The questions raised by *The Life of Wu Xun* are of a fundamental nature.
A person like Wu Xun, living in the late Qing dynasty during the great era of the Chinese people’s struggle against foreign aggressors and domestic reactionary feudal rulers, did not touch a single hair of the feudal economic base and its superstructure. Instead, he fanatically propagated feudal culture, and in order to secure for himself a position from which to propagate feudal culture that he did not previously possess, he went to the utmost lengths of groveling and fawning before the reactionary feudal rulers. Is such repulsive conduct something we ought to extol? To extol such repulsive conduct before the masses of the people, even hoisting the revolutionary banner of “serve the people” to extol it, and even using the defeat of revolutionary peasant struggles as a foil to extol it—is this something we can tolerate? To acknowledge or tolerate such extolling is to acknowledge or tolerate reactionary propaganda that slanders the revolutionary struggles of the peasants, slanders Chinese history, and slanders the Chinese nation; it is to treat reactionary propaganda as legitimate propaganda.

The appearance of the film *The Life of Wu Xun*, and especially the sheer volume of extolling directed at Wu Xun and the film *The Life of Wu Xun*, demonstrates the degree of ideological confusion that has been reached in our country’s cultural circles! In the view of many authors, historical development is not a matter of the new replacing the old, but of making every effort to preserve the old so that it may escape destruction; it is not a matter of overthrowing through class struggle the reactionary feudal rulers who ought to be overthrown, but rather, like Wu Xun, negating the class struggle of the oppressed people and surrendering to the reactionary feudal rulers.

Our authors do not study who the enemies were who oppressed the Chinese people in past history, nor whether those who surrendered to these enemies and served them possess anything worthy of praise.

Nor do our authors study what new social and economic forms, what new class forces, what new figures and new ideas have emerged in China over the more than one hundred years since the Opium War of 1840, waging struggle against the old social and economic forms and their superstructure (politics, culture, etc.), in order to determine what things ought to be praised or extolled, what things ought not to be praised or extolled, and what things ought to be opposed.

What is particularly worthy of attention is the case of certain Communist Party members who claim to have studied Marxism. They have studied the history of social development—historical materialism—but as soon as they encounter a concrete historical event, a concrete historical figure (such as Wu Xun), or a concrete anti-historical idea (such as the film *The Life of Wu Xun* and other works about Wu Xun), they lose all capacity for criticism, and some even go so far as to surrender to such reactionary ideas. Bourgeois reactionary ideas have invaded the fighting Communist Party—is this not a fact? Where on earth has the Marxism that some Communist Party members claim to have already studied gone?

For all the above reasons, a discussion should be launched concerning the film *The Life of Wu Xun* and other writings and essays related to Wu Xun, so as to achieve a thorough clarification of the confused thinking on this question.

Printed based on Mao Zedong’s manuscript.

Note 〔1〕 These are several passages added and rewritten by Mao Zedong when reviewing the draft editorial of the *People’s Daily*, “Attention Should Be Paid to the Discussion of the Film *The Life of Wu Xun*,” and they constitute the main body of this editorial.