Mao Zedong On Dialectical Materialism полностью

We are opposed to “Left” phrase-mongering. China’s Li Lisan-ism of 1930, Trotskyism in the Soviet Union when it could still be regarded as a Communist faction [p. 233] (but which has now become a most reactionary faction), and ultra-left thought in all countries of the world, are all of this sort. The thinking of “Leftists” outstrips a given stage of development of the objective process; some regard their fantasies as truth, while others strain to realize in the present an ideal which can only be realized in the future. They alienate themselves from the current practice of the majority of the people and from the realities of the day, and show themselves adventurist in their actions.

Idealism and mechanistic thinking (jixielun),[3-364] opportunism and adventurism, none of these is based on the epistemology of dialectical materialism, and are all characterized by the breach between the subjective and the objective, by the separation of knowledge from practice. The Marxist[3-365] theory of knowledge, characterized as it is by scientific social practice, cannot but resolutely oppose these wrong ideologies. Marxists recognize that in the absolute and general process of development of the universe, the development of each particular process is relative, and that hence, in absolute truth,[3-366] man’s knowledge of a particular process at any given stage of development is only relative truth.[3-367] The development of an objective process is full of contradictions and struggles, and so is the development of the movement of human knowledge. All the dialectical movements of the objective world can sooner or later be reflected in knowledge.[3-368] In practice,[3-369] the process of[3-370] developing and passing away is infinite, and so is the process of coming into being, developing and passing away in human knowledge. As man’s practice which changes objective reality in accordance with given theories, ideas,[3-371] plans, or programmes, advances further and further, his knowledge of objective reality likewise becomes deeper and deeper. The movement of change in the world of objective reality is never-ending and so is man’s cognition of truth through practice.[3-372] Marxism[3-373] has in no way exhausted truth but ceaselessly opens up roads to the knowledge of truth in the course of practice. Our conclusion is the concrete, historical unity of the subjective and the objective, of theory and practice, of knowing and doing, and we are opposed to all erroneous ideologies, whether “Left” or “Right”,[3-374] which depart from concrete history.

In the whole universe, in the present epoch of the development of nature and society, the responsibility of correctly knowing and changing the world[3-375] has been placed by history upon the shoulders of the proletariat and its party. This process, die practice of changing the world, which is determined in accordance with scientific knowledge, has already reached a historic moment in the world and in China, [p. 234] a great moment unprecedented in human history, that is, the moment for completely banishing darkness from the world and from China and for changing the world into a world of light such as never previously existed. The struggle of the proletariat and the revolutionary people to change the world comprises the fulfillment of the following tasks: to change the objective world, and at the same time, their own subjective world – to change their cognitive ability and change the relations between the subjective and the objective world. Such a change has already come about in one part of the globe, in the Soviet Union. There the people are pushing forward this process of change, for themselves and the world. The people of China and the rest of the world are either just beginning to go through, or will go through, such a process. And the objective world which is to be changed also includes all the opponents of change, who, in order to be changed, must go through a stage of compulsion before they can enter the stage of voluntary, conscious change. The epoch of world communism will be reached when all mankind voluntarily and consciously changes itself and the world.