Liberation for All Peoples Against Imperialism! (Mao Zedong — V.I. Lenin)

Just as there is not a single thing in the world without a dual nature (this is the law of the unity of oppos­ites), so imper­i­al­ism and all reac­tion­ar­ies have a dual nature – they are real tigers and paper tigers at the same time. In past his­tory, before they won state power and for some time after­wards, the slave-own­ing class, the feud­al land­lord class and the bour­geois­ie were vig­or­ous, revolu­tion­ary and progressive–they were real tigers. But with the lapse of time, because their oppos­ites – the slave class, the peas­ant class and the pro­let­ari­at – grew in strength step by step, struggled against them more and more fiercely, these rul­ing classes changed step by step into the reverse, changed into reac­tion­ar­ies, changed into back­ward people, changed into paper tigers. Moreover, even­tu­ally they were over­thrown, or will be over­thrown, by the people. The reac­tion­ary, back­ward, decay­ing classes retained this dual nature even in their last life-and-death struggles against the people. On the one hand, they were real tigers; they devoured people, devoured people by the mil­lions and tens of mil­lions. The cause of the people’s struggle went through a peri­od of dif­fi­culties and hard­ships, and along the path, there were many twists and turns. To des­troy the rule of imper­i­al­ism, feud­al­ism and bur­eau­crat-cap­it­al­ism in China took the Chinese people more than a hun­dred years and cost them tens of mil­lions of lives before the vic­tory in 1949. Look! Were these not liv­ing tigers, iron tigers, real tigers? Nev­er­the­less, in the end they changed into paper tigers, dead tigers, and bean-curd tigers. These are his­tor­ic­al facts. Have people not seen or heard about these facts? There have indeed been thou­sands and tens of thou­sands of them! Thou­sands and tens of thou­sands! Hence, imper­i­al­ism and all reac­tion­ar­ies, looked at in essence, from a long-term point of view, from a stra­tegic point of view, must be seen for what they are – paper tigers. On this, we should build our stra­tegic think­ing. On the oth­er hand, they are also liv­ing tigers, iron tigers, real tigers that can devour people. On this, we should build our tac­tic­al think­ing. -Com­rade Mao Zedong, Speech at the Wuchang Meet­ing of the Polit­ic­al Bur­eau of the Cent­ral Com­mit­tee of the Com­mun­ist Party of China (Decem­ber 1, 1958)

We Marx­ists do not belong to that cat­egory of people who are unqual­i­fied oppon­ents of all war. We say: our aim is to achieve a social­ist sys­tem of soci­ety, which, by elim­in­at­ing the divi­sion of man­kind into classes, by elim­in­at­ing all exploit­a­tion of man by man and nation by nation, will inev­it­ably elim­in­ate the very pos­sib­il­ity of war. But in the war to win that social­ist sys­tem of soci­ety we are bound to encounter con­di­tions under which the class struggle with­in each giv­en nation may come up against a war between the dif­fer­ent nations, a war con­di­tioned by this very class struggle. There­fore, we can­not rule out the pos­sib­il­ity of revolu­tion­ary wars, i.e., wars arising from the class struggle, wars waged by revolu­tion­ary classes, wars which are of dir­ect and imme­di­ate revolu­tion­ary sig­ni­fic­ance. -Com­rade V.I. Len­in, War and Revolu­tion (May 14 (27), 1917)

Over a long peri­od, we have developed this concept for the struggle against the enemy: stra­tegic­ally we should des­pise all our enemies, but tac­tic­ally we should take them all ser­i­ously. This also means that we must des­pise the enemy with respect to the whole, but that we must take him ser­i­ously with respect to each con­crete ques­tion. If we do not des­pise the enemy with respect to the whole, we shall be com­mit­ting the error of oppor­tunism. Marx and Engels were only two indi­vidu­als, and yet in those early days they already declared that cap­it­al­ism would be over­thrown through­out the world. How­ever, in deal­ing with con­crete prob­lems and par­tic­u­lar enemies we shall be com­mit­ting the error of adven­tur­ism unless we take them ser­i­ously. In war, battles can only be fought one by one and the enemy forces can only be des­troyed one by one. Factor­ies can only be built one by one. The peas­ants can only plough the land plot by plot. The same is even true of eat­ing a meal. Stra­tegic­ally, we take the eat­ing of a meal lightly – we know we can fin­ish it. Actu­ally, we eat it mouth­ful by mouth­ful. It is impossible to swal­low an entire ban­quet in one gulp. This is known as a piece­meal solu­tion. In mil­it­ary par­lance, it is called wip­ing out the enemy forces one by one.-Com­rade Mao Zedong, Speech at the Moscow Meet­ing of Com­mun­ist and Work­ers’ Parties (Novem­ber 18,1957).

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Gata Malandra

Edit­or / Research­er at No Bounds

Gata is a music and arts lov­er, stud­ied anthro­po­logy, art man­age­ment and media pro­duc­tion ded­ic­at­ing most of her time to cre­at­ive pro­jects pro­duced by No Bounds.

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