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

struggles no longer exist? How can it be said that the dictatorshipof the proletariat is no longer necessary?Marxism-Leninism tells us that in addition to the suppressionof the hostile classes, the historical tasks of the dictatorshipof the proletariat in the course of building socialismnecessarily include the correct handling of relations betweenthe working class and peasantry, the consolidation of theirpolitical and economic alliance and the creation of conditionsfor the gradual elimination of the class difference betweenworker and peasant.When we look at the economic base of any socialist society,we find that the difference between ownership by the wholepeople and collective ownership exists in all socialist countrieswithout exception, and that there is individual ownershiptoo. Ownership by the whole people and collective ownershipare two kinds of ownership and two kinds of relations of productionin socialist society. The workers in enterprises ownedby the whole people and the peasants on farms owned collectivelybelong to two different categories of labourers in socialistsociety. Therefore, the class difference between workerand peasant exists in all socialist countries without exception.This difference will not disappear until the transition to thehigher stage of communism is achieved. In their present levelof economic development all socialist countries are still far,far removed from the higher stage of communism in which“from each according to his ability, to each according to hisneeds” is put into practice. Therefore, it will take a long, longtime to eliminate the class difference between worker andpeasant. And until this difference is eliminated, it is impossibleto say that society is classless or that there is no longerany need for the dictatorship of the proletariat.In calling a socialist state the “state of the whole people”is one trying to replace the Marxist-Leninist theory of thestate by the bourgeois theory of the state? Is one trying toreplace the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat by astate of a different character?37