135

p The word “practice” crops up again and again in Mao’s articles and speeches, and the call to "combine theory with practice" is one of the "three talismans" which Mao is supposed to have invented.  [135•1  "The theory of knowledge of dialectical materialism raises practice to the first place, holds that human knowledge cannot be separated the least bit from practice, and repudiates all incorrect theories which deny the importance of practice or separate knowledge from practice."  [135•2  ”. . .Materialism and dialectics ... need effort. They must be based on and tested by objective reality.”  [135•3  However, this insistence on the primacy of practice, on knowledge being inseparable from practice—and one could go on and on quoting statements to this effect—should not be allowed to mislead us into accepting such statements at their face value, as truly materialist. It all depends on what one means by practice, the practice of what class Mao intends to combine knowledge with, the practice of what class or classes is taken as the criterion of truth. Here we come up against incredible eclecticism, a mixture of naive and vulgar materialism, empiricism, and subjective idealism. Although in "On Practice" Mao refers to several forms of practical activity (in production, the class struggle, politics, science and the arts), basically he limits practice as the source of knowledge entirely to the sphere of politics, and all other spheres of social life are examined through the prism of political practice. Moreover, this political practice derives from the petty-bourgeois class viewpoint of Mao Tse-tung.

p Some may feel there is nothing wrong in this, that Mao is thus adopting a consistent class approach and analysing things from a firm class standpoint (especially if we are to 136 accept it as the proletarian class standpoint). But the point is that we find here the same one-sidedness and superficiality that leads Mao Tse-tung to idealism and abandonment of class, proletarian, affiliation.

p This incorrect approach to the class struggle leads straight to vulgar sociology, the incursion of the criterion of class adherence into spheres where it is not directly manifest, such as the natural sciences and the transformation of nature, etc. This involves a distortion of the very concept of “practice” as an objective phenomenon representing the unity of the subjective and objective. The objective, material side of practice—practice as a process existing outside man and independently of the will of the individual—drops out, and we are left with the subjective side, where voluntarism and subjectivism—"the great leap forward”, the "people’s communes”, and so on—flourish, and the Maoist thesis advanced in 1958 that "Anything that is conceivable is feasible" comes into its own.

p The transference of these theories to the sphere of " subjective practice" results in mistakes of a voluntarist, subjective kind: the outcome is "to throw all historical realism overboard"  [136•1  and confuse reality with pure fancy.

p Practice, as Mao understands it, is the narrow, separate practice of an individual or a group of persons viewed abstractly and pragmatically. Furthermore, Mao does not even deal with this kind of practice in its entirety, but only with such aspects of it as suit his nationalistic, petty-bourgeois views and may serve to support them. Mao often transforms essentially correct concepts that fall under circumscribed individual "common sense" and "naive realism"—concepts of the popular wisdom—into universal principles with which he tries to define the essence of phenomena incomparably wider and more complex.

p Limiting practice to "personal practice”, Mao proceeds to examine such matters as the position of the various classes in society and their role in economic development and mutual relations not by generalising the vast material on all the various aspects of their activity but by applying facile empirical methods. "You can’t solve a problem?" Mao asks. "Well, get down and investigate the present facts and its 137 past history. When you have investigated the problem thoroughly, you will know how to solve it.”  [137•1  "Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy, and solving a problem to the day of birth. To investigate a problem is, indeed, to solve it.”  [137•2 

p But how can the development of society and class struggle be studied by investigating isolated phenomena? Chairman Mao prescribes his own special method of studying society, and you can rest assured that he will not "chase the sparrow with his eyes closed" or "fish by sense of touch like the blind man”. For Mao has discovered that "We must guard against subjectivism, one-sidedness and superficiality.”  [137•3  He therefore recommends the following: "For those whose duty is to give guidance and direction, the most essential method of knowing the conditions is that they should, proceeding according to plan, devote their attention to a number of cities and villages and make a comprehensive survey of each of them from the basic viewpoint of Marxism, i.e., by means of class analysis."  [137•4  He goes on to say: "A fact-finding conference does not require a large attendance; three to five, or seven or eight persons will be enough. But ample time must be allowed and an outline of investigation prepared beforehand and, furthermore, one must personally put questions to the participants and jot down the answers, and hold discussions with them.”  [137•5 

p Mao has taken good care to omit nothing. He mentions "the basic viewpoint of Marxism" and "class analysis”, he remembers the plan, the outline of investigation and the need to jot down the answers. In other words, he has done his best to ensure that nobody can accuse him of "narrow empiricism”. Yet the method Mao recommends as a universal principle of combining knowledge with practice is really no more than a method of empirical sociology, a method which might be applied in order to learn the situation in one village, one town, or one province at most, and even then with great reservations. The method was used in Yenan, where it was formulated. But it becomes one-sided and superficial as soon 138 as Mao tries to present it as the only way of acquiring knowledge of the world. One is curious to know exactly how Mao and his supporters applied it in order to arrive at the conclusion that "ninety per cent of the people of the world long for revolution" by means of world war. It may be assumed that the conclusion was reached as follows. Chairman Mao chose three to five, or let us say ten persons among the renegade emigre groups residing in Peking and questioned them about "world revolution" and "the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union”. Nirie out of ten, or perhaps all ten said that in their respective countries "a revolutionary situation has matured and the people are longing for revolution”. From which Mao, having pondered upon what he had heard, finally drew the conclusion: "Ninety-five per cent of the people of the world long for revolution.” Those interviewed took the occasion to declare their love for Mao, from which he deduced: "Ninety-five per cent of the people of the world worship the thoughts of Mao Tse-tung.”

p The Maoist approach to practice, to revolutionary experience, as a basis for study of reality and the development of a correct scientific policy, is radically opposed to the Marxist-Leninist approach. The theoretical propositions of Maoism are derived from the narrow, limited sphere of political practice, to the exclusion of all other kinds of practice, from class struggle (chiefly of the peasantry) and national experience, with the inevitable result that they are one-sided and nationalistic.

p Lenin emphasised the indivisibility of revolutionary theory and the revolutionary experience of all the detachments of the world proletariat and its allies. He insisted that "theory cannot be thought up. It grows out of the sum total of the revolutionary thinking of all countries of the world.”  [138•1 

p When Lenin set the Marxists of Russia the task of developing Marxian theory to devise a programme for their Party, he pointed out that for this to be successfully achieved it was necessary for the Party to study and generalise the history of socialism and democracy in Western Europe, the history of the revolutionary movement and the labour movement in Russia, and connect the conclusions arrived at with the 139 working-class movement: "to bring definite socialist ideals to the spontaneous working-class movement, to connect this movement with socialist convictions that should attain the level of contemporary science. .. ".  [139•1 

p In view of the international character of the working-class movement it is essential to study the experience of every single national detachment of the working class together with the experience of the general struggle of the working class of all countries. Generalisation of this experience involves critical study of the past and present and assessment of future prospects. The Marxist-Leninist approach to the theoretical generalisation of the revolutionary experience of each detachment involves studying this experience in connection with the experience of all countries, although it does provide for a deep-going analysis of all forms and methods of struggle within the framework of a single nation without exaggeration or universalisation of any particular form of struggle.

p Lenin never universalised any particular form of struggle, armed or peaceful. He certainly did not universalise that special form of armed struggle, guerrilla warfare. In fact, what Lenin had to say about guerrilla warfare completely destroys Mao’s theory that the experience of guerrilla warfare in China is to be regarded as a universal law of the world revolutionary movement. Lenin wrote: "The party of the proletariat can never regard guerrilla warfare as the only, or even as the chief, method of struggle; it means that this method must be subordinated to other methods, that it must be commensurate with the chief methods of warfare, and must be ennobled by the enlightening and organising influence of socialism. And without this latter condition, all, positively all, methods of struggle in bourgeois society bring the proletariat into close association with the various nonproletarian strata above and below it and, if left to the spontaneous course of events, become frayed, corrupted and prostituted.”  [139•2 

p One of the first things we notice about Mao Tse-tung’s approach to the relationship between theory and practice is the way he either greatly underestimates or completely ignores the experience of other countries. On those rare occasions 140 when he does take into account the experience of other countries, he does so in a purely utilitarian fashion, simply because it happens to suit him at a particular juncture. "We must absorb whatever we today find useful.-... However, we must treat these foreign materials as we do our food, which should be chewed in the mouth, submitted to the working of the stomach and intestines, mixed with saliva, gastric juice and intestinal secretions, and then separated into essence to be absorbed and waste matter to be discarded.. . .”  [140•1  This is the approach Mao Tse-tung advises to Marxism-Leninism. With his hide-bound nationalistic understanding of revolutionary experience, he calls for the sinification of Marxism.

p Mao Tse-tung also universalises the Chinese experience of revolutionary struggle, drawing general conclusions from Chinese practice alone, ignoring the experience of other detachments of the revolutionary movement, and indeed the basic tenets of Marxist-Leninist theory. The author of a book on the early period of Mao Tse-tung’s activities writes: "Mao Tse-tung held that systematic investigation and study of the surrounding situation is the permanent task of the revolutionary. Therefore, Comrade Mao Tse-tung did not consider it necessary to send many people abroad, but deemed it necessary to begin with the study of China and decide the practical questions of the Chinese revolution on the basis of the real situation in China.”  [140•2 

p Mao Tse-tung himself stated at a meeting in the town of Tientsin on March 17, 1957: "To take, for example, affairs here in China, unless we develop Marxism we shall not be able to proceed with them successfully. The basic premises and principles of Marxism in being applied in China must acquire a Chinese colouring and be resolved in accordance with the concrete situation that obtains here.” (Quoted from the Hungweiping newspaper Tung-fang hung, August, 1967, "Long Live the Thoughts of Mao Tse-tung”).

p At first sight this statement is perfectly compatible with the Marxist-Leninist viewpoint and arouses no serious objections. But the point is that in order to develop something one must have first mastered what already exists. Otherwise one 141 is simply at best "discovering America" and churning out vague general formulae.

p It is all very well to solve practical matters by taking into account the situation in China as long as one is dealing exclusively with individual practical questions. But as soon as one adopts this approach in relation to the working-class movement, the result is the enclosure of international phenomena within narrow national limits, empiricism in theory and encouragement of nationalism in politics.

p An exaggerated emphasis on the special experience of China was typical of Mao Tse-tung, as we have already seen, from the very outset of his career. Later, when he acquired leadership of the Party, over-emphasis of Chinese experience became the dominant feature of his views. In the original version of his article "Strategic Problems of China’s Revolutionary War" (written in 1936) he accused of doctrinairism those Chinese revolutionaries who criticised his own "narrow empiricism" and recommended thorough study of the experience of the October Revolution and "the experience of the revolutionary war in Russia”. Mao could hardly declare in public that there was no need to study the experience of the October Revolution, but he does this in so many words in his statements which lay special emphasis on the national Chinese experience. Thus, he declared: "Although we must cherish the Soviet experience and even value it somewhat more than experience of other countries throughout history, because it is the most recent experience of revolutionary war, we must cherish still more the Chinese experience of revolutionary war.. . .”  [141•1  Later, for the publication of Selected Works this passage was edited in such a way as to give equal weight to Soviet and Chinese experience.  [141•2 

p As for his critics, Mao soon forbade them to express their opinions at all, on the grounds that they were only familiar with "foreign models" (i.e., the experience of the Comintern and the CPSU), "had not studied China" and "the moment they took office" noisily speechify and criticise, picking faults left and right. Mao rejected the accusation of "narrow empiricism”, suggesting that the only ones guilty of this were 142 the practical workers "who lack wisdom, perspective and foresight.”  [142•1  Mao clearly regarded himself as being possessed of “foresight”, since he had the “foresight” to insist on the sinification of Marxism and the revival of China’s grandeur. Thus, Mao approaches the question of practice from the standpoint of Sinocentrism.

p Mao’s petty-bourgeois limitations are also patent in his assessment of Chinese revolutionary practice. Mao regards practice as being primarily the practice of peasant revolution, the practice of the political struggle of the petty-bourgeois and peasant strata and of the elements declasses who are so numerous in China, and above all the “practice” of political persecution of his opponents. The working class, the revolutionary experience of the struggle of the international working-class movement and the Chinese proletariat, lie outside the practice Mao is so fond of discussing.

p One searches in vain in the works of Mao for generalisations of the experience of the working-class struggle. Liu Shao-chi declared in his address to the Seventh Congress of the CPC in April 1945 that the ideas of Mao Tse-tung were "the theory and politics of the emancipation of the peasantry".  [142•2  Liu Shao-chi makes no mention at all of the place of the working class in the works of Mao Tse-tung, and this is hardly surprising for Mao completely ignores the most important thing in Marxism—the study of the universal historical mission of the proletariat. We can afford to ignore Mao’s references to the working class in "On People’s Democratic Dictatorship" and his instruction of August 14, 1968, that "the working class is the leading class”, since they were dictated by circumstance and do not reflect the essential views of Maoism, which, as Maoist practice shows, deny the leading role of the working class. Mao may pay lip service to the idea of the "working-class leadership”, but he interprets it in practice as unquestioning obedience to his own instructions, as making the workers "the patient buffaloes of Mao”.

p Mao treats the struggle of the peasantry and the broad masses in China as being quite unrelated to any particular relations of production. He is entirely concerned with the 143 political or, to be more exact, the anti-feudal and national liberation aspect of the practical struggle of the masses.

p Mao advances slogans of struggle without regarding the struggle as the product of a certain system of production relations, without reference to the relevant content, course and conditions of the development of this struggle in all its connections and conditioning factors. This is to be explained by the fact that the slogans are derived from abstract postulates, from "the thoughts of Mao”, instead of being the result of exhaustive study of each form of struggle, each step in the transformation from one form to another, with careful substantiation of the connection between the given struggle and the general struggle of the working class of the whole country, its fusion with the common struggle of the workers of other countries, and assessment of its place in the international struggle of the working class. This is one of the most important aspects of the class roots of the pettybourgeois, chauvinistic nature of Mao and Maoism as a political trend.

p From the standpoint of dialectics, Mao Tse-tung has gone astray in the question of the relationship between the general, the particular and the individual in the understanding of revolutionary experience. He declares the individual and particular to be universal, and proceeds to deduce from this “universal” a new particular and individual.

p The progressive Japanese philosopher Mori Nobushige has the following to say of Mao Tse-tung’s understanding of the combination of theory and practice. The abstract nature of "On Practice”, its chief defect, the author writes, consists in the fact that while theorising on the unity of theory and practice, it overlooks the question of unity of world view and method, partyism and scientific substantiation, class affiliation and universality, which provides the only real basis for concretising the problem of the unity of theory and practice.  [143•1 

Nobushige rightly notes that Mao Tse-tung’s endless repetition of the formula “practice—knowledge—practice” expresses absolutely nothing, since it does not differentiate between materialist concrete reality and positivist individual reality. He says that dogmatic repetition of various formulae 144 together with this ready-made formula is intended to conceal and compensate for a primitive approach to reality, theoretical helplessness, and paucity of ideas. Maoist doctrinairism derives from empiricism, and is its essential precondition and side-product.  [144•1 

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