p The Maoists claim that Mao made a great contribution to the development of the theory of knowledge with the thesis of the transition from perceptual to rational knowledge and then to practice as the result of a “leap”. He is, moreover, given the credit for having advanced these views for the first time. Just how much truth, if any, is there in all this?
p The question of the existence of perceptual and logical (or as Mao calls it, “rational”) stages in the single process of cognition was posed and answered by philosophers in ancient times. Thus, the Chinese sage Mo-tzu regarded that basic knowledge was that acquired through the "five senses”, while understanding perfectly well that such knowledge only provided an image of a thing without answering the question "why is it so?”. Man acquires knowledge of the causes of things by "rational thought”, beginning with "description and denomination of objects”, and going on to "thought on objects”. Mo-tzu and his followers regarded understanding of the causes of things as the "highest complete knowledge" —“wisdom”. Thus, Mo-tzu wrote: "Thought is the method of achieving true knowledge.” In the chapter entitled “Canon” of Mo-tzu’s book we find the following: "Reason is the understanding of the essence of things. Reason, based on perceptual knowledge explains the causes of things and thereby attains clarity and lucidity, as if the thing were before one’s very eyes.” [148•2
p Mo-tzu and his followers divided knowledge into three categories according to type and provenance: "direct knowledge acquired through personal observations”; " 149 indirect" or “reported” knowledge "acquired from other people”, and finally, rational or reflective-verbal knowledge, which is the result of the fusion of the above two forms in one, and which is acquired through thought.
p To turn to European philosophy, we know that ancient Greek and Roman philosophers divided knowledge into two basic categories: the “dark”, perceptual, and the bright, lucid rational. The difference between the materialists and the idealists was that the latter (Plato, for example) denied the importance of perceptual knowledge, and even considered it a hindrance to the attainment of true knowledge, while the former insisted on the importance of perceptual images as the objective basis of knowledge, often indeed underestimating the importance of abstract logic. Thus, according to Democritus, reason "possessing the most subtle organ of knowledge in thought" derives its evidence from sensations arising as a result of the influence on the sense organs of objects in the outside world, consisting of atoms. What Mao claims to have been his own “discovery” was already known to, and expounded by, Mo-tzu and his followers in China and by the materialists in Ancient Greece.
p Later on, both idealists and materialists accepted the division of knowledge into perceptual and rational. We meet this division frequently in the English materialist philosophers, Spinoza, and the French materialists. Francis Bacon, with his materialist theory of knowledge, regarded experience as the first stage of knowledge and reason, the rational processing of perceptual experience, as the second. Moreover, Bacon rejected the extremes of both empiricism and rationalism. The Dutch philosopher Spinoza differentiated three kinds of knowledge: perceptual knowledge, giving a superficial understanding of individual things, rational knowledge, and intuitive knowledge as its highest form, the ability to perceive a thing "through its essence or through knowledge of its immediate causes”.
p The French materialists also divided cognition into two stages—the perceptual and the logical. La Mettrie and Diderot, for example, considered sensations to be the basis of thought as the essence of logical deduction. French materialism, being contemplative, was based on the mechanical reflection of objects in the external world on the "screen of the mind”.
150p Kant and Hegel, the classics of German philosophy, also accepted the relationship between perceptual and rational knowledge. Hegel’s objective idealism stressed the importance of experience and relating our knowledge to reality, regarded by him as a unity of existence (phenomena) and self-contained existence (substance), i.e., as necessary essence.
p Hegel wrote as follows of the relationship between the perceptual and the logical: "The content that fills our consciousness, of whatever kind it be, constitutes the actual substance of the feelings, views, images, notions, aims, duties, etc. and of the thoughts and concepts. Feeling, view, image etc. are thus the forms of such content, which remains one and the same whether felt, viewed, pictured or desired, whether it is only felt, felt, viewed, etc. with a mixture of thought, or only thought. In any one of these forms, or in a mixture of several, the content is the object (Gegenstand) of the consciousness.” [150•1
p Thus, the claims of Mao and his followers to have “ discovered” the division of the cognitative process into perceptual and rational is wholly unfounded. It is worth noting that the founders of Marxism-Leninism did not regard this division as a distinguishing feature of Marxist epistemology, but treated it as something self-evident, already demonstrated in philosophy.
p Lenin made a profound and exhaustive analysis of the Marxist version of the process of cognition as combining two stages in his brilliant work Materialism and Empiric-criticism. The problem has since been developed by Marxist philosophers taking into account developments in the natural sciences, psychology and physiology. The Marxist-Leninist theory of reflection was most fully discussed in the thirties by the Bulgarian Marxist T. Pavlov, and in the books, manuals and articles of the Soviet philosophers V. V. Adoratsky, P. F. Yudin, M. B. Mitin, F. I. Khaskhachick and others.
p It should be realised that the various correct propositions that are undoubtedly to be found in "On Practice" are really borrowings from Soviet sources. However, Mao interprets them in his own way, according to his distorted view of the 151 major problems of Marxist epistemology, as is evident among other things in his approach to the stages of cognition and their relationship to reality. To begin with, Mao treats each stage as entirely separate: first we have perceptual knowledge, then a “leap” into rational knowledge, followed by a further “leap” into practice. This mechanistic division of the integrated process of cognition is apparent in the following statement of Mao’s: "Practice, knowledge, more practice, more knowledge; the cyclical repetition of this pattern to infinity, and with each cycle, the elevation of the content of practice and knowledge to a higher level.” [151•1
p In "Whence Does a Man Acquire Correct Ideas?" Mao Tsetung presents these stages of knowledge as a sequence of separate "processes of cognition”. "Countless phenomena of the objective external world are reflected in a man’s brain through his five sense organs—the organs of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. At first, knowledge is perceptual. [151•2 The leap to conceptual knowledge, i.e., to ideas, occurs when sufficient perceptual knowledge is accumulated. This is one process in cognition. It is the first stage in the whole process of cognition. . . . Then comes the second stage in the progress of cognition, the stage leading from consciousness back to matter, from ideas back to existence, in which the knowledge gained in the first stage is applied in social practice to ascertain whether the theories, policies, plans or measures meet with the anticipated success. Generally speaking, those that succeed are correct and those that fail are incorrect. . . Man’s knowledge makes another leap through the test of practice. This leap is more important than the previous one.” [151•3
p To begin with, Mao splits the process of knowledge into a series of separate, individual stages. He then goes on to transfer questions of epistemology into the sphere of practical political decisions in a simplified, mechanistic manner. In so doing, he confuses the source of knowledge with the actual process of knowing which is based on specific accumulated material. Mao completely dismisses the question of continuity, the adoption of the experience of others. Every one of the 152 “theories, directions, plans, schemes" has to go through all the processes of knowledge and every proposition has to be tested anew in direct individual experience. Likewise, Mao completely disregards the experience of his predecessors. He dismisses all borrowed, indirect experience as “bookish”, and simply ignores it.
p Mao Tse-tung is a nihilist as regards the application to practice of the knowledge of former generations. In his opinion, this knowledge is perfectly useless, or at best, requires testing anew against the conditions of Maoist practice. "All comparatively complete knowledge is acquired through two stages, first the stage of perceptual knowledge and secondly the stage of rational knowledge... . What sort of knowledge is the bookish information of the students? Granted that their information is entirely true knowledge ... something which has been verified by others but not yet by themselves.” [152•1
p Mao thus regards the knowledge acquired from studying the experience of past generations or other peoples, from written sources, as harmful “bookishness” and a source of doctrinairism. It was in accordance with this attitude that Mao advised his cousin: "If you read a lot of books, you’ll never become emperor.”
p This nihilistic attitude to the human treasury of knowledge is in direct contradiction to Marxism-Leninism, which insists on continuity in the development of knowledge. It is anachronistic in our age to regard knowledge, as Mao does, simply as the result of direct personal experience. Engels, writing in the last century, noted that: "By recognising the inheritance of acquired characters, it (modern natural science. —Ed.) extends the subject of experience from the individual to the genus; the single individual that must have experience is no longer necessary, its individual experience can be replaced to a certain extent by the results of the experience of a number of its ancestors... .” [152•2
p A further major weakness of Maoist theory is the metaphysical understanding of practice as the criterion of truth. Mao Tse-tung is highly inconsistent in this matter. While speaking of an endless cycle of "practice—knowledge— practice”, “matter—spirit—matter”, he regards the 153 verification of knowledge in concrete-historical conditions as a single act, and not as a dialectical process. Thus, according to Mao, the truth of knowledge is confirmed by the success of a single attempt to apply it in practice. He does, it is true, make an exception for social phenomena, but this is simply the exception that proves the rule.
p Moreover, Mao understands "the success of practice”, as indeed practice itself, purely pragmatically, as "suiting the purpose”. In "On Practice" he declares "class nature”, and “practicality” to be the "two outstanding characteristics" of Marxist philosophy completely ignoring that inalienable feature, its scientific nature. This pragmatism in the Maoist approach is expressed in the fact that theory itself is regarded not as a science but as guidance for action, the methodological basis for developing the most suitable strategy and tactics, policies and slogans, and in a purely utilitarian manner, as a means to certain ends, as an “ instrument”. According to Mao, Marxism-Leninism is an arrow shot straight to the target of the Chinese revolution. The implication is that Marxism-Leninism and revolution are quite separate things, success or failure depending entirely on the skill of the archer.
p The chief mistake of Maoism here is that it destroys the organic relationship between revolutionary practice and revolutionary theory, and between the objective and subjective factors of their development. Theory, as an instrument—an “arrow”—is reduced to a convenient list of useful rules, a collection of tactical ideas, directions, orders, etc. At the same time, universalisation of direct experience and a complete disregard for knowledge acquired in the past and all non-personal experience, reduces theory to a collection of individual generalisations of narrow empirical experience rendering impossible the development and enrichment of theory and giving rise to doctrinairism, metaphysics and subjectivism.
p Mao’s empiricism in his treatment of the question of the relationship between theory and practice, knowledge and experience, is clearly seen in the following statement. "Knowledge starts with experience—this is the materialism of the theory of knowledge.” [153•1 Moreover, in treating 154 experience as the starting point of knowledge, Mao fails to see the difference between materialism and idealism. The thesis that "knowledge begins with experience" was typical of materialism prior to Marx, while today it is highly popular among various trends of subjective idealism, from the Berkleyans to the neo-Kantian agnostics. Despite all his protestations of fidelity to class and Party principles, in practice Mao renounces all commitment to proletarian class and Party principles. Mao Tse-tung’s analysis fails to recognise the fact that a man’s experience and the way it is reflected in his mind is determined by his social, class position and is quite independent of his will.
p When Mao goes on to supplement his thesis that " knowledge begins with experience" with the pragmatist assertion that "generally speaking, what is crowned with success is right and what is unsuccessful is wrong”, he is adopting a purely positivist view of practice that is subjective and voluntarist.
p Professor Nobushige writes of Mao’s un-Marxist approach to the question of experience that these "thoughts of Mao" can be used to justify the practice of any forces at all, even the most reactionary. After all, according to this logic, in the period when developing fascism was winning “victories”, this could even serve as proof that it was “right”. [154•1
There is thus clearly nothing new in the Maoist "theory of knowledge”. While claiming to be the originator of his theory, Mao is in fact either repeating the most elementary truths of pre-Marxian materialism or expounding his own eclectical brand of subjective idealism combined with vulgar, mechanistic materialism.
Notes
[148•2] Mo-tzu (in Chinese), Peking, 1956, p. 204.
[150•1] Hegel, op. cit, p. 35.
[151•1] Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, Volume One, p. 297.
[151•2] It is worth remembering in this connection that Hegel, in the last century, held that reason, thought, is present in perception, since a certain level of generalisation is already underway.
[151•3] Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, pp. 207-08.
[152•1] Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, Volume Four, p. 33.
[152•2] F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, p. 267.
[153•1] Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, Volume One, p. 291.
[154•1] See Mori Nobushige, op. cit.