Is It a Question of Standpoint?
(June 14, 1957)

Source: RMRB (June 14, 1957), 1. Other Chinese Texts: RMSC (1958), pp. 74–75;
Shengping ziliao, p. 366 (excerpts).

This RMRB editorial was not published under Mao’s signature, but it is attributed to Mao
by some scholars.

One thing is plain to see for everybody in the current rectification campaign,
and that is people often see the same thing in very different, [sometimes] even
opposite, ways. Why is this?
We believe that while there can be many reasons for this, the most significant
is that people have different standpoints.
Some people will say, we are at the moment dealing with contradictions among
the people, [are we not?]¹ Why, then, raise the question of standpoints?
We believe that [even] in dealing with the contradictions among the people, the
question of standpoints is not excluded. At the present time in our country, there
are different classes among the people. Although the members of the bourgeoisie
are being transformed into laboring people and the overwhelming majority of the
petty bourgeoisie have already joined cooperative organizations, the ideological
influences of both of these classes will continue to exist over a long period of time.
To raise the question of standpoint and to understand one another’s true ideological
substance are precisely necessary conditions for correctly handling the contradictions among the people. Otherwise, if we have not even clarified each other’s
standpoints, how can we seek to be truly unified?
Our country is in the midst of constructing socialism. In the process of constructing
socialism, the members of the former bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie will all
eventually be transformed into workers and cooperativized peasants (this includes the
intellectuals among them). This is the only forward direction that we can hope to become unified ideologically. Naturally,
it will take some time to get all the members of the former bourgeoisie and petty
bourgeoisie to be turned over to the standpoint of socialism, but apart from this
viewpoint there is no way in which ideological unity can be achieved, nor can the
contradictions between the new standpoint and the old standpoint among the people
be correctly handled.
In the formula “unity-criticism-unity,”² there has to be a standard for unity; the
same goes for criticism. The basic criterion is socialism. If we do not carry out
criticism from the standpoint of socialism, we will not achieve unity based on the
foundations of socialism.
Some people say that the intellectuals have already made tremendous progress over
the last few years, and that still many people have underestimated this fact. We believe


that there is indeed such a situation, and indeed many Communist Party members
have erred in this regard and must be corrected. However, at the same time, many
intellectuals have overestimated their own progress.3 Were it not so, the many
ideological confusions in the current rectification campaign would be difficult to
explain.
Let us suggest an example. In our democratic revolution, socialist revolution,
and the socialist construction,4 are achievements, after all, the principal [aspect]?
This should, to begin with, be unquestionable. After all, the victory of the democratic revolution, the victory of the socialist revolution, and the triumph of the
socialist construction are the fruits of the struggle and labor of the millions of the
people throughout the country; they are objective facts whose existence does not
depend on human will. Albeit that they are in various ways limited and contain
various shortcomings and mistakes, the foundations of socialist society, established
through the strenuous effort of the people of the entire country, and the socialist
economic enterprises and the socialist cultural and educational enterprises developed by the joint effort of the people of the entire country have allowed our
homeland to achieve rapid progress and have, in a fundamental way, altered the
complexion of our country. Nevertheless, it is precisely this fact [i.e., the unquestionable fact of the achievement and triumphs of the revolution and socialist
construction] that has become a matter of doubt among many intellectuals at the
present time. Among the people in each of the political circles, the journalistic
circles, the educational circles, the literary and artistic circles, the scientific and
technological circles, and the industrial and commercial circles, and among the
young people and the students, there are a few (including a handful of Communist
Youth League members5 and Communist Party members) who have suspicions about
this matter. Moreover, in certain areas, under some people’s instigation, an atmosphere
has been created in which people are forbidden to say that achievements have been the
major [aspect], and whoever says that is considered to have committed the great crime
of [“]being dogmatic [”] and [“]iterating Party stereotypes.[”]6
Why has such a phenomenon appeared? Isn’t there a problem of standpoint here?
We believe that the question of whether or not achievements have been the major
[aspect of our experience] is a fundamental question well worth discussion. We
propose that a [general] debate on this fundamental issue be launched in all circles
throughout the country. This is because it is not a big problem for us, at this point,
to admit the existence of shortcomings and mistakes. The task of this rectification
campaign is precisely to mobilize the forces of the entire Party, indeed, those of all
the people in the country, to struggle against these shortcomings and mistakes. The
thing is that it has now become a fundamental problem of people denying [our]
successes. This is because, if people were to think that the socialist revolution and
the socialist construction were fundamentally mistaken and a failure, then what
would confront people would be darkness; New China would be nothing but a mess
of darkness; so would socialism, Marxism, and the Communist Party. If things were
so, then the problem would not be a matter of rectification at all, but a matter of
destroying the people’s socialist enterprise, destroying the people’s confidence and
that of the nation as a whole.

APRIL – JUNE 1957 / 589

Are we merely making shocking statements to attract attention? Please take a look,
everyone. Is it not true that such a confusion has already been generated in all those
spheres that have been touched by the influence of that ill wind7 that forbids people to
say that “successes have been the major [aspect of our experience]”?
There is nothing particularly fearsome about the creation of such a temporary
confusion. After all, the objective facts cannot be overturned by sophistry and false
arguments. Those Rightist elements who are, to begin with, resolutely opposed to
socialism have revealed their original faces before the masses as a result of their
deliberate fabrication of this confusion. This, of course, is nothing bad. Those
people who have, for the moment, fallen into confusion, will eventually come back
to the side of truth after an ideological struggle; this, too, is nothing bad. Nonethe-less, no matter what transpires, to such people, a temporary ideological confusion
of this nature cannot help but be a deep and indelible lesson.
The big intellectuals, who [reputedly] can discern the very end of a hair, not
only are unable to see the whole cartload of firewood;8 they are unable to see the
earth-shattering historical upheavals and must wait for the common worker or
peasant to correct them. With people like this, even if we were not to say that they
are fundamentally mistaken in their standpoint, at least we could say that they have
not taken a firm stance, couldn’t we?
A single lesson does not make for a final resolution of the problem of standpoint.
It would require many more lessons for people ultimately to change their standpoints, particularly if they are always deluding themselves that the problem has
long been settled. Still, a lesson is a lesson. This also shows how indispensable this
present debate and struggle is even if some people would, for the moment, feel
terribly uncomfortable.

Notes

1. See text Feb. 27, 1957, note 3.
2. See text Feb. 27, 1957, note 22.
3. See text Mar. 12, 1957, note 10.
4. See text June 11, 1957, note 1.
5. See text Feb. 27, 1957, note 74.
6. The Chinese here is dang bagu, which usually refers to “stereotyped Party writing.”
(See text Dec. 27, 1955[2], vol. I, note 106.) Here Mao is obviously not referring to anything
that is specifically written out, or a style of writing, but to the things that are seen by people
from outside the Communist Party as stereotypical lines commonly iterated by Party
members to rationalize the CPC’s policies and measures.
7. See text Feb. 27, 1957, note 51.
8. The Chinese aphorism here is ming cha qiuhuo zhi mo, derived from the book
“Liang Wei Wang” (King Wei of Liang), part I, in Meng zi (Mencius). Qiuhao refers to
a hair in autumn. According to Zhu Xi’s annotation of Meng zi, hairs on animals become
particularly fine in the autumn; therefore the end of a hair in autumn epitomizes the
minutiae of things. To be able to discern the smallest of things but at the same time miss
something as big as a cartload of firewood would, in a rough way, be to “not see the
forest for the trees.”