U.S. IMPERIALISM IS A PAPER TIGER

Mao Tse-tung

[JoP Editorial Note: In commemoration of the great revolutionary Mao Tse-tung’s 46th death anniversary on 9 September, we reproduce this valuable piece on imperialism.]

The United States is flaunting the anti-communist banner everywhere in order to perpetrate aggression against other countries

The United States owes debts everywhere. It owes debts not only to the countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa, but also to the countries of Europe and Oceania. The whole world, Britain included dislikes the United States. The masses of the people dislike it. Japan dislikes the United States because it oppresses her. None of the countries in the East is free from U.S. aggression. The United States has invaded our Taiwan Province. Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam and Pakistan all suffer from U.S. aggression, although some of them are allies of the United States. The people are dissatisfied and in some countries so are the authorities.

All oppressed nations want independence.

Everything is subject to change. The big decadent forces will give way to the small new-born forces. The small forces will change into big forces because the majority of the people demand this change. The U.S. imperialist forces will change from big to small because the American people, too, are dissatisfied with their government.

In my own lifetime I myself have witnessed such changes. Some of us present were born in the Ching Dynasty and others after the 1911 Revolution.

THE FOOLISH OLD MAN WHO REMOVED THE MOUNTAINS

Mao Tse-tung

June 11, 1945

Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung

[This was Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s concluding speech at the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China.]

Editor’s Note: JoP is publishing this article by Comrade Mao to commemorate his 128th birth anniversary which was on December 26, 2021

We have had a very successful congress. We have done three things. First, we have decided on the line of our Party, which is boldly to mobilize the masses and expand the people’s forces so that, under the leadership of our Party, they will defeat the Japanese aggressors, liberate the whole people and build a new-democratic China. Second, we have adapted the new Party Constitution. Third, we have elected the leading body of the Party–the Central Committee. Henceforth our task is to lead the whole membership in carrying out the Party line. Ours has been a congress of victory, a congress of unity. The delegates have made excellent comments on the three reports. Many comrades have undertaken self-criticism; with unity as the objective unity has been achieved through self-criticism. This congress is a model of unity, of self-criticism and of inner-Party democracy.

When the congress closes, many comrades will be leaving for their posts and the various war fronts. Comrades, wherever you go, you should propagate the line of the congress and, through the members of the Party, explain it to the broad masses.

THE BANKRUPTCY OF THE IDEALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY

Mao Tse-tung

September 16, 1949

Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung

Editor’s Note: JoP is publishing this article by Comrade Mao to commemorate his 128th birth anniversary which was on December 26, 2021

The Chinese should thank Acheson, spokesman of the U.S. bourgeoisie, not merely because he has explicitly confessed to the fact that the United States supplied the money and guns and Chiang Kai-shek the men to fight for the United States and slaughter the Chinese people and because he has thus given Chinese progressives evidence with which to convince the backward elements. You see, hasn’t Acheson himself confessed that the great, sanguinary war of the last few years, which cost the lives of millions of Chinese, was planned and organized by U.S. imperialism? The Chinese should thank Acheson, again not merely because he has openly declared that the United States intends to recruit the so-called “democratic individualists” in China, organize a U.S. fifth column and overthrow the People’s Government led by the Communist Party of China and has thus alerted the Chinese, especially those tinged with liberalism, who are promising each other not to be taken in by the Americans and are all on guard against the underhand intrigues of U.S. imperialism. The Chinese should thank Acheson also because he has fabricated wild tales about modern Chinese history; and his conception of history is precisely that shared by a section of the Chinese intellectuals, namely, the bourgeois idealist conception of history. Hence, a refutation of Acheson may benefit many Chinese by widening their horizon. The benefit may be even greater to those whose conception is the same, or in certain respects the same, as Acheson’s.

What are Acheson’s wild fabrications about modern Chinese history? First of all, he tries to explain the occurrence of the Chinese revolution in terms of economic and ideological conditions in China. Here he has recounted many myths.

China and Cuba’s market reforms aren’t “revisionist”

Rainer Shea

Workers Today | October 26, 2021

In his work Critique of the Gotha Programme, Karl Marx took his objection to the analysis of some other communists as an opportunity to put forth an analysis of what needs to happen within communist development. At least in regards to the means of production, this analysis consists of the following ideas:

-That labor is not the source of all wealth; even without labor, we would have the wealth that nature gives us. Therefore, whether society has wealth doesn’t necessarily stem from whether labor is present.

-That there’s a difference between “labor” as it’s defined under the capitalist means of production, and labor as it would be defined under fully developed communism. Whereas labor under capitalism centers around business and the acquisition of property, labor under fully developed communism would not involve these things. 

As Marx articulates this: “In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

Caleb Maupin’s homage to Dr Norman Bethune

Most Americans and Canadians never heard of this great internationalist hero, but he is revered in China.

EDITED BY PATRICE GREANVILLE

The Greanville Post | August 15, 2021

An informal chat with Caleb Maupin as your guide to the multitude of news, lies, distortions, rumors, idiocies, hypocrisies, and ideologies that shape our world.

Taking the example of Canadian surgeon Dr Bethune, who offered his services to help the Spanish Republican army and later China’s revolutionaries in their hour of need, Caleb discusses what makes a person dedicate his life to the betterment and liberation of others. 

China has many monuments to Bethune’s memory. The Chinese people never forget their true friends, let alone those who will put their lives on the line to help them, as Dr Bethune did. Mao wrote a heart-rending eulogy to him, which I reproduce below. 

IN MEMORY OF NORMAN BETHUNE

December 21, 1939

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“We must all learn the spirit of absolute selflessness from him. With this spirit everyone can be very useful to the people. A man’s ability may be great or small, but if he has this spirit, he is already noble-minded and pure, a man of moral integrity and above vulgar interests, a man who is of value to the people.”—Mao Tse-tung

By Mao Tse-tung

Comrade Norman Bethune,[1] a member of the Communist Party of Canada, was around fifty when he was sent by the Communist Parties of Canada and the United States to China; he made light of travelling thousands of miles to help us in our War of Resistance Against Japan. He arrived in Yenan in the spring of last year, went to work in the Wutai Mountains, and to our great sorrow died a martyr at his post. What kind of spirit is this that makes a foreigner selflessly adopt the cause of the Chinese people’s liberation as his own? It is the spirit of internationalism, the spirit of communism, from which every Chinese Communist must learn. Leninism teaches that the world revolution can only succeed if the proletariat of the capitalist countries supports the struggle for liberation of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples and if the proletariat of the colonies and semi-colonies supports that of the proletariat of the capitalist countries.[2] Comrade Bethune put this Leninist line into practice. We Chinese Communists must also follow this line in our practice. We must unite with the proletariat of all the capitalist countries, with the proletariat of Japan, Britain, the United States, Germany, Italy and all other capitalist countries, for this is the only way to overthrow imperialism, to liberate our nation and people and to liberate the other nations and peoples of the world. This is our internationalism, the internationalism with which we oppose both narrow nationalism and narrow patriotism.

THE CHINESE REVOLUTION AND THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY

Mao Tse-tung

Marxists Internet Archive

December 1939

[The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party is a textbook which was written jointly by Comrade Mao Tse-tung and several other comrades in Yenan to the winter of 1939. The first chapter, “Chinese Society”, was drafted by other comrades and revised by Comrade Mao Tse-tung. The second chapter, “The Chinese Revolution”, was written by Comrade Mao Tse-tung himself. Another chapter, scheduled to deal with “Party Building”, was left unfinished by the comrades working on it. The two published chapters, and especially Chapter II, have played a great educational role in the Chinese Communist Party and among the Chinese people. The views on New Democracy set out by Comrade Mao Tse-tung in Chapter II were considerably developed in his “On New Democracy”, written in January 1940.]

CHAPTER I

CHINESE SOCIETY

1. THE CHINESE NATION

China is one of the largest countries in the world, her territory being about the size of the whole of Europe. In this vast country of ours there are large areas of fertile land which provide us with food and clothing; mountain ranges across its length and breadth with extensive forests and rich mineral deposits; many rivers and lakes which provide us with water transport and irrigation; and a long coastline which facilitates communication with nations beyond the seas. From ancient times our forefathers have laboured, lived and multiplied on this vast territory.

China borders on the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the northeast, the northwest and part of the west; the Mongolian People’s Republic in the north; Afghanistan, India, Bhutan and Nepal in the southwest and part of the west; Burma and Indo-China in the south; and Korea in the east, where she is also a close neighbor of Japan and the Philippines. China’s geographical setting has its advantages and disadvantages for the Chinese people’s revolution. It is an advantage to be adjacent to the Soviet Union and fairly distant from the major imperialist countries in Europe and America, and to have many colonial or semi-colonial countries around us. It is a disadvantage that Japanese imperialism, making use of its geographical proximity, is constantly threatening the very existence of all China’s nationalities and the Chinese people’s revolution.

The Historic Journey Of The Communist Party Of China: Forging Ahead to Build a Modern Prosperous Society

R Arun Kumar

People’s Democracy | June 27, 2021

THE third session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the CPC held in December 1978 was historic. This meeting took many important decisions to correct Left deviations and it embarked upon the task of putting the Party back on the correct path, both politically and organisationally.

The CPC decided that socialist construction in China would be according to ‘Chinese characteristics’, built on the initial advances made after the formation of the PRC. It pledged adherence to four cardinal principals: adherence to socialist road, people’s democratic dictatorship, leadership of the Communist Party, and Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. The CPC assessed that China is still in the primary stage of socialist construction. It stated that there will be various stages in each phase and concluded that the primary stage of socialist construction might take many decades. To achieve this, they have to reform their economy by opening it to foreign investment. “On the basis of self-reliance, we should develop equal and mutually beneficial economic cooperation with other countries of the world, introduce advanced technologies and equipment from abroad and make great efforts to improve work in science and education which was needed for modernisation”.

Communist Party of China turns 100

Harsh Thakor

Countercurrents | June 30, 2021

On July 1st the Communist Party of China turns 100. Without doubt it’s formation was one of the greatest turning points in the history of mankind. It shaped the political course of China being a precedent to many a historic event, be it the Long March of 1935,the anti-Japanese War from 1937-45 , the civil war of 1946-1949, the New Democratic revolution of 1949, the Socialist Revolution from 1949-56 the Great Leap Forward, the Socialist Education Movement of 1962, and finally the Great Proletarian Cultural revolution of 1966-76 .All these events enriched the ideology of Marxism Leninism to a pinnacle with symmetry and continuity and unprecedented penetration of practice of massline and  It is a great travesty that at the very time of celebration the CPC has completely betrayed the path it undertook from the 1930’s itself to morally make it an anti-thesis of Marxism-Leninism. With the very induction of the four modernisations by Deng Xiaoping the very backbone of Socialism was destroyed in China and seeds planted for capitalism to bloom.

Quotations from Mao Tse Tung

REVOLUTIONARY VIEWPOINT ON WOMEN’S EMANCIPATION 

31. Women

Quotations from: 1927 – 1964
First Published: 1966
Publisher: Peking Foreign Languages Press
Transcription/Markup: David Quentin / Brian Baggins
Online Version: Mao Tse Tung Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2000

A man in China is usually subjected to the domination of three systems of authority [political authority, family authority and religious authority]…. As for women, in addition to being dominated by these three systems of authority, they are also dominated by the men (the authority of the husband). These four authorities – political, family, religious and masculine – are the embodiment of the whole feudal-patriarchal ideology and system, and are the four thick ropes binding the Chinese people, particularly the peasants. How the peasants have overthrown the political authority of the landlords in the countryside has been described above. The political authority of the landlords is the backbone of all the other systems of authority. With that overturned the family authority, the religious authority and the authority of the husband all begin to totter…. As to the authority of the husband, this has always been weaker among the poor peasants because, out of economic necessity, their womenfolk have to do more manual labour than the women of the richer classes and therefore have more say and greater power of decision in family matters. With the increasing bankruptcy of the rural economy in recent years, the basis for men’s domination over women has already been undermined. With the rise of the peasant movement, the women in many places have now begun to organize rural women’s associations; the opportunity has come for them to lift up their heads, and the authority of the husband is getting shakier every day. In a word, the whole feudal-patriarchal ideology and system is tottering with the growth of the peasants’ power.

“Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan” (March 1927), Selected Works, Vol. I, pp. 44-46.*

The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains

The Foolish Old Man Removes the Mountains, a painting by Xu Beihong

Mao Tse-tung

June 11, 1945

[This is Mao Tse-tung’s (now, Mao Zedong) famous concluding speech at the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

Journal of People posts this speech on the founding anniversary of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949; the day victory of the Chinese people’s revolution was formally announced.]