Petty-Bourgeois Revolutionism - THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY

B.M Leizbon,

The integrity and theoretical power of an ideological trend are judged according to its philosophical basis. The theoretical foundation of Marxism-Leninism is dialectical materialism, which has transformed socialism from a utopia into a science, and enables the working class to act consciously in accordance with the historical necessity and objective laws of social development.

Essentially, petty-bourgeois revolutionism has no integral philosophical basis. No matter how widely the ramifications of that revolutionism differ, they are all based on an eclectic blend of the most contradictory theoretical propositions and never rise above pragmatism, which has as its motto: "Only that which is practically useful and profitable is true."

Karl Marx’s book criticising the economic views of Proudhon, one of the founders of anarchism, appeared 120 years ago. It analyses the foundations of petty-bourgeois political economy and yet it is called The Poverty of Philosophy. It was given this title not only because Marx wanted to use a play on words in his reply to Proudhon’s book "The Philosophy of Poverty. His analysis of Proudhon’s economic constructions is combined with an elucidation of the initial methodological positions of anarchism, and of its theory, which is absolutely untenable and wretched in the literal sense of the word. Hence the poverty of that philosophy!

Proudhon’s economic constructions with their reactionary orientation on the levelling of classes and the preservation of small ownership were eroded by time and consigned to history. But the specific feature of that petty-bourgeois ideologist’s method of thought, the vulgarity of his initial conceptions and the metaphysics of his reasoning which Marx caught so splendidly were resurrected later in new variants of petty-bourgeois opportunism or revolutionism.

There has also been frequent repetition of Proudhon’s manner of expression which Marx described as follows: "The style is often what the French call ampoule [bombastic]. High-sounding speculative jargon. ... A self-advertising, self-glorifying, boastful tone and especially the twaddle about ’science’, and sham display of it." [41•1

History has shown that these traits were not only an individual characteristic of Proudhon, but a general feature of petty-bourgeois ideologists, a sort of protective reaction to conceal the emptiness and insipidity of their conceptions, a sort of inferiority complex of the poverty of philosophy.

At first sight it may appear that petty-bourgeois revolutionism gives birth to the most contradictory modifications. Bakunin’s anarchism differs from Proudhon’s anarchism, even if only because the former recognised only collective ownership, while the latter advocated the preservation of private ownership. Proudhon stood for peaceful means of struggle, Bakunin—for violence. Anarchism rejects political struggle; Trotskyism, conversely, recognises only this form of struggle, neglecting all others. We could carry on this comparison. But despite all the differences within the species, the views held by representatives of petty-bourgeois revolutionism have a common methodological source—unlimited subjectivism, the intention to remake the world according to a speculative scheme, with the help of a small number of people who are aware of the need for change.

The philosophy of anarchism is extremely primitive. Marx characterised its doctrine as "the mess . . . borrowed from Proudhon, St. Simon, etc". [42•1 Lenin also noted that in anarchism there is "no doctrine, revolutionary teaching, or theory". [42•2 Metaphysics, disguised by dialectical phraseology, and undisguised subjectivism—such are the methodological foundations of all the ramifications of anarchism.

Approximately the same can be said of Trotskyism.

Speaking of the peculiar methodology underlying the ideas Trotsky advanced during the trade union discussion in 1920–1921, Lenin criticised them for their eclecticism, metaphysics, scholasticism and one-sidedness. Remarking on Trotsky’s scholastic approach to the trade unions and his constant harping on "the general principle”, Lenin said: "What we actually have before us is a reality of which we have a good deal of knowledge, provided, that is, we keep our heads, and do not let ourselves be carried away by intellectualist talk or abstract reasoning, or by what may appear to be ’theory’ but is in fact error and misapprehension of the peculiarities of transition." [42•3

Trotskyism was always distinguished by an incorrect understanding of the state of affairs because it substituted subjective wishes for objective reality, and recognised no other way of resolving contradictions than by their extreme exacerbation and catastrophic clashes.

Trotsky understood Soviet society as a sort of equilibrium of classes which would inevitably be disturbed. The only way he could see for solving the contradictions between the proletariat and the peasantry was through inevitable antagonistic clashes, and since the peasantry outnumbered the proletariat, he predicted an unavoidable " thermidpr"—a restoration of capitalism.

This panic-stricken exaggeration of the objective “inevitabilities” he had himself invented coexisted in Trotsky’s theories with purely adventuristic views on the possibilities of the subjective factor. It should be noted that by the subjective factor Trotsky understood not the masses and not even the Party, but the "leading personnel”, as he called it. According to his recipe, the problem of the trade unions could be solved by a simple reshuffle. In later years, criticising the Comintern, accusing it of delaying the world revolution, Trotsky again reduced everything to the problem of the "leading personnel”. Modern Trotskyists of the "Fourth International" give the same answer to the question why the hour of world revolution has not yet struck: it is the "crisis of the revolutionary leadership" that is to blame for everything.

Trotsky endows the "leading personnel" with supernatural powers. It can jump over stages as it sees fit, make leaps, "tighten screws”. This is unadulterated subjectivism, and if Trotsky added to it anything of his own it was only that he transformed it into bureaucratic subjectivism.

Camouflaging his views as Leninism, Trotsky, fighting the Comintern, described Bolshevism as a linear process. "It is not flexibility that was and should be the main feature of Bolshevism, but rock hardness,” he wrote in 1928 in direct contradiction to Lenin’s demand that the Communist Party should "resort to changes of tack, to conciliation and compromises. ... It is entirely a matter of knowing how to apply these tactics in order to raise—not lower—the general level of proletarian class-consciousness, revolutionary spirit, and ability to fight and win." [44•1

The one-sidedness, exaggeration, theoretical falsity and other similar features which Lenin noted in Trotsky’s methods are also the " philosophical stock-in-trade" of Maoism.

But Maoism, bred on Chinese soil, naturally reflects the ideological, moral and ethical doctrines which began to form in antiquity and were inculcated into the people’s minds as the official state ideology for two thousand years. The doctrine of Confucius—that great philosopher of ancient China—affected many features of the Chinese national character and way of thinking.

One of the Confucian postulates is implicit obedience to one’s elders, blind submission to the bidding of the “sage”. L. Vassilyev, a Soviet historian, writes that many sinologists noted the tendency of Chinese thinking towards scholasticism, towards blind and absolute faith in the teaching of the sage. The whole system of education was so built that from his very childhood man saw the world only through the eyes of ancient sages, so as to educate in him not an inclination towards independent thought and reasoning, but only the 45striving to apply the precepts and aphorisms of the sage, to rely on approved views.

In his work, ’I he Manchurian Rule in China, S. L. Tikhvinsky, a Soviet sinologist, convincingly shows how Confucian dogmas were implanted during the last few centuries. [45•1 His book tells of emperors who declared that on this earth the "main task is to correct the people’s minds”, of the public burning of objectionable books, of the profanation of the graves of their authors and of many other things which gave Karl Marx ground to speak of "learned ignorance" and "pedantic cruelty" in China.

Academician V. M. Alexeyev, an outstanding sinologist, travelled in the interior of China in 1907, at the beginning of his scientific career. In his travel notes, which are full of deep sympathy with the Chinese people, he says, among other things, that the Chinese are "inclined to use quotations and allusions whenever possible.” He also tells of their instruction which consists in "learning facts and names by heart and later reading scholastic historical treatises”; he speaks of the cult of the "perfect personality”, which with them becomes a form of “worship”; he tells about special collections "containing the most interesting maxims for every imaginable situa- tion”, [45•2 and many other things which still continue to live on and occupy a by no means negligible place in the epoch of big social transformations.

All these specific features of China’s social, economic and cultural development had their 46effect on the petty-bourgeois revolutionism which emerged in that country a long time ago and of which Maoism is a particularly repugnant form.

Unlike other proponents of petty-bourgeois revolutionism, who did not consider themselves philosophers and left no philosophical works, Mao Tse-tung claims a place in the philosophical pantheon. When he related his biography to Edgar Snow, an American journalist, Mao emphasised that early in his life he "studied philosophy with passion”, read Confucius and other ancient Chinese philosophers, although, he asserted, he did not like the classics. Mao claims to have read Spinoza, Kant, Goethe, Hegel and Rousseau, but this is not noticeable in his works which abound in all sorts of quotations, especially from ancient Chinese philosophers. He admits that he admired Kang You-wei and Liang Tsi-chao, the two bourgeois reformists of the late 19th century, Kang You-wei strove to reform Confucius’s teaching and make it serve China’s new social forces. In his "Study of the Counterfeit Classical Canons of the Sin School”, he wrote ”. . .1 want to do away completely with false teachings, annihilate the enemy, destroy his lair, exorcise the evil spirits, dispel the thick fog and illuminate the darkness. The sun will then shine even more brightly, the stars will sparkle more brilliantly and the classical canons and holy behests of Confucius which had almost perished will be revived." [46•1

Kang You-wei explained the long feudal stagnation in China from an unscientific, idealistic 47position, blaming it on neglect of the ethicophilosophic teachings of antiquity. Liang Tsichao (one of Kang You-wei’s pupils) notes that "Kang You-wei either regarded objective reality with contempt or tried to force it into the framework of his views." [47•1

Mao Tse-tung also took a great interest in anarchism. He admitted this to Edgar Snow. He said what a deep mark the peasant uprisings left on his "young brain already inclined to mutiny”. In those years, he said, "I often discussed the problems of anarchism and its possibilities in China. At that time I agreed with many of its aims."

Mao Tse-tung first became acquainted with a Marxist book (i he Manifesto of the Communist Party] at the age of 27. He has considered himself a Marxist ever since. But the Marxist seed fell on a soil thickly sown with ideas having nothing in common with Marxism. There was a real danger of the result being a hybrid. And that is what happened.

Years passed and Mao Tse-tung became the author of philosophical treatises. All of them, beginning with the two lectures "Regarding Practice" and "Regarding Contradictions”, which appeared in 1937, have now been declared in China "a brilliant contribution to the treasure of the world Marxist-Leninist philosophy”, "an enrichment and development of dialectical materialism".

Actually these works contain an eclectic blend of a simplified exposition of well-known propositions of dialectical materialism and an independent “contribution” of the author substituting 48idealism for Marxist materialism and metaphysics for dialectics.

Having declared himself a Marxist, Mao Tsetung naturally recognises the primacy of matter and the secondary nature of consciousness, that is, the materialist view on the fundamental question of philosophy. However, Mao Tse-tung’s practical activity and many of his explicit statements show, as was the case with many others before him, that one can admit that the material principle determines the spiritual and yet not be a consistent materialist.

In his pamphlet Where Man Gets Correct Ideas From Mao Tse-tung says that all correct ideas spring from man’s dual ability: 1) to transform spirit into matter and matter into spirit, and 2) to accept spirit as matter, and matter as spirit. In substance Mao replaces the primacy of matter and the secondary nature of consciousness by their identity, from which it follows that everything that happens in the world can be identified with what is happening in one’s mind. [48•1

By representing in an oversimplified manner the ability of human consciousness to reflect objective reality and by reducing the complex process of cognition simply to a complete coincidence of the ideological and the material, Mao assures us that "every difference in man’s concepts should be regarded as reflecting objective contradictions". [48•2

By that means it is easy to find a so-called “materialistic”, but in reality pragmatic, justi- 49fication of any ideas, no matter how far they are from reality. What is useful to me is a reality. There is no need to know much in order to have an opinion.

Lao Tse, the naive elemental materialist of ancient China who exerted a major influence on the formation of Mao’s views, taught: "Know thyself to know others, know one family to know other families, know one village to know all others, know one empire to know all empires, know one country to know the world. How do I know the world? Thanks to this." [49•1

Judging of the world at large by himself, his family, village and country, Lao Tse was convinced that excessive knowledge brings nothing but harm. He said: "It is difficult to govern a people that has too much knowledge. Therefore to govern a country by means of knowledge is to be its enemy, to govern it without knowledge is to bring it happiness." [49•2

In a talk with medical workers in 1965, Mao Tse-tung said: "The more books you read, the more stupid you become.” That seems to indicate that he is not disinclined to make the country happy according to Lao Tse’s recipe.

It was not a mere coincidence that the discussion "On the Identity of Thinking and Being" was organised precisely in 1960, when the full effects of the voluntaristic economic policy were already being felt in China. This “discussion” gave short shrift to all philosophers who correctly thought that the invention of this identity 50was camouflaged idealism and that its purpose was to justify the failures and mistakes in the country’s domestic and foreign policy.

Since everything Mao Tse-tung says is immediately declared in China a "new brilliant contribution”, the theory of the identity of thinking and being was also declared a “new” one. Actually, it is the same old idealistic theory which Frederick Engels styled "one of the most delirious fantasies" and of which Lenin said that it was absolute nonsense and a through and through reactionary theory.

If the endeavour to deduce the reality of one’s own judgements from the identity of thought and being is camouflaged idealism, the endowment of the "ideas of Mao Tse-tung" with a supernatural and universal power is stark naked idealism. Here idea dominates over matter. All one has to do is to study the ideas of Mao and everything will be all right. Material production is assigned a negligible role, the level of man’s consciousness, not the development of production, being declared the source of all progress.

Considering people the true makers of history, Marxism-Leninism allots to man the decisive role in social production and recognises the great power of progressive ideas in social development. However, the genuine revolutionary teaching does not isolate man from material production, it considers the two as a unity. It is not abstract ideal man that makes history, but the living, real man with all his merits and shortcomings, acting in the concrete historical conditions, with the obtaining level of the productive forces and means of production. The ignoring of this unity of man and the material medium has led and continues to lead to gross mistakes. When one side of the unity is set up against the other, truth becomes falsehood.

Right opportunists always set up the level of the productive forces in opposition to man and practically leave no room for man’s transformative activity. Everything, they say, depends on the material conditions. This is vulgar economic materialism, the philosophy of passivity and laissez-faire, justification of inactivity and timeserving.

All sorts of “Leftists” Lenin said, commit the same mistake, only some commit it "the other way round”. Placing man in opposition to the productive forces, they essentially deny the need for objective preconditions for the successful transformative activity of people. Everything, they say, depends only on man, on his will and consciousness. This is vulgar subjectivism, the philosophy of absolute voluntarism, justifying adventurism and scheming.

It is not hard to see why this philosophy spread in China. The low level of the productive forces, the predominance of the most primitive instruments of labour and the vast and steadily growing population created objective conditions for the simplified view that it is enough to make an all-out effort to attain desired ends.

This setting up of man in opposition to material possibilities is applied not only to all spheres of the economy, but also to the question of war. Lin Piao, who, according to the Chinese press, "upholds the red banner of Mao Tse-tung’s ideas higher than anybody else”, affirms in his article "Long Live the Victory of the People’s War!" that "the best weapon is not some death-dealing weapon, such as a plane, gun, tank or atom bomb but the ideas of Mao Tse-tung”. (By the way, this eulogising of the power of Mao’s ideas has not prevented the Maoists from investing huge sums in the production of nuclear weapons, involving an excessive strain on the economy.)

Contrasting man to ambient reality, the Maoists have constructed a simplified scheme of man deprived of any feelings, thoughts and emotions and fully adapted for the mechanical implementation of Mao’s instructions. This is in strict contradiction to Lenin’s view, who said: "We can (and must) begin to build socialism, not with abstract human material, or with human material specially prepared by us, but with the human material bequeathed to us by capitalism. True, that is no easy matter, but no other approach to this task is serious enough to warrant discus- sion.” [52•1

The fact that there are objective conditions in modern China for voluntaristic ideas and all sorts of fantastic structures does not make these ideas and structures any more correct or justify the erroneous practices based on them. The substitution of idealism for materialism sooner or later leads to a dead end, to bankruptcy, because only ideas correctly reflecting the genuine needs and laws of life can assert themselves, take root and grow.

Passing off subjective idealism for Marxist materialism, Mao likewise interprets Marxist dialectics after his own fashion. The unity and struggle of opposites—that law of development as a result of the internal contradictions of phenomena—is reduced by Mao to a primitive scheme of no practical use in analysing reality. For 53the multiformity of life with its various contradictions—necessary and incidental, essential and secondary, antagonistic and non-antagonistic—he substitutes a simple enumeration of opposites. In fact, he repeats what the ancient Chinese philosophers did when a scientific interpretation of the universe was still in its diapers.

Here is the static interpretation of opposites, as seen by Mao Tse-tung: "Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would also be no life. Without ’above’, there would be no ’below’; without ’below’, there would also be no ’above’. Without misfortune, there would be no good fortune; without good fortune, there would also be no misfortune. Without facility, there would be no difficulty; without difficulty, there would also be no facility. Without landlords, there would be no tenantpeasants; without tenant-peasants, there would also be no landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without a proletariat, there would also be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of the nations, there would be no colonies and semi-colonies: without colonies and semi-colonies, there would also be no imperialist oppression of the nations. All opposite elements are like this." [53•1

How does Mao see development, the struggle of these opposites? He sees it as a simple transformation of one into the other through a change of place: "... Each of the two contradictory aspects within a thing, because of certain conditions, tends to transform itself into the other, to transfer itself to the opposite position." [53•2 According to Mao, the essence of socialist revolution is merely that the subordinated class, the proletariat, becomes the ruling class, and the bourgeoisie takes the place formerly held by its antipode, the landowners and peasants change places, peace and war succeed each other, etc.

According to this scheme, opposites can change places infinitely, all movement is reduced to disturbance and restoration of equilibrium. In Mao Tse-tung and in the Peking textbook Dialectical Materialism, which propagandises Maoism, this proposition is explained at length. The law of development, the textbook says, is "equilibrium—disequilibrium—equilibrium" or "cohesion—the splitting of unity in two—new cohesion”. Imperialism, according to that scheme, plays the following role: "It commits outrages, is defeated, again commits outrages, is again defeated, and so on until its destruction.” Planning is reduced to achieving a temporary and relative equilibrium. "A year passes and, on the whole, this equilibrium is disturbed by the struggle of opposites and becomes disequilibrium, unity stops being unity, and next year equilibrium and unity have to be achieved again." [54•1

This scheme has nothing in common with Marxist dialectics. The interaction of contradictions and their interpenetration has disappeared and their struggle is always understood as a clash of antagonistic forces. This is very convenient for justifying “theoretically” the Mao group’s subversive activity in the international Communist 55movement (after unity there must inevitably be a split), for justifying any errors in planning (the equilibrium achieved is necessarily followed by disequilibrium), for denying the struggle for peace which must inevitably be succeeded by war, for declaring that in socialist society, too, the class struggle must not differ from the struggle before the triumph of the socialist revolution.

Such “dialectics” is extremely convenient, for it helps to evade the concrete analysis of a concrete situation and to construct contradictions according to one’s wishes, to reduce the science and the art of political leadership to aggravation of contradictions, to present unrestrained subjectivism as ideology.

The elemental materialism and naive dialectics of the ancient Chinese philosophers reflected the level of science in their day. They were progressive views for the time. But to return to them in our day would be not a mere archaism, but downright reaction. The people in the propaganda apparatus serving Mao’s ideas understand the striking propinquity of the propositions they disseminate to the philosophy of the ancients. Since it cannot be denied, they try to present ancient Chinese philosophy as something universal and of intransient significance.

The tendency to present ancient Chinese philosophy as the principle of principles has been asserting itself more and more strongly with every passing year. Works have appeared which described this philosophy as a source of atheism, materialism, naturalism and the rationalism of the French encyclopaedists, a cornerstone of the Great French Revolution. The authors of these books also see the influence of Chinese philosophy 56in the works of Kant, Fichte and Hegel. However, even this was not enough for them.

Early in 1957 a discussion was held on the history of Chinese philosophy. In May 1959 a debate was held on the philosophical system of Lao Tse and on problems of Confucius’s philosophy, neo-Confucianism, etc. F. S. Bykov, a Soviet philosopher, noted that in modern Chinese philosophical writings we observe a trend towards the modernisation and idealisation of China’s philosophical heritage, a striving to picture its specific traits as an achievement. Now the claim that ancient Chinese philosophy influenced all philosophy from Descartes to Hegel is considered too modest. Chinese philosophers made attempts to prove that there is no essential difference between the views of Confucius and some theoretical propositions of Marxism-Leninism, while some even read into the principal work of Confucius, The Book of Changes, propositions supposed to have much in common with dialectical materialism.

This sort of modernisation is not new in China. Go Mo-zho has long since portrayed Confucius as Marx’s direct predecessor. In a story published in 1920 and republished in 1950, telling of an imaginary conversation between Marx and Confucius, the author makes Marx express pleasure at meeting an Eastern sage who held the same ideas as he more than 2,000 years ago.

The attempts to pass off as Marxism views which have nothing whatsoever in common with it assume different forms. The substitution of metaphysics for dialectics was in evidence at the philosophical discussion held in 1964 before the "cultural revolution”. The Chinese press reported 57that "as regards the number of participants and its influence and significance, the discussion has had no equal in our scientific circles for many years”. The central problem of the discussion was the "splitting of unity into two" and the "fusion of two into one”. Between June and August alone, according to the Hung-chi, 90 articles were dedicated to this problem. The aim of the discussion was to “expose” those who stood for a concrete historical approach to the unity of the objective and subjective, who maintained that dialectics consists not only in the splitting of unity, but also in the combination of opposites, only on a new basis and in a new quality.

It condemned philosophers adhering to the principles advanced by Lenin in his polemics with the Trotskyists, who had adopted a metaphysical approach by setting up moral stimuli in opposition to material stimuli and declaring the two kinds to be mutually exclusive. The Maoists did not like what Lenin had said at the end of 1920: "But after all we do have some knowledge of Marxism and have learned how and when opposites can and must be combined; and what is most important is that in the three and a half years of our revolution we have actually combined opposites again and again." [57•1

The Maoists correctly saw criticism of their policy in the fact that dialectics requires us not only to distinguish between opposites but also to see their combination, and to learn to use this combination in socialist construction. But being subjectivists they decided not to correct their policy but to “correct” the objective laws of 58dialectics. Actually Mao himself did this long before the discussion. "The contradictory aspects in every process exclude each other, struggle with each other and are opposed to each other. Such contradictory aspects are contained without exception in the processes of all things in the world and in human thought," [58•1 he declared.

There are no exceptions to this! That means that if contradictions emerge within a party, the only way of resolving them is the moral or even physical destruction of all those holding their own views. If we admit the significance of subjective endeavours, the Maoists say, there is no point in speaking of the influence of objective conditions. A philosopher was severely criticised for describing the development of oil production in Da-tsin as follows: "The Da-tsin experience was an example of coincidence of the subjective and the objective. The point is that the people concerned had a very clear idea of the subsurface conditions. If there had been only revolutionary efforts, without any knowledge of the conditions below the surface, the successes would not have been so spectacular." [58•2 This statement was appraised as a challenge to the official version of the Da-tsin experience, which was advertised as a result of revolutionary efforts and the power of Mao’s ideas.

The significance of this line of "splitting unity into two" becomes particularly clear when we look more closely at the view the Maoists take of man: all people are divided into good and bad, into true pupils of Mao and "dogs’ heads”; 59the good have no defects, the bad have no virtues.

Looking at all phenomena in an ossified state, as isolated from one another and deprived of their interpenetration, the Maoists have invented the following scheme: the ideal hero (the revolutionary) has only virtues: courage, staunchness, etc.; the negative personality (the reactionary, the revisionist) has only vices: cowardice, instability, self-indulgence, and so on.

The propaganda apparatus declared a bitter war on the portrayal in literature and art of the "average man”, in whom virtues live side by side with defects. The "splitting unity into two" excludes such co-existence, it leaves no room for human qualities extending beyond the approved scheme. Metaphysics ousts dialectics completely.

In his The Poverty of Philosophy Marx derided Proudhon for having "nothing of Hegel’s dialectics but the language. For him the dialectic movement is the dogmatic distinction between good and bad”. Marx says that Proudhon "has the drawback of being stricken with sterility when it is a question of engendering a new category by dialectical birth-throes. What constitutes dialectical movement is the co-existence of two contradictory sides, their conflict and their fusion into a new category. The very setting of the problem of eliminating the bad side cuts short the dialectic movement. It is not the category which is posed and opposed to itself, by its contradictory nature, it is M. Proudhon who gets excited, perplexed and frets and fumes between the two sides of the category." [59•1

Mao Tse-tung has no need to suffer the " birththroes" of Proudhon, he commands the army, the gangs of thugs with whose help he expects to make short work of contradictions. Mao has not only the “advantage” over Proudhon of holding the government in his hands, but also of being able to use everything that has " enriched" petty-bourgeois ideology in the past 120 years. This includes the subjectivism of anarchism and Narodism, the eclecticism of Trotskyism, and the straightforwardness, one-sidedness, inflexibility and inertness, the inflation of one of the aspects of cognition into an absolute, the dissociation from matter, which Lenin considered indispensable roots of philosophic idealism.

Petty-bourgeois philosophy has advanced but little, it has remained practically as barren as it was before, and can give birth only to illogical theoretical constructions and adventurist practices.

* * *

Notes

[41•1] K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1965, p. 155.

[42•1] K. Marx/F. Engels, Werke, Bd. 33, S. 329, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1966.

[42•2] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 328.

[42•3] Ibid., Vol. 32, pp. 24–25.

[44•1] Ibid., Vol. 31, p. 74.

[45•1] See The Manchurian Rule in China (in Russian), Moscow, 1966, pp. 12, 23, etc.

[45•2] V. M. Alexeyev, In Ancient China. Travel Diaries 1907 (in Russian), Moscow, 1958, pp. 34, 49, 51, 69.

[46•1] S. L. Tikhvinsky, The Movement for Reforms in China at the End of the 19th Century and Kang You-wei (in Russian), Moscow, 1959, p. 76.

[47•1] Ibid., p. 401.

[48•1] I. Elez, G. Davydova, "The

Philosophy of Random Action and Random Action in

Philosophy" (in Russian), Za Rubczlwm, 1967, No. 11.

[48•2] Mao Tsc-tung, Selected Works,

Vol. 2, p. 20.

[49•1] Yang Hing-shun, The Ancient Chinese Pldlosophei Lao Tse and His Teaching (in Russian), Moscow-Leningrad, 1950, pp. 144–45.

[49•2] Ibid., p. 151.

[52•1] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 50.

[53•1] Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, Vol. 2, pp. 43–44.

[53•2] Ibid., p. 44.

[54•1] Mao Tse-tung, "On the Correct Resolution of Contradictions Within the Nation" (in Russian), Moscow, 1957, p. 17.

[57•1] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 32, p. 27.

[58•1] Mao Tse-ttmg, Selected Works, Vol. 2, p. 43.

[58•2] Gitangming ribao, September 11, 1964.

[59•1] K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, Moscow, 1962, p. 108.