ADVANCE ALONG THE ROAD OPENED UP BY THE OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION
— In Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution
by the Editorial Departments of Renmin Ribao , Hongqi and Jiefangjun Bao
(November 6, 1967)
Full 50 years have passed since the Great October Socialist Revolution.
The October Socialist Revolution led by Lenin, great teacher of the proletariat, for the first time translated into reality the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat advanced by Marx and Engels and established the first state of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the history of mankind over one-sixth of the globe.
A new epoch began in the history of mankind.
A new era of the world proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat began.
A new era of the oppressed nations’ struggle for liberation led by the proletariat began.
Comrade Mao Tse-tung, the greatest Marxist-Leninist of our time, has made a most penetrating exposition of the great historic significance of the October Socialist Revolution. He points out:
“The first imperialist world war and the first victorious socialist revolution, the October Revolution, have changed the whole course of world history and ushered in a new era.”
“The October Revolution has opened up wide possibilities for the emancipation of the peoples of the world and opened up the realistic paths towards it; it has created a new front of revolutions against world imperialism, extending from the proletarians of the West, through the Russian revolution to the oppressed peoples of the East.”
“The road of the October Revolution is, fundamentally speaking, the bright road of progress for all mankind.”
Under the guidance of the great banner of Marxism- Leninism and the illumination of the October Revolution, the world has undergone earth-shaking changes in the last 50 years. The flames of the October Revolution are now raging throughout the world.
The great People’s Republic of China under the dictatorship of the proletariat stands like a giant in the East. Aroused and led by our great leader Chairman Mao himself, the 700 million people of China are carrying out a great proletarian cultural revolution such as has never been known before in history. This great revolution which has a vital bearing on the future of China and the destiny of mankind has won decisive victory.
The Albanian Party of Labour headed by the great Marxist-Leninist Comrade Enver Hoxha has led the Albanian people in persevering with proletarian heroism in the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, thus raising a bright red banner of socialism in Europe.
Valiantly resisting the wanton U.S. imperialist aggression, the 31 million people of Vietnam have scored brilliant victories and set a great example of anti-U.S. armed revolutionary struggle for the people of the whole world.
The people of Laos, Burma, the Philippines, Thailand, India, Indonesia and other countries are embarking on or persisting in the road of revolutionary armed struggle. The national-democratic revolutionary movement is unfolding vigorously in the vast areas of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The proletariat of Western Europe, North America and Oceania are awakening and plunging into the struggle against U.S. imperialism and monopoly capital in their own countries.
In short, under the banner of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung’s thought, the international communist movement is cleaning up all the mire of Khrushchov revisionism, and the revolutionary Communists and the broad masses of revolutionary people the world over are fighting, along the road of the October Revolution, to create a new world without imperialism, without capitalism and without the exploitation of man by man.
Under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, the people of the Soviet Union, with revolutionary initiative, smashed the old state machine in the dark world of capitalist rule by means of violent revolution, established the dictatorship of the proletariat, and thus erected a radiant beacon. In the subsequent years, following the road of the October Revolution, the Soviet people won great victories in defeating the White Guard rebellion and the armed intervention of 14 countries, in smashing the opportunist line of Trotsky, Bukharin and company, counterrevolutionary representatives of the bourgeoisie who had wormed their way into the Party, in carrying out socialist transformation and socialist construction, and in waging the anti-fascist war. All these glorious exploits were made at the cost of oceans of the sweat and blood of the heroic sons and daughters of the October Revolution, and they shine with the brilliance of the revolutionary heroism and lofty internationalism of the Soviet proletariat.
Today, in commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the Chinese people and Marxist-Leninists and revolutionary people of all countries deeply cherish the memory of Lenin, the great creator of the October Revolution, and his successor Stalin. We shall never forget the indelible historic feats of the glorious Bolshevik Party and the great Soviet proletariat in opening up the road of the October Revolution and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat.
However, the first great socialist state, the Soviet Union, which was the pride of the Soviet and the world proletariat and was thriving at the time of Lenin and Stalin, has now changed its political colour as a result of the usurpation of Party and state leadership by the handful of top persons in authority taking the capitalist road within the C.P.S.U., as represented by Khrushchov. Under the reactionary rule of the notorious Khrushchov and the revisionist clique headed by his successors Brezhnev and Kosygin, the powerful red bastion, which was once regarded as the light and hope by the people throughout the world, has become the centre of modern counterrevolutionary revisionism and another headquarters of world reaction.
The renegades Brezhnev, Kosygin and company now have the impudence to style themselves successors to the cause of the October Revolution and to engage in demagogy, flaunting the banner of “commemorating” the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. What a monstrous insult to the great Lenin, to the Great October Revolution and to the great Soviet people! You renegade to the October Revolution, by what right do you commemorate the October Revolution? The only place for you is in the dock of history to be tried by the Marxist- Leninists and the hundreds of millions of revolutionary people all over the world!
It is you renegades who have trampled underfoot the great banner of Leninism, betrayed the cause of the dictatorship of the proletariat and, under the signboard of the “party of the entire people” and “state of the whole people”, turned the Communist Party of the Soviet Union founded by Lenin into a bourgeois party, turned the dictatorship of the proletariat set up by the Soviet people at the cost of their blood and lives into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie which suppresses the labouring masses, and turned the Soviet state born amidst the storm of the October Revolution into a revisionist and bourgeois state. The Soviet people have been denied the right to be their own masters and are again under oppression and enslavement by a group of despicable scabs — a new privileged bourgeois stratum.
It is you renegades who have discarded the banner of socialism, strangled the socialist cause of the October Revolution and, under the cloak of “building communism”, replaced the socialist planned economy and the principle of “to each according to his work” by the capitalist principle of profit-seeking and free competition, causing enterprises owned by the whole people and collective farms to degenerate into enterprises of a capitalist nature and a kulak economy.
It is you renegades who, under the cover of “culture of the entire people”, energetically advertise reactionary revisionist ideas, the decadent bourgeois way of life and ugly “Western culture”. Bourgeois ideology dominates all spheres of ideology and culture in the Soviet Union today. The socialist culture fostered by the October Revolution has been trampled underfoot. The communist morality personally nurtured by Lenin and Stalin is being submerged in the icy waters of egoism.
It is you renegades who have betrayed proletarian internationalism and the revolutionary cause of the world proletariat, made “peaceful coexistence”, “peaceful competition” and “peaceful transition” the general line of foreign policy, prostrated yourselves before U.S. imperial- « ism and formed a new “Holy Alliance” with all the most reactionary forces in the world against communism, against the people, against revolution and against China. You are everywhere peddling the opium of revisionism, trying to paralyse the masses of the people, selling out the interests of the revolution and undermining revolutionary struggles, with the result that Communists and revolutionary fighters have been massacred in their tens of thousands by imperialism and its lackeys.
You renegades have committed heinous crimes against the Soviet people and the people throughout the world. You are the sworn enemy of the Soviet people as well as the common enemy of the revolutionary people of the world.
Comrade Mao Tse-tung has often told us: It is only through repeated education by positive and negative ’ examples and through comparisons and contrasts that revolutionary Parties and the revolutionary people can temper themselves, become mature and make sure of victory. Whoever belittles the role of teachers by nega tive example is not a thoroughgoing dialectical materialist.
The usurpation of state power by the modem revisionists and the gradual emergence of an all-round capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries have provided the Marxist-Leninists and revolutionary people of the whole world with a very profound historical lesson: After seizing state power, the proletariat may still lose it and the dictatorship of the proletariat can still revert to a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Not only must the proletariat guard against armed subversion of state power by its enemies at home and abroad. What is more important, it must be vigilant against usurpation of Party and state leadership from within by persons of the Khrushchov type and against the taking of the path of “peaceful evolution”. In betraying the cause of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Khrushchov revisionists serve the world proletariat as first-rate teachers by negative example. In this sense, Khrushchov deserves a one-ton “medal”.
Comrade Mao Tse-tung, the great and valiant standard bearer of Marxism-Leninism, and the Communist Party of China headed by him are leading the 700 million Chinese people, along with the Marxist-Leninists and revolutionary people the world over, in waging with dauntless proletarian revolutionary spirit a great powerful struggle against modern revisionism with the Soviet revisionist renegade clique as its centre. They have won brilliant victories internationally and will surely continue to win still greater victories.
Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s greatest contribution to the international communist movement is his systematic summing up of the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China and of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the world since the October Revolution; he has summed up not only the positive but also the negative experience, and, in particular, the grave lessons of the all-round restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union; and he has comprehensively and thoroughly solved the cardinal issue of our time, the issue of carrying on the revolution and preventing capitalist restoration under the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a great epoch-making development of the Marxist-Leninist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat was founded by Marx and Engels. The proletariat of Paris made the first heroic attempt to seize political power. The Paris Commune failed but, as Marx said, “the principles of the Commune are eternal and cannot be crushed”.
In his Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx advanced the well-known thesis summing up his entire revolutionary theory that “between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat”.
In his struggle against the revisionism of the Second International, Lenin inherited, defended and developed the Marxist theory on proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, solved a series of problems of the proletarian revolution in the era of imperialism and solved the question of the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country, thus developing Marxism to a new stage, the stage of Leninism.
After the October Revolution, Lenin pointed out on many occasions that acute and complex class struggles and the possibility of capitalist restoration still existed under the dictatorship of the proletariat. He said:
“Class struggle, . . . after the overthrow of capitalist rule, after the destruction of the bourgeois state, after the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, does not disappear (as the vulgar representatives of the old socialism and the old social-democracy imagine), but merely changes its forms and in many respects becomes fiercer.”
“The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration.”
Lenin made a penetrating analysis of why, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the overthrown bourgeoisie still has immense strength and is in the position to resist and carry out activities for a restoration, and he explained the necessity for consolidating and strengthening the dictatorship of the proletariat. He stated:
“The dictatorship of the proletariat means a most determined and most ruthless war waged by the new class against a more powerful enemy, the bourgeoisie, whose resistance is increased tenfold by their overthrow (even if only in a single country), and whose power lies, not only in the strength of international capital, the strength and durability of their international connections, but also in the force of habit, in the strength of small-scale production. Unfortunately, small-scale production is still widespread in the world, and small-scale production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale. All these reasons make the dictatorship of the proletariat necessary.”
Lenin also took note of the seriousness of the class struggle in the ideological sphere. He explicitly pointed out:
“Our task is — to defeat all the resistance of the capitalists, not only military and political but also ideological, which is the deepest and the most powerful.”
These brilliant ideas and these great scientific predictions of Lenin’s have tremendously developed the Marxist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat and are of immense practical significance today for all Marxist-Leninists who adhere to the road of the October Revolution.
The modern revisionists Khrushchov, Brezhnev, Kosygin and company have completely betrayed these ideas of Lenin’s. Comrade Mao Tse-tung, while fighting against the modem revisionists and explaining the necessity for persevering in the dictatorship of the proletariat, has invariably taught us not to forget these statements of Lenin’s.
Comrade Mao Tse-tung has comprehensively inherited, defended and developed Marxism-Leninism, he has creatively put forward the great theory of the continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat, and he has personally initiated and led the great practice of the first great proletarian cultural revolution in the history of mankind. This is an extremely important landmark, demonstrating that Marxism has developed to a completely new stage, the stage of Mao Tse-tung’s thought.
The essentials of Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s theory of the continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat are as follows:
One. It is necessary to apply the Marxist-Leninist law of the unity of opposites to the study of socialist society. Comrade Mao Tse-tung points out: “The law of the unity of opposites is the fundamental law of the universe.” “Contradictions exist everywhere”, “contradictoriness within a thing is the fundamental cause of its development”. In socialist society, there are “two types of social contradictions — those between ourselves and the enemy and those among the people themselves”. “The contradictions between ourselves and the enemy are antagonistic contradictions. Within the ranks of the people, the contradictions among the working people are non-antagonistic.” Comrade Mao Tse-tung tells us: It is necessary to “distinguish contradictions among the people from those between ourselves and the enemy” and “correctly handle contradictions among the people”, so that the dictatorship of the proletariat can become increasingly consolidated and strengthened and the socialist system developed.
Two. “Socialist society covers a fairly long historical stage. In this stage, classes, class contradictions and class struggle continue, the struggle between the socialist road and the capitalist road continues and the danger of capitalist restoration remains.” After the basic completion of the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production, “the class struggle is by no means over. The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the class struggle between the different political forces, and the class struggle in the ideological field between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie will continue to be long and tortuous and at times will even become very acute”. In order to prevent capitalist restoration and “peaceful evolution”, it is imperative to carry the socialist revolution on the political and ideological fronts through to the end.
Three. The class struggle under the dictatorship of the proletariat is in essence still a matter of political power, in other words, the bourgeoisie tries to overthrow the dictatorship of the proletariat while the proletariat strives to consolidate it. The proletariat must exercise all-round dictatorship over the bourgeoisie in the field of the superstructure, including the various spheres of culture. “Our relation with them can in no way be one of equality. On the contrary, it is a relation of one class oppressing another, that is, the dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie. There can be no other type of relation, such as a so-called relation of equality, or of peaceful coexistence between exploiting and exploited classes, or of kindness or magnanimity.”
Four. The struggle between the two classes and two roads in society is inevitably reflected within the Party. The handful of Party persons in authority taking the capitalist road are the representatives of the bourgeoisie within the Party. They “are a bunch of counter-revolutionary revisionists. Once conditions are ripe, they will seize political power and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”. In order to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat, we must take great care to see through the “persons like Khrushchov” “who are still nestling beside us”, fully expose them, criticize and repudiate them, overthrow them, make it impossible for them ever to rise again, and we must firmly recapture for the proletariat the power they have usurped.
Five. It is of the greatest importance for the continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat that the great proletarian cultural revolution should be carried out.
“In the great proletarian cultural revolution, the only method is for the masses to liberate themselves.” “Let the masses educate themselves in this great revolutionary movement.” In other words, this revolution is boldly arousing the masses from below by means of extensive democracy under the dictatorship of the proletariat and, at the same time, is forging the great alliance of the proletarian revolutionaries and the revolutionary “three-way alliance” of the revolutionary masses, the People’s Liberation Army and the revolutionary cadres.
Six. “Fight self, repudiate revisionism” is the fundamental programme of the great proletarian cultural revolution in the ideological field. “The proletariat seeks to transform the world according to its own world outlook, and so does the bourgeoisie.” Therefore, the great proletarian cultural revolution is a great revolution that touches people to their very souls and aims at solving the problem of their world outlook. We must criticize and repudiate revisionism politically, ideologically and theoretically, use proletarian ideology to overcome bourgeois egoism and all non-proletarian ideas, transform education, literature and art and all other parts of the superstructure that are not in correspondence with the socialist economic base, and thus uproot revisionism.
In putting forward the above theory of the continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat, Comrade Mao Tse-tung has creatively and with genius developed the Marxist-Leninist conception of class struggle in the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat and has developed with genius the conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is of epoch-making significance and represents the third great milestone in the history of the development of Marxism.
Fifty years ago Lenin stressed that “only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is what constitutes the most profound difference between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well as big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested”. We may now say that only he is a genuine Marxist- Leninist who extends the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat to the recognition of the need to continue the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism-Leninism are to be tested.
The Great October Socialist Revolution opened the way for the proletariat to seize political power. The fundamental experience of the October Revolution expresses the universal law for making revolution in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution. China’s great proletarian cultural revolution has opened the way for the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, for the prevention of capitalist restoration and for the advance to communism. The fundamental experience of the cultural revolution expresses the universal law of class struggle in the historical stage of the transition to communism following the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Various new problems may arise in the future and there may be difficulties and twists and turns; nevertheless, with the triumph of China’s great proletarian cultural revolution, “the important thing is that the ice has been broken — the road is open and the path has been blazed”, as Lenin said in appraising the significance of the October Revolution.
Stalin said: “The October Revolution should not be regarded merely as a revolution ‘within national bounds’. It is, primarily, a revolution of an international, world order.” Like the October Revolution, China’s great proletarian cultural revolution is not merely a revolution “within national bounds”; it is likewise a revolution of an international order. This great revolution has won the enthusiastic support of the proletariat and revolutionary people throughout the world. Its great victory has opened a new era in the international communist movement and will assuredly have a far-reaching influence on the course of human history.
Advanced revolutionary theory always spreads far and wide along with the great victory of the revolutionary struggle which it guides. The October Revolution 50 years ago very greatly stimulated the dissemination of Marxism-Leninism so that the world revolution took on an entirely new look. With the victory of the Chinese revolution in 1949 under the guidance of Comrade Mao Tse-tung, the world has undergone a further radical change. In the short space of over a year, China’s great proletarian cultural revolution has crushed the bourgeois headquarters led by China’s Khrushchov, and utterly discredited the exploiting classes in every respect. This great mass mobilization has shaken the world, and has brought the understanding of Mao Tse-tung’s thought on the part of the people of the world forward to a new and higher level, making it far richer and more profound than ever before.
The revolutionary people of the world have come to understand more and more clearly that Comrade Mao Tse-tung is the greatest teacher and most outstanding leader of the proletariat in the present era and that Chairman Mao is indeed the Lenin of our time. Mao Tse-tung’s thought is Marxism-Leninism at its highest in the present era, is Marxism-Leninism that strikes terror into the hearts of the imperialists, revisionists and reactionaries of all countries, and is the most powerful ideological weapon of the proletariat and the masses of revolutionary people.
With the dissemination of Mao Tse-tung’s thought, the revolutionary people are better able to draw a strict line between Marxism-Leninism and modern revisionism. When they look back at the dung hill in the backyard of the workers’ movement and see the old wares which Khrushchov and his followers have been trying to peddle, people can now more clearly distinguish the fragrant flowers from the poisonous weeds, distinguish the road of the October Revolution from the road which runs counter to it. The Khrushchov revisionist buffoons who clamour for a “party of the entire people” and a “state of the whole people” and have cast the dictatorship of the proletariat to the four winds are finding it more and more difficult to deceive the people with the signboard of “all-round communist construction”. Those parliamentary cretins who don the cloak of Marxism are finding it more and more difficult to prevent the proletariat from rising in arms to seize political power.
The world has now entered a revolutionary new era, with Mao Tse-tung’s thought as its great banner. France was the centre of revolution in the late 18th century, and the centre moved to Germany in the mid-19th century when the proletariat entered the political arena and Marxism came into being. The centre of revolution moved to Russia early in the 20th century, and Leninism came into being. The centre of world revolution has since gradually moved to China and Mao Tse-tung’s thought has come into being. Through the great proletarian cultural revolution, China, the centre of world revolution, has become more powerful and consolidated.
Chairman Mao says: “The Chinese people have always considered the Chinese revolution a continuation of the Great October Socialist Revolution and they regard this as a great honour.” The great proletarian cultural revolution in which we are now engaged is precisely the continuation of the October Revolution in a higher stage under new historical conditions. The best way for the Chinese people to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution today is to hold aloft the great banner of the October Revolution and the great banner of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung’s thought, carry the great proletarian cultural revolution resolutely through to the end, firmly support all the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists of the world and the people of all countries, and, together with them, carry the struggle against imperialism, modern revisionism and all reaction through to the end.
When commemorating the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution, Comrade Mao Tse-tung pointed out: “The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system; this is an objective law independent of man’s will. However much the reactionaries try to hold back the wheel of history, sooner or later revolution will take place and will inevitably triumph.”
And in 1962 Comrade Mao Tse-tung said: “The Soviet (Inion was the first socialist state and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was created by Lenin. Although the leadership of the Soviet Party and state has now been usurped by revisionists, I would advise comrades to remain firm in the conviction that the masses of the Soviet people and of Party members and cadres are good, that they desire revolution and that revisionist rule will not last long.”
The all-round restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union is only a brief interlude in the history of the international communist movement. We are firmly convinced that the genuine Soviet Communists and the great Soviet people, who have been taught by the great Lenin and Stalin, who have the glorious tradition of the October Revolution and who were tested and tempered in the anti-fascist war, will not tolerate for long the renegade clique of the Soviet revisionists riding roughshod over them. They are now waging struggles against the Soviet revisionist renegade clique in a variety of ways. They will certainly unite under the banner of the Great October Revolution, carry forward the behests of Lenin and Stalin, persevere in prolonged struggle, break through the heavy darkness and make the red star of the October Revolution shine forth again, and shine still more brilliantly.
The great truth of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung’s thought is irresistible. More than 90 per cent of the world’s population are invariably for revolution. The masses of the people will eventually triumph. The world revolution will eventually triumph. Under the great revolutionary banner of Mao Tse-tung’s thought, the great cause of the dictatorship of the proletariat pioneered by the October Revolution will certainly advance in more gigantic strides, and communism is sure to win final victory throughout the world.
