Every Ruling Class Governs by
"Taking Class Struggle as the Key Link"
By Hao Guisheng. Renjing Net. Translated by Vero Publishing.
The viewpoint of class struggle is a basic viewpoint of Marxism; Comrade Li Dazhao called it the golden thread of historical materialism.[1] Chairman Mao said that in studying Marxism he held fast to the two words "class struggle." Chairman Mao's theory of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat enriched, deepened and extended the Marxist idea of class struggle. The 1967 editorial of the "two newspapers and one journal"[2] commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution stated that the formulation and elaboration of this theory marked Mao Zedong Thought as the third milestone in the development of Marxism. And one extremely important idea within the theory of continuing revolution is "taking class struggle as the key link."[3]
Since Chairman Mao's death, the idea of "taking class struggle as the key link" has been misunderstood and opposed by many in the Party, including veteran comrades who once fought bloody battles alongside Chairman Mao to win the country. Still more, it has been hated, distorted, slandered and vilified by class enemies at home and abroad, by the bourgeoisie within the Party and by every hostile force in society. Certain people in power, the mainstream media and public intellectuals never forget, year after year, month after month, day after day, to criticize "taking class struggle as the key link." They treat Mao Zedong's idea as a monster to be feared, as though it were the most harmful, unpardonable and absurd "error" ever to befall Chinese Communists and the great cause of socialism, a "rat crossing the street" that the whole Party and all of society cry out to strike, condemned by the whole Party and denounced by the whole country in the form of a Resolution.[4] How, then, should genuine Chinese Communists and Marxists treat this theory correctly? Is it truth or fallacy? A fragrant flower or a poisonous weed? A development and innovation of Marxism, or a departure from and reaction against it? I hold that it is the former, not the latter.
I. In Class Society, the Basic Contradictions of Society Manifest Themselves Chiefly as Class Struggle
The founding of historical materialism revealed that the development of human society is a historical process governed by objective laws. That law is the basic contradiction of society: the contradictory movement, at once corresponding and non-corresponding, between the productive forces and the relations of production, and between the economic base and the superstructure. In class society, the chief and most important manifestation of this contradiction is class struggle. That is why the Communist Manifesto says that since the dissolution of primitive society, the history of humanity has been the history of class struggles. Lenin said that all recorded history up to now has been the history of class struggles, of the succession of the rule and victory of certain social classes over others. Chairman Mao said: "Class struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years. To interpret history from this viewpoint is historical materialism; standing in opposition to this viewpoint is historical idealism." According to the materialist-dialectical explanation of the principal contradiction, the principal contradiction is the one among many contradictions whose existence and development determines, influences and governs the existence and development of all the others. Therefore, in class society, the opposition and struggle between the ruling and the ruled classes, between progressive classes and backward, reactionary ruling classes, determines and influences the development of the whole of society and is the direct motive force of social development. This is an objective law independent of the will of any class.
II. Every Ruling Class, Consciously or Not, Forms a Guiding Ideology and Political Line of Its Own Class in Governing the Country
Historical materialism holds that every human activity has an aim and a guiding idea. In class society, the class that rules economically and politically must likewise have its guiding ideology and political line. Precisely because the law of class struggle is an objective law of class society, independent of human will, every class, and above all the ruling class, even if it has not grasped this objective law in theory, consists of class beings. In its class practice, and especially in its conduct of government, it will therefore, consciously or not, form a distinctive ideological and political line according to its own class will, motives, aims, interests and theory, and this line guides all its practical activity.
1. In all its activities, every ruling class pursues first of all its own class interests
Every activity of every class has an aim, that is, a goal it pursues. Historical materialism stresses that every human activity is connected with material interests. There is no practical activity apart from material interests, and no practical activity of a ruling class apart from material interests. The material interests that a ruling class pursues are the interests of the ruling class, a minority. Because the economic and political positions of the ruling and ruled classes differ, the material interests they pursue also differ and are even fundamentally opposed. In slave society the slave-owning class pursued the interests of the slave owners; in feudal society the landlord class pursued the interests of the landlords; in capitalist society the bourgeoisie pursues the interests of the bourgeoisie. These two fundamentally opposed conceptions of material interest are first of all an extremely important content of class struggle.
2. Every exploiting and ruling class develops production and the economy first of all by means of its ownership of the means of production
The historical-materialist view of material interest includes, first, the concrete aims and content of the material interests people pursue, and second, the paths, means and methods of realizing them. Ordinary working people pursue their basic material needs and interests mainly through their own material labor. But the exploiting classes are different. Their path, means and method of realizing their material interests is mainly to use their ownership of the means of production to appropriate the material wealth created by working people's labor. The slave-owning class realized its material interests through ownership not only of land but of the slaves themselves. The landlord class, through its ownership of land, appropriated the material wealth created by peasant labor in the form of rent and so on. Capitalists, through their ownership of capital, appropriate the surplus value created by the workers. This appropriation of the "labor" of working people through ownership of the means of production is itself the essence of class and the most typical expression of class struggle.
3. To maintain its economic exploitation of the laboring classes, every ruling class must suppress their resistance through state power
In class society there are not only relations of production that organize economic activity but also political relations that maintain social order, chiefly the state, together with the law, the army, the police, prisons and so on. The essence of the state is certainly not the "social contract" of the bourgeois thinker Rousseau. It is an instrument and organ of violence for class oppression, whose core is to maintain and realize class rule, because every act of economic exploitation inevitably provokes resistance from the exploited class. The ruling class must therefore rely on its army, prisons, police and legal system, ostensibly to maintain a certain social order but in essence to suppress by violence the resistance of the exploited class. There is no ruling class that does not maintain its economic exploitation and its political oppression and order through a powerful state machine. And when an advanced class representing the direction of the development of the productive forces seeks to overthrow the old system and establish a new one, it too meets armed suppression by the old ruling class that holds power. It is in this sense that, in every class society, class struggle necessarily takes the form of political struggle over power. The ruling class's use of state power to suppress the resistance of the exploited classes and to suppress progressive classes is an extremely important guiding idea and political program by which it maintains its own rule and manages society.
4. Every ruling class must manufacture a spiritual opium to numb and deceive the exploited and oppressed classes, in order to maintain its class interests and political rule
The ruling class of every society relies not only on the state machine to suppress the resistance of the oppressed classes by force, but also on the ideological superstructure to numb and deceive them ideologically. The policy of "dismissing the hundred schools and honoring Confucianism alone," proposed by Dong Zhongshu in the Han dynasty, used the strict hierarchical notion of Confucianism, "let the ruler be a ruler, the subject a subject, the father a father, the son a son," to maintain the hierarchical order of feudal society. European religious theology first arose among working people: after their repeated failures in resistance, they placed their hopes in Jesus to save them, and so it was a product of the helplessness of the oppressed classes. But it was later remolded and systematized by the thinkers of the landlord class into a spiritual opium with which the landlord class numbed the oppressed classes. In its struggle against the religious theology that upheld the feudal ruling class, the bourgeoisie put forward a series of humanitarian and humanist doctrines. These were historically progressive insofar as they promoted the development of capitalism, but once the capitalist system was established, they served to argue in theory for the eternity and immutability of the capitalist system of private property. In all these cases the ruling class, while performing the "function of the hangman," also performs the "function of the priest."[5] These fundamentally opposed systems of thought in the ideological field are in essence also the concrete expression of each ruling class's own "taking class struggle as the key link."
III. Chairman Mao's Idea of "Taking Class Struggle as the Key Link" Is a Distillation of the Objective Laws of Historical Development and of the State of Class Struggle in the Socialist Period
As everyone knows, "once the headrope is pulled up, all the meshes open" is an ancient Chinese saying. Literally, it means that by grasping the main rope of a fishing net, one can lift all its meshes. In the language of Marxist philosophy, it means that only by grasping the principal contradiction can the secondary contradictions be resolved. The ruling classes of past ages did not understand the Marxist philosophical principles of "principal and non-principal contradictions" and "the principal and non-principal aspects of a contradiction." But their ruling position and class interests meant that, in organizing, managing and governing all the problems of society, they objectively and consciously grasped the fundamental opposition between the ruling and the ruled classes. After the Communists seized power through armed struggle and established a socialist economic and political system, they too faced an enormous number of economic, political and cultural problems. Where were they to begin? From the objective laws of historical class struggle, the objective state of class struggle in socialist society and the relevant Marxist writings, Chairman Mao grasped and consciously set out the scientific concept and guiding idea of "taking class struggle as the key link."
1. A series of statements by Marx, Engels and Lenin in effect require Communists to grasp class struggle as the key link. The Communist Manifesto states plainly: "The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property." The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas. The class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, and this dictatorship is the transition to the abolition of classes and to a classless society. Lenin pointed out again and again that socialism is the period of struggle between dying capitalism and nascent communism. Lenin also said that the dictatorship of the proletariat is a most determined and most ruthless war waged by the new class against a more powerful enemy, the bourgeoisie ... "The dictatorship of the proletariat is essential, and victory over the bourgeoisie is impossible without a long, stubborn and desperate life-and-death struggle which calls for tenacity, discipline, and a single and inflexible will." All these statements tell us that, after seizing power, Communists must uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat and hold fast to the main thread of the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.
2. In 1949, at the point where the two revolutions met, Chairman Mao stated clearly in his speech to the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee that after the enemies with guns have been wiped out, there will still be enemies without guns, who will still attack the proletariat with sugar-coated bullets, and that the principal contradiction in society would remain that between the working class and the bourgeoisie. The corruption case of Liu Qingshan and Zhang Zishan proved the truth of Chairman Mao's judgment. In 1956, after the completion of "one industrialization and three transformations,"[6] he still held that the question of which would win out, socialism or capitalism, had not been fundamentally resolved. In 1962, in light of the new features of class struggle at home and abroad, he issued to the whole Party the great call: "Never forget class struggle." In 1963, against the betrayal of Marxism and socialism by Khrushchev's revisionist clique, he set out systematically in the Nine Commentaries the fifteen basic points of the theory of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat;[7] in 1967 they were condensed into six in an important article of the "two newspapers and one journal." In 1975, before his death, he stated clearly once again: "Is there class struggle in socialist society? What is this about 'taking the three directives as the key link'?[8] Stability and unity do not mean doing without class struggle. Class struggle is the key link, and everything else hinges on it." "In 1949 we said that the principal contradiction in the country was between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Thirteen years later we raised the question of class struggle again, and the situation began to improve. What was the Cultural Revolution for? Class struggle. Liu Shaoqi said class struggle had died out, but he himself did not die out; he wanted to protect his gang of renegades and diehards. Lin Biao wanted to overthrow the proletariat and stage a coup. Had it died out?" "Why are some people no longer able to see clearly the question of contradictions in socialist society? Is the old bourgeoisie not still there? Can't everyone see the large petty bourgeoisie? Are the large numbers of intellectuals who have not been properly remolded not all still there? The influence of small production, corruption and degeneration, speculation and profiteering: are they not everywhere? Were the anti-Party cliques of Liu and Lin not shocking? The problem is that they themselves belong to the petty bourgeoisie and their thinking easily tends to the right. They represent the bourgeoisie themselves, yet say they can no longer see class contradictions clearly."
3. It was precisely by upholding the idea of "taking class struggle as the key link" that New China achieved extremely great and glorious successes in the thirty years of the Mao Zedong era, developing from a backward nation at the mercy of others into a historical giant standing tall in the East, and defeating US imperialism, the most powerful country in the world, armed to the teeth. Of course, New China started from poverty and blankness, and in the course of construction and development there were inevitably problems of one kind or another. But these are inevitable in the development of any new thing, and they can never obscure or obstruct its objective trend of advance, rise and development, just as sunspots can never obscure the brilliance of the sun. Class enemies at home and abroad and opportunists within the Party, looking through tinted glasses, distort and exaggerate the "minor details" and "side currents" in the development of the new, and above all portray the great economic achievements of the Mao era as "the national economy on the brink of collapse," using these distorted and vilified so-called "facts" to argue the "absurdity" of "taking class struggle as the key link." This mistaken method of argument proves precisely the truth of the view it attacks. Practice is the fundamental and ultimate criterion of truth. The objective fact of the extremely serious capitalist restoration in every field of China's economy, politics and culture over more than forty years of "reform and opening up" proves once again the truth of Chairman Mao's idea of "taking class struggle as the key link" to prevent capitalist restoration.
IV. Whether to Uphold the "Four Cardinal Principles" Is Itself Another Way of Expressing "Taking Class Struggle as the Key Link"
After Chairman Mao's death, his theory of continuing revolution, including the idea of "taking class struggle as the key link," was fundamentally repudiated and replaced by a new basic line of the Party: "to unite and lead the people of all ethnic groups, take economic construction as the central task, uphold the Four Cardinal Principles, uphold reform and opening up, and strive to build our country into a prosperous, strong, democratic and culturally advanced modern socialist country." The official core interpretation of this basic line is that "taking economic construction as the central task" has replaced "taking class struggle as the key link." But can it objectively replace it? The sentence seems to make "taking economic construction as the central task" the overall key link, but can it in fact replace it? In many important speeches Deng Xiaoping stressed again and again that upholding the Four Cardinal Principles is the "foundation of the state" in our time. Is this "foundation of the state" not the overall key link? Is the choice between upholding and opposing the Four Cardinal Principles not a choice between fundamentally opposed guiding ideas for Communists? Is it merely a matter of understanding, and not class struggle in the ideological field, a class line of governing the country?
Taking "upholding the Four Cardinal Principles" as the key link is undoubtedly correct. But there is also the phenomenon of revising and distorting the scientific content of the Four Cardinal Principles under the banner of upholding them. The essence of "socialism" is distorted into "liberating and developing the productive forces"; "upholding Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought" is distorted into a Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought stripped of class struggle; "the leadership of the Communist Party" is distorted and revised into a "Party leadership" that obliterates class character and denies that "the ideological and political line decides everything." At the same time, consciously or not, "the people's democratic dictatorship," one of the Four Cardinal Principles, is repudiated and abolished. Does today's mainstream media still speak of the theory of the "people's democratic dictatorship"? When Comrade Wang Weiguang wrote the article "Upholding the People's Democratic Dictatorship Is No Losing Argument,"[9] he met a frenzied "encirclement campaign" by hostile forces in society, in which some so-called theorists and politicians within the Party took part, cooperating with the hostile forces in perfect tacit agreement. Not one mainstream media outlet stood up to support Comrade Wang Weiguang unequivocally. Distorting, revising and attacking the "Four Cardinal Principles" is therefore itself an important expression of class struggle in the ideological field.
In real life there is a view that "governing the country by class struggle does not work," that "governing the country by violent class struggle only makes things more chaotic the more you govern," that "China is a country under the rule of law and should rely all the more on governing the country according to law," and so on. Those who say this know nothing whatever about the concepts of "rule of law" and "governing the country according to law." Law is the will of the ruling class, and the state is an instrument of class oppression. "Governing the country according to law" means governing the country by the will, ideas, theory and legal provisions of the ruling class; it is itself "taking class struggle as the key link." So-called "governing the country according to law" in the abstract, apart from class struggle and the will and theory of the ruling class, is pure fantasy. "Governing the country according to law" includes violence and coercion, but cannot be reduced to violence alone; it also includes non-violence, ideological and political education, and the correct handling of contradictions among the people.
The idea of "taking class struggle as the key link" is a basic idea of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. Every act of opposing, distorting, slandering and viciously attacking it is a departure from and betrayal of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. Certain people with ulterior motives oppose "taking class struggle as the key link" in theory and practice, while in reality they practice "taking the bourgeoisie's class struggle as the key link": taking as the key link the fundamental interests of the bourgeoisie and its theoretical justifications, taking as the key link the subversion of socialism and the restoration of capitalism.
Translator's Notes
1. Li Dazhao (李大钊, 1889–1927). A co-founder of the Communist Party of China. In "My Marxist Views" (1919) he described class struggle as a golden thread running through Marx's theories of history, economics and socialism.
2. "Two newspapers and one journal" (两报一刊). The People's Daily, the Liberation Army Daily and the journal Red Flag, whose joint editorials carried authoritative statements during the Cultural Revolution.
3. "Taking class struggle as the key link" (以阶级斗争为纲). Gang (纲) is the headrope of a fishing net, which lifts all its meshes (目); hence the idiom "once the headrope is pulled up, all the meshes open" (纲举目张), explained in Part III.
4. The Resolution. The 1981 Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party, which rejected "taking class struggle as the key link." The Third Plenary Session of 1978 had already abandoned the slogan.
5. "Hangman" and "priest." An allusion to Lenin's The Collapse of the Second International (1915), which describes the two functions of every ruling class: the hangman, to suppress the protest of the oppressed, and the priest, to console them and reconcile them to class rule.
6. "One industrialization and three transformations" (一化三改). The general line for the transition period of 1953: socialist industrialization and the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts, and capitalist industry and commerce.
7. The Nine Commentaries. The author dates this to 1963, but the Ninth Commentary, which contains the fifteen points, was published on July 14, 1964.
8. "The three directives as the key link" (三项指示为纲). In 1975 Deng Xiaoping proposed taking Mao's three directives as the key link: study the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, promote stability and unity, and develop the national economy. Mao's rebuke quoted here preceded the 1976 campaign to "criticize Deng."
9. Wang Weiguang (王伟光). Then president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. His article, published in Hongqi Wengao (Red Flag Manuscripts) in 2014, drew wide criticism online.