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p The communist movement is constantly faced with opponents on the “Right” and on the “Left” who claim to stand for socialist revolution but in fact distort its meaning. Both tend to regard relative truth as an absolute, and carry it to absurdity. They declare either of the two forms of struggle, which produces the greatest effect only in definite conditions, to be the only and unquestionably best form of struggle. Thus, the revisionists, with their slogan of “painless progress”, insist that there is only the one—peaceful—way of transition to socialism, and it is a way which they in fact reduce to reforms, which do not go to the roots of capitalism; when confronted with armed reaction, they capitulate. On the other hand, the dogmatists, having once and for all connected revolution with revolutionary war, refused to recognise any other, peaceful forms of struggle for power, and push the people into unwarranted sacrifices and disorganise the revolutionary movement.

p Let us note that the anti-Marxist attitude of the CPC leadership on the question of ways of socialist revolution 96 did not crystallise all at once. Up until mid-1963, before the CPC leadership finally broke with the decisions of the 1957 and 1960 Meetings of Communist and Workers’ Parties in Moscow, and merely spoke about a “different reading" of them, documents issued by the CPC Central Committee contained, together with one-sided and erroneous formulations, propositions generally accepted by the Communist Parties about the need to master “every form of struggle”, and to learn swiftly to switch from one form of struggle to another “in accordance with the changes in the situation of such struggle”. A CPC Central Committee letter of June 14, 1963, “Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement”, stressed that “the Communists always prefer to make the transition to socialism by peaceful means".  [96•1  But this letter already threw the wrong light on the attitude taken by the Communist Parties to disagree with Peking. It was said that there had appeared in their ranks “soothsayers” who pinned their hopes on a “peaceful transition”, men who “started from historical idealism, obscured the basic contradictions of capitalist society, rejected the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the class struggle and erected their own subjectivist propositions".  [96•2 

p Subsequently, an open attempt to revise the basic propositions of the 1957 Declaration and the 1960 Statement was made in the well-known editorial articles published from September 6, 1963 to March 31, 1964. The last of the eight articles dealt specifically with the question of the so-called peaceful transition. Intending to talk to the “revisionists” in “much clearer language than before”, its authors left virtually nothing at all of the statements contained earlier in CPC Central Committee documents about the diversity of forms of proletarian struggle. The same “violent revolution is the universal law of proletarian revolution" was proclaimed to be the only Marxist approach. The article explained: “Marxism openly declares the inevitability of violent revolution. It says that violent revolution is the midwife without whom no socialist society is born, that it is the inevitable way of supplanting the bourgeois dictatorship by the 97 proletarian dictatorship, the universal law of proletarian revolution."  [97•1 

p By repeating that the Marxist classics had regarded violence as the midwife of the new society, the Chinese leaders try to present themselves as consistent Marxists. Indeed, Marx and Engels did say that revolutionary violence was the midwife of the new society, but what they meant was social violence, social revolution, which is far from always being identical with war. Generally speaking, the substance of socialist, proletarian revolution consists not only, and not so much, in violence or coercion, as in the creative construction of the new society (the prevalence of violent forms and methods of struggle usually marks the early stages of a social revolution). Lenin wrote: “There is no doubt that without this, without revolutionary violence, the proletariat could not have triumphed. Nor can there be any doubt that revolutionary violence was a necessary and legitimate weapon of the revolution only at definite stages of its development, only under definite and special conditions, and that a far more profound and permanent feature of this revolution and condition of its victory was, and remains, the organisation of the proletarian masses, the organisation of the working people. And it is this organisation of millions of working people that constitutes the best stimulant for the revolution, its deepest source of victory."  [97•2 

p Furthermore, in the course of a proletarian revolution there does indeed occur elimination of the exploiting classes, the “expropriation of the expropriators”, that is, the application of violence to a handful of oppressors, but the social demise of the bourgeois class or of the class of landowners is not the same thing as the physical destruction of persons belonging to these classes. The proletariat gives freedom and the right to work to those who come from the exploiting classes but who refuse to resist the socialist transformations and express their desire to co-operate with the new power.

p Finally, revolution is always violence and social coercion (on this point there can be no misunderstanding), but it does not always involve the use of armed force. It is correct, 98 therefore, to speak not of some kind of “peaceful transition" and violent proletarian revolution, and to contrast these two concepts, but of the peaceful and non-peaceful ways of socialist revolution. The revolution runs a peaceful course when it does not involve an armed uprising, civil war or the armed export of counter-revolution; it runs a non-peaceful way whenever any of these elements (or all three together, as was the case, for instance, during the socialist revolution in Russia) are present in it.

p The author of the Jenmin jihpao article of March 31, 1964, made known the theses which the CPC delegation set up in contrast to the CPSU’s attitude at the 1957 Meeting of the Communist and Workers’ Parties. He wrote: “Starting from tactical considerations, it is useful to express a desire for peaceful transition, but there should be no excessive accent on the possibility of peaceful transition, it is always necessary to be ready to give a rebuff to the attacks of counterrevolution, it is necessary to be prepared for the revolution at the decisive moment of taking power by the working class to overthrow the bourgeoisie by means of armed force, if it resorts to armed force to suppress the people’s revolution (which is, as a rule, inevitable)."  [98•1 

p No Communist has ever doubted the need to use arms to beat back the counter-revolution when it resorts to “armed force to suppress the people’s revolution”. But the Communists have never used the recognition of the peaceful as well as the non-peaceful way of socialist revolution as a kind of tactical ploy or a propaganda slogan which merely serves to cover up preparations for the almost always “inevitable” forms of armed struggle. For the Communists, this question of the way the revolution is to run has always been one of real political tactics and strategy. Moreover, this question of the peaceful and the non-peaceful ways of revolution has been and continues to be one of the Communist Parties’ humanistic world outlook.

p Let us stress that the question of the real implementation of the ideas of the socialist revolution’s peaceful way is a most complex one. The Communist Parties of a number of advanced capitalist countries seek to its solution through so-called structural reforms in capitalist society, by making 99 use of the traditional democratic institutions existing in these countries.

p It is, in fact, the failure to understand this attitude and the denial of the possibility of there being different forms of social coercion, and of the need to use and combine different forms of political struggle that is the characteristic feature of the “directive” Jenmin jihpao article examined above, for its purpose is to revise the agreed documents of the international communist movement and to substitute onesided dogmatic propositions for the dialectical Marxist- Leninist ones. The article says, among other things: “The documents of the Meetings, in particular, contain the assertion that there is a possibility in some capitalist countries of winning state power without civil war, although they also say that the ruling classes never give up power of their own accord; they contain the assertion that there is a possibility of winning a solid majority in parliament and converting parliament into an instrument serving the working people, although they also point to the need to carry on extensive and massive extra-parliamentary struggle and to break down the resistance of the reactionary forces; they do not accentuate the fact that violent revolution is a universal law, although peaceful transition is mentioned."  [99•1 

The Maoists have essentially distorted the idea of the possibility of peaceful transition to socialism which the Communist Parties advocate. A peaceful victory for the socialist revolution is not at all equivalent to denying the use of force in the struggle, nor does the idea of a peaceful way amount to a mere use of bourgeois legalism. When, say, the Communists seek to make parliament serve the people and to fill it with new content, they have in mind not only the battles which are fought at the polls and not only parliamentary debates, but above all the winning by the working class of a parliamentary majority through the broadest revolutionary action of the masses. The revolution develops both “from above" and “from below”. Massive extra-parliamentary struggle is the rock bottom foundation lor truly democratic activity by members of parliament and the condition for parliament progressively playing an ever greater part in the country’s social life.

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p “The proletarian party must in no instance base its ideological propositions, its revolutionary line and the whole of its work on the assumption that the imperialists and the reactionaries will agree to peaceful change,"  [100•1  the CPC leaders warned the Communist Parties which recognise the real possibilities not only of an armed but also of a peaceful way for the revolution. But recognition by the Communist Parties of the possibility of peaceful transition to socialism does not at all imply voluntary abandonment by the exploiting classes of their power, their property or their privileges. In this sense, no deep-going social revolution is conceivable without the organisation of massive political action, without the use of coercive measures with respect to the exploiters, and without the establishment of a dictatorship of the revolutionary classes. Let us add, too, that there has never been any “purely” peaceful or non-peaceful revolution in history in any period. In actual fact there is always a prevalent, predominant tendency which makes its way across the other tendencies. These may pass into one another in the most diverse combinations. Which means of struggle is best and in which conditions? Is it guerrilla warfare? Is it a general political strike? Is it an electoral campaign? Is it an armed uprising in town or country? How are these different means to be combined with each other? To obtain the answers to these questions there is need again and again to look at the aggregation of internal and external factors, which, by the way, keep constantly changing, or, as Lenin said, there is need for concrete analysis of the concrete situation.

p Today, there are over 100 countries which have still to travel the way to socialism. In any of these there may arise and be realised the most diverse tendencies in the most different “proportions”. The history of each nation has national and international features, the specific and the general, the former being unique and the latter occurring everywhere. Coming revolutions will have the great advantage over earlier revolutions in that they will have the opportunity to take account of all their pluses and minuses. The Communists believe that the growing variety of forms in the struggle for socialism is evidence of its viability, and is in a sense an earnest of its triumph.

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The 1969 International Meeting of Communists in Moscow stressed this point once again when it said: “The Communist and Workers’ Parties are conducting their activity in diverse, specific conditions, requiring an appropriate approach to the solution of concrete problems. Each Party, guided by the principles of Marxism-Leninism and in keeping with concrete national conditions, fully independently elaborates its own policy, determines the directions, forms and methods of struggle, and, depending on the circumstances, chooses the peaceful or non-peaceful way of transition to socialism.”  [101•1