Chapter 86 Ideological Prinsoner Yu Luoke 1970

Journalist: “During the Cultural Revolution, you executed a large number of young ideological offenders who opposed your violent actions in the Cultural Revolution. Among them, the most famous one was Yu Luoke, who wrote ‘On Class Origins’ and criticized your fallacious theory of class struggle.”

Mao: “Yes, Yu Luoke was an exceptionally intelligent young man. Even in high school, he studied all 44 volumes of ‘Marx and Engels’ Collected Works’ and wrote dozens of notebooks. Due to his capitalist background, he was not admitted to university. However, he managed to complete reading ‘Lenin’s Collected Works’ as well. When the Cultural Revolution broke out, he wrote a lengthy work called ‘On Class Origins’ to systematically critique the ‘Red Genealogy Theory.’ He argued that Marx only divided humanity into two major classes: the poor and the rich, while Lenin further divided them into the urban capitalist class, the urban proletariat, the middle class, and the urban poor class.

As for me, Mao, I further refined and rigidified these classifications. In the countryside, I divided people into evil landlords, landlords, rich peasants, well-to-do middle peasants, middle peasants, lower-middle peasants, poor peasants, and hired laborers. He said that I, old Mao, also divided people’s thoughts into different levels: the bourgeoisie ideology, petty-bourgeois ideology, proletarian ideology, and above all these classes, there was a superior class of revolutionary cadres and revolutionary military personnel, and at the very top, there was a ruling class sitting on the throne, which was the Central Committee of the Party and me. I could do whatever I pleased, with the power of life and death. That was the essence of my proletarian dictatorship.

The ‘Red Genealogy Theory’ further divided people into ‘Red Five Categories’ and ‘Black Five Categories.’ The ‘Black Five Categories’ were further subdivided into landowners, the wealthy, reactionaries, bad elements, rightists, capitalists, pseudo-paramilitary officers, pseudo-police, pseudo-military officers, traitors, spies, core members of counter-revolutionary parties and groups, counter-revolutionary secret society members, counter-revolutionary monks and nuns, counter-revolutionary pastors, counter-revolutionary imams, bandits, and sorcerers, as well as the family members and children who persistently held counter-revolutionary views. In total, there were 18 categories of people who were targeted and repeatedly struggled against in various movements.

During the Cultural Revolution, Yu Luoke wrote a 100,000-word article, using extensive quotations to refute the ‘Red Genealogy Theory.’ He distributed it nationwide, and it had a significant impact. In January 1968, he was arrested and imprisoned. Even in prison, he continued to preach his ‘Class Origins’ and even gave Marxist-Leninist classes to the prison staff, criticizing my fallacious theory of class struggle. Many people were misled by him. Fearless of death, he was prepared to sacrifice his life. He wrote a poem that said, ‘The universe weighs heavily on my head, yet I remain light.’ Since he was resolute in his beliefs, they had no other choice but to kill him. On March 5, 1970, in a large-scale trial with 100,000 people in Beijing, he was immediately sentenced to death and executed. He was 28 years old at the time of his death.”