To develop a party organization, it is impossible not to understand Marxism. I started reading this book on April 2, 2025, took handwritten notes, and then recorded them here, so there may be some slight discrepancies.
April 2, 2025
22/576
Preface Marxist philosophy is the only scientific and thoroughly revolutionary philosophy.
In class society, all philosophies have class characteristics. People also have a certain class worldview, used to understand and transform the world. However, some people are not necessarily consciously aware of this; their worldview is not systematic or theoretical. Philosophers systematize and theorize their worldview, usually serving their class (in capitalist society, the bourgeoisie not only controls the material means of production but also the spiritual means of production).
Here, an example of a worker and God is given. When workers suffer oppression and exploitation, bourgeois philosophers tell them that it is created by God, and everything is unchangeable; just endure it. This makes them accept bourgeois oppression and exploitation, reflecting the class nature of philosophy. Philosophical struggle is a reflection of class struggle.
There are two most significant and fundamental issues in philosophical struggle. The first concerns the relationship between thinking and existence (or spirit and nature, consciousness and matter, subjective and objective). The second concerns whether the world develops, why it develops, and how it develops.
Regarding the first issue, there are two aspects. The first aspect concerns whether thinking or existence is primary. Materialism believes that existence determines thinking, while idealism believes that thinking determines existence. The second aspect is whether thinking can understand existence; this issue belongs to the first. One view is that thinking can understand existence, known as gnoseology; the other believes that thinking cannot understand existence, known as agnosticism.
For the second issue, we should not engage in metaphysics. We should adopt the contradiction theory, which states: within all things in the world, there are opposing components—contradictions. Things develop and change under internal contradictions, involving not only quantitative change but also qualitative change. This is the development view of dialectics.
We should adopt materialism, gnoseology, dialectics, and oppose idealism, agnosticism, and metaphysics.
Before Marxism emerged, no philosophy was truly scientific.
There are two reasons. First, previous philosophies were basically philosophies of the exploiting classes. Due to their narrow interests and class biases, they distorted the world to maintain their interests.
Second, small-scale production and lack of scientific knowledge limited people’s horizons. Even if some philosophies contained partial truths, they were generally anti-scientific.
Similarly, before Marxism emerged, no philosophy was thoroughly revolutionary. The reason, as mentioned above, is to maintain the reactionary interests of the exploiting classes. Only Marxist philosophy, as the worldview of the proletariat, is the only thoroughly revolutionary philosophy since human history.
The birth of Marxist philosophy signifies the death of all old philosophies (it is a scientific philosophy). It marks a great revolution in the history of philosophy and a new era in human cognition. When studying and applying Marxist philosophy, we must understand the fundamental opposition between Marxism and all old philosophies.
In summary, we must distinguish the boundaries of materialism and idealism, gnoseology and agnosticism, dialectics and metaphysics. We must also distinguish Marxist philosophy from all old philosophies (including those that appear in new forms, especially Western metaphysics, anarchism, revisionism, etc.). These are the major issues of right and wrong that run through all aspects of philosophical struggle. This is the issue discussed in the preface.
Our Marxist philosophy is the most scientific and revolutionary philosophy. It can shatter all old philosophies and transform people’s worldview. Therefore, we must dare to debate and be good at debating because all old philosophies will appear ridiculous or reactionary under the scientific and revolutionary nature of Marxism.
P.S.: The two passages I posted earlier seem to have gone unnoticed in my previous posts. Could you please take a look and criticize or praise?