p Chinese propaganda claims that the aim of the "cultural revolution" is to strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat. Actually, however, the anti-Marxist line of the Mao group and all its practical and political activity have divested the concepts of dictatorship of the proletariat and hegemony of the working class of their true content. The political superstructure of the people’s democratic system is being demolished and replaced with a military-bureaucratic regime of personal power.

p One of Mao Tse-tung’s chief objectives in the "cultural revolution" is to destroy the CPC as a party of the working class and to set up, in its stead, a new political party, a party of the leader, implicitly obedient to his will and desires. The CPC has been paralysed and removed from the leadership of the country’s political life. The Central Committee and other leading Party organs exist only nominally. More than two-thirds of the members and alternate members of the Central Committee have been discredited and repressed. All the six territorial bureaus of the Central Committee and all provincial, city and branch Party committees have been 140 disbanded. The lower Party organisations, including the Party committees at the factories, are in effect idle.

p Lately the Maoists have started the "adjustment and reorganisation of the Party”. This is nothing less than a massive purge—all who show the least doubt in Mao Tsetung and his policies are expelled. Moreover, it is planned to bring "new blood" into the Party (more than 10 million hungweipings and tsaofans). Maoism, which is accorded the role of the "only basis for a united Party”, is the ideological foundation of the emerging political organisation.

p The Maoists have undermined or completely destroyed the constitutional organs of state power. The highest legislative organ, the National Assembly of People’s Representatives, and its Standing Committee are not functioning. The people’s committees in the localities have been abolished, and the work of the State Council and of most of the ministries has been disorganised.

p The Maoists are setting up "revolutionary committees" to replace the people’s and Party committees, whose function, according to the country’s Constitution and the Constitution of the CPC, is to ensure the leading role of the working class. "The revolutionary committees”, Chiehfangchun Pao, the army newspaper, wrote in August 1968, "are one of the creative finds of the working class" and the "latest form of proletarian power”. In fact, the function of these committees is the very reverse—the removal of the working class from the leadership of society. Formally, they are being set up on the basis of a "three-way alliance”, not between the working class, the peasants and the intelligentsia, but between army representatives, cadres supporting Mao Tsetung, and the "revolutionary masses”, i.e., the hungweipings and the tsaofans.

p The "revolutionary committees" exercise the powers formerly enjoyed by Party and state organs, in other words, they are "vested with full political, economic, financial, cultural and educational powers”. The working class and the peasants have been deprived of all possibility of influencing these “committees”. There is no hint of democratic elections. One of the principal tasks of the "revolutionary committees" is to consolidate Mao Tse-tung’s personal power, while the unconditional fulfilment of his instructions is held to be the "highest criterion" of their work.

p Peking propaganda tries to prove that the "cultural revolution" was started to enable the "revolutionary workers and peasants to take over power”. Actually, despite the smokescreen, power is being concentrated in the hands of the army leadership. The chairmen of nearly all the " revolutionary committees" are army officers (commanders of military districts or garrisons, or political commissars). Foreign observers have noted that of the 13.5 men promoted to leading posts in China during the past few years, 111 are army officers.

p The army has become a key factor of life in China. Consisting mostly of peasants, it is the mainstay of the " cultural revolution”. It sets up "revolutionary committees”, and selects men for leading posts through the "direct participation of army representatives in revolutionary committees of all levels”. Moreover, it has been entrusted with " reorganising the Party" after its own model. "Army traditions,” Jcnmin Jihpao underlined on August I, 1968, "are the traditions of the Party”.

The Maoists did not shrink from destroying the trade unions, too. At the end of December 1966 the National Federation of Trade Unions and its newspaper Kungjen Jihpao were raided and closed by thugs from the Union of Red Rebels. The Maoists intend to replace the trade unions with a new organisation called Kungtaihoy, an association chiefly of tsaofans selected according to their devotion to Mao Tse-tung. At the close of 1967 the Minister for Public Security Hsieh Fu-chih declared that the "Kungtaihoy must embrace the revolutionary workers and, for all practical purposes, it will, in future, replace the former trade unions”.