jacobin1949
26th February 2008, 21:36
“My advice to the comrades here today is that if you [already] understand materialism and dialectics, then you still need to supplement it by learning a bit about their opposites, idealism and metaphysics. Those things on the opposing side, Kant’s and Hegel’s writings, Confucius, and Chiang Kai-shek’s books, ought to be read. If you don’t understand idealism and metaphysics and have not undergone a struggle against these things of the opposing side, your materialism and dialectics would not be solid. The shortcoming of some of our Communist Party members and Communist intellectuals is precisely that they know too little about the things on the opposite side. They read a few books written by Marx and proceed to talk about them accordingly; this is relatively monotonous. Their speeches and writings [therefore] lack persuasiveness. If you don’t study things on the opposite side you cannot refute them. Marx, Engels, and Lenin were not like that. They all studied energetically and learned all sorts of contemporary and historical things; moreover, they counseled others to do the same. The three component parts of Marxism were produced through the process of studying the things in bourgeois [society], studying German classical philosophy, British classical economics, and French utopian socialism, and struggling against them. Stalin was a bit less sound. For instance during his time German classical idealist philosophy was said to be a kind of reaction on the part of the German aristocracy to the French Revolution. To draw a conclusion like that is to totally negate German classical idealist philosophy. He [also] negated German military science, saying that [since] the Germans had been defeated, their military science was impractical, and Clausewitz’s book needn’t be read any more.
“Stalin had a lot of metaphysical , and he taught many people to engage in metaphysics. In the [I]Short Course on the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik), he said that Marxist dialectics had four basic characteristics. The first that he talked about was the relationship between things, as if all things were related for no reason. In fact, how are things related? The relationship is actually between the two aspects of a contradiction. In everything there are two aspects in opposition to each other. The fourth [characteristic] he talked about was the internal contradiction in things. Again, he only talked about the struggle between opposites, but not about the unity of opposites. According to this unity of opposites—this basic law of dialectics—opposites struggle against each other, and at the same time they are united; they are mutually exclusive and also interrelated, and under certain conditions they transform themselves into each other.
“The entry on ‘identity’ in the fourth edition of the Concise Dictionary of Philosophy compiled in the Soviet Union reflects Stalin’s point of view. The dictionary says, ‘Phenomena such as war and peace, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and life and death have no identity because they are fundamentally opposed to and mutually exclusive of each other.’ This is to say that these phenomena which are in fundamental opposition to each other do not have identity in the Marxist [sense], are mutually exclusive rather than interrelated, and cannot transform themselves into each other under certain [necessary] conditions. This interpretation is fundamentally incorrect.”
[Mao then elaborates on this point in several more paragraphs. –Ed.]
“Stalin was unable to make the connection between the struggle and unity of opposites. The thought of some people in the Soviet Union is just metaphysical and petrified like that; they view things in either this way or that way [arbitrarily] and do not acknowledge the unity of opposites. Therefore, they make mistakes in politics. We uphold the viewpoint of the unity of opposites and adopt the policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom and letting a hundred schools contend. At the same time that fragrant flowers are blooming, there will inevitably be poisonous weeds blooming too. This is nothing to fear, and, under certain conditions, it may even be beneficial.”
—Speech at the Conference of Provincial, Municipal, and Autonomous Region Party Secretaries (Jan. 27, 1957), version I, WMZ2, pp. 253-5.
http://www.singlespark.org/?id=StalinMaoEval
“Stalin had a lot of metaphysical , and he taught many people to engage in metaphysics. In the [I]Short Course on the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik), he said that Marxist dialectics had four basic characteristics. The first that he talked about was the relationship between things, as if all things were related for no reason. In fact, how are things related? The relationship is actually between the two aspects of a contradiction. In everything there are two aspects in opposition to each other. The fourth [characteristic] he talked about was the internal contradiction in things. Again, he only talked about the struggle between opposites, but not about the unity of opposites. According to this unity of opposites—this basic law of dialectics—opposites struggle against each other, and at the same time they are united; they are mutually exclusive and also interrelated, and under certain conditions they transform themselves into each other.
“The entry on ‘identity’ in the fourth edition of the Concise Dictionary of Philosophy compiled in the Soviet Union reflects Stalin’s point of view. The dictionary says, ‘Phenomena such as war and peace, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and life and death have no identity because they are fundamentally opposed to and mutually exclusive of each other.’ This is to say that these phenomena which are in fundamental opposition to each other do not have identity in the Marxist [sense], are mutually exclusive rather than interrelated, and cannot transform themselves into each other under certain [necessary] conditions. This interpretation is fundamentally incorrect.”
[Mao then elaborates on this point in several more paragraphs. –Ed.]
“Stalin was unable to make the connection between the struggle and unity of opposites. The thought of some people in the Soviet Union is just metaphysical and petrified like that; they view things in either this way or that way [arbitrarily] and do not acknowledge the unity of opposites. Therefore, they make mistakes in politics. We uphold the viewpoint of the unity of opposites and adopt the policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom and letting a hundred schools contend. At the same time that fragrant flowers are blooming, there will inevitably be poisonous weeds blooming too. This is nothing to fear, and, under certain conditions, it may even be beneficial.”
—Speech at the Conference of Provincial, Municipal, and Autonomous Region Party Secretaries (Jan. 27, 1957), version I, WMZ2, pp. 253-5.
http://www.singlespark.org/?id=StalinMaoEval