Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung
November 1958
[SOURCE: Long Live Mao Zedong Thought, a Red Guard Publication.]
Before the realization of the system of ownership by all the people in the rural area, the peasants remained peasants, and there was a certain dual nature when they walked the socialist path. We can only guide them step by step to divorce themselves from relatively small collective ownership and more toward the system of ownership by all the people via the relatively large collective ownership system, but we cannot ask them to complete the process in one stroke — just as before when we could only guide them step by step to give up the private ownership system in favor of the collective ownership system.