Dialectics of Revolution: The significance of Cheng Enfu and Yang Jun’s Triple Revolution Theory

Abstract

This article analyzes the central contributions of Cheng Enfu and Yang Jun’s Triple Revolution Theory, which conceives the revolutionary process through three interrelated dimensions: the seizure of power, the reform and development of the socialist system, and the transition toward communism. It emphasizes that this framework reasserts the indispensable character of the revolutionary seizure of power even amid the current strategic defensive of the international workers’ movement, while situating reforms as integral to the broader revolutionary process rather than as concessions to revisionism. At the same time, it stands as a firm defense of the achievements of existing socialist countries against both bourgeois-reformist and sectarian distortions. By confronting right and left deviations alike, the Triple Revolution Theory reaffirms the dialectical unity of struggle, reform, and transition as essential to the historical advance toward communism.