ABSTRACT
Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? He who cannot distinguish between enemies and friends is certainly not a revolutionary, yet to distinguish between them is not easy. 2 If the Chinese revolution, although it has been going on for thirty years, has 3 achieved so little, this is not because its goal was wrong, but entirely because its strategy has been wrong. The strategic error has consisted precisely in 4 the failure to unite with real friends in order to attack real enemies. The reason for this failure is the inability to distinguish clearly enemies from friends. A revolutionary party is the guide of the masses. No army has ever been known to achieve victory when its chiefs have led it in a false direction, and no revolutionary movement has ever been known to succeed when the revolutionary party has led it in a false direction. We are all members of the revolutionary party, all leaders of the masses, all guides of the masses. We cannot but ask ourselves, however: Do we have this capacity? Will we not end up by leading the masses onto an erroneous road? Will we definitely achieve success? To ensure that we will “not lead the masses astray” and will “definitely achieve success,” we must pay careful attention to the very important question of strategy. In order to determine this strategy, we must first distinguish clearly friends from enemies. 5 The Manifesto of the 250 First National Congress of the Guomindang proclaimed this strategy and traced the boundary between our enemies and our friends. But this declaration was very concise. If we want to understand this important strategy and to distinguish our real enemies from our real friends, we must make a general analysis of the economic status, the class character, and the numerical strength of the various classes of Chinese society, as well as of their respective attitudes toward the revolution.
