by Dmitry Kosyrev
[RIA] What about Karl Marx? Today's ideologists of our neighbor do not help the outside world to appreciate the meaning of their efforts, inventing completely mysterious formulations like "second integration". After all, you still need to know that there was the first integration ... And why and with what? Marxism with traditional Chinese culture.
But when in Beijing they say that this very integration explains "why China is China", and explains it to the whole world, then it's worth thinking about. In the end, this country went from a grandiose socio-economic catastrophe (60s and 70s) to the current fulfillment of the Soviet dream - "to catch up and overtake America" before our eyes. They caught up and surpassed in many key indicators, became one of the two superpowers of the world that are approximately equal in terms of the totality of factors. And how did the Chinese do it?
It is clear that they themselves are constantly pondering this experience of theirs, and today they gently offer it for study around the world. In our case, we are talking about the published research report of the Xinhua News Agency on the work being carried out by the ruling Communist Party on that same “second integration”. It is clear that the agency simplifies the ideological discussion and adapts it to the understanding of a relatively simple foreigner. But even this he does with moderate success, so a translator is needed here.
So our question is: how did China manage to get this rise to the top from a hopeless depth? Xinhua's answer (in free translation): and this is because our civilization is five thousand years old, we have accumulated a lot of useful experience about what to do and what not to do in the event of a disaster. In particular, do not completely destroy your past. It must be integrated with the present and with the previous past in the form of a useful lesson, just as it happened with Marxism in our country.
So, the "first integration" of Marxism with the sad reality. The end of the 1970s, when, after the death of Mao Zedong , they began to try to do something with the unfortunate country, which then produced about the same GDP as the small and escaped Marxism Taiwan.
And look: it seems that then there was no more striking failure of the ideology of Marx and the practice of his followers in the world ( the USSR was still holding on). The idea of a classless society is in ruins, and the country, to put it mildly, is tired of the class struggle. The idea of abandoning private property and building the economy on the principles of not personal interest, but commands from above - and there is nothing to say. Well, let's not forget about culture with a corresponding revolution in it.
What they did in exactly the same situation in the late USSR - early Russia : they threw Marx and everyone else to the sidelines of the political mainstream, pushed back the eternally ruling CPSU , played with the ideas of banning the corresponding ideology. What the Chinese did: in words they kept everything unchanged, including the memory of the person who planted his version of Marxism, that is, Mao Zedong. But in fact, they created - in the form of an experiment and step by step - a completely capitalist economy with elements of state capitalism and social solidarity. "First integration" is a verbal reduction of the frenzied idealism of Marx, Mao and others to the created reality: the classics were right in some ways, wrong in some ways, we have our own peculiarities, and so on.
And here is five thousand years of civilization development: for example, there was a very real person named Kun, he is also Confucius . Well formulated Chinese ideas about the state and the nation as a family, where everyone has mutual obligations. He is now a god, and there are statues of him in the temples. Occasionally you can see statues and Christ there - there was also a man, he taught many, including someone in China, good things. But when the Jesuits arrived in this country in the 16th century, they were very surprised: the locals eagerly assimilate Christian wisdom, but they react strangely to calls to abandon all previous beliefs: what are you talking about, so that we lose the old wisdom for the sake of the new one? For what?
And now the first and second integration of Marx with modernity is the process of respectfully placing new statues (Marx, Mao, Deng Xiaoping) in the same temple. And with features. Xinhua tells us: the world is not an object to be conquered, like the Westerners, our ancient wisdom of harmonious relations between people is also applied to relations between peoples and countries, so in foreign policy we are also the heirs of all five thousand years of experience.