Second, we must learn foreign languages. The language used by foreigners is not “foreign-style clichés.” When Chinese people simply copy it wholesale, it turns into a lifeless, rigid form of such clichés.

For example, “The Alliance Between the Party and Non-Party Members” was discussed by Stalin in his speech on the new Soviet Constitution. We incorporated this idea into the Program for the Administration of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, where it is expressed as “Democratic Cooperation Between Communist Party Members and Persons Outside the Party,” and so on. In short, we must absorb as much of the good things from abroad as possible.

At the Eighteenth Congress of the All-Union Communist Party, Stalin said: “A certain section of our comrades has lost its sensitivity to new developments.” Some of our own comrades are just the same—they fail to perceive many new and important matters. This malady must be cured.

Communists living in China who study Marxism apart from China’s actual needs, even if they were to read Marxist works ten thousand times over, would still remain mere pretenders to Marxism. Such “Marxist theoreticians” are no more than “a mouse stepping onto a scale to weigh itself”—false theorists through and through.