Party of the whole people
전인민의 당
The formula of the CPSU's new (Third) Programme of 1961: since socialism had won completely, just as the Soviet state had passed from a dictatorship of the proletariat to a state of the whole people, the CPSU had passed from the party of the working class to the party of the whole Soviet people. In point 19 of its 1963 Proposal the Chinese party objected that there are no non-class or supra-class parties and that a "party of the whole people" could not replace the vanguard party of the proletariat; the CPSU replied in its Open Letter that, having become a political organisation of the whole people, the party had strengthened its ties with the masses.
In depth
The Chinese critique
Point 19 of the Proposal stated that, according to Leninism, the proletarian party must exist together with the dictatorship of the proletariat in socialist countries, and that the party cannot be dispensed with throughout the historical period of that dictatorship. It asked whether there could be a "party of the whole people" and whether it could replace the vanguard party of the proletariat, calling this not an internal question of one party but a fundamental question of the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism. For Marxist-Leninists there are no non-class or supra-class parties; the proletarian party can represent the interests of the whole people precisely because it represents the interests of the proletariat.
The Soviet answer
The Open Letter said that, to justify the cult of personality, the Chinese leaders had piled up reasoning far from Marxism about class struggle in the USSR and the supposedly wrong propositions of the CPSU Programme on the state of the whole people and the party of the whole people. Having become a political organisation of the whole people, it answered, the CPSU had strengthened its ties with the masses and gained greater strength and discipline; with the victory of socialism Marxism-Leninism, the ideology of the working class, had become the ideology of the whole people.