Liu Shaoqi Quotes

The Communist Party, representing the brightest and most progressive aspects of contempory human society, is the bearer and disseminator of Marxism-Leninism, the acme of human thought. The most politically conscious, progressive and developed people in the world, people with the highest sense of morality and justice, are gathered in the communist Parties, fighting unswervingly against all the forces of darkness and for the bright future and final emancipation of mankind.

When several imperialist powers seek to plunder the weaker nations of the world, the result is an imperialist world war for the redistribution of colonies. And this crime, the most monstrous in world history, is committed by the bourgeoisie under the banner of “nationalism.”

That is to say: in directing the national liberation movements and proletarian socialist movements of the world today, the Communists and the peoples of all countries must base themselves on proletarian internationalism, must discard bourgeois nationalism, and must closely link together the national democratic revolution of the oppressed nations and the socialist revolution of the proletariat, before these two kinds of revolution can both win victory, before we can liberate every nation of the world, and before we can solve all national questions of the world today. Otherwise, not only will we be unable to win any socialist victory, we will also not be able to win real victory in any national liberation movement.

The liberated peoples already exceed one-fourth of the population of the globe. This signifies a regeneration of the world and bears testimony to the scope and level that mankind has already attained in its struggle for emancipation. Undoubtedly the number of the liberated peoples from now on will grow day by day. It will not be long before the whole of mankind will be freed from imperialist domination. No matter what setbacks the struggle may sustain, its general trend toward liberation is an inevitable and irresistible law of history.

The modern revisionists, donning a cloak of Marxism-Leninism, are actually wantonly adulterating Marxism-Leninism, emasculating Marxism-Leninism of its revolutionary soul, repudiating the historic necessity for proletarian revolution and proletarian dictatorship in the period of transition from capitalism to communism, negating the leading role of the proletarian Party, substituting hypocritical bourgeois "supra-class" viewpoints for Marxist-Leninist viewpoints of class analysis, and substituting bourgeois pragmatism for dialectical materialism. They are trying their utmost to benumb the revolutionary will of the working class, to tamper with the essential contents of socialism and communism as strictly defined by Marxism-Leninism and in fact to restore or preserve capitalism. Under such circumstances, the militant task of all Marxist-Leninists is not to evade the challenge of modern revisionism, but to unite in defence of the purity of Marxism-Leninism, to smash this attack completely, to hold aloft the red banner of revolution, and to show the proletariat and the working people the correct direction for struggle and the road to victory.

When opportunist ideas and differences of principle arise in the Party, we must, of course, wage struggles to overcome those ideas and errors of principle. This defiantly does not mean that when there are no differences of principles and no opportunist ideas in the Party, we should deliberately magnify into “differences of principle” divergences of opinion among comrades on questions of a purely practical nature.

You are advancing under complex conditions, with complicated tasks and duties to perform. To fulfill your tasks on time, you must take advantage of favourable opportunities and co-ordinate various kinds of work without loosing sight of the key link or upsetting the sequence of work. The leadership should assume overall responsibility, while specific work should be carried out through a division of labour.

After all, it is not a bad thing that people turn to the Communist Party, enter it seeking a way out of their predicament and approve of its policy. They are not mistaken in coming to us. We welcome them - everyone except for enemy agents, traitors, careerists and ambitious climbers.

As you know, a man's words and actions are guided by his ideology. And a man's ideology is inseparable from his world outlook. The only world outlook for members of the Communist Party is the communist world outlook. This world outlook is the philosophical system of the proletariat and also our communist methodology.

We should of course adopt a correct attitude towards learning from the qualities of the founders of Marxism-Leninism and towards the learning of Marxism-Leninism itself. Otherwise it is impossible to learn anything, let alone to learn it well. In fact, there are different kinds of people in our ranks with different attitudes towards such learning.

We should regard the cities and villages as an integral whole. So far, we have been dealing with rural problems only but the addition of urban problems means we now must attend to the difficulties related to large industries, state-owned enterprises which are socialist in character, state capitalism, the relationship between the cities and the countryside, and so on. In guiding the work of our Party as a whole, we must focus on urban work by keeping these problems in mind and giving them due consideration. We must change the practice of concentrating on just one area at a time or we will make mistakes.

The reason why our Party has been able to achieve these tremendous successes is that from the very beginning it had been a proletarian party of an entirely new type — a party dedicated whole-heartedly to serving the Chinese people and built upon the very solid theoretical foundation of sinified Marxism-Leninism.

We Communists must not separate our study of theory from our ideological self-cultivation. We must remould ourselves and temper our proletarian ideology not only in the practice of revolution but in the study of Marxism-Leninism.

We fully understand the decisive role which the vanguard of the masses can play throughout the people’s struggle for emancipation. The complete emancipation of the people is possible only when they have a vanguard of their own, such as our Party. Otherwise they would be without revolutionary leadership, and the people’s revolution would consequently meet with failure. Only under the firm and correct leadership of our Party and only by carrying on the struggle along the political orientation given by our Party can the Chinese people achieve their complete emancipation.

The General Programme of the Constitution begins by pointing out that our Party is the organized vanguard of the Chinese working class and the highest form of its class organization. It represents the interests of the Chinese nation and people. At the present stage it is striving for new democracy in China and its ultimate aim is the realization of communism in China. Is this character of our Party questionable? I think not.