Page 22 - SELECTED WORKS OF MAO TSE-TUNG Volume III.indd

20 MAO TSE-TUNG
For several decades, many of the returned students from abroad
have suffered from this malady. Coming home from Europe, America
or Japan, they can only parrot things foreign. They become gramo-
phones and forget their duty to understand and create new things.
This malady has also infected the Communist Party.
Although we are studying Marxism, the way many of our people
study it runs directly counter to Marxism. That is to say, they violate
the fundamental principle earnestly enjoined on us by Marx, Engels,
Lenin and Stalin, the unity of theory and practice. Having violated
this principle, they invent an opposite principle of their own, the
separation of theory from practice. In the schools and in the education
of cadres at work, teachers of philosophy do not guide students to
study the logic of the Chinese revolution; teachers of economics do
not guide them to study the characteristics of the Chinese economy;
teachcrs of political science do not guide them to study the tactics
of the Chinese revolution; teachers of military science do not guide
them to study the strategy and tactics adapted to China’s special
features; and so on and so forth. Consequently, error is disseminated,
doing people great harm. A person does not know how to apply in
Fuhsien what he has learned in Yenan. Professors of economics
1
cannot explain the relationship between the Border Region currency
and the Kuomintang currency, so naturally the students cannot ex-
2
plain it either. Thus a perverse mentality has been created among
many students; instead of showing an interest in China’s problems
and taking the Party’s directives seriously, they give all their hearts
to the supposedly eternal and immutable dogmas learned from
their teachers.
Of course, what I have just said refers to the worst type in our
Party, and I am not saying that it is the general case. However,
people of this type do exist; what is more, there are quite a few
of them and they cause a great deal of harm. This matter should not
be treated lightly.

III

In order to explain this idea further, I should like to contrast
two opposite attitudes.
First, there is the subjectivist attitude.