Chapter 39 Initiative comes from seeking truth from facts[1]

(June 18, 1960) Initiative is an extremely important thing.The initiative is to "build a strategic position" and "be as powerful as a bamboo".This matter comes from seeking truth from facts, from the true reflection of objective conditions in people's minds, that is, people's dialectical understanding of the objective outside world.Our socialist revolution and socialist construction in the past ten years has been such a process.After many wrong understandings in the middle, these mistakes are gradually corrected, so as to be correct.As far as comrades in the entire Party are concerned, not all their thinking is correct, and many people do not understand the stand, viewpoint and method of Marxism-Leninism.We have the responsibility to help them, especially comrades in counties, communes and teams.I myself have made many mistakes.Some committed the crime together with the parties involved.For example, in Beidaihe[2] I agreed to complete 30 million tons of steel in 1959; in December in Wuchang[3] I agreed to complete 20 million tons; 500,000 tons.For example, at the Second Zhengzhou Conference[5] in March 1959, it was advocated that the issue of "One Leveling and Two Adjustments"[6] should not be accounted for; Firmly insist that accounts must be settled.and so on.It seems impossible not to make mistakes.As Lenin said, there has never been a man who does not make mistakes.A serious party is to pay attention to mistakes, find out the reasons for mistakes, analyze the objective reasons for making mistakes, and openly correct them. [7] The general line of our party [8] is correct, and the actual work is basically done well.Some mistakes are probably unavoidable.How can there be a so-called sage who never makes mistakes and completes the truth once? The truth is not completed all at once, but gradually.We are dialectical materialist epistemologists, not metaphysical epistemologists.Freedom is the inevitable recognition and transformation of the world.The leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom is accomplished step by step in a long-term process of understanding.We already have ten years of experience in our country's socialist revolution and construction, and we have learned quite a lot.But we still have a great deal of blindness with regard to the revolution and construction in the socialist period, and there is still a great unrecognized realm of necessity, which we have not yet fully understood.We will spend the second ten years investigating it, studying it, and finding out its inherent laws so that we can use these laws to serve the socialist revolution and construction.

Printed from originals kept at the Central Archives. -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ note [1] This is part of the "Ten Years Summary" written by Mao Zedong during the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held from June 14 to 18, 1960. [2] Refers to the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held in Beidaihe from August 17 to 30, 1958. [3] Refers to the Sixth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held in Wuchang from November 28 to December 10, 1958.

[4] Refers to the Seventh Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held in Shanghai from April 2 to 5, 1959. [5] Refers to the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held in Zhengzhou from February 27 to March 5, 1959. [6] One level and two tunes, see note [1] on page 33 of this volume. [7] See Lenin's "Infantile Disease of the "Left" in the Communist Movement".The new translation is: "A political party's attitude towards its own mistakes is the most important and reliable measure of whether the party is serious about fulfilling its obligations to its own class and the working people. Openly admit mistakes, expose mistakes The causes of mistakes, the analysis of the circumstances under which they were made, and careful discussion of ways to correct them—this is the hallmark of a solemn party, this is how the party fulfills its obligations, this is what educates and trains the class, and in turn educates and trains The masses." (Volume 4 of "Selected Works of Lenin", People's Publishing House, 1995 edition, p. 167)

[8] Refers to the "Go all out, strive for the top, and build society more quickly, better and more economically" adopted at the Second Session of the Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China held in Beijing from May 5 to 23, 1958. Doctrine" general line.