(April 6, 1958)
What is the situation of class struggle during the transition period?
It is a struggle between two roads. There will probably be several more rounds. We must have strategy. We need to cool things down first, then let them out again. Without cooling down and letting out, they won’t emerge. As said at the Chengdu Conference: there are two exploiting classes and two working classes. The first exploiting class includes imperialism, feudalism, bureaucratic capitalism, remnants of the Kuomintang, and the 300,000 rightists are also included. Among landlords, some have been reformed, others have not. Those unreformed landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements, and rightist elements—these people oppose communism. They are today’s Chiang Kai-shek and Kuomintang, hostile classes, like Zhang Bojun and others. The rightist elements within the Party are no different. This includes some classified as center-right who have not yet been touched. Their numbers are roughly 5 percent, about 30 million, which is fairly accurate. This is a hostile class, still in need of reform.
First, we must struggle against them; second, we must draw them in. If we can split off seven-tenths of them, that would be a great victory. We need to mobilize them and turn negative forces into positive ones. After a few years, when they truly surrender their hearts and genuinely change, we can remove their labels. The right may turn left, or become centrist; the left may also turn right, like Kautsky. The second exploiting class is the national bourgeoisie and its intellectuals, plus a segment of the upper petty bourgeoisie (such as Liu Shaotang and Chen Bohua, including well-to-do middle peasants in the countryside). The majority of the national bourgeoisie and its intellectuals are centrist elements. They are exploiters, but different from the first exploiting class. They both oppose the Communist Party and do not oppose it; they are a vacillating class. They oppose the Party, but not resolutely—unlike Chiang Kai-shek. They follow whoever appears stronger.
There was a capitalist in Hankou who traveled from Hankou to Beijing relying solely on the phrase “support the Communist Party, support the representatives” to make a living, never saying a word more. In reality, his thinking had not changed much. During the rightist offensive last year, if we had not resolutely crushed it, a Nagy could have emerged in China, with rightists taking power. These people would have followed the tide and done anything to overthrow the Communist Party. They harbor dual loyalties toward the Party—half-hearted and half-minded. Rightists are heartless and mindless. Through the struggle from last year to now, these people are undergoing political change. Last year, most of them were disoriented. But after the great blooming and contending, the victory of rectification in the countryside and cities, and the great leap in production this year, the pressing situation has compelled them to change. Situations are shaped by people. When people gather in numbers, the many pressure the few. The Yangtze River Bridge, industrialization, and the like can be placed within this context. This exploiting class is somewhat more refined, so we treat them with civilized methods, using criticism—different from the methods used in the anti-rightist struggle. Against rightists, we adopt something of a martial nature, simply to make them stink. These are the two exploiting classes, and our approach toward them differs. We unite with the latter exploiting class and isolate and defeat the former; that is, we unite with the center and isolate the right. Though they number 30 million, they are scattered across the country, surrounded, and isolated. Holding a rightist congress—they never expected such a thing—is like an imperial amnesty. Every major city (with a population over 300,000) must hold one, and the principal leading comrades must speak, explaining matters thoroughly. First a reprimand, then a pull. The reprimand leaves them dreary and desolate, cold and lonely; the pull fills them with warmth and ease all over, pointing out a future and giving them hope—like Granny Liu entering the Grand View Garden to borrow money. At first, Xifeng appeared indifferent, but later she was very warm, making Granny Liu very happy. Xifeng is quite formidable; some say she was a capable minister in times of order and a treacherous hero in times of chaos.
The two working classes: workers and peasants. In the past, their hearts were not aligned, and their ideology and mutual relations were not clarified. Under the leadership of our Party, workers labor and peasants till the land. In the past, we handled mutual relations inappropriately. Generally speaking, the work style of our cadres is fundamentally different from that of the Kuomintang, but a portion is almost the same—like lords treating commoners and slave owners treating slaves, suppressing without persuading. A female staff member at a university in Shanghai seized a toilet and barred others from using it. Some cadres’ bad work style is similar to the Kuomintang’s, and in isolated cases, even worse. That is why workers and peasants regarded them as akin to the Kuomintang. Thus, the worldview of workers and peasants remained unchanged—they strove for the “five major items.” Workers and peasants dared not speak, fearing punishment, fearing “tight shoes,” and fearing chaos. Who dared put up a big-character poster? With the advent of great blooming and contending, great rectification and reform, these relations have changed significantly. Workers criticized themselves for striving for the “five major items” as wrong, and their work attitude changed. Barbers and bathhouse workers said they should not have asked for wage increases. In Wuhan, a shop worker who became a cadre immediately put on a stern face toward the shop assistants—that is Kuomintang style. In Hong’an County, once the cadres shed their lordly airs and integrated with the masses, relations changed greatly. Ownership, mutual relations, and distribution are the three issues in production relations. We focus on the middle one—mutual relations. Our rectification aims to resolve the issue of mutual relations. Some members of the Communist Party picked up a slave owner’s arrogance in society and schools. Liu Jiemei learned it from society. Straighten out mutual relations: relations between Party, government, workers’ unions, and workers in factories; between cooperative cadres and members; between Party and government personnel at all levels and their subordinates; between cadres and the masses; between school principals, teachers, and students. In a word, these are contradictions among the people, to be resolved through persuasion, not suppression. Once the lid is lifted, the people feel at ease and spiritually liberated, daring to write big-character posters. This is Leninism, not opportunism. Lenin died too early, but his works, especially those from the revolutionary period, are vivid and lively. He reasoned, gave his heart to the people, spoke the truth, and never minced words—even when fighting enemies. Comrade Stalin carried a bit of a lordly air. Having studied in a missionary school, he was not well versed in dialectics or materialism, somewhat detached from reality. Mutual relations were not handled well and were quite rigid. In the past, the Soviet Union treated us like a father and son, or a cat and mouse; now it’s a bit better. Our democratic tradition has a long history. In the base areas, we practiced democracy: with no money, no grain, no guns, isolated and unaided, we had to rely on the masses. The Party had to be one with the people, the army had to integrate with the masses, and officers had to be one with soldiers. To manage these relations well, the Three Main Rules of Discipline and the Eight Points for Attention were essential. Treat the people as equals, abolish corporal punishment in the army, refrain from shooting deserters, conduct constant education, and constantly engage in struggle. After every battle, when new recruits arrive, education must be renewed. So, though some lordly attitudes remain, we did pick up a democratic work style to some extent, forged through long and arduous struggle. Yet even now, some people still oppose the method of persuasion. For example, in Jinan, some said that spring (1957) was a rightist deviation; they only approved of the summer situation, not the spring situation. In truth, they didn’t approve of the summer situation either. The article “The Summer Situation” already stated that if democracy can be used in the army, why not among the people? This shows the issue remains unresolved. After last year, especially with this year’s bumper harvest, and three years of hard struggle (to fundamentally or initially) change backward conditions, people will understand and truly believe—but we still need to write articles and use theory to persuade them.
In my view, during the transition period, 5 percent of bacteria will still exist; centrist elements may also turn bad. They harbor grievances, though their mouths are silent for now; they will speak up in the future. The struggle is long-term and recurrent. Hundreds of millions of people have roused themselves with vigor. The rightists are isolated; the 300,000 rightists have been made to stink and have no capital; the bourgeoisie also stinks, having been discredited during the Three-Anti and Five-Anti Campaigns. The intellectuals have been tagged with two labels: they have been branded bourgeois intellectuals and branded as having lost their direction. The ones who emerge as heroes are the leftists—people like us. In the future, those who err will also come from the left, because leftists have capital and may slip into error if not careful. For instance, XXXXX was a Politburo member for forty years but detached from the masses, never visiting a single factory or rural village. The merit of XXXXX lies in going everywhere, running about; people called him a traveler. Being a traveler has its benefits. In the past, when we fought guerrilla warfare, we were travelers, traveling for several decades. Now we still travel from the South to the North and must remain travelers. The Central Committee and provincial levels stipulate four months of being a traveler; prefectural and county levels even more. This is to drive people out the door.
What exactly is the class struggle like during the transition period? We must account for its recurrent nature. We must estimate whether major problems may still arise—such as international crises, a world war, great famines. Rightists may stir up trouble, and centrist elements may cause chaos too.