Correctly Handle the Issue of Making Trouble by a Small Number of Individuals

Mao Zedong's important viewpoint in his "On the Correct Handling of the Contradictions Among the People".

In 1956, in response to the strikes of a few workers and students in some places, Mao Zedong analyzed in his speech that the immediate cause of these people's disturbances was that they had some material demands that had not been met; and that some of these demands should and could be solved, while others were inappropriate and too demanding to be solved at once. But the more important factor in the trouble was the leadership bureaucracy. Some of these bureaucratic errors are the responsibility of the higher authorities and cannot be blamed on the lower levels. Another reason for the trouble was the lack of ideological and political education for workers and students.

In 1956, a small number of co-operatives went into trouble, mainly because of bureaucracy in leadership and lack of education for the masses. Mao Zedong suggested that it should be recognized that some masses tend to pay attention to the current, local, individual interests, but do not understand or are not well informed about the long-term, national, collective interests.

Many young people, because of their lack of political and social experience, are not good at comparing the old China with the new one, and do not easily understand how our people had to struggle so hard to get rid of imperialism and the KMT reactionaries, and how long and hard they had to work to build a good socialist society. Therefore, it was necessary to conduct frequent, vivid and practical political education among the masses, and should always give them a true explanation of the difficulties that have arisen and study with them how to solve them.

Mao Zedong pointed out that we are not in favor of disturbances, because internal conflicts among the people can be solved by the method of "unity-criticism-unity", while disturbances will always cause some damage, which is not conducive to the development of the socialist cause.

“We believe that the broad masses of the people in China support socialism, they are very disciplined, very reasonable, and will never cause trouble for no reason.” “But this does not mean that there is no possibility of mass disturbances in the country.” “On this issue, we should pay attention to the following: (1) In order to eliminate the causes of disturbances at root, it is necessary to resolutely overcome bureaucracy, strengthen ideological and political education, and properly deal with various conflicts.” “As long as this is done, the problem of trouble will not occur in general.” (2) If something happens because our work is not well done, we should lead the troublemakers to the right path and use the troublemakers as a special means to improve work, educate cadres and the masses, and solve the problems that are not solved in the usual way.

In the process of dealing with disturbances, one should work carefully and not use simple methods to deal with them, and not to "hastily close." The leaders of the disturbances should not be dismissed lightly, except for those who have violated the criminal law and the existing counter-revolutionaries, who should be punished by law. In a country as large as ours, a few troublemakers are not a cause for alarm, but are sufficient to help us overcome bureaucracy. In our society, there are also a few unreasonable and lawless people who have no regard for the public interest. They may use and distort our methods, deliberately make unreasonable demands to incite the masses, or create rumors and trouble to undermine the normal order of society. We are not in favor of indulging such people. On the contrary, the necessary legal sanctions must be imposed. Punishing such people is the demand of the broad masses of society, and not punishing them is against the will of the masses.

Mao Zedong also said that the reactionaries in socialist countries colluded with imperialists, exploited the internal contradictions of the people, sowed discord and stirred up trouble in an attempt to realize their conspiracy. This lesson from the Hungarian affair deserves our attention.

See "Great Democracy and Small Democracy" on page XXXXX