We look at two letters written by Mao on November 28, 1929, and introduce our discussion of “On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party” and the other parts of the Gutian Resolution.
Further reading:
Pang Xianzhi and Jin Chongji, Mao Zedong: A Biography, vol. 1: 1893-1949
Stuart Schram, ed., Mao’s Road to Power, vol. 3: From the Jinggangshan to the Establishment of the Jiangxi Soviets, July 1927-December 1930
Mao Zedong, “On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party”
Abimael Guzmán, “Report of the Meeting of the Central Leadership with the Cangallo-Fajardo Regional Committee”
Peking Review (Feb. 3, 1967)
Some names from this episode:
Li Lisan, Chairman of Central Committee Propaganda Department
Yang Kaihui, Mao’s first wife
Mao Anying, Mao’s first son
Chen Yi, member of Front Committee of Fourth Red Army
Chen Duxiu, former general secretary of the Communist Party
Mao Zemin, Mao’s brother
Xie Hanqiu, observer from the Fujian Provincial Committee
Liu Heting, Guomindang military commander
Jin Handing, Guomindang military commander
Zhang Zhen, Guomindang military commander
Episode artwork: He Kongde’s Gutian Meeting poster
Listen now:
Transcript:
Welcome to episode 122 of the People’s History of Ideas Podcast.
Where we last left Mao two episodes ago, he had just been restored to his leadership position in the Front Committee, which had overall responsibility for the Fourth Red Army and the various Communist Party organizations in the areas where the army was operating. Mao arrived in Changting, where the Front Committee had set up its temporary headquartes, on November 26, 1929. And one of the things that Mao did that we have a record of not long after arriving in Changting is he wrote two letters on November 28, 1929. One letter was more personal in nature, and the other one was a brief note to the Central Committee.
While neither of these letters is hugely consequential in and of themselves, I think that these letters give us a window into what brief and informal communications looked like between Mao and the Communist Party leadership in Shanghai, and also give us a sense of where his mind was at and what he felt the need to communicate about. So, let’s take a quick look at these letters.
The first letter was written to Li Lisan, who at the time of this letter was a member of the standing committee of the Politburo and also chairman of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee. Here’s the letter:
MRP3 192-193
OK, let’s clarify some of the people and events that Mao asked about or referred to in this letter. Kaihui is Yang Kaihui, Mao’s first wife, and Anying is Mao Anying, their first son. Yang Kaihui was living underground in Hunan at the time with her two children, including Mao Anqing, her second son with Mao, who I suppose is included as part of ‘and the others’ when Mao wrote that “I often think of Kaihui, Anying, and the others” in the letter. We briefly discussed Yang Kaihui’s capture and execution in 1930 in episode 70. But at the time that Mao was writing this letter she was still alive and presumably someone at some level in the party in Hunan if not in Shanghai had an address where letters could be sent to her at.
Zemin refers to Mao Zemin, Mao Zedong’s brother, who was in charge of the Central Committee’s publications department in Shanghai at the time.
Duxiu refers to Chen Duxiu, the former secretary of the Party. The ‘recent actions’ of his referred to by Mao in this letter revolve around two separate issues. First, Chen was opposed to the actions of both the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party in relationship to an effort by a nationalist warlord allied with Chiang Kai-shek to seize the Soviet-controlled Chinese Eastern Railway, which goes across northern Manchuria (it was renamed the Harbin Railway in 1952). Second, Chen Duxiu expressed support for the Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, who had been exiled from the Soviet Union early in 1929. Expressions of support for Trotsky, or even saying that his ideas should be debated or taken seriously, were considered a serious violation of party discipline. Anyways, these two issues had led to Chen’s expulsion from the Communist Party on November 15, 1929.
We’ll be returning to talk about the events surrounding the Chinese Eastern Railway in another episode soon, because they’re pretty important in their own right, and because of the downstream effects of how the Comintern and the Chinese Communist Party responded to those events. But for the moment, we don’t need to get into more depth.
Anyways, this letter gives us just a crack that we can look through to understand Mao’s personal concerns. You might recall from episode 24 that Li Lisan had been a member of Mao’s New People’s Study Society back in Hunan and had been one of the New People’s Study Society members who went to France in 1919 as part of a work-study program called the Diligent Work-Frugal Study Movement. And after getting kicked out of France in 1921 for protesting, he was sent by Mao to help set up a school at the Anyuan Coal Mine in Hunan.
So even though Mao and Li Lisan had not been working closely together any time recently, they had shared the experience of having been young, Hunanese radicals becoming communist revolutionaries in the late teens and early 1920s. And it’s telling that Mao addresses the letter to ‘Brother Lisan.’ In contrast, Mao’s June 14, 1929, letter to Lin Biao was addressed to ‘Comrade Lin Biao.’ Li Lisan was someone who Mao felt that he could address personal concerns to. This is something to keep in mind as we get into 1930, and some important political differences are going to emerge between Mao and Li.
Now, let’s look at the second letter that Mao wrote on November 28, 1929, the one that he wrote to the Central Committee.
MRP3 194
There’s nothing particularly noteworthy about this short letter from Mao to the Central Committee, except that it gives us a feeling for what short communications between Mao and the Party Center looked like, for the sorts of things communicated in those letters and how they were communicated.
One thing that appears in both the letter to Li Lisan and the letter to the Central Committee is a plea for reading materials, which is an ongoing theme in Mao’s communications with the outside world since he went up to the mountains in 1927.
Also on November 28, Mao presided over an enlarged meeting of the Front Committee. At this meeting, a decision was taken to hold another Party Congress for Communists working in the Red Army as an important step in talking out and educating and convincing the cadres about the meaning and importance of the political leadership of the party over the army. Another major theme at this Front Committee meeting was the need to abolish old ways of functioning that the Front Committee leadership labeled as feudal systems within the army, including things like corporal punishment and the execution of deserters.
This issue of trying to eliminate warlord and feudal style ways of running the army, including practices like corporal punishment, is something that we have seen run parallel to Mao’s efforts to create a politically activist army, even though it is a conceptually distinct form. If you recall the Sanwan Reorganization of the army, from episode 62, which took place in September 1927 during a pause in the retreat that Mao led of his armed forces that had survived the Autumn Harvest Uprising. That was the first major step of Mao’s to create a politicized armed force as one of the Communist Party’s major tools for accomplishing the Chinese Revolution, and there too, one of Mao’s concerns was not just introducing political education and political activism into the practices of the army, but along with that the elimination of practices like corporal punishment as a form of discipline in the army.
As we know, subsequently, when Zhu De brought his troops to join with Mao, we have seen in the past few episodes how Mao’s efforts to politicize the army met with resistance on Zhu’s part for two years, up until the point that we have now reached in our narrative, when the September 1929 letter from the Central Committee sided with Mao, and now what we seeing is the triumph of Mao’s way of doing things, which is going to be institutionalized with this 9th Congress of the Communist Party in the Fourth Red Army that will be held in late December 1929. But I would bet that most listeners of this podcast, as we have been discussing this dispute between Mao and Zhu for the past few episodes, would have just assumed that even if Mao and Zhu were disagreeing about the form of political control that the Party should have over the army, and about what sort of political activities red army soldiers should be engaged in, I’m betting that most listeners would assume that brutal, feudal practices like corporal punishment as a form of discipline and the execution of deserters would have been done away with.
But as we can see, even though Mao had been working for over two years to do away with these practices, they had not been done away with (and they won’t be done away with by another decree to that affect by the Front Committee and from the Party Congress either, although those will be important steps in eventually almost eliminating the practice). On the one hand, this shows the inertia of the practice, just as all well-established reactionary practices have an inertia which makes them tenacious in the face of social reform. But also, it demonstrates how without the other efforts at establishing political leadership of the army, and the political level of the army, it doesn’t seem to have been possible to eliminate these sorts of practices from the red army.
And, just for additional context, in reading about this stuff I am reminded about how, even in the major revolutionary organizations (or, perhaps I should say revolutionary-adjacent organizations) of the New Left in the United States, Latin America, and other parts of the world that I have studied, the use of beatings as a form of discipline was actually not that uncommon. It is, after all, one of the few methods of coercion and correction that is available to political forces that don’t have state power, and it has the added enticement of not being as time consuming and involving of other people’s time as other forms of correction, such as extended meetings of criticism and self-criticism or political education courses and mentoring.
Anyways, after the November 28 Front Committee meeting, the Front Committee led the main force of the Fourth Army to the village of Gutian in Shanghang County and began preparing for the Party Congress. Mao spent the next month conducting detailed investigations in the army, the party, and among the masses of the base area and wrote up eight draft resolutions to be discussed at the Gutian Congress. The Congress was held on December 28 and 29, 1929, and after intense discussion, the resolutions that Mao had put together were all combined and adopted as the Resolution of the Gutian Conference. This resolution had nine parts to it, mainly reflecting Mao’s eight original drafts, and they were: “The Problem of Correcting Erroneous and Nonproletarian Ideological Tendencies in the Party;” “On the Problem of Party Organization;” “The Problem of Inner-Party Education;” “The Problem of Propaganda Work by the Red Army;” “The Problem of the Political Training of Soldiers;” “Special Education for Young Soldiers;” “The Problem of Abolishing Corporal Punishment;” “On the Question of Granting Considerate Treatment to Wounded Soldiers;” and finally “On the Problem of the Relationship between the Military System and the Political System of the Red Army.”
I’ll just note, before we move on to the substance of the Resolution, that the decision to colloquially name the resolution of the 9th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in the 4th Red Army as the Resolution of the Gutian Conference is frustrating for some people who might be a little uptight about consistency in naming conventions, and also that things like this can definitely add some confusion to historical accounts which are not detaining themselves so long on the details like we are here. Anyways, nothing to be done but note that clearly Mao and company were not super uptight about consistently labeling things like this, and good for them for that.
Now as it turns out, the document that Mao produced, turned out to be one of those political documents that transcends the particular time and place that it arose in, and the particular problems that it was written to deal with. As such, the first part of the resolution, “The Problem of Correcting Erroneous and Nonproletarian Ideological Tendencies in the Party,” was edited and retitled “On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party” and became one of the most studied parts of Mao’s Selected Works.
When Mao’s Selected Works were put together in the early 1950s, the editorial note that ran at the beginning of “On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party” spoke to the significance of the article like this:
SW1 105-106
Later, during the Cultural Revolution, the newspaper People’s Daily reprinted the article in January 1967 and called on people across China to study the article using the following language:
Peking Review (Feb. 3, 1967) p. 10
And outside China the article “On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party” has been put to extensive use by revolutionaries trying to learn from the experience of the Chinese Revolution. For example, just months before his arrest, during the Third Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru, Abimael Guzmán, the party chairman, made use of “On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party” as part of his “Report of the Meeting of the Central Leadership with the Cangallo-Fajardo Regional Committee.”
Here’s a lengthy excerpt, which I think gives you a good sense of one way in which “On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party” was considered by leading Maoists outside of China to have relevance to their own struggles. This excerpt will anticipate our own discussion of “On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party” coming up next episode, but I think we have covered enough background in the past few episodes that none of the subject matter that Guzmán discusses will seem too surprising or out of left field:
Quotation: “There are various non-proletarian ideas in the Communis Party organization in the Fourth Red Army which greatly hinder the application of the Party’s correct line. Unless these ideas are thoroughly corrected, the Fourth Army cannot possibly shoulder the tasks assigned to it in China’s great revolutionary struggle.” Mao Zedong, Dec. 1929.
Chairman Gonzalo: The above quote is very good and fits like a glove our own reality which is distinct. Our own experience must be seen with clarity if we don’t want to commit errors in our work. There is the material base: the great majority are of peasant origins and others come from the petty bourgeoisie; it is very interesting. That’s our social base too. Then this is a good document starting from the first question, that enumerates the errors, and then sets forth the solutions, pay attention to that quotation. In the Chinese case, for example: the Red Army was composed in its great majority of the peasantry and other elements of the petty bourgeoisie; the peasantry is also petty bourgeois. Of course, you already know that, that is according to Marxism-Leninism. We can’t forget the historical importance of the peasantry, it has been considered as a class for good reason, but it is also petty bourgeois; that must never be forgotten because both are based on small property, on small production. For that reason, I reiterate that the peasantry has importance because of their immense political weight. Because the great majority of them are poor, then they become an ally; and together with the proletarian class they make up the Worker-Peasant Alliance. Watch out! We must know how to specify things well, the alliance is not proletariat-peasants-petty bourgeoisie; it is the Worker-Peasant Alliance: this shows how that part of the petty bourgeoisie has been set aside by the importance it has and because of the poverty it suffers, and that it takes up the banner of destroying private ownership of land by the landowners, the big property. Of course that is the reason; we must know how to place things well; I think if one sees that, one already understands. “What is the use if we analyze the problems of Committee X from a purely military viewpoint?”… There are comrades who consider the military problems and the political problems as having opposed interests. You see? For them it is not a problem when one says up there are military problems, and down here are political problems. It’s not that way at all, but things get presented by counterposing the political to the military. They refuse to recognize the fact that the military constitutes just one of the means. They think that the Red Army like the white army has only one task: to fight. What happened with the main force of Committee X? Aren’t they degenerating in these criteria? Here it is then, a fault crystalizing in reality because of the focus on a single task.
With regard to organization: They subordinate the organization of the Red Army charged with the political work to those in charge of the military work. Why doesn’t the army’s political department work in this Committee? Why doesn’t it function as in other committees? This is the first thing that must function, otherwise how can we establish that the Party be in control of the People’s Army; how can its absolute political leadership be exerted? Apparently, one may think that is not the way it is, but appearance is one thing; this problem must be resolved.
Sectionalism: Those in Committee X worry about the body of the Army. But they do not understand the whole thing, because there is heavy sectionalism, this is an intense form of “small-group” mentality. Clearly some comrades pay little attention to the directives. Some do not understand the objective conditions, and others do not understand the subjective conditions; that is, there are many poisonous weeds, so we must tear them out. That has its social base and root, the ideological dynamics which we have been speaking about from the beginning. They say they suffer from a lack of perspective; yes they do. That’s what is going on here; why don’t they carry out detailed work to conduct the ambushes? Why haven’t the actions been carried out? Why don’t these comrades accomplish their duties? Why don’t they see the need for observing details and doing hard work? why? Because they have no political understanding of the actions; they don’t understand what it’s for: it is to push forward the development of the Support Bases. They don’t understand that it is for conquering Power. Any armed action we do must be planned; if we don’t see the importance, we won’t plan, we won’t act with attention to details; that is the reason then.
Ultra-Democracy: What can we say about the comrades in Committee X? Is authority being recognized there? No, it is not. Then there are individuals, not authorities. We have discussed this with the Committee. The concepts in the documents they submitted are alien to the principle of organization of the Party. For example, when an ambush is agreed upon, it is not put into practice with sincerity, that’s what is happening. That has to do with violating the principles of organization. The document of Committee X also criticizes that neither principles nor standards are being applied. Criticism, instead of being a weapon of combat is becoming a weapon in personal struggles, a manifestation of individualism; we must study. Many comrades do not do self-criticism within the organization of the Party but outside of it. They are practicing gossip. How the hell are we going to put an end to that? In all apparatuses where that exists, we have to end it. It helps the enemy, the old system. The struggle must be raised within the organization. We must apply the standards, to end, to cut out all the gossip that serves the enemy, that serves reaction. In synthesis: We need to correct erroneous ideas, applying chapter 24 of Vol. 1 of Chairman Mao’s works [this is particular to the edition that they were using, he means “On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party]. That is an important chapter in which various quotations are condensed. Study well page 258. Here liberalism and other problems are gone into. These problems exist in Committee X as in other committees of the Party. Letting these things go on and not maintaining a principled position when facing these situations, who does that serve? To give an example: they disobey orders, others focus on personal attacks and seek revenge, others listen to incorrect ideas and say nothing. They speak in the Party meetings without investigating first, without asking questions. They must read and study all this. For example, to work without discipline and without a plan, isn’t that what’s happening? Clearly so! This text is very important; this is all the same document, which must be considered for the rectification of erroneous ideas in the Party, complementing the quotations in Chapter 24. It is urgent that you must study it as part of the Rectification Campaign specific to this Committee. They are not counterpoised to the general line of the Party. You should start to identify, weed out and sweep away as much as possible the ideas alien to the Party, alien to M-L-M, Gonzalo Thought [here he is using MLM as shorthand for the term Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and the term Gonzalo Thought is meant to refer to his own theoretical contributions toward making revolution building on that]. That is what is in unity. We must apply the quotations about People’s War; there you find how to make the People’s War according to the position of the Party, according to the positions of the Proletariat; and making People’s War is our main task as communists in this country. Who prevents the war from expressing its power with alien ideas, with mistaken ideas that must be eradicated by the rectification campaign? Sweep away the alien ideas with the document “On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party.” So, apply the rectification Campaign with the two documents that are part of one whole. It’s not a matter of study, one does not study what is wrong, the issue is to embody what is in conformity, so we can give power to the People’s War, to arm the head in order to arm our hands; when one arms the mind, that is arming the hands to fight better.
OK, what better way to wrap up our introduction to discussing “On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party” than with the extended use of the document by Chairman Gonzalo. We’ll pick up by discussing the content of the document, and the other parts of the Resolution that didn’t make it into the Selected Works, next episode.
Until then, be well.