The next few decades will be precious and important for the future of our
country and the destiny of mankind. The twenty-years-old [of today] will be
forty or fifty in twenty or thirty years’ time. This generation of young people
will take part in building our “poor and bare” country into a great strong
socialist power and will fight and bury imperialism with their own hands. The
task is arduous and the road long. Chinese young people of lofty ambitions
must dedicate their lives to the accomplishment of our great historic mission!
And for this, people of our generation must determine to fight hard for the rest
of their lives!
Politics must follow the mass line. It will not do to rely on leaders alone.
How can the leaders do so much? The leaders can cope with only a fraction
of everything, good and bad. Consequently, everybody must be mobilized to
share the responsibility, to speak up, to encourage other people, and to criticize
other people. Everyone has a pair of eyes and a mouth and he must be allowed
to see and speak up. Democracy means allowing the masses to manage their
own affairs. Here are two ways: one is to depend on a few individuals and the
other is to mobilize the masses to manage affairs. Our politics is mass politics.
Democratic rule is the rule of all, not the rule of a few. Everyone must be urged
to open his mouth. He has a mouth, therefore he has two responsibilities to eat
and to speak. He must speak up wherever he sees bad things or bad styles of
work. He must follow his duty to fight.
Nothing can be done well, if it depends entirely on the leader not on the
leadership of the Party. [We] must rely on the Party and [our] comrades to
deal with matters, not on a solitary leader. An active leader followed by inactive masses will not do; it must be established as a practice that the masses use
both their hands and their mouths. The only way to have things done well is
to depend on the leadership of the Party from above and [the support of] the
masses from below.