Bombarding the Headquarters: the Universal Significance of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

Class Struggle in Socialist Society

Key to understanding the significance of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) is the fundamental premise that, rather than disappearing, the class struggle - between the working class and the capitalists - intensifies during the period of socialist construction.

As Marx wrote, this period of transition is “in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.” The old ruling class, its ideology and its class interests do not simply disappear once the revolutionary struggle for power is won; instead, they will fight tooth and nail to turn the new socialist state back and restore capitalism, and their counterrevolutionary ideas exist even within the Communist Party itself.

Modern Revisionism and the Sino-Soviet Split

In the mid-1960s, the Great Debate between the Chinese Communist Party and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had demonstrated that the risk of capitalist restoration was not only theoretical, but actual. The CPC, under Mao’s leadership, saw that the Khruschevite CPSU’s revisions of basic theses of Marx and Lenin on the nature of the state, the class struggle, and character of socialist society had placed the Soviet Union on the road to restoring capitalism.

But the struggle against revisionism could not be limited to polemics in the international arena: the question of how to maintain course on the socialist road in the face of both international capitalist opposition and an inner-party bourgeoisie had become a decisive problem for the International Communist Movement.

Wind Will Not Cease, Even If Trees Want to Rest

By 1966, it had become clear that this new revisionist bourgeoisie, who “wave the red flag to oppose the red flag,” was ascendant within the Chinese Communist Party as well; even Central Committee members resisted or blunted attempts to wage the ideological struggle against revisionism and the capitalist roaders.

Applying the teachings of Marx and Lenin, and the lessons of the struggle against the revisionists in the international arena, Mao and the left-wing of the Party understood that only by unleashing a fierce ideological and political mass movement against the inner-party bourgeoisie could they ensure the future of the socialist project. If the class struggle continued to rage even under socialism, only continuing the revolution, even under the dictatorship of the proletariat, could keep communist politics in command.

There Can Be No Construction Without Destruction

Mao and his faction called on the masses of revolutionary youth and workers to “bombard the headquarters,” encouraging mass criticism and struggle against not only the revisionists in the Party, but all vestiges of bourgeois ideology in Chinese society, from the factories to the schools to the family. They dared to arouse the masses to form permanent organizations of revolutionary workers and students which could organize and mobilize them to revolutionize all elements of everyday life.

In one example, the revolutionary workers of Shanghai seized control of political power and declared the formation of the Shanghai Commune, with a direct democratic structure modeled on the example of the Paris Commune and the 16 Point Declaration of the Cultural Revolution.

The Cultural Revolution was the greatest experiment in revolutionary democracy ever attempted in human history: unleashing the masses of rebel workers and youth against the socialist state itself. While in many ways, this experiment continued from 1966 until the complete victory of the inner-party bourgeoisie following the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976 (which resulted in the restoration of capitalism in China, as remains the case today), it was at its height from 1966-1968.

The defeat of the GPCR was the consequence of a variety of factors, but the role played by the army was ultimately decisive, illustrating the fundamental law advanced by Mao, that all political power flows from the barrel of the gun. The failure to revolutionize the army, its ties to the Party’s right wing, and Mao’s own vacillation on the proper relationship between the Party, Army and the revolutionary mass organizations generated by the rebel workers meant that the GPCR was unable to fully complete the struggle.

Defeated Armies Learn Well

Despite its defeat, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution has universal significance. The ideology of the International Communist Movement first forged itself in the world-historical lessons of the Paris Commune and the October Revolution, and the Cultural Revolution reflects the highest stage of development of working class struggle ever seen. This is why we understand that to be a Marxist today is to be a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist: the historical experience of the Chinese People’s War and the GPCR have shaken the earth and brought Marxism to a new, higher stage of development.

We say: tell us what you think of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and we will tell you whether you are a communist revolutionary today.

Join us for a lecture and discussion on class struggle during the Cultural Revolution, and its lessons for today on Monday, June 10th at 6:30pm in the Democracy Center at 45 Mt Auburn St Cambridge, MA.