The Chairman said: “Nie Yuanzi’s big-character poster of May 25 was the manifesto of China’s Paris Commune in the 1960s. Its significance surpasses that of the Paris Commune itself. We could never have written such a poster.”

(A few Young Pioneers posted a big-character poster addressed to their father, accusing him of having forgotten the past. They charged that instead of teaching them Mao Zedong Thought, he only asked about their school grades and rewarded them with prizes for good marks.)

The Chairman instructed Comrade Chen Boda to convey to these children that their poster was very well written. He declared: “Let me tell everyone: the youth are the main force of the Cultural Revolution! We must give full play to their revolutionary energy.”

Upon returning to Beijing, I felt deeply saddened. The city was bleak and desolate; some school gates were even locked, and there were outright crackdowns on the student movement. Who would dare suppress the student movement? Only the Beiyang warlords! To claim that the Communist Party fears the student movement is anti-Marxist. Some people constantly talk about following the mass line and serving the people, yet in reality they are pursuing a bourgeois line and serving the interests of the bourgeoisie. The Central Committee of the Communist Youth League should stand with the students, but it has sided with those who repress them. As for who opposes the Cultural Revolution—none other than U.S. imperialism, Soviet revisionism, and Japanese reactionaries.

Using “a distinction between inside and outside” as an excuse is nothing more than fear of revolution. Allowing big-character posters to be put up and then immediately covered over must not be tolerated. This is a grave error of direction that needs to be corrected without delay. We must smash every straitjacket to smithereens!

Only by placing our trust in the masses and humbly learning from them can we become their teachers. The current Cultural Revolution is a momentous, earth-shattering event. Can we, and dare we, pass this crucial test of socialism? For it represents the final step toward abolishing classes and narrowing the three major differences.

Opposition—especially the “authoritarian” ideology of the bourgeoisie—is precisely what must be smashed. Without this smashing, socialism cannot be established. Nor will it be possible to carry out the three key tasks of struggle, criticism, and reform. Simply sitting in offices and listening to reports will get us nowhere. We must rely on the masses, trust them implicitly, and carry the revolution through to the bitter end—even if it means revolution comes knocking at our own door. Leading cadres of the Party and government, as well as responsible Party members, ought to be prepared for just such a possibility. Now is the time to see the revolution through to the end, using this process to temper and transform ourselves. Otherwise, we shall remain on the sidelines.

Some comrades are fierce in attacking others but utterly incapable of self-criticism. In that case, they will never overcome their own limitations.

It falls to you yourselves to set fire to your own house and fan the flames—do you have the courage to do so? After all, the blaze will burn right above your heads. Comrades responded: “We are ready! If we fail, we will resign from our posts. We were born Communists and shall die Communists; a life spent lounging on sofas and fanning ourselves is no life at all.”

It is wrong to impose artificial constraints on the masses. At Peking University, when the students rose up, the administration sought to confine them within rigid frameworks, euphemistically calling it “bringing things back onto the right track”—when in fact it was leading them down a dangerous path.

Some schools have gone so far as to brand students as “counter-revolutionaries.” (Zhang Yan of the Foreign Affairs Office even went abroad and had twenty-odd people labeled counter-revolutionaries.) Such actions drive the masses into opposition. Why fear the bad actors? How many of them are there, really? By and large, the students are good people.

(Someone raised the question: What should be done about the chaos—what about the disarray in the archives?)

What is there to fear? Let the bad elements reveal themselves; as for the good ones, why be afraid? We must replace the word “fear” with “courage.” Ultimately, it is through bold action that we will prove whether or not we can successfully pass the test of socialism.

You must place politics first, go down among the masses, stay alongside them, and make the Proletarian Cultural Revolution even more successful.