SPEECH AT A CONFERENCE OF CADRES IN THE SHANSI-SUIYUAN LIBERATED AREA
( This is Comrade Mao’ s address to the Cadres in the Shansi-Suiyuan liberated Area on April 1, 1948. This is being published on the occasion of the 50 th death anniversary of Comrade Mao, who died on 9 September 1976 for the study of Communist and revolutionary activists.-Editor)
Comrades! Today I wish to speak chiefly on some problems relating to our work in the Shansi- Suiyuan Liberated Area and also on some problems relating to our work in the country as a whole.
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In my opinion, the work of land reform and of Party consolidation carried out during the past year in the area led by the Shansi-Suiyuan Sub-Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has been successful.
This can be viewed from two aspects. On the one hand, the Shansi-Suiyuan Party organization has combated Right deviations, initiated mass struggles and has completed, or is completing, the land reform and the Party consolidation among two million several hundred thousand people out of the area’ s total population of over three million. On the other hand, it has also corrected several“ Left” deviations which occurred in these campaigns and has thereby put its entire work on the path of sound development. It is from these two aspects that I consider the work of land reform and of Party consolidation in the Shansi-Suiyuan Liberated Area to have been successful.
“ From now on,” the people of the Shansi-Suiyuan Liberated Area are saying,“ no one will ever again dare to be feudalist, to bully others or indulge in corruption.” That is their conclusion about our work of land reform and Party consolidation. When they say,“ No one will ever again dare to be feudalist,” they mean that we have led them in initiating struggles through which the system of feudal exploitation in
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Mao Tse Tung
the new Liberated Areas and its remnants in the old and semi-old Liberated Areas have been or are being destroyed. When they say,“ No one will ever again dare to bully others or indulge in corruption,” they refer to the serious phenomenon of a certain degree of impurity in the class composition and style of work in our Party and government organizations that existed in the past. A number of bad elements had sneaked into the Party and government organizations; a number of individuals had developed a bureaucratic style of work, abused their power and bullied the people, employed methods of coercion and commandism to get things done, thereby arousing discontent among the masses, or had indulged in corruption or encroached upon the interests of the masses. However, after a year’ s work of land reform and Party consolidation, these conditions have been fundamentally changed.
One of the comrades present told me,“ We have rid ourselves of what would have proved fatal to us. We have acquired things we never had before.” By“ fatal” he meant the serious phenomenon of impurity in the class composition and style of work in Party and government organizations and the resultant discontent among the masses. This phenomenon has now been fundamentally eliminated. By“ things we never had before but have now acquired” he meant the poor peasant leagues, the new peasant associations, the district and village people’ s representative conferences and the new atmosphere that prevails in the countryside as a result of the work of land reform and Party consolidation.
These comments, I think, give a true picture of how matters stand.
Such is the great success of the work of land reform and Party consolidation in the Shansi-Suiyuan Liberated Area. This is the first aspect of the success. It was on this basis that during the past year the Shansi-Suiyuan Party organization was able to perform war services on an immense scale in support of the great People’ s War of Liberation. Without our successful work in land reform and Party consolidation, it would have been difficult to fulfil such immense military tasks.
On the other hand, the Shansi- Suiyuan Party organization has corrected several“ Left” deviations which occurred in the course of its work. There were three main deviations of this kind. First, in a number of places, in the process of identifying class status a number of working people were wrongly
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