K. This is the 1st working draft of vol. VI. It still ... - From Marx to Mao

ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL PROBLEMS IN THE ANTI-JAPANESE WAR
do not lack labour power can, through collective labour, get even
more profit from their planting, hoeing and harvesting. This method
is entirely beneficial and has no drawbacks. We should promote it
widely. The system of exchange-labour teams which some areas in
the Border Region have already implemented is the same method.
Each county should strive to organize mutual-aid co-operatives and
greatly expand collective labour by the peasants. Apart from this,
there are contract-labour teams. These are also welcomed by the
peasants of the Border Region. The method is not one of mutual aid
but a kind of hired-labour organization for the busy agricultural seasons.
Several people or even more form a group and collectively
work for the people who hire them. When they have finished work-
FROM MARX
TO MAO
ing for one household they go to another. It is another method of
⋆
adjusting the use of labour power. All areas should help those who
come from outside to do contract labour by helping them to find
work to do and so forth.
As for mobilizing women to take part in production, although
many of the women of the Border Region have bound feet, they are
still a large labour force second only to the men. They can take part
in various kinds of supplementary agricultural work such as planting
vegetables, sowing seeds, hoeing weeds, feeding livestock, taking
food to the fields, drawing water, and gathering the harvest, etc.
There are also some who NOT can take part FOR in basic labour. They have
generally done these things in the past. In future we should spread
propaganda and encouragement widely, stimulating their enthusiasm
for labour so as COMMERCIAL
to raise agricultural production. Comrades in the
leading organs of Party and mass organizations for women have as
yet not found the orientation for their work. They feel there is nothing
that they can do. In fact their first task should be that of looking
into and helping DISTRIBUTION
the women of the Border Region to play a wider
role in productive labour, so that all those women who can take part
in labour go to the production front and together with the men solve
the great problem of how to increase production. There are sill a
large number of women in the Border Region who have not untied
their bound feet. This is a great hindrance to labour and production.
We should use the two methods propaganda and compulsion
so that within a few years we make them untie their bound feet.
Henceforth no one is permitted to bind the feet of young girls, no
matter who they are.
As for mobilizing loafers to take part in productive labors, we
321