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p A. Titarenko

A dangerous anti-socialist factor of our day, Maoism has its own economic, social, national, military, ideological, moral and psychological features and specifics. But in this article we are concerned only with one very important aspect of Maoism, namely, the features that characterise its distortion of the Marxist-Leninist understanding of morals and politics, its rejection of communist humanism and its abandonment of the scientific strategy and tactics of the proletarian class struggle. The sad lesson which all Marxists have yet to draw from the practice and “theory” of Maoism is extremely instructive precisely in this respect.

p Scientific communism has always developed in uncompromising struggle with petty-bourgeois ideology, including its “ultra-revolutionary”, adventurist trends. Marx and Engels had time and again spoken strongly against supplanting the end objectives of the proletarian movement by pettybourgeois equalitarian demands; the ideal of a free communist society by the dismal regime of "barrack communism”; a flourishing culture by its sectarian, primitive restriction; political awareness and initiative on the part of the working people by fanatic belief and the sermon of blind obedience; creation by irresponsible destruction; the comprehensive development of the individual by anti-humanist disregard for the destiny of people and the conversion of the individual into a "zero value”, into a standard “cog” turned out mechanically to order "from above”. Small wonder that after the October Revolution Lenin noted: "If we had made any concessions to petty-bourgeois illusions.. .we would have ruined the whole cause of the proletarian revolution.”  [97•*  In China, where the predominance and patriarchal nature of the peasants were even more pronounced than in old 98 Russia, political leaders came forward who not only succumbed to the pressure of the petty-bourgeois element but gave this element’s perverted understanding of socialism the shape of a programme of action, of a primitive world outlook, which its exponents ludicrously call the "highest stage" of Marxism-Leninism.

p In criticising the theory of primitive, levelling “ communism” in all its diverse variants, Marx underlined that in "negating the personality of man in every sphere, this type of communism" has nothing in common with scientific communism and humanism. This "crude communism" drives its proponents towards the "negation of the entire world of culture and civilisation”, towards a return "to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and undemanding man”.  [98•*  This criticism is topical to this day for it enables us to understand the various distortions of communism—petty-bourgeois, pre-proletarian, patriarchal—that have grotesquely intertwined with the practice, policies and slogans of the Maoists in China.

p Maoist policies, theoretical patterns and moral standards constitute a categorical break with the communist -world outlook. In the interrelation of the moral and political factors they grossly flout the principles of Marxist humanism, and make the loftiest virtue out of anti-humanism of a militarybureaucratic and pseudo-revolutionary mould. The egoistical, Great-Power, nationalist ambitions of the Mao group in China are portrayed as immutable “axioms” of political life. Moral principles are reduced to simple "idolised stimulants" for manipulating the masses and a means of inculcating blind faith and unthinking fanaticism; morals not only lose all relative independence (and their “controlling” role in political life) but are shamelessly emasculated and divorced from the achievements of moral development determined by the world communist movement and from the achievements of general historical moral progress.

p True, at first glance it may seem that morals are almost the determining factor of political life in China. This impression is created by the huge masses of people marching with portraits of Mao Tse-tung and by the bellicose, 99 unremitting, flagrantly “moralising” message of social slogans. Actually, however, the role of the moral factor in China’s political life has never been so debased and reduced as at present. The power-hungry, hegemonistic, anti-Soviet designs of Mao Tse-tung and his entourage (which have assumed a fantastic scale) are being implemented at dear cost to the interests of the working people and the cause of socialism, with the involvement of moral fanaticism that has been turned into a near-religion. Filthy artifices and methods of struggle against revolutionary cadres are proclaimed as the “best” from the moral standpoint.

Intrigues, lies, demagogy, threats, physical destruction of opponents, the baiting of various groups of the population against each other, cynical exploitation of the prejudices and ignorance of backward sections, and cult forms of selfadvertisement are used to strengthen the absolute rule of Mao Tse-tung, glorify him for "tens of thousands of years" in China, and win domination for Maoism in the world communist movement. The constant recourse to disgusting, amoral methods in politics has brought the selfish ambitions of the Maoists to light. The foulest political means are openly proclaimed “moral” only because they emanate from the "reddest of the red suns"—Mao Tse-tung. The real objectives pursued by the Maoists have nothing in common either with socialism or with Marxism-Leninism. Theirs is a bellicose nationalism and a despotic striving to secure unlimited power to their military-bureaucratic dictatorship. Marxist students of contemporary ideological and political life in China agree that many of the Maoist political slogans and actions and their pseudo-Marxist verbiage are a blind for anti-Soviet designs and Mao Tse-tung’s hegemonistic claims to "world suzerainty”, for his imperial claims to unlimited autocratic power in China and the world. These claims are evidence that the Maoists have completely abandoned the ideals of the communist world outlook. The reactionary, amoral, anti-humane means employed by the Maoists in the socio-political struggle are fully in accord with the non-Marxist, anti-revolutionary aims of their pseudo- socialism. The barefaced anti-Sovietism of the Maoists and their adventurist foreign policy ambitions are mirrored in the revised Party Constitution and in the communique adopted by the 9th Congress of the CPC.

100 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1972/MU245/20080516/199.tx"

p Alongside the hungweiping slogan that "there is no crime in revolution”, the political slogans being thundered in China include "do not be a modest and courteous intellectual" and "have no fear of disorders”. Peking propaganda unremittingly inflames the masses of China to violence, and gives every encouragement to vile passions, cruelty, ridicule and wild fanaticism. In order to instil in the minds and feelings of millions a primitive, blind moral that all, even their most adventurist and treacherous, political acts are justifiable, the Maoists artificially fostered moral chaos by means of the "cultural revolution”. In effect, they took the offensive against some elementary, humane, positive moral rules of behaviour in order to sow moral confusion among the bulk of the Chinese working people. While speaking of a “class” approach to human behaviour, they destroyed the foundations of active, Marxist humanism, which demands respect for elementary norms of morality and justice. Love of mankind and altruistic feelings are, Lenin wrote, "the most rudimentary, the most elementary premises, convictions and principles of the whole of democracy”  [100•*  The founders of Marxism-Leninism held that it went without saying that tortures, indignities, brutality and other means demoralising the masses were impermissible in the struggle for socialism. The Maoists, however, cynically trampled this principle without the least compunction.

p Upon encountering opposition to their adventurist policies they launched a frenzied campaign of mass repressions and cynically proclaimed arbitrary rule and violence towards the Communist Party and the working masses a “genuine” dictatorship of the proletariat and “genuine” socialism. By shattering the Communist Party they aimed to perpetuate the despotic rule of a handful of intriguers, who had isolated themselves from the people. And having taken this road it was only natural that they should have replaced the people’s democratic system with a military-bureaucratic regime, which, as Marx put it neatly, comes forward as "barrack communism”. As was noted in a Pravda editorial on February 16, 1967, under the heading "On the Anti-Soviet Policy of Mao Tse-tung and His Group”, the line followed by the Maoists "shows that for the sake of power they are 101 prepared to sacrifice everything—the interests of socialism, the interests of their people, the interests of the revolution”. Along with other developments this is an outcome of the Maoists’ gross distortion of the Marxist-Leninist understanding of the correlation between politics and morals. Moreover, it is the result of the degeneration of policy (and of the politicians themselves) started by the abandonment of the moral content of communist aims and the flouting of the principles of Marxist humanism to suit mercenary, Great-Power ambitions. Policies approving everything that serves the purposes proclaimed by the men in power, without any reasonable, critical approach to these purposes, are used for adventurist intrigues calculated to place unlimited power in the hands of a small group of politicians who are alien to the proletariat and the working masses as a whole. These policies twist and warp not only (and not so much) the letter but the very meaning and spirit of socialism.

p Even if it is disguised with socialist slogans, petty- bourgeois revolutionism is quite unstable morally. A revolutionary with a petty-bourgeois way of thinking quickly loses all moral restraint and staunchness in the ups and downs of political struggle. Going from one extreme to another, the petty-bourgeois revolutionary easily loses his enthusiasm. He may by inertia still continue to repeat revolutionary formulas, but they no longer cover his moral emptiness, which is rapidly supplemented by power-hungry ambitions. Pettybourgeois adventurists like the Maoists, who have climbed to power, use this power to further their own selfish aims. After gaining control of the instruments of compulsion they make them self-contained, independent and free from control from below and turn them into weapons, which the regime uses to preserve itself and extend its authority. Under Mao Tse-tung this weapon consists of the army, the police, paramilitary hungweiping organisations, and so on. Here the principles of communist policy are basically distorted, above all by the fact that undisguised violence and mass terror are regarded as a “cure-all”. This distortion of the means of achieving the aims of the revolution inevitably leads to the moral emasculation of the aims themselves. Hypocritically using the name of the revolution, the Mao group has recourse to violence—in its extreme forms—where it is not needed, directing it at champions of the revolution.

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p Ominous signs that Mao Tse-tung and his sycophants were flouting the principles of communist humanism could be discerned even at the earliest stages of their career (as was shown by A. Kadataskottaya in the book Man, God or Sphynx. A Political Portrait of Mao Tse-tung, these signs were perceptible long ago). The principles of Marxist humanism are an encumbrance to the politician with a propensity for adventuristic intrigues. They are, therefore, distorted or buried in oblivion. When they are separated from the policy, strategy and tactics of a Communist Party, the ideals, aims and hopes incorporated in them become a collection of recipes stripped of socio-historical meaning, a pile of propositions that may be interpreted at will. Precisely in this case—when the ideals of communist humanism are flouted or shelved—there arises the possibility for such a distortion of the foundations of Marxist policy, which, as has happened with Maoism, in the long run leads to degeneration, to an anti-socialist turn and the establishment of an anti-popular military-bureaucratic regime.

p On the subject of practical political activity in building socialism, Marx insisted that the leadership pursue this activity in "bright daylight, with no pretensions to infallibility, not hiding itself behind circumlocution offices, not ashamed to confess blunders by correcting them”.  [102•*  The political movement in China, named the "great cultural revolution" (which in fact has nothing in common either with culture or with revolution), is as far removed from these requirements of Marxism as the earth is from the sky. One of the aims of this movement is to consolidate the Mao cult, which has been carried to absurdity, to the point of idolatry. Underlying this cult is a reactionary political and a sinister socio-psychological purpose. The assertion of the Maoists that the "thought of Mao Tse-tung is the absolute authority" in the direct sense of the word is implemented in China’s political and ideological life with unparalleled, primitive callousness and doggedness. Having acquired absurd forms, which would undoubtedly have been ludicrous had they not become so tragic to the destiny of the great Chinese people, the Mao cult turns the "thought of Mao Tse-tung" into a kind of theosophy, according to which a deity in the 103 image of man is capable of endowing with omnipotence and moral goodness all who accept its purposes and ideas, and of giving moral “indulgence” to any action directed "from above”. This deity is invested with all the right to historical initiative—alienated from the millions of "stainless cogs" deprived of such initiative, of individuals, whose role is now reduced to marching with a book of Mao quotations in their hands, to hysterical worship and blind obedience. This deification of Mao in China is gradually destroying not only critical, creative thinking but generally all theoretical, scientific thinking in sociology, replacing it with blind faith and fanatical acquiescence. While the Marxist-Leninist concept of socialism takes as its premise the development of the political initiative and activity of the broadest masses, in China we observe the reverse: the initiative is in the hands of the deity and his retinue, who are not subject to democratic control from below and turn the artificially fostered “enthusiasm” of part of the population into a means of incessantly suppressing their (real and fictitious) rivals.

p In this moral and political atmosphere all distortions, deviations and even crimes stemming from the monstrous cult of Mao Tse-tung are proclaimed a necessity and a “law” of the dictatorship of the proletariat, a law of socialism. This can only discredit the very idea of socialism. Ascetic, blind and total submission of the will of millions of people to the will of Mao Tse-tung is the caricature morality of society and man which the Maoists are planting.

p The French Marxist Jean-fimile Vidal wrote: "The economic foundations of socialism were laid in China. .. . But can they guarantee a socialist future in a country where the working class has been deprived of the possibility to act as leader, where one man or a group of people has destroyed everything that enabled the people to control, criticise and express their will, and exercises arbitrary power;.. .the threat has arisen that a regime resting not on the working class and the poor peasants but chiefly on the army, some security agencies and the hungweiping organisations will gain further ground. Such a regime may take the country out of socialism and direct it to a road of perilous gambles.”  [103•* 

p Not many years have passed since these apprehensions 104 were voiced, but they have come true. The foreign policy of the Maoist leaders has been marked by such disgraceful and treacherous acts as armed provocations on the Soviet frontier, the launching of military adventures jeopardising the security and territorial integrity of the world’s first socialist state. In domestic policy the Maoists have still further intensified the repression and massacre of cadres of shattered Party and public organisations and the sinister features of a military-bureaucratic dictatorship resembling the Eastern despotic regimes of the past are coming more and more to the surface. This has given the Chinese Communist Wang Ming grounds for assessing the present sociopolitical practices of the Maoists in China as a " counterrevolutionary upheaval directed in the country at the Communist Party and the people and outside it at the Soviet Union and the international communist movement”.  [104•* 

p The Peking leaders have not fortuitously declared that humanism is a “bourgeois” concept. As the newspaper Kuangming Jihpao wrote on December 3, 1965, humanism has now "become a form of consciousness that is thoroughly reactionary”. Humanism, the newspaper declared, is “ incompatible” with the class struggle of the proletariat now being waged in accordance with the "thought of Chairman Mao”. The adventurist intrigues of the Maoists are indeed incompatible with Marxist socialist humanism. They have distorted the communist ideal, which is inconceivable without its genuinely humanistic content. The Maoists have no use for humanism, describing it as a "postulate of revisionism" and, under the guise of fighting revisionism, are hitting the vital interests of the people and fanning anti-Sovietism. "In production we must strive for high indices, and in living standards we must maintain a low level"—this utterance of Mao Tse-tung eloquently illustrates the anti-humanistic aspects of his ideal of primitive, egalitarian “communism”’. One of the charges levelled at Deputy Prime Minister Tao Chu was that he was reported as saying that "the purpose of the revolution is to ensure a happy life for the people”. It is not surprising, therefore, that the 9th Congress of the CPC did not consider economic problems, the ways and means of 105 putting an end to China’s economic backwardness and alleviating the difficult material condition of the people. In the anti-Soviet and nationalist, Great-Power clamour at the Congress, even the third five-year plan proclaimed three years ago was “forgotten”.

p Mao Tse-tung’s Leftist, adventurist thesis that "power grows out of the barrel of a gun" is the foundation for a regime of unending persecution and repressions. This “gun” is aimed not at the foreign or internal bourgeoisie but at the “revisionists” in the Party, the army and cultural institutions, i.e., at the working people. The Maoist theorists sometimes assert that the struggle against “revisionism” (read —destruction of the revolutionary forces and organisations in China) is waged with the aim of building up monolithic “unity” in the country. This understanding of unity, and of the means of achieving it, is one of the most disgusting and sinister aspects of fanatical political jockeying that has blossomed in the atmosphere created by the petty-bourgeois adventurist, pseudo-socialist and nationalistic preachings of Maoism.

p The fact that this sort of “unity” has nothing in common with scientific socialism was noted by Marx when he denounced the petty-bourgeois adventurist ideas propounded by Bakunin: "Unity of thought and action is vital to the success of the revolution. The members of the International are trying to create this unity through propaganda, discussion and the open organisation of the proletariat—but to Bakunin’s way of thinking all that is wanted is a secret organisation of hundreds of people, of the privileged representatives of the revolutionary idea kept in the reserve of a selfappointed General Staff permanently under the command of ’Citizen B.’ Here unity of thought and action means nothing but dogmatism and blind obedience. .. . We are confronted with a veritable Jesuit Order.”  [105•* 

p The Maoists regard unbridled violence as the panacea for all ills. Violence is used not only against enemies but also against the working people, against all opponents and even against people only suspected of independent thinking. Efforts are being made to confine the spiritual world of every Chinese to the utterances of the "great helmsman" and 106 to use this unified, primitive “ideology” to regulate man’s behaviour—from the workbench to the most intimate aspects of everyday and private life. Under the slogan of " integrating industry, agriculture and military science”, the Maoists are forcing the workers to engage, in addition to their own work, in agriculture and undergo military training under the supervision of army officers. The Chinese has to devote every free minute to the memorising of quotations from the works of Mao Tse-tung. Every morning the workers are obliged to stand before a portrait of Mao Tse-tung and ask for inspiring “instructions”, and in the evenings they are expected to give an account of their day’s activities. This is designed to achieve an "ideological stunting" of the people and play the role of preventive moral and psychological terror. This kind of terror is supplemented with real, physical terror: the country is dotted with “re-education” and concentration camps; the people, as in the black days of mediaeval times, are offered unending spectacles of public executions, beatings and indignities. On orders from Mao Tsetung the whole population has undergone "psychological reeducation”. In the towns the inhabitants have been divided into small groups of about 10 families, a security officer being appointed to each group. Every adult has to write a detailed account of his past activities, state his attitude to Mao Tsetung’s policies and so on. The members of these groups are forced to inform against each other.

p Founded on the fallacious notion that violence cures all ills, the political practices of the petty-bourgeois adventurist Mao group are anti-humane and menace the lives of many people. They have their own sinister logic—as time passes these practices are carried beyond the direct aims pursued by violence. This is strikingly demonstrated by the "cultural revolution”. Its victims were not only adversaries to the regime and revolutionary cadres. Persecution was spread to persons who unquestionably regarded themselves “loyal” to Mao Tse-tung. Very indicative in this respect is that from 1949 onwards (i.e., from the moment the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed) the number of persons physically destroyed, instead of decreasing (as might have been expected in a country where socialist construction was proceeding successfully and state power was in the hands of the workers and peasants), showed a steady and considerable 107 increase. Characteristically, the 9th Congress of the CPC, held in April 1969, proclaimed the beginning of a campaign under the slogan “struggle—criticism—transformation”, which signifies an intensification of repressions in the country. Violence is thus moving beyond its initial, specifically political objectives and acquires the nature of "permanent, intimidating pressure on the population. The Mao group needs this atmosphere of suspicion, fear and uncertainty of the morrow—resulting from such “preventive” violence (violence for the sake of violence)—in order to consolidate its rule. In this atmosphere, naturally, all norms of genuine socialist morals are superseded by substitute norms of slavish obedience and blind expectation of new initiatives and instructions "from above”.

p Having supplanted Marxism-Leninism by the "thought of Mao Tse-tung”, the Maoists are trying to turn various theoretical propositions into instruments of crude political demagogy: “justification” for any arbitrary, even the most injurious, anti-socialist political act of Mao Tse-tung is at once “found” in tailored quotations from the classics of MarxismLeninism.

p The monopoly of “thought” seized by Mao Tse-tung and his closest associates allows them to use mass media to declare true today what was rejected yesterday, and vice versa. Even individual Marxist propositions, which the Maoists always use out of context, are turned into dead dogmas, lifeless phrases or a collection of words, and utilised for political purposes. Rank-and-file “theorists” of Maoism have become priests of the Mao cult and repeat his utterances parrot-fashion. It is becoming dangerous not only to speak and write in any way other than Mao Tse-tung’s but even to think independently. Divorced from their real meaning and from the creative spirit of Marxist theory, vulgarised and twisted by the Maoists, individual Marxist propositions have been turned into symbolic “labels”—quotations, which may be tagged on to anything. For instance, the thesis of "converting the ideal into the real" was used to justify the outrages perpetrated by the hungweipings; the assault on the people’s standard of living was justified by the slogan of the “primacy” of politics over the economy; the demand that the old (bourgeois) state machine be destroyed served as the justification for smashing constitutional state organs; divisive 108 activities, provocations and intrigues in the international communist movement are justified by a distorted version of the dialectical proposition on the "split entity”, and so on. When various propositions of Marxist theory are used to disguise the actions of ambitious politicians, they cannot help but lose their meaning even in cases when they are reproduced word for word. It is also noteworthy that along with the process of emasculating Marxist theory, the conversion of its various propositions into an incoherent set of demagogic labels is formalised, the propositions themselves are divested of their true meaning and the norms of socialist morals are dropped. The propositions are used as a sort of drug to inculcate blind faith in the "great helmsman”, a drug that works automatically. The only moral “criterion” is that everything that comes "from above"—from Mao Tse-tung and his entourage—is morally sound and unquestionably brilliant.

p The primitive authoritarian moral of blind obedience is entirely at variance with communist morality, with the moral development of the individual moulded in the process of communist construction in line with the principles of Marxist humanism.

p The actions and “theories” of Maoism thus have their own “logic” and their own “sequence”. This is the “logic” of adventurist deviations from Marxism-Leninism, of degeneration, of distortions of the theory and practice of communism. This is the “logic” of Maoism as a socio-political and ideological phenomenon of our century and it has been crowned with the emergence of a military-bureaucratic regime, which is essentially anti-socialist, counter- revolutionary in domestic policy, and chauvinistic in foreign policy, a regime that has abandoned the principles of communist humanism in order to pursue a policy of Machiavellian adventurism.

Filosofskiye nauki, No. 4, 1969, pp. 14-22