Abstract

I will deal first with the question of the criterion of truth. In raising this now there are not only national but also international implications. How should we view Marxism in the light of the practical testing it has received in the hundred or more years since it was created? Early in the twentieth century the Bolshevik revolution won a great victory. In the late 1940s, the Chinese revolution also won a great victory. These great events brilliantly proved the correctness of Marxism, and were profoundly influential in the world at large. In the early 1950s, the imperialists had an unsavory reputation while the socialist camp was more and more influential among the world's peoples. People placed their hopes in the Soviet Union and on China. But in the last twenty years the situation has altered. First problems, the problem of Stalin followed by the problem of Khruschev, arose in the Soviet Union. It changed. This was followed by the split in the socialist camp. The Albanian "beacon" was extinguished and so-called socialist Vietnam fouled up and went fascist. Even here in China we had the chaos perpetrated by Lin Biao and the "Gang of Four." On the other hand, capitalism had a "golden age" for more than twenty years. What does this show? It seems to me that through those years Marxist thought failed to develop along with practice. Can it then be said that in the international realm Marxist theory has fallen out of step with actual conditions?