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

62 MAO TSE-TUNG
is a violent class struggle. Mainly, when the Land Investigation
Campaign was undergoing violent development they could not forsake
clannish and parochial relations and covered up the landlords
and rich peasants of the same clan and the same village, or they
made an incorrect analysis of class status by classifying a landlord
as a rich peasant and a rich peasant, a middle peasant Some comrades
working in the tribunal department have accepted, out of their
extreme inadvertence, slanderous charges against those who were
active in the land investigation, made by the landlords and rich peasants
in the false name of the masses. On the other hand, we had
some comrades in the security bureau as well as the tribunal department
who could not keep up with the masses in pushing forward the
FROM MARX
TO MAO
struggle for class examination and in suppressing the counter-revo-
⋆
lutionaries vigorously. Even when the masses made a request for
arrest and execution by a firing squad of the landlords and rich peasants
who had resisted the land investigation, some of them did not
honor their request. For instance, the tribunal department of Juichin
made many mistakes like this.
4. THE TENDENCY TO ENCROACH UPON THE
MIDDLE PEASANTS IS THE MOST SERIOUS DANGER
NOT FOR
COMMERCIAL
The tendency of “left” opportunism occurred again in very many
places during the land investigation of July. What should be pointed
out emphatically here is the tendency to encroach upon the middle
peasants, though it was clearly stated in the Central Bureau’s Resolution
that:
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“Special attention must be focused on the alliance with the
middle peasants who will be the broadest basic masses in rural
Soviets after the revolution. All our treatments and policies must
win their approval and support. Every decision of the Poor Peasant
Corps and the Soviet must have the support of the middle
peasantry, secured through a village or residence meeting. All
the voices of the middle peasant masses must be heard with care,
and any attempt to encroach upon the interests of the middle peasantry
must be severely dealt with.”
In the summary of the Eight-County Conference it was pointed out that: