The Biggest Democratic Right Is the Right of Management under Socialism

Mao Zedong put forward an important point of view when he read the "Socialism Section" in the next book of the Political Economics Textbook of the Soviet Union (3rd edition).

Mao Zedong believed that we cannot understand the question of people's rights as that the state is managed by only a part of people, and the people enjoy the rights of labor, education, social insurance and so on under the management of these people.

He said: "The right of workers to manage the state, the army, enterprises and culture and education is, in fact, the greatest and most fundamental right of workers under the socialist system.” Without such rights, workers’ rights to work, to rest and to receive education are not guaranteed. "The question of socialist democracy is, first of all, the question of whether workers have the right to overcome the various hostile forces and their influence.”

Such things as newspapers and publications, radio and films, in whose hands they are held and by whom they are discussed, are all questions of rights. There are various factions within the people, and there is partisanship. The question of which faction holds all state organs, all troops, all enterprises, all cultural and educational institutions is extremely relevant to the question of ensuring the rights of the people. In the hands of Marxist-Leninists, the rights of the vast majority of the people are guaranteed; in the hands of right-leaning opportunists or rightists, they may deteriorate and the rights of the people cannot be guaranteed. In short, the people must manage the superstructure themselves, and it is impossible not to manage the superstructure.