The report to the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) stressed the concepts of Sinicizing, modernizing and popularizing Marxism, and of adhering to the principle of arming the whole party and educating all of the people with socialist theory with Chinese characteristics. In the author's opinion, socialist theory with Chinese characteristics is a theoretical system which possesses a powerful creativity, influence and vitality, and whose core value is being "people-oriented". In order to arm the whole party and educate all of the people with this theoretical system, it is necessary to genuinely put the idea of being "people-oriented" into practice, and give an active response to the people’s requirements.

The "people" refers here to the masses, which obviously include the disseminators of Marxism themselves.

In recent years, the number of people contributing to research on Marxist theory and to its dissemination has been continuously increasing, and Marxist studies authorization centers offering master and doctoral degrees have increased by a large margin, as has the quantity of students. However, the number of people who genuinely engage in Marxism studies and popularizing Marxism is actually very limited, and some even feel that there is no future in devoting themselves to this work. This leads to a dispirited feeling, to unsatisfactory team building and to a worsening situation in general.

When looking into the origin of this state of affairs, it becomes clear that the past practices were focused more on how the disseminators of Marxism strengthened their self-cultivation of Marxist theory, and how they reshaped and improved themselves so as to meet the needs of the era’s development, so that they could play a more important role in promoting the popularization of contemporary Chinese Marxism. This was undoubtedly significant and necessary, but while highlighting their historical mission of disseminating Marxism, to a large extent it ignored their contemporary characteristics, and the fact that disseminators of Marxism are also part of the society. Living under the new historical circumstances and a complicated international and domestic background, these people have their own requirements for surviving and developing, including spiritual and physical requirements.

The requirements of the disseminators as a group should be respected and guaranteed by the relevant institutions and mechanisms. These institutions and mechanisms must ensure and highlight the subjectivity of the disseminators, and fully respect their independent value judgments, spirit and emotions. When their efforts and achievements are fully recognized, this will allow them to identify and believe in Marxism emotionally, in their attitudes and their behavior, at which point they will regard the popularization of Marxism as their own responsibility and mission, and bring their abilities into full play.

These institutions and mechanisms should abandon the idea of treating conscious initiative as the only kind of subjective initiative; they should also abandon the practice of simply and unilaterally interpreting human factors as spiritual factor, and separating the spiritual strength of the human being from the material strength. It should be recognized that being part of society, disseminators are also influenced by the daily living of ordinary people. Therefore, meeting their material needs, including the need for clothing, food, shelter and transportation, means mobilizing their enthusiasm and motivating their objective forces of theoretical conscientiousness and confidence.

In a word, it is necessary to organically combine the disseminators' responsibilities with their self-development and the realization of their value, so that they can carry out their obligations and meanwhile enjoy their due rights. This would be of great significance for strengthening the disseminators’ theoretical conscientiousness and confidence, and could really enhance the effectiveness of the popularization of Marxism.

The author is a professor at Heilongjiang University.

　　                                                                                                         Translated by Chen Meina

                                                                                                               Revised by Gabriele Corsetti