(December 5, 1963)
Revolution always requires creating one’s own experience. In the past, none of us knew how to fight; we were neither prepared to take to the mountains and wage guerrilla warfare. I was engaged in workers’ and peasants’ movements, by profession a primary school teacher. However, when the enemy came to arrest and kill us, we were forced to go up into the mountains and take up arms. No matter how we fought, we still didn’t know what we were doing—we had never received any formal military training. We learned from Chiang Kai-shek, we learned from the enemy, and we fought for ten years. Later, when the Japanese invaded, we again learned warfare from them. My entire life has been spent in war; in total, I fought for twenty-two years. From having no resolve to fight at all to developing that resolve, from being completely unskilled in warfare to mastering it.


In armed struggle, one must learn to annihilate the enemy. Even if you cannot eliminate a hundred enemies, you should at least eliminate fifty. As long as you seize their weapons and ammunition, you will not suffer a loss—you will actually profit. If you merely drive them away without destroying them, it is not worthwhile. It is like cutting off one finger after another: first you keep nine fingers, then eight, then seven. In this way, the enemy will gradually weaken before our eyes. The enemy cannot be wiped out all at once; they are destroyed bit by bit, just as fingers are severed one by one. This is essentially the fundamental approach to warfare. To conduct annihilation battles, one must carefully choose the right time and place.
[1]
This section consists of parts one through three of Mao Zedong’s remarks during his meeting with a Colombian study delegation on workers’, students’, and farmers’ movements.


Location.
Let me mention another point: armed struggle requires establishing base areas. Without a base area, you won’t even be able to cut off half a finger. When building a base area, do not treat all feudal landlords uniformly; do not attempt to overthrow large, medium, and small landlords all at once. First, target the most vicious ones—the ruling clique. Those who have not deeply antagonized the peasants can be left untouched for the time being. You may also refrain from immediately distributing land, instead implementing measures to reduce rents and interest rates. Once a base area is established, you can set up a government, peasant associations, youth organizations, women’s organizations, production cooperatives, and a militia. Some comrades lack understanding of this issue and simply fight and then move on—this is known as “raiding banditism.” Running around everywhere, eating up all the pigs and chickens, and then leaving—that will not work; such an approach cannot succeed. Because cities serve as strongholds for imperialist aggression, capturing them outright is extremely difficult. Smaller towns might offer some possibility, but more often than not, the enemy will counterattack, forcing withdrawal, and this cycle repeats many times. The key lies in continuously weakening the enemy’s forces; if those forces are not destroyed, the territory cannot be held.


Furthermore, a separate rural political and economic program is necessary, since a general platform cannot be formulated in great detail. After establishing a base area, rent and interest reductions can be implemented, but land confiscation should not occur immediately. Only after the masses have risen up and a significant number of enemies have been eliminated can land distribution begin. If the enemy remains too powerful and cannot be defeated at once, the guerrilla forces may withdraw, allowing the enemy to retaliate by killing people, at which point even the peasants would dare not accept the redistributed land. For example, during Cuba’s revolution, no land was distributed in the liberated base areas because the fighting had only lasted three years. Our country is vast, and our war was prolonged, lasting twenty-two years. Therefore, land reform was carried out progressively throughout the course of the war, following several major victories and after base areas with populations reaching millions had been secured. You should act according to your specific circumstances, combining Marxism-Leninism with your local conditions.


You must integrate closely with the masses, adopting their language and attire so that they perceive you as trustworthy friends. Urban intellectuals, including myself, often suffer from a certain shortcoming: unfamiliarity with rural realities. Initially, the peasants did not trust us. Having long endured oppression under the rich, they found it hard to believe that we, though not officials ourselves, could truly treat them as equals. They remained skeptical unless we achieved concrete military victories. Once we won battles and began to treat them with genuine equality, their trust was earned.


There is yet another principle: self-reliance should be paramount, with international assistance playing a supplementary role. International aid may or may not be available; ultimately, we must depend on our own efforts. Take Cuba as an example: during its armed struggle, there was no foreign support. So where did their weapons come from? They were seized from the enemy. Similarly, in our own wars, we relied entirely on the enemy—our guns were captured from them, and many enemy soldiers were incorporated into our ranks as reinforcements. These enemy troops were trained and capable of fighting, whereas our own soldiers lacked such training. By integrating some of these prisoners into our units, we were able to sustain combat operations. Base areas served as schools for training cadres. Many of our leaders, such as Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, along with numerous marshals and generals, initially had no military experience whatsoever; they acquired their skills through actual combat.


In the past, we did not use titles like marshal, general, colonel, or lieutenant. Instead, we had designations such as commander-in-chief, army commander, division commander, regimental commander, battalion commander, company commander, platoon leader, and squad leader. Officers and ordinary soldiers were treated equally. However, later on, various ranks and titles emerged, and officers’ uniforms became superior to those of enlisted men. I believe this was undesirable; officers should remain on par with the rank-and-file. One should not rely on titles like “marshal” or “general” for sustenance. I am not a marshal or a general; I am merely the Chairman of the CPC Central Committee, and I should not derive my livelihood from that position. The masses pay no attention to one’s social status or clothing—they care only about one’s policies. Nor do they concern themselves with which party you belong to, whether Communist or Nationalist; if the Communist Party’s policies prove flawed, they will criticize you just the same. So where does knowledge come from? We are all quite ignorant; true knowledge originates from the masses. Without conducting thorough investigations and studies, we understand nothing. Such are some of our experiences.