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p Practice is the impartial and inexorable test of the correctness of views. History provides numerous examples of most acute differences inside a party or between different parties being settled not only by the principled struggle of ideas alone, but also by life itself, political practice.

p The objective laws of social development, Lenin said, "simply brush aside erroneous opinions, making them pointless and devoid of any interest".  [176•1 

p It has happened that what still recently seemed strong and promising became deteriorated and went under, while what was subjected to cruel attacks and defamation proved its correctness. "The class struggle,” Lenin said, "does indeed teach in practice that any false note in the position of any party immediately lands that party where it deserves to be."  [176•2 

p The false positions of the anarchists made this once strong and dangerous trend a nonentity in most countries. There still exists an anarchist International—the Workers’ International Association—who knows about the activities of this artificially maintained organisation, which has neither real power nor influence?

p Or take the so-called Fourth International, whose formation was accompanied by so much drum-beating? The Trotskyists declared that the "crisis experienced by mankind is explained in 177 the main by the crisis of the revolutionary leadership" and that their International would assume this leadership. Several decades have passed, and the Trotskyists must now console themselves with having "carried out laboratory experiments”, as they term them. Constant quarrels and splits, reunions and new disintegration are characteristic of this movement of small groups of intellectuals, minor groupings and lone individuals. Some of them struggle for "orthodox Trotskyism”, others consider that Trotskyism has outlived itself and should be revised. There are groups accusing the "Fourth International" of revisionism and threatening to set up a new International, and also some which resolutely demand "an end to the tradition of splits and the practice of organisational sectarianism, which has had such a devastating influence on our development".

p All these squabbles and mutual accusations typical of this organisation, which gives shelter to various political renegades and adventurists, are proof that history has landed the Trotskyists where they deserve to be, that their false positions have been refuted by the course of development.

p Even though the Maoists spare neither money nor efforts on self-advertisement, on exalting their “prophet” and on intimidating all those who disagree with them, they too are beginning to feel the action of inexorable objective laws.

p China has had many opportunities of discovering how cruel a vengeance life wreaks upon those who refuse to reckon with its laws.

p The pitiful results of the attempt to make a leap in metallurgy by setting up small artisan furnaces in almost every village and district are common knowledge. On October 1, 1958, Renmin 178 ribao reported that close on 100 million people were participating in smelting steel and pig iron, that a major victory had been scored in the technical revolution and that "the veil of mystery obscuring steel production has now been torn to shreds”. However the laws governing the development of modern production made short work of all these braggings about "the Chinese being able to do what is beyond the power of Europeans”, and the hue and cry that was raised about the “leap” in metallurgy. Two years after this subjectivist attempt was made, in 1960, Chinese guides took care to steer visitors away from the abandoned artisan stoves and other sad reminders of that ridiculous voluntarism.

p A modern motor works for 30,000 cars a year was built with Soviet assistance in Changchun. At the beginning of the "big leap”, it was announced that the Soviet specialists held "old ideas" and that the yearly output could be raised to 300,000 a year. This was a purely " voluntaristic" decision, which was supported by no calculations.

p The accusation that the Soviet specialists working in China were conservative and “limited”, and unable to take a revolutionary approach to technology, went hand in hand with infringements of technical norms. The result was that a lot of valuable equipment was wrecked and many factories had to stop operation.

p Any infringement of the laws of physics, technology, or biology is immediately felt. Machines break down, yields drop, money and efforts are wasted. Violations of the objective laws of social development lead to somewhat different results. Their violation may not tell immediately, but only some time later, and not directly, but 179 through the actions of people, their moods, the demands of classes and social strata.

p The proclamation of the "big leap" and "people’s communes" was bound sooner or later to evoke public resistance. The ruling group and Mao himself felt comparatively soon that they could not violate the laws of social development without incurring inevitable punishment. This realisation was reflected in the decision of the Sixth Plenary Meeting of the C.C., C.P.C., held from November 28 to December 10, 1958.

p This decision begins on a pathetic note: "In 1958, on Eastern Asia’s broad horizon, there emerged like a rising sun a new social organisation—the big people’s communes in the villages of our country.” Although in August China was still said to be on the threshold of communism, the December decision declared that it would be wrong "to indulge in pure fantasy about being able to jump into communism, by-passing the stage of socialism”. The most remarkable thing was that the plenary meeting approved Mao’s decision not to advance his candidature to the position of Chairman of the Chinese People’s Republic. This was motivated by the need to give him more time for theoretical work, for concentrating on questions dealing with the political course. Many observers, however, thought that this was a manoeuvre of Mao’s to evade the responsibility for the unavoidable failures of the "big leap" and the "people’s communes".

p For several years, Mao attempted to remain in the shade, but when the economic position improved slightly he endeavoured to resume the old course, adding to it an adventuristic foreign policy. But the sad lessons of the past had not been wasted. The masses had learned from their own 180 political experience and a large part of the population, notably intellectuals and Party workers, were growing increasingly dissatisfied with Mao Tse-tung’s dangerous policies.

p Now it became impossible to continue this policy without removing all those protesting against it, without suppressing and destroying morally and even physically all those who refused to bow to the “wisdom” and “genius” of Mao and were unwilling to follow him blindly wherever he liked.

p But first it was necessary to accumulate strength. Mao began to woo the army’s support through Defence Minister Lin Piao, and to organise numerous detachments of adolescents and young people in various educational establishments to defend Mao’s ideas.

p When Trotsky began his campaign against the G.P.S.U. in 1923, he also attempted to draw the young people in educational establishments over to his side, considering that, by virtue of their youthful enthusiasm and responsiveness, they would be willing to translate their feelings into "immediate action”. Trotsky expected, as he expressed it, that the young people would react with particular vigour to bureaucratism, and strove to portray his struggle against the Party as a struggle against bureaucracy in the Party apparatus, although he himself had broken all records for red tape on the posts he had held.

p Mao Tse-tung is trying to succeed where Trotsky failed. It is not the working class and the peasantry who support his power, but the young people in educational establishments and adolescents who not only lack political experience, but are generally ignorant. The striving of young people "to translate their feelings into immediate 181 action" was used to persecute intellectuals, to wreck institutions and to perpetrate various outrages. The Maoists also encouraged careerism among their young followers, promising them the positions of those whom they would help to " overthrow”. This place-hunting assumed such a scale that the Maoists soon had to rebuke the young people for excessive careerism and for forgetting ideals. Later they even had to threaten those participants in the "cultural revolution" "who selfishly think only about themselves" and "do not fight anarchism”; the Shanghai newspaper Wcnhuui />ao even wrote on July 21, 1967: "we in no way believe that anybody will fight for power for himself."

p Dissatisfaction with Mao Tse-tung’s policy is not a recent development. Yang Wen-yuan, a member of "the group for the cultural revolution under the C.C., C.P.G.”, said in an article published on January 3, 1967, that Mao Tse-tung had already demanded in July 1964 that dissatisfaction with his line should be suppressed. Mao’s letter warning that "if we should fail to take reeducation seriously" grave consequences may be expected, was sent out to all Party organisations as an official document and served as "an impetus to the cultural revolution throughout the country".

p Mao needed over two years to accumulate enough strength for his offensive—for the "great proletarian cultural revolution”. The resolution of the Eleventh Plenary Meeting of the C.C., G.P.G. (August 1966) declared that it was to be a mighty onslaught on bourgeois and feudal ideology, on old morals and old customs. It was also announced that the "brave initiators of that movement will be a large detachment of hitherto 182 unknown boys, girls and adolescents”. This detachment was warned that "words should be used in discussions, and not force".

p But the "brave initiators" understood perfectly well that this warning was unadulterated hypocrisy. They humiliated scientists, writers, Party workers and old Communists, reviled books of the old Chinese classics, smashed art objects created over the centuries, did away even with the Chinese traditional opera, with hundreds of schools and trends, which the people loved so much. All this was done under the pretext of fighting bourgeois and feudal ideology, morals and customs.

p It may be asked why the Maoists, those bellicose nationalists, chauvinists, suddenly attacked the spiritual wealth which was the pride of the Chinese people.

p The answer to this question is to be sought in the development of the "cultural revolution”. Early in spring 1966, a blow was struck at the "black gang" of Teng To, one of the secretaries of the Peking Party Committee, former editor of Renmin ribao.

p He was accused of having published since 1961 articles under the title "Evening Chats at the Foot of the Yanshan Mountain”. These were parables written in the Chinese manner with references to events from ancient history, fairy tales and legends.

p Here is one of them—"The Wealth of One Egg”. "In the period of the Ming dynasty, under the administration of Wen Li, there lived a writer named Chiang In-he. In his collection, ’I he Tales of Sue ’lao, the following anecdote is cited. Once there lived a townsman. He was so poor that when he had breakfast he knew not 183 where his dinner would come from. Once he found an egg and happily ran to his wife shouting: ’We have become rich.’ She asked: ’Where is our wealth?’ He showed his wife the egg, saying: ’Here it is. It must still grow for 10 years.’ Then he told his wife of his plans. ’1 shall take the egg to our neighbour and ask him to place it under the brood-hen. When the chicks arc hatched I shall pick out a hen.’ "

p The townsman then went on to reckon what the hen would bring him, how he would have 300 hens in two years, then five cows, how he would lend out for interest the money he made, and, when he was really rich, would get himself a concubine. The wife flared up and broke the egg.

p Five years later, Teng To was persecuted because this anecdote was regarded as a "slanderous accusation that our big leap had suffered a setback".

p Teng To’s article referring to a monk who had acted arbitrarily and had lost popularity was said to insinuate that "we are committing arbitrary action and violence and have lost popularity”. In other tales too they saw accusations of Mao clad in Aesopian language, accusations of "excessive conceit and disrespect for the masses”, attacks against the general Party line, etc., etc.

p Small wonder, therefore, that the Chinese opera with its traditional allegories, with its good and bad generals, emperors, and despots, and noble popular heroes, was banned. In every character, in every situation, the Maoists’ sick imagination felt an allusion, a hidden implication. Was it not wiser to use the excuse of struggling against old morals and customs in order to abolish what might 184 become a source of trouble? "Indeed, miserable is he whose conscience is not clean."  [184•1 

p However, in their struggle for "spiritual reeducation”, the Maoists take a differentiated approach to China’s cultural heritage. For example, according to the old laws and customs, children were not allowed to give evidence against their father, and were taught to respect their elders. When youngsters were made to humiliate old people, to spit at them and to beat up their teachers, these old customs became an obstruction, and they were rejected as feudal customs. But, at the same time, the Confucian demand for unquestioning obedience to the “sage” fully falls in with the wishes of the Maoists.

p At one time Academician V. M. Alexeyev was surprised by the popularity in old China of all sorts of inscriptions. "The fashion for epigraphs,” he wrote, "which the masses took over from the feudal elite, where it took root apparently with the introduction of hieroglyphics, persists stubbornly. China is a country of inscriptions. One finds them in places where we usually never place inscriptions—on door posts, on door panels, above windows, and so on. The inscriptions are naturally not written by the inhabitants of the poor houses and little shops" since they are "unable to read the inscription, yet they know very well what it contains".  [184•2 

p The Maoists are encouraging this old custom dating back to feudal times, and their Datsy pao (newspapers printed in large hieroglyphs) cover all walls, and hieroglyphs are printed on pavements, on the railway rolling stock, etc.

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p The system of ideological indoctrination of the population, the so-called rural talks, began under the Manchu dynasty of Chin and continued up to the revolution of 1911. As early as 1652, a decree of the emperor formulated the "6 Rules" of moral behaviour in the form of aphorisms. There were special “advocates”, who on the 1st and 15th of every month were to explain the emperor’s aphorisms at "rural talks" and at the same time to reveal cases of their violation. About 20 years later, the 6 Rules became 16 Sermons, among which were: "reject false teachings in order to assert genuine knowledge”; "do not conceal fugitives so as not to become an accomplice in their crime”; "participate in the mutual security system ... to suppress thieves, robbers, and so on".  [185•1 

p The system of constant indoctrination with these imperial rules and sermons, feudal "loyalty checks" and mutual security has not been included by the Maoists in the list of old morals and customs to be abolished in the course of the " cultural revolution”; on the contrary, it has been modernised and developed on an unprecedented scale.

p The following sayings of the Manchu emperors also sound very modern: "In governing the Celestial Kingdom, my main worry is to correct the people’s minds. To correct the people’s minds, I strive first of all to exterminate heresy”; or: "In my efforts to establish supreme control over the entire world, I not only observe laws and rules, but first and foremost work changes by introducing ideas."  [185•2 

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p Particularly widespread in China today is the idea that what is of importance is not what a person thinks or feels, it is his ability not to "lose face”, keep one’s outward dignity, and enjoy the respect of others. Observers have long since noticed that public criticism and self-criticism is used in China not to make the criticised person draw conclusions, but for the purpose of humiliating him, of breaking him, of making him lose face. When the Maoists saw that even such criticism did not have the required effect, they made their victims wear a dunce’s cap and shameful inscriptions, and literally flung mud at them.

p Naturally, the Maoists are not uprooting all old customs, habits and ideas, since Mao Tse-tung’s teachings rely mainly on ancient Chinese philosophers and old parables. It has been calculated that 22 per cent of the quotations in Mao’s works are Confucian or neo-Confucian, 12 per cent from Lao Tse and his pupils, and 13 per cent from folklore and legends.

p An ideology must indeed be corrupt when, growing on a national basis, it needs to enter into conflict with all the progressive traditions of the people and declare them the fruit of feudalism and capitalism in order to maintain its positions.

p Mao and his followers attack everything progressive, everything universally human that ancient Chinese culture contained. They also ban the works of world literature—the books of Shakespeare, Romain Rolland and Tolstoy, because their humanism is opposed to the inhumane ideology and practice of the Maoists.

p How great must be the spiritual bankruptcy of people who reject all the great treasures of world 187 culture and see their salvation in obscurantism, in building a new "Chinese wall"!

p The "cultural revolution”, its purpose, methods and means of implementation, demonstrate the deep ideological crisis into which Maoism has fallen and which has turned into a political crisis accompanied by acute social conflict and clashes in the country.

p Those who but yesterday were the accusers today themselves become "black bandits”, "dogs’ heads" and "vipers’ nests”; a functionary whose policy-making speeches were disseminated throughout the country and the entire world is now styled a "hellish ruler of the former propaganda department”; new organisations arise among the Hungweipings and Tsaofans which clash with one another. All this shows how far the crisis has progressed.

p Mao’s group has thrown the country back not only economically, but also socially. It has greatly weakened the positions of the Communist Party and the working class of China, has opened the door to petty bourgeois, anarchist lawlessness, creating a serious threat to China’s revolutionary achievements. The Maoist group has taken a road fraught with the danger of degeneration into a military-bureaucratic dictatorship similar to Asiatic despotism, using fascist methods to maintain its rule and likely to resort to all sorts of foreign policy adventurism.

p Mao’s policies, however, cannot fail to evoke resistance. Almost two years after the proclamation of the "cultural revolution" Hung-chi (No. 10, 1967) was compelled to admit that "at present the great proletarian cultural revolution is developing in our country unevenly”. By that the journal meant that the Maoists had not succeeded 188 in seizing power in all provinces, that they were not receiving the support they had expected.

p That is why they are forced to manoeuvre, to flirt with those upon whom they only yesterday heaped insults, to censure "anarchistic slogans calling for the systematic purge of all leaders only because they are leaders”, to explain to the Hungweipings that they "should abstain from ’ dissension’, from attacking each other, should resolve the contradictions dividing the people not by abuse and beatings, thuggery and robbery".

However, these are only crafty manoeuvres intended to deceive those who are offering resistance, to win allies among the victims of the purges, to strengthen the positions of Maoists so as to enable them to continue their adventuristic course. "We must always bear in mind Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s latest directive”, says the decision of the Shanghai revolutionary committee of June 2, 1967, "the great cultural revolution is being carried out for the first time. It will undoubtedly be repeated many times.” There is no stopping the adventurists. However, the sane forces in the Communist Party, in the working class, the peasantry and other layers of the Chinese population cannot be suppressed by any repressions, whether they take the form of "cultural revolution" or any other form.

p No matter how much the progressive movement of China is impeded by the present policy of her leaders, the inexorable objective laws of social development cannot be abolished or Maoised; they will assert themselves and erode the ground on which the obsolescent ideas of China’s present leaders are built.

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p Real requirements will compel the Chinese leadership to develop industry. The working class will grow and exert an ever greater influence on the country’s domestic and foreign policy.

p Nobody can ignore economic factors for a long time. Some demagogues like Mao Tse-tung may exclaim: "It is horrible to think of the time when all people will live in wealth!" Nobody can afford to ignore the people’s material and spiritual requirements. Slogans alone without material stimuli cannot promote steady development of production for a long time. This law will of necessity assert itself and will make short work of all the artificial schemes the Maoists use to replace progressive development by the barracks socialism of poverty.

p The same can be said also of the notorious slogan of "reliance on one’s own forces”. The policy denying the need for mutual assistance between the socialist countries reflects a level of development of the productive forces at which the question of co-operation in production with other countries has not yet become acute. But the growth of the productive forces will crush these tendencies towards economic autarchy and, however complicated and contradictory the process, will make China part of the world economy, first and foremost the socialist world economy.

p The growth of the productive forces will also erode the nationalism at present cultivated by the Chinese leaders. Socialist internationalism is not an artificial ideological structure. Internationalism, an inalienable feature of working class ideology, arises as a reflection of the objective process of development of the productive forces which brings nations closer together and strengthens eco- 190 nomic and cultural relations between them. The future belongs to internationalism.

p But the conviction of Marxist-Leninists that the fate of other variants of petty-bourgeois revolutionism is also in store for Maoism does not at all mean that one should sit back and wait until history passes its sentence. A passive attitude towards hostile ideology, waiting for everything to come right in the end is an attitude deeply alien to Marxism.

p The views disseminated by Mao’s followers, their dangerous activity, do great harm to the world communist movement and to the Chinese people themselves; they delay the revolutionary process, even though Peking claims the opposite.

p Whether they wish it or not, the Maoists are acting in the interest of the imperialists, who do not fear revolutionary talk and know only too well that they can turn to their own profit what is behind these resounding but harmless speeches.

p Never yet has adventurism disguised by revolutionary phrases constituted as great a danger as at present, when it has become the official ideology of the ruling group of an enormous country, with the largest population in the world. What is happening in China is not only a tragedy for her people, it also causes enormous harm to the world communist movement and all the liberation forces in the world. Never before has anti-communism had such ideological support as it is receiving from the Mao Tse-tung group, never before has anybody dealt such heavy blows to the ideals of socialism as the Maoists do now.

p Anti-communism has many faces, and its methods of struggle against the forces of progress arc subtle. But their main method consists in deliber- 191 ately ascribing to the Communists views and actions which have nothing in common with communism and which discredit the lofty ideals of socialism.

p In the Manifesto of the Communist Party Marx and Engels revealed the groundlessness and baseness of the accusations levelled against Communists of desiring to eliminate all personal property, to destroy the family, to introduce community of women, etc. The bourgeoisie always strove to pass off the ideas of "barracks communism”, the terrorist methods of petty-bourgeois revolutionism as Marxist ideas.

p All present anti-communist literature—from the pamphlets intended for mass distribution to the pseudo-scientific fat books—depicts Trotskyism as "classical Marxism”, widely using Trotskyists’ statements to discredit the communist ideology.

p The attempt to pass off various distortions of socialism and departures from its principles as socialism and petty-bourgeois revolutionism as Marxism-Leninism is a method constantly used by anti-communism. An enormous propaganda apparatus is maintained to capitalise on deviations from socialist norms, if there are such deviations, and to invent them if there are not.

p At present, the anti-Communists do not have to invent lies about communism to scare the working people, they simply say that the practice in China is the very system for which all Communists are struggling, and that, wherever the Communists succeed in seizing power, conditions will not differ from those in China.

p The international communist movement develops through the joint struggle of all parties for common aims with strict adherence to the prin- 192 ciple of independence of every party, and noninterference of one party in the affairs of others. But just as the successes and achievements of one party multiply the strength of the whole movement, distortions and the rejection of jointly adopted principles and decisions by one party, especially that of a large country, harm all the other parties.

p No wonder the Communists and socialists lost some seats at the parliamentary elections in Japan in 1967 although they had every chance of success. The reactionary forces successfully capitalised on Mao’s "cultural revolution”. If you want the same thing to happen here as is going on in China, they said, vote for the Communists and socialists. Thus, the ruling party of Japan maintained its positions and can thank Mao Tse-tung for that.

p The events which unfolded in the spring of 1968 in France also showed who profits from the extremist hysteria of the Maoist brand. The grandiose, well organised strike that embraced 10 million working people shook the foundations of the regime. But the country’s ruling forces succeeded in strengthening their positions with the help of the Maoist, Trotskyist and anarchist groups. The provocations and outrages these groups were responsible for created an atmosphere of insecurity and fear which the powers that be used to strengthen their position. That is why the bourgeois newspapers were right in saying that, if ultra-revolutionary groups had not existed in France, they should have been invented.

p Naturally all Marxist-Leninist Parties are interested in the real development of the revolution and not in shouting about it, in the true unity of the international communist movement, and 193 they condemned the Maoist group, dissociated themselves from it and declared that its practices had nothing in common with Marxism-Leninism. It is not socialism that has created the present conditions in China, but the trampling on its principles. Communists the world over know that socialism has nothing in common with the militarisation of society, organised slander, public humiliation as a method of administration, the personality cult fanned up to hysteria, the negation of culture, and anti-Sovietism.

p The plenary meeting of the C.C. of the French Communist Party (June 1967), which condemned the nationalistic, aggressive, adventuristic line of the Mao Tse-tung group, emphasised: what is happening today in China is not a “variant” of Marxism, of scientific socialism, which could be explained or justified by the specific conditions prevailing in an Asian country or in economically backward countries in general. The politics and theses supported by the Chinese leaders have nothing in common with Marxism-Leninism, with communism. We must not be expected, the French Communists said, to connive at their ideas and their activity which harm the interests of peace and socialism and are alien to our ideals.

p We cannot remain quiet and indifferent, Dolores Ibarruri said on behalf of the Spanish Communists, when the Chinese leaders impudently mock at human dignity, trample on the elementary standards of proletarian friendship and internationalism. We must not keep quiet when the Soviet people, its Government and the C.P.S.U. are subjected to insults and provocations.

p The reactionary forces expect a lot from the Maoists and use their policies to further their ends. Therefore the Communists in capitalist 194 countries regard the exposure of Mao Tse-tung’s ideology as a component part of the struggle for peace, democracy and socialism.

p There was a time when the struggle of Marxism against petty-bourgeois revolutionism was only a struggle of ideas. The Marxists opposed the views of "barracks communism" with the principles of scientific socialism, defended and developed the latter. Now, when socialism is being built in practice, one can dissociate oneself from petty-bourgeois revolutionism, which discredits socialism, not only by developing the theory of socialism, but also by improving the actually existing socialist system.

p As the productive forces develop and new experience is amassed, the views on socialism also become richer in content. The practical experience of the U.S.S.R. and other socialist countries shows ever more convincingly that the building of socialism is not only socialisation of the means of production, but also the general flourishing of culture, of the human personality, the development of democracy, law and legality, of genuine humanism.

p The development of socialist society will increase the attractive force of the ideas of MarxismLeninism in all countries and accelerate the progressive movement of mankind. "The building of communism in the U.S.S.R. and the all-sided improvement of Soviet socialist society are the basic contribution made by the C.P.S.U. and the entire Soviet people towards the world revolutionary process, towards the struggle of all peoples against imperialism, for peace, national independence, democracy and socialism."  [194•1 

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p The struggle for the victory of socialism in the whole world requires cohesion of the Communist and Workers’ Parties based on the principle of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. The subversive activity of the Mao Tsetung group in the international communist movement weakens the revolutionary forces. But at the same time, all those who cherish communist ideas increase their striving for unity, and this creates the prerequisites for strengthening that unity.

p Marxist-Leninists do not think that there are sincere and honest revolutionaries only among them. They support all fighters against imperialism, irrespective of whether they hold Marxist views or not. The sectarian fanaticism of the Maoists, recognising as revolutionaries only those who worship their idol, is alien to Communists.

But Marxism teaches us to judge parties and people not by what they think of themselves or how they picture themselves, but by their actions. Revolutionism today is the struggle against imperialism, the main obstacle to the progressive development of mankind; and all those who hinder that struggle and split the anti-imperialist front place themselves outside the ranks of the revolutionaries, no matter what loud phrases they use as camouflage.