Science and Technology Constitute a Primary Productive Forces

His talks in September 5 and September 12, 1988; contained in in Vol. 3 of Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping. The excerpts of Deng Xiaoping's two talks are taken from his talks with President Gustav Husak of Czechoslovakia on September 5, 1988 and his talks on the preliminary implementation of the price and wage reform. In the first part, Deng Xiaoping pointed out : “The world is changing, and we should change our thinking and actions change along with it.” For us, the basic task is to maintain socialist convictions and principles, expand the productive forces and raise the people’s living standards. To accomplish this task, we must open our country to the outside World. He said, " Marx said that science and technology are part of the productive forces. Facts show that he was right. In my opinion, science and technology are a primary productive force.”

In the second part, Deng Xiaoping once again said, "Marx was quite right to say that science and technology are part of the productive forces, but now it seems his statement was incomplete. The complete statement should be that science and technology constitute a primary productive force." So we must fully recognize the importance of science and technology. We should put more money and effort into developing them and into developing agriculture and education. We should try every way to expand education, even if it means slowing down in other fields. We must try to increase the material benefits for the few top intellectuals. If we arouse their enthusiasm and show them more respect, they will make more contributions. The wages of intellectuals must be raised step by step over the next few years, so they will have something to look forward to. No matter how many difficulties we have, we must try to improve the treatment of teachers. Science and technology are the primary productive forces which constitute the motive force of the development of socialist society, is a new concept which inherits and deepens Marx's thought that science and technology can be transformed to productive forces, and is an important part of the theoretical achievements made by Chinese communists in their efforts of Sinicization of Marxism.