DECLARATION OF THE FIRST HUNAN PEASANTS CONGRESS

December 1926

[Text] Under the political and economic oppression of imperialism and feudalism, the life of the peasants grows worse day by day. Many are "without a tile over their heads or an inch of ground under their feet," truly homeless and jobless.

Ever since the power of imperialism invaded the orient destroying our "closed door policy," and bursting open our agricultural economy, our Chinese peasants have become the slaves of foreign capitalists. We labor every day to produce much grain, cotton, hemp, silk and tea and they merely produce a little cash and buy it up; they use machinery to manufacture all kinds of newfangled goods, ship them over here, and sell them for God knows how much cash. Stuff like foreign oil, foreign cloth, foreign nails, foreign ceramics and foreign iron--a limitless number of foreign goods have all flooded our cities and are gradually forcing their way into our villages. There is no way to buy our native goods produced without machines and we can't even make a little cash by farming while the foreign goods makes richer every day.

The way in which the imperialists exploit us is to dominate our Customs and ship in goods freely for sale at low prices, taking our silver and destroying our handicrafts industry; it is to dominate our mines, our railroads, our waterways, to start factories and banks, using our cheap resources to make goods for themselves, and taking our coal and iron to control transportation. The imperialists and the warlords have, moreover, colluded to exploit the peasants indirectly by imposing local taxes and the salt tax and directly through acreage tax and surtaxes. In addition the imperialists have made many loans to the warlords who in turn exploit the peasants even more severely in order to repay them. The warlords also use unemployed peasants as mercenary soldiers with weapons supplied by the imperialists to create a force with which to oppress the peasants.

The imperialists exercise their money and military power and collude with the warlords and compradors and after having done this for a while in China the product of the peasants labor finds its way by twist and turn into their pockets.

The exploitation of the peasants by internal warlords and local bullies and rotten gentry is a kind of feudal exploitive system. They do not exploit hired labor as does the capitalist but take away a large portion of the peasants' produce--this is the rent and tax system. So the landlords exploit the peasants directly and indirectly (e.g., through the tenant peasant system), and so the warlords exploit them directly (e.g., with respect to owner-peasants) or indirectly (e.g., with respect to tenant peasants). Every year they rake off about 60 to 65 percent of the peasants harvest.

They conspire together and coordinate with the imperialists and compradors to squeeze the peasants' blood and sweat and to jointly suppress the peasants' resistance. When drought comes and the peasants are driven to the end of their forbearance, they naturally rise up violently, often threatening the overthrow of feudalism and imperialism.

The Taiping Rebellion was an explosion of south China peasants. The Boxer Rebellion was an explosion of north China peasants. Both, however, were repressed by the reactionary forces of imperialism and feudalism.

But the revolutionary movement latent in peasant villages has not been dissipated by the suppression of the imperialists and feudal classes. Such organizations as the San Ho Hui, the San Tien Hui, the Ta Tao Hui, the Ko Lao Hui which pervade the southern provinces and the Nien Tzu, the Pai Lang and the Hung Ch'iang Hui in the north have been continuously created to struggle with the imperialism and the feudal classes. For this reason, cases of missionaries being killed and starving peasants rioting are frequent the most notably in recent years being the burning of the governor of Hunan's offices in the 1908-1911 period and the Li-Ling Tang railway car hijacking case, both of which were done by these people). These revolutionary organizations have no broad united front and do not understand political strategy and so can never do anything of great significance.

The organized, planned revolution by the workers of the world has given us a fine example. Mr Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang which he leads got in touch with these naturally occurring revolutionary groups in the villages some 20 years ago and guided them to the path of the true political party to lead our peasant revolution. In politics they "build democracy" and in economics they established "equal land rights" as the standards for the liberation of the peasants; they always provided the peasants with an appropriate policy with which to fight imperialism and the feudal classes and attain our goals.

Many years ago in Heng-shan and Yueh-pei the peasants of Hunan began to develop organizational shoots. Year before last during the first half of the year some of the peasants of Hsiang-t'an again rose up but they were massacred by the warlords Chao and could not develop successfully. In February of last year in Chu-chou Mr Wang Hsien-tsung became a martyr to the peasants cause. The violence of the warlords and local bullies reached

a peak and the peasants were in a high state of emotion. The saying goes "when things reach their worst, there must be a turn for the better." At this time a fierce campaign to drive out Chao Heng-ti was born and in this the peasants constituted a major force. At the time when Wu and Yeh made their counterattack, the peasants acted as spies, transport, and guides for the Northern Expedition Army and disrupted the enemy's rear. They even took up lances and birdguns and became guerrillas or joined in battles in such as at places like Li-ling, Chu-chou, P'ing-chiang and Hua-jung. No less than 10 battles have had peasant participation and many peasants have been killed. See how brave and willing to sacrifice themselves have been the Hunan peasants who have participated in the battles of the Northern Expedition!

When the Northern Expedition Army moved into Hupeh and Kiangsi and on to the Chekiang-Hunan front the peasants in Hunan devoted all their efforts towards consolidating the rear, overthrowing corrupt officials and throwing out the local bullies and rotten gentry. This movement was extremely broad. The local bullies, rotten gentry and corrupt officials almost everywhere were utterly shocked. No more do they dare to exercise the power and high-handedness to which they have been accustomed and treat the peasants as dirt as they did. Since we peasants do not understand gentility or manners, we stand up straight, beat up any corrupt official, local bully and rotten gentry we hear about; not fearing that they may get together some remnants of their power for a counterattack and may kill peasants on a large scale such as at Chishio, Lin-liu-tang, Yu-hsien, I-yang, An-hua and I-chang. As these tragedies occur, we know that they are but the dying outbursts of a departing storm and we have nothing to fear. This bit of revolutionary work, we would dare compare with the taking of the city of Wu-ch'ang. This is true because the power of the local bullies and rotten gentry of the villages is the true foundation of the warlords, and the destruction of this power would be difficult to accomplish without a rising by the peasants.

The primary task of the present revolutionary government should, we feel, be to continue to dig up the political foundations of the warlords and develop the organization of the masses; we peasants will brave death to support the government as it works toward this goal.

But, the aim of the national revolution is to liberate all of the oppressed masses, not just to liberate the peasants. How can we restrict our concern to the liberation of the peasants. We cannot. But the liberation of the peasants is a pivotal point. If the liberation of the peasants is realized, the interest of all classes is served. At present, one of the main reasons why industry and commerce are not developed is that 300 million peasants have no purchasing power; and the reason why agriculture is not developed is that the peasants have no incentive power. If the peasants are liberated and they can lessen the economic exploitation of the landlords then they will improve agriculture and, as a result of their purchases of fertilizer, tools and cloth, industry and commerce will simultaneously develop. In the French Revolution of years ago the peasants obtained a measure of liberation and the wealth of France was greatly increased; in recent years the peasants of

Russia have completely done away with exploitation by landlords and their productive power increases year after year. These are both clear proofs of this. If industry and commerce profit by the liberation of the peasants, how much more so will education, culture and all kinds of construction.

However, the present financial difficulties of the government, the stagnant money market, the extraordinary terrorism in society and many rumors, are all blamed on the peasants and believed to be the result of the peasant revolution. How they have wronged us! The fears of today do have causes. One is that due to wartime blockades, rice cannot be shipped down the Yangtze River and salt cannot be brought in to Hunan. With this we lose all of the vast income from taxes on rice and salt sales. Another is that finances have not been unified in western Hunan, and the Kweichow Army and other newly formed units have been syphoning off tax revenue so that one-third of the financial resources of all Hunan are lost. Another is manipulation of reactionaries, for example, the attack on the Hengyang Tax Bureau. Although this was partially the result of corruption in the tax bureau which merited the attack, it was also the result of reactionaries taking the opportunity to create hatred among the party, government, and mass organizations. The reactionaries have done many similar things, and for these reasons they have been able to create disorder in society. How can the disorder be attributed to the peasants?

Although the attacks by the peasants on the local bullies and rotten gentry in the villages have used illegal methods, these are methods which must be adopted in the course of revolutionary struggle. At a time when the East wind will overcome the West wind or be overcome by it, how can we not be severe? If we are afraid of conflict or adopt an attitude of doubt or negativism, we cannot be considered revolutionaries. The old policies which did away with conflict are not suitable we have only the new policy established by us all, that of bringing about democratic government in the peasants in the villages and thoroughly destroying the feudal policy of the local bullies and rotten gentry.

This Congress, representing Hunan's 27 million peasants, after careful consideration, has decided upon a policy of revolutionary struggle from now on to achieve liberation.

Peasants to Hunan! Unite under the banner of the Provincial Peasants Association and resolutely fight according to the policy of this Congress!

Our slogans are:

Peasants of China, unite!
Support the Revolutionary Government!
Oppose corrupt officials!
Overthrow local bullies and rotten gentry!
Exterminate bandits!
Put finances in order, get rid of bribes!
Overthrow the warlords!

Overthrow imperialism!
Long live the First Hunan Peasants Congress!
Long live the liberation of the Chinese people!
Long live the Peasants International!
Long live the success of World Revolution!