Liu Shaoqi Quotes

For the Chinese national revolution to succeed, the participation of the masses of all classes and the building of a united front of all classes are necessary. But among the classes taking part in the national revolution, the working class and the peasantry constitute the main force.

We Communists are the most advanced revolutionaries in modern history; to day the changing of society and the world rests upon us and we are the driving force in this change. It is by unremitting struggle against counter-revolutionaries that we Communists change society and the world, and at the same time ourselves.

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.

Marxism-Leninism considers all questions in their historical settings. Marxism-Leninists view bourgeois nationalism under the given historical conditions. Drawing a distinction between its different objective roles, they decide what different attitudes the proletariat should take toward it. In the early period of capitalism, the national movement led by the bourgeoisie had as its objective the struggle against oppression by other nations and the creation of a national state. This national movement was historically progressive, and the proletariat supported it. In the present period, such bourgeois nationalism still exists in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. This variety of nationalism also has a certain objective progressive historical significance.

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.

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 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.

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 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.”

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.

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.

The nature of the Chinese society, the fact that the basic motive forces of the Chinese revolution is the proletarian-led masses who's main force is the peasantry, the existence of the powerful Chinese Communist Party and the prevailing international situation are all factors which have come together to determine that Chinese revolution can be neither a bourgeois-democratic revolution of the old type nor a proletarian-socialist revolution of the newest type, but that it must be a bourgeois-democratic revolution of a new type. In this revolution, though the basic motive forces are the proletariat, the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie, other classes may join the revolution, and we also have numerous allies both at home and abroad.

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.

In China, it was the party of the Chinese proletariat, and not the party of the bourgeoisie or the petty-bourgeoisie, that first raised a clear-cut programme for fighting against imperialism and for national independence. Our Communist Party of China has always been the leader and organiser of the anti-imperialist national united front of the Chinese people. The scale of this national united front embraces workers, peasants, intellectuals, the petty-bourgeoisie, the national bourgeoisie and even the progressive gentry. This revolutionary national liberation movement is not in contradiction to proletarian internationalism, but it is entirely consistent with it. It constitutes an extremely integral part of the movement of proletarian internationalism, constituting its broadest direct ally. The victory of this national liberation movement is a great step forward along the path of the proletarian internationalist cause, for it gives great aid and impetus to the socialist revolution of the proletariat throughout the world.

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.