Comments on the Opinions Regarding the Education Campaign
(October 30, 1958)
Comrade Qiaomu II l:
This document is very good; it may be published in Red Flag.
Mao Zedong
November 30th, at eleven o’clock in the afternoon
Raise the red flag,
pluck out the white flag.
J3J
[l ]
Qiaomu,
referring to Hu Qiaomu, who at that time served as an alternate member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee.
[2]
Refers to the opinions of the Hunan Provincial Committee of the CPC dated October 20, 1958, concerning the launch of the Communist Education Campaign. These opinions presented Zhu Yuansheng, the Party branch secretary of the Huadong Agricultural Production Cooperative in Nan County, hailed as “a bright red flag of communism,” and Liu Yaoqi, the production team leader of the Xingxing Agricultural Production Cooperative in Liuyang County, labeled “a white flag of bourgeois ideology,” illustrating their respective stances during the People’s Commune movement. The opinions held that these two flags,

Comments on the Hunan Provincial Committee’s Opinions Concerning the Launch of the Communist Education Campaign
as two opposing forces, fully reflected the struggle between communist and capitalist ideologies in the countryside during the People’s Commune movement, serving as a microcosm of the ideological battle over the two paths then unfolding in rural areas. On one hand, the socialist and communist ideas among the broad masses of peasants had rapidly taken root and become the mainstream driving force of the movement. On the other hand, a certain segment opposed the unified distribution system of the communes, arguing that it violated the principle of distribution according to work, claiming that poor communes were exploiting rich ones—deeming it unfair and irrational, incapable of stimulating labor initiative—and interpreting communism through the lens of bourgeois individualism. Meanwhile, those advocating post-harvest reckoning launched a vigorous counteroffensive, and some cadres also admitted insufficient ideological preparation for the rapid advent of the people’s communes. Therefore, it was highly necessary to use the people’s commune movement as an opportunity to carry out a sweeping communist ideological revolution across the entire population: to thoroughly demolish the old and establish the new, uprooting entirely all bourgeois ideas of individualism and localism, as well as rightist conservatism and other “white” or “gray” banners, so that communist thought could occupy every position.
The twelfth issue of the journal Red Flag, published on November 16, 1958, featured the opinions of the Hunan Provincial Committee of the CPC.
[3]
This is the title drafted by Mao Zedong for the purpose of publishing in Red Flag the Hunan Provincial Committee’s opinions on launching the Communist Education Campaign.