p A collection of Mao’s statements on various questions, a sort of compendium of Maoist ideology, was issued in Peking in 1966 in the main languages of the world. It gives a good idea of the level and content of Maoist theoretical postulates, which the present Chinese leadership seeks to substitute for Marxism-Leninism.

p Let us note that a person who is about to read Mao’s Little Red Book is in for a surprise. None of the 26 sections of this “aid”, which is declared to be a summit of revolutionary Marxism, specially deals with revolution. It does not contain such terms as “revolutionary situation”, “forms and methods of revolutionary struggle”, “the theory of bourgeois-democratic revolution growing into a socialist revolution”, and so on. But there are any number of expressions dealing with war, like “war and peace”, “people”s war”, “relations between officers and men”, “relations between the army and the people”, etc.

p There is good reason for this lopsided attitude to the problems of revolution. In the Little Red Book the rich and living, the many-faceted and profound doctrine of Marx and Lenin on the proletariat’s revolutionary struggle has been supplanted by a primitive scheme reducing every form of struggle and Communist Parties’ activity essentially to revolutionary war.

p Here are some of the statements it contains.

p “War is the highest form of struggle for resolving contradictions, when they have developed to a certain stage, between classes, nations, states, or political groups, and it has existed ever since the emergence of private property and of classes."  [91•1 

p “Every Communist must grasp the truth: ’Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’... .

p “The seizure of power by armed force, the settlement of the issue by war is the central task and the highest form of revolution. This Marxist-Leninist principle of revolution holds good universally, for China and for all other countries."  [91•2 

p One is struck by the inflexibility and peremptory character of these formulations. If they “hold good universally”, one may well ignore the concrete conditions, the time and place. This simplifies the theory of revolutionary struggle to the limit. At long last one has got universal means of solving all kinds of problems and resolving any contradictions: the contradictions “between classes, nations, states, or political groups”. This means is a revolutionary war. If Mao does now and again advise the use of other means it is merely to prepare for the selfsame revolutionary war.

p How, on what ground, has this distortion of Marxism arisen? Let us look above all at the period in the history of the Chinese revolution to which these quotations refer. They have been taken from Mao’s works entitled “On Protracted War”, “War and Questions of Strategy”, “Strategic Questions of the Revolutionary War in China”, and “ Questions of Strategy in the Guerrilla War Against the Japanese Invaders”. All these works date to the 1930s, and their titles and date explain a great deal.

p The 1930s were the height of the civil war, which continued even after the Japanese imperialists attacked China. In that period, practice, life itself demanded of the progressive forces of the Chinese people, the Chinese Communists above all, that they should organise armed resistance to the invaders, and launch a nation-wide armed struggle, although judging by these same extracts, Mao was already at that time now and again giving incorrect theoretical 92 expressions to this necessity, treating as absolutes specific propositions applicable to a given country, to a given period, and enshrining them as absolute general laws.

p However, in these same works of Mao’s we find—and this is especially important—some understanding of the specific nature of the Chinese situation. Even at the time, Mao used to stress the specific features of China’s external and domestic situation which put the CPC into an absolutely exceptional set of conditions in the struggle. He wrote: “If one clearly understands this [that China is a semi-colony contended for by many imperialist powers—Ed.], then, first, one can understand why in China alone in the world there is such an unusual thing as a prolonged strife within the ruling classes, why the fight intensifies and expands day by day, and why no unified political power has ever come into being. Secondly, one can understand how important the peasant problem is, and consequently why rural uprisings have developed on such a nation-wide scale as at present. Thirdly, one can understand the correctness of the slogan about a workers’ and peasants’ democratic political power. Fourthly, one can understand another unusual thing which corresponds to and arises out of the unusual thing that in China alone in the world there is a prolonged strife within the ruling classes, and that is the existence and development of the Red Army and guerrilla troops, and, together with them, the existence and development of small Red areas that have grown amid the encirclement of the White political power (no such unusual thing is found anywhere except in China). Fifthly, one can also understand that the formation and development of the Red Army, the guerrilla units and the Red areas are the highest form of the peasant struggle under the leadership of the proletariat in semi-colonial China, the inevitable outcome of the growth of the peasant struggle in a semi-colony, and are undoubtedly the most important factors in accelerating the revolutionary upsurge throughout the country. And sixthly, one can also understand that the policy of purely mobile guerrilla-like activities cannot accomplish the task of accelerating the nation-wide revolutionary upsurge, while the kind of policies adopted by Chu Teh and Mao Tse-tung and by Fang Chih-min are undoubtedly correct—policies such as establishing base areas; building up political power according to plan, deepening 93 the agrarian revolution, and expanding the people’s armed forces by developing in due order first the township Red Guards, then the local Red Army, and then a regular Red Army; and expanding political power by advancing in a series of waves, etc., etc."  [93•1 

p However, with the growing tendency for Peking to establish its hegemony in the international liberation movement, these indications of the specific character of the Chinese situation tended to disappear from the CPC documents. The concrete national experience was transformed into experience that “holds good universally" in a phased manner. At first, the experience of armed struggle in China was presented as a universal means for the national liberation struggle of the peoples in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In their statements, the Chinese leaders ever more frequently presented the Chinese revolution as the classic type of revolution for the oppressed countries, and all the three continents (without consideration of the differences in the concrete situation in various countries, their different levels of social development, etc.) as centres of a “ revolutionary situation" standing on the threshold of civil war.

p Very soon even this was felt to be insufficient. When reprinting in 1965 Mao’s article, “Questions of Strategy in the Guerrilla War Against the Japanese Invaders”, the editors of the Hungchih declared the concrete military propositions of that period to be valid as global strategy. The same purpose was served by Lin Piao’s article “Long Live the Victory of the People’s War”, which appeared the same year. It not only declared that the political and economic conditions in China and in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America were identical, it not only advocated for these countries Mao’s thesis of “setting up revolutionary base areas in the countryside and encircling the town by the village”. Mao’s idea was used, you might say, also to characterise the postwar situation in the world, and the attitude of the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America to the countries of North America and Western Europe. The latter were declared to be the “world town”, and Asia, Africa and Latin America, the “world village”. Encirclement of the 94 town by the village was declared to be the specific feature of “world revolution" at its present stage.  [94•1 

p Finally, in Mao’s Little Red Book, published a year later, in 1966, the operation of converting Chinese experience into universal experience was completed. There, the conclusions bearing on a definite situation in China in the 1930s and the 1940s were already presented as a universal law; various statements, taken out of historical contents, were presented as the summit of Marxist thinking, as universal truths of the epoch of the “general collapse of imperialism and the triumph of socialism throughout the world”.

p In 1936, Mao wrote: “War, this monster of mutual slaughter among mankind, will be finally eliminated through the progress of human society, and in no distant future too. But there is only one way of eliminating it, namely, to oppose war by means of war.... A war ... will form a bridge leading world history into a new era."  [94•2 

p That was said a long time ago, in a period when the German, Italian and Japanese imperialists were starting the Second World War on the fields of Europe, Africa and Asia, and the rigidity and peremptory character of the formulation could have been ascribed to the requirements of the concrete situation, of the concrete historical epoch. However, this has been reprinted and declared to be the greatest and, what is more, universal truth in our day. From this it follows (and the Peking propagandists have said as much) that thermonuclear war may be fought by means of thermonuclear war itself. From this it follows that thermonuclear war is the bridge leading to mankind’s radiant future. But if it is a bridge, it is one which is made up of corpses, and one leading to the burial ground of mankind’s civilisation. Summing up the practice of the 1930s and the 1940s, Mao declared: “As we are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not desire war; but war can only be abolished through war; in order to get rid of the gun we must first grasp it in our hand."  [94•3  In order to get rid of thermonuclear arms we must first grasp them in our hand, seems to be the message of this idea today.

p In the 1930s, Mao wrote: “Some people have waxed ironic, calling us advocates of the ’theory of almightiness of war’.. . . Indeed, we are advocates of the theory of almightiness of revolutionary war. This is not bad, this is good, this is the Marxist approach.”

p One may well ask this legitimate question: what about thermonuclear war: is it, too, almighty, revolutionarycreative and therefore desirable?

Spreading the theory of the almightiness of revolutionary war, Mao assures us that this is “not bad, this is good, this is the Marxist approach”. No, this is not the Marxist approach at all. Even revolutionary war cannot be regarded as being the sole almighty means for establishing socialism. It is inevitable only in definite conditions. The only almighty means is the active ogranisation of the revolutionary masses, the proletariat above all, flexibly adapting its tactics and forms of struggle to the changing and mobile political situation.