Chapter 16 of 87

Remarks at a Briefing

Remarks At A Briefing

March 1964

[SOURCE: Long Live Mao Tse-tung Thought, a Red Guard Publication]

I have read your letter asking to have a talk with me. Recently I have been occupied with the struggle against revisionism and the like, so it has taken me some time to come and talk with you.

As you can see, we are struggling against Khrushchev. Can we win? We have struggled against enemies for a generation. We dared to struggle against imperialism, and defeated it. Who says we cannot defeat Khrushchev?!

We are now principally in a struggle against imperialism and revisionism. As for reactionaries like Nehru they don’t amount to too much!

(On the high targets for grain production proposed by some at the 1960 Shanghai meeting).

Truth, all truth, is ever in the hand of minority in the beginning. They will always have some compulsion exerted on them by the majority. Four hundred years ago Copernicus, a great Polish astronomer, discovered that the earth moves. The theory that heavens revolve about the earth had ruled astronomy for over 1,000 years. The greatest achievement of Copernicus in his life time was to replace this theory with the scientific theory that the earth revolves about the sun. The religious circles of that time rallied together to attack him, to oppose him and accuse him of heresy. He was oppressed on all sides. His De Revolutionibus was not published until he was on his deathbed (1543). He rejoiced in it. In Italy during that period the brilliant physicist and astronomer Galileo (1564-1642) subscribed to Copernicus’ “heliocentric theory”. Beginning in 1609 he observed the heavens with a homemade telescope to see whether the stars moved, but he was persecuted by the religious circles of that time and convicted by the reactionary Roman court. Another person was burned to death. Burning an individual is nothing! Truth does not lie in his hands! Burn someone to death and the earth still moves. A German invented sleeping potions. He was an apothecary in a druggist’s shop. The several men did their experiments in the shop. At first their aim was to alleviate the pain of women during childbirth. They carried out several experiments. Once eight people were poisoned and almost died, but finally they discovered a sleeping potion. But the Germans did not allow them to manufacture it or promote its sale. The French purchased their patent rights and invited the apothecary to France and held a meeting to welcome him. Only then was it disseminated. And most curiously, it did not thrive in one place, but did elsewhere. This kind of thing happens very frequently. For instance, Buddhism was born in India, but it was not so tolerated in India; however, it thrived when it reached China and other ! places. As another example, at present Marxism-Leninism is not thriving in Europe or the Soviet Union, but it is in China. Darwin personally believed in religion. When his Origin of Species was published, he was persecuted by religious circles which opposed him.

(On socialist education)

Recently we held a discussion to ratify two documents from the members of the Central Committee to the members of county committees. These documents are being read to the masses. It will take one or two years to finish this reading. I have recommended that whoever is not old and infirm (such as Hsu or Wu), whoever is not illiterate, and whoever has prestige among the masses (of course this does not mean rightists; for instance, P’eng Teh-huai[1] must not go) should take part in this reading. The generals have all gone among the troops to read — they say it can be done! Why don’t others do it?

In actuality, reading documents to the masses means to learn from the masses. If you want to go to a region to read, you first carry out investigation and study.

The “Four Clean-ups” and “Five Antis” were taught to us by the masses. Nothing was engendered in our brains. The “Four Clean-ups” was proposed by the Pao-t’ing Special District Party Committee. Of the eight special district committees in Hopeh Province, only Pao-t’ing presented it. At the beginning even the Pao-t’ing Special District Party Committee did not understand how to carry out the “Four Cleanups. ” Afterwards the masses submitted to them that it would not do to leave out the “Four Clean-ups”, so they accepted it. Cadre participation in labour was taught to us by Hsi-Yang County, Shansi. Later there were also some materials on this from Chekiang Province.

(On the current nationwide launching of a high tide in studying the works of Chairman Mao.)

The Selected Works of Mao, how much of it is mine! It is a work of blood. The struggle in the soviets was very acute. Because of the errors of the Wang Ming line we had to embark on the 25,000 li Long March[1]. These things in Selected Works of Mao were taught to us by the masses and paid for with blood sacrifices.

Some articles should be rewritten, with new things included. The “Two On’s” [“On Contradiction, ” “On Practice”] were written several decades ago. By now everything has developed and the contents have become richer. They should be revised.

(On the lessons of experience during the three years of great development from 1958-1960)

It was most beneficial. We could not have escaped the experience, for we would not have been able to learn how to engage in construction. We had no experience in nationwide construction. During the revolution we gained some experience in economic construction in the base areas. At that time the problems most urgently requiring solution were three: we needed food, we needed clothing, and we needed salt. Thus we had to develop production. These were the reasons for our engaging in economic construction at that time[3].

I spent 10 years before and after the land reform program (documents of 1933). I could not have done it without the 10 years. During the great revolution I held two lecture and study sessions on the peasant movement, one in Canton and one in Wuhan, and did some investigation and study, but still did not have a solution. Only later when I carried out eight investigations in Hsing-kuo and other regions and investigated Ch’ang-kang Township and Ts’aichi Township, could I solve the problem. The masses taught it to me; they told me how to do it.

We spent 25 years studying revolution, from, 1921 to the Seventh Party Congress in 1945[4]. During the Yenan rectification[5], we had come to know the rightist opportunism of Ch’en Tu-hsiu[6] and the three “left” deviationist lines, especially that of Wang Ming[7]. We summed up these experiences. We were thereby able to develop into an army of 1.2 million, not counting the militia, by the close of the war of Resistance against Japan. The Seventh Congress was excellent; it unified our thoughts and united the entire party. Of course, there were still some problems, such as Kao Kang and P’eng Te-haui, but we still had faith in them. P’eng Teh-huai later served as commander of the Northwest Field Army. In 1946 he had skirmishes with the Kuomintang, in July 1947 he began to counterattack — every month he exterminated eight brigades. What bravado! By 1948 he had successively taken Shichiachuang and Tsinan and later waged three great battles.

It took me 15 years to learn how to fight a war. In the beginning I did not know how to fight and did not even consider fighting. When the great revolution was defeated, we had 50,000 party members divided into several groups, one of which was killed, another capitulated, and still another did not venture to do anything and ran away. Only 1,000-2,000 people were left. According to statistics, there were still 800 at the time of the Seventh Congress. In the several years since, some have died of age, so that only 600 are left, only 30 of them from Ching-kang Shan. At that time we had our backs to the wall and were compelled to pick up guns and learn to wage war. We had not entered any military academy. Only a minority had been to a military academy. The study of waging war was mainly taught to us by “teacher” Chiang Kai-shek. He smashed the soviets and caused us to undertake the 25,000 li Long March, 300,000 troops, of whom there remained only 20,000 when we reached north Shensi. And not all of these 20,000 people came on the Long March. They advanced through Yun-yang and Tung-cheng in Ch’ing-yang and Kuanchung in the Shensi-Kansu border areas. At that time I said that the 20,000 people were as strong as 300,000, not weaker. They traveled 25,000 li, their legs did the “talking, ” made their speeches. In this way our brains had to think a bit. Only after the Ts’un-i Conferences[8] did we change our ways and learn how to fight. Everything was forced upon us.

(On the necessity to learn their revolutionary spirit in learning from the liberation Army and the Ministry of Petroleum, and to fight a war of annihilation)

We cannot be hasty. The socialist education campaign in the countryside must fight a war of annihilation. It is not enough time without these X or X years. At least four years: last year, this year, next year, the year after that are needed. We cannot be hasty. It will probably take X or X years or X or X years to completely master learning from the Liberation Army and the Ministry of Petroleum. We cannot be hasty with that either. Some provinces want to finish socialist education this year. That’s too fast. It is a construction of X years or X years (indicates that a coal mine producing over X X tens of thousands metric tons per year in the past required X years to construct). To speed this up or hurry it too much will not do. If you press it excessively it will be done in a phoney manner.

(On what it means to support the General line, the Great Leap Forward, and the peoples’ communes)

Class struggle, the struggle for production, and scientific experimentation must be linked up. Only carrying out the struggle for production and scientific experimentation but not grasping class struggle cannot kindle the spirit and enthusiasm of the people, nor can the struggle for production or scientific experimentation be done well. Will it do to only carry out the struggle for production and not scientific experimentation? To only carry out class struggle but not the struggle for the production or scientific experimentation, and to say “support the General line,” are meaningless. I say that the Ministry of Petroleum has made great achievements; it kindled the revolutionary spirit of the people and also built a X X tens of thousands metric ton oil field. Moreover, it is not just a X X tens of thousands ton oil field, but also a X X ton refinery, of very high quality and up to international standards. This is the only way to convince people!

(On the decline in revolutionary will of some comrades and the necessity to promote young cadres)

In the final analysis, are some people ill or is their revolutionary will declining? Or did they go dancing six times a week? Or is it love of beauty but not country? Some say they are so sick that they cannot do their work. Can an illness be that bad?!. . . Like certain comrades, in the final analysis, do they love beauty or country? In my view, when we ask them to do X X, they may not necessarily be able to do it well. We should give them a “prime minister”.

For many years we have advocated going out to do investigation and study. But they did not go out. They have been engaging in industry for so many years yet they do not know what industry is. They do not understand machinery or equipment: what can they do!

At present we must promote young cadres. At the time of the Ch’ih-pi War and the Ch’un-ying-hui, Chuko Liang was 27 years old, as was Sun Ch’uan. Sun Tse was doing things when he was only 17 or 18 years old. When Chou Yu died he was not over 36 years old; at that time he was about 30. Ts’ao Ts’ao was 53. In fact, young people beat the old. “In the Yangtze River the rear waves push those in front; in the world new people chase after the old”.

(On Ch ’en Yung-kuei of Tachai Production Team)

But we should not look down on the under-educated. During the National People’s Congress, X X X, a comrade of mine who is now a lieutenant governor of Hupeh Province, asked to speak with me. He said that he has now come to understand that intellectuals have the least knowledge. Throughout history, many emperors were intellectuals but were unsuccessful: Sui Yang-ti could write essays and poetry; Ch’en Hou-chu and Li Hou-chu could write poetry and were good at narrative verse; Sung Hat Tsung could write poetry and paint. Some of the under-educated can do great things: Genghis Khan was an illiterate. Liu Pang too could not read a dozen characters, and was under-educated. Chu Yuan-chang was also illiterate, a cattle herder. In our military ranks there are many under-educated, but only a few intellectuals. Hsu Shih-yu[9] studied for a few days! X X X has never had any formal education, nor have Han Hsien-chu or Ch’en Hsi-lien. X X went to senior primary school, as did Liu Ya-lou[10]. Of course, we cannot do without several intellectuals. We consider Lin Piao, Hsu Hsiang- ch’ien, X X X, X X X, . . . to be middle grade intellectuals. My conclusion is that the under-educated can defeat the students of Whampoa.

(On how current practices are all right, wherein everyone wants to engage in criticism and self-criticism and to learn from others).

Everything is one divided into two. I personally am also one divided into two. I was a primary school teacher, and when I was young, I also believed in the spirits. I went with my mother to distant temples to burn incense. Before the October Revolution, I did not even know there was a Marx, or anything which occurred after Marx.

Is there anyone who has not committed a mistake? Some of our comrades enjoy metaphysics. What is metaphysics? It is one-sidedness, allowing only the good to be said and not the bad and being fond of only hearing good and not the bad. Like X X X, a good comrade, but he does not want to let people see their bad points, only their good; they are mortally afraid they will touch a sore point.

Marx was also one divided into two. Marx’s philosophy was learned from Hegel and Feuerbach, his economics from England’s Ricardo and others, and from France he studied utopian socialism All this was bourgeois. From this, one divided into two and produced Marxism. Let me ask you, when Marx was young did he ever read Marx’s works?

This party of ours is also one divided into two.

Before opposing an encirclement and suppression, some people said that one could not run an army without beating people; how could one lead the troops without beatings? At that time warlordism was really vicious! The soldiers said, “Cherish the soldiers, cherish the soldiers, the company commander rides the horse.” This phase was incorrect, the company commander should ride the horse.

P’eng has always carried out splittism. During the time of the central soviet-controlled areas, Li Li-san’s line emerged. They were so “left”! They wanted to strike against the large cities, against Chiu-chiang, Wuhan, and Changsha. I said it would not work; they said we had to strike. At that time there was a Chi-an area party committee secretary, Li Wen-lin, who wrote a letter to the Central Committee stating emphatically that it was the consciousness of the peasants to divide the land and develop and consolidate the land reform and that to first attack Chi-an then Chiu-chiang would definitely throw away the revolution. That is to say that we had to attack Chiu-chiang was quite “left”! We have had 10 years of civil war. The intraparty struggle is very serious.

The Fifth Plenum elected Chang Weng-t’ien[11] to the Political Bureau when he was not even a member of the Central Committee. If we now investigate whether or not Chang was a party member, when he entered the party, or who introduced him, we will not be able to find the answer. Nonetheless he was elected to the Political Bureau, while I, a member of the Political Bureau, was not allowed to participate in the congress.

By the Tsun-i Conference on the Long March, the situation had some changes. There should be a differentiation made in the Wang Ming line. It was different before and after the Tsun-i conference.

In parleying with the Fourth Front Army, we spoke honestly and told Chang Kuo-t’ao[12] that we began with 80,000 men, but then only had 30,000 left. We did speak honestly! At that time the Fourth Front Army still had 80,000 men. Chang Kuo-t’ao demanded the power of leadership from us, but we did not give it. Chang Kuo-t’ao’s errors were errors of line.

Afterwards we arrived in north Shensi. The War of Resistance was also not without problems. There was the Wang Ming line and things like P’eng Teh-huai’s Hundred Regiments Battle. Before the Seventh Party Congress, we held a conference to struggle against P’eng Teh-huai. Did he not say at the Lushan Conference[13]. “You curse me for 40 days, so I curse you for 20 days.” You participated at the Yenan struggle meeting! He did not disperse (indicating the Hundred Regiments Battle); he insisted on concentrating his forces. In actuality, at that time a platoon could have developed into a regiment or a division.

Was it still one divides into two after liberation? The Kao-Jao antiparty clique in 1953 was a great revelation. At the finance conference they said X X and X X were sectarians. I said that the Chinese revolution has scaled many peaks. Without peaks, where is the revolution? At that time we also did not have a common program.

P’eng and Kao Kang united together in north Shensi. I had not thought that Teng Hua would also work with them. Teng Hua told me that he felt that Ching-kang Shan had no peak and was very unattractive. Afterward he sought out P’eng. The late Ch’en Kuang also felt there were no peaks and was dissatisfied.

In 1962 they were again unable to speak of classes and class struggle how unsteady would each department be! Teng Tzu-hui[14] wanted to “contract to the households.” In the past Wang Chia-hsiang[15] had always been ill. For that half a year he was healthy and wanted to have “three reconciliations and one reduction,” with such activism! What we must now do is “three struggles and one increase.” The United Front Department wants the political parties of the bourgeoisie to become socialist political parties and drew up a five-year plan. They softly, softly fell; it was a surrender to the bourgeoisie. At that time they wanted to carry out “three reconciliations and one reduction” internationally and “three freedoms and one contract” domestically. P’eng Teh- huai’s letter of attack also came out at that time as did Hsi Chung-hsun’s[16] book Liu Chih-tan.

(On reading)

There is some truth in the foolish old man who moved the mountains. Within one or several million years a mountain may flatten. The foolish old man put it correctly: after his death would come his sons, and after them more sons. The grandsons would have sons, and sons and grandsons will continue to be produced. But the mountain will not increase in height. There must eventually come a day when it is levelled.

To talk about philosophy for half an hour is enough: if you talk longer you would not talk clearly. We also do not want to read too many books. Reading several dozens will do. The more you read, the more unclear things become.

(On grain levies, purchases and transfers in the countryside)

Some districts do not have basic food rations. I do not approve. They should have basic food rations.

Notes

The Third Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Party held in September 1930, and the subsequent central leading body adopted many positive measures to put an end to the Li Li-san line. But later a number of Party comrades who were inexperienced in practical revolutionary struggle, with Chen Shao-yu (Wang-Ming) and Chin Pang-hsien (Po Ku) in the lead, came out against in the Central Committee’s measures. In the pamphlet, ‘The Two Lines or The Struggle for the Further Bolshevization of the Communist Party of China’, they most emphatically declared that the main danger then existing in the Party was not “Left” opportunism but “Right opportunism” and to justify their own activities they “criticized” the Li Li-san line as “Rightist”. They put forward a new political programme which continued, revived or developed the Li Li-san line and other “Left” ideas and policies in a new guise, and set themselves against the correct line of Comrade Mao Tse-tung. It was mainly to criticize the military mistakes of this new “Left” opportunist line that Comrade Mao Tse-tung wrote the article “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War”. This line was dominant in the Party from the Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee in January 1931 to the meeting of the Political Bureau convened by the Central Committee at Tsunyi, Kweichow Province, in January 1935, which ended the dominance of this erroneous line and established the new central leadership headed by Comrade Mao Tse-tung. The erroneous “Left” line dominated the Party for a particularly long time (four years) and brought extremely heavy losses, with disastrous consequences, to the Party and the revolution. A loss of 90 per cent was inflicted on the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese Red Army and its base areas, tens of million of people in the revolutionary base areas were made to suffer the cruel oppression of ! the Kuomintang, and the progress of the Chinese revolution was retarded.

Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung

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Source: marxists.org — original. Shared freely for study.

Selected Works, Volume IX