WV seems to revere MLMTT by declaring it “absolute.” But while WV has this reputation among some as being especially developed and profound Marxist-Leninists, they actually attempt to render ML theory absolute while disregarding it in practice and instead promoting their own “new theories.” WV, by making MLMTT absolute and solidified in itself, in reality contradicts genuine MLMTT.
Making Mao Tsetung Thought absolute and solidified in itself is counter to Mao Tsetung Thought. Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought has in no way exhausted truth but ceaselessly opens up roads to the knowledge of truth in the course of practice. Liu Shao-Chi and the other swindlers superficially praised Mao Tsetung Thought, but actually disparaged and slandered it; superficially they wanted to establish the absolute authority of Chairman Mao, but actually they were trying to establish their own absolute authority. We must thoroughly expose their vicious and treacherous tactics! (“How Engels Criticized Duhring’s Apriorism–Notes on Studying ’Anti-Duhring’” by Wang Che, Peking Review, 3/10/72, p. 9, emphasis in original)
Instead of seeing that MLMTT is a correct path to increase our understanding of objective reality, instead of seeing that “MLMTT has in no way exhausted truth but ceaselessly opens up roads to the knowledge of truth in the course of practice,” WV pits MLMTT against relative truths gained from practice and ends up negating both MLMTT and the relative truths gained from practice. WV does not recognize the dialectical relationship between complete absolute truth and the historically conditional relative truths that advance endlessly toward complete human knowledge. To negate the dialectical relationship between MLMTT and further truths developed through practice is to cut off MLMTT’s relevance and applicability to life today and this leaves room for swindlers to peddle their own “new theories.”
We believe that absolute truth exists unconditionally and that we are constantly approaching nearer to it, but that at each period in history, our knowledge is relative in that the limits of approximation of our knowledge to objective absolute truth is historically conditioned. Our understanding of the laws of physics, for example, is presently a hundred-fold greater than it was in the last century and yet our knowledge has not exhausted the total truth of the laws of physics–our knowledge is relative and conditional because of historical boundaries of human practice and summarization. With greater practice and summarization, man’s knowledge of physics will also consequently expand and further reach towards complete absolute truth.
Man’s practice is a process of continuous development and will never be ended; so is man’s knowledge. People’s knowledge at any given stage of development is relative truth which contains factors of absolute truth but is not absolute truth. What is absolute truth? Chairman Mao has given a precise definition: “The sum total of innumerable relative truths” constitutes absolute truth. “Innumerable” means countless and knowledge cannot be completed. Therefore, no individual can exhaust absolute truth and enjoy absolute scientific authority. (Wang Che, Peking Review, 3/10/72, p. 9, emphasis in original)
Knowledge at this stage in human history is composed of many objective truths, “factors of absolute truth.”[1] Yet our knowledge is still relative because it is incomplete. This is a correct understanding of the dialectical relationship between absolute and relative truth.
WV strays from this correct understanding, never explains precisely what they mean by absolute and relative truths, but nonetheless liberally use the terms to describe MLMTT (absolute) in contrast to the lessons gained from experience (relative). To quote a few examples from WV’s own writings, criticizing the Revolutionary Union (RU):
Dialectical materialism regards experience as a subjective and partial reflection of objective reality (WV #2, p. 22)
while
the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism contains a larger absolute truth which is supposed to be a guide to our practice in the first place. (WV #2, p. 22)
While raising some correct points about the RU’s worship of their own direct experience and the RU’s denial of the importance of the theoretical struggle, WV covers the RU’s incorrect theory with their own incorrect theory. WV says of the RU empiricists:
Being empiricists, they (the RU) follow the method of “tactics as process,” i.e. proceed from the basis of the experience of practical struggles rather than on a systematic plan of action based on historical materialism (WV #2, p. 22, emphasis added)
Next they go on to counterpose the judging of Eskimos on a “party programme ’fleshed out’ of one’s limited experience” as opposed to “one that is based on the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism and the application of Marxism-Leninism to specific conditions.” (WV #2, p. 22) They sum up their argument with: “In the final analysis, the point in question here is whether Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is the basis of our party program, or ’Experience’ is the basis of our program.” (WV #2, p. 30, emphasis added)
Both alternatives are wrong. What we witness here is WV’s posing of MLMTT against the relative truths gained from practice, as if MLMTT itself is not relative truth and as if MLMTT does not ceaselessly open up roads to the knowledge of truth in the course of practice. According to WV’s reasoning, either one accepts the study of MLMTT without the addition of experiences or one accepts experience without MLMTT. Either one accepts the general study of MLMTT in the abstract, or one limits oneself to experiences’ partial truths.
WV does the very thing that Lenin warns against in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Lenin says that key to understanding the relationship between absolute and relative truth is to apply dialectics. We have to “learn to put and answer the question of the relation between absolute and relative truth dialectically.” (Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, p. 119) Lenin states this very clearly, “for dialectical materialism, there is no impassable boundary between relative and absolute truth.” (Ibid., p. 152) “For Engels absolute truth is compounded from relative truths.” (Ibid., pp. 150-151) Yes, the distinction between relative and absolute truth must be definite enough to disassociate ourselves from those who would deny the existence of absolute truth, who would make relativism the basis of their theory of knowledge (relativism being the outlook that there is no definite truth; as the popular saying goes, “Anything is true, since it’s all relative, depending on how you look at it.”). Yet we should also be clear that this distinction is indefinite enough “to prevent science from becoming a dogma in the bad sense of the term, from becoming something dead, frozen, ossified.” (Ibid., p. 153)
This is precisely the error WV is guilty of. In drawing an either/or situation between absolute and relative truth and between MLMTT and experience, WV in essence does the very opposite of what it appears to do. It fails to view the relationship between absolute and relative truth dialectically. It appears to uphold MLMTT but in essence it is trying to freeze and make MLMTT obsolete.[2]
This is wrong, since MLMTT is the most scientific and correct understanding of human society and the making of revolution. Through actual human practice it has been proven to be absolutely true in its entirety and applicable today. Lenin in his time noted that Marxism had been already proven to be absolutely true and yet Lenin further developed Marxism, adding many other truths to it. For example, Lenin developed the scientific theory of imperialism based upon the accumulation and summarization of numerous truths such as the law of concentration of capital under capitalism. These are “factors of absolute truth,” yet at the same time they are relative truths because they have not exhausted total absolute truth. Lenin’s theory of imperialism is itself at the same time an absolutely true theory and a relative truth (in relation to complete absolute truth). It is absolutely true but does not exhaust the potential to know reality.
The development of truth, the process of knowledge and consequently the process of theoretical development comes from one and only one source: from our practice with the real world. Knowledge comes from and is tested through practice, through the accumulation of experience in the real world constantly raised to a higher level of comprehension. From each experience with the real world, man develops truths, partial truths, yes; and yet the science of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is built upon such relative and partial truths that experience can provide.
Marxists recognize that in the absolute and general process of development of the universe, the development of each particular process is relative, and that hence, in the endless flow of absolute truth, man’s knowledge of a particular process at any given stage of development is only relative truth. The sum total of innumerable relative truths constitutes absolute truth. (Mao, “On Practice,” Selected Readings, p. 80)
It is for this reason that MLMTT is a living science that is constantly being developed and verified through the addition of further truths gained from experience. MLMTT must be practiced, constantly and made a central aspect of all our thinking and doing.
As a living example of this correct approach, any of the articles written by workers’ and peasants’ theoretical study groups in the People’s Republic of China shows that communists in China never pit their own experiences against MLMTT. Rather, with MLMTT as a guide, they use their own experiences to draw rich theoretical lessons to further their revolutionary practice. Theory is made into a living, essential thing. These articles are good examples of integrating theory with practice, the universal truths of MLMTT with the particular experiences of individuals or the masses. Nowhere do we find experience pitted against MLMTT as a body of knowledge solidified in itself, in the name of promoting so-called absolute truth.
WV’s undialectical thinking which in essence erects an impassable barrier between absolute and relative truth is dangerous to our movement. WV advocates MLMTT as an ossified authority over the real world rather than as a science to ceaselessly uncover knowledge of the world in order to change it. Once MLMTT is frozen in the abstract and divorced from its origin and only purpose in real life, the road is open for swindlers to replace MLMTT with their own theories in the name of absolutizing MLMTT.
In the case of WV, they have adopted a bourgeois approach to the study of MLMTT which sees learning MLMTT only through book study. This flows from their view of MLMTT as an absolutized, solidified body of thought, which is contained within books. This scholasticism is a bourgeois conception of how learning takes place, through book learning of abstract theory divorced from its applicability to a concrete analysis of concrete conditions and divorced from revolutionary practice.
WV’s bourgeois scholasticism is evident in its various statements on party building:
We view the present tasks of our movement as the study of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought and the linking up of the working class movement with the communist movement to help build an anti-revisionist communist party in the United States. (WV #2, Statement of Purpose, back cover)
Our principal task is party building. This task is specifically broken down into 4 components:
–the study of Marxism-Leninism and its application to concrete conditions and topical issues.
–the consolidation of advanced elements of the working class around Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought.
–Engagement in polemics within the communist movement for the correct programme
–the linking up of our organization with other communist organizations, based on agreement around programme, strategy, tactics and organizational principles.
The chief feature of this party building task is revolutionary theory. Following are some of the reasons why we feel revolutionary theory is crucial at this Juncture in our communist movement. (They go on in the next section to list five such reasons.) (WV #2, p. 17)
to build an anti-revisionist party is the principal task for all today’s communists and advanced elements – and we must reach out to the most advanced elements within the trade unions to consolidate them through study of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought – the ideology of the proletariat – and through experience in day to day struggles. (“Which Way Out of the Crisis?” WV Supplement, April-May, 1975, p. 5)
How does WV promote scholasticism? Firstly, WV makes principal the consolidation around “study” separated from the fundamental struggle to forge a Marxist-Leninist line for revolution. The actual consolidation of advanced elements must be done not around general “study” of MLMTT alone, but that study of MLMTT must be connected with the struggle around an actual line. The correct study of MLMTT is always part of the process of developing a revolutionary line around which to consolidate advanced elements. But to promote “study” for consolidation as WV does, separate from the question of what is a correct line to guide revolution, only promotes scholasticism and self-cultivation.
Secondly, WV’s statements on party building mention nothing about the necessity of integrating theory and practice–not one mention of the necessity of integrating the universal truths of Marxism-Leninism with the actual practice of revolution. The adoption of MLMTT must include its integration with the continuing practice of the proletariat in order that MLMTT be a real living science to actually change the world.
And thirdly, we note that WV has an incorrect view of theoretical struggle or development. The theoretical struggle includes the struggle to grasp and apply the essence of MLMTT, a key part of which is the struggle to raise understanding, experiences and investigations to a theoretical level to enrich MLMTT. WV instead promotes in an idealist fashion that theory comes simply from “study,” implying that the advanced theory comes solely from reading books. Such idealism proceeds necessarily from their exclusion of the relevance of practice to the enrichment of MLMTT. The simplistic equation of study with theory betrays only a bankrupt understanding of the dialectical materialist path of theoretical development, of which practice is a fundamental part. Instead of theory (rational understanding) to further guide the transformation of life, WV makes bourgeois abstractness and idealist thinking into virtues.
WV’s errors actually make a perversion of the task to make MLMTT a living science for revolution. We need the most advanced theory around which to form our party, but our theory does not come from book learning alone as WV would have, but only through grasping the fundamentals of MLMTT and applying them to solve the practical problems of the revolution, and through raising the practice of the revolution to a theoretical level.
Thus, WV’s whole approach to Marxism-Leninism is as an absolutized, solidified body of knowledge, and divorced from its basis in experience. They render MLMTT useless, inapplicable to problems of making revolution today. In the place of MLMTT, they have of necessity developed their own idealist and metaphysical system of ideas which they promote in practice. WV superficially praises MLMTT, but actually slanders it; superficially they try to absolutize the authority of MLMTT, but actually they are trying to absolutize their own authority in the name of MLMTT.
[1] American independence from England was proclaimed on July 4, 1776. This is absolutely true, a truth that will remain so for eternity. And yet at the same time it is still a relative truth for it is only a part of the greater truth of the American revolution, let alone human history, or the entire objective world.
[2] WV recently has also been known to proclaim the “relativism of certain key aspects of MLMTT while struggling against what they call “left” errors. This would be in seeming contradiction to the point we are making in this article. Actually it is only further proof of how WV actually disparages MLMTT, seeks to ossify it and to absolutize their own formulations. WV’s use of the word “relative” to describe certain aspects of MLMTT is used in the bourgeois sense of the word “relative.” WV means that points of MLMTT are true and applicable only within the context in which it was originally stated and is not applicable to today or in this country because of the different situation. This only serves to further their attempt to “kick MLMTT upstairs” so that they can have a free rein with their own formulations and not have to apply MLMTT to today. Marxist-Leninists use the term “relative” when talking about relative and absolute truth in the dialectical sense that truths, while historically conditional and therefore relative, are nonetheless true. And as for MLMTT, it is relative in the sense that it has not yet exhausted complete absolute truth, but MLMTT is nonetheless “absolute truth” and of universal meaning and therefore applicable to today. This error WV is making betrays their inability to grasp the essence of MLMTT and to recognize that MLMTT is universally applicable and is still relevant today. Instead, WV absolutizes MLMTT in some situations, makes MLMTT relative in others, but the result is always the same. WV attempts to divorce MLMTT from life, thereby actually attacking and attempting to render MLMTT obsolete.