The history of our Party itself convincingly testifies that the victory of the Chinese revolution is the outcome of the outstanding leadership of Comrades Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and other proletarian revolutionaries of the older generation and the outcome of the guidance of Mao Zedong Thought. It is extremely wrong and harmful to refuse to acknowledge, or to underestimate the great role of the revolutionary leaders in a revolutionary cause. It is also extremely wrong, certainly not Marxist, to deify a leader, extol him beyond the limits of reality or exaggerate his individual role.

It was rare in the international communist movement before the 1930s to give great prominence to an individual. This sort of thing came into vogue in the Soviet Union and was started by Khrushchov and his company. Our Party rarely gave great publicity to any single individual in the 30s, 40s and 50s. In 1949 Comrade Mao Zedong moved that celebrating the birthdays of Party leaders should be prohibited and naming places, streets and enterprises after them should be interdicted.

Lin Biao and the "gang of four" later worked might and main "to establish in a big way the leader's authority" and propagated the idea of "boundless loyalty to the great leader" and so on to serve their wild political ambitions to usurp Party and state power. All this was thoroughly anti-Marxist and bred blind faith. Even at that time Comrade Mao Zedong had pointed out: "What is this 'to establish in a big way'? Nominally, it is said to establish my authority, actually goodness knows whose authority it is to establish. To put it bluntly, it is meant to establish his own authority." This had succinctly exposed their criminal intention. Unfortunately, Comrade Mao Zedong's suggestion repeated on many occasions to give less publicity to individuals was not properly acted on.

It must be pointed out that this phenomenon of giving individuals a big build-up still exists from top to bottom. Some eulogies are so unprincipled that they have reached the point of vulgarity. For instance, should a leading comrade go to the grass roots to take a look at things there, it is: "Despite his heavy work schedule he has come deep down to the grass roots to give advice in person." Or, if he puts in an appearance somewhere, it is: "This is the biggest solicitude and the biggest inspiration." His casual remark becomes "an important directive" or something "of both great immediate and farreaching historic significance"! And achievements are invariably accredited to the top leader. When an advanced unit is being commended the number one in charge invariably gets the spotlight.

In many units there are invariably some sycophants around the leading comrades. Vulgar flattery is a strong corrosive on the Party and leading cadres. It is precisely in such a climate of praises and applause that some leading comrades with unhealthy minds grow so swellheaded and conceited that they simply forget themselves and become more arrogant than ever.

Flattering the leaders, to put it mildly, is vulgar. Putting it strongly, it can be said that the flatterers harbour ulterior motives. Whichever the case may be, this must be stopped resolutely. Leading comrades at all levels must make great efforts to guard against arrogance, be modest and prudent and consciously resist the corrosive ideas and style of work of the feudal and capitalist classes. They must keep sober and level-headed when they hear praise from all around them, and must be particularly vigilant against nauseating compliments paid with selfish objectives in mind. If a leading comrade likes being flattered, and the more he is flattered, the more he is pleased, then he will surely become isolated from reality and the masses and will take a tumble.

Full Democracy

To exercise collective leadership, a climate of full democracy must prevail inside the leading body. In this regard, the secretary of a Party committee has an especially heavy responsibility. The relationship between the secretary and members of a committee is certainly not one between the head of a family and his dependents, nor that between superior and his subordinates, but one between an individual and the collective, in which the principle of the minority subordinating to the majority and the individual to the organization must apply. It is not permissible to hold formalistic Party committee meetings, at which only what the secretary says counts as he refuses to countenance any dissenting opinions and all the other members of the Party committee are there only in name. All major issues ?involving the Party's line, principle and policy, the arrangements, checking up and reviewing of work, the promotion, appointment, removal, transfer or handling of responsible cadres, as well as issues which involve the interests of the masses ?must be collectively discussed by members of the committee. Participants must be allowed to express their views fully so that a common understanding is arrived at and a decision made on that basis. It is absolutely impermissible for one individual to make arbitrary decisions.

For a collective leadership to function properly, all members of a Party committee should inform each other what is going on in the field each is in charge of, exchange views, support and help each other, supervise each other and treat each other with understanding. Within a Party committee, there must be measures to ensure a healthy democratic life as well as criticisms and self-criticisms, especially the self-criticism by the secretary and criticism of the secretary by committee members. The committee should continually sum up experience and find out its shortcomings and mistakes in work. When a problem crops up or a deviation occurs in work, the leading cadres must first criticize themselves and accept responsibility. They must never try to lay the blame on others, or worse still, hold their subordinates responsible, and attention must be paid to safeguarding the latter's enthusiasm.

Collective leadership must be built on the basis of full democracy inside the Party and among the people. Correct leadership means coming from the masses and going back to the masses. When we say collective leadership, we certainly do not mean relying merely on the wisdom of a few members of the leadership. On the contrary, every member of the leadership is required to have wide contacts with the masses, make repeated investigations, pool together the wisdom and talents of the masses, and fully reflect their opinions and wishes.

A leading body is no more than a factory for processing the raw materials coming from the people. If members of a leading group do not keep in touch with the masses and listen to their opinions, but shut themselves up in conference rooms to "manufacture things," they cannot produce anything good. They must constantly go to the grass roots, mix with the masses, read carefully the letters from the masses, meet the people calling on them, study the views and proposals of the masses and pay attention to what is said in big-character posters.

The leading bodies must regularly carry out open-door rectification for the rank and file inside and outside the Party to assess their work, make criticisms and suggestions ?all this greatly helps to improve the quality of leadership. This is something that should be encouraged.

Personal Responsibility

Collective leadership and personal responsibility are two sides of a coin. We practise personal responsibility and division of labour under collective leadership. While all important matters should be discussed and decided on by the Party committee collectively, the actual work of carrying out the decisions should be the responsibility of different individuals. One must not expect that each and every minor detail should be discussed by the Party committee, for this will lead to too many meetings and inordinately long meetings which will hold up the committee from dealing with the important issues. All Party committee decisions should also be entrusted to particular individuals for implementation. Collective responsibility must not be interpreted as nobody's responsibility.

We advocate the spirit of boldly taking on responsibility so that every member of a leading group, under collective leadership, will bring his enthusiasm and initiative into full play and attend meticulously to the work he is in charge of. Not everything is to be submitted to the Party committee for discussion, and for the first secretary to give or not give his approval to. Party committees at all levels must have this spirit of boldly shouldering up responsibility; guided by the Party Central Committee's general line and principles, they are expected to emancipate their minds, get on with their work confidently, dare to bring up new problems, study them and handle them, instead of leaving problems they should settle themselves to their superiors.

At the moment, the Party is shifting the emphasis of its work. To speed up the work of socialist modernization is an unparallelled new undertaking. Although it is nearly 30 years since the founding of our People's Republic, for a considerable period of time we put our main effort into political movements. Even now, many comrades still have an inadequate knowledge and little experience in socialist construction work. In fact, it is something completely strange to some of them, and they are doing things more or less in a blind way. In order to provide competent leadership as soon as possible in this great revolution, leading comrades at all levels must, while working hard to acquire mastery of their job through study and practice, pay the utmost attention to bringing the collective wisdom and strength into full play and adhere to the principle of collective leadership so that this glorious tradition of our Party will become a more powerful force in this new historical period.

(No.  8, 1979)