Left Wing Nationalists

"Now whoever opposes the Communists and fires the first shot, will be hit by our second shot immediately, then our third shot. This is 'to pay a man back in his own coin'."

"I hold that the Hundred Regiments Campaign was a military success. Especially after the Anti-Friction Battle, we had to organize such an anti-Japanese campaign to show that we had to oppose frictions for the sake of resisting Japanese aggression. Only thus could we win over large numbers of middle-of-the-roaders. At that time only by seizing the advantage of a weakly defended enemy rear to launch a vigorous surprise attack could we deal blows at the enemy and restore vast expanses of anti-Japanese base areas. It was not easy to organize such a campaign in a unified and planned way under the condition of dense networks of enemy blockhouses. Our victory helped expose the deceptive propaganda of the Japanese invaders and Chiang Kai-shek. It was also necessary for the accumulation of revolutionary strength."

"After making a thorough analysis and appraisal of each man, we switched over to combat training, during which “officers teach soldiers, soldiers teach officers, and soldiers teach each other.” Officers and soldiers taught and learned from one another in earnest."

"As a command officer, I had one good point — I was never satisfied with the victories already won. But I was overanxious to win more victories, so the good point became a shortcoming. Although I reminded myself again and again to guard against impatience, I found it difficult to overcome it."

"We were enlisted to make revolution; to overthrow warlords, corrupt officials, local despots and evil gentry; and to bring about a cut in land rent and interest. But now there is neither revolution nor pay while talk of a cut in land rent and interest is heard no more. Yet, we are ordered to “suppress Communists” and crack down on peasant associations. Who orders us to do such things? Chiang Kai-shek! A soldier earns 6.5 dollars a month. Paying 3.3 dollars for mess, he has only 3.2 dollars left — and this is withheld from us. What a miserable lot we have! We can’t even afford to wear straw sandals or smoke coarse tobacco, let alone provide for our parents, wives, children. The officers must consider the problems of the enlisted men!"

"We are determined to overthrow imperialism and the Kuomintang government, form a government of workers, peasants and soldiers; confiscate the land of the landlords and give it to the peasants. We will establish a Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, in which officers and men are equal, the officers are elected by soldiers’ committees, and the accounts are kept open."

"I was prepared to destroy myself, but I would never do anything to harm the people’s army led by the Party."

"High mountains, dangerous passes, deep ravines, The enemy cavalry sweep the length and breadth at will; Who dares stop them, astride a horse, gun at the ready? Only our General Peng Dehuai."

"History is always moving ahead in a wavelike fashion, and the people of today outpace those of yesterday in their continuous forward advance."

"I reached the age of 23 in 1921. Having been a cowherd, a child labourer, a dyke worker and a soldier, I had been through extreme poverty and experienced the hard life of workers, peasants and soldiers. In the process, I cultivated some simple class feelings for the oppressed."

"China could only resist foreign aggression and develop its industry by instituting democracy and unifying the country."

"The Mandarin language lessons taught included such messages as cultivating self-confidence and valuing time. I was one of the trainees, and in less than two years made some progress in language study. Talks were also given on the dismemberment of China by the foreign powers and on building China as a prosperous nation with a mighty army."

"As World War I was then going on, the European and American imperialists had slowed down their aggression against China, and China’s industry was growing at a relatively high speed. This gave rise to such deceptive bourgeois patriotic ideas as “a prosperous nation with a mighty army” and “save the nation through industrial development”. They had an influence on me. But my chief motive in joining the army was to earn money to help provide for my poor family."

"I was born into a lower-middle peasant family on the 10th day of the 9th moon on the lunar calendar in 1898. All my family had at that time were a few thatched huts on eight or nine mu (hectre) of fallow and hilly land. We planted sweet potatoes and cotton on the fallow land and palms, tea, China fir and bamboo on the hill. Working hard and living frugally, the eight of us — my granduncle, grandmother, my parents and four boys barely managed to make ends meet."

"I was deeply influenced by my grand-uncle who had been a member of the Taiping Army. He often told me stories about the Taiping forces. The Taipings, he used to say, had food for everybody, the women unbound their feet, and the land was shared out among the tillers. This instilled in me the idea of taking the landlords’ riches to relieve the poor, of wiping out the landlords and finding a way out for the poor."

"The appalling poverty I experienced in my childhood and youth tempered me. In later years, I often recalled the plight of my childhood with a view to preventing myself from becoming corrupt and forgetting the hard life of the poor. That is why I can still vividly remember the ordeals I went through as a child."

"Our goal was illegal (revolution), and legality was but a means of achieving that goal. Otherwise we would have been using legality for the sake of legality and would have become the will."

"When soldiers become conscious of what they are doing and are organized, they constitute a mighty force."

"Now, I would like to discuss with special emphasis the question of accepting criticism and supervision from the masses. Ours is a socialist country under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The working class, the poor and lower-middle peasants and the masses of working people are the masters of our country. They have the right to exercise revolutionary supervision over cadres of all ranks of our Party and state organs. This concept has taken deeper root throughout the Party, thanks to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. However, there are still a small number of cadres, especially some leading cadres, who will not tolerate differing views of the masses inside or outside the Party. They even suppress criticism and retaliate, and it is quite serious in some individual cases. In handling problems among the people, Party discipline absolutely forbids such wrong practices as resorting to "suppression if unable to persuade, and arrest if unable to supress.""

"When confronted with issues that concern the line and the overall situation, a true Communist must act without any selfish considerations and dare to go against the tide, fearing neither removal from his post, expulsion from the Party, imprisonment, divorce nor guillotine. Of course, in the face of an erroneous trend there is not only the question of whether one dares go against it but also that of whether one is able to distinguish it. Class struggle and the two-line struggle in the historical period of socialism are extremely complex. When one tendency is covered by another, many comrades often fail to note it. Moreover, those who intrigue and conspire deliberately put up false fronts, which makes it all the more difficult to discern. Through discussion, many comrades have come to realize that according to the dialectic materialist point of view, all objective things are knowable."

"We must have faith in the masses, rely on them, constantly use the weapons of arousing the masses to air their views freely, write big-character posters and hold great debates and strive "to create a political situation in which there are both centralism and democracy, both discipline and freedom, both unity of will and personal ease of mind and liveliness, so as to facilitate our socialist revolution and socialist construction, make it easier to overcome difficulties, enable our country to build a modern industry and modern agriculture at a fairly rapid pace, consolidate our Party and state and make them better able to weather storm and stress.""

"Historical experience tells us that not only will the struggle between the two classes and the two roads in society at home inevitably find expression in our Party, but imperialism and social-imperialism abroad will inevitably recruit agents from within our Party in order to carry out aggression and subversion against us."

"What is wrong with rebellion? It was through the rebellion led by Chairman Mao against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism that members of the Communist Party of China achieved the victory of revolution and succeeded in seizing political power."

"Our country has a large population, vast territory and abundant resources. We must make our country prosperous and strong and we are fully capable of doing it. However, we must persist in the principle of "never seek hegemony" and must never be a superpower under any circumstances."

"Chairman Mao says, "To lead the revolution to victory, a political party must depend on the correctness of its own political line and the solidity of its own organization." All the comrades of our Party must pay close attention to the question of line, persist in continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat, strengthen our Party building and ensure that the Party's basic line for the historical period of socialism is carried through."

"We must heighten our vigilance and understand the protractedness and complexity of this struggle. In order to constantly consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat and seize new victories for the socialist cause, it is necessary to deepen the socialist revolution in the ideological, political and economic spheres, to transform all those parts of the superstructure that do not conform to the socialist economic base and carry out many great political revolutions such as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution."

"The naked eye is not enough, we must have the aid of the telescope and the microscope. The Marxist method is our telescope and microscope in political and military matters."

"If one practises Marxism and wholeheartedly serves the interests of the vast majority of the people of China and the world, one is obliged to work for unity and be open and aboveboard; if one practises revisionism and exclusively serves the small number of exploiting class elements, one will inevitably go in for splits, intrigues and conspiracy. Revisionism is an international bourgeois ideological trend. Revisionists are agents whom the bourgeoisie, and imperialism, revisionism and reaction plant in our Party by means of sending them in or recruiting them from our ranks."

"At home, too, we must oppose every manifestation of "great-power" chauvinism, and further strengthen the revolutionary unity of the whole Party, the whole Army and the people of all the nationalities of the country to speed up our socialist revolution and socialist construction and strive to fulfill our due internationalist obligations."

"Many young comrades on their part warmly pledged to learn modestly from the strong points of veteran cadres who have been tempered through long years of revolutionary war and revolutionary struggle and have rich experience, to be strict with themselves and to do their best to carry on the revolution. Both veteran and new cadres expressed their determination to learn each other's strong points and overcome their own shortcomings."

"Will our Great Cultural Revolution be cursed? Certainly some people will curse it. And even 10 years or several decades later, there will be some people who will curse it."

"To study Marxism and criticize revisionism is our long-term task for strengthening the building of our Party ideologically."

"Let us hold aloft the revolutionary banner of Marxism-Leninism and boldly advance in the fight against imperialism, reaction and modern revisionism, for world peace, national liberation, people’s democracy and socialism, for the gradual achievement of complete victory in the proletarian world revolution and for the building of a new world without imperialism, without capitalism and without the exploitation of man by man!"

"Marxist-Leninist parties should adhere to the revolutionary line, support and assist each other, and perform their proletarian internationalist duty in the present international class struggle and in the great struggle of all the oppressed people and nations for liberation."

"The revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and people of each country goes through different stages and has its own characteristics, but none can be independent of the general laws governing the development of world history. It is of great importance for a proletarian party leading the revolutionary struggle and formulating the revolutionary line and policies of its own country to adhere to the principle of integrating the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete revolutionary practice of its own country. Only when the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism is skillfully integrated with the concrete revolutionary practice of one’s own country, can one make Marxism-Leninism take root, blossom and yield fruit in the country, and lead the revolution to victory."

"Communist parties of the socialist countries should uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat, consolidate and expand the positions of socialism, and carry the socialist revolution through to the end in the political, economic, ideological and cultural fields. Never for a moment must we forget the existence of classes and class struggle, or forget the struggle between the socialist and the capitalist roads. Only thus can we prevent the restoration of capitalism and create the conditions for the transition to communism."

"The great Soviet people is a people endowed with the glorious tradition of the October Revolution. The great Communist Party of the Soviet Union is a Party with a long history of revolutionary struggle."

"It is for revolution that we unite. Unity with revolutionaries is out of the question if one opposes revolution. Making revolution and opposing imperialism is the demand of the broad masses of the people who comprise more than 90 per cent of the world’s population and is the irresistible trend of history. Whoever goes against this aspiration of the people and this trend will inevitably be discarded by history."

"At the present stage, the historical task of the parties of the proletariat in all countries is to unite the revolutionary people of the whole world, unite all the forces that can be united, combat the imperialists and reactionaries, win world peace, national liberation, people’s democracy and socialism, and strive for the gradual achievement of complete victory in the proletarian world revolution and for a new world without imperialism, without capitalism and without the exploitation of man by man."

"In our times, Marxist-Leninists have all the greater confidence to declare to the whole world: The extinction of imperialism is inevitable, so is the victory of socialism and communism! The future of the international communist movement is bright, so is the future of the proletarian world revolution."

"In the past, all kinds of opportunists and revisionists invariably used dual tactics to deceive the revolutionary people, and they invariably put on some false appearance to conceal the essence of their betrayal of the revolution."

"In endeavouring to bolster up the tottering edifice of imperialism, in addition to the direct use of violence, the monopoly capitalists of the imperialist countries invariably rely upon the labour aristocracy as a social prop and life-saver to sap the revolutionary will of the proletariat, to fool and divide the revolutionary people and to resist the proletarian revolutionary storm."

"Without an elementary class analysis, the slogan “unity against the enemy” is meaningless. We must make clear whom they want “unity” with and which enemy they want to deal with."

"The people of the world can definitely defeat this ferocious enemy provided that they clearly recognize U.S. imperialism as their chief enemy, unite with all the forces that can be united, and form the broadest possible united front against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys."

"The people’s revolutionary struggle is surging forward and winning constant victories, while imperialism is being battered everywhere and nearing its doom. The Marxist-Leninists and all revolutionaries are fighting together with the masses of the people with full confidence, dealing hard blows at imperialism and propelling it to its grave. All pessimism is utterly groundless. Whoever spreads pessimistic and defeatist views will be punished by history."

"From the point of view of our wishes, the best thing would be for them to abandon revisionism, or at least refrain from siding with U.S. imperialism, the common enemy of the people of the world. Indeed we were actuated by this wish when we repeatedly advised and criticized them, hoping that they might turn from their erroneous ways. Unfortunately, they have turned a deaf ear to all this. What can one do if they are happy in their own degeneration? They have insisted on staying outside, the united front of the people of the world against U.S. imperialism and conducting an ardent flirtation with it so that they are like a pair of lovebirds that even clubbing cannot separate. In these circumstances, of course it is impossible for them to really join the Marxist-Leninists and the people of the world in any “united action"."

"While entrusting contemporary Marxist-Leninists and all other revolutionaries with arduous missions, history has at the same time created a wide stage of action for them. On this stage of history all real revolutionary heroes can perform many a revolutionary drama, full of sound and colour, power and grandeur, provided that they truly grasp the invincible weapon of Marxism-Leninism, truly rely on the broad masses of the people, and are courageous and skilful in waging struggles Innumerable revolutionary forerunners have opened up the road, set the example and accumulated experience for us."

"The international balance of class forces is very favourable to the socialist countries and the revolutionary people of the world and very unfavourable to imperialism and all the reactionaries. The international balance between the forces of revolution and of counter-revolution has changed, but not one of the basic contradictions of the contemporary world-the contradiction between the socialist camp and the imperialist camp, the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the capitalist countries, the contradiction between the oppressed nations and imperialism, and the contradictions among the imperialist countries and among the monopoly capitalist groups-has disappeared. These basic contradictions are all objective realities and they are becoming increasingly acute."

"After World War I, the capitalist system enjoyed a short period of relative stability. Since World War II there has been no such relative stability. The forces of imperialism have been greatly weakened. U.S. imperialism, the main prop of the imperialist system, is also in a state of general decline. The general crisis of capitalism has greatly deepened."

"Since World War II, U.S. imperialism has stepped into the shoes of German, Italian and Japanese fascism and become the chief enemy of the people of the world. Throughout the postwar period, repeated and intense struggles have been going on between the people of the world on the one side and U.S. imperialism and its lackeys on the other. The vast areas of Asia, Africa and Latin America are the main battlefields of these struggles."