Comments on and Revisions to the Draft Reply Letter from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union[1]
(April, May, June 1963)


For the discussion of the reply to the Soviet Union, please ask Comrades Deng Xiaoping, Kang Sheng, Lu Dingyi, and Chen Boda[3] to come to Hangzhou on the 21st or 22nd of this month. Please notify them and ensure they arrive on time as requested!
Mao Zedong
April 17, 4 a.m.


The proletariat and its party should, on the basis of the worker-peasant alliance, unite all strata that can possibly be united and organize a broad united front against imperialism and its lackeys.


In the course of the revolutionary struggle of oppressed nations and oppressed peoples, only by independently putting forward a thorough anti-imperialist and anti-feudal program, independently conducting mass work, continuously expanding progressive forces, winning over middle forces, and isolating reactionary forces can a proletarian party carry the national-democratic revolution through to the end and guide the revolution onto the track of socialism.
IV
At no time should peaceful coexistence be extended to the relations between oppressed nations and oppressor nations, or between oppressed classes and oppressor classes. Nor should peaceful coexistence be described as the main content of the transition from capitalism to socialism. Still less should it be claimed that peaceful coexistence is the path for all humanity to advance toward socialism. For the practice of peaceful coexistence between countries with different social systems absolutely does not permit, nor is it in any way possible, to touch even a single hair of the social systems of the coexisting countries. Class struggle, national liberation struggles, and the transition from capitalism to socialism are all fierce, life-and-death revolutionary struggles aimed at changing social systems. These are entirely different matters, having absolutely nothing in common with peaceful coexistence.
V
No socialist country, even decades or even centuries after achieving socialist industrialization and agricultural collectivization, can claim that it has completely rid itself of all such elements as bourgeois hangers-on, parasites, speculators, swindlers, idlers, hooligans, and embezzlers of state funds, whom Lenin repeatedly and bitterly denounced. Nor can it be said that a socialist country no longer needs or can abandon the task set forth by Lenin of "clearing away these infectious diseases, plagues, and ulcers bequeathed to socialism by capitalism."
VI
In socialist countries, the question of who will prevail—socialism or capitalism—requires a very long historical period to be gradually resolved.
VII
While opposing revisionism, the main danger in the international communist movement, communists in all countries must also oppose dogmatism.
VIII
If a party cannot think for itself, cannot use its own brains, fails to conduct serious investigation and research, does not deeply understand the precise trends of the various classes in its own country, and is not adept at integrating the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of its own revolution, but merely echoes others, copies foreign experience without analysis, and dances in circles at the beck and call of others’ batons, then such a party is a hodgepodge of revisionism and dogmatism, possessing everything except the principled nature of Marxism-Leninism. Such a party can absolutely never carry out revolutionary struggle, absolutely never achieve revolutionary victory, and absolutely never fulfill the great historical mission of the proletariat.
IX
Merely acknowledging the contradiction between socialism and capitalism while ignoring or underestimating the contradictions within the capitalist world—the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the contradiction between oppressed nations and imperialism, the contradictions among imperialist countries, and the contradictions between monopoly capitalist groups—as well as the struggles arising from these contradictions.
X
Believing that the contradiction between the two world systems will naturally disappear through "economic competition," and that all other contradictions in the world (namely, the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the contradiction between oppressed nations and imperialism, the contradictions among imperialist countries, and the contradictions between monopoly capitalist groups) will also naturally vanish with the disappearance of the contradiction between the two systems, giving rise to some "new world without war" and "peaceful cooperation."
XI
While striving to win over the masses of social democratic parties and the revolutionary left (and, in certain countries, the middle factions opposing foreign imperialist control), communists must draw a clear line of demarcation with social democratic parties and eliminate the ideological influence of social democracy within the international workers’ movement and among the working masses in all countries.
XII
A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement (The Reply of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to the Letter of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Dated March 30, 1963)
XIII
Give full play to the initiative and creativity of the masses, carry out socialist construction in a planned way, develop production, improve the people’s livelihood, and strengthen national defense.
XIV
With Soviet-Albanian relations having deteriorated to such a serious extent, do the leading comrades of the CPSU truly not feel their own responsibility?