f the CPA (M-L) 1 October 2019VANGUARD - Expressing the viewpoint of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
For National Independence and Socialism • www.cpaml.org
Statement by the Central Committee of the CPA (M-L) 1 October 2019
Today, October 1 2019, marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
Led by Chairman Mao Zedong and the Communist Party of China, the heroic people of China stood up and put an end to the oppression of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism.
The path was opened to collectivisation, socialisation and national independence. China practiced proletarian internationalism, and abstained from interfering in the internal affairs of other countries on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.
Ostracised by the powerful imperialist bloc led by US imperialism and its lackeys like Australia, the Chinese attitude of self-reliance, of plain living and hard work won the respect of peoples around the globe. Although isolated diplomatically, China had friends all over the world.
The victory of revisionism in the Soviet Union following the death of Stalin saw a deterioration of relations between the Soviet Union and China. China continued to embrace the revolutionary essence of Marxism-Leninism in the face of Soviet attempts to appease US imperialism and to revive a profit-based private economy. The Soviet leadership professed adherence to “Marxism” and to “socialism” but actually pursued great-power ambitions and became social-imperialist (“socialist in words, imperialist in deeds”).
The great Chinese example of exposing and opposing revisionism inspired Communists throughout the world to question and repudiate revisionism in their own parties. Formed in 1964, the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) was a product of those struggles.
Chairman Mao initiated the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966 in an attempt to prevent a repetition in China of the political and ideological degeneration that had occurred under Khrushchev and later, Brezhnev, in the Soviet Union.
The Cultural Revolution sought to place Party and government leaders under the supervision of the masses, to firmly instill a Communist ethic of service to the people throughout society, and to make criticism of revisionism a mass question rather than something confined to a handful of Party theoreticians. Essential services such as health and education, previously benefitting big-city populations, were made available to all.
After Mao’s death, unrepentant capitalist-roaders seized party and state power and began to reverse the process of collectivisation and socialisation and to promote spurious and self-serving interpretations of Marxism-Leninism. Borrowing from Milton Friedman and the neo-liberal school of economics, a trickle-down theory of it “is glorious to get rich – let some get rich first” was pushed from the very top of the Party; the difference between the capitalist road and the socialist road was deliberately obscured by the nonsense that “it doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white so long as it catches the mice”; and the nature of the Party as a proletarian vanguard was replaced by the “Three Represents” which allowed millionaire capitalists into the Party.
Having embarked on the capitalist road, it was inevitable that the Chinese Party would itself move onto the highway of social-imperialism.
We have not allowed these developments to dishearten or discourage us. What many now see as a major tragedy and set-back in the betrayal of socialism in both the Soviet Union and China will, with the passing of time, be seen as a necessary and useful lesson in further advances by humanity along the road of socialism and Communism.
We shall strive to continue building a revolutionary movement capable of meeting the challenges of the future. We shall continue to uphold genuine Marxism-Leninism (within which the many writings of Comrade Mao Zedong are an inseparable component) as the ideological basis of our political and organisational character.
Commemorate the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China.
Long live the friendship of the Australian and Chinese peoples.
Down with imperialism and social-imperialism.
Independence and socialism for Australia.