The dialectical unity of material happiness and spiritual happiness

The content of happiness is rich and colorful, and different people have different understandings. Since people's survival and development are inseparable from the material living conditions of food, clothing, housing, etc., and the spiritual living conditions of culture, ideals, morality, friendship, love, etc., the true realization of happiness should include material life and spiritual life. Two aspects of life.

As for the content of happiness, Mao Zedong focused on the unity of material life and spiritual life.

First of all, affirm that material life is the foundation of a happy life. In December 1925, he wrote in an article on the reasons for publishing "Political Weekly": "Why publish "Political Weekly"? For revolution. Why revolution? In order to liberate the Chinese nation, in order to realize the rule of the people, in order to make the people Get economic happiness." [12] In "Economic Issues and Financial Issues" written in 1942, based on the actual situation during the Anti-Japanese War, he proposed that our general policy of economic work and financial work is to "develop the economy and ensure supply. ", and also proposed that comrades in the entire border region must "do their best to benefit the farmers and make them rich quickly." He also said: The first job of all Communist Party members working in rural areas is to "organize the people to lead the people to help develop production, increase their material welfare, and on this basis, step by step improve their political consciousness and culture To this end, we should work hard day and night, diligently and earnestly, to study the living problems among the people, production problems, cattle, farm tools, seeds, fertilizers, water conservancy, pasture, agricultural loans, immigration, etc. important issues such as land reclamation, improved agricultural practices, women's labor, second-rate labor, resettlement plans, cooperatives, labor force brigades, transportation brigades, textile industry, animal husbandry, salt industry, etc., and help the people solve these problems in concrete terms rather than in empty words. "[13] In April 1945, Mao Zedong pointed out in "On Coalition Government": "The quality and size of the policies and practices of all Chinese political parties among the Chinese people, in the final analysis, depend on their impact on the Chinese people. Whether the development of the Chinese people's productive forces is helpful and the extent of its help depends on whether it restrains the productive forces or liberates the productive forces."[14] In 1956, he said: "The purpose of the socialist revolution is to liberate the productive forces."[15 ] Mao Zedong said in "On Ten Major Relations" in 1956: "We must mobilize all direct and indirect forces to strive to build our country into a powerful socialist country." [16] On March 19, 1957, he pointed out in the outline of his speech at the Nanjing-Shanghai Party Members and Cadres Conference: "We are now in a period of transition: from class struggle to the struggle against nature, from revolution to construction, from past revolutions to technology Revolution and cultural revolution. "These remarks by Mao Zedong show that he attaches great importance to the material content of people's happiness, and clarifies that the purpose of our engaging in class struggle and revolution is to liberate the productive forces, to change the country's poverty and backwardness, and to continuously improve the people's living standards, "in order to enable the people to achieve economic happiness." The highest program of our party is to realize communism, and one of the important characteristics of communism is the high development of productive forces, which means that all members of society can enjoy a great abundance of material products and implement the principle of "from each according to his ability, "distribute according to need" principle.

In Mao Zedong’s view, people’s happiness is closely linked to the development of social production and the increase of “people’s material welfare”. Basic material living conditions are the foundation of happiness and the material guarantee for people's survival, development, creation, and realization of human value. At the same time, they also directly restrict and affect spiritual life. To benefit the people, we must first continuously improve and enhance the material living standards of the people. To leave the people's basic material living conditions is to leave materialism and just talk about happiness. Mao Zedong included the continuous improvement and improvement of the material welfare of the people into the category of happiness, which is exactly what he adheres to the basic viewpoint of materialism and embodies the idea that the people are the subjects of happiness.

Happiness cannot be separated from material living conditions, but happiness cannot be equated with material enjoyment, nor can happiness be attributed to the hedonism of personal material enjoyment.

Personal hedonism is a kind of hedonism of the exploiting class. If a person is addicted to material enjoyment and lacks noble spiritual sentiments, he is bound to feel spiritual depression, emptiness, and despair; if a person loses a healthy spiritual life, money may become the soil for cultivating greed, hypocrisy, and deception, and even make people Depravity, immorality. The phenomenon of affluent material life, poor social atmosphere and declining moral standards in capitalist countries is a living example. What is worthy of vigilance is that the decadent ideas of hedonism, which the proletariat and the working people have long abandoned, have grown again in our country in recent years, with some people blindly pursuing personal enjoyment of life. Theft, fraud, bribery, gambling, hooliganism, drug abuse and other illegal crimes that appear in society today are all caused by hedonistic ideas in the final analysis. Therefore, hedonism is a corrosive agent that leads to people's degeneration and is fundamentally opposed to the proletarian view of happiness.

Secondly, it is emphasized that spiritual life is an important part of happiness. People's happiness cannot only come from the enjoyment of material life, but also from spiritual life. This point was also seen clearly by many thinkers before Marxism. For example, the ancient Greek materialist philosopher Heraclitus said: "If happiness lies in physical pleasure, then it should be said that the cow is happy when it finds fodder to eat." [17] Another famous philosopher Democritus He also said: "Happiness does not lie in possessing cattle, nor does it lie in possessing gold. Its residence is in our souls." [18] The great British playwright Shakespeare once said: "If a person is in his life In his prime, he only knows how to eat and sleep. What is he? He is just a beast. "[19] This means that humans are different from ordinary animals. Humans have ideals, thoughts, emotions, and richness. of spiritual life. If a person ignores the satisfaction of spiritual life and only regards material enjoyment as happiness, then this kind of happiness is only the happiness at the animal level.

Mao Zedong’s view of happiness not only attaches importance to the happiness of material life, but also pays attention to the happiness of spiritual life. In fact, spirit and matter are the unity of opposites. Human happiness, in addition to the pursuit of material life and body, also has the pursuit of spiritual life and psychological sustenance. The content of spiritual life includes noble sentiments, sincere friendship, pure love, cultural knowledge and quality, healthy cultural entertainment and sports, etc. These are higher-level and deeper happiness than material life. Many facts in real life show that there is no real happiness when there is only satisfaction in material life and no satisfaction in spiritual life. When a person has a rich spiritual life and a noble moral sentiment that is dedicated to the lofty purpose and ideal of life, even if the material living conditions are poor, he still has joy in suffering and still feels the meaning of life and the sufficiency of life. Happy. For example, the great scientist Qian Xuesen gave up the favorable material conditions abroad and returned to the motherland; another example is that during the revolutionary war years, material treatment was meager, but people's spiritual outlook was rich and full. On the contrary, if a person lacks ideals, has an empty spirit, has a vulgar taste, and has a despicable soul, even if he has the most abundant material living conditions, he will feel that the whole life is boring, his heart is empty, his future is dim, he is negative and pessimistic, and he is depressed. This phenomenon is not uncommon.

Mao Zedong emphasized the significance of spiritual life to happiness and believed that the satisfaction of spiritual life is higher than the satisfaction of material life. While reading the Soviet Union's "Political Economics Textbook", he said: Lenin said that materialism is the most "idealistic". They are the most able to work hard and are the least afraid of hardship. Money is material, but money cannot buy materialists. They have the greatest ideals, therefore, they have tenacious fighting spirit. This means that fighting materialists pay more attention to the power and role of the spirit than idealists. Truly revolutionary materialists have lofty ideals and firm moral integrity. They do not seek personal fame and fortune, do not care about personal gains and losses, and do not seek personal gain. Enjoyment, not afraid of hardships and difficulties, is the most indifferent to personal material life, but has the most stringent requirements for ideological cultivation.

Mao Zedong dialectically expounded the relationship between material life and spiritual life. He not only paid attention to the material content of happiness, but also emphasized that one must use a healthy, scientific and noble spiritual life to control one's material life, so that one can truly enjoy the happiness and meaning of life. . He has always attached great importance to the education of the people, and proposed to educate the people, establish communist ideals and beliefs, eliminate illiteracy, strengthen the study of scientific and cultural knowledge under the guidance of Marxism, and improve the cultural quality of the Chinese nation. During the Second Civil Revolutionary War, he pointed out: In order to create a new era, the shackles imposed by the reactionary ruling class on the spirit of the workers and peasants must be lifted and a new Soviet culture of workers and peasants must be created. The general policy of Soviet cultural education "is to educate the broad masses of working people in the spirit of communism, to make culture and education serve the revolutionary war and class struggle, to link education with labor, and to make the broad masses of the Chinese people enjoy Civilized and happy people.”[20] This was true in the war years, and it was also true in the construction of socialism. In 1959, while reading the Soviet Union's "Political Economics Textbook", he pointed out: "We must educate the people, not for individuals, but for the collective, for future generations, and for the future of society to work hard." He also said: In a socialist society, individuals should go to school to learn culture and technology first and foremost for the purpose of building socialism, for industrialization, to serve the people, and for collective interests, and not for high wages. In a conversation in 1958, he said again: "Isn't it the same as a dog making shit to eat if a person only lives to make some food? If you don't do something to help others and engage in communism, what's the point?" These discussions of Mao Zedong concentrated on one point, indicating that proletarian revolutionaries should have lofty ideals of communism and noble integrity. In order to adhere to their ideals and for the revolution, they can abandon all immediate personal interests. The great and lofty communist ideal and the idea of ??serving the people wholeheartedly are the soul of Mao Zedong’s view of happiness.

In short, the content of happiness is the unity of material life and spiritual life. Material living conditions are the basis and premise of spiritual life. Spiritual life is the sublimation of material life and is higher than material life. We must not only pay attention to the material life content of happiness, but also oppose the hedonism that only talks about material life without mentioning spiritual life, and regards material life as the supreme hedonism. We must also oppose overemphasis on spiritual life and separate spiritual life from material life. Understand happiness as asceticism apart from material comforts.