Mao on Dialectics versus Stalin on Dialectics
Top: Cover of ‘Red Front’ September 1977 – organ of the Marxist Leninist Organisation of Britain; designed by and created – we think – by Maureen Scott. See also “Theses on Socialist Art” Alliance ML
Mao on Dialectics versus Stalin on Dialectics
Introduction 28 March 2025
by Hari Kumar
We announced recently the publication in book form of a detailed analysis of Mao Tse-tung (in Wade-Giles or pinyin Mao Ze Dong) by W.B.Bland MLRG.online This printing is of the 1997 second version. However this was not the first edition. That was in 1968 when he was asked to investigate the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” launched by Mao. Bland wrote the 1968 version for the Marxist Leninist Organisation of Britain (MLOB) – the first Report. This is to be found at the Marxist Internet Archive (MIA Bland 1968). It demarcated – certainly in Britain – the lines of the pro-Albanian Party of Labour (PLA) Marxist-Leninists and the pro-Mao Marxist-Leninists. This history will be reviewed shortly. We will shortly publish Volume 1A of “Selected Works of W.B.Bland” which will contain ancillary materials on the exposure of Mao Ze Dong. Bland also did an extensive, separate book – analysing ‘The Thought of Mao Tse-tung”. We will be publishing this at MLRG.online in the next few months. In the meantime we believe the following material is of interest.
This additional material comes from an issue of Red Front – the organ of the MLOB – as shown above. That issue contains several pieces. It was placed on the MIA at: September 1977 Red Front. In the form contained there, it is quite difficult to read. We decided its material remains of interest and we have therefore transcribed it.
We here only focus on the matters directly to do with “Mao Tse tung Thought” and Mao’s theory of contradictions. There are therefore two articles below, from that issue of the MLOB.
As was the practice of the MLOB, none of them are signed by an individual – but are from the collective authorship of the MLOB leading cadre. The two articles we present below are:
Firstly an article entitled “The Mystique of Mao Tse Tung Thought”;
and secondly the Appendix Two, titled “Appendix One: Stalin’s “Dialectical and Historical Materialism”.
Brief editorial notes to “The Mystique of Mao Tse-tung”.
There are clear indications that this was not the sole work of one author but a collective work. This author believes that Maureen Scott – the noted British Socialist Realist artist – had a major hand in this piece. For example the reference to the great artist Käthe Kollwitz, would indicate this to us. But signs of the hands of Mike Baker, and that of Bill Bland are also visible. The style can be readily seen as not the usual Bland ‘crisp’ and clipped style.
Notwithstanding, it is a very pertinent analysis of the “dialectical” obfuscations of Mao. In placing the central role of the national bourgeoisie as being somehow “pro-socialist”, Mao tried to justify his revision of Marxism-Leninism. To effect this he invokes a “non-antagonistic contradiction amongst the people” – that allow the national bourgeoisie and working class and peasantry to jointly “struggle for socialism”. The MLOB article puts this well.
We have not addressed-altered one major error that is contained in this article. This is to simply reproduce the error made by Bland in his original 1968 version. Namely that of incorrectly identifying “The developing Marxist-Leninist section in the CPC and its leadership” with the faction of capitalists that was led by Liu Shao-chi and Peng Chen. Bland corrected this error in the 1997 version, as contained in the 2025 book form (MLRG.online).
Nor do we here address the assertion concerning Chou Yang (Zhou Yang) that:
“it is important to note the illuminating and highly educative controversy which took place in the PRC during the Spring
and summer of 1965 between Chou Yang, chief spokesman of the Liu Shao-chi -Peng Chen leadership on questions of theory and Marxist-Leninist philosophy and representatives of the revisionist faction headed by Mao Tse-tung. The high point of this revealing debate was the publication by Chou Yang of his speech “Fighting Tasks in the Field of Philosophy and the Social Sciences”.
(See in this article republished, as below section “4. The Development of Dialectical Materialism in the PRC – 1959-65”.
We intend to deal more fully with this episode separately.
Neither of these matters affects the main analysis in this article.
Note that the first article from the MLOB 1977, has been considerably edited from the original version as on the MIA site. This was purely for clarity, and readability. This required some phrase shortening; in addition paragraphing was introduced; no substantive content was altered; a few passages were deleted for ‘digression’; a very few additional emphases were added, but these are not notated as being made in 2025. These can all be cross-referenced against the original at the MIA site (Ibid).
Brief editorial notes to “Appendix One: Stalin’s “Dialectical and Historical Materialism”.
To us, this appears to be the primary workload of Bland. In any case – regardless of the authorship, it is a succinct summary highlighting the key pertinent differences on dialectics to Mao’s views.
THE MYSTIQUE OF ” MAO TSE – TUNG THOUGHT” (From Red Front MLOB, September 1977)
- THE RESOLUTION OF CONTRADICTIONS AS THE KERNEL OF MAOIST PHILOSOPHY
A fundamental component of the philosophical system known as “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung”, an absolutely essential feature of its world outlook and the basic method by means of which it cognises the world – is the philosophical method of the resolution of contradictions.
This philosophical basis is typified by, for instance, the theory of “national unity of the national bourgeoisie with the working class and poor peasantry in the building of socialism”, a classic formula for the “harmony of labour and capital” indeed, in which such contradictions are allegedly “resolved” in the teeth of their inherent antagonism.
From this ‘original sin’ of Maoism flow a number of liberal-democratic panacea, all of them, as we shall see, characteristic of that fundamental mechanical determinist world view which is summed up in the concept of “the peaceful resolution of contradictions”, and which is so typical a foundation of the
philosophy of a bourgeois class during its revolutionary phase, the phase of its birth and early development:
“In our country the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie is a contradiction among the people. . . This is because of the
dual character (sic – Ed.) of the national bourgeoisie in our country. . . The contradiction between exploiter and exploited, which exists between the
national bourgeoisie and the working class, is an antagonistic one. But in the concrete conditions existing in China, such an antagonistic contradiction, if properly handled, can be transformed into a non-antagonistic one and resolved in a peaceful way.”
Mao Tse-tung: “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People”; Peking; l964; – p.3-4. (Our emphasis).
Just why and for what precise reasons,
“in the concrete conditions existing in China, such an antagonistic contradiction (i.e., between the working class and the national bourgeoisie- Ed.) can be transformed into a non-antagonistic one and resolved in a peaceful way”
(p.3-4)
is not made clear at any point in the above or any other of Mao’s writings.
In fact, the crux of the ideological deceit perpetrated in the above quotation lies in the so deceptively unengaging and prosaic “in the concrete conditions existing in China”. It is a well-known characteristic of modern revisionism and its special pleading that it seeks to justify its vulgarisations and distortions of Marxist-Leninist theory, its desertion of revolutionary class-principles, by reference to the “special conditions” prevailing in the given country, which necessitate a unique, nationally distinct road to socialism.
In the case of Mao and his special pleading on behalf of the Chinese national bourgeoisie for its inclusion in the bloc of revolutionary classes, he is not, in fact, able to cite a single characteristic of the Chinese national bourgeoisie which distinguishes it qualitatively from the bourgeoisie of any other colonially subservient and economically underdeveloped country:
“··· the Chinese national bourgeoisie also has another quality, namely, a proneness to conciliation with the enemies of the revolution. . . it is neither willing nor able to overthrow imperialism (unaided?- Ed.). . . in a thorough way.”
(“On New Democracy”; Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung: Vol.II, Peking 1965; p.349).
All this is indicative that, as Mao himself admits:
“. . . When confronted by a formidable enemy, they (i.e. the bourgeoisie – Ed.) united with the workers and peasants against him, but when the workers and peasants awakened, they turned round to unite with the enemy against the workers and peasants. This is a general rule applicable to the bourgeoisie everywhere in the world, but the trait is more pronounced in the Chinese bourgeoisie.”
(ibid. p. 349).
All this relates to the oneness of the Chinese bourgeoisie with the bourgeoisies of other lands, and as such it may be looked upon as so much window-dressing.
When it comes to establishing the special features which distinguish the Chinese bourgeoisie from the bourgeoisies of other, and particularly the developed lands, again Mao falls back on a vague and unsubstantiated generalisation:
“The Chinese national bourgeoisie retains a certain revolutionary quality.”
(Ibid.; p.348).
Absolutely no objective evidence is given to prove that the Chinese national bourgeoisie is any more capable of fulfilling a revolutionary role in the carrying through of the national and democratic tasks than was the Russian bourgeoisie two decades earlier.
In the passage from “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People” quoted above, the deception resorted to is of exactly the same order.
To the national bourgeoisie is attributed a “dual character” consisting on the one side of an economic relationship resting on the exploitation of the working class. The other side in this duality, however, is never indicated, much less defined. However, at least as far as the economic strength of the national bourgeoisie is concerned, the statistics issued by the Government of the People ‘s Republic of China in 1966 show that:
“In 1949 capitalist industry accounted for 63.3% of the gross output value of the country’s industry. In 1950 the total volume of private trades occupied 76.1% of the country’s wholesale and retail trades respectively.”
(Mao Tse-tung: Speech at the Supreme State Conference, January 1956; cited in: Kuan Ta-tung; “The Socialist Transformation of Capitalist Industry and Commerce in China”; Peking; 1966; p. 28-29).
Such are the threadbare ideological devices covering the true class nature of Maoist “New Democracy”. On the panorama of history, the classic simplicity of the French bourgeoisie’s “Liberty; Equality, Fraternity” towers above it.
A basic feature of the Maoist perspective leading up to the achievement of a “socialist” society is therefore cooperation between the working class and the national capitalist class in the building of “socialism” – the outcome in practice, in the real world of classes, of relations between classes and, above all, of the struggle between them, of the application to social life and practice of the method of resolution of contradictions in non-antagonistic way:
“The year 1956 saw the transformation of privately-owned industrial and commercial enterprises into joint state-private enterprises. . . The speed and smoothness with which this was carried out are closely related to the fact that we treated the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie as a contradiction among the people. In building a socialist (Sic- Ed) society, all need remoulding, the exploiters as well as the working people.”
(Mao Tse-tung “On the Correct Handling. . .” ; p. 27). .
The result is a theory in which the clear and incisive analysis and definition of class and of the relations between classes which is characteristic of Marxism is blurred and confused. That in such a way as to produce an inverted view of an imaginary chimerical class of national capitalists which can be induced through “ideological remoulding” – to adopt measures and to agree to social policies which, if they were in reality socialist in character, would quite obviously be in opposition to their class interest. This somehow achieves the peaceful resolution of the contradiction between labour and capital in the joint and non-antagonistic building of “socialism”.
In reality, it is not socialism which is being built, but state capitalism, the real cause of the ineffable and heart-gladdening hush of peace which descends on China just at the moment when those “socialist” construction works are being embarked on. This fact is very much in the interest of the national capitalist class to support this peace since, as with it, the entire surplus value produced by the working class is milked from it by an apparatus of discipline and coercion which is part of the state; and then paid out to the national capitalists as a gilt-edged security. The mechanical-determinist prescriptions of Mao help to bring about class peace between labour and capital:
“on the one hand, numbers of the bourgeoisie have already become managerial personnel in joint state-private enterprises and are being transformed from exploiters into working people living by their own labour. On the other hand, they still receive a fixed rate. of interest on their investments in the joint enterprises. . .”
(Ibid.; p. 28).
“The vast majority of the bourgeoisie and intellectuals who come from the old society are patriotic; they are willing to serve their flourishing socialist motherland . . .”
(ibid.; p. 39)
In the text of “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People” it is stated that:
“the socialist system was basically established in 1956”.
(Ibid p.43).
It is clear, however, that whatever had been established in China in 1956, it did not possess the social characteristics associated with and inseparable from
the successful laying of the economic foundations and political superstructure of a socialist society.
These consist, in their most essential form:
– In the taking firm root of socialist production relations based on ownership and control by the whole working people through their state of at least the predominant part of industry, commerce, banking and trade (together with appropriate transitional forms of quasi-socialist property, such as collective farms, in the case of the peasantry);
– Whilst, as far as the political superstructure is concerned, the essential prerequisite for and component of a socialist society is the completion of the class basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat achieved through the consolidation of the class alliance between the proletariat and the poor peasantry;
-Together with the strengthening of its state apparatus of power – this being the particular form of the dictatorship of the proletariat which is appropriate to the objective conditions prevailing in a country emerging or newly emerged from colonial-type oppression through the intermediate stage of the national-democratic revolution.
As we have seen, the illusion of socialism is necessary to the Chinese national capitalist class in order to disguise the essentially state-capitalist character
of the production relations established through the joint state-private boards.
However, let us take for the moment the illusion of socialist production relations and a socialist economic base at its face value.
Let us see how the chimerical “socialism” achieved in the perspective presented by the “Thought of Mao Tse-tung”, i.e., the process of peaceful, non-antagonistic “remoulding” of the national capitalist class (and, remember, of the workers, for, as we have seen, Mao argues that “all need remoulding, the exploiters as well as the working people”) to accept “socialism” looks – from the point of view of the political superstructure of “New Democracy” and its development. This as provided for in the programme laid down by Mao Tse-tung, in which the formula is as follows:
“The democratic parties of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie. . . exist side by side with the party of the working class. . . Because we have no
reason not to adopt the policy of long-term coexistence with all the democratic (sic – Ed.) parties which are truly devoted to the task of uniting the people for the cause of socialism.”
(ibid.; p. 43)
It will be noted here that, in maintaining that the democratic parties are “truly devoted to. . . the cause of socialism”, Mao is declaring that the national capitalist class – whose political instruments the “democratic ‘parties” are and are intended to be under the New Democratic constitution – play a positive role.
Not merely in the completion of the national-democratic revolutionary tasks (in which revolutionary stage Leninism also recognises that a nascent and oppressed capitalist class of a colonial-type country can make a positive contribution) but also in the socialist revolution.
However, unlike Leninism, Maoism does not recognise the transition from capitalism (in the new form of state capitalism established by the New Democratic Revolution) to “socialism” as being a revolutionary process necessitating the transfer of economic and political power from one class (the national capitalist class and its allies) to another class (the working class and its allies).
On the contrary, Maoism conceives of the transition to socialism as a peaceful, gradual and harmonious development, i.e., merely as quantitative change, which can be brought about purely by technological development and “political engineering” (“the correct handling of contradictions. . . “). No role whatever is played in this process by the class struggle waged by the working class and poor peasantry or its qualitative outcome in revolution, socialist revolution led by the working class against the capitalist class.
Hence the national capitalist class, according to “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung”, is able to grow peacefully from capitalism into socialism. And from this it is contended that the political parties representing the interests of that national capitalist class can become “truly devoted to the task of uniting the people for the cause of socialism” forming a leap from “quantity” (mere “long-term coexistence”) to “quality”. (“devotion to the cause of socialism”).
This, unlike the genuine dialectical leap from a capitalist society to a socialist society taking place in the real world of classes, class struggle
and revolution, is fully encompassed in the system of the “Thought of Mao Tse-tung”.
2. ON “CORRECT HANDLING” – AN EMPIRICAL SUBSTITUTE FOR DIALECTICAL REASONING IN THE “THOUGHT OF
MAO TSE-TUNG”
We have already dealt with the fundamental aspect of “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” as it relates to the basic class role of the national bourgeoisie. But it
is in the course of “correctly handling” those class relationships that the more immediately transparent and anti-Marxist manifestations of “The Thought” come to light.
This reveals a basic lack of comprehension of the fact that capitalism and socialism are, according to Marxism-Leninism – or, for that matter, and to the extent that their own pragmatic world view permits it, according to the representatives of the capitalist system – locked in a life and death struggle on a world scale.
This is revealed in what has come to be recognised as the clearest and most definitive statement summing up the revisionist content underlying the entire opus of Mao Tse-tung: “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People”. This work also reveals in its clearest form the view that the contradiction between the capitalist class and the working class, between capital and labour, can be “resolved” peacefully within an eclectic framework of “people’s democratic dictatorship”.
This qualitative break with Marxism-Leninism is revealed in the view of class relations adopted by “The Thought”, which sees the national bourgeoisie not as a clearly defined class which, in accordance with dialectical materialist method is characterised according to the relationship it bears to the ownership and control of the means of production, distribution and exchange.
But instead the national bourgeoisie is seen as a class which can become either an ally or an enemy according to the purely subjective criterion of how it is “handled“:
“. . . if it is not properly handled, if, say, we do not follow a policy of uniting, criticising and educating the national bourgeoisie, or if the
national bourgeoisie does not accept this policy, then the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie can turn into an antagonistic contradiction as between ourselves and the enemy.”
(Ibid.; p.4)
However, the ambiguity of this method as a guide to action – even one which claims to be “scientific”- is revealed in the following. These example quotes
show how, amidst the surface turbulence and anarchy of the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” it could happen that even “the closest Comrade-in-Arms and Great Successor” of the Godhead himself could become overnight a “capitalist roader” (i.e. Lin Piao -2025 editor):
“Quite a few people fail to make a clear distinction between these two different types of contradictions – those between ourselves and the enemy
and those among the people – and are prone to confuse the two. It must be admitted that it is sometimes easy to confuse them.”
(Ibid.; p.12)
“As regards the suppression of counter-revolution, the main thing is that we have achieved successes, but mistakes have also been made. There were excesses in some cases and in other cases counterrevolutionaries were overlooked. Our policy is: ‘Counter-revolutionaries must be suppressed whenever they are found, mistakes must be corrected whenever they are discovered. . .”
(Ibid ; p. 20) .
It should be clear that, a clear analysis must be based on the objective phenomena of classes, class relationships and class struggle. That is – not merely on the subjective factor of how they are “handled”. Otherwise it becomes difficult indeed to distinguish between progressive and reactionary, revolutionary and counter-revolutionary class forces. However, China is not a socialist country – and, in fact, in the period prior to the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”, the CPC and the state of the People’s Republic of China never claimed that it was. They defined China as a “new democracy” which, in its turn, was claimed to be “a transitional form on the road towards socialism”.
It is important to be very clear that the pseudo-dialectical effusions about “the suppression of counter-revolutionaries” and “opposing the top party person in authority taking the capitalist road” are merely a means of papering over the cracks in the edifice of ideological deception and political concealment.
The pseudo-dialectics conceal the truth concerning the real social character of the production relations in China and the question as to which class holds political and state power – in the “People’s Democratic Dictatorship”? Cracks and schisms inevitably arise, and arise ever more frequently, as the discrepancy between the capitalist reality of the “joint state-private boards” and the illusion of “socialism” becomes more and more glaring and acute. These tend to reveal the truth about the incipient struggle between capital and labour which lurks always not so far beneath the surface of “new democratic” society in China.
Indeed, it is inevitable that, in China as in all other capitalist-type countries, the antagonism between capital and labour; between the national capitalist class (in alliance with one or other section of the remnant comprador bourgeoisie) and the working class (in alliance with the poor peasantry); should break out into violent conflict. That antagonism enters into the struggle between revolution (i.e., the struggle of the working class and its allies to bring about the transformation of the national democratic revolution into the socialist revolution, of “new democracy” into socialism) – and counter-revolution (i.e., the struggle of the national capitalist class and its allies to maintain the state-capitalist system in being and to strengthen its dictatorship as embodied in its state apparatus of rule).
Just such a period of revolution and counter-revolution was the period of the ”Socialist Cultural Revolution” and its counter-revolutionary aftermath in the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” between 1965 and 1968. These had their origins, however, in earlier struggles and class engagements in the People’s Republic of China. In 1957 a section of the national bourgeoisie whose interests were represented by the “democratic” parties, made the attempt to force their majority class compatriots, who retained their allegiance to Mao Tse-tung and the revisionist CPC, to abandon the facade of “new democracy” and to adopt instead the state formation of an open bourgeois republic. They were suppressed – but Mao used the opportunity to strengthen the system of people’s democratic dictatorship still further. Mao laid down the first tactical moves which were to enable him, 8 years later, to defeat the attempt by the most advanced section, of the working class led by the new Liu Shao-chi-Peng Chen leadership of the CPC to bring about the long-delayed transition to the socialist revolution in China.
Mao used his method of pseudo-dialectical misrepresentation as a means, on the one hand, of drawing false, inconsequential inferences and on the other, of lending an aura of bogus scientific authority to his essentially empirical concept of “people’s democratic dictatorship” – such as here:
“In 1956, small numbers of workers and students in certain places went on strike.”
“We do not approve of disturbances, because contradictions among the people can be resolved with the formula ‘unity-criticism-unity’. . .We believe that our people (who include the national capitalists -Ed.) stand for socialism, that they uphold discipline and are reasonable. . .”
(Ibid.; p.46).
It is, no accident that the “theoretical” armoury of “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” contains no clear analysis of the classes in “new democratic” China which
conforms – or even attempts to conform – with the scientific criteria of Marxism-Leninism and the dialectical-materialist method. Instead, the “Thought”
presents the following eclectic rag-bag of classes and strata – even political parties are lumped together under the same heading:
“The Chinese Communist Party, the democratic parties, democrats not affiliated to any party, intellectuals, industrialists and businessmen, workers, peasants and handicraftsmen.”
(p.51).
In the all-important presentation of the transition to “socialism” in China as a peaceful, harmonious unfolding of historical events as a result of “skilful social engineering”, Mao takes care to devote more than adequate attention in his speeches’ and articles. In “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People”, his definitive statement lays down the strategy and tactics to be pursued by the revisionist CPC on behalf of the national capitalist class. This in the difficult and stormy period following the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 and the subsequent degeneration of the International Communist Movement into opportunism and revisionism. Mao deals with the question of the “voluntary ideological remoulding of the national bourgeoisie to accept socialism”:
“After they have attended study groups for some weeks, many industrialists and businessmen, on returning to their enterprises, find they speak more of a common language with the workers and the representatives of state shareholdings, and so work better together.”
(p.29)
In 1956-7 dissident elements in the national bourgeoisie and the urban petty bourgeoisie – adopted a radical stance vis-a-vis their own class interest. They took it upon themselves to attempt to bring the system of “new democracy” to an end. In 1957 Mao adopted a soothing, conciliatory tone, speaking in terms of “Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom, a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend”, and blaming “excessive bureaucracy”, “commandism” and “authoritarianism” in the CPC for the disturbances, thus letting the real authors, the right-wing of the national bourgeoisie, off the hook.
But by 1958-9, it had become clear that the empirical prescription of “correctly handling” the social and class contradictions of “new democratic” China had proved powerless. It had not prevented the revolutionisation of a sizeable part of the industrial working class and the development of a Marxist-Leninist outlook amidst a section of the leadership of the CPC.
In 1958-9, the working class was mobilising its forces for the qualitative leap towards socialism which was embodied in the aim of expelling the representatives of the national capitalist class from the “new democratic” state and liquidating the democratic parties, Mao adopted a very different stance.
Mao was adept a political quick-change artist as ever was Thiers on the eve of the Paris Commune. He suddenly appears in the guise of the bold innovator of social forms and architect of the most breathtaking leap in production relations ever seen in history: the leap from the semi-feudal backwardness characteristic of China’s countryside straight into communism! He comes forward with his proposal for “people’s communes”, in which the free production relations of communism shall be established at the stroke of a pen! Let that sly rascal Liu cap that one if he can!
It was with this supreme demagogic move of his whole career that Mao and his revisionist group laid the first and essential basis in “left” demagogy. This underlaid the sweeping counter-revolutionary manoeuvres of 1966-68 and perfected the quasi-fascist techniques of the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”. Then in 1966 units of the PLA under the control of the counter-revolutionaries attacked the steel city of Anshan stronghold of Marxism-Leninism and the organised working class in China creating a blood-bath. The pitched battle ensued lasted for many months. This great class battle,
gives the lie to the utopian picture painted in the writings and speeches of Mao Tse-tung of harmonious class relations and a peaceful, harmonious growth into socialism.
For, in China as in every land in which socialism and the democratic dictatorship of the working class has either been attained (as in the Soviet Union) or comes near to attainment, the actual or approaching victory of the revolutionary proletariat has resulted in intense and bitter class struggles, accompanied at times by the most bloody and destructive massacres which have thrown back the tide of proletarian revolution for a period and ended in a new and strengthened form of rule for the capitalist class and its state. So was it in China.
The present all-powerful military bureaucratic state embodying the rule of the national capitalist class in China will compel the ultimately invincible proletariat and poor peasantry of China to reform their ranks. This will then carry through an all-round criticism of the revisionist “Thought of Mao Tse-tung”, and make a profound theoretical analysis of the social and class reality of the People’s Republic of China after the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”. On that basis it will re-establish their vanguard, destroy the rule of the national capitalist class and bring the socialist revolution to final victory.
To sum up, there can be no doubt but that “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” is the ideology reflecting the rule of the national capitalist class of China. It is a prescription for “correctly handling” and resolving the social and class antagonisms underlying and arising out of the rule of capital over the working people and peasantry of China.
In this connection, the simple words of the democratic artist Kathe Kollwitz come to mind, who said “Life is struggle, struggle and always struggle”. She thereby revealed that she had a more profound grasp of the essence of dialectics than had the “great philosopher” Mao Tse-tung. Mao’s made a much-vaunted claim to be “the creative developer of Marxism-Leninism”, the “great dialectician”, the “Lenin of our era”, and so on. In spite of this, he was unable to comprehend that the essence and motive force of all development and change in nature, society and human thought is contradiction and struggle, not resolution and harmony.
This claim on the part of “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” to be “the Great Continuator of Marxism-Leninism” and the “Lenin of our Era” stands in clear contradiction to Stalin’s exposition of the dialectical method. “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” stands for “the harmonious resolution of contradictions”:
“We must continue to resolve such contradictions in the light of the specific Conditions. . . Contradictions arise continually and are continually resolved; this is the dialectical law of the development of things.”
(Ibid.; p. 16-17) (Our emphases -Ed.);
“Progress and difficulties – this is a contradiction. However, all contradictions not only should, but can be resolved.”
(Ibid.; p. 34) (Our emphasis- Ed.);
“Every contradiction is an objective reality, and it is our task to understand it and resolve it as correctly as we can.”
(Ibid.; p. 54) (Our emphasis- Ed.)
Stalin, in contradistinction to this, upholds the dialectical materialist view which is the diametrical opposite to that of Mao Tse-tung:
“The dialectical method therefore holds that the process of development from the lower to the higher takes place not as a harmonious unfolding of phenomena but as a disclosure of the contradictions inherent in things and phenomena, as a ‘struggle’ of opposite tendencies which operate on the
basis of these contradictions.”
( J. V. Stalin , “Dialectical and Historical Materialism”, FLPH Moscow 1938; p . 717) (Our emphasis- Ed.).
Our critical examination therefore begins with a comparison of the utopianism and metaphysical inversion underlying “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” – with the objectively verifiable scientific method, the generalised essence of scientific practice, which is dialectical materialism. The latter is the scientific philosophy of the revolutionary proletariat and its vanguard and the foundation of Marxism-Leninism.
This comparison should lay bare the essential distortion which exists, behind all the pseudo-dialectical sophistry and phrasemongering.
The world view and philosophical method which cognises all development and change as arising out of the synthesis of contradictions through the emergence of a new quality at a higher level – is the philosophical method of dialectical materialism.
In contrast is “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” which cognises development and change as the mechanical and quantitative resolution, or merging, of contradictions at a given level, thereby emasculating the very contradictions it attempts to cognise by stripping them of their essential contradictoriness, their mutual opposition and antagonism.
We shall see further, that “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung”- is but a variant – a highly sophisticated and tactically concealed one, it is true – of
bourgeois metaphysical philosophy. More specifically, we shall see that, in its system, or world view, it is a variant of bourgeois idealism, whilst in
its method, in its theory, it is a variant of bourgeois mechanical materialism, or determinism .
3. DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM: THE QUESTION OF CONTRADICTION AND RESOLUTION
One thread lies at the heart of materialist dialectics: that is, that in the division of unity and the cognition of its contradictory parts lie the fundamental
feature of dialectics – indeed, “the essence of dialectics” (Lenin):
“The unity of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and action are absolute.”
(Lenin).
Thus the fundamental and continuous process in change is the struggle between opposites. Engels speaks of the “resolution of the contradiction, to a radical qualitative change of the thing.”
We see from this, however, that there can be no question of this resolution taking place without a qualitative leap into a new entity. For instance, it is not possible for the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie to be resolved through harmonious, contradictionless and fundamentally eclectic merging of the one with the other. Such a concept of “development” has nothing at all to do with real development in a real world, which unfolds through the qualitative supercession of the old quality in its entirety by a new quality through a leap to a higher level.
As is true of any society, the dialectics of the development of Chinese society in the leap to a socialist society must, by a similar process of revolutionary change, negate the national bourgeoisie as a class. Marx wrote that “No development that does not negate its previous forms of existence can occur in any sphere.”
And so it is that there can be no process of change through the conflict of opposites within an entity without such process leading to and reaching its final outcome in a leap from quantity into quality. Change of quantity is still change within and inherent to the old quality. Whereas change of quality is the negation of the old quality and the synthesis of the contradictions within it into a new quality – a new quality. That new quality, from the moment of its birth, will contain within it a new fundamental contradiction, and a new structure of subsidiary contradictions dependent upon that fundamental contradiction. Through that a new process of dialectical change will move through which these levels of contradiction in their totality.
The “Thought of Mao Tse-tung”, mechanistically merges these two distinct stages of the dialectical process – quantity and quality, quantitative and qualitative change – into one another. This represents the occurrence of a mere change of quantity – the secondary, finite and limited aspect of change – as if it is a change of quality, a leap into a new quality, had taken place. And, conversely, qualitative change – the fundamental and primary aspect of change, its revolutionary essence – is effectively disguised behind the veil of a mere change of quantity.
In this way “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” postulates the harmonious coexistence and development of contradictions in a metaphysical relationship. In this, change is conceived as a change of form pure and simple; as a mere surface rearrangement of the fundamental elements of the universe which in themselves are eternal and changeless – by means of a mechanical-determinist system. This is fundamentally related to the old mechanical-materialist philosophy of the French Enlightenment whilst lacking any of the latter’s wit or its trenchant criticism of the old society and its relations.
In the case of Mao Tse-tung and his “Thought”, these metaphysical elements take on the more specific and tangible form of the fundamental classes comprising Chinese society. This relationship in reality is one of unremitting and irreconcilable struggle. As in any other capitalist nation-state, these struggles will lead to the qualitative supercession of the old capitalist society through the qualitative leap made by the victorious socialist revolution.
But “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” presents this process as a smooth, contradictionless and harmonious progression or unfolding of successive phenomena. In this the developmental distinction between quantity and quality is obliterated. This “transformation” smacks more of the old stageless, mystical metamorphoses so beloved of the transcendalists – than it does of any materially based developmental changes. The latter are brought about by the conflict of real opposed forces comprising a real sphere of opposites in the real world of man, society and the natural universe.
The metaphysical connotations attaching in the popular imagination to the otherwise simple word “transformation” are thus used in “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” to construct a process of “change” which appears on the surface to bear all the hallmarks of a profound and deep-seated dialectical progression. But upon closer critical examination, these bear a purely semantic or associative significance to change.
For instance, according to “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung”, the working class, in being “transformed” from the oppressed and exploited into the ruling class as a consequence of the victory of the socialist revolution, is presented by Mao as an example of “the two poles in a contradiction reversing their positions and changing places.”
The impression is created, almost spontaneously and unnoticeably, that nothing much has really changed – only the two chief dramatis personae on the stage of capitalism have “swopped roles”. The reality of dialectical development and change, whereby the two fundamental poles, bourgeoisie and proletariat, thesis and anti-thesis, are both qualitatively superseded in the new classless quality of communism, the synthesis of the totality of contradictions underlying capitalism, is obscured behind a sweeping historical generalisation which, through its very vagueness and formlessness, attains to an aura of false profundity.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, were the founders of Communism and the materialist conception of history, of the dialectical materialist method in science and philosophy and the first to place social practice in general and the practice of revolution in particular on a scientific basis. They comprehended with brilliant insight and mastery the dialectics of history in both their generality and their concreteness. They understood full well the fundamental significance of the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the embodiment and essential expression of the leap from capitalism to socialism. It was the qualitative outcome of all the class struggles between bourgeoisie and proletariat throughout the history of capitalism and the highest form of organisation reached by the proletarian-socialist revolution. Indeed its culmination and its essence, was when the victorious proletariat organised itself as the ruling class over its former exploiters and oppressors.
Precisely because they were the first to cognise and master the laws of motion of the transition from capitalism to Communism, they also understood that the qualitative supercession of the fundamental poles of contradiction in capitalist society, bourgeoisie and proletariat, could be attained only in the classless society of communism.
For all these reasons, Marx and Engels, like Lenin after them, saw the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat as occupying an entire historical epoch, the epoch of the transition from capitalism to communism. They understood the stage it occupied within the total process of dialectical change from capitalism to communism as being the negation of the old quality, capitalism through the emergence or birth of the new quality, socialism or the lower stage of communism). They understood that, upon the completion of the proletarian-socialist revolution the working class becomes the ruling class and thereby exchanges its social and class role with that of the defeated capitalist class. But they argued the outcome of the whole subsequent development of socialist society up to the dawn of communism ends in the negation of the rule of the working class, the negation of its revolutionary negation of capitalist society. In that act through it thereby abolishes itself as a class, and hence as a ruling class, by building of communism.
These are the profound dialectics of the epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of the transition from capitalism to communism, which “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” not only obscures but fundamentally misrepresents by vulgarising it to the level of mechanical determinism.
The total process of dialectical development and change goes through various stages. There is an initial stage of quantitative change within the old quality occurring because of the conflict of the opposite poles of force inherent to it. But that conflict reaches a point of intensity at which the framework of the old quality could contain it no longer and it has of necessity to burst asunder, thereby enabling the new quality to emerge. Final negation of the old quality through the first emergence of the new quality – is a revolutionary birth, its leap into being and into a new.
This is followed by the stage in which the new quality (here the newly born capitalist society) develops and consolidates itself, coming towards its full maturity in communist society. It is with this stage that our examination of the dialectics of the transition from capitalism through to full communism must next be concerned.
The sphere of contradiction in which the most fundamental and formative processes of change in society take place is the sphere of the production relations, the economic base. This is as true of the developing socialist society as it is of any of the class-divided societies preceding it. Society will grow through the lower stages of communism i.e. socialism. The latter is characterised by the continued prevalence, though on an ever-diminishing scale, of commodity relations, the operation of the law of value and bourgeois right as the regulators governing the exchange of commodities and the distribution of social wealth between individual producers. So the new society still has adhering to its body the birthmarks inherited from the old quality, capitalism. Socialism, prevails right up to the consolidation of fully mature and developed communist relations. Now under communism the relations of free producers and consumers interact with one another without the intervention of the law of value and bourgeois right, and all capitalist birthmarks have disappeared.
The essential content of this second stage in the dialectical development of the new quality – socialism developing-into-communism – is the negation of socialism’s earlier negation of capitalism. This results from the growth of socialism into its higher, and fully developed stage, communism. This sees the unfolding and full development of all the essential and organic features of the classless society, the society of fully conscious producers freely associating in the utilisation of means of production held (the word “owned” would no longer be apposite) in common.
It is this final and most profound stage in the total process of dialectical change, the stage of the negation of the negation of the old quality through the full development of the new quality which “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” denies. Mao replaces it with a superficial, essentially undevelopmental, ahistorical and, at root, profoundly undialectical “reversal of poles”, which is then presented, not as a stage in the “dialectical” development towards the fully formed new quality, but as itself the end-product of a “process” which is essentially mechanical, not dialectical.
In its epistemology, its theory of knowledge, this particularly subtle form of the disembowelment of the dialectical materialist method is not confined to “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung”. Indeed, it is to be found in most of the treatises on “dialectical materialism” prepared by the modern revisionist falsifiers of Marxism-Leninism and materialist dialectics, whether of the right, the ultra-right or the “left” revisionist stables.
But it is to “The Thought” that we must turn for the most classic and formative statement of the new mechanical-determinist philosophy, the philosophy of the new bourgeoisies of the developing and emerging countries.
It is the classic exposition giving us the clearest insight into the inverted ideological motivations underlying it. As such, it is the most typical and concentrated expression in vulgar philosophy, of the world view of the bourgeoisie at this new stage in the development of capitalism. Namely the new stage of corporate-state monopoly capitalism or its equivalent in the newly-emerged countries: bureaucratic state capitalism. Of these, the latter is increasingly revealing itself throughout the peripheral regions of the capitalist world market. In the previous stage, these saw imperialism and state-monopoly capitalism of the old type in their last dying. The national bourgeoisie, where it existed at all, had been the colonial-type adjunct of the developed metropolitan countries. The corporate-state monopoly capital form was the most appropriate form of the political and state organisation of the national capitalist classes in the conditions of the crisis of absolute retraction and the increasingly antagonistic mode of operation of the falling rate of profit.
In short, “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” is one – and an extremely important one at that – of the various forms of metaphysical philosophy characteristic of a capitalist mode of production which has its back against the wall of history. It is the philosophy of a bourgeois ruling class which, whether in the developed or the emerging countries, will fight with the ferocity of a wolf-pack. Fight not only against the revolutionary proletariat and its allies in defence of its wealth and its system of exploitation as a whole, but also and in the first place against its class rivals in the desperate struggle for a share in, and if possible control of, the dwindling sources of profit and super-profit.
Thus “The ‘Thought of Mao Tse-tung” is the philosophy of a new national bourgeoisie both at its revolutionary stage, before it has ousted imperialism and gained state power in a united national terrain, and at its post-revolutionary stage. Then its prime concern is the struggle for the acquisition of the social and class terrain which it so desperately needs as a soil on which its new system of capitalism – may grow. As the philosophy of a capitalist class with its fangs bared, it can make headway against the ever more adverse tide of history only by battening down on the proletariat and its allies. In particular by preventing the outbreak and victorious completion of the proletarian-socialist revolution. Its direct equivalent in the philosophy and politics of the developed countries is fascism.
Just as fascism is the counter-revolutionary response of monopoly capitalism to the developing proletarian-socialist revolution, so also does “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” form the disguised counter-revolutionary response of the newly emerged national capitalist class of China in its struggle to prevent the uninterrupted (or, for that matter, interrupted) transition to the proletarian-socialist revolution. The latter is a revolutionary transition which it can only halt by launching a violent, armed counter-revolution against the working class. It is disguised, as was Hitler’s onslaught on the German working class, under the foulest and most rabid pseudo-revolutionary demagogy.
Small wonder, then, that in his characterisation of the false dialectics of the “transition to socialism” (i.e. bureaucratic state capitalism) Mao Tse-tung should be at pains to avoid conveying any sense of the profoundly rich and contradictory content underlying the historical epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the transition from capitalism, not merely to a false “socialism” which, by being stripped of its developmental nexus with its fulfilment and completion, communism, can only be a new and higher form of the one and same mode of production, capitalism, namely, bureaucratic state capitalism, but to a real socialism based on and reflecting the precept “from each according to his ability, to each according to his work”.
4. THE DEVELOPMENT OF DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA – 1959-65
In the context of the distortions and one-sidedness wrought upon the living body of Marxist-Leninist theory and dialectical materialist philosophy by the revisionist “Thought of Mao Tse-tung”, it is important to note the illuminating and highly educative controversy which took place in the PRC during the Spring and summer of 1965 between Chou Yang, chief spokesman of the Liu Shao-chi – Peng Chen leadership on questions of theory and Marxist-Leninist philosophy and representatives of the revisionist faction headed by Mao Tse-tung. The high point of this revealing debate was the publication by Chou Yang of his speech “Fighting Tasks in the Field of Philosophy and the Social Sciences”.
In this work, Chou Yang was concerned to demonstrate that dialectical development and change proceeded from the division of an entity or quality into its contradictory parts, and not from the quantitative merging, or combination, of two entities with one another. He showed that when, the class-divided society of capitalism is ultimately superseded qualitatively by the unified, classless society of communism, this is not the result of the two opposed classes under capitalism, proletariat and bourgeoisie, combining together to form one. But it is the birth of a qualitatively new entity, communist society, in which both poles of the old capitalist society, bourgeoisie and proletariat, are not merged into one another, but qualitatively overcome and their existence brought to an end through the supercession of the very society, capitalism, of which they were a part.
To make his thoroughly scientific point as clear as possible, Chou coined the expressive phrase “One divides into two, two never combines into one”. That this struggle in the field of philosophy should have been taking place at that time reveals not only the absolutely primary importance of the battle of ideas in all social development and class struggle, but also that, more specifically, the comrades grouped around the Liu Shao-chi-Peng Chen leadership were already at that stage, i.e. early in the development of the Socialist Cultural Revolution, having to take up positions of active struggle against the Mao faction and its revisionist, anti-Marxist-Leninist ideas and policies. Needless to say, after the defeat of the working class and socialist forces at the hands of the counter-revolutionary “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”, Chou was hounded out of open political and party life – if, indeed, an even worse fate has not befallen him – and his books banned and destroyed.
MATERIALIST DIALECTICS OR METAPHYSICS ?
One of the ideologues of Maoism, Professor George Thompson, in an article entitled “On Contradiction” published in “The Broadsheet”, organ of the China Policy Study Group (a group of bourgeois academics and professionals attached to the Maoist “cultural” front, The Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding), unwittingly reveals the fundamental deception which underlies “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung”. Thompson writes:
“In general, as (Mac Tse-tung) explains, the economic basis is the principal aspect of the contradiction in the movement of society, as opposed to the
ideological superstructure, which is the non-principal aspect; but in certain conditions the non-principal aspect of a contradiction may be transformed. into the principal aspect, just as a non-antagonistic contradiction, if incorrectly handled, may become antagonistic.”
(G. Thompson: “On Contradiction, published in “The Broadsheet”; London; 1965)
A feature of this passage – one which immediately impinges itself upon the critical awareness of any reader acquainted with the fundamental principles of dialectical materialism – is the usage of the word “aspect”. The Oxford Dictionary defines the meaning of this word as follows:
“The way a thing presents itself to eye or mind; look; expression”.
Prof. Thompson, chooses a word with so heavy a subjective bias in its meaning. He seeks to secure a justification of “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung”, and gain the advantage to manoeuvre freely. It is after all a tactically quite complex and risky business to falsify and distort materialist dialectics in order to eulogise.
In the real world, all contradictions are a “pure” contradiction. Using an example of a simple, single sphere the contradiction can be said to comprise two opposite poles of force. Yet Mao makes a complex sphere of contradiction, not by invoking a main sphere of contradiction and a number of subsidiary contradictions. Instead he makes suitably vague “aspects”. These differ from one another according to how they present themselves to an external force that impinges on that sphere of contradiction or organism. That includes how they present themselves to the “eye” – i.e., to the subject. This in effect, succeeds in the task of smuggling in subjective idealism under the guise of outlining a materially based dialectical process.
This skeleton key gives access to the Caligari’s Cabinet of “theoretical” confidence tricks which is “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung”. It is then possible to transform any quality into its opposite, smoothly, harmoniously and peacefully. This without any reference to the relationship of this bogus “contradiction” to the total process of dialectical change. That overall process underlies the laws of motion and development of real organisms moving and having their being in the real world. Instead Mao only refers to an “aspect” of the “contradiction”.
The subject – in the case under consideration – is the Chinese national capitalist class as represented by the revisionist leadership of the CPC headed by Mao Tse-tung. There is an opposite side of the coin existing in unity with this subjective idealism.
Having once chosen which “aspect” of a contradiction is to be the “principal” and which the “non-principal” one, that “aspect” can then be allowed to impinge itself directly upon the development in question. This then determines the outcome in a mechanical way to ensure that it is “correctly handled” – that is in the interests of the national capitalist class.
The willing acolyte, Prof. Thompson chose the subjective term “aspect” in order to illustrate the component parts of a contradiction. But he did not lay the methodological basis for the entire metaphysical system for “correctly handling” the class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie under the conditions of “new democracy”.
It is to the Grand Puppet master himself that we must return. This allows us to unravel the pseudo-dialectical phraseology which forms its tactical cover from the metaphysical content which lies behind it. Let us, take another and closer look at this matter of the “aspect” of a contradiction:
“In our country, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie is a contradiction among the people. The class struggle waged between the two is, by and large, a class struggle within the ranks of the people. This is because of the dual character of the national bourgeoisie in our country. . . In the period of the socialist revolution, exploitation of the working class to make profits is one side (or “aspect” – Ed.), whilst support of the Constitution and willingness to accept socialist transformation is the other. The national bourgeoisie differs from the imperialists, the landlords and the bureaucrat-capitalists. The contradiction between exploiter and exploited which exists between the national bourgeoisie and the working class is on antagonistic one. But, in the concrete conditions existing in China, such an antagonistic contradiction can be transformed into a non- antagonistic one and resolved in a peaceful way.”
(Mao Tse- tung: “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People”; p.3-4) (Our emphases – Ed. ).
We isolate the main aim which Mao Tse-tung is pursuing. First the passage is about the relation of the national capitalist class (or national bourgeoisie) to the working class. It soon becomes clear that Mao is seeking to demonstrate that the contradiction between the working class and the national capitalist class, if “properly handled” can be “transformed” into a non-antagonistic contradiction and resolved peacefully.
The motive behind this aim is, of course, that of creating a “theoretical” justification for including the national capitalist class in the bloc of classes which allegedly exercises joint dictatorship within the framework of “new democracy”. Without this justification the presence of representatives of the national capitalist class in the state would have had no legality in a “Marxism-Leninism” that was distorted and falsified by modern revisionism, and the system of “new democracy” would be considerably weakened.
The developing Marxist-Leninist section in the CPC and its leadership, led by Liu Shao-chi and Peng Chen – had challenged Mao in the People’s Republic of China over the period of approximately one year between 1956 and 1957. This made the delivery of the speech “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People” a tactically vital necessity for the national capitalist class at that precise historical juncture and in the situation then prevailing in China.
The next stage in the Mao’s argument to examine, is the method by which he gives credence and the semblance of a material basis to his contention. Namely that the contradiction between the national capitalist class and the working class can be resolved peacefully, that it is a contradiction “within the ranks of the people”.
Mao here moves into realms which lie very close to that borderline at which the distinction between materialist dialectics and metaphysics. So he must move cautiously. He carries that judicious combination of astuteness with supreme confidence and simplicity which is the hallmark of the practised politician whose own self-confidence (or semblance of it) generates confidence in others.
To achieve this, Mao proceeds from the knowledge that, in the state of popular understanding concerning dialectical materialism and its method, an organism is seen to consist of two parts which are in some way opposed to one another. This perception may or may not – reach as far as an understanding that those two parts are, in fact, contradictory and opposite poles which confront one another in a unity of opposites. But, as an experienced politician, he knows that, by and large most people do not have that understanding. So he can be fairly confident that, if he refers vaguely to the national capitalist class having two sides (or aspects), this will be associated in the popular mind with the two fundamental poles of contradiction which in reality comprise the motive force underlying the movement and development of an organism. Mao can be confident that this tactic (which is what it really is) will lend to his statement an aura of “dialectical” profundity, even the appearance of a bogus “science”.
So the grounds on which Mao claims that the national capitalist class can have its contradiction with the working class resolved non-antagonistically and so grow peacefully into “socialism” is that it has a “dual character”, “two sides” – which are vaguely different or even opposite to one another. On the one hand it exploits the working class to make profits, and on the other that it “supports the Constitution” and is willing to accept and work for socialism.
When, in its turn, it comes to providing a “theoretical” justification or precedent for this “dual character”, however, Mao’s tactical ingenuity, if not exactly exhausted, can find no plausible peg on which to hang his special pleading. He has to then argue vaguely that it derives from “the concrete conditions existing in China” – thereby, incidentally, creating a model excuse in “special national features and conditions” which has been used as a pretext and a cover for the abandonment of Marxist-Leninist principle by modern revisionists of every hue ever since.
If, we discard as a mere pretext or tactical cover the vague and unsubstantiated plea of the alleged “concrete conditions existing in China” – we may rest assured that, if they did possess any real or objective validity or were in any way objectively germane to the issue of the alleged “dual character” of the national capitalist class, Mao would have spelt out with his usual crispness and clarity just what those special conditions were.
What objectively based materiality does in fact remain with which to substantiate Mao’s claim that the national capitalist class possesses a “dual character”?
None at all! Not a tittle of objective evidence is provided to back up this contention. Just as no objective evidence is provided to substantiate the related claim about the “revolutionary side” to the character of the national bourgeoisie at the time of the national democratic Revolution. Undoubtedly that would have corresponded to its objective class interest – “in the concrete conditions existing in China”. But was it actually backed up by any active revolutionary role fulfilled by that class in the national-democratic revolutionary war, and that it did not, whilst supporting the revolution in words, prefer – to depend on the working people and poor peasantry to perform the actual deeds of revolutionary struggle on its behalf?
Following then in the best traditions of the London merchants and bankers who backed Cromwell in 1642; of Robespierre and the upholders of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” who screamed their shrill exhortations from well behind the barricades of 1789 and, indeed, of the bourgeoisies of all lands ever since. This point has some importance, because it is on the claim that the national bourgeoisie did in fact possess a “revolutionary” side in its “dual character” that Mao bases his related contention that that same “dual character”, at the later stage of the “socialist” revolution, then expressed itself in the form of “willingness to accept and work for socialism” – i.e. , that its alleged valiant deeds in the national democratic revolution prepared it for support for the socialist revolution.
As the Report of the MLOB on the Situation in the People’s Republic of China (NB: This refers to the 1968 first edition; Ibid; – Editor 2025)
made clear, it is on this figment, this contrived construction, that Mao erects his now notorious argument that the national capitalist class in a colonial-type
country such as China can and does play a revolutionary role, not merely in the national-democratic, but also in the socialist revolution:
Mao begins by saying:
‘We are confronted by two types of social contradictions – contradictions between ourselves and the enemy and contradictions among the people. These two types of contradictions are totally different in nature.”
(Mao Tse-tung: “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People”; Peking; 1964; p.1-2)
In this respect, he says, what constitutes “the people” varies in different
countries, and also in different historical periods within the same country:
“The term ‘the people’ has different meanings in different countries, and in different historical periods in each country.’
(Mao Tse-tung: ibid.; p.2)
He proceeds to analyse what constitutes “the people” during the period of the construction of socialism in China:
“At this stage of building socialism, all classes, strata and social groups – which approve, support and work for the cause of socialist construction – belong to the category of the people.”
(Mao Tse-tung ibid.; p.2).
Then, in opposition to the Marxist-Leninist thesis that the capitalist class represents a social force fundamentally and violently opposed to the building of socialism – Mao puts forward the revisionist thesis that “in the conditions existing in China” the capitalist class forms, during the period of the construction of socialism, a part of “the people”, that is, one of the “classes, strata and social groups which approve. support and work for the cause of socialist construction.”
“During the building of socialism in the conditions existing in China today what we call contradictions among the people include the following: . . . contradictions between the working class and other sections of the working people on the one hand and the national bourgeoisie on the other. . .
In our country, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie is a contradiction among the people.”
(Mao Tse-tung: ibid.; p. 3; Cited (Report of the CC of the MLOB on the Situation in the People’s Republic of China, Red Front, January 1968).
Once unravelled, the involved and devious inversions and convulsions through which this argument passes are powerless to conceal, as Mao hoped, its true content. On the other hand, they give an indication of the great caution with which the Great Puppetmaster grasps the nettle of this, the most revealing of all the “ultimate truths” of modern revisionism. After all, not even the founding father of Soviet modern revisionism – the most important revisionist school, not of the “left” but of the right – Nikita Khrushchev, ever dared go so far as this!
On reading these passages, it is almost as if the supreme engineer in political intrigue and the opportunist manipulation of ideas had ended up by being himself unwittingly caught up in the toils of the very revisionist distortions and misrepresentations. Those that he had hoped would, at one and the same time, serve both the interests of the national capitalist class and his own reputation as “the Lenin of our Era”.
For, behind the twists and evasions of the argument, the words seem to be driven by an inexorable logic of their own. Mao himself is wrestles in vain to restrain them from revealing the truth about his “Thought” too precipitately and in too open a form. For it is indeed here, in this passage, that the life-cycle of revisionist thought and practice, which begins with a spontaneous retreat before and accommodation to the pressure of capitalist ideas, turns full circle and ends. That end is not only in directly and consciously serving the interests of the capitalist class itself, but is unable to prevent the truth of this, its true and most fundamental nature, from emerging into the open.
It is only just and fitting that it should be through the pen of Mao Tse-tung that the foul gorgon’s head of modern revisionism should finally reveal itself in its true colours. For was Mao not an astute and relatively experienced “theorist” and practitioner of modern revisionist ideology and politics at a time when Nikita Khrushchev was still serving his apprenticeship in treachery and concealment under J.V. Stalin?
So we are left with our virgin birth, the ”dual character” of the Chinese national capitalist class. One side of it enables it to “accept and work for socialism”.
It follows that, if Mao can feel free of any responsibility for providing a verifiable parentage for these immaculate Siamese twins, he can also feel free to choose which of the two “sides” in this duality he shall elevate to become the one which is the primary “aspect”. Will he choose “exploiting the working class to make profits” on the one hand, or of “support for the Constitution and willingness to accept socialism” on the other?
In other words on which is policy of the revisionist CPC leadership headed by Mao Tse-tung to be based? Which will it pursue in practice, in the real world of class conflict between the workers and peasants of China?
In their struggle workers wanted to bring about the transformation of the national-democratic revolution into the socialist revolution. In their struggle the national capitalist class of China, wanted to halt and prevent that transformation and to consolidate permanently its rule and its concealed dictatorship over the working class, working people and poor peasantry within the deceptive framework of “new democracy”.
5. THE NEW METAPHYSICS OF HARMONIOUS CONTRADICTIONS AND THEIR NON-ANTAGONISTIC RESOLUTION
So here we come to the philosophical crux of the matter. Mao postulates two “sides” or “aspects” to the character of the national-capitalist class of China.
Of these two, one is objectively based and has a materialism in the real world (the “side” of “exploiting the working class to make profits”).
The other is subjective and has no such objectively based materiality in the real world (the “side” of “supporting the Constitution” and being willing “to accept and work for socialism”).
Of these two however, it is the latter, the purely subjective evaluation, which is stated by Mao to be the dominant or primary “side”, or “aspect” – and hence the one which should and will be taken as the foundation of policy by the revisionist leadership of the CPC then under his command.
What we are left with in the above passage therefore – after we have boiled off all the bogus Marxism and “dialectics” – is an idealist postulate. This takes the form of the subjectively chosen “aspect” in the “dual character” of the national capitalist class – an “aspect” which, as we have seen, rests on the basis of a false premise and which, unlike its “opposite” characteristic, resides in a purely subjective quality. In the course of our examination, it has become crystal clear that this alleged “characteristic” of being “willing to accept and work for socialism” is not a real characteristic at all, but a false and fabricated one which has been juxtaposed side by side with the real one – that of “exploiting the working class to make profits” – in order to lend it an air of false dialectical contradictoriness, and so to conjure up a false “unity of opposites”.
Even more significant, is the “aspect” of the “dual character” of the national capitalist class chosen by Mao Tse-tung to be the dominant one is an aspect not of the contradiction as such between the national capitalist class and the working class, but of only one pole in that contradiction, namely, of the national capitalist class itself.
As such, it is seen to be not a profound dialectical pole of force in a profound dialectical contradiction which can be equally profoundly resolved in a non-antagonistic and peaceful way so that “socialism” can be achieved in China without the mess and inconvenience of a proletarian-socialist revolution, but an a-priori idealist postulate which derives from and resides in a purely subjective idea existing in the realm of thought or mind – namely, that the national capitalist class of China “willingly accepts and works for the cause of socialism”.
As we have seen, of course this “socialism” possesses no greater a materiality than does the postulate of the national capitalist class being willing to accept and work for it, since it is in reality a state-capitalist system based on joint-state private boards (i.e., on a 50% share in capital ownership between the state and each individual capitalist) which it is in the interest of the national capitalist class to support. Hence the metaphysical character of the bogus “dominant aspect” in the “dual character” of the national capitalist class forms, is projected precisely to serve as a foundation. In the form of a subjective idealist postulate, a foundation for an inverted ideological system in and through which the working class, working people and poor peasantry – the exploited and oppressed classes in “new democratic” China – are to be deceived into accepting the dictatorship of their class enemy, the national capitalist class.
This dictatorship is to be exercised against themselves within the deceptive framework of “people’s democratic dictatorship” as if it were the opposite of this. The dictatorship of the working class, working people and poor peasantry in a real socialist society, would be exercised against the class enemies of the working class and its allies – i.e., the national capitalist class, the comprador capitalists, the feudal landlord class and the remnant agencies of foreign imperialism. That is transformed by the revisionist “Thought of Mao Tse-tung” into “The dictatorship of the whole people” and falsely defined by the “theory” of people’s democratic dictatorship to include the national capitalist class, the class enemy of the working class and its allies:
“Who is to exercise this dictatorship? (i.e. people’s democratic dictatorship – Ed.) Naturally, it must be the working class and the entire people led by it.
Dictatorship does not apply in the ranks of the people. The people cannot possibly exercise dictatorship over themselves; nor should one section of them oppress another section.”
(Mao Tse-tung ibid; p.5)
Here we find the true objective cause underlying the subjective predilection of the Great Puppetmaster and his “Thought” for a vulgarised “dialectics”.
It replaces the rich and many-sided material process which is the complex, developmental conflict of opposed forces within a real, complex and developing unity of opposites. As for instance, the struggle between proletariat and national capitalist class in Chinese “new democratic” society – is replaced by a contradictionless “transformation” of opposites into one another. This without an intensifying and ultimately (i.e., as the outcome of a process of finite duration) irreconcilable struggle taking place between them. And without that struggle reaching its qualitative synthesis in a dialectical leap into a new quality. This is a view of development and change which is more reminiscent of a game of tennis than it is of the real processes of birth, growth, decay and death inherent to a real organism.
Indeed, such a concept of the relationship between opposed forces and the change to which this gives rise – so ineffably pure and simple as it is – would lead us to believe that it had emerged ready made from the unfathomable Thought of the Godhead himself. That is were it not that our realisation of its strictly utilitarian value to the long-term strategic interests of the Chinese national capitalist class precludes our believing in its divine origin.
This “pure” and “simple” concept, becomes translated from an involved double-talk and prevarication to attempt to reconcile the “theory” of the harmonious and non-antagonistic resolution of contradictions and the equally harmonious “transformation of opposites into one another” with the principles of dialectical materialism. The Great Puppetmaster declares that the “antagonistic” contradiction between the working class and the national capitalist class which forms the “negative aspect” of the latter’s “dual character” may be “transformed” into a “non-antagonistic” contradiction as the heavenly outcome of being “properly handled”, and vice versa.
Thus “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” first of all ideologically inverts the relationship of classes within the framework of “new democracy”. This presents “people’s democratic dictatorship” as being exercised against only those class elements amongst the class enemies of the working class, working people and poor peasantry which it is in the interests of the national capitalist class, the active subject, to suppress openly; as a foil to offset its disguised suppression of the working class, working people and poor peasantry. That is the remnants of the comprador bourgeoisie not already in alliance with it, the landlord class and the remaining agencies of foreign imperialism (the Kuomintang remnant on Taiwan). Meanwhile the fundamental, long-term enemy of the working class, working people and poor peasantry, the indigenous national capitalist class, the class which is no mere superficial excrescence of a powerful imperialist overlord, fattens itself on the blood, sweat and toil of a “labour force”.
It carries through primitive accumulation and strengthens its own economic position as an organic part of the developing nation, a nation whose path of social development, like that of any other nation, has of necessity to pass through the jungle of capitalism. This becomes the unavoidable prelude to, and training ground for, the victorious carrying through of the proletarian-socialist revolution by the working class, working people and poor peasantry led by their Marxist-Leninist vanguard party. The national capitalist class is enabled by “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” not only to avoid for a time the revolutionary confrontation with its class enemy, the working class, working people and poor peasantry, which, were it to develop, would throw the entire future of capitalism in that country into the melting pot, but actually to exercise its effective class dictatorship against the proletarian revolutionary alliance within the ideologically deceptive framework of “people’s democratic dictatorship”.
Chinese “left” revisionism, with the theoretical foundation of “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung”, fulfils in the differing objective social and class conditions prevailing in a large formerly colonially enslaved country but recently emerged into national independence an exactly analogous role to that fulfilled by social-democracy and reformism in the developed metropolitan lands. The most salient difference being the tactical need, prior to the carrying through of the national-democratic revolution, for a “revolutionary” stance in the perspective presented, not only in respect of the national democratic revolution, but also for the transition to “socialism”. As against the openly gradualist and reformist stance adopted by right-wing social democracy and reformism.
The national bourgeoisie’s “revolutionary” perspective in the transition to “socialism” simply borrows from the revolutionary tradition of the bourgeois democratic revolution which has been but recently completed and then interprets this as having created the broad conditions under which “socialist construction” can be carried through “non- antagonistically” through the “co-operation” and “mutual supervision” of “all classes within the camp of the people”.
As students of scientific socialism, of the strategy and tactics of the proletarian socialist revolution, we evaluate the national-democratic revolution in China as an important progressive milestone in the history of world capitalism. Also as Marxist-Leninists, however, we recognise that our most fundamental duty lies, not towards the national capitalist class of a colonial-type country in its task of achieving the victory of the national-democratic revolution whilst simultaneously holding back the unleashing of the socialist revolution, but in making a thoroughgoing exposure of the tactics of ideological deception and political manipulation which are so essential a feature of this aim, and which the national capitalist class of a colonial-type country, be its leader Mao Tse-tung, Kwame Nkrumah, or Abdul Nasser, is so skilled in bringing about.
Thus the process through which the working class, working people and poor peasantry of such a colonial-type country as China are mobilised to carry out the national-democratic revolution under the leadership of a developing national capitalist class and by means of ideological precepts and political slogans which reflect the inverted world view of that class constitutes the most essential content of those variants of modern revisionism which serve the interests of the national capitalist classes of the formerly colonially-subjugated countries which have emerged into full nationhood since the end of World War Two. Those variants of modern revisionism to which we refer are Chinese “left” revisionism and small-state “centrist” revisionism such as holds sway in North Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba.
As far as the most formative and influential of those ideologies serving the interests of such national capitalist classes is concerned, however – i.e., Chinese “left” revisionism, the guiding theoretical foundation for which is “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung”, the idealist postulate to the effect that the national capitalist Class “willingly accepts and works for socialism”, together with its subjective first cause, the aim and intention of the national capitalist class, the active subject, itself to deceive the working class, working people and poor peasantry into believing that this is so, then together act as the combined determinant of the empirical effect desired to be obtained in the real world of Chinese ”new democratic” society: the maintenance of the rule of the national capitalist class, of its state apparatus of force and deception, and the holding back of the proletarian socialist revolution which, by 1959, had begun to mature into its pre-revolutionary stage. The link which enables the above idealist postulate to make its effect thus felt and to fulfil its deceptive and disarming role amongst the exploited and oppressed classes in “new democratic” China is the very real one represented by the whole inverted ideology which is the revisionist “Thought of Mao Tse-tung” – its vicariously self-flattering populist demagogy, its moralistic homilising (“all classes, strata and social groups which approve, support and work for the cause of socialist construction belong to the category of the people”), and so on – together with the political apparatus for disseminating that ideology throughout all classes and strata comprising “new democratic” society present in the revisionist “Communist Party of China” and the mass organisations of “people’s democratic dictatorship”.
Conclusion
To sum up, then we see that, as far as its philosophical system is concerned, the “Thought of Mao Tse-tung” is a variant of bourgeois subjective idealism, albeit one which is skilfully disguised behind suitable “dialectical materialist” and “Marxist” phraseology. We see further that, as far as its method is concerned, it is a variant of bourgeois determinism. Its essential components may be summarised as follows:
1) an a-priori idealist postulate existing in the realm of idea or mind which forms the original source of the power and influence exerted by “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung”;
2) a subject first cause, deriving from that postulate and residing in the entire inverted ideological system which is “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung”, a system the objective purpose of which, by inducing amongst the mass of workers, working people and poor peasants of China the belief that the above postulate possesses the force of truth, is to act as the link between the idealist postulate from which it derives and the real world of “new democratic” society and the antagonistic classes it comprises;
3) an empirical secondary effect, the physical embodiment of the inceptive primary postulate, which resides in the political apparatus of “new democratic” society, the objective purpose of which is to act as the physical means of disseminating throughout all classes and strata the disarming, class-collaborationist ideology of “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung”, as the prime means of safeguarding the dictatorship of the national capitalist class in the specific conditions of a large country but recently emerged from colonial enslavement and oppression, and in which it is the aim of that class to
build a viable state-capitalist system in the difficult and highly antagonistic international terrain of advanced imperialism.
It is thus made crystal clear that in “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung”, we have a typical example of that dichotomy between the world of idea and the world of matter in motion, of real men thinking, moving and acting in a real society, which is so fundamental a feature of all metaphysical systems, whether the emphasis be laid upon the former, the subjective element in idea, or upon the latter, the objective element external to the subject and existing in the material universe.
It is also made crystal clear that this metaphysical foundation in the philosophy and world view of a national capitalist class of a former colonial-type country constitutes the basis for, and exerts its influence in the real world of “new democratic” society, through an inverted ideology which acts to conceal the rule of the national capitalist class, its exploitation and oppression of the working class, working people and poor peasantry.
As such, it represents perhaps the last of the great schools of bourgeois thought to emerge and develop in the service of a bourgeois-democratic revolutionary movement, the last scion of a tradition which began with Martin Luther, Thomas Muenzer and the peasant war in Germany, and which has produced such profound thinkers as Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach. In the present era, however, in the era of capitalism’s decline into irrationalism, anti-science and “thought control”, bourgeois thought and culture can spell only the death of philosophy as the organically ordered and systematised expression of the world view of a class, and can produce only great ideological manipulators, confidence tricksters and deceivers of the ilk of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and – for the one country amongst the larger semi-colonial countries of the colonial periphery in which, during the period of classical imperialism between the two world wars, the objective conditions for the successful mounting and carrying through of a proletarian-socialist revolution on the basis of the Leninist strategy of the revolutionary alliance of the working class and the poor peasantry had begun to mature, i.e. China – Mao Tse-tung.
For so long as the historical stage of development awaiting fulfilment in China was that of the national democratic revolution, “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” had an historically limited progressive and revolutionary role to fulfil. But from the moment that the stage of the national-democratic revolution had been carried through, so that the next great task of historical progress became that of carrying through the socialist revolution headed by the proletariat, it turned into its opposite (and here we may use this much-abused phrase in its correct context) and became a reactionary ideology, a reactionary ideological and political force assisting not only the national capitalist class of China, but also the world imperialist system and world reaction to hold back the onset of the proletarian-socialist revolution in China. For all the “progressive” and “revolutionary” charisma attaching falsely to his name, Mao Tse-tung and his “Thought” will most certainly be judged by history as ending its development, not in the camp of social progress, but as a sophisticated, tactically adroit and politically astute system of reactionary ideology, the ideology of a capitalist class which, like any other, can survive only for so long as it can hold back the rising tide of the proletarian-socialist revolution.
With the ever more open adoption of its growing alliance with the greatest reactionary force in the world today, US imperialism – the inevitable self-exposure which has already compelled its former ally, the Albanian Party of Labour, to break with it and to condemn its betrayals in the sharpest even if theoretically misconceived, terms – the hour of greatest weakness and indecision for “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” and its revisionist political apparatus has struck. Now is the time to mount all-embracing and pitiless criticism of its theoretical and political fallacies and deceptions, so that the prestige and the pernicious influence of this important variant of modern revisionist thought and practice within the developing Marxist-Leninist world movement may be neutralised and destroyed at the earliest possible moment.
ARTICLE TWO
APPENDIX ONE – STALIN’S “DIALECTICAL AND HISTORICAL MATERIALISM”
September 1977; on p. 38 ; first placed on web at Marxist Internet Archive; “Encyclopaedia of Anti-Revisionism”; at MIA
Professor George Thompson, the very well-known eulogist of “The Thought of Mao Tsetung”‘ has put forward what is considered by many to be the orthodox view of Maoism on “The Question of Stalin”, namely that Stalin’s exposition of dialectical materialism was lacking in subtlety as compared with Mao’s treatment, as manifested in the latter’s work “On Contradiction”. As is well-known, Stalin’s treatment makes no reference to the question of “antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions”, thereby indicating quite clearly, even if inversely through omission, that he did not consider the distinction to have any validity in scientific dialectical-materialist philosophy. Professor Thompson, on the other hand, rushing in, in his eulogistic zeal, where angels fear to tread; considers that, by omitting this question from his exposition, Stalin revealed his “blindness” towards “an important Marxist concept” from which were later to flow his many “errors”:
“It could, I think, be shown, on the one hand, that Stalin’s errors were largely due to his failure to deal correctly with antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions, and, on the other, that Mao Tse-tung’s development of this aspect of dialectics would not have been possible without the
historical experience of the October Revolution.”
(G. Thompson: “Marxism in China Today”; “The Broadsheet”, organ of the China Policy Study Group; March 1965).
He goes on to counterpose Stalin to Mao on the much-vexed question of “the transformation of contradictions into each other”.
Stalin says:
“Internal contradictions are inherent in all things and phenomena of nature, for they all have their negative and positive sides, a past and a future,
something dying away and something developing; and the struggle between these opposites; the struggle between the old and the new, between that
which is dying away and that which is being born, between that which is disappearing and that which is developing, constitutes the internal content
of the process of development, the internal content of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes.”
(J.V. Stalin: “Dialectical and Historical Materialism”; “Problems of Leninism”, FLPH Moscow 1953; p.717).
It should be noted here that Stalin has not referred to “the transformation of opposites into each other”. But, for Professor Thompson, this is Stalin’s sin.
He then proceeds to demonstrate how Mao is “more subtle and more profound”:
“Contradiction is present in all processes of objectively existing things and of subjective thought and permeates all these processes from beginning
to end; this is the universality and absoluteness of contradiction. Each contradiction and each of its aspects have their respective characteristics;
this is the particularity and relativity of contradiction. In given conditions, opposites possess identity, and consequently can co-exist in a single entity
and can transform themselves into each other; this again is the particularity and relativity of contradiction. But the struggle of opposites is ceaseless;
it goes on both when the opposites are co-existing and when they are transforming themselves into each other; this again is the universality and
absoluteness of contradiction.”
(Mao Tse-tung: cited; in George Thompson: “Marxism in China Today”; ibid.) (Our emphases – Ed.)
Despite Professor Thompson, however, there are in fact no conditions in which opposites can possess identity – nor can the statement that they do holds even a semantic validity, since, if two opposites are identical, they cannot be opposites; and, conversely, if they are opposites they cannot be identical.
The principle of scientific materialist dialectics which Mao is attempting to distort here – (whether spontaneously or with conscious intent is, for purposes of theoretical analysis, immaterial) is that which states that opposites comprise a unity as well as having contradictoriness, being in conflict with one another. Dialectical materialist philosophy states that everything in the material universe, every entity or complex organism, is made up of a structure of spheres of contradiction each one of which comprises two opposite and contradictory poles of force which, in spite of the conflict which exists between them, are held together for a time in a unity of opposites. Only when the intensity of contradiction between the two opposite poles of force mounts to a point at which it becomes irreconcilable is that temporary unity broken, so that a new quality can emerge and a new unity of opposites at a higher level be established. It is this unity of opposites, the opposite characteristic which itself exists and moves in unity with that of the contradictoriness of opposites and the conflict between them, together with the materially based, historically staged process of change of which it forms a part, which Lenin was concerned to characterise when he defined the relationship of contradictoriness and conflict of opposites to their temporary unity as follows:
“The unity of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The
struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and
motion are absolute.”
(V.I. Lenin: “Collected Works”, Vol. 38; FLPH Moscow; p.360).
It is, however, precisely the materially based process of dialectical change which “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” is concerned to deny and to replace by a mechanical, stageless and therefore timeless, undevelopmental and immaterial view of the interrelation and movement of entities and organisms. This is, indeed, of crucial tactical importance to the aim, central to “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung”, of falsifying dialectical materialism so as to make it serve the interests of the national capitalist class. For the emptying out of materialist dialectics of its materially-based developmental content, its epistemology, effectively prepares the ground for the interpretation of change as a mere reversal of opposites relative to one another without this being the qualitative outcome of a total, law-governed dialectical process of change which passes through defined developmental stages. This, in its turn, enables “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” to project a form of transition from capitalism to socialism in which that transition can be effected peacefully and
gradually through the “remoulding of the national capitalist class” on the basis of its “willingness to support the Constitution and work for socialism” – the central, strategic aim behind all the “theoretical” bluff and double-talk.
Thus it emerges that the crucial “theoretical” nub of this aim is the presentation of dialectical change and development in such a way as to suggest that the opposite poles comprising a contradiction can simply be “reversed”, can change their positions relative to one another, without otherwise unduly disturbing the unity in which those opposite poles are temporarily contained, and hence without qualitatively overcoming the old total quality or organism at the heart of which they lie.
Since the old total quality or organism concerned here is nothing less than Chinese “new democratic” society, we see that a “dialectical” respectability is given, through this falsified presentation of the laws of dialectical change and development and of the entire process through which those laws manifest themselves, to the gradual, peaceful, “non-antagonistic” transition from state capitalism (i.e., “new democratic” bureaucratic state capitalism based on the joint state-private boards) to “socialism” a transition which is effected, not through a socialist revolution, the moment of dialectical leap into a new quality, socialist society, in the real world of classes, class struggle and social change through revolution – but through “socialist construction”, central to which is “the peaceful, non-antagonistic remoulding of the national capitalist class” on the basis of its “willingness to accept and work for socialism”.
The moment of “theoretical” inception of this falsified dialectics is the concept of the direct reversal of poles of contradiction relative to one another, a concept which enables the position of the national capitalist class relative to that of the working class to be reversed without the intervention of a moment of qualitative leap – i.e., without a socialist revolution led by the working class, working people and poor peasantry having taken place – and without this having formed a stage in an entire, complex process of dialectical change in society – i.e., without the entire and total process of revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism having matured through all its stages: the stage of quantitative accretion of social and class contradiction and struggle; the stage of the transformation of quantitative class struggle into qualitative revolutionary struggle; the stage of the qualitative negation of the old society and its class dictatorship through the revolutionary birth of the new society, socialism, and its new class dictatorship, the
dictatorship of the proletariat; and, finally, the stage of the negation of socialism’s earlier negation of capitalist society through the commencement of the
stage of transition from socialism to full communist society. This entire, infinitely rich, complex yet law-governed process is replaced in the revisionist
“Thought of Mao Tse-tung” by a mere mechanical “reversal of poles” designed to lend credibility to the concept of the reversal of the role fulfilled by the
national capitalist class from a reactionary to a progressive one within the context of the transition from capitalism to socialism, whereas in fact the development of the socio-political role fulfilled by the national capitalist class in the revolutionary process in a colonial-type country is the exact opposite of this, i,e., from a – however limited- progressive role in the national-democratic revolution to a reactionary one in the socialist revolution.
Thus the final aim behind all this false dialectics and real mechanical determinism emerges as being the provision of a “theoretically principled” justification
for the inclusion of the national capitalist class in the bloc of “revolutionary” classes ostensibly engaged in the “construction of socialism” – i.e., in
building a bureaucratic state-capitalist China.
In contradistinction to the bogus “dialectics” which constitute the “theoretical” foundation of “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung”, the definitive statement by
J.V. Stalin of the dialectical process of change is as follows:
“The dialectical method therefore holds that the process of development from
the lower to the higher takes place not as a harmonious unfolding of phenomena, but as a disclosure of the contradictions inherent in things and phenomena, as a ‘struggle’ of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of these contradictions.”
( J. V. Stalin: ibid. ; p. 718).
Further, and more specifically in refutation of the concept of “the harmonious unfolding and resolution of contradictions” :
“Further, if development proceeds by way of the disclosure of internal contradictions, by way of collisions between opposite forces on the basis of these contradictions and so as to overcome those contradictions, then it is clear that the class struggle of the proletariat is a quite natural and inevitable phenomenon.
Hence we must not cover up the contradictions of the capitalist system, but disclose and unravel then, we must not try to check to the class struggle but carry it to its conclusion.
Hence, in order not to err in policy, one must pursue an uncompromising proletarian class policy’ not a reformist policy of the harmony of the interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, not a compromiser’s policy of the ‘growing of capitalism into socialism”‘·
(J.V. Stalin: ibid.; p. 720).
It can, indeed, be readily understood why the eulogisers of and apologists for the revisionist “Thought of Mao Tse-tung” are so concerned to deprecate and discredit J. V. Stalin’s “Dialectical and Historical Materialism”. For Stalin explicitly condemns in that work the idealist categories of thought, the mechanical-determinist perspectives of development, the gradualist illusions and reformist panaceas which form so prominent a part of the system of bogus dialectics projected by Mao Tse-tung, as represented by such concepts as “the correct handling of contradictions”, the “transformation of antagonistic contradictions into non-antagonistic ones”, the “harmonious resolution of contradictions”, and so on. The clear scientific truths concerning the laws of development and change propounded by Stalin – truths which also assist the proletariat in its revolutionary cause, class truths based on the
proletariat and its struggle for hegemony – stand as irreconcilably opposed to “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung” as capital and labour themselves stand in irreconcilable contradiction to each other.
