PaRCha - JNU - AISA material - 2007 ID-19129
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young friend of mine. He is intelligent, well-read and thoroughly progressive. At one point he said, "I find Marxism rather orthodox, rigid, and inflexible. I have high regards for Marxism and for genuine Marxists like your party, but I cannot accept your theory as the last word. In reply I said that his comments reminded me of a passage I was reading the other day. Then I read out that passage to him from my diary: .
"We do not set ourselves up against the world in doctrinaire fashion with a new principle: Here is the truth! Here you must kneel! We do not seek to anticipate the new world dogmatically, but rather to discover it in the criticism of the old.... It is not our task to build up the future in advance and to settle all problems for all times; our task is ruthless criticism of everything that exists, ruthless in the sense that criticism will not shrink either from its own conclusions or from conflict with the powers that be..." .
"This is exactly what I stand for", exclaimed the young man, "a critical mind, a dynamic thought process, no formulas". .
"And this is exactly what Marx wrote", I quipped. Of course, I added, for Marx "the weapon of criticism" always included "criticism by weapons", because he was a philosopher who believed that it was not enough to explain the world, the point was "to change it". Then I told him this is how genuine Marxists think and act. For us, Marxism is not some received orthodoxy, some set of ready-made, immutable formulas. We sincerely believe in and try to act upon Mao's teaching that "Marxism-Leninism has in no way exhausted truth, but ceaselessly opens up roads to the knowledge of truth in course of practice." .
Yes friends, this is our approach to Marxism and to our own responsibility. We have to construct our own approach-roads to genuine knowledge by the sweat of our brow, by our creative labour. This requires both practical work among the masses and theoretical research by dedicated women and men organised as the communist party. It is through this theory-practice dialogue, through continuous creative practice and consistent theoretical work, that the relevance of Marxism has to be constantly rediscovered and reaffirmed in different contexts. .
The actual history of Marxism also bears this out. The theory of Marxism arose from the most advanced theoretical currents of the contemporary world: classical German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism. But this was only in the first instance. Since then, over the past 150 years and more, Marxism has been applied in different countries at different times in different ways. In the process it has picked up, experimented with, debated over, modified, and accepted and rejected many a political concept, movemental technique, organizational form, etc. This is how 19th century Marxism has developed into Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong thought of the 20th century, and today, in the ongoing process, it rests on us, the present generations, to reinforce and re-establish Marxism's relevance as a vibrant, youthful, ever-expanding worldview, as a guide to revolutionary action. In this work students and the youth have a great role to play. And this is only to be expected. As Lenin eloquently expressed it, .
"Is it not natural that youth should predominate in our party? We are the party of the future and the future belongs to the youth. We are a party of innovators and it is always the youth that most eagerly follow the innovators. We are a party that is waging a self-sacrificing struggle against the old rottenness and the youth is always the first to undertake a self-sacrificing struggle." .
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PaRCha - JNU - AISA material - 2007 ID-19129
.
young friend of mine. He is intelligent, well-read and thoroughly progressive. At one point he said, "I find Marxism rather orthodox, rigid, and inflexible. I have high regards for Marxism and for genuine Marxists like your party, but I cannot accept your theory as the last word. In reply I said that his comments reminded me of a passage I was reading the other day. Then I read out that passage to him from my diary: .
"We do not set ourselves up against the world in doctrinaire fashion with a new principle: Here is the truth! Here you must kneel! We do not seek to anticipate the new world dogmatically, but rather to discover it in the criticism of the old.... It is not our task to build up the future in advance and to settle all problems for all times; our task is ruthless criticism of everything that exists, ruthless in the sense that criticism will not shrink either from its own conclusions or from conflict with the powers that be..." .
"This is exactly what I stand for", exclaimed the young man, "a critical mind, a dynamic thought process, no formulas". .
"And this is exactly what Marx wrote", I quipped. Of course, I added, for Marx "the weapon of criticism" always included "criticism by weapons", because he was a philosopher who believed that it was not enough to explain the world, the point was "to change it". Then I told him this is how genuine Marxists think and act. For us, Marxism is not some received orthodoxy, some set of ready-made, immutable formulas. We sincerely believe in and try to act upon Mao's teaching that "Marxism-Leninism has in no way exhausted truth, but ceaselessly opens up roads to the knowledge of truth in course of practice." .
Yes friends, this is our approach to Marxism and to our own responsibility. We have to construct our own approach-roads to genuine knowledge by the sweat of our brow, by our creative labour. This requires both practical work among the masses and theoretical research by dedicated women and men organised as the communist party. It is through this theory-practice dialogue, through continuous creative practice and consistent theoretical work, that the relevance of Marxism has to be constantly rediscovered and reaffirmed in different contexts. .
The actual history of Marxism also bears this out. The theory of Marxism arose from the most advanced theoretical currents of the contemporary world: classical German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism. But this was only in the first instance. Since then, over the past 150 years and more, Marxism has been applied in different countries at different times in different ways. In the process it has picked up, experimented with, debated over, modified, and accepted and rejected many a political concept, movemental technique, organizational form, etc. This is how 19th century Marxism has developed into Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong thought of the 20th century, and today, in the ongoing process, it rests on us, the present generations, to reinforce and re-establish Marxism's relevance as a vibrant, youthful, ever-expanding worldview, as a guide to revolutionary action. In this work students and the youth have a great role to play. And this is only to be expected. As Lenin eloquently expressed it, .
"Is it not natural that youth should predominate in our party? We are the party of the future and the future belongs to the youth. We are a party of innovators and it is always the youth that most eagerly follow the innovators. We are a party that is waging a self-sacrificing struggle against the old rottenness and the youth is always the first to undertake a self-sacrificing struggle." .
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