1. At present, some comrades holding leadership positions and many engaged in ordinary work do not understand—or understand only superficially—the scientific revolutionary epistemology of Marxism. Their worldview and methodology remain bourgeois, or still bear remnants of bourgeois thinking.
They often consciously or unconsciously substitute subjectivism (idealism) for materialism and metaphysics for dialectics.
Under such circumstances, it is impossible for them to carry out effective investigation and research.
To improve our work, Party committees at all levels should vigorously promote the study of Marxist epistemology, make it accessible to the masses, and ensure that it is mastered by cadres and the general public. Philosophy must be liberated from the classrooms and books of philosophers and transformed into a sharp weapon in the hands of the people.
(May 1963) Printed from Mao Zedong’s manuscript.


2. The source of strength lies with the people. No one can succeed without reflecting their aspirations. We must learn from the people, formulate policies based on their insights, and then educate them in turn. Therefore, to be a teacher, one must first be a student; there is no teacher who has not first been a student. Even after becoming a teacher, one must continue to learn from the people and understand the conditions of one’s own students.
(29 August 1964) Printed from the transcript of a conversation preserved in the Central Archives.


3. Among our cadres, there are quite a number who are self-conceited. One of the reasons for this is their ignorance of Marxist epistemology. Hence, it is extremely necessary to tirelessly propagate this epistemology. Simply put, it means coming from the masses and going back to the masses. By resolving to station oneself in a particular locality over a long period, one can hear the voices of the people, gradually come to recognize objective truth through practice, internalize it as subjective truth, and then return to practice to test its validity. If it does not hold up, one must again seek guidance from the practical experience of the masses. In this way, we can overcome the problem of rigid frameworks—that is, dogmatism—and dispel superstition.
(25 September 1964)


4. To “recognize objective truth” means that, in the course of human practice, one reflects the phenomena and essence of the external objective world; through both gradual and abrupt changes, this becomes an untested subjective truth. To determine whether this subjective truth truly corresponds to objective truth (i.e., to the underlying laws), one must return to practice to see if it works.
(18 October 1964) Printed from Mao Zedong’s manuscript.


5. Human history is a continuous process of moving from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. This historical process will never come to an end. In class-based societies, class struggle will never cease. Even in classless societies, the struggle between the new and the old, between right and wrong, will never end. Within the realms of production and scientific experimentation, humanity and nature alike are constantly evolving and will never halt at any fixed stage. Consequently, humans must continually summarize experiences, make discoveries, invent, create, and advance. Arguments advocating stagnation, pessimism, inaction, or complacency are all erroneous. They are wrong because they contradict the historical facts of human societal development over roughly one million years[2] as well as the historical facts of nature—such as those revealed in celestial history, Earth history, biological history, and other branches of natural science—that we currently know.
(13 December 1964) Printed from the People’s Daily of 31 December 1964.


6. What is Marxism? At that time, the central leaders[3] really understood very little about it, or nothing at all, which led to a major absurdity that persisted for many years. However, this was inevitable: humankind always makes certain mistakes before demonstrating what is correct. It remains unavoidable—even now, in the future, and indefinitely—for us to be governed by objective, inevitable laws without recognizing them, thereby becoming slaves to the external objective world. Blindness in cognition and freedom will always alternate and expand their domains, with error and correctness coexisting forever. Otherwise, development would come to a standstill, and science would cease to exist. Indeed, error often precedes correctness, and blind necessity is the progenitor of freedom. Humans are simultaneously slaves to and masters of both nature and society, because our understanding of the objective material world, of human society, and even of ourselves (that is, of our own bodies) will always remain incomplete. Should complete understanding ever be attained, resulting in a perfectly good and beautiful society—as some theological doctrines claim—this would lead to absolute subjective idealism and metaphysics, which is not a Marxist worldview.
(1965)


7. The core of dialectics is the law of unity of opposites. Other categories, such as the transformation of quantity into quality, the negation of the negation, interconnection, and development, can all be explained within the framework of this central law. Interconnection refers to the mutual relationships among opposing forces across time and space, while development arises from the struggles between these very opposites. As for the transformation of quantity into quality and the negation of the negation, they should be elucidated under the guidance of the central law, in conjunction with concepts like essence and phenomenon, form and content, and so forth. The method of simply listing several inherited philosophical laws side by side is inappropriate; Lenin had essentially resolved this issue. Our task now is to clarify and elaborate upon these principles. With regard to the various categories—there may be more than a dozen—they should all be explained through the contradiction and unity of opposites inherent in things. For example, when defining “essence,” we can only say that it is the principal contradiction and its dominant aspect within a given object. And so on.
(1965) Printed from Mao Zedong’s manuscript.
Notes [1] This first passage consists of a paragraph added by Mao Zedong to the tenth point while reviewing the draft of the CPC Central Committee’s Decision on Several Issues in Current Rural Work (the first ten points). [2] Archaeological findings to date indicate that human history spans at least two million years. [3] Refers to Wang Ming and others who committed “left”-leaning dogmatic errors from early 1931 to late 1934.