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

460 MAO TSE-TUNG
ery comrade (including those in the army) should study this thoroughly.
Only when our comrades understand and carry out the
complementary nature of these two aspects of work, can we call
ourselves all-round communist revolutionaries. Otherwise, although
we do revolutionary work and although we are revolutionaries, we
shall still not be all round revolutionaries. Furthermore, some comrades
are still bureaucrats remote from the masses. Because they
only know how to ask the masses for things and do not know how to
or are unwilling to give things to the masses, the masses detest them.
This question is extremely important. I hope everyone will pay great
attention to it and propagandize the principle throughout the whole
party.
FROM MARX
TO MAO
In what follows we shall sum up our past experience in grain
⋆
work and point out the policy for 1943.
From 1937 to 1939, the grain tax levied in the Border Region covered
only a part of supplies. The deficiency each year was made up
by purchase using funds issued by the government. With the exception
of particular areas and periods when there were grain difficulties,
there were no insurmountable problems in the whole of grain
supply for the four years. During that time we actually enabled the
people to build up their resources. The burdens of grain tax were
heavy on the rich peasants and landlords, very light on the middle
peasants and most poor NOT peasants had FOR none at all. In 1940 outside
aid was cut off and the government had no resources to buy grain.
We had to turn to raising all of it in tax. However, the principle of
“calculating tax on COMMERCIAL
the basis of income” had not yet changed. Also
the grain tax for 1940 was raised to only 90,000 tan and the policies
for collection were not altered. For supplies in the following
year (1941) we put forward the policy of “strengthening grain administration
and DISTRIBUTION
ensuring grain sufficiency”. However, we could
not provide all supplies since we had not levied much grain in 1940.
There was also the related matter of achieving self-sufficiency in
running costs in 1941, in connection with which the various army
units and official organizations paid careful attention to grain in
order to solve problems in livelihood. Another factor was that since
the organizational structure of the departments doing grain work was
not yet strong and the quality of the cadres was not good enough,
the various regulations were not well established and we could not
fully control grain income and expenditure in all places. At the time
the problems of making excessive returns and rash leadership were