WHERE DO CORRECT IDEAS COME FROM?
This passage is from the "Draft Decision of the Central Committee of the
Chinese Communist Party on Certain Problems in Our Present Rural Work".
May 1963
The passage was written by Mao Zedong.
Where do correct ideas come from? Do they drop from the skies ? No. Are
they innate in the mind! No. They come from social practice, and from it
alone; they come from three kinds of social practice, the struggle for
production, the class struggle and scientific experiment.
It is man's social being that determines his thinking. Once the correct
ideas characteristic of the advanced class are grasped by the masses, these
ideas turn into a material force which changes society and changes the
world. In their social practice, men engage in various kinds of struggle
and gain rich experience, both from their successes and from their
failures. Countless phenomena of the objective external world are reflected
in a man's brain through his five sense organs -- the organs of sight,
hearing, smell, taste and touch. At first, knowledge is perceptual. The
leap to conceptual knowledge, i.e., to ideas, occurs when sufficient
perceptual knowledge is accumulated. This is one process in cognition. It
is the first stage in the whole process of cognition, the stage leading
from objective matter to subiective consciousness, from existence to ideas.
Whether or not one's consciousness or ideas (including theories, policies,
plans or measures) do correctly reflect the laws of the objective external
world is not yet proved at this stage, in which it is not yet possible to
ascertain whether they are correct or not. Then comes the second stage in
the process of cognition, the stage leading from consciousness back to
matter, from ideas back to existence, in which the knowledge gained in the
first stage is applied in social practice to ascertain whether the
theories, policies, plans or measures meet with the anticipated success.
Generally speaking, those that succeed are correct and those that fail are
incorrect, and this is especially true of man's struggle with nature.
In social struggle, the forces representing the advanced class sometimes'
suffer defeat not because their ideas are incorrect but because, in the
balance of forces engaged in struggle, they are not as powerful for the
time being as the forces of reaction; they are therefore temporarily
defeated, but they are bound to triumph sooner or later. Man's. knowledge
makes another leap through the test of practice. This leap is more
important than the previous one. For it is this leap alone that can prove
the correctness or incorrectness of the first leap, i.e., of the ideas,
theories, policies, plans or measures formulated in the course of
reflecting the objective external world.
There is no other way of testing truth. Furthermore, the one and only
purpose of the proletariat in knowing the world is to change it. Often, a
correct idea can be arrived at only after many repetitions of the process
leading from matter to consciousness and then back to matter; that is,
leading from practice to knowledge and then back to practice. Such is the
Marxist theory of knowledge, the dialectical materialist theory of
knowledge.
Among our comrades there are many who do not yet understand this theory of
knowledge. When asked the source of their ideas, opinions, policies,
methods, plans and conclusions, eloquent speeches and long articles, they
consider the question strange and cannot answerr it. Nor do they comprehend
that matter can be transformed into consciousness and consciousness into
matter, although such leaps are phenomena of everyday life.
It is therefore necessary to educate our comrades in the dialectical
materialist theory of knowledge, so that they can orientate their thinking
correctly, become good at investigation and study and at summing up
experience, overcome difficulties, commit fewer mistakes, do their work
better, and struggle hard so as to build China into a great and powerful
socialist country and help the broad masses of the oppressed and exploited
throughout the world in fulfilment of our great internationalist duty.
http://home.clara.net/ncp/mao.html
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Elimination of the exploitation of man by man!
Yours in solidarity
Per Rasmussen
Denmark
http://home0.inet.tele.dk/pera/
http://w1.1559.telia.com/~u155900373/
http://w1.1559.telia.com/~u155900388/
Svar på dette:
Mitt hovedanliggende er erkjennelse. Og praksis. Kommunismen er grei den,
men nokså kunstfiendtlig, som nazismen.
Når man bruker tid på å erkjenne, må man ofte innom tilsynelatende
uforståelige og masete og tilsynelatende apolitiske ting.
Kommunister og andre politikere har stort sett liten greie på seg selv.
Det frie mennesket ønsker vi alle, det frie samfunn ønsker vi også alle,
men hvordan skal vi nå dette.
Psykologiens innsikt, at for å forandre andre må vi først forandre oss
selv, står ved lag.
Skal man forsøke å forandre denne teksten, kommer man galt avsted.
Med hilsen
Bror Wyller
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