Resolution of the CPC Central Committee on the Guidelines for Building Socialist Spiritual Civilization

Important document adopted by the Sixth Plenary Session of the 12th CPC Central Committee on September 28, 1986. Included in the Selection of Important Documents since the 12th National Congress (Vol. 3). The main contents include 8 aspects:

(1) The strategic position of the construction of a socialist spiritual civilization. The socialist spiritual civilization with Marxism as guidance is an important characteristic of socialism. Spiritual civilization provides spiritual drivers and knowledge support to the development of the material civilization, and provides forceful ideological guarantees for its correct development orientation. The construction of a socialist spiritual civilization is a large matter relating to the rise, decline, success and failure of Socialism. The basic guidelines for the construction of a socialist spiritual civilization are as follows: It must be the construction of a spiritual civilization that promotes socialist modernization construction, must be the construction of a spiritual civilization that stimulates complete reform and implementation of opening to the outside world, and must be the construction of a spiritual civilization that persists in the Four Cardinal Principles.

(2) The basic task of the construction of a socialist spiritual civilization. The basic task of the construction of a socialist spiritual civilization is to meet the needs of socialist modernization construction for cultivating socialist citizens with ideals, moral, culture and discipline, and improving the ideological, moral, scientific and cultural qualities of the overall Chinese nation. The construction of the spiritual civilization is based on two aspects, one of them is ideological and moral construction and the other is educational, scientific and cultural construction. Strengthening the spiritual civilization construction is not only the mission of the ideological, cultural and educational departments, but is also the task of all departments at the battle line, and is a joint, long-term task of the entire Party, the entire Army and the workers, peasants, intellectuals and other workers and patriots of all nationalities in the entire country.

(3) Using common ideals to mobilize and unit the people from all ethnicities in the entire country. The highest ideal of our Party is to establish a communist society, and building socialism with Chinese characteristics is the necessary phase that must be passed in realizing this highest ideal. Building socialism with Chinese characteristics and building China into a highly civilized and democratic socialist modern country are the common ideals of the people of all nationalities in China at this phase. We should unite the entire body of workers and patriots, vigorously bring them into action, and struggle for the common ideal.

(4) Establishing and carrying forward socialist moral customs. The basic requirements of Socialist moral construction are to love the motherland, love the people, love work, love science and love socialism. concerning moral construction, we absolutely must start from reality, encourage advances, look after the majority, and integrate the requirements of advance with the requirements of being widespread. In all sectors and trades of our society, we must forcefully strengthen professional moral construction. In public and social life, we must forcefully carry forward a spirit of Socialist humanitarianism. We must launch activities to transform social traditions in the broad town and country, advocate a civilized, healthy and scientific way of life, and overcome ignorant and backward things that still exist in social customs. Socialist morals are a new frontier of moral development in human civilization, they certainly must critically inherit all fine moral traditions of human history, and must struggle with all degenerate ideologies and morals.

(5) Strengthening socialist democracy, legal system and discipline education. Highly regarding democracy is a great objective of socialism, and is also an important reflection of Spiritual civilization construction in State and social life. Democracy cannot be separated from the legal system and discipline. The Socialist legal system reflects the people’s will, guarantees the people’s lawful rights and interests, stresses the relationship between people, standardizes and controls the actions of people, and punishes and attacks all sorts of illegal activities violating society. Not wanting a socialist democratic legal system, is absolutely not a socialist legal system; not wanting the democracy of a Socialist legal system, is absolutely not Socialist democracy. Bourgeois liberalization, denies the Socialist system, and advocates a capitalist system, this is basically in violation of the people’s interest and the tide of history, and for the broad masses of people to determinedly oppose. The basic problem in strengthening socialist democracy and legal system construction is educating the people. The people’s democratic dictatorship is a strong and powerful weapon protecting the people and safeguarding the “Four Modernizations”. We must attack all hostile elements destroying our country’s socialist system according to the law.

(6) Disseminating and raising education, science and culture. Education, science and culture are important conditions for material civilization construction, and are also important conditions for raising the popular masses’ ideological and moral consciousness levels. Especially in education and science, with overall Socialist modernization construction as strategic focus, if we cannot obtain the development we should not only will spiritual civilization construction not go forward, economic construction will also have no aftereffect. The socialist nature of China's cultural undertakings requires that social interests of the society be regarded as the highest standard. We must strive to raise the quality of intellectual products to satisfy the masses’ broad requirements, and conduct cultural management structure reform, reform business management, and stimulate the vigorous development of cultural undertakings. To this end, it is necessary to further address the issue of respect for knowledge and talent.

(7) The guiding role of Marxism in the construction of spiritual civilization. Adhering to the guidance of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought is the foundation of China's socialist modernization and the construction of socialist spiritual civilization. Our ideal construction, moral construction, cultural construction, democracy and legal system concept construction are all inseparable from the guidance of Marxism, and inseparable from Marxist theoretical construction. It is impossible to uphold Marxism without the viewpoint of practice, development and creation. Making Marxism into an ossified dogma is wrong; denying the basic principles of Marxism, and thinking that Marxism is “out of date” and blindly worshipping some philosophies and sociologies of the capitalist class, is also wrong.

(8) The duties of Party organizations and Party members in the construction of spiritual civilization. The tasks of all levels’ Party organizations and the broad Party members in spiritual civilization construction, are first, to strengthen their own spiritual civilization construction, and especially do the Party style well; and second, to organize and promote the spiritual civilization construction of the whole society with exemplary actions and arduous work.

The “Resolution” is the first programmatic document of the Party on the construction of spiritual civilization and provides basic guidelines for the healthy development of the construction of spiritual civilization in China.