Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency translation, dated 1 August 1988, collects Chinese articles on theory and policy. Its main item is a 1979 Shanghai forum speech by Wang Ruoshui, which argues that Marxist theory has to be tested and developed in practice, and that Marxism and Mao Zedong Thought should be open to criticism. The collection also covers how urban population is defined, a Fudan University seminar on the crisis in Marxist philosophy, and political security for theorists. Unidentified flying objects come up only as a passing example of a concept.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
That Marxism permits criticism was originally an idea advanced by Chairman Mao in his 1957 report on contradictions among the people. Chairman Mao said: Marxism has been considered as a guiding ideology in our country, then can we criticize it? Of course. Marxism would be useless if it were afraid to be criticized. Instead of being afraid of criticism, Marxism invites it in order to develop during the struggle. In fact, the petty bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie, and other people are criticizing Marxism every day, aren't they? They criticize it every day. Some are fair criticisms and others are not. Can you stop them from criticizing? No, it is impossible. We have to distinguish between opposing socialism and opposing Marxism and between doubting socialism and opposing socialism in action. In China, socialism is our basic system and the overwhelming majority of people support it. So you cannot oppose it. Nowadays, some young people are confused. They doubt socialism and do not understand what socialism is. They thought the iron rice bowl and eating from the same big pot 12 months a year means socialism. What does that have anything to do with socialism? They do not know and we cannot blame them. We should blame ourselves, for we did not do a good job. If you oppose socialism in action, like instigating a group of people, founding some kind of an organization, or calling on the people to overthrow socialism, then, sorry, you would be violating the criminal law. It is of course allowed to have some doubts about socialism. It is also allowed to have some doubts about Marxism. Why can't we have doubts about it since Chairman Mao said it was Okay to criticize it? We should distinguish between party and non-party members. If a party member says I don't believe in Marxism or Mao Zedong Thought at all, we should ask: Why did you join the party? It is not strange for the masses outside the party to have different kinds of thinking. We should use a proletarian world outlook to educate and reform them, which is a long-term task. All non-proletarian thinkings including the anti-Marxist thinking will exist for a long time to come. We should educate or criticize people with such thoughts but we cannot prohibit such thoughts, according to Chairman Mao. What can we do about the anti-Marxist thinking? If our enemies have such thoughts, it will be easy—just forbid their talking. What happens if it is one of our people? We can only let him talk first and then educate and criticize him by reasoning with and talking to him. Therefore, first, we should not be afraid of criticism; second, we cannot possibly stop them from criticizing; and third we should permit criticism. Is criticism good or bad to Marxism? It is good. Many people are scared to death as if allowing criticism could damage our stand and Mao Zedong Thought. I say Chairman Mao himself thought differently. He said: Marxism develops during the process of a struggle and it stops when people stop criticizing. To prevent Marxism from turning into dogmatism, an important measure is to allow a hundred schools to contend. I can tell you something else. In April 1957, I met Chairman Mao and heard him say face to face that Marxism, including the basic tenets of Marxism, permits criticism. He said it did not sound good to say it is Okay to criticize the individual theories of Marxism but not the basic tenets of Marxism. So, when he wrote his speech, he just said in a general term that Marxism can be criticized. But, we did not follow his instruction. Later at a propaganda work conference, someone said that a hundred schools referred to only two schools—capitalist and proletarian, thus confusing the issue of allowing a hundred schools to contend. All thinkings were categorized into either bourgeois or proletarian. In other words, if you were not bourgeois, you must be proletarian. What belonged to the bourgeoisie? Everything that was wrong, as if the proletarian ideology was so pure that it could not have any mistake at all whereas the bourgeoisie had all the mistakes. As a result, every ideology was labeled. This practice may be traced further back to "The Theory of Practice" where there was a sentence saying that all ideologies were stamped with the brand of a class. Of course many ideologies were stamped with the brand of a class, but does every ideology have a class nature? Later during the "Great Cultural Revolution," this sentence became the basis for the theory of blood relationship. You were branded with a class as soon as you were born. The brands of certain classes were especially deep, such as the "son of a bitch" class and the four black categories. The several red categories were also branded with a class which was born red. These brands of classes could never be erased. Can we categorize all ideologies into either bourgeois or proletarian? Many ideologies have a class nature but many don't. What kind of a class nature does the thinking of natural science such as Einstein's theory of relativity have? What class does social science such as Morgan's ancient sociology belong to? Another question is: Are there only two classes? Can landlords be considered a class? Can farmers and small producers be considered a class? How about the petty bourgeoisie in urban areas? How come we only singled out the bourgeoisie? Since only two classes were noticed, someone later put forward the slogan of eliminating bourgeois ideology and fostering proletarian ideology as if on the ideological front all we had to fight was only one bourgeois ideology. When did we criticize the influence of feudalism and petty production over all these years? Never. In fact, we saw that feudal influence was much greater and worse than bourgeois influence. What we did was let slip by the thinkings of the Lullford class and feudalism. As a result, feudal thinking merged during the criticism of the bourgeoisie. For instance, during the "Great Cultural Revolution," women were not allowed to wear skirts or braids. I also saw a big-character poster opposing men and women swimming together and saying that women's swimsuits looked ridiculous in the pool. I think in the past 20 years we have failed to raise anti-feudalism to a proper level on our ideological front. The fact that the government work report at this people's congress mentioned the issue of anti-feudalism indicates
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 10 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.