The Theory of Scientific Socialism Should Be Developed in Practice

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

were situations in the last century or the early part of this century and many changes have occurred since then. Although essential and basic contradictions remain the same, many situations have indeed changed. Due to many years of isolation (resulting first from an imperialist blockade and then from our own closed-door policy), we did not understand the outside world. Due to the isolation and lack of study, we knew very little about the situations of capitalist countries. Even if we knew a little, we were too afraid to talk about it. Now that our door is open, we find that things are different from books, students have raised many questions, and the theoretical circle also feels the need to think about many issues. We now need a book—not one book but many books—that analyzes, from all angles, new phenomena which have appeared in capitalist countries during the past few decades since the introduction of "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" and gives Marxist answers to new questions and on new situations. Of course, we do not have another Lenin; nor did Chairman Mao write such a book. Then what shall we do? I think, instead of waiting for some talent to show up, we should rely on collective power—the collective power of theoretical workers—to explore and study and gain new knowledge from years of research and discussion, which is also developing Marxist political economy.

Lenin said imperialism was moribund capitalism. He even then predicted that the capitalist system was dying. Of course, several dacades could also be considered a dying period in history. It takes not just one or two decades for a system to die; it could take several decades or even a century. This is understandable. But the question is since Lenin's book "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism," especially since World War II, the capitalist economy, in general, has had many crises as well as rapid developments, resulting in higher living standards for workers and a so-called "golden age." How come a dying system has a "golden age?" In addition, some new capitalist countries have emerged in some areas and they are developing very rapidly. For instance, Singapore and South Korea are making rapid economic progress. This explains that Chairman Mao's thesis in "The Theory of New Democracy" that there could not be another Kemal is proved incorrect in practice. Then, is it justified to describe the present capitalist world with such adjectives as rapidly declining and moribound? There are two estimates and based on them we can develop two kinds of foreign strategic principles. If we think the capitalist system is dying, we should hurry up and get prepared for the world revolution. Didn't we use to say during the "cultural revolution" that "now is the time for imperialism to head to a complete collapse and for socialism to head to a world-wide victory?" Lin Biao also thought that way. He believed that cities were surrounded by rural areas all over the world and he wanted to overthrow U.S. imperialism. Soviet revisionism, and everything else. He was an emerse "Leflist." Another estimate is that in spite of crises, capitalism still has some life in it. I have been abroad only a few times. Last year I went to the United States and saw there were

indeed many contradictions including economic problems, inflation, and an energy crisis, which gave them great headaches, but they are far from dying or rapidly declining. When a system is dying, it should be fairly easy to detect. Even if you are there only for 20 days or a month, you should be able to find traces of decline in social conditions and the psychological conditions of the people. Like Comrade Ba Jin said in his novel "Home:" I am denouncing a dying system; that system is indeed dying for feudal things are withering one after another. Judged from the current situation, the force of life is still growing in the framework of capitalist production relations. Therefore, I wonder if the life of capitalism is longer than what Lenin predicted or if it was probably too early for Lenin to say that capitalism was at a dying stage. We should be able to study these questions. At that time, it was impossible for Lenin to make accurate predictions on certain things. I think Lenin probably could not imagine or predict the rapid developments in the science, technology, and productive forces of today's capitalist world. Take polarization for instance. Marx said in "Das Kapital" that as capitalism develops, there will be an increasingly large number of poor proletarians on the one side and millionaires on the other. In other words, the entire society will be polarized into the shape of a gourd—big on one end, small on the other, and very skinny in the middle—and the middle class and petty bourgeoisie will be drawn to both ends. What is the current situation of capitalist society? There are large numbers of middle-class people. Under this circumstance, we should forget about books, proceed strictly from reality, and test theory with practice. If a theory contradicts reality, we should revise it. We should never distort facts to accommodate theories by saying that the peoples of capitalist countries are impoverished, that they will rebel any minute, that they are just sitting on a powder magazine that will explode any time, and that they will be doomed as soon as it explodes. Because, it would be unrealistic. American workers strike, too, but they are not opposing the capitalist system. They want higher wages. We visited the United Auto Workers union in Detroit. A union official told us that they were willing to cooperate with capitalists, but capitalists refused to cooperate, so they had to fight. He believed that everything could be solved through legal struggle and he had no intention of overthrowing the capitalist system. We cannot just say you American workers have such a low level of class consciousness, you are corrupted, and etc. I think we should do more than make critical remarks on this issue, for it reflects the objective existence of a situation; whereas the task of Marxism is to recognize facts as they are in an objective manner and to answer such questions through Marxist analysis. We should not be afraid of such things. Now that our foreign relations have been established and more and more people have come in and out of our country, our youth begin to have problems, thinking that capitalism is superior. In the past these young people did not understand and thought capitalism was a complete mess. Now