Where
there are two opposite approaches to things and people, two opposite views
emerge. "It's terrible!" and "It's fine!",
"riffraff" and "vanguards of the revolution"--here are apt
examples.
We
said above that the peasants have accomplished a revolutionary task which had
been left unaccomplished for many years and have done an important job for the
national revolution. But has this great revolutionary task, this important
revolutionary work, been performed by all the peasants? No. There are three
kinds of peasants, the rich, the middle and the poor peasants. The three live
in different circumstances and so have different views about the revolution In
the first period, what appealed to the rich peasants was the talk about the
Northern Expeditionary Army's sustaining a crushing defeat in Kiangsi, about
Chiang Kai-shek's being wounded in the leg [6]
and flying back to Kwangtung, [7]
and about Wu Pei-fu's [8]
recapturing Yuehchow. The peasant associations would certainly not last and the
Three People's Principles [9]
could never prevail, because they had never been heard of before. Thus an
official of the township peasant association (generally one of the
"riffraff" type) would walk into the house of a rich peasant,
register in hand, and say, "Will you please join the peasant
association?" How would the rich peasant answer? A tolerably well-behaved
one would say, "Peasant association? I have lived here for decades,
tilling my land. I never heard of such a thing before, yet I've managed to live
all right. I advise you to give it up!" A really vicious rich peasant
would say, "Peasant association! Nonsense! Association for getting your
head chopped off! Don't get people into trouble!" Yet, surprisingly
enough, the peasant associations have now been established several months, and
have even dared to stand up to the gentry. The gentry of the neighbourhood who
refused to surrender their opium pipes were arrested by the associations and
paraded through the villages. In the county towns, moreover, some big landlords
were put to death, like Yen Jung-chiu of Hsiangtan and Yang Chih-tse of
Ninghsiang. On the anniversary of the October Revolution, at the time of the anti-British
rally and of the great celebrations of the victory of the Northern Expedition,
tens of thousands of peasants in every township, holding high their banners,
big and small, along with their carrying-poles and hoes, demonstrated in
massive, streaming columns. It was only then that the rich peasants began to
get perplexed and alarmed. During the great victory celebrations of the
Northern Expedition, they learned that Kiukiang had been taken, that Chiang
Kai-shek had not been wounded in the leg and that Wu Pei-fu had been defeated
after all. What is more, they saw such slogans as "Long live the Three
People's Principles!" "Long live the peasant associations!" and
"Long live the peasants!" clearly written on the "red and green
proclamations". "What?" wondered the rich peasants, greatly
perplexed and alarmed, "'Long live the peasants!' Are these people now to
be regarded as emperors?' [10]'
So the peasant associations are putting on grand airs. People from the
associations say to the rich peasants, "We'll enter you in the other
register," or, "In another month, the admission fee will be ten yuan
a head!" Only under the impact of all this are the rich peasants tardily
joining the associations, [11]
some paying fifty cents or a yuan for admission (the regular fee being a mere
ten coppers), some securing admission only after asking other people to put in
a good word for them. But there are quite a number of die-herds who have not
joined to this day. When the rich peasants join the associations, they
generally enter the name of some sixty or seventy year-old member of the
family, for they are in constant dread of "conscription". After
joining, the rich peasants are not keen on doing any work for the associations.
They remain inactive throughout.
How
about the middle peasants? Theirs is a vacillating attitude.
They
think that the revolution will not bring them much good. They have rice cooking
in their pots and no creditors knocking on their doors at midnight. They, too,
judging a thing by whether it ever existed before, knit their brows and think
to themselves, "Can the peasant association really last?" "Can
the Three People's Principles prevail?" Their conclusion is, "Afraid
not!" They imagine it all depends on the will of Heaven and think, "A
peasant association? Who knows if Heaven wills it or not?" In the first
period, people from the association would call on a middle peasant, register in
hand, and say, "Will you please join the peasant association?" The
middle peasant would reply, "There's no hurry!" It was not until the
second period, when the peasant associations were already exercising great
power, that the middle peasants came in. They show up better in the
associations than the rich peasants but are not as yet very enthusiastic, they
still want to wait and see. It is essential for the peasant associations to get
the middle peasants to join and to do a good deal more explanatory work among
them.
The
poor peasants have always been the main force in the bitter fight in the
countryside. They have fought militantly through the two periods of underground
work and of open activity. They are the most responsive to Communist Party
leadership. They are deadly enemies of the camp of the local tyrants and evil
gentry and attack it without the slightest hesitation. "We joined the
peasant association long ago," they say to the rich peasants, "why
are you still hesitating?'! The rich peasants answer mockingly, "What is
there to keep you from joining? You people have neither a tile over your heads
nor a speck of land under your feet!" It is true the poor peasants are not
afraid of losing anything. Many of them really have "neither a tile over
their heads nor a speck of land under their feet". What, indeed, is there
to keep them from joining the associations? According to the survey of Changsha
County, the poor peasants comprise 70 per cent, the middle peasants 20 per
cent, and the landlords and the rich peasants 10 per cent of the population in
the rural areas. The 70 per cent, the poor peasants, may be sub-divided into
two categories, the utterly destitute and the less destitute. The utterly
destitute, [12]
comprising 20 per cent, are the completely dispossessed, that is, people who
have neither land nor money, are without any means of livelihood, and are
forced to leave home and become mercenaries or hired labourers or wandering
beggars. The less destitute, [13]
the other 50 per cent, are the partially dispossessed, that is, people with
just a little land or a little money who eat up more than they earn and live in
toil and distress the year round, such as the handicraftsmen, the
tenant-peasants (not including the rich tenant-peasants) and the
semi-owner-peasants. This great mass of poor peasants, or altogether 70 per
cent of the rural population, are the backbone of the peasant associations, the
vanguard in the overthrow of the feudal forces and the heroes who have performed
the great revolutionary task which for long years was left undone. Without the
poor peasant class (the "riffraff", as the gentry call them), it
would have been impossible to bring about the present revolutionary situation
in the countryside, or to overthrow the local tyrants and evil gentry and
complete the democratic revolution. The poor peasants, being the most
revolutionary group, have gained the leadership of the peasant associations. In
both the first and second periods almost all the chairmen and committee members
in the peasant associations at the lowest level were poor peasants (of the
officials in the township associations in Hengshan County the utterly destitute
comprise 50 per cent, the less destitute 40 per cent, and poverty-stricken intellectuals
10 per cent). Leadership by the poor peasants is absolutely necessary. Without
the poor peasants there would be no revolution. To deny their role is to deny
the revolution. To attack them is to attack the revolution. They have never
been wrong on the general direction of the revolution. They have discredited
the local tyrants and evil gentry. They have beaten down the local tyrants and
evil gentry, big and small, and kept them underfoot. Many of their deeds in the
period of revolutionary action, which were labeled as "going too
far", were in fact the very things the revolution required. Some county
governments, county headquarters of the Kuomintang and county peasant
associations in Hunan have already made a number of mistakes; some have even
sent soldiers to arrest officials of the lowerlevel associations at the
landlords' request. A good many chairmen and committee members of township
associations in Hengshan and Hsianghsiang Counties have been thrown in jail.
This mistake is very serious and feeds the arrogance of the reactionaries. To
judge whether or not it is a mistake, you have only to see how joyful the
lawless landlords become and how reactionary sentiments grow, wherever the
chairmen or committee members of local peasant associations are arrested. We
must combat the counter-revolutionary talk of a "movement of
riffraff" and a "movement of lazy peasants" and must be
especially careful not to commit the error of helping the local tyrants and
evil gentry in their attacks on the poor peasant class. Though a few of the
poor peasant leaders undoubtedly did have shortcomings, most of them have
changed by now. They themselves are energetically prohibiting gambling and
suppressing banditry. Where the peasant association is powerful, gambling has
stopped altogether and banditry has vanished. In some places it is literally
true that people do not take any articles left by the wayside and that doors
are not bolted at night. According to the Hengshan survey 85 per cent of the
poor peasant leaders have made great progress and have proved themselves
capable and hard-working. Only 15 per cent retain some bad habits. The most one
can call these is "an unhealthy minority", and we must not echo the
local tyrants and evil gentry in undiscriminatingly condemning them as
"riffraff". This problem of the "unhealthy minority" can be
tackled only under the peasant associations' own slogan of "strengthen
discipline", by carrying on propaganda among the masses, by educating the
"unhealthy minority", and by tightening the associations' discipline;
in no circumstances should soldiers be arbitrarily sent to make such arrests as
would damage the prestige of the poor peasants and feed the arrogance of the
local tyrants and evil gentry. This point requires particular attention.
No comments:
Post a Comment