P. Fedoseyev

p A powerful impetus was given to the national liberation movement throughout the world by the defeat of German fascism and Japanese militarism at the hands of the Soviet Union and other freedom-loving countries.

p Led by the Communist Party, the Chinese people accomplished a great national liberation and people’s democratic revolutio’n in an unremitting struggle against the imperialists and internal reactionary forces. The Communist Party of China and its leaders stirred the popular masses to action for national and social emancipation. This led to the defeat of the counter-revolutionary forces headed by Chiang Kaishek and the United States imperialists. The successful outcome of the national liberation, anti-feudal, anti-imperialist struggle enabled the Chinese people to go over to the socialist stage of the revolution under the direction of the Communist Party.

p In the Soviet Union and all other countries the working people warmly welcomed the victory of the Chinese people and constantly rendered them all possible assistance. The Communist Party of China enjoyed enormous prestige and respect in the world communist movement.

p Today a group of Chinese leaders headed by Mao Tsetung are baiting and persecuting most of the Party executives and cadres who bore the brunt of the revolutionary work during the liberation struggle and the years of socialist construction. The supporters of this group are attacking the vital interests of the workers and peasants, harassing the intelligentsia and victimising its most prominent representatives. On the international level their attacks are directed not at imperialism but at the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, at the CPSU and all fraternal Communist parties. The divisive policy pursued by these Chinese leaders is undermining the unity of the world revolutionary forces, inflicting infinite damage on the national liberation movement and playing into the hands of imperialism, of US imperialism above all.

p How is this turn of events to be explained? How could revolutionaries degenerate so much as to destroy the principal leading force of the revolution, the Party, and 16 massacre its most active cadres? What made them sink into malicious anti-Sovietism and surpass the most diehard anticommunists in slandering the Soviet Union? What caused this political depravity and degeneration of the Chinese leaders?

p First and foremost, it must be remembered that Mao Tsetung and his supporters joined the Communist Party during the national liberation struggle, in which different class forces and political groups were involved. The agenda of that stage did not call for any demarcation of social groups and political leaders on questions of social reforms and on the ways and means of building socialism. They proclaimed themselves Marxists and exponents of socialist development, and the Party entrusted them with high office and supported them. The defeat of the US imperialist-backed Chiang Kai-shek regime and the conquest of political power by the popular masses headed by the working class opened the road to the socialist reorganisation of social life.

p It is axiomatic that the opposition of bourgeois and pettybourgeois elements stiffens markedly during the transition to socialism. The Chinese leaders proved unable to withstand the pressure of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois sentiments, succumbed to petty-bourgeois nationalistic passions and assumed the role of exponents of anti-proletarian ideology and policy. Here the contributing factors, evidently, were such features of Chinese reality as the predominance of the petty-bourgeois strata in the country’s social structure, the relatively small substratum of industrial workers in a huge population and the small percentage of workers in the Party. Another factor to be considered is the long-standing tradition of Great-Power, Great-Han chauvinism, whose exponents made every effort to fan the Chinese people’s legitimate indignation over the national humiliation they were forced to suffer when China was a semi-colony. In its documents the CPC sternly warned against the danger of GreatPower chauvinism and insisted that all its manifestation be combated. For example, in an editorial in December 1956 the newspaper Jenmin Jihpao wrote: "It is particularly essential that we Chinese should remember that under the Han, Tang, Ming and Ching dynasties our country was a great empire, although for nearly a hundred years, since the latter half of the 19th century, it was a victim of aggression 17 and was reduced to the status of a semi-colony. At present our country is still backward economically and culturally, but when the conditions change the trend towards GreatPower chauvinism will undoubtedly become extremely dangerous unless every effort is made to stop it. Furthermore, it must be pointed out that today this danger has already begun to manifest itself among some of our cadres. That is why in the resolution adopted by the 8th National Congress of the CPC and in the statement issued by the Government of the People’s Republic of China on November 1, 1956 our cadres have been set the task of fighting the trend towards Great-Power chauvinism.” The Mao group not only turned a deaf ear to these warnings but when the class struggle grew acute during the period of transition it came forward as spokesman of Great-Power chauvinism and petty-bourgeois adventurism.

p Mao Tse-tung’s divergence from the basic line adopted by the Communist Party of China and from the international communist movement, and his own special line in domestic and foreign policy became increasingly more pronounced during the period of transition from capitalist and precapitalist relations to socialism. When he began forcing the CPC to adopt the adventurist "big leap" and "people’s communes" policy and pursue a similarly adventurist line in international relations it became evident that this divergence was really deep. Experience has shown that when outworn social systems are broken up there is an upsurge of revolutionary adventurism, which expresses the psychology of the berserk petty bourgeois. Here dizziness with the success of the revolutionary change oddly combines with fear of the difficulties that arise in the course of socialist construction, particularly in a backward country. This gives rise to the vain ultra-revolutionary attempts to resolve in one go all the problems of international policy and internal development, leap over all vital stages and break into the "realm of communism" by storm.

p The Mao group dismissed the decisions of the 8th Congress of the CPC, which mirrored the Marxist-Leninist approach to problems of external and internal policy and laid down the Party’s general line for the period of transition to socialism. The "great proletarian cultural revolution”, which was the signal for pogroms against the Communist 18 Party and its cadres, and for unbridled chauvinism and anti-Sovietism, marked the continuation and crystallisation of this group’s policy of petty-bourgeois adventurism.

p There have been many instances when people who had participated in the national liberation movement or in a bourgeois-democratic revolution and even in a socialist revolution became hostile to communism as soon as their country’s transition to socialist development was started. The transition from the democratic to the socialist revolution is a complex process and constitutes an important stage witnessing a fundamental regrouping of the class forces. For the petty-bourgeois parties and leaders this is a critical stage. Sober-thinking revolutionaries from among the pettybourgeois intellectuals side with the proletariat and gradually arrive at scientific socialism. But far from all pettybourgeois revolutionaries (with their vacillation and negative actions, which temporarily play a certain positive role at the democratic phase of the revolution) are equal to the demands of the period of transition to socialist changes. At this stage many of them fail to move forward along the road to socialism. They turn into dead ends of history and ultimately suffer political bankruptcy. This, for instance, is what happened with some leaders of the Soviet Union who went astray to the “Right” or the “Left”. Similar cases were observed in other countries. This turning-point marking the transition to socialist construction finally reveals who are not proletarian revolutionaries, not Marxists-Leninists, but ideological spokesmen of the bourgeoisie or the petty bourgeoisie. The political bankruptcy and degeneration of this category of leaders from petty-bourgeois revolutionaries to petty-bourgeois counter-revolutionaries is not accidental. It springs from their class positions, their theoretical views and their understanding of politics and tactics. Mao Tse-tung’s degradation is not the result of individual errors or of differences with Marxism. It is due to a depraved philosophy and a vicious policy of petty-bourgeois adventurism.

p The Chinese splitters and anti-Sovietists, the organisers of the "great proletarian cultural revolution”, have proclaimed Maoism as the “highest” stage of the development of Marxism. Mao Tse-tung has studied some Marxist works and on individual issues he has even propounded Marxist views, but on the whole his theoretical concept vulgarises and revises 19 the Marxist teaching from the standpoint of pettybourgeois nationalism and adventurism.

In place of materialist dialectics Maoism offers sophistry and eclecticism. It has rejected the materialist understanding of history in favour of voluntarism, and the theory of the class struggle and revolution in favour of what is essentially a militarist understanding of the revolutionary process. Maoism refuses to recognise the proletariat’s leading role in the communist reconstruction of society, and challenges the Party’s role as the vanguard of the working class. It belittles the role played by the masses in history and idealises “heroes” as the main makers of history. It preaches belief in the supernatural powers of the “leader” and intensifies the personality cult. It opposes scientific communism on fundamental problems of strategy and tactics.