(August 15, 1959)

A document lay on my desk. Picking it up for a look, I found it consisted of several passages of mine and several passages of Lenin’s, under the title “How Should a Marxist Correctly Treat the Revolutionary Mass Movement.” I do not know which *xiucai* comrade was responsible for this. He has managed to find a few machine guns and a few mortars, and has fired off a great volley of successive cannon shells at the Rightist friends in the Lushan Conference. Splittists within the Communist Party, those who are so Rightist they could not possibly be more Rightist.

Friends, have you heard the sound of the cannon fire? Has it struck your vital points? You are unwilling to listen to my words. I have “reached Stalin’s later years,” given you “freedom” and “democracy,” and again “crave greatness and success,” “heed only one side and believe only one side,” and again “when those above show a preference, those below are bound to go even further,” and again “mistakes must be carried through to the very end before one knows to turn a corner,” “one turn of a corner is a full 180 degrees,” “deceived” you, “fished you out like big fish,” and moreover “somewhat resemble Tito.” Everyone before me can no longer speak; only your leaders have the right to speak. It is simply darkness to the extreme, as if only you coming forward could set the situation to rights, and so on and so forth. This is your volley of successive cannon shells, which has nearly blasted half of Mount Lu away. Good heavens, how could you ever be willing to listen to my muddle-headed words? But it is said that you are all top-ranking Marxist-Leninists, adept at summing up experience, speaking more of shortcomings and less of achievements, that the General Line must be revised, that the Great Leap Forward has brought more losses than gains, that the People’s Communes have been botched, and that the Great Leap Forward and the People’s Communes are nothing but manifestations of petty-bourgeois fanaticism. Well then, please take a look at how Marx and Lenin commented on the Paris Commune, and how Lenin commented on the situation of the Russian Revolution! Please take a look: Which is somewhat better, the Chinese Revolution or the Paris Commune? Which is somewhat better, the Chinese Revolution and the Russian Revolution of 1905–1907? And further, how does the situation of China’s socialist construction in 1958–1959 compare with the situation at the time Lenin wrote those two articles in 1919 and 1921? Which is somewhat better? Have you seen how Lenin criticized the renegade Plekhanov, how he criticized those “capitalist gentlemen and their lackeys,” “the dying bourgeoisie and the swine and dogs of the petty-bourgeois democratic factions clinging to it”? If you have not seen it, please take a look, will you?

“Gloating over the difficulties and setbacks in the transition, spreading panic, advocating a reversal of course—all these are tools of the bourgeois intellectuals in carrying out the class struggle. The proletariat will not allow itself to be deceived.” How about that? Our Right-wing friends.

Since the splittists and the friends standing on the Right all cherish Marxism-Leninism, then I suggest: Let this collected document be submitted to the whole Party for discussion once. I think they probably will not object, will they?

Mao Zedong
August 15