Peking Review: Seeing the Essence of Problems
The “Internationale” Spurs Us On
[This article is reprinted from Peking Review, #11, March 17, 1972, pp. 6-8.]
March 18 this year is the 101 anniversary of the founding of the Paris Commune. Since last year Chinese people have once again learnt to sing the “Internationale,” the worldwide song of the proletariat, and regarded singing it as an important teaching material in carrying out education in ideology and political line. Following are three articles relating what the authors have learnt after singing the “Internationale.” —Ed.
We Must Decide and Do It Well
by Lu Kuo-cheng, deputy regiment commander of a P.L.A. unit
The Internationale made the call to the world’s proletariat: “No more tradition’s chain shall bind us” and carry the world revolution through to the end. The verses “We must ourselves, decide our duty, we must decide and do it well” embody the Marxist idea of continuing the revolution and carrying the revolution through to the end. They encourage and spur the proletariat and revolutionary people to advance courageously wave upon wave.
When I sing the song, I often think of the profound historical lesson of proletarian revolution. In March 1871, the proletariat of Paris staged a world-shaking armed uprising and established the Paris Commune—the world’s first dictatorship of the proletariat. But because some of the leaders of the Paris Commune failed to detect the plot of the reactionary bourgeois government headed by Thiers in time, it did not march immediately on Versailles—a stronghold of the bourgeoisie—thus giving the enemy a breathing space to muster his counter-revolutionary forces for a fierce counter-offensive. The Paris Commune suffered a disastrous defeat. “We must decide and do it well” is a lesson gained at the cost of blood and lives of the heroes of the Commune one hundred years ago. Historical experience tells us that on its long path to realizing communism, the proletariat should at no time forget class struggle and should not pause attacking the class enemies. Under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat, we must not relax our vigilance and should detect, expose and struggle resolutely against those “bloody birds of prey” of various descriptions wearing either masks or waving “red flags” to oppose the red flag.
Singing this song also reminds me of the battle scene in April 1949 when we crossed the Yangtze River during the War of Liberation. The Chiang Kai-shek bandit troops who had been badly battered by our army in the three big campaigns—Liaohsi-Shenyang, Peiping-Tientsin and Huai-Hai Campaigns—had retreated south of the Yangtze River. They tried to put up a last-ditch struggle by using the natural barrier of the Yangtze. Bourgeois agents in the Party, a handful of Right opportunists, advocated: Use the river as a boundary and divide up rule north and south. This was a plot to give China’s Thiers, Chiang Kai-shek, breathing space and the Paris Commune’s history of defeat would be seen in China. At that time Chairman Mao issued the “Order to the Army for the Countrywide Advance,” calling on us to “annihilate resolutely, thoroughly, wholly and completely all the Kuomintang reactionaries within China’s borders who dare to resist.”
The order moved a million strong army forward for battle. The Second Company where I was in was given the task of crossing in advance. Singing the Internationale and shouting the slogan “Fight across the Yangtze and liberate all China,” I and the comrades in the whole company forced our way across to the southern bank in small wooden boats amid a hail of bullets.
Deputy leader of the Third Squad Sung Huai-hsien led the whole squad forward. When they neared the southern bank, he was the first to jump into the water, went swiftly to the shore and destroyed two enemy pill-boxes. He was shot down when heading for a third one. Before he died, he waved his arm and shouted: “Comrades, go forward! Don’t let the enemy flee!” We forced our way along the path crimson with the martyr’s blood and smashed the enemy battery. We annihilated the enemy, paving a way for the oncoming troops. Today when we sing the Internationale and recall the history of revolution, the spirit of continuing the revolution embodied in the verses “We must decide and do it well” inspires us to fight with even more vigour and determination.
We Want No Condescending Saviours
by the peasant commentary group of the Tungliushanku Brigade in Linhsi County, Hopei Province
“We want no condescending saviours to rule us from their judgement hall. We workers ask not for their favours, let us consult for all.” These verses of the Internationale vividly and in a penetrating way tell of the great revolutionary teacher Marx’s saying that “the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.” This fundamental principle of historical materialism is a sharp ideological weapon for us to criticize the idealist conception of history propagated by Liu Shao-chi and other swindlers like him who said that heroes created history. These verses heighten the proletariat’s will to fight and crush the bourgeoisie’s arrogance and deal heavy blows at all kinds of sham Marxists. The more we poor and lower-middle peasants study these verses, the more elated we are; the more we sing this song, the stronger we feel.
Do heroes create history or do slaves create history? This is a fundamental landmark distinguishing historical idealism from historical materialism. Liu Shao-chi and those like him did their best to negate the role of the masses in history by propagating the idealist conception of history that it was heroes who created history. They thought they themselves were “saviours” and looked on the masses as “vagabonds.” They deemed that the liberation of the people and the progress of history were bestowed by “heroes of foresight and vision” like themselves. This fully reveals their essence of deep hatred for the masses.
The Internationale tells us that there is no such men born with wisdom, nor are there any divine personages who know everything. It is we the labouring masses who create world history, and not those “heroes” or the landlords, bourgeoisie and their agents who style themselves “saviours.” Chairman Mao teaches us: “The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.” The masses are the masters who know and transform the world. Their practice is the source of men’s knowledge about class struggle and the struggle for production, and the material force which transforms the world. Under the brilliant leadership of Chairman Mao, by closely relying on the masses and the concerted efforts of the people of the whole country, we defeated the Japanese aggressors and buried the Chiang family dynasty, overthrowing the three big mountains—imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism—weighing on the Chinese people. In socialist revolution and socialist construction, we also rely on the strength of the masses and display the revolutionary spirit of “maintaining independence and keeping the initiative in our own hands and relying on our own efforts” to overcome various difficulties and go from victory to victory.
The changes in our brigade are like that. In the vicious old society, things were as follows: Wind and sand reigned in spring; rain in summer and autumn swallowed the farmland; we reaped sand and water but not grain and so famine followed. In the past 20 years and more, guided by Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line, we depended not on divine personages nor on emperors but on our own efforts to struggle with heaven and earth and with class enemies. We made the elements bow and left the class enemies no place to hide. The once poor hamlet with so many sand dunes has been transformed into a socialist new village engulfed in forests and covered by crops. We have basically mechanized or semi-mechanized ploughing, drainage and irrigation, transport, threshing, plant protection, milling grain and crushing fodder. Meanwhile, grain and cotton output increases every year. In the last six years, the brigade delivered and sold to the state more than 1.4 million jin of grain and 580,000 jin of ginned cotion. There also has been a big development in forestry, animal husbandry and side-line occupations.
Today when we sing the Internationale we have a deep understanding of the verse “We workers ask not for their favours, let us consult for all.” We will re-double our efforts to win new victories, to support the revolutionary struggle of the peoples of the world and to let the golden sunlight remain.
Song of Unity for Victory
by Chiang Hung, Shanghai Kiangnan Shipyard worker
The Internationale by the great French worker-poet Eugene Pottier is a revolutionary battle song of the proletariat. It has spread the shining idea of the Paris Commune to the whole world.
“Let each stand in his place; the Internationale shall be the human race!” This has become a clarion call encouraging the world’s proletariat and revolutionary people to fiercely charge against the old world. Today when we are singing this song of our proletariat, we feel elated and more close to it. We, the working class, are determined to hold high the banner of unity and victory and struggle valiantly for the realization of the communist ideal throughout the world.
In the Manifesto of the Communist Party, our great revolutionary teachers Marx and Engels issued the call: “Working men of all countries, unite!”
During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao has taught us “to pay attention to doing your best to unite with all people that can be united.... Marx said that the proletariat must emancipate not only itself but all mankind. Without emancipating all mankind the proletariat cannot achieve its own final emancipation.” To be united is necessary in struggle. Only when we achieve unity based on the principle of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, can we have a unified will and a unified step and can we completely defeat the enemy.
To eliminate the criminal system of exploitation of man by man, the world’s proletariat and revolutionary people have for more than a hundred years been united in waging heroic struggle and achieved great victories.
China’s historical experience also shows that without the unity of the proletariat, there will be no victory for that class. However, “Left” and Right opportunists have always done their best to undermine Party unity, and unification. In the last fifty years, there has always existed within our Party a struggle between the two lines and a struggle between maintaining and undermining Party unity. Chen Tu-hsiu, Wang Ming, Liu Shao-chi and other swindlers like them used that portion of power they had usurped to push an opportunist line politically and to widely engage in plots of splitting the Party organizationally. Under the guidance of Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line, the Chinese people have waged resolute struggles against them and smashed their plots of splitting the Party and undermining the cause of the proletariat, thus making the Chinese revolution achieve continuous victory.
One hundred years have elapsed since the birth of the Internationale. In the meantime the world has undergone tremendous changes. We are now in a new, great era of world revolution. Countries want independence, nations want liberation and the people want revolution—all this has become an irresistible historical trend. The Chinese working class and Chinese people who have already won liberation will stand firmly together with the world’s proletariat and with the oppressed people and nations to fight to the end for the complete emancipation of the whole mankind.
For Your Reference
The “Internationale”
On March 18, 1871, the proletariat and the people of Paris in France staged a courageous armed uprising and founded the Paris Commune. This was the first proletarian regime in the history of mankind, the first great attempt of the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Paris Commune failed because of the military onslaught and bloody suppression by butcher Thiers in collaboration with Bismarck. But just as Marx pointed out: The glorious movement of March 18 was “the dawn of the great social revolution which will liberate mankind from the regime of classes for ever.”
The Paris Commune members put up an extremely heroic resistance against the class enemy at home and abroad. In that week of bloodshed, corpses were littered on the streets and bloodstains found everywhere in Paris. Searches and slaughter continued up to early June. A Versailles newspaper published on May 30 announced that the poet Eugene Pottier had been arrested and put to death. Actually the poet had gone underground. Amid the roar of guns and fire, under the threat of death and while the corpses of the victims were being transported by carts outside the window, our great proletarian poet stayed on the outskirts of Paris in early June. Neither wavering nor becoming down-hearted, he summed up experience from the failure and translated his boiling feelings into language to write the extraordinary inspiring poem—the Internationale. The poem was filled with the firm determination that slaves created history and confidence in the certain victory of the communist cause. It predicted: “Let each stand in his place; the Internationale shall be the human race.” By writing his poem Pottier erected an immortal monument for the Paris Commune members, while through the Internationale the heroes of the Commune issued the call to the late-comers of carrying the revolution through to the end.
It was in June 1888 or seven months after Pottier’s death that Pierre Degeyter first read the words of the Internationale. This French worker-composer was exhilarated by its spirit. Reviewing the historical experience of the workers’ movement, he thought of many things—his and the masses’ loyalty to Marxism and longing for communism, the life of Pottier, the battle scenes of the Paris Commune.... He seemed to have returned to that great year, 1871, so he began on his simple organ to set the music for the Internationale at night. Degeyter worked the whole night and when he finished his task the sun had risen from the east.
In July 1888, the composer led a chorus to give the first performance of the song at a gathering of newspaper sellers in Lille. From that time on, the Internationale has spread all over France and the world and become the battle clarion of the proletariat and workers of all countries.
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Seeing the Essence of Problems
by Chi Ping
[This article is reprinted from Peking Review, #19, May 11, 1973, pp. 5-7.]
CHAIRMAN MAO has always taught us to try to find the essential or main aspects of a problem. We must learn to use this scientific approach in sizing up a situation, analysing a problem or discussing our work.
Criticizing people who go against this approach, Chairman Mao pointed out in July 1955: “The way these comrades look at problems is wrong. They do not look at the essential or main aspects but emphasize the non-essential or minor ones. It should be pointed out that these non-essential or minor aspects must not be overlooked and must be dealt with one by one. But they should not be taken as the essential or main aspects, or we will lose our bearings.” (On the Question of Agricultural Co-operation.)
In estimating a situation, we must try to grasp its essence and mainstream before we can size it up correctly. We must, as Chairman Mao has said, “apply the Marxist-Leninist method in analysing a political situation and appraising the class forces, instead of making a subjective analysis and appraisal.” (On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party.) Only by correctly assessing the relative strength of the different classes in society and the trend of their development can the essence of a situation be ascertained in a maze of complicated phenomena.
During the various historical periods of the Chinese revolution, Chairman Mao always distinguished between the principal and the secondary contradictions of each period by scientifically analysing the balance of class forces and the trend of their development at the time. On this basis, he charted the correct strategy for struggle for the Party and steered the Chinese revolution ahead victoriously.
The same is true for all Communist Party members and revolutionaries. Only when we correctly assess a situation from its essence can we obtain a deep understanding of the Party’s line, principles and policies and steadfastly carry them out; only in this way can we remain level-headed and retain a high revolutionary enthusiasm and persist in the correct political orientation.
To Marxists, all kinds of contradictions in the social life of a class society are, in the last analysis, class contradictions. Such contradictions and struggle motivate the advance of society. Chairman Mao has said: “Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history, such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.” (Cast Away Illusions, Prepare for Struggle.) Classes, class contradictions and class struggle continue in socialist society, which moves forward in contradictory struggle.
Since China entered the period of socialist revolution, the principal contradiction has been that between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The existence and development of this principal contradiction decides or influences the existence and development of other contradictions. Reflected in the Party, this contradiction is manifested in the struggle between a Marxist-Leninist line and an opportunist one. The reason why the Party’s basic line is so important is that it scientifically analyses the principal contradiction in the stage of socialist revolution and points out the principles and methods for its solution.
To view a situation correctly, we should analyse social phenomena in the basic context of the struggle between the two classes, two roads and two lines. This is our most fundamental starting point. In socialist society, the proletariat constantly gains in strength while the bourgeoisie weakens and the Marxist-Leninist line repeatedly repulses the revisionist line in the course of this struggle. Hence the advance of society and history. Therefore, we can see a situation clearly from its essence only by grasping this fundamental starting point.
The waxing and waning of the respective strength of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and the latter’s final extinction is the general trend of revolutionary development in the socialist period. However protracted the struggle and tortuous the road, this general trend will not change. The key here is that the proletariat must have a Marxist-Leninist line.
Chairman Mao has noted: “The correctness or incorrectness of the ideological and political line decides everything.” When the line is correct, the proletarian revolutionary cause will spurt forward. This has been amply proven by the 23-year history of the People’s Republic of China. Guided by Chairman Mao’s proletarian revolutionary line, we have experienced during this period a number of big struggles, including both class struggle in society and line struggle within the Party. Each struggle ended with the strength of the reactionary exploiting classes seriously weakened and the proletariat and revolutionary people growing stronger through the tempering they received. Thus revolution goes forward. Such struggles, carried out ceaselessly, will eventually enable us to accomplish our great historic task—that of finally eliminating the system of exploitation and the exploiting classes.
An entirely different situation has been known to appear in the international communist movement when the line is incorrect, as in the Soviet Union. There, the revisionist renegade clique has usurped Party leadership and state power, betrayed the revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism and followed a revisionist line. The result is that the dictatorship of the proletariat has been replaced by the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, socialism has been replaced by social-imperialism and fascism, revolution is undermined and history retrogresses. However, this is a temporary phenomenon. In the end, Marxism-Leninism will certainly defeat revisionism and the proletariat will defeat the bourgeoisie. This general trend of historical development can never be changed.
Foster the Growth of New Things
As the socialist revolution deepens in China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, initiated and led by Chairman Mao, is a great struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and between the Marxist-Leninist line and the revisionist line. Guided by Chairman Mao’s proletarian revolutionary line, Party members, cadres and masses, after repeated and sharp struggles, uncovered the handful of renegades, special agents and diehard capitalist-roaders in the Party headed by Liu Shao-chi. Then they went on to smash the plots of political swindlers like Liu Shao-chi to restore the fascist dictatorship of the landlords and comprador-bourgeoisie, destroy their bourgeois headquarters and settle accounts with them for their counter-revolutionary crimes and revisionist line. All this has enormously strengthened China’s proletarian dictatorship and the Chinese Communist Party. It was also a very severe blow to imperialism and social-imperialism, which schemed to subvert the socialist system in China through their agents. This tremendous victory has sparked vigorous development in all fields of socialist endeavour and is of extremely far-reaching significance.
The proletariat, through the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, has further enlarged its positions in the superstructure, including all spheres of culture, while the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes suffered harsh blows. In literature and art, education and other realms where the bourgeoisie had long been entrenched, a profound revolution has taken place, with the proletariat taking over these ideological positions.
As Chairman Mao’s proletarian revolutionary line and principles and policies are carried out in all spheres of the superstructure, large numbers of socialist new things have emerged. These include the creation and popularization of model revolutionary theatrical works, enrolment of worker-peasant-soldier students in universities and colleges, settling of educated city youth in the countryside, participation of cadres in productive labour, development of co-operative medical services and emergence of “barefoot doctors” in the rural areas, shifting of medical workers to the countryside. All these have a common class nature: they are advantageous to the proletariat and detrimental to the bourgeoisie and benefit socialism while harming, capitalism. Although some are still in an imperfect state, lack adequate experience or are passing or have yet to pass the test of various struggles, they possess, nonetheless, immense viability and have an illimitable future. They show the direction of our advance and the rapid progress of the socialist revolution. As Chairman Mao has said: “It is always so in the world, the new displacing the old, the old being superseded by the new, the old being eliminated to make way for the new, and the new emerging out of the old.” (On Contradiction.) To actively protect new emerging things, enthusiastically foster their growth and correctly sum up experience and lessons is to persist in revolution and in progress.
Distinguishing Between Principal And Secondary Aspects
In class society, class struggle is “always the great motive force of historical progress.” (Engels: International Socialism and Italian Socialism.) Such noteworthy changes in favour of the proletariat in the balance of class forces have an important bearing on the overall situation of socialist revolution and socialist construction. Their powerful influence is felt in every field, on every front and by every part of the overall situation. Historical experience proves that a major class or line struggle never fails to bring a leap in the various fields of revolution and construction.
In the course of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, we have destroyed the bourgeois headquarters of Liu Shao-chi and other political swindlers and smashed their counter-revolutionary revisionist line; Chairman Mao’s proletarian revolutionary line has taken firm hold of people’s hearts, and the Party’s principles and policies are implemented even better so that the socialist enthusiasts of the cadres and masses are further aroused. All this has enabled every field of work in China to advance triumphantly along the socialist road. Shortcomings and problems which appear during the rapid growth of the socialist cause are non-essential and minor things not difficult to overcome, and certainly can be overcome, once Chairman Mao’s correct line is put into action. In viewing the situation on different fronts or in different fields or in considering a partial situation, the overall situation of the class struggle must not be forgotten, and neither should the essential and main aspects. Concrete analysis should also be made of the minor or secondary aspects. The principal and the secondary aspects form a unity of opposites. The secondary aspects reveal the new contradictions arising in the progress of things, and they will remind us to solve the problems and thus bring about sounder development of the main aspects.
As socialist revolution moves ahead, the victories we win by no means indicate the end of the struggle. These victories can be consolidated and developed only by persisting in continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Chairman Mao has taught us: “We have won great victory. But the defeated class will still struggle. These people are still around and this class still exists. Therefore, we cannot speak of final victory. Not even for decades. We must not lose our vigilance.” Historical experience since the founding of New China proves that each major class struggle with its resultant changes evokes a different response from different classes, strata or social cliques.
The proletariat and the masses of labouring people are elated by their victories, while the reactionary exploiting classes lament their defeat. Liu Shao-chi and other political swindlers did everything in their power to nullify the great achievements of China’s socialist revolution and construction and of the Great Cultural Revolution, slander the fruits of the revolutions in art and literature and in education and other fields of struggle-criticism-transformation and sling mud at the excellent revolutionary situation. They hoped by this to oppose Chairman Mao’s proletarian revolutionary line and achieve their criminal aim of subverting the proletarian dictatorship and restoring capitalism.
To be able to see the essential and main aspects of things correctly, we must firmly adhere to a proletarian stand. Chairman Mao has pointed out: “Our stand is that of the proletariat and of the masses. For members of the Communist Party, this means keeping to the stand of the Party, keeping to Party spirit and Party policy.” (Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art.) This is our fundamental point of departure in approaching all problems. Only in this way can we firmly keep in mind the great historic task of the proletariat, correctly recognize the objective laws of class struggle, grasp the trend of social development, observe at all times what conforms to the maximum interests of the masses and to the advance of society and vice versa, and thus analyse and judge the situation correctly.
Anyone who keeps to the stand of an individual or a small clique instead of that of the proletariat will see problems through prejudiced eyes; he will fail to correctly analyse class contradictions and class struggles and thus see the situation in an incorrect light. It is imperative, therefore, that we carry out Chairman Mao’s instruction to “read and study seriously and have a good grasp of Marxism,” consciously remould our world outlook and keep firmly to the proletarian stand through constant tempering.
(Slightly abridged translation of an article from “Hongqi,” No. 3, 1973. Subheads are ours [Peking Review’s].)
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