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[This issue of Peking Review is from massline.org. Massline.org has kindly given us permission to to place these documents on the MIA. We made only some formatting changes to make them congruent with our style sheets.]


Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-tung
On Opposing Economism


[This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Vol. 10, #5, Jan. 27,
1967, pp. 5-6. Thanks are due to the WWW.WENGEWANG.ORG
web site for some of the work done for this posting.]


Politics Is the Supreme Commander, the Soul.
Political Work Is the Life-Blood of All Economic Work.


Not to have a correct political point of view is like having no soul.


On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People



Political work is the life-blood of all economic work. This is particularly true at a time when the social and economic system is undergoing fundamental change.


Introductory Note to “A Serious Lesson,” The Socialist Upsurge in China‘s Countryside



The revolutionary struggle on the ideological and artistic fronts must be subordinate to the political struggle because only through politics can the needs of the class and the masses find expression in concentrated form.


Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art




We Should Put the Greatest Efforts Into Political Struggle.
In the Absence of Political Reforms All the
Productive Forces Are Being Ruined.

... Our present task is to lead the peasants to put their greatest efforts into the political struggle, so that the landlords‘ authority is entirely overthrown. The economic struggle should follow immediately, so that the land problem and the other economic problems of the poor peasants may be fundamentally solved.


Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan



Once the peasants have their organization, the first thing they do is to smash the political prestige and power of the landlord class, and especially of the local tyrants and evil gentry, that is, to pull down landlord authority and build up peasant authority in rural society. This is a most serious and vital struggle. It is the pivotal struggle in the second period, the period of revolutionary action. Without victory in this struggle, no victory is possible in the economic struggle to reduce rent and interest, to secure land and other means of production, and so on.


Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan



In these struggles we should form various kinds of mass organizations, set up Party nuclei, build armed units of the masses and organs of people‘s political power, speedily raise mass economic struggles to the level of political struggles and lead the masses to take part in building the base areas.


Build Stable Base Areas in the Northeast



In the absence of political reforms all the productive forces are being ruined, and this is true both of agriculture and of industry.


On Coalition Government




We Should Not See Merely the Immediate And Partial Interests of
the Working Class While Forgetting Its Broad, Long-Range Interests.


Education should be conducted among comrades in the trade unions and among the masses of workers to enable them to understand that they should not see merely the immediate and partial interests of the working class while forgetting its broad, long-range interests.


On the Policy Concerning Industry and Commerce



It should be admitted that some people are prone to pay attention to immediate, partial and personal interests and do not understand, or do not sufficiently understand, long-range, national and collective interests.... That is why we must constantly carry on lively and effective political education among the masses and should always tell them the truth about the difficulties that crop up and discuss with them how to surmount these difficulties.


On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People



On entering the city, do not lightly advance slogans of raising wages and reducing working hours. In war time it is good enough if production can continue and existing working hours and original wage levels can be maintained. Whether or not suitable reductions in working hours and increases in wages are to be made later will depend on economic conditions, that is, on whether the enterprises thrive.


Telegram to the Headquarters of the Lo-yang Front After the Recapture of the City




Be Vigilant Against Attack by “Sugar-Coated Bullets.”


There may be some Communists, who were not conquered by enemies with guns and were worthy of the name of heroes for standing up to these enemies, but who cannot withstand sugar-coated bullets; they will be defeated by sugar-coated bullets. We must guard against such a situation.


Report to the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China





The above selection of quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung‘s writings originally appeared in the “Guangming Ribao” on January 17, 1967, with the following editor‘s note:

“At the present time, those persons in authority within the Party who are taking the capitalist road and the very few stubborn elements who cling to the bourgeois reactionary line, working in collusion with monsters and demons in society, are using economism to corrupt the masses, disrupt production, undermine the great proletarian cultural revolution and sabotage the dictatorship of the proletariat.

“Economism leads people astray, causing them to pay attention only to immediate, partial interests, while ignoring the fundamental interests of the proletariat. It is against Marxism-Leninism, against Mao Tse-tung‘s thought, and is out-and-out counter-revolutionary revisionist stuff.

“Our great leader, Chairman Mao, has long ago thoroughly criticized and repudiated economism. To help comrades get a clear understanding of the reactionary nature of economism, we have selected and edited for them to study some of Chairman Mao‘s statement criticizing and repudiating economism.”

—P.R. Ed.


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