Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom: Text of 'On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People'
TSE-TUNG, MAO
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People SPEECH TO THE SUPREME STATE CONFERENCE Peking, February 27, J957 By Mao Tse-tung Chairman, Communist Party of China Our general...
...In a Communist-governed stale, tile Party member regards all non-Communists as his inferiors and does not wish to mix with them more than lie has to...
...But, in the concrete conditions existing in China, such an antagonistic contradiction, if properly handled, can be transformed into a non-antagonistic one and resolved in a peaceful way...
...In a socialist country, such a development is usually only of a localized and temporary nature...
...Since the vacillating elements unwilling to carry on have withdrawn, the great majority of staunch Party members are more firmly united for the struggle...
...that is to say, to solve the contradictions between ourselves and the enemy within the country—for instance, to arrest, try and sentence certain counter-revolutionaries, and for a specified period of time deprive landlords and bureaucrat-capitalists of their right to vote and freedom of speech—all this comes within the scope 7. If the bourgeoisie is properly handled by the Communist party through criticism and education and if it accepts this policy, then its contradictions with the working class will be non-antagonistic and it will remain « part of the people, but if either of these conditions is not fulfilled it passes into the category of "the enemy...
...the unity of opposites is conditional, temporary and transitory, and hence relative, whereas struggle between opposites is absolute...
...But this is to beg the question with regard to the social structures created by contemporary Communism, for under Communist rule the Party itself tends to form a privileged class with interests divergent from those of other sections of the population, and the despotic character of the state makes it less easy to adjust conflicts peacefully than under conditions of liberal democracy...
...What I defined here was the political basis for the long-term coexistence of the various parties...
...This cooperative is situated in a hilly region which was very poor in the past and depended on relief grain sent there every year by the People's Government...
...Our basic task is no longer to set free the productive forces but to 33...
...Sometimes, because our arrangements do not correspond to objective reality, contradictions arise and the balance is upset...
...the fact that it had actually gone so far without disruption was proof that the capitalist system had not yet reached its maximum capacity...
...Why, then, do some people now feel 23...
...On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People SPEECH TO THE SUPREME STATE CONFERENCE Peking, February 27, J957 By Mao Tse-tung Chairman, Communist Party of China Our general subject is the correct handling of contradictions among the people...
...we have achieved much, but in the present transitional period of tremendous social change we are still beset by many difficult problems...
...The small number of grain-short households still found in the countryside will no longer go short, so that, with the exception of certain peasants who grow industrial crops, all peasant households will then have 42...
...The present situation with regard to counter-revolutionaries can be stated in these words: There still are counter-revolutionaries, but not many...
...Information about events in Hungary last autumn came to China in two ways...
...Today, Mao is anxious to curb excessive violence and repression by Party zealots because he fears it may alienate the masses from the Party as happened in Hungary...
...They are the overwhelming majority of the poor peasants and lower middle peasants...
...Among the documents distributed at today's meeting is one concerning the Wang Kuo-fan cooperative in Tsunhua County, Hopei Province, which I suggest you read...
...They wage a struggle against the working class on every front, including the ideological front...
...Without agriculture there can be no light industry...
...The reactionaries and imperialist agents, he argues, take advantage of contradictions among the people to foment disorder, and hence there may be mass revolts in a Communist-ruled country "if they [i.e., contradictions among the people] are not dealt with properly, or if we relax vigilance and lower our guard...
...No, on the one hand, members of the bourgeoisie have already become managerial personnel in joint state-private enterprises and are being transformed from exploiters into working people living by their own labor...
...Contradictions in a socialist society are fundamentally different from con24...
...Under this system, the people enjoy a wide measure of democracy and freedom, but at the same time they have to keep themselves within the bounds of socialist discipline.19 All this is well understood by the people...
...However, his forecast of the desirable results which would in his view follow from it makes it a tempting expedient for a Communist world faced with serious internal difficulties...
...Only then will industry have raw materials and a market, and only so will it be possible to accumulate fairly large funds for the building of a powerful heavy industry...
...This also comes within the scope of the principle of "overall planning, all-around consideration and proper arrangements...
...It is still being attacked and regarded as a poisonous weed in many parts of the world...
...They are two conflicting aspects of a single entity, contradictory as well as united, and we should not one-sidedly emphasize one to the denial of the other...
...Those who have this "exclusive-club" mentality56 resist the idea of bringing all positive factors into play, of rallying everyone who can be rallied, and of doing everything possible to turn negative factors into positive ones, serving the great cause of building a socialist society...
...3. Help to consolidate, not undermine or weaken, the people's democratic dictatorship...
...The bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie are bound to give expression to their ideologies...
...He is ready to be patient with them and give them time...
...now we have them...
...Ot these six criteria, the most important are the socialist path and the leadership of the Party...
...some of them were persuaded by Communist propaganda that they would have more scope than before if the Communists came to power and gave - degree of support to their cause...
...But the real target of their attack is actually the most fundamental elements of Marxism...
...In the period of the socialist revolution, exploitation of the working class to make profits is one side, while support of the Constitution and willingness to accept socialist transformation is the other...
...During the war, it was used very successfully in the anti-Japanese bases to deal with relations between those in positions of leadership and the masses, between the Army and the civilian population, between officers and men, between different units of the Army, and between various groups of cadres...
...Because conditions in Tibet are not ripe, democratic reforms have not yet been carried out there.55 According to the 17-point agreement reached 54...
...Are these opinions correct...
...In regard to the enemy, it uses the method of dictatorship, that is, it forbids them to take part in political activities for as long a period of time as is necessary...
...faith preached at powerless, compulsory listeners by martinet political bosses and enforced by thug policemen can never regain the freshness of a gospel which once promised to "pull down the mighty from their seats and exalt the humble and meek...
...It is true that the establishment of our socialist system has opened the road leading to the ideal state of the future, but we must work hard, very hard indeed, if we are to make that ideal a reality...
...At this stage of building socialism, all classes, strata and social groups which approve, support and work for the cause of socialist first by the domination of the "warlords" and then by the single-party rule of the Kuomintang...
...We should not be too exacting in what we expect of them...
...It is the Parly authorities who will decide whether the leader of a strike has "deliberately put forward unreasonable demands" or spread rumors in order to make trouble...
...This contradiction will also manifest itself in a contradiction between different persons, that is, a contradiction between those who have a relatively accurate understanding of objective laws and those whose understanding of them is relatively inaccurate...
...In Europe, public executions had everywhere ceased to be performed for more than a generation before the advent of the Communist and Nazi regimes, but in China they went on under the Manchu monarchy and the warlords into the present century, so that they were no novelty to adult Chinese and much less shocking than they would have been in Europe...
...Within the ranks of the people, we cannot do without democracy, nor can we do without centralism...
...Obviously, one cannot say that there has been no improvement in the life of the peasants...
...What was not imagined in pre-Leninist Marxism was the domination of a single organized party which would effectively deprive everyone of democratic freedom...
...During the war of resistance to Japanese aggression, all those classes, strata and social groups which opposed aggression belonged to the category of the people, while the Japanese imperialists, Chinese traitors and the pro-Japanese elements belonged to the category of enemies of the people...
...The working class and the entire people led by it" implies again that the Communist party represents the whole population except for the elements specifically designated as "the enemy...
...This will be of help in perfecting our legal system and also in dealing correctly with counter-revolutionaries and other criminals...
...In one sense, it is...
...Crude, coercive methods should not be used in this struggle, but only the method of painstaking reasoning.62 Today, socialism enjoys favorable conditions in the ideological struggle...
...The masses have gained experience through this struggle...
...Grain bought from the peasants at normal prices only amounts to something over 50 billion catties a year...
...Can the capitalists be so clever as to need no more remolding...
...Even, however, in a country with mental habits formed by millennia of autocratic government, there are plenty of people who are aware that these are not the only possible alternatives...
...Marxists should not be afraid of criticism from any quarter...
...Actually, there are bound to be some who are all along reluctant, ideologically, to accept Marxism-Leninism and Communism...
...they are strong and they can fight...
...The two must not be confused...
...The peasants were to be won over by the promise of distribution of landlords' estates, but the urban proletariat, although minority, must lead the partnership because the ideology of the peasants was petty bourgeois...
...With the development of agriculture and light industry, heavy industry will be assured of its market and funds and thus grow faster...
...In our country, a growing number of people have come to understand it...
...But if it is not properly handled, if, say, we do not follow a policy of unity, criticizing and educating the national bourgeoisie, or if the national bourgeoisie does not accept this policy, then the contradictions between the working class and the national bourgeoisie can turn into an antagonistic contradiction as between ourselves and the enemy.7 Since the contradictions between ourselves and the enemy and those among the people differ in nature, they must be solved in different ways...
...If "many people refuse to admit that contradictions still exist in a socialist society," it must be at any rate partly due to the Communist propaganda which represents all human conflict as due to the system of private property and depicts the collectivist society as a paradise of harmony and innocence...
...5. The Question of Intellectuals Contradictions within the ranks of the people in our country also find expression among our intellectuals...
...progress each year...
...exploited which exists between the national bourgeoisie and the working class is an antagonistic one...
...cussion, criticism and reasoning that we can really foster correct ideas, overcome wrong ideas and really settle issues...
...The guiding spirits in disturbances should not be removed from their jobs proposals must be made as suggestions which the Communists may or may not adopt, and not as claims or demands...
...The slogan "long-term coexistence and mutual supervision" is also a product of specific historical conditions in our country...
...The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the class struggle between various political forces, and the class struggle in the ideological field between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie will still be long and devious and at times may even become very acute...
...This must be affirmed...
...Why should « majority of the Chinese people desire Communist rule if they are not even Marxists...
...It is also clear that it takes a hard struggle to build up cooperatives...
...But the comprador element had ceased to be important long before the Communists came to power...
...This education is self-education among the people, and criticism and self-criticism is the fundamental method of self-education...
...In China, there was for a long time greater emphasis on the peasant side of the alliance, and the national bourgeoisie was included in the class grouping, but the nominal widening of the social base did not make any difference to the Communist party's determination to achieve total power...
...Just as it is with criticism of our other faults and mistakes, combating waste is like washing our faces...
...We should not use methods of suppression to prevent them from expressing themselves, but should allow them to do so and at the same time argue with them and direct well-considered criticism at them...
...Take the question of production...
...We must do away with all such shortcomings...
...The statement that revisionism or rightist opportunism is more dangerous than doctrinairism is perhaps the most important passage in Mao's speech in the light of recent events...
...We think that it is harmful to the growth of art and science if administrative measures are used to impose one particular style of art or school of thought and to ban another...
...But in fact these elections proved nothing, as no opposition party was allowed to put up candidates and there was no choice for the electors...
...Led by the working class and the Communist party, and united as one, our 600 million people2 are engaged in the great work of building socialism...
...This was achieved principally by assurances that the peasants could withdraw from the cooperatives again if they wished and by substantial credits given to the cooperatives, but denied to private farmers, as inducements to join...
...The true, the good and the beautiful always exist in comparison with the false, the evil and the ugly, and grow in struggle with the latter...
...that state organs must practice democratic centralism and must rely on the masses, that the personnel of state organs must serve the people...
...Struggle against imperialism and reaction (i.e., the Japanese, the Americans and the Kuomintang) was not enough by Communist standards...
...We must spread the idea of building our country through hard work and thrift...
...If the Communists appeal at all to China's traditional ways of thought, they prefer Taoism to Confucianism...
...The early European travelers in China were deeply impressed, and sometimes appalled, by the vast numbers of the population...
...As Mao says, the essential tiling is to start with a desire for unity, and this can reasonably be expected to exist on both sides in a party whose members have voluntarily joined it on basis of common principles...
...Although they constitute only 6 per cent of China's total population, they inhabit regions which altogether comprise 50 to 60 per cent of the country's total area.54 It is therefore imperative to foster good relations between the Han people and the national minorities...
...The bourgeois-democratic revolution is supposed to have begun with the overthrow of the monarchy in 1912 but to have been frustrated national disunity and turmoil which the people detested have gone forever...
...The time when he was library assistant in Peking National University, in the midst of the excitements and controversies of the Chinese "renaissance" of the early Twenties, was undoubtedly the most effectively and to order their lives properly, the people want their government, the leaders of productive work and of educational and cultural bodies to issue suitable orders of an obligatory nature...
...These activities seem less necessary when the Party is in power and can command obedience instead of winning support...
...At one time, in waging inner-Party struggle, the "left" doctrinaires used the method of "ruthless struggle and merciless blows...
...and so this is also a contradiction among the people...
...Certain contradictions remain to be resolved, such as those between the state and the cooperatives and those within and between the cooperatives themselves...
...A few years later in 1945, when the Chinese Communist party held its 7th National Congress, unity was thus achieved throughout the Party and the great victory of the people's revolution was assured...
...it was the demand of the people.35 It was done to free the masses from long years of oppression by counter-revolutionaries and all kinds of local tyrants—in other words, to set free the productive forces...
...But no such common basis exists in relation lo those for whom the Communist party is merely coercive authority and who do not accept its exclusive right to govern...
...This economy drive must be carried out in a thorough, sustained way...
...Has this class contradiction been resolved completely...
...We refer to the allegation that, in the seven years since liberation, the life of the workers has improved but not that of the peasants.43 As a matter of fact, with very few exceptions both the workers and the peasants are better off than before...
...Mao warns the puppet parties that they will he tolerated only as long as they continue to accept their puppet status...
...Not only is the regime supposed to be based politically on the worker rather than on the peasant, but economically the policy of intensive industrialization favors the urban worker insofar as the overriding need is to provide food at minimum cost for the labor force in industry...
...But this does not mean that in our country there is no possibility of the masses creating disturbances...
...There are the various non-Chinese mountain peoples of western and southwestern China, who are remnants of earlier inhabitants overrun by Chinese settlement...
...At the beginning, Marxism was subjected to all kinds of attack and regarded as a poisonous weed...
...In certain places, both great-Han chauvinism and local nationalism still exist in a serious degree, and this calls for our close attention...
...Changing one's world outlook is never easy for an adult, and it need cause no surprise that, according to Mao, "it cannot yet be said that most of our intellectuals have accomplished it...
...When the majority of the people have clear-cut criteria to go by, criticism and self-criticism can be conducted along proper lines, and these criteria can be applied to people's words and actions to determine whether they are fragrant flowers or poisonous weeds...
...But it is a twisting of Marxist theory to say that the last analysis it serves the economic base...
...In arguing that increased industrial production under the Communist regime proves the superiority of socialism, Mao cannot appeal to Marx, for traditional Marxism required capitalist industry to be fully developed before the lime could be ripe for transition to socialism...
...There can be no reasonable doubt, however, that the population of mainland China is well over 500 million...
...Nonetheless, wrongs must be righted when they are discovered...
...New things always have difficulties and ups and downs to get over as they grow...
...For sensitive individuals, the brainwashing process with its cruel denunciations by colleagues and enforced self-criticism involved the most acute mental suffering, and even the most tough-minded found it hard to bear...
...Without this subjective desire for unity, once the struggle starts it is liable to get out of hand...
...The recruits which a revolutionary party obtains after it has come to power—particularly if it introduces a system in which all jobs depend on Parly patronage—are necessarily of a different kind from those who join it while it is still in the political wilderness...
...But the extraordinary anxiety of Communists to claim that perfect liberty and democracy can be attained only under the permanent, exclusive and uncontrolled rule of their own party is an indirect tribute to the unfailing attraction which these concepts have for modern humanity...
...The "bureaucratic capitalists" who flourished under the Kuomintang regime were extremely nationalistic and restricted foreign business enterprise in all kinds of ways...
...Since tween the relations of production and the development of the productive forces...
...It is interesting to find that the Chinese Communists themselves are affected by this feeling of being lost in the crowd...
...This was absolutely necessary...
...If we want to see China rich and strong, we must be prepared for several decades of intensive effort which will include, among other things, carrying out a policy of building our country through hard work and thrift—of practicing strict economy and combating waste...
...In joint state-private industrial and commercial enterprises, capitalists still receive a fixed rate of interest on their capital, that is to say, exploitation still exists...
...But it must be said that such a view does not tally with the actual circumstances of our industrialists and businessmen, nor with what most of them want...
...they should work together with the staff and workers in the enterprises and make the enterprises the chief centers for remolding themselves...
...The line we adopted in this work was the mass line, that is, the suppression of counter-revolution by the people themselves.37 Of course, even with the adoption of this line, mistakes will still occur in our work, but they will be fewer and easier to correct...
...tradictions in old societies, such as capitalist society...
...Correct and good things have often at first been looked upon not as fragrant flowers but as poisonous weeds...
...Relationships in production and exchange are still being gradually established along socialist lines in various sectors of our economy, and more and more appropriate forms are being sought...
...But our socialist system has just been set up...
...But China, of course, has only carried a step further the Russian Revolution's divergence from the original Marxist expectation that the socialist revolution would come first in the most advanced industrial countries...
...Some people do not understand that our present policy fits the present situation and our past policy fitted the past situation...
...We must learn together with the masses of the people how to make this careful distinction and use the correct methods to fight poisonous weeds...
...There were other people in our country who took a wavering attitude toward the Hungarian events because they were ignorant about the actual world situation...
...This is also a contradiction among the people...
...Another cause for these disturbances was that the ideological and political educational work done among the workers and students was inadequate...
...They are not permitted in Mao's doctrine to claim any representation of the working class or even of the peasants...
...Ideological remolding in the past was necessary and has yielded positive results...
...Lenin gave a very clear exposition of this law...
...There has been a falling off recently in ideological and political work among students and intellectuals, and some unhealthy tendencies have appeared...
...This is of first importance both economically and politically...
...The compradores were the Chinese agents of foreign merchants under the old treaty-port system in China...
...All kinds of disturbances can be looked at in this way...
...We do not approve of disturbances, because contradictions among the people can be resolved in accordance with the formula "unity-criticism-unity," while disturbances inevitably cause losses and are detrimental to the advance of socialism...
...Should that happen, it is the task of this dictatorship to solve the external contradiction between ourselves and the enemy.10 The aim of this dictatorship is to protect all our people so that they can work in peace and build China into a socialist country with a modern industry, agriculture, science and culture...
...If in 1945-56 the Communists had been defeated, as they might have been with u different American policy, and u unified China had then been built up with American instead of Soviet credits and technical assistance, its industrialization would probably today be more, and not less, advanced than it is...
...The Hungarian state is now more firmly established than ever, and all other countries in the socialist camp have also learned a lesson.74 Similarly, the worldwide anti-Communist and anti-popular campaign launched in the latter half of 1956 was, of course, a bad thing...
...It had to be done, he says, because "the people demanded it"—and also, of course, "to set free the productive forces...
...They have not made a comprehensive study of the achievements and shortcomings of the cooperatives and the causes of these shortcomings...
...We shall have to pay some sort of price, but we hope it will not be as high as that paid during the revolutionary period...
...But the exception for "active counterrevolutionaries" greatly reduces its significance, for whether any particular ringleader is to be regarded as such is entirely at the discretion of the Communist party and its political police...
...Marxists are still a minority of the entire population as well as of the intellectuals.61 Marxism therefore must still develop through struggle...
...this is what we call making a mistake...
...The slate institutions of Communist China, in which the central reality is the dictatorship of the Communist party, may be "suited" to socialist relations of production, but they are only necessary for it insofar as these relations have to be imposed by a minority on the people of China...
...they only exist in the concrete...
...But the rightists attack "the most fundamental elements of Marxism...
...This is the only quotation from Chinese classical literature made by Mao in his speech...
...Our industrialists and businessmen can be thoroughly remolded only in the course of work...
...53...
...If it were held that the bourgeoisie no longer had a dual character, then such a study and remolding for the capitalists would no longer be needed...
...Take our country, for example...
...In the political life of our country, how are our people to determine what is right and what is wrong in our words and actions...
...so does the bourgeoisie...
...We must realize that a contradiction is involved in this question between the objective laws of development of socialist economy and our subjective understanding, a contradiction which needs to be revised in practice...
...Doctrinaire criticism settles nothing...
...This law operates everywhere, in the natural world, in human society, and in man's thinking...
...between those in positions of leadership and the led, and contradictions arising from the bureaucratic practices of certain state functionaries in their relations with the masses...
...It is all very well to talk about "democracy for the people and dictatorship for the reactionaries," but the real question is whether under conditions of free democratic choice the people would maintain the Communist party in power or endorse its policies...
...Disturbances thus have a dual character...
...It is not right to make a superficial comparison between the average annual income of a peasant and that of a worker and draw the conclusion that the one is too low and the other too high...
...There is a dilemma here...
...But who is to decide whether anyone falls within these categories...
...But conformity does not necessarily imply conversion...
...There are two kinds of persons whose views differ from ours.31 Those with a rightist way of thinking make no distinction between ourselves and the enemy and mistake our enemies for our own people...
...These are political criteria...
...As I have said, in our society it is bad when groups of people make disturbances, and we do not approve of it...
...In Hungary, a section of 13...
...These events caused some of our intellectuals to lose their balance a bit, but there were no squalls in our country...
...The claim of support from "the overwhelming majority of our people" is based on the elections to the National People's Congress...
...The carefully fostered myth of the inevitability and irreversibility of Communist conquest was shattered when, after ten years of "socialist transformation" and "ideological remolding," Communist rule in Hungary was swept away by a popular uprising and restored only by the intervention of Soviet troops...
...they are grousing that cooperative farming won't do, that it has no superior qualities.40 Does agricultural cooperation possess superior qualities or does it not...
...Marxism teaches us that democracy is part of the superstructure and belongs to the category of politics.18 That is to say, in 16...
...continue to examine and explore ways of dealing with questions relating to specific policies...
...But we should not be impatient...
...Of all the classes in the world, the proletariat is the most eager to change its position...
...3. Agricultural Cooperation We have a farm population of over 500 million, so the situation of our peasants has a very important bearing on the development of our economy and the consolidation of our state power...
...On the other hand, they still receive a fixed rate of interest on their investments in the joint enterprises, that is, they have not yet cut themselves loose from the roots of exploitation...
...Mao's problem, however, is how to have freedom in the arts and sciences without having any freedom in politics, and the problem is in the last analysis insoluble...
...Mao may really believe that it is good for the Communist party from lime to time to consider proposals from the Democratic League and other groups which include in their ranks much of the best administrative and technical talent of pre-Communist China...
...This will help promote the development of agriculture and consolidate the cooperatives...
...In some cases, responsibility for such bureaucratic mistakes should be placed on the higher authorities and those at lower levels should not be made to bear all the blame...
...In old China, there was hardly any engineering industry to speak of...
...Mao is here involved in the difficulties which beset all Communists in trying to explain away the events in Hungary...
...So far as ownership is concerned, these enterprises are not yet completely socialist in character...
...While we stand for freedom with leadership and democracy under centralized guidance, in no sense do we mean that coercive measures should be taken to settle ideological matters and questions involving the distinction between right and wrong among the people...
...Moreover, large numbers of peasants have taken advantage of their right to leave the cooperatives after a period of membership, and the bait of farm loans (much of the proceeds of which have, according to Communist sources, been squandered) cannot be maintained without diverting considerable funds from industrial investment, which the Communists are unwilling to do...
...It would be sheer fancy to imagine that building socialism is all plain sailing and easy success, that one won't meet difficulties or setbacks or need not make tremendous efforts...
...As extended to the whole people, it becomes even more fictitious, for the electorate under Communist rule can only approve it single list of nominated candidates and has no choice between parties...
...Our educational policy must enable everyone who gets an education to develop morally, intellectually and physically and become a cultured, socialist-minded worker...
...It was this experience that led us to the formula "unity-criticism-unity...
...Those who were not executed can presumably be released if they have survived the rigors of the forced-labor camps...
...It is imperative that at this juncture we raise the question of distinguishing contradictions among the people from contradictions between ourselves and the enemy, as well as the question of the proper handling of contradictions among the people, so as to rally the people of all nationalities in our country to wage a new battle—the battle against nature—to develop our economy and culture, enable all our people to go through this transition period in a fairly smooth way, make our new system secure, and build up our new state...
...views and argue their cases...
...between democracy and centralism...
...But, from another point of view, it is not right to say "hard...
...That is to say, democracy operates within the ranks of the people, while the working class, uniting with all those enjoying civil rights, the peasantry in the first place, enforces dictatorship over the reactionary classes and elements and all those who resist socialist transformation and oppose socialist construction...
...Would there be any Party unity left to speak of...
...When the cooperative was first set up in 1953, people called it the "paupers' co-op...
...Marxist philosophy holds that the law of the unity of opposites is a fundamental law of the universe...
...They will be allowed to exist as long as they fulfil two conditions: They must be truly devoted to the task of uniting the people for the cause of socialism—which is in any case a strange devotion for bourgeois parties —and they must enjoy the trust of the people, which means of the Communist party, since the people has no way of freely expressing its confidence or lack of confidence in anyone...
...The movement on the whole is healthy...
...between the Central People's Government and the Local Government of Tibet, reform of the social system must eventually be carried out...
...Of course, remolding of the exploiters and that of the working people are two different types of remolding...
...Some leading democrats33 have also been tempered in one degree or another in the struggle, and they went through troubled times together with us...
...We want to carry on large-scale construction, but our country is still very poor—herein lies a contradiction...
...On the other hand, correct ideas, if pampered in hot-houses without being exposed to the elements or immunized against disease, will not win out against wrong ones...
...We had no experience to start with in revolutionary work, either, and it was only after we had taken a number of tumbles and learned our lesson that we won nationwide victory...
...The fact that in China the peasant guerrillas were for so long the mainstay of the Communist armed forces does not seem to have altered this basic economic trend...
...Such struggles will never end...
...The United Slates was more than willing after the defeat of Japan to provide large-scale economic aid for China—and also to facilitate the transfer to China of the Japanese-created industries of Manchuria, which the Russians dismantled and removed to the Soviet Union...
...You may ban the expression of wrong ideas, but the ideas will still be there...
...Yet, some people have stirred up a miniature typhoon...
...The "progress" made by many intellectuals since the Communists came to power has seldom been without consideration for their careers...
...put of steel was only something over 100,000 tons...
...they want to make use of the present policy to reverse decisions on past cases36 and to deny the great success we achieved in suppressing counter-revolution...
...people's councils and committees of the People's Political Consultative Conference...
...Only a small number of them think that way...
...But quite a number of persons have failed to analyze this situation...
...Without specific conditions, neither of the two contradictory aspects can transform itself into its opposite...
...The non-Communist parties and groups accepting Communist party leadership were allotted a certain number of seals on a joint Government list...
...But if they are not dealt with properly, or if we relax vigilance and lower our guard, antagonism may arise...
...But it educated and steeled the Communist parties and the working class in all countries and thus turned out to be a good thing...
...As a result of the efforts of the people of all the nationalities over the past few years, democratic reforms and socialist transformation have in the main been completed in most of the national-minority areas...
...since liberation, many of them have gone through a process of ideological remolding which was aimed at making a clear distinction between ourselves and the enemy.34 In addition, the consolidation of our state is due to the fact that our economic measures are basically sound, that the people's livelihood is secure and is steadily being improved, that our policies toward the national bourgeoisie and other classes are also correct, and so on...
...No, neither of them...
...It must be understood that the hidden counter-revolutionaries still at large will not take it lying down, but will certainly seize every opportunity to make trouble, and that the United States imperialists and the Chiang Kai-shek clique are constantly sending in secret agents to carry on wrecking activities...
...Some people apparently think that there is no longer any need to concern themselves about politics, the future of their motherland and the ideals of mankind...
...We have always maintained that, under the people's democratic dictatorship, two different methods, dictatorial and democratic, should be used to resolve the two different kinds of contradictions—those between ourselves and the enemy and those among the people...
...They were put forward in the light of the specific conditions existing in China, on the basis of the recognition that various kinds of contradictions still exist in a socialist society, and in response to the country's urgent need to speed up its economic and cultural development...
...Contradictions in capitalist society find expression in acute antagonisms and conflicts, in sharp class struggle, which cannot be resolved by the capitalist system itself and can only be resolved by socialist revolution...
...This is because there the exploitation of man by man has been abolished and the interests of the people are basically the same...
...They are quite capable of devising many good ways of doing so...
...Copernicus's theory of the solar system and Darwin's theory of evolution were once dismissed as erroneous and had to win through over bitter opposition...
...Then there are the Asian and African countries, and all the peace-loving countries and peoples—we must strengthen and develop our solidarity with them...
...One way of resolving this contradiction is to make a sustained effort to practice strict economy in every field...
...The non-Communist parties still existing in China were not independent bodies, but units of a Government bloc pledged to accept the leadership of the Communist party and assigned a certain number of seats in the National Congress and other elected bodies on single official list...
...Does that mean that everyone and everything should be taken care of by the Government alone...
...where there is democracy for the bourgeoisie, there can be no democracy for the proletariat and other working people...
...That is why we should take a cautious attitude in regard to questions of right and wrong in the arts and sciences, encourage free discussion, and avoid hasty conclusions...
...At the same time, where local nationalism exists among national minorities, measures should be taken to overcome it...
...All that is set out above stems from the specific historical conditions in our country...
...It has now been decided not to proceed with democratic reform in Tibet during the period of the second Five-Year Plan, and we can only decide whether it will be done in the period of the third Five-Year Plan in the light of the situation obtaining at that time...
...Fighting against wrong ideas is like being vaccinated—a man develops greater immunity from disease after the vaccine takes effect...
...Certainly not...
...74...
...On the other hand, every household in a cooperative can make its own plans in regard to land reserved for private use and other economic undertakings left to private management, but it must comply with the overall plans of the cooperative or production team to which it belongs...
...rather, we should turn such things to advantage to help us get rid of bureaucracy...
...trade...
...Many of us make some 44...
...Mao is evidently proud of the work accomplished by his killers...
...Two kinds of action are therefore called for—on the one hand, efforts to resolve contradictions among the people by conciliation and redress of grievances, and, on the other, increased vigilance against counter-revolutionary activity...
...But the mystical quietism of the Taoist tvu wei is far removed from the Communists' determination to bend everything and everybody to their will...
...Not to have a correct political point of view is like having no soul...
...By "balance" we mean a temporary, relative unity of opposites...
...The peoples described as national minorities actually fall into two groups, which should be distinguished...
...Lao Tzu's dialectic of opposites has a good Hegelian flavor, and his subversive attitude toward the political and social institutions of his time is grist to the Marxist mill...
...There can be no doubt that we should criticize all kinds of wrong ideas...
...In most areas inhabited by national minorities, there has been a big improvement in relations among the nationalities, but a number of problems remain to be solved...
...The people cannot possibly exercise dictatorship over themselves...
...It will take a considerable time to decide the issue in the ideological struggle between socialism and capitalism in our country...
...After liberation, we rooted out a number of counter-revolutionaries...
...General nationalization of business enterprise and collectivization in agriculture were only carried out in 1955-56...
...that this is a new issue...
...We hope that wherever possible members of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and of the People's Political Consultative Conference and the people's deputies will all take part in this review...
...It was not put forward all of a sudden, but had been in the making for several years...
...In this paragraph, Mao appears to hover to and fro between the view that counter-revolutionaries are still .. serious menace and the view that there arc now only few of them left...
...The present social system of our country is far superior to that of the old days...
...But a thorough change in world outlook takes quite a long time, and we should go about it patiently and not be impetuous...
...In all Communist-governed countries, the great attraction of rank-and-file membership is that it gets people out of ordinary work into supervisory jobs of one kind or another...
...But it is not so clearly understood that agriculture provides heavy industry with an important market...
...A little more resistance to the truth, and he will be an "unmistakable counter-revolutionary...
...Heavy industry is the core of China's economic construction...
...Mao's admission that "a miniature typhoon has whirled up around what they call the cooperatives having no superior qualities" indirectly indicates the widespread peasant disillusionment with the propaganda-boosted collective-farm economy...
...The use of this method can be traced back to still earlier times in the history of our Party...
...Mao's exhortation not to be too harsh in dealing with strikes and "disturbances" arising out of them was perhaps the most sensational of the "liberal" innovations in his speech...
...The Communists themselves admit that the arts and sciences cannot be insulated from politics, and the connections operate both ways...
...By 1956, it had risen to something over 360 billion catties, an increase of nearly 150 billion catties...
...The idea that parliamentary government was of no benefit to the workers had some validity in the early 19th century, when even those European countries which had parliamentary constitutions restricted the franchise with property qualifications...
...After they have attended study groups for some weeks, many industrialists and businessmen, on returning to their enterprises, find they speak more of a common language with the workers and the representatives of state shareholdings and so work better together...
...The figure of 70 per cent is obtained merely by adding up the numbers classified as poor or lower-middle peasants...
...However, some people say that the capitalists have been so remolded that they are now not much different from the workers and that further remolding is unnecessary...
...On the surface, these two slogans—let a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend—have no class character...
...More than 2,000 years ago, Lao Tzu said: "It is upon bad fortune that good fortune leans, upon good fortune bad fortune rests...
...Or, in other words, "take warning from the past in order to be more careful in the future" and "treat the illness in order to save the patient...
...There were excesses in some cases, and in other cases counter-revolutionaries were overlooked...
...Strictly speaking, rightism signifies a deviation within the Communist party comparable to Bukharinism in the early days of the Soviet Union...
...4. Help to consolidate, not undermine or weaken, democratic centralism...
...Such antagonistic actions on a fairly wide scale as took place during the Hungarian events are accounted for by the fact that domestic and foreign counter-revolutionary elements were at work.22 These actions were also of a temporary, though special, nature...
...The idea of long-term coexistence had been in existence for a long time, but last year, when the socialist system was basically established, the slogan was set out in clear terms...
...8. On 'Letting a Hundred Flowers Blossom' and 'Letting a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend' and 'Long-term Coexistence and Mutual Supervision' u| et a hundred flowers blossom" and "let a hundred schools of thought L contend," "long-term coexistence and mutual supervision"—how did these slogans come to be put forward...
...As mankind in general rejects an untruth and accepts a truth, a new truth will begin struggling with new erroneous ideas...
...Such hopes ran counter to the interests of the masses and therefore could not possibly get their support...
...That is to say, because the imperialists and their agents oppressed, exploited and impoverished our country for over a century, the standard of living not only of our peasants but of our workers and intellectuals as well is still low...
...Now, why should we make a point of this...
...If we include these provinces, the peak annual output of steel of our country was only something over 900,000 tons...
...it is the masses who "demand that these persons be punished...
...The non-Communist puppet parties are defined as democratic parties of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie...
...The Chinese Communist party faithfully adheres to this Marxist-Leninist principle...
...Naturally, in judging the truthfulness of scientific theories or assessing the esthetic value of works of art, other pertinent criteria are needed, but these six political criteria are also applicable to all activities in the arts or sciences.68 In a socialist country like ours, can there possibly be any useful scientific or artistic activity which runs counter to these political criteria...
...Of course, as these contradictions are resolved, new problems and new contradictions will emerge and call for solution...
...It must continue to learn in the process of its work and step by step overcome its shortcomings...
...On the contrary, proper legal action must be taken against them...
...Administrative orders issued for the maintenance of social order must be accompanied by persuasion and education, for in many cases administrative orders will not work...
...there was also a tendency to compromise with the enemy—this was the other side...
...These criteria are put forward in order to foster, and not hinder, the free discussion of various questions among the people...
...75 When the Japanese struck into China, they called this a victory...
...Another attitude is to use our heads and learn those things which suit conditions in our country, that is, to absorb whatever experience is useful to us...
...The "exclusive-club mentality" is a very natural consequence of the way a Communist party operates...
...It is common sense that the maintenance of law and order would be impossible without administrative orders...
...The Practice of Economy Here I wish to speak briefly on practicing economy...
...The present situation in which the United States controls a majority in the United Nations and dominates many parts of the world is a transient one, which will eventually be changed...
...Their number, though small, is growing steadily.48 There are, of course, still some intellectuals who are skeptical of socialism or who do not approve of it, but they are in a minority...
...They should not be settled in summary fashion...
...It reached the Party leadership from the confidential reports of Chinese diplomats in Hungary and other European Communist capitals, and it reached wider circles of the people, not from the official press and radio of their own country, but from foreign broadcasts...
...The danger of "pouring cold water" on the zeal of the "functionaries and activists" who carried out the killings and preliminary tortures is, of course, a very real one and must cause the investigators to pull their punches in all but the most scandalous cases...
...We will need several decades of intensive efforts to raise the standard of living of our entire people step by step...
...Wherever counter-revolutionaries are found making trouble, they should be rooted out with a firm hand...
...Democracy is here deprived of importance by being relegated to the social superstructure...
...We still lack experience in construction...
...Can Bad Things Be Turned into Good Things...
...It certainly would not do to refrain from criticism and look on while wrong ideas spread unchecked and acquire their market...
...We should give guidance to social organizations and the masses of the people everywhere in taking such action...
...In my view, the situation is basically sound...
...as long as they comply with the requirements of the state and engage in legitimate pursuits, we should give them opportunities for suitable work...
...To strengthen our solidarity with the Soviet Union, to strengthen our solidarity with all socialist countries—this is our fundamental policy, herein lies our basic interest...
...On no account should we throw matters out the back door, go around grumbling that there are too many people,57 that people are backward, and that things are troublesome and hard to handle...
...It covers writers and journalists, university and school teachers, scientists, doctors and engineers...
...For the current period, Mao does not specifically mention imperialists as the masters of those who "try to wreck socialist construction," but day-to-day Communist propaganda makes up for the omission...
...Its first function is to suppress the reactionary classes and elements and those exploiters in the country who range themselves against the socialist revolution, to suppress all those who try to wreck our socialist construction...
...Take the case of food crops...
...it is suited to the socialist economic base, that is, socialist relations of production.30 But survivals of bourgeois ideology, bureaucratic ways of doing things in our state organs, the flaws in certain links of our state institutions, stand in contradiction to the economic base of socialism...
...Certainly it can...
...The organization of agricultural cooperatives has been successfully completed, and this has solved a major contradiction in our country—that between socialist industrialization and individual farm economy...
...Unification of the country, unity of the people, and unity among our various nationalities—these are the basic guarantees for the sure triumph of our cause...
...This is how things stand today: The turbulent class struggles waged by the masses on a large scale characteristic of the revolutionary periods have, in the main, concluded, but class struggle is not entirely over...
...they endanger the cause by being too strict, coercive and oppressive and thus alienating the masses...
...The only difference is that during the anti-Japanese war this method was used more purposefully...
...Do not people wash their faces every day...
...then there will not be much room left in the world for the imperialists, while it is quite likely that the whole structure of imperialism will utterly collapse.76 Given specific conditions, the two aspects of a contradiction invariably turn into their respective opposites as a result of the struggle between them...
...In our society, there is also a small number of people who are unmindful of public interests, refuse to listen to reason, commit crimes and break the law...
...Revisionism, or rightist opportunism, is a bourgeois trend of thought which is even more dangerous than doctrinairism.66 The revisionists or right opportunists pay lip-service to Marxism and 65...
...Under the rule of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism, production in old China developed very slowly.27 For more than fifty years before liberation, China produced only a few score thousand tons of steel a year, not counting the output of the northeastern provinces...
...One way of overcoming this dangerous tendency is, in our campaign, to increase production and practice economy, to streamline our organizations and transfer cadres to lower levels so that a considerable number of them will return to productive work.178 We must see to it that all cadres and all our people constantly bear in mind that, while ours is a big socialist country, it is an economically backward and poor country, and that this is a very great consideration...
...As most of our cooperatives are only a little over a year old, it would be unreasonable to expect too much from them so soon...
...The immediate cause of these disturbances was the failure to satisfy certain of their demands for material benefits, of which some should and could be met, while others were out of place or excessive and therefore could not be met for the time being...
...We cannot abolish religion by administrative orders, nor can we force people not to believe in it...
...It is, of course, true that drawing a line between ourselves and our enemies is also a question of distinguishing between right and wrong...
...Our attitude on this question is the same as our attitude toward all disturbances: Firstly, we are against it...
...Between them and the working class there is still a considerable gap in ideology, sentiments and habits of life...
...Mao here refers not to the "mistakes" which he admits (Note 24), but to convictions which he regards as proper...
...next comes the semi-proletariat...
...In cases like this, the reactionaries in a socialist country, in league with the imperialists, take advantage of contradictions among the people to foment disunity and dissension and fan the flames of disorder in an attempt to achieve 22...
...A considerable period of time is still required to do so...
...Now, only seven years after liberation of the country, our steel output already exceeds 4 million tons...
...For the recent period, Mao also avoids stating the division in class terms...
...If in some democratic countries Communists arc not, as Mao says, "permitted legal existence," this is not because of their socialist program but because of their conspiratorial activities directed toward the destruction of the democratic liberties which they exploit...
...This is unrealistic...
...To maintain law and order and safeguard the interests of the people, it is likewise necessary to exercise dictatorship over robbers, swindlers, murderers, arsonists, hooligans and other scoundrels who seriously disrupt social order.9 The second function of this dictatorship is to protect our country from subversive activities and possible aggression by the external enemy...
...The organization of cooperatives was completed swiftly, and so some people were worried that something untoward might occur...
...Freedom of social satire in the novel and drama and freedom for critical analysis in history, sociology and economics must have the effect of calling into question the dogmas of Communism and its claims to absolute power over society...
...The key to the solution of this question lies in overcoming great-Han chauvinism...
...7. Overall Planning, All-around Consideration and Proper Arrangements The "overall planning and all-around consideration" mentioned here refers to overall planning and all-around consideration for the interests of the 600 million people of our country...
...Has not this been proved by history...
...Even after the basic victory of the socialist revolution in our country, there are still a number of people who vainly hope for a restoration of the capitalist system...
...They know from personal experi45...
...Our constitution also provides 9. It is interesting to see Mao coining out with the argument that the Communist party's violent repression of its political opponents (counter revolutionaries) is on a par with any society's "dictatorship" over common criminals...
...we simply deprive them of their freedom of speech.64 But it is quite a different matter when we are faced with incorrect ideas among the people...
...The "free discussions in artistic and scientific circles" which schools in science can contend freely...
...The contradictions in capitalist and socialist societies, according to Mao, are fundamental!}' different in that the former can only be resolved by socialist revolution whereas the latter can be resolved "by the socialist system itself...
...Since the social system of our country has changed and the economic basis of bourgeois ideology has in the main been destroyed, it is not only necessary but also possible for large numbers of our intellectuals to change their world outlook...
...1. Two Different Types of Contradictions Never has our country been as united as it is today...
...If this were not so, the old system would not have been overthrown and the new system could not have been set up...
...Judging from the actual experience of many cooperatives, this will probably take five years or a bit longer...
...United with these two forces, we will not stand alone.80 As for the imperialist countries, we should also unite with their peoples and strive to coexist in peace with those countries, do business with them and prevent any possible war, but under no circumstances should we harbor any unrealistic notions about those countries...
...It is due primarily to the fact that we have a Communist party and a liberation army steeled in decades of revolutionary strug31...
...Is this true...
...Others go so far as to say that the capitalists are even a bit better than the workers...
...this is its "dual character...
...By the end of each year, such a balance, taken as a whole, is upset by the struggle of opposites, the unity achieved undergoes a change, balance becomes imbalance, unity becomes disunity, and once again it is necessary to work out a balance and unity for the next year...
...In spite of his boast that "we" suppressed counter-revolution so thoroughly, Mao appears unwilling to take full responsibility for the massacres of 1952...
...For "socialist discipline" read "Communist party rule...
...Here, the conditions are important...
...People all over the world are now discussing whether or not a third world war will break out...
...The extent to which Peking can mobilize the Afro-Asian votes is likely to be tested when the next move is made to seat the Chinese Communist delegates in the United Nations...
...The proletariat seeks to transform the world according to its own world outlook...
...Opposites in contradiction unite as well as struggle with each other, and thus impel all things to move and change...
...Mao reminds his hearers thai he was not always « Marxist, and he attributes his present wisdom not so much to his intellectual conversion as to "taking part in the class struggle...
...But such criticism should not be doctrinaire.65 We should not use the metaphysical method, but strive to employ the dialectical method...
...He is anxious not to smother new ideas, but, of course, all ideas coming from Western democratic countries arc old ideas since they belong to what is, on Marxist-Leninist premises, an earlier stage of social evolution...
...But the majority of our enterprises should not be built in this way...
...But in China the term is used also to denote rebellious tendencies within the non-Communist puppet parties, and in this context its meaning is rather different, for among members of these parties it is a question not of a Communist being insufficiently strong or resolute in upholding his own party's supremacy, but of a non-Communist also attack "doctrinairism...
...This is not surprising in view of the scarcity of well-educated people in the Communist party and' the abundance of cadres who can claim jobs as veterans of the revolutionary wars hilt have had little or no education except for short courses in Marxism-Leninism...
...But fundamentally they are good people who only need a little restraining...
...Mao is careful to explain that the Communists do not want war but are merely not afraid of it...
...As a matter of fact, this balance and unity is partially upset every month and every quarter, and partial readjustments are called for...
...In this passage, ihe "comprador" class is substituted for the "bureaucratic capitalists" as one of the two reactionary classes which have been eliminated...
...After all, as Mao rightly says, with the Party in power "socialism enjoys favorable conditions in the ideological struggle...
...In drawing up plans, handling affairs or thinking over problems, we must proceed from the fact that China has a population of 600 million people...
...The crucial demand was undoubtedly for the recognition of - legal opposition party, which is the one thing a totalitarian regime will not tolerate...
...Hence the hopeful excitement which was certainly caused among elements secretly hostile to the Communist dictatorship...
...This is very bad...
...The answer is that he cannot know, but he had better lie very careful...
...theoretically this involves difficulties, but practically it has the advantage that they can be included in...
...Mutual supervision, which is obviously not a one-sided matter, means that the Communist party should exercise supervision over the other democratic parties and the other democratic parties should exercise supervision over the Communist party...
...In resolving these contradictions, we must keep problems of production and distribution constantly in mind...
...It must be admitted that it is sometimes easy to confuse them...
...The Communist party, its police and its puppet judges...
...They must continue to remold themselves, gradually shed their bourgeois world outlook and acquire a proletarian, Communist world outlook, so that they can fully meet the needs of the new society and closely unite with the workers and peasants...
...their conspiratorial aims...
...But different classes, strata and social groups each have their own views on what are fragrant flowers and what are poisonous weeds...
...The Second World War was followed by the emergence of the socialist camp with a combined population of 900 million...
...Here "the people" are dragged in again to share in the blood-guilt of the Communist leadership...
...if he says they are still powerful after all the ell'orls that have been made to stamp them out, it is discouraging for the Party cadres, but if, on the other hand, he says they have been almost eliminated, there is a risk of relaxed vigilance and complacency...
...This lesson of the Hungarian events deserves our attention...
...Some were sentenced to death because they had committed serious crimes...
...It is true that China's industrial development was retarded first by the anti-commercialism of the old Imperial bureaucracy, then by the civil wars of the "warlords," then b> eight years of Japanese invasion, and finally by the civil war waged by the Communists themselves...
...But if the imperialists insist on unleashing another war, we should not be afraid of it...
...This is the attitude we should adopt...
...In this sense, bad things can be turned into good things...
...All these are contradictions among the people...
...Or Britain...
...It is also important for them to change certain of their old views through study...
...In some capitalist countries, the Communist parties are allowed to exist legally, but only to the extent that they do not endanger the fundamental interests of the bourgeoisie...
...In this sense, "hard" is the right word...
...Law-breaking elements among the people will be dealt with according to law, but this is different in principle from using the dictatorship to suppress enemies of the people...
...Certainly the industrialists and businessmen who are now employed as managers in state enterprises understand that it is "important for them to change certain of their old views through study...
...These two types of contradictions are totally different in nature...
...Our policy is: "Counter-revolutionaries must be suppressed whenever they are found...
...In short, we must learn to take an all-around view of things, seeing not only the positive side of things but also the negative side...
...In socialist society, conditions for the growth of new things are radically different from and far superior to those in the old society...
...Some leading democrats" refers to the politicians of the Democratic League, the Revolutionary Kuomintang and other non-Communist groups which sided with the Communists during the civil war...
...If we are to have a correct understanding of these two different types of contradictions, we must first of all make clear what is meant by "the people" and what is meant by "the enemy...
...Theoretically, a society without sharply defined classes should be less liable to internal disruption than one which has them...
...We have already done some work in this sphere...
...We cannot compel people to give up idealism, any more than we can force them to believe in Marxism...
...If it did and could be defeated in argument, it would be worthless...
...Chinese history offers many similar examples...
...In the first place, there still are counter-revolutionaries...
...Some people" (i.e., the rightists) want these past convictions reversed in accordance with the more recent policy of "leniency...
...As in Hungary, the Communists "aroused enormous expectations and desires" among the youth which they have not been able to fulfil...
...Who are the staunch supporters of the cooperatives...
...They oppose or distort materialism and dialectics, oppose or try to weaken the people's democratic dictatorship and the leading role of the Communist party, oppose or try to weaken socialist transformation and socialist construction...
...This must never be forgotten...
...Mao here recognizes thai the desire of the malcontents was not for a restoration of the old Chinese monarchy or of single-party "tutelage" by the Kuomintang, but for multi-party political democracy on the Western model...
...The national bourgeoisie in China was held to consist of those capitalist elements which had no close links either with foreign (imperialist) capital or with the Kuomintang...
...V hilt we must do now is cut the time we take to gain experience in revolutionary work and not pay such a high price for it...
...It should be admitted that all too often some people are prone to concentrate on immediate, partial and personal interests...
...And so among some people a miniature typhoon has whirled up around what they call the cooperatives having no superior qualities...
...Mao would no doubt like his Party cadres to revive the missionary enthusiasm of 1920, But a political work...
...Some things did go wrong, but, fortunately, they were not so serious...
...The claim that there is more democracy under Communism than there can be in any capitalist country is not, of course, new, and it is worthy of note that it was made by Communists at the time on behalf of Stalin's Russia, which on Khrushchev's testimony can hardly be regarded in retrospect as democratic even by the Communists' own standards...
...If we want to correctly evaluate the results of our efforts to suppress counterrevolution here, let us see what effect the Hungarian events had in our country...
...You cannot expect them not to do so...
...Basing ourselves on the principles of our constitution, the will of the overwhelming majority of our people and the political programs jointly proclaimed on various occasions by our political parties and groups,67 we believe that, broadly speaking, words and actions can be judged right if they: 1. Help to unite the people of our various nationalities, and do not divide them...
...around consideration for the whole people...
...The relative smoothness of the collectivization, however, has not meant « solution of the problem of agriculture any more than elsewhere in the Communist world...
...Why should the other democratic parties be allowed to exercise supervision over the Communist party...
...We began to build our revolutionary armed forces and bases in the south in 1927, and ever since then we have used this method to deal with relations between the Party and the masses, between the Army and the civilian population, between officers and men, and in general with relations among the people...
...This idea has been explained again and again in our Party documents and in speeches by many responsible Party leaders...
...or expelled without good reason, except for those who have committed criminal offenses or active counter-revolutionaries, who should be dealt with according to law.72 In a big country like ours, it is nothing to get alarmed about if small numbers of people should create disturbances...
...construction belong to the category of the people, while those social forces and groups which resist the socialist revolution, and are hostile to and try to wreck socialist construction, are enemies of the people.3 The contradictions between ourselves and our enemies are antagonistic ones...
...Quite the contrary, they need to steel and improve themselves and win new positions in the teeth of criticism and the storm and stress of struggle...
...Since Mao made his speech, however, .. number of these have been denounced as rightists and become victims of Communist displeasure...
...These two items together total over 80 billion catties...
...It is true that "plants raised in hot-houses are not likely lo be robust" and that Communist propagandists who never have an argument will never develop their ideological muscles...
...9. Concerning Disturbances Created by Small Numbers of People In 1956, small numbers of workers and students in certain places went on strike...
...The class struggle waged between the two is, by and large, a class struggle within the ranks of the people...
...4. The idea that contradictions between exploiting and exploited classes can have a non-antagonistic aspect derives from the theory that Communists can profitably make alliances with the "national" bourgeoisie in colonial and semi-colonial countries...
...In 1942, we used this method to resolve contradictions inside the Communist party, namely, contradictions between the doctrinaires and the rank-and-file membership, between doctrinairism and Marxism...
...In Chinese usage, rightism now covers all opposition to the Communist party which is not specifically declared to be counter-revolutionary...
...2. Are beneficial, not harmful, to socialist transformation and socialist construction...
...There is a fundamental difference, however, between the radicalism of the bourgeoisie in the period of the bourgeois-democratic revolution which may lead sections of it into political alliances with Communists (the Kuomintang in 1923-27 and the Democratic League and other groups after 1945) and its alleged "willingness to accept socialist transformation" under Communist rule...
...8. The idea of « "democratic dictatorship" of workers and peasants goes back to the days before the Russian Revolution...
...formative period of his life, and there may well be today a deep inner conflict between Mao the disputant in a free intellectual circle and Mao the totalitarian dictator...
...The masses demand that these persons be punished...
...Could it be that there are people who still do not know that we have a population of 600 million...
...But the Bolsheviks under Lenin took advantage of the confusion of 1917 to seize power eight months after the fall of Tsarism and suppressed Russia's first democratic assembly the day after it met...
...Many of them are diligently studying Marxism, and some have become Communists...
...It is not easy to work out a perfectly rational solution to this problem all at once...
...The application of the six political criteria (the significance of which has been considered in the introduction) in the fields of the arts and sciences would leave little scope for the "free discussion" which Mao advocates...
...The combination would exclude landlords and the bourgeoisie, but would in theory be democratic because the peasants formed the great majority of the population...
...Mao's problem in 1942 was to persuade the fanatics and stalwarts of the Party to agree to the more moderate, supple and compromising tactics which enabled the Communists to win away so much support from the Kuomintang in the years that followed...
...Questions of right and wrong in the arts and sciences should be settled through free discussions in artistic and scientific circles and in the course of practical work in the arts and sciences...
...Most of these peasants of the poorer categories got land of their own for the first time through the land reform and have no desire to surrender their new rights in the land unless certain of .. very substantial material advantage to themselves under the new system...
...It is inevitable that they should stubbornly persist in expressing themselves in every way possible on political and ideological questions...
...However, the wages of a small number of workers and some Government personnel are rather too high, and the peasants have reason to be dissatisfied with this, so it is necessary to make certain appropriate readjustments in the light of specific circumstances...
...More recent events have shown that when Mao spoke of "certain people" he had in mind particularly the leaders of the Democratic League and other auxiliary parties included in the Communist-led Government bloc...
...Mao returns to the point that the truth of Marxism-Leninism should be not merely asserted but demonstrated, in order that intellectuals may be convinced of it...
...4. The Question of Industrialists and Businessmen The year 1956 saw the transformation of privately owned industrial and commercial enterprises into joint state-private enterprises as well as the organization of cooperatives in agriculture and handicrafts as part of the transformation of our social system...
...Some contend that the Chinese bourgeoisie no longer has two sides to its character, but only one side...
...We believe that our people stand for socialism, that they uphold discipline and are reasonable and will not create disturbances without reason...
...Later on in his speech (Note 66), Mao says that the rightists are the more dangerous of the two...
...In the class struggle and the struggle against nature, the working class remolds the whole society and at the same time remolds itself...
...No matter whether it is the question of food, natural calamities, employment, education, the intellectuals, the united front of all patriotic forces, the national minorities, or any other question, we must always proceed from the standpoint of overall planning and all56...
...Only the Soviet Union was willing to do so, because it is a socialist country and our ally...
...Hence, what may seem to be a slower pace of industrialization is actually not so, and indeed the tempo may even be speeded 78...
...As China is a great agricultural country, with over 80 per cent of its population in the villages, its industry and agriculture must be developed simultaneously...
...Democracy sometimes seems to be an end, but it is in fact only a means...
...In the current Chinese Communist formula, all the peoples within these frontiers are Chinese, but those who speak Chinese as their mother tongue are distinguished as the Han...
...However, all contradictions not only should but can be resolved...
...gle, as well as a working people which has been similarly steeled...
...The Soviet Union has been building socialism for forty years, and we treasure its experience...
...But the Tibetans and the Turki people of East Turkestan (Sinkiang) could form separate national states, and the Mongols of Inner Mongolia could be united with those of Outer Mongolia, who already have a national state...
...Class struggle is not yet over...
...2. If disturbances should occur as a result of bad work on our part, then we should guide those involved in such disturbances onto the correct path, make use of these disturbances as a special means of improving our work and educating the cadres and the masses, and work out solutions to those questions which have been neglected in the past...
...But the Communists' own propaganda was directed to promoting this mystification, and there were only too many Chinese as well as foreign businessmen who were ready to think wishfully about the new regime...
...It is also worthy of notice that for the civil-war period (1945-50) the United Stales imperialists are described in exactly the same terms as the Japanese imperialists in the period of Japan's military invasion of China...
...Communist China, in addition to being a military ally of the Soviet Union and member of the Communist bloc, was a member of the Bandung Conference and counts as part of the Afro-Asian bloc—to which the Soviet Union and Eastern European Communist countries do not belong...
...With barely seven years of economic construction behind us, we still lack experience and need to get more...
...One is a doctrinaire attitude: transplanting everything, whether suited or not to the conditions of our country...
...The essential thing is to start with a desire for unity...
...Most of the genuine converts to Communism had made up their minds before the Communists won the civil war...
...But, as always in such matters, Mao passes the buck to the people...
...It is a matter of survival for them...
...Not to do so will run counter to popular will.73 10...
...Who is to exercise this dictatorship...
...secondly, we are not afraid of it...
...Failure to grasp this or, still worse, failure to understand it at all can lead to the gravest mistakes—to ignoring the necessity of waging the struggle in the ideological field...
...When the rule of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism was overthrown by the people, many were not clear as to where China was headed —to capitalism or socialism...
...39...
...They must be able to "talk the language" and keep on the right side of the Party cadres...
...In 1942, we worked out the formula "unity-criticism-unity" to describe this democratic form of resolving contradictions among the people.21 To elaborate, this means to start off with a desire for unity and resolve contradictions through criticism or struggle so as to achieve a new unity on a new basis...
...6. The Question of National Minorities The people of the national minorities in our country number more than 30 million...
...We should trust intellectuals who are really willing to serve the cause of socialism, radically improve our relations with them and help them solve whatever problems have to be solved, so that they can give full play to their talents...
...I do not propose to talk at length on economic questions...
...Mao evidently now recognizes that the effects of "ideological remolding" have not been entirely satisfactory...
...Hence, they came to be regarded as an unpatriotic and anti-national element by Chinese nationalists...
...He admits that it was contradictions among the people that became antagonistic, that is to say, that there was indeed .» popular uprising...
...We must continue to resolve such contradictions in the light of specific conditions...
...But they, too, had a dual character...
...More than one-half of this grain, furthermore, is sold in the villages and nearby towns...
...This is a stock Communist argument...
...But in practice Communists always lend to resort to such methods because they cannot get enough permanent voluntary support to keep themselves in power...
...Hilt years of Communist promises of i belter life have ill prepared the younger generation for an epoch of hardship and austerity...
...But in fact only the Communist party exercises the dictatorship, and even its rank-and-file membership is virtually powerless...
...Who says the working class does not need it...
...Of course, everyone knows this, but in actual practice some are apt to forget it and act as if they thought that the fewer people and the smaller their world the better...
...they will not permit it...
...Any attempt to deal with ideological matters or questions involving right and wrong by administrative orders or coercive measures will be not only ineffective but harmful...
...Leftists regard as counter-revolutionaries people who really are not, and rightists fail to regard as counter-revolutionaries people who really are...
...In my article "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship," written in 1949, I said: "These two aspects, democracy for the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries, when combined, constitute the people's democratic dictatorship...
...But there is no valid analogy between the use of the formula "unity-criticism-unity" for controversies within the Party and its application to the nation at large...
...But the bourgeois intellectuals who serve to keep the Party boxers in training must never hit back too hard...
...Mistakes should be criticized and poisonous weeds fought against wherever they crop up...
...It must never stop doing so...
...Those not yet discovered will be corrected as soon as they come to light...
...Dictatorship "by the people" is a pure fiction...
...For convenience's sake, let us discuss it under twelve sub-headings...
...It is to Mao's credit that he recognizes that "the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science" require some degree of freedom...
...A poor country will be changed into a rich country, a country denied her rights into a country enjoying her rights—a transformation of things into their opposites.77 Here, the decisive conditions are the socialist system and the concerted efforts of a united people...
...In regard to this question, we must be psychologically prepared and at the same time take an analytical view...
...The emphasis on new ideas provides Mao with one means of escape from the implications of his "liberalism...
...But it was carried on in a somewhat rough and ready way, and the feelings of some people were hurt—this was not good.52 We must avoid such shortcomings in the future...
...It is not only futile but very harmful to use crude and summary methods to deal with ideological questions among the people, with questions relating to the spiritual life of man...
...Contradictions arise continually and are continually resolved...
...On the basis of these, it would have required u phenomenal increase under the unfavorable conditions produced by the Japanese invasion and the subsequent civil war lo approach the figure now claimed...
...But, as a result of four years of hard struggle, it has become better off year by year, and now most of its households have reserves of grain...
...No, not yet...
...As regards the suppression of counter-revolution, the main thing is that we have achieved successes, but mistakes have also been made...
...Mao is evidently anxious to assure his hearers that the Communist regime is "now more firmly established than ever," but he makes no reference lo the Soviet intervention which alone saved it...
...We extended this method beyond our Party...
...Nevertheless, it still often happens that new, rising forces are held back and reasonable suggestions smothered.59 The growth of new things can also be hindered, not because of deliberate suppression but because of lack of discernment...
...Ours is a people's democratic dictatorship, led by the working class and based on the worker-peasant alliance.8 What is this dictatorship for...
...In 1949, the country's output was only something over 210 billion catties [105 million tons...
...Within the ranks of the people, there are some who hold somewhat different views on this question...
...Progress and difficulties —this is a contradiction...
...But this is not the way things are...
...Carrying out the policy of letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend will not weaken but strengthen the leading position of Marxism in the ideological field.63 What should our policy be toward non-Marxist ideas...
...Neither great-Han chauvinism nor local nationalism can do any good to unity among the nationalities, and they should both be overcome as contradictions among the people...
...As a scientific truth, Marxism fears no criticism...
...Mao asserts that anarchy is the only alternative to the "centralized guidance" by a self-appointed and self-perpetuating authority...
...Mao does not go so far as to forecast such an ascendancy for his regime, but his will lo turn the tables on America is clearly apparent...
...In European Communist countries, it has been customary for mass meetings to demand death sentences on the accused in big state trials but not actually to witness the executions...
...The figure of "several million" indicates that Mao is using the term "intellectuals" in „ very wide sense, to comprise all educated people who are (or were) not capitalists...
...But China's defeat carried within it the seeds of victory, and Japan's victory carried within it the seeds of defeat...
...Although there are defects and mistakes in our work, every fair-minded person can see that we are loyal to the people, that we are both determined and able to build up our country together with the people, and that we have achieved great successes and will achieve still greater ones...
...generally speaking, underlying the contradictions among the people is the basic identity of the interests of the people...
...The speed and smoothness with which this was carried out are closely related to the fact that we treated the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie as a contradiction among the people...
...Rather than face such "maquis," the Peking Government has been content to reach „ temporary compromise with the Tibetan native authorities whereby the Chinese garrisons and formal Chinese sovereignty are retained but there is to be no further interference for the time being with the Tibetan way of life...
...Thus, leftists provoke avoidable hostility by excessive rigor, while rightists endanger the regime by undue leniency...
...They regard as friends the very people the broad masses regard as enemies...
...But it may be doubted that more than two decades of cruel guerrilla warfare, followed by eight years of virtually absolute power, are likely to advance either moral character or the understanding of human society in its more decent aspects...
...However, this does not mean that there are no longer any contradictions in our society...
...But the implication that the Hungarian Communists were negligent in this respect is somewhat surprising and would probably be challenged by Bakosi and the AVH...
...Our intellectuals have made some progress, but they should not be complacent...
...this is the dialectical law of the development of things...
...Our socialist democracy is democracy in the widest sense, such as is not to be found in any capitalist country.13 Our dictatorship is known as the people's democratic dictatorship, led by the working class and based on the worker-peasant alliance...
...Anarchy does not conform to the interests or wishes of the people.14 Certain people in our country were delighted when the Hungarian events took place.15 They hoped that something similar would happen in China, that thousands upon thousands of people would demonstrate in the streets against the People's Government...
...under no circumstances can it safeguard the freedom of the working people.17 As a matter of fact, freedom and democracy cannot exist in the abstract...
...The theory was that the growth of the productive forces as determined by the advance of technology would so accentuate the contradictions of capitalism that they must produce a revolution—and thus a change in the relations of production—as surely as sealed boiler must burst when the pressure of steam in it passes a certain point...
...The boastful manner in which Communist leaders constantly repeat the figure of 600 million for China's population suggests that it was "target" for the census-takers...
...Every year our country draws up an economic plan in an effort to establish a proper ratio between accumulation and consumption and achieve a balance between production and the needs of society...
...In three Five-Year Plans or perhaps a little longer, China's annual steel output ran be raised to 20 million tons or more from the peak pre-liberation output of something over 900,000 tons in 1943...
...It seems as if Marxism, which was once all the rage, is not so much in fashion now.51 This being the case, we must improve our ideological and set in authority over them to the more sophisticated tyranny of those from their own ranks like Kuo Mo-jo, who have used their Party standing to suppress literary rivals and critics...
...The Bolsheviks did not, however, formally claim to have achieved socialism (involving general nationalization of trade and industry and the collectivization of agriculture) until 1934...
...Many of our comrades are not good at getting along with intellectuals.49 They are stiff with them, lack respect 46...
...Our experience shows that this is a proper method of resolving contradictions among the people...
...Those were the days when the Chinese Communists were "agrarian reformers," "so-called Communists"—indeed, anything but serious Marxist-Leninists out to expropriate the bourgeoisie and collectivize the peasants as soon as it was administratively possible to do so...
...He is himself certain of its truth and1 believes that "fully convincing arguments" can be found for it...
...Still others ask, if remolding is necessary, why does not the working class undergo remolding...
...Mao now comes to the saving qualifications of his (for his hearers) alarming discourse on freedom of speech...
...The idea that the normal defects of human beings can still manifest themselves after private properly in the means of production has been abolished is indeed very hard for most Communists to swallow...
...The element of genuine conviction that seems to emerge in this passage, however discordant it may be with overall Party policy, may be attributed to Mao's own personal background...
...Most of our intellectuals have made marked progress during the past seven years...
...The proposal lo "transfer cadres to lower levels so thai a considerable number of them will return to productive work" may be good economies, but it is very risky politics...
...In intra-Party practice, however, democratic centralism became, as one observer put il, "all center and no circumference...
...the "enemies of the people" are simply all those of whatever class who "resist the socialist revolution...
...These contradictions, however, are fundamentally different in character and have different features from contradictions between the relations of production and the productive forces and between the superstructure and the economic base in the old societies...
...He assumes that all the "remolding" he has undergone has been for his improvement...
...In fact, are not the idealists criticizing Marxism every day and in all sorts of ways...
...the victims were selected by the security police and might as well have been liquidated in prison cellars but for the psychological advantage to be gained by making the public participate in it...
...We have been able to keep our mistakes within bounds because it has been our policy to draw a sharp line between our own people and our enemies, and where mistakes have been made to take suitable measures of rehabilitation...
...Communism gets over this difficulty by the simple device of classifying all opposition of whatever kind as reactionary...
...I also pointed out that, in order to settle questions within the ranks of the people, "the methods we use are democratic, that is, methods of persuasion and not of compulsion...
...It is a complicated problem to settle on a proper ratio between accumulation and consumption within that sector of socialist economy in which the means of production are owned by the whole people and that sector in which the means of production are collectively owned, as well as between these two sectors...
...In building a socialist society, all need remolding, the exploiters as well as the working people...
...On the one hand, the cooperatives' economy must be subject to the unified economic planning of the state, but at the same time it should be allowed to retain a certain leeway and independence of action without prejudice to unified state planning or the policies and laws and regulations of the state...
...Since the principle of practicing strict economy and combating waste was put forward in more emphatic terms than before by the second plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in November 1956, good results have been obtained...
...But there is nothing to show that, given internal order and external peace, capitalism could not have done as well in China as in Japan, which long ago had more modern industry than China has yet created...
...Of course not...
...The damage done to the country's economy in a few weeks of rioting will take a long time to repair...
...Wouldn't this then be the same as "ruthless struggle and merciless blows...
...The former possesses nothing at all, while the latter is not much better off...
...We have spoken on this question of using democratic methods to resolve contradictions among the people on many occasions in the past, and furthermore we have in the main acted on this principle, a principle of which many cadres and many people have a practical understanding...
...Neither of them will enable us to handle properly the question of suppressing counter-revolution, or to correctly assess the results in this work...
...Let us consider who designed and equipped so many important factories for us.179 Was it the United States...
...The same is true of freedom...
...The contradiction between exploiter and 5. The admission thai under Communist rule there can be contradictions between the Government and the masses was the most remarkable admission in Mao's speech, and it was the one which so embarrassed Khrushchev when he was asked about it in his television interview with American newspapermen...
...similarly, there is conformity as well as contradiction between the superstructure and the economic base...
...It is clear, then, that there are no grounds for the view that something has gone wrong with the cooperative movement...
...of our dictatorship...
...Our People's Republic was not built overnight...
...This method was wrong...
...When Mao says it is the Soviet Union and not the United States or Britain which has designed and equipped factories for "us," he means for the Communist regime and not for China as a country...
...Social organizations and the masses themselves can work out ways and means to take care of many matters involving people and things...
...This is because the influence of the bourgeoisie and of the intellectuals who come from the old society will remain in our country as the ideology of a class for a long time to come...
...Those who do not approve of these criteria can still put forward their own repudiating the supremacy of the Communist party and wishing to make an end of it...
...Naturally, it must be the working class and the entire people led by it.11 Dictatorship does not apply in the ranks of the people...
...Take us who are present here, for example...
...But, even assuming that China is threatened by aggression from outside, there is no necessity for any dictatorship merely in order to defend the country...
...Taking the country as a whole, the main force of counter-revolution has been rooted out...
...To sum up, socialist relations of production have been established...
...When we say that socialist relations of production are better suited than the old relations of production to the development of the productive forces, we mean that the former permits the productive forces to develop at a speed unparalleled in the old society, so that production can expand steadily and the constantly growing needs of the people can be met step by step...
...It is much easier to present the case from a Party textbook and drop a broad hint that, if the bourgeois intellectual is not persuaded, he will soon get into trouble and have to make a severe self-criticism with the alternative of being sent to a camp for "reform through labor...
...But in a modern democracy Communists are quite unable to show how .. socialist party supported by a decisive majority of the electorate can constitutionally be prevented from giving effect to its program...
...Plants raised in hot-houses are not likely to be robust...
...Democratic" reforms have had to be postponed in Tibet because of national resistance, which broke into open revolt in Kham Province to the east of Lhasa...
...The Russian Social Democrats originally held the view that the overthrow of the Tsarist autocracy must be followed by a period of rule by bourgeois parties during which Russian capitalism would fulfil its historic mission of industrializing the country...
...It was not difficult for the Chinese Army to break down the defensive line of the ill-equipped Tibetan troops, but the Chinese garrisons, once established in the country, are dependent on supplies from China—there being no surplus of food in Tibet—and are vulnerable to guerrilla warfare, for which the terrain is ideally suited...
...This fact, however, will be more readily appreciated as the gradual progress of technological improvement and modernization of agriculture calls for more and more machinery, fertilizers, water-conservation and electric-power projects and transport facilities for the farms, as well as fuel and building materials for the rural consumers...
...Steps have been or are being taken to correct mistakes which have already been discovered in the work of suppressing counter-revolutionaries...
...On the other hand, some skilled workers are able to obtain high wages, because there is a scarcity of them and various Government enterprises compete for their labor...
...In this struggle, their right-hand men are the revisionists...
...That is why political educational work should be kept going among the masses in an interesting and effective way...
...People may ask: Since Marxism is accepted by the majority of the people in our country as the guiding ideology, can it be criticized...
...The cooperatives are steadily being consolidated...
...we want all our factories, cooperatives, business establishments, schools, Government offices, public bodies—in a word, all the 600 million of our people—to use it in resolving contradictions among themselves...
...Accumulation is essential for both the state and the cooperative, but in neither case should this be overdone...
...In addition lo the Soviet Union, some brother countries of Eastern Europe also gave us assistance...
...We had instances of such confusion in our past work...
...During the San Fan movement in 1952, we fought against corruption, waste and bureaucracy, and the emphasis was on combating corruption...
...Construction is going ahead vigorously on all fronts...
...Our democratic centralism means the unity of democracy and centralism and the unity of freedom and discipline...
...when this will be done can only be decided when the great majority of the people of Tibet and their leading public figures consider it practicable...
...It is something that Mao should recognize the possibility, though he deprives the recognition of practical importance by insisting that every such contradiction can be resolved within the framework of the Communist party-state...
...We must gradually build a number of large-scale modern enterprises as the mainstay of our industries...
...In other words, time is needed for our socialist system to grow and consolidate itself, for the masses to get accustomed to the new system, and for Government workers to study and acquire experience...
...All departments and organizations concerned should take up their responsibilities with regard to ideological and political work...
...I learned a little Marxism from books and so made an initial remolding of my ideas, but it was mainly through taking part in the class struggle over the years that I came to be remolded.45 And I must continue to study if I am to make further progress...
...They felt that there was too little freedom under our people's democracy and that there was more freedom under Western parliamentary democracy.16 They ask for the adoption of the two-party system of the West, where one party is in office and the other out of office...
...What is correct always develops in the course of struggle with what is wrong...
...Since conditions vary in different socialist countries and with different Communist parties, we do not think that other countries and parties must or need to follow the Chinese way...
...Investigations to correct "mistakes" have so far been undertaken only for the 1955 campaign against counter-revolutionaries and not for the more massive earlier terror...
...But we will benefit even more if the other democratic parties do this as well...
...it compels them to obey the laws of the People's Government, compels them to work and to transform themselves into new people through work...
...Unlike the despotic monarchies of the past, which were not ashamed of their absolutism, the modern totalitarian state must sail under false colors...
...Is this true...
...The issue of suppressing counter-revolutionaries provides Mao with .. perfect opportunity of defining left and right deviations from the correct Party line as represented by himself...
...Because of their lack of experience in political and social life, quite a number of young people cannot make a proper comparison between the old and new China...
...During the past few years, most of them have been willing to study and have made marked progress...
...It developed step by step out of the revolutionary bases...
...It is the general rule in Communist-governed countries that the peasant comes off worse than the industrial worker...
...But remnants of the overthrown landlord and comprador00 classes still exist, the bourgeoisie still exists, and Mao would like lo see and the dictatorial rule of the Communist party which he is determined lo maintain are ultimately incompatible, and, as recent events in China have once more shown, free discussion goes down ihe drain whenever it appears that ihe power of the Party is threatened...
...they take part of the picture for the whole...
...What is needed is scientific analysis and fully convincing arguments...
...Marxism has also developed through struggle...
...we must make whatever arrangements are suitable and possible at the particular time and place and after consultation with all those concerned...
...A dangerous tendency has shown itself 77...
...It is clear to everybody that the Hungarian events were not a good thing...
...I myself had all sorts of non-Marxist ideas before...
...Our People's Government is a government that truly represents the interests of the people and serves the people, yet certain contradictions do exist between the Government and the masses.5 These include contradictions between the interests of the state, collective interests and individual interests...
...In addressing the second session of the National Committee of the People's Political Consultative Conference in June 1950, I said further: "The people's democratic dictatorship uses two methods...
...The state agricultural tax is not heavy, amounting only to some 30 billion catties a year...
...The original Marxist theory of the adaptation of the relations of production to the forces of production makes no sense when applied to China...
...If China is to industrialize rapidly out of income, it must mean intense privation for a long period for the great majority of the people...
...In the past, new and correct things often failed at the outset to win recognition from the majority of people and had to develop by twists and turns in struggle...
...Because our Hungarian comrades took proper action in the course of these events, what was a bad thing turned ultimately into a good thing...
...2. The Suppression of Counter-revolution The question of suppressing counter-revolutionaries is a question of the struggle of opposites in the contradiction between ourselves and the enemy...
...6. As pointed out above (Note 4), Mao counts the national bourgeoisie as having both antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions with the working class...
...But when disturbances do occur, they force us to learn lessons from them, to overcome bureaucracy and educate the cadres and the people...
...It is a good thing, but of course it also has ita difficulties...
...For this reason, we need to explain things to our people, our cadres in the first place, to help them understand contradictions in a socialist society and learn how to deal with such contradictions in a correct way...
...they did not give way to unrest during the Hungarian events...
...In 1949, the country's out26...
...On the question of distribution, we must take into account the interest of the state, the cooperative and the individual...
...Now, here are two different attitudes in learning from others...
...As for those who harbor bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas and do not wish to change, are not they also criticizing Marxism in all sorts of ways...
...The early Mao, from such fragmentary glimpses as we have of him, seems to have been a relatively attractive individual—the earnest, romantic student who refused to work on his father's farm because he wanted to continue his education and was full of schemes for the salvation of his country and of all mankind...
...it is not easy for them to thoroughly comprehend what hardships the people of our country went through in the struggle to free themselves from oppression by the imperialists and Kuomintang reactionaries, or what a long period of painstaking work is needed before a happy socialist society can be established...
...But when he warns them not to slip back, because by doing so they will find' themselves in a blind alley, he is implying that the future belongs to Communism, and this is just what, since the dethronement of Stalin and the upheaval in Hungary, many Chinese intellectuals have come to doubt...
...he lives spiritually in „ closed world shut off from the rest of mankind, and he goes outside it only for infiltration and propaganda purposes...
...We do not propose to let these people have their way...
...Nationally this task should be handled by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and the Standing Committee of the People's Political Consultative Conference, and locally by the provincial and municipal 36...
...Whether these democratic parties can long exist depends not merely on what the Communist party itself desires but also on the part played by these democratic parties themselves and on whether they enjoy the confidence of the people.70 Mutual supervision among the various parties has also been a long-established fact, in the sense that they advise and criticize each other...
...Since 1956, however, there has been a radical change in the situation...
...Our Party and our armed forces are rooted in the masses...
...The people, Mao means to say, can have just as much democracy and freedom as is compatible with the permanent monopoly of political power by the Communist party...
...It would be wrong to say that there are still large numbers of counter-revolutionaries at large...
...This is the superior quality of our planned economy...
...they usually resided in the foreign seltlenienls out of reach of Chinese official "squeeze" and in various ways drew advantage from the extraterritorial privileges of the foreign the petty bourgeoisie has only just begun to remold itself...
...In this way, there wi be no more poor peasants and the standard of living of all the peasants will reach or surpass the level of that of the middle peasants...
...66...
...They do not understand that socialist society grows more united and consolidated precisely through the ceaseless process of correctly dealing with and resolving contradictions...
...The "external enemy" for the Chinese Communists is, of course, imperialism, represented particularly by the United States...
...The entire national economy will benefit if we can achieve an even greater growth in our agriculture and thus induce a correspondingly greater development of light industry during the period of the second and third Five-Year Plans...
...During the past few years, great successes have been achieved, but there has also been waste...
...In place of it, in criticizing "left" doctrinairism, we used a new one: to start from a desire for unity and thrash out questions of right and wrong-through criticism or argument, and so achieve a new unity on a new basis...
...In ihc economic system now prevailing in China, it is impossible to measure the productivity of workers against that of peasants by any criteria of ;; free-market economy because of the measures taken to keep down food prices...
...While the broad masses of the people welcome the new system, they are not yet quite accustomed to it...
...I hope these people will take a wider view and really recognize the fact that we have a population of 600 million, that this is an objective fact, and that this is our asset...
...Under specific conditions, a bad thing can lead to good results and a good thing to bad results...
...In the storm and stress of this period, a number of people resigned from Communist parties in many countries...
...This is the law of development of truth, and it is certainly also the law of development of Marxism...
...The only "string" attached to President Truman's offer of aid to China was that the Chinese National Government should achieve "unity" by making a coalition with the Communists—a policy that in retrospect looks incredibly foolish in relation to American interests hut hardly proves ill-will toward China or even toward the Chinese Communists...
...Liberal democratic states are also capable of defending themselves...
...Every contradiction is an objective reality, and it is our task to understand it and resolve it as correctly as we can...
...One reason, it must be said, was that we had succeeded in suppressing counter-revolution quite thoroughly.32 Of course, the consolidation of our state is not primarily due to the suppression of counter-revolution...
...The Party member is supposed to have his whole life centered in the Party and its work...
...So what, from the point of view of the broad masses of the people, should be a criterion today for distinguishing between fragrant flowers and poisonous weeds...
...Study for them should be optional...
...These systematic killings had nothing in common with genuine outbursts of spontaneous popular fury...
...52...
...Government workers are not sufficiently experienced and should the Chinese level of production is far below that of the leading capitalist nations of Europe and America, there cannot be on Marxist premises a greater suitability of a socialist rather than capitalist economy to the productive forces at this stage...
...The technique of the Chinese Communist mob trials, with their careful stage-managing and murderous incitement, has often been described...
...In this review, we must help and not pour cold water on the large numbers of functionaries and activists who took part in the work.38 It is not right to dampen their spirits...
...We must find the correct way to handle the three-way relationship between the tax revenue of the state, accumulation of funds in the cooperative and the personal income of the peasant, and pay constant attention to making readjustments so as to resolve contradic41...
...The methods of "ruthless struggle and merciless blows" were applied by the "left doctrinaires" in purging the Party as well as in dealings with outsiders...
...They want to be lenient to counter-revolutionaries, conciliate everybody and relax control, ignoring the essential need to maintain the supremacy of the Party at all costs...
...This was the method used in the "rectification campaign" of 1942...
...We hope they will not stop halfway or, what is worse, slip back, for if they do they will find themselves in a blind alley...
...Although reference will be made to contradictions between ourselves and our enemies, this discussion will center mainly on contradictions among the people...
...without these we shall not be able to turn our country into a modern industrial power in several decades...
...Of course, advice and criticism exchanged between the Communist party and the other democratic parties will play a positive role in mutual supervision only when they conform to the six political criteria given above...
...In the civil war, the bureaucrat-capitalists (Kuomintang politicians with business interests) and the landlords are represented as arrayed on the side of Chiang Kai-shek against the rest of the population led by the Communists...
...In spite of the disclosures about Stalin's tyranny, the Russian Communists are still unwilling to admit that anything of the nature of a contradiction can exist between » Communist government and the masses of the people whose interests il claims to represent...
...It is true that in China socialist transformation, insofar as a change in the system of ownership is concerned, has in the main been completed, and the turbulent, large-scale, mass class struggles characteristic of the revolutionary periods have in the main concluded...
...that is to say, we are being remolded each year...
...But at that time economy as a guiding principle was not conscientiously carried out in all branches of the national economy, or in Government offices, Army units, schools and people's organizations in general...
...Many dare not acknowledge openly that there still exist contradictions among the people, which are the very forces that move our society forward...
...or excluded from, the people as policy requires...
...these peoples are too much mixed up with the Chinese, and usually too lacking in distinctive culture, to be more than national minorities...
...Whether the total number of the Chinese is 600 or 500 million, there are a great many of them, and changing the beliefs and habits of every one of them is an undertaking which must look bigger and bigger the closer one gets to it...
...Within the ranks of the people, contradictions among the working people are non-antagonistic, while those between the exploiters and the exploited classes have, apart from their antagonistic aspect, a non-antagonistic aspect.4 Contradictions among the people have always existed, but their content differs in each period of the revolution and during the building of socialism...
...protect and expand them in the context of the new relations of production...
...It is not clear, however, how "suitable measures of rehabilitation" are to be taken for people who have been executed by mistake...
...As far as unmistakable counter-revolutionaries and wreckers of the socialist cause are concerned, the matter is easy...
...We must see to it that all our young people understand that ours is still a very poor country,53 that we cannot change this situation radically in a short time, and that only through the united efforts of our younger generation and all our people working with their own hands can our country be made strong and prosperous within a period of several decades...
...We should do everything possible to enable the peasants in normal years to raise their personal incomes year by year on the basis of increased production.42 Many people say that the peasants lead a hard life...
...Logically, the opposite of the United States having a majority in the United [Nations and dominating many parts of the world would be that China should have these advantages...
...The Communist party is strong and its prestige stands high...
...This is because for a party as much as for an individual there is great need to hear opinions different from its own.71 We all know that supervision over the Communist party is mainly exercised by the working people and Party membership...
...one hand and the national bourgeoisie on the other, contradictions within the national bourgeoisie, and so forth...
...I propose that a comprehensive review of the work of suppressing counter-revolution be made this year or next to sum up experience, foster a spirit of righteousness and combat unhealthy tendencies...
...The result in some cases was—as intended—to make a man so ashamed1 of his past life and so broken in spirit that he had to take refuge in the new faith as the only way of regaining his self-respect, but often the experience left behind a bitter resentment which bodes no good for the Communist regime...
...mistakes must be corrected whenever they are discovered...
...In a society where there is class struggle, the exploiting classes are free to exploit the working people while the working people have no freedom from being exploited...
...Now our task is to continue to extend and make still better use of this method throughout the ranks of the people...
...Contradictions exist everywhere, but as things differ in nature so do contradictions in any given phenomenon or thing...
...Some people say that there aren't any and that all is at peace, that we can pile up our pillows and just go to sleep...
...It must seem odd if, at the time when the Communists took over power in China, there were people who were "not clear" whether China was headed for capitalism or socialism...
...35...
...tions as they arise...
...The vast majority of the bourgeoisie and intellectuals who come from the old society are patriotic...
...The substitution of the dictatorship of the Communist party cannot be said, however, in any significant sense to have "completed" it...
...the enthusiasm of the bourgeoisie for its own class liquidation is a peculiarity of Mao's China...
...The left extremists, "sectarians" and "doctrinaires" err through excess of zeal for the Party...
...With regard to this question, we should pay attention to the following: 1. In order to get rid of the root cause of disturbances, we must stamp out bureaucracy, greatly improve ideological and political education, and deal with all contradictions in a proper way...
...The attitude of the non-Communist parties in relations with the Communists should, indeed, be not so much that of politicians bargaining with one another as of civil servants advising a minister who alone has the power of decision...
...He is himself a product of the Chinese intelligentsia in its most alert, questioning and speculative period and is well aware that intellectual conversions cannot be made simply by administrative order...
...That is why it is only by employing methods of dis63...
...Even after deduction of these categories, however, the figure for mainland China appears to be too high...
...China's Path to Industrialization In discussing our path to industrialization, I am here concerned principally with the relationship between the growth of heavy industry, light industry and agriculture...
...Since the beginning of July, the purging of "rightists" in the puppet parties has been in full swing, and in February Mao was probably already planning to deal with them because of the signs of insubordination which had followed the news of the Hungarian uprising...
...reserves of food grain or at least become self-sufficient...
...Some of our agricultural and handicraft producers' cooperatives are still semi-socialist, while even in the fully socialist cooperatives certain problems about ownership remain to be solved...
...It was only later that I embraced Marxism...
...of late among many of our personnel—an unwillingness to share the joys and hardships of the masses, a concern for personal position and gain...
...Many people seem to think that the proposal to use democratic methods to resolve contradictions among the people raises a new question, but actually that is not so.23 Marxists have always held that the cause of the proletariat can only be promoted by relying on the masses of the people, that Communists must use democratic methods of persuasion and education when working among the working people and must on no account resort to commandism or coercion...
...If we had not done so, the masses would not have been able to lift their heads...
...During the war of liberation, the United States imperialists and their henchmen—the bureaucrat-capitalists and landlord class—and the Kuomintang reactionaries, who represented these two classes, were the enemies of the people, while all other classes, strata and social groups which opposed these enemies belonged to the category of the people...
...Those with a "leftist" way of thinking so magnify contradictions between themselves and the enemy that they mistake certain contradictions among the people for contradictions between ourselves and the enemy, and regard as counter-revolutionaries persons who really are not...
...They may take advantage of our policies and distort them, deliberately put forward unreasonable demands in order to stir up the masses, or deliberately spread rumors to create trouble and disrupt social order...
...it is designed to enable a socialist culture to thrive in our land.58 Different forms and styles in art can develop freely, and different 57...
...In our country, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie is a contradiction among the people...
...How can it be said that they no longer have two sides to their character...
...our emphasis then was on combating unduly high standards for non-productive projects in capital construction, and economy in the use of raw materials in industrial production...
...Because of all this, although many of our college students come from families other than those of the working people, all of them, with few exceptions, are patriotic and support socialism...
...Within the ranks of the people, democracy stands in relation to centralism, and freedom to discipline...
...We are prepared to stabilize over a number of years the total amount of the grain tax and the amount of grain purchased by the state at approximately something over 80 billion catties a year...
...The same was true of the national bourgeoisie, to say nothing of the basic masses—the workers and peasants...
...The superstructure—our state institutions of people's democratic dictatorship and its laws, and socialist ideology under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism—has played a positive role in facilitating the victory of socialist transformation and the establishment of a socialist organization of labor...
...It would be naive to imagine that there are no more contradictions...
...For example, the question as to who is right, we or the reactionaries at home and abroad—that is, the imperialists, the feudalists and bureaucrat-capitalists—is also a question of distinguishing between right and wrong, but it is different in nature from questions of right and wrong among the people...
...To say that "the feelings of some people were hurt" is a masterpiece of understatement...
...To put it briefly, the former is a matter of drawing a line between us and our enemies, while the latter is a matter of distinguishing between right and wrong...
...They express themselves in favor of the socialist system...
...This must be the attitude of all the public security organs, the procuracies and the judicial departments, prisons or agencies charged with the reform of criminals through labor...
...If the bulk of the Chinese people really wanted the new system, the Party dictatorship would be superfluous...
...the opportunity to anyone to make a living and give his services to the country, so long as he is really willing to serve the people, really helped the people when they were still in difficulties, did good things and continues to do them consistently without giving up half-way...
...it is not yet fully established, nor yet full consolidated...
...What applies among the people is democratic centralism.12 Our constitution lays it down that citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession, of demonstration, of religious belief and so on...
...Both students and intellectuals should study Marxism-Leninism, current events and political affairs in order to progress both ideologically and politically...
...The main power of the state is in the hands of the working people led by the proletariat...
...But a more important cause was 70...
...Under ordinary circumstances, contradictions among the people are not antagonistic...
...In order to make our country into an industrial power, we must learn conscientiously from the advanced experience of the Soviet Union...
...In China more than anywhere else, the multi-tudinousness of humanity is apt to be overwhelming...
...This is an exhortation to Party cadres not to be too harsh to the bourgeois—or rather the ex-bourgeois now functioning as managers or experts—but it is even more a warning to the latter not to resist socialist transformation...
...China needs as many intellectuals as she can get to carry through the colossal task of socialist construction...
...6. Are beneficial, not harmful, to international socialist solidarity and the solidarity of the peace-loving peoples of the world...
...The policy of letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is designed to promote the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science...
...Resignations from the Party reduce Party membership and are, of 72...
...For instance, a constant process of readjustment through state planning is needed to deal with the contradiction between production and the needs of society, which will, of course, long remain with us...
...After the liberation of the country, we used this same method—"unity-criticism-unity"—in our relations with other democratic parties and industrial and commercial circles...
...But this so-called two-party system is nothing but a means of maintaining the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie...
...In Russia, capitalists were expropriated, but there was no pretense that they liked it...
...In my view, we will be doing well enough if we succeed in establishing the cooperatives during the period of the first Five-Year Plan and consolidating them during the second...
...This is quite wrong, and the people will not permit it...
...To deprive great numbers of local cadres of their prized little corners in the bureaucracy and throw them back again into the poverty-stricken ruts of the "toiling masses" may ease the strain on the economy, but it cannot fail also lo create new factors of discontent against the regime...
...However, it enjoys a different position in the socialist countries...
...The fact is that there still are counter-revolutionaries (this, of course, is not to say you will find them everywhere and in every organization), and we must continue to fight them...
...Many people refuse to admit that contradictions still exist in a socialist society,25 with the result that when confronted with social contradictions they become timid and helpless...
...The victories of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the socialist revolution, coupled with our achievements in socialist construction, have rapidly changed the face of old China.1 Now we see before us an even brighter future...
...Administrative orders and the method of persuasion and education complement each other in solving contradictions among the people...
...In Soviet social classification, "intellectual" has come to include all who are not peasants or manual workers and thus to give a respectable label to the Communist bureaucracy itself...
...From what was done correctly they learned how things should be done...
...5. Tend to strengthen, not to cast off or weaken, the leadership of the Communist party...
...Some of our young people think that everything ought to be perfect once a socialist society is established and that they should be able to enjoy a happy life, ready-made, without working for it...
...beyond that, they are not permitted legal existence...
...Acceptance of that view will also breed confusion.39 38...
...The Chinese Communists are very proud of the fact that they got the peasants into "cooperatives" (virtually equivalent to Russian kolkhozes) without the resistance, bloodshed and famine that attended collectivization under Stalin...
...Everyone knows that light industry is closely related to agriculture...
...It is to be denied lo "unmistakable counter-revolutionaries and wreckers of the socialist cause...
...To do so would be to fly in the face of objective reality...
...The theory was that the Party members in their local branches should elect central executive committee which would in turn impose strict discipline on all members for carrying out all decisions taken...
...Since liberation, the peasants have rid themselves of landlord exploitation, and their production has increased year by year...
...In the suppression of counter-revolution, good people were sometimes mistaken for bad.24 Such things have happened before and still happen today...
...Will it do to ban such ideas and give them no opportunity to express themselves...
...In 1955, we advocated the practice of economy with considerable success...
...they have been tempered in the flames of a protracted revolution...
...No complete census was ever taken in China before the Communists came to power, but well-founded approximate estimates of population were made in the Thirties...
...they are suited to the development of the productive forces, but they are still far from perfect, and their imperfect aspects stand in contradiction to the development of the productive forces.29 There is conformity as well as contradiction be28...
...What this cooperative could do, other cooperatives should also be able to do under normal conditions, even if it may take a bit longer...
...We should always tell them the facts about the difficulties that have cropped up and discuss with them how to solve these difficulties...
...2. The figure of 600 million—or 602 million, to be precise—is derived from the 1954 census, which counted in the population of Formosa and the Overseas Chinese to make up the total...
...The 80 billion catties extracted from the peasants by the Government in grain tax and compulsory purchases arc sufficient to destroy the bargaining position the peasants would have in supplying the towns when there are acute shortages of all kinds of consumer goods...
...But that point was necessarily beyond the level of production attained by the most advanced capitalist nation...
...The reason is that in the past an acute struggle raged between ourselves and our enemies both within and without, and contradictions among the people did not attract as much attention as they do today...
...Ideological struggle is not like other forms of struggle...
...if those who are called on to do the Party's dirty work once get the idea that they are likely to be punished or blamed for the zeal they show in their "work," it may be difficult to evoke sufficient energy and enthusiasm for it the next time their services are required...
...In the same year, members of a small number of agricultural cooperatives also created disturbances, and the main causes were also bureaucracy on the part of the leadership and lack of educational work among the masses...
...The term "the people" has different meanings in different countries and in different historical periods in each country...
...We believe that this attitude will facilitate the growth of the arts and sciences...
...In handling any disturbances, we should work painstakingly and should not use oversimplified methods or declare the matter closed before it is thoroughly settled...
...These together account for more than 70 per cent of the rural population.41 Most of the rest also cherish hopes for the future of the cooperatives...
...In settling matters of an ideological nature or controversial issues among the people, we can only use democratic methods, methods of discussion, of criticism, of persuasion and education, not coercive, high-handed methods.20 In order to carry on their production and studies politics merely serves the economic base, for the socialist revolution is itself „ political act, .. seizure of state power whereby the relations of production are transformed...
...But, even in these countries, there are non-Marxist as well as anti-Marxist ideologies...
...Since the whole campaign, with its dreadful "accusation rallies" and public executions, was ill fact organized and carried out by the Communist party to consolidate its power under the stresses of the Korean War, Mao's explanation is simply a rather clumsy attempt at passing the buck...
...This change in world outlook is a fundamental one, and up to now it cannot yet be said that most of our intellectuals have accomplished it.50 We hope that they will continue making progress and, in the course of work and study, gradually acquire a Communist world outlook, get a better grasp of Marxism-Leninism, and identify themselves with the workers and peasants...
...Of course not...
...Marxism can only develop through struggle—this is true not only in the past and present, it is necessarily true in the future also...
...This is not a good attitude...
...But the "traitors and pro-Japanese elements" of the time of the Japanese invasion are not identical with any class in the Marxist sense, for even the Communists cannot deny that Chiang fought against the Japanese or that the majority of Chinese of all classes refused to collaborate with the invaders...
...Several million intellectuals who worked for the old society have come to serve the new society.47 The question that now arises is how they can best meet the needs of the new society and how we can help them do so...
...Contradictions in socialist society are, on the contrary, not antagonistic and can be resolved one after the other by the socialist system itself.26 The basic contradictions in socialist society are still those between the relations of production and the productive forces, and between the superstructure and the economic base...
...The days of 1. The Chinese Communists claim both to have completed China's bourgeois-democratic revolution and to have carried through a socialist revolution since they came to power...
...In the conditions existing in China today, what we call contradictions among the people include the following: Contradictions within the working class, contradictions within the peasantry, contradictions within the intelligentsia, contradictions between the working class and the peasantry, contradictions between the working class and peasantry on the one hand and the intelligentsia on the other, contradictions between the working class and other sections of the working people on the 3. In these definitions of "the people" for the three successive periods of (1) the war against Japan, (2) the civil war against the Kuomintang, and (3) Communist rule, it should be noted that only in the second period is the division between the people and their enemies made strictly in terms of class...
...This applies to the Communist party, the Youth League, Government departments responsible for this work, and especially heads of educational institutions and teachers...
...Facts give the answer: Only socialism can save China.28 The socialist system has promoted the rapid development of the productive forces of our country—this is a fact that even our enemies abroad have to acknowledge...
...We have this large population...
...motorcar and aircraft industries were non-existent...
...The productivity of the workers is much higher than that of the peasants, while the cost of living for the peasants is much lower than that for workers in the cities," so it cannot be said that the workers receive special favors from the state...
...Both democracy and freedom are relative, not absolute, and they come into being and develop under specific historical circumstances...
...We do not want any kind of poisonous weeds, but we should carefully distinguish between what is really a poisonous weed and what is really a fragrant flower...
...Both these views are wrong...
...We are confronted by two types of social contradictions—contradictions between ourselves and the enemy and contradictions among the people...
...The denial of independent nationhood to these peoples by the Chinese Communists, who are incessantly denouncing the iniquities of imperialism, is due to their determination to maintain intact the frontiers of the old Manchu empire, except for Outer Mongolia which was separated from China by the action of the Soviet Union...
...ence that it is good for them to keep on studying and remolding themselves.46 The idea just referred to that study and remolding are not necessary does not reflect the views of the majority of industrialists and businessmen...
...It is the desire of the Communist party, also its policy, to exist side by side with the other democratic parties for a long time to come...
...But this freedom is freedom with leadership, and this democracy is democracy under centralized guidance, not anarchy...
...The difficulty with "painstaking reasoning" is not only that it strains the patience of Party militants but also that the object of the propaganda may start reasoning, too...
...Because we have no reason not to adopt the policy of long-term coexistence with all other democratic parties which are truly devoted to the task of uniting the people for the cause of socialism and which enjoy the trust of the people.69 As early as the second session of the National Committee of the People's Political Consultative Conference in June 1950, I put the matter in this way: "The people and the People's Government have no reason to reject or deny 68...
...Huge areas of China's territory were seized, and the Chinese called this a defeat...
...Some intellectuals were tempered in the struggles against imperialism and reaction...
...The Chinese Communist party, the other democratic parties, democrats not affiliated with any party, intellectuals, industrialists and businessmen, workers, peasants and handicraftsmen—in short, all the 600 million people in our country—must increase production, practice economy, and combat extravagance and waste...
...Actually, there is no evidence that capitalists in China any more than elsewhere welcome "socialist transformation," but "ideological remolding" is insistently required of them by the regime...
...situation as a poor country denied her rights in international affairs will also be changed...
...The claim appears to be based on the fact that during the first five years of their rule the Communists distributed landlords' estates to the peasants as their private property and tolerated .. private sector of industry...
...Only a very small minority are really dissatisfied...
...If this is done, there will not usually be any disturbances...
...Those who demand freedom and democracy in the abstract regard democracy as an end and not a means...
...China has great natural resources, but outside Manchuria, where an industrial base was created by the Japanese, it is much more backward economically than Russia was in 1928...
...aid from Russia and the European Communist countries is not likely to be on .. sufficient scale to modify this situation fundamentally...
...He does not, indeed, directly state that any scientific or artistic activity which runs counter to the criteria will be punished, but, as he declares that it cannot possibly be "useful," what hope can those responsible for it have of continuing their work in a country where all academic research, all publication of books and all production of plays depend on agencies of the Party-state...
...That is why we hope that the other democratic parties will all pay attention to ideological remolding and strive for long-term coexistence and mutual supervision with the Communist party so as to meet the needs of the new society...
...we should set up a far greater number of small and medium enterprises and make full use of the industries inherited from the old society, so as to effect the greatest economy and do more things with less money...
...It is not easy to strike a balance between these opposite considerations...
...How long will it take to consolidate the cooperatives and end these arguments about their not having any superior qualities...
...the progressive intellectuals had to be taught to make "a clear distinction between ourselves and the enemy," by which is meant that all opposition to the Communist party must he identified with "the enemy...
...For many people, however, acceptance of this law is one thing and its application, examining and dealing with problems, is quite another...
...The First World War was followed by the birth of the Soviet Union with a population of 200 million...
...Early Marxist theory required that there be a full development of capitalist industry and the achievement of bourgeois political democracy (regarded as necessary for the liberation of the productive forces from feudal restrictions) before „ transition to socialism would be possible, and it was assumed that the interval between the bourgeois-democratic and socialist revolutions would be a fairly long one...
...otherwise I shall lag behind...
...This will gladden people in both town and countryside...
...Decisions on exoneration and rehabilitation should receive the same measure of publicity as the original mistaken decisions...
...Our guiding principle is overall planning and all-around consideration and proper arrangements...
...nor should one section of them oppress another section...
...It is said, however, that most Chinese intellectuals prefer ihc ignorance and boorishness of near-illiterates for their work, and interfere in scientific and cultural matters in a way that is uncalled for...
...And how is the citizen to know whether his criticisms will be so classified...
...But he attempts to reduce the significance of this admission by claiming that "domestic and foreign counter-revolutionary elements were at work...
...Mao's thesis appears to make the bourgeoisie at once antagonistic and non-antagonistic in its contradiction with the working class...
...China's 75...
...But the condition is that such bureaucracy on the part of those in positions of leadership...
...This year, we have called for economy and elimination of waste in every respect throughout the country...
...this is because of the dual character of the national bourgeoisie in our country.6 In the years of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, there was a revolutionary side to their character...
...But Mao is unwilling to agree to this and again calls "the people" to his aid...
...There is no evidence that in fact anything like this proportion of the peasants favor collective farming, at any rate now that they have had some experience of it...
...From what was done wrong they learned useful lessons as to why mistakes were made...
...Is not this a good thing...
...Nevertheless, our success in suppressing counter-revolution is undoubtedly an important reason for the consolidation of our state...
...The former is quite in accordance with Marxist theory, but the latter is something which Marx would have regarded as absurd...
...If the imperialists should insist on launching a third world war, it is certain that several hundred million more will turn to socialism...
...But if anyone is still unpersuaded after such arguments have been used, it shows that he is hostile to the regime, a real class enemy...
...But, of course, taking the country as a whole, there are certainly not many counter-revolutionaries...
...It is quite true that "Marxists have always held that the cause of the proletariat can only be promoted by relying on the masses of the people" and that "commandism" and coercion are out of place in dealing with the masses...
...The intention as stated is excellent, but the question is whether Communist China is likely, any more than other Communist countries, to modify its program of forced industrialization and capital accumulation to the extent required...
...It is perfectly sure that we should learn from the good experience of all countries, socialist or capitalist, but the main thing is still to learn from the Soviet Union...
...course, a bad thing, but there is a good side to this...
...Quite a few people fail to make a clear distinction between these two different types of contradictions—those between ourselves and the enemy and those among the people—and are prone to confuse the two...
...all the complications of collective farming familiar from European examples appear to have cropped up in China also...
...We stand resolutely for peace and oppose war...
...In China, capitalist industry has never developed beyond1 its infancy and political democracy has never been established...
...In this respect, the question of whether socialism or capitalism will win is still not really settled...
...A democratic state indeed punishes as crimes certain defined acts of treason or rebellion, but for a totalitarian state all opposition to the will of the ruling party is in itself criminal while the complete concentration of power in the Party dictatorship removes all checks or restrictions on the latter in dealing with the opposition...
...the people deceived by domestic and foreign counter-revolutionaries made the mistake of resorting to acts of violence against the People's Government, with the result that both the state and the people suffered for it...
...The peasants are working with a will, and last year, despite the worst floods, droughts and typhoons in years, they were still able to increase the output of food crops...
...they are willing to serve their flourishing socialist motherland, and they know that, if they turn away from the socialist cause and the working people led by the Communist party, they will have no one to rely on and no bright future to look forward to...
...The national bourgeoisie differs from the imperialists, the landlords and the bureaucrat-capitalists...
...Why should the democratic parties of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie be allowed to exist side by side with the party of the working class over a long period of time...
...Any substantial rise in the real incomes of the peasants must mean .. large-scale diversion of resources from capital-goods into consumer-goods industries, or of foreign exchange to import consumer goods, and such diversions are contrary to the basic objectives of Communist economic planning...
...The principle of democratic centralism was originally .. concept applicable to the Communist party itself and not to the state...
...Even when they stop receiving their fixed interest payments and rid themselves of the label "bourgeoisie," they will still need ideological remolding for quite some time...
...Even when all the counter-revolutionaries in existence have been rooted out, new ones may emerge...
...If we drop our guard, we shall be badly fooled and suffer for it severely...
...The admission that "Marxists are still a minority of the entire population" is significant in view of the claim that China is united as never before in support of the Communist regime...
...As in other Communist countries, the people is allowed neither electoral choice nor any form of organization independent of the party-state...
...they do not understand or do not sufficiently understand long-range, nationwide and collective interests...
...the proletariat can turn them to account, and so can the bourgeoisie and other people...
...Early Marxism was able to reconcile the idea of democracy with that of the dictatorship of the proletariat because it was believed that by the time conditions were ripe for a socialist revolution the economic process of concentration of property and erosion of the middle classes would have made the vast majority of the population proletarian and this majority during the revolutionary period would govern itself democratically without any restrictions, even though the dispossessed bourgeoisie would be deprived of political rights...
...In this remark can be detected a certain nostalgia for the days when Marxism was the latest thing on the campus of Peking National University, the new, exciting doctrine which, in the days of China's greatest weakness and disorder, seemed to have answers to all questions...
...But, at the same time, full attention must be paid to the development of agriculture and light industry...
...By civil rights, we mean political freedom and democratic rights...
...In regard to the people, on the contrary, it does not use compulsion, it uses democratic methods, that is, it must allow the people to take part in political activities and, far from compelling them to do this or that, use the democratic methods of education and persuasion...
...Too many people...
...While criticizing doctrinairism, we should at the same time direct our attention to criticizing revisionism...
...It is certainly a pity if "good people were sometimes mistaken for ibad," and Mao is no doubt very sorry for them...
...A period of trial is often needed to determine whether something is right or wrong...
Vol. 40 • September 1957 • No. 66
