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Forty years ago, on
October 1, 1949, Comrade Mao Tsetung declared the formation of the People’s
Republic of China. With this, one-third of humanity had broken free from the
chains of exploitation and oppression, and entered a world of freedom. In just a
century after the communist manifesto was written, Marx’s dream of a new society
became a living reality in a large part of the globe. In human history, no
single ideology has transformed society so rapidly and so thoroughly, as did
Marxism. Having taken birth in Europe, it spread to all corners of the earth,
liberating even a most backward country like China.
On that occasion, Mao
declared that "the Chinese people have stood up". "Stood up" against 2000 years
of feudal oppression; against a century of colonial plunder and robbery; against
inhuman oppression and exploitation ... and "stood up" as self-respecting people
no longer cowed down by any form of tyranny, old or new. The Chinese revolution
was an epic saga in human endurance, sacrifice and indomitable courage. The
legendary Long March was itself a feat of herculean endeavour, where a
poverty-stricken army of peasants and workers, traversed 12,500 kms, over
mountains and grasslands, fighting at every step a sophisticated enemy force,
ten times its size. Implanting enroute, the seeds of revolution, and setting up
its headquarters in the mountains of Yenan, the embryo of the new society was
taking root in the womb of the old. And it was here, in a room structured out of
a cave in the Yenan mountains, that Mao wrote some of his path-breaking works
that, till this day, act as a guide for revolutionaries throughout the world.
The CPC was born in
the midst of a powerful democratic revolutionary movement against imperialism
and feudalism. The nationwide upsurge ignited by the students in the May 4th
(1919) movement coupled with Sun Yat-sen’s repeated attempts to overthrow the
war-lords and set up a Republic of China, created the favourable grounds for a
joint Kuomintang-Communist struggle for the overthrow of feudalism. With the
betrayal of the revolution by the Kuomintang after the failed Northern
Expedition, and a number of defeats in urban insurrectionary tactics, Mao was to
evolve new insights into the course of revolution in backward countries. His
earth-shaking concepts ‘New Democracy’ and ‘Protracted People’s War’
came out of the earlier failed experiences which sought to mechanically implant
the Russian path to the Chinese revolution.
In his concept of
‘New Democracy’ Mao gave a more scientific shape to Lenin’s concept of two-stage
revolution. In this, Mao, for the first time, pointed out that: while all
anti-feudal, anti-imperialist revolutions in the pre-1917 period were part of
the old bourgeois democratic revolution, in the post-1917 period, they were part
of the World Socialist Revolution; while the former was led by the national
bourgeoisie, the latter must be led by the proletariat; the bourgeoisie now
splits into two camps — the comprador bourgeoisie, that is a target of the
revolution, and the national bourgeoisie that is its ally; and the revolution
must be built on the four-class alliance, with the peasantry as the main force
and the proletariat as a leading force. This theory contributed to a leap in the
Marxist understanding of two-stage revolution in the post-1917 era.
In his concept of
"Protracted People’s War", Mao chalked out a new path, which is today valid
for all revolutions in backward countries. Fighting against various left lines
that negated the role of the peasantry and that sought to make revolution
through urban insurrection on the Russian pattern, Mao developed the strategy of
peasant guerilla warfare; of setting base areas in the countryside and step-by
step encircling the cities.
And while fighting
this war, first against the Kuomintang reactionaries and then against the
Japanese aggressors, Mao developed the science of "people’s war", and for the
first time gave the international proletariat its military theory. In his
concept of people’s war, Mao said that the masses must not merely be armed, but
organised militarily.....comprising a regular army and a people’s militia,
working in close coordination. Mao said that the Red Army fights "in order to
conduct propaganda among the masses, organise them, arm them, and help them
establish revolutionary political power". In this, Mao developed the laws of
guerilla warfare, mobile warfare and its relations with positional warfare.
Moreover, he worked out the minutest details on how to conduct this war, which
till today, is a necessary military manual for any serious revolutionary
fighter.
While fighting a
non-stop war, Mao was not a mere peasant guerilla leader, as made out by some
so-called Marxists, he was first and foremost an exemplary communist. This was
evident not only in his deep insights into Marxist Philosophy but also his major
contribution to building a proletarian party of a new type.
It was Mao who
further developed Lenin’s theory of the unity and struggle of opposites in his
article ‘On Contradictions’. He also raised the Marxist understanding on
the theory of knowledge in his major work ‘On Practice’. More important,
Mao brought to centre-stage of all policy, the question of the proletarian world
outlook, and the necessity to continuously remould one’s bourgeois outlook. His
concepts of ‘Serve the People’, Mass-Line, and acquiring the communist
spirit of selflessness, simplicity, modesty and concern for others, is a theme
that flows through his entire writings.
On the question of
the proletarian party, Mao saw it not as some static monolithic entity, but, as
a dynamic body, developing, like any other phenomena, through the unity and
struggle of opposites — i.e., the struggle between the proletarian view point
and the bourgeois view point. Mao developed the understanding of how to preserve
the proletarian revolutionary character of the party through waging a two-line
struggle against opportunist and revisionist tendencies and lines; and by the
ideological remoulding of party members through criticism and self-criticism and
through rectification movements. Today, without adding these principles, to the
already existing Leninist Party principles, it is difficult for any proletarian
party to grow and develop.
So we find that in
the course of victory of the Chinese revolution, a more developed science of
Marxism was taking shape in the form of Mao Tsetung Thought or Maoism. This
particularly gives to the Chinese revolution, like that of the Russian
revolution, its historical significance. But, with victory in 1949, the
revolution did not end, but continued in a new form. And here the Chinese
experience and Mao’s contribution is, probably, even more significant than in
the earlier period. On the very eve of the Liberation of the country Mao said :
"To win country-wide victory is only the first step in a long march of ten
thousand li." And he was proved right... the class struggle in the course of
building socialism, proved to be as acute, as ruthless, as that in the
pre-revolution period.
The first task before
the new communist government was to rehabilitate a war-ravaged economy, while at
the same time smashing the old rule of imperialism, feudalism and comprador
bureaucrat capitalism and replacing it with a new democratic structure and
economy. The next step required the step-by-step transition to socialism.
Finally, it required the continuous consolidation of the socialist system until
communism. Throughout the entire period this meant continuing the revolution
under the dictatorship of the proletariat. By 1953 the economy had been put on a
sound footing, by the land reforms in the countryside and the revival of
industry, both state-owned and private. By 1956, the transition to socialist
ownership in the means of production was, in the main, completed — through
cooperativisation of agriculture, and by gradually bringing private industry and
commerce under state control and/or part-ownership. From 1958 began the process
of consolidation of the socialist system with the formation of communes in the
countryside, bringing industry under the control of the workers and by
restricting bourgeois right.
To undertake this
entire process of change there was a fierce class struggle .... first, against
remnants of the old system; second, against a new bourgeoisie engendered through
widespread petty commodity production; and third against old ideas, habits,
customs and culture as well as against revisionist ideas within the party that
called for ‘stabilisation’ of the economy at the new democratic stage and
opposed transition to socialism. It is in this process that Mao’s gigantic
contribution to the development of Marxist theory came, with his detailed
elucidation of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the
proletariat.
In doing so he put
forward a ‘Critique of Soviet Economy’ and more scientifically elaborated
the laws of development under socialism. He more concretely put forward the
dialectical relationship between the economic base and the superstructure, and
the important role of the latter in facilitating the transformation of the
former. He put forward the nature of the principal contradiction during the
entire period of socialist construction. He evolved the economic principle of
‘walking on two legs’ and of taking ‘agriculture as the base and industry
as the leading factor.’ He devised the Great Leap Forward to take technology
to the peasantry, and smelt iron and steel in the ‘backyard’. And, most
important of all, he discovered the form for continuing the revolution under the
dictatorship of the proletariat, in the historic Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution (GPCR)
In evolving the laws
for socialist construction Mao said that the principal contradiction for this
entire period was that between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie; he said
"class struggle is the key link and everything else hinges on it"; he
attacked Liu Shao-chi’s theory of productive forces that saw the principal
contradiction as that between the backward productive forces and advanced
production relations; he pin-pointed the headquarters of the new bourgeoisie as
being capitalist roaders in authority within the very communist party itself; he
indicated the process for resolving the three major contradictions — that
between the working class and the peasantry, town and countryside, and mental
and physical labour; he evolved the methods to restrict bourgeois right and curb
the ‘Law of value’; etc.
To bring about this
revolution in the superstructure, Mao evolved the GPCR. While explaining the
aims of the Cultural Revolution Mao said, "struggling against the capitalist
roaders is the principal task, but in no way is it the goal. The goal is to
resolve the problem of world outlook; it is the question of pulling up the roots
of revisionism.... The CC has emphasised many times that the masses must educate
and liberate themselves, the world-view cannot be imposed on them. To transform
ideology it is necessary that external causes work through internal causes,
although these latter are principal. What would victory in the Cultural
Revolution be if it did not transform world outlook ? If the world-view is not
transformed the 2000 capitalist roaders of today will become 4000 the next
time."
Mao’s various slogans
during the GPCR reflected this goal. The call to "Grasp revolution, promote
production" dialectically handled the relationship between revolution and
production, consciousness and matter and the superstructure and the economic
base. By the slogan "keeping politics in command" and "never forget
class struggle," Mao sought to maintain a proper balance between the growth
of the productive forces and the development of the production relations. His
call to "fight self, repudiate revisionism" was combined with the mass
movement for struggle-criticism-transformation, in an attempt to go even deeper
and eradicate the bourgeois outlook from its very roots.
Such then were Mao’s
gigantic contributions to understanding the laws of socialist construction and
working out the forms to bring about the necessary change. No communist can
conceive of building socialism in the future, without understanding these
contributions, of Mao’s in this sphere.
Finally, it was Mao
who led the struggle against revisionism not only within China, but also at the
international plane. When, from the land of the Great Lenin, Khrushchev began
spouting his revisionist trash, and threw the international communist movement
into chaos, it was Mao and the CPC who led the great ideological battle. It was
a relentless struggle in the glorious tradition of Lenin’s struggle against the
Second International. Through this ‘Great Debate’ not only did Mao defend
Marxism-Leninism from the betrayers, he rallied the international communist
forces from all over the world, to make a clean break with ‘modern revisionism’
and establish genuine Marxist-Leninist parties. This monumental contribution to
the Marxist cause is an invaluable weapon with which to counter revisionists of
all hues.
Notwithstanding the
reversal by the Deng revisionists, the Chinese revolution is of historical
significance primarily because, in its course, it developed Marxism-Leninism to
a new and higher stage — that of Mao Tsetung Thought or Maoism. Mao developed
Marxist science in every conceivable sphere : in philosophy, political economy,
scientific socialism, proletarian tactics, party organisation, military science,
and even in the herculean effort to create the new communist man.
Today, there are many
in India who claim to be Maoists, but do not apply these principles to their
daily practice. Chanting Mao’s name is no panacea for revolution: the point is
to apply it in practice to the concrete conditions of the country. There are
those who deny, in their actual practice, the minimum tasks necessary for
launching a people’s war; there are others who get stuck in the morass of
parliamentarism; there are yet others who indefinitely postpone armed struggle;
and there are others who ‘wave the red flag to oppose the red flag’ by dogmatic,
stereotyped rendering of Maoist quotations like formulas. Mao taught us,
particularly through the GPCR, how to distinguish real Marxism from sham
Marxism.
On this the 50th
Anniversary of the historic victory of the great Chinese revolution, let us
widely propagate the glorious achievements of this revolution; let us undertake
a wide campaign for the propagation of Maoism throughout the country, and learn
how to apply it concretely in our daily practice.
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