Telegram to Peng Dehuai and Luo Ruiqing[1]

(February 20, 1941)

The political training directive issued by the Front Headquarters on February 9 is inappropriate. The directive confuses the distinction between the big bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie, theoretically shaking the "Three-Thirds System" and giving the entire army the impression that the entire bourgeoisie has already or is about to betray, and that the Soviet period of the workers, peasants, and petty bourgeoisie is about to return. This could potentially overturn theoretically all the efforts of the Central Committee and the entire Party over the past year to correct "Left" deviationist errors. Advocating agrarian revolution at the present time is extremely erroneous and would isolate our Party. The Central Committee has been and is currently striving to explain to both inside and outside the Party that the Party's policy is not a policy of agrarian revolution but a policy of the united front. To believe that there exists, outside of united front education, a so-called class education opposed to united front education, which should now be emphasized, while failing to understand that united front education is precisely class education, that is, the standpoint and attitude of the proletariat and the peasant class towards the various bourgeois strata (big, national, petty) and landlord strata (big, middle, small) that are still resisting Japan at present. Apart from this, there is no such thing as a separate class education. Only if one believes the united front involves solely unity and no struggle would there be a need to specifically propose emphasizing class antagonism or class struggle. During the period of the anti-communist高潮, the main danger to guard against is the "Left" deviationist danger, not the Right deviationist danger, and the February 9 directive is bound to fuel the development of the "Left" deviationist danger. The February 9 directive contains a tendency to deviate from the fundamental principles of the Central Committee's July 7 Decision and December Directive.

[1] This is the main content of a telegram drafted by Mao Zedong for the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee and the General Political Department of the Central Military Commission, addressed to Peng Dehuai and Luo Ruiqing.

We clearly understand that this arose due to the stimulus of the Southern Anhui Incident. It must be understood that whether it is the Southern Anhui Incident, or even Chiang Kai-shek's betrayal, capitulation, and total rupture, the fundamental principles of the July 7 Decision and the December Directive will not change. Some comrades now seem to feel that after the Southern Anhui Incident, the principled stand held in the Central Committee's July 7 Decision and December Directive is no longer applicable. This view is incorrect.