How to be a Good Communist

Published in July of 1939, How to be a Good Communist outlines how Communists should conduct themselves. Unlike works from the same period by other figures such as Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi focuses primarily on the ideological and behavioral aspect of Communist work rather than the immediacy of warfighting, strategy and tactics. This should not be mistaken to mean that Cde. Liu was ignoring the war effort, though, or saw this work as divorced from it. At the time of publishing How to be a Good Communist, Cde. Liu was the Party Secretary of Northern China, the frontline, and had that year been placed in leadership of the Central Plain Bureau. The two-week long battle of Taierzhuang in 1938 had claimed the lives of some 30,000-40,000 total casualties from both sides, cracking the myth of Japanese military invincibility, but the four-month long defense of Wuhan had fallen, claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands. How to be a Good Communist is not just an instructional pamphlet for Communists wishing to improve their everyday work or self-cultivation: it is for the professional conduct of revolutionary warriors in the midst of a life-or-death struggle of historic, and civilizational importance — written by one of the few men to stand in the middle of it all and walk away victorious.