Unite, While at the Same Time Struggling
(February 5, 1939)

How do we consolidate the united front to achieve our goal: "the War of Resistance must be victorious, and building the country must be successful"? We must
make use of the struggle on two fronts.
One is to oppose closed-doorism. We must talk about love for our former enemies, and unite with the landlords, capitalists, and petty bourgeoisie, provided
only that they are willing. There are some here among us who are mortally afraid
that they will be soiled by bourgeois garbage, and who say these people are no
good, that we should not talk with them about love and should not talk with them
about unity. They believe that we can win the War of Resistance all by ourselves if
we just study Marxism behind closed doors. The thought of these people really is
no good, and we should oppose it, for closed-doorism hinders unity and hinders
the united front. There are also some other people whose thinking is very confused; these are the villains who "make money out of the misfortunes of the country" and who "make a living by creating friction." Such people we must also oppose.
The enemies of unity are those who sabotage unity and pay no attention to unity.
The struggle is like a combat at the front. We have attacked those closed-doorists
who do not care about unity, and also those diehard elements who make a living by
creating friction, and this constitutes a front.
There is another front, and another thing we must attack. This thing we must
attack is seeking to abolish the Communist Party and to incorporate it into the
Guomindang, under the pretext of talking about "unity." Such people often talk
about "aligning the Communist Party with the Guomindang." But to eliminate the
Communist Party is harmful and not advantageous for carrying out [Sun Yatsen's]
Three People's Principles. We are the most resolute in carrying out nationalism
(the anti-Japanese war). We are also the most thoroughgoing in carrying out people's
rights. The Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region is an example of this. Recently
an American reporter attended the meetings of the border region assembly for
several days, and he said that the democracy is on a much higher level here than in
America. In the entire country, it is we here who are carrying out the principles of
people's rights and people's livelihood. Elsewhere, though they boast that they

want to carry out the Three People's Principles, in reality, they apply only one
people's principle (resistance against Japan), and moreover they do not carry it out
very well. We are the loyal followers of the Three People's Principles; we are
indomitable in carrying the Three People's Principles through to the end. If some
people say that people's rights and people's livelihood should not be carried out,
and you say "Well, all right," this is wrong, it is capitulationism; if people say that
they do not want communism and you reply, "Yes, yes," this is also capitulationism.
At present it is we who are resolutely carrying out the Three People's Principles;
in the future, we will carry out communism unconditionally.
On the one hand, the united front is about love and unity; on the other hand, it
also requires struggle. Isn't this self-contradictory? At the school, each one of you
has both unity and struggle. If you make a mistake and you want to correct it, don't
you have to struggle? Confucius said, "The gentleman agrees with others, without
being an echo. The small man echoes without being in agreement."¹ This is also
the same as saying that there is struggle in unity. There are also both unification
and struggle in the relationship between a father and a son, or between a ruler and
his minister. On the one hand, the father loves his son, and his son is filial; the ruler
is enlightened and his minister is worthy-this is loving and uniting, which is also
unity. On the other hand, the son exhorts his father regarding his mistakes and the
minister remonstrates with the king regarding his errors. This is struggle, or what
today is called education by persuasion. All of this shows that there is struggle in
unification, and this applies to everything under heaven. If someone believes that
there is only unity but no struggle, he has not yet studied Marxism properly. Unity
and struggle are the two basic principles of the united front. Well then, are these
two things of equal importance? Should we say that struggle is more important
than unity? The answer to both of these questions is in the negative! The first
fundamental principle of the Anti-Japanese National United Front is unity, which
means we must talk with our friends about love, unity, mutual aid, and so on. But
another principle is struggle, which means mediation, persuasion, education, and
so on. This is an indispensable principle. Well then, why don't we add the word
"struggle" to the name of the "Anti-Japanese National United Front," so that it
will become the "Anti-Japanese National United Struggle Front"? I believe all of
you comrades know the reason. Some people may not understand the word
"struggle" in our sense, and may be frightened away as soon as they see the word
"struggle." At the same time, when we speak of struggle this does not mean that
we have to struggle all the time. It is absolutely not the case that, as soon as we see
a friend, the first thing we say is "I want to unite with you," and the second thing
we say is "I want to struggle with you." In reality this is unnecessary. But the fact
remains that struggle is a principle; nobody can or should forget it. This is the case

during the War of Resistance, but will it be true also after the War of Resistance?
That depends on how the other people behave. If the other people aim their machine guns at us and put their swords against our necks, do we still have to say "I
want to unite with you," "I love you"? Comrades, if that happens in the future, we
will have no alternative but to pick up the machine gun and sword to struggle, and
that struggle can certainly not be carried on by persuasion and education. At that
time, struggle will become the first priority. Marxism holds that there is nothing
that does not contain struggle, and that there is not simply one form of struggle,
but many and varied forms.

--- Notes

1. The quotation is from the Analects, XIII, 23. In this instance, we have preferred the
reading of D.C. Lau (Confucius. The Analects [Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1979],
p. 122) to that of Legge, Vol. I, p. 273.


This is an extract from a speech by Mao at the Central Party School. Our source for this text
is Dangde wenxian, no. 4, 1995, pp. 15-16.