'Don't you think Neumann, that if the nationalists came to power in Germany they would be so exclusively concerned with the western powers that we would be free to build socialism in peace?' Stalin to Heinz Neumann, November 1931
Epoliticus writes: 'Condemn the post-Civil War Mao if you wish. It would also be productive, however, to appreciate his insights.'
Mao's turn to the peasantry was an attempt to make a virtue out of the disaster that the Comintern had visited on the CCP - which had blossomed among the rapidly growing industrial workforce, until they were persuaded to subordinate themselves to the Kuomintang, with disastrous and bloody consequences - a shameful record Mao helped covered up (Harold Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution. 294). According to Jung Chang (a doubtful source, admittedly, but probably right on this) Mao made much of the Long March carried on a bier!
As tactics, the long march was itself a terrible waste of resources, with little positive purpose but to sustain the CCP as an organisation. It was Mao's good fortune that Chiang Kai-Shek had squandered his forces in profiteering to the point that they were useless in the face of the Japanese invasion, leaving him a route back into history.