Notes PART ONE: MAO AS A MARXIST I. This Part draws on: Snow, I937/I96I; I970; I973; Ch'en, I965, Schram, I967a; and Han Suyin I972; I976. There have, of course, been thousands of texts on this or that aspect ofCPC theory and practice which draw upon Mao's work in a more or less useful manner. Certain of this work has been outstanding, for example: the detailed studies ofjan Myrdal and jack Gray or the wider ranging work of Macciocchi. Our debt to the studies of Charles Bettelheim, already mentioned in SCMT, is acknowledged again here. For one assessment of recent texts by Mao, see Stavis, I976. We shall deal with Soviet and Trotskyist assessments of Mao in Part Three of our book. 2. Our citation method involves consulting the Bibliography, for fuller details of works cited. The text used-here Marx's Eightunth Brumaire-is identified by date and page(s) after the author's name. 3· Rossanda's text was first published in 11 Manifesto, July-Aug. I970, then translated in Temps modernes, Dec. I970/Jan. I97I, thence to Socialist Register, I97I. Compare three texts (I97I, I974 and I976) but note some significant criticisms in Bettelheim (I 97 I b). Rossanda, in general, reifies 'Stalinism' ignoring what Bettelheim now sees as the 'Bolshevik ideological formation' (I977: I5f). 4· Since Althusser goes on to speak of 'a silent critique' and pecause it has been claimed that the critique mentioned by Althusser 'remained so implicit as not to have come to the attention of the Chinese Communist Party [sic], which is under the illusion that it is loyal to Stalin's memory' (Callinicos, I976: 93); it is as well now, in advance of detailed examination in Part Three, to refer the reader to Chapter 4 of SCMT and to published texts available in English and French translation for many years which are critical of Stalin. First the explicit texts: Mao, I956C (provenance from Snow, I96I: 52I, I970: 33I; Mao, I956D) translated in I959 and many of the texts of the CPSU/CPC polemic, notably: On the qiU!stion of Stalin (translated in I 963). Implicit texts are legion: Mao, I943F (parts of this were available in English in the I9405-see Gelder, I946) and Mao, I936D, can be properly seen as antecedents of his more famous I9505 texts, e.g. I955F, I956D, and, above all, I957B. More recently we have had available explicit texts: I956F: 87, I958H: 96-103, I958M, I964T and many other Wansui texts. Prime amongst all these, however, must be Mao's Fifteen theses on socialist construction ( I964R) available in English since I964. Every single one of these texts was available to Callinicos when he made the above statement (which is a theme returned to in his book, e.g. I976: 94, 108, I25). Relatedly, Rossanda does not-in contrast to Bettelheim (I97T 103 J4.2 Notes to pages 7-15 I sf) -see CPC theory and practice as a critique ofBolshevism. This is true also of the otherwise significant collection of texts: The Politics of Revolutionary China, issued by the British and Irish Communist Organisation in I977· We applaud their critique of the cult of Lenin, their recognition of the importance (i.e. benefit) of Stalin to the International Communist Movement and urge close study of their texts. Their Bolshevism, however, remains unreconstructed because it remains unrecognised. 5· On 'forcible abstraction' see Sayer, I975a, b; I977b. We refer here to Mao I 93 7H, J, often considered to be part of a larger work On Dialectical Materialism (I937B). On this see: (i) the discussion in Wittfogel, I963; Holubnychni, I964; Doolin and Golas I964; Rue, I967; Schram, I967b; (ii) the texts with Wittfogel (I963: 27o-7) and in Schram, I96g: I8o--go; (iii) Althusser, I963; Nicolaus, I973; I3f; Norman, I976; Sayers, I976. We suggest the best course here (as so often) is to read all four philosophical texts of Mao (those in the Four Essays) I937H, J; I957B; I963A. 6. Note especially, in his philosophical works, how Lenin sees the 'leaps' in matter/consciousness as central and compare the recent discovery of critical exponents common to all matter qua matter (e.g. Wilson's work in Physical Review Letters, 37, I976). On Lenin's philosophy: see Pannekoek, I938; Althusser, I968; I969; I975; Lowy, I976. The recent debate about both 'Dialectics ofNature' and materialism is marred by a failure to comprehend the social message of the former, and the core of the latter, as practical theory not abstracted formulae or invariant empirical process ('read off' as dogma). See Hodges, I965; Timpanaro, I966; Soper, I976; Hoffman, I977; Gunn, I977; Weiss, I977· Earlier work by Hodges (1962, I963, I964) and that of Seve (e.g. I968) is relevant to some facets of his debate. 7· Lenin continues: 'He who speaks about politics, democracy and freedom, about equality, about socialism without posing these questions, without giving them priority, who does not fight against hushing them up, concealing and blunting them, is the worst enemy of the working people ... the rabid opponent of the workers and peasants, a lackey of the landowner, the tsars and the capitalists'. He also demonstrates the political definition and class content of this 'freedom' in his repeated calls, to the People's Commissariat ofjustice, for show trials (Lenin: On the Soviet State Apparatus, p. 344; Collected Works, Vol. 45: 368), for the closure of newspapers and the deportation of writers and professors (ibid., 555) and- in an instruction to Stalin- for the punishment of anti-Soviet doctors (ibid., 559). 8. We are thinking here of the following assembled texts: Selected essays on the stud,y of philosophy by workers, peasants and soldiers (P, FLP, I 97 I); Serving the people with dialectics (P, FLP, I972) or Philosophy is no mystery: peasants put their stud,y to work (P, FLP, I972). But the same significance may be read from studies ofTachai brigade or Chiliying commune (see Wen and Liang, I977; Chu and Tien, I 974, respectively). The absolute strategic significance of these questions is set out in the CPC/CC Party School's Revolutionary Mass Criticism Writing Group's Three major struggles on China's philosophical front ( 1949-1¢4) (P, FLP, I973). For two different assessments of'philosophy in China', contrast Sayers, I975 and Ree, I976. 9· (Lenin, I9I6b: 30). In his I895 notes on The Holy Family, Lenin also argued that (i) 'Marx here advances from Hegelian philosophy to socialism: the Notes to pages 16-26 143 transition is clearly observable .. .' (ibid., p. 24); (ii) here 'Marx's view­ already almost fully developed-concerning the revolutionary role of the proleteriat' is displayed (ibid., p. 26); and (iii) the critiqueofProudhon 'shows how Marx approached the basic idea of his entire "system" ... namely the concept of the social relations of production' (ibid., 30). 10. We refer to that materialist who still awaits critical attention: Wittgenstein. In his 'Grundrisse', The Blue and Brown hooks, for his 'Capital', The Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein, like Marx, warns us against a number of bewitch­ ments; pervasively he warns of false abstraction and 'our craving for generality'. This is The tendency to look for something in common to all the entities which we commonly subsume under a general term-we are inclined to think there must be something in common to all games, say, ... The idea of a general concept being a common property of all its particular instances connects up with other primitive, too simple, ideas of the structure of language. It is comparable to the idea that properties are ingredients of the things which have the properties; e.g. that beauty is an ingredient of all beautiful things as alcohol is of beer and wine, and that we therefore could have pure beauty unadulterated by anything that is beautiful. ( 19fi9a: 17; cf. 19fi9b, passim) He later calls this 'craving', 'contempt for the particular' a term Mao would readily appreciate. 1 1. Lenin argued that 'with Marx the dialectics of bourgeois society is only a particular case of dialectics' ('On the question of dialectics', 1916b: 361), which centred upon the identity of opposites and that 'the individual is the universal' 'Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual' (ibid.). 12. Mao captures both points brilliantly in 'On Practice' where he writes: 'Marxist philosophy ... has two outstanding characteristics. One is its class nature ... The other is its practicality .. .' ( 1937H: 297). Theory generalises the historical experience of the class struggle-in prodllCtion, in political and cultural relations and in scientific experiment and artistic creation-its validity cannot be generalized to all classes, it remains unacceptable to the bourgeoisie. 13. See Mao, 194-4-B, C; 1949], K; 1953E, F,J; 1955F-K; 1958H; 1959-N; 1962B; 1964T; 1966S, T; 1969A; 1971A, plus all the texts in On Literature and Art (cf. Li Chien, 1973, who emphasises the crucial political importance of the early texts) and Chou En-lai's speech on Liu Shao-chi (quoted in Collier and Collier, 1973: 148f) and his 'Political report' to the 1oth Congress of the CPC seej. Harrison, 1972; Houn, 1973; Whyte, 1973; Oksenberg, 1973a, 1974; and Schram, 1973b. For varying Trotskyist analyses of Mao's political theory, contrast Lee, 1972; Cliff, 1957 (cf. Harrington, 1958); 1968 and International Socialism (78), 1975; plus G. Benton in INPRECOR (46) and (5o), 1976. The document they frequently cite- Whither China?- is partly translated in Gittings, 1973: Text 32. 14. This 'getting close' is, of course, a facet of the contradictory relation between Centre and locality addressed in much of Mao's work (e.g.