Study Some Political Economy

Abstract

The great leader Chairman Mao has called upon us many times to study some political economy. This call is directed not only to comrades engaged in economic work but also to the broad masses of Communist Party members and revolutionary cadres — especially the Party's responsible cadres. "Marx's economic theory is the most profound, most complete, and most detailed attestation and application of the theory of Marx" (Lenin, "Karl Marx"). The study of Marxist political economy is very important for having a good grasp of Marxism, for thoroughly understanding our Party's basic program and basic line, for correctly carrying out the line and policies of the Party for the stage of socialist revolution, and for criticizing the anti-Party, anti-Marxist revisionist line of Liu Shao-ch'i and other swindlers. Marxist political economy is a science for the study of production relations, and production relations constitute the fundamental relations that determine all other relations in society. To study production relations, it is essential to study the contradiction between the production relations and the productive forces, the contradiction between the superstructure and the economic base, and the objective laws governing the development of human society. Engels pointed out that the proletarian party's "entire theoretical content stems from the study of political economy" (Karl Marx, A Critique of Political Economy). Bourgeois economists always study the economic relations of society as the relations between things, and use this to cover up the exploitative relations of capitalism. What Marxist political economy studies is not the relations between things but the relations among people, and ultimately the relations between classes. The production of material things has never been the result of individual production but of social production. In order to carry out production, people must form certain production relations one way or another. Production relations are determined by the nature of the productive forces, and in turn play an enormous role in the development of the productive forces. Production relations also change with the development of the productive forces. Production relations that are incompatible with the nature of the productive forces are inevitably transformed sooner or later. The sum total of production relations constitutes the economic base of society. A given economic base has its corresponding superstructure, that is, the state apparatus, army, laws, and all kinds of social ideology. Social production always develops under the impetus of contradictions between the production relations and the productive forces and between the superstructure and the economic base. The contradictions between the production relations and the productive forces and between the superstructure and the economic base are not contradictions between things. They are contradictions among people and between classes. To reveal the secret of exploitation of man by man under the capitalist system through the false appearance of things controlling and governing people and to scientifically prove the laws governing the origination, development, and disintegration of the capitalist system — this is the great contribution of Marxist political economy to the proletarian revolution.