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The 45th anniversary of Chairman Mao's death is approaching.
45 years, nearly half a century, is a long time, but it is also like yesterday.
On September 9, 1976, when I suddenly heard mourning and the "letter to the whole party, the whole army, and the people of all ethnic groups in the country" on the radio, the feeling of shock, grief, and dazedness and overwhelm was unforgettable, and did not slightly weather or erode with time.
On such a day, how should Chairman Mao be commemorated?
I believe that making efforts to study Chairman Mao's writings and arming one's mind with Mao Zedong Thought is one of the best ways to commemorate it.
Mao Zedong Thought is an incomparably rich treasure trove of wisdom, according to statistics, Chairman Mao wrote more than 20 million words in his lifetime, and it is very difficult to master all of them in a short period of time and learn thoroughly.
Therefore, in studying Mao Zedong Thought, there is indeed a problem of "finding tricks." Of course, the "trick" here does not mean opportunism, but that it is necessary to master a good learning method and have a ranking of the content of learning, so as to achieve the learning effect relatively quickly.
Some time ago, I was invited to give a lecture to some cadres, students, and people in the business circles on my experience in studying Chairman Mao's "Theory of Contradictions" and "Theory of Practice."
In my lecture, I pointed out that Chairman Mao has successively put forward five formulas in terms of epistemology and methodology, and understanding and mastering these five formulas is of great significance to comprehensively grasping Mao Zedong's philosophical thinking.
The five formulas are:
1. "Material-Spirit-Matter";
2. "Practice-Awareness-Practice";
3. "Special-General-Special";
4. "Mass-Leader-Masses";
5. "Democracy-Centralization-Democracy";
Many people are very interested after listening to it, and hope that I can write an article on each formula for easy learning and communication.
I think this is a good idea, and today I will write the first formula: "material-spirit-matter".
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The formula "matter-spirit-matter" is Chairman Mao's article "Where Does Man's Correct Thought Come From?" The article proposes:
A correct understanding often needs to go through the transition from matter to spirit, from spirit to matter, that is, from practice to understanding, from understanding to practice, and only after many iterations can it be completed. It is the epistemology of dialectical materialism. ”
This article was written by Chairman Mao in May 1963 when he revised the "Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Several Issues Concerning the Present Rural Work (Draft)", which was later compiled and independently written, which also reflected Chairman Mao's style as an essayist and a philosophical person: targeted, eclectic, and natural.
Chairman Mao's formula is popularly called "material into spirit, spirit into matter," that is, "two changes." Chairman Mao said,
"Some comrades find it incomprehensible that matter can become spirit, and spirit can become material, which is a common leap in daily life. Our comrades, therefore, must be educated in dialectical materialist epistemology. ”
First of all, it should be pointed out here that "matter becomes spirit, and spirit becomes matter" is only a philosophical generalization, not simply saying that material things can become spiritual things like magic, and conversely, spiritual things can become material things like "sesame opening the door", and the proposition of "two changes" cannot be understood in such a simple, intuitive, and vulgar way.
The so-called "material to spirit" refers to people's understanding of objective things through practice, generating perceptual cognition and then rising to rational cognition, forming feelings, perceptions, appearances, and theories, viewpoints, and propositions about objective things, so as to understand and grasp objective things in the form of concepts.
Chairman Mao explained this process in a very popular way in his Treatise on Practice: "If you want to know the taste of pears, you must taste them yourself." After tasting it, you will know that the taste of pears is sour and sweet, and this recognition can guide you whether you will buy pears next time.
With my experience in learning to fly in my early years, when I first saw the plane, I also felt that it was a behemoth and difficult to control, but after the instructor took the flight and practiced by myself, I summed up the conclusion that "the plane can be controlled and can fly well", and when I saw the plane, I no longer felt afraid but felt amiable, which is a process of "practice to understanding" and "material to spirit".
The so-called "transformation of spirit into matter" means that, on the basis of understanding the nature and laws of objective things and under the guidance of correct theory, we should formulate lines, policies, plans, programs, and methods, put ideological theories into people's actions, and transform them into material practices that transform the objective world, that is, transform spiritual forces into material things and change subjective things into objective things.
The formation of Chairman Mao's "On Protracted War" and its great role vividly embody the dialectical process of "changing matter into spirit and spirit into matter."
When "On Protracted War" was published, the all-out War of Resistance had already broken out for 10 months, and a lot of positive and negative experience had been accumulated; it was precisely the existence of such a big material premise as the practice of the War of Resistance that had been refined and processed by Chairman Mao's brain to form a series of conclusions on the protracted War of Resistance. This process is undoubtedly the process of "material to spiritual".
After the publication of "On Protracted War," because it reflected the essential regularity of the War of Resistance Against Japan, it became the general policy of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and guided the Chinese people to finally win a great victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan. This process is the process of "spiritual transformation into matter".
By the way, people usually think of "On Protracted War" as a military work, and I think it is not only a military masterpiece, but also a philosophical masterpiece.
From a more macroscopic historical point of view, after Marxism was introduced to China, it was combined with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution to give birth to Mao Zedong Thought. Under the guidance of Mao Zedong Thought, the Communist Party of China led the people to radiate tremendous material transformation forces, won the great victory of the new-democratic revolution, established the new China, and since then, has made tremendous achievements in socialist revolution and construction. China is no longer the China of the past, and has achieved the transformation and leap of "material into spirit, spirit into material".
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From the material to the spiritual process, it is very important to extract the material from the coarse, to remove the false and the true, from this and the other, from the surface and the inside of the thinking, analysis, so that the "spirit" can reflect the essence of the "material" and its internal laws of development and change, and can not be interpreted according to the needs of interests, otherwise, in the second half of the formula, that is, from the spirit to the material, from the process of understanding practice, it will fall behind and will be defeated.
For example, in 1991, the Collapse of the Soviet Union and the victory of the United States in the Cold War were also a huge material prerequisite.
The fundamental reason why the United States was able to win the Cold War was that the Soviet Union itself had a problem, that is, the leadership of the CPSU had deviated from the principles of socialism and the Soviet people.
However, the Japanese-American political scientist Fukuyama, out of ideological considerations, made a wrong interpretation of this, attributing it to the absolute correctness of the Western economic and political system, and then came to the conclusion of "the end of history".
In the "material-spiritual" stage, Fukuyama made a decisive mistake, but his erroneous perception was recognized and accepted by the victorious Us ruling clique.
Under the guidance of this "theory", the United States began the process of exporting "universal values" with color revolutions and armed invasions in the "spiritual-material" stage, which was not only futile, but also led to its own rapid decline. The hasty withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan and the collapse of the Afghan regime constructed by the United States according to "universal values" are the latest proofs.
Finally, I would like to say that the formula of "matter-spirit-matter" put forward by Chairman Mao is an infinitely rich philosophical proposition, and my short article is only a throwing brick and a guide, and everyone is welcome to discuss it, and I hope to teach it to the Fang family.