IV
The task before the Shansi- Suiyuan Party organization is to make the greatest effort to complete the land reform and Party consolidation, to continue and support the People’ s War of Liberation, to refrain from any further increase in the people’ s burden but appropriately to lighten it, and to restore and develop production. You are now holding a conference on production. For the next few years the aim of restoring and developing production will be to improve the people’ s livelihood on the one hand and to support the People’ s War of Liberation on the other. You have a widespread agriculture and handicraft industry as well as some light and heavy industries using machinery. I hope you will do a good job in leading these productive enterprises, otherwise you cannot be called good Marxists. In agriculture, those labour-exchange teams and cooperatives, [ 4 ] which were in the grip of bureaucrats and which harmed the people instead of benefiting them, have all collapsed. This is entirely understandable and should occasion no regret. Your task is carefully to preserve and develop those labour-exchange teams, cooperatives and other necessary economic organizations that have won mass support and to spread them everywhere.
V
The national situation is a matter of concern for our comrades. Following the Party’ s National Land Conference last year, which resolved to adopt a new policy and unfold land reform and Party consolidation, large conferences of cadres were held in practically all the Liberated Areas on Party consolidation and land reform. At these conferences, Rightist ideas existing in the Party were criticized, and the serious phenomenon of a certain degree of impurity in the
10
Party’ s class composition and style of work was exposed. Afterwards, appropriate measures were taken in many areas, and the“ Left” deviations have been or are being corrected. Thus, confronted with the new political situation and new political tasks, our Party has been able to set its work in the whole country on the path of sound development. In the last few months almost all the People’ s Liberation Army has made use of the intervals between battles for large-scale training and consolidation. This has been carried out in a fully guided, orderly and democratic way. It has therefore aroused the revolutionary fervour of the great masses of commanders and fighters, enabled them clearly to comprehend the aim of the war, eliminated certain incorrect ideological tendencies and undesirable manifestations in the army, educated the cadres and fighters and greatly enhanced the combat effectiveness of the army. From now on, we must continue to carry on this new type of ideological education movement in the army, a movement which has a democratic and mass character. You can see clearly that neither the Party consolidation, nor the ideological education in the army, nor the land reform, all of which we have accomplished and all of which have great historic significance, could be undertaken by our enemy, the Kuomintang. On our part, we have been very earnest in correcting our own shortcomings; we have united the Party and army virtually as one man and forged close ties between them and the masses of the people; we are effectively carrying out all the policies and tactics formulated by the Central Committee of our Party and are successfully waging the People’ s War of Liberation. W ith our enemy, everything is just the opposite. They are so corrupt, so torn by ever-increasing and irreconcilable internal quarrels, so spurned by the people and utterly isolated and so frequently defeated in battle that their doom is inevitable. This is the whole situation of revolution versus counter-revolution in China.
In this situation, all comrades must firmly grasp the general line of the Party, that is, the line of the new-democratic revolution. The new-democratic revolution is not any other revolution, but can only be and must be a revolution against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism waged by the broad masses of the people under the leadership of the proletariat. This means that leadership in this revolution can and must be assumed by no class and party other than the proletariat and the Communist Party of China. This means that the united front of those joining this revolution is very broad, embracing the workers, peasants, independent craftsmen, professionals, intellectuals, the national bourgeoisie and the section of the enlightened gentry which has broken away from the landlord class. All these are what we refer to as the broad masses of the people. The state and the government to be founded by the broad masses of the people will be the People’ s Republic of China and the democratic coalition government of the alliance of all democratic classes under the leadership of the proletariat. The enemies to be overthrown in this revolution can only be and must be imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism. The concentrated expression of all these enemies is the reactionary regime of Chiang Kai-shek’ s Kuomintang.
Feudalism is the ally of imperialism and bureaucratcapitalism and the foundation of their rule. Therefore, the reform of the land system is the main content of China’ s new-democratic revolution. The general line in the land reform is to rely on the poor peasants, unite with the middle peasants, abolish the system of feudal exploitation step by step and in a
Class Struggle