Scientific seminar “Classical Marxist-Leninists with the fight against wrong and hostile views”

An overview of the seminar

In the morning of September 3, 2020, Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics organized a scientific seminar titled “Classical Marxist-Leninists with the fight against wrong and hostile views”. The chairmen of the seminar were Assoc. Prof. Dr. Le Van Loi and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Duong Trung Y, Vice Presidents of the Academy.

Attendees of the meeting included Lieutenant General cum Director of the Vietnam National Defense Academy (under the Ministry of National Defence) Tran Viet Khoa; Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Ha, Deputy Editor-in-chief of the Communist Review; experts and scientists from the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics, the Political Academy (under the Ministry of National Defence), Ministry of Public Security, and the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences.

Delivering the opening and introductory speech at the seminar, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Le Van Loi, Vice President of the Academy, said that since Marxism was first publicly formulated, opponents of Marxism in the past and of Marxism-Leninism today had constantly found ways and used all tricks with all means to discredit Marxism-Leninism. During their lifetime, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin themselves had always actively fought against wrong and hostile views to protect the purity and the scientific, revolutionary essence of their doctrines.

Today, hostile forces are continuing to seek ways to defame, distort, and slander Marxism-Leninism. In this context, on the one hand we keep affirming permanent values of Marxism-Leninism and on the other hand, we firmly fight against these wrong and hostile arguments. “It is essential for classical Marxist-Leninists to learn from experience and have a polemical spirit, methods of fighting, and uncompromising attitude so that the fight against wrong and hostile arguments is effective and practical”, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Le Van Loi emphasized in his speech.

The seminar attracted nearly 20 presentations. Among them, 12 reports presented views on the fight of classical Marxist-Leninists in terms of philosophy, political economy, and scientific socialism. Seven reports provided information on the application of the points of views of classical Marxist-Leninists into the practice of fighting against wrong and hostile views to protect the Party’s ideological foundation in Vietnam today. The seminar focused on analyzing and judging the role of classical Marxist-Leninists in the fight against the false and hostile views in terms of philosophy. The typical example was the struggle of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels against the philosophical view of the Young Hegelians. Participants of the seminar compared the philosophical view of Marxism-Leninism and that of the Young Hegelians, thereby showing that Marxism-Leninism was more scientific than the idealistic philosophy of the Young Hegelians.

Besides, four presentations declared the role of classical Marxist-Leninists in the fight against wrong and hostile views in terms of political theory. They included Karl Marx’s struggle against wrong views about the origin and nature of profits and comparison between Marx’s views and those of bourgeois economists, agrarianism, and mercantilism. Four reports discussing the role of classical Marxist-Leninists in the fight against wrong and hostile views in terms of socialism were also presented in the seminar. The typical examples were the struggle of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels against opinions of anti-science “socialists” of all kinds such as “feudal socialism”, “petty bourgeois socialism”, “bourgeois socialism”, “true socialism”, and the fight of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin against opportunism and revisionism in the Russian Social Democratic Party and in the Second International, et cetera.

Based on the provided information, the remaining presentations at the seminar concentrated on proposing how to apply these thoughts of classical Marxist-Leninists into the practice of Vietnam today to fight against wrong and hostile rhetoric to protect the Party’s ideological foundation. In particular, one mentioned the application of views of Marxism-Leninism on the fight against wrong and hostile views on socialism and the path to socialism in Vietnam today. One presentation gave the application of Marxism-Leninism into the fight against wrong and hostile views on solving the relationships among production, distribution, and social justice in Vietnam. Another focused on the application of Marxism-Leninism into the fight against wrong and hostile views on handling the relationship between the construction of socialism and national defense in Vietnam today. The other was about the application of Marxism-Leninism into the fight against the degradation of political ideologies, morality, lifestyle, “self-evolution”, and “self-transformation” in the Party in our country today. These presentations brought great theoretical and practical significance in the struggle against different manifestations of wrong and hostile views in Vietnam today.

Political Theory (Source:hcma.vn)