Chairman Mao’s Talk with Members of the Politburo who Were in Beijing¹

May 3, 1975

This document was provided by The Secretarial Bureau of the Office of the Central Committee.

Chairman Mao convened a meeting with members of the Politburo who were in Beijing. Attendees shook hands with Chairman Mao one by one.

(When Chairman Mao shook hands with Zhou Enlai) Zhou said: “[I] haven’t seen the Chairman for almost one year, I miss the Chairman.”

Chairman Mao asked Zhou: “How is it going? Have you been ok?”

(Zhou said that he had three surgeries, and that his digestion was still alright, and that he had sent his regards to Chairman Mao two days prior.)

(When shaking hands with Ye Jianying) [Chairman Mao] said: “Oh, the old marshal.”

(When shaking hands with Deng Xiaoping) [Chairman Mao] said: “Oh, Xiaoping.”

(When shaking hands with Chen Xilian) Chairman Mao said: “You are to be the marshal in command?"²

(Chairman Mao shook hands with Ji Dengkui.) Ji said: “I recently met once with the Chairman.”

(When shaking hands with Wu De) Chairman Mao said: “Wu De has virtue."³

(When shaking hands with Chen Yonggui) Chairman Mao said: “Your letter is good. One third [of the time] at Dazhai, one third across the whole nation, and one third at the central committee. Don’t live at the Diaoyutai,⁴ there are no fish there. You and Wu Guixian should both move out. Don’t live at Diaoyutai”⁵

(When Chairman Mao was shaking hands with Wu Guixian) Wu said: “Greetings to Chairman Mao, I am Wu Guixian.”

Chairman Mao: “Oh, I don’t know you.”

Wu: “I met with Chairman Mao in 1964, during National Day when attending the ceremony.”

Chairman Mao: “I don’t know.”

Wu: “The sons and daughters of Yenan greet you.”

Chairman Mao asked: “Are you from Yenan?”

Zhou Enlai: “She is from Henan, and she was a female weaver at Xi’an, in Shaanxi Province. She visited Yenan."⁶

(When shaking hands with Su Zhenhua) Chairman Mao said: “So handling the navy rests with you, the navy needs to be strengthened—make the enemy afraid. [Now] our navy is just this big."(Chairman Mao showed his little finger)

Su: “Now it has grown a bit, now it is this big” (Su showed his ring finger).

(When shaking hands with Xie Jingyi) [Chairman Mao] said, “You are about to become a high-ranking officer, you must be careful.”

Xie answered: “I do not want to become a high-ranking official, but my official duties are continually increasing.”

Chairman Mao said: “Give it a try, if things go wrong, (Chairman Mao made hand gestures) then roll up the quilt."⁷

Chairman Mao said: “It’s been a while since we’ve met. There is a problem I want to discuss with you. Some people’s thoughts are at odds with one another—several individuals. I made a mistake myself. [Zhang] Chunqiao’s article, I didn’t see it in that way.⁸ I only heard it read once, I did not read it. I could not read, so I gave up on talking about the problem of empiricism.⁹ [Yao] Wenyuan showed me the document from New China News Agency (Xinhuashe 新华社)—Chunqiao, sorry.

Also, Shanghai Machine Tools Plant’s “Ten Experiences”¹⁰ all talked about empiricism, and did not mention [the word] “Marxism” one single time, and also did not talk about dogmatism.¹¹

[Shanghai Machine Tools Plant] established a university. A lot of intellectuals think the moon in foreign countries is better than that in China.¹²

There is a need for stability, there is a need for unity. Regardless of what question, regardless of whether it is empiricism or dogmatism, both are revising Marxism-Leninism, and all need to be treated with educational methods. Now some of our comrades should be criticized for making mistakes. Three arrows are shot together: Criticize Lin Biao, Criticize Confucius, and Criticize Pulling Strings.¹³ [But] the Criticize-Lin Biao and Criticize-Confucius campaign needs actions from these people [who have made mistakes]; without these people, the Criticize-Lin Biao Criticize-Confucius campaign will not work. There are millions of these people who pull-strings—including you (referring to Wang Hairong and Tang Wensheng).¹⁴ I am one of them too, I sent several girls to go to study at Peking University, I had no choice. I asked them to go to school. They had been workers for five years, and now [I] sent them to the university. I sent them there, this is also [a form of] pulling strings. I also have bourgeois right. I sent them, and Xie Jingyi had to receive them, these people are not bad people.¹⁵

I had one conversation here¹⁶ with comrade Xiaoping.

You all only hate empiricism and do not hate dogmatism. The “28-and-a-half Bolsheviks” ruled for four years' time.¹⁷ They flew the flag of the Comintern to intimidate the Chinese (Communist) Party, attacking whoever disagreed with them and holding a bunch of empiricists captive. You [Zhou Enlai] were one, Zhu De was one, and other people, mainly Lin Biao and Peng Dehuai. It is not enough for me to only speak of Enlai and Peng Dehuai—without Lin Biao and Peng Dehui they would not have power.¹⁸ Lin Biao wrote On Short and Swift Assault, an article that praised Hua Fu¹⁹ and opposed Deng, Mao, Xie, and Gu. Deng is you (meaning Deng Xiaoping), Mao is Mao Zeqin,²⁰ Xie is Xie Weijun, and Gu is Gu Bo, all other people (except Deng Xiaoping) were martyred, I had just met you once [Deng Xiaoping], you were in fact a representative of the Maoists.²¹

In the fields of education, science, news, culture and art, and many other fields, and in the field of medicine, as long as a foreigner made a fart it would be perceived as fragrant.

I have suffered for two years without eggs just because the Soviets published an article stating they contained cholesterol. And, later another article said that cholesterol was not a big problem, and said that eating eggs were allowed again. [For these people] even the moon is better in foreign countries. Do not underestimate dogmatism.

Many people hold empiricist views, they are just somewhat illiterate, unable to read Marx and Lenin, they can only act according to their experiences. There is no way to deal with empiricism; I have no way to deal with it, it takes time, and it may improve after ten years, eight years, twenty years, or thirty years. Being too rushed is not good, don’t be in a rush [otherwise] some concepts cannot come together.

What I have said is stability and unity, dogmatism, empiricism, revisionism, and also the need to criticize bourgeois right. Don’t rush, anyone of you who rushes will fall [Chairman Mao makes a hand gesture]. Don’t split—unite. Practice Marxism-Leninism, not revisionism. Unite, and don’t split. Be open and above-board, and don’t intrigue and conspire.²²

Don’t function as a gang of four, don’t do it any more, why do you still do it?"²³ Why not unite with the more than two hundred members of the Central Committee)? Functioning as a minority²⁴ is no good, it is bad at all times. This time there is a mistake, self-criticism is needed still. This time is different from the Lushan Conference. It was correct to oppose Lin Biao during the Lushan Conference. This time, there are still three lines: Practice Marxism-Leninism, not revisionism. Unite, and don’t split. Be above-board and open, don’t intrigue and conspire. And this means do not exercise factionalism. I will repeat these three lines: Practice Marxism-Leninism, not revisionism. Unite, and don’t split. Be above-board and open, don’t intrigue and conspire. Go ahead and discuss other affairs, cure the disease and save the patient, don’t persecute anyone, it cannot be resolved in one meeting. [This is] my opinion and my view. There are comrades who do not believe these three lines, don’t listen to me, and forget the three lines. The Ninth National Congress and the Tenth National Congress both addressed these three lines. Everyone needs to discuss these three lines again.

In the fields of education, science, literature and art, and medicine, where intellectuals are concentrated, there are some good [people], and there are a few Marxist-Leninists. You [at the] Ministry of Foreign Affairs [are at] a place where intellectuals are concentrated, am I wrong? You two²⁵ are stinking intellectuals, you should admit this, being the stinking old ninth category, the old ninth category cannot [just] walk away.²⁶

I need to take responsibility, I made a mistake. I did not see Chunqiao’s article in that way. Chunqiao wrote the article with reason, was it not because he had written [such] articles in 1958?²⁷ I did not know him during that period, it seems I didn’t, (Zhang Chunqiao said: “We met once”) did not, I don’t have a recollection [of meeting]. I wrote a note on that article,²⁸ and the People’s Daily published it—was Deng Tuo [邓拓] in charge of the People’s Daily at that time? (Zhang Chunqiao said: “It was Wu Lengxi [吴冷西 ].") Only two articles were supportive [of Zhang’s article], the rest were opposed, so he was angry.²⁹

I think as for the problems that are not big, don’t make minor issues major, but if there is a problem, one must be clear. If it cannot be solved in the first half of the year, let it be solved in the second half of the year; if it cannot be solved this year, let it be solved next year; if it cannot be solved next year, let it be solved in the year after next.³⁰ As I see it, those who criticize empiricism are themselves empiricists, they do not have much Marxism-Leninism, they may have some but not so much, about the same as me.³¹ Refusing to self-criticize is not good. Asking other people to do it [self-criticism] but to not do it oneself. Empirio-criticism in China and Russia, [as] Lenin pointed out: these people were all big intellectuals, completely [adhering to] the theory of Berkeley.³² Berkeley was a bishop in England. You should go read Lenin’s book.

Jiang Qing asked: “Is the Chairman speaking of reading Materialism and Empirio-criticism?” Chairman Mao answered: “Yes.”

Chairman Mao asked: “Who is that? (Zhang Yufeng answered: “Comrade Jiang Qing.")

[Chairman Mao said:] Comrade Jiang Qing did not participate in more than half of [the history of] the Party. Chen Duxiu, Qu Qiubai, Li Lisan, Luo Zhanglong, Wang Ming and Zhang Guotao, they all did not participate in struggles, and the Long March, so no wonder. As I see it, Jiang Qing is a small empiricist, and is far from being a dogmatist. She is not like Wang Ming who wrote an article called “Further Bolshevization,"³³ and she will not act like Zhang Wentian, writing an article about opportunist vacillation.³⁴ Do not be unplanned, be disciplined, be careful, do not act all on one’s own, have discussions with the Politburo. If there is an opinion, discuss it within the Politburo, have it printed into documents and distributed with the name of the Central Committee, do not use individual authorship, for example, and also do not use my name, I never send out any material. I was on leave for ten months this time, and I did not make speeches, I did not publish any opinion, for the Central Committee did not request me to do so. I was outside recuperating, part of the time I recuperated, and during the other part I listened to [people reading] documents, everyday an airplane sent in documents. Now God still hasn’t taken me away, I can still think, listen, speak, and even write if I cannot speak. I can still eat and sleep.³⁵

Be disciplined, the army needs to be cautious, members of the Central Committee need to be even more cautious.³⁶ I had a talk with Jiang Qing once, and I had a talk with Xiaoping once. Wang Hongwen wanted to meet me, and Jiang Qing called me to request a meeting. I said no, if there is meeting, everybody should be invited, that is it. Sorry, I just am like that, I do not have more to say, only three sentences, and the Ninth National Congress and Tenth National Congress were all about the three sentences, “Practice Marxism, and not revisionism; unite, and don’t split; be open and aboveboard, and don’t intrigue and conspire.” Don’t organize some sort of gang, some sort of Guangdong gang or Hu’nan Gang.³⁷ The Changsha repair shop on the Guangzhou-Hankou railway does not recruit people from Hunan, it only recruits people from Guangdong, [this is] a Guangdong gang. During the strike, this railway was not yet constructed. In the three years of 1920, 1921, and 1922, I was organizing the workers' movement in Hunan, from Guangzhou-Hankou, in the Anyuan coal mine, in factories in Hunan, in Zhuzhou, Pingxiang, along the Guangzhou-Hankou railroad, the Zhuzhou-Pingxiang railroad, in the Anyuan coal mine, the Shuikoushan tin mine, called a tin mine, but in fact it had no tin.

“Wuxi’s [a place name, literally “without tin”] tin mountain is without tin,

Pinghu’s [place name, literally “level lake”] lake water on a level lake

Changde’s [place name, literally, “everlasting virtue”] virtue mountain is a mountain with virtue

Changsha’s [place name, literally, “long desert”] sandy water has no sand."³⁸

I said “I have just drunk the waters of Changsha,” this is in fact the water of Baisha well.³⁹ “The fish of Wuchang” is not today’s Wuchang, it was the ancient Wuchang,⁴⁰ located between today’s Wuchang and Daye, I forgot the name of that county, that place used to produce bream fish. Sun Quan (孙权)⁴¹ wanted to move his home, and the common people said, better drink the waters of Yangzhou than eat the fish of Wuchang. So I said “I have just drunk the waters of Changsha; and come to eat the fish of Wuchang."⁴² Sun Quan later moved to Nanjing, and transported Wuchang’s logs down to Nanjing. Sun Quan was a competent person.

Among all the heroes under heaven who can match him? Maybe only Cao and Liu.⁴³ It is a pity that there is no Sun Zhongmou today.⁴⁴ He [Ye Jianying] looked down upon Wu Faxian. Liu is Liu Zhen (刘震), Cao is Cao Lihuai (曹里怀), that is to say that Wu Faxian is not competent.⁴⁵

(Chairman Mao asked Ye Jianying to read a poem from Xin Qiji. Ye Jianying read Xin Qijin’s Nan Xiang Zi: Airing My Feelings upon Climbing Beigu Pavilion of Jingkou :) “From where could I see the land of central region? From Beigu Pavilion the scenery fills the eye. How many times has history witnessed rise and decline? But over time, the immortal Yangtze River keeps flowing and tumbling. Sun Quan commanded an army of ten-thousand soldiers in his youth. He rules the Southeastern land during the endless war. Among all the heroes under heaven who can match him? Maybe only Cao and Liu. To have a child like Sun Zhongmou."⁴⁶

Chairman Mao said: “This person [Ye Jianying] has some culture. ‘Among all the heroes under heaven who can match him? Maybe only Cao and Liu, it is a pity that there is no Sun Zhongmou today.’ [Ye] looked down upon Wu Faxian. Huang [Yongsheng], Wu [Faxian], Li [Zuopeng], and Qiu [Huizuo] are not Cao and Liu, Liu is Liu Zhen, and Cao is Cao Lihuai, it is just Wu Faxian who is not competent.”

Zhou Enlai said: “How about ending today at this point? Chairman, rest a bit.”

(The attendees shake hands and say farewell to Chairman Mao respectively.)

(When shaking hands with Zhou Enlai) Chairman Mao said: “It’s still the three sentences."⁴⁷

(When Wang Hongwen shook hands with Chairman Mao) Wang said: “Carry out work according to the Chairman’s instructions.”

Chairman Mao said: “Do not: (Chairman Mao makes a hand gesture, turning his palms up and down)."⁴⁸

Jiang Qing said: “Listen to the Chairman.”

Zhang Chunqiao said: “Carry out work according to the Chairman’s instructions.”

Yao Wenyuan said: “Carry out work in accordance with Chairman Mao’s instructions.”

(When shaking hand with Chen Xilian) Chairman Mao said: “The commander."⁴⁹

Wu Guixian: “Chairman please take care.”

Appendix A: Translators' Note

This document provides a transcript and commentary of Chairman Mao’s talk with members of the Politburo on May 3^rd^ 1975 (hereafter referred to as the 1975 Talk). The 1975 Talk addresses the essential struggle to maintain unity within the party while at the same time fighting against revisionist tendencies that threatened the proletarian revolutionary line. The conversation highlights various aspects of the complex struggle against the headquarters of the inner-party bourgeoisie. It focuses on the need to counter the attacks of Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai on Zhang Chunqiao in a way that does not leave the left isolated and exposed. To map a way forward, Chairman Mao stresses the particular dangers of both empiricism and dogmatism which had served to abet all forms of revisionist tendencies in the Party’s history, and which contributed to many setbacks in China’s modern revolutionary history.

The 1975 Talk is best understood in the broader historical context of the two-line struggle between the revolutionary line and all sorts of revisionist deviations. The nine-essay compilation Arguing Against the “Third Left-leaning” Line by Chairman Mao offers a window into such history. From 1921 to 1976, there were many moments when all forms of revisionist tendencies imperiled the revolutionary unity of the party. In the late 1920s and 1930s, multiple revisionist lines threatened splitting the party. These included Chen Duxiu’s Trotskyism, Qu Qiubai’s adventurism, Li Lisan’s line, Luo Zhanglong’s rightist factionalism, and later Wang Ming’s dogmatism.⁵⁰ Zhou Enlai, Peng Dehuai, and Zhang Wentian maintained a conciliatory and empiricist attitude towards these deviations, not grasping the danger they represented and the need to address these problems. In view of the political situation of the time, Chairman Mao wrote nine essays to expose the dogmatism and empiricism that went hand in hand in exerting a detrimental effect on the party. This critique was timely as dogmatist rule had contributed to multiple failures of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army and almost risked the party’s elimination. These nine essays later constituted the long article *Arguing Against the “Third Left-leaning” Line (*Hereafter, the Third Left-Leaning Article).

Chairman Mao withheld these documents after writing them because of the disunity they would cause. The logic behind the decision to withhold the documents in the 30s and then release them during the GPCR should be understood. Since the CCP was under constant military attack by reactionary forces in the 1930s, a relatively strong unity was essential to the party’s survival during this time. The matter was complicated by the fact that these documents themselves were critical of the tendency to tolerate destructive lines that risked the party’s very survival. Chairman Mao saw that there was a need to struggle against all such destructive lines, be they left adventurist or right opportunist, while also uniting party members who committed empiricist errors. Chairman Mao believed that the empiricist errors could be considered a problem belonging to the category of contradictions among the people. According to the proletarian policy of “curing the disease to save the patient,” there was thus an attempt to rectify such conciliatory and empiricist mistakes through political education. Consequently, Zhou, Peng and Zhang later admitted their mistakes and joined the struggle against the Wang Ming dogmatist line. Based on this willingness to rectify such mistakes by those in the empiricist camp, Chairman Mao did not subsequently publish these documents.

By the 1960s and 1970s, the situation was different. The establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat following 1949 was met with constant attacks from an inner-party bourgeoisie. The counter-revolutionary tendency of the bourgeoisie made this problem no longer one belonging to the contradictions among the people, and defined the two-line struggle within the party. Some empiricists within the party joined the headquarters of the inner-party bourgeoisie organized by those such as Lin Biao and Peng Dehuai. When the revolutionary line within the party was imperiled by this resurgence of revisionists, capitalist roaders, and rightists, Chairman Mao thought it necessary to reiterate the empiricist-dogmatist problem. In the 1960s when Chairman Mao rediscovered this manuscript (thought to have been lost after the 1940s), he decided to edit it, and distribute it to the Politburo for the purpose of political education. The central point of how to correctly handle the relationship between dogmatism and empiricism mentioned in the Third Left-leaning Article became a key question throughout the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.⁵¹ The correct way to handle the dogmatist-empiricist problem, as seen by Chairman Mao, was also connected to how to undertake the task to limit bourgeois right under the dictatorship of the proletariat. To unite people and advance the anti-revisionist revolutionary line, in the 1975 Talk, Chairman Mao criticizes dogmatism to stop excessive criticism directed against Ye Jianying, Deng Xiaoping. At the same time, he argues against excessive criticism against old cadres who supported the revolution, while also warning the rightists against their empiricism. The overall principle was still to help comrades who made dogmatist and empiricist mistakes through political education.

Unfortunately, the revisionists blocked the publication of the complete document of the Third Left-leaning Article after the 1976 counterrevolutionary coup. This was likely because of the clarity in which the article outlines how empiricism and dogmatism are two aspects of revisionism, and because of the clarity with which it reveals the disgraceful history of the revisionists since 1921. Only some excerpts from the document are accessible to the general public. Since the Third Left-leaning Article provides much historical context to the 1975 Talk, the translators of the document thought it necessary to present several key points made in the Third Left-leaning Article from the available excerpts as well as from other documents published by the CCP. The text in quotation marks hereinafter are original words by Chairman Mao taken from the excerpts unless otherwise noted.

During the 4^th^ Plenary of the 6^th^ Chinese Communist Party Central Committee (January 7^th^ 1931), the Central Committee decided to renounce Li Lishan’s left-leaning line within the party, under the instruction from the Comintern. Wang Ming used this decision as an opportunity to promote his version of an anti-Li Lisan line and anti-right-opportunist line, only to disguise his seizure of power within the party and to later “formulate a line that is even more an extreme repudiation of Marxism-Leninism … Compared with Li Lisan’s left-leaning line, Wang Ming’s dogmatist line was “more ‘left-leaning,’ and the result was even worse than that of the Li Lisan period.” On his road to power, Wang Ming borrowed the authority of Pavel Mif (Chinese name:米夫/ Russian name: Миф), the Comintern representative in China, to carry out his “personal line” as if it was the direct order of the Comintern. But in fact the Comintern had supported Chairman Mao’s line and criticized Wang Ming’s line several times during Wang Ming and Bo Gu’s rule within the CCP (1931-1935) and, later, during the Yenan Rectification Movement (1942-1945).

In the area of military exercise, the dogmatist line, under the influence of Otto Braun (Chinese name: 李德/华夫), one of the Comintern representatives in China at the time, upheld a theory of decisive battles that imposed the Russian experience on the Chinese Revolution, endorsing a general offensive against the Kuomingtang’s aggression and a swift takeover of several major cities. In handling the affairs of land reform in the base areas, the dogmatist line attempted to “further develop the internal class struggles,” and promote an ultra-left policy indistinctly punishing landlords and rich peasants, which hampered social production and therefore imperiled the consolidation of base areas. In dealing with organizing work in urban areas, dogmatists agitated in order to make every struggle militant without any consideration of the concrete context, expecting that such individualist and heroic-like actions could win an immediate total victory.

At a broader level, the dogmatists' absolutist reading of the primary contradictions in Chinese society contributed to these policies, especially after the Manchurian Incident (September 18^th^ 1931). The dogmatists ignored the objective development of class formations in China, idealistically promoting an absolutist view that denied the need to win over intermediate forces like the left-wing of the Kuomingtang to form a united front to advance the New Democratic Revolution in the face of Japan’s imperialist aggression. The absolutist view also falsely asserted that the current activities of the CCP were geared towards a decisive battle between revolutionary forces and counter-revolutionary forces and an armed struggle to defend the Soviet Union. Chairman Mao summarized the features of the dogmatist tendency as “First portraying the enemy as one hunk of iron; knocking down the big enemy and small enemy together; then exerting the major force to beat the small enemy specifically—because it is said that these small enemies are the most dangerous ones. Struggling for ‘clarifying the class lines’ in the Soviet Areas; exercising the so-called ‘no land for landlords, bad land for rich peasants’ to force them to take up weapons to attack the Soviet Union to death…; the so-called ‘Overthrow All’ theory is precisely a brilliant ‘creation’ by these old masters.”

Chairman Mao also concluded that “In the Chinese Communist Party, there were obviously two types of ‘Marxism and Leninism,’ one being the fake Marxism and fake Leninism, of which the features were bragging, acting arbitrarily, shooting arrows without a target, and being unconcerned with reality—this is the nonsense of subjectivism. Another type is the real Marxism, real Leninism, and the features are seeking truths from the facts, no empty talk, considering the time, place, and condition, this is the materialist, dialectical view of revolution.” In general, the history of the Chinese Communist movement during the Agrarian Revolution (1927-1937) proved the falseness of such dogmatist lines. In July 1931, the First Front of the Chinese Workers and Peasants' Red Army led by Mao Zedong successfully broke through the Third Encirclement initiated by Chiang Kai-shek. This military exercise did not follow the theory of decisive battles. However, the total implementation of the Wang Ming dogmatist line that called for a conventional, decisive war against the Kuomingdang’s Fifth Encirclement after 1933 almost led to the elimination of the Red Army. In view of this history, Chairman Mao did not only criticize dogmatism but also dialectically identified empiricism as the accessory to dogmatism. Two essays in the volume of the Third Left-leaning Article criticizing the empiricism of the 1930s mentioned Zhou Enlai, a fact that contributed to the censorship of the publication of the complete document by the revisionists after 1976. It also contributed to Zhou and Deng’s anxiety about the leftist criticism against empiricism during the GPCR, to which they responded with false accusations (see footnotes 8 and 51).

Another document from the Party, Resolutions on Certain Historical Questions (1945), further elaborated the relationship between dogmatism and empiricism. In general, both dogmatism and empiricism are aspects of revisionism, reflecting the bourgeoisie’s world view. Empiricism often presents itself as the accessory of dogmatism: “What differentiates empiricism from dogmatism is that empiricism is not based on books but on narrow experience. It is worth noting that among all comrades who have practical work experience, their positive experiences are very precious. Summarizing and comprehending these experiences scientifically as a guide to future action is not empiricism but Marxism-Leninism; Just like treating Marxist-Leninist theories and principles as a guide for revolutionary action, without treating them as dogma, is in no way empiricism but Marxism-Leninism. However, among all comrades who have experience with practical work, if some people are content with or even only content with their partial experience, and treat these experiences as universal dogma … and are obsessed with a narrow-minded, and non-principled so-called “realism” and a mindless and hopeless pragmatism ... not willing to listen to comrades' criticisms or developing self-criticism, in this way, they become empiricists.

Therefore, even though the points of departures of empiricism and dogmatism are different, they share unity in the essence of their method of thought. They all separate the universal truth of Marixism-Leninism from the concrete practice of the Chinese Revolution; they all go against dialectical materialism and historical materialism, exaggerating partial, relative truths as universal, absolute truths; their thoughts do not match the real situation. Because of this, they have many common erroneous understandings of Chinese society and Chinese Revolution (for instance, the erroneous city-centric view, the view that work in the white-areas is primary, the view of “conventional” warfare detached from real situations, etc). This is the ideological root which allows these two groups of comrades to work along together. As the experiences of the empiricists are partial and narrow, the majority of empiricists often lack independent, clear, and complete opinions on comprehensive matters. Therefore, when they are connected with dogmatists, they often present themselves as the accessory of the latter; But the history of the party proves that dogmatists find it difficult to “disseminate poisons” among the whole party without collaboration from empiricists. After dogmatism is overcome, empiricism then becomes the major obstacle to the development of Marxism-Leninism within the party. Thus, we should not only overcome subjectivist dogmatism but also subjectivist empiricism.” The historical mutual-development of empiricism and dogmatism—a problem still not resolved at present—adds to the significance of the struggle against revisionism by the revolutionaries in the party forms the backdrop to the 1975 Talk.