The Question of Independence and Initiative within the United Front

Included in the third part of Mao Zedong's report at the Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Party on November 5, 1938. This part of the report was later included in the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Volume 2 under the title of “The Question of Independence and Initiative within the United Front”. At that time, the question of independence and initiative within the United Front was one of the prominent questions concerning the Anti-Japanese United Front, a question on which Mao Zedong and Wang Ming had divergent views. It was essentially the question of the leadership of the proletariat in the united front.

After Wang Ming returned to Yan'an from the Soviet Union in November 1937, especially after he became the secretary of the Yangtze River Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, he openly put forward the slogan "everything through the United Front", denying the existence of class struggle within the United Front and ignored the principle of independence and initiative to be implemented by the CPC in its united front policy. When refuting Wang Ming's right deviation, Mao Zedong's evaluation focused on three points.

Firstly, all political parties and groups in the United Front must help each other and make mutual concessions for the sake of long-term cooperation, but such help and concessions should be positive, not negative, on the other hand capitulationism must be strenuously opposed. When we make concessions, fall back, turn to the defensive or halt our advance in our relations with either allies or enemies, we should always see these actions as part of our whole revolutionary policy, as an indispensable link in the general revolutionary line, as one turn in a zigzag course.

Secondly, the identity between the national and the class struggle. To sustain a long war by long-term co-operation or, in other words, to subordinate the class struggle to the present national struggle against Japan—such is the fundamental principle of the united front. Under this principle, the independent character of the parties and classes and their independence and initiative within the United Front should be preserved, and their essential rights should not be sacrificed to co-operation and unity, but on the contrary must be firmly upheld within certain limits. Under this principle, the independent character of the parties and classes and their independence and initiative within the United Front should be preserved, and their essential rights should not be sacrificed to co-operation and unity, but on the contrary must be firmly upheld within certain limits.

Thirdly, "everything through the United Front" is wrong. The KMT has deprived all other political parties of equal rights and is trying to compel them to take its orders. The Communist Party should flexibly use different strategies towards KMT according to different situations, such as: (1) Act first and report afterwards, anticipating what the KMT might agree to; (2) Report first and act afterwards; (3) Act or do something without reporting; (4) Neither doing, something nor reporting. In short, we must not split the United Front, but neither should we allow ourselves to be bound hand and foot, and hence the slogan of "Everything through the United Front" should not be put forward. If "everything must be submitted to the United Front" is interpreted as "everything must be submitted to" Chiang Kai-shek and Yan Xishan, then that slogan, too, is wrong. Our policy is one of independence and initiative within the United Front, a policy both of unity and of independence. This work by Mao Zedong made a powerful criticism of Wang Ming's right deviation errors in the early stage of the Anti-Japanese War and played a guiding role in the maintenance of the Anti-Japanese National United Front and in promoting the development of the revolutionary forces.