Plain Living and Hard Work Is Our Intrinsic Political Quality

#PUBLICATION NOTE

This edition of Plain Living and Hard Work Is Our Intrinsic Political Quality has been prepared and revised for digital publication by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland on the basis of the following editions:

• Speech at the Second Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, in the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, First English Edition, Vol. 5, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1977.
• Speech at the Second Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee, Version 2, in The Writings of Mao Zedong, 1949-76, First English Edition, Vol. 2, M.E. Sharpe, Armonk and London, 1992.

#INTRODUCTION NOTE

This is the concluding speech delivered by Comrade Mao Zedong at the Second Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, China on the 15th of November, 1956. It was first published in the Red Guard collection Long Live Mao Zedong's Thought! in 1968.

The Second Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was held in Beijing, China between the 10th and 15th of November, 1956.

#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

#PLAIN LIVING AND HARD WORK IS OUR INTRINSIC POLITICAL QUALITY

#CONCLUDING SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE SECOND PLENARY SESSION OF THE EIGHTH CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHINA

#Mao Zedong

#15th of November, 1956

#★

#1. ON THE ECONOMY

We must make a comprehensive analysis of a problem before it can be properly solved. Whether to advance or to retreat, whether to get on or get off the horse, must accord with dialectics. In this world, there are always cases of getting on or off the horse, of advancing or retreating. How is it possible to ride all day without getting off? When we walk, our two feet do not move forward together, but always one after the other. When we take a step, one foot moves forward, the other stays behind, and when we take the next, the latter moves forward, leaving the former behind. We see in a movie that the figures are continually in motion on the screen, but when we look at the filmstrip, we see they are all motionless in each frame. The essay Under Heaven in the Writings of Master Zhuang says: «The shadow of a flying bird is not in motion.» All things are at once in motion and not in motion — such is the dialectics of our world. Pure motionlessness does not exist, neither does pure motion. Motion is absolute, while rest is temporary and conditional.

Our planned economy is at once in equilibrium and in disequilibrium. Equilibrium is temporary and conditional. After equilibrium is temporarily established, changes will take place. Equilibrium in the first half of the year will become disequilibrium in the second half; equilibrium in the current year will change into disequilibrium in the next. It is impossible to have equilibrium all the time without having it upset. We Marxists hold that disequilibrium, contradiction, struggle, and development are absolute, while equilibrium and rest are relative. Relative means temporary, conditional. Viewed in this light, is our economy advancing or retreating? We should tell the cadres and the masses that it is both advancing and retreating, but mainly advancing, though not in a straight line, but in a wave-like manner. Although there are times when we get off the horse, as a rule, we get on more often. Are our Party committees at all levels, the various central departments, and the governments at all levels promoting progress or promoting retrogression? Fundamentally speaking, they are promoting progress. Society is always advancing, for to advance, to develop, is the general trend.

Is the First Five-Year Plan correct? I support the opinion that it is essentially correct, as is clearly shown by the first four years of its implementation. True, there have been mistakes, but this is hardly avoidable, because we lack experience. Shall we still make mistakes in the future when we have gained experience after several five-year plans? Yes, we shall. One can never acquire enough experience. Will it be possible to make no mistakes at all in planning ten thousand years hence? Things happening ten thousand years hence will no longer be our business, but one thing is certain, mistakes will be made even then. Young people will make mistakes, but won't older people? Confucius said that, at the age of 70, whatever he did was in conformity with objective law,¹ but I don't believe it, he was just bullshitting. There are 165 key projects that will determine the success or failure of China's industrial and agricultural development. We cannot help but promote them, but perhaps we have promoted them a little bit too quickly. 150 of the 800 construction projects above the norm in our First Five-Year Plan have been designed for us by the Council Union, and other Eastern European countries have assisted us as well, but most of them — all of the smaller ones — have been of our own designing. Do you think the Chinese are incompetent? Why, we are competent, too. However, it must be admitted that we are still not so competent, for we cannot as yet design some of the projects ourselves.

There has been a problem in our construction in the last few years. As some comrades put it, attention has been paid only to the «bones», but very little to the «flesh». Factory buildings have been put up and machinery and other equipment installed without the municipal construction and service facilities to go with them, such as sewage systems, roads, postal and telecommunication services, and even cafes, restaurants, dormitories, theatres, and so on, and this will become a big problem in the future, particularly in the North-West, where things are very tense due to the lack of a good foundation for the cities. The factories have been developed, but there are no barbershops, nobody to make and mend clothes, no roads and highways, not enough automobiles, so the material resources cannot be conveniently imported. Therefore, in promoting industry, it is not enough to design the factory itself; rather, we must include in the plans all the many auxiliary facilities attached to the factory, such as service and welfare facilities. In the past, however, we have generally failed to include these facilities in our plans. The investment and operating expenses that we have set up for the 800 projects themselves are sufficient, but we must anticipate that, as soon as the situation develops, the necessary operating expenses are bound to increase, but we have not included these expenses in our plans, which is a major loophole. In my view, the effects of this problem will be felt, not during the First Five-Year Plan, but during the Second, or perhaps the Third. As to whether the First Five-Year Plan is correct, we can draw a partial conclusion now and another one next year, but I think a comprehensive conclusion will have to wait until the last phase of the Second Five-Year Plan. It is impossible to avoid some degree of subjectivism in planning. To make a few mistakes is not so bad. Achievements have a dual character, and so have mistakes. Achievements encourage people, but at the same time are liable to turn their heads; mistakes depress people and cause anxiety, hence they are an enemy, but at the same time a good teacher. On the whole, nothing seriously or fundamentally wrong has been found in the First Five-Year Plan so far.

We must protect the enthusiasm of the cadres and the masses and not pour cold water on them. Once, some people did pour cold water on the socialist transformation of agriculture, and there was then, as it were, a «committee for promoting retrogression». We pointed out later that it was not right to pour cold water, so we countered with a committee for promoting progress. According to the original plan, the socialist transformation of ownership was to be fundamentally completed in 18 years, but with this promotion, it has been greatly sped up. The Draft Programme for Agricultural Development stipulates that higher-stage agricultural cooperation should be completed in 1958, and now it seems that we can achieve the aim this winter or next spring. There may be quite a few flaws in the process, but this is better than that committee for promoting retrogression; the peasants are pleased and there has been an increase in agricultural production. But for this cooperative transformation, the grain output could not have increased this year by over 20'000'000'000 catties [10'000'000 tons] in the face of such severe natural calamities. In the stricken areas, the existence of cooperatives also helps relief work through production. The shortcomings of the cadres and the masses as well as our own are to be criticized on the premise that their enthusiasm is protected, and in this way, they will have plenty of push. When the masses want something done which is impossible for the time being, matters should be clearly explained to them, and this can certainly be done.

There should be three rounds of discussion before the annual State budget is decided. That is to say, comrades on our Central Committee and other comrades concerned should hold three meetings to discuss it and make the decision — two plenary sessions of the Central Committee and one plenary session of the National People's Congress. This will enable all of us to get to understand the contents of the budget. Otherwise, it will always be the comrades in charge who know them better, while we on our part will just raise our hands. Yet don't we know anything about the contents? Well, I would say, yes and no, we don't know very much about them. With this method of decision after three rounds of discussion, can you say you will know them very well? Not likely, and there will still be a gap between us and the comrades in charge. They are like opera singers on the stage, they know how to sing; we are like the audience, we don't know how to sing. But if we go to the opera often enough, we shall be able to tell good singers from poor ones more or less correctly. After all, it is up to the audience to pass judgment on the singer's performance. And it is with its help that the singer corrects their mistakes. This is where the audience is superior. An opera can continue to run if people like to see it over and over again. Operas which people don't like very much have to be changed. Therefore, inside our Central Committee, there is the contradiction between experts and non-experts. Experts have their strong points, and so do non-experts. Non-experts can tell what is right from what is wrong.

Comrade Zhou Enlai spoke well in one of the speeches. he said that, at the moment, if we are to determine whether a certain year's plans represent «rash advance» or not, we ought to look at the size of the fiscal income and expenditures of that year. In the future, for the rate of construction to remain consistent and steady, it is very important for us to do a good job with the budget. That is why it makes sense that our Second Plenary Session has discussed it; the point is to make everyone aware of this problem. In fact, it is not enough to discuss it just once. We should hold another plenary session of the Central Committee and a plenary session of the National People's Congress to discuss it further. The result of doing so will be to make our budget more accurate; at the same time, it will lay a fully reliable foundation for our economic construction.

In the report on the State budget for 1956, the expression «safely reliable» was used, and I suggest that, from now on, it should be changed into «fully reliable». At the meeting held last January on the question of the intellectuals, I used the expression «fully reliable». «Safe» and «reliable» are tautological. To use «safely» to modify «reliable» neither adds nor qualifies anything. A modifier both describes and qualifies. To say something is «fully reliable» is to qualify reliability as to degree, meaning that it is not just reliable in a general sense, but reliable to the full. It is not easy to make things fully reliable. When the budget was adopted at the National People's Congress last June, everybody said it was reliable. Now it seems that a portion of the budget, less than 10%, is unreliable, because some of the items are not given due priority and others are allocated too much money. So in the future, we must pay attention to the priorities of the items in the budget. Whether the priorities are correct or not requires the experts' attention, but it also requires our attention, and particularly that of the comrades at the provincial level. Of course, everybody should give it their attention.

Both we and the secretaries of the provincial, municipal, and autonomous region Party committees should attend to finance and planning. In the past, some comrades failed to do so seriously. I would like to call your attention, comrades, to the questions of grain, pork, eggs, vegetables, and so on, since they present quite a big problem. According to a telegram from Comrade Deng Zihui in Fujian, beginning from last winter, efforts were concentrated on grain to the neglect of sidelines and industrial crops. This deviation has now been corrected, and efforts have been shifted to them; particularly since there are fixed price ratios between grain and 20 or 30 other items, such as cotton, edible oil, pigs, and tobacco, the peasants have become very much interested in sidelines and industrial crops at the expense of grain. Lopsided stress first on grain, and then on sidelines and industrial crops. Low prices for grain hurt the peasants; now that you have set such low prices for grain, the peasants will simply stop growing it. This problem merits close attention. An appropriate price must be set for agricultural products. Some comrades hope to even out the prices and eliminate the scissors price differential between industrial and agricultural products as soon as possible. This would not be possible. This is because, with regard to the scissors differential right now, the situation is such that, if we take the national income as 100%, the scissors price differential would make up 30% of that, and the direct tax burden on the peasantry across the country averages only 10% or so. If we were to demand that the scissors price differential be completely eliminated right now, so as to arrive at exchange of equal values, the national accumulation would be adversely affected. However, it is also a mistake for the scissors price differential to be too great, such that the peasants could not make a profit. In sum, on the condition that the national accumulation not be affected, it is absolutely necessary to reduce gradually the scissors price differential between industrial and agricultural products, so as to raise the peasants' living standard.

We must build the country through diligence and thrift, combat extravagance and waste, and encourage hard work and plain living and sharing weal and woe with the masses. Some comrades have suggested that factory directors and heads of schools and colleges might live in sheds, and this, I think, is a good idea, especially in hard times. There were no houses whatsoever when we crossed the marshlands on the Long March, we just slept where we could, and Commander-in-Chief Zhu De did so, too, when he walked for 40 days across the marshlands. We all came through. Our troops had no food and ate the bark and leaves of trees. To share happiness and suffering with the people — we did this in the past, why can't we do it now? As long as we keep on doing so, we shall not alienate ourselves from the masses. I heard that in Lanzhou, when they were building a factory, the first thing to get built was the office building, but there were no dormitories for the workers. The workers had to sleep in tents while the office workers slept in the office building.

We must attend to the newspapers. Where newspapers are published, the Central Committee and the Party committees at all levels should take the running of newspapers as a matter of major importance. Since the beginning of this year, there has been one-sided and unrealistic propaganda in the press for improving the people's livelihood, but very little publicity has been given to building the country through diligence and thrift, combating extravagance and waste, and encouraging hard work, plain living, and sharing weal and woe with the masses, which should from now on be the focus of our propaganda in the press. Probably what is broadcast by the radio stations also comes from the newspapers. Therefore, it is necessary to call meetings of reporters, newspaper staffs, and radio personnel to exchange views with them and inform them of the guiding principles in our propaganda. It is only through construction that life can become better. If we only tried to raise the living standard without doing construction work, that would cause problems. For example, in Hungary, the people's living standard has been raised, although not by much, so their situation is not so bad. However, because education is lacking and the consciousness of the masses has not been raised there, small-bourgeois and bourgeois thinking is very influential, and the resulting troubles have been very great.

We must propagate the idea that directors and cadres in leading posts in all bodies must set an example in sharing weal and woe with the masses. Only then can we expect the masses to live plainly and work hard. Building socialism is an arduous and tremendous task, and only through hard struggle can we accomplish socialist construction. Therefore, we must emphasize production. Only when production is enhanced can the people's lives be gradually enhanced. We must emphasize willingness to fight hard among the directors and cadres of our government bodies, promote and give play to the past style of plain living and hard work, and at the same time call upon the people to share weal and woe with us.

Here, I would like to touch on another question, the question of suppressing counter-revolutionaries. Should the local tyrants and evil gentry, despots and counter-revolutionaries, who have committed heinous crimes be put to death? Yes, they should. Some democratic figures say it is bad to execute them, and we say it is fine — we are singing different tunes, that's all. On this theme, we can never sing in tune with the democratic figures. Those we executed were «little Jiang Jieshis». As for the «big Jiang Jieshis», such as Emperor Puyi, Wang Yaowu, and Du Yuming, we will execute none of them. But if the «little Jiang Jieshis» were not done away with, there would be an «earthquake» under our feet every day, the productive forces would not be set free, nor the working people liberated. The productive forces consist of two factors, labourers and tools. If we did not suppress counter-revolutionaries, the working people would be unhappy. So would the oxen and the hoes, and even the land would feel uncomfortable, all because the peasants who put the oxen and hoes and the land to use would be unhappy. Therefore, some counter-revolutionaries must be executed, others arrested, and still others put under public supervision.

#2. ON THE INTERNATIONAL SITUATION

On the whole, the international situation is fine. There are a few imperialist powers, but what of it? Nothing terrifying, even if there were a few dozen more.

Now, troubles have occurred in two areas, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Riots have taken place in Poland and Hungary,² and Britain and France have launched an armed aggression against Egypt. I think these bad things are good things, too. In the eyes of a Marxist, a bad thing has a dual character; on the one hand, it is bad, and on the other, it is good. When people see the word «bad» before the word «thing», many think that it's nothing but bad. But we say there is another aspect to it, that is, a bad thing is at the same time a good thing, and this is what is meant by «failure is the mother of success». Every failure, every reverse, or every mistake, may lead to good results under given conditions. The Hungarian and Polish incidents have proved the existence of problems and of contradictions in socialist society. Now, these problems have been exposed, which means that we will be able to identify their causes, take measures to deal with them, and correct the shortcomings and mistakes in our work. If Poland and Hungary can thus resolve their problems and consolidate their situations, that would be a good thing. All contradictions must be resolved eventually, and that requires a struggle of opposites, a volcanic eruption. Since there is fire in Poland and Hungary, it will blaze up sooner or later. Which is better, to let the fire blaze, or not to let it? Fire cannot be wrapped up in paper. Now that fires have blazed up, that's just fine. In this way, numerous counter-revolutionaries in Hungary have exposed themselves. The Hungarian Incident has educated the Hungarian people and at the same time some comrades in the Council Union as well as us Chinese comrades. It was such a shock when Beria was uncovered. How could a socialist country produce a Beria? It was another big shock when Gao Gang was exposed. It is precisely through such phenomena that we learn. They are in the nature of things and will always happen.

Will there still be revolutions in the future when all the imperialists in the world are overthrown and classes eliminated? What do you say? In my view, there will still be the need for revolution. The social system will still need to be changed, and the term «revolution» will still be in use. Of course, revolutions then will not be of the same nature as those in the era of class struggle. For example, in today's China, the class contradiction has already been fundamentally resolved, and the primary domestic contradiction is the contradiction between the advanced social system and the backward productive forces. Generally speaking, this is a non-antagonistic contradiction, but if it is not properly resolved, it can turn into an antagonistic contradiction. But there will always be contradictions between the relations of production and the productive forces, between the superstructure and the economic basis. When the relations of production become unsuitable, they will have to be overthrown. If the superstructure (ideology and public opinion included) protects the kind of relations of production the people dislike, they will transform it. The superstructure itself constitutes social relations of another kind. It rests on the economic basis. By the economic basis, we mean the relations of production, chiefly ownership. The productive forces are the most revolutionary factor. When the productive forces have developed, there is bound to be a revolution. The productive forces consist of two factors: one is people and the other tools. Tools are made by people. When tools call for a revolution, they will speak through people, through the labourers, who will destroy the old relations of production and the old social relations. «A sophisticated person uses their tongue, not their fists», and the best way is to reason things out. But if reasoning goes unheeded, arms will have to speak. What if there aren't any arms? The labourers have tools in their hands, and those without can use rocks, and if there aren't any rocks even, there are always one's two fists.

Our State bodies are instruments of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Take the courts for, instance, their function is to deal with counter-revolutionaries, but that is not all, for they have to settle numerous disputes among the people. It looks as if courts will still be needed ten thousand years from now. For when classes are eliminated, there will still be contradictions between the advanced and the backward, there will still be struggles and scuffles among people, and there will still be all sorts of riots. What a mess there would be without a court! However, the struggles will then be of a different nature, different from class struggle. The court will be different in nature, too. The superstructure may then still go wrong. For instance, people like us may make mistakes, lose out in struggle, and be ousted from office, so that a Gomulka may come to power or a Rao Shushi be propped up. Would you say such things will not happen? I think they will, even a thousand or ten thousand years from now.

#3. ON SINO-SOVIET RELATIONS

Everything in the world is a unity of opposites. By the unity of opposites, we mean the unity of opposite things differing in nature. For instance, water is a combination of two elements, hydrogen and oxygen. If there were only hydrogen and no oxygen, or the other way around, water could not be formed. Over 1'000'000 compounds are said to have already been named, and no one knows how many have not yet been. All compounds are unities of opposites differing in nature. Likewise with things in society. The relationship between the central and the local authorities is a unity of opposites, and so is that between one department and another.

The relationship between two countries is also a unity of opposites. China and the Council Union are both socialist countries. Are there any differences between them? Yes, there are. The two countries are different in nationality. 39 years have gone by since the November Revolution took place, whereas it is only seven years since we won State power throughout the country. As for the things each has done, they are different in many ways. For instance, unlike theirs, our agricultural collectivization has gone through several stages, our policy toward the capitalists is different from theirs, so are our market price policy and the way we handle the relationship between agriculture and light industry, on the one hand, and heavy industry, on the other, and so are our army system and Party system. We have told them: We don't agree with some of the things you have done, nor do we approve of some of the ways you handle matters.

Here, I'll speak on the question of «having illicit relations with foreign countries». Are there such people in our country who provide foreigners with information behind the back of the Central Committee? I think there are. Gao Gang is a case in point. Many facts have proved this.

On the 24th of December, 1953, at the Enlarged Meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee to unmask Kao Kang, I declared that there were two headquarters in the city of Beijing, one comprised all of us present, and it stirred up an open wind and lit an open fire, whereas the other was an underground headquarters, and it also stirred up a kind of wind and lit a kind of fire, a sinister wind and a sinister fire. Lin Daiyu, a character in a classical Chinese novel, said: «Either the East Wind prevails over the West Wind, or the West Wind prevails over the East Wind.» As for the present day, either the open wind and open fire prevail over the sinister wind and sinister fire, or the sinister wind and sinister fire prevail over the open wind and open fire. The purpose of the other headquarters in stirring up the sinister wind and lighting the sinister fire was to overpower the open wind and put out the open fire, that is, to overthrow a large number of people.

Among our high- and middle-ranking cadres, there are a few (not many) who maintain illicit relations with foreign countries. This is not good. I hope you comrades will make it clear to everybody in the leading Party groups and Party committees of the central departments, as well as in the Party committees at the provincial, municipal, and autonomous region level, that this kind of business must stop. We don't approve of some of the things done in the Council Union, and the Central Committee has already said this to the Soviet leaders several times; some questions on which we have not touched will be taken up later. If they are to be taken up, it should be done by the Central Committee. As for information, don't try to pass it on. Such information is of no use at all, it can only cause harm. It undermines the relations between the two parties and the two countries. Moreover, those engaged in such activities put themselves in an awkward position. Since they do this behind the Party's back, they always have a guilty conscience. Those who have passed on information should make a clean breast of it and be done with it, or else there will be an investigation, and they will be duly punished if found out.

At the moment, the leading position of the Council Union in the socialist camp should not be undermined. If the leading position of the Council Union were undermined, the entire socialist camp would be plunged into even greater chaos. We support the Council Union, mainly because we are Communists who are opposed to imperialism and capitalism, and not for any other reason. Since we have these things in common, and since the Council Union can play the leading role in this, why should we not support it? Naturally, supporting the Council Union does not mean supporting everything about it. Some things Soviet are not compatible with Chinese conditions, and we have not adopted them. Our general principles, policies, and line for the Chinese revolution and our work have all been independently formulated by our Party in accordance with China's characteristics and conditions. We say that it is appropriate that the Council Union should occupy the leading position in the socialist camp, because the Council Union was the first socialist country in the world, and it has a formidable industrial basis. The Council Union also has had many advanced experiences. Even though it has had some shortcomings in the past, and some of the ways they do things are ineffective and inappropriate, they can correct these shortcomings. Nothing in the world is perfect. In the past, some of our comrades looked one-sidedly at the Council Union and saw it as perfect; now, some have switched to the other side and see it as bad in every way. This is an expression of subjectivism.

Some comrades simply don't pay attention to dialectics and are not analytical. They say all things Soviet are good, and they transplant them mechanically. In fact, all things, whether Chinese or foreign, admit of analysis, some being good and some bad. This is true of the work in each province, there are both achievements and shortcomings. And it is also true of every one of us, for we all have not just one but two aspects, strong points and weak points. The doctrine that everything has only one aspect has existed ever since ancient times, and so has the doctrine that everything has two aspects. They are known as metaphysics and dialectics respectively. An ancient Chinese said: «The yin and the yang make up the Way.»³ It is impossible to have only the yin without the yang, or the other way around. This was a doctrine in ancient times affirming two aspects. Metaphysics is a doctrine affirming only one aspect. And it still persists among a considerable number of comrades. They take a one-sided view of things and think everything Soviet is good and transplant it indiscriminately, bringing in quite a few things which should not have been transplanted. Where things are wrongly transplanted and unsuited to this country of ours, there must be changes.

As a matter of fact, in recent times, the Council Union has made a good deal of effort in many spheres of work and in the sphere of international relations. There have been very great improvements, and the direction taken is generally good. This demonstrates that the Council Union is fundamentally good — it was good in the past, it is good in the present, and it may become even better in the future. Naturally, there are still shortcomings. The methods with which it has handled some problems have not been sufficiently appropriate, and there have been some theoretical mistakes as well.

From the very beginning, our Party has emulated the Council Union. The mass line, our political work, and the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat were all learned from the November Revolution. At that time, Lenin focused on mobilizing the masses, organizing the councils of workers', peasants', and soldiers' deputies, and so on. He did not rely on administrative measures. Instead, Lenin sent Party representatives to carry out political work. The problems began in the latter period, under Stalin's leadership, after the November Revolution. Although Stalin still promoted socialism and communism, he nonetheless abandoned some of Lenin's ideas, deviated from the orbit of Leninism, became alienated from the masses, and so on. Therefore, we suffered from some disadvantages when we emulated things from the period of Stalin's leadership and transplanted them to China in a dogmatic way. Today, the Council Union still has some advanced experiences that deserve to be emulated, but there are some aspects in which we simply cannot be like the Council Union. For example, the socialist transformation of capitalist industry and commerce, the cooperative transformation of agriculture, and the «Ten Major Relationships» in economic construction — these are all ways of doing things in China. From now on, in our economic construction, we should mainly start with China's circumstances and with the special characteristics of the time and place in which we are situated. Therefore, while we should still raise the slogan of learning from the Council Union, we should not forcibly and crudely transplant and employ things Soviet in a blind and dogmatic fashion. Similarly, we must also learn some of the good things from capitalist countries, because every country has its strong points and weak points, and we intend mainly to learn from other people's strengths.

I would like to say a few words about the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Council Union. I think there are two «swords»: one is Lenin and the other Stalin. The sword of Stalin has now been discarded by the Russians. Gomulka and some people in Hungary have picked it up to stab at the Council Union and oppose so-called Stalinism. The Communist Parties of many European countries are also criticizing the Council Union, and their leader is Togliatti. The imperialists also use this sword to slay people with. Dulles, for instance, has brandished it for some time. This sword has not been lent out, it has been thrown out. We Chinese have not thrown it away. First, we protect Stalin, and, second, we at the same time criticize his mistakes, and we have written the article On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Unlike some people, who have tried to defame and destroy Stalin, we are acting in accordance with objective reality.

As for the sword of Lenin, hasn't it, too, been discarded to a certain extent by some Soviet leaders? In my view, it has been discarded to a considerable extent. Is the November Revolution still valid? Can it still serve as the example for all countries? Hrusev's report at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Council Union says it is possible to seize State power by the parliamentary road, that is to say, it is no longer necessary for all countries to learn from the November Revolution. Once this gate is opened, by and large, Leninism is thrown away.

The doctrine of Leninism has further developed Marxism. In what respects has it done so? First, in worldview, that is, in materialism and dialectics; and, second, in revolutionary theory and tactics, particularly on the questions of class struggle, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the political party of the proletariat. And then there are Lenin's teachings on socialist construction. Beginning from the November Revolution of 1917, construction went on in the midst of revolution, and thus Lenin had seven years of practical experience in construction, something denied to Marx. It is precisely these fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism that we have been learning.

In both our democratic revolution and our socialist revolution, we have mobilized the masses to wage class struggle, in the course of which we have educated the people. It is from the November Revolution that we have learned to wage class struggle. During the November Revolution, the masses in the cities and villages were fully mobilized to wage class struggle. Those who are now sent by the Council Union as experts to various countries were but children or teenagers at the time of the November Revolution, and many of them have forgotten about this practice. Comrades in some countries say that China's mass line is not right, and they are only too happy to pick up the paternalist approach. There is no stopping them if they want to do so; in any case, we adhere to the «Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence», with non-interference in each other's internal affairs and mutual non-aggression. We have no intention of exercising leadership over any country save our own, that is, the People's Republic of China.

How much capital do you have? Just Lenin and Stalin. Now you have abandoned Stalin and practically all of Lenin as well, with Lenin's feet gone, or perhaps with only his head left, or with one of his hands cut off. We, on our part, stick to studying Marxism-Leninism and learning from the November Revolution. Marx has left us a great many writings, and so has Lenin. To rely on the masses, to follow the mass line — this is what we have learned from them. Not to rely on the masses in waging class struggle and not to make a clear distinction between the people and the enemy — that would be very dangerous.

Nonetheless, Stalin had a tendency to deviate from Marxism-Leninism. A concrete expression of this is his negation of the law of contradiction, and to this day, the Council Union has not thoroughly eliminated the influence of this standpoint of Stalin's. Stalin spoke in a materialist way and tried to apply the dialectical method, but in reality, he was a subjectivist. He placed the individual above everything else, negated the collective, and negated the individual. He engaged in the cult of the individual; in fact, to be more precise, he exercised individual dictatorship. This is anti-materialist. Stalin also spoke of the dialectical method, but in reality, he was metaphysical. For example, in the History of the Communist Party of the Council Union (Majority), Short Course, he wrote the chapter Dialectical and Historical Materialism, but he only talked about the law of contradiction at the very end. We say that the most fundamental question of dialectics is the law of the unity of opposites. It was precisely because of his metaphysics that a one-sided standpoint was produced, in which the internal connections in a thing are negated, and problems are looked at in an isolated and static way. To pay heed to dialectics would be to look at and treat problems as unities of opposites, which is why it is a comprehensive methodology. Life and death, war and peace — these are unities of opposites. In reality, there is also an internal connection between them. That is why these opposites unite under certain conditions. When we seek to understand a problem, we cannot simply look at one aspect. We should analyse all its aspects and examine its essence. In this way, when we try to understand a person, we cannot take the standpoint that this person is completely good or completely bad, or switch between the two standpoints. Why is our Party correct? It is because we have been able to proceed from objective conditions in understanding and resolving all problems; therefore, we are more all-sided and can avoid subjectivism.

Second, Stalin thought the mass line was tailist. He did not recognize the positive aspects of the mass line, and he used administrative methods to resolve many problems. But we Communists are materialists; we acknowledge that the masses are the makers of everything and the masters of history. We have no individual heroes; only when the masses are united can there be strength. In fact, since Lenin died, the mass line has been forgotten in the Council Union. Even in opposing Stalin, the Soviet leadership still does not acknowledge or emphasize the significance of the mass line. Of course, more recently, they have paid some lip-service to this question, but they still do not have a sufficiently profound understanding of it.

Furthermore, the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat were emphasized by Lenin. At that time, the divergence between Lenin and the Third International, on the one hand, and the Second International, on the other, was mainly along the lines that the Marxists emphasized the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat, whereas the opportunists were unwilling to acknowledge them. The fundamental problem with Poland and Hungary is that they have not done a good job of waging class struggle and have left so many counter-revolutionaries at large; nor have they trained their proletariat in class struggle to help them learn how to draw a clear distinction between the people and the enemy, between right and wrong, and between materialism and idealism. And now they have to reap what they have sown, they have brought the fire upon their own heads.

Finally, in the relationship between our countries, we have always advocated treating one another as equals. Naturally, there are big countries and small countries, but each has its strengths. All our fraternal countries share common goals, and therefore, we must unite and treat one another as equals. We cannot have any sense of superiority. Since the Zunyi Meeting, our Party has worked independently and exercised autonomous decision-making, which has allowed it to handle matters in accordance with China's circumstances. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, we raised the slogan of «leaning to one side», meaning that, in political matters, we must unite with the socialist camp and stand on the side of the socialist countries, that we cannot have one foot in the imperialist camp and another in the socialist camp. «Leaning to one side» expressed our determined separation from the capitalist countries in political matters, which dispelled all illusions on the part of the Western countries. It signified that China cannot take the capitalist road and cannot compromise with imperialism; rather, it must resolutely oppose imperialism and capitalism.

Sino-Soviet relations must be improved. With regard to the leading position of the Council Union in the socialist camp, it should not be undermined, otherwise it would be very detrimental to the interests of the socialist camp. We should affirm in general that the Council Union is good, and within the socialist camp, we must acknowledge the leadership of the Council Union. We must reinforce education inside and outside the Party on this point and do a good job at explaining it.

#4. ON GREAT AND SMALL DEMOCRACY

A few cadres with an intellectual background at the level of department or bureau head advocate great democracy, saying that small democracy is not satisfying enough. Their «great democracy» means the adoption of the bourgeois-parliamentary system of the West and the imitation of such Western stuff as «parliamentary democracy», «freedom of the press», and «freedom of speech». Their advocacy is wrong, for they lack the Marxist standpoint, the class standpoint. How ever, the terms great democracy and small democracy are quite graphic, so we have borrowed them.

Democracy is a method, and it all depends on to whom it is applied and for what purpose. We are in favour of great democracy. And what we favour is great democracy under the leadership of the proletariat. Our great democracy is a weapon which we use against the enemy. From the historical standpoint, when Chen Sheng and Wu Guang raised on their bamboo poles the banner of rebellion against the Qing Dynasty, when Wang Mang deposed Ziying and usurped the Han throne, when the Yellow Turbans rose up in rebellion during the time of Emperor Lingdi of the Eastern Han Dynasty, when, during the Three Kingdoms Period, Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Quan vied for the kingdom, and when, in the Qing Dynasty, Hong Xiuquan and Yang Xinqing rose up in rebellion at Jintian, that was all what I call great democracy. We mobilized the masses to fight Jiang Jieshi and beat him after a struggle lasting more than 20 years. In the Land Reform Movement, the peasant masses rose up against the landlord class and got land after three years of struggle. These were instances of great democracy. The Movement Against the «Three Evils» was a struggle against those of our personnel who had been corrupted by the bourgeoisie. The Movement Against the «Five Evils» was a struggle against the bourgeoisie. In both movements, relentless blows were dealt. These were all vigorous mass movements and instances of great democracy. A few days ago, masses of people held a demonstration in front of the Office of the British Charge d'Affaires in China, and several hundred thousand people held a rally at the Square of Heavenly Peace in Beijing in support of Egypt's resistance to Anglo-French aggression. This was also an instance of great democracy, aimed at imperialism. Why shouldn't we cherish this great democracy? We do in fact cherish it. Who is this great democracy directed against? Against imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism, and against capitalism. The socialist transformation of private industry and commerce was directed against capitalism. The socialist transformation of agriculture, which was designed to abolish the private ownership of small-scale producers, was by its nature also directed against capitalism. It was by means of the mass movement that we carried out the socialist transformation of agriculture, mobilizing the peasants, mainly the poor and lower-middle peasants first, to organize themselves, so that the upper-middle peasants could not but agree. As for the fact that the capitalists beat drums and struck gongs to welcome the socialist transformation, it was because they had no alternative with the advent of the socialist upsurge in the countryside and with the pressure from the masses of workers under them.

If great democracy is now to be practised again, I am for it. You are afraid of the masses taking to the streets, I am not, not even if hundreds of thousands should do so. «Those who are not afraid of death by a thousand cuts dare to unhorse the Emperor.» This was a saying of a character in a classical Chinese novel, Wang Xifeng, otherwise called Sister Feng. She it was who said this. The great democracy set in motion by the proletariat is directed against class enemies. Enemies of the nation (who are none other than the imperialists and the foreign monopoly capitalists) are class enemies also. Great democracy can be directed against bureaucrats, too. I just said that there would still be revolutions ten thousand years from now, so possibly, great democracy will have to be practised then. If some people grow tired of life and so become bureaucratic, if, when meeting the masses, they have not a single kind word for them, but only take them to task, and if they don't bother to solve any of the problems the masses may have, they are destined to be overthrown. Now, this danger does exist. If you alienate yourself from the masses and fail to solve their problems, the peasants will wield their carrying poles, the workers will demonstrate in the streets, and the students will riot. Whenever such things happen, they must in the first place be taken as good things, and that is how I look at the matter.

Several years ago, an airfield was to be built somewhere in Henan Province, but no proper arrangements were made beforehand for the peasants living there nor any adequate explanations offered them when they were compelled to move out. The peasants of the village affected said, even the birds will make a few squawks if you go poking with your pole at their nest in a tree and try to bring it down. Deng Xiaoping, you, too, have a nest, and if I destroyed it, wouldn't you make a few squawks? So the local people set up three lines of defence: the first line was composed of children, the second of women, and the third of able-bodied young men. All who went there to do the surveying were driven away and the peasants won out in the end. Later, when satisfactory explanations were given and arrangements made, they agreed to move and the airfield was built. There are quite a few similar cases. Now, there are people who seem to think that, as State power has been won, they can sleep soundly without any worry and play the tyrant at will. The masses will oppose such persons, throw stones at them, and strike at them with their hoes, which will, I think, serve them right and will please me immensely. Moreover, sometimes to fight is the only way to solve a problem. The Communist Party needs to learn a lesson. Whenever students and workers take to the streets, you comrades should regard it as a good thing. There were over 100 students from Chengdu who wanted to come to Beijing to present a petition to the Second Ministry of Machinebuilding, but those in one train were halted at the Guangyuan station in Sichuan Province, while those in another train got as far as Luoyang, but failed to reach Beijing. It is my opinion, and Premier Zhou's, too, that the students should have been allowed to come to Beijing and call on the departments concerned. The workers should be allowed to go on strike and the masses to hold demonstrations. Processions and demonstrations are provided for in our Constitution. In the future, when the Constitution is revised, I suggest that the freedom to strike be added, so that the workers shall be allowed to go on strike. This will help resolve the contradictions between the State and the factory director, on the one hand, and the masses of workers, on the other. After all, they are nothing but contradictions. The world is full of contradictions. The democratic revolution resolved the set of contradictions with imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism. At present, when the contradictions with national capitalism and small-scale production with respect to ownership have been fundamentally resolved, contradictions in other respects have come to the fore, and new contradictions have arisen. There are several hundred thousand cadres at the level of the county Party committee and above who hold the destiny of the country in their hands. If they fail to do a good job, alienate themselves from the masses, and do not live plainly and work hard, the workers, peasants, and students will have good reason to disapprove of them. We must watch out, lest we foster the bureaucratic style of work and grow into an aristocratic stratum divorced from the people. The masses will have good reason to remove from office whoever practises bureaucracy, makes no effort to solve their problems, scolds them, tyrannizes over them, and never tries to make amends. I say it is fine to remove such persons, and they ought to be removed.

Now, the democratic political parties and the bourgeoisie are against the great democracy of the proletariat. If we were to start a second Movement Against the «Five Evils», they would not like it. They are very much afraid that the democratic political parties will be eliminated and will not enjoy long-term coexistence if great democracy is put into practice. Do professors like great democracy? It is hard to say, but I think they are on their guard, they, too, are afraid of proletarian great democracy. If they want to practise bourgeois great democracy, I will propose a rectification movement, that is, ideological remoulding. All the students will be mobilized to criticize them, and in every college, a checkpoint, so to speak, will be set up, which they must pass through before the whole matter can be considered closed. So professors, too, are afraid of proletarian great democracy.

#5. ON THE NATIONAL MINORITIES

With regard to the national minorities, we definitely must do a good job of uniting with them; we cannot take this question lightly or simplify it. In the last several years, although we have done some work on the question of the national minorities and have resolved some problems, there are still quite a lot of problems. At the same time, the question of the national minorities will exist for a long time. If we do our work well, the problems associated with this question can be reduced. The problems that we see currently in the relationship between Poland and the Council Union and between Hungary and the Council Union contains, in both cases, some issues related to the fact that the national question has not been satisfactorily resolved. Similarly, in China, the national question in Tibet has not been fully resolved. Therefore, the Central Committee has proposed several times that we must pay a lot of attention to the national question. Don't assume that it is very easy to unite with the national minorities. We must oppose Han chauvinism, and must earnestly and thoroughly unite with the national minorities.

Here, I will take up another topic, the question of the Dalai Lama. Buddha has been dead for 2'500 years, and now the Dalai Lama and his followers want to go to India and pay homage to him. Shall we let him go or not? The Central Committee thinks that it is better to let him go than not. He will set out in a few days. We advised him to go by air, but he refused, preferring to travel by car via Kalimpong,⁴ where there are spies from various countries as well as Nationalist secret agents. It must be anticipated that the Dalai Lama may not come back, that, in addition, he may insult us every day, making allegations such as «the Communists have invaded Tibet», and that he may go so far as to declare «the independence of Tibet» in India. It must also be anticipated that he may incite the Tibetan upper-stratum reactionaries to issue a call for major riots in the hope of driving us out, while using his absence as an alibi to shirk responsibility. This is possible, if the worst comes to the worst. I would still be glad even if this bad situation occurred. Our Working Committee and our troops in Tibet must make preparations, build fortifications, and store up plenty of food and water. All we have there is only a few soldiers; anyway, each party is free to act as they choose. If you want to fight, we shall be on our guard; if you make an attack, we shall defend ourselves. We should never attack first, but let them do so, and then we shall launch a counter-attack and crush the attackers with relentless blows. Shall I feel aggrieved at the desertion of one Dalai Lama? Not at all, even if you throw in nine more and make it ten Dalai Lamas. It was our experience that Zhang Guotao's desertion did not turn out to be a bad thing. You cannot bind two people together to get them to marry one another. When someone stops caring for your place and wants to leave it, just let them go. What harm will their departure do us? None whatsoever. They can't do more than curse us. Our Communist Party has been cursed for 35 years. And the curses have been just such hackneyed nonsense as that the Communist Party «is extremely ferocious», «communizes property and women», and «is brutal and inhuman». What difference will it make if a Dalai Lama or anyone else should be added to the number of insulters? If the insulting goes on for another 35 years, that will amount to only 70 years. I don't consider it good for a person to be afraid of being insulted. Some people are worried that confidential information may be divulged. Didn't Zhang Guotao possess a lot of confidential information? I never heard that our affairs went amiss as a result of Zhang Guotao divulging confidential information.

Our Party has millions of experienced cadres. Most of them are good cadres, born and brought up on our native soil, linked to the masses, and tested in the course of long struggles. We have a whole body of cadres — those who joined the revolution in the period of the founding of the Party, in the period of the Northern Expedition, during the Agrarian Revolutionary War, the War of Resistance Against Japan, and the War of Liberation, and those who joined after Liberation. They are all valuable assets to our country. The situation in some Eastern European countries is not very stable, and one major reason is that they lack such a body of experienced cadres. With such cadres as ours, who have been tested in different periods of the revolution, we are able to «sit tight in the fishing boat despite the rising wind and waves». We must have this much confidence. We are not even afraid of imperialism, so why should we be afraid of great democracy? Why should we be afraid of students taking to the streets? Yet among our Party members, there are some who are afraid of great democracy, and this is not good. Those bureaucrats who are afraid of great democracy must study Marxism hard and mend their ways.

#6. ON RECTIFICATION AND REORGANIZATION

We are to carry out a rectification movement next year. Three bad styles are to be rectified:

• Subjectivism
• Sectarianism
• Bureaucracy.

After the Central Committee has made the decision, a circular will first be issued, in which different items will be listed. For instance, bureaucracy consists of several items, such as failure to make contact with cadres and the masses, failure to go down and find out about the situation below, and failure to share weal and woe with the masses, plus corruption, waste, and so on. If a circular is issued in the first half of the year, the rectification movement is to begin in the second, with a period of several months in between. Whoever has embezzled public money must confess and return it during that interval, or pay it back later in instalments, or if they cannot possibly manage it even in instalments, they will have to be exempted from repaying it; each of these three ways is all right. But in any case, they must admit their mistake and of their own accord state the amount taken. This is to provide them, so to speak, with a staircase by which they can come down step by step. This method is also to be adopted in dealing with other mistakes. Rather than meting out «punishment without prior warning», make an announcement beforehand and then start the rectification movement at the specified time — this is a method of applying small democracy. Some say, if this method is adopted, there probably won't be much left to rectify in the second half of the year. That is precisely the end we hope to achieve. Our hope is that, by the time the rectification movement formally starts, subjectivism, sectarianism, and bureaucracy will have been considerably reduced. In our history, the rectification movement has proved to be an effective method. From now on, all problems among the people or inside the Party are to be solved by means of rectification, by means of criticism and self-criticism, and not by force. We are in favour of the method of the «gentle breeze and mild rain», and though it is hardly avoidable that in a few cases things may get a little too rough, the overall intention is to cure the sickness and save the patient, and truly to achieve this end, instead of merely paying lip-service to it. The first principle is to protect a person, and the second one is to criticize them. First, they are to be protected, because they are not a counter-revolutionary. This means to start from the desire for unity and, through criticism and self-criticism, arrive at a new unity on a new basis. Within the ranks of the people, if we adopt the method of both protecting and criticizing a person who has made mistakes, we shall win people's hearts, be able to unite the entire people, and bring into play all the positive factors among our 600'000'000 people for building socialism.

I am in favour of the idea that, in peacetime, we should reduce the size of the armed forces somewhat, but we must carry out the work of reorganizing the troops well and properly. At the same time, in the localities, we must also greatly contract the size of military enlistment and grouping. All of us must do some ideological preparation for this. At the moment, there is a very bad practice, in which whenever people speak of work, they speak first of enlistment and grouping; they want more people. Moreover, they assume that only when they have the larger grouping and more people can they get their work done, as if without these things the work cannot be carried out. In reality, that is not so. Often, when we have larger groupings and more people, we have an increase in our bureaucracy. At the moment, when they are doing their work, some comrades pay very little attention to enhancing their effectiveness and awaken the masses' enthusiasm and active spirit, or exploit the potential that lies in all areas. Instead, they want such and such a size of grouping and such and such a number of people at the drop of a hat. That is why this time the Central Committee is resolved to change around this situation thoroughly. The armed forces must be streamlined in a big way, and the regrouping in the localities must also be greatly compressed.

I have always been of the opinion that the army should live plainly and work hard and be a model. At a meeting held here in 1949, one of our generals proposed that the pay in the army should be raised, and many comrades were for his proposal, but I was against it. The illustration he used was that a capitalist ate a meal of five courses, whereas a Liberation Army soldier had only salt water plus some pickled cabbage at a meal, and this, he said, wouldn't do. I said, on the contrary, this was just fine. They had five courses while we ate pickles. There was politics in these pickles, out of which models would emerge. The People's Liberation Army won people's hearts precisely because of these pickles, but, of course, there were other factors, too. Now ,the army meals have improved and are already rather different from having only pickles to eat. But what is most essential is that we must advocate plain living and hard work, which is our intrinsic political quality. Jinzhou is an apple-growing area. At the time of the Liaoxi-Shenyang Campaign, it was autumn, and there were plenty of apples in the villagers' homes, but our fighters did not take a single apple. I was deeply moved when I read about this. Here the fighters themselves were conscious that not to eat the apples was noble, whereas to eat them would have been ignoble, for the apples belonged to the people. Our discipline rests on such consciousness. It is the result of leadership and education by our Party. People must have some spirit, and the revolutionary spirit of the proletariat stems from this consciousness. Did anyone starve to death from not eating an apple? No, for there was millet plus pickles. In times of necessity, you comrades present here will have to live in sheds. When we crossed the marshlands, we had no sheds to sleep in and yet we managed without. Why can't we live in sheds now that we have them? The army people have been in session these few days, and they have expressed with deep feelings and enthusiasm their readiness to exercise self-denial and practise economy. Now that the army is doing this, there is all the more reason for other people to live plainly and work hard. Otherwise, they would be challenged by the army people. There are both civilians and army people present here, so we'll let the army people challenge the civilians. The People's Liberation Army is a good army, and I like it very much.

At the same time, the wage gap between cadres should be gradually narrowed, but this does not mean absolute equalitarianism. Right now, there is too great a gap between the salaries of high-ranking cadres and the wages of the common people. We should reduce salaries and eliminate special treatment, so that the cadres can become one with the people. If we live plainly and work hard, we cannot become divorced from the people. As I see it, the special treatments that should be abolished in this regard are, first, material supplies, and, second, security guards — there are too many of both. We must pay attention to lowering these, but not to the point of getting rid of them entirely. Only when we become models can we call on the people to work hard and share weal and woe with them.

The atmosphere of inflated luxury and enjoyment in the Party is connected with the corroding influence of bourgeois and small-bourgeois ideology. Political work must be strengthened. It must be greatly strengthened in every sphere, whether among civilians or army people, whether in factories, villages, shops, schools, or army units, whether in Party and government bodies or people's organizations, so as to raise the political level of the cadres and the masses and get rid of this unhealthy atmosphere.