Lin Piao -- Policies of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution - Page 2

Chairman Mao has recently pointed out: The proletariat is the greatest class in history of mankind. It is the most powerful revolutionary class ideologically, politically and in strength. It cab and must unite the overwhelming majority of people around itself so as to isolate the handful of enemies to the maximum and attack them.

In the struggle against the enemy, we must carry out the policy "make use of contradictions, win over the many, oppose the few and crush our enemies one by one" which Chairman Mao has always advocated. "Stress should be laid on the weight of evidence and on investigation and study, and it is strictly forbidden to obtain confessions by compulsion and to give them credence." We must implement Chairman Mao's policies of "leniency towards those who confess their crimes and severe punishment of those who refuse to do so" and of "giving a way out."

We rely mainly on the broad masses of the people in exercising dictatorship over the enemy. As for bad people or suspects ferreted out through investigation in the movement for purifying the class ranks, the policy of "killing none and not arresting most" should be applied to all except the active counter-revolutionaries against whom there is conclusive evidence of crimes such as murder, arson, or poisoning, and who should be dealt with in accordance with the law.

As for the bourgeois reactionary academic authorities, we should either criticize them and see, or criticize them and give them work to do, or criticize them and provide them with a proper livlihood. In short, we should criticize their ideology and at the same time give them a way out. To handle this part of the contradiction between ourselves and the enemy in the manner of handling contradictions among the people is beneficial to the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and to the disintegration of the enemy ranks.

In carrying out the policies of the Party, all units must study their specific conditions. In places where the revolutionary great alliance has not yet been sufficiently consolidated, it is necessary to help the revolutionary masses bring about the revolutionary great alliance in accordance with revolutionary principles and so on the basis of different fields of work, trades and school classes so they become united against the enemy. In units where the work of purifying the class ranks has not yet started or has only just started, it is imperative to grasp the work firmly and to do it well in accordance with the Party's policies.