On the 50th anniversary of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in socialist China
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Internationally, the banner of anti-revisionist struggle raised by the GPCR sharpened the twoline struggle within the communist parties across the world and exposed the Soviet revisionists even further. It contributed to a decisive ideological, political and organisational break with revisionism in several countries spanning over the continents. This led to the formation of revolutionary parties with Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought (now Maoism) as their guiding ideology. It gave impetus to a new wave of people’s wars led by communist revolutionaries in several oppressed countries including Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar. Many communist parties that are today leading new democratic revolutions in India, the Philippines, Peru, Turkey, Bangladesh, etc. were all formed or reconstituted during the GPCR. It influenced many massive people’s upsurges in Europe and North America including the militant movement of students and workers in France in the late 1960s, the movement against the US’s Vietnam War and the civil rights movement of the AfricanAmericans, etc. In this way, the GPCR played a crucial role in giving continuity and leadership to the international communist movement since the restoration of capitalim in the Soviet Union.It is true that the great victories and achievements of the GPCR could not be consolidated and the handful of capitalist-roaders in the party leadership succeeded in usurping political power in China. The defeat of China’s socialist revolution, the dissolution of the socialist camp and the disintegration of the socialist world market gave the world capitalist system and the international bourgeoisie a fresh - though temporary - lease of life. Emboldened by the rise of the bourgeoisie to power in the Soviet Union and China and other people’s republics, the imperialists and their domestic collaborators have unleashed a new wave of attack on the oppressed countries, nations and people. This attack encompasses ideological, political, economic, diplomatic, military, cultural and all other spheres. They are waging ever new predatory wars for the re-division of the world, imposing neo-colonial exploitation and oppression in newer, more intensive and more deceptive forms. As a part of this offensive, they are more aggressively targeting the revolutionary, national-democratic and patriotic struggles and the movements of the workers, peasants, students, intellectuals, women, minorities and immigrants in capitalist countries. They are more extensively and viciously promoting bourgeois ideology and culture by using the state and the private sector, international institutions, NGOs, electronic and print media, religious institutions, the education system, etc. in ever new forms to disarm the proletariat and the people of these countries. In Semi-colonial and semi-feudal countries they are propagating decadent feudal ideology and culture together with imperialist ideology and culture in the interest of the reactionary ruling classes.
As the plunder, exploitation and enslavement is increasing, the bourgeoisie of the imperialist countries are trying even more extensively to bring the proletariat and the toiling masses under their ideological, political and cultural influence to reduce the ideological, political and cultural influence of revolutionary Marxism on them. In this scenario, revisionism as a tool of imperialism and its lackeys is raising its ugly head in many forms to save capitalism from its doom. The Soviet and Chinese neo-revisionists had collaborated with imperialism to reverse the socialist revolutions in their own countries, to open their countries for integration with the capitalist world economy, to suppress the communist, national liberation and democratic movements all over the world and contended to re-divide the world market according to the changes in their relative strength. Similarly, today’s old or modern revisionists all over the world are aiding imperialism and domestic reaction, defending the status-quo and collaborating with them in suppressing revolutions and preventing the advancement of the revolution in every country. As a form of bourgeois ideology, line and practice, revisionism continues to pose the main danger to the advancement of the communist movements as starkly demonstrated by the reversal in Nepal.
In addition, the petty bourgeois class, and particularly the intellectuals, has expanded vastly in every country including all the oppressed countries since the GPCR period. The role and importance of the intellectuals and the petty bourgeois in revolution has also increased. But they get easily influenced by bourgeois ideology including revisionism due to their class position. That is why the proletariat and its party need to win them over to the side of the revolution and remould their ideology. The ideological struggle against all forms and expressions of bourgeois, feudal and petty-bourgeois ideologies and politics including revisionism, reformism, parliamentarism, Gandhism, pacifism, post-modernism, patriarchy, casteism, communalism, religious fanaticism, fascism, national chauvinism, regionalism and localism, expansionism, etc. therefore becoming more and more important not only in the context of our country but internationally. The experience and lessons of the GPCR must be utilised in the fight against revisionism and in ideological remoulding of the people.
The GPCR has a great significance for the communist movement of India, where revisionism had been the dominant trend for over five decades till the mid-1960s. It was in the background of Great Debate and the GPCR that the bitter ideological and political struggle against CPI’s revisionism and CPI(M)’s neo-revisionism of the revolutionary forces under the leadership of comrades CM and KC was fought. This paved the way for Naxalbari peasant armed uprising and the beginning of peasant struggle in many parts of the country, resulting in the formation of proletarian revolutionary parties – the CPI(ML) and the MCC – under the leadership of comrades CM and KC respectively. However, even after this decisive break with revisionism, the modern revisionist forces pursuing the parliamentary path continue to be a major hurdle in the advancement of the Indian revolution. Whenever this internal struggle has been fought well, our party acquired higher level of ideological-political clarity, enriched its understanding and strengthened its unity, leading to the advancement of the movement. The right-opportunist lines of DV-TN-CP, SNS and VM, the ‘Left’- opportunist lines of pro-Lin Piao groups, the disruptionist and liquidationist lines of Venu, SM-VS clique, Bharat-Badal clique, etc. were fought and defeated through bitter two-line struggles. After the formation of CPI(Maoist) too, right-opportunist and liquidationist lines of Shivprasad in Karnataka and Sabyasachi Panda in Odisha raised their ugly heads and were defeated in a bitter struggle.
The Indian revolution has advanced to the present stage through the struggle against right and ‘left’ lines within and outside the party and by fighting revisionism in the international communist movement. There is no reason to believe that revisionism will not assert itself again within the revolutionary ranks in one form or the other, particularly at crucial turns of the movement. Moreover, in a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country like India the feudal and imperialist ideologies still hold considerable sway over the masses and there is the possibility of their influence in the revolutionary camp as well. Continuous inculcation of the proletarian world outlook and ideological remoulding in the course of struggle against all non-proletarian ideologies holds particular significance for the Indian revolution. Here too, the lessons of GPCR hold great significance.
The history of the communist movement demonstrates that Marxism and revisionism represent the two opposites of a single entity and that Marxism can develop only in the course of struggle against it. The communists must not therefore fail to learn from the development in theory and practice wrought by the GPCR and to apply them creatively in practice according to concrete conditions. This is essential not only after the seizure of power by the proletariat but also before it, not only during the socialist revolution but also in the democratic revolution. Notwithstanding the reversals, the GPCR will remain a landmark in the communist movement for the theoretical and practical development of Marxism it has achieved and the rich experience it has brought to the proletariat of China and the world. Just as all previous defeats at the hands of the class enemy since the Paris Commune had added new weapons to the arsenal of Marxism and prepared the ground for further advancement of the communist movement, the GPCR too will remain the foundation based on which the proletariat will win new victories in its fight for socialism and communism. By assiduously grasping and assimilating the lessons of the GPCR, the proletariat and its vanguard party can be better prepared against the danger of revisionism, raise its ideological-political level, resolve the new questions and problems coming up in the course of revolution and correctly guide and lead the toiling masses on the path of liberation in the new objective conditions of the class struggle. Resolving these outstanding questions of the socialist revolution will not be the task of the proletariat of any one country but of the international communist movement in the twenty-first century.
The defeat of the revolution in China, therefore, is but a precursor to newer and greater victories of the world proletariat. The great Marxist teachers have taught us that the liberation of humanity from class society and the exploitation and oppression engendered by it will take a long process involving many revolutions. Socialist revolution too is a protracted process with many ups and downs, twists and turns, victories and defeats before its final victory on a world scale. The enemy may win temporary victories in this course, but the proletariat will certainly continue the class struggle until it finally vanquishes the bourgeoisie and accomplishes its world-historic mission. Not one or two but many cultural revolutions will have to be carried out before this. The GPCR will forever remain a forerunner and a guiding light for the coming cultural revolutions.
While celebrating the 50th anniversary of GPCR this year, let us put all efforts to learn from its great victories and achievements and also its shortcomings, remould our world outlook by studying MLM, taking part in the class struggle, creatively applying MLM to the concrete conditions, learning from practice and rectifying our mistakes and fighting against right and ‘left’ opportunist deviations and by using the Marxist method of ‘unity-criticism-unity’, and thus Bolshevise the Party, Army, the United Front and mobilise the masses to enhance our fighting capacity in ideological, political, military, economic and cultural fields. Communists of our country need to resolutely and consistently uphold the primacy of proletarian ideology and working-class leadership in all their works and in all fields in order to destroy the present semi-colonial and semi-feudal state, to bring about a radical social transformation by completing the national and democratic tasks of the revolution and to move towards the goal of establishing the socialist society and finally the communist society by correctly handling and resolving the class contradictions.
Our Party, CPI(Maoist), has evolved the appropriate programme and the strategy and tactic for implementing the programme of the new democratic and socialist revolutions in India which are outlined in our documents ‘Party Programme’ and ‘Strategy and Tactics of the Indian Revolution’. We must strive to deepen our understanding of these documents by complimenting them with the lessons of the GPCR and apply them consistently in all our revolutionary work. Even when our comrades are involved in leading the class struggle in specific fields of work and in specific organisations with their immediate aims and immediate tasks – be it the workers’ organisations, trade unions, peasant organisations, women’s organisations, student and youth organisations, caste annihilation organisations, organisations in literature, art and cultural fields or in the united front forums, etc. – we must never lose sight of the totality of the revolutionary movement, its maximum and minimum programme, its strategy and tactics and its ultimate goals. We must comprehend our various organisations, struggles and tasks in the light of the commonality of their programme and strategy, in their inter-connectedness, unity and totality. Only in this way will we be able to fulfil our immediate tasks and advance our partial struggles by avoiding the pitfalls of all forms of non-proletarian trends or deviations and by countering all forms of non-revolutionary and counterrevolutionary
ideologies and politics, thereby contributing effectively to the advancement of the Indian revolution.
On this occasion of its 50th anniversary, let us learn the lessons of GPCR during the party’s Bolshevisation campaign to consolidate the existing forces and develop new forces, to unite with all democratic streams and movements including national liberations movements and win over all the democratic forces. Guided by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and taking inspiration from the GPCR, let us courageously fight the class enemies in all spheres, consistently repudiate revisionism of all hues and firmly adhere to the proletarian ideology, politics, culture and world outlook. Let us carry the class struggle through to the end to successfully complete the new democratic revolution and the world socialist revolution to march forward to communism that will finally give effect to the undying spirit of the Internationale:
No more tradition’s chains shall bind us,
Arise, ye slaves!No more in thrall!
The earth shall rise on new foundations
We have been naught, we shall be all;
’Tis the final conflict,
Let each stand in his place,
The International Party shall be the human race.
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