I.

Entrusted by Comrade Lin Piao with the task, Comrade Chiang Ching invited some comrades in the armed forces to a forum held in Shanghai from February 2 to 20, 1966, to discuss certain questions concerning the work in literature and art in the armed forces.

Before these comrades left for Shanghai, Comrade Lin Piao gave them the following instructions: "Comrade Chiang Ching talked with me yesterday. She is very sharp politically on questions of literature and art, and she really knows art. She has many opinions, and they are very valuable. You should pay good attention to them and take measures to insure that they are applied ideologically and organizationally. From now on, the army's documents concerning literature and art should be sent to her. Get in touch with her when you have any information for her to keep her well posted on the situation in literary and art work in the armed forces. Ask her for her opinions, which will help improve this work. We should not rest content with either the present ideological level or the present artistic level of such work, both of which need further improvement." Comrade Hsiao Hua and Comrade Yang Cheng-wu expressed enthusiastic approval of and support for the forum and instructed us to act in accordance with Comrade Chiang Ching's opinions. They also expressed their thanks to Comrade Chiang Ching for her concern for the work in literature and art in the armed forces.

At the beginning of the forum and in the course of the exchange of views, Comrade Chiang Ching said time and again that she had not studied Chairman Mao's works well enough and that her comprehension of Chairman Mao's thought was not profound, but that whatever points she had grasped she would act upon resolutely. She said that during the last four years she had largely concentrated on reading a number of literary works -and had formed certain ideas, not all I of which were necessarily correct. She said that we were all Party members and that for the cause of the Party we should discuss things together on an equal footing. This discussion should have been held last year but had been postponed because she had not been in good health. As her health had recently improved, she had invited the comrades to join in discussions according to Comrade Lin Piao's instructions.

Comrade Chiang Ching suggested that we read and see a number of items first and then study relevant documents and material before discussing them. She advised us to read Chairman Mao's relevant writings, had eight private discussions with a comrade from the army and attended four group discussions, 13 film shows and three theatrical performances together with us. She also exchanged opinions with us while watching the films and the theatrical performances. And she advised us to see 21 other films. During this period, Comrade Chiang Ching saw a sample copy of the film The Great Wall Along the South China Sea, received the directors, cameramen and part of the cast and talked with them three times, which was a great education and inspiration to them. From our contacts with Comrade Chiang Ching we realize that her understanding of Chairman Mao's thought is quite profound and that she has made a prolonged and fairly full investigation and study of current problems in the field of literature and art and has gained rich practical experience through her personal exertions in cultivating "experimental plots of land." Taking up her work while she was still in poor health, she held discussions and saw films and theatrical performances together with us and was always modest, warm and sincere. All this has enlightened and helped us a great deal.

II.

In the course of about 20 days, we read two of Chairman Mao's writings and other relevant material, listened to Comrade Chiang Ching's many highly important opinions and saw more than 30 films, including good and bad ones and others with shortcomings and mistakes of varying degrees. We also saw two comparatively successful Peking operas on contemporary revolutionary themes, namely, Raid on The White Tiger Regiment and Taking the Bandits' Stronghold. All this helped to deepen our comprehension of Chairman Mao's thought on literature and. art and raise the level of our understanding of the socialist cultural revolution. Here arc a number of ideas which we discussed and agreed upon at the forum.

1. The last 16 years have witnessed sharp class struggles on the cultural front.

Actually in both stages of our revolution, the new-democratic stage and the socialist stage, there has been a struggle between the two classes and the two lines on the cultural front, that is, the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie for leadership on this front. In the history of out Party, the struggle against both "Left" and Right opportunism has also included struggles between the two lines on the cultural front. Wang Ming's line represented bourgeois thinking which was once rampant within our Party. In the rectification movement which started in 1942, Chairman Mao made a thorough theoretical refutation first of Wang Ming's political, military and organizational lines and then, immediately afterwards, of the cultural line he represented. Chairman Mao's On New Democracy, Talks at The Yenan Forum on Literature and Art, and Letter to the Yenan Peking Opera Theatre After Seeing "Driven to Join the Liangshan Mountain Rebels," are the most complete, the most comprehensive and the most systematic historical summaries of this struggle between the two lines on the cultural front. They carry on and develop the Marxist-Leninist world outlook and theory on literature and art. After our revolution entered the socialist stage, Chairman Mao's two writings, On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People and Speech at the Chinese Communist Party's National Conference on Propaganda Work, were published. They are the most recent summaries of the historical experience of the movements for a revolutionary ideology and a revolutionary literature and art in China and other countries. They represent a new development of the Marxist-Leninist world outlook and of the Marxist-Leninist theory on literature and art. These five writings by Chairman Mao meet the needs of the proletariat adequately and for a long time to come.

More than 20 years have elapsed since the publication of the first three of these five works by Chairman Mao and nearly ten years since the publication of the last two. However, since the founding of our People's Republic, the ideas in these works have basically not been carried out by literary and art circles. Instead, we have been under the dictatorship of a black anti-Party and anti-socialist line which is diametrically opposed to Chairman Mao's thought. This black line is a combination of bourgeois ideas on literature and art, modern revisionist ideas on literature and art and what is known as the literature and art of the 1930S (in the Kuomintang areas of China). Typical expressions of this line are such theories as those of "truthful writing," "the broad path of realism," "the deepening of realism," opposition to "subject-matter as the decisive factor," "middle characters," opposition to "the smell of gunpowder" and "the spirit of the age as the merging of various trends." Most of these views were refuted long ago by Chairman Mao in his Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art. In film circles there are people who advocate "discarding the classics and rebelling against orthodoxy," in other words, discarding the classics of Marxism-Leninism, of Mao Tse-tung's thought, and rebelling against the orthodoxy of people's revolutionary war. As a result of the influence or domination of this bourgeois and modern revisionist counter-current in literature and art, there have been few good or basically good works in the last decade or so (although there have been some) which truly praise worker, peasant and soldier heroes and which serve the workers, peasants and soldiers; many are mediocre, while some are anti-Party and anti-socialist poisonous weeds. In accordance with the instructions of the Central Committee of the Party, we must resolutely carry on a great socialist revolution on the cultural front and completely eliminate this black line. After we are rid of this black line, still others will appear and the struggle must go on. Therefore, this is an arduous, complex and long-term struggle which will take decades, or even centuries. It is a cardinal issue which has a vital beating on the future of the Chinese revolution and the future of the world revolution.

A lesson to be drawn from the last decade or so is that we began to tackle the problem a little late. We have taken up only a few specific questions and have not dealt with the whole problem systematically and comprehensively. So long as we do not seize hold of the field of culture, we will inevitably forfeit many positions in this field to the black line and this is a serious lesson. After the Tenth Plenary Session of the Central Committee in 1962 adopted a resolution on the unfolding of class struggle throughout the country, the struggle to foster proletarian ideology and liquidate bourgeois ideology in the cultural field has gradually developed.

2. The last three years have seen a new situation in the great socialist cultural revolution. The most outstanding example is the rise of Peking operas on contemporary revolutionary themes. Led by the Central Committee of the Party, headed by Chairman Mao, and armed with Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung's thought, literary and art workers engaged in, revolutionizing Peking opera have launched a heroic and tenacious offensive against the literature and art of the feudal class, the bourgeoisie and the modern revisionists. Under the irresistible impact of this offensive, Peking opera, formerly the most stubborn of strongholds, has been radically revolutionized, both in ideology and in form, which has started a revolutionary change in literary and art circles. Peking operas with contemporary revolutionary themes like The Red Lantern, Shachiapang, Taking the Bandits' Stronghold and Raid on The While Tiger Regiment, the ballet Red Detachment of Women, the symphony Shachiapang and the group of clay sculptures Rent Collection Courtyard have been approved by the broad masses of workers, peasants and soldiers and acclaimed by Chinese and foreign audiences. They are pioneer efforts which will exert a profound and far-reaching influence on the socialist cultural revolution. They effectively prove that even that most stubborn of strongholds, Peking opera, can be taken by storm and revolutionized and that foreign classical art forms such as the ballet and symphonic music can also be remoulded to serve our purpose. This should give us still greater confidence in revolutionizing other art forms. Some people say that Peking operas with contemporary revolutionary themes have discarded the traditions and basic skills of Peking opera. On the contrary, the fact is that Peking operas with contemporary revolutionary themes have inherited the Peking opera traditions in a critical way and have really weeded out the old to let the new emerge. The fact is not that the basic skills of Peking opera have been discarded but that they are no longer adequate. Those which cannot be used to reflect present-day life should and must be discarded. In order to reflect present-day life, we urgently need to refine, create, and gradually develop and enrich the basic skills of Peking opera through our experience of real life. At the same time, these successes deal a powerful blow at conservatives of various descriptions and such views as the "box-office earnings" theory, the "foreign exchange earnings" theory and the theory that "revolutionary works can't travel abroad."

Another outstanding feature of the socialist cultural revolution in the last three years is the widespread mass activity of workers, peasants and soldiers on the fronts of ideology, literature and art. Workers, peasants and soldiers are now producing many fine philosophical articles which splendidly express Mao Tse-tung's thought in terms of their own practice. They are also producing many fine works of literature and art in praise of the triumph of our socialist revolution, the big leap forward on all the fronts of socialist construction, our new heroes, and the brilliant leadership of our great Party and our great leader. In particular, both in content and in form the numerous poems by workers, peasants and soldiers appearing on wall-newspapers and blackboards represent an entirely new age.

Of course, these are merely the first fruits of our socialist cultural revolution, the first step in our long march of ten thousand li. In order to safeguard and extend these achievements and to carry the socialist cultural revolution through to the end, we must work hard for a long time.

3. The struggle between the two roads on the front of literature and art is bound to be reflected in the armed forces, which do not exist in a vacuum and cannot possibly be an exception to the rule. The Chinese People's Liberation Army is the chief instrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China. It represents the mainstay and hope of the Chinese people and the revolutionary people of the world. Without a people's army, neither the victory of our revolution nor the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism would have been possible and the people would have nothing. Therefore, the enemy will inevitably try to undermine it from all sides and will inevitably use literature and art as weapons in his attempt to corrupt it ideologically. However, after Chairman Mao pointed out that basically, literary and art circles had not carried out the policies of the Party over the past 15 years, certain persons still claimed that the problem of the orientation of literature and art in our armed forces had already been solved, and that the problem to be solved was mainly one of raising the artistic level. This point of view is wrong and is not based on concrete analysis. In point of fact, some works of literature and art by our armed forces have a correct orientation and have reached a comparatively high artistic level; some have a correct orientation but their artistic level is low; others have serious -defects or mistakes in both political orientation and artistic form, and still others are anti-Party and anti-socialist poisonous weeds. The August First Studio has produced as bad a film as the Pressgang.

This shows that the work in literature and art in the armed forces has also come under the influence of the black line to a greater or lesser degree. Besides, we have as yet trained relatively few creative workers who are really up to the mark; the ideological problems in creative work are still numerous, and the ranks are still not so pure. We must analyse and solve these problems properly.

4. The Liberation Army must play an important role in the socialist cultural revolution. Comrade Lin Piao has kept a firm hold on the work in literature and art since he has been in charge of the work of the Military Commission of the Central Committee of the Party. The many instructions he has given are correct. "The Resolution on Strengthening Political and Ideological Work in the Armed Forces" adopted at the enlarged session of the Military Commission clearly specified that the aim of the work in literature and art in the armed forces was "to serve the cause of fostering proletarian ideology and liquidating bourgeois ideology and consolidating and improving fighting capacity in close conjunction with the tasks of the armed forces and in the context of their ideological situation." There is already a nucleus of literary and art workers in the armed forces whom we have trained and who have been tempered in revolutionary war. A number of good works have been produced in the armed forces. Therefore, the Liberation Army must play its due role in the socialist cultural revolution and must fight bravely and unswervingly to carry out the policy that literature and art should serve the workers, peasants and soldiers and serve socialism.

5. In the cultural revolution, there must be both destruction and construction. Leaders must take personal charge and see to it that good models are created. The bourgeoisie has its reactionary "monologue on creating the new." We, too, should create what is new and original, new in the sense that it is socialist and original in the sense that it is proletarian. The basic task of socialist literature and art is to work hard and create heroic models of workers, peasants and soldiers. Only when we have such models and successful experience in creating them will we be able to convince people, to consolidate the positions we hold, and to knock the reactionaries' stick out of their hands.

On this question, we should have a sense of pride and not of inferiority.

We must destroy the blind faith in what is known as the literature and art of the 1930s (in the Kuomintang areas of China). At that time, the Left-wing movement in literature and art followed Wang Ming's "Left" opportunist line politically; organizationally it practised closed-doorism and sectarianism; and its ideas on literature and art were virtually those of Russian bourgeois literary critics such as Belinsky, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov and of Stanislavsky in the theatrical field, all of whom were bourgeois democrats in tsarist Russia with bourgeois ideas and not Marxist ones. The bourgeois-democratic revolution is a revolution in which one exploiting class replaces another. It is only the proletarian socialist revolution that finally destroys all exploiting classes. Therefore, we must not take the ideas of any bourgeois revolutionary as guiding principles for our proletarian movement in ideology or in literature and art. There were of course good things in the 1930s too, namely, the militant Left-wing movement in literature and art led by Lu Hsun. Around the middle of the 1930s, some Left-wing leaders under the influence of Wang Ming's Right capitulationist line abandoned the Marxist-Leninist class standpoint and put forward the slogan of "a literature of national defence." This was a bourgeois slogan. It was Lu Hsun who put forward the proletarian slogan of "a mass literature for the national revolutionary war." Some Left-wing writers and artists, notably Lu Hsun, also raised the slogans that literature and art should serve the workers and peasants and that the workers and peasants should create their own literature and art. However, no systematic solution was found for the fundamental problem of the integration of literature and art with the workers, peasants and soldiers. The great majority of those Left-wing writers and artists were bourgeois nationalist-democrats, and a number failed to pass the test of the democratic revolution, while others have not given a good account of themselves under the test of socialism.

We must destroy blind faith in Chinese and foreign classical literature. Stalin was a great Marxist-Leninist. His criticism of the modernist literature and art of the bourgeoisie was very sharp. But he uncritically took over what are known as the classics of Russia and Europe and the consequences were bad. The classical literature and art of China and of Europe (including Russia) and even American films have exercised a considerable influence on our literary and art circles, and some people have regarded them as holy writ and accepted them in their entirety. We should draw a lesson from Stalin's experience. Old and foreign works should be studied too, and refusal to study them would be wrong; but we must study them critically, making the past serve the present and foreign works serve China.

As for the relatively good Soviet revolutionary works of literature and art which appeared after the October Revolution, they too must be analysed and not blindly worshipped or, still less, blindly imitated. Blind imitation can never become art. Literature and art can only spring from the life of the people which is their sole source. This is borne out by the whole history of literature and art, past and present, Chinese and foreign.

The rising forces in the world invariably defeat the forces of decay. Our People's Liberation Army was weak and small at the beginning, but it eventually became strong and defeated the U.S.-Chiang Kaishek reactionaries. Confronted with the excellent revolutionary situation at home and abroad and our glorious tasks, we should be proud to be thoroughgoing revolutionaries. We must have the confidence and courage to do things never previously attempted, because ours is a revolution to eliminate all exploiting classes and systems of exploitation once and for all and to root out all exploiting class ideologies, which poison the minds of the people. Under the leadership of the Central Committee of the Party and Chairman Mao and under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung's thought, we must create a new socialist revolutionary literature and art worthy of our great country, our great Party, our great people and our great army. This will be a most brilliant new literature and art opening up a new era in human history.

But it is no easy matter to create good models. Strategically we must take the difficulties in creative work lightly, but tactically we must take them seriously. To create a fine work is an arduous process, and the comrades in charge of creative work must never adopt a bureaucratic or casual attitude but must work really hard and share the writers' and artists' joys and hardships. It is essential to get first-hand material as far as possible, or when this is impossible at least to get the material at second hand. There should be no fear of failures or mistakes. Allowance should be made for them, and people must be permitted to correct their mistakes. It is necessary to rely on the masses, follow the line of "from the masses, to the masses," and repeatedly undergo the test of practice over a long period, so that a work may become better and better and achieve the unity of revolutionary political content and the best possible artistic form. In the course of practice it is necessary to sum up experience in good time and gradually grasp the laws of various forms of art. Otherwise, no good models can be created.

We should give the fullest attention to the themes of socialist revolution and socialist construction, and it would be entirely wrong to ignore them.

A serious effort should now be made to create works of literature and art about the three great military campaigns of Liaohsi-Shenyang, Huai-Hai and Peiping-Tientsin and other important campaigns while the comrades who led and directed them are still alive. There are many important revolutionary themes, historical and contemporary, on which work urgently needs to be done in a planned and systematic way. A success must be made of the film, The Great Wall Along the South China Sea. The film The Long March must be revised successfully. A nucleus of truly proletarian writers and artists should be trained in the process.

6. People engaged in the work of literature and art, whether they are leaders or writers and artists, must all practise the Party's democratic centralism. We favour "rule by the voice of the many" and oppose "rule by the voice of one man alone." We must follow the mass line. In the past, some people pressed the leadership to nod and applaud when they produced something. This is a very bad style of work. As for the cadres in charge of creative work in literature and art, they should always bear two points in mind: First, be good at listening to the opinions of the broad masses; second, be good at analysing these opinions, accept the right ones and reject the wrong ones. Completely flawless works of literature and art are non-existent, and as long as the keynote of a work is good, we should help improve it by pointing out its shortcomings and errors. Bad works should not be hidden away, but should be shown to the masses for their comment. We must not be afraid of the masses but should have firm trust in them, and they can give us much valuable advice. Besides, this will improve their powers of discrimination. It costs several hundred thousand or as much as a million yuan to produce a film. To hide a bad film away is wasteful. Why not show it to the public so as to educate writers and artists and the masses and at the same time make up for its cost to the state and thus turn it to good account ideologically and economically? The film Beleaguered City has been shown for a long time but it received no criticism. Shouldn't the Jiefangjun Bao write an article criticizing it?

7. We must encourage revolutionary and militant literary and art criticism by the masses, and break the monopoly over literary and art criticism by a few so-called critics (those wrong in orientation and deficient in militancy). We must place the weapon of literary and art criticism in the hands of the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers and integrate professional critics with critics from among the masses. We must make this criticism more militant and oppose unprincipled vulgar praise. We must reform our style of writing, encourage the writing of short, popular articles, turn our literary and art criticism into daggers and hand-grenades and learn to handle them effectively in close combat. Of course, we must at the same time write longer, systematic articles of theoretical depth. We oppose the use of terminology and jargon to frighten people. Only in this way can we disarm the self-styled literary and art critics. The Jiefangjun Bao and the Jiefangjun Wenyi should set up special columns, regular or occasional, for comment on literature and art. Warm support should be given to good or basically good works and their shortcomings pointed out in a helpful way. And principled criticism must be made of bad works. In the theoretical field, we must thoroughly and systematically criticize typical fallacies on literature and art and the many other fallacies spread by certain people who attempt to falsify history and to boost themselves in such books as the History of the Development of the Chinese Film, A Collection of Historical Data on the Chinese Drama Movement in the Last Fifty Years and A Preliminary Study of the Repertory of Peking Opera. We must not mind being accused of "brandishing the stick." When some people charge us with oversimplification and crudeness, we must analyse these charges. Some of our criticisms are basically correct but are not sufficiently convincing because our analysis and evidence are inadequate and should be improved. With some people it is a matter of understanding; they start by accusing us of over-simplification and crudeness but eventually drop the charge. But when the enemy condemns our correct criticisms as over-simplified and crude, we must stand firm. Literary and art criticism should become one of our day-to-day tasks, an important method both in the struggle in the field of literature and art and in Party leadership in this field of work. Without correct literary and art criticism it is impossible for creative work to flourish.

8. In the struggle against foreign revisionism in the field of literature and art, we must not only catch small figures like Chukhrai. We should catch the big ones, catch Sholokhov and dare to tackle him. He is the father of revisionist literature and art. His And Quiet Flows the Don, Virgin Soil Upturned and The Fate of a Man have exercised a big influence on a number of Chinese writers and readers. Shouldn't the army organize people to study his works and write convincing critical articles containing well-documented analysis? This will have a profound influence in China and the rest of the world. The same thing should be done with similar works by Chinese writers.

9. As for method, we must combine revolutionary realism with revolutionary romanticism in our creative work, and must not adopt bourgeois critical realism or bourgeois romanticism.

The fine qualities of the worker, peasant and soldier heroes who have emerged under the guidance of the correct line of the Party are the concentrated expression of the class character of the proletariat. We must work with enthusiasm and do everything possible to create heroic models of workers, peasants and soldiers. We should create typical characters. Chairman Mao has said that "life as reflected in works of literature and art can and ought to be on a higher plane, more intense, more concentrated, more typical, nearer the ideal, and therefore more universal than actual everyday life." We should not confine ourselves to actual persons and events. Nor should we portray a hero only after he is dead. In fact, there are many more living heroes than dead ones. This means that our writers must concentrate and generalize experience from real life accumulated over a long period of time to create a variety of typical characters.

When we write about revolutionary wars, we must first be clear about their nature -ours is the side of justice and the enemy's is the side of injustice. Our works must show our arduous struggles and heroic sacrifices, but must also express revolutionary heroism and revolutionary optimism. While depicting the cruelty of war, we must not exaggerate or glorify its horrors. While depicting the arduousness of the revolutionary struggle, we must not exaggerate or glorify the sufferings involved. The cruelty of a revolutionary war and revolutionary heroism, the arduousness of the revolutionary struggle and revolutionary optimism constitute a unity of opposites, but we must be clear about which is the principal aspect of the contradiction; otherwise, if we make the wrong emphasis, a bourgeois pacifist trend will emerge. Moreover, while depicting our people's revolutionary war, whether in the stage in which guerrilla warfare was primary and mobile warfare supplementary, or in the stage in which mobile warfare was primary, we must correctly show the relationship between the regular forces, the guerrillas and the people's militia and between the armed masses and the unarmed masses under the leadership of the Party.

Regarding the selection of subject-matter, only when we plunge into the thick of life and do a good job of investigation and study can we make the selection properly and correctly. Playwrights should unreservedly plunge into the heat of the struggle for a long period. Directors, actors and actresses, cameramen, painters and composers should also go into the thick of life and make serious investigations and studies. In the past, some works distorted the historical facts, concentrating on the portrayal of erroneous lines instead of the correct line; some described heroic characters who nevertheless invariably violate discipline, or created heroes only to have them die in a contrived tragic ending; other works do not present heroic characters but only "middle" characters who are actually backward people, or caricatures of workers, peasants or soldiers; in depicting the enemy, they fail to expose his class nature as an exploiter and oppressor of the people, and even glamorize him; still others are concerned only with love and romance, pandering to philistine tastes and claiming that love and death are the eternal themes. All such bourgeois and revisionist trash must be resolutely opposed.

10. Re-educate the cadres in charge of the work of literature and art and reorganize the ranks of writers and artists. For historical reasons, before the whole country was liberated it was rather difficult for us proletarians to train our own workers in literature and art in the areas under enemy rule. Our cultural level was relatively low and our experience limited. Many of our workers in literature and art had received a bourgeois education. In the course of their revolutionary activities in literature and art, some failed to pass the test of enemy persecution and turned traitor, while others failed to resist the corrosive influence of bourgeois ideas and became rotten. In the base areas, we trained a considerable number of revolutionary workers in literature and art. Especially after the publication of the Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art, they had the correct orientation, embarked on the path of integration with the workers, peasants and soldiers, and played a positive role in the revolution. The weakness was that, after the country was liberated and we entered the big cities, many comrades failed to resist the corrosion of bourgeois ideology in the ranks of our writers and artists, with the result that some of them have fallen out in the course of advance. Ours is the literature and art of the proletariat, the literature and art of the Party. The principle of proletarian Party spirit is the outstanding feature distinguishing us from other classes. It must be understood that representatives of other classes also have their principle of party spirit, and that they are very stubborn too. We must firmly adhere to the principle of proletarian Party spirit and combat the corrosion of bourgeois ideology in creative thinking, in organizational line and in style of work. As for bourgeois ideology, we must draw a clear line of demarcation and must on no account enter into peaceful coexistence with it. A variety of problems now exist in literary and art circles which, for most people, are problems of ideological understanding and of raising such understanding through education. We must earnestly study Chairman Mao's works, creatively study and apply them, tie up what we learn from them with our own thinking and practice and study them with specific problems in mind. Only in this way can we really understand, grasp and master Chairman Mao's thought. We must plunge into the thick of life for a long period of time, integrate ourselves with the workers, peasants and soldiers to raise our class consciousness, remould our ideology and wholeheartedly serve the people without any regard for personal fame or gain. It is necessary to teach our comrades to study Marxism-Leninism and Chairman Mao's works and to remain revolutionary all their lives, and pay special attention to the maintenance of proletarian integrity in later life, which is not at all easy.

III.

By taking part in the forum, we have acquired a relatively clear understanding of all the questions mentioned above, and our opinions on them now correspond with the realities in the work in literature and art among the armed forces. As a result, the level of our political consciousness has been raised, and our determination to carry out the socialist cultural revolution and our sense of responsibility in this respect have likewise been strengthened. We will continue to study Chairman Mao's works conscientiously, make serious investigations and studies and do well in our cultivation of "experimental plots" and the production of good models, so as to take the lead in the current struggle of the cultural revolution to foster proletarian ideology and liquidate bourgeois ideology.

Comrade Lin Piao's Letter to Members of the Standing Committee of the Military Commission of the Party Central Committee, March 22, 1966