Be Concerned With the Well-Being of the Masses, Pay Attention to Methods of Work

#PUBLICATION NOTE

This edition of Be Concerned With the Well-Being of the Masses, Pay Attention to Methods of Work has been prepared and revised for digital publication by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland on the basis of the following editions:

• Be Concerned With the Well-Being of the Masses, Pay Attention to Methods of Work, in the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, First English Edition, Vol. 1, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1965.
• Conclusions Regarding the Report of the Central Executive Committee, in Mao's Road to Power, First English Edition, Vol. 4, M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, 1997.

#INTRODUCTION NOTE

This is the speech delivered by Comrade Mao Zedong summing up the discussion of the Report of the First Central Executive Committee and the First Council of People's Commissars to the Second National Congress of Councils of the Council Republic of China in Ruijin, Jiangxi, China on the 27th of January, 1934. It was first published in the Hongse Zhonghua, Special Issue No. 5 (31st of January, 1934).

#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

#BE CONCERNED WITH THE WELL-BEING OF THE MASSES, PAY ATTENTION TO METHODS OF WORK

#SPEECH SUMMING UP THE DISCUSSION OF THE REPORT TO THE SECOND NATIONAL CONGRESS OF COUNCILS

#Mao Zedong

#27th of January, 1934

#★

Comrades!

You have already been discussing for two days the report I delivered on behalf of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars. During the last two days, at yesterday's group discussions and today's plenary session, the comrades have expressed many opinions and recounted experiences and the lessons to be learned from them in every aspect of our work. On the whole, it can be said that my report has been unanimously accepted. With regard to the present situation, the tasks to which this situation gives rise, various aspects of the application of our policies in the past two years, and the weaknesses that exist in our work, in yesterday's and today's discussions, the comrades generally agreed with my report. It should be pointed out, first of all, that the remarks made by the comrades have been, on the whole, extremely correct.

I should, however, also point out in my concluding speech that, during the last two days' discussions, yesterday and today, and primarily during yesterday's group meetings, the remarks of some of the comrades contained incorrect views. Here, the opinions have mainly to do with the fifth «encirclement and suppression» campaign. On this matter, most of the comrades have agreed with what I said in my report: that we have won preliminary victory with regard to the fifth «encirclement and suppression» campaign, but that the decisive battle still seriously confronts us, and that calling upon the broad masses, uniting all forces, and striving for victory in the final battle are the most important tasks now facing us. Therefore, for comrades to have ventured an opinion during the discussion, such as that «the fifth ‹encirclement and suppression› campaign has already been thoroughly smashed», is obviously incorrect. There were other comrades who said that «we are only in the process of preparing to smash the fifth ‹encirclement and suppression› campaign», and such an opinion is incorrect as well. The first view overestimates our own victory, and casually cancels our serious task of finally smashing the «encirclement and suppression» campaign, whereas, in fact, Jiang Jieshi is gathering all his forces to mount a large-scale final offensive against us. This sort of estimate is, therefore, wrong, and also very dangerous. The second view obscures the fact that, for the last few months, the Red Army has, through arduous battles, dealt rather heavy blows to the enemy and has already won a preliminary victory. This victory, combined with the great victory of smashing the fourth «encirclement and suppression» campaign, lays a solid foundation for our thoroughly smashing the fifth «encirclement and suppression» campaign. Underestimating one's own achievements is also very dangerous.

One comrade said of the People's Revolutionary Government of Fujian Province that is is somewhat revolutionary and not totally counter-revolutionary. Such a view is also wrong. I have already pointed out in my report that the People's Revolutionary Government is part of the reactionary ruling classes, and a new trick to deceive the people in an attempt to save themselves from their doom. They regard the Council Power as their enemy, but the label of the Nationalist Party, on the other hand, is too foul, so they fabricate a so-called People's Revolutionary Government and make an appeal for a third way. Fooling the people this way has no revolutionary significance whatsoever, as the current facts have already proved.

Another comrades said some wrong things at a group meeting. He claimed that the Council Power has not actually expanded the Red Army, nor did it have any guerrilla forces, and that the peasants should still pay rent to the landlords. Such talk is, of course, utter nonsense, and I think merits no explanation. Yet another comrade said that all staff workers in Fujian are opportunists. This likewise deserves no explanation, as I believe that everyone knows it to be erroneous. We admit that opportunists who are out there making trouble do exist among some council staff members and that we should wage resolute struggle against such elements. Remarks like those of this comrade, however, constitute slander against the Council Power.

With regard to the question of marriage, I mentioned in my report that, if either the man or the woman firmly requests a divorce, the Council Government should permit a divorce. It should be pointed out, however, that dependents of Red Army soldiers constitute an exception. In order to strengthen the Red Army soldiers' determination to fight, the Central Government has stipulated that, when the spouse of a Red Army soldier requests a divorce, they must obtain their spouse's agreement. Only when they have not heard from their spouse for two years may the spouse unilaterally request a divorce. As for the question of the marriageable age, many comrades advocate lowering it. I think that this suggestion is inappropriate. In the interests of the people and the class, marriageable age should not go below 20 for men and 18 for women. It should be understood that early marriage has extremely harmful effects. Comrades! You need to have patience! [Audience bursts into laughter.] Under the rule of the landlords and bourgeoisie in the past, some poor workers and peasants were unable to marry even at the age of 40 or 50, so why is it impossible to wait now for even one or two years? [Audience again bursts into laughter.]

The above is part of my conclusion, but the main part of the conclusion is yet to follow.

There are two questions which comrades have failed to stress during the discussion and which, I feel, should be dealt with. Both of these questions concern how to link the people's lives with the revolutionary war.

The first concerns the well-being of the masses.

Our central task at present is to mobilize the broad masses to take part in the revolutionary war, overthrow imperialism and the Nationalist Party by means of such war, spread the revolution throughout the country, and drive imperialism out of China. Anyone who does not attach enough importance to this central task is not a good revolutionary cadre. If our comrades really comprehend this task and understand that the revolution must at all costs be spread throughout the country, then they should in no way neglect or underestimate the question of the immediate interests, the well-being, of the broad masses. For the revolutionary war is a war of the masses; it can be waged only by mobilizing the masses and relying on them. For this reason, we must place the task of war before the broad masses. Only by mobilizing the masses on a huge scale to participate in and support the war can we win victory in it.

If we only mobilize the people to carry on the war and do nothing else, can we succeed in defeating the enemy? Of course not. If we want to win, we must do a great deal more. We must implement the fundamental decrees of the Council Power, protect the interests of the broad masses, lead the workers' economic struggles, limit capitalist exploitation, lead the peasants' struggle for land and distribute the land to them, heighten their labour enthusiasm and increase agricultural production, safeguard the interests of the workers, establish cooperatives, develop trade with outside areas, and solve the problems facing the masses — food, shelter and clothing, fuel, rice, cooking oil and salt, sickness and hygiene, and marriage. In short, all the practical problems in the masses' everyday life should claim our attention. If we attend to these problems, solve them, and satisfy the needs of the masses, we shall really become organizers of the well-being of the masses, and they will truly rally around us and give us their warm support. Comrades, will we then be able to mobilize them to take part in the revolutionary war? Yes, indeed we will.

Here is the kind of thing we have found among some of our cadres. They talk only about expanding the Red Army, enlarging the transport corps, collecting the land tax, and selling bonds; as for other matters, they neither discuss nor attend to them, and even ignore them altogether. For instance, there was a time when the Tingzhou Municipal Council concerned itself only with the expansion of the Red Army and with mobilization for the transport corps and paid not the slightest attention to the well-being of the masses. The problems facing the people of Tingzhou city were that they had no firewood, no salt was on sale, because the capitalists were hoarding it, some people had no houses to live in, because the houses of the local tyrants had not yet been redistributed to the masses, and rice was both scarce and expensive. These were practical problems for the masses of the people of Tingzhou, and they eagerly looked to us for help in solving them. But the Tingzhou Municipal Council did not discuss any of these matters. That is why, when the new council of workers' and peasants' deputies was elected in the city, 100 or more deputies were unwilling to attend after the first few council meetings had discussed only the expansion of the Red Army and mobilization for the transport corps, entirely ignoring the well-being of the masses, so that the council was unable to go on meeting. The result was that very little was achieved in regard to the expansion of the Red Army and mobilization for the transport corps. That was one kind of situation.

Comrades! You have probably read the pamphlets given you about two model townships. There the situation is entirely different. What a great number of people have joined the Red Army from Changgang Township in Jiangxi and Caixi Township in Fujian! In Changgang, 80% of the young men and women have joined the Red Army, and in Caixi, the figure is 88%. There has been a big sale of bonds, too, and 4'500 yuan worth have been sold in Changgang, which has a population of 1'500. Much has also been done in other fields. What accounts for this? A few examples will make the point clear. In Changgang, when fire broke out in a poor peasant's house destroying one and a half rooms, the township government appealed to the masses to contribute money to help him. In another instance, three persons were starving, so the township government and the mutual-aid society immediately gave them rice. During the food shortage last summer, the township government obtained rice from Gonglue County,¹ more than 200 li [100 kilometres] away, for the relief of the masses. Excellent work was done along these lines in Caixi as well. Such township governments are really models. They are absolutely different from the Tingzhou Municipal Council with its bureaucratic and opportunist methods of leadership. We should learn from Changgang and Caixi Townships and oppose bureaucratic directors like those in Tingzhou city.

I earnestly suggest to this congress that we pay close attention to the well-being of the masses, from the problems of land and labour to those of fuel, rice, cooking oil, and salt. The women want to learn ploughing and harrowing. Whom can we get to teach them? The children want to go to school. Have we set up primary schools? The wooden bridge over there is too narrow and people may fall off. Should we not repair it? Many people suffer from boils and other ailments. What are we going to do about it? All such problems concerning the well-being of the masses should be placed on our agenda. We should discuss them, adopt and carry out decisions, and check up on the results. We should convince the masses that we represent their interests, that our lives are intimately bound up with theirs. We should help them to proceed from these things to an understanding of the higher tasks which we have put forward, the tasks of the revolutionary war, so that they will support the revolution and spread it throughout the country, respond to our political appeals and fight to the end for victory in the revolution. The masses in Changgang say: «The Communist Party is really good! It has thought of everything on our behalf.» The comrades in Changgang Township are an example to all of us. What admirable people! They have won the genuine affection of the broad masses, who support their call for war mobilization. Just look! 80% of the young men and women in Changgang Township have gone to the front! Do we want to win the support of the masses? Do we want them to devote their strength to the front? If so, we must be with them, awaken their enthusiasm and initiative, be concerned with their well-being, work earnestly and sincerely in their interests, and solve all their problems of production and everyday life — the problems of salt, rice, housing, clothing, childbirth, and so on. If we do so, the masses will surely support us and regard the revolution as their most glorious banner, as their very life. In the event of a Nationalist attack on the Red areas, they will fight the Nationalist Party to the death. There can be no doubt about this, for is it not a plain fact that we have smashed the enemy's first, second, third, and fourth «encirclement and suppression» campaigns?

The Nationalist Party is now pursuing a policy of blockhouse warfare,² feverishly constructing their «tortoise-shells» as though they were iron bastions. Comrades! Are they really iron bastions? Not in the least! Think of the palaces of the feudal emperors over thousands of years, were they not powerful with their walls and moats? Yet they crumbled one after another the moment the masses rose up. The Tsar of Russia was one of the world's most ferocious rulers, yet, when the proletariat and the peasantry rose up in revolution, was there anything left of him? No, nothing. His bastions of iron? They all crumbled. Comrades! What is a true bastion of iron? It is the masses, the millions upon millions of people who genuinely and sincerely support the revolution. That is the real iron bastion, which no force can smash, no force whatsoever. The counter-revolution cannot smash us; on the contrary, we shall smash it. Rallying millions upon millions of people around the Council Government and expanding our revolutionary war, we shall wipe out all counter-revolution and take over the whole of China.

I shall now address the second important question, which I feel should likewise be raised emphatically at the Congress. The second question concerns our methods of work.

We are the leaders and organizers of the revolutionary war as well as the leaders and organizers of the life of the masses. To organize the revolutionary war and to improve the life of the masses are our two major tasks. We must not only talk about such tasks, but carry them out in practice as well. In this respect, we are faced with the serious problem of methods of work and methods of leadership. It is not enough to set tasks, we must also solve the problem of the methods for carrying them out. If our task is to cross a river, we cannot cross it without a bridge or a boat. Unless the bridge or boat problem is solved, it is idle to speak of crossing the river. Unless the problem of method is solved, talk about the task is useless. Unless we pay attention to giving leadership to the work of expanding the Red Army and devote particular care to our methods, we will never succeed even though we recite the phrase «Expand the Red Army» a thousand times, from morning until night, day after day, the way monks keep chanting their sutras, and the result will still be nothing but sutras, with no Red Army to show for it. [Laughter] Has there been this kind of situation in our work? Yes! In fact, quite a lot of it! Let's take a look at Ruijin and Fujian. In Ruijin, the emulation campaign to expand the Red Army was worthy of our praise. Under the direct leadership of the Central Bureau and the Central Revolutionary Military Commission, within a month and a half, beginning on the 1st of December, they recruited close to 4'000 soldiers. Because they used correct methods, waged a struggle against opportunism and bureaucracy, and mobilized the masses for the class struggle, they could accomplish such achievements and become the top winner in the emulation campaign throughout the Red areas to expand the Red Army. And Fujian, on the other hand? The results in more than ten counties in the whole province only matched those in the single county of Ruijin, and even that result depended on a change in methods of work under the direct leadership of the Central Bureau in the last two weeks. With bureaucratic leadership, like that in December, they could not even have matched the single county of Ruijin. As for Ruijin, 4'000 soldiers were recruited in the last 45 days, whereas, during the month of August last year, only 30 people came it. Bureaucratic leadership, on the one hand, and conscientious, pragmatic leadership, on the other, have thus produced results that are as different from each other as night and day. To speak again of the December emulation campaign in Ruijin, several districts, such as the City District, Xiaoxiao District, and Huangbai District, barely achieved anything at all in the first half month, because they were under bureaucratic leadership, but, after the emulation campaign, the director was replaced and the methods of work were modified, so that, in the second half of the month, they not only fulfilled the whole month's quota, but even exceeded it by 100%. This is the way it was in expanding the Red Army. Let us now look at the sale of public bonds. When Ruijin had sold all its bonds and collected the whole 240'000 yuan, how was it in Yudu County? Under opportunist and bureaucratic leadership, they sold only 19'000 yuan worth, and, of the 190'000 yuan worth of bonds they took on to sell, over 100'000 yuan worth are probably kept to this day in the trunks of those bureaucrats. In the one township of Changgang, 4'500 yuan worth were sold, with an average of each person buying 3,80 yuan worth. If all townships were to do as in Changgang, then 12'000'000 yuan worth could be issued in the Central Red Area alone. But what if all did as in Yudu County? Then even 1'000'000 yuan worth could not be sold. Does this not show that the problems of methods of work and methods of leadership have taught us a serious lesson? In any other field, for instance, in checking up on land distribution, or in economic construction, or culture and education, or our work in the new areas and the outlying districts, if all we do is to set the tasks without attending to the methods of carrying them out, without combating opportunist and bureaucratic methods of work and adopting practical and concrete ones, without discarding empty talk and idle phrase-mongering and instead adopting practical and concrete methods, and without discarding commandist methods and adopting the method of patient persuasion, then no task whatsoever can be accomplished.

The comrades in Xingguo have done first-rate work and deserve our praise as model workers. Similarly, the comrades in north-eastern Jiangxi have done good work and are also model workers. By linking the problem of the well-being of the masses with that of the revolutionary war, the comrades in both these places are simultaneously solving the problems of revolutionary methods of work and of accomplishing their revolutionary tasks. They are working conscientiously, solving problems with minute care, and shouldering their revolutionary responsibilities in earnest; they are good organizers and leaders both of revolutionary war and of the well-being of the masses. They are the most honourable leaders of council work. Elsewhere, too, the comrades have made progress in their work and deserve our praise — as in some parts of the counties of Shanghang, Changting, and Yongding in Fujian Province; in Xijiang and other places in southern Jiangxi Province; in some parts of the counties of Chaling, Yongxin, and Ji'an in the Hunan-Jiangxi Red Area; in some parts of Yangxin County in the Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi Red Area; in districts and townships of many other counties in Jiangxi Province; and in Ruijin County, which is directly under our Central Government.

We should point out, however, that council work in some places has not been satisfactory. With regard to the work in these places, we should heighten our revolutionary vigilance to the utmost in the spirit of self-criticism. For instance, in many places in Fujian-Jiangxi, Guangdong-Jiangxi, and Hunan-Hubei Provinces, numerous weaknesses still exist in council work. Similarly, Fujian and Hunan-Jiangxi Provinces lag far behind Jiangxi and Fujian-Zhejiang-Jiangxi Provinces. In the leadership of the Fujian Provincial Council, for example, there is serious bureaucracy. The working personnel in many of these places have bad relations with the masses. They still do not understand that the revolutionary war should be closely linked with the well-being of the masses, or that they ought to make efforts to learn the art of leading the masses. They still do not understand that, without good methods of work, there is absolutely no way to accomplish one's tasks, or that all council work should be fully coordinated with the revolutionary war. A thorough change should be made in the work of these areas after the Congress. The Congress should sternly censure those people who know nothing of the situation at the lower levels and fail to understand the feelings of the masses, who can only engage in empty talk and meaningless phrase-mongering, and even resort to coercion and commandism in handling council work, particularly those who are seriously opportunist and bureaucratic. Their standpoints and methods are absolutely wrong, and they obstruct council work and harm the revolutionary war. They should immediately remould themselves. In all the places under our leadership, there are undoubtedly many active cadres, excellent comrades, who have sprung from the masses. These comrades have a responsibility to rigorously criticize these opportunists and bureaucrats, guide them and help them in quickly correcting their mistakes, and purge from the councils those elements who obstinately refuse to change. In other words, they must help in places where our work is weak and help comrades who are not yet able to work well. We are in the midst of a great revolutionary war; we must break through the enemy's large-scale «encirclement and suppression» campaign and spread the revolution to all parts of the country. All revolutionary cadres have a tremendous responsibility. After this congress, we must adopt effective measures to improve our work, the advanced areas should become even more advanced, and the backward areas should catch up with the advanced. We must create thousands of townships like Changgang and scores of counties like Xingguo. They will be our strongholds. From these strongholds, we shall proceed to smash the enemy's «encirclement and suppression» campaigns, overthrow the rule of imperialism and the Nationalist Party throughout the country, and bring about the victory of the revolution throughout all of China! [Loud applause.]

This brings to a close my conclusions on the Report of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars. As to other issues, I have addressed them in my report and shall not repeat them now. This is the end of my conclusions. [Thunderous applause. All present salute Comrade Mao Zedong and sing The Internationale.]