p The point of departure of the materialist understanding of history is that the production of material values underlies social development. Materialism is inseparably linked with the recognition that economic relations are the factor determining the entire system of social relations, and that in antagonistic society the class struggle is the principal motive force of history. In the course of a century bourgeois and petty-bourgeois theorists have been attacking these fundamental principles of Marxism, counterposing all sorts of idealistic concepts to materialist principles.

p An expression of the voluntaristic understanding of history is, for example, the "theory of violence”, according to which the course of social life and the position of classes and nations are determined not by economic development, not by economic relations, but by force of compulsion. This theory was energetically propounded in the 19th century by the not unknown German petty-bourgeois socialist Eugene Karl Diihring, who believed that the decisive factor of social life was not economic development but political strength.

p Marx and Engels demonstrated that the "theory of violence" was untenable, showed the interaction between economics and politics and between objective conditions and the 20 subjective factor in history, and defined the role played by violence in changing the forms of social life. Violence cannot create new productive forces or new social relations. But when the conditions are ripe for revolution, revolutionary violence serves as a means of overthrowing the outworn social system and reorganising social life in accordance with the level and requirements of the development of the productive forces. "Force,” Marx said, "is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.”  [20•*  Revolutionary violence does not sweep away the laws of economic development and does not replace material production. It pulls down the socio-political obstacles to the development of the productive forces.

p Petty-bourgeois anarchism and other varieties of revolutionary adventurism have sought to replace the materialism of Marx with voluntarism and subjectivism. For instance, according to Mikhail Bakunin, “ideals” and “revolt” are the movers of the social revolution, whose purpose is to build life on the basis of the "broadest will”. Criticising Bakunin’s understanding of the prerequisites for society’s revolutionary reorganisation, Marx wrote: "The will, not economic conditions, is the basis of his social revolution. "  [20•** 

p Having undertaken to “Sinicise” Marxist theory, the Maoists adopted the stand of petty-bourgeois ideologists and rejected the fundamental principles of materialism in favour of voluntarism and subjectivism. In fact they have substituted the materialist understanding of history with the notorious "theory of violence”.

p In the history of social thinking in China, as in Western countries, the "theory of violence" originated in old philosophical schools. For instance, Han Fei-tzu, the chief exponent of the ancient Chinese school of Fachia (Legalists), taught that only the most extreme and ruthless methods were needed in politics and that power rested solely on force and compulsion.

p The history of the ideological struggle shows that the "theory of violence" closely intertwines with justification of war, with the ideology of militarism. Small wonder that it became particularly widespread in the epoch of imperialism, 21 when forced decisions and wars began to play a large role in determining the course of history.

p This "theory‘s” close link with chauvinism, with claims to world domination is more pronounced today than ever before. People infected with chauvinism and nursing hegemonistic ambitions are quite naturally attracted to the "theory of violence”. They pin their hopes on military means of struggle, and belittle or ignore the significance of economic development and economic problems.

p The Chinese preachers of the "theory of violence”, who hide behind a smokescreen of revolutionary verbiage, believe that war is the cardinal means of settling all social contradictions. The essence of Maoism’s concept of history is revealed by the following thesis: "War is the highest form of struggle, existing ever since the emergence of private property and social classes, for settling contradictions between classes, between nations, between states, or between political groups at given stages of their development.”  [21•* 

p In place of the Marxist theory that ever since society’s division into classes the class struggle has been the dominant factor of history, Mao Tse-tung thus offers his militarist understanding of history as a history of wars. According to him, in politics the guideline should be laid down not by the laws of the class struggle but by the laws of war. Marxism holds that in class society the relations between the classes underlie all social phenomena and developments, including wars, but Mao Tse-tung’s standpoint is that the class struggle must be understood in the light of the laws of war. He writes: "War is the highest form of struggle between nations, states, classes, or political groups, and all laws of war are applied by a nation, a state, a class, or a political group waging a war to win victory for itself.”  [21•** 

p Marxism-Leninism teaches that war is the continuation of the policy pursued by definite classes to attain their class aims. In other words, war is a form of struggle for the interests of a given class. But from the theories expounded by Mao Tse-tung it follows that the class struggle must be governed by the laws of war.

p Employing Marxist terminology and using the concepts 22 “classes" and "class struggle" for the sake of appearances, Mao Tse-tung ignores the Marxist theory of the class struggle and the proletarian revolution, doggedly replacing it with his militarist "theory of violence”, the theory of a military upheaval. "Political power,” he insists, "grows out of the barrel of a gun.”  [22•*  According to his own admission, this is a paraphrase of the maxim of the Chinese militarists: "Whoever has an army has power.”  [22•**  Its own inner logic brings Maoism to the conclusion that it is not economic relations that ultimately determine to whom the political power belongs in a country, but the gun, the army, as a selfsufficing force determining the destinies of society. Military force is made a fetish of also in Mao Tse-tung’s arguments about the future of human society. He says that "the whole world can be remoulded only with the gun”.  [22•*** 

p He claims that a world war is the only means by which lasting peace may be achieved and socialism can triumph on a world-wide scale, saying "there is only one way . . . namely, to oppose war by means of war”.  [22•****  His supporters cold-bloodedly reason that even if half of mankind is annihilated in a world war, there will still remain the other half. On the other hand, imperialism would be destroyed and socialism would reign throughout the world. This fully fits in with Mao Tse-tung’s theoretical views.

p The Mao group opposes the Leninist principle of peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems. They reject the Leninist thesis that after its establishment first in one or several countries, socialism influences world development chiefly through the force of its example, its economic policy, its achievements in economic and cultural development.

p In effect, the Chinese “Marxists” preach the theory that revolution must be exported by means of war. It goes without saying that they want this war to be started by the Soviet Union, and allege that since it is not fighting such a war it has struck a bargain with United States imperialism and lapsed into “revisionism”. The Maoists frequently repeat the Chinese saying: "Sit on a mountain and watch the tigers 23 fight”. Are they contemplating involving the Soviet Union in a world war and watching this war from a “mountain”?

p In accordance with his militarist understanding of history Mao Tse-tung has replaced materialist dialectics with a metaphysical concept of struggle between antagonistic forces, turning dialectics into sophistry.

p Instead of the dialectical teaching of development and of resolving contradictions in the course of a struggle, Mao Tse-tung propounds the thesis that opposites change reciprocally. His view of development is that in the course of movement each opposite occupies the position which had earlier been occupied by its opposite. The opposites themselves are analysed metaphysically, as not subject to change, as something constant and immutable. Thereby Mao Tsetung ignores the vital dialectical thesis that development is, in effect, the transition from one quality to another, in the process of which old contradictions are surmounted.

p Instead of dialectics, Mao Tse-tung offers the theory of opposing forces, which know no qualitative change and can only change places and by turns pull each other from side to side or up and down. What we get here is something resembling the notorious theory of equilibrium, according to which contradictions balance each other, so that from time to time this equilibrium is disturbed and then restored, and the movement thus continues. This understanding of dialectics, naturally, undermines its very foundation and, essentially, signifies rejection of development. If opposites only change places and if history is nothing but the movement of opposites, the disturbance and restoration of equilibrium, nothing new can take shape, no qualitative changes can take place in social development.

p Mao Tse-tung’s admirers try to apply their primitive understanding of the struggle of opposites to the essence of the historical process, to the charting of the strategy and tactics of the world communist movement. This is how these “dialectics” look when applied to the revolutionary process: ".. .by means of revolution, the proletariat, once the ruled, becomes the ruler, while the bourgeoisie, originally the ruler, becomes the ruled, and is transferred to the position originally occupied by its opposite.”  [23•* 

p According to Mao Tse-tung this kind of “dialectical” change of opposites takes place in the course of revolutionary transformations in the countryside: ”. . .the land-owning landlord class becomes a class deprived of its land, while the peasants, once deprived of their land, become small holders of land.”  [24•* 

p This interpretation of the dialectics of history quite obviously has nothing in common with the real course of historical development. The bourgeoisie, it goes without saying, has never gone over and will never go over "to the position originally occupied by its opposite”, i.e., the working class, in the same way as the proletariat will never turn into the bourgeoisie. There have been cases of capitalists being ruined and becoming wage workers, and of individual workers becoming entrepreneurs. But this does not mean that the substance of the socialist revolution is the conversion of the proletariat into the bourgeoisie, and of the bourgeoisie into the proletariat. Similarly, history knows of no case of peasants having taken the place of the landowner class, or of the landowner class becoming peasants. A qualitatively new class structure takes shape in society with the emergence of a new mode of production. Revolutionary transformations bring about not merely a change of places occupied by opposite classes, but a fundamental change of the classes themselves, and lead to the moulding of new class relations. Nobody save metaphysicians can believe that the old classes can remain, merely changing places with each other, under a new mode of production as a result of revolution.

p These examples illustrate the fundamental distinctions between Marxist dialectics and the sophistry of the Chinese theorists. They missed the main point of Marxist-Leninist teaching, namely, that opposites are not immutable and everlasting, that they are in the process of ceaseless movement and change. The revolutionary significance of MarxistLeninist dialectics lies precisely in its teaching that inner contradictions lead to the replacement of the old content by a new, higher content. Thus, the replacement of capitalism by socialism signifies not a "change of places" between socialism and capitalism but the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system and the establishment of the new, socialist system.

p This interpretation of dialectics as a “reshuffle” of opposites is not some minor aspect in the views of Mao Tse-tung. In the last analysis it underlies the militarist understanding of the historical process so typical of Maoism. Indeed, by obviating the need for taking the qualitative changes of social phenomena into consideration, this metaphysical set-up makes it possible to group historical phenomena not from the point of view of their concrete social significance but under the abstract “timeless” categories of “war” and “peace”.

p “As everybody knows,” Mao Tse-tung writes, "war and peace transform themselves into each other. War is transformed into peace. ... Peace is transformed into war.”  [25•*  History knows of many cases when wars of a definite type were followed not by peace but by other wars of a different social nature. For example, with time the liberation wars of the French bourgeois revolution turned into reactionary wars of aggrandizement waged by the Empire of Napoleon. These wars brought enslavement to many peoples and, in their turn, gave rise to a period of national liberation wars.

p Or take another historical example. The First World War was not simply replaced by peace. In Russia the imperialist war turned into a civil war. Historical development after the October Revolution was characterised by the world’s division into two camps—socialist Russia and the capitalist states encircling her. The Second World War likewise did not end with a simple return to the pre-war peace. A fundamental qualitative feature of the period since that war is the formation of the world socialist system. The change that took place in the balance of power between socialism and capitalism gave the national liberation movement new, unprecedented scope, and capitalism’s colonial system collapsed. This has greatly increased the possibilities of fighting imperialist aggression and created real prerequisites for averting another world war through the concerted efforts of the socialist countries and all the peace-loving nations fighting imperialism.

The fundamental qualitative changes that have taken place in the course of historical development and the intricate interdependence of phenomena do not fit into the 26 abstract, metaphysical pattern of peace being replaced by war and of war leading to peace, a pattern under which lasting peace can only be achieved through war. Maoism’s allegedly “dialectical” interpretation of history turns out to be a purely subjectivist, sophistical distortion of the real process of social development.