CULTURAL PURGE ‘IRRESISTIBLE’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31084, 13 June 1966, Page 13

CULTURAL PURGE ‘IRRESISTIBLE’

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter—Copyright) HONGKONG, June 12. The “Red Flag”, theoretical journal of the Chinese Communist Party, in its latest issue, has described the cultural purge now taking place throughout China as a struggle of a kind never before known in history’.

Under the direct leadership of the chairman, Mao Tse-tung, and the party’s central committee, this revolution was unfolding swiftly and vigorously and with the irresistible force of an avalanche, said the journal.

It was of the utmost importance that this struggle should not be taken lightly as it affected the destiny and the future of the party, the country and the world revolution, “Red Flag” said. It said that a life and death struggle was taking place between the bourgeoisie who wanted to restore capitalism and the proletariat who wanted to prevent it “This struggle affects the issue of whether the dictatorship of the proletariat and the economic base of socialism in our country can or cannot be consolidated and developed,

and whether our party and country will or will not change colour.” “Red Flag” said that representatives of the bourgeoisie who had wormed their way into the party and “monsters” of all kinds together with their decadent ideologies, were being swept away by the masses. “World experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat shows that it cannot be consolidated, that the socialist system cannot be consolidated, unless there is a proletarian cultural revolution and persistent efforts to eradicate bourgeois Ideology. “A free rein to bourgeois Ideology inevitably leads to the subversion of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the emergence of such representatives of the bourgeoisie as Khrushchev, who seuzed political power through a palace coup or a military coup, or a combination of both,” said the “Red Flag.” Tower Firmer* The New China News Agency said today that the political power of the proletariat was now firmer than ever in China. By carrying out the cultural purge, “we are digging out the social foundation of imperialism and modern revisionism within our country,” it said. The agency denied that the purge was directed against all intellectuals, as alleged by some “reactionaries.” This was sheer nonsense, it said. “The spearhead of our great proletarian cultural revolu-

tion is directed against a small handful of anti-commun-ist villians who have donned the cloak of communism and a small handful of anti-party, anti-socialist and counterrevolutionary bourgeois intel' tuals.”