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

ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL PROBLEMS IN THE ANTI-JAPONESE WAR
We intend to keep this amount as fixed in the following few years
even if as a result of agricultural development the total amount of
grain produced in the Border Region increases from its present level
of around 1,500,000 tan. (Many comrades estimate that with better
use of existing labour power, we can raise the total production of
the Border Region to 2 million tan.) All increases will thus accrue
to the peasants, making them keen to work hard to develop their
own production, and enabling them to improve their own livelihood
and to dress and eat well.
All comrades throughout the Border Region must learn from the
way the comrades of Yanan county strive to work in the interests of
the peasants, so that the peasants rapidly get richer. The richer the
FROM MARX
TO MAO
peasants become, the less they take exception to handing over a fixed
⋆
amount of grain tax and the more they feel close to and inseparable
from the Communist Party, the Eighth Route Army and the Border
Region Government The peasant Wu Manyou of Yanan county is clear
proof of this. On 30 April 1942, the Liberation Daily carried the
following report on him.
THE MODEL RURAL LABOUR HERO,
WU MANYOU EXCELS IN OPENING NEW LAND AND
HARVESTING GRAIN FOR SEVERAL YEARS RUNNING,
AND INFLUENCES THE MASSES TO TAKE PART
ACTIVELY IN SPRING PLOUGHING
NOT FOR
COMMERCIAL
(Our special report.) Rural labour heroes appear one after another
in the Spring Ploughing Movement. In order to express their
deep devotion to the Border Region, to consolidate the Region and
DISTRIBUTION
to improve their own life, they display the spirit of labour to a high
degree. Among them, Wu Manyou from Luilin district in Yanan
county is especially respected by most peasants. Every year his
harvest of grain exceeds that of others by one-sixth. The two labour
powers in his family farm over 120 mou of land. This year
they opened up 35 mou of uncultivated land. He is already publicly
recognized as a model labour hero by the peasants of the township.
According to late news last night, the Reconstruction Department
of the Border Region Government has decided to give him a special
award.
(Our report from Yanan.) For successive years the peasant Wu
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