15 16   17

p As a science and ideology, as the
theoretical foundation of the international communist movement as a whole and of every Communist Party, MarxismLeninism develops in unremitting struggle with the ideology of the exploiting classes, in struggle chiefly with bourgeois ideology, which dominates capitalist society. Moreover, it sharply opposes the socio-political and philosophical theories reflecting reactionary tendencies and the instability of the petty-bourgeois strata in exploiting society.

p In capitalist society, until workers and other working people join the Communist Parties they are constantly influenced by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology, which is not easily shaken off. Through various channels this ideology also has some influence on a section of the membership of the Communist Parties. The penetration of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois influence into communist ranks manifests itself mainly in the emergence of Right or “Left” revisionism, of Right or “Left” deviations in the workingclass and communist movement. Therefore, besides combating undisguised proponents of reactionary bourgeois and pseudo-revolutionary Utopian petty-bourgeois ideology, Marxism-Leninism develops in irreconcilable struggle within the working-class and communist movement directed against Right and “Left” deviations, against all attempts at revising the scientific ideology of the working class.

p A general outline of the struggle against Right and “Left” deviations in the working-class and communist movement to safeguard the purity of and creatively develop MarxismLeninism as the revolutionary ideology of the working class 18 may be traced by the struggle against Lassallcanism and anarchism at a time when Marxism was in the process of evolution, by the struggle against Bernsteinianism and, generally, against Right opportunism and revisionism in the Second International and against modern Social-Democracy and other forms of Right revisionism, by the struggle against “Leftism” as an infantile disease of communism at the time the Communist International was set up, against Trotskyism as the most dangerous manifestation of “Left” adventurism in the period between the two world wars, the struggle against Left sectarianism and dogmatism and, lastly, the struggle against Maoism. The international communist movement was considerably strengthened by the defeat of the most aggressive imperialist forces in the Second World War, from which the USSR, the world’s first socialist country, emerged as the principal victor, and by the triumph of the socialist revolution in a number of countries. However, the influx of tens of millions of new people into the communist movement brought with it, in varying degree, ideas and sentiments alien to the working class. The countries that took the road to socialism found themselves confronted by totally new and complex tasks: besides having to eradicate the disproportions in the economy and the national and territorial antagonisms inherited from capitalism, they had to build up inter-state relations of a new type, based not only on equality and mutual non-interference in internal affairs, but also on many-sided co-operation and internationalist reciprocal assistance. The changes in the international situation likewise brought problems to the. Communist and Workers’ Parties in the advanced capitalist countries and in countries fighting for national liberation or which had just won liberation from colonial dependence.

p By concerted effort the international communist movement analysed the basic problems of the new epoch and charted the general line of its strategy and tactics under present-day conditions. This is mirrored in the documents of the 1957 and 1960 Moscow Meetings of Communist and Workers’ Parties. However, during the quest for forms and methods of applying the new strategy and tactics in the obtaining conditions, the impact of various factors gave rise to objective possibilities for errors of a Right or “Left” nature in individual Parties.

p Having lost their former predominant position, the 19 imperialists find that under the new balance of forces in the world it is becoming harder and more and more hazardous to organise armed interventions to suppress the revolutionary movement in various parts of the globe. As a result, ideological subversion receives prominence in imperialism’s "global strategy" directed against the world revolutionary movement as a whole and, mainly, against the socialist countries. Amid subversion of this kind special importance is attached to encouraging anti-Marxist deviations and fanning nationalism in some Parties in the hope that this would undermine the unity of the international communist movement and then weaken and destroy the affected Parties. Inasmuch as the CPSU continues to be in the van of the international communist movement and the USSR remains the mainstay of socialism and the most powerful barrier to imperialist aggression, the preaching of anti-Sovietism has become the main element of imperialism’s global strategy.

p This is the angle from which we have to assess the real substance and role of Maoism, which at the close of the 1950s took shape as a petty-bourgeois, “Leftist” trend in the international working-class movement and in the course of a single decade became a clear-cut anti-Soviet force. In effect, it more and more frequently adopts the role of an assistant and ally of imperialism in its efforts to crush the international working-class and communist movement.

p The situation obtaining in the world today was strikingly laid bare by the developments in Czechoslovakia. These developments provided further testimony of the villainy and perfidy of imperialism’s strategy and were an indication of some weakness in our own ranks. Furthermore, they reaffirmed that regardless of differences in argumentation, both Right and “Left” revisionism are to be seen at the decisive moment working hand in glove with the forces of black reaction, coming out against genuine revolutionary action, against genuine revolutionary forces.

p Lenin pointed out that it is particularly hard to apply Marxism-Leninism creatively in countries with a predominantly peasant population, and that the penetration of classalien influences into the proletarian Parties of these countries is fraught with grave danger. This wholly and completely applies to a backward and semi-colonial country such as China has been. From the history of the Communist Party of China we know that its leadership has frequently been 20 influenced by Right and “Left” deviations. For instance, one of the reasons that the Chinese revolution of 1927 was defeated was that a Right-opportunist group headed by the Party’s General Secretary Chen Tu-hsiu held sway in the CPC leadership. Towards 1930 the leadership passed into the hands of the Li Li-san “Left” group, which artificially speeded up the organisation of insurgent action, calculating that this would provoke war between the USSR and world imperialism. Such a war, the Li Li-san group believed, would ensure the victory of the Chinese revolution.

p The leadership of the CPC and the Chinese Army was seized by the Mao Tse-tung group in January 1935 as a result of a factional struggle. By that time Mao Tse-tung had fallen into error on a series of fundamental issues. However, considerable success was achieved on the eve of and during the Second World War in founding a united front of the Chinese people and in enhancing the prestige and increasing the membership of the CPC through the active assistance of the Comintern and under the beneficial influence of the decisions of its Seventh Congress on forming a united front in the struggle against fascism and against the war in China. In the autumn of 1940 the Comintern requested the CPC leadership to vitalise the struggle against Japanese imperialism in order to prevent Japan from attacking the USSR. Although Mao had the possibility of complying with this request, nationalistic considerations made him adopt a wait-and-see attitude.

p The Chinese revolution triumphed chiefly because of the assistance received by it from the Soviet Army. Substantial progress was registered in China as a result of the dedicated labour of the Chinese people and the generous economic, scientific and technological assistance from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. In less than ten years, i.e., from 1949 to 1957, China’s industrial output increased more than fivefold. In view of this striking achievement, the Eighth Congress of the CPC, held in 1956, recommended that the CPC should continue its correct line calling for the building of socialism in China in close alliance with the USSR within the framework of the world socialist system, and in active struggle against imperialism.

p Everything seemed to be running smoothly. But in the period from 1957 to 1960, the Mao group, which held the leading position in the Party, sharply veered away from the 21 general line of the international communist movement, from the well-founded decisions of the Eighth Congress, and embarked on an erroneous, disastrous policy. What is the explanation for this?

p At the first Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties, held in Moscow in 1957, Mao Tse-tung, who led the Chinese delegation, sought to impose on the international communist movement the perverse theory that despite the changed balance of forces in the world another global war was inevitable and that such a war should be regarded as the principal means of crushing imperialism and securing the victory of the world revolution. In effect, this was a variant of Trotsky’s discredited theory of "permanent revolution”. Another effort to incite the international communist movement to aggravate the world situation and artificially speed up the world revolution was made by the Chinese delegation at the Moscow Meeting in 1960.

p True, in both 1957 and 1960 the Chinese representatives signed the international communist movement’s main programme documents that were drawn up jointly by all the fraternal Parties. But it soon became evident that the Mao group had signed these documents for purely tactical reasons and had no intention of adhering to the general line charted in them.

p Back in 1935-45, after gaining control of the leadership of the CPC and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Mao Tse-tung brutally made away with leading Party cadres whom he found objectionable, and thereby seized absolute power. In this situation, the Party Rules adopted at the Seventh Congress of the CPC in 1945 contained the provision that the Party "is guided by the thought of Mao Tse-tung”. This provision was omitted from the Party Rules adopted by the Eighth Congress in 1956. They correctly stated that the Party was guided by Marxist-Leninist theory. Moreover, the decisions of the Eighth Congress of the CPC warned against the harmful consequences of the personality cult and stated that inner-Party democracy had to be promoted. These provisions came into conflict with Mao Tse-tung’s past practice and his ambition of perpetuating the cult of his personality.

p The successes achieved in building up a united China and in developing her economy turned the heads of the CPC leaders and gave them the subjectivistic idea that China’s 22 internal growth and also world development could be speeded up artificially in the direction desired by them. They believed the conditions were favourable for establishing their hegemony in the international communist movement. This brought to the fore the Great-Power, chauvinistic tendencies, subjectivism and petty-bourgeois “Leftism” displayed earlier by them. The Maoists swept aside the decisions of the Eighth Congress of the CPC and plunged into adventurism in home and foreign policy. Maoism took shape as eclecticism, consisting of the most diverse views, whose role was to use pseudo-revolutionary verbiage to conceal the Great-Power, chauvinistic, subjectivist and adventurist political line of the Mao group. The adventurist, "three red banners" policy—"new general line”, "big leap" and "people’s communes"—thus came into being in 1958.

p The "big leap" and the people’s communes were subjectivistic attempts, clashing with the objective laws of social development and with realistic possibilities, to multiply many times over the rate of industrialisation and agricultural development in the People’s Republic of China in order to leap over the socialist stage and rapidly go over to communism. The collapse of this line, which was both Utopian and adventurist, became obvious as early as the end of 1959, while at the beginning of 1960 it was, in fact, abandoned. However, this did not have a sobering effect on the Peking leaders. All they did was to change their tactics, laying emphasis on their adventurist course in international politics.

p The theoretical and international aspects of Mao’s "new general line”, in opposition to the general line adopted at the Moscow Meetings, were formalised in the notorious “proposal” of 1963. It was inevitable that the international communist movement should reject it as being anti-Marxist. Every effort was made to show the CPC leaders that they were wrong.

The Mao group paid no heed to the friendly counsels of the vast majority of the fraternal Parties. After their failure to force the international communist movement to accept their programme, the Maoists, like the Trotskyites of the 1920s, began to run down and slander the CPSU and other fraternal Parties which did not agree with them. Chinese diplomats in all countries and Chinese representatives at international forums started divisive activities in order to rally around themselves all opposition and all the shady 23 elements expelled from fraternal Parties and made it plain that they were bent on splitting the international communist movement. This became a feature of the activities of the CPC representatives in the national liberation movement and in the various international progressive movements.

p The Mao group’s divisive activities in the international communist movement have undermined the unity and the militancy of the revolutionary movement in many countries. This has enabled the reactionary forces throughout the world to go over to the offensive and deal the revolutionary and progressive forces a series of blows. The most striking illustration is Vietnam, where, as a result of Peking’s divisive activities, the USA has been able to launch a most wanton aggression against the Vietnamese people.

p To halt this aggression and, in general, cut short imperialism’s acts of aggression, it was imperative to unite all the revolutionary and progressive forces in the world, regardless of the differences between them. However, the Mao group, which calls itself the most determined fighter against imperialism, categorically refused to take part in any negotiations with the USSR and other socialist countries on concerted action against imperialism. The pretext was that the Soviet Union and other socialist countries "are the allies of the imperialists”. This despite the fact that the leaders of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam had repeatedly declared that the Soviet Union and other European socialist countries were among the forces rendering Vietnam massive military, economic and political assistance. Why, in that case, were the Maoists so virulently opposed to joint action? Only overwhelmingly naive people inexperienced in politics can assume that the Chinese leaders really believe their slanderous fabrications against the CPSU and other fraternal socialist Parties and therefore have no desire to negotiate with them. The truth lies somewhere else, and is inexorable.

p Co-ordinated joint action by all socialist countries and progressive forces in support of Vietnam would have put a speedy end to US aggression in Vietnam and restored peace throughout the world. Moreover, it would have created conditions favourable for a further powerful upsurge of the 24 revolutionary and progressive movements throughout the world. In that case the prestige of the Soviet Union and the world socialist system would have soared to new heights and the danger of another world war would have diminished. But this runs counter to the Mao group’s adventurist concepts, according to which war is the sole means for ensuring the triumph of the revolution on the national and the global scale. That is why the Maoists are so fanatically opposed to joint action in aid of Vietnam and in the struggle against imperialism generally.

p On the basis of the above considerations the Mao group made the following insidious demand of the CPSU and other fraternal Parties: "If you desire to prove that you are really enemies of imperialism, aggravate the international situation everywhere and provoke military conflicts.” Here the point must be made that the Maoists want others to employ these tactics, while they confine themselves to denunciations of the imperialists.

p In this light one can clearly see the real purport of the Maoists’ assertions that the temporary stationing of the troops of the USSR and other socialist countries in Czechoslovakia is "another conspiracy between the USSR and the USA”.

Troops of five socialist countries entered Czechoslovakia in order to prevent the counter-revolution from seizing that country and prevent Czechoslovakia from falling prey to the imperialists and being turned into a springboard for further aggressive acts by NATO against other European socialist countries. That was why imperialist propaganda raised a hue and cry against the five socialist countries and played the role of ardent champion of the "new Czechoslovak road to socialism”. The imperialists never for a moment meant to give the counter-revolution in Czechoslovakia open military assistance. The reason was not that they did not wish to take such a step, but that the balance of strength was unfavourable to them both in Europe and throughout the world. What then lay behind the absurd accusation of conspiracy with imperialism? The fact that a military conflict did not break out between the USSR and the imperialists in this case, either: the cardinal aim of the Peking leaders, as we have already mentioned, is to provoke such a conflict, which, according to their calculations, would end their international isolation and lead them out of the chaos 25 reigning in China. Moreover, they hope that another world war would devastate mainly North America and Europe, as a result of which China would become the dominant power in the world.

p In order to substantiate the factional struggle, which has developed into a civil war for the seizure of absolute power in the Party and the state, and justify their foreign policy aimed at hotting up international tension and provoking war between the USSR and the USA, and also to divert the anger of the masses over the tremendous internal difficulties, Mao Tse-tung and his group took a series of steps to give Maoism the shape of an ideology.

p In an editorial carried by the magazine Hungchih and the newspaper Jenmin Jihpao on May 18, 1967, it is emphasised that the decision passed by the CC CPC on May 16, 1966 (drawn up under Mao Tse-tung’s personal direction, it was published almost a year after its adoption) is permeated with new ideas "of exceptionally great and far-reaching significance”. The “new” propositions of Maoism, mirrored in this editorial and in some of Mao’s speeches in recent years, contain not well-founded and well-argumented principles but only postulates mostly in the form of dicta and aphorisms. They were “explained” in a slanderous speech made by Lin Piao on the 50th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution and in editorials in Hungchih and Jenmin Jihpao. The basic propositions of Maoism, “enriched” in this manner, are:

p 1. The USSR and other socialist countries adhering to the correct general line worked out by the Moscow Meetings, the People’s Republic of Bulgaria among them, have “ degenerated” abjectly. Capitalism has been restored in these countries as a result of which they have become wholly and completely allies of the USA and other imperialist countries. For that reason, the struggle for the "defeat of the revisionists is a prerequisite" of the victory over imperialism. Thus, for the Maoists, enemy No. 1 is not US imperialism, the vanguard of all the reactionary forces in the world that is reducing Vietnam to piles of rubble, but “ revisionism”, i.e., chiefly the European socialist countries headed by the USSR. Proceeding from this, the Maoists conduct a base 26 campaign of slander against the Soviet Union and other socialist countries comparable only with the anti-communism of the most rabid reactionaries. Subversive, splitting activity against the Communist Parties of the developed capitalist countries is carried on in the same manner.

p 2. It is common knowledge that after it was crushed in the major cities in 1927 and as a consequence of the errors committed subsequently by the CPC leadership, the Chinese revolutionary movement was confined for a long time mainly to rural regions. Today the Maoists seek to dispense this limited experience as a "universal recipe" for all revolutions. Here is what they write: "First and foremost, the peasant masses must be mobilised for guerilla war, the agrarian revolution must be completed and strongpoints must be established in the countryside. Then the cities must be surrounded by the villages and captured.” According to Lin Piao, this “discovery” by Mao Tse-tung is "a great development of the road opened by the October Revolution, a road to power" and it is offered as a "strategic plan" for the victory of the revolution throughout the world.

p This anti-scientific Maoist “theory” lies at the root of the demand that China should be regarded as the centre of the world revolutionary movement. By nature and content the purpose of this “theory” is to bring into the Maoist camp masses of illiterate peasants and other petty-bourgeois strata in Asia, Africa and Latin America who are awakening to independent and political life. In this case, the Maoists counted on their political inexperience and their hatred and distrust of the capitalist West accumulated over centuries of colonial slavery. But developments show that in this issue, too, the Mao group had clearly overrated their own potentialities and underrated the growing political maturity of the working people of Asia, Africa and Latin America. In these continents the number of people whom such an absurd idea can inspire is rapidly diminishing.

p 3. A new and important element of Maoism today is the attempt to give out as a "theoretical discovery of epochal significance" the counter-revolutionary civil war which the Mao group unleashed two years ago under the high- sounding title of "cultural revolution”. The slogans put forward by Mao Tse-tung at the llth plenary meeting of the CC CPC state: "Remove power from the hands of people following the capitalist road!" and "Open fire at the headquarters!”

27

p Using Mao Tse-tung’s maxims, the Peking theoreticians are seeking to substantiate the civil war started under these slogans and on factional considerations: they contend that the struggle between the “people” and the "enemies of the people" must go on uninterruptedly. This is described as a struggle between antagonistic classes, a struggle which must be waged on the principle of "who will beat whom”, in other words, until the enemy is destroyed completely. However, the Mao group does not and cannot offer a genuinely class, scientific criterion to show who are the "representatives of the people" and who are "the enemies of the people”.

p Unquestionably, there are enemies of the working people in China today. They are remnants of the exploiting classes— former capitalists and feudal lords, and remnants of the old reactionary parties. Most of them continue to receive large sums of money as interest on nationalised enterprises and hold responsible posts in the economy and in the state apparatus. These class enemies inflict damage wherever they can. Naturally, given favourable conditions they would have tried to restore capitalism. Precisely these reactionary elements have not been touched by the "cultural revolution”. The label "enemies of the people following the capitalist road" has been slapped not on them but on many veterans of the revolutionary movement, on those Party leaders and statesmen who had disagreed with Mao’s line at one stage or another or had expressed doubts regarding the infallibility of Mao’s personality or his adventurist policies. In support of this statement suffice it to recall that Liu Shao-chi, President of the People’s Republic of China, Teng Hsiao-ping, General Secretary of the CPC, Chu Teh, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National Assembly of People’s Representatives, and many of his deputies, and lastly many members of the Political Bureau of the CC CPC—participants in the national liberation struggle, cadres who had rendered distinguished service in the building of socialism in the PRC—have been proclaimed "ringleaders of the black gang”.

p The fact that subjectivism and factionalism have been decisive elements in organising the persecution of cadres devoted to socialism and proletarian internationalism or simply persons objectionable to the Mao faction has given rise to conditions for internecine strife between rival Maoist organisations and groups. This, along with the growing 28 resistance of the working people to the "cultural revolution”, has led to chaos which is accompanied by economic dislocation and a considerable lag in public education, science and culture, and nullifies past achievements in the building of socialism and in uniting the Chinese people morally and politically.

p 4. In the hope of surmounting the existing anarchy and factional struggle and uniting the masses around Mao for the purpose of achieving their megalomaniac aims, the Maoists have been fanning Great-Power (Great-Han) nationalism on an unparalleled scale. Stress is laid on the numerical strength of the Chinese people and wide use is made of the national superiority complex and exclusiveness cultivated by the Chinese emperors in the course of many centuries.

p To reinforce Great-Han chauvinism and substantiate their bid for world domination they have recourse to the longconsidered claim that in our day the centre of the world revolutionary movement has moved to Peking and that Mao Tse-tung is the leader and helmsman of the world revolution.

p From history we know that the centres of the world revolutionary movement did indeed move. For instance, France, where the great bourgeois revolution of 1789 triumphed, was the centre of the world revolutionary movement at the close of the 18th century. In the mid-19th century, the centre moved to Germany, where the bourgeois revolution gained broad scope and where Marx and Engels evolved the scientific ideology of the only genuinely revolutionary class, the proletariat.

p Early in the 20th century the main centre of the world revolutionary movement moved again, this time to Russia. In those years all the contradictions innate in the new, imperialist epoch were concentrated there. Russia was pregnant with the bourgeois-democratic revolution. The ruthlessly exploited proletariat of that country was relatively concentrated and well organised, and proved capable of leading the bourgeois-democratic revolution in order later to go over to the socialist revolution. As a consequence, Russia became the homeland of Leninism, which marked a new stage in the development of Marxism. Lenin laid bare the new features of the epoch of imperialism and creatively developed the theory, strategy and tactics of the proletarian 29 revolution. Founded under his leadership, the Bolshevik Party secured victory in the struggle to overthrow capitalism and has been successfully building socialism.

p After the Great October Socialist Revolution the Soviet Union became the recognised centre, bulwark and beacon of the world revolutionary movement. The Soviet Union played the central role in defeating nazism in the Second World War and in the triumph of new socialist revolutions that followed on the heels of the war. Furthermore, the USSR rendered immense service in making possible the victory of the national liberation movement in a number of countries after the war. Undisputably, the Soviet Union has contributed colossally towards the successful building of socialism in all countries that have taken the socialist road and towards safeguarding them against encroachments by imperialism.

p The Chinese leaders, too, recognised all this until 1956 and even at the second Moscow Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties in 1960. They frankly acknowledged that in the new situation, too, the USSR remained the centre of the world revolutionary movement and was its most powerful force and mainstay.

p What was the state of affairs in the course of the past 10-12 years, when the conflict between the Mao group and the international communist movement burst out and deepened? Owing to its immense achievements in building communist society, the further improvement of the economic and socio-political system, the rapid rate of technological, scientific and cultural advance, the tremendous assistance to Vietnam, the determined defence of revolutionary Cuba, of the Arab peoples against Israeli aggression, of socialist Hungary in 1956 and of Czechoslovakia today against the inroads of the counter-revolution, the Soviet Union continues to be regarded by the working people of the whole world as the main bulwark of revolution and progress. The USSR continues to render vital assistance to socialist and to many developing countries. It continues to give all-sided support to all democratic and national liberation movements in the world. Another manifestation of the Soviet Union’s leading role as the bastion of the world revolution is that thanks to its powerful army, nuclear weapons, missiles and nuclear-powered submarines it has become the main, real force paralysing and curbing the USA, the super-powerful, 30 most aggressive and most heavily armed imperialist state, and also the revanchist ambitions of the Federal Republic of Germany.

p What on the theoretical level is the substance of the evolution of Maoism? Until recent years the followers of Mao sought to represent Maoism as "Chinese Marxism”, having in mind that Mao applied Marxist-Leninist theory to the specific conditions obtaining in China. Indeed, Mao’s earliest works contain some Marxist propositions, but these are worded very primitively and vaguely. However, basic concepts like "dialectical contradiction”, "proletarian revolution" and "dictatorship of the proletariat" are not interpreted by Mao in the universally accepted scientific sense. He injects his own, anti-scientific meaning into them. Thus, Marxist phraseology conceals an anti-scientific, profoundly erroneous content. For instance, Mao frequently reduces a dialectical contradiction to a purely formal, external element such as the contradiction between the concepts of good and evil; he includes poor peasants into the concept "working class”; he reduces the dictatorship of the proletariat to a military-bureaucratic dictatorship of a ruling clique headed by himself, and so on.

p The anti-Marxist, anti-scientific aspects of Maoism began to predominate after 1956, when Mao turned radically away from the sound decisions of the Eighth Congress of the CPC. Regardless of the partial use of Marxist terminology, all the “new” features introduced into Maoism in recent years and advertised as the "highest stage of the development of Leninism" are profoundly erroneous and constitute an eclectic mixture of Trotskyism, anarchism, Great-Power chauvinism and political adventurism with the addition of the most rabid anti-Sovietism.

p To round off the picture, a few words must be said about the substance of modern Maoism. Arbitrarily reducing the significance of Leninism to "the solution of the problem of the triumph of the dictatorship of the proletariat in one country”, the Peking “theoreticians” maintain in their latest “works” that Lenin did not foresee the possibility that capitalism might be restored and did not deal with the ways and means of preventing such a restoration.

p On the basis of this untenable premise, Lin Piao and other Peking “theoreticians” proclaim that the "cultural revolution" discovered by Mao is a "great historic contribution”, 31 maintaining that it has shown "the ways and means of strengthening the dictatorship of the proletariat and preventing the restoration of capitalism in conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat”. But, as we have already seen, the "cultural revolution" pursues totally different aims, namely, the precipitation of civil war so that a handful of adventurists who have betrayed Marxism-Leninism, can seize absolute power in the Party and the state.

p At the same time, the modern Maoist theoreticians incredibly impoverish and distort the basic tasks confronting the dictatorship of the proletariat.

p Marxism-Leninism teaches that the entire experience of socialist construction in the USSR and other socialist countries, including the positive experience of the People’s Republic of China until 1958, bears out that the cardinal internal tasks of the socialist revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat are: economic development with the main emphasis on socialist industrialisation and the co-operation and mechanisation of agriculture; the launching of a genuinely cultural revolution with the purpose of raising the educational and ideological level of the people and reorganising science and art on a Marxist-Leninist basis; raising the people’s standard of living. All this is fully in keeping with Lenin’s propositions that the principal task of the revolution after the dictatorship of the proletariat has been established and consolidated is to promote peaceful economic and cultural development, achieve a higher labour productivity than under capitalism and raise the people’s standard of living. That was how the problems of socialist construction were interpreted in the decisions of the Eighth Congress of the CPC.

p However, after the failure of the "big leap" and the people’s communes, which were counted on to ensure China’s direct transition to communism, Mao performed a volteface in the theory of socialist development too. The Leninist policy in economic development, founded on a combination of material and moral incentives, was branded as “ economism”, while the legitimate striving to improve the people’s standard of living was stigmatised as a tendency to "turn bourgeois”, as a "return to capitalism”.

p The Maoist theoreticians now declare: "Chairman Mao frequently stresses that the problem of ’who beats whom’ takes a long time to be settled in the course of the 32 revolution. It must not be imagined that after one or two, or three or four cultural revolutions everything will be all right.”

p In other words, instead of economic and cultural development they offer periodic rounds of "struggle against headquarters”, i.e., the extermination of leading cadres objectionable to the cult and the ruling clique supporting it. The Maoists hope to fill decades and perhaps even centuries (to use an expression of Mao himself) of the development of the socialist revolution with a “revolutionary” content of this kind. But has this prospect, which in practice brought tragedy to the Chinese people, anything in common with the actual development of the socialist revolution? Does this not, in effect, compromise the very idea of socialism?

There can be no doubt that sooner or later the Communist Party of China and the working class, peasants and people’s intelligentsia of the People’s Republic of China will find the strength to put an end to the anarchy into which they have been led by the Mao group. Maoism, which has degenerated into Great-Power chauvinism and pseudorevolutionary adventurism and slid into undisguised anticommunism, will be thrown on the scrap heap of history. Chinese Communists and the Chinese people will rejoin us under the banner of the great and invincible MarxistLeninist teaching and proletarian internationalism and advance towards the complete triumph of socialism and communism.