Spiritual Civilization

The sum total of the achievements of intellectual production and intellectual life created by man in the process of knowing and reshaping the world, which manifests itself as the progress of intellectual production and the increase of the level of intellectual life.

In his work The History and Theory of Socialism, it was Bernstein who first put forth the term “spiritual civilization”. Marx and Engels did not directly use this concept, but they put forth a series of related concepts, such as “intellectual production”, “mental intercourse”, “intellectual activity”, “intellectual life”, “the production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness”. The terms “intellectual products” and “intellectual creations”, as put forward in The Communist Manifesto, is close to the original form of the concept “spiritual civilization”. In these classical expressions, the object to which spiritual civilization refers are mainly the ideological superstructures corresponding to a definite mode of production of society, such as politics, juridical ideas, morality, science, art, religion, philosophy, etc., which constitute the main contents of spiritual civilization.

Spiritual civilization is a product of the development of human society to a certain stage. The achievements of human spiritual civilization are always built on a certain material basis. It is closely connected with the division of labor between physical and mental labor. Every epoch has its own definite spiritual civilization that both corresponds to the level and the characteristics of material civilization. “Mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved.” The nature of spiritual civilization is determined by the mode of production. In different societies, the nature of spiritual civilization is different. The ideological aspect of spiritual civilization is directly determined by the economic system and political system of society, and are indirectly connected with the productive forces of society, but it has a significant impact on the development of spiritual civilization of the society as a whole, and advanced political thoughts and moral customs can actively push forward the forward development of human culture. The development of the cultural aspect of the spiritual civilization is directly connected with the material production and economic life of society, and directly reacts upon the material production and economic life of society. The development of science and culture is conducive to improving people’s ideological and moral realm. A complete spiritual civilization is the unity of ideological and cultural aspects. Spiritual civilization is both determined by material civilization and has a relative independence, and has its own laws of development. To measure the progress of society, we must not look only at the state of material civilization, but also at the state of intellectual production and intellectual life.

Generally speaking, the spiritual civilization of any epoch is a critique, inheritance, innovation and development of past spiritual civilizations. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels pointed out that “all epoch-making systems have as their real content the needs of the time in which they arose. Each one of them is based on the whole of the antecedent development of a nation, on the historical growth of its class relations with their political, moral, philosophical and other consequences.” The development of a spiritual civilization manifests itself as the replacement of old ideas and theories by new ideas and theories, the victory of advanced ideas over backward and reactionary ideas, the victory of truth over fallacy, and the growing flourishing of culture and science. Spiritual civilization acts as a tremendous promoter and lever of the development of human society. The capitalist spiritual civilization is an important manifestation of capitalist material civilization and capitalist system. On the one hand, it is built on the exploitation of the broad masses of workers and other laborers by the bourgeoisie; on the other hand, it has created many achievements of spiritual civilization of human society. Socialist spiritual civilization both inherits the excellent achievements of the capitalist spiritual civilization and all human civilizations and embodies the superiority of the socialist system.

The socialist spiritual civilization is one of the important features of socialism. Deng Xiaoping pointed out that in a socialist country, “the so-called spiritual civilization refers not only to education, science and culture (which are of course indispensable) but also to communist ideology, ideal, faith, morality, discipline, revolutionary standpoint and principle, comradely relations among people, and so on.”, “internationalism and patriotism also belong to this realm”. He further proposed to vigorously carry forward “the revolutionary spirit, which inspires people to work tirelessly, observe strict discipline, make sacrifices, act selflessly and put the interests of others first, the spirit that gives people revolutionary optimism and the determination to overwhelm all enemies and surmount all difficulties in order to win victory”, formed during the long years of revolutionary war, and “foster this spirit among all our people, particularly our young people, through exemplary deeds, so that it becomes the main pillar of the spiritual civilization of the People’s Republic of China.” Doing a good job in the construction of spiritual civilization in China is the fundamental guarantee for upholding the socialist path and for realizing the “Four Modernizations”. While building a socialist material civilization, we must attach importance to the construction and development of a socialist spiritual civilization. Under the socialist system, in terms of the trend of development and final result of material and spiritual civilization, it must be higher than the level of capitalism. Of course, since the socialist system has not been established for a long time, it itself needs a process of self-development and perfection, therefore, building a socialist spiritual civilization at a higher level will also be a long-term process, which requires great efforts.