by the Editorial Board
Following the international call, The Worker calls upon all proletarian revolutionaries and class conscious workers to commemorate the 130th birthday of Chairman Mao Zedong throughout the month of December and into January.
Chairman Mao was born on December 26, 1893 to a middle peasant family in rural China. He began his course as a revolutionary in 1911 as the first waves of democratic revolution swept China—he was an active fighter in the May Fourth Student Movement of 1919 and a founder of the Communist Party of China in 1921 and he led the Autumn Harvest Uprising in 1927.
Already a convicted Communist militant, in the inferno of class struggle convinced of the invincible and indispensable leadership of the proletariat, Chairman Mao established the strategy of surrounding the cities from the countryside and developing base areas among the peasantry, leading to the glorious initiation of the People’s War.
In the heroic battles of the People’s War, based on the worker-peasant alliance, in which the proletariat is the leading force and the peasantry is the base force, Chairman Mao developed the United Front between the classes opposed to imperialist and colonial domination of the Chinese people. It was in the armed struggle that the Chairman led the creation of the Chinese Red Army, later renamed the People’s Liberation Army.
Chairman Mao theorized the correct type of revolution corresponding to semi-feudal, semi-colonial countries oppressed by imperialism as New Democratic Revolution, a revolution in which the democratic tasks are carried out alongside some socialist tasks, which is led by the proletariat and its Party, the Communist Party. New Democratic Revolution transforms the backward, feudal mode of production into an industrialized mode of production capable of supporting the transition into socialist revolution without pause. Chairman Mao solved the problem of making socialist revolution in the backward countries.
Chairman Mao authored many Marxist works which are now classics indispensable to understanding the doctrine of the international proletariat, and he did this in the midst of fighting in the People’s War. Chairman Mao led the masses of China to stand up and conquer political power countrywide on October 1, 1949 after decades of glorious combat.
As a resolute Marxist-Leninist, unwavering in principles, Chairman Mao led the proletariat on the international level after the death of Comrade Stalin. He led the struggle against the modern revisionism and social-imperialism which emerged from the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union. Chairman Mao led the Great Debate and developed a masterful polemic against the revisionism represented by Nikita Khrushchev, directly inspiring a great wave of anti-revisionism and proletarian revolution around the world under the banner of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.
Standing above his written works is the contribution to the World Proletarian Revolution made by Chairman Mao. He conducted the socialist revolution in the People’s Republic of China, determining the fundamental line of socialism as based on the principle of class struggle. Chairman Mao proved that classes and class struggle define socialism; he synthesized the global experience of the proletariat and developed the theory of the continuation of the socialist revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. This led to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, beginning in 1966 and ending with the Chairman’s death in 1976. Cultural Revolution is the type of revolution which corresponds to socialist society and the socialist mode of production in order to prevent capitalist restoration, serving the development of socialism. It is continued in waves until the unalterable goal of the communist society is attained.
Chairman Mao proved that the Communist Party itself is a contradiction, and within it the class struggle rages—the struggle between the bourgeois and the proletariat, and that those in power taking the capitalist road represented the new bourgeoisie. Chairman Mao spread Marxist philosophy to the greatest number of masses in history and fought at the center of the Chinese Revolution for more than 60 years.
Only one month after Chairman Mao’s death in September 1976, those who still remained in the Party and had taken the capitalist road arrested Chairman Mao’s closest and most loyal comrades and proceeded to distort and misuse the People’s Liberation Army to arrest the class conscious masses and Party militants still upholding Chairman Mao’s invincible thought. The greatest achievements of the revolution were undermined, destroyed, and overthrown. Drug addiction, prostitution, exploitation, and poverty returned in a major way, corresponding to the dissolution of the peasant Communes and the ending of the Cultural Revolution’s greatest achievement: the Revolutionary Committees. Today, the social-imperialists who dominate the Chinese people and take part in the exploitation of the people of the world have hollowed and distorted Chairman Mao’s memory, banned his teachings and pretending he is a simple “founding father.”
The restoration of capitalism in China only confirms Chairman Mao’s theories and warnings to the workers of all countries, proving that cultural revolution is correct and necessary as the type of revolution which all socialist counties must carry out.
Chairman Mao Zedong’s contributions to the three integral and component parts of Marxism—Marxist philosophy, Marxist political economy, and scientific socialism—have raised Marxism to its third, highest and superior stage: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. There are three great milestones in the development of the ideology of the proletariat represented by Marx, Lenin, and Chairman Mao. Having synthesized and embodied Marxism-Leninism in its creative application, the Chairman accomplished a leap; his contributions and theory to this day remain the highest universal synthesis of Marxism, meaning that today the stage of the ideology in which we find ourselves is principally Maoism. This is what must command and guide the World Proletarian Revolution to its unalterable goal: luminous Communism, passing from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of liberty.
The Worker reiterates the glorious slogans: Unite Under Maoism! and It is right to rebel against reactionaries! These slogans must be realized in the commemoration of the 130th anniversary of Chairman Mao’s birth. We encourage all readers to creatively do their part, big or small, by taking initiative in this commemoration and we invite submissions and reports on how this great international occasion is marked in your city, town, or country.
The commemoration of the 130 years of Chairman Mao is a blow against revisionism and a powerful educational tool for reaching and uniting the most active and class conscious elements in the working class.
Eternal honor and Glory to Chairman Mao Zedong!
Long Live the 130 Years of Chairman Mao!
Unite Under Maoism!
