Combine Legal Struggles and Illegal Struggles

One of the specific struggle tactics, formulated and implemented by the Communist Party of China, during the period of democratic revolution.

In November 1938, Mao Zedong pointed out at the Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party that "internally, capitalist countries practice bourgeois democracy (not feudalism), when they are not fascist or not at war; in their external relations, they are not oppressed by, but themselves oppress, other nations. Because of these characteristics, it is the task of the party of the proletariat in the capitalist countries to educate workers, build up strength through a long period of legal struggle, and thus prepare for the final overthrow of capitalism. In these countries, the question is one of a long legal struggle, of utilizing parliament as a platform, of economic and political strikes, of organizing trade unions and educating the workers. There the form of organization is legal and the form of struggle bloodless (non-military).”

“However, as a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country, China does not have the social conditions for long-term legal struggle as a whole and strategically, and it is not advisable to completely copy the legal struggle forms of political parties in capitalist countries.” Mao Zedong pointed out: "However, China is different. The characteristics of China are that she is not independent and democratic, but semi-colonial and semi-feudal, that internally she has no democracy but is under feudal oppression and that in her external relations she has no national independence, but is oppressed by imperialism. It follows that we have no parliament to make use of and no legal right to organize the workers to strike. Here, the task of the Communist Party is basically not to go through a long period of legal struggle before launching insurrection and war, and not to seize the big cities first and then occupy the countryside, but the reverse. The CPC must take armed struggle as its main form in order to guide the Chinese revolution to victory. The Communist Party of China can never have the illusion of seizing power through legal struggle, but this does not mean refusing to use any means of legal struggle. According to the development of the objective situation, we should combine legal struggle with illegal struggle and correctly utilize the two forms of struggle.”

In April 1936, Liu Shaoqi summed up the experience of the workers' movement in the white areas in the Agrarian Revolutionary War in his “Outline on the Workers' Movement in the White Area”. He pointed out that "we should make use of all means and open possibilities to widely contact and organize the workers. Our main task is to make use of the factory and trade union law which are important for improving the present situation of the working class in order to organize the struggle among the workers and the masses, to demand the realization of the interests stipulated in those articles, and to expose the deception of the KMT in this regard, only in this way can we actually benefit from the work of the labor movement.

Liu Shaoqi pointed out that in the work of the white areas, "we oppose legalism, but we must use all legal opportunities to organize workers."