Mao adopted the fundamental principles in the three components of Marxism (materialist philosophy, political economy and scientific socialism) as laid down by Marx and Engels and contributed to the further development of these.

In materialist philosophy, Mao made a great contribution. Following Lenin’s identification of the law of unity of opposites as the most fundamental of the laws of contradiction, he elaborated on this law and thereby deepened our understanding of materialist dialectics.

He averred that social practice encompasses production, class struggle and scientific experiment and is the source of correct ideas. He demonstrated the dialectical relationship between knowledge and social practice as well as that one between the perceptual and the rational levels of knowledge in the process of cognition.

He agreed with all his great Marxist predecessors that in general the forces of production are primary to the relations of production and the mode of production is primary to the superstructure. But in the process of sustained revolutionary change, the new relations of production and the new superstructure can play the primary role. The former release the forces of production from the old fetters and the latter enhances the mode of production.

Mao pointed out that class character is determined not only by the ownership of the means of production, role in the production process and the distribution of the social product but also by the mode of thinking by which social production is carried out. He comprehended the dialectical relationship between social being and social consciousness and laid stress on the need for continuing revolutionization of consciousness and the process of cultural revolution.

He defined culture as the reflection of economics and politics. It has a dialectical relationship with these. In his theory of art and literature, he called for the reflection of the revolutionary class struggle and for the revolutionary workers, peasants and soldiers to take their place as heroes. He was for revolutionary romanticism and wrote poetry along this line. He declared that art and literature are important methods to educate the masses.

He was inspired by the teachings of his great predecessors regarding historical materialism, particularly the state and revolution in class society. He resolutely espoused the revolutionary essence of Marxism. He asserted that the proletariat must wage the class struggle, seize political power and establish the socialist state as a class dictatorship of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.

In revolutionary practice, he stressed the importance of the concrete analysis of concrete conditions, social investigation and mass work, combating all forms of idealism, subjectivism and Right and “Left” opportunism and taking the mass line in order to transform correct ideas into a material force.

He grasped the critique of capitalism and outline of scientific socialism by Marx and Engels as well as the critique of monopoly capitalism or modern imperialism and the realization of socialist revolution and construction by Lenin and Stalin.

He extended and further developed our knowledge of Marxist political economy and scientific socialism by learning the positive and negative lessons from building socialism in the Soviet Union, by leading the criticism and repudiation of modern revisionism and capitalist restoration in 1957, by unmasking the class character of the Soviet modern revisionists and the degeneration of the Soviet Union from being socialist to being monopoly bureaucrat capitalist, by revealing its general tendency towards social-fascism, by opposing the neocolonialism of the two superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism and, most important of all, by engaging in socialist revolution and construction self-reliantly in China and in the spirit of proletarian internationalism.

Mao integrated the universal theory of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete semicolonial and semifeudal conditions of China and carried out the Chinese revolution under the class leadership of the proletariat and within the context of the world proletarian-socialist revolution. In leading the new democratic revolution to victory in a country as vast as China, containing one-fourth of humanity, Mao is undeniably a great communist thinker and leader whom the world proletariat and people can be proud of.

In the course of the Chinese revolution, he was guided by the teachings of the great Lenin regarding the building of the communist party as the advanced detachment of the working class. And he introduced the rectification movement as the method of ensuring the ideological, political and organizational strengthening of the proletarian revolutionary party.

He excelled as the master of political and military science in accordance with materialist dialectics. He successfully pursued the theory and strategic line of protracted people’s war. To this day, his military writings are unsurpassed in comprehensiveness and richness of experience in revolutionary war. These guided the revolutionary forces at various stages and in various forms of armed struggle to victory on so vast a scale.

He directed the communist party to engage in a revolutionary united front in order to arouse the people in their millions. At the same time, he ensured the vanguard role, independence and initiative of the working class party. Before nationwide seizure of political power, he built organs of political power along the line of the united front. Upon total victory, he established the people’s democratic state with the proletarian class dictatorship at its core.

Upon the basic completion of the new democratic revolution through the seizure of political power, Mao proceeded to lead the socialist revolution and construction and improved on the example of the pioneering experience provided by the Soviet Union under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin. The communist party maintained its leading role in the socialist state with multiparty support and strived to revolutionize all aspects of society.

Mao engaged in socialist construction, transforming private into public ownership of the means of production; planning a self-reliant economic development in a well-balanced and well-proportioned way; using agriculture as the basic factor, heavy and basic industries as the leading factor, with light industry as the bridge; and raising the standard of living and culture steadily from one level to a higher one, with the highest priority given to meeting the basic needs and improving the lot of the working people.

Mao’s line of socialist revolution and construction through the Great Leap Forward, “walking on two legs” and building the communes, was tested and proven correct when it did not only overcome the imperialist blockade, the revisionist sabotage and the natural calamities but resulted in strengthening the industrial foundation of China and produced the bumper crops and ample manufactures for agricultural production and the people’s consumption.

Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, China was a bulwark of the world proletarian revolution. In accordance with the principle of proletarian internationalism, the Chinese communist party, proletariat and people of all nationalities did everything they could to unite and strengthen the international communist movement along the general revolutionary line against imperialism, social-imperialism, modern revisionism and all reaction.

They unselfishly supported the Korean and Indochinese peoples in their heroic and victorious struggles for national liberation against the wars of aggression launched by U.S. imperialism, rallied the oppressed nations and peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America against imperialism, social-imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism and racism and roused the proletariat and people in the capitalist and revisionist-ruled countries to fight against monopoly capitalism in order to advance the cause of socialism.

Mao Zedong analyzed the basic changes in the situation of the class struggle on a global scale and adopted the correct foreign policy of socialist China concerning the concrete reality of three worlds and promoted the international united front against imperialism, social-imperialism and all reaction in line with the principle of proletarian internationalism and in opposition to the revisionist line of liquidating the world proletarian revolution.

What may be regarded as Mao’s greatest achievement and greatest contribution to Marxism-Leninism is the theory and practice of continuing revolution under proletarian class dictatorship to consolidate socialism, combat modern revisionism and prevent the restoration of capitalism.

Mao resolutely pointed out that the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is the main contradiction in socialist society in an entire historical epoch. He asserted that class struggle is the key link in the progress of socialist society. If this key link is abandoned, then the waning of proletarian revolutionary consciousness results in the peaceful evolution of socialism to capitalism.

In view of the Soviet experience under Stalin, Mao declared that there must be a recognition of the distinction between contradictions among the people and between the people and the enemy and that the contradictions among the people must be correctly handled in the manner which he clarified.

Mao took into account the problems which his great predecessors required to be solved in socialist society, such as the vestiges and persistent influence of the old exploiting classes; the contradictions between the working class and the peasantry, town and countryside, and mental and physical labor; the spontaneous generation of the bourgeoisie by petty commodity production; and the force of old habits and customs.

But it is to the great honor of Mao to be at the forefront in the struggle of the international communist movement against modern revisionism centered in the Soviet Union, to systematically study and pose the problem of modern revisionism and capitalist restoration and to put forward a series of principles to solve the problem.

He had the advantage of studying the bureaucratic bourgeois currents in the Chinese Communist Party, state and society as well as the growth abroad of modern revisionism and capitalist restoration in Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. He pointed out the actual and potential factors of capitalism that undermine and destroy the factors of socialism in socialist society.

He called on mass vigilance and active resistance against individual selfishness and corruption, against the retrogression to the “theory of productive forces” of the classical revisionists Bernstein and Kautsky, against the persistent ideas and influence of the old exploiting classes, against the petty bourgeoisification of the bureaucracy and the new intelligentsia and against the rise of the new bourgeoisie.

He called for the proletariat and the people to make the socialist relations of production progressively dissolve the private ownership of the means of production, to put proletarian revolutionary politics in command of production and to revolutionize all aspects of the superstructure.

The practical application of the theory of continuing revolution under proletarian class dictatorship through the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution succeeded for ten years from 1966 to 1976 and created the most extensive democracy ever experienced by mankind. But after Mao’s death, the counterrevolutionary Right or capitalist-roaders could make a coup d’etat and carry out the restoration of capitalism in the People’s Republic of China. This must be studied and analyzed by applying the positive revolutionary outlook and method used by Karl Marx in studying and analyzing the brief success and eventual defeat of the Paris Commune of 1871.

Nonetheless, the theory of continuing revolution under the proletarian class leadership remains valid even as the positive and negative lessons from its practical application must be drawn. The failure of the Paris Commune never invalidated the theory of proletarian revolution and proletarian dictatorship and provided the lessons that would guide the eventual victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution.

The correctness of Mao in posing the problem of modern revisionism and capitalist restoration through peaceful evolution and in putting forward the theory of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship is proven by the crisis, weakening, disintegration and collapse of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes and the ceaselessly worsening capitalist conditions of exploitation and oppression in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The collapse of the social-imperialist superpower confirms the analysis of Mao who in 1964 pointed out, “The coming to power of the revisionists is precisely the coming to power of the bourgeoisie.”

The coming to power in China of the revisionists opposed to Mao and the reversal of Mao’s theory and practice of continuing revolution under the proletarian class dictatorship have resulted in the restoration of capitalism. China is now ruled by the corrupt bureaucrat bourgeoisie and the comprador big bourgeoisie, supported by the privileged stratum of petty bourgeoisified forces in urban areas and rich peasants. The Chinese bourgeoisie is exploiting and oppressing the Chinese proletariat and people and China is being opened widely to the penetration of imperialist capital.

The state has been disemboweled of its socialist character and the communist party of its Marxist-Leninist character. It is only a matter of time that the Chinese modern revisionists and capitalist-roaders will drop off their “socialist” masks as a result of internal contradictions and the pressures of neocolonialism, as in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. But we also hope that someday the revolutionary heirs to Mao’s legacy, who are the genuine Chinese communists, the proletariat and the rest of the people, will rise up once more to overthrow their oppressors and exploiters.

Without Mao’s theory of continuing revolution under proletarian class dictatorship, the proletarian revolutionary parties and the international proletariat would be at a loss today in the face of the resounding disintegration of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes; the ideological and political offensive of the imperialists, their petty-bourgeois and reactionary lackeys; and the foolhardy insistence of neorevisionists that the development of Marxism-Leninism stopped with either the great communist Lenin or Stalin or even with the revisionist Brezhnev or Gorbachev.

The crisis of overproduction of the world capitalist system is now raging, unleashing unprecedented oppression and exploitation and pushing the proletariat and people to wage revolutionary struggle. This crisis is accelerated by high technology in the hands of the monopoly capitalists, by the extraction of superprofits by fewer but bigger supermonopolies, by cutthroat competition and by the use of high finance and high technology to kill jobs and to further depress the neocolonial client-states.

The resurgence of the anti-imperialist and socialist movement is necessitated and justified by the crisis. But the question always arises, will the new wave of new democratic and socialist revolutions be able to keep and develop socialism when it reemerges in several countries before the global defeat of monopoly capitalism?

The great Mao provided the answer with the theory of continuing revolution under proletarian class dictatorship. This theory is of great historic significance for having inaugurated a new and higher stage in the development of the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism. This is the stage of Mao Zedong Thought or Maoism.

Armed with this theory, the proletariat and people who succeed in making socialist revolution in various countries can know what is the problem to face and solve in order to develop socialism until such time that on a world scale imperialism and all reaction can be defeated and the ultimate goal of communism can be reached.

In this declaration, we uphold the great red banner of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought or Maoism. We are resolved to study and put into practice this theory, carry out a counteroffensive against the ideological and political offensive of the imperialists and all their anticommunist lackeys and to arouse, organize and mobilize the proletariat and the people in a resurgent revolutionary movement for national liberation, democracy and socialism against imperialism and all reaction.

The proletarian revolutionaries who adhere to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought are today the most resolute, most advanced and most consolidated detachment of the international proletariat. They understand most comprehensively and most profoundly the disintegration and collapse of the revisionist ruling parties and regimes, the ever worsening crisis of the world capitalist system, the impending resurgence of the anti-imperialist and socialist movement and the certain future of socialism and ultimate victory of communism in the world.

It is the special revolutionary and internationalist duty of all proletarian revolutionaries, their parties and organizations to promote the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought; win over other parties and organizations which are honestly desirous of learning about the fall of modern revisionism and fighting for socialism against monopoly capitalism; and generate the resurgence of the anti-imperialist and socialist movement of the proletariat and people in a new period of revolutionary struggle in the world.