p The Maoists’ distrust of the workers is strikingly shown by their slanderous thesis about the "bourgeois degeneration" of the working class. "Bourgeois influence,” wrote the newspaper Peiching Jihpao, "has penetrated the body of the working class in a thousand ways.” This is what lies at the back of the drive to "proletarianise the working class”. In effect, it signifies that a sweeping offensive has been started against the ideological, moral and political positions of the working class. The claims that "the class struggle within 142 the working class has intensified" show that a nation-wide brainwashing campaign is under way. It has been announced that the chief task at industrial enterprises is to “ revolutionise” and “proletarianise” the workers and to get on with the "class struggle”.  [142•* 

p In the ideological sphere this indicates that the Maoists are determined to make the people abandon the ideals of scientific communism, of Marxism-Leninism. They are seeking to replace the proletarian ideology with the nationalistic, revisionist "thought of Mao Tse-tung”, with a personality cult carried to fanatic idolatry. They want the workers to be robots "eternally devoted to Mao Tse-tung”, "neither saying nor doing anything unfavourable to Mao Tse-tung" and "carrying out Mao’s orders even if they do not understand them”. The slogan of "eradicating selfishness and establishing selflessness" is designed to "drive all remnants of individual thinking from the heads of the workers”.

p In the political sphere these are attempts to put an end to the social activity and political independence of the workers and turn the working class into an unthinking productive force, and the workers into "small cogs”, into blind and disinherited executors meekly accepting any whim of the "great helmsman”. The philosophy of blind submission, which the Maoists are trying to foist on the Chinese worker, has been bared by "iron Wang”, foreman at the Taching oilfields, whom Chinese propaganda has called a "model of revolutionisation for workers throughout China": "Chairman Mao teaches us to be ’submissive buffaloes’. . . they’re very good: the strongest and, at the same time, the most hardy. ... I want to be a buffalo all my life.”  [142•** 

p In the cultural sphere the Maoists have frozen the low educational level of the workers (according to official statistics more than 20 per cent of the workers and nearly 40 per cent of the seasonal and contract workers are illiterate) and have artificially cut the working people off from the achievements of Chinese and world culture.

As envisaged by its inspirers and organisers, a cardinal objective of the "cultural revolution" is to eradicate from the minds of the workers all vestiges of proletarian 143 internationalism and friendly feelings for the Soviet Union and other socialist countries and their working class, whip up nationalism and Great-Power chauvinism and kindle antiSovietism. The Chinese workers are urged to learn from "iron Wang" how to hate Soviet people. Such is the thoroughly nationalistic policy of the Maoists.