p The catastrophic effects of the "big leap" and the "people’s communes" evidently weakened the position of Mao Tsetung and his supporters in the Party leadership. However, while taking some steps to remedy the situation in the economy, the Central Committee failed to see that Mao Tsetung’s policies were leading to disaster. More, we feel that the Central Committee in effect assumed the political responsibility for the adventurist line laid down by Mao Tsetung and his followers. This greatly prejudiced the Party’s prestige and its links with the masses and hit the healthy forces in the Party who were opposed to the Maoists.

p In the meantime, Mao Tse-tung and his supporters took steps to strengthen their position and prepare for an attack on those who did not share their petty-bourgeois, adventurist views. They relied chiefly on the army, which in 1959 came under Lin Piao. The army gradually became a self-contained force in China’s political life. A nation-wide campaign was started under the slogan "Learn from the army”. The Communist Party’s role and function as the leading force of society gradually passed to the army.

p Step by step Mao Tse-tung and his supporters created the conditions and requisites for a decisive assault on the sound forces in the CPC.

p This general offensive on the foundations of the emergent socialist system in China was labelled "cultural revolution”, which, unquestionably, had an inner link with the "big leap" and the "people’s commune" policy. "A play begins with a 184 prologue,” Mao Tse-tung once said, "but the prologue is not its culmination.”  [184•*  While the period of the "big leap" and the establishment of the "people’s communes" could be called a kind of prologue of the Maoist political line that was “cleansed” of Marxism-Leninism, the "cultural revolution”, which developed into a stark tragedy for the Chinese people, was its culmination.

p A retrospective view of the complex, tangled and sometimes contradictory course of the "cultural revolution" brings to light the keynote of all its stages—concentration of efforts to shatter the Party organisations and destroy the Party cadres in the centre and in the localities. What lies behind the seeming paradox that Mao Tse-tung attacked the Party which he was heading? Unless this question is answered much will seem absurd and strange, to say the least.

p However, there was logic in the actions of the Maoists. The main reason inducing them to start the "cultural revolution" was the growing opposition and resistance in practically all links of the Party apparatus to their ruinous policies. They found they could not use the old methods to force the Party to accept their platform and they therefore decided to smash the Party with the aid of the army, and the hungweipings, tsaofans and other essentially pettybourgeois elements on whom they could rely. These were temporary vehicles for the attainment of their objectives, and they created more problems than they solved.

p However, in starting the "cultural revolution" the Maoists had their sights also on a more distant goal. They feared not only the existing opposition but also the potential opposition that was making itself felt more and more with the escalation of the Maoist political offensive. Today nobody doubts the real purpose of this offensive, which was not only to force the "ideology of Maoism" with its petty-bourgeois, nationalistic and Great-Power hegemonistic aims on the Party and the country but also to perpetuate it.  [184•**  These aims obviously 185 underlie the political campaign that is being conducted in China as a "cultural revolution”.  [185•* 

p This conclusion is borne out also by the socio-political consequences of the "cultural revolution”. The economic basis of socialism and its political superstructure, which, as we have already noted, had been greatly weakened before the "cultural revolution”, were damaged to such an extent that the revolutionary gains of the Chinese people were menaced. The working class has been badly hit. The most class-conscious and politically active workers were either physically destroyed or exiled to the countryside for “ reeducation”. The economic condition of the peasants has deteriorated. Small as it was China’s creative and technological intelligentsia has been still further decimated. Artificially ranging the different classes and social substrata against each other and sowing distrust and hostility between and within them, the Maoists have seriously undermined the alliance of the working class with the peasants and all other working people.

p Many observers have noted that the national bourgeoisie has been least of all affected by the "cultural revolution”. It is very significant that in analysing the content of this “revolution” many bourgeois sinologists note with satisfaction that in the broad sense it is not a “cultural” but a social and economic revolution.  [185•** 

p The fact that the Communist Party of China has been smashed in the course of the political campaign unleashed by Mao Tse-tung has kindled great interest and hope in the camp of the imperialists. For instance, Professor A. Whiting of the USA has pointed out that "the heaviest blows of the cultural revolution fell precisely on the Party.”  [185•***  Whiting can hardly be accused of exaggeration. The scale on which the Party committees were smashed is shown by facts and 186 figures known to the whole world. For instance, more than three-fourths of the Central Committee members, nearly two-thirds of the Political Bureau members and almost all the members of the Central Committee Secretariat have been repressed or discredited.  [186•* 

p The entire system of state authority in the centre and in the localities has been to all intents and purposes paralysed. The trade unions, the Young Communist League and public and cultural organisations that played an important role in China’s political life have been disbanded. The Party committees and the lawful organs of authority have been supplanted by "revolutionary committees”, which are fulfilling the function of temporary organs of authority.

p Facts show that the Mao group is out to establish a military-bureaucratic dictatorship. However, this dictatorship, whose content and origin are petty bourgeois, cannot have a broad and dependable social basis because it is alien to the vital interests of the Chinese working class, the peasant masses and the intelligentsia. This is the principal weakness of the Maoists, their Achilles’ heel.

p The army is the foundation on which the edifice of the present Maoist regime rests. The Mao group has used the army to demolish the lawful organs of authority and turned it from an instrument safeguarding the people’s democratic system into a vehicle of its policies. The position held by the army, which had for years been thoroughly indoctrinated in the Maoist spirit, made it easy for Mao Tse-tung and his myrmidons to seize control over it. As a matter of fact, in a number of cases this control has proved to be extremely feeble as shown by the numerous reshuffles and purges among the senior officers, the acts of open insubordination and resistance to the Maoists, and so on.

p The bureaucratic substratum (in China it is far from being numerically small), recruited from people loyal to Mao Tsetung and his supporters, is the second major mainstay of the Maoist regime.

p At present, feeling that they have in the main completed the destructive phase of the "cultural revolution”, the Maoists are concentrating their efforts to achieve a “positive” consolidation of the results of that “revolution”. First and foremost, they are determined to legalise the destruction of the Party and state organs of authority and stabilise the new regime. These were the issues before the 9th Congress of the CPC, which the Mao group held in April 1969.

p The Party Constitution, endorsed by the 12th plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the CPC on October 31, 1968, gives some idea of the nature of the new, reorganised political party, designed to form, along with the army, the foundation of the military-bureaucratic regime. From beginning to end this Constitution is permeated with ideas and theses that are utterly at variance with Marxism- Leninism and incompatible with the guiding principles of the communist movement. It openly places Mao Tse-tung above the Party and obliges the members to study and apply the "thought of Mao Tse-tung”. It confirms the anti-Soviet tenor of the Maoist policy and raises it to the level of a Party principle.

p The unprecedented fact that the Party Constitution contains a clause on the "right of succession to the throne" shows how the Maoists interpret democratic centralism and the principles of Party life. After enumerating Lin Piao’s services to Mao Tse-tung, the Constitution states bluntly: "Comrade Lin Piao is Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s closest associate and successor.”  [187•*  The inclusion of this provision in the Constitution of a party that continues to call itself Communist is testimony of anything except the stability of the Maoist leadership itself, which is being torn by an unremitting struggle between various groups and clans.

p The Maoists convened the 9th Congress with the purpose of consolidating the results of the "cultural revolution”, 188 which was nothing less than a gradual political upheaval accomplished with the aid of the army. In other words, the 9th Congress was convened to sanction the degeneration of the people’s democratic system into a military-bureaucratic dictatorship.

p What enabled the Mao group, at least at the given stage, to secure a partial realisation of its plans?

p A magazine article, naturally, does not provide the possibility of laying bare and analysing the entire range of objective and subjective factors whose interaction led to the present developments. But I should like to quote a passage from a work by Lenin which will help to give a better understanding of the circumstances that enabled the Maoists to accomplish an essentially counter-revolutionary coup under the guise of a struggle against “revisionists” and "restorers of capitalism”. In analysing the prerequisites for averting a social restoration, Lenin wrote: ".. .the only conditional and relative guarantee against restoration is that the revolution should be effected in the most drastic manner possible, effected by the revolutionary class directly, with the least possible participation of go-betweens, compromisers and all sorts of conciliators; that this revolution should really be carried to the end.”  [188•* 

p Some of the factors mentioned by Lenin were conspicuously lacking in the Chinese revolution. The Mao group constantly sought to divert this revolution from the socialist to the petty-bourgeois road and thereby systematically undermined it with telling effect.

p We feel that the Mao group’s plans were not discerned and disrupted in time because the Party and its leading organs lacked sufficient political and ideological foresight. The proletarian stratum in the CPC was numerically very small. The level of the Party membership’s ideological, political and theoretical training was very low. Another important factor was that for many years the Mao group had cultivated petty-bourgeois, nationalistic sentiments and views in the Party and in the country as a whole. Many of the leaders who disagreed with Mao Tse-tung on various issues were likewise largely infected with these views and sentiments.

p To a very large extent the fact that the key post in the Party was held by Mao Tse-tung himself helped the Maoists to carry out their plans. One will understand the atmosphere in which the Maoists launched their attack on the Party and the lawful organs of state authority if one bears in mind that Mao Tse-tung wielded arbitrary power in the Party and flouted elementary norms and principles of Party life, and also if one takes into account the incredible proportions that were reached by the cult of his personality and the cult of his “thought”.

p In assaulting the Party the Maoists had recourse to the most subtle methods of social demagogy and deceit. For instance, while claiming that they were "strengthening the dictatorship of the proletariat" they were in fact demolishing the foundations of the people’s democratic system. To further their own ends, they exploited not only the political immaturity of young people but also the illiteracy and backwardness of the broad masses. It was certainly no accident that Mao Tse-tung described the Chinese people as "a clean sheet of paper" on which "it is possible to write the newest and most beautiful words and draw the newest and most beautiful pictures”. The "cultural revolution”, evidently, was one of these "beautiful pictures”, which the "great helmsman" decided to inscribe into the history of the Chinese people with fire and sword.

While emphasising that the entire blame for China’s present national tragedy devolves entirely on Mao Tse-tung and his supporters, who in pursuance of their political aims did not shrink from plunging China into chaos, note must be made of the great historical responsibility which the healthy forces of the CPC, the Chinese working class and the Chinese people as a whole bear for the destiny of their country and of socialism. The founders of scientific communism had repeatedly pointed out that this responsibility for the development of their countries is borne not only by individual political leaders, parties and classes but also by nations and peoples. Here it would be appropriate to recall a vivid statement by Karl Marx, who said: "A nation and a woman are not forgiven the unguarded hour in which the first adventurer that came along could violate them”.  [189•*  These 190 words refer to a different epoch and a totally different situation, but they succinctly express the very idea of a nation’s historical responsibility for its development.