The real problem, then, is to be locked into old ways, old dogmatisms developed under different circumstances. One might study carefully – always a useful undertaking – the texts of Marx and Engels, or indeed Lenin, Stalin and Mao, but the risk is that one takes them as iron-clad prescriptions for all situations. Deng’s point here is that such an approach is actually a betrayal of Marxism, for the key is the method itself rather than the specific results arising from the method in specific situations.
— Read on stalinsmoustache.org/2020/02/17/liberating-thought-part-3-seeking-truth-from-facts/