The struggle against opportunism. It may be said that around the time of the May
21st Incident the Party organizations in the border area counties were
controlled by opportunists. When the counterrevolution set in, there was very
little resolute struggle. In October last year, when the Red Army (the First
Regiment of the First Division of the First Army of the Workers' and Peasants'
Revolutionary Army) arrived in the border area counties, only a few Party
members who had gone into hiding were left and the Party organizations had been
entirely destroyed by the enemy. The period from last November to April was one
of rebuilding the Party, and the period since May has been one of great
expansion. But in the last twelve months manifestations of opportunism
continued to be widespread. On the approach of the enemy, some members, lacking
the will to fight, hid in remote hills, which they called "lying in
ambush". Other members, though very active, resorted to blind
insurrection. These were both expressions of petty-bourgeois ideology. After a
long period of tempering through struggle and of inner-Party education, such
things have become less frequent. In the past year, the same petty-bourgeois
ideology also existed in the Red Army. On the approach of the enemy, either
reckless battle or precipitate flight would be proposed. Often both ideas
emanated from the same individual in the course of the discussions on what
military action to take. This opportunist ideology has been gradually corrected
through prolonged inner-Party struggle and through lessons learned from actual
events, for instance, from the losses incurred in reckless battle and the
reverses suffered during precipitate flight.
Localism. The economy in the border area is agricultural, with some places
still in the age of the hand-pestle (in the hilly regions the wooden pestle is
still in general use for husking rice, while in the plains there are many stone
pestles). The unit of social organization everywhere is the clan, consisting of
people having the same family name. In the Party organizations in the villages,
it often happens that a branch meeting virtually becomes a clan meeting, since
branches consist of members bearing the same family name and living close
together. In these circumstances it is very hard indeed to build a
"militant Bolshevik Party". Such members do not quite understand when
they are told that the Communists draw no sharp line of demarcation between one
nation and another or between one province and another, or that a sharp line
should not be drawn between different counties, districts and townships.
Localism exists to a serious extent in the relations between counties and even
between districts and townships within the same county. In eliminating
localism, reasoning can at best produce only limited results, and it takes
White oppression, which is by no means localized, to do much more. For
instance, it is only when counter-revolutionary "joint suppression"
campaigns by the two provinces make the people share a common lot in struggle
that their localism is gradually broken down. Localism is declining as a result
of many such lessons.
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