June 1, 1943

[This decision on methods of leadership was written by Comrade Mao Tse-tung
for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.]


1. There are two methods which we Communists must employ in whatever work
we do. One is to combine the general with the particular; the other is to
combine the leadership with the masses.

2. In any task, if no general and widespread call is issued, the broad masses
cannot be mobilized for action. But if persons in leading positions confine
themselves to a general call--if they do not personally, in some of the
organizations, go deeply and concretely into the work called for, make a
break-through at some single point, gain experience and use this experience
for guiding other units--then they will have no way of testing the correctness
or of enriching the content of their general call, and there is the danger
that nothing may come of it. In the rectification movement of 1942, for example,
there were achievements wherever the method of combining the general call
with particular and specific guidance was used, but there were no achievements
wherever this method was not used. In the rectification movement of 1943,
each bureau and sub-bureau of the Central Committee and each area and prefectural
Party committee, in addition to making a general call (a rectification plan
for the whole year), must do the following things, gaining experience in
the process. Select two or three units (but not too many) from the organization
itself and from other organizations, schools or army units in the vicinity.
Make a thorough study of those units, acquire a detailed knowledge of the
development of the rectification movement in them and a detailed knowledge
of the political history, the ideological characteristics, the zeal in study
and the strong and weak points in the work of some (again not too many)
representative members of their personnel. Furthermore, give personal guidance
to those in charge to find concrete solutions for the practical problems
facing those units. The leaders in every organization, school or army unit
must do likewise, as each of these has a number of subordinate units. Moreover,
this is the method by which the leaders combine leading and learning. No
one in a leading position is competent to give general guidance to all the
units unless he derives concrete experience from particular individuals and
events in particular subordinate units. This method must be promoted everywhere
so that leading cadres at all levels learn to apply it.

3. Experience in the 1942 rectification movement also proves it is essential
for the success of the rectification that a leading group should be formed
in each unit in the course of the movement, made up of a small number of
activists and with the heads of the given unit as its nucleus, and that this
leading group should link itself closely with the masses taking part in the
movement. However active the leading group may be, its activity will amount
to fruitless effort by a handful of people unless combined with the activity
of the masses. On the other hand, if the masses alone are active without
a strong leading group to organize their activity properly, such activity
cannot be sustained for long, or carried forward in the right direction,
or raised to a high level. The masses in any given place are generally composed
of three parts, the relatively active, the intermediate and the relatively
backward. The leaders must therefore be skilled in uniting the small number
of active elements around the leadership and must rely on them to raise the
level of the intermediate element and to win over the backward elements.
A leading group that is genuinely united and linked with the masses can be
formed only gradually in the process of mass struggle, and not in isolation
from it. In the process of a great struggle, the composition of the leading
group in most cases should not and cannot remain entirely unchanged throughout
the initial, middle and final stages; the activists who come forward in the
course of the struggle must constantly be promoted to replace those original
members of the leading group who are inferior by comparison or who have
degenerated. One fundamental reason why the work in many places and many
organizations cannot be pushed ahead is the lack of a leading group which
is united, linked with the masses and kept constantly healthy. A school of
a hundred people certainly cannot be run well if it does not have a leading
group of several people; or a dozen or more, which is formed in accordance
with the actual circumstances (and not thrown together artificially) and
is composed of the most active, upright and alert of the teachers, the other
staff and the students. In every organization, school, army unit, factory
or village, whether large or small, we should give effect to the ninth of
Stalin's twelve conditions for the bolshevization of the Party, namely, that
on the establishment of a nucleus of leadership.
[1] The criteria for such a leading group should
be the four which Dimitrov enumerated in his discussion of cadres
policy--absolute devotion to the cause, contact with the masses, ability
independently to find one's bearings and observance of discipline.
[2] Whether in carrying out the central tasks--war,
production, education (including rectification)--or in checking-up on work,
examining the cadres' histories, or in other activities, it is necessary
to adopt the method of linking the leading group with the masses, in addition
to that of linking the general call with particular guidance.

4. In all the practical work of our Party, all correct leadership is necessarily
"from the masses, to the masses". This means: take the ideas of the masses
(scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn
them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate
and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own, hold
fast to them and translate them into action, and test the correctness of
these ideas in such action. Then once again concentrate ideas from the masses
and once again go to the masses so that the ideas are persevered in and carried
through. And so on, over and over again in an endless spiral, with the ideas
becoming more correct, more vital and richer each time. Such is the Marxist
theory of knowledge.

5. The concept of a correct relationship between the leading group and the
masses in an organization or in a struggle, the concept that correct ideas
on the part of the leadership can only be "from the masses, to the masses",
and the concept that the general call must be combined with particular guidance
when the leadership's ideas are being put into practice--these concepts must
be propagated everywhere during the present rectification movement in order
to correct the mistaken viewpoints among our cadres on these questions. Many
comrades do not see the importance of, or are not good at, drawing together
the activists to form a nucleus of leadership, and they do not see the importance
of, or are not good at, linking this nucleus of leadership closely with the
masses, and so their leadership becomes bureaucratic and divorced from the
masses. Many comrades do not see the importance of, or are not good at, summing
up the experience of mass struggles, but fancying themselves clever, are
fond of voicing their subjectivist ideas, and so their ideas become empty
and impractical. Many comrades rest content with making a general call with
regard to a task and do not see the importance of, or are not good at, following
it up immediately with particular and concrete guidance, and so their call
remains on their lips, or on paper or in the conference room, and their
leadership becomes bureaucratic. In the present rectification movement we
must correct these defects and learn to use the methods of combining the
leadership with the masses and the general with the particular in our study,
in the check-up on work and in the examination of cadres' histories; and
we must also apply these methods in all our future work.

6. Take the ideas of the masses and concentrate them, then go to the masses,
persevere in the ideas and carry them through, so as to form correct ideas
of leadership--such is the basic method of leadership. In the process of
concentrating ideas and persevering in them, it is necessary to use the method
of combining the general call with particular guidance, and this is a component
part of the basic method. Formulate general ideas (general calls) out of
the particular guidance given in a number of cases, and put them to the test
in many different units (not only doing so yourself, but by telling others
to do the same); then concentrate the new experience (sum it up) and draw
up new directives for the guidance of the masses generally. Comrades should
do this in the present rectification movement, and also in, every other kind
of work. Better leadership comes with greater skill in doing this.

7. In relaying to subordinate units any task (whether it concerns the
revolutionary war, production or education; the rectification movement, check-up
on work or the examination of cadres' histories; propaganda work, organizational
work or anti-espionage, or other work), a higher organization and its departments
should in all cases go through the leader of the lower organization concerned
so that he may assume responsibility; in this way both division of labour
and unified centralized leadership are achieved. A department at a higher
level should not go solely to its counterpart at the lower level (for instance,
a higher department concerned with organization, propaganda or anti-espionage
should not go solely to the corresponding department at the lower level),
leaving the person in over-all charge of the lower organization (such as
the secretary, the chairman, the director or the school principal) in ignorance
or without responsibility. Both the person in over-all charge and the person
with specific responsibility should be informed and given responsibility.
This centralized method, combining division of labour with unified leadership,
makes it possible, through the person with over-all responsibility, to mobilize
a large number of cadres--on occasion even an organization's entire personnel--to
carry out a particular task, and thus to overcome shortages of cadres in
individual departments and turn a good number of people into active cadres
for the work in hand. This, too, is a way of combining the leadership with
the masses. Take, for instance, the examining of cadres' histories. If the
job is done in isolation, if it is done only by the few people in the
organization department in charge of such work, it certainly cannot be done
well. But if it is done through the administrative head of a particular
organization or school, who mobilizes many or even all of his staff, or many
or even all of his students, to take part in the work, while at the same
time the leading members of the organization department at the higher level
give correct guidance, applying the principle of linking the leadership with
the masses, then undoubtedly the task of examining the cadres' histories
will be satisfactorily accomplished.

8. In any given place, there cannot be a number of central tasks at the same
time. At any one time there can be only one central task, supplemented by
other tasks of a second or third order of importance. Consequently, the person
with over-all responsibility in the locality must take into account the history
and circumstances of the struggle there and put the different tasks in their
proper order; he should not act upon each instruction as it comes from the
higher organization without any planning of his own, and thereby create a
multitude of "central tasks" and a state of confusion and disorder. Nor should
a higher organization simultaneously assign many tasks to a lower organization
without indicating their relative importance and urgency or without specifying
which is central, for that will lead to confusion in the steps to be taken
by the lower organizations in their work and thus no definite results will
be achieved. It is part of the art of leadership to take the whole situation
into account and plan accordingly in the light of the historical conditions
and existing circumstances of each locality, decide correctly on the centre
of gravity and the sequence of the work for each period, steadfastly carry
through the decision, and make sure that definite results are achieved. This
is also a problem of method of leadership, and care must be taken to solve
it when applying the principles of combining the leadership with the masses
and the general with the particular.

9. Details concerning methods of leadership are not dealt with here; it is
hoped that comrades in all localities will themselves do some hard thinking
and give full play to their own creativeness on the basis of the principles
here set forth. The harder the struggle, the greater the need for Communists
to link their leadership closely with the demands of the vast masses, and
to combine general calls closely with particular guidance, so as to smash
the subjectivist and bureaucratic methods of leadership completely. All the
leading comrades of our Party must at all times counterpose scientific, Marxist
methods of leadership to subjectivist, bureaucratic methods of leadership
and use the former to overcome the latter. Subjectivists and bureaucrats
do not understand the principles of combining the leadership with the masses
and the general with the particular; they greatly impede the development
of the work of the Party. To combat subjectivist and bureaucratic methods
of leadership, we must promote scientific, Marxist methods of leadership
both extensively and intensively.

## Notes

[1] See J. V. Stalin, "The Prospects of the Communist Party
of Germany and the Question of Bolshevization", Works, Eng. ed.,
FLPH, Moscow, 1954, Vol. VII, p. 39.

[2] See Georgi Dimitrov, "Unity of the Working Class Against
Fascism", Selected Articles and Speeches, Eng. ed., Lawrence &
Wishart, London, 1951, pp. 138-39.


Transcription by the Maoist Documentation Project.