“Left” Closed-Doorism

Before the Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the CPC in January 1931 and Zunyi Conference in January 1935, Wang Ming's “Left” dogmatism displayed an erroneous tendency in treating the issue of establishing a broad anti-Japanese national united front. Its errors were mainly manifested in:

(1) On the issue of revolutionary tasks, confusing the boundaries between democratic revolution and socialist revolution. For example, they carried out the “Left” agrarian revolutionary line, underestimated the decisive role of the peasants in the struggle against feudalism, wrongly opposed the so-called "peasants' capitalism" and the so-called "rich peasants line", and implemented the elimination of the rich peasants' economy and other “Left” policies; they isolated revolutionary forces and the Red Army movement suffered a setback as a result of his economic and labor policies, which advocated opposing the bourgeoisie and even the upper petty bourgeoisie as a whole, denying the existence of the middle sections and the third faction, applying excessive “Left” policy towards intellectuals, carrying out military work of demanding soldiers instead of officials, and excessive “Left” policy of eliminating counter-revolutionaries.

(2) On the issue of the Anti-Japanese United Front, they failed to correctly understand the new changes in domestic class relations after the rise of the national contradictions between China and Japan. They did not see the internal division of the KMT group after the September 18 Incident, nor did they expected the changes of the big landlords and big bourgeoisie after the North China Incident in 1935 and the Xi'an Incident in 1936.

(3) On the issue of the revolutionary situation and the Party's tasks, they failed to continue to emphasize the national "revolutionary climax" and the "offensive line" of the Party throughout the country. That is, they did not understand the imbalance, twists and turns of the Chinese revolution, underestimated the importance of military struggle, especially peasant guerrilla warfare and rural base areas, and opposed the "gun barrel doctrine" and the "local and conservative ideas of peasant consciousness". They also advocated the preparation of armed uprisings in cities, advocated positional warfare and opposed guerrilla warfare and mobile warfare with guerrilla characteristics, and wrongly emphasized the so-called "normalization" and opposed the so-called "guerrillaism" of the Red Army. In the fifth counter-campaign against "encirclement and suppression", they put forward the wrong slogans of "decisive battle of China's two roads" and "not giving up an inch of land from the revolutionary base areas".

(4) On the issue of offensive and defensive strategies, they were seriously divorced from reality. For example, in the Red Army building movement, the enemies encircling the revolutionary base areas were described as "very shaky", "terrified", "final death", "accelerated collapse", "total collapse" and so on.

They denied the imbalance between the revolutionary development of the South and the north, wrongly opposed the so-called "theory of backwardness in the north", and demanded the establishment of a red political power in the villages of the north; they also denied the imbalance between the central and peripheral areas of the base areas and wrongly opposed the so-called "Luo Ming line"; and they refused to take advantage of the contradictions among the warlords who attacked the Red Army and to reach a compromise with the army who was willing to stop attacking the Red Army.

In the work of the White Areas, they refused to make use of all legitimate possibilities, by organizing large and unprotected Party organs and various so-called red mass organizations that were separated from the broad masses, and they called and organized political strikes, demonstrations and even unconditional armed actions such as riots.

(5) On the issue of organization, “Left” closed-doorism formed a sectarian line which was divorced from the masses outside the Party (not taking the Party as the representative of the interests of the people and the centralizer of the will of the people) besides formed a sectarian line divorced from the masses inside the Party (not subordinating the partial interests of a section of the Party to the interests of the whole Party, not regarding the leading organs of the Party as the centralizer of the will of the Party as a whole).

In the Party at that period, all comrades who doubted, disagreed with, dissatisfied with, did not actively support or did not resolutely implement the wrong line because it was impracticable, regardless of their situation, were wrongly labelled as "right-deviationist opportunists", "rich peasant line", "Luo Ming line", "conciliatory line", and "double faced", and were subjected to "ruthless struggle" and "merciless attacks", and even faced "inner-Party struggle” in the same way as criminals and enemies.

What was combined with this erroneous struggle within the party was the sectarian cadre policy. The sectarians did not regard the old cadres as the precious capital of the Party and did not give the new cadres correct education, instead, they rashly promoted all the new cadres and foreign cadres who shared their scent, who only knew how to follow their voices with blind obedience, they also lacked due working experience and who were not in touch with the masses, that meant that the old cadres at the central and local levels were replaced by such new cadres. Thus, the “Left” closed-doorism caused serious damage to the revolution. The Zunyi Conference held in January 1935 put an end to the dominance of this erred line in the Central Committee of the CPC.

Then the Wayaobu Conference held in December of the same year criticized the “Left” closed-doorism error and determined the strategic policy of establishing an anti-Japanese national united front.

Mao Zedong pointed out that the tactics of closed-doorism were the tactics of the regal isolationist. Closed-doorism just "drives the fish into deep waters and the sparrows into the thickets", and “it will drive the millions upon millions of the masses, this mighty army, over to the enemy's side, which would certainly win his acclaim. In practice, closed-doorism was the faithful servant of the Japanese imperialists and the traitors and collaborators. Its adherents' talk of the "pure" and the "straight" would be condemned by Marxist-Leninists and commended by the Japanese imperialists. We definitely want no closed-doorism; what we want was the revolutionary national united front, which would spell death to the Japanese imperialists and the traitors and collaborators.