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The Legend of the “Legend of ‘Maoism’”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Benjamin Schwartz
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Extract

The following remarks (which I hope will be my last on Prof. Wittfogel's “The Legend of ‘Maoism’”) will hardly bear the appearance of a coherent essay. They are simply a collection of fragmentary replies to his own fragmentary points of attack. For some years now Prof. Wittfogel has been obsessed with the view that Fairbank, Schwartz and Brandt (an indivisible entity) have committed an “error” (not an accidental error!) which has led to incalculably evil results in our struggle with world Communism.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 2 , June 1960 , pp. 35 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1960

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References

1 For a consideration of some of ProfessorWittfogel, 's own implicit assumptions see my article in the New Leader, 04 4, 1960.Google Scholar

2 Brandt, Conrad, Schwartz, Benjamin and Fairbank, John K., A Documentary History of Chinese Communism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952)CrossRefGoogle Scholar (hereafter cited as Documentary History).

3 Schwartz, Benjamin I., Chinese Communism & the Rise of Mao (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951) (hereafter cited as Schwartz 1951).Google Scholar

4 e.g., see Schwartz, 1951, pp. 201–204.Google Scholar

5 Schwartz, 1951, p. 200.Google Scholar

6 Kautsky, John in his Maoism and the Communist Party of India (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Technology Press, 1956)Google Scholar argues that this denial is too sweeping.

7 To cite one text at random: see Ch'iao-mu, Hu's Thirty Years of the Communist Party of China (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1951)Google Scholar which still represents the present orthodox line.

8 Schwartz, 1951, p. 117.Google Scholar

9 Lenin, , Oeuvres Completes, Vol. XXV, p. 420.Google Scholar

10 As a matter of fact, it is known that the Russian proletariat in the cities of Asia used such theories to dominate the surrounding “natives.” Thus Broido in 1923 speaks of a “smychka of the Russian town with the native backward village, the great Russian proletariat with the Uzbek village, etc.” Park, , Bolshevism in Turkestan, 1917–27 (New York: Columbia University, 1957), p. 172.Google Scholar

11 The only reason he did not mention “workers' Soviets” as well as “peasant Soviets” is because he did not believe that a working class existed in these areas.

12 Schwartz, 1951, p. 199Google Scholar