Page 16 - SELECTED WORKS OF MAO TSE-TUNG Volume III.indd

14 MAO TSE-TUNG
POSTSCRIPT
April 19, 1941

The experience of the period of the ten years’ civil war is the
best and most pertinent for the present period, the War of Resistance
Against Japan. This refers to the aspect of how to link ourselves
with the masses and mobilize them against the enemy, but not to the
aspect of the tactical line. The Party’s present tactical line is different
in principle from that of the past. Formerly, the Party’s tactical line
was to oppose the landlords and the counter-revolutionary bour-
geoisie; now, it is to unite with all those landlords and members of
the bourgeoisie who are not against resisting Japan. Even in the
latter stage of the ten years’ civil war, it was incorrect not to have
adopted differing policies towards the reactionary government and
political party which were launching armed attacks on us on the
one hand, and towards all the social strata of a capitalist character
under our own rule on the other; it was also incorrect not to have
adopted differing policies towards the different groups within the
reactionary government and political party. At that time, a policy
of “all struggle” was pursued towards every section of society other
than the peasantry and the lower strata of the urban petty bour-
geoisie, and this policy was undoubtedly wrong. In agrarian policy,
it was also wrong to repudiate the correct policy adopted in the early
and middle periods of the ten years’ civil war, whereby the land-
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lords were given the same allotment of land as the peasants so that
they could engage in farming and would not become displaced or
go up into the mountains as bandits and disrupt public order. The
Party’s policy is now of necessity a different one; it is not “all struggle
and no alliance”, neither is it “all alliance and no struggle” (like the
Chen Tu-hsiuism of 1927). Instead, it is a policy of uniting with all
social strata opposed to Japanese imperialism, of forming a united
front with and yet of waging struggles against them, struggles that
differ in form according to the different degrees in which their
vacillating or reactionary side manifests itself in capitulation to the
enemy and opposition to the Communist Party and the people. The
present policy is a dual policy which synthesizes “alliance” and
“struggle”. In labour policy, it is the dual policy of suitably improving
the workers’ livelihood and of not hampering the proper develop-
ment of the capitalist economy. In agrarian policy, it is the dual