Mao's Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings, 1912-49: v. 3: From the Jinggangshan to the Establishment of the Jiangxi Soviets, July 1927-December 1930

Revolutionary Writings, 1912-49

Zedong Mao, Nancy J. Hodes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317465348
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Affairs & Administration
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This projected ten-volume edition of Mao Zedong's writings provides abundant documentation in his own words regarding his life and thought. It has been compiled from all available Chinese sources, including the many new texts that appeared in 1993, Mao's centenary.

1930

New Year's Day¹

(To the Tune of "Like a Dream")

(January 1930)

Ninghua, Qingliu, and Guihua,²
Paths are narrow, forests deep, moss slippery.
Whither shall we go today?
Straight to the foot of Wuyi Mountain.
At the foot of the mountain, the foot of the mountain,
The wind unfurls our red banner like a picture.

This poem was first published in Shikan, January 1957. Our source is Shici duilian, pp. 31-32.

1. This refers to the first day of the lunar new year, which fell in 1930 on January 30.

2. Names of three xian in Fujian Province, through which Mao led his Red Army troops at the beginning of 1930.

Letter to Comrade Lin Biao

(January 5,1930)

Comrade Lin Biao:

Several days have gone by since New Year and I still have not replied to your letter. One reason is that some things have kept me busy, and another is that I have been wondering what I should actually write to you. Do I have anything good to offer you? After racking my brain, I still could not find anything suitable, so I put it off. Now I have thought of a few things. Although I do not know whether they really apply to your situation, the few things I have to say are indeed about an important problem in the present struggle. Even if it does not apply to your particular circumstances, it is still a crucial general problem, and that is why I am bringing it up.

What is the problem that I want to raise? It is the problem of how to evaluate the current situation and what actions we should take in consequence.¹ I felt quite strongly in the past, and to some extent I still feel now, that your evaluation of the situation is rather pessimistic. This viewpoint of yours was most obvious at the meeting on the evening of May 18 last year in Ruijin. I know that you² believe that a revolutionary high tide will inevitably arise, but you³ do not believe it could possibly come quickly. Consequently, as far as action is concerned, you do not approve of the plan to take Jiangxi in one year and approve only of guerrilla actions⁴ in the three areas on the borders of Fujian, Guangdong, and Jiangxi; at the same time, you do not have a deep understanding of what it means to establish Red political power in the three areas and, therefore, do not have a deep understanding of the idea of accelerating the nationwide revolutionary high tide through the consolidation and expansion of Red political power. Judging from your belief in the policy of * * * style mobile guerrilla actions,⁵ you seem to think that, since the revolutionary high tide is still remote, to undertake the arduous work of establishing political power would be to labor in vain. Instead, you want to extend our political influence through the easier method of roving guerrilla actions and wait until the masses throughout the country have been won over, or more or less won over, before launching a nationwide insurrection⁶ which, with the participation of the Red Army, would become a great nationwide revolution. Your theory that we must first win over the masses everywhere on a nationwide scale, and then establish political power, is not, in my opinion, applicable to the Chinese revolution. As I see it, this theory derives mainly from your failure to understand clearly that China is a semicolonial country for which imperialism is contending in its final stages.⁷ If you clearly recognized this, then you would understand, first of all, why, in the whole world, the strange phenomenon of chaotic warfare within the ruling class is found in China alone, why this warfare is steadily growing fiercer and more widespread, and why there can at no time be a unified political power. Second, you would understand the grave significance of the peasant problem⁸ and hence why rural insurrections have developed on the present nationwide scale. Third, you would understand the absolute correctness of the slogan of workers' and peasants' political power.⁹ Fourth, you would understand another strange phenomenon, which follows from the first (that in China alone there is chaotic warfare within the ruling class), namely, the existence and development of the Red Army and guerrilla forces, and together with them, the existence and development of small areas of Red political power¹⁰ (the soviets) encircled by the White regime. (This strange thing does not exist outside China.) Fifth, you would understand that the expansion of the Red Army, the guerrilla forces and the Soviet areas¹¹ is the highest form of the peasant struggle in a semicolony, and the form toward which the semicolonial peasant struggle must move.¹² Sixth, you would understand that they (the Red Army and the peasants' soviet) are undoubtedly the most significant allied forces of the proletarian struggle in the semicolonial countries. (The proletariat must step forward to lead them), and that they are important factors¹³ in promoting the revolutionary high tide throughout the country. And seventh, you would also understand that the policy which merely calls for roving guerrilla actions cannot accomplish the task of promoting this nationwide revolutionary high tide, while the kind of policy adopted by Zhu and Mao, He Long, Li Wenlin, and Fang Zhimin is undoubtedly correct—that is, the policy of establishing base areas; of systematically setting up political power; of close coordination, organization, and training of the Red Army, the guerrilla troops, and the broad peasant masses; of deepening the agrarian revolution; of expanding the armed forces¹⁴ by a comprehensive process of building up first the township insurrection troops,¹⁵ then the district Red Guards, then the xian Red Guards, then the local Red Army troops, all the way up to non-local Red Army troops;¹⁶ and of spreading political power by advancing in a series of waves. Only thus is it possible to build the confidence of the revolutionary masses throughout the country, as Soviet Russia¹⁷ has built it throughout the world. Only thus is it possible to create tremendous difficulties for the ruling classes,¹⁸ shake their foundations, and hasten their internal disintegration. Only thus is it really possible to create a Red Army which will become one of the important instruments¹⁹ in the great revolution of the future. In short, only thus is it possible to promote the revolutionary high tide.

Now, I would like to say more about what I feel are the reasons for your rather pessimistic evaluation of the situation. I feel that your evaluation is the exact opposite of the evaluation by the faction within the Party who suffer from revolutionary impetuosity. Comrades who commit the error of revolutionary impetuosity overestimate the subjective forces and underestimate the objective forces.²⁰ Such an appraisal stems mainly from idealism,²¹ and in the end undoubtedly leads to the erroneous path of adventurism. You have not made this mistake; but your shortcomings seem to be of another kind, namely, underestimating subjective forces and overestimating objective forces to a certain extent. This would also constitute an improper appraisal and be certain to produce bad results of another kind. You acknowledge the weakness of subjective forces and the strength of objective ones, but you do not seem to recognize the following key points:²²

1. Although the subjective forces of the revolution in China are weak, so also are all organizations (organs of political power, armed forces, political parties, etc.) of the ruling classes, resting as they do on the fragile social and economic structure²³ of China. This helps to explain why revolution cannot break out at once in the countries of Western Europe, where, although the subjective forces of revolution are much stronger²⁴ than in China, the forces of the ruling classes are many times stronger. In China the revolution will undoubtedly move toward a high tide more rapidly than in Western Europe, for although the subjective forces of the revolution at present are weak, the objective forces are weak, too.

2. The subjective forces of the revolution have indeed been greatly weakened since the defeat of the Great Revolution.²⁵ The remaining subjective forces are very small, and if one judges by form,²⁶ this naturally makes the comrades (those comrades who have this way of looking at things) feel pessimistic. But if we judge by reality, it is quite another story. Here we can apply the old Chinese saying, "A single spark can start a prairie fire." In other words, our forces, although small at present, will grow very rapidly. In the conditions prevailing in China, their growth is not only possible but indeed inevitable, as the May Thirtieth movement and the Great Revolution which followed have fully proved. When we look at a thing, we must examine its essence and treat its form merely as an usher at the threshold, and once we cross the threshold, we must grasp the essence of the thing and throw away the form that serves as an usher, this is the only reliable and scientific method of analysis that has revolutionary significance.

3. Similarly, in appraising the objective forces,²⁷ we must never look merely at their form, but should examine their essence. In the initial period of our independent régime in the Hunan-Jiangxi Border Area, a few comrades, under the influence of the incorrect appraisal of the Hunan Provincial Committee at that time, genuinely believed the words of²⁸ the Hunan Provincial Committee and regarded the class enemy as altogether worthless; the two descriptive terms, "thoroughly shaky" and "utterly panic-stricken," which are standing jokes to this day, were used by the Hunan Provincial Committee at the time (from May to June the year before last) in assessing the Hunan ruler Lu Diping, Such an assessment necessarily led to adventurism in the political sphere. But during the four months from November the year before last to February last year (before the outbreak of the war between Chiang Kaishek and the Guangxi warlords), when the largest and the third²⁹ "joint suppression expedition" was approaching the Jinggangshan, some comrades expressed doubts, saying, "How long can we keep the Red flag flying?" As a matter of fact, the struggle in China between Britain, the United States and Japan had by then become quite open and a state of tangled warfare between Chiang Kaishek, the Guangxi clique and Feng Yuxiang was taking shape; hence it was actually the time when the counter-revolutionary tide had begun to ebb and the revolutionary tide to rise again. Yet a pessimistic mentality³⁰ was to be found not only in the Red Army and local Party organizations; even the Central Committee was misled by the superficial objective situa tion³¹ and adopted a pessimistic tone. Its February 7 letter is evidence of the pessimistic analysis made in the Party at that time.

4. The objective situation today is still such that comrades who see only the form³² and not the essence of what is before them are liable to be misled. In particular, when our comrades working in the Red Army are defeated in battle or encircled or pursued by strong enemy forces, they often unwittingly generalize and exaggerate their momentary, specific, and limited situation, as though the situation in China and the world as a whole gave no cause for optimism and the prospects of victory for the revolution were remote. The reason they brush aside the essence³³ in their observation of things is that they have no scientific understanding³⁴ of the essence of the overall situation. The question of whether there will soon be a revolutionary high tide in China can be decided only by making a detailed examination to ascertain whether the contradictions leading to a revolutionary high tide are developing. If we correctly recognize that³⁵ contradictions are developing in the world between the imperialist countries, between the imperialist countries and their colonies, and between the imperialists and the prole tariat,³⁶ it follows that the need of the imperialists to contend for the domination of China becomes more urgent. While the imperialist contention becomes more intense, both the contradiction between imperialism and the whole Chinese nation and the contradictions among the imperialists themselves develop simultaneously on Chinese soil, thereby creating the tangled warfare which is expanding and intensifying daily and giving rise to the continuous development of the contradictions among China's ruling classes.³⁷ In the wake of the contradictions among the rulers—the chaotic warfare among the warlords—come ruthless increases of taxation,³⁸ which steadily sharpen the contradiction between the broad mas...