Repudiate sub-reformism; study lifestyle
scientifically
I. The LRS and the "Gang of Four"
II. The ultraleft in the Cultural Revolution and sub-reformism
III. A scientific approach to lifestyle
by MC5
February 24, 1999
I. The LRS and the "Gang of Four"
In the July, 1979 publication of the now defunct organization League of Revolutionary Struggle(LRS) which gave rise to the revisionist Freedom Road Socialist Organization(FRSO), there is an article upholding Deng Xiaoping revisionism called "China Is Vigorously Building Socialism." The publication says that the "Gang of Four" went too far in attacking bourgeois right--the right to distribution according to work--and went too far toward communism. However, the way that the article put this attack into effect was as follows: "The 'gang of four' opposed fully implementing the principle 'to each according to one's work' and attacked workers who worked hard for socialism as backward."(1)
This oversimplification of the problem of socialist transition toward communism is made to the point of caricature, as if the "Gang of Four" went about attacking workers instead of the policies of the central leaders they disagreed with. With such reasoning communism itself will be an attack on workers who work hard, because by definition, communism will not be "to each according to his work," but "to each according to his need" as Marx said.
The article continues "In those areas where the gang held influence, socialist construction was seriously disrupted. In many factories workers stopped working altogether. These workers, however, continued to receive full pay whether or not they worked. In some areas this went on for several years.
"What did this mean? It meant of course that socialist production suffered for the entire country. It meant that the burden on the workers who continued to labor became greater-- objectively some workers lived off the labor of those workers and peasants who did work hard for socialism."(1)
Of course, anyone who reads Peking Review or any other Chinese publication from the time that the "Gang of Four" were in charge (1966 to 1976) can see that the above is a lie or oversimplification of the class struggle. The articles are full of calls for hard work and producing more for the state. If production did not increase or work stopped it must have been on account of those sabotaging it and running contrary to the stated line. When such enemies attacked, the workers may have had to stop production as well just to deal with them. In 1976 it was none other than Deng Xiaoping's supporters who staged the counterrevolutionary Tiananmen incident. Throughout the Cultural Revolution, conniving righists and sub- reformist ultraleftists did everything to distract attention from the basics of the mode of production.
Not surprisingly, given their brief and caricatured treatment of the issues, the reasons the LRS gave for opposing the "Gang of Four" are exceedingly superficial. We will provide the whole argument they gave in their section "True nature of the 'gang of four'" right here. We will letter each paragraph for study purposes.
A. "It is very important to understand that the gang's policies were leading to the restoration of capitalism in China. Their policies were weakening socialism and encouraging the development of backward and capitalist ideas. The gang themselves were bourgeois elements.
B. "What makes this hard for some people outside of China to grasp is that the gang built up its reputation supposedly opposing capitalist restoration. But their talk was only a cover for their own attempts to get top power in the Party and country. We can't look at just what they proclaimed about themselves; we must examine their actual practice and effect on society.
C. "The gang accused many veteran Party leaders of supposedly being capitalist-roaders. This was very similar to Trotsky's attacks on the old Bolsheviks during the time that Lenin was near death. The purpose of these attacks was the same in both cases: to discredit leaders who had made genuine contributions to revolution and replace them with new counter-revolutionary 'leaders.'
D. "The lifestyle and behavior of the gang and their followers show their hypocrisy about wanting to restrict privileges and having more equality. The gang themselves lived extravagant lifestyles--this was revealed ironically by Jiang Qing (Chiang Ching) herself to an American author who wrote a biography about her. The gang's followers also live such a life. There is a very popular play in China today called ITALICS Where Silence Reigned, ITALICS END which shows how the gang and its followers attacked the veteran communists in an unprincipled way just to gain power, position and comfort.
E. "A key figure in this play is a high official who gained many privileges and material advantages because of his unscrupulous attacks on other communists during the Cultural Revolution. He is shown to be an out and out careerist. The play is very popular in China because it speaks to how many people in China actually feel about the gang--that all the gang's noise about combatting capitalism was nothing more than 'thief crying stop thief.'
F. "Contrary to the bourgeois media's presentation of the gang as 'austere proletarians who represented the revolutionary left' or even 'over enthusiastic, but well intentioned ultraleftists,' the 'gang of four' were really self-seekers and capitalist elements who used Marxist words and some 'ultraleft' thinking to cover their own personal ambitions.
G. "A good example of the type of reactionaries promoted by the gang is an opportunist called Wen Sung-ho. In China they say he personifies the gang's essence. His career illustrates what is called the new bourgeois elements that appear under socialism, and also what is meant by the gang's feudal fascism.
H. "Before the Cultural Revolution, Wen worked in a Hangchow silk factory. He was not respected much by the other workers, for he was known as a pleasure seeker, paying little attention to Marxism-Leninism and work. He had been criticized for his attitude and behavior during the socialist education movement in the early 1960's.
I. "With the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, Wen suddenly became very active and incited factionalism and disruption at the factory. He carried out Lin Biao and the 'gang of four's' line of 'overthrowing all' and attacked the veteran cadre. Soon afterwards he began to meet personally with Yao Wenyuan (Yao Wen Yuen) and Wang Hongwen (Wang Hung Wen), two of the 'gang of four.' With their backing, Wen rose up rapidly, first becoming a director at this factory and then even a member of the Standing Committee of the Provincial government. He also was admitted into the Party.
J. "The masses of workers at Wen's plant strongly opposed he getting these posts. Ninety-five percent of the workers there, knowing his behavior, openly expressed their opposition to his Party membership. But the gang promoted him over these mass protestations. In 1974, Wang Hongwen got Wen to be a delegate to the 10th Party Congress, even though 550 out of the 581 Party members of the factory signed a letter opposing Wen's delegate status. But the gang disregarded the democratic centralism of the Party and the masses.
K. "With his new power, Wen lorded over the workers. He persecuted the veteran cadre and reorganized the local militia into his personal shock force which he used to terrorize the workers. Wen retaliated against many of the workers who had previously opposed him--he had some workers beaten up right on the line, while he had others arrested in their homes in the dead of night, imprisoned and beaten for months.
L. "Wen used workers' funds for his own pleasure, squandered money on banquets, appropriated five cars for himself and even converted a workers' sanitorium for his own personal use. He even had people carry him in a sedan chair once when he visited a scenic spot.
M. "Finally in early 1975, Chairman Mao himself went to Hangchow and pointed out that Wen was a bad element. The Party soon sent Vice-Premier Ji Dengku (Chi Teng-kuei) to straighten out the situation in the province which culminated in Wen's arrest in late 1975.
N. "This struggle was conducted ITALICS before END ITALICS the gang itself fell in late 1976, and is an example of the masses fierce struggle against the gang and its followers."(2)
There are so many things wrong with this quote, let's go over it point by point.
Paragraph "A" is correct to ask how capitalist restoration occurred in China.. If the LRS wants to prove its point within Maoism it needs to prove what it says in paragraph "A." However, already it is in trouble, because Deng Xiaoping disallowed the concept of "bourgeoisie in the party" and discussions in China are no longer allowed to take the form that the LRS used in paragraph "A." They were already passe in China by the time LRS published its article.
Paragraph "B" should be read as the beginning of a slide into Christian-style sub- reformism. Clearly what the LRS means by "practice" is one's persynal lifestyle.
Paragraph "C" is obviously ridiculous. Stalin also attacked and had shot plenty of "Old Bolsheviks"--Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin and Trotsky himself. The question is not whether they "had made genuine contributions" as LRS itself says. The question was whether or not they were still making contributions. The answer to this is obvious because these "veterans" named in the "Adverse Current" in 1967 and Deng Xiaoping's legions came to power in China without the "Gang of Four" and proved their substance. They abolished collective farming, issued all land as private plots, allowed for agricultural goods to be traded mostly on a free market for profit and instituted industrial production for profit with massive unemployment. All of this about the mode of production in China is admitted fully and openly in official Chinese publications by the "veteran comrades" of which LRS speaks.
Paragraphs "D" through "F" are about lifestyle again. Far more attention is given to the alleged lifestyle of the "Gang of Four" than to matters of distribution under socialist transition. That is not to mention there is NOTHING about the abolition of collective farming or the revolutionary committees in industry that were running factories instead of the old style of single-responsibility system bosses. Without fail the strategy of reactionaries is to attack the revolutionaries' motivations instead of their line and impact on the mode of production. In many cases, Christian individualists and other pre- political people are incapable of understanding the nature of structural change, so they reduce issues to individual lifestyles that they can understand.
Paragraphs "G" through "L" are about Wen. Yet, again the focus is on Wen persynally, not his line. All we learn about his line with regard to class struggle is that he terrorized workers according to LRS. The rest is all lifestyle talk and irrelevant persynal detail. Where did Wen want the province to go? What was he saying and implementing in factory policy? There is mostly no answer.
Paragraphs "M" and "N" only prove that Mao did not regard the "Gang of Four" as bourgeois elements. He corrected a mistake and no where did he call the "Gang of Four" "bourgeois elements." He certainly did call Deng Xiaoping a capitalist-roader though and had him removed from office in 1976. The League of Revolutionary Struggle does not face that fact anywhere in the article: Deng Xiaoping is simply not mentioned despite his having a well-known line, and not just a lifestyle.
Everything that the Gang of Four said about the "veteran comrades" it attacked proved to be true. The "veteran comrades" had decades in power after 1976 to prove the "Gang of Four" correct about them.
If there were still collective farming in China, no unemployment and firms were not openly run for profit, then we would have to consider whether it was worth getting rid of the "Gang of Four." Yet, the facts are in: it is a good thing that the "Gang of Four" sought power and had in fact two seats on the highest party committee when Mao died. It wasn't just for persynal ambition and lifestyle that the Gang of Four pursued power; the change of China's mode of production without the "Gang of Four" is the proof.
If every single lifestyle charge they made against the "Gang of Four" (and now Mao too with all these rumors about his sex life coming to light), it would not add up to a hill of beans. Socialism is not a lifestyle. It is a mode of production that underlies propensities to make lifestyle choices. Reformists at least aim at change affecting the whole society. Sub-reformists look at change in individuals. The League of Revolutionary Struggle (LRS) was a subjectivist, empiricist, sub-reformist, individualist organization paving the way for post-modernism.
In discussions with MIM in the early 1980s, the LRS attacked MIM with post-modernism. Always the Chinese were right, because they were Chinese according to the LRS. So goes their line across-the-board. The LRS should have studied the Red Flag article (23September1964) "The Subjective Idealist Substance of Pragmatist Empiricism." It is not the experience of a Black persyn, a Chinese persyn or a Latin King or Queen that makes that persyn correct or not.
Describing American pragmatist William James, Red Flag said, "From his viewpoint so-called 'pure experience' is a primitive, obscure entity; experience is wholly 'self- sufficient' and not dependent on the realistic world; it in itself is the only true reality." To translate for the current issue at hand, the mode of production in China is the mode of production in China, no matter what any Chinese say about it--and that should be obvious as we are talking about Deng Xiaoping and his cronies that the LRS defended.
Red Flag continued: "'Experience' is the philosophical conception with which pragmatists are fondest of toying. . . Pragmatists are so fond of discussing experience, principally because they seek to utilize this conception for carrying on sophism and concealing the subjective idealist substance of their philosophy. . . They have extended the scope of experience immeasurably, make it include and embrace everything under the sun. The pragmatist interpretation of experience is confused and incoherent. What pragmatists call experience is not limited to what is ordinarily called sense experience, but includes all man's ideologies and psychological impressions, even dreams, rambling thoughts, magic, and superstition. . . .At other times they stress with all their effort that experience is not subjective itself and not dependent on any subject." The experience of being Chinese does not make one's line on China correct, because experience comes with idealist inaccuracy. However, the LRS line paved the way at some major U.$. colleges for post-modernism--with a social basis in the tokenism that exalted experience and said people with different experience should be hired as faculty for that reason.
Now even former members of the LRS such as Amiri Baraka have admitted that the LRS followed the yuppie ideology and surrendered the weapon of ideological struggle. They certainly did: they and their FRSO descendants are for feel-good subjectivist politics. For this reason they still haven't admitted that China is capitalist.
The LRS represents the equivalent of the right wing in the Communist Party of China, the bourgeois wing. They are not unlike the hard- right bourgeois elements who sought to oust President Clinton for his lifestyle.
The FRSO that descended from LRS merged with the centrist elements supporting Hua Guofeng, who himself was the one who ended the campaign against Deng and allowed him back to power without a fight. The FRSO still hasn't come clean to this day and jumbles the question of capitalist restoration; although the masses clearly should require from us communists clarity on that before we ask them to sacrifice their blood in struggle!
II. The ultraleft in the Cultural Revolution and sub-reformism
Apart from the counterrevolutionary right like the LRS and the center-right turned counterrevolutionary like the FRSO, the ultraleft was also obsessed with sub-reformism and also broke up the proletarian camp by examining one individual lifestyle at a time during the Cultural Revolution. Although it is a lie by the LRS that the "Gang of Four" ever said "overthrow all," the Progressive Labor Party and affiliated Red Guard groups in China were openly for overthrowing 95% percent of the party. Other anarchists and Trotskyists were for 100% overthrow. These ultraleft factions wanted to fry Jiang Qing in oil as they said themselves.
Not surprisingly when tens of millions of workers and peasants seem wrong to you, the focus ends up being on each individual lifestyle--what is wrong with each of these people, else how else can one attack the 95% who are workers and peasants? People like Deng Xiaoping can be attacked for their lines in power and what they want to do with the mode of production. Yet the mode of production and structure of society with regard to patriarchy bored the rightists and ultraleftists during the Cultural Revolution. They also didn't like it when Mao kept telling them the enemy was only 5 percent of the party--and not a different five percent every day. They sought to bring about disunity in the proletarian camp by focussing on lifestyle questions.
Even now in "Road to Revolution 4.5" the PLP talks about breaking with nationalism and breaking with reformism. Then they say about those breaks: "Every one of our breaks represents yet another halting step towards communism."(3) For them, joining a party and changing one's mind is revolution. Not surprisingly they say most of their practice has been reformist. The reason is that their root conception of class struggle is sub- reformist. No wonder there is not a single armed struggle in the world that PLP supports fully and fraternally. For MIM, in contrast, a step toward communism is a change in the structure of society or at least an armed struggle in progress.
We must now teach the masses the lesson of the Cultural Revolution -- how to oppose both rightism and ultraleftism in party-led mass movements. Repudiating sub-reformism is one key to the struggle.
We should repudiate sub-reformism confidently, because there will never be a time when the society produces no advanced elements. Some communists will degenerate, but others will be born to take up the struggle unless the species ends itself. As long as the "Gang of Four" opposed private agriculture and profit in command, it was the duty of the proletariat and revolutionary masses to support them.
The emphasis in lifestyle questions must be voluntary and non-obtrusive. Obtrusive struggles aimed at using state or mass movement power to change individual lifestyles backfire and produce anarchism. During the Cultural Revolution's latter phases, the leadership of the movement realized that revolutionizing other people is easier than revolutionizing oneself. In other words, ego gets in the way of revolutionary remolding; however, the solution is to struggle at the general line level and let individuals draw their own conclusions about themselves.
In the Cultural Revolution, to deal with the ultraleftists, the slogan arose of "repudiate self; fight revisionism." Another version was "combat self-interest, criticize and repudiate revisionism."(4) Even this slogan ended up being too much of a concession to the ultraleft. It must be made clear that people should voluntarily repudiate self and that uncovering hypocrisy and lifestyle flaws in others is not the goal of revolutionaries. The ultraleftists were out to revolutionize everyone else or 95% of everyone else in lifestyle questions and they were being encouraged by the slogan to look at themselves in terms of ideological remolding first and primarily while also attacking the 5% of party members on the capitalist-road. Ideological remolding of the masses must in no way be equated with the necessity of power-struggle against the capitalist-roaders in the party. Putting ideological remolding of oneself first may result in New Age ideas or other mystical traps. Fighting revisionists or imperialists in power is principal over ideological remolding or we will tend to fall into the sub-reformist trap. Number one target of the Cultural Revolution Liu Shaoqi was famous for his work along these lines stressing "self-cultivation."
III. A scientific approach to lifestyle
In MIM we have a party "primer." It constitutes numerous rules and regulations for party members. They are based on appearances that we need to make to be attractive to the masses and mostly what the causes of political degeneration are. Through long years of dealing with the masses, of combating pseudo-feminism, of listening to extremist lifestyle pseudo-environmentalists, of defending Stalin and Mao against what our critics think are devastating blows having to do with lifestyle and from dealing with the history of political degeneration in and outside MIM, MIM has come to an increasing understanding of the uses and limitations of a primer and any lifestyle related sub-reformism.
The primer is helpful in the functioning of our party. In addition to the issue of degeneration, it is easier to be an effective communist with some lifestyles rather than others--by living near large numbers of people for instance. For this reason, our Central Committee takes up the burden of revolution including living by the primer.
We no longer require living by the primer of all members, only our best ones. Even that is not to say that the primer would be any protection if revisionism arose in the Central Committee. The best upholding of the primer will mean nothing in a context of struggle over general line--unless we are guilty of sub-reformism. Not for nothing Hitler titled his book "My Struggle" and not for nothing "practice is principal" does not mean "my practice is principal."
We have geographic restrictions in the party primer. The reason for that is the experience of our party and other North American organizations historically that it is more difficult to be a communist in some geographic locations than others, especially if one is alone as a communist in that locale. Eventually we will have communists everywhere, but right now we seek to prevent the ones we have from degenerating. The science involved says that geographic choices cause degeneration or political reliability.
There is a science in preventing political degeneration. We give advice on finances, geography, drugs and marriage. Yet, we must be clear that none of these are the mode of production. None of these amount to self- determination for the oppressed nation masses. Every single thing mentioned in the primer is less than secondary, because lifestyle questions are less than secondary.
Patriarchy is an example of a secondary contradiction right now and lifestyle questions are all less than secondary. Of the three major strands of oppression, it is gender oppression in the imperialist countries that tends to be most susceptible to causing sub- reformist thought. We must say frankly that we do not trust the anarchists or pseudo- feminists seeking to reform men by lifestyle choices within the existing patriarchy. Men cannot be reformed within patriarchy, only revolutionized.
A student attended a typical pseudo-feminist led "Take Back the Night" march of the U.$. anti-rape movement and he brought his mother. His mother was a little taken aback and said to her son, "don't you think the speakers are a little radical?" His reply was that she was out of touch, "no ma, they are not radical; they are mainstream. There--that's radical" and he snatched a MIM Notes from a comrade at the rally and gave it to his mother. The story raises that for too many imperialist country people, the meaning of "radical" has been lost. It has been so stifled that people don't know what it is anymore and assume a radical is looking for a new lifestyle, because their politics or lack thereof has no other reference point other than maybe Christianity or Buddhism at best.
MIM does not want to know about Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky. MIM wants to make on-the-job sexual harassment impossible by guaranteeing everyone a job and geographic mobility in their jobs. Anyone who wants to turn down a sexual advance by a "superior" or rebuke that superior will be able to do so under socialism by leaving a job if necessary without fear of career loss. If it is true Mao chased after wimmin in his late years in power, at least the wimmin he chased had jobs guaranteed. Hence, his achievements far outweigh anything his objectively patriarchal critics might raise. The question of political leaders is what affects the millions of people, not just the one.
That is the difference between an individualist sub-reformist and a radical or structuralist. A radical looks for some simple underlying solution to a problem affecting everyone or large groups of people; whereas people chasing down the details and wanting everyone to get excited about Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky are sub-reformists. They burn the people out in ideological struggle case-by-case and thereby set back the movement. The most red-hot of these sub- reformists are usually ultraleftists shouting militant rhetoric even against revolutionaries and then getting bogged down in burnout and reformism.
People raising a fuss about gay and lesbian lifestyles either for or against are far removed from cardinal questions. We will not tolerate splitting the Maoist forces so that some prudes will rest easy at night with regard to his or her comrades' lifestyle in bed. The number of gay or lesbian revolutionaries raising lifestyle up as a cardinal question can be listed on a single hand. Mostly this problem of putting lifestyle above cardinal principles comes from the right. These counterrevolutionary rightists don't understand what a cardinal question is anyway, so we do not go out of our way to attract them to the party. Let them be dissuaded by our lesbian liberation logo or by our hammer and sickle.
In the national oppression question, there are those who say one has to wear certain clothes, have certain hairdos and listen to certain music. The Black Panthers disdained these "pork-chop nationalists" and the Panthers were right. A lifestyle is no substitute for real politics.
In class exploitation questions, we have the movement "for social responsibility" that says each individual should invest in funds that carry out responsible capitalism. These petty- bourgeois have made lifestyle yet again the focus. Meanwhile, MIM is in favor of making money any way legally possible and handing it over to PIRAO, so we do not believe that lifestyle on these questions is paramount.
MIM is not really in favor of reviewing lifestyles case-by-case. Any politics that leads in that direction will necessarily divide the proletarian camp into little bits. This is what we mean by repudiating sub-reformism. In Amerika we have the unconscious background of thinking about the "Ten Commandments" and living in "hypocrisy" with regard to those "Ten Commandments." As we pointed out in the Stalin MT, even comrades engaged in armed struggle such as in Yugoslavia found themselves breaking with the Russian comrades over lifestyle questions, especially food and drink. We need to break with unscientific preconceptions and no longer seek to draw our sense of outrage from them. In fact, we need to put these sub-reformists on the defensive every time they raise up their drivel to being principal or even secondary.
At any time, some elements of the international communist movement are progressing and some are degenerating. We ask that comrades manipulate themselves into progressing.
We point to the common policies that help with degeneration prevention and reduce the chances for subjectivist and individualist infighting in the proletarian camp. That's how we address lifestyle questions--by informing people of what choices they can make to increase their chances of not degenerating. There will be those who do not believe the Party in its historical experience with many similar people and organizations, but we should struggle with the non-believers in a general theoretical and historical way and not with reference to their own lifestyle to be examined case-by-case.
Monogamy increases the chances of inner-party stability and helps truly oppressed and proletarian mothers who need help caring for young children. Not taking drugs keeps one from getting arrested or drifting off into escapist political space. So on and so on-- there are lifestyle things one can do to improve one's chances of making revolutionary contributions. Each of these questions will hit hard at the individual level, but we must seek to answer them at the level of general line. The general line talks about the things that everyone can refer to and therefore is the only way for people to envision how to work together.
In 1976, the people of China had a choice. They could support the "Gang of Four" despite whatever perceived lifestyle flaws they had or they could support Hua and Deng. The result is now history.
That is not to say we do not vigorously promote a science of lifestyle. We must let the party members and masses considering becoming revolutionaries know what is most likely to promote their revolutionary consciousness. We must also take a clear stand of right and wrong on all lifestyle questions-- not case-by-case but in general. Failure to do so only results in more endless relativist and ultraleftist conflicts, often through the informal channels of gossip favoring the oppressor.
Taking a clear stand on lifestyle questions should never mean choosing one's leaders and consequently the line one is following based on lifestyle of individuals. No one calling him or herself "radical" -- not to mention revolutionary -- should substitute sub- reformism for communism. We would have picked the "Gang of Four" and Mao over Deng Xiaoping, Hua Guofeng and the Adverse Current group of "veteran comrades" who restored capitalism in China whether or not all the lifestyle charges against Mao and the Four were true.
The weapon of lifestyle criticism must be removed from the hands of those who claim to be in our movement against class, nation and gender oppression. We should rely on voluntary efforts in lifestyle questions while vigorously making known the statistical truths about where certain lifestyle choices lead politically. Criticism of comrades should be restricted to questions of the general line, never to lifestyle. Today, we speak of the Mark Rudd lifestyle with regard to wimmin, but we do so with no particular animosity against Rudd. Rather we mean to sum up the damage that '60s men practicing the "free love" line did in our movement.
We are confident that the progress of society does not depend on one-on- one struggles relating to lifestyle. Even the question of suicide itself is a question of the general line--one's attitude toward the international proletariat. MIM has no magic lifestyle solutions within capitalist society that make everyone happy. To be happy living within imperialism is itself a crime against the international communist movement.
Asking individuals for sacrifice for the Central Committee does not necessarily help provide such sacrifice. We seek people to abide by our primer voluntarily in order to become useful Central Committee members. A Central Committee member tripping out on drugs or caring for children s/he shouldn't have had in the imperialist countries--such a Central Committee member is little use to the proletariat. Hence, we ask our people who join the CC voluntarily to put revolution ahead of drugs and child-raising.
Science does not advance by single case studies alone. In fact, such a science is impossible. Likewise, when it comes to lifestyle, MIM's primer and ideological position is based on what tends to be true statistically, not in each case. Even following every single rule in the primer is not a guarantee of revolutionary consciousness. A certain percentage of cases will always turn against us and a certain percentage of cases will always turn up in our favor when we didn't expect them to. We are presenting generalizations to the masses and struggling to make sure the masses and party members understand these generalizations. Hence, our slogan is "repudiate sub-reformism; study lifestyle scientifically."
Notes:
1. Forward, July 1979, p. 33.
2. Forward, July 1979, pp. 39-41.
3. See www.plp.org to find "Road to Revolution
4.5"
4. See for example, Peking's Red Flag No. 15, 6Oct1967:
"This is the basic guiding principle of the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution."
Contact MIM by writing mim@mim.org