Source: Peking Review, No. 35, August 25. 1967
Transcribed by
www.wengewang.orgTHE "Resolution of the Eighth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China Concerning the Anti-Party Clique Headed by Peng Teh-huai" (excerpts) [see our last issue — P.R. Ed.} has been made public in the midst of the high tide of the revolutionary mass movement launched by the proletarian revolutionaries throughout the country to criticize and repudiate the handful of top Party persons in authority taking the capitalist road. This is of extremely great significance for the complete overthrow of that inveterate counter-revolutionary revisionist Peng Teh-huai, for the thorough demolition of the bourgeois headquarters headed by China's Khrushchov, and for the advance of the current revolutionary mass movement of all-out criticism and repudiation.
This document was a product of the great victory won at the Eighth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Party in 1959, that is, the Lushan Meeting. That meeting exposed and smashed the criminal scheme of the anti-Party clique headed by Peng Teh-huai to usurp the leadership of the Party, the army and the government and to restore capitalism; it safeguarded the leadership of the Party's Central Committee headed by Chairman Mao, the Party's general line for building socialism, and the socialist cause of the Party and the people.
Chairman Mao pointed out: "This struggle at Lushan is a class struggle, a continuation of the life-and-death struggle between the two major antagonistic classes — the bourgeoisie and the proletariat — which has gone on all through the socialist revolution in the last ten years."
Under the wise leadership of our great leader Chairman Mao, the Chinese people, within a short time after the founding of the People's Republic of China, in the main completed the socialist transformation of the means of production. In 1958, Chairman Mao put forward the general line of going all out, aiming high and achieving greater, quicker, better and more economical results in building socialism. This, the only correct Marxist-Leninist line, was put forward by Chairman Mao after summing up international and domestic experience in the building of socialism. Under the brilliant guidance of this, general line, the hundreds of millions of Chinese people, with high morale and firm determination, brought about the great leap forward in the national economy and people's communes were formed throughout the countryside.
The great victories of the general line, the great leap forward and the people's commune movement caused utter panic among all the reactionary forces within the country and abroad, and they put up a desperate resistance. Within the country, landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements. Rightists and all kinds of ghosts and monsters came out into the open in large numbers to stir up trouble. Internationally, there was a big outburst of anti-China hysteria among the imperialists, modern revisionists and reactionaries of various countries. They launched a frantic attack against our Party and the Chinese people. It was precisely at that time that that inveterate Right opportunist Peng Teh-huai mustered his partners like Huang Ke-cheng, Chang Wen-tien and Chou Hsiao-chou and rushed into action. In a planned and organized way and with deliberate intent they viciously attacked the Party, socialism and our great Leader Chairman Mao.
The so-called letter selling out his views dished up by Pong Teh-huai, the ringleader of the anti-Party clique at the Lushan Meeting, contained an out-and-out counter-revolutionary revisionist programme. Consumed by ambition and completely revealing his renegade nature, Peng Teh-huai desperately opposed the highspeed development of the national economy, the revolutionary mass movement in socialist construction, the carrying through to the end of the socialist revolution on the economic front, the leadership of the Party and the principle of putting politics in command, and Chairman Mao, the very red sun in the hearts of the Chinese people and the revolutionary people of the world.
The struggle between the proletarian revolutionary line represented by Chairman Mao, and the counterrevolutionary revisionist line of Peng Teh-huai and his partners in the anti-Party clique at the Lushan Meeting was a life-and-death struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and between the socialist road and the capitalist road. It was a big struggle of vital concern to the future and destiny of our great motherland.
Peng Teh-huai's anti-Party activity at the Lushan Meeting was by no means accidental, nor was it an isolated incident. It was a wild, desperate onslaught by the dying bourgeoisie against the flourishing socialist cause of the proletariat
The sinister boss behind this counter-revolutionary attack was none other than the top Party person in authority taking the capitalist road.
It was this person who at the Lushan Meeting put his utmost efforts into a counter-revolutionary double-dealing tactic, and actively backed Peng Teh-huai's anti-Party activities. After Peng Teh-huai's scheme was exposed, he continued surreptitiously to fan up evil winds and fires, and schemed to tamper with the already prepared summary of the meeting and turn it into an anti-"Left" document directed against Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line. After the Lushan Meeting, he came out into the open, slandering the general line as having been put forward blindly, the great leap forward as being "brought about in a rush" causing "disproportions in the economy," alleging that "the people's communes were set up too early," and "there is danger of disintegration." He even made the absurd assertion that "the Lushan Meeting made a mistake," and that "it was wrong to oppose Right opportunism." Moreover, he energetically boosted the spirit of "Hai Jui," whipped up the evil wind of reversing the correct verdict passed on the Right opportunists and made bitter complaints on behalf of the Right opportunists represented by Peng Teh-huai. He vainly tried to help Peng Teh-huai rise again and resume command of the armed forces, so as to realize his counter-revolutionary restorationist plot of usurping the leadership of the Party, the armed forces and the state.
All this fully testifies to the fact that the struggle, against Peng Teh-huai's anti-Party clique is in essence a major battle in the long-term test of Strength between the proletarian headquarters and the bourgeois headquarters.
Peng Teh-huai's anti-Party activities had not only China's Khrushchov as behind-the-scenes boss, they were also supported and encouraged by the Soviet Union's Khrushchov. After Peng Teh-huai came out into the open at the Lushan Meeting, the Soviet Khrushchov blatantly and shamelessly praised him as 'correct," "brave" and as his "best friend." The facts clearly reveal that Peng Teh-huai is a man who maintains illicit relations with a foreign country and who in co-ordination with the Khrushchovian modern revisionists aims to overthrow the dictatorship of the proletariat in China.
The Resolution of the Eighth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China points out: "The long-standing anti-Party activities of the Right opportunist anti-Party clique headed by Peng Teh-huai constitute a grave danger to the socialist cause of the Party and the people."
Peng Teh-huai has never been a Marxist. He is an out-and-out big bourgeois warlord, careerist and conspirator who, with a speculator's mentality of ''investing in a share," wormed his way into the Party and the army. Over the past decades, he has consistently taken the bourgeois reactionary stand and opposed Chairman Mao, the great thought of Mao Tse-tung and the proletarian revolutionary line of Chairman Mao. For a long time, he made use of the positions he had usurped in the Party's Central Committee and the People's Liberation Army to carry out a series of conspiratorial activities for usurping the leadership of the army and he became the agent, within the army, of the bourgeois headquarters headed by China's Khrushchov.
The Lushan Meeting dug out this time bomb that had been buried in the Party and in the army. This was a serious blow to the bourgeois headquarters headed by China's Khrushchov. It was a great victory for our Party and our people and a great victory for the invincible thought of Mao Tse-tung.
But, the struggle between the two lines in our Party has not yet been concluded. As Chairman Mao pointed out: "This kind of struggle, it seems, will continue in China and in our Party for at least 20 years and possibly half a century. In short, the struggle will cease only when classes die out completely."
In the present revolutionary campaign of mass criticism and repudiation, the dragging out of this inveterate counter-revolutionary revisionist Peng Teh-huai into broad daylight for all-out, penetrating criticism, repudiation and struggle by the masses, is an important part of the thorough repudiation of the handful of top Party persons in authority taking the capitalist road who are headed by China s Khrushchov.
We must develop the thoroughgoing revolutionary spirit of vigorously pursuing the tottering foe and beating the dog in the water, and thoroughly liquidate the lowering crimes of the handful of top Party persons in authority taking the capitalist road, including Peng Teh-huai, in opposing the Party, socialism' and Mao Tse-tung's thought. We must wipe out their pernicious, revisionist influence in every field, repudiate, overthrow and completely discredit them politically, ideologically and theoretically, and carry the great proletarian cultural revolution through to the end.
("Renmin Ribao'' editorial, August 16.)