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.
so be eliminated sooner or later and it will involve even more areas. Many people have already had too much of this. They say: We redress mishandled cases everyday. Why are there so many cases to be redressed? A large part of the masses think the same way. What do you think about their thinking? In a certain sense, their thinking is still under the pernicious influence of the ultra-leftist thinking of the "Gang of Four." In another sense, their thinking is lagging behind the situation. The situation has developed and the focus has been shifted, but they still stay in the past talking about things like taking the class struggle or this and that as the key link. So based on this point, their thinking is conservative. There are actually two common definitions for "leftists" and rightists as Chairman Mao pointed out. One definition is: One who emphasizes struggle, excessive struggle, is a leftist; one who lacks the spirit of struggle is a rightist. Another definition is: One who does things which should be done in the future, going too far, is called a "leftist", one who refuses to do things which should have been done and stays in the past is called a "rightist." Although practice has changed, many people with ossified thinking have failed to change their thinking along with the change of practice, so in this sense they are considered as conservatives who have fallen behind. ## The Issue of Socialist Democracy Should Be Resolved Many socialist countries have not yet resolved this issue. Failure to resolve this issue has caused many problems for the Soviet Union. What about us? We have not resolved it either. We always thought democracy was an issue of work style. For many years we advertised: Democracy is to let the people speak, refrain from bludgeoning and putting labels on people, and heed the opinions of the masses. We thought this was what democracy was all about. It is of course democracy but the major meaning of democracy should not be limited to this area. This formulation is to urge leaders to heed the opinions of the masses, let the people speak, and allow them to express their opinions. According to this formulation which is based on the viewpoint of the leaders', democracy is possible even in a feudal society. Due to the deep influence of feudal ideology, our discussion of democracy has been limited to how leaders should understand the people. An upright feudal official and a good emperor could be democratic if they accepted others' advice. Of course we hope that leaders are like this, but the question is what do we do if they aren't. Nothing. Now we have to correct this misunderstanding. First, democracy is the system of a country under which the people have the right not only to criticize but also to supervise, vote, recall, and etc. I attended the people's congress and felt that some progress has been made. At the congress, representatives criticized state leaders by name and those criticisms were sharp and unprecedented. Many representatives responded to the issue of personal privileges, which is a good phenomenon. However, all this is just preliminary. The important question is the principle of the Paris Commune. Before when we discussed the principle and experience of the Paris Commune, people like Yao Wenyuan and Chen Boda always wrote articles to blame the failure on the lack of suppression on the enemy. Today when we discuss the principle of the Paris Commune, we concentrate on how to prevent leaders from changing from the people's public servants into the people's masters. The Paris Commune had two methods: one is general election and the other, the low-wage system. The low-wage system, under which leaders are paid the same amount of wage as workers, is not feasible today, but at least personal privileges should be eliminated. ## --- We cannot expect "upright officials" to do all this for us. We have to rely on ourselves and fight. Whether it is economic reform, political democracy, or ideological liberation, there is always a fight and many things demand of us to get up and fight. This is a very important experience and lesson. If there were more comrades like Zhang Zhixin [1728 1807 2450] in the past, many things would not have been in such a mess. Zhang Zhixin was a hero of the socialist period and we need such an example. In the old days, things were simple. Whoever opposed the Kuemintang became a here, of course, and whoever got shot became a martyr who will be remembered by the people. Under the new conditions, whoever has differing views becomes a revisionist who will go down in history as a byword of infamy and whoever opposes Mao Zedong Thought becomes a disgraced element of the three evils who cannot even gain the understanding of the people. It is not very easy to take this kind of mental pressure. None of us is mentally prepared for such a struggle in the socialist period. In the past, when we fought the Kuomintang and Japanese, we could easily tell right from wrong and we felt superior to our enemies if we died and became heroes. However, in the socialsit period, since the party and leaders have high prestige, we always feel like we are wrong, wondering if we lack ideological consciousness, if we are wrong after all, and if we will go down in history labelled as a byword of infamy and humiliation. This indeed poses a mental pressure. So I said Comrade Zhang Zhixin was wonderful. She noticed the problems very early. She was also alone because at the time everybody else, not knowing the problems, was still talking about the "three bests" and the "red sun." Comrade Zhang Zhixin's criticism on Chairman Mao came from love and respect not vicious attacks. I heard that comrades of Liaoning Province decided to rehabilitate Comrade Zhang Zhixin after they read the documents of the ideological work conference and found that there were criticisms on Chairman Mao because Comrade Zhang Zhixin's criticism was not as serious as those at the ideological work conference. She was great because she was alone and many good comrades and people around her did not understand and opposed her. It was not easy for her to persist under such a circumstance Zhang Zhixin was the vanguard of ideological liberation Ideological liberation is to free us from various kinds of ideologies such as idealism, old dogmatism, superstitions, and prejudice that prevent us from understanding
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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.