Monkey Smashes Heaven reprints this article from Beijing Review no. 18, April 28, 1967 pp 21-22, commentary is by Prairie Fire
(source: Monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)
There are some peripheral problems in this article. The police paradigm is found in it to an extent. Also, the metaphysics of inevitablism permeates the article. Assertions about inevitable victory for our cause are false. Our victory is not written in the book of nature; it is not foretold by the stars. Scientifically, it is important to break with this kind of thinking. At the same time, rhetorically, it may be necessary to recognize the importance of non-scientific and folk vocabularies. A cult around a “genius” leader who guarantees success will mobilize more people than pure science, with its uncertainties, coldness and complexity. Telling the masses that victory is inevitable will get more people to throw down for the cause. It is a version of Plato’s noble lie. Pure science is never as compelling. And, when the revisionists use these things in real life struggles, to remain pure is to be disarmed. It is suicidal not to respond in kind. If we are stuck with non-science as a component of revolution, then it is idealist to reject it across the board. The question becomes one of how to mitigate the negative effects of certain non-scientific tropes.
The article honoring Lenin appears in 1967, the hottest year of the Cultural Revolution decade (roughly, 1966 through 1976). This was the year when power seizures were at their height. The January Storm in Shanghai was an inspiring event where the rebel masses took power throughout the city. Power seizures and fake power seizures swept across China. That year witnessed a wave of rebellion and reaction in which contending groups toppled the state, and each other, over and over. Often struggles degenerated into battles of all against all, with shifting, opportunistic, sectarian, deadly fighting mixed up with genuine struggles between revolution and counterrevolution.
1967 was the height of power for one of the two “utopian” currents of the Cultural Revolution decade. (1) This year is especially important. This was a year where the masses loudly spoke of reaching communism. Drawing their inspiration from the Paris Commune, some spoke of establishing a commune of China to replace a corrupt party-state filled with capitalist roaders. This “utopian” current was defeated as the chaos became too great for the center. Close to this current, junior leaders of the Cultural Revolution Group like Wang Li, Guan Feng, and Qi Benyu were purged in late 1967 into 1968. Close to this current, senior leaders like Jiang Qing and Chen Boda survived, but there would be not be another round of power seizures from below to topple revisionists during the Cultural Revolution decade.
This document originally is published on the anniversary of Lenin’s birthday as a reminder of the truly life and death consequences of revisionism. We reprint this document today in the context of another life and death struggle within the International Communist Movement. A group of modern revisionists under the banner of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, seek to destroy Mao-inspired people’s wars and Islamic resistance to imperialism. In Nepal, they have captured state power. They declare that imperialist finance capital is their partner in carrying forward so-called New Democracy. They uphold the theory of productive forces, and a Neocon-Trotskyist plan for imperialist development of Nepal.
Revisionism does not wear a “kick me” sign. This article is a reminder to what is left of the International Communist Movement. It is our duty to call out revisionism. Look to this document and look to Nepal. Where is Lenin in Nepal? Where is Mao in Nepal?
Notes.
1. The other “utopian” current being the Flying Leap, barracks egalitarianism of Lin Biao. This current also made calls to reach communism.
Article follows:
“In Memory of the Great Lenin, Down with Modern Revisionism! by “Renmin Ribao” Commentator
Today, the Chinese people are celebrating the 97th anniversary of the birth of the great Lenin amid the resounding triumphant songs of the great proletarian cultural revolution.
Lenin was the great revolutionary teacher, after Marx and Engels; of proletariat and the oppressed nations of the world.
Lenin founded the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, led by the Soviet people in winning the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution and established the first socialist state in the world.
Reviewing the history of the development of Marxism, Lenin once wrote: Marxism “has had to fight for every step forward in the course of its life.” Lenin devoted his life to unflinching and acute struggles against the various kinds of enemies of the proletariat. Through his unrelenting fight against revisionists and opportunists of all shades and hues, Lenin safeguarded Marxism and brought it forward to a new historical stage, the stage of Leninism.
Lenin defended and developed the Marxist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat in his struggle against revisionism and opportunism. He pointed out: “A Marxist is solely someone who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat.” He also said, “The key question of every revolution is undoubtedly the question of state power. Which class holds power decides everything.” Therefore, before their seizure of power, the proletariat and other revolutionary people must stick to the principle of violent revolution, smash the old state apparatus and take power by the force of arms; and after taking power, they must safeguard and consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat and carry the socialist revolution through to the end. The proletariat has nothing if it has no political power; it gains everything if it gains political power; and it loses it if it loses political power. This is a fundamental law of class struggle and an extremely important lesson for the international communist movement.
While celebrating the 97th anniversary of the birth of the great Lenin, we must not lose sight of the harsh fact that, in the Soviet Union, the native land of Leninism has been usurped by the Khrushchov revisionist group and that the dictatorship of the proletariat there has been transformed into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Khrushchov and his successors Brezhnev, Kosygin and their like have betrayed the great Lenin, betrayed Marxism-Leninism, betrayed the October revolution and betrayed the Soviet people and the people of the whole world. They are the biggest group of renegades and scabs in history,
Revisionism is the avowed enemy of Marxism, but it always swears by the name of Marx. Lenin said: “It cannot be prohibited from doing this, just as a trading firm cannot be prohibited from using any particular sign or advertisement.” This is the case with the Soviet revisionist leading clique today. This handful of dirty renegades have the cheek to call themselves “successors to the cause of Lenin” and try to bluff and deceive in the name of Leninism. They have lost all sense of shame!
The group of Soviet revisionists today are the very successors to those revisionists rebuked by Lenin. But their crimes are a thousand times more heinous than those of their predecessors.
These people have turned the C.P.S.U. founded by Lenin into “a party of the entire people,” that is, a new-type social-democratic party, a party of the bourgeoisie. Aren’t they the type of opportunists Lenin once reproved for “going the length of betraying the Party”?
These people have flagrantly carried out the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in the Soviet Union, restored capitalism in an all-round manner, buried the achievements of the October Revolution and caused the socialist state founded by Lenin to change its colour. Aren’t they the type of “agents of the bourgeoisie” Lenin once condemned?
These people go down on their bended knees before imperialism, follow the line of capitulation and never hesitate to sell out the interests of the revolutionary people of the world in order to realize “U.S.-Soviet collaboration for world domination. Aren’t they the type of “flunkeys ‘serving’ imperialism” Lenin once rebuked?
These people peddle far and wide their fraud of “peaceful transition” to corrode the revolutionary will of the peoples and oppose the oppressed peoples who take to revolutionary violence in order to resist counter-revolutionary violence and seize power by the force of arms. Aren’t they the type of “proselytes” Lenin once rebuked?
They have committed every crime in feigning support for but actually betraying the oppressed nations’ struggles for liberation. They are helping the imperialists to strangle the national-liberation movement everywhere and have gone to the length of serving as the No. 1 accomplice of U.S. imperialism in its aggression against the Vietnamese people. Aren’t they the type of “traitors and scoundrels” Lenin once denounced?
Marxism-Leninism teaches us that the emergence of revisionism is not accidental but has social roots. Revisionism will appear so long as imperialism exists and so long as the bourgeoisie exist. Fifty years ago, Lenin said that in coming decades “new Plekhanovs, new Scheidemanns, new sentimental conciliators like Kautsky will grow up from the depths of ‘united’ international social democracy.” What Lenin predicted has taken place. Naturally, this is nothing to be afraid of. That modern revisionism with the Soviet revisionist clique as its centre is for the time being rampaging around is merely a manifestation of the desperate struggle of imperialism in its dying stage. It can never hold back the triumphant advance of Marxism-Leninism.
Our great leader Chairman Mao is the genuine successor to the cause of Lenin. Chairman Mao has inherited, defended and developed Marxism-Leninism with genius, creatively and in an all-round way, and has raised it to a completely new stage. Mao Tse-tung’s thought is Marxism-Leninism of the era in which imperialism is heading for total collapse and socialism is advancing to worldwide victory. The great proletarian cultural revolution personally launched and led by Chairman Mao has solved the problem of arousing millions upon millions of people to make extensive revolution under conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It has solved the problem of seizing power from a handful of persons in authority taking the capitalist road in organs of the dictatorship of the proletariat; and it has solved the problem of preventing capitalist restoration and ensuring that China will never change its colour. This is a significant development of Marxism-Leninism by Chairman Mao. It is as important and as great as Marx’s theory of scientific socialism and Lenin’s theory of the of the proletariat seizing power in one country. This unprecedented, great revolution has not only firmly consolidated the dictatorship of the proletariat in our country, but has ushered in a new era in the international communist movement and sounded the death knell of imperialism, reactionaries of all countries and modern revisionism.
Marxism-Leninism has always developed amid the curses and opposition of the enemy. Just after Marxism was born, all the reactionary forces in Europe joined hands in a vain attempt to drive away the “phantom” that had appeared in Europe. When Leninism was born, the revisionists of the Second International and scabs and renegades of all shades and hues got together to oppose it. Leninism had not only been bitterly hated and cursed by the imperialists, reactionaries and international revisionists but has also been rabidly attacked by Trotsky, Bukharin and other bourgeois elements within the C.P.S.U. itself. At present, the imperialists and reactionaries of all countries, in league with the modern revisionists, are hysterically attacking the great thought of Mao Tse-tung. At the same time, a handful of the biggest Party persons in authority taking the capitalist road and revisionist in our country echoing the class enemies at home and abroad, have been unscrupulously opposing Mao Tse-tung’s thought. In doing so, the revisionists at home and abroad are opposing Marxism, opposing Leninism, opposing revolution. But whoever opposes Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung’s thought, no matter who he is and what disguise he may wear, will be knocking his head against a brick wall and will meet a shameful end. As the saying goes, “You will all perish, body and name, and yet the rivers will flow on for ever.” No force on earth can prevent Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung thought, from achieving worldwide victory!
“Where nature sentient, she too would pass from youth to age; but in man’s world seas change into youth to age; but in man’s world seas change into mulberry fields.” [Chairman Mao’s poem: The Capture of Nanking by the People’s Liberation Army] In the native land of Leninism political power has been temporarily usurped by the revisionist clique, but socialism will eventually triumph over revisionism and capitalism. This is an inevitable law of the development of history. The great Soviet people will definitely not put up for long with the rule of the traitorous Soviet revisionist clique. Leninism will certainly shine again in all its glory over the Soviet land! Long live Leninism! Down with modern revisionism!” (”Renmin Ribao,” April 22)
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Also see: Two Roads Defeated part 1; Two Roads Defeated part 2; Two Roads Defeated part 3; Mao Declassified; Some of Us reviewed (Part 1); Some of Us reviewed (Part 2);Some of Us reviewed (Part3); A Maoist-Third Worldist Review of Mobo Gao, The Battle for China’s Past; In memory of the great Lenin..; Some lines within the CCP in the Maoist period; Shubel Morgan video On the Theory of Productive Forces; The Essence of “Theory of Productive Forces” Is to Oppose Proletarian Revolution; The Lin Biao Centennial, hooray!; Lin Biao excerpt on the TOPF with important commentary by Prairie Fire; Mao’s Bloody Revolution Revealed (with Philip Short, 2007); Really supporting the GPCR vs. Opportunist Yapping;Morning Sun (2003, Carma Hinton, Richard Gordon and Geremie R. Barmé); Subel Morgan’s Series On “On the Theory of the Productive Forces”
Great commentary. I question the accuracy of the claim that the Soviet Union was “serving as the No. 1 accomplice of U.S. imperialism in its aggression against the Vietnamese people.” How is that, exactly?
I was also wondering what is meant by “fake power seizures.”
Fake power seizures were staged by those in power. Behind the scenes, someone in authority would organize a fake mass movement to overthrow himself and go through the motions of self-criticism. Having feigned repentance, feigned cooperation with the fake representatives of masses, he would be returned to power. He’d be given another chance.
If someone in authority knew the masses were going to organize to depose him, he might stage a fake power seizure as a way to avoid a real one.
As early as 1965, the Chinese Communist Party was arguing that the “USSR” was betraying the cause of national liberation in Vietnam in favor of elevating its standing with the u$ in the world.
The CCP argued that the Geneva “Peace” Conference (there were two Chairs of such- the u$ and the “USSR”) which the “USSR” was supporting only made mention of ceasing u$ bombing of north Vietnam, and was clearly not committed to the cardinal issue: the complete withdrawal of all u$ aggressor troops from all of Vietnam. Further, the CCP surmised that in making conditions for “unity of action” such that large areas of China were to be occupid by “Soviet” troops and turned into aircraft bases, the “USSR” was pursuing a national chauvinist line. The Chinese allowed any amount of Soviet personnel and military equipment to pass through China but were unwilling to have the “USSR” occupy Chinese territory. The CCP also argued that the “USSR” was not at all providing the military, financial and diplomatic aid which befitted a nominally socialist sountry of its strength and wealth.
Had the “USSR” not had a proven record of dallying with u$ imperialism, both publicly and surreptitiously, and slandering the CCP the Chinese might have been more forthcoming in this and other matters. But the CCP did not trust the CPUSSR at all. It was concerned that the “USSR” would sell out Vietnam only to increase its own social-imperialist influence in the world.