(April 30, 1938)

The Workers' Representative Assembly of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border
Region has been in session for several days, but I have not had time to attend.
Today they have asked me to give a talk, so I will discuss one problem, that of
"forming organizations and fighting Japan."
The united front, for which another name is "form organizations," is engaged
precisely in forming organizations to fight Japan. These organizations are different now from what they were in the past. The united front is a big organization, put
together from many small organizations. The workers' union is one of these many
small organizations. There are tens of millions of workers in China, and this proletariat of tens of millions of people should unite to form an organization. Among
these tens of millions of workers, there are also seventy-two trades, and the workers of every trade and industry should organize a workers' union for each trade
and industry. At the same time, within each trade and industry, each locality is
different. For instance, Yanchang has the coal miners of Yanchang, the central
Shaanxi plain has the coal miners of the central Shaanxi plain, and every place has
its own workers' union for coal miners; Shaanxi Province has organized a general
union for all the coal miners in Shaanxi. Tai'erzhuang, where China recently won
a great victory, produces very good coal, and there are many coal miners there.
They too want to organize a workers' union for the coal industry. Once every
province has its own workers' union for the coal industry, then a general union for
coal-industry workers of the entire country can be organized. In addition, the unions
of every industry in every locality in every province can join together to organize
a national general workers' union. This is the way we must organize the country's
proletariat of tens of millions of people. I am told that you are discussing the issue
of unifying and spreading the union organizations. This is excellent; we must organize the proletariat of tens of millions of people in every province and every
industry in the entire country to form a workers' organization. This is the way to
"form organizations and fight Japan," and its strength will be very great.
Should it be only the workers who form organizations and fight Japan? Are
there other organizations? There is another organization that is formed by the farmers

Our source for this text is Dangde wenxian, 1995, no. 4, pp. 12-13.

who till the land. There is a saying in China: "If the peasants don't exert themselves, the emperor will starve." But I think that if the peasants do not exert themselves, it is not just the emperor who will starve; there will certainly be a lot of
people who starve. Our China has several hundred million peasants, and they should
also be formed into an organization. Everywhere, in every province, every xian,
and every township, a peasants' association, a peasants' society for resisting Japan
and saving the country, should be established. If we organize in such a way, and
use these kinds of organizations to go fight Japan, need we fear that Japanese
imperialism cannot be overthrown?

There are also the businessmen; those who do business should also be organized. Are there others? Cultural workers, those who wield the pen, these people
who write articles, should also be organized. The Northern Shaanxi Public School
has now been set up, and in cultural circles the National Salvation Society has
been established as well. Some people ask what is the use of a pen; can you use a
pen to fight the Japanese? Yes, you can fight the Japanese with a pen; axes, hoes,
and pens should all be organized, and united in organizations to fight the Japanese.
Napoleon said: one pen is stronger than three thousand Mausers. Now we say that
if one pen is equal to even one gun, the whole country will have many tens of
thousands of guns.

For the people of every profession in the whole country all to be organized in
this way is what is called the National Anti-Japanese United Front; this is a big
organization of the whole country.

Are there any other organizations or not? Yes, there are big organizations of a
global nature; this means forming organizations with other countries. For this, one
must understand a bit about the world situation. Back when I was a child I heard
people say, "Without stepping outside his gate, the scholar knows all the wide
world's affairs"; now I think that this sentence is completely wrong. There are still
some old scholars who are still alive today, and they only know about the affairs
of a few dozen li around them. If you go and ask one about Japanese affairs, about
why Japan is fighting China, he would say he does not know. If you go on and ask
about the affairs of Italy, Germany, and Spain, again he would not know. What do
these scholars know about the wide world's affairs? I say they do not know a
thing. There is now another kind of scholar, like the students at the Northern

1. Since Paul von Mauser, the inventor of this weapon, was not born until 1838, after
Napoleon's death, Mao's citation cannot be strictly accurate. Perhaps he understood Mauser,
in its Chinese transcription, to refer to any nineteenth-century gun.
2. The term xiucai, here translated "scholars," refers to the graduates at the lowest level
of the imperial bureaucracy. Since the examinations for this rank had been abolished thirty
years earlier, any xiucai still alive would necessarily have been relatively old.
3. Once again, the term here translated "scholar" is xiucai; both before and after 1949,
Mao used it deliberately in referring to his contemporaries to underscore that they were
fulfilling the role which the graduates of the imperial examinations were supposed to play,
but could not.
Shaanxi Public School and the people of the National Salvation Association in
cultural circles. They have a kind of skill that enables them to keep in touch with
the news sent by radio; they truly know about the affairs of the world. Now when
the Spanish government wins a victory, I know that this is because their workers
are very well united. The Chinese army won a victory at Tai'erzhuang, and I also
know this. Yesterday our Commander in Chief Zhu [De] won a victory, and I knew
about it today! What is the reason for this? It is because now there is a kind of
thing, made by the workers, which can fly through the sky, and it is called radio.
In the past some people said that foreigners are all straight-legged; their legs
are straight, and they cannot walk, if they fall down they cannot get up, and so
forth. All this talk was wrong. Among the foreigners there are good foreigners,
and there are bad foreigners. You could say that among the foreigners about eight
or nine out of ten have sympathy for China or may be willing to help China. I think
some of you must have seen that a few days ago the Xinhua ribao of Hankou
published two articles by Japanese; those are two good Japanese.

In every country of the world now those good foreigners have organizations.
The proletarian Soviet Union is the largest organization. In Japan, Germany, Italy,
and Spain, the good people in these countries all have formed organizations, antifascist organizations. The workers of foreign countries want to oppose fascism,
and we, the Chinese people, also want to oppose fascism; the goal is the same.
This is a big organization of world antifascists. In this way, the workers in every
country want to overthrow Japanese imperialism. The workers within Japan want
to overthrow Japanese imperialism as well; they also want to organize a united
front. The three united fronts, one in China, one of the antifascists of the whole
world, plus the one of the Japanese proletariat, all want to rise up and overthrow
Japanese imperialism, and this will result in a united front of the whole world. This
united front must still be organized well, and expanded well, in order to attack
Japanese imperialism in unison. Do you think that Japanese imperialism can be
overthrown? It certainly can. Whoever says that China cannot defeat Japan is wrong.

If China is to defeat Japanese imperialism, the working class will have a very
important role to play in the War of Resistance. Hence, the proletariat must unite
together well. We must overthrow Japanese imperialism, for only then can we be
sure that we will not become slaves without a country. We will never agree to
serve as slaves without a country. We must raise up our heads, we must stand up.
Only through unity can we overthrow Japanese imperialism!

4. The term here translated "stand up" is fanshen, used by Mao in the late 1930s to
symbolize the liberation of the Chinese people, and especially of the peasantry.