Sixty Points on Working Methods (Draft)

In January 1958, Mao Zedong summed up the CPC's leadership and working methods in revolution and construction. It was included in the Collected Works of Mao Zedong, Volume 7.

In 1956, the socialist transformation succeeded; in 1957, the Rectification Movement was launched and the First Five-Year Plan was over-fulfilled. In this context, Mao Zedong believed that a new high tide of production has been risen and was still rising. In order to adapt to this situation, the working methods of the central and local Party committees need to be changed. Therefore, Mao Zedong wrote “Sixty Points on Working Methods (Draft)”.

It is an important part for the Communist Party of China to explore the road of China's socialist construction. Some of its contents are correct or relatively correct, while others are wrong and unscientific. To a certain extent, it has promoted the formation of the “Great Leap Forward” Movement.

The “Sixty Points on Working Methods (Draft)” summarizes the good leadership and working methods formed by the Communist Party of China for a long time, such as the Party committee focusing on the central work, planning evaluation and inspection, opposing wastefulness, promoting experimental fields, sizing both ends and dragging the middle along with them, combining politics with business, the construction of the upper level must meet the needs of the economic foundation and the development of productive forces, adhering to the Rectification Movement, and achieving genuine equality. We should treat cadres and the masses with a truly equal attitude, conduct investigation and research, and the Party committee should handle military affairs.

At the same time, it also puts forward some one-sided methods, such as the "three accounts" method, which promotes the "exaggeration" phenomenon in the "Great Leap Forward Movement”; the understanding of the proportion of accumulation and consumption of agricultural cooperatives, which overemphasizes accumulation and reduces consumption, damages the interests of farmers and frustrates the enthusiasm of farmers; the "ten fingers" method has a certain subjective value.