This week’s reading is a guest reading by Em (@em_being) from Abnormal Mapping.
They’re reading all of “Oppose Book Worship”
by Mao Tse-tung

Available online here:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_11.htm

[This episode:]

I. NO INVESTIGATION, NO RIGHT TO SPEAK – 1:35

II. TO INVESTIGATE A PROBLEM IS TO SOLVE IT – 2:19

III. OPPOSE BOOK WORSHIP – 4:14

IV. WITHOUT INVESTIGATING THE ACTUAL SITUATION, THERE IS BOUND TO BE AN IDEALIST APPRAISAL OF CLASS FORCES AND AN IDEALIST GUIDANCE IN WORK, RESULTING EITHER IN OPPORTUNISM OR IN PUTSCHISM – 6:02

V. THE AIM OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC INVESTIGATION IS TO ARRIVE AT A CORRECT APPRAISAL OF CLASS FORCES AND THEN TO FORMULATE CORRECT TACTICS FOR THE STRUGGLE – 7:04

VI. VICTORY IN CHINA'S REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE WILL DEPEND ON THE CHENESE COMRADES' UNDERSTANDING OF CHINESE CONDITIONS – 10:11

VII. THE TECHNIQUE OF INVESTIGATION – 12:52

Footnotes:

1. 3:36
See Confucian Analects, Book III, "Pa Yi": "When Confucius entered the Ancestral Temple he inquired into everything."

2. 6:40
Li Kuei was a hero in the well-known Chinese novel shui Hu Chuan' (Heroes of the Marshes) which describes the peasant war that occurred towards the end of the Northern Sung Dynasty (960-1127). He was simple, outspoken and very loyal to the revolutionary cause of the peasants, but crude and tactless.

3. 7:32
Comrade Mao Tse-tung has always laid great stress on investigation, regarding social investigation as the most important task and the basis for defining policy in the work of leadership. The work of investigation was gradually developed in the Fourth Army of the Red Army on Comrade Mao Tsetung's initiative. He stipulated that social investigation should be a regular part of the work, and the Political Department of the Red Army prepared detailed forms covering such items as the state of the mass struggle, the condition of the reactionaries, the economic life of the people and the amount of land owned by each class in the rural areas. Wherever the Red Army went, it first made itself familiar with the class situation in the locality and then formulated slogans suited to the needs of the masses.

4. 9:57
Here 'the mountains' are the Chingkang mountain area along the borders of Kiangsi and Hunan Provinces; the 'plains’ are those in southern Kiangsi and western Fukien. In January 1929, comrade Mao Tse-tung led the main force of the Fourth Army of the Red Army down from the Chingkang Mountains to southern Kiangsi and western Fukien in order to set up two large revolutionary base areas.

5. 11:50
The "Book of documents" consisted of the resolutions adopted at the Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party of China in July 1928, including the political resolution and the resolutions on the peasant question, the land question, the organization of political power, etc. Early in 1929 the Front Committee of the Fourth Army of the Red Army published these resolutions in book form for distribution to the Party organizations in the Red Army and to the local Party organizations.