On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship
An important article written by Mao Zedong to commemorate the 28th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. It was first broadcasted by Xinhua News Agency on June 30, 1949, and published in People's Daily on July 1. It was included in the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Volume 4. When Mao Zedong wrote this article, New China was about to be born.
In this situation, how to understand the road the Chinese people have gone through in the past? How to understand the reasons and basic experience of the victory of China's New-Democratic Revolution? What is the nature of the state power in the coming New China? What will be the status of the various classes that will share the state power and their mutual relations?
This paper focuses on the basic views of the Chinese Communists on the below major issues.
(1) People's democratic dictatorship and the prospect of human progress. The article points out that “when classes disappear, all instruments of class struggle—parties and the state machinery—will lose their function, cease to be necessary, therefore gradually wither away and end their historical mission; and human society will move to a higher stage.”
“The leadership of the Communist Party and the state power of the people's dictatorship are such conditions. If we do not recognize this truth, we will not be communists."
(2) Mao Zedong pointed out that "after the Opium War in 1840, the advanced Chinese people, after all kinds of hardships, sought the truth from the western countries. Hong Xiuquan, Kang Youwei, Yan Fu and Sun Yat-sen represent a group of people who sought truth from the west before the birth of the Communist Party of China.” but "imperialist aggression shattered the fond dreams of the Chinese about learning from the West.” "October Revolution" in Russia has delivered us the Marxism-Leninism. The October Revolution helped progressives in China, as throughout the world, to adopt the proletarian world view as the instrument for studying a nation's destiny and considering anew their own problems. Follow the path of the Russians—that was their conclusion.”
(3) The development of Chinese Revolution and its basic experience. The article points out that “Chinese revolution, led by the Communist Party of China, has made tremendous advances both in theory and practice and has radically changed the face of China.” “The western bourgeois civilization, bourgeois democracy and the program of bourgeois republic have all broken down in the minds of the Chinese people. Bourgeois democracy has given way to people's democracy under the leadership of the working class and the bourgeois republic to the people's republic. This has made it possible to achieve socialism and communism through the people's republic, to abolish classes and enter a world of Great Harmony.”
“A well-disciplined Party armed with the theory of Marxism-Leninism, using the method of self-criticism and linked with the masses of the people, an army under the leadership of such a Party; a United Front of all revolutionary classes and all revolutionary groups under the leadership of such a Party—these are the three main weapons with which we have defeated the enemy. They distinguish us from our predecessors.”
Since the fundamental issue of revolution is the issue of state power, and the abdication of the bourgeois republic to the people's republic is the result of the Chinese people's historic choice. “To sum up our experience and concentrate it into one point, it is the people's democratic dictatorship under the leadership of the working class (through the Communist Party) and based upon the alliance of workers and peasants. This dictatorship must unite as one with the international revolutionary forces. This is our formula, our principal experience, our main programme."
(4) The people's democratic dictatorship was carried out in New China. In response to some people's condemnation of the establishment of the people's democratic dictatorship as "dictatorship", Mao Zedong wrote that the nature of revolutionary dictatorship and counter revolutionary dictatorship is opposite, and the former is learned from the latter and that this learning is very important.
He pointed out that the people's democratic dictatorship is based on the alliance of the working class, the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie, and mainly on the alliance of the workers and the peasants, because these two classes comprise 80% to 90%t of China's population. These two classes are the main force in overthrowing imperialism and the KMT reactionaries. The transition from New Democracy to socialism also depends mainly upon their alliance. The people's democratic dictatorship needs the leadership of the working class. For it is only the working class that is most far-sighted, most selfless and most thoroughly revolutionary.
China must utilize all the factors of urban and rural capitalism that are beneficial and not harmful to the national economy and the people's livelihood; and we must unite with the national bourgeoisie in common struggle. But the national bourgeoisie cannot be the leader of the revolution, nor should it have the chief role in state power.
Mao Zedong also pointed out that “the combination of these two aspects, democracy for the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries, is the people's democratic dictatorship”; “the state of the people's democratic dictatorship must systematically solve the problems of industrialization”.
"On the People's Democratic Dictatorship" points out the direction for the New China to establish, consolidate and improve the people's democratic dictatorship. Together with Mao Zedong's report at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh CPC Central Committee, it forms the policy basis of "the Common Program of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference".
This paper also provides theoretical guidance for us to study and summarize the history and basic experience of modern China from the perspective of historical materialism, especially the history and basic experience of the New-Democratic Revolution.