毛泽东选集/关于农业合作化问题

#§Report at a conference of secretaries of provincial, municipal and autonomous region Party committees called by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

#§An upsurge in the new, socialist mass movement is imminent throughout the countryside.

# But some of our comrades, tottering along like a woman with bound feet, are complaining all the time, "You're going too fast, much too fast."

# Too much carping, unwarranted complaints, boundless anxiety and countless taboos -- all this they take as the right policy to guide the socialist mass movement in the rural areas.

#§No, this is not the right policy, it is the wrong one.

#§The high tide of social transformation in the countryside, the high tide of co-operation, has already swept a number of places and will soon sweep the whole country.

# Some errors are unavoidable in the process, which is understandable, and they will not be hard to correct.

# Shortcomings or mistakes among cadres and peasants can be remedied or overcome provided we actively help them.

# The cadres and the peasants are advancing under the leadership of the Party and, fundamentally, the movement is healthy.

# In some places they have made certain mistakes in their work; for example, poor peasants have been barred from the co-operatives in disregard of their difficulties, while well-to-do middle peasants have been forced into the co-operatives in violation of their interests.

# These mistakes should be corrected by educating the cadres and peasants and not by simply dressing them down.

# We must guide the movement boldly and must not "fear dragons ahead and tigers behind".

# Both cadres and peasants will remould themselves in the course of the struggles they themselves experience.

# Let them go into action and let them learn and become more competent as they go along.

# In this way many fine people will come to the fore.

# Large groups of cadres with short-term training should be sent to the countryside from above to guide and assist the co-operative movement, but they must also take part in the movement itself if they are to learn how to work.

#§In short, the leadership should never lag behind the mass movement.

# Yet, as things stand now, it is the mass movement which is running ahead, while the leadership cannot keep pace with it.

#§The nation-wide co-operative movement is now taking tremendous strides forward, and yet we still have to argue such questions as: Can the co-operatives grow?# Can they be consolidated?# As far as certain comrades are concerned, the crux of the matter seems to be their worry as to whether it is possible to consolidate the several hundred thousand existing semi-socialist co-operatives, which are generally rather small, averaging twenty-odd peasant households each.

# Of course, unless they can be consolidated, growth is out of the question.

# Certain comrades remain unconvinced despite the record of the growth of co-operation in the last few years and want to wait and see how things shape up in 1955.

# They may even want to wait and see for another year, and only if more co-operatives are consolidated by the end of 1956 will they be truly convinced that the co-operative transformation of agriculture is possible and that the policy of the Central Committee of our Party is correct.

# That is why the work in these two years is crucial.

#§In order to show the feasibility of agricultural co-operation and the soundness of the Party Central Committee's policy on this matter, it is perhaps not without some value for us to review the history of the agricultural co-operative movement in our country.