How to Scientifically Understand Communism and Faithfully Practice Communism?
Author Sun Peijun is Prof, in the Political Science and Law Teaching and Research Department of the Central Party School
Source: China Party and Government Cadres Forum, Issue 7, July 2018
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out at the meeting celebrating the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China: “To keep in mind our original aspiration and continue to move forward, we must bear in mind that our party has determined the struggle for communism and socialism as its own program since its founding, firmly uphold the lofty ideal of communism and the common ideal of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and constantly push forward the great practice of striving for lofty ideals.”
Ideals and beliefs mark the value pursuit and spiritual motivation of a political party. Without the inspiration and guidance of lofty ideals, even the most noble cause may lose its spiritual support and strong motivation. Party members and cadres must clearly understand communism, the “original aspiration” that our party has never forgotten, the “program” that it will always strive for, and the unswerving “lofty ideal”, and be firm believers and loyal practitioners of the lofty ideal of communism and the common ideal of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
1. The communist ideal is an important indicator of whether our party is strong and powerful.
When talking about communism, people will naturally think of many words related to it: the Communist International, the Internationale, the communist movement, communist successors, communist consciousness, time-tested and loyal communist fighters, Bethune-style communist fighters, etc. This is people’s simple understanding of communism. Some people, when talking about these words, do not understand this communist discourse system from the bottom of their hearts, do not use their hearts to experience the touching deeds of the Communists, but look at the beliefs and ideals of communism from a utilitarian perspective, and fail to believe in communism in thought, the original intention, and fight for the cause of communism in action, and “vulgarize” communism. The reason is that, on the one hand, the understanding of the connotation of communism is too superficial and one-sided; on the other hand, communism itself is also under the challenge of capitalist ideologies such as liberalism and “universalism”, and these “isms” also affect people’s value orientation to a certain extent.
We must have a scientific attitude towards scientific theories, and an important prerequisite for strengthening communist ideals and beliefs is to have a scientific understanding of communism. To form a scientific understanding of communism, we need to work hard on publicity and education, strengthen the construction of communist discourse power through the construction of disciplines such as philosophy, political science, and economics, popularize and publicize the original meaning of communism, and enhance the scientific and humanized interpretation of communist discourse, which is both easy to understand and true, so that people can truly understand what communism is intuitively, take the excellent traditions and advanced figures of communism seriously, organically unify academic and practical aspects, do not make exaggerations, do not avoid problems, and speak with the superiority and advancement of communism. Communists must persist in reading Marxist classics and understanding Marxist principles as a lifestyle and a spiritual pursuit, and use classics to cultivate integrity, temper thoughts, sublimate realms, and guide practice.
Communist Party members are believers and practitioners of communism, and they must maintain the political determination to pursue their ideals. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: “The decline of a political party often begins with the loss or lack of ideals and beliefs. Whether our party is strong and powerful depends not only on whether the whole party is unwavering in its ideals and beliefs, but also on whether every party member is unwavering in his ideals and beliefs.” The light of ideals is immortal, and the light of faith is immortal. The lofty ideal of communism has inspired generations of Communists to fight bravely, and thousands of martyrs have sacrificed their precious lives for this ideal. Today, when socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, Communists must bear in mind the wishes of the martyrs and remain committed to realizing the great ideals for which they shed blood and sacrificed.
2. The concept of communism was proposed on the basis of scientific criticism of the shortcomings of capitalist society and has strong vitality.
Historically, the communist practice model encountered setbacks, and the international communist movement once fell into a low ebb. In particular, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the drastic changes in Eastern Europe at the end of the 20th century, as well as the mistakes made by my country in the mid-20th century that were too eager for quick results and too impetuous to go beyond the laws of communist development, have caused great damage to communism and provided soil for the discrediting of communism.
In 1999: Victory Without a Battle, former US President Nixon believed that the rise of socialism was only a historical accident, and the socialist system in practice was just a passing historical guest who came and went in a hurry; he claimed that capitalism would defeat socialism without a battle at the end of the 20th century, and that the 21st century would be the “American Century” dominated by the United States and the capitalist system would once again dominate the world. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former US President Carter’s assistant for national security affairs, also asserted in the book The Great Failure: The Rise and Fall of Communism in the Twentieth Century that communism would irreversibly decline in history by the next century, and its practice and creed would no longer have anything to do with the human condition, and it would go down in history as the most abnormal political and rational deformity of the 20th century. American political scientist Fukuyama proposed that the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the dramatic changes in Eastern Europe, and the end of the Cold War marked the end of communism, and that there was only one way for history to develop, namely, the Western market economy and democratic politics. These, to a certain extent, reflected the bourgeoisie’s misunderstanding and even prejudice against communism.
The concept of communism was proposed on the basis of scientific criticism of the shortcomings of capitalist society. Capitalism is a mode of production and social system that has its own insurmountable antagonistic contradictions, a mode of production and social system that constantly creates confrontation, crisis, conflict and even war, a mode of production and social system that has the sole purpose of grabbing wealth, a mode of production and social system that builds the prosperity of a few people and a few countries on the poverty of the majority of people and most countries, a mode of production and social system that produces greed, corruption and injustice while producing wealth, and is doomed to have no future. The dialectics of history tells us that the prosperity of capitalism is just paving the way for it to be replaced by something new, and this new thing must be communism. On the basis of criticizing privatization, alienated labor, and human slavery in capitalist society, Marx and Engels further proposed: “Communism is the positive transcendence of private property, that is, human self-alienation, and therefore the real appropriation of human essence by and for man; therefore, it is the return of man to himself, to social (i.e., human) man, a return that is complete, conscious, and preserves all the wealth of previous development. This communism, as completed naturalism equals humanism, and as completed humanism equals naturalism, is the real solution to the contradiction between man and nature, and between man and man; it is the real solution to the struggle between existence and essence, objectification and self-affirmation, freedom and necessity, individual and class. It is the answer to the riddle of history, and it knows that it is this answer.”
Communism is now experiencing a “rebound” phenomenon to varying degrees in many capitalist countries or former socialist countries. Since the late 1990s, countries such as Germany, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have also increasingly set off a wave of “nostalgia for Eastern Europe”. After the “financial crisis”, many Westerners miss the life in the 1960s and 1970s more and more. Under global politics, network politics and ecological politics, communism has demonstrated strong vitality and inexhaustible energy in dealing with the relationship between people and things, people and people, and people and society, both in terms of concept and practice. Those arguments that slander communism have gradually lost their living space.
It has been 170 years since the publication of the Communist Manifesto. Human society has undergone tremendous changes, but the general principles expounded by Marxism are still completely correct as a whole. The scientific ideas of Marx and Engels on the future direction of social development are gradually becoming a reality.
Communism is between history and reality, between belief and practice. It is both subjective cognition and objective necessity. In understanding the discourse of communism, we cannot leave the European background, the Russian background, or the Chinese practice; we cannot leave the classic works of Marxism or the theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
We must make in-depth interpretations from the perspectives of history and reality, theory and practice, continuously improve the Marxist ideological awareness and theoretical level of party members and cadres, and truly get out of the misunderstanding of communism, sober in theory and firm in politics, maintain a clear understanding and persistent pursuit of lofty ideals and goals, always bear in mind communism, the “original intention” and lofty ideal of the Communists, and contribute to the realization of communism and the promotion of human progress.
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