March and April 1941


PREFACE


March 17, 1941

The present rural policy of the Party is not one of Agrarian Revolution as
during the ten years' civil war, but is a rural policy for the National United
Front Against Japan. The whole Party should carry out the Central Committee's
directives of July 7 and December 25, 1940, [1]
and the directives of the forthcoming Seventh National Congress. The following
material is being published to help comrades find a method for studying problems.
Many of our comrades still have a crude and careless style of work, do not
seek to understand things thoroughly and may even be completely ignorant
of conditions at the lower levels, and yet they are responsible for directing
work. This is an extremely dangerous state of affairs. Without a really concrete
knowledge of the actual conditions of the classes in Chinese society there
can be no really good leadership.

The only way to know conditions is to make social investigations, to investigate
the conditions of each social class in real life. For those charged with
directing work, the basic method for knowing conditions is to concentrate
on a few cities and villages according to a plan, use the fundamental viewpoint
of Marxism, i.e., the method of class analysis, and make a number of thorough
investigations. Only thus can we acquire even the most rudimentary knowledge
of China's social problems.

To do this, first, direct your eyes downward, do not hold your head high
and gaze at the sky. Unless a person is interested in turning his eyes downward
and is determined to do so, he will never in his whole life really understand
things in China.

Second, hold fact-finding meetings. Certainly, no all-round knowledge can
be acquired merely by glancing this way and that and listening to hearsay.
Of the data I obtained through fact-finding meetings, those on Hunan Province
and on Chingkangshan have been lost. The materials published here consist
mainly of the "Survey of Hsingkuo", the "Survey of Changkang Township" and
the "Survey of Tsaihsi Township". Holding fact-finding meetings is the simplest,
most practicable and most reliable method, from which I have derived much
benefit; it is a better school than any university. Those attending such
meetings should be really experienced cadres of middle and lower ranks, or
ordinary people. In my investigations of five counties in Hunan Province
and two counties in Chingkangshan, I approached responsible cadres of middle
rank; in the Hsunwu investigation I approached cadres of the middle and lower
ranks, a poor hsiutsai, [2] a bankrupt
ex-president of the chamber of commerce and a petty official in charge of
county revenue who had lost his job. All of these people gave me a great
deal of information I had never even heard of. The man who for the first
time gave me a complete picture of the rottenness of Chinese jails was a
petty jailer I met during my investigation in Hengshan County, Hunan. In
my investigations of Hsingkuo County and Changkang and Tsaihsi townships,
I approached comrades working at the township level and ordinary peasants.
These cadres, the peasants, the hsiutsai, the jailer, the merchant
and the revenue clerk were all my esteemed teachers, and as their pupil I
had to be respectful and diligent and comradely in my attitude; otherwise
they would have paid no attention to me, and, though they knew, would not
have spoken or, if they spoke, would not have told all they knew. A fact-finding
meeting need not be large; from three to five or seven or eight people are
enough. Ample time must be allowed and an outline for the investigation must
be prepared; furthermore, one must personally ask questions, take notes and
have discussions with those at the meeting. Therefore one certainly cannot
make an investigation, or do it well, without zeal, a determination to direct
one's eyes downward and a thirst for knowledge, and without shedding the
ugly mantle of pretentiousness and becoming a willing pupil. It has to be
understood that the masses are the real heroes, while we ourselves are often
childish and ignorant, and without this understanding it is impossible to
acquire even the most rudimentary knowledge.

I should like to repeat that the main purpose of publishing this reference
material is to indicate a method for finding out the conditions prevailing
at the lower levels; it is not to have comrades memorize the specific material
and the conclusions drawn from it. Speaking generally, the infant bourgeoisie
of China has not been able, and never will be able, to provide relatively
comprehensive or even rudimentary material on social conditions, as the
bourgeoisie in Europe, America and Japan has done; we have therefore no
alternative but to collect it ourselves. Speaking specifically, people engaged
in practical work must at all times keep abreast of changing conditions,
and this is something for which no Communist Party in any country can depend
on others. Therefore, everyone engaged in practical work must investigate
conditions at the lower levels. Such investigation is especially necessary
for those who know theory but do not know the actual conditions, for otherwise
they will not be able to link theory with practice. Although my assertion,
"No investigation, no right to speak", has been ridiculed as "narrow empiricism",
to this day I do not regret having made it; what is more, I still insist
that without investigation there cannot possibly be any right to speak. There
are many people who "the moment they alight from the official carriage" make
a hullabaloo, spout opinions, criticize this and condemn that; but, in fact,
ten out of ten of them will meet with failure. For such views or criticisms,
which are not based on thorough investigation, are nothing but ignorant twaddle.
Countless times our Party suffered at the hands of these "imperial envoys",
who rushed here, there and everywhere. Stalin rightly says that "theory becomes
purposeless if it is not connected with revolutionary practice". And he rightly
adds that "practice gropes in the dark if its path is not illumined by
revolutionary theory". [3] Nobody should be labelled
a "narrow empiricist" except the "practical man" who gropes in the dark and
lacks perspective and foresight.

Today I still feel keenly the necessity for thorough research into Chinese
and world affairs; this is related to the scantiness of my own knowledge
of Chinese and world affairs and does not imply that I know everything and
that others are ignorant. It is my wish to go on being a pupil, learning
from the masses, together with all other Party comrades.

POSTSCRIPT


April 19, 1941

The experience of the period of the ten years' civil war is the best and
most pertinent for the present period, the War of Resistance Against Japan.
This refers to the aspect of how to link ourselves with the masses and mobilize
them against the enemy, but not to the aspect of the tactical line. The Party's
present tactical line is different in principle from that of the past. Formerly,
the Party's tactical line was to oppose the landlords and the
counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie; now, it is to unite with all those landlords
and members of the bourgeoisie who are not against resisting Japan. Even
in the latter stage of the ten years' civil war, it was incorrect not to
have adopted differing policies towards the reactionary government and political
party which were launching armed attacks on us on the one hand, and towards
all the social strata of a capitalist character under our own rule on the
other; it was also incorrect not to have adopted differing policies towards
the different groups within the reactionary government and political party.
At that time, a policy of "all struggle" was pursued towards every section
of society other than the peasantry and the lower strata of the urban petty
bourgeoisie, and this policy was undoubtedly wrong. In agrarian policy, it
was also wrong to repudiate the correct policy adopted in the early and middle
periods of the ten years' civil war, [4] whereby
the landlords were given the same allotment of land as the peasants so that
they could engage in farming and would not become displaced or go up into
the mountains as bandits and disrupt public order. The Party's policy is
now of necessity a different one; it is not "all struggle and no alliance",
neither is it "all alliance and no struggle" (like the Chen Tu-hsiuism of
1927). Instead, it is a policy of uniting with all social strata opposed
to Japanese imperialism, of forming a united front with and yet of waging
struggles against them, struggles that differ in form according to the different
degrees in which their vacillating or reactionary side manifests itself in
capitulation to the enemy and opposition to the Communist Party and the people.
The present policy is a dual policy which synthesizes "alliance" and "struggle".
In labour policy, it is the dual policy of suitably improving the workers'
livelihood and of not hampering the proper development of the capitalist
economy. In agrarian policy, it is the dual policy of requiring the landlords
to reduce rent and interest and of stipulating that the peasants should pay
this reduced rent and interest. In the sphere of political rights, it is
the dual policy of allowing all the anti-Japanese landlords and capitalists
the same rights of person and the same political and property rights as the
workers and peasants and yet of guarding against possible counter-revolutionary
activity on their part. State-owned and co-operative economy should be developed,
but the main economic sector in the rural base areas today consists not of
state but of private enterprises, and the sector of non-monopoly capitalism
in our economy should be given the opportunity to develop and be used against
Japanese imperialism and the semi-feudal system. This is the most revolutionary
policy for China today, and to oppose or impede its execution is undoubtedly
a mistake. To preserve the communist purity of Party members scrupulously
and resolutely, and to protect the useful part of the capitalist sector of
the social economy and enable it to develop appropriately, are both indispensable
tasks for us in the period of resisting Japan and building a democratic republic.
In this period it is possible that some Communists may be corrupted by the
bourgeoisie and that capitalist ideas may emerge among members of the Party,
and we must fight against these decadent ideas; however, we should not mistakenly
carry over the struggle against capitalist ideas within the Party to the
field of social economy and oppose the capitalist sector of the economy.
We must draw a clear line of demarcation between the two. The Communist Party
of China is working in a complicated environment, and every Party member
and especially every cadre, must temper himself to become a fighter who
understands Marxist tactics. A one-sided and over-simplified approach to
problems can never lead the revolution to victory.

NOTES


1. The Central Committee's directive of July 7, 1940 is
the "Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on
the Present Situation and the Party's Policy". The Central Committee's directive
of December 25, 1940 is included in the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung,
Vol. II, as the article "On Policy".

2. A hsiutsai was a holder of the lowest degree
in the imperial examinations.

3. J. V. Stalin, "The Foundations of Leninism", Problems
of Leninism, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1954, p. 31.

4. The first period of the ten years' civil war lasted
from late 1927 to late 1928 and is generally known as the Chingkangshan period;
the middle period ran from early 1929 to the autumn of 1931, that is, from
the establishment of the Central Red Base Area to the victorious conclusion
of the campaign against the third "encirclement and suppression"; and the
third period from late 1931 to late 1934, that is, from the victorious conclusion
of that campaign to the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau at Tsunyi
in Kweichow Province called by the Central Committee of the Party. The Tsunyi
Meeting of January 1935 put an end to the domination of the "Left" opportunist
line in the Party, which had lasted from 1931 to 1934, and steered the Party
back to the correct line.


Transcription by the Maoist Documentation Project.