Sugar-Coated Bullets

Capitalism evidently involves doing what comes naturally, Red China's rulers reluctantly admit. They just can't seem to root out its surviving tendencies. Red Boss Mao Tse-tung has made only two big speeches this year. The first, made last summer but published only last month, decreed a drastic stepping-up of farm collectivization (TIME, Dec. 5). The second speech, made six weeks ago, was called "Socialist Transformation of Private Industry and Commerce." It still has not been made public, but its tenor can be judged by a sudden spate of propaganda on the evils of free enterprise. Nanking's Hsinhua Daily took aim at the "lawless bourgeoisie" for using "sugarcoated bullets" in its "attack against the working class." Apparently the remaining shop owners, who are forbidden to close up their businesses while the government exacts a confiscatory tax on all their sales, are guilty of all manner of capitalistic vices. Sample sugar-coated bullet: "evilly increasing salaries." The evil of a wage raise, Hsinhua Daily explained, is "in eroding the thinking of the . . . workers, in softening their fighting spirits."

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