Bombard the Bourgeois Headquarters!

#PUBLICATION NOTE

This edition of Bombard the Bourgeois Headquarters! has been prepared and revised for digital publication by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland on the basis of the following edition: Bombard the Headquarters, in the Beijing Review, Vol. 10, No. 33 (11th of August, 1967).

#INTRODUCTION NOTE

This is the big-character poster written by Comrade Mao Zedong in Beijing, China on the 5th of August, 1966 in refutation of Liu Shaoqi's bourgeois-reactionary line during the 11th Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

The 11th Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was held in Beijing, China between the 1st and 12th of August, 1966. The Plenary Session decided to launch the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

During the 11th Plenary Session of the Party's Eighth Central Committee, Comrade Mao Zedong was at first in the minority regarding the initiation of the Cultural Revolution. It was only once he put up this big-character poster to mobilize the Red Guards against Liu Shaoqi's bourgeois headquarters that he was able to win over the Centrist elements in the Central Committee for launching the Cultural Revolution.

#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

#BOMBARD THE BOURGEOIS HEADQUARTERS!

#MY BIG-CHARACTER POSTER

#Mao Zedong

#5th of August, 1966

#★

China's first Marxist-Leninist big-character poster and Commentator's article on it in the Renmin Ribao [People's Daily] are indeed superbly written!¹ Comrades, please read them again. But in the last 50 days or so, some leading comrades from the central down to the local levels have acted in a diametrically opposite way. Adopting the reactionary standpoint of the bourgeoisie, they have enforced a bourgeois dictatorship and struck down the surging movement of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. They have stood facts on their head and juggled black and white, encircled and suppressed revolutionaries, stifled opinions differing from their own, imposed a White terror, and felt very pleased with themselves. They have puffed up the arrogance of the bourgeoisie and deflated the morale of the proletariat. How poisonous! Viewed in connection with the Right-wing deviation in 1962 and the wrong tendency of 1964, which was «Left-wing» in form, but Right-wing in essence, shouldn't this make one wide awake?²