On the Emancipation of the Mind

Abstract

Today our country is entering a prosperous period of great reform and change. We are starting to reform our economic and political institutions. This is a great event of historical significance. In this reform, our basic socialist system will not be changed, but specific institutions ought to be changed. Not only will the economic institutions be changed, solving the problems of the ownership structure and the management system within state ownership, but also the political institutions will be changed, revising the constitution, and establishing a highly democratic political system. Today’s emancipation of the mind is characteristic of the time and represents great progress compared with the past. Such progress has been realized at great cost. The ‘credit’ should go to the ‘Great Cultural Revolution’ because the pendulum swings away from extremes and a full exposure of problems creates the necessary conditions for the emancipation of the mind and reform. If China had not experienced this calamity, ideological rigidity might have persisted for a relatively long time. Although we now have a greater understanding, we paid too great a price for that understanding. We are now aware that we must manage affairs according to the genuine scientific attitude of Marxism and that what we need most today is democracy and science.