For years, we had wanted to carry out rectification but never found the right opportunity. Now we have found it. In matters that involve many people, without launching a movement, it’s impossible to get things moving. It’s necessary to create an atmosphere; without such an atmosphere, it simply won’t work. Now an atmosphere of criticism has been created, and this atmosphere should be sustained. Taking the handling of contradictions among the people as the theme, we must analyze contradictions in all their various aspects.

In the past, we were blind to what contradictions existed in industry, agriculture, culture, education, and other areas. Now we must line up these contradictions in order and take stock. In the past, it seemed that the mere mention of contradictions was a disaster, but what disaster is there really? Chiang Kai-shek had four million troops, and the American army reached the Yalu River—still, there was no disaster. We live amid contradictions every day; contradictions are everywhere, and opposites are always performing against each other. Yet some refuse to acknowledge or deliberately conflate the two types of contradictions. We must acknowledge them, then analyze them, and find solutions. Nowadays, newspapers are discussing the issue of contradictions every day. Some worry that the people's government will be overthrown, but two or three months have passed already. The government has not been overthrown; on the contrary, the more discussion there is, the more it develops, and the more consolidated the people's government becomes. At present, the Ministry of Higher Education and the Ministry of Education are being fiercely criticized, and the fiercer the criticism, the better—it helps sort out the contradictions. If there are attacks, we should seize this opportunity. As long as evidence is found, one can stand firm. Problems that remained unresolved for years, or even decades, may, through debate, be resolved in a matter of months. People are not proposing to break your rice bowl, nor are they trying to beat you to death with one blow; they are demanding improved relations. We must classify the contradictions from various angles: higher education, general education, literature and art, science, and so on. Health work is also well worth attacking—attack it more, attack it earnestly, and publish it in the newspapers. This can draw everyone's attention; otherwise, bureaucracy will never be resolved. We must find solutions, and we must engage both inside and outside the Party together. Previously, holding small meetings didn’t work. We need large meetings like the Eleventh Enlarged Session of the Supreme State Conference and the propaganda conference, where Party and non-Party people meet together. When these two elements combine, a chemical reaction occurs, producing something different—and then it becomes effective. Every province and municipality should hold such meetings. Publishing them in the newspapers can break the stifling atmosphere. At this point, it is more natural to propose rectification. The overall theme of rectification is to handle contradictions among the people and oppose the three evils.

There is a special provision in the Central Committee of the Communist Party's directive: participation in labor. This does not advocate that everyone present should go plow the fields—sweeping the streets is at least feasible. The main purpose is to demonstrate an attitude: to eradicate bureaucracy and subjectivism. By adding the method of participating in labor, the overall goal is to mingle with workers and peasants, and to engage in some labor, however modest. The peasants say, "In the past, you carried out land reform together with us, but now that you've become officials, you ignore us." In the past, cooperative directors who did not participate in labor were very unpopular, and the masses were highly dissatisfied. Without labor, one cannot integrate with the peasants; the common people will not trust you and will not speak the truth to you. Now that district and township cadres participate in production together with the masses, the masses immediately speak the truth to them. The words spoken by the masses to deputies of the National People's Congress and members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference are not always entirely true. Especially since we are all intellectuals, we feel estranged from the working people. There is one way to be together with them: participate in some labor, to some extent. For instance, in the south, helping with rice planting or weeding is not especially difficult. Of course, those who are old or sick may be exempted. Our country has a distinctive feature: a population as huge as six hundred million, yet only one billion six hundred million mu of arable land, which is so little. Unless some special measures are adopted, I'm afraid the nation cannot be run well.

Rectification will affect those outside the Party. It is stipulated that non-Party members participate voluntarily and may withdraw freely. Over the past two months, this method has been in effect—that is, the rectification approach: I criticize you, you criticize me; speak up if you have opinions. Party and non-Party individuals are integrated as one. This is rectification, and it has already been going on for two months.

Contradictions in united front work that remained unresolved for years, such as having a position but no real power, were very difficult to resolve in the past, but now they may be resolved. The main reason they were hard to solve previously was ideological resistance. In the past, Communist Party members held positions with power and responsibility, while democratic personages had positions but no power or responsibility. Now, everyone should have a position, power, and responsibility. Mingling with the Communist Party is indeed not easy for democratic personages; it is quite vexing and makes handling affairs difficult. Now, relations inside and outside the Party should be transformed into equal ones—not merely formal but truly enjoying positions and power. Henceforth, in any locality, whoever serves as the head shall be in charge. (Ma Yinchu: In the past, fortunately, there was an organization. All my ways are old. If I were really to take charge, I couldn't maintain the current situation. Chairman: Your statement is not thorough. Contradictions exist; muddling through cannot resolve them. There is probably some truth in professors governing the university. Should there be two bodies—a school affairs committee managing administration, and a professorial conference overseeing teaching and learning?)

For now, we should not delve into materialist dialectics; we should focus on political relations and combat the three evils. Avoid getting bogged down in worldviews and methods of thought, lest the political relations be diluted. Materialist dialectics can be pursued later. This issue will affect the democratic parties and democratic personages. We cannot expect that a great many people will accept the Marxist-Leninist worldview all at once. We hope that within three five-year plans, about one-third of the five million intellectuals—roughly one and a half million—will be able to accept materialist dialectics; that would be very good. From now on, study must be voluntary; they should study on their own and may voluntarily form small groups. As for textbooks on dialectics, one should be compiled each year; some are already outdated, and old words need new expression. Worldview is a long-term matter. The five million intellectuals who previously served the old society must now switch to serving the new society. They have the old worldview; only a small fraction possess a new worldview. It is unnatural—and impossible—for many people to embrace a new worldview in a short time. It is estimated that within ten years, over one-third but fewer than two-thirds of the intellectuals will still retain the old worldview. But as long as these people are, first, patriotic, and second, believe in socialism, that will suffice. Some professors teach Marxism-Leninism in their lectures—this is to make a living—but privately they say that they themselves do not believe in dialectics. A left-wing professor in Shanghai said that since liberation, "my soul has been restless," "like fifteen buckets hanging, seven up and eight down." Those teaching social sciences are passive every day; history must be rewritten and re-taught. In the old society, teaching simply required pulling out the material; one textbook could be used for many years, and there weren't so many meetings. Natural scientists have it somewhat easier. During periods of great social upheaval, intellectuals suffer hardships, particularly those in the social sciences. Here there is a question of the economic base. The economic base to which the five million intellectuals were formerly attached has now collapsed. Imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism were overthrown long ago; even national capitalism has fundamentally disappeared, and individual ownership has been destroyed. Some say, with private ownership gone, how can there still be a dual character? This is incorrect. "Without the skin, to what can the fur attach?" Since the old skin no longer exists, the fur must attach to a new skin; it cannot dangle in midair. It must attach to the skin of the working class. Currently, the five million intellectuals eat from the labor of workers and peasants, from state ownership and collective ownership. Today, there are twelve million industrial workers, plus fourteen million Party, government, military, educational, and economic personnel (factory directors and cooperative managers not included). Together that makes twenty-six million. These fourteen million do not directly produce; the ones truly and directly engaged in production are the twelve million workers. All the rest must gradually transition toward workers. At the time of liberation, there were only over five million industrial workers; in the early Soviet Union, there were only three and a half million. Society’s progress is not determined by numbers. The peasantry numbers several hundred million, yet that cannot determine whether society advances or not. The peasants will eventually all become agricultural workers, and cooperatives will become state farms—though this may be a matter of decades from now. The fur of the five million intellectuals must attach to the skin of the twelve million-strong working class. Fur detached from the skin is unviable; one must always eat in a certain household. At present, some intellectuals are not fully aware of this: the footings of their walls (the economic base) have long been hollowed out. The old economic base, once shaken by an earthquake, left them suspended. The old economic base is gone, yet their minds have not yet changed; their thinking has been drilled into them over many years. Now the fur has already attached to the skin, but their thinking still regards Marxism-Leninism as no good. We must not force people to believe in the Marxist-Leninist worldview. To win belief requires a process. The old worldview—both the bourgeois and the petty-bourgeois worldview—is one and the same. Some say the petty bourgeoisie produces dualism while the bourgeoisie produces monism. Some say that calling them petty-bourgeois intellectuals makes them more comfortable, whereas calling them bourgeois intellectuals makes them uncomfortable. Actually, this is a kind of superstition, a social convention. For instance, I myself was originally a bourgeois intellectual. I was influenced by bourgeois social conventions and educated in a bourgeois fashion. I once believed in Buddhism, believed in Kant, believed in anarchism—all of which are idealism. Therefore, I was a bourgeois intellectual. Petty-bourgeois intellectuals are bourgeois intellectuals; there is but one old worldview, and no separate petty-bourgeois worldview can be distinguished from it.

The political common-sense textbooks for industrial and commercial workers can be studied, but textbooks are just textbooks; thinking is still thinking. There will always be a portion of people who never change. Conditioned reflex: childbirth is originally not painful, but social opinion says it is painful, and so the pain arises. To change pain into non-pain requires doctors to do a great deal of work, requires another kind of conditioned reflex. Don’t believe that all intellectuals, all members of the democratic parties, and all Communist Party members believe in communism. Within the Communist Party, a rather considerable number do not believe in communism and do not even believe in socialism; what they believe in is democracy. They were not prepared for the socialist revolution. Xue Xun, the former vice governor of Hebei Province, opposed the state monopoly for purchasing and marketing and advocated free trade. Not implementing state monopoly for purchasing and marketing won’t do; overdoing it also won’t do. Next year, we plan that except for cash-crop areas, the grain, oil, and meat of most cooperatives will be handled by the cooperatives themselves. A rather large portion of Party members do not believe in socialism; they are engaged in socialism merely because they were swept along with the current. I do not believe that all the democratic parties believe in socialism. A large portion do not believe in socialism, though they are also unwilling to say so openly. Among the Communist Party, the democratic parties, intellectuals, national capitalists, some peasants, and some workers (the workers’ composition is also complex, growing from five million to twelve million, and their hearts are not all aligned), there is still an attitude of "wait and see" regarding whether socialism will succeed and whether the Communist Party can make it. There is still quite a portion of people in society who have boarded the pirate ship (the ship of communism) and have no choice; whether the ship capsizes depends on heaven. This is entirely natural.

In the past, what we carried out was class struggle—during the democratic revolution and the socialist revolution alike—waging war between people, people beating people, internal rebellion among people. This consumed decades of energy. If we count from the Opium War, it has already been over a hundred years. The Opium War, as far as the masses are concerned, was a class struggle; as far as Lin Zexu was concerned, it was a struggle between Chinese exploiters and foreign exploiters. Looking just at recent decades, from the founding of the Communist Party onward, it has been thirty years, and our energy has all been spent on this. Some say the Communist Party cannot lead science and only knows how to carry out class struggle; that the Party has tactics but no learning. This is half correct. To say we have tactics but no learning depends on what kind of learning is meant. Class struggle, for instance, is a great learning; one cannot say we lack it. We learned it through years of making mistakes and conducting self-criticisms. Class struggle will still exist in the future—struggles like imperialist wars and diplomacy with capitalist countries are all of a class-struggle nature. Now we have entered a different kind of war: declaring war on nature. We need to understand natural science. What if we don’t understand it? I already said in an article in 1949: the things we are familiar with will soon lie idle, and we must learn what we don’t yet understand. If we don’t understand, so be it; don’t pretend to understand. We must learn honestly. It may require decades, much like our past study of class struggle. From the Party’s founding to the Seventh Congress (1921–1945), it took twenty-four years, with so much bloodshed and many setbacks, before we learned class struggle. Now, to learn this new war of construction, we must start from the beginning. Can we learn it? We certainly can. Some parties and groups have many experts, such as the China Democratic League and the Jiusan Society; the China National Democratic Construction Association also has quite a few. Generally speaking, this is a new era with new tasks: class struggle ends, and we declare war on nature. We are still in the transitional period; the old relations of production have been destroyed, and the new economic base is not yet consolidated. To fight this battle will take decades—probably twenty or thirty years. Because we lack experience and lack cadres. With the Soviet experience before us, we might do slightly better, slightly worse, or about the same. How it will go, everyone must wait and see; I must wait and see too. We cannot boast and claim to be one hundred percent correct. Some say the Communist Party changes orders overnight, especially the Ministry of Higher Education. The Kuomintang had many taxes; the Communist Party has many meetings. Many meetings mean changes are inevitable. This year alone, capital construction was adjusted by over two billion. The budget must be set by November of the preceding year, submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, distributed for discussion in December, and production starts in January. Submitting it to the National People's Congress is effectively ex post facto approval. We lack experience and need to study—study natural science, study planning experience. Accumulating experience requires accumulating decades of it. Some changes of orders overnight are due to a lack of experience. My own mind also tended somewhat toward vainglory at first; it only began to change around March and April last year. I talked with comrades from over thirty ministries and departments, and later, at the Supreme State Conference, I discussed the ten major relationships, five of which pertain to the economy.

Beijing is both a good place and a not-so-good place. Leading officials of the Communist Party should spend four months each year outside the capital and eight months in Beijing. You can do the same. The characteristics of the central authorities are, first, being disconnected from reality, and second, being comprehensive. The drawback is precisely this disconnection. Once you leave Beijing, you feel relieved.