Chapter 100 Solve the "five more" problems in the district and township work

(March 19, 1953) All central bureaus and sub-bureaus, and transferred to provincial and municipal party committees, prefectural party committees, and county party committees; all central departments and party groups of the Central People's Government: (1) The report of the inspection team of the Northwest Bureau in December 1952 on the "five excesses" in district and township work was well written.This report concentratedly reflects some problems that our party and government organizations have seriously divorced from the peasant masses and harmed the interests of farmers and their activists in the work of our party and government in the countryside, namely the so-called "five excesses" problems. "Five more" means more tasks, more meetings and training sessions, more official documents and reports, more organizations, and more part-time activists.These problems have existed for a long time. The central government has issued instructions on some of them, requiring party committees at all levels to pay attention to and solve them, but not only have they not been resolved, but have become more and more serious.The reason is that the whole issue was not raised systematically, and most importantly, the struggle against decentralization and bureaucracy was not launched in the five-level party and government leading organs of the central government, large regions, provinces (cities), prefectures and counties.Because the "five excesses" in the districts and townships basically did not arise from the districts and townships, but from above, which was caused by the serious decentralism and bureaucracy in the leading organs of the party and government at all levels above the county level. Some of them are products of the past revolutionary war and land reform period, which have not been changed and are left over to this day.Therefore, we must, within 1953, focus on overcoming the bureaucracy in the leading organs while implementing the Central Committee's directive on opposing bureaucracy, commandism, and violations of law and discipline[1] issued on January 5, 1953. This problem can only be solved by reforming systems and methods that were needed in the past but are no longer needed.From now on, leading organs at all levels will define tasks, convene meetings and transfer personnel for training, issue official documents and report to lower levels, define the organizational form of districts and townships, and use village Regarding the issue of activists, the main responsible comrades of the party committees and governments above the county level should make appropriate regulations according to the actual and feasible conditions, and some regulations should be made by the central government.In the past, many work departments organized by the party, government, and people at all levels independently assigned tasks to lower levels, randomly called lower level personnel and rural activists for meetings or training, distributed official documents, and casually requested reports to lower levels or rural areas. Systems and bad methods must be resolutely abolished and replaced by systems and methods that are led, unified and appropriate to the situation.As for the existence of dozens of committees in each township in the countryside and the fact that activists hold too many concurrent jobs, all of which hinder production and separate themselves from the masses, they should also be changed resolutely but step by step.

(2) Relevant departments of the party, government, and civil organizations at the central level, the central government respectively instructs the Central Organization Department, the Central People's Government Administration Council and its subordinate comrades in charge of the financial, cultural, educational, and political and legal committees to be responsible for the "five excesses" that have occurred in the past The various matters of the problem were quickly sorted out, and appropriate systems and methods were stipulated to report to the central government. (3) All major regions, provinces and cities are responsible for the central bureaus, sub-bureaus, provincial and municipal committees, and comrades in charge of administrative agencies at the same level to sort out the "five excesses" problems, formulate their own solutions, and report to the central government.In order to achieve this project, all central bureaus, sub-bureaus, and provincial and municipal committees are requested to follow the approach of the Northwest Bureau and send an inspection team specially designed to understand the "five excesses" problems, and inspect one or two districts and townships (in cities, inspect one The situation of the two districts and streets) is considered as a reference material for solving problems.

(4) The "five excesses" issues at the prefectural and county levels shall be resolved under the guidance of the provincial party committee. (5) The recommendations in the report of the inspection team of the Northwest Bureau on various measures to solve the "five excesses" problems are basically correct and can be tried in various places. (6) Agricultural production is the overwhelming work in the countryside, and other work in the countryside revolves around agricultural production and serves it.All so-called work tasks and working methods that hinder the peasants' production must be avoided.At present, my country's agriculture is basically still a scattered small-scale peasant economy using old-fashioned tools, which is very different from the collectivized agriculture of the Soviet Union using machines.Therefore, in the current transitional period in our country, in terms of agriculture, except for the state-owned farms, it is still impossible to implement unified and planned production, and we cannot interfere too much with the peasants. We can only use price policies and necessary and feasible economic policies. Work and politics to direct agricultural production and to coordinate it with industry into the national economic plan.The so-called agricultural "plans" and the so-called "tasks" in the countryside that exceed this limit are bound to be impracticable, and will inevitably arouse the opposition of the peasants, separating our Party from the peasant masses who account for more than 80 percent of the country's population. is very dangerous.The so-called "five excesses" in the district and township work, a large part of which is the expression of this excessive interference with the peasants (the other part is produced and left over due to the needs of the revolutionary war and land reform), Has caused dissatisfaction among farmers and must be changed.Even as far as the widely developing agricultural mutual aid groups and the few agricultural production cooperatives are concerned, there are only a few or dozens of small organizations, and they are established on the basis of private property. It is not fixed yet, and it uses old-fashioned farm tools.Therefore, for these mutual aid groups and cooperatives, it is absolutely necessary to give positive advocacy and appropriate guidance according to the existing decisions of the central government, but they should never be confused with socialist collective farms, and they should never interfere too much .The main dangerous tendency of our Party in the countryside now is that many comrades confuse the decentralized economy with the collective economy, that is, too much interference.The so-called "five excesses" problem partly reflects this erroneous thinking.

(7) Please publish this instruction and the report of the inspection team of the Northwest Bureau attached below in the party journal. Central Committee of the Communist Party of China March 19, 1953 Published according to Mao Zedong's manuscript. -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ note [1] See pages 253-255 of this volume.