Comrade Enlai:

Recently, many revolutionary teachers and students as well as revolutionary masses who have come to Beijing have written to me asking whether putting high hats on, painting faces on, and parading along the streets those in power who are taking the capitalist road and the “monsters and demons” constitutes armed struggle. In my view, such practices should indeed be regarded as a form of armed struggle. However, they are not desirable. They fail to achieve the purpose of educating the people.  I wish to emphasize here that in our struggles we must adhere to literary struggle and refrain from armed struggle, for armed struggle can only affect the body but not the soul. Only by persisting in literary struggle, presenting the facts, reasoning with people, and convincing them through reason, can we conduct our struggles at a higher level and truly attain the goal of educating the people. It should be noted that armed struggle is, in the vast majority of cases, instigated by a small number of reactionary bourgeois elements with ulterior motives. These individuals deliberately seek to undermine the Party’s policies, sabotage the Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and erode the Party’s prestige. Anyone who resorts to physical violence should be dealt with in accordance with the law.

Please convey this message to the revolutionary teachers and students and the revolutionary masses who have come to Beijing.

Mao Zedong
December 27, 1966

(Note: Some accounts state that this letter was written on February 1, 1967.)