Polemic on General Line of International ... - From Marx to Mao

tion, it is necessary to raise the living standards of the peoplegradually and on a broad scale.EIGHTH, ownership by the whole people and collectiveownership are the two forms of socialist economy. The transitionfrom collective ownership to ownership by the wholepeople, from two kinds of ownership to a unitary ownershipby the whole people, is a rather long process. Collectiveownership itself develops from lower to higher levels andfrom smaller to larger scale. The people’s commune whichthe Chinese people have created is a suitable form of organizationfor the solution of the question of this transition.NINTH, “Let a hundred flowers blossom and a hundredschools of thought contend” is a policy for stimulating thegrowth of the arts and the progress of science and for promotinga flourishing socialist culture. Education must serve proletarianpolitics and must be combined with productive labour.The manual workers should at the same time be intellectualsand the intellectuals manual workers. Among those engagedin science, culture, the arts and education, the struggle topromote proletarian ideology and destroy bourgeois ideologyis a protracted and fierce class struggle. It is necessary tobuild up a large detachment of working-class intellectualswho serve socialism and who are both “red and expert”,i.e., who are both politically conscious and professionallycompetent, by means of the cultural revolution, and revolutionarypractice in class struggle, the struggle for productionand scientific experiment.TENTH, it is necessary to maintain the system of cadreparticipation in collective productive labour. The cadres ofour Party and state are ordinary workers and not overlordssitting on the backs of the people. By taking part in collectiveproductive labour, the cadres maintain extensive, constantand close ties with the working people. This is a major measureof fundamental importance for a socialist system; it helpsto overcome bureaucracy and to prevent revisionism anddogmatism.474