Recently, the media has repeatedly emphasized the relationship between Marxism and China traditional culture. How to understand and recognize this problem? The author focuses on the essence of culture and China traditional culture.
First, the nature and characteristics of culture
"Culture" is a familiar concept to most people. As far as the author knows, it has four meanings: first, in the narrowest sense, culture is to know the words. In the old society, anyone who had attended school, could read letters and books was called a literate person, which was opposite to "illiteracy". Second, it refers to the creative work of literature, art, music and painting, which is called cultural work. This is the meaning of "culture" in the "Ministry of Culture" of our country. Third, it refers to the unique social ideology in social life, which is different from the economic and political phenomena in social life and constitutes three basic phenomena of human society with the former two. The culture that most people talk about in real life belongs to this meaning. Fourth, culture in the broadest sense, culture is humanization, and the sum of all material wealth and spiritual wealth created by human beings through labor is culture. Language and writing are special material symbols formed by human beings in the process of material production and communication, and they are also "culture" in the broadest sense. Another example is to study ancient culture, that is, to study the culture of that era through unearthed material cultural relics. The "culture" and its essence studied here are mainly the third meaning, that is, the ideology of society.
Historical materialism holds that the basic components of human society are material productivity, relations of production (the sum of which is the economic base of society) and superstructure. Productivity determines relations of production, and economic base determines superstructure. Superstructure is divided into political superstructure and ideological superstructure. National government departments, political parties, laws, military, police, prisons and other material facilities constitute the political superstructure of society, while philosophy, literature and art, morality, religion, political and legal thoughts constitute the ideological superstructure. Culture refers to the ideological superstructure. Historical materialism also distinguishes all social phenomena into social existence and social consciousness. Social existence is all material phenomena in social life, and social consciousness is all spiritual phenomena in social life. Social existence determines social consciousness, and social consciousness reacts to social existence. There are different levels of social consciousness: the low-level social consciousness is social psychology, which is related to daily social life and is an unsystematic, amorphous and spontaneous reflection form, which is manifested in feelings, customs, habits, prejudices, spontaneous tendencies and beliefs. High-level social consciousness is social ideology, which is a systematic and theoretical reflection form of social life. This form has a clear division of labor, and there is a set of relatively stable concepts, judgments and reasoning forms inside, forming their own relatively independent disciplinary systems. Social psychology and social ideology are divided into low-level and high-level, direct and indirect, which is their difference, and they are internally related. Social ideology depends on social psychology,And influence and guide social psychology, but it can’t be attributed to social psychology. In terms of the division between social consciousness and social existence, "culture" or "cultural construction" in the general sense mainly refers to the highest level of social ideology in social consciousness.
Because culture belongs to the ideological part of superstructure and social ideology in social consciousness, it leads to the following basic characteristics of "culture":
1, the historical culture or the times.
Because social consciousness is absolutely dependent on social existence, superstructure is absolutely dependent on economic base. The productive forces and relations of production in human society are developing and changing, social existence is developing and changing, and the specific content of culture is also developing and changing. Mankind has experienced primitive society, slave society, feudal society, capitalist society and socialist society. Therefore, the culture based on economy is primitive social culture, slave social culture, feudal social culture, capitalist social culture, socialist culture or Marxist culture. Although these cultures have their inheritance and commonness, they are essentially different, and they are historic or epochal. Never confuse the essential differences between different cultures in different times. There is absolutely no "universal value" culture that transcends the socio-economic foundation and historical era and applies to all historical periods. The cultures that have great influence on the world today are feudal culture, capitalist culture and socialist culture. The cultures that have a great influence on contemporary China are China’s historical and traditional culture, religious culture, western culture (that is, capitalist culture) and socialist culture.
2. Nationality of culture
Because social ideology depends on social psychology. Different countries and ethnic groups have different economic systems, geographical environment, social psychology, habits and customs, and their cultures also have extremely strong national characteristics. To study the phenomenon of "culture", we must study a nation’s own characteristics such as economy, politics, living environment, customs and history. The culture of our Chinese nation is very different from that of India, Arabia, ancient Greece and Rome.
3. The class nature of culture
The primitive society of mankind is primitive public ownership, and the primitive culture formed on this basis is basically applicable to all primitive people of that era. However, private ownership appeared at the end of primitive society. In real life, human beings are divided into two parts, that is, those who possess the means of production and those who do not. They have different positions and functions in the production process, and have different possession of labor products. Some of them occupy the labor of others. This is the emergence of opposing classes. The emergence of opposing classes from their different production relations and positions will inevitably produce opposing ideologies, which in fact produce different cultural contents. As Chairman Mao said, everyone lives in a certain class position, and all kinds of thoughts are branded with class. Slave owners and classes in slave society, landlords and peasants in feudal society, bourgeoisie and proletariat in capitalist society. Its ideology and cultural content are bound to have a strong class consciousness, which is fundamentally different in essence. This is the class nature of culture.
4. Historical inheritance and interaction of culture.
Culture is rooted in the economic base, but once the specific cultural content is produced, it will not disappear immediately with the change of the economic base that formed it, but will exist in the new social form for a long time, and its dross content will have a negative effect on the new social form, and the positive and essence content will be absorbed and inherited by the cultural content of the new social form. At the same time, the cultures of different countries and ethnic groups will also play a greater or lesser role and influence in the communication between countries and ethnic groups and various communication activities.
5. The reaction of culture to social economic foundation and social existence.
The existence and development of culture is absolutely restricted by economic base and social existence, but it also has relative independence, which not only has its own development law, but also has great reaction to social existence. That is to say, if this cultural content adapts to the economic base and social development, it will have a positive role in promoting and promoting the society, and vice versa. We can’t generally say that all cultures have a progressive role, nor can we say that they all have a negative or obstructive role, but we should analyze specific cultures in specific historical times and specific conditions.
6. Culture shapes or humanizes people.
The development of human society is not only manifested in the development of productive forces, economic base and superstructure, that is, the basic social contradictions. It also shows human development. Historical materialism holds that human nature is not natural eating, drinking and sexual behavior, but people in social relations, which is the sum of social relations. People are concrete, historical and class people in class society. Culture is also a specific historical class culture, and the role of any culture in history must be transformed into people’s specific qualities and abilities through people. Its substantive difference lies in the different standards of people shaped by cultures of different times and classes. The core of feudal culture is the supremacy of power, and the standard of shaping people is the absolutely obedient slave-type people who prostrate themselves before the power, which is the need of the feudal ruling class. The core of capitalist culture is the supremacy of money, and the standard of shaping people is selfish people who prostrate themselves before money, which is the need of bourgeois rule. The core of socialist culture is master consciousness and subject consciousness, and the standard of shaping people is social master type, which is the need of the socialist essence of working people being masters of their own affairs based on public ownership.
Second, the essence of China traditional culture and its social role
China’s traditional culture is national in the first place. It is a national culture formed on the basis of China’s productivity and economy for thousands of years. There is no doubt about this. The author focuses on the essence of China traditional culture from two aspects: Marxist class analysis method and materialist dialectical method.
China traditional culture, in a complete sense, should refer to all the history and culture of the Chinese nation. However, people usually understand it in a narrow sense, not referring to the whole history and culture of the Chinese nation, but referring to the feudal traditional culture left over from thousands of years of feudal economy and politics, which was the dominant culture in China society before the May 4th Movement.
First, the negative nature of China traditional culture is understood by using the method of class analysis.
Marx said that the dominant ideology is the culture of the economically dominant ruling class. The essence of feudal culture is the culture of the dominant feudal ruling class in feudal society, that is, the culture of the landlord class ruling, exploiting and squeezing farmers. From its basic content, it has the following characteristics:
1, the supremacy of power
Feudal culture, especially its typical thought, Confucianism, emphasizes Jun Jun, ministers, fathers and sons, the father as a child, the husband as a wife, and the monarch as a minister. You told me to die, and I had to die. From this, a strict hierarchical system is formed, and power is supreme, power worship, fear of power, pursuit of power and dependence on power are formed. Form the truth of power, refer to a deer as a horse, and the monarch is endowed by God. Most people are required to absolutely submit to powerful forces, including foreign powerful forces. The root of the traitor phenomenon in China for thousands of years is to succumb to this foreign powerful force. There is a common saying in China, that is, "He who knows the times is a wise man". This so-called "current affairs" is "internal and external powerful forces." Almost all "traitors" regard this sentence as their "theoretical basis" for betraying the people, the nation and the country.
2. "Man-eating" culture
Confucianism emphasizes the "three cardinal principles" as well as the "five permanents", that is, "benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom and faith". "Benevolence" seems to emphasize the spirit of mutual love. However, Lu Xun said in Diary of a Madman: "When I look at the history, there is no age in this history, and the words’ benevolence, righteousness and morality’ are written on every crooked leaf. I couldn’t sleep anyway. I read it carefully in the middle of the night, only to see from the cracks that the word’ cannibalism’ was written all over the book! " The "cannibalism" mentioned here is not a material cannibalism, but a spiritual cannibalism, that is, turning people into people who are absolutely obedient in front of those in power and are not allowed to have any doubts and rebellious behaviors, and they will always be "sinners" in front of those in power. On seeing the emperor, Zhong Shen in the TV series Liu Luoguo said, "The emperor is wise, but the slave is guilty.". However, he always said to his subordinates and ordinary people, "I am wise, you are guilty." Wang Gang, the actor who plays He Shen, once met a grassroots cadre. He held Wang Gang’s hand tightly and said, "You played He Shen very well. I learned a lot from He Shen." In fact, I learned the "cannibalism" culture of being a slave to the superior and a master to the inferior. In real life, it is manifested in bullying the weak and fearing the strong, bullying the good and fearing the evil, bullying the people, bullying others and so on.
3. Inverted concept of justice and benefit.
In cultural dictionaries, "benefit" is generally interpreted as "material benefit" and "righteousness" as "spiritual pursuit". Material determines the spirit, and there is no meaning that is divorced from the basis of material interests. Italy is also good, that is, it is righteousness to seek the interests of the majority of people. However, in China’s feudal traditional culture, we tried our best to belittle the legitimate pursuit of material interests by the broad masses of working people, and tried our best to raise the pursuit of spirit by the elites of a few ruling classes. This "righteousness" actually represents the common interests of the ruling class. Confucius said: "A gentleman is a metaphor for righteousness, while a villain is a metaphor for profit". "Gentleman with wild taste, villain with earth; A gentleman cherishes punishment, a villain cherishes benefits ",and Zhu Xi, a Confucian scholar in the Song Dynasty, said that" preserving justice and destroying human desires "are all typical thoughts that lead to the inversion of good and evil.
4. Selfishness
Feudal society is also a typical private ownership society, and it is bound to advocate private ideas based on this private ownership economy. In feudal culture, people tried their best to publicize that "man is not for himself, and the devil takes the hindmost" and "man dies for wealth, and birds die for food". However, in the official and some thinkers, it is also advocated that "the world is public." However, this kind of "public" is not the common interest of the vast majority of people, but refers to the feudal emperor who lived in the world in a broad sense and the small family of individuals in a narrow sense, and is still "selfish" in essence. This shows the typical hypocrisy of this culture as well as the "upside down view of righteousness and benefit".
5, despise labor theory
How to treat people’s material productive labor is also an important content of culture. The leading part of China’s traditional culture despises working people and material production and labor, such as Mencius’ "Those who work hard rule people, and those who work hard rule people" and Confucius’ "You can’t move from being wise to being foolish". Confucius also divided people into four classes, that is, "those who are born to know are superior, those who learn and know are secondary, those who are trapped and know are again, those who are trapped but don’t learn, and the people are inferior."
6, reading an official theory
China’s traditional culture extremely despises laborers and laborers, and advocates strict social hierarchy, thus trying to encourage a few people to pursue culture. But the goal of pursuing culture is not to improve and develop oneself and serve the society, but to climb to the highest level of society and pursue power. For example, "learning to be an excellent official", "where does the official come from when there is no scholar at home", "Nobody asked after ten years of cold window, and he became famous in one fell swoop" and so on.
From the class analysis of Confucianism, which is the core of the dross content in China traditional culture, especially in feudal culture, the personality characteristics molded by China traditional culture are distorted and one-sided, with extremely serious characteristics such as selfishness, servility, hypocrisy, indifference and internal friction. It is the spiritual opium that paralyzes the people, the spiritual weapon that defends the feudal ruling class, the ideological root that hinders the development of China’s productive forces and science and technology, and the extremely important reason that led to the continuation of the feudal society in China for thousands of years, so it became one of the main targets of criticism and attack by the May 4th Movement. And up to now, it still smells like a corpse in a coffin in China, especially the decadent culture of "supremacy of power", "bullying the weak and fearing the strong", "being wise and foolish" and "every man for himself and the devil takes the hindmost", which is too harmful to contemporary China society, including cadres and intellectuals. If we don’t face up to and acknowledge its extremely serious corrosive and destructive effect on contemporary China, we are definitely not a Marxist.
Secondly, the positive factors of China traditional culture are recognized by materialist dialectics.
Materialist dialectics requires a dialectical analysis of everything, and so should the traditional culture of China. The distinctive feature of culture in class society is class, but it is also human culture, the product of the development of human civilization and the spiritual achievement of civilization accumulated by people at that time. At the same time, the peasant class, as an oppressed class, also forms its own relatively unique peasant class culture from its own economic relations and political status; Even in the ruling class, there must be opposition between justice and evil, progress and conservative reaction, which will form different degrees of opposing cultural content. In this sense, China’s traditional culture must also contain a lot of excellent essence.
1, the sense of social responsibility
Feudal society is a private ownership society, which inevitably forms the selfish world outlook and outlook on life of the exploiting class. But people are social people, and some members of the ruling class can also proceed from the interests of most people in society, thus forming a strong sense of social responsibility. For example, Fan Zhongyan in the Song Dynasty "worries about the world first, and then enjoys the world", the couplets of Donglin Academy in the Ming Dynasty "The sound of wind and rain reading is like ears, and everything in the world is concerned about family affairs and state affairs", and Gu Yanwu in the Qing Dynasty "The rise and fall of the world, every man has a responsibility" and so on.
2. Patriotism
On the basis of social responsibility, a large number of officials and literati with strong patriotic feelings have emerged in various historical dynasties. For example, Qu Yuan, a native of Chu in the Warring States Period, and Yue Fei in the Song Dynasty (30 fame, dust and earth, 8,000 miles of clouds and the moon). A strong man is hungry for meat from Hu Lu, and talks about his thirst for the blood of Hun), Lu You (who is humble and doesn’t dare to worry about his country), Wen Tianxiang (who has never died in life since ancient times, and keeps his heart in the history), and Lin Zexu in the Qing Dynasty (who is greedy for life and death, why should he avoid it because of misfortune and happiness).
3. Independent personality characteristics
The dominant feudal culture created an important personality characteristic that everything was subordinate to power and there was no ability to distinguish right from wrong, beauty and ugliness, good and evil. However, there are also some intellectuals who are unyielding to power and evil forces. They demand "distinguishing clearly" and pursue independent personality. "The mighty can’t be bent, the poor can’t be moved, and the rich can’t be lewd." Li Kang, a litterateur of the Three Kingdoms, exposed the phenomenon of destroying independent opinions and outstanding talents in social life, saying, "The wood is beautiful in the forest, and the wind will destroy it; When piled out of the shore, the flow will be turbulent; It is also pointed out that "people with lofty ideals and aspirations are benevolent, but they still regret it", that is, those who have great ideals and ambitions and are determined to make a difference remain unmoved and unswervingly follow the original path. This expresses the independent consciousness and persistent belief of intellectuals.
4, the pursuit of equality and awareness of resistance to powerful and evil forces.
The core of feudal culture is inequality, but among the oppressed classes and people, this concept of inequality is strongly opposed, and countless peasant uprisings of different scales have taken place in the past dynasties against the feudal economic and political system. For example, in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Chen Sheng Wu Guang Uprising at the end of Qin Dynasty, Greenwood Uprising at the end of Western Han Dynasty, Yellow Scarf Uprising at the end of Eastern Han Dynasty, Huang Chao Uprising at the end of Tang Dynasty, Classical Fang La Uprising in Song Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang Uprising at the end of Yuan Dynasty, Li Zicheng Zhang Xianzhong Uprising at the end of Ming Dynasty, Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Uprising at the end of Qing Dynasty and so on. They fought against the feudal exploitation and oppression system with a series of slogans, such as "Heaven is dead, Yellow Heaven should stand", "All the rich and the poor" and "All the heavens are exempt from taxation". Because farmers are not representatives of advanced productive forces and their own class limitations, all previous peasant uprisings have failed. But as Chairman Mao said, in China’s feudal society, only this kind of peasant class struggle, peasant uprising and peasant war was the real driving force of historical development. Because every major peasant uprising and peasant war hit the feudal rule at that time, it also promoted the development of social productive forces to some extent.
5. Pay attention to people’s consciousness
While advocating contempt for labor and laborers, feudal culture also produced its opposite thought of attaching importance to the people. For example, during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, there were ideas such as "people-oriented" and "water can carry a boat or overturn it". In the process of long-term contact with the working people, some intellectuals also deeply feel the greatness of labor and laborers. A large number of pastoral poems created by Tao Yuanming, especially his famous article Peach Blossom Garden, eulogize the industriousness, simplicity and greatness of the peasant class. Lu You, a patriotic poet in the Song Dynasty, has more profound feelings for farmers. Although he did not establish and could not establish the mass historical view, he eulogized the peasants engaged in material production and labor as great heroes in his works. For example, in a seven-law poem reflecting rural pastoral life, he said: "It is a heroic thing to plow, and it is not necessary to die of old age in Nanyang" (referring to Zhuge Liang, who was originally a farmer, would not be a hero if he had not been taken care of by Liu Bei and had been farming in his hometown all his life).
The essence of China’s traditional culture also includes many outstanding ideological achievements such as simple materialism and simple dialectics in philosophy, educational learning thoughts, literature, calligraphy, painting and poetry.
The above-mentioned excellent essence of China’s traditional culture, though not the mainstream in the feudal society of China for thousands of years, has been passed down from generation to generation, edifying and shaping many great heroes and outstanding figures with independent personality, critical struggle spirit, integrity and honesty, and they have also played a certain role in promoting the development of China society. On the whole, however, the positive content of China’s traditional culture is not dominant in the development of feudal history, and its role is much smaller than that of the dross content. It is absolutely wrong to regard the whole feudal culture, including a large number of decadent dross, especially its core Confucianism, as compatible with Marxism.
To sum up, to understand the essence of culture and China traditional culture, we need to understand China traditional culture from the unity of general and individual culture, and put China traditional culture in the process of historical development, from its epochal, class and dialectical nature. In particular, we should understand its essence from its class nature, and we should not talk about its essence in an abstract way without class nature, the inheritance and development of China’s traditional culture in a critical and abstract way, and we should not talk about the compatibility and mutual combination of Marxism and China’s traditional culture in an abstract way without the times and class nature. The essence and soul of Marxism is to eliminate private ownership and class struggle. The essence and mainstream of China’s traditional culture are ideological and theoretical weapons to safeguard feudal private ownership and the feudal ruling class. How can this fundamental opposition between them be naturally combined? Mao Zedong Thought is the product of the combination of Marxism and China’s revolutionary construction practice, and China’s revolutionary construction practice certainly includes the practical inheritance, reform and development of China’s history and culture. Mao Zedong’s development of Marxism is the result of studying China’s class struggle practice and its history, including its cultural development history, and China’s present situation, especially the class struggle practice against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism. In the practice of China’s revolutionary construction, he removed the dross and absorbed the essence of China’s traditional culture to the greatest extent, making the past serve the present and bringing forth the new. This combination is a critical, sublating and revolutionary combination of China’s traditional culture in the practical struggle of Marxism China.It is by no means that China’s way of adhering to and developing Marxism is simply attributed to the combination with traditional culture without analysis or criticism. It can be seen that the word "excellent" in "combining with Chinese excellent traditional culture" is very important, and it is absolutely impossible to distinguish between good and bad and restore the ancient ways in an all-round way.
We must not forget that Mao Zedong and other revolutionaries of the older generation and the Communist Party of China (CPC) led the people of China to create the best, richest and most precious red traditional cultural achievements unprecedented in China and even in human history. This has been deeply rooted in people’s hearts and has become the spiritual pillar of hundreds of millions of people. In fact, it has become the most advanced, important and core part of China’s excellent traditional culture, and no one can exclude it. Without this core and subject, the combination with China traditional culture will be lost and counterproductive.
(The author is a professor at Tianjin Normal University and a senior researcher at Kunlun Policy Research Institute; Source: Kunlun Policy Network[original]Revised draft, authorized by the author)
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