The original title of this document is Excerpts From Talks Given In Wuchang, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shanghai from January 18 to February 21, 1992. However, I think that title makes the text seem a lot more boring than it actually is!
I have replaced the roman numerals that denoted each section with an illustrative quote, so as to give a better idea of what each section discusses and thus of how worthwhile this text is. I also followed the same procedure to give the whole collection a more provocative title. All footnotes, etc. are also additions of mine.
Please refer to Deng Xiaoping’s Selected Works for the official presentation of this content. — R. D. [1]
Contents
- “Revolution means the emancipation of the productive forces, and so does reform”
- “Planning and market forces are both means of controlling economic activity”
- “A vivid, convincing model of the development process”
- “The struggle against bourgeois liberalization”
- “Imperialists are pushing for peaceful evolution towards capitalism in China”
- “More and more people will come to believe in Marxism, because it is a science”
Contents
- Introduction
- Positive and Dialectical Logic
- The Dialectic in the Western Tradition
- The Dialectic in Chinese Tradition
- The Influences on Mao of These Two Dialectical Traditions
- Mao’s Military Dialectics
- Conclusion
Introduction
The purpose of this essay is to investigate in detail the notion of “dialectic,” and more particularly to do so by looking at the origins and operational logic of Mao Ze-dong’s military strategy. We are all aware of the Western dialectical tradition in philosophy; Hegel in The Logic [1] traces this tradition from Parmenides, Socrates and Plato to Immanuel Kant. More recently, the French sociologist Lucien Goldmann has illuminated later moments in this line of thought, placing Racine and especially Blaise Pascal before Kant, and analyzing the theoretical contributions of Marx and Georg Lukacs. [2] What many of us might well not realize, however, is that our Western dialectical tradition is paralleled by dialectical traditions in other civilizations.
The appearance of independent dialectical traditions can be readily understood if one views a society as a complexly mediated system of class relations, which is at once an operating everyday social order, and a self-destructive system generating its own contradictions. Insofar as there is a “logic” to the awareness of (and reliance on) the pervasiveness of social order, one sees the presence of a positive logic which deeply influences the way people think. In a similar fashion, where there is awareness and expression of the inescapably temporal nature of everything social, one sees the presence of a negative or dialectical logic which also acts to influence the world-view.
One thing particularly interesting about Mao is the dual heritage of the dialectical logic present in his strategies, policies, and philosophies. Others have recognized this; Vsevolod Holubnychy for example, writes that “…Mao Ze-dong’s materialist dialectics has a definite place in the realm of the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist Philosophy … In addition, it is also somewhat related to the dialectics of classical Chinese philosophy.” [3] Holubnychy goes on to perform a content analysis of the entirety of Mao’s references, quotes and citations in the four volumes of his Collected Works. He presents the findings given in Chart 1. [4]
Contents
1
A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization.
A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization.
A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization.
The fact is that the so-called “Western” civilization — “European” civilization as it has been shaped by two centuries of bourgeois rule — is incapable of solving the two major problems to which its existence has given rise: the problem of the proletariat and the colonial problem. Europe is unable to justify itself either before the bar of “reason” or before the bar of “conscience” and, increasingly, it takes refuge in a hypocrisy which is all the more odious because it is less and less likely to deceive.
Europe is indefensible.
Apparently that is what the American strategists are whispering to each other.
That in itself is not serious.
What is serious is that “Europe” is morally, spiritually indefensible.
And today the indictment is brought against it not by the European masses alone, but on a world scale, by tens and tens of millions of men who, from the depths of slavery, set themselves up as judges.
The colonialists may kill in Indochina, torture in Madagascar, imprison in Black Africa, crack down in the West Indies. Henceforth the colonized know that they have an advantage: they know that their temporary “masters” are lying.
Therefore that their masters are weak.
And since I have been asked to speak about colonization and civilization, let us go straight to the principal lie that is the source of all the others.
Colonization and civilization?
In dealing with this subject, the commonest curse is to be the dupe in good faith of a collective hypocrisy that cleverly misrepresents problems, the better to legitimize the hateful solutions provided for them.
In other words, the essential thing here is to see clearly, to think clearly — that is, dangerously — and to answer clearly the innocent first question: what, fundamentally, is colonization? To agree on what it is not: neither evangelization, nor a philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease, and tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law. To admit once and for all, without flinching at the consequences, that the decisive actors here are the adventurer and the pirate, the wholesale grocer and the ship owner, the gold digger and the merchant, appetite and force, and behind them, the baleful projected shadow of a form of civilization which, at a certain point in its history, finds itself obliged, for internal reasons, to extend to a world scale the competition of its antagonistic economies.
Pursuing my analysis, I find that hypocrisy is of recent date; that neither Cortez discovering Mexico from the top of the great teocalli, [1] nor Pizzaro before Cuzco (much less Marco Polo before Khanbaliq [2]), claims that he is the harbinger of a superior order. They kill; they plunder; they have helmets, lances, cupidities — the slavering apologists came later. The chief culprit in this domain is Christian pedantry, which laid down the dishonest equations Christianity = civilization, paganism savagery, from which there could not but ensue abominable colonialist and racist consequences, whose victims were to be the Indians, the Yellow peoples, and the Negroes.
That being settled, I admit that it is a good thing to place different civilizations in contact with each other; that it is an excellent thing to blend different worlds; that whatever its own particular genius may be, a civilization that withdraws into itself atrophies; that for civilizations, exchange is oxygen; that the great good fortune of Europe is to have been a crossroads, and that because it was the locus of all ideas, the receptacle of all philosophies, the meeting place of all sentiments, it was the best center for the redistribution of energy.
But then I ask the following question: has colonization really placed civilizations in contact? Or, if you prefer, of all the ways of establishing contact, was it the best?
I answer: No.
And I say that between colonization and civilization there is an infinite distance; that out of all the colonial expeditions that have been undertaken, out of all the colonial statutes that have been drawn up, out of all the memoranda that have been dispatched by all the ministries, there could not come a single human value.
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