Study the Marxist Theory of Knowledge and Dialectics [I]
(1963–1965)

I
At present, some comrades holding leading positions and many comrades engaged in ordinary work still do not understand, or do not fully understand, the Marxist scientific revolutionary theory of knowledge. Their world outlook and methodology remain bourgeois, or still contain remnants of bourgeois ideology. They often consciously or unconsciously substitute subjectivism (idealism) for materialism and metaphysics for dialectics. Since this is the case, it is impossible for them to carry out investigation and research well. In order to do our work well, Party committees at all levels should vigorously promote the study of the Marxist theory of knowledge, make it accessible to the masses, and enable the broad ranks of cadres and the masses of the people to grasp it. Let philosophy be liberated from the classrooms and books of philosophers and become a sharp weapon in the hands of the masses.
(May 1963)

II
The source of strength is the masses of the people. Without reflecting the demands of the masses, no individual can succeed. One must acquire knowledge from the masses, formulate policies, and then go back to educate the masses. Therefore, to be a teacher, one must first be a student; there is no teacher who has not first been a student. Moreover, even after becoming a teacher, one must still learn from the masses and understand the conditions of one’s own students.
(August 29, 1964)

III
Among our cadres, there are quite a few who are self-righteous. One of the reasons for this is that they do not understand the Marxist theory of knowledge. Therefore, it is extremely necessary to tirelessly propagate this theory of knowledge. To put it simply, it means "from the masses, to the masses." By resolving to go down and stay at selected grassroots units for a long period, one can hear the voices of the masses, gradually come to know objective truth through practice, transform it into subjective truth, and then return to practice to see whether it works. If it does not work, one must once again seek guidance from the practice of the masses. In this way, the problem of restrictive conventions, that is, the problem of dogmatism, can be resolved, and superstition can be dispelled.
(September 25, 1964)

IV
What is meant by knowing objective truth is that, in practice, human beings reflect the phenomena and essence of the objective external world, which, through gradual change and sudden change, become subjective truth that has not yet been tested. To know whether the subjective truth obtained in this process truly reflects objective truth (i.e., laws), one must return to practice to see whether it works.
(October 18, 1964)

V
The history of mankind is a history of continuous development from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. This history will never end. In societies where classes exist, class struggle will never end. In societies where classes do not exist, the struggle between the new and the old, between the correct and the erroneous, will never end. Within the spheres of the struggle for production and scientific experiment, mankind always develops continuously, and nature also always develops continuously; they will never stop at a single level. Therefore, mankind must always continuously sum up experience, make discoveries, inventions, creations, and advances. Viewpoints that advocate stopping, pessimistic viewpoints, viewpoints of inertia and pride, are all erroneous. They are erroneous because these viewpoints do not conform to the historical facts of the development of human society over approximately one million years [1], nor do they conform to the historical facts of nature known to us so far (for example, the history of celestial bodies, the history of the Earth, the history of life, and the natural world as reflected in the histories of various other natural sciences).
(December 13, 1964)

VI
What is Marxism? The central leaders of that time [2] truly understood very little, or were utterly ignorant, and made a great laughingstock for many years. But this was unavoidable; mankind always has to make some mistakes before their correctness can be demonstrated. Not understanding the objective laws of nature and being dominated by them, making oneself a slave to the objective external world—this has been unavoidable up to now, will be so in the future, and even into infinity. Blindness and freedom in understanding will always alternate and expand their domains; error and correctness will always coexist. Otherwise, development would cease, and science would cease to exist. It must be understood that error is often the precursor of correctness, and blind necessity is often the ancestor of freedom. Mankind is simultaneously the slave of nature and society, and their master. This is because mankind's understanding of the objective material world, human society, and humanity itself (i.e., the human body) is forever incomplete. If one day understanding were complete, and society perfectly good and perfectly beautiful (as theology claims), that would lead to absolute subjective idealism and metaphysics, which is not the world outlook of a Marxist.
(1965)

VII
The core of dialectics is the law of the unity of opposites. Other categories, such as the mutual change of quality and quantity, the negation of the negation, connection, development, etc., can all be explained within this core law. What is called connection is the mutual connection of various opposites in time and space; what is called development is the result of the struggle of various opposites. As for the mutual change of quality and quantity and the negation of the negation, they should be explained under the guidance of the core law, along with phenomena and essence, form and content, etc. The method of placing several laws handed down from old philosophy side by side is inappropriate; Lenin basically resolved this, and our task is to explain and develop it. As for the various categories (there can be over a dozen), they must all be explained through the contradictory unity of opposites in things. For example, what is essence? One can only say that essence is the principal contradiction in a thing and the principal aspect of that contradiction. And so on, by analogy.
(1965)

[1] Archaeological discoveries to date prove that human history spans at least 2 million years.
[2] This refers to Wang Ming and others who committed "Left" dogmatist errors from early 1931 to late 1934.

Report on the Plan and the Implementation of the Plan (Draft).
On July 3, Vice Premier and Chairman of the State Planning Commission Li Fuchun delivered this report to the 99th Session of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.

[3]
A passage on page 6 reads: "Class struggle, the struggle for production, and scientific experiment are the three great revolutionary movements for building a powerful socialist country. They are a sure guarantee that Communists will be free from bureaucratism and immune to revisionism and dogmatism, and will remain invincible forever. They are a reliable guarantee that the proletariat will be able to unite with the broad working masses and exercise democratic dictatorship." Two passages on pages 35 to 37 read: "Correct ideas of man can only come from social practice, and only from the three kinds of social practice—the struggle for production, class struggle, and scientific experiment. It is man’s social being that determines his thinking.

426

Comments on the Report on the Adjustment and Implementation of the Plan for the Last Two Years of the Second Five-Year Plan (Draft)

Once the correct ideas characteristic of the advanced class are grasped by the masses, these ideas turn into a material force which changes society and changes the world. In their social practice, men engage in various kinds of struggle and gain rich experience, both from their successes and from their failures. Countless phenomena of the objective external world are reflected in a man’s brain through his five sense organs—the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body. At first, knowledge is perceptual. When perceptual knowledge has accumulated to a certain point, a leap occurs, transforming it into rational knowledge, which is thought. This is a process of cognition. It is the first stage in the whole process of cognition, the stage leading from objective matter to subjective consciousness, from being to thought. At this stage, whether consciousness or thought (including theories, policies, plans, and methods) correctly reflects the laws of the objective external world is not yet proven, and it cannot yet be determined whether they are correct. Then comes the second stage in the process of cognition, the stage leading from consciousness back to matter, from thought back to being, in which the knowledge gained in the first stage is applied in social practice to ascertain whether these theories, policies, plans, methods, etc., can yield the anticipated successes. Generally speaking, those that succeed are correct, and those that fail are incorrect, and this is especially true of man’s struggle with nature. In social struggle, the forces representing the advanced class sometimes suffer defeat not because their ideas are incorrect but because, in the balance of forces engaged in struggle, they are not as powerful for the time being as the forces of reaction; they are therefore temporarily defeated, but they are bound to triumph sooner or later. Man’s knowledge makes another leap through the test of practice. This leap is more significant than the previous one. For only through this leap can the first leap in cognition, i.e., the ideas, theories, policies, plans, methods, etc., derived from the process of reflecting the objective external world, be proven correct or incorrect; there is no other way of testing truth. The sole purpose of the proletariat in knowing the world is to change it; there is no other purpose. Often, a correct idea can be arrived at only after many repetitions of the process leading from matter to consciousness and then back to matter, that is, leading from practice to knowledge and then back to practice. Such is the Marxist theory of knowledge, the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge." "It is necessary to educate our comrades in the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge so that they can orientate their thinking correctly, become good at investigation and study and at summing up experience, overcome difficulties, commit fewer mistakes, do their work well, and strive hard to build a great and powerful socialist country, and help the broad masses of the oppressed and exploited throughout the world in fulfillment of the great internationalist duty we ought to bear." A passage on page 41 reads: "This socialist education movement is a great revolutionary movement. It involves not only the question of class struggle but also the question of cadres’ participation in labor, and it involves the work of learning, through experimentation and with a strict scientific approach, to solve a number of problems in enterprises and undertakings. It may seem very difficult, but in fact it is not hard to solve if only one takes it seriously. This struggle is a struggle for re-educating people, a great movement for reorganizing the revolutionary class ranks and waging a sharp, tit-for-tat struggle against the capitalist and feudal forces that are mounting frantic attacks on us, crushing their counterrevolutionary arrogance, and remolding the overwhelming majority of these forces into new men. It is also a movement in which cadres and the masses participate together in productive labor and scientific experiment, enabling our Party to become still more glorious, greater, and more correct, and enabling our cadres to become at once versed in politics and competent in their professional work, both red and expert, not floating on the surface, acting as bureaucrats and overlords, and divorcing themselves from the masses, but integrating themselves with the masses and winning their genuine support."