Speech by Giovanni Scuderi, on behalf of the PMLI Central Committee, for the 35th anniversary of Mao's demise Let's apply Mao's teachings on the party of the proletariat

There follows the text of the splendid, far-seeing and memorable speech that General Secretary of the PMLI Giovanni Scuderi delivered on September 11 in the Green Hall of the Florence Congress Palace, shortened in order to keep to time limits set by the PMLI Central Committee for the Commemoration of Mao on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of his demise.

Dear comrades, dear friends,
on behalf of the Presidency and my own, I thank the comrades who took the floor to speak. They were just flashes, but two minutes of red words are worthier than two hours of reformist words. You said very right, useful and encouraging things, we will think about them.
I thank the Central Committee of the Italian Marxist-Leninist Party, organizer of this public commemoration of Mao, which gave me the honour to speak on its behalf.
As you know, Mao passed away 35 years ago, on September 9, 1976, but he is always with us, because the influence of his thought, his work and his example is still living, strong and operating in the PMLI and its leaders and simple militants, of the old as well as the new generations.
However we highly miss his physical presence because when he was alive, he was a guarantee for us. By following him, we were sure not to fail, because we knew that the road he pointed was the right one. A proved scientist of revolution and anti-imperialist and anti-revisionist struggle couldn't fail, and he didn't. Every time he completely hit the centre.
When he passed away physically, we suddenly found ourselves without a fundamental datum point and facing new responsibilities towards our proletariat and the cause of socialism. We understood that, in order not to loose the route, we had to double our efforts to study Marxism-Leninism-Mao's Thought and to apply it in our country's concrete reality.
This was our sheet anchor in a moment when many parties and groups in Italy and abroad hauled down Mao's flag and disbanded. For us, the revolutionary theory of the proletariat is the daily intellectual food, as it is bread for the body. Mao's Thought in particular, since it is an unlimited source of teachings on all fields: philosophy and politics, economy and culture, strategy and tactics, organization and military.
Every time we read Mao's works, according to the problems we have to handle, we always find new things to learn. We will be eternally thankful to Mao. As comrade sympathizer Pier said in his poem titled "Ode to Mao", sent to "The Bolshevik" for this occasion: "Let's learn from your teachings / and we will change history and nature, / making the red sun rise in the West too!"
Whoever doesn't believe that, but wishes to make the revolution, should read and study Mao's works; he will change his mind and a new, powerful light he will have in front of his eyes.
Mao is a great Teacher of revolution. For 28 years, from 1921 to 1949, he ideologically, politically, organizationally and militarily led the New Democratic Revolution, interspersed with the War of Resistance Against Japan waged from 1937 to 1945. This new form of armed bourgeois democratic revolution led by the proletariat freed the Chinese people from semi-feudalism, semi-colonialism and imperialism, and allowed the proletariat to seize political power. In the next 27 years, Mao led on all fields socialist revolution and socialist construction in China, the last ten years being dedicated to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, elaborated an led by Mao, in order to prevent the restoration of capitalism by revisionists disguised as communists.
For 55 years Mao pledged each day of his life to socialist revolution, collecting, as Party leader, military leader, anti-revisionist fighter, statesman, an experience unique in the world, of fundamental importance for all the world revolutionaries, especially for Marxist-Leninists.
Whoever wants to make socialist revolution cannot disregard Mao's Thought and work. Even those who simply want to know what happened in the world after Stalin's demise cannot do without recurring to Mao, whose Thought is essential for understanding the nature, functions and aims of modern revisionism and the havoc it brought on the USSR of Lenin and Stalin, Mao's China, the other former socialist countries and the historic communist parties. Through Mao's Thought, new generations can more easily understand the thought of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, their work, the revolutionary path, socialism and communism.
Mao always fought for the emancipation of the Chinese people, but when he was young he did that from a bourgeois democratic and reformist standpoint. When he was 18 years old he joined the revolutionary movement, the next year he became a students leader, then he tied with the workers for whom he established night study classes. In 1936 in the red base of Yan'an established by himself, recalling his pre-Marxist early experience, he said to the American journalist Edgar Snow who was interviewing him: "At that time my ideas were a strange mix of democratic reformism, liberalism and utopian socialism. I had something like a vague passion for '19th century democracy', utopianism and old-type liberalism, and I was firmly anti-militarist and anti-imperialist"(1).
In the famed work titled "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship" of July 30, 1949, so Mao historically described the issue: "From the time of China's defeat in the Opium War of 1840, Chinese progressives went through untold hardships in their quest for truth from the Western countries. (...) Chinese who then sought progress would read any book containing the new knowledge from the West. (...) In my youth, I too engaged in such studies. They represented the culture of Western bourgeois democracy (...).The Chinese in those days regarded Russia as backward, and few wanted to learn from her. (...)
Imperialist aggression shattered the fond dreams of the Chinese about learning from the West. (...) Doubts arose, increased and deepened. World War I shook the whole globe. The Russians made the October Revolution and created the world's first socialist state. Under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, the revolutionary energy of the great proletariat and labouring people of Russia, hitherto latent and unseen by foreigners, suddenly erupted like a volcano, and the Chinese and all mankind began to see the Russians in a new light. Then, and only then, did the Chinese enter an entirely new era in their thinking and their life. They found Marxism-Leninism, the universally applicable truth, and the face of China began to change.
It was through the Russians that the Chinese found Marxism. Before the October Revolution, the Chinese were not only ignorant of Lenin and Stalin, they did not even know of Marx and Engels. The salvoes of the October Revolution brought us Marxism-Leninism. The October Revolution helped progressives in China, as throughout the world, to adopt the proletarian world outlook 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".
This was Mao's conclusion as well, he was 24 years old. Finally he had found which were the ideology, culture, path, alliances, methods and means to change the face of China. When he was 27 he found and read the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" by Marx and Engels. The path which was to be followed became still clearer. His world outlook had been radically transformed by then, from bourgeois democratic and reformist to proletarian revolutionary and Marxist-Leninist. And through the serious and deep study, he understood that Marxism-Leninism is not a dogma but a guide to action, and that it must be integrated with concrete and specific conditions of one's own country. In doing this he distinguished in the Party by elaborating China's own way to achieve socialism and for the proletariat to seize political power. An unprecedented masterpiece in the history of socialism and the international communist movement. A great experience that should be particularly valued by the peoples of the Third World countries whose conditions are similar to those of then-China.
Making revolution was Mao's only great aspiration. Because he had understood that only through revolution it is possible to eradicate the causes of exploitation of man by man, of the existence of classes and class injustices, of imperialist war and to create the conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat and the masses. He certainly didn't strive to achieve merits, honours, glory, personal privileges, as bourgeois political adventurers of every colour shamefully do.
In a letter dated July 6, 1963 he said: "I am an hero in want of others." Speaking about a survey on the countrysides in March 1941, he specified that "the masses are the real heroes, while we ourselves are often childish and ignorant, and without this understanding it is impossible to acquire even the most rudimentary knowledge. It is my wish to go on being a pupil, learning from the masses, together with all other Party comrades".
His modesty, his spirit of service to the masses, his coherence and his educative sense were unlimited. Four years after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, of which he had been elected president, he called the Party "not to place Chinese comrades on a par with Marx, Engels, Lenin or Stalin. Our relationship to them is one of pupils to teachers and that is how it should be. Observance of these regulations is true modesty"(2).
The following year, 1954, during the discussion on the Draft Constitution of the People's Republic of China, he spoke against those who wanted to insert his name and his exploits in it with those words: "Finally, a word by way of explanation. Some say that it is out of exceptional modesty on the part of certain individuals that some articles have been deleted from the Draft Constitution. This is not the way to put it. It is not out of modesty but because inclusion of these articles would be improper, unjustifiable and unscientific. In a people's democratic state like ours such improper articles ought not to be written into the constitution. We have not omitted, out of modesty, what ought to have been included. With science, modesty or immodesty is not the issue. Constitution-making is a matter of science. We must believe in science and nothing else, that is to say, we must not have blind faith in anything. What is right is right and what is wrong is wrong, whether it concerns the Chinese or foreigners, whether it concerns the dead or the living. To believe otherwise is blind faith. We must do away with blind faith"(3).
On July 1, 1921 in Shanghai, along with other eleven delegates, Mao founded the Communist Party of China. In then-China, which had 450 millions inhabitants, there were just some fifty communists, who were to become three millions in 1948 and even more in the following years.
The foundation of the CPC gradually brought about a qualitative leap in the Chinese revolutionary movement. Mao was elected chairman of the Central Committee at the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau held in Zunyi in January 1935 during the Long March.
This election was the crowning achievement of the struggle Mao waged against the Right opportunists led by the first Party Secretary Chen Duxiu and later, from 1927 to January 1935, against "Left" opportunists led by the new Party Secretary Qu Qiubai, and then by Li Lisan and finally by Wang Ming.
Right opportunists, after the defeat of the 1927 Nanchang uprising, capitulated to the Kuomintang nationalist party led by Jiang Jieshi. Qu Qiubai's "Left" opportunists held, according to Trotsky's "permanent revolution" theory, that the Chinese revolution already had a character of socialist revolution. This current, like the next analogous ones, pushed the Party and the revolutionary movement to armed adventurist actions, particularly in China's main cities.
On the other hand, Mao held that, in order to reach socialist revolution, it was necessary to pass through the New Democratic Revolution, and that it was necessary to create base areas in the countrysidee and encircle cities from the countrysidee, on the basis of the protracted revolutionary people's war strategy.
Mao overcame the Right and "Left" opportunists thanks to his deep knowledge of Marxism-Leninism and the Chinese reality, to his dialectical skills of persuading and the victories seized by the Red Army, that he himself had helped to establish on August 1, 1927.
The CPC under Mao's leadership strengthened, developed and grew, and could fulfil all its revolutionary tasks in the many stages of the revolution and of the building of socialism, through the two-line struggle: the Marxist-Leninist proletarian revolutionary one and the Right or "Left" revisionist and bourgeois one.
In all, eleven two-line struggles were held in Mao's CPC. The last one was the one against Deng Xiaoping's Right revisionist clique, which opposed building socialism and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution with fake Marxist-Leninist theorizations. This renegade, traitor and swindler was timely unmasked and defeated by Mao each time he came out, and in the end, proving to be turning a deaf ear to every warning and to be hopeless, he was dismissed from all his posts both inside and outside the Party. He re-emerged shortly after Mao's death, and only then he was able to realize his old design of restoration of capitalism in China.
Mao, with his legendary far-sightedness, had long since foreseen the possibility for the bourgeoisie to seize back political power. In his speech-proved by the picture standing on the board behind the presidency-to the Second Plenary Session of the 7th CPC Central Committee, held on March 5, 1949, seven months before the victory of the New Democratic Revolution, he warned the Party, the People's Liberation Army and the whole Chinese people about the danger they could fall into if they turned down revolutionary vigilance.
Here his words: "With victory, the people will be grateful to us and the bourgeoisie will come forward to flatter us. It has been proved that the enemy cannot conquer us by force of arms. However, the flattery of the bourgeoisie may conquer the weak-willed in our ranks. There may be some Communists, who were not conquered by enemies with guns and were worthy of the name of heroes for standing up to these enemies, but who cannot withstand sugar-coated bullets; they will be defeated by sugar-coated bullets". And he explicitly pointed out that, after the whole China was liberated, the main internal contradiction would be "the contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie."
Because of the revisionists' direct faults, in the end this contradiction was solved, although temporarily, with the victory of the bourgeoisie and capitalism, despite this is denied by the revisionist swindlers of Beijing, Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao, Xi Jinping and their underlings Oliviero Diliberto and Domenico Losurdo and other false communists, who prattle about the existence of socialism in China.
On the contrary, the harsh truth is that the CPC has become a fascist party, and China has become an imperialist super-power with planetary hegemonic ambitions. Nevertheless, the undeniable fact remains that no one will ever be able to delete Mao's socialist China, Mao's Thought, Mao's theory on continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
They will eternally be a theoretical, political and practical treasure of the international proletariat and the Marxist-Leninists of the whole world.
 
MAO'S TEACHINGS ON THE PARTY
The experience of the glorious and ever-victorious Party of Mao as well as Mao's theoretical elaboration on the Party of the proletariat have, in the opinion of us Italian Marxist-Leninists, a particular and paramount importance, a source of inspiration and teachings to make the PMLI a Red Giant also in the body [In his editorial for the 31st Party Foundation Anniversary in 2008, General Secretary Giovanni Scuderi pointed out that the PMLI is already a Red Giant in the head, because of its ideology and political line, and must become a Red Giant in the body too, that is to say, to increase the number of Party members and organizations (translator's note)]. In fact, our Party, the PMLI, has been and is being built and developed on the model of Mao's CPC.
In 1948, on the occasion of the 31st anniversary of the October Revolution, Mao wrote an article for the organ of the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties of Europe, "For A Lasting Peace, For A People's Democracy", which included a fundamental assertion on the Party of the proletariat.
Here his words: "If there is to be revolution, there must be a revolutionary party. Without a revolutionary party, without a party built on the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory and in the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary style, it is impossible to lead the working class and the broad masses of the people to defeat imperialism and its running dogs"(4).
A brilliant synthesis of the character, ideology, way of living and way of working, and the aim of the Revolutionary Party of the proletariat. "If there is to be revolution" is the premise. It is good to be clear in that regard and not beating about the bush. Do we want revolution or not? In other words: do we want to sweep capitalism away or not? If we simply want to tune down and soften capitalism, every reformist bourgeois democratic party will do. But if we rather want to abolish capitalism and achieve socialism, we cannot do without "a revolutionary party", that is the fundamental organizational tool arranged for and functional to revolution. But this isn't about a generic revolutionary party, but "a party built on the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory", that is the science of revolution, the proletarian and revolutionary world outlook and the strategies and tactics elaborated by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao. They must direct all the revolutionary action by the Party, its leaders and militants, and must be applied according to concrete conditions of one's own country.
"Marxism-Leninism - Mao explained - is the theory created by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin on the basis of practice, their general conclusion drawn from historical and revolutionary reality. (...) Marxism-Leninism is the most correct, scientific and revolutionary truth, born out of and verified by objective reality"(5).
Marxism-Leninism-Mao's Thought is the culture of the proletariat, liberalism is the culture of the bourgeoisie. Each we choose one or the other. Another solution is not possible, not even the one of catching from both the cultures. In that case, the balance would lean in favour of bourgeois culture.
"Revolutionary culture - Mao said - is a powerful revolutionary weapon for the broad masses of the people. It prepares the ground ideologically before the revolution comes and is an important, indeed essential, fighting front in the general revolutionary front during the revolution"(6).
Once proletarian, people's, youth and women's masses have acquired the culture of the proletariat, it enlightens mind and brings about an enormous material force. This is well known by all the Party comrades who grasped this culture and resort to it whenever they need in order to refresh their memory and for their revolutionary political work. This was well understood by a young female comrade who recently joined the PMLI, on whom we lay high hopes.
Being a culture, it shall not be learned if not from Marxist-Leninist books. It cannot emerge spontaneously from the movements of the working class, workers, pensioners, unemployed, temporary workers, people's, women's, student and youth masses. They will never be able to grasp a proletarian culture if it is not brought by the Party of the proletariat and if they do not study Marxism-Leninism-Mao's Thought. Conscious working-women and workmen must understand well the importance of this ideological and political issue and make all due efforts to study the culture of the proletariat, because only by gaining its own culture the working class can become a class for itself capable of uniting all the exploited and oppressed masses, youth and progressive intellectuals on a revolutionary ground, of making and winning socialist revolution, of overthrowing the bourgeois ruling class and achieving and maintaining political power and socialism.
The Revolutionary Party, as Mao taught, must be based also on the "Marxist-Leninist revolutionary style." This style concerns the Party inner relations, relations with the masses and other political, labour, social, cultural and religious forces, study, integration with reality and use of revolutionary theory, analysis of the reality where we are working, the way of writing. Each of these relations must be consistent with Marxism-Leninism-Mao's Thought, which excludes individualism, liberalism, subjectivism, sectarianism, dogmatism, Right and "Left" revisionism, empiricism, stereotyped style in speeches, leaflets and articles, intellectualism, abstractionism and bookish method.
Essentially, our style must be focused on historical materialism and dialectical materialism, on linking theory with concrete practice, on knowing objective reality, on seeking truth from facts, on mass policy and united front policy, on using convincing arguments, on writing shorter, briefer and more full of substance articles, on considering the people we are talking to and their political consciousness, on using a lively and people's language, on sense of responsibility towards the Party, the proletariat and the masses, on the Party revolutionary unity, on the mutual assistance between comrades, on collective teamwork, on democratic centralism, on proletarian discipline, on criticism and self-criticism.
"Without a revolutionary party - Mao says in the end - it is impossible to lead the working class and the broad masses of the people to defeat imperialism and its running dogs". In this regard there is no need to use many words since this assertion has been largely attested by history and current facts. Peoples, even if they are led by non-Marxist-Leninist parties and movements, can manage to free themselves from foreign imperialism, as a number of past and current cases show, but if they are not headed by a Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary Party they can't overthrow capitalism in their own country. This is because only this Party truly wants to suppress capitalism and has the right experience, ideology, strategy and tactics to do that.
Imperialism is a savage, bloody and insatiable monster, even when it wants to appear as a "fairy" who comes to rescue peoples who rose up in revolt, as it happened in Libya and could happen in Syria. It is unworthy of any "humanitarian" credibility. Whatever it does, even what seems to be right or even requested, is done only for its own interest: to rule peoples and plunder their country's wealth and resources, to expand its market, to increase its profits and to strengthen its international hegemony. At the same time it starves, exploits and sucks its own people's dry, burdening him with the financial and economic crisis plaguing it, the most serious and devastating one since 1929.
The war of aggression against Libya opened a new chapter in "humanitarian" military interventionism by imperialism and its international organizations UN and NATO. From now on, the latter ones will believe it is a law and their settled right to intervene with weapons in those countries where people rise up against their rulers' oppression. We don't accept this, we must not allow it, and we call on the peoples not to rely on them and on imperialism, to defend their autonomy and freedom as well as their country's independence and sovereignty, relying on their own forces and on the help of the other anti-imperialist peoples.
The Party of the proletariat cannot exist and efficiently operate if it has not a sufficient number of militants who completely pledge their life to the cause of the Party, the proletariat and socialism. Red fighters of the first line, ideologically and politically prepared, coherent with the Marxist-Leninist conception of the Party, well centralized and disciplined, closely linked to the masses, capable of conquering the trust of the masses where they work, study and live, to help masses to handle their material and immediate problems, to increase their political consciousness and to organize, mobilize and direct them in class struggle; capable of practising the mass line and the united front line.
The practice of the united front is paramount for linking to the masses and for forging alliances necessary to the success of immediate and long-term struggles. However we must be wary not to sink Right-wing or "Left"-wing. Nevertheless, because of the current conditions of our country, the possibility to realize organic and stable alliances with central, regional and local governments is excluded. This doesn't preclude possible de facto meetings of minds on specific issues.
As Mao said, we must "serve the people with whole heart, not with half or two-thirds"(7). Therefore we cannot begrudge our revolutionary political commitment. We must draw inspiration from the Party's slogan: "Not a single minute be wasted, all time be devoted to revolution", one's own age, health, family, professional and student conditions permitting.
"A Communist - Mao said - should have largeness of mind and he should be staunch and active, looking upon the interests of the revolution as his very life and subordinating his personal interests to those of the revolution; always and everywhere he should adhere to principle and wage a tireless struggle against all incorrect ideas and actions, so as to consolidate the collective life of the Party and strengthen the ties between the Party and the masses; he should be more concerned about the Party and the masses than about any private person, and more concerned about others than about himself. Only thus can he be considered a Communist"(8). Being such a Marxist-Leninist is not easy but we must make it, taking example from comrades who have already been practising, for some decades or all along, this Marxist-Leninist militancy.
Such a militancy cannot be compared or equalled to any other militancy and political and social commitment, because it is the greatest, fairest, most useful, worthiest and most gratifying activity that anyone who want to give the greatest contribution to social progress and the emancipation of the proletariat and the whole mankind can do.
Our hope is that an ever-growing number of advanced, fighting and conscious elements, especially working-women and workmen, students, intellectuals, may understand the importance and historic necessity of the Marxist-Leninist militancy and join us without further delay under the red flags of the Leaders, of socialism and of the PMLI. Under those flags, revolutionary believers who are Party sympathizers can just as easily find their place.
Marxist-Leninist militants are red soldiers but if they do not have a leadership, red officers, how can they unleash their full strength, organize, march in unison, fight the same battles, shoot in the same direction and against the same targets, those targets being our class enemies? Thus we need red cadres who are up to their tasks and their duties, who are trusted by the Party, the proletariat and the masses, who can organize, lead, educate and mobilize Party members in class struggle. They, at various levels, must be the Party's absolutely best militants, without any seniority, age, sex, sexual orientation, social origin discrimination, but keeping in mind that working-women and workmen must be the head as well as the spinal column of the Party.
Mao pointed out that Party leading members "must be cadres and leaders versed in Marxism-Leninism, politically far-sighted, competent in work, full of the spirit of self-sacrifice, capable of tackling problems on their own, steadfast in the midst of difficulties and loyal and devoted in serving the nation, the class and the Party. It is on these cadres and leaders that the Party relies for its links with the membership and the masses, and it is by relying on their firm leadership of the masses that the Party can succeed in defeating the enemy"(9).
The current cadres of the PMLI, generally, have those characteristics, but we still have a lot to do in order to improve, to grow stronger and stronger, mainly on the fields of theory and of knowing reality. One's learning is never complete, and we must continue to learn until our eyes close forever. We must never dare to feel complete and contented with what we already know and can do.
We are not eternal, therefore we have the duty to seriously and concretely work to form our successors. As for the future General Secretariat, the 5th National Congress of the PMLI and the Central Committee it elected have already taken the due measures. We can feel safe about that, for now. Those measures guarantee the continuity of the proletarian revolutionary and Marxist-Leninist line and leadership of the PMLI.
But they are not enough. We must form successors at all levels, from cells to top. In this work, decisive for the revolutionary future of the PMLI and of the Italian socialist revolution, we must firmly follow and apply the following instructions of Mao's: "In order to guarantee that our Party and country do not change their colour, we must not only have a correct line and correct policies but must train and bring up millions of successors who will carry on the cause of proletarian revolution.
In the final analysis, the question of training successors for the revolutionary cause of the proletariat is one of whether or not there will be people who can carry on the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary cause started by the older generation of proletarian revolutionaries, whether or not the leadership of our Party and state will remain in the hands of proletarian revolutionaries, whether or not our descendants will continue to march along the correct road laid down by Marxism-Leninism, or, in other words, whether or not we can successfully prevent the emergence of Khrushchovite revisionism in China. In short, it is an extremely important question, a matter of life and death for our Party and our country. It is a question of fundamental importance to the proletarian revolutionary cause for a hundred, a thousand, nay ten thousand years. Basing themselves on the changes in the Soviet Union, the imperialist prophets are pinning their hopes of "peaceful evolution" on the third or fourth generation of the Chinese Party. We must shatter these imperialist prophecies. From our highest organizations down to the grass-roots, we must everywhere give constant attention to the training and upbringing of successors to the revolutionary cause.
What are the requirements for worthy successors to the revolutionary cause of the proletariat?
They must be genuine Marxist-Leninists and not revisionists like Khrushchov wearing the cloak of Marxism-Leninism.
They must be revolutionaries who whole-heartedly serve the majority of the people of China and the whole world, and must not be like Khrushchov who serves both the interests of the handful of members of the privileged bourgeois stratum in his own country and those of foreign imperialism and reaction.
They must be proletarian statesmen capable of uniting and working together with the overwhelming majority. Not only must they unite with those who agree with them, they must also be good at uniting with those who disagree and even with those who formerly opposed them and have since been proved wrong. But they must especially watch out for careerists and conspirators like Khrushchov and prevent such bad elements from usurping the leadership of the Party and government at any level.
They must be models in applying the Party's democratic centralism, must master the method of leadership based on the principle of 'from the masses, to the masses', and must cultivate a democratic style and be good at listening to the masses. They must not be despotic like Khrushchov and violate the Party's democratic centralism, make surprise attacks on comrades or act arbitrarily and dictatorially.
They must be modest and prudent and guard against arrogance and impetuosity; they must be imbued with the spirit of self-criticism and have the courage to correct mistakes and shortcomings in their work. They must not cover up their errors like Khrushchov, and claim all the credit for themselves and shift all the blame on others.
Successors to the revolutionary cause of the proletariat come forward in mass struggles and are tempered in the great storms of revolution. It is essential to test and know cadres and choose and train successors in the long course of mass struggle"(10).
Democratic centralism is the fundamental organizational principle of the Party of the proletariat. A principle that cannot be renounced, hated and slandered by class enemies, false communists and hardly tolerated by individualists. Democratic centralism is one of the distinguishing qualities of the Party of the proletariat. It cannot have just centralism nor just democracy. In the first case it would sink in bourgeois militarism, in the second case it would sink into anarchy. Both centralism and democracy are needed in dialectical unity, both active with the same relevance so that the Party may have the highest personal fulfillment as well as the highest revolutionary operational unity.
Mao explains democratic centralism this way: "Within the ranks of the people, democracy is correlative with centralism and freedom with discipline. They are the two opposites of a single entity, contradictory as well as united, and we should not one-sidedly emphasize one to the exclusion of the other. Within the ranks of the people, we cannot do without freedom, nor can we do without discipline; we cannot do without democracy, nor can we do without centralism. This unity of democracy and centralism, of freedom and discipline, constitutes our democratic centralism"(11).
Among the Party there can be different ideas, and this is not necessarily a problem, but after discussion, in order not to paralyze the Party's action, only the majority's ideas must be put in practice. This is the essence of democratic centralism, that Mao summed up with those words: "we must affirm anew the discipline of the Party, namely: (1) the individual is subordinate to the organization; (2) the minority is subordinate to the majority; (3) the lower level is subordinate to the higher level; and (4) the entire membership is subordinate to the Central Committee. Whoever violates these articles of discipline disrupts Party unity"(12).
Minority however can always propose its position to a new debate if facts, following events, will show it was right. If that is the case, majority must engage in proper self-criticism.
The Party is a living, thinking, operating, fighting body, completely devoted to class struggle, made up by members coming from different experiences and formations, with various class and age origins, which inevitably bring contradictions inside the Party. Anyway contradictions in the Party will exist even after the organizational amalgam and the unification of thought on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Mao's Thought. Because, as Mao says: "Opposition and struggle between ideas of different kinds constantly occur within the Party; this is a reflection within the Party of contradictions between classes and between the new and the old in society"(13).
Contradictions within the Party can be of two kinds: those among the people and those between us and the enemy, that is to say, Right and "Left" revisionists. Contradictions of the first kind are not antagonistic and can be solved by discussion and persuasion, those of the second kind are antagonistic and must be solved by a hard principled ideological struggle; sometimes, when all dialectical weapons have run out, they can be solved by striking-off or expulsion from the Party. Those are extreme decisions, which are to be taken only when this is absolutely necessary for the Party's revolutionary and Marxist-Leninist unity.
Criticism and self-criticism are the tool we must use in order to handle contradictions among the Party. First, spontaneously self-criticize if mistakes are committed. Second, criticize without hesitation who is doing wrong, or who we think is doing wrong, whoever they are. Everyone, more or less, make mistakes, small, middle or big mistakes; therefore we all are subject to criticism and self-criticism, depending on the gravity of the mistakes we made. Through this process we strengthen personally and collectively, because we learn something more and not to repeat the same mistakes.
Self-criticism is necessary in order to clean ourselves from bourgeois or revisionist influence and to prevent other Party members from making the same mistakes. To criticize who is doing wrong is necessary to prevent non-Marxist-Leninist ideas, proposals, working ways from gaining ground in the Party, and to correct whoever commits mistakes in good faith. As Mao says: "We stand for active ideological struggle because it is the weapon for ensuring unity within the Party and the revolutionary organizations in the interest of our fight. Every Communist and revolutionary should take up this weapon.
But liberalism rejects ideological struggle and stands for unprincipled peace, thus giving rise to a decadent, Philistine attitude and bringing about political degeneration in certain units and individuals in the Party and the revolutionary organizations"(14).
Whoever escapes active ideological struggle, whoever doesn't stand criticism, throws in the towel and runs away from the Party, is not a genuine Marxist-Leninist. The Party must never be abandoned, whatever comes at personal and collective level. It must be abandoned only if it changes its political colour and subjective and objective conditions to restore its Marxist-Leninist line and leadership are no longer present. In this case however one must not retire into private life, but should strive to rebuild the old Marxist-Leninist Party.
Mao's teachings on the Party of the proletariat, the Marxist-Leninist Party, are already largely practised at all levels of the PMLI, from now on we must apply them with greater firmness, precision and consciousness, with an higher and more mature ideological, political and organizational consciousness.
 
ON THE HISTORY OF THE PARTY OF THE PROLETARIAT IN ITALY
The question of the Party of the proletariat is a fundamentally important question for the future of the proletariat, class struggle, socialist revolution and socialism.
The first to talk about this Party at world-level were Marx and Engels. They laid its foundation in the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" of 1848, fighting against wrong conceptions of socialism and communism, and, later, against Bakunin's anarchists who, afflicted by petty-bourgeois individualism, didn't accept any discipline and leadership. But it was Lenin, deep connoisseur of Marxism since when he took part at the students revolutionary movement, who elaborated the theory of the Marxist-Leninist Party during the struggle for the establishment and building of the Russian Party and against populism, economism, spontaneity and Menshevism. In this regard, his famous works "What Is To Be Done" of 1902 and "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back" of 1904 are fundamental.
Stalin and Mao grasped Lenin's teachings on the Party, defended them from Right and "Left" revisionists and enriched them according to the experience of their own Parties and the international communist movement.
In Italy, the proletariat was organized into a party for the first time in the last two decades of the 19th century. Previously there were just workers' friendly societies and then workers' "resistance" societies, network of Leagues, network of fasci [Old Italian word meaning "union", "association" (translator's note)], circles of social studies, Workers' Consulates (Federations of Trade Associations) and later Labour Chambers, spread everywhere in Italy.
In 1882 the Italian Workers Party was born on the initiative of the Milan Workers Club. In 1886 it was disbanded by Depretis, but it was re-established the following year. In 1892 in Genoa the Italian Socialist Party was established, initially called Italian Workers' Party. Delegates came from all parts of Italy representing the many currents referring to socialism: workerists, revolutionary socialists, evolutionists, collectivist republicans, anarchists. The congress majority led by Filippo Turati organizationally broke with anarchists and workerists, grasped Marxism and took the goal of socialism.
But in the program approved by the Congress, the reformist and revisionist nature of the PSI was clear. In fact, it read that it was needed "a largest struggle aimed at seizing public powers (State, municipalities, public administrations) in order to turn them from tools, as they now are, of oppression and exploitation, into tools for economic and political emancipation from the ruling class". This was to happen through the electoral and parliamentary way.
With the establishment of the PSI, Mazzini's followers, anarchists, workerists, who until then had strongly influenced and conditioned the Italian workers' movement, were defeated, but at the same time the struggle for true socialism was sabotaged. In a moment when the proletariat's push towards socialism was growing, and the bourgeois ruling class was taking political, party, tactical measures to counter the rise of socialism.
In this it was aided by Pope Leo XIII who, through his encyclical letter "Rerum Novarum" (New Things), published on May 15, 1891, systematically attacked Marxism, socialism, class struggle and strike; theorized inter-classism, class collaboration and third way between liberalism and socialism; and laid the foundation for the Italian Catholics' party tied to the Vatican.
The PSI completely self-exposed when it attacked Lenin and genuine socialism, to such an extent that it forced the communist minority to leave the party and to establish in Livorno, on January 21, 1921, the PCd'I [Communist Party of Italy (translator's note)], which later took the name of PCI [Italian Communist Party (translator's note)]. An historic revolutionary act, that honours the base delegates who accomplished it.
This party was born in order to make socialist revolution and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. But things didn't go this way because, just as happened with the PSI, its leadership was taken immediately by bourgeois democrats, first through the sectarian, dogmatic and Trotskyite Amedeo Bordiga, and then with the Right revisionist Antonio Gramsci and Palmiro Togliatti.
In the end, as we all know, the PCI, never genuinely communist, closed shop thanks to the Trotskyite Achille Occhetto and the neo-liberal opportunists Massimo D'Alema, Walter Veltroni and others, including Pier Luigi Bersani, former member of "Avanguardia operaia" ["Workers Vanguard", a Trotskyite group in 1968-1975 (translator's note)].
The PCI self-exposed as a revisionist, reformist, bourgeois and anticommunist party gradually in order not to attract attention from Lenin, Stalin, Mao and the proletariat firmly determined to achieve socialism and seize political power. A fundamental passage of it was the "new party" theorized by Togliatti, immediately after his return in Italy from Moscow, in March 1944, which included, among other things, the elimination of the commitment to Marxism-Leninism in order to join the party.
The seed of revisionism and reformism however lays in Gramsci. Now that he has no longer anything to hide, this is innocently explained by the old Trotskyite and Ingrao's follower [Pietro Ingrao is a long-time Trotskyite leader (translator's note)] Alfredo Reichlin, current leading member of the PD [Democratic Party, a "centre-left" party (translator's note)] on L'Unità of February 6, this year. Those are his words: "The PCI was born on the push of the October Revolution but it actually fed on a great heresy compared to the 'vulgate' of Leninism... The communists' history was also one of considering themselves as the great reformers Italy had never had. The new Jacobins and the new Lutherans. It comes from there. Gramsci's great idea on a party different than the previous revolutionary formations as well as the model of coup d'etat professionals that could come from an uncritical reading of the Russian Revolution. The PCI refused the catastrophic and too simplistic vision of power coming from Lenin. A class becomes a ruling class if it rules even before it seizes power, in other words, if it is able to exercise an intellectual and moral leadership on the entire society, if it elaborates a more advanced culture and links people with intellectuals. In short, if it creates a ruling class. And this was the bread we ate along with many other naïve things. This was an idea of ours - Reichlin concludes - original of the Italian revolution. It wasn't 'follow the path of the Russians'."
The PCI disbanded in 1991 because it had depleted its "communist" function and because its leaders needed to re-establish their good reputation and start anew as genuine bourgeois democrats loyal to capitalism.
The Great Leaders of the International Proletariat seriously and personally followed the events pertaining the Italian Party, given the relevance of the history and the importance of the proletariat of our country.
Marx and Engels wrote fundamental pages on the Italian Resurgence from 1848 till the Unification of Italy in 1861. Engels, who was elected Secretary for Italy of the First International on August 1, 1871, until his death, occurred in 1895, followed step-by-step the Italian workers' movement. In 1893 he published an Italian preface to "The Manifesto of the Communist Party" and ladled out a lot of advises to those who were handling the Italian workers' movement. Famous is his 1894 letter to Turati where he dissuaded the PSI leader to join the bourgeois government as a minority.
Lenin held a fundamental role to expose Turati and Bordiga, as well as for the establishment of the PCI. Stalin always tried to keep Togliatti under control by having him at work for the Third International and later for the international communist movement.
Mao strove to expose the PCI revisionism by having two important editorials published on the Party press. The first on the number of December 31, 1962 of "The People's Daily", organ of the CPC CC, titled "Differences Between Comrade Togliatti and Us", the second one on the number of June 1963 of "Red Flag", theoretical organ of the CPC CC, titled "More On the Differences Between Comrade Togliatti and Us".
Those two papers of high ideological content were essential for the first four pioneers of the PMLI to understand the revisionist nature of the PCI, to ideologically, politically and organizationally orient them and to fight, starting from 1967, the Togliatti revisionist clique.
Immediately after its shutting down, the PCI's place was taken by the Trotskyite party Communist Refoundation of Armando Cossutta, Diliberto and Garavini, and later of Fausto Bertinotti, Nichi Vendola and Franco Giordano, finally of Paolo Ferrero. Other parties, groups and movements style themselves as communists, first of all the PdCI [Party of Italian Communists (translator's note)] of Diliberto and a former member of "Lotta continua" ["Continuous Struggle", an adventurist group in 1969-1976 (translator's note)] Marco Rizzo. The latter, after having been expelled from the party, established "Communists-People's Left" tied to the Greek Communist Party.
A common link ties every of them: Gramsci; someone, like "L'Ernesto"'s Fosco Giannini ["L'Ernesto" is a currently existing revisionist group (translator's note)] adds Lenin to make sure that the new trick of the "re-establishment of the communist party" may involve all those who want to "follow the path of the Russians." However it will be hard for those who sufficiently know Lenin to be deceived by them.
Now the Italian proletariat has its own Party, the PMLI, and therefore the sincere people supporting socialism and whoever truly wants to change this bourgeois society have all the possibilities to understand what stand is to be taken and what is to be done, once they come in knowledge of the Party.
 
THE HISTORIC MISSION OF THE PMLI
The PMLI was born to make socialist revolution and it will make it, if we will be able to keep at bay revisionists and the agents of the bourgeoisie who inevitably, as we will grow stronger and stronger in number and more and more tied to the masses, will try to infiltrate the Party, to seize its leadership and to deviate it from the path of the October.
"Saving China." This was what Mao wanted to do, and he did it. "Saving Italy." This is what the PMLI wants to do, and it will do it, even if it takes a thousand years. Our historic mission is to suppress capitalism, overthrow the bourgeoisie from power and lead the proletariat to seize political power and achieve socialism.
As Comrade Mino Pasca said, answering to birthday wishes with a message of December 18, 2009: "Men pass away, the PMLI will live until it realized paradise on this earth."
A titanic deed, which requires total devotion and highest preparation from Marxist-Leninists and the active and conscious participation of the proletariat and its allies.
In theory and practice a formula capable of changing the nature of capitalism doesn't exist, not even the old reformist formula of the so-called "new development model" revived by Vendola and he like, including former "ultra-Left" and spontaneity people.
Events regarding P3, P4 [Secret bourgeois criminal groups aimed at subverting control on big businessmen and controlling the government behind the scenes, strongly tied to Berlusconi (translator's note)], the scandals involving Berlusconi, Tarantini, Frisullo, Tedesco, Morichini, Pronzato, Penati and others, "Appaltopoli", "Affittopoli", "Calciopoli" [Inquiries regarding misdoings for personal profit in procurements, rents management, and football market (translator's note)] show a clear picture of corruption, squalor, rot reigning supreme among the bourgeois ruling class, the bourgeois State and Right and "Left" bourgeois political adventurers. It is impossible to sweep away all this if one doesn't use the broom of proletarian revolution and socialism.
On the occasion of the 3rd National Congress of the PMLI, that, as Comrade Monica Martenghi recalled in her opening speech, was held in December 1985 in this hall, we launched the general design of socialism in Italy. We call the attention of the proletariat, the masses and the new generations on it in order to value it, grasp it and use it so that they may direct and give a strategic tune to their struggles.
At the same time we call on all the anti-fascist political, labour, social, cultural, religious forces to unite to overthrow Berlusconi, the new Mussolini and the main social slaughterer. Surely we cannot wait for the end of the Legislature in 2013 because he can do other and bigger damages to the people and the country as well as win new elections.
Anyway his economic manoeuvre, and the constitutional bills attached to it, must not pass. This is an institutional coup because it regards articles 41, 53, 81 and 119 of the Constitution, cancels the working national contract and article 18 of the Statute of Workers [Article 18 of the Statute of Workers allows a judge to force the employer to reinstate a unjustey fired worker to his or her job (translator's note)], and hardly hits workers and people's masses, particularly regarding pensions for female workers, social and welfare services, health and public services.
An unprecedented constitutional, social and labour slaughter that can be stopped only by a people's revolt. In parliament votes are lacking and self-styled oppositions don't question the so-called trade-sales, that is to say the manoeuvre's numbers amounting to 70 billions from now to 2014.
This murderous manoeuvre, supported by the new Vittorio Emanuele III Giorgio Napolitano, must be paid solely by those who have the money to pay it, that is to say, financiers, owners and riches, that 10% of Italians owning 45-50% of the country's wealth.
Therefore we ask for debt relief; cancellation of the obligation to balance budget and of the total freedom of enterprises, both inserted into the Constitution; cancellation of the articles concerning national contract, art. 18, pensions, two-year freeze of public employees' severance pays, liberalizations and privatizations, big works. Moreover we ask for Italy to leave the European Union and the restoration of the lira, the nationalization of banks, the tax on large estates, the re-tax on money exported by those who used the fiscal shield, the tax on financial transactions, halving military expense, to retire Italian soldiers from all the foreign "missions", to reduce the salaries of members of parliament to no more than three times the workers' average salary, to abolish life annuity for members of parliament, to employ temporary workers indeterminately, a plan for full employment, to cancel health tickets as well as VAT increase.
The current withering economic crisis shows once more that capitalism cannot avoid crisis for its own inner contradictions as well as for inter-capitalistic contradictions. It also shows that, in the highest stage of capitalism, imperialism, financial capital yields paramount power over industrial capital and dictates its will to governments, states and coalitions of states.
In order to abolish those crisis and the rule of capital, there is no other way than abolishing capitalism. Therefore we must fight every electoral, parliamentary, governmental, constitutional, reformist and pacific illusion, and at the same time we must persuade mass movements we are part of to be autonomous and independent from bourgeois institutions and bourgeois governments, regardless their colour. Including the orange governments of Luigi De Magistris and Giuliano Pisapia [mayors of Naples and Milan respectively (translator's note)], who are working to integrate movements and the social Left into bourgeois institutions and capitalism through the so-called "participative democracy".
We are definitely against "national cohesion" and the "social pact" between oppressed and oppressors, between exploited and exploiters, between bourgeois rulers and ruled. Because this solely means to strengthen capitalism, its institutions and its governments, and halt class struggle.
We must unite with all those who can be united on immediate questions of common interest, practising a large united front and alliance policy with a careful political eye and according to Party's strategies and tactics.
We support the Val Susa people's movement against high-speed rail (Tav) and we express our highest militant solidarity to its fighters, who last night were attacked by the neo-fascist Maroni's "law enforcers".
We must support all the anti-capitalist mass movements and humanitarian organizations as well. Even if we are not part of them, as for Emergency, which is holding its national meeting at the same time of our commemoration of Mao in this very Congress Palace. To it we express our solidarity and support for its initiatives for the freedom of volunteer Francesco Azzarà recently kidnapped in Darfur.
Dear comrades, the commemoration of Mao is drawing to its close. You will soon leave for your cities, some of you even abroad being emigrates, to re-take your fighting posts. As for the past, we will follow you with our mind and giving you all the help we can. All militants and active sympathizers of the PMLI are in the heart of the CC, the Political Bureau and the General Secretary.
In saying goodbye to you and wishing you newer and greater successes, I will use the words with which Mao addressed comrades who were departing for the front. Then, it was August 26, 1945, the Chinese people were fighting against Japanese aggression.
With lyrical language and one of his most wonderful metaphors, Mao said: "We Communists are like seeds and the people are like the soil. Wherever we go, we must unite with the people, take root and blossom among them. Wherever our comrades go, they must build good relations with the masses, be concerned for them and help them overcome their difficulties. We must unite with the masses; the more of the masses we unite with, the better"(15).
This is precisely what we all must do. Mao, we promise this to you! Mao, thank you for everything!
With Mao forever!
Let's apply Mao's teachings on the Party of the proletariat!
Forward with strength and faith towards united, red and socialist Italy!
With the Leaders and the PMLI we will win!

NOTES
1) Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China, Italian ed., Einaudi Publisher, p. 168
2) Mao, Combat Bourgeois Ideas in the Party, August 12, 1953, Selected Works (Italian ed.), Vol. V, p. 123
3) Mao, On the Draft Constitution of the People's Republic of China, June 14, 1954, ibidem, p. 169
4) Mao, Revolutionary Forces of the World Unite, Fight Against Imperialist Aggression!, November 1948, Selected Works (Italian ed.), Foreign Languages Publishing House - Beijing, Vol. 4, p. 292
5) Mao, Rectify the Party's Style of Work, February 1, 1942, ibidem, Vol. 3, pp. 33 e 37
6) Mao, On New Democracy, January1940, Selected Works, ibidem, Vol. 1, p. 314
7) Mao, Persevere in Plain Living and Hard Struggle, Mantain Close Ties With the Masses, March 1957, Selected Works (Italian ed.), Vol. V, p. 603
8) Mao, Combat Liberalism, September 7, 1937, Selected Works, ibidem, Vol. 2, p. 27
9) Mao, Win the Masses in Their Millions for the Anti-Japanese National United Front, May 7, 1937, Ibidem, Vol. 1, p. 308
10) Mao, quoted in On Khrushchov's Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World, July 14, 1964
11) Mao, On the Correct Handling of the Contradictions Among the People, February 27, 1957, Little Marxist-Leninist Library, published by the PMLI, p. 13
12) Mao, The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War, October 1938, Selected Works (Italian ed.), Foreign Languages Publishing House, Vol. 2, p. 212
13) Mao, On Contradiction, August 1937, Ibidem, Vol. 1, p. 336
14) Mao, Combat Liberalism, September 7, 1937, Selected Works, ibidem, Vol. 2, p. 25
15) Mao, On the Chungking Negotiations, October 17, 1945, Ibidem, Vol. 4, p. 55