Critique of the Thesis on the Existence of Forms
(April 24, 1960)

Comrades Boda and Dingyi[1]—read and then
return to Comrade Xiaoping[2].
Mao
The 24th

This document[I] may be read.
Typical revisionism, the thesis of a running dog of the bourgeoisie.

--- Notes

[1] Boda, i.e., Chen Boda, then alternate member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, Director of the Central Political Research Office, and secretary to Mao Zedong. Dingyi, i.e., Lu Dingyi, then alternate member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Minister of the Central Propaganda Department.
[2] Xiaoping, i.e., Deng Xiaoping, then General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee.


[I] Refers to an article entitled "Article in the Italian Communist Monthly *Rinascita* Holds That Socialist Economic Forms Exist Within Capitalist Society," published in an internal bulletin compiled and printed by the International Liaison Department of the CPC Central Committee on April 22, 1960. The article excerpted the following main viewpoints from the article "Do Socialist Economic Forms Exist Within Capitalist Society?" published in the first issue of 1960 of *Rinascita*, the central organ of the Italian Communist Party: 1. Socialist economic forms and structures should begin before the proletariat seizes political power and are a prerequisite for the seizure of power. 2. Modern capitalist factories, joint-stock companies, producers' cooperatives, and state-capitalist industries are new socialist economic forms. 3. The proletarian revolution is not meant to deepen the contradictions of capitalism, causing it to explode and thereby seize power, but to resolve these contradictions. On this summary, Mao Zedong also wrote a critique, which is Part Three of this document.