The Theory of Scientific Socialism Should Be Developed in Practice

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

stage is from practice to knowledge and another stage is from knowledge to practice. In this sense, the process of cognition has two stages—one from the beginning of practice to knowledge and the other, the return of knowledge to practice. This is the development of Lenin's idea because according to Lenin the process consists of vivid perception, abstract thinking, and practice in that order. Since this puts practice at the end of the process of cognition, practice only plays the role of testing. In fact, practice is the foundation of the whole process of cognition; it is not only the beginning but also the end of the process. This shows the shortcoming of Lenin's formulation. In addition, since the process begins with perception, this theory is also acceptable to idealism. Lenin said that proceeding from perception, one may take the road of subjectivism leading to idealism or materialism. Therefore, we should say that the process begins from practice and that there are two stages between practice and knowledge: one is perceptual and the other, rational knowledge. This is my view. Knowledge should of course return to practice to be tested, but there are only two forms of knowledge: perceptual and rational. Are there any other forms? I say no. How can knowledge return to practice to be tested? It is simple. First we gain perceptual knowledge in practice and then elevate it to rational knowledge. Practice itself does not equal knowledge. For instance, the 10-year "Great Cultural Revolution" was a test for our basic line, or the theory of continuous revolution, and the theory of sharpening the class struggle. This 10-year period was used to test this theory. How? Like I said before, first we discovered through perceptual knowledge many wronged cases, economic problems, and lower living standards and then we elevated and combined many different kinds of perceptual knowledge, turned them into rational knowledge, and then concluded that the theory of sharpening the class struggle is wrong. When we review our experiences, we also use practice as the criterion for judgement which is formulated on the basis of perceptual and rational knowledge; therefore, as far as the form of knowledge is concerned, there are only two stages. In sum, we should affirm Chairman Mao's philosophical development and achievements. It is not right to ignore "The Theory of Practice" and stress only "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism."

Then, is Chairman Mao's philosophical thinking perfect? Of course not. For instance, I think "The Theory of Practice" also has insufficient areas or shortcomings. Here I will discuss only one question: what is perceptual and rational knowledge? According to "The Theory of Practice," perceptual knowledge reflects the appearance of things and is a stage of sense perceptions and impressions; after this stage repeats for several times, a sudden change will take place and form conception, judgement, inference, or rational knowledge, which reflects the essence of things. So perceptual knowledge is different from rational knowledge. One difference is that rational knowledge is conception and judgement while perceptual knowledge is impression and sense perception. Another difference is that perceptual knowledge reflects

This formulation is questionable. Does it mean that there is no concept or judgement in the stage of perceptual knowledge? Let me give you an example. I say this cup is white. Is this perceptual or rational knowledge? By saying that this cup is white, I reflected the appearance. But didn't I reflect any concept or judgement? The cup is a concept and so is the color white. That the cup is white is a judgement but this judgement does not reflect the essence of the cup. So I think there is conception and judgement in the stage of perceptual knowledge and we don't automatically understand the essence of things as soon as we gain concepts. Let's look at one of Chairman Mao's own example: The first part of the Chinese people's struggle against imperialism was the stage of perceptual knowledge and so was the long-term spontaneous struggle of the working class against capitalism. Were there any concept or judgement during that stage? Of course there were, but those concepts and judgements only reflected the appearance of things. We often use concepts and judgements in our daily life, but many of such concepts and judgements reflect only the appearance not the essence of things. So we cannot say that the formation of a concept automatically leads to the essence of things. Not necessarily. The difference between a concept and a sense perception is that the former masters the common characteristics and appearances of things and summarizes the common characteristics of things. Of course, essence can be reflected only by concepts, but this does not mean that all concepts reflect the essence of things. We now have many concepts. For instance, the concept of capitalism existed before Marxism, but then it did not reflect the essence of capitalism. The concept of the noun commodity existed long time ago, but it took economists several thousand years to study, from classical economics to Marx, before they finally understood the essence of commodity. Therefore, after a concept is formed, we usually have to go through a fairly long development stage before we can master the essence of things. For another instance, since the 1940's, there have been people reporting that they saw flying objects which did not look like airplanes or anything else. More and more people saw them but nobody knew what they were. So after failing to find their name after much research, we named them "flying saucers" which foreigners called "UFO—namely unidentified flying objects. Is this a concept? "Flying saucers"—unidentified flying objects—is a concept. But what exactly is this unidentified flying object or "flying saucer"? Is it sent by the people of another planet or an illusion? We don't know. We need to conduct research and prolonged studies and collect data before we can finally judge what exactly is a "flying saucer" and understand its essence. For still another instance, when did we learn the essence of men? Marx did. He said men's essence is the combination of social relations, so he grasped the essence of men. But, didn't the concept of men exist before then? Aristotle said men are rational animals and others said men are ...there were many concepts. Franklin said men are tool-making animals, which was affirmed by Marx. Therefore, the process of learning the essence of things is