Reflections on the Future by an Old Revolutionary 

Known as "Wei Wei's political testament."[1] First circulated in June 2008. Translated by Vero Publishing.

A true Communist Party ought to deliver a verdict on thirty years of reform and opening up.

The changes of these thirty years show that capitalism has basically been restored. The principal contradiction in our society today is still the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie; only the principal aspect of the contradiction has changed, from the proletariat to the bourgeoisie. The proletariat and the working people of our country now face a new revolution.

1. The nature of the revolution. It is to hold high the great banner of Mao Zedong's continuing revolution and carry through to the end the great socialist revolution against corruption, against national betrayal and against capitalist restoration. The dictatorship of the proletariat no longer exists, so this is not continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat but continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The road will be hard and tortuous.

2. The targets of the revolution. They are the capitalist-roaders within the Party and the revisionist renegade clique that has usurped the Party and seized power. The revisionist clique is a fake Communist Party under a Communist signboard. They have not thrown away this signboard because they want to inherit the Communist Party's legal standing so as to go on deceiving the people. At the Seventeenth Congress they made the thought of Deng, Jiang and Hu an independent theoretical system.[2] Their guiding ideology has already cut away Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, which are mentioned only in the Party Constitution. Without that hat they would lose their legitimacy and could not stand on their own feet. So they will not throw off this cloak until the very end. Their class essence is the bureaucratic-comprador bourgeoisie; they are the target of the revolution.

They are frantically selling out the interests of the country and the nation. Recently they have even moved to open the country's finance completely, handing the lifelines of the national economy to foreigners on a platter, which is beyond ordinary understanding. Such die-hard betrayal of the country can only mean that their ties with foreign forces are already very deep, their interests already inseparable, and their families, children and property already moved abroad. They have sold themselves completely to foreign powers; they are foreign lackeys and traitors. They are carrying out privatization on a grand scale, selling off state enterprises and passing the Property Law,[3] while the bosses of the few remaining state enterprises pay themselves high salaries; these enterprises have already degenerated and changed their nature. In national consciousness they are not even as good as Putin. Putin dares to stand up to the United States; they lack even that national spirit. Their servility can be compared with that of the traitorous Qing government.

3. The state machine. This state machine is thoroughly corrupt and rotten. Even if the revolution wins, it will not use the old state machine; as Lenin said in The State and Revolution, this state machine must be smashed completely. But let there be no misunderstanding: upright and outstanding Communist Party members are still an important force.

4. The leading class of the revolution. It is still the working class, that is, the proletariat. Migrant workers are the new echelon of the working class, and laboring peasants and laboring intellectuals remain its reliable allies. Practice has proved that the working class is the most loyal to socialism; its fate and the fate of socialism are inseparable. The working-class poet Wang Xuezhong wrote a poem called "Mother State Enterprise."[4] Who else could write such lines? Only the working class has such feeling for socialist state enterprises.

5. The Communist Party must be rebuilt. The revolutionary left must build a genuinely Marxist, revolutionary and militant Communist Party. First we must declare that we want a Communist Party of orthodox Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, a true Communist Party. What we seek to overthrow is the revisionist clique, the bureaucratic-comprador bourgeois revisionist clique, the renegades who usurped the Party and seized power. They have betrayed the revolutionary line of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong. They are a fake Communist Party, a corrupt and degenerate fake Communist Party.

There is a problem now. Mass incidents occur frequently in the country, and sudden upheavals can come quickly and unexpectedly. Once one happens, all kinds of forces will be mixed together, and a tide of discontented masses could destroy jade and stone alike. That danger exists. For the masses now think the Communist Party is bad and want to overthrow the corrupt, traitorous, self-serving party, not the party of the Mao Zedong era. So we must now explain to the masses and separate the true Communist Party from the fake one. We must raise the slogan of "the true Communist Party" versus "the fake Communist Party," so that the masses have the concept; otherwise jade and stone will be destroyed together. When something like the Hungarian events[5] happens, the masses will not be able to tell the difference, and by then it will be impossible to explain. Take the June Fourth incident: most of the students and citizens were against corruption, but the leading figure, Fang Lizhi,[6] was an extreme rightist, and the masses were used by the right, which led to tragedy. Our slogan is: We want a true Communist Party that represents the laboring masses, not a fake Communist Party that represents corrupt officials and the bourgeoisie! We want true socialism based on public ownership!

In the past we called for a return to Chairman Mao's revolutionary line, and some may mistakenly think we want to restore everything as it was. The masses' rights of supervision and management were not fully realized in that time either. The goal we put forward is to rebuild a brand-new, better and more complete socialist country, to carry out the principles of the Paris Commune and to develop to a high degree the true democracy of socialism. Proletarian democracy alone is the true and broadest democracy. This means that the masses must truly exercise the rights of management, supervision, election and recall, that wage differentials must be narrowed, and that bourgeois right must be restricted. These are the principles of the Paris Commune.

6. On the united front. There are at present three forces in society: first, the revisionist clique that holds state power; second, the working class and the revolutionary masses; third, the extreme right of the Western Hills Meeting type.[7] The frenzied national betrayal of the bureaucratic-comprador revisionist clique has made some on the left want to join hands with the right to overthrow the present regime. We must be clear about who is our most vicious enemy. The main difference between the revisionist clique and the extreme right is that the former still wears the Communist Party's cap and cloak, and now and then still puts on a high-sounding show. If the extreme right came to power, it would tear off every disguise and suppress the Communist Party with bloody ferocity. Today's Western Hills faction and big capitalists such as Wang Zhaojun[8] are its representatives. Their hatred of the Communist Party comes from the marrow of their bones; they are thoroughgoing anti-Communists.

The present government let these people get rich first and even admitted them into the Party, fully expecting them to be grateful. In fact they are filled with hatred for the Communist Party and can hardly wait to make it step down, quickly, "through legal procedures." The extreme right is their political representative, and it is they who will contend with the left for the country in the future. But the left is the common enemy of both the extreme right and the revisionist clique. Hence the slogans of our united front:

(1) All leftists, unite under the banner of opposing capitalist restoration: keep in touch, share ideas, spur one another on, and seek common ground while setting aside differences.

(2) All patriots, unite under the banner of opposing national betrayal.

(3) People of the whole country, unite under the banner of opposing corruption.

Some people's powers of deception are still very great. Their advantage is that they hold all power and the whole propaganda machine, and every so often they turn up at the site of a mine disaster or in a worker's or peasant's home to shed tears, which has taken in some young people. But we must look at what they actually do. After the Seventeenth Congress they turned further to the right. They pushed "reform at the crucial stage," sold off the last state enterprises, laid workers off and bought out their years of service, and turned workers from masters into hired labor. Now they come out with some Labor Law[9]—just like American politicians who send soldiers off to fight in Iraq and then carry a roast turkey to the front to comfort the troops.

Towards the anti-Communist article by Xie Tao,[10] that vanguard of anti-Communism, they adopted a policy of "no circulation, no promotion, no criticism." They invited Li Rui,[11] who viciously attacks Mao and the Party, to attend the Seventeenth Congress as a non-voting delegate. To Wang Zhaojun's four open letters challenging the Communist Party from Anhui they made no response whatever. Yet they arrested and jailed Zhang Xianfu[12] for commemorating Mao Zedong and closed leftist websites wholesale. Is their true face still not clear? Their "emancipation of the mind" amounts to three abandonments: abandoning Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, abandoning the worker and peasant masses, and abandoning revolution. What they now rely on is: privatization and the market economy; national betrayal and the bourgeoisie at home and abroad; and a corrupt state machine that exercises fascist dictatorship.

7. Some say that the veteran cadres of today are a "worker aristocracy"—what some call the "Third Plenum faction"[13]—who enjoy comparatively high treatment and comfortable lives and are content to keep fit and live out their old age in peace; and that some intellectuals and white-collar people likewise think things are better now than before and are still satisfied with the present regime.

It is true that some veteran cadres now enjoy generous treatment. They are kept in comfort and also kept in the dark; they do not go online and do not know the real state of the country and society. We should still do more propaganda work among them. After all, they grew up and fought through the revolutionary years and still have some ability to tell right from wrong. At the very least, the overwhelming majority of them are firmly against corruption and against national betrayal.

8. The left is basically united in its view of the reform. Within the left the differences are mainly over strategy and tactics. Just what tactics will lead to victory?

Tactics must serve strategy, and strategy is a matter of fundamental principle. Principle cannot be given up; tactics can be flexible. The revolution does not reject legal struggle—at no time does it reject legal struggle. Our left uses every position it can to denounce the extreme right, such as Li Rui and Xie Tao, and also Duan Ruofei:[14] they are shameless and vicious renegades and enemies within. We take a resolute stand against the reform. Some people advocate quoting Deng. He was an insidious swindler and the root of the trouble. It is best not to use his words from now on; otherwise we will only cloud the masses' eyes and confuse the line of sight. We must expose the swindlers' false face and tear off their disguise, spread our views online and wherever our words can be published, win over the masses, and broaden our front.

In our propaganda we must also not let them lead us by the nose, going round in circles inside the frames they have drawn.

9. Our slogans. The nature of the revolution requires stirring, clear-cut fighting slogans. That is: hold high the great banner of Mao Zedong's continuing revolution and carry through to the end the great socialist revolution against restoration, against national betrayal and against capitalist restoration.[15] For the united-front slogans, see point 6.

10. Shouting slogans is not enough; we must also do a great deal of hard practical work. In his day Deng Zhongxia[16] disguised himself as a worker, went into workers' homes, met them, waited, and in the end launched the great Hong Kong strike that shook China and the world, turning Hong Kong, the "Fragrant Harbor," into a "Stinking Harbor." Then there was Lin Xiangqian,[17] organizer of the Great February Seventh Strike, and others—all of them deeply heroic. The reason the left today is weak, powerless and ignored is that it has not made contact with the working class and the broad masses; a large body of core activists in between is missing. A few years ago there was a mass incident in Daqing,[18] in which the workers acted in an extraordinary way: they occupied the office building and organized themselves in perfect order. The economic position and class standpoint of the working class determine its revolutionary and advanced character. Intellectuals must take the road of integrating with the workers and peasants.

An old comrade who did underground work says the present dictatorship is a hundred times stronger than Chiang Kai-shek's. Our generation will not see the day of victory; my son's generation probably will not either; my grandson's generation may or may not see it. But I still have faith in the victory of Marxism-Leninism.

What we have now is fascist dictatorship: you are not allowed to speak, and there is no democracy to speak of. We need democracy. Lenin said there is no pure democracy, only class democracy.[19] We do not want bourgeois democracy. Americans say, "We can curse the President in the street." But when the American government fights in Korea, fights in Vietnam, bombs Iraq and makes you cannon fodder, you still have to go! What we want is the true democracy of the proletariat and the popular masses. The Communist Party is the vanguard of the working class, but it too must be supervised. If the class cannot control the Party, if it has no right of supervision and recall, then when revisionism emerges at the Center there is nothing to be done. Whoever becomes General Secretary—does his level of Marxism-Leninism immediately rise? Does he become a master? Stand on a par with Chairman Mao? Nonsense! It is a post. The class is a whole, with strength and consciousness. Only the class can supervise and manage the Party. Only when democracy has developed to that degree can the class keep the Party in check while the Party in turn leads the class. Then revisionism emerging at the Center will be nothing to fear. This is a great historical lesson.

Now they have a complete apparatus of dictatorship: the army, state power, the police, procuratorate and courts, the media… First they arrest you, keep you under watch, "have a talk" with you (a talk is the mildest), or put you under shuanggui[20] and surveillance. So the difficulties are still great. This requires a new revolution, and it should be a mass movement from the bottom up. Mobilize the working class to sweep them away; if once is not enough, then twice, three times. Mass work must be done bit by bit. The people want revolution; if they are not awakened now, they will awaken in the future, and in the future they will make revolution. We must trust the masses. At present neither the subjective nor the objective conditions are ripe, and we must not be impatient for quick results. We must do underground work. The study groups, seminars and other forms that have been set up in various places are very good. Let everyone create the conditions and do the hard work among the masses to raise their consciousness. One day, when conditions are ripe and these are linked together, that will be a party. Once loose groups unite, no force on earth can stop them.

Translator's Notes

[1] Wei Wei (魏巍, 1920–2008), army writer best known for the essay "Who Are the Most Beloved People?" (1951) and the novel The East. In his last years he was a prominent figure on the Maoist left. He died in August 2008. This text circulated online as his "political testament" from June 2008, apparently as notes of his remarks. Its authorship has not been independently confirmed. In the original, points 1–3 have no numerals; they are supplied here.

[2] The 17th Party Congress (October 2007) grouped Deng Xiaoping Theory, the "Three Represents" (Jiang Zemin) and the Scientific Outlook on Development (Hu Jintao) as "the theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics." The Party Constitution still names Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought alongside them.

[3] The Property Law (物权法) was adopted by the National People's Congress in March 2007. Its drafting was strongly contested by the left as a legal guarantee of privatization.

[4] Wang Xuezhong (王学忠), a laid-off worker-poet from Anyang, Henan, known for poems on the plight of state-enterprise workers.

[5] The Hungarian uprising of 1956, which Chinese discourse long called the "Hungarian incident."

[6] Fang Lizhi (方励之, 1936–2012), astrophysicist and leading liberal dissident, regarded by the authorities as an instigator of the 1989 protests. He took refuge in the U.S. Embassy after June Fourth.

[7] The Western Hills Conference Faction (西山会议派) was a right-wing anti-Communist group within the Kuomintang. It met at the Western Hills outside Beijing in November 1925 to oppose cooperation with the Communists. The term was revived by the left for a March 2006 meeting of liberal scholars and officials in the Western Hills of Beijing, which was said to have called for constitutional and market reforms.

[8] Wang Zhaojun (汪兆钧), an Anhui businessman who from 2007 published open letters online calling on the Communist Party to give up its monopoly of power.

[9] The Labor Contract Law, passed in June 2007 and in force from January 2008. The author treats it as a cosmetic gesture after mass layoffs.

[10] Xie Tao (谢韬, 1921–2010), former vice-president of Renmin University. His 2007 article "The Democratic Socialist Model and China's Future" (《民主社会主义模式与中国前途》) in Yanhuang Chunqiu set off a fierce debate.

[11] Li Rui (李锐, 1917–2019), once Mao's secretary, purged at the 1959 Lushan Conference, and later a leading liberal critic of Mao. The claim that he attended the 17th Congress as a non-voting delegate is the author's.

[12] Zhang Xianfu (张纤夫): this person could not be identified. The name may be garbled. The text says he was imprisoned for commemorating Mao.

[13] The "Third Plenum faction" means those who identify with the line of the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee (December 1978), which launched the reform.

[14] Duan Ruofei (段若非) is generally known as a Marxist theorist of the left, a former deputy editor of Qiushi who was critical of the reform. His listing here among the extreme right is anomalous. It may be an error in transcription, and it is translated as written.

[15] As written, "restoration" and "capitalist restoration" repeat each other. Point 1 has "against corruption" in this position, which may be the intended reading.

[16] The original has 邓仲夏, an error for Deng Zhongxia (邓中夏, 1894–1933), the Communist labor leader. He led the Canton–Hong Kong Strike of 1925–26, which paralyzed Hong Kong for some sixteen months. "Hong Kong" (香港) literally means "Fragrant Harbor"; during the strike it was mocked as 臭港, "Stinking Harbor," because of the uncollected refuse.

[17] Lin Xiangqian (林祥谦, 1892–1923), union leader at Jiang'an on the Beijing–Hankou Railway. Warlord Wu Peifu's troops suppressed the strike of 7 February 1923, and Lin was executed for refusing to order the men back to work.

[18] In March 2002, tens of thousands of laid-off Daqing oilfield workers protested for weeks against buy-out terms.

[19] A paraphrase of Lenin's argument in The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (1918) that "pure democracy" is a liberal fiction and that democracy always has a class character.

[20] Shuanggui (双规), the Party's extra-legal detention and interrogation of members under investigation, "at a designated time and place."