Boris Leibson
PETTY-BOURGEOIS
REVOLUTIONISM
__AUTHOR__
BORIS LEIBSON
__TITLE__
PETTY-BOURGEOIS
REVOLUTIONISM
__TEXTFILE_BORN__ 2006-10-02T22:28:48-0700
__TRANSMARKUP__ "Y. Sverdlov"
__SUBTITLE__
(Anarchism, Trotskyism and Maoism)
Progress Publishers • Moscow
[1]TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY DON DANEMANIS
B. M. Jl eft G3 OH
MeJiKo6ypjKya3Ht>iH
First printing 1970
Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
[2]CONTENTS
Ha
The General and Ihe Particular..........
9
The Poverty of Philosophy...........
40
``Permanent Revolution"............
01
Staking the Future on War...........
94
``Barracks Communism".............
114
Idol Worship.................
132
No Squeamishness About Means..........
147
Bellicose Nationalism..............
160
``Cultural Revolution"---Crisis of Maoism......
HG
[3] ~ [4] __ALPHA_LVL1__ [introduction.]Current events in China connected with the so-called cultural revolution have become a matter of great concern and anxiety to the world communist movement and all true friends of the Chinese people.
They cannot be said to have come like a bolt from the blue. For some years now, the communist movement has had to fight the ideology of Mao Tse-tung's followers, who have broken with the general line elaborated by the Moscow Meetings of 1957 and 1960 and are attempting to impose on all Communist Parties an adventurist policy alien to Marxism-Leninism. Mao's "great proletarian cultural revolution" is closely connected with the adventuristic domestic and foreign policy his group has now been pursuing for many years.
The policy of Mao and his group has now entered a new dangerous phase. It harms the interests of socialism, the international workingclass and liberation movement, endangers the socialist achievements of the Chinese people and objectively helps imperialism.
The monstrous forms that events in China have assumed, the outrages, lawlessness and provocations with their top-dressing of revolutionary phrase-mongering are naturally received as something unprecedented in history. Yet, though these events are unique, one cannot fail to see that the international communist movement is now faced with a phenomenon that bears a definite 5 resemblance to the symptoms of the ``disease'' Marx, Engels and Lenin and all true Communists fought, the disease they diagnosed as pettybourgeois revolutionism.
This pseudo-revolutionism, which always crops up "in somewhat new forms, in a hitherto unfamiliar garb or surroundings, in an unusual---a more or less = unusual---situation"^^1^^ inflicts great harm on the struggle to do away with capitalism and, as historical experience demonstrates, tends to degenerate from revolutionary phrase-mongering and empty gestures into an anti-revolutionary and finally outright reactionary force.
The world revolutionary movement comes up against many varieties of petty-bourgeois revolutionism. They differ according to their specific social roots, national features, historical conditions and, finally, the personal qualities of their leaders and ideologists. But despite all their different manifestations and even sometimes their apparent dissimilarity, all these varieties have many common specific features.
When Lenin was fighting the = Narodniks,^^2^^ he compared the manifestations of petty-bourgeois ideology in Russia and in the West, notably the views of the Narodniks and those of the so-called economic romanticists in Europe. "It goes without saying,'' Lenin said, "that Russia's specific historic and economic features, on the one hand, and her incomparably greater backwardness, on the other, lend Narodism particularly marked distinctive features. But these distinctions are no more than those between varieties within the same _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 32.
~^^2^^ The Narodniks---a petty-bourgeois trend in the Russian revolutionary movement.
6 species and, therefore, do not disprove the similarity between Narodism and petty-bourgeois romanticism."^^1^^Applying Lenin's methodology, we see that Chinese petty-bourgeois revolutionism bears the stamp of that country's historical and economic development. But comparing Maoism with other manifestations of petty-bourgeois revolutionism, particularly anarchism and Trotskyism, we find that, despite some differences between them, they all belong to the same species.
Historical experience is instructive. But reliance on it is fraught with danger. There is always the temptation to lull oneself with the fact that "something of the sort" has happened before and to be content with establishing analogies, overlooking the specific features of new phenomena a thorough understanding of which is indispensable for success in defending revolutionary Marxism.
Maoist ideology reveals a curious intermixture of anarchist and Narodnik views on the special historical mission of the peasantry and the pseudorevolutionary phrase-mongering of Trotskyism and the postulates of the ancient Chinese philosophers. But the main thing in Maoism is that petty-bourgeois revolutionism is made to serve bellicose great-power chauvinism and is striving for world leadership. This is a case of nationalistic manifestation of petty-bourgeois revolutionism. The fact that the champions of this anti-Marxist ideology are at the helm of state in so vast a country as China constitutes a danger far worse than that of any previous anti-Marxist trend.
No past experience, not even the most tempting parallels and comparisons can substitute for a _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 2, pp. 250--51.
7 detailed study of the concrete events in China. This does not mean, however, that we can disregard history in this study. On the contrary, the history of the struggle of Marxism against antiMarxist trends helps us gain a deeper understanding of the kind of enemies revolutionary theory had to contend with in its development. This historical experience helps us better to discern the modern enemies of Marxism no matter how they are disguised, helps us advance arguments against them, and strengthens our conviction of the invincibility of Marxist-Leninist ideology. [8] __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE GENERALThroughout its history the working-class movement has constantly had to fight petty-bourgeois revolutionism. This type of revolutionism emerged even before the proletariat became an independent class, since the petty bourgeoisie, having its roots in pre-capitalist social relations, is historically older than the working class.
Depending on the specific forms assumed by the disintegration of small commodity production and on specific historical conditions, petty- bourgeois revolutionism has different roots in different countries. The social basis of diverse manifestations of petty-bourgeois revolutionism in the Romanic countries of Western Europe was provided mainly by the ruined urban handicraftsmen, whereas in Russia it was provided chiefly by the peasantry, oppressed by survivals of serfdom. In countries where there is colonial or national oppression, petty-bourgeois revolutionism develops on the basis of the downtrodden state of the whole or nearly the whole population and naturally acquires a national liberation character. Certain sections of the intelligentsia in all countries are a feeding ground for petty-bourgeois revolutionism.
Numerous facts are known when the pettybourgeois struggle has played a progressive role. Marxists assess highly the work of the Jacobins in France, the contribution of the revolutionary Narodniks to Russia's emancipation movement, and the role of Sun Yat-sen in the development of China's anti-imperialist struggle; they honour 9 the memory of Cuba's revolutionary democrat, Jose Marti. In modern conditions, the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie is capable of paving the way for progressive development in countries where there is as yet no working class. In many of the countries that have won national independence, an outstanding role was played by revolutionary democrats representing the interests of the working peasantry, semi-proletarian elements and petty-bourgeois urban sections. These revolutionary democratic forces succeeded in steering some of these countries on to the road of non-capitalist development and are implementing important social transformations. And although much in the ideas of the revolutionary democrats is inconsistent and contradictory, Marxists consider it their duty to support them, being convinced that the logic and experience of the class struggle will help honest revolutionarydemocratic leaders to gradually rid themselves of many illusions.
The objective possibilities of petty-bourgeois revolutionism depend greatly on the period in which it asserts itself. Since the working class has become the most consistent revolutionary force of modern society, a force able to rally all those who are oppressed by capitalism, and still more so since socialism has become an international force, the positive role of the petty-bourgeois revolutionaries becomes the more apparent, the closer they draw to the proletariat and act as its allies.
At the same time, in addition to militant democratism, passionate love of freedom and resolute struggle for national independence, the petty bourgeoisie breeds also cowardly reformism, and what Lenin ironically described as petty- 10 bourgeois revolutionism---menacing, haughty and presumptuous in word, and hollow in deed.
The diversity of types of small-commodity economy are reflected in one way or another in the motley ideology of the petty bourgeoisie and the forms of its revolutionism. Being unable to create an objective, scientific theory to explain the process of social development, the petty bourgeoisie thinks up the most grotesque ideological conceptions. In so doing, it eclectically borrows propositions from various bourgeois doctrines, and, after the emergence of the Marxist ideology of the working class, from the proletarian ideology, and attempts to conciliate them.
For of all their erratic groping and the fact that their judgements are often diametrically opposed, all types of petty-bourgeois revolutionism at all times have certain features in common. Marx, Engels and Lenin showed great penetration in disclosing these common features, and subsequent events have brought additional proof that their analysis was highly accurate.
The principal feature observed in all types of pseudo-revolutionism is extreme subjectivism, unwillingness to take into account the objective laws of social development, blind faith in the miraculous power of revolutionary slogans, direct and immediate action, irrespective of the prevailing socio-political situation. Hence the tactics of unrestrained adventurism, or, as Lenin noted, passive "waiting for 'great days' along with an inability to muster the forces which create great events".^^1^^ Proletarian revolutionism is notable for its combination of scientific sobriety in the analysis of the objective state of affairs with the most _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 16, p. 349.
11 emphatic recognition of the importance of the revolutionary energy and initiative of the masses, and also of parties and individuals that are able correctly to express the requirements of social development; whereas petty-bourgeois revolutionism is based on impulses and passions.Defining petty-bourgeois revolutionism Lenin wrote in his ``Left-Wing'' Communism---an Infantile Disorder: "The instability of such revolutionism, its barrenness, and its tendency to turn rapidly into submission, apathy, phantasms, and even a frenzied infatuation with one bourgeois fad or another---all this is common = knowledge."^^1^^ Appalled at the horrors of capitalism, the petty bourgeois easily falls into extreme revolutionism but is unable to muster the necessary patience, organisation, discipline and endurance. This social phenomenon can be observed in all capitalist countries, and historical experience shows that it can cause harm not only during the period of the struggle against capitalism, but also after capitalism has been vanquished in individual countries by the revolutionary forces.
Before the victory of Marxist ideology in the working-class movement, when the struggle of the proletariat was still weak and the forms typical of the movement's initial stages still prevailed, anarchism was the fullest expression of the numerous shades of petty-bourgeois revolutionism. Lenin called anarchism "bourgeois philosophy turned inside = out."^^2^^ The individualist views and ideals of the anarchists, Lenin noted, were in direct opposition to socialism and looked not into the future of the bourgeois system, but into its past, when lone, _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ibid., Vol. 31, p. 32.
~^^2^^ Ibid., Vol. 10, p. 73.
12 scattered petty producers were governed by blind coincidence. "Anarchism,'' Lenin wrote, "is a product of despair. The psychology of the unsettled intellectual or the vagabond, and not of the pro- letarian."^^1^^While the working-class movement was making its first steps, the anarchists did not attach any importance to it or else tried to co-operate with workers' organisations in order to subordinate them to their aims. But as Marxist views gained ground, the hostility of the anarchists towards proletarian ideology became more clearly manifest.
Opposing organised forms of the workingclass struggle in general and political struggle in particular, rejecting the state as such, including the dictatorship of the proletariat, the anarchists incited the workers to spontaneous violent action. They accused the leaders of the working class of careerism and of forgetting the interests of the revolution, of "pursuing the worst kind of bourgeois policy".
The anarchists resorted to splitting activities in the First International, secretly organised their own "Social-Democratic Alliance" and declared that this secret organisation would accept people "combining brain, energy, honesty, ability to conspire and revolutionary passion".
Ignoring the laws of socio-economic development they were unable to analyse objective reality correctly and to reveal the social forces able to blaze the trail into the future. The anarchists thought that the future could be charted according to their subjective desires, and that all means were suitable to achieve their aim. Some _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ibid., Vol. 5, p. 327.
13 extreme representatives of anarchism declared that poison, the dagger and the hangman's rope were the weapons of the genuine revolutionary, the rebel, the trouble-maker who is prepared to destroy everything that stands in his way.The growth of the workers' mass movement and its better organisation deprived the activity of the lone revolutionary of any justification and petty-bourgeois ideas became increasingly meaningless. The anarchists gradually turned from revolutionary phrase-mongering to deliberate disorganisation of revolutionary struggle and began to rally to their black banners all sorts of degraded, declassed elements, half-crazed intellectuals dreaming of violence and destruction, people with a grudge against the whole world.
There were many varieties of anarchism. Having emerged as the ideology of the urban lumpenproletarian, it spread to the countryside and gave birth to various peasant variants. In Russia, anarchism considerably influenced the ideology of the Narodniks and the various shades of peasant Utopian socialism. Lenin said of anarchism in Russia that "in the past (the seventies of the nineteenth century) it was able to develop inordinately....''^^1^^
The assertion that the peasantry possesses a "socialist instinct'', that the village commune is an embryo of socialism and that peasant uprisings will save mankind from capitalism and exploitation provides a family link between anarchism, various groups of the Narodnik movement and its epigons---the Socialist- Revolutionaries, in particular the Socialist-Revolutionary Maximalists.
_-_-_~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 33.
14In countries which were more backward than Russia, anarchism appeared later, and assumed specific forms bearing the imprint of national features. In China, anarchism began to spread in the beginning of the twentieth century. It became particularly strong after the 1911 revolution. However, as Lenin wrote as early as 1901, during the whole of its existence, anarchism "has produced nothing but general platitudes against exploitation".^^1^^
Although ideologically sterile, anarchism nevertheless exerted a pernicious influence by obstructing the revolutionary struggle of the working class. Russia's anarchists gained evil fame in 1917 and during the Civil War. During the national revolutionary war in Spain (1936), the anarchists considered that their main task was not victory in the war and not the rout of the fascists, but an immediate "social revolution''. In Aragon, where, for a short time, they managed to seize power, almost all the property of the people was socialised and all political activity except that of the anarchists was prohibited. On the pretext of collectivisation they took away the peasants' land and cattle, made them work for very low pay, "equal for all'', under supervision of armed groups. What was called ``collectivisation'' led to a natural economy in which each village had to live on its own resources. At the enterprises too the anarchists concentrated all their ultra- revolutionary activities on equalitarian distribution. Outrages, violence, and expropriation became the official policy of the anarchists. This was so much grist to Franco's mill. Manifestations of anarchism are encountered even today, particularly in a number of Latin American countries.
_-_-_~^^1^^ Ibid., Vol. 5, p. 327.
15With the spread of Marxism in the workingclass movement, anarchism, which according to Lenin is "one of the most harmful elements of the working-class = movement'',^^1^^ degenerated more and more.
The extensive spread of Marxist ideas throughout the world does not mean, however, that the ideology of petty-bourgeois revolutionism has completely disappeared. It has begun to adapt itself to the changed conditions. "The dialectics of history,'' Lenin wrote, "were such that the theoretical victory of Marxism compelled its enemies to disguise themselves as = Marxists."^^2^^ When Lenin said that, he had in mind the "internally decayed liberalism'', which strives to revive in the form of socialist opportunism, but his words apply just as much to petty-bourgeois revolutionism, which tries to survive by disguising itself as Marxism and using Marxist terminology in the hope of winning positions within the workingclass movement developing under the banner of Marxism-Leninism.
A new stage thus emerges in the development of petty-bourgeois revolutionism, which now finds expression in various ``Left'' and ``ultra-Left'' interpretations of Marxism, but preserves its traditional subjectivism, its revolutionary phrasemongering, its blind faith in the miracle-working power of all direct action; the wrenching of "this 'direct action' out of its general social and political context, without the slightest analysis of the = latter."^^3^^
If the anarchists accused Marx and Engels of _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ibid., Vol. 19, p. 408.
~^^2^^ Ibid., Vol. 18, p. 584.
~^^3^^ Ibid., Vol. 15, p. 195.
16 opportunism, representatives of later generation petty-bourgeois revolutionism spearheaded their vociferous accusations against Lenin and his followers. Arch-revolutionary anarchic phrases are now filled in with Marxist terms, but their sense has not changed. Lenin's book ``Left-Wing'' Communism---an Infantile Disorder which called for flexibility in tactics and the use of all forms of struggle, was considered opportunistic by the ultra-revolutionaries.Later, too, Leftist elements continued to allege that the Leninist line of the Comintern was a continuation of the false path leading "from revolution to reformism, from struggle to tactics of diplomacy and the illusory embellishment of contradictions and = antagonisms".^^1^^
Lenin described petty-bourgeois revolutionism of that time as revolutionism "which smacks of anarchism, or borrows something from the latter and, in all essential matters, does not measure up to the conditions and requirements of a consistently proletarian class = struggle".^^2^^ Today revolutionism smacking of anarchism strives to act the role of the only mouthpiece of Marxism, loudly proclaims itself the only genuinely Marxist trend. Having failed in their attempts to set themselves up as a ``Left'' opposition to Leninism, Leftist groups which subsequently appeared in the working-class movement and fought against the Marxist-Leninist Parties generally assumed names which advertised their alleged links with Leninism, "Leninist Union'', "Marxist-Leninist Party'', _-_-_
~^^1^^ "Activity of the Executive Committee and the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (from July 13, 1921 to February 1, 1922)" (in Russian), Petrograd, 1922, p. 96.
~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 32.
__PRINTERS_P_17_COMMENT__ 2---1541 17 ``Leninist Wing of the Party'', "Back to Leninism'', "Long Live Leninism! "are the names of some of the dissenting petty-bourgeois revolutionist organisations and their programme political documents.In the early stage, the Bakuninists were the most typical representatives of motley anarchism, but later however Trotskyism became the main source from which the many hues and shades of petty-bourgeois revolutionism derived their ideology. It would be fruitless to try to discover a complete or still less a consistent ideological system in Trotskyism. It is sufficient to look at this pettybourgeois trend in Russia in the period between the two revolutions to see that Trotsky's skips from one political line to another, so resolutely exposed by the Bolsheviks, are not just biographical episodes but a characteristic feature of the Trotskyist world outlook.
``In 1903 he was a Menshevik,'' Lenin wrote about Trotsky at the end of 1910; "he abandoned Menshevism in 1904, returned to the Mensheviks in 1905 and merely flaunted ultra-revolutionary phrases; in 1906 he left them again; at the end of 1906 he advocated electoral agreements with the Cadets (i.e., he was in fact once more with = the Mensheviks)."^^1^^ A few years later, Lenin noted that Trotsky "has never had any 'physiognomy' at all; the only thing he does have is a habit of changing sides, of skipping from the liberals to the Marxists and back again, of mouthing scraps of catchwords and bombastic parrot = phrases."^^2^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ Ibid., Vol. 16, p. 391.
~^^2^^ Ibid., Vol. 20, p. 160.
18The only consistent feature in Trotsky's views, in all his vacillations, is hurrah-revolutionism, which ignores the objective conditions of the struggle, a type of revolutionism which he borrowed essentially from the anarchists.
In his attempt at an autobiography, as Trotsky styled his My Life, published in Berlin in 1930, he says that he has no truck with anarchism, but it is not difficult to see that Trotsky's views on revolutionism greatly resemble the ideas of the anarchists.
In his book, Trotsky repeatedly touches on the question of the "psychological type of the revolutionary'', declaring that "with sufficient experience one can distinguish with a high degree of accuracy between a Bolshevik and a Menshevik by just looking at them''. That is rather amusing, considering that it comes from a person who hobnobbed with the Mensheviks all his life and only joined the Bolsheviks in 1917. Trotsky admits with unconcealed self-satisfaction that he believes in "socio-revolutionary fatalism'', flaunts his " revolutionary position" and his delight knows no bounds when he recalls that somebody wrote somewhere that "Trotsky went about like a Leyden jar and every contact with him caused a discharge".
Here is how Trotsky described what he calls the revolutionary inspiration of a political leader: ''. . . the unconscious rises from its deep lair, subordinates the conscious working of the mind, and merges with it to form a sort of higher unity.'' In his opinion, the actions of the leaders of the October Revolution were determined by the fact that the "hidden forces of the organism, the deep-most instincts inherited from our animal ancestors, all rose to the surface, broke through the doors of __PRINTERS_P_19_COMMENT__ 2* 19 psychological routine and in conjunction with supreme historico-philosophic generalisations, placed themselves at the service of the revolution".
We cannot help recalling Lenin's apt description of Trotsky as a ``windbag'', as a "hero of the phrase'', as a man of whom "unbearable phrasemongering'', "senseless exclamations, bombastic words, arrogant tricks" were typical. His phrasemongering was by no means harmless, it served as a cover for his petty-bourgeois revolutionism, which, in certain historical conditions, comes close to proletarian revolutionism but usually opposes it and fights it.
In 1917, when revolutionary events were quickly coming to a climax, Trotsky came close to the Bolsheviks, but later, whenever a situation arose that called for patience, a temporary withdrawal, preparation for a lengthy struggle without any guarantee of an immediate effect, one could immediately discern the disorganising essence of Trotskyism, which was prepared to sacrifice the real achievements of the already victorious revolution for the sake of a high-sounding phrase about the future revolution.
The Trotskyists showed hostility to every step the world communist movement made to win over new allies, to work out a more flexible policy corresponding to the new conditions; they accused the Communists of revisionism, of rejecting revolutionary principles, of sliding towards bourgeois positions.
When the Trotskyists had been utterly defeated in the Soviet Union, they intensified their efforts to arouse international dissent. Trotsky hoped to unite all the ultra-Left sectarian elements that existed in some Communist Parties, to create a common platform, to enlist all renegades and by 20 first splitting up the individual parties, eventually to split the Communist International.
The subversion carried out by the Trotskyists for many years in the Communist Parties with the object of destroying the Comintern was unsuccessful. The Trotskyists suffered a complete fiasco with their pseudo-revolutionary platform in the international working-class movement and became an impotent sect. Having lost all hope of disintegrating the Third, Communist International from within, they set up their so-called Fourth International in 1938. This organisation, whose first aim was to undermine the unity of the MarxistLeninist Parties, drags out a miserable existence and is torn by internal strife.
The history of the struggle against the efforts of Trotskyism to undermine the Marxist movement from within shows that Trotskyism has no social basis worth speaking of, that its adherents are recruited chiefly from groups of intellectuals and declassed elements reinforced by all sorts of dissidents and adventurists. Lenin once said of Trotsky that "such types are characteristic of the flotsam of past historical = formations".^^1^^ Yet such flotsam of the past can become dangerous; they can and do gain new life as soon as favourable situation arises.
Now that socialism has become the leading force in the world, and more and more peoples, after being oppressed for centuries, are appearing in the arena of history, one can speak of a new phase in the manifestations of petty-bourgeois revolutionism.
The enlistment of ``recruits'' to the labour movement, the drawing of new sections of working _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 20, p. 347.
21 people into the class struggle, Lenin noted, was always accompanied by vacillations in theory and tactics, the repetition of old mistakes, temporary returns to obsolescent views and tactics. No wonder, therefore, that the winning over not merely of certain sections of the working people, but of whole peoples to the liberation movement is accompanied by vacillations and errors, and the revival and unexpected intermingling of long since rejected views.Where backward economic relations prevail, Lenin pointed out, champions of the labour movement emerge who embrace only some aspects of Marxism, only separate parts of the new world outlook, only separate slogans and demands, because they are unable to break completely with all bourgeois and petty-bourgeois views. Russia's backward economic relations explain why the Russian Marxists had to wage such a long and stubborn struggle against various manifestations of petty-bourgeois ideology.
When the national liberation revolution was unfolding in China, the economic relations in that country were even more backward than in Russia. This vast country with stagnant semi-feudal relations was in bondage to the imperialist powers who exploited its backwardness in the most predatory manner. In its 1,200,000 villages, a multitude of peasant households, mostly small and on a rental basis, had to bear intolerable feudal oppression. From century to century, the primitive hoe and the sickle remained practically the only implements of labour. The urban petty bourgeoisie was numerous. Chronic hunger carried away millions and millions of people with inexorable regularity. The agrarian question and the liberation from imperialist dependence were the cardi- 22 nal issues that determined the nature of China's growing agrarian, national liberation revolution.
In the early twenties, when the Communist Party of China (C.P.C.) was forming, China's industrial proletariat numbered less than three million. At that time, however, the C.P.C. grew in pace with the labour movement, and workers constituted the majority in it. At the First AllChina Party Congress in 1921, each delegate represented only about 50 Party members, at the Second Congress in 1922, 120, at the Third in 1923, 400, and at the Fourth in 1925, about 1,000. By 1927 the Party had over 57,900 members, and close on 58.3 per cent of these were workers.
Chiang Kai-shek's counter-revolutionary coup d'etat in the spring of 1927 shattered the labour movement. Many experienced Communists who were connected with the working-class movement perished. The Party membership dropped to 10,000.
The conditions in towns were extremely unfavourable for Party activity. Reaction was rampant. The Kuomintang held strong positions and had a large army at its orders. Naval units and marines of the imperialist powers were stationed in the main proletarian centres. After 1927, the Communist Party was compelled by circumstances to work mainly in the remote countryside. For 22 years the Party was cut off from the industrial centres. It developed with the agrarian revolution and the growing peasant movement. Leading Party personnel became engrossed with the peasants and began to underestimate work in towns. The Comintern repeatedly drew the attention of the Chinese Communists to the fact that they were neglecting work among the working class.
As regards its composition, the Communist 23 Party became predominantly a peasant Party. In 1949, when the Chinese People's Republic was proclaimed, there were about seven million Party members, only four per cent of whom were workers. Ten years earlier Liu Shao-chi, speaking of the negative phenomena in the Party due to its specific composition, said: "The reason, I think, is simple, our Party did not drop from the sky, but emerged from the womb of Chinese society."
Some joined the Party for the sake of the great communist aims, but "to some of our comrades, of peasant origin, communism meant the 'overthrow of the Tu = hao^^1^^ and the division of the land' ''. To the Party flocked also those who "were in a hopeless position, had no profession, no work, no chance to learn, wanted to throw off the family yoke, to escape a marriage being forced on them, etc. Finally some people joined the Party in the hope that it would help them to have taxes lowered and 'to get on in the world'.... It is therefore quite natural that when a critical moment arises some of them begin to vacillate in certain situations and change for the worse."
Lu Hsing, perhaps the only representative of China's progressive national culture who was not defamed during the "cultural revolution" and whom even "the great helmsman" recognises, wrote in the mid-twenties that when the slogans of the revolution are pronounced by revolutionary phrase-mongers they have a growling sound: "Revolution, r-r-r-revolution, r-r-r-r! . .."
The petty-bourgeois medium not only formed the surrounding in which the Party existed, it also _-_-_
~^^1^^ Tu hao---a category of rural exploiters, including particularly the kulaks, usurers, and den-keepers, linked with criminal elements and the police.---Ed.
24 affected its composition, was a constant source of many errors, of both a Right opportunist and chiefly a Leftist nature.The history of the Communist Party of China abounds in manifestations of Leftist adventurism, which harmed the people's struggle enormously. The Sixth Congress of the Communist Party held in 1928 exposed the harm and dangers resulting from the activities of Trotskyist-putschist elements in the Party. But the semi-Trotskyist group headed by Li Li-san, which gained a majority in the Central Committee of the C.P.C. in the summer of 1930, pursued an anti-Leninist line expressed, as the Comintern noted, "in putschist, adventurist tactics".^^1^^
The revolution in China was developing unevenly, there was as yet no revolutionary situation in the country. Yet the Leftist adventurists pursued a policy of organising insurrections and refused to reckon with the real conditions, insisting on "the immediate introduction of socialism" in the districts liberated from the enemy. Li Lisan relied mainly on China's Red Army, which at that time numbered only 60,000 badly equipped officers and men. Instead of consolidating the territorial basis of the revolution, the Left adventurists wanted to seize large towns.
This pernicious policy greatly undermined the authority of the Party among the masses and would have had catastrophic consequences for the cause of the revolution had not the Comintern _-_-_
~^^1^^ Letter of Comintern Executive Committee to the Central Committee of the C.P.C. about the Li Li-san group (October 1930). In the collection Strategy and Tactics oj the Comintern in the National-Colonial Revolution. As Illustrated in China (in Russian), Moscow, 1934, pp. 283--90.
25 helped the Chinese Communists to rectify their erroneous line.In the late twenties and early thirties, many Communist Parties and the Comintern itself committed Leftist, sectarian mistakes, which were condemned and rectified by the Seventh Congress of the Comintern in 1935. However, the Comintern took the correct line in respect of China. It was worked out in sharp struggle with the Trotskyists, who ignored the uneven development of the revolution in various districts and advocated a general uprising, maintaining that the impending Chinese revolution would immediately be a socialist one.
The Comintern, however, proceeded from the assumption that, in the first stage, the Chinese revolution would be anti-feudal, and therefore recommended that, in addition to work in the towns, a territorial basis should be created for the revolution in the countryside. Since the revolution was developing unevenly, the Comintern warned the Chinese Communists against a premature general insurrection and stressed the necessity to strengthen the young Red Army and to master guerilla tactics.
The struggle against Li Li-san's Leftist antiComintern deviation was not an easy one. Even after Li Li-san was removed from the leadership, his followers maintained a conciliatory attitude towards him and their attacks were soon spearheaded against those who insisted on a consistent implementation of the Comintern line.
Subsequently, Mao Tse-tung did everything possible to falsify this period in the history of the C.P.C. For this purpose he worked out the " Decision on Some Questions of the History of Our Party'', which after its approval by the Seventh 26 Enlarged Plenum of the Central Committee of the C.P.C., in April 1945, became the official interpretation of the preceding decade in the history of the Party under Mao Tse-tung's leadership.
This lengthy document appended to the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung importunately stressed that Mao Tse-tung, "in particular, never supported it [the Li Li-san's line] but, on the contrary, rectified with much patience the 'Left" mistakes....^^1^^ Actually, however, like Li Li-san, Mao Tse-tung at that time considered that "only after wiping out comparatively large enemy units and occupying the cities can we arouse the masses on a large = scale...."^^2^^ He says so outright in his letter "A Spark Can Start a Conflagration" (January 5, 1930). Half a year later, in July 1930, Mao Tse-tung, echoing Li Li-san's views, wrote: ''. . . the objective and subjective conditions for the victory of the revolution have matured throughout the country and a new revolutionary upsurge has set in. In this situation, the immediate task of the revolutionary masses is to concentrate all revolutionary forces, to seize political power throughout the country, to ensure the triumph of the revolution on a country-wide scale."
Condemning "petty-bourgeois hotheadedness" in words alone, the "Decision on Some Questions of the History of Our Party" glorifies Mao Tsetung as the saviour of the Party, who never made any mistakes and hushes up the fact that Mao's plan to seize the large town of Nanchang as early as 1929 was one of the most dangerous manifestations of Leftist adventurism at that time. The capture of the town of Changsha by the troops _-_-_
~^^1^^ Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, Vol. 4, p. 179.
~^^2^^ Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 123.
27 under Mao Tse-tung in September 1930 was also a reckless step. The siege of the town took a heavy toll, and the troops were able to hold it only for a few days. This venture too was nothing but a practical implementation of Li Li-san's policy.Thus, there are no grounds for asserting that Mao Tse-tung disagreed with Li Li-san. On the contrary, Mao shared Li's views, and dissociated himself from Li Li-san only when Leftist adventurism ended in failure.
This explains why the "Decision on Some Questions of the History of Our Party" is surprisingly soft-spoken where it concerns Li Li-san's deviation but castigates the followers of the Comintern line severely. The latter are accused of criticising Mao Tse-tung for ``riflemania'', " parochialism, conservatism, typical of the peasant mind'', for underestimating the hegemony of the working class and work in towns.
A comparison of various documents shows that the services Mao Tse-tung claims he rendered by substantiating the importance of the revolutionary bases in the countryside, the need to form a single national anti-Japanese front and other propositions were in the final analysis nothing but a particularisation of the relevant Comintern directives. The success of the Chinese revolution under Mao Tse-tung's leadership was possible only because the Comintern persistently corrected the Leftist and Right-opportunist mistakes in China. That is apparently why the ``Decision'' makes no mention of the Comintern from the time when Mao Tse-tung assumed the leadership of the Party, and all activities of the Party are reviewed in complete isolation from the international communist movement.
28The Li Li-san line---by no means the only manifestation in the Chinese Communist Party of ``Leftism'', semi-Trotskyism and Trotskyism---is closely related to the views then held by Mao Tse-tung. Great interest attaches in this connection to Li Li-san's speech of repentance at the Eighth Congress of the C.P.C. in 1956.
Admitting his previous mistakes, Li Li-san made no promises for the future, because pettybourgeois faults, he said, are like weeds which even a "fire in the steppe does not fully destroy and which grow again when the spring winds blow."^^1^^
The years following the Eighth Party Congress showed that Li Li-san displayed a certain clearsightedness when he forecast that the defects of petty-bourgeois revolutionism would be revived if conditions were favourable.
While the Chinese revolution was still in the anti-colonial, anti-feudal, bourgeois-democratic stage, the numerous petty-bourgeois elements joining the Communist Party proved to be revolutionaries capable of clearing the road of various feudal and colonial vestiges for further advance. At that time Mao Tse-tung said: "Two steps have to be taken in the Chinese revolution: the first is New Democracy, and the second socialism. Moreover, the first step will take quite a long time and can by no means be accomplished overnight. We are not Utopians, and we cannot depart from the actual conditions confronting = us."^^2^^
During that period, the C.P.C. scored major _-_-_
~^^1^^ Materials of the Eighth All-China Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (in Russian), Moscow, 1956, pp. 368--75.
^^2^^ Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, Vol. 3, p. 128.
29 victories and the Chinese people benefited under its leadership, especially in the field of agrarian reform and economic rehabilitation. However, when the country was faced with more complex tasks in building the economic basis for socialism and developing new social relations, there was growing evidence of petty-bourgeois impatience and the inability to switch over from methods which were justified during the war period to methods of long-term socialist construction in peace-time aimed at winning one economic position after another.Without this change of methods, there can be no successful socialist construction. But such a change requires great patience and consistency.
However, with the formation of the Chinese People's Republic in 1949 it was announced that the democratic stage of the revolution was over; democratic measures began to be called socialist and socialist changes began to be introduced with great haste, in direct violation of the principle but recently proclaimed by Mao Tse-tung, "We cannot depart from the actual conditions confronting us.'' There were more and more manifestations of petty-bourgeois impatience, the desire to rush ahead regardless of real possibilities, attempts to skip over unavoidable stages of development determined by objective socio-economic factors, in particular by the level of development attained by the productive forces.
Criticising Leftist views on the possibility of achieving socialism "at one go'', of gaining a paradisial life practically by a single cavalry attack, Lenin drew attention to the petty-bourgeois, adventurist character and the enormous danger of such views. In the article "The Importance of Gold Now and After the Complete Victory of 30 Socialism'', written in 1921, Lenin spoke of the need for a "gradual, cautious, and round-about approach to the solution of the fundamental problems of economic development''. "The greatest, perhaps the only danger to the genuine revolutionary is that of exaggerated revolutionism, ignoring the limits and conditions in which revolutionary methods are appropriate and can be successfully = employed."^^1^^ The revolutionary will surely perish if he elevates ``revolution'', to something almost divine, if he loses his head and his ability to reflect, weigh, and ascertain in the coolest manner under what circumstances there should be revolutionary action and when it is necessary to switch to reformist action.
Mao Tse-tung, who knew how to act in a revolutionary way when it was necessary to struggle against imperialism and internal reaction, proved absolutely unable to implement the methods necessary for the successful building of socialism. After the rehabilitation of the economy ruined by long wars, the Mao Tse-tung group began imposing upon the Party a policy that threatened to plunge the country into economic catastrophe. Naturally, this policy was resisted by all those who strove to build socialism along MarxistLeninist lines relying on the experience of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries.
For a long time the differences in the C.P.C. were carefully concealed and there was only indirect evidence of the struggle within the Party. It intensified and began to take various forms after the Eighth Congress of the C.P.C. (1956). The so-called cultural revolution has shown what extremes the Maoists are ready to go to in order _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, pp. 109, 110--11.
31 to suppress all resistance to their adventurist line.The stand of the Mao Tse-tung group roused fresh hopes in the adventurists in the so-called Fourth International. They thought that there had appeared enormous opportunities which "open up a field of activity such as Trotskyism had never had before''. As early as September 1960, that is, before the Meeting of Representatives of 81 Communist and Workers' Parties in Moscow, the so-called Fourth International sent an open letter to the Central Committee of the C.P.C., in which it applauded its stand, saying that it coincided with Trotskyist positions, and called upon it to initiate an open discussion with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the entire world communist movement. "The Fourth International,'' the letter read, "which from the moment of its foundation has been fighting . . . against the ideas against which you are fighting today, supports you."
The Trotskyist press praised Mao's subsequent splitting activities and declared that in its differences with Moscow, Peking stood practically on Trotskyist positions. The Trotskyist "International Secretariat" welcomed the "theses of the C.P.C. . . . since they clearly resemble some Marxist revolutionary propositions of our movement''. In Britain, the Trotskyists were even more outspoken. After publication of the C.P.C. letter outlining the 25 points of the Chinese leadership's line, they declared: "The Chinese call it 'the 25 points' ---we call it Trotskyism."
The fact that Mao Tse-Tung's views coincide on many points with those of the anarchists and Trotskyists and that the methods they use for subversion against the Marxist-Leninist Parties 32 are similar does not mean that these manifestations of petty-bourgeois revolutionism are based on identical conceptions.
It would be over-simplifying to hold that Maoism emerged on the basis of anarchism or Trotskyism and is only a variant of these trends. If Maoism has ``developed'' on its own a number of propositions resembling anarchist or Trotskyist propositions, this only proves that, in the face of the objective laws of social development, pettybourgeois pseudo-revolutionaries of different trends generally resort to the same ``remedy''--- unrestrained voluntarism.
The difference between the social basis that gave birth to anarchism and Trotskyism and the one that fosters the views of Mao's followers also has its influence. Anarchism is the world outlook of the tramp, of the urban lumpenproletarian. Trotskyism also reflects mainly the views of declasses, of townspeople, including intellectuals, who have lost all ground for action. But the Mao group's petty-bourgeois revolutionism is not of urban, but of rural origin.
The specific conditions in China, a vast peasant country, in whose liberation from colonial dependence and feudalism the peasants played an enormous role, left their imprint on the manifestations of petty-bourgeois revolutionism. Therefore the views spread by the Maoists contain, besides anarchist and Trotskyist ideas, also purely Narodnik ideas, reminiscent of those which were professed by the Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries of both Right and Left wings, and so resolutely opposed by the = Bolsheviks.^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ Many books have been published in China in recent years to ``prove'' the exclusive nature oi the Chinese peasantry; in particular, some 500 works have been devoted __PRINTERS_P_33_COMMENT__ 3---1541 __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 34. 33
The opinion that there can be no comparison between Trotskyism, with its initially clear-cut anti-peasant trend, and the views of the Narodniks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, which are advertised as an expression of peasant interests, is wrong. The evolution of the views of the Trotskyists and Socialist-Revolutionaries has erased many of the differences between them.
K. V. Gusev, a Soviet historian, who studied the ideology and history of the Socialist- Revolutionary Party and drew widely on new = archive materials,^^1^^ found that Trotskyism and the pettybourgeois socialism of the Narodniks and Socialist-Revolutionaries have much in common as regards their methodological principles and also possess many common features typical of all pettybourgeois revolutionism. Among these features, the author says, are emphasis only on the destruc- _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 33. to the history of the peasant wars in the Middle Ages. Garushyants, a Soviet historian, who has made a study of the research methods of modern Chinese historians, writes that some historians were accused of dogmatism for applying to China the view expressed by Lenin that "lack of consciousness and vaguely expressed political demands are typical of the peasant mass''. Historians who quoted Lenin's words that the medieval ideals of peasant equality are Utopian were also branded as dogmatists. Engels's characteristic of the religious mythical consciousness of the peasants is considered outdated. According to the Chinese historians, only the Russian peasantry could be considered as ``tsarist'', and the views held on this score by the founders of Marxism-Leninism should, they say, not be applied to China. The "classical revolutionary tradition in China" is said to be a result of the "peasantry's deep consciousness".
~^^1^^ In 1919 the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries declared that they were willing to join the Comintern, if their views ---a mixture of Trotskyism and Narodism---were recognised. The peasantry, they wrote, is a powerful detachment of the international army of labour fighting for socialism. The backward countries which have predominantly a peasant __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 35. 34 tive role of the revolution, and inability to determine the role and place of the classes in it, the opinion that it is a purely volitional act, undue haste, and some = others.^^1^^
In the present epoch, in which the historical transition from capitalism to socialism is taking place under the guidance of Marxist-Leninist ideas, it is natural that many people who wish to be considered revolutionaries declare themselves Marxist-Leninists.
But as the old saying goes: Not all those who say "Lord! Lord!'', however will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. It is not enough to declare oneself a Marxist, one must actually be one, and the Maoists are not. At first, Mao declared that he would "apply the general truth of MarxismLeninism in the concrete conditions obtaining in China''. A few years later he set himself the task of "making Marxism Chinese, of seeing to it that it has a Chinese character in its every manifestation''. Later Mao's followers declared that he had transformed Marxism from a European into an Asiatic form, had ``sinicised'' Marxism. Now Mao is presented as the greatest Marxist of all times and all peoples.
But the Marxist teaching cannot be sinicised, Japanised or Russified. Reformists, revisionists and anti-communists of all shades have at differ- _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 34. population stand closer to socialism and therefore "if imperialist capital is defeated in an international war. . . and the Russian and West European industrial workers give their support, a world socialist revolution may be carried out (as envisaged by Karl Marx), especially if the Chinese and the Indians help".
~^^1^^ See Lenin s Fight Against Petty-Bourgeois Revolutionism and Adventurism (in Russian), Moscow, 1966, pp. 289-- 90.
__PRINTERS_P_35_COMMENT__ 3* 35 ent times wasted a sea of ink trying to picture Leninism as a purely Russian phenomenon, one that does not fit the European countries. These views have been refuted not only by Marxist critics, but by life itself. The falsifiers of Marxism have now found support in China.Marxism-Leninism is omnipotent because it correctly reflects the general laws applying to all countries without exception, irrespective of their specific features. Marxism-Leninism makes it possible to find one's bearings in any situation and to find solutions promoting progressive development. If any part of Marxism-Leninism is accepted by itself, and the others rejected or overlooked, the integrity of revolutionary theory is destroyed, leaving a heap of eclecticisms of the type characteristic of the pre-proletarian period in social development or, at best, of the first steps of the labour movement.
What has happened in China is what Lenin meant when he spoke of the danger that arises in backward countries, where ideologies emerge which "seize upon one aspect of the labour movement, elevate one-sidedness to a theory. . . = ."^^1^^ Mao Tse-tung's group seizes upon only one aspect of Marxism: it recognises the role of the subjective factor in the historical process and rejects the other, which requires a sober scientific analysis of the objective state of affairs. This one- sidedness, which amounts to a break with Marxism, is "elevated to a theory" and, furthermore, has a pronounced nationalist tint, differing in this from many previous manifestations of petty-bourgeois revolutionism.
Peking uses Marxist terminology to disseminate _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 16, p. 349.
36 views which have nothing whatsoever in common with Marxism-Leninism. Maoism emerged in a backward country which had for a long time been subjected to colonial oppression. It is a peculiar peasant variant of petty-bourgeois revolutionism. It is an ideology which reflects the determination of the petty bourgeois to improve his position immediately through a universal levelling or let the whole of mankind perish if he fails.The claim of the present representatives of petty-bourgeois revolutionism that they speak on behalf of a 700-million nation does not make their ideology any more viable. This freakish patchwork of bits of conceptions long since smashed by Marxism-Leninism and tailored to narrow nationalist interests cannot pretend to a future.
The objective conditions for a flourishing of petty-bourgeois revolutionism are naturally present in China just as they were in Russia and still are in other backward peasant countries. But the presence of the conditions for a disease to spread does not necessarily mean that there must be an epidemic. The task of Marxist political leadership is precisely to diagnose ills, and then to fight them, to correct erroneous views capable of ruining the revolution.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union succeeded in this task because it was implacable in the fight against Right-wing opportunism and all variants of Leftist pseudo-revolutionism. "When it came into being in 1903,'' Lenin wrote in 1920, "Bolshevism took over the tradition of a ruthless struggle against petty-bourgeois semi-anarchist (or dilettante-anarchist) revolutionism. . . = ."^^1^^
The Bolsheviks had to wage a particularly in- _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ibid., Vol. 31, p. 33.
37 tense struggle in subsequent years, when the Party was defending the Leninist line in socialist construction. The Theses of the C.C., C.P.S.U., Fiftieth Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, note the great importance of the ideological and political rout of Trotskyism which "sowed distrust for the working class of the U.S.S.R., maintaining that socialism could not be built in our country without the victory of the proletarian revolution in the West. . . . Using the screen of Left ultra-revolutionary phraseology, they [ Trotskyists] tried to impose an adventurist policy of artificially pushing the revolution in other countries and dooming the building of socialism to failure in our = country."^^1^^The absence of serious traditions in the struggle against Leftist ultra-revolutionism was felt in China when it had to face the difficulties of building socialism in a backward country. Renegades and advocates of an adventuristic, great-power policy disguised by Leftist phrases got the upper hand in the leadership.
Communists are convinced that in the present epoch any country, even the most backward one, can successfully develop along non-capitalist lines and arrive at socialism. If the Mongolian People's Republic was able to travel that path at a time when there was only one socialist country in the world---the Soviet Union---which, moreover, was surrounded by hostile capitalist states, now, when the world socialist system is marching from strength to strength, it is all the more possible for socialism to triumph in any developing country.
_-_-_~^^1^^ Fiftieth Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Theses of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U., Moscow, 1967, p. 12.
38The events unfolding in China are by no means inevitable in a backward country. Here we have the exception that proves the rule.
Trampling upon the principles of proletarian internationalism, the Maoists are rejecting cooperation with the socialist countries, with the Soviet Union, whose assistance played such a substantial role in the achievements of the Chinese People's Republic. The consequences of this policy prove that, in a backward country such as China, advance towards socialism is possible only with the co-operation of the socialist community, its assistance and experience.
Petty-bourgeois revolutionism is an enormous danger at all stages of the struggle against capitalism. It becomes particularly harmful when the victorious revolution opens up prospects for the practical building of a new society. Proof of this is the serious danger threatening China's revolutionary achievements through the fault of the Mao group.
[39] __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHYThe integrity and theoretical power of an ideological trend are judged according to its philosophical basis. The theoretical foundation of Marxism-Leninism is dialectical materialism, which has transformed socialism from a utopia into a science, and enables the working class to act consciously in accordance with the historical necessity and objective laws of social development.
Essentially, petty-bourgeois revolutionism has no integral philosophical basis. No matter how widely the ramifications of that revolutionism differ, they are all based on an eclectic blend of the most contradictory theoretical propositions and never rise above pragmatism, which has as its motto: "Only that which is practically useful and profitable is true."
Karl Marx's book criticising the economic views of Proudhon, one of the founders of anarchism, appeared 120 years ago. It analyses the foundations of petty-bourgeois political economy and yet it is called The Poverty of Philosophy. It was given this title not only because Marx wanted to use a play on words in his reply to Proudhon's book "The Philosophy of Poverty. His analysis of Proudhon's economic constructions is combined with an elucidation of the initial methodological positions of anarchism, and of its theory, which is absolutely untenable and wretched in the literal sense of the word. Hence the poverty of that philosophy!
40Proudhon's economic constructions with their reactionary orientation on the levelling of classes and the preservation of small ownership were eroded by time and consigned to history. But the specific feature of that petty-bourgeois ideologist's method of thought, the vulgarity of his initial conceptions and the metaphysics of his reasoning which Marx caught so splendidly were resurrected later in new variants of petty-bourgeois opportunism or revolutionism.
There has also been frequent repetition of Proudhon's manner of expression which Marx described as follows: "The style is often what the French call ampoule [bombastic]. High-sounding speculative jargon. ... A self-advertising, self-glorifying, boastful tone and especially the twaddle about 'science', and sham display of = it."^^1^^
History has shown that these traits were not only an individual characteristic of Proudhon, but a general feature of petty-bourgeois ideologists, a sort of protective reaction to conceal the emptiness and insipidity of their conceptions, a sort of inferiority complex of the poverty of philosophy.
At first sight it may appear that petty-bourgeois revolutionism gives birth to the most contradictory modifications. Bakunin's anarchism differs from Proudhon's anarchism, even if only because the former recognised only collective ownership, while the latter advocated the preservation of private ownership. Proudhon stood for peaceful means of struggle, Bakunin---for violence. Anarchism rejects political struggle; Trotskyism, conversely, recognises only this form of struggle, neglecting all others. We could carry on this comparison. But despite all the differences within the species, the _-_-_
~^^1^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1965, p. 155.
41 views held by representatives of petty-bourgeois revolutionism have a common methodological source---unlimited subjectivism, the intention to remake the world according to a speculative scheme, with the help of a small number of people who are aware of the need for change.The philosophy of anarchism is extremely primitive. Marx characterised its doctrine as "the mess . . . borrowed from Proudhon, St. = Simon, etc".^^1^^ Lenin also noted that in anarchism there is "no doctrine, revolutionary teaching, or theory".^^2^^ Metaphysics, disguised by dialectical phraseology, and undisguised subjectivism---such are the methodological foundations of all the ramifications of anarchism.
Approximately the same can be said of Trotskyism.
Speaking of the peculiar methodology underlying the ideas Trotsky advanced during the trade union discussion in 1920--1921, Lenin criticised them for their eclecticism, metaphysics, scholasticism and one-sidedness. Remarking on Trotsky's scholastic approach to the trade unions and his constant harping on "the general principle'', Lenin said: "What we actually have before us is a reality of which we have a good deal of knowledge, provided, that is, we keep our heads, and do not let ourselves be carried away by intellectualist talk or abstract reasoning, or by what may appear to be 'theory' but is in fact error and misapprehension of the peculiarities of = transition."^^3^^
Trotskyism was always distinguished by an _-_-_
~^^1^^ K. Marx/F. Engels, Werke, Bd. 33, S. 329, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1966.
~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 328.
~^^3^^ Ibid., Vol. 32, pp. 24--25.
42 incorrect understanding of the state of affairs because it substituted subjective wishes for objective reality, and recognised no other way of resolving contradictions than by their extreme exacerbation and catastrophic clashes.Trotsky understood Soviet society as a sort of equilibrium of classes which would inevitably be disturbed. The only way he could see for solving the contradictions between the proletariat and the peasantry was through inevitable antagonistic clashes, and since the peasantry outnumbered the proletariat, he predicted an unavoidable " thermidpr"---a restoration of capitalism.
This panic-stricken exaggeration of the objective ``inevitabilities'' he had himself invented coexisted in Trotsky's theories with purely adventuristic views on the possibilities of the subjective factor. It should be noted that by the subjective factor Trotsky understood not the masses and not even the Party, but the "leading personnel'', as he called it. According to his recipe, the problem of the trade unions could be solved by a simple reshuffle. In later years, criticising the Comintern, accusing it of delaying the world revolution, Trotsky again reduced everything to the problem of the "leading personnel''. Modern Trotskyists of the "Fourth International" give the same answer to the question why the hour of world revolution has not yet struck: it is the "crisis of the revolutionary leadership" that is to blame for everything.
Trotsky endows the "leading personnel" with supernatural powers. It can jump over stages as it sees fit, make leaps, "tighten screws''. This is unadulterated subjectivism, and if Trotsky added to it anything of his own it was only that he transformed it into bureaucratic subjectivism.
43Camouflaging his views as Leninism, Trotsky, fighting the Comintern, described Bolshevism as a linear process. "It is not flexibility that was and should be the main feature of Bolshevism, but rock hardness,'' he wrote in 1928 in direct contradiction to Lenin's demand that the Communist Party should "resort to changes of tack, to conciliation and compromises. ... It is entirely a matter of knowing how to apply these tactics in order to raise---not lower---the general level of proletarian class-consciousness, revolutionary spirit, and ability to fight and = win."^^1^^
The one-sidedness, exaggeration, theoretical falsity and other similar features which Lenin noted in Trotsky's methods are also the " philosophical stock-in-trade" of Maoism.
But Maoism, bred on Chinese soil, naturally reflects the ideological, moral and ethical doctrines which began to form in antiquity and were inculcated into the people's minds as the official state ideology for two thousand years. The doctrine of Confucius---that great philosopher of ancient China---affected many features of the Chinese national character and way of thinking.
One of the Confucian postulates is implicit obedience to one's elders, blind submission to the bidding of the ``sage''. L. Vassilyev, a Soviet historian, writes that many sinologists noted the tendency of Chinese thinking towards scholasticism, towards blind and absolute faith in the teaching of the sage. The whole system of education was so built that from his very childhood man saw the world only through the eyes of ancient sages, so as to educate in him not an inclination towards independent thought and reasoning, but only the _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ibid., Vol. 31, p. 74.
44 striving to apply the precepts and aphorisms of the sage, to rely on approved views.In his work, 'I he Manchurian Rule in China, S. L. Tikhvinsky, a Soviet sinologist, convincingly shows how Confucian dogmas were implanted during the last few = centuries.^^1^^ His book tells of emperors who declared that on this earth the "main task is to correct the people's minds'', of the public burning of objectionable books, of the profanation of the graves of their authors and of many other things which gave Karl Marx ground to speak of "learned ignorance" and "pedantic cruelty" in China.
Academician V. M. Alexeyev, an outstanding sinologist, travelled in the interior of China in 1907, at the beginning of his scientific career. In his travel notes, which are full of deep sympathy with the Chinese people, he says, among other things, that the Chinese are "inclined to use quotations and allusions whenever possible.'' He also tells of their instruction which consists in "learning facts and names by heart and later reading scholastic historical treatises''; he speaks of the cult of the "perfect personality'', which with them becomes a form of ``worship''; he tells about special collections "containing the most interesting maxims for every imaginable situa- = tion'',^^2^^ and many other things which still continue to live on and occupy a by no means negligible place in the epoch of big social transformations.
All these specific features of China's social, economic and cultural development had their _-_-_
~^^1^^ See The Manchurian Rule in China (in Russian), Moscow, 1966, pp. 12, 23, etc.
~^^2^^ V. M. Alexeyev, In Ancient China. Travel Diaries 1907 (in Russian), Moscow, 1958, pp. 34, 49, 51, 69.
45 effect on the petty-bourgeois revolutionism which emerged in that country a long time ago and of which Maoism is a particularly repugnant form.Unlike other proponents of petty-bourgeois revolutionism, who did not consider themselves philosophers and left no philosophical works, Mao Tse-tung claims a place in the philosophical pantheon. When he related his biography to Edgar Snow, an American journalist, Mao emphasised that early in his life he "studied philosophy with passion'', read Confucius and other ancient Chinese philosophers, although, he asserted, he did not like the classics. Mao claims to have read Spinoza, Kant, Goethe, Hegel and Rousseau, but this is not noticeable in his works which abound in all sorts of quotations, especially from ancient Chinese philosophers. He admits that he admired Kang You-wei and Liang Tsi-chao, the two bourgeois reformists of the late 19th century, Kang You-wei strove to reform Confucius's teaching and make it serve China's new social forces. In his "Study of the Counterfeit Classical Canons of the Sin School'', he wrote ''. . .1 want to do away completely with false teachings, annihilate the enemy, destroy his lair, exorcise the evil spirits, dispel the thick fog and illuminate the darkness. The sun will then shine even more brightly, the stars will sparkle more brilliantly and the classical canons and holy behests of Confucius which had almost perished will be = revived."^^1^^
Kang You-wei explained the long feudal stagnation in China from an unscientific, idealistic _-_-_
~^^1^^ S. L. Tikhvinsky, The Movement for Reforms in China at the End of the 19th Century and Kang You-wei (in Russian), Moscow, 1959, p. 76.
46 position, blaming it on neglect of the ethicophilosophic teachings of antiquity. Liang Tsichao (one of Kang You-wei's pupils) notes that "Kang You-wei either regarded objective reality with contempt or tried to force it into the framework of his = views."^^1^^Mao Tse-tung also took a great interest in anarchism. He admitted this to Edgar Snow. He said what a deep mark the peasant uprisings left on his "young brain already inclined to mutiny''. In those years, he said, "I often discussed the problems of anarchism and its possibilities in China. At that time I agreed with many of its aims."
Mao Tse-tung first became acquainted with a Marxist book (i he Manifesto of the Communist Party] at the age of 27. He has considered himself a Marxist ever since. But the Marxist seed fell on a soil thickly sown with ideas having nothing in common with Marxism. There was a real danger of the result being a hybrid. And that is what happened.
Years passed and Mao Tse-tung became the author of philosophical treatises. All of them, beginning with the two lectures "Regarding Practice" and "Regarding Contradictions'', which appeared in 1937, have now been declared in China "a brilliant contribution to the treasure of the world Marxist-Leninist philosophy'', "an enrichment and development of dialectical materialism".
Actually these works contain an eclectic blend of a simplified exposition of well-known propositions of dialectical materialism and an independent ``contribution'' of the author substituting _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ibid., p. 401.
47 idealism for Marxist materialism and metaphysics for dialectics.Having declared himself a Marxist, Mao Tsetung naturally recognises the primacy of matter and the secondary nature of consciousness, that is, the materialist view on the fundamental question of philosophy. However, Mao Tse-tung's practical activity and many of his explicit statements show, as was the case with many others before him, that one can admit that the material principle determines the spiritual and yet not be a consistent materialist.
In his pamphlet Where Man Gets Correct Ideas From Mao Tse-tung says that all correct ideas spring from man's dual ability: 1) to transform spirit into matter and matter into spirit, and 2) to accept spirit as matter, and matter as spirit. In substance Mao replaces the primacy of matter and the secondary nature of consciousness by their identity, from which it follows that everything that happens in the world can be identified with what is happening in one's = mind.^^1^^
By representing in an oversimplified manner the ability of human consciousness to reflect objective reality and by reducing the complex process of cognition simply to a complete coincidence of the ideological and the material, Mao assures us that "every difference in man's concepts should be regarded as reflecting = objective contradictions".^^2^^
By that means it is easy to find a so-called ``materialistic'', but in reality pragmatic, justi- _-_-_
~^^1^^ I. Elez, G. Davydova, "The
Philosophy of Random Action and Random Action in
Philosophy" (in Russian), Za Rubczlwm, 1967, No. 11.
~^^2^^ Mao Tsc-tung, Selected Works,
Vol. 2, p. 20.
48 fication of any ideas, no matter how far they are from reality. What is useful to me is a reality. There is no need to know much in order to have an opinion.Lao Tse, the naive elemental materialist of ancient China who exerted a major influence on the formation of Mao's views, taught: "Know thyself to know others, know one family to know other families, know one village to know all others, know one empire to know all empires, know one country to know the world. How do I know the world? Thanks to = this."^^1^^
Judging of the world at large by himself, his family, village and country, Lao Tse was convinced that excessive knowledge brings nothing but harm. He said: "It is difficult to govern a people that has too much knowledge. Therefore to govern a country by means of knowledge is to be its enemy, to govern it without knowledge is to bring it = happiness."^^2^^
In a talk with medical workers in 1965, Mao Tse-tung said: "The more books you read, the more stupid you become.'' That seems to indicate that he is not disinclined to make the country happy according to Lao Tse's recipe.
It was not a mere coincidence that the discussion "On the Identity of Thinking and Being" was organised precisely in 1960, when the full effects of the voluntaristic economic policy were already being felt in China. This ``discussion'' gave short shrift to all philosophers who correctly thought that the invention of this identity _-_-_
~^^1^^ Yang Hing-shun, The Ancient Chinese Pldlosophei Lao Tse and His Teaching (in Russian), Moscow-Leningrad, 1950, pp. 144--45.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 151.
49 was camouflaged idealism and that its purpose was to justify the failures and mistakes in the country's domestic and foreign policy.Since everything Mao Tse-tung says is immediately declared in China a "new brilliant contribution'', the theory of the identity of thinking and being was also declared a ``new'' one. Actually, it is the same old idealistic theory which Frederick Engels styled "one of the most delirious fantasies" and of which Lenin said that it was absolute nonsense and a through and through reactionary theory.
If the endeavour to deduce the reality of one's own judgements from the identity of thought and being is camouflaged idealism, the endowment of the "ideas of Mao Tse-tung" with a supernatural and universal power is stark naked idealism. Here idea dominates over matter. All one has to do is to study the ideas of Mao and everything will be all right. Material production is assigned a negligible role, the level of man's consciousness, not the development of production, being declared the source of all progress.
Considering people the true makers of history, Marxism-Leninism allots to man the decisive role in social production and recognises the great power of progressive ideas in social development. However, the genuine revolutionary teaching does not isolate man from material production, it considers the two as a unity. It is not abstract ideal man that makes history, but the living, real man with all his merits and shortcomings, acting in the concrete historical conditions, with the obtaining level of the productive forces and means of production. The ignoring of this unity of man and the material medium has led and continues to lead to gross mistakes. 50 When one side of the unity is set up against the other, truth becomes falsehood.
Right opportunists always set up the level of the productive forces in opposition to man and practically leave no room for man's transformative activity. Everything, they say, depends on the material conditions. This is vulgar economic materialism, the philosophy of passivity and laissez-faire, justification of inactivity and timeserving.
All sorts of ``Leftists'' Lenin said, commit the same mistake, only some commit it "the other way round''. Placing man in opposition to the productive forces, they essentially deny the need for objective preconditions for the successful transformative activity of people. Everything, they say, depends only on man, on his will and consciousness. This is vulgar subjectivism, the philosophy of absolute voluntarism, justifying adventurism and scheming.
It is not hard to see why this philosophy spread in China. The low level of the productive forces, the predominance of the most primitive instruments of labour and the vast and steadily growing population created objective conditions for the simplified view that it is enough to make an all-out effort to attain desired ends.
This setting up of man in opposition to material possibilities is applied not only to all spheres of the economy, but also to the question of war. Lin Piao, who, according to the Chinese press, "upholds the red banner of Mao Tse-tung's ideas higher than anybody else'', affirms in his article "Long Live the Victory of the People's War!" that "the best weapon is not some death-dealing weapon, such as a plane, gun, tank or atom bomb but the ideas of Mao Tse-tung''. (By the
__PRINTERS_P_51_COMMENT__ 4* 51 way, this eulogising of the power of Mao's ideas has not prevented the Maoists from investing huge sums in the production of nuclear weapons, involving an excessive strain on the economy.)Contrasting man to ambient reality, the Maoists have constructed a simplified scheme of man deprived of any feelings, thoughts and emotions and fully adapted for the mechanical implementation of Mao's instructions. This is in strict contradiction to Lenin's view, who said: "We can (and must) begin to build socialism, not with abstract human material, or with human material specially prepared by us, but with the human material bequeathed to us by capitalism. True, that is no easy matter, but no other approach to this task is serious enough to warrant discus- sion.''^^1^^
The fact that there are objective conditions in modern China for voluntaristic ideas and all sorts of fantastic structures does not make these ideas and structures any more correct or justify the erroneous practices based on them. The substitution of idealism for materialism sooner or later leads to a dead end, to bankruptcy, because only ideas correctly reflecting the genuine needs and laws of life can assert themselves, take root and grow.
Passing off subjective idealism for Marxist materialism, Mao likewise interprets Marxist dialectics after his own fashion. The unity and struggle of opposites---that law of development as a result of the internal contradictions of phenomena---is reduced by Mao to a primitive scheme of no practical use in analysing reality. For _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 50.
52 the multiformity of life with its various contradictions---necessary and incidental, essential and secondary, antagonistic and non-antagonistic---he substitutes a simple enumeration of opposites. In fact, he repeats what the ancient Chinese philosophers did when a scientific interpretation of the universe was still in its diapers.Here is the static interpretation of opposites, as seen by Mao Tse-tung: "Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would also be no life. Without 'above', there would be no 'below'; without 'below', there would also be no 'above'. Without misfortune, there would be no good fortune; without good fortune, there would also be no misfortune. Without facility, there would be no difficulty; without difficulty, there would also be no facility. Without landlords, there would be no tenantpeasants; without tenant-peasants, there would also be no landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without a proletariat, there would also be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of the nations, there would be no colonies and semi-colonies: without colonies and semi-colonies, there would also be no imperialist oppression of the nations. All opposite elements are like = this."^^1^^
How does Mao see development, the struggle of these opposites? He sees it as a simple transformation of one into the other through a change of place: "... Each of the two contradictory aspects within a thing, because of certain conditions, tends to transform itself into the other, to transfer itself to the opposite = position."^^2^^ _-_-_
~^^1^^ Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, Vol. 2, pp. 43--44.
^^2^^ Ibid., p. 44.
53 According to Mao, the essence of socialist revolution is merely that the subordinated class, the proletariat, becomes the ruling class, and the bourgeoisie takes the place formerly held by its antipode, the landowners and peasants change places, peace and war succeed each other, etc.According to this scheme, opposites can change places infinitely, all movement is reduced to disturbance and restoration of equilibrium. In Mao Tse-tung and in the Peking textbook Dialectical Materialism, which propagandises Maoism, this proposition is explained at length. The law of development, the textbook says, is "equilibrium---disequilibrium---equilibrium" or "cohesion---the splitting of unity in two---new cohesion''. Imperialism, according to that scheme, plays the following role: "It commits outrages, is defeated, again commits outrages, is again defeated, and so on until its destruction.'' Planning is reduced to achieving a temporary and relative equilibrium. "A year passes and, on the whole, this equilibrium is disturbed by the struggle of opposites and becomes disequilibrium, unity stops being unity, and next year equilibrium and unity have to be achieved again."^^1^^
This scheme has nothing in common with Marxist dialectics. The interaction of contradictions and their interpenetration has disappeared and their struggle is always understood as a clash of antagonistic forces. This is very convenient for justifying ``theoretically'' the Mao group's subversive activity in the international Communist _-_-_
~^^1^^ Mao Tse-tung, "On the Correct Resolution of Contradictions Within the Nation" (in Russian), Moscow, 1957, p. 17.
54 movement (after unity there must inevitably be a split), for justifying any errors in planning (the equilibrium achieved is necessarily followed by disequilibrium), for denying the struggle for peace which must inevitably be succeeded by war, for declaring that in socialist society, too, the class struggle must not differ from the struggle before the triumph of the socialist revolution.Such ``dialectics'' is extremely convenient, for it helps to evade the concrete analysis of a concrete situation and to construct contradictions according to one's wishes, to reduce the science and the art of political leadership to aggravation of contradictions, to present unrestrained subjectivism as ideology.
The elemental materialism and naive dialectics of the ancient Chinese philosophers reflected the level of science in their day. They were progressive views for the time. But to return to them in our day would be not a mere archaism, but downright reaction. The people in the propaganda apparatus serving Mao's ideas understand the striking propinquity of the propositions they disseminate to the philosophy of the ancients. Since it cannot be denied, they try to present ancient Chinese philosophy as something universal and of intransient significance.
The tendency to present ancient Chinese philosophy as the principle of principles has been asserting itself more and more strongly with every passing year. Works have appeared which described this philosophy as a source of atheism, materialism, naturalism and the rationalism of the French encyclopaedists, a cornerstone of the Great French Revolution. The authors of these books also see the influence of Chinese philosophy 55 in the works of Kant, Fichte and Hegel. However, even this was not enough for them.
Early in 1957 a discussion was held on the history of Chinese philosophy. In May 1959 a debate was held on the philosophical system of Lao Tse and on problems of Confucius's philosophy, neo-Confucianism, etc. F. S. Bykov, a Soviet philosopher, noted that in modern Chinese philosophical writings we observe a trend towards the modernisation and idealisation of China's philosophical heritage, a striving to picture its specific traits as an achievement. Now the claim that ancient Chinese philosophy influenced all philosophy from Descartes to Hegel is considered too modest. Chinese philosophers made attempts to prove that there is no essential difference between the views of Confucius and some theoretical propositions of Marxism-Leninism, while some even read into the principal work of Confucius, The Book of Changes, propositions supposed to have much in common with dialectical materialism.
This sort of modernisation is not new in China. Go Mo-zho has long since portrayed Confucius as Marx's direct predecessor. In a story published in 1920 and republished in 1950, telling of an imaginary conversation between Marx and Confucius, the author makes Marx express pleasure at meeting an Eastern sage who held the same ideas as he more than 2,000 years ago.
The attempts to pass off as Marxism views which have nothing whatsoever in common with it assume different forms. The substitution of metaphysics for dialectics was in evidence at the philosophical discussion held in 1964 before the "cultural revolution''. The Chinese press reported 56 that "as regards the number of participants and its influence and significance, the discussion has had no equal in our scientific circles for many years''. The central problem of the discussion was the "splitting of unity into two" and the "fusion of two into one''. Between June and August alone, according to the Hung-chi, 90 articles were dedicated to this problem. The aim of the discussion was to ``expose'' those who stood for a concrete historical approach to the unity of the objective and subjective, who maintained that dialectics consists not only in the splitting of unity, but also in the combination of opposites, only on a new basis and in a new quality.
It condemned philosophers adhering to the principles advanced by Lenin in his polemics with the Trotskyists, who had adopted a metaphysical approach by setting up moral stimuli in opposition to material stimuli and declaring the two kinds to be mutually exclusive. The Maoists did not like what Lenin had said at the end of 1920: "But after all we do have some knowledge of Marxism and have learned how and when opposites can and must be combined; and what is most important is that in the three and a half years of our revolution we have actually combined opposites again and = again."^^1^^
The Maoists correctly saw criticism of their policy in the fact that dialectics requires us not only to distinguish between opposites but also to see their combination, and to learn to use this combination in socialist construction. But being subjectivists they decided not to correct their policy but to ``correct'' the objective laws of _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 32, p. 27.
57 dialectics. Actually Mao himself did this long before the discussion. "The contradictory aspects in every process exclude each other, struggle with each other and are opposed to each other. Such contradictory aspects are contained without exception in the processes of all things in the world and in human = thought,"^^1^^ he declared.There are no exceptions to this! That means that if contradictions emerge within a party, the only way of resolving them is the moral or even physical destruction of all those holding their own views. If we admit the significance of subjective endeavours, the Maoists say, there is no point in speaking of the influence of objective conditions. A philosopher was severely criticised for describing the development of oil production in Da-tsin as follows: "The Da-tsin experience was an example of coincidence of the subjective and the objective. The point is that the people concerned had a very clear idea of the subsurface conditions. If there had been only revolutionary efforts, without any knowledge of the conditions below the surface, the successes would not have been so = spectacular."^^2^^ This statement was appraised as a challenge to the official version of the Da-tsin experience, which was advertised as a result of revolutionary efforts and the power of Mao's ideas.
The significance of this line of "splitting unity into two" becomes particularly clear when we look more closely at the view the Maoists take of man: all people are divided into good and bad, into true pupils of Mao and "dogs' heads''; _-_-_
~^^1^^ Mao Tse-ttmg, Selected Works, Vol. 2, p. 43.
~^^2^^ Gitangming ribao, September 11, 1964.
58 the good have no defects, the bad have no virtues.Looking at all phenomena in an ossified state, as isolated from one another and deprived of their interpenetration, the Maoists have invented the following scheme: the ideal hero (the revolutionary) has only virtues: courage, staunchness, etc.; the negative personality (the reactionary, the revisionist) has only vices: cowardice, instability, self-indulgence, and so on.
The propaganda apparatus declared a bitter war on the portrayal in literature and art of the "average man'', in whom virtues live side by side with defects. The "splitting unity into two" excludes such co-existence, it leaves no room for human qualities extending beyond the approved scheme. Metaphysics ousts dialectics completely.
In his The Poverty of Philosophy Marx derided Proudhon for having "nothing of Hegel's dialectics but the language. For him the dialectic movement is the dogmatic distinction between good and bad''. Marx says that Proudhon "has the drawback of being stricken with sterility when it is a question of engendering a new category by dialectical birth-throes. What constitutes dialectical movement is the co-existence of two contradictory sides, their conflict and their fusion into a new category. The very setting of the problem of eliminating the bad side cuts short the dialectic movement. It is not the category which is posed and opposed to itself, by its contradictory nature, it is M. Proudhon who gets excited, perplexed and frets and fumes between the two sides of the = category."^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, Moscow, 1962, p. 108.
59Mao Tse-tung has no need to suffer the " birththroes" of Proudhon, he commands the army, the gangs of thugs with whose help he expects to make short work of contradictions. Mao has not only the ``advantage'' over Proudhon of holding the government in his hands, but also of being able to use everything that has " enriched" petty-bourgeois ideology in the past 120 years. This includes the subjectivism of anarchism and Narodism, the eclecticism of Trotskyism, and the straightforwardness, one-sidedness, inflexibility and inertness, the inflation of one of the aspects of cognition into an absolute, the dissociation from matter, which Lenin considered indispensable roots of philosophic idealism.
Petty-bourgeois philosophy has advanced but little, it has remained practically as barren as it was before, and can give birth only to illogical theoretical constructions and adventurist practices.
[60] __ALPHA_LVL1__ ``PERMANENT REVOLUTION''Marxism explains the necessity and inevitability of the social revolution by the conditions and requirements of the material life of society and by the objective laws of the class struggle. To petty-bourgeois revolutionism, however, the revolution is the reaction of a mutinous soul to injustice, the struggle for a moral ideal, the abstract idea of a better future.
Marxists consider that the basis for correct tactics can be "only an objective consideration of the sum total of the relations between absolutely all the classes in a given society, and consequently a consideration of the objective stage of development reached by that society and of the relations between it and other = societies".^^1^^ At the same time they regard all classes not as immobile, but in movement. That is why Marxists insist on a clear definition of the motive force and the nature of every revolution, its direct and ultimate aims, the relation between the various stages the revolution has to go through.
The only criterion for tactics advanced by petty-bourgeois revolutionism is that they be "the most revolutionary of all''. This explains their complete indifference to the assessment of the objective possibilities offered by the actual stage, their striving to advance maximalist slogans according to the "all or nothing" principle.
The anarchists accused Marx and Engels of opportunism. "Don't you understand,'' they said, _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 75.
61 ``that a revolutionary always should and does consider himself entitled to rouse the people to insurrection.'' He who does not believe in the ``readiness'' of the people for revolution, they say, does not believe in revolution in general. "That is why we cannot wait, refuse to tolerate hesitation and wavering. The question 'What is to be done?' should not worry us any longer. It has been solved long ago. We should make revolution. How? Everybody should do it as he can and knows best,'' they add. Answering such revolutionary babble, Engels convincingly showed that all these slogans are advanced as though the people making them do not inhabit our sinful planet but live in the transcendental spheres of empty phrases, and that these are only phrases to "conceal revolutionary = inaction".^^1^^In Italy, Spain and other countries the wild ``revolutionary'' phrases of the anarchists awoke a response when the working-class movement was only in embryo. The anarchists presented every manifestation of dissatisfaction as the end of the capitalist system. In 1873, when revolutionary events were maturing in Spain, the anarchists wrote in their newspaper: ''. . . As yet nothing has happened in Barcelona, but on the squares, in public places there is permanent revolution!" Engels caustically commented that this revolution of the anarchists "consists in constant drum-beating, and for this reason 'permanently' does not budge from the 'spot' = ".^^2^^
Anarchism does not draw any distinction between the concepts ``bourgeois'', "bourgeois- _-_-_
~^^1^^ K. Marx/F. Engels, Wcrkc, Bd. 18, 1962, S. 552, 554.
~^^2^^ Ibid., pp. 481--82.
62 democratic" and ``socialist'' revolution. It solves without any difficulty the concrete problems which each one of them is called upon to solve as well as the complex relations between the successive stages of revolutionary struggle. The anarchists reduced the concept ``revolution'' to spontaneous mutiny, which was to become a "social liquidation''. The state is liquidated, the old culture uprooted, everything that can be destroyed is destroyed, and the new society grows up from nothing.Hence the assertion that a revolutionary "knows only one science---the science of destruction''; hence also the gamble on the inborn instinct to mutiny, which is supposed to be present in everybody. When the working-class movement became more organised and rejected the naive mutinous ideas it had initially held, the anarchists declared that the working class was unfit for struggle. Bakunin divided all nations into those able and those unable to carry out a revolution. In his opinion, peoples who did not suffer material hardships lost the revolutionary spirit; only poor peoples, in particular peasants, could be revolutionaries. The peasantry was declared to be the spontaneous bearer of socialist ideas.
The Utopian views of the special mission of the peasantry, the fantastic ideas of the tactics in the revolutionary struggle were overcome as capitalist development eroded the basis on which the peasant Utopias rested and Marxist ideas increasingly gained ground and recognition as the only ones correctly expressing the development needs of modern society.
However, the ideas of the past do not disappear completely, they are able to revive under new 63 conditions, to adapt themselves to views that have become dominant in the revolutionary movement. A case in point was the adaptation by petty- bourgeois revolutionism of Marx's and Engels's term "permanent revolution" to create a concept having nothing in common with Marxism.
In the first appeal of the Central Committee to the Communist League, published in March 1850, Marx and Engels emphasised that the working class cannot rest content with victories that satisfy the bourgeoisie, and even the democratic petty bourgeoisie whose aim is to finish with the revolution as quickly as possible. "Our task,'' they said, "is to make the revolution permanent, until all more or less possessing classes have been forced out of their position of dominance, until the proletariat has conquered state power...."^^1^^ The appeal ended with a call to the workers to take up an independent stand, not to allow themselves to be sidetracked from organising their own party, whose slogan "should be the uninterrupted revolution".
The Marxist idea of the permanent revolution follows logically from the fact that the proletariat is the only consistent revolutionary class, one that refuses to stand any form of oppression ---the class whose historical mission is to build a classless society.
At that time, Marxists thought that the socialist revolution could be victorious only if there was a world revolution, one embracing at least the main capitalist countries. By "permanent revolution" Marx and Engels understood the _-_-_
~^^1^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. I, Moscow, 1962, p. 110.
64 victory of the proletariat in all the dominant countries in the world.Half a century later, the Marxist view of the revolution in permanence was developed by Lenin in his theory on the growing-over of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into the socialist revolution. Since the world capitalist system as a whole has now become mature for transition to socialism, a revolution which begins as a bourgeois one has every objective possibility not to stop with the destruction of feudal survivals, but to continue until the dictatorship of the proletariat is established. Lenin said that everything would depend on who would head the revolution: the bourgeoisie, interested in stopping it as quickly as possible, or the proletariat, which rallying all working people around itself, can lead the revolution to the victory of socialism. ''. .. From the democratic revolution,'' Lenin wrote in 1905, "we shall at once, and precisely in accordance with the measure of our strength, the strength of the class-conscious and organised proletariat, begin to pass to the socialist revolution. We stand for uninterrupted = revolution."^^1^^ In 1905, Lenin had not yet formulated the conclusion on the possibility of socialism triumphing in a single country, but his entire theory of the growing-over of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into the socialist revolution is based on the internal possibilities of the revolution. His book Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution and all other works written during the turbulent years of the first Russian Revolution are permeated with the conviction that the prospects of the movement, and _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 9, pp. 236--37.
__PRINTERS_P_65_COMMENT__ 5---1541 65 the speed with which the stages of the revolution will change, depend primarily on the strength of the working class, its organisation and its ability to win over the peasantry.This explains also Lenin's demand "to expand enormously" the limits of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, and his thorough understanding that it is impossible to jump over the stage of that revolution and to begin to solve socialist tasks immediately. Lenin said that disregard of the democratic stage and of the tasks connected with it, belittling of these tasks, means "a travesty of theoretical = Marxism...."^^1^^
He called upon the Party to set the entire people broader general democratic tasks with more courage and initiative, and considered the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry as a new type of power, one that can carry the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution through to the end and ensure its growing-over into a socialist revolution.
This was not the only period during which a "travesty of theoretical Marxism" was made. It appeared in many variants in later years, and not only in Russia, but also in the international communist movement.
Trotsky, too, made a travesty of Marxism when in opposition to Marx's and Engels's propositions on permanent revolution and to Lenin's theory of the growing-over of a bourgeoisdemocratic revolution into a socialist revolution he advanced his own "permanent revolution" theory which Lenin called "absurdly = Left".^^2^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ Ibid., Vol. 9, p. 112.
~^^2^^ Ibid., Vol. 20, p. 346.
66``No tsar, but a workers' government"---was the slogan Trotsky proclaimed in 1905. It expressed the endeavour to jump over the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution which was already under way in Russia. "Trotsky's major mistake,'' Lenin said, "is that he ignores the bourgeois character of the revolution and has no clear conception of the transition from this revolution to the socialist = revolution."^^1^^
After the February bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1917, Lenin advanced the slogan "All power to the Soviets!'', realising that they could pave the way for the transition to the socialist revolution. "Are we not in danger of falling into subjectivism, of wanting to arrive at the socialist revolution by 'skipping' the bourgeois-democratic revolution---which is not yet completed and has not yet exhausted the peasant movement?" asked Lenin in his Letters on 'Tactics. "I might be incurring this danger if I said: 'No tsar, but a workers' government.' = "^^2^^ Some time later, speaking at the Petrograd City Party Conference, Lenin again emphasised that Trotsky's slogan "No tsar, but a workers' government" was erroneous.
Under Russian conditions, the Trotskyist "permanent revolution" meant to ignore the revolutionary possibilities of the peasantry, to regard it as an anti-revolutionary force. The Trotskyists continued their anti-peasant policy also after the triumph of the socialist revolution. If, however, we look at Trotskyism not only in its Russian variant, but also consider it as a claim to provide a general scheme for the world social- _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ibid., Vol. 15, p. 371.
~^^2^^ Ibid., Vol. 24, p. 4S.
67 ist revolution, we see that the main thing in Trotskyism is its endeavour to jump at any cost over stages of revolutionary development. In some cases this skipping means a break with the peasantry, in others, it may lead to the rejection of other allies---the national bourgeoisie, the urban petty-bourgeoisie, etc.Characteristically, modern Trotskyists, while continuing to admire the so-called "permanent revolution" theory, which the "Fourth International" considers its "precious heritage'', actually reject Trotsky's view of the peasantry as a reactionary force. Wishing to adapt their stand, at least in some degree, to the growing national liberation movement, the Trotskyists now speak of the peasant countries of the East as of "the emergent new vanguard'', and ascribe to them "a radical and decisive role'', while continuing to propagandise the "doctrine of permanent revolution'', which is supposed to hold out for Asia, Africa and Latin America the prospect of a leap to socialism.
Trotsky, trying to prove the possibility of skipping stages of social development, said: "It is nonsense to claim that it is impossible in general to jump over stages.'' Marxist-Leninists do not deny leaps in the revolutionary process, but they regard a leap as an objective phenomenon prepared by the entire preceding development and not as the result only of revolutionary enthusiasm.
Mao Tse-tung holds the same methodological views as the Trotskyists as regards both the subjectivist striving to jump over stages and the contraposing of the revolution in one country to the world revolution. Like the Trotskyists, the Maoists have always and everywhere stood for the establishment of socialism in every country, irrespective 68 of the conditions prevailing there, and have always insisted that this must be done by armed insurrection.
According to the views of the Maoists, the peoples in the developing countries who have embarked on the road of independent national development should overthrow their governments by force of arms and immediately proclaim socialist construction.
Peking attacks the Communist Parties in the developed capitalist countries for regarding the struggle for the vital needs of the working people, for democracy, and for peace as a means of promoting the victory of socialism. Since this struggle has not yet taken the form of a revolution they call it opportunism.
This is obvious from Peking's attitude to the parliamentary activity of Communists and their courageous struggle to defend democracy. The dialectics of history is such that with the growth of the liberation movement and the influence of the working class, the bourgeois democratic system becomes irksome to the monopoly bourgeoisie. It therefore launches an assault on democratic freedoms and endeavours to revise the constitution, to cancel all more or less progressive laws. Under these conditions, the defence of democracy, even if it is a very limited and formal bourgeois democracy in many respects, the movement for the extension and renovation of this democracy becomes a struggle against the monopolies and undermines the foundations of the capitalist system.
``At a time when the united anti-monopoly front is consolidating and expanding, when the working class and its allies are gaining ever greater political weight in society, they can make 69 a wider use of their hard-won democratic rights and institutions in the struggle against monopoly rule. The democratic reforms, expressing the interests of the working class and the non- proletarian sections of working people, which are being enforced under pressure of the masses, result in the consolidation of the positions of the progressive forces, and expand the bridgehead for launching a decisive offensive against capitalist positions. The movement to win greater rights for the people in the bourgeois countries is an important aspect of the class battles and an integral part of the struggle for = socialism."^^1^^
The Mao Tse-tung group denies any possibility that the working people's struggle for democracy may be successful, and calls even its most obvious successes hand-outs of the ruling classes.
In the article "Once Again on Comrade Toglliati's Differences With Us'', the editorial offices of the Renmin ribao and the Hung-chi ``explained'' that seats in a bourgeois parliament are not won by struggle but are handed out at will by the bourgeoisie in order to deprave the working class and its leaders. "In its interests,'' they wrote, "the bourgeoisie admits representatives of the working class political party to its parliament under definite conditions. It thus strives to lead some representatives and leaders of the working class astray, to corrupt and even to bribe them.'' So it seems that the victories of the Communists in elections are no more than bourgeois hand-outs and parliamentary cretinism.
_-_-_~^^1^^ Fiftieth Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Theses of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U., pp. 57--58.
70Only blind supporters of pseudo-revolutionary schemes can deny that democratic gains reflect the balance of forces in the country, that they are the result of struggle and proof of the growing influence of the working class and the Communist Party. Many facts from the practice of the international communist movement corroborate Lenin's statement that political changes "of a truly democratic nature, and especially political revolutions, can under no circumstances whatsoever either obscure or weaken the slogan of socialist revolution. On the contrary, they always bring it closer, extend its basis, and draw new sections of the petty bourgeoisie and the semiproletarian masses into the socialist = struggle".^^1^^
By revolution Marxism-Leninism understands
first and foremost the conquest of state power by
the revolutionary class. It does not link the
concept of revolution with the method by which this
conquest is made. "The passing of state power
from one
When in 1938, during the long drawn-out civil war and the armed resistance against the Japanese invaders, Mao Tse-tung said that in China _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 339.
~^^2^^ Ibid., Vol. 24, p. 44.
71 war was the main form of struggle and that "the rifle gives birth to power'', this really applied in the concrete conditions then prevailing in China. But even at that time Mao did not intend this as a characteristic of the specific features of the struggle in China, he considered it universally valid. His article extolling weapons as the source of all power begins with a categorical statement: "The central task of the revolution and its highest form is the seizure of power by force of arms, i.e., the solution of the question by war. This revolutionary principle of Marxism-Leninism is universally correct, it is undoubtedly correct for China and also for other = countries."^^1^^The activity of the Maoist groups in the European countries shows how they regard revolutionism in modern conditions. To them revolutionism is expressed by terrorist acts, arson, obstructions, fights, and the cut-throat methods once advocated by the anarchists, methods which did not rest on a sound basis even then, and are absurd today, when the working-class movement is organised on a mass scale.
Thus, the Maoists recognise as revolutionary action only a revolutionary war, only armed insurrection, and consider all other forms of struggle against the ruling classes as opportunism and treachery.
Such stereotyped patterns for the methods and forms of struggle have nothing in common with genuine revolutionism. An analysis of the specific features of our epoch has shown that under definite conditions there is a real possibility of uniting the bulk of the people, of carrying out a _-_-_
~^^1^^ Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, Vol. 2, Russian editon, p. 379.
72 successful socialist revolution and of seizing state power without civil war.In appraising the forms of struggle, Lenin did not proceed from abstract positions of maximum revolutionism; he assessed them according to their suitability in the objective conditions in which the social forces have to contend and according to how much these forms help to expand the mass movement and raise it to a higher stage. Lenin emphasised that the Bolsheviks could not and would not adopt the slogan of being "more revolutionary than anybody else'', that the senseless ``revolution-making'' of the anarchists was entirely alien to them.
The most revolutionary slogan calling for the most decisive form of struggle must inevitably become an empty phrase if it is proclaimed without due regard for the specific conditions of the current stage and the forms taken by the mass movement. "When people refuse to reckon with the actual situation that has arisen and the actual conditions of the particular mass movement, because of a slogan misinterpreted as unchangeable,'' Lenin said, "such an application of a slogan inevitably degenerates into revolutionary = phrase-mongering."^^1^^
There are not and cannot be universal forms of struggle suitable in all conditions. A form which in some conditions might seem the only possible one, and might really play a revolutionary role, may become anti-revolutionary in other historical conditions. And, vice versa, a form which in certain conditions might be a rejection of revolutionary struggle, may become _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 15, p. 215.
73 an important form for advancing the revolution in different historical conditions.Any attempt to make some form of struggle universal is dogmatic and essentially antirevolutionary. Nobody can invent forms of struggle They are evolved by the mass movement and depend on the concrete features of every historical moment. "Under no circumstances,'' Lenin said, "does Marxism confine itself to the forms of struggle possible and in existence at the given moment only, recognising as it does that new forms of struggle, unknown to the participants of the given period, inevitably arise as the given social situation = changes."^^1^^ That is why Lenin stressed with such insistence that the revolutionary class "in order to accomplish its task . . . must be able to master all forms or aspects of social activity without exception .. . must be prepared for the most rapid and brusque replacement of one form by = another."^^2^^
Jumping over stages is only one aspect of the "permanent revolution" of the Trotskyists. The other deals with the relation between the revolutionary struggle within the country and the development of the world revolution.
Realising that the ignoring of bourgeoisdemocratic tasks in a backward country would put the proletariat in a difficult position by isolating it from the broad mass of the peasants, Trotsky saw only one way out of this dilemma, namely to spread the fire of revolution to the international arena. In 1922, he explained the essence of his "permanent revolution" as follows in the preface to his book 1905: "The contradictions in the _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ibid., Vol. 11, p. 213.
~^^2^^ Ibid., Vol. 31, p. 96.
74 position of a workers' government in a backward country with a predominantly peasant population can be resolved only on an international scale, in the arena of the world proletarian revolution."Lenin's theory of revolution did not underestimate the importance of the external conditions in which the revolution develops or ignore the significance of the international factor, but it proceeded first and foremost from the internal motive forces and proved that the revolution could be accomplished by relying on those forces. The "permanent revolution" theory, however, stresses not the development of the internal possibilities of the revolution, but the degree to which it can enkindle revolutionary development in other countries, making the fate of the revolution in one country entirely dependent on international support. The seeming revolutionism of the slogan "No tsar, but a workers' government" reflects not faith in the internal possibilities of the revolution but, on the contrary, complete disbelief in them, and adventurist reliance on external support alone.
Compelled to reckon with the triumphant spread of Lenin's ideas in the working-class movement, Trotsky hypocritically camouflaged his ideas as Leninism, denied that Trotskyism was hostile to Leninism. Right up to 1928 Trotsky stated that "the difference between the two lines, the 'permanent' and the Leninist, are of secondary and subordinate significance.. . .'' He attempted by all means to prove that the " permanent revolution" theory was nothing else than the Leninist theory of the growing-over of the democratic revolution into a socialist one, with the only difference that he (Trotsky) regarded the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the 75 proletariat and the peasantry (which Lenin considered to be the substance of the ``growing-over'') as unrealistic, and the "permanent revolution" slogan as leading directly to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Trotsky's attempts to picture the difference between the Leninist theory of the socialist revolution and his "permanent revolution" as a matter of secondary importance were designed to screen over the main thing, the substance, and to conceal the abyss dividing Leninism and Trotskyism.
However, the fact that these were not abstract theoretical problems, not differences of " subordinate importance'', but vital policy problems was becoming obvious not only in Russia, but also in all other countries where Leftist elements endeavoured to make the fate of the revolution depend on the victory of the revolution on a world-wide scale.
The anti-Marxist views on the relation between the revolution in one country and the world revolution became current in China as early as the thirties. Li Li-san, maintaining that "a direct revolutionary situation is maturing throughout the world'', said in 1930: "The victory of the Chinese revolution cannot be ensured and achieved without the victory of the world revolution.'' Here, as in petty-bourgeois revolutionism in general, ultra-revolutionary phraseology easily coexists with capitulationism and lack of faith in the internal revolutionary forces. Many variants of the "permanent revolution" theory spread in China during subsequent years.
The problem of the relation between the revolution in one country and the world revolution has a direct bearing on the prospects of social 76 development after the triumph of the revolution.
Immediately after the Great October Socialist Revolution, Trotsky's "permanent revolution" theory was intended by its creator to justify a policy leading to the destruction of the young Soviet state, since the latter was unable to crush world imperialism. After the Civil War and the defeat of the interventionists, the "permanent revolution" theory was used as the ideological basis for denying the possibility of building socialism in one country.
When the country had to decide whether it was to advance along the road of socialist construction without relying on immediate help from the world revolution, whether it was to make every possible use of the peaceful respite or to carry out a policy of unleashing a revolutionary war, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union displayed new vigour in exposing the adventurist nature of Trotsky's "permanent revolution" theory.
The success of the C.P.S.U. in rousing the people to work for socialism and winning a brilliant victory solved the question whether or not it was possible to build socialism in one country. Events disproved the Trotskyist Cassandras. Socialism triumphed in the Soviet Union in the most difficult conditions, at a time when the country was surrounded by capitalist states. Despite persistent efforts by the defenders of the "permanent revolution" theory over many years to deny the socialist nature of the Soviet system and their predictions of its inevitable degeneration, the facts belied them.
Mao's followers also practically deny that it is possible for socialist society to develop successfully in a single country or even in a community 77 of socialist states. They make the prospect of socialist construction and the gradual transition from socialism to communism directly dependent upon the destruction of world imperialism.
When the new Programme of the C.P.S.U. outlining the basic directions of communist construction in the U.S.S.R. was approved by the entire world communist movement, the Chinese leaders also called it a "grandiose plan for the building of communism by the Soviet people''. This was said in the greetings addressed by the Central Committee of the C.P.C. to the 22nd Congress of the C.P.S.U. and signed by = Mao Tse-tung.^^1^^ Some time later, however, Mao Tsetung ceased to call the construction taking place in the Soviet Union = communist,^^2^^ and subsequently he declared that the Programme of the C.P.S.U. was aimed "against the revolution of the peoples'', "at preserving and restoring capitalism".
Again the thesis is advanced that, as long as capitalism exists in the world, a country that has carried out a socialist revolution is unable to solve its internal contradictions on a national scale, that this can be done only on an international scale. Formerly this pseudo-revolutionary but actually capitulationist statement was directed against socialist construction; now it is levelled against communist construction. Formerly the Trotskyists denied the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country; now Mao Tse-tung's _-_-_
~^^1^^ See The Twenty-Second Congress of the C.P.S.U., October 17--31, 1961. Stenographic Report, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1962, pp. 327--28.
~^^2^^ See "Greetings on the Occasion of the 46th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution'', Pravda, November 7, 1963.
78 followers deny the possibility of the triumph of communism in several countries, asserting that this is possible only on a world scale. They refuse to believe that a programme for building communist society can be implemented in presentday conditions, in a world in which there is still imperialism. Similar to the approach the Trotskyists once adopted to socialist construction, the Maoists now say that any attempt to build communist society in one or several countries while imperialism still exists is an effort to achieve the impossible, that is, acting without a sense of responsibility and at variance with proletarian internationalism. How familiar all this sounds! Even the same old words are used: "striving to achieve the impossible'', "departure from proletarian internationalism'', etc.In their attacks on communist construction in the U.S.S.R., the Maoist propagandists seek enthusiasm in verbal strivings to kindle the world revolution by all and every means. The danger of building communism, they say, is that people will rest content with what they have achieved in their country and will stop thinking about the world revolution, that "the political consciousness of the people, its militancy will drop....'' In their opinion, the shortest way to communism is not to work out and implement a programme of communist construction, but "to fight imperialism by all possible means".
It is extremely difficult for adherents of the abstract formula "a revolutionary must make revolutions" to understand that earnest, conscientious work in a socialist country is also an expression of revolutionism, that a diplomat pursuing the peaceful policy of a socialist country is also working for the revolutionary cause. Naturally 79 the image of the Red Army man with a cartridge belt over his shoulder is more impressive than the image of a scientist in the laboratory or the director of a factory, but today revolutionism in the socialist countries is expressed not by fighting on barricades but by working to improve the socialist system, by raising its economic and military potential, by increasing its spiritual wealth.
The Chinese hurrah-revolutionaries reject Lenin's view that socialism will exert its main influence on international development by its economic successes, that the emergent new society will revolutionise human development by the force of its example. They want to implant in the communist movement adventuristic ideas springing essentially from their distrust of the socialist forces.
Attacking communist construct