[PRWC Party Documents] Stand For Socialism Against Modern Revisionism, January 15, 1992

Stand For Socialism Against Modern Revisionism

IV. Certain Lessons from the Collapse of Modern Revisionism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

The Cultural Revolution

Basahin sa Pilipino Basahon sa Hiligaynon

Armando Liwanag, Chairman, Central Committee, Communist Party of the Philippines

January 15, 1992

In continuing the revolution, combating revisionism and other counterrevolutionary forces and preventing the restoration of capitalism in socialist society, the cultural revolution must be carried out coextensively and interactively with the political and socioeconomic revolution.

If we are to avoid the errors which caused the failure of the great proletarian cultural revolution in China, we must grasp that the cultural revolution is a persuasive democratic process with Marxist-Leninist theory in the lead carried out along the general line of the people's revolutionary struggle, that the process is a protracted one and so many times more protracted than either the people's war or socialist economic construction and should not be rushed in order not to be persecutory; and that to preempt anarchy institutions like the Party, the state, the people's organizations, the educational system, the mass media and so on should take on responsibility for leadership over the cultural mass movement, with due process rigorously followed and the rights of individuals and groups respected.

The cultural revolution is an important process for keeping high the proletarian revolutionary consciousness and the spirit of selflessness and service to the people. As one generation after another draws away from the accomplished process of seizing political power from the reactionaries and the heroic efforts to establish a socialist society, those who are in the bureaucracy of the ruling party, the state and even in the mass organizations can degenerate into a new bourgeoisie and adopt modern revisionism and other retrograde ideas and policies. The youth and intelligentsia can adopt petty-bourgeois attitudes, grow cynical towards those in power, fall for anticommunist views and adulate the ideas and fashions of the domestic and international bourgeoisie.

Even while we are still engaged in the new-democratic revolution in the Philippines, we are already carrying out a cultural revolution among the people. We are promoting a cultural revolution with a national, democratic and scientific character. At the core of this revolutionary mass phenomenon are proletarian revolutionary cadres guided by the theory of Marxism-Leninism.

Our cultural revolution of a new-democratic type is distinct from and yet continuous with the socialist cultural revolution. Like now, we shall continue to combine Party leadership, the mass movement and a strong sense of the rights of the individual within the anti-imperialist and socialist framework. We shall take all the necessary time, no matter how long, to raise the people's revolutionary consciousness from one level to another through formal and informal educational and cultural activities and to isolate and defeat the ideas that run counter to socialism.

In socialist society, we shall carry out the cultural revolution to promote the proletarian revolutionary stand and the spirit of service to the people. The cultural revolution shall ceaselessly put revolutionary politics (patriotic and proletarian) and moral incentive in command of production and other social activities. The revolutionization of the superstructure shall complement and interact with the revolutionization of the mode of production.

When the bourgeoisie is deprived of its economic and political power, it seeks to make a comeback at first in the ideological and cultural fields. When it succeeds at ideological revision and cultural pollution, then it can undertake the changes in political and economic policies which favor capitalist restoration. The bourgeoisie is most effective when it can work through unremoulded and degenerate elements within the state and the ruling party. The proletarian revolutionaries have therefore to be ever vigilant and resolute in maintaining the correct line and in militantly waging the socialist cultural revolution.

The main contradiction in socialist society is the one between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The old bourgeois class and the landlord class are easy to identify and the people are vigilant towards them. So the members of these defeated classes would rather encourage the intelligentsia and the bureaucracy to start adopting the petty-bourgeois mode of thinking and behavior. On the basis of this, the bourgeoisie can regain lost ground, especially in the ideological and cultural fields. When the proletariat loses the fight in these fields, the already pronounced bourgeois revisionists can push the antiproletarian change of political and economic policies under the guise of transcending classes and class struggle.

By that time, the bourgeoisie shall have been well on the way of reimposing itself on the proletariat and the people and restoring capitalism. The restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe proves that the victory of socialism is not irreversible in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution. All proletarian revolutionaries can learn important lessons from the way the bourgeoisie has come on top of the proletariat in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe through peaceful evolution from within the state and the party and by using the state against the party, particularly the dwindling proletarian revolutionaries in the party.

In building socialism as the long-term preparation for communism, we shall strive to reduce the gap and solve the contradictions between the proletariat and peasantry, between mental and physical labor and between urban and rural life. We shall do so by mustering the capabilities of the proletariat and the rest of the people, utilizing science and technology and fostering a socialist civilization.

We owe to Mao the theory of continuing revolution, combating modern revisionism and preventing capitalist restoration in socialist society; and the application of this theory in the great proletarian cultural revolution, which succeeded for a number of years until the errors accumulated and resulted in a Rightist backlash. If the positive aspects are upheld and the negative aspects are corrected, then Mao's theory and practice of the cultural revolution can be the treasury of knowledge on the basic principles and methods for continuing the revolution in socialist society. The theoretical work on the cultural revolution is a wide and open field for study.

The failure of a revolution is never the permanent end of it. The Paris Commune of 1871 succeeded briefly and failed. But the theory of class struggle and proletarian dictatorship was never invalidated. After 46 years, the Great October Socialist Revolution triumphed.

Then, the forces of fascism wiped out the working class parties in many European countries and eventually invaded the Soviet Union. But soon after World War II, several socialist countries arose in Eastern Europe and Asia.

Modern revisionism would emerge to afflict a number of socialist countries. And finally from 1989 to 1991, we witnessed the collapse of revisionist parties and regimes. This confirms the correctness of the Marxist-Leninist criticism and repudiation of modern revisionism and eliminates a certain number of revisionist parties and regimes which have caused theoretical and political confusion in the socialist and anti-imperialist movement.

Unfortunately, the capitalist powers have become more arrogant and cruel upon the disappearance of the Soviet Union as a superpower rival of the United States. But they are beset by the crisis of overproduction and contradictions are growing between them and their client states in the imperialist and neocolonial framework. In fact, the continuing crisis of the countries in which capitalism and bourgeois dictatorship have been restored in a blatant manner, has all along been part of the global capitalist crisis. The former Soviet republics and the East European countries have become hotbeds of nationalism, ethnic conflicts, militarism and civil war and lay bare the rottenness of the capitalist system.

Upon the aggravation of capitalist oppression and exploitation, the anti-imperialist and socialist cause is bound to surge to a new and higher level. The high technology in the hands of the capitalist powers has already deepened and aggravated the crisis of overproduction. The trade war among the capitalist powers is developing in the wake of the end of the bipolar Cold War. The United States is disturbing the balance among the capitalist powers as it seeks to revive its productive capacity, expand its trade and solve its huge deficit and debt problems in an environment where the other capitalist powers are holding tightly on to their productive and trade advantages and all neocolonial client states (except a few earners of export surplus due to U.S. market accommodations) in the South and East are long depressed and find no relief from deficits, debt problem and austerity measures.

For sometime, notwithstanding the disappearance of the two-superpower rivalry, the social turbulence and political violence will increase throughout the world. From these will reemerge the anti-imperialist and socialist movement at a new and higher level. The increased oppression and exploitation of the peoples of the world can only serve to generate the revolutionary movement. What has come about as a hostile environment for this movement is a precondition and a challenge for its resurgence.