79

[introduction.]

p E. Batalov

p The philosophical views of Mao Tse-tung, who, according to the "Communique of the llth Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the CPC”, "inherited, upheld and brilliantly, creatively and comprehensively developed Marxism-Leninism, and raised it to a new level”, is frequently called the "philosophy of practice" on the grounds that the "thought of Mao Tse-tung" is permeated with the spirit of creativity, that in this “thought” the doctrine of practice occupies a prominent place and serves as one of the theoretical foundations of the policy pursued by him.

p Indeed, Mao Tse-tung discourses at length about “ practice”, about the "link between theory and practice”. Basically, the concept propounded by him does not clash with his policy with all its catastrophic consequences. On the contrary, it gives it theoretical foundation. A superficial reading of individual works (particularly random excerpts from these works) of Mao himself and of the active propagators of his “thought” in different countries may, it is true, create the illusion that Mao’s concept of practice is similar to the Marxist views on this subject, and give the impression that in China today Marxist “words” are at variance with nonMarxist “deeds”, especially if it is borne in mind that there are Marxist elements in Mao’s concept, which has been built up with the aid of Marxist terminology and mirrors some of the real problems confronting socialist society and real trends of present-day social development.

p However, we see no basic contradiction between the theory propounded by Mao Tse-tung and the practice pursued by him, or between his early and later theoretical works. During the decades in which the "thought of Mao" took shape, his views naturally underwent an evolution: with time (or temporarily) he tacitly abandoned some propositions, and developed others, revealing the secret of what formerly had seemed to be insignificant “nuances” and "shades of meaning”, thereby showing their deep-going theoretical and 80 political purport. Nonetheless, the "thought of Mao" has always performed the social function of substantiating and justifying his policies, while the evolution of this “thought” was directly or indirectly linked with the changes in his political line.

An analysis of the "thought of Mao”, taken in unity with the policy followed by his group,  [80•*  i.e., as a socially functioning system, allows us to draw the conclusion that Mao’s concept of practice has nothing in common with the further development of Marxism-Leninism. Strictly speaking, it cannot be called Marxist at all. Similarly, it is neither a reproduction nor a development of any other philosophical concept—Confucianist, pragmatic and so on—known to history. Mao Tse-tung’s concept of practice is specifically (by its structure, if not by the composition of its elements) the product of the concrete historical conditions obtaining in China, where the "thought of Mao”, which gives an ideal reflection of these conditions, was moulded.  [80•** 

I

p In characterising Marxist philosophy generally and gnosiology in particular, Mao Tse-tung underscores chiefly their 81 practical essence, leaving in the background what underlies practice. "The viewpoint of practice,” he insists, referring to Materialism and Empirio-Criticism and the Theses on I’cuerbach, "is the first and basic" (my italics.—E.B.) " viewpoint of the theory of knowledge of dialectical materialism”,  [81•*  while the "practical character" of dialectical materialism, is, along with its class character, its "most striking feature”.

p By using the works of Marx and Lenin in the traditional Confucian manner, i.e., at random picking out words and phrases from the text, Mao Tse-tung has failed to grasp the substance of the Marxist-Leninist theory of practice, which is founded on recognition of the objective world and on the existence of things independently of our consciousness. It is only on this level that we can give a materialist interpretation of “experience”, “practice”, “truth” and the " reorganisation of the world”. That is precisely why Lenin said that "recognition of the external world and the reflection of it in the human mind form the basis of the theory of knowledge of dialectical materialism”.  [81•** 

p Indeed, to say that the practical nature of Marxist philosophy is its "most striking feature”, that dialectical materialism is a "philosophy of practice”, without placing practice on a materialist foundation, means to say nothing, because in this case it is not clear how Marxist philosophy differs from a number of other philosophical schools, say, pragmatism, which may likewise and with full grounds be ranked as a "practical philosophy”. Mao does not, of course, deny the existence of objective reality, but for him it is an abstraction, a sort of "thing for itself": it must be recognised, but once recognised it can be completely ignored or, which is the same, regarded as plastic and acquiring an arbitrarily chosen form under the influence of the subject’s activity. "An obvious specific of the 600 million-strong Chinese people”, Mao Tse-tung said in 1958, "is, among other features, its poverty and the fact that it is a sheet of clean paper. This is bad at first glance, but actually it is good. There is nothing on a clean sheet of paper, but on it one can write the newest and most beautiful words, and draw the newest and most 82 beautiful pictures" (Hungchi, 1958, No. 1). In other words, one can ignore the level of China’s productive forces, her traditions and the international situation, in short, abstract oneself from the diversity of the objective world.

p This attitude is far removed from Marxism because for the materialist dialectician acknowledgement of the material foundation of practice means not simply placing on record the primary nature of being but recognising the constant interaction between the subject and the object, recognising that human practice is determined by objective conditions taken concretely and integrally, for without taking these conditions into account it is impossible to chart and put into effect a correct political line, i.e., a political line conforming to the concrete conditions of social life.

p Non-recognition of the fact that the subject’s practical activity is determined by objective conditions inevitably leads to a pragmatic approach to theory as a “working” conception, which “serves” practice, to a subjectivist, instrumentalist interpretation of truth as a purely utilitarian weapon. For Mao Tse-tung and his group truth is not what adequately, even if intentionally, reflects the objective state of things, but what is useful and advantageous, what “serves” in the given conditions. In one of his latest and, of course “brilliant” works, Where Do People Get Correct Ideas?, Mao Tse-tung writes: "Generally speaking, what leads to a successful result is correct, and what is not crowned with success is wrong" (Chinese ed., Peking, 1964, p. 129).

p Naturally, this interpretation of truth is very convenient because it allows justifying zigzags and “leaps” from one extreme to another and promising that communism would be attained now "in three years of hard work”, now in scores of years hence, or "perhaps even hundreds of years”, but it has nothing to do with Marxism.  [82•* 

83

p Marxism regards practice—living, purposeful, objectsensuous activity (which is called practice only so far as it is compared with theory as hardened activity embodied in objects)—not only as a criterion of truth and a source of knowledge but as the process of knowledge proper, which includes perceptual and rational elements. Conversely, as a process knowledge is practice inasmuch as it provides the ideal model of subsequent practical activity. The farther the process of the "humanisation of nature" advances and the more science becomes a direct productive force, the higher is the degree of rationalisation reached by perceptual knowledge and of the mutual penetration and mutual conditionally of practice and knowledge (theory).

p In Mao Tse-tung’s concept of practice, on the contrary, practice is divorced from knowledge, theory is opposed to practice. "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" (my italics.—E.B.).  [83•*  Here knowledge (both perceptual and rational), on the one hand, and practice, on the other, come forward as distinct, mechanically alternating cycles. In its turn, within the framework of the "cycle of knowledge”, perceptual knowledge is separated from rational knowledge, which is its opposite. Mao Tse-tung insists that it is necessary to "start from perceptual knowledge and actively develop it into rational knowledge, and then, starting from rational knowledge, actively direct revolutionary practice so as to remould the subjective and the objective world"  [83•**  (my italics.—E.B.).

p In order to make sure that this is not "simply an accidental vulgarisation" or a slip of the pen, but a “nuance” concealing an entire concept, we have to look into other works by Mao Tse-tung, for example, the essay Rectify the Party’s Style in Work (1942), in which he writes: All comparatively complete knowledge is acquired through two stages, 84 first, the stage of perceptual knowledge and, secondly, the stage of rational knowledge, the latter being the development of the former to a higher plane.”  [84•*  We learn that the knowledge acquired perceptually can exist independently in the same way as rational knowledge (although Mao Tse-tung qualifies this as a “bad” phenomenon). There even are "two kinds of comrades" possessing "partial knowledge": comrades who read books and possess rational knowledge but lack the perceptual knowledge, that is gained through practice; comrades engaged in practical work whose "knowledge is usually perceptual and partial. . .they lack rational and comprehensive knowledge”.  [84•**  How does one obtain "complete knowledge"? By integrating “partial” knowledge. "Thus there are two kinds of incomplete knowledge: one is knowledge already contained in books and the other is knowledge which is usually perceptual and partial, and both are onesided. Only through an integration of the two can excellent and comparatively complete knowledge emerge.”  [84•*** 

p Two elements can thus be clearly defined: the isolation of perceptual and rational knowledge and the striving to link practice only with perceptual knowledge, which means depriving practice of its rational and cognitive nature. This approach reduces practice to pure experience (“knowledge starts with experience—this is the materialism of the theory of knowledge"  [84•**** ), to empiricism, which Mao Tse-tung sometimes attacks but which, as the Japanese philosopher Mori Nobushige justifiably notes, is intrinsic to Mao himself,  [84•*****  and ultimately leads to the destruction of practice as rational activity. Practice degenerates into blind, unconscious, thoughtless activity, which at best provides the raw material for a subsequent gnosiological, theoretical analysis, while the activity of the subject is reduced to the blind performance of the will of the "great leader”, to that of a " stainless cog" of a mammoth machine, set in motion personally by the “helmsman”, who ruthlessly “changes” these “cogs” if they begin to “rust”, i.e., to think. This is the purpose of 85 the endless appeals to "obey the Chairman" and to "learn from the Army"—to learn to obey unquestioningly.

Peking propaganda’s demagogic slogans about " remoulding the consciousness" and "awakening the consciousness" of every individual must not mislead us because this “ remoulding” and “awakening” mean drumming the "thought of Mao Tse-tung" into the mind of every person. In the long run this is done with the purpose not of rationalising practice and introducing an element of consciousness into the activity of the masses but to regiment people’s thinking, to force them to adopt slogans blindly and, as a result, prevent them from acquiring real, i.e., critical, knowledge of the world around them through practice. "We resolutely carry out all the instructions of Chairman Mao—those we understand and those we yet do not understand,” declares the Maoist newspaper Chiehfangchun Pao. "We must resolutely carry out the instructions of Chairman Mao, which coincide with our own ideas, but we must also carry out those that do not coincide with our own ideas.” This anti-intellectual spirit is perhaps best expressed in a hungweiping slogan, which says: "We need no brains! Our minds are armed with the thought of Mao Tse-tung.” This is a direct precept to mould in the minds of the masses and individuals cut and dried forms of perception and reasoning, into which, as into the bed of Procrustes, the entire multiform content of the practical work of the present-day Chinese could be squeezed.

II

p Mao Tse-tung’s rejection of the determining nature of the subject’s practical activity is not accidental. He claims that he is the creator of the "theory of active reflection”, which, according to the authors of the book Dialectical Materialism, published in China in 1963, "deals a crushing blow at mechanistic theories that obscure the subjective activity of people”. In fact, Mao Tse-tung tries to deal a blow, but it is aimed not at mechanistic but at dialectical materialism. He seeks to achieve this by absolutising the role of ideological and political practice and belittling or completely rejecting the role of economic practice, attributing to "subjective activity”, to “ideas”, the “determining”, “decisive” role in reorganising the world. "The social life of people,” he writes 86 in the article Where Do People Get Correct Ideas? " determines their ideology. As soon as correct ideas, propounded by the advanced classes, are adopted by the masses, they become a material force for the reconstruction of society and of the world.” Naturally, these "correct ideas" are the "thought of Mao Tse-tung”. "The thought of Mao Tse-tung, which is an unprecedented^ powerful spiritual atomic bomb, becomes a great material force that transforms the world as soon as the masses adopt it and achieve the further revolutionisation of their thinking.”  [86•* 

p Ideas, of course, play an active role in changing the objective world. This has been repeated time and again by Marx, Engels and Lenin. But they have always spoken of the relative independence of ideas, superstructures and politics, for ideas, as everybody knows, cannot turn into an object; they only act as the instrument by which one object is turned into another, a conversion whose condition is not only that the masses should master revolutionary ideas but that there should be concrete material prerequisites. This is passed over in silence by Mao Tse-tung, who limits himself to speaking generally about the role of objective reality.

p Unconditionally giving politics and ideology first place, he ignores the circumstance that the role of ideas, of ideology and politics changes depending on the concrete conditions of time and place. During the socialist revolution and socialist construction all forms of practice—economic, political and ideological—are dialectically interrelated. In particular, a manifestation of this is that now one now another of these forms of practice acquires prominence, i.e., plays the leading role, at the different stages of the development of socialist society. Moreover, economic practice plays a dual role: as the basic form of practice, which in the long run determines society’s development even at stages when the leading role is played by political and ideological practice, and as the principal form of practice, when it moves to the forefront.  [86•**  Moreover, with the establishment of 87 socialist social relations a change occurs not only in the role but in the essence of political practice: it is no longer a struggle of the victorious class for power (because it is already at the helm of power), but a drive to promote socialist democracy. In a socialist state this is the only historical justification for giving politics prominence for certain periods. But for Mao Tse-tung the theory of the primacy of political and ideological practice over economic practice is a means of justifying the economic failures that have occurred through his own fault, and the measures to strengthen his shaken positions in the army, the Party and the state.

p The artificial accentuation—almost twenty years after the people’s revolution—of political practice as a struggle for power (of which the most acute and open form was the notorious "great proletarian cultural revolution”) and the orientation on a permanent political struggle as the motive force of socialist society had by their inner logic to compel the Maoists, sooner or later, to go over from "verbal criticism”, i.e., from discrediting their adversaries politically and morally, from accusing them of “revisionism”, "abstract humanism”, "bourgeois degeneration" and "anti-Party activity”, to "criticism by force”, which grew into a process, cold-bloodedly directed by the “Chairman” himself, of physically destroying the "internal enemy”, whom Mao Tsetung saw not in the Chinese bourgeoisie, who were, by no means accidentally, unaffected by the "cultural revolution”, but in true Chinese Communists, who, devoted to socialism, ventured to put up some form of resistance to the Maoist line of setting up a military-bureaucratic regime in China, a regime that clashes with the very essence of socialism.

p But the orientation on permanent political practice as a struggle for power has yet another aspect, namely, a struggle against the "foreign political enemy”. For Mao Tse-tung this enemy is not international imperialism, but socialist countries, above all the Soviet Union, for in the policy pursued by the CPSU and the Soviet Union the Mao group sees the main obstacle to its adventurist bid for 88 international domination. For a number of years Peking propaganda has been running a virulent campaign of slander against the Soviet people and the socialist system in the USSR in an effort, in violation of the norms of relations between socialist countries, to impose on Soviet society their own recipe for the building of communism and push the CPSU into starting a Maoist-type "cultural revolution" in the Soviet Union, curtailing democracy, kindling a "class struggle" and pursuing a policy of repressions. The Soviet Union and other socialist countries were accused of “economism”, "deviation from the revolution" and "bourgeois degeneration”. "After the conquest of power by the proletariat," Jenmin Jihpao wrote on August 25, 1967, "there are two diametrically opposing lines in the country’s development. The first is the line of Soviet revisionism, which one-sidedly accentuates material production, machines, mechanisation and material incentives. This line opposes giving prominence to politics, pushes the class struggle into the background and abolishes the dictatorship of the proletariat.” The second line, of course, is the "line of the Chairman”, which gives first place to politics and is, therefore, "genuinely Marxist”. What was meant by this "Marxist line" was shown by subsequent developments, when passing from "verbal criticism" to " criticism by force”, within the country, the Maoists, in their quest for a nationalistic foundation on which to rally the Chinese people under the "banner of the thought of Mao Tse-tung”, levelled this "criticism by force" at the "foreign political enemy”, i.e., the socialist countries.

p [floating footnote]  [88•* 

While the "cultural revolution" has greatly retarded China’s cultural development, confronted her with great economic difficulties, reduced the already low standard of living"’ and seriously shaken her prestige as a civilised country in the eyes of progressive people in many countries, the Maoist line of armed provocations against socialist 89 countries is fundamentally at variance with the real interests of the Chinese people and quite plainly leads not only to a further weakening of Peking’s international positions but to the total collapse of its prestige in the international communist movement. This is the inevitable result of destroying practice as a rational activity, and of replacing economic development and state administration by "political activity" in its vulgar interpretation.

III

p Practice may be counterposed to theory only on the gnosiological level. Theoretical activity (not theory as a product) is itself practice, i.e., it signifies the transformation of the objectively perceptible world ideally, not materially. Practice embraces ideal activity as well, for material practice, which really transforms the objective perceptible world, is human practice and, consequently, it rests on a plan devised by man in the process of ideally modelling purposeful material activity.

p At the early stages of civilisation ideal and material practice were not separated from each other, in the same way as work by brain was not separated from work by hand. But with the separation of work by brain from work by hand and with the division of the spheres of practice into material and ideal spheres, the intelligentsia began to emerge as a special substratum with ideal practice as its prerogative. Under capitalism this division of practice into spheres embodied in the division into intelligentsia and "ordinary people" is a vital prerequisite for the sale of labour by the proletariat and assumes extreme forms.

p Under socialist (and communist) social relations, the spheres of ideal and material practice, labour by hand and by brain, are gradually fused. However, this process takes a very long time. Essential distinctions remain between physical and mental labour at the first stage of communism, and this means that the division of the spheres of practice also remains. The intelligentsia, too, remains as a social substratum engaged in ideal practice. Moreover, scientific and technological progress, which turns science into a direct productive force and increases the historical scale of the working people’s activity, enhances the role played by the intelligentsia while preserving it as an independent substratum. 90 The only difference is that now the intelligentsia is no longer divorced from the "ordinary people" but is linked with them, inasmuch as in conditions of the general growth of the cultural level theoretical activity ceases to be the prerogative of intellectuals. Nonetheless, any artificial acceleration of the integration of ideal and material practice in contravention of concrete material conditions, and any aspiration to abolish the intelligentsia can only halt the process of bringing about a convergence of the intelligentsia and the people. But this is the very line pursued by Mao Tse-tung.

p The "intelligentsia problem" has always worried Mao Tse-tung, who, for political reasons, recognised the need for intellectuals but remained suspicious of them, regarding them as a potential subversive force capable not only of independently opposing his policies but also sowing among the people the "poison grass" of doubt in his infallibility. Strictly speaking, Mao Tse-tung’s concept of practice rejects the right of the intelligentsia to independent existence. Intellectuals engage in mental, theoretical activity, which, according to Mao Tse-tung, is not practice and yields only “rational”, i.e., “partial”, “incomplete” and, even worse, “dogmatic” knowledge. "They ought to learn the truth that many so-called intellectuals are relatively the least knowledgeable, while the workers and peasants are on occasions more knowledgeable.”  [90•*  To turn “incomplete”, “book”, “rational” knowledge into complete knowledge it must be “integrated” with perceptual knowledge, i.e., with practice. According to Mao Tse-tung this integration must be achieved by drawing the “bookworms”, i.e., the intellectuals (who cannot even be called fullfledged intellectuals until they are involved in practice) into practical activity through “integration” with the “people”, in other words, by transferring them to practical (or more exactly, physical) work.

p The Communist Party of China had indeed been confronted with the task of remoulding the thinking of the Chinese bourgeois intellectuals who had joined the Party during the revolution, and drawing them into the revolutionary practice of the proletariat.  [90•**  But Mao Tse-tung gave a 91 vulgar interpretation of this process, identifying the " remoulding of the world outlook" of the intellectual with instilling the "thought of Mao" into his head, and taking the intelligentsia’s integration with the people to mean its virtual annihilation. This explains why after the revolution in China, when a new army of intellectuals, many of whom came from workers’ and peasants’ families, took shape, Mao Tse-tung adopted a harder line towards the intelligentsia: “brainwashing” campaigns followed one after another in quick succession; it became customary to send intellectuals to the countryside for long periods of "re-education through labour" (drawing into practice); professionalism, erudition and manifestations of high culture began to be stigmatised as bourgeois survivals and as attempts at "suppressing the masses”; critical thinking and an uncompromising attitude to shortcomings were assessed as counter-revolutionary; any accomplishment distinguishing a person from the masses was qualified as egoism and egocentrism and, consequently, as “revisionism”. During the "great proletarian cultural revolution" the policy of "rolling the intellectual in mud" and deprofessionalising him was carried to extremes. The slogan "integration with the masses" was, in effect, interpreted as a call upon the intelligentsia to master the "culture of the masses”, which was described as the most “advanced” and the "most revolutionary”. This meant denying the sphere of ideal practice to the intelligentsia inasmuch as this specific and relatively independent sphere was itself rejected.

p As a result the very existence of the intellectuals as a social substratum, which "are so called just because they most consciously, most resolutely and most accurately reflect and express the development of class interests and 92 political groupings in society as a whole,”  [92•*  was called in question.

p True, until recently part of the Chinese intelligentsia was not affected by the policy of “revolutionisation”. This was stipulated in the "Decision of the Central Committee of the CPC on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”, which stated: "More attention must be paid to valuable scientists and scientific and engineering cadres. They may also be helped to change their thinking and style of work step by step.” However, this does not change the general conclusion that Mao Tse-tung is aiming to destroy the intelligentsia and, for a certain period, preserve only a narrow segment deliberately isolated from society in the calculation that as a result of this isolation they will cease being intellectuals and turn into technocrats, into asocial cogs of a gigantic state machine.

p It would be wrong, of course, to believe that socialist society must perpetuate the gap created by bourgeois society between the intelligentsia and the people and, consequently, the division of practice into spheres. On the contrary, socialism is the social system that gives rise to the prerequisites and real conditions for erasing the essential distinctions between manual and mental labour and abolishing the boundaries between ideal and material practice. Even Mao Tsetung grasps this fundamental trend of socialism, which has been scientifically substantiated by Marxism-Leninism. But Marxism approaches this problem differently. This approach has been excellently described by Antonio Gramsci, who wrote that Marxist philosophy does not seek to pinion " ’ ordinary’ people at the level of their primitive philosophy of common sense. On the contrary, it strives to lead them to a higher conception of life. Its aim in stressing the need for contact between the intelligentsia and ‘ordinary’ people is not to restrict scientific activity and thereby maintain unity at the low level of the masses but to set up an intellectualmoral bloc, which would make it politically possible to promote the progress of the masses instead of only small groups of intellectuals" (my italics.—E.B.}  [92•** 

93

When Marx criticised those who sanctified the words “people” and “proletariat”,  [93•*  he did not, of course, seek to humiliate the worker or belittle his revolutionary role. On the contrary, he wanted to show the real position of the proletariat in capitalist society, so that the proletariat would know where it stood and be able to change this position. Mao Tse-tung, on the other hand, in an effort to resolve the “ intelligentsia-people” problem, demagogically flatters the people, forgetting that the people have not so much to enlighten as to be enlightened by this same intelligentsia. Indeed, the Chinese people have changed during the years of popular rule, but they still have a long road to travel to reach the summits of world culture. This can be achieved not by hypocritically flattering the people, by encouraging religious feeling and ignorance, by spreading the cult of Mao Tse-tung, or by setting the people apart from the intelligentsia, but by helping to establish close contact between them, not by abolishing the intelligentsia as a substratum or by reducing the intellectual to the level of a semi-literate peasant, but by raising the peasant to the level of the intellectual.

IV

p Marxism-Leninism regards practical activity as the means by which changes and transformations are accomplished. The transformation of the world is precisely what constitutes a vital condition and the basic content of human existence. But the process of changing and transforming the world does not boil down solely to revolutions, to “leaps’ (consummating periods of evolution, of qualitative accumulation). It covers peaceful evolution because no revolution, neither social nor scientific and technological, can be accomplished without preparation, without the corresponding "initial accumulation”.

p There are thus always two types of practice: revolutionary-critical and day-to-day, ordinary, evolutionary practice, inasmuch as it prepares and sustains revolutionary-critical practice.

p Mao Tse-tung is an avowed exponent of the theory of permanent revolution. But in his interpretation of permanent 94 revolution he differs from Marx or Lenin (for whom the continuity of the revolutionary process meant the consistent consummation of the revolution in accordance with objective historical laws). For Mao Tse-tung permanent revolution means leaping over stages, rejecting pauses in the revolution, with revolutions following one after another without stops or intervals.

p On the basis of this interpretation of permanent revolution he not only counterposes day-to-day, “evolutionary” to “revolutionary” practice, but tries to reduce the former to naught. While he does not reject day-to-day activity as activity generally, he rejects it as day-to-day activity. Actually, in Mao Tse-tung’s conception there is no place for real revolutionary-critical activity either, for he regards it in the spirit of unalloyed anarchism, seeing its highest form in destruction, in “rebellion”. Maoism reduces Marxism to bare rebellion. "Thousands upon thousands of Marxist propositions,” writes Hungchi, organ of the Central Committee of the CPC, "in the long run boil down to one thing, namely, that ’rebellion is a just cause’. This is the very soul of the thought of Mao Tse-tung. ... To shun rebellion means simply to wallow in revisionism.. . . We want to turn the old world upside down, to smash it to pieces, to precipitate chaos and confusion. And the greater this confusion is, the better. . . . We want to consummate our rebellion, start a huge uprising of the proletariat and create a new, proletarian world" (No. 10, 1966, p. 11).

p It is not easy, of course, for the average revolutionary, particularly if he comes from the petty bourgeoisie, to relinquish "revolutionary nihilism" and "military romanticism" and to get used to day-to-day creative activity. Without such day-to-day creative activity, without calm, planned, day-to-day creative work there can be no revolution. "History knows moments when the most important thing for the success of the revolution is to heap up as large a quantity of the fragments as possible, i.e., to blow up as many of the old institutions as possible; moments arise when enough has been blown up and the next task is to perform the ‘prosaic’ (for the petty-bourgeois revolutionary, the ‘boring’) task of clearing away the fragments; and moments arise when the careful nursing of the rudiments of the new system, which are growing amidst the wreckage on a soil 95 which as yet has been badly cleared of rubble, is the most important thing.”  [95•*  Lenin specified the periods when activity is destructive and when it is constructive. He wrote: "In bourgeois revolutions, the principal task of the mass of working people was to fulfil the negative or destructive work of abolishing feudalism, monarchy and medievalism. ... In every socialist revolution, however, .. . the principal task of the proletariat, and of the poor peasants which it leads, is the positive or constructive work of setting up an extremely intricate and delicate system of new organisational relationships extending to the planned production and distribution of the goods required for the existence of tens of millions of people.”  [95•** 

p China went through a period of “destruction”, which lasted several decades at least. By the inner logic of the development of the socialist revolution there should now have commenced a new period not rejecting “destruction” (as a stage of development) but subordinating it to construction as the basic task in the building of socialism. Mao Tse-tung, however, continues to depend on the old, “tested” methods of destruction, which seem more revolutionary to him. He is now destroying not the old but the new world created by the Chinese workers, peasants and intellectuals themselves.

p History shows that on the international and even on the national scale the periods of revolutionary leaps in various spheres of human activity do not usually coincide. A fundamental revolutionary break-up of social relations may take place during a period of relative “tranquillity” in the development of many fields of science and technology, and the scientific and technological revolution may come about during a period when social relations are relatively stable.

p Another lesson from history is that being governed by inner laws revolutionary changes in different fields of activity acquire diverse forms. The appearance of "revolutionary masses" on the stage does not mean that a "revolutionary theatre" has been created, in the same way that the smashing of machines does not lead to a revolution in technology. Therefore, any attempt to unify the forms of revolutionarycritical practice in various spheres can only more or less considerably delay the real revolution in these spheres.

96

p This sort of “revolutionisation”, without the ground for it being prepared by the entire course of preceding development, and, therefore, inevitably doomed to be purely external, leads to rejection not only of the old, outworn and unreasonable but also to the destruction of really reasonable links and relations, in short, to degradation. An example of this is the "revolutionary reform" in education, which the "cultural revolution" has reduced to the cancellation of “ nonrevolutionary” sciences, the burning of books, the smashing of school equipment, and so forth, or the “revolution” in literature and art whose purpose is to replace professional art with second-rate amateurism and reject the entire world and national cultural heritage.

p In addition to giving rein to anarchy and destroying practice as rational activity, such a “revolution”, in the given case conducted under the banner of the "thought of Mao Tse-tung”, discredits and distorts Marxist-Leninist theory and the Marxist teaching of practice.

Voprosy filosofii, No. 3, 1969, pp. 93-104