The alternative is to leave people alone if they have no material interest in changing society in the way you want to see it changed. Find your allies and do politics with them. I have known several people who rent out rooms in houses they own. I don't seek out opportunities to inform them that as a class landlords oppress and immiserate renters as a class. If someone I know is a member of a reactionary labor union I don't tell them how much I prefer the politics of more left-wing unions. People generally know what side their bread is buttered on. It's just way more sensible to discuss politics with members of your own class in the context of political projects. I'm taking the time to express my conflicting interpretation of Mao here because I think our politics are more or less aligned and we both have a genuine interest in understanding the passage. In my reading Mao is advising on personal conduct within a revolutionary collective, not within the society as a whole. It's an important distinction.

deleted by creator

uh actually mao didnt order anything of the sort, he just didnt prosecute people that did :mao-wave:

I'm just going to assume this isn't a bit, so if this is :bait: congrats you got me. I can't speak with authority on the entire history of the CPC's land reform efforts, but I can point to a relevant section of an English language book on Chinese history that deals with this very topic during the period of time when Mao was writing and distributing "Combat Liberalism". From "In Search of Modern China" by Jonathan Spence (1991), chapter 14, subhead "Wuhan Summer, Canton Winter":

In late 1926 and early 1927 there had been notable signs of peasant unrest in China. In some areas the peasants had seized the land for themselves, formed "poor peasants associations" to run their communities, and publicly paraded, humiliated, and in many cases killed the more hated of the local landlords. Peng Pai had had dramatic success in forming radical peasant associations near Canton, until they were counterattacked by landlord forces. Mao Zedong, who had risen while in Canton to become director of the Guomindang's Peasant Movement Training Institute, also had several opportunities in 1925 and 1926 to propagandize CCP views in the Hunan countryside, especially around Changsha. In February 1927, after the Northern Expedition had passed through the region, he took the time to study what was happening and wrote an excited report for a local CCP journal.

Mao was particularly impressed by the power of the poor peasants and their political consciousness. "They raise their rough, blackened hands and lay them on the heads of the gentry," he wrote. "They alone are the deadliest enemies of the local bullies and evil gentry and attack their strongholds without the slightest hesitation; they alone are able to carry out the work of destruction." The CCP, he noted, could take the initiative with these peasant stalwarts if it chose: "To march at their head and lead them? To follow in the rear, gesticulating at them and criticizing them? To face them as opponents? Every Chinese is free to choose among the three." But Mao implied that it would be folly to ignore this immense potential force. If one assessed the 1926-1927 "democratic revolution" on a ten-point scale, he observed, then the "urban dwellers and the military rate only three points, while the remaining seven points should go to the peasants in their rural revolution."

Also it may be helpful to review Mao's "How to Differentiate the Classes in the Rural Areas", written a few years later in 1933. Here he describes in plain language rural class distinctions as he understood them at the time.

Murder implies that a person was killed, and leeches don't qualify.

What’s your opinion on the word kulak, comrade?

WTF is a peasant landlord? No. Mao didn't kill any of those because they don't exist. A peasant by definition owns little to no land.