p One of the expressions of the violation of Leninist principles and rules of inner-Party life in China is Mao’s personality cult, which has assumed such ugly and hypertrophied forms that it has virtually become impossible to make mention of the personality cult problem, let alone examine it. But this very fact makes a look at the CPC documents dealing specially with personality cult problems so much more important and instructive. These documents date back to the period when Mao’s glorification and deification in China had not yet reached the proportions of a national craze, a period when the CPC leadership still tried to analyse the problem theoretically.

p We have in mind above all the article “On the Historical Experience of the Proletarian Dictatorship" which was written just after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, when fundamental decisions in the Communist Party of China were still being taken collectively and, as the editors of Jenmin jihpao said at the time, this article was written “on the basis of a discussion of the given question at an enlarged meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China".  [129•1  This fact seems to explain why there is some depth in this document, which is the best evidence today of the CPC leadership’s betrayal of its own principles and concrete assessments.

p Chinese documents in the early 1960s declared the decisions of the 20th Congress of the CPSU on the personality cult to be “a betrayal of Marxism”, “revisionism”, “ treason”, etc. The Chinese leaders said: “The so-called fight against the personality cult, started by the CPSU leadership was taken over by them in a relay from Bakunin, Kautsky, Trotsky and Tito, who had used the slogan to fight against the leaders of the proletariat and to undermine the proletariat’s revolutionary movement."  [129•2 

p Let us now recall what the same paper had said about the same decisions seven years earlier. It had written: “This 130 bold self-criticism, carried out by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and aimed at exposing the mistakes it had made, testifies that its inner life is highly principled and that Marxism-Leninism has great viability."  [130•1 

p But apart from recalling these general principled assessments by the CPC leadership of the decisions of the 20th CPSU Congress the important thing to bear in mind is that the article “On the Historical Experience of the Proletarian Dictatorship" contained attempts to consider the personality cult in its historical development, in a unity of its subjective and objective aspects. The article linked up its emergence with the ideology of the past, with the immaturity of millions of people in a petty-bourgeois country which had carried out a proletarian revolution, and where old traditions had much potency. The article went on: “The personality cult is a rotten legacy which has come down from mankind’s long history. The personality cult has a basis not only among the exploiter classes but also among the small producers___After the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship, despite the fact that the exploiting classes were eliminated, the petty-producer economy supplanted by the collective economy, and a socialist society built, some of the rotten ideological survivals remaining from the old society and laden with poison can still long remain in the minds of men. ’The force of habit in millions and tens of millions is a most formidable force’ (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 44). The personality cult is also in a sense an expression of the force of habit of millions and tens of millions of people."  [130•2 

p It was also stressed that there were various difficulties in building up the state machinery in a socialist country which had gone through a period of civil war, difficulties which in turn helped to produce the personality cult: “In order to defeat a strong enemy the proletarian dictatorship requires a high degree of centralised power. This highly centralised power must go hand in hand with a high level of democracy. When the accent is one-sidedly on centralisation, a great many errors may arise."  [130•3 

p The emergence and development of the personality cult was connected with the fact that after the victory over the class enemy, bureaucratic practices tended to remain tenacious, and that the practice of the Chinese revolution itself offered an example. The article said: “After the victory of the revolution, when the working class and the Communist Party became a class and a party in power, leading workers of our Party and state are subjected in many respects to the influence of bureaucracy, thereby facing a great danger: abusing their official position in government agencies, they may well engage in arbitrary practices, lose their touch with the masses, abandon the collective leadership, govern by fiat and undermine democratic principles in the Party and in the state. That is why if we do not want to find ourselves in such a bog, we must devote the closest attention to maintaining the ’line of the masses’ in our method of leadership, and never in any case allowing the slightest negligence. For this we must formulate a definite system of work, ensuring the implementation of the ’line of the masses’ and of collective leadership, so as to avoid the appearance of upstarts and individual ‘heroes’ out of touch with the masses, reducing subjectivism and one-sidedness in our work which are at variance with objective reality".  [131•1 

p An attempt was also made in the article to establish the connection between the initial and the culminating stage of the process being examined, when the emergence of the personality cult was to some extent promoted not only by the difficulties but also by the successes of socialist construction achieved through the effort of the masses and hundreds of thousands of Communists. The article elaborated on the well-known idea expressed in the documents of the 20th Congress of the CPSU to the effect that “the personality cult emerged and developed against the background of the greatest historical gains by Marxism-Leninism, and the tremendous successes scored by the Soviet people and the Communist Party in socialist construction".  [131•2 

p It would of course be wrong to require an editorial article, and especially one written shortly after the events in question, to contain an exhaustive analysis of the causes of a 132 complex and contradictory phenomenon like the personality cult. But it cannot be denied that it did contain some important outlines making it possible to take a historical approach to the analysis of the experience of the proletarian dictatorship and a consideration of its lessons and mistakes. A general assessment of the 1956 article today shows that it concentrated attention on Lenin’s idea about the difficulties of the transition period. That was the key to an understanding of the events taking place in one’s own country, the key which the CPC leadership subsequently lost. This departure from the method of Leninism and of historical materialism went hand in hand with its slanderous statements to the effect that the 20th and the 22nd Congresses of the CPSU had revised Lenin’s propositions.

p The events of the past few years give ground to say that the article “On the Historical Experience of the Proletarian Dictatorship" contained an indirect critique of Mao’s personality cult and had been written without his consent, even if not against his will. It had apparently been prepared by the internationalist section of the CPC leadership at the time, which under the influence of the 20th Congress of the CPSU could not help but realise the full extent of the danger for China’s future presented by Mao’s personality cult.

p Under pressure from the section Mao and his followers had to accept the criticism of the personality cult at the 8th Congress and the deletion from the CPC Rules of the statement, which had been written into the Rules at the 7th Congress, that Mao’s ideas were the Party’s leading ideology. It was under pressure from this section that the 8th Congress tried to remove the shortcomings in the structure and the system of the Party apparatus which made it possible for various negative features to appear among Party leaders, notably Mao himself. We have in mind the requirements that Party congresses are to be held regularly, that the Rules should contain a provision on annual sessions of Congresses for the purpose of controlling the Central Committee’s activity, that the Central Committee and its Politburo should be enlarged, that all Party members, including its leaders, should strictly abide by the Party Rules and so on.

p Let us note this fact. In the period under consideration, Mao himself and his closest associates did not oppose, not openly at any rate, the criticism of the ideology and practice 133 of the personality cult, and at one time this may even have created the impression that Mao accepted this criticism. At any rate, towards the end of February 1957, Mao delivered a speech at the Supreme State Conference, which was then published in the form of an article and entitled: “On the Correct Handling of the Contradictions Among the People”. Mao spoke fairly frankly about the difficulties of socialist construction, agreed that contradictions existed in the country, criticised bureaucratic practices in the Party and government apparatus, and urged broad discussions in science, literature and the art (the so-called Hundred Flowers line).  [133•1  He wished to create the impression that he was not speaking as the leader of a state and of a Party but as the father of a big family. That is why he did not in essence condemn those who had taken part in the strikes and the disorders which had occurred in China in 1956, but merely rebuked them, and blamed everything on the bureaucratic practices of the local leaders.

p Mao’s speech evoked a stormy response inside and outside the Party. Rank-and-file Party members and the masses of working people saw his speech as a call for the establishment of Leninist standards in the Party and the state and in every sphere of social and political life. A broad discussion was started of Mao’s article and in the course of it demands were put forward for measures in China essentially similar to those which were being put through in the Soviet Union in pursuance of the decisions of the 20th Congress of the CPSU. Statements by ordinary Chinese citizens contained criticism of Mao’s personality cult and its negative consequences.

p Here is an example. Lin Hsi-ling, a girl-student of the People’s University, delivered a speech at Peking University on May 27, 1957. She said: “Chairman Mao’s valuable quality is that he has dialectical ideas and knows how to discover and correct mistakes, to generalise experience and to learn from it. But that is not to say that he has not made any mistakes. In China there is also a personality cult.... The Chairman wrote several poems and sent them to the 134 journal Shikan, where some people began to evaluate them, declaring that the Chairman is not only a great politician but also a great poet. I think that when the Chairman heard of this he could not help being angry, because these are nasty words. Some people say that the Chairman is a good calligrapher, but I don’t think so [emphasis added—V. Y., K. I., Y.P.and V.Y.}."  [134•1 

p Statements by many scientists, lecturers, students and workers dealt with a broad range of questions relating to breaches of the principles of socialist legality, the existence of a bureaucratic regime in the Party, the discrepancy between wages and the principles of remuneration for labour under socialism, lack of democratic principles in the work of colleges and research institutions, etc.

p The discussion of Mao’s article, in the course of which shortcomings in various sections of China’s social mechanism were criticised, was used by counter-revolutionary elements, especially by members of the bourgeois parties and also by their allies within the CPC and outside it, as an opportunity for attacking the CPC, the Soviet Union and socialism in general. They were justly condemned as “Rightist elements”, but the Maoists put a broad interpretation on this concept, and included among them those who were mistaken or were vacillating, and even those who favoured the establishment of Leninist standards in Party and state life not only in words but also in deeds. Without any reason at all they were lumped together with avowed enemies of socialism like Chang Po-chun, Lung Yun and Fei Hsiaotung.

p The attacks on Mao’s opponents which followed in 1957 and 1958 under the pretext of a drive against the “Rightist elements" showed very well the falsehood and essentially provocative character of the Maoists’ condemnation of the personality cult, and gave evidence that Mao and his entourage in fact had no intention of giving up the ideology and practices of the personality cult.

p It is well known that for the USSR the personality cult was a temporary phenomenon, and that the CPSU found the strength to put an end to that state of affairs. The Theses of 135 the CPSU Central Committee, Fiftieth Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, which summed up the experience of socialist construction in the USSR over half a century, said: “Life proved that the Party’s political course was correct. It showed its ability to give theoretical generalisation to the experience of the masses, to put forward correct political slogans, and to lay bare and correct mistakes. In pursuing its course towards the further development of socialist democracy, the 20th Party Congress resolutely condemned Stalin’s personality cult which was expressed in the glorification of the role of one man, something that is alien to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism, in departures from the Leninist principles of collective leadership, and in unwarranted reprisals and other violations of socialist legality which inflicted harm on our society. These distortions, for all their gravity, did not alter the nature of socialist society, nor did they shake the pillars of socialism.

p “The Party and the people had an abiding faith in the cause of communism and worked with enthusiasm to implement the Leninist ideals, overcoming difficulties, temporary setbacks and mistakes."  [135•1  Where the Party finds the strength and means to give an objective assessment of negative tendencies, where these tendencies are resolutely cut short, there they cannot develop into a threat to the construction of socialism and communism.

p In contrast to the line of the CPSU and the fraternal Parties of other socialist countries oriented upon a broad development of socialist democracy, Mao’s personality cult is being implanted in China in increasing proportions. This is evident in the fact that all the power in the Party and the state is virtually concentrated in the hands of one man, that his instructions, and his alone, are the ultimate truth, that there is no freedom of opinion either within the Party or the state, and that the ideological and political opponents of the “great helmsman" and people who merely doubt or are mistaken are classed as “enemies of the people”, that there is a political reign of terror in the country which is being carried out in Mao’s name and that Marxism-Leninism is being supplanted by Maoism. The report to the 9th Congress of 136 the CPC asserted: “All the achievements of the Communist Party of China are the result of Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s sage leadership, are a victory of the thought of Mao Tsetung. Over the last half-century, Chairman Mao Tse-tung, directing the great struggle of the multinational people of China to complete the new-democratic revolution, in the course of directing the great struggle—the socialist revolution and socialist construction in our country—in the course of the great struggle of the modern international communist movement against imperialism, against modern revisionism and reaction in various countries, combining the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of the revolution, inherited, upheld and developed MarxismLeninism in the sphere of politics, military science, economics, culture, philosophy and so on, and raised it to a totally new stage.”

p This kind of assessment of Mao’s contribution to Marxist theory goes hand in hand with ignoring or direct denial of the merits of all the other leading members of the CPC, past and present, and of the leaders of the international communist and working-class movement. For that purpose, the history of the CPC before Mao’s advent to power in 1935 is being revised and is being presented as a succession of mistakes and miscalculations. There is a deliberate confusion between the Right opportunists (Chen Tu-hsiu), the “Left” opportunists (Li Li-san) and true internationalists (Chui Chu-po). The paper Jenmin jihpao wrote: “Our Party has gone through struggle with the Right or the Left-deviationist erroneous line of Chen Tu-hsiu, Chui Chu-po, Li Li-san, and Wang Ming, and especially through long and repeated struggle with the bourgeois reactionary line represented by Liu Shaochi."  [136•1  This assertion was repeated in the report to the 9th Congress of the CPC: “The history of the Communist Party of China is a history of struggle of the Marxist-Leninist line, of Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s struggle against Right and ‘Left’-opportunist lines in the Party.. .. Our Party has matured, grown up and gained in stature in struggle between two lines, especially in struggle which led to the rout of three traitors’ cliques: the cliques of Chen Tu-hsiu, Wang 137 Ming and Liu Shao-chi, which have done the Party a great harm.

p On instructions from the Mao group a “movement for the study of the history of the struggle between the two lines within the Party" was started in China, with the obvious purpose of defaming all of Mao’s opponents, while presenting him as the great leader of the CPC who never makes any mistakes. In this context, one should note the publication in the Chinese press, on November 25, 1968, of Mao’s report at the 2nd Plenary Meeting of the Seventh Central Committee of the CPC on March 5, 1949. The re-issue of this 20-year-old report and the highest praise heaped on it at the 9th Congress of the CPC pursued the following purposes: to present Mao’s fight against those who differed with him within the Party as a struggle of long duration between two lines: the “revolutionary proletarian line”, meaning Mao’s own line, and the “counter-revolutionary, revisionist line”, meaning that of his opponents.  [137•1 

p The report, and the Party Rules adopted at the 9th Congress of the CPC were designed to put an official legal seal on the ideology of Mao’s personality cult. All the events set out in the report centre on Mao’s own personality; the whole history of the struggle within the CPC during the antiJapanese war and after the formation of the CPR is described as Mao’s personal struggle against Liu Shao-chi, as the struggle of the “proletarian revolutionary line of Chairman Mao Tse-tung" against the “revisionist line of Liu Shaochi”. It is alleged that “the line of Mao Tse-tung" scored victories at every stage while the line of Liu Shao-chi suffered defeat. The report made no mention of any Party documents or decisions of Party congresses and conferences. The development of the Chinese revolution is presented in the light of naked subjectivism: out in front was Mao Tse-tung, who saw all and anticipated everything, while the Party and the people followed blindly in his footsteps.

p There is no other instance in the history of the world revolutionary movement of a living leader’s name being entered into the Party Rules.

p Let us stress that Mao’s personality cult has been erected on the socio-spiritual foundation which had been cemented for long centuries by feudal Confucian tradition. Confucius magnified the cult of Wen Wang (12th century B.C.), the first legendary king of the Chou dynasty (12th-3rd centuries B.C.) and spread his own teaching on the strength of his authority and on tradition. Subsequently, the cult of Confucius himself was built up step by step, until he came to be compared with the “heavens” which lit up the whole world with its radiant light. By the 2nd century B.C., Confucius was enshrined as a deity and his cult was given a theological substantiation in the teaching of Tung Chung-shu.

p Confucianism had the aim of suppressing vibrant thinking among men and transforming them into fanatics who did the will of the ruling feudal elite. Confucius insisted that the life of men down here, on earth, depended entirely on sage rulers. He compared them to the wind, and their subjects to the grass which bent in the wind. Where rulers rule wisely, the people “will toil without grumbling".  [138•1 

Virtually the same ideas are being preached in China today, the only difference being that Maoism does not make any references to the “will” of the ancestors, while the rest is essentially identical with Confucian dogmas. The point is that Maoism has no need either of “celestial will" or of any ancestors—“sage rulers of antiquity"—because Mao himself has long since been converted by his admirers into a “living god”, and, as Maoist propaganda insists, is an embodiment of mankind’s wisdom.