p The grave danger of Maoism consists in its efforts to discredit the principles of socialism, and horribly to distort, twist and deform the ideals for which millions of men on the globe have been fighting.

p The Maoists refuse to consider this elementary truth: the means of transformation cannot be neutral with respect to the aim of transformation, the way this or that country has to carry out the mature social revolution, for this inevitably leaves its mark on the nature of the new system that is being established. In other words, the Maoists fail to realise the simple fact that even a victorious civil war creates vast additional difficulties for further creative construction. Mao’s Little Red Book says: “Revolutionary war is an antitoxin which not only eliminates the enemy’s poison but also purges us of our own filth. Every just, revolutionary war is endowed with tremendous power and can transform many things or clear the way for their transformation ... and people and everything else ... will be transformed during and after the war."  [115•1 

p Superficially this sounds like the ideas Marx and Lenin expressed about the use of revolutionary coercion being inevitable and necessary, and about revolutionary coercive action by the masses being creative. But having declared 116 revolutionary war to be a cure-all, Mao altogether forgets about dialectics, about the fact that any phenomenon may develop into its opposite, that the antitoxin may well become (as the dividing line is obliterated and the use of violent methods is overdone) a potent toxin, a preparation that kills instead of curing.

p In contrast to reformism of any stripe, Marxism recognises revolutionary coercion to be inevitable and necessary for social transformations. In the society divided into antagonistic classes, the rising, progressive classes cannot avoid using force to break up the obsolete social relations and to overthrow the exploiting classes which are connected with that system and refuse to give up their interests and privileges of their own accord. This is a truth Marxism had derived from summing up past experience. Let us recall what Plekhanov once said: “The fewer the chances a given social class or section has of maintaining its domination the more inclined it is to terroristic measures."  [116•1  Resistance by the outgoing classes inevitably makes the revolutionary classes resort to violent retaliatory measures and armed struggle.

p But in contrast to all manner of Blanquist, anarchist and Trotskyite petty-bourgeois theories, Marxism does not confine itself to saying that revolutionary coercion is progressive and justified. On many occasions the founders of Marxism warned the proletariat that the use of violent means was limited and forced, and emphasised the dangers arising from the use of extreme means of struggle.

p Marxism requires that a distinction should be drawn between the forms of violence and requires—and this is extremely important—that the leaders of the proletariat should keep violence down to a minimum at every stage of the struggle, and use more moderate forms of coercion whenever possible. It requires them to display skill in switching at the right time from means of violence and coercion to means of education and persuasion.

p On the strength of historical experience, the Marxists regard the forms of violent action by proletarian parties above all as being dependent on the resistance put up by the overthrown classes and the ability of the masses to impose 117 their own methods and modes of struggle on the enemy. At the same time, as Marx and Lenin both pointed out, the level of the moral and intellectual development of the working class itself and its parties and leaders, and other circumstances, like the legacy of war, have a great part to play in the choice of more humane or sterner forms of revolution.  [117•1  Marx saw the political organisation of the Paris Commune type as being an organised means of proletarian action and specifically observed that “it affords the rational medium in which that class struggle can run through its different phases in the most rational and humane way."  [117•2 

p The experience of the Paris Commune in 1871 and of the October Socialist Revolution in 1917 showed that proletarian revolutions were initially almost totally bloodless revolutions, and that only support of the counter-revolutionary forces by interventionists (Prussians in 1871, and the Entente and the Germans in 1918-1920) enabled the overthrown classes to start sanguinary civil wars both in France and in Russia. The proletariat used more moderate means of coercion after the Second World War as bourgeois-democratic revolutions developed into socialist ones in the countries of Eastern Europe.

p Consequently, to the extent that it depends on the proletarian revolutionary parties they have always preferred not to carry things to the extremes. They are aware of the simple truth, one that history has tested over and over again in numerous civil wars, that armed struggle and civil war are connected with vast losses and sufferings for the masses, with the destruction of the productive forces, with the death of the best revolutionary men, that they are connected—and this is of much importance for the prospects of the revolution—with the inevitable militarisation of the country, and the emergence of traditions and habits which may subsequently become a serious obstacle to transition to peaceful construction.

p During the Civil War in Russia, Lenin repeatedly warned of the danger of the excessive enlargement of the sphere in 118 which military methods were being applied, and said that it was intolerable to use military orders in organising the working masses. He wrote: “This is a field in which revolutionary violence and dictatorship can be applied only by way of abuse and I make bold to warn you against such abuse. Revolutionary violence and dictatorship are excellent things when applied in the right way and against the right people. But they cannot be applied in the field of organisation."  [118•1 

p It is true that during the Civil War in Russia herself, the country’s militarisation and some militarisation of organised government became inevitable. The “war communism" of the Civil War period is known to have included the surplus food appropriation system, and the use of the Red Army units not only in military operations but also on the labour front, with some sections of production being militarised. Lenin specifically and repeatedly stressed that “war communism" was a forced expedient caused by the Civil War and the country’s extreme ruin, and that it had not been and could not be a permanent policy. After the Civil War, the Party combated attempts to continue the emergency measures longer than was necessary.

p In China this historical experience of the October Revolution has been discarded. In their day-to-day political practices, the Maoists are guided by the idea that socialism should be built in the first place by means of violence and the use of armed force.

p The healthy forces in the CPC, believing that it is impossible for China today to abandon the military methods of the earlier period all at once, were nevertheless fully aware of their interim nature and of their applicability only within a definite historical period and within the framework of strictly established spheres of Party and government activity. By contrast, Mao’s followers put all their trust into these methods in tackling any questions, and the forms and methods of work produced during the civil war were carried over to the whole of the transition period.

p The Maoists have carried out a “militarisation” both of town and country, spreading army rules to the Party organisations, the enterprises, the schools and the kindergartens. 119 Relations are modelled after the army in the people’s communes, the factories and plants; military orders are used to decide all questions relating to the development of production and a new system of wages has been introduced based on this principle: “Work for the highest level in production, and maintain a low level in life”; orders, coercion and violence have become popular as a means of “educational work" with the intelligentsia. This tendency, already fairly pronounced back in the 1950s, was carried to an extreme during the “cultural revolution”; the violent voluntaristic measures coming from the “top” were backed up by stagemanaged pressure from “below” on the part of politically immature masses of young people who had been drugged by pseudo-Marxist catchwords; subsequently, the anarchist masses escaping from under control were kept in check by the use of army units.

p With the barrack-room as their ideal, the leaders of the “cultural revolution" have no need for normally functioning democratic organs or socialist legality. No wonder then that in the course of the “cultural revolution" central or local organs of power were disbanded, trade unions and young communist organisations were broken up and a massive purge of Party bodies carried out. The society the Maoists are trying to build up has no need either for the conscious, intelligent and well-educated man, capable of thinking for himself; no wonder the architects of the “cultural revolution" have set themselves the task of converting the conscious citizen of socialist society into “Chairman Mao’s stainless screw”. This kind of society has no need for popular participation in elaborating socialist forms, for there everything has been provided for in advance and established by the precepts of the “omniscient great helmsman”. The people are being induced to believe that to reach communism all one need do is obediently fulfil Mao’s teachings, that only one thing is necessary, namely, that the people should become “an army without uniform”.

“What a fine specimen of barrack-room communism!”, Marx and Engels once wrote about the well-known article of the Bakuninists entitled “The Main Principles of the Future Social System”, which proposed that men should produce for society as much as possible and consume as little us possible, that men’s activity should all be regulated, 120 including the use of dining rooms and bedrooms, and that all the functions of administration should be vested in a committee of conspirators, without any control or responsibility to anyone. “This article shows that if mere mortals are being punished, as for a crime, for the very idea of a future organisation of society, that is because the leaders have already ordered everything beforehand."  [120•1  We wonder what Marx and Engels would have said about the principles of presentday Maoist policy, whose aim is to translate into life these monstrous principles of a reactionary utopia.