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

68 MAO TSE-TUNG
Investigation Campaign is the best opportunity to commence a thorough
struggle, to combat bureaucratism, corruption and passive sabotage,
and to drive class heretics out of the Soviet [organs]. Our
work on these elements has been extraordinarily inadequate. Many
of our comrades in the Department of the Workers’ and Peasants’
Inspection have demonstrated, in the face of this violent class
struggle, their passivism and vacillations, and their bureaucratism
and formalism. In some extreme cases, for instance, the chief of
the section of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection of the Municipal
Soviet of Juichin and the chief of the tribunal section of the
Municipal Soviet of Paopi committed an exceedingly serious crime
of corruption (embezzlement of some 1,000 yuan of public funds).
FROM MARX
TO MAO
The chief of the section of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection of
⋆
Tutou District neither criticized nor arrested the chairman of the
District Soviet who has abandoned and neglected the Land Investigation
Campaign. In some places the prosecution drive of the department
of Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection has again gone into
another wrong direction by treating the question of love as decadent
and the taking of things of landlords as corrupt. They proceeded to
prosecute these elements even on public trial. In some places they
dismissed those who committed trivial mistakes in their duties, and
they did not initiate self-criticism systematically to commence a
thorough struggle. They NOT spared themselves FORwith
this arduous work
and substituted a simplified punitism for it. Needless to say, those
among the working personnel of the Soviets who committed chronic
and serious mistakes COMMERCIAL
should be washed out resolutely, but to dismiss
from duties those, whose mistakes did not reach this extent is
an excess. As to the question of class heretics, it generally concerns
only one’s class origin, not one’s work; only if one’s background
happens DISTRIBUTION
to be bad is he called a class heretic, and is dismissed
regardless of how long a history of struggle he has behind
him, regardless of how correctly he has carried on the policy of the
Party and Soviet in the past and at present. True, we should resolutely
wash out those class heretics and should without question wash
out those whose class origin is bad and whose work is also bad (including
the landlords, rich peasants, passive saboteurs, and corrupt
and decadent elements). But if those who are not in this category
are to be purged, it is an excess.