Leftist Reading: On Practice and Contradiction Part 11

Leftist Reading

Episode 87:

This week we’re continuing with On Practice and Contradiction by Mao Zedong
The two halves of the book are available online here:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

The previous episode that already covered chapter 2 of this book can be found here:
https://www.abnormalmapping.com/leftist-reading-rss/2020/8/31/guest-leftist-reading-oppose-book-worship

[Part 1]
1. A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire

[Bonus 1, from the archives]
2. Oppose Book Worship

[Part 2]
3. On Practice: On the Relation between Knowledge and Practice, between Knowing and Doing

[Part 3 - 6]
4. On Contradiction

[Part 6]
5. Combat Liberalism
6. The Chinese People Cannot Be Cowed by the Atom Bomb
7. US Imperialism Is a Paper Tiger

[Part 7]
8. Concerning Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR
9. Critique of Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR

[Part 8]
10. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People
Section 1-2
[Part 9]
Section 3-8
[Part 10]
Section 9-12
11. Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?

[Part 11 - This Week]
12. Talk on Questions of Philosophy
First Reading - 00:19

[Part 12]
12. Talk on Questions of Philosophy

Footnotes:
1) 1:09
In other words (1) Marxist philosophy, that is, dialectical materialism and historical materialism, which deals with the general law of development of the contradictions existing in nature, human society and man’s thought; (2) Marxist political economy which elucidates the law governing the development of society’s economy and exposes how the capitalist class exploits the working class (the theory of surplus-value); and (3) scientific socialism which shows that capitalist society is bound to develop to a higher stage of society and that the proletariat is the grave-digger of the capitalist system. (For details see Lenin’s ‘The Three Sources and the Three Component Parts of Marxism’.)

2) 3:46
Peking University, jointly descended from the old Peking University which launched the 4 May Movement in 1919, and from the American-endowed Yenching University, has continued since 1949 to enjoy the highest prestige in China for general intellectual excellence. People’s University (Jen-min ta-hsüeh), also located in Peking, was specially set up to provide courses more accessible to students from worker and peasant backgrounds.

3) 3:59
Among the Confucian classics, the Four Books represent the core studied by beginners, the Five Classics a somewhat larger corpus.

4) 4:32
Among his varied educational experiences, Mao Zedong has long singled out the six months he spent reading in the Hunan Provincial Library, in the winter of 1912–13, as one of the most valuable.

5) 5:45
The first sentence is from the Doctrine of the Mean, the second is from Mencius, book IV.

6) 6:19
The quotation is from the Confucian Analects. The incident in which the people of K’uang detained Confucius and wanted to kill him is referred to in the Analects.

7) 6:44
Mao’s reasoning is apparently that, whether or not he went there, Confucius had nothing against Ch’in (a state which existed in the first millennium BC in present-day Shensi, whose ruler ultimately conquered the whole of China and founded the Ch’in dynasty in 221 BC), since he included in the Book of Odes, which he is supposed to have edited, a number of poems from that area, including the two mentioned by Mao.

8) 6:48
Ssu-ma Chien (145–90 BC) was China’s first great historian, who compiled shih-chi (Historical Records) relating the history of China from the origins to his own day.

9) 7:37
The translation of the above poem, and of the titles of the two mentioned previously, are taken from Legge’s version of the Book of Odes.

10) 8:02
Love poems have traditionally been interpreted by Chinese critics as an allegory for the relations between an official and his prince; Chu Hsi held that they should be taken at face value. Mao puts the commonsense view that they should sometimes be taken literally, and sometimes not.

11) 8:24
Wei Chuang (c. 858–910) was an eminent poet of the late T’ang (618–906) and early Five (907–960) Dynasties. Mao is arguing that the same principles of interpretation should be applied to the Book of Odes and to all classical poetry.

12) 9:16
The ‘Socialist Education Movement’, launched by Comrade Mao after the Tenth Plenum in the autumn of 1962, was known as the ‘four clean-ups’ in the countryside, and as the ‘five antis’ (wu-fan) in the cities. The four cleanups were: socialist rectification in the fields of politics, ideology, organization and economy.

13) 10:20
Kuang-ming jih-pao, organ of the China Democratic League, took the lead in criticisms of the Party in April 1957, when the ‘blooming and contending’ was in full flood. The Wen-hui pao, published in Shanghai, was a non-Party organ which had been criticized by Mao for its bourgeois tendencies in 1957. In November 1965, it was to serve as the channel for the opening shot in the Cultural Revolution.

14) 10:43
Chou Ku-ch’eng was the author of numerous works on Chinese and world history. Since 1950 he had been a professor at Futan University in Shanghai. In 1962 he published an article on history and art, in which he expressed ideas on the Zeitgeist which were said to be an expression in the realm of aesthetics of Yang Hsien-chen’s philosophical theories (see below, note 19).]

15) 10:49
Sun Yeh-fang was at this time Director of the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Science; he was dismissed in 1966. As K’ang Sheng’s remark indicates, he had adopted the ideas of some Soviet and Eastern European economists with whom he had been in professional contact about the role of the profit motive in a socialist economy.

16) 11:41
In the summer of 1955, just before Mao’s speech of 31 July gave a new impetus to the formation of agricultural producers’ cooperatives, the Party’s Rural Work Department (at the instigation of Liu Shao-ch’i) had disbanded a number of cooperatives which were said to have been hastily and prematurely formed.

17) 12:12
Teng Tzu-hui (1895–1972) had been head of the Rural Work Department since 1952, though his influence had declined since the late 1950s, because of his share of responsibility for the ‘disbanding’ or ‘weeding-out’ of cooperatives in 1955. It would appear, however that he still possessed sufficient status to put his views energetically in opposition to those of Mao when, in the early 1960s, the policies enumerated here by Mao were a subject of dispute within the Party. Both the Rural Work Department and Teng Tzu-hui were severely criticized by Comrade Mao during a debate on cooperative transformation. [For more details see Selected Works, vol. V, pp. 224–25.
As a symbol to cover this whole spectrum of policies, emphasizing the role of material incentives, private plotting, etc., the expression ‘four great freedoms’ is less common, in documents published since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, than ‘Sanzi yibao’ (‘three freedoms and one fix, or guarantee’). On this concept, which is supposed to sum up the reactionary line of Liu Shao-ch’i and his sympathizers in the countryside, see the article ‘Struggle between Two Roads in China’s Countryside’, Peking Review, No. 49 (1967), pp. 11–19.

18) 12:21
A Right opportunist view advocated by Liu Shao-chi’ and others. In this connection see Comrade Mao’s speech at the Political Bureau meeting of the Central Committee of the CPC ‘Refute the Right Deviationist Views that Depart from General Line’, Selected Works, vol. V, pp. 93–94.

19) 14:00
The view that ‘two combine into one’ was put forward in the early 1960s by Yang Hsien-chen, who had been, since 1955, President of the Higher Party School. Beginning in July 1964 this formulation was violently attacked in the press on the grounds that it minimized the importance of struggle and contradiction, and contrasted with Mao’s view that ‘one divides into two’, i.e. that struggle, and in particular class struggle, constantly re-emerges, even when particular contradictions have been resolved. The ‘outline of an article’ referred to in the stenographer’s note was presumably a summary of one of the forthcoming attacks on Yang, submitted to the Chairman in advance for his approval.

20) 18:11
The defence of Madrid, starting in October 1936, lasted for two years and five months. In 1936, fascist Germany and Italy made use of the Spanish fascist warlord Franco to launch a war of aggression against Spain. The Spanish people, led by the Popular Front Government, heroically defended democracy against aggression. The battle of Madrid, the capital of Spain, was the bitterest in the whole war. Madrid fell in March 1939 because Britain, France and other imperialist countries assisted the aggressors by their hypocritical policy of ‘non-intervention’ and because divisions arose within the Popular Front. The point of this criticism is obviously not that the Spanish Republicans fought to the end, but that they failed to grasp the axiom that territorial strong points are not in themselves decisive.

21) 18:44
See ‘Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of our Party’ adopted on 20 April 1945, Selected Works, vol. III, pp. 177–225 (1965 edn).

22) 19:37
Mao began his activity at this institute in 1925, but it was in 1926 that he actually served as principal and made his main contribution.

23) 23:10
The quotation is from Mencius, book VI, part A, ch. 15.

24) 24:31
This is presumably a reference to Chang Ping-lin’s celebrated article, published in 1903, entitled ‘A Refutation of K’ang Yu-wei’s Letter on Revolution’. In this article, Chang sharply attacked K’ang not only on the issue of revolution versus gradual reform, but on the importance of racial differences between the Chinese and the Manchus, which K’ang tended to minimize. The Manchus, Chang argued, were an alien and decadent race, totally unfit to rule China. It was in this context that he discussed evolution, indicating that the existing racial differences were the product of history.

25) 25:24
Fu Ying is apparently a Chinese scientist who was alive in 1964, since Mao says he wants to look him up.

26) 25:45
Lu P’ing was President of Peking University at this time; he was removed and ‘struggled against’ in June 1966.