Magnitogorsk
Democracy and Class Struggle says French comrades recently made a video about the Long March of the Chinese Revolution which mentions Magnitogorsk and Anshan.
From Magnitogorsk to Anshan - contrasting the developing ideas of Socialism in both the Soviet Union and People's China
Magnitogorsk would be a major city, built largely in secret, on the eastern side of the extreme southwest Urals Mountains on the Ural River in the Chelyabinsk Oblast of the RFSFR.
There was at this locality a geologic anomaly – namely, a mountain almost entirely made of iron.
The River locale made it accessible to supply of whatever might be needed to develop this resource for the Soviet Government.
It would become the world’s largest city devoted to iron and steel manufacturing dwarfing Pittsburgh in size and extent.
Joseph Stalin had learned of this mountain in his youth, and had climbed it, and had over the years consulted many geologists and engineers about the possibility of exploiting this resource.
As many young people do he had experimented with a magnetic compass while climbing and had seen how the compass went crazy in different directions according to where one happened to be at the moment. Now he would put that knowledge to work.
Everything for Magnetic Mountain and it’s A to Z steel manufacturing complex at the center of a satellite of cities devoted to large-scale industrial manufacturing plants, had to be imported to the chosen site and implanted into the virgin land.
During the years of its construction (the 1930’ s) every attempt was made to jump ahead in social organization along lines which would serve as a “model” for new socialist humanity.
For a wonderful exposition of what Stalinist Socialism could and did achieve
I recommend the book Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization, Stephen Korkin, 1995, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.
Great advances were made in the development of education from kindergarten through tertiary levels of university and technical institutes.
Great advances were made in training working people to discuss daily events from the class struggle perspective to determine what a ”socialist” course and/ or perspective should look like on each of the many issues arising in Soviet life.
At the same time old ideas, some then contemporary Bolshevik ideas, were set aside in favor of publicly discussed and agreed upon modifications (as in the areas of marriage, divorce and abortion.
No area of cultural life was ignored as the buildings comprising Magnetic Mountain were constructed to house every area of social as well as technological life.
Source : Jason B Smith ABC Of Communism 2016
Note On The “Charter Of The Anshan Iron And Steel Company
This report of the Anshan party committee is very good. The more one reads it the more delighted one gets. It doesn’t strike one as too long, in fact, one would be willing to read it even if it were longer; this is because the problems raised in the report are factual, well reasoned, and very absorbing.
With more than 100,000 workers and staff members, the Anshan Iron and Steel Company is the country’s biggest enterprise.
Formerly, people there thought that their enterprise was a modernized one and there was no need for technical revolution.
They were opposed to launching vigorous mass movements, to the principle of cadre participation in productive labor and worker participation in management, of reform of irrational and outdated rules and regulations and of close cooperation among cadres, workers, and technicians, and opposed to putting politics in command..; they relied on just a few people working in seclusion.
Many favored the system of placing responsibility solely on the factory director and were against the system of the factory director designated to undertake responsibility under the leadership of the party committee.
They held that the “Charter of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Combine” (a set of authoritative rules practiced in a big steel plant in the Soviet Union) was sacred.
That was the situation up to the Great Leap Forward in 1958, which marked the first stage. The year 1959 marked the second stage, when people began to think things over, began to have faith in the mass movement, and began to question the system of placing responsibility solely on the factory director and the Charter of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Combine.
During the Lushan Meeting of July 1959, the Central Committee received a good report from them, which spoke in favor of the Great Leap Forward, of opposing the right deviation and making utmost exertions; it also put forward a high but practicable target.
The Central Committee was extremely pleased with the report and had it circulated ! to the comrades concerned with its comment. They immediately relayed it by telephone to their respective provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, thus helping the struggle going on at the time to criticize right opportunism.
The present report (March 1960) takes another step forward; it does not smack of the Charter of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Combine, but has given birth to a Charter of the Anshan Iron and Steel Company.
Here emerges the Charter of the Anshan Iron and Steel Company in China, in the Far East. This marks the third stage. Now this report is being passed on to you and you are asked to transmit it to the large and medium-sized enterprises under your administration and to party committees of all large and medium-sized cities and, of course, you may also transmit it to prefectural party committees and other cities.
It should be used as a document for study by cadres in order to stimulate their minds and make them think about the affairs in their own units, so that under due leadership a great Marxist-Leninist movement of economic and technical revolution will be carried out link by link and wave upon wave in the cities and the country side during the whole year of 1960.
Source : Mao Zedong Collected Works 1960
Constitution of Anshan Iron and Steel Company Spurs Revolution And Production
Source: Peking Review, No. 16, April 17, 1970
Transcribed by www.wengewang.org
ILLUMINATED by the Constitution of the Anshan Iron and Steel Company formulated personally by our great leader Chairman Mao, China's biggest iron and steel centre Anshan is marching with big strides in line with Mao Tsetung Thought. Revolution and production in Anshan have been developing vigorously, and a prosperous and flourishing new atmosphere prevails.
Since entering the great 1970s, the company's workers, revolutionary cadres and technicians, in close combination with struggle-criticism-transformation, have launched a new high tide of living study and application of Mao Tsetung Thought, centred on implementing the Constitution of the Anshan Iron and Steel Company.
Factories and mines of the company have all organized Mao Tsetung Thought study classes to implement the Anshan constitution in an all-round way and held meetings to exchange experience in this work.
In the mines, at the side of furnaces and in the workshops, the workers carried out revolutionary mass criticism along with the revolutionary cadres and technicians.
With the Anshan constitution as their weapon, they angrily denounced and thoroughly criticized the towering crimes committed by the renegade, hidden traitor and scab Liu Shao-chi and his agents in pushing the counter-revolutionary revisionist line in running enterprises.
Careful study and mass criticism have helped the revolutionary broad masses grasp more fully the Anshan constitution and tremendously raised their consciousness of the struggle between the two lines.
This has propelled the mass movement of struggle-criticism-transformation in the company forward with gathering momentum and resulted in successive new victories in revolution and production.
Since the beginning of this year, the output of pig iron, steel, steel billets, rolled steel, coke, sintered ore and other main products has risen steadily and the consumption of raw and other materials and fuel has dropped notably, and the time for per heat of steel has been shortened.
The company's steel mills are producing cold-rolled silicon-steel sheets in rolls and other new products, thus filling up some blanks in the varieties of rolled steel in China.
The Constitution of the Anshan Iron and Steel Company was formulated personally by our great leader Chairman Mao on March 22, 1960. During the high tide of the Great Leap Forward in 1958, the workers at Anshan held high the great red banner of Mao Tsetung Thought, displayed the revolutionary spirit of daring to think and act and waged resolute struggles against the revisionist line in running enterprises,
They firmly placed politics in command, launched vigorous mass movements, went full steam ahead with technical innovations and technical revolution, and achieved fruitful results.
Chairman Mao summed up the great creative experience of the Chinese working class and in sharp contrast to the Soviet revisionist "Constitution of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Combine'' (the revisionist system of management practised in the Soviet Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Combine), he formulated the Constitution of the Anshan Iron and Steel Company.
In it he laid down the five fundamental principles for running socialist enterprises well, namely.
"Keep politics firmly in command; strengthen Party leadership; launch vigorous mass movements; institute the system of cadre participation in productive labour and worker participation in management, of reform of irrational and outdated rules and regulations, and of close co-operation among workers, cadres and technicians; and go full steam ahead with the technical innovations and technical revolution."
The great Anshan constitution emerged like the red sun in China and the Far East.
It lights up the road for the proletariat in running enterprises. But before the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Liu Shao-chi and his agents at Anshan, frightened to death by the Anshan constitution, bitterly hated it and stubbornly blocked it from reaching the masses and resisted it frantically.
They feverishly pushed the "Magnitogorsk constitution." They advocated such counter-revolutionary revisionist fallacies as "relying on experts to run the factories," "production first," "putting profits in command" and "material incentives," and put down the vigorous mass movements in an attempt to misdirect the Anshan Iron and Steel Company on to the evil road of capitalism.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution personally initiated and led by our great leader Chairman Mao has cleared the way for the proletariat to run factories and all economic undertakings.
On March 22, 19G8, the Anshan Municipal Revolutionary Committee was set up. The first plenary session of the Committee passed a decision for firm implementation of the Anshan constitution.
Thus, the great Anshan constitution which had long been pigeonholed by Liu Shao-chi and company swiftly became known to the workers and immediately gave great impetus to the enterprise.
Under the leadership and with the assistance of the revolutionary committees at various levels and the People's Liberation Army men supporting the Left, the revolutionary masses hold high the banner of the Anshan constitution.
They have carried out sustained revolutionary mass criticism and firmly adhered to the five principles of the Anshan constitution 10 guide and promote the struggle-criticism-transformation in a determined effort to turn the Anshan Iron and Steel Company into a great red school of Mao Tsetung Thought.
As a result of the unprecedented revolutionary vigour and enthusiasm on the part of the cadres and workers, production quotas have been overfullfilled one after another.
In 1969 alone, over 430 new products were successfully trial-produced and more than 2,000 technical innovations were introduced. The vigorous development of revolution and production fully shows the tremendous power of the Anshan constitution.
Chairman Mao teaches us: "There is no construction without destruction. Destruction means criticism and repudiation, it means revolution." Through practice over the past two years, the revolutionary masses at Anshan have understood profoundly that full implementation of the Anshan constitution requires a profound ideological revolution, deep-going and sustained revolutionary mass criticism, relentless criticism of the "Constitution of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Combine" and thorough elimination of the remaining pernicious influence of its revisionist line for running enterprises.
In line with Chairman Mao's great teachings Politics is the commander, the soul in everything and "Political work is the life-blood of all economic work," workers at Anshan, holding high the banner of revolutionary mass criticism, roundly criticized the towering crimes committed by Liu Shao-chi and his agents in plotting capitalist restoration by peddling the "Constitution of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Combine*1 and such counter-revolutionary revisionist trash as "putting profits in command"' and "material incentives."
Through revolutionary mass criticism, they have been able to distinguish more clearly between the revisionist line in running enterprises and Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line. This has increased their determination to give prominence to proletarian politics.
The revolutionary masses of the Anshan Iron and Steel Company's seamless tubing mill said: "When we put politics in command, the situation is completely new; otherwise, it would be lifeless. The capitalist roaders of the mill stubbornly pushed Liu Shao-chi's counter-revolutionary revisionist trash such as 'using economic methods to manage economic undertakings' and 'doing whatever is profitable'; regardless of the interests of the state, the capitalist roaders spread the fallacy that 'the mill will not accept orders for processing steel tubes which are wanted in small numbers, which must meet high and stringent standards, which are difficult to produce and which are of the same specifications.'
As a result, they misdirected our socialist enterprises on to the road of capitalism and production was lifeless." After the establishment of the mill's revolutionary committee, taking the Anshan constitution as their weapon, the revolutionary masses undertook deep-going and sustained revolutionary mass criticism of the fallacy whose essence was "putting profits in command
." Thus the way was cleared for giving prominence to proletarian politics and the workers' revolutionary initiative and creativeness was greatly stimulated.
They persevere in using Mao Tsetung Thought to command everything, always bear in mind the interests of the country and dare to shoulder heavy tasks for the revolution. They are ingenious in finding ways to expand the types and specifications of products and have turned out large numbers of very big, long, thick, thin and hard seamless steel tubes which were considered impossible in the past.
The number of types and specifications is well above the total for the previous 13 years and production is now more than double the originally designed capacity.
Chairman Mao teaches us: "The force at the core leading our cause forward is the Chinese Communist Party," "Without the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party no revolution can succeed."
While intensively studying and conscientiously implementing the Constitution of the Anshan Iron and Steel Company, workers and revolutionary cadres at Anshan have studied once again these great teachings of Chairman Mao's and received a profound education.
They have conscientiously studied Chairman Mao's great programme for consolidating and building the Party and the new Party Constitution, and scathingly criticized the crimes of Liu Shao-chi and his agents in pushing "relying on experts to run the factories" and the "system of one-man leadership" in an attempt to abolish Party leadership.
This has helped them understand even more deeply the greatness, glory and correctness of the Chinese Communist Party founded and nurtured by our great leader Chairman Mao himself. They said that only by putting the socialist enterprises under the absolute leadership of the Party could there be guarantee that the socialist enterprises would never change their nature and would always march forward victoriously along Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line.
They all pledged to firmly establish the concept of Party leadership, actively and consciously follow Party leadership and uphold it, unite closely around the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party with Chairman Mao as its leader and Vice-Chairman Lin as its deputy leader, closely follow Chairman Mao's great strategic plan and continue to win new victories in both revolution and production.
In implementing the Constitution of the Anshan Iron and Steel Company, the leading members of the revolutionary committees at all levels and the workers have condemned the heinous crimes of Liu Shao-chi and his agents in sabotaging the "launching of vigorous mass movements" and "the system of cadre participation in productive labour and worker participation in management, of reform of irrational and outdated rules and regulations, and of close co-operation among workers, cadres and technicians."
They have established the system of cadre participation in collective productive labour and elected a great number of advanced workers to the leading groups of the revolutionary committees at all levels to lead and manage socialist enterprises.
Many plants and mining enterprises have set up "three-in-one" combination groups consisting of the workers, who form the main body, and the technicians and revolutionary cadres.
In close co-operation, they have vigorously carried out technical revolution and actively and carefully changed irrational and outdated rules and regulations. This has resulted in a rapid development in production.
Big clumsy and outmoded equipment which the capitalist roaders and the bourgeois "authorities" considered unalterable has been greatly improved by the "three-in-one" technical innovation groups and is now playing a greater role in production.
The company's revolutionary committees at all levels are now summing up their experience and noting where they still lag behind the advanced enterprises.
They are determined to hold still higher the brilliant banner of the Anshan constitution, speed up the work of struggle-criticism-transformation, achieve still greater victories in both revolution and production, and win honour for our great leader Chairman Mao and our great socialist motherland.
