November 5, 1938

[This is part of Comrade Mao Tse-tung's concluding speech at the Sixth
Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Party. At the time,
the issue of independence and initiative within the united front was one
of the outstanding questions concerning the anti-Japanese united front, a
question on which there were differences of opinion between Comrade Mao Tse-tung
and Chen Shao-yu. In essence what was involved was proletarian leadership
in the united front. In his report of December 1947 ("The Present Situation
and Our Tasks") Comrade Mao Tse-tung briefly summed up these differences:

During the War of Resistance, our Party combated ideas similar to those
  of the capitulationists [referring to Chen Tu-hsiu's capitulationism in the
  period of the First Revolutionary Civil War], that is, such ideas as making
  concessions to the Kuomintang's anti-popular policies, having more confidence
  in the Kuomintang than in the masses, not daring to arouse and give full
  rein to mass struggles, not daring to expand the Liberated Areas and the
  people's armies in the Japanese-occupied areas, and handing over the leadership
  in the War of Resistance to the Kuomintang. Our Party waged a resolute struggle
  against such impotent and degenerate ideas, which run counter to the principles
  of Marxism-Leninism, resolutely carried out its political line of "developing
  the progressive forces, winning over the middle forces and isolating the
  die-hard forces", and resolutely expanded the Liberated Areas and the People's
  Liberation Army. Not only did this ensure our Party's ability to defeat Japanese
  imperialism in the period of its aggression, but also in the period after
  the Japanese surrender when Chiang Kai-shek launched his counter-revolutionary
  war, it ensured our Party's ability to switch smoothly and without loss to
  the course of Opposing Chiang Kai-shek's counter-revolutionary war with a
  people's revolutionary war and to win great victories in a short time. All
  Party comrades must keep these lessons of history firmly in mind.]


HELP AND CONCESSIONS SHOULD BE POSITIVE, NOT NEGATIVE


All political parties and groups in the united front must help each other
and make mutual concessions for the sake of long-term cooperation, but such
help and concessions should be positive, not negative. We must consolidate
and expand our own Party and army, and at the same time should assist friendly
parties and armies to consolidate and expand; the people want the government
to satisfy their political and economic demands, and at the same time give
the government every possible help to prosecute the War of Resistance; the
factory workers demand better conditions from the owners, and at the same
time work hard in the interests of resistance; for the sake of unity against
foreign aggression, the landlords should reduce rent and interest, and at
the same time the peasants should pay rent and interest. All these principles
and policies of mutual assistance are positive, not negative or one-sided.
The same should be true of mutual concessions. Each side should refrain from
undermining the other and from organizing secret party branches within the
other's party, government and army. For our part we organize no secret party
branches inside the Kuomintang and its government or army, and so set the
Kuomintang's mind at rest, to the advantage of the War of Resistance. The
saying, "Refrain from doing some things in order to be able to do other
things",[1] exactly meets the case. A national
war of resistance would have been impossible without the reorganization of
the Red Army, the change in the administrative system in the Red areas, and
the abandonment of the policy of armed insurrection. By giving way on the
latter we have achieved the former; negative measures have yielded positive
results. "To fall back the better to leap forward"
[2]--that is Leninism. To regard concessions as
something purely negative is contrary to Marxism-Leninism. There are indeed
instances of purely negative concessions--the Second International's doctrine
of collaboration between labour and capital [3]
resulted in the betrayal of a whole class and a whole revolution. In China,
Chen Tu-hsiu and then Chang Kuo-tao were both capitulators; capitulationism
must be strenuously opposed. When we make concessions, fall back, turn to
the defensive or halt our advance in our relations with either allies or
enemies, we should always see these actions as part of our whole revolutionary
policy, as an indispensable link in the general revolutionary line, as one
turn in a zigzag course. In a word, they are positive.

THE IDENTITY BETWEEN THE NATIONAL AND THE CLASS
STRUGGLE

To sustain a long war by long-term co-operation or, in other words, to
subordinate the class struggle to the present national struggle against
Japan--such is the fundamental principle of the united front. Subject to
this principle, the independent character of the parties and classes and
their independence and initiative within the united front should be preserved,
and their essential rights should not be sacrificed to co-operation and unity,
but on the contrary must be firmly upheld within certain limits. Only thus
can co-operation be promoted, indeed only thus can there be any co-operation
at all. Otherwise co-operation will turn into amalgamation and the united
front will inevitably be sacrificed. In a struggle that is national in character,
the class struggle takes the form of national struggle, which demonstrates
the identity between the two. On the one hand, for a given historical period
the political and economic demands of the various classes must not be such
as to disrupt co-operation; on the other hand, the demands of the national
struggle (the need to resist Japan) should be the point of departure for
all class struggle. Thus there is identity in the united front between unity
and independence and between the national struggle and the class struggle.

"EVERYTHING THROUGH THE UNITED FRONT" IS WRONG

The Kuomintang is the party in power, and so far has not allowed the united
front to assume an organizational form. Behind the enemy lines, the idea
of "everything through" is impossible, for there we have to act independently
and with the initiative in our own hands while keeping to the agreements
which the Kuomintang has approved (for instance, the Programme of Armed
Resistance and National Reconstruction). Or we may act first and report
afterwards, anticipating what the Kuomintang might agree to. For instance,
the appointment of administrative commissioners and the dispatch of troops
to Shantung Province would never have occurred if we had tried to get these
things done "through the united front". It is said that the French Communist
Party once put forward a similar slogan, but that was probably because in
France, where a joint committee of the parties already existed and the Socialist
Party was unwilling to act in accordance with the jointly agreed programme
and wanted to have its own way, the Communist Party had to put forward such
a slogan in order to restrain the Socialist Party, and certainly it did not
do so to shackle itself. In the case of China, the Kuomintang has deprived
all other political parties of equal rights and is trying to compel them
to take its orders. If this slogan is meant to be a demand that everything
done by the Kuomintang must go through us, it is both ridiculous and impossible.
If we have to secure the Kuomintang's consent beforehand for everything we
do, what if the Kuomintang does not consent? Since the policy of the Kuomintang
is to restrict our growth, there is no reason whatever for us to propose
such a slogan, which simply binds us hand and foot. At present there are
things for which we should secure prior consent from the Kuomintang, such
as the expansion of our three divisions into three army corps--this is to
report first and act afterwards. There are other things which the Kuomintang
can be told after they have become accomplished facts, such as the expansion
of our forces to over 200,000 men--this is to act first and report afterwards.
There are also things, such as the convening of the Border Region assembly,
which we shall do without reporting for the time being, knowing that the
Kuomintang will not agree. There are still other things which, for the time
being, we shall neither do nor report, for they are likely to jeopardize
the whole situation. In short, we must not split the united front, but neither
should we allow ourselves to be bound hand and foot, and hence the slogan
of "everything through the united front" should not be put forward. If
"everything must be submitted to the united front" is interpreted as "everything
must be submitted to" Chiang Kai-shek and Yen Hsi-shan, then that slogan,
too, is wrong. Our policy is one of independence and initiative within the
united front, a policy both of unity and of independence.

NOTES

1. A quotation from Mencius.

2. V. I. Lenin, "Conspectus of Hegel's Book
Lectures on the History of Philosophy", Collected Works, Russ. ed.,
Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 275.

3. "The doctrine of collaboration between labour and capital"
is the reactionary doctrine of the Second International, which advocates
such collaboration in the capitalist countries and opposes the revolutionary
overthrow of bourgeois rule and the establishment of the dictatorship of
the proletariat.


Transcription by the Maoist Documentation Project.