Historical Confidence, Historical Consciousness, and Historical Initiative | History | Initiative
Author: Zhou Xiaomao
Strengthening historical confidence, enhancing historical consciousness, and enhancing historical initiative are the inherent requirements for Marxist political parties to grasp the pulse of history, correctly understand and treat history, and have the courage to grasp and create history. Historical confidence, historical consciousness, and historical initiative are an organic whole. To forge ahead on a new journey and make achievements in a new era, we must consciously strengthen our historical confidence, enhance our historical consciousness, enhance our historical initiative, and promote historical development and progress.
Firm historical confidence
How a political party or nation treats its own history or has a certain historical perspective largely determines the direction of history and the fate of the party and nation. By affirming, acknowledging, and acknowledging the history of political parties and nations, and strengthening historical confidence, political parties can grow from scratch, from small to large, from weak to strong, and achieve long-term governance; A nation can gather cohesion, centripetal force, and obtain space for survival and development. However, treating the history of political parties and nations with a nihilistic attitude, denying leaders, smearing heroes, and distorting facts will inevitably lead to historical twists and turns and even historical regression. Therefore, strengthening historical confidence is a prerequisite for the inheritance and prosperity of political parties and ethnic groups. Historical development has never been a simple linear motion, but the result of the combined action of parallelograms of force. Peaks and valleys, high and low tides, and favorable and unfavorable conditions always alternate periodically in the historical process. In the face of complex history, if one becomes overly proud, arrogant, and self proclaimed due to the glory of history, or excessively insecure, self destructive, and self abandoning due to the twists and turns of history, they will inevitably fall into confusion and passivity. Only by strengthening historical confidence can one enhance historical consciousness, enhance historical initiative, and persevere in opening up new history. So, we must take history as a lesson, suck on the milk, absorb nutrients, and draw wisdom from the experiences and lessons of the Party's history, the history of New China, the history of reform and opening up, the history of socialist development, and the history of the development of the Chinese nation. Especially, we must cherish the history of the new era for ten years, recognize the milestone significance of the great changes in the new era for ten years, and enhance our sense of pride and confidence.
Enhancing historical awareness
On the surface, the development of history seems disorganized and dazzling. In fact, what is hidden within the spontaneity of history is the consciousness of history. Seemingly disordered history always follows the internal laws of its own development and has its own internal logic of development. The most fundamental way to enhance historical consciousness is to understand and grasp the objective laws of historical development. Historical materialism holds that the people are the creators of history, that is, the subjects who create history, and the "people in the play" of history. A history of human social development, in the end, is a vivid practice of the historical subject constantly exploring historical laws, reducing the blindness of cognitive history, and enhancing the consciousness of controlling history. Therefore, the more the historical subject grasps the inherent laws of historical development, the more they can recognize historical trends, follow historical trends, promote historical progress, and ultimately enhance historical consciousness. Of course, clearing the fog of history and grasping the laws of history is not a spontaneous process, but a highly conscious result of the historical subject. In the long history of human society, due to the lack of guidance from scientific theories, people are in the inevitable kingdom of history. Their historical consciousness has not been fully demonstrated, but is obscured by the spontaneity of history. Enhancing historical consciousness is based on a scientific understanding of the objective laws of history. It is necessary to explore and summarize in practice, as well as to guide it with scientific theories and methods. In the history of human thought, Marxism is a scientific truth for understanding and transforming the world. This theoretical system scientifically explains the internal relationship between productive forces and production relations, economic foundation and superstructure, social existence and social consciousness, and for the first time reveals the objective laws of historical development, providing a powerful ideological weapon for historical subjects to enhance their historical consciousness. Therefore, we must arm the whole party and educate the people with the latest theories of Marxism, especially the sinicization and modernization of Marxism. We should guide party members, cadres, and the general public to analyze historical phenomena and observe historical problems with the Marxist perspective and method, deepen our understanding of the governing laws of the Communist Party, socialist construction laws, and human social development laws, and continuously enhance our historical consciousness.
Enhance historical initiative
Historical materialism adheres to both materialism and dialectics when revealing the objective laws of historical development; The dialectics of history emphasizes both the objective conditions of historical development and the subjective initiative and proactive spirit of historical subjects. Marx said, "People create their own history, but they do not create it freely, not under the conditions they choose, but under the conditions they directly encounter, establish, and inherit from the past." In other words, people's creation of history is constrained by objective conditions. So, people cannot create history based on their subjective will, let alone maliciously tamper with and distort history, otherwise they will inevitably be punished by the laws of history. However, as the main body of history, the people are not passive or powerless in the face of historical laws, but actively and effectively. The people are the masters of history. Classic Marxist writers have fully affirmed the subjective initiative of historical subjects. Marx regarded human passion and passion as the essential strength of human beings, believing that even the most agile bees could not compare to the worst architects. He emphasized that what the proletariat lost in revolution was chains, and what it gained would be the entire world. When summarizing the experience of the Paris Commune, we praise the revolutionary will and historical initiative of the Paris working class in establishing the Paris Commune with "what kind of flexibility, what kind of historical initiative, and what kind of self sacrifice spirit". In Lenin's view, Marx valued the historical initiative of the masses the most. Lenin consciously used this historical initiative to lead the Russian people to victory in the October Revolution and opened the prelude to socialist construction in economically and culturally backward countries. The historical process of China's revolution, construction and reform has also proved that the people, under the leadership of the CPC, have given play to their subjective initiative, constantly strengthened their historical initiative, written a new chapter in history and created a new realm of history. The great changes of the new era in the past decade have milestone significance in the history of the Party, New China, reform and opening up, socialist development, and the development of the Chinese nation.A beautiful future cannot be waited for, it can only rely on the Party and the people to work hard, work hard, and strive for it. Faced with the major challenges of the new journey, such as high winds, fast waves, and even turbulent waves, any negative and lethargic mental state cannot achieve the great goal. Only by enhancing historical initiative, maintaining historical determination, and always maintaining a clear and firm resolution to solve the unique problems of the big party, can we form a strong joint force to work together to achieve the Chinese Dream, and continue to push forward the great historical cause of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation!
