Page 227 - SELECTED WORKS OF MAO TSE-TUNG Volume I.indd

STRATEGY IN CHINA’S REVOLUTIONARY WAR 221
It is easy to give an answer to such views, and our history has
already done so. As for loss of territory, it often happens that only
by loss can loss be avoided; this is the principle of “Give in order to
take”. If what we lose is territory and what we gain is victory over
the enemy, plus recovery and also expansion of our territory, then it
is a paying proposition. In a business transaction, if a buyer does not
“lose” some money, he cannot obtain goods; if a seller does not
“lose” some goods, he cannot obtain money. The losses incurred in a
revolutionary movement involve destruction, and what is gained is
construction of a progressive character. Sleep and rest involve loss of
time, but energy is gained for tomorrow’s work. If any fool does not
understand this and refuses to sleep, he will have no energy the next
day, and that is a losing proposition. We lost out in the fifth counter-
campaign for precisely such reasons. Reluctance to give up part of our
territory resulted in the loss of it all. Abyssinia, too, lost all her
territory when she fought the enemy head-on, though that was not
the sole cause of her defeat.
The same holds true on the question of bringing damage on the
people. If you refuse to let the pots and pans of some households be
smashed over a short period of time, you will cause the smashing of
the pots and pans of all the people to go on over a long period of time.
If you are afraid of unfavourable short-term political repercussions,
you will have to pay the price in unfavourable long-term political
repercussions. After the October Revolution, if the Russian Bolsheviks
had acted on the opinions of the “Left Communists” and refused to
sign the peace treaty with Germany, the new-born Soviets would
have been in danger of early death. 34
Such seemingly revolutionary “Left” opinions originate from the
revolutionary impetuosity of the petty-bourgeois intellectuals as well
as from the narrow conservatism of the peasant small producers.
People holding such opinions look at problems only one-sidedly and
are unable to take a comprehensive view of the situation as a whole;
they are unwilling to link the interests of today with those of tomorrow
or the interests of the part with those of the whole, but cling like grim
death to the partial and the temporary. Certainly, we should cling
tenaciously to the partial and the temporary when, in the concrete
circumstances of the time, they are favourable — and especially when
they are decisive — for the whole current situation and the whole period,
or otherwise we shall become advocates of letting things slide and
doing nothing about them. That is why a retreat must have a terminal