251

p The problem of continuity has always been a vital one for human progress. In the most general terms, the dialectics of social development reveals a contradictory unity of two interconnected elements. On the one hand, each new generation never starts from scratch, but assimilates the cultural (material and spiritual) values which had been accumulated by earlier generations. By extracting from cultural values of the past the concentrated creative energy of human thought and work which they contain, men are enabled to turn it into their own gain. On the other hand, the material and spiritual values of past epochs become for those who assimilate them no more than “the raw material for new production" (Marx), for the creation of fresh values and, consequently, for fresh spurts into the future.

252

p That is why the culture of each new formation necessarily finds itself in continuity with the whole aggregate of earlier relations of spiritual production, distribution, exchange and consumption. The objective basis for this continuity is provided by the development of material production, because ultimately changes in spiritual production are determined by the changes taking place in the sphere of social being. But while being determined by production and reproduction of actual life, spiritual culture always depends in its development both on the relations which have arisen earlier in spiritual production itself and on the existing results of mankind’s earlier spiritual activity, which are found in the form of a definite complex of cultural values.

p In the recent period, the attitude of communism to the cultural legacy of the past is a question that has acquired special practical, political and theoretical urgency in connection with a number of additional circumstances. New theoretical and political aspects of continuity have appeared with the spread of socialism beyond the boundaries of one country, the establishment of the world socialist community, and the collapse of the colonial system of imperialism. There have arisen the problem of the attitude on the part of the culture of some socialist countries to the cultural experience gained by other socialist countries and the problem of the relationship between the culture of socialist society and the culture of bourgeois society under peaceful coexistence between opposite social systems and the mounting ideological struggle.

p The greater the number of countries taking the way of socialist change, the faster is the cultural and historical progress of society, the greater the urgency of the question of the attitude to adopt to the cultural legacy of earlier generations, of what precisely needs to be taken from the treasure-house of world culture, of how the socialist nations and the nations taking the non-capitalist way can use not only the cultural values created in past historical epochs but also the cultural achievements in present-day capitalist society.

p The steady and unprecedented growth in the flow of information, which mankind is accumulating in the course of the headlong scientific and technological revolution, objectively gives greater importance to the question of 253 assimilating the cultural legacy. At the same time, there are also subjective reasons for probing more deeply into the problem of continuity in the development of culture in socialist society. Let us consider only two of these: a) the attempts by present-day Right and “Left” revisionists to revise the basic Marxist principles bearing on the cultural legacy; b) the fresh barrage of charges coming from the anti-Communists that the Marxists-Leninists are taking a nihilistic attitude to the culture of earlier epochs (let us note that the revival of anti-communist activity along this line is largely connected precisely with the Maoists’ antiLeninist attitude to the cultural legacy).

p A vast store of practical experience in cultural construction, experience which is of international importance, has been gained in the USSR and the People’s Democracies in the decades of their socialist construction. One of the most important lessons the Communist Parties have drawn from an analysis of their activity in realising Lenin’s plan of the cultural revolution is that it would have been unfeasible but for the Marxist-Leninist struggle on two fronts: both against the attempts to adopt the whole of the old culture, without discrimination, and against the attempts to reject the whole of it out of hand.

p Lenin repeatedly stressed that there can be no extraclass ideology, and consequently no extra-class culture, in bourgeois society, which is rended by class antagonisms. He criticised the “mindless philosophers" who denied the party spirit of philosophy, and branded those whom he called the “learned salesmen of the capitalist class”, insisting on the partisanship of literature and art. Lenin said that the proletariat could not afford to adopt indiscriminately the whole of the old culture, adding that this would be tantamount to forgetting the class criteria in assessing the cultural legacy. These ideas of Lenin’s are of immediate relevance to our own day in fighting present-day revisionism, which calls for an end to ideology in culture, and a “peaceful synthesis" of socialist and bourgeois cultures (Henri Lefebvre, Ernst Fischer, and others). However, while fighting the Rightopportunist attitudes to the cultural legacy, MarxistsLeninists have always attacked the “Left"-opportunist anarchist attitude to the cultural legacy.

p There is nothing in common between the cultural 254 revolution and the nihilistic attitude to the achievements of world culture, the primitive rejection of the cultural legacy of one’s own nation and of that of other nations.

p In his writings and numerous speeches, Lenin showed the sheer nonsense of the ultra-Leftist arguments about a bourgeois science “hostile to the proletariat in class terms”, about “all of bourgeois art, a product of the exploitative system, being alien to the proletariat”. Lenin maintained that socialist culture could not arise “out of nothing”, that it did not “spring from out of nowhere”, and that the way for its emergence had been paved by centuries of social development. From this he drew the conclusion that “we must take the entire culture that capitalism left behind and build socialism with it".  [254•1  He also wrote: “Socialism cannot be built unless we utilise the heritage of capitalist culture."  [254•2 

p These ideas of Lenin’s are of special importance for a principled assessment of the ideological “platform” and nihilistic practices in the so-called great proletarian cultural revolution in China.

p The ideologists of the “cultural revolution" in China say that the proletariat must put an end to all the “old culture" as being a “feudal” and “bourgeois” culture. The tone of the ideological campaign was set on April 13, 1966, by an editorial in Chief angchiun pao, the mouthpiece of the People’s Liberation Army, entitled “Hold High the Great Red Banner of Mao Tse-Tung’s Thought, Actively Participate in the Great Socialist Cultural Revolution”. It was reprinted by all the national papers and also in the journal Hungchih. It provided a “theoretical basis" for these nihilistic calls: “The socialist revolution goes hand in hand with destruction and construction. There can be no complete construction without complete destruction." This slogan became the central one in the drive against culture. Thus, a Hsinhua press release on June 11, 1966, said that the “proletarian revolution demands the final destruction of the old bourgeois and feudal culture, which is rotten through and through, and the creation of a totally new, socialist culture”, and called for “a struggle for the extensive liquidation of the old culture”.

255

p How did the leaders of the “cultural revolution" in China come to adopt these monstrous ideas which are not only alien to Marxism-Leninism, but clash with the views of Marx, Engels and Lenin? It is impossible to answer this question without bringing out all the connections which exist between some of Mao’s theoretical views and the practices of the “great proletarian cultural revolution”.

p Even before the revolution won out in China, Mao insisted, in some of his speeches, notably those at a conference on literature and art in Yenan in May 1942, that “only dark forces which endanger the masses of the people must be exposed ... this is the basic task of all revolutionary artists and writers".  [255•1  He stressed that the revolution had need only of works extolling the bright side of the proletariat and “depicting the dark side" of the bourgeoisie.  [255•2  Hence the conclusion: “Life, reflected in the works of literature and art, can and must appear to be loftier, brighter, more concentrated, more typical and more ideal . .. than commonplace reality."  [255•3 

p In defining in this utilitarian manner the content of socialist art, the tasks it faced and the Party’s line with respect to art, Mao went on to a similarly blunt definition of form for works of literature and art. He stressed that workers and peasants needed the kind of art that “can be readily accepted by them".  [255•4  This essentially primitive and idealistic approach to fundamental aesthetic problems, being again nothing but vulgarisation and revision of the basic principles of Marxist-Leninist aesthetics, was given practical expression in the CPC leadership’s political line as the “theoretical basis" of the “great cultural revolution”. A direct outcome of this theoretical injunction, in particular, was the attitude to the whole of the Chinese people’s artistic legacy, which was declared to be anti-popular and characteristic of the exploiting elite, and so allegedly alien to the revolution in form and content.

p Mao asserted that in pre-revolutionary China the whole of culture had consisted of two parts: Chinese semi-feudal 256 culture, on the one hand, and the culture brought in from outside, “imperialist” culture, on the other.  [256•1  He wrote that for this reason, the Chinese people had had a feeling of hatred for the traditional “culture of the mandarins”, and for the “imperialist culture”, which it had regarded as a “foreign body”. “All these are rotten and should be completely destroyed."  [256•2  From this necessarily followed the need to eliminate the whole of the old culture as being an “ exploitative" culture. That is precisely what the leaders of the “great proletarian cultural revolution" suggested: “We must vigorously eradicate the old ideology, the old culture, the old customs and the old mores of all the exploiting classes."  [256•3 

p Chou En-lai, Chen Yi and Lin Piao gave an unambiguous explanation of how these nihilistic propositions should be applied to culture. On June 17, 1966, Chou En-lai declared that the traditional Chinese culture, created over the past several thousand years, “poisoned the minds of men”, and on June 21, 1966, Chen Yi told a meeting that “culture [the whole of culture!—E. B.] and traditional customs poison the minds of people, which is why they need to be completely (sic!) rejected and their influence destroyed".  [256•4  On August 31, 1966, addressing a meeting of “revolutionary” students and teachers, Lin Piao urged them on Mao’s behalf to “wipe out the old culture”.

p The Chinese leaders declared that the works of the outstanding masters of culture in the past did not contain anything but “the exploitative substance" and ordered a drive both against national and world culture. The first blow was dealt at the Chinese classics, among them Li Po, Tu Fu, Tao Yuan-ming, Kwang Han-ching and Pu Sung-ling. Here is how Kwangming jihpao assessed the classical novel, Dream in the Red Chamber, by the 18th-century writer Tsao Hsiueh-ching: “To be quite frank, Tsao Hsiueh-ching considers beautiful what from our present standpoint has long since become outdated. ... There is a thick layer of 257 exploitative, class varnish on the methods of combating feudal morality used by Chia Pao-yui and Lin Tai-yui [the leading characters of the novel—E.B.], on their ideals of life, the essence of their love, etc.”

p For some time now Chinese periodicals and literary journals have said nothing good about such classical works of traditional art as the Peking, Shaohsin, Kunming and other national operas. The CPC leaders have accused many present-day playwrights and composers of being “too enthusiastic about ancient art”, and have urged a complete repudiation of classic opera, declaring that “if Peking opera does not fade away in 40 years, it is bound to fade away within 60".  [257•1  That being the Maoists’ attitude to their own traditional Chinese culture, is it surprising that they have anathematised the classical cultural legacy of other nations?

p Virtually all the world’s classics in literature and the arts have been attacked. Thus, official Chinese critics have actually consigned all of Shakespeare’s works to the scrapheap, declaring them to be a part “of the ideology of the exploiting classes, and antagonistic to the ideology of the proletariat, which is why if they are allowed to spread unhampered, without being subjected to harsh criticism, they could have an extremely bad effect on the modern reader.... Seen in the light of the present day, Shakespeare’s plays turn out to be contrary to socialist collectivism at root,” says Kwangming jihpao.

p The same paper says about Balzac: “He extolled a reactionary theory of humanism.” About Stendhal the paper says: “In building the beautiful life we must not be inspired by the works of Stendhal.. .. He and we are essentially men going different ways.... We cannot but separate ourselves from him ideologically.” Chinese periodicals have classed among the “poisonous weeds" works like Dante’s Divina Commedia, Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, the works of Rablais, Hugo and Maupassant.

p It is said quite in earnest in China that the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert, Chopin, Glinka and Chaikovsky allegedly “reflect nothing but the suffering and romanticism of the lone intellectual".  [257•2  According to 258 Kwangming jihpao, Bizet’s “Carmen” is nothing but an “ auction of goods like the bourgeois emancipation of the individual, the cult of sex and of individualism".  [258•1  Consider the same paper’s view of the classical ballet, which, it says, “spreads the reconciliation of classes and the bourgeois theory of humanism, and corrupts youth".  [258•2  Here is what Hungchih said in February 1970 about the new production of “Swan Lake" at the Bolshoi Theatre: “An evil genius leaps about the stage, suppressing everything. Indeed, devils have become the protagonists! . .. We have here a truly sinister picture of the restoration of capitalism on the stage!”

p Attacks have been made on all the Russian classics, including Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Lev Tolstoi and Chekhov. Chinese critics say that stories and novels by Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev and Goncharov do nothing but “relish the corrupt way of life of landowners and aristocrats”. They found a “revisionist outlook" in Tolstoi’s Resurrection and Anna Karenina, and Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches. The weekly Wenyi pao accused the prominent Chinese writer, Shao Chuan-lin, of “political degradation" and charged that he was “kowtowing to the West”, because he had translated into Chinese Dostoyevsky’s novel The Insulted and Humiliated.  [258•3  Another prominent Chinese writer, Ouyang Shan, has also been abused for “worshipping Chekhov”. Some Chinese newspapers carried pasquinades against the famous Russian 19th-century revolutionary democrats Belinsky, Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky and called them “bourgeois literary critics”.

p In their efforts to provide some “theoretical basis" for their nihilistic treatment of the classics, Chinese literary critics have put forward the ridiculous idea that recognition of continuity between socialist literature and the literature and art of critical realism amounts to “a denial of the innovative character of socialist literature and art”. In an effort to convince their readers that this view, which so 259 patently clashes with Lenin’s, is in line with the principles of Marxism-Leninism, Chinese “theorists” have gone to the extent of falsifying the views of Maxim Gorky, the founder of socialist realism. “According to Gorky critical realism is the realism of bourgeois idlers."  [259•1  This is the grossest possible distortion of Gorky’s view, which can be allowed only when the reader is unable to consult the original. Everyone knows that Gorky always showed the greatest respect for the writers of critical realism and called them the “prodigal sons" of their class, thereby stressing the idea that by overcoming their class sympathies and antipathies these men rose above them and to a large extent expressed the feelings of the working people.

p The official Chinese press has also given equal assessments of the scientific legacy, and while these have been less concrete, they have been sufficiently definite. It has denied the objective content of science, declaring all scientific achievements of past epochs to be “alien in class terms" to the proletariat and the revolution. Thus, in an article entitled “Refuting the Slogan ‘All Are Equal in Face of the Truth’ " one paper wrote: “Can ‘all be equal’ in face of the truth? We say: No! Truth has a class substance."  [259•2 

p Another paper carried a letter signed by seven students of the Chinese People’s University addressed to the Central Committee and Chairman Mao demanding “resolute, swift and final destruction of the whole old system of education, and the heaviest fire aimed against the gentlemen styled as bourgeois ‘authorities’ ".  [259•3  This letter, which was hailed by students and teachers in many other Chinese colleges, ridiculed the old system of education “with its emphasis on so-called systematic knowledge" and insisted that “the longer the students study, the hazier their thinking”. The letter proposed the abolition of “the old bourgeois titles and degrees”, “the bourgeois system of enrolment and training of post-graduates”, etc. The editors said the letter set “a model of courage and daring”.

p The CPC leadership got the Central Committee and the State Council to issue a directive abolishing entrance examinations at higher schools, and declared the teacher’s 260 concern for high academic progress among students to be a “bourgeois revisionist black line”. It urged that the old study aids (published before 1966) should be “buried” and a new curriculum implemented, under which primary schools should “study quotations from the works of Chairman Mao and three of his articles”, secondary schools, a collection of selected works by Mao and other articles of his, and institutions of higher learning—the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung.

p The theoretical propositions of the ideologists of the “cultural revolution”, which have been building up another “Great Wall" between China’s culture and foreign culture, are extremely harmful, and are clearly at variance with the whole ideology and revolutionary practice of Marxism- Leninism and, let us add, with the decisions of the 8th Congress of the CPC, whose resolution on the Central Committee’s political report said: “There is need to inherit and comprehend everything that is useful in our country’s past culture and the culture of foreign countries; in addition, there is need to use the achievements of modern science and culture to sort out all the best elements in our country’s cultural legacy and to make efforts to create a new, socialist national culture.”

p In contrast to the primitive Leftist talk about the spiritual culture of the past epochs being unacceptable for the triumphant proletarian revolution, Marxism-Leninism takes a strictly scientific and truly class approach to the cultural legacy, implying above all a concrete historical analysis of the cultural values of the past epochs. Because at definite stages of social development, namely, in the initial stages of the existence of this or that antagonistic formation, the relations of production proper to it have a progressive role to play, the class which is in charge of these relations of production, the ruling class, acts as a progressive force in the cultural and historical process. For this reason, the culture of every ruling class is not always, and never entirely, reactionary. The history of exploitative societies shows that many ideas put forward by the men who represent the ruling class in the sphere of culture can contain objective truth, correctly reflect the objective requirements of social progress and be of lasting importance.

p Every ideology has a class character, reflecting the world 261 in terms of definite class positions, but the whole point is how correctly it reflects reality at a given historical moment. Lenin repeatedly warned of the serious danger of vulgarisation whenever, for instance, the terms “bourgeois”, “ bourgeois ideology”, “bourgeois literature”, etc., are used outside a historical context. He wrote: “This word [bourgeois—E.B.) is often understood very incorrectly, narrowly and unhistorically, it being associated (without distinction of historical period) with a selfish defence of the interests of a minority."  [261•1 

p Everyone knows that bourgeois writers, critics, and so on, who fought against the reactionary and religious ideology of feudalism, made a big contribution to the treasure-store of world culture, and that the proletariat inherits and continues all that is best in the sphere of culture under capitalism.

p In class society, spiritual culture has a class character. That is an axiom of Marxism-Leninism. But what does that mean? It means above all that spiritual culture in a class society always has a definite class ideological content. It also means that spiritual culture in class society has corresponding social functions and a practical class orientation. But it should also be borne in mind that not all the components of spiritual culture have a class character. Science, for instance, is a most important component of culture. Lenin relentlessly branded his ideological adversaries as “learned salesmen of the capitalist class”, but added: “For instance, you will not make the slightest progress in the investigation of new economic phenomena without making use of the works of these salesmen."  [261•2  This is even truer of the natural and technical sciences, which do contain some elements of the class philosophical outlook, but cannot be reduced to these because they always rest on facts, which they generalise, and are in addition inconceivable without the methods of research proper to this or that science.

p Lenin warned that “not a single one" of the bourgeois scientists who are capable of making very valuable contributions in the special fields of chemistry, history or physics “can be trusted one iota”, when it comes to theoretical and philosophical generalisations.  [261•3  At the same time, he urged to take 262 and use in the interests of socialism the discoveries made by these men and to separate the objective content of science (to be inherited and advanced) from reactionary class philosophy (to be cut off and discarded).

p In this context, let us recall, for instance, Lenin’s attitude to Taylor’s system, which, he said, combined the refined brutality of bourgeois exploitation and a number of outstanding scientific achievements in analysing physical movements in the labour process, elimination of incorrect and superfluous movements, development of the most expedient methods, and introduction of the best systems of accounting and control. Assessing the , role of Taylor’s system in the scientific organisation of labour, Lenin wrote: “The Soviet Republic must at all costs adopt all that is valuable in the achievements of science and technology in this field."  [262•1 

p Nor can socialism afford to take a nihilistic attitude to the achievements of art in earlier epochs. The emergence of humanistic art, for instance, is connected with the rise of bourgeois relations, but it does not follow that humanism is an exclusively “bourgeois” ideology, because from the outset it was an expression of protest against the inhumanity of bourgeois relations as well. The art of socialist society inherits and critically remoulds these humanistic ideas, develops on the basis of progressive artistic and aesthetic views and creative realistic traditions, adopting the techniques and artistic methods, and what is especially important, inherits the works of art themselves which are unique in their aesthetic value as specimens and monuments of the culture of past ages.

This leads us up to yet another highly important question, that of the attitude of the cultural revolution to the culture of present-day bourgeois society.