An upsurge in the new, socialist mass movement is imminent throughout the countryside. But some of our comrades, tottering along like a woman with bound feet, are complaining all the time, "You're going too fast, much too fast." Too much carping, unwarranted complaints, boundless anxiety and countless taboos -- all this they take as the right policy to guide the socialist mass movement in the rural areas.

No, this is not the right policy, it is the wrong one.

The high tide of social transformation in the countryside, the high tide of co-operation, has already swept a number of places and will soon sweep the whole country. It is a vast socialist revolutionary movement involving a rural population of more than 500 million, and it has tremendous, world-wide, significance. We should give this movement active, enthusiastic and systematic leadership, we should not drag it back by whatever means. Some errors are unavoidable in the process, which is understandable, and they will not be hard to correct. Shortcomings or mistakes among cadres and peasants can be remedied or overcome provided we actively help them. The cadres and the peasants are advancing under the leadership of the Party and, fundamentally, the movement is healthy. In some places they have made certain mistakes in their work; for example, poor peasants have been barred from the co-operatives in disregard of their difficulties, while well-to-do middle peasants have been forced into the co-operatives in violation of their interests. These mistakes should be corrected by educating the cadres and peasants and not by simply dressing them down. Blunt reprimands solve no problem. We must guide the movement boldly and must not "fear dragons ahead and tigers behind". Both cadres and peasants will remould themselves in the course of the struggles they themselves experience. Let them go into action and let them learn and become more competent as they go along. In this way many fine people will come to the fore. "Fearing dragons ahead and tigers behind" will not produce cadres. Large groups of cadres with short-term training should be sent to the countryside from above to guide and assist the co-operative movement, but they must also take part in the movement itself if they are to learn how to work. One does not necessarily learn how to do a job just by listening to a lecturer explain a few dozen points in a training class.

In short, the leadership should never lag behind the mass movement. Yet, as things stand now, it is the mass movement which is running ahead, while the leadership cannot keep pace with it. This state of affairs must change.

[Part I of Report at a conference of secretaries of provincial, municipal and autonomous region Party committees called by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.]

Source: http://www.maoism.org/msw/vol5/mswv5_44.htm