July 1966
[Source: Long Live Mao Tse-tung Thought, a Red Guard publication.]
Chairman Mao said that the 'May Twenty-fifth' big-character poster of Nieh Yüan-tzu[1] is a manifesto of the Chinese Paris Commune of the sixties of the twentieth century, the significance of which surpasses the Paris Commune. This kind of big-character poster we are incapable of writing.
(Several Young Pioneers wrote big-character posters about their fathers saying that their fathers had forgotten their past, did not talk to them about Mao Tse-tung thought, but did ask them about the marks they got at school and rewarded them when they got good marks.)
Chairman Mao asked Comrade Ch'en Po-ta to pass on a message to these little friends: 'Your big-character posters are very well-written.' [He continued:]
I say to you all: youth is the great army of the Great Cultural Revolution! It must be mobilized to the full.
After my return to Peking I felt very unhappy and desolate. Some colleges even had their gates shut. There were even some which suppressed the student movement. Who is it who suppressed the student movement? Only the Pei-yang Warlords. [2] It is anti-Marxist for communists to fear the student movement. Some people talk daily about the mass line and serving the people, but instead they follow the bourgeois line and serve the bourgeoisie. The Central Committee of the Youth League should stand on the side of the student movement. But instead it stands on the side of suppression of the student movement. Who opposes the great Cultural Revolution? The American imperialists, the Soviet revisionists, the Japanese revisionists and the reactionaries.
To use the excuse of distinguishing between 'inner' and 'outer' [3] to fear revolution. To cover over big-character posters which have been put up, such things cannot be allowed. This is a basic error of orientation. They must immediately change direction, and smash all the old conventions.
We believe in the masses. To become teachers of the masses we must first be the students of the masses. The present great Cultural Revolution is a heaven-and-earth-shaking event. Can we, dare we, cross the pass into socialism? This pass leads to the final destruction of classes, and the reduction of the three great differences.
To oppose, especially to oppose 'authoritative' bourgeois ideology, is to destroy. Without this destruction, socialism cannot be established nor can we carry out first struggle, second criticism, third transformation. Sitting in offices listening to reports is no good. The only way is to rely on the masses, trust the masses, struggle to the end. We must be prepared for the revolution to be turned against us. The Party and government leadership and responsible Party comrades should be prepared for this. If you now want to carry the revolution through to the end, you must discipline yourself, reform yourself in order to keep up with it. Otherwise you can only keep out of it.
There are some comrades who struggle fiercely against others, but cannot struggle with themselves. In this way, they will never be able to cross the pass.
It is up to you to lead the fire towards your own bodies, to fan the flames to make them burn. Do you dare to do this? Because it will burn your own heads.
The comrades replied thus: 'We are prepared. If we're not up to it, we will resign our jobs. We live as Communist Party members and shall die as Communist Party members. It doesn't do to live a life of sofas and electric fans.' [Chairman Mao said:]
It will not do to set rigid standards for the masses. When Peking University saw that the students were rising up, they tried to set standards. They euphemistically called it 'returning to the right track'. In fact it was 'diverting to the wrong track'.
There were some schools which labelled the students as counter-revolutionaries. (Liaison officer Chang Yen went out and labelled twenty-nine people as counter-revolutionary.) [Chairman Mao said:]
In this way you put the masses on the side of the opposition. You should not fear bad people. How many of them are there after all? The great majority of the student masses are good.
Someone raised the question of disturbances. What do we do in such cases about taking legal action? [Chairman Mao said:]
What are you afraid of? When bad people are involved you prove that they
are bad. What do you fear about good people? You should replace the word
'fear' by the word 'dare'. You must demonstrate once and for all whether
or not the pass into socialism has been crossed. You must put politics in
command, go among the masses and be at one with them, and carry on the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution even better.
1. A woman instructor at Peking University who was the first to write a big character poster, inaugurating the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
2. The new-style army under the control of Yüan Shih-k'ai during the last years of the Empire was known as the Pei-yang lu-chian or Northern Army. The term 'Pei-yang Warlords' is employed both of Yüan and his subordinates during the period 1911-16, and more loosely as a collective designation for the several cliques into which his epigones split up during the decade following his death. Mao is probably thinking here in particular of the warlord-dominated government in Peking in 1919, which suppressed the May Fourth student demonstrations.
3. This distinction between 'inner' and 'outer' probably refers broadly to the drawing of rigid boundaries in a variety of contexts, ranging from Party and non-Party at one extreme to Chinese and foreigners at the other. The crucial point at issue in the summer of 1966 (and indeed subsequently, throughout the whole of the Cultural Revolution) was, however, that of the status of the Communist Party as an order set apart from the rest of society.
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