Page 13 - SELECTED WORKS OF MAO TSE-TUNG Volume III.indd

PREFACE AND POSTSCRIPT
TO RURAL SURVEYS

March and April 1941

PREFACE
March 17, 1941

The present rural policy of the Party is not one of Agrarian Rev-
olution as during the ten years’ civil war, but is a rural policy for the
National United Front Against Japan. The whole Party should carry
out the Central Committee’s directives of July 7 and December 25,
1940, and the directives of the forthcoming Seventh National Con-
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gress. The following material is being published to help comrades
find a method for studying problems. Many of our comrades still
have a crude and careless style of work, do not seek to understand
things thoroughly and may even be completely ignorant of conditions
at the lower levels, and yet they are responsible for directing work.
This is an extremely dangerous state of affairs. Without a really
concrete knowledge of the actual conditions of the classes in Chinese
society there can be no really good leadership.
The only way to know conditions is to make social investigations,
to investigate the conditions of each social class in real life. For
those charged with directing work, the basic method for knowing
conditions is to concentrate on a few cities and villages according
to a plan, use the fundamental viewpoint of Marxism, i.e., the method
of class analysis, and make a number of thorough investigations.
Only thus can we acquire even the most rudimentary knowledge of
China’s social problems.
To do this, first, direct your eyes downward, do not hold your
head high and gaze at the sky. Unless a person is interested in turning
his eyes downward and is determined to do so, he will never in his
whole life really understand things in China.

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