p Current events in China connected with the so-called cultural revolution have become a matter of great concern and anxiety to the world communist movement and all true friends of the Chinese people.

p They cannot be said to have come like a bolt from the blue. For some years now, the communist movement has had to fight the ideology of Mao Tse-tung’s followers, who have broken with the general line elaborated by the Moscow Meetings of 1957 and 1960 and are attempting to impose on all Communist Parties an adventurist policy alien to Marxism-Leninism. Mao’s "great proletarian cultural revolution" is closely connected with the adventuristic domestic and foreign policy his group has now been pursuing for many years.

p The policy of Mao and his group has now entered a new dangerous phase. It harms the interests of socialism, the international workingclass and liberation movement, endangers the socialist achievements of the Chinese people and objectively helps imperialism.

p The monstrous forms that events in China have assumed, the outrages, lawlessness and provocations with their top-dressing of revolutionary phrase-mongering are naturally received as something unprecedented in history. Yet, though these events are unique, one cannot fail to see that the international communist movement is now faced with a phenomenon that bears a definite 6 resemblance to the symptoms of the “disease” Marx, Engels and Lenin and all true Communists fought, the disease they diagnosed as pettybourgeois revolutionism.

p This pseudo-revolutionism, which always crops up "in somewhat new forms, in a hitherto unfamiliar garb or surroundings, in an unusual—a more or less unusual—situation"  [6•1  inflicts great harm on the struggle to do away with capitalism and, as historical experience demonstrates, tends to degenerate from revolutionary phrase-mongering and empty gestures into an anti-revolutionary and finally outright reactionary force.

p The world revolutionary movement comes up against many varieties of petty-bourgeois revolutionism. They differ according to their specific social roots, national features, historical conditions and, finally, the personal qualities of their leaders and ideologists. But despite all their different manifestations and even sometimes their apparent dissimilarity, all these varieties have many common specific features.

p When Lenin was fighting the Narodniks,  [6•2  he compared the manifestations of petty-bourgeois ideology in Russia and in the West, notably the views of the Narodniks and those of the so-called economic romanticists in Europe. "It goes without saying,” Lenin said, "that Russia’s specific historic and economic features, on the one hand, and her incomparably greater backwardness, on the other, lend Narodism particularly marked distinctive features. But these distinctions are no more than those between varieties within the same 7 species and, therefore, do not disprove the similarity between Narodism and petty-bourgeois romanticism."  [7•1 

p Applying Lenin’s methodology, we see that Chinese petty-bourgeois revolutionism bears the stamp of that country’s historical and economic development. But comparing Maoism with other manifestations of petty-bourgeois revolutionism, particularly anarchism and Trotskyism, we find that, despite some differences between them, they all belong to the same species.

p Historical experience is instructive. But reliance on it is fraught with danger. There is always the temptation to lull oneself with the fact that "something of the sort" has happened before and to be content with establishing analogies, overlooking the specific features of new phenomena a thorough understanding of which is indispensable for success in defending revolutionary Marxism.

p Maoist ideology reveals a curious intermixture of anarchist and Narodnik views on the special historical mission of the peasantry and the pseudorevolutionary phrase-mongering of Trotskyism and the postulates of the ancient Chinese philosophers. But the main thing in Maoism is that petty-bourgeois revolutionism is made to serve bellicose great-power chauvinism and is striving for world leadership. This is a case of nationalistic manifestation of petty-bourgeois revolutionism. The fact that the champions of this anti-Marxist ideology are at the helm of state in so vast a country as China constitutes a danger far worse than that of any previous anti-Marxist trend.

No past experience, not even the most tempting parallels and comparisons can substitute for a 8 detailed study of the concrete events in China. This does not mean, however, that we can disregard history in this study. On the contrary, the history of the struggle of Marxism against antiMarxist trends helps us gain a deeper understanding of the kind of enemies revolutionary theory had to contend with in its development. This historical experience helps us better to discern the modern enemies of Marxism no matter how they are disguised, helps us advance arguments against them, and strengthens our conviction of the invincibility of Marxist-Leninist ideology.