Fire Sower Li Dazhao

Li Dazhao took the lead in spreading Marxism in China and made historic contributions: first, after learning and accepting Marxism, he became the earliest disseminator of Marxism in China; second, he systematically studied Marxism and set up courses in universities such as Peking University to train the first generation of Marxist backbone talents for the cause of the Chinese revolution; third, he used Marxism to explore China's practical problems and lead China to the socialist road.

The earliest disseminator of Marxism in China

In his youth, Li Dazhao witnessed the peril of the country and the dark social situation under the imperialist aggression, and was determined to find a way out for the suffering China. From 1913 to 1916, Li Dazhao studied at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, and began to read socialism and Marxism. The theories of socialism and Marxism spread early in Japan, and the Japanese translation of the Communist Manifesto from 1904 to 1905 began to be published. During Li Dazhao's study in Japan, Kawakami, a professor of economics at Kyoto Imperial University, has translated Marx's Das Kapital into Japanese, which enables Li Dazhao to get in touch with Marx's original works and learn Marxism.

After the February Revolution in Russia, Li Dazhao wrote articles such as "the distant causes and near causes of the Russian Revolution", "Bread and Peace Movement", "the Establishment of the Russian Republican Government and its political platform", "the influence of the Russian Revolution" and "the coups of European countries in the Great War". While introducing the Russian revolution, he called the Russian revolution "the dawn of peace" and represented "the trend of foreign politics". After the victory of the Russian October Revolution, Li Dazhao began to deeply understand its value and significance. On New Year's Day in 1919, Li Dazhao published "New Era" in "Weekly Review" No. 3, pointing out the impact of the Russian October Revolution on China: "We are in this dark China, dead Beijing, and seem to share the first line of the dawn. It's like getting a little star in the middle of the night to see the path of a new life."

From the beginning of 1919, Li Dazhao's understanding of Marxism gradually deepened. In February of that year, he published "The Issue of Women after the War", although it talked about women's issues, but it has clearly expressed the idea of the world proletariat uniting. He believes: "The way to solve the problem of women completely is to unite the power of all women to break the arbitrary social system of men; On the other hand, it also combines the power of proletarian women in the world, to break the property class (including men and women) arbitrary social system." It expresses the Marxist viewpoint that Li Dazhao used the means of class struggle to overthrow the system of exploitation.

After in-depth study, Li Dazhao began to introduce and spread Marxism in China. he clearly pointed out that marxism was "china's savior" and became the earliest disseminator of marxism in china in the early 20th century.

The Pioneer of Chinese Systematic Study of Marxism

After becoming a staunch Marxist, Li Dazhao systematically studied Marxism with great enthusiasm and sowed the "fire" of truth in China ". He compiled Volume 6, No. 5 of the "New Youth", which he was responsible for, into a special issue of "Marxist Studies", and assisted the Beijing "Morning News" supplement to open a column of "Marx Studies" and published a series of articles introducing Marx's life, theory and contributions.

In the summer of 1919, Li Dazhao wrote "My View on Marxism", which was published in two parts in "New Youth" magazine Volume 6, No. 5 and No. 6. In this long article, he used a considerable part of the system to introduce the Marxist historical materialism. It also excerpts and interprets the relevant paragraphs of Marxist historical materialism in Marx's "The Poverty of Philosophy", "The Communist Manifesto" and other works, and on this basis, the "essentials" of Marxist historical materialism are summarized into two points: One is "The sum of production relations in human society constitutes the structure of social economy. This is the basic structure of society. All social political, legal, ethical, philosophical, in short, all spiritual structures change with the structural changes of the economy". The second is that "productive forces are closely related to social organization. As soon as the productive forces change, social organizations must change with them." otherwise, there will be a "social revolution" to establish new social organizations that meet the requirements of the development of the productive forces, but such a revolution will not happen easily. it will only happen when the productive forces develop to an "irrecoverable extent in the social organizations in which they are active.

In July 1920, Li Dazhao was hired as a professor in the Department of Political Science and the Department of History at Peking University. Since October of that year, Li Dazhao has offered the course of "Historical Materialism Research" for students of the Department of Political Science. Since then, as long as he is in school, he has taught students of history and politics every year. Through the courses offered in Peking University, part-time classes in Beijing Higher Normal School and lectures in universities in Wuhan, Shanghai, Chengdu and other places, Li Dazhao trained the first generation of advanced professionals who were familiar with Marxist historical materialism for China from the level of university academic establishment. Some of the students who had been taught by Li Dazhao later became the backbone members of the founding period of the Communist Party of China, such as Deng Zhongxia, Gao Junyu, Liu Renjing, Huang Ri Kui, Wang Fusheng, Luo Zhanglong, Fan Hongjie, He Mengxiong, Miao Boying, etc. Most of the articles in the above-mentioned lecture notes were later published in the press, thus going beyond the campus and having a national impact.

Li Dazhao also led the establishment of a number of social organizations such as the Marxist Theory Research Association, the Socialist Research Association, and the Beijing Socialist Youth League to promote Marxist research and propaganda activities. It is precisely under the hard work of a large number of revolutionaries represented by Li Dazhao that a large number of advanced young people accepted Marxism and embarked on the revolutionary road, promoted the close integration of Marxism and the labor movement, and laid a solid ideological foundation for the birth of the Communist Party of China.

an explorer of applying marxism to the reality of china

Li Dazhao's study of Marxism is not just a theoretical discussion, that is, the study of general academic and ethical issues, but a step further, applying it to solve China's practical problems and exploring China's development path.

Li Dazhao pointed out that since modern times, due to the aggression and oppression of Western capitalist countries, China has not only lost its political independence, but also lost the control of customs, railways, and trade ports. Economic power "belongs to others". In contrast, the people of Western countries are only exploited and oppressed by their own capitalists, while China is subject to the joint slaughter of many great powers, and the changes in China's economy are also caused by external oppression, so "the Chinese suffer more pain and sacrifice more". If the Chinese nation wants to fundamentally get rid of this miserable situation of being oppressed by the bourgeoisie all over the world and suffering and making sacrifices far exceeding the proletariat of other countries, it must choose a correct path, rapidly develop Chinese industry, and get rid of the oppression and oppression of world capitalism. Exploitation.

On March 20, 1921, Li Dazhao published "Socialism in China and Capitalism in the World" in Volume 1, No. 2 of "Commentary", clarifying the view that China can only develop industry in a socialist way. He believes that serious problems have appeared in the economic organizations of western developed countries, the contradiction between labor and capital is prominent, the labor movement is booming day by day, the capitalist system is suspected and criticized, and the world has begun to develop from capitalism to socialism. At the same time, Western countries have "developed from free competition to the status of socialist co-operation." If China continues to follow the old path that the West has followed step by step, then "people have gone thousands of miles away. We are still in the beginning", when will we be able to catch up with the developed countries? When will we be able to get rid of the dangerous situation of poverty, backwardness and even subjugation? If the Chinese nation wants to stand in the forest of world powers, "it is afraid that it will not be possible to achieve success if it is not an organization that combines both efforts and social co-operation".

Since the Opium War, the Chinese nation has gradually been on the verge of subjugation and extinction, and many people with lofty ideals have tried to find truth from Western countries in order to resist aggression, save the peril and revive the nation. They successively found some theories and doctrines of the 18th and 19th centuries from the treasure house of Western theories, but they have not discovered the Marxist doctrine that was officially born in Europe in 1848. It is precisely because of this that during the long period of almost 80 years from 1840 to the eve of the May 4th Movement, although they were heroic and unyielding, all these efforts and struggles to save the peril were ultimately defeated by the joint strangulation of imperialist and feudal forces because they had no scientific theory to guide them.

Under this historical background, Li Dazhao took the lead in holding up the banner of Marxism, using Marxist historical materialism to investigate the development process of Chinese history, and exploring the reasons for the changes in modern Chinese national movement, and came to two major discoveries: First, he discovered that "The origin of China's disturbance today is all due to the rise of modern European industry, the formation of imperialism, and the oppression of our backward countries with its economic power, with all kinds of unequal treaties to control the independence and autonomy of my legal and tax rights, and my national economy, with the trend of declining rivers and tends to go bankrupt". The second is to find that in order to change this situation, China must adopt socialism in addition to abolishing the unequal treaties between China and foreign countries by revolutionary means to restore China's "position of freedom and equality" in the international arena. This enables the Chinese people to have a scientific understanding of their own destiny and the inevitable trend of future development, knowing that no matter how difficult and dangerous they are, the great cause of the independence, liberation and rejuvenation of the Chinese nation will surely succeed! It is precisely because of finding the scientific truth of Marxism and using it to explain and guide the process of Chinese history that "the face of China has changed" and "the Chinese people have a new period from thought to life".

Source: Learning Times