Li Shouxian, the Party Secretary of Yingshan County, was browsing through today's meeting outline in the library of the Party School in Wuhan. Chairman Chen Ke had recently taken over the administration of Hubei and immediately began summoning the secretaries of the Hubei Provincial Committee and various cities and counties for a meeting.

The documents provided for the meeting were divided into two categories: one was a summary of the People's Party's specific work over the past five years, and the other was the discussion outline for this meeting. Undoubtedly, the specific work summary sparked intense interest among the vast majority of comrades. Li Shouxian was just a beat too slow, and all the copies of the work summary were snatched up, with three or four comrades huddled together reading a single copy. He couldn't squeeze his head in. Helplessly, Li Shouxian could only pick up the discussion outline to read.

"What is the People's Revolution", "Communism and the Socialist Program". These extremely theoretical summaries indeed failed to arouse interest in many comrades. Rather than racking their brains reading these, it would be more relaxing to listen to Chairman Chen Ke speak at the meeting.

Li Shouxian glanced around the large reading room of the library again. Wherever there was a crowd of bobbing heads, it was undoubtedly comrades reading the specific work summaries; probably eighty percent of the comrades were reading those. About twenty percent of the comrades were frowning and reading alone with their heads buried in the books, and what they were reading was undoubtedly the theoretical lectures.

Li Shouxian flipped open the "Theoretical Discussion" booklet he had picked up, and a sentence jumped into his eyes. It wasn't that the position of this sentence was particularly eye-catching, but that the handbook emphasized it with a red underline: "Currently, whether in economic research or economic construction, we must pay attention to an unscientific tendency, that is, overemphasizing productive forces while neglecting the study and construction of production relations. This tendency is very likely to breed the erroneous concept of 'productive forces determinism' in the current and long period to come. The development of our People's Party is by no means a simple accumulation of productive forces, but needs to be constructed through holistic research and exploration..."

When Chen Ke said this, his expression was quite serious, and Li Shouxian had a deep impression of it. However, unknown which reader had written a comment next to it: "Apriorism?!" The large question mark and exclamation mark likely expressed suspicion and dissatisfaction. Whether the object of dissatisfaction was Chen Ke, who wrote this passage, or the comrades with the "tendency towards productive forces alone", was unknown.

Li Shouxian considered his own theoretical knowledge to be very shaky. He actually envied those comrades who dared to openly criticize others from the bottom of his heart. Li Shouxian's family could be considered well-off middle peasants, and he had read some books. After the flood destroyed Li Shouxian's family, he instead received compulsory education here in the People's Party. By now, Li Shouxian could read, write, and calculate, but that bit of classical Chinese education from his early years had long been completely overwhelmed by the People's Party's modern Chinese education. Asking him to write in vernacular Chinese was fine, but he really couldn't achieve making a summary speech with such concise content.

Opening his own thick notebook, Li Shouxian finally found the term "Apriorism". Following it was the explanation Li Shouxian had copied down. "Apriorism: A form of idealist epistemology. It is fundamentally opposed to the materialist reflection theory. It believes that human knowledge precedes sensory experience and social practice, and is innate. Also known as a priorism or idealist apriorism." While silently reading this text, Li Shouxian racked his brains to recall in which class he had learned this knowledge and how the lecturing teacher had elaborated on this content. After thinking for a good while, Li Shouxian finally remembered that it was Qi Huishen, the Secretary of the Anhui Provincial Committee, who had taught this class. In it, he had analyzed complex idealism and materialism.

"These learned comrades are just different," Li Shouxian couldn't help but sigh.

When Chairman Chen Ke summoned the Hubei comrades for a meeting under the name of "Cadre Training", Li Shouxian never expected the situation to turn into what it was now. Originally a Hubei meeting, it had turned into a National Party Congress of the People's Party. Party representatives from various provinces gathered in Wuhan. This Third Plenary Session was not like the past, mainly conducting work arrangements and related discussions. Under the leadership of Chairman Chen Ke, more than 1,200 representatives selected from nearly 60,000 People's Party members and probationary members were conducting an ideological discussion meeting.

This meeting was not like the past where one just listened to reports; all representatives had to participate in discussions and logically accept the concepts of the socialist system and people's revolution. Besides study and social practice, there were group discussions. Li Shouxian had been worrying about the work in the county, thinking that after listening to the work arrangements, he could go back and continue working. Unexpectedly, Chairman Chen Ke spoke up: if this discussion wasn't finished, no one could think about going back.

Since Chairman Chen had spoken, everyone initially felt they should hurry up and finish the meeting so they could hurry back to work. So the discussions were actually quite active. As a result, after several general assemblies and small group discussions, even Li Shouxian, who considered himself to have no concept of "profound" political concepts, discovered that there were not just a few people within the party who opposed Chairman Chen Ke on many concepts.

The People's Party had held many trainings, large and small, in the past, and many concepts and consensuses existed. For example, overthrowing the imperial system, establishing a socialist republic, and realizing the people's democratic dictatorship—these concepts were undisputed content within the People's Party.

Those who could be elected as party representatives were all comrades with considerable practical experience. Regarding specific work and theoretical elaboration, much was done attached to work arrangements. At the time, everyone listened and thought it made sense, and it was effective for specific work. However, after the work was done, to what extent these theories were remembered by comrades and continued to be applied in other work varied vastly.

Li Shouxian considered himself not smart enough, so he read those documents repeatedly whenever he had time. He tried to combine them with mass work, and there were some results. At this meeting, after listening to the speeches, he felt that quite a few comrades not only failed to combine work with mobilizing the masses, but some even advocated doing the opposite. their attitude was not only not to mobilize the masses, but even to advocate restricting the masses, adopting a model of absolute unilateral leadership by the People's Party. These comrades brought out various examples to prove that this method was the most efficient and also the most thorough in mopping up enemies.

Since there was comrades holding this attitude, naturally there was another faction, believing that as long as the People's Party's dominant situation could be maintained, the current situation in the localities could be temporarily accepted, and even the gentry and landlords could be classified as a force that "can be fully cooperated with temporarily" to rapidly advance the goal of the People's Party seizing full power in the four provinces.

At the meeting, Chairman Chen Ke criticized comrades holding both these attitudes simultaneously. All sides had a great debate from theory to practice. Finally, Chairman Chen Ke had to require all comrades to give work reports at the meeting, and conduct "criticism and self-criticism" at the reporting meeting. At the same time, discussions and analysis were conducted on the article "Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society".

Originally, many comrades thought the meeting could be completed in five or six days, but in the blink of an eye, it exceeded everyone's expectations. Chairman Chen Ke not only had no intention of letting everyone go back, but even summoned one-tenth of the party members and probationary members to enter the Party School for training in the name of the Party School. The original 1,200-person meeting turned into a 6,000-person study and meeting session in the blink of an eye. Chairman Chen Ke personally served as the principal of the Party School, and Anhui Provincial Committee Secretary Qi Huishen served as the vice-principal.

This time it was not just a matter of the Party Constitution; the Party School first emphasized organizational discipline. Chairman Chen Ke demanded the establishment of "iron-like discipline". Including the organization methods of various regular meetings and ad hoc meetings. The division of labor for comrades in various positions, internal scrutiny of the party organization, and the reporting system. Including various accountability systems. If a problem occurred, exactly which department needed to be responsible.

These organizational regulations existed originally, but this time they were refined and improved through discussion. All content had to be discussed and trained by party organizations at all levels of the Party School. Every party group had to understand these work positions. Besides oral exams, there were written exams. This was still okay; including Li Shouxian, most comrades felt that although it was troublesome, doing so had been proven by many cases. Clear division of labor and responsibilities in place were of great benefit to the work.

The first sharp conflict erupted over "reporting" (whistleblowing). The published "Regulations on Reporting by Party Members" required that all party members had the obligation to report bad behavior within the party. Reporting did not distinguish between closeness or distance; all party members must maintain loyalty to the party's cause and conduct public and private reporting of words and deeds that violated party organizational discipline.

"Isn't this just snitching?" The Party School exploded. Criticism and self-criticism was one thing, but reporting and exposing was another matter. The former was a work discussion issue; if you didn't say it, or if you had thick skin when criticized by comrades, you could get through it. Even so, comrades turning into enemies during public criticism and self-criticism were not just one or two cases. But the latter, in this era, was a matter of shooting someone in the back.

Originally, perfecting the organizational structure and clarifying the division of responsibilities had already made many comrades very dissatisfied in their hearts. What many comrades envied was Chen Ke's demeanor of holding great power and wielding it freely; the division of responsibilities directly turned this possibility into a bubble. And public and private reporting made comrades in leadership positions feel great unease. Because this reporting was facing the "Discipline Inspection Commission". Since there was a lack of cadres everywhere now, the Discipline Inspection Commission was short-handed, and many young cadres entered the Discipline Inspection Commission to work. The old cadres might not necessarily look up to these comrades. If it was just because they entered the Discipline Inspection Commission that new cadres could ride over old cadres, this was not a situation the old cadres were willing to see.

Moreover, many of the party members were new party members with insufficient understanding of the People's Party. They had not been subjected to strict disciplinary constraints, and their "jianghu air" (outlaw/triad mentality) was heavy. These various problems entangled together, and using "opposing private reporting, demanding public criticism and self-criticism" as a vent, quite a few comrades in the Party School caused a ruckus.

Li Shouxian usually didn't like to form cliques, and he consistently agreed with Chen Ke's views. So for the time being, no one pulled Li Shouxian into this noisy force. However, thinking of the current situation, Li Shouxian also felt very uneasy in his heart.