p Capitalism as a socio-economic formation, with its culture, is in a sense something that is already on the way out, while socialism, with its culture, represents 263 the future of mankind, a higher and qualitatively new stage of development. However, in this period the two cultures exist side by side, and so necessarily influence each other. That is why the relationship between socialist culture and the culture of modern bourgeois society can and must be seen as yet another essential aspect of the problem of continuity, which might be called the “horizontal” aspect (in contrast to the “vertical”, historical aspect).

p It would be quite wrong to take the retrospective view of this relationship not only in theoretical but also in practical terms, because once the element of continuity is excluded from this relationship we should have to deny the need for making critical use of the progressive elements in the culture of modern bourgeois society. The present is always a point at which the future is in contact with the past, and so has to take over from it all that is valuable.

p It is quite obvious that in view of the implacable class struggle which is going on in the world arena there can be no “integration” of ideology, as the Right-wing revisionists have advocated. Socialist ideology and bourgeois ideology are antipodes and do not meet. Leonid Brezhnev said in his speech at the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties: “Peaceful coexistence does not extend to the struggle of ideologies—this must be stressed most categorically."  [263•1  Likewise there can be no “convergence” between the two cultures, socialist culture and bourgeois culture.

p However, it would be wrong to reduce the problem of the dialectical interaction of the two cultures to a struggle of ideologies. Far from excluding, the struggle of ideologies implies the need to make the utmost use “of the achievements of the engineering and culture created by large-scale capitalism".  [263•2  This applies not only to capitalism as it existed before the 1920s, but fully applies also to modern capitalism and its culture.

p The ideologists of the “cultural revolution" in China, while urging a struggle against the whole of the “old culture”, as a “feudal” and “bourgeois” culture, have also 264 issued the slogan of fighting present-day foreign culture, which they regard either as “imperialist” or “revisionist”. They declare: “We must not only stamp out but also destroy a corrupt culture like the imperialist and the modern revisionist culture."  [264•1  It is now hard to find a West European or American writer or scientist whom the Chinese periodicals have not anathematised, and this includes James Aldridge, Ernest Hemingway, Lion Feuchtwanger, Frederic Joliot-Curie and John Bernal.

p The “theorists” of the “great proletarian cultural revolution" identify the concept of “the culture of bourgeois society" and “bourgeois culture”, whereas it is necessary to draw a distinction within each national culture between the culture of the ruling class and the culture of the oppressed classes, the more or less developed elements of democratic and socialist culture.

p It is an incontestable fact that in highly developed capitalist countries a proletarian literature has already long since emerged and is successfully developing, a new literature that has attained great ideological and artistic heights. Among those who have helped to create it are outstanding playwrights and producers, a host of remarkable musicians and artists, who have sided with communism.

p Besides, many prominent workers in culture in the capitalist world today now find themselves at the crossroad. They have rejected the policy which leads to another world war, and begin to realise that this policy springs from a definite social order. In their creative work, these men and women— sometimes hesitantly and inconclusively—express their people’s urge for peace and social progress. Some of them have still a long way to go before accepting communism. But whatever the differences of their views and nature of their activity they all represent the democratic stream in the spiritual life of modern bourgeois society. That is why they should not be classed among the “servitors” of the bourgeoisie. Some of these numerous democratic leaders may subsequently turn to the Right, as Jules Romains once did in the past, and John Steinbeck in our own day, but many of them will continue on the hard and dangerous way of struggle. Let us recall that Anatole France joined the 265 Communist Party, Romain Rolland actively co-operated with the Communists, and Pablo Picasso sided with communism.

p In their fight against “bourgeois culture”, the Chinese leaders discard the Marxist-Leninist criterion of the dialectical, concrete historical assessment of cultural values; they have clearly revised from the “Left” Lenin’s proposition of the two cultures within each national culture of bourgeois society; they have rejected out of hand the culture of bourgeois society as a whole, including its democratic elements, and also the elements of socialist culture, taking shape within the entrails of capitalist society; they have classed the new culture of the socialist countries as “bourgeois” culture.

p Take the pamphlet entitled Some Questions Bearing on the Literature of Modern Soviet Revisionism, which was published in Peking in the summer of 1966. The contributors to the pamphlet, which was put out for distribution at the so-called extraordinary conference of Asian and African writers (July 1966), attacked the article “The Art of the Heroic Epoch”,  [265•1  which said that the general line in the development of literature in the 20th century consists in assimilating and enriching the traditions of critical and socialist realism—the traditions of Maxim Gorky, Martin Andersen Nexo, Romain Rolland, Theodore Dreiser, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Pablo Neruda, Bertolt Brecht, Mikhail Sholokhov, Leon Kruczkowski, Henri Barbusse, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vitezslav Nezval, Mihail Sadoveanu and Johannes Becher. The two men who wrote the article entitled “Extracts from the Statements of Sholokhov, a Renegade Author”, Hsiang Hung and Wei Ning, said: “The present-day Soviet revisionists, with the help of their ’ general line of development of literature in the 20th century’, which represents a mixture of revolutionary, non- revolutionary and counter-revolutionary writers, and which makes no distinction between friends and enemies... have in fact tried to prevent the development of a truly socialist, revolutionary literature of the 20th century."  [265•2 

p The best writings of proletarian authors in the USA, Britain and Italy have been labeled in China as “revisionist”. 266 This is in fact a distortion of the propositions proclaimed by the 8th Congress of the CPC to “inherit and comprehend all that is useful in the culture of China and of foreign countries”.

p Another fundamental error made by the vulgarisers of Marxism, who reject the whole of present-day foreign culture as an “imperialist culture”, consists in their identification of the concepts of “culture” and of “ideology”. These two concepts are in no sense identical, but we find them identified in Mao’s article “On New Democracy" which said that “a given culture is the ideological reflection of the politics and economy of a given society".  [266•1  Actually, however, while ideology makes up the content of spiritual culture in class society, and for that reason determines and directs the development of every form of spiritual production, it is in no sense a concept that is identical with the concept of “spiritual culture”.

p When V. Pletnyov, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Proletcult,  [266•2  wrote in an article, “On the Ideological Front”, which appeared in Pravda in 1922, that “questions of ideology are broader than questions of culture”, Lenin made a note in the margin of this word “broader”. A little later, Pravda carried an article by Y. Yakovlev, entitled “On Proletarian Culture and Proletcult”, which had been written on the strength of Lenin’s notes and which, in addition, had been read and edited by Lenin himself.  [266•3  Concerning the statement that “ideology is broader than culture”, the article said: “This is a patent absurdity, because culture, which brings together a number of social phenomena (ranging from morality and law to science, art and philosophy) is, of course, a more general concept than social ideology."  [266•4  Consequently, “ideology” is not broader but narrower than “culture”.

p On the strength of Lenin’s ideas, the 20th Congress of 267 the CPSU made a scathing criticism of the vulgar theories which held that the general tendency for capitalism to stagnate allegedly rules out any progress in the sphere of culture in the imperialist epoch. Those who close their eyes to the achievements of culture abroad wittingly or unwittingly help to slow down the development of culture in the socialist society. Lenin believed that the epoch-making task facing the proletariat after the take-over was “turning the sum total of the very rich, historically inevitable and necessary for us store of culture and knowledge and technique accumulated by capitalism from an instrument of capitalism into an instrument of socialism".  [267•1 

p The Chinese leaders have not only rejected everything that is progressive in the culture of modern bourgeois society, including the elements of democratic and socialist culture, which are taking shape within it, but have also urged repudiation of the achievements in the culture of the socialist countries.

p Mao’s followers have accused Soviet cultural personalities of “revisionism” and “bourgeois degeneration”, and this applies above all to those who attack militarism and urge efforts to prevent a disastrous nuclear war, among them Sholokhov, Simonov, Tvardovsky and Ehrenburg.

p The Maoists declare that the “ideology of survival" permeates such works as Sholokhov’s “The Fate of a Man”,  [267•2  and Simonov’s The Living and the Dead and Days and Nights. They say that the Soviet writers Aitmatov, Miezelaitis and Rozhdestvensky are “revisionists” who constitute a “special detachment of US imperialism and help to undermine the revolutionary wars of Asian and African peoples”. An article by Hsieh Shui-fu denigrates all Soviet writers who have written works about the Great Patriotic War, declaring that “they have taken the path of betrayal of the revolutionary traditions of Soviet literature ... and are vehicles of ideas asserting no more than the need to save one’s life and unwillingness to carry on the revolution, vehicles of ideas asserting the happiness of the individual 268 and indifference to the country’s prosperity. These works can only paralyse and undermine the militant will of the peoples fighting in defence of peace and against imperialism, and in practice play the part of accomplices of imperialism in preparing another war".  [268•1 

p The best Soviet films—Clear Skies, Ballad of a Soldier, On the Seven Winds, Ivan’s Childhood, The Cranes Are Flying, Nine Days of One Year, among others—have “ merited" similar assessments in the Chinese press. The film critic Fang Liang says: “Some revisionists .. . have deliberately distorted the true face of war by producing a number of reactionary films ... these films extol pacifism, capitulationism, and preach the philosophy of survival."  [268•2  Among the “revisionist films" the Chinese film critics have managed to include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Don Quixote, The Idiot, Eugene Onegin, The Captain’s Daughter, Queen of Spades and Resurrection.

p There has been particular indignation in China over the struggle for peaceful coexistence, against another world war, and the consequent policy of cultural contacts with the capitalist countries, which the Soviet people has pursued under the leadership of the Communist Party, and in which workers of Soviet culture quite naturally take an active part. The Maoists condemn the cultural exchanges between the USSR and the USA, and the publication of the works of foreign writers in the Soviet Union on the plea that this allegedly helps the “infiltration” of bourgeois ideology.

The attacks on Soviet literature and art and on outstanding cultural personalities are an aspect of the broad antiSoviet propaganda campaign which has been carried on by its sponsors for a long time behind the cover of the “ cultural revolution”. By now the whole world has realised that this campaign has far-reaching political aims. There is no doubt at all that one of these aims is to deify Mao, to stamp out creative thinking, and to try to eliminate all opposition to the adventurist and chauvinistic policy which is being pursued for the purpose of realising the hegemonistic plans now being fostered by the CPC leadership.