On Criticizing
*Self-Cultivation*
[I]
Talks
(March, April 1967)

Never again be taken in by that book *Self-Cultivation*. The book *Self-Cultivation* is deceptive talk, divorced from real class struggle, divorced from revolution, divorced from political struggle, saying not a word about the fundamental issue of revolution being the issue of political power, saying not a word about the issue of the dictatorship of the proletariat, propagating an idealist theory of self-cultivation, beating around the bush to promote bourgeois individualism, promoting slavishness, and opposing Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. To engage in "self-cultivation" according to this book can only result in the more one cultivates, the more "revisionist" one becomes; the more one engages in self-cultivation, the more one turns into a revisionist.

This book is entirely deceptive talk. The basic issue of revolution is the issue of political power. Whether or not to seize political power, whether political power can be seized, and how to seize political power—on these basic issues, this pamphlet (i.e., *Self-Cultivation*) avoids discussion altogether. It does not discuss seizing political power at all, does not discuss the dictatorship of the proletariat, departs from political power, departs from class, departs from class analysis, departs from class struggle. It is entirely a bourgeois idealist, reactionary, [!] thing that does not touch even a single hair of Chiang Kai-shek, a great poisonous weed of the bourgeoisie.

I have read Liu Shaoqi’s *On the Self-Cultivation of Communist Party Members* several times; it is anti-Marxist-Leninist. I think university students should study it more thoroughly, select a few passages, and write articles to criticize it. It is necessary to criticize Liu Shaoqi’s *On the Self-Cultivation of Communist Party Members* and Deng Xiaoping’s speeches over many years.

IV
I have never agreed with the "theory of the docile tool."

[!] Refers to Liu Shaoqi’s *On the Self-Cultivation of Communist Party Members*.