Now I would like to address the second question and say a few words about unity.
I am very glad, very happy, that our meeting has been so united. This meeting has reflected a trend: that of the increasing vigour of the proletariat and peoples of the entire world and of the east wind prevailing over the west wind. We have many defects and have committed many errors, but our achievements are what counts. Year after year we have scored remarkable achievements. All this can be seen in the vigour of this meeting of more than 60 communist parties. We have all agreed that we must have a head. That head is the Soviet Union and the CPSU. There is a Chinese saying which goes, ‘A snake without a head cannot proceed’. Look: each person here has a head, and every party of every country also has its head. There are collective heads and individual heads. Central committees and politburos are collectives, and first secretaries are individuals. We must have both, otherwise there will be anarchy.
Gomulka's speech yesterday made me happy. He said that to admit that the Soviet Union is our head is to admit the truth, and not something manmade, but the product of historical development. But in his country, there are still some people who for the time being balk a bit at that description, and who prefer using such expressions as 'the first and mightiest socialist power'. In his country, there exists this kind of a contradiction: the progressive elements have not yet been able to reconcile themselves with a substantial number of people. They still have to work at it. I believe comrade Gomulka is a good person. Comrade Khrushchev has indicated to me twice that comrade Gomulka can be trusted. I hope that we - Poland, the Soviet Union, China and all other countries - can become completely united and that we can gradually improve our relations.
I am also glad the Yugoslav comrades signed the second declaration. The fact that they signed the Peace Manifesto of the 60-odd parties, what does it signify? It signifies unity. They did not sign the 12-country declaration, and therefore of the 13 countries one is missing. They say they would have found it difficult, and I figure this is also acceptable. We cannot coerce people, and if Yugoslavia is unwilling to sign then let us leave it at that. In another couple of years, I think they will be able to sign a different declaration.
With regard to the question of unity I'd like to say something about approaches. I think our attitude should be one of unity towards every comrade, no matter who, provided he is not a hostile element or a saboteur. We should adopt a dialectical, not a metaphysical, approach towards him. What is meant by a dialectical approach? It means being analytical about everything, acknowledging that human beings all make mistakes and not negating a person completely just because he has made mistakes. Lenin once said that there is not a single person in the world who does not make mistakes. I have made many mistakes and these mistakes have been very beneficial to me and taught me a lesson. Everyone needs support. An able fellow needs the help of three other people, a fence needs the support of three stakes. These are Chinese proverbs. Still another Chinese proverb says with all its beauty the lotus needs the green of its leaves to set it off. You, comrade Khrushchev, even though you are a beautiful lotus, you too need the leaves to set you off. I, Mao Zedong, while not a beautiful lotus, also need leaves to set me off. Still another Chinese proverb says three cobblers with their wits combined equal Zhuge Liang, the master mind. This corresponds to comrade Khrushchev's slogan – collective leadership. Zhuge Liang by himself can never be perfect, he has his limitations. Look at this declaration of our 12 countries. We have gone through a first, second, third and fourth draft and have not yet finished polishing it. I think it would be presumptuous for anyone to claim God-like omniscience and omnipotence. So what attitude should we adopt towards a comrade who has made mistakes? We should be analytical and adopt a dialectical, rather than a metaphysical approach. Our party once got bogged down in metaphysics, in dogmatism, which totally destroyed anyone not to its liking. Later we repudiated dogmatism and came to learn a little more dialectics. The unit; of opposites is the fundamental concept of dialectics. In accordance with this concept, what should we do with a comrade who has made mistakes? We should first wage a struggle to rid him of his wrong ideas. Second, we should also help him. Point one, struggle, and point two, help. We should proceed from good intentions to help him correct his mistakes so that he will have a way out.
However, dealing with persons of another type is different. Towards persons like Trotsky and like Chen Duxiu, Zhang Guotao and Gao Gang in China, it was impossible to adopt a helpful attitude, for they were incorrigible. And there were individuals like Hitler, Jiang Jieshi and the tsar, who were likewise incorrigible and had to be overthrown because we and they were absolutely exclusive of each other. In this sense, there is only one aspect of their nature, not two. In the final analysis, this is also true of the imperialist and capitalist systems, which are bound to be replaced in the end by the socialist system. The same applies to ideology, idealism will be replaced by materialism and theism by atheism. Here we are speaking of the strategic objective. But the case is different with tactical stages, where compromises may be made. Didn't we compromise with the Americans on the 38th Parallel in Korea? Wasn't there a compromise with the French in Vietnam?
At each tactical stage, it is necessary to be good at making compromises as well as waging struggles. Now let us return to the relations between comrades. I would suggest that talks be held by comrades where there has been some misunderstanding between them. Some seem to think that, once in the communist party, people all become saints with no differences or misunderstandings, and that the party is not subject to analysis, that is to say, it is monolithic and uniform, hence there is no need for talks. It seems as if people have to be 100 per cent Marxists once they are in the party. Actually there are Marxists of all degrees, those who are 100 per cent, 90, 80, 70, 60, or 50 per cent Marxist, and some who are only 10 or 20 per cent Marxist. Can't two or more of us have talks together in a small room? Can't we proceed from the desire for unity and hold talks in the spirit of helping each other? Of course I'm referring to talks within the communist ranks, and not to talks with the imperialists (though we do hold talks with them as well). Let me give an example. Aren't our 12 countries holding talks on the present occasion? Aren’t the more than 60 parties holding talks too? As a matter of fact they are. In other words, provided that no damage is done to the principles of Marxism-Leninism, we accept from others certain views that are acceptable and give up certain of our own views that can be given up. Thus we have two hands to deal with a comrade who has made mistakes, one hand to struggle with and the other to unite with him. The aim of struggle is to uphold the principles of Marxism, which means being principled; that is one hand. The other hand is to unite with him. The aim of unity is to provide him with a way out, to compromise with him, which means being flexible. The integration of principle with flexibility is a Marxist-Leninist principle, and it is a unity of opposites.
Any kind of world, and of course class society in particular, teems with contradictions. Some say that there are contradictions to be 'found' in socialist society, but I think this is a wrong way of putting things. The point is not that there are contradictions to be found, but that it teems with contradictions. There is no place where contradictions do not exist, nor is there any person who cannot be analysed. To think that he cannot is being metaphysical. You see an atom is a complex of unities of opposites. There is a unity of the two opposites, the nucleus and the electrons. In a nucleus there is again a unity of opposites, the protons and the neutrons. Speaking of the proton, there are protons and antiprotons, and as for the neutrons there are neutrons and antineutrons. In short, the unity of opposites is present everywhere. The concept of the unity of opposites, dialectics, must be widely propagated. I say dialectics should be moved from the small circle of philosophers to the broad masse s of the people. I suggest that this question be discussed at meetings of the politburos and at the plenary sessions of the central committees of the various parties and also at meetings of their party committees at all levels. As a matter of fact, the secretaries of our party branches understand dialectics, when they prepare reports to branch meetings, they usually write down two items in their notebooks, first, the achievements and, second, the shortcomings. One divides into two - this is a universal phenomenon, and this is dialectics.
Perhaps you resent it when I talk about questions like these at this kind of meeting, but I am not much of a person for following trends. I have also been talking for quite some time now, so I intend to finish. But before I do so, want to say just a few more things. I endorse the CPSU Central Committee's solution of the Molotov question. That was a struggle of opposites. The facts prove that unity could not be achieved and that the two sides excluded each other. The Molotov clique took the opportunity to attack at a time when comrade Khrushchev was abroad and unprepared. However, even though they waged a surprise attack, our comrade Khrushchev is no fool, he is a smart person who immediately mobilized his troops and waged a victorious counterattack. That struggle was one between two lines: one erroneous and one relatively correct. In the four or five years since Stalin's death the situation has improved considerably in the Soviet Union in the sphere of both domestic policy and policy. This shows that the line represented by comrade Khrushchev is more correct and that opposition to this line is incorrect. Comrade Molotov is an old comrade with a long fighting history, but this time he made a mistake. This struggle between two lines within the CPSU was of the antagonistic kind, because the two sides could not accommodate each other and one side excluded the other. When this is the case, if everything is handled well there need not be any trouble, but if things are not handled well there is the danger of trouble.
Stalin did a great job in leading the Soviet party, and his achievements were primary and outweighed his faults and errors. However, over a long period his way of thinking became increasingly metaphysical and he did a lot of harm to dialectics. The personality cult was metaphysical and nobody could criticize him. In my view, these 40 years of the Soviet Union amount to a dialectical process. First, Lenin's dialectics, then Stalin's numerous metaphysical viewpoints. Some viewpoints, when translated into action and taken to their extreme, inevitably turned into their own opposites and so we have dialectics once again. I am very glad that comrade Khrushchev said in his speech at the meeting to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution that contradictions exist in socialist society. I am very glad about the many articles produced in Soviet philosophical circles addressing the internal contradictions of socialist society. Some articles have also touched upon the problem of contradictions between socialism and capitalism. These are problems involving two different kinds of contradictions.
Let me end my talk here, by declaring once more that I endorse both resolutions.