Chapter 18 labor movement

After the "1st National Congress" of the Communist Party of China, the secretaries of the Chinese Labor Organization were successively established in various places, and Mao Zedong was appointed as the director of the Hunan branch.The Hunan Branch of the Communist Party of China under his leadership focused on leading the labor movement in accordance with the spirit of the Central Committee. In December 1921, he visited Anyuan Road Mine for the first time.This is the oil painting "Chairman Mao Goes to Anyuan" created by Liu Chunhua with this background. From the end of 1921 to the beginning of 1923, Mao Zedong visited Anyuan four times, but the actual situation was not exactly as shown in the oil painting.This work in Anyuan is tentative and difficult.Some work without any results, and Mao Zedong was not the only leader.

Mao Zedong was indeed wearing a white long gown and walked along the railway to Anyuan, but he took off his long gown as soon as he saw the small town.Anyuan is dirty. The working conditions of the 12,000 miners were harsh, and 15 hours of heavy labor every day made people numb from exhaustion.There are 24 Christian churches within a four-mile radius, but only one small medical clinic serving 6,000 workers.This is a reproduction of the scene described by Dickens, without being touched by the spirit of the May Fourth Movement in the slightest. Mao Zedong always went deep into the grassroots. He lived in the miners' homes, inspected the mines, and kept records.

When he went into the house to talk to the workers, the miners all stood up.This respect of the workers is not conducive to getting to work.The existence of social estrangement made Mao Zedong feel distressed mentally. Could it be that he is no longer a son of the earth but a guardian of truth in a misfit Moscow?But Mao Zedong was not discouraged.He and his younger brother Mao Zemin went to Anyuan for the second time.This time Mao Zedong was wearing a straw hat, a shabby jacket, and straw sandals on his feet, which seemed much more rustic. For a few weeks in December 1921, the two of them lived in an inn.Every foggy morning they went out to convince the miners. "Your hands have created history," Mao Zedong kept saying to these dark faces and tired eyes.

His theme in Anyuan was to oppose the doctrine of destiny. A Communist group was formed, workers' clubs and, of course, workers' night schools were set up.The evening school was unsuccessful, and Mao Zedong soon canceled it and replaced it with a very useful day school for the children of workers. Mao Zedong would use concise and visual teaching methods.He wrote the word "工" on the blackboard, and then explained that the upper horizontal line is "sky", the lower line is "earth", and the vertical line in the middle represents the working class itself. The workers stand on the ground, standing upright, The whole world is theirs. [8] His teaching method may make Professor Yang shake his head, but it is a good teaching method.

In September 1922, when Mao Zedong came to Anyuan for the third time, it was already raining.This was partly because of the misery of the miners, who were not treated as human beings, and partly because of the successful agitation of intellectuals from Changsha. Mao Zedong was in charge, but he was not the main operator.An important figure is Li Lisan.He is the "half" of the recruits who did not make a clear statement about Mao Zedong's 1917 friend-seeking revelation.Until 1921, he was still working and studying in France. Another figure is Liu Shaoqi, a young man from a wealthy family who had been educated in Moscow.Liu Shaoqi was a hero in the successful Anyuan strike in the fall of 1922.The strike made Anyuan a banner to most of the Chinese and led to the birth of the Hunan Provincial Federation of Trade Unions.Mao Zedong was elected as the director-general of the federation.Liu Shaoqi added beautiful feathers to Mao's laurel crown. [9]

The labor movement in Anyuan was impressive, and its development was quite unusual. With a population of more than 400 million, there are only 2 million industrial workers in China, and the Anyuan Workers' Club is like an isolated castle in the desert. "Long live the workers", the slogan that Mao Zedong brought to Anyuan was despised by Chinese listeners in 1922. Anyuan set up reading rooms, cooperatives, and workers' councils, and more than 60% of the workers joined the workers' clubs at all levels led by the Communist Party.There were huge parades on May Day, the anniversary of the October Revolution, Lenin's birthday, and even the birthday of the Marxist Liebknecht as far away as Germany.

Anyuan became a base, and the Communist International warmed its heart (Anyuan was indeed jokingly called "Little Moscow").It looked as if it had become a demonstration outpost for the so-called world revolution.But where will it lead the world?The miners have won better wages and working conditions, so what's next? In 1922, Mao Zedong wrote almost nothing, except for group petitions, letters, and communiqués.He was busy building one organization after another.Qingshuitang is now his office.This is the seat of the Xiang District Committee, and also the clubhouse of the leftists in Changsha.Surrounded by vegetable fields used by the Communists as a veil, the windows of this low house were often lit until dawn.

Mao Zedong tried to juggle his small family life, instead of burying himself in papers and meetings, as some Communists would have liked.He and Yang Kaihui moved from Qingshuitang to a room partially used by the self-study university, which is more comfortable.Mao Zedong's mother-in-law lives with them, and she has a house she likes.Mao Zedong's first son Mao Anying (meaning hero's bank) was born in 1922.The warm family life has not been affected by the busy and tense work. In 1922, something happened again. I don't know whether it was because of family reasons or Mao Zedong wanted to be closer to the office, so they moved back to Qingshuitang to live.

The residence of Mao Zedong and Yang Kaihui in Qingshuitang.Qingshuitang is located outside Xiaowu Gate on the outskirts of Changsha City. Because the environment is relatively secluded, it was chosen as the secret activity organ of the Hunan Party Organization.Mao Zedong and Yang Kaihui lived here for two and a half years, which was also a rare warm time after Mao Zedong became a professional revolutionary. Mao Zedong led a strike of 6,000 masons in Changsha (who complained that they could only get two meals of gruel a day).He dressed up as a worker in coarse clothes and directed the workers to shout slogans by whistling. [10] He also led a group of people to rush into the rich foreman's house at dinner time to let the workers see the difference in food between the two.

The governor's entourage suspected that Mao Zedong was not an ordinary mason, so he questioned Mao Zedong's name, but Mao Zedong cleverly diverted the conversation to other matters. In November 1921, Mao Zedong had a meeting with Ma Lin, a representative of the Communist International who was passing through Changsha at that time (he did not mention it later). ［11］ Mao Zedong helped to found a variety of trade union organizations, including stonemasons, barbers, weavers, tailors, and typesetting workers in various trades.Mao Zedong went south to Hengyang and established a party organization in the Third Normal School, and his stepsister paved the way for him to do this kind of work.

Mao participated in a strike by compositors against Ta Kung Pao, the newspaper in which Mao often published articles.The strike may have damaged his relationship with the editorial board, and he has published little or nothing at the paper since. [12] Mao Zedong was especially concerned about the hard life of the 9,000 rickshaw pullers in Changsha.He used party campaign funds to help the rickshaw strikers, demanding lower rents from owners of the city's 3,100 rickshaws, large and small, and won.In the evening class for rickshaw pullers, Mao Zedong adopted a new teaching method.He first wrote "work" on the blackboard, and then wrote "person" next to it. The combination of these two characters is "worker".Mao Zedong then wrote another "day".He smiled and told the coachman how to put the character "人" under the character "工" to form the character "天".He further explained that if workers unite, they can be as strong as the sky. [13] Some coachmen met the conditions for joining the party, and Mao Zedong held a brief party joining ceremony for them outside the south gate.He hung the flag of the Communist Party of China on the banyan tree, and the coachmen came to the flag one by one, raised their right hands and followed Mao Zedong to swear: "Sacrifice the individual, class struggle, strictly keep secrets, obey discipline, work hard, and never betray the party." A look of joy flashed in his eyes, and Mao Zedong gave each new party member a certificate and some study documents. The world is turned upside down and the world is turned upside down.Workers at the bottom of society, never thought to be politically involved, are now members of parties that see themselves as the driving force of history.People will say that this is a claim from the ghetto. Shortly thereafter, Agnes Smedley dined with several educated Chinese in Beijing.After drinking for three rounds, an upper-class person declared: "There is no class in China, and the Marxists invented this concept of class. My coachman took me on the street, and we can talk and laugh like old friends." Smedley Surprised and asked: "If you drag him on the street, or when he is unwilling to do it, can you still be friends?" [14] Beijing in the 1920s knew nothing about Mao Zedong, yet Smedley had long been tirelessly involved in Mao's cause.In a sense, Mao was inventing class.This is an effective invention, and it shows that the rickshaw puller is not a thing in itself, but a thing of history through class struggle. In April 1922, Mao Zedong went to Hangzhou to attend the Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.He has become a compelling figure, but not quite.A representative of the Comintern who participated in the Hangzhou meeting recalled: "The participants who played the leading roles were Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, Zhang Guotao...and another very capable student from Hunan. I can't remember his name." [15] Mao Zedong was well-known at the time, but he was still a man in the corner. In 1923, the labor movement in Hunan entered a critical period.On the one hand it is in its heyday and is the strongest in China.Mao Zedong asked Li Lisan, Liu Shaoqi, and his economically minded younger brother Mao Zemin to stay in Anyuan and continue their work.He himself sowed the seeds of revolution in many places in Hunan. He organized trade unions, launched as many as a dozen strikes, and secretly developed party organizations in various places from time to time.Work is moving forward in great strides.In two years, Hunan had more than 20 trade union organizations and more than 50,000 members.Although the conditions for recruiting party members were very strict and cautious, the number of party members in Hunan jumped from 10 in mid-1921 to 123 a year later.When every trade union was formed, Mao Zedong always tried to install a party member as director general. On the other hand, the labor movement lacked a popular base, as illustrated by the crisis on the railways. Like most industries, the railways were largely owned by foreign capital, and anti-imperialist sentiment fueled workers' resistance.Railroad workers are the most advanced.In North China, the railway became the cradle of the infant Chinese Communist Party.Following instructions from Shanghai, Mao Zedong turned his attention to the Guangdong-Han Railway.The Chinese Communist Party believed that it—like the Anyuan coal mine—could be the vanguard of Hunan's proletarian revolution. Mao Zedong acted according to the Anyuan model.At the Xinhe station in Changsha, he worked at home, and the progress was smooth.He held meetings in teahouses and sometimes invited railroad workers to his home in Qingshuitang to discuss strike plans overnight. In Yuezhou in the north, Mao Zedong's work was not very effective for some reasons. "The worker is the mother of happiness in the world" [16], this resounding slogan did not bring much success.A strike was called in September 1922, and the trains lay dead in the parking lot.Mao also specially arranged for telegrams of solidarity with the strikers to be sent from other unions and cities.However, the Beiyang warlords who had already controlled Hankou immediately transferred their troops to Yuezhou to suppress the workers.The workers suffered heavy losses, and the tracks were stained red with blood. Although there were counterattacks and some achievements were made, the warlords finally took control of the situation.By February 1923, the Cantonese-Han railway workers' movement had been completely suppressed, and Hunan's rulers outlawed trade unions.A proletarian revolution seemed out of reach. The period of struggle from 1921 to 1923 seemed to be coming to an end soon. In April 1923, Mao Zedong fled Changsha to avoid being arrested as an "extremeist"*. [17] * Many years later, the then Governor of Hunan was interviewed in Taiwan.When asked why he didn't take the opportunity to kill Mao Zedong, he replied with a smile: "I don't know, maybe it's because he has too much energy." Mao Zedong did not take Yang Kaihui away with her, she was pregnant again and was taken care of by her mother.The past two years have been the longest period of time Mao Zedong lived with his first wife in free love. Mao Zedong had many questions to ponder as he sneaked into the countryside.Is a revolution of urban workers really at hand?If not, can it still be said that the Chinese Communist Party is always wise? The party marched hard on the city roads.The party's general secretary is still Professor Chen Duxiu, who is an orthodox Marxist, so he sees no hope for the rural road.Those who returned from studying in Europe, such as Li Lisan, Liu Shaoqi, etc., did not realize that the revolution in Asia should be different from the revolution in Europe. However, the number of proletarians in China is too small, less than one percent of the entire population, and the Chinese Communist Party is still mainly an organization of intellectuals.Many active trade unionists do not yet know what the term "Marxism" means. Besides, the warlords had guns in their hands, and it was almost self-defeating to blatantly despise them, and it seemed useless to persuade them——Mao Zedong argued with the governor of Hunan Province in December 1922. It is intriguing that Mao Zedong did not attend the Second Congress of the Communist Party of China held in July 1922.When the representatives met together, he was already in Shanghai.He explained: "I wanted to attend, but I forgot the venue and couldn't find any comrades, so I missed this conference." [18] It's hard to believe that he has nothing to do with Shanghai.It appears that Mao was not fully committed to party activities in the summer of 1922. His enthusiasm seemed pent up.The labor union had been his life, for which he sacrificed his writing, lost his job as an elementary school teacher, and had to flee Changsha. However, the organization of the city was not able to develop Mao Zedong's full ability.He had never worked in a mine or a factory, and he knew the land but not the machines or industrial production.Nor had he been to Europe, where the world revolution of the proletariat through uprisings was alive and well. For some reason, Mao was not as comfortable with the labor movement as Zhang Guotao (the son of a landowner who spoke English), Li Lisan (who had studied in France), or Liu Shaoqi (who had studied in the Soviet Union). Unlike Liu Shaoqi, he believed that the development of industrial organization would naturally lead to the door of socialism as if by gravity. The issue of wages and working hours did not excite Mao much, at least not as much as the suicide of the bride in Changsha or his father's greed for his tenants. Mao Zedong was stymied by xenophobic tendencies.Russian advisors are always fashionable, but can a new China be built like this?Simply ticking off a few items on the schedule of the Communist International, will every earth, stone and social life of lovely China be changed? We should start to find allies, and Mao Zedong knew this.In his article "The Great Union of the People", he has already expressed his desire for a broad union.But in 1919 Mao was still free to write what interested him.By 1923 he was part of a disciplined ranks.The leader of this organization is more capable than he, and its headquarters is 800 miles away in Shanghai. The policy for 1921-1922 is also being reconsidered within the Chinese Communist Party.The line produced by the first congress was paranoid, and the strength of the 57 party members was too weak. Moscow considered the "big one" line to be too arrogant. Marin, a Dutch-born Bolshevik pyramid schemer, tried to change this situation following the instructions of the Comintern.However, the Second Congress in 1922 did not take Marin's opinion seriously, and in fact the course did not change.Soon, the incident in Guangzhou gave Marin a reason to attack. Sun Yat-sen, head of the Canton government since 1917, was driven out of his base by warlords.This idiosyncratic, passionate, capricious character is at the end of his rope.Western countries never supported him, and warlords turned against him.At this time, Moscow extended a helping hand to him. In January 1923, a political marriage was made.Sun Yat-sen reached an agreement with the Soviet special envoy Joffe in Shanghai.The Chinese Communist Party will work hand in hand with the Kuomintang, and Communist Party members can join the Kuomintang as individuals, while the Communist Party continues to maintain its independent existence.But the organizational leadership of the "National Revolution"—a neologism on the lips of the Communist Party—belonged to the KMT.