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

the leadership of the CPSU. We expressed our views on thetwo successive drafts put forward by the Central Committeeof the CPSU and made a considerable number of majorchanges of principle which we presented as our own reviseddraft. Repeated discussions were then held between the delegationsof the Chinese and Soviet Parties on the basis ofour revised draft before the Joint Draft Declaration by theCPSU and the CPC was submitted to the delegations of theother fraternal Parties for their opinions.As a result of the common efforts of the delegations of theCPC and the other fraternal Parties, the meeting finallyadopted the present version of the Declaration, which containstwo major changes on the question of the transition fromcapitalism to socialism compared with the first draft putforward by the leadership of the CPSU. First, while indicatingthe possibility of peaceful transition, the Declaration alsopoints to the road of non-peaceful transition and stresses that“Leninism teaches, and experience confirms, that the rulingclasses never relinquish power voluntarily”. Secondly, whilespeaking of securing “a firm majority in parliament”, theDeclaration emphasizes the need to “launch an extra-parliamentarymass struggle, smash the resistance of the reactionaryforces and create the necessary conditions for peaceful realizationof the socialist revolution”.Despite these changes, the formulation in the Declarationon the question of the transition from capitalism to socialismwas still unsatisfactory. We finally conceded the point onlyout of consideration for the repeatedly expressed wish of theleaders of the CPSU that the formulation should show someconnection with that of the 20th Congress of the CPSU.However, we presented the Central Committee of theCPSU with an outline of our views on the question of peacefultransition in which the views of the CPC were explainedcomprehensively and clearly. The outline emphasizes thefollowing:72