Academic Journal of Science and Technology ISSN: 2771-3032 | Vol. 4, No. 1, 2022 102 Discussion on the Fourfold Fundamental Characteristics of Marxism Xiaohua Guo Party School of Meizhou Municipal Committee, Meijian District, Meizhou, Guangdong 514000, China Abstract: Marxism is a great theory, combined with scientific, popular, open, practical. Starting from the study of the original text of Marxist classics, this paper uses the analysis method of combining theory with practice, history and reality to fully articulate the fourfold characteristics of Marxism. The success of Marxist philosophy, political economy and scientific socialism in theory and practice reflects the scientific nature of Marxism. Marx fought for the people's interests all his life, embodies its popular character. Marxism is open to the past, present and future of human history and to all outstanding human cultures, which reflects its openness. Marxism has made great achievements in scientific socialism, and China has made great achievements after receiving the guidance of Marxism, which shows the practicality of Marxism. Keywords: Marxism, Scientific, Practicality, Popular, Openness. 1. Introduction Marxism is the foundation of our party and country, the basic principles of Marxism influence the development of the country in all aspects. Therefore, in order to understand contemporary Chinese politics, one must first understand Marxism. Therefore, every member of the Communist Party should ponder the question of why Marxism, and strengthen the study of Marxist theory all his life. Only in this way can we grasp the essence of Marxism, strengthen our ideals and convictions, and enhance our working ability. 2. The scientific of Marxism 2.1. The scientific of Marxism’s Philosophy Let's first analyze the scientific nature of Marxist philosophy. [1] Marxist philosophy consists of two parts, namely dialectical materialism and historical materialism. When I say these two words, you can see that they both have the same suffix, namely materialism. From this, we can probably know the importance of materialism to Marxist philosophy. Indeed, materialism is the cornerstone of the building of Marxist philosophy. Only when we understand what materialism is and why materialism is right, can we continue to study the relevant content of dialectical materialism and historical materialism. Let's start with materialism. Obviously, materialism is a theory formed to study a certain problem. To be specific, materialism is a theory formed in the process of studying the origin of the world. Materialism has a unique word. About the only word, we often make up the words have only, only, and so on. This means that there is only one. According to this understanding, in the study of the origin of the world, the answer of materialism is only material is existing. Now let's analyze why matter is first the origin of the world is matter, and consciousness is only the reflection of matter. Start with the simplest example. For example, I want to teach a child about elephants. The best thing to do is to take him to the park to see the elephants and let him form his own understanding of the elephants. In this cognitive activity, we must first have the material existence of the elephant before we can form the consciousness of the elephant. Similarly, if your child is curious and asks about fairy tales, you will not be able to answer them. Because mythological demons are not physical beings, it is impossible for human consciousness to have any reflection of them. It can be seen that material existence is the first thing. Only when there is material existence can human consciousness have a reflection about material. Secondly, consciousness is the product of the development of the material world to a certain stage, and it is also a kind of matter in a sense. This is the result of scientific research, not here.Idealism is the product of human infant's subjective imagination. Before modern times, the social production was underdeveloped, the level of science and technology was backward, and human beings' ability to understand nature was very limited. They used to understand natural phenomena with the concept of gods in their imagination, thus forming idealism. For example, the Chinese explain the phenomenon of thunder and lightning with the use of thunder and lightning, while the West uses God to explain the formation of nature and human history. Since the Renaissance, the scientific and technological level of human beings has been changing with each passing day, and the cognitive ability of human beings has become increasingly mature. Idealism has also been declining, which is the inevitable development of human beings. It can be seen that Marx fully absorbed the essence of modern human science, decisively abandoned the outdated idealism, and established materialism as the cornerstone of his philosophy.Now let's look at dialectics. This is a word we use a lot, and we hear a lot. For example, when discussing a problem, we often say that we should look at the problem critically. We often think with dialectical method, essentially using dialectics, but I'm afraid few people have seriously thought about what dialectics is. In its original meaning, it refers to a way of perceiving and thinking about things. From the point of view of the history of philosophy, it has a long history, first appeared in ancient Greece period. The founder of dialectics was Heracletes. When it looks at the outside world, it finds that everything has two opposing sides, that there is white and black, cold and hot, man and woman, good and evil, and so on. At the same time, he also believes that the two opposing sides are united. That is to say, if there were no 103 day, people would not know what night is. Finally, he concluded that the existence of everything is both opposite and unified, and called this way of looking at things dialectic. As we know, ancient Greece was a land of philosophers. After Heraclitus, the great philosopher Socrates developed dialectics. Socrates was as talkative as Confucius, and his favorite activity was to walk down the street and talk to people. His chats, of course, were not paternalistic gossip or curious gossip, but philosophical conversations about the search for wisdom. He began his conversation by asking questions, which is the nature of philosophy, for philosophy is the study of asking how everything exists. First, Socrates throws out a question to make way for the person to answer it, then gives a counterexample to deny the person's answer, and finally, Socrates generalizes the answer he thinks is correct. The whole dialogue is a process in which seemingly correct answers are repeatedly denied and finally the correct answer is reached. This is what we often refer to as the three links of dialectics, from thesis to antithesis and then to synthesis, which is short for antithesis. By Socrates' time, dialectics had matured into a highly effective way of understanding the world. From ancient Greece to modern times, many western philosophers have used it to think. Philosophy developed to the period of classical German philosophy, Hegel thoroughly carried forward dialectics. Hegel is a master of dialectics. He believes that contradiction is the driving force of all things, including human consciousness, nature and society. On this basis, he summarized three laws of dialectics, namely, the law of unity of opposites, the law of quantitative change and qualitative change, and the law of negation of negation. The law of unity of opposites, contradiction is universal, there are contradictions within and between everything, the unity and struggle of the two sides of the contradiction promote the movement and development of things. I think you are familiar with the law of unity of opposites. Next, let's analyze the law of quantitative and qualitative change. According to the law of quantitative change and qualitative change, quantitative change is the premise of qualitative change, and when it develops to a certain stage, it will cause qualitative change. I will use the Chinese nation from standing up, rich and strong three great leaps to illustrate. Obviously, every leap is a qualitative change, but every qualitative change is fully based on quantitative change. Finally, the negation law of negation is analyzed. This rule is a bit of a mouthful to read and a bit difficult to understand. It says that the essence of the development of things is the process of constant self-denial, and only by constantly experiencing the process of the negation of the negation can things achieve better development. Let me give you an example. Today's China is a socialist society. How did it come about? It comes from the denial of the old society. What is the future of China's social development? It's a communist society. From the perspective of productivity and production relations, the future China will certainly be very different from the current China. From this perspective, it is a denial of the current society. Of course, this negation is in the positive sense, because it is the continuous improvement of the social system. It can be seen from this that our construction of a communist society is a process of negation. In the process of constant negation, we bid farewell to the past and improve ourselves until we achieve our final goal. These three laws are the essence of the development of dialectics from ancient to modern times, and they are the super weapons to study human thinking, nature and society. After Hegel, Marx was the most talented thinker of his time who was good at using dialectics to analyze and solve problems. Any of Marx's classic original works, we must be able to Marx's strong dialectical thinking ability.[2] As you can see, we have spent a lot of time explaining what materialism and dialectics are and why they are scientific theories. The reason for this is that materialism and dialectics are the cornerstones of Marxist theoretical edifice, from which all of Marx's positions, views and methods come. Only with a thorough understanding of Marxist materialism and dialectics can we understand Marxism and make good use of it.It is not difficult to know that dialectical materialism is a philosophy of understanding and transforming the world with dialectics on the basis of insisting on materialism. Historical materialism is the knowledge that studies the law of historical development from the standpoint of materialism. Through the above analysis, there is no doubt that dialectics and materialism are scientific. Naturally, dialectical materialism is a scientific theory. Now let us analyze the scientific nature of historical materialism. Historical materialism tells us that the productive forces determine the relations of production, and the relations of production react with the productive forces. With the development of productive forces, human society presents a development process from primitive society, slave society, feudal society, capitalist society, socialist society, communist society. In the social field, the material base determines the superstructure, and the superstructure reacts on the material base. The scientific nature of these views has been explained by teachers at all levels, from junior high school to university classes, and all of you are familiar with them and can even be used to analyze and solve practical problems. I do not analyze them one by one as I did with materialism and dialectics. Through the above analysis, we can know that Marxist philosophy is a scientific theory. 2.2. The Scientific Nature of Marxist Political Economy To understand Marxist political economy, we must first understand political economy. Commonly understood, political economy is the study of the generation and distribution of national wealth. It was born in the early days of capitalism. Marxist political economy is formed on the basis of criticizing capitalist classical economics. The theory of surplus value, the irreconcilable contradiction between the private ownership of the means of production and the socialized mass production is the greatest creation of Marxist political economy. As for the correctness of these two theoretical viewpoints, you have already understood them in many ideological and political courses, so I will not make specific theoretical analysis. The early workers smashed the production machine in order to fight against the exploitation of capitalists, and the economic crisis that broke out continuously for hundreds of years in the capitalist society is the best proof of the scientific nature of Marxist political economy. 2.3. The Scientific Nature of Scientific Socialism The central idea of scientific socialism, more familiar to all, was that mankind was bound to enter a communist society, and that this could only be achieved through violent revolution by the proletariat. The success of the October Revolution in Russia, the establishment of a large number of 104 socialist countries in the world after World War II, and the great achievements of the Communist Party of China's revolutionary reform and construction in the past century are all the best examples of the truth of scientific socialism. Therefore, there should be no doubt that scientific socialism is an absolute truth.Above, we explained the specific contents of Marxist philosophy, Marxist political economy and scientific socialism one by one, and fully demonstrated their scientific nature. It can be seen that from a theoretical perspective Marxism is a scientific truth without any error. 3. The Practicality of Marxism This is the distinguishing feature of Marxism from other theories. To do that, let's first understand what practice is. From the literal meaning of the word, practice can be understood as actual practice, with emphasis on human actions. In philosophical terms, it refers to all social activities that human beings can actively understand and transform the material world. These activities mainly include production practice, practice of dealing with social relations, and scientific practice. This is very easy to understand, farmers farming, workers do work, is the practice of production. Deputies to the National People's Congress propose bills on behalf of the people, and government departments coordinate labor relations. Similar practices are dealing with social relations. Scientists analyzing the gene sequence of Omicron in the laboratory are scientific practices. To say that Marxism is a practical theory means that it pays special attention to practice, to study the laws of practice, and to use these laws to promote the great development of practice. For example, in production practice, Marx attached great importance to the study of productive forces, and regarded the development level of productive forces as a decisive factor in distinguishing social types and shaping production relations. In the practice of dealing with social relations, Marx found the law of the development of human society, and profoundly pointed out the fundamental contradiction between then and now capitalist society, and pointed out that only through violent revolution can we lead to the communist society that human beings are bound to enter. It is an unprecedented initiative to study human history and human society, discover the laws, and lead the proletariat in reality to launch a violent revolution to promote the development of human society. Because the previous doctrine was basically knowledge without talking about actual action. As an ancient Chinese saying goes, you can't hear what's going on outside the window. You can only read the books of sages. Just memorize the classics, figure out the meaning of the text, and then can cope with the imperial examination, and finally seek an official post. As for caring about the sufferings of the common people and solving social problems, they have nothing to do with themselves. The same was true in the era of idealism in the West. When doing research, intellectuals mostly use reason to prove whether a certain theory is logical or not. They do not pay much attention to the practical problems of society, let alone seek effective solutions to social problems. Even when Hegel was concerned about reality and history, he even called the decayed political system of Germany the best political system in line with rationality, and called emperors like Napoleon the essence of the Age of Enlightenment. In the words of Marx, the philosophy of that era was suspended in the sky and out of touch. It was only with Marx that philosophy moved from heaven to earth, shared the destiny with The Times and the people, and turned thought into a weapon for the people to understand and transform the world. So Marx famously said that philosophers only interpret the world in different ways; the problem is to change the world. It is because of the powerful practicality of Marxism that the communist movement triggered by Marx has become the most vigorous social movement in modern human history. From this point of view, Marxism is indeed incomparable in its practicality. 4. The Popular of Marxism What is the people, the people are industrious and good people, is the ordinary majority of society. The people occupy a very high position in Marxist theory. It can be said that the sole mission of Marxism is to seek liberation for the whole world and the people. It is quite appropriate to say that Marxism has a popular character. An example can be given to illustrate. One is the story of Marx's early days as an editor. At that time, as the chief editor , Marx observed such an incomprehensible phenomenon that many people living in poverty went to the forest to pick up some firewood or wild fruits, but they were found guilty of theft by the court. What was even more ridiculous was that many people rushed to join in knowing that they would go to prison because they could eat a full meal after being jailed. The hardships of ordinary people's lives and the absurdity of legal regulations deeply touched Marx. At this time, Marx stood decisively on the side of the people and chose to use his intelligence to fight against the unconscionable Prussian government. Marx was so outraged that he wrote a debate on the law of forest theft, which exposed the reactionary face of the Prussian government. [3] As a result, Marx was forced to lose his job. Even so, Marx never changed his character of speaking for the people and crying out for justice, but Marx was accompanied by the life of his death and rough life. So Marx finally became a thinker and a revolutionary person. His path is closely related to his pursuit of legitimate interests for Prussia. Even if Marx had been a little lax in his stance toward the people and had nodded to the reactionary government at that time, Marx's life would not have been so difficult. But Marx did not do so, which fully demonstrated the popular character of Marxism.What can more illustrate the populism of Marxist theory is that the fundamental purpose of Marxism is to realize the liberation of all mankind and serve the fundamental happiness of people all over the world. In the Communist manifesto, Marx called on the proletarians of the world to unite. The proletarians have nothing to lose in this revolution but their chains. What they gain is the whole world. In order to achieve this goal, on the one hand, Marx tirelessly carried out theoretical research, wrote the imperial masterpiece on capital, theoretically exposed the inherent contradictions of capitalist society, and provided theoretical support for the inevitability of proletarian revolution. On the other hand, Marx always paid attention to the latest situation of the European workers' movement at that time, gave practical guidance to the proletarian League, supported the Paris Commune with public opinion, and practically promoted the realization of the self-liberation of the proletarians with his actions. It is precisely because Marxism is a great theory for the liberation of all mankind that Marxism has been warmly welcomed by the people since its birth. As the Communist manifesto spread around the world, Capital became known as the Bible of the working class. The reason why the broad masses of people are so enthusiastic about Marxist theory is that the popular nature 105 of Marxist theory has touched them and they have found the weapon to change their destiny. The populism of Marxism is also reflected in the fact that it declared the bankruptcy of the idealist view of history and regarded the people as the creators of history for the first time in history. The idealist view of history is isolated from the people. They regard the gods or heroes as the masters of history, and the people are always the foil in their eyes. Start with the view of God as the master of history. In the early days of human society, the great peoples of both East and West held this view. The Greeks regarded the gods of Mount Olympus as the master of history, the Hebrews regarded Yahweh as the master of history, and the Chinese in the Shang Dynasty also regarded God as the master of history. Since God dominates human history, man always plays a passive role in the historical process and in the relationship with God. Since man's existence is ordained by God, he must devote all his energy to the activity of knowing God's will. So, whether it was Athens, Hebrew or Chinese, the position of priests was very important, because they were the representatives of the divine will. With the awakening of human subject consciousness, the concept of history dominated by God gradually evolved into the concept of history dominated by heroes. The most representative one is the history of the emperors, especially the founding emperors, during the two thousand years of absolute monarchy in China. In the Han Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty, when historians write about their birth, they say that their mothers had visions when they conceived them, and that their mothers dreamed a dream and there was a big light and then they came into being. This is to tell the world, they are not naked eyes, but God down, is the true son of heaven, so they should be the emperor, do the people of the world's father of course. Under the influence of this heroic view of history, the people will only become obedient and foolish people loyal to the king, and human history will hardly make progress. In Marx's words, people will never get rid of the inevitability of being exploited and enslaved, and they will never make the leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom. But only to Marx, the people were treated correctly for the first time, and the great function of the subject of history and the creator of history was greatly highlighted. 5. The Openness of Marxism This is a very striking feature of Marxist theory. Open, as opposed to closed, means a state of freedom and openness. The openness of Marxism can be understood from two perspectives: its openness to the essence of human thought and its openness to human history. Always being open to the essence of human thought means that Marxism can always absorb the essence of human thought to enrich itself. This is most obvious in the theoretical structure of Marxism. Marxist philosophy has absorbed the essence of Western philosophy, especially German classical philosophy, Marxist political economy has absorbed the essence of Western classical political economy, Marxist Utopian socialism has absorbed the essence of Western Utopian socialist thought. Obviously, Marxism naturally has the great gene of encapsulating all the essence of human thought, which is the source of Marxism's eternal correctness. [4] At the same time, the openness of Marxism is also reflected in the fact that it is always open to human history. For the past of human beings, Marx used historical materialism to find the law of its development, expounded the historical iron law of the development of human society from low to high, and pointed out that since the primitive society, human society is an exploitative society. For today's human beings, Marx thoroughly exposed the inherent social contradictions of capitalist society, and found the weapons of class struggle and violent revolution for the proletariat. Regarding the future of mankind, Marxism clearly states that the ultimate goal of mankind is to achieve the liberation of all mankind, which can only be achieved through the establishment of a communist society. Marx has scientific analysis and accurate judgment on the past, present and future of history, which fully reflects the openness of Marxism.As a Marxist learner, we must learn the spirit of openness embodied in Marxism, make ourselves always open to all the excellent essence of human thought, make ourselves always open to human history, and constantly understand the essence of Marxism in the process of absorbing the essence and observing history, so as to better play the great function of Marxism in guiding practice. 6. Conclusion The BBC used make a survey of thinkers of the millennium, Marx certainly came out on top. They were followed by Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton, two great physicists who revolutionized human perception of time and space. But Marx's ranking actually surpassed them, which shows the powerful power of Marxist theory. If the relevant theories of these two physicists have made a qualitative leap in human beings' understanding of the laws of natural operation, then the theories of Marxism have made a huge breakthrough in human beings' understanding of the laws of social development. We should firmly believe that Marxism is a great theory, so as to provide strong conviction for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. References [1] Xiaofeng Yan,Xiaoqin Tan.Why Marxism is Wright [M]. Beijing: Publishing of Beijing Normal University,2021.2. [2] Selected Works of Marx and Engels Vol. 3 [M]. Beijing: People's Publishing House,1995.13. [3] Selected Works of Marx and Engels Vol. 3 [M]. Beijing: People's Publishing House,1995.558. [4] Selected Works of Marx and Engels Vol. 3 [M]. Beijing: People's Publishing House,1995.480.