First Published: The Call, Vol. 5, No. 6, June 7, 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Can socialism win its victory over capitalism? Once in power, can the working class consolidate and preserve its victory? Is the future for the revolutionary forces bright?
Last month marked the 10th anniversary of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, an event of great historical significance which proved that the answer to all the above questions is an enthusiastic “yes!”
On May 16,1966, Mao Tsetung, the Chairman of the Communist Party of China, guided the drafting of the circular which sounded the call for China's cultural revolution. This circular served as a call to China's 700 million people to continue the socialist revolution under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat and to defend their revolution against attempts at capitalist restoration.
Since that time, the Chinese people under the guidance of their great Communist Party and Chairman Mao have won tremendous victories over the capitalist roaders like Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao and Teng Hsiao-ping. In the Circular of May 16, 1966, Chairman Mao warned against the “representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party” and who posed as revolutionaries by “waving the red flag to oppose the red flag.”
Liu Shao-chi and those who followed him promoted various theories and programs aimed at eroding the rule of the working class and bringing back bourgeois rule as happened earlier in the Soviet Union with Khrushchov and company. They promoted capitalism and revisionism in the cultural sphere, trying to weaken the resistance of the people. They preached “the dying out of class struggle” while at the same time intensifying their own class struggle against the people. They also promoted the idea that the development of the “productive forces” was more important than revolution, in order to turn the people away from their struggle to build socialism.
If the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution had not taken place, a counter-revolutionary restoration could well have occurred throughout the country before long.
Relying on the masses, Chairman Mao called forth the revolutionary “three-in-one” committees in which workers and peasants, soldiers and revolutionary party cadre worked together to fight the revisionists. Through the course of this revolution, the consciousness of the masses was raised and millions came to be able to better distinguish Marxism from revisionism. Today the Cultural Revolution in China is continuing in the present stage of beating back the “rightist wind” which Teng Hsiao-ping represented.
Let the revisionists rant and rave about the “disruptive” effects of the cultural revolution. Let the opportunists call it “ultra-left.” We warmly welcome a hundred more cultural revolutions which will prove to be the salvation of socialism and will lead the way toward the abolition of all classes and the achievement of a communist society. This is the hope of the struggling working class of every country.