Mao Zedong's Comment on the Circular Concerning Organizing Lectures to Propagate Materialist Thought and Criticize Bourgeois Idealist Thought (January 24, 1955)

It can be used.

Mao Zedong
January 24

Printed from the manuscript.

Note
〔1〕 This circular, issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in January 1955, stated that the criticism of the erroneous ideas in Yu Pingbo's *Studies on "Dream of the Red Chamber"* had been brought to a temporary close, that the criticism of the Hu Shi school of thought had been preliminarily launched, and that the criticism of the literary and artistic ideas of Hu Feng and his clique would also be initiated. These ideological struggles are of extremely great significance, as they concretely propagate Marxist materialist thought through the criticism of bourgeois idealist thought familiar to Chinese intellectuals. Propagating materialist thought among the masses to raise their consciousness is one of the Party's most fundamental and constant tasks. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out serious education among approximately five million Party cadres and non-Party intellectuals who are literate, specifically criticizing idealist thought and establishing materialist thought, so that through them the broad masses of the people can be educated. To this end, it is necessary to adopt the method of lectures, utilizing spare time to explain to the five million Party and non-Party intellectuals the great significance of the ideological criticism currently being launched, in conjunction with local cadres and...