Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman
[This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Vol. 9, #34, Aug. 19,
1966, pp. 12-13. Thanks are due to the WWW.WENGEWANG.ORG
web site for some of the work done for this posting.]
COMRADE Mao Tse-tung presided in person over the Eleventh Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, which was held in a new stage of China’s socialist revolution and at a decisive moment in the development of the great proletarian cultural revolution. This Session is a milestone marking the new stage of our country’s socialist revolution.
In socialist countries, there still exists the question of which road will be taken after the basic completion of the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production. The question of whether to carry the socialist revolution through to the end and make the gradual transition to communism, or to stop half-way and retrogress towards capitalism, presents itself sharply before the people. By summing up and drawing upon both the positive and the negative experiences of the Chinese revolution and the international communist movement, Comrade Mao Tse-tung has furnished the theoretical answer to this question; and the question is gradually being resolved in practice.
At the Tenth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Party, which was held in 1962, Comrade Mao Tse-tung once again stressed the theory of contradictions, of classes and class struggle in socialist society and gave us the great call never to forget class struggle. Furthermore, during the past few years, Comrade Mao Tse-tung has put forward a series of brilliant policies which are of decisive and fundamental importance to socialist revolution and socialist construction; a series of important directives with regard to the socialist education movement and the great proletarian cultural revolution; and a series of important guiding principles on opposition to imperialism, on the establishment of the broadest possible international united front against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys, on opposition to modern revisionism, and on support for the revolutionary struggles of all the oppressed peoples and oppressed nations of the world. All these are fundamental questions for consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist system in our country, for preventing revisionist usurpation of the Party and state leadership, for preventing the restoration of capitalism and for ensuring that China adheres to proletarian internationalism.
Sailing the seas depends on the helmsman!
The great helmsman of our country’s revolution is Comrade Mao Tse-tung.
It is precisely because our Party and the masses of the people have at the helm a helmsman of such genius as Comrade Mao Tse-tung and the great thought of Mao Tse-tung as the compass, to chart the correct course through heavy fog that, during the past few decades, at each important moment of our country’s revolution, the great ship of our revolution has been able to avoid the countless dangerous shoals and hidden rocks and advance victoriously along the revolutionary course of Marxism-Leninism in the teeth of great storms and waves.
Lenin said: “Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” This is perfectly true. Without Mao Tse-tung’s thought, there would never have been the great, glorious and correct Communist Party of China, or the victory of our democratic revolution and socialist revolution, or the new China. Without Mao Tse-tung’s thought, it would have been impossible to build China into a great socialist country or to enable the Chinese people to stand for ever erect in the world and to march forward constantly.
Comrade Lin Piao has very correctly explained the supreme importance of Mao Tse-tung’s thought for the Chinese revolution and for the future of China. He said: “China is a great socialist state of the dictatorship of the proletariat and has a population of 700 million. It needs unified thinking, revolutionary thinking, correct thinking. That is Mao Tse-tung’s thinking.”
The fundamental task of the great proletarian cultural revolution in China is to ensure that Mao Tse-tung’s thought shall be grasped by the greatest possible number of people. It is also to further promote the revolutionization of people’s ideology and turn the spiritual force into a gigantic material force for the transformation of society and nature.
Let us hold still higher the great red banner of Mao Tse-tung’s thought, rally even more closely round the Party’s Central Committee headed by Comrade Mao Tse-tung, carry out energetically the policies set down in the Communique of the Eleventh Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Party, unite with all those with whom it is possible to unite, and, relying on our own strength and working vigorously, overcome all resistance and all difficulties and carry through the great proletarian cultural revolution, the socialist revolution and the struggle against imperialism and modern revisionism to the very end.
Strive to build China into a powerful socialist country!
Strive to unite with the people of all countries to build a new world without imperialism, without capitalism and without the system of exploitation of man by man!
Long live the great unity of the Chinese people!
Long live the great unity of the people of the world!
(“Renmin Ribao” editorial, August 15.)
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