54

p The whole of Maoist “philosophy” is basically set forth in 1) Dialectical Materialism, written in Yenan in the late thirties on the basis of lectures given at the Party School there. A much altered extract was included in the Selected Works published during the fifties, in the form of two articles entitled "On Practice" and "On Contradiction”. We hope to make clear further on why Mao Tse-tung did not have the whole text included in Selected Works; 2) the article "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People”, published in 1957; 3) the article "Whence Does a Man Acquire Correct Ideas?" (1963), amounting to four type-written pages; 4) the articles "On New Democracy" and "On People’s Democratic Dictatorship”; 5) the anti-Soviet editorials of the newspaper Jen-min jih-pao and journal Hungchih (1963–1965)  [54•1 ; 6) statements on philosophical questions made at various meetings and in connection with philosophical debates.  [54•2 

p If we analyse all these articles and statements it becomes patently evident that Mao Tse-tung makes use of Marxist phraseology purely as a means to an end, to camouflage for the time being his real views. At the same time, Mao’s own interpretation of Marxism shows an extremely limited knowledge of the subject. This is hardly surprising, since the traditional education Mao received naturally did not include Marxist theory, while in the process of self– 55 education he was unable to acquire a correct understanding of Marxism since he drew his information mainly from the works of petty-bourgeois socialists.

p In the twenties Mao Tse-tung studied G. Kircupp’s History of Socialism. Failing to distinguish between the political views of Lassalle, Rodbertus and Marx, Kircupp makes a superficial criticism of Marxist doctrine from the standpoint of petty-bourgeois socialism, and in particular of such important parts as the theory of labour, the theory of value, surplus value and so on. It would appear that Mao Tsetung’s negative attitude to Marx’s Capital derives from the bias he acquired from the "indelible impression" Kircupp’s book made on him.

p Kircupp’s book strengthened Mao Tse-tung’s sympathy for anarchism, since Kircupp is full of praise for the anarchists, declaring the catechism of Bakunin (sharply criticised by Marx) and the views of Kropotkin to be revolutionary socialism. Kircupp rejects Marx’s scientific socialism and preaches his own "moral socialism”, declaring that socialism in the past frequently showed a tendency to degenerate into a rigid and sterile orthodoxy which tried to solve all problems with the aid of restricted and poorly assimilable theories.  [55•1  Kircupp suggests that socialism should be purged of materialism and revolutionary orthodoxy. It must be noted that Mao Tse-tung adopted Kircupp’s concept of "moral socialism”.

p Mao Tse-tung could only base his views of MarxismLeninism on translations, since he knew no foreign languages. Moreover, in the early forties, and indeed right up to 1949, only a very small part of the works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism were available in Chinese.

p In the twenties Mao’s ignorance of Marxism-Leninism did not matter a great deal, in view of the generally deficient theoretical knowledge of the CPC leaders. After Mao usurped power in the CPC in 1935, however, the position was radically altered. Henceforth, Mao needed a knowledge of Marxist theory in order to strengthen his position in the Party leadership.

p Not until the end of the thirties did Mao read odd chapters and extracts from Engels’ Ludwig Feuerbach, 56 Anti-Diihring and Dialectics of Nature, and Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-criticism and Philosophical Notebooks. At roughly the same time he read Stalin’s The Foundations of Leninism and On the Foundations of Leninism which, as we know, did not attempt to present all the wealth of Marxist-Leninist theory. A textual analysis of Mao’s writings shows that all his quotations from Marx, Engels and Lenin were derived from these works of Stalin.

p Any correct propositions as appear in Mao Tse-tung’s works are simply a rehash of the ideas of Stalin and other Marxists, both Soviet and Chinese (the latter including Li Ta-chao, Chu Chiu-po, Peng Pai, Wang Ming and Ai Szuch’i), while his own “original” ideas are, as a rule, erroneous.

p A close analysis of Mao Tse-tung’s articles makes it clear that he had not read such fundamental Marxist works as Capital, The Poverty of Philosophy, The Holy Family or The German Ideology. Indeed, Mao was wont to refer to those who took the trouble to study Capital as "doctrinairists, racking their brains to no avail”.

p Mao Tse-tung’s attitude to Marx and his works was clearly expressed in quite unambiguous terms in a speech at the Second Session of the Eighth Party Congress in 1958, when he called for "the destruction of blind faith in Marx" and the indoctrination of the Chinese people with the "Thoughts of Mao Tse-tung”. "Marx had two eyes and two hands, just like the rest of us, but his head was full of Marxism,” Mao said. "However, there is no need to read everything Marx wrote. After all, he wrote so much! There is no need at all to read everything. Comrade Yang Hsienchen,  [56•1  have you read all of Marx? Yes, you have read 57 everything and you have climbed to the highest storey, whereas I have not and I have not yet got to the top. I think that those who are at the bottom should on no account be afraid of those who are at the top....”

p How much Mao Tse-tung knows about Marxism can be gauged from the following rather self-effacing statement by Mao himself, made during a conversation with journalists and people from the publishing world on March 10, 1957.

p “When somebody or other says that he understands Marxism it must be borne in mind that there are different degrees of understanding Marxism. I too have read a few books by the founders of Marxism. I don’t know how many they wrote, but I imagine rather less than half have been translated in China. A specialist should read as much as possible. We have not much free time and can read less" (quoted from the Hungweiping newspaper Tung fang hung, July 1967).

p These views of Mao on the study of the classics of Marxism and the question of whether it was indeed at all necessary for the Chinese to study the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin were developed by Kuo Mo-jo, President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Addressing scholars present at the inaugural meeting of the history society in the Kwangsi-Chuang autonomous region, Kuo Mo-jo called on the Chinese to study Marxism-Leninism from the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, which they should "read thoroughly" and "learn by heart”, since the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin were “difficult” and “remote” from Chinese life. "Although Chinese translations exist which we can read, however conscientiously the translation was made, as soon as you begin reading them relative difficulties in understanding them arise. Moreover, the practice dealt with in these classic works is so remote from us that we have not experienced it ourselves and even when you want to look into them deeply, you are bound to find difficulties arising. The works of Chairman Mao are written in Chinese, and are moreover written simply, clearly and perfectly.”  [57•1 

58

p Mao’s supporters attempt to justify their scornful attitude towards world socialist thought and scientific socialism by insisting that socialism developed on a purely Chinese basis. During the “rectification” movement of 1942 to 1944, at the time when the Party was being “purged” of the influence of Marxism-Leninism and the Comintern, Chen Po-ta, now a leading Maoist theoretician, wrote the following, which conforms perfectly to the spirit of that campaign. " Socialism has been the dream of the best representatives of our nation for thousands of years. The thinker Mo-tzu (5th c. B.C.) called this dream ’universal love’, while in the treatise Li Yuan it is referred to as the ’great union’. ... The ideals of socialism and communism—of ’great union’— in the case of our nation have not been introduced from outside, but are a historical need inherent in our nation.”

p Analysis of bibliographic sources of the published works of Mao Tse-tung shows how totally unfounded and absurd are the claims of the sacristans of the Mao cult that their leader "brilliantly, creatively, and all-embracingly inherited, defended and developed Marxism-Leninism, raising it to a new stage”.

p In all of Mao Tse-tung’s works, if we try to trace his sources we find a preponderance of references to, or
•
References to, or quotations from Percentage of references in nil 4 volumes 1. Confucian and neo-Confucian writings ................ 2. Taoist and Mohist writings . . . . 3. Folklore legends, pure belles lettres. . 4. Other Chinese and foreign writers, unclassified............ 5. Marx and Engels......... 6. Lenin ............... 7. Stalin .............. 22 12 13 7 4 18 24 TOTAL 100% 59
•
quotations from Confucius, Mencius and other ancient and medieval Chinese sages. The bourgeois Sinologist V. Holubnychy made a careful textual study of the works of Mao Tse-tung and drew up the following statistical table of the sources quoted by Mao in all four volumes of Selected Works.   [59•1 

p We checked these figures for ourselves and found them to be basically correct. While it naturally cannot be assumed that Mao Tse-tung has only read those authors he quotes in his works, this table nevertheless serves to give a fair idea of the range of authors he has studied.

p The Soviet film director R. Karmen who spent over a year in China in 1939–1940 and met Mao Tse-tung in Yenan on several occasions provides another extremely convincing testimony to the ideological substratum of Mao’s views. In his A Year in China, published in 1941, he mentions that in his conversations and speeches Mao Tse-tung was constantly quoting Confucius.  [59•2  This is also confirmed by the memoirs of Otto Braun (Li Te), an outstanding German Communist and internationalist who was military adviser to the Central Committee of the CPC in the thirties and was for many years closely acquainted with Mao.  [59•3 

p It so happened that thanks to the efforts of Ai Szu-ch’i and other Marxists several Soviet philosophy manuals were translated into Chinese in the thirties. Mao Tse-tung thus had ample opportunity to acquire a correct understanding of the basic principles of Marxist philosophy, had he so wished. But his “philosophical” works show that he was either unable or unwilling to take advantage of the information on MarxistLeninist philosophy contained in Soviet popular philosophy manuals. This is certainly suggested by the numerous distortions of Marxist theses that are to be found in Mao Tse-tung’s writings from the forties onwards.

p Mao’s first “philosophical” work, as we have already mentioned, was the pamphlet Dialectical Materialism. The list of contents reproduced below should give the reader a good idea of its subject matter.

60

p Chapter I. Idealism and Materialism  

p I. The war between two armies in philosophy.
II. The difference between idealism and materialism.
III. The source of the rise and development of idealism.
IV. The origin of the inception and development of           materialism.

p Chapter II. Dialectical Materialism  

p I. Dialectical materialism is the revolutionary arm of the           proletariat.
II. The relationship between the old philosophical           heritage and dialectical materialism.
III. The unity of world view and methodology in           dialectical materialism.
IV. The question of the object of materialist dialectics—           what do materialist dialectics serve to study?
V. On matter.
VI. On movement (on development).
VII. On space and time.
VIII. On awareness.
IX. On reflection.
X. On truth.
XI. On practice (on the connection between cognition           and practice, theory and action, knowledge and action).

p Chapter III. Materialist Dialectics  

p I. The law of the unity of opposites.

p a) Two views of development.
b) The formal-logistic law of identity and the           dialectical law of contradiction.
c) The universality of contradiction.
d) The particularity of contradiction.
e) The principal contradiction and the principal           aspect of a contradiction.
f) Identity and struggle of the aspects of a           contradiction.
g) The place of antagonism in the line of           contradictions.

p A detailed analysis of the text revealed that it was based entirely on two Soviet works, the text-book Dialectical 61 Materialism (Moscow 1933, general editor M. Mitin), and the article of the same name published in volume 22 of the first edition of the Bolshaya Sovietxkaya Entsiklopedia.

p Mao Tse-tung’s pamphlet is really no more than a recapitulation of these two works. Whole passages have been “lifted” wholesale, with little or no change. This is especially true of those problems which were never examined at all in traditional Chinese philosophy, or which were treated at a very low theoretical level and which required a knowledge of natural science and the historical development of world philosophy to be properly understood. Such problems include the question of the material nature of the world, the forms in which matter exists, especially space and time, and objective, relative and absolute truth.

p Yet despite the fact that Mao Tse-tung is merely retelling in Chinese the correct theses contained in Soviet works, he nevertheless manages to distort and vulgarise them.

p According to Mao, the basic social cause of idealism is the antithesis between intellectual labour and manual labour. ”. . .The earliest manifestation of idealism was brought about by the superstition and ignorance of primitive, savage man. But with the development of production, the separation between manual labour and intellectual labour was responsible for ranking idealism first among currents of philosophical thought. With the development of the productive forces of society, the division of labour made its appearance; the further development of the division of labour saw the emergence of persons devoting themselves entirely and exclusively to intellectual labour. But when the productive forces are still weak, the division between the two does not reach the stage of complete separation. Only after classes and private property appear and exploitation becomes the foundation of the existence of the ruling class do great changes occur. Intellectual labour then becomes the exclusive privilege of the ruling class, while manual labour becomes the fate of the oppressed classes. The ruling class begins to examine the relationship between themselves and the oppressed classes in an upside-down fashion: It is not the labourers who provide them with the means for existence, but rather they who provide the labourers with the means of existence. They therefore despise manual labour and develop idealist conceptions. The elimination of the differences 62 between manual labour and intellectual labour is one of the preconditions for eliminating idealist philosophy.”  [62•1 

p Mao Tse-tung is quite wrong in identifying the causes of the appearance of the illusion about the independent development of ideology with the social roots of idealism. In actual fact, the division of labour into intellectual and manual work, while demoralising man and entailing on him special social functions, at the same time gives a strong impulse to the development of the productive forces, science and the arts. This can be seen from the first antagonistic class society. As Engels wrote: "It was slavery that first made possible the division of labour between agriculture and industry on a larger scale, and thereby also Hellenism, the flowering of the ancient world. Without slavery, no Greek state, no Greek art and science.. . .”  [62•2 

p As for the social roots of idealism, they lie in the division of society into classes and the urge of the exploiter classes to retain and strengthen their rule.

p Mao Tse-tung’s articles "On Practice" and "On Contradiction" included in the Selected Works also contain extensive borrowings from the above-mentioned Soviet textbook and Bolshaya Sovietskaya Entsiklopedia.  [62•3  One example is the thesis of the two views concerning the laws of development of the world: the metaphysical and the dialectical. Once again, the Marxist theses borrowed from the Soviet works appear side by side with over-simplified, vulgarised interpretations of numerous problems and even un-Marxist and anti-Marxist theses. This is particularly evident in Mao’s treatment of the basic law of dialectics.  [62•4 

p The outward resemblance Mao’s two articles bear to genuine Marxist works, as regards terminology, added to the fact that they contain such extensive borrowings of theses from Soviet works, often blinds people to their real content and significance. This misunderstanding is further increased 63 by the references to A. M. Deborin and the "Menshevikising idealists”. However, in our opinion, the politico– philosophical errors of the Deborin group could not possibly have any bearing on China, since the CPC cadres were, for objective reasons, far removed from philosophical debates in the USSR. The only people who might have some idea of the views of Deborin and his group were the Chinese students studying in Moscow or CPC representatives in the Comintern. The majority of these adopted an internationalist standpoint, and on their return to China represented a serious threat to the nationalist policy of Mao Tse-tung. It was these people that Mao Tse-tung had in mind when he spoke of the influence of Deborin’s idealism on certain members of the CPC and of political errors of a doctrinaire nature. In insisting on the need to combat Deborin and his group, Mao was pursuing two aims: he was preparing an alibi for the liquidation of genuine internationalist Communists and at the same time proclaiming his own “fidelity” to Marxism.

p Mao Tse-tung’s articles and statements on philosophy dating from the 1950s and 1960s (for example, "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People”, 1957, and his instructions regarding the debate on the "dissolution of the entity" 1964) show an ever-increasing distortion and vulgarisation of Marxism-Leninism. We shall be discussing this in detail in another chapter, and shall therefore restrict ourselves at this stage to one example.

p Quotations from Chairman Mao contains the following idea on idealism and metaphysics, materialism and dialectics, purporting to date from 1955. "In the world only idealism and metaphysics require the minimum of effort, for they enable people to talk all kinds of rubbish without taking objective reality into account and without testing what they say in real life. Materialism and dialectics, on the contrary, require effort from people, for they are based on objective reality and are tested in real life.

p “Unless one makes an effort it is easy to slide towards idealism and metaphysics.”  [63•1 

p If in the late thirties Mao Tse-tung was still making some kind of effort to disclose the real causes of the appearance of various trends in philosophy, albeit distorting the Marxist 64 viewpoint, twenty years later he reduces the whole problem to the amount of effort the philosopher, scientist, scholar or practical man expends in his particular field of activity. Such an attitude begs the conclusion that all industrious people are materialists and dialecticians while all lazy people are idealists and metaphysicians. According to this thesis, that great son of the Chinese people Sun Yat-sen clearly falls into the latter category, since he is well known to have been an idealist in his philosophical views.

p The fact that Mao Tse-tung uses Marxist phraseology in his works and that some of the Maoist theses bear a formal resemblance to the ideas of Marxism-Leninism enables the Maoists to camouflage the true essence of "Mao Tse-tung’s Thoughts”. Moreover, Mao is fond of quoting Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, and makes frequent "oaths of allegiance" to the Marxist cause and the ideals of Marxism-Leninism. However, does this really provide grounds for regarding Mao, if not as an "outstanding Marxist-Leninist”, at least as an ordinary run-of-the-mill Marxist philosopher, or for blaming Soviet philosophy or Marxism-Leninism in general for the appearance of Maoism, as bourgeois propagandists are wont to do?

p It certainly does not. A detailed analysis of the views of Mao Tse-tung shows that anti-Marxist ideas predominate in his theories, so that the borrowed Marxist theses are really an alien element in his “philosophy”. This is especially clear from those parts of his writings where he offers his own interpretation of problems treated by Marxism-Leninism. Mao’s supporters extol him not so much for his repetition of general truths as for those formulations which represent an essential departure from the Marxist-Leninist philosophical treatment of such problems as proletarian revolution, war and peace, class relations and the class struggle under socialism which we shall be dealing with in later chapters.

p The frequent appeals Mao makes in his writings to the authority of Stalin and citations from him were also intended simply to create the impression of adherence to Marxism-Leninism and the communist movement. In actual fact, Mao makes hypocritical use of Stalin’s name for attacks on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. A collection of Mao’s speeches at closed meetings, published by the Hungweipings, reveals that Mao called Stalin a 65 metaphysician and accused him of being opposed to the Chinese revolution. In "Three Milestones in the Development of Marxism”, distributed by the Hungweipings, it is claimed that as a result of Stalin’s theoretical errors, Marxism began to "mark time" in the Soviet Union. Curiously enough, the date given for the beginning of this "marking time" is 1935, the year Mao Tse-tung "assumed leadership" of the CPC.

It is quite clear even from this brief examination of the story of Mao Tse-tung’s acquaintanceship with MarxismLeninism that he never was a Marxist, and that the Maoist claim that he “inherited”, “defended” and “developed” Marxism-Leninism is just another myth. It is paradoxical and absurd when a hidebound chauvinist suffering from megalomania aspires to become a classic of Marxism–
Leninism.

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