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<div></div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Library:Ten_Myths_about_Israel&diff=64715Library:Ten Myths about Israel2024-03-28T18:10:53Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
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<div>== Preface ==<br />
{{Library work|title=Ten Myths about Israel|image=Ten Myths About Israel Book Cover.jpg|author=Ilan Pappe|written in=2017|publisher=Verso Books|source=http://library.lol/main/108C6989A36D924940EB7DCE6EB07291}}<br />
History lies at the core of every conflict. A true and unbiased understanding of the past offers the possibility of peace. The distortion or manipulation of history, in contrast, will only sow disaster. As the example of the Israel–Palestine conflict shows, historical disinformation, even of the most recent past, can do tremendous harm. This willful misunderstanding of history can promote oppression and protect a regime of colonization and occupation. It is not surprising, therefore, that policies of disinformation and distortion continue to the present and play an important part in perpetuating the conflict, leaving very little hope for the future.<br />
<br />
Constructed fallacies about the past and the present in Israel and Palestine hinder us from understanding the origins of the conflict. Meanwhile, the constant manipulation of the relevant facts works against the interests of all those victimized by the ongoing bloodshed and violence. What is to be done?<br />
<br />
The Zionist historical account of how the disputed land became the state of Israel is based on a cluster of myths that subtly cast doubt on the Palestinians' moral right to the land. Often, the Western mainstream media and political elites accept this set of myths as a given truth, as well as the justification for Israeli actions across the last sixty or so years. More often than not, the tacit acceptance of these myths serves as an explanation for Western governments' disinclination to interfere in any meaningful way in a conflict that has been going on since the nation's foundation.<br />
<br />
This book challenges these myths, which appear in the public domain as indisputable truths. These statements are, to my eyes, distortions and fabrications that can—and must—be refuted through a closer examination of the historical record. The common thread that runs through this book is the juxtaposition of popular assumption and historical reality. By placing each myth side by side with the truth, each chapter exposes the weaknesses of the received wisdom through an examination of the latest historical research.<br />
<br />
The book covers ten foundational myths, or clusters of myths, which are common and recognizable to anyone engaged in one way or another with the Israel–Palestine question. The myths and the counter arguments follow a chronological order.<br />
<br />
The first chapter charts Palestine on the eve of the arrival of Zionism in the late nineteenth century. The myth is the depiction of Palestine as an empty, arid, almost desert-like land that was cultivated by the arriving Zionists. The counter- argument reveals a thriving pre-existing society undergoing accelerated processes of modernization and nationalization.<br />
<br />
The myth of Palestine being a land without people has its correlate in the famous myth of the people without a land, the subject of [[#The_Jews_Were_a_People_without_a_Land|Chapter 2]]. Were the Jews indeed the original inhabitants of Palestine who deserved to be supported in every way possible in their "return" to their "homeland"? The myth insists that the Jews who arrived in 1882 were the descendants of the Jews expelled by the Romans around 70 CE. The counterargument questions this genealogical connection. Quite a hefty scholarly effort has shown that the Jews of Roman Palestine remained on the land and were first converted to Christianity and then to Islam. Who these Jews were is still an open question—maybe the Khazars who converted to Judaism in the ninth century; or maybe the mixture of races across a millennium precludes any answer to such a question. More importantly, I argue in this chapter that in the pre-Zionist period the connection between the Jewish communities in the world and Palestine was religious and spiritual, not political. Associating the return of the Jews with statehood, before the emergence of Zionism, was a Christian project until the sixteenth century, and thereafter a specifically Protestant one (in particular an Anglican one).<br />
<br />
[[#Zionism_is_Judaism|Chapter 3]] closely examines the myth that equates Zionism with Judaism (so that anti-Zionism can only be depicted as anti-Semitism). I try to refute this equation through an historical assessment of Jewish attitudes to Zionism and an analysis of the Zionist manipulation of Judaism for colonial and, later, strategic reasons.<br />
<br />
The fourth chapter engages with the claim that there is no connection between colonialism and Zionism. The myth is that Zionism is a liberal national liberation movement while the counterargument frames it as a colonialist, indeed a settler colonial, project similar to those seen in South Africa, the Americas, and Australia. The significance of this refutation is that it reflects how we think about the Palestinian resistance to Zionism and later to Israel. If Israel is just a democracy defending itself, then Palestinian bodies such as the PLO are purely terrorist outfits. However, if their struggle is against a colonialist project then they are an anticolonialist movement, and their international image will be very different from the one Israel and its supporters try to impose on world public opinion.<br />
<br />
[[#Zionism_is_not_Colonialism|Chapter 5]] revisits the well-known mythologies of 1948, and in particular aims to remind readers why the claim of voluntary Palestinian flight has been successfully debunked by professional historiography. Other myths associated with the 1948 events are also discussed in this chapter.<br />
<br />
The final historical chapter questions whether the 1967 war was forced on Israel and was therefore a "no choice" war. I claim that this was part of Israel's desire to complete the takeover of Palestine that had almost been completed in the 1948 war. The planning for the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip began in 1948, and did not cease until the historical opportunity offered by a reckless Egyptian decision in June 1967. I further argue that the Israeli policies immediately after the occupation prove that Israel anticipated the war rather than accidently staggered into it.<br />
<br />
The seventh chapter brings us into the present. Is Israel a democratic state, I ask, or is it a non-democratic entity? I make the case for the latter by examining the status of the Palestinians inside Israel and in the occupied territories (who together make up almost half of the population ruled by Israel).<br />
<br />
[[#The_Oslo_Mythologies|Chapter 8]] deals with the Oslo process. After nearly a quarter of a century since the signing of the accord, we have a good perspective on the fallacies connected to the process and can ask whether it was a peace accord that failed, or a successful Israeli ploy to deepen the occupation.<br />
<br />
A similar perspective can be now applied to the Gaza Strip and the still widely accepted myth that the misery of the people there is due to the terrorist nature of the Hamas. In the ninth chapter I choose to differ, and present another interpretation of what has happened in Gaza since the turn of the last century.<br />
<br />
Finally, in the tenth chapter I challenge the myth that the two-states solution is the only way forward. We have been blessed with excellent activist and scholarly works critiquing this formula and offering alternative solutions. They constitute a formidable challenge to this last myth.<br />
<br />
The book also includes a timeline as an appendix, which will help readers to further contextualize the arguments.<br />
<br />
My hope is that, whether the reader is a newcomer to the field, or a veteran student of it, the book will be a useful tool. It is directed primarily to anyone who finds themselves in a discussion on the evergreen topic of the Israel–Palestine question. This is not a balanced book; it is yet another attempt to redress the balance of power on behalf of the colonized, occupied, and oppressed Palestinians in the land of Israel and Palestine. It would be a real bonus if advocates of Zionism or loyal supporters of Israel were also willing to engage with the arguments herein. After all, the book is written by an Israeli Jew who cares about his own society as much as he does about the Palestinian one. Refuting mythologies that sustain injustice should be of benefit to everyone living in the country or wishing to live there. It forms a basis on which all its inhabitants might enjoy the great achievements that only one privileged group currently has access to.<br />
<br />
Moreover, the book will hopefully prove a useful tool for activists who recognize that knowledge about Palestine is as necessary as commitment to the cause. It is not a substitute for the incredible work done by many scholars over the years, whose contributions have made a book like this possible; but it is an entry point into that world of knowledge.<br />
<br />
Students and scholars may tap into this book if they have cured themselves of the greatest malaise of the academic world in our time: the idea that commitment undermines excellence in scholarly research. The best undergraduate and postgraduate students I have had the pleasure to teach and supervise were the committed ones. This book is just one modest invitation to future scholars to leave their ivory towers and reconnect with the societies on whose behalf they conduct their research—whether they write about global warming, poverty, or Palestine, they should proudly wear their commitment on their academic sleeves. And if their universities are still not ready for this, they should be savvy enough to play the game of "unbiased, objective academic research" on these contentious issues, while fully recognizing its false pretense.<br />
<br />
For the general public this book presents a simple version of a topic that can often seem to be extremely complicated (as indeed some of its aspects are); but it is one that can be easily explained and related to from the universal perspective of justice and human rights.<br />
<br />
Finally, my hope is that this book will clarify some of the deep misunderstandings at the heart of the Israel–Palestine problem, in the past and in the present. As long as these distortions and inherited assumptions are not questioned, they will continue to provide an immunity shield for the present inhuman regime in the land of Palestine. By examining these assumptions in light of the latest research, we can see how far they are from the historical truth and why setting the historical record straight might have an impact on the chances for peace and reconciliation in Israel and Palestine.<br />
<br />
== Fallacies of the Past ==<br />
<br />
=== Palestine Was an Empty Land ===<br />
<br />
The geopolitical space today called Israel or Palestine has been a recognized country since Roman times. Its status and conditions in the distant past are topics for heated debate between those who believe that sources such as the Bible have no historical value and those who regard the holy book as a historical account. The significance of the country's pre-Roman history will be treated in this book in the next few chapters. However, it seems there is a wide consensus among scholars that it was the Romans who granted the land the name "Palestina," which predated all the other similar references to the land as Palestine. During the period of Roman, and later Byzantine, rule, it was an imperial province, and its fate depended very much on the fortunes of Rome and later Constantinople.<br />
<br />
From the mid-seventh century onwards, Palestine's history was closely linked to the Arab and Muslim worlds (with a short interval in the medieval period when it was ceded to the Crusaders). Various Muslim empires and dynasties from the north, east and south of the country aspired to control it, since it was home to the second-holiest place in the Muslim religion after Mecca and Medina. It also had other attractions of course, due to its fertility and strategic location. The cultural richness of some of these past rulers can still be seen in parts of Israel and Palestine, although local archaeology gives precedence to Roman and Jewish heritages and hence the legacy of the Mamelukes and the Seljuk, those fertile and thriving medieval Islamic dynasties, has not yet been excavated.<br />
<br />
Even more relevant to an understanding of contemporary Israel and Palestine is the Ottoman period, commencing with their occupation of the land in 1517. The Ottomans remained there for 400 years and their legacy is still felt today in several respects. The legal system of Israel, the religious court records (the ''sijjil''), the land registry (the ''tapu''), and a few architectural gems all testify to the significance of the Ottomans' presence. When the Ottomans arrived, they found a society that was mostly Sunni Muslim and rural, but with small urban elites who spoke Arabic. Less than 5 percent of the population was Jewish and probably 10 to 15 percent were Christian. As Yonatan Mendel comments:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>The exact percentage of Jews prior to the rise of Zionism is unknown. However, it probably ranged from 2 to 5 percent. According to Ottoman records, a total population of 462,465 resided in 1878 in what is today Israel/Palestine. Of this number, 403,795 (87 percent) were Muslim, 43,659 (10 percent) were Christians and 15,011 (3 percent) were Jewish.<ref group="1.">Jonathan Mendel, ''The Creation of Israeli Arabic: Political and Security Considerations in the Making of Arabic Language Studies in Israel'', London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, p. 188.</ref><br />
</blockquote><br />
The Jewish communities around the world regarded Palestine at that time as the holy land of the Bible. Pilgrimage in Judaism does not have the same role as it does in Christianity and Islam, but nonetheless, some Jews did see it as a duty and in small numbers visited the country as pilgrims. As one of the chapters in the book will show, before the emergence of Zionism it was mainly Christians who wished, for ecclesiastical reasons, to settle Jews in Palestine more permanently.<br />
<br />
You would not know this was Palestine in the 400 years of Ottoman rule from looking at the official website of the Israeli foreign ministry relating to the history of Palestine since the sixteenth century:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Following the Ottoman Conquest in 1517, the Land was divided into four districts, attached administratively to the province of Damascus and ruled from Istanbul. At the outset of the Ottoman era, some 1,000 Jewish families lived in the country, mainly in Jerusalem, Nablus (Schechem), Hebron, Gaza, Safed (Tzfat) and the villages of the Galilee. The community was composed of descendants of Jews who had always lived in the Land as well as immigrants from North Africa and Europe.<br />
<br />
Orderly government, until the death (1566) of Sultan Suleiman the magnificent, brought improvements and stimulated Jewish immigration. Some newcomers settled in Jerusalem, but the majority went to Safed where, by the mid-16th century, the Jewish population had risen to about 10,000, and the town had become a thriving textile center.<ref group="1.">From the official website of the ministry of foreign affairs at [https://mfa.gov.il mfa.gov.il].</ref><br />
</blockquote><br />
Sixteenth-century Palestine, it appears, was mainly Jewish, and the commercial lifeblood of the region was concentrated in the Jewish communities in these towns. What happened next? According to the foreign ministry website:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>With the gradual decline in the quality of Ottoman rule, the country suffered widespread neglect. By the end of the 18th century, much of the Land was owned by absentee landlords and leased to impoverished tenant farmers, and taxation was as crippling as it was capricious. The great forests of the Galilee and the Carmel mountain range were denuded of trees; swamp and desert encroached on agricultural land.<br />
</blockquote><br />
In this story, by 1800 Palestine had become a desert, where farmers who did not belong there somehow cultivated parched land that was not theirs. The same land appeared to be an island, with a significant Jewish population, ruled from the outside by the Ottomans and suffering from intensive imperial projects that robbed the soil of its fertility. Every passing year the land became more barren, deforestation increased, and farmland turned to desert. Promoted through an official state website this fabricated picture is unprecedented.<br />
<br />
It is a bitter irony that in composing this narrative the authors did not rely on Israeli scholarship. Most Israeli scholars would be quite hesitant about accepting the validity of these statements or sponsoring such a narrative. Quite a few of them, such as David Grossman (the demographer not the famous author), Amnon Cohen, and Yehoushua Ben-Arieh, have indeed successfully challenged it. Their research shows that, over the centuries, Palestine, rather than being a desert, was a thriving Arab society—mostly Muslim, predominantly rural, but with vibrant urban centers.<br />
<br />
Despite this contestation of the narrative, however, it is still propagated through the Israeli educational curriculum, as well as in the media, informed by scholars of a lesser prominence but with greater influence on the education system.<ref group="1.">A good example of this is the current curriculum for high schools on the Ooman History of Jerusalem, available at [https://cms.education.gov cms.education.gov].</ref> Outside of Israel, in particular in the United States, the assumption that the promised land was empty, desolate, and barren before the arrival of Zionism is still alive and kicking, and is therefore worth attending to.<br />
<br />
We need to examine the facts. The opposing historical narrative reveals a different story in which Palestine during the Ottoman period was a society like all the other Arab societies around it. It did not differ from the Eastern Mediterranean countries as a whole. Rather than encircled and isolated, the Palestinian people were readily exposed to interactions with other cultures, as part of the wider Ottoman empire. Secondly, being open to change and modernization, Palestine began to develop as a nation long before the arrival of the Zionist movement. In the hands of energetic local rulers such as Daher al-Umar (1690–1775), the towns of Haifa, Shefamr, Tiberias, and Acre were renovated and re-energized. The coastal network of ports and towns boomed through its trade connections with Europe, while the inner plains traded inland with nearby regions. The very opposite of a desert, Palestine was a flourishing part of Bilad al-Sham (the land of the north), or the Levant of its time. At the same time, a rich agricultural industry, small towns and historical cities served a population of half a million people on the eve of the Zionist arrival.<ref group="1.">For a focused study of such trade connections see Beshara Doumani, ''Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700–1900'', Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.</ref><br />
<br />
At the end of the nineteenth century this was a sizeable population, of which, as mentioned above, only a small percentage were Jewish. It is notable that this cohort were at the time resistant to the ideas promoted by the Zionist movement. Most Palestinians lived in the countryside in villages, which numbered almost 1,000. Meanwhile, a thriving urban elite made their home along the coast, on the inner plains and in the mountains.<br />
<br />
We now have a much better understanding of how the people who lived there defined themselves on the eve of the Zionist colonization of the country. As elsewhere in the Middle East and beyond, Palestinian society was introduced to the powerful defining concept of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the nation. There were local and external dynamics that prompted this new mode of self-reference, as happened elsewhere in the world. Nationalist ideas were imported into the Middle East in part by American missionaries, who arrived in the early nineteenth century both with the wish to proselytize but also with a desire to spread novel notions of self-determination. As Americans they felt they represented not only Christianity but also the newest independent state on the global map. The educated elite in Palestine joined others in the Arab world in digesting these ideas and formulating an authentic national doctrine, which led them to demand more autonomy within, and eventually independence from, the Ottoman Empire.<br />
<br />
In the mid to late nineteenth century the Ottoman intellectual and political elite adopted romantic nationalist ideas that equated Ottomanism with Turkishness. This trend contributed to the alienation of the non-Turkish subjects of Istanbul, most of them Arabs, from the Ottoman Empire. The nationalization process in Turkey itself was accompanied by secularization trends in the second half of the nineteenth century which diminished the importance of Istanbul as a religious authority and focus.<br />
<br />
In the Arab world, secularization was also part of the process of nationalization. Not surprisingly, it was mainly minorities, such as the Christians, that embraced warmly the idea of a secular national identity based on a shared territory, language, history, and culture. In Palestine, Christians who engaged with nationalism found eager allies among the Muslim elite, leading to a mushrooming of Muslim-Christian societies all over Palestine towards the end of World War I. In the Arab world, Jews joined these kind of alliances between activists from different religions. The same would have happened in Palestine had not Zionism demanded total loyalty from the veteran Jewish community there.<br />
<br />
A thorough and comprehensive study of how Palestinian nationalism arose before the arrival of Zionism can be found in the works of Palestinian historians such as Muhammad Muslih and Rashid Khalidi.<ref group="1.">Rashid Khalidi, ''Palestinian Identity: e Construction of Modern National Consciousness'', New York: Columbia University Press, 2010, and Muhammad Muslih, ''The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism'', Institute for Palestine Studies, 1989.</ref> They show clearly that both elite and non-elite sections of Palestinian society were involved in developing a national movement and sentiment before 1882. Khalidi in particular shows how patriotic feelings, local loyalties, Arabism, religious sentiments, and higher levels of education and literacy were the main constituents of the new nationalism, and how it was only later that resistance to Zionism played an additional crucial role in defining Palestinian nationalism.<br />
<br />
Khalidi, among others, demonstrates how modernization, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the greedy European quest for territories in the Middle East contributed to the solidification of Palestinian nationalism before Zionism made its mark in Palestine with the British promise of a Jewish homeland in 1917. One of the clearest manifestations of this new self-definition was the reference in the country to Palestine as geographical and cultural entity, and later as a political one. Despite there not being a Palestinian state, the cultural location of Palestine was very clear. There was a unifying sense of belonging. At the very beginning of the twentieth century, the newspaper ''Filastin'' reflected the way the people named their country.<ref group="1.">For more on the paper and its role in the national movement see Khalidi, ''Palestinian Identity''.</ref> Palestinians spoke their own dialect, had their own customs and rituals, and appeared on the maps of the world as living in a country called Palestine.<br />
<br />
During the nineteenth century, Palestine, like its neighboring regions, became more clearly defined as a geopolitical unit in the wake of administrative reforms initiated from Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. As a consequence, the local Palestinian elite began to seek independence within a united Syria, or even a united Arab state (a bit like the United States of America). This pan-Arabist national drive was called in Arabic ''qawmiyya'', and was popular in Palestine and the rest of the Arab world.<br />
<br />
Following the famous, or rather infamous, Sykes-Picot Agreement, signed in 1916 between Britain and France, the two colonial powers divided the area into new nation states. As the area was divided, a new sentiment developed: a more local variant of nationalism, named in Arabic ''wataniyya''. As a result, Palestine began to see itself as an independent Arab state. Without the appearance of Zionism on its doorstep, Palestine would probably have gone the same way as Lebanon, Jordan, or Syria and embraced a process of modernization and growth.<ref group="1.">The alternative possible modernization of Palestine is discussed brilliantly in the collection of articles by Salim Tamari, ''The Mountain Against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture'', Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.</ref> This had, in fact, already started by 1916, as a result of Ottoman polices in the late nineteenth century. In 1872, when the Istanbul government founded the Sanjak (administrative province) of Jerusalem, they created a cohesive geopolitical space in Palestine. For a brief moment, the powers in Istanbul even toyed with the possibility of adding to the Sanjak, encompassing much of Palestine as we know it today, as well as the sub-provinces of Nablus and Acre. Had they done this, the Ottomans would have created a geographical unit, as happened in Egypt, in which a particular nationalism might have arisen even earlier.<ref group="1.">See Butrus Abu-Manneh, "The Rise of the Sanjaq of Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century," in Ilan Pappe (ed.), ''The Israel/Palestine Question'', London and New York: Routledge, 2007, pp. 40–50.</ref><br />
<br />
However, even with its administrative division into north (ruled by Beirut) and south (ruled by Jerusalem), this shift raised Palestine as a whole above its previous peripheral status, when it had been divided into small regional sub-provinces. In 1918, with the onset of British rule, the north and the south divisions became one unit. In a similar way and in the same year the British established the basis for modern Iraq when they fused the three Ottoman provinces of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra into one modern nation state. In Palestine, unlike in Iraq, familial connections and geographical boundaries (the River Litani in the north, the River Jordan in the east, the Mediterranean in the west) worked together to weld the three sub-provinces of South Beirut, Nablus, and Jerusalem into one social and cultural unit. This geopolitical space had its own major dialect and its own customs, folklore, and traditions.<ref group="1.">For a more detailed analysis see Ilan Pappe, ''A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 14–6.</ref><br />
<br />
By 1918, Palestine was therefore more united than in the Ottoman period, but there were to be further changes. While waiting for final international approval of Palestine's status in 1923, the British government renegotiated the borders of the land, creating a better-defined geographical space for the national movements to struggle over, and a clearer sense of belonging for the people living in it. It was now clear what Palestine was; what was not clear was who it belonged to: the native Palestinians or the new Jewish settlers? The final irony of this administrative regime was that the reshaping of the borders helped the Zionist movement to conceptualize geographically "Eretz Israel," the Land of Israel where only Jews had the right to the land and its resources.<br />
<br />
Thus, Palestine was not an empty land. It was part of a rich and fertile eastern Mediterranean world that in the nineteenth century underwent processes of modernization and nationalization. It was not a desert waiting to come into bloom; it was a pastoral country on the verge of entering the twentieth century as a modern society, with all the benefits and ills of such a transformation. Its colonization by the Zionist movement turned this process into a disaster for the majority of the native people living there.<br />
<br />
==== Footnotes ====<br />
<references group="1." /><br />
<br />
=== The Jews Were a People without a Land ===<br />
The claim in the previous chapter, that Palestine was a land without people, goes hand in hand with the claim that the Jews were a people without a land.<br />
<br />
But were the Jewish settlers a people? Recent scholarship has repeated doubts expressed many years ago about this as well. The common theme of this critical point of view is best summarized in Shlomo Sand's ''The Invention of the Jewish People''.<ref group="2.">Shlomo Sand, ''The Invention of the Jewish People'', London and New York: Verso, 2010.</ref> Sand shows that the Christian world, in its own interest and at a given moment in modern history, supported the idea of the Jews as a nation that must one day return to the holy land. In this account, this return would be part of the divine scheme for the end of time, along with the resurrection of the dead and the second coming of the Messiah.<br />
<br />
The theological and religious upheavals of the Reformation from the sixteenth century onwards produced a clear association, especially among Protestants, between the notion of the end of the millennium and the conversion of the Jews and their return to Palestine. Thomas Brightman, a sixteenth-century English clergyman, represented these notions when he wrote, "Shall they return to Jerusalem again? There is nothing more certain: the prophets do everywhere confirm it and beat about it."<ref group="2.">Thomas Brightman, ''The Revelation of St. John Illustrated with an Analysis and Scholions'' [''sic''], 4th edn, London, 1644, p. 544</ref> Brightman was not only hoping for a divine promise to be fulfilled; he also, like so many after him, wished the Jews either to convert to Christianity or to leave Europe all together. A hundred years later, Henry Oldenburg, a German theologian and natural philosopher, wrote: "If the occasion present itself amid changes to which human affairs are liable, [the Jews] may even raise their empire anew, and … God may elect them a second time."<ref group="2.">From a letter he wrote to Spinoza on December 4, 1665, quoted in Franz Kobler, ''The Vision Was There: The History of the British Movement for the Restoration of the Jews to Palestine'', London: Birt Am Publications, 1956, pp. 25–6.</ref> Charles-Joseph of Lign, an Austro-Hungarian field marshal, stated in the second half of the eighteenth century:<blockquote>I believe that the Jew is not able to assimilate, and that he will constantly constitute a nation within a nation, wherever he may be. The simplest thing to do would in my opinion be returning to them their homeland, from which they were driven.<ref group="2.">Hagai Baruch, ''Le Sionisme Politique: Precurseurs et Militants: Le Prince De Linge'', Paris: Beresnik, 1920, p. 20.</ref> As is quite apparent from this last text, there was an obvious link between these formative ideas of Zionism and a more longstanding anti-Semitism.</blockquote>François-René de Chateaubriand, the famous French writer and politician, wrote around the same time that the Jews were "the legitimate masters of Judea." He influenced Napoleon Bonaparte, who hoped to elicit the help of the Jewish community in Palestine, as well as other inhabitants of the land, in his attempt to occupy the Middle East at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He promised them a "return to Palestine" and the creation of a state.<ref group="2.">Suja R. Sawafta, "Mapping the Middle East: From Bonaparte’s Egypt to Chateaubriand’s Palestine," PhD thesis submitted to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2013.</ref> Zionism, as we can see, was therefore a Christian project of colonization before it became a Jewish one.<br />
<br />
The ominous signs of how these seemingly religious and mythical beliefs might turn into a real program of colonization and dispossession appeared in Victorian Britain as early as the 1820s. A powerful theological and imperial movement emerged that would put the return of the Jews to Palestine at the heart of a strategic plan to take over Palestine and turn it into a Christian entity. In the nineteenth century, this sentiment became ever more popular in Britain and affected the official imperial policy: "The soil of Palestine … only awaits for the return of her banished children, and the application of industry, commensurate with agricultural capabilities, to burst once more into universal luxuriance, and be all that she ever was in the days of Solomon."<ref group="2.">A. W. C. Crawford, Lord Lindsay, ''Letters on Egypt, Edom and the Holy Land'', Vol. 2, London, 1847, p. 71.</ref> Thus wrote the Scottish peer and military commander John Lindsay. This sentiment was echoed by David Hartley, an English philosopher, who wrote: "It is probable that the Jews will be reinitiated in Palestine."<ref group="2.">Quoted in Anthony Julius, ''Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 43.</ref><br />
<br />
The process was not wholly successful before it received the support of the United States. Here, too, there was a history of endorsing the idea of a Jewish nation having the right to return to Palestine and build a Zion. At the same time as Protestants in Europe articulated these views, they appeared in a similar form across the Atlantic. The American president, John Adams (1735–1826), stated: "I really wish the Jews again in Judea as an independent nation."<ref group="2.">“Jews in America: President John Adams Embraces a Jewish Homeland” (1819), at [https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org jewishvirtuallibrary.org].</ref> A simple history of ideas leads directly from the preaching fathers of this movement to those with the power to change the fate of Palestine. Foremost among them was Lord Shaftesbury (1801–85), a leading British politician and reformer, who campaigned actively for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. His arguments for a greater British presence in Palestine were both religious and strategic.<ref group="2.">Donald Lewis, ''The Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 38.</ref><br />
<br />
As I will presently show, this dangerous blend of religious fervor and reformist zeal would lead from Shaftesbury's efforts in the middle of the nineteenth century to the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Shaftesbury realized that it would not be enough to support the return of the Jews, and they would have to be actively assisted by Britain in their initial colonization. Such an alliance should start, he asserted, by providing material help to the Jews to travel to Ottoman Palestine. He convinced the Anglican bishopric center and cathedral in Jerusalem to provide the early funding for this project. This would probably not have happened at all had Shaftesbury not succeeded in recruiting his father in law, Britain's foreign minister and later prime minister, Lord Palmerston, to the cause. In his diary for August 1, 1838, Shaftesbury wrote:<blockquote>Dined with Palmerston. After dinner left alone with him. Propounded my schemes, which seems to strike his fancy. He asked questions and readily promised to consider it [the program to help the Jews to return to Palestine and take it over]. How singular is the order of Providence. Singular, if estimated by man's ways. Palmerston had already been chosen by God to be an instrument of good to His ancient people, to do homage to their inheritance, and to recognize their rights without believing their destiny. It seems he will yet do more. Though the motive be kind, it is not sound. I am forced to argue politically, financially, commercially. He weeps not, like his Master, over Jerusalem, nor prays that now, at last, she may put on her beautiful garments.<ref group="2.">Anthony Ashley, Earl of Shaesbury, Diary entries as quoted by Edwin Hodder, ''The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaesbury'', London, 1886, Vol. 1, pp. 310–11; see also Geoffrey B. A. M. Finlayson, ''The Seventh Earl of Shaesbury'', London: Eyre Methuen, 1981, p. 114; The National Register Archives, London, Shaesbury (Broadlands) MSS, SHA/PD/2, August 1, 1840.</ref></blockquote>As a first step, Shaftesbury persuaded Palmerston to appoint his fellow restorationist (a believer in the restoration of Palestine to the Jews) William Young as the first British vice-consul in Jerusalem. He subsequently wrote in his diary: "What a wonderful event it is! The ancient City of the people of God is about to resume a place among the nations; and England is the first of the gentile kingdoms that ceases to "tread her down.'"<ref group="2.">Quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb, ''The People of the Book: Philosemitism in England, From Cromwell to Churchill'', New York: Encounter Books, 2011, p. 11.</ref> A year later, in 1839, Shaftesbury wrote a thirty-page article for ''The London Quarterly Review'', entitled "State and Restauration (''sic'') of the Jews," in which he predicted a new era for God's chosen people. He insisted that<blockquote>the Jews must be encouraged to return in yet greater numbers and become once more the husbandman of Judea and Galilee … though admittedly a stiff-necked, dark hearted people, and sunk in moral degradation, obduracy, and ignorance of the Gospel, [they are] not only worthy of salvation but also vital to Christianity's hope of salvation.<ref group="2.">''The London Quarterly Review'', Vol. 64, pp. 104–5.</ref></blockquote>Shaftesbury's gentle lobbying of Palmerston proved successful. For political reasons, more than for religious ones, Palmerston too became an advocate for Jewish restoration. Among other factors that came into play in his deliberations was the "view that the Jews could be useful in buttressing the collapsing Ottoman Empire, thus helping to accomplish the key object of British foreign policy in the area."<ref group="2.">Ibid.</ref><br />
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Palmerston wrote to the British ambassador in Istanbul on August 11, 1840, concerning the mutual benefit to both the Ottomans and Britain of allowing Jews to return to Palestine. Ironically, the restoration of the Jews was seen as an important means of maintaining the status quo, and of avoiding the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Palmerston wrote:<blockquote>There exists at the present time among the Jews dispersed over Europe, a strong notion that the time is approaching when their nation is to return to Palestine … It would be of manifest importance to the Sultan to encourage the Jews to return and to settle in Palestine because the wealth which they would bring with them would increase the resources of the Sultan's dominions; and the Jewish people, if returning under the sanction and protection and at the invitation of the Sultan, would be a check upon any future evil designs of Mohamet Ali or his successor … I have to instruct Your Excellency strongly to recommend [the Turkish government] to hold out every just encouragement to the Jews of Europe to return to Palestine.<ref group="2.">Ibid.</ref></blockquote>Mohamet Ali, more popularly known as Muhammad Ali, was the governor of Egypt who ceded from the Ottoman Empire in the first half of the nineteenth century. When Palmerston wrote this letter to his ambassador in Istanbul, it was after a decade in which the Egyptian ruler had nearly toppled the sultan himself. The idea that Jewish wealth exported to Palestine would strengthen the Ottoman Empire from potential internal and external enemies underlines how Zionism was associated with anti-Semitism, British imperialism, and theology.<br />
<br />
A few days after Lord Palmerston sent his letter, a lead article in ''The Times'' called for a plan "to plant the Jewish people in the land of their fathers," claiming this was under "serious political consideration" and commending the efforts of Shaftesbury as the author of the plan, which, it argued, was "practical and statesmanlike."<ref group="2.">''The Times of London'', August 17, 1840.</ref> Lady Palmerston also supported her husband's stance. She wrote to a friend: "We have on our side the fanatical and religious elements, and you know what a following they have in this country. They are absolutely determined that Jerusalem and the whole of Palestine shall be reserved for the Jews to return to; this is their only longing to restore the Jews."<ref group="2.">Quoted in Geoffrey Lewis, ''Balfour and Weizmann: The Zionist, the Zealot and the Emergence of Israel'', London: Continuum books, 2009, p. 19.</ref> Thus the Earl of Shaftesbury was described as: "The leading proponent of Christian Zionism in the nineteenth century and the first politician of stature to attempt to prepare the way for Jews to establish a homeland in Palestine."<ref group="2.">Deborah J. Schmidle, "Anthony Ashley-Cooper, Seventh Earl of Shasbury," in Hugh D. Hindman (ed.), ''The World of Child Labour: An Historical and Regional Survey'', London and New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2009, p. 569.</ref><br />
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This moment of British establishment enthusiasm for the idea of restoration should properly be described as proto-Zionism. While we should be careful about reading contemporary ideology into this nineteenth-century phenomenon, it nevertheless had all the ingredients that would turn these ideas into the future justification for erasing and denying the basic rights of the indigenous Palestinian population. There were of course churches and clergymen who did identify with the local Palestinians. Notable among them was George Francis Popham Blyth, a Church of England cleric who, along with some high church Anglican colleagues, developed strong sympathies for the Palestinians' aspirations and rights. In 1887 Blyth founded St. George College, which is today probably still one of the best high schools in East Jerusalem (attended by the children of the local elite, who would play a crucial role in Palestinian politics in the first half of the twentieth century). The power, however, was with those who supported the Jewish cause, later to become the Zionist cause.<br />
<br />
The first British consulate in Jerusalem opened in 1838. Its brief included informally encouraging Jews to come to Palestine, promising to protect them, and in some cases attempting to convert them to Christianity. The most well-known of the early consuls was James Finn (1806–72), whose character and direct approach made it impossible to conceal the implications of this brief from the local Palestinians. He wrote openly, and was probably the first to do so, about the connection between returning the Jews to Palestine and the possible displacement of the Palestinians as a result.<ref group="2.">I have developed this idea in Ilan Pappe, ''The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty: The Husaynis'', 1700–1948, London: Saqi Books, 2010, pp. 84, 117.</ref> This connection would be at the heart of the Zionist settler colonial project in the following century.<br />
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Finn was stationed in Jerusalem between 1845 and 1863. He has been lauded by later Israeli historians for helping Jews to settle in their ancestral land, and his memoirs have been translated into Hebrew. He is not the only historical figure to have appeared in one nation's pantheon and in the rogues' gallery of another. Finn detested Islam as a whole and the notables of Jerusalem in particular. He never learned to speak Arabic and communicated via an interpreter, which did nothing to smooth his relationship with the local Palestinian population.<br />
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Finn was helped by the inauguration of the Anglican bishopric in Jerusalem in 1841, headed by Michael Solomon Alexander (a convert from Judaism), and by the inauguration of Christ Church, the first Anglican church, near Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem, in 1843. Although these institutions later developed a strong affinity with the Palestinian right of self-determination, at the time they supported Finn's proto-Zionist aspirations. Finn worked more eagerly than any other European to establish a permanent Western presence in Jerusalem, organizing the purchase of lands and real estate for missionaries, commercial interests, and government bodies.<br />
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An important link connecting these early, mainly British, Christian Zionist buds with Zionism was the German Temple Pietist movement (later known as the Templers), active in Palestine from the 1860s to the outbreak of World War I. The Pietist movement grew out of the Lutheran movement in Germany that spread all over the world, including to North America (where its influence on the early settler colonialism is felt to this very day). Its interest in Palestine evolved around the 1860s. Two German clergymen, Christoph Hoffman and Georg David Hardegg, founded the Temple Society in 1861. They had strong connections to the Pietist movement in Württemberg, Germany, but developed their own ideas on how best to push forward their version of Christianity. For them, the rebuilding of a Jewish temple in Jerusalem was an essential step in the divine scheme for redemption and absolution. More importantly, they were convinced that if they themselves settled in Palestine they would precipitate the second coming of the Messiah.<ref group="2.">Helmut Glenk, ''From Desert Sands to Golden Oranges: The History of the German Templers Settlement of Sarona in Palestine'', Toronto: Trafford, 2005, is one of the few works in English. Most of the works on the Templars are in either German or Hebrew.</ref> While not everyone in the respective churches and national organizations welcomed their particular way of translating Pietism into settler colonialism in Palestine, senior members of the Royal Prussian court and several Anglican theologians in Britain enthusiastically supported their dogma.<br />
<br />
As the Temple movement grew in prominence, it came to be persecuted by most of the established church in Germany. But they moved their ideas on to a more practical stage and settled in Palestine—fighting with each other along the way, as well as adding new members. They founded their first colony on Mount Carmel in Haifa in 1866 and expanded into other parts of the country. The warming of the relationship between Kaiser Wilhelm II and the sultan at the very end of the nineteenth century further enhanced their settlement project. The Templers remained in Palestine under the British Mandate until 1948, when they were kicked out by the new Jewish state.<br />
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The Templers' colonies and methods of settlement were emulated by the early Zionists. While the German historian Alexander Scholch described the Templers' colonization efforts as "The Quiet Crusade," the early Zionist colonies established from 1882 onwards were anything but quiet.<ref group="2.">Alexander Scholch, ''Palestine in Transformation, 1856–1882: Studies in Social, Economic, and Political Development'', Washington: Institute of Palestine Studies, 2006.</ref> By the time the Templers settled in Palestine, Zionism had already become a notable political movement in Europe. Zionism was, in a nutshell, a movement asserting that the problems of the Jews of Europe would be solved by colonizing Palestine and creating a Jewish state there. These ideas germinated in the 1860s in several places in Europe, inspired by the Enlightenment, the 1848 "Spring of Nations," and later on by socialism. Zionism was transformed from an intellectual and cultural exercise into a political project through the visions of Theodor Herzl, in response to a particularly vile wave of anti-Jewish persecution in Russia in the late 1870s and early 1880s, and to the rise of anti-Semitic nationalism in the west of Europe (where the infamous Dreyfus trial revealed how deeply rooted anti-Semitism was in French and German society).<br />
<br />
Through Herzl's efforts and those of like-minded Jewish leaders, Zionism became an internationally recognized movement. Independently at first, a group of Eastern European Jews developed similar notions about the solution for the Jewish question in Europe, and they did not wait for international recognition. They began to settle in Palestine in 1882, after preparing the ground by working in communes in their home countries. In the Zionist jargon they are called the First Aliyah—the first wave of Zionist immigration lasting to 1904. The second wave (1905–14) was different, since it mainly included frustrated communists and socialists who now saw Zionism not only as a solution for the Jewish problem but also as spearheading communism and socialism through collective settlement in Palestine. In both waves, however, the majority preferred to settle in Palestinian towns, with only a smaller number attempting to cultivate land they bought from Palestinians and absentee Arab landowners, at first relying on Jewish industrialists in Europe to sustain them, before seeking a more independent economic existence.<br />
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While the Zionist connection with Germany proved insignificant at the end of the day, the one with Britain became crucial. Indeed, the Zionist movement needed strong backing because the people of Palestine began to realize that this particular form of immigration did not bode well for their future in the country. Local leaders felt it would have a very negative effect on their society. One such figure was the mufti of Jerusalem, Tahir al-Hussayni II, who linked Jewish immigration into Jerusalem with a European challenge to the city's Muslim sanctity. Some of his elders had already noted that it was James Finn's idea to connect the arrival of the Jews with the restoration of Crusader glory. No wonder, then, that the mufti led the opposition to this immigration, with a special emphasis on the need to refrain from selling land to such projects. He recognized that possession of land vindicated claims of ownership, whereas immigration without settlement could be conceived as transient pilgrimage.<ref group="2.">Pappe, ''The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty'', p. 115.</ref><br />
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Thus, in many ways, the strategic imperial impulse of Britain to use the Jewish return to Palestine as a means of deepening London's involvement in the "Holy Land" coincided with the emergence of new cultural and intellectual visions of Zionism in Europe. For both Christians and Jews, therefore, the colonization of Palestine was seen as an act of return and redemption. The coincidence of the two impulses produced a powerful alliance that turned the anti-Semitic and millenarian idea of transferring the Jews from Europe to Palestine into a real project of settlement at the expense of the native people of Palestine. This alliance became public knowledge with the proclamation of the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917—a letter from the British foreign secretary to the leaders of the Anglo-Jewish community in effect promising them full support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.<br />
<br />
Thanks to the accessibility and efficient structure of the British archives, today we are blessed with many excellent scholarly works exploring the background to the declaration. Still among the best of them is an essay from 1970 by Mayer Verte, of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.<ref group="2.">Verte’s 1970 article was republished as "The Balfour Declaration and Its Makers" in N. Rose (ed.), ''From Palmerston to Balfour: Collected Essays of Mayer Verte'', London: Frank Cass, 1992, pp. 1–38.</ref> He showed in particular how British officials asserted wrongly that Jewish members in the Bolshevik movement had similar aspirations to the Zionists, and that therefore a pro-Zionist declaration would pave the way for good relations with the new political power in Russia. More to the point was the assumption of these policy makers that such a gesture would be welcomed by the American Jews, whom the British suspected of having a great influence in Washington. There was also a mixture of millenarianism and Islamophobia: David Lloyd George, the prime minister at the time and a devout Christian, favored the return of the Jews on a religious basis, and strategically both he and his colleagues preferred a Jewish colony to a Muslim one, as they saw the Palestinians, in the Holy Land.<br />
<br />
More recently we have had access to an even more comprehensive analysis, written in 1939, but lost for many years before it reappeared in 2013. This is the work of the British journalist, J. M. N Jeffries, ''Palestine: The Reality'', which runs to more than 700 pages explaining what lay behind the Balfour Declaration.<ref group="2.">J. M. N Jeffries, ''Palestine: The Reality, Washington: Institute of Palestine Studies'', 2013.</ref> It reveals, through Jeffries' personal connections and his access to a wide range of no-longer-extant documents, precisely who in the British admiralty, army and government was working for the declaration and why. It appears that the pro-Zionist Christians in his story were far more enthusiastic than the Zionists themselves about the idea of British sponsorship of the colonization process in Palestine.<br />
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The bottom line of all the research hitherto conducted on the declaration is that the various decision makers in Britain saw the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine as coinciding with British strategic interests in the area. Once Britain had occupied Palestine, this alliance allowed the Jews to build the infrastructure for a Jewish state under British auspices, while protected by His Majesty's Government's bayonets.<br />
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But Palestine was not easily taken. The British campaign against the Turks lasted almost the whole of 1917. It began well, with the British forces storming through the Sinai Peninsula, but they were then held up by an attritional trench war in the lines between the Gaza Strip and Bir Saba. Once this stalemate was broken, it became easier—in fact, Jerusalem surrendered without a fight. The ensuing military occupation brought all three discrete processes—the emergence of Zionism, Protestant millenarianism, and British imperialism—to Palestinian shores as a powerful fusion of ideologies that destroyed the country and its people over the next thirty years.<br />
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There are those who would like to question whether the Jews who settled in Palestine as Zionists in the aftermath of 1918 were really the descendants of the Jews who had been exiled by Rome 2,000 years ago. It began with popular doubts cast by Arthur Koestler (1905–83), who wrote ''The Thirteenth Tribe'' (1976) in which he advanced the theory that the Jewish settlers were descended from the Khazars, a Turkish nation of the Caucasus that converted to Judaism in the eighth century and was later forced to move westward.<ref group="2.">The book has been reprinted as Arthur Koestler, ''The Khazar Empire and its Heritage'', New York: Random House, 1999.</ref> Israeli scientists have ever since tried to prove that there is a genetic connection between the Jews of Roman Palestine and those of present-day Israel. Nevertheless, the debate continues today.<br />
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More serious analysis came from biblical scholars who were not influenced by Zionism, such as Keith Whitelam, Thomas Thompson, and the Israeli scholar, Israel Finkelstein, all of whom reject the Bible as a factual account of any significance.<ref group="2.">Keith Whitelam, in ''The Invention of Ancient Israel'', London and New York: Routledge, 1999, and Thomas L. Thompson, in ''The Mythical Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel'', London: Basic Books, 1999, created the Copenhagen School of biblical minimalism that pursues the main arguments and research on this issue.</ref> Whitelam and Thompson also doubt the existence of anything like a nation in biblical times and, like others, criticize what they call the "invention of modern Israel" as the work of pro-Zionist Christian theologians. The latest and most updated deconstruction of this idea came in Shlomo Sand's two books, ''The Invention of the Jewish People'' and ''The Invention of the Land of Israel''.<ref group="2.">Shlomo Sand, ''The Invention of the Jewish People'', and ''The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland'', London and New York: Verso, 2014.</ref> I respect and appreciate this scholarly effort. Politically, however, I think it is less significant than the assumption that denies the existence of the Palestinians (although it is the complement of that assumption). People are entitled to invent themselves, as so many national movements have done in their moment of inception. But the problem becomes acute if the genesis narrative leads to political projects such as genocide, ethnic cleansing, and oppression.<br />
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In the particular case of the claims of nineteenth-century Zionism, it is not the historical accuracy of those claims that matters. What matters is not whether the present Jews in Israel are the authentic descendants of those who lived in the Roman era, but rather the state of Israel's insistence that it represents all the Jews in the world and that everything it does is for their sake and on their behalf. Until 1967, this claim was very helpful for the state of Israel. Jews around the world, in particular in the United States, became its main supporters whenever its policies were questioned. In many respects, this is still the case in the United States today. However, even there, as well as in other Jewish communities, this clear association is nowadays challenged.<br />
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Zionism, as we shall see in the next chapter, was originally a minority opinion among Jews. In making the argument that the Jews were a nation belonging to Palestine and therefore should be helped to return to it, they had to rely on British officials and, later, military power. Jews and the world at large did not seem to be convinced that the Jews were a people without a land. Shaftesbury, Finn, Balfour, and Lloyd George liked the idea because it helped Britain gain a foothold in Palestine. This became immaterial after the British took Palestine by force and then had to decide from a new starting point whether the land was Jewish or Palestinian—a question it could never properly answer, and therefore had to leave to others to resolve after thirty years of frustrating rule.<br />
<br />
==== Footnotes ====<br />
<references group="2." /><br />
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=== Zionism is Judaism ===<br />
In order to examine properly the assumption that Zionism is the same as Judaism, one has to begin with the historical context in which it was born. Since its inception in the mid-nineteenth century, Zionism was only one, inessential, expression of Jewish cultural life. It was born out of two impulses among Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe. The first was a search for safety within a society that refused to integrate Jews as equals and that occasionally persecuted them, either through legislation or through riots organized or encouraged by the powers that be as a diversion from economic crises or political upheavals. The second impulse was a wish to emulate other new national movements mushrooming in Europe at the time, during what historians called the European Spring of Nations. Those Jews who sought to transform Judaism from a religion into a nation were not unique among the many ethnic and religious groups within the two crumbling empires—the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman—who wished to redefine themselves as nations.<br />
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The roots of modern-day Zionism can be found already in the eighteenth century in what was called the Jewish enlightenment movement. This was a group of writers, poets, and rabbis who revived the Hebrew language and pushed the boundaries of traditional and religious Jewish education into the more universal study of science, literature, and philosophy. Across Central and Eastern Europe, Hebrew newspapers and journals began to proliferate. Out of this group there emerged a few individuals, known in Zionist historiography as the "Harbingers of Zionism," who showed greater nationalist tendencies and associated the revival of Hebrew with nationalism in their writings. They put forward two new ideas: the redefinition of Judaism as a national movement and the need to colonize Palestine in order to return the Jews to the ancient homeland from which they had been expelled by the Romans in 70 <span class="small">CE</span>. They advocated for "the return" by way of what they defined as "agricultural colonies" (in many parts of Europe Jews were not allowed to own or cultivate land, hence the fascination with starting anew as a nation of farmers, not just as free citizens).<br />
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These ideas became more popular after a brutal wave of pogroms in Russia in 1881, which transformed them into a political program propagated by a movement called "The Lovers of Zion," who dispatched a few hundred enthusiastic young Jews to build the first new colonies in Palestine in 1882. This first phase in the history of Zionism culminates with the works and actions of Theodor Herzl. Born in Pest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1860, but resident for most of his life in Vienna, Herzl began his career as a playwright interested in the status and problems of the modern Jew in his society, asserting at first that full assimilation into local society was the key to this predicament. In the 1890s he became a journalist and, according to his own version of his life, it was at this time that he realized how potent anti-Semitism was. He concluded that there was no hope for assimilation and opted instead for the foundation of a Jewish state in Palestine as the best solution to what he defined as the "Jewish Problem."<br />
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As these early Zionist ideas were aired among Jewish communities in countries such as Germany and the United States, prominent rabbis and leading figures in those communities rejected the new approach. Religious leaders dismissed Zionism as a form of secularization and modernization, while secular Jews feared that the new ideas would raise questions about the Jews' loyalty to their own nation-states and would thus increase anti-Semitism. Both groups had different ideas about how to cope with the modern-day persecution of the Jews in Europe. Some believed that the further entrenchment of Jewish religion and tradition was the answer (as Islamic fundamentalists would do at the same time, when faced with European modernization), while others advocated for further assimilation into non-Jewish life.<br />
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When Zionist ideas appeared in Europe and the United States between the 1840s and the 1880s, most Jews practiced Judaism in two different ways. One involved entrenchment: living within very tight religious communities, shunning new ideas such as nationalism, and indeed regarding modernization as such as an unwelcome threat to their way of life. The other way involved living a secular life, which differed from that of the non-Jewish communities in only very minimal ways—celebrating certain holidays, frequenting the synagogue on Fridays, and probably not eating in public during the fast of the day of atonement (Yom Kippur). Gershom Scholem, who was one such Jew, recalled in his memoirs ''Berlin to Jerusalem'' how, as a member of a young Jewish group in Germany, he used to dine with his friends in the same restaurant in Berlin during Yom Kippur; on their arrival, the proprietor would inform them that "the special room for the fasting gentlemen in the restaurant was ready."<ref group="3.">Gershom Scholem, ''From Berlin to Jerusalem: Youth Memoirs'', Jerusalem: Am Oved, 1982, p. 34 (Hebrew).</ref> Individuals and communities found themselves between these two poles of secularization on the one hand and Orthodox life on the other. But let us look more closely at the positions they adopted towards Zionism in the second half of the nineteenth century.<br />
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Jewish secularism is a slightly bizarre concept of course, as is Christian secularism or Islamic secularism. Secular Jews as described above were people with various degrees of connection to religion (very much as a secular Christian in Britain celebrates Easter and Christmas, sends his children to Church of England schools, or attends Sunday mass occasionally or frequently). In the latter half of the nineteenth century, this modern form of practicing Judaism became a powerful movement known as the Reform movement, which looked for ways of adapting religion to modern life without succumbing to its anachronistic aspects. It was particularly popular in Germany and the United States.<br />
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When the Reformists first encountered Zionism, they vehemently rejected the idea of redefining Judaism as nationalism and the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. However, their anti-Zionist stance shifted after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. In the second half of the twentieth century, the majority among them created a new Reform movement in the United States, which became one of the strongest Jewish organizations in the country (although not until 1999 did the new movement officially vow allegiance to Israel and Zionism). However, a large number of Jews left the new movement and set up the American Council of Judaism (ACJ), which reminded the world in 1993 that Zionism was still a minority view among Jews, and which remained loyal to the old Reformist notions about Zionism.<ref group="3.">The following quotes from the Reformists are taken from an assessment of their position, critical and pro-Zionist but nonetheless very informative, which includes the documents in full. See Ami Isserof, "Opposition of Reform Judaism to Zionism: A History," August 12, 2005, at [https://zionism-israel.com zionism-israel.com].</ref><br />
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Before that schism, the Reform movement in both Germany and the United States had provided a strong and unanimous case against Zionism. In Germany, they publicly rejected the idea of a Jewish nation and proclaimed themselves "Germans of the Mosaic faith." One of the German Reformists' early acts was to remove from their prayer rituals any references to a return to "Eretz Israel" or the rebuilding of a state there. Similarly, already in 1869, American Reformists stated in one of their first conventions<blockquote>that the messianic aim of Israel [i.e. the Jewish people] is not the restoration of a Jewish state under a descendant of David, involving a second separation from the nations of earth, but the union of the children of God in the confession of the unity of God, so as to realize the unity of all rational creatures, and their call to moral sanctification.</blockquote>In 1885, another Reformist conference stated: "We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and we therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any laws concerning the Jewish state."<br />
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One famous leader in this respect was Rabbi Kaufman Kohler, who repudiated the idea "that Judea is the home of the Jew—an idea which 'unhomes' [''sic''] the Jew all over the wide earth." Another leader of the movement at the end of the nineteenth century, Isaac Mayer Wise, often ridiculed Zionist leaders such as Herzl, comparing them to charlatan alchemists claiming to contribute to science. In Vienna, the city of Herzl, Adolf Jellinek argued that Zionism would endanger the position of Jews in Europe and claimed that most of them objected to the idea. "We are at home in Europe," he declared.<br />
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Apart from the Reformers, liberal Jews at that time rejected the claim that Zionism provided the only solution for anti-Semitism. As Walter Lacquer shows us in his book, ''The History of Zionism'', liberal Jews regarded Zionism as a fanciful movement that provided no answer to the problems of the Jews in Europe. They argued for what they called a "regeneration" of the Jews, involving a display of total loyalty to their homelands and a willingness to be fully assimilated into them as citizens.<ref group="3.">Walter Lacquer, ''The History of Zionism'', New York: Tauris Park Paperback, 2003, pp. 338–98.</ref> They hoped that a more liberal world might solve the problems of persecution and anti-Semitism. History showed that liberalism had saved those Jews who moved to, or lived in, the UK and the USA. Those who believed it could happen in the rest of Europe were proven wrong. But even today, with hindsight, many liberal Jews do not see Zionism as the right answer then or now.<br />
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Socialists and Orthodox Jews began to voice their criticisms of Zionism only in the 1890s, when Zionism became a more recognized political force very late in the decade, thanks to the diligent work of Herzl. Herzl understood contemporary politics and wrote utopian stories, political tracts, and newspaper reports summarizing the idea that it was in Europe's interest to help build a modern Jewish state in Palestine. World leaders were not impressed; neither were the Ottomans, as the rulers of Palestine. Herzl's greatest achievement was bringing all the activists together at one conference in 1897, and from there building up two basic organizations—a world congress promoting the ideas of Zionism globally, and local Zionist outfits on the ground expanding the Jewish colonization of Palestine.<br />
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Thus, with the crystallization of Zionist ideas, the criticism of Jews opposed to Zionism also became clearer. Apart from the Reform movement, criticism came from the left, lay leaders of the various communities, and from Orthodox Jews. In 1897, the same year as the first Zionist conference was convened in Basel, a socialist Jewish movement was born in Russia: the Bund. It was both a political movement and a Jewish trade union. Bund members believed that a socialist, even a Bolshevik, revolution would be a far better solution to the problems of Jews in Europe than Zionism. They regarded the latter as a form of escapism. More importantly, when Nazism and Fascism were on the rise in Europe, Bundists felt that Zionism contributed to this brand of anti-Semitism by questioning the loyalty of Jews to their homelands. Even after the Holocaust, Bundists were convinced that Jews should seek a place in societies that cherish human and civil rights, and did not see a Jewish nation state as a panacea. This strong anti-Zionist conviction, however, slowly subsided from around the mid-1950s, and the remnants of this once-powerful movement eventually decided to support the state of Israel publicly (they even had a branch in the Jewish state).<ref group="3.">The most recent work on the movement is Yoav Peled, ''Class and Ethnicity in the Pale: The Political Economy of Jewish Workers’ Nationalism in Late Imperial Russia'', London: St. Martin’s Press, 1989.</ref><br />
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The reaction of the Bund did not trouble Herzl as much as did the lukewarm response of the Jewish political and economic elites in places such as Britain and France. They saw Herzl either as a charlatan whose ideas were far removed from reality, or worse as someone who could undermine Jewish life in their own societies where, as in Britain, they had made immense progress in terms of emancipation and integration. The Victorian Jews were disturbed by his call for Jewish sovereignty in a foreign land with an equal status to other sovereign states in the world. For the more established sections of Central and Western European Jewry, Zionism was a provocative vision that called into question the loyalty of English, German, and French Jews to their own home nations. Thanks to their lack of support for Herzl, the Zionist movement failed to become a powerful actor before World War I. Only after Herzl's death in 1904 did other leaders of the movement—in particular Chaim Weizmann, who immigrated to Britain in the year Herzl died and became a leading scientist there, contributing to the British war effort in World War I—build a strong alliance with London that served Zionism well, as will be described later in this chapter.<ref group="3.">M. W. Weisgal and J. Carmichael (eds.), ''Chaim Weizmann: A Biography by Several Hands'', New York: Oxford University Press, 1963.</ref><br />
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The third critique on Zionism in its early days came from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish establishment. To this day, many ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities vehemently oppose Zionism, although they are much smaller than they were in the late nineteenth century and some of them moved to Israel and are now part of its political system. Nonetheless, as in the past, they constitute yet another non-Zionist way of being Jewish. When Zionism made its first appearance in Europe, many traditional rabbis in fact forbade their followers from having anything to do with Zionist activists. They viewed Zionism as meddling with God's will to retain the Jews in exile until the coming of the Messiah. They totally rejected the idea that Jews should do all they can to end the "Exile." Instead, they had to wait for God's word on this and in the meantime practice the traditional way of life. While individuals were allowed to visit and study in Palestine as pilgrims, this was not to be interpreted as permission for a mass movement. The great Hasidic German Rabbi of Dzikover summed up this approach bitterly when he said that Zionism asks him to replace centuries of Jewish wisdom and law for a rag, soil, and a song (i.e. a flag, a land, and an anthem).<ref group="3.">Elie Kedourie, ''Nationalism'', Oxford: Blackwell, 1993, p. 70.</ref><br />
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Not all the leading rabbis opposed Zionism however. There was a small group of quite famous authoritative figures, such as the rabbis al-Qalay, Gutmacher, and Qalisher, who endorsed the Zionist program. They were a small minority but in hindsight they were an important group as they laid the foundation for the national religious wing of Zionism. Their religious acrobatics were quite impressive. In Israeli historiography they are called the "Fathers of the Religious Zionism." Religious Zionism is a very important movement in contemporary Israel, as the ideological home of the messianic settler movement, Gush Emunim, which colonized the West Bank and the Gaza Strip from 1967 onwards. These rabbis not only called on Jews to leave Europe but also asserted that it was a religious duty, not just a nationalist one, for Jews to colonize Palestine through the cultivation of its land (not surprisingly the natives of the land do not feature in their writings). They claimed that such an act would not be meddling with God's will; on the contrary, it would fulfill the prophecies of the Prophets and advance the full redemption of the Jewish people and the coming of the Messiah.<ref group="3.">Shlomo Avineri, ''The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State'', New York: Basic Books, 1981, pp. 187–209.</ref><br />
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Most of the leading lights in Orthodox Judaism rejected this plan and interpretation. They had another axe to grind with Zionism. The new movement not only wished to colonize Palestine; it also hoped to secularize the Jewish people, to invent the "new Jew" in antithesis to the religious Orthodox Jews of Europe. This culminated in the image of a new European Jew who could no longer live in Europe, because of its anti-Semitism, but had to live as a European outside the continent. Thus, like many movements during this period, Zionism redefined itself in national terms—but it was radically different because it chose a new land for this conversion. The Orthodox Jew was ridiculed by the Zionists and was viewed as someone who could only be redeemed through hard work in Palestine. This transformation is beautifully described in Herzl's futuristic utopian novel, ''Altnueland'', which tells the story of a German tourist expedition arriving in the Jewish state long after it had been established.<ref group="3.">You can now download the book for free at [https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org jewishvirtuallibrary.org].</ref> Before arriving in Palestine, one of the tourists had run into a young Orthodox Jewish beggar—he comes across him again in Palestine, now secular, educated, and extremely rich and content.<br />
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The role of the Bible within Jewish life offered one further clear difference between Judaism and Zionism. In the pre-Zionist Jewish world, the Bible was not taught as a singular text that carried any political or even national connotation in the various Jewish educational centers in either Europe or the Arab world. The leading rabbis treated the political history contained in the Bible, and the idea of Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel, as marginal topics in their spiritual world of learning. They were much more concerned, as indeed Judaism in general was, with the holy writings focusing on the relationship between believers, and in particular on their relations with God.<br />
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From "The Lovers of Zion" in 1882 to the Zionist leaders on the eve of World War I, who appealed to Britain to support the Jewish claim for Palestine, reference to the Bible was quite common. In pursuit of their own interests, Zionist leaders fundamentally challenged the traditional biblical interpretations. The Lovers of Zion, for instance, read the Bible as the story of a Jewish nation born on the land of Palestine as an oppressed people under the yoke of a Canaanite regime. The latter exiled the Jewish people to Egypt, until they returned to the land and liberated it under Joshua's leadership. The traditional interpretation, in contrast, focuses on Abraham and his family as a group of people discovering a monotheistic god rather than a nation and a homeland. Most readers will be familiar with this conventional narrative of the Abrahamites discovering God and through trials and tribulations finding themselves in Egypt<ref group="3.">See Eliezer Shweid, ''Homeland and the Promised Land, Tel Aviv'': Am Oved, 1979, p. 218 (Hebrew).</ref>—hardly a story of an oppressed nation engaged in a liberation struggle. However, the latter was the preferred Zionist interpretation, which still holds water in Israel today.<br />
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One of the most intriguing uses of the Bible in Zionism is that practiced by the socialist wing of the movement. The fusion of socialism with Zionism began in earnest after Herzl's death in 1904, as the various socialist factions became the leading parties in the World Zionist movement and on the ground in Palestine. For the socialists, as one of them said, the Bible provided "the myth for our right over the land."<ref group="3.">Micha Yosef Berdichevsky, "On Both Sides," quoted in Asaf Sagiv, "The Fathers of Zionism and the Myth of the Birth of the Nation," Techelt, 5 (1998), p. 93 (Hebrew).</ref> It was in the Bible that they read stories about Hebrew farmers, shepherds, kings, and wars, which they appropriated as describing the ancient golden era of their nation's birth. Returning to the land meant coming back to become farmers, shepherds, and kings. Thus, they found themselves faced with a challenging paradox, for they wanted both to secularize Jewish life and to use the Bible as a justification for colonizing Palestine. In other words, though they did not believe in God, He had nonetheless promised them Palestine.<br />
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For many Zionist leaders, the reference in the Bible to the land of Palestine was just a means to their ends, and not the essence of Zionism. This was clear in particular in texts written by Theodor Herzl. In a famous article in ''The Jewish Chronicle'' (July 10, 1896) he based the Jewish demand for Palestine on the Bible, but expressed his wish that the future Jewish state be run according to the European political and moral philosophies of his time. Herzl was probably more secular than the group of leaders who replaced him. This prophet of the movement seriously considered alternatives to Palestine, such as Uganda, as the promised land of Zion. He also looked at other destinations in the north and south of America and in Azerbaijan.<ref group="3.">A good discussion on these options can be found in Adam Rovner, ''In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands Before Israel'', New York: NYU Press, 2014.</ref> With Herzl's death in 1904, and the rise of his successors, Zionism homed in on Palestine and the Bible became even more of an asset than before as proof of a divine Jewish right to the land.<br />
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The new post-1904 fixation on Palestine as the only territory in which Zionism could be implemented was reinforced by the growing power of Christian Zionism in Britain and in Europe. Theologians who studied the Bible and evangelical archeologists who excavated "the Holy Land" welcomed the settlement of Jews as confirming their religious belief that the "Jewish return" would herald the unfolding of the divine promise for the end of time. The return of the Jews was the precursor of the return of the Messiah and the resurrection of the dead. The Zionist project of colonizing Palestine was well served by this esoteric religious belief.<ref group="3.">An excellent summary of this point with adequate references can be found in Stephen Sizer's article "The Road to Balfour: e History of Christian Zionism," at [https://balfourproject.org balfourproject.org].</ref> However, behind these religious visions lay classical anti-Semitic sentiments. For pushing Jewish communities in the direction of Palestine was not only a religious imperative; it also helped in the creation of a Europe without Jews. It therefore represented a double gain: getting rid of the Jews in Europe, and at the same time fulfilling the divine scheme in which the Second Coming was to be precipitated by the return of the Jews to Palestine (and their subsequent conversion to Christianity or their roasting in Hell should they refuse).<br />
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From that moment onwards, the Bible became both the justification and the route map for the Zionist colonization of Palestine. Historically, the Bible served Zionism well from its inception until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. It played an important role in the dominant Israeli narrative—for both domestic and external purposes—claiming that Israel is the same land as was promised by God to Abraham in the Bible. "Israel" in this narrative existed until 70 <span class="small">CE</span>, when the Romans demolished it and exiled its people. The religious commemoration of that date, when the second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, was a day of mourning. In Israel it has become a national day of mourning on which all leisure-industry businesses, including restaurants, are required to close from the evening before.<br />
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The principal scholarly and secular proof for this narrative has been provided in recent years with the help of what is called biblical archeology (in itself an oxymoronic concept, since the Bible is a great literary work, written by many peoples in different periods, and hardly a historical text<ref group="3.">Ingrid Hjelm and Thomas Thompson (eds.), ''History, Archaeology and the Bible, Forty Years after "Historicity,"'' London and New York: Routledge, 2016.</ref>). After 70 <span class="small">CE</span>, according to the narrative, the land was more or less empty until the Zionist return. However, leading Zionists knew that appealing to the authority of the Bible would not be enough. Colonizing the already inhabited Palestine would require a systematic policy of settlement, dispossession, and even ethnic cleansing. To this end, portraying the dispossession of Palestine as the fulfillment of a divine Christian scheme was priceless when it came to galvanizing global Christian support behind Zionism.<br />
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As we have seen, once all other territorial options were ruled out and Zionism focused on the reclamation of Palestine, the leaders who took over from the early pioneers began to inject socialist, and even Marxist, ideology into the growing secular movement. The aim now was to establish (with the help of God) a secular, socialist, colonialist Jewish project in the Holy Land. As the colonized natives quickly learned, ultimately their fate was sealed regardless of whether the settlers brought with them the Bible, the writings of Marx, or the tracts of the European Enlightenment. All that mattered was whether, or how, you were included in the settlers' vision of the future. It is telling therefore that in the obsessive records kept by the early Zionist leaders and settlers, the natives featured as an obstacle, an alien and an enemy, regardless of who they were or of their own aspirations.<ref group="3.">Ilan Pappe, "Shtetl Colonialism: First and Last Impressions of Indigeneity by Colonised Colonisers," Seler Colonial Studies, 2:1 (2012), pp. 39–58.</ref><br />
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The first anti-Arab entries in those records were written while the settlers were still being hosted by the Palestinians on the way to the old colonies, or in the towns. Their complaints stemmed from their formative experiences, searching for work and a means of subsistence. This predicament seemed to affect them universally, whether they went to the old colonies or whether they tried their luck in the towns. Wherever they were, in order to survive they had to work shoulder to shoulder with Palestinian farmers or workers. Through such intimate contact even the most ignorant and defiant settlers realized that Palestine was totally an Arab country in its human landscape.<br />
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David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Jewish community during the Mandatory period and Israel's first prime minister, described the Palestinian workers and farmers as ''beit mihush'' ("an infested hotbed of pain"). Other settlers talked about the Palestinians as strangers and aliens. "The people here are stranger to us than the Russian or Polish peasant," wrote one of them, adding, "We have nothing in common with the majority of the people living here."<ref group="3.">Moshe Bellinson, "Rebelling Against Reality," in ''The Book of the Second Aliya'', Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1947 (Hebrew), p. 48. This book is the largest published collection of Second Aliya diary entries, leers and articles.</ref> They were surprised to find people in Palestine at all, having been told the land was empty. "I was disgusted to find out that in Hadera [an early Zionist colony built in 1882] part of the houses were occupied by Arabs," reported one settler, while another reported back to Poland that he was appalled to see many Arab men, women, and children crossing through Rishon LeZion (another colony from 1882).<ref group="3.">Yona Hurewitz, "From Kibush Ha-Avoda to Selement," in ''The Book of the Second Aliya'', p. 210.</ref><br />
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Since the country was not empty, and you had to overcome the presence of the natives, it was good to have God on your side—even if you were an atheist. Both David Ben-Gurion and his close friend and colleague Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (who along with Ben-Gurion led the Zionist socialist factions in Palestine and later became the second president of Israel) used the biblical promise as the main justification for the colonization of Palestine. This remained the case for the ideologues who succeeded them in the Labor party into the mid-1970s, and up to the very shallow secular Bible-ism of the Likud party and its offshoots of recent years.<br />
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The interpretation of the Bible as the divine justification for Zionism helped the socialists to reconcile their adherence to the universal values of solidarity and equality with the colonization project of dispossession. Indeed, since colonization was the main goal of Zionism, one has to ask what kind of socialism this was. After all, in the collective memory of many, the golden period of Zionism is associated with the collectivist, egalitarian life embodied in the establishment of the Kibbutz. This form of life lasted long after Israel was founded and it attracted young people from all over the world who came to volunteer and experience communism in its purest form. Very few of them realized, or could have known, that most of the Kibbutzim were built on destroyed Palestinian villages, whose populations had been expelled in 1948. In justification, the Zionists claimed that these villages were old Jewish places mentioned in the Bible, and hence that their appropriation was not an occupation but a liberation. A special committee of "biblical archeologists" would enter a deserted village and determine what its name was in biblical times. Energetic officials of the Jewish National Fund would then establish the settlement with its newly recovered name.<ref group="3.">Ilan Pappe, "The Bible in the Service of Zionism," in Hjelm and Thompson, ''History, Archaeology and the Bible'', pp. 205–18.</ref> A similar method was used after 1967 by the then minister of labor, Yigal Alon, a secular socialist Jew, for building a new town near Hebron, since it "belonged" to the Jewish people, according to the Bible.<br />
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Some critical Israeli scholars, most notable among them Gershon Shafir and Zeev Sternhell (as the well as the American scholar Zachary Lockman), have explained how the colonial appropriation of land tainted the supposed golden era of socialist Zionism. As these historians show, socialism within Zionism, as a praxis and way of life, was always a conditional and limited version of the universal ideology. The universal values and aspirations that characterized the various ideological movements of the Western left were very early on nationalized or Zionized in Palestine. No wonder then that socialism lost its attractiveness for the next generation of settlers.<ref group="3.">For a discussion of these works and the early introduction of the colonialist paradigm to the research on Zionism see Uri Ram, "The Colonisation Perspective in Israeli Sociology," in Ilan Pappe (ed.), e Israel/Palestine Question, London and New York: Routledge, 1999, pp. 53–77.</ref><br />
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Yet religion remained an important aspect of the process even after the land had been taken from the Palestinians. In its name you could invoke and assert an ancient moral right to Palestine that challenged every other external claim to the land in those dying days of imperialism. This right also superseded the moral claims of the native population. One of the most socialist and secular colonialist projects of the twentieth century demanded exclusivity in the name of a pure divine promise. The reliance on the sacred text proved highly profitable for the Zionist settlers and extremely costly to the local population. The late and brilliant Michael Prior's last book, ''The Bible and Colonialism'', showed how the same kinds of projects were pursued around the globe in ways that have much in common with the colonization of Palestine.<ref group="3.">Michael Prior, ''The Bible and Colonialism: A Moral Critique'', London: Bloomsbury 1997.</ref><br />
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After Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967, the Bible continued to be used to similar ends. I have already mentioned Yigal Alon, who used the Bible to justify building a Jewish town, Qiryat Arba, on land expropriated from the people of Hebron, the nearby Palestinian town. Qiryat Arba quickly became a hotbed for people who took the Bible even more seriously as a guide to action. They selectively chose those biblical chapters and phrases that in their eyes justified the dispossession of the Palestinians. As the years of the occupation continued, so too did the regime of brutality against the dispossessed. This process of drawing political legitimization from a sacred text can lead to fanaticism with dangerous consequences. The Bible, for instance, has references to genocide: the Amalekites were killed to the last by Joshua. Today there are those, thankfully for now only a fanatical minority, who refer not only to the Palestinians as Amalekites but also to those who are not Jewish enough in their eyes.<ref group="3.">These themes are discussed at length in an excellent book that alas exists only in Hebrew: Se Rachlevski, ''The Messiah’s Donkey'', Tel Aviv: Yeditot Achronot, 1998.</ref><br />
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Similar references to genocide in the name of God appear in the Jewish Haggadah for Pesach (Passover). The main tale, of the Passover Seder—where God sends Moses and the Israelites to a land inhabited by others, to possess it as they see fit—is of course not an imperative issue for the vast majority of Jews. It is a literary text, not a manual for war. However, it can be exploited by the new stream of Jewish messianic thinking, as was the case with the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 and, in the summer of 2015, the burning to death first of a teenager in one incident, and then of two parents and their baby in another. Israel's new minister of justice, Ayelet Shaked, entertained similar ideas, so far only for Palestinians who have died in their attempts to resist Israel: their whole family, she said, should "follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there."<ref group="3.">This appeared on her official Facebook page on July 1, 2014, and was widely quoted in the Israeli press.</ref> For the time being, this is just a warning for the future. Since 1882, as we have seen, the Bible has been used as a justification for dispossession. However, in the early years of the state of Israel, 1948–67, reference to the Bible subsided and was only employed on the right-wing margins of the Zionist movement to justify their depiction of the Palestinians as subhuman and as the eternal enemies of the Jewish people. After the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967, these messianic and fundamentalist Jews, growing up in the Religious National Party, MAFDAL, seized the opportunity to transform their hallucinations into real action on the ground. They settled everywhere in the newly occupied territories, with or without the consent of the government. They created islands of Jewish life within Palestinian territory, and began to behave as if they owned all of it.<br />
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The most militant factions of Gush Emunim, the post-1967 settlement movement, took advantage of the very particular circumstances created by the Israeli rule over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to go wild in their license to dispossess and abuse in the name of the sacred texts. Israeli law did not apply in the occupied territories, which were ruled by military emergency regulations. However, this military legal regime did not apply to the settlers, who were in many ways immune from sanction in both legal systems. Their settling by force in the middle of Palestinian neighborhoods in Hebron and Jerusalem, uprooting of Palestinian olive trees, and setting fire to Palestinian fields were all justified as part of the divine duty to settle in "Eretz Israel."<br />
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But the settlers' violent interpretation of the biblical message was not confined to the occupied territories. They began to push into the heart of the mixed Arab-Jewish towns in Israel, such as Acre, Jaffa and Ramleh, in order to disturb the delicate modus vivendi that had prevailed there for years. The movement of settlers into these sensitive spots inside the pre-1967 Israeli border had the potential of undermining, in the name of the Bible, the already strained relations between the Jewish state and its Palestinian minority.<br />
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The final reason offered for the Zionist reclamation of the Holy Land, as determined by the Bible, was the need of Jews around the world to find a safe haven, especially after the Holocaust. However, even if this was true, it might have been possible to find a solution that was not restricted to the biblical map and that did not dispossess the Palestinians. This position was voiced by a quite a few well-known personalities, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. These commentators tried to suggest that the Palestinians should be asked to provide a safe haven for persecuted Jews alongside the native population, not in place of it. But the Zionist movement regarded such proposals as heresy.<br />
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The difference between settling alongside the native people and simply displacing them was recognized by Mahatma Gandhi when he was asked by the Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, to lend his support to the Zionist project. In 1938, Buber had been asked by Ben-Gurion to put pressure on several well-known moral figures to show their public support for Zionism. They felt that approval from Gandhi, as the leader of a nonviolent national struggle against imperialism, would be especially useful, and were prepared to leverage his respect for Buber in order to get it. Gandhi's major statement on Palestine and the Jewish question appeared in his widely circulated editorial in the ''Harijan'' of November 11, 1938, in the middle of a major rebellion by the native Palestinians against the British government's pro-Zionist policies. Gandhi began his piece by saying that all his sympathies lay with the Jews, who as a people had been subjected to inhuman treatment and persecution for centuries. But, he added,<blockquote>My sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and in the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after their return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?<ref group="3.">Quoted in Jonathan K. Crane, "Faltering Dialogue? Religious Rhetoric of Mohandas Ghandi and Martin Buber," ''Anaskati Darshan'', 3:1 (2007), pp. 34–52. See also A. K. Ramakrishnan, "Mahatma Ghandi Rejected Zionism," ''The Wisdom Fund'', August 15, 2001, at [https://twf.org twf.org].</ref></blockquote>Gandhi thus questioned the very foundational logic of political Zionism, rejecting the idea of a Jewish state in the promised land by pointing out that the "Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract." Thus, Gandhi disapproved of the Zionist project for both political and religious reasons. The endorsement of that project by the British government only alienated Gandhi even further. He had no doubts about who Palestine belonged to:<blockquote>Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs … Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.<ref group="3.">Quoted in Avner Falk, "Buber and Ghandi," ''Ghandi Marg'', 7th year, October 1963, p. 2. There are several websites such as the Ghandi Archives that also have the full dialogue.</ref></blockquote>Gandhi's response to the Palestine question contains different layers of meaning, ranging from an ethical position to political realism. What is interesting is that, while firmly believing in the inseparability of religion and politics, he consistently and vehemently rejected the cultural and religious nationalism of Zionism. A religious justification for claiming a nation state did not appeal to him in any substantial sense. Buber responded to this article by trying to justify Zionism, but Gandhi had apparently had enough and the correspondence petered out.<br />
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Indeed, the space the Zionist movement demanded for itself was not determined by the need to rescue persecuted Jews, but by the wish to take as much of Palestine as possible with as few inhabitants as was practical. Sober and secular Jewish scholars attempted to remain "scientific" in translating a hazy promise from an ancient past into a present fact. The project had been started already by the chief historian of the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine, Ben-Zion Dinaburg (Dinur), and was continued intensively after the creation of the state in 1948. Its end product is represented by the quotation from the website of the Israeli foreign ministry reproduced in [[Library:Ten Myths about Israel#Palestine Was an Empty Land|Chapter 1]]. Dinur's task in the 1930s, like that of his successors ever since, was to prove scientifically that there had been a Jewish presence in Palestine ever since Roman times.<br />
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Not that anyone doubted it. Despite the historical evidence that the Jews who lived in eighteenth-century Palestine rejected the notion of a Jewish state, as did the Orthodox Jews in the late nineteenth century, this was rejected out of hand in the twentieth century. Dinur and his colleagues used the statistic that Jews made up no more than 2 percent of the population of eighteenth-century Palestine to prove the validity of the biblical promise and of the modern Zionist demand for Palestine.<ref group="3.">Ben-Zion Dinaburg's ''The People of Israel in their Land: From the Beginning of Israel to the Babylonian Exile'' was published in Hebrew in 1936 and a second volume, ''Israel in Exile'', in 1946.</ref> This narrative has become the standard, accepted history. One of Britain's most distinguished professors of history, Sir Martin Gilbert, produced many years ago the ''Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict'', published across several editions by Cambridge University Press.<ref group="3.">Martin Gilbert, ''The Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conict'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.</ref> The ''Atlas'' begins the history of the conflict in biblical times, taking it for granted that the territory was a Jewish kingdom to which the Jews returned after 2,000 years of exile. Its opening maps tell the whole story: the first is of biblical Palestine; the second of Palestine under the Romans; the third of Palestine during the time of the crusaders; and the fourth, of Palestine in 1882. Thus, nothing of importance happened between the medieval era and the arrival of the first Zionists. Only when foreigners are in Palestine—Romans, Crusaders, Zionists—is it worth mentioning.<br />
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Israeli educational textbooks now carry the same message of the right to the land based on a biblical promise. According to a letter sent by the education ministry in 2014 to all schools in Israel: "the Bible provides the cultural infrastructure of the state of Israel, in it our right to the land is anchored."<ref group="3.">The letter appears on the official website, dated November 29, 2014.</ref> Bible studies are now a crucial and expanded component of the curriculum—with a particular focus on the Bible as recording an ancient history that justifies the claim to the land. The biblical stories and the national lessons that can be learned from them are fused together with the study of the Holocaust and of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. There is a direct line from this 2014 letter back to the evidence given by David Ben-Gurion in 1937 to the Royal Peel Commission (the British inquiry set up to try to find a solution to the emerging conflict). In the public discussions on the future of Palestine, Ben-Gurion waved a copy of the Bible at the members of the committee, shouting: "This is our ''Qushan'' [the Ottoman land registry proof], our right to Palestine does not come from the Mandate Charter, the Bible is our Mandate Charter."<ref group="3.">Tom Segev, ''One Palestine, Complete'', London: Abacus, 2001, p. 401.</ref><br />
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Historically, of course, it makes no sense to teach the Bible, what happened to the Jews of Europe, and the 1948 war as one historical chapter. But ideologically the three items are linked together and indoctrinated as the basic justification for the Jewish state in our time. This discussion of the role of the Bible in modern-day Israel leads us to our next question: is Zionism a colonialist movement?<br />
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==== Footnotes ====<br />
<references group="3." /><br />
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=== Zionism is not Colonialism ===<br />
The land of Palestine was not empty when the first Zionist settlers arrived there in 1882. This fact was known to the Zionist leaders even before the first Jewish settlers arrived. A delegation sent to Palestine by the early Zionist organizations reported back to their colleagues: "the bride is beautiful but married to another man."<ref group="4.">Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, ''Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel'', London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1992, p. 74</ref> Nevertheless, when they first arrived, the early settlers were surprised to encounter the locals whom they regarded as invaders and strangers. In their view, the native Palestinians had usurped their homeland. They were told by their leaders that the locals were not natives, that they had no rights to the land. Instead they were a problem that had to, and could, be resolved.<br />
<br />
This conundrum was not unique: Zionism was a settler colonial movement, similar to the movements of Europeans who had colonized the two Americas, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. Settler colonialism differs from classical colonialism in three respects. The first is that settler colonies rely only initially and temporarily on the empire for their survival. In fact, in many cases, as in Palestine and South Africa, the settlers do not belong to the same nation as the imperial power that initially supports them. More often than not they ceded from the empire, redefining themselves as a new nation, sometimes through a liberation struggle against the very empire that supported them (as happened during the American Revolution for instance). The second difference is that settler colonialism is motivated by a desire to take over land in a foreign country, while classical colonialism covets the natural resources in its new geographical possessions. The third difference concerns the way they treat the new destination of settlement. Unlike conventional colonial projects conducted in the service of an empire or a mother country, settler colonialists were refugees of a kind seeking not just a home, but a homeland. The problem was that the new "homelands" were already inhabited by other people. In response, the settler communities argued that the new land was theirs by divine or moral right, even if, in cases other than Zionism, they did not claim to have lived there thousands of years ago. In many cases, the accepted method for overcoming such obstacles was the genocide of the indigenous locals.<ref group="4.">Patrick Wolfe, "Seler Colonialism and the Logic of Elimination of the Native," ''Journal of Genocide Research'', 8:4 (2006), pp. 387–409.</ref><br />
<br />
One of the leading scholars on settler colonialism, Patrick Wolfe, argues that settler colonial projects were motivated by what he calls "the logic of elimination." This meant that the settlers developed the necessary moral justifications and practical means to remove the natives. As Wolfe indicates, at times this logic entailed actual genocide, at other times, ethnic cleansing or an oppressive regime that denied the natives any rights.<ref group="4.">Ibid.</ref> I would add that there was another logic permeating the logic of elimination: the logic of dehumanization. As a victim yourself of persecution in Europe, you needed first to dehumanize a whole native nation or society, before being willing to do the same, or worse, to fellow humans.<br />
<br />
As a result of these twin logics, whole nations and civilizations were wiped out by the settler colonialist movement in the Americas. Native Americans, south and north, were massacred, converted by force to Christianity, and finally confined to reservations. A similar fate awaited the aboriginals in Australia and to a lesser extent the Maoris in New Zealand. In South Africa, such processes ended with the imposition of the apartheid system upon the local people, while a more complex system was imposed on the Algerians for about a century.<br />
<br />
Zionism is therefore not sui generis but an example of a wider process. This is important not just for how we understand the machinations of the colonial project, but also for our interpretation of the Palestinian resistance to it. If one asserts that Palestine was a land without people waiting for the people without a land, then the Palestinians are robbed of any argument for protecting themselves. All their efforts to hold onto their land become baseless violent acts against the rightful owners. As such, it is difficult to separate the discussion of Zionism as colonialism from the question of the Palestinians as a colonized native people. The two are linked together in the same analysis.<br />
<br />
The official Israeli narrative or foundational mythology refuses to allow the Palestinians even a modicum of moral right to resist the Jewish colonization of their homeland that began in 1882. From the very beginning, Palestinian resistance was depicted as motivated by hate for Jews. It was accused of promoting a protean anti-Semitic campaign of terror that began when the first settlers arrived and continued until the creation of the state of Israel. The diaries of the early Zionists tell a different story. They are full of anecdotes revealing how the settlers were well received by the Palestinians, who offered them shelter and in many cases taught them how to cultivate the land.<ref group="4.">See Pappe, "Shtetl Colonialism."</ref> Only when it became clear that the settlers had not come to live alongside the native population, but in place of it, did the Palestinian resistance begin. And when that resistance started, it quickly took the form of every other anticolonialist struggle.<br />
<br />
The idea that impoverished Jews were entitled to a safe haven was not objected to by the Palestinians and those supporting them. However, this was not reciprocated by the Zionist leaders. While Palestinians offered shelter and employment to the early settlers, and did not object to working should to shoulder with them under whatever ownership, the Zionist ideologues were very clear about the need both to push the Palestinians out of the country's labor market and to sanction those settlers who were still employing Palestinians or who worked alongside them. This was the idea of ''avoda aravit'', (Hebrew Labor), which meant mainly the need to bring an end to ''avoda aravit'', (Arab Labor). Gershon Shafir, in his seminal work on the Second Aliyah, the second wave of Zionist immigration (1904–14), explains well how this ideology developed and was practiced.<ref group="4.">For a discussion of these works and the early introduction of the colonialist paradigm into the research on Zionism, see Ram, "The Colonisation Perspective in Israeli Sociology."</ref> The leader of that wave, David Ben-Gurion (who became the leader of the community and then prime minister of Israel), constantly referred to Arab labor as an illness for which the only cure was Jewish labor. In his and other settlers' letters, Hebrew workers are characterized as the healthy blood that will immunize the nation from rottenness and death. Ben-Gurion also remarked that employing "Arabs" reminded him of the old Jewish story of a stupid man who resuscitated a dead lion that then devoured him.<ref group="4.">Natan Hofshi, "A Pact with the Land," in ''The Book of the Second Aliya'', p. 239.</ref><br />
<br />
The initial positive Palestinian reaction confused some of the settlers themselves throughout the period of British rule (1918–48). The colonialist impulse was to ignore the native population and create gated communities. However, life offered different opportunities. There is extensive evidence of coexistence and cooperation between the newly arrived Jews and the native population almost everywhere. Jewish settlers, particularly in the urban centers, could not survive without engaging, at least economically, with the Palestinians. Despite numerous attempts by the Zionist leadership to disrupt these interactions, hundreds of joint businesses were formed throughout those years, alongside trade-union cooperation and agricultural collaboration. But without political support from above this could not open the way for a different reality in Palestine.<ref group="4.">I have examined these relationships in detail in ''A History of Modern Palestine'', pp.108–16.</ref><br />
<br />
At the same time, the Palestinian political leaders grew more hostile to such joint initiatives as the Zionist movement became more aggressive. The slow realization among the Palestinian political, social, and cultural elite that Zionism was a colonialist project strengthened the common national identity in opposition to the settlers. And eventually there was also Palestinian pressure from above to cease the cooperation and interaction. The Palestinian political movement took time to emerge, developing out of a small group, the Muslim-Christian society, in several Palestinian towns. The guiding principles of the society were primarily modern and secular, added to the twofold concerns of the Arab world at large: a pan-Arab overview wedded to a local patriotism that became ever stronger following World War II.<br />
<br />
The first eruption of pan-Arab nationalism had occurred in the second half of the nineteenth century. It brought with it the hope of transforming the Ottoman world into an independent Arab republic, a bit like the United States of America, or an Arab-Ottoman empire, like the Austro-Hungarian one. When it transpired that this impulse could not withstand the imperial interests of Britain and France, who wished to divide the Ottoman Middle East between themselves, a more local version of nationalism developed, adapting itself to the map created by the Ottoman administrative boundaries and the division of the area by the colonial powers. As mentioned in [[Library:Ten Myths about Israel#08 Chapter1.xhtml|Chapter 1]], the first Arab nationalist impulse is called ''qawmiyya'', the later local version, ''wataniyya''. The Palestinian community played a role in both. Its intellectuals were engaged with, and were members of, the various organizations and movements seeking Arab unity, independence, and self-determination. At the same time, even before Britain defined, with the help of other European powers, the geopolitical space called Palestine, there was a particular Palestinian existence manifested in the customs of people, their Arabic dialect, and shared history.<br />
<br />
When the Zionists arrived in Palestine in the late nineteenth century, the two impulses were still at work among the Palestinian community. Many of its intellectuals and activists were dreaming of a united Arab republic. Others were taken with the idea of a Greater Syria—willing for Damascus to be the center of a new state with Palestine a part of it. When the British arrived and the international community, through the League of Nations, began discussing the future of Palestine, prominent Palestinians produced a journal called ''Southern Syria'', and even considered establishing a party under this name.<ref group="4.">Khalidi, ''Palestinian Identity'', p. 239.</ref> In 1919, when US president Woodrow Wilson sent an inquiry, the King-Crane Commission, to discern the wishes of the Palestinians, the committee discovered that the majority wanted the territory to be independent.<br />
<br />
Whether they were pan-Arabists, or local patriots, or wanted to be part of Greater Syria, the Palestinians were united in their wish not to be part of a Jewish state. Their leaders objected to any political solution that would hand any part of the small country to the settler community. As they clearly declared in their negotiations with the British at the end of the 1920s, they were willing to share with those who had already arrived, but could accept no more.<ref group="4.">See Pappe, ''A History of Modern Palestine'', pp. 109–16.</ref> The collective voice of the Palestinians was crystallized in the executive body of the Palestinian National Conference that met every year for a decade, starting in 1919. This body represented the Palestinians in their negotiations with both the British government and the Zionist movement. However, before that happened, the British tried to advance an agreement of equality between the parties. In 1928, the Palestinian leadership, notwithstanding the wishes of the overall majority of their people, consented to allow the Jewish settlers equal representation in the future bodies of the state. The Zionist leadership was in favor of the idea only for as long as it suspected the Palestinians would reject it. Shared representation stood against everything Zionism was supposed to be. So, when the proposal was accepted by the Palestinian party, it was rejected by the Zionists. This led to the riots of 1929, which included the massacre of Jews in Hebron and a much higher death toll among the Palestinian community.<ref group="4.">See Ilan Pappe, ''The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine'', Oxford: Oneworld, 2006, pp. 29–39.</ref> But there were also other reasons for the wave of violence, the most serious since the beginning of the Mandate. It was triggered by the dispossession of Palestinian tenants from land owned by absentee landlords and local notables, which had been bought by the Jewish National Fund. The tenants had lived for centuries on the land but they were now forced into slums in the towns. In one such slum, northeast of Haifa, the exiled Syrian preacher, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, recruited his first followers for an Islamic holy war against the British and the Zionist movement in the early 1930s. His legacy was ensured when his name was adopted by the military wing of the Hamas movement.<br />
<br />
After 1930, the Palestinian leadership was institutionalized in the form of the Arab Higher Committee, a body that represented all the political parties and movements in the Palestinian community. Until 1937 it continued to attempt a compromise with the British government, but by then both the Zionists and the imperialists had ceased to care what the Palestinian point of view was, and went on unilaterally to determine the future of the territory. By this time the Palestinian national movement regarded Zionism as a colonialist project that had to be defeated. Yet even in 1947, when Britain decided to refer the question to the United Nations, the Palestinians suggested, with other Arab states, a unitary state in Palestine to replace the Mandate. The UN deliberated the fate of Palestine for seven months and had to decide between two options: the one suggested by the Palestinians of a unitary state that would absorb the existing Jewish settlers but would not allow any further Zionist colonization; the other suggesting a partition of the land into an Arab state and Jewish state. The UN preferred the latter option, and hence the message to Palestinians was: you cannot share your life on the land with the settlers—all you can hope for is to salvage half of it and concede the other half to the settlers.<br />
<br />
Thus one can depict Zionism as a settler colonial movement and the Palestinian national movement as an anticolonialist one. In this context, we can understand the behavior and policies of the leader of the community, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, before and during World War II in a different light than the narrative normally served up as historical fact. As many readers will know, one of the common allegations propagated endlessly by the Israelis is that the Palestinian leader was a Nazi sympathizer. The mufti of Jerusalem was not an angel. At a very early age he was chosen by the notables of Palestine, and by the British, to hold the most important religious position in the community. The position, which al-Husayni held throughout the Mandatory period (1922–48), brought him political power and a high social standing. He attempted to lead the community in the face of the Zionist colonization, and when in the 1930s people such as Izz ad-Din al-Qassam pushed for an armed struggle he was able to steer the majority away from this violent option. Nevertheless, when he endorsed the idea of strikes, demonstrations, and other ways of trying to change British policy, he became the empire's enemy, and had to escape from Jerusalem in 1938.<ref group="4.">See Pappe, ''The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty'', pp. 283–7.</ref> In the circumstances he was forced into the arms of his enemy's enemy, in this case Italy and Germany. While in political asylum in Germany for two years, he came under the influence of Nazi doctrine and confused the distinction between Judaism and Zionism. His willingness to serve as a radio commentator for the Nazis and to help recruit Muslims in the Balkans to the German war effort no doubt stains his career. But he did not act any differently from the Zionist leaders in the 1930s, who themselves sought an alliance with the Nazis against the British Empire, or from all the other anticolonialist movements who wanted rid of the Empire by way of alliances with its principal enemies.<br />
<br />
When the war ended in 1945, the Mufti returned to his senses and tried to organize the Palestinians on the eve of the Nakbah, but he was already powerless, and the world he belonged to, that of the Arab Ottoman urban notables, was gone. If he deserves criticism, it is not for his errors concerning Zionism. It is for his lack of sympathy with the plight of the peasants in Palestine, and for his disagreements with other notables, which weakened the anticolonialist movement. Nothing he did justifies his entry in the American-Zionist project ''The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust'' being the second longest after Hitler's.<ref group="4.">For an in-depth analysis see Ilan Pappe, ''The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge'', London and New York: Verso, 2010, pp. 153–7.</ref> Ultimately, neither his mistakes nor his achievements had much impact on the course of Palestinian history. He was absolved of being treated as a war criminal by the allies, and allowed to return to Egypt, but not Palestine, at the end of the war.<br />
<br />
With all his faults, before he escaped from Palestine in 1938, and to a certain extent after that in exile, he led an anticolonialist liberation movement. The fact that he was Mufti—one who also believed that religion should be recruited in the struggle against a colonialist movement that coveted his homeland and threatened his people's existence—is not relevant. Anticolonialist movements such as the FLN in Algeria had a strong connection to Islam, as did many liberation movements in the Arab world struggling for independence from Italy, Britain, and France after World War II. Nor was the Mufti's commitment to violence, or that of other leaders such as al-Qassam (killed by the British in 1935 and buried near Haifa), unique in the history of anticolonialist struggles. The liberation movements in South America and Southeast Asia were not pacifist organizations, and they put their faith in the armed struggle as much as in the political process. Had the Mufti been able to return to Palestine he would have realized not only that Zionism was a successful settler colonial project, but more importantly that it was on the eve of its most crucial existential project.<br />
<br />
By 1945, Zionism had attracted more than half a million settlers to a country whose population was about 2 million. Some came with the permission of the Mandatory government, some without. The local native population was not consulted, nor was its objection to the project of turning Palestine into a Jewish state taken into account. The settlers managed to build a state within a state—constructing all the necessary infrastructure—but they failed in two respects. They managed to buy up only 7 percent of the land, which would not suffice for a future state. They were also still a minority—one third in a country in which they wanted to be the exclusive nation.<br />
<br />
As with all earlier settler colonial movements, the answer to these problems was the twin logic of annihilation and dehumanization. The settlers' only way of expanding their hold on the land beyond the 7 percent, and of ensuring an exclusive demographic majority, was to remove the natives from their homeland. Zionism is thus a settler colonial project, and one that has not yet been completed. Palestine is not entirely Jewish demographically, and although Israel controls all of it politically by various means, the state of Israel is still colonizing—building new colonies in the Galilee, the Negev, and the West Bank for the sake of increasing the number of Jews there—dispossessing Palestinians, and denying the right of the natives to their homeland.<br />
<br />
==== Footnotes ====<br />
<references group="4." /><br />
<br />
=== The Palestinians Voluntarily Left Their Homeland in 1948 ===<br />
There are two questions relating to this assumption and both will be examined here. First: was there was a will to expel the Palestinians? Second: on the eve of the 1948 war, were the Palestinians called upon to voluntarily leave their homes, as the Zionist mythology has it?<br />
<br />
The centrality of the transfer idea in Zionist thought was analyzed, to my mind very convincingly, in Nur Masalha's book, ''Expulsion of the Palestinians''.<ref group="5.">Nur Masalha, ''Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought'', 1882–1948, Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992.</ref> Here I will just add some quotations to emphasize the point that the Zionist leadership and ideologues could not envision a successful implementation of their project without getting rid of the native population, either through agreement or by force. More recently, after years of denial, Zionist historians such as Anita Shapira have accepted that their heroes, the leaders of the Zionist movement, seriously contemplated transferring the Palestinians. However, they hang on desperately to the fact there was a confusion between "compulsory" and "voluntary" transfer.<ref group="5.">See Anita Shapira, ''Land and Power'', New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 285–6.</ref> It is true that in public meetings all the Zionist leaders and ideologues talked about transfer by agreement. But even those speeches reveal a bitter truth: there is no such a thing as voluntary transfer. It is semantics not practice.<br />
<br />
Berl Katznelson was probably one of the most important Zionist ideologues in the 1930s. He was known as the moral conscience of the movement. His support for transfer was unequivocal. At the twentieth Zionist conference, convened shortly after the British made their first significant proposal for peace, he strongly voiced his support for the idea. He told the attendees,<blockquote>My conscience is completely clear. A distant neighbor is better than a close enemy. They will not lose by their transfer and we certainly will not. In the final analysis this is a political reform of benefit to both sides. For a long time I have been convinced that this is the best solution … and this must happen one of these days.<ref group="5.">Quoted in David Ben-Gurion, ''The Roads of Our State'', Am Oved: Tel Aviv, 1938, pp. 179–180 (Hebrew).</ref></blockquote>When he heard that the British government was considering the possibility of moving the Palestinians within Palestine, he was greatly disappointed: "The transfer to 'inside of Palestine' would mean the area of Shechem (Nablus). I believe that their future lies in Syria and Iraq."<ref group="5.">Ibid.</ref><br />
<br />
In those days, leaders like Katznelson hoped that the British would convince, or induce, the local population to leave. In an infamous letter from Ben-Gurion to his son Amos in October 1937, he already understood that it might be necessary to do it by force.<ref group="5.">See the letter in in translation at [http://palestineremembered.com palestineremembered.com].</ref> Publicly, that same year, Ben-Gurion supported Katznelson, saying,<blockquote>The compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something we never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the first and second Temples … We are given an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in our wildest imaginings. This is more than a state, government and sovereignty—this is national consolidation in a free homeland.<ref group="5.">Yosef Gorny, ''The Arab Question and the Jewish Problem'', Am Oved: Tel Aviv, 1985, p. 433 (Hebrew).</ref></blockquote>In a similarly clear way he told the Zionist assembly in 1937, "In many parts of the country it will not be possible to settle without transferring the Arab fellahin," which he hoped would be done by the British.<ref group="5.">Benny Morris, ''Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–1999'', New York: Random House, 2001, p. 142.</ref> But, with or without the British, Ben-Gurion articulated clearly the place of expulsion in the future of the Zionist project in Palestine when he wrote that same year, "With compulsory transfer we would have a vast area for settlement … I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it."<ref group="5.">Masalha, ''Expulsion of the Palestinians'', p. 117.</ref><br />
<br />
In 2008, an Israeli journalist, reviewing these statements from the past, concluded that they were still acceptable to many Israelis seventy years later. Indeed, since 1937, the expulsion of the Palestinians has been part of the Zionist DNA of the modern Jewish state.<ref group="5.">See report by Eric Bender in ''Maariv'', March 31, 2008.</ref> However, the process was not straightforward. Ben-Gurion and the other leaders were cautious about what to do should it prove impossible to convince the Palestinians to leave. Beyond that they were not inclined to articulate any policy. All Ben-Gurion was willing to say was that he did not object to forceful transfer but he did not deem it necessary at that historical juncture.<br />
<br />
This ambivalence was brought to Katznelson's attention. At a public meeting in 1942, he was asked about it by some leftist Zionist leaders who thought that Ben-Gurion had renounced the idea of transfer of the Palestinians. He replied, "To the extent that I know Zionist ideology, this [transfer] is part of the realization of Zionism, the perception of this Zionism is the transfer of the people from country to country—a transfer by agreement."<ref group="5.">Berl Katznelson, ''Writings'', Tel Aviv: Davar, 1947, Vol. 5, p. 112.</ref> In public, Ben-Gurion, the leader of the movement, and other ideologues such as Katznelson, were all in favor of what they called voluntary transfer. Ben-Gurion said, "The transfer of the Arabs is easier than any other transfer since there are Arab states in the area"; he added that it would be an improvement for the Palestinians to be transferred (he did not explain why). He suggested transferring them to Syria. He also kept talking about voluntary transfer.<ref group="5.">Central Zionist Archives, Minutes of the Jewish Agency Executive, May 7, 1944, pp. 17–19.</ref><br />
<br />
This was not, however, an honest position, nor was it a possible one. In fact, colleagues of these leaders and ideologues could not see how a transfer could be anything but compulsory. At a closed meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive in June 1938 devoted to transfer, it seems the assembled members, including Ben-Gurion, Katznelson, Sharett, and Ussishkin, were all in favor of compulsory transfer. Katznelson tried to explain what he meant by compulsory: "What is meant by compulsory transfer? Is it transfer against the wishes of the Arab State? Against such wishes no force in the world could implement such a transfer."<ref group="5.">Central Zionist Archives, Minutes of the Jewish Agency Executive, June 12, 1938, pp. 31–2.</ref> He explained that compulsory meant overcoming the resistance of the Palestinians themselves:<blockquote>If you have to make a transfer agreement with each Arab village and every individual Arab, you will never resolve the problem. We are continually carrying out transfers of individual Arabs, but the question will be the transfer of large numbers of Arabs with the agreement of the Arab State.<ref group="5.">Ibid.</ref></blockquote>This was the trick. The talk was of voluntary transfer, and the strategy was incremental until the opportunity emerged for a massive transfer in 1948. Even if you accept Benny Morris's thesis in his book, ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem'', that the transfer was in practice incremental and not massive, after a certain number has been reached, however incrementally, the result is still a massive ethnic cleansing—of which more will be said later.<br />
<br />
From the minutes of the June 1938 meeting we learn that the language of voluntary transfer actually meant compulsory. Ben-Gurion stated that carrying out a compulsory transfer, especially if the British did it, "would be the greatest achievement in the history of the Jewish settlement in Palestine." He added, "I favor compulsory transfer; I see nothing unethical in it." Menachem Ussishkin, a prominent leader and ideologue, added that "it was most ethical to transfer Arabs out of Palestine and resettle them in better conditions." He hinted that this was probably the logic behind the Balfour Declaration. Moreover, no time was wasted in beginning a discussion about numbers and the means of achieving them. These matters would be finalized only in 1948, but the foundations were laid at this 1938 meeting. A very small minority of those attending objected to compulsory transfer. Syria was the preferred destination and the hope was to be able to move at least 100,000 Palestinians in the first wave.<ref group="5.">Ibid.</ref><br />
<br />
The discussion about transfer was put on a hold during World War II as the community focused on increasing the number of Jewish immigrants and the establishment of the future state. The conversation was reignited when it became clear that Britain was about to leave Palestine. The British decision was announced in February 1947, which is when we see an intensification of the discussion on forced transfer. In my book ''The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine'', I examine the way these discussions from 1947 evolved into a master plan for the massive expulsion of the Palestinians in March 1948 (Plan D), to which I will return later in this chapter. The official Israeli line, however, has not changed for years: the Palestinians became refugees because their leaders, and the leaders of the Arab world, told them to leave Palestine before the Arab armies invaded and kicked out the Jews, after which they could then return. But there was no such call—it is a myth invented by the Israeli foreign ministry. The position of the Israeli foreign office on the very short-lived UN attempt to bring peace in the immediate aftermath of the 1948 war was that the refugees ran away. However, that particular peace process (which lasted for a few months in the first half of 1949) was so brief that Israel was not asked to provide any evidence for this claim, and for many years the refugee problem was expunged from the international agenda.<br />
<br />
The need to provide proof emerged in the early 1960s, as we have learned recently thanks to the diligent work of Shay Hazkani, a freelance reporter working for ''Haaretz''.<ref group="5.">Shay Hazkani, "Catastrophic Thinking: Did Ben-Gurion Try to Re-write History?," ''Haaretz'', May 16, 2013.</ref> According to his research, during the early days of the Kennedy administration in Washington, the US government began to exert pressure on Israel to allow the return of the 1948 refugees to Israel. The official US position since 1948 had been to support the Palestinian right of return. In fact, already in 1949, the Americans had exerted pressure on Israel to repatriate the refugees and imposed sanctions on the Jewish state for its refusal to comply. However, this was a short-term pressure, and as the Cold War intensified the Americans lost interest in the problem until John F. Kennedy came to power (he was also the last US president to refuse to provide Israel with vast military aid; after his assassination the faucet was fully open—a state of affairs that led Oliver Stone to allude to an Israeli connection to the president's murder in his film ''JFK'').<br />
<br />
One of the first acts of the Kennedy administration on this front was to take an active part in a UN General Assembly discussion on the topic in the summer of 1961. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion panicked. He was convinced that, with American blessing, the UN might force Israel to repatriate the refugees. He wanted Israeli academics to conduct research that would prove that the Palestinians left voluntarily, and to this end approached the Shiloah Institute, the leading center for Middle Eastern studies in Israeli academia at the time. A junior researcher, Ronni Gabai, was entrusted with the task. With his permit to access classified documents, he reached the conclusion that expulsions, fear, and intimidation were the major causes of the Palestinian exodus. What he did not find was any evidence for a call from the Arab leadership for the Palestinians to leave so as to make way for the invading armies. However, there is a conundrum here. The conclusion just mentioned appeared in Gabai's doctorate on the topic and is recalled by him as the one he sent to the foreign ministry.<ref group="5.">Ibid.</ref> And yet in his research in the archives Hazkani found a letter from Gabai to the foreign ministry summarizing his research and citing the Arab call to leave as the main cause for the exodus.<br />
<br />
Hazkani interviewed Gabai, who even today is adamant that he did not write this letter, and that it did not reflect the research he had undertaken. Someone, we still do not know who, sent a different summary of the research. In any case, Ben-Gurion was not happy. He felt the summary—he did not read the whole research—was not poignant enough. He asked for a researcher he knew, Uri Lubrani, later one of Mossad's experts on Iran, to undertake a second study. Lubrani passed the bucket to Moshe Maoz, today one of Israel's leading orientalists. Maoz delivered the goods, and in September 1962 Ben-Gurion had what he himself described as our White Paper that proves beyond doubt that the Palestinians fled because they were told to do so. Moaz later went on to do a PhD in Oxford under the late Albert Hourani (on a non-related topic), but said in an interview that his research was affected less by the documents he had seen and more by the political assignment he received.<ref group="5.">Ibid.</ref><br />
<br />
The documents Gabai examined in early 1961 were declassified in the late 1980s, and several historians, among them Benny Morris and myself, saw for the first time clear evidence for what pushed the Palestinians out of Palestine. Although Morris and I have not agreed on how premeditated and planned the expulsion was, we concurred that there was no call from Arab and Palestinian leaders for people to leave. Our research, since described as the work of the "new historians," reaffirmed Gabai's conclusion that the Palestinians lost their homes and homeland mainly through expulsion, intimidation, and fear.<ref group="5.">The first person to refute these calls was the Irish journalist Erskine Childs in ''The Spectator'', May 12, 1961.</ref><br />
<br />
Morris asserted that the onset of the fighting between Israel and the Arab armies that entered the country on the day the British Mandate ended, May 15, 1948, was the main reason for what he called the "Birth of the Palestinian refugee problem." I have argued that it was not the war itself, since half of those who became refugees—hundreds of thousands of Palestinians—had been expelled before it had even commenced. Moreover, I claimed that the war was initiated by Israel in order to secure the historical opportunity to expel the Palestinians.<ref group="5.">Ilan Pappe, "Why were they Expelled?: The History, Historiography and Relevance of the Refugee Problem," in Ghada Karmi and Eugene Cortan (eds.), ''The Palestinian Exodus, 1948–1988'', London: Ithaca 1999, pp. 37–63.</ref><br />
<br />
The idea that the Palestinians left voluntarily is not the only false assumption associated with the 1948 war. There are three others that are often aired to explain away the events of that year. The first is that the Palestinians are to be blamed for what happened to them since they rejected the UN partition plan of November 1947. This allegation ignores the colonialist nature of the Zionist movement. What is clear is that the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians can in no way be justified as a "punishment" for their rejecting a UN peace plan that was devised without any consultation with the Palestinians themselves.<br />
<br />
The two other assumptions associated with 1948 are that Israel was a David fighting an Arab Goliath, and that after the war Israel extended the hand of peace but the Palestinians and the wider Arab world rejected the gesture. Research on the first assumption has proved that the Palestinians had no military power whatsoever, and that the Arab states sent only a relatively small contingent of troops—smaller compared to the Jewish forces, and far less well equipped or trained. Moreover, these troops were sent into Palestine not as a reaction to the declaration of the founding of the state of Israel, but in response to Zionist operations that had already begun in February 1948, and in particular in the wake of the well-publicized massacre in the village of Der Yassin near Jerusalem in April 1948.<ref group="5.">See Pappe, ''The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine''.</ref><br />
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As for the third myth that the Israeli state extended a hand of peace in the aftermath of the conflict, the documents show the opposite. In fact, an intransigent Israeli leadership clearly refused to enter into negotiations over the future of post-Mandatory Palestine or consider the return of the people who had been expelled or had fled. While Arab governments and Palestinian leaders were willing to participate in a new and more reasonable UN peace initiative, the Israeli leadership turned a blind eye when in September 1948 Jewish terrorists assassinated the UN peace mediator, Count Bernadotte. They further rejected any new proposals for peace adopted by the body that replaced Bernadotte, the Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC), as new negotiations commenced at the end of 1948. As a result, the same UN General Assembly that had voted by a two-thirds majority for the partition plan in November 1947, voted with no objections for a new peace plan in December 1948. This was Resolution 194, adopted on December 11. It had three recommendations: renegotiation of the partition of Palestine in a way that would better fit the demographic realties on the ground; the full and unconditional return of all refugees; and the internationalization of Jerusalem.<ref group="5.">Avi Shlaim, ''The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World'', London: Penguin, 2014.</ref><br />
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The Israeli intransigence would continue. As the historian Avi Shlaim has shown in his book ''The Iron Wall'', contrary to the myth that the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to refuse peace, it was Israel that constantly rejected the offers that were on the table.<ref group="5.">Ibid.</ref> It began with the rejection of a peace offer and fresh ideas for the refugee issue put forward by the Syrian ruler Husni al-Zaim in 1949, and continued with Ben-Gurion's undermining of initial peace feelers sent out by Gamal Abdel Nasser in the early 1950s. Better known is the way Israel refused to show any flexibility in its negotiations with King Hussein in 1972 (mediated by Henry Kissinger over the West Bank), and its refusal to heed President Sadat of Egypt's warning in 1971 that if they would not negotiate bilaterally over the Sinai he would be forced to go to war over it—which he did two years later, inflicting a traumatic blow to Israel's sense of security and invincibility.<br />
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All these myths surrounding 1948 fuse together in the image of a Jewish state fighting against all odds, offering succor to the Palestinians, encouraging them to stay and proposing peace, only to learn that there "is no partner" on the other side. The best way to counter this image is to redescribe, patiently and systematically, the events that took place in Palestine between 1946 and 1949.<br />
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In 1946, the British government in London thought it could hold onto Palestine for some time to come. It began moving forces out of Egypt into the territory as the Egyptian national liberation struggle intensified that year. However, a harsh winter at the year's end, rising tensions among the Zionist paramilitary groups who had begun to take action against the British forces, and, most importantly, the decision to leave India, brought about a dramatic shift in the British policy towards Palestine. In February 1947, Britain decided to leave the region. The two communities—settlers and natives—reacted very differently to the news. The Palestinian community and its leaders assumed that the process was to be similar to that in the neighboring Arab countries. The Mandatory administration would gradually transfer power to the local population, which would democratically decide the nature of the future state. The Zionists, however, were far better prepared for what came next. Immediately after London's decision to withdraw, the Zionist leadership prepared itself on two fronts: diplomatically and militarily, making preparations for a future confrontation.<br />
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At the outset the main focus was on diplomacy. This took the form of finding ways to defeat the well-argued Palestinian claim for a democratic decision about the future of the country. One particular way of doing this was by associating the Holocaust and the fate of Jews around the world with that of the settler Jewish community in Palestine. Thus the Zionist diplomats strove to persuade the international community that the question of who replaced Britain as the sovereign power in Palestine was associated with the fate of all the Jews in the world. Even more poignantly, this policy was associated with the need to compensate the Jewish people for their suffering during the Holocaust.<br />
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The result was the UN Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947. The document was prepared by a special committee, UNSCOP, made up of representatives who had little prior knowledge, if any, of the Palestine question. The idea that division of the territory was the best solution came from the Zionist movement itself. The committee members in fact obtained little feedback from the Palestinians themselves. The Arab Higher Committee, the political representative body of the Palestinians and the Arab League, decided to boycott UNSCOP. It was already clear that the right of the Palestinians to their homeland would not be respected in the same way it had been for the Iraqis and the Egyptians. In the immediate aftermath of World War I, the League of Nations had recognized the right of all the nations in the Middle East to self-determination. The decision in 1947 to exclude the Palestinians (likewise with the decision to the exclude the Kurdish nation) was a grave mistake that is one of the main causes of the ongoing conflict in the region.<br />
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The Zionists suggested that 80 percent of Palestine should be a Jewish state, while the rest could either become an independent Arab Palestinian state or be annexed and handed to the Kingdom of Jordan. Jordan itself was ambivalent towards the UN efforts as a result: on the one hand, they were being offered a possible extension of their arid kingdom into parts of fertile Palestine; on the other hand, they did not wish to be seen as betraying the Palestinian cause. The dilemma became even more acute when the Jewish leadership offered the Hashemites in Jordan an agreement to this effect. In a way, at the end of the 1948 war, Palestine was more or less divided in such a manner between the Zionist movement and Jordan.<ref group="5.">Avi Shlaim, ''Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement and the Partition of Palestine'', New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.</ref><br />
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Nevertheless, there was no absolute Zionist control over UNSCOP. The committee, which deliberated on the solution between February and November 1947, revised the Zionists' plans. It expanded the area allocated to the Palestinians and insisted that there would be two independent states. They implicitly hoped that the two states would form an economic union and a joint immigration policy, and that each community would have the option to vote in the other state, should they wish to do so. As the declassified documents reveal, the Zionist leadership accepted the new map and the terms offered by the UN because they knew about the rejection of the plan by the other side. They also knew that the final division of territory would be determined by action on the ground rather than negotiations in a committee room.<ref group="5.">This was quite convincingly proved by Simha Flapan in ''The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities'', New York: Pantheon, 1988.</ref> The most important result was the international legitimization of the Jewish state, including the borders of the future state. In retrospect we can appreciate that from the perspective of the Zionist leadership in 1948, they had adopted the correct approach when it came to setting out the state without fixing the borders.<br />
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This leadership was not idle between the partition plan and the end of the Mandate in May 1948. They had to be active. In the Arab world the pressure on governments to use force against the new Jewish state was growing. In the meantime, on the ground in Palestine, local paramilitary groups began to stage attacks, mainly on Jewish transportation and isolated colonies, trying to pre-empt the implementation of an international decision to turn their homeland into a Jewish state. These moments of resistance were quite limited and petered out in the weeks after the UN partition was announced. At the same time, the Zionist leadership was acting on three discrete fronts. The first involved preparing itself for the possibility of a military invasion by the Arab countries. This did happen and we now know that the Jewish military benefited from the Arab forces' lack of real preparation, purpose, and coordination. The Arab political elites were still quite reluctant to interfere in Palestine. There was a tacit agreement with Jordan that it would take over parts of Palestine, later to become the West Bank, in return for a limited participation in the war effort. This proved a crucial factor in the balance of power. The Jordanian army was the best-trained army in the Arab world.<br />
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On the diplomatic front, the months of February and March 1948 were a particularly tense time for the Zionist movement. The United States, through its envoys on the ground, realized that the UN partition plan of November 1947 was flawed. Instead of bringing calm and hope to the country, the plan itself had been the main reason for the recent eruption of violence. There were already reports of Palestinians being forced out of their homes and of killings on both sides. Both sides attacked each other's public transport, and skirmishes on the lines dividing Arab and Jewish neighborhoods in the mixed towns continued for few days. The US president, Harry Truman, agreed to rethink the idea of partition and suggested a new plan. Through his ambassador to the UN he proposed an international trusteeship over the whole of Palestine for five years, so as to give more time to the search for a solution.<br />
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This move was abruptly halted by vested interests. It was the first time the Jewish lobby in the United States was used to change the position of the American administration. AIPAC did not exist yet, but the method was already in place to connect the domestic political scene in America with the interests of Zionism, and later of Israel, in Palestine. In any case, it worked, and the US administration returned to its support of the partition plan. Interestingly, the USSR was even more loyal to the Zionist position and had no second thoughts at all. With the help of members of the Palestine Communist Party (PCP) they facilitated the supply of arms from Czechoslovakia to the Jewish forces before and after May 1948. Readers today may raise an eyebrow at this, but the PCP's support for the Zionist cause was possible for two reasons. First the Soviet Union believed the new Jewish state would be socialist and anti-British (and therefore more inclined towards the Eastern Bloc in the emerging Cold War). Secondly, the PCP believed that national liberation was a necessary phase on the way to their more complete social revolution, and they recognized both the Palestinians and the Zionists as national movements (this is why the party still today supports the two-states solution).<ref group="5.">New and more profound material on this twist has now been exposed in a recent book by Irene Gendzier, ''Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of US Policy in the Middle East'', New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.</ref><br />
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While struggling to secure international approval, the Zionist leadership was busy preparing its community for war, imposing compulsory recruitment and taxation, intensifying military preparations, and escalating arms purchases. They were also quite efficient at gathering intelligence that exposed the lack of preparation in the rest of the Arab world. Working on two fronts—military and diplomatic—did not affect the Zionist strategy towards the most important issue troubling the movement's leaders: how to create a state that was both democratic and Jewish located on however much of Palestine they might succeed in getting their hands on? Or, put a different way: what to do with the Palestinian population in the future Jewish state?<br />
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The various deliberations on this question ended on March 10, 1948, when the high command produced the infamous Plan Dalet, Plan D, which gave an indication of the fate of the Palestinians who lived in the areas to be occupied by the Jewish forces. The debates were led by the leader of the Jewish community, David Ben-Gurion, who was determined to secure demographic exclusivity for the Jews in any future state. This was an obsession that not only informed his actions before 1948, but also long after the creation of the state of Israel. As we shall see, this led him in 1948 to orchestrate the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and in 1967 to oppose the occupation of the West Bank.<br />
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In the days after the Partition Resolution was adopted, Ben-Gurion told his colleagues in the leadership that a Jewish state in which Jews made up only 60 percent was not viable. However, he did not reveal what percentage of Palestinians would make the future state unviable. The message he conveyed to his generals, and through them to the troops on the ground, was nonetheless clear: the fewer Palestinians in a Jewish state the better. This is why, as Palestinian scholars such as Nur Masalha and Ahmad Sa'di have proved, he also tried to get rid of the Palestinians who were left within the Jewish state after the war ("the Arab minority").<ref group="5.">Ahmad Sa'di, "The Incorporation of the Palestinian Minority by the Israeli State, 1948–1970: On the Nature, Transformation and Constraints of Collaboration," ''Social Text'', 21:2 (2003), pp. 75–94.</ref><br />
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Something else happened in the period between November 29, 1947 (when the UN Resolution was adopted) and May 15, 1948 (when the British Mandate ended) that helped the Zionist movement to better prepare for the days ahead. As the end of the Mandate approached, the British forces withdrew into the port of Haifa. Any territory they left, the military forces of the Jewish community took over, clearing out the local population even before the end of the Mandate. The process began in February 1948 with a few villages, and culminated in April with the cleansing of Haifa, Jaffa, Safad, Beisan, Acre, and Western Jerusalem. These last stages had already been systematically planned under the master plan, Plan D, prepared alongside the high command of the Haganah, the main military wing of the Jewish community. The plan included the following clear reference to the methods to be employed in the process of cleansing the population:<blockquote>Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously …<br />
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Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.<ref group="5.">Walid Khalidi, "Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine," ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', 18:1 (1988), pp. 4–33.</ref></blockquote>How could the small Israeli army engage in large-scale ethnic cleansing operations while, from May 15, also being confronted with regular forces from the Arab world? First of all, it is noteworthy that the urban population (apart from three towns: Lydd, Ramleh, and Bir Saba) had already been cleansed before the Arab armies arrived. Second, the rural Palestinian area was already under Israeli control, and the confrontations with the Arab armies occurred on borders of these rural areas not inside them. In one case where the Jordanians could have helped the Palestinians, in Lydd and Ramleh, the British commander of the Jordanian army, Sir John Glubb, decided to withdraw his forces and avoided confrontation with the Israeli army.<ref group="5.">Benny Morris, ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 426.</ref> Finally, the Arab military effort was woefully ineffective and short lived. After some success in the first three weeks, its presence in Palestine was a shambolic story of defeat and hasty withdrawal. After a short lull towards the end of 1948, the Israeli ethnic cleansing thus continued unabated.<br />
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From our present vantage point, there is no escape from defining the Israeli actions in the Palestinian countryside as a war crime. Indeed, as a crime against humanity. If one ignores this hard fact one will never understand what lies behind Israel's attitude towards Palestine and the Palestinians as a political system and a society. The crime committed by the leadership of the Zionist movement, which became the government of Israel, was that of ethnic cleansing. This is not mere rhetoric but an indictment with far-reaching political, legal, and moral implications. The definition of the crime was clarified in the aftermath of the 1990s civil war in the Balkans: ethnic cleansing is any action by one ethnic group meant to drive out another ethnic group with the purpose of transforming a mixed ethnic region into a pure one. Such an action amounts to ethnic cleansing regardless of the means employed to obtain it—from persuasion and threats to expulsions and mass killings.<br />
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Moreover, the act itself determines the definition; as such, certain policies have been regarded as ethnic cleansing by the international community, even when a master plan for their execution was not discovered or exposed. Consequently, the victims of ethnic cleansing include both people who have left their homes out of fear and those expelled forcefully as part on an ongoing operation. The relevant definitions and references can be found on the websites of the US State Department and the United Nations.<ref group="5.">US State Department, Special Report on Ethnic Cleansing, May 10, 1999.</ref> These are the principal definitions that guide the international court in The Hague when it is tasked with judging those responsible for planning and executing such operations.<br />
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A study of the writings and thoughts of the early Zionist leaders shows that by 1948 this crime was inevitable. The goal of Zionism had not changed: it was dedicated to taking over as much of Mandatory Palestine as possible and removing most of the Palestinian villages and urban neighborhoods from the space carved out for the future Jewish state. The execution was even more systematic and comprehensive than anticipated in the plan. In a matter of seven months, 531 villages were destroyed and eleven urban neighborhoods emptied. The mass expulsion was accompanied by massacres, rape, and the imprisonment of males over the age of ten in labor camps for periods of over a year.<ref group="5.">I detailed this in ''The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine''.</ref><br />
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The political implication is that Israel is exclusively culpable for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem, for which it bears the legal as well as moral responsibility. The legal implication is that even if there is a statute of limitations, after such a long period, for those who committed a deed understood as a crime against humanity, the deed itself is still a crime for which nobody was ever brought to justice. The moral implication is that the Jewish state was born out of sin—like many other states, of course—but the sin, or the crime, has never been admitted. Worse, among certain circles in Israel it is acknowledged, but in the same breath fully justified both in hindsight and as a future policy against the Palestinians, wherever they are. The crime is still committed today.<br />
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All these implications were totally ignored by the Israeli political elite. Instead a very different lesson has been learned from the events of 1948: that one can, as a state, expel half of a country's population and destroy half its villages with impunity. The consequences of such a lesson, immediately after 1948 and beyond, were inevitable—the continuation of the ethnic cleansing policy by other means. There have been well-known landmarks in this process: the expulsion of more villagers between 1948 and 1956 from Israel proper; the forced transfer of 300,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the 1967 war; and a very measured, but constant, cleansing of Palestinians from the Greater Jerusalem area, calculated as more than 250,000 by the year 2000.<sup>31</sup><br />
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After 1948, the policy of ethnic cleansing took many forms. In various parts of the occupied territories and inside Israel, the policy of expulsion was replaced by a prohibition on people leaving their villages or neighborhoods. Restricting Palestinians to where they lived served the same purpose as expelling them. When they are besieged in enclaves—such as areas A, B and C under the Oslo Accord in the West Bank, or in villages and neighborhoods in Jerusalem that are declared part of the West Bank, or in the Gaza Ghetto—they are not counted demographically in either official or informal censuses, which is what matters to the Israeli policy makers more than anything else.<br />
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As long as the full implications of Israel's past and present ethnic cleansing policies are not recognized and tackled by the international community, there will be no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ignoring the issue of the Palestinian refugees will repeatedly undermine any attempt to reconcile the two conflicting parties. This is why it is so important to recognize the 1948 events as an ethnic cleansing operation, so as to ensure that a political solution will not evade the root of the conflict; namely, the expulsion of the Palestinians. Such evasions in the past are the main reason for the collapse of all previous peace accords.<br />
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If the legal lessons are not learned, there will always remain retributive impulses and revengeful emotions on the Palestinian side. The legal recognition of the 1948 Nakbah as an act of ethnic cleansing would pave the way for some form of restitutive justice. This would be the same as the process that has taken place recently in South Africa. The acknowledgement of past evils is not done in order to bring criminals to justice, but rather to bring the crime itself to public attention and trial. The final ruling there will not be retributive—there will be no punishment—but rather restitutive: the victims will be compensated. The most reasonable compensation for the particular case of the Palestinian refugees was stated clearly already in December 1948 by the UN General Assembly in its Resolution 194: the unconditional return of the refugees and their families to their homeland (and homes where possible). Without some such restitution, the state of Israel will continue to exist as a hostile enclave at the heart of the Arab world, the last reminder of a colonialist past that complicates Israel's relationship not only with the Palestinians, but with the Arab world as a whole.<br />
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It is important to note, however, that there are Jews in Israel who have absorbed all these lessons. Not all Jews are indifferent to or ignorant about the Nakbah. Those who are not are currently a small minority, but one which makes its presence felt, demonstrating that at least some Jewish citizens are not deaf to the cries, pain, and devastation of those killed, raped, or wounded throughout 1948. They have heard of the thousands of Palestinian citizens arrested and imprisoned in the 1950s, and they acknowledge the Kafr Qasim massacre in 1956, when citizens of the state were murdered by the army just because they were Palestinians. They know about the war crimes committed throughout the 1967 war and the callous bombing of the refugee camps in 1982. They have not forgotten the physical abuse meted out to Palestinian youth in the occupied territories in the 1980s and afterwards. These Israeli Jews are not deaf and can still today hear the voices of the military officers ordering the execution of innocent people and the laughter of the soldiers standing by and watching.<br />
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They are also not blind. They have seen the remains of the 531 destroyed villages and the ruined neighborhoods. They see what every Israeli can see, but for the most part chooses not to: the remnants of villages under the houses of the Kibbutzim and beneath the pine trees of the JNF (Jewish National Fund) forests. They have not forgotten what happened even when the rest of their society has. Perhaps because of that they understand fully the connection between the 1948 ethnic cleansing and the events that followed up to the present. They recognize the link between the heroes of Israel's war of independence and those who commanded the cruel suppression of the two Intifadas. They never mistook Yitzhak Rabin or Ariel Sharon for peace heroes. They also refuse to ignore the obvious connection between the building of the wall and the wider policy of ethnic cleansing. The expulsions of 1948 and the imprisonment of people within walls today are the inevitable consequences of the same racist ethnic ideology. Nor can they fail to recognize the link between the inhumanity inflicted on Gaza since 2006 and these past policies and practices. Such inhumanity is not born in a vacuum; it has a history and an ideological infrastructure that justifies it.<br />
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Since the Palestinian political leadership has neglected this aspect of the conflict, it is Palestinian civil society that is leading the effort to relocate the 1948 events at the center of the national agenda. Inside and outside Israel, Palestinian NGOs such as BADIL, ADRID, and Al-Awda, are coordinating their struggle to preserve the memory of 1948 and explain why it is crucial to engage with the events of that year for the sake of the future.<br />
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==== Footnotes ====<br />
<references group="5." /><br />
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=== The June 1967 War Was a War of "No Choice" ===<br />
In June 1982, following Israel's assault on Lebanon, there was much debate concerning the official announcement that the nation had "no choice" but to follow the violent course of action it had taken. At that time, the Israeli public was divided between those who deemed the campaign necessary and justified and those who doubted its moral validity. In making their points both sides used the 1967 war as a benchmark, identifying the earlier conflict as an unimpeachable example of a war of "no choice." This is a myth.<ref group="6.">Not everyone agrees with this. See Avi Shlaim, ''Israel and Palestine: Reprisals, Revisions, Refutations'', New York and London: Verso, 2010.</ref><br />
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According to this accepted narrative, the 1967 war forced Israel to occupy the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and keep it in custody until the Arab world, or the Palestinians, were willing to make peace with the Jewish state. Consequently another myth emerges—which I will discuss in a separate chapter—namely that the Palestinian leaders are intransigent and that therefore peace is impossible. This argument thus generates the impression that the Israeli rule is temporary: the territories have to remain in custody pending a more "reasonable" Palestinian position.<br />
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In order to re-evaluate the 1967 war we first need to go back to the war of 1948. The Israeli political and military elite regarded the latter as a missed opportunity: a historical moment in which Israel could, and should, have occupied the whole of historical Palestine from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. The only reason they did not do so was because of an agreement they had with neighboring Jordan. This collusion was negotiated during the last days of the British Mandate, and when finalized it limited the military participation of the Jordanian army in the general Arab war effort in 1948. In return, Jordan was allowed to annex areas of Palestine that became the West Bank. David Ben-Gurion, who kept the pre-1948 agreement intact, called the decision to allow Jordan to take the West Bank ''bechiya ledorot''—which literally means that future generations would lament the decision. A more metaphorical translation might choose to translate it as "a fatal historical mistake."<ref group="6.">Shlaim, ''Collusion Across the Jordan''.</ref><br />
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Ever since 1948, important sections of the Jewish cultural, military, and political elites had been looking for an opportunity to rectify this mistake. From the mid-1960s onwards, they carefully planned how to create a greater Israel that would include the West Bank.<ref group="6.">For more on this lobby and its work, see Tom Segev's ''1967: Israel and the War That Transformed the Middle East'', New York: Holt and Company, 2008, and Ilan Pappe, "The Junior Partner: Israel's Role in the 1958 Crisis," in Roger Louis and Roger Owen (eds.), ''A Revolutionary Year: The Middle East in 1958'', London and New York: I. B. Tauris 2002, pp. 245–74.</ref> There were several historical junctures in which they almost executed the plan only to draw back at the very last moment. The most famous are 1958 and 1960, when David Ben-Gurion aborted the execution of the plan due to fears of international reaction in the first instance and for demographic reasons in the second (calculating that Israel could not incorporate such a large number of Palestinians). The best opportunity came with the 1967 war. Later in this chapter I will explore the origins of that war, arguing that whatever the historical narrative of its causes, one has to look closely at Jordan's role in it. Was it, for example, necessary to occupy and retain the West Bank in order to maintain the relatively good relationship Israel had had with Jordan since 1948? If the answer is no, as I think it is, then the question arises as to why Israel pursued this policy, and what it tells us about the likelihood of Israel ever giving up the West Bank in the future. Even if, as the official Israeli mythology has it, the West Bank was occupied in retaliation for the Jordanian aggression of June 5, 1967, the question remains as to why Israel remained in the West Bank after the threat had dissipated. After all, there are plenty of examples of aggressive military actions that did not end with a territorial expansion of the state of Israel. As I will attempt to show in this chapter, incorporating the West Bank and the Gaza Strip within Israel had been the plan since 1948, even if it was only implemented in 1967.<br />
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Was the 1967 war inevitable? We can begin our answer in 1958—described in the scholarly literature on the modern Middle East as the revolutionary year. In that year, the progressive, radical ideas that brought the Egyptian Free Officers to power in Cairo began to make an impact all over the Arab world. This trend was supported by the Soviet Union and almost inevitably challenged by the United States. This "playing out" of the Cold War in the Middle East opened up opportunities for those in Israel looking for a pretext to correct the "fatal historical mistake" of 1948. It was driven by a powerful lobby within the Israeli government and army, led by the war heroes of 1948, Moshe Dayan and Yigal Alon. When a consensus developed in the West that the "radicalism" emerging in Egypt might engulf other countries, including Jordan, the lobby recommended that Prime Minister Ben-Gurion approach NATO to promote the idea of a pre-emptive Israeli takeover of the West Bank.<ref group="6.">Pappe, "The Junior Partner."</ref><br />
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This scenario became even more plausible after Iraq fell into the hands of progressive, even radical, officers. On July 14, 1958, a group of Iraqi officers staged a military coup that brought down the Hashemite dynasty. The Hashemites had been put in power by the British in 1921 to keep Iraq within the Western sphere of influence. Economic recession, nationalism, and strong connections to Egypt and the USSR triggered a protest movement that brought the officers to power. It was led by a group calling itself the Free Officers, headed by Abd al-Karim Qasim, which, emulating the group that had overthrown the monarchy in Egypt six years earlier, replaced the monarchy with the republic of Iraq.<br />
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At the time, it was also feared in the West that Lebanon could be the next region be taken over by revolutionary forces. NATO decided to preempt this scenario by dispatching its own forces (US Marines to Lebanon and British Special Forces to Jordan). There was no need, and no wish, to involve Israel in this developing cold war in the Arab world.<ref group="6.">Ibid.</ref> When the Israeli idea of "saving" at least the West Bank was voiced, it was firmly rejected by Washington. It seems, however, that Ben-Gurion was quite happy to be warned off at this stage. He had no wish to undermine the demographic achievement of 1948—he did not want to change the balance between Jews and Arabs in a new "greater" Israel by incorporating the Palestinians living in the West Bank.<ref group="6.">Ibid.</ref> In his diary he reported that he had explained to his ministers that occupying the West Bank would constitute a grave demographic danger: "I told them about the danger of incorporating one million Arabs into a state that has a population of one and three quarter million."<ref group="6.">Ben-Gurion Archive, Ben-Gurion Dairy, August 19, 1958.</ref> For the same reason he pre-empted another attempt by the more hawkish lobby to exploit a new crisis two years later in 1960. As long as Ben-Gurion was in power, the lobby, so brilliantly described in Tom Segev's book ''1967'', would not have its way. However, by 1960, it had become much more difficult to restrain the lobby. In fact, in that year, all the ingredients that would later mark the crisis of 1967 were in place and carried the same threat of erupting into a war. But war was averted, or at least delayed.<br />
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In 1960, the first significant actor on the scene was the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdul Nasser, who conducted a dangerous policy of brinkmanship, as he would six years later. Nasser heightened the war rhetoric against Israel, threatening to move troops into the demilitarized Sinai Peninsula and to block the passage of ships into the southern city of Eilat. His motives for doing so were the same in 1960 as they were in 1967. He feared that Israel would attack Syria, which between 1958 and 1962 was in a formal union with Egypt called the United Arab Republic. Ever since Israel and Syria had concluded an armistice agreement in the summer of 1949, there had been quite a few issues unresolved. Among them were pieces of land, called "no-man's land" by the UN, which both sides coveted. Every now and then, Israel encouraged members of the Kibbutzim and settlements adjacent to these lands to go and cultivate them, knowing full well that this would trigger a Syrian response from the Golan Heights above them. This is exactly what happened in 1960, and a predictable cycle of escalating tit for tat then followed: the Israeli air force were employed to gain some real battle experience and show their supremacy over the Russian jets employed by the Syrian air force. Dogfights ensued, artillery was exchanged, complaints were submitted to the armistice committee, and an uneasy lull reigned until violence erupted once more.<ref group="6.">For a very honest version of these events see David Shaham, ''Israel: The First Forty Years'', Tel Aviv: Am Oved 1991, pp. 239–47 (Hebrew).</ref><br />
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A second source of friction between Israel and Syria concerned the Israeli construction of a national water carrier (this is the official Israeli name in English for a huge project that includes viaducts, pipelines, and canals) between the estuaries of the River Jordan and the south of the state. Work on the project began in 1953 and included siphoning off some of the water resources that were desperately needed both in Syria and in Lebanon. In response, the Syrian leaders succeeded in convincing their Egyptian allies in the UAR that Israel might launch an all-out military campaign against Syria in order to secure the strategic Golan Heights, and the sources of the River Jordan.<br />
<br />
Nasser had another motive for tipping the precarious balance in and around historical Palestine. He wanted to break the diplomatic stasis of the period and challenge the global indifference to the Palestine question. As Avi Shlaim showed in his book ''The Iron Wall'', Nasser had some hope of finding a way out of the deadlock when he negotiated with Moshe Sharett, Israel's dovish foreign minister and, for a short while in the mid-1950s, its prime minister.<ref group="6.">See Shalim, ''The Iron Wall'', pp. 95–142.</ref> However, Nasser understood that power lay in the hands of Ben-Gurion, and once the latter returned to the prime minister's office in 1955, there was little hope of advancing peace between the two states.<br />
<br />
While these negotiations took place, the two sides discussed the possibility of an Egyptian land passage in the Negev in return for ending the standoff. This was an early tentative idea on the agenda that was not developed further, and we have no way of knowing whether it would have led to a bilateral peace treaty. What we do know is that there was little chance of any bilateral peace agreement between Israel and Egypt as long as Ben-Gurion was Israel's prime minister. Even out of power, Ben-Gurion used his connections with the army to convince its commanders to launch several provocative military operations against the Egyptian forces in the Gaza Strip while these negotiations were taking place. The pretext for these operations was the infiltrations of Palestinian refugees from the Gaza Strip into Israel, which gradually became more militarized and eventually constituted a real guerilla warfare against the Jewish state. Israel reacted by destroying Egyptian bases and killing Egyptian troops.<ref group="6.">Pappe, "The Junior Partner," pp. 251–2.</ref><br />
<br />
The peace efforts died for all intents and purposes once Ben-Gurion returned to power and joined Britain and France in a military alliance aimed at bringing down Nasser in 1956. No wonder that, four years later, when contemplating a war against Israel, Nasser deemed his maneuvers a pre-emptive move to save his regime from a possible Anglo-French-Israeli attack. Thus, in 1960, when the tension on the Israeli-Syrian border grew and there was no progress whatsoever on the diplomatic front, Nasser probed a new strategy, referred to earlier as "brinkmanship." The purpose of this exercise was to constantly test the boundaries of possibility. In this case, to examine how far military preparations and threats can change the political reality, without actually going to war. The success of such brinkmanship depends not only on the person who initiates it but also on the unforeseeable responses of those against whom the policy is directed. And that is where it can go terribly wrong, as it did in 1967.<br />
<br />
Nasser implemented this strategy for the first time in 1960, and repeated it in a similar way in 1967. He sent forces into the Sinai Peninsula—which was supposed to be a demilitarized zone according to the agreement that ended the 1956 war. The Israeli government and the UN acted very sensibly in 1960 in the face of this threat. The UN secretary-general, Dag Hammarskjöld, took a firm position demanding the immediate withdrawal of the Egyptian forces. The Israeli government called up its reserves but sent a clear message it would not start a war.<ref group="6.">Ami Gluska, ''The Israeli Military and the Origins of the 1967 War: Government, Armed Forces and Defence Policy, 1963–1967'', London and New York: Routledge 2007, pp. 121–2.</ref><br />
<br />
On the eve of 1967 war, all these factors played a role in the outbreak of violence. Two personalities, however, were no longer involved: David Ben-Gurion and Dag Hammarskjöld. Ben-Gurion had left the political scene in 1963. Ironically, it was only after his departure that the Greater Israel lobby was able to plan its next step. Until then, Ben-Gurion's demographic obsession had prevented the takeover of the West Bank, but also produced the by now familiar military rule Israel had imposed on different Palestinian groups. The abolition of this regime in 1966 allowed a ready-made apparatus to control both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip even before the June 1967 war erupted. The military rule Israel had imposed on the Palestinian minority in 1948 was based on British Mandatory emergency regulations that treated the civilian population as a potential alien group, hence robbing it of its basic human and civil rights. Military governors were installed across the Palestinian areas with executive, judicial, and legislative authority. This was a quite a well-oiled machinery by 1966, including hundreds of employees who would serve as the nucleus for a similar regime when it was imposed on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.<br />
<br />
Thus, the military rule that was abolished in 1966 was imposed in 1967 on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; and all was in place for an invasion. Since 1963 a group of Israeli experts from the army, civil service, and academia had planned for the transition, putting together a detailed manual for how to run a Palestinian territory according to emergency regulations, should the opportunity rise.<ref group="6.">I have discussed this in detail in Ilan Pappe, "Revisiting 1967: The False Paradigm of Peace, Partition and Parity," ''Settler Colonial Studies'', 3:3–4 (2013), pp. 341–51.</ref> This gave absolute power to the army in every sphere of life. The opportunity for moving this apparatus from one Palestinian group (the Palestinian minority in Israel) to another (the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) came in 1967, when Nasser was encouraged in his brinkmanship by the Soviet leadership, who believed strongly that an Israeli attack on Syria was imminent in the last days of 1966.<ref group="6.">In his typical way Norman Finkelstein takes the official narrative of Israel as presented by one of its best articulators, Abba Eban, and demolishes it. See his ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'', London and New York: Verso, 2003, pp. 135–45.</ref> In the summer of that year, a new group of officers and ideologues had staged a military coup and taken over the Syrian state (known as the new "Ba'ath"). One of the first acts of the new regime was to deal more firmly with the Israeli plans to exploit the waters of the River Jordan and its estuaries. They began building their own national carrier and diverted the river for their own needs. The Israeli army bombed the new project, which led to frequent and gradually more intensified dogfights between the two air forces. The new regime in Syria also looked favorably on the newly formed Palestinian national liberation movement. This in turn encouraged Fatah to stage a guerrilla war against Israel in the Golan Heights, using Lebanon as a launching pad for attacks. This only added to the tension between the two states.<br />
<br />
It seems that until April 1967 Nasser still hoped that his histrionics would be enough to force a change in the status quo, without recourse to war. He signed a defense alliance with Syria in November 1966, declaring his intention to come to the latter's aid should Israel attack. Yet the deterioration on the Israeli-Syrian border hit a new low in April 1967. Israel staged a military attack on Syrian forces in the Golan Heights that was intended, according the then general chief of staff of the Israeli army, Yitzhak Rabin, "to humiliate Syria."<ref group="6.">From an interview given by Rabin on May 12, 1967 to the UPI news service in which he threatened in addition to topple the Syrian regime. See Jeremy Bowen, ''Six Days: How the 1967 War Shaped the Middle East'', London: Simon and Schuster UK, 2004, pp. 32–3.</ref> By this stage it seemed as if Israel was doing all it could to push the Arab world into war. It was only then that Nasser felt compelled to repeat his gambit of 1960—dispatching troops into the Sinai Peninsula and closing the Tiran straights, a narrow passage that connected the Gulf of Aqaba with the Red Sea and hence could stop, or hinder, maritime traffic into Israel's most southern port, Eilat. As in 1960, Nasser waited to see how the UN would react. Back in 1960, Dag Hammarskjöld was not impressed and had not withdrawn the UN troops who had been stationed there since 1956. The new secretary-general, U Thant, was less assertive and withdrew the UN forces when the Egyptian troops entered the Peninsula. This had the effect of escalating the tension further.<br />
<br />
However, the most important factor in the rush to war was the absence of any authoritative challenge to the warmongering within the Israeli leadership at the time. This might have offered some form of internal friction delaying the hawks' pursuit of conflict, allowing the international community to look for a peaceful resolution. A diplomatic effort led by the United States was still in its early stages when Israel launched its attack on all its Arab neighbors on June 5, 1967. There was no intention in the Israeli cabinet of providing the necessary time to the peace brokers. This was a golden opportunity not to be missed.<br />
<br />
In crucial Israeli cabinet meetings before the war, Abba Eban naively asked the chiefs of staff and his colleagues what the difference was between the 1960 crisis and the 1967 situation, as he thought the latter could have been resolved in the same way.<ref group="6.">Ibid.</ref> It "is a matter of honor and deterrence" was the reply. Eban replied that losing young soldiers only for the sake of honor and deterrence was too high a human price to be paid. I suspect that other things were said to him that have not been recorded in the minutes, probably about his need to understand that this was a historical opportunity to correct the "fatal historical mistake" of not occupying the West Bank in 1948.<br />
<br />
The war began early in the morning of June 5 with an Israeli attack on the Egyptian air force, which nearly destroyed it. This was followed the same day with similar assaults on the air forces of Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. Israeli forces also invaded the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula and in the next few days reached the Suez Canal, occupying the whole of the peninsula. The attack on the Jordanian air force triggered the Jordanian capture of a small UN zone between the two parts of Jerusalem. Within three days, after fierce fighting, the Israeli army had captured East Jerusalem (on June 7), and two days later they drove the Jordanian army out of the West Bank.<br />
<br />
On June 7, the Israeli government was still uncertain about opening a new front against the Syrians on the Golan Heights, but the remarkable successes on the other front convinced the politicians to allow the army to occupy the Golan Heights. By June 11, Israel had become a mini-empire, controlling the Golan Heights, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Sinai Peninsula. In this chapter I will focus on the Israeli decision to occupy the West Bank.<br />
<br />
On the eve of the war, Jordan had entered into a military alliance with Egypt and Syria according to which, the moment Israel attacked Egypt, Jordan was obliged to enter the war. Notwithstanding this commitment, King Hussein sent clear messages to Israel that if war began he would have to do something, but that it would be short and would not entail a real war (this was very similar to his grandfather's position in 1948). In practice, the Jordanian involvement was more than symbolic. It included a heavy bombardment of West Jerusalem and the eastern suburbs of Tel Aviv. However, it is important to note what Jordan was reacting to: its air force had been totally destroyed by Israel a couple of hours earlier, at noon on June 5. King Hussein thus felt obliged to react more forcefully than he probably intended.<br />
<br />
The problem was that the army was not under his control, but was commanded by an Egyptian general. The common narrative of these events is based on Hussein's own memoirs and those of Dean Rusk, the American Secretary of State at the time. According to this narrative, Israel sent a conciliatory message to Hussein urging him to stay out of the war (even though it had destroyed the Jordanian air force). On the first day Israel was still willing not to go too far in its assault on Jordan, but the latter's reaction to the destruction of its air force led Israel into a much wider operation on the second day. Hussein actually wrote in his memoirs that he hoped all the time someone would stop the madness as he could not disobey the Egyptians nor risk a war. On the second day he urged the Israelis to calm down and only then, according to this narrative, did Israel proceed to a larger operation.<ref group="6.">See Avi Shlaim, "Walking the Tight Rope," in Avi Shlaim and Wm. Roger Louis (eds.), ''The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 114.</ref><br />
<br />
There are two problems with this narrative. How can one reconcile the assault on the Jordanian air force with the sending of a reconciliatory message? More importantly, even if Israel was still hesitant about its policy towards Jordan on the first day, it is clear even from this narrative that by the second day it did not wish to give Jordan any respite. As Norman Finkelstein has rightly noted, if you wanted to destroy what was left of the Jordanian army and retain your relationship with the one Arab country most loyal to Israel, a short operation in the West Bank, without occupying it, would have sufficed.<ref group="6.">Finkelstein, ''Image and Reality'', pp. 125–35.</ref> The Israeli historian Moshe Shemesh has examined the Jordanian sources and concluded that, after Israel attacked the Palestinian village of Samua in November 1966, in an attempt to defeat the Palestinian guerrillas, the Jordanian high command was persuaded that Israel intended to occupy the West Bank by force.<ref group="6.">Moshe Shemesh, ''Arab Politics, Palestinian Nationalism and the Six Day War'', Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2008, p. 117.</ref> They were not wrong.<br />
<br />
This did not happen as feared in 1966, but a year later. The whole of Israeli society was galvanized around the messianic project of "liberating" the holy places of Judaism, with Jerusalem as the jewel in the new crown of Greater Israel. Left- and right-wing Zionists, and Israel's supporters in the West, were also caught up in, and mesmerized by, this euphoric hysteria. In addition, there was no intention of leaving the West Bank and the Gaza Strip immediately after their occupation; in fact there was no desire to leave them at all. This should stand as further proof of Israeli responsibility for the final deterioration of the May 1967 crisis into a full-blown war.<br />
<br />
How important this historical juncture was for Israel can be seen from the way the government withstood the strong international pressure to withdraw from all the territories occupied in 1967, as demanded in the famous UN Security Council Resolution 242 very shortly after the war ended. As readers probably know, a Security Council resolution is more binding than a resolution by the General Assembly. And this was one of the few Security Council resolutions criticizing Israel that was not vetoed by the United States.<br />
<br />
We now have access to the minutes of a meeting of the Israeli government in the immediate days after the occupation. This was the thirteenth government of Israel and its composition is very relevant to the argument I am making here. It was a unity government of a kind not seen before, or after, in Israel. Every shade of the Zionist and Jewish political spectrum was represented. Apart from the Communist Party, every other party had a representative in the government, from left to right and center. Socialist parties such as Mapam, right-wing parties like Menachem Begin's Herut, the liberals, and the religious parties were all included. The sense you get from reading the minutes is that the ministers knew they represented a wide consensus in their own society. This conviction was further energized by the euphoric atmosphere that engulfed Israel after the triumphant blitzkrieg that lasted only six days. Against this background, we can better understand the decisions these ministers took in the immediate aftermath of the war.<br />
<br />
Moreover, many of these politicians had been waiting since 1948 for this moment. I would go even further and say that the takeover of the West Bank in particular, with its ancient biblical sites, was a Zionist aim even before 1948 and it fitted the logic of the Zionist project as a whole. This logic can be summarized as the wish to take over as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians as possible. The consensus, the euphoria, and the historical context explain why none of the subsequent Israeli governments have ever deviated from the decisions these ministers took.<br />
<br />
The first decision they made was that Israel could not exist without the West Bank. Direct and indirect methods of controlling the region were offered by the minister of agriculture, Yigal Alon, when he distinguished between areas where Jewish settlements could be built and areas that were densely populated by Palestinians, which should be ruled indirectly.<ref group="6.">Israel State Archives, minutes of government meetings, June 11 and 18, 1967.</ref> Alon changed his mind within a few years about the method of indirect rule. At first he hoped that the Jordanians would be tempted to help Israel rule parts of the West Bank (probably, although this was never spelled out, by maintaining Jordanian citizenships and laws in the "Arab areas" of the West Bank). However, a lukewarm Jordanian response to this plan tilted him towards Palestinian self-rule in those areas as the best way forward.<br />
<br />
The second decision was that the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza Strip would not be incorporated into the state of Israel as citizens. This did not include the Palestinians living in what Israel regarded at the time as the new "Greater Jerusalem" area. The definition of that area, and who in it was entitled to Israeli citizenship, changed whenever this space grew in size. The greater the Greater Jerusalem became, the larger the number of Palestinians in it. Today there are 200,000 Palestinians within what is defined as the Greater Jerusalem area. To ensure that not all of them are counted as Israeli citizens, quite a few of their neighborhoods were declared to be West Bank villages.<ref group="6.">Valerie Zink, "A Quiet Transfer: The Judaization of Jerusalem," ''Contemporary Arab Affairs'', 2:1 (2009), pp. 122–33.</ref> It was clear to the government that denying citizenship on the one hand, and not allowing independence on the other, condemned the inhabitants of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to life without basic civil and human rights.<br />
<br />
The next question therefore was how long the Israeli army would occupy the Palestinian areas. It seems that for most ministers the answer was, and still is: for a very long time. For instance, Moshe Dayan, the minister of defense, on one occasion threw into the air a period of fifty years.<ref group="6.">Israel State Archives, minutes of government meeting, June 26, 1967.</ref> We are now in the fiftieth year of the occupation.<br />
<br />
The third decision was associated with the peace process. As mentioned earlier, the international community expected Israel to return the territories it had occupied in exchange for peace. The Israeli government was willing to negotiate with Egypt over the future of the Sinai Peninsula and with Syria over the Golan Heights, but not over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In one brief press conference in 1967, the prime minister at the time, Levy Eshkol, said as much.<ref group="6.">''Haaretz'', June 23, 1967.</ref> But soon his colleagues understood that public declarations of this kind were unhelpful, to put it mildly. Therefore, this strategic position was never explicitly acknowledged again in the public domain. What we do have is clear statements from a few individuals, most prominent among them Dan Bavli, who were part of the senior team of officials charged with strategizing the policy towards the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In retrospect, Bavli reports that the unwillingness to negotiate, especially over the West Bank, underlined the Israeli policy at the time (and I would add: and ever since).<ref group="6.">Dan Bavli, ''Dreams and Missed Opportunities, 1967–1973'', Jerusalem: Carmel 2002 (Hebrew).</ref> Bavli described this policy as an "addition to belligerence and short sightedness" that replaced any search for a solution: "The various Israeli governments talked a lot about peace but did very little to achieve it."<ref group="6.">Ibid, p. 16.</ref> What the Israelis invented there and then is what Noam Chomsky has called a "complete farce."<ref group="6.">Noam Chomsky "Chomsky: Why the Israel-Palestine 'Negotiation' are a Complete Farce," [https://alternet.org Alternet.org], September 2, 2013.</ref> They understood that talking about peace does not mean they cannot establish on the ground irreversible facts that will defeat the very idea of peace.<br />
<br />
Readers may ask, and rightly so, whether there was no peace camp or liberal Zionist position at the time that genuinely sought peace. Indeed there was, and perhaps there still is one today. However, from the very beginning it was marginal and had the support of only a small section of the electorate. Decisions are made in Israel by a core group of politicians, generals, and strategists who lay down policy, regardless of public debates. Moreover, the only way to judge, in hindsight at least, what the Israeli strategy might be is not through the discourse of the state's policy makers but through their actions on the ground. For example, the policy declarations of the 1967 unity government might have differed from those of the Labor governments that ruled Israel until 1977, and from those voiced by the Likud governments that have ruled Israel intermittently up until today (with the exception of a few years in which the now extinct Kadima party led the Sharon and Olmert governments in the first decade of the twenty-first century). The actions of each regime, however, have been the same, remaining loyal to the three strategic decisions that became the catechism of Zionist dogma in post-1967 Israel.<br />
<br />
The most crucial action on the ground was the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, along with the commitment to their expansion. The government located these settlements at first in less densely populated Palestinian areas in the West Bank (since 1968) and Gaza (since 1969). However, as is so chillingly described in the brilliant book by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, ''The Lords of the Land'', the ministers and planners succumbed to pressure from the messianic settler movement, Gush Emunim, and also settled Jews at the heart of the Palestinian neighborhoods.<ref group="6.">Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, ''The Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967–2007'', New York: Nation Books, 2009.</ref><br />
<br />
Another way of judging what the real Israeli intentions have been since 1967 is to look at these policies from the point of view of the Palestinian victims. After the occupation, the new ruler confined the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in an impossible limbo: they were neither refugees nor citizens—they were, and still are, citizenless inhabitants. They were inmates, and in many respects still are, of a huge prison in which they have no civil and human rights and no impact on their future. The world tolerates this situation because Israel claims—and the claim was never challenged until recently—that the situation is temporary and will continue only until there is a proper Palestinian partner for peace. Not surprisingly, such a partner has not been found. At the time of writing, Israel is still incarcerating a third generation of Palestinians by various means and methods, and depicting these mega-prisons as temporary realities that will change once peace comes to Israel and Palestine.<br />
<br />
What can the Palestinians do? The Israeli message is very clear: If they comply with the expropriations of land, the severe restrictions on movement, the harsh bureaucracy of occupation, then they may reap a few benefits. These may be the right to work in Israel, to claim some autonomy, and, since 1993, even the right to call some of these autonomous regions a state. However, if they choose the path of resistance, as they have done occasionally, they will feel the full might of the Israeli army. The Palestinian activist Mazin Qumsiyeh has counted fourteen such uprisings that have attempted to escape this mega-prison—all were met with a brutal, and in the case of Gaza, even genocidal, response.<ref group="6.">Mazin Qumsiyeh, ''Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment'', London: Pluto Press, 2011.</ref><br />
<br />
Thus we can see that the takeover of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip represents a completion of the job that began in 1948. Back then, the Zionist movement took over 80 percent of the Palestine—in 1967 they completed the takeover. The demographic fear that haunted Ben-Gurion—a greater Israel with no Jewish majority—was cynically resolved by incarcerating the population of the occupied territories in a non-citizenship prison. This is not just a historical description; in many ways it is still the reality in 2017.<br />
<br />
==== Footnotes ====<br />
<references group="6." /><br />
<br />
== Fallacies of the Present ==<br />
<br />
=== Israel Is the Only Democracy in the Middle East ===<br />
In the eyes of many Israelis and their supporters worldwide—even those who might criticize some of its policies—Israel is, at the end of the day, a benign democratic state, seeking peace with its neighbors, and guaranteeing equality to all its citizens. Those who do criticize Israel assume that if anything went wrong in this democracy then it was due to the 1967 war. In this view, the war corrupted an honest and hardworking society by offering easy money in the occupied territories, allowing messianic groups to enter Israeli politics, and above all else turning Israel into an occupying and oppressive entity in the new territories.<br />
<br />
The myth that a democratic Israel ran into trouble in 1967 but still remained a democracy is propagated even by some notable Palestinian and pro-Palestinian scholars—but it has no historical foundation. Before 1967, Israel definitely could not have been depicted as a democracy. As we have seen in previous chapters, the state subjected one-fifth of its citizenship to military rule based on draconian British Mandatory emergency regulations that denied the Palestinians any basic human or civil rights. Local military governors were the absolute rulers of the lives of these citizens: they could devise special laws for them, destroy their houses and livelihoods, and send them to jail whenever they felt like it. Only in the late 1950s did a strong Jewish opposition to these abuses emerge, which eventually eased the pressure on the Palestinian citizens.<br />
<br />
For the Palestinians who lived in pre-war Israel and those who lived in the post-1967 West Bank and the Gaza Strip, this regime allowed even the lowest-ranking soldier in the IDF to rule, and ruin, their lives. They were helpless if such a solider, or his unit or commander, decided to demolish their homes, or hold them for hours at a checkpoint, or incarcerate them without trial. There was nothing they could do.<ref group="7.">A detailed description of this life can be found in Ilan Pappe, ''The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel'', New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013, pp. 46–93.</ref> At every moment from 1948 until today, there had been some group of Palestinians undergoing such an experience. The first group to suffer under such a yoke was the Palestinian minority inside Israel. It began in the first two years of statehood when they were pushed into ghettoes, such as the Haifa Palestinian community living on the Carmel mountain, or expelled from the towns they had inhabited for decades, as such as Safad. In the case of Isdud, the whole population was expelled to the Gaza Strip.<ref group="7.">Morris, ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited'', p. 471.</ref> In the countryside, the situation was even worse. The various Kibbutz movements coveted Palestinian villages on fertile land. This included the socialist Kibbutzim, Hashomer Ha-Zair, which was allegedly committed to binational solidarity. Long after the fighting of 1948 had subsided, villagers in Ghabsiyyeh, Iqrit, Birim, Qaidta, Zaytun, and many others, were tricked into leaving their homes for a period of two weeks, the army claiming it needed their lands for training, only to find out on their return that their villages had been wiped out or handed to someone else.<ref group="7.">See Pappe, ''The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine'', pp. 181–7.</ref><br />
<br />
This state of military terror is exemplified by the Kafr Qasim massacre of October 1956, when, on the eve of the Sinai operation, forty-nine Palestinian citizens were killed by the Israeli army. The authorities alleged that they were late returning home from work in the fields when a curfew had been imposed on the village. This was not the real reason, however. Later proofs show that Israel had seriously considered the expulsion of Palestinians from the whole area called the Wadi Ara and the Triangle in which the village sat. These two areas—the first a valley connecting Afula in the east and Hadera on the Mediterranean coast; the second expanding the eastern hinterland of Jerusalem—were annexed to Israel under the terms of the 1949 armistice agreement with Jordan. As we have seen, additional territory was always welcomed by Israel, but an increase in the Palestinian population was not. Thus, at every juncture, when the state of Israel expanded, it looked for ways of restricting the Palestinian population in the recently annexed areas.<br />
<br />
Operation "Hafarfert" (mole) was the codename of a set of proposals for the expulsion of Palestinians when a new war broke out with the Arab world. Many scholars today now think that the 1956 massacre was a practice run to see if the people in the area could be intimidated to leave. The perpetrators of the massacre were brought to trial thanks to the diligence and tenacity of two members of the Knesset: Tawfiq Tubi from the Communist Party and Latif Dori of the Left Zionist party Mapam. However, the commanders responsible for the area, and the unit itself that committed the crime, were let off very lightly, receiving merely small fines.<ref group="7.">Shira Robinson, "Local Struggle, National Struggle: Palestinian Responses to the Kafr Qasim Massacre and its Aftermath, 1956–66," ''International Journal of Middle East Studies'', 35 (2003), pp. 393–416.</ref> This was further proof that the army was allowed to get away with murder in the occupied territories.<br />
<br />
Systematic cruelty does not only show its face in a major event like a massacre. The worst atrocities can also be found in the regime's daily, mundane presence. Palestinians in Israel still do not talk much about that pre-1967 period, and the documents of that time do not reveal the full picture. Surprisingly, it is in poetry that we find an indication of what it was like to live under military rule. Natan Alterman was one of the most famous and important poets of his generation. He had a weekly column, called "The Seventh Column," in which he commented on events he had read or heard about. Sometimes he would omit details about the date or even the location of the event, but would give the reader just enough information to understand what he was referring to. He often expressed his attacks in poetic form:<blockquote>The news appeared briefly for two days, and disappeared.<br />
<br />
And no one seem to care, and no one seems to know.<br />
<br />
In the far away village of Um al-Fahem,<br />
<br />
Children—should I say citizens of the state—played in the mud<br />
<br />
And one of them seemed suspicious to one of our brave soldiers who<br />
<br />
shouted at him: Stop!<br />
<br />
An order is an order<br />
<br />
An order is an order, but the foolish boy did not stand,<br />
<br />
He ran away<br />
<br />
So our brave soldier shot, no wonder<br />
<br />
And hit and killed the boy.<br />
<br />
And no one talked about it.<ref group="7.">Natan Alterman, "A Matter of No Importance," ''Davar'', September 7, 1951.</ref></blockquote>On one occasion he wrote a poem about two Palestinian citizens who were shot in Wadi Ara. In another instance, he told the story of a very ill Palestinian woman who was expelled with her two children, aged three and six, with no explanation, and sent across the River Jordan. When she tried to return, she and her children were arrested and put into a Nazareth jail. Alterman hoped that his poem about the mother would move hearts and minds, or at least elicit some official response. However, he wrote a week later:<blockquote>And this writer assumed wrongly<br />
<br />
That either the story would be denied or explained<br />
<br />
But nothing, not a word.<ref group="7.">Natan Alterman, "Two Security Measures," ''The Seventh Column'', Vol. 1, p. 291 (Hebrew).</ref></blockquote>There is further evidence that Israel was not a democracy prior to 1967. The state pursued a shoot-to-kill policy towards refugees trying to retrieve their land, crops, and husbandry, and staged a colonial war to topple Nasser's regime in Egypt. Its security forces were also trigger-happy, killing more than fifty Palestinian citizens during the period 1948–67.<br />
<br />
The litmus test of any democracy is the level of tolerance it is willing to extend towards the minorities living in it. In this respect, Israel falls far short of being a true democracy. For example, after the new territorial gains several laws were passed ensuring a superior position for the majority: the laws governing citizenship, the laws concerning land ownership, and most important of all, the law of return. The latter grants automatic citizenship to every Jew in the world, wherever he or she was born. This law in particular is a flagrantly undemocratic one, for it was accompanied by a total rejection of the Palestinian right of return—recognized internationally by the UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of 1948. This rejection refuses to allow the Palestinian citizens of Israel to unite with their immediate families or with those who were expelled in 1948. Denying people the right of return to their homeland, and at the same time offering this right to others who have no connection to the land, is a model of undemocratic practice.<br />
<br />
Added to this was a further layering of denial of the rights of the Palestinian people. Almost every discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel is justified by the fact that they do not serve in the army.<ref group="7.">I have listed these in ''The Forgotten Palestinians''.</ref> The association between democratic rights and military duties is better understood if we revisit the formative years in which Israeli policy makers were trying to make up their minds about how to treat one-fifth of the population. Their assumption was that Palestinian citizens did not want to join the army anyway, and that assumed refusal, in turn, justified the discriminatory policy against them. This was put to the test in 1954 when the Israeli ministry of defense decided to call up those Palestinian citizens eligible for conscription to serve in the army. The secret service assured the government that there would be a widespread rejection of the call-up. To their great surprise, all those summoned went to the recruiting office, with the blessing of the Communist Party, the biggest and most important political force in the community at the time. The secret service later explained that the main reason was the teenagers' boredom with life in the countryside and their desire for some action and adventure.<ref group="7.">See Pappe, ''The Forgotten Palestinians'', p. 65.</ref><br />
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Notwithstanding this episode, the ministry of defense continued to peddle a narrative that depicted the Palestinian community as unwilling to serve in the military. Inevitably, in time, the Palestinians did indeed turn against the Israeli army, who had become their perpetual oppressors, but the government's exploitation of this as a pretext for discrimination casts huge doubt on the state's pretense to being a democracy. If you are a Palestinian citizen and you did not serve in the army your rights to government assistance as a worker, student, parent, or as part of a couple, are severely restricted. This affects housing in particular, as well as employment—where 70 percent of all Israeli industry is considered to be security-sensitive and therefore closed to these citizens as a place to find work.<ref group="7.">See the report by Adalah, "An Anti-Human Rights Year for the Israeli Supreme Court," December 10, 2015, at [http://adalah.org adalah.org].</ref><br />
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The underlying assumption of the ministry of defense was not only that Palestinians do not wish to serve but that they are potentially an enemy within who cannot be trusted. The problem with this argument is that in all the major wars between Israel and the Arab world the Palestinian minority did not behave as expected. They did not form a fifth column or rise up against the regime. This, however, did not help them: to this day they are seen as a "demographic" problem that has to be solved. The only consolation is that still today most Israeli politicians do not believe that the way to solve "the problem" is by the transfer or expulsion of the Palestinians (at least not in peacetime).<br />
<br />
The claim to being a democracy is also questionable when one examines the budgetary policy surrounding the land question. Since 1948, Palestinian local councils and municipalities have received far less funding than their Jewish counterparts. The shortage of land, coupled with the scarcity of employment opportunities, creates an abnormal socioeconomic reality. For example, the most affluent Palestinian community, the village of Me'ilya in the upper Galilee, is still worse off than the poorest Jewish development town in the Negev. In 2011, the ''Jerusalem Post'' reported that "average Jewish income was 40% to 60% higher than average Arab income between the years 1997 to 2009."<ref group="7.">''The Jerusalem Post'', November 24, 2011.</ref><br />
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Today more than 90 percent of the land is owned by the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Landowners are not allowed to engage in transactions with non-Jewish citizens and public land is prioritized for the use of national projects, which means that new Jewish settlements are being built while there are hardly any new Palestinian settlements. Thus, the biggest Palestinian city, Nazareth, despite the tripling of its population since 1948, has not expanded one square kilometer, whereas the development town built above it, Upper Nazareth, has tripled in size, on land expropriated from Palestinian landowners.<ref group="7.">See Ilan Pappe, "In Upper Nazareth: Judaisation," ''London Review of Books'', September 10, 2009.</ref><br />
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Further examples of this policy can be found in Palestinian villages throughout Galilee, revealing the same story: how they have been downsized by 40 percent, sometimes even 60 percent, since 1948, and how new Jewish settlements have been built on expropriated land. Elsewhere this has initiated full-blown attempts at "Judaization." After 1967, the Israeli government became concerned about the lack of Jews living in the north and south of the state and so planned to increase the population in those areas. Such a demographic change necessitated the confiscation of Palestinian land for the building of Jewish settlements.<br />
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Worse was the exclusion of Palestinian citizens from these settlements. This blunt violation of a citizen's right to live wherever he or she wishes continues today, and all efforts by human rights NGOs in Israel to challenge this apartheid have so far ended in total failure. The Supreme Court in Israel has only been able to question the legality of this policy in a few individual cases, but not in principle. Imagine if in the UK or the United States, Jewish citizens, or Catholics for that matter, were barred by law from living in certain villages, neighborhoods, or maybe whole towns? How can such a situation be reconciled with the notion of democracy?<br />
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Thus, given its attitude towards two Palestinian groups—the refugees and the community in Israel—the Jewish state cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be assumed to be a democracy. But the most obvious challenge to that assumption is the ruthless Israeli attitude towards a third Palestinian group: those who have lived under its direct and indirect rule since 1967, in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. From the legal infrastructure put in place at the outset of the war, through the unquestioned absolute power of the military inside the West Bank and outside the Gaza Strip, to the humiliation of millions of Palestinians as a daily routine, the "only democracy" in the Middle East behaves as a dictatorship of the worst kind.<br />
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The main Israeli response, diplomatic and academic, to the latter accusation is that all these measures are temporary—they will change if the Palestinians, wherever they are, behave "better." But if one researches, not to mention lives in, the occupied territories, one will understand how ridiculous these arguments are. Israeli policy makers, as we have seen, are determined to keep the occupation alive for as long as the Jewish state remains intact. It is part of what the Israeli political system regards as the status quo, which is always better than any change. Israel will control most of Palestine and, since it will always include a substantial Palestinian population, this can only be done by non-democratic means.<br />
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In addition, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the Israeli state claims that the occupation is an enlightened one. The myth here is that Israel came with good intentions to conduct a benevolent occupation but was forced to take a tougher attitude because of the Palestinian violence. In 1967 the government treated the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as natural part of "Eretz Israel," the land of Israel, and this attitude has continued ever since. When you look at the debate between the right-and left-wing parties in Israel on this issue, their disagreements have been about how to achieve this goal, not about its validity.<br />
<br />
Among the wider public, however, there was a genuine debate between what one might call the "redeemers" and the "custodians." The "redeemers" believed Israel had recovered the ancient heart of its homeland and could not survive in the future without it. In contrast, the "custodians" argued that the territories should be exchanged for peace with Jordan, in the case of the West Bank, and Egypt in the case of the Gaza Strip.<ref group="7.">See Amnon Sella, "Custodians and Redeemers: Israel's Leaders' Perceptions of Peace, 1967–1979," ''Middle East Studies'', 22:2 (1986), pp. 236–51.</ref> However, this public debate had little impact on the way the principal policy makers were figuring out how to rule the occupied territories. The worst part of this supposed "enlightened occupation" has been the government's methods for managing the territories. At first the area was divided into "Arab" and potential "Jewish" spaces. Those areas densely populated with Palestinians became autonomous, run by local collaborators under a military rule. This regime was only replaced with a civil administration in 1981. The other areas, the "Jewish" spaces, were colonized with Jewish settlements and military bases. This policy was intended to leave the population both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in disconnected enclaves with neither green spaces nor any possibility for urban expansion.<br />
<br />
Things only got worse when, very soon after the occupation, Gush Emunim started settling in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, claiming to be following a biblical map of colonization rather than the governmental one. As they penetrated the densely populated Palestinian areas, the space left for the locals was shrunk even further.<br />
<br />
What every colonization project primarily needs is land—in the occupied territories this was achieved only through the massive expropriation of land, deporting people from where they had lived for generations, and confining them in enclaves with difficult habitats. When you fly over the West Bank, you can see clearly the cartographic results of this policy: belts of settlements that divide the land and carve the Palestinian communities into small, isolated, and disconnected communities. The Judaization belts separate villages from villages, villages from towns, and sometime bisect a single village. This is what scholars call a geography of disaster, not least since these policies turned out to be an ecological disaster as well: drying up water sources and ruining some of the most beautiful parts of the Palestinian landscape. Moreover, the settlements became hotbeds in which Jewish extremism grew uncontrollably—the principal victims of which were the Palestinians. Thus, the settlement at Efrat has ruined the world heritage site of the Wallajah valley near Bethlehem, and the village of Jafneh near Ramallah, which was famous for its fresh water canals, lost its identity as a tourist attraction. These are just two small examples out of hundreds of similar cases.<br />
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House demolition is not a new phenomenon in Palestine. As with many of the more barbaric methods of collective punishment used by Israel since 1948, it was first conceived and exercised by the British Mandatory government during the Great Arab Revolt of 1936–39. This was the first Palestinian uprising against the pro-Zionist policy of the British Mandate, and it took the British army three years to quell it. In the process, they demolished around 2,000 houses during the various collective punishments meted out to the local population.<ref group="7.">Motti Golani, ''Palestine Between Politics and Terror, 1945–1947'', Brandeis: Brandeis University Press, 2013, p. 201.</ref> Israel demolished houses from almost the first day of its military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The army blew up hundreds of homes every year in response to various acts undertaken by individual family members.<ref group="7.">Horrific detailed descriptions of almost every such demolition can be found on the website of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, at [http://ichad.org ichad.org].</ref> From minor violations of military rule to participation in violent acts against the occupation, the Israelis were quick to send in their bulldozers to wipe out not only a physical building but also a focus of life and existence. In the greater Jerusalem area (as inside Israel) demolition was also a punishment for the unlicensed extension of an existing house or the failure to pay bills.<br />
<br />
Another form of collective punishment that has recently returned to the Israeli repertoire is that of blocking up houses. Imagine that all the doors and windows in your house are blocked by cement, mortar, and stones, so you can't get back in or retrieve anything you failed to take out in time. I have looked hard in my history books to find another example, but found no evidence of such a callous measure being practiced elsewhere.<br />
<br />
Finally, under the "enlightened occupation," settlers have been allowed to form vigilante gangs to harass people and destroy their property. These gangs have changed their approach over the years. During the 1980s, they used actual terror—from wounding Palestinian leaders (one of them lost his legs in such an attack), to contemplating blowing up the mosques on Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem. In this century, they have engaged in the daily harassment of Palestinians: uprooting their trees, destroying their yields, and shooting randomly at their homes and vehicles. Since 2000, there have been at least 100 such attacks reported per month in some areas such as Hebron, where the 500 settlers, with the silent collaboration of the Israeli army, harassed the locals living nearby in an even more brutal way.<ref group="7.">See the report of the Israeli NGO Yesh Din, "Law Enforcement on Israeli Civilians in the West Bank," at [http://yesh-din.org yesh-din.org].</ref><br />
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From the very beginning of the occupation then, the Palestinians were given two options: accept the reality of permanent incarceration in a mega-prison for a very long time, or risk the might of the strongest army in the Middle East. When the Palestinians did resist—as they did in 1987, 2000, 2006, 2012, 2014, and 2016—they were targeted as soldiers and units of a conventional army. Thus, villages and towns were bombed as if they were military bases and the unarmed civilian population was shot at as if it was an army on the battlefield. Today we know too much about life under occupation, before and after Oslo, to take seriously the claim that non-resistance will ensure less oppression. The arrests without trial, as experienced by so many over the years; the demolition of thousands of houses; the killing and wounding of the innocent; the drainage of water wells—these are all testimony to one of the harshest contemporary regimes of our times. Amnesty International annually documents in a very comprehensive way the nature of the occupation. The following is from their 2015 report:<blockquote>In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israeli forces committed unlawful killings of Palestinian civilians, including children, and detained thousands of Palestinians who protested against or otherwise opposed Israel's continuing military occupation, holding hundreds in administrative detention. Torture and other ill-treatment remained rife and were committed with impunity. The authorities continued to promote illegal settlements in the West Bank, and severely restricted Palestinians' freedom of movement, further tightening restrictions amid an escalation of violence from October, which included attacks on Israeli civilians by Palestinians and apparent extrajudicial executions by Israeli forces. Israeli settlers in the West Bank attacked Palestinians and their property with virtual impunity. The Gaza Strip remained under an Israeli military blockade that imposed collective punishment on its inhabitants. The authorities continued to demolish Palestinian homes in the West Bank and inside Israel, particularly in Bedouin villages in the Negev/Naqab region, forcibly evicting their residents.<ref group="7.">See "Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories," at [http://amnesty.org amnesty.org].</ref></blockquote>Let's take this in stages. Firstly, assassinations—what Amnesty's report calls "unlawful killings": about 15,000 Palestinians have been killed "unlawfully" by Israel since 1967. Among them were 2,000 children.<ref group="7.">The fatalities count is more accurate from 1987 onwards, but there are reliable sources for the period as a whole. See the reports of fatalities by B'Tselem and visit their statistics page at [http://btselem.org btselem.org]. Other sources include IMEMC and UN OCHA reports.</ref> Another feature of the "enlightened occupation" is imprisonment without trial. Every fifth Palestinian in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has undergone such an experience.<ref group="7.">One of the more thorough reports on the numbers of prisoners can be found in Mohammad Ma'ri, "Israeli Forces Arrested 800,000 Palestinians since 1967," "The Saudi Gazette", December 12, 2012.</ref> It is interesting to compare this Israeli practice with similar American policies in the past and the present, as critics of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement claim that US practices are far worse. In fact, the worst American example was the imprisonment without trail of 100,000 Japanese citizens during World War II, with 30,000 later detained under the so-called "war on terror." Neither of these numbers comes even close to the number of Palestinians who have experienced such a process: including the very young, the old, as well as the long-term incarcerated.<ref group="7.">See the document in the Harry Truman Library, "The War Relocation Authority and the Incarceration of the Japanese-Americans in the Second World War," at [http://trumanlibrary.org trumanlibrary.org].</ref> Arrest without trial is a traumatic experience. Not knowing the charges against you, having no contact with a lawyer and hardly any contact with your family are only some of the concerns that will affect you as a prisoner. More brutally, many of these arrests are used as means to pressure people into collaboration. Spreading rumors or shaming people for their alleged or real sexual orientation are also frequently used as methods for leveraging complicity.<br />
<br />
As for torture, the reliable website Middle East Monitor published a harrowing article describing the 200 methods used by the Israelis to torture Palestinians. The list is based on a UN report and a report from the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem.<ref group="7.">See "Torture in Israeli Prisons," October 29, 2014, at [http://middleeastmonitor.com middleeastmonitor.com].</ref> Among other methods it includes beatings, chaining prisoners to doors or chairs for hours, pouring cold and hot water on them, pulling fingers apart, and twisting testicles.<br />
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What we must challenge here, therefore, is not only Israel's claim to be maintaining an enlightened occupation but also its pretense to being a democracy. Such behavior towards millions of people under its rule gives the lie to such political chicanery. However, although large sections of civil societies throughout the world deny Israel its pretense to democracy, their political elites, for a variety of reasons, still treat it as a member of the exclusive club of democratic states. In many ways, the popularity of the BDS movement reflects the frustrations of those societies with their governments' policies towards Israel.<br />
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For most Israelis these counterarguments are irrelevant at best and malicious at worst. The Israeli state clings to the view that it is a benevolent occupier. The argument for "enlightened occupation" proposes that, according to the average Jewish citizen in Israel, the Palestinians are much better off under occupation and they have no reason in the world to resist it, let alone by force. If you are a non-critical supporter of Israel abroad, you accept these assumptions as well.<br />
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There are, however, sections of Israeli society that do recognize the validity of some of the claims made here. In the 1990s, with various degrees of conviction, a significant number of Jewish academics, journalists, and artists voiced their doubts about the definition of Israel as a democracy. It takes some courage to challenge the foundational myths of one's own society and state. This is why quite a few of them later retreated from this brave position and returned to toeing the general line. Nevertheless, for a while during the last decade of the last century, they produced works that challenged the assumption of a democratic Israel. They portrayed Israel as belonging to a different community: that of the non-democratic nations. One of them, the geographer Oren Yiftachel from Ben-Gurion University, depicted Israel as an ethnocracy, a regime governing a mixed ethnic state with a legal and formal preference for one ethnic group over all the others.<ref group="7.">Oren Yiftachel and As'ad Ghanem, "Towards a Theory of Ethnocratic Regimes: Learning from the Judaisation of Israel/Palestine," in E. Kaufman (ed.), ''Rethinking Ethnicity, Majority Groups and Dominant Minorities'', London and New York: Routledge, 2004, pp. 179–97.</ref> Others went further, labeling Israel an apartheid state or a settler colonial state.<ref group="7.">See Uri Davis, ''Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle from Within'', London: Zed Books, 2004.</ref> In short, whatever description these critical scholars offered, "democracy" was not among them.<br />
<br />
==== Footnotes ====<br />
<references group="7." /><br />
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=== The Oslo Mythologies ===<br />
On September 13, 1993, Israel and the PLO signed a declaration of principles, known as the Oslo Accord, on the White House lawn under the auspices of President Bill Clinton. The PLO leader, Yasser Arafat, the Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, would later receive a Nobel Peace prize for this Accord. It ended a long period of negotiations that had begun in 1992. Until that year, Israel had refused to negotiate directly with the PLO over the fate of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, or about the Palestinian question in general. Successive Israeli governments preferred negotiating with Jordan, but since the mid-1980s they had allowed PLO representatives to join the Jordanian delegations.<br />
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There were several reasons for the change in the Israeli position that enabled direct negotiations with the PLO. The first was the victory of the Labor party in the 1992 elections (for the first time since 1977) and the formation of a government that was more interested in a political solution than the previous Likud-led administrations. The new government understood that the attempts to negotiate directly with the local Palestinian leadership about autonomy were stalled because every Palestinian decision was referred back to the PLO headquarters in Tunis; thus, a direct line was more useful.<br />
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The second reason concerned Israeli apprehensions arising from the Madrid peace initiative—an American enterprise to bring Israel, the Palestinians, and the rest of the Arab world together to agree on a solution in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. President George Bush Sr. and his secretary of state, William Baker, fathered this initiative in 1991. Both politicians asserted that Israel was an obstacle to peace and pressured the Israeli government to agree to a halt in settlement building so as to give the two-states solution a chance. Israeli–American relations at the time were at an unprecedented low. The new Israeli administration also initiated direct contact with the PLO themselves. The Madrid conference of 1991 and the peace efforts conducted under its auspices were probably the first genuine American effort to find a solution for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip based on Israeli withdrawal. The Israeli political elite wanted to thwart the move by nipping it in the bud. They preferred to initiate their own peace proposal and convince the Palestinians to accept it. Yasser Arafat was also unhappy with the Madrid initiative since in his eyes the local Palestinian leadership in the occupied territories, headed by the Gazan leader, Haidar Abdel-Shafi, and Faysal al-Husseini from Jerusalem, threatened his leadership and popularity by taking the lead in the negotiations.<br />
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Thus the PLO in Tunis and the Israeli foreign office in Jerusalem began behind-the-scenes negotiations while the Madrid peace effort continued. They found a willing mediator in Fafo, a Norwegian peace institute based in Oslo. The two teams eventually met in the open in August 1993 and with American involvement finalized the Declaration of Principles (DOP). The DOP was hailed as the end of the conflict when it was signed, with a lot of histrionics on the White House lawn in September 1993.<br />
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There are two myths associated with the Oslo process. The first is that it was a genuine peace process; the second that Yasser Arafat intentionally undermined it by instigating the Second Intifada as a terrorist operation against Israel.<br />
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The first myth was born out the desire of both sides in 1992 to reach a solution. However, when this failed, it quickly became a game of who to blame. Israeli hardliners pointed the finger at the Palestinian leadership. A more nuanced, liberal Zionist version of this assumption laid the blame on Yasser Arafat but also on the Israeli right, in particular Benjamin Netanyahu, for the impasse after the PLO leader's death in 2004. In either scenario, the peace process is considered a real one, albeit a failure. However, the truth is more complex. The terms of the agreement were impossible to fulfill. The claim that Arafat refused to respect the Palestinian pledges made in the 1993 Accord does not bear scrutiny. He could not enforce pledges that were impossible to keep. For example, the Palestinian authorities were called upon to act as Israel's security subcontractor inside the occupied territories and ensure that there would be no resistance activity. More implicitly, Arafat was expected to accept the Israeli interpretation of the final settlement emerging from the Accord without debate. The Israelis presented this fait accompli to the PLO leader in the summer of 2000 at the Camp David summit, where the Palestinian leader was negotiating the final agreement with the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, and the US President, Bill Clinton.<br />
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Barak demanded a demilitarized Palestinian state, with a capital in a village near Jerusalem, Abu Dis, and without parts of the West Bank such as the Jordan Valley, the big Jewish settlement blocs, and areas in Greater Jerusalem. The future state would not have an independent economic and foreign policy and would be autonomous only in certain domestic aspects (such as running the educational system, tax collection, municipalities, policing, and maintaining the infrastructures on the ground). The formalization of this arrangement was to signify the end of the conflict and terminate any Palestinian demands in the future (such as the right of return for the 1948 Palestinian refugees).<br />
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The peace process was a busted flush from the outset. To understand the failure of Oslo, one has to widen the analysis and relate the events to two principles that remained unanswered throughout the Accord. The first was the primacy of geographical or territorial partition as the exclusive foundation of peace; the second the denial of the Palestinian refugees' right of return and its exclusion from the negotiating table.<br />
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The proposition that the physical partition of the land was the best solution for the conflict appeared for the first time in 1937 as part of the British Royal Commission, the Peel Report. At that time the Zionist movement suggested that Jordan—Transjordan in those days—should annex the "Arab parts of Palestine," but the idea was rejected by the Palestinians.<ref group="8.">Masalha, ''Expulsion of the Palestinians'', p. 107.</ref> It was later re-adopted as the best way forward in the UN Partition Resolution of November 1947. The UN appointed a special commission of inquiry (UNSCOP) to try to find a solution. The members of the committee came from countries that had very little interest in or knowledge about Palestine. The Palestinian representative body, the Arab Higher Committee, and the Arab League, boycotted UNSCOP and refused to cooperate with it. This left a vacuum that was filled by the Zionist diplomats and leadership, who fed UNSCOP with their ideas for a solution. They suggested the creation of a Jewish state over 80 percent of Palestine; the Commission reduced it to 56 percent.<ref group="8.">"Revisiting the UNGA Partition Resolution," ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', 27:1 (1997), pp. 5–21.</ref> Egypt and Jordan were willing to legitimize the Israelis' takeover of Palestine in 1948 in return for bilateral agreements with them (which were eventually signed in 1979 with Egypt and in 1994 with Jordan).<br />
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The idea of partition then reappeared under different names and references in the efforts led by the Americans after 1967. It was implicit in the new discourse that emerged: that of "territories for peace," which every peace negotiator treated as a sanctified formula—the more territory Israel withdrew from the more peace it would get. Now the territory that Israel could withdraw from was within the 20 percent it had not taken over in 1948. In essence then, the idea was to build peace on the basis of partitioning the remaining 20 percent between Israel and whomever it would legitimize as a partner for peace (the Jordanians until the late 1980s, and the Palestinians ever since).<br />
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Unsurprisingly, therefore, this became the cornerstone of the logic that informed the opening discussions in Oslo. It was easily forgotten, however, that historically every time partition had been offered, it was followed by more bloodshed and failed to produce the desired peace. Indeed, the Palestinian leaders at no point ever demanded partition. It was always a Zionist and, later, an Israeli idea. In addition, the proportion of territory demanded by the Israelis grew as their power increased. Thus, as the idea of partition gained growing global support, it increasingly appeared to the Palestinians as an offensive strategy by other means. It was due only to the lack of alternatives that the Palestinian parties accepted this set of circumstances as a lesser evil within the terms of negotiation. In the early 1970s, Fatah acknowledged partition as a necessary means on the way to full liberation, but not as a final settlement by itself.<ref group="8.">The best account of the developments leading to the Oslo Accord is Hilde Henriksen Waage, "Postscript to Oslo: The Mystery of Norway's Missing Files," ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', 38:1 (2008), pp. 54–65.</ref><br />
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So, in truth, without the application of extreme pressure, there is no reason in the world why a native population would ever volunteer to partition its homeland with a settler population. And therefore we should acknowledge that the Oslo process was not a fair and equal pursuit of peace, but a compromise agreed to by a defeated, colonized people. As a result, the Palestinians were forced to seek solutions that went against their interests and endangered their very existence.<br />
<br />
The same argument can be made about the debates concerning the "two-states solution" that was offered in Oslo. This offer should be seen for what it is: partition under a different wording. Even in this scenario, although the terms of the debate appear different, Israel would not only decide how much territory it was going to concede but also what would happen in the territory it left behind. While the promise of statehood initially proved persuasive to the world and to some Palestinians, it soon came to sound hollow. Nonetheless, these two intertwined notions of territorial withdrawal and statehood were successfully packaged as parts of a peace deal in Oslo in 1993. Yet within weeks of the joint signature on the White House lawn, the writing was on the wall. By the end of September, the Accord's vague principles had already been translated into a new geopolitical reality on the ground under the terms of what was called the Oslo II (or Taba<ref group="8.">See "1993 Oslo Interim Agreement," at [http://israelipalestinian.procon.org israelipalestinian.procon.org].</ref>) agreement. This included not just partitioning the West Bank and the Gaza Strip between "Jewish" and "Palestinian" zones, but partitioning further all the Palestinian areas into small cantons or Bantustans. The peace cartography of 1995 amounted to a bisected series of Palestinian zones that resembled, in the words of quite a few commentators, a Swiss cheese.<ref group="8.">See Ian Black, "How the Oslo Accord Robbed the Palestinians," ''Guardian'', February 4, 2013.</ref><br />
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Once this program became clear, the decline of the negotiations was swift. Before the final summit meeting in the summer of 2000, Palestinian activists, academics, and politicians had realized that the process they supported did not involve an actual Israeli military withdrawal from the occupied territories, nor did it promise the creation of a real state. The charade was revealed and progress ground to a halt. The ensuing sense of despair contributed to the outburst of the second Palestinian uprising in the autumn of 2000.<br />
<br />
The Oslo peace process did not fail simply due to its adherence to the principle of partition. In the original Accord there was an Israeli promise that the three issues that trouble the Palestinians most—the fate of Jerusalem, the refugees, and the Jewish colonies—would be negotiated when the interim period of five years came to a successful end. Within this interim period, the Palestinians had to prove they could serve effectively as Israel's security subcontractors, preventing any guerrilla or terror attacks against the Jewish state, its army, settlers, and citizens. Contrary to the promise made in the Oslo DOP, when the five years of the first stage were over, the second stage, in which the more substantial issues for the Palestinians were meant to be discussed, did not commence. The Netanyahu government claimed that it was unable to initiate this second phase because of Palestinian "misbehavior" (which included "incitement in schools" and weak condemnations of terror attacks against soldiers, settlers, and citizens). In truth, however, the process was stalled mainly by the assassination of the Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, in November 1995. The murder was followed by the victory of the Likud party, headed by Netanyahu, in the 1996 national elections. The new prime minister's overt objection to the Accord put the brake on the process. Even when the Americans forced him to restart negotiations, progress was extremely slow until the return to power of the Labor party, under Ehud Barak, in 1999. Barak was determined to complete the process with a final peace agreement, an impulse fully supported by the Clinton administration.<br />
<br />
Israel's final offer, delivered during discussions at Camp David in the summer of 2000, proposed a small Palestinian state, with a capital in Abu Dis, but without significant dismantling of any settlements and no hope for return of the refugees. After the Palestinians rejected the offer, there was an informal attempt by the deputy Israeli foreign minister, Yossi Beilin, to offer a more reasonable deal. On the issue of refugees he now agreed to their return to a future Palestinian state and symbolic repatriation to Israel. But these informal terms were never ratified by the state. (Thanks to the leaking of key documents, known as the Palestine papers, we now have a better insight into the nature of the negotiations, and readers who wish to examine other aspects of the negotiations between 2001 and 2007 are advised to consult this accessible source.<ref group="8.">See "Meeting Minutes: Taba Summit—Plenary Session," at [http://thepalestinepapers.com thepalestinepapers.com].</ref>) And yet, as negotiations collapsed, it was the Palestinian leadership, rather than the Israeli politicians, who were accused of being intransigent, leading to the collapse of Oslo. This does a disservice to those involved and to how seriously the prospects of partition were taken.<br />
<br />
The exclusion of the Palestinian right of return from the agenda is the second reason why the Oslo Accord was irrelevant as a peace process. While the partition principle reduced "Palestine" to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the exclusion of the refugee issue, and of that of the Palestinian minority inside Israel, shrank the "Palestinian people" demographically to less than half of the Palestinian nation. This lack of attention to the refugee question was not new. Ever since the beginning of the peace efforts in post-Mandatory Palestine, the refugees have been exposed to a campaign of repression and negligence. Ever since the first peace conference on post-1948 Palestine, the Lausanne meeting of April 1949, the refugee problem has been excluded from the peace agenda and disassociated from the concept of "The Palestine Conflict." Israel participated in that conference only because it was a precondition for its acceptance as a full member of the UN,<ref group="8.">Ilan Pappe, ''The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948–1951'', London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1992, pp. 203–43.</ref> who also demanded that Israel sign a protocol, called the May Protocol, committing itself to the terms of Resolution 194, which included an unconditional call for the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes or to be given compensation. A day after it was signed in May 1949, Israel was admitted to the UN and immediately retracted its commitment to the protocol.<br />
<br />
In the wake of the June 1967 war, the world at large accepted the Israeli claim that the conflict in Palestine began with that war and was essentially a struggle over the future of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Several Arab regimes also accepted this notion, abandoning the refugee problem as an issue. However, the refugee camps soon became sites of intensive political, social, and cultural activity. It was there, for example, that the Palestinian liberation movement was reborn. Only the UN continued to mention in several of its resolutions the obligation of the international community to ensure the full and unconditional repatriation of the Palestinian refugees—the commitment first made in Resolution 194 in 1948. Still today the UN includes a body named "the committee for the inalienable rights of the Palestinian refugees," but it has had little effect on the peace process.<br />
<br />
The Oslo Accord was no different. In this document, the refugee issue was buried in a subclause, almost invisible in the mass of words. The Palestinian partners to the Accord contributed to this obfuscation, probably out of negligence rather than intentionally, but the result was the same. The refugee problem—the heart of the Palestine conflict, a reality acknowledged by all Palestinians, wherever they are, and by anyone sympathizing with the Palestinian cause—was marginalized in the Oslo documents. Instead, the issue was handed to a short-lived multilateral group who were asked to focus on the 1967 refugees, the Palestinians who were expelled or left after the June war. The Oslo Accord in fact substituted for an embryonic attempt, born out of the 1991 Madrid peace process, to form a multilateral group that would discuss the refugee issue on the basis of UN General Assembly Resolution 194. The group was led by the Canadians, who regarded the right of return as a myth, throughout 1994, and then it petered out. In any case, without any official announcement, the group stopped meeting and the fate of even the 1967 refugees (more than 300,000 of them) was abandoned.<ref group="8.">Robert Bowker, ''Palestinian Refugees: Mythology, Identity and the Search for Peace'', Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003, p. 157.</ref><br />
<br />
The implementation of the Accord after 1993 only made things worse. The rules of the agreement required the abandonment by the Palestinian leadership of the right of return. Thus only five years after the cantonization of "the Palestinian entity" and its transformation into a Bantustan, the Palestinian leadership was given permission to express its wish to deal with the refugee problem as part of the negotiations over the permanent settlement of the Palestine question. Nevertheless, the Israeli state was able to define the terms of discussion and so chose to distinguish between, on the one hand, the introduction of the "refugee problem" as a legitimate Palestinian grievance, and, on the other, the demand for the "right of return," which it was able to describe as a Palestinian provocation.<br />
<br />
In the last ditch attempt to save the agreement at the Camp David summit in 2000, the refugee issue did not fare any better. In January 2000, the Barak government presented a paper, endorsed by the American negotiators, defining the parameters of the negotiations. This was an Israeli diktat, and until the summit was convened in the summer, the Palestinians failed to produce a counterproposal. The final "negotiations" were in essence a combined Israeli and American effort to get the Palestinians to accept the paper, which included, among other things, an absolute and categorical rejection of the Palestinian right of return. It left open for discussion the number of refugees that might be allowed to return to the territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority, although all involved understood that these crammed areas were unable to absorb more people, while there was plenty of space for repatriating refugees in the rest of Israel and Palestine. This part of the discussion was a meaningless gesture, introduced simply to silence any criticism without offering a real solution.<br />
<br />
The peace process of the 1990s was thus no such thing. The insistence on partition and the exclusion of the refugee issue from the agenda rendered the Oslo process at best a military redeployment and a rearrangement of Israeli control in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. At worst, it inaugurated a new system of control that made life for the Palestinians in the occupied territories far worse than it was before.<br />
<br />
After 1995, the impact of the Oslo Accord as a factor that ruined Palestinian society, rather than bringing peace, became painfully clear. Following Rabin's assassination and the election of Netanyahu in 1996, the Accord became a discourse of peace that had no relevance to the reality on the ground. During the period of the talks—between 1996 and 1999—more settlements were built, and more collective punishments were inflicted on the Palestinians. Even if you believed in the two-states solution in 1999, a tour of either the West Bank or the Gaza Strip would have convinced you of the words of the Israeli scholar, Meron Benvenisti, who wrote that Israel had created irreversible facts on the ground: the two-states solution was killed by Israel.<ref group="8.">Meron Benvenisti, ''West Bank Data Project: A Survey of Israel's Politics'', Jerusalem: AEI Press, 1984.</ref> Since the Oslo process was not a genuine peace process, the Palestinians' participation in it, and their reluctance to continue it, was not a sign of their alleged intransigence and violent political culture, but a natural response to a diplomatic charade that solidified and deepened Israeli control over the occupied territories.<br />
<br />
This then leads on to the second myth concerning the Oslo process: that Arafat's intransigence ensured the failure of the Camp David Summit in 2000. Two questions have to be answered here. Firstly, what happened in the summer of 2000 at Camp David—who was responsible for the summit's failure? Secondly, who was responsible for the violence of the Second Intifada? The two questions will help us engage directly with the common assumption that Arafat was a warmonger who came to Camp David to destroy the peace process and returned to Palestine with a determination to start a new Intifada.<br />
<br />
Before we answer these questions, we should remember the reality in the occupied territories on the day Arafat left for Camp David. My main argument here is that Arafat came to Camp David to change that reality while the Israelis and the Americans arrived there determined to maintain it. The Oslo process had transformed the occupied territories into a geography of disaster, which meant that the Palestinians' quality of life was far worse after the Accord that it was before. Already in 1994, Rabin's government forced Arafat to accept its interpretation of how the Accord would be implemented on the ground. The West Bank was divided to the infamous areas A, B, and C. Area C was directly controlled by Israel and constituted half of the West Bank. The movement between, and inside, these areas became nearly impossible, and the West Bank was cut off from the Gaza Strip. The Strip was also divided between Palestinians and Jewish settlers, who took over most of the water resources and lived in gated communities cordoned off with barbered wire. Thus the end result of this supposed peace process was a deterioration in the quality of Palestinian lives.<br />
<br />
This was Arafat's reality in the summer of 2000 when he arrived at Camp David. He was being asked to sign off as a final settlement the irreversible facts on the ground that had turned the idea of a two-states solution into an arrangement that at best would allow the Palestinians two small Bantustans and at worst would allow Israel to annex more territory. The agreement would also force him to give up any future Palestinian demands or propose a way of alleviating some of the daily hardships most Palestinians suffered from.<br />
<br />
We have an authentic and reliable report of what happened at Camp David from the State Department's Hussein Agha and Robert Malley.<ref group="8.">Robert Malley and Hussein Agha, "Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors," ''New York Review of Books'', August 9, 2001.</ref> Their detailed account appeared in the ''New York Review of Books'' and begins by dismissing the Israeli claim that Arafat ruined the summit. The article makes the point that Arafat's main problem was that, in the years since Oslo, life for the Palestinians in the occupied territories had only got worse. Quite reasonably, according to these two American officials, he suggested that instead of rushing within two weeks "to end the conflict for once and for all," Israel should agree to certain measures that might restore the Palestinians' faith in the usefulness and benefits of the peace process. The period of two weeks, incidentally, was not an Israeli demand, but a foolish time frame insisted upon by Bill Clinton, who was considering his own legacy.<br />
<br />
There were two major proposals that Arafat signaled as potential areas of discussion, which, if accepted, might improve the reality on the ground. The first was to de-escalate the intensive colonization of the West Bank that had increased after Oslo. The second was to put an end to the daily brutalization of normal Palestinian life, manifested in severe restrictions of movement, frequent collective punishments, arrests without trial, and constant humiliations at the checkpoints. All these practices occurred in every area where there was a contact between the Israeli army or civil administration (the body running the territories) and the local population.<br />
<br />
According to the testimony of the American officials, Barak refused to change Israel's policy towards the Jewish colonies or the daily abuse of the Palestinians. He took a tough position that left Arafat with no choice. Whatever Barak proposed as a final settlement did not mean much if he could not promise immediate changes in the reality on the ground. Predictably, Arafat was blamed by Israel and its allies for being a warmonger who, immediately after returning from Camp David, encouraged the Second Intifada. The myth here is that the Second Intifada was a terrorist attack sponsored and perhaps even planned by Yasser Arafat. The truth is, it was a mass demonstration of dissatisfaction at the betrayals of Oslo, compounded by the provocative actions of Ariel Sharon. In September 2000, Sharon ignited an explosion of protest when, as the leader of the opposition, he toured Haram al-Sharif, the Temple Mount, with a massive security and media presence.<br />
<br />
The initial Palestinian anger was expressed in non-violent demonstrations that were crushed with brutal force by Israel. This callous repression led to a more desperate response—the suicide bombers who appeared as the last resort in the face of the strongest military power in the region. There is telling evidence from Israeli newspaper correspondents of how their reports on the early stages of the Intifada—as a non-violent movement crushed by the Israeli army—were shelved by their editors so as to fit the narrative of the government. One of them was a deputy editor of ''Yeidot Ahronoth'', the main daily in the state, who wrote a book about the misinformation produced by the Israeli media in the early days of the Second Intifada.<ref group="8.">Daniel Dor, ''The Suppression of Guilt: The Israeli Media and the Reoccupation of the West Bank'', London: Pluto Press, 2005.</ref> Israeli propagandists claimed the Palestinians' behavior only confirmed the famous saying of the veteran Israeli super-diplomat, Abba Eban, that the Palestinians do not miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity for peace.<br />
<br />
We have a better understanding today of what triggered the furious Israeli reaction. In their book ''Boomerang'', two senior Israeli journalists, Ofer Shelah and Raviv Drucker, interview the Israeli general chief of staff and strategists in the ministry of defense, providing us with inside knowledge on the way these officials were thinking about the issue.<ref group="8.">Raviv Drucker and Ofer Shelah, ''Boomerang'', Jerusalem: Keter, 2005 (Hebrew).</ref> Their conclusion was that in the summer of 2000 the Israeli army was frustrated after its humiliating defeat at the hands of Hezbollah in Lebanon. There was a fear that this defeat made the army look weak, and so a show of force was needed. A reassertion of their dominance within the occupied territories was just the kind of display of sheer power the "invincible" Israeli army needed. It was ordered to respond with all its might, and so it did. When Israel retaliated against a terror attack on a hotel in the sea resort of Netanya in April 2002 (in which thirty people were killed), it was the first time the military had used airplanes to bomb the dense Palestinian towns and refugee camps in the West Bank. Instead of hunting down the individuals who had carried out the attacks, the most lethal heavy weapons were brought to bear on innocent people.<br />
<br />
Another common reference in the blame game Israel and the United States played after the failure at Camp David was that of reminding public opinion that there was a chronic problem with Palestinian leaders, who at the moment of truth would expose their warmongering ways. The claim that "there is no one to talk to on the Palestinian side" resurfaced in that period as a common analysis from pundits and commentators in Israel, Europe, and the United States. Such allegations were particularly cynical. The Israeli government and army had tried by force to impose its own version of Oslo—one that was meant to perpetuate the occupation forever but with Palestinian consent—and even an enfeebled Arafat could not accept it. He and so many other leaders who could have led their people to reconciliation were targeted by the Israelis, and most of them, including probably Arafat himself, were assassinated. The targeted killing of Palestinian leaders, including moderate ones, was not a new phenomenon in the conflict. Israel began this policy in 1972 with the assassination of Ghassan Kanafani, a poet and writer who also could have led his people to reconciliation. The fact that he was targeted, as a secular and leftist activist, is symbolic of the role Israel played in killing those Palestinians it later "regretted" not being there as partners for peace.<br />
<br />
In May 2001, President George Bush Jr. appointed Senator Robert Mitchell as a special envoy to the Middle East. Mitchell produced a report about the causes of the Second Intifada, deciding, "We have no basis on which to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the PA to initiate a campaign of violence at the first opportunity; or to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the [Government of Israel] to respond with lethal force."<ref group="8.">For the full text see "Sharm El-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee Report: 'Mitchell Report'," April 30, 2001, at [http://eeas.europa.eu eeas.europa.eu].</ref> On the other hand, he blamed Ariel Sharon for provoking unrest by visiting and violating the sacredness of the al-Aqsa mosque and the holy places of Islam.<br />
<br />
In short, even the disempowered Arafat realized that the Israeli interpretation of Oslo in 2000 meant the end of any hope for normal Palestinian life and doomed the Palestinians to more suffering in the future. This scenario was not only morally wrong in his eyes, but would also, as he was well aware, strengthen the hand of those who regarded the armed struggle against Israel as the only way to liberate Palestine. At any given moment, Israel could have stopped the Second Intifada, but the army needed a show of "success"; only when this was achieved through the barbaric operation of "Defensive Shield" in 2002 and the building of the infamous "apartheid wall" did they succeed temporarily in quelling the uprising.<br />
<br />
==== Footnotes ====<br />
<references group="8." /><br />
<br />
=== The Gaza Mythologies ===<br />
The issue of Palestine is closely associated in international public opinion with the Gaza Strip. Ever since the first Israeli assault on the Strip in 2006, and up to the recent 2014 bombardment of the 1.8 million Palestinians living there, this part of the region epitomized the Palestine question for the world at large. I will present in this chapter three myths which mislead public opinion about the causes of the ongoing violence in Gaza, and which explain the helplessness felt by anyone wishing to end the misery of the people crammed into one of the world's most densely populated pieces of land.<br />
<br />
The first myth refers to one of the main actors on the ground in the Strip: the Hamas movement. Its name is the Arabic acronym for "Islamic Resistance Movement," and the word ''hamas'' also literally means "enthusiasm." It grew out of a local branch of the Islamic fundamentalist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, in Egypt in the second half of the 1980s. It began as a charity and educational organization but was transformed into a political movement during the First Intifada in 1987. The following year it published a charter asserting that only the dogmas of political Islam had a chance of liberating Palestine. How these dogmas were to be implemented or what they really mean was never fully explained or demonstrated. From its inception up to the present, Hamas has been involved in an existential struggle against the West, Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA), and Egypt.<br />
<br />
When Hamas surfaced in the late 1980s, its main rival in the Gaza Strip was the Fatah movement, the main organization within, and founder of, the PLO. It lost some support among the Palestinian people when it negotiated the Oslo Accord and founded the Palestinian Authority (hence the chair of the PLO is also the president of the PA and the head of Fatah). Fatah is a secular national movement, with strong left-wing elements, inspired by the Third World liberation ideologies of the 1950s and 1960s and in essence still committed to the creation in Palestine of a democratic and secular state for all. Strategically, however, Fatah has been committed to the two-states solution since the 1970s. Hamas, for its part, is willing to allow Israel to withdraw fully from all the occupied territories, with a ten-year armistice to follow before it will discuss any future solution.<br />
<br />
Hamas challenged Fatah's pro-Oslo policy, its lack of attention to social and economic welfare, and its basic failure to end the occupation. The challenge became more significant when, in the mid-2000s, Hamas decided to run as a political party in municipal and national elections. Hamas's popularity in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip had grown thanks to the prominent role it played in the Second Intifada in 2000, in which its members were willing to become human bombs, or at least to take a more active role in resisting the occupation (one should point out that during that Intifada young members of Fatah also showed the same resilience and commitment, and Marwan Barghouti, one of their iconic leaders, is still in jail in Israel for his role in the uprising).<br />
<br />
Yasser Arafat's death in November 2004 created a political vacuum in the leadership, and the Palestinian Authority, in accordance with its own constitution, had to conduct presidential elections. Hamas boycotted these elections, claiming that they would be too closely associated with the Oslo process and less so with democracy. It did, however, participate that same year, 2005, in municipal elections, in which it did very well, taking control of over one-third of the municipalities in the occupied territories. It did even better in the elections in 2006 to the parliament—the legislative assembly of the PA as it is called. It won a comfortable majority in the assembly and therefore had the right to form the government—which it did for a short while, before clashing with both Fatah and Israel. In the ensuing struggle, it was ousted from official political power in the West Bank, but took over the Gaza Strip. Hamas's unwillingness to accept the Oslo Accord, its refusal to recognize Israel, and its commitment to armed struggle form the background to the first myth I examine here. Hamas is branded as a terrorist organization, both in the media and in legislation. I will claim that it is a liberation movement, and a legitimate one at that.<br />
<br />
The second myth I examine concerns the Israeli decision that created the vacuum in the Gaza Strip which enabled Hamas not only to win the elections in 2006 but also to oust Fatah by force in the same year. This was the 2005 unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the Strip after nearly forty years of occupation. The second myth is that this withdrawal was a gesture of peace or reconciliation, which was reciprocated by hostility and violence. It is crucial to debate, as I do in this chapter, the origins of the Israeli decision and to look closely at the impact it has had on Gaza ever since. In fact, I claim that the decision was part of a strategy intended to strengthen Israel's hold over the West Bank and to turn the Gaza Strip into a mega-prison that could be guarded and monitored from the outside. Israel not only withdrew its army and secret service from the Strip but also pulled out, in a very painful process, the thousands of Jewish settlers the government had sent there since 1969. So, I will claim that viewing this decision as a peaceful gesture is a myth. It was more a strategic deployment of forces that enabled Israel to respond harshly to the Hamas victory, with disastrous consequences for the population of Gaza.<br />
<br />
And indeed, the third and last myth I will look at is Israel's claim that its actions since 2006 have been part of a self-defensive war against terror. I will venture to call it, as I have done elsewhere, an incremental genocide of the people of Gaza.<br />
<br />
''Hamas Is a Terrorist Organization''<br />
<br />
The victory of Hamas in the 2006 general elections triggered a wave of Islamophobic reaction in Israel. From this moment on, the demonization of the Palestinians as abhorred "Arabs" was enhanced with the new label of "fanatical Muslims." The language of hate was accompanied by new aggressive anti-Palestinian policies that aggravated the situation in the occupied territories beyond its already dismal and atrocious state.<br />
<br />
There have been other outbreaks of Islamophobia in Israel in the past. The first was in the late 1980s, when a very small number of Palestinian workers—forty people out of a community of 150,000—were involved in stabbing incidents against their Jewish employers and passersby. In the aftermath of the attacks Israeli academics, journalists, and politicians related the stabbing to Islam—religion and culture alike—without any reference to the occupation or the slavish labor market that developed on its margins.<ref group="9.">Ilan Pappe, "The Loner Desparado: Oppression, Nationalism and Islam in Occupied Palestine," in Marco Demchiles (ed.), ''A Struggle to Define a Nation'' (forthcoming with Gorgias Press).</ref> A far more severe wave of Islamophobia broke out during the Second Intifada in October 2000. Since the militarized uprising was mainly carried out by Islamic groups—especially suicide bombers—it was easier for the Israeli political elite and media to demonize "Islam" in the eyes of many Israelis.<ref group="9.">Pappe, ''The Idea of Israel'', pp. 27–47.</ref> A third wave began in 2006, in the wake of Hamas's victory in the elections to the Palestinian parliament. The same characteristics of the previous two waves were apparent in this one as well. The most salient feature is the reductionist view of everything Muslim as being associated with violence, terror, and inhumanity.<br />
<br />
As I have shown in my book, ''The Idea of Israel'',<ref group="9.">Ibid, pp. 153–78.</ref> between 1948 and 1982 Palestinians were demonized by comparisons with the Nazis.<ref group="9.">A refreshing view on Hamas can be found in Sara Roy, ''Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza: Engaging the Islamist Social Sector'', Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.</ref> The same process of "Nazifying" the Palestinians is now applied to Islam in general, and to activists in its name in particular. This has continued for as long as Hamas and its sister organization, Islamic Jihad, have engaged in military, guerrilla, and terror activity. In effect, the rhetoric of extremism wiped out the rich history of political Islam in Palestine, as well as the wide-ranging social and cultural activities that Hamas has undertaken ever since its inception.<br />
<br />
A more neutral analysis shows how far-fetched the demonized image of Hamas as a group of ruthless and insane fanatics is.<ref group="9.">Yehuda Lukacs, ''Israel, Jordan, and the Peace Process'', Albany: Syracuse University Press, 1999, p. 141.</ref> Like other movements within political Islam, the movement reflected a complex local reaction to the harsh realities of occupation, and a response to the disorientated paths offered by secular and socialist Palestinian forces in the past. Those with a more engaged analysis of this situation were well prepared for the Hamas triumph in the 2006 elections, unlike the Israeli, American, and European governments. It is ironic that it was the pundits and orientalists, not to mention Israeli politicians and chiefs of intelligence, who were taken by surprise by the election results more than anyone else. What particularly dumbfounded the great experts on Islam in Israel was the democratic nature of the victory. In their collective reading, fanatical Muslims were meant to be neither democratic nor popular. These same experts displayed a similar misunderstanding of the past. Ever since the rise of political Islam in Iran and in the Arab world, the community of experts in Israel had behaved as if the impossible was unfolding in front of their eyes.<br />
<br />
Misunderstandings, and therefore false predictions, have characterized the Israeli assessment of the Palestinians for a long time, especially with regard to the political Islamic forces within Palestine. In 1976, the first Rabin government allowed municipal elections to take place in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. They calculated, wrongly, that the old cadre of pro-Jordanian politicians would be elected in the West Bank and the pro-Egyptian ones in the Strip. The electorate voted overwhelmingly for PLO candidates.<ref group="9.">Quoted in Andrew Higgins, "How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas," ''Wall Street Journal'', January 24, 2009.</ref> This surprised the Israelis, but it should not have. After all, the expansion of the PLO's power and popularity ran parallel to a concerted effort by Israel to curb, if not altogether eliminate, the secular and socialist movements within Palestinian society, whether in the refugee camps or inside the occupied territories. Indeed, Hamas became a significant player on the ground in part thanks to the Israeli policy of encouraging the construction of an Islamic educational infrastructure in Gaza as a counterbalance to the grip of the secular Fatah movement on the local population.<br />
<br />
In 2009, Avner Cohen, who served in the Gaza Strip around the time Hamas began to gain power in the late 1980s, and was responsible for religious affairs in the occupied territories, told the ''Wall Street Journal'', "the Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation."<ref group="9.">Shlomi Eldar, ''To Know the Hamas'', Tel Aviv: Keter, 2012 (Hebrew).</ref> Cohen explains how Israel helped the charity al-Mujama al-Islamiya (the "Islamic Society"), founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 1979, to become a powerful political movement, out of which the Hamas movement emerged in 1987. Sheikh Yassin, a crippled, semi-blind Islamic cleric, founded Hamas and was its spiritual leader until his assassination in 2004. He was originally approached by Israel with an offer of help and the promise of a license to expand. The Israelis hoped that, through his charity and educational work, this charismatic leader would counterbalance the power of the secular Fatah in the Gaza Strip and beyond. It is noteworthy that in the late 1970s Israel, like the United States and Britain, saw secular national movements (whose absence today they lament) as the worst enemy of the West.<br />
<br />
In his book ''To Know the Hamas'', the Israeli journalist Shlomi Eldar tells a similar story about the strong links between Yassin and Israel.<ref group="9.">Ishaan Tharoor, "How Israel Helped to Create Hamas," ''Washington Post'', July 30, 2014.</ref> With Israel's blessing and support, the "Society" opened a university in 1979, an independent school system, and a network of clubs and mosques. In 2014, the ''Washington Post'' drew its own very similar conclusions about the close relationship between Israel and the "Society" until its transformation into Hamas in 1988.<ref group="9.">Chabon in an interview with ''Haaretz'', April 25, 2016.</ref> In 1993, Hamas became the main opposition to the Oslo Accord. While there was still support for Oslo, it saw a drop in its popularity; however, as Israel began to renege on almost all the pledges it had made during the negotiations, support for Hamas once again received a boost. Particularly important was Israel's settlement policy and its excessive use of force against the civilian population in the territories.<br />
<br />
But Hamas's popularity among the Palestinians did not depend solely on the success or failure of the Oslo Accord. It also captured the hearts and minds of many Muslims (who make up the majority in the occupied territories) due the failure of secular modernity to find solutions to the daily hardships of life under occupation. As with other political Islamic groups around the Arab world, the failure of secular movements to provide employment, welfare, and economic security drove many people back into religion, which offered solace as well as established charity and solidarity networks. In the Middle East as a whole, as in the world at large, modernization and secularization benefited the few but left many unhappy, poor, and bitter. Religion seemed a panacea—and at times even a political option.<br />
<br />
Hamas struggled hard to win a large share of public support while Arafat was still alive, but his death in 2004 created a vacuum that it was not immediately able to fill. Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) did not enjoy the same legitimacy and respect as his predecessor. The fact that Arafat was delegitimized by Israel and the West, while Abu Mazen was accepted by them as Palestinian president, reduced his popularity among the younger generation, in the de-developed rural areas, and in the impoverished refugee camps. The new Israeli methods of oppression introduced during the Second Intifada—particularly the building of the wall, the roadblocks, and the targeted assassinations—further diminished the support for the Palestinian Authority and increased the popularity and prestige of Hamas. It would be fair to conclude, then, that successive Israeli governments did all they could to leave the Palestinians with no option but to trust, and vote for, the one group prepared to resist an occupation described by the renowned American author Michael Chabon as "the most grievous injustice I have seen in my life."<ref group="9.">For a good analysis of how Netanyahu employs the "clash of civilizations" by a university student, see Joshua R. Fattal, "Israel vs. Hamas: A Clash of Civilizations?," ''The World Post'', August 22, 2014, at [http://huffingtonpost.com huffingtonpost.com].</ref><br />
<br />
The only explanation for the rise of Hamas offered by most Israeli "experts" on Palestinian affairs, inside and outside the establishment, involved appealing to Samuel Huntington's neoconservative model of the "clash of civilizations" as a way of understanding how history works. Huntington divided the world into two cultures, rational and irrational, which inevitably came into conflict. By voting for Hamas the Palestinians were supposedly proving themselves to be on the "irrational" side of history—an inevitable position given their religion and culture. Benjamin Netanyahu put it in even cruder terms when he talked about the cultural and moral abyss that separates the two peoples.<ref group="9.">"Hamas Accuses Fatah over Attack," Al Jazeera, December 15, 2006.</ref><br />
<br />
The obvious failure of the Palestinian groups and individuals who had come to prominence on the promise of negotiations with Israel clearly made it seem as if there were very few alternatives. In this situation the apparent success of the Islamic militant groups in driving the Israelis out of the Gaza Strip offered some hope. However, there is more to it than this. Hamas is now deeply embedded in Palestinian society thanks to its genuine attempts to alleviate the suffering of ordinary people by providing schooling, medicine, and welfare. No less important, Hamas's position on the 1948 refugees' right of return, unlike the PA's stance, was clear and unambiguous. Hamas openly endorsed this right, while the PA sent out ambiguous messages, including a speech by Abu Mazen in which he rescinded his own right to return to his hometown of Safad.<br />
<br />
''The Israeli Disengagement Was an Act of Peace''<br />
<br />
The Gaza Strip amounts to slightly more than 2 percent of the landmass of Palestine. This small detail is never mentioned whenever the Strip is in the news, nor was it mentioned in the Western media coverage of the dramatic events in Gaza in the summer of 2014. Indeed, it is such a small part of the country that it has never existed as a separate region in the past. Before the Zionization of Palestine in 1948, Gaza's history was not unique or different from the rest of Palestine, and it had always been connected administratively and politically to the rest of the country. As one of Palestine's principal land and sea gates to the world, it tended to develop a more flexible and cosmopolitan way of life, not dissimilar to other gateway societies in the Eastern Mediterranean in the modern era. Its location on the coast and on the Via Maris from Egypt up to Lebanon brought with it prosperity and stability—until this was disrupted and nearly destroyed by the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948.<br />
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The Strip was created in the last days of the 1948 war. It was a zone into which the Israeli forces pushed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the city of Jaffa and its southern regions down into the town of Bir-Saba (Beersheba of today). Others were expelled to the zone from towns such as Majdal (Ashkelon) as late as 1950, in the final phases of the ethnic cleansing. Thus, a small pastoral part of Palestine became the biggest refugee camp on earth. It still like this today. Between 1948 and 1967, this huge refugee camp was delineated and severely restricted by the respective Israeli and Egyptian policies. Both states disallowed any movement out of the Strip, and as a result, living conditions became ever harsher as the number of inhabitants doubled. On the eve of the Israeli occupation in 1967, the catastrophic nature of this enforced demographic transformation was evident. Within two decades this once pastoral coastal part of southern Palestine became one of the world's most densely inhabited areas, without the economic and occupational infrastructure to support it.<br />
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During the first twenty years of occupation, Israel did allow some movement outside the area, which was cordoned off with a fence. Tens of thousands of Palestinians were permitted to join the Israeli labor market as unskilled and underpaid workers. The price Israel demanded for this was total surrender. When this was not complied with, the free movement for laborers was withdrawn. In the lead up to the Oslo Accord in 1993, Israel attempted to fashion the Strip as an enclave, which the peace camp hoped would become either autonomous or a part of Egypt. Meanwhile the nationalist, right-wing camp wished to include it in the "Eretz Israel" they dreamed of establishing in place of Palestine.<br />
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The Oslo agreement enabled the Israelis to reaffirm the Strip's status as a separate geopolitical entity—not just outside of Palestine as a whole, but also apart from the West Bank. Ostensibly, both were under Palestinian Authority control, but any human movement between them depended on Israel's good will. This was a rare feature in the circumstances, and one that almost disappeared when Netanyahu came to power in 1996. At the same time, Israel controlled, as it still does today, the water and electricity infrastructure. Since 1993 it has used this control to ensure the well-being of the Jewish settler community on the one hand, and to blackmail the Palestinian population into submission on the other. Over the last fifty years, the people of the Strip have thus had to choose between being internees, hostages, or prisoners in an impossible human space.<br />
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It is in this historical context that we should view the violent clashes between Israel and Hamas since 2006. In light of that context, we must reject the description of Israeli actions as part of the "war against terror," or as a "war of self-defense." Nor should we accept the depiction of Hamas as an extension of al-Qaeda, as part of the Islamic State network, or as a mere pawn in a seditious Iranian plot to control the region. If there is an ugly side to Hamas's presence in Gaza, it lies in the group's early actions against other Palestinian factions in the years 2005 to 2007. The main clash was with Fatah in the Gaza Strip, and both sides contributed to the friction that eventually erupted into an open civil war. The clash erupted after Hamas won the legislative elections in 2006 and formed the government, which included a Hamas minister responsible for the security forces. In an attempt to weaken Hamas, President Abbas transferred that responsibility to the head of the Palestinian secret service—a Fatah member. Hamas responded by setting up its own security forces in the Strip.<br />
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In December 2006, a violent confrontation in the Rafah crossing between the Presidential Guard and the Hamas security forces triggered a confrontation that would last until the summer of 2007. The Presidential Guard was a Fatah military unit, 3,000 strong, consisting mostly of troops loyal to Abbas. It had been trained by American advisers in Egypt and Jordan (Washington had allocated almost 60 million dollars to its maintenance). The incident was triggered by Israel's refusal to allow the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, to enter the Strip—he was carrying cash donations from the Arab world, reported to be tens of millions of dollars. The Hamas forces then stormed the border control, manned by the Presidential Guard, and fighting broke out.<ref group="9.">"Reporter's Family was Caught in the Gunfire," ''Boston Globe'', May 17, 2007—one of many eyewitness accounts of those difficult days.</ref><br />
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The situation deteriorated quickly thereafter. Haniyeh's car was attacked after he crossed into the Strip. Hamas blamed Fatah for the attacks. Clashes broke out in the Strip and in the West Bank as well. In the same month, the Palestinian Authority decided to remove the Hamas-led government and replace it with an emergency cabinet. This sparked the most serious clashes between the two sides, which lasted until the end of May 2007, leaving dozens of dead and many wounded (it is estimated that 120 people died). The conflict only ended when the government of Palestine was split into two: one in Ramallah and one in Gaza.<ref group="9.">"Palestine Papers: UK's MI6 'tried to weaken Hamas,'" BBC News, January 25, 2011, at [http://bbc.co.uk bbc.co.uk].</ref><br />
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While both sides were responsible for the carnage, there was also (as we have learned from the Palestine papers, leaked to Al Jazeera in 2007) an external factor that pitted Fatah against Hamas. The idea of preempting a possible Hamas stronghold in the Gaza Strip, once the Israelis withdrew, was suggested to Fatah as early as 2004 by the British intelligence agency MI6, who drew up a security plan that was meant to "encourage and enable the Palestinian Authority to fully meet its security obligations … by degrading the capabilities of the rejectionists (which later on the document names as the Hamas)."<ref group="9.">Ian Black, "Palestine Papers Reveal MI6 Drew up Plan for Crackdown on Hamas," ''Guardian'', January 25, 2011.</ref> The British prime minister at the time, Tony Blair, had taken a special interest in the Palestine question, hoping to have an impact that would vindicate, or absolve, his disastrous adventure in Iraq. The ''Guardian'' summarized his involvement as that of encouraging Fatah to crack down on Hamas.<ref group="9.">A taste of his views can be found in Yuval Steinitz, "How Palestinian Hate Prevents Peace," ''New York Times'', October 15, 2013.</ref> Similar advice was given to Fatah by Israel and the United States, in a bid to keep Hamas from taking over the Gaza Strip. However, things got scrappy and the preemptive plan backfired in multiple ways.<br />
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This was in part a struggle between politicians who were democratically elected and those who still found it hard to accept the verdict of the public. But that was hardly the whole story. What unfolded in Gaza was a battle between the United States' and Israel's local proxies—mainly Fatah and PA members, most of whom became proxies unintentionally, but nonetheless danced to Israel's tune—and those who opposed them. The way Hamas acted against other factions was later reciprocated by the action the PA took against them in the West Bank. One would find it very hard to condone or cheer either action. Nevertheless, one can fully understand why secular Palestinians would oppose the creation of a theocracy, and, as in many other parts of the Middle East, the struggle over the role of religion and tradition in society will also continue in Palestine. However, for the time being, Hamas enjoys the support, and in many ways the admiration, of many secular Palestinians for the vigor of its struggle against Israel. Indeed, that struggle is the real issue. According to the official narrative, Hamas is a terrorist organization engaging in vicious acts perpetrated against a peaceful Israel that has withdrawn from the Gaza Strip. But did Israel withdraw for the sake of peace? The answer is a resounding no.<br />
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To get a better understanding of the issue we need to go back to April 18, 2004, the day after the Hamas leader Abdul Aziz al-Rantissi was assassinated. On that day, Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the foreign affairs and defense committee in the Knesset and a close aide to Benjamin Netanyahu, was interviewed on Israeli radio. Before becoming a politician, he had taught Western philosophy at the University of Haifa. Steinitz claimed that his worldview had been shaped by Descartes, but it seems that as a politician he was more influenced by romantic nationalists such as Gobineau and Fichte, who stressed purity of race as a precondition for national excellence.<ref group="9.">Reshet Bet, Israel Broadcast, April 18, 2004.</ref> The translation of these European notions of racial superiority into the Israeli context became evident as soon as the interviewer asked him about the government's plans for the remaining Palestinian leaders. Interviewer and interviewee giggled as they agreed that the policy should involve the assassination or expulsion of the entire current leadership, that is all the members of the Palestinian Authority—about 40,000 people. "I am so happy," Steinitz said, "that the Americans have finally come to their senses and are fully supporting our policies."<ref group="9.">Benny Morris, Channel One, April 18, 2004, and see Joel Beinin, "No More Tears: Benny Morris and the Road Back from Liberal Zionism," ''MERIP'', 230 (Spring 2004).</ref> On the same day, Benny Morris of Ben-Gurion University repeated his support for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, claiming that this was the best way of solving the conflict.<ref group="9.">Ari Shavit, "PM Aide: Gaza Plan Aims to Freeze the Peace Process," ''Haaretz'', October 6, 2004.</ref><br />
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Opinions that used to be considered at best marginal, at worst lunatic, were now at the heart of the Israeli Jewish consensus, disseminated by establishment academics on prime-time television as the one and only truth. Israel in 2004 was a paranoid society, determined to bring the conflict to an end by force and destruction, whatever the cost to its society or its potential victims. Often this elite was supported only by the US administration and the Western political elites, while the rest of the world's more conscientious observers watched helpless and bewildered. Israel was like a plane flying on autopilot; the course was preplanned, the speed predetermined. The destination was the creation of a Greater Israel, which would include half the West Bank and a small part of the Gaza Strip (thus amounting to almost 90 percent of historical Palestine). A Greater Israel without a Palestinian presence, with high walls separating it from the indigenous population, who were to be crammed into two huge prison camps in Gaza and what was left of the West Bank. In this vision, the Palestinians in Israel could either join the millions of refugees languishing in the camps, or submit to an apartheid system of discrimination and abuse.<br />
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That same year, 2004, the Americans supervised what they called the "Road Map" to peace. This was a ludicrous idea initially put forward in the summer of 2002 by President Bush, and even more far-fetched than the Oslo Accord. The idea was that the Palestinians would be offered an economic recovery plan, and a reduction in the Israeli military presence in parts of the occupied territories, for about three years. After that another summit would, somehow, bring the conflict to an end for once and for all.<br />
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In many parts of the Western world, the media took the Road Map and the Israeli vision of a Greater Israel (including autonomous Palestinian enclaves) to be one and the same—presenting both as offering the only safe route to peace and stability. The mission of making this vision a reality was entrusted to "the Quartet" (aka the Middle East Quartet, or occasionally the Madrid Quartet), set up in 2002 to allow the UN, the United States, Russia, and the EU to work together towards peace in Israel-Palestine. Essentially a coordinating body consisting of the foreign ministers of all four members, the Quartet became more active in 2007 when it appointed Tony Blair as its special envoy to the Middle East. Blair hired the whole new wing of the legendary American Colony hotel in Jerusalem as his headquarters. This, like Blair's salary, was an expensive operation that produced nothing.<br />
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The Quartet's spokespersons employed a discourse of peace that included references to a full Israeli withdrawal, the end of Jewish settlements, and a two-states solution. This inspired hope among some observers who still believed that this course made sense. However, on the ground, the Road Map, like the Oslo Accord, allowed Israel to continue to implement its unilateral plan of creating the Greater Israel. The difference was that, this time, it was Ariel Sharon who was the architect, a far more focused and determined politician than Rabin, Peres, or Netanyahu. He had one surprising gambit that very few predicted: offering to evict the Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip. Sharon threw this proposal into the air in 2003, and then pressured his colleagues to adopt it, which they did within a year and half. In 2005, the army was sent in to evict the reluctant settlers by force. What lay behind this decision?<br />
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Successive Israeli governments had been very clear about the future of the West Bank, while not so sure about what should happen with the Gaza Strip.<ref group="9.">''Haaretz'', April 17, 2004.</ref> The strategy for the West Bank was to ensure it remained under Israeli rule, direct or indirect. Most governments since 1967, including Sharon's, hoped that this rule would be organized as part of a "peace process." The West Bank could become a state in this vision—if it remained a Bantustan. This was the old idea of Yigal Alon and Moshe Dayan from 1967; areas densely populated by Palestinians should be controlled from the outside. But things were different when it came to the Gaza Strip. Sharon had agreed with the original decision of the early governments, most of them Labor, to send settlers into the heart of the Gaza Strip, just as he supported the building of settlements in the Sinai Peninsula, which were evicted to the last under the bilateral peace agreement with Egypt. In the twenty-first century, he came to accept the pragmatic views of leading members of both the Likud and Labor parties on the possibility of leaving Gaza for the sake of keeping the West Bank.<ref group="9.">Pappe, "Revisiting 1967."</ref><br />
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Prior to the Oslo process, the presence of Jewish settlers in the Strip did not complicate things, but once the new idea of a Palestinian Authority emerged, they became a liability to Israel rather than an asset. As a result, many Israeli policy makers, even those who did not immediately take to the idea of eviction, were looking for ways of pushing the Strip out of their minds and hearts. This became clear when, after the Accord was signed, the Strip was encircled with a barbed-wire fence and the movement of Gazan workers into Israel and the West Bank was severely restricted. Strategically, in the new setup, it was easier to control Gaza from the outside, but this was not entirely possible while the settler community remained inside.<br />
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One solution was to divide the Strip into a Jewish area, with direct access to Israel, and a Palestinian area. This worked well until the outbreak of the Second Intifada. The road connecting the settlements' sprawl, the Gush Qatif block as it was called, was an easy target for the uprising. The vulnerability of the settlers was exposed in full. During this conflict the Israeli army tactics included massive bombardments and destruction of rebellious Palestinian pockets, which in April 2002 led to the massacre of innocent Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp. These tactics were not easily implemented in the dense Gaza Strip due to the presence of the Jewish settlers. It was not surprising, then, that a year after the most brutal military assault on the West Bank, operation "Defensive Shield," Sharon contemplated the removal of the Gaza settlers so as to facilitate a retaliation policy. In 2004, however, unable to force his political will on the Strip, he called instead for a series of assassinations of Hamas leaders. Sharon hoped to influence the future with the assassinations of the two chief leaders, Abdul al-Rantisi and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (killed on March 17, 2004). Even a sober source such as ''Haaretz'' assumed that after these assassinations, Hamas would lose its power base in the Gaza Strip and be reduced to an ineffective presence in Damascus, where, if need be, Israel would attack it too. The newspaper also was impressed by the US support for the assassinations (although both the paper and the Americans would be much less supportive of the policy later on).<ref group="9.">Pappe, "Revisiting 1967."</ref><br />
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These killings took place before Hamas won the 2006 elections and took over the Gaza Strip. In other words, the Israeli policy did not undermine Hamas; on the contrary, it enhanced its popularity and power. Sharon wanted the Palestinian Authority to take control of Gaza and treat it like Area A in the West Bank; but this outcome did not materialize. So Sharon had to deal with Gaza in one of two ways: either clear out the settlers so that he could retaliate against Hamas without the risk of hurting Israeli citizens; or depart altogether from the region in order to refocus his efforts on annexing the West Bank, or parts of it. In order to ensure that the second alternative was understood internationally, Sharon orchestrated a charade that everybody fell for. As he began to make noises about evicting the settlers from the Strip, Gush Emunim compared the action to the Holocaust and staged a real show for the television when they were physically evicted from their homes. It seemed as if there were a civil war in Israel between those who supported the settlers and those on the left, including formidable foes of Sharon in the past, who supported his plan for a peace initiative.<ref group="9.">For an excellent analysis written on the day itself, see Ali Abunimah, "Why All the Fuss About the Bush–Sharon Meeting," ''Electronic Intifada'', April 14, 2014.</ref><br />
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Inside Israel this move weakened, and in some cases entirely wiped out, dissenting voices. Sharon proposed that with the withdrawal from Gaza and the ascendance of Hamas therein, there was no point in pushing forward grand ideas such as the Oslo Accord. He suggested, and his successor after his terminal illness in 2007, Ehud Olmert, agreed, that the status quo be maintained for the time being. There was a need to contain Hamas in Gaza, but there was no rush to find a solution to the West Bank. Olmert called this policy unilateralism: since there were be no significant negotiations in the near future with the Palestinians, Israel should unilaterally decide which parts of the West Bank it wanted to annex, and which parts could be run autonomously by the Palestinian Authority. There was a sense among Israeli policy makers that, if not in public declarations, then at least as a reality on the ground, this course of action would be acceptable to both the Quartet and the PA. Until now, it had seemed to work.<br />
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With no strong international pressure and a feeble PA as a neighbor, most Israelis did not feel the strategy towards the West Bank to be an issue of great interest. As the election campaigns since 2005 have shown, Jewish society has preferred to debate socioeconomic issues, the role of religion in society, and the war against Hamas and Hezbollah. The main opposition party, the Labor Party, has more or less shared the vision of the coalition government, hence it has been both inside and outside government since 2005. When it came to the West Bank, or the solution to the Palestine question, Israeli Jewish society appeared to have reached a consensus. What cemented that sense of consensus was the eviction of the Gaza settlers by Sharon's right-wing administration. For those who considered themselves to the left of the Likud, Sharon's move was a peace gesture, and a brave confrontation with the settlers. He became a hero of the left as well of the center and moderate right, like de Gaulle taking the ''pied noir'' out of Algeria for the sake of peace. The Palestinian reaction in the Gaza Strip and criticism from the PA of Israeli policies ever since were seen as a proof of the absence of any sound or reliable Palestinian partner for peace.<br />
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Apart from brave journalists such as Gideon Levy and Amira Hass at ''Haaretz'', a few members of the small left Zionist party Meretz, and some anti-Zionist groups, Jewish society in Israel became effectively silent, giving governments since 2005 carte blanche to pursue any policy towards the Palestinians they deem fit. This was why, in the 2011 protest movement that galvanized half a million Israelis (out of a population of 7 million) against the governments' policies, the occupation and its horrors were not mentioned as part of the agenda. This absence of any public discourse or criticism had already allowed Sharon in his last year in power, 2005, to authorize more killings of unarmed Palestinians and, by way of curfews and long periods of closure, to starve the society under occupation. And when the Palestinians in the occupied territories occasionally rebelled, the government now had a license to react with even greater force and determination.<br />
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Previous American governments had supported Israeli policies regardless of how they affected, or were perceived by, the Palestinians. This support, however, used to require negotiation and some give and take. Even after the outbreak of the Second Intifada in October 2000, some in Washington tried to distance the United States from Israel's response to the uprising. For a while, Americans seemed uneasy about the fact that several Palestinians a day were being killed, and that a large number of the victims were children. There was also some discomfort about Israel's use of collective punishments, house demolitions, and arrests without trial. But they got used to all this, and when the Israeli Jewish consensus sanctioned the assault on the West Bank in April 2002—an unprecedented episode of cruelty in the vicious history of the occupation—the US administration objected only to the unilateral acts of annexation and settlement that were expressly forbidden in the EU–American-sponsored Road Map.<br />
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In 2004, Sharon asked for US and UK support for the colonialization in the West Bank in return for withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and he got it. His plan, which passed in Israel for a consensual peace plan, was at first rejected by the Americans as unproductive (the rest of the world condemned it in stronger terms). The Israelis, however, hoped that the similarities between the American and British conduct in Iraq and Israel's policies in Palestine would lead the United States to change its position, and they were right. It is noteworthy that, until the very last moment, Washington hesitated before giving Sharon the green light for the withdrawal from Gaza. On April 13, 2004, a bizarre scene unfolded on the tarmac of Ben-Gurion airport. The prime minister's jet remained stationary for a few hours after its scheduled departure. Inside, Sharon had refused to allow it to take off for Washington until he got US approval for his new so-called disengagement plan. President Bush supported the disengagement per se. What his advisors found hard to digest was the letter Sharon had asked Bush to sign as part of the US endorsement. It included an American promise not to pressure Israel in the future about progress in the peace process, and to exclude the right of return from any future negotiations. Sharon convinced Bush's aides that he would not be able to unite the Israeli public behind his disengagement program without American support.<ref group="9.">Quoted in ''Yediot Ahronoth'', April 22, 2014.</ref><br />
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In the past, it had usually taken a while for US officials to submit to Israeli politicians' need for a consensus. This time, it took only three hours. We now know that there was another reason for Sharon's sense of urgency: he knew that he was being investigated by the police on serious charges of corruption, and he needed to persuade the Israeli public to trust him in the face of a pending court case. "The wider the investigation, the wider the disengagement," said the left-wing member of Knesset Yossi Sarid, referring to the linkage between Sharon's troubles in court and his commitment to the withdrawal.<ref group="9.">See "Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory," on the ICJ website, [http://icj-cij.org icj-cij.org].</ref> It ought to have taken the US administration much longer than it did to reach a decision. In essence, Sharon was asking President Bush to forgo almost every commitment the Americans had made over Palestine. The plan offered an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the closure of the handful of settlements there, as well as several others in the West Bank, in return for the annexation of the majority of the West Bank settlements to Israel. The Americans also knew all too well how another crucial piece fitted into this puzzle. For Sharon, the annexation of those parts of the West Bank he coveted could only be executed with the completion of the wall Israel had begun building in 2003, bisecting the Palestinian parts of the West Bank. He had not anticipated the international objection—the wall became the most iconic symbol of the occupation, to the extent that the international court of justice ruled that it constituted a human rights violation. Time will tell whether or not this was a meaningful landmark.<ref group="9.">At first, in March 2004, Beilin was against the disengagement, but from July 2004 he openly supported it (Channel One interview, July 4, 2004).</ref><br />
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As Sharon waited in his jet, Washington gave its support to a scheme that left most of the West Bank in Israeli hands and all of the refugees in exile—and gave its tacit agreement to the wall. Sharon chose the ideal US president as a potential ally for his new plans. President George W. Bush was heavily influenced by Christian Zionists, and maybe even shared their view that the presence of the Jews in the Holy Land was part of the fulfilment of a doomsday scenario that might inaugurate the Second Coming of Christ. Bush's more secular neocon advisers had been impressed by the war against Hamas, which accompanied Israel's promises of eviction and peace. The seemingly successful Israeli operations—mostly the targeted assassinations in 2004—were a proof by proxy that America's own "war against terror" was bound to triumph. In truth, Israel's "success" was a cynical distortion of the facts on the ground. The relative decline in Palestinian guerrilla and terror activity was achieved by curfews and closures and by confining more than 2 million people in their homes without work or food for protracted periods of time. Even neoconservatives should have been able to grasp that this was not going to provide a long-term solution to the hostility and violence provoked by an occupying power, whether in Iraq or Palestine.<br />
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Sharon's plan was approved by Bush's spin doctors, who were able to present it as another step towards peace and use it as a distraction from the growing debacle in Iraq. It was probably also acceptable to more even-handed advisers, who were so desperate to see some progress that they persuaded themselves that the plan offered a chance for peace and a better future. These people long ago forgot how to distinguish between the mesmerizing power of language and the reality it purports to describe. As long as the plan contained the magic term "withdrawal," it was seen as essentially a good thing even by some usually cool-headed journalists in the United States, by the leaders of the Israeli Labor party (bent on joining Sharon's government in the name of the sacred consensus), and by the newly elected leader of the Israeli left party, Meretz, Yossi Beilin.<ref group="9.">See the fatalities statistics on B'Tselem's website, [http://btselem.org btselem.org].</ref><br />
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By the end of 2004, Sharon knew he had no reason to fear outside pressure. The governments of Europe and the United States were unwilling or unable to stop the occupation and prevent the further destruction of the Palestinians. Those Israelis who were willing to take part in anti-occupation movements were outnumbered and demoralized in the face of the new consensus. It is not surprising that, around that time, civil societies in Europe and in the United States woke up to the possibility of playing a major role in the conflict and were galvanized around the idea of the Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions movement. Quite a few organizations, unions, and individuals were committed to a new public effort, vowing to do all they could to make the Israelis understand that policies such as Sharon's came at a price.<br />
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Since then, from the academic boycott to economic sanctions, every possible means has been attempted in the West. The message at home was also clear: their governments were no less responsible than Israel for the past, present, and future catastrophes of the Palestinian people. The BDS movement demanded a new policy to counter Sharon's unilateral strategy, not only for moral or historical reasons, but also for the sake of the West's security and even survival. As the violence since the events of September 11, 2001 has so painfully shown, the Palestine conflict undermined the multicultural fabric of Western society, as it pushed the United States and the Muslim world further and further apart and into a nightmarish relationship. Putting pressure on Israel seemed a small price to pay for the sake of global peace, regional stability, and reconciliation in Palestine.<br />
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Thus, the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza was not part of a peace plan. According to the official narrative it was a gesture of peace that the ungrateful Palestinians responded to first by electing Hamas, and then by launching missiles into Israel. Ergo, there was no point or wisdom in any further withdrawal from any occupied Palestinian territory. All Israel could do was defend itself. Moreover, the "trauma" that "nearly led to a civil war" was meant to persuade Israeli society that it is not an episode worth repeating.<br />
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''Was the War on Gaza a War of Self-Defense?''<br />
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Although I have coauthored a book (with Noam Chomsky) under the title ''The War on Gaza'', I am not sure that "war" is the right term to describe what happened in the various Israeli assaults on the Strip, beginning in 2006. In fact, after the onset of Operation Cast Lead in 2009, I have opted to call the Israeli policy an incremental genocide. I hesitated before using this highly charged term, and yet cannot find another to accurately describe what happened. Since the responses I received, among others from some leading human rights activists, indicated that a certain unease accompanies such usage of the term, I was inclined to rethink it for a while, but came back to employing it recently with an even stronger conviction: it is the only appropriate way of describing what the Israeli army has been doing in the Gaza Strip since 2006.<br />
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On December 28, 2006, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem published its annual report on the atrocities in the occupied territories. In that year Israeli forces killed 660 citizens, more than triple that of the previous year when around 200 Palestinians were killed. According to B'Tselem, in 2006, 141 children were among the dead. Most of the casualties were from the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli forces demolished almost 300 houses and crushed entire families. This means that since 2000, almost 4,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, half of them children; more than 20,000 were wounded.<ref group="9.">Leslie Susser, "The Rise and Fall of the Kadima Party," ''Jerusalem Post'', August 8, 2012.</ref><br />
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B'Tselem is a conservative organization, and the numbers of the dead and injured may be higher. However, the issue is not just about the escalating intentional killing, it is about the strategy behind such acts. Throughout the last decade, Israeli policy makers faced two very different realities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the former, they were closer than ever to completing the construction of their eastern border. The internal ideological debate was over, and the master plan for annexing half of the West Bank was being implemented at an escalating pace. The last phase was delayed due to the promises made by Israel, under the terms of the Road Map, not to build any new settlements. But the policy makers quickly found two ways of circumventing this alleged prohibition. First they redefined a third of the West Bank as part of Greater Jerusalem, which allowed them to build towns and community centers within this new annexed area. Secondly, they expanded old settlements to such proportions that there was no need to build new ones.<br />
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Overall, the settlements, the army bases, the roads, and the wall put Israel into a position to officially annex almost half of the West Bank whenever it deemed it necessary. Within these territories there were a considerable number of Palestinians, against whom the Israeli authorities would continue to implement slow and creeping transfer policies. This was too boring a subject for the Western media to bother with, and too elusive for human rights organizations to make a general point about them. There was no rush as far as the Israelis were concerned—they had the upper hand: the daily abuse and dehumanization exercised by the dual mechanism of the army and the bureaucracy was as effective as ever in contributing to the dispossession process.<br />
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Sharon's strategic thinking was accepted by everyone who joined his last government, as well has his successor Ehud Olmert. Sharon even left the Likud and founded a centrist party, Kadima, that reflected this consensus on the policy towards the occupied territories.<ref group="9.">John Dugard, ''Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of the Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied by Israel since 1967'', UN Commission on Human Rights, Geneva, March 3, 2005.</ref> On the other hand, neither Sharon nor anyone who followed him could offer a clear Israeli strategy vis-à-vis the Gaza Strip. In the eyes of the Israelis, the Strip is a very different geopolitical entity to that of the West Bank. It remains in the hands of Hamas, while the Palestinian Authority seems to run the fragmented West Bank with Israeli and American blessing. There is no chunk of land in the Strip that Israel covets and there is no hinterland, like Jordan, into which it can expel the Palestinians. Ethnic cleansing as the means to a solution is ineffective here.<br />
<br />
The earliest strategy adopted in the Strip was the ghettoization of the Palestinians, but this was not working. The besieged community expressed its will to life by firing primitive missiles into Israel. The next attack on this community was often even more horrific and barbaric. On September 12, 2005, Israeli forces left the Gaza Strip. Simultaneously, the Israeli army invaded the town of Tul-Karim, made arrests on a massive scale, especially activists of the Islamic Jihad, an ally of Hamas, and killed a few of its people. The organization launched nine missiles that killed no one. Israel responded with Operation "First Rain."<ref group="9.">See the analysis by Roni Sofer in ''Ma'ariv'', September 27, 2005.</ref> It is worth dwelling for a moment on the nature of that operation. Inspired by punitive measures adopted first by colonialist powers, then by dictatorships, against rebellious imprisoned or banished communities, "First Rain" began with supersonic jets flying over Gaza to terrorize the entire population. This was followed by the heavy bombardment of vast areas from sea, sky, and land. The logic, the Israeli army spokespersons explained, was to build up a pressure that would weaken the community's support for the rocket launchers.<ref group="9.">Anne Penketh, "US and Arab States Clash at the UN Security Council," ''Independent'', March 3, 2008.</ref> As was to be expected, not least by the Israelis, the operation only increased the support for the fighters and gave extra impetus to their next attempt. The real purpose of that particular operation was experimental. The Israeli generals wanted to know how such operations might be received at home, in the region generally, and in the wider world. When the international condemnation proved to be very limited and short-lived, they were satisfied with the result.<br />
<br />
Since "First Rain" all subsequent operations have followed a similar pattern. The difference has been in their escalation: more firepower, more causalities, and more collateral damage, and, as expected, more Qassam missiles in response. Another dimension was added after 2006 when the Israelis employed the more sinister means of imposing a tight siege on the people of the Strip through boycott and blockade. The capturing of the IDF soldier, Gilad Shalit, in June 2006 did not change the balance of power between Hamas and Israel, but it nonetheless provided an opportunity for the Israelis to escalate even further their tactical and allegedly punitive missions. After all, there was no strategic clarity over what to do beyond continuing with the endless cycle of punitive actions.<br />
<br />
The Israelis also continued to give absurd, indeed sinister, names to their operations. "First Rain" was succeeded by "Summer Rains," the name given to the punitive operations that began in June 2006. "Summer Rains" brought a novel component: a land invasion into parts of the Gaza Strip. This enabled the army to kill citizens even more effectively and to present this as a consequence of heavy fighting within dense populated areas; that is, as an inevitable result of the circumstances rather than of Israeli policy. With the end of the summer came operation "Autumn Clouds," which was even more efficient: on November 1, 2006, seventy civilians were killed in less than forty-eight hours. By the end of that month, almost 200 had been killed, half of them children and women. Some of this activity ran in parallel to the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, making it easier to complete these operations without much external attention, let alone criticism.<br />
<br />
From "First Rain" to "Autumn Clouds" one can see escalation in every area. Firstly, there was the disappearance of the distinction between "civilian" and "non-civilian" targets: the senseless killing had turned the population at large into the main target of the operation. Secondly, there was the escalation in the employment of every possible killing machine the Israeli army possesses. Thirdly, there was the conspicuous rise in the number of casualties. Finally, and most importantly, the operations gradually crystallized into a strategy, indicating the way Israel intends to solve the problem of the Gaza Strip in the future: through a measured genocidal policy. The people of the Strip, however, continued to resist. This led to further genocidal Israeli operations, but still today a failure to reoccupy the region.<br />
<br />
In 2008, the "Summer" and the "Autumn" operations were succeeded by operation "Hot Winter." As anticipated, the new round of attacks caused even more civilian deaths, more than 100 in the Gaza Strip, which was bombarded once more from air, sea, and land, and also invaded. This time at least, it seemed for a moment that the international community was paying attention. The EU and the UN condemned Israel for its "disproportionate use of force," and accused it of violating international law; the American criticism was "balanced." However, it was enough to lead to a ceasefire, one of many, that would occasionally be violated by another Israeli attack.<ref group="9.">David Morrison, "The Israel-Hamas Ceasefire," ''Sadaka'', 2nd edition, March 2010, at [http://web.archive.org web.archive.org].</ref> Hamas was willing to prolong the ceasefire, and authorized the strategy in religious terms, calling it ''tahadiah''—meaning a lull in Arabic, and ideologically a very long period of peace. It also succeeded in convincing most factions to stop launching rockets into Israel. Mark Regev, the Israeli government spokesperson, admitted as much himself.<ref group="9.">"WikiLeaks: Israel Aimed to Keep Gaza Economy on the Brink of Collapse," ''Reuters'', January 5, 2011.</ref><br />
<br />
The success of the ceasefire might have been assured had there been a genuine easing of the Israeli siege. Practically this meant increasing the amount of goods allowed into the Strip and easing the movement of people in and out. Yet Israel did not comply with its promises in this regard. Israeli officials were very candid when they told their US counterparts that the plan was to keep the Gaza economy "on the brink of collapse."<ref group="9.">Morrison, "The Israel-Hamas Ceasefire."</ref> There was a direct correlation between the intensity of the siege and the intensity of the rocket launches into Israel, as the accompanying diagram prepared by the Carter Peace Center illustrates so well.<div class="break"><br />
Import of Goods into Gaza–Rockets and Mortars Fired from Gaza<br />
<br />
[[File:Images/img_p134.jpg|Images]]<br />
<br />
''Source: The Carter Center, "Gaza Timeline Analysis: Movement and Fatalities", 2009''<br />
</div>Israel broke the ceasefire on November 4, 2008, on the pretext that it had exposed a tunnel excavated by Hamas—planned, so they claimed, for another abduction operation. Hamas had been building tunnels out of the Gaza ghetto in order to bring in food, move people out, and indeed as part of its resistance strategy. Using a tunnel as a pretext for violating the ceasefire would be akin to a Hamas decision to violate it because Israel has military bases near the border. Hamas officials claimed that tunnel in question had been built for defensive reasons. They never shied away from boasting about a different function in other cases, so this might be true. The Irish Palestine solidarity group Sadaka published a very detailed report compiling evidence showing that Israeli officers knew there was no danger whatsoever from the tunnel. The government just needed a pretext for yet another attempt to destroy Hamas.<ref group="9.">See the B'Tselem report "Fatalities during Operation Cast Lead," at [http://btselem.org btselem.org].</ref><br />
<br />
Hamas responded to the Israeli assault with a barrage of missiles that injured no one and killed no one. Israel stopped its attack for a short period, demanding that Hamas agree to a ceasefire under its conditions. Hamas's refusal led to the infamous "Cast Lead" operation at the end of 2008 (the code names were now changed to even more ominous ones). The preliminary bombardment this time was unprecedented—it reminded many of the carpet bombing of Iraq in 2003. The main target was the civilian infrastructure; nothing was spared—hospitals, schools, mosques—everything was hit and destroyed. Hamas responded by launching missiles into Israeli towns not targeted before, such as Beersheba and Ashdod. There were a few civilian casualties, but most of the Israelis killed, thirteen in total, were soldiers killed by friendly fire. In sharp contrast, 1,500 Palestinians lost their lives in the operation.<ref group="9.">"Gaza Could Become Uninhabitable in Less Than Five Years Due to Ongoing 'De-development'," UN News Centre, September 1, 2015, at [http://un.org un.org].</ref><br />
<br />
A new cynical dimension was now added: international and Arab donors promised aid running into the billions to rebuild what Israel would only destroy again in the future. Even the worst disaster can be profitable.<br />
<br />
The next round came in 2012 with two operations: "Returning Echo," which was smaller in comparison to the previous attacks, and the more significant "Pillar of Defense" in July 2012, which brought an end to the social protest movement of that summer, with its potential to bring down the government for the failure of its economic and social policies. There is nothing like a war in the south to convince young Israelis to stop protesting and go out and defend the homeland. It had worked before, and it worked this time as well.<br />
<br />
In 2012, Hamas reached Tel Aviv for the first time—with missiles that caused little damage and no casualties. Meanwhile, with the familiar imbalance, 200 Palestinians were killed, including tens of children. This was not a bad year for Israel. The exhausted EU and US governments did not even condemn the 2012 attacks; in fact they repeatedly invoked "Israel's right to defend itself." No wonder that two years later the Israelis understood that they could go even further. Operation "Protective Edge," in the summer of 2014, had been in the planning for two years; the abduction and killing of three settlers in the West Bank provided the pretext for its execution, during which 2,200 Palestinians were killed. Israel itself was paralyzed for a while, as Hamas's rockets even reached Ben-Gurion airport.<br />
<br />
For the first time, the Israeli army fought face to face with the Palestinian guerrillas in the Strip, and lost sixty-six soldiers in the process. In this battle between desperate Palestinians, their backs to their wall, enraged by a long and cruel siege, and the Israeli army, the former had the upper hand. The situation was like that of a police force entering a maximum security prison it had controlled mainly from outside, only to be faced with the desperation and resilience of prisoners who have been systematically starved and strangulated. It is frightening to think what Israel's operational conclusions will be after this clash with brave Hamas fighters.<br />
<br />
The war in Syria and the resulting refugee crisis did not leave much space for international action or interest in Gaza. However, it seems everything is poised for yet another round of attacks against the people of the Strip. The UN has predicted that, at the current rate of destruction, by 2020 the Strip will have become uninhabitable. This will be brought about not only by military force but also by what the UN calls "de-development"—a process whereby development is reversed:<blockquote>Three Israeli military operations in the past six years, in addition to eight years of economic blockade, have ravaged the already debilitated infrastructure of Gaza, shattered its productive base, left no time for meaningful reconstruction or economic recovery and impoverished the Palestinian population in Gaza, rendering their economic wellbeing worse than the level of two decades previous.</blockquote>This death sentence has become even more likely since the military coup in Egypt. The new regime there has now closed the only opening Gaza had outside of Israel. Since 2010, civil society organizations have sent flotillas to show solidarity and break the siege. One of them was viciously attacked by Israeli commandoes, who killed nine of the passengers on board the ''Mavi Marmara'' and arrested the others. Other flotillas were treated better. However, the 2020 prospect is still there, and it seems that to prevent this infliction of a slow death the people of Gaza will need more than peaceful flotillas to persuade the Israelis to relent.<br />
<br />
==== Footnotes ====<br />
<references group="9." /><br />
<br />
== Looking Ahead ==<br />
<br />
=== The Two-States Solution Is the Only Way Forward ===<br />
This familiar myth is usually delivered in an affirmative voice claiming that there is a solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and that it is waiting for us just around the corner. However, the reality of the current colonization of vast parts of the West Bank by Israel renders any two-states solution an improbable vision. At best, the most one can hope for is a Palestinian Bantustan. But such a political arrangement would create a state with no proper sovereignty, divided into several cantons, with no means of protecting or sustaining itself independently of Israel. Any expectation of a more independent entity, should there be a miraculous change of mind on Israel's part, does not turn the two-states solution into a final act in the conflict. It is unthinkable that a national struggle for liberation, now almost 150 years old, might end with conditional autonomous rule over just 20 percent of the homeland. Moreover, no diplomatic accord or document could ever define who is and who is not part of the agreement. For example, it would be impossible to declare those who live in the West Bank Palestinians, but not those in the Gaza Strip. This would be the current situation, because both the Gaza Strip and many parts of Jerusalem seem to be excluded from negotiations and are not included in the envisaged state.<br />
<br />
The two-states solution, as noted earlier, is an Israeli invention that was meant to square a circle. It responds to the question of how to keep the West Bank under Israeli control without incorporating the population that lives there. Thus it was suggested that part of the West Bank would be autonomous, a quasi-state. In return, the Palestinians would have to give up all their hopes for return, for equal rights for Palestinians in Israel, for the fate of Jerusalem, and for leading a normal life as human beings in their homeland.<br />
<br />
Any criticism of this myth is often branded as anti-Semitism. However, in many ways the opposite is true: there is a connection between the new anti-Semitism and the myth itself. The two-states solution is based on the idea that a Jewish state is the best solution for the Jewish problem; that is, Jews should live in Palestine rather than anywhere else. This notion is also close to the hearts of anti-Semites. The two-states solution, indirectly one should say, is based on the assumption that Israel and Judaism are the same. Thus, Israel insists that what it does, it does in the name of Judaism, and when its actions are rejected by people around the world the criticism is not only directed toward Israel but also towards Judaism. The leader of the UK Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, attracted of a lot of criticism when he explained, to my mind correctly, that blaming Judaism for Netanyahu's policies is like blaming Islam for the actions of the Islamic State. This is a valid comparison, even if it rattled some people's sensitivities.<ref group="10.">Daniel Clinton, "Jeremy Corbyn Appears to Compare Supporters of Israel with ISIS at Release of Anti-Semitism Report," ''Jerusalem Post'', June 30, 2016.</ref><br />
<br />
The two-states solution is like a corpse taken out in the morgue every now and then, dressed up nicely, and presented as a living thing. When it has been proven once more that there is no life left in it, it is returned to the morgue. In the future, the only thing that might change is the United Nations admitting Palestine as a full member. At the same time, we might also see the completion of the Israeli takeover of Area C (more than 50 percent of the West Bank). The tension between the two—the symbolic act in the UN Security Council and the reality on the ground—may be too much for the international community to bear. The best scenario imaginable might be that such circumstances force everyone to go back to the drawing board and rethink a solution to the conflict from first principles.<br />
<br />
The charade will end soon, peacefully or violently, but either way painfully. It seems that nothing is going to stop Israel now from completing its colonization of the West Bank and continuing its siege on Gaza. This might be achieved with international blessing, but there are quite enough politicians in Israel who seem willing to proceed without that blessing. In either case, Israel will need to use brutal force to implement its vision of a "solution": annexing half of the West Bank, ghettoizing the other half as well as the Gaza Strip, and imposing an apartheid regime of a sort on its own Palestinian citizens. Such a situation will render any discourse on the two-states solution irrelevant and obsolete.<br />
<br />
In ancient times, the dead were buried with their beloved artifacts and belongings. This coming funeral will probably follow a similar ritual. The most important item to go six feet under is the dictionary of illusion and deception with its famous entries such as "the peace process," "the only democracy in the Middle East," "a peace-loving nation," "parity and reciprocity," and "a humane solution to the refugee problem." A replacement dictionary has been in the making for many years, redefining Zionism as colonialism, Israel as an apartheid state, and the Nakbah as ethnic cleansing. It will be much easier to put it into common use once the two-states solution has been pronounced dead.<ref group="10.">On the dictionary see Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe, ''On Palestine'', London: Penguin, 2016.</ref><br />
<br />
The maps of the dead solution will also be lying next to the body. The cartography that reduced Palestine to a tenth of its historical self, and which was presented as a map of peace, will hopefully be gone forever. There is no need to prepare an alternative map. Since 1967, the geography of the conflict has never changed in reality, even while it was constantly transformed in the discourse of liberal Zionist politicians, journalists, and academics. Palestine was always the land between the river and the sea. It still is. Its changing fortunes are characterized not by geography but by demography. The settler movement that arrived there in the late nineteenth century now accounts for half the population and controls the other half through a matrix of racist ideology and apartheid policies. Peace is not a matter of demographic change, nor a redrawing of maps: it is the elimination of these ideologies and policies. Who knows, it may be easier now than ever to do this.<br />
<br />
The funeral will expose the fallacy of the Israeli mass protest movement of 2012, while at the same time highlighting its positive potential. For seven weeks in that summer, middle-class Israeli Jews protested in huge numbers against their government's social and economic policies. In order to ensure as big a protest as possible, its leaders and coordinators did not dare mention occupation, colonization, or apartheid. The source of every evil, they claimed, was the brutal capitalist policies of the government. On a certain level, they had a point. These policies prevented the master race of Israel from enjoying fully and equally the fruits of Palestine's rape and dispossession. However, a fairer division of the spoils will not ensure a normal life for either Jews or Palestinians; only an end to the looting and pillaging will. And yet the demonstrators also expressed their skepticism and distrust concerning what their media and politicians tell them about the socioeconomic reality; this may open the way for a better understanding of the lies they have been fed about the "conflict" and their "national security" over so many years.<br />
<br />
The funeral should energize us all to follow the same distribution of labor as before. As urgently as ever, Palestinians need to solve the issue of representation. And the progressive Jewish forces in the world need to be more intensively recruited to the BDS and solidarity campaigns. In Palestine itself, the time has come to move the discourse of the one-state solution into political action, and maybe to adopt the new dictionary. Since the dispossession is everywhere, the repossession and reconciliation will have to occur everywhere. If the relationship between Jews and Palestinians is to be reframed on a just and democratic basis, then we can accept neither the old, buried map of the two-states solution nor its logic of partition. This also means that the sacred distinction between Jewish settlements in Israel (before 1967) and those in the West Bank (after 1967) should be consigned to the grave as well. The distinction should instead be made between those Jews who are willing to discuss a reformulation of the relationship, a change of regime, and equal status, and those who are not, regardless of where they live now.<br />
<br />
There are some surprising phenomena in this respect if one studies the human and political fabric of contemporary Israel-Palestine: the willingness to enter into dialogue is sometimes more evident beyond the green line than inside it. The dialogues within about a change of regime, the question of representation, and the BDS campaign are all part and parcel of the same effort to bring justice and peace to Palestine. Once the two-states solution is buried, one major obstacle to a just peace in Israel and Palestine will have been removed.<br />
<br />
==== Footnotes ====<br />
<references group="10." /><br />
<br />
== Conclusion ==<br />
In 2017, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will have lasted for fifty years. After such a long period, the term "occupation" becomes somewhat redundant and irrelevant. Two generations of Palestinians have already lived under this regime. Although they themselves will still call it occupation, what they are living through is rooted in something else much harder to defeat or change—colonization. The term colonization, as I noted in the opening chapters, is not easily applied to the present—it is more often than not associated with past events. This is why, with the help of recent and exciting research, scholars writing on Israel are more frequently using another term: settler colonialism.<br />
<br />
Colonialism can be described as the movement of Europeans to different parts of the world, creating new "white" nations where indigenous people had once had their own kingdoms. These nations could only be created if the settlers employed two logics: the logic of elimination—getting rid by all means possible of the indigenous people, including by genocide; and the logic of dehumanization—regarding the non-Europeans as inferior and thus as not deserving the same rights as the settlers. In South Africa these twin logics led to the creation of the Apartheid system, founded officially in 1948, the same year that the Zionist movement translated the same logics into an ethnic cleansing operation in Palestine.<br />
<br />
As this book attempts to show, from a settler colonial perspective events such as the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Oslo Process, and the disengagement from Gaza in 2005 are all part of the same Israeli strategy of taking as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians in it as possible. The means of achieving this goal have changed over time, and it remains uncompleted. However, it is the main fuel that feeds the fire of the conflict.<br />
<br />
In this manner, the horrific connection between the logics of dehumanization and elimination, so apparent in the spread of European settler colonialism throughout the world, first found its way into the authoritarian states of the Middle East. It was ruthlessly manifest, among a multitude of other examples, in the destruction of the Kurds by Saddam Hussein as well as in the punitive actions carried out by the Assad regime in 2012. It was then also employed by groups opposing that regime: the worst example being the genocidal policies of the Islamic State.<br />
<br />
This barbarization of human relations in the Middle East can only be stopped by the people of the region themselves. However, they should be aided by the outside world. Together the region should return to its not so distant past, when the guiding principle was "live and let live." No serious discussion about ending human rights abuses in the region as a whole can bypass a conversation about the 100 years of human rights abuses in Palestine. The two are intimately connected. The exceptionalism enjoyed by Israel, and before that by the Zionist movement, makes a mockery of any Western critique of human rights abuses in the Arab world. Any discussion of the abuse of the Palestinians' human rights needs to include an understanding of the inevitable outcome of settler colonial projects such as Zionism. The Jewish settlers are now an organic and integral part of the land. They cannot, and will not, be removed. They should be part of the future, but not on the basis of the constant oppression and dispossession of the local Palestinians.<br />
<br />
We have wasted years talking about the two-states solution as if it had any relevance to the issue described above. But we needed that time to persuade both Israeli Jews and the world at large that when you found a state—even one with a thriving culture, a successful high-tech industry, and a powerful military—on the basis of dispossessing another people, your moral legitimacy will always be questioned. Confining the question of legitimacy only to the territories Israel occupied in 1967 will never resolve the issue at the heart of the problem. Of course it will help if Israel withdraws from the West Bank, but there is a possibility that it will just monitor the region in the same way it has policed the Gaza Strip since 2006. This will not hasten an end to the conflict, it will just transform it into a conflict of a different kind.<br />
<br />
There are deep layers of history that will need to be addressed if a genuine attempt is to be made at a resolution. After World War II, Zionism was allowed to become a colonialist project at a time when colonialism was being rejected by the civilized world because the creation of a Jewish state offered Europe, and West Germany in particular, an easy way out of the worst excesses of anti-Semitism ever seen. Israel was the first to declare its recognition of "a new Germany"—in return it received a lot of money, but also, far more importantly, a carte blanche to turn the whole of Palestine into Israel. Zionism offered itself as the solution to anti-Semitism, but became the main reason for its continued presence. The "deal" also failed to uproot the racism and xenophobia that still lies at the heart of Europe, and which produced Nazism on the continent and a brutal colonialism outside of it. That racism and xenophobia is now turned against Muslims and Islam; since it is intimately connected to the Israel–Palestinian question, it could be reduced once a genuine answer to that question is found.<br />
<br />
We all deserve a better ending to the story of the Holocaust. This could involve a strong multicultural Germany showing the way to the rest of Europe; an American society dealing bravely with the racial crimes of its past that still resonate today; an Arab world that expunges its barbarism and inhumanity …<br />
<br />
Nothing like that could happen if we continue to fall into the trap of treating mythologies as truths. Palestine was not empty and the Jewish people had homelands; Palestine was colonized, not "redeemed"; and its people were dispossessed in 1948, rather than leaving voluntarily. Colonized people, even under the UN Charter, have the right to struggle for their liberation, even with an army, and the successful ending to such a struggle lies in the creation of a democratic state that includes all of its inhabitants. A discussion of the future, liberated from the ten myths about Israel, will hopefully not only help to bring peace to Israel and Palestine, but will also help Europe reach a proper closure on the horrors of World War II and the dark era of colonialism.<br />
<br />
== Timeline ==<br />
{| class="wikitable" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1881<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Waves of Russian pogroms lasting until 1884. The Zionist movement appears in Europe.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1882<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| First Aliyah (1882–1904). The foundation of Rishon LeZion, Zichron Yaacov, and Rosh Pina in Palestine.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1897<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The First Zionist Congress in Basel. The establishment of the World Zionist Congress.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1898<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The Second Zionist Congress.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1899<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The Third Zionist Congress.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1901<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The Jewish National Fund (JNF) founded.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1904<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The Second Aliyah (1904–14).<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1908<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The Palestine Office is established (in 1929 it became the Jewish Agency).<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1909<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Degania, the first Kibbutz (Kvutzat Degania), is founded. The building of Tel Aviv. The Hashomer founded.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1915–16<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The Hussein–McMahon correspondence.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1916<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The Sykes-Picot agreement.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1917<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The Balfour Declaration. Britain occupies Palestine and governs it through a military administration (until 1920).<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1920<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The Haganah is founded. The Histadrut is founded. The San Remo Conference grants Britain the Mandate over Palestine.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1922<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Britain recognizes Transjordan as a separate political entity and Amir Abdullah as its ruler. The US Congress endorses the Balfour Declaration.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1923<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The British Mandate over Palestine and Transjordan is authorized first by the League of Nations, then at the Treaty of Lausanne.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1931<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The Irgun splits from the Haganah.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1936<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Arab Revolt breaks out and would last until 1939.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1937<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The Peel Royal Commission.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1940<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| "Lehi" (Stern gang) splits from the Irgun. The Village Files Project launched.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1946<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1947<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Britain announces the end of the Mandate and transfers the question of Palestine to the UN. The UN forms a special committee, UNSCOP, which recommends partition. This is approved by the United Nations' General Assembly (Resolution 181).<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1948<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The ethnic cleansing of Palestine: British Mandate ends, the State of Israel declared and recognized by the United States and the USSR. Israel at war with troops entering Palestine from neighboring Arab countries while completing the expulsion of half of Palestine's population, demolishing half of its villages, and emptying and destroying eleven of its twelve towns.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1949<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| UNGA Resolution 194 (calling for the return of the Palestinian refugees). Armistice agreements between Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt. Military rule is imposed on the remaining Palestinian citizens inside Israel, which will remain in place until 1966.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1950<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The immigration of Jews from Arab countries begins.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1956<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Israel joins Britain and France in a war against Egypt's Nasser, occupying the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. The Kafr Qasim massacre.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1959<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Wadi Salib riots (Mizrahi riots in Haifa protesting discrimination).<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1963<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The end of the Ben-Gurion era.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1967<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The Six-Day War: Israel occupies the Sinai and the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank. UNSC Resolution 242 calls on Israel to withdraw from all occupied territories. Israeli settlement project in the West Bank and Gaza begins.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1973<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The October War: Israel occupies part of Egypt proper and retains control of the Golan Heights after a bloody conflict that took the state by surprise.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1974<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| UN Security Council Resolution 338 reaffirms the rights of the Palestinians to self-determination and national independence.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1976<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The Land Day Protests of the Palestinians in Israel against the Judaization of the Galilee.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1977<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The Likud under Menachem Begin wins the national elections after thirty years of Labor rule. President Anwar Sadat of Egypt visits Jerusalem and begins bilateral talks with Israel.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1978<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Peace treaty signed between Israel and Egypt. PLO attack on Tel Aviv reciprocated by Operation "Litani"—Israel occupies part of southern Lebanon.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1981<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Annexation of the Golan Heights to Israel.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1982<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Sinai returned to Egypt. Operation "Peace for the Galilee" in which Israel invades Lebanon in an attempt to destroy the PLO.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1987<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The First Palestinian Intifada.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1989<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Collapse of the USSR and mass migration of Jews and non-Jews from across the Eastern Bloc to Israel.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1991<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| First Gulf War. US convenes international conference on Palestine in Madrid.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1992<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Labor returns to power and Yitzhak Rabin becomes prime minister for the second time.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1993<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The PLO and Israel sign the Oslo Declaration of Principles in the White House.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1994<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The Palestinian National Authority is formed and Yasser Arafat, the PLO chairman, arrives in the occupied territories to become president of the PNA. Israel and Jordan sign peace treaty.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1995<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Oslo II signed (interim agreement for Palestinian control of parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip). Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1996<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Likud returns to power and the first Benjamin Netanyahu government is formed.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 1999<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Labor's Ehud Barak elected as prime minister.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 2000<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Israel withdraws from southern Lebanon. The Second Intifada erupts.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 2001<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Ariel Sharon, head of the Likud, elected as prime minister. Later forms his own party (Kadima) and wins the 2005 elections.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 2002<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| The West Bank Wall project is approved; implementation begins in 2003.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 2005<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Sharon re-elected. Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement is launched. Israel evacuates from Gaza settlements and military bases.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 2006<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Hamas wins the elections for the second Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). Israel, the Middle East Quartet (United States, Russia, United Nations, and European Union), several Western states, and the Arab states impose sanctions on the Palestinian Authority, suspending all foreign aid. The siege on Gaza begins. Second Lebanon War and Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 2006<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Ehud Olmert elected as prime minister (in February 2016 Olmert began a nineteen-month prison sentence for bribery and obstruction of justice).<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 2008<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Gaza War—Operation "Cast Lead." The UN and human rights organizations count more than 1,400 Palestinian deaths, of which 926 were unarmed civilians. Three Israeli civilians were killed and six soldiers.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 2009–13<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Second Netanyahu Government.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 2011<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Social protest across Israel (The Tent Movement).<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 2012<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Operation "Pillar of Cloud." Four Israeli civilians and two soldiers were killed in Palestinian rocket attacks. According to the UN, 174 Palestinians in total died, 107 of them civilians.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 2013–15<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Third Netanyahu Government.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 2014<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Operation "Protective Edge." According to the main estimates, between 2,125 and 2,310 Gazans were killed (1,492 civilians, including 551 children and 299 women), and between 10,626 and 10,895 were wounded (including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were left permanently disabled). Sixty-six Israeli soldiers, five Israeli civilians (including one child), and one Thai civilian were killed, and 469 IDF soldiers and 261 Israeli civilians were injured. Israel destroyed about 17,000 homes, and partially destroyed 30,000.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="top"| 2015<br />
<br />
| style="text-align: left;" valign="bottom"| Fourth Netanyahu Government.<br />
<br />
|}<br />
<br />
''I would like to thank my friend Marcelo Svirsky for compiling this timeline.''<br />
<br />
[[Category:Library works about Palestine]]<br />
[[Category:Library works by Ilan Pappe]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Library:Psychiatric_Hegemony:_A_Marxist_Theory_of_Mental_Illness&diff=64619Library:Psychiatric Hegemony: A Marxist Theory of Mental Illness2024-03-26T17:56:03Z<p>CriticalResist: added category</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Library work|title=Psychiatric Hegemony: A Marxist Theory of Mental Illness|author=Bruce M. Z. Cohen|written in=2016|published_date=Palgrave Macmillian UK|isbn=978-1-137-46051-6}}<br />
<br />
=Dedication=<br />
<br />
<center><i>This book is dedicated to three critical sociologists who continue to inspire:<br />
Stanley Cohen (1942–2013)<br />
<br />
Stuart Hall (1932–2014)<br />
<br />
Jock Young (1942–2013)<br />
<br />
&<br />
<br />
An old friend and revolutionary footballer:<br />
Hafty (d. 2014)<br />
<br />
Es geht voran!</i></center><br />
<br />
=Preface=<br />
<br />
This book exists for two main reasons. First, to fill a gap in the<br />
current sociology of mental health scholarship. This omission was<br />
brought to my attention by my postgraduate students; though I was<br />
initially very sceptical of their research capabilities, it turned out<br />
that they were basically cor- rect. Granted, there are bits and pieces<br />
of Marxist analysis out there, but compared with the other mainstream<br />
areas of sociological investigation such as education, youth, crime,<br />
and the family, the use of the big man’s work to make sense of the<br />
continuing power of the mental health system is nearly<br />
non-existent. Second, this book offers a radical challenge to the<br />
conservative and theory-free scholarship which is currently infecting<br />
my area of sociology. I believe we need to bring critical scholarship<br />
back to the heart of the sociology of mental health; we desperately<br />
need to have the theoretical as well as the empirical debates.<br />
<br />
The book title may suggest radical polemic, but at the same time, I<br />
think the argument is relatively simple and straightforward, and also, I<br />
think there is plenty of evidence to support it. Under capitalism, we live<br />
in a society of fundamental inequalities defined by our relation to the<br />
means of economic production. Public or private, every institution in<br />
capitalist society is framed by these same power disparities. The dominant<br />
understandings of who we are, what is expected of us, and the limits of<br />
our behaviour are constructed and defined by the capitalist class, then<br />
reproduced through the state and institutions of civil society (e.g., the systems of education, criminal justice, and health). This is necessary for<br />
the progression and survival of capitalism. For example, we are socialised<br />
by the family, the school, and the mass media to accept social and eco-<br />
nomic disparities as natural and common sense; as the inevitable result of<br />
differential talent and competition within the marketplace, rather than<br />
class privilege and the exploitation of the majority of the population. In<br />
this respect, the mental health system is no exception. Led by the insti-<br />
tution of psychiatry as the ultimate experts on the mind, mental health<br />
professionals are far from immune to the needs of capital. In fact, I will<br />
demonstrate in this book that the mental health system has been impres-<br />
sively compliant to the wishes of the ruling classes and, for that reason,<br />
has gained more power, authority, and professional jurisdiction as indus-<br />
trial society has developed.<br />
While this book is centrally a theoretical interrogation of psychiat-<br />
ric discourse and professional power, I have also attempted to make it<br />
accessible to practitioners and non-theoreticians. I think theory is vitally<br />
important to achieving a broader understanding of human existence<br />
within this world, but I appreciate that many put more faith in the “prac-<br />
tical solution,” in being “pragmatic,” and in changing the world through<br />
“doing.” I think mental health practitioners—and I have met plenty<br />
over the years—are particularly prone to this view. For this reason, there<br />
are four substantive chapters in the book (on the issues of work, youth,<br />
women, and political protest) which are written with the pragmatists in<br />
mind. These apply Marxist ideas to specific issues within the field and<br />
highlight the many dangers of simply “doing” mental health work with-<br />
out any thought to the wider structures in which they carry out such<br />
activities. Often performed by professionals who similarly believed that<br />
they were “acting in the best interests of the patient,” the history of psy-<br />
chiatry and its allies is littered with too many acts of violence, torture,<br />
and death to be able to write them off as aberrations or exceptions in a<br />
“progressive” and “scientific” system of health care. It can instead be seen<br />
as a regular service performed by the mental health system in support of<br />
the ruling elites.<br />
<br />
What follows is my version of a Marxist theory of mental illness.<br />
It is only one contribution within the sociology of mental health, but<br />
nevertheless, I hope it inspires others to follow my analysis in equally<br />
challenging and critical directions. And if you want to continue the dis-<br />
cussion, you can email me at b.cohen@auckland.ac.nz or @BmzCohen<br />
on twitter.<br />
<br />
=Acknowledgements=<br />
<br />
This book could not have happened without the emphatic support of<br />
Palgrave Macmillan; I am eternally grateful for their faith and trust in<br />
this project. In particular I would like to thank my Editors, Nicola Jones<br />
and Sharla Plant, as well as the ever-helpful Assistant Editors, Eleanor<br />
Christie, Laura Aldridge and Cecilia Ghidotti. The idea for the book<br />
originated from my postgraduate “Sociology of Mental Health” class. I<br />
thank all of the students that I have had the pleasure to teach on that<br />
course over the years, in particular Dhakshi Gamage (a student who articulated the specific connection between neoliberal values and the construction of shyness as a mental disorder long before I did). In 2015 I had<br />
the chance to meet with a number of international colleagues working on<br />
critical issues in mental health and I would like to thank them all for their<br />
kind words of support and advice. They include Suman Fernando, China<br />
Mills, and Peter Morrall. My good friend Jeff Masson has become something of a mentor, what a guy! I would like to thank both him and his<br />
family for being such warm and generous people on the many occasions<br />
that we have visited them and outstayed our welcome. The Department<br />
of Sociology at the University of Auckland continues to be the home of<br />
a vibrant crowd of collegial people who understand how important it is<br />
to have the time and resources to complete a major research project like<br />
this one—many thanks to you all. Of particular note, hello to my friend<br />
and colleague Colin Cremin, with whom I have shared some really useful conversations on the slippery subject of academic writing. And he lets<br />
me win when we play PES 2016, result! Thanks also to Helen Sword for<br />
the conversation on the ferry about scholarly writing and her very useful<br />
book Stylish Academic Writing (I tried, Helen!). This would be an appropriate point to add that all the ideas and attempts at style in this book are<br />
my fault alone. My thanks and appreciation to the Faculty of Arts, who<br />
approved my research and study leave in 2015; this allowed me to complete most of the writing for the book. The Faculty also funded a summer<br />
scholar, Rearna Hartmann, for three months (from November 2014 to<br />
February 2015) to undertake some additional analysis of each edition<br />
of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This work<br />
appears in Chaps. 3–7 of the book. Rearna should get a special mention<br />
here as she proved to be such an incredibly talented and efficient scholar-in-training; it was a real pleasure to work with you on this project.<br />
<br />
For inspiration, support, and temporary escape from the book writing, I would like to thank my football team, Tripzville/University-Mt<br />
Wellington (the 2015 Division Three (Seniors) Over-35s champions!),<br />
especially the boss, Mark Rossi, and my left-back partner in the crime,<br />
Tony Westmoreland. The music from the Killers kept me reasonably<br />
buoyant throughout the writing phase. Thanks also to friends and family<br />
in England, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand for all the good times,<br />
including the constant flow of alcohol, much needed. Maeby and Milo<br />
constantly interrupted my writing to show me wildlife they had “found”<br />
in the garden; on reflection, probably useful exercise for me. Finally, from<br />
the east to the west, the north to the south, she is the love of my life and<br />
the brains of the operation, Dr Jessica Terruhn—thanks for all the feedback on the drafts and, you know, everything else. I love you, honey!<br />
<br />
=Contents=<br />
<br />
{| style="margin: 0 auto; float: center;"<br />
| '''1 Introduction: Thinking Critically About Mental Illness''' || 1<br />
|-<br />
| '''2 Marxist Theory and Mental Illness: A Critique of Political Economy''' || 27<br />
|-<br />
| '''3 Psychiatric Hegemony: Mental Illness in Neoliberal Society''' || 69<br />
|-<br />
| '''4 Work: Enforcing Compliance''' || 97<br />
|-<br />
| '''5 Youth: Medicalising Deviance''' || 113<br />
|-<br />
| '''6 Women: Reproducing Patriarchal Relations''' || 139<br />
|-<br />
| '''7 Resistance: Pathologising Dissent''' || 169<br />
|-<br />
| '''8 Conclusion: Challenging the Psychiatric Hegemon''' || 205<br />
|-<br />
| '''Appendix A: Methodology for Textual Analysis of the DSMs''' || 213<br />
|-<br />
| '''Appendix B: Youth-Related Diagnostic Categories in the DSM, 1952–2013''' || 215<br />
|-<br />
| '''Appendix C: “Feminised” Diagnostic Categories in the DSM, 1952–2013''' || 221<br />
|-<br />
| '''Index''' || 225<br />
|}<br />
<br />
=List of Abbreviations=<br />
:{|<br />
| ADD || Attention Deficit Disorder<br />
|-<br />
| ADHD || Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder<br />
|-<br />
| APA || American Psychiatric Association*<br />
|-<br />
| APD || Antisocial Personality Disorder<br />
|-<br />
| BPD || Borderline Personality Disorder<br />
|-<br />
| CTO || Community Treatment Order<br />
|-<br />
| DSM || Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders<br />
|-<br />
| ECT || Electroconvulsive Therapy<br />
|-<br />
| EL || Encephalitis Lethargica<br />
|-<br />
| FDA || Food and Drug Administration<br />
|-<br />
| GD || Gender Dysphoria<br />
|-<br />
| GID || Gender Identity Disorder<br />
|-<br />
| HPD || Histrionic Personality Disorder<br />
|-<br />
| ISA || Ideological State Apparatus<br />
|-<br />
| LLPDD || Late Luteal Phase Dysphoric Disorder<br />
|-<br />
| NIMH || National Institute of Mental Health<br />
|-<br />
| OSDD || Other Specified Dissociative Disorder<br />
|-<br />
| PENS || Psychological Ethics and National Security<br />
|-<br />
| PMDD || Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder<br />
|-<br />
| PMS || Premenstrual Syndrome<br />
|-<br />
| PMT || Premenstrual Tension<br />
|-<br />
| PTSD || Posttraumatic Stress Disorder<br />
|-<br />
| xvi || List of Abbreviations<br />
|-<br />
| SAD || Social Anxiety Disorder<br />
|-<br />
| SSRI || Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors<br />
|-<br />
| UK || United Kingdom<br />
|-<br />
| US || United States<br />
|-<br />
| WHO || World Health Organization<br />
|-<br />
| || (*to distinguish the American Psychiatric Association from<br />
the American Psychological Association, the full name for the<br />
latter is always given in the text)<br />
|}<br />
<br />
=List of Figures and Tables=<br />
<br />
{|<br />
| Figures<br />
|-<br />
| Fig. 2.1 || Reasons for Admission to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, 1864–1889 || 39<br />
|-<br />
| Tables<br />
|-<br />
| Table 3.1 || Increase in the use of work, home, and school phrasings in the DSM, 1952–2013 || 79<br />
|-<br />
| Table 4.1 || Number of work-related words/phrases in the DSM, 1952–2013 || 104<br />
|-<br />
| Table 5.1 || Number of youth-related diagnostic categories in the DSM, 1952–2013 || 121<br />
|-<br />
| Table 5.2 || Number of youth-related words/phrases in the DSM, 1952–2013 || 122<br />
|-<br />
| Table 6.1 || Number of “feminised” diagnostic categories in the DSM, 1952–2013 || 152<br />
|-<br />
| Table 6.2 || Number of gender-related words/phrases in the DSM, 1952–2013 || 155<br />
|-<br />
| Table 7.1 || Number of protest-related words/phrases in the DSM, 1952–2013 || 194<br />
|}<br />
<br />
=1: Introduction: Thinking Critically About Mental Illness =<br />
<br />
This book is a critical reflection on the current global epidemic of mental disease, and with that, the global proliferation of mental health professionals and the expanding discourse on mental illness. Over the past 35 years, scientific ideas on mental pathology from the designated experts on the mind have seeped outwards from the psychiatric institution into many spheres of public and private life. It is part of my role as a sociologist to explain how this epidemic has come about and the extent to which it is a valid reflection of real medical progress in the area. I am not alone in undertaking such a project; other social scientists—as well as psychiatrists and psychologists themselves—have investigated the recent expansion in the varieties of mental disorder and their usage among western populations, and have voiced similar concerns to the ones that I will articulate in this book. However, as the title suggests, this work goes further than most other scholars and mental health experts appear able to. This is because I frame the business of mental health within its wider structural context, within a system of power relations of which economic exploitation is the determinant one. Ignoring the development and current dynamics of capitalist society has been a significant omission of most other scholarship in the area; this is my contribution to getting critical social theory back to the heart of research and scholarship in the sociology of mental health.<br />
<br />
“We are,” according to the psychotherapist James Davies (2013: 1), “a population on the brink.” The figures for mental disease suggest that not only are we currently in the grip of an illness epidemic but we are nearing a tipping point towards catastrophe: out of a global population of seven billion inhabitants, 450 million people are estimated to be currently affected by a mental or behavioural disorder (World Health Organization 2003: 4), with 100 million of them taking psychotropic drugs (Chalasani 2016: 1184). The projected rates in developed countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom are even higher with one in four people suffering from a mental disorder each year (Davies 2013: 1). The World Health Organization (WHO) (2003: 5) estimates that the expenditure on mental health problems in western society amounts to between 3 and 4 per cent of gross national product; the cost in the United States alone is over $100 billion per year (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010: 65). By 2020, according to the WHO, depression—a disease which will affect one-fifth of all Americans at some point in their life (Horwitz and Wakefield 2007: 4)—will be “the second leading cause of worldwide disability, behind only heart disease” (Horwitz and Wakefield 2007: 5).<br />
<br />
Consequently, the WHO (2003: 3) states of this mental illness epidemic that “[t]he magnitude, suffering and burden in terms of disability and costs for individuals, families and societies are staggering.” From being a relatively rare affliction just 60 years ago, mental illness is now everybody’s concern. Whitaker (2010a: 6–7) has noted of this change that the rates of debilitating mental illness among US adults has increased sixfold between 1955 and 2007. However, the “plague of disabling mental illness” as he calls it has fallen particularly hard on young people in the country, with an incredible 35-fold increase between 1997 and 2007. This makes mental disease the “leading cause of disability in children” in the United States (Whitaker 2010a: 8). The varieties of known mental illnesses have also increased over time, with the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) identifying 106 mental disorders in 1952, yet 374 today (Davies 2013: 2).<br />
<br />
In the current milieu it is no surprise that the power and influence of the mental health professionals are—like the above statistics—“growing at a remarkable rate” (Davies 2013: 2). However, as every critical scholar on the topic is aware, very serious problems remain with the current science and practice within the mental health system. These concerns inevitably lead us to questioning the reality of the claims to a mental illness “epidemic” made by health organisations such as the APA and the WHO, and to ask who really benefits from the global expansion of the psychiatric discourse. An essential issue here is the continuing contested nature of “mental illness,” for there remains no proof that any “mental disorder” is a real, observable disease. Consequently, the “experts” still cannot distinguish the mentally ill from the mentally healthy. In fact, a recent attempt by the APA—the most powerful psychiatric body in the world—to define mental illness was bluntly described by one of their most senior figures as “bullshit” (see discussion below). Accordingly, it also follows that no “treatment” has been shown to work on any specific “mental illness” and that there is no known causation for any disorder. Of course, these issues are highly disputed by many mental health professionals, so the evidence and debates are outlined in detail in the chapters that follow. I appreciate that questioning the validity of mental illness comes as little comfort to those people who are currently experiencing stress, trauma, or behaviour which causes what Thomas Szasz (1974) has previously referred to as “problems in living.” Let me clarify briefly here that this book is not denying such experience; rather it is questioning the discourse of “mental illness” which is produced by groups of professionals who claim an expert knowledge over this experience. Therefore, the current discussion is a critique of professional power not of personal experience and behaviour which may have been labelled (or self-labelled) as a “mental illness.” Though my previous work has investigated the multifaceted meanings of illness and recovery for those so labelled (see, e.g., Cohen 2015), this is not the focus of the current book. Instead, the issue at hand is how to explain the incredible expansion of what we might 1 Introduction: Thinking Critically About Mental Illness 3 4 call the “mental health industry”—that is, the entirety of the professionals, businesses, and discourse surrounding the area of mental health and illness—without a concurrent progression in the scientific evidence on mental pathology. The next section briefly explores some of the main explanations given for the dominance of the current mental health system and the gaps in this work.<br />
<br />
==Critical Scholarship on Mental Illness==<br />
<br />
Most commonly, critical scholars focus on one major reason for the current expansion in the numbers and categories of mental illness in western society—namely, the influence of pharmaceutical corporations (colloquially referred to as “big pharma”) on the construction of new categories of disorder and the promotion of drug solutions for those disorders (see, e.g., Davies 2013 ; Healy 2004 ; Moncrieff 2009 ; Moynihan and Cassels 2005; Whitaker 2010a; Whitaker and Cosgrove 2015 ). The institution of psychiatry is the ultimate authority responsible for defining and treating mental pathologies, yet commentators argue that the profession has been steadily compromised by forming close relationships with big pharma, who are now effectively setting the mental health agenda. For example, critics point to the 69 per cent of psychiatrists responsible for the development of the latest edition of the DSM (DSM-5, see American Psychiatric Association 2013) who have financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry (Cosgrove and Wheeler 2013 : 95). Research has also demonstrated the close involvement of big pharma in the development of current mental illness categories including social anxiety disorder (SAD) (Lane 2007) and premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) (Cosgrove and Wheeler 2013). The more behaviour and experience that can be successfully medicalised—that is, reconceptualised as in need of medical intervention—through this medico-industrial partnership, the more drugs can be potentially sold to the public. Thus it is argued that the expansion of the mental illness discourse is the result of a market takeover of health care; corporations rather than medical practitioners are now designating what mental pathology is and, as a result, dictating treatment. The obvious solution to this situation involves the de-coupling of mental health services from the influence of big business. Tighter government regulation and oversight of pharmaceutical corporations is required, as is transparency within the relevant professional organisations.<br />
<br />
While this critique of big pharma’s intervention in the production and promotion of the contemporary psychiatric discourse is relevant, it is perhaps the least surprising aspect of the operation of the mental health system within capitalist society. Scholars of medical history such as Andrew Scull (1989, 1993, 2015), for example, have profiled a continuing “trade in lunacy” which can be traced back to the beginnings of industrial society and witnessed throughout the development of modern mental health work. That the market is part of the workings of psychiatry and related professions should be self-evident to any scholar aware of the history of the mental health system in western society. Such critics would also acknowledge that while psychiatry legitimates the products of big pharma, pushing psychopharmaceuticals in turn helps legitimate the psychiatric profession. The prescribing of drugs is a key symbol of modern doctoring which serves to align psychiatric practice with other branches of medicine through a shared biomedical understanding of health and illness.<br />
<br />
The medico-industrial relationship described above has raised an associated criticism from critical scholars as to the efficacy of the biomedical approach in understanding mental health problems more generally. Biomedicine conceptualises disease as a physical pathology of the body. Thus, biomedical psychiatry theorises mental disorder as having a physical aetiology (causation) that can be observed, measured, and treated. Modern psychiatry focuses on the brain as the organ that causes such “disease,” and most often regards mental illness as the result of faulty neurotransmitters or “chemical imbalances” in the brain. The biomedical approach to understanding mental illness have been a part of psychiatry since its emergence over 200 years ago, yet has become increasingly dominant within the mental health system since the 1980s (Chap. 2). According to critics, however, despite its current “hegemonic” moment (Cosgrove and Wheeler 2013: 100), bio-psychiatry lacks the legitimacy of scientific evidence. The scholars blame corrupt individuals and powerful interests both inside and outside of psychiatry for reiterating biomedical myths regarding the “normal” and “abnormal” workings of the brain so as to be able to promote physical interventions such as drugs and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) as potential “cures” for mental illness. Such writers note the continuing lack of proof of biological causation for any mental disorder, the potential for corruption at the hands of big pharma, the perversion of the psychiatric profession by particular selfinterested, powerful parties and individuals, and the reductionist nature of the biomedical model which is seen to have damaged the founding aims of the profession to improve the care and treatment of people who suffer from mental disorders and to always perform their duties in the best interests of the patient (see, e.g., Bentall 2009; Breggin 1991 ; Davies 2013; Greenberg 2013 ; Whitaker and Cosgrove 2015).<br />
<br />
Critics call for an understanding of mental disorder which goes beyond biological reductionism to consider psychological, social, and environmental factors which correlate with mental illness. Often conceptualised as the “psychosocial model” (or simply, the “social model”) of mental illness, scholars and experts highlight a range of evidence from socioeconomic data which demonstrates that such factors as family income, educational level, ethnic group, geographical location, and social class are all closely related to the chances of developing a mental health problem. While the social model suggests that we all have the potential to suffer mental disorders if exposed to traumatic situations, some groups are particularly vulnerable to mental illness due to experiencing comparatively more stressful life conditions and, at the same time, having less access to cultural and economic resources which can alleviate the threat of mental problems. As the WHO’s (2013) recent Mental Health Action Plan 2013–2020 has emphasised,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Depending on the local context, certain individuals and groups in society may be placed at a significantly higher risk of experiencing mental health problems. These vulnerable groups may (but do not necessarily) include members of households living in poverty, people with chronic health conditions, infants and children exposed to maltreatment and neglect, adolescents first exposed to substance use, minority groups, indigenous populations, older people, people experiencing discrimination and human rights violations, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons, prisoners, and people exposed to conflict, natural disasters or other humanitarian emergencies.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Interventions are then aimed at the personal and the social; therapy and counselling allows individuals to work through their disorder with trained professionals, while community health services target certain deprived communities for mental health promotions and the additional resourcing of mental illness prevention teams.<br />
<br />
Explanations for the increase in rates of mental illness given by socially orientated models of mental health, therefore, draw attention to the widening social inequalities experienced in neoliberal society which impact levels of well-being in vulnerable populations. For example, Wilkinson and Pickett (2010: 67) draw on WHO data to claim that people suffer more mental illness in countries with wider inequalities (as measured by income distribution and the disparities between the richest and the poorest in that society). Their comparison of twelve advanced industrial nations shows the United States as having the highest rates of mental illness and, correspondingly, the highest rate of income inequalities. In comparison, Japan experiences the lowest rate of mental health problems and has a relatively equal distribution of income. It is a popular piece of sociologically orientated accounting in which society has the potential to make us sick; particularly those societies with higher levels of social and economic inequality appear to make us sicker. Thus, some Marxists have similarly argued that capitalism is ultimately responsible for causing mental illness (see, e.g., Robinson 1997 ; Rosenthal and Campbell 2016 ). However, as with most epidemiological work on mental illness, this analysis is weak and inconclusive. The research ultimately suffers from the same fundamental deficit as the biomedical model in that, while speculative correlations are made, there remains no proof of causation for any mental disorder.<br />
<br />
As with psychiatrists, the many mental health workers in allied professions—such as the psychotherapists, psychologists, counsellors, and psychiatric social workers—who promote the more socially orientated approaches to mental illness, continue to stand by the validity of psychiatry’s knowledge base and for good reason: it is a discourse which furthers their own professional interests and legitimates their own “mental health” practices in a currently expanding market. Many scholars make the same mistake in arguing for such socially oriented approaches—they reinforce the psychiatric discourse as having validity where none has been established. Thus, what may first appear as serious critical scholarship on psychiatric knowledge production and the mental health system is often quite conservative and reformist in nature. These attempts at “critical” literature on the mental health system are most likely written by those inside the mental health profession, especially psychiatrists and psychologists (see, e.g., Bentall 2009; Davies 2013; Paris 2008). Unless they wish to give up their high-paid jobs—some escape into academia, others retire early—these writers continue to be complicit in supporting the mental health system that has produced them. For this reason their arguments go no further than pleas for reform (fewer drugs, more therapy, and so on) which allow their profession to continue to expand their operations relatively unhindered by serious critique.<br />
<br />
To firmly ground the mental health system as a moral and political project, the following section discusses the continuing lack of validity of psychiatric knowledge. This deconstruction of the “science” of psychiatry is purposely undertaken here to highlight both the limits of previous critical scholarship—which has often failed to engage with the fundamental problems of mental health work—and the need to frame such institutions within structural systems of power and social control. Before this however, a brief note on a couple of key terms I will use in this discussion and subsequently throughout the book.<br />
<br />
Psy-professions: my argument in this book implicates not only the psychiatric profession, but also allied groups such as psychologists, counsellors, psychiatric social workers, psychoanalysts, and the many other “talk therapy” professionals (for full critiques, see, e.g., Masson 1994; Morrall 2008). Collectively, I follow Rose (1999: viii) in understanding these groups as the “psy-professions”: “experts” who have over time acquired an authority on the supposed “real nature of humans as psychological subjects.” As medically trained practitioners, psychiatrists have the ultimate authority to define and police abnormal behaviour—which is why the book focuses primarily on this profession—yet they are ably assisted by other groups which have subsequently emerged and have vested interests in continuing to align themselves with the same knowledge base. The discussion in this book will demonstrate, for example, that psychologists, therapists, and counsellors can all be implicated in systematically serving the interests of the powerful.<br />
<br />
Psychiatric discourse: I use this term to differentiate scientific evidence on “mental illness” (what some might call “psychiatric knowledge,” although this is also a highly problematic phrase) from psy-professional claims-making in the area. Psychiatric discourse is the totality of the propositions to expertise on “mental illness” and “mental health” (including the language, practices, and treatments) that psychiatric and allied professions have circulated to the public over the past 200 years. The term signifies the socially constructed nature of what is claimed to be expert knowledge in the area. For this reason, general terminology produced by the mental health system should be treated with caution. For example, in this book I refer to various labels of “mental illness,” to mental health “experts,” to “patients” and “users” of services, and so on; this does not, however, signal my acceptance of any such terminology as accurate or the truth of the matter.<br />
<br />
==Deconstructing the “Science” of Psychiatry==<br />
<br />
In his recent book Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry, former president of the APA, Jeffrey Lieberman (2015: 288–289), summarises the progress that psychiatry has made over the past 200 years in its knowledge and understanding of mental pathology. “We know that mental disorders exhibit consistent clusters of symptoms,” he declares,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>We know that many disorders feature distinctive neural signatures in the brain. We know that many disorders express distinctive patterns of brain activity. We have gained some insight into the genetic underpinnings of mental disorders. We can treat persons with mental disorders using medications and somatic therapies that act uniquely on their symptoms but exert no effects in healthy people. We know that specific types of psychotherapy lead to clear improvements in patients suffering from specific types of disorders. And we know that, left untreated, these disorders cause anguish, misery, disability, violence, even death. Thus, mental disorders are abnormal, enduring, harmful, treatable, feature a biological component, and can be reliably diagnosed.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Underscoring psychiatry’s worth as a medical enterprise, Lieberman (2015: 289) concludes by stating of the above summary that “I believe this should satisfy anyone’s definition of medical illness.” Likewise, Shorter (1997: 325) concurs with Lieberman on the ascendancy of the psychiatric discipline to a valid branch of medical science when he reflects that<br />
<br />
<blockquote>[i]n two hundred years ... psychiatrists [have] progressed from being the healers of the therapeutic asylum to serving as gatekeepers for Prozac. Psychiatric illness has passed from a feared sign of bad blood—a genetic curse—to an easily treatable condition not essentially different from any other medical problem, and possessing roughly the same affective valence.</blockquote><br />
<br />
<br />
Such positive appraisal of the knowledge and treatment of mental disorders by the official historians of psychiatry necessarily rationalises the jurisdictional exclusivity of the profession as based on a progressive narrative of medical science and discovery. Nevertheless, it is a successfully cultivated rhetoric of truth claims which crucially lacks evidence to sustain the desired picture of medical advancement in the field. This section surveys the main issues with the current state of psychiatric knowledge— namely, the disagreements over aetiology and treatment of mental illness, the lack of agreement on what “mental illness” is, and consequently the lack of validity to any category of mental disorder. This deconstruction of psychiatric knowledge claims will lead us to question what the purpose of the psy-professions in capitalist society actually is.<br />
<br />
A recent review of the science behind the psychiatric discourse concluded that “no biological sign has ever been found for any ‘mental disorder.’ Correspondingly, there is no known physiological etiology” (Burstow 2015 : 75). This conclusion also became clear to the APA’s own DSM-5 task force when they began work on the new manual in 2002. As Whitaker and Cosgrove (2015: 60) record, in reviewing the available research evidence it was plain to the committee members that “[t] he etiology of mental disorders remained unknown. The field [of mental health] still did not have a biological marker or genetic test that could be used for diagnostic purposes.” Furthermore, the research also showed that psychiatrists could still not distinguish between mentally healthy and mentally sick people, and consequently had failed to define their area of supposed expertise. This issue was recently highlighted with reference to comments made by Allen Frances, the chair of the previous DSM-IV task force. When the DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association 1994 : xxi) was published in 1994, it stated that “mental disorder” was<br />
<br />
<blockquote>conceptualized as a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual and that is associated with present distress (e.g., a painful symptom) or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more important areas of functioning) or with a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom.</blockquote><br />
<br />
However, as the architect of the DSM-IV, Frances was later quoted by Greenberg (2013: 35–36) as stating of the above definition, “[h]ere’s the problem ... There is no definition of a mental disorder ... it’s bullshit ... I mean you can’t define it.” The lack of knowledge on mental health and illness has haunted the entire history of psychiatry. Some have dismissed critics who highlight this fundamental hole in the science of psychiatry as “antipsychiatry” or “mental illness deniers.” Such attacks on scholars who attempt to investigate the accuracy of the central pillars of psychiatric knowledge should further concern us, as it perhaps signals that plenty in the profession are already aware of the flimsy nature on which their “expertise” continues to rest. Together with an understanding of the history of the psychiatric profession—summed up by Scull (1989 : 8) as “dismal and depressing”—I would argue that it should be the duty of all social scientists concerned with the mental health field that, in good conscience and putting the needs of the public first, they remain highly sceptical of a psychiatric discourse that poses as expert knowledge on the mind but produces little actual evidence to back up the assertions made.<br />
<br />
Though at first glance historical mental disorders such as masturbatory insanity (Chap. 2), drapetomania (Chap. 7), hysteria (Chap. 5), and homosexuality may appear as evidence of the profession reflecting the dominant norms and values of wider society, they are argued by the official historians of psychiatry to be examples of the false starts, early experimentations, and theoretical innovations of an emerging scientific discipline. It is suggested that this history is evidence of medical and scientific progress within the area of mental health to the current point where we know more about mental distress than ever before. Yet problems in the legitimacy of psychiatry’s vocation have remained, and reached crisis point at the cusp of deinstitutionalisation in the 1970s. At the time, a number of significant studies demonstrated the profession’s inherent tendency to label people as “mentally ill,” to stigmatise everyday aspects of a person’s behaviour as signs of pathology, and to make judgements on a person’s mental health status based on subjective judgements rather than objective criteria.<br />
<br />
The study that had the most direct impact on the psychiatric profession— as well as public consciousness—at this time was David Rosenhan’s (1973) classic research On Being Sane in Insane Places which found that psychiatrists could not distinguish between “real” and “pseudo” patients presenting at psychiatric hospitals in the United States. All of Rosenhan’s “pseudo” patients (college students/researchers involved in the experiment) were admitted and given a psychotic label, and all the subsequent behaviour of the researchers—including their note-taking—was labelled by staff as further symptoms of their disorder (for a summary, see Burstow 2015: 75–76). This research was a culmination of earlier studies on labelling and mental illness which had begun in the 1960s with Irving Goffman (1961) and Thomas Scheff (1966). Goffman’s (1961) ethnographic study of psychiatric incarceration demonstrated many of the features which Rosenhan’s study would later succinctly outline, including the arbitrary nature of psychiatric assessment, the labelling of patient behaviour as further evidence of “mental illness,” and the processes of institutional conformity by which the inmates learned to accept such labels if they wanted to have any chance of being released from the institution at a later date. Scheff’s (1966) work on diagnostic decision making in psychiatry formulated a general labelling theory for the sociology of mental health. Again, his research found that psychiatrists made arbitrary and subjective decisions on those designated as “mentally ill,” sometimes retaining people in institutions even when there was no evidence to support such a decision. Psychiatrists, he argued, relied on a common sense set of beliefs and practices rather than observable, scientific evidence. Scheff (1966) concluded that the labelling of a person with a “mental illness” was contingent on the violation of social norms by low-status rule-breakers who are judged by higher status agents of social control (in this case, the psychiatric profession). Thus, according to these studies, the nature of “mental illness” is not a fixed object of medical study but rather a form of “social deviance”—a moral marker of societal infraction by the powerful inflicted on the powerless. This situation is summated in Becker’s (1963: 9, emphasis original) general theory of social deviance which stated that<br />
<br />
<blockquote>deviance is ''not'' a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an “offender.” The deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied; deviant behavior is behavior that people so label.</blockquote><br />
<br />
The growing perception that psychiatric work was “unscientific” and, in turn, “mental illness” was a label of social deviance was further amplified in the 1970s by the APA’s very public battle over the continuation of homosexuality as a classification of mental disorder in the DSM (for a full discussion, see Kutchins and Kirk 1997: 55–99). As with the rationale for the profession labelling this sexual orientation as a mental illness in both the DSM-I (American Psychiatric Association 1952: 38–39) and the DSM-II (American Psychiatric Association 1968: 44), the successful decision to subsequently remove the label from the manual in 1973 was anything but scientific. On the contrary, Burstow (2015: 80) records how a mix of disruptive protests by gay rights campaigners, along with an internal power struggle between psychoanalysts and biomedical-orientated psychiatrists, brought about the change in APA policy. The end result was a decision based not on research evidence but rather a simple postal vote of APA members (Burstow 2015: 80). With institutional psychiatry in decline, community alternatives developing, and related mental health disciplines encroaching on traditional psychiatric territory, the profession entered a period of political and epistemological crisis. To regain credibility, the APA needed to prove the robustness of its knowledge base and convince the public as well as policy makers of their continuing usefulness and expertise.<br />
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The solution was to boost the scientific credibility of the field through improving the reliability of mental illness categories—that is, the identification and agreement among different practitioners of patients presenting with a specific disorder—which would then aid in validating such pathologies as real disease rather than professionally produced constructions. As Whitaker and Cosgrove (2015: 45–46) state of the importance of the reliability and validity concepts,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>In infectious medicine, a diagnostic manual needs to be both reliable and valid in order to be truly useful. A classification system that is reliable enables physicians to distinguish between different diseases, and to then prescribe a treatment specific to a disease, which has been validated— through studies of its clinical course and, if possible, an understanding of its pathology—as real.</blockquote><br />
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Under the leadership of Robert Spitzer, the APA carried out extensive field trials with the aim of testing the reliability of different diagnostic categories towards the creation of a more robust and scientifically sound DSM (to be released in 1980 as the DSM-III). Spitzer and Fleiss’ (cited in Kirk and Kutchins 1994: 75) own assessment of the reliability of categories of mental disorder in the DSM-I and the DSM-II was that none of them were more than “satisfactory,” frankly admitting that<br />
<br />
<blockquote>[t]here are no diagnostic categories for which reliability is uniformly high. Reliability appears only satisfactory for three categories: mental deficiency, organic brain syndrome (but not its subtypes), and alcoholism. The level of reliability is no better than fair for psychosis and schizophrenia and is poor for the remaining categories.</blockquote><br />
<br />
To rectify this situation, Spitzer’s team coordinated a number of largescale pieces of research on psychiatric classification, including “the largest reliability study in history” (Burstow 2015: 77; for full details, see Williams et al. 1992) involving 592 people—both psychiatric patients and those without a previous history of mental health problems— being interviewed by pairs of psychiatrists spread over six sites in the United States and one in Germany. Kirk and Kutchins (1994: 83) have described the time, planning, and resourcing that went into this study as “the envy of researchers who attempt to conduct rigorous studies in clinical settings.” Subsequently, the data was claimed by the developers of the DSM-III to be of “far greater reliability” for most classes of mental disorder than that utilised in previous DSMs; the results showed a generally “quite good” level of agreement between psychiatrists, especially on the classic categories of schizophrenia and major affective disorders (American Psychiatric Association, cited in Kirk and Kutchins 1994: 79). On its release in 1980, the DSM-III was hailed as a great success for the discipline—a document which would finally silence detractors through accurately demonstrating the effective scientific progress of the discipline in the twentieth century. Consequently, the DSM-III has come to mark a “revolution” within the discipline (Decker 2013: xv). For western psychiatry, the manual was the “book that changed everything” (Lieberman 2015: 134).<br />
<br />
It was, however, a revolution based on a scientific lie. The DSM-III field trials were “[b]latently rigged” (Burstow 2015: 77) by Spitzer’s task force to produce higher rates of reliability. A summary of the research biases in the construction of the studies—including the non- representative nature of the samples—has been noted by Whitaker and Cosgrove (2015 : 48–49), following extensive meta-analysis of the original field trial data by Kirk and Kutchins (1992). However, Kirk and Kutchins’ own evaluation of the DSM-III research revealed something even more surprising— namely, that there was no improvement in the previous poor levels of diagnostic reliability. In fact, in some categories of mental disorder, there were even greater levels of disagreement between psychiatrists than there had been with previous DSMs (Kirk and Kutchins 1994: 82–83). In large part, the claimed success of the DSM-III was due to a “linguistic sleight of hand” (Whitaker and Cosgrove 2015: 49) in which Spitzer and his task force re-phrased the same statistical levels of agreement between psychiatric professions (in this case, defined by kappa mean values between 0 and 1, where 1 is complete agreement and 0 complete disagreement) in different ways when comparing the DSM-I and the DSM-II with the DSM-III. For example, a mental disorder in the previous DSMs with a kappa score of .7 had been presented as “only satisfactory,” but was then redefined in the DSM-III as a “good” level of inter-rater agreement (Whitaker and Cosgrove 2015: 49). Thus, Kirk and Kutchins (1994 : 83) concluded that “despite the scientific claims of great success, reliability appears to have improved very little in three decades.” The DSM-III can therefore be seen as the success of the rhetoric of psychiatry rather than the result of any actual scientific progress within the discipline (Kirk and Kutchins 1992 ).<br />
<br />
Predictably, subsequent research has shown no improvement in inter-rater reliability and, in many cases, has produced kappa scores below those reported in the original DSM-III field trials (Whitaker and Cosgrove 2015 : 50). The implications for the DSM on which psychiatry bases its claims to scientific rigour are clear—“the latest versions of DSM as a clinical tool,” state Kirk and Kutchins (1994: 84), “are unreliable and therefore of questionable validity as a classification system.” As the authors proceeded to document with the DSM-IV, rather than attempt to tighten mental illness classifications, the APA actually loosened them further, thereby increasing the potential number of people who could be labelled under each mental disorder (Kutchins and Kirk 1997 ). Following the DSM-III field trials, subsequent DSM task forces have abandoned the reliability issue, believing it to have been solved despite ongoing criticisms from health researchers and social scientists. And, lest we forget, even if psychiatry did one day solve the reliability problem, it still does not solve the validity issue for mental disorder classifications. After all, “[t]he fact that people can be trained to apply a label in a consistent way,” Burstow (2015 : 78) reminds us, “does not mean that the label points to anything real.”<br />
<br />
Psychiatric insiders have openly admitted the lack of science to their area of operations. Allen Frances (cited in Whitaker and Cosgrove 2015 : 61), for example, has recently stated that the mental disorders given in the DSM are “better understood as no more than currently convenient constructs or heuristics that allow [psychiatrists] to communicate with one another.” This has included the classic constructs of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (formerly manic-depression), of which the mental health researcher Joel Paris at the Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, has admitted “[i]n reality, we do not know whether [such] conditions ... are true diseases” (cited in Whitaker and Cosgrove 2015: 61). Even National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) director and strong advocate of biomedical psychiatry, Thomas Insel (cited in Masson 2015 : xii), announced on the release of the DSM-5 in 2013 that the categories of mental disorder lacked validity and NIMH would no longer be using such diagnoses for research purposes.<br />
<br />
Despite the claims to “progress” made by official historians of psychiatry such as Lieberman and Shorter, there is no evidence for the supposed “science” of psychiatry. There is no test for any mental illness, no proof of causation, no evidence of successful “treatment” that relates specifically to an individual disorder, and no accurate prediction of future cases. Thus, the claim that psychiatric constructs are real disease has not been proven. Consequently, it is necessary to utilise the existing evidence to more accurately theorise the real vocation of the psy-professions in capitalist society. As the faulty knowledge claims of the DSM are summarised by Burstow (2015: 78, emphasis original), “reliability cannot legitimately function as a validity claim and no studies have established validity”; therefore, “it follows that ... no foundation of any sort exists for the DSM categories. This is a serious issue that calls into question the power vested in psychiatry.” It necessarily leads us to consider such institutions as moral and political enterprises rather than medical ones (Szasz 1974: xii) because psy-professionals make historically and culturally bound judgements on the “correct” and “appropriate” behaviour of society’s members. This is a point summated by Ingelby (1980: 55, emphasis added) when he states that<br />
<br />
<blockquote>what one thinks psychiatrists are up to depends crucially on what one thinks their patients are up to; and the latter question cannot be answered without taking an essentially political stand on what constitutes a “reasonable” response to a social situation.</blockquote><br />
<br />
In the same manner, British psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff (2010 : 371) agrees that a “psychiatric diagnosis can be understood as functioning as a political device, in the sense that it legitimates a particular social response to aberrant behaviour of various sorts, but protects that response from any democratic challenge.” Even Shorter (1997: viii) accepts that the profession is responsible for policing social deviance when he remarks that “[p]sychiatry is, to be sure, the ultimate rulemaker of acceptable behaviour through its ability to specify what counts as ‘crazy.’” Likewise, the concept of “health” within the mental health system is understood as whatever counts as “normal” within a specific historical epoch and cultural setting. Sayers (cited in Christian 1997: 33–34) states of this relative concept of “health” that<br />
<br />
<blockquote>[t]he society and the individual’s role within it are assumed to be normal (that is to say, “healthy”: “normality” is a common synonym for “health” in psychiatry as in other areas of medicine). Indeed, the prevailing social environment is made the very criterion of normality, and the individual is judged ill insofar as he or she fails to “adjust” to it.</blockquote><br />
<br />
==The Urgency for Marxist Theory==<br />
<br />
Despite the lack of validity to the “science” of psychiatry, most “critical” texts fail to adequately explain the expansion of mental health work because they lack sustained ''theoretical engagement''. Most commentators refuse to conceptualise the mental health business beyond what they can see with their own eyes, and this in turn hides the wider structural forces which can shape, inhabit, and direct the institutional priorities of the mental health experts. For instance, if Wilkinson and Pickett (2010 : 67) had spent more time critically investigating the production of psychiatric knowledge, they might have come to the conclusion that the more unequal the society, the more likely it is that people will be labelled with a mental disorder. Stated in a slightly different manner, countries that have faced the brunt of neoliberal polices are more likely to apply labels of “mental disorder” onto the population.<br />
<br />
This is not, however, to suggest that there has been a complete absence of critical social theorising on the activities of the psy-professionals within capitalist society. On the contrary, from labelling and social constructionist accounts to critical realism, post-psychiatry, and mad studies, there has been a considerable tradition of engagement with the issues of societal inequalities, institutional power, and psychiatric mechanisms of social control since the 1960s (see Cohen, forthcoming). Such literature has been highly valuable to the sociology of mental health and is utilised throughout this book. Nevertheless, this scholarship still fails to fully contextualise the political project of psychiatry in relation to the fundamental conditions of economic exploitation under capitalism. The critical analysis lacks either a full understanding of the dynamics of capitalist society or an adequate historical and contemporary contextualisation of the institution of psychiatry. Without attending to both of these issues, the scholarship will remain piecemeal and theoretically incomplete. It is my contention that an inherently political institution such as psychiatry can only be fully understood through an appropriate framing of the profession within wider socio-historical processes and with the aid of Marxist theory. This allows us to make sense of the emergence and development of the psy-professions within industrial society, their changing practices and priorities, points of internal and external competition and conflict, as well as their current period of expansion in neoliberal society.<br />
<br />
It has been left to a small handful of Marxist scholars to outline a fundamental truth of the mental health system: that its priorities and practices are fundamentally shaped by the goals of capitalism (see, e.g., Brown 1974; Nahem 1981; Parker 2007; Roberts 2015; Robinson 1997 ; Rosenthal and Campbell 2016). As Brown (1974: 1) has remarked of psychology, it is “more than just a professional field of work. It is also a codified ideology and practice that arises from the nature of our capitalist society and functions to bolster that society.” This is less surprising, states Nahem (1981 : 7), when it is understood that, as with psychiatry, “[p]sychology arose and developed in capitalist society, a class society. In all class societies, the dominant social, cultural and political views are those of the dominant class.” And more so, with the continuing expansion of the psy-professions, Parker (2007 : 1–2) argues that psychology has become<br />
<br />
<blockquote>an increasingly powerful component of ideology, ruling ideas that endorse exploitation and sabotage struggles against oppression. This psychology circulates way beyond colleges and clinics, and different versions of psychology as ideology are now to be found nearly everywhere in capitalist society.</blockquote><br />
<br />
The dominant norms and values of the ruling classes are reflected in the psychiatric discourse on human behaviour and the workings of the mind. Consequently, the psy-professions are responsible for facilitating the maximisation of profit for the ruling classes while individualising the social and economic conditions of the workers. The mental health system seeks to normalise the fundamentally oppressive relations of capitalism by focusing on the individual—rather than the society—as pathological and in need of adjustment through “treatment” options such as drugs, ECT, and therapy. These arguments will be discussed in further detail in the chapters that follow. To end this section, however, I briefly want to highlight a key problem with previous Marxist literature.<br />
<br />
Almost all of the Marxist scholars cited above come from inside the psy-professions (usually psychology), and for that reason most attempt to still rescue their discipline from capitalism. For example, Nahem (1981 : 7) speaks of the mental health system as being “co-opted” by capitalism, a situation in which the true evidence-based practice of psychiatry and psychology has been replaced by the ideology of the ruling classes. Similarly, Robinson (1997) and Rosenthal and Campbell (2016 ) argue that the psy-professions have been tainted by capitalism, and that, consequently, a socialist society would have “a genuinely scientific psychology [which] will constitute an essential part of human culture” (Robinson 1997: 77). However, the idea of a “new psychiatry” or “new psychology” based on Marxist principles (as suggested in Brown 1974) is fundamentally incompatible with the socio-historical reality of these institutions (Chap. 2). As I argue throughout this book, the psy-professions are a product of capitalism; they were created to police dissent and reinforce conformity, not to emancipate people. Thus, they cannot be reformed or rescued from capitalism; they are and will always be institutions of social control, and for that reason they have no positive role to play in a socialist society (Chap. 8). As important as the previous Marxist scholarship on mental health has been, this book avoids the potential biases of the reformed therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist in assessing the history and current expansion of the psy-professionals.<br />
<br />
==Summary==<br />
<br />
Twenty years ago, Thomas Harris (1995: xv), the bestselling author of ''I’m OK-You’re OK''—one of the first “popular psychology” texts on the market—stated that “[t]he question [for psychiatry] has always been how to get Freud off the couch and to the masses.” This book explains how and why the psychiatric discourse has proliferated over the past few decades and achieved its current hegemonic status in neoliberal society. The following chapter appropriately grounds the discussion in Marx’s classic theory of historical materialism. This is contextualised within a socio-historical analysis of the philosophies and treatments of the psychiatric profession over the past 200 years. The discussion demonstrates how the mental health system has served both the economic and ideological needs of capitalist society. With reference to the work of neo-Marxist scholarship, the specific linkage of neoliberalism to the expansion of the psychiatric discourse is explained in Chap. 3. The “crisis” of psychiatry in the mid-1970s and the construction of the DSM-III in 1980 need to be understood within the wider political framework of a declining welfare state and an increasing focus on individualism. To explore how the psyprofessionals serve capitalist society in specific areas of private and public life, Chaps. 4–7 analyse the impingement of psychiatric hegemony on young people and women, as well as in work lives and with forms of social and political protest. Each of these chapters includes textual research on the DSM, demonstrating how categories and symptoms of mental disorder have come to increasingly mirror the dominant norms and values of neoliberal society. Chapter 4 investigates the psychological sciences’ engagement with the world of work, including a case study of social anxiety disorder—the construction of which can only be fully understood in the context of neoliberal demands for “employability” and “sellable selves” within the labour force. As part of the future workforce, Chap. 5 investigates the growth in mental disorders aimed specifically at young people. Including a socio-historical analysis of the most commonly diagnosed childhood mental illness (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)), the discussion demonstrates that the contemporary moment of labelling children with mental disorders is strongly related to the requirements of late capitalism for compliant, disciplined, and higherskilled workers. In comparison to the mental health system’s relatively recent focus on young people, women have been an ongoing obsession for the psy-professions since the beginning of industrial society. From hysteria to borderline personality disorder (BPD), Chap. 6 recounts the systematic pathologisation of female emotions and experiences by psyprofessionals, showing how these activities have primarily functioned to reinforce the division of labour, traditional gender roles, and patriarchal power. Chapter 7 explores some of the darkest moments in the history of the mental health system including their support for slavery, the central role they played in the Nazi holocaust, and their recent involvement in torturing prisoners of the “war on terror.” This discussion will demonstrate that, rather than being isolated events carried out by rogue elements, these activities achieved widespread support among the mental health experts and were fundamentally considered to be “in the best interests of the patient.” Further, the analysis will also show that the post-9/11 “culture of fear” in western society has only served to further enforce psychiatry hegemony, a situation achieved through the closer surveillance of social and political dissent as reflected in the DSM-5. Chapter 8 concludes the discussion in this book by briefly offering a few practical ways in which we can begin to challenge the psychiatric hegemon. These include challenging the academic apologists for the psy-professions, campaigning for the outlawing of psychiatric violence and compulsory treatment, and the forming of alliances with fellow radical scholars, psychiatric survivors, and left-wing activists.<br />
<br />
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<br />
=2: Marxist Theory and Mental Illness: A Critique of Political Economy=<br />
<br />
Over the past 35 years, social theory has largely disappeared from scholarship on mental illness. In sociology and related disciplines, critical thinking has been sacrificed in the face of a neoliberal agenda which prioritises “pragmatic” scholarship relevant to current social policy. Consequently, dominant approaches to mental health research do little more than support the contemporary political agenda. Whether big-data epidemiological studies on the levels of “mental illness” within the general population or small in-depth analysis of psychiatric experiences, contemporary research is usually bereft of any problematising of the mental health system, the psy-professions, or the psychiatric discourse on which such professions lay claims to expertise. Shamefully, we have left it largely to those within these professions to raise the most awkward questions on the mental health business including the lack of validity of current mental disorders, the increasing medicalisation of everyday behaviour, the close ties to pharmaceutical companies, and the role of these groups as agents of social control. Too many sociologists are scared of engaging with the critical issues—they fear being labelled as “antipsychiatry” or of denying survivor/user experience, and they worry about being excluded from funding streams if they raise serious issues about the nature and purpose of the mental health system in capitalist society. Yet if sociologists of medicine are truly serious about accurately researching issues of health and illness, if we still “care” about our subject area, then there is an urgent need to contextualise our work in a set of historical and contemporary power relations. As Vincente Navarro (1980 : 200) has previously made clear,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>The actual way of studying disease in any society is by analyzing its historical presence within the political, economic, and ideological power relations in that specific social formation. And by this, I do not mean the analysis of the natural history of disease but rather the political, economic, and ideological determinants of that disease, determinants resulting from the overall power relations which are primarily based on the social relations of production. These power relations are the ones which determine the nature and definition of disease, medical knowledge, and medical practice.</blockquote><br />
<br />
This book is my contribution to reigniting critical thinking within the sociology of mental health.<br />
<br />
This chapter begins by outlining the Marxist theory of “materialism,” a critique of the political economy of capitalist society which aims to explain economic and social disparities as a historical process. An understanding of Marxist theory allows us to view capitalism as an economic system of fundamental inequalities which are reproduced not only in activities specifically related to the exchange of labour and commodities but rather in all aspects of social, cultural, and political life. In other words, capitalism frames institutional, group, and personal understandings of the world and responses to it. This includes the structure, practices, and priorities of the mental health system itself—an issue which is discussed with reference to those scholars who have previously applied Marxist theory to medicine and psychiatry including Navarro, Waitzkin, Brown, and Parker. Following these scholars, I spend the remainder of the chapter performing a Marxist assessment of the political economy of the mental health system. This is done through analysing a range of colourful and horrific socio-historical examples—including tranquilizer chairs, masturbation, lobotomies, vibrators, shock treatment, and a lot of drugs—to demonstrate how psychiatry and allied professions have served the needs of capitalism both economically and ideologically.<br />
<br />
==Historical Materialism==<br />
<br />
Karl Marx’s analysis of capitalism is recognised by scholars on both the right and the left as highly significant in explaining the formation and continuance of the fundamental economic and social inequalities witnessed within advanced industrial societies. His theory of historical materialism states that the source of human progress and historical change is not to be found in “legal relations” or “political forms,” but rather “in the material conditions of life” (cited in Howard and King 1985: 4). By this Marx means that the economic relations of human beings determine all other relations in that society. Material survival rather than the development of rationality and spiritual thinking forms the fundamental basis of human endeavour in each historical epoch (Palumbo and Scott 2005: 42). In challenging the individualist, liberal theorising of many of his contemporaries, Marx argued that industrial society had not created a radically new society of rational individuals endowed with free will, but instead introduced a new form of industrial slavery which in many ways replicated the medieval serfdom of feudal society. “Freedom” in industrial society is thus an illusion created by a more complex set of societal relations in which political and legal institutions—designated by Marx as part of the “superstructure” of capitalism—reproduced and reinforced these economic relations as appropriate and just. In explaining this contention, Marx (cited in Howard and King 1985: 5, emphasis added) argues,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.</blockquote><br />
<br />
For Marx, the mode of production in any given epoch consists of the ''forces of production'' (technologies, raw materials, and so on) and the ''relations of production'' entailing “forms of social organized labour based on the laws of ownership” (Palumbo and Scott 2005: 44). The relations of production determine the status and social-class position of the population dependent on whether they are the owners—the ruling classes, or “bourgeoisie”—or the workers—the working classes, or “proletariat”—of the means of production (in this case, factories, offices, businesses, and so on). Unique to capitalist society, the means of production are privately owned, with the goal of the ruling classes to accumulate and maximise profit through a competitive and expanding market for commodities (Palumbo and Scott 2005 : 45). Capitalist society is therefore marked by a fundamental disparity in the distribution of economic resources between the majority of the population—the working classes—who are only “free” to sell their labour to the bourgeoisie, and the small elite who own and control the economic base. It is a system of exploitation in which the workers generate “surplus value” for the ruling classes from their labour, are alienated from what they produce, and in turn are commodified by this process (Palumbo and Scott 2005: 46). The workers are kept at subsistence wages, while the elite accumulate greater wealth— the rich will get richer, prophesied Marx, while the poor will get poorer. Though this has not precisely been the case as industrial capitalism has progressed, there is still plenty of evidence for the continuance of huge inequalities in income and wealth in western society, as well as increasing of gaps between the rich and the poor since the emergence of neoliberalism 35 years ago (see, e.g., Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2015).<br />
<br />
On this basis, Marx conceptualises capitalist society as chaotic, anarchic, and riddled with contradictions. Ultimately, it is a system defined by the permanent struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie over the means of production—a conflict which the workers are destined to win through uprising and revolution, eventually creating a new socialist or communist society defined by common ownership and an equal distribution of resources based on need (Crossley 2005: 291). It is “one of the contradictions of capitalism,” Brown (1974 : 17) notes, “that as capitalism creates a working class that it then exploits, the development 30 Psychiatric Hegemony of that class seals the fate of the capitalist system, for the working class will overthrow the bourgeois class.” Within capitalist society lies the seed of its own destruction. The conflict between the social classes will come to a conclusion when the working classes reach “class consciousness”— that is, a recognition of their true social and economic existence under capitalism. However, in the meantime, Marx argued that the exploitative conditions of capitalism led to the alienation of workers from their social environment. The natural sociability and communality of the people is displaced by the brutality of lived conditions under capitalism (Palumbo and Scott 2005: 47). Marx theorised that the workers had exchanged “relations between persons into relations between things,” a “commodity fetishism” in which objects instead of social relations embody worth and value (Palumbo and Scott 2005: 47). This was one form of “false consciousness” of the working classes, a process of exchanging awareness of the true nature of capitalism for the false values of commodities, a part of ruling class ideology. This ideology of capitalism is perpetuated by the superstructure and institutions of civil society such as the church, the state, the criminal justice system, the education system, the media, and the health system.<br />
<br />
The next section draws on the Marxist understandings of historical materialism to explore how these ideas can be applied to the field of medicine and psychiatry. My contention is that the priorities and practices of the western health care system facilitate capitalist goals in two distinct ways: first, through direct and indirect profit accumulation, and second, through the social control of deviant populations and the ideological reproduction of dominant norms and values of the ruling classes.<br />
<br />
==Marxism, Medicine, and Mental Health==<br />
<br />
Many years ago when the Channel Tunnel—connecting England and France—was being built (1986–1992), I got the chance to talk to a nurse working on the project on the English side. The project was big, deadlines were tight, and the workers, she told me, were suffering terrible conditions in the tunnel (a total of ten workers died during the construction (Smith 2015 )). I wondered how complicated her job was as part of the onsite health personnel for such a large project. Not very. “The men mostly come to me complaining of terrible headaches,” she explained, “my job is to give them two aspirin and get them back down the tunnel as quickly as possible.”<br />
<br />
Speaking of medicine under capitalism, Waitzkin (2000: 37) notes the fundamental contradiction between the perception of health as the ultimate “caring profession” and a society which establishes obstacles to the goal of alleviating “needless suffering and death,” for “[t]he social organization of medicine also fosters patterns of oppression that are antithetical to medicine’s more humane purposes. These patterns within medicine mirror and reproduce oppressive features of the wider society as well.” Marxist scholars of medicine have theorised this replication of the wider class struggle within the health system in a number of ways. First, the priorities of the institution favour those of capitalism and the ruling class. For example, the modern system of health care emerged out of the need for a healthier and more reliable industrial workforce (Waitzkin 2000 : 48); concern for the health of the working classes has tended to peak when there are imperialist wars to be fought, while the majority of current medical research prioritises lifestyle and “me too” cosmetic treatments for the global market rather than research on life-saving treatments for cancer and infectious diseases (see, e.g., Rapaport 2015). Second, the exploitative work relations within capitalist societies are replicated within the rigid hierarchy of medicine, with high-waged, upper middle-class consultants holding a great amount of decision-making power at the top, the lower middle-class nursing managers administering consultants’ needs in the middle, and—holding no power whatsoever and subject to the whims of health managers—the low-earning working-class orderlies and auxiliary staff at the bottom of the pyramid. Navarro (1976 : 446) also notes the tendency of the medical profession to maintain and reinforce these class relations through “both the distribution of skills and knowledge and the control of technology” within the health service. Third, the health system functions as an institution of social control. That is, it reinforces the dominant values and norms of capitalism through its surveillance and labelling practices. In the words of Freidson (1988 : 252), medicine acts as a “moral entrepreneur” to the extent that illness is viewed negatively and as something to be “eradicated or contained.” Even cancer, he states, is a social valuation by the profession, a moral rather than an objective judgement of the body, even if it is one “on which most people happen to agree” (Freidson 1988: 252). Taking a Marxist approach to medicine includes recognising the policing function of the health professions to label and “medicalise” social deviance as illness, as well as reinforce the ideological prerogatives of capitalism as natural and common sense (for instance, through biomedical interventions focused on the individual rather than the wider social environment).<br />
<br />
The social control function within psy-professional work practices and knowledge claims is reasonably easy to identify and has been a major focus of critical scholars—Marxist and otherwise—since the 1960s (see, e.g., Conrad 1975; Goffman 1961; Rosenhan 1973 ; Scheff 1966 ). The moral judgements that mental health experts make of people’s behaviour under the claims of scientific neutrality and objectivity allow them to sanction forms of deviance which run contrary to the prevailing social order. For example, Szasz (cited in Freidson 1988: 249) stated in 1964 that “agoraphobia is illness because one should not be afraid of open spaces. Homosexuality is an illness because heterosexuality is the social norm. Divorce is illness because it signals failure of marriage.” Specifically, Marxist contentions of the psy-professions as agents of social control focus on the ways in which these experts contribute to the alienation of people from their own creative abilities. These experts utilise their knowledge claims on human behaviour to depoliticise attempts at social transformation at the group and community level, in turn acknowledging only individual solutions as possible. Consequently, states Parker (2007 : 2), this “psychologisation of social life” performed by mental health workers “encourages people to think that the only possible change they could ever make would be in the way they dress and present themselves to others.”<br />
<br />
Ultimately, however, a Marxist critique of political economy needs to consider the ideological function in the context of the underlying economic prerogatives of capitalism. The social control of populations considered as deviant and labelled as “mentally ill” by the psy-professions serves specific requirements of the market, whether this is through the profiteering from individual treatments, the expansion of professional services, or the reinforcement of work and family regimes in the name of appropriate treatment outcomes. In his critical work on the history of psychiatry, Scull (1993: 10) argues that the emergence of the psychiatric profession can be explained as a result of the changes in the social organisation of deviance brought about by new market relations. He asserts that the rise of industrial society required a more complex response to social deviance; there was especially a need to adequately control such groups—who were no longer tied to the land, but instead “free” to sell their labour to the emerging bourgeois—and separate the non-able bodied (e.g., the sick, disabled, poor, alcoholic, vagrant, and elderly) from the “healthy” population. Thus, the growth of the asylums for “the mad” is understood as an economically efficient means by which groups of deviants could be physically separated from the rest of society and kept under close surveillance by new professional authorities (Scull 1993: 33). In Scull’s (1993 : 29) words,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>the main driving force behind the rise of a segregative response to madness (and to other forms of deviance) can ... be asserted to lie in the effects of a mature capitalist market economy and the associated ever more thoroughgoing commercialization of existence.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Therefore, it is ultimately the goals of capitalism which directs industrial society’s response to social deviance and, in this way, brings about the formation of the medical attendants/mad doctors/alienists who would in time become the psychiatric profession.<br />
<br />
A Marxist approach to understanding the mental health system necessarily has to analyse professional organisation, discourse, and practice, at both the economic and ideological levels. As Brown (1974 : 17–18, emphases original) remarks, a Marxist approach to the psy-professions helps us make sense of “''the manifestation, on a huge, technological basis, of capitalist economic relations,” so we can then “understand the role of psychology and psychiatry as mediating the economic-class structure and the personal emotional structure.''” Psychiatry’s claims to “scientific practice,” remarks Scull (1993: 392–393), means it has “great potential value in legitimizing and depoliticizing efforts to regulate social life and to keep the recalcitrant and socially disruptive in line.” However, this medicalisation of deviance by the mental health experts should not be treated as fundamentally distinct and separate from the economic base that 34 Psychiatric Hegemony determines the specific form—as well as the groups—who are regulated under such regimes of power. As Parker (2014: 167) states of psychotherapy, a Marxist analysis allows us to understand the profession within capitalism “as an apparatus that not only participates in the production of value but also ... [becomes] more important to the production, circulation and management, in both the State and civil society, of subjectivity.” In this manner, the following section will analyse a range of examples from the history of psychiatry, highlighting both their specific techniques for managing subjectivity as agents of social control and the production of economic value from their operations.<br />
<br />
==Industrialisation and the Mad Doctors==<br />
<br />
Official historians of psychiatry see Philippe Pinel’s unchaining of the mad in Paris in 1793 as a highly symbolic moment when the insane were, for the first time, recognised as human beings in need of therapeutic intervention rather than imprisonment and mistreatment (see, e.g., Lieberman 2015: 35–36). It is the formal beginning of the psychiatric profession, a new group of medical experts whose vocation will be to care for and treat the mentally ill as opposed to punish them. Pinel’s traitement moral (known in the Anglo-American world as “moral treatment” or “moral therapy”) was hailed as a truly humanitarian approach to the management of the mad which reflected the rationalism of the new industrial world. Rather than forwarding an organic aetiology for madness, patient case studies suggested to Pinel that particular life events or trauma was at the root of their disturbed behaviour. It was felt that “moral” means could correct the actions of the insane through a more understanding response involving listening to patient complaints, reasoning with them, and showing kindness (Porter 2002: 104). Pinel’s philosophy placed an emphasis on the humane care of the insane with the goal of returning them to “rationality” and good health through respectful, therapeutic discourse. His own commentaries on moral treatment, however, cautioned that “successful treatment depended on the employment of psychological terror and fear to gain the compliance of the insane” (Kirk et al. 2013: 45). This importance placed on threats, compliance, and the reform of character found at the very birth of psychiatric practice is something that we continue to see in the “therapeutic” setting today. Fundamental here is the emergence of new understandings of madness which closely align with the changing forces of production and the management of social deviance. Psychiatry’s success is dependent on the profession’s usefulness in serving the industrial order, including the demands of the bourgeoisie for a highly regulated and compliant workforce. It is more than coincidence that the profession remains—without any trace of irony—insistent on aligning their earliest developments with the appropriately named system of “moral treatment.”<br />
<br />
Following Pinel, William Tuke and his fellow Quakers implemented the principles of moral treatment at their York Retreat in England. At this rural residence patients were to be treated humanely and with dignity; a minimum of physical restraint was utilised, instead the custodians encouraged various forms of behavioural adjustment. However, transgressions from acceptable standards of “normal” and proper conduct would not be tolerated. Rather than be idle, patients were expected to take up work and hobbies, adhere to good manners at all times, to dress appropriately, and be considerate in social interactions with staff, other patients, and visitors to the Retreat (Foucault 1988a: 241–278). With a ratio of one staff member to every three patients, Tuke claimed a 70 per cent recovery rate among patients at the establishment (Whitaker 2010b: 24).<br />
<br />
Contemporary commentators continue to see moral treatment and the practices at the York Retreat as examples of what good mental health care should be (see, e.g., Borthwick et al. 2001). Its underlying philosophy, however, reflected wider puritanical responses of Victorian society to the socially deviant. A reform of character under industrial capitalism was not only desirable but also necessary; by force of will, the irrational citizen would now be made rational again. As Foucault (1988a: 241–278) has discussed, moral treatment was a shift in the management of those labelled as “mad” in as much as the new disciplinary apparatus enforced a closer surveillance of personal conduct, so as to instil obedience to authority in a new set of societal relations. Kirk et al. (2013: 45) have noted of the Retreat that it was still an institution that confined people against their will and utilised a system of rewards and punishments to enforce “psychological and physical conformity.” Making progress in this system of moral treatment, state Kirk et al. (2013: 45),<br />
<br />
<blockquote>required obedience and proper behavior by the patients. Failure to follow the rules dramatically undermined the patient’s social status, institutional privileges, and personal wellbeing by the forced transfer to more remote and less respectable and comfortable wards. Total control by the alienists/ moral managers over the physical and social environment of the inmates was the mechanism that imposed discipline.</blockquote><br />
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This moral management of social deviance was appropriated and replicated by the medical attendants/mad doctors in the larger asylum system over the course of the nineteenth century. Mass incarceration in such facilities effectively facilitated, “sweeping from the streets the poor, the indigent, the mad and the homeless, [and] unsightly beggars” (Breggin 1993: 145), yet at the same time offered a philosophy of care and treatment which emphasised humanitarianism and the potential for recovery. Effectively, the mad doctors succeeded in gaining jurisdiction over the mentally ill through a convincing medical rhetoric on mental disease, even though, as Abbott (cited in Kirk et al. 2013: 9) notes, “[o]f its treatments, only incarceration had any effect, and that made the psychiatrists little different from the jailers they had replaced, despite their reference to the medical model of science, treatment and cure.”<br />
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The custodians of the emerging asylum system offered a more sophisticated form of social control consistent with the complexities of the industrial order. It is interesting in this respect that the early proponents of moral treatment were religious orders from whom the mad doctors/alienists appropriated their methods—a move from religion to psychiatry as the moral authority for the scientific age. As Abbott (1988: 298) further comments, the early success of the profession is based on its promise to adjust individuals to the new social order. “From its first interest in prevention and indeed from the moral therapy era,” he writes (Abbott 1988: 298, emphasis added),<br />
<br />
<blockquote>psychiatry had been fascinated by the relation of the individual to society. The psychiatric concept of prevention attributed nervous and mental disease to failure of adjustment between individual and society, and assumed successful adjustment would prevent disease. ''Adjustment underlay every application of psychiatry to social control; young people must be adjusted to the orderly world, soldiers must be adjusted to trench warfare, workers must be adjusted to factories.''</blockquote><br />
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Foucault (1988b: 180) reiterates Abbott’s point when he states that “[f ] rom the outset, psychiatry has had as its project to be a function of social order.” The mad doctors’ control of jurisdiction over those labelled as “insane” was only possible through constructing a medical narrative which reflected and responded to the social and economic concerns of the ruling elites. This is further stressed by Foucault (1988b : 180–181, emphasis original) when he puts himself in the shoes of the alienist/psychiatric profession as they emerge in the nineteenth century;<br />
<br />
<blockquote>everywhere society is meeting a mass of problems, in the street, at work, in the family, etc. – and we psychiatrists are the functionaries of social order. It is up to us to make good these disorders. We have a function in public hygiene. That is the true vocation of psychiatry. And that is its true context, its destiny.</blockquote><br />
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A useful example of psychiatry’s expanding moral role with industrial society can be seen in Fig. 2.1 which shows an original record of incarceration for the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (in the city of Weston, West Virginia), from when it opened in 1864 until 1889. Reasons for admission include “bad whiskey,” “desertion by husband,” “immoral life,” “laziness,” “novel reading,” “politics,” and “uterine derangement”.<br />
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'''Fig. 2.1''' Reasons for Admission to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum,<br />
1864–1889<br />
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In the name of “public hygiene,” behaviour considered as deviant or threatening to the industrial elites was pathologised by the mad doctors. This included what Szasz (2000: 35) refers to as one of “the most commonly diagnosed and most enthusiastically treated mental disease[s] in the history of medicine,” namely masturbatory insanity. As the label suggests, the profession theorised that masturbation was not only an unhygienic and deviant behaviour but one which led to insanity and even suicide (Szasz 2000: 36). Still being offered for the “sufferer” as late as the 1930s, treatment options included “restraining devices and mechanical appliances, circumcision, cautery of the genitals, clitoridectomy, and castration” (Szasz 2000: 36). Widely recognised as the founder of British psychiatry, Henry Maudsley was particularly vocal in his disdain for those engaging in such behaviour; “[t]he sooner [the masturbator] sinks to his degraded rest,” opined Maudsley (cited in Szasz 2000: 36), “the better for the world which is well rid of him.” This example allows us to identify specific economic and ideological concerns of the ruling classes embedded in the construction of the mental illness. As Szasz (2000: 35) has noted, masturbation was useful to psychiatric expansionism insofar as the “disorder” could be potentially applied to the entire population. Children and adults, males and females could all be caught in the masturbatory insanity net; the classification was a clear case of the mad doctors medicalising deviant behaviour. It was also a good example of the expansion of psychiatric jurisdiction through the medicalisation of sex and sexualities.<br />
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Further, it is possible to discern here more specific needs to reinforce the family unit as well as productivity within the labour force. As White (2009: 20–21) has outlined, the claimed physical manifestations of masturbatory insanity (including baldness, stammering, blindness, and skin disease) were used as “a means of social control over the activities of men” (White 2009: 21). Sexual activity was to be confined to reproduction; masturbation was associated with an idleness that would not be tolerated in industrial society. Additionally, the burgeoning of ideas on eugenics—avidly taken up by psychiatry (Chap. 7)—suggested that the alleged greater susceptibility of the working classes to insanity was the result of an evolutionary trend which would continue unless abated by compulsory sterilisation of the “mad.” Castration for masturbatory insanity was therefore theorised as “hygienic” in halting the reproduction of “inferior stock.” For example, the well-known Pennsylvanian gynaecologist, William Goodell, was of the opinion in 1882 that “sound policy” in the future would be “to stamp out insanity by castrating all the insane men and spaying all the insane women,” a view shared by the editor of the Texas Medical Journal who also believed that the “treatment” would have the additional benefit of stopping insane men from masturbating (cited in Whitaker 2010b: 57–58).<br />
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Women who deviated from their primary roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers were a particular target for the masturbatory insanity label. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the profession began specialising in female “mental illnesses” such as hysteria and nymphomania. The prerogatives of industrial capitalism dictated that a woman’s place was in the home, and psychiatry reinforced these patriarchal norms through the social control of women who deviated from the prescribed gender role (Chap. 5). Isaac Baker Brown of the Obstetrical Society of London, for example, was a firm believer that female madness was primary caused by masturbation, suggesting that symptoms could be detected in those women who desired work and were indifferent to their domestic obligations (Showalter 1980: 176–177). From 1859, he performed clitoridectomies on women and girls (as young as ten years old) for a variety of deviations including a 20-year old who disobeyed her mother and was a serious reader, a woman who was “forward and open” with men and had never had an offer of marriage, and a unmarried dressmaker with digestive problems (Showalter 1980: 177). Brown’s surgical mutilations were particularly recommended for uncooperative wives, with Showalter (1980: 177) noting that he “urged clitoridectomy for women seeking divorce and believed that the operation would make them more contented, and certainly more manageable, wives.” It is recorded that this specific surgical intervention did not vanish from asylums until the 1950s (Whitaker 2010b : 79).<br />
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In another ironic twist in the history of mental illness, at the same time as psychiatry was utilising radical interventions to stop disobedient women from masturbating and gaining sexual pleasure outside of the confines of heterosexual marriage, there were colleagues in private practice who—in the name of psychiatric treatment and advances in medicine—were masturbating their “frigid” and matrimonially unsatisfied “hysterical” patients to orgasm. As Maines (1999 ) has outlined, the “treatment” of middle-class women labelled as “hysterical” was highly profitable for the profession and one which was assisted at the end of the nineteenth century by the introduction of a new “medical aid” and future sex toy, the vibrator. Though seemingly contradictory, both practices can be understood as part of the various attempts by psychiatry to pathologise and control the female body through preserving the status quo of family, marriage, and the industrial division of labour (Chap. 6).<br />
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==Biological Theory and Physical Treatments==<br />
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As with prisons and workhouses, institutions for those labelled as “mentally ill” expanded considerably over the course of the nineteenth century in the United Kingdom and the United States. Private clinics and practices for middle-class clients grew and diversified as the century progressed, while large publically funded asylums were built and filled with the working classes. In 1850, there were only 7140 people (4.03 per 10,000 of population) in public asylums in the UK, yet by 1954 there were 148,000 (33.45 per 10,000 of population) (Scull 1984: 67). Similar increases were witnessed in the United States, with over 550,000 people incarcerated in psychiatric institutions by 1955 (Lieberman 2015 : 154). In the mid-nineteenth century, the poor for the first time outnumbered 2 Marxist Theory and Mental Illness: A Critique of Political... 41 the rich as psychiatric patients (Burstow 2015: 38). Private practice individualised social problems of industrial society as various forms of “neuroses”—especially useful in reinforcing the restricted roles of middle-class women. In contrast, the asylum system utilised various physical “treatments” on groups considered as deviant, problematic, or “unfit” to be let loose in wider society. As Scull (1989: 243) notes, with the introduction of state provision, lower-class families were particularly prone to committing troublesome and decrepit family members to the asylum due to the lack of “resources for coping with the dependant and economically unproductive.” Thus, as industrial society progressed in the nineteenth century, so business and prestige for the emerging mental health profession flourished.<br />
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However, then as now, there remained problems for the alienists/psychiatrists in constructing a valid knowledge base with which to legitimate and justify such expansion to other branches of medicine (as well as the general public). Another major paradox from the history of psychiatry, highlighted by Scull (1989: 239–249), is that as the numbers of the “insane”—measured by the rates of psychiatric incarceration— increased throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, “curability” rates—measured by the numbers discharged from such facilitates—declined. Between the 1870s and the 1920s, the “recovery” rate in England dropped from 40 to 31 per cent (Shorter 1997: 191). Many inmates were incarcerated in such facilities for the entirety of their lives, with Scull (1989) acknowledging that, by the 1950s, the average stay in a US state psychiatric hospital was over 20 years. During the hundred years of growth in the business of private and public psychiatry between 1850 and 1950, colleagues in other branches of medicine had made considerable advances in their knowledge base. In comparison, the mental health experts had made no noticeable progress. This was in spite of psychiatry developing a wide range of biomedical, physically based treatments for mental disorder, some of which will now be discussed.<br />
<br />
From the end of the eighteenth century, western medicine made specific advances in their activities due to the appropriation of the language and techniques of scientific enquiry. Impressionistic theories of disease that had been based on the idea of “humoral balance” (Scull 2015 : 28) were no longer acceptable in a society built on rationalism and science. This was encapsulated in Rudolf Virchow’s development of the medical “gold standard” for discovering and accurately classifying disease. As Burstow (2015 : 36, emphasis original) outlines,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>According to this new understanding, pain or discomfort per se no longer sufficed for something to qualify as a disease. Real lesion, real cellular pathology observable directly or by tests was to be the standard. While disease might be hypothesized and temporarily entertained in the absence of pathology, to be clear, it was discoveries of pathology alone which confirmed them.</blockquote><br />
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Attempts by the alienist/psychiatric professionals to similarly legitimise their ideas and practices following Virchow’s gold standard of medicine are encapsulated in the observational and classificatory work of the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin—considered as the “father of modern psychiatry” (Cohen 2014a: 440)—in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Kraepelin’s close observations and recording of life histories of over a thousand incarcerated asylum patients led him to theorise that mental disease was caused by discrete, physical entities that incapacitated the normal working of the brain. He developed successive editions of the Textbook of Psychiatry (Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie) which outlined his findings and delineated different varieties of mental disorder, including his original descriptions of praecox (later relabelled as schizophrenia) and manic-depression (Cohen 2014a: 440–441). Thus, Kraepelin’s work was a successful attempt to promote the idea of a “scientific psychiatry”—that is, a branch of medicine which followed the scientific method and biological theory of their colleagues in other sub-disciplines. As a result of his work, mental disease was firmly established as a disease of the brain, and various treatments aimed at this human organ were progressed under a scientific ethos of hypothesis testing, experimentation, and evaluation. Only one omission from Virchow’s gold standard continued to haunt the psychiatric profession, and that was the absence of the discovery of any definite physical pathology. Theories could be entertained, according to Virchow, but not confirmed without real evidence of mental disease. As with those who followed him, Burstow (2015: 43) notes that Kraepelin’s ideas on mental pathology hung on assumptions—rather than definite proof—of linkage “between symptoms, etiology, and prognosis.” This did not, however, stop psychiatry experimenting on the bodies of those incarcerated in the hope of, retrospectively, proving aetiology.<br />
<br />
The physician Benjamin Rush (a signatory to the US Declaration of Independence) was an early believer in the physical aetiology of mental illness. In the 1890s, the man who would become known as “the father of American psychiatry” (his face still appears on the APA emblem) announced his latest cure for madness, the “tranquilizer chair.” Whitaker (2010b: 16) explains the workings of this invention,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Once strapped into the chair, lunatics could not move at all—their arms were bound, their wrists immobilized, their feet clamped together—and their sight was blocked by a wooden contraption confining the head. A bucket was placed beneath the seat for defecation, as patients would be restrained for long periods at a time.</blockquote><br />
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Rush was a man of science, he believed that insanity was caused by the irregular flow of blood vessels in the brain. Thus, he argued that the tranquilizer chair calmed and steadied the blood supply of the insane. The device “binds and confines every part of the body,” stated Rush (cited in Whitaker 2010b : 16),<br />
<br />
<blockquote>By keeping the trunk erect, it lessens the impetus of blood toward the brain ... [the tranquilizer chair’s] effects have been truly delightful to me. It acts as a sedative to the tongue and temper as well as to the blood vessels.</blockquote><br />
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Along with the bloodletting, cold baths and spinning devices that were then popular in “calming” and “curing” the mad (see Whitaker 2010b: 1–38), Rush’s new invention was popular back in the asylums of Europe where the attendants were particularly impressed at how the tranquilizer chair could make the most stubborn of inmates “gentle and submissive” following only one or two days of chair therapy (Whitaker 2010b: 16). These early examples of torture disguised as “treatment” by psychiatry developed further in the early part of the twentieth century as they appropriated physically invasive techniques from other branches of medicine.<br />
<br />
As the “curability” rates continued to drop and scientific psychiatry faced mounting challenges from Freud’s “dynamic psychiatry”—which appeared to offer more potential for positive mental health outcomes (see Shorter 1997: 145–189)—the desire of the public mental health system for credibility intensified in the first few decades of the twentieth century. At this time, public psychiatry adopted the veneer of general medicine by strategic name changing (“asylums” became “hospitals,” “alienists” became “psychiatrists”, and so on) as well as appropriating physical apparatus (e.g., ambulances and morgues) and interventions (such as drugs and surgery) from other parts of medicine. As Whitaker (2010b: 73–74) has noted, the new psychiatric treatments were different from previous alienist interventions in that they actually “worked”—through permanently damaging the brain. Indeed, Walter Freeman who popularized the transorbital lobotomy in the United States advocated for the procedure as a part of what he called “brain-damaging therapeutics” (Burstow 2015: 52).<br />
<br />
Before thorazine appeared on the market in the 1950s (see discussion below), biomedical psychiatry experimented on the socially deviant with a variety of dangerous drug “treatments.” These included various poisons such as camphor and metrazol, as well as insulin administered at very high dosages to invoke seizures and comas in the patient (Whitaker 2010b: 91–96). Purposely taking the patient “to the doors of death” (as one physician put it (Whitaker 2010b: 91)), such treatments were considered a success and carried out widely in the psychiatric institutions of the 1930s and 1940s. The hospital staff observed that the inmates became quieter and more obedient following such “treatment,” while the patients themselves lived in palpable terror of further interventions of this nature (Whitaker 2010b: 91). The “treatments” remained dangerous, causing not only brain damage for many but also occasionally death. Meanwhile, some psychiatrists remained concerned that these interventions were less than permanent and did not signify a long-term cure for chronic mental illness.<br />
<br />
Two forms of “physical therapy” on the brain that tended to produce more permanent effects (we might say damage) were ECT (more commonly known as “electroshock treatment”) and lobotomy. Along with drug treatments, both of these interventions in modified forms are still in use today. Crucial here in understanding the perceived “effectiveness” 2 Marxist Theory and Mental Illness: A Critique of Political... 45 of these treatments—despite a lack of any evidence for the biological aetiology of mental disease—is to highlight the ways in which they successfully adjusted the behaviour of the socially deviant in a way which allowed for discharge back to the family and even a return to work. The treatments are not an advance in psychiatric medicine, but nevertheless useful in modifying inappropriate behaviour in a more permanent manner, in turn aiding capitalist prerogatives for productivity in the family and the labour force. Both “treatments” would eventually take a back seat to “antipsychotic” drugs, which some scholars argue perform essentially the same task as ECT and psychosurgery in damaging the brain, yet do so in a cheaper and seemingly more effective manner (see, e.g., Breggin 1991; Breggin and Cohen 1999 ; Moncrieff 2009; Whitaker 2010a).<br />
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To understand these physical interventions as forms of social control of deviant groups, it is useful to consider those who were first forced to have the treatments, and the groups who have been subsequently prioritised for them. ECT was first performed in 1938 on an Italian homeless man rounded up by the police in Rome. The inspiration for placing electrodes on the forehead of psychiatric inmates and giving them electric shocks was Italian psychiatrist Ugo Cerletti’s visit to a local slaughterhouse where he observed pigs being stunned with electric jolts, making them more manageable for butchers to kill. After being shocked with 110 volts through the brain, Cerletti’s first human guinea pig experienced a seizure and subsequently pleaded with the psychiatrist not to inflict the “treatment” on him again (by this point the vagrant was under the—not too surprising—impression that the psychiatrist was going to kill him); Cerletti announced ECT a triumph (Whitaker 2010b: 96–98). Then as now, the procedure produces a convulsion or grand mal seizure (van Daalen-Smith et al. 2014: 206) which appears to “calm” the patient and inhibit the behaviour conceptualised by mental health workers as various forms of “psychoses” or “autism.” The psychiatric profession remains baffled as to how ECT works on the body, yet a recent review of the available evidence stated that the only known effects are permanent brain dysfunction and a higher risk of death (Read and Bentall 2010 ).<br />
<br />
As with the drug treatments that preceded it, ECT has been a nonetoo-subtle method of psychiatric torture which demands conformity from psychiatric inmates, either by threat or as a result of the intervention itself; as Burstow (2015: 55) reminds us, the Nazi doctors were early adopters of ECT for use on concentration camp inmates. From the earliest experimentations with ECT, it appears that psychiatry was quite aware that electroshock resulted in brain trauma, generally feeling that this was no bad thing. ECT-inflicted patients were observed as experiencing amnesia, being disorientated, lethargic, and apathetic; some noted that their whole intellect was lowered by the “treatment” (Whitaker 2010b: 98). This was all seen as helpful for the patient, for as one physician (cited in Whitaker 2010b: 99) noted, “the greater the damage [to the brain], the more likely the remission of psychotic symptoms.”<br />
<br />
It was the perceived intellect of the inmate population that particularly marked them out for ECT. Noted pioneer, Dr Abraham Myerson (cited in Burstow 2015 : 55), bluntly stated of candidates for ECT that<br />
<br />
<blockquote>[t]hese people have ... more intelligence than they can handle, and the reduction of intelligence is an important factor in the curative process. I say this without cynicism. The fact is that some of the very best cures that one gets are in those individuals whom one reduces almost to amentia [simple-mindedness].</blockquote><br />
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ECT has experienced a recent resurgence, with psychiatrists now keen to target deviant young people labelled as “depressed” or “autistic” for shock treatment if they “fail to respond” to drug interventions (Breggin and Breggin 1998: 195; see also Tomazin 2015 ; van Daalen-Smith et al. 2014). Leonard Roy Frank (cited in Mills 2014: 93), a survivor of ECT, rhetorically asks, “[w]hy is it that 10 volts of electricity applied to a political prisoner’s private parts [genitalia] is seen as torture while 10 or 15 times that amount applied to the brain is called ‘treatment’?” Because, I would argue, the threat of ECT is effective in policing those who fail to perform their family, school, work, or consumer roles in western society. Yet, even for some of those in the profession, the treatment remained imprecise as a biomedical intervention and it soon appeared that ECT would be superseded by Egas Moniz’s Nobel Prize-winning “miracle cure” of the lobotomy (Whitaker 2010b : 107–108).<br />
<br />
Inspired by observations of World War I veterans who had suffered prefrontal brain damage, neurosurgeons suggested that operating on the brains of those labelled as mentally ill could dull the emotions and reduce the intellectual capacity in a more permanent and specific way than ECT had been able to. Egas Moniz theorised that pathological thoughts were “fixed” in the “celluloconnective systems” in the prefrontal lobes of the brain, thus the “cure” for mental disorder was to “destroy” these connections through psychosurgical interventions (Whitaker 2010b : 107–108). Like the majority of subsequent lobotomies, Moniz’s first procedure was carried out on a woman (in this case, a former prostitute). As Whitaker (2010b: 113) describes the operation, Moniz “drilled holes into her skull, used a syringe to squirt absolute alcohol onto the exposed white fibers, which killed tissue through dehydration, and then sewed her back up.” The woman was subsequently returned to the asylum, where the psychiatrists reported that she remained in a calm state. Following this “successful” operation, further prefrontal operations on the incarcerated population were performed, and by 1936, Moniz was advertising his drilling procedure as demonstrating marked improvements in all of the operated patients (including the observation that post-operative manicdepressives had become “less emotional”) (Whitaker 2010b : 114).<br />
<br />
During the 1940s and 1950s, Moniz’s psychosurgery was made popular in America through the refinements made by Walter Freeman and his neurosurgeon assistant James Watts. Their first patient was again female—a 63-year-old woman who Freeman felt dominated her husband and who he described as a “master of bitching” (cited in Whitaker 2010b : 115). Freeman and Watts were pleased with the results of the operation, writing in the Southern Medical Journal that the woman was now able to carry out household chores and appeared to her husband, “more normal than she had ever been” (cited in Whitaker 2010b: 116). By the end of 1936, the physicians had operated on a further 16 women and 3 men (Whitaker 2010b: 116). Post-operative evaluations of patient behaviour were almost exclusively carried out by staff at the psychiatric facilities where the procedures had been performed, focusing on the social norms of “appearance, work, and activity levels” (Getz 2009: 145). Not surprisingly, the results were considered overwhelming positive. Freeman (cited in Getz 2009: 145) himself was especially proud that, as with ECT, intellect and creative functioning was permanently curtailed by the surgical procedure, declaring that “[n]one of our patients has written a book, designed a house, composed a piece of music or invented a salable gadget.” The particular targets for lobotomy were the black community as well as uncooperative women. This issue is highlighted in Freeman’s own recollections (cited in Burstow 2015: 53–54) of lobotomising a black woman who had been confined in a padded cell at the psychiatric hospital for some years: “when it came time to transfer her ... for operation,” he recalls,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>five attendants had to restrain her while the nurse gave her the hypodermic [injection]. The operation was successful in that there were no further outbreaks ... From that day after ... (and we demonstrated this repeatedly to the ward personnel), we could grab [the patient] by the throat, twist her arm, tickle her in the ribs and slap her behind without eliciting anything more than a wide grin and hoarse chuckle</blockquote><br />
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As with all of psychiatry’s physical interventions, the lobotomy “worked” for capitalism in as far as they pacified troublesome groups for good. The left-wing filmmaker and actor Frances Farmer was but one of many political victims of Freeman’s psychosurgery. As Ussher (2011: 71; see also Getz 2009 : 146) has recounted, Farmer was originally committed to Washington State Hospital by her mother in 1944 for “drinking, smoking, swearing and having sex with men,” she was eventually lobotomised and returned home in 1950. The same fate was visited on John F. Kennedy’s older sister, Rosemary Kennedy, by her father in 1941, following his concerns for her aggressive behaviour and the fear that she might become pregnant (Getz: 2009 : 146; see also Burstow 2015 : 54).<br />
<br />
Whitaker (2010b: 123) notes that the majority of lobotomised patients were able to leave the hospital, leading to the phrase “lobotomy gets ‘em home” becoming popular in the media as news of the “miracle cure” spread. The surgery was increasingly argued to be useful for not only psychotic conditions such as schizophrenia and manic-depression but an ever-widening variety of mental disorders (including anxiety and depression) as well as for dealing with “criminals, psychopaths, and sexual perverts” (Valenstein 1980: 96). The operation was even recommended to American housewives who were finding the tedium of homemaking and childrearing too boring to cope with. As late as 1980, Valenstein (1980 : 2 Marxist Theory and Mental Illness: A Critique of Political... 49 90) was suggesting that such women remained appropriate cases for psychosurgery. He states of one typical case for the procedure:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Household chores such as washing-up or polishing a table were completely impossible for her, as they took so long and caused her such distress. Her husband and mother were, therefore, forced into running her home and, on medical advice, her two children were at boarding school.</blockquote><br />
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ECT, antidepressants, and psychotherapy all had a limited effect on this woman’s behaviour—each time she “relapsed” after a few weeks—and Valenstein (1980: 90–91) suggested that in such “hard to reach” cases, psychosurgery would still make sense as a part of modern psychiatric treatment. Here we see the continuation of physical therapies as forms of social control; the appropriate gender role for women as mothers and wives being reinforced through the “scientific” psychiatric discourse and “treatment” technologies of the mental health system (Chap. 6).<br />
<br />
Freeman eventually became frustrated with the amount of time the Moniz-designed brain-drilling operations took and his reliance on an assistant to anesthetise the patient. Instead he devised a simpler, cheaper and less time-consuming operation which he boasted could be done in 20 minutes (Whitaker 2010b: 133). The procedure required no anaesthetic—instead he used three successive shocks of ECT to pacify the patient—and could be administered by any psychiatrist after only a few hours of training. Freeman’s infamous “transorbital lobotomy” innovation has been described by Whitaker (2010b : 133) as follows:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Freeman attacked the frontal lobes through the eye sockets. He would use an ice pick to poke a hole in the bony orbit above each eye and then insert it seven centimeters deep into the brain. At that point, he would move behind the patient’s head and pull up on the ice pick to destroy the frontal lobe nerve fibers.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Freeman (cited in Whitaker 2010b: 133) even felt it unnecessary to sterilise the ice pick and thereby “waste time with that ‘germ crap.’”<br />
<br />
Consequently, Burstow (2015: 53) notes that Freeman’s innovation further increased medical interest in the procedure, due to its ability to maximise “doctor’s profits, [reduce] hospital expenses, and dramatically 50 Psychiatric Hegemony [increase] the number ‘served.’” Thanks to the claims of high “curability” attributed to the transorbital lobotomy by the media and medical journals at the time, over 20,000 social deviants in America alone were lobotomised in the 1950s (Whitaker 2010b: 132). Research articles followed the lobotomists’ claims in suggesting that the procedure was a painless, minor, low-risk operation which brought about significant improvement in the patient’s behaviour. Over time, however, it became clear that what this implied was that the lobotomy made the inmate more manageable for hospital staff. As Burstow (2015: 52) comments on the subjective judgements made of the lobotomised victim, “behaviour presenting less problems for staff [qualified] as ‘improvement.’ Indeed, people who could once write poetry and now could do little but giggle were being declared better.” Whitaker (2010b: 131) agrees, stating that “any change in behavior [of the lobotomised inmate] that resulted in the patients’ becoming more manageable (or less of a bother), could be judged as an improvement.” It is unsurprising then that, as Getz (2009: 145) remarks, under such conditions the procedure was increasingly used as a form of punishment by psychiatric staff for unruly behaviour or for those who had not been appropriately pacified by doses of ECT. In fact, Freeman was personally convinced that the more the patient resisted his ice-pick therapy, the more necessary it was that they should receive it (Whitaker 2010b: 133).<br />
<br />
Similar to the current expansion of drug treatments for ever-younger groups of deviant, Freeman’s evangelical zeal for the lobotomy led him to operate on 11 young people in the 1950s, including one just four years old (Whitaker 2010b: 135). Explaining his rational for lobotomising children, he admitted it was simply an easier and more efficient method of behaviour modification. “It is easier,” Freeman (cited in Whitaker 2010b: 136) argued, “to smash the world of fantasy, to cut down upon the emotional interest that the child pays to his inner experiences, than it is to redirect his behavior into socially acceptable channels.” It was by this point a typical statement of psychiatric arrogance that subsequently left 2 of the 11 lobotomised young people dead (Whitaker 2010b : 136). Eventually, Freeman—a psychiatrist with no formal surgical training or qualifications—had killed too many patients for the medical establishment to accept and was banned from performing any further lobotomies in the late 1960s. It is estimated that over 40,000 psychiatric patients were victims of psychosurgery while it was fashionable in mid-twentiethcentury America (Getz 2009: 147). Subsequently, the “curability” claims made by psychiatry were, once again, found to be groundless. An example is offered by Whitaker (2010b: 135) in describing the reasons for the popularity of the procedure at the Stockton State Hospital in California; the lobotomy could turn “resistive, destructive” inmates into “passive” ones (Braslow, cited in Whitaker 2010b: 135). While a useful method of social control, it was no miracle cure for mental illness; it is estimated that 12 per cent of those lobotomised at the hospital died from the procedure (usually through bleeding in the brain), many more were left severely and permanently disabled, and only 23 per cent ever left the hospital (Whitaker 2010b: 135).<br />
<br />
As with ECT, the brutality of the lobotomy has not stopped subsequent attempts by the profession to make it popular again. In the political turmoil of the 1970s, psychiatrists suggested that black people should be targeted for psychosurgery (Burstow 2015 : 54), while practitioners in the 1980s considered that the intervention might be of benefit for those suffering from anorexia nervosa, ADHD, and autism (Getz 2009 : 148). The latest version of psychosurgery is called “neuromodulation” or “deep brain stimulation,” and is recommended for those labelled with depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder (Getz 2009 : 147).<br />
<br />
While the physical treatments outlined above attempted to offer psychiatry a veneer of biomedical progress to legitimate their activities, they can be more accurately understood as instruments of torture and oppression to more efficiently control those considered as problematic and troublesome to capitalist society. Yet Whitaker (2010b: 127–130) also notes that there were important economic motives for the state and the psychiatric profession to continue experimenting on inmates in search of a more efficient way of managing deviant populations. This included the need for a cheaper form of “care” that could be performed outside the hospital system—an intervention which would address the mounting fiscal crisis caused by the continued funding of large psychiatric hospitals. Mythologised as yet another miracle cure for those labelled as “mentally ill,” this would eventuate in the popular promotion of drugs (or “psychopharmaceuticals”) within the mental health system, which will be discussed in the next section.<br />
<br />
==The Drugs “Revolution”==<br />
<br />
Through the maximisation of profits for pharmaceutical corporations, the contemporary popularity for prescribing drugs is perhaps the most obvious and salient example of psychiatry serving the economic base of capitalism. However, this phenomenon can also be understood as the profession performing its ideological role as a part of the superstructure of capitalism, through the continued individualisation of political discontent and management of the population through chemical agents. The past few decades have witnessed a substantial increase in the consumption of psychiatric drugs across western society. For example, in America, the number of children medicated with ADHD-related drugs (chiefly Ritalin) grew from 150,000 at the end of the 1970s to 3.5 million in 2012 (Whitaker and Cosgrove 2015: 91–92). Similarly in the UK, Moncrieff (2009: 3) notes that the prescriptions for antidepressants increased “by 243 % in the ten years up to 2002.” The explosion in profits for pharmaceutical companies over this period has been summated by Whitaker (2010a: 320–321):<br />
<br />
<blockquote>In 1985, outpatient sales of antidepressants and antipsychotics in the United States amounted to $503 million. Twenty-three years later, U.S. sales of antidepressants and antipsychotics reached $24.2 billion, nearly a fiftyfold increase. Antipsychotics—a class of drugs previously seen as extremely problematic in kind, useful only in severely ill patients—were the top revenue-producing class of drugs in 2008, ahead even of the cholesterol-lowering agents. Total sales of all psychotropic drugs in 2008 topped $40 billion. Today—and this shows how crowded the drugstore has become—one in every eight Americans takes a psychiatric drug on a regular basis.</blockquote><br />
<br />
As a result of what Burstow (2015: 167) has termed psychiatry’s “march to Pharmageddon,” there have been concerns from scholars both inside and outside the psy-professions that drug prescribing is getting out of hand. Specific critiques have suggested that mental health experts may be medicalising evermore aspects of our everyday behaviour as mental illnesses (e.g., our “hoarding,” drinking, gaming, grieving, gambling, and so on) so as to prescribe us more drugs; that the professional bodies are far too cosy with pharmaceutical companies and have consequently lost sight of their duty of care to their clients; that the potential health harms of long-term drug taking have been neglected in the hype around the latest “miracle pill” appearing on the market (e.g., Whitaker (2010a: 354) notes that those labelled as “mentally ill” are “now dying twenty-five years earlier than their peers”); and that other therapies are being ignored in favour of the quick-fix chemical cure.<br />
<br />
This section demythologises the idea of the “chemical cure” for mental illness by concentrating on the changing economic and political goals of capitalism since the mid-twentieth century. This analysis demonstrates that there can never be a “magic bullet” for mental disorder when aetiology has not been established, thus we have to understand drug treatments as a continuation of the biomedical technologies of control I have discussed so far in this chapter. As with other physical interventions, psychopharmaceuticals can also be understood as a further attempt to legitimise the psychiatric profession as a relevant branch of medicine. A critical evaluation of psychotropic interventions then should not focus on their effectiveness in “treating” or “curing” mental disorders, but rather analyse how this metaphorical placebo aids the survival and expansion of the psychiatric profession beyond the asylum walls. This discussion will break with much of the previous scholarship in the area by arguing that the profit-making ventures of biomedical psychiatry—as reflected in the growth of the new psycho-drugs culture—are in fact secondary to capitalism’s desire for the closer surveillance, monitoring, and moral management of the general population in neoliberal society, a function that the psy-professions are most suited for.<br />
<br />
Official historians of psychiatry view the introduction of the drug chlorpromazine (marketed as thorazine in America) in the 1950s as a turning point of revolutionary proportions in the treatment and care of the mentally ill. Shorter (1997: 246) calls it “the first drug that worked,” while in a chapter titled—in the now familiar irony-free fashion of such writers—“Mother’s Little Helper: Medicine At Last,” Lieberman (2015 : 175, emphasis original) argues that chlorpromazine was “the first ''psychopharmaceutical'' ... a drug providing true therapeutic benefits for a troubled mind.” According to such scholars, this is a breakthrough in psychiatric medicine which can be equated “to the introduction of penicillin in general medicine” (Shorter 1997 : 255). It is the beginning of “the era of psychopharmacology” (Shorter 1997: 255) which, as biomedical knowledge on the workings of the brain has progressed, we continue to reap the rewards of today. For Lieberman (2015: 178), chlorpromazine is the first drug to specially target and reduce the symptoms of psychoses (such as hallucinations and disorganised thinking). As he explains, the effect of the drug on institutionalised patients was dramatic and lasting: “[n]ow they could return home,” he states, “and incredibly, begin to live stable and even purposeful lives. They had a chance to work, to love, and—possibly—to have a family” (Lieberman 2015 : 180). Chlorpromazine was also a significant improvement on previous physical therapies (such as ECT and lobotomy) in terms of being “much less dangerous, and easily tolerated by the patients.” Just over a year after the drug was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1954, Scull (2015: 367) notes that two million people were taking chlorpromazine in America alone. On this basis, the official history of psychiatry suggests that the introduction of chlorpromazine leads to the slow but inevitable end of the asylum era. In the words of Lieberman (2015 : 180), “[i]t is no coincidence that the asylum population began to decline from its peak in the United States in the same year Thorazine was released.” For Shorter (1997), the triumph of chlorpromazine as the first “antipsychotic” drug represents a breakthrough for the psychiatric profession as important as Pinel unchaining the mad 150 years before—it was proof of the biological causation of mental disease and, just as importantly, a safe treatment modularity with which to control, if not cure, the symptoms of severe mental disorder.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, the above picture of the psychopharmaceutical “revolution” does not stand up to closer scrutiny. The available evidence demonstrates that the drugs were—and continue to be—no more useful than previous physical treatments, either in the sense of proving an underlying biological aetiology for mental illness or in terms of the potential harm posed to patients (see, e.g., Breggin and Cohen 1999 ; Burstow 2015; Davies 2013; Kirsch 2009 ; Moncrieff 2009 ; Whitaker 2010a). As Moncrieff (2009 : 1) has outlined,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>there is no real demarcation between previous eras’ psychiatric treatments, and the theories that justified them, and our own; that the need to believe in a cure for psychiatric conditions that drove and sustained people’s faith in insulin coma therapy, ECT, radical surgery, sex hormone therapy and many other bizarre interventions is the strongest impetus behind the use of modern-day psychiatric drugs.</blockquote><br />
<br />
I argue here that the drugs revolution can be understood as a significant success for welfare capitalism, where institutional costs are transformed into profits for pharmaceutical corporations. At the same time, the decline of the welfare state and rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s eventuate in chemical forms of social control largely replacing the institution and other forms of physical constraint as the more subtle and preferred technology for managing deviance in capitalist society. Initially suspicious of drug therapy, the evidence also suggests that psychiatric professionals in fact remained for some time wedded to the institution as their traditional power base and only belatedly turned to drugs as a technique of legitimating their expansion beyond the asylum walls. Thus, the idea of a “drugs revolution” in the twentieth century can be understood as a myth used to retrospectively legitimate the current, dominant treatment modality within the mental health system and the continuance of the psychiatric profession as the dominant group of experts responsible for defining and “treating” mental illness.<br />
<br />
Contrary to psychiatric mythology, the introduction of chlorpromazine to the mental health system happened by accident rather than design, the term “antipsychotic” being later added by pharmaceutical companies to more effectively market the drug to institutional psychiatry and state authorities. Hypothesised as a beneficial anaesthetic for major operations, the drug was originally used by Henri Laborit, a French naval surgeon, for its antihistaminic properties in 1949. The surgeon (cited in Whitaker 2010a: 48) noted that the results of the drug appeared positive in that the patient “felt no pain, no anxiety, and often did not remember his operation.” Thus, Laborit felt chlorpromazine offered a potential improvement on barbiturates and morphine, popularly used as pre-operation anaesthetics at the time. At a medical conference in 1951, he further stated that the drug appeared to produce “a veritable medicinal lobotomy,” and for this reason might also be of use to psychiatry (Laborit, cited in Whitaker 2010a: 49). The following year, Jean Delay and Pierre Deniker, two prominent French psychiatrists, put the drug to the test on patients they had labelled as “psychotic” at St. Anne’s Hospital in Paris (Whitaker 2010a: 49–50). The first patient to be given the drug was a 57-year-old male labourer who had been admitted for “making improvised political speeches in cafes, becoming involved in fights with strangers, and for ... walking around the street with a pot of flowers on his head preaching his love of liberty” (Delay, cited in Shorter 1997: 250). After three weeks of chlorpromazine the psychiatrists discharged the patient, observing a new calmness within him. The authorities were impressed with the results of the drug on the asylum population; while still conscious and responsive to the ward staff, the inmates were much more subdued and quiet. As with ECT and pre-frontal lobotomy, the drug produced a more manageable and compliant patient. The psychiatrists wrote triumphantly of the chlorpromazine-drugged patient in 1952 that “he rarely takes the initiative of asking a question” and, further, “does not express his preoccupations, desires, or preference” (Delay and Deniker, cited in Whitaker 2010a: 50).<br />
<br />
As a quick and cheap substitute for lobotomy, the drug quickly became popular across asylums in Europe. Hans Lehmann, the physician who is often cited as responsible for the introduction of chlorpromazine to North America, admitted he was intrigued by the claim of the research papers and drugs marketing literature that the drug acted “like a chemical lobotomy” (Shorter 1997 : 252). After the implementation of the drug regimen at his Verdun Hospital in Montreal, Lehmann felt chlorpromazine achieved roughly the same results as insulin treatment and ECT but was an improvement on psychosurgery (of which he was an avid supporter) (Moncrieff 2009 : 45). The drug, announced Lehmann, was most useful in managing the psychiatric patient in that it produced an “emotional indifference” in the inmate (cited in Breggin 1991: 55). As Breggin (1991: 55) notes, chlorpromazine was not conceptualised by the profession and business promoters as a cure for mental illness or even an alleviator of symptoms, but rather a pacifier of one’s character. “We have to remember,” stated the psychiatrist E. H. Parsons (cited in Whitaker 2010a: 50–51) in 1955, “that we are not treating diseases with this drug ... We are using a neuropharmacologic agent to produce a specific effect.” That effect has been summated by Breggin (1991: 55, emphasis original) as, “[p]atient’s don’t lose their symptoms, they lose interest in them.”<br />
<br />
Thus, chlorpromazine’s success in sedating patients on the ward was hardly a “revolution” in psychiatric practice. Prior to the 1950s, notes Moncrieff (2009 : 41), other psychotropics were used extensively by the profession both inside and outside the institution; “[i]npatients were frequently prescribed several different drugs simultaneously,” she comments, “and outpatients were also frequently prescribed drugs, mostly barbiturates and stimulants.” Unlike today, this drugging of patients was viewed by the profession as something of an embarrassment; psychiatry was all too aware that such chemical interventions were a form of physical control rather than anything that could be considered as “therapeutic” (Moncrieff 2009: 41). At the time, drugs were not seen by the majority of psychiatrists as central to the future of their practice. For this reason, psychiatrists in America remained, for a time, reticent to use chlorpromazine in their institutions for the simple reason that they already had other physical and chemical treatments which acted in roughly the same manner. Further proof that the drug was no “miracle” pill for mental disorder (as the ''New York Times'' would go on to describe it in the mid1950s) (Whitaker 2010a: 58) is provided by Scull (2015: 367–368), who observes both that the numbers of patients in asylums were falling in many parts of America prior to the introduction of chlorpromazine in the 1950s and that many European countries witnessed no such reductions in patient numbers until the 1970s—many years after the drug had been introduced there. The impreciseness of the correlation between chlorpromazine and deinstitutionalisation has led Scull and other commentators (see, e.g., Whitaker 2010a: 206–207) to a different conclusion—that fiscal considerations of state legislatures took precedent over any claims to effective treatment or the “curability” of those labelled as mentally disordered. The psychiatric institution was no longer economically viable as a holding place for problematic populations, so the hype created around new “neuroleptic” drugs such as chlorpromazine and the possibility of returning patients to “the community” were used in a way which “allowed governments to save money while simultaneously giving their policy a humanitarian gloss” (Scull 1984: 139). As Lieberman (2015: 179) notes, the American success of chlorpromazine was achieved by the pharmaceutical company Smith, Kline & French, who focused their efforts on state governments through the fiscal arguments of “health economics” and “cost-cutting,” rather than promising psychiatry a miraculous cure for mental illness. Together with a successful media campaign (see Whitaker 2010a: 58–61) claiming that chlorpromazine symbolised a “new era of psychiatry,” this tactic worked; within a year of launching the drug, Smith, Kline & French’s total sales increased by over a third (Moncrieff 2009 : 42).<br />
<br />
The success of chlorpromazine was therefore not the result of scientific endeavour and the development of ever-more sophisticated psychiatric practice, but instead social and economic forces beyond the profession— namely, institutions as economically unviable forms of social control, the marketing of drugs by pharmaceutical companies, and the eventual need for the expansion of psychiatry as moral managers of the general population. The success was economic not therapeutic; while no disease had been identified or treated with chlorpromazine, pharmaceutical companies recognised that, with deinstitutionalisation, there was now substantial rewards to be made from the business of community-based mental health care. Meanwhile, governments could justify cuts and closures of the asylums and instead fund outpatients and drug treatments as both cheaper and more “effective” public health interventions. In time, the crisis of deinstitutionalisation facilitated the psychiatric profession’s increased commitment to the biomedical model and the use of drugs as a primary source of medical legitimation for their continued practice and expansion into other arenas of economic and social life. Drugs aided the professional legitimation of mental health work outside the institution (Moncrieff 2009: 49), and a revised history of the “drugs revolution” was constructed to suggest the natural progression of psychiatry as a branch of scientific medicine.<br />
<br />
At first, the post-war expansion of outpatient clinics and community-based mental health teams (often comprising of a variety of social and medical practitioners) appeared to threaten psychiatry’s natural position as the ultimate authority on mental illness. Yet the post-institutional turn to biomedicine and drugs became a useful justification for reinforcing the power of the psychiatrists in these new settings. Only the psychiatrist had the power to prescribe and alter the medications of the patient, and with the growing mythology that the drugs were actually effective, it meant that all other treatment options were given secondary importance, subservient to chemical interventions in the community (for an example of this dynamic, see Samson 1995 ). Thus, Moncrieff (2009: 44) suggests that by the mid-twentieth century psychiatry had become a “sitting duck” for a new treatment with which they could legitimately justify a disengagement from the asylum and an expansion into the world outside. Drugs provided that justification and fitted well with the popular view from other branches of medicine. As Breggin (1991: 55) states of the benefits of drug interventions for psychiatrists,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>the dose could be “titrated”—that is, it could be raised and lowered to obtain the desired effect. As an ostensibly more humane intervention, drug therapy both salved the consciences of psychiatrists and made them feel more like legitimate doctors.</blockquote><br />
<br />
With the development of successive generations of neuroleptics and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil, sales have skyrocketed as psychiatric practice has expanded into new arenas of public and private life. The evidence, however, has repeatedly shown that the drugs do not work. For example, an extensive review of both the published and unpublished clinical trials of the “wonder drug” Prozac by the clinical psychologist Irving Kirsch (2009 ) concluded that it was no more effective than placebo (i.e., dummy pills with no active ingredients) (see also Whitaker 2010a; Whitaker and Cosgrove 2015). Similar findings have been outlined by Moncrieff (2009) in a review of research on various antidepressants and stimulants. “[P]sychiatric drug treatment,” she concludes, “is currently administered on the basis of a huge collective myth; the myth that psychiatric drugs act by correcting the biological basis of psychiatric symptoms or diseases” (Moncrieff 2009: 237). It is therefore an impressive success for biomedical psychiatry that, despite the lack of evidence, the idea of “chemical imbalances” in the brains of those diagnosed as “mentally ill”—and psychopharmaceuticals as the “chemical cure”—has gained such traction in both popular and scientific discourse. In the words of Breggin and Cohen (1999 : 35), “[n]o psychiatric drug has ever been tailored to a known biochemical derangement,” and, “no biochemical imbalances have ever been documented with certainty in association with any psychiatric diagnosis.” This is something that psychiatrists have only recently owned up to, with Ronald Pies (cited in Whitaker and Cosgrove 2015: 186), editor-in-chief of the Psychiatric Times, admitting in 2011 that “[i]n truth, the ‘chemical imbalance’ notion was always a kind of urban legend—never a theory seriously propounded by well-informed psychiatrists.” An urban legend may be, but nevertheless a biomedical rhetoric that can justify psychiatric intervention and drug treatment as valid medical practice. The psychiatrist Daniel Carlat has freely acknowledged that using the language of “chemical imbalances” at least suggests to patients that psychiatrists know what they are doing. In 2010, Carlat (cited in Whitaker and Cosgrove 2015: 187, emphasis added) declared,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>I say that [“chemical imbalances in the brain”] not because I really believe it, because I know that the evidence isn’t really there for us to understand the mechanism. I think I say that because patients want to know something, and they want to know that we as physicians have some basic understanding of what we’re doing when we’re prescribing medications. ''And they certainly don’t want to hear that a psychiatrist essentially has no idea how these medications work.''</blockquote><br />
<br />
Whitaker and Cosgrove (2015: 87) have discussed the significant benefits for both big pharma and the psychiatric profession in promoting drug use in the current mental health system. For the drug companies, psychiatry can medically legitimate their products as well as facilitate the expansion of the potential population for their products. In turn, the drug companies legitimate the institution of psychiatry as a “real” (meaning biomedically-based) part of medicine and facilitate the expansion of its areas of research and expertise through various funding and revenue streams. The outcome of this relationship has been fairly predictable—both parties have benefited enormously over time. Pharmaceutical companies continue to maximise their profits while psychiatry’s (and, by extension, other psy-professionals’) power—as signified by the proliferation of its discourse among the general population—has significantly expanded over the past 35 years.<br />
<br />
That said, the expansion of the psy-professions in general and the proliferation of the psychiatric discourse to hegemonic status in neoliberal society cannot be explained by the success of the drug industry alone. This requires further analysis of the ideological role of psy-disciplines, which will be outlined in the next chapter. Suffice here to say that a Marxist analysis of psychiatric power always needs to consider the benefits to capitalism inferred by their changing discourse and practices. And while every part of civil society can serve the economic base, it is the value of such institutions as part of the superstructure which distinguishes them as ultimately relevant and useful to the ruling classes. So whereas we may think of the drugs issue only in terms of the economic prerogatives of capitalism, it is in fact their value as a means of social and ideological control of the population which should be given particular importance here. As Moncrieff (2009: 238) has rightly stated of the dominant biomedical view of psychopharmaceutical interventions as effective treatment for mental illnesses,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>this knowledge has itself become an instrument of psychiatric power. It has facilitated the particular form of social control that is embodied in psychiatric practice, by construing psychiatric constraint as the medical cure of mental disease. It has helped to disperse psychiatric power throughout the population by concealing the moral nature of psychiatric judgements</blockquote><br />
<br />
From moral treatment to drug treatment, psychiatry’s project remains unchanged: their goal is the moral management and behavioural adjustment of populations considered socially deviant, whether unemployed, underproductive, or politically suspect. The intervention of pharmaceutical companies in the process of psychiatric medicalisation needs to be understood as a rather insignificant factor in the general production of the psychiatric discourse. As Horwitz and Wakefield (2007: 182, emphasis original) have commented on biomedical psychiatry’s takeover of the DSM in the 1970s, “[t]here is no evidence that pharmaceutical companies had a role in developing DSM-III diagnostic criteria.” While this statement might be challenged by the DSM-III research of Lane (2007 ) and others, it is still accurate to conclude that pharmaceutical companies have never been the ''originators'' of diagnostic categories; this has remained the responsibility of psychiatry (regardless of how far the profession may sometimes appear to be in big pharma’s pockets). Thus, while SSRIs and other contemporary psychoactive drugs can be seen as interventions of social control performed by mental health workers, “to restrain individuals from behavior and experience that are not complementary to the requirements of the dominant value system” (Lennard, cited in Conrad 1975: 19), the specific form of behaviour and experience which is considered in need of reform or restraint is still dictated by the psychiatric profession.<br />
<br />
==Summary==<br />
<br />
Utilising Marx’s theory of historical materialism, it has been argued in this chapter that the modern mental health system is constituted and framed by the social and economic forces of industrial capitalism. Trough a socio-historical survey of the practices and philosophies of the mental health experts from moral treatment to psychopharmaceutical interventions, I have demonstrated that the success of the psychiatric professionals is predicated on their knowledge claims aligning with the goals of the ruling classes for subservient and compliant workers. As a part of the superstructure, the mental health system has aided the economic base through the naturalisation of the fundamental inequalities of capitalist society. Tis ideological role of the psychiatric system works to depoliticise and individualise the realities of existence within the current social order through medicalising deviance and enforcing conformity on suspect groups. Yet as will be discussed in the following chapter, in neoliberal society the ideological role has been extended, resulting in the psychiatric discourse becoming hegemonic. As Burstow (2015: 70) has summated of this expansion,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Incomparably more people are intruded on, with that number multiplying with every passing day. Surveillance of anyone who has ever seemed in trouble, surveillance of our children, of seniors is now routine. If once upon a time, one would have to appear “deviant” or to exhibit “unusual behaviour” to fall under the auspices of the “system,” now normal childhood qualifies as a disease. Moreover, the intrusion reaches significantly deeper than the shackles of yesteryear, into the inner recesses of the brain. It is as if psychiatry had removed the fetters from the body of the “lunatic” subject only to place more durable ones on everyone’s mind.</blockquote><br />
<br />
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Navarro, V. (1980) ‘Work, Ideology and Science: The Case of Medicine’, Social Science and Medicine, 14(3): 191-205.<br />
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Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2015) In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All. Paris: OECD Publishing<br />
<br />
Palumbo, A., and Scott, A. (2005) ‘Classical Social Teory II: Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim’, in Harrington, A. (Ed.), Modern Social Teory: An Introduction (pp. 40-62). Oxford: Oxford University Press.<br />
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Parker, I. (2007) Revolution in Psychology: Alienation to Emancipation. London: Pluto Press.<br />
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Parker, I. (2014) ‘Psychotherapy under Capitalism: The Production, Circulation and Management of Value and Subjectivity’, Psychotherapy and Politics International, 13(3): 166-175.<br />
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Porter, R. (2002) Madness: A Brief History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rapaport, L. (2015) ‘U.S. Needs to Raise Investment, Shift Medical Research<br />
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Priorities’, Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-investment- research-idUSKBN0KN27B20150114 (retrieved on 21 April 2016). Read, J., and Bentall, R. (2010) ‘The Effectiveness of Electroconvulsive Terapy:<br />
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A Literature Review’, Epidemiologia e Psichiatria Sociale, 19(4): 333-347. Rosenhan, D. L. (1973) ‘On Being Sane in Insane Places’, Science, 179(4070): 250-258.<br />
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Samson, C. (1995) ‘The Fracturing of Medical Dominance in British Psychiatry?’, Sociology of Health and Illness, 17(2): 245-268.Scheff, T. J. (1966) Being Mentally Ill: A Sociological Teory. Chicago: Aldine.<br />
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Scull, A. (1984) Decarceration: Community Treatment and the Deviant: A Radical View (2nd ed.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.<br />
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Scull, A. (1989) Social Order/Mental Disorder: Anglo-American Psychiatry in Historical Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press.<br />
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Scull, A. (1993) The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain, 1700-1900. New Haven: Yale University Press.<br />
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Scull, A. (2015) Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity, from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine. Princeton: Princeton University Press.<br />
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Shorter, E. (1997) A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Showalter, E. (1980) ‘Victorian Women and Insanity’, Victorian Studies, 23(2): 157-181.<br />
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Smith, O. (2015) ‘The Channel Tunnel: 20 Fascinating Facts’, The Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/france/articles/The-Channel-Tunnel-20-fascinating-facts/ (retrieved on 21 April 2016). Szasz, T. S. (2000) ‘Remembering Masturbatory Insanity’, Ideas on Liberty, 50: 35-36.<br />
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Tomazin, F. (2015) ‘Shock Terapy Figures Spiking’, The Age, http://www. theage.com.au/victoria/shock-therapy-figures-spiking-20150516-gh33pi. html (retrieved on 6 March 2016). Ussher, J. M. (2011) The Madness of Women: Myth and Experience. London: Routledge.<br />
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Valenstein, E. S. (1980) ‘Who Receives Psychosurgery?’, in Valenstein, E. S. (Ed.), The Psychosurgery Debate: Scientific, Legal, and Ethical Perspectives (pp. 89-107). San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company.<br />
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van Daalen-Smith, C., Adam, S., Breggin, P., and LeFrançois, B. A. (2014) ‘The Utmost Discretion: How Presumed Prudence Leaves Children Susceptible to Electroshock’, Children & Society, 28(3): 205-217.<br />
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Waitzkin, H. (2000) The Second Sickness: Contradictions of Capitalist Health Care (rev. ed.). Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers.<br />
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Whitaker, R. (2010a) Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America. New York: Crown Publishers.<br />
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Whitaker, R. (2010b) Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill (rev. ed.) New York: Basic Books.<br />
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Whitaker, R., and Cosgrove, L. (2015) Psychiatry Under the In uence: Institutional Corruption, Social Injury, and Prescriptions for Reform. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.<br />
<br />
White, K. (2009) An Introduction to the Sociology of Health and Illness (2nd ed.). London: Sage.<br />
<br />
=3: Psychiatric Hegemony: Mental Illness in Neoliberal Society=<br />
<br />
The previous chapter outlined a critique of the political economy of mental illness, focusing on the psy-professionals’ support of the economic base from the development of moral treatment and the asylum system in the nineteenth century to the current profiteering from an expanding drugs market. Demonstrating Marx and Engels’ (1965: 37) statement that capitalism “must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere,” I have shown that the mental health system generates an increasing range of products and services for the market, mirrors the wider division of labour through exploitative work practices, and functions as an institution of social control, policing deviance, and reinforcing exploitative relations within capitalist society as “normal” and common sense.<br />
<br />
This chapter, however, gives special attention to the expanding ideological power of the psychiatric discourse within neoliberal society. I present here my core rationale for taking a Gramscian approach to understanding this discourse as “hegemonic,” that is, an all-encompassing form of knowledge which works to naturalise and reinforce the norms and values of capital through professional claims-making. As was highlighted in the last chapter, the mental health system has always had ideological dimensions, yet the recent demands of neoliberal capital have necessitated the expansion of the psychiatric discourse to the point where it has become hegemonic and totalising. Our behaviour, our personalities, our lifestyles, our relationships, and even our shopping trips are now closely observed and judged under this psychiatric hegemony, and we have in turn come to monitor and understand ourselves through this discourse. As Whitaker (2010a: 10, emphasis original) rightly states of these changes,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Over the past twenty-five years, psychiatry has profoundly reshaped our society. Through its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual [the DSM], psychiatry draws a line between what is “normal” and what is not. Our societal understanding of the human mind, which in the past arose from a medley of sources (great works of fiction, scientific investigations, and philosophical and religious writings), is now filtered through the DSM.</blockquote><br />
<br />
The chapter begins by describing the ideological purpose of professional groups such as psychiatry within advanced capitalist societies. In doing so, I draw on the theoretical work of Gramsci, Althusser, and Habermas in conceptualising how such groups within civil society legitimise ruling class ideology through their practices and constructed discourse. This is followed by a discussion of how this ideological critique can be applied to medicine and psychiatry, as well as a review of the processes through which the psychiatric discourse—that is, the totality of ideas (including the language, practices, and treatments) on “mental illness” and “mental health” that psychiatric and allied professions have circulated to the public over the past 200 years—became hegemonic following the “crisis” of psychiatry in the mid-1970s, the construction of the DSM-III in 1980, and the wider development of neoliberal policies. The final part of the chapter discusses some of the contemporary issues which inform the recent increase in “mental illness” self-surveillance and self-labelling behaviour, a situation, I argue, that further demonstrates the existence of psychiatric hegemony.<br />
<br />
==Hegemony, Ideology, and Professional Power==<br />
<br />
Given the oppressive economic conditions that workers endure under western capitalism, Marx (1971) prophesied the proletariat revolution as inevitable. This certainly appeared likely with the European and American financial crises of the 1920s and 1930s and, consequently, a rise in political and class consciousness. It was, however, a catastrophic period which western capitalism survived. In this context of failed revolutions, theorising on the superstructure of capital (Chap. 2) became increasingly important to Marxist writers in addressing the “inevitability” question (Heiner 2006: 10-11). Gramsci’s (1971) answer to this question was that the ruling classes ultimately survived threats to their authority not through direct “domination” and coercion of the masses but rather by demonstrating “intellectual and moral leadership.” It was the latter type of supremacy that constituted what he termed “hegemony,” a form of “internal control” which Femia (1981: 24) outlines as “an order in which a common social-moral language is spoken, in which one concept of reality is dominant, informing with its spirit all modes of thought and behaviour.” Or as Kellner (2005: 158) has succinctly defined hegemonic power, the “domination by ideas and cultural forms that induce consent to the rule of the leading groups in society.” Gramsci argued that the coercive powers of the state (e.g., the army, police, and the judicial system) were comparatively ineffective and fragile in ultimately halting the revolution; instead the capitalist classes had secured a greater chance of survival through hegemonic power—the rule of the bourgeoisie by induced consent. As Crossley (2005: 114) has articulated this idea,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>The bourgeoisie must win the hearts and minds of the people, persuading them (without even seeming to do so or to need to do so) that the status quo is natural and inevitable, beneficial for all, and inducing them to identify with it.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Gramsci located the intellectual and moral leadership won by the ruling classes as residing in civil society rather than the state. By “civil society” he meant institutions such as religion, education, the media, and the family, to which Marxist scholars such as Navarro (1986) and Waitzkin (2000) have added the institution of health as a further site of hegemonic power. These civic institutions are much more effective than direct, repressive organs of the state in manipulating the masses due to their perceived detachment from elite control. Hegemonic power is conducted under the guise of objective and neutral institutional practice, though it is in reality nothing of the sort. Instead, intellectuals and professionals are responsible for the legitimation of ruling class ideas within the public sphere, articulating such values as seemingly natural and taken-for-granted knowledge about the world. Tus, Fontana (1993: 140-141) comments that<br />
<br />
<blockquote>the function of intellectuals is not only to create a particular way of life and a particular conception of the world, but also to translate the interests and values of a specific social group into general, “common” values and interests.</blockquote><br />
<br />
What we understand as “normal” and common sense is in fact dominant, capitalist ideas imparted through professional discourse, an issue summated in the famous quote from Marx and Engels that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” (cited in Navarro 1980: 196). Althusser (2005: 114) commented that the concept of hegemony offered “a theoretical solution in outline to the problems of the interpenetration of the economic and the political.” In other words, it was an effective explanatory device for understanding the survival of the economic base of capitalism despite significant political struggles against the bourgeoisie in every epoch.<br />
<br />
Althusser himself extended Gramsci’s conceptions of hegemony by developing a specific theory of ideology. Rather than being directly shaped by the economic base, Althusser suggested that institutions of civil society had a degree of autonomy from it that is “neither totally shaped by the economy nor totally autonomous” (Crossley 2005: 150). This can explain why not every decision, behaviour, or practice of an organisation appears to be traceable back to the economic prerogatives of capitalism. This subtlety within Althusser’s analysis highlights that hegemonic power is a form of ''negotiated'' power in which professional groups and institutions can act in semi-autonomous and sometimes oppositional directions to capital. Each institution has its own set of professional priorities, interests, and values to protect from other competing groups, and sometimes this may bring about conflict with the objectives of the ruling elites. In such situations, compromise is necessary so as not to threaten the fundamental economic base and current social order (Freidson 1988; Williams 1977). Discussing the institution of medicine as part of hegemonic relations, Navarro (1989: 198) summarises this issue of professional autonomy as follows:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Medical knowledge is not produced and reproduced in the abstract but through agents and relations which are bearers of power relations of which class is a determinant one. To say this is not to say that medical and scientific knowledge does not have an autonomy of its own, but that autonomy takes place within a set of power relations which determines not only how medical knowledge is used … but also what knowledge is produced and how that knowledge is produced.</blockquote><br />
<br />
With industrial societies becoming more complex, Althusser emphasised the increasing significance of such institutions in imposing capitalistic ideology on the working classes, referring to them as ideological state apparatuses (ISAs). ISAs, he argued, were much more effective in securing the consent of the masses (Crossley 2005: 152), reproducing the goals of capitalism as normal and inevitable, or as Crossley (2005: 152) conceptualises them,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>[S]ites of practice where human subjects or agents are, in effect, shaped as compliant and willing members of (capitalist) society. That is, they are the sites of practices which form us as human agents, making us what we are and, more importantly, making us “in the image” of capitalist society.</blockquote><br />
<br />
To summarise, a Marxist ideological critique which follows the ideas of Gramsci and Althusser investigates<br />
<br />
<blockquote>the subtle “ideological hegemony” by which institutions of civil society … promulgate ideas and beliefs that support the established order … the “ideological apparatuses” that the capitalist class use to preserve state power … and the ideological features of modern science that legitimate social policy decisions made by “experts” in the interests of the dominant class. (Waitzkin 1978: 270)</blockquote><br />
<br />
Effectively, hegemony functions to pacify revolutionary protest through making certain limited concessions to the working classes (e.g., by introducing and extending parliamentary democracy), while the ISAs become increasingly important in reinforcing the norms and values of the ruling classes as a consensual and widely shared view of social reality.<br />
<br />
Of all the areas of civil society, Habermas argued that the sciences offered the greatest potential for acting as ISAs. Tis was due to the rhetorical language of the sciences which promoted its various disciplines as fundamentally objective and value-free. According to Habermas, scientific ideology was increasingly working on technical solutions to social and political problems within capitalist society. In this manner, states Waitzkin (2000: 122), “science tends to depoliticize these issues by removing them from critical scrutiny.” Of great pertinence to understanding psychiatric discourse as hegemonic in neoliberal society, Habermas (cited in Waitzkin 2000: 122) was already claiming in 1971 that, “today’s dominant, rather glassy background ideology, which makes a fetish of science, is more irresistible and far-reaching than ideologies of the old type.” Increasingly, the different branches of science are responsible for legitimating fundamental inequalities in advanced capitalist societies as “normal,” “inevitable,” and “natural.” For example, Navarro (1986: 40-41, emphasis original) states of the health system that it serves “a very high legitimization function” for capital in this regard,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>[I]t creates false consciousness that what is basically a collective and, therefore, political problem, determined by the manner of control over the process of production and consumption in capitalist societies, can be solved by individual therapeutic intervention. In this way, medicine depoliticizes what is intrinsically a political problem. Tus, what requires a collective answer is presented as an individual problem, demanding an individual response. This is a main ideological function of medicine, the ''legitimization'' of class relations in our society.</blockquote><br />
<br />
There are a number of specific interventions relevant to psychiatric practice which Waitzkin (2000: 124) has detailed as part of this legitimation process—these include the increasing medicalisation of social problems, “the transmission of ideological messages” within professional-client interactions, “the management of potentially troublesome emotions” by the discipline, and the reproduction of the “class structure and the relations of capitalist production.” Following Freidson’s (1988) work on medical dominance, Waitzkin (2000: 123) hypothesises that<br />
<br />
<blockquote>doctors may be more effective in enforcing societal norms than other social control agents; doctors are less accountable to the public and therefore freer to inject class and professional biases into their relationships with clients.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Medical social control thus has extended to economic production, the family and other major institutions. As a part of this medical social control, how and why the psychiatric discourse has become hegemonic within neoliberal society will be discussed in the following sections.<br />
<br />
==The “Public Language” of the DSM-III==<br />
<br />
Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in 1965, Mike Gorman (at the time, executive director of the National Committee Against Mental Illness) called for the psychiatric profession to develop new skills, procedures, and practices to confront the challenges posed by deinstitutionalisation and the mounting critics of the current mental health system (Chap. 1). Fundamentally, psychiatry was not speaking to the people. The middle class “worried well” spent years in private therapy hoping to learn what was really going in their unconscious, while the working classes still faced a largely coercive system of public psychiatry in institutions or outpatient facilities. It was time, Gorman argued, for psychiatry to justify itself to an increasingly cynical public who often felt that whatever “mental illness” was, it was someone else’s problem. Reflecting the disenchantment of many within the APA, Gorman (cited in Harris 1995: xv, emphasis added) stated that<br />
<br />
<blockquote>''psychiatry must develop a “public” language, decontaminated of technical jargon and suited to the discussion of universal problems of our society'' … As difficult as this task is, it must be done if psychiatry is to be heard in the civic halls of our nation.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Fast-forward 50 years and it is clear that the profession has succeeded in this aim, so much so that we now often articulate the behaviour and emotions of ourselves and others using the “public language” that the psy-professionals have honed over this period. Generally, when we make assessments of character, we are now reiterating the dominant psychiatric code—for example, “your kid’s a bit hyperactive,” “those guys in the IT department are all on the [autistic] spectrum,” “she’s obviously experiencing mental health issues today,” “I’ve just got a compulsive personality,” “he’s totally addicted to gaming,” “you sound clinically depressed,” and so on. It is perhaps hard to remember that it was not always like this. Before the 1980s a different language was used to articulate our feelings and emotions—we were perhaps “down” or sad sometimes, overjoyed or elated at other times, but seldom “manic,” “clinically depressed,” or indeed “bipolar.” As Furedi (2004: 84) similarly notes of the rise of “therapeutic culture” in the west, “[b]efore the 1980s, terms like syndrome, self-esteem, PTSD, sex addiction and counselling had not yet entered the public vocabulary.” And few desired access to labels of mental disorder either (which, at the time, involved a high risk of being hospitalised). When mental illnesses were identified in public discourse, it was typically limited to highly stigmatised categories such as schizophrenia or manic-depression. Tis has obviously changed. Here I locate the fundamental reason for this as due to the decline of social welfarism and the rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s; this change facilitates the expansion of the psy-disciplines into many new areas of social and economic life. The institution of psychiatry emerges as an ISA because the psychiatric discourse becomes increasingly important in reinforcing the dominant goals of neoliberalism, focusing on the self—rather than the group, community, organisation, or society—as the appropriate site for change and (using the language of neoliberalism) “growth.”<br />
<br />
As was outlined in Chap. 1, western psychiatry was in a state of professional and epistemological crisis in the 1970s (see, e.g., Decker 2007; Mayes and Horwitz 2005; Wilson 1993), a situation which was only averted with the publication of the DSM-III in 1980. Despite the failure to in any way improve the actual “science” of psychiatry, the hype that the DSM-III task force and the APA leadership created around the manual as scientifically more rigorous than ever before worked as an excellent public relations exercise for the profession. The DSM-III was also a decisive victory for biomedical psychiatry, a return to the descriptive “scientific psychiatry” of the early twentieth century. Tus, the DSM-III can also be seen as an attempt at internal legitimation, to align their activities and practices more closely to other branches of medicine. As a result of this return to biomedicine, the DSM-III was primarily promoting drug solutions to the mental disorders catalogued therein, a situation that has led many commentators to highlight the strong financial linkage between task force members and pharmaceutical companies (see, e.g., Cosgrove and Wheeler 2013). The rapid growth in the total number of mental disorders from DSM-II to DSM-III (from 182 to 265, the largest single expansion to date) also suggested a move by psychiatry to increasingly (bio)medicalise aspects of life which had previously fallen outside of the profession’s domain, a process to further expand their areas of jurisdiction. Due to the success of the DSM-III, Samson (1995: 79) states that the manual has become “the most important source of professional legitimation worldwide,” and one which has had serious consequences outside of psychiatry itself. As Mayes and Horwitz (2005: 265) have since summarised of the effects of the DSM-III,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>The direct and indirect institutional change the new manual produced extended far beyond psychiatry, because the DSM is used by clinicians, the courts, researchers, insurance companies, managed care organizations, and the government (NIMH, FDA, Medicaid, Medicare). As a classificatory scheme, it categorizes people as normal or disabled, healthy or sick. And as the definitive manual for measuring and defining illness and disorders, it operates as mental health care’s official language for clinical research, financial reimbursement, and professional expertise. Few professional documents compare to the DSM in terms of affecting the welfare of so many people.</blockquote><br />
<br />
While critical assessments of the DSM-III which expose the document as an important example of professional retrenchment and jurisdictional expansion—in other words, a fundamentally political rather than scientific project (Armstrong, in Caplan 1995: ix)—have validity, not enough attention has been paid to the wider societal processes effecting the institution during the period when the DSM-III was constructed and produced (in fact, neo-Foucauldian scholars such as Nikolas Rose (1996, 1999) are probably the only ones to make the connection between the emerging “advanced liberal” conditions and the expansion of psydiscourse and services). In the 1970s, western society is in a period of serious social and economic upheaval. Tese issues cannot be separated from the crisis within psychiatry in the 1970s, nor the solution offered by the DSM-III in 1980. Instead, the development of the DSM-III can be better understood as a part of the structural changes informed by the decline of the social state and the emergence of neoliberal ideology.<br />
<br />
Fundamentally, the DSM-III began to speak the “public language” that Gorman had advocated 15 years earlier. Such adaptation of professional knowledge to more consumer-friendly terminology was not unique to psychiatry but witnessed across a range of professions. For instance, Oppenheimer made the observation in the mid-1970s that professionals were increasing called upon “to systematize their knowledge and thereby make it potentially accessible to lay members of society” (Macdonald 1995: 4). Whereas the DSM-I and the DSM-II were primarily developed for use by doctors in the hospital system, Decker (2013: xvii, emphasises added) explains that the DSM-III “was meant instead for psychiatrists in private practice, ''mainly seeing patients one to one'', and for research psychiatrists in academic institutions, ''carrying out a host of studies on many patients at a time''.” Consequently, the language and phrasing of mental disorders in the DSM-III was simplified and made more intelligible to the lay community. For consultations with clients and for research (e.g., the increasing use of mass-survey data collection, which developed with the DSM-III field trials and continues today), simple articulations as opposed to jargon-laden typologies of disease were required. The DSM-III offered an example of Althusser’s (2005) concept of “interpellation”—people began to recognise their own behaviour in the descriptions of mental pathology in the manual, lists of “symptoms” that could be easily utilised in quantifiable researcher checklists as well as self-report studies which encouraged people to begin diagnosing themselves with such disorders. For the first time, each disorder in the DSMIII was presented with a handy list of specific diagnostic criteria, which spoke simultaneously to everyone as well as in such a vague manner as to facilitate the stretching of the psychiatric net much wider than before. For instance, the diagnostic criteria for overanxious disorder included “unrealistic worry about future events,” “preoccupation with the appropriateness of the individual’s behaviour in the past,” “overconcern about competence in a variety of areas,” “excessive need for reassurance about a variety of worries,” “marked self-consciousness or susceptibility to embarrassment or humiliation,” and “marked feelings of tension or inability to relax” (American Psychiatric Association, 1980: 56-57).<br />
<br />
More generally, however, the psychiatric discourse witnessed in the DSM-III (as well as subsequent DSMs) reflects the emergence of neoliberal obsessions with efficiency, productivity, and consumption (Chaps. 4–7). So when we conceptualise psychiatry as speaking a “public language” in the DSM, it must be recognised that this language is not neutral and value-free but rather reflects a dominant ideological rhetoric of the specific epoch, in this case the crisis in welfarism and the emergence of neoliberalism. The priorities and proclivities of western psychiatry cannot be seen as motivated primarily by professional interest or by economic motives of the pharmaceutical industry but instead as framed by prevailing norms and values of the social order. As a political document, the discourse articulated in the DSM-III reflects the changing nature of late capitalism. Table 3.1 gives a straightforward example of this, highlighting the increased use of phrasings attached to work, home, and school with each edition of the DSM. Whereas the DSM-I and the DSM-II make hardly any reference to such arenas of life, the DSM-III dramatically increases such phrasing—a trend which continues as neoliberalism progresses. It is also interesting to note that there was a significant increase in the use of the “work” and “school” phrasings between the DSM-IV-TR (in 2000) and the DSM-5 (in 2013), despite the manuals being of almost equal length.<br />
<br />
{| |+ Table 3.1 || Increase in the use of work, home, and school phrasings in the DSM, 1952-2013a | || || DSM- || DSM- || DSM- || |- | || DSM-I || DSM-II || III || III-R || DSM-IV || IV-TR || DSM-5 |- | Word/phrase || (1952) || (1968) || (1980) || (1987) || (1994) || (2000) || (2013) |- | Work/ing/er || 5 || 1 || 72 || 122 || 186 || 204 || 288 |- | Home/housework || 2 || 2 || 59 || 80 || 92 || 96 || 109 |- | School || 4 || 2 || 91 || 105 || 158 || 170 || 257 |}<br />
<super>a</super>See Appendix A for methodology<br />
<br />
Like every profession, psychiatry has a degree of autonomy in their research and practices, yet they are ultimately shaped by current power relations. The priorities of the profession, therefore, tend to mirror the priorities of capitalism. To illustrate this point with another example, Lane (2007) has profiled how shyness became the new mental disorder of social phobia (since relabelled as social anxiety disorder) in the DSM- III (Chap. 4). With no validity for such a diagnosis, a number of parties are implicated in this case of medicalisation including the Pfizer pharmaceutical corporation (who funded a number of task force meetings at the time) and Robert Spitzer’s fight with the psychoanalysts for control of diagnostic constructions. However, these issues are predated by the profession’s own research focus on shyness which can be traced back to the mid-1960s, with a small number of patients showing symptoms of anxiety around social situations such as visiting the office canteen, attending parties, or being involved in public speaking (Lane 2007: 71). As would progress further under the neoliberalist doctrine, the development of new classifications such as social phobia would appear to the profession to originate in some sort of “evidence base” (which are actually people’s problems in adjusting to changing arrangements of capital in arenas such as work, home, and the school). Psychiatry then does in fact maintain a key role in setting the agenda for what potentially ends up in the DSM; however, the origins of that agenda are external to the profession, dictated by wider social and economic forces. By the time of the DSM-5, psychiatric diagnoses are blatantly mirroring neoliberal ideology in relating mental illness to underperformance. With the diagnostic criteria for premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), for example, the manual (American Psychiatric Association 2013: 172, emphasis added) states that “[t]he symptoms are associated with clinically significant distress or interference with work, school, usual social activities, or relationships with others (e.g., avoidance of social activities; ''decreased productivity and efficiency'' at work, school, or home).” Tus, the prevailing ideological values of our time—for instance, to be productive and efficient in all aspects of our lives—is conceived through psychiatric discourse as a common sense mental health message. Are you failing within neoliberal society? Ten you might have a mental illness. As Conrad and Potter (2000: 561-562) have summated of psychiatry’s diagnostic project here, the process is necessarily historically and culturally contingent: “[c]ertain diagnostic categories appear and disappear over time, reflecting and reinforcing particular ideologies within the ‘diagnostic project’ (the professional legitimization of diagnoses), as well as within the larger social order.”<br />
<br />
Beginning with the success of the DSM-III, this section has mapped how the psychiatric discourse reflects and reproduces the dominant ideology of late capitalism. The reason for its progression to a state of hegemonic authority on the self requires discussion of the main tenets of neoliberal philosophy. Tese will be examined in the following section.<br />
<br />
==The Rise of Neoliberalism and Hegemonic Psychiatry==<br />
<br />
The post-war period of social welfarism and popular state intervention in many spheres of social and economic activity (including state provision of health and welfare services, public housing, nationalised industries, and a highly regulated labour market) effectively came to an end in the 1970s with high levels of inflation and unemployment (conceptualised by contemporary commentators as “stagflation”) (Schrecker and Bambra 2015: 13). In this climate there was a popular response from the economic elites—and then the electorates—to the “neoliberal” ideas of economic philosophers such as Hayek (1976) and Friedman (1982) who argued that the well-being of the individual was predicated on the autonomy and freedom of the market in capitalist societies. According to these commentators, the crisis in contemporary economic and social conditions was due to the over-regulation and control of the market by the state. Centralised planning and over-bureaucratisation of the marketplace had been a detriment to the competition and potential growth of western economies (Rose 1996: 153). Under such conditions, neoliberal thinkers argued that individuals could not reach their full potential, achieve substantial success, and consequently maximise their own happiness. Neoliberal philosophy then framed old laissez faire economic arguments in a new conception of personal emancipation; it appeared simultaneously as a “pragmatic” response to changing global processes and as a popular “freeing” of the people from the constraints of central governments. As Harvey (2005: 40) has noted of this selling of the neoliberal project to the masses,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>An open project around the restoration of economic power to a small elite would probably not gain much popular support. But a programmatic attempt to advance the cause of individual freedoms could appeal to a mass base and so disguise the drive to restore class power. Furthermore, once the state apparatus made the neoliberal turn it could use its powers of persuasion, co-optation, bribery, and threat to maintain the climate of consent necessary to perpetuate its power.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Schrecker and Bambra (2015: 13) have commented that neoliberalism can be best understood as having multiple dimensions, “including concrete policy programs and innovations (e.g., welfare state retrenchment and ‘workfare’), more general reorganization of state institutions (e.g., privatization and contracting out), and an ideology.” In the first instance, neoliberalism is an economic theory which seeks to free capital from government regulation and restraint in the belief that this is the most successful and efficient means of achieving wealth and happiness for the greatest number. Or as Harvey (2005: 2) states of the idea, it proposes “that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade.” The popularity of this political philosophy crystallised in the late 1970s with the electoral successes of the Tatcher and Reagan governments in the United Kingdom and United States, respectively. Backed by international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, “liberalisation” policies were quickly introduced which “freed” local markets from state interference and saw a massive redistribution of resources from the public to the private sector, including the selling-off of state industries and assets (Moncrieff 2008: 237-238). At the same time, these neoconservative governments cut public spending in such areas as health, housing, education, social services, and welfare. As devastating as the neoliberal economic policies of the 1970s and 1980s were to the working classes, it was the ideological aspects of the<br />
<br />
3 Psychiatric Hegemony: Mental Illness in Neoliberal Society 83 philosophy which had the greater and longer lasting impact on western society. In Moncrieff’s (2008: 241) words, what accompanied the economic polices was “an evolving cultural and moral ethos, which is best summed up by a change from broad acceptance of collective virtues such as equality and solidarity to the individual and intertwined values of competition and consumerism.” As with the “freeing” of capital from state intervention, neoliberal philosophy argued that the individual must also be “freed” from the state. To “aid” or “encourage” the individual to be competitive and maximise their potential within this society, neoliberal governments made radical cuts in spending on social services and welfare provision, instead channelling resources into training and workfare programmes, nominally aimed at encouraging entrepreneurship and proactive citizens into employment and business opportunities. Fundamentally, this brought about a seismic shift in the popular perception of the state from being a provider of care and services to the population to one aimed at facilitating (both market and individual) competition. The move from “welfare capitalism” to “workfare capitalism” has been summated by Schrecker and Bambra (2015: 16) as a move to “decentralization and welfare pluralism (with a strong role for the private sector), the promotion of labour market flexibility, supply-side economics, the subordination of social policy to the demands of the market and a desire to minimize social expenditure.”<br />
<br />
The withdrawal of the state from many areas of social and community activity and the refocusing instead on the individual as the site of responsibility and transformation begins to explain how the psy-disciplines came to expand their areas of jurisdiction with neoliberalism. Rose (1996: 150-151) eloquently refers to the populace in this new set of political and social relations as “enterprising individuals,” that is, subjects embedded with the core values of neoliberalism. Tis includes the very language we now use to speak of and understand ourselves—as autonomous individuals seemingly free to choose, yet personally responsible for non-achievement. As Harvey (2005: 65-66) suggests of the neoliberal self,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>While personal and individual freedom in the marketplace is guaranteed, each individual is held responsible and accountable for his or her own actions and well-being … Individual success or failure are interpreted in terms of entrepreneurial virtues or personal failings (such as not investing significantly enough in one’s own human capital through education) rather than being attributed to any systemic property (such as the class exclusions usually attributed to capitalism).</blockquote><br />
<br />
Popular consent for such a conception of the self has been achieved through “[p]owerful ideological influences circulated through the corporations, the media, and the numerous institutions that constitute civil society—such as the universities, schools, churches, and professional associations” (Harvey 2005: 40). Here we can obviously add the psyprofessions as a part of civil society responsible for promoting such neoliberal values. Harvey (2005: 3) concludes that neoliberalism “as a mode of discourse” has become hegemonic. How we understand ourselves and the world is both shaped by and relies on the dominant language of the “enterprise culture.” In other words, the discourse traditionally associated with business and economics (e.g., “efficiency,” “productivity,” and so on) is now also used to refer to our own experiences, emotions, and behaviour. In neoliberal ideology, the self has replaced the group, the community, or wider society as the site for reform and change. Tis emphasis on the individual has seen the depoliticisation of social and economic inequalities to the point where, in the words of Ulrich Beck (1992: 100, emphasis original), they have been redefined “in terms of an ''individualization of social risks.''” Most pertinent to our understanding of the psy-professions in neoliberal society is that “social problems are increasingly perceived in terms of psychological dispositions: as personal inadequacies, guilt feelings, anxieties, conflicts, and neuroses” (Beck 1992: 100). In this “risk society,” “expert” groups such as psychiatrists and psychologists become increasingly important to capitalism in their attempts to scientifically speak to the “risky” behaviour of the individual. Tis rise of “expert knowledge and expert opinion” in neoliberal society, remarks Turner (1995: 221), means that such discourse is “highly politicized.” Tus, as the social state has fallen away with the expansion of neoliberal ideology, the psy-disciplines have come to play a key role in promoting and perpetuating the focus on the risky subject, increasing their moral authority into new areas of jurisdiction, with every individual within a population redefined under a hegemonic psychiatric discourse as “in a permanent condition of vulnerability” (Furedi 2004: 130) to “mental illness.”<br />
<br />
Through an understanding of the rise of neoliberalism, it is therefore possible to comprehend the recent expansion of the psychiatric discourse. For Rose (1999: vii), the psy-professions have played “a very significant role in contemporary forms of political power,” so much so, that the disciplines “make it possible to govern human beings in ways that are compatible with the principles of liberalism and democracy.” Tis is due to their professional focus on character reform and self-realization, values which have a high degree of symmetry with the neoliberal project. As has been discussed, in 1980 the DSM-III expanded the APA’s range of mental disorders and made the diagnoses more user-friendly. It began to speak the language of neoliberalism, highlighting everyday issues in settings beyond the institution. Rather than only disability and illness, recovery and growth were now also promoted as possible. Moskowitz gives an example of this change in emphasis with the introduction of the diagnosis of identity disorder in the 1980s, the DSM stating that potential sufferers had<br />
<br />
<blockquote>uncertainty about a variety of issues relating to identity, including long-term goals, career choice, friendship patterns, sexual orientation, and behaviour, religious identification, moral value systems and group loyalties … Frequently, the disturbance is epitomized by the person asking “Who am I?” (American Psychiatric Association, cited in Moskowitz 2001: 246)</blockquote><br />
<br />
Previously dominated by the negative institutional classifications of schizophrenia and manic-depression, the expanding range of personality, identity, and anxiety disorders from the DSM-III onwards has initiated a more “positive” discourse of day-to-day concerns, inadequacies, and traumas. In the post-institutional climate, acute and severe mental disorders have been replaced with the now “common disorders” of ADHD, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), general anxiety disorder, BPD, and autism, for which the prescribed treatment is much more likely to be drugs or therapy rather than committal. The impressive results of this neoliberal shift in the psychiatric discourse towards the idea of “positive” mental health can be seen in the countless “awareness campaigns” invoking the risk of mental illness within the general population (“it’s everyone’s problem”), as well as the mass screenings and “early intervention” programmes in schools to “catch” the early phases of mental illness in children and thereby “prevent” a more serious disorder in adulthood. Further examples include the expanding number of epidemiological studies which claim to highlight yet more cases of mental pathology which have gone undetected and/or untreated in the community, the grassroots movements campaigning for further aspects of behaviour or personality to also be classified as an official mental disorder, and the general high levels of self-labelling within the population.<br />
<br />
Similarly, it is more than coincidence that the 1980s and 1990s saw the rise of self-help culture (Ehrenreich 2009; Moskowitz 2001) and the turn of psychological and counselling professionals towards “positive psychology” and “positive thinking” (Cederström and Spicer 2015: 62-63). Laid thick with the values of neoliberalism, the discourse of “positive mental health” no longer focuses primarily on bringing the “insane” back to some state of normality but rather on the self-improvement of the individual. It is no longer enough to be “sane” or “normal”; one has to be constantly striving to be more positive and happier in life. Tis is a therapeutic quest which perfectly aligns with the neoliberal philosophy of personal responsibility and the need to constantly improve the self. It is a hegemonic discourse, thinly veiled as a therapeutic and medical expertise on the mind which promotes the values and goals of neoliberal capital. As Ehrenreich (2009: 8-9) has stated of the “positive thinking” revolution in late capitalism, it promotes a model of deficit focused entirely on the individual:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>If optimism is the key to material success, and if you can achieve an optimistic outlook through the discipline of positive thinking, then there is no excuse for failure. The flip side of positivity is thus a harsh insistence on personal responsibility: if your business fails or your job is eliminated, it must [be] because you didn’t try hard enough, didn’t believe firmly enough in the inevitability of your success. As the economy has brought more layoffs and financial turbulence to the middle class, the promoters of positive thinking have increasingly emphasized this negative judgment: to be disappointed, resentful, or downcast is to be a “victim” and a “whiner.”</blockquote><br />
<br />
In the same way, psychiatric labels have come to focus on deficits and failings in character which threaten the productivity and consumption activities of the individual in many social and economic arenas of life. Thus, the psychiatric discourse seeks to both depoliticise the fundamental inequalities and structural failings of capitalism as individual coping problems while reinforcing the values of competition and self- improvement as common sense and taken for granted. Speaking similarly of psychotherapy, Parker (2014: 171) states that the individual’s<br />
<br />
<blockquote>“adaptation” to capitalism requires psychotherapists not merely to ameliorate the worst excesses of the system, but to ensure that this adaptation is geared to inciting and channelling the critical reflexive energy of citizens so that the very critique that they make of the economy serves to fine-tune it … Tus psychotherapy becomes crucial to the state health apparatus as a practice devoted to the balance of dissatisfaction and yearning requisite for consumption and production.</blockquote><br />
<br />
To explain more fully how we have come to self-regulate ourselves under a hegemonic psychiatric discourse in neoliberal society, the next section draws on Foucault’s theory of bio-power, a subtle form of regulatory power focused on the body.<br />
<br />
==Bio-Power, Governance, and Psychiatric Hegemony==<br />
<br />
To counter the claim that psychiatry acts as an agent of social control, such professionals commonly point to the many clients who now voluntary approach them demanding a psychiatric label (and often specify the medication which they see as the solution to their chosen disorder). Tey also highlight the many grassroots organisations which have sprung up to support the “reality” of various mental disorders (e.g., Autism Speaks, Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, and the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance) with anti-stigma campaigns and calls to “normalise” these a ictions in line with a growing disabilities discourse (Conrad 2007: 87). Further, professionals can cite the global flow of biomedical ideas on mental illness which people are increasingly communicating through social media without any direct intervention from the experts (as an example, I was recently forwarded an image from a “friend” on Facebook showing brain scans of four “normal” people and four suffering from ADHD, PTSD, bipolar disorder, and depression--cue the conclusion that different coloured blobs in the head are the cause of different mental illnesses--“just because you can’t see it,” read the accompanying statement, “doesn’t mean someone’s not battling it”). Reflecting on these acts of self-monitoring and promotion of the psychiatric discourse from the behavioural and happiness sciences, Davies (2015: 258) notes that the greatest success of such knowledge claims occurs “when individuals come to interpret and narrate their own lives according to this body of expertise.”<br />
<br />
For Foucault, the emergence of industrial society marked a transformation in the exercise of power from the right to ''take life'' to power ''over life'' (Smart 1983: 90). This was a change in the nature of sovereign power towards a focus on the biological; the body becomes an increasingly important site for the surveillance and governance of the individual. Under the developing system of production, populations are to be supervised and managed through more subtle systems of regulation and social control, with health and social services being particularly significant to the emergence and expansion of bio-power. As Smart (1983: 90) explains,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>[T]he well-being of the population or the social body was the object of techniques of power, the focus of their exercise being the conditions affecting the biological processes of life (e.g. reproduction, mortality, health, etc.). The emergence of these respective techniques for subjugating bodies and for regulating populations has been identified by Foucault as marking the beginning of an era of bio-power.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Bio-power is thus the merging of the biological with the political. Under new expert authorities in industrial society, the body becomes an object of knowledge to be monitored, coerced, and controlled in increasingly complex ways. Trough these techniques the body is made “docile” so as to be “subjected, used, transformed, and improved” (Foucault, cited in Gastaldo 1997: 114). Expert forms of knowledge on the body such as those produced by the psy-professionals become increasingly important in advanced liberal societies as they can regulate individuals beyond the traditional sites of state intervention. Tis general process of regulation of the population beyond the direct, overt apparatus of the state has been referred to in a Foucauldian sense as modes of “governance.” “Governmentality” was defined by Foucault (cited in Rose et al. 2006: 83) as “techniques and procedures for directing human behaviour.” In Rose’s (1996: 155, emphasis original) words,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Governing in a liberal-democratic way means governing through the freedom and aspirations of subjects rather than in spite of them. The possibility of imposing “liberal” limits on the extent and scope of “political” rule has thus been provided by a proliferation of discourses, practices, and techniques through which self-governing capabilities can be installed in free individuals in order to bring their own ways of conducting and evaluating themselves into alignment with political objectives.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Rose would disagree, but I believe that these political objectives are to reinforce class rule and facilitate the maximisation of profits for the elites. As the social state has declined, the governance of individuals through neoliberal health and wellness discourses—including psychiatric ideology—has allowed for a more subtle form of social control to emerge, one that governs bodies “at a distance” through the extension of bio-politics. This is the expansion of ruling class hegemony through the spread of psychiatric myths into previously untouched areas of social and economic life. It is a most profound form of social control, as it appears in daily life as if we have consented to this expansion of psychiatric authority. After all, no one forced us to recognise our own unproductiveness because we spend too much time at the computer playing solitaire; rather, we now seem to be proactive in realising we have a “problem”—anything from attention-deficit and work avoidance behaviour to gaming addiction and obsessive behaviour—and require “help.” Tus, an important part of bio-politics in neoliberal society is self-surveillance, with Rose (1999: 11, emphasis added) noting that,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Through self-inspection, self-problematization, self-monitoring, and confession, ''we evaluate ourselves according to the criteria provided for us by others.'' Through self-reformation, therapy, techniques of body alteration, and calculated reshaping of speech and emotion, we adjust ourselves by means of the techniques propounded by the experts of the soul [meaning, the psy-professionals].</blockquote><br />
<br />
For neo-Foucauldian scholars, this governance at a distance is not necessarily a negative thing. Instead, it can empower individuals in negotiating their many public and personal responsibilities, and in understanding the limits of their actions and behaviour in society. Yet at its heart, notes Furedi, this “therapeutic governance” has a weak conception of individual capacity. It remains a top-down view of the individual which “represents scepticism towards the ability of people to act as responsible citizens, without the support of professionals who knows [sic] best what is in their interest” (Furedi 2004: 196). Instead, it can be more accurately hypothesised that the current popularity of mental health self-surveillance and mental illness self-labelling results from psychiatric hegemony and its imbued neoliberal ideology of risk and personal responsivity. As Clarke et al. (2003: 171-172) have stated of this focus on medical surveillance in neoliberal society,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>[H]ealth becomes an individual goal, a social and moral responsibility, and a site for routine biomedical intervention … the focus is no longer on illness, disability, and disease as matters of fate, but on health as a matter [of ] ongoing moral self-transformation.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Through psychiatric hegemony, then, we are all implicated as “at risk” of mental illness and must constantly self-monitor for potential signs of disorder (as many professional associations and drug adverts advise us). Clarke (2013: 418) has summated the importance of this mental health self-governance in neoliberal society with reference to the rise of disorders such as ADHD. She states,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Neo-liberal governance is typified by its emphasis on citizen involvement as individuals take independent action and become enterprises (or entrepreneurs) unto themselves and in a sense police themselves by internalising and enacting prevailing truths about the identification and management of risks … Neo-liberalism depends on self-governance (or in the case of children, governance by parents and similar authorities). For instance, mothers increasingly turn to … individualising children’s (mis)behaviour as disordered through mental illness discourse, of which attention deficit disorder<br />
<br />
(ADD)/Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most prevalent around the globe today.</blockquote> The parent has successfully sought help and aided the medicalisation of the child’s deviant behaviour (Chap. 5). Tis is a neoliberal process of social control which is so successful that Norris and Lloyd (cited in Adams 2008: 119) have noticed that the mental illness diagnosis often comes as a relief to the parent<br />
<br />
<blockquote>first, because they have located the “cause” of their child’s distress, and secondly, because they, as parents, are not to blame … Their child’s “abnormal” behaviour is, in this account, a medical issue to be rectified through medication that makes “normal” their child’s brain dysfunction.</blockquote><br />
<br />
What is also evident here is that the biomedical model is crucial to promoting neoliberal solutions focused on the individual. This successfully depoliticises the non-conformity of the child through suggesting that “chemical imbalances” in the brain are the problem. As a frontline psychiatrist herself, Moncrieff (2008: 243) has recognised that the rise of biomedical psychiatry and neoliberalism are intrinsically linked: “the chemical imbalance idea of psychiatric problems facilitates the neoliberal project,” she argues, and “features of neoliberalism in turn strengthen the chemical balance theory and biopsychiatry more generally.” The increasing social and economic disparities in neoliberal society are individualised through biomedical ideology. Moncrieff (2008: 248-249) states that this represents<br />
<br />
<blockquote>a clear instance of the medicalization of political discontent. But this situation is not overtly coercive. Tis view has not been imposed on people by direct force. People themselves have come to see their problems as individual problems, emanating from their brain chemistry.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Thus, biomedical ideology as a part of psychiatric hegemony has become the dominant “solution” to what are social and economic conditions of late capitalism. Biomedicine promises a range of corrections in line with neoliberal conduct, such as improved productivity and marketability as well as “recovery” and the “normalisation” of mental disorders for those who are at risk of deviating from their expected roles as workers, consumers, students, homemakers, and reproducers of the future workforce. Yet psychiatric hegemony encompasses more than the dominant biomedical rhetoric, and can also be detected in social models of the psy-professions. Feminist therapists, for example, argue that a legitimate response to a climate of anti-feminism is now to work on the self-esteem of their clients. “Hence,” remarks Dubrofsky (2007: 266), “social, political, and economic problems are turned into personal problems that can be solved by an individual who is willing to work on him- or herself.” It is but one example of an all-encompassing psychiatric discourse that denies the social and political realities of late capitalism and has successfully placed the focus back on the individual as the site of change.<br />
<br />
==Summary==<br />
<br />
Tirty-five years ago, Ingelby (1980: 54) predicted an expansion of psychiatric ideology into the public sphere when he stated that psychiatric ideas were being “incorporated within ‘common sense’ itself.” No longer was the mental patient to be subject to overt forms of oppression within the psychiatric institution; rather, the patient would come to embody psychiatric discourse on a more voluntary basis. “For as the mental hospitals are phased out,” remarked Ingelby (1980: 54),<br />
<br />
<blockquote>more and more treatment takes place in the doctor’s surgery and the general hospital; but the mental patient is still just as effectively incarcerated within his role. Moreover, this role is internalized within the patient’s own thinking and that of the people around him or her, and it guides everybody’s self-interpretations, whether or not they ever become patients.</blockquote><br />
<br />
As the neoliberal project has developed, we have all become implicated as subjects at risk of mental disorder. Tis is not, however, due to any advancement in the knowledge on real pathology but rather an expansion of the psychiatric discourse to the point where it has taken on hegemonic status. It is more than coincidence then that, as Davies (2015: 177) has observed, “[t]he entanglement of psychic maximization and profit maximization has grown more explicit over the course of the neoliberal era.” As I have argued in this chapter, neoliberalism requires a compliant and competitive population focused on correcting and improving their emotions, behaviour, and social capacities. Tis has been aided by the expansion of the psy-professions in governing populations “at a distance”; psychiatric hegemony has depoliticised fundamental inequalities of capitalism while proliferating neoliberal values through its classifications and philosophies on “treatment.” The pretext of scientific authority on the mind has allowed the psy-professions to enforce ruling class values and norms as consensual and taken-for-granted assumptions of human behaviour. Tis has happened to such an extent that individuals are now involved in acts of self-surveillance, seeking the solution to the structural failings of neoliberal society through individual DSM symptoms of “mental illness.”<br />
<br />
The psychiatric profession has always been a site of social control for policing the working classes within industrial society, yet their ideological role has never been as significant as it currently is. Over the chapters that follow, I will systematically demonstrate the development of this psychiatric hegemony by drawing on the evidence of psy-expansionism into the world of work and employment, through exploring youth deviance and the education system, through investigating the social control of women and the reinforcement of the division of labour, and with the continued pathologisation of social and political dissent.<br />
<br />
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Medicine, 89(2): 264-278.<br />
Waitzkin, H. (2000) The Second Sickness: Contradictions of Capitalist Health Care<br />
(rev. ed.). Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers.<br />
Whitaker, R. (2010a) Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs,<br />
and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America. New York: Crown<br />
Publishers.<br />
Williams, R. (1977) Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.<br />
Wilson, M. (1993) DSM-III and the Transformation of American Psychiatry: A<br />
History’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 150(3): 399-410.<br />
<br />
=4: Work: Enforcing Compliance=<br />
<br />
In this chapter, I profile the increasing encroachment of psychiatry and the psychological sciences upon the world of work. I argue that such expansionism has served a number of key goals for the profession and for capitalism, including professional legitimation and the expansion of expertise, increased profit and the consumption of goods and services and, most importantly, the naturalisation of unequal and exploitative relations in the workplace. I will demonstrate here that it is more than coincidence that the conceptualisation of work as a form of treatment or “therapy” by psychiatrists coincided with the development of industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century. “Work therapy” continues today, yet I will show that psychiatry’s role has moved from that of the social control and punishment of the unemployed and the non-able bodied in the asylums to a more subtle focus on reinforcing compliant work regimes and permanent “self-growth” ideologies on the precarious worker in neoliberal society. This exploration of dominant notions of work and unemployment therefore gives special attention to the emerging hegemonic role played by the mental health experts within the neoliberal workplace. This can be demonstrated through changes within professional practices and the psychiatric discourse embedded in the categories of “mental illness” given in successive DSMs since 1980. Te discussion will show that psychiatry and allied psychological sciences have expanded their areas of jurisdiction into the workplace of the white-collar worker at the behest of capitalist enterprise, where self-surveillance and a continual working on the self has become a part of the increased need for an efficient, flexible, and mobile labour force.<br />
<br />
Psychiatry has always been a conservative vocation which seeks to reinforce and maintain the status quo, where the dominant norms and values of society are normalised and deviations from them are pathologised. This is clearly evidenced when exploring psychiatric interventions in the world of work. The nature of work has changed dramatically over the last two centuries with the relations of production having grown increasingly complex; the serfs have been emancipated and replaced by an increasingly flexible and precarious pool of labour required for global growth. At the same time, what has not changed is the intervention of the psychiatric discourse to justify oppressive labour relations as normal and inevitable through the depoliticising and individualising of economic hardships in the workplace. To take but one example, I woke up one afternoon recently to find that the 2014 Noble Prize winners in psychology were suggesting that my tendency to stay up late rather than get up early was a sign of “Machiavellianism, secondary psychopathy, and exploitive narcissism” (Jonason et al. 2013: 538). Obviously, some of psychiatry’s little helpers had been getting up very early in the morning to grapple with the theories of evolutionary psychology and the problem of vampires. Te authors did at least admit that a limitation of their study could be the predominance of students in their sample; “night-time preferences may be strongest in college-students,” state Jonason et al. (2013: 540), “because of the freedom a orded to stay up late and lessened need to work relative to adults.” Behind the wackiness of such research lies a serious moral message informed by the needs of liberal democratic societies for good citizens and workers to rise early and go to bed at a reasonable time. A point summarised more generally by Phil Brown (1974: 47-48) when he states that “[a]s guardians of morality, the psychiatric-psychological establishment must put into the textbooks the definitions of mental illness that best reflect the dominant social values of the bourgeoisie.”<br />
<br />
==Moral Treatment and the Work Ethic==<br />
<br />
As was discussed in Chap. 2, crucial to the early formation of the asylum attendants—later to be renamed as “alienists” and then “psychiatrists”— as a legitimate group to manage the insane was the appropriation of the “humanist” philosophy of “moral treatment” from Pinel and Tuke. In line with the dominant values of early industrial society, the exposure to and reinforcement of appropriate behaviour could correct deviant character. In theory, the “mad” would no longer be chained, tortured, and warehoused by society, instead they would be taught how to behave and act appropriately without fear of punishment. In turn, good behaviour would be rewarded with humane care and the potential to re-join the world outside the institution. Te stick had been replaced by the carrot; as long as the patient could learn the rules and behaviour of this new society, they had nothing to fear.<br />
<br />
As with the prison and workhouse, one of the primary features of moral treatment at the York Retreat was the importance of work in the daily regime of the inmates and, equally, a distain for idleness. Even if the work was of little value in itself, it reinforced a moral imperative in the mind of the deviant. As Foucault (1988a: 247) reflected,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Work comes first in “moral treatment” as practiced at the Retreat. In itself,<br />
work possesses a constraining power superior to all forms of physical coercion, in that the regularity of the hours, the requirements of attention, the<br />
obligation to produce a result detach the su erer from a liberty of mind<br />
that would be fatal and engage him in a system of responsibilities.</blockquote><br />
<br />
<br />
Samuel Tuke was of the opinion that “of all the modes by which patients<br />
may be induced to restrain themselves, regular employment is perhaps the<br />
most generally efficacious” (cited in Scull 1989: 90). Under such a “treatment” regime, work had a moral value in self-regulating the behaviour<br />
of the deviant. Tis was a new form of moral surveillance in industrial<br />
society and one which was as applicable to the prisoner, the poor, and<br />
the mad as it was to the factory worker. It is this moral authority of such<br />
management and daily regimes as found in wider capitalist society which<br />
psychiatry progressed with the expansion of institutions for the insane throughout Europe and America in the nineteenth century. Te key to<br />
psychiatrists successfully establishing themselves as the “experts on the<br />
mind” was their appropriation of moral treatment as a “scientific” system<br />
of care for the management of the insane which—more that coincidentally—conformed to the values of the dominant social order. As Pollard<br />
has noted, industrial capitalism demanded “a reform of ‘character’ on the<br />
part of every single workman, since the previous character did not fit the<br />
new industrial system” (cited in Scull 1989: 91). A new set of competitive<br />
norms had to be taught and internalised through the new institutions by<br />
disciplinary techniques rather than coercion, and this applied as much to<br />
those labelled as “mad” as to the rest of society. Tus, the appearance and<br />
success of moral treatment can only be fully understood within the wider<br />
social and economic context in which it emerged, a point reinforced by<br />
Scull (1989: 92) when he notes,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>The insistence on the importance of the internalization of norms, the conception of how this was to be done, and even the nature of the norms that were to be internalized—in all these respects we can now see how the emerging attitude toward the insane paralleled contemporaneous shifts in the treatment of other deviants and of the normal.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Following the philosophy of moral treatment, regimes of work were established in institutions for the insane so that the chances for idleness among these deviant populations would be minimised and the work ethic could be reinforced as part of the new, dominant approach to “care.” Farms were to be attached to asylums to o er the opportunity for “the kind of regular employment which greatly helped to restore men’s minds” (Scull 1993: 150). However, while still stressing the therapeutic benefits of moral treatment, as the asylums grew in size, the work undertaken by patients became more orientated to the goals of the facility. Similar to prisons, inmates of asylums could be found “employed” in the asylum laundries, as farm labourers, and for undertaking other menial tasks within the institution (Scull 1993: 288-289). Tus, “work therapy” became an excuse for patients to be used as cheap labour for the smooth running of the institution. Tis would be a constant of inpatient existence until such establishments were phased out in the latter half of the twentieth century, with Brown (1974: 51, emphasis original) commenting on psychiatric institutions in the 1970s that<br />
<br />
<blockquote>[h]ard work, faith in one’s superiors and rule-following are taught, backed up with the wide range of threats available to hospital sta . Everything done to the patients is seen as something for the patients—“work therapy,” “recreational therapy,” etc. Thus cheap labor on the wards and in “occupational therapy” is obtained in the guise of help.</blockquote><br />
<br />
==The “Humanisation” of Work==<br />
<br />
The impact of the psychological sciences on the work environment outside the institution was not felt until after World War II. Te post-war economic boom created an environment of labour shortages and low retention, and under these circumstances economic elites became increasingly interested in the “psychology” of the “productive worker.” “Business managers, beset by high rates of absenteeism and job turnover,” reiterates Napoli (cited in Cautin et al. 2013: 43) of the situation in America,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>took unprecedented interest in hiring the right worker and keeping him contented on the job. Management turned to psychologists … and the amount of psychological testing quickly increased. Surveys show that in 1939 only 14 % of businesses were using such tests; in 1947 the proportion rose to 50 %, and in 1952, 75%.</blockquote><br />
<br />
From finding and retaining the “right worker” through psychological testing developed the associated idea of the “happy worker”—an employee who, through positive reinforcements, could increase rates of productivity and, consequently, profits. Work was no longer seen only as a necessity for survival within capitalist society but a place of improvement, importantly a place to improve oneself. As Rose (1999: 56) has summarised of this so-called “humanization” of work, “correctly organized, productive work itself can satisfy the worker; the activity of working itself can provide rewarding personal and social relations for those engaged in it; good work can be a means to self-fulfilment.” Te psychological sciences had a significant role to play in the development of new techniques for the selection, management, and improvement of the workforce (Rose 1999: 82), and the branches of occupational and industrial psychology expanded significantly during this period.<br />
<br />
Changes in the industrial base of capitalism in the 1970s only served to expand psy-professional practice still further. As the manufacturing sector was replaced in economic significance by growth in the service industries, changing skills were required within the labour force. Traditional manual labour was declining while there was a burgeoning skills gap within white collar occupations. Tus, the labour force was put under increasing pressure to “adapt” and “upskill” to meet the needs of the changing marketplace. Te new aptitudes required by employers included social skills, problem-solving skills, independent and team working, a flexible approach to work, as well as workers ready to further upskill. In the future, people would have to demonstrate high levels of “employability” within their jobs and what Elraz (2013: 810) calls a “sellable self ” which will be, “associated with the constant expectation to perform, manage-impression, self-promote and ‘sell’ oneself as an attractive product: with no ‘faults’, ‘weaknesses’ or ‘limitations’, always ready to be, and do ‘more’.” Tis “new subjectivity of work” (Rose 1999: 106) has meant that the individual worker has become a key site for psyprofessional intervention in neoliberal society. I experienced one example of this intervention at first-hand when I was employed at a Training and Enterprise Council in England in the early 1990s. Both employees and our unemployed “clients” were o ered the chance to undertake taxpayer- funded neurolinguistic programming, a business-orientated form of neurocognitive therapy. Te presence of this “training initiative” is a small demonstration of the successful creep of the psychological sciences into the work environment over this period—those to be re-skilled learnt in these sessions that the way to real, long-lasting, and personally satisfying success was to examine their own weaknesses and confront their personal barriers to achieving a job. Te discourse of neurolinguistic programming fitted perfectly with the dominant notions of the sellable self, where success in employment was intrinsically tied to the self-actualisation of the person; an increasing need within neoliberal capitalism to “work on the ego of the worker” (Rose 1999: 113).<br />
<br />
The idea of “positive thinking” and the opportunity for “personal<br />
growth” brought about by the expansion of the psy-professions into the<br />
world of work has been indoctrinated on the employed and unemployed<br />
alike. Ehrenreich (2009: 45) recounts the experience of laid-o white-<br />
collar workers as follows:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>At the networking groups, boot camps, and motivational sessions available to the unemployed, I found unanimous advice to abjure anger and “negativity” in favor of an upbeat, even grateful approach to one’s immediate crisis. People who had been laid off from their jobs and were spiraling down toward poverty were told to see their condition as an “opportunity” to be embraced … [T]he promised outcome was a kind of “cure”: by being positive, a person might not only feel better during his or her job search, but actually bring it to a faster, happier conclusion.</blockquote><br />
<br />
I would argue that what is taken by employers, managers, benefit officers, work counsellors, and occupational psychologists as “negative thinking” is the continued ability of people to think critically about their situation and consider it in a wider political context. Tis is the antithesis of the required compliant employed or unemployed citizen in neoliberal society, and the psy-professions have sought to depoliticise and individualise such thinking through their expansion of hegemonic notions of “happiness,” “positive thinking,” and “positive mental health.” As psychotherapist Richard Brouillette (2016) recently admitted, a concentration on individual narratives by the profession means that “therapy could easily become an arm of the state, seeking to ‘cure’ listlessness or a reluctance to work, potentially limiting social and political awareness among those it is intended to serve.”<br />
<br />
Rose (1999: 114) has noted that a focus on positive mental health in the workplace has included management policies aimed at “richness of self, self-acceptance, growth motivation, investment in living, unified outlook on life, regulation from within, independence, and adequacy of interpersonal relations.” In contrast, mental ''illness'' in the workplace can broadly be conceived as the opposite; for example, those who are perceived as having poor interpersonal relations, who show a lack of independence, and have “negative” personality traits which limit their “growth” potential (e.g., introversion, shyness, melancholia, and pessimism).<br />
<br />
The current prevalence of mental illness in the labour force is estimated to be one in every four workers. Te Partnership for Workplace Mental Health (2006: 6) estimates that the indirect annual costs of mental illness to American employers may be as high as $100 billion. Whereas a straight Marxist analysis would suggest that the increased alienation of workers in neoliberalism leads to greater levels of sickness including mental disorder (see, e.g., Robinson 1997; Rosenthal 2010; Rosenthal and Campbell 2016), there is a need to consider the interventions of the mental health system in the world of work as increasingly useful in ideological terms, justifying the precarious conditions that we currently work under as natural and inevitable. I argue here that mental illness designations are increasingly focused on the world of work and serve an important role in depoliticising employment relations; instead of recognising power disparities in the work environment, new and/or changing diagnostic categories of mental illness encourage workers to problematise the self rather than the organisation or wider society.<br />
<br />
Table 4.1 shows the quantity of work-related terminology used in each<br />
edition of the DSM. Te number of such phrasings has significantly<br />
increased over time, from a count of 10 in the DSM-I to 387 in the<br />
DSM-5. References to “work,” “working,” or “worker” are particularly<br />
evident in mental disorders from 1980 onwards and, despite being a<br />
similar sized manual to the previous edition, the DSM-5 increased the<br />
use of such phrasings by almost a third (it is worth noting that part of<br />
this increase is due to the introduction of the workplace to the previously<br />
<br />
{|<br />
|+ Table 4.1 Number of work-related words/phrases in the DSM, 1952-2013<sup>a</sup><br />
|-<br />
| || || DSM- || DSM- || || DSM-<br />
|-<br />
| DSM-I DSM-II III III-R DSM-IV IV-TR DSM-5<br />
|-<br />
| Word/phrase || (1952) || (1968) || (1980) || (1987) || (1994) || (2000) || (2013)<br />
|-<br />
| Business || 4 || 0 || 8 || 7 || 9 || 9 || 11<br />
|- <br />
| Unemployed/ment || 1 || 0 || 6 || 17 || 31 || 23 || 46 <br />
|-<br />
| Employed/ees/ers/ment<br />
|-<br />
| Flexible/ility || 0 || 0 || 0 || 1 || 7 || 4 || 14<br />
| Loss of job/employment/ || 0 || 0 || 8 || 1 || 9 || 10 || 16<br />
|:job loss<br />
| Under/unproductive/ity || 0 || 0 || 10 || 2 || 11 || 8 || 12<br />
|-<br />
| Work/ing/er || 5 || 1 || 72 || 122 || 186 || 204 || 288<br />
|-<br />
| Total count || 10 || 1 || 104 || 150 || 253 || 258 || 387<br />
|}<br />
<br />
<sup>a</sup>See Appendix A for methodology.<br />
<br />
school-defined ADHD diagnosis, a classification which Conrad (2007: 139) has referred to as representing “the medicalization of underperformance”). As expected, the DSM-III in 1980 shows a large increase in the references to workplace terminology. Following the construction of DSM-III, a number of mental illness classifications have appeared which have specifically sought to pathologise behaviour and personality traits which are seen to limit the desired skills and roles of workers in the neoliberal workplace; these include disinhibited social engagement disorder and social anxiety disorder. To illustrate my argument for the workplace as a site of psychiatric hegemony I will now outline the latter diagnosis as an appropriate case study.<br />
<br />
==Case Study: Social Anxiety Disorder==<br />
<br />
First classified in the DSM-III (American Psychiatric Association 1980: 227-228) as social phobia under the notoriously vague—yet increasingly useful—lexicon of anxiety disorders, the primary symptom of social anxiety disorder (SAD) was a “persistent, irrational fear of, and compelling desire to avoid, situations in which the individual may be exposed to scrutiny by others” (American Psychiatric Association 1980: 227). As acknowledged by Lane (2007: 72-75), the development of this diagnosis by the DSM-III committee had little to do with any scientific study on the topic and much more to do with acquiring a set of descriptive, inclusionary behavioural criteria under the watchful eyes of pharmaceutical patrons such as Upjohn. By the 1990s, social phobia was being named “the disorder of the decade” (Aho 2010: 191); this situation was significantly aided—not for the last time—by a loosening in diagnostic criteria with the deletion of the phrase “compelling desire to avoid” in the revised edition of the DSM-III (American Psychiatric Association 1987: 241). With only the mental disorders of alcohol dependence and major depressive disorder a ecting more people, those who currently suffer from SAD in the United States are estimated to represent at least 13 per cent of the population (Aho 2010: 191).<br />
<br />
If there really was originally an attempt to exclude “normal” behaviour from the criteria for SAD, this appears to have completely vanished by the time of the release of the DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association 2013: 202), where the first symptom of the disorder is now a,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Marked fear or anxiety about one or more social situations in which the individual is exposed to possible scrutiny by others. Examples include social interactions (e.g., having a conversation, meeting unfamiliar people), being observed (e.g., eating or drinking), and performing in front of others (e.g., giving a speech).</blockquote><br />
<br />
Readers may be reflecting on whether they have also shown similar anxieties in such social situations, arguably many of us have. Is this normal behaviour—an irritating if perhaps necessary fallibility of something which maybe makes us who we are—or is it a pathology, an illness which requires treatment? Critics have argued that the APA’s invention of SAD represents the successful medicalisation of shyness, a natural human emotion (Lane 2007; Scott 2006). Tus, the diagnosis can be conceptualised as a label given to those deviating from dominant neoliberal norms of the model citizen and worker who should now be assertive, gregarious, and an aggressive go-getter. As Scott (2006: 134) saliently comments, thanks to the development of the SAD label, the psy-professionals now assert that “being shy is a barrier not only to personal relationships but also to career advancement and civil interaction with strangers, acquaintances and friends.”<br />
<br />
There are a number of key reasons that have been given by scholars for the “discovery” and expansion of SAD. Tese include the influence of pharmaceutical companies on such “diagnostic creep,” the potential for jurisdictional expansion by psychiatrists and allied professions, and the promotion of shyness as a medical problem by advocacy groups and research institutions (see, e.g., Conrad 2007; Lane 2007; Moynihan and Cassels 2005; Scott 2006). However, while there is plenty of evidence to suggest that these factors have had a significant impact on the expansion of SAD throughout western society, they do not explain psychiatry’s original focus on shyness towards its initial appearance in the DSM-III. Such an analysis involves a wider socio-historical analysis of psychiatry’s primary function within western society. Aho (2010: 201) has been one to offer such a critique of those who forward the political economic view of medicalisation as simply, “a product of recent capitalist collusion between the pharmaceutical industry, managed care organizations … and advocates of the new DSM.” Instead, he states that “before medical professionals and pharmaceutical conglomerates can profit from pathologizing certain behaviors, a web of historical meanings is already in place, working behind our backs to determine what will count as normal and abnormal” (Aho 2010: 201).<br />
<br />
As I have outlined earlier in this book, the institution of psychiatry does not work in a vacuum, somehow above the everyday norms and values of wider society; rather, they are a profession with a particular conservative zeal for upholding the current social order through their work. When behaviour becomes unacceptable to the needs of capitalism, the profession seeks to pathologise such deviance. Tis process does not happen overnight but through a progression of debate, research, and movement towards a collective focus on such areas. In this case, the research on shyness from Philip Zimbardo (1977)—the former president of the American Psychological Association—is seen as key towards the development of social phobia as a category of mental illness. Significantly, his research did not suggest that shyness was a mental illness, but rather noted a concern that people with such characteristics were likely to be seriously disadvantaged as society began to change. Zimbardo (1977: 5, emphasis added) commented on the “condition,”<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Shyness is an insidious personal problem that is reaching such endemic proportions as to be justifiably called a social disease. Trends in our society suggest it will get worse in the coming years as social forces increase our isolation, competition, and loneliness. Unless we begin to do something soon, many of our children and grandchildren will become prisoners of their own shyness.</blockquote><br />
<br />
The traits of shyness—including timidity, mistrust of others, and a lack of self-assertion (Zimbardo 1977: 13)—were conceptualised as increasingly problematic within contemporary society and therefore a justifiable focus for psychiatric activity. Tis is tacit acceptance that such behaviour has not been found to be a mental disorder as a result of rigorous testing but rather is socially dictated and culturally relative; shyness becomes a “social disease” (i.e., a social deviance) in need of treatment. Thus, “the rise of social phobia,” states Cottle (1999: 25),<br />
<br />
<blockquote>offers a glimpse not so much at the anatomy of a specific illness as at the still inherently subjective nature of psychiatric medicine and the cultural forces that help draw the boundary between what we are told to think of as normal and what we are told to consider pathological.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Concerned with the need for workers to conform to the desired norms and values necessary to “succeed” in neoliberal society, the psy-professions have stigmatised and “othered” those once considered only shy, introverted, or reticent co-workers. Tis process of psychiatrists labelling the shy as mentally ill has also been previously highlighted by Scott (2004: 133) who acknowledges that, in comparison, the non-shy self,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>embodies the cultural values of contemporary Western societies: ambition, assertiveness, competitiveness and individualism. Tis dominant ideal can be used to stigmatize those who fail to live up to such expectations, whose difference is attributed to individual pathologies rather than to an unrealistic cultural ideology.</blockquote><br />
<br />
The success of psychiatric hegemony here is that since the original construction of social phobia in 1980, workers have become more inclined to self-label and entertain the possibility of therapy and drug treatment for their failure to be more sociable and assertive at their place of work. Tis situation has further legitimated the extension of the psy-professions in the areas of unemployment, job training, and work, reinforcing the neoliberal focus on the self as the site of change, while simultaneously depoliticising the increasingly alienating work environment and constant pressures on employees to upskill and be “more employable” in the jobs market (see Elraz 2013). Trough the pathologisation of such “non-sellable” traits, Lane (2007: 208) argues that what counts as acceptable behaviour within the population has been narrowed to such an extent that “we now tend to believe that active membership in community activities, the cultivation of social skills (becoming a ‘people person’), and the development of group consciousness are natural, universal, and obligatory aims.”<br />
<br />
==Summary==<br />
<br />
As Roberts (2015: 24) has pointed out of the recent increase in the use of the “autism” label by the psy-professions, the pathologisation of shyness reflects neoliberal capital’s desire for “emotional labour” within the work force. “It is no longer enough just to shift product,” states Roberts (2015: 24), “one must now do it with a smile, with ‘sincerity,’ with a friendly touch.” In this chapter I have discussed the psy-professionals' involvement in the area of work from utilising it as a form of “therapy” for idleness in the nineteenth century to encompassing dominant neoliberal ideals of employability and productivity in the current DSM. Reinforcing the ideological prerogatives for workers to concentrate on their individual failings rather than the social reality of their collective exploitation under capitalism has allowed the experts of the mind to expand their areas of jurisdiction into the office, factory, home, and—as we shall see in the next chapter—the school.<br />
<br />
In 2014, the Bureau of Labor Statistics ranked industrial-organisational psychologists as the fastest-growing occupation in the United States, with Farnham (2014) noting of the profession that “their expertise results in better hires, increased productivity, reduced turnover, and lower labor costs.” Meanwhile, the UK government’s Department for Work and Pensions has recently been considering compulsory mental health counselling for the unemployed and possible sanctions for those who refuse such “treatment” (Gayle 2015). Again we witness here the expansion of psy-professions as they align their “expertise” and “science” with the needs of capitalism. Contrary to what our managers are telling us, the infiltration of psychiatry and allied professions into our work lives is not a progressive step in the health field, rather it signals the closer surveillance and social control of labour under neoliberal conditions. Te following chapter moves on to discuss how the future workers have also become victims of this psychiatric hegemony through the closer monitoring of their behaviour in the education system.<br />
<br />
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Rosenthal, S., and Campbell, P. (2016) Marxism and Psychology. Toronto:<br />
ReMarx Publishing.<br />
Scott, S. (2004) ‘Te Shell, the Stranger and the Competent Other: Towards a<br />
Sociology of Shyness’, Sociology, 38(1): 121-37.<br />
Scott, S. (2006) ‘Te Medicalization of Shyness: From Social Misfits to Social<br />
Fitness’, Sociology of Health and Illness, 28(2): 133-153.<br />
Scull, A. (1989) Social Order/Mental Disorder: Anglo-American Psychiatry in<br />
Historical Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press.<br />
Scull, A. (1993) Te Most Solitary of A ictions: Madness and Society in Britain,<br />
1700-1900. New Haven: Yale University Press.<br />
Zimbardo, P. G. (1977) Shyness: What It is, What To Do About It. Reading, MA:<br />
Addison-Wesley.<br />
<br />
=5: Youth: Medicalising Deviance=<br />
<br />
This chapter considers the key economic and ideological factors within<br />
capitalist society that have precipitated what might be described as the<br />
relatively recent psychiatric and therapeutic “gold rush” of diagnosing<br />
young people with ever greater varieties of mental illness. As regimes of<br />
work have changed throughout the twentieth century and the demand<br />
for the workforce to possess higher and more complex skills has become<br />
greater, it will be shown that a focus on compulsory schooling justifies<br />
the closer surveillance and control of youth behaviour by psychiatric and<br />
associated professions. In forwarding the central argument of this book,<br />
a socio-historical analysis is performed on the diagnosis of ADHD, currently the most popular mental illness label given to school-aged children<br />
and young adults. While considering the issues of deinstitutionalisation,<br />
psy-professional struggles over jurisdiction, and the encroaching power<br />
of the pharmaceutical industry, the ADHD case study, along with textual<br />
analyses of consecutive DSMs, will show that the increasing infiltration<br />
of the psychiatric discourse into the education system serves a significant<br />
function for capitalism in enforcing dominant moral codes and economic<br />
prerogatives while pathologising any deviation or resistance to these patterns of authority.<br />
<br />
Wilkinson and Pickett (2010: 63) estimate that a million children in Britain are currently mentally ill, including one in ten of those aged between five and sixteen. Understanding these figures in the context of the education system, the scholars note that “in any secondary school with 1000 students, 50 will be severely depressed, 100 will be distressed, 10-20 will be suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder and between 5-10 girls will have an eating disorder” (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010: 63). And the numbers appear to be growing. For example, in the case of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), three to five per cent of young people in the US were diagnosed with the disorder in 1970s (Conrad 2006: xi) whereas the current estimate is between seven and nine per cent of the youth population (Bowden 2014: 423). Recent studies from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests an even higher rate of 11 per cent of school-age children, including 20 per cent of the male population (Saul 2014: 16). This represents a growth in ADHD in the US of 41 per cent in the last ten years (Saul 2014: 16). Whitaker and Cosgrove (2015: 92) estimate that 3.5 million young people in America are now being prescribed ADHD medication, which is “nearly six times the number in 1990.”<br />
<br />
As will be detailed later in this chapter, my analysis suggests that the range of mental disorders that can be associated with young people is currently 47 from a total of 374 classified in the DSM-5. Fifty years ago, in the first edition of the DSM, the figure was just eight. This impressive picture of the current “epidemic” of child mental illness can be contrasted with the knowledge that just a hundred years ago cases of mental disorder in children was considered most rare, with there being no specific pathology that psychiatry believed affected young people in particular (Timimi 2008: 166). How can we explain the increase in the rates and numbers of mental illnesses said to be afflicting young people across western society, especially over the past 35 years? Critical scholars have pointed to a number of factors including the consideration of psychiatrists as “moral entrepreneurs” responsible for the increased medicalisation of childhood, the need for a continual expansion of psy-professional activity into new areas of public and private life, and the role of pharmaceutical companies in distorting notions of “mental illness” to increase the profits from drug consumption (Rose 2006: 476-479). While the increasing medicalisation of deviant behaviour is a common theme within much of this scholarship, writers are cautious as to the seemingly complex dynamics whereby a specific aspect of young peoples’ behaviour becomes categorised as a new mental illness by psychiatry (though pharmaceutical companies are often seen as a key agent here). Rose (2006: 480), however, has suggested that this medicalisation thesis should be tempered by a more “subtle” and less deterministic approach through which we can understand how both individuals and their doctors discursively code experience “in relation to a cultural norm of the active, responsible, choosing self, realizing his or her potential in the world through shaping a lifestyle.”<br />
<br />
The argument I develop here is much simpler than either Rose’s or the medicalisation scholars, less subtle maybe, but certainly more straightforward: rates of mental illness for young people have increased because of capitalism’s need to mould the moral character of the individual at an earlier age than previously. As the last chapter documented, neoliberalism has seen the progressive creep of psychiatry and associated professions into the workplace, training centres, and welfare and unemployment offices to enforce self-surveillance and progress “character building” in the interests of capitalism. Likewise, such regimes depoliticise and pathologise resistance through re-framing the systemic problems of an alienating and unfulfilling work environment as symptoms of “mental illness” and, thus, part of an individual’s own failings. With the requirement for more compliant, competitive, and skilled citizens needed for the neoliberal marketplace, the psy-professionals have also intensified their focus on youth; this has particularly been achieved through the compulsory education system as the primary site for surveillance and, consequently, diagnostic expansion. This chapter begins by outlining the social construction of “children” and “young people,” and the subsequent concern for their moral obligations by welfare agencies. It will then focus on the introduction of compulsory schooling as well as the development of child psychology and child psychiatric services which emerge from the education factories. Discussion of the post-war struggle for professional jurisdiction of disturbed and disabled children will be given, followed lastly by a detailed analysis of psychiatry’s increasing focus on young people in neoliberal society.<br />
<br />
==The Social Construction of Childhood==<br />
<br />
At the end of the twentieth century, Rose (1999: 123) stated that childhood had become “the most intensively governed sector of personal existence.” This includes the surveillance of the home and the school by health, welfare, and education services. It was not always this way; in fact, “childhood” as a separate and distinct phase of the life cycle only emerges with the Enlightenment and then develops further with industrial society (Aires 1962; Conrad and Schneider 1992: 145). Before this period, little attention was shown to these smaller versions of adults who were afforded the same rights and obligations as the rest of the population. Specifically, the nineteenth century saw key changes in this view, as birth and the first years of a person’s life were reconceptualised as a period of significance to industrial citizens’ future physical and moral health. The early years were reshaped as a time of “innocence” where the child needed special attention and guidance from authorities (Conrad and Schneider 1992: 146).<br />
<br />
Consequently, this period witnessed a growing concern for the younger population from the media, politicians, charities, and the public, which resulted in the emergence of professional groups and organisations specifically focused on childhood as a new “social issue.” The construction and subsequent problematisation of young people in the nineteenth century can be succinctly understood as informed by two necessary conditions for the expansion of industrial capital at this time: firstly, the economic requirement for the labour force to be physically healthier, better skilled, better organised, and generally more conditioned to industrial work regimes prior to entering the factories and the mills. And secondly, the ideological requirement for the working classes to conform to the new industrial environment, embracing the dominant norms and values of capitalism without dissent (these ideas often being framed by religious groups, the media, and politicians as a concern for the “future morality” of society). As a result, there is an increase in the surveillance of the emerging nuclear family (Chap. 6). However, it is with the establishment of compulsory schooling in the latter decades of the nineteenth century that these economic and ideological prerogatives are given their clearest and most enduring form.<br />
<br />
The establishment of compulsory education addressed the need for a more literate and higher skilled workforce (Timimi 2008: 165), while at the same time allaying the fears of the ruling classes as to the perceived threat of an increasingly organised and politicised working class population. The new public schools system therefore performed a secondary socialisation function, instilling dominant codes in the future labour force and acting as a site where authority and moral obligation of the new citizens could be enforced. Similar to the factory, the asylum, and the prison, the school established another institution of social control in industrial society where obedience to the social order could be reinforced, primarily through surveillance by moral authorities rather than through physical punishment. Citing John Locke’s philosophy on education which informed this state apparatus, Scull (1993: 108) notes that “[t]he child needed to be taught to be ‘his own slave driver’” through rewarding “appropriate” behaviour and shaming deviant actions. Joined by an emergent teaching profession, the psychological sciences would come to take a decisive role in enforcing this ideological function of the education system. Following the enactment of legislation in the 1830s to outlaw child labour in Britain (Duffin 2000: 330), the increased visibility on the streets along with public concern as to the potential delinquency of the young working class population led to demands that greater attention be paid to child welfare. Informed by Christian and nationalist doctrines as well as burgeoning psychological, educational, and philosophical approaches to “child development” (Timimi 2008: 165), many “child-saving” charities and philanthropic groups emerged during this period to campaign for greater social and medical interventions in early life, with a particular focus on the family and the school. As Conrad and Schneider (1992: 146) recount, “[t]hese reformers, including moralists, educators, and clergy, supported child-rearing philosophies that emphasized psychological control and moral solicitude, in the name of benefiting the child.” For such reformers, a great deal of momentum was gained from the introduction of compulsory schooling—this led to what Timimi (2008: 165) calls “a prolonged and unprecedented public discussion about the physical and mental condition of children.” This concern for the psychological<br />
well-being and development of the young citizen also paralleled the more<br />
general growth of public medicine in Victorian Britain. As Porter (1997:<br />
633-634) has outlined of the guiding principles,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>medicine (it was argued) had to become a positive and systematic enterprise, undertaking planned surveillance of apparently healthy, normal people as well as the sick, tracing groups from infancy to old age, logging the incidence of chronic, inherited and constitutional conditions, correlating ill health against variables like income, education, class, diet and housing.</blockquote><br />
<br />
By the end of the nineteenth century, the medical gaze had expanded to incorporate “the entire psycho-social economy” of society (Porter 1997: 634), including a growing interest in education. Within the school environment, the concern for the “morality” of the future workers shown earlier by child-saving groups became a focus for the scientific surveillance and management of young people by the psychological sciences under the auspices of identifying learning difficulties and behavioural problems. In the new century, psychiatrists and psychologists began to observe, monitor, and evaluate the classroom, not for mental pathologies within the child but for behaviour that differentiated them from the “normal” and the expected. Tus the psy-professionals’ interventions in schools were, from the beginning, moral rather than scientific judgements of appropriate behaviour, holding within them the aim of enforcing dominant and desired notions of “normality” on the young. As Rose (1999: 133) has summarised,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>It is around pathological children—the troublesome, the recalcitrant, the delinquent—that conceptions of normality have taken shape. It is not that a knowledge of the normal course of development of the child has enabled experts to become more skilled at identifying those unfortunate children who are in some way abnormal. Rather, expert notions of normality are extrapolated from our attention to those children who worry the courts, teachers, doctors, and parents. Normality is not an observation but a valuation. It contains not only a judgment about what is desirable, but an injunction as to the goal to be achieved. In so doing, the very notion of “the normal” today awards power to scientific truth and expert authority.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Before the advent of compulsory schooling it had been rare for children to be conceptualised as suffering from a “mental illness,” though Timimi (2008: 166) notes that there were occasional youth admittances to asylums throughout the nineteenth century. However, the concern for the welfare of the child and the general “mental hygiene” of the population in the early part of the twentieth century changed this view and saw the emergence of medical and social disciplines and professional bodies that, for the first time, specialised in child and adolescent health, including the establishment of paediatrics as a sub-discipline of medicine (Duffin 2000: 317). Similarly, early development psychology and child psychiatry were also established (Timimi 2008: 166), the latter notably helped by the foundation in England of the Tavistock Square Clinic in 1920 which boasted a children’s department responsible for promoting “awareness” of childhood mental disorders (Porter 1997: 645).<br />
<br />
==“Intelligence” Testing==<br />
<br />
In the previous chapter I discussed the development of an increasingly complex work environment throughout the twentieth century; at the same time, the psychological sciences expanded its areas of jurisdiction to facilitate skills diversification and “personal development,” increase the productivity and efficiency of the workforce, and enforce conformity to the dominant values of capital by pathologising and depoliticising worker resistance. The primary site for enforcing such structures of discipline on the future workforce, however, would come to be the school—this was where the psychological sciences would first make a significant claim to expertise beyond the psychiatric institution and the analyst’s couch. Rose (1999: 135) recounts that, as with the factory or the parade ground, school brought children together in a single space where they could be observed and judged ''en masse''. Individual differences between children were made visible by the school system, and the institution, “sought to discipline [children] according to institutional criteria and objectives” (Rose 1999: 140). However, there were those who would not or could not adapt to the desired moral codes for behaviour and performance at school. These young people—who came to be labelled as “educational imbeciles or the feeble-minded” (Rose 1999: 140)—were a problem for the authorities.<br />
<br />
Inspired by the eugenicists’ obsession for marking and testing biological and mental differences within the general population (Chap. 7), psychologists developed the intelligence quotient (IQ) test to measure the academic performance of school children and separate the able from the less-abled students. This is the beginning of psychometric and associated testing which has since expanded across many areas of economic and social life. Commenting on the significance of the “intelligence” test, Rose (1999: 143) states that,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>The technique of the test was the most important contribution of the psychological sciences to the human technologies of the first half of the twentieth century. The test routinizes the complex ensemble of social judgement<br />
on individual variability into an automatic device that makes difference<br />
visible and notable.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Thus, the intelligence test can be seen as a moral technology used specifically for the social judgement of school children by psychologists under the guise of “science” (see also Roberts 2015: 12-13). The inventor of the test, Alfred Binet, had developed it to identify the “feeble-minded” to be sent to special schools. Significant for contextualising later mass testings and screenings of school children for intelligence, abnormalities, and mental disorders, Rose (1999: 142, emphasis added) notes, "Binet’s test used criteria that were directly educational and behavioural. ''They were direct assessments of the degree of adaptation of individual children to the expectation that others had of them''." The key to the success of Binet’s test was not the ability to accurately measure “intelligence”—which he felt was impossible to predict through such time-restricted tests—but its administrative usefulness in identifying problematic individuals (Rose 1999: 142). By the 1960s, the “science” of testing school children had expanded to such an extent that it was enshrined in the United States under the federal Medicare package, where children could be screened for a whole host of physical and behavioural disorders. With mass-screening programmes administered through schools, Conrad and Schneider (1992: 155) state that it had become, “possible to establish diagnosis and intervention with deviant children to an extent beyond the dreams of the 19th-century child-savers.” Under the pretext of “health care” for school children, these moral technologies aided the expansion of the psy- professionals into the education system over the course of the twentieth century, and with it an increased focus on childhood deviance and the use of psychiatric labels to neutralise such threats to authority.<br />
<br />
==The Rise of the Risky Kid==<br />
<br />
An analysis of successive editions of the DSM for youth-related diagnoses demonstrates three key issues to support my argument for the development of psychiatric hegemony here. Firstly, psychiatry has linked childhood mental illness to unwanted behaviour and conduct in the classroom from the very first edition. For example, the DSM-I introduced “learning disturbance” as a category of “special symptoms/reaction” (American Psychiatric Association 1952: 39), as well as the mental disorder of conduct disorder/disturbance (American Psychiatric Association 1952: 41) which included the example of truancy as symptomatic behaviour (in an updated form, the latter remains in the DSM-5) (see Appendix B for the full diagnostic list identified in each DSM). Secondly, the pathologisation of youth behaviour and the experiences/events of childhood and adolescence have increased exponentially, from eight diagnostic categories in the DSM-I to 47 in the DSM-5 (see Table 5.1). Young people have been a market of serious growth for the mental health industry, and psychiatry (along with pharmaceutical companies and other vested parties) has been successful in grabbing a significant piece of that pie over the years. From my analysis of the DSMs, the classifications and discourse on youth have grown considerably, divorcing all other areas of specific<br />
<br />
'''Table 5.1''' Number of youth-related diagnostic categories in the DSM,<br />
<span style="display:center;">1952-2013<sup>a</sup></span><br />
<br />
{|<br />
| DSM-I || DSM-II || DSM-III || DSM-III-R || DSM-IV || DSM-IV-TR || DSM-5<br />
|-<br />
| (1952) || (1968) || (1980) || (1987) || (1994) || (2000) | (2013)<br />
|-<br />
| 8 || 18 || 37 || 41 || 42 || 43 || 47<br />
|}<br />
<sup>a</sup>See Appendix B for full diagnostic list.<br />
<br />
psychiatric expansion. Tirdly, the growth in youth-related mental illness classifications and discourse is uneven, with the most pronounced increase evidenced in 1980 with the publication of the DSM-III. At the end of institutionalisation and the beginning of neoliberalism, the number of mental disorders aimed at young people and adolescents doubled from 18 in the DSM-II to 37 in the DSM-III. It is here, for example, that the behaviours of stuttering and being mute become mental illnesses (the former remains in the DSM-5 as childhood-onset uency disorder (American Psychiatric Association 2013: 45-47)), while learning disabilities, social ineptitude, and (especially) boys’ unruly behaviour are medicalised under labels such as autism and ADHD. In previous DSMs, references to “school” were rare (the word was mentioned only four times in the diagnostic categories in the DSM-I and twice in the DSM-II), yet in the DSM-III the word was liberally scattered across many diagnoses as both examples and the focus for a site of disorder, with the phrase being used a total of 91 times. Many new words and phrases associated with youth, education, and leisure were introduced under classifications and symptomologies in the DSM-III, and these have usually increased with each successive edition of the manual (see Table 5.2).<br />
<br />
To fully understand the growth in the psychiatric surveillance of young<br />
people during the post-war period, it is necessary to consider the expan-<br />
sion of the welfare state in western societies, the struggle for control of<br />
<br />
'''Table 5.2''' Number of youth-related words/phrases in the DSM, 1952-2013<sup>a</sup><br />
{|<br />
| DSM- || DSM- || DSM-<br />
|-<br />
| DSM-I || DSM-II || III || III-R || DSM-IV || IV-TR || DSM-5<br />
|-<br />
| Word/phrase || (1952) || (1968) || (1980) || (1987) || (1994) || (2000) || (2013)<br />
|-<br />
| Adolescent/ce || 9 || 39 || 211 || 274 || 206 || 216 || 179<br />
|-<br />
| Child/ren/hood || 32 || 71 || 672 || 762 || 822 || 855 || 1318<br />
|-<br />
| Educat/ed/ion || 0 || 0 || 6 || 4 || 14 || 16 || 26<br />
|-<br />
| Game/s/ing || 0 || 0 || 6 || 12 || 12 || 12 || 75<br />
|-<br />
| Play/ing/mates || 0 || 0 || 27 || 37 || 66 || 59 || 87<br />
|-<br />
| School || 4 || 2 || 91 || 105 || 158 || 170 || 257<br />
|-<br />
| Teach/er/es/ing || 0 || 0 || 8 || 6 || 12 || 19 || 18<br />
|-<br />
| Youth/young people || 0 || 0 || 3 || 6 || 4 || 6 || 23<br />
|-<br />
| Total count || 45 || 112 || 1024 || 1206 || 1294 || 1353 || 1983<br />
|}<br />
<sup>a</sup>See Appendix A for methodology.<br />
<br />
expertise over the areas of youth mental health and “mental retardation” between psychologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, educationalists and social workers, societal concerns over the morality of young people, and the perceived increases in teenage delinquency and crime at the time. The expansion of intelligence testing to increasingly younger populations allowed for the detection of ever greater numbers of those considered “feeble-minded” or “morons.” Confined to institutions for the “mentally retarded” or in “special schools,” Eyal et al. (2010: 78-79) note that these “socially incapable” individuals were inevitably from working class and minority backgrounds, with professional judgements made on the basis of prevailing ideas of “feeble-mindedness” as related to delinquency and crime. The number of young people admitted to institutions for the mentally deficient increased dramatically between the 1940s and the 1960s, with Eyal et al. (2010: 114) recording a figure for America of 108,500 pupils in 1948 but 540,000 students by 1966 (the general school-age population in the country less than doubled over the same period). This period of intense institutionalisation of large numbers of young people represents the attempt of psy-professionals to exert social control over deviant groups who could be diverted from the public schools system into spaces of moral management and confinement. Being “mentally deficient” was a useful metaphor for deviant and troublesome individuals in the education system, as Eyal et al. (2010: 79) remarks, “[t]ruancy, delinquency, epilepsy, alcoholism, sexual promiscuity, even masturbation, all served as pretexts for commitment as mentally deficient, and the category of ‘defective delinquent’ was the main prism through which the problem of feeble-mindedness was viewed.” Such moral failings of the post-war juvenile delinquent were conceptualised by child psychiatrists as evidence of a serious mental disorder (most often utilising the label of “childhood schizophrenia”) for which they typically recommended psychiatric institutionalisation and a course of 20 ECT treatments (Eyal et al. 2010: 134).<br />
<br />
As has been previously discussed in Chap. 3, deinstitutionalisation led to a significant change in the diagnostic focus of psychiatry from “severe and acute” mental illnesses—which typically called for an institutional response—to less severe pathologies which expanded their areas of expertise and locus of operations. By the mid-1970s there was a similar decline in the use of institutions for the “mentally retarded”—children were “mainstreamed” back into the public schools system and, consequently, a greater surveillance of young people within the education system by psychiatry and related professions unfolded. By the time of the publication of the DSM-III in 1980, youth-related mental illnesses had mysteriously doubled and delinquent behaviour such as pyromania, kleptomania, and other “conduct disorders” had been given their own DSM classifications. Tus, the DSM-III and the growing focus on youth mental illness can be understood as a consequence of the deinstitutionalisation of deviant youth from special education facilities. As with the move towards “milder” mental disorders in the community, the integration of children and young people once labelled as suffering from “learning disturbances” into mainstream schools called for the greater surveillance and control of youth behaviour in the wider education system. The increase in the psychiatric labelling of groups of young people with diagnoses such as oppositional defiant disorder, ADHD, conduct disorder, and autism is a consequence of the change in the site of psy-professional operations which, in the latter case, is supported by Eyal et al. (2010) who argue that the recent autism “epidemic” in western society is a result of the diagnostic substitution of the term “mentally retarded” for the more recent psychiatric label.<br />
<br />
==Education Factories and the Surveillance of the Future Workforce==<br />
<br />
In the mid-1970s my own primary school introduced a rule banning a popular lunchtime activity of inserting baked beans into bread rolls. We were instructed to eat rolls with butter only; the baked beans had to remain on the plate, outside the roll at all times. One day, a friend of mine disobeyed this rule and was caught by a teacher at our lunch table. The teacher was most put out by this open display of beans-in-roll pleasure. I was ten years old but even then curious about how the world worked, so I asked the teacher why this activity was forbidden. This was a mistake. The response was very loud and a bit scary. The lesson we learned that day was if there is something worse than blatantly disobeying school rules it was questioning them; students who question orders are by extension questioning authority. As outlined earlier in this chapter, compulsory education serves both an economic and an ideological function in capitalist society. Students learn a range of literacy and numeracy skills which will benefit the market in due course and, at the same time, they learn to conform, obey, and take for granted the norms and values of capitalist society as inscribed through the formal and informal processes of schooling. As neoliberalism has impacted compulsory schooling over the past 35 years, the latter ideological function has become increasingly important, with noted scholar and school teacher John Taylor Gatto (2002: 21) bluntly stating that “[n]o one believes that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders.”<br />
<br />
Schools manage the ideological reproduction of the future labour force. Youth dissent and resistance must be neutralised in the interests of enforcing the ideals of the ruling classes upon all young citizens. Rather than an array of free-thinking individuals, schools use techniques of scientific management on young people to produce “formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled” (Gatto 2002: 23). Difference or digressions from the expected behaviour are signs of deviance and can be consequently labelled as “learning difficulties” and signs of pathology. In western society, explains Adams (2008: 114), the education system rewards cohesion and cooperation with teachers, school rules, and the prescribed tasks of the classroom. Yet—as with the rules of my own primary school—the judging of the behaviour of pupils and how far they are “cooperating” or otherwise with teachers’ expectations are context specific rather than universal. Instead of considering reactions to behaviour considered as inappropriate and incorrect as a product of the professional expectations of teachers alone, Adams (2008: 114) argues we need to place them in their broader socio-political and cultural context. The current ideal type among teachers for the conforming and non-confrontational pupil needs to be seen as a result and reinforcement of this wider context. Tus, “inappropriate” behaviour does not necessarily re ect impairment but rather “socio-cultural and political actions” of the wider policy environment. “Dominant political positions,” states Adams (2008: 114), “contribute to the creation of categories such as ‘deviant’ through their description of appropriate and inappropriate. This duly positions professional response that in turn can and does further legitimate policy.” The psychological sciences have become increasingly useful for teachers and the schools system in supporting the exclusion of troublesome pupils and labelling non-conformist students as mentally disturbed. Szasz has previously highlighted the absurd vagueness of diagnostic symptomology which allows any aspect of child behaviour in the classroom to be understood as a potential mental disorder. This he does by citing a journal article from 1962 which argued for more psychiatric services in the education system, identifying the following symptoms which suggested underlying pathologies in school children:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>1. Academic problems—under-achievement, over-achievement, erratic, uneven performance. 2. Social problems with siblings, peers—such as the aggressive child, the submissive child, the show-off. 3. Relations with parental and other authority figures, such as defiant behavior, submissive behavior, ingratiation. 4. Overt behavioral manifestations, such as tics, nail-biting, thumb-sucking … [and] interests more befitting to the opposite sex (such as tom-boy girl and effeminate boy). (Radin, cited in Szasz 1997: 35).</blockquote><br />
<br />
As signalled by the recent construction of mental illness categories explicitly focused on student behaviour in school (such as losing homework and failing to pay attention in class), psy-professionals’ role in the public education system has become more pronounced over the past few decades. Just as profound, however, has been the heightened concentration in the post-welfare era on the school as a site of economic competition, with market forces more directly in uencing school management, teaching processes, and ultimately the pressures placed on young people to acquire greater numbers of qualifications and skills than previously. Adams (2008: 115) has described how neoliberal education policies have subordinated the needs of individual students to the wider economy, arguing that “in effect, ‘learner’ became ‘worker in waiting’ with the knowledge and skills deemed as worthwhile to gleam from school as those required and celebrated in the commercial world.” As a result, commentators have noted how schools have become far more demanding social environments which involve greater levels of self-regulation of young people (Timimi 2009: 139). As western governments have demanded greater numbers of students continue in education and reorientate themselves to a future as white-collar workers, the qualities of school pupils once considered appropriate (such as exuberance, curiosity, and energy) have been replaced by more on-task academic learning and seat-work (Graham 2008: 24). As a result of the pressures on teachers and pupils in this neoliberal environment, there has been a need for a closer surveillance of behaviour in school and, more readily, a desire to discipline the defiant child through the application of various mental illness labels. As the Department for Education and Skills for England and Wales stated in 2005, “better discipline … [in schools will] enable teachers to teach and learners to learn” (cited in Adams 2008: 115). To further illustrate how psychiatric hegemony has been achieved as a result of the needs of capital to ideologically control young citizens, the following section profiles the origins and development of ADHD, the most popular label of mental disorder currently applied to young people.<br />
<br />
==Case Study: Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder==<br />
<br />
As noted at the beginning of the chapter, up to 11 per cent of school-age children in the United States are currently diagnosed with ADHD (Saul 2014: 16). Granted, these figures are considerably higher than those for other western countries. For example, Zwi et al. (in Conrad 2006: xii) suggest that the United States has a diagnosis rate for ADHD some 10-30 times higher than that for the UK. However, one trend which unites all western societies is the increased use of the label for problematic children over time—particularly since the 1990s (Conrad 2006: xii)—and the increased use of stimulant medications as a treatment option. The dominant biomedical view states that ADHD is a neurological dysfunction of the brain. This is despite a lack of any evidence for the biological causation of the disorder (Christian 1997: 34; DeGrandpre 2000: 9). A brief overview of the symptoms for the mental disorder in the DSM-5 highlights the obvious psychiatric construction of ADHD as a set of education markers—to which has been added workplace markers (Chap. 4)—of deviance and failure within the schooling system. The symptomologies given by the American Psychiatric Association (2013: 59) for the “inattention” markers of ADHD are,<br />
<br />
<ol style="list-style-type:lower-alpha;"><br />
<li>Often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in</li> schoolwork, at work, or during other activities (e.g., overlooks or misses details, work is inaccurate).</li><br />
<li>Often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities (e.g., has difficulty remaining focused during lectures, conversations, or lengthy reading).</li><br />
<li>Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly (e.g., mind<br />
seems elsewhere, even in the absence of any obvious distraction).</li><br />
<li>Often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish<br />
schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace (e.g., starts tasks but quickly<br />
loses focus and is easily sidetracked).</li><br />
<li>Often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities (e.g., difficulty<br />
managing sequential tasks; difficulty keeping materials and belongings in<br />
order; messy, disorganized work; has poor time management; fails to meet<br />
deadlines).</li><br />
<li>Often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort (e.g., schoolwork or homework; for older adolescents and adults, preparing reports, completing forms, reviewing lengthy papers).</li><br />
<li>Often loses things necessary for tasks or activities (e.g., school materials, pencils, books, tools, wallets, keys, paperwork, eyeglasses, mobile telephones).</li><br />
<li>Is often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli (for older adolescents and adults, may include unrelated thoughts).</li><br />
<li>Is often forgetful in daily activities (e.g., doing chores, running errands;<br />
for older adolescents and adults, returning calls, paying bills, keeping<br />
appointments).</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
As a general marker of productivity, changes to the ADHD diagnosis<br />
between DSM-IV (1994) and DSM-5 (2013) have focused on expanding<br />
the diagnosis to adults by introducing aspects of work and home life as<br />
additional realms for symptomologies. Similarly, the symptoms from the<br />
American Psychiatric Association (2013: 60) for the “hyperactivity and<br />
impulsivity” component of ADHD are,<br />
<br />
<ol style="list-style-type:lower-alpha;"><br />
<li>Often fidgets with or taps hands or feet or squirms in seat.</li><br />
<li>Often leaves seat in situations when remaining seated is expected (e.g., leaves his or her place in the classroom, in the office or other workplace, or in other situations that require remaining in place).</li><br />
<li>Often runs about or climbs in situations where it is inappropriate. (Note: In adolescents or adults, may be limited to feeling restless.)</li><br />
<li>Often unable to play or engage in leisure activities quietly.</li><br />
<li>Is often “on the go,” acting as if “driven by a motor” (e.g., is unable to</li><br />
<li>or uncomfortable being still for extended time, as in restaurants, meetings; may be experienced by others as being restless or difficult to keep up with).</li><br />
<li>Often talks excessively.</li><br />
<li>Often blurts out an answer before a question has been completed (e.g., completes people’s sentences; cannot wait for turn in conversation).</li><br />
<li>Often has difficulty waiting his or her turn (e.g., while waiting in line).</li><br />
<li>Often interrupts or intrudes on others (e.g., butts into conversations, games, or activities; may start using other people’s things without asking or receiving permission; for adolescents and adults, may intrude into or take<br />
over what others are doing).</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
Clear within the phraseology and the “symptoms” of ADHD is the concern to medicalise the behaviour of unruly children in the classroom; it is a question of children refusing to conform to the required order of school life and, therefore, the APA developing the label of ADHD as a device of social control (rather than a product of scientific enquiry). As Graham (2008: 23) has correctly remarked of these symptomologies, “most of the behaviours listed are connected to (and one could even argue contingent upon) the demands of schooling.” The contradiction between the espousal of biological aetiology and treatment of increasing numbers of young people, and the obvious place of compulsory education in the construction of the ADHD label has been further highlighted by Christian (1997: 34) when he states that “[s]chool classrooms have had and still have an intimate connection to the origination and the diagnosis of ADHD; and yet, little attention is given to the school setting in the causal explanation of the disorder.” Rafalovich (2004: 21-34) has sought to partially address this situation by performing a socio-historical analysis of pre-ADHD labels, in the process detailing psychiatry’s increased focus on the “morality” of young people’s behaviour in school at the end of the nineteenth century.<br />
<br />
The growing medical concern for the “moral imbecile” was specifically contemplated by the physician George Still at the beginning of the twentieth century when he gave a series of lectures at the Royal College of Physicians in London, arguing for the increased scientific investigation of “the occurrence of defective moral control as a morbid condition in children” (cited in Rafalovich 2004: 27). Still believed morality to have a biological base, so pathology could be suspected if it appeared that children were not developing in the way society had designated (i.e., if it appeared that the appropriate moral controls on the child’s behaviour were absent). However, he argued that such children should not to be confused with the “retarded” or “idiot” child. Following his own observations, he stated that these young people were just as intelligent as those who showed moral control and thus demonstrated a degree of agency in their immorality. Symptoms of these defective young people included “passionateness,” “lawlessness,” and “wanton mischievousness-destructiveness” (cited in Rafalovich 2004: 28). Too young for prison and too smart to be considered an imbecile, Still argued that this was a hereto under-investigated and under-theorised group of juvenile delinquents who offered a potential threat to the future of society. Despite the clear linkage between medical science and dominant views on morality within Still’s work, official historians of psychiatry continue to see the physician as a scientific visionary, responsible for the original research on children which would eventually lead to the modern classification of ADHD. In contrast, Rafalovich (2004) identifies the growing concern for deviant and unruly youth by the medical profession as the origins of the current DSM label.<br />
<br />
Significant to Rafalovich’s (2004: 29-34) socio-historical analysis is the diagnosis of encephalitis lethargica (EL)—commonly known as “sleepy sickness”—which concerned medicine in the 1920s. Admittedly a poorly defined illness, EL can be understood as an early explanation for delinquency, including as it did the symptoms of “emotional instability, irritability, … lying, thieving, impaired memory and attention, personal untidiness, tics, … poor motor control, and general hyperactivity” (Kessler, cited in Rafalovich 2004: 30). Similar to Still, the physician Roger Kennedy utilised case studies to argue that the young people suffering from EL were in fact, “moral rather than mental imbeciles. Some of them appear dull and drowsy, but in their antics and behaviour they display a cunning that is not commensurate with greatly impaired mental faculties” (cited in Rafalovich 2004: 32). As Rafalovich (2004: 30) argues, such statements exemplify a crucial point in the construction of the ADHD diagnosis, where child psychiatry begins to use specific diagnoses such as EL to claim that “persistently defiant childhood behaviour represented physiological pathology.”<br />
<br />
Such claims as to the biological aetiology of the child’s immoral character appeared to be confirmed during the 1930s when the synthesising and marketing of new psychoactive drugs saw an expansion—especially in the United States—in the scope and in uence of pharmaceutical industries on the psychological sciences and the general public (Conrad 1975: 14). In 1937, Charles Bradley presented the results of a drugs study on school children with learning disabilities. His research appeared to show that amphetamines, paradoxically, calmed many of his participants and allowed them to complete study tasks with less disruption. Now an often cited study in the development of drug treatments for ADHD, at the time it was treated as no more than a curiosity. Bradley’s study was performed on children already attending special institutions and diagnosed with “learning disabilities,” thus the results of the research appeared from the outside as if it was only relevant to a small cohort of young people who had already been excluded from mainstream schooling. Yet, an interest in improving student “discipline” in schools by the psychological sciences and pharmaceutical researchers—under the guise of helping those with “learning difficulties”—slowly progressed over the following decades. In the 1950s, the first edition of DSM named a number of mental disorders which directly referred to young people’s deviant behaviour at school (such as conduct disturbance, see American Psychiatric Association 1952: 41) and the drug Ritalin appeared on the US market for the first time. Following the development of Laufer et al.’s new diagnostic category of hyperkinetic impulse disorder in 1957 (Conrad 1975: 14), the turbulence of the 1960s led to an increase in disruptive and resistant young people being labelled as hyperactive. In 1968, the APA more than doubled their diagnostic categories for young people with the publication of the DSM-II, including a dedicated section on “behavior disorders of childhood and adolescence” (American Psychiatric Association 1968: 49-51). Among the new disorders was hyperkinetic reaction of childhood (or adolescence), which the APA described as characterised by “overactivity, restlessness, distractibility, and short attention span” (American Psychiatric Association 1968: 50). With the help of “moral entrepreneurs” such as pharmaceutical companies and the Association for Children with Learning Disabilities (Conrad 1975: 16), by the mid-1970s hyperkinesis had become “the most common child psychiatric problem” in the United States (Conrad 1975: 14).<br />
<br />
As has been noted earlier in this chapter, a significant shift occurred with the production of the DSM-III in 1980. While deinstitutionalisation was a threat to public psychiatry, the relatively small field of child psychiatry offered opportunities for the expansion of the medical discipline into new areas of work and expertise. With the mainstreaming of deviant children who were once confined to “special schools” and the increasing requirement for adolescents to upskill and study beyond the end of compulsory schooling, the interests of the state in managing and controlling youth within the education system coincides with the specific interests of the psy-professionals to expand their areas of influence beyond one institution and into another.<br />
<br />
Reflecting on the DSM-III committee’s desire to open up the possibility of mental disorders to a much broader population—some might say everyone—a whole chapter of the manual is devoted to “disorders usually first evident in infancy, childhood, or adolescence” (American Psychiatric Association 1980: 35, emphasis added). Taking up five pages of this chapter was the new diagnosis of attention deficit disorder (ADD) which, under the two subtypes of ADD with hyperactivity and ADD without hyperactivity, brought together numerous previous labels given to troublesome children (including hyperkinesis and minimal brain dysfunction). Significant here was the growing emphasis placed upon the ''inattentiveness'' of the school child (examples in the DSM-III included that the child, “often fails to finish things,” “often doesn’t seem to listen,” is “easily distracted,” and “has difficulty concentrating on schoolwork” (American Psychiatric Association 1980: 43)), a focus that should not only be seen in the cynical context of diagnostic expansion—a move from explicitly disruptive behaviour to simple levels of concentration at school—but also in terms of the changing needs of the classroom towards more studious and attentive pupils. Reflecting this change, ADD became the now familiar classification of ADHD in the revised edition of the DSM-III seven years later (American Psychiatric Association 1987: 50-53). Following his extensive research on ADHD with clinicians, parents, teachers, and pupils, Rafalovich (2004: 131) finds that key to “discovering” behaviour that will consequently be defined by authorities as ADHD is the child’s school. Such behaviour, he states, is “articulated in one of two ways: as academic struggles, denoting an inability to competently engage in the achievement of classroom assignments, and as social struggles, denoting interpersonal con icts with other students and/or teachers” (Rafalovich 2004: 131). These two sites of struggle at school are then re ected in the symptomology constructed by psychiatry within the ADHD diagnosis, as Rafalovich (2004: 131) concludes, “the disorder’s inattention component can be seen in academic failure, and its hyperactivity component can be witnessed in children’s overt behavioral problems.”<br />
<br />
With the construction and expansion of the ADHD category to greater numbers of young people, the emphasis is changing from overt disruption to student inattention. This can be seen as reflecting the changing educational priorities in neoliberalism from the social control of deviant working class youth to the ideological enforcement of a dominant morality on the broader population of school children. The move towards consideration of simple inattention as pathology has also had the interesting by-product of slowly closing the gender gap of this still male-dominated mental disorder (DeGrandpre 2000: 147). Following prescribed gender behaviour, boys have been more likely to be labelled as loud, aggressive troublemakers in class, while girls have been considered by teachers as more passive and introspective. Tus, Rafalovich (2004: 125, emphasis added) rightly summates that “[t]he issue at the core of why there is such a huge gender discrepancy in instances of ADHD has more to do with ''behavioral visibility'' than with the actual existence of the condition.” The diagnosing of boys with ADHD has been estimated as three to five times higher than for girls (DeGrandpre 2000: 147), a situation that led the ''New York Times'' in 1994 to conclude that boyhood was in danger of becoming a “state of proto-disease” (cited in DeGrandpre 2000: 147).<br />
<br />
Increasing the focus on inattention in subsequent editions of the DSM has been a useful way in which the APA can attempt to address the above gender bias in the application of the ADHD label. In his book Saving Normal, the chair of the DSM-IV task force, Allen Frances (2013: 142), freely admits of the classification that “[w]e changed a few words so that the definition [of ADHD] would be more female friendly—taking into account that girls are more likely to be inattentive ‘space cadets’ and less likely than boys to be hyperactive.” Apart from glimpsing another picture of the impressive manner in which the DSM task forces undertake their work (i.e., a reliance on dominant, common sense notions of “appropriate” gender roles rather than any scientific evidence), Frances’ statement highlights the blatant intention of the APA to expand the classification outwards to groups currently under-represented in the profile of ADHD.<br />
<br />
In conclusion, this socio-historical analysis of ADHD has demonstrated that the diagnosis emerged from the closer focus of the psy-professions on the morality of young people in the twentieth century and the concern for controlling and correcting deviant behaviour. The expansion of ADHD from a rare disorder to a popular disease among young people over the past 35 years can be understood as a result of capitalism’s need to enforce discipline, compliance, and authority on the future workforce at a younger age. The redefined standards of normality in the neoliberal classroom are therefore designated under the lexicon of psychiatric hegemony as a concern for the control, correction, and treatment of deviant groups of children. ADHD as a classic example of the medicalisation of deviant behaviour is perhaps best summed up by a special education teacher cited in Rafalovich’s (2004: 111) research who, without irony, states that “[t]he last thing someone with untreated ADHD wants to do is go to school.”<br />
<br />
==Summary==<br />
<br />
Rose (1999: 123) has commented on the importance of young people to industrial society that “the child—as an idea and a target—has become inextricably connected to the aspirations of authorities.” Over time, psychiatric authorities have medicalised more and more aspects of the experiences and behaviour of children. From intelligence testing and the institutionalisation of “mentally deficient” children to DSM-III and the demands of the current education system, this chapter has explored the expansion of psy-professionals’ focus on children and adolescents over the past hundred years. Trough socio-historical investigation, analysis of consecutive DSMs as well as utilising the case study of ADHD, I have demonstrated how the supposed “experts on the mind” have served to reinforce the economic and ideological prerogatives of the capitalist class. For youth, this primarily takes place through compulsory schooling as secondary socialisers of the future workforce. Throughout the development of industrial capitalism it has been demonstrated that the psy-professionals has been concerned with the perceived immorality of working class youth. The psychiatric discourse previously pathologised such deviant behaviour through incarcerating such groups in “special schools” and then, more recently, through the construction of an increasing range of mental disorders aimed specifically at youth and schooling. As Rafalovich (2004: 64) has concluded, from the diagnosis of EL nearly a hundred years ago to ADHD currently, the institutional location has been a key variable in understanding the construction of childhood mental illness. He states that “problems in school have been historically seen as indicative of severe social maladjustment, and improvement in school performance is equated to ‘appropriate’ social behaviour” (Rafalovich 2004: 64). As framed by the neoliberal focus on the individual as the site of change, the institutional requirements of the school for conformity and compliance means that now more than ever teachers are aided by the mental health system. The focus of teachers on the notion of the “individual deficit” of young people, comments Adams (2008: 123), should now be seen as having “become even more political rather than psychological.”<br />
<br />
Speaking more generally to the drivers of the medicalisation of deviant behaviour in his classic study of hyperactive children, Conrad (2006: 98) states that “[t]he greater the benefit to established institutions, the greater the likelihood of medicalization.” While the changing demands of capitalism brought about the relatively recent expansion in psy-professional activity focused on young people, the discussion in the next chapter investigates an institution of industrial society which has experienced psy-professional intervention for a more sustained length of time, namely the family. It will be demonstrated that the reconstituted nuclear family system in capitalist society has served to confine and oppress women for specific economic reasons, and that this system of patriarchal relations has been constantly reinforced by psy-professional practice over time.<br />
<br />
==Bibliography==<br />
<br />
Adams, P. (2008) ‘Positioning Behaviour: Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity<br />
Disorder (ADHD) in the Post-Welfare Educational Era’, International Journal<br />
of Inclusive Education, 12(2): 113-125.<br />
Aires, P. (1962) Centuries of Childhood. New York: Vintage Books.<br />
American Psychiatric Association. (1952) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual:<br />
Mental Disorders. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.<br />
American Psychiatric Association. (1968) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric<br />
Association.<br />
American Psychiatric Association. (1980) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.<br />
American Psychiatric Association. (1987) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed. rev.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.<br />
American Psychiatric Association. (2013) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association.<br />
Bowden, G. (2014) ‘The Merit of Sociological Accounts of Disorder: The Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Case’, Health, 18(4): 422-438.<br />
Christian, J. M. (1997) ‘The Body as a Site of Reproduction and Resistance: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and the Classroom’, Interchange, 28(1): 31-43.<br />
Conrad, P. (1975) ‘The Discovery of Hyperkinesis: Notes on the Medicalization<br />
of Deviant Behaviour’, Social Problems, 23(1): 12-21.<br />
Conrad, P. (2006) Identifying Hyperactive Children: The Medicalization of Deviant<br />
Behavior (rev. ed.). Aldershot: Ashgate.<br />
Conrad, P., and Schneider, J. (1992) Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness<br />
to Sickness. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.<br />
DeGrandpre, R. J. (2000) Ritalin Nation: Rapid-Fire Culture and the Transformation of Human Consciousness (rev. ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.<br />
Duffin, J. (2000) History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan.<br />
Eyal, G., Hart, B., Onculer, E., Oren, N., and Rossi, N. (2010) The Autism<br />
Matrix: The Social Origins of the Autism Epidemic. Cambridge: Polity.<br />
Frances, A. (2013) Saving Normal: An Insider’s Revolt against Out-Of-Control<br />
Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary<br />
Life. New York: Harper Collins.<br />
Gatto, J. T. (2002) Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory<br />
Schooling (rev. ed.). Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers.<br />
Graham, L. J. (2008) ‘From ABCs to ADHD: The Role of Schooling in the<br />
Construction of Behaviour Disorder and Production of Disorderly Objects’,<br />
International Journal of Inclusive Education, 12(1): 7-33.<br />
Porter, R. (1997) The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity.<br />
New York: Norton.<br />
Rafalovich, A. (2004) Framing ADHD Children: A Critical Examination of the<br />
History, Discourse, and Everyday Experience of Attention Deficit⁄Hyperactivity<br />
Disorder. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.<br />
Roberts, R. (2015) Psychology and Capitalism: The Manipulation of Mind.<br />
Alresford: Zero Books.<br />
Rose, N. (1999) Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (2nd ed.).<br />
London: Free Association Books.<br />
Rose, N. (2006) ‘Disorders Without Borders? The Expanding Scope of Psychiatric Practice’, BioSocieties, 1(4): 465-484.<br />
Saul, R. (2014) ADHD Does Not Exist: The Truth about Attention Deficit and<br />
Hyperactivity Disorder. New York: HarperCollins.<br />
Scull, A. (1993) The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain,<br />
1700-1900. New Haven: Yale University Press.<br />
Szasz, T. S. (1997) The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the<br />
Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (rev. ed.). Syracuse, NY: Syracuse<br />
University Press.<br />
Timimi, S. (2008) ‘Children’s Mental Health and the Global Market: An<br />
Ecological Analysis’, in Cohen, C. I., and Timimi, S. (Eds.), Liberatory<br />
Psychiatry: Philosophy, Politics, and Mental Health (pp. 163-182). Cambridge:<br />
Cambridge University Press.<br />
Timimi, S. (2009) ‘Why Diagnosis of ADHD has Increased so Rapidly in the<br />
West: A Cultural Perspective’, in Timimi, S., and Leo, J. (Eds.), Rethinking<br />
ADHD: From Brain to Culture (pp. 133-159). Houndmills, Basingstoke:<br />
Palgrave Macmillan.<br />
Whitaker, R., and Cosgrove, L. (2015) Psychiatry Under the In uence: Institutional<br />
Corruption, Social Injury, and Prescriptions for Reform. New York: Palgrave<br />
Macmillan.<br />
Wilkinson, R., and Pickett, K. (2010) The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for<br />
Everyone (rev. ed.). London: Penguin.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Library]]<br />
[[Category:Library works about science]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Great_Proletarian_Cultural_Revolution&diff=64589Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution2024-03-25T18:02:40Z<p>CriticalResist: fix 2</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Message box/Missing Sources}}[[File:Cultural Revolution poster.png|thumb|Chinese poster from the Cultural Revolution]]<br />
The '''Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution''' (shortened as the '''Cultural Revolution''' or '''GPCR''') was a series of policies enacted by the [[Communist Party of China]] aimed at eliminating [[Bourgeoisie|bourgeois]] influence in [[People's Republic of China|China]]. This lasted from May 1966 until [[Mao Zedong|Mao]]'s death in 1976.<br />
<br />
The CPC in the modern era has admitted the Cultural Revolution to be a mistake.<ref name=":0"><br />
{{Web citation<br />
| newspaper = People's Daily Online<br />
| title = Commentary: China will never allow the repetition of Cultural Revolution<br />
| date = 2016-05-17<br />
| url = http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0517/c98649-9059031.html<br />
| quote = [T]he Cultural Revolution, initiated by the national leader and exploited by the reactionaries, is an internal chaos bringing disasters to the party, the country and the people. The history has proved that the Cultural Revolution was totally wrong in its theory and practice.<br />
<br />
The CPC has admitted, analyzed and corrected the mistakes made by itself and the leaders of the country, drawing lessons from both failures and successful experiences.<br />
<br />
By differentiating the ten-year period of the Cultural Revolution with the incorrect theory and practice of it, the above document also strongly refutes the viewpoint that denies the history and leadership of the CPC, even the socialist system with the excuse of internal chaos.<br />
}}<br />
</ref> The CPC also states that the Cultural Revolution will never come back to China, and that the CPC has learnt extensively from it and criticised itself from it.<ref name=":1"><br />
{{Web citation<br />
| newspaper = People's Daily Online<br />
| title = Society firmly rejects Cultural Revolution<br />
| date = 2016-05-17<br />
| url = http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0517/c90780-9058793.html<br />
| quote = It is not possible for such a revolution to be repeated. The decade of calamity caused severe damage, leaving permanent pain for many Chinese. Entirely denying the values of the Cultural Revolution will help Chinese society remain vigilant against the danger of all kinds of disorder.<br />
<br />
China’s development in recent decades started from complete denial of the Cultural Revolution in theory and shifting the focus of the country to economic construction in practice. In the over 30 years, we strived to recover from the losses. The shared goal has provided strong momentum for the country’s progress. It also helped strengthen social solidarity. The principle of not straying onto the wrong path has been widely endorsed by the public.<br />
<br />
We have bid farewell to the Cultural Revolution. We can say it once again today that the Cultural Revolution cannot and will not come back. There is no place for it in today’s China.<br />
}}<br />
</ref><br />
== History ==<br />
===First phase===<br />
<br />
The first phase of the Cultural Revolution was from the beginning of the Cultural Revolution until the CPC's [[9th National Congress of the Communist Party of China|Ninth National Party Congress]] in April 1969. The main task of this stage was to eliminate and smash the '[[Capitalism|capitalist]] headquarters' and seize power from those who are 'taking the capitalist road', to transform a [[dictatorship of the bourgeoisie]] into [[Dictatorship of the proletariat|that of the proletariat]].<ref><br />
{{Web citation<br />
| newspaper = ChinaDaily<br />
| title = 'Cultural revolution' (1966-76)<br />
| date = 2010-11-24<br />
| url = https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/19thcpcnationalcongress/2010-11/24/content_29714621.htm<br />
| quote = The main task of this stage was to smash the so-called Capitalist Headquarters and seize power from those in power taking the capitalist road. The purpose was to turn the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie into one of the proletariat. The campaign was presented as: "all doubt", "down with everything" and "all-out civil war".<br />
}}<br />
</ref><br />
A meeting was held at the Political Bureau of the Eighth CPC Central Committee and the 11th Plenum of the Eighth CPC Central Committee both in May 1966, which marked the full-scale beginning of the Cultural Revolution.<br />
<br />
On May 16th 1966, the meeting of the Political Bureau which adopted the "Notice from the Communist Party of China Central Committee" (also known as the May 16 Notice) in which the 'Anti-Party Group' of [[Peng Zhen]], [[Luo Ruiqing]], [[Lu Dingyi]] and [[Yang Shangkun]] were criticised.<br />
<br />
Based on the notice, the CPC Central Committee established the 'Central Cultural Revolution Group' on May 28th, which was lead by [[Chen Boda]] as the group head, [[Kang Sheng]] and others as advisors, and deputy heads such as [[Jiang Qing]], [[Zhang Chunqiao]], and others. This CCRG would replace Political Bureau and the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee as the leading command center for the Cultural Revolution.<br />
<br />
On August 8th, 1966, the 11th Plenum of the Eighth CPC Central Committee adopted the "Decision Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution", which criticized the 'capitalist headquarters' led by [[Liu Shaoqi]] and [[Deng Xiaoping]]. After the plennary meeting, the large of amount of criticsm that arisen on the 'Bourgeois Reactionary Line' pointed at Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. <br />
<br />
The [[Red Guards]] emerged, a mass-led student movement, and travelled across the whole nation in order to meet young activists and pass on orders from the CCRG. This as a result created chaos and resulted in paralysing local party organisations.<ref><br />
{{Web citation<br />
| newspaper = ChinaDaily<br />
| title = 'Cultural revolution' (1966-76)<br />
| date = 2010-11-24<br />
| url = https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/19thcpcnationalcongress/2010-11/24/content_29714621.htm<br />
| quote = Red Guards emerged and traveled across the country to meet other young activists and pass on the orders from the CCRG, creating chaos across the country and paralyzing local Party organizations. [...] Except for field armies, all Party committees at various levels became paralyzed, and grassroots party organizations ceased their activities.<br />
}}<br />
</ref> On October 5 1966, the CPC Central Committee transmitted instructions made by Central Military Commission and the General Political Department, which cancelled the regulation that the 'Cultural Revolution' could be led by Party committees. Therefore a new revolution began without any leadership from the Committee.<br />
<br />
[[Mao Zedong]] presided over in a work conference in order to criticise further the 'bourgeois reactionary line' and criticised Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Mao also stressed that the public should teach and liberate themselves. After meeting, the criticism of the line reached a climax in China.<br />
<br />
In December 1966, the CPC Central Committee issued the 10 regulations concerning how to take hold of the revolution and promote production, and the instruction concerning the rural cultural revolution, which states that the masses can arrange the cultural revolution, in the form of the four great rights of democracy. Nationwide turmoil began to take place. This became known as th eperiod of [[Wudou]], or Violent Struggle.<br />
<br />
on January 6th 1967, The 'January Storm' was made, incited by [[Jiang Qing]], Chen Boda, Zhang Chunqiao, and others; the Shanghai Workers' Revolutionary Rebel General Headquarters led by Wang Hongwen and other rebel organizations held a conference to overthrow the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and seize power from it. Mao openly supported the January Storm and called his supporters to emulate it whenever needed.<br />
<br />
Between January and February 1967, various meetings were held by the CPC Central Committee, many older proletarian revolutionaries (most of whom were also instrumental to the founding of the [[People's Republic of China]]) voiced strong opposition to the Cultural Revolution, calling it a mistake. They criticised the activities of [[Lin Biao]] and Jiang Qing such as purging veteran officials and creating chaos within the party and the [[People's Liberation Army]]. However, the struggle was presented to Mao as a one-sided report by Kang Sheng. As a result, Mao criticized the veteran revolutionists who participated in the struggle.<br />
<br />
After the failure of the February meetings, the practice of "all-out civil war" and "down with everything" campaigns escalated. Led by Lin Biao, Jiang Qing, Kang Sheng, and their allies, China started a movement of 'Sorting out traitors', 'mass revolutionary criticism', and 'cleaning up the class ranks', which resulted in countless misjudged cases especially those concerning Liu Shaoqi, Tao Zhu, Peng Dehuai and He Long.<br />
<br />
By 5th September 1968, revolutionary committees were all established in the 29 provinces of the PRC (With the exception of Taiwan) bringing the 'red-revolution' in all provinces.<br />
<br />
In October 1968, a meeting of the 12th Plenum of the Eighth CPC Central Committee was conducted, and the result of the meeting was that the theory and practice of the cultural revolution were deemed 'positive'. The meeting participants decided to expel Liu Shaoqi from the party.<br />
<br />
A constitution was also implemented from the recent draft, which stated that "Lin Biao is comrade Mao Zedong's close comrade-in-arms and successor." In April 1969, Lin Biao delivered a political report CPC's Ninth National Party Congress. Lin Biao, Jiang Qing and their allies were all elected to the political bureau, which expanded to their power on the Central Committee.<br />
=== Second phase ===<br />
<br />
The second phase was launched in April 1969 until 10th National Party Congress in August 1973. The main task of this phase was to crush the conspiracy by the counter-revolutionary group of Lin Biao to seize supreme power and stage a coup d'etat. [[Zhou Enlai]] also presided over the daily work of the Central Committee, taking the situation a turn for the better.<br />
<br />
After the 9th National Congress, the whole nation entered into a stage of 'struggle, criticism, and transformation'. The central task was to repudiate the 'revisionist route', carrying out the policies of said congress, and putting everything in the nation on track for the 'Cultural Revolution'. At this stage China continued to carry out the 'mass revolutionary criticism'. It also purged class ranks and expanded the scope, to crack down on counter-revolutionary activities, corruption, theft, and the '516 members'. Many cadres and intellectuals were also persecuted in order to reduce 'bureaucracy', sending cadres to the countryside for re-education. The 'Education Revolution' caused a widespread decline in the quality of education, and created chaos in the teaching ranks. In 1971, Jiang Qing released a Summary of the Work Conference on National Education, which severely dampened the enthusiasm of intellectuals.<br />
<br />
In September 1971, after the defeat of Lin Biao and his counter-revolutionary coup, Zhou Enlai presided over the central government's daily work with the support of Mao and took political, economic and diplomatic steps to improve the situation. However he was slandered by Jiang Qing and his allies. Mao still thought the top task was to oppose the 'ultra-rightist' stance resulting in the denial to correct the suggestions to criticise the left, and the country continued to move in the wrong direction.<br />
<br />
In August 1973, the CPC held its [[10th National Congress of the Communist Party of China|10th National Congress]] in Beijing. The Congress inherited the left-leaning mistakes and guidelines and appointed Wang Hongwen as the Vice Chairman of the CPC Central Committee. The '[[Gang of Four]]' was formed as a result, which were: [[Jiang Qing]], [[Zhang Chunqiao]], [[Yao Wenyuan]] and [[Wang Hongwen]]. They formed within the Political Bureau and the power of the Gang of Four was strengthened.<br />
===Third phase===<br />
The third phase was launched after the 10th National Congress and lasted until the crushing of the Gang of Four at 1976. The main task of this was to criticise Lin Biao and Confucian campaigns.<br />
<br />
Mao started this said campaign to vindicate the Cultural Revolution. In January 1974, Jiang Qing and and Wang Hongwen proposed to start the criticism of Lin Biao and Confucian campaigns, this received approval by Mao Zedong. When there was an opportunity to usurp the Party's power, Jiang Qing and his allies pointed towards Zhou Enlai. Mao Zedong found out about this conspiracy, and labelled them as the 'Gang of Four'. He saw that Jiang Qing wanted to be the Chairman of the CPC Central Committee. Their plan was foiled.<br />
<br />
In early 1975, a new State Council, the Cabinet, was formed with Zhou Enlai as premier and Deng Xiaoping as vice premier at the Fourth National People's Congress. Following the Congress, Zhou Enlai became seriously ill. Deng Xiaoping presided over the central government's daily work with the support of Mao and Zhou. He held a series of meetings for industry, agriculture, transportation, and science and technology, in order to rectify various aspects of the Cultural Revolution and taking the situation in a turn for the better. However, Mao couldn't tolerate Deng's efforts to correct the errors of the Cultural Revolution. He first called on learning the theory of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, then launched a series of campaigns called the 'Criticize Deng and Oppose the Rehabilitation of Right-Leaning Elements'.<br />
<br />
When Zhou Enlai died, various activities took place across the whole nation to commemorate Zhou. The Gang of Four tried to suppress these activities, and coupled with the 'Criticize Deng and Oppose the Rehabilitation of Right-Leaning Elements' campaigns, resulted in public anger.The masses in Beijing, Nanjing, Taiyuan and other places organized massive public rallies to mourn Zhou Enlai and oppose the Gang of Four. The Political Bureau and Mao Zedong misjudged the nature of the Tiananmen Rally, calling it 'counter-revolutionary', which also resulted in Deng being removed from office.<br />
=== Death of Mao Zedong ===<br />
When Mao Zedong died, the Gang of Four began to accelerate the pace in [[Counterrevolution|counter-revolutionary]] activities. Wang Hongwen tried to take over the CPC Central Committee. At the same time, he tried to distribute arms to Shanghai militias to prepare for a rebellion. On September 4th, Guangming Daily posted an article titled 'Forever Act According to Principles Laid Down by Chairman Mao', which misquoted Mao's dying words in an attempt to control the party. The Political Bureau, led by [[Hua Guofeng]], Ye Jianying, and Li Xiannian crushed the Gang of Four. This marks the end of the Cultural Revolution.<br />
<br />
In August 1977, at the 11th National Congress, the Central Committee officially announced the end of the Cultural Revolution.<br />
== Impact ==<br />
=== Communist Party of China's current stance ===<br />
<br />
The CPC in the modern era has admitted the Cultural Revolution to be a mistake.<ref name=":0" /> The CPC also states that the Cultural Revolution will never come back to China, and that the CPC has learnt extensively from it and criticised itself from it.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
=== Maoist stances ===<br />
Maoists support the Cultural Revolution, and also usually the Gang of Four or even Lin Biao. They also despise Deng Xiaoping, calling him a 'Capitalist Roader' as the Cultural Revolution used to call him. [[Abimael Guzmán|Gonzalo]] states that the Cultural Revolution (and successive ones) are a continuation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Without them, there could be no march towards communism.<ref><br />
{{Citation<br />
| author = Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru<br />
| year = 1988<br />
| title = Interview with Chairman Gonzalo<br />
| title-url = http://www.redsun.org/pcp_doc/pcp_0788.htm<br />
| quote = By studying Chairman Mao Tsetung and the resolutions of the CPC, we are increasingly understanding the importance of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as the continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is indispensable--without it the revolution cannot continue its march towards communism. We believe there will be successive cultural revolutions, but we think that those cultural revolutions will have to be forged in practice.<br />
}}<br />
</ref><br />
=== Hoxhaist stance ===<br />
[[Hoxhaism|Hoxhaists]], while despising modern China, also despise the Cultural Revolution, with [[Enver Hoxha]] claiming that it was not great, nor cultural, nor proletarian.<ref><br />
{{Citation<br />
| author = Enver Hoxha<br />
| year = 1979<br />
| title = Imperialism and the Revolution<br />
| title-url = https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/toc.htm<br />
| quote = The course of events showed that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was neither a revolution, nor great, nor cultural, and in particular, not in the least proletarian. It was a palace Putsch on an all-China scale for the liquidation of a handful of reactionaries who had seized power.<br />
}}<br />
</ref><br />
== References ==<br />
<references /><br />
[[Category:History of China]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Great_Proletarian_Cultural_Revolution&diff=64584Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution2024-03-25T11:23:09Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Message box/Missing Sources}}[[File:Cultural Revolution poster.png|thumb|Chinese poster from the Cultural Revolution]]<br />
The '''Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution''' (shortened as the '''Cultural Revolution''' or '''GPCR''') was a series of policies enacted by the [[Communist Party of China]] aimed at eliminating [[Bourgeoisie|bourgeois]] influence in [[People's Republic of China|China]]. This lasted from May 1966 until [[Mao Zedong|Mao]]'s death in 1976.<br />
<br />
The CPC in the modern era has admitted the Cultural Revolution to be a mistake.<ref name=":0" /> The CPC also states that the Cultural Revolution will never come back to China, and that the CPC has learnt extensively from it and criticised itself from it.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
== History ==<br />
===First phase===<br />
<br />
The first phase of the Cultural Revolution was from the beginning of the Cultural Revolution until the CPC's [[9th National Congress of the Communist Party of China|Ninth National Party Congress]] in April 1969. The main task of this stage was to eliminate and smash the '[[Capitalism|capitalist]] headquarters' and seize power from those who are 'taking the capitalist road', to transform a [[dictatorship of the bourgeoisie]] into [[Dictatorship of the proletariat|that of the proletariat]].<ref><br />
{{Web citation<br />
| newspaper = ChinaDaily<br />
| title = 'Cultural revolution' (1966-76)<br />
| date = 2010-11-24<br />
| url = https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/19thcpcnationalcongress/2010-11/24/content_29714621.htm<br />
| quote = The main task of this stage was to smash the so-called Capitalist Headquarters and seize power from those in power taking the capitalist road. The purpose was to turn the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie into one of the proletariat. The campaign was presented as: "all doubt", "down with everything" and "all-out civil war".<br />
}}<br />
</ref><br />
A meeting was held at the Political Bureau of the Eighth CPC Central Committee and the 11th Plenum of the Eighth CPC Central Committee both in May 1966, which marked the full-scale beginning of the Cultural Revolution.<br />
<br />
On May 16th 1966, the meeting of the Political Bureau which adopted the "Notice from the Communist Party of China Central Committee" (also known as the May 16 Notice) in which the 'Anti-Party Group' of [[Peng Zhen]], [[Luo Ruiqing]], [[Lu Dingyi]] and [[Yang Shangkun]] were criticised.<br />
<br />
Based on the notice, the CPC Central Committee established the 'Central Cultural Revolution Group' on May 28th, which was lead by [[Chen Boda]] as the group head, [[Kang Sheng]] and others as advisors, and deputy heads such as [[Jiang Qing]], [[Zhang Chunqiao]], and others. This CCRG would replace Political Bureau and the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee as the leading command center for the Cultural Revolution.<br />
<br />
On August 8th, 1966, the 11th Plenum of the Eighth CPC Central Committee adopted the "Decision Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution", which criticized the 'capitalist headquarters' led by [[Liu Shaoqi]] and [[Deng Xiaoping]]. After the plennary meeting, the large of amount of criticsm that arisen on the 'Bourgeois Reactionary Line' pointed at Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. <br />
<br />
The [[Red Guards]] emerged, a mass-led student movement, and travelled across the whole nation in order to meet young activists and pass on orders from the CCRG. This as a result created chaos and resulted in paralysing local party organisations.<ref><br />
{{Web citation<br />
| newspaper = ChinaDaily<br />
| title = 'Cultural revolution' (1966-76)<br />
| date = 2010-11-24<br />
| url = https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/19thcpcnationalcongress/2010-11/24/content_29714621.htm<br />
| quote = Red Guards emerged and traveled across the country to meet other young activists and pass on the orders from the CCRG, creating chaos across the country and paralyzing local Party organizations. [...] Except for field armies, all Party committees at various levels became paralyzed, and grassroots party organizations ceased their activities.<br />
}}<br />
</ref> On October 5 1966, the CPC Central Committee transmitted instructions made by Central Military Commission and the General Political Department, which cancelled the regulation that the 'Cultural Revolution' could be led by Party committees. Therefore a new revolution began without any leadership from the Committee.<br />
<br />
[[Mao Zedong]] presided over in a work conference in order to criticise further the 'bourgeois reactionary line' and criticised Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Mao also stressed that the public should teach and liberate themselves. After meeting, the criticism of the line reached a climax in China.<br />
<br />
In December 1966, the CPC Central Committee issued the 10 regulations concerning how to take hold of the revolution and promote production, and the instruction concerning the rural cultural revolution, which states that the masses can arrange the cultural revolution, in the form of the four great rights of democracy. Nationwide turmoil began to take place. This became known as th eperiod of [[Wudou]], or Violent Struggle.<br />
<br />
on January 6th 1967, The 'January Storm' was made, incited by [[Jiang Qing]], Chen Boda, Zhang Chunqiao, and others; the Shanghai Workers' Revolutionary Rebel General Headquarters led by Wang Hongwen and other rebel organizations held a conference to overthrow the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and seize power from it. Mao openly supported the January Storm and called his supporters to emulate it whenever needed.<br />
<br />
Between January and February 1967, various meetings were held by the CPC Central Committee, many older proletarian revolutionaries (most of whom were also instrumental to the founding of the [[People's Republic of China]]) voiced strong opposition to the Cultural Revolution, calling it a mistake. They criticised the activities of [[Lin Biao]] and Jiang Qing such as purging veteran officials and creating chaos within the party and the [[People's Liberation Army]]. However, the struggle was presented to Mao as a one-sided report by Kang Sheng. As a result, Mao criticized the veteran revolutionists who participated in the struggle.<br />
<br />
After the failure of the February meetings, the practice of "all-out civil war" and "down with everything" campaigns escalated. Led by Lin Biao, Jiang Qing, Kang Sheng, and their allies, China started a movement of 'Sorting out traitors', 'mass revolutionary criticism', and 'cleaning up the class ranks', which resulted in countless misjudged cases especially those concerning Liu Shaoqi, Tao Zhu, Peng Dehuai and He Long.<br />
<br />
By 5th September 1968, revolutionary committees were all established in the 29 provinces of the PRC (With the exception of Taiwan) bringing the 'red-revolution' in all provinces.<br />
<br />
In October 1968, a meeting of the 12th Plenum of the Eighth CPC Central Committee was conducted, and the result of the meeting was that the theory and practice of the cultural revolution were deemed 'positive'. The meeting participants decided to expel Liu Shaoqi from the party.<br />
<br />
A constitution was also implemented from the recent draft, which stated that "Lin Biao is comrade Mao Zedong's close comrade-in-arms and successor." In April 1969, Lin Biao delivered a political report CPC's Ninth National Party Congress. Lin Biao, Jiang Qing and their allies were all elected to the political bureau, which expanded to their power on the Central Committee.<br />
=== Second phase ===<br />
<br />
The second phase was launched in April 1969 until 10th National Party Congress in August 1973. The main task of this phase was to crush the conspiracy by the counter-revolutionary group of Lin Biao to seize supreme power and stage a coup d'etat. [[Zhou Enlai]] also presided over the daily work of the Central Committee, taking the situation a turn for the better.<br />
<br />
After the 9th National Congress, the whole nation entered into a stage of 'struggle, criticism, and transformation'. The central task was to repudiate the 'revisionist route', carrying out the policies of said congress, and putting everything in the nation on track for the 'Cultural Revolution'. At this stage China continued to carry out the 'mass revolutionary criticism'. It also purged class ranks and expanded the scope, to crack down on counter-revolutionary activities, corruption, theft, and the '516 members'. Many cadres and intellectuals were also persecuted in order to reduce 'bureaucracy', sending cadres to the countryside for re-education. The 'Education Revolution' caused a widespread decline in the quality of education, and created chaos in the teaching ranks. In 1971, Jiang Qing released a Summary of the Work Conference on National Education, which severely dampened the enthusiasm of intellectuals.<br />
<br />
In September 1971, after the defeat of Lin Biao and his counter-revolutionary coup, Zhou Enlai presided over the central government's daily work with the support of Mao and took political, economic and diplomatic steps to improve the situation. However he was slandered by Jiang Qing and his allies. Mao still thought the top task was to oppose the 'ultra-rightist' stance resulting in the denial to correct the suggestions to criticise the left, and the country continued to move in the wrong direction.<br />
<br />
In August 1973, the CPC held its [[10th National Congress of the Communist Party of China|10th National Congress]] in Beijing. The Congress inherited the left-leaning mistakes and guidelines and appointed Wang Hongwen as the Vice Chairman of the CPC Central Committee. The '[[Gang of Four]]' was formed as a result, which were: [[Jiang Qing]], [[Zhang Chunqiao]], [[Yao Wenyuan]] and [[Wang Hongwen]]. They formed within the Political Bureau and the power of the Gang of Four was strengthened.<br />
===Third phase===<br />
The third phase was launched after the 10th National Congress and lasted until the crushing of the Gang of Four at 1976. The main task of this was to criticise Lin Biao and Confucian campaigns.<br />
<br />
Mao started this said campaign to vindicate the Cultural Revolution. In January 1974, Jiang Qing and and Wang Hongwen proposed to start the criticism of Lin Biao and Confucian campaigns, this received approval by Mao Zedong. When there was an opportunity to usurp the Party's power, Jiang Qing and his allies pointed towards Zhou Enlai. Mao Zedong found out about this conspiracy, and labelled them as the 'Gang of Four'. He saw that Jiang Qing wanted to be the Chairman of the CPC Central Committee. Their plan was foiled.<br />
<br />
In early 1975, a new State Council, the Cabinet, was formed with Zhou Enlai as premier and Deng Xiaoping as vice premier at the Fourth National People's Congress. Following the Congress, Zhou Enlai became seriously ill. Deng Xiaoping presided over the central government's daily work with the support of Mao and Zhou. He held a series of meetings for industry, agriculture, transportation, and science and technology, in order to rectify various aspects of the Cultural Revolution and taking the situation in a turn for the better. However, Mao couldn't tolerate Deng's efforts to correct the errors of the Cultural Revolution. He first called on learning the theory of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, then launched a series of campaigns called the 'Criticize Deng and Oppose the Rehabilitation of Right-Leaning Elements'.<br />
<br />
When Zhou Enlai died, various activities took place across the whole nation to commemorate Zhou. The Gang of Four tried to suppress these activities, and coupled with the 'Criticize Deng and Oppose the Rehabilitation of Right-Leaning Elements' campaigns, resulted in public anger.The masses in Beijing, Nanjing, Taiyuan and other places organized massive public rallies to mourn Zhou Enlai and oppose the Gang of Four. The Political Bureau and Mao Zedong misjudged the nature of the Tiananmen Rally, calling it 'counter-revolutionary', which also resulted in Deng being removed from office.<br />
=== Death of Mao Zedong ===<br />
When Mao Zedong died, the Gang of Four began to accelerate the pace in [[Counterrevolution|counter-revolutionary]] activities. Wang Hongwen tried to take over the CPC Central Committee. At the same time, he tried to distribute arms to Shanghai militias to prepare for a rebellion. On September 4th, Guangming Daily posted an article titled 'Forever Act According to Principles Laid Down by Chairman Mao', which misquoted Mao's dying words in an attempt to control the party. The Political Bureau, led by [[Hua Guofeng]], Ye Jianying, and Li Xiannian crushed the Gang of Four. This marks the end of the Cultural Revolution.<br />
<br />
In August 1977, at the 11th National Congress, the Central Committee officially announced the end of the Cultural Revolution.<br />
== Impact ==<br />
=== Communist Party of China's current stance ===<br />
The CPC in the modern era has admitted the Cultural Revolution to be a mistake.<ref name=":0"><br />
{{Web citation<br />
| newspaper = People's Daily Online<br />
| title = Commentary: China will never allow the repetition of Cultural Revolution<br />
| date = 2016-05-17<br />
| url = http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0517/c98649-9059031.html<br />
| quote = [T]he Cultural Revolution, initiated by the national leader and exploited by the reactionaries, is an internal chaos bringing disasters to the party, the country and the people. The history has proved that the Cultural Revolution was totally wrong in its theory and practice.<br />
<br />
The CPC has admitted, analyzed and corrected the mistakes made by itself and the leaders of the country, drawing lessons from both failures and successful experiences.<br />
<br />
By differentiating the ten-year period of the Cultural Revolution with the incorrect theory and practice of it, the above document also strongly refutes the viewpoint that denies the history and leadership of the CPC, even the socialist system with the excuse of internal chaos.<br />
}}<br />
</ref> The CPC also states that the Cultural Revolution will never come back to China, and that the CPC has learnt extensively from it and criticised itself from it.<ref name=":1"><br />
{{Web citation<br />
| newspaper = People's Daily Online<br />
| title = Society firmly rejects Cultural Revolution<br />
| date = 2016-05-17<br />
| url = http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0517/c90780-9058793.html<br />
| quote = It is not possible for such a revolution to be repeated. The decade of calamity caused severe damage, leaving permanent pain for many Chinese. Entirely denying the values of the Cultural Revolution will help Chinese society remain vigilant against the danger of all kinds of disorder.<br />
<br />
China’s development in recent decades started from complete denial of the Cultural Revolution in theory and shifting the focus of the country to economic construction in practice. In the over 30 years, we strived to recover from the losses. The shared goal has provided strong momentum for the country’s progress. It also helped strengthen social solidarity. The principle of not straying onto the wrong path has been widely endorsed by the public.<br />
<br />
We have bid farewell to the Cultural Revolution. We can say it once again today that the Cultural Revolution cannot and will not come back. There is no place for it in today’s China.<br />
}}<br />
</ref><br />
<br />
=== Maoist stances ===<br />
Maoists support the Cultural Revolution, and also usually the Gang of Four or even Lin Biao. They also despise Deng Xiaoping, calling him a 'Capitalist Roader' as the Cultural Revolution used to call him. [[Abimael Guzmán|Gonzalo]] states that the Cultural Revolution (and successive ones) are a continuation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Without them, there could be no march towards communism.<ref><br />
{{Citation<br />
| author = Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru<br />
| year = 1988<br />
| title = Interview with Chairman Gonzalo<br />
| title-url = http://www.redsun.org/pcp_doc/pcp_0788.htm<br />
| quote = By studying Chairman Mao Tsetung and the resolutions of the CPC, we are increasingly understanding the importance of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as the continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is indispensable--without it the revolution cannot continue its march towards communism. We believe there will be successive cultural revolutions, but we think that those cultural revolutions will have to be forged in practice.<br />
}}<br />
</ref><br />
=== Hoxhaist stance ===<br />
[[Hoxhaism|Hoxhaists]], while despising modern China, also despise the Cultural Revolution, with [[Enver Hoxha]] claiming that it was not great, nor cultural, nor proletarian.<ref><br />
{{Citation<br />
| author = Enver Hoxha<br />
| year = 1979<br />
| title = Imperialism and the Revolution<br />
| title-url = https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/toc.htm<br />
| quote = The course of events showed that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was neither a revolution, nor great, nor cultural, and in particular, not in the least proletarian. It was a palace Putsch on an all-China scale for the liquidation of a handful of reactionaries who had seized power.<br />
}}<br />
</ref><br />
== References ==<br />
<references /><br />
[[Category:History of China]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Great_Proletarian_Cultural_Revolution&diff=64583Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution2024-03-25T11:20:10Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Message box/Missing Sources}}[[File:Cultural Revolution poster.png|thumb|Chinese poster from the Cultural Revolution]]<br />
The '''Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution''' (shortened as the '''Cultural Revolution''' or '''GPCR''') was a series of policies enacted by the [[Communist Party of China]] aimed at eliminating [[Bourgeoisie|bourgeois]] influence in [[People's Republic of China|China]]. This lasted from May 1966 until [[Mao Zedong|Mao]]'s death in 1976.<br />
<br />
The Cultural Revolution was carried out during a time when the democracy of the [[mass line]] was disrupted by the fury of a [[cult of personality]] around [[Mao Zedong]] and this caused irreparable cultural loss in [[China]]; both Chinese and Marxist-Leninists today criticize it, and seek to learn from these errors. Only [[Maoism|Maoists]] continue to defend it.<br />
<br />
== History ==<br />
===First phase===<br />
<br />
The first phase of the Cultural Revolution was from the beginning of the Cultural Revolution until the CPC's [[9th National Congress of the Communist Party of China|Ninth National Party Congress]] in April 1969. The main task of this stage was to eliminate and smash the '[[Capitalism|capitalist]] headquarters' and seize power from those who are 'taking the capitalist road', to transform a [[dictatorship of the bourgeoisie]] into [[Dictatorship of the proletariat|that of the proletariat]].<ref><br />
{{Web citation<br />
| newspaper = ChinaDaily<br />
| title = 'Cultural revolution' (1966-76)<br />
| date = 2010-11-24<br />
| url = https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/19thcpcnationalcongress/2010-11/24/content_29714621.htm<br />
| quote = The main task of this stage was to smash the so-called Capitalist Headquarters and seize power from those in power taking the capitalist road. The purpose was to turn the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie into one of the proletariat. The campaign was presented as: "all doubt", "down with everything" and "all-out civil war".<br />
}}<br />
</ref><br />
A meeting was held at the Political Bureau of the Eighth CPC Central Committee and the 11th Plenum of the Eighth CPC Central Committee both in May 1966, which marked the full-scale beginning of the Cultural Revolution.<br />
<br />
On May 16th 1966, the meeting of the Political Bureau which adopted the "Notice from the Communist Party of China Central Committee" (also known as the May 16 Notice) in which the 'Anti-Party Group' of [[Peng Zhen]], [[Luo Ruiqing]], [[Lu Dingyi]] and [[Yang Shangkun]] were criticised.<br />
<br />
Based on the notice, the CPC Central Committee established the 'Central Cultural Revolution Group' on May 28th, which was lead by [[Chen Boda]] as the group head, [[Kang Sheng]] and others as advisors, and deputy heads such as [[Jiang Qing]], [[Zhang Chunqiao]], and others. This CCRG would replace Political Bureau and the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee as the leading command center for the Cultural Revolution.<br />
<br />
On August 8th, 1966, the 11th Plenum of the Eighth CPC Central Committee adopted the "Decision Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution", which criticized the 'capitalist headquarters' led by [[Liu Shaoqi]] and [[Deng Xiaoping]]. After the plennary meeting, the large of amount of criticsm that arisen on the 'Bourgeois Reactionary Line' pointed at Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. <br />
<br />
The [[Red Guards]] emerged, a mass-led student movement, and travelled across the whole nation in order to meet young activists and pass on orders from the CCRG. This as a result created chaos and resulted in paralysing local party organisations.<ref><br />
{{Web citation<br />
| newspaper = ChinaDaily<br />
| title = 'Cultural revolution' (1966-76)<br />
| date = 2010-11-24<br />
| url = https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/19thcpcnationalcongress/2010-11/24/content_29714621.htm<br />
| quote = Red Guards emerged and traveled across the country to meet other young activists and pass on the orders from the CCRG, creating chaos across the country and paralyzing local Party organizations. [...] Except for field armies, all Party committees at various levels became paralyzed, and grassroots party organizations ceased their activities.<br />
}}<br />
</ref> On October 5 1966, the CPC Central Committee transmitted instructions made by Central Military Commission and the General Political Department, which cancelled the regulation that the 'Cultural Revolution' could be led by Party committees. Therefore a new revolution began without any leadership from the Committee.<br />
<br />
[[Mao Zedong]] presided over in a work conference in order to criticise further the 'bourgeois reactionary line' and criticised Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Mao also stressed that the public should teach and liberate themselves. After meeting, the criticism of the line reached a climax in China.<br />
<br />
In December 1966, the CPC Central Committee issued the 10 regulations concerning how to take hold of the revolution and promote production, and the instruction concerning the rural cultural revolution, which states that the masses can arrange the cultural revolution, in the form of the four great rights of democracy. Nationwide turmoil began to take place. This became known as th eperiod of [[Wudou]], or Violent Struggle.<br />
<br />
on January 6th 1967, The 'January Storm' was made, incited by [[Jiang Qing]], Chen Boda, Zhang Chunqiao, and others; the Shanghai Workers' Revolutionary Rebel General Headquarters led by Wang Hongwen and other rebel organizations held a conference to overthrow the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and seize power from it. Mao openly supported the January Storm and called his supporters to emulate it whenever needed.<br />
<br />
Between January and February 1967, various meetings were held by the CPC Central Committee, many older proletarian revolutionaries (most of whom were also instrumental to the founding of the [[People's Republic of China]]) voiced strong opposition to the Cultural Revolution, calling it a mistake. They criticised the activities of [[Lin Biao]] and Jiang Qing such as purging veteran officials and creating chaos within the party and the [[People's Liberation Army]]. However, the struggle was presented to Mao as a one-sided report by Kang Sheng. As a result, Mao criticized the veteran revolutionists who participated in the struggle.<br />
<br />
After the failure of the February meetings, the practice of "all-out civil war" and "down with everything" campaigns escalated. Led by Lin Biao, Jiang Qing, Kang Sheng, and their allies, China started a movement of 'Sorting out traitors', 'mass revolutionary criticism', and 'cleaning up the class ranks', which resulted in countless misjudged cases especially those concerning Liu Shaoqi, Tao Zhu, Peng Dehuai and He Long.<br />
<br />
By 5th September 1968, revolutionary committees were all established in the 29 provinces of the PRC (With the exception of Taiwan) bringing the 'red-revolution' in all provinces.<br />
<br />
In October 1968, a meeting of the 12th Plenum of the Eighth CPC Central Committee was conducted, and the result of the meeting was that the theory and practice of the cultural revolution were deemed 'positive'. The meeting participants decided to expel Liu Shaoqi from the party.<br />
<br />
A constitution was also implemented from the recent draft, which stated that "Lin Biao is comrade Mao Zedong's close comrade-in-arms and successor." In April 1969, Lin Biao delivered a political report CPC's Ninth National Party Congress. Lin Biao, Jiang Qing and their allies were all elected to the political bureau, which expanded to their power on the Central Committee.<br />
=== Second phase ===<br />
<br />
The second phase was launched in April 1969 until 10th National Party Congress in August 1973. The main task of this phase was to crush the conspiracy by the counter-revolutionary group of Lin Biao to seize supreme power and stage a coup d'etat. [[Zhou Enlai]] also presided over the daily work of the Central Committee, taking the situation a turn for the better.<br />
<br />
After the 9th National Congress, the whole nation entered into a stage of 'struggle, criticism, and transformation'. The central task was to repudiate the 'revisionist route', carrying out the policies of said congress, and putting everything in the nation on track for the 'Cultural Revolution'. At this stage China continued to carry out the 'mass revolutionary criticism'. It also purged class ranks and expanded the scope, to crack down on counter-revolutionary activities, corruption, theft, and the '516 members'. Many cadres and intellectuals were also persecuted in order to reduce 'bureaucracy', sending cadres to the countryside for re-education. The 'Education Revolution' caused a widespread decline in the quality of education, and created chaos in the teaching ranks. In 1971, Jiang Qing released a Summary of the Work Conference on National Education, which severely dampened the enthusiasm of intellectuals.<br />
<br />
In September 1971, after the defeat of Lin Biao and his counter-revolutionary coup, Zhou Enlai presided over the central government's daily work with the support of Mao and took political, economic and diplomatic steps to improve the situation. However he was slandered by Jiang Qing and his allies. Mao still thought the top task was to oppose the 'ultra-rightist' stance resulting in the denial to correct the suggestions to criticise the left, and the country continued to move in the wrong direction.<br />
<br />
In August 1973, the CPC held its [[10th National Congress of the Communist Party of China|10th National Congress]] in Beijing. The Congress inherited the left-leaning mistakes and guidelines and appointed Wang Hongwen as the Vice Chairman of the CPC Central Committee. The '[[Gang of Four]]' was formed as a result, which were: [[Jiang Qing]], [[Zhang Chunqiao]], [[Yao Wenyuan]] and [[Wang Hongwen]]. They formed within the Political Bureau and the power of the Gang of Four was strengthened.<br />
===Third phase===<br />
The third phase was launched after the 10th National Congress and lasted until the crushing of the Gang of Four at 1976. The main task of this was to criticise Lin Biao and Confucian campaigns.<br />
<br />
Mao started this said campaign to vindicate the Cultural Revolution. In January 1974, Jiang Qing and and Wang Hongwen proposed to start the criticism of Lin Biao and Confucian campaigns, this received approval by Mao Zedong. When there was an opportunity to usurp the Party's power, Jiang Qing and his allies pointed towards Zhou Enlai. Mao Zedong found out about this conspiracy, and labelled them as the 'Gang of Four'. He saw that Jiang Qing wanted to be the Chairman of the CPC Central Committee. Their plan was foiled.<br />
<br />
In early 1975, a new State Council, the Cabinet, was formed with Zhou Enlai as premier and Deng Xiaoping as vice premier at the Fourth National People's Congress. Following the Congress, Zhou Enlai became seriously ill. Deng Xiaoping presided over the central government's daily work with the support of Mao and Zhou. He held a series of meetings for industry, agriculture, transportation, and science and technology, in order to rectify various aspects of the Cultural Revolution and taking the situation in a turn for the better. However, Mao couldn't tolerate Deng's efforts to correct the errors of the Cultural Revolution. He first called on learning the theory of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, then launched a series of campaigns called the 'Criticize Deng and Oppose the Rehabilitation of Right-Leaning Elements'.<br />
<br />
When Zhou Enlai died, various activities took place across the whole nation to commemorate Zhou. The Gang of Four tried to suppress these activities, and coupled with the 'Criticize Deng and Oppose the Rehabilitation of Right-Leaning Elements' campaigns, resulted in public anger.The masses in Beijing, Nanjing, Taiyuan and other places organized massive public rallies to mourn Zhou Enlai and oppose the Gang of Four. The Political Bureau and Mao Zedong misjudged the nature of the Tiananmen Rally, calling it 'counter-revolutionary', which also resulted in Deng being removed from office.<br />
=== Death of Mao Zedong ===<br />
When Mao Zedong died, the Gang of Four began to accelerate the pace in [[Counterrevolution|counter-revolutionary]] activities. Wang Hongwen tried to take over the CPC Central Committee. At the same time, he tried to distribute arms to Shanghai militias to prepare for a rebellion. On September 4th, Guangming Daily posted an article titled 'Forever Act According to Principles Laid Down by Chairman Mao', which misquoted Mao's dying words in an attempt to control the party. The Political Bureau, led by [[Hua Guofeng]], Ye Jianying, and Li Xiannian crushed the Gang of Four. This marks the end of the Cultural Revolution.<br />
<br />
In August 1977, at the 11th National Congress, the Central Committee officially announced the end of the Cultural Revolution.<br />
== Impact ==<br />
=== CPC's current stance ===<br />
The CPC in the modern era has admitted the Cultural Revolution to be a mistake.<ref><br />
{{Web citation<br />
| newspaper = People's Daily Online<br />
| title = Commentary: China will never allow the repetition of Cultural Revolution<br />
| date = 2016-05-17<br />
| url = http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0517/c98649-9059031.html<br />
| quote = [T]he Cultural Revolution, initiated by the national leader and exploited by the reactionaries, is an internal chaos bringing disasters to the party, the country and the people. The history has proved that the Cultural Revolution was totally wrong in its theory and practice.<br />
<br />
The CPC has admitted, analyzed and corrected the mistakes made by itself and the leaders of the country, drawing lessons from both failures and successful experiences.<br />
<br />
By differentiating the ten-year period of the Cultural Revolution with the incorrect theory and practice of it, the above document also strongly refutes the viewpoint that denies the history and leadership of the CPC, even the socialist system with the excuse of internal chaos.<br />
}}<br />
</ref><br />
The CPC also states that the Cultural Revolution will never come back to China, and that the CPC has learnt extensively from it and criticised itself from it.<ref><br />
{{Web citation<br />
| newspaper = People's Daily Online<br />
| title = Society firmly rejects Cultural Revolution<br />
| date = 2016-05-17<br />
| url = http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0517/c90780-9058793.html<br />
| quote = It is not possible for such a revolution to be repeated. The decade of calamity caused severe damage, leaving permanent pain for many Chinese. Entirely denying the values of the Cultural Revolution will help Chinese society remain vigilant against the danger of all kinds of disorder.<br />
<br />
China’s development in recent decades started from complete denial of the Cultural Revolution in theory and shifting the focus of the country to economic construction in practice. In the over 30 years, we strived to recover from the losses. The shared goal has provided strong momentum for the country’s progress. It also helped strengthen social solidarity. The principle of not straying onto the wrong path has been widely endorsed by the public.<br />
<br />
We have bid farewell to the Cultural Revolution. We can say it once again today that the Cultural Revolution cannot and will not come back. There is no place for it in today’s China.<br />
}}<br />
</ref><br />
<br />
=== Maoist stances ===<br />
Maoists support the Cultural Revolution, and also usually the Gang of Four or even Lin Biao. They also despise Deng Xiaoping, calling him a 'Capitalist Roader' as the Cultural Revolution used to call him. [[Abimael Guzmán|Gonzalo]] states that the Cultural Revolution (and successive ones) are a continuation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Without them, there could be no march towards communism.<ref><br />
{{Citation<br />
| author = Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru<br />
| year = 1988<br />
| title = Interview with Chairman Gonzalo<br />
| title-url = http://www.redsun.org/pcp_doc/pcp_0788.htm<br />
| quote = By studying Chairman Mao Tsetung and the resolutions of the CPC, we are increasingly understanding the importance of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as the continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is indispensable--without it the revolution cannot continue its march towards communism. We believe there will be successive cultural revolutions, but we think that those cultural revolutions will have to be forged in practice.<br />
}}<br />
</ref><br />
=== Hoxhaist stance ===<br />
[[Hoxhaism|Hoxhaists]], while despising modern China, also despise the Cultural Revolution, with [[Enver Hoxha]] claiming that it was not great, nor cultural, nor proletarian.<ref><br />
{{Citation<br />
| author = Enver Hoxha<br />
| year = 1979<br />
| title = Imperialism and the Revolution<br />
| title-url = https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/toc.htm<br />
| quote = The course of events showed that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was neither a revolution, nor great, nor cultural, and in particular, not in the least proletarian. It was a palace Putsch on an all-China scale for the liquidation of a handful of reactionaries who had seized power.<br />
}}<br />
</ref><br />
== References ==<br />
<references /><br />
[[Category:History of China]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Irish_Republicanism&diff=64570Irish Republicanism2024-03-25T00:35:00Z<p>CriticalResist: Created page with "a"</p>
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<div>a</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Somali_Democratic_Republic_(1969%E2%80%931991)&diff=64562Somali Democratic Republic (1969–1991)2024-03-24T19:34:28Z<p>CriticalResist: Removed unsourced parts and left a stub, due to the entire article being written by a banned editor.</p>
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<div>{{Infobox country|name=Somali Democratic Republic|native_name=Jamhuuriyadda Dimoqraadiga Soomaaliyeed<br>الجمهورية الديمقراطية الصومالية|image_flag=Flag of Somalia.svg|image_coat=Somalia COA.svg|capital=Mogadishu (Hamar)|largest_city=Mogadishu|mode_of_production=Socialism|government_type=People's dictatorship under a one-party African (Somali) socialist republic|leader_title1=President|leader_name1=[[Mohamed Siad Barre]]|year_start=1969|year_end=1991|national_anthem=Soomaaliya Ha Noolaato (Somali)<br />
<br />
"Long live Somalia"|largest_settlement=Mogadishu|common_languages=Somali<br>Arabic<br>English<br>Italian|religion=[[Islam]]|demonym=Somali|legislature=People's Assembly}}<br />
<br />
The '''Somali Democratic Republic''' was the socialist administration of Somalia ruled by Siad Barre and the Supreme Revolutionary Council and the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party from 1969 to 1991. It consisted of current day Somali borders and succeeded the Somali Republic.<br />
<br />
=== References ===<br />
<ref>{{Citation|author=SRSP (Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party)|year=1975|title=Statute of the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/subject//somalia/srsp/SRSP-party-statute-1976.pdf|pdf=https://www.marxists.org/subject//somalia/srsp/SRSP-party-statute-1976.pdf|city=Mogadishu|publisher=SRSP|mia=https://www.marxists.org/subject//somalia/srsp/SRSP-party-statute-1976.pdf}}</ref><br />
[[Category:Former socialist states]]<br />
<references /><ref>{{Citation|author=People's Assembly|year=1979|title=Somali Democratic Republic The Constitution 1979|pdf=https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1111553803905413230/1113263238474383370/Somalia-Constitution1979.pdf|city=Mogadishu|publisher=People's Assembly}}</ref></div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Category:Left_communists&diff=64558Category:Left communists2024-03-24T18:50:55Z<p>CriticalResist: Created blank page</p>
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<div></div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Xinjiang_Vocational_Education_and_Training_Centers&diff=64542Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers2024-03-24T18:02:57Z<p>CriticalResist: /* Myths */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:Picture_of_Ürümqi.jpg|thumb|350x350px|Picture of Ürümqi, capital of the Xinjiang Province]]<br />
The '''Xinjiang''' '''Vocational Education and Training Centers''' are facilities operated by the [[Xinjiang|Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region]] government in [[People's Republic of China|China]]. These <br />
<br />
facilities were built in response to a series of terrorist attacks by an insurgency of Islamist separatists, referred to as the Xinjiang Conflict.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=CGTN|title=Fighting Terrorism in Xinjiang|date=2019-12-05|url=https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-12-05/Fighting-terrorism-in-Xinjiang-MaNLLDtnfq/index.html|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref> China accuses the [[United States of America|United States]] of having supported these terrorists, similar to how the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] cultivated extremist proxies in [[Operation Cyclone]] which later evolved into Al Qaeda<ref>{{Web citation|author=Catherine Wong|newspaper=South China Morning Post|title=US-China ties: Washington funded terrorists in Xinjiang, Beijing says|date=2021-04-14|url=https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3129545/us-china-ties-washington-funded-terrorists-xinjiang-beijing|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref> (see the terrorism section in the XUAR page).<br />
<br />
While the West carries out its so-called "war on terror" with bombs, China has taken a different approach; by investing in vocational and educational facilities, the Chinese government seeks to offer a more stable and prosperous life to would-be recruits into such extremist organizations. Following a critical assessment by the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) released on August 31, 2022,<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights|title=OHCHR Assessment of human rights concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China|date=2022-08-31|url=https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref> the People's Republic of China released a report accusing the assessment of misrepresenting China's laws and policies.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other international organizations in Switzerland|newspaper=Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights|title=Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism in Xinjiang: Truth and Facts|date=2022-09-31|url=https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/ANNEX_A.pdf|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref> The report documented the numerous terror attacks in Xinjiang and coming out of Xinjiang and laid out the policies of the VETCs so as to stress the soundness of their adherence to the principles of human rights protection. <br />
<br />
== Historical and material context of the Autonomous Region ==<br />
[[File:Xinjiang.svg.png|thumb|Location of Xinjiang Province (in red) in the People's Republic of China]]<br />
The region known as Xinjiang (新疆, literally meaning ''New Frontier'') has been an inseparable part of China since the Han Dynasty in 60 BCE, and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was established in 1955 under the People's Republic of China. The vast areas both north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, called the Western Regions in ancient times, were in close contact with the Central Plains as early as the pre-Qin period (c. 2100-221 BC). With the establishment of the unified feudal dynasties Qin (221-206 BC) and Han (206 BC-AD 220), multi-ethnic unification has been the norm in China’s historical development. In 60 BC, the government of the Western Han Dynasty established the Western Regions Frontier Command in Xinjiang, officially making Xinjiang a part of Chinese territory.<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|author=China’s State Council Information Office|title=The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang|url=https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2019/03/18/content_281476567813306.htm}}</ref><br />
<br />
=== The Emergence of the Autonomous Region ===<br />
<br />
==== Ancient History ====<br />
The region in which we currently know as Xinjiang became part of the [[Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE)|Han dynasty]] in 60 BCE. Since then, the region has been populated by Han Chinese since this time.<br />
<br />
==== The Republic of China ====<br />
After [[Nicolas II]] tried to conscript Kazakh and Kyrgyz people into the First World War in 1916, they attacked Russian settlers and then fled into Xinjiang.<ref>{{Citation|author=Vijay Prashad|year=2017|title=Red Star Over the Third World|chapter=Soviet Asia|city=New Delhi|publisher=LeftWord Books}}</ref><br />
<br />
== Demographics ==<br />
<br />
=== The Uyghur People ===<br />
Xinjiang has been a multi-ethnic region since ancient times. Down the ages, ethnic groups of various kinds have lived in the region and communicated with each other. By the end of the 19th century, 13 ethnic groups – the Uygur, Han, Kazak, Mongolian, Hui, Kirgiz, Manchu, Xibe, Tajik, Daur, Uzbek, Tatar, and Russian – had settled in Xinjiang, with the Uyghurs having the largest population.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
The Uyghur ethnic group came into being through a long process of migration and ethnic integration though they are not descendants of the Turks, instead, they are the descendants of the nomadic Dingling (丁零) tribe [[Mongolia]]. In 552 CE a clan of the emerging Dingling tribe established a Turkic Khanate in the Dunggar Basin in northern Xinjiang. In 744, the Uygur Alliance led by Guli Pei Luo, with the cooperation of the army of the [[Tang dynasty (618–907)|Tang Dynasty]], overthrew the Turkic Khanate and established the Mobei Uyghur Khanate. Historically as a way to resist oppression and slavery by the Turks, the Ouigour people (ancestors to the current-day Uyghur) united with some of the Tiele tribes to form the Ouigour tribal alliance.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
After the Uyghur Khanate suffered a major defeat in 840, some of them moved inland to live among the Han people, while the rest of the surviving Uyghurs were divided into three sub-groups. One of which moved to the Turpan Basin and the modern Jimsar region, where they founded the Gaochang Uygur Kingdom. Another moved to the Hexi Corridor, where they merged with local ethnic groups to become what was later known as the Yugu people. The third sub-group moved to the west of Pamir, scattered in areas from Central Asia to Kashgar, and joined the Karluk and Yagma peoples in founding the Karahan Kingdom. There they merged with the Han people in the Turpan Basin and the Yanqi, Qiuci, Yutian, Shule, and other peoples in the Tarim Basin to form the main body of the modern Uygur group.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
== Rise of religious terrorism ==<br />
<br />
==== The historical multireligious nature of Xinjiang ====<br />
In primitive society, the residents of Xinjiang once followed a primitive religion from which Shamanism evolved. Later, a succession of religions popular in the East and the West were introduced into Xinjiang via the Silk Road, the first of which was Zoroastrianism.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
Around the first century BC, Buddhism was introduced into Xinjiang and gradually became the major religion, coexisting with many other religions. From the 4th to the 10th century, Buddhism reached its peak, while in the same period Zoroastrianism proliferated throughout Xinjiang, particularly in the Turpan area. Around the fifth century, Taoism was introduced into Xinjiang, becoming prevalent mainly in Turpan and Hami. It spread to most parts of Xinjiang and experienced a revival during the Qing Dynasty.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In the sixth century, Manichaeism and Nestorianism were introduced into Xinjiang. From the 10th to the 14th century, Nestorianism flourished as the Uyghur and some other peoples converted to it in many parts of Xinjiang. In the late ninth and early 10th century, Islam was introduced into southern Xinjiang, changing the religious profile of Xinjiang again. After the Karahan Khanate accepted Islam, in the mid-10th century it launched a religious war against the Buddhist Kingdom of Yutian, and the war lasted for more than 40 years. In the early 11th century, the Karahan Khanate conquered Yutian and imposed Islam in that region. Thereafter, Islam dominated southern Xinjiang while Buddhism dominated northern Xinjiang. In the mid-14th century, the rulers of the Eastern Chagatai Khanate spread Islam to the northern edge of the Tarim Basin, the Turpan Basin and Hami by war and compulsion. By the early 16th century many religions coexisted in Xinjiang, with Islam being the predominant religion. Beginning in the 18th century, Protestantism, Catholicism, and the Eastern Orthodox Church were introduced into Xinjiang. Islam has ever since been the principal religion in Xinjiang, coexisting with a number of other religions.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
==== Modern Religious Extremism and the East Turkestan Movement ====<br />
At the turn of the 20th century, separatists and religious extremists both in and outside China, inherited the so-called theories of “Pan-Turkism” and “Pan-Islamism” which were created by former colonialists, spread the word that Uyghurs were the only “masters” of Xinjiang, that the ethnic cultures of Xinjiang were not of Chinese culture, and that Islam was the only religion practiced by ethnic groups of Xinjiang. They incited all ethnic groups speaking Turki and believing in Islam to join together in creating the theocratic state of so-called “East Turkistan”. They denied the history that China was jointly built by all its ethnic groups, and clamored for “opposition to all ethnic groups other than Turks” and for the “annihilation of pagans”.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
From the early 20th century onto the late 1940s, these ideas were pushed forward by “East Turkistan” forces who wanted to create their own state in Xinjiang. In 1915, the separatist Maswud returned to Ili, opened a school and publicly preached separatism to the students. On November 12, 1933, Mohammad Imin founded the so-called “East Turkistan Islamic Republic”, but the farce ended in less than three months due to strong opposition from the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
On November 12, 1944, another group of separatists led by Elihan Torae founded the so-called “Republic of East Turkistan”, which soon collapsed a year later. Afterwards, a series of separatist organizations and individuals continued their subversive and separatist activities under the banner of “East Turkistan” in a vain attempt to establish their own state.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
The “East Turkistan” forces, however, have not resigned themselves to defeat. With the support of international anti-China forces, the “East Turkistan” forces have resorted to all means, both fair or foul, to organize, plan and carry out acts of separatism and sabotage. In the early 1950s the separatists instigated many riots in Xinjiang, calling on Uyghurs to “unite under the moon-and-star banner to create a republic of Islam”. In the 1960s there were the riots in Ili and Tacheng on the China-Russia border, the riot of the “East Turkistan People’s Revolutionary Party”, and the armed rebellion of the Gang of Ahongnof in southern Xinjiang. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, religious extremism had made further inroads into Xinjiang. It soon blended with terrorism to stir up social unrest in the region, seriously undermining local stability and security.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
Since the 1990s, especially after the September 11 attacks in the US, the “East Turkistan” forces inside and outside China have stepped up their collaboration as terrorism and extremism spread around the globe, trying desperately to establish “East Turkistan” through struggle. In the name of ethnicity and religion, they deceitfully used people’s ethnic identity and religious belief to instigate religious fanaticism, spread religious extremism, and incite the common people to join in violent and terrorist activities. They brainwashed people with these beliefs, abetting them to “die for their belief in order to enter heaven”. Some of the most susceptible followers, no longer possessed of any self-control, became extremists and terrorists who heartlessly slaughtered innocent people.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
For a long time separatists have tied extremism to religion, to religious believers, and to society as a whole. They tell people not to obey anyone but Allah and incite them to resist government management. They abuse those who do not follow the path of extremism as pagans, traitors and scum, urging their followers to verbally assault, reject, and isolate non-believers, Party members and officials, and patriotic religious individuals. They deny and reject all forms of secular culture, preaching a life without TV, radio and newspaper, forbidding people to weep at funerals or laugh at weddings, imposing bans on singing and dancing, and forcing women to wear heavily-veiled black long gowns. They over-generalize the “Halal” concept, stamping food, medicine, cosmetics, clothing, etc. with the Halal symbol. They turn a blind eye to the diverse and splendid cultures of Xinjiang created by all its ethnic groups, trying to sever the ties between the Chinese culture and the ethnic cultures of Xinjiang.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
Nowadays, these groups generally operate under the name of ETIM, or [[East Turkestan Islamic Movement]] or the East Turkistan Party, which is affiliated with ETIM.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In 1990, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement organized its first terrorist attack in Baren Township. The ETIM was designated as a terrorist organization by the [[United Nations|UN]] in 2002 and by the Chinese government in 2003. In July 2009, Islamic extremists caused riots in Ürümqi, killing almost 200 people and injuring over 1,000. In May 2014 in Ürümqi, they drove cars into a crowded marketplace and threw explosives at buildings, killing 39 and injuring 94. In July 2014, Imam [[Juma Tahir]] was assassinated after calling for peace and stability in Xinjiang.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
Similar to [[Operation Cyclone]], where the [[United States of America|USA]] supported Islamic fundamentalism to destabilize the [[Democratic Republic of Afghanistan|socialist government]] of [[Afghanistan]], the US has supported Islamic fundamentalist separatists in the Xinjiang region of China. During the 1990s, the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] transported Uyghur terrorists from Xinjiang to Afghanistan to be trained in guerilla warfare by the [[Mujahideen]], following a plan of action developed by [[Bernard Lewis]], a specialist at Oxford University, who proposed the creation of an “Arc of Crisis” made up of Muslims manipulated to extend US influence and overthrow Communist (Soviet) rule in Middle Eastern nations. Graham Fuller, former Deputy Director of the CIA's National Council of Intelligence, said in 1999:<blockquote>The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them [radicalized Muslims] against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia<ref>{{Citation|author=Paul L. Williams|year=2015|title=Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance Between the Vatican, the CIA, and the Mafia|page=271|publisher=Prometheus Books}}</ref></blockquote>And FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds said in 2010:<blockquote>…without the Cold War excuse our foreign policymakers had a real hard time justifying our joint operations and terrorism schemes in the resource-rich ex Soviet states with these same groups, so they made sure they kept their policies unwritten and unspoken, and considering their grip on the mainstream media, largely unreported. Now what would your response be if I were to say on the record, and, if required, under oath: ‘''Between 1996 and 2002, we, the United States, planned, financed, and helped execute every major terrorist incident by Chechen rebels (and the Mujahideen) against Russia. Between 1996 and 2002, we, the United States, planned, financed, and helped execute every single uprising and terror related scheme in Xinjiang (aka East Turkistan and Uyghurstan)''<ref>{{Web citation|author=Sibel Edmonds|newspaper=Boiling Frogs Post|title=Friends-Enemies-Both? Our Foreign Policy Riddle|date=2010-10-03|url=https://sibel104.rssing.com/chan-18066673/article1.html|archive-url=https://archive.is/cbBsA}}</ref></blockquote>China's response to this upsurge of terrorism and separatism has been to [[Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers|construct re-education camps]] ([[Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers]]) which have been decried by the Western press in an effort to accuse China of running "concentration camps" and "death camps". Western countries have signed a letter criticizing China, while a counter-letter was signed by countries in the Muslim World as well as progressive states such as [[Republic of Cuba|Cuba]] and [[Bolivia]] (under the socialist government of [[Evo Morales]], prior to the US-backed coup).<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Qiao Collective|title=Xinjiang: A Report and Resource Compilation|date=2021-09-21|url=https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/xinjiang|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220620004209/https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/xinjiang}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Shane Quinn|newspaper=Orinoco Tribune|title=Beijing’s Decades-Long Policies in Xinjiang, CIA Interference, Funding of Separatist and Terrorist Groups|date=2020-08-26|url=https://orinocotribune.com/beijings-decades-long-policies-in-xinjiang-cia-interference-funding-of-separatist-and-terrorist-groups/}}</ref><br />
<br />
==== Examples of terrorist attacks ====<br />
Terrorist groups under the general term of East Turkestan Party have committed more than 30 acts between 1990 and 2016, which include killing ordinary people, assassinating religious leaders, endangering public safety (acts that did not have human victims or were foiled before they could be carried out), attacking government organs and planning riots.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
Other notable examples include, but are not limited to:On February 5, 1992, while the whole of China was celebrating the Spring Festival, a terrorist group planted bombs on a No. 52 and a No. 30 bus in Urumqi, blowing up the 2 buses, killing 3 people and injuring 23 others.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
* On February 5, 1992 during the Spring Festival celebrations, a terrorist group planted bombs on a No. 52 and a No. 30 bus in Urumqi, blowing up the 2 buses, killing 3 people and injuring 23 others.<br />
* On March 22, 1996, two masked terrorists broke into the house of Akemusidike Aji, vice president of the Islamic Association of Xinhe County, Aksu Prefecture, and assistant imam of a mosque, and shot him dead.<br />
* On July 5, 2009, the “East Turkistan” forces inside and outside China engineered a riot in Urumqi which shocked the whole world. Thousands of terrorists attacked civilians, government organs, public security and police officers, residential houses, stores and public transportation facilities, causing 197 deaths and injuries to over 1,700, smashing and burning down 331 stores and 1,325 vehicles, and damaging many public facilities.<br />
* On July 30, 2011, two terrorists hijacked a truck at the junction of a food street in Kashgar City, stabbed the driver to death, drove the truck into the crowd, and then attacked the public with their knives. In this incident, 8 were killed and 27 injured. The next day, knife-wielding terrorists randomly attacked pedestrians on Xiangxie Street, Renmin West Road, killing 6 and injuring 15.<br />
* On February 28, 2012, nine knife-wielding terrorists attacked civilians on Xingfu Road, Yecheng County, Kashgar Prefecture, resulting in 15 deaths and 20 injuries.<br />
* On March 1, 2014, eight knife-wielding Xinjiang terrorists attacked passengers at the Kunming Railway Station Square and the ticket lobby, leaving 31 dead and 141 injured.<br />
* On May 22, 2014, five terrorists drove two SUVs through the fence of the morning fair of North Park Road of Saybagh District, Urumqi, into the crowd, and then detonated a bomb, claiming the life of 39 and leaving 94 injured.<br />
* On September 18, 2015, terrorists attacked a coal mine in Baicheng County, Aksu Prefecture, causing 16 deaths and 18 injuries<br />
* On December 28, 2016, four terrorists drove into the courtyard of Moyu County government, Hotan Prefecture, detonated a homemade explosive device, and attacked government staff, leaving 2 dead and 3 injured.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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== International Reactions ==<br />
International reaction to the economic and cultural developments in the Xinjiang region have been mostly represented through the eyes of the imperial core. Their claims keep growing in scale and the goal is simply to destabilise the CPC, and open up China for their domestic markets under their own terms. It should also be noted Xinjiang is a very important geographical area for the [[Belt and Road Initiative]] and contains tons of oil in the Tarim Basin. 100 additional million tons were discovered in 2020.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Global Times|title=China discovers 100 million ton oilfield in northwestern Xinjiang|url=https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1185102.shtml}}</ref><br />
<br />
=== The United States ===<br />
The [[United States of America]] and their imperialist allies understand that Xinjiang is a very important target in order to destabilise China, as destabilising China would allow them to install [[Social class|comprador]] heads of state, which would force open China's markets, much like what we have seen after the [[Opium wars]].<br />
<br />
In 2018, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson of the US Army explained in a speech at the Ron Paul Institute that the USA has a military presence in Afghanistan so that they can keep troops close to China, and that if they wanted to destabilize China, they would go through Xinjiang, harnessing and stoking the separatist sentiment present there.<ref>{{YouTube citation|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91wz5syVNZs&t=1260s|channel=RonPaulLibertyReport|title='What Is The Empire's Strategy?' - Col Lawrence Wilkerson Speech At RPI Media & War Conferenc}}</ref><br />
<br />
In October 2020, then-Secretary of State [[Mike Pompeo]] removed the designation of ETIM as a terrorist group.<ref>{{Web citation|author=State Department|newspaper=Federal Register|title=In the Matter of the Designation of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement Also Known as ETIM as a “Terrorist Organization” Pursuant to Section 212(a)(3)(B)(vi)(II) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as Amended|date=2020-05-11|url=https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/11/05/2020-24620/in-the-matter-of-the-designation-of-the-eastern-turkistan-islamic-movement-also-known-as-etim-as-a}}</ref> It should be noted that for 10 years prior to that decision, the USA had been drone striking people they designated as ETIM fighters in Pakistan and thus begs the question: who was the USA bombing for a decade if ETIM did not exist for more than 10 years, as Pompeo alleged without evidence?<br />
<br />
Mike Pompeo's ferocious slander against China and the people of Xinjiang gave rise to a movement from Uyghurs living in Xinjiang showing what their actual life is like in Xinjiang, and telling Mr. Pompeo to stop spreading slander.<ref>{{YouTube citation|url=https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbOIKUddMBtp0_xEFqn4zey48kkgJq5w|title=Citizens of Xinjiang Speak}}</ref><br />
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=== Boycott of Xinjiang cotton industry ===<br />
After claims of forced labour were advanced without evidence, many international companies (including, for example, H&M), decided not to use Xinjiang cotton in their products. This had the effect of weakening Xinjiang's economy, as producers were not able to sell their stock. In retaliation, Chinese people started boycotting these companies, and H&M closed down most locations in China.<br />
<br />
== Use in propaganda warfare ==<br />
As part of the West's [[New Cold War]] against China, many Western media outlets have accused China of "operating concentration camps" in the Xinjiang region. These allegations have been debunked on non-Western media outlets, as well as the sparse alternative media outlets within the West.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=CGTN|title=China: Xinjiang's reality check debunks rumors and lies|date=2021-02-06|url=https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-02-06/China-Xinjiang-s-reality-check-debunks-rumors-and-lies-XEGmYJFpCw/index.html|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref> This is a clear example of information warfare.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Roderic Day|newspaper=Red Sails|title=The Xinjiang Atrocity Propaganda Blitz|date=2021-03-22|url=https://redsails.org/the-xinjiang-atrocity-propaganda-blitz/|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref><br />
<br />
=== Genocide Allegations ===<br />
The so-called Uyghur genocide is an [[Imperialism|imperialist]] myth propagated by the [[Government of the United States of America|U.S. government]] since 2017. It claims that the [[People's Republic of China|Chinese]] government is committing [[genocide]] against the Uyghur people of the [[Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region|Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region]]. However, the Uyghur population has been steadily increasing and grew by more than 25% between 2010 and 2018 even though the total population of Xinjiang only rose by 13.99%. The Uyghur population is growing faster than Han Chinese (2%) or other ethnic minorities (22.14%). Chinese protections of [[Islam]] have been reputed to be contested by some citizens as suggesting preferential treatment, refuting the claim that the China's policies are anti-Islam<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Business Standard|title=Use of anti-Islam words to defame Muslims banned on Chinese social media|date=2019-09-21|url=https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/use-of-anti-islam-words-to-defame-muslims-banned-on-chinese-social-media-117092100457_1.html}}</ref>. <br />
<br />
China has roughly 54 other ethnic groups which have been relatively unscathed, including other Muslim-majority ethnic groups such as the Hui ethnic group, which is larger than the Uyghur population. In 2019, almost 1,000 diplomats and journalists from many countries as well as the [[United Nations|UN]], [[European Union|EU]], [[Arab League]], [[African Union]], and [[Organisation of Islamic Cooperation]] visited Xinjiang and found no evidence of genocide. In response to the [[Donald Trump|Trump]] administration Secretary of State [[Mike Pompeo]]'s claims of genocide in Xinjiang, people from all walks of life in the region submitted at least 450 written responses and 345 videos condemning the comments as untrue and harmful.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Qiao Collective|title=Xinjiang Responds|url=https://www.qiaocollective.com/xinjiang-responds}}</ref><br />
<br />
==== Adrian Zenz ====<br />
[[Adrian Zenz]] is a fundamentalist Christian and self-proclaimed "independent researcher" connected to the [[Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation]] who does not understand a word of Chinese and bases his research on documents published by the CPC to claim that China is incarcerating 1 million Uyghurs in concentration camps. His research has been shown to be shoddy or completely wrong -- including, for example, a time where he claimed 87% of all new IUD procedures in China (temporary sterilisation tool) were done in Xinjiang, whereas the source he used (official CPC statistics) showed a number of 8.7%, a staggering difference by a factor of 10.<br />
<br />
He had also claimed that Xinjiang is forcibly sterilizing Uyghur women with IUDs. In fact, only 328,475 of China's total 3,774,318 IUDs were in Xinjiang.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=CGTN|title=Fact Check: Lies on Xinjiang-related issues vs. the truth|date=2021-02-06|url=https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-02-06/Fact-Check-Lies-on-Xinjiang-related-issues-vs-the-truth-XEFuvz6b84/index.html}}</ref> In September 2018, he said there were about 1,060,000 Uyghurs in [[Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers|re-education camps]]. It is important to note that this number is based on anonymous interviews consiting of only eight people. In his initial report for the ~1M estimate, [[Radio Free Asia]] is cited four times, and the estimate is only mentioned on (pp. 21-2). Zenz finds this number by roughly extrapolating a “leaked” report by Newsweek Japan (affiliated with Newsweek Inc.). This report came from “Istekral TV”, which frequently platforms the terrorist organization ETIM—the report was never confirmed.<br />
<br />
On May 4, 2022, the BBC posted [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-8df450b3-5d6d-4ed8-bdcc-bd99137eadc3 an article] detailing what they termed the "Xinjiang Police Files", a collection of documents and other resources which purportedly proved accusations of maltreatment against Uyghurs. The documents were allegedly provided by an anonymous source to Adrian Zenz, who then gave them to the BBC. The documents in fact showed many Uyghurs working at the centers and that the centers had some Han Chinese detainees. Many articles used images of guns as a scare tactic without noting that these were images of security drills and that the magazines were empty. The articles associated with the files whitewashed the crimes of genuine ETIM members who had been a party in bombings such as Yusup Ismayil (with text placed over an image of Yusup reading "many have been detained just for ordinary, outward signs of their Islamic faith or for visiting countries with majority Muslim populations", with no citation for this claim)<ref>{{Web citation|author=Yin Sura|newspaper=Mango Press|title=The Xinjiang Police Files are Actually Boring: Zenz's Reality Warping|date=2022-06-12|url=https://archive.is/jeCII#selection-631.0-631.69}}</ref>. The Xinjiang Police Files "key documents" file metadata showed that Adrian Zenz and [[Ilshat Kobor]] (of the [[Uyghur American Association]]) had modified them, with metadata information being removed soon after release. The XPF website also posted demographic data, of which the number of male and female detainees added up to over the stated total in the same data.<br />
<br />
==== Zamira Dawut ====<br />
The [[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]] claimed that Zamira Dawut was sterilized at a vocational center. Her brother, Abduhelil, said she had never been to a vocational center. Zamira said her father was arrested multiple times and then died of unknown causes. In reality, he was never arrested or even investigated and died of heart disease on 2019 October 12.<br />
<br />
==== The New York Times ====<br />
On 2019 November 16, ''[[The New York Times]]'' reported on supposed leaked documents on Xinjiang. State media was quick to assert that these documents were not authentic, calling them "fabricated." Grammatical errors indicated that the documents were fake and likely translated from English to Chinese, with users further noting that the "leaked" docs did not correspond to the formatting standards of Chinese government documents (GB/T9704).<br />
<br />
== Myths ==<br />
[[File:A HRC 41 G 11 and 17-min.png|thumb|UN Human Rights Council resolutions 41/G/11 (blue) criticizing China and 41/G/17 (red) supporting China.]]<br />
<br />
A [[United Nations|UN]] Resolution of global south nations<ref>https://undocs.org/pdf?symbol=en/A/HRC/41/G/17</ref><blockquote>We express our firm opposition to relevant countries’ practice of politicizing human rights issues, by naming and shaming, and publicly exerting pressures on other countries. We commend China’s remarkable achievements in the field of human rights by adhering to the people-centered development philosophy and protecting and promoting human rights through development. We also appreciate China’s contributions to the international human rights cause.</blockquote>[[World Bank]] Investigation of Xinjiang<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=World Bank|title=World Bank Statement on Review of Project in Xinjiang, China|date=2019-11-11|url=https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2019/11/11/world-bank-statement-on-review-of-project-in-xinjiang-china|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref>[[File:A C3 74 SR37-min.png|thumb|UN General Assembly resolution SR.37]]When allegations are made, the World Bank takes them seriously and reviews them thoroughly. In line with standard practice, immediately after receiving a series of serious allegations in August 2019 in connection with the Xinjiang Technical and Vocational Education and Training Project, the Bank launched a fact-finding review, and World Bank senior managers traveled to Xinjiang to gather information directly...<br />
<br />
The team conducted a thorough review of project documents, engaged in discussions with project staff, and visited schools directly financed by the project, as well as their partner schools that were the subject of allegations. The review did not substantiate the allegations.<br />
<br />
[[Organization of Islamic Cooperation]] praises Chinese handling of Xinjiang<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=The Forty- Six Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers, (Session: 50 Years Of Islamic Cooperation: Roadmap For Prosperity And Development)|title=RESOLUTIONS ON MUSLIM COMMUNITIES AND MUSLIM MINORITIES IN THE NON-OIC MEMBER STATES|date=2019-03-1-2|url=https://www.oic-oci.org/docdown/?docID=4447&refID=1250|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref><ref>http://www.inp.net.pk/china-lauds-oics-resolution-on-xinjiang/</ref><blockquote>Welcomes the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat's delegation upon invitation from the People's Republic of China; commends the efforts of the People's Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and looks forward to further cooperation between the OIC and the People's Republic of China.</blockquote>[[Egypt|Egyptian]] media delegates visit Xinjiang<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=The News|title=Egyptian media delegates provide a detailed insight of the situation in Xinjiang|date=2019-02-11|url=https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/430738-egyptian-media-delegates-provide-a-detailed-insight-of-the-situation-in-xinjiang|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref><blockquote>The recently published report also brings forth some interesting facts related to the religious freedom as opposed to the western propaganda. The report provides a strong testimonial by the visiting delegates who clearly state, “the in houses of worship such as the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, modern facilities abound, providing water, electricity and air conditioning. Local clerics told the visitors that their religious activities had been very well protected”. "The conditions here are very good," said Abdelhalim Elwerdany, of Egypt's Al-Gomhuria newspaper. "I could feel that local Muslims fully enjoy religious freedom."</blockquote><br />
In 2019 July, the 41st session of the UN Human Rights Council met and voted on two opposing letters regarding Xinjiang. 50 countries voted in favor of China's policies and 22 voted against.<br />
<br />
On 2019 October 29, at the 74th session of the UN General Assembly, 24 countries and the EU criticized China and 57 countries supported China.<br />
=== International Visits to Xinjiang ===<br />
<br />
==== Diplomats ====<br />
In 2018 December, diplomats from [[Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (2004–2021)|Afghanistan]], [[Republic of India|India]], [[Republic of Indonesia|Indonesia]], [[Republic of Kazakhstan|Kazakhstan]], [[State of Kuwait|Kuwait]], [[Kyrgyz Republic|Kyrgyzstan]], [[Malaysia]], [[Islamic Republic of Pakistan|Pakistan]], [[Republic of Tajikistan|Tajikistan]], [[Kingdom of Thailand|Thailand]], and [[Republic of Uzbekistan|Uzbekistan]] visited Xinjiang and had full access to vocational training centers. They found no evidence of [[Slavery|forced labor]] or cultural or religious oppression.<br />
<br />
On 2019 January 29, an EU delegation visited. On February 25, about 200 representatives of 50 political parties from almost 30 countries visited Ürümqi. On February 28, diplomats from [[People's Democratic Republic of Algeria|Algeria]], [[Republic of the Union of Myanmar|Burma]], [[Hellenic Republic|Greece]], [[Hungary]], [[Kingdom of Morocco|Morocco]], [[Socialist Republic of Vietnam|Vietnam]], and the Arab League visited. China offered to let the EU visit again in March, but it declined. On March 27, the [[Republic of Albania|Albanian]] and [[Republic of Serbia|Serbian]] ambassadors to China ([[Selim Belortaja]] and [[Milan Bačević]]) visited. On June 15, Under Secretary-General of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Office Vladimir Voronkov visited Xinjiang. Between June 18 and 21, diplomats from Algeria, [[Burkina Faso]], the [[Democratic Republic of the Congo|DR Congo]], [[Lao People's Democratic Republic|Laos]], Malaysia, [[Federal Republic of Nigeria|Nigeria]], Serbia, [[Federal Republic of Somalia|Somalia]], Tajikistan, [[Togolese Republic|Togo]], and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation visited. On August 19, diplomats from [[Kingdom of Bahrain|Bahrain]], [[Kingdom of Cambodia|Cambodia]], [[Lao People's Democratic Republic|Laos]], [[Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal|Nepal]], [[Federal Republic of Nigeria|Nigeria]], the [[Republic of the Philippines|Philippines]], and [[Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka|Sri Lanka]] visited. In September, diplomats from the African Union and 16 African countries, including [[Republic of Burundi|Burundi]], [[Republic of Djibouti|Djibouti]], [[Lesotho]], [[Republic of the Sudan|Sudan]], [[Republic of Uganda|Uganda]], and [[Republic of Zimbabwe|Zimbabwe]] visited. In November, [[Fahri Hamzah]], former Deputy Speaker of the [[Republic of Indonesia|Indonesian]] House of Representatives, visited Xinjiang. On November 11, the [[The World Bank|World Bank]] visited Xinjiang and found no abnormalities in the vocational centers.<br />
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==== Media ====<br />
On 2019 January 6, [[Reuters]] visited Xinjiang. Starting on January 9, 12 media representatives from Afghanistan, [[People's Republic of Bangladesh|Bangladesh]], [[Arab Republic of Egypt|Egypt]], Sri Lanka, and [[Republic of Türkiye|Turkey]] visited. Another media delegation from Egypt visited on January 29. On February 22, 11 journalists from Indonesia and Malaysia visited. On 2019 May 7, [[National Public Radio|NPR]] released its report on a visit to a vocational center. On 2019 June 18, [[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]] visited a vocational center. Starting on July 14, journalists from 24 countries, including [[Republic of India|India]], [[Islamic Republic of Iran|Iran]], [[Italian Republic|Italy]], [[Japan]], Pakistan, [[Russian Federation|Russia]], [[Kingdom of Saudi Arabia|Saudi Arabia]], Thailand, Turkey, the [[United States of America|USA]], and Uzbekistan visited Xinjiang. On August 17, a media group from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Japan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, [[State of Qatar|Qatar]], Russia, Turkey, and the [[United Arab Emirates|UAE]] visited. On August 29, [[ABC News]] visited a vocational center. On October 10, 2021, as Xinjiang was slowly opening for tourism, the [[Associated Press]] traveled to Xinjiang in order to investigate the measures taken by the government. They concluded that the genocidal policies had existed at some point but had been done away with before the opening measures, although the article still critiqued certain things they felt stifled Uyghur culture. A response was posted afterwards by ''The New Atlas'' which bemoaned several of the article's pretensions.<ref>{{YouTube citation|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78s7yP2BdF0|channel=The New Atlas|title=AP News Confirms NO Uyghur Genocide in Xinjiang China}}</ref><br />
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== References ==<br />
<references /><br />
[[Category:Xinjiang Region]]<br />
[[Category:People's Republic of China]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Xinjiang_Vocational_Education_and_Training_Centers&diff=64541Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers2024-03-24T18:02:19Z<p>CriticalResist: reworked references</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:Picture_of_Ürümqi.jpg|thumb|350x350px|Picture of Ürümqi, capital of the Xinjiang Province]]<br />
The '''Xinjiang''' '''Vocational Education and Training Centers''' are facilities operated by the [[Xinjiang|Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region]] government in [[People's Republic of China|China]]. These <br />
<br />
facilities were built in response to a series of terrorist attacks by an insurgency of Islamist separatists, referred to as the Xinjiang Conflict.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=CGTN|title=Fighting Terrorism in Xinjiang|date=2019-12-05|url=https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-12-05/Fighting-terrorism-in-Xinjiang-MaNLLDtnfq/index.html|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref> China accuses the [[United States of America|United States]] of having supported these terrorists, similar to how the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] cultivated extremist proxies in [[Operation Cyclone]] which later evolved into Al Qaeda<ref>{{Web citation|author=Catherine Wong|newspaper=South China Morning Post|title=US-China ties: Washington funded terrorists in Xinjiang, Beijing says|date=2021-04-14|url=https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3129545/us-china-ties-washington-funded-terrorists-xinjiang-beijing|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref> (see the terrorism section in the XUAR page).<br />
<br />
While the West carries out its so-called "war on terror" with bombs, China has taken a different approach; by investing in vocational and educational facilities, the Chinese government seeks to offer a more stable and prosperous life to would-be recruits into such extremist organizations. Following a critical assessment by the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) released on August 31, 2022,<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights|title=OHCHR Assessment of human rights concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China|date=2022-08-31|url=https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref> the People's Republic of China released a report accusing the assessment of misrepresenting China's laws and policies.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other international organizations in Switzerland|newspaper=Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights|title=Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism in Xinjiang: Truth and Facts|date=2022-09-31|url=https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/ANNEX_A.pdf|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref> The report documented the numerous terror attacks in Xinjiang and coming out of Xinjiang and laid out the policies of the VETCs so as to stress the soundness of their adherence to the principles of human rights protection. <br />
<br />
== Historical and material context of the Autonomous Region ==<br />
[[File:Xinjiang.svg.png|thumb|Location of Xinjiang Province (in red) in the People's Republic of China]]<br />
The region known as Xinjiang (新疆, literally meaning ''New Frontier'') has been an inseparable part of China since the Han Dynasty in 60 BCE, and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was established in 1955 under the People's Republic of China. The vast areas both north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, called the Western Regions in ancient times, were in close contact with the Central Plains as early as the pre-Qin period (c. 2100-221 BC). With the establishment of the unified feudal dynasties Qin (221-206 BC) and Han (206 BC-AD 220), multi-ethnic unification has been the norm in China’s historical development. In 60 BC, the government of the Western Han Dynasty established the Western Regions Frontier Command in Xinjiang, officially making Xinjiang a part of Chinese territory.<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|author=China’s State Council Information Office|title=The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang|url=https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2019/03/18/content_281476567813306.htm}}</ref><br />
<br />
=== The Emergence of the Autonomous Region ===<br />
<br />
==== Ancient History ====<br />
The region in which we currently know as Xinjiang became part of the [[Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE)|Han dynasty]] in 60 BCE. Since then, the region has been populated by Han Chinese since this time.<br />
<br />
==== The Republic of China ====<br />
After [[Nicolas II]] tried to conscript Kazakh and Kyrgyz people into the First World War in 1916, they attacked Russian settlers and then fled into Xinjiang.<ref>{{Citation|author=Vijay Prashad|year=2017|title=Red Star Over the Third World|chapter=Soviet Asia|city=New Delhi|publisher=LeftWord Books}}</ref><br />
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== Demographics ==<br />
<br />
=== The Uyghur People ===<br />
Xinjiang has been a multi-ethnic region since ancient times. Down the ages, ethnic groups of various kinds have lived in the region and communicated with each other. By the end of the 19th century, 13 ethnic groups – the Uygur, Han, Kazak, Mongolian, Hui, Kirgiz, Manchu, Xibe, Tajik, Daur, Uzbek, Tatar, and Russian – had settled in Xinjiang, with the Uyghurs having the largest population.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
The Uyghur ethnic group came into being through a long process of migration and ethnic integration though they are not descendants of the Turks, instead, they are the descendants of the nomadic Dingling (丁零) tribe [[Mongolia]]. In 552 CE a clan of the emerging Dingling tribe established a Turkic Khanate in the Dunggar Basin in northern Xinjiang. In 744, the Uygur Alliance led by Guli Pei Luo, with the cooperation of the army of the [[Tang dynasty (618–907)|Tang Dynasty]], overthrew the Turkic Khanate and established the Mobei Uyghur Khanate. Historically as a way to resist oppression and slavery by the Turks, the Ouigour people (ancestors to the current-day Uyghur) united with some of the Tiele tribes to form the Ouigour tribal alliance.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
After the Uyghur Khanate suffered a major defeat in 840, some of them moved inland to live among the Han people, while the rest of the surviving Uyghurs were divided into three sub-groups. One of which moved to the Turpan Basin and the modern Jimsar region, where they founded the Gaochang Uygur Kingdom. Another moved to the Hexi Corridor, where they merged with local ethnic groups to become what was later known as the Yugu people. The third sub-group moved to the west of Pamir, scattered in areas from Central Asia to Kashgar, and joined the Karluk and Yagma peoples in founding the Karahan Kingdom. There they merged with the Han people in the Turpan Basin and the Yanqi, Qiuci, Yutian, Shule, and other peoples in the Tarim Basin to form the main body of the modern Uygur group.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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== Rise of religious terrorism ==<br />
<br />
==== The historical multireligious nature of Xinjiang ====<br />
In primitive society, the residents of Xinjiang once followed a primitive religion from which Shamanism evolved. Later, a succession of religions popular in the East and the West were introduced into Xinjiang via the Silk Road, the first of which was Zoroastrianism.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
Around the first century BC, Buddhism was introduced into Xinjiang and gradually became the major religion, coexisting with many other religions. From the 4th to the 10th century, Buddhism reached its peak, while in the same period Zoroastrianism proliferated throughout Xinjiang, particularly in the Turpan area. Around the fifth century, Taoism was introduced into Xinjiang, becoming prevalent mainly in Turpan and Hami. It spread to most parts of Xinjiang and experienced a revival during the Qing Dynasty.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
In the sixth century, Manichaeism and Nestorianism were introduced into Xinjiang. From the 10th to the 14th century, Nestorianism flourished as the Uyghur and some other peoples converted to it in many parts of Xinjiang. In the late ninth and early 10th century, Islam was introduced into southern Xinjiang, changing the religious profile of Xinjiang again. After the Karahan Khanate accepted Islam, in the mid-10th century it launched a religious war against the Buddhist Kingdom of Yutian, and the war lasted for more than 40 years. In the early 11th century, the Karahan Khanate conquered Yutian and imposed Islam in that region. Thereafter, Islam dominated southern Xinjiang while Buddhism dominated northern Xinjiang. In the mid-14th century, the rulers of the Eastern Chagatai Khanate spread Islam to the northern edge of the Tarim Basin, the Turpan Basin and Hami by war and compulsion. By the early 16th century many religions coexisted in Xinjiang, with Islam being the predominant religion. Beginning in the 18th century, Protestantism, Catholicism, and the Eastern Orthodox Church were introduced into Xinjiang. Islam has ever since been the principal religion in Xinjiang, coexisting with a number of other religions.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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==== Modern Religious Extremism and the East Turkestan Movement ====<br />
At the turn of the 20th century, separatists and religious extremists both in and outside China, inherited the so-called theories of “Pan-Turkism” and “Pan-Islamism” which were created by former colonialists, spread the word that Uyghurs were the only “masters” of Xinjiang, that the ethnic cultures of Xinjiang were not of Chinese culture, and that Islam was the only religion practiced by ethnic groups of Xinjiang. They incited all ethnic groups speaking Turki and believing in Islam to join together in creating the theocratic state of so-called “East Turkistan”. They denied the history that China was jointly built by all its ethnic groups, and clamored for “opposition to all ethnic groups other than Turks” and for the “annihilation of pagans”.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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From the early 20th century onto the late 1940s, these ideas were pushed forward by “East Turkistan” forces who wanted to create their own state in Xinjiang. In 1915, the separatist Maswud returned to Ili, opened a school and publicly preached separatism to the students. On November 12, 1933, Mohammad Imin founded the so-called “East Turkistan Islamic Republic”, but the farce ended in less than three months due to strong opposition from the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
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On November 12, 1944, another group of separatists led by Elihan Torae founded the so-called “Republic of East Turkistan”, which soon collapsed a year later. Afterwards, a series of separatist organizations and individuals continued their subversive and separatist activities under the banner of “East Turkistan” in a vain attempt to establish their own state.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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The “East Turkistan” forces, however, have not resigned themselves to defeat. With the support of international anti-China forces, the “East Turkistan” forces have resorted to all means, both fair or foul, to organize, plan and carry out acts of separatism and sabotage. In the early 1950s the separatists instigated many riots in Xinjiang, calling on Uyghurs to “unite under the moon-and-star banner to create a republic of Islam”. In the 1960s there were the riots in Ili and Tacheng on the China-Russia border, the riot of the “East Turkistan People’s Revolutionary Party”, and the armed rebellion of the Gang of Ahongnof in southern Xinjiang. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, religious extremism had made further inroads into Xinjiang. It soon blended with terrorism to stir up social unrest in the region, seriously undermining local stability and security.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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Since the 1990s, especially after the September 11 attacks in the US, the “East Turkistan” forces inside and outside China have stepped up their collaboration as terrorism and extremism spread around the globe, trying desperately to establish “East Turkistan” through struggle. In the name of ethnicity and religion, they deceitfully used people’s ethnic identity and religious belief to instigate religious fanaticism, spread religious extremism, and incite the common people to join in violent and terrorist activities. They brainwashed people with these beliefs, abetting them to “die for their belief in order to enter heaven”. Some of the most susceptible followers, no longer possessed of any self-control, became extremists and terrorists who heartlessly slaughtered innocent people.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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For a long time separatists have tied extremism to religion, to religious believers, and to society as a whole. They tell people not to obey anyone but Allah and incite them to resist government management. They abuse those who do not follow the path of extremism as pagans, traitors and scum, urging their followers to verbally assault, reject, and isolate non-believers, Party members and officials, and patriotic religious individuals. They deny and reject all forms of secular culture, preaching a life without TV, radio and newspaper, forbidding people to weep at funerals or laugh at weddings, imposing bans on singing and dancing, and forcing women to wear heavily-veiled black long gowns. They over-generalize the “Halal” concept, stamping food, medicine, cosmetics, clothing, etc. with the Halal symbol. They turn a blind eye to the diverse and splendid cultures of Xinjiang created by all its ethnic groups, trying to sever the ties between the Chinese culture and the ethnic cultures of Xinjiang.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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Nowadays, these groups generally operate under the name of ETIM, or [[East Turkestan Islamic Movement]] or the East Turkistan Party, which is affiliated with ETIM.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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In 1990, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement organized its first terrorist attack in Baren Township. The ETIM was designated as a terrorist organization by the [[United Nations|UN]] in 2002 and by the Chinese government in 2003. In July 2009, Islamic extremists caused riots in Ürümqi, killing almost 200 people and injuring over 1,000. In May 2014 in Ürümqi, they drove cars into a crowded marketplace and threw explosives at buildings, killing 39 and injuring 94. In July 2014, Imam [[Juma Tahir]] was assassinated after calling for peace and stability in Xinjiang.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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Similar to [[Operation Cyclone]], where the [[United States of America|USA]] supported Islamic fundamentalism to destabilize the [[Democratic Republic of Afghanistan|socialist government]] of [[Afghanistan]], the US has supported Islamic fundamentalist separatists in the Xinjiang region of China. During the 1990s, the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] transported Uyghur terrorists from Xinjiang to Afghanistan to be trained in guerilla warfare by the [[Mujahideen]], following a plan of action developed by [[Bernard Lewis]], a specialist at Oxford University, who proposed the creation of an “Arc of Crisis” made up of Muslims manipulated to extend US influence and overthrow Communist (Soviet) rule in Middle Eastern nations. Graham Fuller, former Deputy Director of the CIA's National Council of Intelligence, said in 1999:<blockquote>The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them [radicalized Muslims] against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia<ref>{{Citation|author=Paul L. Williams|year=2015|title=Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance Between the Vatican, the CIA, and the Mafia|page=271|publisher=Prometheus Books}}</ref></blockquote>And FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds said in 2010:<blockquote>…without the Cold War excuse our foreign policymakers had a real hard time justifying our joint operations and terrorism schemes in the resource-rich ex Soviet states with these same groups, so they made sure they kept their policies unwritten and unspoken, and considering their grip on the mainstream media, largely unreported. Now what would your response be if I were to say on the record, and, if required, under oath: ‘''Between 1996 and 2002, we, the United States, planned, financed, and helped execute every major terrorist incident by Chechen rebels (and the Mujahideen) against Russia. Between 1996 and 2002, we, the United States, planned, financed, and helped execute every single uprising and terror related scheme in Xinjiang (aka East Turkistan and Uyghurstan)''<ref>{{Web citation|author=Sibel Edmonds|newspaper=Boiling Frogs Post|title=Friends-Enemies-Both? Our Foreign Policy Riddle|date=2010-10-03|url=https://sibel104.rssing.com/chan-18066673/article1.html|archive-url=https://archive.is/cbBsA}}</ref></blockquote>China's response to this upsurge of terrorism and separatism has been to [[Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers|construct re-education camps]] ([[Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers]]) which have been decried by the Western press in an effort to accuse China of running "concentration camps" and "death camps". Western countries have signed a letter criticizing China, while a counter-letter was signed by countries in the Muslim World as well as progressive states such as [[Republic of Cuba|Cuba]] and [[Bolivia]] (under the socialist government of [[Evo Morales]], prior to the US-backed coup).<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Qiao Collective|title=Xinjiang: A Report and Resource Compilation|date=2021-09-21|url=https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/xinjiang|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220620004209/https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/xinjiang}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Shane Quinn|newspaper=Orinoco Tribune|title=Beijing’s Decades-Long Policies in Xinjiang, CIA Interference, Funding of Separatist and Terrorist Groups|date=2020-08-26|url=https://orinocotribune.com/beijings-decades-long-policies-in-xinjiang-cia-interference-funding-of-separatist-and-terrorist-groups/}}</ref><br />
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==== Examples of terrorist attacks ====<br />
Terrorist groups under the general term of East Turkestan Party have committed more than 30 acts between 1990 and 2016, which include killing ordinary people, assassinating religious leaders, endangering public safety (acts that did not have human victims or were foiled before they could be carried out), attacking government organs and planning riots.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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Other notable examples include, but are not limited to:On February 5, 1992, while the whole of China was celebrating the Spring Festival, a terrorist group planted bombs on a No. 52 and a No. 30 bus in Urumqi, blowing up the 2 buses, killing 3 people and injuring 23 others.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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* On February 5, 1992 during the Spring Festival celebrations, a terrorist group planted bombs on a No. 52 and a No. 30 bus in Urumqi, blowing up the 2 buses, killing 3 people and injuring 23 others.<br />
* On March 22, 1996, two masked terrorists broke into the house of Akemusidike Aji, vice president of the Islamic Association of Xinhe County, Aksu Prefecture, and assistant imam of a mosque, and shot him dead.<br />
* On July 5, 2009, the “East Turkistan” forces inside and outside China engineered a riot in Urumqi which shocked the whole world. Thousands of terrorists attacked civilians, government organs, public security and police officers, residential houses, stores and public transportation facilities, causing 197 deaths and injuries to over 1,700, smashing and burning down 331 stores and 1,325 vehicles, and damaging many public facilities.<br />
* On July 30, 2011, two terrorists hijacked a truck at the junction of a food street in Kashgar City, stabbed the driver to death, drove the truck into the crowd, and then attacked the public with their knives. In this incident, 8 were killed and 27 injured. The next day, knife-wielding terrorists randomly attacked pedestrians on Xiangxie Street, Renmin West Road, killing 6 and injuring 15.<br />
* On February 28, 2012, nine knife-wielding terrorists attacked civilians on Xingfu Road, Yecheng County, Kashgar Prefecture, resulting in 15 deaths and 20 injuries.<br />
* On March 1, 2014, eight knife-wielding Xinjiang terrorists attacked passengers at the Kunming Railway Station Square and the ticket lobby, leaving 31 dead and 141 injured.<br />
* On May 22, 2014, five terrorists drove two SUVs through the fence of the morning fair of North Park Road of Saybagh District, Urumqi, into the crowd, and then detonated a bomb, claiming the life of 39 and leaving 94 injured.<br />
* On September 18, 2015, terrorists attacked a coal mine in Baicheng County, Aksu Prefecture, causing 16 deaths and 18 injuries<br />
* On December 28, 2016, four terrorists drove into the courtyard of Moyu County government, Hotan Prefecture, detonated a homemade explosive device, and attacked government staff, leaving 2 dead and 3 injured.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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== International Reactions ==<br />
International reaction to the economic and cultural developments in the Xinjiang region have been mostly represented through the eyes of the imperial core. Their claims keep growing in scale and the goal is simply to destabilise the CPC, and open up China for their domestic markets under their own terms. It should also be noted Xinjiang is a very important geographical area for the [[Belt and Road Initiative]] and contains tons of oil in the Tarim Basin. 100 additional million tons were discovered in 2020.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Global Times|title=China discovers 100 million ton oilfield in northwestern Xinjiang|url=https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1185102.shtml}}</ref><br />
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=== The United States ===<br />
The [[United States of America]] and their imperialist allies understand that Xinjiang is a very important target in order to destabilise China, as destabilising China would allow them to install [[Social class|comprador]] heads of state, which would force open China's markets, much like what we have seen after the [[Opium wars]].<br />
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In 2018, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson of the US Army explained in a speech at the Ron Paul Institute that the USA has a military presence in Afghanistan so that they can keep troops close to China, and that if they wanted to destabilize China, they would go through Xinjiang, harnessing and stoking the separatist sentiment present there.<ref>{{YouTube citation|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91wz5syVNZs&t=1260s|channel=RonPaulLibertyReport|title='What Is The Empire's Strategy?' - Col Lawrence Wilkerson Speech At RPI Media & War Conferenc}}</ref><br />
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In October 2020, then-Secretary of State [[Mike Pompeo]] removed the designation of ETIM as a terrorist group.<ref>{{Web citation|author=State Department|newspaper=Federal Register|title=In the Matter of the Designation of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement Also Known as ETIM as a “Terrorist Organization” Pursuant to Section 212(a)(3)(B)(vi)(II) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as Amended|date=2020-05-11|url=https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/11/05/2020-24620/in-the-matter-of-the-designation-of-the-eastern-turkistan-islamic-movement-also-known-as-etim-as-a}}</ref> It should be noted that for 10 years prior to that decision, the USA had been drone striking people they designated as ETIM fighters in Pakistan and thus begs the question: who was the USA bombing for a decade if ETIM did not exist for more than 10 years, as Pompeo alleged without evidence?<br />
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Mike Pompeo's ferocious slander against China and the people of Xinjiang gave rise to a movement from Uyghurs living in Xinjiang showing what their actual life is like in Xinjiang, and telling Mr. Pompeo to stop spreading slander.<ref>{{YouTube citation|url=https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbOIKUddMBtp0_xEFqn4zey48kkgJq5w|title=Citizens of Xinjiang Speak}}</ref><br />
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=== Boycott of Xinjiang cotton industry ===<br />
After claims of forced labour were advanced without evidence, many international companies (including, for example, H&M), decided not to use Xinjiang cotton in their products. This had the effect of weakening Xinjiang's economy, as producers were not able to sell their stock. In retaliation, Chinese people started boycotting these companies, and H&M closed down most locations in China.<br />
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== Use in propaganda warfare ==<br />
As part of the West's [[New Cold War]] against China, many Western media outlets have accused China of "operating concentration camps" in the Xinjiang region. These allegations have been debunked on non-Western media outlets, as well as the sparse alternative media outlets within the West.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=CGTN|title=China: Xinjiang's reality check debunks rumors and lies|date=2021-02-06|url=https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-02-06/China-Xinjiang-s-reality-check-debunks-rumors-and-lies-XEGmYJFpCw/index.html|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref> This is a clear example of information warfare.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Roderic Day|newspaper=Red Sails|title=The Xinjiang Atrocity Propaganda Blitz|date=2021-03-22|url=https://redsails.org/the-xinjiang-atrocity-propaganda-blitz/|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref><br />
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=== Genocide Allegations ===<br />
The so-called Uyghur genocide is an [[Imperialism|imperialist]] myth propagated by the [[Government of the United States of America|U.S. government]] since 2017. It claims that the [[People's Republic of China|Chinese]] government is committing [[genocide]] against the Uyghur people of the [[Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region|Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region]]. However, the Uyghur population has been steadily increasing and grew by more than 25% between 2010 and 2018 even though the total population of Xinjiang only rose by 13.99%. The Uyghur population is growing faster than Han Chinese (2%) or other ethnic minorities (22.14%). Chinese protections of [[Islam]] have been reputed to be contested by some citizens as suggesting preferential treatment, refuting the claim that the China's policies are anti-Islam<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Business Standard|title=Use of anti-Islam words to defame Muslims banned on Chinese social media|date=2019-09-21|url=https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/use-of-anti-islam-words-to-defame-muslims-banned-on-chinese-social-media-117092100457_1.html}}</ref>. <br />
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China has roughly 54 other ethnic groups which have been relatively unscathed, including other Muslim-majority ethnic groups such as the Hui ethnic group, which is larger than the Uyghur population. In 2019, almost 1,000 diplomats and journalists from many countries as well as the [[United Nations|UN]], [[European Union|EU]], [[Arab League]], [[African Union]], and [[Organisation of Islamic Cooperation]] visited Xinjiang and found no evidence of genocide. In response to the [[Donald Trump|Trump]] administration Secretary of State [[Mike Pompeo]]'s claims of genocide in Xinjiang, people from all walks of life in the region submitted at least 450 written responses and 345 videos condemning the comments as untrue and harmful.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Qiao Collective|title=Xinjiang Responds|url=https://www.qiaocollective.com/xinjiang-responds}}</ref><br />
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==== Adrian Zenz ====<br />
[[Adrian Zenz]] is a fundamentalist Christian and self-proclaimed "independent researcher" connected to the [[Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation]] who does not understand a word of Chinese and bases his research on documents published by the CPC to claim that China is incarcerating 1 million Uyghurs in concentration camps. His research has been shown to be shoddy or completely wrong -- including, for example, a time where he claimed 87% of all new IUD procedures in China (temporary sterilisation tool) were done in Xinjiang, whereas the source he used (official CPC statistics) showed a number of 8.7%, a staggering difference by a factor of 10.<br />
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He had also claimed that Xinjiang is forcibly sterilizing Uyghur women with IUDs. In fact, only 328,475 of China's total 3,774,318 IUDs were in Xinjiang.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=CGTN|title=Fact Check: Lies on Xinjiang-related issues vs. the truth|date=2021-02-06|url=https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-02-06/Fact-Check-Lies-on-Xinjiang-related-issues-vs-the-truth-XEFuvz6b84/index.html}}</ref> In September 2018, he said there were about 1,060,000 Uyghurs in [[Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers|re-education camps]]. It is important to note that this number is based on anonymous interviews consiting of only eight people. In his initial report for the ~1M estimate, [[Radio Free Asia]] is cited four times, and the estimate is only mentioned on (pp. 21-2). Zenz finds this number by roughly extrapolating a “leaked” report by Newsweek Japan (affiliated with Newsweek Inc.). This report came from “Istekral TV”, which frequently platforms the terrorist organization ETIM—the report was never confirmed.<br />
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On May 4, 2022, the BBC posted [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-8df450b3-5d6d-4ed8-bdcc-bd99137eadc3 an article] detailing what they termed the "Xinjiang Police Files", a collection of documents and other resources which purportedly proved accusations of maltreatment against Uyghurs. The documents were allegedly provided by an anonymous source to Adrian Zenz, who then gave them to the BBC. The documents in fact showed many Uyghurs working at the centers and that the centers had some Han Chinese detainees. Many articles used images of guns as a scare tactic without noting that these were images of security drills and that the magazines were empty. The articles associated with the files whitewashed the crimes of genuine ETIM members who had been a party in bombings such as Yusup Ismayil (with text placed over an image of Yusup reading "many have been detained just for ordinary, outward signs of their Islamic faith or for visiting countries with majority Muslim populations", with no citation for this claim)<ref>{{Web citation|author=Yin Sura|newspaper=Mango Press|title=The Xinjiang Police Files are Actually Boring: Zenz's Reality Warping|date=2022-06-12|url=https://archive.is/jeCII#selection-631.0-631.69}}</ref>. The Xinjiang Police Files "key documents" file metadata showed that Adrian Zenz and [[Ilshat Kobor]] (of the [[Uyghur American Association]]) had modified them, with metadata information being removed soon after release. The XPF website also posted demographic data, of which the number of male and female detainees added up to over the stated total in the same data.<br />
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==== Zamira Dawut ====<br />
The [[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]] claimed that Zamira Dawut was sterilized at a vocational center. Her brother, Abduhelil, said she had never been to a vocational center. Zamira said her father was arrested multiple times and then died of unknown causes. In reality, he was never arrested or even investigated and died of heart disease on 2019 October 12.<br />
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==== The New York Times ====<br />
On 2019 November 16, ''[[The New York Times]]'' reported on supposed leaked documents on Xinjiang. State media was quick to assert that these documents were not authentic, calling them "fabricated." Grammatical errors indicated that the documents were fake and likely translated from English to Chinese, with users further noting that the "leaked" docs did not correspond to the formatting standards of Chinese government documents (GB/T9704).<br />
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== Myths ==<br />
[[File:A HRC 41 G 11 and 17-min.png|thumb|UN Human Rights Council resolutions 41/G/11 (blue) criticizing China and 41/G/17 (red) supporting China.]]<br />
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A [[United Nations|UN]] Resolution of global south nations<ref>https://undocs.org/pdf?symbol=en/A/HRC/41/G/17</ref><blockquote>We express our firm opposition to relevant countries’ practice of politicizing human rights issues, by naming and shaming, and publicly exerting pressures on other countries. We commend China’s remarkable achievements in the field of human rights by adhering to the people-centered development philosophy and protecting and promoting human rights through development. We also appreciate China’s contributions to the international human rights cause.</blockquote>[[World Bank]] Investigation of Xinjiang<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=World Bank|title=World Bank Statement on Review of Project in Xinjiang, China|date=2019-11-11|url=https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2019/11/11/world-bank-statement-on-review-of-project-in-xinjiang-china|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref>[[File:A C3 74 SR37-min.png|thumb|UN General Assembly resolution SR.37]]When allegations are made, the World Bank takes them seriously and reviews them thoroughly. In line with standard practice, immediately after receiving a series of serious allegations in August 2019 in connection with the Xinjiang Technical and Vocational Education and Training Project, the Bank launched a fact-finding review, and World Bank senior managers traveled to Xinjiang to gather information directly...<br />
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The team conducted a thorough review of project documents, engaged in discussions with project staff, and visited schools directly financed by the project, as well as their partner schools that were the subject of allegations. The review did not substantiate the allegations.<br />
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[[Organization of Islamic Cooperation]] praises Chinese handling of Xinjiang<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=The Forty- Six Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers, (Session: 50 Years Of Islamic Cooperation: Roadmap For Prosperity And Development)|title=RESOLUTIONS ON MUSLIM COMMUNITIES AND MUSLIM MINORITIES IN THE NON-OIC MEMBER STATES|date=2019-03-1-2|url=https://www.oic-oci.org/docdown/?docID=4447&refID=1250|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref><ref>http://www.inp.net.pk/china-lauds-oics-resolution-on-xinjiang/</ref><blockquote>Welcomes the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat's delegation upon invitation from the People's Republic of China; commends the efforts of the People's Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and looks forward to further cooperation between the OIC and the People's Republic of China.</blockquote>[[Egypt|Egyptian]] media delegates visit Xinjiang<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=The News|title=Egyptian media delegates provide a detailed insight of the situation in Xinjiang|date=2019-02-11|url=https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/430738-egyptian-media-delegates-provide-a-detailed-insight-of-the-situation-in-xinjiang|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref><blockquote>The recently published report also brings forth some interesting facts related to the religious freedom as opposed to the western propaganda. The report provides a strong testimonial by the visiting delegates who clearly state, “the in houses of worship such as the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, modern facilities abound, providing water, electricity and air conditioning. Local clerics told the visitors that their religious activities had been very well protected”. "The conditions here are very good," said Abdelhalim Elwerdany, of Egypt's Al-Gomhuria newspaper. "I could feel that local Muslims fully enjoy religious freedom."</blockquote><br />
In 2019 July, the 41st session of the UN Human Rights Council met and voted on two opposing letters regarding Xinjiang. 50 countries voted in favor of China's policies and 22 voted against.<br />
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On 2019 October 29, at the 74th session of the UN General Assembly, 24 countries and the EU criticized China and 57 countries supported China.<br />
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=== International Visits to Xinjiang ===<br />
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==== Diplomats ====<br />
In 2018 December, diplomats from [[Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (2004–2021)|Afghanistan]], [[Republic of India|India]], [[Republic of Indonesia|Indonesia]], [[Republic of Kazakhstan|Kazakhstan]], [[State of Kuwait|Kuwait]], [[Kyrgyz Republic|Kyrgyzstan]], [[Malaysia]], [[Islamic Republic of Pakistan|Pakistan]], [[Republic of Tajikistan|Tajikistan]], [[Kingdom of Thailand|Thailand]], and [[Republic of Uzbekistan|Uzbekistan]] visited Xinjiang and had full access to vocational training centers. They found no evidence of [[Slavery|forced labor]] or cultural or religious oppression.<br />
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On 2019 January 29, an EU delegation visited. On February 25, about 200 representatives of 50 political parties from almost 30 countries visited Ürümqi. On February 28, diplomats from [[People's Democratic Republic of Algeria|Algeria]], [[Republic of the Union of Myanmar|Burma]], [[Hellenic Republic|Greece]], [[Hungary]], [[Kingdom of Morocco|Morocco]], [[Socialist Republic of Vietnam|Vietnam]], and the Arab League visited. China offered to let the EU visit again in March, but it declined. On March 27, the [[Republic of Albania|Albanian]] and [[Republic of Serbia|Serbian]] ambassadors to China ([[Selim Belortaja]] and [[Milan Bačević]]) visited. On June 15, Under Secretary-General of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Office Vladimir Voronkov visited Xinjiang. Between June 18 and 21, diplomats from Algeria, [[Burkina Faso]], the [[Democratic Republic of the Congo|DR Congo]], [[Lao People's Democratic Republic|Laos]], Malaysia, [[Federal Republic of Nigeria|Nigeria]], Serbia, [[Federal Republic of Somalia|Somalia]], Tajikistan, [[Togolese Republic|Togo]], and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation visited. On August 19, diplomats from [[Kingdom of Bahrain|Bahrain]], [[Kingdom of Cambodia|Cambodia]], [[Lao People's Democratic Republic|Laos]], [[Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal|Nepal]], [[Federal Republic of Nigeria|Nigeria]], the [[Republic of the Philippines|Philippines]], and [[Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka|Sri Lanka]] visited. In September, diplomats from the African Union and 16 African countries, including [[Republic of Burundi|Burundi]], [[Republic of Djibouti|Djibouti]], [[Lesotho]], [[Republic of the Sudan|Sudan]], [[Republic of Uganda|Uganda]], and [[Republic of Zimbabwe|Zimbabwe]] visited. In November, [[Fahri Hamzah]], former Deputy Speaker of the [[Republic of Indonesia|Indonesian]] House of Representatives, visited Xinjiang. On November 11, the [[The World Bank|World Bank]] visited Xinjiang and found no abnormalities in the vocational centers.<br />
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==== Media ====<br />
On 2019 January 6, [[Reuters]] visited Xinjiang. Starting on January 9, 12 media representatives from Afghanistan, [[People's Republic of Bangladesh|Bangladesh]], [[Arab Republic of Egypt|Egypt]], Sri Lanka, and [[Republic of Türkiye|Turkey]] visited. Another media delegation from Egypt visited on January 29. On February 22, 11 journalists from Indonesia and Malaysia visited. On 2019 May 7, [[National Public Radio|NPR]] released its report on a visit to a vocational center. On 2019 June 18, [[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]] visited a vocational center. Starting on July 14, journalists from 24 countries, including [[Republic of India|India]], [[Islamic Republic of Iran|Iran]], [[Italian Republic|Italy]], [[Japan]], Pakistan, [[Russian Federation|Russia]], [[Kingdom of Saudi Arabia|Saudi Arabia]], Thailand, Turkey, the [[United States of America|USA]], and Uzbekistan visited Xinjiang. On August 17, a media group from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Japan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, [[State of Qatar|Qatar]], Russia, Turkey, and the [[United Arab Emirates|UAE]] visited. On August 29, [[ABC News]] visited a vocational center. On October 10, 2021, as Xinjiang was slowly opening for tourism, the [[Associated Press]] traveled to Xinjiang in order to investigate the measures taken by the government. They concluded that the genocidal policies had existed at some point but had been done away with before the opening measures, although the article still critiqued certain things they felt stifled Uyghur culture. A response was posted afterwards by ''The New Atlas'' which bemoaned several of the article's pretensions.<ref>{{YouTube citation|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78s7yP2BdF0|channel=The New Atlas|title=AP News Confirms NO Uyghur Genocide in Xinjiang China}}</ref><br />
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== References ==<br />
<references /><br />
[[Category:Xinjiang Region]]<br />
[[Category:People's Republic of China]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Uyghur_genocide&diff=64540Uyghur genocide2024-03-24T17:58:56Z<p>CriticalResist: Changed redirect target from Uyghur genocide allegations to Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers</p>
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<div>#REDIRECT [[Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Xinjiang_genocide_allegations&diff=64539Xinjiang genocide allegations2024-03-24T17:58:53Z<p>CriticalResist: Changed redirect target from Uyghur genocide allegations to Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers</p>
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<div>#REDIRECT [[Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Economic_and_cultural_developments_in_Xinjiang&diff=64538Economic and cultural developments in Xinjiang2024-03-24T17:57:42Z<p>CriticalResist: redirect to central merged page</p>
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<div>#REDIRECT [[Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Uyghur_genocide_allegations&diff=64537Uyghur genocide allegations2024-03-24T17:57:24Z<p>CriticalResist: redirect to central merged page</p>
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<div>#REDIRECT [[Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Xinjiang_Vocational_Education_and_Training_Centers&diff=64536Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers2024-03-24T17:54:15Z<p>CriticalResist: more typo work, removed old criticism section that wasn't really criticism? The source is good though.</p>
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<div>[[File:Picture_of_Ürümqi.jpg|thumb|350x350px|Picture of Ürümqi, capital of the Xinjiang Province]]<br />
The '''Xinjiang''' '''Vocational Education and Training Centers''' are facilities operated by the [[Xinjiang|Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region]] government in [[People's Republic of China|China]]. These <br />
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facilities were built in response to a series of terrorist attacks by an insurgency of Islamist separatists, referred to as the Xinjiang Conflict.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=CGTN|title=Fighting Terrorism in Xinjiang|date=2019-12-05|url=https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-12-05/Fighting-terrorism-in-Xinjiang-MaNLLDtnfq/index.html|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref> China accuses the [[United States of America|United States]] of having supported these terrorists, similar to how the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] cultivated extremist proxies in [[Operation Cyclone]] which later evolved into Al Qaeda<ref>{{Web citation|author=Catherine Wong|newspaper=South China Morning Post|title=US-China ties: Washington funded terrorists in Xinjiang, Beijing says|date=2021-04-14|url=https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3129545/us-china-ties-washington-funded-terrorists-xinjiang-beijing|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref> (see the terrorism section in the XUAR page).<br />
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While the West carries out its so-called "war on terror" with bombs, China has taken a different approach; by investing in vocational and educational facilities, the Chinese government seeks to offer a more stable and prosperous life to would-be recruits into such extremist organizations. Following a critical assessment by the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) released on August 31, 2022<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights|title=OHCHR Assessment of human rights concerns in the<br />
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China|date=2022-08-31|url=https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref>, the People's Republic of China released a report accusing the assessment of misrepresenting China's laws and policies.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other international organizations in Switzerland|newspaper=Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights|title=Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism in Xinjiang: Truth and Facts|date=2022-09-31|url=https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/ANNEX_A.pdf|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref> The report documented the numerous terror attacks in Xinjiang and coming out of Xinjiang and laid out the policies of the VETCs so as to stress the soundness of their adherence to the principles of human rights protection. <br />
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== Historical and material context of the Autonomous Region ==<br />
[[File:Xinjiang.svg.png|thumb|Location of Xinjiang Province (in red) in the People's Republic of China]]<br />
The region known as Xinjiang (新疆, literally meaning ''New Frontier'') has been an inseparable part of China since the Han Dynasty in 60 BCE, and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was established in 1955 under the People's Republic of China. The vast areas both north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, called the Western Regions in ancient times, were in close contact with the Central Plains as early as the pre-Qin period (c. 2100-221 BC). With the establishment of the unified feudal dynasties Qin (221-206 BC) and Han (206 BC-AD 220), multi-ethnic unification has been the norm in China’s historical development. In 60 BC, the government of the Western Han Dynasty established the Western Regions Frontier Command in Xinjiang, officially making Xinjiang a part of Chinese territory.<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|author=China’s State Council Information Office|title=The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang|url=https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2019/03/18/content_281476567813306.htm}}</ref><br />
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=== The Emergence of the Autonomous Region ===<br />
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==== Ancient History ====<br />
The region in which we currently know as Xinjiang became part of the [[Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE)|Han dynasty]] in 60 BCE. Since then, the region has been populated by Han Chinese since this time.<br />
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==== The Republic of China ====<br />
After [[Nicolas II]] tried to conscript Kazakh and Kyrgyz people into the First World War in 1916, they attacked Russian settlers and then fled into Xinjiang.<ref>{{Citation|author=Vijay Prashad|year=2017|title=Red Star Over the Third World|chapter=Soviet Asia|city=New Delhi|publisher=LeftWord Books}}</ref><br />
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== Demographics ==<br />
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=== The Uyghur People ===<br />
Xinjiang has been a multi-ethnic region since ancient times. Down the ages, ethnic groups of various kinds have lived in the region and communicated with each other. By the end of the 19th century, 13 ethnic groups – the Uygur, Han, Kazak, Mongolian, Hui, Kirgiz, Manchu, Xibe, Tajik, Daur, Uzbek, Tatar, and Russian – had settled in Xinjiang, with the Uyghurs having the largest population.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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The Uyghur ethnic group came into being through a long process of migration and ethnic integration though they are not descendants of the Turks, instead, they are the descendants of the nomadic Dingling (丁零) tribe [[Mongolia]]. In 552 CE a clan of the emerging Dingling tribe established a Turkic Khanate in the Dunggar Basin in northern Xinjiang. In 744, the Uygur Alliance led by Guli Pei Luo, with the cooperation of the army of the [[Tang dynasty (618–907)|Tang Dynasty]], overthrew the Turkic Khanate and established the Mobei Uyghur Khanate. Historically as a way to resist oppression and slavery by the Turks, the Ouigour people (ancestors to the current-day Uyghur) united with some of the Tiele tribes to form the Ouigour tribal alliance.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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After the Uyghur Khanate suffered a major defeat in 840, some of them moved inland to live among the Han people, while the rest of the surviving Uyghurs were divided into three sub-groups. One of which moved to the Turpan Basin and the modern Jimsar region, where they founded the Gaochang Uygur Kingdom. Another moved to the Hexi Corridor, where they merged with local ethnic groups to become what was later known as the Yugu people. The third sub-group moved to the west of Pamir, scattered in areas from Central Asia to Kashgar, and joined the Karluk and Yagma peoples in founding the Karahan Kingdom. There they merged with the Han people in the Turpan Basin and the Yanqi, Qiuci, Yutian, Shule, and other peoples in the Tarim Basin to form the main body of the modern Uygur group.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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== Rise of religious terrorism ==<br />
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==== The historical multireligious nature of Xinjiang ====<br />
In primitive society, the residents of Xinjiang once followed a primitive religion from which Shamanism evolved. Later, a succession of religions popular in the East and the West were introduced into Xinjiang via the Silk Road, the first of which was Zoroastrianism.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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Around the first century BC, Buddhism was introduced into Xinjiang and gradually became the major religion, coexisting with many other religions. From the 4th to the 10th century, Buddhism reached its peak, while in the same period Zoroastrianism proliferated throughout Xinjiang, particularly in the Turpan area. Around the fifth century, Taoism was introduced into Xinjiang, becoming prevalent mainly in Turpan and Hami. It spread to most parts of Xinjiang and experienced a revival during the Qing Dynasty.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
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In the sixth century, Manichaeism and Nestorianism were introduced into Xinjiang. From the 10th to the 14th century, Nestorianism flourished as the Uyghur and some other peoples converted to it in many parts of Xinjiang. In the late ninth and early 10th century, Islam was introduced into southern Xinjiang, changing the religious profile of Xinjiang again. After the Karahan Khanate accepted Islam, in the mid-10th century it launched a religious war against the Buddhist Kingdom of Yutian, and the war lasted for more than 40 years. In the early 11th century, the Karahan Khanate conquered Yutian and imposed Islam in that region. Thereafter, Islam dominated southern Xinjiang while Buddhism dominated northern Xinjiang. In the mid-14th century, the rulers of the Eastern Chagatai Khanate spread Islam to the northern edge of the Tarim Basin, the Turpan Basin and Hami by war and compulsion. By the early 16th century many religions coexisted in Xinjiang, with Islam being the predominant religion. Beginning in the 18th century, Protestantism, Catholicism, and the Eastern Orthodox Church were introduced into Xinjiang. Islam has ever since been the principal religion in Xinjiang, coexisting with a number of other religions.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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==== Modern Religious Extremism and the East Turkestan Movement ====<br />
At the turn of the 20th century, separatists and religious extremists both in and outside China, inherited the so-called theories of “Pan-Turkism” and “Pan-Islamism” which were created by former colonialists, spread the word that Uyghurs were the only “masters” of Xinjiang, that the ethnic cultures of Xinjiang were not of Chinese culture, and that Islam was the only religion practiced by ethnic groups of Xinjiang. They incited all ethnic groups speaking Turki and believing in Islam to join together in creating the theocratic state of so-called “East Turkistan”. They denied the history that China was jointly built by all its ethnic groups, and clamored for “opposition to all ethnic groups other than Turks” and for the “annihilation of pagans”.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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From the early 20th century onto the late 1940s, these ideas were pushed forward by “East Turkistan” forces who wanted to create their own state in Xinjiang. In 1915, the separatist Maswud returned to Ili, opened a school and publicly preached separatism to the students. On November 12, 1933, Mohammad Imin founded the so-called “East Turkistan Islamic Republic”, but the farce ended in less than three months due to strong opposition from the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
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On November 12, 1944, another group of separatists led by Elihan Torae founded the so-called “Republic of East Turkistan”, which soon collapsed a year later. Afterwards, a series of separatist organizations and individuals continued their subversive and separatist activities under the banner of “East Turkistan” in a vain attempt to establish their own state.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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The “East Turkistan” forces, however, have not resigned themselves to defeat. With the support of international anti-China forces, the “East Turkistan” forces have resorted to all means, both fair or foul, to organize, plan and carry out acts of separatism and sabotage. In the early 1950s the separatists instigated many riots in Xinjiang, calling on Uyghurs to “unite under the moon-and-star banner to create a republic of Islam”. In the 1960s there were the riots in Ili and Tacheng on the China-Russia border, the riot of the “East Turkistan People’s Revolutionary Party”, and the armed rebellion of the Gang of Ahongnof in southern Xinjiang. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, religious extremism had made further inroads into Xinjiang. It soon blended with terrorism to stir up social unrest in the region, seriously undermining local stability and security.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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Since the 1990s, especially after the September 11 attacks in the US, the “East Turkistan” forces inside and outside China have stepped up their collaboration as terrorism and extremism spread around the globe, trying desperately to establish “East Turkistan” through struggle. In the name of ethnicity and religion, they deceitfully used people’s ethnic identity and religious belief to instigate religious fanaticism, spread religious extremism, and incite the common people to join in violent and terrorist activities. They brainwashed people with these beliefs, abetting them to “die for their belief in order to enter heaven”. Some of the most susceptible followers, no longer possessed of any self-control, became extremists and terrorists who heartlessly slaughtered innocent people.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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For a long time separatists have tied extremism to religion, to religious believers, and to society as a whole. They tell people not to obey anyone but Allah and incite them to resist government management. They abuse those who do not follow the path of extremism as pagans, traitors and scum, urging their followers to verbally assault, reject, and isolate non-believers, Party members and officials, and patriotic religious individuals. They deny and reject all forms of secular culture, preaching a life without TV, radio and newspaper, forbidding people to weep at funerals or laugh at weddings, imposing bans on singing and dancing, and forcing women to wear heavily-veiled black long gowns. They over-generalize the “Halal” concept, stamping food, medicine, cosmetics, clothing, etc. with the Halal symbol. They turn a blind eye to the diverse and splendid cultures of Xinjiang created by all its ethnic groups, trying to sever the ties between the Chinese culture and the ethnic cultures of Xinjiang.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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Nowadays, these groups generally operate under the name of ETIM, or [[East Turkestan Islamic Movement]] or the East Turkistan Party, which is affiliated with ETIM.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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In 1990, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement organized its first terrorist attack in Baren Township. The ETIM was designated as a terrorist organization by the [[United Nations|UN]] in 2002 and by the Chinese government in 2003. In July 2009, Islamic extremists caused riots in Ürümqi, killing almost 200 people and injuring over 1,000. In May 2014 in Ürümqi, they drove cars into a crowded marketplace and threw explosives at buildings, killing 39 and injuring 94. In July 2014, Imam [[Juma Tahir]] was assassinated after calling for peace and stability in Xinjiang.<br />
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Similar to [[Operation Cyclone]], where the [[United States of America|USA]] supported Islamic fundamentalism to destabilize the [[Democratic Republic of Afghanistan|socialist government]] of [[Afghanistan]], the US has supported Islamic fundamentalist separatists in the Xinjiang region of China. During the 1990s, the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] transported Uyghur terrorists from Xinjiang to Afghanistan to be trained in guerilla warfare by the [[Mujahideen]], following a plan of action developed by [[Bernard Lewis]], a specialist at Oxford University, who proposed the creation of an “Arc of Crisis” made up of Muslims manipulated to extend US influence and overthrow Communist (Soviet) rule in Middle Eastern nations. Graham Fuller, former Deputy Director of the CIA's National Council of Intelligence<ref>{{Citation|author=Paul L. Williams|year=2015|title=Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance Between the Vatican, the CIA, and the Mafia|page=271|publisher=Prometheus Books}}</ref>, said in 1999:<blockquote>The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them [radicalized Muslims] against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia</blockquote>And FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds said in 2010:<blockquote>…without the Cold War excuse our foreign policymakers had a real hard time justifying our joint operations and terrorism schemes in the resource-rich ex Soviet states with these same groups, so they made sure they kept their policies unwritten and unspoken, and considering their grip on the mainstream media, largely unreported. Now what would your response be if I were to say on the record, and, if required, under oath: ‘''Between 1996 and 2002, we, the United States, planned, financed, and helped execute every major terrorist incident by Chechen rebels (and the Mujahideen) against Russia. Between 1996 and 2002, we, the United States, planned, financed, and helped execute every single uprising and terror related scheme in Xinjiang (aka East Turkistan and Uyghurstan)''<ref>{{Web citation|author=Sibel Edmonds|newspaper=Boiling Frogs Post|title=Friends-Enemies-Both? Our Foreign Policy Riddle|date=2010-10-03|url=https://sibel104.rssing.com/chan-18066673/article1.html|archive-url=https://archive.is/cbBsA}}</ref></blockquote>China's response to this upsurge of terrorism and separatism has been to [[Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers|construct re-education camps]] ([[Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers]]) which have been decried by the Western press in an effort to accuse China of running "concentration camps" and "death camps". Western countries have signed a letter criticizing China, while a counter-letter was signed by countries in the Muslim World as well as progressive states such as [[Republic of Cuba|Cuba]] and [[Bolivia]] (under the socialist government of [[Evo Morales]], prior to the US-backed coup).<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Qiao Collective|title=Xinjiang: A Report and Resource Compilation|date=2021-09-21|url=https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/xinjiang|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220620004209/https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/xinjiang}}</ref> <ref>{{Web citation|author=Shane Quinn|newspaper=Orinoco Tribune|title=Beijing’s Decades-Long Policies in Xinjiang, CIA Interference, Funding of Separatist and Terrorist Groups|date=2020-08-26|url=https://orinocotribune.com/beijings-decades-long-policies-in-xinjiang-cia-interference-funding-of-separatist-and-terrorist-groups/}}</ref><br />
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==== Examples of terrorist attacks ====<br />
Terrorist groups under the general term of East Turkestan Party have committed more than 30 acts between 1990 and 2016, which include killing ordinary people, assassinating religious leaders, endangering public safety (acts that did not have human victims or were foiled before they could be carried out), attacking government organs and planning riots.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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Other notable examples include, but are not limited to:On February 5, 1992, while the whole of China was celebrating the Spring Festival, a terrorist group planted bombs on a No. 52 and a No. 30 bus in Urumqi, blowing up the 2 buses, killing 3 people and injuring 23 others.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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* On February 5, 1992 during the Spring Festival celebrations, a terrorist group planted bombs on a No. 52 and a No. 30 bus in Urumqi, blowing up the 2 buses, killing 3 people and injuring 23 others.<br />
* On March 22, 1996, two masked terrorists broke into the house of Akemusidike Aji, vice president of the Islamic Association of Xinhe County, Aksu Prefecture, and assistant imam of a mosque, and shot him dead.<br />
* On July 5, 2009, the “East Turkistan” forces inside and outside China engineered a riot in Urumqi which shocked the whole world. Thousands of terrorists attacked civilians, government organs, public security and police officers, residential houses, stores and public transportation facilities, causing 197 deaths and injuries to over 1,700, smashing and burning down 331 stores and 1,325 vehicles, and damaging many public facilities.<br />
* On July 30, 2011, two terrorists hijacked a truck at the junction of a food street in Kashgar City, stabbed the driver to death, drove the truck into the crowd, and then attacked the public with their knives. In this incident, 8 were killed and 27 injured. The next day, knife-wielding terrorists randomly attacked pedestrians on Xiangxie Street, Renmin West Road, killing 6 and injuring 15.<br />
* On February 28, 2012, nine knife-wielding terrorists attacked civilians on Xingfu Road, Yecheng County, Kashgar Prefecture, resulting in 15 deaths and 20 injuries.<br />
* On March 1, 2014, eight knife-wielding Xinjiang terrorists attacked passengers at the Kunming Railway Station Square and the ticket lobby, leaving 31 dead and 141 injured.<br />
* On May 22, 2014, five terrorists drove two SUVs through the fence of the morning fair of North Park Road of Saybagh District, Urumqi, into the crowd, and then detonated a bomb, claiming the life of 39 and leaving 94 injured.<br />
* On September 18, 2015, terrorists attacked a coal mine in Baicheng County, Aksu Prefecture, causing 16 deaths and 18 injuries<br />
* On December 28, 2016, four terrorists drove into the courtyard of Moyu County government, Hotan Prefecture, detonated a homemade explosive device, and attacked government staff, leaving 2 dead and 3 injured.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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== International Reactions ==<br />
International reaction to the economic and cultural developments in the Xinjiang region have been mostly represented through the eyes of the imperial core. Their claims keep growing in scale and the goal is simply to destabilise the CPC, and open up China for their domestic markets under their own terms. It should also be noted Xinjiang is a very important geographical area for the [[Belt and Road Initiative]] and contains tons of oil in the Tarim Basin. 100 additional million tons were discovered in 2020.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Global Times|title=China discovers 100 million ton oilfield in northwestern Xinjiang|url=https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1185102.shtml}}</ref><br />
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=== The United States ===<br />
The [[United States of America]] and their imperialist allies understand that Xinjiang is a very important target in order to destabilise China, as destabilising China would allow them to install [[Social class|comprador]] heads of state, which would force open China's markets, much like what we have seen after the [[Opium wars]].<br />
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In 2018, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson of the US Army explained in a speech at the Ron Paul Institute that the USA has a military presence in Afghanistan so that they can keep troops close to China, and that if they wanted to destabilize China, they would go through Xinjiang, harnessing and stoking the separatist sentiment present there.<ref>{{YouTube citation|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91wz5syVNZs&t=1260s|channel=RonPaulLibertyReport|title='What Is The Empire's Strategy?' - Col Lawrence Wilkerson Speech At RPI Media & War Conferenc}}</ref><br />
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In October 2020, then-Secretary of State [[Mike Pompeo]] removed the designation of ETIM as a terrorist group.<ref>{{Web citation|author=State Department|newspaper=Federal Register|title=In the Matter of the Designation of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement Also Known as ETIM as a “Terrorist Organization” Pursuant to Section 212(a)(3)(B)(vi)(II) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as Amended|date=2020-05-11|url=https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/11/05/2020-24620/in-the-matter-of-the-designation-of-the-eastern-turkistan-islamic-movement-also-known-as-etim-as-a}}</ref> It should be noted that for 10 years prior to that decision, the USA had been drone striking people they designated as ETIM fighters in Pakistan and thus begs the question: who was the USA bombing for a decade if ETIM did not exist for more than 10 years, as Pompeo alleged without evidence?<br />
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Mike Pompeo's ferocious slander against China and the people of Xinjiang gave rise to a movement from Uyghurs living in Xinjiang showing what their actual life is like in Xinjiang, and telling Mr. Pompeo to stop spreading slander.<ref>{{YouTube citation|url=https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbOIKUddMBtp0_xEFqn4zey48kkgJq5w|title=Citizens of Xinjiang Speak}}</ref><br />
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=== Boycott of Xinjiang cotton industry ===<br />
After claims of forced labour were advanced without evidence, many international companies (including, for example, H&M), decided not to use Xinjiang cotton in their products. This had the effect of weakening Xinjiang's economy, as producers were not able to sell their stock. In retaliation, Chinese people started boycotting these companies, and H&M closed down most locations in China.<br />
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== Use in propaganda warfare ==<br />
As part of the West's [[New Cold War]] against China, many Western media outlets have accused China of "operating concentration camps" in the Xinjiang region. These allegations have been debunked on non-Western media outlets, as well as the sparse alternative media outlets within the West.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=CGTN|title=China: Xinjiang's reality check debunks rumors and lies|date=2021-02-06|url=https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-02-06/China-Xinjiang-s-reality-check-debunks-rumors-and-lies-XEGmYJFpCw/index.html|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref> This is a clear example of information warfare.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Roderic Day|newspaper=Red Sails|title=The Xinjiang Atrocity Propaganda Blitz|date=2021-03-22|url=https://redsails.org/the-xinjiang-atrocity-propaganda-blitz/|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref><br />
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=== Genocide Allegations ===<br />
The so-called Uyghur genocide is an [[Imperialism|imperialist]] myth propagated by the [[Government of the United States of America|U.S. government]] since 2017. It claims that the [[People's Republic of China|Chinese]] government is committing [[genocide]] against the Uyghur people of the [[Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region|Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region]]. However, the Uyghur population has been steadily increasing and grew by more than 25% between 2010 and 2018 even though the total population of Xinjiang only rose by 13.99%. The Uyghur population is growing faster than Han Chinese (2%) or other ethnic minorities (22.14%). Chinese protections of [[Islam]] have been reputed to be contested by some citizens as suggesting preferential treatment, refuting the claim that the China's policies are anti-Islam<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Business Standard|title=Use of anti-Islam words to defame Muslims banned on Chinese social media|date=2019-09-21|url=https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/use-of-anti-islam-words-to-defame-muslims-banned-on-chinese-social-media-117092100457_1.html}}</ref>. <br />
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China has roughly 54 other ethnic groups which have been relatively unscathed, including other Muslim-majority ethnic groups such as the Hui ethnic group, which is larger than the Uyghur population. In 2019, almost 1,000 diplomats and journalists from many countries as well as the [[United Nations|UN]], [[European Union|EU]], [[Arab League]], [[African Union]], and [[Organisation of Islamic Cooperation]] visited Xinjiang and found no evidence of genocide. In response to the [[Donald Trump|Trump]] administration Secretary of State [[Mike Pompeo]]'s claims of genocide in Xinjiang, people from all walks of life in the region submitted at least 450 written responses and 345 videos condemning the comments as untrue and harmful.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Qiao Collective|title=Xinjiang Responds|url=https://www.qiaocollective.com/xinjiang-responds}}</ref><br />
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==== Adrian Zenz ====<br />
[[Adrian Zenz]] is a fundamentalist Christian and self-proclaimed "independent researcher" connected to the [[Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation]] who does not understand a word of Chinese and bases his research on documents published by the CPC to claim that China is incarcerating 1 million Uyghurs in concentration camps. His research has been shown to be shoddy or completely wrong -- including, for example, a time where he claimed 87% of all new IUD procedures in China (temporary sterilisation tool) were done in Xinjiang, whereas the source he used (official CPC statistics) showed a number of 8.7%, a staggering difference by a factor of 10.<br />
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He had also claimed that Xinjiang is forcibly sterilizing Uyghur women with IUDs. In fact, only 328,475 of China's total 3,774,318 IUDs were in Xinjiang.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=CGTN|title=Fact Check: Lies on Xinjiang-related issues vs. the truth|date=2021-02-06|url=https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-02-06/Fact-Check-Lies-on-Xinjiang-related-issues-vs-the-truth-XEFuvz6b84/index.html}}</ref> In September 2018, he said there were about 1,060,000 Uyghurs in [[Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers|re-education camps]]. It is important to note that this number is based on anonymous interviews consiting of only eight people. In his initial report for the ~1M estimate, [[Radio Free Asia]] is cited four times, and the estimate is only mentioned on (pp. 21-2). Zenz finds this number by roughly extrapolating a “leaked” report by Newsweek Japan (affiliated with Newsweek Inc.). This report came from “Istekral TV”, which frequently platforms the terrorist organization ETIM—the report was never confirmed.<br />
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On May 4, 2022, the BBC posted [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-8df450b3-5d6d-4ed8-bdcc-bd99137eadc3 an article] detailing what they termed the "Xinjiang Police Files", a collection of documents and other resources which purportedly proved accusations of maltreatment against Uyghurs. The documents were allegedly provided by an anonymous source to Adrian Zenz, who then gave them to the BBC. The documents in fact showed many Uyghurs working at the centers and that the centers had some Han Chinese detainees. Many articles used images of guns as a scare tactic without noting that these were images of security drills and that the magazines were empty. The articles associated with the files whitewashed the crimes of genuine ETIM members who had been a party in bombings such as Yusup Ismayil (with text placed over an image of Yusup reading "many have been detained just for ordinary, outward signs of their Islamic faith or for visiting countries with majority Muslim populations", with no citation for this claim)<ref>{{Web citation|author=Yin Sura|newspaper=Mango Press|title=The Xinjiang Police Files are Actually Boring: Zenz's Reality Warping|date=2022-06-12|url=https://archive.is/jeCII#selection-631.0-631.69}}</ref>. The Xinjiang Police Files "key documents" file metadata showed that Adrian Zenz and [[Ilshat Kobor]] (of the [[Uyghur American Association]]) had modified them, with metadata information being removed soon after release. The XPF website also posted demographic data, of which the number of male and female detainees added up to over the stated total in the same data.<br />
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==== Zamira Dawut ====<br />
The [[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]] claimed that Zamira Dawut was sterilized at a vocational center. Her brother, Abduhelil, said she had never been to a vocational center. Zamira said her father was arrested multiple times and then died of unknown causes. In reality, he was never arrested or even investigated and died of heart disease on 2019 October 12.<br />
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==== The New York Times ====<br />
On 2019 November 16, ''[[The New York Times]]'' reported on supposed leaked documents on Xinjiang. State media was quick to assert that these documents were not authentic, calling them "fabricated." Grammatical errors indicated that the documents were fake and likely translated from English to Chinese, with users further noting that the "leaked" docs did not correspond to the formatting standards of Chinese government documents (GB/T9704).<br />
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== Myths ==<br />
[[File:A HRC 41 G 11 and 17-min.png|thumb|UN Human Rights Council resolutions 41/G/11 (blue) criticizing China and 41/G/17 (red) supporting China.]]<br />
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A [[United Nations|UN]] Resolution of global south nations<ref>https://undocs.org/pdf?symbol=en/A/HRC/41/G/17</ref><blockquote>We express our firm opposition to relevant countries’ practice of politicizing human rights issues, by naming and shaming, and publicly exerting pressures on other countries. We commend China’s remarkable achievements in the field of human rights by adhering to the people-centered development philosophy and protecting and promoting human rights through development. We also appreciate China’s contributions to the international human rights cause.</blockquote>[[World Bank]] Investigation of Xinjiang<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=World Bank|title=World Bank Statement on Review of Project in Xinjiang, China|date=2019-11-11|url=https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2019/11/11/world-bank-statement-on-review-of-project-in-xinjiang-china|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref>[[File:A C3 74 SR37-min.png|thumb|UN General Assembly resolution SR.37]]When allegations are made, the World Bank takes them seriously and reviews them thoroughly. In line with standard practice, immediately after receiving a series of serious allegations in August 2019 in connection with the Xinjiang Technical and Vocational Education and Training Project, the Bank launched a fact-finding review, and World Bank senior managers traveled to Xinjiang to gather information directly...<br />
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The team conducted a thorough review of project documents, engaged in discussions with project staff, and visited schools directly financed by the project, as well as their partner schools that were the subject of allegations. The review did not substantiate the allegations.<br />
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[[Organization of Islamic Cooperation]] praises Chinese handling of Xinjiang<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=The Forty- Six Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers, (Session: 50 Years Of Islamic Cooperation: Roadmap For Prosperity And Development)|title=RESOLUTIONS ON MUSLIM COMMUNITIES AND MUSLIM MINORITIES IN THE NON-OIC MEMBER STATES|date=2019-03-1-2|url=https://www.oic-oci.org/docdown/?docID=4447&refID=1250|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref><ref>http://www.inp.net.pk/china-lauds-oics-resolution-on-xinjiang/</ref><blockquote>Welcomes the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat's delegation upon invitation from the People's Republic of China; commends the efforts of the People's Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and looks forward to further cooperation between the OIC and the People's Republic of China.</blockquote>[[Egypt|Egyptian]] media delegates visit Xinjiang<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=The News|title=Egyptian media delegates provide a detailed insight of the situation in Xinjiang|date=2019-02-11|url=https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/430738-egyptian-media-delegates-provide-a-detailed-insight-of-the-situation-in-xinjiang|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref><blockquote>The recently published report also brings forth some interesting facts related to the religious freedom as opposed to the western propaganda. The report provides a strong testimonial by the visiting delegates who clearly state, “the in houses of worship such as the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, modern facilities abound, providing water, electricity and air conditioning. Local clerics told the visitors that their religious activities had been very well protected”. "The conditions here are very good," said Abdelhalim Elwerdany, of Egypt's Al-Gomhuria newspaper. "I could feel that local Muslims fully enjoy religious freedom."</blockquote><br />
In 2019 July, the 41st session of the UN Human Rights Council met and voted on two opposing letters regarding Xinjiang. 50 countries voted in favor of China's policies and 22 voted against.<br />
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On 2019 October 29, at the 74th session of the UN General Assembly, 24 countries and the EU criticized China and 57 countries supported China.<br />
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=== International Visits to Xinjiang ===<br />
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==== Diplomats ====<br />
In 2018 December, diplomats from [[Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (2004–2021)|Afghanistan]], [[Republic of India|India]], [[Republic of Indonesia|Indonesia]], [[Republic of Kazakhstan|Kazakhstan]], [[State of Kuwait|Kuwait]], [[Kyrgyz Republic|Kyrgyzstan]], [[Malaysia]], [[Islamic Republic of Pakistan|Pakistan]], [[Republic of Tajikistan|Tajikistan]], [[Kingdom of Thailand|Thailand]], and [[Republic of Uzbekistan|Uzbekistan]] visited Xinjiang and had full access to vocational training centers. They found no evidence of [[Slavery|forced labor]] or cultural or religious oppression.<br />
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On 2019 January 29, an EU delegation visited. On February 25, about 200 representatives of 50 political parties from almost 30 countries visited Ürümqi. On February 28, diplomats from [[People's Democratic Republic of Algeria|Algeria]], [[Republic of the Union of Myanmar|Burma]], [[Hellenic Republic|Greece]], [[Hungary]], [[Kingdom of Morocco|Morocco]], [[Socialist Republic of Vietnam|Vietnam]], and the Arab League visited. China offered to let the EU visit again in March, but it declined. On March 27, the [[Republic of Albania|Albanian]] and [[Republic of Serbia|Serbian]] ambassadors to China ([[Selim Belortaja]] and [[Milan Bačević]]) visited. On June 15, Under Secretary-General of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Office Vladimir Voronkov visited Xinjiang. Between June 18 and 21, diplomats from Algeria, [[Burkina Faso]], the [[Democratic Republic of the Congo|DR Congo]], [[Lao People's Democratic Republic|Laos]], Malaysia, [[Federal Republic of Nigeria|Nigeria]], Serbia, [[Federal Republic of Somalia|Somalia]], Tajikistan, [[Togolese Republic|Togo]], and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation visited. On August 19, diplomats from [[Kingdom of Bahrain|Bahrain]], [[Kingdom of Cambodia|Cambodia]], [[Lao People's Democratic Republic|Laos]], [[Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal|Nepal]], [[Federal Republic of Nigeria|Nigeria]], the [[Republic of the Philippines|Philippines]], and [[Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka|Sri Lanka]] visited. In September, diplomats from the African Union and 16 African countries, including [[Republic of Burundi|Burundi]], [[Republic of Djibouti|Djibouti]], [[Lesotho]], [[Republic of the Sudan|Sudan]], [[Republic of Uganda|Uganda]], and [[Republic of Zimbabwe|Zimbabwe]] visited. In November, [[Fahri Hamzah]], former Deputy Speaker of the [[Republic of Indonesia|Indonesian]] House of Representatives, visited Xinjiang. On November 11, the [[The World Bank|World Bank]] visited Xinjiang and found no abnormalities in the vocational centers.<br />
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==== Media ====<br />
On 2019 January 6, [[Reuters]] visited Xinjiang. Starting on January 9, 12 media representatives from Afghanistan, [[People's Republic of Bangladesh|Bangladesh]], [[Arab Republic of Egypt|Egypt]], Sri Lanka, and [[Republic of Türkiye|Turkey]] visited. Another media delegation from Egypt visited on January 29. On February 22, 11 journalists from Indonesia and Malaysia visited. On 2019 May 7, [[National Public Radio|NPR]] released its report on a visit to a vocational center. On 2019 June 18, [[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]] visited a vocational center. Starting on July 14, journalists from 24 countries, including [[Republic of India|India]], [[Islamic Republic of Iran|Iran]], [[Italian Republic|Italy]], [[Japan]], Pakistan, [[Russian Federation|Russia]], [[Kingdom of Saudi Arabia|Saudi Arabia]], Thailand, Turkey, the [[United States of America|USA]], and Uzbekistan visited Xinjiang. On August 17, a media group from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Japan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, [[State of Qatar|Qatar]], Russia, Turkey, and the [[United Arab Emirates|UAE]] visited. On August 29, [[ABC News]] visited a vocational center. On October 10, 2021, as Xinjiang was slowly opening for tourism, the [[Associated Press]] traveled to Xinjiang in order to investigate the measures taken by the government. They concluded that the genocidal policies had existed at some point but had been done away with before the opening measures, although the article still critiqued certain things they felt stifled Uyghur culture. A response was posted afterwards by ''The New Atlas'' which bemoaned several of the article's pretensions.<ref>{{YouTube citation|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78s7yP2BdF0|channel=The New Atlas|title=AP News Confirms NO Uyghur Genocide in Xinjiang China}}</ref><br />
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== References ==<br />
<references /><br />
[[Category:Xinjiang Region]]<br />
[[Category:People's Republic of China]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Xinjiang_Vocational_Education_and_Training_Centers&diff=64535Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers2024-03-24T17:46:53Z<p>CriticalResist: correct sentence to flow in article</p>
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<div>The '''Xinjiang''' '''Vocational Education and Training Centers''' are facilities operated by the [[Xinjiang|Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region]] government in [[People's Republic of China|China]]. These facilities were built in response to a series of terrorist attacks by an insurgency of Islamist separatists, referred to as the Xinjiang Conflict.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=CGTN|title=Fighting Terrorism in Xinjiang|date=2019-12-05|url=https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-12-05/Fighting-terrorism-in-Xinjiang-MaNLLDtnfq/index.html|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref> China accuses the [[United States of America|United States]] of having supported these terrorists, similar to how the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] cultivated extremist proxies in [[Operation Cyclone]] which later evolved into Al Qaeda<ref>{{Web citation|author=Catherine Wong|newspaper=South China Morning Post|title=US-China ties: Washington funded terrorists in Xinjiang, Beijing says|date=2021-04-14|url=https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3129545/us-china-ties-washington-funded-terrorists-xinjiang-beijing|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref> (see the terrorism section in the XUAR page).<br />
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While the West carries out its so-called "war on terror" with bombs, China has taken a different approach; by investing in vocational and educational facilities, the Chinese government seeks to offer a more stable and prosperous life to would-be recruits into such extremist organizations. Following a critical assessment by the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) released on August 31, 2022<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights|title=OHCHR Assessment of human rights concerns in the<br />
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China|date=2022-08-31|url=https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref>, the People's Republic of China released a report accusing the assessment of misrepresenting China's laws and policies.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other international organizations in Switzerland|newspaper=Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights|title=Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism in Xinjiang: Truth and Facts|date=2022-09-31|url=https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/ANNEX_A.pdf|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref> The report documented the numerous terror attacks in Xinjiang and coming out of Xinjiang and laid out the policies of the VETCs so as to stress the soundness of their adherence to the principles of human rights protection. <br />
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== Historical and material context of the Autonomous Region ==<br />
[[File:Xinjiang.svg.png|thumb]]<br />
The region known as Xinjiang (新疆, literally meaning ''New Frontier'') has been an inseparable part of China since the Han Dynasty in 60 BCE, and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was established in 1955 under the People's Republic of China. The vast areas both north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, called the Western Regions in ancient times, were in close contact with the Central Plains as early as the pre-Qin period (c. 2100-221 BC). With the establishment of the unified feudal dynasties Qin (221-206 BC) and Han (206 BC-AD 220), multi-ethnic unification has been the norm in China’s historical development. In 60 BC, the government of the Western Han Dynasty established the Western Regions Frontier Command in Xinjiang, officially making Xinjiang a part of Chinese territory<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|author=China’s State Council Information Office|title=The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang|url=https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2019/03/18/content_281476567813306.htm}}</ref><br />
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=== The Emergence of the Autonomous Region ===<br />
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==== Ancient History ====<br />
The region in which we currently know as Xinjiang became part of the [[Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE)|Han dynasty]] in 60 BCE. Since then, the region has been populated by Han Chinese since this time.<br />
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==== The Republic of China ====<br />
After the [[Nicholas II|Tsar]] tried to conscript Kazakh and Kyrgyz people into the First World War in 1916, they attacked Russian settlers and then fled into Xinjiang.<ref>{{Citation|author=Vijay Prashad|year=2017|title=Red Star Over the Third World|chapter=Soviet Asia|city=New Delhi|publisher=LeftWord Books}}</ref><br />
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== Demographics ==<br />
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=== The Uyghur People ===<br />
Xinjiang has been a multi-ethnic region since ancient times. Down the ages, ethnic groups of various kinds have lived in the region and communicated with each other. By the end of the 19th century, 13 ethnic groups – the Uygur, Han, Kazak, Mongolian, Hui, Kirgiz, Manchu, Xibe, Tajik, Daur, Uzbek, Tatar, and Russian – had settled in Xinjiang, with the Uyghurs having the largest population.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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The Uyghur ethnic group came into being through a long process of migration and ethnic integration though they are not descendants of the Turks, instead, they are the descendants of the nomadic Dingling (丁零) tribe [[Mongolia]]. In 552 CE a clan of the emerging Dingling tribe established a Turkic Khanate in the Dunggar Basin in northern Xinjiang. In 744, the Uygur Alliance led by Guli Pei Luo, with the cooperation of the army of the [[Tang dynasty (618–907)|Tang Dynasty]], overthrew the Turkic Khanate and established the Mobei Uyghur Khanate. Historically as a way to resist oppression and slavery by the Turks, the Ouigour people (ancestors to the current-day Uyghur) united with some of the Tiele tribes to form the Ouigour tribal alliance.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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After the Uyghur Khanate suffered a major defeat in 840, some of them moved inland to live among the Han people, while the rest of the surviving Uyghurs were divided into three sub-groups. One of which moved to the Turpan Basin and the modern Jimsar region, where they founded the Gaochang Uygur Kingdom. Another moved to the Hexi Corridor, where they merged with local ethnic groups to become what was later known as the Yugu people. The third sub-group moved to the west of Pamir, scattered in areas from Central Asia to Kashgar, and joined the Karluk and Yagma peoples in founding the Karahan Kingdom. There they merged with the Han people in the Turpan Basin and the Yanqi, Qiuci, Yutian, Shule, and other peoples in the Tarim Basin to form the main body of the modern Uygur group.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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== Rise of religious terrorism ==<br />
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==== The historical multireligious nature of Xinjiang ====<br />
In primitive society, the residents of Xinjiang once followed a primitive religion from which Shamanism evolved. Later, a succession of religions popular in the East and the West were introduced into Xinjiang via the Silk Road, the first of which was Zoroastrianism.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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Around the first century BC, Buddhism was introduced into Xinjiang and gradually became the major religion, coexisting with many other religions. From the 4th to the 10th century, Buddhism reached its peak, while in the same period Zoroastrianism proliferated throughout Xinjiang, particularly in the Turpan area. Around the fifth century, Taoism was introduced into Xinjiang, becoming prevalent mainly in Turpan and Hami. It spread to most parts of Xinjiang and experienced a revival during the Qing Dynasty.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
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In the sixth century, Manichaeism and Nestorianism were introduced into Xinjiang. From the 10th to the 14th century, Nestorianism flourished as the Uyghur and some other peoples converted to it in many parts of Xinjiang. In the late ninth and early 10th century, Islam was introduced into southern Xinjiang, changing the religious profile of Xinjiang again. After the Karahan Khanate accepted Islam, in the mid-10th century it launched a religious war against the Buddhist Kingdom of Yutian, and the war lasted for more than 40 years. In the early 11th century, the Karahan Khanate conquered Yutian and imposed Islam in that region. Thereafter, Islam dominated southern Xinjiang while Buddhism dominated northern Xinjiang. In the mid-14th century, the rulers of the Eastern Chagatai Khanate spread Islam to the northern edge of the Tarim Basin, the Turpan Basin and Hami by war and compulsion. By the early 16th century many religions coexisted in Xinjiang, with Islam being the predominant religion. Beginning in the 18th century, Protestantism, Catholicism, and the Eastern Orthodox Church were introduced into Xinjiang. Islam has ever since been the principal religion in Xinjiang, coexisting with a number of other religions.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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==== Modern Religious Extremism and the East Turkestan Movement ====<br />
At the turn of the 20th century, separatists and religious extremists both in and outside China, inherited the so-called theories of “Pan-Turkism” and “Pan-Islamism” which were created by former colonialists, spread the word that Uyghurs were the only “masters” of Xinjiang, that the ethnic cultures of Xinjiang were not of Chinese culture, and that Islam was the only religion practiced by ethnic groups of Xinjiang. They incited all ethnic groups speaking Turki and believing in Islam to join together in creating the theocratic state of so-called “East Turkistan”. They denied the history that China was jointly built by all its ethnic groups, and clamored for “opposition to all ethnic groups other than Turks” and for the “annihilation of pagans”.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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From the early 20th century onto the late 1940s, these ideas were pushed forward by “East Turkistan” forces who wanted to create their own state in Xinjiang. In 1915, the separatist Maswud returned to Ili, opened a school and publicly preached separatism to the students. On November 12, 1933, Mohammad Imin founded the so-called “East Turkistan Islamic Republic”, but the farce ended in less than three months due to strong opposition from the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
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On November 12, 1944, another group of separatists led by Elihan Torae founded the so-called “Republic of East Turkistan”, which soon collapsed a year later. Afterwards, a series of separatist organizations and individuals continued their subversive and separatist activities under the banner of “East Turkistan” in a vain attempt to establish their own state.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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The “East Turkistan” forces, however, have not resigned themselves to defeat. With the support of international anti-China forces, the “East Turkistan” forces have resorted to all means, both fair or foul, to organize, plan and carry out acts of separatism and sabotage. In the early 1950s the separatists instigated many riots in Xinjiang, calling on Uyghurs to “unite under the moon-and-star banner to create a republic of Islam”. In the 1960s there were the riots in Ili and Tacheng on the China-Russia border, the riot of the “East Turkistan People’s Revolutionary Party”, and the armed rebellion of the Gang of Ahongnof in southern Xinjiang. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, religious extremism had made further inroads into Xinjiang. It soon blended with terrorism to stir up social unrest in the region, seriously undermining local stability and security.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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Since the 1990s, especially after the September 11 attacks in the US, the “East Turkistan” forces inside and outside China have stepped up their collaboration as terrorism and extremism spread around the globe, trying desperately to establish “East Turkistan” through struggle. In the name of ethnicity and religion, they deceitfully used people’s ethnic identity and religious belief to instigate religious fanaticism, spread religious extremism, and incite the common people to join in violent and terrorist activities. They brainwashed people with these beliefs, abetting them to “die for their belief in order to enter heaven”. Some of the most susceptible followers, no longer possessed of any self-control, became extremists and terrorists who heartlessly slaughtered innocent people.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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For a long time separatists have tied extremism to religion, to religious believers, and to society as a whole. They tell people not to obey anyone but Allah and incite them to resist government management. They abuse those who do not follow the path of extremism as pagans, traitors and scum, urging their followers to verbally assault, reject, and isolate non-believers, Party members and officials, and patriotic religious individuals. They deny and reject all forms of secular culture, preaching a life without TV, radio and newspaper, forbidding people to weep at funerals or laugh at weddings, imposing bans on singing and dancing, and forcing women to wear heavily-veiled black long gowns. They over-generalize the “Halal” concept, stamping food, medicine, cosmetics, clothing, etc. with the Halal symbol. They turn a blind eye to the diverse and splendid cultures of Xinjiang created by all its ethnic groups, trying to sever the ties between the Chinese culture and the ethnic cultures of Xinjiang.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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Nowadays, these groups generally operate under the name of ETIM, or [[East Turkestan Islamist Movement]] or the East Turkistan Party, which is affiliated with ETIM.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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In 1990, the [[East Turkestan Islamic Movement]] organized its first terrorist attack in Baren Township. The ETIM was designated as a terrorist organization by the [[United Nations|UN]] in 2002 and by the Chinese government in 2003. In July 2009, Islamic extremists caused riots in Ürümqi, killing almost 200 people and injuring over 1,000. In May 2014 in Ürümqi, they drove cars into a crowded marketplace and threw explosives at buildings, killing 39 and injuring 94. In July 2014, Imam [[Juma Tahir]] was assassinated after calling for peace and stability in Xinjiang.<br />
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Similar to [[Operation Cyclone]], where the [[United States of America|USA]] supported Islamic fundamentalism to destabilize the [[Democratic Republic of Afghanistan|socialist government]] of [[Afghanistan]], the US has supported Islamic fundamentalist separatists in the Xinjiang region of China. During the 1990s, the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] transported Uyghur terrorists from Xinjiang to Afghanistan to be trained in guerilla warfare by the [[Mujahideen]], following a plan of action developed by [[Bernard Lewis]], a specialist at Oxford University, who proposed the creation of an “Arc of Crisis” made up of Muslims manipulated to extend US influence and overthrow Communist (Soviet) rule in Middle Eastern nations. Graham Fuller, former Deputy Director of the CIA's National Council of Intelligence<ref>{{Citation|author=Paul L. Williams|year=2015|title=Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance Between the Vatican, the CIA, and the Mafia|page=271|publisher=Prometheus Books}}</ref>, said in 1999:<blockquote>The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them [radicalized Muslims] against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia</blockquote>And FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds said in 2010:<blockquote>…without the Cold War excuse our foreign policymakers had a real hard time justifying our joint operations and terrorism schemes in the resource-rich ex Soviet states with these same groups, so they made sure they kept their policies unwritten and unspoken, and considering their grip on the mainstream media, largely unreported. Now what would your response be if I were to say on the record, and, if required, under oath: ‘''Between 1996 and 2002, we, the United States, planned, financed, and helped execute every major terrorist incident by Chechen rebels (and the Mujahideen) against Russia. Between 1996 and 2002, we, the United States, planned, financed, and helped execute every single uprising and terror related scheme in Xinjiang (aka East Turkistan and Uyghurstan)''<ref>{{Web citation|author=Sibel Edmonds|newspaper=Boiling Frogs Post|title=Friends-Enemies-Both? Our Foreign Policy Riddle|date=2010-10-03|url=https://sibel104.rssing.com/chan-18066673/article1.html|archive-url=https://archive.is/cbBsA}}</ref></blockquote>China's response to this upsurge of terrorism and separatism has been to [[Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers|construct re-education camps]] ([[Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers]]) which have been decried by the Western press in an effort to accuse China of running "concentration camps" and "death camps". Western countries have signed a letter criticizing China, while a counter-letter was signed by countries in the Muslim World as well as progressive states such as [[Republic of Cuba|Cuba]] and [[Bolivia]] (under the socialist government of [[Evo Morales]], prior to the US-backed coup).<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Qiao Collective|title=Xinjiang: A Report and Resource Compilation|date=2021-09-21|url=https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/xinjiang|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220620004209/https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/xinjiang}}</ref> <ref>{{Web citation|author=Shane Quinn|newspaper=Orinoco Tribune|title=Beijing’s Decades-Long Policies in Xinjiang, CIA Interference, Funding of Separatist and Terrorist Groups|date=2020-08-26|url=https://orinocotribune.com/beijings-decades-long-policies-in-xinjiang-cia-interference-funding-of-separatist-and-terrorist-groups/}}</ref><br />
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==== Examples of terrorist attacks ====<br />
Terrorist groups under the general term of East Turkestan Party have committed more than 30 acts between 1990 and 2016, which include killing ordinary people, assassinating religious leaders, endangering public safety (acts that did not have human victims or were foiled before they could be carried out), attacking government organs and planning riots.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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Other notable examples include, but are not limited to:On February 5, 1992, while the whole of China was celebrating the Spring Festival, a terrorist group planted bombs on a No. 52 and a No. 30 bus in Urumqi, blowing up the 2 buses, killing 3 people and injuring 23 others.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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* On February 5, 1992 during the Spring Festival celebrations, a terrorist group planted bombs on a No. 52 and a No. 30 bus in Urumqi, blowing up the 2 buses, killing 3 people and injuring 23 others.<br />
* On March 22, 1996, two masked terrorists broke into the house of Akemusidike Aji, vice president of the Islamic Association of Xinhe County, Aksu Prefecture, and assistant imam of a mosque, and shot him dead.<br />
* On July 5, 2009, the “East Turkistan” forces inside and outside China engineered a riot in Urumqi which shocked the whole world. Thousands of terrorists attacked civilians, government organs, public security and police officers, residential houses, stores and public transportation facilities, causing 197 deaths and injuries to over 1,700, smashing and burning down 331 stores and 1,325 vehicles, and damaging many public facilities.<br />
* On July 30, 2011, two terrorists hijacked a truck at the junction of a food street in Kashgar City, stabbed the driver to death, drove the truck into the crowd, and then attacked the public with their knives. In this incident, 8 were killed and 27 injured. The next day, knife-wielding terrorists randomly attacked pedestrians on Xiangxie Street, Renmin West Road, killing 6 and injuring 15.<br />
* On February 28, 2012, nine knife-wielding terrorists attacked civilians on Xingfu Road, Yecheng County, Kashgar Prefecture, resulting in 15 deaths and 20 injuries.<br />
* On March 1, 2014, eight knife-wielding Xinjiang terrorists attacked passengers at the Kunming Railway Station Square and the ticket lobby, leaving 31 dead and 141 injured.<br />
* On May 22, 2014, five terrorists drove two SUVs through the fence of the morning fair of North Park Road of Saybagh District, Urumqi, into the crowd, and then detonated a bomb, claiming the life of 39 and leaving 94 injured.<br />
* On September 18, 2015, terrorists attacked a coal mine in Baicheng County, Aksu Prefecture, causing 16 deaths and 18 injuries<br />
* On December 28, 2016, four terrorists drove into the courtyard of Moyu County government, Hotan Prefecture, detonated a homemade explosive device, and attacked government staff, leaving 2 dead and 3 injured.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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== International Reactions ==<br />
International reaction to the economic and cultural developments in the Xinjiang region have been mostly represented through the eyes of the imperial core. Their claims keep growing in scale and the goal is simply to destabilise the CPC, and open up China for their domestic markets under their own terms. It should also be noted Xinjiang is a very important geographical area for the [[Belt and Road Initiative]] and contains tons of oil in the Tarim Basin. 100 additional million tons were discovered in 2020.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Global Times|title=China discovers 100 million ton oilfield in northwestern Xinjiang|url=https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1185102.shtml}}</ref><br />
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=== The United States ===<br />
The [[United States of America]] and their imperialist allies understand that Xinjiang is a very important target in order to destabilise China, as destabilising China would allow them to install [[Social class|comprador]] heads of state, which would force open China's markets, much like what we have seen after the [[Opium wars]].<br />
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In 2018, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson of the US Army explained in a speech at the Ron Paul Institute that the USA has a military presence in Afghanistan so that they can keep troops close to China, and that if they wanted to destabilise China, they would go through Xinjiang, harnessing and stoking the separatist sentiment present there.<ref>{{YouTube citation|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91wz5syVNZs&t=1260s|channel=RonPaulLibertyReport|title='What Is The Empire's Strategy?' - Col Lawrence Wilkerson Speech At RPI Media & War Conferenc}}</ref><br />
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In October 2020, then-Secretary of State [[Mike Pompeo]] removed the designation of ETIM as a terrorist group.<ref>{{Web citation|author=State Department|newspaper=Federal Register|title=In the Matter of the Designation of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement Also Known as ETIM as a “Terrorist Organization” Pursuant to Section 212(a)(3)(B)(vi)(II) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as Amended|date=2020-05-11|url=https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/11/05/2020-24620/in-the-matter-of-the-designation-of-the-eastern-turkistan-islamic-movement-also-known-as-etim-as-a}}</ref> It should be noted that for 10 years prior to that decision, the USA had been drone striking people they designated as ETIM fighters in Pakistan and thus begs the question: who was the USA bombing for a decade if ETIM did not exist for more than 10 years, as Pompeo alleged without evidence?<br />
<br />
Mike Pompeo's ferocious slander against China and the people of Xinjiang gave rise to a movement from Uyghurs living in Xinjiang showing what their actual life is like in Xinjiang, and telling Mr. Pompeo to stop spreading slander.<ref>{{YouTube citation|url=https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkbOIKUddMBtp0_xEFqn4zey48kkgJq5w|title=Citizens of Xinjiang Speak}}</ref><br />
<br />
=== Boycott of Xinjiang cotton industry ===<br />
After claims of forced labour were advanced without evidence, many international companies (including, for example, H&M), decided not to use Xinjiang cotton in their products. This had the effect of weakening Xinjiang's economy, as producers were not able to sell their stock. In retaliation, Chinese people started boycotting these companies, and H&M closed down most locations in China.<br />
<br />
== Use in propaganda warfare ==<br />
As part of the West's [[New Cold War]] against China, many Western media outlets have accused China of "operating concentration camps" in the Xinjiang region. These allegations have been debunked on non-Western media outlets, as well as the sparse alternative media outlets within the West.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=CGTN|title=China: Xinjiang's reality check debunks rumors and lies|date=2021-02-06|url=https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-02-06/China-Xinjiang-s-reality-check-debunks-rumors-and-lies-XEGmYJFpCw/index.html|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref> This is a clear example of information warfare.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Roderic Day|newspaper=Red Sails|title=The Xinjiang Atrocity Propaganda Blitz|date=2021-03-22|url=https://redsails.org/the-xinjiang-atrocity-propaganda-blitz/|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref><br />
<br />
=== Genocide Allegations ===<br />
The so-called Uyghur genocide is an [[Imperialism|imperialist]] myth propagated by the [[Government of the United States of America|U.S. government]] since 2017. It claims that the [[People's Republic of China|Chinese]] government is committing [[genocide]] against the Uyghur people of the [[Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region|Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region]]. However, the Uyghur population has been steadily increasing and grew by more than 25% between 2010 and 2018 even though the total population of Xinjiang only rose by 13.99%. The Uyghur population is growing faster than Han Chinese (2%) or other ethnic minorities (22.14%). Chinese protections of [[Islam]] have been reputed to be contested by some citizens as suggesting preferential treatment, refuting the claim that the China's policies are anti-Islam<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Business Standard|title=Use of anti-Islam words to defame Muslims banned on Chinese social media|date=2019-09-21|url=https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/use-of-anti-islam-words-to-defame-muslims-banned-on-chinese-social-media-117092100457_1.html}}</ref>. <br />
<br />
China has roughly 54 other ethnic groups which have been relatively unscathed, including other Muslim-majority ethnic groups such as the Hui ethnic group, which is larger than the Uyghur population. In 2019, almost 1,000 diplomats and journalists from many countries as well as the [[United Nations|UN]], [[European Union|EU]], [[Arab League]], [[African Union]], and [[Organisation of Islamic Cooperation]] visited Xinjiang and found no evidence of genocide. In response to the [[Donald Trump|Trump]] administration Secretary of State [[Mike Pompeo]]'s claims of genocide in Xinjiang, people from all walks of life in the region submitted at least 450 written responses and 345 videos condemning the comments as untrue and harmful.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Qiao Collective|title=Xinjiang Responds|url=https://www.qiaocollective.com/xinjiang-responds}}</ref><br />
<br />
==== Adrian Zenz ====<br />
[[Adrian Zenz]] is a fundamentalist Christian and self-proclaimed "independent researcher" connected to the [[Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation]] who does not understand a word of Chinese and bases his research on documents published by the CPC to claim that China is incarcerating 1 million Uyghurs in concentration camps. His research has been shown to be shoddy or completely wrong -- including, for example, a time where he claimed 87% of all new IUD procedures in China (temporary sterilisation tool) were done in Xinjiang, whereas the source he used (official CPC statistics) showed a number of 8.7%, a staggering difference by a factor of 10.<br />
<br />
He had also claimed that Xinjiang is forcibly sterilizing Uyghur women with IUDs. In fact, only 328,475 of China's total 3,774,318 IUDs were in Xinjiang.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=CGTN|title=Fact Check: Lies on Xinjiang-related issues vs. the truth|date=2021-02-06|url=https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-02-06/Fact-Check-Lies-on-Xinjiang-related-issues-vs-the-truth-XEFuvz6b84/index.html}}</ref> In September 2018, he said there were about 1,060,000 Uyghurs in [[Xinjiang Vocational Education and Training Centers|re-education camps]]. It is important to note that this number is based on anonymous interviews consiting of only eight people. In his initial report for the ~1M estimate, [[Radio Free Asia]] is cited four times, and the estimate is only mentioned on (pp. 21-2). Zenz finds this number by roughly extrapolating a “leaked” report by Newsweek Japan (affiliated with Newsweek Inc.). This report came from “Istekral TV”, which frequently platforms the terrorist organization ETIM—the report was never confirmed.<br />
<br />
On May 4, 2022, the BBC posted [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-8df450b3-5d6d-4ed8-bdcc-bd99137eadc3 an article] detailing what they termed the "Xinjiang Police Files", a collection of documents and other resources which purportedly proved accusations of maltreatment against Uyghurs. The documents were allegedly provided by an anonymous source to Adrian Zenz, who then gave them to the BBC. The documents in fact showed many Uyghurs working at the centers and that the centers had some Han Chinese detainees. Many articles used images of guns as a scare tactic without noting that these were images of security drills and that the magazines were empty. The articles associated with the files whitewashed the crimes of genuine ETIM members who had been a party in bombings such as Yusup Ismayil (with text placed over an image of Yusup reading "many have been detained just for ordinary, outward signs of their Islamic faith or for visiting countries with majority Muslim populations", with no citation for this claim)<ref>{{Web citation|author=Yin Sura|newspaper=Mango Press|title=The Xinjiang Police Files are Actually Boring: Zenz's Reality Warping|date=2022-06-12|url=https://archive.is/jeCII#selection-631.0-631.69}}</ref>. The Xinjiang Police Files "key documents" file metadata showed that Adrian Zenz and [[Ilshat Kobor]] (of the [[Uyghur American Association]]) had modified them, with metadata information being removed soon after release. The XPF website also posted demographic data, of which the number of male and female detainees added up to over the stated total in the same data.<br />
<br />
==== Zamira Dawut ====<br />
[[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]] claimed that Zamira Dawut was sterilized at a vocational center. Her brother, Abduhelil, said she had never been to a vocational center. Zamira said her father was arrested multiple times and then died of unknown causes. In reality, he was never arrested or even investigated and died of heart disease on 2019 October 12.<br />
<br />
==== ''The New York Times'' ====<br />
On 2019 November 16, ''[[The New York Times]]'' reported on supposed leaked documents on Xinjiang. State media was quick to assert that these documents were not authentic, calling them "fabricated." Grammatical errors indicated that the documents were fake and likely translated from English to Chinese, with users further noting that the "leaked" docs did not correspond to the formatting standards of Chinese government documents (GB/T9704).<br />
<br />
== Myths ==<br />
<br />
A [[United Nations|UN]] Resolution of global south nations<ref>https://undocs.org/pdf?symbol=en/A/HRC/41/G/17</ref><blockquote>We express our firm opposition to relevant countries’ practice of politicizing human rights issues, by naming and shaming, and publicly exerting pressures on other countries. We commend China’s remarkable achievements in the field of human rights by adhering to the people-centered development philosophy and protecting and promoting human rights through development. We also appreciate China’s contributions to the international human rights cause.</blockquote>[[World Bank]] Investigation of Xinjiang<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=World Bank|title=World Bank Statement on Review of Project in Xinjiang, China|date=2019-11-11|url=https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2019/11/11/world-bank-statement-on-review-of-project-in-xinjiang-china|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref><blockquote>When allegations are made, the World Bank takes them seriously and reviews them thoroughly. In line with standard practice, immediately after receiving a series of serious allegations in August 2019 in connection with the Xinjiang Technical and Vocational Education and Training Project, the Bank launched a fact-finding review, and World Bank senior managers traveled to Xinjiang to gather information directly...<br />
<br />
The team conducted a thorough review of project documents, engaged in discussions with project staff, and visited schools directly financed by the project, as well as their partner schools that were the subject of allegations. The review did not substantiate the allegations.</blockquote>[[Organization of Islamic Cooperation]] praises Chinese handling of Xinjiang<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=The Forty- Six Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers, (Session: 50 Years Of Islamic Cooperation: Roadmap For Prosperity And Development)|title=RESOLUTIONS ON MUSLIM COMMUNITIES AND MUSLIM MINORITIES IN THE NON-OIC MEMBER STATES|date=2019-03-1-2|url=https://www.oic-oci.org/docdown/?docID=4447&refID=1250|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref><ref>http://www.inp.net.pk/china-lauds-oics-resolution-on-xinjiang/</ref><blockquote>Welcomes the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat's delegation upon invitation from the People's Republic of China; commends the efforts of the People's Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and looks forward to further cooperation between the OIC and the People's Republic of China.</blockquote>[[Egypt|Egyptian]] media delegates visit Xinjiang<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=The News|title=Egyptian media delegates provide a detailed insight of the situation in Xinjiang|date=2019-02-11|url=https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/430738-egyptian-media-delegates-provide-a-detailed-insight-of-the-situation-in-xinjiang|retrieved=2023-07-23}}</ref><blockquote>The recently published report also brings forth some interesting facts related to the religious freedom as opposed to the western propaganda. The report provides a strong testimonial by the visiting delegates who clearly state, “the in houses of worship such as the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, modern facilities abound, providing water, electricity and air conditioning. Local clerics told the visitors that their religious activities had been very well protected”. "The conditions here are very good," said Abdelhalim Elwerdany, of Egypt's Al-Gomhuria newspaper. "I could feel that local Muslims fully enjoy religious freedom."</blockquote><br />
[[File:A HRC 41 G 11 and 17-min.png|thumb|UN Human Rights Council resolutions 41/G/11 (blue) criticizing China and 41/G/17 (red) supporting China.]]<br />
In 2019 July, the 41st session of the UN Human Rights Council met and voted on two opposing letters regarding Xinjiang. 50 countries voted in favor of China's policies and 22 voted against.<br />
[[File:A C3 74 SR37-min.png|thumb|UN General Assembly resolution SR.37]]<br />
On 2019 October 29, at the 74th session of the UN General Assembly, 24 countries and the EU criticized China and 57 countries supported China<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
=== International Visits to Xinjiang ===<br />
<br />
==== Diplomats ====<br />
In 2018 December, diplomats from [[Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (2004–2021)|Afghanistan]], [[Republic of India|India]], [[Republic of Indonesia|Indonesia]], [[Republic of Kazakhstan|Kazakhstan]], [[State of Kuwait|Kuwait]], [[Kyrgyz Republic|Kyrgyzstan]], [[Malaysia]], [[Islamic Republic of Pakistan|Pakistan]], [[Republic of Tajikistan|Tajikistan]], [[Kingdom of Thailand|Thailand]], and [[Republic of Uzbekistan|Uzbekistan]] visited Xinjiang and had full access to vocational training centers. They found no evidence of [[Slavery|forced labor]] or cultural or religious oppression.<br />
<br />
On 2019 January 29, an EU delegation visited. On February 25, about 200 representatives of 50 political parties from almost 30 countries visited Ürümqi. On February 28, diplomats from [[People's Democratic Republic of Algeria|Algeria]], [[Republic of the Union of Myanmar|Burma]], [[Hellenic Republic|Greece]], [[Hungary]], [[Kingdom of Morocco|Morocco]], [[Socialist Republic of Vietnam|Vietnam]], and the Arab League visited. China offered to let the EU visit again in March, but it declined. On March 27, the [[Republic of Albania|Albanian]] and [[Republic of Serbia|Serbian]] ambassadors to China ([[Selim Belortaja]] and [[Milan Bačević]]) visited. On June 15, Under Secretary-General of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Office Vladimir Voronkov visited Xinjiang. Between June 18 and 21, diplomats from Algeria, [[Burkina Faso]], the [[Democratic Republic of the Congo|DR Congo]], [[Lao People's Democratic Republic|Laos]], Malaysia, [[Federal Republic of Nigeria|Nigeria]], Serbia, [[Federal Republic of Somalia|Somalia]], Tajikistan, [[Togolese Republic|Togo]], and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation visited. On August 19, diplomats from [[Kingdom of Bahrain|Bahrain]], [[Kingdom of Cambodia|Cambodia]], [[Lao People's Democratic Republic|Laos]], [[Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal|Nepal]], [[Federal Republic of Nigeria|Nigeria]], the [[Republic of the Philippines|Philippines]], and [[Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka|Sri Lanka]] visited. In September, diplomats from the African Union and 16 African countries, including [[Republic of Burundi|Burundi]], [[Republic of Djibouti|Djibouti]], [[Lesotho]], [[Republic of the Sudan|Sudan]], [[Republic of Uganda|Uganda]], and [[Republic of Zimbabwe|Zimbabwe]] visited. In November, [[Fahri Hamzah]], former Deputy Speaker of the [[Republic of Indonesia|Indonesian]] House of Representatives, visited Xinjiang. On November 11, the [[The World Bank|World Bank]] visited Xinjiang and found no abnormalities in the vocational centers.<br />
<br />
==== Media ====<br />
On 2019 January 6, [[Reuters]] visited Xinjiang. Starting on January 9, 12 media representatives from Afghanistan, [[People's Republic of Bangladesh|Bangladesh]], [[Arab Republic of Egypt|Egypt]], Sri Lanka, and [[Republic of Türkiye|Turkey]] visited. Another media delegation from Egypt visited on January 29. On February 22, 11 journalists from Indonesia and Malaysia visited. On 2019 May 7, [[National Public Radio|NPR]] released its report on a visit to a vocational center. On 2019 June 18, [[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]] visited a vocational center. Starting on July 14, journalists from 24 countries, including [[Republic of India|India]], [[Islamic Republic of Iran|Iran]], [[Italian Republic|Italy]], [[Japan]], Pakistan, [[Russian Federation|Russia]], [[Kingdom of Saudi Arabia|Saudi Arabia]], Thailand, Turkey, the [[United States of America|USA]], and Uzbekistan visited Xinjiang. On August 17, a media group from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Japan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, [[State of Qatar|Qatar]], Russia, Turkey, and the [[United Arab Emirates|UAE]] visited. On August 29, [[ABC News]] visited a vocational center. On October 10, 2021, as Xinjiang was slowly opening for tourism, the [[Associated Press]] traveled to Xinjiang in order to investigate the measures taken by the government. They concluded that the genocidal policies had existed at some point but had been done away with before the opening measures, although the article still critiqued certain things they felt stifled Uyghur culture. A response was posted afterwards by ''The New Atlas'' which bemoaned several of the article's pretensions.<ref>{{YouTube citation|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78s7yP2BdF0|channel=The New Atlas|title=AP News Confirms NO Uyghur Genocide in Xinjiang China}}</ref><br />
<br />
== Criticism ==<br />
Although information about the education and training centers are distorted by Western propaganda, the legal basis behind these centers are too broad and can be exploited to follow the political interests of Chinese leaders contrary to the interests of the people in the region. The "Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Regulation on De-extremification", adopted in 2017 considers that extremism includes "rejecting or refusing public goods and services such as radio and television", "wearing, or compelling others to wear, burqas with face coverings, or to bear symbols of extremification", without clearly denoting what these symbols are, and "spreading religious fanaticism through irregular beards or name selection".<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=China Law Translate|title=Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Regulation on De-extremification|date=2017-03-30|url=https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/xinjiang-uyghur-autonomous-region-regulation-on-de-extremification/}}</ref><br />
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== References ==<br />
<references /><br />
[[Category:Xinjiang Region]]<br />
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content: none;<br />
}<br />
/* Add parentheses around nested lists */<br />
.hlist dd dd:first-child:before, .hlist dd dt:first-child:before, .hlist dd li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist dt dd:first-child:before, .hlist dt dt:first-child:before, .hlist dt li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist li dd:first-child:before, .hlist li dt:first-child:before, .hlist li li:first-child:before {<br />
content: " (";<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd dd:last-child:after, .hlist dd dt:last-child:after, .hlist dd li:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist dt dd:last-child:after, .hlist dt dt:last-child:after, .hlist dt li:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist li dd:last-child:after, .hlist li dt:last-child:after, .hlist li li:last-child:after {<br />
content: ")";<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
}<br />
/* Put ordinals in front of ordered list items */<br />
.hlist ol {<br />
counter-reset: listitem;<br />
}<br />
.hlist ol > li {<br />
counter-increment: listitem;<br />
}<br />
.hlist ol > li:before {<br />
content: " " counter(listitem) "\a0";<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd ol > li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist dt ol > li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist li ol > li:first-child:before {<br />
content: " (" counter(listitem) "\a0";<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*CREATE ACCOUNT AND USER LOGIN CSS*/<br />
<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-container {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 3em auto;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-container #userloginForm {<br />
float: unset;<br />
margin: 0;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-vform {<br />
margin: 2.5em auto 0;<br />
width: 22rem;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-container {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 3em auto;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-container #userloginForm {<br />
float: unset;<br />
margin: 0;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-vform {<br />
margin: 2.5em auto 0;<br />
width: 22rem;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-createacct-benefits-container {<br />
display: none<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*Special:Book CSS'ing (added by Collection)*/<br />
#collection-download-button{<br />
float:left;<br />
}<br />
#downloadButton{<br />
cursor:pointer;<br />
}<br />
.collection-maintenance-box{<br />
display:none;<br />
}</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&diff=64410MediaWiki:Common.css2024-03-20T16:08:05Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div>/* CSS placed here will be applied to all skins */<br />
/*************************/<br />
<br />
#editpage-copywarn {<br />
line-height: 1em;<br />
margin-top: .75em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.test01 {<br />
text-align: center;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-header{ /* gap between "contribute" and "news" got removed somehow, this adds it back*/<br />
column-gap:1em;<br />
align-items:stretch!important; /*makes all flex items have the same height*/<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Wiki theming */<br />
#siteSub { /* Size of text "From ProleWiki, the proletarian encyclopedia" below the title of the article. */<br />
display: block;<br />
font-size: 85% !important; /* Attaching !important because a new update did some shit it wasn't supposed to do */<br />
} <br />
.mw-body {<br />
box-shadow: 0 0.25em 0.6em -0.15em rgba(0,0,0,0.15);<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-ProleWiki_Main_page .firstHeading, <br />
.page-ProleWiki_Main_page #siteSub { <br />
display: none; <br />
}<br />
<br />
/*add icons to quick links in main page*/<br />
.mainpage-library>a:before{<br />
content: "";<br />
width: 1.1rem;<br />
height: 1.1rem;<br />
background-size: 100%;<br />
background-position: center;<br />
opacity: var(--opacity-icon-base);<br />
filter: var(--filter-invert);<br />
margin-right: 0.2em;<br />
background-repeat: no-repeat;<br />
background-image: linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url(/load.php?modules=oojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-citation&image=book&format=original&skin=citizen);<br />
display: inline-block;<br />
}<br />
<br />
<br />
/*Site notice configuration*/<br />
/* Removing messy CSS code from DismissableSiteNotice extension */<br />
.mw-dismissable-notice-close {<br />
display:none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mw-dismissable-notice-body {<br />
margin:auto !important;<br />
text-align:left;<br />
}<br />
/*Adding the box and items CSS*/<br />
.sitenotice-box {<br />
display: flex;<br />
flex-direction: column;<br />
padding: 20px;<br />
width: 80%;<br />
background: #efefef;<br />
border-radius: 12px;<br />
margin: auto;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mw-body-content sub,<br />
.mw-body-content sup,<br />
.reference {<br />
font-size: 80%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-Library_Theses_on_Feuerbach .mw-body-content h3<br />
{ text-align: center; }<br />
<br />
/* Announcement style */<br />
<br />
.announcement {<br />
border:1px solid #aaaaaa;<br />
background-color:#f9f9f9;<br />
padding:5px;<br />
font-size: 95%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Standard Navigationsleisten, aka box hiding thingy<br />
from .de. Documentation at [[Wikipedia:NavFrame]]. */<br />
div.NavFrame {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
padding: 4px;<br />
border: 1px solid #a2a9b1;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
border-collapse: collapse;<br />
font-size: 95%;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame + div.NavFrame {<br />
border-top-style: none;<br />
border-top-style: hidden;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavHead {<br />
line-height: 1.6em;<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
background-color: #ccf;<br />
position: relative;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame p,<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavContent,<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavContent p {<br />
font-size: 100%;<br />
}<br />
a.NavToggle {<br />
position: absolute;<br />
top: 0;<br />
/* @noflip */<br />
right: 3px;<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
font-size: 90%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Default style for navigation boxes */<br />
.navbox { /* Navbox container style */<br />
box-sizing: border-box;<br />
border: 1px solid #a2a9b1;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
clear: both;<br />
font-size: 88%;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
padding: 1px;<br />
margin: 1em auto 0; /* Prevent preceding content from clinging to navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox .navbox {<br />
margin-top: 0; /* No top margin for nested navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox + .navbox {<br />
margin-top: -1px; /* Single pixel border between adjacent navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-inner,<br />
.navbox-subgroup {<br />
width: 100%;<br />
}<br />
.navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-title,<br />
.navbox-abovebelow {<br />
padding: 0.25em 1em; /* Title, group and above/below styles */<br />
line-height: 1.5em;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
}<br />
th.navbox-group { /* Group style */<br />
white-space: nowrap;<br />
/* @noflip */<br />
text-align: right;<br />
}<br />
.navbox,<br />
.navbox-subgroup {<br />
background-color: #fdfdfd; /* Background color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-list {<br />
line-height: 1.5em;<br />
border-color: #fdfdfd; /* Must match background color */<br />
}<br />
/* cell spacing for navbox cells */<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-abovebelow,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-group,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-image,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-list { /* Borders above 2nd, 3rd, etc. rows */<br />
border-top: 2px solid #fdfdfd; /* Must match background color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox th,<br />
.navbox-title {<br />
background-color: #ccccff; /* Level 1 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-abovebelow,<br />
th.navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-title {<br />
background-color: #ddddff; /* Level 2 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-abovebelow {<br />
background-color: #e6e6ff; /* Level 3 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-even {<br />
background-color: #f7f7f7; /* Even row striping */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-odd {<br />
background-color: transparent; /* Odd row striping */<br />
}<br />
.navbox .hlist td dl,<br />
.navbox .hlist td ol,<br />
.navbox .hlist td ul,<br />
.navbox td.hlist dl,<br />
.navbox td.hlist ol,<br />
.navbox td.hlist ul {<br />
padding: 0.125em 0; /* Adjust hlist padding in navboxes */<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Reduce page jumps by hiding collapsed/dismissed content */<br />
.client-js .mw-special-Watchlist #watchlist-message,<br />
.client-js .NavFrame.collapsed .NavContent,<br />
.client-js .collapsible:not( .mw-made-collapsible).collapsed > tbody > tr:not(:first-child) {<br />
display: none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Style for horizontal lists (separator following item).<br />
@source mediawiki.org/wiki/Snippets/Horizontal_lists<br />
@revision 8 (2016-05-21)<br />
@author [[User:Edokter]]<br />
*/<br />
.hlist dl,<br />
.hlist ol,<br />
.hlist ul {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
padding: 0;<br />
}<br />
/* Display list items inline */<br />
.hlist dd,<br />
.hlist dt,<br />
.hlist li {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
display: inline;<br />
}<br />
/* Display nested lists inline */<br />
.hlist.inline,<br />
.hlist.inline dl,<br />
.hlist.inline ol,<br />
.hlist.inline ul,<br />
.hlist dl dl, .hlist dl ol, .hlist dl ul,<br />
.hlist ol dl, .hlist ol ol, .hlist ol ul,<br />
.hlist ul dl, .hlist ul ol, .hlist ul ul {<br />
display: inline;<br />
}<br />
/* Hide empty list items */<br />
.hlist .mw-empty-li {<br />
display: none;<br />
}<br />
/* Generate interpuncts */<br />
.hlist dt:after {<br />
content: ": ";<br />
}<br />
/**<br />
* Note hlist style usage differd in<br />
* the Minerva skin. Remember .hlist is a class defined in core as well! Please check Minerva desktop (and Minerva.css) when changing<br />
* See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T213239<br />
*/<br />
.hlist dd:after,<br />
.hlist li:after {<br />
content: " · ";<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist dt:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist li:last-child:after {<br />
content: none;<br />
}<br />
/* Add parentheses around nested lists */<br />
.hlist dd dd:first-child:before, .hlist dd dt:first-child:before, .hlist dd li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist dt dd:first-child:before, .hlist dt dt:first-child:before, .hlist dt li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist li dd:first-child:before, .hlist li dt:first-child:before, .hlist li li:first-child:before {<br />
content: " (";<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd dd:last-child:after, .hlist dd dt:last-child:after, .hlist dd li:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist dt dd:last-child:after, .hlist dt dt:last-child:after, .hlist dt li:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist li dd:last-child:after, .hlist li dt:last-child:after, .hlist li li:last-child:after {<br />
content: ")";<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
}<br />
/* Put ordinals in front of ordered list items */<br />
.hlist ol {<br />
counter-reset: listitem;<br />
}<br />
.hlist ol > li {<br />
counter-increment: listitem;<br />
}<br />
.hlist ol > li:before {<br />
content: " " counter(listitem) "\a0";<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd ol > li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist dt ol > li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist li ol > li:first-child:before {<br />
content: " (" counter(listitem) "\a0";<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*CREATE ACCOUNT AND USER LOGIN CSS*/<br />
<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-container {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 3em auto;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-container #userloginForm {<br />
float: unset;<br />
margin: 0;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-vform {<br />
margin: 2.5em auto 0;<br />
width: 22rem;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-container {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 3em auto;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-container #userloginForm {<br />
float: unset;<br />
margin: 0;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-vform {<br />
margin: 2.5em auto 0;<br />
width: 22rem;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-createacct-benefits-container {<br />
display: none<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*Special:Book CSS'ing (added by Collection)*/<br />
#collection-download-button{<br />
float:left;<br />
}<br />
#downloadButton{<br />
cursor:pointer;<br />
}<br />
.collection-maintenance-box{<br />
display:none;<br />
}</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&diff=64409MediaWiki:Common.css2024-03-20T16:03:20Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div>/* CSS placed here will be applied to all skins */<br />
/*************************/<br />
<br />
#editpage-copywarn {<br />
line-height: 1em;<br />
margin-top: .75em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.test01 {<br />
text-align: center;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-header{ /* gap between "contribute" and "news" got removed somehow, this adds it back*/<br />
column-gap:1em;<br />
align-items:stretch!important; /*makes all flex items have the same height*/<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Wiki theming */<br />
#siteSub { /* Size of text "From ProleWiki, the proletarian encyclopedia" below the title of the article. */<br />
display: block;<br />
font-size: 85% !important; /* Attaching !important because a new update did some shit it wasn't supposed to do */<br />
} <br />
.mw-body {<br />
box-shadow: 0 0.25em 0.6em -0.15em rgba(0,0,0,0.15);<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-ProleWiki_Main_page .firstHeading, <br />
.page-ProleWiki_Main_page #siteSub { <br />
display: none; <br />
}<br />
<br />
/*add icons to quick links in main page*/<br />
.mainpage-library:before{<br />
content:"";<br />
width:20px;<br />
height:20px;<br />
background-size:auto;<br />
background-position:center;<br />
opacity:var(--opacity-icon-base);<br />
filter:var(--filter-invert);<br />
margin-right:25px;<br />
background-repeat:no-repeat;<br />
background-image: linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("/load.php?modules=oojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-citation&image=book&format=original&skin=citizen");<br />
}<br />
<br />
<br />
/*Site notice configuration*/<br />
/* Removing messy CSS code from DismissableSiteNotice extension */<br />
.mw-dismissable-notice-close {<br />
display:none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mw-dismissable-notice-body {<br />
margin:auto !important;<br />
text-align:left;<br />
}<br />
/*Adding the box and items CSS*/<br />
.sitenotice-box {<br />
display: flex;<br />
flex-direction: column;<br />
padding: 20px;<br />
width: 80%;<br />
background: #efefef;<br />
border-radius: 12px;<br />
margin: auto;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mw-body-content sub,<br />
.mw-body-content sup,<br />
.reference {<br />
font-size: 80%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-Library_Theses_on_Feuerbach .mw-body-content h3<br />
{ text-align: center; }<br />
<br />
/* Announcement style */<br />
<br />
.announcement {<br />
border:1px solid #aaaaaa;<br />
background-color:#f9f9f9;<br />
padding:5px;<br />
font-size: 95%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Standard Navigationsleisten, aka box hiding thingy<br />
from .de. Documentation at [[Wikipedia:NavFrame]]. */<br />
div.NavFrame {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
padding: 4px;<br />
border: 1px solid #a2a9b1;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
border-collapse: collapse;<br />
font-size: 95%;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame + div.NavFrame {<br />
border-top-style: none;<br />
border-top-style: hidden;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavHead {<br />
line-height: 1.6em;<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
background-color: #ccf;<br />
position: relative;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame p,<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavContent,<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavContent p {<br />
font-size: 100%;<br />
}<br />
a.NavToggle {<br />
position: absolute;<br />
top: 0;<br />
/* @noflip */<br />
right: 3px;<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
font-size: 90%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Default style for navigation boxes */<br />
.navbox { /* Navbox container style */<br />
box-sizing: border-box;<br />
border: 1px solid #a2a9b1;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
clear: both;<br />
font-size: 88%;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
padding: 1px;<br />
margin: 1em auto 0; /* Prevent preceding content from clinging to navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox .navbox {<br />
margin-top: 0; /* No top margin for nested navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox + .navbox {<br />
margin-top: -1px; /* Single pixel border between adjacent navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-inner,<br />
.navbox-subgroup {<br />
width: 100%;<br />
}<br />
.navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-title,<br />
.navbox-abovebelow {<br />
padding: 0.25em 1em; /* Title, group and above/below styles */<br />
line-height: 1.5em;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
}<br />
th.navbox-group { /* Group style */<br />
white-space: nowrap;<br />
/* @noflip */<br />
text-align: right;<br />
}<br />
.navbox,<br />
.navbox-subgroup {<br />
background-color: #fdfdfd; /* Background color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-list {<br />
line-height: 1.5em;<br />
border-color: #fdfdfd; /* Must match background color */<br />
}<br />
/* cell spacing for navbox cells */<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-abovebelow,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-group,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-image,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-list { /* Borders above 2nd, 3rd, etc. rows */<br />
border-top: 2px solid #fdfdfd; /* Must match background color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox th,<br />
.navbox-title {<br />
background-color: #ccccff; /* Level 1 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-abovebelow,<br />
th.navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-title {<br />
background-color: #ddddff; /* Level 2 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-abovebelow {<br />
background-color: #e6e6ff; /* Level 3 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-even {<br />
background-color: #f7f7f7; /* Even row striping */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-odd {<br />
background-color: transparent; /* Odd row striping */<br />
}<br />
.navbox .hlist td dl,<br />
.navbox .hlist td ol,<br />
.navbox .hlist td ul,<br />
.navbox td.hlist dl,<br />
.navbox td.hlist ol,<br />
.navbox td.hlist ul {<br />
padding: 0.125em 0; /* Adjust hlist padding in navboxes */<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Reduce page jumps by hiding collapsed/dismissed content */<br />
.client-js .mw-special-Watchlist #watchlist-message,<br />
.client-js .NavFrame.collapsed .NavContent,<br />
.client-js .collapsible:not( .mw-made-collapsible).collapsed > tbody > tr:not(:first-child) {<br />
display: none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Style for horizontal lists (separator following item).<br />
@source mediawiki.org/wiki/Snippets/Horizontal_lists<br />
@revision 8 (2016-05-21)<br />
@author [[User:Edokter]]<br />
*/<br />
.hlist dl,<br />
.hlist ol,<br />
.hlist ul {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
padding: 0;<br />
}<br />
/* Display list items inline */<br />
.hlist dd,<br />
.hlist dt,<br />
.hlist li {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
display: inline;<br />
}<br />
/* Display nested lists inline */<br />
.hlist.inline,<br />
.hlist.inline dl,<br />
.hlist.inline ol,<br />
.hlist.inline ul,<br />
.hlist dl dl, .hlist dl ol, .hlist dl ul,<br />
.hlist ol dl, .hlist ol ol, .hlist ol ul,<br />
.hlist ul dl, .hlist ul ol, .hlist ul ul {<br />
display: inline;<br />
}<br />
/* Hide empty list items */<br />
.hlist .mw-empty-li {<br />
display: none;<br />
}<br />
/* Generate interpuncts */<br />
.hlist dt:after {<br />
content: ": ";<br />
}<br />
/**<br />
* Note hlist style usage differd in<br />
* the Minerva skin. Remember .hlist is a class defined in core as well! Please check Minerva desktop (and Minerva.css) when changing<br />
* See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T213239<br />
*/<br />
.hlist dd:after,<br />
.hlist li:after {<br />
content: " · ";<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist dt:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist li:last-child:after {<br />
content: none;<br />
}<br />
/* Add parentheses around nested lists */<br />
.hlist dd dd:first-child:before, .hlist dd dt:first-child:before, .hlist dd li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist dt dd:first-child:before, .hlist dt dt:first-child:before, .hlist dt li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist li dd:first-child:before, .hlist li dt:first-child:before, .hlist li li:first-child:before {<br />
content: " (";<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd dd:last-child:after, .hlist dd dt:last-child:after, .hlist dd li:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist dt dd:last-child:after, .hlist dt dt:last-child:after, .hlist dt li:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist li dd:last-child:after, .hlist li dt:last-child:after, .hlist li li:last-child:after {<br />
content: ")";<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
}<br />
/* Put ordinals in front of ordered list items */<br />
.hlist ol {<br />
counter-reset: listitem;<br />
}<br />
.hlist ol > li {<br />
counter-increment: listitem;<br />
}<br />
.hlist ol > li:before {<br />
content: " " counter(listitem) "\a0";<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd ol > li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist dt ol > li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist li ol > li:first-child:before {<br />
content: " (" counter(listitem) "\a0";<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*CREATE ACCOUNT AND USER LOGIN CSS*/<br />
<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-container {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 3em auto;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-container #userloginForm {<br />
float: unset;<br />
margin: 0;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-vform {<br />
margin: 2.5em auto 0;<br />
width: 22rem;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-container {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 3em auto;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-container #userloginForm {<br />
float: unset;<br />
margin: 0;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-vform {<br />
margin: 2.5em auto 0;<br />
width: 22rem;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-createacct-benefits-container {<br />
display: none<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*Special:Book CSS'ing (added by Collection)*/<br />
#collection-download-button{<br />
float:left;<br />
}<br />
#downloadButton{<br />
cursor:pointer;<br />
}<br />
.collection-maintenance-box{<br />
display:none;<br />
}</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&diff=64408MediaWiki:Common.css2024-03-20T16:01:56Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div>/* CSS placed here will be applied to all skins */<br />
/*************************/<br />
<br />
#editpage-copywarn {<br />
line-height: 1em;<br />
margin-top: .75em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.test01 {<br />
text-align: center;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-header{ /* gap between "contribute" and "news" got removed somehow, this adds it back*/<br />
column-gap:1em;<br />
align-items:stretch!important; /*makes all flex items have the same height*/<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Wiki theming */<br />
#siteSub { /* Size of text "From ProleWiki, the proletarian encyclopedia" below the title of the article. */<br />
display: block;<br />
font-size: 85% !important; /* Attaching !important because a new update did some shit it wasn't supposed to do */<br />
} <br />
.mw-body {<br />
box-shadow: 0 0.25em 0.6em -0.15em rgba(0,0,0,0.15);<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-ProleWiki_Main_page .firstHeading, <br />
.page-ProleWiki_Main_page #siteSub { <br />
display: none; <br />
}<br />
<br />
/*add icons to quick links in main page*/<br />
.mainpage-library:before{<br />
content:"";<br />
width:20px;<br />
height:20px;<br />
margin-right:25px;<br />
background-repeat:no-repeat;<br />
background-image: linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("/load.php?modules=oojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-citation&image=book&format=original&skin=citizen");<br />
}<br />
<br />
<br />
/*Site notice configuration*/<br />
/* Removing messy CSS code from DismissableSiteNotice extension */<br />
.mw-dismissable-notice-close {<br />
display:none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mw-dismissable-notice-body {<br />
margin:auto !important;<br />
text-align:left;<br />
}<br />
/*Adding the box and items CSS*/<br />
.sitenotice-box {<br />
display: flex;<br />
flex-direction: column;<br />
padding: 20px;<br />
width: 80%;<br />
background: #efefef;<br />
border-radius: 12px;<br />
margin: auto;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mw-body-content sub,<br />
.mw-body-content sup,<br />
.reference {<br />
font-size: 80%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-Library_Theses_on_Feuerbach .mw-body-content h3<br />
{ text-align: center; }<br />
<br />
/* Announcement style */<br />
<br />
.announcement {<br />
border:1px solid #aaaaaa;<br />
background-color:#f9f9f9;<br />
padding:5px;<br />
font-size: 95%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Standard Navigationsleisten, aka box hiding thingy<br />
from .de. Documentation at [[Wikipedia:NavFrame]]. */<br />
div.NavFrame {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
padding: 4px;<br />
border: 1px solid #a2a9b1;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
border-collapse: collapse;<br />
font-size: 95%;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame + div.NavFrame {<br />
border-top-style: none;<br />
border-top-style: hidden;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavHead {<br />
line-height: 1.6em;<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
background-color: #ccf;<br />
position: relative;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame p,<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavContent,<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavContent p {<br />
font-size: 100%;<br />
}<br />
a.NavToggle {<br />
position: absolute;<br />
top: 0;<br />
/* @noflip */<br />
right: 3px;<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
font-size: 90%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Default style for navigation boxes */<br />
.navbox { /* Navbox container style */<br />
box-sizing: border-box;<br />
border: 1px solid #a2a9b1;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
clear: both;<br />
font-size: 88%;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
padding: 1px;<br />
margin: 1em auto 0; /* Prevent preceding content from clinging to navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox .navbox {<br />
margin-top: 0; /* No top margin for nested navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox + .navbox {<br />
margin-top: -1px; /* Single pixel border between adjacent navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-inner,<br />
.navbox-subgroup {<br />
width: 100%;<br />
}<br />
.navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-title,<br />
.navbox-abovebelow {<br />
padding: 0.25em 1em; /* Title, group and above/below styles */<br />
line-height: 1.5em;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
}<br />
th.navbox-group { /* Group style */<br />
white-space: nowrap;<br />
/* @noflip */<br />
text-align: right;<br />
}<br />
.navbox,<br />
.navbox-subgroup {<br />
background-color: #fdfdfd; /* Background color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-list {<br />
line-height: 1.5em;<br />
border-color: #fdfdfd; /* Must match background color */<br />
}<br />
/* cell spacing for navbox cells */<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-abovebelow,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-group,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-image,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-list { /* Borders above 2nd, 3rd, etc. rows */<br />
border-top: 2px solid #fdfdfd; /* Must match background color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox th,<br />
.navbox-title {<br />
background-color: #ccccff; /* Level 1 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-abovebelow,<br />
th.navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-title {<br />
background-color: #ddddff; /* Level 2 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-abovebelow {<br />
background-color: #e6e6ff; /* Level 3 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-even {<br />
background-color: #f7f7f7; /* Even row striping */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-odd {<br />
background-color: transparent; /* Odd row striping */<br />
}<br />
.navbox .hlist td dl,<br />
.navbox .hlist td ol,<br />
.navbox .hlist td ul,<br />
.navbox td.hlist dl,<br />
.navbox td.hlist ol,<br />
.navbox td.hlist ul {<br />
padding: 0.125em 0; /* Adjust hlist padding in navboxes */<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Reduce page jumps by hiding collapsed/dismissed content */<br />
.client-js .mw-special-Watchlist #watchlist-message,<br />
.client-js .NavFrame.collapsed .NavContent,<br />
.client-js .collapsible:not( .mw-made-collapsible).collapsed > tbody > tr:not(:first-child) {<br />
display: none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Style for horizontal lists (separator following item).<br />
@source mediawiki.org/wiki/Snippets/Horizontal_lists<br />
@revision 8 (2016-05-21)<br />
@author [[User:Edokter]]<br />
*/<br />
.hlist dl,<br />
.hlist ol,<br />
.hlist ul {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
padding: 0;<br />
}<br />
/* Display list items inline */<br />
.hlist dd,<br />
.hlist dt,<br />
.hlist li {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
display: inline;<br />
}<br />
/* Display nested lists inline */<br />
.hlist.inline,<br />
.hlist.inline dl,<br />
.hlist.inline ol,<br />
.hlist.inline ul,<br />
.hlist dl dl, .hlist dl ol, .hlist dl ul,<br />
.hlist ol dl, .hlist ol ol, .hlist ol ul,<br />
.hlist ul dl, .hlist ul ol, .hlist ul ul {<br />
display: inline;<br />
}<br />
/* Hide empty list items */<br />
.hlist .mw-empty-li {<br />
display: none;<br />
}<br />
/* Generate interpuncts */<br />
.hlist dt:after {<br />
content: ": ";<br />
}<br />
/**<br />
* Note hlist style usage differd in<br />
* the Minerva skin. Remember .hlist is a class defined in core as well! Please check Minerva desktop (and Minerva.css) when changing<br />
* See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T213239<br />
*/<br />
.hlist dd:after,<br />
.hlist li:after {<br />
content: " · ";<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist dt:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist li:last-child:after {<br />
content: none;<br />
}<br />
/* Add parentheses around nested lists */<br />
.hlist dd dd:first-child:before, .hlist dd dt:first-child:before, .hlist dd li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist dt dd:first-child:before, .hlist dt dt:first-child:before, .hlist dt li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist li dd:first-child:before, .hlist li dt:first-child:before, .hlist li li:first-child:before {<br />
content: " (";<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd dd:last-child:after, .hlist dd dt:last-child:after, .hlist dd li:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist dt dd:last-child:after, .hlist dt dt:last-child:after, .hlist dt li:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist li dd:last-child:after, .hlist li dt:last-child:after, .hlist li li:last-child:after {<br />
content: ")";<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
}<br />
/* Put ordinals in front of ordered list items */<br />
.hlist ol {<br />
counter-reset: listitem;<br />
}<br />
.hlist ol > li {<br />
counter-increment: listitem;<br />
}<br />
.hlist ol > li:before {<br />
content: " " counter(listitem) "\a0";<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd ol > li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist dt ol > li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist li ol > li:first-child:before {<br />
content: " (" counter(listitem) "\a0";<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*CREATE ACCOUNT AND USER LOGIN CSS*/<br />
<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-container {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 3em auto;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-container #userloginForm {<br />
float: unset;<br />
margin: 0;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-vform {<br />
margin: 2.5em auto 0;<br />
width: 22rem;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-container {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 3em auto;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-container #userloginForm {<br />
float: unset;<br />
margin: 0;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-vform {<br />
margin: 2.5em auto 0;<br />
width: 22rem;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-createacct-benefits-container {<br />
display: none<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*Special:Book CSS'ing (added by Collection)*/<br />
#collection-download-button{<br />
float:left;<br />
}<br />
#downloadButton{<br />
cursor:pointer;<br />
}<br />
.collection-maintenance-box{<br />
display:none;<br />
}</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&diff=64407MediaWiki:Common.css2024-03-20T16:01:13Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div>/* CSS placed here will be applied to all skins */<br />
/*************************/<br />
<br />
#editpage-copywarn {<br />
line-height: 1em;<br />
margin-top: .75em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.test01 {<br />
text-align: center;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-header{ /* gap between "contribute" and "news" got removed somehow, this adds it back*/<br />
column-gap:1em;<br />
align-items:stretch!important; /*makes all flex items have the same height*/<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Wiki theming */<br />
#siteSub { /* Size of text "From ProleWiki, the proletarian encyclopedia" below the title of the article. */<br />
display: block;<br />
font-size: 85% !important; /* Attaching !important because a new update did some shit it wasn't supposed to do */<br />
} <br />
.mw-body {<br />
box-shadow: 0 0.25em 0.6em -0.15em rgba(0,0,0,0.15);<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-ProleWiki_Main_page .firstHeading, <br />
.page-ProleWiki_Main_page #siteSub { <br />
display: none; <br />
}<br />
<br />
/*add icons to quick links in main page*/<br />
.mainpage-library>p:before{<br />
content:"";<br />
width:20px;<br />
height:20px;<br />
margin-right:5px;<br />
background-repeat:no-repeat;<br />
background-image: linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("/load.php?modules=oojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-citation&image=book&format=original&skin=citizen");<br />
}<br />
<br />
<br />
/*Site notice configuration*/<br />
/* Removing messy CSS code from DismissableSiteNotice extension */<br />
.mw-dismissable-notice-close {<br />
display:none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mw-dismissable-notice-body {<br />
margin:auto !important;<br />
text-align:left;<br />
}<br />
/*Adding the box and items CSS*/<br />
.sitenotice-box {<br />
display: flex;<br />
flex-direction: column;<br />
padding: 20px;<br />
width: 80%;<br />
background: #efefef;<br />
border-radius: 12px;<br />
margin: auto;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mw-body-content sub,<br />
.mw-body-content sup,<br />
.reference {<br />
font-size: 80%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-Library_Theses_on_Feuerbach .mw-body-content h3<br />
{ text-align: center; }<br />
<br />
/* Announcement style */<br />
<br />
.announcement {<br />
border:1px solid #aaaaaa;<br />
background-color:#f9f9f9;<br />
padding:5px;<br />
font-size: 95%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Standard Navigationsleisten, aka box hiding thingy<br />
from .de. Documentation at [[Wikipedia:NavFrame]]. */<br />
div.NavFrame {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
padding: 4px;<br />
border: 1px solid #a2a9b1;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
border-collapse: collapse;<br />
font-size: 95%;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame + div.NavFrame {<br />
border-top-style: none;<br />
border-top-style: hidden;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavHead {<br />
line-height: 1.6em;<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
background-color: #ccf;<br />
position: relative;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame p,<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavContent,<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavContent p {<br />
font-size: 100%;<br />
}<br />
a.NavToggle {<br />
position: absolute;<br />
top: 0;<br />
/* @noflip */<br />
right: 3px;<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
font-size: 90%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Default style for navigation boxes */<br />
.navbox { /* Navbox container style */<br />
box-sizing: border-box;<br />
border: 1px solid #a2a9b1;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
clear: both;<br />
font-size: 88%;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
padding: 1px;<br />
margin: 1em auto 0; /* Prevent preceding content from clinging to navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox .navbox {<br />
margin-top: 0; /* No top margin for nested navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox + .navbox {<br />
margin-top: -1px; /* Single pixel border between adjacent navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-inner,<br />
.navbox-subgroup {<br />
width: 100%;<br />
}<br />
.navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-title,<br />
.navbox-abovebelow {<br />
padding: 0.25em 1em; /* Title, group and above/below styles */<br />
line-height: 1.5em;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
}<br />
th.navbox-group { /* Group style */<br />
white-space: nowrap;<br />
/* @noflip */<br />
text-align: right;<br />
}<br />
.navbox,<br />
.navbox-subgroup {<br />
background-color: #fdfdfd; /* Background color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-list {<br />
line-height: 1.5em;<br />
border-color: #fdfdfd; /* Must match background color */<br />
}<br />
/* cell spacing for navbox cells */<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-abovebelow,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-group,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-image,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-list { /* Borders above 2nd, 3rd, etc. rows */<br />
border-top: 2px solid #fdfdfd; /* Must match background color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox th,<br />
.navbox-title {<br />
background-color: #ccccff; /* Level 1 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-abovebelow,<br />
th.navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-title {<br />
background-color: #ddddff; /* Level 2 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-abovebelow {<br />
background-color: #e6e6ff; /* Level 3 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-even {<br />
background-color: #f7f7f7; /* Even row striping */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-odd {<br />
background-color: transparent; /* Odd row striping */<br />
}<br />
.navbox .hlist td dl,<br />
.navbox .hlist td ol,<br />
.navbox .hlist td ul,<br />
.navbox td.hlist dl,<br />
.navbox td.hlist ol,<br />
.navbox td.hlist ul {<br />
padding: 0.125em 0; /* Adjust hlist padding in navboxes */<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Reduce page jumps by hiding collapsed/dismissed content */<br />
.client-js .mw-special-Watchlist #watchlist-message,<br />
.client-js .NavFrame.collapsed .NavContent,<br />
.client-js .collapsible:not( .mw-made-collapsible).collapsed > tbody > tr:not(:first-child) {<br />
display: none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Style for horizontal lists (separator following item).<br />
@source mediawiki.org/wiki/Snippets/Horizontal_lists<br />
@revision 8 (2016-05-21)<br />
@author [[User:Edokter]]<br />
*/<br />
.hlist dl,<br />
.hlist ol,<br />
.hlist ul {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
padding: 0;<br />
}<br />
/* Display list items inline */<br />
.hlist dd,<br />
.hlist dt,<br />
.hlist li {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
display: inline;<br />
}<br />
/* Display nested lists inline */<br />
.hlist.inline,<br />
.hlist.inline dl,<br />
.hlist.inline ol,<br />
.hlist.inline ul,<br />
.hlist dl dl, .hlist dl ol, .hlist dl ul,<br />
.hlist ol dl, .hlist ol ol, .hlist ol ul,<br />
.hlist ul dl, .hlist ul ol, .hlist ul ul {<br />
display: inline;<br />
}<br />
/* Hide empty list items */<br />
.hlist .mw-empty-li {<br />
display: none;<br />
}<br />
/* Generate interpuncts */<br />
.hlist dt:after {<br />
content: ": ";<br />
}<br />
/**<br />
* Note hlist style usage differd in<br />
* the Minerva skin. Remember .hlist is a class defined in core as well! Please check Minerva desktop (and Minerva.css) when changing<br />
* See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T213239<br />
*/<br />
.hlist dd:after,<br />
.hlist li:after {<br />
content: " · ";<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist dt:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist li:last-child:after {<br />
content: none;<br />
}<br />
/* Add parentheses around nested lists */<br />
.hlist dd dd:first-child:before, .hlist dd dt:first-child:before, .hlist dd li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist dt dd:first-child:before, .hlist dt dt:first-child:before, .hlist dt li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist li dd:first-child:before, .hlist li dt:first-child:before, .hlist li li:first-child:before {<br />
content: " (";<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd dd:last-child:after, .hlist dd dt:last-child:after, .hlist dd li:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist dt dd:last-child:after, .hlist dt dt:last-child:after, .hlist dt li:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist li dd:last-child:after, .hlist li dt:last-child:after, .hlist li li:last-child:after {<br />
content: ")";<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
}<br />
/* Put ordinals in front of ordered list items */<br />
.hlist ol {<br />
counter-reset: listitem;<br />
}<br />
.hlist ol > li {<br />
counter-increment: listitem;<br />
}<br />
.hlist ol > li:before {<br />
content: " " counter(listitem) "\a0";<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd ol > li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist dt ol > li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist li ol > li:first-child:before {<br />
content: " (" counter(listitem) "\a0";<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*CREATE ACCOUNT AND USER LOGIN CSS*/<br />
<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-container {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 3em auto;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-container #userloginForm {<br />
float: unset;<br />
margin: 0;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-vform {<br />
margin: 2.5em auto 0;<br />
width: 22rem;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-container {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 3em auto;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-container #userloginForm {<br />
float: unset;<br />
margin: 0;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-vform {<br />
margin: 2.5em auto 0;<br />
width: 22rem;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-createacct-benefits-container {<br />
display: none<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*Special:Book CSS'ing (added by Collection)*/<br />
#collection-download-button{<br />
float:left;<br />
}<br />
#downloadButton{<br />
cursor:pointer;<br />
}<br />
.collection-maintenance-box{<br />
display:none;<br />
}</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&diff=64406MediaWiki:Common.css2024-03-20T16:00:56Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div>/* CSS placed here will be applied to all skins */<br />
/*************************/<br />
<br />
#editpage-copywarn {<br />
line-height: 1em;<br />
margin-top: .75em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.test01 {<br />
text-align: center;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-header{ /* gap between "contribute" and "news" got removed somehow, this adds it back*/<br />
column-gap:1em;<br />
align-items:stretch!important; /*makes all flex items have the same height*/<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Wiki theming */<br />
#siteSub { /* Size of text "From ProleWiki, the proletarian encyclopedia" below the title of the article. */<br />
display: block;<br />
font-size: 85% !important; /* Attaching !important because a new update did some shit it wasn't supposed to do */<br />
} <br />
.mw-body {<br />
box-shadow: 0 0.25em 0.6em -0.15em rgba(0,0,0,0.15);<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-ProleWiki_Main_page .firstHeading, <br />
.page-ProleWiki_Main_page #siteSub { <br />
display: none; <br />
}<br />
<br />
/*add icons to quick links in main page*/<br />
.mainpage-library:before{<br />
content:"";<br />
width:20px;<br />
height:20px;<br />
margin-right:5px;<br />
background-repeat:no-repeat;<br />
background-image: linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("/load.php?modules=oojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-citation&image=book&format=original&skin=citizen");<br />
}<br />
<br />
<br />
/*Site notice configuration*/<br />
/* Removing messy CSS code from DismissableSiteNotice extension */<br />
.mw-dismissable-notice-close {<br />
display:none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mw-dismissable-notice-body {<br />
margin:auto !important;<br />
text-align:left;<br />
}<br />
/*Adding the box and items CSS*/<br />
.sitenotice-box {<br />
display: flex;<br />
flex-direction: column;<br />
padding: 20px;<br />
width: 80%;<br />
background: #efefef;<br />
border-radius: 12px;<br />
margin: auto;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mw-body-content sub,<br />
.mw-body-content sup,<br />
.reference {<br />
font-size: 80%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-Library_Theses_on_Feuerbach .mw-body-content h3<br />
{ text-align: center; }<br />
<br />
/* Announcement style */<br />
<br />
.announcement {<br />
border:1px solid #aaaaaa;<br />
background-color:#f9f9f9;<br />
padding:5px;<br />
font-size: 95%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Standard Navigationsleisten, aka box hiding thingy<br />
from .de. Documentation at [[Wikipedia:NavFrame]]. */<br />
div.NavFrame {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
padding: 4px;<br />
border: 1px solid #a2a9b1;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
border-collapse: collapse;<br />
font-size: 95%;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame + div.NavFrame {<br />
border-top-style: none;<br />
border-top-style: hidden;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavHead {<br />
line-height: 1.6em;<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
background-color: #ccf;<br />
position: relative;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame p,<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavContent,<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavContent p {<br />
font-size: 100%;<br />
}<br />
a.NavToggle {<br />
position: absolute;<br />
top: 0;<br />
/* @noflip */<br />
right: 3px;<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
font-size: 90%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Default style for navigation boxes */<br />
.navbox { /* Navbox container style */<br />
box-sizing: border-box;<br />
border: 1px solid #a2a9b1;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
clear: both;<br />
font-size: 88%;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
padding: 1px;<br />
margin: 1em auto 0; /* Prevent preceding content from clinging to navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox .navbox {<br />
margin-top: 0; /* No top margin for nested navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox + .navbox {<br />
margin-top: -1px; /* Single pixel border between adjacent navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-inner,<br />
.navbox-subgroup {<br />
width: 100%;<br />
}<br />
.navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-title,<br />
.navbox-abovebelow {<br />
padding: 0.25em 1em; /* Title, group and above/below styles */<br />
line-height: 1.5em;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
}<br />
th.navbox-group { /* Group style */<br />
white-space: nowrap;<br />
/* @noflip */<br />
text-align: right;<br />
}<br />
.navbox,<br />
.navbox-subgroup {<br />
background-color: #fdfdfd; /* Background color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-list {<br />
line-height: 1.5em;<br />
border-color: #fdfdfd; /* Must match background color */<br />
}<br />
/* cell spacing for navbox cells */<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-abovebelow,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-group,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-image,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-list { /* Borders above 2nd, 3rd, etc. rows */<br />
border-top: 2px solid #fdfdfd; /* Must match background color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox th,<br />
.navbox-title {<br />
background-color: #ccccff; /* Level 1 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-abovebelow,<br />
th.navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-title {<br />
background-color: #ddddff; /* Level 2 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-abovebelow {<br />
background-color: #e6e6ff; /* Level 3 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-even {<br />
background-color: #f7f7f7; /* Even row striping */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-odd {<br />
background-color: transparent; /* Odd row striping */<br />
}<br />
.navbox .hlist td dl,<br />
.navbox .hlist td ol,<br />
.navbox .hlist td ul,<br />
.navbox td.hlist dl,<br />
.navbox td.hlist ol,<br />
.navbox td.hlist ul {<br />
padding: 0.125em 0; /* Adjust hlist padding in navboxes */<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Reduce page jumps by hiding collapsed/dismissed content */<br />
.client-js .mw-special-Watchlist #watchlist-message,<br />
.client-js .NavFrame.collapsed .NavContent,<br />
.client-js .collapsible:not( .mw-made-collapsible).collapsed > tbody > tr:not(:first-child) {<br />
display: none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Style for horizontal lists (separator following item).<br />
@source mediawiki.org/wiki/Snippets/Horizontal_lists<br />
@revision 8 (2016-05-21)<br />
@author [[User:Edokter]]<br />
*/<br />
.hlist dl,<br />
.hlist ol,<br />
.hlist ul {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
padding: 0;<br />
}<br />
/* Display list items inline */<br />
.hlist dd,<br />
.hlist dt,<br />
.hlist li {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
display: inline;<br />
}<br />
/* Display nested lists inline */<br />
.hlist.inline,<br />
.hlist.inline dl,<br />
.hlist.inline ol,<br />
.hlist.inline ul,<br />
.hlist dl dl, .hlist dl ol, .hlist dl ul,<br />
.hlist ol dl, .hlist ol ol, .hlist ol ul,<br />
.hlist ul dl, .hlist ul ol, .hlist ul ul {<br />
display: inline;<br />
}<br />
/* Hide empty list items */<br />
.hlist .mw-empty-li {<br />
display: none;<br />
}<br />
/* Generate interpuncts */<br />
.hlist dt:after {<br />
content: ": ";<br />
}<br />
/**<br />
* Note hlist style usage differd in<br />
* the Minerva skin. Remember .hlist is a class defined in core as well! Please check Minerva desktop (and Minerva.css) when changing<br />
* See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T213239<br />
*/<br />
.hlist dd:after,<br />
.hlist li:after {<br />
content: " · ";<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist dt:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist li:last-child:after {<br />
content: none;<br />
}<br />
/* Add parentheses around nested lists */<br />
.hlist dd dd:first-child:before, .hlist dd dt:first-child:before, .hlist dd li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist dt dd:first-child:before, .hlist dt dt:first-child:before, .hlist dt li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist li dd:first-child:before, .hlist li dt:first-child:before, .hlist li li:first-child:before {<br />
content: " (";<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd dd:last-child:after, .hlist dd dt:last-child:after, .hlist dd li:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist dt dd:last-child:after, .hlist dt dt:last-child:after, .hlist dt li:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist li dd:last-child:after, .hlist li dt:last-child:after, .hlist li li:last-child:after {<br />
content: ")";<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
}<br />
/* Put ordinals in front of ordered list items */<br />
.hlist ol {<br />
counter-reset: listitem;<br />
}<br />
.hlist ol > li {<br />
counter-increment: listitem;<br />
}<br />
.hlist ol > li:before {<br />
content: " " counter(listitem) "\a0";<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd ol > li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist dt ol > li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist li ol > li:first-child:before {<br />
content: " (" counter(listitem) "\a0";<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*CREATE ACCOUNT AND USER LOGIN CSS*/<br />
<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-container {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 3em auto;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-container #userloginForm {<br />
float: unset;<br />
margin: 0;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-vform {<br />
margin: 2.5em auto 0;<br />
width: 22rem;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-container {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 3em auto;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-container #userloginForm {<br />
float: unset;<br />
margin: 0;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-vform {<br />
margin: 2.5em auto 0;<br />
width: 22rem;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-createacct-benefits-container {<br />
display: none<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*Special:Book CSS'ing (added by Collection)*/<br />
#collection-download-button{<br />
float:left;<br />
}<br />
#downloadButton{<br />
cursor:pointer;<br />
}<br />
.collection-maintenance-box{<br />
display:none;<br />
}</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&diff=64405MediaWiki:Common.css2024-03-20T16:00:39Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div>/* CSS placed here will be applied to all skins */<br />
/*************************/<br />
<br />
#editpage-copywarn {<br />
line-height: 1em;<br />
margin-top: .75em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.test01 {<br />
text-align: center;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-header{ /* gap between "contribute" and "news" got removed somehow, this adds it back*/<br />
column-gap:1em;<br />
align-items:stretch!important; /*makes all flex items have the same height*/<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Wiki theming */<br />
#siteSub { /* Size of text "From ProleWiki, the proletarian encyclopedia" below the title of the article. */<br />
display: block;<br />
font-size: 85% !important; /* Attaching !important because a new update did some shit it wasn't supposed to do */<br />
} <br />
.mw-body {<br />
box-shadow: 0 0.25em 0.6em -0.15em rgba(0,0,0,0.15);<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-ProleWiki_Main_page .firstHeading, <br />
.page-ProleWiki_Main_page #siteSub { <br />
display: none; <br />
}<br />
<br />
/*add icons to quick links in main page*/<br />
.mainpage-library{<br />
content:"";<br />
width:20px;<br />
height:20px;<br />
margin-right:5px;<br />
background-repeat:no-repeat;<br />
background-image: linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("/load.php?modules=oojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-citation&image=book&format=original&skin=citizen");<br />
}<br />
<br />
<br />
/*Site notice configuration*/<br />
/* Removing messy CSS code from DismissableSiteNotice extension */<br />
.mw-dismissable-notice-close {<br />
display:none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mw-dismissable-notice-body {<br />
margin:auto !important;<br />
text-align:left;<br />
}<br />
/*Adding the box and items CSS*/<br />
.sitenotice-box {<br />
display: flex;<br />
flex-direction: column;<br />
padding: 20px;<br />
width: 80%;<br />
background: #efefef;<br />
border-radius: 12px;<br />
margin: auto;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mw-body-content sub,<br />
.mw-body-content sup,<br />
.reference {<br />
font-size: 80%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-Library_Theses_on_Feuerbach .mw-body-content h3<br />
{ text-align: center; }<br />
<br />
/* Announcement style */<br />
<br />
.announcement {<br />
border:1px solid #aaaaaa;<br />
background-color:#f9f9f9;<br />
padding:5px;<br />
font-size: 95%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Standard Navigationsleisten, aka box hiding thingy<br />
from .de. Documentation at [[Wikipedia:NavFrame]]. */<br />
div.NavFrame {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
padding: 4px;<br />
border: 1px solid #a2a9b1;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
border-collapse: collapse;<br />
font-size: 95%;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame + div.NavFrame {<br />
border-top-style: none;<br />
border-top-style: hidden;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavHead {<br />
line-height: 1.6em;<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
background-color: #ccf;<br />
position: relative;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame p,<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavContent,<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavContent p {<br />
font-size: 100%;<br />
}<br />
a.NavToggle {<br />
position: absolute;<br />
top: 0;<br />
/* @noflip */<br />
right: 3px;<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
font-size: 90%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Default style for navigation boxes */<br />
.navbox { /* Navbox container style */<br />
box-sizing: border-box;<br />
border: 1px solid #a2a9b1;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
clear: both;<br />
font-size: 88%;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
padding: 1px;<br />
margin: 1em auto 0; /* Prevent preceding content from clinging to navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox .navbox {<br />
margin-top: 0; /* No top margin for nested navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox + .navbox {<br />
margin-top: -1px; /* Single pixel border between adjacent navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-inner,<br />
.navbox-subgroup {<br />
width: 100%;<br />
}<br />
.navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-title,<br />
.navbox-abovebelow {<br />
padding: 0.25em 1em; /* Title, group and above/below styles */<br />
line-height: 1.5em;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
}<br />
th.navbox-group { /* Group style */<br />
white-space: nowrap;<br />
/* @noflip */<br />
text-align: right;<br />
}<br />
.navbox,<br />
.navbox-subgroup {<br />
background-color: #fdfdfd; /* Background color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-list {<br />
line-height: 1.5em;<br />
border-color: #fdfdfd; /* Must match background color */<br />
}<br />
/* cell spacing for navbox cells */<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-abovebelow,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-group,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-image,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-list { /* Borders above 2nd, 3rd, etc. rows */<br />
border-top: 2px solid #fdfdfd; /* Must match background color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox th,<br />
.navbox-title {<br />
background-color: #ccccff; /* Level 1 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-abovebelow,<br />
th.navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-title {<br />
background-color: #ddddff; /* Level 2 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-abovebelow {<br />
background-color: #e6e6ff; /* Level 3 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-even {<br />
background-color: #f7f7f7; /* Even row striping */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-odd {<br />
background-color: transparent; /* Odd row striping */<br />
}<br />
.navbox .hlist td dl,<br />
.navbox .hlist td ol,<br />
.navbox .hlist td ul,<br />
.navbox td.hlist dl,<br />
.navbox td.hlist ol,<br />
.navbox td.hlist ul {<br />
padding: 0.125em 0; /* Adjust hlist padding in navboxes */<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Reduce page jumps by hiding collapsed/dismissed content */<br />
.client-js .mw-special-Watchlist #watchlist-message,<br />
.client-js .NavFrame.collapsed .NavContent,<br />
.client-js .collapsible:not( .mw-made-collapsible).collapsed > tbody > tr:not(:first-child) {<br />
display: none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Style for horizontal lists (separator following item).<br />
@source mediawiki.org/wiki/Snippets/Horizontal_lists<br />
@revision 8 (2016-05-21)<br />
@author [[User:Edokter]]<br />
*/<br />
.hlist dl,<br />
.hlist ol,<br />
.hlist ul {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
padding: 0;<br />
}<br />
/* Display list items inline */<br />
.hlist dd,<br />
.hlist dt,<br />
.hlist li {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
display: inline;<br />
}<br />
/* Display nested lists inline */<br />
.hlist.inline,<br />
.hlist.inline dl,<br />
.hlist.inline ol,<br />
.hlist.inline ul,<br />
.hlist dl dl, .hlist dl ol, .hlist dl ul,<br />
.hlist ol dl, .hlist ol ol, .hlist ol ul,<br />
.hlist ul dl, .hlist ul ol, .hlist ul ul {<br />
display: inline;<br />
}<br />
/* Hide empty list items */<br />
.hlist .mw-empty-li {<br />
display: none;<br />
}<br />
/* Generate interpuncts */<br />
.hlist dt:after {<br />
content: ": ";<br />
}<br />
/**<br />
* Note hlist style usage differd in<br />
* the Minerva skin. Remember .hlist is a class defined in core as well! Please check Minerva desktop (and Minerva.css) when changing<br />
* See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T213239<br />
*/<br />
.hlist dd:after,<br />
.hlist li:after {<br />
content: " · ";<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist dt:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist li:last-child:after {<br />
content: none;<br />
}<br />
/* Add parentheses around nested lists */<br />
.hlist dd dd:first-child:before, .hlist dd dt:first-child:before, .hlist dd li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist dt dd:first-child:before, .hlist dt dt:first-child:before, .hlist dt li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist li dd:first-child:before, .hlist li dt:first-child:before, .hlist li li:first-child:before {<br />
content: " (";<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd dd:last-child:after, .hlist dd dt:last-child:after, .hlist dd li:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist dt dd:last-child:after, .hlist dt dt:last-child:after, .hlist dt li:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist li dd:last-child:after, .hlist li dt:last-child:after, .hlist li li:last-child:after {<br />
content: ")";<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
}<br />
/* Put ordinals in front of ordered list items */<br />
.hlist ol {<br />
counter-reset: listitem;<br />
}<br />
.hlist ol > li {<br />
counter-increment: listitem;<br />
}<br />
.hlist ol > li:before {<br />
content: " " counter(listitem) "\a0";<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd ol > li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist dt ol > li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist li ol > li:first-child:before {<br />
content: " (" counter(listitem) "\a0";<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*CREATE ACCOUNT AND USER LOGIN CSS*/<br />
<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-container {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 3em auto;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-container #userloginForm {<br />
float: unset;<br />
margin: 0;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-vform {<br />
margin: 2.5em auto 0;<br />
width: 22rem;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-container {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 3em auto;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-container #userloginForm {<br />
float: unset;<br />
margin: 0;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-vform {<br />
margin: 2.5em auto 0;<br />
width: 22rem;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-createacct-benefits-container {<br />
display: none<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*Special:Book CSS'ing (added by Collection)*/<br />
#collection-download-button{<br />
float:left;<br />
}<br />
#downloadButton{<br />
cursor:pointer;<br />
}<br />
.collection-maintenance-box{<br />
display:none;<br />
}</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&diff=64404MediaWiki:Common.css2024-03-20T16:00:09Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div>/* CSS placed here will be applied to all skins */<br />
/*************************/<br />
<br />
#editpage-copywarn {<br />
line-height: 1em;<br />
margin-top: .75em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.test01 {<br />
text-align: center;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-header{ /* gap between "contribute" and "news" got removed somehow, this adds it back*/<br />
column-gap:1em;<br />
align-items:stretch!important; /*makes all flex items have the same height*/<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Wiki theming */<br />
#siteSub { /* Size of text "From ProleWiki, the proletarian encyclopedia" below the title of the article. */<br />
display: block;<br />
font-size: 85% !important; /* Attaching !important because a new update did some shit it wasn't supposed to do */<br />
} <br />
.mw-body {<br />
box-shadow: 0 0.25em 0.6em -0.15em rgba(0,0,0,0.15);<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-ProleWiki_Main_page .firstHeading, <br />
.page-ProleWiki_Main_page #siteSub { <br />
display: none; <br />
}<br />
<br />
/*add icons to quick links in main page*/<br />
.mainpage-library{<br />
content:"";<br />
width:20px;<br />
height:20px;<br />
background-image: linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("/load.php?modules=oojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-citation&image=book&format=original&skin=citizen");<br />
}<br />
<br />
<br />
/*Site notice configuration*/<br />
/* Removing messy CSS code from DismissableSiteNotice extension */<br />
.mw-dismissable-notice-close {<br />
display:none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mw-dismissable-notice-body {<br />
margin:auto !important;<br />
text-align:left;<br />
}<br />
/*Adding the box and items CSS*/<br />
.sitenotice-box {<br />
display: flex;<br />
flex-direction: column;<br />
padding: 20px;<br />
width: 80%;<br />
background: #efefef;<br />
border-radius: 12px;<br />
margin: auto;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mw-body-content sub,<br />
.mw-body-content sup,<br />
.reference {<br />
font-size: 80%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-Library_Theses_on_Feuerbach .mw-body-content h3<br />
{ text-align: center; }<br />
<br />
/* Announcement style */<br />
<br />
.announcement {<br />
border:1px solid #aaaaaa;<br />
background-color:#f9f9f9;<br />
padding:5px;<br />
font-size: 95%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Standard Navigationsleisten, aka box hiding thingy<br />
from .de. Documentation at [[Wikipedia:NavFrame]]. */<br />
div.NavFrame {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
padding: 4px;<br />
border: 1px solid #a2a9b1;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
border-collapse: collapse;<br />
font-size: 95%;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame + div.NavFrame {<br />
border-top-style: none;<br />
border-top-style: hidden;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavHead {<br />
line-height: 1.6em;<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
background-color: #ccf;<br />
position: relative;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame p,<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavContent,<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavContent p {<br />
font-size: 100%;<br />
}<br />
a.NavToggle {<br />
position: absolute;<br />
top: 0;<br />
/* @noflip */<br />
right: 3px;<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
font-size: 90%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Default style for navigation boxes */<br />
.navbox { /* Navbox container style */<br />
box-sizing: border-box;<br />
border: 1px solid #a2a9b1;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
clear: both;<br />
font-size: 88%;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
padding: 1px;<br />
margin: 1em auto 0; /* Prevent preceding content from clinging to navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox .navbox {<br />
margin-top: 0; /* No top margin for nested navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox + .navbox {<br />
margin-top: -1px; /* Single pixel border between adjacent navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-inner,<br />
.navbox-subgroup {<br />
width: 100%;<br />
}<br />
.navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-title,<br />
.navbox-abovebelow {<br />
padding: 0.25em 1em; /* Title, group and above/below styles */<br />
line-height: 1.5em;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
}<br />
th.navbox-group { /* Group style */<br />
white-space: nowrap;<br />
/* @noflip */<br />
text-align: right;<br />
}<br />
.navbox,<br />
.navbox-subgroup {<br />
background-color: #fdfdfd; /* Background color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-list {<br />
line-height: 1.5em;<br />
border-color: #fdfdfd; /* Must match background color */<br />
}<br />
/* cell spacing for navbox cells */<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-abovebelow,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-group,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-image,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-list { /* Borders above 2nd, 3rd, etc. rows */<br />
border-top: 2px solid #fdfdfd; /* Must match background color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox th,<br />
.navbox-title {<br />
background-color: #ccccff; /* Level 1 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-abovebelow,<br />
th.navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-title {<br />
background-color: #ddddff; /* Level 2 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-abovebelow {<br />
background-color: #e6e6ff; /* Level 3 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-even {<br />
background-color: #f7f7f7; /* Even row striping */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-odd {<br />
background-color: transparent; /* Odd row striping */<br />
}<br />
.navbox .hlist td dl,<br />
.navbox .hlist td ol,<br />
.navbox .hlist td ul,<br />
.navbox td.hlist dl,<br />
.navbox td.hlist ol,<br />
.navbox td.hlist ul {<br />
padding: 0.125em 0; /* Adjust hlist padding in navboxes */<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Reduce page jumps by hiding collapsed/dismissed content */<br />
.client-js .mw-special-Watchlist #watchlist-message,<br />
.client-js .NavFrame.collapsed .NavContent,<br />
.client-js .collapsible:not( .mw-made-collapsible).collapsed > tbody > tr:not(:first-child) {<br />
display: none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Style for horizontal lists (separator following item).<br />
@source mediawiki.org/wiki/Snippets/Horizontal_lists<br />
@revision 8 (2016-05-21)<br />
@author [[User:Edokter]]<br />
*/<br />
.hlist dl,<br />
.hlist ol,<br />
.hlist ul {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
padding: 0;<br />
}<br />
/* Display list items inline */<br />
.hlist dd,<br />
.hlist dt,<br />
.hlist li {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
display: inline;<br />
}<br />
/* Display nested lists inline */<br />
.hlist.inline,<br />
.hlist.inline dl,<br />
.hlist.inline ol,<br />
.hlist.inline ul,<br />
.hlist dl dl, .hlist dl ol, .hlist dl ul,<br />
.hlist ol dl, .hlist ol ol, .hlist ol ul,<br />
.hlist ul dl, .hlist ul ol, .hlist ul ul {<br />
display: inline;<br />
}<br />
/* Hide empty list items */<br />
.hlist .mw-empty-li {<br />
display: none;<br />
}<br />
/* Generate interpuncts */<br />
.hlist dt:after {<br />
content: ": ";<br />
}<br />
/**<br />
* Note hlist style usage differd in<br />
* the Minerva skin. Remember .hlist is a class defined in core as well! Please check Minerva desktop (and Minerva.css) when changing<br />
* See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T213239<br />
*/<br />
.hlist dd:after,<br />
.hlist li:after {<br />
content: " · ";<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist dt:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist li:last-child:after {<br />
content: none;<br />
}<br />
/* Add parentheses around nested lists */<br />
.hlist dd dd:first-child:before, .hlist dd dt:first-child:before, .hlist dd li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist dt dd:first-child:before, .hlist dt dt:first-child:before, .hlist dt li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist li dd:first-child:before, .hlist li dt:first-child:before, .hlist li li:first-child:before {<br />
content: " (";<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd dd:last-child:after, .hlist dd dt:last-child:after, .hlist dd li:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist dt dd:last-child:after, .hlist dt dt:last-child:after, .hlist dt li:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist li dd:last-child:after, .hlist li dt:last-child:after, .hlist li li:last-child:after {<br />
content: ")";<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
}<br />
/* Put ordinals in front of ordered list items */<br />
.hlist ol {<br />
counter-reset: listitem;<br />
}<br />
.hlist ol > li {<br />
counter-increment: listitem;<br />
}<br />
.hlist ol > li:before {<br />
content: " " counter(listitem) "\a0";<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd ol > li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist dt ol > li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist li ol > li:first-child:before {<br />
content: " (" counter(listitem) "\a0";<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*CREATE ACCOUNT AND USER LOGIN CSS*/<br />
<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-container {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 3em auto;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-container #userloginForm {<br />
float: unset;<br />
margin: 0;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-vform {<br />
margin: 2.5em auto 0;<br />
width: 22rem;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-container {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 3em auto;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-container #userloginForm {<br />
float: unset;<br />
margin: 0;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-vform {<br />
margin: 2.5em auto 0;<br />
width: 22rem;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-createacct-benefits-container {<br />
display: none<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*Special:Book CSS'ing (added by Collection)*/<br />
#collection-download-button{<br />
float:left;<br />
}<br />
#downloadButton{<br />
cursor:pointer;<br />
}<br />
.collection-maintenance-box{<br />
display:none;<br />
}</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&diff=64403MediaWiki:Common.css2024-03-20T15:59:23Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div>/* CSS placed here will be applied to all skins */<br />
/*************************/<br />
<br />
#editpage-copywarn {<br />
line-height: 1em;<br />
margin-top: .75em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.test01 {<br />
text-align: center;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-header{ /* gap between "contribute" and "news" got removed somehow, this adds it back*/<br />
column-gap:1em;<br />
align-items:stretch!important; /*makes all flex items have the same height*/<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Wiki theming */<br />
#siteSub { /* Size of text "From ProleWiki, the proletarian encyclopedia" below the title of the article. */<br />
display: block;<br />
font-size: 85% !important; /* Attaching !important because a new update did some shit it wasn't supposed to do */<br />
} <br />
.mw-body {<br />
box-shadow: 0 0.25em 0.6em -0.15em rgba(0,0,0,0.15);<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-ProleWiki_Main_page .firstHeading, <br />
.page-ProleWiki_Main_page #siteSub { <br />
display: none; <br />
}<br />
<br />
/*add icons to quick links in main page*/<br />
.mainpage-library:before{<br />
content:"";<br />
width:20px;<br />
height:20px;<br />
background-image: linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url(/load.php?modules=oojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-citation&image=book&format=original&skin=citizen);<br />
}<br />
<br />
<br />
/*Site notice configuration*/<br />
/* Removing messy CSS code from DismissableSiteNotice extension */<br />
.mw-dismissable-notice-close {<br />
display:none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mw-dismissable-notice-body {<br />
margin:auto !important;<br />
text-align:left;<br />
}<br />
/*Adding the box and items CSS*/<br />
.sitenotice-box {<br />
display: flex;<br />
flex-direction: column;<br />
padding: 20px;<br />
width: 80%;<br />
background: #efefef;<br />
border-radius: 12px;<br />
margin: auto;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mw-body-content sub,<br />
.mw-body-content sup,<br />
.reference {<br />
font-size: 80%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-Library_Theses_on_Feuerbach .mw-body-content h3<br />
{ text-align: center; }<br />
<br />
/* Announcement style */<br />
<br />
.announcement {<br />
border:1px solid #aaaaaa;<br />
background-color:#f9f9f9;<br />
padding:5px;<br />
font-size: 95%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Standard Navigationsleisten, aka box hiding thingy<br />
from .de. Documentation at [[Wikipedia:NavFrame]]. */<br />
div.NavFrame {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
padding: 4px;<br />
border: 1px solid #a2a9b1;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
border-collapse: collapse;<br />
font-size: 95%;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame + div.NavFrame {<br />
border-top-style: none;<br />
border-top-style: hidden;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavHead {<br />
line-height: 1.6em;<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
background-color: #ccf;<br />
position: relative;<br />
}<br />
div.NavFrame p,<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavContent,<br />
div.NavFrame div.NavContent p {<br />
font-size: 100%;<br />
}<br />
a.NavToggle {<br />
position: absolute;<br />
top: 0;<br />
/* @noflip */<br />
right: 3px;<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
font-size: 90%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Default style for navigation boxes */<br />
.navbox { /* Navbox container style */<br />
box-sizing: border-box;<br />
border: 1px solid #a2a9b1;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
clear: both;<br />
font-size: 88%;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
padding: 1px;<br />
margin: 1em auto 0; /* Prevent preceding content from clinging to navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox .navbox {<br />
margin-top: 0; /* No top margin for nested navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox + .navbox {<br />
margin-top: -1px; /* Single pixel border between adjacent navboxes */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-inner,<br />
.navbox-subgroup {<br />
width: 100%;<br />
}<br />
.navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-title,<br />
.navbox-abovebelow {<br />
padding: 0.25em 1em; /* Title, group and above/below styles */<br />
line-height: 1.5em;<br />
text-align: center;<br />
}<br />
th.navbox-group { /* Group style */<br />
white-space: nowrap;<br />
/* @noflip */<br />
text-align: right;<br />
}<br />
.navbox,<br />
.navbox-subgroup {<br />
background-color: #fdfdfd; /* Background color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-list {<br />
line-height: 1.5em;<br />
border-color: #fdfdfd; /* Must match background color */<br />
}<br />
/* cell spacing for navbox cells */<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-abovebelow,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-group,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-image,<br />
tr + tr > .navbox-list { /* Borders above 2nd, 3rd, etc. rows */<br />
border-top: 2px solid #fdfdfd; /* Must match background color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox th,<br />
.navbox-title {<br />
background-color: #ccccff; /* Level 1 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-abovebelow,<br />
th.navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-title {<br />
background-color: #ddddff; /* Level 2 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-group,<br />
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-abovebelow {<br />
background-color: #e6e6ff; /* Level 3 color */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-even {<br />
background-color: #f7f7f7; /* Even row striping */<br />
}<br />
.navbox-odd {<br />
background-color: transparent; /* Odd row striping */<br />
}<br />
.navbox .hlist td dl,<br />
.navbox .hlist td ol,<br />
.navbox .hlist td ul,<br />
.navbox td.hlist dl,<br />
.navbox td.hlist ol,<br />
.navbox td.hlist ul {<br />
padding: 0.125em 0; /* Adjust hlist padding in navboxes */<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Reduce page jumps by hiding collapsed/dismissed content */<br />
.client-js .mw-special-Watchlist #watchlist-message,<br />
.client-js .NavFrame.collapsed .NavContent,<br />
.client-js .collapsible:not( .mw-made-collapsible).collapsed > tbody > tr:not(:first-child) {<br />
display: none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/* Style for horizontal lists (separator following item).<br />
@source mediawiki.org/wiki/Snippets/Horizontal_lists<br />
@revision 8 (2016-05-21)<br />
@author [[User:Edokter]]<br />
*/<br />
.hlist dl,<br />
.hlist ol,<br />
.hlist ul {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
padding: 0;<br />
}<br />
/* Display list items inline */<br />
.hlist dd,<br />
.hlist dt,<br />
.hlist li {<br />
margin: 0;<br />
display: inline;<br />
}<br />
/* Display nested lists inline */<br />
.hlist.inline,<br />
.hlist.inline dl,<br />
.hlist.inline ol,<br />
.hlist.inline ul,<br />
.hlist dl dl, .hlist dl ol, .hlist dl ul,<br />
.hlist ol dl, .hlist ol ol, .hlist ol ul,<br />
.hlist ul dl, .hlist ul ol, .hlist ul ul {<br />
display: inline;<br />
}<br />
/* Hide empty list items */<br />
.hlist .mw-empty-li {<br />
display: none;<br />
}<br />
/* Generate interpuncts */<br />
.hlist dt:after {<br />
content: ": ";<br />
}<br />
/**<br />
* Note hlist style usage differd in<br />
* the Minerva skin. Remember .hlist is a class defined in core as well! Please check Minerva desktop (and Minerva.css) when changing<br />
* See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T213239<br />
*/<br />
.hlist dd:after,<br />
.hlist li:after {<br />
content: " · ";<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist dt:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist li:last-child:after {<br />
content: none;<br />
}<br />
/* Add parentheses around nested lists */<br />
.hlist dd dd:first-child:before, .hlist dd dt:first-child:before, .hlist dd li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist dt dd:first-child:before, .hlist dt dt:first-child:before, .hlist dt li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist li dd:first-child:before, .hlist li dt:first-child:before, .hlist li li:first-child:before {<br />
content: " (";<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd dd:last-child:after, .hlist dd dt:last-child:after, .hlist dd li:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist dt dd:last-child:after, .hlist dt dt:last-child:after, .hlist dt li:last-child:after,<br />
.hlist li dd:last-child:after, .hlist li dt:last-child:after, .hlist li li:last-child:after {<br />
content: ")";<br />
font-weight: normal;<br />
}<br />
/* Put ordinals in front of ordered list items */<br />
.hlist ol {<br />
counter-reset: listitem;<br />
}<br />
.hlist ol > li {<br />
counter-increment: listitem;<br />
}<br />
.hlist ol > li:before {<br />
content: " " counter(listitem) "\a0";<br />
}<br />
.hlist dd ol > li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist dt ol > li:first-child:before,<br />
.hlist li ol > li:first-child:before {<br />
content: " (" counter(listitem) "\a0";<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*CREATE ACCOUNT AND USER LOGIN CSS*/<br />
<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-container {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 3em auto;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-container #userloginForm {<br />
float: unset;<br />
margin: 0;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_UserLogin .mw-ui-vform {<br />
margin: 2.5em auto 0;<br />
width: 22rem;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .firstHeading {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 1.5em auto .4em;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-container {<br />
width: 32rem;<br />
margin: 3em auto;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-container #userloginForm {<br />
float: unset;<br />
margin: 0;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-ui-vform {<br />
margin: 2.5em auto 0;<br />
width: 22rem;<br />
}<br />
.page-Special_CreateAccount .mw-createacct-benefits-container {<br />
display: none<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*Special:Book CSS'ing (added by Collection)*/<br />
#collection-download-button{<br />
float:left;<br />
}<br />
#downloadButton{<br />
cursor:pointer;<br />
}<br />
.collection-maintenance-box{<br />
display:none;<br />
}</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=ProleWiki:Main_page/styles.css&diff=64402ProleWiki:Main page/styles.css2024-03-20T15:58:59Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div>.mainpage-body {<br />
margin:auto;<br />
}<br />
<br />
#mainpage-banner span<br />
{<br />
display: inline-block;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
content: url(/resources/assets/mainpage/mainpageheader_en.png);<br />
border-radius:12px;<br />
<br />
}<br />
.mainpage-banner-overlay {<br />
position: absolute;<br />
top: 65px;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*adding icons to new quick links*/<br />
.mainpage-articles>:after{<br />
content:"";}<br />
.mainpage-library{<br />
content:"";<br />
}<br />
.mainpage-essays{<br />
content:"";}<br />
.mainpage-categories{<br />
content:"";}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-header {<br />
display: flex;<br />
margin: 2em 5em;<br />
align-items:baseline;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-intro {<br />
flex: 2;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-intro h1 {<br />
font-size: 2.5em;<br />
border: none;<br />
margin: 0 0 .15em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-intro p {<br />
font-size: 1.1em;<br />
line-height: 1.7em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-stats {<br />
display: flex;<br />
align-items: center;<br />
margin:auto;<br />
}<br />
.header-stats ul {<br />
list-style: none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
@media screen and (max-width: 800px) {<br />
.mainpage-header {<br />
flex-direction: column;<br />
margin:2em;<br />
}<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-frame {<br />
box-shadow: 0 0 .3em #999;<br />
border-radius: 1em;<br />
width:100%;<br />
}<br />
.mainpage-frame:after {<br />
display: block;<br />
content: "";<br />
clear: both;<br />
}<br />
.separator {<br />
width:5%;<br />
margin:1em auto;<br />
}<br />
.frame-header {<br />
background-color:#b50014;<br />
border-radius: 1em 1em 0.25em 0.25em;<br />
color: #fff;<br />
padding: .4em .8em .5em;<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
}<br />
.frame-header:before {<br />
display: inline-block;<br />
/* Add some content in order to get normal line height, then make it transparent */<br />
content: "x";<br />
color: transparent;<br />
width: 40px;<br />
opacity: .7;<br />
/*[[File:Hamsickwhite.svg]]*/<br />
background-image: url(https://shared.prolewiki.org/uploads/3/3d/Hamsickwhite.svg);<br />
background-size: contain;<br />
background-repeat: no-repeat;<br />
background-position: left center;<br />
}<br />
.frame-body {<br />
padding: 1em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*bringing some of the bootstrap framework*/<br />
.frame-container{ /* ideally this should be the first <div> tag on the page and EVERYTHING is contained in it */<br />
display:flex;<br />
align-self:flex-start;<br />
flex-flow:row wrap;<br />
gap:15px;<br />
margin-bottom:2rem;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.col-1{flex:0 0 auto;width:8%}<br />
.col-2{flex:0 0 auto;width:15%}<br />
.col-3{flex:0 0 auto;width:24%}<br />
.col-4{flex:0 0 auto;width:32%}<br />
.col-5{flex:0 0 auto;width:40%}<br />
.col-6{flex:0 0 auto;width:49%}<br />
.col-7{flex:0 0 auto;width:57%}<br />
.col-8{flex:0 0 auto;width:65%}<br />
.col-9{flex:0 0 auto;width:76%}<br />
.col-10{flex:0 0 auto;width:84%}<br />
.col-11{flex:0 0 auto;width:90%}<br />
.col-12{flex:0 0 auto;width:100%}<br />
<br />
@media only screen and (max-width:768px){<br />
.col-1,.col-2,.col-3,.col-4,.col-5,.col-6,.col-7,.col-8,.col-9,.col-10,.col-11,.col-12{<br />
width:100%;<br />
}<br />
.frame-container{<br />
margin-bottom:15px; /* should be same as flex gap */<br />
}<br />
}</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=ProleWiki:Main_page/styles.css&diff=64401ProleWiki:Main page/styles.css2024-03-20T15:37:48Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div>.mainpage-body {<br />
margin:auto;<br />
}<br />
<br />
#mainpage-banner span<br />
{<br />
display: inline-block;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
content: url(/resources/assets/mainpage/mainpageheader_en.png);<br />
border-radius:12px;<br />
<br />
}<br />
.mainpage-banner-overlay {<br />
position: absolute;<br />
top: 65px;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*adding icons to new quick links*/<br />
.mainpage-articles>:after{<br />
content:"";}<br />
.mainpage-library{<br />
content:"";<br />
/*background-image: linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url(/load.php?modules=oojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-citation&image=book&format=original&skin=citizen);*/<br />
}<br />
.mainpage-essays{<br />
content:"";}<br />
.mainpage-categories{<br />
content:"";}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-header {<br />
display: flex;<br />
margin: 2em 5em;<br />
align-items:baseline;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-intro {<br />
flex: 2;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-intro h1 {<br />
font-size: 2.5em;<br />
border: none;<br />
margin: 0 0 .15em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-intro p {<br />
font-size: 1.1em;<br />
line-height: 1.7em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-stats {<br />
display: flex;<br />
align-items: center;<br />
margin:auto;<br />
}<br />
.header-stats ul {<br />
list-style: none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
@media screen and (max-width: 800px) {<br />
.mainpage-header {<br />
flex-direction: column;<br />
margin:2em;<br />
}<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-frame {<br />
box-shadow: 0 0 .3em #999;<br />
border-radius: 1em;<br />
width:100%;<br />
}<br />
.mainpage-frame:after {<br />
display: block;<br />
content: "";<br />
clear: both;<br />
}<br />
.separator {<br />
width:5%;<br />
margin:1em auto;<br />
}<br />
.frame-header {<br />
background-color:#b50014;<br />
border-radius: 1em 1em 0.25em 0.25em;<br />
color: #fff;<br />
padding: .4em .8em .5em;<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
}<br />
.frame-header:before {<br />
display: inline-block;<br />
/* Add some content in order to get normal line height, then make it transparent */<br />
content: "x";<br />
color: transparent;<br />
width: 40px;<br />
opacity: .7;<br />
/*[[File:Hamsickwhite.svg]]*/<br />
background-image: url(https://shared.prolewiki.org/uploads/3/3d/Hamsickwhite.svg);<br />
background-size: contain;<br />
background-repeat: no-repeat;<br />
background-position: left center;<br />
}<br />
.frame-body {<br />
padding: 1em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*bringing some of the bootstrap framework*/<br />
.frame-container{ /* ideally this should be the first <div> tag on the page and EVERYTHING is contained in it */<br />
display:flex;<br />
align-self:flex-start;<br />
flex-flow:row wrap;<br />
gap:15px;<br />
margin-bottom:2rem;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.col-1{flex:0 0 auto;width:8%}<br />
.col-2{flex:0 0 auto;width:15%}<br />
.col-3{flex:0 0 auto;width:24%}<br />
.col-4{flex:0 0 auto;width:32%}<br />
.col-5{flex:0 0 auto;width:40%}<br />
.col-6{flex:0 0 auto;width:49%}<br />
.col-7{flex:0 0 auto;width:57%}<br />
.col-8{flex:0 0 auto;width:65%}<br />
.col-9{flex:0 0 auto;width:76%}<br />
.col-10{flex:0 0 auto;width:84%}<br />
.col-11{flex:0 0 auto;width:90%}<br />
.col-12{flex:0 0 auto;width:100%}<br />
<br />
@media only screen and (max-width:768px){<br />
.col-1,.col-2,.col-3,.col-4,.col-5,.col-6,.col-7,.col-8,.col-9,.col-10,.col-11,.col-12{<br />
width:100%;<br />
}<br />
.frame-container{<br />
margin-bottom:15px; /* should be same as flex gap */<br />
}<br />
}</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=ProleWiki:Main_page/styles.css&diff=64400ProleWiki:Main page/styles.css2024-03-20T15:32:34Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div>.mainpage-body {<br />
margin:auto;<br />
}<br />
<br />
#mainpage-banner span<br />
{<br />
display: inline-block;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
content: url(/resources/assets/mainpage/mainpageheader_en.png);<br />
border-radius:12px;<br />
<br />
}<br />
.mainpage-banner-overlay {<br />
position: absolute;<br />
top: 65px;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*adding icons to new quick links*/<br />
.mainpage-articles>:after{<br />
content:"";}<br />
.mainpage-library{<br />
content:url(https://en.prolewiki.org/load.php?modules=oojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-citation&image=book&format=original&skin=citizen);}<br />
.mainpage-essays{<br />
content:"";}<br />
.mainpage-categories{<br />
content:"";}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-header {<br />
display: flex;<br />
margin: 2em 5em;<br />
align-items:baseline;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-intro {<br />
flex: 2;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-intro h1 {<br />
font-size: 2.5em;<br />
border: none;<br />
margin: 0 0 .15em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-intro p {<br />
font-size: 1.1em;<br />
line-height: 1.7em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-stats {<br />
display: flex;<br />
align-items: center;<br />
margin:auto;<br />
}<br />
.header-stats ul {<br />
list-style: none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
@media screen and (max-width: 800px) {<br />
.mainpage-header {<br />
flex-direction: column;<br />
margin:2em;<br />
}<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-frame {<br />
box-shadow: 0 0 .3em #999;<br />
border-radius: 1em;<br />
width:100%;<br />
}<br />
.mainpage-frame:after {<br />
display: block;<br />
content: "";<br />
clear: both;<br />
}<br />
.separator {<br />
width:5%;<br />
margin:1em auto;<br />
}<br />
.frame-header {<br />
background-color:#b50014;<br />
border-radius: 1em 1em 0.25em 0.25em;<br />
color: #fff;<br />
padding: .4em .8em .5em;<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
}<br />
.frame-header:before {<br />
display: inline-block;<br />
/* Add some content in order to get normal line height, then make it transparent */<br />
content: "x";<br />
color: transparent;<br />
width: 40px;<br />
opacity: .7;<br />
/*[[File:Hamsickwhite.svg]]*/<br />
background-image: url(https://shared.prolewiki.org/uploads/3/3d/Hamsickwhite.svg);<br />
background-size: contain;<br />
background-repeat: no-repeat;<br />
background-position: left center;<br />
}<br />
.frame-body {<br />
padding: 1em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*bringing some of the bootstrap framework*/<br />
.frame-container{ /* ideally this should be the first <div> tag on the page and EVERYTHING is contained in it */<br />
display:flex;<br />
align-self:flex-start;<br />
flex-flow:row wrap;<br />
gap:15px;<br />
margin-bottom:2rem;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.col-1{flex:0 0 auto;width:8%}<br />
.col-2{flex:0 0 auto;width:15%}<br />
.col-3{flex:0 0 auto;width:24%}<br />
.col-4{flex:0 0 auto;width:32%}<br />
.col-5{flex:0 0 auto;width:40%}<br />
.col-6{flex:0 0 auto;width:49%}<br />
.col-7{flex:0 0 auto;width:57%}<br />
.col-8{flex:0 0 auto;width:65%}<br />
.col-9{flex:0 0 auto;width:76%}<br />
.col-10{flex:0 0 auto;width:84%}<br />
.col-11{flex:0 0 auto;width:90%}<br />
.col-12{flex:0 0 auto;width:100%}<br />
<br />
@media only screen and (max-width:768px){<br />
.col-1,.col-2,.col-3,.col-4,.col-5,.col-6,.col-7,.col-8,.col-9,.col-10,.col-11,.col-12{<br />
width:100%;<br />
}<br />
.frame-container{<br />
margin-bottom:15px; /* should be same as flex gap */<br />
}<br />
}</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=ProleWiki:Main_page/styles.css&diff=64399ProleWiki:Main page/styles.css2024-03-20T15:31:56Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div>.mainpage-body {<br />
margin:auto;<br />
}<br />
<br />
#mainpage-banner span<br />
{<br />
display: inline-block;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
content: url(/resources/assets/mainpage/mainpageheader_en.png);<br />
border-radius:12px;<br />
<br />
}<br />
.mainpage-banner-overlay {<br />
position: absolute;<br />
top: 65px;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*adding icons to new quick links*/<br />
.mainpage-articles>:after{<br />
content:"";}<br />
.mainpage-library{<br />
content:"https://en.prolewiki.org/load.php?modules=oojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-citation&image=book&format=original&skin=citizen";}<br />
.mainpage-essays{<br />
content:"";}<br />
.mainpage-categories{<br />
content:"";}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-header {<br />
display: flex;<br />
margin: 2em 5em;<br />
align-items:baseline;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-intro {<br />
flex: 2;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-intro h1 {<br />
font-size: 2.5em;<br />
border: none;<br />
margin: 0 0 .15em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-intro p {<br />
font-size: 1.1em;<br />
line-height: 1.7em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-stats {<br />
display: flex;<br />
align-items: center;<br />
margin:auto;<br />
}<br />
.header-stats ul {<br />
list-style: none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
@media screen and (max-width: 800px) {<br />
.mainpage-header {<br />
flex-direction: column;<br />
margin:2em;<br />
}<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-frame {<br />
box-shadow: 0 0 .3em #999;<br />
border-radius: 1em;<br />
width:100%;<br />
}<br />
.mainpage-frame:after {<br />
display: block;<br />
content: "";<br />
clear: both;<br />
}<br />
.separator {<br />
width:5%;<br />
margin:1em auto;<br />
}<br />
.frame-header {<br />
background-color:#b50014;<br />
border-radius: 1em 1em 0.25em 0.25em;<br />
color: #fff;<br />
padding: .4em .8em .5em;<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
}<br />
.frame-header:before {<br />
display: inline-block;<br />
/* Add some content in order to get normal line height, then make it transparent */<br />
content: "x";<br />
color: transparent;<br />
width: 40px;<br />
opacity: .7;<br />
/*[[File:Hamsickwhite.svg]]*/<br />
background-image: url(https://shared.prolewiki.org/uploads/3/3d/Hamsickwhite.svg);<br />
background-size: contain;<br />
background-repeat: no-repeat;<br />
background-position: left center;<br />
}<br />
.frame-body {<br />
padding: 1em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*bringing some of the bootstrap framework*/<br />
.frame-container{ /* ideally this should be the first <div> tag on the page and EVERYTHING is contained in it */<br />
display:flex;<br />
align-self:flex-start;<br />
flex-flow:row wrap;<br />
gap:15px;<br />
margin-bottom:2rem;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.col-1{flex:0 0 auto;width:8%}<br />
.col-2{flex:0 0 auto;width:15%}<br />
.col-3{flex:0 0 auto;width:24%}<br />
.col-4{flex:0 0 auto;width:32%}<br />
.col-5{flex:0 0 auto;width:40%}<br />
.col-6{flex:0 0 auto;width:49%}<br />
.col-7{flex:0 0 auto;width:57%}<br />
.col-8{flex:0 0 auto;width:65%}<br />
.col-9{flex:0 0 auto;width:76%}<br />
.col-10{flex:0 0 auto;width:84%}<br />
.col-11{flex:0 0 auto;width:90%}<br />
.col-12{flex:0 0 auto;width:100%}<br />
<br />
@media only screen and (max-width:768px){<br />
.col-1,.col-2,.col-3,.col-4,.col-5,.col-6,.col-7,.col-8,.col-9,.col-10,.col-11,.col-12{<br />
width:100%;<br />
}<br />
.frame-container{<br />
margin-bottom:15px; /* should be same as flex gap */<br />
}<br />
}</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=ProleWiki:Main_page/styles.css&diff=64398ProleWiki:Main page/styles.css2024-03-20T15:28:18Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div>.mainpage-body {<br />
margin:auto;<br />
}<br />
<br />
#mainpage-banner span<br />
{<br />
display: inline-block;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
content: url(/resources/assets/mainpage/mainpageheader_en.png);<br />
border-radius:12px;<br />
<br />
}<br />
.mainpage-banner-overlay {<br />
position: absolute;<br />
top: 65px;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*adding icons to new quick links*/<br />
.mainpage-articles>:after{<br />
content:"test";<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-header {<br />
display: flex;<br />
margin: 2em 5em;<br />
align-items:baseline;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-intro {<br />
flex: 2;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-intro h1 {<br />
font-size: 2.5em;<br />
border: none;<br />
margin: 0 0 .15em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-intro p {<br />
font-size: 1.1em;<br />
line-height: 1.7em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.header-stats {<br />
display: flex;<br />
align-items: center;<br />
margin:auto;<br />
}<br />
.header-stats ul {<br />
list-style: none;<br />
}<br />
<br />
@media screen and (max-width: 800px) {<br />
.mainpage-header {<br />
flex-direction: column;<br />
margin:2em;<br />
}<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-frame {<br />
box-shadow: 0 0 .3em #999;<br />
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.frame-body {<br />
padding: 1em;<br />
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<br />
/*bringing some of the bootstrap framework*/<br />
.frame-container{ /* ideally this should be the first <div> tag on the page and EVERYTHING is contained in it */<br />
display:flex;<br />
align-self:flex-start;<br />
flex-flow:row wrap;<br />
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margin-bottom:2rem;<br />
}<br />
<br />
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.col-6{flex:0 0 auto;width:49%}<br />
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.col-12{flex:0 0 auto;width:100%}<br />
<br />
@media only screen and (max-width:768px){<br />
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.frame-container{<br />
margin-bottom:15px; /* should be same as flex gap */<br />
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}</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=ProleWiki:Main_page/Content&diff=64397ProleWiki:Main page/Content2024-03-20T15:26:56Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div><templatestyles src="ProleWiki:Main page/styles.css/><br />
<!--------------------------------------------<br />
MAIN HEADER<br />
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<hr />
<div>.mainpage-body {<br />
margin:auto;<br />
}<br />
<br />
#mainpage-banner span<br />
{<br />
display: inline-block;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
content: url(/resources/assets/mainpage/mainpageheader_en.png);<br />
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<br />
}<br />
.mainpage-banner-overlay {<br />
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top: 65px;<br />
width: 100%;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*adding icons to new quick links*/<br />
.mainpage-articles>p::before{<br />
content:"test";<br />
}<br />
<br />
.mainpage-header {<br />
display: flex;<br />
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}<br />
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}<br />
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}<br />
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margin:auto;<br />
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list-style: none;<br />
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margin:1em auto;<br />
}<br />
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background-color:#b50014;<br />
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color: #fff;<br />
padding: .4em .8em .5em;<br />
font-weight: bold;<br />
}<br />
.frame-header:before {<br />
display: inline-block;<br />
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content: "x";<br />
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background-image: url(https://shared.prolewiki.org/uploads/3/3d/Hamsickwhite.svg);<br />
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background-repeat: no-repeat;<br />
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}<br />
.frame-body {<br />
padding: 1em;<br />
}<br />
<br />
/*bringing some of the bootstrap framework*/<br />
.frame-container{ /* ideally this should be the first <div> tag on the page and EVERYTHING is contained in it */<br />
display:flex;<br />
align-self:flex-start;<br />
flex-flow:row wrap;<br />
gap:15px;<br />
margin-bottom:2rem;<br />
}<br />
<br />
.col-1{flex:0 0 auto;width:8%}<br />
.col-2{flex:0 0 auto;width:15%}<br />
.col-3{flex:0 0 auto;width:24%}<br />
.col-4{flex:0 0 auto;width:32%}<br />
.col-5{flex:0 0 auto;width:40%}<br />
.col-6{flex:0 0 auto;width:49%}<br />
.col-7{flex:0 0 auto;width:57%}<br />
.col-8{flex:0 0 auto;width:65%}<br />
.col-9{flex:0 0 auto;width:76%}<br />
.col-10{flex:0 0 auto;width:84%}<br />
.col-11{flex:0 0 auto;width:90%}<br />
.col-12{flex:0 0 auto;width:100%}<br />
<br />
@media only screen and (max-width:768px){<br />
.col-1,.col-2,.col-3,.col-4,.col-5,.col-6,.col-7,.col-8,.col-9,.col-10,.col-11,.col-12{<br />
width:100%;<br />
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.frame-container{<br />
margin-bottom:15px; /* should be same as flex gap */<br />
}<br />
}</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=ProleWiki:Main_page/Content&diff=64395ProleWiki:Main page/Content2024-03-20T15:24:31Z<p>CriticalResist: added quick links to major content spaces under header image</p>
<hr />
<div><templatestyles src="ProleWiki:Main page/styles.css/><br />
<!--------------------------------------------<br />
MAIN HEADER<br />
---------------------------------------------><br />
<div class="mainpage-body"><div id="mainpage-banner" class="mainpage-headerimage"><span></span></div><br />
<br />
<div class="frame-container col-12" style="justify-content:space-around;font-size:1.1em;word-spacing:1.2em;"> <b><p><span class="mainpage-articles">[[Special:AllPages|Articles]]</span> <span class="mainpage-library">[[Library]]</span> <span class="mainpage-essays">[[Essays]]</span> <span class="mainpage-categories">[[Categories]]</span></p></b> </div><br />
<br />
<div class="mainpage-header"><br />
<div class="header-intro"><h1>Welcome to ProleWiki!</h1><br />
<p>We are [[ProleWiki:About|ProleWiki]], a [[communism|communist]] ([[Marxism-Leninism|Marxist-Leninist]]) project founded in September 2020. Our aim is to build an [[anti-imperialism|anti-imperialist]] and [[Proletariat|proletarian]] collaborative encyclopedia, with information on current events, communist parties worldwide, countries, and more. We also host a [[ProleWiki:Library|library of texts]] important to the international proletarian movement, from [[Marx]] and [[Engels]] to [[Lenin]] and [[Stalin]]. Since our beginning in 2020, we currently have {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} articles and counting.</p><br />
</div><br />
<div class="header-stats"><br />
<ul><br />
<li>Total number of articles: '''{{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}'''</li><br />
<li>Number of uploaded files: '''{{NUMBEROFFILES}}'''</li><br />
<li>Number of comrades: '''{{NUMBERINGROUP:trusted}} '''</li><br />
<li>Number of edits: '''{{NUMBEROFEDITS}}'''</li><br />
</ul><br />
</div><br />
</div><br />
<!--------------------------------------------<br />
Featured, News and Contribute<br />
---------------------------------------------> <br />
<div class="frame-container col-12"><br />
<div class="mainpage-frame col-8"><br />
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</div></div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=History_of_China&diff=64390History of China2024-03-20T04:58:00Z<p>CriticalResist: paragraph sourcing fix</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:China-topography-features.jpg|thumb|304x304px|Topographical map of China showing the Yellow river (in the North) and the Yangtze river (in the south)]]''This page is about the history of China until the establishment of the People's Republic. For the history of the People's Republic of China specifically, see [[People's Republic of China#History|History of the People's Republic of China]].''<br />
<br />
The history of China dates back to more than 5000 years ago.<ref name=":0" /> <br />
<br />
== Geography of China ==<br />
According to Dr. Ken Hammond of the New Mexico State University, to understand how China (中国, ''Zhōngguó,'' , literally the "Middle Kingdom") materially developed throughout its history, it's important to first understand the geography of the country.<ref name=":0">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 1: Geography and Archeology|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
The North China plain, at the mouth of the Yellow river (''Huáng Hé'', 黄河), is to this day the agricultural heartland of China thanks to its low and flat terrain as well as the irrigation it receives from the river, and this plain is where Chinese civilisation first emerged.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
Conversely, the South China plain is a region of hills and valleys, mostly south of the Yangtze river (''Cháng Jiāng'', 长江, literally "long river"). Settlements in the south are divided off one another by these mountains, and river valleys tend to be where permanent settlements developed.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
=== Rivers ===<br />
Two important Chinese rivers find their source in the Tibetan plateau: The Yellow river and the Yangtze river.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
The Yellow River has shaped China for millennia. It snakes around Northern China until it empties into the Yellow sea, in the province of [[Shandong province|Shandong]]. While the Yellow River has historically represented a challenge to China as it was prone to flooding, these floods brought with them fertile soil and irrigation to crops, and the river has always been primordial to the development of Chinese civilisation.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
The Yangtze River further in the south has also been very important to Chinese civilisation historically, but less so than the Yellow river. The Yangtze river, while prone to flooding both historically and in the modern day, has played a huge part in agriculture and sustaining life around it. The Yangtze river's flooding was dealt with in part through the [[Three Gorges dam]].<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
== Prehistoric and early historic period ==<br />
<br />
=== Traditional Chinese historiography===<br />
Chinese history has been studied by its people since Ancient times, and forms the basis of the traditional Chinese historiography. Their history begins around the time of the sage kings, or sage emperors, figures of antiquity and prehistory (i.e. that predate writing). Thus historiography, which is the writing of history itself, has been going on in China for millennia. Dr. Ken Hammond notes that in many places, this historiography has been proven correct thanks to archeological records found after the fact.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
==== Sage kings Yao and Shun====<br />
One of the first and notable king in traditional Chinese historiography is Yao (尧), who was the first to pass the throne down to a successor. Yao's own son was considered to be weak and decadent, and so Yao scoured his kingdom until he found Shun (帝舜) who had strong moral virtues and picked him as his successor.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
The story of king Yao is an interesting contrast to the practices of succession in later ruling dynasties in China, where succession was kept to a single family. According to Dr. Ken Hammond, this story is important in Chinese historiography because it highlights a quality, that of having a strong moral character, that was considered important throughout Chinese history.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
This story, as well as the virtue of morals, would later found the premises for the [[Mandate of Heaven]] (''Tiānmìng'', 天命, literally Heaven's command) in China.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
===Early societies===<br />
[[File:Longshan-black-pottery-vase-7480.jpg|thumb|330x330px|Longshan black pottery vase dated around 2nd millenium BC.]]<br />
According to Dr. Ken Hammond, the population of China itself has evolved in complex ways. The earliest people who would later call themselves the Chinese (''Zhongguo ren'', literally "People of the Middle Country") lived in the North China plain. The earliest societies to emerge from this area were confederations of numerous tribal groups who defined themselves in contrast to those who were not Chinese, i.e. people who were not civilized. A number of terms exist in Chinese to define these people that are best translated to as "barbarians" in English (barbarians being what the [[Ancient Greece|Ancient Greeks]] similarly called any people who were not [[Greece|Greek]]).<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
Excavated pottery remains suggest that a single culture came to dominate the whole of the North China plain some 4000 to 6000 years ago. Characteristic pottery was discovered as originating from Dragon Mountain (''Lóngshān'', 龙山), and later showed up in other archeological sites.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
===Writing===<br />
One key element that made this first Chinese society define themselves as civilized (as opposed to what they defined as their barbarian neighbors) was a system of writing, which their neighbors did not possess. There is not much transitional evidence to the emergence of writing in China. That is to say, archeological evidence shows that once writing appears in China, it showed up as a fairly fully developed system, suggesting that writing appeared fairly quickly.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
===Mass migration===<br />
As Chinese civilisation expanded, neighboring peoples, particularly in the South, were either displaced or assimilated. The Vietnamese and Thai people, for example, formerly lived in southern China and were displaced as part of this expansion to the South.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
Some of these populations were forced further west, on higher elevation, and have remained there since then. Today, they are generally called hill tribe communities, and many of these groups retain distinctive identities in China: they retain their own language, their own cultural practice, and their own religion. Today, they constitute around 5% of the population of China. There are 54 officially recognized ethnic minorities in China.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
This process happened around 2500 to 2000 years ago.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
== The first slave states==<br />
The emergence of bronze was critical to China's future development. Bronze gave rise to an industry of mining, smelting, and shaping the metal into tools, weapons, jewellery, etc. which created culture in the various populations that inhabited what is now China. This transition from the neolithic to the bronze age also marked the transition from prehistory to history.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
===The Xia dynasty===<br />
According to Dr. Hammond, traditional Chinese historiography considers the Xia (''Xià Cháo,'' 夏朝) to be the first dynasty in Chinese history. The Xia however did not leave any written records, but did leave a clear demarcation to prior forms of societies before them.<ref name=":1">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 2: The first dynasties|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref> Interestingly enough, some scholars believe that the Erlitou civilization along the Yellow River was the site of the original Xia dynasty.<ref>Allan, Sarah (2007). "Erlitou and the Formation of Chinese Civilization: Toward a New Paradigm". ''The Journal of Asian Studies''. '''66''' (2): 461–496. doi:10.1017/S002191180700054X. S2CID 162264919. <br />
<br />
pp 489 - 490</ref><br />
<br />
The Xia period began roughly around 2200 BCE. The Xia built palace architecture, large structures built on rammed earth platforms (compressed and firm layers of dirt), a method that would be used in China for the coming millennia. The Xia also saw the emergence of [[class society]]; as agriculture and pottery was creating a surplus of food, fewer farmers were needed, and a class of "non-farmers" (artisans, warriors, spiritual leaders and bureaucrats) emerged, forming the basis of Chinese class society.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
Dr. Hammond theorizes that this emergent class of leaders solidified their power by performing rituals for the populace. The Xia's ancestors performed [[totemism]], a practice in which animal spirits are associated with particular tribal or clan families. In the Xia dynasty, the worship of totems of one particular family was transformed into a royal ancestral cult. In other words, not only the spirits of animals, but the spirits of the ancestors of the present day rulers came to be seen as divine powers. This further solidified the power of the royal family and laid the foundation for [[Monarchism|monarchy]] in Chinese society.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
The Xia civilisation ultimately did not leave many details as to their way of life, and most of their records came from the subsequent Shang dynasty, who shared many consistent features with the Xia.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
===The Shang dynasty===<br />
The Shang dynasty (''Shāng Cháo,'' 商朝), named after the royal family, begins around 1500 BCE. Dr. Hammond notes that traditional Chinese historiography uses a very elaborate and precise chronology which would place the Shang dynasty at 1766 BC, but that modern archeological investigations cannot confirm this date, and so the actual date of their foundation remains vague.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
==== Oracle bones divination ====<br />
[[File:Oracle bone inscriptions.png|thumb|337x337px|The abdominal parts of two tortoise shells with divinatory inscriptions excavated at the site of Yinxu, Anyang, Henan province, China.]]<br />
The Shang dynasty has left many written records about their life, as they performed oracle bone divination (''jiǎgǔ'', 甲骨). In this practice, people would ask a question to the royal family's ancestors on either oxen shoulder blade bone or the underside of turtle shells. The question would be carved on the bone by a diviner, the class of people who could read and write. The bone would then be poked by a sharp, heated implement during daily ceremonies, which caused it to crack. The way the bone cracked was then interpreted as an answer by the ancestors to the question carved into the bone. The Shang took their written records even further and kept records on the ''results'' of the divination. This means they kept record of not only the questions, but also the answers and actual outcome of the divinations.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
Oracle bone divination was so commonplace in the Shang period that to this day, tens of thousands of bones have been dug up.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
Dr. Hammond notes that these divination rituals were important to maintain the power of the dynasty and diviners, but the bronze culture was also equally important. Bronze cutlery (such as wine cups, plates or pans) were used to present offerings to the ruler's ancestors. After these offerings and sacrifices, which took place in great halls, the king would offer the "physical remains" (the offerings that had not been consumed by the ancestors) to the populace in great feasts, as a way to remind the people of his wealth and power.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
==== Succession of power ====<br />
The Shang dynasty had a novel way of handling succession. In their time, life expectancy was not very long -- one could hope to live up to 30 on average. It was thus very common that the Shang king would die before his oldest son was old enough to succeed him. Because of this, the kingship passed from oldest to youngest brother. Then the eldest son of the eldest king would take over, and the process would repeat. 26 kings were recorded during the Shang period, which lasted for around 500 years (an average of one king every twenty years).<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
The Shang also built royal capitals, which was a continuation of the Xia palace architecture on rammed earth structures. However, they didn't seem to stay in them a very long time: they had nine capitals during their 500 years rule. These buildings were bigger and more decorated than their Xia predecessors, likely as a way to display their wealth and power.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
==== Shang state ====<br />
[[File:Approximate territory of the Shang dynasty.png|thumb|Approximate territory of the Shang dynasty, in green.]]The Shang state was a federation of people. In other words, there was at the center of the system the Shang ruling family, followed by their blood relations, and then people who were not blood relations to that family but were part of the Shang state. The Shang dynasty spread relatively far, and the federated people that were part of this state played a primordial role in its upkeep and border security. As such, due to the size of the Shang empire, reports, letters and communication from the king to his subordinates would be sent in writing, which characterizes the Shang as a literate state.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
The Shang state was quite elaborate and practiced division of labour from early on. Bronze objects, for example, were made with casts in which the molten bronze was poured. Their bronze industry -- mining the metal, smelting, refining, blending the metals together, the design of the objects, etc. was all organized by the Shang state and required different laborers and artisans for each step of the process. This involved the organisation of a consequent number of people as well as running activities at a number of sites (the mines, for example, were not located in the same place as the furnaces).<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
This elaborate, organized system of production required that the Shang state had a capacity to sustain its people, e.g. feeding them, clothing them, housing them, etc. This is how archeologists know that the Shang also had an elaborate taxation system, which also appeared on oracle bones. Tributes were paid by subordinates who were part of this federation to the Shang royal family and formed the basis of taxation revenue. Furthermore, the organisation of the mining industry further established the authority of the royal family and their kin.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
The Shang practiced [[slavery]], which was the first major mode of production in the world and allowed them to sustain this elaborate society and state. Slaves, as was usual in the earliest incarnation of the institution, were usually prisoners of war and criminals.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
==== Decline of the Shang period ====<br />
The people not under Shang authority were a constant concern and often came up in oracle bones. Since the Shang recorded every outcome of oracle bone divination, these records show that there were frequent devastating raids from outside populations. Notably, people were recorded as being taken away as slaves during these raids.<ref name=":1" /><br />
<br />
Security was a critical function of the Shang state but eventually found itself in a contradiction. The Shang dynasty needed to deploy and maintain soldiers in the border regions, where the tributary non-Shang people lived, so that they could receive their tribute and not have it stolen during raids. Over time, this created resentment from these populations, especially when security started breaking down and raids became more frequent.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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This unrest eventually boiled over to rebellion, when the tributary peoples to the Shang overthrew the dynasty and established the Zhou dynasty as their successors.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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==Western Zhou==<br />
<br />
=== Premises ===<br />
The Zhou people (''Zhōu'', 周), located on the western side of the Shang Empire, were a tributary community of the empire, with a mythological history of their own. Their early history involves a change from a hunting-gathering society, before developing to an agricultural society, going back to hunting and gathering, and finally settling down as more permanent farmers. According to Dr. Hammond, these societal changes reflect the environmental conditions at the time (some 4000 years ago), when northwestern China was wetter, cooler, and the weather had not settled permanently, which made food sources change over time.<ref name=":02">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 3: The Zhou Conquest|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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After the Zhou settled into sedentary agricultural communities, they became affiliated as a tributary state to the Shang, a process that left them resentful of their new lords. Around the late 12th century BCE (-1150), as the Shang dynasty was facing external raids they could not defend against, the Zhou rebelled against their overlords and seized power from them.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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One notable advancement of the Zhou dynasty was that they marked a break way from slavery and into early [[Feudalism|feudal]] society (Fēngjiàn, 封建) which worked differently from the European feudal system.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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=== War against the Shang ===<br />
Tai Zhou, a Zhou king, organized a long-term plan to take over the Shang. In a first move, the Zhou people followed the Wei river eastward and resettled closer to the Shang. Secondly, they sustained greater communication with other subordinated people of the Shang Empire, particularly on the west side of the Shang territory so as to create the alliances necessary to overthrow the Shang kings. Finally, around the year 1050 BC, the Zhou initiated a war against the Shang. According to Dr. Hammond, the war seems to have been initiated by Wen Zhou (as Tai Zhou had died by then), referred to as a king in historical records, but his son Wu was the one who took the throne from the Shang.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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While the exact date of this war has been lost, paleo-astronomers have narrowed down the range of possible dates to within a few years of 1045 BCE based on the study of celestial events described at that time.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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On that date, the Zhou people and their allies marched to the capital of the Shang (modern day Anyang), and set themselves up on the west side of a river. On the morning of the battle, the young king Wu gave a speech calling for the overthrow of the Shang and then led his armies forward into the city. A number of ancient documents that have survived to this day describe the battle that took place on that day; the Classic of Documents contains a purported transcript of the speech king Wu gave on that day as well as a document describing the battle. It is said that on this day, blood flowed so heavily in the streets that wood was seen floating in streams of it.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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The battle concluded with the killing of the Shang king; the Shang state was thus seized by the Zhou and king Wu crowned.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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==== The duke of Zhou ====<br />
King Wu died only three years into his rule as the Zhou king. His son, Cheng, was proclaimed the new king but was too young to rule, and so a regency was organized. Wu's younger brother, known as Ji Dan, was the principal regent for the young king.<ref>{{Citation|author=R. Eno|year=2010|title=Indiana University, History G380 – class text readings – Spring 2010 – R. Eno|title-url=https://scholarworks.iu.edu/iuswrrest/api/core/bitstreams/3357825b-f345-4b0a-a796-23c021efcde1/content|publisher=Indiana University}}</ref> He was seen as a very sage and moral character, as he could have easily usurped the throne from the young king, but instead was happy to serve as an advisor.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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The duke of Zhou thus became a very important figure in Chinese history, even serving as a model for Confucius some 500 years later.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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=== Migration of the Shang ===<br />
Although the Shang had been defeated, the Zhou did not exterminate them. The Shang were moved away from the capital of Anyang to the south and east and given a territory of their own, made into subordinates of the Zhou. They were allowed to retain their customs, including the worship of their royal family's ancestors. To this day, certain families in southeastern Anhui province trace their family all the way back to the Shang.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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=== Establishment of Chang'an capital ===<br />
At the same time, the Zhou moved the capital (and thus center) of their empire from Anyang back to their own ancestral homelands in the valley of the Wei river. They built a new capital at Chang'an (modern-day city of Xian), which served as a capital for a number of later dynasties.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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The Zhou also established a pattern for the design of capital cities which was later picked up by subsequent dynasties. Their city was designed to be the physical representation of a well-ordered world, drawing back to the Mandate of Heaven. The city of Chang'an was laid out as a square surrounded by a wall, and oriented on a north-south axis with a compound in the northern part that formed the residence of the ruler. In the southern part of the city were residential areas for the common people, markets, and other centers of activity for daily life. Surrounding the city in the four cardinal directions (north, west, south, east) were ritual complexes -- altars and other temples for the performing of sacrifices and other ceremonies.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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=== Creation of the Mandate of Heaven ===<br />
To understand the [[Mandate of Heaven]], it is important to understand what Heaven is in China. According to Dr. Hammond, the Chinese people in earlier history (including the Zhou) worshiped what we translate as Heaven (''tian''). Tian should not be thought of as the Christian Heaven, but rather sort of a natural operating system, the overarching mechanism that governs the functioning of everything in the universe. Tian should be understood as an all-encompassing organic system, and not as a divinity or god. However, it does have the capacity for action. One such capacity is the bestowing or withdrawing of the Mandate of Heaven.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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The Zhou were the ones who developed this doctrine to justify their conquest of the Shang, arguing that there was a "proper" way for society to be organized, which was focalised around a good ruler. since the Shang were unable to protect their tributary people from raids (and thus did not maintain the livelihood and prosperity of the people), they were unfit to rule and Heaven (tian) had withdrawn the Mandate from the Shang and given it to the Zhou, as the Zhou were able (or allowed) to defeat the Shang and seize power from them.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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The Mandate of Heaven would become central to all political transitions from one dynasty (or form of government) to another, even enduring to this day in the People's Republic. The Mandate formed instant justification for an overthrow of a dynasty: if one succeeded in seizing the state, then they had clearly received the Mandate of Heaven. If they failed, then they clearly had not received the Mandate and thus the old dynasty would keep ruling.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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For the first time, the state was not the property of a ruling family but instead, drawing on earlier mythical accounts of kings Yao and Shun, considered to be something that involved the moral qualities of the rulers. The Mandate is bestowed and removed by forces outside of human control, and as such the state belongs to the dynasty that was picked by Heaven to rule.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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== Eastern Zhou: Transition from slavery to feudalism ==<br />
<br />
=== Early successes ===<br />
The first two to three hundred years of Zhou rule were successful; that period was marked by territorial expansion (particularly in the south and southeast) and population growth. By the 8th century BCE, the Zhou state was four times larger than the Shang at the time of conquest in terms of territory.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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These successes lead to new administrative challenges. Governing the entire realm from the capital became difficult as it grew due to the sheer distance to cover, and the Zhou kings started delegating power to members of the royal family: brothers, cousins, etc. were sent to these regions to fulfill administrative roles. However, the Zhou soon ran out of family members to appoint and turned to military leaders, loyal to the dynasty. The practice in the Zhou kingdom was that the military commander who brought new territory to the state would be appointed its political supervisor.<ref name=":03">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 4: Fragmentation and Social Change|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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In the first few reigns of Zhou kings, this system worked well. The Zhou could appoint loyal individuals and let them take care of administrating remote regions on the border of the kingdom.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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=== Administrative challenges ===<br />
As time went by, the monarchy became an established institution -- not solely dependent on a moral king, but on the entire royal family. Members of the Zhou clan, who grew up in the royal capital, knew that they would be given a title to administrate eventually, and became complacent about it. At the same time, in local communities around the kingdom, the delegates managing these territories were the descendants of the original appointees, and thus they did not feel loyal to the Zhou dynasty, whose presence in these regions was almost null; they resented that they had to send taxes and tribute to the capital. This sentiment was particularly strong in the fertile southern and southeastern areas that produced a lot of food, but still had to send most of their surplus to the king as tribute.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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Thus these local rulers started to hold back some of the tribute they were supposed to send, while at the same time subverting the established hierarchy; records show, in fact, that at the beginning of the 8th century BCE, certain local administrators (appointed by the Zhou royal family) began to refer to themselves as kings instead of dukes, most notably in local official documents.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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=== Arrival of the Qin and moving of the capital ===<br />
In normal times, as the Zhou king heard of these developments, he would have sent troops to restore his authority on these tributary provinces. However, at the start of the 8th century BCE, a new people emerged from the western frontier of the Zhou kingdom, called the Qin. They started to raid into Zhou territory, which prompted them to move their capital far eastward, at the site of what is today the city of Luoyang, which remained a very important capital and cultural center for later dynasties.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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This move to a more secure area made the Zhou abandon their ancestral homeland in Chang'an. Because of this, the Zhou were unable to attend to the matter of local administrative appointees proclaiming themselves as kings, which was a challenge to the rule of the Zhou; as more local rulers proclaimed themselves king over their appointed lands, the legitimacy of the Zhou rule was called into question.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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The crisis took several centuries to mature: despite the challenges, the Zhou dynasty remained on the throne and ruled from Luoyang. While tributary rulers kept paying some amount of respect to the Zhou dynasty, it became clear that the Zhou did not control any territory beyond their capital.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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== Spring and Autumn period ==<br />
From the middle of the 8th century BCE to the 5th century BCE, China saw the Spring and Autumn period develop. This period gets its name from the book of the ''Spring and Autumn Annals'', a record that described the year to year events happening in the tributary state of Lu.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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The rulers of Lu claimed that they were descended from the duke of Zhou, which gave them some legitimacy on the throne over other minor states vying for power. The state of Lu was also the homeland of Confucius, whom is believed to have edited the ''Annals''.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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The Annals describe a process of sheer breakdown of the Zhou authority. As local rulers started calling themselves kings, so did they start acting like one: they set up royal courts in their holdings, began to perform rituals which were normally reserved for the king, started to wear the clothing appropriate to a king, demanded the ritual gestures from their advisors that they themselves should show to the king, etc.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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=== Rise of the hegemons ===<br />
With the breakdown of their single, unifying authority, it became impossible for the Zhou kings to restore order in the kingdom. Self-proclaimed kings started conquering their neighbors, and the kingdom erupted into war rapidly after that. In Chinese records, these kings are called ''ba wang'', translated as hegemons, understood as "kings in power, but not in right". In other words, these kings were able to rule because they had the power to do so, but were not legitimate rulers as they had not received the Mandate of Heaven, which was still with the Zhou.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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This period lasted a few hundred years and saw the number of states increase in China; from a single unified state in the 8th century BCE, there came to be more than 250 existing by the 5th century BCE, with some of them consisting only of a single town and its agricultural fields. Each of them, no matter their size, claimed to be a legitimate sovereign government. While they still acknowledged the rulership of the Zhou to some extent, this was only a performative exercise as the Zhou kings exercised no real authority outside of their domain.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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== Hundred schools of thought ==<br />
{{Main article|Chinese philosophy}}<br />
As this breakdown process took place over China, a new class slowly emerged: the ''shi'' (士, meaning advisor, scholar or general), a class of professional political administrators and advisors to kings and rulers which would come to remain very important in all later dynasties. Their role was reminiscent of the diviners of the Xia and Shang period, people who could read and write, but was wholly a product of the situation at the time: as the number of royal courts proliferated, there came a large demand for capable administrators and advisors. The ''shi'' traveled the land offering their services to different kings for a period of time, often creating fierce competition between kings for the most capable advisor. Often, they became a symbol of a ruler: a king who had a famous or capable advisor at his side was seen as a good ruler.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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The proliferation of this class also gave rise to philosophy in China (and thus Chinese philosophy), as the ''shi'' would debate each other and, in this era of great turmoil and war, began to question the fundamental order of China and rulership to understand why the Zhou kingdom broke down, and how statesmen could avoid this fate in the future.<ref name=":04">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 5: Confucianism and Daoism|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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Their influence on Chinese society was such that they survived in various ways in later dynasties, and so many of these schools of thought existed that they are today referred to as the "hundred schools of thought" (''zhūzǐ bǎijiā'', 諸子百家).<ref name=":05">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 6: The Hundred Schools|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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Some of the most famous ''shi'' of this period are [[Confucius]], [[Laozi]], and [[Sun Tzu]].<ref name=":04" /><br />
[[File:Confucius, fresco from a Western Han tomb of Dongping County, Shandong province, China.jpg|thumb|Likely the earliest depiction of Confucius, from a Western Han (202 BCE - 9 CE) fresco, found in a tomb in Shandong Province, China.|287x287px]]<br />
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=== Confucius and Confucianism ===<br />
Confucius (''Kong Fuzi'', 孔子), was a ''shi'' and perhaps the most influential figure in Chinese philosophy. He was born in the Lu state circa 551 BCE and died in that same place around 480 BCE.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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Most of the information that survived about Confucius was written down by his students and their students later on, but very little is known from his contemporaries. Confucius grew up in the state of Lu and later spent a fair amount of time travelling around eastern China as a ''shi'', offering his services to various rulers. However, Confucius was not very successful in this effort and only landed minor roles and positions as an advisor. He eventually gave up on his goal of trying to achieve political success through serving in administrations, went back to his home state of Lu and settled into the role of a teacher.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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The core of his ideas were about human relationships; if one wanted a well-ordered society in which people could live together in peace and prosperity, then he argued people needed to realize that this happened through relationships with one another. He saw the family as a microcosm of this societal relationship: they involved on the one hand bonds of duties and obligations, and on the other bonds of affection and compassion.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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==== Five great relationships ====<br />
Confucius defined a set of five great relationships, concrete examples which represented his overarching idea of all relationships in society. These are the relationship between the ruler and the subject, father and son, husband and wife, elder brother and younger brother, and the relationship between friend and friend. All of these relationships have certain characteristics; in each pair, one side plays a "leading" role and one plays a "following" role, even in the friend relationship: according to Confucius, there will always be a set of circumstances that puts one friend as a leader above the other (age, skill, etc).<ref name=":04" /><br />
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While there is a hierarchy in these relationships, they also have an aspect of reciprocity: the ruler (or father, or husband) must be a good ruler; they must fulfill their role in a proper way. If they abuse their role, then the subject (or the son, the wife, etc.) is released from the bond of obligation. The reciprocity of these relationships is what makes them work, and differentiates them from a simple domineering relationship (where the ruler would just force the subject to comply to his will). If both sides are fulfilling their roles properly then, according to Confucius, society will function properly.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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These relationships structure society, but to make them work people need to understand this system as they encounter it so they can apply it. To make that happen, Confucius relied on ritual: he saw rituals as central to the implementation of his order of relationships in daily life. Rituals are simply repeated behavior and can be as simple as a handshake (when two people meet, they shake hands) or as elaborate as a graduation ceremony, which involve hundreds of people.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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==== Analysis of the Zhou period ====<br />
When looking back at the decline of the Zhou period, Confucius attributed its downfall to the violation of the proper ritual order: when people started taking for themselves the title of king and performing the rituals of royalty at their court, they broke with the right way of ordering society and all the wars and suffering that afflicted China since then stemmed from that event.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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To fix this situation, Confucius argued for the return of the ritual order of the early Zhou rather than the chaotic disordered of the warring states period. He also advocated for the rectification of names or, in other words, to "make names fit reality" (going back to the rise of the Hegemons who usurped the title of king).<ref name=":04" /><br />
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A critical individual in this process of rectification is what Confucius called the gentleman (''jūn zǐ'', 君子, literally "noble's son"). This individual is one who models the proper ritual order and behavior in himself: he engages in learning about the past, and he seeks to approach the Dao (道, meaning "path", also spelled Tao), i.e. the way one should live in the world to manifest the rectification of rituals. As a role model, the gentleman can be emulated by others in society.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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Around 150 years after Confucius' death, a man by the name of [[Mencius]] (Meng Ke, 孟軻) picked up his work and developed Confucius' ideas further. Mencius especially turned his attention towards the relationship between a ruler and his subject, talking about the necessity of the ruler to "do the right thing", and that the people had the right to overthrow him if he failed at this duty.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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=== Daoism ===<br />
Daoism (or Taoism) was theorised by Laozi (''Lǎozǐ'', 老子, also romanised as Lao Tsu meaning "old master") and was as important and influential as Confucianism in traditional Chinese society. While Confucianism had a very proactive outlook (society will prosper if people act towards the natural order), Daoism is radically at odds with Confucianism; it is based upon a skepticism of our knowledge and [[epistemology]] (the ability to know things).<ref name=":04" /><br />
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Not much is known about Laozi, and it is not certain that he even existed. His most famous work is a book that bears his name, with most subsequent writings being attributed to a later follower by the name of Zhuangzi who wrote around the 3rd century BCE.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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For Daoists, all knowledge is arbitrary and partial. When we think about knowledge, all we're talking about is our ability to communicate: we know something is an orange, for example, because we name it an orange; names are meaningless and made up to describe things existing in reality. Thus our knowledge, Daoists argue, is partial: it is always limited and one can never know everything.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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Acting on the basis of partial knowledge will lead to consequences which can't be anticipated; in trying to make things better, we often end up making them worse.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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Zhuangzi liked to write in fables to explain his teachings, and one such fable is of an eagle soaring high in the sky who cannot discern between individual rocks and trees, it just sees patterns of color on the ground. By contrast, a small sparrow is hopping around on the ground and sees everything up close: the individual grains in the stalks of wheat, the leaves on the trees, the gravel on the road, etc. According to Zhuangzi, neither one is right in their interpretation of what they see as they're limited by their perspective. This fable illustrates the fundamental Daoist belief of questioning one's ability to know things.<ref name=":04" /> It is reminiscent of the theories of later [[Idealism|idealist]] philosophers such as [[Kant]] or [[George Berkeley|Berkeley]].<br />
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Daoists were of course worried about the troubles facing China, and in fact Laozi wrote about his vision for a well-ordered society. In his opinion, an ideal life is one in which everything one should want and need is already found in one's immediate community. Thus, wanting to conquer other states does not lead one anywhere, all it does is take one out of the proper order where one really belongs. A critical concept in Daoism is ''wu wei'' (translated as "inaction") -- not to act in a way that goes against the natural flow of things or being.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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For Daoists, the point isn't to make the world a better place (because one cannot know all the necessary information to achieve that goal), but to live in one's own proper order.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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=== Other schools of thought ===<br />
Confucianism and Daoism were at opposites. While the former advocated human action, the other advocated skepticism and inaction. These two schools of thought, while being the most influential in Chinese society, were not the only ones existing at the time of the warring states period however.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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Many of these schools were concerned with linguistics, and humankind's relationship to words in the material world. Others were concerned with military strategy, which made sense during a time of chronic wars. Sun Tzu (''Sūnzǐ'', 孙子) is certainly the most famous military thinkers to come out of the warring states period and was in great demand back in his time as well, unlike Confucius who had trouble finding employment as a political influencer. Other thinkers also explored cosmology or [[metaphysics]].<ref name=":04" /><br />
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Two significant theories of this era, which did not survive as influential schools after the warring states period, were Mohism (''Mòjiā'', 墨家 named after its founder ''Mòzǐ'', 墨子) and Legalism (''Fǎ Jiā'', 法家).<ref name=":04" /><br />
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==== Mohism ====<br />
Mohism is remembered for two aspects of its school: the doctrine of universal love and defensive warfare. Mohists believed that one should love everyone equally and treat other people the way one would like to be treated. While there are some parallels to Confucianism (for example, Confucius' famous silver rule "do not impose on others that which you yourself do not desire"), the Mohist doctrine of universal love developed as a critical response to the Confucians' theories of reciprocal relationships, especially how some relationships were more important than other. The Mohists argued that the priority given to one's family were the vector of war as ruling dynasties were themselves a family, and thus put their family's interests above other rulers'.<ref name=":05" /><br />
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The Mohists, following their doctrine, also became renowned experts in defensive warfare. Their idea was that by building up the defenses of smaller and weaker states (so that they could resist the attacks of stronger states), then aggression would cease to be a profitable course of action and they would stop fighting -- and instead pursue their interests by other less violent means. The Mohists offered their services as consultants to states which were at risk of being invaded, and in some cases proved to be quite effective (but obviously did not stop warfare entirely).<ref name=":05" /><br />
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The ideas of Mòjiā faded away as the warring states period came to an end, as they were a product of this period and ceased to be relevant in the time of peace that followed.<ref name=":05" /><br />
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==== Legalism ====<br />
Legalists had an approach on politics, government and social order that was rather different from any other schools of the time. The doctrines of legalism are associated particularly with the state of Qin -- the same one that forced the Zhou to move their capital and led to their decline soon after.<ref name=":05" /><br />
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The Qin developed a very effective military state; the whole of their society was mobilized in the army and directed towards the objective of expansion. These methods began to be formulated during the 4th century BCE by Shang Yang (''Gōngsūn Yǎng'', 公孫鞅) who was the chief minister of the Qin state at that time. His basis was simple, and revolved around rewards and punishments.<ref name=":05" /><br />
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On this basis, Shang Yang began a process that went on for over 150 years of promulgating laws, codes and regulations which gave the people in Qin society a clear understanding of what their obligations and duties were and what the consequences of failing those laws were. The idea was that by having clear laws that everybody knew and understood the consequences of breaking, then people would behave properly. The Qin proved to be truly effective in this regard, as the laws were applied equally to everyone regardless of class or status: whether they were a farmer or a general, one was punished the same for the same crime.<ref name=":05" /> <br />
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These laws were fairly harsh; punishments often involved amputation, execution or banishment even for relatively minor offenses. In theory, the harshness was mitigated by the fact that everybody knew of the punishments for breaking the law.<ref name=":05" /><br />
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In the 3rd century BCE, Han Fei (''hán fēi'', 韩非 ) developed a philosophical rationale to legalism. He himself was a ''shi'', and had worked in a number of courts before coming to the employment of the Qin for the remainder of his life. He developed a theory of human nature, theorizing that people are naturally selfish and greedy and will seek to maximise their own personal gain while minimizing their pain. In theory, by exploiting this nature, it was possible to get people to do what one wanted them to do. This theory is interesting not only because it draws parallels to modern-day [[Neoliberalism|neoliberal]] arguments and justifications, but also because it broke away from other schools at the time (such as Confucianism and Mohism) who claimed there was a natural proper order to the world and people should perform their proper roles. In legalism, the state exists for the ruler: the ruler owns the state as his private property and there is no reciprocity like in Confucianism. Thus the state is not wielded as a tool to achieve the greater good, but to do what the ruler wishes.<ref name=":05" /><br />
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The doctrines of legalism served the Qin state very well during the warring states period, as they emerged victorious after defeating the last remaining state of Chu and unified China once again under a single dynasty.<ref name=":05" /><br />
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== Warring states period ==<br />
[[File:Warring states of china and Qin contest, circa 250 BCE.png|thumb|356x356px|In red, the territory controlled by the Qin in 210 BCE as they emerged victorious of the warring states period.]]<br />
Around the year 480 BCE, the breakdown and fragmentation of China begins to reverse as strong states emerge and start to conquer weaker states. The number of states went from 250 to about 50-100 in just three centuries. This marked the end of the Spring and Autumn Period and the beginning of the Warring states period.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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=== End of the warring states period ===<br />
Around the last decades of the period, starting at the 3rd century BCE, the Qin state collected victory over victory and quickly annexed the various remaining states, until only two were left: Qin and Chu, both controlling similarly-sized areas. The ruler of the Qin state was named Qin Shi Huangdi in Chinese historiography, meaning ''First emperor of the Qin''. This marked the moment the term Emperor (Huangdi) entered the Chinese vocabulary. This was a very significant development, as previous rulers were called kings (wang). Huangdi was an ancient mythological -- almost spiritual or god-like -- figure, from back in the age of Yao and Shun. The king of the Qin adopting the title of Huangdi was a claim to a type of rulership that had not been seen in China previously; it was a claim to total power over all of China, the lord of all.<ref name=":05" /><br />
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== Qin and Han: Growth of feudal society ==<br />
The title of Qin Shi Huangdi, Dr. Hammond notes, was quite ironic, as the Qin state only ruled for 14 years.<ref name=":05" /> In that time though, they undertook dramatic transformations: controlling vast territories bigger than had been owned before by earlier dynasties.<ref name=":06">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 7: The Early Han Dynasty|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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Within his kingdom, the emperor set out to create a single administrative system. His work persisted after the Qin dynasty itself collapsed and into later dynasties.<ref name=":06" /><br />
[[File:Qin Coin.png|thumb|Preserved Qin dynasty era coin]]<br />
The first such reform was of standardisation. When China had been divided in the Spring and Autumn and then warring states period, local circumstances had diverged quite a bit from kingdom to kingdom. For example, wagons and carts had axles of different lengths in different states. This seemingly innocuous difference force traders to switch carts at the border, as the roads were not meant for their carts, and while this was highly beneficial to the warring state period (as the lords could restrict and control trade more easily), it created logistical delays in the unified Qin state. Standard coins were also introduced in the empire, and the Qin state was the first to give Chinese coins a square hole in the middle so they could be linked on a string and carried around more easily. Qin Shi Huangdi also standardized writing across the whole empire, normalizing how characters should be written.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
The Qin also thought it important to establish a standard ideological system. They were not particularly attached to the ideas of Confucius or other great thinkers like Laozi: only the doctrine of legalism counted. This led, in the year 214 BCE, to a burning of books and the (live) burying of scholars. Any books that were not teachings of legalism or practical utilitarian texts (how to do things) were destroyed. Likewise, as many teachings were taught orally by teachers and thinkers, the Qin emperor ordered that these scholars who knew the texts by heart be buried alive. This process was very thorough, and many of these texts did not survive that period, as most of them existed in only one copy at the time -- to this day, very few texts exist from before the fall of the Qin dynasty. Those that did survive were usually written down after the fall of the Qin dynasty.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
=== Overthrow of the Qin ===<br />
The doctrine of legalism proved to be a very effective system at gaining power, but not at ''retaining'' it. There was no method of self-regulation in this system, i.e. no restraint on how to wield power. Qin Shi Huangdi pursued this power purely in his own self-interest and died in 210 BCE. His son succeeded him on the throne, but proved unable to maintain the state his father had assembled, and he was killed only three years later.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
In the five following years, several contenders emerged, trying to establish their dynasty over China. Fairly quickly, two principal contenders appeared: Xiang Yu (''Xiàng Yǔ'', 项籍), and Liu Bang (''Liú Bāng'', 劉邦). Xiang Yu was a general in the state of Chu prior to the unification under the Qin state, and was the most likely contender for the throne as he proved very popular in the empire.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, hist opponent Liu Bang was a relatively minor figure; he was a jailer, escorting groups of prisoners from local jails to county jails. Around the time the Qin state was collapsing, Liu Bang embarked on one of this mission, which involved an overnight journey. He made camp with his prisoners in the night and, in the morning, found that several had escaped. He knew that this would have dire consequences for him as, under the Qin system, he had failed his duties and would be likely executed. To avoid this fate, Liu Bang resorted to the only other alternative available to him: he assembled his remaining prisoners and told them he would set them free if they followed him. They became the core of his rebel army who fought against the Qin and, after the collapse of the dynasty, he continued to raise an army which eventually grew to become a serious military challenger for power.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
Xiang Yu and Liu Bang eventually came into direct conflict with one another. In the year 204 BCE, a battle took place in which Xiang Yu defeated the rival army, inflicting very strong casualties on Liu Bang's side and concluding that his army (and Liu Bang's struggle for the throne) was destroyed. However, Liu Bang had executed a strategic withdrawal which led his army into a port town on the Yellow river (named Ao). There, he seized the granary, recruited new followers and rebuilt his forces to resume the conflict with Xiang Yu.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
Two years later, Liu Bang defeated Xiang Yu in a very dramatic siege. The story, in traditional Chinese historiography, was that Xiang Yu found his encampment surrounded by the soldiers of Liu Bang -- themselves former soldiers of the Chu -- singing folk songs of their homeland. When Xiang Yu heard the songs, he knew that his cause was lost. He had a final evening with his favorite concubine, killed her, and then leapt on his horse straight into the enemy's lines where he was finally cut down.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
With his main opponent taken out of the power struggle, Liu Bang was free to proclaim a new dynasty over China, which he called the Han, after the district from which he originated. The Han dynasty became one of the great ages in Chinese history, lasting for 400 years, reaching a geographical size, population and wealth never seen before. The Han dynasty was a contemporary of the [[Roman Empire (27 BCE–395 CE)|Roman Empire]] in the west and the two indirectly traded through the [[Silk road]].<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
==The early Han dynasty==<br />
Liu Bang established the capital at Chang'an, the same city that was the first capital of the Zhou dynasty as well as the capital of the Qin empire. From there, he established a system of imperial governance which was at first a continuation of the Qin system but evolved over the next century of Han rule into a much more stable and viable order.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
Liu Bang inherited however two systems of governance at the time of his ascension to the throne. The administration in the western half of China was run directly from the capital: the emperor appointed officials to serve in local government for relatively short fixed terms before being sent somewhere else. This allowed the imperial court and the emperor to exercise direct control and essentially administrate these regions himself. In the eastern half of the empire though, power was given to military leaders in Liu Bang's army who had secured these territories and pledged their loyalty to the new dynasty. This system had also been practiced by the Zhou and eventually led to their end, and indeed became a problem as well for the Han dynasty.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
Nonetheless, Liu Bang was able to stabilize his rule and peacefully handed the succession to his son after his death in 195 BCE. A challenge emerged soon, however, when the family of the empress sought to develop influence at court. In 180, when the new emperor came to the throne, their plan was thwarted and the Liu family was able to keep control of the throne.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
By that time, the military leaders who had been given land in the eastern part of the empire were becoming restless, and a number of efforts were made by Han emperors to maintain and extend their control over the east. This came to a head in 154 BCE when a rebellion took place: several military rulers in the east rose up and challenged the power of the Liu family. Not all of them backed the rebellion though, and the Liu family was able to manipulate these rulers in the east against one another so that they fought against each other instead of focusing on the empire. As those regions weakened themselves, the empire was able to bring them back into their direct administration (the system in the west) and use them as a base for operations against the remaining rebels. Within a few years, virtually all of east China came back under the direct administration of the Han.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
This was a critical development: first, it indicated that the Han (and more globally the Chinese) had learned their lesson from the Zhou and how to counteract such situations. Secondly, it cemented the rulership of the Han dynasty: by 150 BCE, China was a single administrative entity, no longer divided by tributary rulers.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
=== Emperor Wudi ===<br />
The immediate aftermath of this period saw one of China's most famous emperors on the throne, Wudi (''Hàn Wǔdì'', 汉武帝 -- ''Wu'' being his honorific title and ''Di'' coming from ''Huangdi'', the title the Emperor of Qin established). His reign lasted for 54 years, making it the longest continuous reign in China at the time. Due to China being virtually free of internal strife and rebellion at the time of his ascension to the throne, Wudi was able to engage in many reforms that consolidated an imperial, administrative and ideological order which remained the basis of the imperial court for the next 2000 years.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
This process started by emperor Wudi is often called the ''Han synthesis'' by historians, and is described as a blending together of three components: Confucianism, legalism (as an administrative practice) and [[metaphysics]].<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
The Han legal system was inspired by the Qin system of rewards and punishments, but was made more "humane" by the inclusion of a Confucian element, which sought out to establish proper relationships between people. These two philosophies were however more concerned by the [[Materialism|material]] world, and emperor Wudi was concerned with the metaphysical world as well, which he saw as an integral part (along with the material world) of a larger cosmic order.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
This was theorized by the likes of Dong Zhongshu (''Dŏng Zhòngshū'', 董仲舒) who brought together a number of ideas that had been in China for a long time already into a system that is sometimes called correlative cosmology; correlative cosmology seeks to explain correlation and connections between phenomena that can observed in the natural world and actions taking place in human society. Dr. Hammond likens it to a "doctrine of interpretation of omens": an earthquake or an eclipse, for example, may be interpreted as a sign that the natural order of things is disturbed in some way. Human misbehavior -- including the emperor's -- would create such omens which were interpreted by the royal court to bring the emperor back on the right path.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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Wudi had a vision of the state that was in agreement with Confucianism as a tool for doing good, but this vision was also a rationale for his many expansions: his reign is also marked with a period of great military expansions, going as far as to invade Korea in the north, Vietnam in the south and projecting power to [[central Asia]], creating the largest Chinese empire at the time. Emperor Wudi famously apologized to the whole of China for the many wars he started near the end of his reign, which he considered a mistake.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
His governing style was also new; he wanted the state to proactively solve problems for people and be engaged in the economic life of the country. He was against the manipulation of the market for mercantile profiteering and created government monopolies on critical goods such as salt, iron, alcohol, etc. to regulate and dispatch these commodities around the country.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
Wudi also began the practice of [[meritocracy]] in the state administration. Under this system, the royal court held examinations (based on written tests) that anyone could take to demonstrate their scholarship and learning. Passing the test would let one be appointed to positions in government. This system was initially held at a very small scale, and was not the main tool for recruiting government officials in China: during Wudi's reign, most officials came into service of the government through reputation or recommandation.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
=== Aftermath of Wudi's reign ===<br />
After Wudi's death, his policies came under debate: in 81 BCE, six years after his death, a great debate took place at the royal court, surviving in written records known as the ''Debate on salt and iron''. Two factions formed, arguing over whether it was a good thing or not (in Confucian terms) for the state to intervene in the economy. One faction argued that the role of the state was to regulate private greed so the interests of the common people could be protected, and the other faction argued that the government shouldn't be intervening in society but merely create a set of moral expectations: the government itself should be good and act in a proper way, which would set the example for people in society to follow. They also argued that it was improper for the government to enrich itself by participating in private economic activity. These debates were significant in their time and were also studied by the later Chinese to set out the parameters of how interventionist or active the government should be.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
The result of these debates was that the government decided to abandon most of Wudi's monopolies, and allowed the economy to go its own way with a minimal amount of government intervention.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
This moment -- up until to around the turn of the millennium (and going into the Common Era) -- was characterized by a very stable period in China's history, at least for the people. During this time, emperors became less and less engaged in the affairs of administration, instead preferring leisure and leaving the management of the state to their officials. This allowed officials to become corrupt and line their own pockets. The revenue of the state was neglected, and the day-to-day administrative tasks and military affairs were ignored. Additionally, in-law families (relatives by marriage) tried to manipulate the royal court in their favor.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
== Later Han dynasty ==<br />
This all came to a head in the year 7 of the present era when emperor Zhangdi (漢章帝) died without an heir. A brief period followed where power was usurped by Wang Mang (王莽) who headed the Xin dynasty (''Xīn Cháo,'' 新朝, literally "new dynasty") for about 20 years. This period is known as the ''Wang Mang Interregnum.<ref name=":07">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 8: Later Han and the Three Kingdoms|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref>'' Wang died without a successor in the year 23 of the current era, and another branch of the Liu family re-established their rule. This event started the period known as the later Han (or sometimes the eastern Han) which lasted for another 200 years.<ref name=":06" /><br />
<br />
=== Land reforms ===<br />
The Han dynasty as a whole was a period during which the land ownership underwent significant changes.<ref name=":07" /><br />
<br />
Up until that point, land had been the property of lords (most of them military rulers), and the farmers that lived on the land were the possessions of the rulers as well. Most of these rulers were put in place in earlier dynasties by rewarding generals with the land they conquered, but some land grants were made to members of the political administration as rewards for services rendered.''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
<br />
As the Han dynasty dealt with the problem of local military rulers and unified the whole empire under their sole command, their administration naturally moved to a more civilian staff and was expanded to help manage the affairs of a centralized realm. The Han then began attributing land differently, forced by the material reality of this new order in which they were the sole owner of all the land and did not rely on the loyalty of tributary lords. The practice of rewarding administrators with land became an institution under the Han.''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
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This policy also changed the make up of the agricultural economy which started resembling a market system, where individual estates owned by individual families produced grain and other commodities which were then sold over the whole of China.''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
<br />
In theory, land remained the property of the emperor. In practice however, land that was granted out to families (and passed on from generation to generation) developed into ''de facto'' [[private property]]. The state started to recognize this fact and issued charters and other grants of land started functioning more like property deeds. Conflicts between landlords (such as access to water) were mediated through a legal court that recognized their property and title as land owners.''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
<br />
The advent of private property was a very significant event in the history of China, and would survive for millennia after that. Generational wealth began being amassed in a process which could be likened to [[Primitive accumulation of capital|primitive accumulation]].''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
<br />
=== Cultural shift ===<br />
Given that the [[Base and superstructure|base]] changed, so did the [[superstructure]] of China. Chinese culture had, prior to the later Han, been focused primarily on tales of heroism and the glories of warfare, which were characteristic of the warring states period. The Han instead pursued cultural sophistication: learning and the pursuit of knowledge, being able to both read and write poetry, writing essays, became more culturally significant and valued in the later Han. This shift was spearheaded by the [[ruling class]] and mostly concerned them.''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
<br />
=== End of the Han period ===<br />
<br />
==== Eunuch influence ====<br />
Internal conflicts start reappearing at the royal court, with in-laws trying to seize power at court, military leaders resenting this new class of landlords who, they felt, had stolen their titles. Eunuchs became a problem as well; Eunuchs were somewhat unique to Chinese society: they were castrated males who served in the private residential parts of the imperial palace, in which only the emperor himself was allowed. Their condition made them non-threatening to the line of succession, and while eunuchs were not unique to China per se, their specific role in imperial China was. Eunuchs also worked with the emperor's concubines. Most of the time, eunuchs kept to their menial role but in times when the succession led to a young emperor on the throne, eunuchs could be influential over the young emperor who likely had one as his tutor or companion.''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
<br />
==== Decline of the Han ====<br />
Eunuchs gaining influence notably became a problem in the later Han when a series of young emperors came to the throne, which turned them into a major faction within the imperial court.''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
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Making matters worse, the weakening of imperial oversight allowed local strongmen -- not yet military figures, but mostly private land owners -- to intensify their exploitation over the peasantry, raising taxes and rents and creating discontent. Unsurprisingly, this situation led to the outbreak of rebellions against landlords and the dynasty over large parts of China. The empire responded by leading military interventions to quell these rebellions which, in a domino effect, increased the power of the military.''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
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By the latter part of the second century, the Han dynasty had ceased to be a functional political entity. Much like the later Zhou, it still existed and emperors succeeded one another on the throne, but real power dissolved and strongmen in the country expanded their territory as factionalism at court weakened the functioning of the state even further.''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
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Eventually, in the year 220, the last Han emperor was set aside and the country broke up into three successor states, one of which was ruled by a member of the Liu family (the ruling family of the Han dynasty), named Liu Bei (''Liú Bèi'', 刘备).<ref name=":07" /><br />
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==The three kingdoms period==<br />
The breakup of the Han state led to the very short period (lasting from 220 to 265) known as the ''three kingdoms'' (''Sānguózhì yǎnyì'', 三国志演义), titled after the ''Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms'' (''sānguó zhì'', 三国志) written by Chen Shou (''Chén Shòu'', 陈寿) who lived through the period as a military officer of the Shu kingdom.<ref name=":07" /><br />
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The three kingdoms in question were:<br />
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# Shu (蜀), in modern-day Sichuan province, ruled by Liu Bei of the Han dynasty.<br />
# Wei (魏), located in the north, ruled by Cao Pi (曹丕), son of Cao Cao (''Cáo Cāo,'' 曹操), a famous general of the late Han empire.<br />
# Wu (吳), in the southeast, ruled by Sun Quan (''Sūn Quán'', 孙权).<ref name=":07" /><br />
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=== Beginning of the period ===<br />
The three kingdoms period started in the same way the earlier breakdown of the Zhou had, by a fragmentation of the empire into various sovereign states. However, unlike the breakdown of the Zhou era, the three kingdoms remained stable among themselves and did not divide themselves. They all presented themselves as Confucian regimes: all three employed a Confucian administration and were concerned with doing good in their own states. Thus, there was still a continuity from the Han period -- with the distinction that the heroes of this era were generals and not scholars.<ref name=":07" /><br />
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=== Significance of the three kingdoms period ===<br />
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It remains to this day one of the most famous eras in Chinese history due to the age it represents; unlike most periods of Chinese history, the heroes of the three kingdoms are not the kind of heroes portrayed in earlier times for their strength and might, but remembered their cleverness and wit. Deceiving your enemy, i.e. winning a fight by not fighting, are considered the great talents of this era. Cao Cao and Zhuge Liang (''Zhūgě Liàng'', 诸葛亮) are considered the two most exemplar heroes of this period.<ref name=":07" /><br />
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In one instance, Dr. Hammond notes, a general had brought his army to the south, setting up camp on the bank of a large river. On the other side of the river were the enemy's forces. Their supply lines extended and arriving from a long march, the army in the north was in a tough spot for the coming battle. If they could inflict a decisive victory on their enemy at that time, however, they would certainly turn the tide of war. To make matters worse, the incoming army from the north had used up almost all their arrows in the battles on the way to the river. They thus decided to take advantage of the local conditions: in the evenings, a fog would come down on the river due to meteorological conditions at that time of year. Going upstream, they commandeered boats from the locals. In the boats, they built mannequins out of straw and put their uniforms on these strawmen. In the evening, they pushed these boats full of straw puppets down the river. The sentries of the opposing army suddenly saw several boats coming down the river, full of soldiers lined up to attack. They unleashed their arrows on the boats, hitting only the strawmen. Further downstream, the first army then brought the boats to shore and collected the arrows from the boats, resupplying themselves. Dr. Hammond notes this story is significant because it has been passed down for millennia, and remains told to this day. These stories have been dramatised into poetry, operas, novels and, more recently, TV shows in China.<ref name=":07" /><br />
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The Three Kingdoms period was immortalised and made famous by the epic novel ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' (''Sānguó Yǎnyì'', 三国演义) written in the 14th century by Luo Guanzhong (''Luó Guànzhōng'', 湖海散人). The novel is considered one of the four great classics of Chinese literature.<ref name=":07" /><br />
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=== End of the period ===<br />
In 265 CE, in the state of Wei, the Sima family seized power from the Cao family. They fielded a force which conquered the states of Wu and Shu, and from that time until the year 304, their dynasty of the Jin replaced the three Kingdoms and united China again.<ref name=":07" /><br />
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That period of unification did not last very long however, as other events in Asia (which, Dr. Hammond notes, are still not fully understood) brought about a great migration of people around this time down into northern India. At the beginning of the 4th century, Turkic speaking people started moving into northwestern China.<ref name=":07" /><br />
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== Buddhism in China ==<br />
{{Main article|Buddhism}}<br />
Chinese history and culture is very largely self-contained, and so the arrival of Buddhism marked one of the rare moments when an outside element came into China.<ref name=":08">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 9: Buddhism|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
=== Origins of Buddhism ===<br />
Buddhism traces its origins to India, at around the 6th century BCE -- the same time the teachings of the hundred schools are appearing in China. Dr. Hammond notes that this is a chronological coincidence which coincides with the appearance of other great ages of philosophy elsewhere in the world (such as in Ancient Greece or Persia).<ref name=":08" /><br />
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There are plenty and very specific accounts around the origins of Buddhism -- stories about the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the first Buddha and founder of Buddhism -- but many contradict each other in certain aspects, which makes establishing a historical timeline of the Buddha's early life difficult.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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The common thread to the origin of Buddhism is as follows: Siddhartha Gautama (also referred to as Shakyamuni, ''the light of the Shakyas'', his clan) underwent several life-changing experiences, and as a result of those became a teacher of new ideas which took root in India, developed and grew there, and eventually spread to the rest of South and Southeast Asia.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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He came from a noble family in northern India (now in Nepal). As a noble, he grew up in conditions of great luxury and comfort. He was raised in a palace, and isolated in many ways from the realities of life around him. For the young prince, life was beautiful and a good thing to live.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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At a certain point, he came to a realisation that not everything in the world is perfect and beautiful. In one account, the prince was out in the palace gardens one day, when he heard a sound he did not recognize. He climbed a tree near the wall of the garden, looking out onto the town street. There, he saw a procession of people going by carrying a plan with something wrapped in cloth and adorned with flowers. Not understanding what he was seeing, the prince went to his parents to ask them about this strange event. They explain to him that he saw a funeral procession; the wrapped up object was a dead body, and the sound he heard was the sound of crying and lamentation. This was the first encounter the prince had with death and the suffering associated with it; thus awakening him for the first time to the imperfections of the world.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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There are a number of other accounts, but the common link between them is that at some point, before becoming the Buddha, Gautama saw or experienced something which made him understand imperfection in his previously perfect sheltered life.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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The prince then went out in search of understanding, to understand why there is suffering and imperfection in the world. He ran away from the palace and embarked on a spiritual quest which took him around the whole of northern India. This geographical area, Dr. Hammond notes, was very spiritually rich at the time: hermits were common in the woods, marketplaces were full of preachers, and the prince spent a number of years going from one teacher to another asking his question: "why is there suffering, and is there anything we can do about it?"<ref name=":08" /><br />
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None of the teachers he encountered, however, gave the prince satisfactory answers. Eventually, he found a place called Sarnath (near the modern-day city of Varanasi, India). There, he went into a "deer park" -- likely an estate belonging to a family connected to his. While sitting under a tree, he suddenly had a moment of enlightenment and understood the answer to his question. Immediately following this event, the prince gave his first teachings. Following that event, he kept travelling and attracting more followers until the moment he realised he was soon going to depart the material world. Several accounts exist of what happened next; in one account, the Buddha bodily ascended to the celestial realm. In others, he left his physical body behind and spiritually transformed -- in those schools, there are relics of the Buddha's body.<ref name=":08" /> <br />
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After his death or departure, the Buddha's followers took up the role of becoming his interpreters and teachers of their own. It was from that point forward that Buddhism grew and developed a religious practice and institution.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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=== Teachings of Buddhism ===<br />
In essence, the principles of Buddhism are very straight-forward. The key is the realisation of the nature of suffering; suffering is a part of our natural lives, and arises from our attachment to things in the material world. To be free of suffering, one has to free themselves from their attachments to the world around them. This can happen through meditation, renunciation and other spiritual undertakings.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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These are the four noble truths and are the core to all schools of Buddhism.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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The reason attachment is the source of suffering is that the reality of the world is impermanent: everything that exists passes away at some point; it has a beginning and an end. The ''appearance'' of permanence is an illusion (''maya'' in Sanskrit). Illusion doesn't mean that things do not actually exist, but that nothing is going to permanently, continuously exist forever.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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The most central experience of attachment is our own selves; we are all attached to ourselves (and our lives). The idea of rejecting attachment is very straightforward in theory, but becomes understandably difficult to put into practice: it is almost impossible to detach oneself from their own life. This is why the spiritual practice of renunciation (through meditation and other practices) becomes very important to Buddhists.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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=== Schools of Buddhism ===<br />
In the centuries after the death of the Buddha, his teachings develop and eventually spread, and two major schools of Buddhism arise.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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==== Theravada school ====<br />
Theravada Buddhism is primarily focused on the attainment of individual spiritual liberation; it takes the teachings of the Buddha at their most basic level and is concerned with how each individual can attain enlightenment for themselves.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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Early Theravada Buddhism sees the earliest development of monasticism (choosing to live in a monastery) as individuals renounce their involvement in society and leave behind the things which attach them to this world, including the very strong attachment to family and friends.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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At first, Theravada Buddhists simply retreated from the world and became hermits or wanderers. But as time went by, groups came together not to form a society with formal rules and practices, but rather into "places of dwelling", places where they would usually gather together.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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==== Mahayana Buddhism ====<br />
About 300 years later, a second school of Buddhism began to emerge, called Mahayana (''great vehicle''). This school moved its focus away from individual spiritual liberation and towards the salvation of all sentient beings. In this school of thought, any being capable of consciousness will be conscious of its own mortality and of the world around it. Therefore, it will be subject to the suffering caused by attachment. Mahayana Buddhism believes that one can't be truly spiritually free so long as they know others continue to suffer.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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Mahayana Buddhism introduced the concept of the Bodhisattva, a being who has reached a point of spiritual liberation: they could attain a state of transcendence as they have reached their individual liberation, but choose to remain in the material world to help other beings along the path of spiritual enlightenment.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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=== Spreading of Buddhism to Asia ===<br />
The spread of Mahayana Buddhism was linked in part to the embrace of Buddhism by king Ashoka in India. He ruled much of northern India and wanted to be a good king; he held spiritual debates at his court and decided that Buddhism was the best answer to the problems facing people. He erected pillars of stone to proclaim and promote the teachings of Buddhism around his realm, specifically Mahayana.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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It was from his kingdom that Buddhism spread out beyond India and into the rest of south and southeast Asia. The school that reached these places was Theravada. Mahayana Buddhism tended to go north and west and into central Asia, picked up along the silk road: Buddhist monks traveled along the silk road, spreading their teachings.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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==== Arrival of Buddhism in China ====<br />
It was from this route that Buddhism arrived in China some time in the second half of the Han dynasty. When Buddhist monks arrived in China, they were welcomed at the court of the emperor: the Han emperor himself was a spiritual figure himself, dating back to the Shang dynasty and the worship of his ancestors. In that role, he was a patron to all kinds of spiritual practices.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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When Buddhist monks arrived at Luoyang, they were given room and board and allowed to practice. But, at the beginning, they were considered more of an exotic curiosity; they were foreigners coming from outside of China, and their teachings were interesting, but different.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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Eventually, as the Han state deteriorated into widespread misery and rebellions, Buddhism became more popular among the masses; this should not be surprising, as it was a time of suffering and as such a philosophy that addressed the origins of suffering and offered a path out of it proved popular. Buddhism rapidly took root in China from that point on and became a part of Chinese culture and society. The teachings were spread through texts brought from India and by the oral teachings of monks. In the late second century and into the third century CE, Buddhism became a popular religion in China (popular in that it was the religion of the people).<ref name=":08" /><br />
<br />
==Great migration to China==<br />
After the short-lived Jin dynasty, and as Buddhism was spreading into China, a new force came into China from outside: a great migration of peoples from Central Asia moved into the Chinese heartland. This event was part of a larger series of migrations that took place all over Asia during the fourth century, but historians are not sure why that movement happened.<ref name=":09">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 10: Northern and Southern Dynasties|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
This period is called the ''northern and southern dynasties'' (''Nán-Běi Cháo,'' 南北朝'')'' in Chinese historiography, with the new conquerors forming the northern dynasties, and the Han people pushed south forming the southern dynasties.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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The people that came to northern-northwestern China (relative to the borders at the end of the Han dynasty) spoke a language that is an ancestor to Turkish, and are sometimes called proto-Turkic by historians. They arrived in a space occupied by the Xiongnu people, who had been a constant presence and, at times, either a welcome trading partner or a threat on the Chinese frontier -- the Han dynasty build the Great Wall to defend against their raids.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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When the Turkic peoples started migrating into the territory of the Xiongnu, who were nomadic, they became displaced and moved further up north. After a long migration that took them several decades, they emerged in European history as the Huns.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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Eventually, these Turkic peoples moved from what was the Xiongnu territory and into China as well, which was a fertile area. Their migration came to an end north of the Yangtze river, which they did not cross. The north of China at the time was home to 20-30 million people, and the migratory populations totalled fewer than a million people. It should be understood that this process of migration was not peaceful and did not displace the Chinese people established there, but rather these newcomers established themselves as sort of overlords. In this process, they displaced the empire of China from the region and instead established their rule, taking over by force. This period is called the Northern dynasty.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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South of the Yangtze river, Chinese civilisation and political order was preserved. However, Chinese presence in that area had only been established for a few hundred years at most; Dr. Hammond notes that the Chinese population in the south was aware that they were not living in their ancestral homeland.<ref name=":09" /><br />
<br />
=== Northern Wei dynasty ===<br />
[[File:Southern and Northern Dynasties 440 CE.png|thumb|332x332px|Southern and Northern Dynasties 440 CE. The Wei dynasty came to dominate the north.]]<br />
This process of migration only ended in the early 5th century, with many groups coming in at different times and establishing their rule of different areas. The most historically significant of these dynasties is the Wei dynasty (''Bei Wei'' 北魏) -- not to be confused with the Wei kingdom from the three kingdoms period (魏). To differentiate the two, historians often call it the Northern Wei dynasty or the ''Tuoba'' kingdom (拓跋魏), named after its people.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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This dynasty controlled major parts of the modern-day Henan, Hebei and Shanxi provinces. They first established their capital near the modern-day city of Datong, and after a hundred years or so moved it to the historical capital of Luoyang.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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==== Cave temples ====<br />
[[File:5zmqouty.jpg|thumb|376x376px|Cave temple of Yungang (云冈, cloud harbour). The statues were originally contained in their own chambers, but the front walls eroded away with time.]]<br />
The nature of the soil in northwestern China, called loess, is very particular. It is very granular soil built up by the retreat of the glaciers at the end of the last ice age, and the wind blew the resultant dust in fan-shaped patterns over thousands and thousands of square miles. The deposits of this soil can be hundreds of meters deep.<ref name=":09" /><br />
<br />
Thanks to this granular nature as well as the dry climate of the region, it is possible to simply carve into it, and the people of north China often lived in dwellings carved out on hillsides.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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The Tuoba built extensive Buddhist cave temples in the same way at each of their two capitals by carving out and hollowing into cliff faces. Some of the statues are 20-30 feet tall (6-9 metres), around which will be thousands of tiny Buddha figures. The statues were patronized by people to earn merit or as acts of devotion and faith; the bigger statues were commissionned by wealthy patrons such as the Wei lords themselves while the small status were ordered by farmers in exchange for a few coins to have it carved on their behalf.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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Dr. Hammond notes that the cave temples show a clear mark that the Turkic peoples who migrated into China were themselves Buddhist (coming into contact with it after it had spread from India) and brought with them a somewhat militant form of Buddhism different from the one practiced in China. For the Tuoba and other Turkic peoples, Buddhism was central to their culture and had been devotees for centuries at that point.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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==== End of the process of migration ====<br />
The great migration into China went on for over a century and into the fifth century CE, but eventually stopped. Afterwards, another process followed where the new elite that had imposed itself in north China started to intermingle with the existing Chinese community. After having conquered the areas by military might, its rulers wanted to then control and extract wealth from its population; particulary because China produced items of great value (such as silk or porcelain) that were previously simply unavailable to these peoples.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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From the point of view of the Chinese, particularly from the nobles and landowners, they were interested in forming alliances and partnerships with the conquerors to protect their interests. One principal way these two communites were able to come into contact with each other was through intermarriage.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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Eventually, blended families emerged: they were neither fully Chinese or fully Turkic, but what anthropologists call Sino-Turkic. A process of cultural accomodation also took place at the same time, where the cultural practices of both sides were adopted -- mainly on the Turkic side.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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The Turks quickly realised that to administer the territories they had conquered, they needed to use the existing mechanisms of local administration that the Chinese had laid out. Thus they adopted Chinese as the language of government, and shortly after adopted Chinese as the language of daily life. After a few generations, Turkic families started to adopt Chinese surnames adapted from their original name. Turkic leaders even began wearing Chinese-style clothing.<ref name=":09" /><br />
<br />
Likewise, certain Turkic words were adopted into Chinese vocabulary. Aspects of diet and food preparation became characteristic of north China, and some cultural practices of the region still practiced to this day can trace back their origins to the Turkic influences.<ref name=":09" /><br />
<br />
=== Southern dynasties ===<br />
South of the Yangtze river, where the Chinese had been pushed out, there were also several different ruling dynasties. While the south of China had been controlled since emperor Wudi centuries earlier, the Chinese in the southern dynasties were very conscious of their Chinese identity. At the same time as the migrations happened in the north, thousands of people -- particulary wealthier families -- left their home in the north to move south, which reminded the southern Chinese of their "anomalous" position in the south -- that they were all migrants from the north.<ref name=":09" /><br />
<br />
==== Cultural developments during the southern dynasties ====<br />
This engendered a kind of cultural anxiety that drove Chinese nobles to remind themselves of their cultural identity. One development was the rise of calligraphy as an art form; up until that point, writing had essentially been a functional practice: there had been prescribed forms on how to write characters (dating back to the Qin empire), but under the southern dynasties the ''way'' in which characters were written came to be seen as an art. The way one wrote, additionally, also came to be representative of their moral character. It was during the southern dynasties period that one celebrated calligrapher practiced, Wang Xizhi (王羲之). The southern dynasties also saw the emergence of painting as an art form. Prior to that period, painting was seen as a craft, the production of an item. But in the southern dynasties, painting was considered to be an expression of an artist' individual tastes. One famous painter of the period is Gu Kaizhi (''Gù Kǎizhī'', 顾恺之).<ref name=":09" /><br />
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Writing as a literary tool also became increasingly complex. Chinese literature was very straight-forward and simple: writers like Mencius or Sun Tzu wrote in a very matter-of-fact, straight to the point style. Starting in the southern dynasties, writing became very self-referential; there were lots of allusions to earlier texts, sometimes maybe just a few lines or characters, often in obscure ways so that one had to be very educated and knowledgeable about these older texts to get the reference. This literary practice came about to differentiate the southern Chinese from their peers in the North living under "barbarian" rule, who would not understand the references and phrasings.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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==== Developments in Buddhism ====<br />
The southern dynasties also gave birth to distinctly Chinese schools of Buddhism adapted from the cultural sensibilities and developments in Chinese society, such as the Tiantai or Chan school (more familiar in the west under the name Zen). The developments of Buddhism became vital in the later reunification of China under one dynasty in the 6th century.<ref name=":09" /><br />
<br />
=== End of the period of division ===<br />
This division of China lasted for close to 300 years. By the latter part of the 6th century, the conditions that created this division had begun to change. In the North, the period of migrations had ended and a long era of cultural accommodation had ensued. In the South meanwhile, the adoption of Buddhism and a process of familiarisation with the populations in North China began to create the ground for reunification into one China, especially in the Chinese elite.<ref name=":010">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 11: Sui Reunification and the Rise of the Tang|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
== The Sui dynasty ==<br />
In the 580s, circumstances arose that brought this long period of division to an end. A general named Yang Jian, who came from a Sino-turkic family in the northwest of China, seized power for himself in the state he served in, called the Northern Zhou dynasty. He founded his own dynasty after a coup, which he called the Sui dynasty -- named after his home district.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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Such violent overthrows were not particularly uncommon in this period of division, but what made the Sui dynasty historically important was that by 589, Yang had re-established a single unified empire encompassing both North and South China.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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Part of his success was due to him being a general, leading troops in campaigns and conquering the rest of North China. At the same time, he did not employ this method in South China and one of his first acts was to send his son, Yang Guang, to be viceroy of the city of Yangzhou, a very important economic and political center in East China. The city was technically in North China (and under Sui control), but sat right on the border with South China, close to [[Nanjing]]. From there, Yang Guang was able to get into correspondance and negotiations to peacefully reconcile and integrate South China.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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They also used Buddhism as a common cultural trait between the North and the South to reach out to their neighbours. They eventually negotiated a marriage between Yang Guang and a princess in the South to reintegrate that state, with other Southern states soon following suit.<ref name=":010" /><br />
[[File:China-sui-large.png|thumb|Sui dynasty borders laid on top of modern day China map (PRC)]]<br />
<br />
=== Establishment of the Sui state ===<br />
While the Sui dynasty itself did not last very long and only had two emperors (Yang Jian and then Yang Guang), it did succeed in establishing a new political order which the Tang inherited after them, and which proved to be long lasting.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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==== Legal code ====<br />
A legal code was formulated which gave a body of law to the empire as a whole, used to regulate the affairs of the government and citizens. The adoption of a legal code was not a new undertaking at this time in Chinese history, but their code brought together laws from North and South China and their several different administrations and states, creating a cohesive body of law for the many different cultures living in the now reunified China.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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==== Well-field system ====<br />
The Sui dynasty also used the well-field system (井田制度, ''jǐngtián zhìdù''), which was first attested to in Chinese early history (and even pre-history, going back to the mythological foundation of China). It was a way of distributing land based on a grid system: the outer fields in a given area were private fields owned and farmed by peasants, with the central field farmed for the lord or empire: the revenues from that field would be used to pay taxes and tribute. Dr Hammond notes that the character for well (井, ''jǐng'') was likely drawn after this system.<ref name=":010" /> <br />
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The Sui did not bring back this exact system, but used it to promote a stable agricultural order. While all land in the empire theoretically belonged to the emperor, this system made sure that arable land was redistributed to different families every 3 years, ensuring that all families had about the same access to agricultural resources. This redistribution prevented the accumulation of large amounts of land in some families, avoiding the formation of both landlords and landless peasants.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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The land was not all distributed equally; there were still aristocratic, land-owning families which were inherited into the Sui dynasty from the period of division. The well-field system did not expropriate this owned land; it was entirely exempted. Still, this system allowed farmers to fulfill their own needs.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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==== Frontier defense ====<br />
The Northwest frontier remained a zone of instability, and in order to defend it, the emperor established agricultural colonies: soldiers would be sent to the frontier and support themselves by farming the land there rather than being financed and fed by the heartland of China.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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==== Public granaries ====<br />
Finally, the Sui dynasty established a system of public granaries. Every year at harvest time, surplus grain was bought at subsidized prices and stored in granaries. During the course of the year as grain prices rose due to lower supply until the next harvest, the government would release grain into the markets from these granaries to maintain stable supplies and prices.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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=== Succession of Yang Jian ===<br />
Yang Jian was succeeded by his son Yang Guang, the second and last emperor of the Sui. His rule was marked by military expeditions, seeking to re-establish Chinese control on territories lost on the periphery during the division of the North and South. In particular, he launched some military campaigns against Korea. These campaigns were not successful and created dissatisfaction in the empire.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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He also launched military campaigns to the northwest, into Central Asia, to try and push some of the Turkic populations away. These campaigns were also a financial drain on the economy and disrupted communities as soldiers were taken away from their villages to fight on the frontier.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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At the same time, the Northwest of China had been slowly going through a slow, millennia-long process of climate change which progressively made the region warmer and dried, reducing agricultural production. By the Sui period, the Northwest was not able to support the lavish lifestyle of the imperial court (located since earlier times at Chan'an and Luoyang nearby). As such, grain was required to be imported from the South, for which Yang Guang undertook the construction of a canal (which he never finished but would later become the Grand Canal, which remains the main economic artery from North to South China). This project required a large mobilisation of both labour and resources and while necessary when looked at with historical insight, the construction of the canal was not popular with the masses.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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=== End of the Sui dynasty ===<br />
The Sui dynasty lasted from the years 589 to 617. The masses were not happy with the failed military campaigns and the construction of the Grand Canal that took their toll on their families and local economy. This discontent however, by itself, would not have been enough to dissolve the Sui dynasty. In addition to that, a story (or rumour) was going around the capital that the throne "was going to be occupied" by a person named Li (the ruler of Sui being named Yang). This story was first spread by travelling soothsayers and then made into a folk song. Yang began to mistrust government officials named Li and, to safeguard his rule, had them executed as well.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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In the city of Tanyuan, Li Shimin, the son of a garrison commander, saw the writing on the wall for himself and his father: if they were going to wait around, then eventually the emperor would have them executed for being named Li. Yuan, Shimin's father, had to take the opportunity and seize power for himself. In 617, Li Yuan, his son and their troops marched south to the capital. Rebellions broke out, and the court collapsed fairly quickly: Yang Guang died, and authority disintegrated at the capital.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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== The Tang dynasty ==<br />
<br />
=== Establishment of the dynasty ===<br />
A brief period of civil war ensued after the end of the Sui dynasty, with a number of contenders seeking to establish their dynasty. The Li family were the leading contenders and, in 621, all of their opponents were disposed of, leaving the way open to establish their Tang dynasty with Li Yuan as emperor. The name Tang, like many dynasties before them, was the name of the district Li Yuan originated from.<ref name=":010" /> The capital was established at the historical site of Chang'an, with the city of Luoyang being used as a secondary capital.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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==== Emperor Li Shimin ====<br />
Li Yuan abdicated in 626 to his son Li Shimin, who reigned for 23 years until 649. He continued many of the practices started by the Sui dynasty. Additionally, he formalised the number of ministries to just six which was kept by all subsequent emperor dynasties down to the year 1911, when the Imperial structure of China was overthrown and the Republic of China was born.<ref name=":011">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 12: The Early Tang Dynasty|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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He also created a separate bureaucratic institution to manage the affairs of the imperial household, creating a clear demarcation between the personal activities and finances of the royal family and the affairs and finances of the government. This demarcation was an important development because it removed the state a bit more from being the personal property of the emperor. It also proved to be a robust structure so as to prevent abuses by the royal family which had created problems in the past.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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Finally, Li Shimin also extended Chinese power into Korea and what is now Vietnam. In the far west, Tang armies projected their power much further than any other dynasty before: they established direct Chinese control as far as Xinjiang province. Into what is now parts of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, protectorates were established with local rulers, contributing to the economic expansion of the Tang dynasty.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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=== Economic and social change ===<br />
[[File:Location of xi'an.png|thumb|Location of Xi'an city in China, previously the historical capital of Chang'an.]]<br />
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==== Chang'an capital ====<br />
The city of Chan'an was important not only due to its historical role, but also because it was strategically placed at the beginning (or end) of the Silk Road when it came to the road's entrance into (and out of) China.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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Trade routes from all over Asia converged at Chang'an, which made it develop into probably the greatest city in the world at that time: the city housed a population of 2 million people, established in a geographical area vastly larger than its biggest "rivals" at the time (Cairo and Baghdad). As a center of trade, people from civilisations all across Eurasia converged there, making the city into an unrivalled -- and probably unprecedented -- cosmopolitan multicultural center.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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==== Prosperity ====<br />
The first century of Tang rule was otherwise marked by peace, China having been unified again, which allowed for prosperity which fuelled economic growth along with the vast international trading system.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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Demographic growth followed; part of the population growth was due to the expansion at the borders, bringing in new territory, but also due to internal factors: no internal warfare meant more people survived, and the economic activity of the Silk Road raised the standards of living for the people and contributed to longer life expectancy.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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It is estimated that during the course of the Tang dynasty, the population of China grew from ~120 million to ~250 million.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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==== Social order ====<br />
The social order in the Tang dynasty was a continuation of the aristocratic system which had emerged back during the Han. The basis of wealth and status was the ownership of large estates, concentrated into families who had been in possession of these estates for hundreds of years.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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The Tang formalised and regulated these estates to an extent even greater than seen in previous dynasties. In the capital, a genealogical registry was made, maintaining a record of who was a member of which family. Officials in the government tended to be recruited from these families.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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This basis for recruitment maintained the aristocratic order which pleased these families, but Dr. Hammond also notes that to function as an educated and literate government official, one needed a certain amount of economic resources to learn the textual tradition, the writings of Confucius, the histories of China, the body of precedent and historical knowledge necessary. A peasant family who needed to deploy all its available [[labor-power]] towards the production of food simply would not have been able to spare a young man for the several years needed to educate him on these topics.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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=== Empress Wu Zetian ===<br />
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==== Biography ====<br />
Li Shimin eventually died and passed down the title of emperor to his son. In 690, empress Wu Zetian assumed the throne, an unprecedented event in China: all emperors before her had been men. She was also the last empress of China.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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At a very young age (perhaps around 12 or 13, she came into the court as a concubine during the last years of Li Shimin -- it is not clear that he actually met her. When the emperor died, the tradition was that all women and consorts at his court were retired into Buddhist temples so that the partner of an emperor could not become anyone else's partner.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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On the first anniversary of Li Shimin's death, his son Li Zhi visited the former concubines and became captivated by Wu Zetian, who would have been around 15 years old at this time. He brought her back to the palace, making her his favourite consort. Eventually, he displaced his own wife and made Wu Zetian the empress, giving her direct proximity to the throne. At the same time, Li Zhi had no sons to inherit the throne but only nephews, making Wu Zetian the aunt of the next two emperors that followed. In 690, she set aside her nephew, who was still a very young boy, and assumed imperial power for herself.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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Wu Zetian ruled for 15 years, and one of her first acts was to change the name of the dynasty to the Zhou dynasty, echoing back to the ancient dynasty. She stepped down in 705 from the throne, and her nephew, who had briefly reigned before her, returned to the throne. Wu Zetian died of natural causes shortly after.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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==== Impact ====<br />
The reign of empress Wu Zetian was a very unique moment in Chinese history. In traditional Chinese historiography about her, her story is presented as a pretty bleak event; the Confucian scholars who wrote her stories down didn't like that a woman was on the throne and they did everything they could to smear her reputation. Looking at the records of her 15 years rule however shows that she was an average ruler, who didn't innovate much but also stayed the course in terms of stability.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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She was noted for her patronage of Buddhism, and for undermining the aristocratic recruitment system established by Li Shimin. As the royal court distrusted her, she sought to create alliances with minor families by recruiting them at the royal court and garner support from them instead.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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=== Emperor Xuanzong ===<br />
After Wu Zetian's abdication, her nephew (known as Xuanzong, personal name Li Longji) took the throne, reigning until the year 756 -- over 50 years. He is considered one of the great emperors in Chinese history, not because of his own achievements, but because he ruled over the golden age of the Tang dynasty, a time during which the economy flourished, the role of Chang'an as a trade center continued to be significant, and Buddhist culture flourished and both temples were built and great translation projects were carried out to further embed Buddhism in Chinese culture.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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The first part of the eight century was also an age when some of the greatest poets in all of Chinese history were contemporaries: they knew and wrote each other, and created a very rich and dynamic moment in Chinese arts. Figures like Li Bo, Du Fu, Meng Haoran from that period are names that any Chinese schoolchild today would be familiar with and learn about.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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==== Quest for immortality ====<br />
Emperor Xuanzong was a competent emperor nonetheless but as he became older, he became more concerned with the inner life of the palace: notably the quest for immortality.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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At the time in China, coming from the time of the Northern and Southern dynasties, a spiritual practice known as religious Daoism (differentiated from the philosophical practice) was particularly concerned with seeking out immortality, being in communication with a spiritual realm which was populated by immortal beings. Part of the way this was done was through taking various chemical substances into one's body, producing heightened states of spiritual sensitivity (likely hallucinogenics). The people involved in this practice believed that they came in contact with spiritual beings who passed onto them various "recipes" for better concoctions to pursue their spiritual quest. Xuanzong became involved in these activities as he grew older, perhaps unsurprisingly.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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==== Yang Guifei ====<br />
At the same time, emperor Xuanzong became enamored with a woman known as Yang Guifei -- from the earlier ruling Yang family deposed by the Li. Guifei was not her personal name, but a title meaning "precious concubine". She was selected by Xuanzong to become his favourite, and came to play a role in his life beyond that of a simple palace lady, becoming a partner and advisor in the affairs of state and other concerns. This made her a very powerful individual -- at least potentially -- so much so that Confucian officials at the court became jealous of her.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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=== An Lushan and Frontier security ===<br />
One constant problem in the Tang dynasty was the security of the frontier in the west, maintaining the defences along to border with inner Asia. The Tang dynasty continued the military colonies from the Sui dynasty, but also came up with new policies. One of these was to employ military forces from one part of the frontier in the defence of another part of the frontier. The Uighur people for example, from the northwestern frontier, were sent to the defence of the northeastern frontier, where the people they were defending against had nothing in common with them.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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One Uighur individual employed in this capacity, known as An Lushan (likely Rakshan in his original language), was in charge of a Chinese garrison near where the modern city of Beijing is located. He was a very competent general and defended his part of the frontier effectively. This made him into a popular figure at Xuanzong's court. Every so often, these commanders would come to make a report to the capital and historical records show that when An Lushan came to the capital, he was received quite lavishly by the emperor himself.<ref name=":011" /> <br />
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Through these visits, An Lushan also became a good friend of Yang Guifei. Their relationship is recorded as being perfectly ordinary but jealous officials at the court chose to slander both Yang Guifei and An Lushan by claiming they were having an illicit affair. The emperor didn't believe in the rumours, but he was so persistently fed these rumours that eventually, he began having doubts. He summoned An Lushan to the capital. An Lushan was not unaware of the rumours, and so he refused to make the trip. This was taken as an act of guilt on the part of An Lushan, and so the emperor summoned him again, and An Lushan agreed to come to the capital.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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==== The An Lushan rebellion ====<br />
An Lushan took his army with him to see the emperor. This triggered, in the year 755, the An Lushan Rebellion, which lasted until 763 and shook the Tang dynasty to its very core, as their rule up until then had been one of great successes and internal peace.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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A number of battles and sieges took place, and he emerged victorious in every case, his armies growing each time. As he approached the capital, the emperor and courtiers decided to run away (despite having summoned him officially). They fled to the southwest into Sichuan and the capital of Chang'an was captured by the rebels. During this march, the emperor realized that he could not continue his relationship with Yang Guifei, and he allowed his courtiers to assassinate her.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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==== End of the rebellion ====<br />
The rebellion eventually subsided after both the emperor and An Lushan died (the first of old age, and the latter during the course of the rebellion), and both of their sons continued the hostilities in their fathers' stead.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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With the capital lost, the royal family had to find new avenues of support against the rebels, the main method by which they made compromises with powerful military officials who were stationed far away from any hostilities. When approached by the emperor, these generals saw an opportunity to negotiate with the emperor and obtained concessions. For example, the court had to agree to relinquish the control of certain taxes, to be owned by the generals instead.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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=== Aftermath and impact of the An Lushan rebellion ===<br />
These deals were successful as they allowed the Li family to preserve its rule and defeat the rebellion. However, in granting these concessions, the dynasty weakened itself irreparably. After the An Lushan rebellion ended in 763, the Tang dynasty was never able to regain the dynamism and prosperity that they had previously enjoyed.<ref name=":011" /><br />
<br />
Soon, the same situation that had led to the demise of several earlier dynasties resurfaced: the Tang court directly controlled the areas around Chang'an and Luoyang, as well as certain areas (particularly in northwest China) that were traditionally under the administration of the ruling dynasty. But otherwise, large portions of the empire -- although they continued to recognize the authority of the ruling family and continued to send tribute, kept bigger proportions for themselves and became increasingly autonomous.<ref name=":012">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 13: Han Yu and the Late Tang|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
At the same time, many noble families began to find legal mechanisms to grant their land to Buddhist monasteries, making their land tax exempt. The contract worked by giving ownership of the land to the monastery, with the family retaining rights to some of the use of the land, for example owning some of the harvest. With this mechanism, the family would ultimately make more profits from not paying taxes on the land, even if they only retained part of the harvest and could not use their land freely any more.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
The confluence of these two phenomena led to a major loss of revenue for the royal family, who especially needed money after the several years of civil war. This led the government to increase the rate of taxations, mostly impacting smaller peasant families who didn't have much to their name in the first place. This not only caused unrest, but also increased wealth inequality.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
== Late Tang dynasty ==<br />
<br />
=== Confucian revival of the 9th century ===<br />
At the beginning of the 9th century, a movement to revive the centrality of Confucianism in Chinese political culture and operations of the state started to appear, the biggest of which was the Gu Wen (''old-style prose'') movement, a literary movement led by Han Yu.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
==== Han Yu ====<br />
Like several of the Gu Wen advocates, he was a new kind of figure in the Tang imperial government. Coming from a minor aristocratic family, he entered imperial service by taking one of the occasionally-held imperial examinations, demonstrating literary accomplishment as opposed to simply being born in privilege.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
He critiqued the problems that were plaguing China at the time through literary culture. As a member of the scholar elite, he considered that the centrality of literary culture was fundamental to the functioning of politics (the Confucian ''shi''). To Han Yu, prose writing should be as clear and simple as possible, communicating the author's ideas clearly. He criticized the flowery prose that came about in the Southern dynasties, saying it was a kind of writing in which people were more concerned about ''how'' they were saying something rather than ''what'' they were saying.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
He blamed this development on two influences: Buddhism, and religious Daoism (a response from within Chinese culture to the arrival of Buddhism). He considered that both were bad influences on Chinese civilization largely because they represented the rejection of the family as Confucius envisioned society. Buddhism especially directly challenged the worship of the ancestors that had been central to Chinese spirituality since ancient times. Han Yu argued that with Buddhist monks not having children and thus not continuing their family line, there were no descendants to carry out offerings to the ancestors who would be abandoned.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
He advocated a return to the values of Confucianism in essays, two of his most famous ones being titled ''The origins of the Dao'' and ''The memorial on the bone of the Buddha.<ref name=":012" />''<br />
<br />
===== ''Memorial on the bone of the Buddha'' =====<br />
In ''Memorial'', he took on a major event that happened in his time: a bone of the Buddha's finger was brought to Chang'an, attracting many pilgrims with it. The emperor himself had announced that he would go to the monastery and pay his respects to this relic. Han Yu wrote a letter to the emperor saying (in a very straightforward Confucian manner) this was not appropriate for the emperor of China to do, "paying respect to the rotten corpse of a foreigner" -- underlying that not only was it problematic for the emperor to give meaning to a body part (bodies, and the people taking care of them, being on the fringes of society in ancient Chinese culture), but moreover that the Buddha was a foreigner, which was scandalous to Han Yu.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
The emperor was not pleased by Han Yu's letter, and sentenced him to exile in the fringe parts of South China, near the border with what is now Vietnam. This punishment happened several times in the course of Han Yu's career, owing to this direct approach to matters of policy, and was often a death sentence as malaria or other tropical diseases would contaminate the exiled.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
===== Legacy =====<br />
Han Yu died in 824. While he and the other Gu Wen theorists never achieved enough influence to sweep over the entire nation, they created an intellectual position which became part of the ongoing discourse on Chinese culture. The values that Han Yu advocated for would later be picked up again in the 11th century.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
Han Yu himself did not talk about financial questions; he attacked Buddhism on moral grounds of it being foreign, undermining the family, Confucian values and Chinese culture.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
=== Final decades of the Tang dynasty ===<br />
<br />
==== Purge of Buddhism ====<br />
In 845, 20 years after Han Yu's death, a great purge of Buddhism took place -- mainly as a response to Han Yu's criticism as well as the fiscal problems facing the dynasty. Emperor Wuzong, a fanatical Daoist, issued edicts to ban Buddhism and established monasteries from China. This created a great rupture in Buddhist monasteries: monks and nuns were told to return to their families, and their monasteries torn down.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
More importantly, monastic lands were also confiscated and turned over to the royal family, which allowed for a new stage of land redistribution, giving it back to small farmers which the court could tax. In effect, over several decades privately-owned aristocratic lands (originally handed to monasteries to avoid taxes) were seized by the government who could now tax this land even more.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
The purge of Buddhism lasted only 6-7 years, by the early 850s, Buddhist monasteries were able to be re-established and quickly reappeared in China. However, they did not have their land restored; without these land holdings to support themselves, monasteries were unable to reacquire the large population base that they had before.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
While this return of tax revenue helped the government, it did not support the dynasty for very long.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
==== End of the Tang dynasty ====<br />
All of these conditions eventually culminated into a crisis. Civil wars broke out around China with powerful generals trying to wrestle territories from their peers. In the last years of the 9th century, military forces penetrated into the imperial palace and massacred the eunuchs, making the final emperors of the Tang into puppets of military warlords.<ref name=":020">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 14: Five Dynasties and the Song Founding|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
This process ended in the year 907 when the last claimant to the throne of the Tang was deposed and murdered, which led the dynasty to completely disappearing.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
==Five dynasties period==<br />
Following the dismantling of the Li dynasty, China was again fragmented into several different kingdoms. This period, however, was comparatively brief; lasting only 53 years. It would also be the last time China broke down into a multiplicity of small states.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
While this period is known in Chinese historiography as the Five dynasties period, there were actually up to 20 different states that existed in total during this period, not all at the same time. The five dynasties that gave the name to the period are those which were considered (by later historians) to have passed along the legitimate transmission of authority (''Zhengtong''), tracing a line from the Tang through these five consecutive dynasties and into the Song. The longest of those five dynasties lived for a total of 13 years while some of them survived only for a year or two.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
This period was one of great instability and constant warfare. Military power, much like earlier periods, was the main component for assuming authority: anyone with enough troops and resources could establish their regime.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
== Song dynasty founding ==<br />
In 960, the Five dynasties period officially came to an end. A pair of brothers, Zhao Guangyin and Zhao Guanyi, seized power in the last of the five dynasties state. They overthrew the young king and proclaimed their own dynasty, the Song -- named after their place of origin.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
The Song, which was established in 960, proved to be the state that reunified China after this period and would last down to the year 1279.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
The two brothers succeeded one after the other on the throne for a total of 35 years, but their two reigns are sometimes counted as just one. They were military commanders who had come to the throne by military means, and thus faced a very urgent problem: anybody else with means and resources could challenge their rule and seize power from them in turn.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
To avoid this fate, they carried out military campaigns to reunify China. By the end of the decade, they had militarily re-established an empire -- though smaller than the Tang empire even at its largest, not venturing as far into the frontiers.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
=== New administrative order ===<br />
To secure these new land acquisitions, the Zhao brothers established a civilian bureaucratic government which had been the norm since the Han dynasty; the mechanism to fill this government was to turn to the aristocracy and wealthy families who could afford to educate and spare their sons for government service.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
Following the civil war and dissolution of the Tang however, almost all of these aristocratic families had simply vanished and died off. Their land titles had been seized and burned during rebellions, and the family members would be executed by peasant rebels when they marched on the estates. Noble families would also serve as generals at war, of which there was plenty during the late Tang, and died there. When administrative centers were fought over and captured, the conqueror would often burn documents.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
Essentially, the Zhao brothers did not have this aristocratic and educated base from which they could recruit. To solve this problem, they looked towards the past and found the imperial examinations that had been started in the early Han dynasty, albeit as a minor mechanism for recruitment. While this system did not become the sole means of recruitment, it was expanded and became a central institution of the Song dynasty. The other two main means of recruitment were by recommandation from someone in the administration, and through the ''Yin'' (shadow) privilege. Officials could extend the shadow privilege to their sons who did not have to go through any other qualifying procedures.<ref name=":020" /> <br />
<br />
Still, the examinations remained the main avenue for recruitment; looking at the highest-ranked members of the Song administration (who made policies) reveals that the great majority of them were people who came in by the imperial examinations.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
==== Undertaking of the imperial examinations ====<br />
While legally speaking, almost anyone could take the imperial examination, some groups were excluded by default, the biggest of which being women. Merchants, who were the second most significant group in terms of numbers, were also banned from taking the examination through generations (their sons and other descendants were automatically ineligible). This had to do with the Confucian system which considered merchants to have very low social utility as they didn't produce anything themselves.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
While this left around 50% of the population technically eligible for the exams, one needed to be educated in order to even show up at the exam, which were out of reach for many families who could not spare the labour-power and finances required to educate their son.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
The examination process itself took inspiration from the Confucian revival seen under Han Yu. The exams tested the candidate's mastery of a body of Confucian writing, historical texts and classical literature. The candidate needed to be able to cite texts from memory and apply them to questions of government or administration. They also needed to be able to compose poetry, writing in an elegant literary style.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
==== Cultural changes of the imperial examination system ====<br />
This central place the imperial examinations took in the material base of the country influenced its superstructure heavily, and it became an institution of Chinese culture that survived for the next thousand years: preparing for the exams, taking the exams, being part of this system is what gave a sense of self and community to the elite. Whereas the old aristocratic families received their identity from being great families listed in the registry, the new elite families from the Song dynasty onwards however, people attained this prestige and status by participating in the imperial examination system, making them the educated ''shi'' of older times. This is also around the time the term ''shi'' came to mean not solely an advisor, but an educated person or a scholar as well.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
Members of this strata knew each other from their participation in a shared literate culture, extending to people even who did not pass the exams; these were very tough to pass, held at two levels: local and national (and later provincial level). The pass rate at each level was only about 10%, with a fewer proportion of people attending exams at each higher level. On average, 100 people passed the exam every year. Those who failed their exam were still educated however, and came to constitute the scholar class.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
==Intellectual ferment in the Song dynasty==<br />
<br />
=== Place of the shi in society ===<br />
The importance of the imperial examination system as an institution of imperial China from the Song dynasty forward led to a major cultural crisis in the Chinese educated elite, who went through a process of self-realized and realized what exactly their role was and what they should do with the power they possessed, being not only educated and literate but also in the government administration.<ref name=":013">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 15: Intellectual Ferment in the 11th Century|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
The ''shi'' in the Song dynasty came to the conclusion that by having passed the imperial examinations (or even having attended them) and being educated individuals, they had access and were part of a system of governance and social leadership which they took as a very deep responsibility. Their official positions also afforded them some privileges; for example, they were exempt from labour duties in which a subject had to render to his liege at some time during the year. They were also exempt from corporal punishment.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
Even those who only attended the examinations but didn't pass could find a role in public and social life, serving as teachers for example, and Dr. Hammond notes that many private academies flourished during this period. They could also become tutors or clerks and secretaries in government. Still, this social class remained a very small portion of Chinese society, amounting to 5-6% of the total population at most.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
=== Three basic positions ===<br />
From the writings and other documents that survived the Song dynasty, historians are able to define three distincts positions, though Dr. Hammond notes they are not formal enough to be considered schools of thought.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
==== Wen ren and Jing shi ====<br />
Two similar groups of scholars came to emerge during this period: <br />
<br />
The first group were the ''Wen ren. Wen'' translates in this context as "literary culture"; it has to do with things that are written or produced with writing tools (such as painting or calligraphy). Language, poetry, prose writing, the classics, etc. fall under the general rubric of ''Wen''. ''Ren'' means person or people, so ''Wen Ren'' in English translates as "literary gentleman".<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
The second group was also very concerned with literary culture but approached it in a somewhat different way. They were called the ''Jing shi'', meaning "ordering the world" or "statecraft"; they were focused on the application of the literary body towards the management of state affairs and government.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
Both shared a faith in the literary textual tradition as a repository of knowledge and values, which were very important to these Confucian scholars.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
===== Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi =====<br />
Important individuals in the ''Wen ren'' group were ''Ouyang Xiu'' and ''Su Shi''. While Ouyang was a generation older than Su, they both knew each other and were good acquaintances. They came to know each other when Ouyang was the chief examiner in the year 1059, the same year Su passed his examination at the top of his promotion. Ouyang used his role as an examiner to promote his particular views, drawing upon Han Yu from the Tang dynasty; he was a practitioner of the ''Gu Wen'' principles, and gave preference to prospective examinees who wrote in the ''Gu Wen'' tradition of a clear, concise, to-the-point style. Su Shi was one of those and ranked in large part because of the style of his writing. From there, they looked at the literary heritage as a source of inspiration, knowledge and information, but also as a reservoir of good examples to follow in terms of values and qualities to live by.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
There were still differences between the two acquaintances; Ouyang Xiu was an antiquarian, very interested in the past, collecting antiquities. He saw the literary past as a repository to inspire him. Su Shi, while having the same kind of immersion and familiarity with the past, aimed to achieve such a complete assimilation of that material that he could then spontaneously good writing. But in order to achieve that spontaneity, it was necessary for him to immerse oneself into the models of the past so as to absorb the values and manifest these good qualities.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
===== Sima Guang and Wang Anshi =====<br />
The Jing Shi thinkers shared concerns for the records of the past with the ''Wen ren'', but had a more practical bent to this body of texts. They were concerned with how one could draw from the literature of the past, its examples and values, to solve the problems of society in their day.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
Sima Guang and Wang Anshi knew each other (as well as Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi); hey all lived in the same cities, went to the same social events, knew each other at court and were part of a shared cultural milieu.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
In the late 1060s, Wang Anshi rose to the top of the imperial administration, being named chief minister of the imperial government. He was then given the authority by the emperor to launch a major reform program which he undertook based upon his personal interpretation of the history of the past. These were called the new policies, setting out to foster a more proactive state that will intervene in society to benefit the people. These policies involved, for example, the creation of state-sponsored schools to make education more widespread and a system of regulated agricultural loans so farmers would not be dependent on loans from aristocratic (landlord) families.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
Sima Guang is considered to be the other greatest statecraft thinker of this period, but he was rabidly hostile to the ideas of Wang Anshi, showing that while they drew from the literary body of Chinese history to inform their views, they did not come to the same conclusions at all. When Wang Anshi was named as chief minister, Sima Guang resigned government and retired from the capital at Kaifeng, moving west to the ancient capital of Luoyang. In the 1070s, after Wang Anshi was dismissed from his positions, Sima Guang was brought back and set out to dismantle the policies of Wang Anshi.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
His opposition to Wang Anshi's ideas was based upon a different interpretation of the values to be derived from the literary record of China: while Wang Anshi called for intervention to bring about a Confucian order, Sima Guang argued that the state should keep its hands out of society, and that the emperor should rely upon those within society with a "natural role" as leaders to address the problems their communities face. One way to interpret Sima Guang's views is to see him as defending the leading role and autonomy of the ''shi''; the ''shi'' being extracted from the wealthy land-owning class, i.e. those with privilege.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
==== Cosmological thought ====<br />
At the same time, a third position grew in the ''shi''; a group concerned with linking human affairs to larger cosmic orders and natural systems. In the Northern Song, some thinkers began to place emphasis on a concept very different from ''Wen'', which they called ''Li''. While ''Wen'' refers to things literary or the "pattern" formed by words on a page, which by definition are man-made. ''Li'' on the other hand refers to patterns that occur in nature, the word coming from the striped patterns that appear on some types of rocks. The word ''Li'' itself means pattern or principle.<ref name=":013" /> <br />
<br />
This distinction was fundamental to the cosmological thinkers, who were concerned with trying to understand the naturally-occurring patterns of the world around them. They saw moral values as coming not out of ''Wen'' but being derived directly from natural patterns, because they were embued with normative values. That is to say, patterns that can be observed in nature do not inform simply the way things ''are'', but the way things ''should be'' -- giving them a moral value. In some ways, this calls back to the Confucian ideal of the ''Dao'' ("way"), being the proper order of things which is inherently desirable.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
In the ''Li'' cosmology, acting in accordance to those patterns makes one's actions morally good, while acting against the patterns or principles make one's actions bad. Initially, the cosmological thinkers didn't reject ''Wen'' but argued that it was a mediated experience; relying on the writings of the past was to rely on a humanly constructed understanding of the world. While there were insights to be gained there, they argued, it was not the same as directly apprehending the patterns and principles of the universe.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
=== Legacy ===<br />
While in the Song dynasty these factions and their ideas were only germinal, the period that ensued from this cultural crisis is almost the richest period in Chinese intellectual history and the development of traditional Chinese thought since the Warring states period. It is seen as a critical point in Chinese history as later Chinese thinkers would work from the foundations that were laid in the Song dynasty in regards to their theoretical writings or arguments.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
==Conquest states in the North==<br />
The Song dynasty's borders, while larger in some areas than their predecessors the Tang, did not extend to the borders of modern day China (the People's Republic). Outside of these borders were, at different times, large empires existing which were sometimes in conflict with China. Two of these states came to cause trouble for China, both coming from the North (Northeast and Northwest respectively).<ref name=":015">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 17: Conquest States in the North|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
=== Northeast state of Liao ===<br />
The Northeast of China, which we call Manchuria in modern times, is geographically very different from the Chinese heartland (North and South China): by contrast to the more marginal areas of the empire (such as the tall Tibetan plateau or the arid Xinjiang desert), the north-east was very lush and well-watered, making fishing, hunting and harvesting natural products fairly easy to live in for semi-nomadic populations, inhabited by the Khitan and Jurchen people since ancient times.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
When the Tang dynasty disappeared in 907 and China fragmented in the period of the five dynasties, a leader of the Khitan people (named Abao Ji in Chinese historiography) seized power in the north-east and proclaimed a state which he called a dynasty, emulated after the Chinese model. The Khitan would have been very familiar with China and the Tang who exercised influence over many of the Khitan people, such that their disappearance had a very direct impact on the Khitan. In this context, Abao Ji replaced the authority that China had relinquished.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
Over the next 20 years, Abao Ji conducted military campaigns to extend and consolidate his power. He broke from traditional Khitan modes of leadership -- as a semi-nomadic people, the Khitan had not had a highly organised and centralized political system prior to Abao Ji; traditionally, the elders and more prominent warriors within particular families would emerge as tribal leaders and individuals would be selected as leaders during times of war or hunts. Instead, Abao Ji effectively set himself up as an emperor.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
The adoption of a dynastic title, and calling his regime the Liao dynasty, was a reflection of this change; but it did not come without strife from the Khitan people. The military campaigns he waged served the purposes not only of consolidating territory, but also of seizing loot which Abao Ji would redistribute to the tribal families so as to gain their loyalty.<ref name=":015" /><br />
[[File:Sixteen Prefectures map.png|thumb|Map showing the location of the 16 prefectures]]<br />
Critical in this process was the ability of the Khitan to seize a strip of farmland at the very northern edge of China which came to be known as the 16 prefectures that had been part of the Tang. This area was very different from the rest of Liao territory: instead of sparsely-populated forests and mountains, this territory was not only a fertile farmland, but also very densely populated by Chinese people. By controlling this thin area, the Khitan brought a considerable amount of wealth to the Liao state.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
==== War against the Song ====<br />
When the Song dynasty arose after 960, they aimed to regain this lost territory controlled by a non-Chinese ruler. In the year 1004 and again in the year 1044, major military campaigns were launched against the Khitan to try and seize the 16 prefectures. Both of these campaigns were however unsuccessful. This resulted in humiliating moments for the Song dynasty, and the Song were forced to sign treaties with the Liao; this was quite a change for the Chinese empire who, as a major power in the region, had previously never signed agreements with another power. What they ended up agreeing to was to pay annual tribute to the emperors of the Liao dynasty, in gold and precious cloth (such as silk). These subsidies were doubled after the second unsuccessful campaign of 1044.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
After the second failure, the Song decided that military reconquest was not a cost-effective method of regaining this territory and stopped launching more campaigns. For the Khitan, these tributes are a very significant source of income. For the Chinese, while not being a large economic drain, the tributes were a very humiliating situation however.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
As time went by, the Liao dynasty evolved in various ways. The Chinese population inside the Liao state made up 70% of the total population, and as such the Khitan developed a system of dual administration: in the 16 prefectures, which was populated by their Chinese population, they used the Chinese bureaucratic system that was already in place before the Khitan arrived. This was very effective for the purposes the Liao desired, which was to extract wealth from these lands and keeping the people living there away from rebellion. In the rest of the Liao state, they retained traditional Khitan ways -- at least most of the time; a process took place over long periods of time by which the Liao court became more like the Chinese bureaucracy they had sought to emulate as the Khitan rulers get used to living a Chinese imperial lifestyle.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
This eventually alienated Liao emperors from traditional Khitan customs, resulting in tensions within the Khitan people. The Khitan emperors would also reward their followers by often granting them bits of land from the 16 prefectures. As they granted these lands however, they often became tax-exempt and took away a major source of revenue for the Liao state. The tributes coming in from China were helpful, but not sufficient to offset this loss.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
Eventually, late in the 11th century, the Liao state had trouble paying its military forces. Unrest was beginning to spread among the Chinese population, and insurrections began to take place against Khitan rule. In parallel, the Chinese had devised a strategy to retake the 16 prefectures: they found another non-Chinese people, the Jurchen, who could open a front with the Khitan that would divert them from defending the 16 prefectures.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
==== Jurchen meddling ====<br />
The Jurchen lived further north than the Khitan and some had been incorporated in the Liao state. China used this situation to incite the "free" Jurchen, living outside of Liao territory, to invade the Liao state by sending gifts and advisors. In particular, they encouraged a Jurchen ruler named Aguda to defy the Liao emperor. In the 1120s, the Jurchen launched military campaigns against the Khitan. By this time, the internal problems of the Khitan had developed to the point that they could hardly mount a defense against the Jurchen. To further weaken the Liao state, China also cut their tributes.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
In several years, the Jurchen managed to invade and destroy the Liao dynasty. However, while China had expected to have a docile neighbour who had taken care of their problem for them, they actually had a rude awakening: after the Jurchen had been trained, organised and successfully destroyed the Liao state, they continued their campaigns down into China and in the latter part of the 1120s, they had seized much of Northern China -- notably capturing the northern Song capital at Kaifeng along with the emperor himself and his mother. They were carried off to the north in captivity and were never ransomed, instead living the rest of their life there while another emperor was put on the throne.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
After the capture of Kaifeng, the Chinese court fled south, which instigated a period of several years where the Jurchen armies were effectively chasing the Chinese court from one place to another.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
Finally, the Song forces were able to regroup and mobilize forces and push back against the Jurchen, ultimately being unable to drive them all out of China. By the early 1130s, a clear line of demarcation between Chinese and Jurchen-controlled territories had emerged, located about midway between the Yellow river and the Yangtze river.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
This marked the beginning of the Southern Song for China, the second half of the Song dynasty. Their new capital was established at the city of Hangzhou, located on the southern coast of China.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
=== Jin dynasty ===<br />
Meanwhile, the Jurchen had set up their own dynasty, which they called the Jin (meaning gold in Chinese, taken in reference to the most prominent "golden clan" in Jurchen culture). They too developed a dual system like the Liao dynasty, with their Chinese population representing over 90% of the total population in Jurchen territory.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
The Jin dynasty accommodated to Chinese culture much faster than the Turkic invaders of the North and South period did; within a generation or two, the Jin had effectively become a Chinese state as many of the Jurchen people in the north moved into Chinese land and adopted Chinese lifestyle, settling down and acquiring land. The Jurchen dimension of the Jin state diminished greatly, though it did not disappear entirely.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
The Jin state retained a lot of the features that had been in place during the Northern Song in terms of art, poetry, intellectual debates (such as the Wen and Li factions), etc. In this way, the Jin state is considered to be essentially a continuation of the Northern Song. The economic system of the Jin also remained the same as it was before, due to the North China plain being traditionally the breadbasket of China and retaining their agricultural economy.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
== Southern Song dynasty ==<br />
The reunification of China remained very important in the Southern Song, though no serious efforts were made after a Chinese general was betrayed during the war and lost the empire's last chance to challenge the Jurchen.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
The capital at Hangzhou was considered a temporary capital, with the permanent and "real" one being at Kaifeng, showing how much the Chinese intended to reconquer the North. However, the Song dynasty ended up never achieving that goal as a little over a hundred years later, the Mongols conquered China and established their own empire there.<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
=== Geographic nature and demographics ===<br />
By the geographical nature of the terrain the Southern Song had come to possess (located in Southern China), their economic base had radically altered from the time they had possessed a whole, unified China. As seen previously, the north of China consisted of mostly agricultural (and indeed high-yielding) plains, forming the breadbasket of China in history. By contrast, the southern parts were hilly, with centres of population being separated by difficult to parse hills, river valleys and low mountains.<ref name=":016">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 18: Economy and Society in Southern Song|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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The population of the Southern Song amounted to 60% of the total population of Chinese people. Beginning in the Tang, there had been a shift in the region populations gravitated towards. Back in the Han and earlier times, the great majority of Chinese people lived in the North or to the West. As China expanded geographically, people migrated to the South which resulted in a greater dispersal of people. By the end of the Tang dynasty, the majority of Chinese had come to live in the South. This trend reversed by the end of the Southern Song and today, there is about a 50/50 distribution between North and South China.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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=== Cultural identity ===<br />
Because of the "remoteness" imposed by the geographical nature of the hilly terrain in south China, localities seemed to develop a greater sense of identity from each other, a conscious thought that their settlement existed and was different from another settlement.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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Because of this particularity, this transformation of the Song from controlling all of China to just the southern half had some effects on the ''shi'' class of educated political officials. In the Southern Song, they changed the ways they arranged marriages in a very clear (historically) marker. In the Northern Song, the political capital at Kaifeng had been a great cultural center; officials from all around the country travelled there every three years for assignment to new duties. Through these travels to the capital, families would meet each other and negotiate marriages. Kaifeng had become a major center for such arrangements, and it wasn't rare for people from opposite ends of the country to meet and arrange marriages between their families.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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In the Southern Song, the wide horizon of arranged marriages scaled back dramatically. Marriages were not negotiated empire-wide as they had been before, but most families at this level tended to keep marriages within a narrow local circle; perhaps a handful of townships at most. However, the tradition of travelling to the capital for re-assignment was kept from the Northern Song and these officials still took care of empire-wide tasks. This change in behaviour indicated a change in their thinking and cultural identity which was informed by the new material conditions they had found themselves in: the educated elite families in the Southern Song thought of themselves principally as members of local societies who served on a national level, rather than members of a national elite that served on a local basis.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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These families also became much more involved in local affairs. They undertook public works such as repairing roads, digging canals, organising local militias to control bandits, even starting schools and academies. While nowadays we expect these tasks to be carried out by the government, this development marked the first time the Chinese government effectively started taking care of these issues. However, the management of these public works projects can only be called semi-governmental as they were carried out by local families ''besides'' of their imperial duties, not as part of them.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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=== Economy in the Southern Song ===<br />
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==== Local specialization ====<br />
All of these factors led to differences in the economic base of the Southern Song. Notably, there came to be a trend towards local economic specialization -- the production of certain commodities became the specialty of certain locations. For example, tea had been grown more or less everywhere alongside grain and other crops. Under the Southern Song, tea came to be mostly grown in Zhiejang and Hunan provinces who abandoned other crops (including grain, which was a staple of subsistence farming) to focus on tea. Grain thus required to be imported, and long-distance systems developed to supply the regions with food.<ref name=":016" /><br />
[[File:Bowl, China, Jingdezhen kilns, Jiangxi province, Southern Song dynasty, 13th century AD, qingbai-glazed stoneware - Ethnological Museum, Berlin - DSC01992.jpg|thumb|Ceramic bowl from Jingdezhen made in the 13th century.]]<br />
The city of Jingdezhen became a great center of ceramics. Ceramics had been produced in China for millennia and many centers had developed. Jingdezhen however industrialized production; the imperial kilns were located there, and production was organized on a basis similar to assembly lines. Thousands of workers were employed, with teams running the kilns 24 hours a day. Distribution was also handled industrially: warehouses were built for storage, and then shipped not only all over China, but also made their way regularly as far as the Persian Gulf. From there, they could be shipped all over the world; Jingdezhen wares have been found as far as the Western coast of Africa and Mediterranean countries, making them a truly global commodity -- all regulated by the imperial state.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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==== Monetary policies ====<br />
The imperial state, while continuing to be a Confucian government, put in place a number of policies which actively encouraged the growth of the commercial economy (trading) -- particularly though monetary policies.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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The state encouraged and carried out a great expansion in the money supply which, at the time, was backed by precious metals. These policies had an international dimension as well; Song coins were allowed to leave the country and spread throughout East Asia, becoming the common currency in Japan and Korea at this time.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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==== Paper money ====<br />
The Southern Song also experimented with paper money, which was a fairly radical development. The Chinese recognized the use of money as a universal means of circulation or universal commodity, recognizing that it did not have to be a precious metal so long as it was accepted as having value by the people who used it. While not much paper money left the borders, it did circulate quite widely within China. The experiment didn't work out as well as intended however, and paper money fell out of use after the Song dynasty.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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==== Growth of the merchants and artisans ====<br />
These factors fostered the growth of a new class, merchans and artisans which derived their wealth not from agriculture or landlording, but from the production of goods and subsequent distribution and sale.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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This started to apply some stress to Chinese society. In classic Confucian thought, merchants were at the bottom of the social strata, considered to be morally tainted (although they were recognized to have some social utility). Up until the Southern Song, the limited presence of merchants did not create a big problem for the state due to how they were perceived. However, as commercial activity expanded wideld, so did not only the numbers of merchants but the wealth they concentrated in their hands as well. Towns grew, where large numbers of merchant families made their home. They built elaborate mansions, wore fine clothes (often the same kind the educated elite would be wearing), had themselves carried around in chairs by servants, and eventually started emulating the culture of the elite: they bought books and paintings, they established libraries, funded public works projects, sponsored monasteries, etc.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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This created tensions between the emerging commercial class and the established feudal elite who made their money on agricultural production; a situation highly reminiscent of the rise of the [[bourgeoisie]] in Europe and their later struggles against the established [[Feudalism|feudal]] order (even happening around the same time in history).<ref name=":016" /><br />
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In China, this development took a different trajectory; the contradiction between the two classes was able to be diffused to some extent. This can be explained by the convergence of interests that happened early in the Song dynasty: wealthy landowing families started to take some of the wealth they were earning from their agricultural revenue and invested it in commercial enterprises, making there commercial partners. At the same time, merchants who were becoming wealthy wanted to reinvent themselves as these educated, elite families and bought land to set up their estates. After a generation or two, they would train their sons to take the imperial examinations to cement their ''shi'' status.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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== Neo-Confucianism in the Song dynasty ==<br />
As the material base in the (Southern) Song changed, so did the character of its ideas. It is during the Song dynasty that Neo-Confucianism (''dào xué,'' 道学, "the learning of the Way") emerged, theorized by Zhu Xi (1130-1200). He took after the cosmological thinkers of the past, notably those from the earlier Song dynasty, bringing all of their theories and methodologies in a coherent body of philosophy.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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It should be noted that neo-Confucianism is a misnomer of sorts. While this is how ''dào xué i''s customarily called in the West and in English, it is not the name used in China. The distinction is significant because in traditional Chinese culture, one does not want to invent something "new" or "neo", but rather one wants to return to the correct interpretation of the past. ''Dào xué,'' while being "new" in the sense that it was developed as a coherent body of philosophy in the Southern Song dynasty millenia after Confucius, was not emphasized by Zhu Xi as being new, but as returning to the correct interpretation of the classics.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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The core of Zhu Xi's argument is that there had been a shift in the source of moral values, from the primacy of the literay cultural tradition (the ''Wen'') to a primacy of the direct understanding or apprehension of the natural patterns and principles of the universe (the ''Li''). He believed that by observing natural patterns and deriving principles from them, one could ground morality in a very firm basis -- not being solely a matter of convention or what people had decided amongst themselves, but a natural order more powerful than humans.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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Further, he argued that this was exactly what the sage emperors of Antiquity did -- emperors like Yao and Shun, who had harmonized themselves with the patterns and principles they'd seen around them, and thus why they were sages.<ref name=":017">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 19: Zhu Xi and Neo-Confucianism|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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Therefore, to Zhu Xi, the ''Wen'' was useful as a record of how people had understood those insights of the ancients; ''Wen'' shouldn't be taken as a source of values in and of itself, but as a way of approaching an understanding of the ancient sages believed and carried out. Deriving a sense of values would happen, for Zhu Xi, through both studying the ancient texts from this point of view and from studying phenomena in the world.<ref name=":017" /> <br />
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The critical figure in this process was the "gentleman" (''Junza'') that Confucius upheld as a model of good values for everyone to follow. In practice, this meant the ''shi'', the educated elite. The ''junza'' would essentially be the invidual who puts the quest for moral values into practice; he sought to develop and cultivate his own moral qualities, while being engaged in the process of making the world a better place. In that process, he would have to undertake studies, but also what Zhu Xi called the "investigation of things" (''gé wù'', 格物). These practices would prepare the ''junza'' to be a good person, lead a good family life, and thus be able to carry on the affairs of the state.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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Zhu Xi did not reject the textual tradition, but he did take a very critical approach to it, unlike the Northern Song elite. He did not care much to immerse himself in the textual tradition and absorb values from it, but he did say there were elements of value in this tradition. He was uncomfortable with the "commentarial" tradition; the body of texts which sought to interpret the teachings and writings of the Ancient over the past millenia and a half. Zhu Xi thought that these later texts obscured the meanings of what the original authors had actually said (or actually intended to say). He thus advocated a return to the classics, engaging directly with them.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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One of Zhu Xi's legacies was the selection of four texts he considered to be fundamental to his philosophy, making them the centerpieces of his educational program. The Confucian classics in Chinese history varied throughout the eras, with there at times being 5, 8, or even 13. Two of Zhu Xi's four texts were the ''Analects of Confucius'' (written by his students after his death) and the ''book of Mencius'' (Confucius' most famous follower, written a century and a half later). These two texts had always been in the classical canon, and were full-length books. The other two texts he considered fundamental were chapters taken from a longer work called the ''Liji'', which is a record of ritual activities of the early Zhou dynasty. These two chapters of the ''Liji'' are called ''the doctrine of the Mean'' and ''the Great Learning''.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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=== The Great Learning ===<br />
This chapter of the ''Liji'' perhaps encapsulates Zhu Xi's philosophy best. The ''Great Learning'' is not a long text, but it follows a very careful course of development, starting by referring back to the ancients (who wished to bring order to the world). There is a short preface before that to explain what the ''great learning'' (the Dao) is: manifesting one's virtue in the world, or in practical terms, "knowing when to stop" (as quoted from the book).<ref name=":017" /><br />
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The ancients who wished to bring order to the world, according to the Great Learning, firstly had to govern well. To achieve that, they followed a logical sequence, which can be explained in this manner: they first had to get their family to be well-ordered, properly organized and run. But to achieve that, they first had to rectify and cultivate themselves. To achieve that, they tried to get their consciousness clear, which they realized required them to extend their knowledge. Finally, to extend their knowledge, they started by engaging in the ''investigation of things'' (''gé wù'').<ref name=":017" /><br />
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==== Process of the Dào Xué ====<br />
When things are investigated ''correctly'', then knowledge is expanded. That sequence is essentially the entire basis of the ''dào xué'', but it should not be seen as a step-by-step program; Zhu Xi's teachings were especially well-preserved by his students who took extensive notes of his lectures. In these records, he made it quite clear that all these activities actually need to be undertaken at the same time, they cannot be separated and must be pursued at all times, even when one is alone (which Zhu Xi got from Confucius). This was especially important to Zhu Xi as the Daoxue was not simply a matter of public affairs or appearances, but something one had to pursue for themselves.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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The path the this learning takes is a process of moral development that, for Zhu Xi, would essentially make one into a "gentleman", or ''Junza''. For Confucius, there was nothing that inherently restricted this practice to one particular group within society. Indeed, the Great Learning ends with the following phrase: "for everyone, from the son of heaven down to an ordinary farmer, this should be the way"; the implication being that self-cultivation is a responsibility that all individuals in society have, although Zhu Xi did not emphasize this aspect in his writings.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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=== Qi ===<br />
The social and economic context Zhu Xi lived in, of the Southern Song dynasty, likely influenced his writing, which can be seen to some extent in his writing. The idea of an individual moral responsibility corresponds, for example, to the emergence of a more market-oriented economic system, in which individuals participate in exchange and in which a "marketplace of ideas" might be inferred. In that place of ideas, the individual would advocate his own moral understanding and insights: Zhu Xi's system is not one that imposes a dogma or truth from the top-down, but one that challenges individuals to cultivate themselves morally and bring out their own moral understanding.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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In a sense, everything shares in ''Li'' (the seeking out of natural patterns from which one can derive universal principles) . Zhu Xi asks, for example, the question of why some people are morally better than others: "if everyone shares in Li, why aren't people inherently good?"<ref name=":017" /><br />
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Zhu Xi explained this through the concept of ''Qi'', which, he argued, could not be separated from ''Li''. Qi is often referred to as an "energy" system within the body, but for the cosmological thinkers, ''Qi'' is the fabric of material reality. If ''Qi'' were the base, then ''Li'' would be the superstructure.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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The process of self-cultivation is one that clarifies one's ''Qi''; the clearer one's ''Qi'' is, the more directly will natural principles (''Li'') be manifested. To the degree that one's ''Qi'' is "cloudy", ''Li'' will be obscured to them.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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The cultivation of the individual is therefore a process to more directly manifest ''Li'', which is done through being in harmony with the ''Dao''.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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=== Legacy ===<br />
''Dào xué'' itself never became a dominant or even mainstream philosophy during Zhu Xi's lifetime, but it became so very rapidly ''after'' his death; by the 1240s, Daoxue was given official recognition by the imperial state and even after the Mongol conquest, Zhu Xi's interpretation of Confucianism came to be the official line followed by the empire, even being given central place in the imperial examination system.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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==The rise of the Mongols==<br />
While China was continuing on, divided between the Jin and Song dynasties, a new power was beginning to arise out in the Asian steppes, the Mongol empire led by [[Genghis Khan]] (also known as Temujin).<ref name=":018">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 20: The Rise of the Mongols|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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=== Temujin ===<br />
The Mongols lived nomadically and semi-nomadically, moving from summer to winter pastures throughout the year in the great grasslands (also called steppes) of inner Asia, areas in which they had lived for centuries by that point. They subsisted by raising sheep, goats and horses.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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The political landscape of the Mongol people can be described as low-intensity. Leadership was organised on the basis of a family (or tribal) affiliation but seldom came together as a coherent force.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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Temujin was born in the 1160s, the son of a minor tribal chieftain. His father was murdered early in his life. After this, Temujin and his family were forced to flee to remote hills. As Temujin grew up, he conceived a desire to avenge his father and an ambition to unite the Mongol people. In the 1180s, he began to pursue his ambitions: he led his family back to society and ruthlessly murdered his older brothers so that he would be the senior male member of his tribe. At 16, he claimed a bride by the name of Börte who had been promised to him in an agreement between his father and her father when Temujin was just an infant. Although his father had been murdered and the promise of marriage could have been cancelled, the bride's family agreed to honor the contract. Moreover, the bride's father gave Temujin a sable cloak, which was a very valuable item which became a symbol of his power in later years.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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Through his family connections and charisma, Temujin was afterwards able to form alliances and build up a following. He received a reputation as a strong and dynamic fighter and leader. In one instance, his wife had been kidnapped in a raid committed by other Mongols, as happened from time to time. In response, Temujin launched a raid and succesfully brought back his wife, impressing his peers greatly.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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In 1190, Temujin was named ''khan'', which is a title reserved for a tribal leader. Over the next 10 years, he and other Mongol leaders would at times collaborate and at times fight against each other, but by 1200 he had built a foundation from which to unite all the Mongol tribes. This was not accepted easily by other leaders who did not want to see one individual dominate all other tribes. When this happened in the past and someone would become too strong, the other tribes would ally together to cut them down to size.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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Confrontations came to a head in 1204 when Temujin was defeated in battle. Withdrawing from the battle with only a few thousand of his soldiers, he waited for the enemy to celebrate his defeat -- knowing that they would get drunk and be unable to mount a defense. Temujin rode back with his army three days later and assaulted the camp. His assault was successful, and he was able to get rid of essentially all of his competition.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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In 1206, he convened a ''kurultai'', an assembly during which all tribes came together to discuss politics. There he was elected to be Genghis Khan, or "oceanic leader", the king of kings.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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=== Great raids ===<br />
Leadership of the Mongols was based on the ability to distribute goods seized during raids. Having unified the Mongols, raids between tribes were forbidden, but a new source of revenue had to be found to replace it, and so the Mongols started preparing large raids on their immediate neighbours.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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They eventually started raiding a very enticing target: the Jin dynasty, which controlled the agricultural wealth of the North China plain.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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Two keys to the success of the Mongols' conquests were their cavalry and their ruthlessness. They had bred over centuries horses capable of marching for days on end, which made the Mongol army highly mobile (to the point, Dr. Ken Hammond notes, that they could essentially show up at a city overnight). Secondly, when the Mongols sieged a settlement, they would offer two choices: either surrender and only a portion of the city would be killed, with most of the men being incorporated into the Mongol army, or refuse to surrender and everyone would be killed. It is exemplified historically that the Mongols were very strict at enforcing this ultimatum, almost never deviating from it.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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They also developed a very highly refined system of military organization. Army groups were organized on the decimal system, and as the army expanded they simply created new units with some Mongol officers at their head. In this way they were able to continually expand their army.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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The Mongols conquered vast amounts of land under Temujin, going as far down to Persia and west to Russia. On the way, they started raiding into Tibet and there won the submission of the Tibetan monastic leaders, after which Tibet was incorporated into the Empire, with some Mongols even adopting Tibetan Buddhism.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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=== Death of Temujin ===<br />
In 1227, 20 years after the Mongols had started their great raids, Temujin died as he was bringing his forces back towards Mongolia. When he died, all the Mongol armies had to return home for another ''kurultai'' and elect their new leader. This process took over 2 years, and Temujin's son, Ugedei, was elected as Genghis Khan and presided over a second great age of conquest.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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It was under Ugedei's leadership that the Mongols ventured into China, destroying and incorporating the Jin state 1234 and move down into the Southern Song.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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Ugedei died in 1241, leaving a decade-long period of uncertainty after which the Mongol empire was divided among four of Temujin's grandsons.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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=== Partition of the Mongol Empire ===<br />
Batu Khan took over Russia and Ukraine, calling his territory the Khanate of the Golden Horde -- the successors of which later became the Cossacks. Hulagu controlled Persia, with his descendants being known as the Ilkhan and converting to Islam which was the religion of Persia, emerging later as the Mughals (who invaded India until 1857). In the third territory in central Asia, Chagadai took over Samarkand, naming his holdings the Khanate of Chagatai. One of his descendants was Tamerlane, a great conqueror in the 15th century who almost conquered China. Finally, in China itself, Kublai became the Khan there and lorded over not only the Southern Song dynasty but Korea as well. He also made two attempts at invading Japan which never succeeded.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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This age of conquest was unprecedented; they brought together territories that had never been controlled by a single power in history. This created conditions which had never been seen before; for example, it became safe to travel all the way from the Mediterranean to the Pacific under the protection of the Mongols. There was much more interaction amongst different parts of East Asia, Eastern Europe and West Asia (the Middle East).<ref name=":018" /><br />
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==The Yuan dynasty==<br />
[[File:1920px-Mongol Song Wars.jpg|thumb|Map of the Mongol conquest of the Song empire, 1234-1279,]]<br />
The great age of conquest by the Mongols was over by the middle of the 13th century. In 1260, Kublai Khan took over the territories his father Genghis had conquered, including areas of China that were previously owned by the Jin state conquered in 1234.<ref name=":019">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 21: The Yuan Dynasty|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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A great debate took place within Mongol society as to what to do with this conquered territory. One proposal was to clear the land of the North China plain, essentially razing everything down to make pasture land for their horses. Fortunately, a former Jin official was able to convince the Mongols that it would be more profitable to maintain North China as a zone of farming and taxation.<ref name=":019" /><br />
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=== Conquest of China ===<br />
When Kublai became Greath Khan in 1260, devoted his power to conquer all of China. This was not an easy endaveour for the Mongols and their cavalry tactics due to the hilly, mountaineous and wet nature of the South China plain with many river valleys. They brought in soldiers from other parts of the empire who had experience in urban warfare (both siege and in cities), particularly from Persia. They also learned to fight on rivers and waterways and for the first time really began to develop a naval component to their operations.<ref name=":019" /><br />
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The Mongols eventually succeeded in driving the Song emperor out of the capital at Hangzhou in the 1270s and by 1279, the last claimant to the throne was disposed of, dissolving the Song dynasty.<ref name=":019" /><br />
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China was thus unified again, although under a foreign ruler. In 1272, Kublai Khan had already established a new dynasty in China: the Yuan dynasty ("long-lasting" or "far-reaching"). This marked a clear change in Mongol administrative methods, that they needed to adapt to the realities of the country they had just conquered if they wanted to control it, but it was not entirely unique to China: they also did the same in Persia for example, adopting Islam.<ref name=":019" /><br />
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A capital was even established at Beijing, named ''Dadu'' (元大都, "Great capital"). The Mongols, being mostly nomadic, did not usually establish a permanent capital. Not all of the Mongols were happy with this however; some of the noblemen did not want to settlind down, and a portion of Mongols broke off from China to go back to their homeland, resuming their traditional lifestyle.<ref name=":019" /> <br />
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=== Challenges of the Yuan ===<br />
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=== Role of the shi ===<br />
The very first challenge the Yuan under Kublai Khan faced was the administrative question. By that time, China was home to around 100 million people versus perhaps a million Mongols spread out over their entire conquered territories. There were also particular tensions between the Mongol conquerors and the traditional ''shi'' elite, who had resisted the conquerors for over 20 years, leading to resentment from the Mongols towards the Chinese elites. Finally, there was a cultural barrier: most Mongols were illiterate, and could not read classical Chinese, which furthered their distrust of the ''shi''.<ref name=":019" /><br />
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The Mongols however could not entirely get rid of the ''shi'' as they could not effectively administer China without some access to the existing mechanisms of administration. Their solution was thus to import educated and experienced people from other parts of their territories who came to be known as the ''sèmù rén'' (色目人, "people with colored eyes"), reflecting their foreign nature.<ref name=":019" /><br />
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The semu ren were placed in official positions alongside the ''shi'', but couldn't speak or read Chinese themselves, still requiring intermediaries. But with this system, the semu ren came to control the high-level decisions and the ''shi'' were relegated to clerical work. The ''shi'' found themselves in an undesirable position, as they had previously thought of themselves as being policy-makers and the best-suited people to control the affairs of the kingdom. Because of this new role, they began turning some their attention and energy into other kinds of activites, especially in art and literature. In painting for example, a whole genre of perseverance and endurance symbolism (such as rocks, bamboo shoots, blooming flowers, etc.) flourished in the Yuan dynasty.<ref name=":019" /><br />
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More significantly, they also began to write plays and popular dramas which were played all over the empire in public theaters, including in the capital at Dadu. These were historical dramas which drew on legends of the past and historical accounts. They often told stories that had to do with resistance to arbitrary authority and maintaining the purity of Han culture in the face of barbarian presence. Such topics were of course prohibited by the Mongols, but the censors did not catch these nuances and theater plays flourished under the Yuan.<ref name=":019" /><br />
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[[Marco Polo]] was himself a ''semu ren''; born in Venice, he left in 1272 and travelled over land to the Yuan court with his father and uncle, eventually becoming a government employee in China for over 20 years before going back to his home city.<ref name=":019" /><br />
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=== End of Kublai Khan's reign ===<br />
Kublai Khan passed away in 1296, and so did the great age of the Mongols. While his descendants kept their territories, they eventually diverged from each other and took their own path integrating with their local cultures, breaking up the Mongol empire over time.<ref name=":019" /> <br />
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After Kublai's death, there was a succession of mostly apathetic emperors. While the Yuan dynasty lasted another 80 years, they never really enjoyed the kind of power like Kublai had had. This gave rise to some developments that eventually contributed to the downfall of the Yuan dynasty.<ref name=":019" /><br />
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Power increasingly fell into the hands of Chinese officials, even at the imperial court. While they were theoretically employed solely as advisors, they came to have greater influence after Kublai's death. In 1313, the Mongols decided to reinstate the imperial examination system -- a tremendous concession to the ''shi'', as it formed the focal point of their identity.<ref name=":019" /><br />
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From there on, two problems developped:<br />
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* Great conflicts arose among the Mongol nobility. If someone's tribe began to stand out, the other families would band together to take them down (which Temujin and Kublai had managed to overcome and extinguish). After Kublai's death and several generations passed by, this aspect of their culture began to reemerge and when one Mongol noble began to be more powerful or competent, others came together to sabotage them. This internal sabotage rendered the Mongols a more or less neutral force in Chinese affairs.<br />
* On the other hand, although the ''shi'' found back positions of influence, they tended to fall into factions loyal to particular nobles (likely because they lacked the base to form a unified force of their own), often at odds with each other.<ref name=":019" /><br />
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These two problems paralyzed the Yuan state, making it unable to respond to their natural and human challenges. Notably, a great plague struck China late in the 1340s, likely related to the plague that swept through Europe at the same time. In any case, the mortality rate was as high as 50% of the population in some places. This led to a variety of other problems such as insufficient revenues and labour-power to maintain big projects such as the river dikes, leading to flooding and more deaths through the elements or famine. Because of the way the Yuan court was structured by that point, neither local nobles nor the imperial court were able to respond to these events.<ref name=":021">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 22: The Rise of the Ming|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
Local authorities, in fact, tended to be so scared of the disease that they instead secluded themselves in their manors, hoarding as many resources as they could and never venturing out. The only "institutional" force that played a positive role in this period were the Buddhist monasteries, who provided shelter, food and medical care to people.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
This forced local popular movements to rise up, mostly centered around peasants, to seize the resources they needed -- becoming bandits and rebels -- to repair important infrastructure and avoid famines.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
==The rise of the Ming==<br />
It's in this context plaguing the Yuan dynasty that the Ming dynasty emerged. Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋) lived as an intinerant ; while not a Buddhist monk per se, he traveled from monastery to monastery to receive shelter and food. There, he eventually started frequenting the peasant rebel groups that also relied on those services. He became involved with such a group called the Red Turbans, where his intelligence and military skills fairly quickly made him a leader in the movement.<ref name=":021" /><br />
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By the early 1360s, Zhu Yuanzhang had taken over the movement and softly repositioned it from a mystical motif (the movement saw itself as an apocalyptic upheaval thrown into the chaos of the plague) to using it to found a new dynasty, overthrowing the Yuan Mongols and placing himself at the head. He proclaimed this dynasty in 1368, calling it the ''Ming'' (明, ''Míng'', meaning "bright"). However, while the dynasty was proclaimed, he had not defeated the Mongols yet.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
Zhu Yuanzhang took his various armies which had been consolidated in the Yangtze valley to the capital at Dadu. Upon their arrival, instead of fighting, the Mongols abandoned the city and retreated to the grasslands further north, letting Zhu Yuanzhang to take control of the empire. He then returned south and established his capital at Nanjing, leaving one of his sons in command of the old capital at Dadu against a possible Mongol invasion.<ref name=":021" /><br />
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=== The principal task of the Ming ===<br />
The Ming needed to reestablish and recreate institutions for their dynasty, as the ones in place under the Yuan were brought over by the Mongols and slowly eroded over the last years of their rule. To that end, Zhu Yuanzhang adopted the model of the Confucian state and set about putting in place the proper Confucian bureaucracy, along with the right people to run it -- the ''shi.''<ref name=":021" /><br />
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Zhu Yuangzhang reinstated the imperial examination system just two years after the founding of his dynasty. Immediately, however, he suspended the system as he did not trust the ''shi'', believing they didn't behave very well during the crises of the past decades and Zhu himself not being very educated himself, was afraid of the power they could wield.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
In 1380, the emperor reinstated the examinations again (at which point they would run uninterrupted until 1905). Still mistrustful of the ''shi'' however, emperor Zhu became convinced one of his close officials, a man by the name of Hu Weiyong (胡惟庸), was plotting against him. Hu Weiyong was executed along with anyone who ever worked with him, members of his family, members of the family of people that worked with Hu, etc. In total, thousands of people were executed.<ref name=":021" /><br />
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This began a pattern in emperor Zhu until the end of his rule, leading to the execution of tens of thousands of people. One consequence of these executions is that upon the death of an official, the Emperor would also abolish the office they managed, taking it into his own hands. With an active and dynamic ruler such as Zhu, who took a hands-on approach to governing, taking these functions was not problematic. However, later in the dynasty, this consequence created issues with Emperors who were not so involved or competent in governing.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
=== Death of Emperor Zhu Yuangzhang ===<br />
Emperor Zhu eventually died in 1398. He was succeeded by one of his grandsons, Zhu Yunwen (朱允炆) -- the eldest son of his eldest son. Customarily, the crown would be passed down to the Emperor's eldest son. However, due to his eldest son having died some time earlier, Emperor Zhu decided to pass the crown to his grandson, which made his other sons very resentful.<ref name=":021" /><br />
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Zhu Yunwen had grown up in the palace, surrounded by Confucian officials and educated in the same manner -- the same officials which his grandfather was distrustful of. On the contrary, Zhu Yunwen considered himself one of them.<ref name=":021" /><br />
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This displeased his uncle (and Zhu Yuangzhang's last alive son), Zhu Di (朱棣, ''Zhū Dì''), who not only felt resentful that he was passed up for the throne, but also felt that his nephew was not respecting the political culture the last emperor had put into the court.<ref name=":021" /><br />
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Between 1400 and 1402, Zhu Di coordinated a series of political and military actions which were designed to put pressure on his nephew. In 1402, he forced his nephew's forces to the South, attacked the capital at Nanjing, and proclaimed himself emperor, becoming the third emperor of the Ming (although for more than 150 years, his nephew's short rule of 4 years was simply erased from history, making Zhu Di the second emperor).<ref name=":021" /><br />
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=== Emperor Zhu Di ===<br />
Upon becoming emperor, Zhu Di faced several problems. He was not considered the legitimate ruler but a usurper, and many of the Confucian officials did not recognize his seizure of power. In particular, he was defied in open court by a Confucian official when he was ordered to make an edict recognizing Zhu Di as emperor, leading to the execution of all members of this faction.<ref name=":021" /><br />
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Nonetheless, Zhu Di struck a middle ground with the ''shi'': he enjoyed a much better relationship with the Confucian officials than his father had. In fact, he cultivated a much closer relationship with his officials after they accepted his rule.<ref name=":021" /><br />
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In particular, Zhu Di became involved in building the power of the Grand Secretariat (内閣, nèigé) in the empire. Technically, the role of this institution was to process documents such as edicts to be issued, reports coming in, requests for funds, memorials, etc. All of the empire's paperwork passed through the Secretariat. Zhu Di made the Secretariat into a consultative body, reporting to him directly and advising him, making it a very important and powerful institution.<ref name=":021" /><br />
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Zhu Di also built up the city of Beijing, which he made into his capital. Several hundred carpenters and crafstmen were moved up north from Nanjing to build this capital.<ref name=":021" /><br />
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==== Maritime voyages ====<br />
Under Zhu Di's reign, great navy fleets were assembled at the beginning of 1405 and sent to sail out as far as the Persian Gulf (as well as Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean and the East coast of Africa) until around 1435.<ref name=":021" /><br />
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These voyages involved hundreds of ships, some being several times bigger than the frigates European powers used for their future maritime voyages. What made these voyages special was not the destination -- private traders had been sailing those routes for some time already -- but the fact that they were organized officially by the government and that we are not entirely sure why they were launched and then stopped. A likely explanation is that Zhu Di wanted to demonstrate the legitimacy of his rule by exploring officially and sending representatives to places that traded with China.<ref name=":021" /><br />
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The most likely explanation as to why the voyages were discontinued is that there happened a shift in the imperial court's concerns, redirecting their concerns towards the inner Asian frontier, which had been a challenge for most past dynasties, instead of the sea.<ref name=":021" /><br />
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===The Ming golden age===<br />
The end of Zhu Di's reign gave way to a succession of emperors who were not considered very notable in Chinese historiography. Unsurprisingly, the Grand Secretariat emerged during this period as the principal political force in China. We can note three individuals, known as the Three Yangs, all employed in the Grand Secretariat, who were considered important:<ref name=":022">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 23: The Ming Golden Age|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
* Yang Shiqi, Grand Secretary and one of the most prominent literary authorities of his time.<br />
* Yang Rong and <br />
* Yang Pu, two Grand Secretaries who had come into office under Zhu Di.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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At the same time, eunuchs came to prominence as well under the Ming. They played a particular role within the imperial system; within the palace, the emperor represented the ''creative'' force of ''Yang'', and his consorts represented the ''receiving'' force, the Yin. Within the palace, there could be no Yang except for the emperor. Laborers were still needed within the palace however, and eunuchs (castrated men) were picked for these tasks.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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This privileged proximity to the imperial family allowed them, under the Han, to get access to the emperor and barter said privilege for benefits with other nobles. Under the Ming, Zhu Yuangzhang had excluded eunuchs from consulting government documents and could not be taught to read. Zhu Di however, when he was conspiring to seize power, used eunuchs greatly to conspire and spy on his nephew. Even after seizing the throne, he kept using eunuchs as covert agents and employing them as they were dependent on him. The ''shi'', while hired and appointed by the emperor, were not entirely dependent on him to survive -- they were landowners for the most part and enjoyed the privilege of the imperial examination system.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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Zhu Di allowed eunuchs to become involved in the handling of documents and information within the palace again, and by the end of his reign had set the stage for what would come to be known as the ''Inner Palace School,'' an academy within imperial grounds for the training of eunuchs.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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From then on, a difficult balance had to be struck between ''within'' the palace (the eunuchs) and ''outside'' the palace (the ''shi''). Given the power and wealth that eunuchs came to have under Zhu Di, sought to legitimize themselves as a force of their own, as they were before that seen as "inferiors", due to the castration (their body had been mutilated and they could not pass on their lineage, which were seen as a bad thing in the Confucian school). To overcome this stigma, many became patrons of the arts, founded monasteries or schools, etc.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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=== Growth in the 15th and 16th century ===<br />
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==== Stabilization and political growth ====<br />
By the 1450s, the Ming state had stabilized into a routine state: the ''shi'' were back in their traditional role of running the imperial bureaucracy, the examination system, dominating the cultural landscape, etc. and the eunuchs keeping the palace running and functioning in the interest of the dynasty.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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This spilled over to the political level as well. Ming society was embarking on a great age of expansion and development; this was in part facilitated by actions of the government itself. From very early on, the Ming had a very well-developed system of internal communication. Information could flow back to the capital from anywhere within the empire, running an imperial postal service throughout the territory complete with postal relays, roads, stables, and lodgings for messengers. A message could be sent to the far southern border in as little as 5 weeks, which was fairly quick at the time and especially compared to previous dynasties.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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This postal service became the core to build the infrastructure of a much bigger system that would be used by merchants and other private interests: since these roads were built and patrolled by soldiers at all times, they were safe to travel on. Thus, merchants or other rich citizens who carried a lot of money or cargo started travelling on these roadways. These roads became the network for the trading system in the Ming dynasty.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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==== Economic growth and trade ====<br />
In turn, that usage contributed to further economic growth as services directed towards the commercial travellers began to spring up along the roads and official stations. Merchants were also allowed to use certain government facilities, such as the barges on the grand canal, which was used to ship grain from the South to Beijing -- Beijing at the time was such a large city that it could not entirely feed itself and needed to import its food. When the barges were not in use, merchants could rent them.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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We see also during this time, up to the 16th century and beyond, a revival of local manufacturing specialization such as what was seen in the Southern Song; certain areas within China began to develop specialized production, e.g. the textile centers in the Jiang'an region. These centers led to further economic growth: families who had been subsistence farmers for the most part instead became craftsmen, producing tea, porcelain or other goods, and earning a wage. It became necessary to import food to these areas, which travelled through the imperial road system.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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This growth was reflected in other ways such as in the development of financial institutions regarding the economy. Paper money, which had been experimented with in the Southern Song, was brought back. Proto-banking institutions began to develop, especially in Shanxi province where private paper money began to circulate.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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===== International and global trade =====<br />
While domestic growth was facilitated by government intervention, the international situation was a bit more complex. After the end of the great voyages that had been ordered under the first emperor, other states saw the Ming negatively when it came to trade. The Ming had passed policies and edicts severely limiting foreign trade in China, limiting trading in certain ports and passing the Maritime Interdict, which was an effort to control foreign coastal merchants and commerce. While these policies did not completely ban trading on the coast, it did control it very carefully. This was a problem because the impulse to trade with China was very strong, leading to the rise of piracy: as people were prevented from trading, they instead turned to raiding the Chinese coastline.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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China established the Tales Trade system with Japan, where a metal rod would be cut in half, with the Japanese trader having one half and an official in China the other. When the trader came to port, he would match his half of the tales with the official, thus proving he was legally authorized to trade and not a pirate.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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This facilitated trade with Japan which was important for China: at that time, Japan had discovered significant deposits of silver. This flow of silver in China allowed for monetization, turning this silver into coins to use as money, rather than barter or credit. That trend to monetization and the encouragement of trade that came with it became more significant as the 16th century progressed.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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The Spanish had colonized the Americas and started the mining of silver and gold. This new large supply of precious metals (particularly silver) began to flow into the global economy: in the 1570s, the Spanish acquired a trading post at Manila (Philippines) and very quickly, the Chinese started trading extensively with the Spanish there, leading to even more economic growth in China.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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This economic growth translated to a growth in population: at the beginning of the Ming dynasty in 1380, there were about 155 million people living in China. By 1500, that figure had grown to around 230 million. By the end of the Ming dynasty in the middle of the 17th century, that number had risen to 270 million. Standards of living also rose throughout China as the economic growth kept ahead of the population growth.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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==== Challenges in the Ming ====<br />
Nonetheless, even during this golden age China faced serious challenges. In particular, the Mongols returned a few times and caused serious problems on the Northern frontier: in 1449, Mongol raids along the Great Wall near Beijing had frightened the court, and the emperor, who had come to the throne at 8 years old (but was a young man by then), set out to lead an expedition against the Mongols and prove his skills. This proved to be a disaster: his party was attacked and defeated by the Mongols, with the emperor being captured and held for ransom.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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This marked the first case where the Mongols revived as a threat to the empire. A century later, in the late 1540s, Mongol forces once again began to raid across the Great Wall and even came within sight of Beijing. This raised the question of border security once again, and led to vast debates about how to deal with this threat. At the same time, piracy also remained a concern and even grew as one, becoming a major source of insecurity and polarization at the court.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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Eventually, the Ming put together a military force which suppressed piracy along the coast, leading to a relaxed policy around the coast giving access to more ports and areas to foreign merchants.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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== Gridlock and crisis in the Ming ==<br />
By the end of the 16th century, other problems began to emerge due to the security issues as well as the rapid economic growth that took place in the years prior.<ref name=":022" /><br />
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Zhu Yijun's (朱翊鈞) reign, which lasted from 1572 to 1620, was marked by a number of crises that started under him and would deepen with them. His reign started off in a good situation, thanks to the emperor's Grand Secretary who served as his advisor, Zhang Juzheng (张居正). The advisor had wanted to strengthen the power of the central state, allowing the state to more effectively respond to its challenges in governing. To that end, Zhang Juzheng wanted to reform the taxation system and restrain the excesses of both local officials and private wealthy families. The impulse for these proposals was a number of changes in Chinese civil society, specifically due to the monetization and growing commercialization of the economy and the ensuing flow of silver into China.<ref name=":023">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 24: Gridlock and Crisis|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
=== Zhang Juzheng's reform ===<br />
Zhang first carried out a survey across the empire to find out who owned what land, what it could be used for, and what it should be valued at for tax purposes. The last comprehensive survey had been made in 1393, almost two hundred years earlier.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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Later, he undertook a series of reforms to make the collection of taxes easier and more efficient for both tax-payers and the State, ultimately making sure that more of the collected taxes actually ended up in the state's coffers. This came to be known as the ''single whip reforms.'' The way taxes were traditionally paid in China was in kind -- that is, not in money but with items (grain, cloth, etc.). Accordingly, taxes would be collected during the moment of the year when these items were produced and made available; grain, for example, had to be collected in the fall after the harvest came in and cloth were collected in the Spring after the weaving season had been completed.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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The tax reform turned the payment of taxes into cash, having taxes be paid out in silver. This made them collectable at the same time of the year for everyone, and also consolidated all tax payments (of which there were more than 100 rates) into one lump sum of money. This was a much more efficient system, which was especially effective in the big commercial centers of the empire that had developed a local economy.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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The attempts to survey the land, however, did not go as well; Zhang was confronted by the wealthy land-owning families who benefitted from having the records be inaccurate, as they paid less taxes on this land. This marked an interesting contradiction with the ''shi'': while they served the interests of the empire and worked in high-ranking official positions, they were also issued from the wealthy land-owning families and in that capacity, benefitted from resisting the State.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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This resistance was quite effective, so much so that by the end of the 1570s, Zhang Juzheng had made quite a few enemies in government and was occluded from his position by the next decade. At the same time, the tax reform of making payments in cash found itself in a few difficult situations. In developed areas of the empire, which relied on local specialized production and had steady cashflow, the system worked very well. In the rest of the empire however, where silver was not widely in circulation, the reform made the situation worse for peasants. They found themselves having to take their relatively meager (subsistence) crops and sell them for money, which was usually copper in these regions. Thus, peasants had to trade their grain for copper which they converted into silver somewhere else, effectively leaving them with very little silver by the end and burdening them with higher taxes than before the reform.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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This burden took several years to take its toll, and was compounded by the gridlock the government found itself in by the end of the 16th century. At that time, the state ceased to function effectively not on the day-to-day level, but on the level of being able to respond to new challenges and problems appearing because of a ''moralization'' of political discourse.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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=== Philosophical developments in Confucianism ===<br />
The roots of this process of moralization are found in the ideas of a man named Wang Yangming (王陽明). Living from 1472 to 1529, he was a philosopher, scholar and state official with a very successful governmental career. In some ways, he proved to be the last great Confucian philosopher in imperial times; much like his precedessor Zhu Xi brought together ideas he formulated into Neo-Confucianism, Wang Yangming took certain elements from that tradition of Confucianism and gave them different interpretations and emphasis. This gave rise to philosophical developments that he himself may not have had anticipated would cause such problems in the late Ming.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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The critical idea within Wang Yangming's thought was that everyone had within them an "innate knowledge of the good". This idea was not a novel one and it had been in Confucianism since Confucius himself, but Wang Yangming emphasized it as an explicit law. His interpretation of this rule was that individuals had a responsibility for moral judgment. Prior to this, the tendency for Confucians had been to defer moral judgment to their superiors: the ''shi'' had been looked up to as providing the leadership and guidance for other people to follow. Wang Yangming's ideas, instead, suggested that individuals would find this responsibility (and thus agency) within themselves.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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Not only was it enough to have a knowledge of the good, it was imperative that one also act on this knowledge. This had also been part of Confucian teachings over the previous 1500 years but, in conjunction with his other teaching, this new interpretation had revolutionary consequences. Indeed, alongside the rise of a commercial economy, this philosophy played a part in the rise of individuality in China.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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As the 16th century went on and his followers expanded upon his ideas, a variety of popular movements took place: people from non-literati backgrounds such as peasants and merchants became involved in movements growing from Wang Yangming's ideas, at times defying the power of the emperor based on the idea that it was not necessary to defer to the authority of others.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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Unsurprisingly, these ideas also gained traction within the educated elite. This philosophy began to permeate in such a way in government that political discussion became not a matter of seeking out a compromise between two competing (but legitimate) policies, but rather as a conflict between good and evil: if one has an innate knowledge of good, and they believe their idea to be good, then their ideas must be good, which implies that the competitor's idea must be bad by default. Thus, rather than seeking compromise and progress, officials started to seek the victory of their morally pure position.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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Disputes developed at the imperial court as well, which created greater problems. In one instance, the emperor, who had a son who was poised to become the heir, had acquired a new concubine with which he had a son as well. He then wanted to replace his wife, the empress, with his concubine and make their son the new heir. The Confucian officials refused, on the grounds of their moral interpretation, but the emperor refused to accept the criticisms, which marked the start of a disconnect between the officials and the emperor, which led to him removing himself from the day-to-day administration and policies, leaving his officials to carry them out.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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==== Donglin Academy ====<br />
By the early 1600s, the moralization of politics had gone even further. the Donglin academy (東林書院, ''Dōnglín Shūyuàn'') developed and served as the center for a movement amongst young ''shi''. While congregations of people with the same ideas had been somewhat allowed in history, factional organizations were banned under the Ming and before them. To get around this restriction, members would often create clubs of different kinds (poetry, gardening...). The Donglin Academy, however, took things one step further and became close to an organized political movement in China: they shared clear values and the participants helped each other out politically.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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Ultimately, the Donglin faction presented themselves as the morally pure group and criticized the existing officials within the Ming state as morally corrupt on the basis that the emperor was still refusing to cooperate with these officials (over the new heir). Their argument was that if those officials had been morally pure, they would have been able to convince the emperor to abandon his plans. Since they could not, it was necessary, the Donglin argued, that they replace the corrupt officials with their own members.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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That level of confrontation gave no leeway to a practical resolution as the criticized officials were not criticized on the basis of their skills (something they could improve), but on the basis of their character -- an innate trait in them as people. This all culminated in the 1620s in a great series of executions and factional conflicts. Eunuchs even seized power for a time. This greatly weakened the dynasty and the damage done to the system was so severe that the country entered a crisis: factions were more concerned about their infighting than with the affairs of the empire, and the poverty of the border regions burdened by silver taxation got even worse. Many defaulted on their taxes, had their assets seized or lost their land. This led to a downward spiral in the economic circumstances of these regions, which pushed people to outside the bounds of lawful society, forcing them to become bandits and raiders, eventually growing into rebellion.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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Even the commercial areas, which benefited from silver taxation, felt a strain: merchants, who were excluded from the imperial examination system, were now present in much greater numbers and wealth and were clamoring for official positions in society.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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This gridlock weakened China in such a way that by the time the Manchus invaded, no one was effectively prepared to respond and defend against them.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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==The rise of the Manchus==<br />
The Manchus came from what is now North-Eastern China, which at the time was not part of the empire. The Manchus were a ''new'' people; prior to the 16th century, this identity not exist. It was created by a man known as Nurhachi, he himself a Jurchen -- the same people that invaded established the Jin dynasty a few centuries earlier.<ref name=":024">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 25: The Rise of the Manchus|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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=== Nurhachi's beginning of the Manchu ===<br />
Born around 1559, he had the ambition of restoring the glory of his people when they possessed when they controlle the Jin. He soon began to feel, however, that the Jurchen people themselves were not the best vehicle for these ambitions. Thus, he created a "superethnic" group by getting various tribal communities to affiliate themselves with his movement -- either through conquest or negotiations.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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In the first quarter of the 17th century, this new group began to call itself the Manchus. Although the etymology of the name is unknown, there is a theory that it may have been the name of a Buddhist spiritual figure. Regardless, the Manchus quickly began to develop a national identity: they adopted a writing system, they wrote down their own legends and myths, created a history of the Manchu people with myths of origin.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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The Manchus developed their relationship with the Mongols who lived further west through a number of links: the adoption of Buddhism like the Mongols, and the writing system the Manchus used which was based upon the Mongol writing system.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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Through this period, the Manchus seem to have been principally concerned with their own sense of identity and consolidating their power in the territory they controlled. Around the time of the second quarter of the 17th century however, the Manchus began to directly challenge the Ming dynasty for power: first in the northeast, and later in China itself beyond the Great Wall.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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=== Problems in Ming China ===<br />
In the Ming dynasty, the Great Wall represented the frontier between "settled" territory on the inside, and nomadic, loose populations on the outside that may have been governed by the empire, but were not really Chinese. To the far east of the wall, however, in the coastal areas, Chinese settlers had started occupying land beyond the wall in what is now sometimes called Southern Manchuria, more accurately [[Liaoning province]]. When the Manchu set out to conquer China, that area became the first the conquered.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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In 1626, the Manchus proclaimed a revived Jin dynasty (the later Jin dynasty). They established a capital city at what is now the city of [[Shenyang]], built in the same layout as the city of Beijing. In 1635, the Manchu language was made the official language of the court. In 1636, the name of the dynasty was changed from Jin to Qing, meaning pure (and from which we derive the name ''China'' in English). The symbolism behind the name showed an ambition to do more than simply revive the name of the Jin but also to purify China of the decadence of the Ming dynasty -- tying their ambitions to the Mandate of Heaven which the Manchus said the Ming had lost.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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In the 1640s, military campaigns against the Ming became more active and larger. In 1641, a Ming garrison was besieged and captured by the Manchus, marking a great victory. Additionnally, several of the defeated Ming generals defected and joined the Manchus in their conquest. By early 1644, the Manchus had established their control over all of the northeast right up to the Great Wall, which they had not yet been able to penetrate.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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In China, the situation was bleak: the crises that had been building up in years prior had not been addressed due to a factionalized government and the financial problems of the dynasty had began to intensify as well. Silver imports into China from China and Spain decreased drastically, which put a limit on monetization and thus the possible growth of the Chinese economy. Zhu Youjian (朱由檢, ''Zhū Yóujiǎn''), crowned emperor of Ming in 1628, tried to get the economy under control through a series of reforms, but it was too late to save it.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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The problems plaguing the empire compounded throughout his reign. For example, dispossessed farmers started organizing themselves in bandit and rebel bands, raiding and attacking small towns, which required the government to deploy troops. However, the lack of revenue and loss of fortune to bandits meant that troops were not paid their wages in time or even at all, leading to them disbanding or even joining the rebels and further compounding the problem.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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=== Conquest of Beijing ===<br />
Throughout the Manchu conquests, a man emerged as a leader: Li Zicheng (李自成). Originally the leader of an independent army in north Shaanxi, he was positioned to attack the capital at Beijing in 1644, entering it in April of that year and occupying it for himself. As the story goes, on the morning that Li's army took Beijing, the emperor Zhu Youjian woke up as usual only to find all his advisors and courtiers had fled, without anyone telling him about the invaders. The emperor then took a piece of silk and walked out of the palace (which was highly unusual for emperors to do) up to a hill surrounding the city. There, he pricked his finger and wrote on the silk 'Son of Heaven' (天子), his official title. He then hanged himself from a tree on the hillside, and thus brought the rule of the Ming to an end.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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With Li Zicheng in control of the capital, officials and princes from imperial families fled to Nanjing, the secondary capital of the dynasty. They held there for a while and even proclaimed a successor, none of which saved the Ming. Li Zicheng proclaimed a dynasty of his own as well in Beijing, with himself as the new emperor. He began the process of establishing his rule shortly afterwards: calling officials to introduce themselves at his court, and creating a new government with them. This dynasty was short-lived, however, as the Manchus were still active and so were Ming loyalists. The Manchus had been stopped beyond the Great Wall at its eastern end, and could not get past a Ming fortress no matter their attempts.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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=== End of the Ming dynasty ===<br />
When Li Zicheng captured Beijing however, the general of the fortress, Wu Sangui (吳三桂) found himself in a difficult position: he was still a Chinese general charged with protecting the empire, but his dynasty did not really exist anymore. His mistress was also in Beijing, and he was worried she might be recruited into the new emperor's harem. He thus negotiated with the Manchus: he would allow them to bring their army inside through the Great Wall, and both their army and the fortress' garrison would go down to Beijing to drive out the rebels and restore the Ming dynasty.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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The Manchus agreed, and the gates of the fortress were opened. The two then went west to Beijing and destroyed Li's nascent dynasty. Unsurprisingly, the Manchus then announced they would not restore the Ming dynasty but put their Qing dynasty in place. Having achieved his real objective -- securing his mistress -- and understanding the reality of the Manchu conquest, Wu did not object to this turn of events and later became a general under the Qing.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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While seizing the capital was a very important step to establish the Qing, there was of course a lot left to do. The Manchus then had to establish their rule over the rest of the empire and have it recognized. Military campaigns continued for the next two years, and as in previous such conquests, the greatest resistance came from the Jiangnan area, in Southern China, which was the wealthiest region in China and thus also the one most producing literate and academic scholars. At the city of Yangzhou, the Manchus met fierce resistance -- much stronger than they anticipated. After they took the city, they enacted upon the city ten days of looting and killing, essentially killing any Chinese they found within the city. This, the Manchus hoped, would send a message against further resistance. On the contrary, it strengthened the national identity and those who resisted at Yangzhou were considered to be brave heroes who preferred to choose death over surrender. The story of Yangzhou would play a motif at the end of the Qing dynasty centuries later as an appeal to Chinese patriotism and nationalism.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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By the end of the 1640s, most of the resistance against the Manchus had been extinguished. Some loyalist elements did hold out against the Manchus, notably on the island of Taiwan. At the time, the island was part of Fujian province and in a peculiar position: while it was part of the empire, it had become a focal point for activity by Europeans (specifically the Portuguese and the Dutch). Ming loyalists crossed the strait and settled in Taiwan, but never really made an attempt to retake the empire. It was only by the 1680s that the loyalists in Taiwan were suppressed.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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In 1660, the last emperor of the Ming (who was in exile in what is now Myanmar, when the royal family fled the Manchu) was returned to China and executed, effectively putting an end to the Ming dynasty. The Qing empire could then properly begin, and would ultimately be the last of China's dynasty.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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==Kang-Qian era==<br />
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=== Emperor Kangxi ===<br />
In 1661, the first emperor of the Qing died and was succeeded by one of his sons, the Kangxi emperor (康熙, ''Kāngxī'' '','' personal name Xuanye), which began a series of long reigns: over the next 135 years, only three emperors would reign over the Qing. Historically, these three emperors represent the greatest achievements of not only the Qing dynasty, but of all of Chinese civilization up to that point as their rules were also met with great advances in literature, culture, peace, prosperity and stability.<ref name=":025">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 26: Kangxi to Qianlong|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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Xuanye came to the throne at the age of 8. He was not the oldest son of the emperor, but he had survived smallpox which was taken as a sign of his good health. For the first five or six years, he was guided in his rule by a council of regents, called the Oboi regency after his uncle, who headed the regency. In 1667, when Xuanye was a teen, he took it upon himself to stop his regency and his uncle was relieved of his duties.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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Xuanye's ascension to the throne coincided with a time where things were stabilizing in the Qing. Still, In the 1670s, Xuanye faced the most serious challenge to the Qing dynasty -- both up until that point in the dynasty's history and until the middle of the 19th century. Wu Sangui, the general at the fortress that let the Manchus in years prior, was not content with the new emperor. He had been rewarded for his cooperation by being granted very large territory as a feudal domain, but in the 1670s, the Qing wanted to seize these territories (as well as those they had granted to other defecting generals), perhaps in preparation before the holders of this land died and passed it down to their sons.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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==== Rebellion in the Southwest ====<br />
This triggered a rebellion in the Southwest of China, with Wu Sangui as its leader, known as ''the revolt of the three feudatories'' (三藩之亂, ''Sānfān zhī luàn'') due to the three generals that rose up. More military forces in South and Southwest China joined in with the rebellion, but certainly not all of them, and not outside of this region. It took the Qing dynasty 8 years to take down the rebellion, suppressing it by the 1680s. Their success was made possible due to the loyalty the vast majority of the Chinese army displayed towards this new dynasty: this was a very significant development as it showed that the Qing state was not perceived as an "alien", non-Chinese body (such as the Jin or Yuan were).<ref name=":025" /><br />
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The Manchus had achieved this loyalty largely because after the initial conquest of the Ming, they had established conditions of peace within the empire and had allowed, for the most part, let the Chinese return to their livelihood. They did, however, impose heavy taxation on the Jangnan area and had established the traditional Manchu ''queue'' hairstyle as the only allowed hairstyle for Han men, which became associated with Chinese identity in a generation or two. The penalty for not wearing the hair was execution for trahison.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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==== Attempt to bring in the Mongols ====<br />
Once the rebellion had been quelled, the emperor turned his attention to trying to win control over all of the Mongol tribes. This would be a difficult undertaking: Mongol tribes were scattered over a wide geographical area. The Eastern Mongols, with whom the Jurchen had made partnerships, for located close to China, but the Western Mongols did not share this partnership and had fled to escape the turmoil in China, going as far as Southern Russia. The Qing empire soon became a multi-ethnic state: the bringing together of the Manchus, the Han Chinese, the Mongols, Tibetans and the Central Asian populations in far Xinjiang was pursued by Xuanye and his successors.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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Xuanye, however, was not succesful in defeating or luring the Western Mongols to China. However, he did start the process which was carried on by his successors. He was also able to project Qing power into new geographic areas -- notably in the province of [[Xinjiang]]. Another concern of his was his efforts to stabilize the fiscal bases for his dynasty. In 1712, the Qing state undertook a survey of the empire, much like the Ming had done under Zhang Juzheng. This survey updated tax rates, but came with a new condition: the rates fixed by this survey would remain in perpetuity, meaning that a piece of land, once its value and tax had been set by this survey, would never see it change. This was known as the Tax Edict of 1712 and led to major problems down the line for the Qing.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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=== Yongzheng emperor ===<br />
Regardless, in 1722, Xuanye died after a reign of over 60 years, and was succeeded by one of his sons who adopted the name of the Yongzheng (雍正) emperor (personal name Yinzhen). The circumstances of his succession are a little unusual. Even at the time, some historians questioned his legitimacy: Yinzhen was the 13th son of the emperor, so quite far removed from the line of succession. Yet, he was named in an edict which was purportedly written by his father, the emperor, on his deathbed. This edict, however, was believed by most Chinese to have been forged. The conduct of the young emperor after coming to power also created a certain amount of suspicion: he had bad relations with most of his other brothers, and had most of them either imprisoned, exiled or executed.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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==== Reforms under Yongzheng ====<br />
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==== Tax reforms ====<br />
Nonetheless, he turned out to be an effective emperor. Despite his shorter reign (from 1722 to 1735), he devoted these years to improving the administration of the empire and was more benevolent than his father. Unsurprisingly, the tax edict of 1712 was starting to create problems for the Qing: the flow of income to the imperial treasury was lower than the emperor thought it should be and there were indeed problems with the collection system and its subsequent repatriation to the capital. Taxes would be collected on the local level, forwarded to the provincial, consolidated there and then sent to the capital. Then, the imperial treasury would return funding to the provincial level which would return it to the local villages and cities. With so many steps, losses of silver due to corruption and other problems happened very often. Particularly, because the taxes were paid in silver, the metal would be melted down by the government and then remolded into bars for easier transport. Fees and other surcharges happened during this process, essentially making the collection of taxes variable every time. These charges would also normally not be recorded, which allowed for corruption.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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Yinzhen wanted to reform the tax collection system to improve the flow of income to the capital and reduce corruption, giving the imperial court greater control. He reformed the system so that not only collection and transfer would be properly recorded, but localities would be allowed to keep a portion of the taxes they paid for themselves to be used as their funding, instead of having the silver first go to the capital and then be sent back to the villages. This project was first tested in some provinces in Central China where it proved very successful. When attempting to expand this reform to the whole empire however, Yinzhen met a lot of resistance: the provinces in Central China were generally in a middle-ground in terms of economic and social revenue. This system, however, did not please the local nobles in the coastal areas, which were generally richer, as they wanted to keep control over the flow of silver with which they could enrich themselves.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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The emperor eventually became frustrated with this system and abandoned it in the early 1730s, thereby informally accepting the conditions led by the coastal nobles. <ref name=":025" /><br />
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==== Grand Council ====<br />
Other reforms were also attempted. Notably, he finished the establishment of the Grand Council which had been started by his father. A continuation of the Grand Secretariat under the Ming, the Council supplanted the Secretariat. The Grand Council was almost entirely a deliberative and consultative body, meant to be debating policy, which did make it the most critical decision-making institution in China as the emperor was the one who promulgated law. The Grand Secretariat, which took up this consultative function under the Ming (on top of their existing administrative function), was thus relegated back to being an administrative institution. The Grand Council did not have fixed membership, with members being appointed by the emperor.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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==== Other reforms ====<br />
Yinzhen also undertook reforms for the well-being of his subjects and regularized the status of certain outcast social groups.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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=== Qianlong emperor ===<br />
Yinzhen died after only 13 years on the throne, and was succeeded by one of his sons who chose the name of the Qianlong (乾隆) emperor (personal name Hongli), reigning from 1735 until 1795. He actually lived until 1798, but abdicated so that he would not reign longer than his grandfather, the Kangxi emperor.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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His reign is viewed by many historians as the high-tide of the Qing dynasty. His 60 years of rule were a period where the early achievements of the Qing dynasty came to fruition, and Hongli built on efforts his predecessors had started. He was a very hands-on and pragmatic administrators, paying close attention to the details of many going-ons of the empire.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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Population continued to grow in China, reaching about 400 million by the end of his reign. China attained its greatest prosperity in history during this time, making it probably the richest country in the world at the time. Notably, many Chinese goods such as tea, porcelain, silk, etc. flowed all around the planet in the global market. At its height, China was responsible for 25% of global economic production.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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Nonetheless, it was not a completely peaceful time. Hongli pursued military campaigns as well, and was able to complete the process of bringing all of the Mongol tribes into the empire by the 1770s. He pursued a very careful policy of dealing with defeated enemies: he would give them official titles and great wealth, as he was interested in expanding the empire and strengthening it, by making his subjects loyal.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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He also deepened the relationship between the Qing empire and Tibet. Tibet had been closely linked to the Mongols, and was embedded into the Qing empire at its establishement through that link. Hongli continued the policies of maintaining a strong Chinese presence in Tibet.<ref name=":025" /><br />
[[File:Map of qing vs prc.jpg|thumb|Map of Qing borders at their height (in red) overlaid by a map of modern-day China (the People's Republic)]]<br />
It was under Hongli that China reached its peak in terms of territorial area: indeed, the borders of modern-day China (the People's Republic) were built under the Qing and are in fact slightly smaller than they were under the Qing, who controlled Mongolia and parts of what is now India, Nepal and Russia.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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By the end of Hongli's reign, new problems emerged -- many of which as a result of the long period of success the dynasty had. The growth of China's population, for example, could hardly be sustained by the amount of land that the empire possessed, who had no more land to expand (conquer) into. The economy started stagnating and plateaued, as it reached a point at which it was limited by the current technology and means of production that existed. At the same time, [[capitalism]] began to emerge in the West, specifically in England, and led to new kinds of conflicts that eventually reached China.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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==The coming of the West==<br />
At the end of the 18th century, both China and the West were peering at a new era in world history. In China, the Qing empire -- which had been in power for over 150 years -- had achieved great success as well as dormant problems as outlined in the last section. In the West, similar developments took place and ushered in a new age of expansion, of projection of power in terms of economic and military conquests.<ref name=":026">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 27: The Coming of the West|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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East Asia and the Mediterranean world both have had a long history of trade and contact. Land and maritime exchanges go back at least to the Roman empire, perhaps even earlier. Certainly, Roman glassware has been found in tombs from the Han period and Chinese silk was found in Roman graves. Chinese records -- written documents -- mention a representative from a place called ''Rum'' arriving at court. These may have been traders rather than representatives, but indicate that the Chinese were at least aware of the Roman empire.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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During the age of Islamic expansion in the 7th century, the links that had been established between Europe and East Asia were disrupted. Christian Europe was cut off from the rest of the Eurasian landmass by the movement of Islamic armies from out of the Arabian peninsula and into [[West Asia]], [[Persia]] and [[North Africa]]. This resulted in a breakdown of information travel: goods were still traded along the [[Silk Road]] and in maritime routes but communication, knowledge and information did not pass through as much from Europe to China.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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At the same time, Arab traders from the Persian Gulf began to sail across the Indian Ocean and arriving in increasing numbers to the southern coast of China in the 7th century, bringing with them their religion, [[Islam]]. A mosque was founded in [[Guanzhou]] (sometimes called Canton) around 670, not long after the Great Age of Islamic expansion had began. In Chang'an, now known as Xian, a great mosque was also built to serve traders coming in overland, also late in the 7th century. As Chinese goods made their way over land or sea mostly to [[Syria]], they would be bought by the Venitians who brought them back to Venice and then dispatched those goods over the rest of Europe.<ref name=":026" /><br />
[[File:Portuguese expeditions around Africa.webp|thumb|Map of Portuguese expeditions around Africa.]]<br />
In the 1400s, as the Mongol conquests broke down, so did safe travels over land routes to China. This prompted the Portuguese to find their own access to East Asia and their goods such as spices or silk instead of relying on middlemen. The problem the Portuguese faced, however, was the landmass of Africa: at the time, they did not know how big Africa was and if it was even possible to get around it by sea. Thus they began a very systematic process of exploration in the same century, going down the African coast, charting the coastline and waters and making maps out of this information.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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Gradually going further and further down the coast of Africa, the Portuguese eventually made their way down the Western end of the continent in the mid 1400s. They found the Southern cape of Africa by the end of the century, and after that sailed east into the Indian Ocean.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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These expeditions gave the Portuguese access to direct trading with the whole of Asia. What they found however, was that they could not simply take over the existing trading systems. In 1511, the Portuguese attacked and seized the port of Malacca (modern-day [[Malaysia]]), hoping that it would put them in a strong position to assert their strength in the existing trading networks, but quickly found that it was not sufficient -- as important as Malacca was as a trading city at the time.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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Instead, as they found in the later part of the 16th century, there was a lot of wealth to be made not by taking over and dominating the spice trade from Southeast Asia and bringing it back to Europe, but by participating in the regional trade network of the Indian Ocean, which came to be called the Country Trade. Within these networks, the Portuguese began to carry cargo and establish a presence in ports all over the region, doing most of their trading activity in that network. The Spanish, Duth and English soon followed by the 1600s, establishing their own trading companies and becoming participants in this profitable trading system.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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Through the 17th and into the 18th century, Europeans established a place for themselves within the existing Asian trading networks. Still, they remained only one group out of the many participants in this system. Rivalries between the European powers further weakened their position in Asia: a variety of wars and rivalries broke down any cooperation in the East Asian trade, with European powers forming not one allied bloc in this network, but each competing for themselves.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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The Dutch eventually came to focus their economic activity on the islands of Southeast Asia (modern-day [[Indonesia]]) and in [[Japan]], gaining a place as the only -- Europeans -- foreigners who could still trade with Japan after the closing down of their borders. The Spanish established themselves in the Philippines, and Manila became a lucrative center of trade for them after they conquered it in 1571, through which they sold Mexican silver to China.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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The Portuguese, who had been the first to establish a presence in Southeast Asia, maintained some role there: they had trading posts on the West coast of [[India]], and established the enclave at [[Macao Special Administrative Region|Macao]] in 1557, which remained in their hands until 1999, but they devoted most of their attention to Africa and Brazil and did not become as significant as other European powers in East Asia. Meanwhile, the British became involved in India.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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While all were interested in China and saw it as the "greatest prize of all", being a tremendous market and the source of high-quality manufactured goods, they had difficulties getting access to it. At the end of the 18th century, both China and Europe were moving through a period of great change. The first big change in Europe was of course the [[Industrial Revolution]], which took place in Britain first and led to new conditions for the production of commodities. The circumstances that led to the industrial revolution were also present in China, especially in the Jiangnan area and in parts of India (the [[Bengal]] region). Nonetheless, while there is a wide debate over how the industrial revolution took place in Britain, the fact remains that it was the first country to go through with it.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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One of the biggest consequence of the industrial revolution for Europe was that the continent changed from being a consumer of goods to being a producer which they could send to market elsewhere. In conjunction with this transformation, Europe saw the rise of capitalism and its [[Free market|free-market]] ideology. The free market represented a break from the [[Mercantilism|mercantilist]] relation of production that was dominant before it: mercantilism was represented by state actors, large state-sponsored companies (such as the [[Dutch East Indian Company]]) controlling trade in a region under their name instead of letting individual actors do it in their own name and resources. The most influential figure behind the free market was of course [[Adam Smith]], who wrote the [[Wealth of Nations|''Wealth of Nations'']].<ref name=":026" /><br />
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Smith was undoubtedly influenced by the nascent Industrial Revolution that took place in Great-Britain, his country of origin, and saw for himself the productive output that steam machines could achieve. This unprecedented rate of production meant that factories could produce more commodities than they could sell at home, and thus would need to export them. Smith, to justify this new mode of production that was naturally starting to form throug the use of the steam machine, argued that countries should be allowed to buy and sell wherever they wish, with not artificial barriers being put in place (such as China limiting traders to certain ports or Japan only trading with Europe through the Dutch). The British found in this theory the justification to be penetrating into the Chinese market in full force, especially as silver (which was money) was mostly flowing ''into'' China and not out of it, which the British also needed for their economy.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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== First Opium War and arrival of European imperialism ==<br />
The end of the Qianlong emperor's reign marks a convenient line of demarcation between the successes of the Qing that ultimately became difficulties for the dynasty. As mentioned before, the large population growth under the Qing started pushing against the limits the agricultural means of production in China were able to sustain. The elites, whether the traditional ''shi'' or the new merchant elites, were very conservative and concerned with protecting their wealth and economic interest. Furthermore, emperors after the Kang-Qian era, while still involved, were not as powerful at stopping problems from compounding.<ref name=":027">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 28: Threats from Within and Without|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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Frustrations among the populace began to form rebellions, and those had been going on for over a century. Beginning in the late 18th century and accelerating in the 19th century, new forms of mystical movements and insurrection began to break out against private interests (local landlords and wealthy families) and the representatives of the state. The international context was also shifting: trade became the great question, and both the increased of production from the industrial revolution and the ideology of capitalism and free trade began to come into conflict with the Chinese model, particularly with the British.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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From about the middle of the 18th century, China had regulated its trade with European powers through the Canton system (一口通商, ''Yīkǒu tōngshāng''). Under this system, trade could only take place in one port, the port of Canton (now more accurately called Guangzhou) in the far South of China, past Hong Kong and Schenzen and requiring boats to sail into the mouth of a river called the Schizi Yang (狮子洋). Moreover, that trade had to be conducted through licensed Chinese agents, the hong merchants, who served as brokers between European and Chinese merchants.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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This trade did function and was in fact quite lively, but it was a trade in which European merchants brought silver to China with which they bought Chinese commodities. This regulated system was quite satisfactory for the Chinese as they made good money and had a lot of outlets for their manufactured goods, but wasn't as interesting to the European merchants as even if they did acquire goods they could sell back in their homeland, they realized there was still a lot of untapped potential in dealing with China if only they could sell the Chinese a commodity which China would pay silver for, thus reversing the flow of trade and balancing the flow a little better.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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In 1792, and then again in 1816 (before and after the [[Napoleonic Wars]]), the British sent diplomatic missions to China to try and establish commercial relations between the two countries. In both instances, these missions were received very politely but were told that the Chinese were simply not interested in their "shoddy goods" (as emperor Qianlong said to King George III in a letter).<ref name=":027" /><br />
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This was considered unacceptable to the British, who still required some commodity to sell to China if they were to open up trade relations. In 1816, they settled on opium. Opium was already familiar to China, produced in very small quantities in the far Southwest mostly as medicine. Its non-medicinal use had also been known and recognized for a long time, and had been regulated since the 1730s. What the British found was that as they colonized more of India, they opened up a very suitable environment to produce opium. They set off to aggressively destroy the local cotton industry so as to eliminate competition and turn it to opium production.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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They then discovered they could market opium to the poorest classes of society in Southeast Asia and South China, and thus began to ship opium in ever-increasing volumes from Bengal through Southeast Asia and into the Guangzhou port where it was then offloaded into the domestic economy. Between 1816 and 1830, the volume of opium shipped to China increased every year without fail. The impacts were dramatic: millions of Chinese became addicted to opium. It became a tremedous social problem: people were not productive, crime rose, and on an economic level, the British were demanding payment for opium in silver. This had the very rapid effect of reversing the flow of silver ''out'' of China, leading to economic disruptions throughout the empire and causing ripple effects.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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By the 1830s, there were shortages of capital for investment and prices were subject to dramatic fluctuations. At this time, this state of matter was starting to be taken very seriously by the Chinese government. The Qing State, however, was having problems dealing with these issues. The government had become increasingly unresponsive: conflicts, policy and debate within the Qing leadership had bogged down efforts to deal with problems, and were particularly frustrating because the bureaucratic mentality of "doing things the way they had always been done" was quite strong, but ultimately ineffective against such an unprecedented problem. Revenues were declining; the outflow of silver meant that taxes were not collected as extensively, and the capacity of government to maintain its normal functions (such as the infrastructure of the grand canal) began to diminish.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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Of course, the Chinese realized that the opium trade was at the heart of all these problems, both in its social and economic impacts. The Qing government repeatedly protested to British merchants and the king about the problem they had caused and its effects, and the emperor then called for a debate among his officials about how to deal with the influx of opium. Lin Zexu (林则徐, ''Lín Zéxú''), the general governor of Huguang, made a proposal. He had served in Central Asia, dealing with the security problems there, and had distinguished himself as an official who was able to be flexible and creative in dealing with problems. His proposal to the emperor was a two-track approach: on the one hand, he advocated for rehibilitation programs to opium addicts to redress the epidemic. On the other, he urged strict prohibition in the sale of opium. This was already the existing law of China, but Lin Zexu wanted to enforce it stringently. By attacking the supply and demand of opium, he hoped that this would eliminate the problem.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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The emperor was very impressed by the proposal and eventually, in 1838, Lin Zexu was tasked with becoming the Imperial Commissioner charged with eradicating the opium trade in Guanzhou. Lin travelled south from the capital to Guanzhou and, in 1839, launched a serious campaign directed at stopping the flow of opium into China. He took a very direct approach to the matter: in Guangzhou, the foreign traders had warehouses where their goods were brought ashore and stored before they were shipped off in the interior. Lin Zexu, in the spring of 1839, ordered that opium in these warehouses be confiscated: accordingly, a large quantity of opium was seized. He then had a large trench dug in the ground, the opium dumped into it, and lime spread over it and set aflame.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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When the Chinese destroyed the opium supplies, the British merchants were of course quite upset and demanded that reparations be made. The British military representatives assured that they would be compensated by the crown, but Lin Zexu proved to be intent on keeping the trade shut down, and so the British -- who thought that this was perhaps a one-time demonstration -- were quite upset when they realized Lin Zexu had no intention of allowing the trade to resume. After a second round of destroying opium, the British decided they had to take action.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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There was a long debate in Parliament over what to do over China -- not over the opium trade specifically (as the British did not want to present themselves as a drug cartel), but over the free market. When war was declared and the British fleet was sent out to China, it was done not on the basis of making the world safe for drug dealers, but on the basis of promoting free trade.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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British naval superiority was certainly unquestioned at the time and were able to inflict humiliating defeats on the Chinese, and did so repeatedly: the [[First Opium War]] started in 1839 and went on until 1842. China was defeated in this war, and was forced to reach a settlement as the British were closing in on the capital, which culminated into the [[Treaty of Nanjing]]. The treaty opened a series of ports along the South China coast to British traders, and allowed them to establish commercial residence in those ports (known as the Treaty ports). Secondly, they could trade freely without using the hong brokers. The Treaty also ceded the island of Hong Kong -- which had been occupied by the British -- for 100 years. Finally, it established a very important principle, of extra-territoriality. This principle meant that while British citizens were in China, they would be subject not to Chinese law, but to British law. In other words, if they committed a crime in China, they could not be arrested by the Chinese police but only by the British. This principle came as a response to a number of incidents in which British sailors who had been ashore in Guangzhou had been involved in violent incidents and had been imprisoned by the Chinese.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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The Treaty of Nanjing was signed in 1842, and in rapid succession over the next few years, several other Western powers signed treaties with China as well: the United States in 1844, followed by the French, Dutch and Russians. Each of these treaties forced more concessions from China and more treats ports were opened These treaties also included a "no most favored nation" clause, which said that any concession granted to any one power in a treaty automatically extended to all other powers that had treaties, which shared the benefits of this imperialism while further weakening China. Foreign missionaries were given legal protection to operate in China.<ref name=":027" /><br />
<br />
These provisions from the Treaty of Nanjing were quite humiliating for China (and indeed, the following 100 years after the start of the Opium War would become known as the Century of Humiliation [百年国耻, ''bǎinián guóchǐ'']). The opening of the Treaty ports also had significant economic impacts beyond the psychological impacts; even though there were somewhat positive consequences (as trade expanded and the ports grew), the dislocations that they caused in other parts of the Chinese economy were quite severe and led to peculiar movements growing elsewhere in the empire.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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=== The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom ===<br />
By the middle of the 19th century, Southern China could be described as a place that was ready for catastrophic events. As the Treaty Ports were established, the other problems plaguing China before that -- huge population growth, areas being economically devastated, outpouring flow of silver, widespread opium addiction etc. -- had not gone away in the slightest.<ref name=":028">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 29: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
The particular circumstances of Chinese geography, with Southern China being rife with hills, mountains and river valleys, naturally gave rise to local ethnic groups that were able to grow a strong cultural identity through the remoteness of some areas in the region. One of these groups, the Hakka (客家, meaning ''guest families''), or Kejia in Mandarin, were Chinese that migrated from Northern China to the South after the initial waves of migration during the Northern and Southern dynasties, and brought with themselves a northern culture that was a bit different from the earlier northern culture, which they retained to the 19th century. Because the Hakka were marginalized, they tended to be self-reliant within themselves. However, they were still very much affected by the problems facing Qing society, and perhaps made them more receptive to unusual, non-traditional ideas.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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==== Hong Xiuquan ====<br />
Hong Xiuquan (洪秀全) was himself a Hakka, and came from a family that was not particularly wealthy, but well-off enough to have him educated and prepared to take the imperial examination. Hong hoped that with by succeeding at the imperial exam, he could elevate his family's fortune; a lot of aspirations were placed on him.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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He repeatedly took the entry-level imperial examinations, but failed them every time. To take these examinations, he would go to the city of Guangzhou -- a very lively port city with lots of foreigner presence. There, he encountered a Christian missionary in the street who handed him a tract which Hong took home with him.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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A few years later, after another unsuccessful attempt to pass the exam, Hong decided to retire from this goal. He went home and there shut himself in his room for weeks. During that time, he had visions in which an old gentleman and a younger man appeared to him and talked with him. When Hong recovered from his breakdown, reflecting on his vision, he read through the Christian tracts he had been given years before in Guangzhou. He came to the conclusion that the old man in the vision was God and the young man was Jesus. What they had been telling him was that he was the younger brother of Jesus and that it was his mission to bring the story of Christianity to the Chinese people.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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This launched Hong towards his life's work, and he began to develop an understanding of the world in which the whole Confucian empire of China was something he must destroy. From there, he began forming a movement with himself at its center to establish on Earth a Heavenly kingdom. This came to be called the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (太平天囯, ''tàipíng tiānguó'', literally "Heavenly kingdom of great peace").<ref name=":028" /><br />
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==== Society of God worshippers ====<br />
At first, in the late 1830s, this movement took the form of what Hong called the Society of God worshippers. Many of those involved with this society were originally Hakka as well, but it soon grew larger than this one group. Hong Xiuquan continued to have visions and develop his theological system in which his role, as the younger brother of Jesus, was at its center. As far as historians can tell, Hong never read the Bible and his understanding of Christianity came from these few simple missionary tracts he had acquired. He did undertake some serious study of Christianity later on, but certainly never was a serious scholar of the Church. Instead, his appeal was based on his personal charisma: his faith and belief in himself and his mission, which was apparently quite compelling.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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He attracted around himself a core of followers, some of whom were well-educated, quite wealthy, or even government officials. They established a [[Utopian socialism|utopian]] commune near the city of Guanzhou based upon Hong's understanding of [[Primitive communism|primitive (Christian) communism]]. There were no ranks or hierarchy in the commune (which was especially a break from the Confucian belief in ranks). They abolished [[private property]]. As time went by, they started taking on more extreme caracteristics: men and women were soon segregated, living in seperate spaces. Families were broken up, and marriage was rejected due to its place in the traditional Confucian system. In many ways, their society inverted the core principles of traditional Confucian society.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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These characteristics were apparently very appealing to Chinese society, because tens of thousands of people soon joined the movement. In the course of the 1840s, the movement grew and expanded territorially. In the course of that growth, Hong's ambitions also developed and he went from simply having a vision of a community separate from Chinese society to applying that society over all of China, by overthrowing the Qing dynasty.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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==== Taiping rebellion ====<br />
In 1850, the Society of God worshippers reached the point where it was time to act on these ambitions. Hong developed a system in which he was the Heavenly King, with four advisors along his side who represented the four cardinal directions (North, South, East, West) who acted as leaders. Then, they launched a military campaign, heading north. They fought their way up through Central China ([[Hunan province]]) and against the armies of the Qing dynasty, which they defeated. As they went north, they found support from the peasants and other poor or marginalized groups within Central China. As the movement progressed north, more people would flock to it.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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When the rebels reached the Yangtze river, they turned East and headed downriver until they came upon Nanjing, which was one of the great cities of the empire. Although it wasn't a capital under the Qing, it still remained the seat of government for the region and retained many of its Ming features (under whom Nanjing was the second capital).<ref name=":028" /><br />
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The Taiping rebels occupied Nanjing and made it the capital of their movement. During the next decade, they continued to fight and expand their territory. They sent an expedition to the north that did not entirely succeed; while it did fight and win in the north, it returned to Nanjing eventually. Once in Nanjing, the Heavenly Kingdom underwent some changes which proved to be quite problematic to it. Notably, Hong Xiuquan and his four advisors took residence in the former imperial palaces at Nanjing and began to live a much more imperial life: eating well, enjoying luxuries, and especially establishing a harem for themselves. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Taiping followers continued to live in circumstances of relative poverty and, of course, the characteristics of the Taiping of puritanism and equalitarianism.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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As many as 100 million people seemed to have been involved in the Taiping movement at its peak; a quarter of the population of China. They controlled a significant amount of territory, amounting to essentially all of South China. This difference in lifestyle between the commoners and Hong Xiuquan began to create tensions. The enthusiasm of the ordinary families for this austere lifestyle and segregation started to wane as time went on, particularly once they had settled in at Nanjing and the phase of active military campaigning had come to an end.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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==== Hunan Army ====<br />
While all this was going on, the Qing of course had to respond to the rebels. Their response was initially not very effective; the military situation within the country was at a low. The Qing military system had two basic components: on the one hand, the Banners, which the Manchus had built up before their conquest of the Ming. Manchu Banners were not solely composed of Manchu people and were the elite troops. The second tier was the Green Standard army, which were the ordinary troops who were more numerous than the Banners. By the 1850s, neither armies were in good shape: they were under-equipped, under-trained, not disciplined, and many of the Banner troops had not seen action in over a century.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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The dynasty thus had to find a way for a more effective response. What they did was turn to a new source of organization and support for military activities: the Qing turned to local Chinese elites, who in dynasties past used to provide local governmental functions, including security. The Qing state appealed to them to assume a greater role in what they argued was self-defense. Zeng Guofan (曾国藩, Zēng Guófán) was such a leader who was given the responsibility and authority to organize local troops in Hunan, his home province, as he saw fit so as to defeat the Taiping. Most significantly, he was also given a new financial basis to do this with; he was given control over the Lijin tax (厘金), which was a very modest tariff deducted from every trade transaction made in a province, which represented a large source of revenue when put together, especially as Hunan was a very wealthy province.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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Zeng Guofan proved to be effective at this task, and very quickly put together the Hunan army. While Zeng Guofan is the most famous general of this time, other armies were similarly put together by the Qing. His army was well-equipped, well-paid, well-fed and well-clothed. Towards the end of the 1850s, the Hunan Army started being deployed in campaigns against the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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==== Role of Western powers ====<br />
The Western powers also had a vested interest in this rebellion. When Shanghai was made a Treaty Port, it was only a relatively small fishing village. Due to the influx of trade however and its location at the mouth of the Yangtze river, it soon grew to become a major Chinese city. By the time the Taiping occupied Nanjing (with only a decade elapsing), it had significantly grown and became the "capital" for Europeans in China. There, they found themselves in an interesting situation: Hong Xiuquan claimed to be a Christian, and even called himself Jesus' younger brother. From that point of view, he was an appealing figure to Europeans as someone who could be dealt with more easily than the Qing. They send a diplomatic delegation to Nanjing that met with Hong Xiuquan and, following that meeting, saw him not as someone who could be allied with but as a lunatic. From then on, the Western powers instead decided to back the Qing dynasty and sent some military support.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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==== End of the rebellion ====<br />
In 1864, the Taiping Kingdom fell to the Hunan army and was destroyed. Great massacres took place at Nanjing, and the rebellion -- which was only one of several challenges -- was finally brought to an end. By this time, the West had established its position quite firmly in China, and the Qing state had received their backing.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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The Taiping rebellion can be understood in its material conditions; in the context of a weakened, humiliated China that was going through huge social changes -- a strange new religion, unlike what China had seen before, from people they had never seen before, came to the country. Hong Xiuquan should not be understood as the literal brother of Jesus Christ or that people followed him because he was charismatic. Rather, in this rebellion, people thought they might have the answer to the issues that plagued the Qing. Conversely, the rebellion was also able to grow and become what it was because the Qing empire was initially too weak to fight against it.{{Citation needed}}<br />
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==Efforts at reform in the Qing state==<br />
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=== Self-strenghtening movement ===<br />
The Qing dynasty knew that China wanted to flourish again, some sort of reforms were going to have to take place. From the 1860s to the early 1890s, certain leaders within the Chinese and Manchu elites began to pursue programs designed to give China the ability to stand up to the Western powers. This movement came to be called the Self-strenghtening Movement (自强运动, ''zìqiáng yùndòng''). The idea was that China could not rely on outside forces to take care of their problems and, if it wished to be strong enough to take control of its destiny, it had to strengthen itself.<ref name=":030">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 30: Efforts at Reform|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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The 1860s were a time in which these changes were possible, as a young emperor came to the throne in 1860. He was subject to a regency, and some of them were very receptive to these types of reforms. Provincial leaders were also relied on in the course of this movement to provide the 'brains' of an effort to get China back on its own feet.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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The 1870s and 1880s represent the core of this period. During that time, China undertook a number of initiatives. On one hand, they recognized that the superior position of the West was found on their military strength: the Opium War of 1840 did not really meet much resistance from the Chinese; one way to match the West was for China to develop their own military sector. Part of this initiative dealt in simply buying up equipment and ships from European arsenals, but the powers that sold them these ships (especially Britain) were of course careful about a strong China, and made sure to sell only outdated and obsolete equipment, knowing it would not be equal to the equipment the British themselves were putting in the field.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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==== Establishment of arsenal and institutes ====<br />
China recognized this was not enough if they really wanted to develop self-reliance. Accordingly, they established a great arsenal near the city of [[Wuhan]] and a naval shipyard near the mouth of the Yangtze river. The arsenal was also near sources of coal and iron ore, so that the arsenal would be able to produce steel.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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The other priority of the Self-Strenghtening Movement was focused on learning about Western science and technology. This was required to successfully operate these new industries, but there was a recognition at the time that Western superiority went beyond the military field: there was an understanding in Europe of industrial production, and in China a sense that Western science gave the imperialist powers an advantage to dominate China. The Qing government set up an institute to translate European books and circulate them among the educated elite. Initially, these translations focused on science and technology books, but after a large number of those had been translated, the institute also published books on social sciences, political theory, and became particularly interested in the ideas of [[Social Darwinism]] -- the idea at the time that nations compete and that the survival of the fittest apply to civilizations as well. This of course fit in nicely with the thinking of the Self-Strengthening Movement.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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Finally, the Qing realized a third dimension of this movement was a restructure of how China related to other countries in the world. The international order in which the Qing was used to functioning in was as such: China was in the center, and other countries were expected to come and pay their respects (under the tribute system). This was not working with the Western powers, and China was forced to pay hommage and respect to these imperialist powers. China recognized, though, that among the Western power there was a concept of 'equality' between countries: the concept of treaties, for example, is based on the idea that both parties are equal and form a contract. The real content of the treaties were unequal; the terms had been dictacted and China was forced to accept whatever was offered. But the rhetoric of treaties, China realized, was one that was based on equal exchange and partners.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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To give China the ability to participate more fully in that international system, they created a new institutional structure for international relations, the Zongli Yamen (總理衙門, ''zǒnglǐ yámen''), the foreign ministry which dealt with other countries strictly.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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These efforts were very sincere and pursued quite strongly by their advocates, but they were not sufficient to solve the problems that China was confronted with. For one thing, the self-strengtheners were never a majority or dominant group within the imperial bureaucracy. Resistance to modernization was perhaps more characteristic of the imperial bureaucracy under the conservative majority.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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==== End of the Self-strenghtening movement and First Sino-Japanese war ====<br />
The insufficiency of the movement began to be demonstrated in the mid-1880s when China was defeated in a war against [[France]]. [[Third Republic of France|France]], at the time, was in the process of colonizing what was then called [[Indochina]] (now [[Southeast Asia]]), including [[Vietnam]]. At the time, Vietnam was a tributary state of China and they appealed to the Qing to defend them against the French. China sent some of their modernized navy down to the gulf of Tonkin, but were defeated there in a further humiliation and setback.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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Ten years later, the failures of the self-strenghtening movement were most clearly revealed in a war between China and Japan. When Japan had been forcibly opened by the United States in the 1850s, they had decided to embark upon a campaign of modernization through the [[Meiji restoration|Meiji Restoration]]. By the end of the 19th century, Japan had gone a long way to achieving this goal. In the war of 1894-1895, which was fought mostly in [[Korea]] (attempting to establish control over the peninsula), China was dealt one defeat after another both on land and at sea. For China, it was further humiliating to be defeated by Japan as they were a long-time neighbor, seen as the "little brothers" for most of Chinese history.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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In fact, the defeat in the [[First Sino-Japanese war]] triggered a protest movement in China: candidates for the imperial examinations circulated petitions around Beijing which gathered thousands of signatures and were submitted to the court, demanding that a more effective response to imperialist aggression be made. Two leaders particularly emerged from this protest, Kang Youwei (康有为, ''kāng yǒuwéi'') and Liang Qichao (梁启超, ''liáng qǐchāo''). They began to write articles, publish newspapers and submit memorials to the throne. This group advocated that the Qing government adopt a complete institutional restructure to give China a more effective government, much like Japan had done during the Meiji Restoration. In 1898, after three years of agitation, they were able to put their ideas into action. A new emperor had come to the throne as a young man, and the empress [[Cixi]], who had managed his regency, stepped aside and let the emperor, Guangxu, rule. He became convinced of this program and from the middle of June to September 1898, ran the [[Hundred days of reform|Hundred Days of Reform]] (戊戌变法, ''wù xū biàn fǎ''). During that period, the emperor proclaimed a series of edicts designed to streamline administration, reduce bureaucracy, and open up the channels for popular input. He appointed a number of advocates of reform to key positions in the government, and China was embarked on a process of transforming China from the inside out.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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But as with the Self-Strengtheners, there were a number of officials who were resistant to reform, and who either ignored the reforms or actively resisted them. Eventually, in mid-September, conservative Manchu officials along with some Chinese officials decided the reforms had gone too far and they, along with empress Cixi, plotted a [[coup]] and placed the emperor under house arrest. The leading reformers were rounded up, and 8 of them executed. Kang and Liang had been alerted to the plot however, and fled to Japan. The reforms were brought to a complete halt and ended what was perhaps the last best hope to modernize the Qing and give them the capacity to enter the modern political era, where it could have remained as the government of China. By bringing the reform to an end through violent means however, Cixi had signaled that a more conservative leadership was to be expected for the Qing.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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=== Boxer rebellion ===<br />
While these events were transpiring in the capital, the [[Boxer rebellion]] (义和团起义, ''Yìhétuán Qiyi'', literally "Movement of the ''Righteous and Harmonious Fists''") was rising. In many ways, this rebellion was part of a long tradition of peasant rebellions that had happened in historical China and were involved in the fall of many dynasties. Often, these popular movements were religious in nature or had a strong spiritual component, and that was certainly the case with the Boxers. Their name is based upon the fact that the leaders of the rebellion came from a martial arts movement; they believed that their practice was spiritual, and that through exercises and practice, they would make themselves supernaturally invulnerable. The Boxer movement spread quite rapidly, centered in an area of [[Shandong province]] that was relatively poor and from which many popular peasant movements had risen in the past of the 19th century. It was, finally, also an area with a strong foreign presence, particularly Germans. The missionaries in Shandong were seen as invaders intruding in China, and Chinese who converted to Christianity were also seen as problematic in society; notably, some became Christians perhaps not for the religion but because there were material benefits to be gained in terms of access to charity, food supplies, and protection as the missionaries were protected by the Qing government under the Treaties.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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The Boxers took it upon themselves to "purify" their communities. Initially, the Boxers directed their efforts towards the Qing government who protected the missionaries. After the suppression of the reforms however, the government became more encouraging of movements such as the Boxers. The governor of Shandong province made a number of proclamations in support of the Boxers.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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==== Siege of Beijing ====<br />
[[File:Troops of the Eight nations alliance 1900.jpg|thumb|321x321px|Troops of the coalition that defeated the Boxer Rebellion, 1900. Photo taken during the subsequent occupation of Beijing.]]<br />
That encouragement led the Boxers to step up their activities and by the late 1890s, they became a bigger and more aggressive movement. In the winter of 1899, they moved out of Shandong province and made their way North towards the treaty port of Tianjian. By the summer of 1900, they marched on Beijing where the Boxers were well-received. Indeed, the empress Cixi -- who was now firmly in control of government -- proclaimed she was on their side. By June of 1900, the Boxers were assieging the diplomatic quarter in the Eastern side of the city of Beijing.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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The siege lasted for 55 days and was only lifted when an international military force (which included Japan, who was seen as an equal partner with the other imperialist powers), fought their way through Beijing to lift the siege through to the middle of August. The Boxers were defeated there, and the Western powers then occupied Beijing. The empress fled from the capital, which culminated into another humiliation for China and left the Qing state once more submitting to the Western powers: a treaty was signed and the empress came back to the capital, but the Boxers were all executed. Under the terms of the [[Boxer Protocol]], China was forced to pay an indemnity to the Western powers, which they could hardly afford, and signaled that the Qing state's days were numbered.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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==The fall of the Empire==<br />
The shock of this final blow following the crushing of the Boxer rebellion gave way to a vast realization, even among the conservative members of the Qing state, that a serious series of reforms would have to be undertaken. Ultimately, although the following decade would be marked with many reforms that just years earlier the Qing would have thought untolerable, these efforts were too little too late and the Qing dynasty would fall in 1912.<ref name=":029">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 31: The Fall of the Empire|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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The most remarkable of these reforms was proclaimed in 1905 and the Confucian examination system was abolished. It was the most important institution and cultural apparatus within China's political system and had existed for several hundred years, marking the delimitation between the educated elite and the common folk.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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Many other reforms that had been rescinded in 1898 were now again put in place. A blueprint to transform the Qing state from an [[absolute monarchy]] to a [[constitutional monarchy]] was studied and developed, and a plan was adopted to create provincial assemblies. These measures, however, were not sufficient to address the situation: even at that time, many in China already felt that reforming the system was no longer a question and revolution was necessary.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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Anti-Manchu ideas also saw a revival at this time of the early 20th century. Around the 1890s, the story of the siege of Yangzhou, which was the last bastion of resistance against the Manchu some hundreds of years earlier, and which the Manchu massacred to make an example of, started circulating in political circles. Among those circles, there was a sense that the Manchu conquerors were in part responsible for the situation in China and that removing them would be one step towards fixing the many problems China was facing. A broader anti-imperialist sentiment was also growing during these years.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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=== Sun Yat-Sen ===<br />
One of the most famous figures of this movement was [[Sun Yat-Sen]] (孫中山, ''Sūnzhōngshān'', Sūn Yìxiān. Cantonese: ''syun¹ jat⁶sin¹'' ), who remains a very popular figure in the [[PRC]] as the "father of modern China." He was born in the Guangdong province and educated partially in [[Hong Kong]] and [[Hawaii]] (before the US occupation). In the 1880s, he began to be attracted to ideas of radical change. By having a position juxtaposed within the traditional culture of China, the colonial province of Hong Kong and the independent (though US-influenced) Hawaii, he believed that the imperial system held China back and a [[Republic]] was needed to modernize China.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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In the 1890s, he started building a revolutionary movement aiming not to reform and adapt the Qing state, but to abolish it entirely. After the defeat of China during the First Sino-Japanese War, the failure of the reforms in 1898, and the failure of the Boxer Rebellion, Sun Yat-Sen's ideas became increasingly popular, and more and more Chinese turned away from ideas of reform and into revolution.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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In the first decade of the 20th century, Sun Yat-Sen put together an umbrella organization, the [[Revolutionary League]] (中国同盟会, ''zhōngguó tóngméng huì'' ) who brought together all anti-Qing factions in the empire under a common program. Furthermore, he travelled extensively in and out of China to speak to Chinese overseas communities and raise money for his revolutionary activities. Some of those activities took the form of violent uprisings against Qing officials around China. None of these, however, were successful and the reputation of the nationalist movement was certainly one of a political movement over a revolutionary movement.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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=== Last emperor of the Qing dynasty ===<br />
The efforts at reforms the Qing state had put in place after the Boxer Rebellion began to stall out after 1908. At that point, both the emperor and the empress Cixi died at the same time. Emperor [[Puyi]] (溥仪, ''pǔyí'') was placed on the throne at the age of two. His conservative uncles exercised power for him and slowed down the reform program, which completely halted the progress previously made, and the dynasty entered a final period of rigidity.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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Within the dynastic system, however, the military sector was one where modernization was becoming increasingly powerful, which had began as far back as the 1880s. Army officers, notably the junior officers, had increasingly been exposed to technology and military improvements from outside, and as such were more receptive to adopting these advancements for themselves. In fact, the Revolutionary League spent a considerable amount of effort to win over junior officers, with many beginning to carry out clandestine operations for the revolutionaries.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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=== Wuhan rebellion ===<br />
In October of 1911, one of these groups in Wuhan plotted bombings to trigger a popular uprising, but their activities were discovered by pure accident. As the state discovered the conspiracy and was preparing to move in on Wuhan to arrest the plotters, the group launched a 'coup' on Wuhan and arrested several officials of the Qing state, mainly from the army, and called upon the people and soldiers to join them. The revolutionaries proclaimed a Republic in Hubei province, independent from the Qing empire. Over the next few weeks, other military units in Central China followed suit and proclaimed their independence as well.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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Sun Yat-Sen was not in China when he received word of the Wuhan rebellion. He set out to return to China by going eastward through Europe instead of the Pacific, returning in December of 1911. Before he came back, the revolutionary movement began to realize they were about to become successful and needed to figure out what would happen to China after that.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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Yuan Shikai, who was previously one of the officials who turned against the reformers of 1898 and took part in the suppression of these reforms, eventually aligned himself with the reformists. In 1911, he was the commander of the military forces in Northern China. In that capacity, he was close to that capital and had access to the Manchu elites. He positioned himself as the middleman between the revolutionaries -- most of them from the military -- and the Qing.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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He negotiated the abdication of the Qing dynasty on behalf of the Republic, but not as a uninterested party. The expectation was that when Sun Yat-Sen returned to China, he would become the President of the new [[Republic of China]]. However, as part of the deal that Yuan negotiated, Sun had to agree to step down as President when the emperor abdicated and allow him to become President instead.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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The situation played out exactly as planned. Sun Yat-Sen returned to China in December 1911 and became President of the new Republic. When the emperor abdicated in February of 1912, Sun stepped down and Yuan was named in his place.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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=== Provisional National Assembly ===<br />
The plan was that Yuan's Presidency would be a provisional one, until a Constitution could be established and institutions established. A National Assembly was elected in 1912 whose task was to produce a Constitution. Accordingly, elections were organized and held and the Revolutionary League, which had been transformed into the Guomindang (better known as the [[Kuomintang]], or KMT, meaning National People's Party), emerged as the clear victor in the new Assembly.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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Yuan Shikai was unwilling to let the Assembly continue, however. He had the representative from the KMT at the provisional National Assembly assassinated. The Assembly still went on as planned, and eventually Yuan dissolved the assembly when it became clear he would lose his privilege. Over the course of a few years, he expelled the KMT delegates and a new Assembly approved a Constitution in which Yuan Shikai was named as President for life.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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=== End of Yuan Shikai's regime ===<br />
He would remain President for three years and by 1916, Yuan was starting to style an imperial dynasty of his own. He had Imperial robes made for himself, surrounded himself with advisors in the Confucian style, and even went to the temple of Heaven in Beijing to perform the imperial duty of sacrifices.<ref name=":029" /> <br />
<br />
This was too much even for his more loyal followers, and this effort collapsed on Yuan. He fled the capital shortly after, and died during the journey back South to his hometown, ostensibly of natural causes.<ref name=":029" /><br />
<br />
Yuan Shikai's period of rule is seen mostly as a further stage in the collapse of political authority in China. His death led to a total breakdown of China and the nascent Republic which had not been able to strengthen its institutions and form a lasting apparatus. From that point on and for over a decade, warlords emerged and ruled over their own parts of the country, carving China among themselves. From 1916 to 1927, there was no effective government over the whole of China.<ref name=":029" /><br />
<br />
==The new culture movement==<br />
With the fall of the Qing dynasty and the imperial order, many began to thoroughly question and renounce the nature of this order. In particular, the Confucian heritage was seen as a major component of the imperial order and an obstacle to a new Chine. In the same years that the Republic fragmented into warlord factions (1916), new ideas also began to emerge and be advocated for. This process lasted throughout the 1910s, and is sometimes called the [[new culture movement]] (新文化运动'', Xīn Wénhuà Yùndòng'').<ref name=":031">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 32: The New Culture Movement and May 4th|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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This movement set out to create a new culture for China, one suited for a Republican China. Central to this was the question of language: Chinese political and elite culture was bound with the use of the classical Chinese language, which was very different from how ordinary people spoke in their day-to-day life. The literary language had been preserved from the writings of Confucius, Mencius and other masters of antiquity, and over time became increasingly alienated from the language of the common people. The new culture movement advocated "Simple language", writing Chinese as it was spoken.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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Likewise, the classical language had embedded in it the core ideas of Confucianism were increasingly seen as oppressive. Over time, the reciprocal nature of Confucian relationships morphed into more authority-based relationships; that of the husband over the wife, or the ruler over the subject, which were seen as dictatorial by the movement. Confucianism came to be seen as one and the same with the oppression of women, peasants and workers who were historically seen as lesser people.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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Several newspapers came to be circulated at this time, with many ideas drawn from Western thinkers who were seen, at that time, as being the most successful countries. Some of those thinkers became very popular in China, even going on tour in the country to teach their ideas (such as [[George Bernard Shaw]] and [[Bertrand Russell]]).<ref name=":031" /><br />
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Other groups emerged as well, perhaps with a less sophisticated program, but who were still influential. [[Anarchism|Anarchists]] were very active in China at this time, drawing from European anarchist movements who were a sizeable faction in the late 19th and early 20th century. Anarchism spread to China from Japan (where it was also an active movement) and Europe, through Chinese students who were exposed to these ideas while living abroad, and who then wrote publications from their host countries which they then sent over to China to be distributed.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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=== World War I ===<br />
The [[First World War]] was taking place while this movement was going on. The period was, in some ways, beneficial for China. In other ways, however, it brought on adverse circumstances. Economically, the war was an opportunity for China as European industry was diverted to a war economy, leaving a void in global demand that Chinese factories (and Japanese factories as well, which were implanted in China) could fill.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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Hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers also travelled to Europe during that time, particularly to France, where they found jobs in abandoned factories as their workers had gone into service. The workers in France became a very significant force; they sent money back home to their family, and in the long-term, had become exposed to the conditions in European factories, the ideas of democracy, education, etc. and of course labor unions too. They brought these ideas back with them to China.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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==== Japanese imperialism in China ====<br />
The end of the war proved to be critical in regards to Sino-Japanese relations. In the late 19th century, China fought a war against Japan in which it had been utterly defeated. In 1905, Japan fought a war against Russia and defeated them too, which was as a remarkable -- if not dramatic -- event in Europe. Japan had also [[Korea#Japanese colonialism|invaded Korea]], furthering their imperial ambitions in Asia. Increasingly, Japan was again setting its sights on China and the Asian mainland in general. When World War I started, Japan saw it as an opportunity for these ambitions. While the European powers were keen to exploit the warlord situation in China for their own gain, they recognized that China was sort of an "equal" imperialized nation, being equally shared by all imperial powers.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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As the European powers were busy with the war at home, the Japanese delivered a letter to the government in 1915, called the 21 Demands. It was a program meant to facilitate Japanese imperialism in China: there, they wanted sepcial economic concessions, being able to place Japanese officials in the Chinese government, and be given a unique status to carve out more of China for themselves. The Chinese government refused the demands, but the pressure was certainly put on them from then on.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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The Japanese fought on the side of the [[First World War#Alliances|Triple Entente]] during the war; they were far from the front, but Germany had possessions in China and more generally in the Pacific, which Japan was able to occupy militarily.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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In 1919, the peace negotiations took place at Versailles and did not favor China. China had also part of the Entente, the victors, but while Japan was rewarded for their support during the war, China wound up being left out. Notably, one argument made during the war was that if colonial nations supported their overlords, they would later be rewarded with greater self-determination. This never came to pass, and for China, this was made clear when the former German territorial concessions were granted to Japan rather than being given back to China.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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This was seen as a betrayal by the Chinese, and when word of this reached Beijing, it instantly sparked demonstrations which became the focal point of what became the May 4th movement: news had come from Paris during the night of May 3rd by telegram.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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===May 4th movement===<br />
On May 4th 1919, thousands of students assembled at Tiananmen Square in Beijing and marched eastward towards the diplomatic quarter. The police blocked the demonstrators there, who then marched to the home of the Foreign Minister. The government was seen as having sold out China by the demonstrators, while in fact the Chinese government had never accepted the terms of the treaty. The demonstrators burned the home of the Minister down. Police arrived and confrontations ensued, and the demonstration was eventually broken up.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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Political tension in the capital persisted to the following day. Officials from Beijing University and the government became involved in the situation, and eventually, the government agreed to the students' demands not to ratify the treaty.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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The movement spread far beyond the capital, and even beyond students. It became a very popular movement, including with Chinese merchants, as one tactic of the movement was the boycott of Japanese goods.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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The May 4th demonstration eventually merged into the New Culture Movement. More importantly, the treaty of Versailles showed the Chinese that Western ideas such as democracy, freedom and individuality, which they promoted, were nothing more than duplicitous lies, and China found itself at the mercy of imperial powers once again, thus realizing -- in some portions of the population, at least -- that they would not be enough to save China and guide it towards a new China.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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In conjunction with these events, other developments outside of China were also taking place, and word of these began to find their way in the political climate of China. One of them is the [[October Revolution]], which began in 1917. It had a tremendous impact in China, with word of it spreading in China by spring of 1918.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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For one, the Tsarist system was perhaps the closest parallel to the Qing dynasty; both had the same powers, ruling over a large territory. When the Bolsheviks took power and denounced the duplicitous diplomacy of the Western powers, this message was very well-received by progressives in China.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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==The communist party (1921-1937)==<br />
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=== Founding of the Communist Party of China ===<br />
The [[Communist Party of China]] (CPC) was founded in Shanghai in 1921, as a result of a process that had been going on for a number of years: [[Marxism|Marxist]] study groups had existed in China for several years, and had links to workers' organization and other socialist grups. As the [[USSR]] had established itself at the beginning of the 1920s and the [[Third Internationale]] was formed, the Soviet Union sent out agents abroad to assist in the process of revolutionary organization in other countries. In China, agents of the Internationale were involved both with the establishment of the CPC and the reorganization of Sun Yat-Sen's KMT.<ref name=":032">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 33: The Chinese Communists, 1921-1937|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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The advisors who came to China worked with the Marxist study groups, began to establish a national organization and suggested a programme and organizational structure for the party. Finally, in 1921, they assisted with the convening of the [[1st National Congress of the Communist Party of China|first party Congress]]. Only a dozen or so representatives assisted to this Congress as not many people could easily travel to Shanghai. [[Mao Zedong]] (毛泽东, ''Máo Zé dōng'') assisted to this first Congress, but was not yet a very well-known figure at the time.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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=== First United Front ===<br />
The communist advisors to the CPC and KMT put forward an analysis of the situation in China which called for a united front between the two factions. The KMT, which was still under the leadership of Sun Yat-Sen, was reorganized along the disciplined lines of the Bolsheviks, which made it a much more effective organization than it previously was. This did not mean that the KMT embraced Marxism-Leninism, but it did help Sun Yat-Sen open up to some form of collaboration with the CPC.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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The first united front was put together, and under these terms, individual members of the CPC could join the KMT as well, and even serve as officers within units of the nationalist party. Many did join the KMT and participated within political activities or rose to cadre positions, including Mao himself who became leader of the Peasant Bureau within the KMT.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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The KMT was certainly not Marxist or even communist, but working with the CPC -- who was still quite small at that time -- was beneficial to them, as the communist organizers brought many members to the KMT and did diligent work. It was also beneficial to the CPC, who was able to gain experience and members through this arrangement.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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Sun Yat-Sen died in 1925, which marked a turning point for the united front. A leadership vacuum opened up, and it took over a year to find a successor, [[Chiang Kai-shek|Chiang Kai-Shek]] (蒋介石, Jiang Jieshi). He came from a military career, and had been sent by Sun Yat-Sen to study in Russia and learn about the Revolution, the Red Army, and their system of governance. He was very impressed by the successes of the Bolsheviks, but remained a staunch [[Anti-communism|anti-communist]]. As the commandant of the nationalist military academy outside of Guanzhou, he established a network of friendships and loyalties within the Nationalist Army. There, he used these loyalties to emerge as the new leader of the KMT.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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==== Chiang Kai-shek and the Northern Expedition ====<br />
In 1926, Chiang Kai-Shek found himself in a strong position within the KMT to reunify China. He undertook the [[Northern Expedition]] that same year, which was very successful. Dr. Ken Hammond notes that in some ways, Chiang Kai-shek could be seen at this time as one of the many warlords that vied for control of China. Regardless, the Nationalist Army, departing from Guandong Province, marched North and then East towards Nanjing. Over the course of a few months, they had gained control of all of Southern China and absorbed warlords' troops into the Nationalist Army. Some of this control was gained through military conquest, but some negotiations were also made to bring some warlords under the umbrella of the KMT. In other instances, Chiang Kai-shek simply bribed them and bought their loyalty.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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The Northern Expedition succeeded by the spring of 1927, getting all of Southern China into KMT hands. In April of that year, the Nationalist forces reached the outskirts of Shanghai. At that point, Chiang Kai-Shek made a very critical decision; up until then, he had reluctantly maintained the United Front, as he was not strong enough to repudiate this arrangement previously.<ref name=":032" /> <br />
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==== Breaking down of the First United Front ====<br />
By April 1927, as the KMT emerged stronger than before, Chiang decided to eliminate the communists, destroying them as a political force. He did not march into the city however, but let CPC organizers within the city stage an uprising, who thought the KMT army would help them. Instead, Chiang Kai-shek's army remained outside the city, and the uprising was suppressed by a combination of troops from the foreign powers and organized crime organizations. They destroyed the communist movement in Shanghai: many communists were arrested and executed, along with workers who may or may not have taken part in the uprising. Several militants, of course, also died in the fighting. This bloody suppression of the uprising in Shanghai signalled the end of the United Front. A left-wing group in the KMT continued to align itself with the CPC, but were reined in shortly after.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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The CPC found itself in a difficult situation; their principal political orientation had been to organize the workers, taking from Marx's theories of the [[proletariat]]. The organizational base of the party had been destroyed, however: Shanghai was the most important location, but soon the CPC was systematically driven out of other cities and out of urban areas.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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To survive this crisis, Mao Zedong, as leader of the Peasant Bureau in the KMT, had spent a lot of time in the countryside and away from his home province of Hunan. What he saw there were large peasant movements, not unlike the peasant uprisings in China's history, but in a modern context -- a modern peasantry which could benefit from a modern ideology. He saw peasant movements as a very powerful force, and, as he put forward to his comrades, they could either try to lead it, or get out of their way before it sweeps everything away.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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These ideas had been marginal until this time, but were accepted over a few years by the CPC. Initially, when the party was driven away from the cities, the remaining organizers and the advisors from the Internationale called for a greater revolution, and urged for communists to launch insurrections around the country, which led to a series of disastrous uprisings. Mao was drawn into one such uprising; he was ordered to lead a peasant army to take over a city in Central China, which they held for a few days before being driven out by the KMT, forcing Mao's army to the mountains of Jangxi Province. There, with the remnants of the CPC forces, he put forward the model for the [[rural base area]]. In the early 1930s, Mao, along with [[Zhu De]] and [[Zhou Enlai]] worked with millions of peasants in Jiangxi to carry out experiments in land reforms, the family structure, and other proposals in peasant society.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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In any case, Chiang Kai-Shek went on to continue the unification of China throughout the 1920s. During the second half of the Northern Expedition however, Chiang ran into trouble with the Japanese, notably turning into military confrontations in some places, where Japan had a presence. Chiang, however, considered that his main enemy were not the Japanese but the Chinese communists, and was willing to ignore the activities of the Japanese Army to focus on the communists.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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=== The Long March ===<br />
The base area of the CPC in Jiangxi became the focal point of Chiang's efforts, and he began a series of encirclement campaigns there, blockading the base area with troops and slowly closing the ring. The first of these efforts were defeated by the communists who drove off the KMT forces. Chiang kept the pressure up, and began to receive military advice from the [[Nazi Party]] who had come to power in 1933. By 1934, it became apparent that the latest encirclement campaign was going to be successful. CPC leaders thus took the decision to evacuate the province, leading to the [[Long March]].<ref name=":032" /><br />
<br />
In October 1934, they decided to try and reach another base area in Yan'an (延安, Yán'ān) province far up North, without much of a plan on how they would get there. 115,000 people broke out of the base area at Jiangxi, leaving behind a small contigent to keep the KMT forces occupied. Over the next year, the troops walked over a thousand kilometers, crossing mountain ranges, swamps and deep river gorges as they were being pursued and harassed by nationalist forces. More than 100,000 of the communist forces were lost in one way or another during the March.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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Early in the course of the Long March, Mao Zedong was named Chairman of the party, a position he would hold without interruption until his death in 1976. The communists reached the base area at Yan'an at the end of 1935, and set the stage for the latter part of the [[Chinese Revolution]], which is called the Yan'an Era. There, the CPC had a new area to experiment with organizational methods.<ref name=":032" /><br />
<br />
==War and revolution==<br />
In 1936, an opportunity arose to form the [[Second United Front]] to resist the Japanese invader. At that time, the southern part of Shanxi Province (itself in North China) was under the control of Zhang Xueliang, a military strongman who was part of the KMT. His father had been a warlord in Northern China who was assassinated by the Japanese in 1928. This made Zhang inclined to take a strong stand against Japanese aggression, and he perceived Chiang Kai-shek's as being unwilling to push them out.<ref name=":033">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 34: War and Revolution|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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Chiang Kai-shek was placed under house arrest during a visit, and Zhang then sought out to invite CPC representatives, who sent Zhou Enlai. An agreement was then reached to form a united front to resist the Japanese invasion. Chiang Kai-shek was then released upon the conclusion of this accord and placed Zhang under house arrest in turn, in which he would remain until the end of the 1990s as he was taken to Taiwan when the KMT fled there.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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=== Start of the Second Sino-Japanese war ===<br />
In 1931, Japan invaded China in the continuation of their imperialist ambitions in Asia. They first occupied Manchuria and created a puppet state there which they called [[Manchuko|Manchukuo]], with the last of the Manchu emperor, Puyi, named as its ruler. In July 1937, Japan then started a full scale invasion into the rest of China.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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The invasion of China was pursued relentlessly along two basic lines: part of the Japanese Imperial Army moved from Manchukuo down south, crossing the Great Wall and into Beijing down to Wuhan. The second front started at the city of Shanghai, which was at the time a very international city, home to Statesians, French and British citizens. In the Fall of 1937, the Japanese troops stationed there attacked the Chinese (western) side of Shanghai, and then followed a course west, up the Yangtze river.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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The Japanese plan was to let both groups meet at Wuhan, which they expected to happen fairly quickly in a blitzkrieg invasion. This did not work out however, as the resistance put up by the Chinese was much more intense than the Japanese had anticipated.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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Nonetheless, the nationalist government was forced to retreat from Nanjing to Wuhan, and eventually out of Wuhan to Chongqing. When the Japanese reached Nanjing, which was the KMT's capital, they committed the [[Rape of Nanjing]]: hundreds of thousands of people were killed and many women were raped.<ref name=":033" /> To this day, the Japanese government has not apologized for it and formally denied the massace even took place in 1990.<ref>{{Web citation|title=Nanking Massacre: the untold story|url=https://depts.washington.edu/triolive/quest/2007/TTQ07032/yuen/denials.html|archive-url=https://archive.ph/wip/gH66B}}</ref><br />
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While this event was meant to terrorize the Chinese, it actually galvanized the resistance. After the first two years of the war, the front stabilized. The KMT had their main center of operations in Chongqing and another in Kunming. The Japanese did not occupy all of South China, and pockets of KMT forces continued to operate there long after the initial invasion.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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In the North, the CPC had their base area in Yan'an from which they pursued a vast campaign of guerilla warfare across all of North China. During the daytime, the Imperial Japanese Army could certainly extend their presence but at night, except for the areas along the main railway lines and large towns, much of the countryside was in the hands of communist guerillas, who carried out operations to harass and tie down lots of Japanese troops.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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This pattern persisted for several years, with Japan occupying much of China but unable to push their conquest further and achieve total control of their occupied territories. Their invasion of China, which was designed to help them solve their economic and population problems at home, proved to be a very counter-productive endeavour.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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=== End of the war and proclamation of the People's Republic ===<br />
By 1944, it became clear that the defeat of Japan was inevitable despite their victories in 1941-42. In anticipation of the US and the Soviets invading the Japanese islands culminating in its surrender, Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT pursued a static strategy, without launching any major offensives and fighting mostly along defensive lines. Chiang Kai-shek had received a large amount of military aid from the US during the war, but he refused to use it, instead stockpiling it for the civil war against the CPC.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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As for the CPC, they saw the coming end of the war as setting the stage for a revolutionary confrontation between their movement and the nationalist government. The anti-Japanese resistance, which the CPC had spearheaded, had won the communists great support from the Chinese population, which helped to spread popular support for the Chinese Red Army and the CPC in general. Meanwhile, they were able to project an image of Chiang Kai-shek as corrupt and unpatriotic.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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When Japan surrendered in September of 1945, a period ensued in China where efforts were made to negotiate a coalition government for after the war. The US sent representatives to bring leaders from both factions together but, while that was going on, a lot of maneuvering was taking place on the ground. The Soviets had liberated Manchuria in 1945 shortly before Japan surrendered and in doing so passed some aid to the communist forces.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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Meanwhile, the USA was turning over lots of Japanese arms to the KMT. As such, although negotiations were taking place, both parties were strenghtening their military capabilities in preparation for a civil war. When the negotiations broke down by the end of 1946, full-scale fighting broke out between the CPC and KMT. The KMT drove the communists out of their base at Yan'an but this proved to be fairly meaningless, as the CPC had most of their support base in North China and Manchuria, which quickly joined them in the fight.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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In 1948, a battle took place at the Huai river, involving more than a million soldiers combined. The CPC emerged victorious from it and broke the KMT army. Political support for the KMT disintegrated due to their poor image, and Chiang Kai-shek began to withdraw his forces to the island of Taiwan. This was preceded first by an uprising of the indigenous Taiwanese population who refused the KMT occupation. There, the KMT committed a massacre of more than 20,000 Taiwanese in order to pacify the island. Martial law was imposed and stayed in effect for over 40 years.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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In 1949, the remaining nationalist forces in mainland China were completely broken down and the remains of the KMT fled to Taiwan entirely. In April, the communist forces entered Beijing after negotiating a bloodless surrender following a long siege. Over the summer of that year, as communist forces advanced across China, the leadership settled in Beijing and began to prepare establishing a new government. On October 1st, the People's Republic of China was proclaimed by Mao Zedong at Tiananmen.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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== Further reading ==<br />
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* [[Library:An Outline History of China]]<br />
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==References==<br />
<references /></div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=History_of_China&diff=64368History of China2024-03-19T02:18:39Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
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<div>[[File:China-topography-features.jpg|thumb|304x304px|Topographical map of China showing the Yellow river (in the North) and the Yangtze river (in the south)]]''This page is about the history of China until the establishment of the People's Republic. For the history of the People's Republic of China specifically, see [[People's Republic of China#History|History of the People's Republic of China]].''<br />
<br />
The history of China dates back to more than 5000 years ago.<ref name=":0" /> China, like all state societies, went through the [[slavery]], [[Feudalism|feudal]] and [[Capitalism|capitalist]] modes of production until the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949.{{Citation needed}}<br />
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== Geography of China ==<br />
According to Dr. Ken Hammond of the New Mexico State University, to understand how China (中国, ''Zhōngguó,'' , literally the "Middle Kingdom") materially developed throughout its history, it's important to first understand the geography of the country.<ref name=":0">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 1: Geography and Archeology|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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The North China plain, at the mouth of the Yellow river (''Huáng Hé'', 黄河), is to this day the agricultural heartland of China thanks to its low and flat terrain as well as the irrigation it receives from the river, and this plain is where Chinese civilisation first emerged.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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Conversely, the South China plain is a region of hills and valleys, mostly south of the Yangtze river (''Cháng Jiāng'', 长江, literally "long river"). Settlements in the south are divided off one another by these mountains, and river valleys tend to be where permanent settlements developed.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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=== Rivers ===<br />
Two important Chinese rivers find their source in the Tibetan plateau: The Yellow river and the Yangtze river.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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The Yellow River has shaped China for millennia. It snakes around Northern China until it empties into the Yellow sea, in the province of [[Shandong province|Shandong]]. While the Yellow River has historically represented a challenge to China as it was prone to flooding, these floods brought with them fertile soil and irrigation to crops, and the river has always been primordial to the development of Chinese civilisation.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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The Yangtze River further in the south has also been very important to Chinese civilisation historically, but less so than the Yellow river. The Yangtze river, while prone to flooding both historically and in the modern day, has played a huge part in agriculture and sustaining life around it. The Yangtze river's flooding was dealt with in part through the [[Three Gorges dam]].<ref name=":0" /><br />
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== Prehistoric and early historic period ==<br />
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=== Traditional Chinese historiography===<br />
Chinese history has been studied by its people since Ancient times, and forms the basis of the traditional Chinese historiography. Their history begins around the time of the sage kings, or sage emperors, figures of antiquity and prehistory (i.e. that predate writing). Thus historiography, which is the writing of history itself, has been going on in China for millennia. Dr. Ken Hammond notes that in many places, this historiography has been proven correct thanks to archeological records found after the fact.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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==== Sage kings Yao and Shun====<br />
One of the first and notable king in traditional Chinese historiography is Yao (尧), who was the first to pass the throne down to a successor. Yao's own son was considered to be weak and decadent, and so Yao scoured his kingdom until he found Shun (帝舜) who had strong moral virtues and picked him as his successor.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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The story of king Yao is an interesting contrast to the practices of succession in later ruling dynasties in China, where succession was kept to a single family. According to Dr. Ken Hammond, this story is important in Chinese historiography because it highlights a quality, that of having a strong moral character, that was considered important throughout Chinese history.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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This story, as well as the virtue of morals, would later found the premises for the [[Mandate of Heaven]] (''Tiānmìng'', 天命, literally Heaven's command) in China.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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===Early societies===<br />
[[File:Longshan-black-pottery-vase-7480.jpg|thumb|330x330px|Longshan black pottery vase dated around 2nd millenium BC.]]<br />
According to Dr. Ken Hammond, the population of China itself has evolved in complex ways. The earliest people who would later call themselves the Chinese (''Zhongguo ren'', literally "People of the Middle Country") lived in the North China plain. The earliest societies to emerge from this area were confederations of numerous tribal groups who defined themselves in contrast to those who were not Chinese, i.e. people who were not civilized. A number of terms exist in Chinese to define these people that are best translated to as "barbarians" in English (barbarians being what the [[Ancient Greece|Ancient Greeks]] similarly called any people who were not [[Greece|Greek]]).<ref name=":1" /><br />
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Excavated pottery remains suggest that a single culture came to dominate the whole of the North China plain some 4000 to 6000 years ago. Characteristic pottery was discovered as originating from Dragon Mountain (''Lóngshān'', 龙山), and later showed up in other archeological sites.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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===Writing===<br />
One key element that made this first Chinese society define themselves as civilized (as opposed to what they defined as their barbarian neighbors) was a system of writing, which their neighbors did not possess. There is not much transitional evidence to the emergence of writing in China. That is to say, archeological evidence shows that once writing appears in China, it showed up as a fairly fully developed system, suggesting that writing appeared fairly quickly.<ref name=":0" /><br />
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===Mass migration===<br />
As Chinese civilisation expanded, neighboring peoples, particularly in the South, were either displaced or assimilated. The Vietnamese and Thai people, for example, formerly lived in southern China and were displaced as part of this expansion to the South.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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Some of these populations were forced further west, on higher elevation, and have remained there since then. Today, they are generally called hill tribe communities, and many of these groups retain distinctive identities in China: they retain their own language, their own cultural practice, and their own religion. Today, they constitute around 5% of the population of China. There are 54 officially recognized ethnic minorities in China.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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This process happened around 2500 to 2000 years ago.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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== The first slave states==<br />
The emergence of bronze was critical to China's future development. Bronze gave rise to an industry of mining, smelting, and shaping the metal into tools, weapons, jewellery, etc. which created culture in the various populations that inhabited what is now China. This transition from the neolithic to the bronze age also marked the transition from prehistory to history.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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===The Xia dynasty===<br />
According to Dr. Hammond, traditional Chinese historiography considers the Xia (''Xià Cháo,'' 夏朝) to be the first dynasty in Chinese history. The Xia however did not leave any written records, but did leave a clear demarcation to prior forms of societies before them.<ref name=":1">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 2: The first dynasties|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref> Interestingly enough, some scholars believe that the Erlitou civilization along the Yellow River was the site of the original Xia dynasty.<ref>Allan, Sarah (2007). "Erlitou and the Formation of Chinese Civilization: Toward a New Paradigm". ''The Journal of Asian Studies''. '''66''' (2): 461–496. doi:10.1017/S002191180700054X. S2CID 162264919. <br />
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pp 489 - 490</ref><br />
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The Xia period began roughly around 2200 BCE. The Xia built palace architecture, large structures built on rammed earth platforms (compressed and firm layers of dirt), a method that would be used in China for the coming millennia. The Xia also saw the emergence of [[class society]]; as agriculture and pottery was creating a surplus of food, fewer farmers were needed, and a class of "non-farmers" (artisans, warriors, spiritual leaders and bureaucrats) emerged, forming the basis of Chinese class society.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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Dr. Hammond theorizes that this emergent class of leaders solidified their power by performing rituals for the populace. The Xia's ancestors performed [[totemism]], a practice in which animal spirits are associated with particular tribal or clan families. In the Xia dynasty, the worship of totems of one particular family was transformed into a royal ancestral cult. In other words, not only the spirits of animals, but the spirits of the ancestors of the present day rulers came to be seen as divine powers. This further solidified the power of the royal family and laid the foundation for [[Monarchism|monarchy]] in Chinese society.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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The Xia civilisation ultimately did not leave many details as to their way of life, and most of their records came from the subsequent Shang dynasty, who shared many consistent features with the Xia.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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===The Shang dynasty===<br />
The Shang dynasty (''Shāng Cháo,'' 商朝), named after the royal family, begins around 1500 BCE. Dr. Hammond notes that traditional Chinese historiography uses a very elaborate and precise chronology which would place the Shang dynasty at 1766 BC, but that modern archeological investigations cannot confirm this date, and so the actual date of their foundation remains vague.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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==== Oracle bones divination ====<br />
[[File:Oracle bone inscriptions.png|thumb|337x337px|The abdominal parts of two tortoise shells with divinatory inscriptions excavated at the site of Yinxu, Anyang, Henan province, China.]]<br />
The Shang dynasty has left many written records about their life, as they performed oracle bone divination (''jiǎgǔ'', 甲骨). In this practice, people would ask a question to the royal family's ancestors on either oxen shoulder blade bone or the underside of turtle shells. The question would be carved on the bone by a diviner, the class of people who could read and write. The bone would then be poked by a sharp, heated implement during daily ceremonies, which caused it to crack. The way the bone cracked was then interpreted as an answer by the ancestors to the question carved into the bone. The Shang took their written records even further and kept records on the ''results'' of the divination. This means they kept record of not only the questions, but also the answers and actual outcome of the divinations.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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Oracle bone divination was so commonplace in the Shang period that to this day, tens of thousands of bones have been dug up.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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Dr. Hammond notes that these divination rituals were important to maintain the power of the dynasty and diviners, but the bronze culture was also equally important. Bronze cutlery (such as wine cups, plates or pans) were used to present offerings to the ruler's ancestors. After these offerings and sacrifices, which took place in great halls, the king would offer the "physical remains" (the offerings that had not been consumed by the ancestors) to the populace in great feasts, as a way to remind the people of his wealth and power.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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==== Succession of power ====<br />
The Shang dynasty had a novel way of handling succession. In their time, life expectancy was not very long -- one could hope to live up to 30 on average. It was thus very common that the Shang king would die before his oldest son was old enough to succeed him. Because of this, the kingship passed from oldest to youngest brother. Then the eldest son of the eldest king would take over, and the process would repeat. 26 kings were recorded during the Shang period, which lasted for around 500 years (an average of one king every twenty years).<ref name=":1" /><br />
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The Shang also built royal capitals, which was a continuation of the Xia palace architecture on rammed earth structures. However, they didn't seem to stay in them a very long time: they had nine capitals during their 500 years rule. These buildings were bigger and more decorated than their Xia predecessors, likely as a way to display their wealth and power.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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==== Shang state ====<br />
[[File:Approximate territory of the Shang dynasty.png|thumb|Approximate territory of the Shang dynasty, in green.]]The Shang state was a federation of people. In other words, there was at the center of the system the Shang ruling family, followed by their blood relations, and then people who were not blood relations to that family but were part of the Shang state. The Shang dynasty spread relatively far, and the federated people that were part of this state played a primordial role in its upkeep and border security. As such, due to the size of the Shang empire, reports, letters and communication from the king to his subordinates would be sent in writing, which characterizes the Shang as a literate state.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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The Shang state was quite elaborate and practiced division of labour from early on. Bronze objects, for example, were made with casts in which the molten bronze was poured. Their bronze industry -- mining the metal, smelting, refining, blending the metals together, the design of the objects, etc. was all organized by the Shang state and required different laborers and artisans for each step of the process. This involved the organisation of a consequent number of people as well as running activities at a number of sites (the mines, for example, were not located in the same place as the furnaces).<ref name=":1" /><br />
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This elaborate, organized system of production required that the Shang state had a capacity to sustain its people, e.g. feeding them, clothing them, housing them, etc. This is how archeologists know that the Shang also had an elaborate taxation system, which also appeared on oracle bones. Tributes were paid by subordinates who were part of this federation to the Shang royal family and formed the basis of taxation revenue. Furthermore, the organisation of the mining industry further established the authority of the royal family and their kin.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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The Shang practiced [[slavery]], which was the first major mode of production in the world and allowed them to sustain this elaborate society and state. Slaves, as was usual in the earliest incarnation of the institution, were usually prisoners of war and criminals.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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==== Decline of the Shang period ====<br />
The people not under Shang authority were a constant concern and often came up in oracle bones. Since the Shang recorded every outcome of oracle bone divination, these records show that there were frequent devastating raids from outside populations. Notably, people were recorded as being taken away as slaves during these raids.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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Security was a critical function of the Shang state but eventually found itself in a contradiction. The Shang dynasty needed to deploy and maintain soldiers in the border regions, where the tributary non-Shang people lived, so that they could receive their tribute and not have it stolen during raids. Over time, this created resentment from these populations, especially when security started breaking down and raids became more frequent.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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This unrest eventually boiled over to rebellion, when the tributary peoples to the Shang overthrew the dynasty and established the Zhou dynasty as their successors.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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==Western Zhou==<br />
<br />
=== Premises ===<br />
The Zhou people (''Zhōu'', 周), located on the western side of the Shang Empire, were a tributary community of the empire, with a mythological history of their own. Their early history involves a change from a hunting-gathering society, before developing to an agricultural society, going back to hunting and gathering, and finally settling down as more permanent farmers. According to Dr. Hammond,<ref name=":02">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 3: The Zhou Conquest|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref> these societal changes reflect the environmental conditions at the time (some 4000 years ago), when northwestern China was wetter, cooler, and the weather had not settled permanently, which made food sources change over time.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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After the Zhou settled into sedentary agricultural communities, they became affiliated as a tributary state to the Shang, a process that left them resentful of their new lords. Around the late 12th century BCE (-1150), as the Shang dynasty was facing external raids they could not defend against, the Zhou rebelled against their overlords and seized power from them.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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One notable advancement of the Zhou dynasty was that they marked a break way from slavery and into early [[Feudalism|feudal]] society (Fēngjiàn, 封建) which worked differently from the European feudal system.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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=== War against the Shang ===<br />
Tai Zhou, a Zhou king, organized a long-term plan to take over the Shang. In a first move, the Zhou people followed the Wei river eastward and resettled closer to the Shang. Secondly, they sustained greater communication with other subordinated people of the Shang Empire, particularly on the west side of the Shang territory so as to create the alliances necessary to overthrow the Shang kings. Finally, around the year 1050 BC, the Zhou initiated a war against the Shang. According to Dr. Hammond, the war seems to have been initiated by Wen Zhou (as Tai Zhou had died by then), referred to as a king in historical records, but his son Wu was the one who took the throne from the Shang.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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While the exact date of this war has been lost, paleo-astronomers have narrowed down the range of possible dates to within a few years of 1045 BCE based on the study of celestial events described at that time.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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On that date, the Zhou people and their allies marched to the capital of the Shang (modern day Anyang), and set themselves up on the west side of a river. On the morning of the battle, the young king Wu gave a speech calling for the overthrow of the Shang and then led his armies forward into the city. A number of ancient documents that have survived to this day describe the battle that took place on that day; the Classic of Documents contains a purported transcript of the speech king Wu gave on that day as well as a document describing the battle. It is said that on this day, blood flowed so heavily in the streets that wood was seen floating in streams of it.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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The battle concluded with the killing of the Shang king; the Shang state was thus seized by the Zhou and king Wu crowned.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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==== The duke of Zhou ====<br />
King Wu died only three years into his rule as the Zhou king. His son, Cheng, was proclaimed the new king but was too young to rule, and so a regency was organized. Wu's younger brother, known as Ji Dan, was the principal regent for the young king.<ref>{{Citation|author=R. Eno|year=2010|title=Indiana University, History G380 – class text readings – Spring 2010 – R. Eno|title-url=https://scholarworks.iu.edu/iuswrrest/api/core/bitstreams/3357825b-f345-4b0a-a796-23c021efcde1/content|publisher=Indiana University}}</ref> He was seen as a very sage and moral character, as he could have easily usurped the throne from the young king, but instead was happy to serve as an advisor.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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The duke of Zhou thus became a very important figure in Chinese history, even serving as a model for Confucius some 500 years later.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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=== Migration of the Shang ===<br />
Although the Shang had been defeated, the Zhou did not exterminate them. The Shang were moved away from the capital of Anyang to the south and east and given a territory of their own, made into subordinates of the Zhou. They were allowed to retain their customs, including the worship of their royal family's ancestors. To this day, certain families in southeastern Anhui province trace their family all the way back to the Shang.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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=== Establishment of Chang'an capital ===<br />
At the same time, the Zhou moved the capital (and thus center) of their empire from Anyang back to their own ancestral homelands in the valley of the Wei river. They built a new capital at Chang'an (modern-day city of Xian), which served as a capital for a number of later dynasties.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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The Zhou also established a pattern for the design of capital cities which was later picked up by subsequent dynasties. Their city was designed to be the physical representation of a well-ordered world, drawing back to the Mandate of Heaven. The city of Chang'an was laid out as a square surrounded by a wall, and oriented on a north-south axis with a compound in the northern part that formed the residence of the ruler. In the southern part of the city were residential areas for the common people, markets, and other centers of activity for daily life. Surrounding the city in the four cardinal directions (north, west, south, east) were ritual complexes -- altars and other temples for the performing of sacrifices and other ceremonies.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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=== Creation of the Mandate of Heaven ===<br />
To understand the [[Mandate of Heaven]], it is important to understand what Heaven is in China. According to Dr. Hammond, the Chinese people in earlier history (including the Zhou) worshiped what we translate as Heaven (''tian''). Tian should not be thought of as the Christian Heaven, but rather sort of a natural operating system, the overarching mechanism that governs the functioning of everything in the universe. Tian should be understood as an all-encompassing organic system, and not as a divinity or god. However, it does have the capacity for action. One such capacity is the bestowing or withdrawing of the Mandate of Heaven.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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The Zhou were the ones who developed this doctrine to justify their conquest of the Shang, arguing that there was a "proper" way for society to be organized, which was focalised around a good ruler. since the Shang were unable to protect their tributary people from raids (and thus did not maintain the livelihood and prosperity of the people), they were unfit to rule and Heaven (tian) had withdrawn the Mandate from the Shang and given it to the Zhou, as the Zhou were able (or allowed) to defeat the Shang and seize power from them.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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The Mandate of Heaven would become central to all political transitions from one dynasty (or form of government) to another, even enduring to this day in the People's Republic. The Mandate formed instant justification for an overthrow of a dynasty: if one succeeded in seizing the state, then they had clearly received the Mandate of Heaven. If they failed, then they clearly had not received the Mandate and thus the old dynasty would keep ruling.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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For the first time, the state was not the property of a ruling family but instead, drawing on earlier mythical accounts of kings Yao and Shun, considered to be something that involved the moral qualities of the rulers. The Mandate is bestowed and removed by forces outside of human control, and as such the state belongs to the dynasty that was picked by Heaven to rule.<ref name=":02" /><br />
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== Eastern Zhou: Transition from slavery to feudalism ==<br />
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=== Early successes ===<br />
The first two to three hundred years of Zhou rule were successful; that period was marked by territorial expansion (particularly in the south and southeast) and population growth. By the 8th century BCE, the Zhou state was four times larger than the Shang at the time of conquest in terms of territory.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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These successes lead to new administrative challenges. Governing the entire realm from the capital became difficult as it grew due to the sheer distance to cover, and the Zhou kings started delegating power to members of the royal family: brothers, cousins, etc. were sent to these regions to fulfill administrative roles.<ref name=":03">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 4: Fragmentation and Social Change|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref> However, the Zhou soon ran out of family members to appoint and turned to military leaders, loyal to the dynasty. The practice in the Zhou kingdom was that the military commander who brought new territory to the state would be appointed its political supervisor.<br />
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In the first few reigns of Zhou kings, this system worked well. The Zhou could appoint loyal individuals and let them take care of administrating remote regions on the border of the kingdom.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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=== Administrative challenges ===<br />
As time went by, the monarchy became an established institution -- not solely dependent on a moral king, but on the entire royal family. Members of the Zhou clan, who grew up in the royal capital, knew that they would be given a title to administrate eventually, and became complacent about it. At the same time, in local communities around the kingdom, the delegates managing these territories were the descendants of the original appointees, and thus they did not feel loyal to the Zhou dynasty, whose presence in these regions was almost null; they resented that they had to send taxes and tribute to the capital. This sentiment was particularly strong in the fertile southern and southeastern areas that produced a lot of food, but still had to send most of their surplus to the king as tribute.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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Thus these local rulers started to hold back some of the tribute they were supposed to send, while at the same time subverting the established hierarchy; records show, in fact, that at the beginning of the 8th century BCE, certain local administrators (appointed by the Zhou royal family) began to refer to themselves as kings instead of dukes, most notably in local official documents.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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=== Arrival of the Qin and moving of the capital ===<br />
In normal times, as the Zhou king heard of these developments, he would have sent troops to restore his authority on these tributary provinces. However, at the start of the 8th century BCE, a new people emerged from the western frontier of the Zhou kingdom, called the Qin. They started to raid into Zhou territory, which prompted them to move their capital far eastward, at the site of what is today the city of Luoyang, which remained a very important capital and cultural center for later dynasties.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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This move to a more secure area made the Zhou abandon their ancestral homeland in Chang'an. Because of this, the Zhou were unable to attend to the matter of local administrative appointees proclaiming themselves as kings, which was a challenge to the rule of the Zhou; as more local rulers proclaimed themselves king over their appointed lands, the legitimacy of the Zhou rule was called into question.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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The crisis took several centuries to mature: despite the challenges, the Zhou dynasty remained on the throne and ruled from Luoyang. While tributary rulers kept paying some amount of respect to the Zhou dynasty, it became clear that the Zhou did not control any territory beyond their capital.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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== Spring and Autumn period ==<br />
From the middle of the 8th century BCE to the 5th century BCE, China saw the Spring and Autumn period develop. This period gets its name from the book of the ''Spring and Autumn Annals'', a record that described the year to year events happening in the tributary state of Lu.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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The rulers of Lu claimed that they were descended from the duke of Zhou, which gave them some legitimacy on the throne over other minor states vying for power. The state of Lu was also the homeland of Confucius, whom is believed to have edited the ''Annals''.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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The Annals describe a process of sheer breakdown of the Zhou authority. As local rulers started calling themselves kings, so did they start acting like one: they set up royal courts in their holdings, began to perform rituals which were normally reserved for the king, started to wear the clothing appropriate to a king, demanded the ritual gestures from their advisors that they themselves should show to the king, etc.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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=== Rise of the hegemons ===<br />
With the breakdown of their single, unifying authority, it became impossible for the Zhou kings to restore order in the kingdom. Self-proclaimed kings started conquering their neighbors, and the kingdom erupted into war rapidly after that. In Chinese records, these kings are called ''ba wang'', translated as hegemons, understood as "kings in power, but not in right". In other words, these kings were able to rule because they had the power to do so, but were not legitimate rulers as they had not received the Mandate of Heaven, which was still with the Zhou.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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This period lasted a few hundred years and saw the number of states increase in China; from a single unified state in the 8th century BCE, there came to be more than 250 existing by the 5th century BCE, with some of them consisting only of a single town and its agricultural fields. Each of them, no matter their size, claimed to be a legitimate sovereign government. While they still acknowledged the rulership of the Zhou to some extent, this was only a performative exercise as the Zhou kings exercised no real authority outside of their domain.<ref name=":03" /><br />
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== Hundred schools of thought ==<br />
{{Main article|Chinese philosophy}}<br />
As this breakdown process took place over China, a new class slowly emerged: the ''shi'' (士, meaning advisor, scholar or general), a class of professional political administrators and advisors to kings and rulers which would come to remain very important in all later dynasties. Their role was reminiscent of the diviners of the Xia and Shang period, people who could read and write, but was wholly a product of the situation at the time: as the number of royal courts proliferated, there came a large demand for capable administrators and advisors. The ''shi'' traveled the land offering their services to different kings for a period of time, often creating fierce competition between kings for the most capable advisor. Often, they became a symbol of a ruler: a king who had a famous or capable advisor at his side was seen as a good ruler.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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The proliferation of this class also gave rise to philosophy in China (and thus Chinese philosophy), as the ''shi'' would debate each other and, in this era of great turmoil and war, began to question the fundamental order of China and rulership to understand why the Zhou kingdom broke down, and how statesmen could avoid this fate in the future.<ref name=":04">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 5: Confucianism and Daoism|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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Their influence on Chinese society was such that they survived in various ways in later dynasties, and so many of these schools of thought existed that they are today referred to as the "hundred schools of thought" (''zhūzǐ bǎijiā'', 諸子百家).<ref name=":05">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 6: The Hundred Schools|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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Some of the most famous ''shi'' of this period are [[Confucius]], [[Laozi]], and [[Sun Tzu]].<ref name=":04" /><br />
[[File:Confucius, fresco from a Western Han tomb of Dongping County, Shandong province, China.jpg|thumb|Likely the earliest depiction of Confucius, from a Western Han (202 BCE - 9 CE) fresco, found in a tomb in Shandong Province, China.|287x287px]]<br />
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=== Confucius and Confucianism ===<br />
Confucius (''Kong Fuzi'', 孔子), was a ''shi'' and perhaps the most influential figure in Chinese philosophy. He was born in the Lu state circa 551 BCE and died in that same place around 480 BCE.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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Most of the information that survived about Confucius was written down by his students and their students later on, but very little is known from his contemporaries. Confucius grew up in the state of Lu and later spent a fair amount of time travelling around eastern China as a ''shi'', offering his services to various rulers. However, Confucius was not very successful in this effort and only landed minor roles and positions as an advisor. He eventually gave up on his goal of trying to achieve political success through serving in administrations, went back to his home state of Lu and settled into the role of a teacher.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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The core of his ideas were about human relationships; if one wanted a well-ordered society in which people could live together in peace and prosperity, then he argued people needed to realize that this happened through relationships with one another. He saw the family as a microcosm of this societal relationship: they involved on the one hand bonds of duties and obligations, and on the other bonds of affection and compassion.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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==== Five great relationships ====<br />
Confucius defined a set of five great relationships, concrete examples which represented his overarching idea of all relationships in society. These are the relationship between the ruler and the subject, father and son, husband and wife, elder brother and younger brother, and the relationship between friend and friend. All of these relationships have certain characteristics; in each pair, one side plays a "leading" role and one plays a "following" role, even in the friend relationship: according to Confucius, there will always be a set of circumstances that puts one friend as a leader above the other (age, skill, etc).<ref name=":04" /><br />
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While there is a hierarchy in these relationships, they also have an aspect of reciprocity: the ruler (or father, or husband) must be a good ruler; they must fulfill their role in a proper way. If they abuse their role, then the subject (or the son, the wife, etc.) is released from the bond of obligation. The reciprocity of these relationships is what makes them work, and differentiates them from a simple domineering relationship (where the ruler would just force the subject to comply to his will). If both sides are fulfilling their roles properly then, according to Confucius, society will function properly.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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These relationships structure society, but to make them work people need to understand this system as they encounter it so they can apply it. To make that happen, Confucius relied on ritual: he saw rituals as central to the implementation of his order of relationships in daily life. Rituals are simply repeated behavior and can be as simple as a handshake (when two people meet, they shake hands) or as elaborate as a graduation ceremony, which involve hundreds of people.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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==== Analysis of the Zhou period ====<br />
When looking back at the decline of the Zhou period, Confucius attributed its downfall to the violation of the proper ritual order: when people started taking for themselves the title of king and performing the rituals of royalty at their court, they broke with the right way of ordering society and all the wars and suffering that afflicted China since then stemmed from that event.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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To fix this situation, Confucius argued for the return of the ritual order of the early Zhou rather than the chaotic disordered of the warring states period. He also advocated for the rectification of names or, in other words, to "make names fit reality" (going back to the rise of the Hegemons who usurped the title of king).<ref name=":04" /><br />
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A critical individual in this process of rectification is what Confucius called the gentleman (''jūn zǐ'', 君子, literally "noble's son"). This individual is one who models the proper ritual order and behavior in himself: he engages in learning about the past, and he seeks to approach the Dao (道, meaning "path", also spelled Tao), i.e. the way one should live in the world to manifest the rectification of rituals. As a role model, the gentleman can be emulated by others in society.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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Around 150 years after Confucius' death, a man by the name of [[Mencius]] (Meng Ke, 孟軻) picked up his work and developed Confucius' ideas further. Mencius especially turned his attention towards the relationship between a ruler and his subject, talking about the necessity of the ruler to "do the right thing", and that the people had the right to overthrow him if he failed at this duty.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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=== Daoism ===<br />
Daoism (or Taoism) was theorised by Laozi (''Lǎozǐ'', 老子, also romanised as Lao Tsu meaning "old master") and was as important and influential as Confucianism in traditional Chinese society. While Confucianism had a very proactive outlook (society will prosper if people act towards the natural order), Daoism is radically at odds with Confucianism; it is based upon a skepticism of our knowledge and [[epistemology]] (the ability to know things).<ref name=":04" /><br />
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Not much is known about Laozi, and it is not certain that he even existed. His most famous work is a book that bears his name, with most subsequent writings being attributed to a later follower by the name of Zhuangzi who wrote around the 3rd century BCE.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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For Daoists, all knowledge is arbitrary and partial. When we think about knowledge, all we're talking about is our ability to communicate: we know something is an orange, for example, because we name it an orange; names are meaningless and made up to describe things existing in reality. Thus our knowledge, Daoists argue, is partial: it is always limited and one can never know everything.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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Acting on the basis of partial knowledge will lead to consequences which can't be anticipated; in trying to make things better, we often end up making them worse.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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Zhuangzi liked to write in fables to explain his teachings, and one such fable is of an eagle soaring high in the sky who cannot discern between individual rocks and trees, it just sees patterns of color on the ground. By contrast, a small sparrow is hopping around on the ground and sees everything up close: the individual grains in the stalks of wheat, the leaves on the trees, the gravel on the road, etc. According to Zhuangzi, neither one is right in their interpretation of what they see as they're limited by their perspective. This fable illustrates the fundamental Daoist belief of questioning one's ability to know things.<ref name=":04" /> This fable is reminiscent of later [[Idealism|idealist]] philosophers such as [[Kant]] or [[George Berkeley|Berkeley]].<br />
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Daoists were of course worried about the troubles facing China, and in fact Laozi wrote about his vision for a well-ordered society. In his opinion, an ideal life is one in which everything one should want and need is already found in one's immediate community. Thus, wanting to conquer other states does not lead one anywhere, all it does is take one out of the proper order where one really belongs. A critical concept in Daoism is ''wu wei'' (translated as "inaction") -- not to act in a way that goes against the natural flow of things or being.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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For Daoists, the point isn't to make the world a better place (because one cannot know all the necessary information to achieve that goal), but to live in one's own proper order.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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=== Other schools of thought ===<br />
Confucianism and Daoism were at opposites. While the former advocated human action, the other advocated skepticism and inaction. These two schools of thought, while being the most influential in Chinese society, were not the only ones existing at the time of the warring states period however.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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Many of these schools were concerned with linguistics, and humankind's relationship to words in the material world. Others were concerned with military strategy, which made sense during a time of chronic wars. Sun Tzu (''Sūnzǐ'', 孙子) is certainly the most famous military thinkers to come out of the warring states period and was in great demand back in his time as well, unlike Confucius who had trouble finding employment as a political influencer. Other thinkers also explored cosmology or [[metaphysics]].<ref name=":04" /><br />
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Two significant theories of this era, which did not survive as influential schools after the warring states period, were Mohism (''Mòjiā'', 墨家 named after its founder ''Mòzǐ'', 墨子) and Legalism (''Fǎ Jiā'', 法家).<ref name=":04" /><br />
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==== Mohism ====<br />
Mohism is remembered for two aspects of its school: the doctrine of universal love and defensive warfare. Mohists believed that one should love everyone equally and treat other people the way one would like to be treated. While there are some parallels to Confucianism (for example, Confucius' famous silver rule "do not impose on others that which you yourself do not desire"), the Mohist doctrine of universal love developed as a critical response to the Confucians' theories of reciprocal relationships, especially how some relationships were more important than other. The Mohists argued that the priority given to one's family were the vector of war as ruling dynasties were themselves a family, and thus put their family's interests above other rulers'.<ref name=":05" /><br />
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The Mohists, following their doctrine, also became renowned experts in defensive warfare. Their idea was that by building up the defenses of smaller and weaker states (so that they could resist the attacks of stronger states), then aggression would cease to be a profitable course of action and they would stop fighting -- and instead pursue their interests by other less violent means. The Mohists offered their services as consultants to states which were at risk of being invaded, and in some cases proved to be quite effective (but obviously did not stop warfare entirely).<ref name=":05" /><br />
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The ideas of Mòjiā faded away as the warring states period came to an end, as they were a product of this period and ceased to be relevant in the time of peace that followed.<ref name=":05" /><br />
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==== Legalism ====<br />
Legalists had an approach on politics, government and social order that was rather different from any other schools of the time. The doctrines of legalism are associated particularly with the state of Qin -- the same one that forced the Zhou to move their capital and led to their decline soon after.<ref name=":05" /><br />
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The Qin developed a very effective military state; the whole of their society was mobilized in the army and directed towards the objective of expansion. These methods began to be formulated during the 4th century BCE by Shang Yang (''Gōngsūn Yǎng'', 公孫鞅) who was the chief minister of the Qin state at that time. His basis was simple, and revolved around rewards and punishments.<ref name=":05" /><br />
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On this basis, Shang Yang began a process that went on for over 150 years of promulgating laws, codes and regulations which gave the people in Qin society a clear understanding of what their obligations and duties were and what the consequences of failing those laws were. The idea was that by having clear laws that everybody knew and understood the consequences of breaking, then people would behave properly. The Qin proved to be truly effective in this regard, as the laws were applied equally to everyone regardless of class or status: whether they were a farmer or a general, one was punished the same for the same crime.<ref name=":05" /> <br />
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These laws were fairly harsh; punishments often involved amputation, execution or banishment even for relatively minor offenses. In theory, the harshness was mitigated by the fact that everybody knew of the punishments for breaking the law.<ref name=":05" /><br />
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In the 3rd century BCE, Han Fei (''hán fēi'', 韩非 ) developed a philosophical rationale to legalism. He himself was a ''shi'', and had worked in a number of courts before coming to the employment of the Qin for the remainder of his life. He developed a theory of human nature, theorizing that people are naturally selfish and greedy and will seek to maximise their own personal gain while minimizing their pain. In theory, by exploiting this nature, it was possible to get people to do what one wanted them to do. This theory is interesting not only because it draws parallels to modern-day [[Neoliberalism|neoliberal]] arguments and justifications, but also because it broke away from other schools at the time (such as Confucianism and Mohism) who claimed there was a natural proper order to the world and people should perform their proper roles. In legalism, the state exists for the ruler: the ruler owns the state as his private property and there is no reciprocity like in Confucianism. Thus the state is not wielded as a tool to achieve the greater good, but to do what the ruler wishes.<ref name=":05" /><br />
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The doctrines of legalism served the Qin state very well during the warring states period, as they emerged victorious after defeating the last remaining state of Chu and unified China once again under a single dynasty.<ref name=":05" /><br />
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== Warring states period ==<br />
[[File:Warring states of china and Qin contest, circa 250 BCE.png|thumb|356x356px|In red, the territory controlled by the Qin in 210 BCE as they emerged victorious of the warring states period.]]<br />
Around the year 480 BCE, the breakdown and fragmentation of China begins to reverse as strong states emerge and start to conquer weaker states. The number of states went from 250 to about 50-100 in just three centuries. This marked the end of the Spring and Autumn Period and the beginning of the Warring states period.<ref name=":04" /><br />
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=== End of the warring states period ===<br />
Around the last decades of the period, starting at the 3rd century BCE, the Qin state collected victory over victory and quickly annexed the various remaining states, until only two were left: Qin and Chu, both controlling similarly-sized areas. The ruler of the Qin state was named Qin Shi Huangdi in Chinese historiography, meaning ''First emperor of the Qin''. This marked the moment the term Emperor (Huangdi) entered the Chinese vocabulary. This was a very significant development, as previous rulers were called kings (wang). Huangdi was an ancient mythological -- almost spiritual or god-like -- figure, from back in the age of Yao and Shun. The king of the Qin adopting the title of Huangdi was a claim to a type of rulership that had not been seen in China previously; it was a claim to total power over all of China, the lord of all.<ref name=":05" /><br />
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== Qin and Han: Growth of feudal society ==<br />
The title of Qin Shi Huangdi, Dr. Hammond notes, was quite ironic, as the Qin state only ruled for 14 years.<ref name=":05" /> In that time though, they undertook dramatic transformations: controlling vast territories bigger than had been owned before by earlier dynasties.<ref name=":06">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 7: The Early Han Dynasty|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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Within his kingdom, the emperor set out to create a single administrative system. His work persisted after the Qin dynasty itself collapsed and into later dynasties.<ref name=":06" /><br />
[[File:Qin Coin.png|thumb|Preserved Qin dynasty era coin]]<br />
The first such reform was of standardisation. When China had been divided in the Spring and Autumn and then warring states period, local circumstances had diverged quite a bit from kingdom to kingdom. For example, wagons and carts had axles of different lengths in different states. This seemingly innocuous difference force traders to switch carts at the border, as the roads were not meant for their carts, and while this was highly beneficial to the warring state period (as the lords could restrict and control trade more easily), it created logistical delays in the unified Qin state. Standard coins were also introduced in the empire, and the Qin state was the first to give Chinese coins a square hole in the middle so they could be linked on a string and carried around more easily. Qin Shi Huangdi also standardized writing across the whole empire, normalizing how characters should be written.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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The Qin also thought it important to establish a standard ideological system. They were not particularly attached to the ideas of Confucius or other great thinkers like Laozi: only the doctrine of legalism counted. This led, in the year 214 BCE, to a burning of books and the (live) burying of scholars. Any books that were not teachings of legalism or practical utilitarian texts (how to do things) were destroyed. Likewise, as many teachings were taught orally by teachers and thinkers, the Qin emperor ordered that these scholars who knew the texts by heart be buried alive. This process was very thorough, and many of these texts did not survive that period, as most of them existed in only one copy at the time -- to this day, very few texts exist from before the fall of the Qin dynasty. Those that did survive were usually written down after the fall of the Qin dynasty.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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=== Overthrow of the Qin ===<br />
The doctrine of legalism proved to be a very effective system at gaining power, but not at ''retaining'' it. There was no method of self-regulation in this system, i.e. no restraint on how to wield power. Qin Shi Huangdi pursued this power purely in his own self-interest and died in 210 BCE. His son succeeded him on the throne, but proved unable to maintain the state his father had assembled, and he was killed only three years later.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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In the five following years, several contenders emerged, trying to establish their dynasty over China. Fairly quickly, two principal contenders appeared: Xiang Yu (''Xiàng Yǔ'', 项籍), and Liu Bang (''Liú Bāng'', 劉邦). Xiang Yu was a general in the state of Chu prior to the unification under the Qin state, and was the most likely contender for the throne as he proved very popular in the empire.<br />
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On the other hand, hist opponent Liu Bang was a relatively minor figure; he was a jailer, escorting groups of prisoners from local jails to county jails. Around the time the Qin state was collapsing, Liu Bang embarked on one of this mission, which involved an overnight journey. He made camp with his prisoners in the night and, in the morning, found that several had escaped. He knew that this would have dire consequences for him as, under the Qin system, he had failed his duties and would be likely executed. To avoid this fate, Liu Bang resorted to the only other alternative available to him: he assembled his remaining prisoners and told them he would set them free if they followed him. They became the core of his rebel army who fought against the Qin and, after the collapse of the dynasty, he continued to raise an army which eventually grew to become a serious military challenger for power.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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Xiang Yu and Liu Bang eventually came into direct conflict with one another. In the year 204 BCE, a battle took place in which Xiang Yu defeated the rival army, inflicting very strong casualties on Liu Bang's side and concluding that his army (and Liu Bang's struggle for the throne) was destroyed. However, Liu Bang had executed a strategic withdrawal which led his army into a port town on the Yellow river (named Ao). There, he seized the granary, recruited new followers and rebuilt his forces to resume the conflict with Xiang Yu.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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Two years later, Liu Bang defeated Xiang Yu in a very dramatic siege. The story, in traditional Chinese historiography, was that Xiang Yu found his encampment surrounded by the soldiers of Liu Bang -- themselves former soldiers of the Chu -- singing folk songs of their homeland. When Xiang Yu heard the songs, he knew that his cause was lost. He had a final evening with his favorite concubine, killed her, and then leapt on his horse straight into the enemy's lines where he was finally cut down.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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With his main opponent taken out of the power struggle, Liu Bang was free to proclaim a new dynasty over China, which he called the Han, after the district from which he originated. The Han dynasty became one of the great ages in Chinese history, lasting for 400 years, reaching a geographical size, population and wealth never seen before. The Han dynasty was a contemporary of the [[Roman Empire (27 BCE–395 CE)|Roman Empire]] in the west and the two indirectly traded through the [[Silk road]].<ref name=":06" /><br />
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==The early Han dynasty==<br />
Liu Bang established the capital at Chang'an, the same city that was the first capital of the Zhou dynasty as well as the capital of the Qin empire. From there, he established a system of imperial governance which was at first a continuation of the Qin system but evolved over the next century of Han rule into a much more stable and viable order.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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Liu Bang inherited however two systems of governance at the time of his ascension to the throne. The administration in the western half of China was run directly from the capital: the emperor appointed officials to serve in local government for relatively short fixed terms before being sent somewhere else. This allowed the imperial court and the emperor to exercise direct control and essentially administrate these regions himself. In the eastern half of the empire though, power was given to military leaders in Liu Bang's army who had secured these territories and pledged their loyalty to the new dynasty. This system had also been practiced by the Zhou and eventually led to their end, and indeed became a problem as well for the Han dynasty.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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Nonetheless, Liu Bang was able to stabilize his rule and peacefully handed the succession to his son after his death in 195 BCE. A challenge emerged soon, however, when the family of the empress sought to develop influence at court. In 180, when the new emperor came to the throne, their plan was thwarted and the Liu family was able to keep control of the throne.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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By that time, the military leaders who had been given land in the eastern part of the empire were becoming restless, and a number of efforts were made by Han emperors to maintain and extend their control over the east. This came to a head in 154 BCE when a rebellion took place: several military rulers in the east rose up and challenged the power of the Liu family. Not all of them backed the rebellion though, and the Liu family was able to manipulate these rulers in the east against one another so that they fought against each other instead of focusing on the empire. As those regions weakened themselves, the empire was able to bring them back into their direct administration (the system in the west) and use them as a base for operations against the remaining rebels. Within a few years, virtually all of east China came back under the direct administration of the Han.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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This was a critical development: first, it indicated that the Han (and more globally the Chinese) had learned their lesson from the Zhou and how to counteract such situations. Secondly, it cemented the rulership of the Han dynasty: by 150 BCE, China was a single administrative entity, no longer divided by tributary rulers.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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=== Emperor Wudi ===<br />
The immediate aftermath of this period saw one of China's most famous emperors on the throne, Wudi (''Hàn Wǔdì'', 汉武帝 -- ''Wu'' being his honorific title and ''Di'' coming from ''Huangdi'', the title the Emperor of Qin established). His reign lasted for 54 years, making it the longest continuous reign in China at the time. Due to China being virtually free of internal strife and rebellion at the time of his ascension to the throne, Wudi was able to engage in many reforms that consolidated an imperial, administrative and ideological order which remained the basis of the imperial court for the next 2000 years.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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This process started by emperor Wudi is often called the ''Han synthesis'' by historians, and is described as a blending together of three components: Confucianism, legalism (as an administrative practice) and metaphysics.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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The Han legal system was inspired by the Qin system of rewards and punishments, but was made more "humane" by the inclusion of a Confucian element, which sought out to establish proper relationships between people. These two philosophies were however more concerned by the [[Materialism|material]] world, and emperor Wudi was concerned with the metaphysical world as well, which he saw as an integral part (along with the material world) of a larger cosmic order.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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This was theorized by the likes of Dong Zhongshu (''Dŏng Zhòngshū'', 董仲舒) who brought together a number of ideas that had been in China for a long time already into a system that is sometimes called correlative cosmology; correlative cosmology seeks to explain correlation and connections between phenomena that can observed in the natural world and actions taking place in human society. Dr. Hammond likens it to a "doctrine of interpretation of omens": an earthquake or an eclipse, for example, may be interpreted as a sign that the natural order of things is disturbed in some way. Human misbehavior -- including the emperor's -- would create such omens which were interpreted by the royal court to bring the emperor back on the right path.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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Wudi had a vision of the state that was in agreement with Confucianism as a tool for doing good, but this vision was also a rationale for his many expansions: his reign is also marked with a period of great military expansions, going as far as to invade Korea in the north, Vietnam in the south and projecting power to [[central Asia]], creating the largest Chinese empire at the time. Emperor Wudi famously apologized to the whole of China for the many wars he started near the end of his reign, which he considered a mistake.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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His governing style was also new; he wanted the state to proactively solve problems for people and be engaged in the economic life of the country. He was against the manipulation of the market for mercantile profiteering and created government monopolies on critical goods such as salt, iron, alcohol, etc. to regulate and dispatch these commodities around the country.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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Wudi also began the practice of [[meritocracy]] in the state administration. Under this system, the royal court held examinations (based on written tests) that anyone could take to demonstrate their scholarship and learning. Passing the test would let one be appointed to positions in government. This system was initially held at a very small scale, and was not the main tool for recruiting government officials in China: during Wudi's reign, most officials came into service of the government through reputation or recommandation.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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=== Aftermath of Wudi's reign ===<br />
After Wudi's death, his policies came under debate: in 81 BCE, six years after his death, a great debate took place at the royal court, surviving in written records known as the ''Debate on salt and iron''. Two factions formed, arguing over whether it was a good thing or not (in Confucian terms) for the state to intervene in the economy. One faction argued that the role of the state was to regulate private greed so the interests of the common people could be protected, and the other faction argued that the government shouldn't be intervening in society but merely create a set of moral expectations: the government itself should be good and act in a proper way, which would set the example for people in society to follow. They also argued that it was improper for the government to enrich itself by participating in private economic activity. These debates were significant in their time and were also studied by the later Chinese to set out the parameters of how interventionist or active the government should be.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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The result of these debates was that the government decided to abandon most of Wudi's monopolies, and allowed the economy to go its own way with a minimal amount of government intervention.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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This moment -- up until to around the turn of the millennium (and going into the Common Era) -- was characterized by a very stable period in China's history, at least for the people. During this time, emperors became less and less engaged in the affairs of administration, instead preferring leisure and leaving the management of the state to their officials. This allowed officials to become corrupt and line their own pockets. The revenue of the state was neglected, and the day-to-day administrative tasks and military affairs were ignored. Additionally, in-law families (relatives by marriage) tried to manipulate the royal court in their favor.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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== Later Han dynasty ==<br />
This all came to a head in the year 7 of the present era when emperor Zhangdi (漢章帝) died without an heir. A brief period followed where power was usurped by Wang Mang (王莽) who headed the Xin dynasty (''Xīn Cháo,'' 新朝, literally "new dynasty") for about 20 years. This period is known as the ''Wang Mang Interregnum.<ref name=":07">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 8: Later Han and the Three Kingdoms|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref>'' Wang died without a successor in the year 23 of the current era, and another branch of the Liu family re-established their rule. This event started the period known as the later Han (or sometimes the eastern Han) which lasted for another 200 years.<ref name=":06" /><br />
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=== Land reforms ===<br />
The Han dynasty as a whole was a period during which the land ownership underwent significant changes.<ref name=":07" /><br />
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Up until that point, land had been the property of lords (most of them military rulers), and the farmers that lived on the land were the possessions of the rulers as well. Most of these rulers were put in place in earlier dynasties by rewarding generals with the land they conquered, but some land grants were made to members of the political administration as rewards for services rendered.''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
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As the Han dynasty dealt with the problem of local military rulers and unified the whole empire under their sole command, their administration naturally moved to a more civilian staff and was expanded to help manage the affairs of a centralized realm. The Han then began attributing land differently, forced by the material reality of this new order in which they were the sole owner of all the land and did not rely on the loyalty of tributary lords. The practice of rewarding administrators with land became an institution under the Han.''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
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This policy also changed the make up of the agricultural economy which started resembling a market system, where individual estates owned by individual families produced grain and other commodities which were then sold over the whole of China.''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
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In theory, land remained the property of the emperor. In practice however, land that was granted out to families (and passed on from generation to generation) developed into ''de facto'' [[private property]]. The state started to recognize this fact and issued charters and other grants of land started functioning more like property deeds. Conflicts between landlords (such as access to water) were mediated through a legal court that recognized their property and title as land owners.''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
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The advent of private property was a very significant event in the history of China, and would survive for millennia after that. Generational wealth began being amassed in a process which could be likened to [[Primitive accumulation of capital|primitive accumulation]].''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
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=== Cultural shift ===<br />
Given that the [[Base and superstructure|base]] changed, so did the [[superstructure]] of China. Chinese culture had, prior to the later Han, been focused primarily on tales of heroism and the glories of warfare, which were characteristic of the warring states period. The Han instead pursued cultural sophistication: learning and the pursuit of knowledge, being able to both read and write poetry, writing essays, became more culturally significant and valued in the later Han. This shift was spearheaded by the [[ruling class]] and mostly concerned them.''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
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=== End of the Han period ===<br />
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==== Eunuch influence ====<br />
Internal conflicts start reappearing at the royal court, with in-laws trying to seize power at court, military leaders resenting this new class of landlords who, they felt, had stolen their titles. Eunuchs became a problem as well; Eunuchs were somewhat unique to Chinese society: they were castrated males who served in the private residential parts of the imperial palace, in which only the emperor himself was allowed. Their condition made them non-threatening to the line of succession, and while eunuchs were not unique to China per se, their specific role in imperial China was. Eunuchs also worked with the emperor's concubines. Most of the time, eunuchs kept to their menial role but in times when the succession led to a young emperor on the throne, eunuchs could be influential over the young emperor who likely had one as his tutor or companion.''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
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==== Decline of the Han ====<br />
Eunuchs gaining influence notably became a problem in the later Han when a series of young emperors came to the throne, which turned them into a major faction within the imperial court.''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
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Making matters worse, the weakening of imperial oversight allowed local strongmen -- not yet military figures, but mostly private land owners -- to intensify their exploitation over the peasantry, raising taxes and rents and creating discontent. Unsurprisingly, this situation led to the outbreak of rebellions against landlords and the dynasty over large parts of China. The empire responded by leading military interventions to quell these rebellions which, in a domino effect, increased the power of the military.''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
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By the latter part of the second century, the Han dynasty had ceased to be a functional political entity. Much like the later Zhou, it still existed and emperors succeeded one another on the throne, but real power dissolved and strongmen in the country expanded their territory as factionalism at court weakened the functioning of the state even further.''<ref name=":07" />''<br />
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Eventually, in the year 220, the last Han emperor was set aside and the country broke up into three successor states, one of which was ruled by a member of the Liu family (the ruling family of the Han dynasty), named Liu Bei (''Liú Bèi'', 刘备).<ref name=":07" /><br />
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==The three kingdoms period==<br />
The breakup of the Han state led to the very short period (lasting from 220 to 265) known as the ''three kingdoms'' (''Sānguózhì yǎnyì'', 三国志演义), titled after the ''Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms'' (''sānguó zhì'', 三国志) written by Chen Shou (''Chén Shòu'', 陈寿) who lived through the period as a military officer of the Shu kingdom.<ref name=":07" /><br />
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The three kingdoms in question were:<br />
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# Shu (蜀), in modern-day Sichuan province, ruled by Liu Bei of the Han dynasty.<ref name=":07" /><br />
# Wei (魏), located in the north, ruled by Cao Pi (曹丕), son of Cao Cao (''Cáo Cāo,'' 曹操), a famous general of the late Han empire.<ref name=":07" /><br />
# Wu (吳), in the southeast, ruled by Sun Quan (''Sūn Quán'', 孙权).<ref name=":07" /><br />
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=== Beginning of the period ===<br />
The three kingdoms period started in the same way the earlier breakdown of the Zhou had, by a fragmentation of the empire into various sovereign states. However, unlike the breakdown of the Zhou era, the three kingdoms remained stable among themselves and did not divide themselves. They all presented themselves as Confucian regimes: all three employed a Confucian administration and were concerned with doing good in their own states. Thus, there was still a continuity from the Han period -- with the distinction that the heroes of this era were generals and not scholars.<ref name=":07" /><br />
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=== Significance of the three kingdoms period ===<br />
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It remains to this day one of the most famous eras in Chinese history due to the age it represents; unlike most periods of Chinese history, the heroes of the three kingdoms are not the kind of heroes portrayed in earlier times for their strength and might, but remembered their cleverness and wit. Deceiving your enemy, i.e. winning a fight by not fighting, are considered the great talents of this era. Cao Cao and Zhuge Liang (''Zhūgě Liàng'', 诸葛亮) are considered the two most exemplar heroes of this period.<ref name=":07" /><br />
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In one instance, Dr. Hammond notes, a general had brought his army to the south, setting up camp on the bank of a large river. On the other side of the river were the enemy's forces. Their supply lines extended and arriving from a long march, the army in the north was in a tough spot for the coming battle. If they could inflict a decisive victory on their enemy at that time, however, they would certainly turn the tide of war. To make matters worse, the incoming army from the north had used up almost all their arrows in the battles on the way to the river. They thus decided to take advantage of the local conditions: in the evenings, a fog would come down on the river due to meteorological conditions at that time of year. Going upstream, they commandeered boats from the locals. In the boats, they built mannequins out of straw and put their uniforms on these strawmen. In the evening, they pushed these boats full of straw puppets down the river. The sentries of the opposing army suddenly saw several boats coming down the river, full of soldiers lined up to attack. They unleashed their arrows on the boats, hitting only the strawmen. Further downstream, the first army then brought the boats to shore and collected the arrows from the boats, resupplying themselves. Dr. Hammond notes this story is significant because it has been passed down for millennia, and remains told to this day. These stories have been dramatised into poetry, operas, novels and, more recently, TV shows in China.<ref name=":07" /><br />
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The Three Kingdoms period was immortalised and made famous by the epic novel ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' (''Sānguó Yǎnyì'', 三国演义) written in the 14th century by Luo Guanzhong (''Luó Guànzhōng'', 湖海散人). The novel is considered one of the four great classics of Chinese literature.<ref name=":07" /><br />
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=== End of the period ===<br />
In 265 CE, in the state of Wei, the Sima family seized power from the Cao family. They fielded a force which conquered the states of Wu and Shu, and from that time until the year 304, their dynasty of the Jin replaced the three Kingdoms and united China again.<ref name=":07" /><br />
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That period of unification did not last very long however, as other events in Asia (which, Dr. Hammond notes, are still not fully understood) brought about a great migration of people around this time down into northern India. At the beginning of the 4th century, Turkic speaking people started moving into northwestern China.<ref name=":07" /><br />
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== Buddhism in China ==<br />
{{Main article|Buddhism}}<br />
Chinese history and culture is very largely self-contained, and so the arrival of Buddhism marked one of the rare moments when an outside element came into China.<ref name=":08">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 9: Buddhism|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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=== Origins of Buddhism ===<br />
Buddhism traces its origins to India, at around the 6th century BCE -- the same time the teachings of the hundred schools are appearing in China. Dr. Hammond notes that this is a chronological coincidence which coincides with the appearance of other great ages of philosophy elsewhere in the world (such as in Ancient Greece or Persia).<ref name=":08" /><br />
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There are plenty and very specific accounts around the origins of Buddhism -- stories about the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the first Buddha and founder of Buddhism -- but many contradict each other in certain aspects, which makes establishing a historical timeline of the Buddha's early life difficult.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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The common thread to the origin of Buddhism is as follows: Siddhartha Gautama (also referred to as Shakyamuni, ''the light of the Shakyas'', his clan) underwent several life-changing experiences, and as a result of those became a teacher of new ideas which took root in India, developed and grew there, and eventually spread to the rest of South and Southeast Asia.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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He came from a noble family in northern India (now in Nepal). As a noble, he grew up in conditions of great luxury and comfort. He was raised in a palace, and isolated in many ways from the realities of life around him. For the young prince, life was beautiful and a good thing to live.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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At a certain point, he came to a realisation that not everything in the world is perfect and beautiful. In one account, the prince was out in the palace gardens one day, when he heard a sound he did not recognize. He climbed a tree near the wall of the garden, looking out onto the town street. There, he saw a procession of people going by carrying a plan with something wrapped in cloth and adorned with flowers. Not understanding what he was seeing, the prince went to his parents to ask them about this strange event. They explain to him that he saw a funeral procession; the wrapped up object was a dead body, and the sound he heard was the sound of crying and lamentation. This was the first encounter the prince had with death and the suffering associated with it; thus awakening him for the first time to the imperfections of the world.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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There are a number of other accounts, but the common link between them is that at some point, before becoming the Buddha, Gautama saw or experienced something which made him understand imperfection in his previously perfect sheltered life.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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The prince then went out in search of understanding, to understand why there is suffering and imperfection in the world. He ran away from the palace and embarked on a spiritual quest which took him around the whole of northern India. This geographical area, Dr. Hammond notes, was very spiritually rich at the time: hermits were common in the woods, marketplaces were full of preachers, and the prince spent a number of years going from one teacher to another asking his question: "why is there suffering, and is there anything we can do about it?"<ref name=":08" /><br />
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None of the teachers he encountered, however, gave the prince satisfactory answers. Eventually, he found a place called Sarnath (near the modern-day city of Varanasi, India). There, he went into a "deer park" -- likely an estate belonging to a family connected to his. While sitting under a tree, he suddenly had a moment of enlightenment and understood the answer to his question. Immediately following this event, the prince gave his first teachings. Following that event, he kept travelling and attracting more followers until the moment he realised he was soon going to depart the material world. Several accounts exist of what happened next; in one account, the Buddha bodily ascended to the celestial realm. In others, he left his physical body behind and spiritually transformed -- in those schools, there are relics of the Buddha's body.<ref name=":08" /> <br />
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After his death or departure, the Buddha's followers took up the role of becoming his interpreters and teachers of their own. It was from that point forward that Buddhism grew and developed a religious practice and institution.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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=== Teachings of Buddhism ===<br />
In essence, the principles of Buddhism are very straight-forward. The key is the realisation of the nature of suffering; suffering is a part of our natural lives, and arises from our attachment to things in the material world. To be free of suffering, one has to free themselves from their attachments to the world around them. This can happen through meditation, renunciation and other spiritual undertakings.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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These are the four noble truths and are the core to all schools of Buddhism.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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The reason attachment is the source of suffering is that the reality of the world is impermanent: everything that exists passes away at some point; it has a beginning and an end. The ''appearance'' of permanence is an illusion (''maya'' in Sanskrit). Illusion doesn't mean that things do not actually exist, but that nothing is going to permanently, continuously exist forever.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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The most central experience of attachment is our own selves; we are all attached to ourselves (and our lives). The idea of rejecting attachment is very straightforward in theory, but becomes understandably difficult to put into practice: it is almost impossible to detach oneself from their own life. This is why the spiritual practice of renunciation (through meditation and other practices) becomes very important to Buddhists.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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=== Schools of Buddhism ===<br />
In the centuries after the death of the Buddha, his teachings develop and eventually spread, and two major schools of Buddhism arise.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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==== Theravada school ====<br />
Theravada Buddhism is primarily focused on the attainment of individual spiritual liberation; it takes the teachings of the Buddha at their most basic level and is concerned with how each individual can attain enlightenment for themselves.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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Early Theravada Buddhism sees the earliest development of monasticism (choosing to live in a monastery) as individuals renounce their involvement in society and leave behind the things which attach them to this world, including the very strong attachment to family and friends.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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At first, Theravada Buddhists simply retreated from the world and became hermits or wanderers. But as time went by, groups came together not to form a society with formal rules and practices, but rather into "places of dwelling", places where they would usually gather together.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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==== Mahayana Buddhism ====<br />
About 300 years later, a second school of Buddhism began to emerge, called Mahayana (''great vehicle''). This school moved its focus away from individual spiritual liberation and towards the salvation of all sentient beings. In this school of thought, any being capable of consciousness will be conscious of its own mortality and of the world around it. Therefore, it will be subject to the suffering caused by attachment. Mahayana Buddhism believes that one can't be truly spiritually free so long as they know others continue to suffer.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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Mahayana Buddhism introduced the concept of the Bodhisattva, a being who has reached a point of spiritual liberation: they could attain a state of transcendence as they have reached their individual liberation, but choose to remain in the material world to help other beings along the path of spiritual enlightenment.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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=== Spreading of Buddhism to Asia ===<br />
The spread of Mahayana Buddhism was linked in part to the embrace of Buddhism by king Ashoka in India. He ruled much of northern India and wanted to be a good king; he held spiritual debates at his court and decided that Buddhism was the best answer to the problems facing people. He erected pillars of stone to proclaim and promote the teachings of Buddhism around his realm, specifically Mahayana.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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It was from his kingdom that Buddhism spread out beyond India and into the rest of south and southeast Asia. The school that reached these places was Theravada. Mahayana Buddhism tended to go north and west and into central Asia, picked up along the silk road: Buddhist monks traveled along the silk road, spreading their teachings.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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==== Arrival of Buddhism in China ====<br />
It was from this route that Buddhism arrived in China some time in the second half of the Han dynasty. When Buddhist monks arrived in China, they were welcomed at the court of the emperor: the Han emperor himself was a spiritual figure himself, dating back to the Shang dynasty and the worship of his ancestors. In that role, he was a patron to all kinds of spiritual practices.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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When Buddhist monks arrived at Luoyang, they were given room and board and allowed to practice. But, at the beginning, they were considered more of an exotic curiosity; they were foreigners coming from outside of China, and their teachings were interesting, but different.<ref name=":08" /><br />
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Eventually, as the Han state deteriorated into widespread misery and rebellions, Buddhism became more popular among the masses; this should not be surprising, as it was a time of suffering and as such a philosophy that addressed the origins of suffering and offered a path out of it proved popular. Buddhism rapidly took root in China from that point on and became a part of Chinese culture and society. The teachings were spread through texts brought from India and by the oral teachings of monks. In the late second century and into the third century CE, Buddhism became a popular religion in China (popular in that it was the religion of the people).<ref name=":08" /><br />
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==Great migration to China==<br />
After the short-lived Jin dynasty, and as Buddhism was spreading into China, a new force came into China from outside: a great migration of peoples from Central Asia moved into the Chinese heartland. This event was part of a larger series of migrations that took place all over Asia during the fourth century, but historians are not sure why that movement happened.<ref name=":09">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 10: Northern and Southern Dynasties|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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This period is called the ''northern and southern dynasties'' (''Nán-Běi Cháo,'' 南北朝'')'' in Chinese historiography, with the new conquerors forming the northern dynasties, and the Han people pushed south forming the southern dynasties.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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The people that came to northern-northwestern China (relative to the borders at the end of the Han dynasty) spoke a language that is an ancestor to Turkish, and are sometimes called proto-Turkic by historians. They arrived in a space occupied by the Xiongnu people, who had been a constant presence and, at times, either a welcome trading partner or a threat on the Chinese frontier -- the Han dynasty build the Great Wall to defend against their raids.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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When the Turkic peoples started migrating into the territory of the Xiongnu, who were nomadic, they became displaced and moved further up north. After a long migration that took them several decades, they emerged in European history as the Huns.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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Eventually, these Turkic peoples moved from what was the Xiongnu territory and into China as well, which was a fertile area. Their migration came to an end north of the Yangtze river, which they did not cross. The north of China at the time was home to 20-30 million people, and the migratory populations totalled fewer than a million people. It should be understood that this process of migration was not peaceful and did not displace the Chinese people established there, but rather these newcomers established themselves as sort of overlords.<ref name=":09" /> In this process, they displaced the empire of China from the region and instead established their rule, taking over by force. This period is called the Northern dynasty.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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South of the Yangtze river, Chinese civilisation and political order was preserved. However, Chinese presence in that area had only been established for a few hundred years at most; Dr. Hammond notes that the Chinese population in the south was aware that they were not living in their ancestral homeland.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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=== Northern Wei dynasty ===<br />
[[File:Southern and Northern Dynasties 440 CE.png|thumb|332x332px|Southern and Northern Dynasties 440 CE. The Wei dynasty came to dominate the north.]]<br />
This process of migration only ended in the early 5th century, with many groups coming in at different times and establishing their rule of different areas. The most historically significant of these dynasties is the Wei dynasty (''Bei Wei'' 北魏) -- not to be confused with the Wei kingdom from the three kingdoms period (魏). To differentiate the two, historians often call it the Northern Wei dynasty or the ''Tuoba'' kingdom (拓跋魏), named after its people.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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This dynasty controlled major parts of the modern-day Henan, Hebei and Shanxi provinces. They first established their capital near the modern-day city of Datong, and after a hundred years or so moved it to the historical capital of Luoyang.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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==== Cave temples ====<br />
[[File:5zmqouty.jpg|thumb|376x376px|Cave temple of Yungang (云冈, cloud harbour). The statues were originally contained in their own chambers, but the front walls eroded away with time.]]<br />
The nature of the soil in northwestern China, called loess, is very particular. It is very granular soil built up by the retreat of the glaciers at the end of the last ice age, and the wind blew the resultant dust in fan-shaped patterns over thousands and thousands of square miles. The deposits of this soil can be hundreds of meters deep.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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Thanks to this granular nature as well as the dry climate of the region, it is possible to simply carve into it, and the people of north China often lived in dwellings carved out on hillsides.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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The Tuoba built extensive Buddhist cave temples in the same way at each of their two capitals by carving out and hollowing into cliff faces. Some of the statues are 20-30 feet tall (6-9 metres), around which will be thousands of tiny Buddha figures. The statues were patronized by people to earn merit or as acts of devotion and faith; the bigger statues were commissionned by wealthy patrons such as the Wei lords themselves while the small status were ordered by farmers in exchange for a few coins to have it carved on their behalf.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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Dr. Hammond notes that the cave temples show a clear mark that the Turkic peoples who migrated into China were themselves Buddhist (coming into contact with it after it had spread from India) and brought with them a somewhat militant form of Buddhism different from the one practiced in China.<ref name=":09" /> For the Tuoba and other Turkic peoples, Buddhism was central to their culture and had been devotees for centuries at that point.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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==== End of the process of migration ====<br />
The great migration into China went on for over a century and into the fifth century CE, but eventually stopped. Afterwards, another process followed where the new elite that had imposed itself in north China started to intermingle with the existing Chinese community. After having conquered the areas by military might, its rulers wanted to then control and extract wealth from its population; particulary because China produced items of great value (such as silk or porcelain) that were previously simply unavailable to these peoples.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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From the point of view of the Chinese, particularly from the nobles and landowners, they were interested in forming alliances and partnerships with the conquerors to protect their interests. One principal way these two communites were able to come into contact with each other was through intermarriage.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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Eventually, blended families emerged: they were neither fully Chinese or fully Turkic, but what anthropologists call Sino-Turkic. A process of cultural accomodation also took place at the same time, where the cultural practices of both sides were adopted -- mainly on the Turkic side.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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The Turks quickly realised that to administer the territories they had conquered, they needed to use the existing mechanisms of local administration that the Chinese had laid out. Thus they adopted Chinese as the language of government, and shortly after adopted Chinese as the language of daily life. After a few generations, Turkic families started to adopt Chinese surnames adapted from their original name. Turkic leaders even began wearing Chinese-style clothing.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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Likewise, certain Turkic words were adopted into Chinese vocabulary. Aspects of diet and food preparation became characteristic of north China, and some cultural practices of the region still practiced to this day can trace back their origins to the Turkic influences.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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=== Southern dynasties ===<br />
South of the Yangtze river, where the Chinese had been pushed out, there were also several different ruling dynasties. While the south of China had been controlled since emperor Wudi centuries earlier, the Chinese in the southern dynasties were very conscious of their Chinese identity. At the same time as the migrations happened in the north, thousands of people -- particulary wealthier families -- left their home in the north to move south, which reminded the southern Chinese of their "anomalous" position in the south -- that they were all migrants from the north.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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==== Cultural developments during the southern dynasties ====<br />
This engendered a kind of cultural anxiety that drove Chinese nobles to remind themselves of their cultural identity. One development was the rise of calligraphy as an art form; up until that point, writing had essentially been a functional practice: there had been prescribed forms on how to write characters (dating back to the Qin empire), but under the southern dynasties the ''way'' in which characters were written came to be seen as an art. The way one wrote, additionally, also came to be representative of their moral character. It was during the southern dynasties period that one celebrated calligrapher practiced, Wang Xizhi (王羲之). The southern dynasties also saw the emergence of painting as an art form. Prior to that period, painting was seen as a craft, the production of an item. But in the southern dynasties, painting was considered to be an expression of an artist' individual tastes. One famous painter of the period is Gu Kaizhi (''Gù Kǎizhī'', 顾恺之).<ref name=":09" /><br />
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Writing as a literary tool also became increasingly complex. Chinese literature was very straight-forward and simple: writers like Mencius or Sun Tzu wrote in a very matter-of-fact, straight to the point style. Starting in the southern dynasties, writing became very self-referential; there were lots of allusions to earlier texts, sometimes maybe just a few lines or characters, often in obscure ways so that one had to be very educated and knowledgeable about these older texts to get the reference. This literary practice came about to differentiate the southern Chinese from their peers in the North living under "barbarian" rule, who would not understand the references and phrasings.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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==== Developments in Buddhism ====<br />
The southern dynasties also gave birth to distinctly Chinese schools of Buddhism adapted from the cultural sensibilities and developments in Chinese society, such as the Tiantai or Chan school (more familiar in the west under the name Zen). The developments of Buddhism became vital in the later reunification of China under one dynasty in the 6th century.<ref name=":09" /><br />
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=== End of the period of division ===<br />
This division of China lasted for close to 300 years. By the latter part of the 6th century, the conditions that created this division had begun to change. In the North, the period of migrations had ended and a long era of cultural accommodation had ensued. In the South meanwhile, the adoption of Buddhism and a process of familiarisation with the populations in North China began to create the ground for reunification into one China, especially in the Chinese elite.<ref name=":010">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 11: Sui Reunification and the Rise of the Tang|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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== The Sui dynasty ==<br />
In the 580s, circumstances arose that brought this long period of division to an end. A general named Yang Jian, who came from a Sino-turkic family in the northwest of China, seized power for himself in the state he served in, called the Northern Zhou dynasty. He founded his own dynasty after a coup, which he called the Sui dynasty -- named after his home district.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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Such violent overthrows were not particularly uncommon in this period of division, but what made the Sui dynasty historically important was that by 589, Yang had re-established a single unified empire encompassing both North and South China.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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Part of his success was due to him being a general, leading troops in campaigns and conquering the rest of North China. At the same time, he did not employ this method in South China and one of his first acts was to send his son, Yang Guang, to be viceroy of the city of Yangzhou, a very important economic and political center in East China. The city was technically in North China (and under Sui control), but sat right on the border with South China, close to [[Nanjing]]. From there, Yang Guang was able to get into correspondance and negotiations to peacefully reconcile and integrate South China.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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They also used Buddhism as a common cultural trait between the North and the South to reach out to their neighbours. They eventually negotiated a marriage between Yang Guang and a princess in the South to reintegrate that state, with other Southern states soon following suit.<ref name=":010" /><br />
[[File:China-sui-large.png|thumb|Sui dynasty borders laid on top of modern day China map (PRC)]]<br />
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=== Establishment of the Sui state ===<br />
While the Sui dynasty itself did not last very long and only had two emperors (Yang Jian and then Yang Guang), it did succeed in establishing a new political order which the Tang inherited after them, and which proved to be long lasting.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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==== Legal code ====<br />
A legal code was formulated which gave a body of law to the empire as a whole, used to regulate the affairs of the government and citizens. The adoption of a legal code was not a new undertaking at this time in Chinese history, but their code brought together laws from North and South China and their several different administrations and states, creating a cohesive body of law for the many different cultures living in the now reunified China.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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==== Well-field system ====<br />
The Sui dynasty also used the well-field system (井田制度, ''jǐngtián zhìdù''), which was first attested to in Chinese early history (and even pre-history, going back to the mythological foundation of China). It was a way of distributing land based on a grid system: the outer fields in a given area were private fields owned and farmed by peasants, with the central field farmed for the lord or empire: the revenues from that field would be used to pay taxes and tribute. Dr Hammond notes that the character for well (井, ''jǐng'') was likely drawn after this system.<ref name=":010" /> <br />
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The Sui did not bring back this exact system, but used it to promote a stable agricultural order. While all land in the empire theoretically belonged to the emperor, this system made sure that arable land was redistributed to different families every 3 years, ensuring that all families had about the same access to agricultural resources. This redistribution prevented the accumulation of large amounts of land in some families, avoiding the formation of both landlords and landless peasants.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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The land was not all distributed equally; there were still aristocratic, land-owning families which were inherited into the Sui dynasty from the period of division. The well-field system did not expropriate this owned land; it was entirely exempted. Still, this system allowed farmers to fulfil their own needs.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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==== Frontier defence ====<br />
The Northwest frontier remained a zone of instability, and in order to defend it, the emperor established agricultural colonies: soldiers would be sent to the frontier and support themselves by farming the land there rather than being financed and fed by the heartland of China.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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==== Public granaries ====<br />
Finally, the Sui dynasty established a system of public granaries. Every year at harvest time, surplus grain was bought at subsidized prices and stored in granaries. During the course of the year as grain prices rose due to lower supply until the next harvest, the government would release grain into the markets from these granaries to maintain stable supplies and prices.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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=== Succession of Yang Jian ===<br />
Yang Jian was succeeded by his son Yang Guang, the second and last emperor of the Sui. His rule was marked by military expeditions, seeking to re-establish Chinese control on territories lost on the periphery during the division of the North and South. In particular, he launched some military campaigns against Korea. These campaigns were not successful and created dissatisfaction in the empire.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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He also launched military campaigns to the northwest, into Central Asia, to try and push some of the Turkic populations away. These campaigns were also a financial drain on the economy and disrupted communities as soldiers were taken away from their villages to fight on the frontier.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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At the same time, the Northwest of China had been slowly going through a slow, millennia-long process of climate change which progressively made the region warmer and dried, reducing agricultural production. By the Sui period, the Northwest was not able to support the lavish lifestyle of the imperial court (located since earlier times at Chan'an and Luoyang nearby). As such, grain was required to be imported from the South, for which Yang Guang undertook the construction of a canal (which he never finished but would later become the Grand Canal, which remains the main economic artery from North to South China). This project required a large mobilisation of both labour and resources and while necessary when looked at with historical insight, the construction of the canal was not popular with the masses.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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=== End of the Sui dynasty ===<br />
The Sui dynasty lasted from the years 589 to 617. The masses were not happy with the failed military campaigns and the construction of the Grand Canal that took their toll on their families and local economy. This discontent however, by itself, would not have been enough to dissolve the Sui dynasty. In addition to that, a story (or rumour) was going around the capital that the throne "was going to be occupied" by a person named Li (the ruler of Sui being named Yang).<ref name=":010" /> This story was first spread by travelling soothsayers and then made into a folk song. Yang began to mistrust government officials named Li and, to safeguard his rule, had them executed as well.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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In the city of Tanyuan, Li Shimin, the son of a garrison commander, saw the writing on the wall for himself and his father: if they were going to wait around, then eventually the emperor would have them executed for being named Li. Yuan, Shimin's father, had to take the opportunity and seize power for himself. In 617, Li Yuan, his son and their troops marched south to the capital. Rebellions broke out, and the court collapsed fairly quickly: Yang Guang died, and authority disintegrated at the capital.<ref name=":010" /><br />
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== The Tang dynasty ==<br />
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=== Establishment of the dynasty ===<br />
A brief period of civil war ensued after the end of the Sui dynasty, with a number of contenders seeking to establish their dynasty. The Li family were the leading contenders and, in 621, all of their opponents were disposed of, leaving the way open to establish their Tang dynasty with Li Yuan as emperor. The name Tang, like many dynasties before them, was the name of the district Li Yuan originated from.<ref name=":010" /> The capital was established at the historical site of Chang'an, with the city of Luoyang being used as a secondary capital.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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==== Emperor Li Shimin ====<br />
Li Yuan abdicated in 626 to his son Li Shimin, who reigned for 23 years until 649. He continued many of the practices started by the Sui dynasty. Additionally, he formalised the number of ministries to just six which was kept by all subsequent emperor dynasties down to the year 1911, when the Imperial structure of China was overthrown and the Republic of China was born.<ref name=":011">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 12: The Early Tang Dynasty|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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He also created a separate bureaucratic institution to manage the affairs of the imperial household, creating a clear demarcation between the personal activities and finances of the royal family and the affairs and finances of the government. This demarcation was an important development because it removed the state a bit more from being the personal property of the emperor. It also proved to be a robust structure so as to prevent abuses by the royal family which had created problems in the past.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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Finally, Li Shimin also extended Chinese power into Korea and what is now Vietnam. In the far west, Tang armies projected their power much further than any other dynasty before: they established direct Chinese control as far as Xinjiang province. Into what is now parts of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, protectorates were established with local rulers, contributing to the economic expansion of the Tang dynasty.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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=== Economic and social change ===<br />
[[File:Location of xi'an.png|thumb|Location of Xi'an city in China, previously the historical capital of Chang'an.]]<br />
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==== Chang'an capital ====<br />
The city of Chan'an was important not only due to its historical role, but also because it was strategically placed at the beginning (or end) of the Silk Road when it came to the road's entrance into (and out of) China.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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Trade routes from all over Asia converged at Chang'an, which made it develop into probably the greatest city in the world at that time: the city housed a population of 2 million people, established in a geographical area vastly larger than its biggest "rivals" at the time (Cairo and Baghdad). As a center of trade, people from civilisations all across Eurasia converged there, making the city into an unrivalled -- and probably unprecedented -- cosmopolitan multicultural center.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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==== Prosperity ====<br />
The first century of Tang rule was otherwise marked by peace, China having been unified again, which allowed for prosperity which fuelled economic growth along with the vast international trading system.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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Demographic growth followed; part of the population growth was due to the expansion at the borders, bringing in new territory, but also due to internal factors: no internal warfare meant more people survived, and the economic activity of the Silk Road raised the standards of living for the people and contributed to longer life expectancy.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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It is estimated that during the course of the Tang dynasty, the population of China grew from ~120 million to ~250 million.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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==== Social order ====<br />
The social order in the Tang dynasty was a continuation of the aristocratic system which had emerged back during the Han. The basis of wealth and status was the ownership of large estates, concentrated into families who had been in possession of these estates for hundreds of years.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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The Tang formalised and regulated these estates to an extent even greater than seen in previous dynasties. In the capital, a genealogical registry was made, maintaining a record of who was a member of which family. Officials in the government tended to be recruited from these families.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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This basis for recruitment maintained the aristocratic order which pleased these families, but Dr. Hammond also notes that to function as an educated and literate government official, one needed a certain amount of economic resources to learn the textual tradition, the writings of Confucius, the histories of China, the body of precedent and historical knowledge necessary.<ref name=":011" /> A peasant family who needed to deploy all its available labour-power towards the production of food simply would not have been able to spare a young man for the several years needed to educate him on these topics.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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=== Empress Wu Zetian ===<br />
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==== Biography ====<br />
Li Shimin eventually died and passed down the title of emperor to his son. In 690, empress Wu Zetian assumed the throne, an unprecedented event in China: all emperors before her had been men. She was also the last empress of China.<ref name=":011" /><br />
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At a very young age (perhaps around 12 or 13, she came into the court as a concubine during the last years of Li Shimin -- it is not clear that he actually met her. When the emperor died, the tradition was that all women and consorts at his court were retired into Buddhist temples so that the partner of an emperor could not become anyone else's partner.<ref name=":011" /><br />
<br />
On the first anniversary of Li Shimin's death, his son Li Zhi visited the former concubines and became captivated by Wu Zetian, who would have been around 15 years old at this time. He brought her back to the palace, making her his favourite consort. Eventually, he displaced his own wife and made Wu Zetian the empress, giving her direct proximity to the throne. At the same time, Li Zhi had no sons to inherit the throne but only nephews, making Wu Zetian the aunt of the next two emperors that followed. In 690, she set aside her nephew, who was still a very young boy, and assumed imperial power for herself.<ref name=":011" /><br />
<br />
Wu Zetian ruled for 15 years, and one of her first acts was to change the name of the dynasty to the Zhou dynasty, echoing back to the ancient dynasty. She stepped down in 705 from the throne, and her nephew, who had briefly reigned before her, returned to the throne. Wu Zetian died of natural causes shortly after.<ref name=":011" /><br />
<br />
==== Impact ====<br />
The reign of empress Wu Zetian was a very unique moment in Chinese history. In traditional Chinese historiography about her, her story is presented as a pretty bleak event; the Confucian scholars who wrote her stories down didn't like that a woman was on the throne and they did everything they could to smear her reputation. Looking at the records of her 15 years rule however shows that she was an average ruler, who didn't innovate much but also stayed the course in terms of stability.<ref name=":011" /><br />
<br />
She was noted for her patronage of Buddhism, and for undermining the aristocratic recruitment system established by Li Shimin. As the royal court distrusted her, she sought to create alliances with minor families by recruiting them at the royal court and garner support from them instead.<ref name=":011" /><br />
<br />
=== Emperor Xuanzong ===<br />
After Wu Zetian's abdication, her nephew (known as Xuanzong, personal name Li Longji) took the throne, reigning until the year 756 -- over 50 years. He is considered one of the great emperors in Chinese history, not because of his own achievements, but because he ruled over the golden age of the Tang dynasty, a time during which the economy flourished, the role of Chang'an as a trade center continued to be significant, and Buddhist culture flourished and both temples were built and great translation projects were carried out to further embed Buddhism in Chinese culture.<ref name=":011" /><br />
<br />
The first part of the eight century was also an age when some of the greatest poets in all of Chinese history were contemporaries: they knew and wrote each other, and created a very rich and dynamic moment in Chinese arts. Figures like Li Bo, Du Fu, Meng Haoran from that period are names that any Chinese schoolchild today would be familiar with and learn about.<ref name=":011" /><br />
<br />
==== Quest for immortality ====<br />
Emperor Xuanzong was a competent emperor nonetheless but as he became older, he became more concerned with the inner life of the palace: notably the quest for immortality.<ref name=":011" /><br />
<br />
At the time in China, coming from the time of the Northern and Southern dynasties, a spiritual practice known as religious Daoism (differentiated from the philosophical practice) was particularly concerned with seeking out immortality, being in communication with a spiritual realm which was populated by immortal beings. Part of the way this was done was through taking various chemical substances into one's body, producing heightened states of spiritual sensitivity (likely hallucinogenics). The people involved in this practice believed that they came in contact with spiritual beings who passed onto them various "recipes" for better concoctions to pursue their spiritual quest. Xuanzong became involved in these activities as he grew older, perhaps unsurprisingly.<ref name=":011" /><br />
<br />
==== Yang Guifei ====<br />
At the same time, emperor Xuanzong became enamored with a woman known as Yang Guifei -- from the earlier ruling Yang family deposed by the Li. Guifei was not her personal name, but a title meaning "precious concubine". She was selected by Xuanzong to become his favourite, and came to play a role in his life beyond that of a simple palace lady, becoming a partner and advisor in the affairs of state and other concerns. This made her a very powerful individual -- at least potentially -- so much so that Confucian officials at the court became jealous of her.<ref name=":011" /><br />
<br />
=== An Lushan and Frontier security ===<br />
One constant problem in the Tang dynasty was the security of the frontier in the west, maintaining the defences along to border with inner Asia. The Tang dynasty continued the military colonies from the Sui dynasty, but also came up with new policies. One of these was to employ military forces from one part of the frontier in the defence of another part of the frontier. The Uighur people for example, from the northwestern frontier, were sent to the defence of the northeastern frontier, where the people they were defending against had nothing in common with them.<ref name=":011" /><br />
<br />
One Uighur individual employed in this capacity, known as An Lushan (likely Rakshan in his original language), was in charge of a Chinese garrison near where the modern city of Beijing is located. He was a very competent general and defended his part of the frontier effectively. This made him into a popular figure at Xuanzong's court. Every so often, these commanders would come to make a report to the capital and historical records show that when An Lushan came to the capital, he was received quite lavishly by the emperor himself.<ref name=":011" /> <br />
<br />
Through these visits, An Lushan also became a good friend of Yang Guifei. Their relationship is recorded as being perfectly ordinary but jealous officials at the court chose to slander both Yang Guifei and An Lushan by claiming they were having an illicit affair. The emperor didn't believe in the rumours, but he was so persistently fed these rumours that eventually, he began having doubts. He summoned An Lushan to the capital. An Lushan was not unaware of the rumours, and so he refused to make the trip. This was taken as an act of guilt on the part of An Lushan, and so the emperor summoned him again, and An Lushan agreed to come to the capital.<ref name=":011" /><br />
<br />
==== The An Lushan rebellion ====<br />
An Lushan took his army with him to see the emperor. This triggered, in the year 755, the An Lushan Rebellion, which lasted until 763 and shook the Tang dynasty to its very core, as their rule up until then had been one of great successes and internal peace.<ref name=":011" /><br />
<br />
A number of battles and sieges took place, and he emerged victorious in every case, his armies growing each time. As he approached the capital, the emperor and courtiers decided to run away (despite having summoned him officially). They fled to the southwest into Sichuan and the capital of Chang'an was captured by the rebels. During this march, the emperor realized that he could not continue his relationship with Yang Guifei, and he allowed his courtiers to assassinate her.<ref name=":011" /><br />
<br />
==== End of the rebellion ====<br />
The rebellion eventually subsided after both the emperor and An Lushan died (the first of old age, and the latter during the course of the rebellion), and both of their sons continued the hostilities in their fathers' stead.<ref name=":011" /><br />
<br />
With the capital lost, the royal family had to find new avenues of support against the rebels, the main method by which they made compromises with powerful military officials who were stationed far away from any hostilities. When approached by the emperor, these generals saw an opportunity to negotiate with the emperor and obtained concessions. For example, the court had to agree to relinquish the control of certain taxes, to be owned by the generals instead.<ref name=":011" /><br />
<br />
=== Aftermath and impact of the An Lushan rebellion ===<br />
These deals were successful as they allowed the Li family to preserve its rule and defeat the rebellion. However, in granting these concessions, the dynasty weakened itself irreparably. After the An Lushan rebellion ended in 763, the Tang dynasty was never able to regain the dynamism and prosperity that they had previously enjoyed.<ref name=":011" /><br />
<br />
Soon, the same situation that had led to the demise of several earlier dynasties resurfaced: the Tang court directly controlled the areas around Chang'an and Luoyang, as well as certain areas (particularly in northwest China) that were traditionally under the administration of the ruling dynasty. But otherwise, large portions of the empire -- although they continued to recognize the authority of the ruling family and continued to send tribute, kept bigger proportions for themselves and became increasingly autonomous.<ref name=":012">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 13: Han Yu and the Late Tang|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
At the same time, many noble families began to find legal mechanisms to grant their land to Buddhist monasteries, making their land tax exempt. The contract worked by giving ownership of the land to the monastery, with the family retaining rights to some of the use of the land, for example owning some of the harvest. With this mechanism, the family would ultimately make more profits from not paying taxes on the land, even if they only retained part of the harvest and could not use their land freely any more.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
The confluence of these two phenomena led to a major loss of revenue for the royal family, who especially needed money after the several years of civil war. This led the government to increase the rate of taxations, mostly impacting smaller peasant families who didn't have much to their name in the first place. This not only caused unrest, but also increased wealth inequality.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
== Late Tang dynasty ==<br />
<br />
=== Confucian revival of the 9th century ===<br />
At the beginning of the 9th century, a movement to revive the centrality of Confucianism in Chinese political culture and operations of the state started to appear, the biggest of which was the Gu Wen (''old-style prose'') movement, a literary movement led by Han Yu.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
==== Han Yu ====<br />
Like several of the Gu Wen advocates, he was a new kind of figure in the Tang imperial government. Coming from a minor aristocratic family, he entered imperial service by taking one of the occasionally-held imperial examinations, demonstrating literary accomplishment as opposed to simply being born in privilege.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
He critiqued the problems that were plaguing China at the time through literary culture. As a member of the scholar elite, he considered that the centrality of literary culture was fundamental to the functioning of politics (the Confucian ''shi''). To Han Yu, prose writing should be as clear and simple as possible, communicating the author's ideas clearly. He criticized the flowery prose that came about in the Southern dynasties, saying it was a kind of writing in which people were more concerned about ''how'' they were saying something rather than ''what'' they were saying.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
He blamed this development on two influences: Buddhism, and religious Daoism (a response from within Chinese culture to the arrival of Buddhism). He considered that both were bad influences on Chinese civilization largely because they represented the rejection of the family as Confucius envisioned society. Buddhism especially directly challenged the worship of the ancestors that had been central to Chinese spirituality since ancient times. Han Yu argued that with Buddhist monks not having children and thus not continuing their family line, there were no descendants to carry out offerings to the ancestors who would be abandoned.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
He advocated a return to the values of Confucianism in essays, two of his most famous ones being titled ''The origins of the Dao'' and ''The memorial on the bone of the Buddha.<ref name=":012" />''<br />
<br />
===== ''Memorial on the bone of the Buddha'' =====<br />
In ''Memorial'', he took on a major event that happened in his time: a bone of the Buddha's finger was brought to Chang'an, attracting many pilgrims with it. The emperor himself had announced that he would go to the monastery and pay his respects to this relic. Han Yu wrote a letter to the emperor saying (in a very straightforward Confucian manner) this was not appropriate for the emperor of China to do, "paying respect to the rotten corpse of a foreigner" -- underlying that not only was it problematic for the emperor to give meaning to a body part (bodies, and the people taking care of them, being on the fringes of society in ancient Chinese culture), but moreover that the Buddha was a foreigner, which was scandalous to Han Yu.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
The emperor was not pleased by Han Yu's letter, and sentenced him to exile in the fringe parts of South China, near the border with what is now Vietnam. This punishment happened several times in the course of Han Yu's career, owing to this direct approach to matters of policy, and was often a death sentence as malaria or other tropical diseases would contaminate the exiled.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
===== Legacy =====<br />
Han Yu died in 824. While he and the other Gu Wen theorists never achieved enough influence to sweep over the entire nation, they created an intellectual position which became part of the ongoing discourse on Chinese culture. The values that Han Yu advocated for would later be picked up again in the 11th century.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
Han Yu himself did not talk about financial questions; he attacked Buddhism on moral grounds of it being foreign, undermining the family, Confucian values and Chinese culture.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
=== Final decades of the Tang dynasty ===<br />
<br />
==== Purge of Buddhism ====<br />
In 845, 20 years after Han Yu's death, a great purge of Buddhism took place -- mainly as a response to Han Yu's criticism as well as the fiscal problems facing the dynasty. Emperor Wuzong, a fanatical Daoist, issued edicts to ban Buddhism and established monasteries from China. This created a great rupture in Buddhist monasteries: monks and nuns were told to return to their families, and their monasteries torn down.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
More importantly, monastic lands were also confiscated and turned over to the royal family, which allowed for a new stage of land redistribution, giving it back to small farmers which the court could tax. In effect, over several decades privately-owned aristocratic lands (originally handed to monasteries to avoid taxes) were seized by the government who could now tax this land even more.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
The purge of Buddhism lasted only 6-7 years, by the early 850s, Buddhist monasteries were able to be re-established and quickly reappeared in China. However, they did not have their land restored; without these land holdings to support themselves, monasteries were unable to reacquire the large population base that they had before.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
While this return of tax revenue helped the government, it did not support the dynasty for very long.<ref name=":012" /><br />
<br />
==== End of the Tang dynasty ====<br />
All of these conditions eventually culminated into a crisis. Civil wars broke out around China with powerful generals trying to wrestle territories from their peers. In the last years of the 9th century, military forces penetrated into the imperial palace and massacred the eunuchs, making the final emperors of the Tang into puppets of military warlords.<ref name=":020">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 14: Five Dynasties and the Song Founding|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
This process ended in the year 907 when the last claimant to the throne of the Tang was deposed and murdered, which led the dynasty to completely disappearing.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
==Five dynasties period==<br />
Following the dismantling of the Li dynasty, China was again fragmented into several different kingdoms. This period, however, was comparatively brief; lasting only 53 years. It would also be the last time China broke down into a multiplicity of small states.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
While this period is known in Chinese historiography as the Five dynasties period, there were actually up to 20 different states that existed in total during this period, not all at the same time. The five dynasties that gave the name to the period are those which were considered (by later historians) to have passed along the legitimate transmission of authority (''Zhengtong''), tracing a line from the Tang through these five consecutive dynasties and into the Song. The longest of those five dynasties lived for a total of 13 years while some of them survived only for a year or two.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
This period was one of great instability and constant warfare. Military power, much like earlier periods, was the main component for assuming authority: anyone with enough troops and resources could establish their regime.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
== Song dynasty founding ==<br />
In 960, the Five dynasties period officially came to an end. A pair of brothers, Zhao Guangyin and Zhao Guanyi, seized power in the last of the five dynasties state. They overthrew the young king and proclaimed their own dynasty, the Song -- named after their place of origin.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
The Song, which was established in 960, proved to be the state that reunified China after this period and would last down to the year 1279.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
The two brothers succeeded one after the other on the throne for a total of 35 years, but their two reigns are sometimes counted as just one. They were military commanders who had come to the throne by military means, and thus faced a very urgent problem: anybody else with means and resources could challenge their rule and seize power from them in turn.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
To avoid this fate, they carried out military campaigns to reunify China. By the end of the decade, they had militarily re-established an empire -- though smaller than the Tang empire even at its largest, not venturing as far into the frontiers.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
=== New administrative order ===<br />
To secure these new land acquisitions, the Zhao brothers established a civilian bureaucratic government which had been the norm since the Han dynasty; the mechanism to fill this government was to turn to the aristocracy and wealthy families who could afford to educate and spare their sons for government service.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
Following the civil war and dissolution of the Tang however, almost all of these aristocratic families had simply vanished and died off. Their land titles had been seized and burned during rebellions, and the family members would be executed by peasant rebels when they marched on the estates. Noble families would also serve as generals at war, of which there was plenty during the late Tang, and died there. When administrative centers were fought over and captured, the conqueror would often burn documents.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
Essentially, the Zhao brothers did not have this aristocratic and educated base from which they could recruit. To solve this problem, they looked towards the past and found the imperial examinations that had been started in the early Han dynasty, albeit as a minor mechanism for recruitment. While this system did not become the sole means of recruitment, it was expanded and became a central institution of the Song dynasty. The other two main means of recruitment were by recommandation from someone in the administration, and through the ''Yin'' (shadow) privilege. Officials could extend the shadow privilege to their sons who did not have to go through any other qualifying procedures.<ref name=":020" /> <br />
<br />
Still, the examinations remained the main avenue for recruitment; looking at the highest-ranked members of the Song administration (who made policies) reveals that the great majority of them were people who came in by the imperial examinations.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
==== Undertaking of the imperial examinations ====<br />
While legally speaking, almost anyone could take the imperial examination, some groups were excluded by default, the biggest of which being women. Merchants, who were the second most significant group in terms of numbers, were also banned from taking the examination through generations (their sons and other descendants were automatically ineligible). This had to do with the Confucian system which considered merchants to have very low social utility as they didn't produce anything themselves.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
While this left around 50% of the population technically eligible for the exams, one needed to be educated in order to even show up at the exam, which were out of reach for many families who could not spare the labour-power and finances required to educate their son.<ref name=":020" /><ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
The examination process itself took inspiration from the Confucian revival seen under Han Yu. The exams tested the candidate's mastery of a body of Confucian writing, historical texts and classical literature. The candidate needed to be able to cite texts from memory and apply them to questions of government or administration. They also needed to be able to compose poetry, writing in an elegant literary style.<br />
<br />
==== Cultural changes of the imperial examination system ====<br />
This central place the imperial examinations took in the material base of the country influenced its superstructure heavily, and it became an institution of Chinese culture that survived for the next thousand years: preparing for the exams, taking the exams, being part of this system is what gave a sense of self and community to the elite. Whereas the old aristocratic families received their identity from being great families listed in the registry, the new elite families from the Song dynasty onwards however, people attained this prestige and status by participating in the imperial examination system, making them the educated ''shi'' of older times. This is also around the time the term ''shi'' came to mean not solely an advisor, but an educated person or a scholar as well.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
Members of this strata knew each other from their participation in a shared literate culture, extending to people even who did not pass the exams; these were very tough to pass, held at two levels: local and national (and later provincial level). The pass rate at each level was only about 10%, with a fewer proportion of people attending exams at each higher level. On average, 100 people passed the exam every year. Those who failed their exam were still educated however, and came to constitute the scholar class.<ref name=":020" /><br />
<br />
==Intellectual ferment in the Song dynasty==<br />
<br />
=== Place of the shi in society ===<br />
The importance of the imperial examination system as an institution of imperial China from the Song dynasty forward led to a major cultural crisis in the Chinese educated elite, who went through a process of self-realized and realized what exactly their role was and what they should do with the power they possessed, being not only educated and literate but also in the government administration.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
The ''shi'' in the Song dynasty came to the conclusion that by having passed the imperial examinations (or even having attended them) and being educated individuals, they had access and were part of a system of governance and social leadership which they took as a very deep responsibility. Their official positions also afforded them some privileges; for example, they were exempt from labour duties in which a subject had to render to his liege at some time during the year. They were also exempt from corporal punishment.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
Even those who only attended the examinations but didn't pass could find a role in public and social life, serving as teachers for example, and Dr. Hammond notes that many private academies flourished during this period.<ref name=":013">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 15: Intellectual Ferment in the 11th Century|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref> They could also become tutors or clerks and secretaries in government. Still, this social class remained a very small portion of Chinese society, amounting to 5-6% of the total population at most.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
=== Three basic positions ===<br />
From the writings and other documents that survived the Song dynasty, historians are able to define three distincts positions, though Dr. Hammond notes they are not formal enough to be considered schools of thought.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
==== Wen ren and Jing shi ====<br />
Two similar groups of scholars came to emerge during this period: <br />
<br />
The first group were the ''Wen ren. Wen'' translates in this context as "literary culture"; it has to do with things that are written or produced with writing tools (such as painting or calligraphy). Language, poetry, prose writing, the classics, etc. fall under the general rubric of ''Wen''. ''Ren'' means person or people, so ''Wen Ren'' in English translates as "literary gentleman".<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
The second group was also very concerned with literary culture but approached it in a somewhat different way. They were called the ''Jing shi'', meaning "ordering the world" or "statecraft"; they were focused on the application of the literary body towards the management of state affairs and government.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
Both shared a faith in the literary textual tradition as a repository of knowledge and values, which were very important to these Confucian scholars.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
===== Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi =====<br />
Important individuals in the ''Wen ren'' group were ''Ouyang Xiu'' and ''Su Shi''. While Ouyang was a generation older than Su, they both knew each other and were good acquaintances. They came to know each other when Ouyang was the chief examiner in the year 1059, the same year Su passed his examination at the top of his promotion. Ouyang used his role as an examiner to promote his particular views, drawing upon Han Yu from the Tang dynasty; he was a practitioner of the ''Gu Wen'' principles, and gave preference to prospective examinees who wrote in the ''Gu Wen'' tradition of a clear, concise, to-the-point style. Su Shi was one of those and ranked in large part because of the style of his writing. From there, they looked at the literary heritage as a source of inspiration, knowledge and information, but also as a reservoir of good examples to follow in terms of values and qualities to live by.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
There were still differences between the two acquaintances; Ouyang Xiu was an antiquarian, very interested in the past, collecting antiquities. He saw the literary past as a repository to inspire him. Su Shi, while having the same kind of immersion and familiarity with the past, aimed to achieve such a complete assimilation of that material that he could then spontaneously good writing. But in order to achieve that spontaneity, it was necessary for him to immerse oneself into the models of the past so as to absorb the values and manifest these good qualities.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
===== Sima Guang and Wang Anshi =====<br />
The Jing Shi thinkers shared concerns for the records of the past with the ''Wen ren'', but had a more practical bent to this body of texts. They were concerned with how one could draw from the literature of the past, its examples and values, to solve the problems of society in their day.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
Sima Guang and Wang Anshi knew each other (as well as Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi); hey all lived in the same cities, went to the same social events, knew each other at court and were part of a shared cultural milieu.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
In the late 1060s, Wang Anshi rose to the top of the imperial administration, being named chief minister of the imperial government. He was then given the authority by the emperor to launch a major reform program which he undertook based upon his personal interpretation of the history of the past. These were called the new policies, setting out to foster a more proactive state that will intervene in society to benefit the people. These policies involved, for example, the creation of state-sponsored schools to make education more widespread and a system of regulated agricultural loans so farmers would not be dependent on loans from aristocratic (landlord) families.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
Sima Guang is considered to be the other greatest statecraft thinker of this period, but he was rabidly hostile to the ideas of Wang Anshi, showing that while they drew from the literary body of Chinese history to inform their views, they did not come to the same conclusions at all. When Wang Anshi was named as chief minister, Sima Guang resigned government and retired from the capital at Kaifeng, moving west to the ancient capital of Luoyang. In the 1070s, after Wang Anshi was dismissed from his positions, Sima Guang was brought back and set out to dismantle the policies of Wang Anshi.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
His opposition to Wang Anshi's ideas was based upon a different interpretation of the values to be derived from the literary record of China: while Wang Anshi called for intervention to bring about a Confucian order, Sima Guang argued that the state should keep its hands out of society, and that the emperor should rely upon those within society with a "natural role" as leaders to address the problems their communities face. One way to interpret Sima Guang's views is to see him as defending the leading role and autonomy of the ''shi''; the ''shi'' being extracted from the wealthy land-owning class, i.e. those with privilege.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
==== Cosmological thought ====<br />
At the same time, a third position grew in the ''shi''; a group concerned with linking human affairs to larger cosmic orders and natural systems. In the Northern Song, some thinkers began to place emphasis on a concept very different from ''Wen'', which they called ''Li''. While ''Wen'' refers to things literary or the "pattern" formed by words on a page, which by definition are man-made. ''Li'' on the other hand refers to patterns that occur in nature, the word coming from the striped patterns that appear on some types of rocks. The word ''Li'' itself means pattern or principle.<ref name=":013" /> <br />
<br />
This distinction was fundamental to the cosmological thinkers, who were concerned with trying to understand the naturally-occurring patterns of the world around them. They saw moral values as coming not out of ''Wen'' but being derived directly from natural patterns, because they were embued with normative values. That is to say, patterns that can be observed in nature do not inform simply the way things ''are'', but the way things ''should be'' -- giving them a moral value. In some ways, this calls back to the Confucian ideal of the ''Dao'' ("way"), being the proper order of things which is inherently desirable.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
In the ''Li'' cosmology, acting in accordance to those patterns makes one's actions morally good, while acting against the patterns or principles make one's actions bad. Initially, the cosmological thinkers didn't reject ''Wen'' but argued that it was a mediated experience; relying on the writings of the past was to rely on a humanly constructed understanding of the world. While there were insights to be gained there, they argued, it was not the same as directly apprehending the patterns and principles of the universe.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
=== Legacy ===<br />
While in the Song dynasty these factions and their ideas were only germinal, the period that ensued from this cultural crisis is almost the richest period in Chinese intellectual history and the development of traditional Chinese thought since the Warring states period.<ref name=":013" /> It is seen as a critical point in Chinese history as later Chinese thinkers would work from the foundations that were laid in the Song dynasty in regards to their theoretical writings or arguments.<ref name=":013" /><br />
<br />
==Conquest states in the North==<br />
The Song dynasty's borders, while larger in some areas than their predecessors the Tang, did not extend to the borders of modern day China (the People's Republic). Outside of these borders were, at different times, large empires existing which were sometimes in conflict with China.<ref name=":015">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 17: Conquest States in the North|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
Two of these states came to cause trouble for China, both coming from the North (Northeast and Northwest respectively).<ref name=":015" /><br />
<br />
=== Northeast state of Liao ===<br />
The Northeast of China, which we call Manchuria in modern times, is geographically very different from the Chinese heartland (North and South China): by contrast to the more marginal areas of the empire (such as the tall Tibetan plateau or the arid Xinjiang desert), the north-east was very lush and well-watered, making fishing, hunting and harvesting natural products fairly easy to live in for semi-nomadic populations, inhabited by the Khitan and Jurchen people since ancient times.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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When the Tang dynasty disappeared in 907 and China fragmented in the period of the five dynasties, a leader of the Khitan people (named Abao Ji in Chinese historiography) seized power in the north-east and proclaimed a state which he called a dynasty, emulated after the Chinese model. The Khitan would have been very familiar with China and the Tang who exercised influence over many of the Khitan people, such that their disappearance had a very direct impact on the Khitan. In this context, Abao Ji replaced the authority that China had relinquished.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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Over the next 20 years, Abao Ji conducted military campaigns to extend and consolidate his power. He broke from traditional Khitan modes of leadership -- as a semi-nomadic people, the Khitan had not had a highly organised and centralized political system prior to Abao Ji; traditionally, the elders and more prominent warriors within particular families would emerge as tribal leaders and individuals would be selected as leaders during times of war or hunts. Instead, Abao Ji effectively set himself up as an emperor.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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The adoption of a dynastic title, and calling his regime the Liao dynasty, was a reflection of this change; but it did not come without strife from the Khitan people. The military campaigns he waged served the purposes not only of consolidating territory, but also of seizing loot which Abao Ji would redistribute to the tribal families so as to gain their loyalty.<ref name=":015" /><br />
[[File:Sixteen Prefectures map.png|thumb|Map showing the location of the 16 prefectures]]<br />
Critical in this process was the ability of the Khitan to seize a strip of farmland at the very northern edge of China which came to be known as the 16 prefectures that had been part of the Tang. This area was very different from the rest of Liao territory: instead of sparsely-populated forests and mountains, this territory was not only a fertile farmland, but also very densely populated by Chinese people. By controlling this thin area, the Khitan brought a considerable amount of wealth to the Liao state.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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==== War against the Song ====<br />
When the Song dynasty arose after 960, they aimed to regain this lost territory controlled by a non-Chinese ruler. In the year 1004 and again in the year 1044, major military campaigns were launched against the Khitan to try and seize the 16 prefectures. Both of these campaigns were however unsuccessful. This resulted in humiliating moments for the Song dynasty, and the Song were forced to sign treaties with the Liao; this was quite a change for the Chinese empire who, as a major power in the region, had previously never signed agreements with another power. What they ended up agreeing to was to pay annual tribute to the emperors of the Liao dynasty, in gold and precious cloth (such as silk). These subsidies were doubled after the second unsuccessful campaign of 1044.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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After the second failure, the Song decided that military reconquest was not a cost-effective method of regaining this territory and stopped launching more campaigns. For the Khitan, these tributes are a very significant source of income. For the Chinese, while not being a large economic drain, the tributes were a very humiliating situation however.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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As time went by, the Liao dynasty evolved in various ways. The Chinese population inside the Liao state made up 70% of the total population, and as such the Khitan developed a system of dual administration: in the 16 prefectures, which was populated by their Chinese population, they used the Chinese bureaucratic system that was already in place before the Khitan arrived. This was very effective for the purposes the Liao desired, which was to extract wealth from these lands and keeping the people living there away from rebellion. In the rest of the Liao state, they retained traditional Khitan ways -- at least most of the time; a process took place over long periods of time by which the Liao court became more like the Chinese bureaucracy they had sought to emulate as the Khitan rulers get used to living a Chinese imperial lifestyle.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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This eventually alienated Liao emperors from traditional Khitan customs, resulting in tensions within the Khitan people. The Khitan emperors would also reward their followers by often granting them bits of land from the 16 prefectures. As they granted these lands however, they often became tax-exempt and took away a major source of revenue for the Liao state. The tributes coming in from China were helpful, but not sufficient to offset this loss.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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Eventually, late in the 11th century, the Liao state had trouble paying its military forces. Unrest was beginning to spread among the Chinese population, and insurrections began to take place against Khitan rule. In parallel, the Chinese had devised a strategy to retake the 16 prefectures: they found another non-Chinese people, the Jurchen, who could open a front with the Khitan that would divert them from defending the 16 prefectures.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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==== Jurchen meddling ====<br />
The Jurchen lived further north than the Khitan and some had been incorporated in the Liao state. China used this situation to incite the "free" Jurchen, living outside of Liao territory, to invade the Liao state by sending gifts and advisors. In particular, they encouraged a Jurchen ruler named Aguda to defy the Liao emperor. In the 1120s, the Jurchen launched military campaigns against the Khitan. By this time, the internal problems of the Khitan had developed to the point that they could hardly mount a defense against the Jurchen. To further weaken the Liao state, China also cut their tributes.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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In several years, the Jurchen managed to invade and destroy the Liao dynasty. However, while China had expected to have a docile neighbour who had taken care of their problem for them, they actually had a rude awakening: after the Jurchen had been trained, organised and successfully destroyed the Liao state, they continued their campaigns down into China and in the latter part of the 1120s, they had seized much of Northern China -- notably capturing the northern Song capital at Kaifeng along with the emperor himself and his mother. They were carried off to the north in captivity and were never ransomed, instead living the rest of their life there while another emperor was put on the throne.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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After the capture of Kaifeng, the Chinese court fled south, which instigated a period of several years where the Jurchen armies were effectively chasing the Chinese court from one place to another.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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Finally, the Song forces were able to regroup and mobilize forces and push back against the Jurchen, ultimately being unable to drive them all out of China. By the early 1130s, a clear line of demarcation between Chinese and Jurchen-controlled territories had emerged, located about midway between the Yellow river and the Yangtze river.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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This marked the beginning of the Southern Song for China, the second half of the Song dynasty. Their new capital was established at the city of Hangzhou, located on the southern coast of China.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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=== Jin dynasty ===<br />
Meanwhile, the Jurchen had set up their own dynasty, which they called the Jin (meaning gold in Chinese, taken in reference to the most prominent "golden clan" in Jurchen culture). They too developed a dual system like the Liao dynasty, with their Chinese population representing over 90% of the total population in Jurchen territory.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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The Jin dynasty accommodated to Chinese culture much faster than the Turkic invaders of the North and South period did; within a generation or two, the Jin had effectively become a Chinese state as many of the Jurchen people in the north moved into Chinese land and adopted Chinese lifestyle, settling down and acquiring land. The Jurchen dimension of the Jin state diminished greatly, though it did not disappear entirely.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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The Jin state retained a lot of the features that had been in place during the Northern Song in terms of art, poetry, intellectual debates (such as the Wen and Li factions), etc. In this way, the Jin state is considered to be essentially a continuation of the Northern Song. The economic system of the Jin also remained the same as it was before, due to the North China plain being traditionally the breadbasket of China and retaining their agricultural economy.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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== Southern Song dynasty ==<br />
The reunification of China remained very important in the Southern Song, though no serious efforts were made after a Chinese general was betrayed during the war and lost the empire's last chance to challenge the Jurchen.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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The capital at Hangzhou was considered a temporary capital, with the permanent and "real" one being at Kaifeng, showing how much the Chinese intended to reconquer the North. However, the Song dynasty ended up never achieving that goal as a little over a hundred years later, the Mongols conquered China and established their own empire there.<ref name=":015" /><br />
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=== Geographic nature and demographics ===<br />
By the geographical nature of the terrain the Southern Song had come to possess (located in Southern China), their economic base had radically altered from the time they had possessed a whole, unified China. As seen previously, the north of China consisted of mostly agricultural (and indeed high-yielding) plains, forming the breadbasket of China in history. By contrast, the southern parts were hilly, with centres of population being separated by difficult to parse hills, river valleys and low mountains.<ref name=":016">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 18: Economy and Society in Southern Song|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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The population of the Southern Song amounted to 60% of the total population of Chinese people. Beginning in the Tang, there had been a shift in the region populations gravitated towards. Back in the Han and earlier times, the great majority of Chinese people lived in the North or to the West. As China expanded geographically, people migrated to the South which resulted in a greater dispersal of people. By the end of the Tang dynasty, the majority of Chinese had come to live in the South. This trend reversed by the end of the Southern Song and today, there is about a 50/50 distribution between North and South China.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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=== Cultural identity ===<br />
Because of the "remoteness" imposed by the geographical nature of the hilly terrain in south China, localities seemed to develop a greater sense of identity from each other, a conscious thought that their settlement existed and was different from another settlement.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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Because of this particularity, this transformation of the Song from controlling all of China to just the southern half had some effects on the ''shi'' class of educated political officials. In the Southern Song, they changed the ways they arranged marriages in a very clear (historically) marker. In the Northern Song, the political capital at Kaifeng had been a great cultural center; officials from all around the country travelled there every three years for assignment to new duties. Through these travels to the capital, families would meet each other and negotiate marriages. Kaifeng had become a major center for such arrangements, and it wasn't rare for people from opposite ends of the country to meet and arrange marriages between their families.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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In the Southern Song, the wide horizon of arranged marriages scaled back dramatically. Marriages were not negotiated empire-wide as they had been before, but most families at this level tended to keep marriages within a narrow local circle; perhaps a handful of townships at most. However, the tradition of travelling to the capital for re-assignment was kept from the Northern Song and these officials still took care of empire-wide tasks. This change in behaviour indicated a change in their thinking and cultural identity which was informed by the new material conditions they had found themselves in: the educated elite families in the Southern Song thought of themselves principally as members of local societies who served on a national level, rather than members of a national elite that served on a local basis.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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These families also became much more involved in local affairs. They undertook public works such as repairing roads, digging canals, organising local militias to control bandits, even starting schools and academies. While nowadays we expect these tasks to be carried out by the government, this development marked the first time the Chinese government effectively started taking care of these issues. However, the management of these public works projects can only be called semi-governmental as they were carried out by local families ''besides'' of their imperial duties, not as part of them.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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=== Economy in the Southern Song ===<br />
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==== Local specialization ====<br />
All of these factors led to differences in the economic base of the Southern Song. Notably, there came to be a trend towards local economic specialization -- the production of certain commodities became the specialty of certain locations. For example, tea had been grown more or less everywhere alongside grain and other crops. Under the Southern Song, tea came to be mostly grown in Zhiejang and Hunan provinces who abandoned other crops (including grain, which was a staple of subsistence farming) to focus on tea. Grain thus required to be imported, and long-distance systems developed to supply the regions with food.<ref name=":016" /><br />
[[File:Bowl, China, Jingdezhen kilns, Jiangxi province, Southern Song dynasty, 13th century AD, qingbai-glazed stoneware - Ethnological Museum, Berlin - DSC01992.jpg|thumb|Ceramic bowl from Jingdezhen made in the 13th century.]]<br />
The city of Jingdezhen became a great center of ceramics. Ceramics had been produced in China for millennia and many centers had developed. Jingdezhen however industrialized production; the imperial kilns were located there, and production was organized on a basis similar to assembly lines. Thousands of workers were employed, with teams running the kilns 24 hours a day. Distribution was also handled industrially: warehouses were built for storage, and then shipped not only all over China, but also made their way regularly as far as the Persian Gulf. From there, they could be shipped all over the world; Jingdezhen wares have been found as far as the Western coast of Africa and Mediterranean countries, making them a truly global commodity -- all regulated by the imperial state.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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==== Monetary policies ====<br />
The imperial state, while continuing to be a Confucian government, put in place a number of policies which actively encouraged the growth of the commercial economy (trading) -- particularly though monetary policies.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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The state encouraged and carried out a great expansion in the money supply which, at the time, was backed by precious metals. These policies had an international dimension as well; Song coins were allowed to leave the country and spread throughout East Asia, becoming the common currency in Japan and Korea at this time.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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==== Paper money ====<br />
The Southern Song also experimented with paper money, which was a fairly radical development. The Chinese recognized the use of money as a universal means of circulation or universal commodity, recognizing that it did not have to be a precious metal so long as it was accepted as having value by the people who used it. While not much paper money left the borders, it did circulate quite widely within China. The experiment didn't work out as well as intended however, and paper money fell out of use after the Song dynasty.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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==== Growth of the merchants and artisans ====<br />
These factors fostered the growth of a new class, merchans and artisans which derived their wealth not from agriculture or landlording, but from the production of goods and subsequent distribution and sale.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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This started to apply some stress to Chinese society. In classic Confucian thought, merchants were at the bottom of the social strata, considered to be morally tainted (although they were recognized to have some social utility). Up until the Southern Song, the limited presence of merchants did not create a big problem for the state due to how they were perceived. However, as commercial activity expanded wideld, so did not only the numbers of merchants but the wealth they concentrated in their hands as well. Towns grew, where large numbers of merchant families made their home. They built elaborate mansions, wore fine clothes (often the same kind the educated elite would be wearing), had themselves carried around in chairs by servants, and eventually started emulating the culture of the elite: they bought books and paintings, they established libraries, funded public works projects, sponsored monasteries, etc.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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This created tensions between the emerging commercial class and the established feudal elite who made their money on agricultural production; a situation highly reminiscent of the rise of the [[bourgeoisie]] in Europe and their later struggles against the established [[Feudalism|feudal]] order (even happening around the same time in history).<ref name=":016" /><br />
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In China, this development took a different trajectory; the contradiction between the two classes was able to be diffused to some extent. This can be explained by the convergence of interests that happened early in the Song dynasty: wealthy landowing families started to take some of the wealth they were earning from their agricultural revenue and invested it in commercial enterprises, making there commercial partners. At the same time, merchants who were becoming wealthy wanted to reinvent themselves as these educated, elite families and bought land to set up their estates. After a generation or two, they would train their sons to take the imperial examinations to cement their ''shi'' status.<ref name=":016" /><br />
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== Neo-Confucianism in the Song dynasty ==<br />
As the material base in the (Southern) Song changed, so did the character of its ideas. It is during the Song dynasty that Neo-Confucianism (''dào xué,'' 道学, "the learning of the Way") emerged, theorized by Zhu Xi (1130-1200). He took after the cosmological thinkers of the past, notably those from the earlier Song dynasty, bringing all of their theories and methodologies in a coherent body of philosophy.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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It should be noted that neo-Confucianism is a misnomer of sorts. While this is how ''dào xué i''s customarily called in the West and in English, it is not the name used in China. The distinction is significant because in traditional Chinese culture, one does not want to invent something "new" or "neo", but rather one wants to return to the correct interpretation of the past. ''Dào xué,'' while being "new" in the sense that it was developed as a coherent body of philosophy in the Southern Song dynasty millenia after Confucius, was not emphasized by Zhu Xi as being new, but as returning to the correct interpretation of the classics.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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The core of Zhu Xi's argument is that there had been a shift in the source of moral values, from the primacy of the literay cultural tradition (the ''Wen'') to a primacy of the direct understanding or apprehension of the natural patterns and principles of the universe (the ''Li''). He believed that by observing natural patterns and deriving principles from them, one could ground morality in a very firm basis -- not being solely a matter of convention or what people had decided amongst themselves, but a natural order more powerful than humans.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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Further, he argued that this was exactly what the sage emperors of Antiquity did -- emperors like Yao and Shun, who had harmonized themselves with the patterns and principles they'd seen around them, and thus why they were sages.<ref name=":017">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 19: Zhu Xi and Neo-Confucianism|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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Therefore, to Zhu Xi, the ''Wen'' was useful as a record of how people had understood those insights of the ancients; ''Wen'' shouldn't be taken as a source of values in and of itself, but as a way of approaching an understanding of the ancient sages believed and carried out. Deriving a sense of values would happen, for Zhu Xi, through both studying the ancient texts from this point of view and from studying phenomena in the world.<ref name=":017" /> <br />
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The critical figure in this process was the "gentleman" (''Junza'') that Confucius upheld as a model of good values for everyone to follow. In practice, this meant the ''shi'', the educated elite. The ''junza'' would essentially be the invidual who puts the quest for moral values into practice; he sought to develop and cultivate his own moral qualities, while being engaged in the process of making the world a better place. In that process, he would have to undertake studies, but also what Zhu Xi called the "investigation of things" (''gé wù'', 格物). These practices would prepare the ''junza'' to be a good person, lead a good family life, and thus be able to carry on the affairs of the state.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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Zhu Xi did not reject the textual tradition, but he did take a very critical approach to it, unlike the Northern Song elite. He did not care much to immerse himself in the textual tradition and absorb values from it, but he did say there were elements of value in this tradition. He was uncomfortable with the "commentarial" tradition; the body of texts which sought to interpret the teachings and writings of the Ancient over the past millenia and a half. Zhu Xi thought that these later texts obscured the meanings of what the original authors had actually said (or actually intended to say). He thus advocated a return to the classics, engaging directly with them.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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One of Zhu Xi's legacies was the selection of four texts he considered to be fundamental to his philosophy, making them the centerpieces of his educational program. The Confucian classics in Chinese history varied throughout the eras, with there at times being 5, 8, or even 13. Two of Zhu Xi's four texts were the ''Analects of Confucius'' (written by his students after his death) and the ''book of Mencius'' (Confucius' most famous follower, written a century and a half later). These two texts had always been in the classical canon, and were full-length books. The other two texts he considered fundamental were chapters taken from a longer work called the ''Liji'', which is a record of ritual activities of the early Zhou dynasty. These two chapters of the ''Liji'' are called ''the doctrine of the Mean'' and ''the Great Learning''.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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=== The Great Learning ===<br />
This chapter of the ''Liji'' perhaps encapsulates Zhu Xi's philosophy best. The ''Great Learning'' is not a long text, but it follows a very careful course of development, starting by referring back to the ancients (who wished to bring order to the world). There is a short preface before that to explain what the ''great learning'' (the Dao) is: manifesting one's virtue in the world, or in practical terms, "knowing when to stop" (as quoted from the book).<ref name=":017" /><br />
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The ancients who wished to bring order to the world, according to the Great Learning, firstly had to govern well. To achieve that, they followed a logical sequence, which can be explained in this manner: they first had to get their family to be well-ordered, properly organized and run. But to achieve that, they first had to rectify and cultivate themselves. To achieve that, they tried to get their consciousness clear, which they realized required them to extend their knowledge. Finally, to extend their knowledge, they started by engaging in the ''investigation of things'' (''gé wù'').<ref name=":017" /><br />
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==== Process of the Dào Xué ====<br />
When things are investigated ''correctly'', then knowledge is expanded. That sequence is essentially the entire basis of the ''dào xué'', but it should not be seen as a step-by-step program; Zhu Xi's teachings were especially well-preserved by his students who took extensive notes of his lectures. In these records, he made it quite clear that all these activities actually need to be undertaken at the same time, they cannot be separated and must be pursued at all times, even when one is alone (which Zhu Xi got from Confucius). This was especially important to Zhu Xi as the Daoxue was not simply a matter of public affairs or appearances, but something one had to pursue for themselves.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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The path the this learning takes is a process of moral development that, for Zhu Xi, would essentially make one into a "gentleman", or ''Junza''. For Confucius, there was nothing that inherently restricted this practice to one particular group within society. Indeed, the Great Learning ends with the following phrase: "for everyone, from the son of heaven down to an ordinary farmer, this should be the way"; the implication being that self-cultivation is a responsibility that all individuals in society have, although Zhu Xi did not emphasize this aspect in his writings.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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=== Qi ===<br />
The social and economic context Zhu Xi lived in, of the Southern Song dynasty, likely influenced his writing, which can be seen to some extent in his writing. The idea of an individual moral responsibility corresponds, for example, to the emergence of a more market-oriented economic system, in which individuals participate in exchange and in which a "marketplace of ideas" might be inferred. In that place of ideas, the individual would advocate his own moral understanding and insights: Zhu Xi's system is not one that imposes a dogma or truth from the top-down, but one that challenges individuals to cultivate themselves morally and bring out their own moral understanding.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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In a sense, everything shares in ''Li'' (the seeking out of natural patterns from which one can derive universal principles) . Zhu Xi asks, for example, the question of why some people are morally better than others: "if everyone shares in Li, why aren't people inherently good?"<ref name=":017" /><br />
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Zhu Xi explained this through the concept of ''Qi'', which, he argued, could not be separated from ''Li''. Qi is often referred to as an "energy" system within the body, but for the cosmological thinkers, ''Qi'' is the fabric of material reality. If ''Qi'' were the base, then ''Li'' would be the superstructure.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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The process of self-cultivation is one that clarifies one's ''Qi''; the clearer one's ''Qi'' is, the more directly will natural principles (''Li'') be manifested. To the degree that one's ''Qi'' is "cloudy", ''Li'' will be obscured to them.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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The cultivation of the individual is therefore a process to more directly manifest ''Li'', which is done through being in harmony with the ''Dao''.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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=== Legacy ===<br />
''Dào xué'' itself never became a dominant or even mainstream philosophy during Zhu Xi's lifetime, but it became so very rapidly ''after'' his death; by the 1240s, Daoxue was given official recognition by the imperial state and even after the Mongol conquest, Zhu Xi's interpretation of Confucianism came to be the official line followed by the empire, even being given central place in the imperial examination system.<ref name=":017" /><br />
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==The rise of the Mongols==<br />
While China was continuing on, divided between the Jin and Song dynasties, a new power was beginning to arise out in the Asian steppes, the Mongol empire led by [[Genghis Khan]] (also known as Temujin).<ref name=":018">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 20: The Rise of the Mongols|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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=== Temujin ===<br />
The Mongols lived nomadically and semi-nomadically, moving from summer to winter pastures throughout the year in the great grasslands (also called steppes) of inner Asia, areas in which they had lived for centuries by that point. They subsisted by raising sheep, goats and horses.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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The political landscape of the Mongol people can be described as low-intensity. Leadership was organised on the basis of a family (or tribal) affiliation but seldom came together as a coherent force.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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Temujin was born in the 1160s, the son of a minor tribal chieftain. His father was murdered early in his life. After this, Temujin and his family were forced to flee to remote hills. As Temujin grew up, he conceived a desire to avenge his father and an ambition to unite the Mongol people. In the 1180s, he began to pursue his ambitions: he led his family back to society and ruthlessly murdered his older brothers so that he would be the senior male member of his tribe. At 16, he claimed a bride by the name of Börte who had been promised to him in an agreement between his father and her father when Temujin was just an infant. Although his father had been murdered and the promise of marriage could have been cancelled, the bride's family agreed to honor the contract. Moreover, the bride's father gave Temujin a sable cloak, which was a very valuable item which became a symbol of his power in later years.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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Through his family connections and charisma, Temujin was afterwards able to form alliances and build up a following. He received a reputation as a strong and dynamic fighter and leader. In one instance, his wife had been kidnapped in a raid committed by other Mongols, as happened from time to time. In response, Temujin launched a raid and succesfully brought back his wife, impressing his peers greatly.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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In 1190, Temujin was named ''khan'', which is a title reserved for a tribal leader. Over the next 10 years, he and other Mongol leaders would at times collaborate and at times fight against each other, but by 1200 he had built a foundation from which to unite all the Mongol tribes. This was not accepted easily by other leaders who did not want to see one individual dominate all other tribes. When this happened in the past and someone would become too strong, the other tribes would ally together to cut them down to size.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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Confrontations came to a head in 1204 when Temujin was defeated in battle. Withdrawing from the battle with only a few thousand of his soldiers, he waited for the enemy to celebrate his defeat -- knowing that they would get drunk and be unable to mount a defense. Temujin rode back with his army three days later and assaulted the camp. His assault was successful, and he was able to get rid of essentially all of his competition.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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In 1206, he convened a ''kurultai'', an assembly during which all tribes came together to discuss politics. There he was elected to be Genghis Khan, or "oceanic leader", the king of kings.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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=== Great raids ===<br />
Leadership of the Mongols was based on the ability to distribute goods seized during raids. Having unified the Mongols, raids between tribes were forbidden, but a new source of revenue had to be found to replace it, and so the Mongols started preparing large raids on their immediate neighbours.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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They eventually started raiding a very enticing target: the Jin dynasty, which controlled the agricultural wealth of the North China plain.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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Two keys to the success of the Mongols' conquests were their cavalry and their ruthlessness. They had bred over centuries horses capable of marching for days on end, which made the Mongol army highly mobile (to the point, Dr. Ken Hammond notes, that they could essentially show up at a city overnight). Secondly, when the Mongols sieged a settlement, they would offer two choices: either surrender and only a portion of the city would be killed, with most of the men being incorporated into the Mongol army, or refuse to surrender and everyone would be killed. It is exemplified historically that the Mongols were very strict at enforcing this ultimatum, almost never deviating from it.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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They also developed a very highly refined system of military organization. Army groups were organized on the decimal system, and as the army expanded they simply created new units with some Mongol officers at their head. In this way they were able to continually expand their army.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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The Mongols conquered vast amounts of land under Temujin, going as far down to Persia and west to Russia. On the way, they started raiding into Tibet and there won the submission of the Tibetan monastic leaders, after which Tibet was incorporated into the Empire, with some Mongols even adopting Tibetan Buddhism.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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=== Death of Temujin ===<br />
In 1227, 20 years after the Mongols had started their great raids, Temujin died as he was bringing his forces back towards Mongolia. When he died, all the Mongol armies had to return home for another ''kurultai'' and elect their new leader. This process took over 2 years, and Temujin's son, Ugedei, was elected as Genghis Khan and presided over a second great age of conquest.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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It was under Ugedei's leadership that the Mongols ventured into China, destroying and incorporating the Jin state 1234 and move down into the Southern Song.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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Ugedei died in 1241, leaving a decade-long period of uncertainty after which the Mongol empire was divided among four of Temujin's grandsons.<ref name=":018" /><br />
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=== Partition of the Mongol Empire ===<br />
Batu Khan took over Russia and Ukraine, calling his territory the Khanate of the Golden Horde -- the successors of which later became the Cossacks. Hulagu controlled Persia, with his descendants being known as the Ilkhan and converting to Islam which was the religion of Persia, emerging later as the Mughals (who invaded India until 1857). In the third territory in central Asia, Chagadai took over Samarkand, naming his holdings the Khanate of Chagatai. One of his descendants was Tamerlane, a great conqueror in the 15th century who almost conquered China. Finally, in China itself, Kublai became the Khan there and lorded over not only the Southern Song dynasty but Korea as well. He also made two attempts at invading Japan which never succeeded.<ref name=":018" /><br />
<br />
This age of conquest was unprecedented; they brought together territories that had never been controlled by a single power in history. This created conditions which had never been seen before; for example, it became safe to travel all the way from the Mediterranean to the Pacific under the protection of the Mongols. There was much more interaction amongst different parts of East Asia, Eastern Europe and West Asia (the Middle East).<ref name=":018" /><br />
<br />
==The Yuan dynasty==<br />
[[File:1920px-Mongol Song Wars.jpg|thumb|Map of the Mongol conquest of the Song empire, 1234-1279,]]<br />
The great age of conquest by the Mongols was over by the middle of the 13th century. In 1260, Kublai Khan took over the territories his father Genghis had conquered, including areas of China that were previously owned by the Jin state conquered in 1234.<ref name=":019">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 21: The Yuan Dynasty|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
A great debate took place within Mongol society as to what to do with this conquered territory. One proposal was to clear the land of the North China plain, essentially razing everything down to make pasture land for their horses. Fortunately, a former Jin official was able to convince the Mongols that it would be more profitable to maintain North China as a zone of farming and taxation.<ref name=":019" /><br />
<br />
=== Conquest of China ===<br />
When Kublai became Greath Khan in 1260, devoted his power to conquer all of China. This was not an easy endaveour for the Mongols and their cavalry tactics due to the hilly, mountaineous and wet nature of the South China plain with many river valleys. They brought in soldiers from other parts of the empire who had experience in urban warfare (both siege and in cities), particularly from Persia. They also learned to fight on rivers and waterways and for the first time really began to develop a naval component to their operations.<ref name=":019" /><br />
<br />
The Mongols eventually succeeded in driving the Song emperor out of the capital at Hangzhou in the 1270s and by 1279, the last claimant to the throne was disposed of, dissolving the Song dynasty.<ref name=":019" /><br />
<br />
China was thus unified again, although under a foreign ruler. In 1272, Kublai Khan had already established a new dynasty in China: the Yuan dynasty ("long-lasting" or "far-reaching"). This marked a clear change in Mongol administrative methods, that they needed to adapt to the realities of the country they had just conquered if they wanted to control it, but it was not entirely unique to China: they also did the same in Persia for example, adopting Islam.<ref name=":019" /><br />
<br />
A capital was even established at Beijing, named ''Dadu'' (元大都, "Great capital"). The Mongols, being mostly nomadic, did not usually establish a permanent capital. Not all of the Mongols were happy with this however; some of the noblemen did not want to settlind down, and a portion of Mongols broke off from China to go back to their homeland, resuming their traditional lifestyle.<ref name=":019" /> <br />
<br />
=== Challenges of the Yuan ===<br />
<br />
=== Role of the shi ===<br />
The very first challenge the Yuan under Kublai Khan faced was the administrative question. By that time, China was home to around 100 million people versus perhaps a million Mongols spread out over their entire conquered territories. There were also particular tensions between the Mongol conquerors and the traditional ''shi'' elite, who had resisted the conquerors for over 20 years, leading to resentment from the Mongols towards the Chinese elites. Finally, there was a cultural barrier: most Mongols were illiterate, and could not read classical Chinese, which furthered their distrust of the ''shi''.<ref name=":019" /><br />
<br />
The Mongols however could not entirely get rid of the ''shi'' as they could not effectively administer China without some access to the existing mechanisms of administration. Their solution was thus to import educated and experienced people from other parts of their territories who came to be known as the ''sèmù rén'' (色目人, "people with colored eyes"), reflecting their foreign nature.<ref name=":019" /><br />
<br />
The semu ren were placed in official positions alongside the ''shi'', but couldn't speak or read Chinese themselves, still requiring intermediaries. But with this system, the semu ren came to control the high-level decisions and the ''shi'' were relegated to clerical work. The ''shi'' found themselves in an undesirable position, as they had previously thought of themselves as being policy-makers and the best-suited people to control the affairs of the kingdom. Because of this new role, they began turning some their attention and energy into other kinds of activites, especially in art and literature. In painting for example, a whole genre of perseverance and endurance symbolism (such as rocks, bamboo shoots, blooming flowers, etc.) flourished in the Yuan dynasty.<ref name=":019" /><br />
<br />
More significantly, they also began to write plays and popular dramas which were played all over the empire in public theaters, including in the capital at Dadu. These were historical dramas which drew on legends of the past and historical accounts. They often told stories that had to do with resistance to arbitrary authority and maintaining the purity of Han culture in the face of barbarian presence. Such topics were of course prohibited by the Mongols, but the censors did not catch these nuances and theater plays flourished under the Yuan.<ref name=":019" /><br />
<br />
[[Marco Polo]] was himself a ''semu ren''; born in Venice, he left in 1272 and travelled over land to the Yuan court with his father and uncle, eventually becoming a government employee in China for over 20 years before going back to his home city.<ref name=":019" /><br />
<br />
=== End of Kublai Khan's reign ===<br />
Kublai Khan passed away in 1296, and so did the great age of the Mongols. While his descendants kept their territories, they eventually diverged from each other and took their own path integrating with their local cultures, breaking up the Mongol empire over time.<ref name=":019" /> <br />
<br />
After Kublai's death, there was a succession of mostly apathetic emperors. While the Yuan dynasty lasted another 80 years, they never really enjoyed the kind of power like Kublai had had. This gave rise to some developments that eventually contributed to the downfall of the Yuan dynasty.<br />
<br />
Power increasingly fell into the hands of Chinese officials, even at the imperial court. While they were theoretically employed solely as advisors, they came to have greater influence after Kublai's death. In 1313, the Mongols decided to reinstate the imperial examination system -- a tremendous concession to the ''shi'', as it formed the focal point of their identity.<ref name=":019" /><br />
<br />
From there on, two problems developped:<br />
<br />
* Great conflicts arose among the Mongol nobility. If someone's tribe began to stand out, the other families would band together to take them down (which Temujin and Kublai had managed to overcome and extinguish). After Kublai's death and several generations passed by, this aspect of their culture began to reemerge and when one Mongol noble began to be more powerful or competent, others came together to sabotage them. This internal sabotage rendered the Mongols a more or less neutral force in Chinese affairs.<ref name=":019" /><br />
* On the other hand, although the ''shi'' found back positions of influence, they tended to fall into factions loyal to particular nobles (likely because they lacked the base to form a unified force of their own), often at odds with each other.<ref name=":019" /><br />
<br />
These two problems paralyzed the Yuan state, making it unable to respond to their natural and human challenges.<ref name=":019" /><br />
<br />
Notably, a great plague struck China late in the 1340s, likely related to the plague that swept through Europe at the same time. In any case, the mortality rate was as high as 50% of the population in some places. This led to a variety of other problems such as insufficient revenues and labour-power to maintain big projects such as the river dikes, leading to flooding and more deaths through the elements or famine. Because of the way the Yuan court was structured by that point, neither local nobles nor the imperial court were able to respond to these events.<ref name=":021">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 22: The Rise of the Ming|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
Local authorities, in fact, tended to be so scared of the disease that they instead secluded themselves in their manors, hoarding as many resources as they could and never venturing out. The only "institutional" force that played a positive role in this period were the Buddhist monasteries, who provided shelter, food and medical care to people.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
This forced local popular movements to rise up, mostly centered around peasants, to seize the resources they needed -- becoming bandits and rebels -- to repair important infrastructure and avoid famines.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
==The rise of the Ming==<br />
It's in this context plaguing the Yuan dynasty that the Ming dynasty emerged. Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋) lived as an intinerant ; while not a Buddhist monk per se, he traveled from monastery to monastery to receive shelter and food. There, he eventually started frequenting the peasant rebel groups that also relied on those services. He became involved with such a group called the Red Turbans, where his intelligence and military skills fairly quickly made him a leader in the movement.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
By the early 1360s, Zhu Yuanzhang had taken over the movement and softly repositioned it from a mystical motif (the movement saw itself as an apocalyptic upheaval thrown into the chaos of the plague) to using it to found a new dynasty, overthrowing the Yuan Mongols and placing himself at the head. He proclaimed this dynasty in 1368, calling it the ''Ming'' (明, ''Míng'', meaning "bright"). However, while the dynasty was proclaimed, he had not defeated the Mongols yet.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
Zhu Yuanzhang took his various armies which had been consolidated in the Yangtze valley to the capital at Dadu. Upon their arrival, instead of fighting, the Mongols abandoned the city and retreated to the grasslands further north, letting Zhu Yuanzhang to take control of the empire. He then returned south and established his capital at Nanjing, leaving one of his sons in command of the old capital at Dadu against a possible Mongol invasion.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
=== The principal task of the Ming ===<br />
The Ming needed to reestablish and recreate institutions for their dynasty, as the ones in place under the Yuan were brought over by the Mongols and slowly eroded over the last years of their rule. To that end, Zhu Yuanzhang adopted the model of the Confucian state and set about putting in place the proper Confucian bureaucracy, along with the right people to run it -- the ''shi.''<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
Zhu Yuangzhang reinstated the imperial examination system just two years after the founding of his dynasty. Immediately, however, he suspended the system as he did not trust the ''shi'', believing they didn't behave very well during the crises of the past decades and Zhu himself not being very educated himself, was afraid of the power they could wield.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
In 1380, the emperor reinstated the examinations again (at which point they would run uninterrupted until 1905). Still mistrustful of the ''shi'' however, emperor Zhu became convinced one of his close officials, a man by the name of Hu Weiyong (胡惟庸), was plotting against him. Hu Weiyong was executed along with anyone who ever worked with him, members of his family, members of the family of people that worked with Hu, etc. In total, thousands of people were executed.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
This began a pattern in emperor Zhu until the end of his rule, leading to the execution of tens of thousands of people. One consequence of these executions is that upon the death of an official, the Emperor would also abolish the office they managed, taking it into his own hands. With an active and dynamic ruler such as Zhu, who took a hands-on approach to governing, taking these functions was not problematic. However, later in the dynasty, this consequence created issues with Emperors who were not so involved or competent in governing.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
=== Death of Emperor Zhu Yuangzhang ===<br />
Emperor Zhu eventually died in 1398. He was succeeded by one of his grandsons, Zhu Yunwen (朱允炆) -- the eldest son of his eldest son. Customarily, the crown would be passed down to the Emperor's eldest son. However, due to his eldest son having died some time earlier, Emperor Zhu decided to pass the crown to his grandson, which made his other sons very resentful.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
Zhu Yunwen had grown up in the palace, surrounded by Confucian officials and educated in the same manner -- the same officials which his grandfather was distrustful of. On the contrary, Zhu Yunwen considered himself one of them.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
This displeased his uncle (and Zhu Yuangzhang's last alive son), Zhu Di (朱棣, ''Zhū Dì''), who not only felt resentful that he was passed up for the throne, but also felt that his nephew was not respecting the political culture the last emperor had put into the court.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
Between 1400 and 1402, Zhu Di coordinated a series of political and military actions which were designed to put pressure on his nephew. In 1402, he forced his nephew's forces to the South, attacked the capital at Nanjing, and proclaimed himself emperor, becoming the third emperor of the Ming (although for more than 150 years, his nephew's short rule of 4 years was simply erased from history, making Zhu Di the second emperor).<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
=== Emperor Zhu Di ===<br />
Upon becoming emperor, Zhu Di faced several problems. He was not considered the legitimate ruler but a usurper, and many of the Confucian officials did not recognize his seizure of power. In particular, he was defied in open court by a Confucian official when he was ordered to make an edict recognizing Zhu Di as emperor, leading to the execution of all members of this faction.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
Nonetheless, Zhu Di struck a middle ground with the ''shi'': he enjoyed a much better relationship with the Confucian officials than his father had. In fact, he cultivated a much closer relationship with his officials after they accepted his rule.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
In particular, Zhu Di became involved in building the power of the Grand Secretariat (内閣, nèigé) in the empire. Technically, the role of this institution was to process documents such as edicts to be issued, reports coming in, requests for funds, memorials, etc. All of the empire's paperwork passed through the Secretariat. Zhu Di made the Secretariat into a consultative body, reporting to him directly and advising him, making it a very important and powerful institution.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
Zhu Di also built up the city of Beijing, which he made into his capital. Several hundred carpenters and crafstmen were moved up north from Nanjing to build this capital.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
==== Maritime voyages ====<br />
Under Zhu Di's reign, great navy fleets were assembled at the beginning of 1405 and sent to sail out as far as the Persian Gulf (as well as Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean and the East coast of Africa) until around 1435.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
These voyages involved hundreds of ships, some being several times bigger than the frigates European powers used for their future maritime voyages. What made these voyages special was not the destination -- private traders had been sailing those routes for some time already -- but the fact that they were organized officially by the government and that we are not entirely sure why they were launched and then stopped. A likely explanation is that Zhu Di wanted to demonstrate the legitimacy of his rule by exploring officially and sending representatives to places that traded with China.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
The most likely explanation as to why the voyages were discontinued is that there happened a shift in the imperial court's concerns, redirecting their concerns towards the inner Asian frontier, which had been a challenge for most past dynasties, instead of the sea.<ref name=":021" /><br />
<br />
===The Ming golden age===<br />
The end of Zhu Di's reign gave way to a succession of emperors who were not considered very notable in Chinese historiography. Unsurprisingly, the Grand Secretariat emerged during this period as the principal political force in China. We can note three individuals, known as the Three Yangs, all employed in the Grand Secretariat, who were considered important:<ref name=":022">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 23: The Ming Golden Age|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
* Yang Shiqi, Grand Secretary and one of the most prominent literary authorities of his time.<br />
* Yang Rong and <br />
* Yang Pu, two Grand Secretaries who had come into office under Zhu Di.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
At the same time, eunuchs came to prominence as well under the Ming. They played a particular role within the imperial system; within the palace, the emperor represented the ''creative'' force of ''Yang'', and his consorts represented the ''receiving'' force, the Yin. Within the palace, there could be no Yang except for the emperor. Laborers were still needed within the palace however, and eunuchs (castrated men) were picked for these tasks.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
This privileged proximity to the imperial family allowed them, under the Han, to get access to the emperor and barter said privilege for benefits with other nobles. Under the Ming, Zhu Yuangzhang had excluded eunuchs from consulting government documents and could not be taught to read. Zhu Di however, when he was conspiring to seize power, used eunuchs greatly to conspire and spy on his nephew. Even after seizing the throne, he kept using eunuchs as covert agents and employing them as they were dependent on him. The ''shi'', while hired and appointed by the emperor, were not entirely dependent on him to survive -- they were landowners for the most part and enjoyed the privilege of the imperial examination system.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
Zhu Di allowed eunuchs to become involved in the handling of documents and information within the palace again, and by the end of his reign had set the stage for what would come to be known as the ''Inner Palace School,'' an academy within imperial grounds for the training of eunuchs.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
From then on, a difficult balance had to be struck between ''within'' the palace (the eunuchs) and ''outside'' the palace (the ''shi''). Given the power and wealth that eunuchs came to have under Zhu Di, sought to legitimize themselves as a force of their own, as they were before that seen as "inferiors", due to the castration (their body had been mutilated and they could not pass on their lineage, which were seen as a bad thing in the Confucian school). To overcome this stigma, many became patrons of the arts, founded monasteries or schools, etc.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
=== Growth in the 15th and 16th century ===<br />
<br />
==== Stabilization and political growth ====<br />
By the 1450s, the Ming state had stabilized into a routine state: the ''shi'' were back in their traditional role of running the imperial bureaucracy, the examination system, dominating the cultural landscape, etc. and the eunuchs keeping the palace running and functioning in the interest of the dynasty.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
This spilled over to the political level as well. Ming society was embarking on a great age of expansion and development; this was in part facilitated by actions of the government itself. From very early on, the Ming had a very well-developed system of internal communication. Information could flow back to the capital from anywhere within the empire, running an imperial postal service throughout the territory complete with postal relays, roads, stables, and lodgings for messengers. A message could be sent to the far southern border in as little as 5 weeks, which was fairly quick at the time and especially compared to previous dynasties.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
This postal service became the core to build the infrastructure of a much bigger system that would be used by merchants and other private interests: since these roads were built and patrolled by soldiers at all times, they were safe to travel on. Thus, merchants or other rich citizens who carried a lot of money or cargo started travelling on these roadways. These roads became the network for the trading system in the Ming dynasty.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
==== Economic growth and trade ====<br />
In turn, that usage contributed to further economic growth as services directed towards the commercial travellers began to spring up along the roads and official stations. Merchants were also allowed to use certain government facilities, such as the barges on the grand canal, which was used to ship grain from the South to Beijing -- Beijing at the time was such a large city that it could not entirely feed itself and needed to import its food. When the barges were not in use, merchants could rent them.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
We see also during this time, up to the 16th century and beyond, a revival of local manufacturing specialization such as what was seen in the Southern Song; certain areas within China began to develop specialized production, e.g. the textile centers in the Jiang'an region. These centers led to further economic growth: families who had been subsistence farmers for the most part instead became craftsmen, producing tea, porcelain or other goods, and earning a wage. It became necessary to import food to these areas, which travelled through the imperial road system.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
This growth was reflected in other ways such as in the development of financial institutions regarding the economy. Paper money, which had been experimented with in the Southern Song, was brought back. Proto-banking institutions began to develop, especially in Shanxi province where private paper money began to circulate.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
===== International and global trade =====<br />
While domestic growth was facilitated by government intervention, the international situation was a bit more complex. After the end of the great voyages that had been ordered under the first emperor, other states saw the Ming negatively when it came to trade. The Ming had passed policies and edicts severely limiting foreign trade in China, limiting trading in certain ports and passing the Maritime Interdict, which was an effort to control foreign coastal merchants and commerce. While these policies did not completely ban trading on the coast, it did control it very carefully. This was a problem because the impulse to trade with China was very strong, leading to the rise of piracy: as people were prevented from trading, they instead turned to raiding the Chinese coastline.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
China established the Tales Trade system with Japan, where a metal rod would be cut in half, with the Japanese trader having one half and an official in China the other. When the trader came to port, he would match his half of the tales with the official, thus proving he was legally authorized to trade and not a pirate.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
This facilitated trade with Japan which was important for China: at that time, Japan had discovered significant deposits of silver. This flow of silver in China allowed for monetization, turning this silver into coins to use as money, rather than barter or credit. That trend to monetization and the encouragement of trade that came with it became more significant as the 16th century progressed.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
The Spanish had colonized the Americas and started the mining of silver and gold. This new large supply of precious metals (particularly silver) began to flow into the global economy: in the 1570s, the Spanish acquired a trading post at Manila (Philippines) and very quickly, the Chinese started trading extensively with the Spanish there, leading to even more economic growth in China.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
This economic growth translated to a growth in population: at the beginning of the Ming dynasty in 1380, there were about 155 million people living in China. By 1500, that figure had grown to around 230 million. By the end of the Ming dynasty in the middle of the 17th century, that number had risen to 270 million. Standards of living also rose throughout China as the economic growth kept ahead of the population growth.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
==== Challenges in the Ming ====<br />
Nonetheless, even during this golden age China faced serious challenges. In particular, the Mongols returned a few times and caused serious problems on the Northern frontier: in 1449, Mongol raids along the Great Wall near Beijing had frightened the court, and the emperor, who had come to the throne at 8 years old (but was a young man by then), set out to lead an expedition against the Mongols and prove his skills. This proved to be a disaster: his party was attacked and defeated by the Mongols, with the emperor being captured and held for ransom.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
This marked the first case where the Mongols revived as a threat to the empire. A century later, in the late 1540s, Mongol forces once again began to raid across the Great Wall and even came within sight of Beijing. This raised the question of border security once again, and led to vast debates about how to deal with this threat. At the same time, piracy also remained a concern and even grew as one, becoming a major source of insecurity and polarization at the court.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
Eventually, the Ming put together a military force which suppressed piracy along the coast, leading to a relaxed policy around the coast giving access to more ports and areas to foreign merchants.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
== Gridlock and crisis in the Ming ==<br />
By the end of the 16th century, other problems began to emerge due to the security issues as well as the rapid economic growth that took place in the years prior.<ref name=":022" /><br />
<br />
Zhu Yijun's (朱翊鈞) reign, which lasted from 1572 to 1620, was marked by a number of crises that started under him and would deepen with them. His reign started off in a good situation, thanks to the emperor's Grand Secretary who served as his advisor, Zhang Juzheng (张居正). The advisor had wanted to strengthen the power of the central state, allowing the state to more effectively respond to its challenges in governing. To that end, Zhang Juzheng wanted to reform the taxation system and restrain the excesses of both local officials and private wealthy families. The impulse for these proposals was a number of changes in Chinese civil society, specifically due to the monetization and growing commercialization of the economy and the ensuing flow of silver into China.<ref name=":023">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 24: Gridlock and Crisis|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
<br />
=== Zhang Juzheng's reform ===<br />
Zhang first carried out a survey across the empire to find out who owned what land, what it could be used for, and what it should be valued at for tax purposes. The last comprehensive survey had been made in 1393, almost two hundred years earlier.<ref name=":023" /><br />
<br />
Later, he undertook a series of reforms to make the collection of taxes easier and more efficient for both tax-payers and the State, ultimately making sure that more of the collected taxes actually ended up in the state's coffers. This came to be known as the ''single whip reforms.'' The way taxes were traditionally paid in China was in kind -- that is, not in money but with items (grain, cloth, etc.). Accordingly, taxes would be collected during the moment of the year when these items were produced and made available; grain, for example, had to be collected in the fall after the harvest came in and cloth were collected in the Spring after the weaving season had been completed.<ref name=":023" /><br />
<br />
The tax reform turned the payment of taxes into cash, having taxes be paid out in silver. This made them collectable at the same time of the year for everyone, and also consolidated all tax payments (of which there were more than 100 rates) into one lump sum of money. This was a much more efficient system, which was especially effective in the big commercial centers of the empire that had developed a local economy.<ref name=":023" /><br />
<br />
The attempts to survey the land, however, did not go as well; Zhang was confronted by the wealthy land-owning families who benefitted from having the records be inaccurate, as they paid less taxes on this land. This marked an interesting contradiction with the ''shi'': while they served the interests of the empire and worked in high-ranking official positions, they were also issued from the wealthy land-owning families and in that capacity, benefitted from resisting the State.<ref name=":023" /><br />
<br />
This resistance was quite effective, so much so that by the end of the 1570s, Zhang Juzheng had made quite a few enemies in government and was occluded from his position by the next decade. At the same time, the tax reform of making payments in cash found itself in a few difficult situations. In developed areas of the empire, which relied on local specialized production and had steady cashflow, the system worked very well. In the rest of the empire however, where silver was not widely in circulation, the reform made the situation worse for peasants. They found themselves having to take their relatively meager (subsistence) crops and sell them for money, which was usually copper in these regions. Thus, peasants had to trade their grain for copper which they converted into silver somewhere else, effectively leaving them with very little silver by the end and burdening them with higher taxes than before the reform.<ref name=":023" /><br />
<br />
This burden took several years to take its toll, and was compounded by the gridlock the government found itself in by the end of the 16th century. At that time, the state ceased to function effectively not on the day-to-day level, but on the level of being able to respond to new challenges and problems appearing because of a ''moralization'' of political discourse.<ref name=":023" /><br />
<br />
=== Philosophical developments in Confucianism ===<br />
The roots of this process of moralization are found in the ideas of a man named Wang Yangming (王陽明). Living from 1472 to 1529, he was a philosopher, scholar and state official with a very successful governmental career. In some ways, he proved to be the last great Confucian philosopher in imperial times; much like his precedessor Zhu Xi brought together ideas he formulated into Neo-Confucianism, Wang Yangming took certain elements from that tradition of Confucianism and gave them different interpretations and emphasis. This gave rise to philosophical developments that he himself may not have had anticipated would cause such problems in the late Ming.<ref name=":023" /><br />
<br />
The critical idea within Wang Yangming's thought was that everyone had within them an "innate knowledge of the good". This idea was not a novel one and it had been in Confucianism since Confucius himself, but Wang Yangming emphasized it as an explicit law. His interpretation of this rule was that individuals had a responsibility for moral judgment. Prior to this, the tendency for Confucians had been to defer moral judgment to their superiors: the ''shi'' had been looked up to as providing the leadership and guidance for other people to follow. Wang Yangming's ideas, instead, suggested that individuals would find this responsibility (and thus agency) within themselves.<ref name=":023" /><br />
<br />
Not only was it enough to have a knowledge of the good, it was imperative that one also act on this knowledge. This had also been part of Confucian teachings over the previous 1500 years but, in conjunction with his other teaching, this new interpretation had revolutionary consequences. Indeed, alongside the rise of a commercial economy, this philosophy played a part in the rise of individuality in China.<ref name=":023" /><br />
<br />
As the 16th century went on and his followers expanded upon his ideas, a variety of popular movements took place: people from non-literati backgrounds such as peasants and merchants became involved in movements growing from Wang Yangming's ideas, at times defying the power of the emperor based on the idea that it was not necessary to defer to the authority of others.<ref name=":023" /><br />
<br />
Unsurprisingly, these ideas also gained traction within the educated elite. This philosophy began to permeate in such a way in government that political discussion became not a matter of seeking out a compromise between two competing (but legitimate) policies, but rather as a conflict between good and evil: if one has an innate knowledge of good, and they believe their idea to be good, then their ideas must be good, which implies that the competitor's idea must be bad by default. Thus, rather than seeking compromise and progress, officials started to seek the victory of their morally pure position.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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Disputes developed at the imperial court as well, which created greater problems. In one instance, the emperor, who had a son who was poised to become the heir, had acquired a new concubine with which he had a son as well. He then wanted to replace his wife, the empress, with his concubine and make their son the new heir. The Confucian officials refused, on the grounds of their moral interpretation, but the emperor refused to accept the criticisms, which marked the start of a disconnect between the officials and the emperor, which led to him removing himself from the day-to-day administration and policies, leaving his officials to carry them out.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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==== Donglin Academy ====<br />
By the early 1600s, the moralization of politics had gone even further. the Donglin academy (東林書院, ''Dōnglín Shūyuàn'') developed and served as the center for a movement amongst young ''shi''. While congregations of people with the same ideas had been somewhat allowed in history, factional organizations were banned under the Ming and before them. To get around this restriction, members would often create clubs of different kinds (poetry, gardening...). The Donglin Academy, however, took things one step further and became close to an organized political movement in China: they shared clear values and the participants helped each other out politically.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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Ultimately, the Donglin faction presented themselves as the morally pure group and criticized the existing officials within the Ming state as morally corrupt on the basis that the emperor was still refusing to cooperate with these officials (over the new heir). Their argument was that if those officials had been morally pure, they would have been able to convince the emperor to abandon his plans. Since they could not, it was necessary, the Donglin argued, that they replace the corrupt officials with their own members.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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That level of confrontation gave no leeway to a practical resolution as the criticized officials were not criticized on the basis of their skills (something they could improve), but on the basis of their character -- an innate trait in them as people. This all culminated in the 1620s in a great series of executions and factional conflicts. Eunuchs even seized power for a time. This greatly weakened the dynasty and the damage done to the system was so severe that the country entered a crisis: factions were more concerned about their infighting than with the affairs of the empire, and the poverty of the border regions burdened by silver taxation got even worse. Many defaulted on their taxes, had their assets seized or lost their land. This led to a downward spiral in the economic circumstances of these regions, which pushed people to outside the bounds of lawful society, forcing them to become bandits and raiders, eventually growing into rebellion.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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Even the commercial areas, which benefited from silver taxation, felt a strain: merchants, who were excluded from the imperial examination system, were now present in much greater numbers and wealth and were clamoring for official positions in society.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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This gridlock weakened China in such a way that by the time the Manchus invaded, no one was effectively prepared to respond and defend against them.<ref name=":023" /><br />
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==The rise of the Manchus==<br />
The Manchus came from what is now North-Eastern China, which at the time was not part of the empire. The Manchus were a ''new'' people; prior to the 16th century, this identity not exist. It was created by a man known as Nurhachi, he himself a Jurchen -- the same people that invaded established the Jin dynasty a few centuries earlier.<ref name=":024">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 25: The Rise of the Manchus|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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=== Nurhachi's beginning of the Manchu ===<br />
Born around 1559, he had the ambition of restoring the glory of his people when they possessed when they controlle the Jin. He soon began to feel, however, that the Jurchen people themselves were not the best vehicle for these ambitions. Thus, he created a "superethnic" group by getting various tribal communities to affiliate themselves with his movement -- either through conquest or negotiations.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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In the first quarter of the 17th century, this new group began to call itself the Manchus. Although the etymology of the name is unknown, there is a theory that it may have been the name of a Buddhist spiritual figure. Regardless, the Manchus quickly began to develop a national identity: they adopted a writing system, they wrote down their own legends and myths, created a history of the Manchu people with myths of origin.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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The Manchus developed their relationship with the Mongols who lived further west through a number of links: the adoption of Buddhism like the Mongols, and the writing system the Manchus used which was based upon the Mongol writing system.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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Through this period, the Manchus seem to have been principally concerned with their own sense of identity and consolidating their power in the territory they controlled. Around the time of the second quarter of the 17th century however, the Manchus began to directly challenge the Ming dynasty for power: first in the northeast, and later in China itself beyond the Great Wall.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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=== Problems in Ming China ===<br />
In the Ming dynasty, the Great Wall represented the frontier between "settled" territory on the inside, and nomadic, loose populations on the outside that may have been governed by the empire, but were not really Chinese. To the far east of the wall, however, in the coastal areas, Chinese settlers had started occupying land beyond the wall in what is now sometimes called Southern Manchuria, more accurately [[Liaoning province]]. When the Manchu set out to conquer China, that area became the first the conquered.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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In 1626, the Manchus proclaimed a revived Jin dynasty (the later Jin dynasty). They established a capital city at what is now the city of [[Shenyang]], built in the same layout as the city of Beijing. In 1635, the Manchu language was made the official language of the court. In 1636, the name of the dynasty was changed from Jin to Qing, meaning pure (and from which we derive the name ''China'' in English). The symbolism behind the name showed an ambition to do more than simply revive the name of the Jin but also to purify China of the decadence of the Ming dynasty -- tying their ambitions to the Mandate of Heaven which the Manchus said the Ming had lost.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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In the 1640s, military campaigns against the Ming became more active and larger. In 1641, a Ming garrison was besieged and captured by the Manchus, marking a great victory. Additionnally, several of the defeated Ming generals defected and joined the Manchus in their conquest. By early 1644, the Manchus had established their control over all of the northeast right up to the Great Wall, which they had not yet been able to penetrate.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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In China, the situation was bleak: the crises that had been building up in years prior had not been addressed due to a factionalized government and the financial problems of the dynasty had began to intensify as well. Silver imports into China from China and Spain decreased drastically, which put a limit on monetization and thus the possible growth of the Chinese economy. Zhu Youjian (朱由檢, ''Zhū Yóujiǎn''), crowned emperor of Ming in 1628, tried to get the economy under control through a series of reforms, but it was too late to save it.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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The problems plaguing the empire compounded throughout his reign. For example, dispossessed farmers started organizing themselves in bandit and rebel bands, raiding and attacking small towns, which required the government to deploy troops. However, the lack of revenue and loss of fortune to bandits meant that troops were not paid their wages in time or even at all, leading to them disbanding or even joining the rebels and further compounding the problem.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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=== Conquest of Beijing ===<br />
Throughout the Manchu conquests, a man emerged as a leader: Li Zicheng (李自成). Originally the leader of an independent army in north Shaanxi, he was positioned to attack the capital at Beijing in 1644, entering it in April of that year and occupying it for himself. As the story goes, on the morning that Li's army took Beijing, the emperor Zhu Youjian woke up as usual only to find all his advisors and courtiers had fled, without anyone telling him about the invaders. The emperor then took a piece of silk and walked out of the palace (which was highly unusual for emperors to do) up to a hill surrounding the city. There, he pricked his finger and wrote on the silk 'Son of Heaven' (天子), his official title. He then hanged himself from a tree on the hillside, and thus brought the rule of the Ming to an end.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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With Li Zicheng in control of the capital, officials and princes from imperial families fled to Nanjing, the secondary capital of the dynasty. They held there for a while and even proclaimed a successor, none of which saved the Ming. Li Zicheng proclaimed a dynasty of his own as well in Beijing, with himself as the new emperor. He began the process of establishing his rule shortly afterwards: calling officials to introduce themselves at his court, and creating a new government with them. This dynasty was short-lived, however, as the Manchus were still active and so were Ming loyalists. The Manchus had been stopped beyond the Great Wall at its eastern end, and could not get past a Ming fortress no matter their attempts.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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=== End of the Ming dynasty ===<br />
When Li Zicheng captured Beijing however, the general of the fortress, Wu Sangui (吳三桂) found himself in a difficult position: he was still a Chinese general charged with protecting the empire, but his dynasty did not really exist anymore. His mistress was also in Beijing, and he was worried she might be recruited into the new emperor's harem. He thus negotiated with the Manchus: he would allow them to bring their army inside through the Great Wall, and both their army and the fortress' garrison would go down to Beijing to drive out the rebels and restore the Ming dynasty.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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The Manchus agreed, and the gates of the fortress were opened. The two then went west to Beijing and destroyed Li's nascent dynasty. Unsurprisingly, the Manchus then announced they would not restore the Ming dynasty but put their Qing dynasty in place. Having achieved his real objective -- securing his mistress -- and understanding the reality of the Manchu conquest, Wu did not object to this turn of events and later became a general under the Qing.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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While seizing the capital was a very important step to establish the Qing, there was of course a lot left to do. The Manchus then had to establish their rule over the rest of the empire and have it recognized. Military campaigns continued for the next two years, and as in previous such conquests, the greatest resistance came from the Jiangnan area, in Southern China, which was the wealthiest region in China and thus also the one most producing literate and academic scholars. At the city of Yangzhou, the Manchus met fierce resistance -- much stronger than they anticipated. After they took the city, they enacted upon the city ten days of looting and killing, essentially killing any Chinese they found within the city. This, the Manchus hoped, would send a message against further resistance. On the contrary, it strengthened the national identity and those who resisted at Yangzhou were considered to be brave heroes who preferred to choose death over surrender. The story of Yangzhou would play a motif at the end of the Qing dynasty centuries later as an appeal to Chinese patriotism and nationalism.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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By the end of the 1640s, most of the resistance against the Manchus had been extinguished. Some loyalist elements did hold out against the Manchus, notably on the island of Taiwan. At the time, the island was part of Fujian province and in a peculiar position: while it was part of the empire, it had become a focal point for activity by Europeans (specifically the Portuguese and the Dutch). Ming loyalists crossed the strait and settled in Taiwan, but never really made an attempt to retake the empire. It was only by the 1680s that the loyalists in Taiwan were suppressed.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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In 1660, the last emperor of the Ming (who was in exile in what is now Myanmar, when the royal family fled the Manchu) was returned to China and executed, effectively putting an end to the Ming dynasty.<ref name=":024" /><br />
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The Qing empire could then properly begin, and would ultimately be the last of China's dynasty.<br />
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==Kang-Qian era==<br />
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=== Emperor Kangxi ===<br />
In 1661, the first emperor of the Qing died and was succeeded by one of his sons, the Kangxi emperor (康熙, ''Kāngxī'' '','' personal name Xuanye), which began a series of long reigns: over the next 135 years, only three emperors would reign over the Qing. Historically, these three emperors represent the greatest achievements of not only the Qing dynasty, but of all of Chinese civilization up to that point as their rules were also met with great advances in literature, culture, peace, prosperity and stability.<ref name=":025">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 26: Kangxi to Qianlong|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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Xuanye came to the throne at the age of 8. He was not the oldest son of the emperor, but he had survived smallpox which was taken as a sign of his good health. For the first five or six years, he was guided in his rule by a council of regents, called the Oboi regency after his uncle, who headed the regency. In 1667, when Xuanye was a teen, he took it upon himself to stop his regency and his uncle was relieved of his duties.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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Xuanye's ascension to the throne coincided with a time where things were stabilizing in the Qing. Still, In the 1670s, Xuanye faced the most serious challenge to the Qing dynasty -- both up until that point in the dynasty's history and until the middle of the 19th century. Wu Sangui, the general at the fortress that let the Manchus in years prior, was not content with the new emperor. He had been rewarded for his cooperation by being granted very large territory as a feudal domain, but in the 1670s, the Qing wanted to seize these territories (as well as those they had granted to other defecting generals), perhaps in preparation before the holders of this land died and passed it down to their sons.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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==== Rebellion in the Southwest ====<br />
This triggered a rebellion in the Southwest of China, with Wu Sangui as its leader, known as ''the revolt of the three feudatories'' (三藩之亂, ''Sānfān zhī luàn'') due to the three generals that rose up. More military forces in South and Southwest China joined in with the rebellion, but certainly not all of them, and not outside of this region. It took the Qing dynasty 8 years to take down the rebellion, suppressing it by the 1680s. Their success was made possible due to the loyalty the vast majority of the Chinese army displayed towards this new dynasty: this was a very significant development as it showed that the Qing state was not perceived as an "alien", non-Chinese body (such as the Jin or Yuan were).<ref name=":025" /><br />
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The Manchus had achieved this loyalty largely because after the initial conquest of the Ming, they had established conditions of peace within the empire and had allowed, for the most part, let the Chinese return to their livelihood. They did, however, impose heavy taxation on the Jangnan area and had established the traditional Manchu ''queue'' hairstyle as the only allowed hairstyle for Han men, which became associated with Chinese identity in a generation or two. The penalty for not wearing the hair was execution for trahison.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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==== Attempt to bring in the Mongols ====<br />
Once the rebellion had been quelled, the emperor turned his attention to trying to win control over all of the Mongol tribes. This would be a difficult undertaking: Mongol tribes were scattered over a wide geographical area. The Eastern Mongols, with whom the Jurchen had made partnerships, for located close to China, but the Western Mongols did not share this partnership and had fled to escape the turmoil in China, going as far as Southern Russia. The Qing empire soon became a multi-ethnic state: the bringing together of the Manchus, the Han Chinese, the Mongols, Tibetans and the Central Asian populations in far Xinjiang was pursued by Xuanye and his successors.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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Xuanye, however, was not succesful in defeating or luring the Western Mongols to China. However, he did start the process which was carried on by his successors. He was also able to project Qing power into new geographic areas -- notably in the province of [[Xinjiang]]. Another concern of his was his efforts to stabilize the fiscal bases for his dynasty. In 1712, the Qing state undertook a survey of the empire, much like the Ming had done under Zhang Juzheng. This survey updated tax rates, but came with a new condition: the rates fixed by this survey would remain in perpetuity, meaning that a piece of land, once its value and tax had been set by this survey, would never see it change. This was known as the Tax Edict of 1712 and led to major problems down the line for the Qing.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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=== Yongzheng emperor ===<br />
Regardless, in 1722, Xuanye died after a reign of over 60 years, and was succeeded by one of his sons who adopted the name of the Yongzheng (雍正) emperor (personal name Yinzhen). The circumstances of his succession are a little unusual. Even at the time, some historians questioned his legitimacy: Yinzhen was the 13th son of the emperor, so quite far removed from the line of succession. Yet, he was named in an edict which was purportedly written by his father, the emperor, on his deathbed. This edict, however, was believed by most Chinese to have been forged. The conduct of the young emperor after coming to power also created a certain amount of suspicion: he had bad relations with most of his other brothers, and had most of them either imprisoned, exiled or executed.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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==== Reforms under Yongzheng ====<br />
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==== Tax reforms ====<br />
Nonetheless, he turned out to be an effective emperor. Despite his shorter reign (from 1722 to 1735), he devoted these years to improving the administration of the empire and was more benevolent than his father. Unsurprisingly, the tax edict of 1712 was starting to create problems for the Qing: the flow of income to the imperial treasury was lower than the emperor thought it should be and there were indeed problems with the collection system and its subsequent repatriation to the capital. Taxes would be collected on the local level, forwarded to the provincial, consolidated there and then sent to the capital. Then, the imperial treasury would return funding to the provincial level which would return it to the local villages and cities. With so many steps, losses of silver due to corruption and other problems happened very often. Particularly, because the taxes were paid in silver, the metal would be melted down by the government and then remolded into bars for easier transport. Fees and other surcharges happened during this process, essentially making the collection of taxes variable every time. These charges would also normally not be recorded, which allowed for corruption.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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Yinzhen wanted to reform the tax collection system to improve the flow of income to the capital and reduce corruption, giving the imperial court greater control. He reformed the system so that not only collection and transfer would be properly recorded, but localities would be allowed to keep a portion of the taxes they paid for themselves to be used as their funding, instead of having the silver first go to the capital and then be sent back to the villages. This project was first tested in some provinces in Central China where it proved very successful. When attempting to expand this reform to the whole empire however, Yinzhen met a lot of resistance: the provinces in Central China were generally in a middle-ground in terms of economic and social revenue. This system, however, did not please the local nobles in the coastal areas, which were generally richer, as they wanted to keep control over the flow of silver with which they could enrich themselves.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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The emperor eventually became frustrated with this system and abandoned it in the early 1730s, thereby informally accepting the conditions led by the coastal nobles. <ref name=":025" /><br />
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==== Grand Council ====<br />
Other reforms were also attempted. Notably, he finished the establishment of the Grand Council which had been started by his father. A continuation of the Grand Secretariat under the Ming, the Council supplanted the Secretariat. The Grand Council was almost entirely a deliberative and consultative body, meant to be debating policy, which did make it the most critical decision-making institution in China as the emperor was the one who promulgated law. The Grand Secretariat, which took up this consultative function under the Ming (on top of their existing administrative function), was thus relegated back to being an administrative institution.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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The Grand Council did not have fixed membership, with members being appointed by the emperor.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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==== Other reforms ====<br />
Yinzhen also undertook reforms for the well-being of his subjects and regularized the status of certain outcast social groups.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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=== Qianlong emperor ===<br />
Yinzhen died after only 13 years on the throne, and was succeeded by one of his sons who chose the name of the Qianlong (乾隆) emperor (personal name Hongli), reigning from 1735 until 1795. He actually lived until 1798, but abdicated so that he would not reign longer than his grandfather, the Kangxi emperor.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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His reign is viewed by many historians as the high-tide of the Qing dynasty. His 60 years of rule were a period where the early achievements of the Qing dynasty came to fruition, and Hongli built on efforts his predecessors had started. He was a very hands-on and pragmatic administrators, paying close attention to the details of many going-ons of the empire.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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Population continued to grow in China, reaching about 400 million by the end of his reign. China attained its greatest prosperity in history during this time, making it probably the richest country in the world at the time. Notably, many Chinese goods such as tea, porcelain, silk, etc. flowed all around the planet in the global market. At its height, China was responsible for 25% of global economic production.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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Nonetheless, it was not a completely peaceful time. Hongli pursued military campaigns as well, and was able to complete the process of bringing all of the Mongol tribes into the empire by the 1770s. He pursued a very careful policy of dealing with defeated enemies: he would give them official titles and great wealth, as he was interested in expanding the empire and strengthening it, by making his subjects loyal.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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He also deepened the relationship between the Qing empire and Tibet. Tibet had been closely linked to the Mongols, and was embedded into the Qing empire at its establishement through that link. Hongli continued the policies of maintaining a strong Chinese presence in Tibet.<ref name=":025" /><br />
[[File:Map of qing vs prc.jpg|thumb|Map of Qing borders at their height (in red) overlaid by a map of modern-day China (the People's Republic)]]<br />
It was under Hongli that China reached its peak in terms of territorial area: indeed, the borders of modern-day China (the People's Republic) were built under the Qing and are in fact slightly smaller than they were under the Qing, who controlled Mongolia and parts of what is now India, Nepal and Russia.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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By the end of Hongli's reign, new problems emerged -- many of which as a result of the long period of success the dynasty had. The growth of China's population, for example, could hardly be sustained by the amount of land that the empire possessed, who had no more land to expand (conquer) into. The economy started stagnating and plateaued, as it reached a point at which it was limited by the current technology and means of production that existed. At the same time, [[capitalism]] began to emerge in the West, specifically in England, and led to new kinds of conflicts that eventually reached China.<ref name=":025" /><br />
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==The coming of the West==<br />
At the end of the 18th century, both China and the West were peering at a new era in world history. In China, the Qing empire -- which had been in power for over 150 years -- had achieved great success as well as dormant problems as outlined in the last section. In the West, similar developments took place and ushered in a new age of expansion, of projection of power in terms of economic and military conquests.<ref name=":026">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 27: The Coming of the West|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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East Asia and the Mediterranean world both have had a long history of trade and contact. Land and maritime exchanges go back at least to the Roman empire, perhaps even earlier. Certainly, Roman glassware has been found in tombs from the Han period and Chinese silk was found in Roman graves. Chinese records -- written documents -- mention a representative from a place called ''Rum'' arriving at court. These may have been traders rather than representatives, but indicate that the Chinese were at least aware of the Roman empire.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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During the age of Islamic expansion in the 7th century, the links that had been established between Europe and East Asia were disrupted. Christian Europe was cut off from the rest of the Eurasian landmass by the movement of Islamic armies from out of the Arabian peninsula and into [[West Asia]], [[Persia]] and [[North Africa]]. This resulted in a breakdown of information travel: goods were still traded along the [[Silk Road]] and in maritime routes but communication, knowledge and information did not pass through as much from Europe to China.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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At the same time, Arab traders from the Persian Gulf began to sail across the Indian Ocean and arriving in increasing numbers to the southern coast of China in the 7th century, bringing with them their religion, [[Islam]]. A mosque was founded in [[Guanzhou]] (sometimes called Canton) around 670, not long after the Great Age of Islamic expansion had began. In Chang'an, now known as Xian, a great mosque was also built to serve traders coming in overland, also late in the 7th century. As Chinese goods made their way over land or sea mostly to [[Syria]], they would be bought by the Venitians who brought them back to Venice and then dispatched those goods over the rest of Europe.<ref name=":026" /><br />
[[File:Portuguese expeditions around Africa.webp|thumb|Map of Portuguese expeditions around Africa.]]<br />
In the 1400s, as the Mongol conquests broke down, so did safe travels over land routes to China. This prompted the Portuguese to find their own access to East Asia and their goods such as spices or silk instead of relying on middlemen. The problem the Portuguese faced, however, was the landmass of Africa: at the time, they did not know how big Africa was and if it was even possible to get around it by sea. Thus they began a very systematic process of exploration in the same century, going down the African coast, charting the coastline and waters and making maps out of this information.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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Gradually going further and further down the coast of Africa, the Portuguese eventually made their way down the Western end of the continent in the mid 1400s. They found the Southern cape of Africa by the end of the century, and after that sailed east into the Indian Ocean.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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These expeditions gave the Portuguese access to direct trading with the whole of Asia. What they found however, was that they could not simply take over the existing trading systems. In 1511, the Portuguese attacked and seized the port of Malacca (modern-day [[Malaysia]]), hoping that it would put them in a strong position to assert their strength in the existing trading networks, but quickly found that it was not sufficient -- as important as Malacca was as a trading city at the time.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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Instead, as they found in the later part of the 16th century, there was a lot of wealth to be made not by taking over and dominating the spice trade from Southeast Asia and bringing it back to Europe, but by participating in the regional trade network of the Indian Ocean, which came to be called the Country Trade. Within these networks, the Portuguese began to carry cargo and establish a presence in ports all over the region, doing most of their trading activity in that network. The Spanish, Duth and English soon followed by the 1600s, establishing their own trading companies and becoming participants in this profitable trading system.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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Through the 17th and into the 18th century, Europeans established a place for themselves within the existing Asian trading networks. Still, they remained only one group out of the many participants in this system. Rivalries between the European powers further weakened their position in Asia: a variety of wars and rivalries broke down any cooperation in the East Asian trade, with European powers forming not one allied bloc in this network, but each competing for themselves.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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The Dutch eventually came to focus their economic activity on the islands of Southeast Asia (modern-day [[Indonesia]]) and in [[Japan]], gaining a place as the only -- Europeans -- foreigners who could still trade with Japan after the closing down of their borders. The Spanish established themselves in the Philippines, and Manila became a lucrative center of trade for them after they conquered it in 1571, through which they sold Mexican silver to China.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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The Portuguese, who had been the first to establish a presence in Southeast Asia, maintained some role there: they had trading posts on the West coast of [[India]], and established the enclave at [[Macao Special Administrative Region|Macao]] in 1557, which remained in their hands until 1999, but they devoted most of their attention to Africa and Brazil and did not become as significant as other European powers in East Asia. Meanwhile, the British became involved in India.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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While all were interested in China and saw it as the "greatest prize of all", being a tremendous market and the source of high-quality manufactured goods, they had difficulties getting access to it. At the end of the 18th century, both China and Europe were moving through a period of great change. The first big change in Europe was of course the [[Industrial Revolution]], which took place in Britain first and led to new conditions for the production of commodities. The circumstances that led to the industrial revolution were also present in China, especially in the Jiangnan area and in parts of India (the [[Bengal]] region). Nonetheless, while there is a wide debate over how the industrial revolution took place in Britain, the fact remains that it was the first country to go through with it.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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One of the biggest consequence of the industrial revolution for Europe was that the continent changed from being a consumer of goods to being a producer which they could send to market elsewhere. In conjunction with this transformation, Europe saw the rise of capitalism and its [[Free market|free-market]] ideology. The free market represented a break from the [[Mercantilism|mercantilist]] relation of production that was dominant before it: mercantilism was represented by state actors, large state-sponsored companies (such as the [[Dutch East Indian Company]]) controlling trade in a region under their name instead of letting individual actors do it in their own name and resources. The most influential figure behind the free market was of course [[Adam Smith]], who wrote the [[Wealth of Nations|''Wealth of Nations'']].<ref name=":026" /><br />
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Smith was undoubtedly influenced by the nascent Industrial Revolution that took place in Great-Britain, his country of origin, and saw for himself the productive output that steam machines could achieve. This unprecedented rate of production meant that factories could produce more commodities than they could sell at home, and thus would need to export them. Smith, to justify this new mode of production that was naturally starting to form throug the use of the steam machine, argued that countries should be allowed to buy and sell wherever they wish, with not artificial barriers being put in place (such as China limiting traders to certain ports or Japan only trading with Europe through the Dutch). The British found in this theory the justification to be penetrating into the Chinese market in full force, especially as silver (which was money) was mostly flowing ''into'' China and not out of it, which the British also needed for their economy.<ref name=":026" /><br />
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== First Opium War and arrival of European imperialism ==<br />
The end of the Qianlong emperor's reign marks a convenient line of demarcation between the successes of the Qing that ultimately became difficulties for the dynasty. As mentioned before, the large population growth under the Qing started pushing against the limits the agricultural means of production in China were able to sustain. The elites, whether the traditional ''shi'' or the new merchant elites, were very conservative and concerned with protecting their wealth and economic interest. Furthermore, emperors after the Kang-Qian era, while still involved, were not as powerful at stopping problems from compounding.<ref name=":027">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 28: Threats from Within and Without|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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Frustrations among the populace began to form rebellions, and those had been going on for over a century. Beginning in the late 18th century and accelerating in the 19th century, new forms of mystical movements and insurrection began to break out against private interests (local landlords and wealthy families) and the representatives of the state. The international context was also shifting: trade became the great question, and both the increased of production from the industrial revolution and the ideology of capitalism and free trade began to come into conflict with the Chinese model, particularly with the British.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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From about the middle of the 18th century, China had regulated its trade with European powers through the Canton system (一口通商, ''Yīkǒu tōngshāng''). Under this system, trade could only take place in one port, the port of Canton (now more accurately called Guangzhou) in the far South of China, past Hong Kong and Schenzen and requiring boats to sail into the mouth of a river called the Schizi Yang (狮子洋). Moreover, that trade had to be conducted through licensed Chinese agents, the hong merchants, who served as brokers between European and Chinese merchants.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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This trade did function and was in fact quite lively, but it was a trade in which European merchants brought silver to China with which they bought Chinese commodities. This regulated system was quite satisfactory for the Chinese as they made good money and had a lot of outlets for their manufactured goods, but wasn't as interesting to the European merchants as even if they did acquire goods they could sell back in their homeland, they realized there was still a lot of untapped potential in dealing with China if only they could sell the Chinese a commodity which China would pay silver for, thus reversing the flow of trade and balancing the flow a little better.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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In 1792, and then again in 1816 (before and after the [[Napoleonic Wars]]), the British sent diplomatic missions to China to try and establish commercial relations between the two countries. In both instances, these missions were received very politely but were told that the Chinese were simply not interested in their "shoddy goods" (as emperor Qianlong said to King George III in a letter).<ref name=":027" /><br />
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This was considered unacceptable to the British, who still required some commodity to sell to China if they were to open up trade relations. In 1816, they settled on opium. Opium was already familiar to China, produced in very small quantities in the far Southwest mostly as medicine. Its non-medicinal use had also been known and recognized for a long time, and had been regulated since the 1730s. What the British found was that as they colonized more of India, they opened up a very suitable environment to produce opium. They set off to aggressively destroy the local cotton industry so as to eliminate competition and turn it to opium production.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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They then discovered they could market opium to the poorest classes of society in Southeast Asia and South China, and thus began to ship opium in ever-increasing volumes from Bengal through Southeast Asia and into the Guangzhou port where it was then offloaded into the domestic economy. Between 1816 and 1830, the volume of opium shipped to China increased every year without fail. The impacts were dramatic: millions of Chinese became addicted to opium. It became a tremedous social problem: people were not productive, crime rose, and on an economic level, the British were demanding payment for opium in silver. This had the very rapid effect of reversing the flow of silver ''out'' of China, leading to economic disruptions throughout the empire and causing ripple effects.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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By the 1830s, there were shortages of capital for investment and prices were subject to dramatic fluctuations. At this time, this state of matter was starting to be taken very seriously by the Chinese government. The Qing State, however, was having problems dealing with these issues. The government had become increasingly unresponsive: conflicts, policy and debate within the Qing leadership had bogged down efforts to deal with problems, and were particularly frustrating because the bureaucratic mentality of "doing things the way they had always been done" was quite strong, but ultimately ineffective against such an unprecedented problem. Revenues were declining; the outflow of silver meant that taxes were not collected as extensively, and the capacity of government to maintain its normal functions (such as the infrastructure of the grand canal) began to diminish.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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Of course, the Chinese realized that the opium trade was at the heart of all these problems, both in its social and economic impacts. The Qing government repeatedly protested to British merchants and the king about the problem they had caused and its effects, and the emperor then called for a debate among his officials about how to deal with the influx of opium. Lin Zexu (林则徐, ''Lín Zéxú''), the general governor of Huguang, made a proposal. He had served in Central Asia, dealing with the security problems there, and had distinguished himself as an official who was able to be flexible and creative in dealing with problems. His proposal to the emperor was a two-track approach: on the one hand, he advocated for rehibilitation programs to opium addicts to redress the epidemic. On the other, he urged strict prohibition in the sale of opium. This was already the existing law of China, but Lin Zexu wanted to enforce it stringently. By attacking the supply and demand of opium, he hoped that this would eliminate the problem.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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The emperor was very impressed by the proposal and eventually, in 1838, Lin Zexu was tasked with becoming the Imperial Commissioner charged with eradicating the opium trade in Guanzhou. Lin travelled south from the capital to Guanzhou and, in 1839, launched a serious campaign directed at stopping the flow of opium into China. He took a very direct approach to the matter: in Guangzhou, the foreign traders had warehouses where their goods were brought ashore and stored before they were shipped off in the interior. Lin Zexu, in the spring of 1839, ordered that opium in these warehouses be confiscated: accordingly, a large quantity of opium was seized. He then had a large trench dug in the ground, the opium dumped into it, and lime spread over it and set aflame.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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When the Chinese destroyed the opium supplies, the British merchants were of course quite upset and demanded that reparations be made. The British military representatives assured that they would be compensated by the crown, but Lin Zexu proved to be intent on keeping the trade shut down, and so the British -- who thought that this was perhaps a one-time demonstration -- were quite upset when they realized Lin Zexu had no intention of allowing the trade to resume. After a second round of destroying opium, the British decided they had to take action.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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There was a long debate in Parliament over what to do over China -- not over the opium trade specifically (as the British did not want to present themselves as a drug cartel), but over the free market. When war was declared and the British fleet was sent out to China, it was done not on the basis of making the world safe for drug dealers, but on the basis of promoting free trade.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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British naval superiority was certainly unquestioned at the time and were able to inflict humiliating defeats on the Chinese, and did so repeatedly: the [[First Opium War]] started in 1839 and went on until 1842. China was defeated in this war, and was forced to reach a settlement as the British were closing in on the capital, which culminated into the [[Treaty of Nanjing]]. The treaty opened a series of ports along the South China coast to British traders, and allowed them to establish commercial residence in those ports (known as the Treaty ports). Secondly, they could trade freely without using the hong brokers. The Treaty also ceded the island of Hong Kong -- which had been occupied by the British -- for 100 years. Finally, it established a very important principle, of extra-territoriality. This principle meant that while British citizens were in China, they would be subject not to Chinese law, but to British law. In other words, if they committed a crime in China, they could not be arrested by the Chinese police but only by the British. This principle came as a response to a number of incidents in which British sailors who had been ashore in Guangzhou had been involved in violent incidents and had been imprisoned by the Chinese.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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The Treaty of Nanjing was signed in 1842, and in rapid succession over the next few years, several other Western powers signed treaties with China as well: the United States in 1844, followed by the French, Dutch and Russians. Each of these treaties forced more concessions from China and more treats ports were opened These treaties also included a "no most favored nation" clause, which said that any concession granted to any one power in a treaty automatically extended to all other powers that had treaties, which shared the benefits of this imperialism while further weakening China. Foreign missionaries were given legal protection to operate in China.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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These provisions from the Treaty of Nanjing were quite humiliating for China (and indeed, the following 100 years after the start of the Opium War would become known as the Century of Humiliation [百年国耻, ''bǎinián guóchǐ'']). The opening of the Treaty ports also had significant economic impacts beyond the psychological impacts; even though there were somewhat positive consequences (as trade expanded and the ports grew), the dislocations that they caused in other parts of the Chinese economy were quite severe and led to peculiar movements growing elsewhere in the empire.<ref name=":027" /><br />
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=== The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom ===<br />
By the middle of the 19th century, Southern China could be described as a place that was ready for catastrophic events. As the Treaty Ports were established, the other problems plaguing China before that -- huge population growth, areas being economically devastated, outpouring flow of silver, widespread opium addiction etc. -- had not gone away in the slightest.<ref name=":028">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 29: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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The particular circumstances of Chinese geography, with Southern China being rife with hills, mountains and river valleys, naturally gave rise to local ethnic groups that were able to grow a strong cultural identity through the remoteness of some areas in the region. One of these groups, the Hakka (客家, meaning ''guest families''), or Kejia in Mandarin, were Chinese that migrated from Northern China to the South after the initial waves of migration during the Northern and Southern dynasties, and brought with themselves a northern culture that was a bit different from the earlier northern culture, which they retained to the 19th century. Because the Hakka were marginalized, they tended to be self-reliant within themselves. However, they were still very much affected by the problems facing Qing society, and perhaps made them more receptive to unusual, non-traditional ideas.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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==== Hong Xiuquan ====<br />
Hong Xiuquan (洪秀全) was himself a Hakka, and came from a family that was not particularly wealthy, but well-off enough to have him educated and prepared to take the imperial examination. Hong hoped that with by succeeding at the imperial exam, he could elevate his family's fortune; a lot of aspirations were placed on him.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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He repeatedly took the entry-level imperial examinations, but failed them every time. To take these examinations, he would go to the city of Guangzhou -- a very lively port city with lots of foreigner presence. There, he encountered a Christian missionary in the street who handed him a tract which Hong took home with him.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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A few years later, after another unsuccessful attempt to pass the exam, Hong decided to retire from this goal. He went home and there shut himself in his room for weeks. During that time, he had visions in which an old gentleman and a younger man appeared to him and talked with him. When Hong recovered from his breakdown, reflecting on his vision, he read through the Christian tracts he had been given years before in Guangzhou. He came to the conclusion that the old man in the vision was God and the young man was Jesus. What they had been telling him was that he was the younger brother of Jesus and that it was his mission to bring the story of Christianity to the Chinese people.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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This launched Hong towards his life's work, and he began to develop an understanding of the world in which the whole Confucian empire of China was something he must destroy. From there, he began forming a movement with himself at its center to establish on Earth a Heavenly kingdom. This came to be called the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (太平天囯, ''tàipíng tiānguó'', literally "Heavenly kingdom of great peace").<ref name=":028" /><br />
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==== Society of God worshippers ====<br />
At first, in the late 1830s, this movement took the form of what Hong called the Society of God worshippers. Many of those involved with this society were originally Hakka as well, but it soon grew larger than this one group. Hong Xiuquan continued to have visions and develop his theological system in which his role, as the younger brother of Jesus, was at its center. As far as historians can tell, Hong never read the Bible and his understanding of Christianity came from these few simple missionary tracts he had acquired. He did undertake some serious study of Christianity later on, but certainly never was a serious scholar of the Church. Instead, his appeal was based on his personal charisma: his faith and belief in himself and his mission, which was apparently quite compelling.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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He attracted around himself a core of followers, some of whom were well-educated, quite wealthy, or even government officials. They established a [[Utopian socialism|utopian]] commune near the city of Guanzhou based upon Hong's understanding of [[Primitive communism|primitive (Christian) communism]]. There were no ranks or hierarchy in the commune (which was especially a break from the Confucian belief in ranks). They abolished [[private property]]. As time went by, they started taking on more extreme caracteristics: men and women were soon segregated, living in seperate spaces. Families were broken up, and marriage was rejected due to its place in the traditional Confucian system. In many ways, their society inverted the core principles of traditional Confucian society.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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These characteristics were apparently very appealing to Chinese society, because tens of thousands of people soon joined the movement. In the course of the 1840s, the movement grew and expanded territorially. In the course of that growth, Hong's ambitions also developed and he went from simply having a vision of a community separate from Chinese society to applying that society over all of China, by overthrowing the Qing dynasty.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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==== Taiping rebellion ====<br />
In 1850, the Society of God worshippers reached the point where it was time to act on these ambitions. Hong developed a system in which he was the Heavenly King, with four advisors along his side who represented the four cardinal directions (North, South, East, West) who acted as leaders. Then, they launched a military campaign, heading north. They fought their way up through Central China ([[Hunan province]]) and against the armies of the Qing dynasty, which they defeated. As they went north, they found support from the peasants and other poor or marginalized groups within Central China. As the movement progressed north, more people would flock to it.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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When the rebels reached the Yangtze river, they turned East and headed downriver until they came upon Nanjing, which was one of the great cities of the empire. Although it wasn't a capital under the Qing, it still remained the seat of government for the region and retained many of its Ming features (under whom Nanjing was the second capital).<ref name=":028" /><br />
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The Taiping rebels occupied Nanjing and made it the capital of their movement. During the next decade, they continued to fight and expand their territory. They sent an expedition to the north that did not entirely succeed; while it did fight and win in the north, it returned to Nanjing eventually. Once in Nanjing, the Heavenly Kingdom underwent some changes which proved to be quite problematic to it. Notably, Hong Xiuquan and his four advisors took residence in the former imperial palaces at Nanjing and began to live a much more imperial life: eating well, enjoying luxuries, and especially establishing a harem for themselves. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Taiping followers continued to live in circumstances of relative poverty and, of course, the characteristics of the Taiping of puritanism and equalitarianism.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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As many as 100 million people seemed to have been involved in the Taiping movement at its peak; a quarter of the population of China. They controlled a significant amount of territory, amounting to essentially all of South China. This difference in lifestyle between the commoners and Hong Xiuquan began to create tensions. The enthusiasm of the ordinary families for this austere lifestyle and segregation started to wane as time went on, particularly once they had settled in at Nanjing and the phase of active military campaigning had come to an end.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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==== Hunan Army ====<br />
While all this was going on, the Qing of course had to respond to the rebels. Their response was initially not very effective; the military situation within the country was at a low. The Qing military system had two basic components: on the one hand, the Banners, which the Manchus had built up before their conquest of the Ming. Manchu Banners were not solely composed of Manchu people and were the elite troops. The second tier was the Green Standard army, which were the ordinary troops who were more numerous than the Banners. By the 1850s, neither armies were in good shape: they were under-equipped, under-trained, not disciplined, and many of the Banner troops had not seen action in over a century.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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The dynasty thus had to find a way for a more effective response. What they did was turn to a new source of organization and support for military activities: the Qing turned to local Chinese elites, who in dynasties past used to provide local governmental functions, including security. The Qing state appealed to them to assume a greater role in what they argued was self-defense. Zeng Guofan (曾国藩, Zēng Guófán) was such a leader who was given the responsibility and authority to organize local troops in Hunan, his home province, as he saw fit so as to defeat the Taiping. Most significantly, he was also given a new financial basis to do this with; he was given control over the Lijin tax (厘金), which was a very modest tariff deducted from every trade transaction made in a province, which represented a large source of revenue when put together, especially as Hunan was a very wealthy province.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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Zeng Guofan proved to be effective at this task, and very quickly put together the Hunan army. While Zeng Guofan is the most famous general of this time, other armies were similarly put together by the Qing. His army was well-equipped, well-paid, well-fed and well-clothed. Towards the end of the 1850s, the Hunan Army started being deployed in campaigns against the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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==== Role of Western powers ====<br />
The Western powers also had a vested interest in this rebellion. When Shanghai was made a Treaty Port, it was only a relatively small fishing village. Due to the influx of trade however and its location at the mouth of the Yangtze river, it soon grew to become a major Chinese city. By the time the Taiping occupied Nanjing (with only a decade elapsing), it had significantly grown and became the "capital" for Europeans in China. There, they found themselves in an interesting situation: Hong Xiuquan claimed to be a Christian, and even called himself Jesus' younger brother. From that point of view, he was an appealing figure to Europeans as someone who could be dealt with more easily than the Qing. They send a diplomatic delegation to Nanjing that met with Hong Xiuquan and, following that meeting, saw him not as someone who could be allied with but as a lunatic. From then on, the Western powers instead decided to back the Qing dynasty and sent some military support.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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==== End of the rebellion ====<br />
In 1864, the Taiping Kingdom fell to the Hunan army and was destroyed. Great massacres took place at Nanjing, and the rebellion -- which was only one of several challenges -- was finally brought to an end. By this time, the West had established its position quite firmly in China, and the Qing state had received their backing.<ref name=":028" /><br />
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The Taiping rebellion can be understood in its material conditions; in the context of a weakened, humiliated China that was going through huge social changes -- a strange new religion, unlike what China had seen before, from people they had never seen before, came to the country. Hong Xiuquan should not be understood as the literal brother of Jesus Christ or that people followed him because he was charismatic. Rather, in this rebellion, people thought they might have the answer to the issues that plagued the Qing. Conversely, the rebellion was also able to grow and become what it was because the Qing empire was initially too weak to fight against it.{{Citation needed}}<br />
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==Efforts at reform in the Qing state==<br />
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=== Self-strenghtening movement ===<br />
The Qing dynasty knew that China wanted to flourish again, some sort of reforms were going to have to take place. From the 1860s to the early 1890s, certain leaders within the Chinese and Manchu elites began to pursue programs designed to give China the ability to stand up to the Western powers. This movement came to be called the Self-strenghtening Movement (自强运动, ''zìqiáng yùndòng''). The idea was that China could not rely on outside forces to take care of their problems and, if it wished to be strong enough to take control of its destiny, it had to strengthen itself.<ref name=":030">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 30: Efforts at Reform|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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The 1860s were a time in which these changes were possible, as a young emperor came to the throne in 1860. He was subject to a regency, and some of them were very receptive to these types of reforms. Provincial leaders were also relied on in the course of this movement to provide the 'brains' of an effort to get China back on its own feet.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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The 1870s and 1880s represent the core of this period. During that time, China undertook a number of initiatives. On one hand, they recognized that the superior position of the West was found on their military strength: the Opium War of 1840 did not really meet much resistance from the Chinese; one way to match the West was for China to develop their own military sector. Part of this initiative dealt in simply buying up equipment and ships from European arsenals, but the powers that sold them these ships (especially Britain) were of course careful about a strong China, and made sure to sell only outdated and obsolete equipment, knowing it would not be equal to the equipment the British themselves were putting in the field.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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==== Establishment of arsenal and institutes ====<br />
China recognized this was not enough if they really wanted to develop self-reliance. Accordingly, they established a great arsenal near the city of [[Wuhan]] and a naval shipyard near the mouth of the Yangtze river. The arsenal was also near sources of coal and iron ore, so that the arsenal would be able to produce steel.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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The other priority of the Self-Strenghtening Movement was focused on learning about Western science and technology. This was required to successfully operate these new industries, but there was a recognition at the time that Western superiority went beyond the military field: there was an understanding in Europe of industrial production, and in China a sense that Western science gave the imperialist powers an advantage to dominate China. The Qing government set up an institute to translate European books and circulate them among the educated elite. Initially, these translations focused on science and technology books, but after a large number of those had been translated, the institute also published books on social sciences, political theory, and became particularly interested in the ideas of [[Social Darwinism]] -- the idea at the time that nations compete and that the survival of the fittest apply to civilizations as well. This of course fit in nicely with the thinking of the Self-Strengthening Movement.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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Finally, the Qing realized a third dimension of this movement was a restructure of how China related to other countries in the world. The international order in which the Qing was used to functioning in was as such: China was in the center, and other countries were expected to come and pay their respects (under the tribute system). This was not working with the Western powers, and China was forced to pay hommage and respect to these imperialist powers. China recognized, though, that among the Western power there was a concept of 'equality' between countries: the concept of treaties, for example, is based on the idea that both parties are equal and form a contract. The real content of the treaties were unequal; the terms had been dictacted and China was forced to accept whatever was offered. But the rhetoric of treaties, China realized, was one that was based on equal exchange and partners.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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To give China the ability to participate more fully in that international system, they created a new institutional structure for international relations, the Zongli Yamen (總理衙門, ''zǒnglǐ yámen''), the foreign ministry which dealt with other countries strictly.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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These efforts were very sincere and pursued quite strongly by their advocates, but they were not sufficient to solve the problems that China was confronted with. For one thing, the self-strengtheners were never a majority or dominant group within the imperial bureaucracy. Resistance to modernization was perhaps more characteristic of the imperial bureaucracy under the conservative majority.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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==== End of the Self-strenghtening movement and First Sino-Japanese war ====<br />
The insufficiency of the movement began to be demonstrated in the mid-1880s when China was defeated in a war against [[France]]. [[Third Republic of France|France]], at the time, was in the process of colonizing what was then called [[Indochina]] (now [[Southeast Asia]]), including [[Vietnam]]. At the time, Vietnam was a tributary state of China and they appealed to the Qing to defend them against the French. China sent some of their modernized navy down to the gulf of Tonkin, but were defeated there in a further humiliation and setback.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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Ten years later, the failures of the self-strenghtening movement were most clearly revealed in a war between China and Japan. When Japan had been forcibly opened by the United States in the 1850s, they had decided to embark upon a campaign of modernization through the [[Meiji restoration|Meiji Restoration]]. By the end of the 19th century, Japan had gone a long way to achieving this goal. In the war of 1894-1895, which was fought mostly in [[Korea]] (attempting to establish control over the peninsula), China was dealt one defeat after another both on land and at sea. For China, it was further humiliating to be defeated by Japan as they were a long-time neighbor, seen as the "little brothers" for most of Chinese history.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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In fact, the defeat in the [[First Sino-Japanese war]] triggered a protest movement in China: candidates for the imperial examinations circulated petitions around Beijing which gathered thousands of signatures and were submitted to the court, demanding that a more effective response to imperialist aggression be made. Two leaders particularly emerged from this protest, Kang Youwei (康有为, ''kāng yǒuwéi'') and Liang Qichao (梁启超, ''liáng qǐchāo''). They began to write articles, publish newspapers and submit memorials to the throne. This group advocated that the Qing government adopt a complete institutional restructure to give China a more effective government, much like Japan had done during the Meiji Restoration. In 1898, after three years of agitation, they were able to put their ideas into action. A new emperor had come to the throne as a young man, and the empress [[Cixi]], who had managed his regency, stepped aside and let the emperor, Guangxu, rule. He became convinced of this program and from the middle of June to September 1898, ran the [[Hundred days of reform|Hundred Days of Reform]] (戊戌变法, ''wù xū biàn fǎ''). During that period, the emperor proclaimed a series of edicts designed to streamline administration, reduce bureaucracy, and open up the channels for popular input. He appointed a number of advocates of reform to key positions in the government, and China was embarked on a process of transforming China from the inside out.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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But as with the Self-Strengtheners, there were a number of officials who were resistant to reform, and who either ignored the reforms or actively resisted them. Eventually, in mid-September, conservative Manchu officials along with some Chinese officials decided the reforms had gone too far and they, along with empress Cixi, plotted a [[coup]] and placed the emperor under house arrest. The leading reformers were rounded up, and 8 of them executed. Kang and Liang had been alerted to the plot however, and fled to Japan. The reforms were brought to a complete halt and ended what was perhaps the last best hope to modernize the Qing and give them the capacity to enter the modern political era, where it could have remained as the government of China. By bringing the reform to an end through violent means however, Cixi had signaled that a more conservative leadership was to be expected for the Qing.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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=== Boxer rebellion ===<br />
While these events were transpiring in the capital, the [[Boxer rebellion]] (义和团起义, ''Yìhétuán Qiyi'', literally "Movement of the ''Righteous and Harmonious Fists''") was rising. In many ways, this rebellion was part of a long tradition of peasant rebellions that had happened in historical China and were involved in the fall of many dynasties. Often, these popular movements were religious in nature or had a strong spiritual component, and that was certainly the case with the Boxers. Their name is based upon the fact that the leaders of the rebellion came from a martial arts movement; they believed that their practice was spiritual, and that through exercises and practice, they would make themselves supernaturally invulnerable. The Boxer movement spread quite rapidly, centered in an area of [[Shandong province]] that was relatively poor and from which many popular peasant movements had risen in the past of the 19th century. It was, finally, also an area with a strong foreign presence, particularly Germans. The missionaries in Shandong were seen as invaders intruding in China, and Chinese who converted to Christianity were also seen as problematic in society; notably, some became Christians perhaps not for the religion but because there were material benefits to be gained in terms of access to charity, food supplies, and protection as the missionaries were protected by the Qing government under the Treaties.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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The Boxers took it upon themselves to "purify" their communities. Initially, the Boxers directed their efforts towards the Qing government who protected the missionaries. After the suppression of the reforms however, the government became more encouraging of movements such as the Boxers. The governor of Shandong province made a number of proclamations in support of the Boxers.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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==== Siege of Beijing ====<br />
[[File:Troops of the Eight nations alliance 1900.jpg|thumb|321x321px|Troops of the coalition that defeated the Boxer Rebellion, 1900. Photo taken during the subsequent occupation of Beijing.]]<br />
That encouragement led the Boxers to step up their activities and by the late 1890s, they became a bigger and more aggressive movement. In the winter of 1899, they moved out of Shandong province and made their way North towards the treaty port of Tianjian. By the summer of 1900, they marched on Beijing where the Boxers were well-received. Indeed, the empress Cixi -- who was now firmly in control of government -- proclaimed she was on their side. By June of 1900, the Boxers were assieging the diplomatic quarter in the Eastern side of the city of Beijing.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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The siege lasted for 55 days and was only lifted when an international military force (which included Japan, who was seen as an equal partner with the other imperialist powers), fought their way through Beijing to lift the siege through to the middle of August. The Boxers were defeated there, and the Western powers then occupied Beijing. The empress fled from the capital, which culminated into another humiliation for China and left the Qing state once more submitting to the Western powers: a treaty was signed and the empress came back to the capital, but the Boxers were all executed. Under the terms of the [[Boxer Protocol]], China was forced to pay an indemnity to the Western powers, which they could hardly afford, and signaled that the Qing state's days were numbered.<ref name=":030" /><br />
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==The fall of the Empire==<br />
The shock of this final blow following the crushing of the Boxer rebellion gave way to a vast realization, even among the conservative members of the Qing state, that a serious series of reforms would have to be undertaken. Ultimately, although the following decade would be marked with many reforms that just years earlier the Qing would have thought untolerable, these efforts were too little too late and the Qing dynasty would fall in 1912.<ref name=":029">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 31: The Fall of the Empire|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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The most remarkable of these reforms was proclaimed in 1905 and the Confucian examination system was abolished. It was the most important institution and cultural apparatus within China's political system and had existed for several hundred years, marking the delimitation between the educated elite and the common folk.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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Many other reforms that had been rescinded in 1898 were now again put in place. A blueprint to transform the Qing state from an [[absolute monarchy]] to a [[constitutional monarchy]] was studied and developed, and a plan was adopted to create provincial assemblies. These measures, however, were not sufficient to address the situation: even at that time, many in China already felt that reforming the system was no longer a question and revolution was necessary.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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Anti-Manchu ideas also saw a revival at this time of the early 20th century. Around the 1890s, the story of the siege of Yangzhou, which was the last bastion of resistance against the Manchu some hundreds of years earlier, and which the Manchu massacred to make an example of, started circulating in political circles. Among those circles, there was a sense that the Manchu conquerors were in part responsible for the situation in China and that removing them would be one step towards fixing the many problems China was facing. A broader anti-imperialist sentiment was also growing during these years.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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=== Sun Yat-Sen ===<br />
One of the most famous figures of this movement was [[Sun Yat-Sen]] (孫中山, ''Sūnzhōngshān'', Sūn Yìxiān. Cantonese: ''syun¹ jat⁶sin¹'' ), who remains a very popular figure in the [[PRC]] as the "father of modern China." He was born in the Guangdong province and educated partially in [[Hong Kong]] and [[Hawaii]] (before the US occupation). In the 1880s, he began to be attracted to ideas of radical change. By having a position juxtaposed within the traditional culture of China, the colonial province of Hong Kong and the independent (though US-influenced) Hawaii, he believed that the imperial system held China back and a [[Republic]] was needed to modernize China.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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In the 1890s, he started building a revolutionary movement aiming not to reform and adapt the Qing state, but to abolish it entirely. After the defeat of China during the First Sino-Japanese War, the failure of the reforms in 1898, and the failure of the Boxer Rebellion, Sun Yat-Sen's ideas became increasingly popular, and more and more Chinese turned away from ideas of reform and into revolution.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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In the first decade of the 20th century, Sun Yat-Sen put together an umbrella organization, the [[Revolutionary League]] (中国同盟会, ''zhōngguó tóngméng huì'' ) who brought together all anti-Qing factions in the empire under a common program. Furthermore, he travelled extensively in and out of China to speak to Chinese overseas communities and raise money for his revolutionary activities. Some of those activities took the form of violent uprisings against Qing officials around China. None of these, however, were successful and the reputation of the nationalist movement was certainly one of a political movement over a revolutionary movement.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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=== Last emperor of the Qing dynasty ===<br />
The efforts at reforms the Qing state had put in place after the Boxer Rebellion began to stall out after 1908. At that point, both the emperor and the empress Cixi died at the same time. Emperor [[Puyi]] (溥仪, ''pǔyí'') was placed on the throne at the age of two. His conservative uncles exercised power for him and slowed down the reform program, which completely halted the progress previously made, and the dynasty entered a final period of rigidity.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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Within the dynastic system, however, the military sector was one where modernization was becoming increasingly powerful, which had began as far back as the 1880s. Army officers, notably the junior officers, had increasingly been exposed to technology and military improvements from outside, and as such were more receptive to adopting these advancements for themselves. In fact, the Revolutionary League spent a considerable amount of effort to win over junior officers, with many beginning to carry out clandestine operations for the revolutionaries.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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=== Wuhan rebellion ===<br />
In October of 1911, one of these groups in Wuhan plotted bombings to trigger a popular uprising, but their activities were discovered by pure accident. As the state discovered the conspiracy and was preparing to move in on Wuhan to arrest the plotters, the group launched a 'coup' on Wuhan and arrested several officials of the Qing state, mainly from the army, and called upon the people and soldiers to join them. The revolutionaries proclaimed a Republic in Hubei province, independent from the Qing empire. Over the next few weeks, other military units in Central China followed suit and proclaimed their independence as well.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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Sun Yat-Sen was not in China when he received word of the Wuhan rebellion. He set out to return to China by going eastward through Europe instead of the Pacific, returning in December of 1911. Before he came back, the revolutionary movement began to realize they were about to become successful and needed to figure out what would happen to China after that.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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Yuan Shikai, who was previously one of the officials who turned against the reformers of 1898 and took part in the suppression of these reforms, eventually aligned himself with the reformists. In 1911, he was the commander of the military forces in Northern China. In that capacity, he was close to that capital and had access to the Manchu elites. He positioned himself as the middleman between the revolutionaries -- most of them from the military -- and the Qing.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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He negotiated the abdication of the Qing dynasty on behalf of the Republic, but not as a uninterested party. The expectation was that when Sun Yat-Sen returned to China, he would become the President of the new [[Republic of China]]. However, as part of the deal that Yuan negotiated, Sun had to agree to step down as President when the emperor abdicated and allow him to become President instead.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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The situation played out exactly as planned. Sun Yat-Sen returned to China in December 1911 and became President of the new Republic. When the emperor abdicated in February of 1912, Sun stepped down and Yuan was named in his place.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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=== Provisional National Assembly ===<br />
The plan was that Yuan's Presidency would be a provisional one, until a Constitution could be established and institutions established. A National Assembly was elected in 1912 whose task was to produce a Constitution. Accordingly, elections were organized and held and the Revolutionary League, which had been transformed into the Guomindang (better known as the [[Kuomintang]], or KMT, meaning National People's Party), emerged as the clear victor in the new Assembly.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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Yuan Shikai was unwilling to let the Assembly continue, however. He had the representative from the KMT at the provisional National Assembly assassinated. The Assembly still went on as planned, and eventually Yuan dissolved the assembly when it became clear he would lose his privilege. Over the course of a few years, he expelled the KMT delegates and a new Assembly approved a Constitution in which Yuan Shikai was named as President for life.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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=== End of Yuan Shikai's regime ===<br />
He would remain President for three years and by 1916, Yuan was starting to style an imperial dynasty of his own. He had Imperial robes made for himself, surrounded himself with advisors in the Confucian style, and even went to the temple of Heaven in Beijing to perform the imperial duty of sacrifices.<ref name=":029" /> <br />
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This was too much even for his more loyal followers, and this effort collapsed on Yuan. He fled the capital shortly after, and died during the journey back South to his hometown, ostensibly of natural causes.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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Yuan Shikai's period of rule is seen mostly as a further stage in the collapse of political authority in China. His death led to a total breakdown of China and the nascent Republic which had not been able to strengthen its institutions and form a lasting apparatus. From that point on and for over a decade, warlords emerged and ruled over their own parts of the country, carving China among themselves. From 1916 to 1927, there was no effective government over the whole of China.<ref name=":029" /><br />
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==The new culture movement==<br />
With the fall of the Qing dynasty and the imperial order, many began to thoroughly question and renounce the nature of this order. In particular, the Confucian heritage was seen as a major component of the imperial order and an obstacle to a new Chine. In the same years that the Republic fragmented into warlord factions (1916), new ideas also began to emerge and be advocated for. This process lasted throughout the 1910s, and is sometimes called the [[new culture movement]] (新文化运动'', Xīn Wénhuà Yùndòng'').<ref name=":031">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 32: The New Culture Movement and May 4th|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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This movement set out to create a new culture for China, one suited for a Republican China. Central to this was the question of language: Chinese political and elite culture was bound with the use of the classical Chinese language, which was very different from how ordinary people spoke in their day-to-day life. The literary language had been preserved from the writings of Confucius, Mencius and other masters of antiquity, and over time became increasingly alienated from the language of the common people. The new culture movement advocated "Simple language", writing Chinese as it was spoken.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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Likewise, the classical language had embedded in it the core ideas of Confucianism were increasingly seen as oppressive. Over time, the reciprocal nature of Confucian relationships morphed into more authority-based relationships; that of the husband over the wife, or the ruler over the subject, which were seen as dictatorial by the movement. Confucianism came to be seen as one and the same with the oppression of women, peasants and workers who were historically seen as lesser people.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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Several newspapers came to be circulated at this time, with many ideas drawn from Western thinkers who were seen, at that time, as being the most successful countries. Some of those thinkers became very popular in China, even going on tour in the country to teach their ideas (such as [[George Bernard Shaw]] and [[Bertrand Russell]]).<ref name=":031" /><br />
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Other groups emerged as well, perhaps with a less sophisticated program, but who were still influential. [[Anarchism|Anarchists]] were very active in China at this time, drawing from European anarchist movements who were a sizeable faction in the late 19th and early 20th century. Anarchism spread to China from Japan (where it was also an active movement) and Europe, through Chinese students who were exposed to these ideas while living abroad, and who then wrote publications from their host countries which they then sent over to China to be distributed.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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=== World War I ===<br />
The [[First World War]] was taking place while this movement was going on. The period was, in some ways, beneficial for China. In other ways, however, it brought on adverse circumstances. Economically, the war was an opportunity for China as European industry was diverted to a war economy, leaving a void in global demand that Chinese factories (and Japanese factories as well, which were implanted in China) could fill.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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Hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers also travelled to Europe during that time, particularly to France, where they found jobs in abandoned factories as their workers had gone into service. The workers in France became a very significant force; they sent money back home to their family, and in the long-term, had become exposed to the conditions in European factories, the ideas of democracy, education, etc. and of course labor unions too. They brought these ideas back with them to China.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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==== Japanese imperialism in China ====<br />
The end of the war proved to be critical in regards to Sino-Japanese relations. In the late 19th century, China fought a war against Japan in which it had been utterly defeated. In 1905, Japan fought a war against Russia and defeated them too, which was as a remarkable -- if not dramatic -- event in Europe. Japan had also [[Korea#Japanese colonialism|invaded Korea]], furthering their imperial ambitions in Asia. Increasingly, Japan was again setting its sights on China and the Asian mainland in general. When World War I started, Japan saw it as an opportunity for these ambitions. While the European powers were keen to exploit the warlord situation in China for their own gain, they recognized that China was sort of an "equal" imperialized nation, being equally shared by all imperial powers.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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As the European powers were busy with the war at home, the Japanese delivered a letter to the government in 1915, called the 21 Demands. It was a program meant to facilitate Japanese imperialism in China: there, they wanted sepcial economic concessions, being able to place Japanese officials in the Chinese government, and be given a unique status to carve out more of China for themselves. The Chinese government refused the demands, but the pressure was certainly put on them from then on.<ref name=":031" /><ref name=":031" /><br />
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The Japanese fought on the side of the [[First World War#Alliances|Triple Entente]] during the war; they were far from the front, but Germany had possessions in China and more generally in the Pacific, which Japan was able to occupy militarily.<br />
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In 1919, the peace negotiations took place at Versailles and did not favor China. China had also part of the Entente, the victors, but while Japan was rewarded for their support during the war, China wound up being left out. Notably, one argument made during the war was that if colonial nations supported their overlords, they would later be rewarded with greater self-determination. This never came to pass, and for China, this was made clear when the former German territorial concessions were granted to Japan rather than being given back to China.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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This was seen as a betrayal by the Chinese, and when word of this reached Beijing, it instantly sparked demonstrations which became the focal point of what became the May 4th movement: news had come from Paris during the night of May 3rd by telegram.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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===May 4th movement===<br />
On May 4th 1919, thousands of students assembled at Tiananmen Square in Beijing and marched eastward towards the diplomatic quarter. The police blocked the demonstrators there, who then marched to the home of the Foreign Minister. The government was seen as having sold out China by the demonstrators, while in fact the Chinese government had never accepted the terms of the treaty. The demonstrators burned the home of the Minister down. Police arrived and confrontations ensued, and the demonstration was eventually broken up.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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Political tension in the capital persisted to the following day. Officials from Beijing University and the government became involved in the situation, and eventually, the government agreed to the students' demands not to ratify the treaty.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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The movement spread far beyond the capital, and even beyond students. It became a very popular movement, including with Chinese merchants, as one tactic of the movement was the boycott of Japanese goods.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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The May 4th demonstration eventually merged into the New Culture Movement. More importantly, the treaty of Versailles showed the Chinese that Western ideas such as democracy, freedom and individuality, which they promoted, were nothing more than duplicitous lies, and China found itself at the mercy of imperial powers once again, thus realizing -- in some portions of the population, at least -- that they would not be enough to save China and guide it towards a new China.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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In conjunction with these events, other developments outside of China were also taking place, and word of these began to find their way in the political climate of China. One of them is the [[October Revolution]], which began in 1917. It had a tremendous impact in China, with word of it spreading in China by spring of 1918.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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For one, the Tsarist system was perhaps the closest parallel to the Qing dynasty; both had the same powers, ruling over a large territory. When the Bolsheviks took power and denounced the duplicitous diplomacy of the Western powers, this message was very well-received by progressives in China.<ref name=":031" /><br />
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==The communist party (1921-1937)==<br />
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=== Founding of the Communist Party of China ===<br />
The [[Communist Party of China]] (CPC) was founded in Shanghai in 1921, as a result of a process that had been going on for a number of years: [[Marxism|Marxist]] study groups had existed in China for several years, and had links to workers' organization and other socialist grups. As the [[USSR]] had established itself at the beginning of the 1920s and the [[Third Internationale]] was formed, the Soviet Union sent out agents abroad to assist in the process of revolutionary organization in other countries. In China, agents of the Internationale were involved both with the establishment of the CPC and the reorganization of Sun Yat-Sen's KMT.<ref name=":032">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 33: The Chinese Communists, 1921-1937|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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The advisors who came to China worked with the Marxist study groups, began to establish a national organization and suggested a programme and organizational structure for the party. Finally, in 1921, they assisted with the convening of the [[1st National Congress of the Communist Party of China|first party Congress]]. Only a dozen or so representatives assisted to this Congress as not many people could easily travel to Shanghai. [[Mao Zedong]] (毛泽东, ''Máo Zé dōng'') assisted to this first Congress, but was not yet a very well-known figure at the time.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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=== First United Front ===<br />
The communist advisors to the CPC and KMT put forward an analysis of the situation in China which called for a united front between the two factions. The KMT, which was still under the leadership of Sun Yat-Sen, was reorganized along the disciplined lines of the Bolsheviks, which made it a much more effective organization than it previously was. This did not mean that the KMT embraced Marxism-Leninism, but it did help Sun Yat-Sen open up to some form of collaboration with the CPC.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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The first united front was put together, and under these terms, individual members of the CPC could join the KMT as well, and even serve as officers within units of the nationalist party. Many did join the KMT and participated within political activities or rose to cadre positions, including Mao himself who became leader of the Peasant Bureau within the KMT.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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The KMT was certainly not Marxist or even communist, but working with the CPC -- who was still quite small at that time -- was beneficial to them, as the communist organizers brought many members to the KMT and did diligent work. It was also beneficial to the CPC, who was able to gain experience and members through this arrangement.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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Sun Yat-Sen died in 1925, which marked a turning point for the united front. A leadership vacuum opened up, and it took over a year to find a successor, [[Chiang Kai-shek|Chiang Kai-Shek]] (蒋介石, Jiang Jieshi). He came from a military career, and had been sent by Sun Yat-Sen to study in Russia and learn about the Revolution, the Red Army, and their system of governance. He was very impressed by the successes of the Bolsheviks, but remained a staunch [[Anti-communism|anti-communist]]. As the commandant of the nationalist military academy outside of Guanzhou, he established a network of friendships and loyalties within the Nationalist Army. There, he used these loyalties to emerge as the new leader of the KMT.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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==== Chiang Kai-shek and the Northern Expedition ====<br />
In 1926, Chiang Kai-Shek found himself in a strong position within the KMT to reunify China. He undertook the [[Northern Expedition]] that same year, which was very successful. Dr. Ken Hammond notes that in some ways, Chiang Kai-shek could be seen at this time as one of the many warlords that vied for control of China. Regardless, the Nationalist Army, departing from Guandong Province, marched North and then East towards Nanjing. Over the course of a few months, they had gained control of all of Southern China and absorbed warlords' troops into the Nationalist Army. Some of this control was gained through military conquest, but some negotiations were also made to bring some warlords under the umbrella of the KMT. In other instances, Chiang Kai-shek simply bribed them and bought their loyalty.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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The Northern Expedition succeeded by the spring of 1927, getting all of Southern China into KMT hands. In April of that year, the Nationalist forces reached the outskirts of Shanghai. At that point, Chiang Kai-Shek made a very critical decision; up until then, he had reluctantly maintained the United Front, as he was not strong enough to repudiate this arrangement previously.<ref name=":032" /> <br />
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==== Breaking down of the First United Front ====<br />
By April 1927, as the KMT emerged stronger than before, Chiang decided to eliminate the communists, destroying them as a political force. He did not march into the city however, but let CPC organizers within the city stage an uprising, who thought the KMT army would help them. Instead, Chiang Kai-shek's army remained outside the city, and the uprising was suppressed by a combination of troops from the foreign powers and organized crime organizations. They destroyed the communist movement in Shanghai: many communists were arrested and executed, along with workers who may or may not have taken part in the uprising. Several militants, of course, also died in the fighting. This bloody suppression of the uprising in Shanghai signalled the end of the United Front. A left-wing group in the KMT continued to align itself with the CPC, but were reined in shortly after.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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The CPC found itself in a difficult situation; their principal political orientation had been to organize the workers, taking from Marx's theories of the [[proletariat]]. The organizational base of the party had been destroyed, however: Shanghai was the most important location, but soon the CPC was systematically driven out of other cities and out of urban areas.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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To survive this crisis, Mao Zedong, as leader of the Peasant Bureau in the KMT, had spent a lot of time in the countryside and away from his home province of Hunan. What he saw there were large peasant movements, not unlike the peasant uprisings in China's history, but in a modern context -- a modern peasantry which could benefit from a modern ideology. He saw peasant movements as a very powerful force, and, as he put forward to his comrades, they could either try to lead it, or get out of their way before it sweeps everything away.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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These ideas had been marginal until this time, but were accepted over a few years by the CPC. Initially, when the party was driven away from the cities, the remaining organizers and the advisors from the Internationale called for a greater revolution, and urged for communists to launch insurrections around the country, which led to a series of disastrous uprisings. Mao was drawn into one such uprising; he was ordered to lead a peasant army to take over a city in Central China, which they held for a few days before being driven out by the KMT, forcing Mao's army to the mountains of Jangxi Province. There, with the remnants of the CPC forces, he put forward the model for the [[rural base area]]. In the early 1930s, Mao, along with [[Zhu De]] and [[Zhou Enlai]] worked with millions of peasants in Jiangxi to carry out experiments in land reforms, the family structure, and other proposals in peasant society.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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In any case, Chiang Kai-Shek went on to continue the unification of China throughout the 1920s. During the second half of the Northern Expedition however, Chiang ran into trouble with the Japanese, notably turning into military confrontations in some places, where Japan had a presence. Chiang, however, considered that his main enemy were not the Japanese but the Chinese communists, and was willing to ignore the activities of the Japanese Army to focus on the communists.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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=== The Long March ===<br />
The base area of the CPC in Jiangxi became the focal point of Chiang's efforts, and he began a series of encirclement campaigns there, blockading the base area with troops and slowly closing the ring. The first of these efforts were defeated by the communists who drove off the KMT forces. Chiang kept the pressure up, and began to receive military advice from the [[Nazi Party]] who had come to power in 1933. By 1934, it became apparent that the latest encirclement campaign was going to be successful. CPC leaders thus took the decision to evacuate the province, leading to the [[Long March]].<ref name=":032" /><br />
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In October 1934, they decided to try and reach another base area in Yan'an (延安, Yán'ān) province far up North, without much of a plan on how they would get there. 115,000 people broke out of the base area at Jiangxi, leaving behind a small contigent to keep the KMT forces occupied. Over the next year, the troops walked over a thousand kilometers, crossing mountain ranges, swamps and deep river gorges as they were being pursued and harassed by nationalist forces. More than 100,000 of the communist forces were lost in one way or another during the March.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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Early in the course of the Long March, Mao Zedong was named Chairman of the party, a position he would hold without interruption until his death in 1976. The communists reached the base area at Yan'an at the end of 1935, and set the stage for the latter part of the [[Chinese Revolution]], which is called the Yan'an Era. There, the CPC had a new area to experiment with organizational methods.<ref name=":032" /><br />
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==War and revolution==<br />
In 1936, an opportunity arose to form the [[Second United Front]] to resist the Japanese invader. At that time, the southern part of Shanxi Province (itself in North China) was under the control of Zhang Xueliang, a military strongman who was part of the KMT. His father had been a warlord in Northern China who was assassinated by the Japanese in 1928. This made Zhang inclined to take a strong stand against Japanese aggression, and he perceived Chiang Kai-shek's as being unwilling to push them out.<ref name=":033">{{Citation|author=Dr. Ken Hammond|year=2004|title=From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese history|chapter=Lecture 34: War and Revolution|publisher=The Teaching Company}}</ref><br />
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Chiang Kai-shek was placed under house arrest during a visit, and Zhang then sought out to invite CPC representatives, who sent Zhou Enlai. An agreement was then reached to form a united front to resist the Japanese invasion. Chiang Kai-shek was then released upon the conclusion of this accord and placed Zhang under house arrest in turn, in which he would remain until the end of the 1990s as he was taken to Taiwan when the KMT fled there.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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=== Start of the Second Sino-Japanese war ===<br />
In 1931, Japan invaded China in the continuation of their imperialist ambitions in Asia. They first occupied Manchuria and created a puppet state there which they called [[Manchuko|Manchukuo]], with the last of the Manchu emperor, Puyi, named as its ruler. In July 1937, Japan then started a full scale invasion into the rest of China.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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The invasion of China was pursued relentlessly along two basic lines: part of the Japanese Imperial Army moved from Manchukuo down south, crossing the Great Wall and into Beijing down to Wuhan. The second front started at the city of Shanghai, which was at the time a very international city, home to Statesians, French and British citizens. In the Fall of 1937, the Japanese troops stationed there attacked the Chinese (western) side of Shanghai, and then followed a course west, up the Yangtze river.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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The Japanese plan was to let both groups meet at Wuhan, which they expected to happen fairly quickly in a blitzkrieg invasion. This did not work out however, as the resistance put up by the Chinese was much more intense than the Japanese had anticipated.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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Nonetheless, the nationalist government was forced to retreat from Nanjing to Wuhan, and eventually out of Wuhan to Chongqing. When the Japanese reached Nanjing, which was the KMT's capital, they committed the [[Rape of Nanjing]]: hundreds of thousands of people were killed and many women were raped.<ref name=":033" /> To this day, the Japanese government has not apologized for it and formally denied the massace even took place in 1990.<ref>{{Web citation|title=Nanking Massacre: the untold story|url=https://depts.washington.edu/triolive/quest/2007/TTQ07032/yuen/denials.html|archive-url=https://archive.ph/wip/gH66B}}</ref><br />
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While this event was meant to terrorize the Chinese, it actually galvanized the resistance. After the first two years of the war, the front stabilized. The KMT had their main center of operations in Chongqing and another in Kunming. The Japanese did not occupy all of South China, and pockets of KMT forces continued to operate there long after the initial invasion.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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In the North, the CPC had their base area in Yan'an from which they pursued a vast campaign of guerilla warfare across all of North China. During the daytime, the Imperial Japanese Army could certainly extend their presence but at night, except for the areas along the main railway lines and large towns, much of the countryside was in the hands of communist guerillas, who carried out operations to harass and tie down lots of Japanese troops.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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This pattern persisted for several years, with Japan occupying much of China but unable to push their conquest further and achieve total control of their occupied territories. Their invasion of China, which was designed to help them solve their economic and population problems at home, proved to be a very counter-productive endeavour.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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=== End of the war and proclamation of the People's Republic ===<br />
By 1944, it became clear that the defeat of Japan was inevitable despite their victories in 1941-42. In anticipation of the US and the Soviets invading the Japanese islands culminating in its surrender, Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT pursued a static strategy, without launching any major offensives and fighting mostly along defensive lines. Chiang Kai-shek had received a large amount of military aid from the US during the war, but he refused to use it, instead stockpiling it for the civil war against the CPC.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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As for the CPC, they saw the coming end of the war as setting the stage for a revolutionary confrontation between their movement and the nationalist government. The anti-Japanese resistance, which the CPC had spearheaded, had won the communists great support from the Chinese population, which helped to spread popular support for the Chinese Red Army and the CPC in general. Meanwhile, they were able to project an image of Chiang Kai-shek as corrupt and unpatriotic.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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When Japan surrendered in September of 1945, a period ensued in China where efforts were made to negotiate a coalition government for after the war. The US sent representatives to bring leaders from both factions together but, while that was going on, a lot of maneuvering was taking place on the ground. The Soviets had liberated Manchuria in 1945 shortly before Japan surrendered and in doing so passed some aid to the communist forces.<ref name=":033" /><br />
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Meanwhile, the USA was turning over lots of Japanese arms to the KMT. As such, although negotiations were taking place, both parties were strenghtening their military capabilities in preparation for a civil war. When the negotiations broke down by the end of 1946, full-scale fighting broke out between the CPC and KMT. The KMT drove the communists out of their base at Yan'an but this proved to be fairly meaningless, as the CPC had most of their support base in North China and Manchuria, which quickly joined them in the fight.<ref name=":033" /><br />
<br />
In 1948, a battle took place at the Huai river, involving more than a million soldiers combined. The CPC emerged victorious from it and broke the KMT army. Political support for the KMT disintegrated due to their poor image, and Chiang Kai-shek began to withdraw his forces to the island of Taiwan. This was preceded first by an uprising of the indigenous Taiwanese population who refused the KMT occupation. There, the KMT committed a massacre of more than 20,000 Taiwanese in order to pacify the island. Martial law was imposed and stayed in effect for over 40 years.<ref name=":033" /><br />
<br />
In 1949, the remaining nationalist forces in mainland China were completely broken down and the remains of the KMT fled to Taiwan entirely. In April, the communist forces entered Beijing after negotiating a bloodless surrender following a long siege. Over the summer of that year, as communist forces advanced across China, the leadership settled in Beijing and began to prepare establishing a new government. On October 1st, the People's Republic of China was proclaimed by Mao Zedong at Tiananmen.<ref name=":033" /><br />
<br />
== Further reading ==<br />
<br />
* [[Library:An Outline History of China]]<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references /></div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Belt_and_Road_Initiative&diff=64353Belt and Road Initiative2024-03-18T12:08:14Z<p>CriticalResist: captioned map</p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:BRI agreements.png|alt=All countries that either attended a BRI summit (yellow) or who signed cooperation documents related to the BRI (red)|thumb|Countries currently in the Belt and Road Initiative (red) and countries which attended a BRI summit (yellow)]]<br />
The '''Belt and Road Initiative''' ('''BRI''') is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the [[China#Governance|Chinese government]] in 2013 to invest in nearly 70 countries and international organizations. The BRI was initially proposed by China in [[Kazakhstan]].<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Xinhua|title=Officials, experts say deepened China-Central Asia cooperation on Belt and Road benefits region, world|date=2023-05-18|url=https://english.news.cn/20230518/864fd60c483c49b0bf4386affd74ae1d/c.html|retrieved=2023-06-28}}</ref> It is considered a centerpiece of [[Xi Jinping]]'s foreign policy.<ref>{{News citation|title=President Xi proposes Silk Road economic belt|url=https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013xivisitcenterasia/2013-09/07/content_16951811.htm}}</ref><br />
<br />
The BRI is one of the many factors which is leading to [[de-dollarization]]<ref>https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2018/04/09/the-de-dollarization-in-china/</ref> the decline of the influence of the [[United States imperialism|US empire]],<ref>{{News citation|journalist=[[Danny Haiphong]]|title=U.S. imperial Decline and the Belt and Road Initiative: The Most Important Global Struggle of the Century|url=https://blackagendareport.com/us-imperial-decline-and-belt-and-road-initiative-most-important-global-struggle-century|newspaper=[[Black Agenda Report]]}}</ref> and enhanced economic growth of [[Non-Aligned Movement|non-aligned countries]].<ref>{{News citation|title=China’s BRI: The REAL Story! Symbol of its Inevitable Rise? With Hussein Askary!|url=https://youtu.be/OGGItLIKL8g}}</ref> It has also furthered the strength and helps to carry out what was established in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This has lead to over 40 countries partaking in the BRI's environmentally friendly development.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Xinhua|title=(CPC Congress) Official hails positive progress in building green Belt and Road|date=2022-10-21|url=https://english.news.cn/20221021/3510edb82fc64407bd423c5ad72a8080/c.html|retrieved=2023-06-28}}</ref><br />
<br />
In 2021, [[Republic of Cuba|Cuba]] has joined the BRI project for the purpose of expanding its telecommunications and green energy industries.<ref>{{News citation|journalist=|date=2021-10-18|title=Cuba Formally Joins China's Belt and Road Energy Partnership|url=https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Cuba-Formally-Joins-Chinas-Belt-and-Road-Energy-Partnership-20211018-0016.html|newspaper=[[TeleSUR]]|archive-url=|archive-date=|retrieved=}}</ref> Syria has also joined.<ref>{{News citation|date=2022-12-01|title=Syria Officially Joins China's Belt and Road, Seeking Lifeline to Defy U.S. Sanctions|url=https://www.newsweek.com/syria-officially-joins-chinas-belt-road-seeking-lifeline-defy-us-sanctions-1668849}}</ref> In February 2022, [[Argentine Republic|Argentina]] joined the BRI.<ref>{{News citation|date=2022-02-06|title=Argentina officially joins BRI in major boost for China-Latin America cooperation|url=https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202202/1251555.shtml|newspaper=Global Times|retrieved=2022-02-08}}</ref><ref>{{News citation|journalist=[[Benjamin Norton]]|date=2022-02-12|title=Trapped in IMF debt, Argentina turns to Russia and joins China's Belt & Road|url=https://youtu.be/NZzATH_759s|newspaper=[[Multipolarista]]}}</ref> Total, this has lead the BRI to have three-fourths of nations in the world participating in it.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Xinhua|title=Belt and Road Initiative participated by three-fourths of world's countries: FM|date=2023-03-07|url=https://english.news.cn/20230307/bb6a8edabb984f35bcbf2930e8649ad8/c.html|retrieved=2023-06-28}}</ref> In total, this has caused 151 countries to sign agreements with China for their mutual benefit.<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|newspaper=Xinhua|title=Belt and Road Initiative promotes economic growth, improves people's lives: spokesperson|date=2023-03-03|url=https://english.news.cn/20230303/42d3cefc3f884db4a5d2833ca9e89141/c.html|retrieved=2023-06-28}}</ref><br />
<br />
The participating countries have extracted great benefit from being members in the BRI.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Xinhua|title=Belt and Road Initiative a high-quality public good: Chinese FM|date=2023-03-07|url=https://english.news.cn/20230307/445535cfeeb74f098e93ae9407a798a6/c.html|retrieved=2023-06-28}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Xinhua|title=Chinese political advisors discuss people-to-people connectivity along Belt and Road|date=2022-11-25|url=https://english.news.cn/20221125/8441fd86e8f94a2eb9d57b3def178444/c.html|retrieved=2023-06-28}}</ref> It has created 420,000 jobs and lifted 40 million people out of poverty.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Xinhua|title=Belt and Road Initiative creates 420,000 jobs for participant countries: FM|date=2023-03-07|url=https://english.news.cn/20230307/83163d3aca13492c9ffdfd7855c8fbbd/c.html|retrieved=2023-06-28}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Xinhua|title=Belt and Road Initiative a key platform for new era of international cooperation: Thai ambassador|date=2023-03-08|url=https://english.news.cn/20230308/fc38b17e42aa43628f51b35af26fbca7/c.html|retrieved=2023-06-28}}</ref> The BRI has also lead to deeper ties between China and other participating countries.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Xinhua|title=China, Belt and Road countries enjoy closer trade ties|date=2023-03-02|url=https://english.news.cn/20230302/3b7a7001402c4b46a40ff4fd0ae7f25e/c.html|retrieved=2023-06-28}}</ref><br />
<br />
In total, China has developed over 200 contacts with 152 countries as part of the BRI.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=Xinhua|title=BRI benefits partner nations with vast opportunities|date=2023-11-20|url=https://english.news.cn/20231120/80a7cb0451b744a884775b19ad1df8ae/c.html|retrieved=2023-11-20}}</ref><br />
<br />
Trade between China and BRI member countries reached 21 trillion USD between 2013 and October 2023. Direct Chinese investments in BRI member countries reached 270 billion USD during the time period.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=The State Council of the People’s Republic of China|title=China releases document on vision, actions for Belt and Road cooperation in next decade|date=2023-11-24|url=https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202311/24/content_WS65600f67c6d0868f4e8e1936.html|retrieved=2023-12-4}}</ref><br />
<br />
==Reactions==<br />
The BRI has been demonized by Western [[bourgeois media]] on the basis that it's a [[Chinese_debt-trap_myth|"debt trap"]]<ref>{{News citation|title=China's debt-trap diplomacy|url=https://thehill.com/opinion/international/551337-chinas-debt-trap-diplomacy|newspaper=The Hill}}</ref> or an example of so-called "Chinese imperialism," but these claims serve only propaganda purposes and are not founded in evidence.<ref>{{News citation|title=Debunking the Myth of ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’|url=https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/08/debunking-myth-debt-trap-diplomacy|newspaper=Chatham House}}</ref><ref>{{News citation|title=The Chinese 'Debt Trap' Is a Myth|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/02/china-debt-trap-diplomacy/617953/|newspaper=The Atlantic}}</ref><ref>{{News citation|title=Catagorically Debunking the Claim that China is Imperialist|url=https://orinocotribune.com/catagorically-debunking-the-claim-that-china-is-imperialist/}}</ref> Guo Weimin, the spokesman for the initial meeting of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, called such claims, "noises" and rejected them.<ref name=":0" /><br />
<br />
In response to concerns, the Communist Party of China has sought to improve reporting standards and transparency with their BRI projects so as to increase trust with member countries.<ref>{{News citation|title=China’s response to Belt and Road backlash|url=https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2018/12/15/chinas-response-to-belt-and-road-backlash/}}</ref><br />
<br />
Anti-imperialist journalist Richard Medhurst has reported that China's BRI project is helping to rebuild the economies that have been destroyed by Western wars and sanctions.<ref>{{News citation|date=2022-01-25|title=Syria Officially Joins China's Belt and Road Initiative {{!}} BRI|url=https://youtu.be/b8bFjhiwvnw}}</ref><br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<br />
<references /><br />
[[Category:Belt and Road Initiative]]<br />
[[Category:Pages to be protected]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Library:Elementary_principles_of_philosophy&diff=64267Library:Elementary principles of philosophy2024-03-16T18:52:19Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Library work<br />
| title = Elementary principles of philosophy<br />
| author = Georges Politzer<br />
|publisher=International Publishers|edition_date=1976| type = Book<br />
|source=[https://annas-archive.org/md5/5212d271f108a89b4dbd54b658b4fbda anna's archive]|audiobook=[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrodPcAMP2OsMmlF6pGphTSKU1z03GH5N youtube audiobook]| published = February 1946 in France<br />
}}<br />
''This book features control questions available [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions|here]].''<br />
<br />
== Preface by Maurice Le Goas ==<br />
This elementary textbook reproduces the notes taken by one of the students of [[Georges Politzer]], during the classes taught by him at the Workers' University ''(l'Université Ouvrière)'' in the school year 1935-1936. In order to understand its character and scope, it is first necessary to specify the aim and method of our teacher. <br />
<br />
We know that the Workers' University was founded in 1932 by a small group of professors to teach [[Marxism|Marxist]] science to manual [[Proletariat|workers]] and to give them a method of reasoning that would allow them to understand our times and to guide their actions, as much in their technique as in the political and social fields.<br />
<br />
From the very beginning, Georges Politzer took on the task of teaching Marxist philosophy, [[dialectical materialism]], at the Workers' University: a task all the more necessary as official teaching continued to ignore or distort this philosophy.<br />
<br />
None of those who had the privilege of attending these courses – he spoke each year before a large audience of people of all ages and professions, but dominated by young workers – will forget the deep impression that everyone felt before this big redheaded young man, so enthusiastic and learned, so conscientious and fraternal, so attentive to bringing an arid and ungrateful subject to an inexperienced audience.<br />
<br />
His authority imposed on his class a pleasant discipline, which knew how to be severe, but always remained just, and there was emanating from his person such a power of life, such a radiance that he was admired and loved by all his pupils.<br />
<br />
In order to make himself understood, Politzer first removed from his vocabulary all philosophical slang, all the technical terms that only the initiated could hear. He wanted to use only simple words known to all. When he was forced to use a particular term, he did not fail to explain it at length using familiar examples. If, in discussions, one of his students used learned words, he would take it back and mock it with the biting irony that was familiar to all who approached him.<br />
<br />
He wanted to be simple and clear and always appealed to common sense, without ever sacrificing the accuracy and truthfulness of the ideas and theories he put forward. He knew how to make his lessons extremely lively by involving the audience in discussions before and after the lesson. At the end of each lesson, he would give what he called one or two control questions, which were designed to summarize the lesson or apply the content to a particular topic. Students were not required to cover the topic, but many did and brought a written assignment with them at the beginning of the next lesson. He would then ask who had completed the assignment, raise his hand, and select a few of us to read our text and complete it with oral explanations if necessary. Politzer would criticize or praise and provoke a brief discussion among the students, and then he would conclude by learning from the discussion. This lasted about half an hour and allowed those who had missed the previous class to fill in the gap and relate it to what they had learned before; it also allowed the teacher to see how well it had been understood; he insisted on delicate or obscure points if necessary. <br />
<br />
He would then begin the day's lesson, which lasted about an hour; then the students would ask questions about what had just been said. These questions were generally interesting and insightful, and Politzer would take the opportunity to clarify and rephrase the essence of the lesson from a different perspective.<br />
<br />
Georges Politzer, who had a thorough knowledge of his subject and an intelligence of admirable flexibility, was concerned above all with the reactions of his audience: he took the general "temperature" each time and constantly checked the degree of assimilation of his students. He was also followed by them with passionate interest. He helped to train thousands of activists, many of whom are now in "responsible" positions.<br />
<br />
We, who understood the value of this teaching and who thought of all those who could not hear it, and especially our provincial comrades, wanted the publication of his lectures. He promised to think about it, but, in the midst of his immense work, he never found the time to carry out this project.<br />
<br />
Then, during my second year of philosophy at the Workers' University, where they had created a higher course, I had the opportunity to ask Politzer to correct some homework for me, and I gave him, at his request, my course notebooks. He found them well done, and I suggested that he write the lessons of the elementary course according to my notes. He encouraged me to do so, promising to review and correct them. Unfortunately, he could not find the time. His occupations being more and more heavy, he left the upper course of philosophy to our friend René Maublanc. I informed him of our plans and asked him to review the first lessons I had written. He eagerly accepted and encouraged me to finish this work which we were then to present to Georges Politzer. But the war came: Politzer was to die a heroic death in the struggle against the [[German Reich (1933–1945)|Hitlerian occupier]].<br />
<br />
Although our professor was no longer there to finalize a work he had approved and encouraged, we thought it would be useful to publish it according to my lecture notes.<br />
<br />
Georges Politzer, who began his philosophy course at the Workers' University each year by establishing the true meaning of the word [[materialism]] and protesting against the slanderous deformations that some people subjected him to, energetically recalled that the materialist philosopher is not lacking in ideals and that he is ready to fight to make this ideal triumph. Since then he has been able to prove it by his sacrifice, and his heroic death illustrates this initial course, in which he affirmed the union, in Marxism, of theory and practice. It is not useless to insist on this devotion to an ideal, this abnegation and this high moral value at a time when, once again, one dares to present Marxism as "a doctrine which transforms man into a machine or an animal barely superior to the gorilla or the chimpanzee" (Lenten Sermon at Notre-Dame de Paris, pronounced, on February 18, 1945, by the R. P. Panici.).<br />
<br />
We can never protest enough against such outrages to the memory of our comrades. Let us only remind those who have the audacity to pronounce them the example of Georges Politzer, Gabriel Péri, Jacques Solomon, Jacques Decour, who were Marxists and who professed at the Université Ouvrière de Paris: all good comrades, simple, generous; fraternal, who did not hesitate to devote a good part of their time to come to a lost neighborhood to teach the workers philosophy, political economy, history or science. <br />
<br />
The Workers' University was dissolved in 1939. It reappeared, after the Liberation, under the name ''New University''. A new team of dedicated professors, taking over from those who had been shot, came to resume the interrupted work.<br />
<br />
Nothing can encourage us more in this essential task than to pay tribute to one of the founders and animators of the Workers' University, and no tribute seems to us more just and useful than to publish Georges Politzer's ''Elementary principles of philosophy''.<br />
<div style='text-align:right;width:90%;'>''Maurice Le Goas.''</div><br />
<br />
== The philosophical problems ==<br />
=== Introduction ===<br />
==== Why should we study philosophy? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
In the course of this work, we propose to present and explain the elementary principles of materialist philosophy.<br />
<br />
Why is this? Because Marxism is intimately linked to a philosophy and a method: those of dialectical materialism. It is therefore indispensable to study this philosophy and this method in order to understand Marxism and to refute the arguments of bourgeois theories as much as to undertake an effective political struggle.<br />
<br />
Indeed, Lenin said: "Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. "(Lenin: [[Library:What is to be done?|What is to be done?]]) This means, first of all: it is necessary to link theory with [[Praxis|practice]].<br />
<br />
''What is practice?'' It is the act of realizing. For example, industry, agriculture realize (i.e., put into reality) certain theories (chemical, physical or biological theories).<br />
<br />
''What is theory?'' It is the knowledge of the things we want to achieve.<br />
<br />
We can be practical only — but then we realize by routine. We can be theoretical only — but then what we conceive is often impossible to achieve. So there has to be a connection between theory and practice. The whole question is to know what this theory should be and how it should relate to practice.<br />
<br />
We think that the worker activist needs a method of analysis and reasoning that is just in order to be able to carry out a just revolutionary action. That he needs a method that is not a dogma giving him ready-made solutions, but a method that takes into account facts and circumstances that are never the same, a method that never separates theory from practice, reasoning from life. Now this method is contained in the philosophy of dialectical materialism, the basis of Marxism, which we propose to explain.<br />
<br />
==== Is the study of philosophy a difficult thing? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
It is generally thought that the study of philosophy is for workers a difficult thing, requiring special knowledge. It must be admitted that the way in which bourgeois textbooks are written is well done to confirm these ideas and can only repel them. <br />
<br />
We do not intend to deny the difficulties involved in the study in general, and in the study of philosophy in particular; but these difficulties are perfectly surmountable, and they come above all from the fact that they are new things for many of our readers. <br />
<br />
From the outset, we will, moreover, by making things clearer, call upon them to review certain definitions of words that are distorted in everyday language.<br />
<br />
==== What is philosophy? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Vulgarly, we understand by, philosopher: either the one who lives in the clouds, or the one who takes things in their good side, the one who does not "worry". But, on the contrary, the philosopher is the one who wants to give precise answers to certain questions, and, if we consider that philosophy wants to give an explanation to the problems of the universe (where does the world come from? where are we going? etc.), we see, therefore, that the philosopher is concerned with many things, and, contrary to what is said, "cares a lot". <br />
<br />
We will therefore say, in order to define philosophy, that it wants to explain the universe, nature, that it is ''the study of the most general problems''. Less general problems are studied by the sciences. Philosophy is therefore an extension of the sciences in the sense that it is based on the sciences and ''depends on them''. <br />
<br />
We immediately add that Marxist philosophy provides a method for solving all problems and that this method comes under what is called: materialism.<br />
<br />
==== What is the materialist philosophy? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Here again, there is a confusion that we must immediately denounce; vulgarly speaking, the materialist is the one who only thinks of enjoying material pleasures. By playing on the word materialism — which contains the word ''matter'' — we have thus come to give it a completely false meaning. <br />
<br />
By studying materialism - in the scientific sense of the word - we are going to give it back its true meaning; being materialist does not prevent us, as we shall see, from having an ideal and from fighting to make it triumph. <br />
<br />
We have said that philosophy wants to give an explanation to the most general problems of the world. But, in the history of humanity, this explanation has not always been the same. <br />
<br />
The first men did try to explain nature, the world, but they did not succeed. What makes it possible to explain the world and the phenomena that surround us are the sciences, and the discoveries that have allowed the sciences to progress are very recent. <br />
<br />
The ignorance of the first men was therefore an obstacle to their research. This is why, in the course of history, because of this ignorance, we see ''religions'' arise, which also want to explain the world, but by supernatural forces. This is an anti-scientific explanation. But as, little by little, over the centuries, science will develop, men will try to explain the world by material facts based on scientific experiments, and it is from there, from this desire to explain things by science, that materialist philosophy is born. <br />
<br />
In the following pages, we are going to study what materialism is, but, from now on, we must remember that ''materialism is nothing other than the scientific explanation of the universe''. <br />
<br />
By studying the history of materialist philosophy, we will see how bitter and difficult the struggle against ignorance has been. It must be noted that this struggle is not yet over, since materialism and ignorance continue to exist side by side, side by side. <br />
<br />
It is at the heart of this struggle that Marx and Engels intervened. Understanding the importance of the great discoveries of the nineteenth century, they enabled materialist philosophy to make enormous progress in the scientific explanation of the universe. This is how dialectical materialism was born. They were the first to understand that the laws that govern the world can also explain the workings of societies; they formulated the famous theory of historical materialism. <br />
<br />
In this book, we propose to study first materialism, then dialectical materialism and finally historical materialism. But, above all, we want to establish the relations between materialism and Marxism.<br />
<br />
==== What is the relationship between materialism and Marxism? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We can summarize them as follows: <br />
<br />
# The philosophy of materialism constitutes the basis of Marxism.<br />
# This materialist philosophy which wants to bring a scientific explanation to the problems of the world progresses, in the course of history, at the same time as the sciences. Consequently, Marxism stems from the sciences, rests on them and evolves with them.<br />
# Before Marx and Engels, there were, on several occasions and in different forms, materialistic philosophies. But in the nineteenth century, with the sciences taking a great step forward, Marx and Engels renewed this ancient materialism from the modern sciences and gave us the ''modern'' materialism, which is called ''dialectical materialism'', and which forms the basis of Marxism.<br />
<br />
We see from these few explanations that the philosophy of materialism, contrary to what is said, has a history. This history is intimately linked to the history of science. Marxism, based on materialism, did not come out of one man's brain. It is the culmination, the continuation of ancient materialism, which was already very advanced in Diderot. Marxism is the flowering of materialism developed by the Encyclopedists of the 18th century, enriched by the great discoveries of the 19th century. Marxism is a living theory, and to show right away how it sees problems, we will take an example that everyone knows: the problem of class struggle. <br />
<br />
What do people think about this issue? Some think that the defense of bread dispenses with political struggle. Others think that it is enough to punch in the street, denying the need for organization. Still others claim that only political struggle will bring a solution to this issue. <br />
<br />
For the Marxist, class struggle includes: <br />
<br />
# An economic struggle. <br />
# A political struggle.<br />
# An ideological struggle. <br />
<br />
The problem must therefore be posed simultaneously on these three terrains: <br />
<br />
# One cannot fight for bread without fighting for peace, without defending freedom and without defending all the ideas that serve the struggle for these objectives.<br />
# The same is true in the political struggle, which since Marx has become a true science: one is obliged to take into account both the economic situation and ideological currents in order to wage such a struggle.<br />
# As for the ideological struggle, which manifests itself through propaganda, in order for it to be effective, one must take into account the economic and political situation. <br />
<br />
We see, therefore, that all these problems are intimately linked and, therefore, that no decision can be taken in front of any aspect of this great problem of class struggle - in a strike, for example. - without taking into consideration every aspect of the problem and the whole problem itself. <br />
<br />
It is therefore the one who is capable of fighting on all terrains that will give the movement the best direction. <br />
<br />
This is how a Marxist understands this problem of class struggle. Now, in the ''ideological'' struggle that we have to wage every day, we are faced with problems that are difficult to solve: immortality of the soul, existence of God, origins of the world, etc. It is the dialectical materialism that will give us a method of reasoning, that will allow us to solve all these problems and, as well, to unveil all the campaigns of falsification of Marxism, which pretend to complete and renew it.<br />
<br />
==== Bourgeois campaigns against Marxism ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
These attempts at falsification are based on a wide variety of bases. One seeks to set against Marxism the socialist authors of the pre-Marxist period (before Marx). This is how we very often see the "utopians" used against Marx. Others use Proudhon; others draw on the revisionists of before 1914 (though masterfully refuted by Lenin). But what must be emphasized above all is the campaign of silence that the bourgeoisie is waging against Marxism. It has done everything in particular to prevent materialist philosophy from being known in its Marxist form. Particularly striking in this respect is the whole of philosophical teaching as it is given in France. <br />
<br />
Philosophy is taught in secondary schools. But one can follow all this teaching without ever learning that there is a materialist philosophy elaborated by Marx and Engels. When, in philosophy textbooks, we talk about materialism (because we have to talk about it), we always talk about Marxism and materialism ''separately''. Marxism, in general, is presented only as a political doctrine, and when historical materialism is spoken of, the philosophy of materialism is not mentioned; in short, all of dialectical materialism is ignored. <br />
<br />
This situation does not only exist in schools and high schools: it is exactly the same in Universities. The most characteristic fact is that one can be a "specialist" in philosophy in France, with the highest diplomas awarded by French universities, without knowing that Marxism has a philosophy, which is materialism, and without knowing that traditional materialism has a modern form, which is Marxism, or dialectical materialism. <br />
<br />
We want to demonstrate that Marxism has a general conception not only of society, but also of the universe itself. It is therefore useless, contrary to what some people claim, to regret that the great defect of Marxism is its lack of philosophy, and to want, like some theorists of the workers' movement, to go in search of this philosophy that Marxism lacks. For Marxism has a philosophy, which is dialectical materialism. <br />
<br />
The fact remains, moreover, that despite this campaign of silence, despite all the falsifications and precautions taken by the ruling classes, Marxism and its philosophy are beginning to become more and more known.<br />
<br />
=== The fundamental problem of philosophy ===<br />
==== How should we begin the study of philosophy? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
In our introduction, we said several times that the philosophy of dialectical materialism was the basis of Marxism. <br />
<br />
Our goal is the study of this philosophy; but to reach this goal we must advance in stages. <br />
<br />
When we speak of dialectical materialism, we have before us two words: ''materialism'' and ''dialectical'', which means that materialism is dialectical. We know that before Marx and Engels materialism already existed, but that it was they, with the help of the discoveries of the nineteenth century, who transformed this materialism and created "dialectical" materialism. <br />
<br />
Later we will examine the meaning of the word "dialectical," which refers to the modern form of materialism. <br />
<br />
But since, before Marx and Engels, there were materialist philosophers (for example, Diderot in the 18th century), and since there are points in common to all materialists, we need to study the ''history'' of materialism before discussing dialectical materialism. We also need to know the conceptions that are opposed to materialism.<br />
<br />
==== Two ways of explaining the world ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen that philosophy is the "study of the most general problems" and that it has to to explain the world, nature, man. <br />
<br />
If we open a textbook of bourgeois philosophy, we are astonished by the multitude of different philosophies that can be found in it. They are designated by multiple more or less complicated words ending in "ism": criticalism, evolutionism, intellectualism, etc., and this multitude creates confusion. The bourgeoisie, moreover, has done nothing to clarify the situation, quite the contrary. But we can already sort out all these systems and distinguish two great currents, two clearly opposed conceptions: <br />
<br />
# The scientific conception.<br />
# The non-scientific conception of the world.<br />
<br />
==== Matter and spirit ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
When philosophers set out to explain the world, nature, mankind, everything that we Finally, they were called upon to make distinctions. We see for ourselves that there are things, objects that are material, that we see and touch. Then, other realities that we do not see and that we cannot touch or measure, like our ideas. <br />
<br />
So we classify things in this way: on the one hand, those that are material; on the other hand, those that are not material. are not material and are in the realm of mind, thought, ideas. <br />
<br />
This is how philosophers found themselves in the presence of ''matter'' and ''spirit''.<br />
<br />
==== What is matter? What is the spirit? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have just seen in a general way how we have been led to classify things according to whether they are matter or spirit. <br />
<br />
But we must specify that this distinction is made in different forms and with different words. <br />
<br />
Thus, instead of talking about spirit we talk about thought, our ideas, our consciousness, the soul, just as when we talk about nature, the world, the earth, being, it is matter that we are talking about.<br />
<br />
So again, when Engels, in his book ''[[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy]]'', talks about being and thinking, being is matter; thinking is spirit. <br />
<br />
To define what is thought or spirit, and what is being or matter, we will say: <br />
<br />
''Thought'' is the idea that we have of things; some of these ideas usually come to us from our sensations and correspond to material objects; other ideas, such as those of God, philosophy, infinity, thought itself, do not correspond to material objects. The essential thing we must remember here is that we have ideas, thoughts, feelings, because we see and feel. <br />
<br />
''Matter'' or being is what our sensations and perceptions show and present to us, it is, in a general way, everything that surrounds us, what we call the "external world". Example: My sheet of paper is white. Knowing that it is white is an idea, and it is my senses that give me this idea. But the matter is the sheet itself. <br />
<br />
That is why, when philosophers talk about the relationship between being and thinking, or between mind and matter, or between consciousness and the brain, etc., it all concerns the same question and means: what is, of matter or mind, of being or thinking, the most important term? Which is the one that precedes the other? This is the fundamental question of philosophy.<br />
<br />
==== The fundamental question or problem of philosophy ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Each of us has asked ourselves what we become after death, where the world came from, how the earth was formed. And it is difficult for us to admit that there has ''always'' been something. We tend to think that at some point there was nothing. That's why it's easier to believe what religion teaches: “The spirit hovered above the darkness... then came the matter.” In the same way, we wonder where our thoughts are, and so the problem arises for us of the relationship between mind and matter, between brain and thought. There are many other ways of asking the question. For example, what is the relationship between will and power? Will is, here, mind, thought; and power is what is possible, it is being, matter. We also often encounter the question of the relationship between "social consciousness" and "social existence". <br />
<br />
The fundamental question of philosophy thus presents itself under different aspects and we can see how important it is to always recognize the way in which this problem of the relationship between matter and spirit arises, because we know that there can only be two answers to this question: <br />
<br />
# a scientific answer.<br />
# a non-scientific answer.<br />
<br />
==== Idealism and materialism ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
This is how philosophers have been led to take a stand on this important issue. The first men, completely ignorant, having no knowledge of the world and of themselves, and having only weak technical means to act on the world, attributed to supernatural beings the responsibility for everything that astonished them. In their imaginations, excited by the dreams in which they saw themselves and their fellow creatures living, they came to this conception that each of us had a double existence. Troubled by the idea of this “double”, they came to believe that their thoughts and feelings were produced not by their <blockquote><br />
their bodies, but of a distinct soul which inhabits the body and leaves it at death. <ref name=":0" group="note">Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach]]: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy#Materialism|Materialism]]</ref> <br />
</blockquote>This idea of the immortality of the soul and of a possible life of the spirit outside of matter was born later on. <br />
<br />
Likewise their weakness, their anxiety before the forces of nature, before all those phenomena which they did not understand and which the state of the art did not allow them to control (germination, storms, floods, etc.) led them to suppose that, behind these forces, there were all-powerful beings, "spirits" or "gods", beneficent or evil, but, in any case, capricious. <br />
<br />
In the same way, they believed in gods, in beings more powerful than men, but they imagined them in the form of men or animals, as material bodies. It was only later that souls and gods (and then the One God who replaced the gods) were conceived as pure spirits.<br />
<br />
This led to the idea that in reality there are spirits that have a very specific life, completely independent of that of bodies, and that do not need bodies to exist.<br />
<br />
Subsequently, this question was posed in a more precise way according to religion, in this form: <blockquote><br />
Did God create the world or has the world been in existence eternally?<br />
<br />
The answers which the philosophers gave to this question split them into two great camps. <ref name=":0" group="note" /><br />
</blockquote>Those who, adopting the non-scientific explanation, admitted the creation of the world by God, i.e. affirmed that spirit had created matter, these were the camp of idealism. <br />
<br />
The others, those who tried to give a scientific explanation of the world and thought that nature, matter was the main element, belonged to the different schools of materialism. <br />
<br />
Originally, these two expressions, idealism and materialism, did not mean anything other than that. <br />
<br />
Idealism and materialism are therefore two opposite and contradictory answers to the fundamental problem of philosophy. <br />
<br />
Idealism is the non-scientific conception. Materialism is the scientific conception of the world. <br />
<br />
We will see later the proof of this affirmation, but we can say, from now on, that if we observe well in experience that there are bodies without thought, like stones, metals, earth, we never observe, on the other hand, the existence of mind without body. <br />
<br />
To end this chapter with an unequivocal conclusion, we see that to answer this question: how is it that man thinks? There can only be two completely different and totally opposite answers: <br />
<br />
#Man thinks because he has a soul.<br />
# Man thinks because he has a brain.<br />
<br />
Depending on which answer we give, we will be trained to give different solutions to the problems that arise from this question. <br />
<br />
Depending on our answer, we will be either idealistic or materialistic.<br />
=== Idealism ===<br />
==== Moral idealism and philosophical idealism ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We denounced the confusion created by everyday language with regard to materialism. The same confusion is found with regard to idealism.<br />
<br />
We must not in fact confuse moral idealism with ''philosophical'' idealism.<br />
<br />
Moral idealism consists in devoting oneself to a cause, to an ideal. The history of the international labor movement teaches us that an incalculable number of revolutionaries, of Marxists, devoted themselves even to the sacrifice of their lives for a moral ideal, and yet they were the adversaries of this other idealism which one calls philosophical idealism.<br />
<br />
Philosophical idealism is a doctrine based on the explanation of the world by the mind.<br />
<br />
It is the doctrine which answers the fundamental question of philosophy by saying: “it is the thought which is the principal element, the most important, the first”. And idealism, by affirming the primary importance of thought, affirms that it is this which produces being or, in other words, that “it is the spirit which produces matter”.<br />
<br />
This is the first form of idealism; it found its full development in religions by affirming that God, “pure spirit”, was the creator of matter.<br />
<br />
The religion which has claimed and still claims to be outside philosophical discussions is, in reality, on the contrary, the direct and logical representation of idealistic philosophy.<br />
<br />
However, science intervening over the centuries, it soon became necessary to explain matter, the world, things other than by God alone. For, from the 16th century, science began to explain the phenomena of nature without taking God into account and by dispensing with the creation hypothesis.<br />
<br />
To better combat these scientific, materialist and atheistic explanations, it was therefore necessary to push idealism further and ''deny the very existence of matter''.<br />
<br />
This is what an English bishop, Berkeley, who has been called the father of idealism at the beginning of the 18th century.<br />
<br />
==== Why should we study Berkeley's idealism? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The goal of his philosophical system will therefore be to destroy materialism, to try to show us that material substance does not exist. He writes in the preface of his book Three dialogues of Hylas and Philonoüs:<blockquote>If these principles are accepted and regarded as true, it follows that atheism and skepticism are, by the same token, completely shot down, obscure questions cleared up, almost insoluble difficulties solved, and men who enjoyed paradoxes brought back to common sense. </blockquote>Thus, for Berkeley, what is true is that matter does not exist and that it is paradoxical to claim the contrary.<br />
<br />
We will see how he goes about demonstrating this to us. But I think it's not useless to insist that those who want to study philosophy should take Berkeley's theory very seriously.<br />
<br />
I know that Berkeley's theses will make some people smile, but we must not forget that we live in the 20th century and that we benefit from all the studies of the past. And we will see, moreover, when we study materialism and its history, that the materialist philosophers of the past also sometimes make people smile.<br />
<br />
It should be known, however, that Diderot, who was, before Marx and Engels, the greatest of materialist thinkers, attached some importance to the Berkeley system, since he described it as an <blockquote>extravagant system which, to the shame of the human mind and philosophy, is the most difficult to refute, despite being the most absurd of all <ref group="note">Diderot, “Letter on the blind”.</ref></blockquote>Lenin himself devoted many pages to the philosophy of Berkeley and wrote: <blockquote>For the present we shall confine ourselves to one conclusion: the “recent Machians” have not adduced a single argument against the materialists that had not been adduced by Bishop Berkeley. <ref group="note">Lenin: ''[[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces|Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces]]: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces#In lieu of an introduction|In lieu of an introduction]]''</ref></blockquote>Finally, here is the assessment of Berkeley's immaterialism given in a textbook on the history of philosophy, used in high schools:<blockquote>A theory which is still imperfect, no doubt, but admirable, and which must destroy forever, in philosophical minds, the belief in the existence of a material substance.</blockquote>That is to say the importance for everyone - although for different reasons, as these quotations have shown you - of this philosophical reasoning.<br />
<br />
==== Berkeley's idealism ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The purpose of this system is therefore to demonstrate that matter does not exist.<br />
<br />
Berkeley said:<blockquote>Matter is not what we think it is by thinking that it exists outside our mind. We think that things exist because we see them, because we touch them; it is because they give us these sensations that we believe they exist.<br />
<br />
But our sensations are only ideas that we have in our mind. So the objects that we perceive through our senses are nothing but ideas, and ideas cannot exist outside our mind.</blockquote>For Berkeley, things exist; he does not deny their nature and existence, but he asserts that they exist only in the form of the sensations that make them known to us, and concludes that our sensations and objects are one and the same thing.<br />
<br />
Things exist, that's for sure, but in us, he says, in our mind, and they have no reality outside the mind.<br />
<br />
We conceive things with the help of sight; we perceive them with the help of touch; smell tells us about smell; taste tells us about taste; hearing tells us about sound. These different sensations give us ideas, which, combined with each other, make us give them a common name and consider them as objects.<blockquote>“Thus, for example, a certain color, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple; other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things.”<ref group="note">Berkeley, as cited by Lenin in [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces|Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces]], [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces|''In lieu of an introduction'']]</ref></blockquote>So we are victims of illusions when we think, when we know the world and things as external, since all that exists only in our mind.<br />
<br />
In his book ''Three dialogues between Hylas and Philonous'', Berkeley demonstrates this thesis in the following way:<blockquote>Isn't it absurd to believe that the same thing at the same time can be different? For example, hot and cold at the same moment? So imagine that one of your hands is hot and the other is cold, and that both of them are immersed at the same time in a vase full of water at an intermediate temperature: won't the water appear hot to one hand and cold to the other?</blockquote>Since it is absurd to believe that a thing at the same time can be, in itself, different, we must conclude that this thing exists only in our mind.<br />
<br />
So what does Berkeley do in its method of reasoning and discussion? He strips objects, things, of all their properties.<br />
<br />
“You say that objects exist because they have a color, a smell, a flavor, because they are big or small, light or heavy? I will show you that this does not exist in objects, but in our spirits.<br />
<br />
“Here's a coupon of cloth: you tell me it's red. Is that right? You think the red is in the fabric itself. Is that certain? You know that there are animals with eyes different from ours that will not see this red cloth; likewise a man with jaundice will see it yellow! Then what color is it? It depends, you say? So the red is not in the cloth, but in the eye, in us.<br />
<br />
“You say that this cloth is light? If you drop it on an ant, she will certainly find it heavy. Who is right? Do you think it's warm? If you had a fever, you'd think it was cold! So is it hot or cold?<br />
<br />
“In a word, if the same things can be red, heavy, hot at the same time for some, and for others exactly the opposite, it is because we are victims of illusions and things only exist in our minds”<br />
<br />
By removing all their properties from objects, we come to say that they only exist in our thinking, that is to say that ''matter is an idea''.<br />
<br />
Already, before Berkeley, the Greek philosophers said, and this was right, that certain qualities such as flavor, sound were not in the things themselves, but in us.<br />
<br />
But what is new in Berkeley's theory is precisely that he extends this remark to ''all'' the qualities of objects.<br />
<br />
The Greek philosophers had, in fact, established the following distinction between the qualities of things: <br />
<br />
On the one hand, the ''primary qualities'', i.e., those that are in objects, such as weight, size, resistance, etc., are the qualities that are in objects.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, the ''secondary qualities'', that is, those that are in us, such as smell, taste, warmth, etc., and that are in objects, such as weight, size, resistance, etc.<br />
<br />
Berkeley applies to first qualities the same thesis as to second qualities, namely that all qualities, ''all properties are not in objects, but in us''.<br />
<br />
If we look at the sun, we see it round, flat, red. Science teaches us that we are wrong, that the sun is not flat, is not red. We will therefore abstract, with the help of science, certain false properties that we give to the sun, but without concluding that it does not exist! It is however to such a conclusion that Berkeley reaches.<br />
<br />
Berkeley was certainly not wrong in showing that the distinction of the ancients did not stand up to scientific analysis, but he commits a fault of reasoning, a sophism, in drawing from these remarks consequences that they do not entail. He shows, in fact, that the qualities of things are not such as our senses show us, that is to say that our senses deceive us and distort material reality, and he concludes immediately that material reality does not exist.<br />
<br />
==== Consequences of idealist reasoning ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The thesis being: "Everything exists only in our mind", we must conclude that the outside world does not exist.<br />
<br />
Pushing this reasoning to its logical conclusion, we would come to say: "I am the only one who exists, since I only know other men through my ideas, that other men are for me, like material objects, only collections of ideas". This is what in philosophy is called ''solipsism'' (which means ''me only'').<br />
<br />
Berkeley, Lenin tells us in his already quoted book, instinctively defends himself against the accusation of supporting such a theory. We even note that solipsism, an extreme form of idealism, has not been supported by any philosopher.<br />
<br />
This is why we must try, when discussing with idealists, to emphasize that the reasonings that effectively deny the matter, in order to be logical and consequent, must come to this absurd extremity that is solipsism.<br />
<br />
==== The idealist arguments ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have endeavored to summarize Berkeley's theory as simply as possible, because it was he who, most frankly, set out what philosophical idealism is.<br />
<br />
But it is certain that, in order to fully understand this reasoning, which is new to us, it is now indispensable to take it very seriously and to make an intellectual effort. Why? Because we will see later on that, if idealism presents itself in a more hidden way and under the cover of new words and expressions, all idealistic philosophies only take up the arguments of "old Berkeley". (Lenin).<br />
<br />
Because we will also see how much, the idealistic philosophy that has dominated and still dominates the ''official'' history of philosophy, bringing with it a method of thought that we are impregnated with, has been able to penetrate in us despite an entirely secular education.<br />
<br />
The basis of the arguments of all idealistic philosophies being found in the reasoning of Bishop Berkeley, we will therefore, to summarize this chapter, try to identify what are these main arguments and what they try to demonstrate to us.<br />
<br />
===== The spirit creates matter =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
This, as we know, is the idealistic answer to the fundamental question of philosophy; it is the first form of idealism that is reflected in the different religions, where it is asserted that the spirit created the world.<br />
<br />
This assertion can have two meanings:<br />
<br />
Either God created the world, and the world really exists outside of us. This is the ordinary idealism of theologies.<ref group="note">Theology is the ''“science” (!)'' that deals with God and divine things.</ref> <br />
<br />
Or God created the ''illusion'' of the world by giving us ideas that do not correspond to any material reality. This is Berkeley's "immaterialist idealism" which wants to prove to us that spirit is the only reality, matter being a product made by our spirit.<br />
<br />
This is why the idealists assert that:<br />
<br />
===== The world does not exist outside of our thinking =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
This is what Berkeley wants to demonstrate to us by saying that we are making a mistake by attributing to things properties and qualities that would be their own, whereas these only exist in our mind.<br />
<br />
For the idealists, benches and tables do exist, but only in our thinking, and not outside of us, because<br />
<br />
===== It's our ideas that create things =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
In other words, things are a reflection of our thinking. Indeed, since it is the mind that creates the illusion of matter, since it is the mind that gives our thought the idea of matter, since the sensations we feel in front of things do not come from things themselves, but only from our thought, the source of the reality of the world and of things is our thought and, therefore, everything that surrounds us does not exist outside our mind and can only be the reflection of our thought.<br />
<br />
But since, in the case of Berkeley, ''our'' mind would be incapable of creating these ideas ''by itself'', and since, moreover, it does not do what it wants with them (as would happen if it created them on its own), we must admit that it is another, more powerful mind that is the creator. It is therefore God who creates our spirit and imposes on us all the ideas of the world we encounter in it.<br />
<br />
These are the main theses on which the idealistic doctrines rest and the answers they bring to the fundamental question of philosophy. It is now time to see what is the response of materialist philosophy to this question and to the problems raised by these theses.<br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<br />
<blockquote><br />
''Berkeley: Three dialogues between Hylas and Philonous'' </br>''Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
=== Materialism ===<br />
==== Why should we study materialism? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen that, for the question “What are the relations between being and thought?” there can only be two opposed and contradictory answers. In the preceding chapter we have studied the idealist answer and the arguments presented to defend idealist philosophy.<br />
<br />
We now have to examine the second answer to this fundamental problem (a problem, let us repeat, which is at the basis of all philosophy) and see what arguments materialism brings to the defense. All the more so because materialism is for us a very important philosophy, since it is that of Marxism.<br />
<br />
It is, therefore, indispensable to know materialism well. Indispensable especially because the conceptions of this philosophy are very badly known and have been falsified. Indispensable also because, by our education, by the instruction we have received — whether primary or more developed —, by our habits of living and reasoning, we are all, more or less, without realizing it, impregnated with idealistic conceptions. (We will see, moreover, in other chapters, several examples of this affirmation and why it is so).<br />
<br />
It is therefore an absolute necessity for those who want to study Marxism to know its basis: materialism.<br />
<br />
==== Where does materialism come from? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have broadly defined philosophy as an effort to explain the world, the universe. But we know that, according to the state of human knowledge, its explanations have changed and that two attitudes have been adopted throughout the history of humanity to explain the world: one, anti-scientific, calling upon one or more superior minds, upon supernatural forces; the other, scientific, based on facts and experiences.<br />
<br />
One of these conceptions is defended by idealistic philosophers; the other by materialists.<br />
<br />
This is why, from the very beginning of this book, we have said that the first idea we should have of materialism is that this philosophy represents the "scientific explanation of the universe".<br />
<br />
If idealism was born out of human ignorance — and we will see how ignorance was maintained, nurtured in the history of societies by cultural and political forces that shared idealistic conceptions — materialism was born out of the struggle of science against ignorance or obscurantism.<br />
<br />
This is why this philosophy was so much fought against and why, in its modern form (dialectical materialism), it is little known, if not ignored or misunderstood by the official academic world.<br />
<br />
==== How and why materialism has evolved ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Contrary to the claims of those who fight this philosophy and who say that this doctrine has not evolved for twenty centuries, the history of materialism shows us in this philosophy something alive and always in motion.<br />
<br />
Over the centuries, man's scientific knowledge has progressed. At the beginning of the history of thought, in Greek antiquity, scientific knowledge was almost nil, and the first scholars were, at the same time, philosophers, because, at that time, philosophy and the nascent sciences formed a whole, one being the extension of the others.<br />
<br />
Later on, as the sciences brought precisions in the explanation of the phenomena of the world, precisions that hindered and even contradicted the dogmas of idealistic philosophies, a conflict was born between philosophy and the sciences.<br />
<br />
The sciences being in contradiction with the official philosophy of that time, it had become necessary for them to separate from it. Also,<blockquote>they were in no more hurry than to free themselves from the philosophical hodgepodge and leave the philosophers the vast hypotheses to make contact with restricted problems, those which are ripe for a solution in the near future. So this distinction is made between science... and philosophy. <ref group="note">René Maublanc: La vie ouvrière, November 25, 1935</ref></blockquote>But materialism, born with the sciences, linked to them and dependent on them, has progressed, evolved with them, to arrive, with modern materialism, that of Marx and Engels, at reuniting, once again, science and philosophy in dialectical materialism.<br />
<br />
We will study this history and this evolution, which are linked to the progress of civilization, but we already see, and this is what is very important to remember, that materialism and science are linked to each other and that materialism is absolutely dependent on science.<br />
<br />
It remains for us to establish and define the bases of materialism, bases that are common to all philosophies which, under different aspects, claim to be materialistic.<br />
<br />
==== What are the arguments and principles of materialism? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
To answer, we must return to the fundamental question of philosophy, that of the relationship between being and thinking: which of one or the other is the main one?<br />
<br />
The materialists affirm first of all that there is a determined relationship between being and thinking, between matter and spirit. For them, it is the being, the matter, which is the first reality, the first thing, and the spirit which is the second, posterior reality, dependent on the matter.<br />
<br />
Therefore, for materialists, it is not spirit or God who created the world and matter, but it is the world, matter, nature that created spirit: <blockquote>mind itself is merely the highest product of matter <ref name=":0" group="note" /></blockquote><br />
<br />
This is why, if we take up the question we asked in the second chapter: "From whence does man think?" the materialists answer that man thinks because he has a brain and that thought is the product of the brain. For them, there can be no thought without matter, without a body.<blockquote>our consciousness and thinking, however supra-sensuous they may seem, are the product of a material, bodily organ, the brain. <ref name=":0" group="note" /></blockquote>Therefore, for materialists, matter, being are something real, existing outside of our thought, and do not need thought or mind to exist. Likewise, since spirit cannot exist without matter, there is no immortal soul independent of the body.<br />
<br />
Contrary to what the idealists say, the things around us exist independently of us: they are what give us our thoughts; and our ideas are only the reflection of things in our brain.<br />
<br />
This is why, in front of the second aspect of the question of the relationship between being and thinking:<blockquote>in what relation do our thoughts about the world surrounding us stand to this world itself? Is our thinking capable of the cognition of the real world? Are we able in our ideas and notions of the real world to produce a correct reflection of reality? In philosophical language this question is called the question of identity of thinking and being.<ref name=":0" group="note" /> </blockquote>Materialists declare: Yes, we can know the world, and the ideas which we entertain about this world are more and more correct, since we can study it with the help of the sciences, and since the latter are continually proving to us through experience that the things which surround us have indeed a reality which is their own, independent of us, and that man can already in part reproduce these things by creating them artificially.<br />
<br />
To sum up, we will say that the materialists, faced with the fundamental problem of philosophy, assert:<br />
<br />
===== It is matter that creates the spirit =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
It is matter that produces spirit and, scientifically, we have never seen spirit without matter.<br />
<br />
===== Matter exists outside any spirit=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Matter exists outside of all mind and it does not need a mind to exist, having an existence that is particular to it. Contrary to what idealists say, it is not our ideas that create things, but, on the contrary, it is things that give us our ideas.<br />
<br />
===== Science and experience allow us to know the world =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We are capable of knowing the world, the ideas we have of matter and of the world are becoming more and more accurate, since, with the help of science, we can clarify what we already know and discover what we do not know.<br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote>''Plekhanov: [[Library:Fundamental problems of marxism|Fundamental problems of Marxism]]''</blockquote><br />
<br />
=== Which is right, idealism or materialism? ===<br />
==== How we should state the problem ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Now that we know the theses of the idealists and the materialists, we will try to find out who is right.<br />
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Let us recall that we must first of all note, on the one hand, that these arguments are absolutely opposed and contradictory. On the other hand, as soon as one defends one or the other theory, it leads us to conclusions which, by their consequences, are very important.<br />
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In order to know who is right, we must refer to the three points by which we have summarized each argument.<br />
<br />
The idealists say:<br />
<br />
#That it is spirit that creates matter;<br />
#That matter does not exist outside our thoughts, and that it is therefore for us only an illusion;<br />
#That it is our ideas that create things.<br />
Materialists, on the other hand, affirm exactly the opposite. To facilitate our work, we must first study what is common sense and what surprises us most.<br />
#Is it true that the world exists only in our thoughts?<br />
#Is it true that it is our ideas that create things?<br />
<br />
These are two arguments defended by Berkeley's "immaterialist" idealism, whose conclusions lead, as in all theologies, to our third question:<br />
<br />
<ol start="3"><br />
<li>Is it true that spirit creates matter?</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
These are very important questions since they relate to the fundamental problem of philosophy. It is, therefore, by discussing them that we will know who is right, and they are particularly interesting for materialists, in that materialist answers to these questions are common to all materialist philosophies - and, therefore, to dialectical materialism.<br />
<br />
==== Is it true that the world only exists in our thinking? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Before studying this question, we need to explain two philosophical terms that we are called upon to use and that we will often encounter in our readings.<blockquote>''Subjective reality'' (which means: reality that exists '''only in''' our thoughts).<br />
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''Objective reality'' (reality that exists '''outside''' of our thoughts).</blockquote>Idealists say that the world is not an objective reality, but a subjective one.<br />
<br />
Materialists say that the world is an objective reality.<br />
<br />
To show us that the world and things exist only in our thinking, Bishop Berkeley breaks them down into their properties (color, size, density, etc.). He shows us that these properties, which vary according to individuals, are not in the things themselves, but in the minds of each one of us. He deduces that matter is an aggregate of non-objective, but subjective properties and that, consequently, it does not exist.<br />
<br />
If we take again the example of the sun, Berkeley asks us if we believe in the objective reality of the red disc, and he shows us with his method of discussing properties, that the sun is not red and is not a disc. Therefore, the sun is not an objective reality, because it does not exist by itself, but it is a simple subjective reality, since it exists only in our thinking.<br />
<br />
Materialists say that the sun exists anyway, not because we see it as a flat, red disc, because that is naive realism -- that of the children and the first men who had only their senses to control reality -- but they say that the sun exists by invoking science. Science allows us, in fact, to rectify the errors that our senses make us commit.<br />
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But we must, in this example of the sun, clearly pose the problem.<br />
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With Berkeley, we will say that the sun is not a disk and that it is not red, but we do not accept its conclusions: the negation of the sun as an objective reality.<br />
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We are not discussing the properties of things, but their existence.<br />
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We are not discussing whether our senses deceive us and distort material reality, but whether this reality exists outside our senses.<br />
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Well then! Materialists assert the existence of this reality outside us and they provide arguments that are science itself.<br />
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What do idealists do to show us that they are right? They argue about words, make great speeches, write many pages.<br />
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Let us suppose for a moment that they are right. If the world exists only in our thinking, then did the world not exist before mankind? We know that this is false, since science shows us that man appeared very late on earth. Some idealists will then tell us that before man there were animals and that thought could inhabit them. But we know that before the animals there was an uninhabitable earth on which no organic life was possible. Still others will tell us that even if only the solar system existed and man did not exist, thought and spirit existed in God. This is how we arrive at the supreme form of idealism. We have to choose between God and science. Idealism cannot sustain itself without God, and God cannot exist without idealism.<br />
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So this is exactly how the problem of idealism and materialism arises: Who is right? God or science?<br />
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God is a pure spirit creator of matter, an affirmation without proof.<br />
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Science is going to show us by practice and experience that the world is an objective reality and will allow us to answer the question:<br />
<br />
==== Is it true that it is our ideas that create things? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Take, for example, a bus that passes as we cross the street in the company of an idealist with whom we discuss whether things have an objective or subjective reality and whether it is true that it is our ideas that create things. Of course, if we don't want to be crushed, we will be very careful. Therefore, in practice, the idealist is obliged to recognize the existence of the bus. For him, practically speaking, there is no difference between an objective bus and a subjective bus, and this is so right that practice provides the proof that idealists, in life, are materialists.<br />
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We can, on this subject, cite many examples where we would see that the idealistic philosophers and those who support this philosophy do not disdain certain 'objective' baseness to obtain what, for them, is only subjective reality!<br />
<br />
This is why we no longer see anyone asserting, like Berkeley, that the world does not exist. The arguments are much more subtle and hidden.<ref group="note">See, as an example of the idealists' way of arguing, the chapter entitled [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism#“The discovery of the world-elements”|“The discovery of the world-elements”]], in Lenin's book: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]].</ref><br />
<br />
It is therefore, according to Lenin's words, "the criterion of practice" that will allow us to confound idealists.<br />
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The latter, moreover, will not fail to say that theory and practice are not the same, that they are two quite different things. This is not true. If a conception is right or wrong, it is practice alone which, through experience, will demonstrate it to us.<br />
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The example of the bus shows that the world therefore has an objective reality and is not an illusion created by our mind.<br />
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It remains to be seen now, since Berkeley's theory of immaterialism cannot stand up to the sciences nor can it withstand the criterion of practice, if, as all the conclusions of idealistic philosophies, religions and theologies affirm, that ''spirit creates matter''.<br />
<br />
==== Is it true that spirit creates matter? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
As we have seen above, the spirit, for idealists, has its supreme form in God. It is the final answer, the conclusion of their theory, and that is why the ''mind-matter'' problem arises in the last analysis, of who, the idealist or the materialist, is right, in the form of the problem: 'God or science'.<br />
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Idealists assert that God has existed from all eternity, and that, having undergone no change, he is always the same. He is the pure spirit, for whom time and space do not exist. He is the creator of matter.<br />
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To support their affirmation of God, here again the idealists do not present any arguments.<br />
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To defend the creator of matter, they resort to a lot of mysteries, which a scientific mind cannot accept.<br />
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When we go back to the origins of science and we see that it was in the heart and because of their great ignorance that primitive men forged in their minds the idea of God, we see that the idealists of the 20th century continue, like the first men, to ignore everything that patient and persevering work has made it possible to know. For, in the end, for the idealists, God cannot be explained, and there remains for them a belief without any proof. When the idealists want to "prove" to us the necessity of the creation of the world by saying that matter could not always have existed, that it had to have a birth, they resort to a God who never had a beginning. In what way is this explanation clearer?<br />
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To support their arguments, the materialists, on the contrary, will use the science that men have developed as they pushed back the "limits of their ignorance".<br />
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But does science allow us to think that the spirit created matter? No.<br />
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The idea of creation by a pure spirit is incomprehensible because we know nothing of the sort in experience. For this to be possible, it would have been necessary, as idealists say, that spirit existed alone before matter, whereas science shows us that this is not possible and that there is no spirit without matter. On the contrary, spirit is always linked to matter, and we see in particular that the mind of man is linked to the brain, which is the source of our ideas and thoughts. Science does not allow us to conceive that ideas exist in a vacuum...<br />
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It would therefore be necessary for the mind of God, in order for it to exist, to have a brain. This is why we can say that it is not God who created matter, and man as well, but that it is matter, in the form of the human brain, that created the God-mind.<br />
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We will see further on whether science gives us the possibility to believe in a God, or in something over which time would have no effect and for which space, movement and change would not exist.<br />
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Already now we can conclude that in their answer to the fundamental problem of philosophy:<br />
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==== The materialists are right and science proves their assertions ====<br />
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Materialists are right to assert:<br />
<br />
# Against Berkeley's idealism and against the philosophers who hide behind his immaterialism: that the world and things, on the one hand, exist well outside of our thoughts and that they do not need our thoughts to exist; on the other hand, that it is not our ideas that create things, but that, on the contrary, it is the things that give us our ideas.<br />
# Against all idealist philosophies, because their conclusions end in affirming the creation of matter by spirit; that is to say -- in the last instance, in affirming the existence of God and in supporting theologies -- materialists, relying on science, assert and prove that it is matter which creates spirit and that they do not need the “God hypothesis” to explain the creation of matter.<br />
<br />
''Note'' — We have to be careful how idealists pose problems. They claim that God created man when we saw that it was man who created God. They also assert, on the other hand, that it is spirit that created matter when we see that it is, in truth, exactly the opposite. This is a way of reversing the perspectives that we had to point out.<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote><br />
''Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism#Did nature exist prior to man?|Did nature exist prior to man?]]''<br />
<br />
''Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
=== Is there a third philosophy? Agnosticism ===<br />
==== Why a third philosophy? ====<br />
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It may seem to us, after these first chapters, that, after all, it must be quite easy to recognize ourselves in the midst of all philosophical reasoning, since only two great currents share all the theories: idealism and materialism. And that, moreover, the arguments that fight in favor of materialism carry it in a definitive way. <br />
<br />
It thus appears that, after some examination, we have found our way back to the philosophy of reason: materialism.<br />
<br />
But things are not so simple. As we have already pointed out, modern idealists do not have Bishop Berkeley's frankness. They present their ideas<blockquote>“in a much more artful form, and confused by the use of a ‘new’ terminology, so that these thoughts may be taken by naive people for ‘recent’ philosophy!” <ref name=":1" group="note">Lenin: ''[[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces|Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces]]''</ref> </blockquote>We have seen that two answers can be given to the fundamental question of philosophy, which are totally opposed, contradictory and irreconcilable. These two answers are very clear and do not allow for any confusion.<br />
<br />
And, in fact, until about 1710, the problem was posed as follows: on the one hand, those who asserted the existence of matter outside our thinking -- these were the materialists; -- on the other hand, those who, with Berkeley, denied the existence of matter and claimed that it exists only in us, in our minds -- these were the idealists.<br />
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But, at that time, as the sciences progressed, other philosophers intervened, who tried to separate the idealists from the materialists, creating a philosophical current that created confusion between these two theories, and this confusion has its source in the search for a third philosophy.<br />
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==== Argumentation of this third philosophy ====<br />
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The basis of this philosophy, which was developed after Berkeley, is that it is useless to try to know the real nature of things and that we will only ever know appearances.<br />
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This is why this philosophy is called agnosticism (from the Greek ''a'', negation, and ''gnosticos'', capable of knowing; therefore “incapable of knowing”).<br />
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According to the agnostics, one cannot know whether the world is, at its core, spirit or nature. It is possible for us to know the appearance of things, but we cannot know their reality.<br />
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Let us take the example of the sun. We have seen that it is not, as the first men thought, a flat, red disc. This disc was therefore only an illusion, an appearance (appearance is the ''superficial'' idea that we have of things; it is not their reality).<br />
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This is why, considering that idealists and materialists argue about whether things are matter or spirit, whether or not these things exist outside our thinking, whether or not it is possible for us to know them, agnostics say that we can know appearance well, but never reality.<br />
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Our senses, they say, allow us to see and feel things, to know their external aspects, their appearances; these appearances therefore exist for us; they constitute what is called, in philosophical language, the "thing for us". But we cannot know the thing independent of us, with its own reality, what is called the "thing in itself".<br />
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Idealists and materialists, who continually discuss these subjects, are comparable to two men who would have one of the blue glasses, the other of the pink glasses, walking in the snow and arguing over what is the true color of the snow. Suppose they would never be able to take off - their glasses. Will they ever be able to know the true color of the snow?.... No. Well! idealists and materialists arguing over who is right and who is wrong wear blue and pink glasses. They will never know reality. They will have a knowledge of snow "for them"; everyone will see it in their own way, but they will never know snow "in itself". This is the reasoning of agnostics.<br />
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==== Where does this philosophy come from? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The founders of this philosophy were [[Hume]] (1711-1776), who was Scottish, and [[Immanuel Kant|Kant]] (1724-1804), a German. Both tried to reconcile idealism and materialism.<br />
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Here is a passage from Hume's reasoning quoted by Lenin in his book [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|''Materialism and empiriocriticism'']]:<br />
<blockquote><br />
“It seems evident, that men are carried, by a natural instinct or prepossession, to repose faith in their senses; and that, without any reasoning, or even almost before the use of reason, we always suppose an external universe, which depends not on our perception, but would exist though we and every sensible creature were absent or annihilated. Even the animal creations are governed by a like opinion, and preserve this belief of external objects, in all their thoughts, designs, and actions....<br />
<br />
But this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us, that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, and that the senses are only the inlets, through which these images are conveyed, without being able to produce any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object. The table, which we see, seems to diminish, as we remove farther from it: But the real table, which exists independent of us, suffers no alteration: It was therefore, nothing but its image, which was present to the mind. These are the obvious dictates of reason…<br />
<br />
But this primordial and universal opinion is promptly shaken by the most superficial philosophy, which teaches us that nothing but images or perception will ever be accessible to our mind and that sensations are only channels followed by these images and are not in a position to establish themselves a direct relationship, whatever it may be, between the mind and the object. The table we see seems smaller when we move away from it, but the real table, which exists independently of us, does not change; our mind has therefore perceived nothing but the image of the table. These are the obvious indications of reason.” <ref group="note" name=":2">Hume, as cited by Lenin in ''[[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces|Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces]]: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces#In lieu of an introduction|In lieu of an introduction]]''</ref><br />
</blockquote><br />
We see that Hume first of all admits what falls under the common sense: "existence of an external universe" which does not depend on us. But he immediately refuses to admit this existence as an objective reality. For him, this existence is nothing more than an image, and our senses which observe this existence, this image, are incapable of establishing any relation whatsoever between mind and object.<br />
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In a word, we live in the midst of things as in the cinema, where we observe on the screen the image of objects, their existence, but where, behind the images themselves, that is, behind the screen, there is nothing.<br />
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Now, if we want to know how our minds know objects, can this not be due to <blockquote>the energy of the mind itself, or from the suggestion of some invisible and unknown spirit, or from some other cause still more unknown to us? <ref name=":2" group="note" /></blockquote><br />
<br />
==== Its consequences ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Here is an attractive theory which, moreover, is very widespread. We find it in different aspects, throughout history, among philosophical theories and, nowadays, among all those who claim to "remain neutral and maintain themselves in a scientific reserve".<br />
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We therefore need to examine whether this reasoning is correct and what consequences flow from it.<br />
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If it is really impossible for us, as agnostics assert, to know the true nature of things and if our knowledge is limited to their appearances, then we cannot affirm the existence of objective reality, and we cannot know whether things exist by themselves. For us, for example, the bus is an objective reality; the agnostic tells us that it is not certain, that we cannot know if the bus is a thought or a reality. He therefore forbids us to maintain that our thinking is a reflection of things. We see that we are there in the middle of idealistic reasoning, because, between affirming that things do not exist or simply that we cannot know if they exist, the difference is not great!<br />
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We have seen that the agnostic distinguishes between "things for us" and "things in themselves". The study of things for us is therefore possible: this is science: but the study of things in themselves is impossible, because we cannot know what exists outside of us.<br />
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The result of this reasoning is the following: the agnostic accepts science -- and, since science can only be made on the condition of expelling all supernatural forces from nature -- before science he is a materialist.<br />
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But he hurries to add that, since science only gives us appearances, nothing proves, moreover, that there is not in reality anything other than matter, or even that there is matter or that God does not exist. Human reason cannot know anything about it and therefore has no business interfering in it. If there are other ways of knowing "things in themselves," such as religious faith, the agnostic does not want to know it either and does not recognize the right to discuss it.<blockquote>As soon, however, as our agnostic has made these formal mental reservations, he talks and acts as the rank materialist he is at heart. He may say that, as far as we know, matter and motion, or as it is now called, energy, can neither be created nor destroyed, but that we have no proof of their not having been created at some time or other. But if you try to use this admission against him in any particular case, he will quickly put you out of court. If he admits the possibility of spiritualism in abstracto, he will have none of it in concreto. As far as we know and can know, he will tell you there is no creator and no Ruler of the universe; as far as we are concerned, matter and energy can neither be created nor annihilated; for us, mind is a mode of energy, a function of the brain; all we know is that the material world is governed by immutable laws, and so forth. Thus, as far as he is a scientific man, as far as he knows anything, he is a materialist; outside his science, in spheres about which he knows nothing, he translates his ignorance into Greek and calls it agnosticism. <ref name=":3" group="note">Engels: ''[[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces|Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces]]:'' [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces#General introduction and the history of materialism|''General introduction and the history of materialism'']] </ref></blockquote>The consequence is that by doubting the profound value of science, by seeing in it only appearances, this third philosophy proposes that we attribute no truth to science and consider it perfectly useless to seek to know something, to try to contribute to progress.<br />
<br />
Agnostics say: In the past, men saw the sun as a flat disk and believed that this was the reality; they were wrong. Today, science tells us that the sun is not as we see it, and claims to explain everything. We know, however, that it is often wrong, one day destroying what it built the day before. Error yesterday, truth today, but error tomorrow. Thus, argue the agnostics, we cannot know; reason brings us no certainty. And if means other than reason, such as religious faith, claim to give us absolute certainties, it is not even science that can prevent us from believing it. By diminishing confidence in science, agnosticism thus prepares the way for the return of religions.<br />
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==== How can we refute this "third" philosophy? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen that, to prove their claims, materialists use not only science, but also experience, which allows them to control science. Thanks to the "criterion of practice", one can know things.<br />
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Agnostics tell us that it is impossible to assert that the outside world exists or does not exist.<br />
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However, through practice, we know that the world and things exist. We know that the ideas we have about things are well-founded, that the relationships we have established between things and ourselves are real.<blockquote>From the moment we turn to our own use these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense perceptions. If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt must fail. But if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended it for, then that is positive proof that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves. And whenever we find ourselves face to face with a failure, then we generally are not long in making out the cause that made us fail; we find that the perception upon which we acted was either incomplete and superficial, or combined with the result of other perceptions in a way warranted by them—what we call defective reasoning. So long as we take care to train and to use our senses properly, and to keep our action within the limits prescribed by perceptions properly made and properly used, so long we shall find that the result of our action proves the conformity of our perceptions with the objective nature of the things perceived. Not in one single instance, so far, have we been led to the conclusion that our sense perceptions, scientifically controlled, induce in our minds ideas respecting the outer world that are, by their very nature, at variance with reality, or that there is an inherent incompatibility between the outer world and our sense perceptions of it. <ref name=":3" group="note" /></blockquote>Taking up Engels' phrase, we will say "the proof of the pudding is that you eat it" (English proverb). If it did not exist, or if it was only an idea, after eating it, our hunger would not be alleviated at all. Thus it is perfectly possible for us to know things, to see if our ideas correspond to reality. It is possible for us to control the data of science through experience and industry that translate the theoretical results of science into practical applications. The reason we can make synthetic rubber is that science knows the "thing in itself" that is rubber.<br />
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So we see that it is not useless to try to find out who is right, because through the theoretical errors that science can make, experience always gives us proof that science is right.<br />
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==== Conclusion ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Since the 18th century, among the various thinkers who have borrowed to a greater or lesser extent from agnosticism, we see that this philosophy is sometimes torn by idealism and sometimes by materialism. Under cover of new words, as Lenin says, even pretending to use science to support their reasoning, they only create confusion between the two theories, allowing some to have a convenient philosophy, which gives them the possibility to declare that they are not idealists because they use science, but that they are not materialists either, because they don't dare to go to the end of their arguments, because they are not consistent with themselves.<blockquote>What, indeed, is agnosticism, ''writes Engels'', if not shameful materialism? The agnostic's conception of nature is entirely materialistic. The entire natural world is governed by laws and does not admit the intervention of external action; but he adds, as a precaution: “We do not possess the means to affirm or deny the existence of any supreme being beyond the known universe.” <ref name=":3" group="note" /></blockquote>Hence, this philosophy is playing into the hands of idealism and, all told, because they are inconsistent in their reasoning; agnostics lead right back to idealism. “Scratch an agnostic,” says Lenin, “and you will find an idealist.”<br />
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We have seen that one can know which is right between materialism or idealism.<br />
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We now see that the theories that claim to reconcile these two philosophies can, in fact, only support idealism, that they do not provide a third answer to the fundamental question of philosophy and that, consequently, there is no third philosophy.<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote><br />
''Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]''<br />
<br />
''Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach]]''<br />
<br />
''Engels: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific|Socialism: utopian and scientific]]: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces#General introduction and the history of materialism|General introduction and the history of materialism]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions#The philosophical problems|Control questions]]''<br />
== The philosophical materialism ==<br />
=== Matter and materialists ===<br />
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After defining:<br />
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First, the ideas common to all materialists, second, the arguments of all materialists against idealistic philosophies, and finally, demonstrating the error of agnosticism, we will draw conclusions from this teaching and strengthen our materialist arguments by providing our answers to the following two questions:<br />
<br />
# What is matter?<br />
# What does it mean to be materialist?<br />
<br />
==== What is matter? ====<br />
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''Importance of the issue''. Whenever we have a problem to solve, we need to ask the questions clearly. In fact, here it is not so easy to give a satisfactory answer. To do so, we must make a theory of matter.<br />
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In general, people think that matter is what can be touched, what is strong and hard. In ancient Greece, this is how matter was defined.<br />
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We know today, thanks to science, that this is not true.<br />
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==== Successive theories of matter ====<br />
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(Our goal is to review the various theories relating to matter as simply as possible, without going into scientific explanations.)<br />
<br />
In Greece, it was believed that matter was a full and impenetrable reality that could not be divided into infinity. A moment arrives, it was said, when the pieces are no longer divisible; and we called these particles atoms (atom = indivisible). A table is then an agglomerate of atoms. It was also believed that these atoms were different from each other: there were smooth and round atoms like those of oil, others rough and crooked, like those of vinegar.<br />
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It was [[Democritus]], a materialist of antiquity, who established this theory; he was the first to try to give a materialistic explanation of the world. He thought, for example, that the human body was made up of coarse atoms, that the soul was an agglomeration of finer atoms and, as he recognized the existence of gods but still wanted to explain everything as a materialist, he claimed that the gods themselves were made up of super-fine atoms.<br />
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In the 19th century this theory changed profoundly.<br />
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It was always thought that matter divided into atoms, that the latter were very hard particles attracted to each other. The theory of the Greeks had been abandoned, and these atoms were no longer crooked or smooth, but it was still argued that they were impenetrable, indivisible and undergoing a movement of attraction towards each other.<br />
<br />
Today, it is demonstrated that the atom is not an impenetrable and indivisible grain of matter (that is to say indivisible), but that it is itself composed of particles called electrons rotating at very high speed around a nucleus where almost all of the atom's mass is condensed. If the atom is neutral, electrons and nucleus have an electric charge, but the positive charge of the nucleus is equal to the sum of the negative charges carried by the electrons. Matter is an agglomeration of these atoms, and if it opposes a resistance to penetration, it is because of the very movement of the particles that compose it.<br />
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The discovery of these electrical properties of matter, and in particular the discovery of electrons, provoked at the beginning of the twentieth century an assault by idealists against the very existence of matter. “The electron has nothing material,” they claimed. “It is nothing more than an electric charge in motion. If there is no matter in the negative charge, why would there be any in the positive nucleus? So matter has vanished. There is only energy!”<br />
<br />
Lenin, in [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|''Materialism and empiriocriticism'']] (chapter V), put things right by showing that energy and matter are inseparable. Energy is material, and movement is only the mode of existence of matter. In short, the idealists interpreted the discoveries of science backwards. At the time when this one highlighted aspects of the matter ignored until then, they concluded that the matter does not exist, under the pretext that it does not conform to the idea that one had of it long ago, when we believed that matter and motion were two distinct realities.<br />
<br />
==== What is matter for materialists ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
On this subject, it is essential to make a distinction: it is a question of seeing first:<br />
<ol start="1"><br />
<li>What is matter?</li><br />
</ol><br />
then<br />
<ol start="2"><br />
<li>What is matter like?<br />
</li><br />
</ol>The materialists' answer to the first question is that matter is an external reality, independent of spirit, and does not need spirit to exist. Lenin says on this subject:<blockquote>Matter is that which, acting upon our sense-organs, produces sensation; matter is the objective reality given to us in sensation.<ref group="note">Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism#What is matter? What is experience?|What is matter? What is experience?]]</ref></blockquote>Now, to the second question: "What is matter like?" the materialists say: "It is not for us to answer, it is for science."<br />
<br />
The first answer is invariable from antiquity to the present day.<br />
<br />
The second answer has varied and must vary because it depends on the sciences, on the state of human knowledge. It is not a definitive answer.<br />
<br />
We see that it is absolutely indispensable to pose the problem well and not to let the idealists mix up the two questions. It is necessary to separate them well, to show that it is the first which is the main one, and that our answer to it has always been invariable.<blockquote>For the ''sole'' “property” of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of ''being an objective reality,'' of existing outside our mind. <ref group="note">Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism#“Matter has disappeared”|“Matter has disappeared”]]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
==== Space, time, motion and matter ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
If we claim, because we see it, that matter exists outside of us, we also need to make it clear that:<br />
<br />
# Matter exists in time and space.<br />
# Matter is in motion.<br />
<br />
Idealists, on the other hand, think that space and time are ideas of our mind (Kant was the first to support this). For them, space is a shape that we give to things, space is born from the mind of man. The same goes for time.<br />
<br />
The materialists affirm, on the contrary, that space is not in us, but that it is we who are in space. They also affirm that time is an indispensable condition for the unfolding of our life; and that, consequently, time and space are inseparable from what exists outside of us, that is, from matter.<blockquote>... The basic forms of all being are space and time, and being out of time is just as gross an absurdity as being out of space. <ref name=":4" group="note">Engels: [[Library:Anti-Dühring|Anti-Dühring]]: [[Library:Anti-Dühring#Philosophy|Philosophy]]</ref></blockquote>We therefore believe that there is a reality independent of consciousness. We all believe that the world has existed before us and will continue to exist after us. We believe that the world, in order to exist, does not need us. We believe that Paris existed before we were born and that unless it is definitively razed it will exist after our death. We are certain that Paris exists, even when we don't think about it, just as there are tens of thousands of cities that we have never visited, whose names we don't even know, and which nevertheless exist. This is the general conviction of humanity. Science has given this argument a precision and solidity that nullifies all idealistic finery.<blockquote>The natural sciences affirm positively that the earth existed in such states that neither man nor any living being inhabited it and could not inhabit it. Organic matter is a late phenomenon, the product of a very long evolution. <ref name=":5" group="note">Lenin: ''[[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]''</ref></blockquote>If the sciences thus provide us with proof that matter exists in time and space, they teach us, at the same time, that matter is in motion. This last precision, which is provided to us by modern science, is very important because it destroys the old theory that matter is incapable of motion, inert.<blockquote>Motion is the mode of existence of matter... Matter without motion is as inconceivable as motion without matter. <ref name=":4" group="note" /></blockquote>We know that the world in its present state is the result, in all fields, of a long evolution and, consequently, the result of a slow but continuous movement. We thus specify, after having demonstrated the existence of matter, that<blockquote>the universe is only moving matter, and this moving matter can only move in space and time. <ref name=":5" group="note" /></blockquote><br />
<br />
==== Conclusion ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
It follows from these observations that the idea of God, the idea of a "pure spirit" creator of the universe, is meaningless, because a God outside of space and time is something that cannot exist.<br />
<br />
It is necessary to share the idealistic mysticism, consequently not to admit any scientific control, to believe in a God existing outside time, that is to say not existing at any time, and existing outside space, that is to say not existing anywhere.<br />
<br />
Materialists, strengthened by the conclusions of science, affirm that matter exists in space and at a certain moment (in time). Therefore, the universe could not have been created, because it would have taken God to create the world at a moment that was at no time (since time for God does not exist) and it would also have sprung the world out of nothing.<br />
<br />
In order to admit creation, one must therefore first admit that there was a moment when the universe did not exist, and then that out of nothing something came out, which science cannot admit.<br />
<br />
We see that the idealistic arguments, confronted with science, cannot be supported, while those of the materialist philosophers cannot be separated from the sciences themselves. We thus underline, once again, the intimate relationship between materialism and science.<br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<br />
<blockquote><br />
''Engels: [[Library:Anti-Dühring|Anti-Dühring]]''<br />
<br />
''Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
=== What does it mean to be a materialist? ===<br />
==== Union of theory and practice ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The purpose of our study is to know what Marxism is, to see how the philosophy of materialism, by becoming dialectical, identifies itself with Marxism. We already know that one of the foundations of this philosophy is the close connection between theory and practice.<br />
<br />
This is why, after having seen what matter is for materialists, and then how matter is, it is indispensable to say, after these two theoretical questions, what it means to be materialist, that is to say how the materialist acts. This is the practical side of these problems.<br />
<br />
The basis of materialism is the recognition of being as the source of thought. But is it enough to keep repeating this? To be a true partisan of consequent materialism, one must be: 1. in the field of thought; 2. in the field of action.<br />
<br />
==== What does it mean to be a supporter of materialism in the field of thought? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
To be a partisan of materialism in the field of thought means knowing the fundamental formula of materialism: '''being produces thought''', knowing how this formula can be applied.<br />
<br />
When we say: being produces thought, we have here an abstract formula, because the words: being and thought are abstract words. "Being" is being in general; "thought" is thought in general that we want to talk about. Being, as well as thought in general, is a subjective reality (see part one, chapter IV, the explanation of "subjective reality" and "objective reality"); it does not exist: it is what is called an abstraction. To say: "being produces thought" is thus an abstract formula, because it is composed of abstractions.<br />
<br />
So, for example: we know a lot about horses, but if we talk about the horse, it is the horse in general that we want to talk about; well! the horse in general is an abstraction.<br />
<br />
If we put in the place of the horse, man or being in general, they are still abstractions.<br />
<br />
But if the horse in general doesn't exist, what does exist? It's the horses in particular. The veterinarian who would say: "I treat the horse in general, but not the horse in particular" would be laughed at, as would the doctor who would say the same thing about men.<br />
<br />
So there is no such thing as being in general, but there are particular beings with particular qualities. It is the same with thought.<br />
<br />
We will therefore say that being in general is something abstract, and that particular being is something concrete; thus of thought in general and of particular thought.<br />
<br />
''The materialist is the one who knows how to recognize in all situations, who knows how to recognize where is the being and where is the thought.''<br />
<br />
Example: The brain and our ideas.<br />
<br />
We must know how to transform the abstract general formula into a concrete formula. The materialist will thus identify the brain as being and our ideas as being the thought. He will reason while saying: it is the brain (the being) which produces our ideas (the thought). This is a simple example, but let's take the more complex example of human society and see how a materialist will reason.<br />
<br />
The life of society is composed (roughly) of an economic life and a political life. What is the relationship between economic life and political life?... What is the primary factor in this abstract formula that we want to make a concrete formula?<br />
<br />
For the materialist, the first factor, that is to say, the being, the one that gives life to society, is economic life. The second factor, the thought that is created by the being, which can only live through it, is political life.<br />
<br />
The materialist will therefore say that economic life explains political life, since political life is a product of economic life.<br />
<br />
This statement, made here summarily, is at the root of what is called ''historical materialism'' and was first made by Marx and Engels.<br />
<br />
Here is another more delicate example: the poet. Certainly, there are many elements involved in explaining "the poet," but here we want to show one aspect of this question.<br />
<br />
We will generally say that the poet writes because he is driven by inspiration. Is that enough to explain that the poet writes this rather than that? No. The poet may have thoughts in his head, but he is also a being who lives in society. We will see that the first factor, the one that gives the poet his own life, is society, since the second factor is the ideas that the poet has in his brain. Therefore, one of the elements, the fundamental element, that "explains" the poet will be society, that is, the environment in which he lives in that society. (We will find the "poet" again when we study the dialectic, because then we will have all the elements to study this problem properly).<br />
<br />
We can see from these examples that the materialist is the one who knows how to apply the formula of materialism everywhere and always, at every moment, and in every case.<br />
<br />
==== What is materialism in practice? ====<br />
<br />
===== First aspect of the question =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen that there is no third philosophy and that if one is not consistent in the application of materialism, one is either an idealist or one obtains a mixture of idealism and materialism.<br />
<br />
The bourgeois scholar, in his studies and in his experiences, is always materialist. This is normal, because, in order to advance science, it is necessary to work on matter, and if the scientist really believed that matter exists only in his mind, he would find it useless to make experiments.<br />
<br />
So there are several varieties of scientists:<br />
<br />
# Scientists who are conscious and consistent materialists.<br />
# Scientists who are materialists without knowing it: i.e. almost all of them, because it is impossible to do science without positing the existence of matter. But, among the latter, one must distinguish:<br />
## Those who begin to follow materialism, but who stop, because they don't dare to call themselves such: these are the agnostics, those whom Engels calls the "shameful materialists".<br />
## Then there are the scholars, unknowingly materialistic and inconsistent. They are materialists in the laboratory, but when they come out of their work, they are idealists, believers, religious.<br />
<br />
In fact, the latter did not know or did not want to put their ideas in order. They are in perpetual contradiction with themselves. They separate their work, necessarily materialist, from their philosophical conceptions. They are "scientists", and yet, if they do not expressly deny the existence of matter, they think, unscientifically, that it is useless to know the real nature of things. They are "scientists" and yet they believe without any proof in impossible things. (See the case of Pasteur, Branly and others who were believers, whereas the scientist, if he is consistent, must abandon his religious beliefs). Science and belief are absolutely opposed.<br />
<br />
===== Second aspect of the question =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
''Materialism and action'': If it is true that the true materialist is the one who applies the formula that is at the basis of this philosophy everywhere and in all cases, he must be careful to apply it well.<br />
<br />
As we have just seen, one must be consistent, and to be a consistent materialist, one must transpose materialism into action.<br />
<br />
To be a materialist in practice is to act in accordance with philosophy, taking ''reality'' as the first and most important factor, and ''thought'' as the second factor.<br />
<br />
We are going to see what attitudes are taken by those who, without realizing it, take thought as the first factor and are therefore at this moment idealists without knowing it.<br />
<br />
<ol start="1"><br />
<li>What do we call the one who lives as if he were alone in the world? The ''individualist''. He lives within his shell; the outside world exists only for him. For him, the important thing is ''himself'', his thought. He is a pure idealist, or what is called a solipsist. <ref group="note">See explanation of this word, [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy#Consequences of idealist reasoning|section “Consequences of idealist reasoning”]]</ref></li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
The individualist is selfish, and being selfish is not a materialist attitude. The selfish limits the universe to his own person.<br />
<br />
<ol start="2"><br />
<li>He who learns ''for the sake of learning'', as a dilettante, who assimilates well, has no difficulties, but keeps it all for himself. He attaches primary importance to himself, to his thought.</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
The idealist is closed to the outside world, to reality. The materialist is always ''open'' to reality; that is why those who take courses in Marxism and who learn easily must try to transmit what they have learned.<br />
<br />
<ol start="3"><br />
<li>He who reasons about all things in relation to himself undergoes an idealist deformation.</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
He will say, for example, of a meeting where things were said that were unpleasant to him: "This is a bad meeting". This is not the way to analyze things; one must judge the meeting in relation to the organization, to its purpose, and not in relation to oneself.<br />
<br />
<ol start="4"><br />
<li>''Sectarianism'' is not a materialist attitude either. Because the sectarian has understood the problems, because he agrees with himself, he claims that others should be like him. It is still giving primary importance to oneself or to a sect.</li><br />
<br />
<li>The ''doctrinaire'' who has studied the texts, has drawn definitions from them, is still an idealist when he is content to quote materialist texts, when he lives only with his texts, because then the real world disappears. He repeats these formulas without applying them in reality. He gives primary importance to the texts, to the ideas. Life unfolds in his consciousness in the form of texts, and, in general, we see that the doctrinaire is also sectarian.</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
To believe that the revolution is a question of education, to say that in explaining "once and for all" to the workers the necessity of the revolution they must understand and that if they do not want to understand, it is not worth trying to make the revolution, that is sectarianism and not a materialist attitude.<br />
<br />
We have to note the cases where people do not understand; we have to look for reasons why this is so, note the repression, the propaganda of the bourgeois newspapers, radio, cinema, etc., and look for all possible means to make people understand what we want, through leaflets, brochures, newspapers, schools, etc.<br />
<br />
To have no sense of reality, to live on the moon and, practically, to make projects without taking into account the situations and realities, is an idealist attitude that gives primary importance to beautiful projects without seeing if they are feasible or not. Those who continually criticize, but do nothing to make things better, proposing no remedies, those who lack critical sense themselves, all of them are inconsistent materialists.<br />
<br />
==== Conclusion ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
By these examples, we see that the faults, which we can see more or less in each of us, are idealistic faults. We have it because we separate practice from theory and the bourgeoisie, which has influenced us, likes us not to attach importance to reality. For her, who supports idealism, theory and practice are two completely different and unrelated things. These flaws are therefore harmful, and we must fight them, because they ultimately benefit the bourgeoisie. In short, we must note that these defects, engendered in us by society, by the theoretical bases of our education, of our culture, rooted in our childhood, are the work of the bourgeoisie -- and get rid of them.<br />
<br />
=== History of materialism ===<br />
{{top}}<br />
So far we have studied what materialism is in general and what ideas are common to all materialists. We will now see how it has evolved from antiquity to modern materialism. In short, we are going to trace the history of materialism.<br />
<br />
We don't pretend to explain in so few pages the 2000 years of the history of materialism; we simply want to give some general indications that will guide the readings.<br />
<br />
In order to study this history properly, even summarily, it is indispensable to see at every moment why things have unfolded in this way. It would be better not to quote certain historical names than not to apply this method. But, while we do not want to clutter up our readers' brains, we think it is necessary to name in chronological order the main materialist philosophers more or less known to them.<br />
<br />
This is why, in order to simplify the work, we will devote these first pages to the purely historical side, and then, in the second part of this chapter, we will see why the evolution of materialism has had to undergo the form of development that it did.<br />
==== The need to study this history====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The bourgeoisie does not like the history of materialism, and that is why this history, taught in bourgeois books, is completely incomplete and always false. Various falsification processes are used:<br />
<br />
<ol start="1"><br />
<li>Since we cannot ignore the great materialist thinkers, we name them by talking about everything they have written except their materialist studies, and we forget to say that they are materialist philosophers.</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
There are many such cases of oblivion in the history of philosophy as it is taught in high schools and universities, and we shall cite as an example Diderot, who was the greatest materialist thinker before Marx and Engels.<br />
<br />
<ol start="2"><br />
<li>There have been many thinkers throughout history who were unknowingly materialistic or inconsequential. That is to say, in some of their writings they were materialists, but in others they were idealists: Descartes, for example.</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
Now the history written by the bourgeoisie leaves in the shade all that, in these thinkers, not only influenced materialism, but gave birth to a whole current of this philosophy.<br />
<br />
<ol start="3"><br />
<li>Then, if these two falsification processes do not succeed in camouflaging certain authors, they are simply concealed.</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
This is how the history of literature and philosophy of the eighteenth century is taught by "ignoring" Holbach and Helvetius, who were great thinkers of that time.<br />
<br />
Why is this so? Because the history of materialism is particularly instructive for knowing and understanding the problems of the world; and also because the development of materialism is harmful to the ideologies that support the privileges of the ruling classes.<br />
<br />
These are the reasons why the bourgeoisie presents materialism as a doctrine that has not changed, frozen for twenty centuries, while on the contrary materialism was something alive and always in motion.<blockquote>But just as idealism underwent a series of stages of development, so also did materialism. With each epoch-making discovery even in the sphere of natural science, it has to change its form.<ref name=":0" group="note" /></blockquote>We now have a better understanding of the need to study, even summarily, this history of materialism. To do so, we must distinguish two periods: 1° from the origin (Greek antiquity) up to Marx and Engels; 2° from the materialism of Marx and Engels to the present day. (We will study this second part with dialectical materialism).<br />
<br />
We call the first period "pre-Marxist materialism", and the second "Marxist materialism" or "dialectical materialism".<br />
<br />
==== Pre-Marxist materialism ====<br />
===== Ancient Greece =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Let us recall that materialism is a doctrine that has always been linked to the sciences, that has evolved and progressed with the sciences. When, in Greek antiquity, in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E., the sciences began to manifest themselves with the "physicists", a materialist current was formed which attracted the best thinkers and philosophers of that time (Thales, Anaximene, Heraclitus). These first philosophers will be, as Engels says, "naturally dialecticians". They are struck by the fact that movement and change are everywhere and that things are not isolated, but intimately linked to each other. <br />
<br />
Heraclitus, who is called the "father of dialectic", said:<blockquote>Nothing is still; everything flows; you never bathe twice in the same river, because it is never, in two successive moments, the same: from one moment to the next, it has changed; it has become different.</blockquote>Heraclitus, the first, seeks to explain the movement, the change, and sees in the contradiction the reasons for the evolution of things.<br />
<br />
The conceptions of these first philosophers were right, and yet they were abandoned because they were wrong to be formulated a priori, that is, the state of science at that time did not allow us to prove what they maintained. On the other hand, the social conditions necessary for the dialectic to flourish (we shall see what they are later on) were not yet realized.<br />
<br />
It is only much later, in the 19th century, that the conditions (social and intellectual) allowing the sciences to prove the correctness of the dialectic will be realized.<br />
<br />
Other Greek thinkers had materialistic conceptions: Leucippe (5th century B.C.E.), who was the master of Democritus, had already discussed this problem of atoms, whose theory we have seen established by the latter.<br />
<br />
Epicurus (341-270 B.C.E.), a disciple of Democritus, was a very great thinker whose philosophy was completely falsified by the Church in the Middle Ages. Out of hatred of philosophical materialism, the Church presented Epicurean doctrine as profoundly immoral, as vindication of the lowest passions. In reality, Epicurus was an ascetic and his philosophy aimed at giving a scientific (and therefore anti-religious) foundation to human life.<br />
<br />
All these philosophers were aware that philosophy was linked to the fate of humanity, and we can already see there, on their part, an opposition to official theory, an opposition to materialism.<br />
<br />
But one great thinker dominates ancient Greece: it was Aristotle, who was rather idealistic. His influence was considerable. And that's why we must cite him in particular. He drew up an inventory of human knowledge of that time, filling in the gaps created by the new sciences. A universal mind, he wrote many books on all subjects. Through the universality of his knowledge, of which only idealistic tendencies were retained, neglecting its materialistic and scientific aspects, he had a considerable influence on philosophical conceptions until the end of the Middle Ages, that is, for twenty centuries.<br />
<br />
During all this period, therefore, the ancient tradition was followed, and only Aristotle was thought of. A savage repression raged against those who thought otherwise. Nevertheless, towards the end of the Middle Ages, a struggle broke out between idealists who denied the existence of matter and those who thought there was a material reality.<br />
<br />
In the 11th and 12th centuries, this dispute continued in France and especially in England.<br />
<br />
In the beginning, it was mainly in the latter country that materialism developed. Marx said:<blockquote>Materialism is the true son of Great Britain.<ref group="note">Marx-Engels: "The Holy Family", Philosophical Studies, Social Editions, 1961</ref></blockquote>A little later, it was in France that materialism flourished. In any case, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries we see two currents manifest themselves: one, English materialism, and the other, French materialism, whose coming together will contribute to the prodigious blossoming of materialism in the eighteenth century.<br />
<br />
=====English materialism =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
<blockquote>The authentic father of English materialism and of all modern experimental science is Bacon. The science of nature is for him the true science, and physics, based on sensible experience, is the noblest fundamental part of it. <ref group="note">Engels: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific|Socialism: utopian and scientific]]</ref></blockquote>Bacon is famous as the founder of the experimental method in the study of science. For him, the important thing is to study science in the "great book of nature", and this is particularly interesting at a time when science is studied in the books that Aristotle had left a few centuries earlier.<br />
<br />
To study physics, for example, this is how you would do it: on a certain subject, take the passages written by Aristotle; then take the books of St. Thomas Aquinas, who was a great theologian, and read what he had written about Aristotle's passage. The professor did not make any personal comment, let alone say what he thought, but referred to a third book that repeated Aristotle and St. Thomas. This was the science of the Middle Ages, which was called scholasticism: it was a bookish science, because it was studied only in books.<br />
<br />
It is against this scholasticism, this set and rigid teaching, that Bacon reacted by calling for study in the Great book of nature.<br />
<br />
At that time, a question arose:<br />
<br />
Where do our ideas come from? Where does our knowledge come from? Each of us has ideas, the idea of a house, for example. This idea comes to us because there are houses, the materialists say. Idealists think that it is God who gives us the idea of a house. Bacon, for his part, said that the idea only existed because we saw or touched things, but he could not yet demonstrate this.<br />
<br />
It was Locke (1632-1704) who set out to demonstrate how ideas come from experience. He showed that all ideas come from experience and that only experience gives us ideas. The idea of the first table came to man before it existed, because, through experience, he was already using a tree trunk or a stone as a table.<br />
<br />
With Locke's ideas, English materialism passed to France in the first half of the 18th century, because, while this philosophy was developing in a particular way in England, a materialist current had formed in our country.<br />
<br />
=====Materialism in France=====<br />
{{top}}One can date from Descartes (1596-1650) the birth in France of a clearly materialistic current. Descartes had a great influence on this philosophy, but, in general, few speak about it!<br />
<br />
At this time when the feudal ideology was very alive, even in the sciences, where one studied in the scholastic way that we saw, Descartes enters in fight against this state of affairs.<br />
<br />
The feudal ideology is imbued with religious mentality. It therefore considers that the Church, representing God on earth, has the monopoly of truth. It follows that no man can claim the truth if he does not subordinate his thought to the teachings of the Church. Descartes defeats this conception. He certainly does not attack the Church as such, but he boldly professes that every man, believer or not, can reach the truth through the exercise of his reason ("natural light").<br />
<br />
Descartes declares from the beginning of his Discourse of the method: "Common sense is the thing of the world best shared". Consequently, everyone in front of science has the same rights. And if he makes, for example, a good criticism of the medicine of his time (''The Imaginary Invalid'', of Molière, is an echo of the criticisms of Descartes), it is because he wants to make a science which is a true science, based on the study of nature and rejecting that taught until him, where Aristotle and saint Thomas were the only "arguments".<br />
<br />
Descartes lived at the beginning of the seventeenth century; in the following century, the [[French Revolution|Revolution]] was going to break out, and that is why we can say of him that he comes out of a world that is going to disappear to enter a new world, in the one that is going to be born. This position makes Descartes a conciliator; he wants to create a materialistic science and, at the same time, he is idealistic, because he wants to save religion.<br />
<br />
When, in his time, people used to ask: Why are there animals that live? They answered according to the ready-made answers of theology: because there is a principle that makes them live. Descartes, on the contrary, maintained that the laws of animal life are simply matter. He believed, moreover, and affirmed that animals are nothing other than machines of flesh and muscles, just as other machines are of iron and wood. He even thought that they both had no sensations and when, at the Abbey of Port-Royal, during the weeks of study, men who claimed to follow his philosophy would prick some dogs, they would say: "As nature is well done, it looks like they are suffering!"<br />
<br />
For Descartes, the materialist, the animals were thus machines. But Man is different, because he has a soul, says Descartes the idealist.<br />
<br />
Ideas developed and defended by Descartes will be born, on the one hand, a clearly materialist philosophical current and, on the other hand, an idealist current.<br />
<br />
Among those who continue the materialist Cartesian branch, we will retain La Mettrie (1709- 1751). Taking up this thesis of the animal-machine, he extends it to man. Why shouldn't man be a machine?.... The human soul itself, he sees it as a mechanics where ideas would be mechanical movements.<br />
<br />
It was at this time that English materialism penetrated into France with Locke's ideas. From the junction of these two currents was born a more evolved materialism. It will be:<br />
<br />
=====The materialism of the 18th century=====<br />
{{top}}This materialism was defended by philosophers who also knew how to be admirable fighters and writers; continually criticizing social institutions and religion, applying theory to practice and always fighting against power, they were sometimes locked up in the Bastille or in Vincennes.<br />
<br />
It was they who gathered their works in the great Encyclopedia, where they set the new direction of materialism. They had, moreover, a great influence, since this philosophy was, as Engels says, "the conviction of all cultivated youth".<br />
<br />
It was even the only time in the history of philosophy in France when a philosophy with a French character became truly popular.<br />
<br />
Diderot, born in Langres in 1713, died in Paris in 1784, dominated the whole movement. What must be said above all, and what bourgeois history does not say, is that he was, before Marx and Engels, the greatest materialist thinker. Diderot, Lenin said, almost arrives at the conclusions of contemporary (dialectical) materialism.<br />
<br />
He was a true militant; always in battle against the Church, against the social state, he knew the dungeons. The history written by the contemporary bourgeoisie has largely escaped him. But one must read the Interviews of Diderot and d'Alembert, Rameau's Nephew, Jacques the Fatalist to understand the enormous influence of Diderot on materialism.<br />
<br />
In the first half of the 19th century, because of historical events, we see a retreat of materialism. The bourgeoisie of all countries makes a great propaganda in favor of idealism and religion, because not only does it no longer want progressive (materialist) ideas to spread, but it also needs to put thinkers and the masses to sleep in order to stay in power.<br />
<br />
It is then that we see Feuerbach in Germany asserting, in the midst of all the idealistic philosophers, his materialist convictions, <blockquote>by putting materialism squarely back on the throne. <ref group="note" name=":6">Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach]]: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy#Hegel|Hegel]]</ref></blockquote>Essentially developing a critique of religion, he takes up in a healthy and contemporary way the bases of materialism that had been forgotten and thus influences the philosophers of his time.<br />
<br />
We arrive at this period of the nineteenth century when we see an enormous progress in the sciences, due in particular to these three great discoveries: the living cell, the transformation of energy, and evolution (from Darwin), which will allow Marx and Engels, influenced by Feuerbach, to make materialism evolve to give us modern, or dialectical, materialism.<br />
<br />
We have just seen, in a very brief way, the history of materialism before Marx and Engels. We know that the latter, while agreeing with the materialists who preceded them on many points in common, also judged that the latter's work, on the other hand, had many flaws and shortcomings.<br />
<br />
In order to understand the transformations they brought to pre-Marxist materialism, it is therefore absolutely necessary to investigate what these defects and shortcomings were, and why they were so.<br />
<br />
In other words, our study of the history of materialism would be incomplete if, after listing the various thinkers who contributed to the progress of materialism, we did not try to find out how and in what direction this progress was made and why it underwent this or that form of evolution.<br />
<br />
We are particularly interested in the materialism of the 18th century, because it was the culmination of the different currents of this philosophy.<br />
<br />
We are going to study what were the errors of this materialism, what were its shortcomings, but, as we must never see things in a unilateral way, but on the contrary as a whole, we will also underline what were its merits.<br />
<br />
Materialism, which was dialectical in its beginnings, has not been able to continue to develop on this basis. Dialectical reasoning, because of the insufficiency of scientific knowledge, had to be abandoned. It was first necessary to create and develop the sciences.<blockquote>One had first to know what a particular thing was before one could observe the changes it was undergoing.<ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>It is thus the very intimate union of materialism and science that will allow this philosophy to become once again, on a more solid and scientific basis, the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels.<br />
<br />
We will thus find the birth certificate of materialism next to that of science. But, if we always find where materialism comes from, we must also establish where idealism comes from.<br />
<br />
====Where does idealism come from?====<br />
{{top}}If, in the course of history, idealism has been able to exist alongside religion, tolerated and approved by it, this is because in reality, it was born from and comes from religion. <br />
<br />
Lenin wrote a formula on this subject that we must study. "Idealism is nothing but a refined form of religion. "What does it mean? It means that idealism is able to present its conceptions much more flexibly than religion. To claim that the universe was created by a spirit floating above the darkness, that God is immaterial, and then suddenly, as religion does, declaring that he speaks (through the Word) and that he has a son (Jesus), is a series of brutally presented ideas. Idealism, by affirming that the world exists only in our thoughts, in our mind, presents itself in a more hidden way. In fact, as we know, it is the same in substance, but the form is less brutal, more elegant. That is why idealism is a refined form of religion."<br />
<br />
It is also refined because idealistic philosophers know, in discussions, how to anticipate questions, how to lay traps, like Philonous to poor Hylas in the Berkeley dialogues.<br />
<br />
But to say that idealism stems from religion is simply to put the problem off, and we must ask ourselves this immediately:<br />
<br />
====Where does religion come from?====<br />
{{top}}Engels gave us a very clear answer on this subject: "Religion is born from the limited conceptions of man."<br />
<br />
For the first men, this ignorance was twofold: ignorance of nature and ignorance of themselves. One must constantly think of this double ignorance when studying the history of primitive men.<br />
<br />
In Greek antiquity, which we already consider an advanced civilization, this ignorance seems childish, for example when we see that Aristotle thought that the earth was immobile, that it was the center of the world and that planets revolved around the earth. (The latter, of which he thought numbered 46, were attached like nails on a ceiling, and the whole thing revolved around the earth...)<br />
<br />
The Greeks also believed that there were four elements: water, earth, air and fire, and that it was not possible to decompose them. We know that this is not true, since we are now decomposing water, earth and air and we do not consider fire as a body of the same order.<br />
<br />
About human beings themselves, the Greeks were also very ignorant, since they did not know the function of our organs and they considered, for example, the heart as the seat of courage!<br />
<br />
If the ignorance of the Greek scholars was so great, they whom we already consider to be very advanced, then what must have been the ignorance of the men who lived thousands of years before them? The concepts that primitive men had of nature and of themselves were limited by ignorance. But these men still tried to explain things. All the documents we have about primitive men tell us that these men were very preoccupied with dreams. We have seen, from the first chapter, how they solved this question of dreams by believing in the existence of a "double" of man. In the beginning, they attributed to this double a kind of transparent and light body, still having a material consistency. It is only much later that this conception is born in their minds that man has in him an immaterial principle that survives after death, a spiritual principle (the word comes from ''spiritus'', which in Latin means breath, the breath that goes away with the last breath, at the moment when one gives up the soul and the "double" alone remains). It is then the soul that explains the thought, the dream.<br />
<br />
In the Middle Ages, there were strange ideas about the soul. It was thought that in a fat body one had a thin soul and in a thin body a great soul; that is why, at that time, ascetics used to make long and numerous fasts to have a great soul, to make a great dwelling for the soul.<br />
<br />
Having admitted in the form of the transparent, then in the form of the soul, a spiritual principle, the survival of man after death, primitive men created the gods.<br />
<br />
Believing at first in who were more powerful than men existing in a still material form, they imperceptibly came to this belief in gods existing in the form of a soul superior to ours. And so, after having created a multitude of gods, each with its defined function, as in ancient Greece, they came to this conception of one God. Then the monotheistic religion of today was created. We can see that the origin of religion, even in its present form, was ignorance.<br />
<br />
Idealism was thus born from the limited conceptions of man, from his ignorance; while materialism, on the contrary, is born from the retreat of these limits.<br />
<br />
In the course of the history of philosophy, we are going to witness this continuous struggle between idealism and materialism. The latter wants to push back the limits of ignorance, and this will be one of its glories and one of its merits. Idealism, on the contrary, and the religion that feeds it make every effort to maintain ignorance and to take advantage of this ignorance of the masses to make them tolerate oppression, economic and social exploitation.<br />
<br />
==== The merits of pre-Marxist materialism ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen materialism born among the Greeks as soon as an embryo of science existed. Following this principle that when science develops, materialism develops, we see in the course of history:<br />
<br />
# In the Middle Ages, a weak development of science, a halt to materialism.<br />
# In the 17th and 18th centuries, a great development of science corresponds to a great development of materialism. The French materialism of the 18th century is the direct consequence of the development of the sciences.<br />
# In the nineteenth century, we witness many great discoveries, and materialism undergoes a very great transformation with Marx and Engels.<br />
# Today, science is progressing enormously and so is materialism. We see the best scholars applying dialectical materialism in their work.<br />
<br />
Idealism and materialism therefore have completely opposite origins; and we see, over the centuries, a struggle between these two philosophies, a struggle that still lasts today, and which was not only academic.<br />
<br />
This struggle that crosses the history of humanity is the struggle between science and ignorance, it is the struggle between two currents. One is pulling humanity towards ignorance and keeping it in this ignorance, the other, on the contrary, tends towards the emancipation of men by replacing ignorance with science.<br />
<br />
This struggle has sometimes taken serious forms, as in the time of the Inquisition, where we can take, among others, the example of Galileo. The latter asserts that the Earth revolves. This is a new piece of knowledge, which is in contradiction with the Bible and also with Aristotle: if the earth revolves, it is not the center of the universe, but simply a point in the universe, and we must then widen the limits of our thoughts. What do we do then in the face of this discovery of Galileo?<br />
<br />
In order to keep humanity in ignorance, a religious court is instituted, and Galileo is condemned to make amends. This is an example of the struggle between ignorance and science.<br />
<br />
We must therefore judge the philosophers and scientists of that time by placing them in this struggle of ignorance against science, and we will see that by defending science they were defending materialism without knowing it themselves. Thus Descartes, by his reasoning, provided ideas that could advance materialism.<br />
<br />
We must also see that this struggle in the course of history is not simply a theoretical struggle, but a social and political struggle. The ruling classes in this battle are always on the side of ignorance. Science is revolutionary and contributes to the emancipation of humanity.<br />
<br />
The case of the bourgeoisie is typical. In the 18th century, the bourgeoisie was dominated by the feudal class; at that time, it was in favor of science; it led the fight against ignorance and gave us ''L'Encyclopédie''. In the twentieth century, the bourgeoisie is the ruling class, and in this struggle against ignorance and science, it is for ignorance with much greater savagery than before (see Hitlerism).<br />
<br />
So we see that pre-Marxist materialism has played a considerable role and has had a very great historical importance. During this struggle between ignorance and science it was able to develop a general conception of the world that could be opposed to religion, and therefore to ignorance. It is also thanks to the evolution of materialism, to this succession of his works, that the indispensable conditions for the blossoming of dialectical materialism were realized.<br />
<br />
==== The defects of pre-Marxist materialism ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
To understand the evolution of materialism, to see its flaws and shortcomings, we must never forget that science and materialism are linked.<br />
<br />
In the beginning, materialism was ahead of science, and that is why this philosophy could not assert itself from the outset. Science had to be created and developed to prove that dialectical materialism was right, but this took more than twenty centuries. During this long period, materialism was influenced by the sciences and particularly by the spirit of the sciences, as well as by the most developed particular sciences.<br />
<br />
That is why<blockquote>The materialism of the last century ''[that is, of the 18th century]'' was predominantly mechanical, because at that time, of all natural sciences, only mechanics, and indeed only the mechanics of solid bodies — celestial and terrestrial — in short, the mechanics of gravity, had come to any definite close. Chemistry at that time existed only in its infantile, phlogistic form. Biology still lay in swaddling clothes; vegetable and animal organisms had been only roughly examined and were explained by purely mechanical causes. What the animal was to Descartes, man was to the materialists of the 18th century — a machine. <ref name=":0" group="note" /></blockquote>This, then, is what materialism was, the result of a long and slow evolution of science after the "hibernation period of the Christian Middle Ages".<br />
<br />
The great mistake in this period was to consider the world as a great mechanics, to judge everything according to the laws of this science called mechanics. Considering motion as a simple mechanical movement, it was believed that the same events had to happen over and over again. We saw the machine side of things, but we did not see the living side. This materialism is therefore called mechanical materialism.<br />
<br />
Let's see an example: How did these materialists explain thinking? In this way: "the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile"! That's a bit simplistic! Marx's materialism, on the contrary, gives a series of clarifications. Our thoughts do not come only from the brain. We have to see why we have certain thoughts, certain ideas, rather than others, and then we realize that society, our surroundings, etc., select our ideas. Mechanical materialism considers thought as a simple mechanical phenomenon. But it is much more than that!<blockquote>This exclusive application of mechanics to phenomena of a chemical and organic nature, in which mechanical laws certainly also acted, but were rejected in the background by laws of a higher order, constitutes a specific, but inevitable narrowness at that time of classical French materialism. <ref name=":0" group="note" /></blockquote>This is the first major fault of eighteenth-century materialism.<br />
<br />
The consequences of this error were that it ignored history in general, that is, the point of view of historical development, of process: this materialism considered that the world did not evolve and that it returned at regular intervals to similar states, nor did it conceive of an evolution of man and animals.<blockquote>This materialism ... in its inability to consider the world as a process, as matter engaged in historical development ... corresponded to the level reached at the time by the natural sciences and the metaphysical way,<ref group="note">''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy#Study of metaphysics|Study of metaphysics]]''</ref> i.e. antidialectical, of philosophizing that resulted from it. It was known that nature was engaged in a perpetual movement. But this movement, according to the conception of the time, also described a perpetual circle and, therefore, never moved a single place; it always produced the same results.<ref name=":0" group="note" /></blockquote>This is the second flaw of this materialism.<br />
<br />
Its third mistake was that it was too contemplative; it did not see enough of the role of human action in the world and in society. Marx's materialism teaches that we must not only explain the world, but transform it. Man is an active element in history that can bring change to the world.<br />
<br />
The action of the Russian communists is a living example of an action capable not only of preparing, making and succeeding in the revolution, but, since 1918, of establishing socialism in the midst of enormous difficulties.<br />
<br />
Pre-Marxist materialism was unaware of this concept of human action. At that time, it was thought that man is a product of his environment, whereas Marx teaches us that the environment is a product of man and that man is therefore a product of his own activity under certain conditions given at the outset. If man undergoes the influence of his environment, he can transform this environment, society; he can, therefore, transform himself.<br />
<br />
The materialism of the 18th century was therefore too contemplative, because it ignored the historical development of everything, and this was inevitable then, since scientific knowledge was not advanced enough to conceive the world and things differently than through the old method of thinking: "metaphysics".<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote><br />
''Marx and Engels: [[Library:The holy family|The holy family]]''<br />
<br />
''Marx: [[Library:Theses on Feuerbach|Theses on Feuerbach]]''<br />
<br />
''Plekhanov: [[Library:Essays on the history of materialism|Essays on the history of materialism]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions#The philosophical materialism|Control questions]]''<br />
<br />
== Study of metaphysics==<br />
=== What is the "metaphysical method"? ===<br />
{{top}}<br />
We know that the defects of the materialists of the 18th century come from their form of reasoning, from their particular method of research which we have called "metaphysical method". The metaphysical method thus translates a particular conception of the world, and we must notice that, if to pre-Marxist materialism we oppose Marxist materialism, in the same way to metaphysical materialism we oppose dialectical materialism.<br />
<br />
====The characteristics of this method ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
What we are going to study here is this <blockquote>old method of investigation and thought which Hegel calls “metaphysical” <ref name=":7" group="note">Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|''Ludwig Feuerbach'']]'': [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy#Marx|Marx]]''</ref></blockquote>Let's start immediately with a simple remark. Which seems more natural to most people: movement or stillness? What is the normal state of affairs for them: rest or mobility?<br />
<br />
In general, it is thought that rest existed before movement and that something, in order for it to be able to move, was first in a state of rest.<br />
<br />
The Bible also tells us that before the universe, which was created by God, there was immobile eternity, i.e. rest.<br />
<br />
Here are words we will often use: rest, stillness, and also movement and change. But these last two words are not synonymous.<br />
<br />
Movement, in the strict sense of the word, is displacement. Example: a falling stone, a moving train are in motion.<br />
<br />
Change, in the strict sense of the word, is the passage from one form to another. Example: A tree that loses its leaves has changed shape. But it is also the passage from one state to another. Example: The air has become unbreathable: it is a change.<br />
<br />
So movement means change of place, and change means change of shape or state. We will try to respect this distinction, in order to avoid confusion (when we study the dialectic, we will be called upon to review the meaning of these words).<br />
<br />
We have just seen that, generally speaking, we think that movement and change are less normal than rest, and it is certain that we have a kind of preference to consider things at rest and without change.<br />
<br />
Example: We bought a pair of yellow shoes and after some time, after multiple repairs (replacement of soles and heels, gluing of many parts), we still say: "I'm going to put on my yellow shoes", without realizing that they are not the same anymore. For us, it is always the yellow shoes that we bought on such and such an occasion and that we paid such and such a price. We will not consider the change that has occurred to our shoes, they are always the same, they are identical. We neglect the change to see only the identity as if nothing important had happened. This is the principle of identity.<br />
<br />
=====The principle of identity=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
It consists in preferring immobility to movement and identity to change in the face of events.<br />
<br />
From this preference, which constitutes the first character of this method, a whole conception of the world is derived. We consider the universe as if it were frozen," Engels says. The same will be true for nature, society and mankind. Thus it is often claimed: "There is nothing new under the sun", which means that there has always been no change, since the universe has remained motionless and identical. It is also often understood to mean a periodic return to the same events. God created the world by producing fish, birds, mammals, etc., and since then nothing has changed, the world has not moved. It is also said: "Men are always the same", as if men have always been the same.<br />
<br />
These common expressions reflect this conception which is deeply rooted in us, in our minds, and the bourgeoisie exploits this error to the full.<br />
<br />
When one criticizes socialism, one of the arguments most readily given is that man is selfish and that it is necessary for some force to intervene to constrain him, otherwise disorder would reign. This is the result of this metaphysical conception that man has forever a fixed nature that cannot change.<br />
<br />
It is quite certain that if we suddenly had the possibility of living in a communist regime, that is to say, if we could distribute the products immediately to each one according to his needs and not according to his work, it would be a rush to satisfy whims, and such a society would not be able to hold out. And yet this is communist society and this is what is rational. But it is because we have a metaphysical conception rooted in us that we picture the future man who will live in a relatively distant future as similar to the man of today.<br />
<br />
Therefore, when we affirm that a socialist or communist society is not viable because man is selfish, we forget that if society changes, man will also change.<br />
<br />
Every day we hear criticisms of the Soviet Union that reveal to us the difficulties of understanding of those who formulate them. This is because they have a metaphysical conception of the world and of things.<br />
<br />
Among the many examples we could cite, let us take just this one. We are told: "A worker in the Soviet Union receives a salary that does not correspond to the total value of what he produces, so there is a surplus value, that is to say, a deduction from his salary. So it is stolen. In France, it is the same, workers are exploited; there is therefore no difference between a Soviet worker and a French worker.<br />
<br />
Where is the metaphysical conception in this example? It consists in not considering that there are two types of societies here and in not taking into account the differences between these two societies. To believe that as long as there is added value here and there, it is the same thing, without considering the changes that have taken place in the Soviet Union, where man and machine no longer have the same economic and social meaning as in France. Now, in our country, the machine exists to produce (at the service of the boss) and man to be exploited. In the U.S.S.R., the machine exists to produce (at the service of man) and man to enjoy the fruit of his labor. The surplus value in France goes to the boss; in the USSR to the socialist state, that is to say, to the community without exploiters. Things have changed.<br />
<br />
We see therefore, from this example, that the defects of judgment come, in those who are sincere, from a metaphysical method of thinking, and particularly from the application of the first character of this method, a fundamental characteristic which consists in underestimating change and in preferring to consider immobility or, in other words, which tends to perpetuate identity in the midst of change. <br />
<br />
But what is this identity? We saw a house being built that was completed on January 1, 1935, for example. On January 1, 1936, as well as all the years that followed, we will say that it is identical, because it still has two floors, twenty windows, two doors on the façade, etc., because it always remains itself, does not change, is not different. So to be identical is to remain the same, not to become different. And yet this house has changed! It is only at first glance, superficially, that it has remained the same. The architect or the mason, who see the thing more closely, know that the house is already not the same one week after its construction: here, a small crack occurred, there a stone played, there the color is gone, etc.... So it is only when you look at things "roughly" that they look the same. In analysis, in detail, they change constantly.<br />
<br />
But what are the practical consequences of the first character of the metaphysical method?<br />
<br />
Since we prefer to see identity in things, that is, to see them remaining themselves, we say, for example: "Life is life, and death is death. "We affirm that life remains life, that death remains itself, death, and that's all.<br />
<br />
As we become accustomed to seeing things in their identity, we separate them from each other. To say "a chair is a chair" is a natural statement, but it is to emphasize identity and at the same time it means: what is not a chair is something else.<br />
<br />
It is so natural to say this that emphasizing it seems childish. In the same vein, we will say: "The horse is the horse, and what is not the horse is something else. "So we separate the chair on one side and the horse on the other, and we do that for each thing. So we make distinctions, strictly separating things from each other, and that's how we are led to turn the world into a collection of separate things, and that's what the second characteristic of the metaphysical method:<br />
<br />
=====Isolation of things=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
What we have just said seems so natural that one may ask: why say that? We will see that, in spite of everything, it was necessary, because this system of reasoning leads us to see things from a certain angle.<br />
<br />
It is still in the practical consequences that we are going to judge the second character of this method.<br />
<br />
In everyday life, if we consider animals and if we reason about them by separating beings, we do not see what is common between those of different genera and species. A horse is a horse and a cow is a cow. There is no connection between them.<br />
<br />
This is the point of view of ancient zoology, which classifies animals by clearly separating them from each other and sees no connection between them.<br />
<br />
This is one of the results of the application of the metaphysical method.<br />
<br />
As another example, we can cite the fact that the bourgeoisie wants science to be science; that philosophy remains itself; the same goes for politics; and, of course, there is nothing in common, absolutely no connection between the three.<br />
<br />
The practical conclusions of such a reasoning is that a scientist must remain a scientist and does not have to mix his science with philosophy and politics. It will be the same for the philosopher and the man of a political party.<br />
<br />
When a man of good faith reasons in this way, we can say that he reasons as a metaphysician. The English writer Wells went to the Soviet Union a few years ago and visited the great writer, now deceased, Maxim Gorky. He proposed to him to create a literary club where politics would not be made, because, in his mind, literature is literature, and politics is politics. Gorky and his friends apparently started laughing and Wells was offended. Wells saw and conceived of the writer as living outside of society, while Gorky and his friends knew that this is not the case in life, where, in truth, all things are connected - whether we like it or not.<br />
<br />
In everyday practice, we try to classify, isolate things, see them, study them only for themselves. Those who are not Marxists see the state in general by isolating it from society, as independent of the form of society. To reason in this way, to isolate the state from society is to isolate it from its relationship with reality.<br />
<br />
The same mistake is made when we speak of man by isolating him from other men, from his environment, from society. If we also consider the machine for itself by isolating it from the society in which it produces, we make the mistake of thinking: "Machine in Paris, machine in Moscow; added value here and there, there's no difference, it's absolutely the same thing.<br />
<br />
Yet this is a reasoning that can be read continuously and those who read it accept it, because the general and usual point of view is to isolate, to divide things. This is a habit characteristic of the metaphysical method.<br />
<br />
===== Eternal and impassable divisions=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
After having given our preference to consider things as immobile and unchanging, we have classified and catalogued them, creating divisions among them that make us forget the relationships they may have with each other.<br />
<br />
This way of seeing and judging leads us to believe that these divisions exist once and for all (a horse is a horse) and that they are absolute, impassable and eternal. This is the third character of the metaphysical method.<br />
<br />
But we have to be careful when we talk about this method; because, when we Marxists say that in capitalist society there are two classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, we also make divisions that may seem to be metaphysical. However, it is not simply by introducing divisions that one is a metaphysician, it is the way in which one establishes the differences, the relations that exist between these divisions.<br />
<br />
When we say, for example, that there are two classes in society, the bourgeoisie immediately thinks that there are rich and poor. And, of course, it will tell us, “There have always been rich and poor.”<br />
<br />
"There has always been" and "there always will be" is a metaphysical way of reasoning. Things are forever classified independently of each other, and partitions, insurmountable walls are established between them.<br />
<br />
Society is divided into rich and poor, instead of acknowledging the existence of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and even if we admit this last division, we consider them outside their mutual relations, that is, outside the class struggle. What are the practical consequences of this third character, which establishes definitive barriers between things? It is that between a horse and a cow there can be no kinship. It will be the same for all sciences and for everything that surrounds us. We will see further on if this is right, but we still have to examine what are the consequences of these three different characters we have just described and it will be the fourth characteristic of the metaphysical method:<br />
<br />
=====Opposition of opposites =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
It follows from all that we have just seen that when we say, "Life is life, and death is death," we are affirming that there is nothing in common between life and death. We set them apart from each other by seeing life and death each for itself, without seeing the relationships that can exist between them. Under these conditions, a man who has just lost his life must be considered dead, because it is impossible for him to be both alive and dead at the same time, since life and death are mutually exclusive.<br />
<br />
By considering things as isolated, definitely different from each other, we manage to set them against each other.<br />
<br />
This is the fourth character of the metaphysical method, which opposes opposites to one another and affirms that two opposites cannot exist at the same time.<br />
<br />
Indeed, in this example of life and death, there can be no third possibility. It is absolutely necessary for us to choose one or the other of the possibilities that we have distinguished. We consider that a third possibility would be a contradiction, that this contradiction is an absurdity and, therefore, an impossibility.<br />
<br />
The fourth character of the metaphysical method is therefore the horror of contradiction.<br />
<br />
The practical consequences of this reasoning is that, when we talk about democracy and dictatorship, for example, well! the metaphysical point of view demands that a society choose between the two: because democracy is democracy, and dictatorship is dictatorship. Democracy is not dictatorship; and dictatorship is not democracy. We have to choose, otherwise we are faced with a contradiction, an absurdity, an impossibility.<br />
<br />
The Marxist attitude is quite different.<br />
<br />
We think, on the contrary, that the dictatorship of the proletariat, for example, is at the same time the dictatorship of the mass and democracy for the mass of the exploited.<br />
<br />
We think that life, the life of living beings, is only possible because there is a perpetual struggle between cells and that, continually, some die to be replaced by others. Thus, life contains within it death. We think that death is not as total and separate from life as metaphysics thinks, because on a corpse all life has not completely disappeared, since certain cells continue to live for a certain time and from this corpse other lives will be born.<br />
<br />
==== Development ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
So we see that the different characteristics of the metaphysical method force us to look at things from a certain angle and lead us to reason in a certain way. We see that this way of analyzing has a certain "logic" that we will study later, and we also see that it corresponds very much to the way of seeing, thinking, studying, analyzing that we encounter in general.<br />
<br />
We begin - and this enumeration will allow us to summarize - with <br />
<br />
# Seeing things in their immobility, in their identity.<br />
# Separating things from one another, detaching them from their mutual relationships.<br />
# Establishing eternal divisions between things, impassable walls.<br />
# Opposing opposites, affirming that two opposites cannot exist at the same time.<br />
<br />
We have seen, when we have examined the practical consequences of each character, that none of this corresponds to reality.<br />
<br />
Does the world conform to this conception? Are things immobile and without change in nature? No. We see that everything changes and we see movement. So this conception is not in agreement with the things themselves. It is obviously nature that is right, and it is this conception that is wrong.<br />
<br />
We have defined, from the beginning, philosophy as wanting to explain the universe, man, nature, and so on. Since the sciences study particular problems, philosophy is, as we have said, the study of the most general problems that join and extend the sciences.<br />
<br />
However, the old "metaphysical" way of thinking which applies to all problems is also a philosophical conception which considers the universe, man and nature in a very particular way.<blockquote>To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. "His communication is 'yea, yea; nay, nay'; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another, cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to the other. <ref group="note" name=":8">Engels: [[Library:Anti-Dühring|Anti-Dühring]]: [[Library:Anti-Dühring#Introduction|Introduction]]</ref> </blockquote>The metaphysical conception thus considers "the universe as a set of fixed things". In order to grasp this way of thinking, we will study how it conceives of nature, society and thought.<br />
<br />
====The metaphysical conception of====<br />
=====Nature=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Metaphysics considers nature as a set of things definitively fixed.<br />
<br />
But there are two ways of looking at it this way.<br />
<br />
The first way considers that the world is absolutely motionless, movement being only an illusion of our senses. If we remove this appearance of motion, nature does not move.<br />
<br />
This theory was defended by a school of Greek philosophers called the Eleates. This simplistic conception is so in violent contradiction with reality that it is no longer supported today.<br />
<br />
The second way of considering nature as a set of fixed things is much more subtle. We don't say that nature is immobile, we want it to move, but we affirm that it is animated by a mechanical movement. Here, the first way disappears; movement is no longer denied, and this does not seem to be a metaphysical conception. This conception is called "mechanistic" (or the "mechanism").<br />
<br />
It constitutes an error that is very often committed and that we find among the materialists of the 17th and 18th centuries. We have seen that they do not consider nature as motionless, but in movement, only, for them, this movement is simply a mechanical change, a displacement.<br />
<br />
They admit the whole solar system (the earth revolves around the sun), but they think that this movement is purely mechanical, that is to say a pure change of place, and they consider this movement only in this aspect.<br />
<br />
But things are not so simple. The fact that the earth rotates is certainly a mechanical movement, but it can, while it is rotating, be subject to influences, such as cooling down, for example. So there is not only a displacement, there are also other changes that take place.<br />
<br />
What characterizes this conception, called "mechanistic", is that we consider only the mechanical movement.<br />
<br />
If the earth keeps turning and nothing more happens to it, the earth changes its place, but the earth itself does not change; it remains identical to itself. It only continues, before us as well as after us, to turn again and again. Thus everything happens as if nothing had happened. So we see that to admit movement, but to make of it a pure mechanical movement, is a metaphysical conception, because this movement is without history.<br />
<br />
A watch with perfect organs, built with indestructible materials, would work forever without changing in any way, and the watch would have no history. It is such a conception of the universe that we constantly find in Descartes. He seeks to reduce to mechanics all the physical and physiological laws. He has no idea of chemistry (see his explanation of the circulation of blood), and his mechanical conception of things will still be that of the materialists of the 18th century.<br />
<br />
(We will make an exception for Diderot, who is less purely mechanistic, and who, in some writings, glimpses the dialectical conception).<br />
<br />
What characterizes the materialists of the eighteenth century is that they make nature a clockwork mechanism.<br />
<br />
If this were really so, things would continually return to the same point without leaving a trace, nature would remain identical to itself, which is indeed the first character of the metaphysical method.<br />
<br />
=====Society=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The metaphysical conception is that nothing changes in society. But, in general, this is not presented as such. It is recognized that changes occur, for example, in production, where raw materials are used to produce finished objects; in politics, where governments succeed one another. People recognize all this, but they consider the capitalist regime to be definitive, eternal, and sometimes even compare it to a machine.<br />
<br />
That's how we talk about the economic machine that sometimes breaks down, but we want to repair it in order to preserve it. We want this economic machine to be able to continue to distribute, like an automatic machine, dividends to some and misery to others.<br />
<br />
We also talk about the political machine, which is the bourgeois parliamentary regime, and we ask only one thing of it: it is, sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right, to function in order to preserve the privileges of capitalism.<br />
<br />
This is a mechanistic, metaphysical conception of society.<br />
<br />
If it were possible for this society, in which all these cogs work, to continue its march continuously, it would leave no trace and, consequently, no continuation in history.<br />
<br />
There is also a very important mechanistic conception that is valid for the whole universe, but especially for society, which consists in spreading the idea of a regular march and a periodic return of the same events, under the formula: "history is a perpetual beginning again".<br />
<br />
It should be noted that these conceptions are very widespread. They do not really deny the movement and change that exist and that we see in society, but they falsify the movement itself by transforming it into a simple mechanism.<br />
<br />
=====Thought=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
What is, around us, our conception of thought?<br />
<br />
We believe that human thought is and was eternal. We believe that if things have changed, our way of reasoning is the same as that of the man who lived a century ago. Our feelings, we consider them to be the same as the Greeks, goodness and love as having always existed; this is how one speaks of "eternal love". It is very common to believe that human feelings have not changed.<br />
<br />
This is what makes people say and write, for example, that a society cannot exist without having another basis than individual and selfish enrichment. This is why we often hear that the "desires of the men are always the same".<br />
<br />
We often think that way. Far too often. In the movement of thought as in all the others, we let the metaphysical conception penetrate. This is because, at the basis of our education, is this method,<blockquote>this way of thinking which seems to us at first sight extremely plausible, because it is that of what is called common sense. <ref name=":8" group="note" /></blockquote>The result is that this way of seeing, this metaphysical way of thinking is not only an conception of the world, but also a way of thinking.<br />
<br />
While it is relatively easy to reject metaphysical reasoning, it is, on the other hand, more difficult to get rid of the metaphysical way of thinking. On this subject, we must make a clarification. We call the way in which we see the universe: a conception; and the way in which we seek explanations: a method.<br />
<br />
For example: <br />
<br />
# The changes we see in society are only apparent, they renew what has already been - that is a conception".<br />
# When we look at the history of society to see what has already taken place and conclude that "there is nothing new under the sun", this is what "method" is.<br />
<br />
And we find that design inspires and determines the method. Of course, once inspired by the design, the method in turn reacts to it, directing it, guiding it.<br />
<br />
We have seen what metaphysical conception is; we are going to see what is its method of research. It is called logic.<br />
<br />
====What is logic?====<br />
{{top}}<br />
It is said of "logic" that it is the art of thinking well. To think according to the truth is to think according to the rules of logic. What are these rules? There are three main rules:<br />
<br />
1. The principle of identity: it is, as we have already seen, the rule that a thing is identical to itself, does not change (the horse is the horse).<br />
<br />
2. The principle of non-contradiction: a thing cannot be at the same time itself and its opposite. It is necessary to choose (life cannot be life and death).<br />
<br />
3. The principle of the excluded third party - or exclusion of the third case, which means: between two contradictory possibilities, there is no room for a third. One must choose between life and death, there is no third possibility.<br />
<br />
Therefore, to be logical is to think well. To think well means not forgetting to apply these three rules.<br />
<br />
We recognize here principles that we have studied and that come from the metaphysical conception.<br />
<br />
Logic and metaphysics are, therefore, intimately linked; logic is an instrument, a method of reasoning that proceeds by classifying each thing in a well determined way, that obliges us, therefore, to see things as identical to themselves, that then obliges us to choose, to say yes or no, and, in conclusion, that excludes between two cases, life and death for example, a third possibility.<br />
<br />
When we say: "All men are mortal; this comrade is a man; therefore this comrade is mortal", we have what is called a syllogism (this is the typical form of logical reasoning). By reasoning in this way, we have determined the place of the comrade, we have made a classification.<br />
<br />
Our tendency of mind, when we meet a man or a thing, is to say to ourselves: Where should we classify it? This is the only problem we have in our mind. We see things as circles or boxes of different sizes, and our concern is to fit those circles or boxes into each other, and into a certain order.<br />
<br />
In our example, we first determine a large circle that contains all mortals; then a smaller circle that contains all men; and only then that fellow.<br />
<br />
If we want to classify them, we will then, according to a certain "logic", fit the circles into each other.<br />
<br />
The metaphysical conception is therefore constructed with logic and syllogism. A syllogism is a group of three propositions; the first two are called premises, which means "sent before"; and the third is the conclusion. Another example: "In the Soviet Union, before the last constitution, there was the dictatorship of the proletariat. Dictatorship is dictatorship. In the USSR it is dictatorship. So there was no difference between the USSR, Italy and Germany, countries of dictatorship."<br />
<br />
We are not looking here for whom and on whom the dictatorship is exercised, just as when we praise bourgeois democracy, we are not saying for whose benefit it is exercised.<br />
<br />
This is how one manages to pose problems, to see things and the social world as part of separate circles and to bring the circles into each other.<br />
<br />
These are certainly theoretical questions, but they lead to a way of acting in practice. Thus we can cite the unfortunate example of Germany in 1919, where social democracy, in order to maintain democracy, killed the dictatorship of the proletariat without seeing that by doing so it was allowing capitalism to continue and giving Nazism a grip.<br />
<br />
Seeing and studying things separately is what zoology and biology did, until it was seen and understood that there was an evolution of animals and plants. Before that, all beings were classified by thinking that things had always been what they were.<blockquote>And in fact, while natural science up to the end of the last century was predominantly a ''collecting'' science, a science of finished things, in our century it is essentially a systematizing science, a science of the processes, of the origin and development of these things and of the interconnection which binds all these natural processes into one great whole. <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>But to conclude, we must give:<br />
<br />
====The explanation of the word: "metaphysics"====<br />
{{top}}<br />
There is an important part of philosophy called metaphysics. But it has such importance only in bourgeois philosophy, since it deals with God and the soul. Everything there is eternal. God is eternal, unchanging, remaining identical to himself; the soul too. It is the same with good, evil, etc., all being clearly defined, definitive and eternal. In this part of philosophy called metaphysics, we therefore see things as a fixed whole and we proceed in reasoning by opposition: we oppose spirit to matter, good to evil, etc., that is to say we reason by opposition of the opposites between them.<br />
<br />
We call this way of reasoning, of thinking, this conception: "metaphysical", because it deals with things and ideas that are outside of the physical, such as God, goodness, the soul, evil, etc., and it is a way of reasoning that is called "metaphysical". Metaphysics comes from the Greek meta, which means "beyond", and from physics, the science of the phenomena of the world. Therefore, metaphysics is what deals with things beyond the world.<br />
<br />
It is also because of a historical accident that we call this philosophical conception "metaphysics". Aristotle, who wrote the first treatise on logic (the one we still use today), wrote a lot. After his death, his disciples classified his writings; they made a catalog and, after a writing entitled Physics, they found an untitled writing, which dealt with things of the mind. They classified it by calling it After Physics, in Greek: Metaphysics.<br />
<br />
Let us insist, in conclusion, on the link that exists between the three terms we have studied:<br />
<br />
Metaphysics, mechanism, logic. These three disciplines are always presented together and are called each other. They form a system and can only be understood by each other.<br />
<br />
<br />
''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions#Study of metaphysics|Control questions]]''<br />
<br />
== Study of dialectics ==<br />
=== Introduction to the study of dialectics ===<br />
==== Preliminary precautions ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
When we talk about dialectics, it is sometimes with mystery and by presenting it as something complicated. Not knowing what it is, we also talk about it wrongly. All this is regrettable and leads to mistakes that must be avoided.<br />
<br />
Taken in its etymological sense, the term dialectic simply means the art of debate, and this is how we often hear it said of a man who discusses at length, and even by extension of one who speaks well: he is a dialectician!<br />
<br />
It is not in this sense that we are going to study dialectics. From a philosophical point of view, it has taken on a special meaning.<br />
<br />
Contrary to what one thinks, dialectics, in its philosophical sense, is within everyone's reach, because it is something very clear and without mystery.<br />
<br />
But if dialectics can be understood by everyone, it still has its difficulties, and this is how we must understand them.<br />
<br />
Among the manual works, some are simple, others are more complicated. Making packing cases, for example, is a simple job. Assembling a radio set, on the other hand, is a job that requires a lot of skill, precision, and manual dexterity.<br />
<br />
Hands and fingers are for us working instruments. But thought is also a working instrument. And if our fingers don't always do precise work, the same is true for our brain.<br />
<br />
In the history of human work, Man, in the beginning, could only do rough work. Progress in science has made more precise work possible.<br />
<br />
It is exactly the same for the history of thought. Metaphysics is that method of thinking which is only capable, like our fingers, of crude movements (such as nailing up boxes or pulling out the drawers of metaphysics).<br />
<br />
Dialectics differs from this method because it allows for greater precision. It is nothing more than a method of thinking with great precision.<br />
<br />
The evolution of thinking has been the same as that of manual work. It is the same history, and there is no mystery; everything is clear in this evolution.<br />
<br />
The difficulties we encounter come from the fact that, for twenty-five years, we nailed crates and suddenly we are placed in front of a radio set to assemble them. It is certain that we will have big difficulties, that our hands will be heavy, our fingers unwieldy. It is only little by little that we will manage to soften ourselves and to carry out this work. What was very difficult at the beginning will then seem simpler to us.<br />
<br />
The same is true for dialectics. We are embarrassed, heavy with the old method of metaphysical thinking, and we have to acquire the dexterity, the precision of the dialectical method. But we see that, here again, there is nothing mysterious or very complicated.<br />
<br />
====Where did the dialectic method originate?====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We know that metaphysics considers the world to be a complex of fixed things and that, if we look at nature, we see that, on the contrary, everything moves and changes. We find that the same holds true for thought. The result of these findings is a disagreement between metaphysics and reality. In order to give a simple definition of the main idea conveyed by these words, we might say that “metaphysics” implies “immobility” and that “dialectics” implies “motion.”<br />
<br />
Motion and change, which exist in everything which surrounds us, form the basis of dialectics.<blockquote>When we reflect on Nature, or the history of mankind, or our own intellectual activity, the first picture presented to us is of an endless maze of relations and interactions, in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes out of existence. <ref name=":8" group="note" /></blockquote>According to this very text by Engels, we see that, from the dialectical point of view, everything changes, nothing remains where it is, nothing stays what it is and that, consequently, this point of view is in perfect agreement with reality. Nothing remains in the place which it occupies since even that which seems immobile to us moves; it moves with the revolution of the earth around the sun and the rotation of the earth on its axis. In metaphysics, the principle of identity maintains that a thing must remain itself. We see that, on the contrary, nothing remains what it is.<br />
<br />
We have the impression that we always remain the same, and yet Engels tells us that “the same are different.” We think that we are identical but we have already changed. From the child which we were, we have become an adult and this adult, physically, never remains the same but gets older every day.<br />
<br />
Hence, the misleading appearance is not motion, as the Eleatic philosophers claimed, but immobility, since, in fact, everything moves and changes.<br />
<br />
History also proves to us that things do not remain as they are. At no moment is society immobile. There was first, in antiquity, a slave society; this was then succeeded by a feudal society and then capitalist society. The study of these societies shows us that the factors permitting the birth of a new society continually and imperceptibly developed within them. In this way, capitalist society changes every day and has ceased to exist in the USSR. Because no society remains immobile, the socialist society erected in the Soviet Union is also destined to disappear. It is already visibly transforming, and this is why metaphysicians do not understand what is taking place there. They continue to judge a completely transformed society with the feelings of a man who is still under capitalist oppression.<br />
<br />
Our feelings themselves change, which we hardly notice. We see what was only an attraction turn into love, then sometimes degenerate into hatred.<br />
<br />
What we see everywhere, in nature, history and thought, is change and motion. It is with this observation that dialectics begins.<br />
<br />
The Greeks were startled by the fact that change and motion are encountered everywhere. We have seen that Heraclitus, who is called the “father of dialectics,” was the first to give us a dialectical concept of the world, i.e., he described a world in motion and not fixed. Heraclitus’ way of seeing can become a ''method''.<br />
<br />
But this dialectical method was able to assert its authority only a long time after that, and we must see why dialectics was dominated by the metaphysical concept for such a long time.<br />
<br />
====Why has dialectics long been dominated by metaphysical conception?====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen that the dialectical point of view was born very early in history, but that man’s insufficient knowledge enabled the metaphysical concept to develop and take precedence over dialectics.<br />
<br />
We can draw a parallel here between idealism, which arose from the great ignorance of men, and the metaphysical concept, which derived from the insufficient knowledge of dialectics.<br />
<br />
How and why was this possible?<br />
<br />
Men began the study of nature in a state of complete ignorance. In order to study the phenomena which they found, they began by classifying them. But a mental habit resulted from this way of classifying. By making categories and separating them from each other, our minds get used to making such separations and we find in this the first characteristic of the metaphysical method. Hence, it was really from the insufficient development of science that metaphysics emerged. Only 150 years ago, people studied the sciences by separating them from each other. For example, chemistry, physics, and biology were studied separately and no relation was seen between them. This method was further applied within the sciences: physics was concerned with sound, heat, magnetism, electricity, etc. but it was thought that these different phenomena were totally unrelated; each was studied in separate chapters.<br />
<br />
We easily recognize in this practice the second characteristic of metaphysics which requires that one disregard the relations between things and that there be nothing in common between them.<br />
<br />
Likewise, it is easier to conceive of things in a state of rest than in motion. Let us take photography as an example. We see that, firstly, pictures are taken of things in their immobility (this is photography), then, only later, in motion (this is cinema). So, this example of the development of photography and cinema mirrors that of the sciences and the human mind. We study things at rest before studying them in motion.<br />
<br />
Why is this so? Because ''people were ignorant''. In order to learn, people took the easiest point of view. Now, immobile things are easier to grasp and study. Certainly the study of things at rest is a necessary stage of dialectical thought—but only an insufficient, fragmentary ''stage'', which must be integrated into the study of things which are becoming.<br />
<br />
We run across this state of mind in biology, for example, in the study of zoology and botany. Because they were not well known, animals were first classified into breeds and species, since it was thought that there was nothing in common between them and that it ''had always been this way'' (third characteristic of metaphysics). From this was derived the theory called “fixism” (which maintains, contrary to “evolutionism,” that animal species have always been what they are, that they have never ''evolved''), which is, consequently, a metaphysical theory which stems from man’s ignorance.<br />
<br />
====Why was eighteenth-century materialism metaphysical?====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We know that mechanics played a large role in the materialism of the 18th century and that this materialism is often called “mechanistic materialism.” Why was this so? Because the materialist concept is linked to the development of all the sciences and among these it was mechanics which developed first. In common speech, mechanics is the study of machines; in scientific language, it is the study of motion as displacement. Mechanics was the science which developed first because mechanical motion is the simplest kind of motion. It is much easier to study the motion of an apple on a tree which is blowing in the wind than to study the change produced in a ripening apple. The effect of the wind on the apple can be more easily studied than the ripening of the apple. But the former study is “partial” and thus opens the door to metaphysics.<br />
<br />
Although they do indeed notice that everything is in motion, the ancient Greeks cannot make use of this observation, for their knowledge is insufficient. So, things and phenomena are observed and classified, and people are satisfied with studying their displacement, from which mechanics is derived; and the inadequacy of scientific knowledge gives rise to the metaphysical concept.<br />
<br />
We know that materialism is always based on science and that in the 18th century science was dominated by the metaphysical spirit. Of all the sciences, the most developed during this period was mechanics. “This is why it was inevitable,” says Engels, “that the materialism of the 18th century be a metaphysical and mechanistic materialism, because the sciences were like that.”<br />
<br />
We shall say, then, that this mechanistic and metaphysical materialism was materialist because it answered the fundamental question of philosophy by saying that the primary factor is matter; but it was metaphysical because it considered the universe to be a complex of fixed and mechanical things and because it studied and saw everything from the point of view of mechanics.<br />
<br />
There comes a day when, through the accumulation of research, one finds that the sciences are not immobile; one notices that they have been transformed. After having separated chemistry from biology and physics, one comes to the realization that it has become impossible to deal with one of the sciences without having recourse to the others. For example, the study of digestion, which belongs to the domain of biology, becomes impossible without chemistry. Towards the 19th century, the interconnection of the sciences is clearly seen and a retreat of the metaphysical spirit in the sciences ensues, due to a more profound knowledge of nature. Up to then, the phenomena of physics had been studied separately; now, no one could deny that all these phenomena were of the same nature. This is how electricity and magnetism, which used to be studied separately, have come to be united in a single science: electromagnetism.<br />
<br />
Likewise, by studying the phenomena of sound and heat, scientists have realized that both derive from phenomena of a similar nature.<br />
<br />
By banging with a hammer, one obtains a sound and produces heat. It is motion which produces heat. And we know that sound consists of vibrations in the air; vibrations are also motion. Hence, these two phenomena are similar in nature.<br />
<br />
In biology, by classifying more and more minutely, scientists have succeeded in discovering species which are incapable of being classified as either plant or animal. Hence, there was no abrupt separation of plants and animals. After further study, they arrived at the conclusion that animals have not always been what they are. The facts condemned fixism and the metaphysical spirit.<br />
<br />
It was during the 19th century that the transformation we have just seen and which enabled materialism to become dialectical occurred. Dialectics is the spirit of science, which, in the course of its development, abandoned the metaphysical concept. Materialism was able to be transformed because the sciences changed. Metaphysical sciences were in harmony with metaphysical materialism just as the new sciences are in harmony with a new materialism, i.e., dialectical materialism.<br />
<br />
==== How dialectical materialism was born: Hegel and Marx ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
If we ask how this transformation of metaphysical materialism into dialectical materialism was brought about, the answer we generally get is:<br />
<br />
# There was the metaphysical materialism of the 18th century;<br />
# The sciences changed;<br />
# Marx and Engels stepped in; they cut metaphysical materialism in two; abandoning the metaphysics, they kept the materialism and added dialectics to it.<br />
<br />
If we have a tendency to present things in this way, it is due to the metaphysical method, which demands that we simplify things in order to make a schema. We must, however, always keep in mind that ''the facts of reality should never be schematized''. Facts are more complicated than they seem or than we think. It follows that there was not such a simple transformation of metaphysical materialism into dialectical materialism.<br />
<br />
Dialectics was, in fact, developed by a German idealist philosopher, Hegel (1770-1831), who was able to understand the change which had taken place in the sciences. Reverting to the old idea of Heraclitus, he found, with the help of scientific progress, that everything in the universe is motion and change, that nothing is isolated, but rather everything is dependent on everything else, and this is how he created dialectics. It is due to Hegel that we speak today of the dialectical motion of the world. What Hegel first grasped was the motion of thought, and he called it naturally dialectics.<br />
<br />
But Hegel is an idealist, i.e., he gives primary importance to spirit and, consequently, he entertains a particular idea about motion and change. He thinks that it is spiritual changes which provoke changes in matter. For Hegel, the universe is idea become matter and, before the universe, there was first spirit which discovered the universe. In short, he finds that both spirit and the universe are in perpetual change, but concludes that changes in spirit determine changes in matter.<br />
<br />
Example: The inventor has an idea; he realized this idea, and it is this materialized idea which creates changes in matter.<br />
<br />
Hence, Hegel is certainly a dialectician, but he subordinates dialectics to idealism.<br />
<br />
It is then that Marx (1818-1883) and Engels (1820-1895), followers of Hegel, but materialist followers and therefore giving primary importance to matter, think that his dialectics makes assertions which are correct but upside down. Engels says in this regard that with Hegel dialectics was standing on its head and it had to be put back on its feet. Hence, Marx and Engels transfer the initial cause of this motion of thought defined by Hegel to material reality and call it naturally dialectics, borrowing the same term from him.<br />
<br />
They think that Hegel is right to say that thought and the universe are perpetually changing, but that he is mistaken to declare that it is changes in ideas which determine changes in things. It is, rather, things which give us ideas, and ideas have been altered because things have been altered.<br />
<br />
Therefore, we ought to avoid saying, “Marx and Engels possess, on the one hand, materialism, inherited from the French materialism of the 18th century, and, on the other hand, Hegel’s dialectics; consequently, it remained for them only to join the two together.”<br />
<br />
This is a simplistic, schematic concept, which forgets that phenomena are more complicated; it is a metaphysical concept.<br />
<br />
Marx and Engels will certainly take dialectics from Hegel, but they will transform it. They will do the same with materialism in order to give us dialectical materialism.<br />
<br />
=== The laws of dialectics ===<br />
==== 1. The dialectical change ====<br />
===== What is meant by dialectical change =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The first law of dialectics begins by remarking that “nothing stays where it is; nothing remains what it is.” Dialectics implies motion and change. Consequently, when one speaks of seeing things from a dialectical viewpoint, this means seeing them from the point of view of motion and change. When we want to study things according to dialectics, we shall study them ''in'' their motion and ''in'' their change.<br />
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Here is an apple. We have two ways of studying this apple: either from the metaphysical or from the dialectical point of view.<br />
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In the first case, we shall give a description of this fruit, its shape and color. We shall list its properties; we shall speak of its taste, etc. Then we can compare the apple with the pear, see their similarities and differences and finally conclude that an apple is an apple and a pear is a pear. This is how things were formerly studied, as numerous books will attest.<br />
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If we want to study the apple from the dialectical point of view, we shall place ourselves within the framework of motion; not the motion of the apple when it rolls and moves from place to place, but rather the ''motion of its evolution''. Then we shall find that the ripe apple has not always been what it is. Before that it was a green apple; before being a flower, it was a bud. In this way, we shall go back to the condition of the apple tree in spring. The apple has not always been an apple: it has a history. Likewise, it will not remain what it is. If it falls, it will rot, decompose and scatter its seeds, which will, if all goes well, produce a shoot and then a tree. Hence, neither has the apple always been what it is nor will it remain what it is.<br />
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This is what is called studying things from the point of view of motion. It is study from the point of view of the past and the future. By studying in this way, the present apple is seen only as a ''transition'' between what it was, the past, and what it will be, the future.<br />
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In order to clearly explain this way of seeing things, we are going to take two more examples: the Earth and society.<br />
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From a metaphysical point of view, we shall describe the shape of the Earth in all its details. We shall find that on its surface there are seas, land and mountains; we shall study the nature of the soil. Then we can compare the Earth to other planets or to the Moon, and we shall finally conclude that the Earth is the Earth.<br />
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Whereas by studying the history of the earth from the dialectical point of view, we shall see that it has undergone transformations and that, consequently, the earth will undergo in the future even more transformations. We must then take into account today that the present state of the Earth is but a transition between past changes and changes to come. This transition is such that the changes which take place are imperceptible, although they are on a much larger scale than those which occur during the ripening of an apple.<br />
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Let us now look at the example of society, which is of particular interest to Marxists.<br />
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Let us still apply our two methods. From the metaphysical point of view, we will be told that there have always been rich and poor. We shall find that there are large banks and enormous factories. We will be given a detailed description of capitalist society, which will be compared with past societies (feudal, slave-owning) by looking for similarities and differences, and we will be told that capitalist society is what it is.<br />
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From the dialectical point of view, we shall learn that capitalist society has not always been what it is. When we find that in the past other societies lived for a while, we shall deduce from this that capitalist society, like all societies, is not permanent and has no intangible basis, but rather it is only a provisional reality for us, a transition between the past and the future.<br />
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From these few examples, we see that to consider things from the dialectical point of view means to consider them to be provisional, having a history in the past and about to have a history in the future; having a beginning and going to have an end.<br />
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=====For dialectics, there is nothing definitive, absolute, sacred =====<br />
{{top}}<blockquote>For it [dialectical philosophy], nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away. <ref name=":6" group="note" /></blockquote>Here is a definition which underlines what we have just seen and what we are going to study:<br />
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''“For dialectics, there is nothing final.”'' This means that, for dialectics, everything has a past and will have a future; consequently, it is not here once and for all and what it is today is not final. (Examples of the apple, earth, society.)<br />
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For dialectics, there is no power in the world, nor beyond the world, which can hold things in a permanent state, hence there is "nothing absolute." (''Absolute'' means not subject to any condition, hence, universal; eternal, perfect.)<br />
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''"Nothing is sacred,"'' this does not mean that dialectics despises everything. No! A sacred thing is a thing which is regarded as immutable, which must neither be touched nor be discussed but only venerated. Capitalist society, for example, is "sacred". Well, dialectics tells us that ''nothing'' can escape from motion, change or the transformations of history.<br />
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''"Transitory"'' comes from "transire" which means to pass; a transitory thing is one which grows old and must disappear. Dialectics shows us that anything which is transitory eventually has no longer any reason for being, that everything is destined to disappear. What is young grows old; what is living today dies tomorrow, and nothing exists, for dialectics, "except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away."<br />
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Hence, to assume the dialectical point of view means to consider nothing to be eternal, except change. It means understanding that no particular thing can be eternal except "becoming."<br />
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But what is this "becoming" which Engels speaks of in his definition?<br />
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We have seen that the apple has a history. Let us now take the example of a pencil which has its own history, too.<br />
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This pencil, which is worn down today, was once new. The wood from which it is made came from a board, and this board came from a tree. We see then that the apple and the pencil both have a history and that neither one has always been what it is. But is there a difference between these two histories? Certainly!<br />
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The green apple became ripe. When it was green, could it, if all went well, not become ripe? No, it ''had'' to ripen, just as, if it falls to the ground, it has to rot, decompose, and scatter its seeds.<br />
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Whereas the tree from which the pencil comes may not become a board, and this board may not become a pencil. The pencil itself can always remain whole and not be sharpened.<br />
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Hence, we notice a difference between these two histories. In the case of the apple, if nothing abnormal occurs, the flower becomes an apple and the green apple ''becomes'' ripe. Thus, given one stage, the other stage ''necessarily'' and inevitably follows (if nothing stops the evolution).<br />
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In the history of the pencil, on the other hand, the tree may not become a board, the board may not become a pencil, and the pencil may not be sharpened. Hence, given one stage, the second stage ''may not follow''. If the history of the pencil proceeds through all its stages, it is due to foreign intervention—that of man.<br />
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In the history of the apple, we find stages which succeed one another, the second stage deriving from the first, etc. This history follows the “becoming” which Engels speaks of. In the history of the pencil, the stages are placed side by side, without deriving from each other. This is because the apple is following a natural process.<br />
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=====The process=====<br />
{{top}}(Word coming from Latin and meaning: forward motion, or the act of advancing, of progressing.)<br />
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Why does the green apple become ripe? Because of what it contains. It is due to internal sequences which stimulate the apple to ripen; ''it is because it was an apple even before it was ripe; it is because it could not help but ripen''.<br />
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When one examines the flower which will become an apple, then the green apple which will ripen, one finds that these internal sequences, stimulating the apple in its evolution, act under the pressure of internal forces. This latter is called ''autodynamism'', which means a force which comes from the being itself.<br />
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When the pencil was still a board, the intervention of man was necessary in order to make it become a pencil, for never would a board transform itself into a pencil. There were not internal forces at work, thus no autodynamism and no process. Hence, dialectics implies not only motion but also autodynamism.<br />
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We see then that dialectical motion contains within itself processes or autodynamism, which is its essential feature. For not every motion or change is dialectical. If we approach the study of a flea from the dialectical viewpoint, we shall say that it has not always been what it is and that it will not always be what it is. If we crush it, this certainly represents a change for it, but will this change be dialectical? No. Without us, it would not have been crushed. Hence, this change is not dialectical, but ''mechanical''.<br />
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Therefore, we must be careful when we speak of dialectical change. We think that if the earth continues to exist, capitalist society will be replaced by a socialist and then a Communist society. This will be a dialectical change. But, if the earth explodes, capitalist society will disappear not through an autodynamic change, but through a mechanical change.<br />
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In another context, we say that there is a mechanical discipline when this discipline is not natural. But it is autodynamic when it is freely consented to, i.e., when it comes from its natural milieu. A mechanical discipline is imposed from the outside; it is a discipline coming from leaders who are different from those they command. (We understand then to what extent non-mechanical discipline, autodynamic discipline, is not within the reach of every organization!)<br />
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Therefore, we must avoid using dialectics in a mechanical fashion. This is a tendency which we derive from our metaphysical habits of thinking. We mustn’t repeat like a parrot that things have not always been what they are. When a dialectician says that, he must look for how things were before. For saying that is not the end of an argument, but the beginning of scrupulous research into what things were like ''before''.<br />
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Marx, Engels and Lenin studied at length and in detail what capitalist society was like before them. They observed the smallest details in order to take note of dialectical changes. Lenin, in order to describe and criticize the changes in capitalist society, and to study the imperialist period, made very detailed studies and consulted numerous statistics.<br />
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When we speak of autodynamism, we should never turn it into a literary phrase either; we should only use this word knowingly and for those who understand it totally.<br />
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Finally, when studying something, after having seen what its autodynamic changes are and stated what change one has found, one must look for the reason why this change is autodynamic.<br />
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This is why dialectics, research and science are closely linked.<br />
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Dialectics is not a way of explaining and knowing things without having studied them, but rather a way of studying well and making good observations, by looking for the beginning and the end of things, where they come from and where they are going.<br />
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==== 2. Reciprocal action ====<br />
===== Sequencing of processes =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have just seen, in connection with the history of the apple, what a process is. Let’s have another look at this example. We have looked for where the apple came from and we were obliged to push our research as far back as the tree. But this problem of research also arises in regard to the tree. The study of the apple leads us to the study of the origins and destiny of the tree. Where does the tree come from? From an apple. It comes from an apple which has fallen and rotted in the earth, giving birth to a shoot. This leads us to study the ground, the conditions in which the seeds of the apple were able to sprout, the influences of the air, sun, etc. In this way, starting with the study of the apple, we are led to study the soil, proceeding from the process of the apple to that of the tree. The latter process has its sequence in turn in that of the soil. We have here what is called a “sequence of processes.” This will enable us to express and study the second law of dialectics: the law of reciprocal action. Let us take another example of the sequence of processes, that of the Workers’ University in Paris.<br />
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If we study this school from the dialectical point of view, we shall look for where it came from, and find at first this answer: in the autumn of 1932, some comrades meeting together decided to found a Workers’ University in Paris in order to study Marxism.<br />
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But where did this committee get this idea of teaching Marxism? Obviously because Marxism exists. But then, where does Marxism come from?<br />
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We see that research into the sequence of processes involves us in detailed and complete studies. Much more: by looking for the source of Marxism, we shall find that this doctrine is the very conscience of the proletariat. We see (whether we are for or against Marxism) that the proletariat then does exist; and so again we ask the question: where does the proletariat come from?<br />
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We know that it derives from an economic system, viz., capitalism. We know that the division of society into classes, that class struggle, was not caused, as our adversaries claim, by Marxism. On the contrary, we know that Marxism observes the existence of this class struggle and draws its force from the already existing proletariat.<br />
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Hence, from process to process, we arrive at the examination of the conditions of existence of capitalism. We have in this way a sequence of processes which shows us that everything influences everything else. This is the law of reciprocal action.<br />
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As a conclusion to these two examples of the apple and of the Workers’ University in Paris, let us see how a metaphysician would have proceeded.<br />
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In the example of the apple, he could only have thought, ’’Where does the apple come from?" And he would have been satisfied with the answer, “The apple comes from the tree.” He would not have looked any further.<br />
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For the Workers’ University he would have been satisfied with saying, about its origin, that it was founded by a group of men who wished “to corrupt the French people” or some such nonsense.<br />
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But the dialectician sees the entire sequence of processes which end, on the one hand, with the apple, and, on the other, with the Workers’ University. The dialectician connects the particular fact, the detail, to the whole.<br />
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He connects the apple to the tree, and he goes back further, all the way to nature in its entirety. The apple is not only the fruit of the apple tree, but also that of all of nature.<br />
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The Workers’ University is not only the “fruit” of the proletariat, but also the “fruit” of capitalist society.<br />
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Hence, we see that, contrary to the metaphysician who conceives of the world as a complex of fixed things, the dialectician will see the world as a complex of processes. And, if the dialectical point of view is true for nature and for the sciences, if is also true for society. <blockquote>“The old method of investigation and thought which Hegel calls “metaphysical”, which preferred to investigate ''things'' as given, as fixed and stable, a method the relics of which still strongly haunt people’s minds, had a great deal of historical justification in its day.” <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>Consequently, things and society were studied during this period as a complex of “ready-made, fixed objects,” which not only do not change, but, particularly in the case of society, are not destined to disappear.<br />
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Engels points out the great importance of dialectics, this:<blockquote>“... great basic thought that the world is not to be comprehended as a complex of readymade ''things'', but as a complex of ''processes'', in which the things apparently stable no less than their mind images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away, in which, in spite of all seeming accidentally and of all temporary retrogression, a progressive development asserts itself in the end...” <ref name=":7" group="note" /> </blockquote>Hence, neither should capitalist society be regarded as a “complex of ready-made things”; rather, it should be studied as a complex of processes.<br />
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Metaphysicians realize that capitalist society has not always existed, and they say that it has a history; but they think that, with its appearance, society has stopped evolving and will remain “fixed” from now on. They regard all things as finished and not as the beginning of a new process. The story of the creation of the world by God is an explanation of the world as a complex of completed things. God accomplished a completed task each day. He made plants and animals and man once and for all; whence the theory of fixism.<br />
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Dialectics judges things in a different way. It does not regard things as “fixed” objects, but rather as objects “in motion.” Nothing is complete; it is always the end of one process and the beginning of another process, always changing and developing. This is why we are so sure of the transformation of capitalist society into a socialist society. Since nothing is permanently finished, capitalist society is the end of a process to which socialist society and then Communist society and so forth will succeed. There is and there will continually be a development.<br />
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But we must be careful here not to look upon dialectics as something inevitable, from which one might conclude, “Since you are so sure of the change which you desire, why do you struggle?” For, as Marx says, “in order to deliver a socialist society, a midwife is necessary;” whence the necessity of revolution, of action.<br />
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The fact is, things are not so simple. One mustn’t forget the role of men who may advance or slow down this transformation (we shall take up this question again in chapter 5 of this part, when we speak of historical materialism).<br />
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For the moment, all we wish to point out is the existence of a sequence of processes in everything which is produced through the internal force of things (autodynamism). We repeat, for dialectics, ''nothing is complete''. We must understand the development of things as having no final act. At the end of one theatrical production of the world the first act of another play begins. More precisely, this first act had already begun in the last act of the preceding play.<br />
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=====The great discoveries of the 19th century=====<br />
{{top}}What determined the abandonment of the metaphysical spirit and obliged first scientists, then Marx and Engels, to consider things in their dialectical movement, is, as we know, the discoveries made in the 19th century. As Engels points out in ''[[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach]]'', there were three especially great discoveries of this period which caused dialectics to advance.<br />
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======The discovery of the living cell and its development======<br />
{{top}}Before this discovery, “fixism” had been adopted as the basis of all reasoning. Species were considered to be foreign to each other. Moreover, two kingdoms were categorically differentiated: the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom.<br />
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Then this discovery takes place, enabling the idea of “evolution,” which thinkers and scientists of the 18th century had already started to spread, to become more precise. This discovery leads to the understanding that life is made up of a succession of births and deaths and that every living being is an association of cells. This finding then leaves no boundary remaining between animals and plants and thus dispels the metaphysical concept.<br />
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======The discovery of energy transformation======<br />
{{top}}Formerly, science believed that sound, heat and light, for example, were completely alien to each other. Yet now it is discovered that all these phenomena can be transformed into each other, that there are sequences of processes in ''inert'' matter as well as in living nature. This revelation brings still another blow to metaphysical thinking.<br />
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======The discovery of evolution in humans and animals======<br />
{{top}}Darwin, says Engels, reveals that all the products of nature are the result of a long process of development of originally single-celled microorganisms: everything is the product of a long process having the cell for its origin.<br />
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Engels concludes that, thanks to these three great discoveries, we can follow the sequence of all these natural phenomena not only within the different domains, but also ''between'' the different domains.<br />
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It is, therefore, the sciences which made the elaboration of the second law of reciprocal action possible.<br />
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Between the plant, animal and mineral kingdoms there is no sharp break, but rather only processes; everything is connected. And this is true for society as well. The different societies which have spanned the history of mankind should be regarded as a series of sequences of processes in which one society has necessarily come from the one which preceded it.<br />
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Hence, we should remember that science, nature and society must be seen as a sequence of processes, and that the motor working to develop this sequence is ''autodynamism''.<br />
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=====Historical development or spiral development=====<br />
{{top}}If we examine the process which we are beginning to know a little more closely, we see that the apple is the result of a sequence of processes. Where does the apple come from? The apple comes from the tree. Where does the tree come from? From the apple. We may then think that we have here a vicious circle in which we always return to the same point. Tree, apple. Apple, tree. Likewise, if we take the example of the egg and the hen. Where does the egg come from? From the hen. Where does the hen come from? From the egg.<br />
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If we regarded things in this way, this would not be a process, but a circle. This appearance, moreover, has created the idea of the “eternal return.” That is to say, we always come back to the same point, the point of departure.<br />
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But let us see exactly how the problem is stated.<br />
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# Here is an apple.<br />
# When it decomposes, it engenders a tree or some trees.<br />
# Each tree does not produce one apple, but several apples.<br />
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Hence, we do not return to the same point of departure; we come back to the apple, but on another level.<br />
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Similarly, if we begin with the tree, we have:<br />
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# A tree which produces<br />
# some apples, which in turn produce<br />
# some trees<br />
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Here again we return to the tree, but on another level. The scope has widened.<br />
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Hence, we do not have a circle, as appearances might make us think, but a process of development which we shall call a historical development. History shows us that time does not go by without leaving any traces. Time passes, but the same developments do not return. The world, nature and society constitute a development which is historical, a development which, in philosophical language, is called “spiral.”<br />
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We use this image in order to make our ideas clear; it is a comparison to illustrate the fact that things evolve according to a circular process, but do not return to the point of departure; they come back a bit above, on another level, and so on, which produces an ascending spiral.<br />
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Hence, the world, nature and society have a historical (spiral) development, and what stimulates this development, let us not forget, is autodynamism.<br />
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=====Conclusion=====<br />
{{top}}We have just studied, in these first chapters on dialectics, the first two laws: that of change and that of reciprocal action. This was indispensable in order to approach the study of the law of contradiction, for it is this law which will enable us to understand the force which stimulates dialectical change, viz., autodynamism.<br />
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In the first chapter relative to the study of dialectics, we saw why this theory had been dominated for so long by the metaphysical concept and why the materialism of the 18th century was metaphysical. After having rapidly seen the three great discoveries of the 19th century which enabled materialism to develop in order to become dialectical, we understand better now why it was necessary for the history of this philosophy to go through the three great periods which we have seen: 1) materialism of antiquity (theory of atoms); 2) materialism of the 18th century (mechanistic and metaphysical); finally culminating in 3) dialectical materialism.<br />
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We have maintained throughout that materialism derives from the sciences and is linked to them. We can see, after these three chapters, how true this is. We have seen in this study of dialectical motion and change and of the law of reciprocal action that all our arguments are based on science.<br />
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Today, when scientific studies are specialized to the extreme and when scientists (generally ignorant of dialectical materialism) sometimes cannot understand the importance of their discoveries in relation to the totality of the sciences, it is the role of philosophy, whose mission, we have said, is to provide an explanation of the world and of the most general problems, and, in particular, it is the mission of dialectical materialism, to unite all the particular discoveries of each science into a synthesis, thereby establishing a theory which makes us more and more, as Descartes said, “masters and possessors of nature.”<br />
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====3. Contradiction====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen that dialectics regards things as being in perpetual change, continually evolving, in a word, undergoing a dialectical motion (first law).<br />
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This dialectical motion is possible because everything, at the moment when we are studying it, is but the result of a sequence of processes, i.e., a sequence of stages come from each other. And, continuing our study further, we have seen that this sequence of processes necessarily develops in time into a progressive motion, “in spite of any momentary backsliding.”<br />
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We have called this development “historical” or “spiral,” and we know that it generates itself, through autodynamism.<br />
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But what are the laws of autodynamism? What are the laws which enable the stages to proceed from each other? They are called the “laws of dialectical motion.”<br />
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Dialectics teaches us that things are not eternal: they have a beginning, a maturity, and an old age, which has an end, a death.<br />
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All things pass through these stages: birth, maturity, old age, end. Why is this so? Why are things not eternal?<br />
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This is an old question which has always interested humanity. Why must we die? We do not understand this necessity; throughout history, men have dreamed of eternal life, of the ways of changing this state of affairs. For example, in the Middle Ages, they invented magic potions for eternal youth or life.<br />
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Why then is everything which is born obliged to die? This is a great law of dialectics which we should compare with metaphysics in order to really understand it.<br />
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=====Life and death=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
From the metaphysical point of view, things are considered in an isolated fashion, taken by themselves, and, because metaphysics studies things in this way, it considers them unilaterally, i.e., from one side. This is why it can be said that those who see things one-sidedly are metaphysicians. Briefly, when a metaphysician studies the phenomenon called life, he does so without relating this phenomenon to any other. He sees life for itself and by itself, unilaterally. He sees it from one side only. If he examines death, he will do the same thing; he will apply his unilateral point of view and conclude by saying: life is life and death is death. Between the two there is nothing in common; one cannot be both alive and dead, for the two are opposite things and completely contrary to each other.<br />
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To see things in this way is to view them superficially. Upon closer examination, it will be seen firstly, that they cannot be opposed, nor even can they be so brutally separated, since experience and reality show us that death continues life and that it derives from the living.<br />
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As for life, can it derive from death? Yes. The transformation of the elements of the dead corpse will give birth to other lives and be used as fertilizer for the earth, making it more fertile, for example. Death, in many cases, will help life; death will enable life to be born; and, in living bodies themselves, life is only possible because there is a continual replacement of dead cells by those which are newly-born. (See Translator’s notes.)<br />
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Hence, life and death are constantly being transformed into each other, and in everything we observe the invariability of this great law: ''everywhere, things are transformed into their opposites''.<br />
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=====Things turn into their opposite=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Metaphysicians set opposites against each other, but reality shows us that opposites are ''transformed'' into each other, that things do not remain themselves, but are transformed into their opposites.<br />
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If we examine truth and error, we tend to think that there is nothing in common between them. Truth is truth and error is error. This the unilateral point of view, which sets the two opposites at loggerheads, as one might do with life and death.<br />
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And yet, sometimes when we exclaim, "Hey, it's raining!", no sooner have we finished saying so than the rain has stopped. The sentence was correct when we began it, but it was transformed into an error. (The Greeks had already observed this fact, so they said that in order not to be mistaken it was best to keep silent!)<br />
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In the same vein, let us go back to the example of the apple. We see a ripe apple on the ground and we say, “There is a ripe apple.” However, it has been on the ground for some time and already it is beginning to decompose, so that truth becomes error.<br />
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Science also provides us with numerous examples of laws, considered for many years to be “truths” and which scientific progress has proven to be “errors” at a certain moment.<br />
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Hence, we see that truth changes into error. But does error ever change into truth?<br />
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In the beginning of civilization, notably in Egypt, men imagined fights between the gods in order to explain the rising and setting of the sun. This is an error to the extent that it was said that the gods push or pull the sun to make it move. But science says that this theory is partially justified in that there are in fact forces which make the sun move. So we see that error is not diametrically opposed to truth.<br />
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If, then, things do change into their opposites, how is this possible? How does life change into death?<br />
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If there were only life, 100 percent pure life, it could never be death, and if death were totally itself, 100 percent pure death, it would be impossible for the one to change into the other. But there is already some death in life and thus some life in death.<br />
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By looking closely, we see that a living being is composed of cells, that these cells are renewed, that they disappear and reappear in the same place. They live and die continually in a living being, in which there is therefore both life and death.<br />
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We also know that the beard of a dead man continues to grow. The same is true for his nails and hair. These are clear-cut phenomena which prove that life continues after death.<br />
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In the Soviet Union, the blood of the dead is preserved under special conditions for blood transfusions: thus, with the blood of a dead person a living person is remade. Consequently, we can say that in the midst of death there is life. “Life is therefore also a contradiction which is present in things and processes themselves, and which constantly asserts and solves itself; and as soon as the contradiction ceases, life too comes to an end, and death steps in.” <ref name=":4" group="note" /><br />
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Hence, things not only change into each other, but also a thing is not only itself, but another thing which is its opposite, for everything contains its opposite.<br />
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If we represent a thing by a circle, we have force which pushes this thing toward life, pushing from the center outwards, for example (expression), but we also have forces which push this thing in the opposite direction, forces of death, pushing from the exterior inwards (compression).<br />
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Thus, within everything opposed forces, antagonisms, exist.<br />
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What happens between these forces? They struggle with each other. Consequently, a thing is not only moved by a force acting in a single direction, but everything is really moved by two forces acting in opposing directions: one towards the affirmation and one towards the negation of things, one towards life and one towards death. What does the affirmation and negation of things mean?<br />
<br />
In life, there are forces which maintain life, which tends toward the affirmation of life. Then there are also forces in living organisms which tend towards negation. In everything, some forces tend towards affirmation and others towards negation, and, between affirmation and negation there is a contradiction.<br />
<br />
Hence, dialectics observes change, but why do things change? Because they are not in agreement with themselves, because there is a struggle between forces, between internal antagonisms, because there is contradiction. Here is the third law of dialectics: ''Things change because they contain contradictions within themselves''.<br />
<br />
(If we are obliged, at times, to use more or less complicated words—like dialectics, autodynamism, etc.—or terms which seem contrary to traditional logic and difficult to understand, it is not because we like to complicate things at whim as the bourgeoisie does. No. But this study, although elementary, seeks to be as complete as possible and to facilitate the later reading of the philosophical works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, who use these terms. In any case, since we must utilize something other than everyday language, we are determined to make it comprehensible to everyone in the framework of this study.)<br />
<br />
To see things in this way is to view them superficially. Upon closer examination, it will be seen firstly, that they cannot be opposed, nor even can they be so brutally separated, since experience and reality show us that death continues life and that it derives from the living.<br />
<br />
As for life, can it derive from death? Yes. The transformation of the elements of the dead corpse will give birth to other lives and be used as fertilizer for the earth, making it more fertile, for example. Death, in many cases, will help life; death will enable life to be born; and, in living bodies themselves, life is only possible because there is a continual replacement of dead cells by those which are newly-born.<br />
<br />
Hence, life and death are constantly being transformed into each other, and in everything we observe the invariability of this great law: ''everywhere, things are transformed into their opposites''.<br />
<br />
=====Affirmation, negation and negation of negation=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Here we must make a distinction between what is called a verbal contradiction—which means that, when someone tells you “yes,” you answer “no”—and the contradiction which we have just seen and which is called a dialectical contradiction, i.e., a contradiction ''in facts'', in things themselves.<br />
<br />
When we speak of the contradiction which exists in the heart of capitalist society, this does not mean that some people say yes and others say no about certain theories. This means that there is a contradiction in factual reality, that there are real forces which are fighting each other: first, a force which tends to ''affirm'' itself, viz., the bourgeois class which tends to maintain itself; then, a second social force which tends toward the negation of the bourgeois class, viz., the proletariat. Hence the contradiction does exist in reality, because the bourgeoisie cannot exist without creating its opposite, the proletariat. <br />
<br />
As Marx says, <blockquote>“What the bourgeoisie, therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.” <ref group="note">Marx and Engels: [[Library:Manifesto of the communist party|Manifesto of the communist party]]: [[Library:Manifesto of the communist party#Bourgeois and proletarians.5BEngels_1.5D|Bourgeois and proletarians]]</ref></blockquote>In order to prevent this, the bourgeoisie would have stop being itself, which would be absurd. Consequently, by affirming itself, it creates its own negation.<br />
<br />
Let us take the example of an egg which is laid and sat on by a hen: we find that in the egg there is a seed which develops at a certain temperature and under certain conditions. This seed, while developing, will produce a chick; hence, the seed is already the negation of the egg. We see then that in the egg there are two forces: one which tends to make it remain an egg and one which tends to make it become a chick. Therefore, the egg is in disagreement with itself and all things are in disagreement with themselves.<br />
<br />
This may seem difficult to understand, because we are used to the metaphysical way of reasoning, but this is why we should make an effort to become accustomed to seeing ''things in their reality''.<br />
<br />
A thing begins by being an ''affirmation'' which comes from ''negation''. The chick is an affirmation born from the negation of the egg. It is one stage of the process. But the chick, in turn, will be transformed into a hen. During this transformation, there will be a contradiction between the forces which fight to make the chick become a hen and those which fight to make the chick remain a chick. The hen will thus be the negation of the chick, the latter having derived from the negation of the egg.<br />
<br />
The hen will therefore be the negation of the negation. And this is the general course of the stages of dialectics.<br />
{|<br />
|Affirmation<br />
|also called<br />
|thesis<br />
|-<br />
|Negation<br />
|or<br />
|antithesis<br />
|-<br />
|Negation of the negation<br />
|or<br />
|synthesis<br />
|}<br />
These words summarize dialectical development. They are used to represent the sequence of stages, to indicate that each stage is the destruction of the preceding one.<br />
<br />
Destruction is a negation. The chick is the negation of the egg, since by being born it destroys the egg. Similarly, the ear of wheat is the negation of the grain of wheat. The grain will germinate in the soil; this germination is the germination of the grain of wheat and will produce a plant. This plant, in turn, will flower and produce an ear; the latter will be the negation of the plant or the negation of the negation.<br />
<br />
Hence, we see that the negation which dialectics speaks of is another way of speaking of destruction. There is a negation of what disappears, of what is destroyed.<br />
<br />
# Feudalism was the negation of the slave state.<br />
# Capitalism is the negation of feudalism.<br />
# Socialism is the negation of capitalism.<br />
<br />
Just as when we made a distinction between verbal contradiction and dialectical contradiction, here we must clearly understand what verbal negation, which says “no,” is and what dialectical negation, which means “destruction,” is.<br />
<br />
But while negation means destruction, it does not mean just any kind of destruction, but dialectical destruction. Thus, when we crush a flea, it does not die from internal destruction, from dialectical negation. Its destruction is not the result of autodynamic stages; it is the result of a purely mechanical change.<br />
<br />
Destruction is a negation only if it is a product of affirmation, if it comes from it. Thus, the egg which is sat on, being the affirmation of what an egg is, engenders its own negation: it becomes a chick, and the latter symbolizes the destruction or the negation of the egg, by piercing and destroying the shell.<br />
<br />
In the chick we observe two adverse forces; “chick” and “hen.” In the course of this development of the process, the hen will lay eggs, whence a new negation of the negation arises. From these eggs, then, a new sequence of the process will begin.<br />
<br />
In the case of wheat we also see an affirmation, then a negation and negation of the negation.<br />
<br />
Let us take materialist philosophy as another example.<br />
<br />
In the beginning, we find a primitive, spontaneous materialism, which, due to its ignorance, creates its own negation: idealism. But the idealism which negates the old materialism will itself be repudiated in turn by modern or dialectical materialism, because philosophy, along with the sciences, develops and provokes the destruction of idealism. Hence, here also, we have affirmation, negation and negation of the negation.<br />
<br />
We may also observe this cycle in the evolution of society.<br />
<br />
In the beginning of history we find the existence of a primitive Communist society, a society without classes, based on the common ownership of the land. But this form of ownership becomes a hindrance to the development of production and, in this way, creates its own negation: a class society, based on private ownership and the exploitation of man by man. But this society as well carries its own negation within itself, because a superior development of the means of production brings about the necessity of negating the division of society into classes, of negating private ownership. So we return to the point of departure: the necessity for a Communist society, ''but on another level''. In the beginning, there was a lack of commodities; today, we have a very high capacity of production.<br />
<br />
Notice that for all the examples we have given we return to the point of departure, but on another level (spiral development), ''a higher level''.<br />
<br />
We see then that contradiction is the great law of dialectics. That evolution is a fight between antagonistic forces. That not only do things change into each other, but also everything is transformed into its opposite. That things do not agree with themselves because there are struggles inside them between opposed forces, because there are internal contradictions within them.<br />
<br />
''Note.'' The expressions “affirmation,” “negation,” and “negation of the negation” are only verbal shorthand for the moments of dialectical evolution. Therefore, we should be careful not to run about trying to find these three stages everywhere. Sometimes we shall not find all of them because the evolution is not complete. So we mustn’t mechanically try to see these changes as such in everything. Let us especially remember that contradiction is the great law of dialectics. That is the essential point.<br />
<br />
=====Summary=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We already know that dialectics is a method of thinking, of reasoning and of analyzing which enables us to make good observations and to study well, for it obliges us to look for the source of everything and to describe its history.<br />
<br />
We have seen that the former method of thinking certainly had its necessity in its time. But to study with the dialectical method is to observe, let us repeat, that all things, apparently immobile, are but a sequence of processes in which everything has a beginning and an end, where in everything, “in spite of all seeming accidents and of all temporary retrogression, a progressive development asserts itself in the end...” <ref name=":7" group="note" /><br />
<br />
Only dialectics enables us to understand the development and the evolution of things; it alone permits us to understand the destruction of ancient things and the birth of new ones. Only dialectics lets us understand all developments in their transformations by letting us know them as entities made up of opposites. For, as far as the dialectical concept is concerned, the natural development of things, evolution, is a continual struggle between antagonistic forces and principles.<br />
<br />
Hence, while for dialectics the first law is the observation of motion and change—“Nothing remains what, where and as it was.” (Engels)—we now know that the explanation of this law resides in the fact that things change not only by transforming themselves into each other, but also by transforming themselves into their opposites. Contradiction is therefore a great law of dialectics.<br />
<br />
We have studied what contradiction is from the dialectical point of view, but we must again lay stress on this in order to add certain details and to point out certain errors which we should not commit.<br />
<br />
It is quite certain that we must first familiarize ourselves with this assertion, which is in harmony with reality: the transformation of things into their opposites. Certainly, this shocks our understanding and surprises us, because we are accustomed to thinking with the old metaphysical method. But we have seen why this is so. We have seen in detail, with examples, that this ''exists'' in reality and why things are changed into their opposites.<br />
<br />
This is why it can be maintained that, if things are transformed, if they change and evolve, it is because they are in contradiction with themselves, because they carry their opposites within themselves, because they contain within themselves ''an interpenetration, a unity and struggle of opposites''.<br />
<br />
=====The unity of opposites=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Each thing is an interpenetration of opposites.<br />
<br />
To declare such a thing at first appears absurd. "A thing and its opposite have nothing in common." This is what is generally thought. For dialectics, however, each thing is, at the same time, itself and its opposite; each thing is an interpenetration of opposites, and we must explain this.<br />
<br />
For a metaphysician, the unity and struggle of opposites is an impossible thing. For him, things are made up of a single piece, in harmony with themselves. Here we are declaring just the opposite, namely that things are made up of two pieces—themselves and their opposites—and that there are two forces in them which fight each other because things are not in harmony with themselves, because they contradict themselves.<br />
<br />
If we take the example of ignorance and science, i.e., knowledge, we know that from the metaphysical point of view these are two totally opposed and contrary things. Someone who is ignorant is not a scientist and someone who is a scientist is not ignorant.<br />
<br />
However, if we look at the facts, we see that they do not give rise to such a rigid opposition. We see that at first ignorance prevailed, then science appeared; and we thereby ascertain that one thing is transformed into its opposite: ignorance is transformed into science.<br />
<br />
There is no ignorance without science or knowledge. There is no 100 percent pure ignorance. An individual, no matter how ignorant he may be, can at least recognize objects and his food. ''There is never absolute ignorance'': there is always some knowledge in ignorance. The seeds of knowledge have already been planted in ignorance. Therefore, we are correct in maintaining that the opposite of a thing is found in the thing itself.<br />
<br />
Let us look at knowledge now. Can there be 100 percent pure knowledge? No. One is always ignorant of something. Lenin says, “The object of knowledge is inexhaustible,” which means that there is always something to be learned. ''There is no absolute knowledge''. All knowledge and every science contains some ignorance.<br />
<br />
What exists in reality is ''relative'' knowledge and ignorance, a mixture of knowledge and ignorance.<br />
<br />
Hence, in this example it is not the ''transformation'' of things into their opposites which we observe, but rather the existence of opposites ''in the same thing'', or, in other words, the ''interpenetration of opposites''. <br />
<br />
We could go back to the examples which we have already seen: life and death, truth and error, and we would find that, in both cases, as in everything, an interpenetration of opposites exists, i.e., each thing contains at the same time itself and its opposite. This is why Engels says:<blockquote>If, however, investigation always proceeds from this standpoint, the demand for final solutions and eternal truths ceases once for all; one is always conscious of the necessary limitation of all acquired knowledge, of the fact that it is conditioned by the circumstances in which it was acquired. On the other hand, one no longer permits oneself to be imposed upon by the antitheses, insuperable for the still common old metaphysics, between true and false, good and bad, identical and different, necessary and accidental. One knows that these antitheses have only a relative validity; that that which is recognized now as true has also its latent false side which will later manifest itself, just as that which is now regarded as false has also its true side by virtue of which it could previously have been regarded as true. <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>This text by Engels clearly shows us how dialectics should be understood and the true meaning of the interpenetration of opposites.<br />
<br />
=====Mistakes to avoid=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
This great law of dialectics, contradiction, must be clearly explained in order not to create any misunderstandings.<br />
<br />
First, it should not be interpreted in a mechanical way. We mustn’t think that in all knowledge there is truth ''plus'' error, or ''both'' something true ''and'' something false.<br />
<br />
If this law were applied in this way, it would justify those who say that there is something true plus something false in all opinions, so “let’s remove what is false, and what is true and good will remain.” This is said in certain so-called Marxist circles, where it is thought that Marxism is right to point out that, in capitalism, there are factories, trusts and banks which hold economic life in their hands, that it is correct to say that this economic life is going badly; but what is false in Marxism, they add, is class struggle: let’s leave out the theory of class struggle and we shall have a good doctrine. It is also said that Marxism applied to the study of society is correct and true “but why mix in dialectics? This is the false side, let’s remove dialectics and keep the rest of Marxism as true!”<br />
<br />
These are mechanical interpretations of the interpenetration of opposites.<br />
<br />
Here is another example: Proudhon, after having learned of this theory of opposites, thought that there was a good and a bad side in everything. So, observing that there is a bourgeoisie and a proletariat in society, he said, “Let’s remove what is bad, the proletariat!” That is how he constructed his system of credits which was to create "parcelled out property," i.e., to allow the proletarians to become owners. In this way, there would only be the bourgeoisie and society would be good.<br />
<br />
However, we know very well that there can be no proletariat ''without'' the bourgeoisie and that the bourgeoisie exists only ''through'' the proletariat: these are two opposites which are inseparable. This unity and struggle of opposites is internal and real: it is an inseparable union. Hence, in order to get rid of the opposites it is not sufficient to cut one from the other. In a society based on the exploitation of man by man, there necessarily exists two antagonistic classes: masters and slaves in antiquity, lords and serfs in the Middle Ages, bourgeoisie and proletariat today.<br />
<br />
In order to abolish capitalist society, to create a society without classes, both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat must be eliminated - in order to enable free men to create a materially and intellectually more advanced society, to go towards communism in its superior form and not to create, as our adversaries claim, a communism which is "egalitarian in poverty."<br />
<br />
Hence, we must be very careful when we explain or when we apply the interpenetration of opposites to an example or to a study. We should avoid trying to find everywhere and to apply mechanically, for example, the negation of the negation, or to find the interpenetration of opposites everywhere, for our knowledge in general is limited and this can lead us to blind alleys.<br />
<br />
What counts is this principle: dialectics and its laws oblige us to study things in order to discover their evolution and the forces, the opposites, which determine this evolution. We must therefore study the interpenetration of opposites contained in things, and this interpenetration of opposites is tantamount to saying that ''an affirmation is never an absolute affirmation'', since it contains within itself a negative portion. And this is the essential point: ''It is because things contain their own negation that they are transformed''. Negation is the “solvent”: if it did not exist, things would not change. As, in fact, things do change, they must then contain a solvent principle. We can declare beforehand that it exists since we see things evolving, but we cannot discover this principle without a detailed study of the thing itself, for this principle does not have the same appearance in everything.<br />
<br />
=====Practical consequences of dialectics=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Hence, in practice, dialectics obliges us always to consider both, not one, sides of things: never to consider truth without ignorance. The big mistake of metaphysics is precisely to consider only one side of things, to judge unilaterally. If we make many mistakes, it is always to the extent that we see but one side of things, because we often reason unilaterally.<br />
<br />
While idealist philosophy maintains that the world exists only in the ideas of men, we must recognize that, in truth, there are some things which exist only in our thoughts. This is true. But idealism is unilateral: it sees only this aspect. It sees only man who invents things which are not found in reality and it then concludes that nothing exists outside of our ideas. Idealism is correct to point out this faculty in man, but, by not applying the criterion of practice, it sees only that.<br />
<br />
Metaphysical materialism is also mistaken because it sees but one side of problems. It sees the universe as a mechanism. Does mechanics exist? Yes! Does it play an important role? Yes! Metaphysical materialism is thus correct to say this, but it is a mistake to see only mechanical motion.<br />
<br />
Naturally, we are prone to seeing only one side of things and people. If we judge a comrade, almost always we see only his good or his bad side. We must see ''both'', without which it would not be possible to have cadres in organizations. In political practice, the unilateral method of judgment leads to sectarianism. If we encounter an adversary belonging to a reactionary organization, we judge him by his bosses. Yet, he is perhaps only an embittered, discontent employee, and we should not judge him like a fascist boss. Likewise, we can apply this reasoning to bosses and understand that, while they may seem bad to us, it is often because they themselves are dominated by the structure of society and, ''under different social conditions'', they would perhaps be different.<br />
<br />
If we keep the interpenetration, the unity and struggle of opposites in mind, we look at things in their multiple aspects. We see then that this reactionary is, on the one hand, reactionary, but, on the other, he is a worker and in his case there is a contradiction. We should look and find out why he has joined this organization and, at the same time, why he should not have joined. In this way we can judge and discuss his case in a less sectarian manner.<br />
<br />
In accordance with dialectics then, we must consider things from all the angles which we can differentiate.<br />
<br />
To summarize, and as a theoretical conclusion, we shall say: Things change because they include an internal contradiction (themselves and their opposites). The opposites are in conflict, and changes arise from these conflicts. Thus change is the ''solution'' of the conflict.<br />
<br />
Capitalism contains an internal contradiction, the conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Change is explained by this conflict and the transformation of capitalist society into a socialist society is the end of this conflict.<br />
<br />
There is change and motion wherever there is contradiction. Contradiction is the negation of the affirmation. When the third term, negation of the negation, is achieved, the solution appears, for, at that moment, the reason for the contradiction is eliminated, ''obsolete''.<br />
<br />
Hence, it can be said that, while the sciences—chemistry, physics, biology, etc.—study the laws of change particular to them, dialectics studies the most general laws of change. Engels says, <blockquote>“Dialectics is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of Nature, human society and thought.” <ref name=":4" group="note" /></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote>''Engels: [[Library:Anti-Dühring|Anti-Dühring]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
==== 4. Transformation of quantity into quality or the law of progress by leaps ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Before tackling the problem of the application of dialectics to history, it remains for us to study one last law of dialectics.<br />
<br />
This will be facilitated by the studies which we have just made wherein we have seen what negation of the negation is and what is meant by the interpenetration, the unity and struggle of opposites.<br />
<br />
As always, let us proceed by examples.<br />
<br />
===== Reforms or revolution =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
When speaking of society, people ask, “Should we instigate reforms or make a revolution?” They debate whether, in order to transform capitalist society into a socialist society, successive reforms or an abrupt transformation—revolution—is needed.<br />
<br />
With respect to this problem, let us recall what we have already studied. Every transformation is the result of a struggle between opposing forces. When something evolves, it is because it contains its opposite, everything being an interpenetration of opposites. We can observe the struggle of opposites and the transformation of the thing into its opposite. ''How does this transformation take place?'' This is the new problem which confronts us.<br />
<br />
One may believe that this transformation occurs little by little, through a series of small transformations, that the green apple changes into a ripe apple through a series of progressive changes.<br />
<br />
Many people think in this way that society is transformed little by little and that the result of a series of these small transformations will be the transformation of capitalist society into a socialist society. These small transformations are reforms and it will be their total, the sum of the small, gradual changes, which will give us a new society.<br />
<br />
This theory is called ''reformism''. The supporters of this theory are called reformists, not because they demand reforms, but because they think that reforms are ''sufficient'', that their accumulation will ''imperceptibly'' transform society.<br />
<br />
Let us see if this is true:<br />
<br />
======The political argument======<br />
{{top}}<br />
If we look at the facts, i.e., what has happened in other countries, we shall see that, where this system has been tried, it has not been successful. The transformation of capitalist society—its destruction—has succeeded in a single country: the U.S.S.R., and we find that it was not through a series of reforms, but through revolution.<br />
<br />
======The historical argument======<br />
{{top}}<br />
Generally speaking, is it true that things are transformed by small changes, by reforms?<br />
<br />
Let us still look at the facts. If we examine historical changes, we see that they do not occur ''indefinitely'', that they are not continuous. There comes a moment when, instead of ''small'' changes, change takes place with an abrupt leap.<br />
<br />
In the history of societies, the outstanding events which we find are abrupt changes, revolutions.<br />
<br />
Even those who are not familiar with dialectics know, nowadays, that violent changes have occurred in history. However, until the 17th century, it was believed that “nature does not jump,” that it makes no leaps. People refused to see any abrupt changes in the continuity of change. But science stepped in and revealed, with facts, that changes did occur abruptly. The revolution of 1789 opened people’s eyes even better; it was in itself an obvious example of a clean break with the past. It came to be seen that all the decisive stages of history had been important, abrupt and sudden upheavals. For example, as friendly as they may have been, the relations between two states grew colder, more strained and bitter, then took on a hostile character—and, all of a sudden, it was war, an abrupt rupture with the continuity of events. Another example: in Germany, after the war of 1914-1918, there was a gradual rise of fascism, then one day Hitler took power: Germany entered a new historical stage.<br />
<br />
Today, those who do not deny these abrupt changes maintain that they are accidents, an accident being something which happens but which might not have happened.<br />
<br />
In this way, people explain revolutions in the history of societies by saying, “They were accidents.”<br />
<br />
With regard to the history of France, for example, it is maintained that the fall of Louis XVI and the French Revolution occurred because Louis XVI was a weak and soft man. “If he had been an energetic man, we would not have had a revolution.” We even read that, if he had not prolonged his meal at Varennes, he would not have been arrested and the course of history would have been changed. Hence, the French Revolution was just an accident, it is said.<br />
<br />
Dialectics, on the contrary, recognized that revolutions are necessities. There are, indeed, gradual changes, but their accumulation ends up producing abrupt changes.<br />
<br />
======The scientific argument======<br />
{{top}}Let us take the example of water, if we start at 0° Centigrade, and raise the temperature of the water from 1°, 2°, 3° up to 98°, the change is continuous. But can it continue indefinitely? We can go again up to 99°, but, at 100° Centigrade, we have an abrupt change: the water is ''transformed'' into steam.<br />
<br />
If, inversely, from 99° we go down to 1°, again we have a continuous change; but we cannot lower the temperature like this indefinitely, for, at 0° Centigrade, the water is ''transformed'' into ice.<br />
<br />
From 1° to 99° the water still remains water; only its temperature changes. This is what is called a ''quantitative'' change, which answers the question “How much?”, i.e., “How much heat is there in the water?”. When the water changes into ice or steam, we have a ''qualitative change'', a change in quality. It is no longer water: it has become ice or steam.<br />
<br />
When a thing does not change its nature, we have a quantitative change (in the example of water, we have a change in the degree of heat, but not in nature). When it changes in nature, when a thing becomes ''another'' thing, this change is qualitative.<br />
<br />
Hence, we see that the evolution of things cannot be quantitative indefinitely: things which change finally undergo a qualitative change. ''Quantity changes into quality''. This is a general law. But, as always, we mustn’t be satisfied with only this abstract formula.<br />
<br />
In Engels’ book ''[[Library:Anti-Dühring|Anti-Dühring]]'', in the chapter entitled “[[Library:Anti-Dühring#Quantity and quality|Dialectics, quantity and quality]]” we can find a large number of examples illustrating how exact this law is, not only in the natural sciences, but in everything else; a law according to which <blockquote>quantitative change suddenly produces, at certain points, a qualitative difference <ref name=":4" group="note" /></blockquote>Here is another example, cited by H. Wallon in volume VIII of the ''French Encyclopédie'' (in which he refers to Engels): nervous energy which accumulates in a child provokes laughter; but, if it continues to grow, laughter changes into a fit of tears; in this way, children who become excited and laugh too hard end up crying.<br />
<br />
We shall give one last well-known example: that of someone running for an elected office. If 4,500 votes are needed for an absolute majority, the candidate is not elected with 4,499 votes; he remains what he is: a candidate. With one more vote, this quantitative change determines a qualitative change, since the candidate becomes an elected official.<br />
<br />
This law provides us with the solution to the problem: reform or revolution.<br />
<br />
Reformists tell us: “You want the impossible which happens only by accident; you are utopians.” But with this law we can see who really is the one who is dreaming the impossible! The study of the phenomena of nature and science shows us that changes are not gradual indefinitely, but that at a certain moment change becomes abrupt. We are not declaring this arbitrarily; rather it is science, nature and reality which declare this to be true.<br />
<br />
We might then ask, “What role do we play in these abrupt changes?”<br />
<br />
We are going to answer this question and develop this problem by applying dialectics to history. Here we have come to a very famous part of dialectical materialism: historical materialism.<br />
<br />
=====Historical materialism=====<br />
{{top}}What is historical materialism? It is simply, now that we know what dialectics is, the application of this method to the history of human societies.<br />
<br />
In order to clearly understand this, we must clarify what history is. History implies change, change in society. Society has a history throughout which it is constantly changing; we see great events taking place in it. So, the following question is raised: since, in history, societies change, what explains these changes?<br />
<br />
======How to explain history?======<br />
{{top}}In this regard it is often asked, “For what reason must there always be war? Men ought to be able to live in peace!”<br />
<br />
To these questions we are going to provide materialist answers.<br />
<br />
A cardinal might explain that war is a punishment from God; this is an idealist answer, for it uses God to explain events. This is explaining history by spirit. It is spirit which creates and makes history.<br />
<br />
Speaking of Providence is also an idealist answer. Hitler, in ''Mein Kampf'', tells us that history is the work of Providence, and he thanks the latter for having placed his place of birth on the Austrian border.<br />
<br />
To make God or Providence responsible for history is a convenient theory; men can do nothing and, consequently, we can do nothing to stop war, we must let it happen.<br />
<br />
From a scientific point of view, can we support such a theory? Can we find its justification in facts? No.<br />
<br />
The first materialist affirmation in this discussion is that history is not the work of God, but the ''work of men''. So then, men can act on history and prevent the war.<br />
<br />
======History is the work of people======<br />
{{top}}<br />
<blockquote>Men make their own history, whatever its outcome may be, in that each person follows his own consciously desired end, and it is precisely the resultant of these many wills operating in different directions and of their manifold effects upon the outer world that constitutes history. Thus it is also a question of what the many individuals desire. The will is determined by passion or deliberation. But the levers which immediately determine passion or deliberation are of very different kinds. Partly they may be external objects, partly ideal motives, ambition, enthusiasm for whims of all kinds. But, on the one hand, we have seen that the many individual wills active in history for the most part produce results quite other than those they intended— often quite the opposite; their motives therefore in relation to the total result are likewise of only secondary significance. On the other hand, the further question arises: What driving forces in turn stand behind these motives? What are the historical causes which transform themselves into these motives in the brains of the actors? <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>This text of Engels tells us then that it is men who act according to their will (desires), but that these desires do not always go in the same direction! What is it then which ''determines'', which decides the actions of men? Why do their desires not go in the same direction?<br />
<br />
Some idealists will agree that it is the actions of men which make history and that these actions result from their will: it is will which determines action, and it is our thoughts and our feelings which determine our will. We would then have the following sequence: idea—will—action. In order to explain action, we must revert back to find the determining idea-cause.<br />
<br />
Now we make it immediately clear that the action of great men and of doctrine is undeniable, but that it needs to be explained. It is not the sequence “idea—will—action” which explains it. In this way some people claim that in the 18th century Diderot and the Encyclopedists, by spreading to the public the ideas of the Rights of Man, seduced and won, by these ideas, the will of those men who, consequently, made the revolution. Similarly, in the U.S.S.R. the ideas of Lenin were spread and people acted in conformity with these ideas. People then conclude from this that, if there were no revolutionary ideas, there would be no revolution. This point of view leads to the conclusion that the motor forces of history are the ideas of great leaders, that it is these leaders who make history. You know the formula of ''Action Française'', “Forty kings made France”; we might add, kings who did not have many “ideas”!<br />
<br />
What is the materialist point of view on this question?<br />
<br />
We have seen that there were many points in common between 18th century materialism and modern materialism, but that the former materialism had an idealist theory of history.<br />
<br />
Hence, whether frankly idealist or disguised behind an inconsistent materialism, this idealist theory which we have just seen and which seems to explain history explains nothing. For ''what provokes action''? Engels says:<blockquote>The old materialism never put this question to itself. Its conception of history, in so far as it has one at all, is therefore essentially pragmatic; it divides men who act in history into noble and ignoble and then finds that as a rule the noble are defrauded and the ignoble are victorious. hence, it follows for the old materialism that nothing very edifying is to be got from the study of history, and for us that in the realm of history the old materialism becomes untrue to itself because it takes the ideal driving forces which operate there as ultimate causes, instead of investigating what is behind them, what are the driving forces of these driving forces. <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>Will, ideas, it is claimed. But why did the philosophers of the 18th century have ''precisely'' these ideas? If they had tried to propound Marxism, no one would have listened to them, for, at this time, people would not have understood. It is not only the fact that ideas are conveyed which counts; they must also be understood. Consequently, there are ''definite times'' for accepting ideas as well as for forging them.<br />
<br />
We have always said that ideas are of great importance, but we must see where they come from.<br />
<br />
We must then search for the causes which give us these ideas, and for what are, in the final analysis, ''the motor forces of history''.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote><br />
''Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]''<br />
<br />
''Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions#Study of dialectics|Control questions]]''<br />
== The historical materialism ==<br />
=== The driving forces of history ===<br />
{{top}}<br />
As soon as the question, “Where do our ideas come from?” is raised, the need for pursuing our research further becomes apparent. If we reasoned in the manner of the 18th century materialists, who thought that “the mind secretes thought as the liver secretes bile,” we could answer this question by saying that it is nature which produces the mind and that, consequently, our ideas are the product of nature and the product of our minds.<br />
<br />
It could then be said that ''history'' is made by the ''action'' of men driven by their will, the latter being the expression of their ''ideas'' which are themselves derived from their brains. But watch out!<br />
<br />
==== One mistake to avoid ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
If we explained the French Revolution by saying that it was the result of the application of the ideas which arose in the minds of philosophers, this would be a narrow and insufficient explanation and a poor application of materialism.<br />
<br />
What must be seen is ''why'' the ideas launched by the thinkers of this period were adopted by the masses. Why was Diderot not alone in conceiving of them and for what reason were the great majority of minds since the 16th century developing the same ideas? Is it because these minds suddenly had the same weight, the same convolution? No. There were changes in ideas, but no change took place inside the skull.<br />
<br />
This explanation of ideas by the brain seems like a materialist explanation. But to speak of Diderot’s brain is really to speak of the ideas in Diderot’s brain. Hence, this is a falsified and improper materialist theory, in which we witness the revival of the idealist tendency to give primary importance to ideas.<br />
<br />
Let us go back to the sequence: history — action — will — ideas. Ideas have a meaning, a content. The working class, for example, struggles for the elimination of capitalism. This is an idea held by the struggling workers. They think because they have brains, certainly, and the brain is therefore a ''necessary condition'' for thinking; but it is not a ''sufficient'' condition. The brain explains the material act of having ideas, but it does not explain why one has certain ideas rather than others. “Everything which sets men in motion must go through their minds; but what form it will take in the mind will depend very much upon the circumstances.” <ref name=":7" group="note" /><br />
<br />
How can we then explain the content of our ideas, that is, how does the idea of overthrowing capitalism come to us?<br />
<br />
==== The "social being" and consciousness ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We know that our ideas are the reflection of things. The goals which our ideas contain are also the reflection of things, but which things?<br />
<br />
In order to answer this question, we must see where men live and where their ideas appear. We find that men live in a capitalist society and that their ideas appear in this society and are derived from it. <blockquote>“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.” <ref name=":12" group="note">Marx: ''[[Library:A contribution to the critique of political economy|A contribution to the critique of political economy]]: [[Library:A contribution to the critique of political economy#Preface|Preface]]''</ref></blockquote>In this definition, what Marx calls “their being,” signifies what we are; “consciousness” is what we think, what we desire.<br />
<br />
We are struggling for an ideal profoundly rooted in us, it is generally said, and as a result of this, it is our ''consciousness'' which determines our being. We act in a certain way because we think in a certain way, because we want to.<br />
<br />
It is a grave error to speak this way, for in reality it is our social being which determines our consciousness.<br />
<br />
A proletarian ''thinks'' like a proletarian, and a bourgeois ''thinks'' like a bourgeois (we shall see later why this is not always the case). But, generally speaking, “A man thinks differently in a palace and in a hut.” <ref group="note">Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach]]: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy#Feuerbach|Feuerbach]]</ref><br />
<br />
==== Idealist theories ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Idealists say that a proletarian or a bourgeois is one or the other because he thinks like one or the other.<br />
<br />
We say, on the contrary, that, while one may think like a proletarian or a bourgeois, this is because one is one or the other. A proletarian has a proletarian class consciousness because ''he is'' a proletarian.<br />
<br />
We should pay close attention to the practical consequences of this idealist theory. Accordingly, if one is a bourgeois, it is because one thinks like a bourgeois. Hence, in order to stop being one, it is sufficient to change the way of thinking in question; and in order to halt bourgeois exploitation, it is sufficient to make the bosses change their ''convictions''. This is a theory defended by Christian socialists; it was also shared by the founders of utopian socialism.<br />
<br />
Moreover, it is also held by the fascists who fight against capitalism, not to eliminate it, but to make it more “rational”! As soon as management understands that it exploits workers, they say, it will no longer do so. Here we have a completely idealist theory whose dangers are obvious to us.<br />
<br />
====The "social being" and the conditions of existence====<br />
{{top}}Marx speaks of “social being.” What does he mean by this?<br />
<br />
“Social being” is determined by the material conditions of existence in which men live in society.<br />
<br />
It is not the consciousness of men which determines their material conditions of existence, but these material conditions which determine their consciousness.<br />
<br />
What are the material conditions of existence? In society, there are rich people and poor people, and their way of thinking is different, their ideas on the same subject are different. Taking the subway, for someone poor and unemployed, is a luxury, but it is a disgrace for someone rich who has a car.<br />
<br />
Does a poor person entertain these ideas about the subway because he is poor or because he takes the subway? Because he is poor. Being poor is his condition of existence.<br />
<br />
So, we must see ''why'' there are rich people and poor people in order to be able to explain men’s conditions of existence.<br />
<br />
In the economic process of production, a group of people occupying an analogous place (i.e., in the present capitalist system, possessing the means of production—or, on the contrary, working on the means of production which do not belong to them), and consequently having to a certain extent the same material conditions of existence, form a ''class''. However, the notion of class is not simply that of wealth or poverty. A proletarian may earn more than a bourgeois. He is, nonetheless, a proletarian because he is dependent on a boss and because his life is neither ''secure'' nor ''independent''. The material conditions of existence consist not only of money earned, but also of ''social function''. Therefore, we have the following sequence:<br />
<br />
People make their ''history'' through their ''actions'' according to their ''will'', which is the expression of their ''ideas''. The latter are derived from their material conditions of existence, i.e., their membership in a ''class''.<br />
<br />
==== Class struggles, the driving force of history ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
People act because they have certain ideas. They owe these ideas to their material conditions of existence, because they belong to one class or another. This does not mean that there are only two classes in society. There are a number of classes, of which two are principally in conflict: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.<br />
<br />
Hence, ''beneath ideas there are classes''.<br />
<br />
Society is divided into classes which struggle against each other. Thus, if we examine the ideas which man has, we see that these ideas are in conflict, and that, beneath these ideas, we find classes which are themselves in conflict as well.<br />
<br />
Consequently, the motor forces of history, i.e., ''the explanation of history, is class struggle''.<br />
<br />
If we take the permanent deficit of the budget, for example, we see that there are two solutions: one consists of continuing what is called financial orthodoxy: savings, loans, new taxes, etc.; the other solution consists of making the rich pay.<br />
<br />
We observe a political struggle around these ideas. Generally, one is “sorry” that one cannot reach an agreement on this matter. The Marxist, however, wants to understand and looks for what is underneath the political struggle. He then discovers the social struggle, i.e., class struggle. Struggle between those who favor the first solution (capitalists) and those who favor making the rich pay (middle classes and proletariat). Engels says:<blockquote>In modern history at least it is, therefore, proved that all political struggles are class struggles, and all class struggles for emancipation, despite their necessarily political form — for every class struggle is a political struggle — turn ultimately on the question of ''economic'' emancipation. <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>Thus we have another link to add to the sequence we have used to explain history. We now have: action, will, ideas, beneath which are found classes and, behind classes, is the economy. ''Hence, it is indeed class struggles which explain history, but it is the economy which determines classes''.<br />
<br />
If we wish to explain a historical fact, we must examine which ideas are in conflict, look for the classes beneath these ideas and, finally, define the economic mode which characterizes these classes.<br />
<br />
One may still wonder where classes and the economic mode come from (and dialecticians are not afraid of asking all these successive questions because they know that we must find the source of everything). This is what we shall study in detail in the next chapter, but we can already say:<br />
<br />
In order to know where classes come from, one must study the history of society, and then one will see that the existing classes have not always been the same. In Greece: slaves and masters: in the Middle Ages: serfs and lords; next, to simplify the enumeration, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.<br />
<br />
In the above description, we find that classes change, and, if we look for the reason why they change, we shall see that it is because the ''economic conditions'' have changed (by economic conditions we mean: the structure of production, of distribution, of exchange, of the consumption of goods, and, as the ultimate condition of all the rest, the way of producing, or technology).<br />
<br />
Here follows a text by Engels:<blockquote>Bourgeoisie and proletariat both arose in consequence of a transformation of the economic conditions, more precisely, of the mode of production. The transition, first from guild handicrafts to manufacture, and then from manufacture to large-scale industry, with steam and mechanical power, had caused the development of these two classes. <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>Hence, in the last analysis, we see that we may represent the motor forces of history by the following sequence:<br />
<br />
# History is the work of ''people''.<br />
# Action, which creates history, is determined by their ''will''.<br />
# This will is the expression of their ''ideas''.<br />
# These ideas are the reflection of the ''social conditions'' in which they live.<br />
# It is these social conditions which determine ''classes'' and their struggles.<br />
# Classes are themselves determined by ''economic conditions''.<br />
<br />
To clarify in what forms and under what conditions this sequence takes place, let us say that:<br />
<br />
# ''Ideas'' find their expression in life in the ''political'' sphere.<br />
# ''Class struggles'', which are behind the struggles of ideas, are manifested in the ''social sphere''.<br />
#''Economic conditions'' (which are determined by the state of ''technology'') find their expression in the ''economic sphere''.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote><br />
''Marx and Engels: [[Library:Manifesto of the communist party|Manifesto of the communist party]]''<br />
<br />
''Marx: [[Library:A contribution to the critique of political economy|A contribution to the critique of political economy]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
===Where do classes and economic conditions come from?===<br />
{{top}}We have seen that, in the last analysis, the motor forces of history are classes and their struggles determined by ''economic conditions''.<br />
<br />
This may be expressed by the following sequence: people have ideas in their heads which make them act. These ideas are derived from the material conditions of existence in which they live. These material conditions of existence are determined by the social place they occupy in society, i.e., by the class to which they belong, and classes are themselves determined by the economic conditions in which society evolves.<br />
<br />
But it remains for us to see what it is which determines economic conditions and the classes they create. This is what we propose to study below.<br />
<br />
==== First major division of labor ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
By studying the evolution of society and taking into account the events of the past, the first observation one makes is that the division of society into classes has not always existed. Dialectics demands that we search for the origin of things. Now we find that, in a far-distant past, there were no classes. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels tells us:<blockquote>Production at all former stages of society was essentially collective: there was not one class, one category, then another. Likewise, consumption of the products created by men was collective. This is primitive communism.</blockquote>All men participate in production; the individual instruments of labor are private property, but those which are used in common belong to the community. The division of labor exists at this lower stage only between the sexes. Man hunts, fishes, etc.; woman takes care of the house. There are no “private” interests at stake.<blockquote>But men did not remain in this period; the first change in the life of men will be the division of labor in society. “But the division of labor slowly insinuates itself into this process of production.” <ref name=":9" group="note">Engels: ''[[Library:The origin of the family, private property and the state|The origin of the family, private property and the state]]: [[Library:The origin of the family, private property and the state#Barbarism and civilization|Barbarism and civilization]]''</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
This first event occurs where men:<blockquote>found animals which could be tamed and, when once tamed, bred. The wild buffalo cow had to be hunted; the tame buffalo cow gave a calf yearly and milk as well. A number of the most advanced tribes— the Aryans, Semites, perhaps already also the Turanians—now made their chief work first the taming of cattle, later their breeding and tending only. Pastoral tribes separated themselves from the mass of the rest of the barbarians—the first great social division of labor. <ref name=":9" group="note" /></blockquote>Hence we have, as the first mode of production: hunting and fishing; as the second mode of production: cattle raising, which gives rise to pastoral tribes.<br />
<br />
This first division of labor is the basis for:<br />
<br />
====First division of society into classes====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The increase of production in all branches—cattle raising, agriculture, domestic handicrafts—gave human labor power the capacity to produce a larger product than was necessary for its maintenance. At the same time it increased the daily amount of work to be done by each member of the gens, household community or single family. It was now desirable to bring in new labor forces. War provided them; prisoners of war were turned into slaves. With its increase of the productivity of labor and therefore of wealth, and its extension of the field of production, the first great social division of labor was bound, in the general historical conditions prevailing, to bring slavery in its train. From the first great social division of labor arose the first great cleavage of society into two classes: masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited. <ref name=":9" group="note" /><br />
<br />
We have now reached the threshold of civilization. Civilization opens with a new advance in the division of labor. At the lowest stage of barbarism men produced only directly for their own needs; any acts of exchange were isolated occurrences, the object of exchange merely some fortuitous surplus. In the middle stage of barbarism we already find among the pastoral peoples a possession in the form of cattle which, once the herd has attained a certain size, regularly produces a surplus over and above the tribe’s own requirements, leading to a division of labor between pastoral peoples and backward tribes without herds, and hence to the existence of two different levels of production side by side with one another and to the conditions necessary for regular exchange. <ref name=":9" group="note" /><br />
<br />
Thus, at this moment, we have two classes in society: masters and slaves. Thereafter society will continue to live and to undergo new developments. A new class will appear and grow.<br />
<br />
==== Second major division of labour ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
<blockquote>Wealth increased rapidly, but as the wealth of individuals. The products of weaving, metalwork and the other handicrafts, which were becoming more and more differentiated, displayed growing variety and skill. In addition to corn, leguminous plants and fruits, agriculture now provided wine and oil, the preparation of which had been learned. Such manifold activities were no longer within the scope of one and the same individual; the second great division of labor took place—handicraft separated from agriculture. The continuous increase of production and simultaneously of the productivity of labor heightened the value of human labor power. Slavery… now be-comes an essential constituent part of the social system; slaves ... are driven by dozens to work in the fields and the workshops. With the splitting up of production into the two great main branches, agriculture and handicrafts, arises production directly for exchange, commodity production; with it came commerce, … <ref name=":9" group="note" /></blockquote><br />
<br />
==== Second division of society into classes ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
In this way, the first great division of labor increases the value of human labor, and creates a growth of wealth, which again increases the value of labor and makes a second division of labor necessary: handicrafts and agriculture. At this moment, the constant increase of production and with it of the value of the human labor power makes slaves ’’indispensable" and creates commercial production and with it a third class: merchants.<br />
<br />
Hence, at this moment in society, we have a triple division of labor and three classes: farmers, artisans, merchants. For the first time we see a class appear which ''does not participate in production'', and this class, the merchant class, will dominate the other two.<blockquote>The upper stage of barbarism brings us the further division of labor between agriculture and handicrafts, hence the production of a constantly increasing portion of the products of labor directly for exchange, so that exchange between individual producers assumes the importance of a vital social function. Civilization consolidates and intensifies all these existing divisions of labor, particularly by sharpening the opposition between town and country (the town may economically dominate the country, as in antiquity, or the country the town, as in the middle ages), and it adds a third division of labor peculiar to itself and of decisive importance. It creates a class which no longer concerns itself with production, but only with the exchange of the products—the merchants…. (This class) makes itself into an indispensable middleman between any two producers and exploits them both. Under the pretext… (of becoming) the most useful class of the population, a class of parasites… who, as a reward for their actually very insignificant services, skim all the cream off production at home and abroad, rapidly amass enormous wealth and a corresponding social influence, and for that reason receive under civilization ever higher honors and ever greater control of production until at last they also bring forth a product of their own — the periodical trade crises. <ref name=":9" group="note" /></blockquote>Hence, we see the sequence which, beginning with primitive communism, leads us to capitalism.<br />
<br />
# Primitive communism.<br />
# Division between barbarians and pastoral tribes (first division of labor: masters and slaves).<br />
# Division between farmers and artisans (second division of labor).<br />
# Birth of a merchant class (third division of labor) which<br />
# Engenders periodic commercial crises (capitalism).<br />
<br />
Now we know where classes come from; it remains for us to study:<br />
<br />
====This determines the economic conditions ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We should first review very briefly the different societies which have preceded us.<br />
<br />
We lack documents with which to study in detail the history of societies which preceded those of antiquity. But we know, for example, that with the Greeks, masters and slaves existed and that the merchant class was already beginning to develop. Then, in the Middle Ages, feudal society, with its lords and serfs, enabled the merchants to gain more and more importance. They clustered near the castles, in the heart of the ''bourgs'' (whence the name “bourgeois”). Moreover, in the Middle Ages, before capitalist production, there were only small enterprises, whose primary condition was that the producer be the owner of his instruments of labor. The means of production belonged to the individual and were adapted only to individual use. Consequently, they were paltry, small, and limited. The historical role of capitalist production and the bourgeoisie was to concentrate and enlarge these means of production, transforming them into the powerful levers of modern production.<blockquote>...since the 15th century this has been historically worked out through the three phases of simple co-operation, manufacture, and modern industry. But the bourgeoisie, as is shown there, could not transform these puny means of production into mighty productive forces without transforming them, at the same time, from means of production of the individual into ''social'' means of production only workable by a collectivity of men. <ref name=":10" group="note">Engels: ''[[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific|Socialism: utopian and scientific]]: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific#Historical%20materialism|Historical materialism]]''</ref></blockquote>Hence, we see that, parallel with the evolution of classes (masters and slaves; lords and serfs), there is an evolution of the conditions of production, of distribution and of exchange of wealth, i.e., of economic conditions, and that this economic evolution follows step by step and coincides with the evolution of the modes of production. It is therefore the<br />
<br />
==== Modes of production ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
that is, the condition of instruments and tools, their utilization, labor methods, in a word, the state of technology, which determines economic conditions.<blockquote>The spinning-wheel, the hand-loom, the blacksmith’s hammer were replaced by the spinning machine, the power-loom, the steam-hammer; the individual workshop, by the factory, implying the cooperation of hundreds of thousands of workmen. In like manner, production itself changed from a series of individual into a series of social acts, and the products from individual to social products. <ref name=":10" group="note" /></blockquote>Here we see that the evolution of modes of production totally transformed the productive forces. Now, while the tools of labor have become collective, the ownership of property has remained individual! Machines which can function only through collective implementation have remained the property of a single man. For this reason we see that<blockquote>“[The productive forces], as they grow more and more powerful, against their quality as capital, this stronger and stronger command that their social character shall be recognized ''(...)'', tends to bring about that form of the socialization of great masses of the means of production which we meet with in the different kinds of joint-stock companies ''(...)'' At a further stage of evolution, this form also becomes insufficient ''(...)'', the official representative of capitalist society — the state — will ultimately have to undertake the direction of production ''(...)'' show how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose <ref name=":10" group="note" /><br />
<br />
“All [the capitalist's] social functions are now performed by salaried employees.” <ref name=":11" group="note">Engels: ''[[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific|Socialism: utopian and scientific]]: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific#Historical materialism|Historical materialism]]: [[Library:Socialism:_utopian_and_scientific#Capitalist_revolution|Capitalist_revolution]]''</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
Thus the contradictions of the capitalist system become clear to us:<blockquote>On the one hand, perfecting of machinery, made by competition compulsory for each individual manufacturer, and complemented by a constantly growing displacement of laborers. ''Industrial reserve-army''. On the other hand, unlimited extension of production, also compulsory under competition, for every manufacturer. On both sides, unheard-of development of productive forces, excess of supply over demand, over-production and products — excess there, of laborers, without employment and without means of existence. <ref name=":11" group="note" /></blockquote>There is a contradiction between work which has become social and collective and property which has remained private. And so, with Marx, we shall say:<blockquote>From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. <ref name=":12" group="note" /></blockquote><br />
<br />
==== Remarks ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Before ending this chapter, we must make a few comments and underline the fact that, in this study, we find all the characteristics and laws of dialectics which we have just studied.<br />
<br />
Indeed, we have just very quickly traced the history of societies, of classes and of modes of production. We see how dependent each part of this study is on the others. We find that this history is essentially in motion and that the changes which occur at each stage of the evolution of society are provoked by an internal struggle between the different conservative and progressive elements, a struggle which ends in the destruction of one society and in the birth of a new one. Each society has a character and a structure quite different from the society which preceded it. These radical transformations occur after an accumulation of events which, in themselves, seem insignificant, but which, at a certain moment, create by their accumulation a situation which provokes an abrupt, revolutionary change.<br />
<br />
Hence, here we recognize the characteristics and the great general laws of dialectics namely:<br />
<br />
* The interdependence of things and events.<br />
* Dialectical motion and change.<br />
* Autodynamism.<br />
* Contradiction.<br />
* Reciprocal action.<br />
* And evolution by leaps (transformation of quantity into quality).<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote>''Engels: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific|Socialism: utopian and scientific]]''<br />
<br />
''Engels: [[Library:The origin of the family, private property and the state|The origin of the family, private property and the state]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions#The historical materialism|Control questions]]''<br />
<br />
== Dialectical materialism and ideologies ==<br />
=== Application of the dialectical method to ideologies ===<br />
==== What is the importance of ideologies for Marxism? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We are accustomed to hearing that Marxism is a materialist philosophy which denies the role of ideas in history. Denying the role of the ideological factor, it only considers economic influences.<br />
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''This is false''. Marxism does not deny the important role of the mind, of art or of ideas in life. Quite to the contrary, it attaches a particular importance to these ideological forms. We are going to end this study of the elementary principles of Marxism by examining how the method of dialectical materialism may be applied to ideologies. We shall see what the role of ideologies in history, i.e., the influence of the ideological ''factor'', is and what ideological ''forms'' are.<br />
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This part of Marxism which we are about to study is the least known part of this philosophy. The reason for this is that, for a long time, attention has been centered on the part of Marxism which deals with political economy. As a result, this subject has been arbitrarily separated, not only from the great “whole” which Marxism forms, but from its very foundation. For what enabled political economy to become a true science was historical materialism, which is, as we have seen, an application of dialectical materialism.<br />
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We might point out, parenthetically, that this manner of proceeding derives from the metaphysical spirit which we have so much trouble ridding ourselves of. It is, let us repeat, to the extent that we isolate things and study them unilaterally, that we commit mistakes.<br />
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Incorrect interpretations of Marxism derive, therefore, from the fact that the role of ideologies in history and in life has not been sufficiently underlined. Ideologies have been separated from Marxism. As a result, Marxism has been separated from dialectical materialism, that is to say, from itself!<br />
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We are happy to see that, in recent years, thanks in part to the work of the Workers’ University in Paris, through which several thousands of students have come to know Marxism, thanks also to the work of our intellectual comrades who have contributed to the cause through their work and their books, Marxism has regained its true character and the place which belongs to it.<br />
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====What is an ideology? (Ideological factors and forms)====<br />
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We shall open this chapter, which is dedicated to the role of ideologies, with a few definitions.<br />
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What do we call an ''ideology''? Ideology implies, above all, ''ideas''. Ideology is a collection of ideas which form a whole, a theory, a system or even at times simply a state of mind.<br />
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Marxism is an ideology which forms a whole and which offers a method of resolving all problems. A republican ideology is the collection of ideas which we find in the mind of a republican. <ref group="note">“Republican” as in someone who supports a republic.</ref><br />
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But an ideology is not only a collection of pure ideas, supposedly void of any feeling (this is a metaphysical concept); an ideology necessarily includes feelings, likes, dislikes, hopes, fears, etc. In the proletarian ideology, we find the ideal elements of class struggle, but we also find feelings of solidarity with those who are exploited by the capitalist system, with the “imprisoned,” as well as feelings of revolt, of enthusiasm, etc. All of these elements make up an ideology.<br />
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Now let us see what is meant by the ''ideological factor'': this is ideology considered as a cause or a force which acts, which is capable of exerting influence. This is why one speaks of the ''influence of the ideological factor''. Religions, for example, are an ideological factor which we must take account of; they have a moral force of considerable influence.<br />
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What is an ''ideological form''? This term designates a collection of particular ideas which form an ideology in a specialized field. Religion and ethics are forms of ideology, as are science, philosophy, literature, art and poetry.<br />
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Hence, if we want to examine the role of the history of ideology in general and of all its forms in particular, we must conduct our study, not by separating ideology from history, i.e., from the life of society, but by determining the role of ideology, its factors and forms, ''in'' and beginning with society.<br />
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==== Economic structure and ideological structure ====<br />
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In our study of historical materialism, we saw that the history of societies may be explained in the following sequence: men make history by their actions, the expression of their will. The latter is determined by their ideas. We have seen that what explains men’s ideas, i.e., their ideology, is the social milieu in which we find classes, themselves determined by the economic factor, i.e., in the last analysis, by the mode of production.<br />
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We have also seen that between the ideological factor and the social factor there is the political factor, which appears in the ideological struggle as the expression of the social struggle.<br />
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If, then, we examine the structure of society in the light of historical materialism, we see that its foundation is the economic structure, then, above it, there is the social structure, which supports the political structure, and finally the ideological structure.<br />
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We see that, for materialists, the ideological structure is at the top of the social edifice, while, for idealists, the ideological structure is at its base.<blockquote>In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. <ref name=":12" group="note" /></blockquote>Consequently, we see that it is the economic structure which forms the foundation of society. We might also say that it is the infrastructure (which means inferior, or lower, structure).<br />
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Ideology, including all its forms: ethics, religion, science, poetry, art and literature, constitutes the supra—or superstructure (which means structure at the top).<br />
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Since we know, as materialist theory shows, that ideas are the reflection of things, that it is our social existence which determines our consciousness, we may say that the superstructure is the reflection of the infrastructure.<br />
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Here is an example by Engels, which clearly shows this to be so:<blockquote>Calvin's creed was one fit for the boldest of the bourgeoisie of his time. His predestination doctrine was the religious expression of the fact that in the commercial world of competition success or failure does not depend upon a man's activity or cleverness, but upon circumstances uncontrollable by him. It is not of him that willeth or of him that runneth, but of the mercy of unknown superior economic powers; and this was especially true at a period of economic revolution, when all old commercial routes and centres were replaced by new ones, when India and America were opened to the world, and when even the most sacred economic articles of faith – the value of gold and silver – began to totter and to break down. <ref group="note">Engels: ''[[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces|Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces]]: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces#History of the English middle-class|History of the English middle-class]]''</ref></blockquote>What happens in the economic life of merchants? They compete with each other. Merchants and bourgeois alike have experienced this competition, in which there are victors and vanquished. Quite often, the most resourceful and intelligent are defeated by competition, by a crisis which crops up and downs them. For them, this crisis is unpredictable, a blow of fate. It is this idea, that, for no apparent reason, the least clever sometimes survive crises, which is transposed in the Protestant religion. It is this observation, that some accidentally “make it,” which creates the idea of ''predestination'' according to which men must submit to a fate which is fixed, for all eternity, by God.<br />
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From this example of the reflection of economic conditions, we see how the superstructure is the reflection of the infrastructure.<br />
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Here is another example: let us take the mentality of two non-union, i.e., politically undeveloped, workers. One works in a big factory, where the work is rationalized; the other for a small craftsman. It is certain that both of them will have a different conception of their boss. For one, the boss will be the ferocious exploiter, characteristic of capitalism. The other will see the boss as a worker, certainly well-off, but a worker and not a tyrant.<br />
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It is surely the reflection of their conditions of work which will determine their conception of management.<br />
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This important example causes us, in order to be precise, to make certain observations.<br />
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==== True and false consciousness ====<br />
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We have just said that ideologies are the reflection of the material conditions of society, that social being determines social consciousness. One might conclude from this that the proletariat must automatically have a proletarian ideology.<br />
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But such a supposition does not correspond to reality, for there are workers who do not have a worker’s consciousness.<br />
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Hence, we must make a distinction: people may live in certain conditions, but their consciousness of it may not correspond to reality. This is what Engels terms “having a false consciousness.”<br />
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Example: some workers are influenced by the doctrine of corporatism which is a return towards the Middle Ages and handicrafts. In this case, there is a consciousness of the misery of workers, but it is not a true and correct consciousness. Ideology certainly is, in this case, a reflection of the conditions of social life, but it is not a loyal or exact reflection.<br />
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In people’s consciousness, this reflection is often “upside down.” To observe the existence of misery is a reflection of social conditions, but this reflection becomes false when one thinks that a return to handicrafts would be the solution to the problem. Hence, here we see a consciousness which is partly true and partly false.<br />
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The worker who is a royalist also has a consciousness which is both true and false. True because he wants to eliminate the misery which he observes; false because he thinks a king can do that. And, simply because he has reasoned badly, because he has poorly chosen his ideology, this worker can become a class enemy for us, even though he belongs to our class. Thus, to have a false consciousness is to be mistaken or deceived about one’s true condition.<br />
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We can say, then, that ideology is the reflection of the conditions of existence, but that it is not an ''inevitable'' reflection.<br />
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Moreover, we must point out that everything possible is done to give us a false consciousness and to develop the influence of the ideology of the ruling classes on the exploited classes. The first elements of a life conception which we receive, our education and instruction, give us a false consciousness. Our connections in life, a peasant background for some of us, propaganda, the press, the radio also falsify our consciousness at times.<br />
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Consequently, ideological work is of extreme importance for us as Marxists. False consciousness must be ''destroyed'' in order for us to attain a true consciousness. Without ideological work, this transformation cannot be realized.<br />
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Those who consider Marxism to be a fatalistic doctrine are, therefore, wrong, since, in reality, we believe that ideologies play a large role in society and that one must teach and learn the philosophy of Marxism so that it may become an efficient tool and weapon.<br />
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==== Action and reaction of ideological factors ====<br />
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From the examples of true and false consciousness above, we have seen that we mustn’t always try to explain ideas only by the economy, thereby denying that ideas exert any influence. To proceed in this way would be to interpret Marxism incorrectly.<br />
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Ideas can be explained, certainly, in the ''last analysis'', by the economy, but they also have an activity of their own.<blockquote>…According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure... also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents (that is, of things and events whose inner interconnection is so remote or so impossible of proof that we can regard it as nonexistent, as negligible), the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary. <ref group="note">Engels letter to J. Bloch In Königsberg<br />
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Available in MIA: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm</ref></blockquote>Hence, we see that we must examine ''everything'' before looking for the economic factor and that, while the latter is the cause in the last analysis, we must always remember that it is not the ''only'' cause.<br />
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Ideologies are ''reflections'' and the ''effects'' of economic conditions, but the relation between the two is not simple, for we also observe a ''reciprocal action of ideologies'' on the infrastructure.<br />
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If we want to study the mass movement which developed in France after February 6, 1934 <ref group="note">The authors are referring to the Popular Front, a coalition of left-wing parties (Socialists, Communists and Radicals) which came to power in France in 1936. <br />
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The riot of February 6, 1934, was crucial to this movement, for it led first to a spontaneous grouping of the masses with the leaders of the left-wing parties and, later in the year, to an agreement “against fascism and war,” signed between Communists and Socialists. <br />
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After the success of the Popular Front in the elections of May 1936, Leon Blum constituted a left-wing government which was to remain in power until June 1937</ref>, we shall do so from two angles, in order to demonstrate what we have just discussed.<br />
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# Some explain this movement by saying that its cause was the economic crisis. This is a materialist, but unilateral, explanation. This explanation takes only one factor into consideration: the economic one, in this case, the crisis.<br />
# This reasoning is, therefore, partly correct, but on the condition that another explanatory factor be added: what people were thinking, their ideology. Now, in this mass movement, people were “anti-Fascist.” These feelings were due to the propaganda which gave rise to the Popular Front. But, in order for this propaganda to be effective, a favorable terrain was necessary. What one was able to do in 1936 was not possible in 1932. Finally, we know how, afterwards, this mass movement and its ideology in turn influenced the economy by the social struggle which they inspired.<br />
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Hence, in this example we see that ideology, which is the reflection of social conditions, becomes in turn a cause of events.<blockquote>Political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., development is based on economic development. But all these react upon one another and also upon the economic basis. It is not that the economic situation is cause, solely active, while everything else is only passive effect. There is, rather, interaction on the basis of economic necessity, which ultimately asserts itself. <ref group="note">Engels letter to Borgius<br />
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Available on MIA: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_25.htm</ref></blockquote>Accordingly,<blockquote>The basis of the right of inheritance—assuming that the stages reached in the development of the family are the same—is an economic one. Nevertheless, it would be difficult to prove, for instance, that the absolute liberty of the testator in England and the severe restrictions in every detail imposed upon him in France are due to economic causes alone. Both react back, however, on the economic sphere to a very considerable extent, because they influence the distribution of property. <ref group="note">Engels letter to C. Schmidt<br />
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Available on MIA: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_10_27.htm</ref></blockquote>To cite a more contemporary example, we shall take that of taxes. We all have an idea about taxes. The rich want theirs reduced and so favor indirect taxes; workers and the middle classes want, on the contrary, a fiscality based on direct and progressive taxation. So then, the idea which we have about taxes, and which is an ideological factor, has its origin in our economic situation, which is created and imposed by capitalism. The rich wish to keep their privileges and fight to preserve the present mode of taxation and to reinforce the laws in this direction. Now, these laws, which derive from ideas, react on the economy, for they destroy small commerce and the handicrafts and accelerate capitalist concentration.<br />
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Consequently, we see that economic conditions give rise to modifications in economic conditions, and that is by taking into account this ''reciprocity of relations'' that we should examine ideologies, all ideologies. It is only in the last analysis that we see economic necessities always prevail.<br />
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We know that it is the mission of writers and thinkers to propagate, if not defend, ideologies. Their thoughts and writings are not always very typical or straightforward, but, in fact, even in simple tales or stories, upon analysis we can always find an ideology. To make this type of analysis is a very delicate operation, and we must be very prudent. We are going to indicate a dialectical method of analysis, which will be of great assistance, but we must be careful not to be mechanical and try to explain the unexplainable.<br />
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==== Dialectical method of analysis ====<br />
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In order to apply the dialectical method properly, one must know many things. If you do not know your subject, it must be studied carefully, otherwise, your judgment will amount to only a caricature of the truth.<br />
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# In order to make an analysis of a literary work, a book or story, we are going to indicate a method which may be applied to other subjects as well. You must first pay attention to the content of the book or story you wish to analyze. Examine it independently of any social question, for not everything is derived from class struggle or economic conditions. There are literary influences which we must take into consideration. Try to see to which “literary school” the work belongs. Take into account the internal development of ideologies. Practically speaking, it would be good to make a summary of the subject under analysis and to note down anything you found remarkable.<br />
# Next observe the social types the heroes of the intrigue belong to. Look for the class to which they belong. Examine the action of the characters and see if what takes place in the novel can be linked in some way to a social viewpoint. If this is not possible, if it cannot reasonably be done, it is better to abandon the analysis rather than invent. You must never invent an explanation.<br />
# After you have discovered what class or classes are involved, you must determine the economic foundation, i.e., the means of production and the way of producing at the moment when the action of the novel takes place. If, for example, the action is contemporary, the economic system is capitalism. At present we see numerous stories and novels which criticize and fight capitalism. But there are two ways to fight capitalism:<br />
## As a revolutionary seeking to go forward.<br />
## As a reactionary, who wants to return to the past. It is often this form which we encounter in modern novels, in which one longs for the “good old days.”<br />
# Once we have obtained all this, we can then look for the ideology, i.e., see what the ideas and feelings, the way of thinking, of the author is. While searching for the ideology, we shall keep in mind the role it plays, its influence on the minds of those who read the book.<br />
# We can then conclude our analysis, by saying why such a story or novel was written at ''such a moment''. And criticize or praise, according to the case, the author’s intentions (often unconscious).<br />
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This method of analysis can be effective only if one remembers, while applying it, everything which has been said previously. We must remember that dialectics, while it provides us with a new way of conceiving things, also demands that we know them well in order to discuss and analyze them.<br />
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Consequently, now that we have seen what our method consists of, we must try, in our studies and in our personal and militant lives, to see things in their motion, in their changes, in their contradictions and in their historical significance and not in a static, immobile state. We must try to study them as well in all their aspects and not unilaterally. In short, we must always try to apply the dialectical spirit everywhere.<br />
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==== The need for ideological struggle ====<br />
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We know better now what dialectical materialism is, the modern form of materialism founded by Marx and Engels and developed by Lenin. In the present work we have made particular use of texts by Marx and Engels, but we cannot end this course without pointing out that the philosophical work of Lenin is also considerable. That is why today we speak of Marxism-leninism.<br />
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''Marxism-leninism and dialectical materialism are inseparably united''. Only through the knowledge of dialectical materialism can one measure the entire scope and wealth of Marxism-leninism. This leads us to the conclusion that ''the militant is not truly armed ideologically unless he is familiar with the entirety of this doctrine''. Having understood this, the bourgeoisie attempts to introduce, by any means, its own ideology into the consciousness of workers. Knowing perfectly well that, of all the aspects of Marxism-leninism, it is dialectical materialism which is, at present, least known, the bourgeoisie has organized a campaign of silence against it. It is painful to note that the official instruction is oblivious to this method, and that teaching methodology in schools and universities has not changed in the last hundred years.<br />
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If, formerly, the metaphysical method dominated the dialectical method, this was due, as we have seen, to the ignorance of people. Today, science has provided us with the means to demonstrate that the dialectical method is most suitable to scientific research. It is scandalous that our children continue to be taught how to think and study with a method born of ignorance.<br />
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While in their scientific research scientists can no longer study, in their specializations, without taking into account the interpenetration of the sciences, in this way unconsciously utilizing a part of dialectics, too often they apply the intellectual training given to them and which is infused with the metaphysical spirit. How much progress would have been realized by those great scientists who have already contributed to humanity—for example, Pasteur and Branly, who were idealists and believers—if they had had a dialectical training!<br />
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But there is a form of struggle against Marxism-leninism which is even more dangerous than this campaign of silence, namely, those distortions which the bourgeoisie tries to organize even within the workers’ movement. At this moment, we witness the blossoming of numerous “theoreticians,” who claim to be “Marxists” and who pretend to be “renewing” or “rejuvenating” Marxism. ''Campaigns of this nature often choose for their foundation those aspects of Marxism which are least known, in particular, materialist philosophy''.<br />
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Thus, for example, there are people who claim to accept Marxism as a concept of revolutionary action, but not as a general conception of the world. They maintain that one can be perfectly Marxist without accepting materialist philosophy. In conformity with this general attitude, diverse attempts at adulteration occur. People who still call themselves Marxists try to introduce into Marxism concepts which are incompatible with its very foundation, namely, materialist philosophy. We have seen such attempts in the past. It was against them that Lenin wrote ''[[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]''. At the present time, in a period of large diffusion of Marxism, we are witnessing the rebirth and multiplication of these attempts. How can we expect to recognize and uncover those who attack Marxism in its philosophical aspect, if we do not know the true philosophy of Marxism?<br />
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==== Conclusion ====<br />
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Fortunately, for several years now, and in the working class in particular, we have observed a tremendous thrust towards the study of the whole of Marxism and a growing interest precisely in the study of materialist philosophy. This is clearly an indication that, in the present situation, the working class has perfectly understood the justice of the reasons which we gave in the beginning for studying materialist philosophy. Through their own experience, workers have learned the necessity of linking practice to theory and, at the same time, the necessity of extending theoretical study as far as possible. The role of every militant must be to reinforce this tendency and to give it a proper direction and content. We are happy to see that, thanks to the Workers’ University in Paris, (Today “Université Nouvelle” [New University] 8, Avenue Mathurin-Moreau, Paris, France.), several thousand have learned what dialectical materialism is. While this illustrates in a striking manner our struggle against the bourgeoisie and shows us ''which side'' science is on, it also shows us our duty. ''We must'' study. We must know and make Marxism known in all circles. Parallel with the struggle in the streets and at work, militants must lead an ''ideological'' struggle. Their duty is to defend our ideology against all forms of attack and, at the same time, to lead the ''counter-offensive'' for the destruction of bourgeois ideology in the consciousness of workers. But, in order to dominate all aspects of this struggle, we must be armed. The militant can truly be armed only through the knowledge of dialectical materialism.<br />
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Until we have constructed a classless society in which nothing will thwart the development of science, such is the essential part of our duty.<br />
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''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions#Dialectical materialism and ideologies|Control questions]]''<br />
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==Notes==<br />
<references group="note" /><br />
[[Category:Library works by Georges Politzer]]<br />
[[Category:Library works about philosophy]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Library:Elementary_principles_of_philosophy&diff=64266Library:Elementary principles of philosophy2024-03-16T18:07:15Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Library work<br />
| title = Elementary principles of philosophy<br />
| author = Georges Politzer<br />
|publisher=International Publishers|edition_date=1976| type = Book<br />
|source=[https://annas-archive.org/md5/5212d271f108a89b4dbd54b658b4fbda anna's archive]|audiobook=[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrodPcAMP2OsMmlF6pGphTSKU1z03GH5N youtube audiobook]| published = February 1946 in France<br />
}}<br />
''This book features control questions available [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions|here]].''<br />
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== Preface by Maurice Le Goas ==<br />
This elementary textbook reproduces the notes taken by one of the students of [[Georges Politzer]], during the classes taught by him at the Workers' University ''(l'Université Ouvrière)'' in the school year 1935-1936. In order to understand its character and scope, it is first necessary to specify the aim and method of our teacher. <br />
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We know that the Workers' University was founded in 1932 by a small group of professors to teach [[Marxism|Marxist]] science to manual [[Proletariat|workers]] and to give them a method of reasoning that would allow them to understand our times and to guide their actions, as much in their technique as in the political and social fields.<br />
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From the very beginning, Georges Politzer took on the task of teaching Marxist philosophy, [[dialectical materialism]], at the Workers' University: a task all the more necessary as official teaching continued to ignore or distort this philosophy.<br />
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None of those who had the privilege of attending these courses – he spoke each year before a large audience of people of all ages and professions, but dominated by young workers – will forget the deep impression that everyone felt before this big redheaded young man, so enthusiastic and learned, so conscientious and fraternal, so attentive to bringing an arid and ungrateful subject to an inexperienced audience.<br />
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His authority imposed on his class a pleasant discipline, which knew how to be severe, but always remained just, and there was emanating from his person such a power of life, such a radiance that he was admired and loved by all his pupils.<br />
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In order to make himself understood, Politzer first removed from his vocabulary all philosophical slang, all the technical terms that only the initiated could hear. He wanted to use only simple words known to all. When he was forced to use a particular term, he did not fail to explain it at length using familiar examples. If, in discussions, one of his students used learned words, he would take it back and mock it with the biting irony that was familiar to all who approached him.<br />
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He wanted to be simple and clear and always appealed to common sense, without ever sacrificing the accuracy and truthfulness of the ideas and theories he put forward. He knew how to make his lessons extremely lively by involving the audience in discussions before and after the lesson. At the end of each lesson, he would give what he called one or two control questions, which were designed to summarize the lesson or apply the content to a particular topic. Students were not required to cover the topic, but many did and brought a written assignment with them at the beginning of the next lesson. He would then ask who had completed the assignment, raise his hand, and select a few of us to read our text and complete it with oral explanations if necessary. Politzer would criticize or praise and provoke a brief discussion among the students, and then he would conclude by learning from the discussion. This lasted about half an hour and allowed those who had missed the previous class to fill in the gap and relate it to what they had learned before; it also allowed the teacher to see how well it had been understood; he insisted on delicate or obscure points if necessary. <br />
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He would then begin the day's lesson, which lasted about an hour; then the students would ask questions about what had just been said. These questions were generally interesting and insightful, and Politzer would take the opportunity to clarify and rephrase the essence of the lesson from a different perspective.<br />
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Georges Politzer, who had a thorough knowledge of his subject and an intelligence of admirable flexibility, was concerned above all with the reactions of his audience: he took the general "temperature" each time and constantly checked the degree of assimilation of his students. He was also followed by them with passionate interest. He helped to train thousands of activists, many of whom are now in "responsible" positions.<br />
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We, who understood the value of this teaching and who thought of all those who could not hear it, and especially our provincial comrades, wanted the publication of his lectures. He promised to think about it, but, in the midst of his immense work, he never found the time to carry out this project.<br />
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Then, during my second year of philosophy at the Workers' University, where they had created a higher course, I had the opportunity to ask Politzer to correct some homework for me, and I gave him, at his request, my course notebooks. He found them well done, and I suggested that he write the lessons of the elementary course according to my notes. He encouraged me to do so, promising to review and correct them. Unfortunately, he could not find the time. His occupations being more and more heavy, he left the upper course of philosophy to our friend René Maublanc. I informed him of our plans and asked him to review the first lessons I had written. He eagerly accepted and encouraged me to finish this work which we were then to present to Georges Politzer. But the war came: Politzer was to die a heroic death in the struggle against the [[German Reich (1933–1945)|Hitlerian occupier]].<br />
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Although our professor was no longer there to finalize a work he had approved and encouraged, we thought it would be useful to publish it according to my lecture notes.<br />
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Georges Politzer, who began his philosophy course at the Workers' University each year by establishing the true meaning of the word [[materialism]] and protesting against the slanderous deformations that some people subjected him to, energetically recalled that the materialist philosopher is not lacking in ideals and that he is ready to fight to make this ideal triumph. Since then he has been able to prove it by his sacrifice, and his heroic death illustrates this initial course, in which he affirmed the union, in Marxism, of theory and practice. It is not useless to insist on this devotion to an ideal, this abnegation and this high moral value at a time when, once again, one dares to present Marxism as "a doctrine which transforms man into a machine or an animal barely superior to the gorilla or the chimpanzee" (Lenten Sermon at Notre-Dame de Paris, pronounced, on February 18, 1945, by the R. P. Panici.).<br />
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We can never protest enough against such outrages to the memory of our comrades. Let us only remind those who have the audacity to pronounce them the example of Georges Politzer, Gabriel Péri, Jacques Solomon, Jacques Decour, who were Marxists and who professed at the Université Ouvrière de Paris: all good comrades, simple, generous; fraternal, who did not hesitate to devote a good part of their time to come to a lost neighborhood to teach the workers philosophy, political economy, history or science. <br />
<br />
The Workers' University was dissolved in 1939. It reappeared, after the Liberation, under the name ''New University''. A new team of dedicated professors, taking over from those who had been shot, came to resume the interrupted work.<br />
<br />
Nothing can encourage us more in this essential task than to pay tribute to one of the founders and animators of the Workers' University, and no tribute seems to us more just and useful than to publish Georges Politzer's ''Elementary principles of philosophy''.<br />
<div style='text-align:right;width:90%;'>''Maurice Le Goas.''</div><br />
<br />
== The philosophical problems ==<br />
=== Introduction ===<br />
==== Why should we study philosophy? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
In the course of this work, we propose to present and explain the elementary principles of materialist philosophy.<br />
<br />
Why is this? Because Marxism is intimately linked to a philosophy and a method: those of dialectical materialism. It is therefore indispensable to study this philosophy and this method in order to understand Marxism and to refute the arguments of bourgeois theories as much as to undertake an effective political struggle.<br />
<br />
Indeed, Lenin said: "Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. "(Lenin: [[Library:What is to be done?|What is to be done?]]) This means, first of all: it is necessary to link theory with [[Praxis|practice]].<br />
<br />
''What is practice?'' It is the act of realizing. For example, industry, agriculture realize (i.e., put into reality) certain theories (chemical, physical or biological theories).<br />
<br />
''What is theory?'' It is the knowledge of the things we want to achieve.<br />
<br />
We can be practical only — but then we realize by routine. We can be theoretical only — but then what we conceive is often impossible to achieve. So there has to be a connection between theory and practice. The whole question is to know what this theory should be and how it should relate to practice.<br />
<br />
We think that the worker activist needs a method of analysis and reasoning that is just in order to be able to carry out a just revolutionary action. That he needs a method that is not a dogma giving him ready-made solutions, but a method that takes into account facts and circumstances that are never the same, a method that never separates theory from practice, reasoning from life. Now this method is contained in the philosophy of dialectical materialism, the basis of Marxism, which we propose to explain.<br />
<br />
==== Is the study of philosophy a difficult thing? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
It is generally thought that the study of philosophy is for workers a difficult thing, requiring special knowledge. It must be admitted that the way in which bourgeois textbooks are written is well done to confirm these ideas and can only repel them. <br />
<br />
We do not intend to deny the difficulties involved in the study in general, and in the study of philosophy in particular; but these difficulties are perfectly surmountable, and they come above all from the fact that they are new things for many of our readers. <br />
<br />
From the outset, we will, moreover, by making things clearer, call upon them to review certain definitions of words that are distorted in everyday language.<br />
<br />
==== What is philosophy? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Vulgarly, we understand by, philosopher: either the one who lives in the clouds, or the one who takes things in their good side, the one who does not "worry". But, on the contrary, the philosopher is the one who wants to give precise answers to certain questions, and, if we consider that philosophy wants to give an explanation to the problems of the universe (where does the world come from? where are we going? etc.), we see, therefore, that the philosopher is concerned with many things, and, contrary to what is said, "cares a lot". <br />
<br />
We will therefore say, in order to define philosophy, that it wants to explain the universe, nature, that it is ''the study of the most general problems''. Less general problems are studied by the sciences. Philosophy is therefore an extension of the sciences in the sense that it is based on the sciences and ''depends on them''. <br />
<br />
We immediately add that Marxist philosophy provides a method for solving all problems and that this method comes under what is called: materialism.<br />
<br />
==== What is the materialist philosophy? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Here again, there is a confusion that we must immediately denounce; vulgarly speaking, the materialist is the one who only thinks of enjoying material pleasures. By playing on the word materialism — which contains the word ''matter'' — we have thus come to give it a completely false meaning. <br />
<br />
By studying materialism - in the scientific sense of the word - we are going to give it back its true meaning; being materialist does not prevent us, as we shall see, from having an ideal and from fighting to make it triumph. <br />
<br />
We have said that philosophy wants to give an explanation to the most general problems of the world. But, in the history of humanity, this explanation has not always been the same. <br />
<br />
The first men did try to explain nature, the world, but they did not succeed. What makes it possible to explain the world and the phenomena that surround us are the sciences, and the discoveries that have allowed the sciences to progress are very recent. <br />
<br />
The ignorance of the first men was therefore an obstacle to their research. This is why, in the course of history, because of this ignorance, we see ''religions'' arise, which also want to explain the world, but by supernatural forces. This is an anti-scientific explanation. But as, little by little, over the centuries, science will develop, men will try to explain the world by material facts based on scientific experiments, and it is from there, from this desire to explain things by science, that materialist philosophy is born. <br />
<br />
In the following pages, we are going to study what materialism is, but, from now on, we must remember that ''materialism is nothing other than the scientific explanation of the universe''. <br />
<br />
By studying the history of materialist philosophy, we will see how bitter and difficult the struggle against ignorance has been. It must be noted that this struggle is not yet over, since materialism and ignorance continue to exist side by side, side by side. <br />
<br />
It is at the heart of this struggle that Marx and Engels intervened. Understanding the importance of the great discoveries of the nineteenth century, they enabled materialist philosophy to make enormous progress in the scientific explanation of the universe. This is how dialectical materialism was born. They were the first to understand that the laws that govern the world can also explain the workings of societies; they formulated the famous theory of historical materialism. <br />
<br />
In this book, we propose to study first materialism, then dialectical materialism and finally historical materialism. But, above all, we want to establish the relations between materialism and Marxism.<br />
<br />
==== What is the relationship between materialism and Marxism? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We can summarize them as follows: <br />
<br />
# The philosophy of materialism constitutes the basis of Marxism.<br />
# This materialist philosophy which wants to bring a scientific explanation to the problems of the world progresses, in the course of history, at the same time as the sciences. Consequently, Marxism stems from the sciences, rests on them and evolves with them.<br />
# Before Marx and Engels, there were, on several occasions and in different forms, materialistic philosophies. But in the nineteenth century, with the sciences taking a great step forward, Marx and Engels renewed this ancient materialism from the modern sciences and gave us the ''modern'' materialism, which is called ''dialectical materialism'', and which forms the basis of Marxism.<br />
<br />
We see from these few explanations that the philosophy of materialism, contrary to what is said, has a history. This history is intimately linked to the history of science. Marxism, based on materialism, did not come out of one man's brain. It is the culmination, the continuation of ancient materialism, which was already very advanced in Diderot. Marxism is the flowering of materialism developed by the Encyclopedists of the 18th century, enriched by the great discoveries of the 19th century. Marxism is a living theory, and to show right away how it sees problems, we will take an example that everyone knows: the problem of class struggle. <br />
<br />
What do people think about this issue? Some think that the defense of bread dispenses with political struggle. Others think that it is enough to punch in the street, denying the need for organization. Still others claim that only political struggle will bring a solution to this issue. <br />
<br />
For the Marxist, class struggle includes: <br />
<br />
# An economic struggle. <br />
# A political struggle.<br />
# An ideological struggle. <br />
<br />
The problem must therefore be posed simultaneously on these three terrains: <br />
<br />
# One cannot fight for bread without fighting for peace, without defending freedom and without defending all the ideas that serve the struggle for these objectives.<br />
# The same is true in the political struggle, which since Marx has become a true science: one is obliged to take into account both the economic situation and ideological currents in order to wage such a struggle.<br />
# As for the ideological struggle, which manifests itself through propaganda, in order for it to be effective, one must take into account the economic and political situation. <br />
<br />
We see, therefore, that all these problems are intimately linked and, therefore, that no decision can be taken in front of any aspect of this great problem of class struggle - in a strike, for example. - without taking into consideration every aspect of the problem and the whole problem itself. <br />
<br />
It is therefore the one who is capable of fighting on all terrains that will give the movement the best direction. <br />
<br />
This is how a Marxist understands this problem of class struggle. Now, in the ''ideological'' struggle that we have to wage every day, we are faced with problems that are difficult to solve: immortality of the soul, existence of God, origins of the world, etc. It is the dialectical materialism that will give us a method of reasoning, that will allow us to solve all these problems and, as well, to unveil all the campaigns of falsification of Marxism, which pretend to complete and renew it.<br />
<br />
==== Bourgeois campaigns against Marxism ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
These attempts at falsification are based on a wide variety of bases. One seeks to set against Marxism the socialist authors of the pre-Marxist period (before Marx). This is how we very often see the "utopians" used against Marx. Others use Proudhon; others draw on the revisionists of before 1914 (though masterfully refuted by Lenin). But what must be emphasized above all is the campaign of silence that the bourgeoisie is waging against Marxism. It has done everything in particular to prevent materialist philosophy from being known in its Marxist form. Particularly striking in this respect is the whole of philosophical teaching as it is given in France. <br />
<br />
Philosophy is taught in secondary schools. But one can follow all this teaching without ever learning that there is a materialist philosophy elaborated by Marx and Engels. When, in philosophy textbooks, we talk about materialism (because we have to talk about it), we always talk about Marxism and materialism ''separately''. Marxism, in general, is presented only as a political doctrine, and when historical materialism is spoken of, the philosophy of materialism is not mentioned; in short, all of dialectical materialism is ignored. <br />
<br />
This situation does not only exist in schools and high schools: it is exactly the same in Universities. The most characteristic fact is that one can be a "specialist" in philosophy in France, with the highest diplomas awarded by French universities, without knowing that Marxism has a philosophy, which is materialism, and without knowing that traditional materialism has a modern form, which is Marxism, or dialectical materialism. <br />
<br />
We want to demonstrate that Marxism has a general conception not only of society, but also of the universe itself. It is therefore useless, contrary to what some people claim, to regret that the great defect of Marxism is its lack of philosophy, and to want, like some theorists of the workers' movement, to go in search of this philosophy that Marxism lacks. For Marxism has a philosophy, which is dialectical materialism. <br />
<br />
The fact remains, moreover, that despite this campaign of silence, despite all the falsifications and precautions taken by the ruling classes, Marxism and its philosophy are beginning to become more and more known.<br />
<br />
=== The fundamental problem of philosophy ===<br />
==== How should we begin the study of philosophy? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
In our introduction, we said several times that the philosophy of dialectical materialism was the basis of Marxism. <br />
<br />
Our goal is the study of this philosophy; but to reach this goal we must advance in stages. <br />
<br />
When we speak of dialectical materialism, we have before us two words: ''materialism'' and ''dialectical'', which means that materialism is dialectical. We know that before Marx and Engels materialism already existed, but that it was they, with the help of the discoveries of the nineteenth century, who transformed this materialism and created "dialectical" materialism. <br />
<br />
Later we will examine the meaning of the word "dialectical," which refers to the modern form of materialism. <br />
<br />
But since, before Marx and Engels, there were materialist philosophers (for example, Diderot in the 18th century), and since there are points in common to all materialists, we need to study the ''history'' of materialism before discussing dialectical materialism. We also need to know the conceptions that are opposed to materialism.<br />
<br />
==== Two ways of explaining the world ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen that philosophy is the "study of the most general problems" and that it has to to explain the world, nature, man. <br />
<br />
If we open a textbook of bourgeois philosophy, we are astonished by the multitude of different philosophies that can be found in it. They are designated by multiple more or less complicated words ending in "ism": criticalism, evolutionism, intellectualism, etc., and this multitude creates confusion. The bourgeoisie, moreover, has done nothing to clarify the situation, quite the contrary. But we can already sort out all these systems and distinguish two great currents, two clearly opposed conceptions: <br />
<br />
# The scientific conception.<br />
# The non-scientific conception of the world.<br />
<br />
==== Matter and spirit ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
When philosophers set out to explain the world, nature, mankind, everything that we Finally, they were called upon to make distinctions. We see for ourselves that there are things, objects that are material, that we see and touch. Then, other realities that we do not see and that we cannot touch or measure, like our ideas. <br />
<br />
So we classify things in this way: on the one hand, those that are material; on the other hand, those that are not material. are not material and are in the realm of mind, thought, ideas. <br />
<br />
This is how philosophers found themselves in the presence of ''matter'' and ''spirit''.<br />
<br />
==== What is matter? What is the spirit? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have just seen in a general way how we have been led to classify things according to whether they are matter or spirit. <br />
<br />
But we must specify that this distinction is made in different forms and with different words. <br />
<br />
Thus, instead of talking about spirit we talk about thought, our ideas, our consciousness, the soul, just as when we talk about nature, the world, the earth, being, it is matter that we are talking about.<br />
<br />
So again, when Engels, in his book ''[[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy]]'', talks about being and thinking, being is matter; thinking is spirit. <br />
<br />
To define what is thought or spirit, and what is being or matter, we will say: <br />
<br />
''Thought'' is the idea that we have of things; some of these ideas usually come to us from our sensations and correspond to material objects; other ideas, such as those of God, philosophy, infinity, thought itself, do not correspond to material objects. The essential thing we must remember here is that we have ideas, thoughts, feelings, because we see and feel. <br />
<br />
''Matter'' or being is what our sensations and perceptions show and present to us, it is, in a general way, everything that surrounds us, what we call the "external world". Example: My sheet of paper is white. Knowing that it is white is an idea, and it is my senses that give me this idea. But the matter is the sheet itself. <br />
<br />
That is why, when philosophers talk about the relationship between being and thinking, or between mind and matter, or between consciousness and the brain, etc., it all concerns the same question and means: what is, of matter or mind, of being or thinking, the most important term? Which is the one that precedes the other? This is the fundamental question of philosophy.<br />
<br />
==== The fundamental question or problem of philosophy ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Each of us has asked ourselves what we become after death, where the world came from, how the earth was formed. And it is difficult for us to admit that there has ''always'' been something. We tend to think that at some point there was nothing. That's why it's easier to believe what religion teaches: “The spirit hovered above the darkness... then came the matter.” In the same way, we wonder where our thoughts are, and so the problem arises for us of the relationship between mind and matter, between brain and thought. There are many other ways of asking the question. For example, what is the relationship between will and power? Will is, here, mind, thought; and power is what is possible, it is being, matter. We also often encounter the question of the relationship between "social consciousness" and "social existence". <br />
<br />
The fundamental question of philosophy thus presents itself under different aspects and we can see how important it is to always recognize the way in which this problem of the relationship between matter and spirit arises, because we know that there can only be two answers to this question: <br />
<br />
# a scientific answer.<br />
# a non-scientific answer.<br />
<br />
==== Idealism and materialism ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
This is how philosophers have been led to take a stand on this important issue. The first men, completely ignorant, having no knowledge of the world and of themselves, and having only weak technical means to act on the world, attributed to supernatural beings the responsibility for everything that astonished them. In their imaginations, excited by the dreams in which they saw themselves and their fellow creatures living, they came to this conception that each of us had a double existence. Troubled by the idea of this “double”, they came to believe that their thoughts and feelings were produced not by their <blockquote><br />
their bodies, but of a distinct soul which inhabits the body and leaves it at death. <ref name=":0" group="note">Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach]]: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy#Materialism|Materialism]]</ref> <br />
</blockquote>This idea of the immortality of the soul and of a possible life of the spirit outside of matter was born later on. <br />
<br />
Likewise their weakness, their anxiety before the forces of nature, before all those phenomena which they did not understand and which the state of the art did not allow them to control (germination, storms, floods, etc.) led them to suppose that, behind these forces, there were all-powerful beings, "spirits" or "gods", beneficent or evil, but, in any case, capricious. <br />
<br />
In the same way, they believed in gods, in beings more powerful than men, but they imagined them in the form of men or animals, as material bodies. It was only later that souls and gods (and then the One God who replaced the gods) were conceived as pure spirits.<br />
<br />
This led to the idea that in reality there are spirits that have a very specific life, completely independent of that of bodies, and that do not need bodies to exist.<br />
<br />
Subsequently, this question was posed in a more precise way according to religion, in this form: <blockquote><br />
Did God create the world or has the world been in existence eternally?<br />
<br />
The answers which the philosophers gave to this question split them into two great camps. <ref name=":0" group="note" /><br />
</blockquote>Those who, adopting the non-scientific explanation, admitted the creation of the world by God, i.e. affirmed that spirit had created matter, these were the camp of idealism. <br />
<br />
The others, those who tried to give a scientific explanation of the world and thought that nature, matter was the main element, belonged to the different schools of materialism. <br />
<br />
Originally, these two expressions, idealism and materialism, did not mean anything other than that. <br />
<br />
Idealism and materialism are therefore two opposite and contradictory answers to the fundamental problem of philosophy. <br />
<br />
Idealism is the non-scientific conception. Materialism is the scientific conception of the world. <br />
<br />
We will see later the proof of this affirmation, but we can say, from now on, that if we observe well in experience that there are bodies without thought, like stones, metals, earth, we never observe, on the other hand, the existence of mind without body. <br />
<br />
To end this chapter with an unequivocal conclusion, we see that to answer this question: how is it that man thinks? There can only be two completely different and totally opposite answers: <br />
<br />
#Man thinks because he has a soul.<br />
# Man thinks because he has a brain.<br />
<br />
Depending on which answer we give, we will be trained to give different solutions to the problems that arise from this question. <br />
<br />
Depending on our answer, we will be either idealistic or materialistic.<br />
=== Idealism ===<br />
==== Moral idealism and philosophical idealism ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We denounced the confusion created by everyday language with regard to materialism. The same confusion is found with regard to idealism.<br />
<br />
We must not in fact confuse moral idealism with ''philosophical'' idealism.<br />
<br />
Moral idealism consists in devoting oneself to a cause, to an ideal. The history of the international labor movement teaches us that an incalculable number of revolutionaries, of Marxists, devoted themselves even to the sacrifice of their lives for a moral ideal, and yet they were the adversaries of this other idealism which one calls philosophical idealism.<br />
<br />
Philosophical idealism is a doctrine based on the explanation of the world by the mind.<br />
<br />
It is the doctrine which answers the fundamental question of philosophy by saying: “it is the thought which is the principal element, the most important, the first”. And idealism, by affirming the primary importance of thought, affirms that it is this which produces being or, in other words, that “it is the spirit which produces matter”.<br />
<br />
This is the first form of idealism; it found its full development in religions by affirming that God, “pure spirit”, was the creator of matter.<br />
<br />
The religion which has claimed and still claims to be outside philosophical discussions is, in reality, on the contrary, the direct and logical representation of idealistic philosophy.<br />
<br />
However, science intervening over the centuries, it soon became necessary to explain matter, the world, things other than by God alone. For, from the 16th century, science began to explain the phenomena of nature without taking God into account and by dispensing with the creation hypothesis.<br />
<br />
To better combat these scientific, materialist and atheistic explanations, it was therefore necessary to push idealism further and ''deny the very existence of matter''.<br />
<br />
This is what an English bishop, Berkeley, who has been called the father of idealism at the beginning of the 18th century.<br />
<br />
==== Why should we study Berkeley's idealism? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The goal of his philosophical system will therefore be to destroy materialism, to try to show us that material substance does not exist. He writes in the preface of his book Three dialogues of Hylas and Philonoüs:<blockquote>If these principles are accepted and regarded as true, it follows that atheism and skepticism are, by the same token, completely shot down, obscure questions cleared up, almost insoluble difficulties solved, and men who enjoyed paradoxes brought back to common sense. </blockquote>Thus, for Berkeley, what is true is that matter does not exist and that it is paradoxical to claim the contrary.<br />
<br />
We will see how he goes about demonstrating this to us. But I think it's not useless to insist that those who want to study philosophy should take Berkeley's theory very seriously.<br />
<br />
I know that Berkeley's theses will make some people smile, but we must not forget that we live in the 20th century and that we benefit from all the studies of the past. And we will see, moreover, when we study materialism and its history, that the materialist philosophers of the past also sometimes make people smile.<br />
<br />
It should be known, however, that Diderot, who was, before Marx and Engels, the greatest of materialist thinkers, attached some importance to the Berkeley system, since he described it as an <blockquote>extravagant system which, to the shame of the human mind and philosophy, is the most difficult to refute, despite being the most absurd of all <ref group="note">Diderot, “Letter on the blind”.</ref></blockquote>Lenin himself devoted many pages to the philosophy of Berkeley and wrote: <blockquote>For the present we shall confine ourselves to one conclusion: the “recent Machians” have not adduced a single argument against the materialists that had not been adduced by Bishop Berkeley. <ref group="note">Lenin: ''[[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces|Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces]]: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces#In lieu of an introduction|In lieu of an introduction]]''</ref></blockquote>Finally, here is the assessment of Berkeley's immaterialism given in a textbook on the history of philosophy, used in high schools:<blockquote>A theory which is still imperfect, no doubt, but admirable, and which must destroy forever, in philosophical minds, the belief in the existence of a material substance.</blockquote>That is to say the importance for everyone - although for different reasons, as these quotations have shown you - of this philosophical reasoning.<br />
<br />
==== Berkeley's idealism ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The purpose of this system is therefore to demonstrate that matter does not exist.<br />
<br />
Berkeley said:<blockquote>Matter is not what we think it is by thinking that it exists outside our mind. We think that things exist because we see them, because we touch them; it is because they give us these sensations that we believe they exist.<br />
<br />
But our sensations are only ideas that we have in our mind. So the objects that we perceive through our senses are nothing but ideas, and ideas cannot exist outside our mind.</blockquote>For Berkeley, things exist; he does not deny their nature and existence, but he asserts that they exist only in the form of the sensations that make them known to us, and concludes that our sensations and objects are one and the same thing.<br />
<br />
Things exist, that's for sure, but in us, he says, in our mind, and they have no reality outside the mind.<br />
<br />
We conceive things with the help of sight; we perceive them with the help of touch; smell tells us about smell; taste tells us about taste; hearing tells us about sound. These different sensations give us ideas, which, combined with each other, make us give them a common name and consider them as objects.<blockquote>“Thus, for example, a certain color, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple; other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things.”<ref group="note">Berkeley, as cited by Lenin in [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces|Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces]], [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces|''In lieu of an introduction'']]</ref></blockquote>So we are victims of illusions when we think, when we know the world and things as external, since all that exists only in our mind.<br />
<br />
In his book ''Three dialogues between Hylas and Philonous'', Berkeley demonstrates this thesis in the following way:<blockquote>Isn't it absurd to believe that the same thing at the same time can be different? For example, hot and cold at the same moment? So imagine that one of your hands is hot and the other is cold, and that both of them are immersed at the same time in a vase full of water at an intermediate temperature: won't the water appear hot to one hand and cold to the other?</blockquote>Since it is absurd to believe that a thing at the same time can be, in itself, different, we must conclude that this thing exists only in our mind.<br />
<br />
So what does Berkeley do in its method of reasoning and discussion? He strips objects, things, of all their properties.<br />
<br />
“You say that objects exist because they have a color, a smell, a flavor, because they are big or small, light or heavy? I will show you that this does not exist in objects, but in our spirits.<br />
<br />
“Here's a coupon of cloth: you tell me it's red. Is that right? You think the red is in the fabric itself. Is that certain? You know that there are animals with eyes different from ours that will not see this red cloth; likewise a man with jaundice will see it yellow! Then what color is it? It depends, you say? So the red is not in the cloth, but in the eye, in us.<br />
<br />
“You say that this cloth is light? If you drop it on an ant, she will certainly find it heavy. Who is right? Do you think it's warm? If you had a fever, you'd think it was cold! So is it hot or cold?<br />
<br />
“In a word, if the same things can be red, heavy, hot at the same time for some, and for others exactly the opposite, it is because we are victims of illusions and things only exist in our minds”<br />
<br />
By removing all their properties from objects, we come to say that they only exist in our thinking, that is to say that ''matter is an idea''.<br />
<br />
Already, before Berkeley, the Greek philosophers said, and this was right, that certain qualities such as flavor, sound were not in the things themselves, but in us.<br />
<br />
But what is new in Berkeley's theory is precisely that he extends this remark to ''all'' the qualities of objects.<br />
<br />
The Greek philosophers had, in fact, established the following distinction between the qualities of things: <br />
<br />
On the one hand, the ''primary qualities'', i.e., those that are in objects, such as weight, size, resistance, etc., are the qualities that are in objects.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, the ''secondary qualities'', that is, those that are in us, such as smell, taste, warmth, etc., and that are in objects, such as weight, size, resistance, etc.<br />
<br />
Berkeley applies to first qualities the same thesis as to second qualities, namely that all qualities, ''all properties are not in objects, but in us''.<br />
<br />
If we look at the sun, we see it round, flat, red. Science teaches us that we are wrong, that the sun is not flat, is not red. We will therefore abstract, with the help of science, certain false properties that we give to the sun, but without concluding that it does not exist! It is however to such a conclusion that Berkeley reaches.<br />
<br />
Berkeley was certainly not wrong in showing that the distinction of the ancients did not stand up to scientific analysis, but he commits a fault of reasoning, a sophism, in drawing from these remarks consequences that they do not entail. He shows, in fact, that the qualities of things are not such as our senses show us, that is to say that our senses deceive us and distort material reality, and he concludes immediately that material reality does not exist.<br />
<br />
==== Consequences of idealist reasoning ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The thesis being: "Everything exists only in our mind", we must conclude that the outside world does not exist.<br />
<br />
Pushing this reasoning to its logical conclusion, we would come to say: "I am the only one who exists, since I only know other men through my ideas, that other men are for me, like material objects, only collections of ideas". This is what in philosophy is called ''solipsism'' (which means ''me only'').<br />
<br />
Berkeley, Lenin tells us in his already quoted book, instinctively defends himself against the accusation of supporting such a theory. We even note that solipsism, an extreme form of idealism, has not been supported by any philosopher.<br />
<br />
This is why we must try, when discussing with idealists, to emphasize that the reasonings that effectively deny the matter, in order to be logical and consequent, must come to this absurd extremity that is solipsism.<br />
<br />
==== The idealist arguments ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have endeavored to summarize Berkeley's theory as simply as possible, because it was he who, most frankly, set out what philosophical idealism is.<br />
<br />
But it is certain that, in order to fully understand this reasoning, which is new to us, it is now indispensable to take it very seriously and to make an intellectual effort. Why? Because we will see later on that, if idealism presents itself in a more hidden way and under the cover of new words and expressions, all idealistic philosophies only take up the arguments of "old Berkeley". (Lenin).<br />
<br />
Because we will also see how much, the idealistic philosophy that has dominated and still dominates the ''official'' history of philosophy, bringing with it a method of thought that we are impregnated with, has been able to penetrate in us despite an entirely secular education.<br />
<br />
The basis of the arguments of all idealistic philosophies being found in the reasoning of Bishop Berkeley, we will therefore, to summarize this chapter, try to identify what are these main arguments and what they try to demonstrate to us.<br />
<br />
===== The spirit creates matter =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
This, as we know, is the idealistic answer to the fundamental question of philosophy; it is the first form of idealism that is reflected in the different religions, where it is asserted that the spirit created the world.<br />
<br />
This assertion can have two meanings:<br />
<br />
Either God created the world, and the world really exists outside of us. This is the ordinary idealism of theologies.<ref group="note">Theology is the ''“science” (!)'' that deals with God and divine things.</ref> <br />
<br />
Or God created the ''illusion'' of the world by giving us ideas that do not correspond to any material reality. This is Berkeley's "immaterialist idealism" which wants to prove to us that spirit is the only reality, matter being a product made by our spirit.<br />
<br />
This is why the idealists assert that:<br />
<br />
===== The world does not exist outside of our thinking =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
This is what Berkeley wants to demonstrate to us by saying that we are making a mistake by attributing to things properties and qualities that would be their own, whereas these only exist in our mind.<br />
<br />
For the idealists, benches and tables do exist, but only in our thinking, and not outside of us, because<br />
<br />
===== It's our ideas that create things =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
In other words, things are a reflection of our thinking. Indeed, since it is the mind that creates the illusion of matter, since it is the mind that gives our thought the idea of matter, since the sensations we feel in front of things do not come from things themselves, but only from our thought, the source of the reality of the world and of things is our thought and, therefore, everything that surrounds us does not exist outside our mind and can only be the reflection of our thought.<br />
<br />
But since, in the case of Berkeley, ''our'' mind would be incapable of creating these ideas ''by itself'', and since, moreover, it does not do what it wants with them (as would happen if it created them on its own), we must admit that it is another, more powerful mind that is the creator. It is therefore God who creates our spirit and imposes on us all the ideas of the world we encounter in it.<br />
<br />
These are the main theses on which the idealistic doctrines rest and the answers they bring to the fundamental question of philosophy. It is now time to see what is the response of materialist philosophy to this question and to the problems raised by these theses.<br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<br />
<blockquote><br />
''Berkeley: Three dialogues between Hylas and Philonous'' </br>''Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
=== Materialism ===<br />
==== Why should we study materialism? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen that, for the question “What are the relations between being and thought?” there can only be two opposed and contradictory answers. In the preceding chapter we have studied the idealist answer and the arguments presented to defend idealist philosophy.<br />
<br />
We now have to examine the second answer to this fundamental problem (a problem, let us repeat, which is at the basis of all philosophy) and see what arguments materialism brings to the defense. All the more so because materialism is for us a very important philosophy, since it is that of Marxism.<br />
<br />
It is, therefore, indispensable to know materialism well. Indispensable especially because the conceptions of this philosophy are very badly known and have been falsified. Indispensable also because, by our education, by the instruction we have received — whether primary or more developed —, by our habits of living and reasoning, we are all, more or less, without realizing it, impregnated with idealistic conceptions. (We will see, moreover, in other chapters, several examples of this affirmation and why it is so).<br />
<br />
It is therefore an absolute necessity for those who want to study Marxism to know its basis: materialism.<br />
<br />
==== Where does materialism come from? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have broadly defined philosophy as an effort to explain the world, the universe. But we know that, according to the state of human knowledge, its explanations have changed and that two attitudes have been adopted throughout the history of humanity to explain the world: one, anti-scientific, calling upon one or more superior minds, upon supernatural forces; the other, scientific, based on facts and experiences.<br />
<br />
One of these conceptions is defended by idealistic philosophers; the other by materialists.<br />
<br />
This is why, from the very beginning of this book, we have said that the first idea we should have of materialism is that this philosophy represents the "scientific explanation of the universe".<br />
<br />
If idealism was born out of human ignorance — and we will see how ignorance was maintained, nurtured in the history of societies by cultural and political forces that shared idealistic conceptions — materialism was born out of the struggle of science against ignorance or obscurantism.<br />
<br />
This is why this philosophy was so much fought against and why, in its modern form (dialectical materialism), it is little known, if not ignored or misunderstood by the official academic world.<br />
<br />
==== How and why materialism has evolved ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Contrary to the claims of those who fight this philosophy and who say that this doctrine has not evolved for twenty centuries, the history of materialism shows us in this philosophy something alive and always in motion.<br />
<br />
Over the centuries, man's scientific knowledge has progressed. At the beginning of the history of thought, in Greek antiquity, scientific knowledge was almost nil, and the first scholars were, at the same time, philosophers, because, at that time, philosophy and the nascent sciences formed a whole, one being the extension of the others.<br />
<br />
Later on, as the sciences brought precisions in the explanation of the phenomena of the world, precisions that hindered and even contradicted the dogmas of idealistic philosophies, a conflict was born between philosophy and the sciences.<br />
<br />
The sciences being in contradiction with the official philosophy of that time, it had become necessary for them to separate from it. Also,<blockquote>they were in no more hurry than to free themselves from the philosophical hodgepodge and leave the philosophers the vast hypotheses to make contact with restricted problems, those which are ripe for a solution in the near future. So this distinction is made between science... and philosophy. <ref group="note">René Maublanc: La vie ouvrière, November 25, 1935</ref></blockquote>But materialism, born with the sciences, linked to them and dependent on them, has progressed, evolved with them, to arrive, with modern materialism, that of Marx and Engels, at reuniting, once again, science and philosophy in dialectical materialism.<br />
<br />
We will study this history and this evolution, which are linked to the progress of civilization, but we already see, and this is what is very important to remember, that materialism and science are linked to each other and that materialism is absolutely dependent on science.<br />
<br />
It remains for us to establish and define the bases of materialism, bases that are common to all philosophies which, under different aspects, claim to be materialistic.<br />
<br />
==== What are the arguments and principles of materialism? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
To answer, we must return to the fundamental question of philosophy, that of the relationship between being and thinking: which of one or the other is the main one?<br />
<br />
The materialists affirm first of all that there is a determined relationship between being and thinking, between matter and spirit. For them, it is the being, the matter, which is the first reality, the first thing, and the spirit which is the second, posterior reality, dependent on the matter.<br />
<br />
Therefore, for materialists, it is not spirit or God who created the world and matter, but it is the world, matter, nature that created spirit: <blockquote>mind itself is merely the highest product of matter <ref name=":0" group="note" /></blockquote><br />
<br />
This is why, if we take up the question we asked in the second chapter: "From whence does man think?" the materialists answer that man thinks because he has a brain and that thought is the product of the brain. For them, there can be no thought without matter, without a body.<blockquote>our consciousness and thinking, however supra-sensuous they may seem, are the product of a material, bodily organ, the brain. <ref name=":0" group="note" /></blockquote>Therefore, for materialists, matter, being are something real, existing outside of our thought, and do not need thought or mind to exist. Likewise, since spirit cannot exist without matter, there is no immortal soul independent of the body.<br />
<br />
Contrary to what the idealists say, the things around us exist independently of us: they are what give us our thoughts; and our ideas are only the reflection of things in our brain.<br />
<br />
This is why, in front of the second aspect of the question of the relationship between being and thinking:<blockquote>in what relation do our thoughts about the world surrounding us stand to this world itself? Is our thinking capable of the cognition of the real world? Are we able in our ideas and notions of the real world to produce a correct reflection of reality? In philosophical language this question is called the question of identity of thinking and being.<ref name=":0" group="note" /> </blockquote>Materialists declare: Yes, we can know the world, and the ideas which we entertain about this world are more and more correct, since we can study it with the help of the sciences, and since the latter are continually proving to us through experience that the things which surround us have indeed a reality which is their own, independent of us, and that man can already in part reproduce these things by creating them artificially.<br />
<br />
To sum up, we will say that the materialists, faced with the fundamental problem of philosophy, assert:<br />
<br />
===== It is matter that creates the spirit =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
It is matter that produces spirit and, scientifically, we have never seen spirit without matter.<br />
<br />
===== Matter exists outside any spirit=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Matter exists outside of all mind and it does not need a mind to exist, having an existence that is particular to it. Contrary to what idealists say, it is not our ideas that create things, but, on the contrary, it is things that give us our ideas.<br />
<br />
===== Science and experience allow us to know the world =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We are capable of knowing the world, the ideas we have of matter and of the world are becoming more and more accurate, since, with the help of science, we can clarify what we already know and discover what we do not know.<br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote>''Plekhanov: [[Library:Fundamental problems of marxism|Fundamental problems of Marxism]]''</blockquote><br />
<br />
=== Which is right, idealism or materialism? ===<br />
==== How we should state the problem ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Now that we know the theses of the idealists and the materialists, we will try to find out who is right.<br />
<br />
Let us recall that we must first of all note, on the one hand, that these arguments are absolutely opposed and contradictory. On the other hand, as soon as one defends one or the other theory, it leads us to conclusions which, by their consequences, are very important.<br />
<br />
In order to know who is right, we must refer to the three points by which we have summarized each argument.<br />
<br />
The idealists say:<br />
<br />
#That it is spirit that creates matter;<br />
#That matter does not exist outside our thoughts, and that it is therefore for us only an illusion;<br />
#That it is our ideas that create things.<br />
Materialists, on the other hand, affirm exactly the opposite. To facilitate our work, we must first study what is common sense and what surprises us most.<br />
#Is it true that the world exists only in our thoughts?<br />
#Is it true that it is our ideas that create things?<br />
<br />
These are two arguments defended by Berkeley's "immaterialist" idealism, whose conclusions lead, as in all theologies, to our third question:<br />
<br />
<ol start="3"><br />
<li>Is it true that spirit creates matter?</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
These are very important questions since they relate to the fundamental problem of philosophy. It is, therefore, by discussing them that we will know who is right, and they are particularly interesting for materialists, in that materialist answers to these questions are common to all materialist philosophies - and, therefore, to dialectical materialism.<br />
<br />
==== Is it true that the world only exists in our thinking? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Before studying this question, we need to explain two philosophical terms that we are called upon to use and that we will often encounter in our readings.<blockquote>''Subjective reality'' (which means: reality that exists '''only in''' our thoughts).<br />
<br />
''Objective reality'' (reality that exists '''outside''' of our thoughts).</blockquote>Idealists say that the world is not an objective reality, but a subjective one.<br />
<br />
Materialists say that the world is an objective reality.<br />
<br />
To show us that the world and things exist only in our thinking, Bishop Berkeley breaks them down into their properties (color, size, density, etc.). He shows us that these properties, which vary according to individuals, are not in the things themselves, but in the minds of each one of us. He deduces that matter is an aggregate of non-objective, but subjective properties and that, consequently, it does not exist.<br />
<br />
If we take again the example of the sun, Berkeley asks us if we believe in the objective reality of the red disc, and he shows us with his method of discussing properties, that the sun is not red and is not a disc. Therefore, the sun is not an objective reality, because it does not exist by itself, but it is a simple subjective reality, since it exists only in our thinking.<br />
<br />
Materialists say that the sun exists anyway, not because we see it as a flat, red disc, because that is naive realism -- that of the children and the first men who had only their senses to control reality -- but they say that the sun exists by invoking science. Science allows us, in fact, to rectify the errors that our senses make us commit.<br />
<br />
But we must, in this example of the sun, clearly pose the problem.<br />
<br />
With Berkeley, we will say that the sun is not a disk and that it is not red, but we do not accept its conclusions: the negation of the sun as an objective reality.<br />
<br />
We are not discussing the properties of things, but their existence.<br />
<br />
We are not discussing whether our senses deceive us and distort material reality, but whether this reality exists outside our senses.<br />
<br />
Well then! Materialists assert the existence of this reality outside us and they provide arguments that are science itself.<br />
<br />
What do idealists do to show us that they are right? They argue about words, make great speeches, write many pages.<br />
<br />
Let us suppose for a moment that they are right. If the world exists only in our thinking, then did the world not exist before mankind? We know that this is false, since science shows us that man appeared very late on earth. Some idealists will then tell us that before man there were animals and that thought could inhabit them. But we know that before the animals there was an uninhabitable earth on which no organic life was possible. Still others will tell us that even if only the solar system existed and man did not exist, thought and spirit existed in God. This is how we arrive at the supreme form of idealism. We have to choose between God and science. Idealism cannot sustain itself without God, and God cannot exist without idealism.<br />
<br />
So this is exactly how the problem of idealism and materialism arises: Who is right? God or science?<br />
<br />
God is a pure spirit creator of matter, an affirmation without proof.<br />
<br />
Science is going to show us by practice and experience that the world is an objective reality and will allow us to answer the question:<br />
<br />
==== Is it true that it is our ideas that create things? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Take, for example, a bus that passes as we cross the street in the company of an idealist with whom we discuss whether things have an objective or subjective reality and whether it is true that it is our ideas that create things. Of course, if we don't want to be crushed, we will be very careful. Therefore, in practice, the idealist is obliged to recognize the existence of the bus. For him, practically speaking, there is no difference between an objective bus and a subjective bus, and this is so right that practice provides the proof that idealists, in life, are materialists.<br />
<br />
We can, on this subject, cite many examples where we would see that the idealistic philosophers and those who support this philosophy do not disdain certain 'objective' baseness to obtain what, for them, is only subjective reality!<br />
<br />
This is why we no longer see anyone asserting, like Berkeley, that the world does not exist. The arguments are much more subtle and hidden.<ref group="note">See, as an example of the idealists' way of arguing, the chapter entitled [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism#“The discovery of the world-elements”|“The discovery of the world-elements”]], in Lenin's book: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]].</ref><br />
<br />
It is therefore, according to Lenin's words, "the criterion of practice" that will allow us to confound idealists.<br />
<br />
The latter, moreover, will not fail to say that theory and practice are not the same, that they are two quite different things. This is not true. If a conception is right or wrong, it is practice alone which, through experience, will demonstrate it to us.<br />
<br />
The example of the bus shows that the world therefore has an objective reality and is not an illusion created by our mind.<br />
<br />
It remains to be seen now, since Berkeley's theory of immaterialism cannot stand up to the sciences nor can it withstand the criterion of practice, if, as all the conclusions of idealistic philosophies, religions and theologies affirm, that ''spirit creates matter''.<br />
<br />
==== Is it true that spirit creates matter? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
As we have seen above, the spirit, for idealists, has its supreme form in God. It is the final answer, the conclusion of their theory, and that is why the ''mind-matter'' problem arises in the last analysis, of who, the idealist or the materialist, is right, in the form of the problem: 'God or science'.<br />
<br />
Idealists assert that God has existed from all eternity, and that, having undergone no change, he is always the same. He is the pure spirit, for whom time and space do not exist. He is the creator of matter.<br />
<br />
To support their affirmation of God, here again the idealists do not present any arguments.<br />
<br />
To defend the creator of matter, they resort to a lot of mysteries, which a scientific mind cannot accept.<br />
<br />
When we go back to the origins of science and we see that it was in the heart and because of their great ignorance that primitive men forged in their minds the idea of God, we see that the idealists of the 20th century continue, like the first men, to ignore everything that patient and persevering work has made it possible to know. For, in the end, for the idealists, God cannot be explained, and there remains for them a belief without any proof. When the idealists want to "prove" to us the necessity of the creation of the world by saying that matter could not always have existed, that it had to have a birth, they resort to a God who never had a beginning. In what way is this explanation clearer?<br />
<br />
To support their arguments, the materialists, on the contrary, will use the science that men have developed as they pushed back the "limits of their ignorance".<br />
<br />
But does science allow us to think that the spirit created matter? No.<br />
<br />
The idea of creation by a pure spirit is incomprehensible because we know nothing of the sort in experience. For this to be possible, it would have been necessary, as idealists say, that spirit existed alone before matter, whereas science shows us that this is not possible and that there is no spirit without matter. On the contrary, spirit is always linked to matter, and we see in particular that the mind of man is linked to the brain, which is the source of our ideas and thoughts. Science does not allow us to conceive that ideas exist in a vacuum...<br />
<br />
It would therefore be necessary for the mind of God, in order for it to exist, to have a brain. This is why we can say that it is not God who created matter, and man as well, but that it is matter, in the form of the human brain, that created the God-mind.<br />
<br />
We will see further on whether science gives us the possibility to believe in a God, or in something over which time would have no effect and for which space, movement and change would not exist.<br />
<br />
Already now we can conclude that in their answer to the fundamental problem of philosophy:<br />
<br />
==== The materialists are right and science proves their assertions ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Materialists are right to assert:<br />
<br />
# Against Berkeley's idealism and against the philosophers who hide behind his immaterialism: that the world and things, on the one hand, exist well outside of our thoughts and that they do not need our thoughts to exist; on the other hand, that it is not our ideas that create things, but that, on the contrary, it is the things that give us our ideas.<br />
# Against all idealist philosophies, because their conclusions end in affirming the creation of matter by spirit; that is to say -- in the last instance, in affirming the existence of God and in supporting theologies -- materialists, relying on science, assert and prove that it is matter which creates spirit and that they do not need the “God hypothesis” to explain the creation of matter.<br />
<br />
''Note'' — We have to be careful how idealists pose problems. They claim that God created man when we saw that it was man who created God. They also assert, on the other hand, that it is spirit that created matter when we see that it is, in truth, exactly the opposite. This is a way of reversing the perspectives that we had to point out.<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote><br />
''Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism#Did nature exist prior to man?|Did nature exist prior to man?]]''<br />
<br />
''Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
=== Is there a third philosophy? Agnosticism ===<br />
==== Why a third philosophy? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
It may seem to us, after these first chapters, that, after all, it must be quite easy to recognize ourselves in the midst of all philosophical reasoning, since only two great currents share all the theories: idealism and materialism. And that, moreover, the arguments that fight in favor of materialism carry it in a definitive way. <br />
<br />
It thus appears that, after some examination, we have found our way back to the philosophy of reason: materialism.<br />
<br />
But things are not so simple. As we have already pointed out, modern idealists do not have Bishop Berkeley's frankness. They present their ideas<blockquote>“in a much more artful form, and confused by the use of a ‘new’ terminology, so that these thoughts may be taken by naive people for ‘recent’ philosophy!” <ref name=":1" group="note">Lenin: ''[[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces|Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces]]''</ref> </blockquote>We have seen that two answers can be given to the fundamental question of philosophy, which are totally opposed, contradictory and irreconcilable. These two answers are very clear and do not allow for any confusion.<br />
<br />
And, in fact, until about 1710, the problem was posed as follows: on the one hand, those who asserted the existence of matter outside our thinking -- these were the materialists; -- on the other hand, those who, with Berkeley, denied the existence of matter and claimed that it exists only in us, in our minds -- these were the idealists.<br />
<br />
But, at that time, as the sciences progressed, other philosophers intervened, who tried to separate the idealists from the materialists, creating a philosophical current that created confusion between these two theories, and this confusion has its source in the search for a third philosophy.<br />
<br />
==== Argumentation of this third philosophy ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The basis of this philosophy, which was developed after Berkeley, is that it is useless to try to know the real nature of things and that we will only ever know appearances.<br />
<br />
This is why this philosophy is called agnosticism (from the Greek ''a'', negation, and ''gnosticos'', capable of knowing; therefore “incapable of knowing”).<br />
<br />
According to the agnostics, one cannot know whether the world is, at its core, spirit or nature. It is possible for us to know the appearance of things, but we cannot know their reality.<br />
<br />
Let us take the example of the sun. We have seen that it is not, as the first men thought, a flat, red disc. This disc was therefore only an illusion, an appearance (appearance is the ''superficial'' idea that we have of things; it is not their reality).<br />
<br />
This is why, considering that idealists and materialists argue about whether things are matter or spirit, whether or not these things exist outside our thinking, whether or not it is possible for us to know them, agnostics say that we can know appearance well, but never reality.<br />
<br />
Our senses, they say, allow us to see and feel things, to know their external aspects, their appearances; these appearances therefore exist for us; they constitute what is called, in philosophical language, the "thing for us". But we cannot know the thing independent of us, with its own reality, what is called the "thing in itself".<br />
<br />
Idealists and materialists, who continually discuss these subjects, are comparable to two men who would have one of the blue glasses, the other of the pink glasses, walking in the snow and arguing over what is the true color of the snow. Suppose they would never be able to take off - their glasses. Will they ever be able to know the true color of the snow?.... No. Well! idealists and materialists arguing over who is right and who is wrong wear blue and pink glasses. They will never know reality. They will have a knowledge of snow "for them"; everyone will see it in their own way, but they will never know snow "in itself". This is the reasoning of agnostics.<br />
<br />
==== Where does this philosophy come from? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The founders of this philosophy were [[Hume]] (1711-1776), who was Scottish, and [[Immanuel Kant|Kant]] (1724-1804), a German. Both tried to reconcile idealism and materialism.<br />
<br />
Here is a passage from Hume's reasoning quoted by Lenin in his book [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|''Materialism and empiriocriticism'']]:<br />
<blockquote><br />
“It seems evident, that men are carried, by a natural instinct or prepossession, to repose faith in their senses; and that, without any reasoning, or even almost before the use of reason, we always suppose an external universe, which depends not on our perception, but would exist though we and every sensible creature were absent or annihilated. Even the animal creations are governed by a like opinion, and preserve this belief of external objects, in all their thoughts, designs, and actions....<br />
<br />
But this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us, that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, and that the senses are only the inlets, through which these images are conveyed, without being able to produce any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object. The table, which we see, seems to diminish, as we remove farther from it: But the real table, which exists independent of us, suffers no alteration: It was therefore, nothing but its image, which was present to the mind. These are the obvious dictates of reason…<br />
<br />
But this primordial and universal opinion is promptly shaken by the most superficial philosophy, which teaches us that nothing but images or perception will ever be accessible to our mind and that sensations are only channels followed by these images and are not in a position to establish themselves a direct relationship, whatever it may be, between the mind and the object. The table we see seems smaller when we move away from it, but the real table, which exists independently of us, does not change; our mind has therefore perceived nothing but the image of the table. These are the obvious indications of reason.” <ref group="note" name=":2">Hume, as cited by Lenin in ''[[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces|Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces]]: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces#In lieu of an introduction|In lieu of an introduction]]''</ref><br />
</blockquote><br />
We see that Hume first of all admits what falls under the common sense: "existence of an external universe" which does not depend on us. But he immediately refuses to admit this existence as an objective reality. For him, this existence is nothing more than an image, and our senses which observe this existence, this image, are incapable of establishing any relation whatsoever between mind and object.<br />
<br />
In a word, we live in the midst of things as in the cinema, where we observe on the screen the image of objects, their existence, but where, behind the images themselves, that is, behind the screen, there is nothing.<br />
<br />
Now, if we want to know how our minds know objects, can this not be due to <blockquote>the energy of the mind itself, or from the suggestion of some invisible and unknown spirit, or from some other cause still more unknown to us? <ref name=":2" group="note" /></blockquote><br />
<br />
==== Its consequences ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Here is an attractive theory which, moreover, is very widespread. We find it in different aspects, throughout history, among philosophical theories and, nowadays, among all those who claim to "remain neutral and maintain themselves in a scientific reserve".<br />
<br />
We therefore need to examine whether this reasoning is correct and what consequences flow from it.<br />
<br />
If it is really impossible for us, as agnostics assert, to know the true nature of things and if our knowledge is limited to their appearances, then we cannot affirm the existence of objective reality, and we cannot know whether things exist by themselves. For us, for example, the bus is an objective reality; the agnostic tells us that it is not certain, that we cannot know if the bus is a thought or a reality. He therefore forbids us to maintain that our thinking is a reflection of things. We see that we are there in the middle of idealistic reasoning, because, between affirming that things do not exist or simply that we cannot know if they exist, the difference is not great!<br />
<br />
We have seen that the agnostic distinguishes between "things for us" and "things in themselves". The study of things for us is therefore possible: this is science: but the study of things in themselves is impossible, because we cannot know what exists outside of us.<br />
<br />
The result of this reasoning is the following: the agnostic accepts science -- and, since science can only be made on the condition of expelling all supernatural forces from nature -- before science he is a materialist.<br />
<br />
But he hurries to add that, since science only gives us appearances, nothing proves, moreover, that there is not in reality anything other than matter, or even that there is matter or that God does not exist. Human reason cannot know anything about it and therefore has no business interfering in it. If there are other ways of knowing "things in themselves," such as religious faith, the agnostic does not want to know it either and does not recognize the right to discuss it.<blockquote>As soon, however, as our agnostic has made these formal mental reservations, he talks and acts as the rank materialist he is at heart. He may say that, as far as we know, matter and motion, or as it is now called, energy, can neither be created nor destroyed, but that we have no proof of their not having been created at some time or other. But if you try to use this admission against him in any particular case, he will quickly put you out of court. If he admits the possibility of spiritualism in abstracto, he will have none of it in concreto. As far as we know and can know, he will tell you there is no creator and no Ruler of the universe; as far as we are concerned, matter and energy can neither be created nor annihilated; for us, mind is a mode of energy, a function of the brain; all we know is that the material world is governed by immutable laws, and so forth. Thus, as far as he is a scientific man, as far as he knows anything, he is a materialist; outside his science, in spheres about which he knows nothing, he translates his ignorance into Greek and calls it agnosticism. <ref name=":3" group="note">Engels: ''[[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces|Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces]]:'' [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces#General introduction and the history of materialism|''General introduction and the history of materialism'']] </ref></blockquote>The consequence is that by doubting the profound value of science, by seeing in it only appearances, this third philosophy proposes that we attribute no truth to science and consider it perfectly useless to seek to know something, to try to contribute to progress.<br />
<br />
Agnostics say: In the past, men saw the sun as a flat disk and believed that this was the reality; they were wrong. Today, science tells us that the sun is not as we see it, and claims to explain everything. We know, however, that it is often wrong, one day destroying what it built the day before. Error yesterday, truth today, but error tomorrow. Thus, argue the agnostics, we cannot know; reason brings us no certainty. And if means other than reason, such as religious faith, claim to give us absolute certainties, it is not even science that can prevent us from believing it. By diminishing confidence in science, agnosticism thus prepares the way for the return of religions.<br />
<br />
==== How can we refute this "third" philosophy? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen that, to prove their claims, materialists use not only science, but also experience, which allows them to control science. Thanks to the "criterion of practice", one can know things.<br />
<br />
Agnostics tell us that it is impossible to assert that the outside world exists or does not exist.<br />
<br />
However, through practice, we know that the world and things exist. We know that the ideas we have about things are well-founded, that the relationships we have established between things and ourselves are real.<blockquote>From the moment we turn to our own use these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense perceptions. If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt must fail. But if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended it for, then that is positive proof that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves. And whenever we find ourselves face to face with a failure, then we generally are not long in making out the cause that made us fail; we find that the perception upon which we acted was either incomplete and superficial, or combined with the result of other perceptions in a way warranted by them—what we call defective reasoning. So long as we take care to train and to use our senses properly, and to keep our action within the limits prescribed by perceptions properly made and properly used, so long we shall find that the result of our action proves the conformity of our perceptions with the objective nature of the things perceived. Not in one single instance, so far, have we been led to the conclusion that our sense perceptions, scientifically controlled, induce in our minds ideas respecting the outer world that are, by their very nature, at variance with reality, or that there is an inherent incompatibility between the outer world and our sense perceptions of it. <ref name=":3" group="note" /></blockquote>Taking up Engels' phrase, we will say "the proof of the pudding is that you eat it" (English proverb). If it did not exist, or if it was only an idea, after eating it, our hunger would not be alleviated at all. Thus it is perfectly possible for us to know things, to see if our ideas correspond to reality. It is possible for us to control the data of science through experience and industry that translate the theoretical results of science into practical applications. The reason we can make synthetic rubber is that science knows the "thing in itself" that is rubber.<br />
<br />
So we see that it is not useless to try to find out who is right, because through the theoretical errors that science can make, experience always gives us proof that science is right.<br />
<br />
==== Conclusion ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Since the 18th century, among the various thinkers who have borrowed to a greater or lesser extent from agnosticism, we see that this philosophy is sometimes torn by idealism and sometimes by materialism. Under cover of new words, as Lenin says, even pretending to use science to support their reasoning, they only create confusion between the two theories, allowing some to have a convenient philosophy, which gives them the possibility to declare that they are not idealists because they use science, but that they are not materialists either, because they don't dare to go to the end of their arguments, because they are not consistent with themselves.<blockquote>What, indeed, is agnosticism, ''writes Engels'', if not shameful materialism? The agnostic's conception of nature is entirely materialistic. The entire natural world is governed by laws and does not admit the intervention of external action; but he adds, as a precaution: “We do not possess the means to affirm or deny the existence of any supreme being beyond the known universe.” <ref name=":3" group="note" /></blockquote>Hence, this philosophy is playing into the hands of idealism and, all told, because they are inconsistent in their reasoning; agnostics lead right back to idealism. “Scratch an agnostic,” says Lenin, “and you will find an idealist.”<br />
<br />
We have seen that one can know which is right between materialism or idealism.<br />
<br />
We now see that the theories that claim to reconcile these two philosophies can, in fact, only support idealism, that they do not provide a third answer to the fundamental question of philosophy and that, consequently, there is no third philosophy.<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote><br />
''Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]''<br />
<br />
''Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach]]''<br />
<br />
''Engels: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific|Socialism: utopian and scientific]]: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces#General introduction and the history of materialism|General introduction and the history of materialism]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions#The philosophical problems|Control questions]]''<br />
== The philosophical materialism ==<br />
=== Matter and materialists ===<br />
{{top}}<br />
After defining:<br />
<br />
First, the ideas common to all materialists, second, the arguments of all materialists against idealistic philosophies, and finally, demonstrating the error of agnosticism, we will draw conclusions from this teaching and strengthen our materialist arguments by providing our answers to the following two questions:<br />
<br />
# What is matter?<br />
# What does it mean to be materialist?<br />
<br />
==== What is matter? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
''Importance of the issue''. Whenever we have a problem to solve, we need to ask the questions clearly. In fact, here it is not so easy to give a satisfactory answer. To do so, we must make a theory of matter.<br />
<br />
In general, people think that matter is what can be touched, what is strong and hard. In ancient Greece, this is how matter was defined.<br />
<br />
We know today, thanks to science, that this is not true.<br />
<br />
==== Successive theories of matter ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
(Our goal is to review the various theories relating to matter as simply as possible, without going into scientific explanations.)<br />
<br />
In Greece, it was believed that matter was a full and impenetrable reality that could not be divided into infinity. A moment arrives, it was said, when the pieces are no longer divisible; and we called these particles atoms (atom = indivisible). A table is then an agglomerate of atoms. It was also believed that these atoms were different from each other: there were smooth and round atoms like those of oil, others rough and crooked, like those of vinegar.<br />
<br />
It was [[Democritus]], a materialist of antiquity, who established this theory; he was the first to try to give a materialistic explanation of the world. He thought, for example, that the human body was made up of coarse atoms, that the soul was an agglomeration of finer atoms and, as he recognized the existence of gods but still wanted to explain everything as a materialist, he claimed that the gods themselves were made up of super-fine atoms.<br />
<br />
In the 19th century this theory changed profoundly.<br />
<br />
It was always thought that matter divided into atoms, that the latter were very hard particles attracted to each other. The theory of the Greeks had been abandoned, and these atoms were no longer crooked or smooth, but it was still argued that they were impenetrable, indivisible and undergoing a movement of attraction towards each other.<br />
<br />
Today, it is demonstrated that the atom is not an impenetrable and indivisible grain of matter (that is to say indivisible), but that it is itself composed of particles called electrons rotating at very high speed around a nucleus where almost all of the atom's mass is condensed. If the atom is neutral, electrons and nucleus have an electric charge, but the positive charge of the nucleus is equal to the sum of the negative charges carried by the electrons. Matter is an agglomeration of these atoms, and if it opposes a resistance to penetration, it is because of the very movement of the particles that compose it.<br />
<br />
The discovery of these electrical properties of matter, and in particular the discovery of electrons, provoked at the beginning of the twentieth century an assault by idealists against the very existence of matter. “The electron has nothing material,” they claimed. “It is nothing more than an electric charge in motion. If there is no matter in the negative charge, why would there be any in the positive nucleus? So matter has vanished. There is only energy!”<br />
<br />
Lenin, in [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|''Materialism and empiriocriticism'']] (chapter V), put things right by showing that energy and matter are inseparable. Energy is material, and movement is only the mode of existence of matter. In short, the idealists interpreted the discoveries of science backwards. At the time when this one highlighted aspects of the matter ignored until then, they concluded that the matter does not exist, under the pretext that it does not conform to the idea that one had of it long ago, when we believed that matter and motion were two distinct realities.<br />
<br />
==== What is matter for materialists ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
On this subject, it is essential to make a distinction: it is a question of seeing first:<br />
<ol start="1"><br />
<li>What is matter?</li><br />
</ol><br />
then<br />
<ol start="2"><br />
<li>What is matter like?<br />
</li><br />
</ol>The materialists' answer to the first question is that matter is an external reality, independent of spirit, and does not need spirit to exist. Lenin says on this subject:<blockquote>Matter is that which, acting upon our sense-organs, produces sensation; matter is the objective reality given to us in sensation.<ref group="note">Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism#What is matter? What is experience?|What is matter? What is experience?]]</ref></blockquote>Now, to the second question: "What is matter like?" the materialists say: "It is not for us to answer, it is for science."<br />
<br />
The first answer is invariable from antiquity to the present day.<br />
<br />
The second answer has varied and must vary because it depends on the sciences, on the state of human knowledge. It is not a definitive answer.<br />
<br />
We see that it is absolutely indispensable to pose the problem well and not to let the idealists mix up the two questions. It is necessary to separate them well, to show that it is the first which is the main one, and that our answer to it has always been invariable.<blockquote>For the ''sole'' “property” of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of ''being an objective reality,'' of existing outside our mind. <ref group="note">Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism#“Matter has disappeared”|“Matter has disappeared”]]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
==== Space, time, motion and matter ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
If we claim, because we see it, that matter exists outside of us, we also need to make it clear that:<br />
<br />
# Matter exists in time and space.<br />
# Matter is in motion.<br />
<br />
Idealists, on the other hand, think that space and time are ideas of our mind (Kant was the first to support this). For them, space is a shape that we give to things, space is born from the mind of man. The same goes for time.<br />
<br />
The materialists affirm, on the contrary, that space is not in us, but that it is we who are in space. They also affirm that time is an indispensable condition for the unfolding of our life; and that, consequently, time and space are inseparable from what exists outside of us, that is, from matter.<blockquote>... The basic forms of all being are space and time, and being out of time is just as gross an absurdity as being out of space. <ref name=":4" group="note">Engels: [[Library:Anti-Dühring|Anti-Dühring]]: [[Library:Anti-Dühring#Philosophy|Philosophy]]</ref></blockquote>We therefore believe that there is a reality independent of consciousness. We all believe that the world has existed before us and will continue to exist after us. We believe that the world, in order to exist, does not need us. We believe that Paris existed before we were born and that unless it is definitively razed it will exist after our death. We are certain that Paris exists, even when we don't think about it, just as there are tens of thousands of cities that we have never visited, whose names we don't even know, and which nevertheless exist. This is the general conviction of humanity. Science has given this argument a precision and solidity that nullifies all idealistic finery.<blockquote>The natural sciences affirm positively that the earth existed in such states that neither man nor any living being inhabited it and could not inhabit it. Organic matter is a late phenomenon, the product of a very long evolution. <ref name=":5" group="note">Lenin: ''[[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]''</ref></blockquote>If the sciences thus provide us with proof that matter exists in time and space, they teach us, at the same time, that matter is in motion. This last precision, which is provided to us by modern science, is very important because it destroys the old theory that matter is incapable of motion, inert.<blockquote>Motion is the mode of existence of matter... Matter without motion is as inconceivable as motion without matter. <ref name=":4" group="note" /></blockquote>We know that the world in its present state is the result, in all fields, of a long evolution and, consequently, the result of a slow but continuous movement. We thus specify, after having demonstrated the existence of matter, that<blockquote>the universe is only moving matter, and this moving matter can only move in space and time. <ref name=":5" group="note" /></blockquote><br />
<br />
==== Conclusion ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
It follows from these observations that the idea of God, the idea of a "pure spirit" creator of the universe, is meaningless, because a God outside of space and time is something that cannot exist.<br />
<br />
It is necessary to share the idealistic mysticism, consequently not to admit any scientific control, to believe in a God existing outside time, that is to say not existing at any time, and existing outside space, that is to say not existing anywhere.<br />
<br />
Materialists, strengthened by the conclusions of science, affirm that matter exists in space and at a certain moment (in time). Therefore, the universe could not have been created, because it would have taken God to create the world at a moment that was at no time (since time for God does not exist) and it would also have sprung the world out of nothing.<br />
<br />
In order to admit creation, one must therefore first admit that there was a moment when the universe did not exist, and then that out of nothing something came out, which science cannot admit.<br />
<br />
We see that the idealistic arguments, confronted with science, cannot be supported, while those of the materialist philosophers cannot be separated from the sciences themselves. We thus underline, once again, the intimate relationship between materialism and science.<br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<br />
<blockquote><br />
''Engels: [[Library:Anti-Dühring|Anti-Dühring]]''<br />
<br />
''Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
=== What does it mean to be a materialist? ===<br />
==== Union of theory and practice ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The purpose of our study is to know what Marxism is, to see how the philosophy of materialism, by becoming dialectical, identifies itself with Marxism. We already know that one of the foundations of this philosophy is the close connection between theory and practice.<br />
<br />
This is why, after having seen what matter is for materialists, and then how matter is, it is indispensable to say, after these two theoretical questions, what it means to be materialist, that is to say how the materialist acts. This is the practical side of these problems.<br />
<br />
The basis of materialism is the recognition of being as the source of thought. But is it enough to keep repeating this? To be a true partisan of consequent materialism, one must be: 1. in the field of thought; 2. in the field of action.<br />
<br />
==== What does it mean to be a supporter of materialism in the field of thought? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
To be a partisan of materialism in the field of thought means knowing the fundamental formula of materialism: '''being produces thought''', knowing how this formula can be applied.<br />
<br />
When we say: being produces thought, we have here an abstract formula, because the words: being and thought are abstract words. "Being" is being in general; "thought" is thought in general that we want to talk about. Being, as well as thought in general, is a subjective reality (see part one, chapter IV, the explanation of "subjective reality" and "objective reality"); it does not exist: it is what is called an abstraction. To say: "being produces thought" is thus an abstract formula, because it is composed of abstractions.<br />
<br />
So, for example: we know a lot about horses, but if we talk about the horse, it is the horse in general that we want to talk about; well! the horse in general is an abstraction.<br />
<br />
If we put in the place of the horse, man or being in general, they are still abstractions.<br />
<br />
But if the horse in general doesn't exist, what does exist? It's the horses in particular. The veterinarian who would say: "I treat the horse in general, but not the horse in particular" would be laughed at, as would the doctor who would say the same thing about men.<br />
<br />
So there is no such thing as being in general, but there are particular beings with particular qualities. It is the same with thought.<br />
<br />
We will therefore say that being in general is something abstract, and that particular being is something concrete; thus of thought in general and of particular thought.<br />
<br />
''The materialist is the one who knows how to recognize in all situations, who knows how to recognize where is the being and where is the thought.''<br />
<br />
Example: The brain and our ideas.<br />
<br />
We must know how to transform the abstract general formula into a concrete formula. The materialist will thus identify the brain as being and our ideas as being the thought. He will reason while saying: it is the brain (the being) which produces our ideas (the thought). This is a simple example, but let's take the more complex example of human society and see how a materialist will reason.<br />
<br />
The life of society is composed (roughly) of an economic life and a political life. What is the relationship between economic life and political life?... What is the primary factor in this abstract formula that we want to make a concrete formula?<br />
<br />
For the materialist, the first factor, that is to say, the being, the one that gives life to society, is economic life. The second factor, the thought that is created by the being, which can only live through it, is political life.<br />
<br />
The materialist will therefore say that economic life explains political life, since political life is a product of economic life.<br />
<br />
This statement, made here summarily, is at the root of what is called ''historical materialism'' and was first made by Marx and Engels.<br />
<br />
Here is another more delicate example: the poet. Certainly, there are many elements involved in explaining "the poet," but here we want to show one aspect of this question.<br />
<br />
We will generally say that the poet writes because he is driven by inspiration. Is that enough to explain that the poet writes this rather than that? No. The poet may have thoughts in his head, but he is also a being who lives in society. We will see that the first factor, the one that gives the poet his own life, is society, since the second factor is the ideas that the poet has in his brain. Therefore, one of the elements, the fundamental element, that "explains" the poet will be society, that is, the environment in which he lives in that society. (We will find the "poet" again when we study the dialectic, because then we will have all the elements to study this problem properly).<br />
<br />
We can see from these examples that the materialist is the one who knows how to apply the formula of materialism everywhere and always, at every moment, and in every case.<br />
<br />
==== What is materialism in practice? ====<br />
<br />
===== First aspect of the question =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen that there is no third philosophy and that if one is not consistent in the application of materialism, one is either an idealist or one obtains a mixture of idealism and materialism.<br />
<br />
The bourgeois scholar, in his studies and in his experiences, is always materialist. This is normal, because, in order to advance science, it is necessary to work on matter, and if the scientist really believed that matter exists only in his mind, he would find it useless to make experiments.<br />
<br />
So there are several varieties of scientists:<br />
<br />
# Scientists who are conscious and consistent materialists.<br />
# Scientists who are materialists without knowing it: i.e. almost all of them, because it is impossible to do science without positing the existence of matter. But, among the latter, one must distinguish:<br />
## Those who begin to follow materialism, but who stop, because they don't dare to call themselves such: these are the agnostics, those whom Engels calls the "shameful materialists".<br />
## Then there are the scholars, unknowingly materialistic and inconsistent. They are materialists in the laboratory, but when they come out of their work, they are idealists, believers, religious.<br />
<br />
In fact, the latter did not know or did not want to put their ideas in order. They are in perpetual contradiction with themselves. They separate their work, necessarily materialist, from their philosophical conceptions. They are "scientists", and yet, if they do not expressly deny the existence of matter, they think, unscientifically, that it is useless to know the real nature of things. They are "scientists" and yet they believe without any proof in impossible things. (See the case of Pasteur, Branly and others who were believers, whereas the scientist, if he is consistent, must abandon his religious beliefs). Science and belief are absolutely opposed.<br />
<br />
===== Second aspect of the question =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
''Materialism and action'': If it is true that the true materialist is the one who applies the formula that is at the basis of this philosophy everywhere and in all cases, he must be careful to apply it well.<br />
<br />
As we have just seen, one must be consistent, and to be a consistent materialist, one must transpose materialism into action.<br />
<br />
To be a materialist in practice is to act in accordance with philosophy, taking ''reality'' as the first and most important factor, and ''thought'' as the second factor.<br />
<br />
We are going to see what attitudes are taken by those who, without realizing it, take thought as the first factor and are therefore at this moment idealists without knowing it.<br />
<br />
<ol start="1"><br />
<li>What do we call the one who lives as if he were alone in the world? The ''individualist''. He lives within his shell; the outside world exists only for him. For him, the important thing is ''himself'', his thought. He is a pure idealist, or what is called a solipsist. <ref group="note">See explanation of this word, [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy#Consequences of idealist reasoning|section “Consequences of idealist reasoning”]]</ref></li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
The individualist is selfish, and being selfish is not a materialist attitude. The selfish limits the universe to his own person.<br />
<br />
<ol start="2"><br />
<li>He who learns ''for the sake of learning'', as a dilettante, who assimilates well, has no difficulties, but keeps it all for himself. He attaches primary importance to himself, to his thought.</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
The idealist is closed to the outside world, to reality. The materialist is always ''open'' to reality; that is why those who take courses in Marxism and who learn easily must try to transmit what they have learned.<br />
<br />
<ol start="3"><br />
<li>He who reasons about all things in relation to himself undergoes an idealist deformation.</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
He will say, for example, of a meeting where things were said that were unpleasant to him: "This is a bad meeting". This is not the way to analyze things; one must judge the meeting in relation to the organization, to its purpose, and not in relation to oneself.<br />
<br />
<ol start="4"><br />
<li>''Sectarianism'' is not a materialist attitude either. Because the sectarian has understood the problems, because he agrees with himself, he claims that others should be like him. It is still giving primary importance to oneself or to a sect.</li><br />
<br />
<li>The ''doctrinaire'' who has studied the texts, has drawn definitions from them, is still an idealist when he is content to quote materialist texts, when he lives only with his texts, because then the real world disappears. He repeats these formulas without applying them in reality. He gives primary importance to the texts, to the ideas. Life unfolds in his consciousness in the form of texts, and, in general, we see that the doctrinaire is also sectarian.</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
To believe that the revolution is a question of education, to say that in explaining "once and for all" to the workers the necessity of the revolution they must understand and that if they do not want to understand, it is not worth trying to make the revolution, that is sectarianism and not a materialist attitude.<br />
<br />
We have to note the cases where people do not understand; we have to look for reasons why this is so, note the repression, the propaganda of the bourgeois newspapers, radio, cinema, etc., and look for all possible means to make people understand what we want, through leaflets, brochures, newspapers, schools, etc.<br />
<br />
To have no sense of reality, to live on the moon and, practically, to make projects without taking into account the situations and realities, is an idealist attitude that gives primary importance to beautiful projects without seeing if they are feasible or not. Those who continually criticize, but do nothing to make things better, proposing no remedies, those who lack critical sense themselves, all of them are inconsistent materialists.<br />
<br />
==== Conclusion ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
By these examples, we see that the faults, which we can see more or less in each of us, are idealistic faults. We have it because we separate practice from theory and the bourgeoisie, which has influenced us, likes us not to attach importance to reality. For her, who supports idealism, theory and practice are two completely different and unrelated things. These flaws are therefore harmful, and we must fight them, because they ultimately benefit the bourgeoisie. In short, we must note that these defects, engendered in us by society, by the theoretical bases of our education, of our culture, rooted in our childhood, are the work of the bourgeoisie -- and get rid of them.<br />
<br />
=== History of materialism ===<br />
{{top}}<br />
So far we have studied what materialism is in general and what ideas are common to all materialists. We will now see how it has evolved from antiquity to modern materialism. In short, we are going to trace the history of materialism.<br />
<br />
We don't pretend to explain in so few pages the 2000 years of the history of materialism; we simply want to give some general indications that will guide the readings.<br />
<br />
In order to study this history properly, even summarily, it is indispensable to see at every moment why things have unfolded in this way. It would be better not to quote certain historical names than not to apply this method. But, while we do not want to clutter up our readers' brains, we think it is necessary to name in chronological order the main materialist philosophers more or less known to them.<br />
<br />
This is why, in order to simplify the work, we will devote these first pages to the purely historical side, and then, in the second part of this chapter, we will see why the evolution of materialism has had to undergo the form of development that it did.<br />
==== The need to study this history====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The bourgeoisie does not like the history of materialism, and that is why this history, taught in bourgeois books, is completely incomplete and always false. Various falsification processes are used:<br />
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<ol start="1"><br />
<li>Since we cannot ignore the great materialist thinkers, we name them by talking about everything they have written except their materialist studies, and we forget to say that they are materialist philosophers.</li><br />
</ol><br />
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There are many such cases of oblivion in the history of philosophy as it is taught in high schools and universities, and we shall cite as an example Diderot, who was the greatest materialist thinker before Marx and Engels.<br />
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<ol start="2"><br />
<li>There have been many thinkers throughout history who were unknowingly materialistic or inconsequential. That is to say, in some of their writings they were materialists, but in others they were idealists: Descartes, for example.</li><br />
</ol><br />
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Now the history written by the bourgeoisie leaves in the shade all that, in these thinkers, not only influenced materialism, but gave birth to a whole current of this philosophy.<br />
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<ol start="3"><br />
<li>Then, if these two falsification processes do not succeed in camouflaging certain authors, they are simply concealed.</li><br />
</ol><br />
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This is how the history of literature and philosophy of the eighteenth century is taught by "ignoring" Holbach and Helvetius, who were great thinkers of that time.<br />
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Why is this so? Because the history of materialism is particularly instructive for knowing and understanding the problems of the world; and also because the development of materialism is harmful to the ideologies that support the privileges of the ruling classes.<br />
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These are the reasons why the bourgeoisie presents materialism as a doctrine that has not changed, frozen for twenty centuries, while on the contrary materialism was something alive and always in motion.<blockquote>But just as idealism underwent a series of stages of development, so also did materialism. With each epoch-making discovery even in the sphere of natural science, it has to change its form.<ref name=":0" group="note" /></blockquote>We now have a better understanding of the need to study, even summarily, this history of materialism. To do so, we must distinguish two periods: 1° from the origin (Greek antiquity) up to Marx and Engels; 2° from the materialism of Marx and Engels to the present day. (We will study this second part with dialectical materialism).<br />
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We call the first period "pre-Marxist materialism", and the second "Marxist materialism" or "dialectical materialism".<br />
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==== Pre-Marxist materialism ====<br />
===== Ancient Greece =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Let us recall that materialism is a doctrine that has always been linked to the sciences, that has evolved and progressed with the sciences. When, in Greek antiquity, in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E., the sciences began to manifest themselves with the "physicists", a materialist current was formed which attracted the best thinkers and philosophers of that time (Thales, Anaximene, Heraclitus). These first philosophers will be, as Engels says, "naturally dialecticians". They are struck by the fact that movement and change are everywhere and that things are not isolated, but intimately linked to each other. <br />
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Heraclitus, who is called the "father of dialectic", said:<blockquote>Nothing is still; everything flows; you never bathe twice in the same river, because it is never, in two successive moments, the same: from one moment to the next, it has changed; it has become different.</blockquote>Heraclitus, the first, seeks to explain the movement, the change, and sees in the contradiction the reasons for the evolution of things.<br />
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The conceptions of these first philosophers were right, and yet they were abandoned because they were wrong to be formulated a priori, that is, the state of science at that time did not allow us to prove what they maintained. On the other hand, the social conditions necessary for the dialectic to flourish (we shall see what they are later on) were not yet realized.<br />
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It is only much later, in the 19th century, that the conditions (social and intellectual) allowing the sciences to prove the correctness of the dialectic will be realized.<br />
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Other Greek thinkers had materialistic conceptions: Leucippe (5th century B.C.E.), who was the master of Democritus, had already discussed this problem of atoms, whose theory we have seen established by the latter.<br />
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Epicurus (341-270 B.C.E.), a disciple of Democritus, was a very great thinker whose philosophy was completely falsified by the Church in the Middle Ages. Out of hatred of philosophical materialism, the Church presented Epicurean doctrine as profoundly immoral, as vindication of the lowest passions. In reality, Epicurus was an ascetic and his philosophy aimed at giving a scientific (and therefore anti-religious) foundation to human life.<br />
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All these philosophers were aware that philosophy was linked to the fate of humanity, and we can already see there, on their part, an opposition to official theory, an opposition to materialism.<br />
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But one great thinker dominates ancient Greece: it was Aristotle, who was rather idealistic. His influence was considerable. And that's why we must cite him in particular. He drew up an inventory of human knowledge of that time, filling in the gaps created by the new sciences. A universal mind, he wrote many books on all subjects. Through the universality of his knowledge, of which only idealistic tendencies were retained, neglecting its materialistic and scientific aspects, he had a considerable influence on philosophical conceptions until the end of the Middle Ages, that is, for twenty centuries.<br />
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During all this period, therefore, the ancient tradition was followed, and only Aristotle was thought of. A savage repression raged against those who thought otherwise. Nevertheless, towards the end of the Middle Ages, a struggle broke out between idealists who denied the existence of matter and those who thought there was a material reality.<br />
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In the 11th and 12th centuries, this dispute continued in France and especially in England.<br />
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In the beginning, it was mainly in the latter country that materialism developed. Marx said:<blockquote>Materialism is the true son of Great Britain.<ref group="note">Marx-Engels: "The Holy Family", Philosophical Studies, Social Editions, 1961</ref></blockquote>A little later, it was in France that materialism flourished. In any case, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries we see two currents manifest themselves: one, English materialism, and the other, French materialism, whose coming together will contribute to the prodigious blossoming of materialism in the eighteenth century.<br />
<br />
=====English materialism =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
<blockquote>The authentic father of English materialism and of all modern experimental science is Bacon. The science of nature is for him the true science, and physics, based on sensible experience, is the noblest fundamental part of it. <ref group="note">Engels: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific|Socialism: utopian and scientific]]</ref></blockquote>Bacon is famous as the founder of the experimental method in the study of science. For him, the important thing is to study science in the "great book of nature", and this is particularly interesting at a time when science is studied in the books that Aristotle had left a few centuries earlier.<br />
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To study physics, for example, this is how you would do it: on a certain subject, take the passages written by Aristotle; then take the books of St. Thomas Aquinas, who was a great theologian, and read what he had written about Aristotle's passage. The professor did not make any personal comment, let alone say what he thought, but referred to a third book that repeated Aristotle and St. Thomas. This was the science of the Middle Ages, which was called scholasticism: it was a bookish science, because it was studied only in books.<br />
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It is against this scholasticism, this set and rigid teaching, that Bacon reacted by calling for study in the Great book of nature.<br />
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At that time, a question arose:<br />
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Where do our ideas come from? Where does our knowledge come from? Each of us has ideas, the idea of a house, for example. This idea comes to us because there are houses, the materialists say. Idealists think that it is God who gives us the idea of a house. Bacon, for his part, said that the idea only existed because we saw or touched things, but he could not yet demonstrate this.<br />
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It was Locke (1632-1704) who set out to demonstrate how ideas come from experience. He showed that all ideas come from experience and that only experience gives us ideas. The idea of the first table came to man before it existed, because, through experience, he was already using a tree trunk or a stone as a table.<br />
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With Locke's ideas, English materialism passed to France in the first half of the 18th century, because, while this philosophy was developing in a particular way in England, a materialist current had formed in our country.<br />
<br />
=====Materialism in France=====<br />
{{top}}One can date from Descartes (1596-1650) the birth in France of a clearly materialistic current. Descartes had a great influence on this philosophy, but, in general, few speak about it!<br />
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At this time when the feudal ideology was very alive, even in the sciences, where one studied in the scholastic way that we saw, Descartes enters in fight against this state of affairs.<br />
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The feudal ideology is imbued with religious mentality. It therefore considers that the Church, representing God on earth, has the monopoly of truth. It follows that no man can claim the truth if he does not subordinate his thought to the teachings of the Church. Descartes defeats this conception. He certainly does not attack the Church as such, but he boldly professes that every man, believer or not, can reach the truth through the exercise of his reason ("natural light").<br />
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Descartes declares from the beginning of his Discourse of the method: "Common sense is the thing of the world best shared". Consequently, everyone in front of science has the same rights. And if he makes, for example, a good criticism of the medicine of his time (''The Imaginary Invalid'', of Molière, is an echo of the criticisms of Descartes), it is because he wants to make a science which is a true science, based on the study of nature and rejecting that taught until him, where Aristotle and saint Thomas were the only "arguments".<br />
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Descartes lived at the beginning of the seventeenth century; in the following century, the [[French Revolution|Revolution]] was going to break out, and that is why we can say of him that he comes out of a world that is going to disappear to enter a new world, in the one that is going to be born. This position makes Descartes a conciliator; he wants to create a materialistic science and, at the same time, he is idealistic, because he wants to save religion.<br />
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When, in his time, people used to ask: Why are there animals that live? They answered according to the ready-made answers of theology: because there is a principle that makes them live. Descartes, on the contrary, maintained that the laws of animal life are simply matter. He believed, moreover, and affirmed that animals are nothing other than machines of flesh and muscles, just as other machines are of iron and wood. He even thought that they both had no sensations and when, at the Abbey of Port-Royal, during the weeks of study, men who claimed to follow his philosophy would prick some dogs, they would say: "As nature is well done, it looks like they are suffering!"<br />
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For Descartes, the materialist, the animals were thus machines. But Man is different, because he has a soul, says Descartes the idealist.<br />
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Ideas developed and defended by Descartes will be born, on the one hand, a clearly materialist philosophical current and, on the other hand, an idealist current.<br />
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Among those who continue the materialist Cartesian branch, we will retain La Mettrie (1709- 1751). Taking up this thesis of the animal-machine, he extends it to man. Why shouldn't man be a machine?.... The human soul itself, he sees it as a mechanics where ideas would be mechanical movements.<br />
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It was at this time that English materialism penetrated into France with Locke's ideas. From the junction of these two currents was born a more evolved materialism. It will be:<br />
<br />
=====The materialism of the 18th century=====<br />
{{top}}This materialism was defended by philosophers who also knew how to be admirable fighters and writers; continually criticizing social institutions and religion, applying theory to practice and always fighting against power, they were sometimes locked up in the Bastille or in Vincennes.<br />
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It was they who gathered their works in the great Encyclopedia, where they set the new direction of materialism. They had, moreover, a great influence, since this philosophy was, as Engels says, "the conviction of all cultivated youth".<br />
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It was even the only time in the history of philosophy in France when a philosophy with a French character became truly popular.<br />
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Diderot, born in Langres in 1713, died in Paris in 1784, dominated the whole movement. What must be said above all, and what bourgeois history does not say, is that he was, before Marx and Engels, the greatest materialist thinker. Diderot, Lenin said, almost arrives at the conclusions of contemporary (dialectical) materialism.<br />
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He was a true militant; always in battle against the Church, against the social state, he knew the dungeons. The history written by the contemporary bourgeoisie has largely escaped him. But one must read the Interviews of Diderot and d'Alembert, Rameau's Nephew, Jacques the Fatalist to understand the enormous influence of Diderot on materialism.<br />
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In the first half of the 19th century, because of historical events, we see a retreat of materialism. The bourgeoisie of all countries makes a great propaganda in favor of idealism and religion, because not only does it no longer want progressive (materialist) ideas to spread, but it also needs to put thinkers and the masses to sleep in order to stay in power.<br />
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It is then that we see Feuerbach in Germany asserting, in the midst of all the idealistic philosophers, his materialist convictions, <blockquote>by putting materialism squarely back on the throne. <ref group="note" name=":6">Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach]]: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy#Hegel|Hegel]]</ref></blockquote>Essentially developing a critique of religion, he takes up in a healthy and contemporary way the bases of materialism that had been forgotten and thus influences the philosophers of his time.<br />
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We arrive at this period of the nineteenth century when we see an enormous progress in the sciences, due in particular to these three great discoveries: the living cell, the transformation of energy, and evolution (from Darwin), which will allow Marx and Engels, influenced by Feuerbach, to make materialism evolve to give us modern, or dialectical, materialism.<br />
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We have just seen, in a very brief way, the history of materialism before Marx and Engels. We know that the latter, while agreeing with the materialists who preceded them on many points in common, also judged that the latter's work, on the other hand, had many flaws and shortcomings.<br />
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In order to understand the transformations they brought to pre-Marxist materialism, it is therefore absolutely necessary to investigate what these defects and shortcomings were, and why they were so.<br />
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In other words, our study of the history of materialism would be incomplete if, after listing the various thinkers who contributed to the progress of materialism, we did not try to find out how and in what direction this progress was made and why it underwent this or that form of evolution.<br />
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We are particularly interested in the materialism of the 18th century, because it was the culmination of the different currents of this philosophy.<br />
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We are going to study what were the errors of this materialism, what were its shortcomings, but, as we must never see things in a unilateral way, but on the contrary as a whole, we will also underline what were its merits.<br />
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Materialism, which was dialectical in its beginnings, has not been able to continue to develop on this basis. Dialectical reasoning, because of the insufficiency of scientific knowledge, had to be abandoned. It was first necessary to create and develop the sciences.<blockquote>One had first to know what a particular thing was before one could observe the changes it was undergoing.<ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>It is thus the very intimate union of materialism and science that will allow this philosophy to become once again, on a more solid and scientific basis, the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels.<br />
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We will thus find the birth certificate of materialism next to that of science. But, if we always find where materialism comes from, we must also establish where idealism comes from.<br />
<br />
====Where does idealism come from?====<br />
{{top}}If, in the course of history, idealism has been able to exist alongside religion, tolerated and approved by it, this is because in reality, it was born from and comes from religion. <br />
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Lenin wrote a formula on this subject that we must study. "Idealism is nothing but a refined form of religion. "What does it mean? It means that idealism is able to present its conceptions much more flexibly than religion. To claim that the universe was created by a spirit floating above the darkness, that God is immaterial, and then suddenly, as religion does, declaring that he speaks (through the Word) and that he has a son (Jesus), is a series of brutally presented ideas. Idealism, by affirming that the world exists only in our thoughts, in our mind, presents itself in a more hidden way. In fact, as we know, it is the same in substance, but the form is less brutal, more elegant. That is why idealism is a refined form of religion."<br />
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It is also refined because idealistic philosophers know, in discussions, how to anticipate questions, how to lay traps, like Philonous to poor Hylas in the Berkeley dialogues.<br />
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But to say that idealism stems from religion is simply to put the problem off, and we must ask ourselves this immediately:<br />
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====Where does religion come from?====<br />
{{top}}Engels gave us a very clear answer on this subject: "Religion is born from the limited conceptions of man."<br />
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For the first men, this ignorance was twofold: ignorance of nature and ignorance of themselves. One must constantly think of this double ignorance when studying the history of primitive men.<br />
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In Greek antiquity, which we already consider an advanced civilization, this ignorance seems childish, for example when we see that Aristotle thought that the earth was immobile, that it was the center of the world and that planets revolved around the earth. (The latter, of which he thought numbered 46, were attached like nails on a ceiling, and the whole thing revolved around the earth...)<br />
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The Greeks also believed that there were four elements: water, earth, air and fire, and that it was not possible to decompose them. We know that this is not true, since we are now decomposing water, earth and air and we do not consider fire as a body of the same order.<br />
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About human beings themselves, the Greeks were also very ignorant, since they did not know the function of our organs and they considered, for example, the heart as the seat of courage!<br />
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If the ignorance of the Greek scholars was so great, they whom we already consider to be very advanced, then what must have been the ignorance of the men who lived thousands of years before them? The concepts that primitive men had of nature and of themselves were limited by ignorance. But these men still tried to explain things. All the documents we have about primitive men tell us that these men were very preoccupied with dreams. We have seen, from the first chapter, how they solved this question of dreams by believing in the existence of a "double" of man. In the beginning, they attributed to this double a kind of transparent and light body, still having a material consistency. It is only much later that this conception is born in their minds that man has in him an immaterial principle that survives after death, a spiritual principle (the word comes from ''spiritus'', which in Latin means breath, the breath that goes away with the last breath, at the moment when one gives up the soul and the "double" alone remains). It is then the soul that explains the thought, the dream.<br />
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In the Middle Ages, there were strange ideas about the soul. It was thought that in a fat body one had a thin soul and in a thin body a great soul; that is why, at that time, ascetics used to make long and numerous fasts to have a great soul, to make a great dwelling for the soul.<br />
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Having admitted in the form of the transparent, then in the form of the soul, a spiritual principle, the survival of man after death, primitive men created the gods.<br />
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Believing at first in who were more powerful than men existing in a still material form, they imperceptibly came to this belief in gods existing in the form of a soul superior to ours. And so, after having created a multitude of gods, each with its defined function, as in ancient Greece, they came to this conception of one God. Then the monotheistic religion of today was created. We can see that the origin of religion, even in its present form, was ignorance.<br />
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Idealism was thus born from the limited conceptions of man, from his ignorance; while materialism, on the contrary, is born from the retreat of these limits.<br />
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In the course of the history of philosophy, we are going to witness this continuous struggle between idealism and materialism. The latter wants to push back the limits of ignorance, and this will be one of its glories and one of its merits. Idealism, on the contrary, and the religion that feeds it make every effort to maintain ignorance and to take advantage of this ignorance of the masses to make them tolerate oppression, economic and social exploitation.<br />
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==== The merits of pre-Marxist materialism ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen materialism born among the Greeks as soon as an embryo of science existed. Following this principle that when science develops, materialism develops, we see in the course of history:<br />
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# In the Middle Ages, a weak development of science, a halt to materialism.<br />
# In the 17th and 18th centuries, a great development of science corresponds to a great development of materialism. The French materialism of the 18th century is the direct consequence of the development of the sciences.<br />
# In the nineteenth century, we witness many great discoveries, and materialism undergoes a very great transformation with Marx and Engels.<br />
# Today, science is progressing enormously and so is materialism. We see the best scholars applying dialectical materialism in their work.<br />
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Idealism and materialism therefore have completely opposite origins; and we see, over the centuries, a struggle between these two philosophies, a struggle that still lasts today, and which was not only academic.<br />
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This struggle that crosses the history of humanity is the struggle between science and ignorance, it is the struggle between two currents. One is pulling humanity towards ignorance and keeping it in this ignorance, the other, on the contrary, tends towards the emancipation of men by replacing ignorance with science.<br />
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This struggle has sometimes taken serious forms, as in the time of the Inquisition, where we can take, among others, the example of Galileo. The latter asserts that the Earth revolves. This is a new piece of knowledge, which is in contradiction with the Bible and also with Aristotle: if the earth revolves, it is not the center of the universe, but simply a point in the universe, and we must then widen the limits of our thoughts. What do we do then in the face of this discovery of Galileo?<br />
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In order to keep humanity in ignorance, a religious court is instituted, and Galileo is condemned to make amends. This is an example of the struggle between ignorance and science.<br />
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We must therefore judge the philosophers and scientists of that time by placing them in this struggle of ignorance against science, and we will see that by defending science they were defending materialism without knowing it themselves. Thus Descartes, by his reasoning, provided ideas that could advance materialism.<br />
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We must also see that this struggle in the course of history is not simply a theoretical struggle, but a social and political struggle. The ruling classes in this battle are always on the side of ignorance. Science is revolutionary and contributes to the emancipation of humanity.<br />
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The case of the bourgeoisie is typical. In the 18th century, the bourgeoisie was dominated by the feudal class; at that time, it was in favor of science; it led the fight against ignorance and gave us ''L'Encyclopédie''. In the twentieth century, the bourgeoisie is the ruling class, and in this struggle against ignorance and science, it is for ignorance with much greater savagery than before (see Hitlerism).<br />
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So we see that pre-Marxist materialism has played a considerable role and has had a very great historical importance. During this struggle between ignorance and science it was able to develop a general conception of the world that could be opposed to religion, and therefore to ignorance. It is also thanks to the evolution of materialism, to this succession of his works, that the indispensable conditions for the blossoming of dialectical materialism were realized.<br />
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==== The defects of pre-Marxist materialism ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
To understand the evolution of materialism, to see its flaws and shortcomings, we must never forget that science and materialism are linked.<br />
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In the beginning, materialism was ahead of science, and that is why this philosophy could not assert itself from the outset. Science had to be created and developed to prove that dialectical materialism was right, but this took more than twenty centuries. During this long period, materialism was influenced by the sciences and particularly by the spirit of the sciences, as well as by the most developed particular sciences.<br />
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That is why<blockquote>The materialism of the last century ''[that is, of the 18th century]'' was predominantly mechanical, because at that time, of all natural sciences, only mechanics, and indeed only the mechanics of solid bodies — celestial and terrestrial — in short, the mechanics of gravity, had come to any definite close. Chemistry at that time existed only in its infantile, phlogistic form. Biology still lay in swaddling clothes; vegetable and animal organisms had been only roughly examined and were explained by purely mechanical causes. What the animal was to Descartes, man was to the materialists of the 18th century — a machine. <ref name=":0" group="note" /></blockquote>This, then, is what materialism was, the result of a long and slow evolution of science after the "hibernation period of the Christian Middle Ages".<br />
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The great mistake in this period was to consider the world as a great mechanics, to judge everything according to the laws of this science called mechanics. Considering motion as a simple mechanical movement, it was believed that the same events had to happen over and over again. We saw the machine side of things, but we did not see the living side. This materialism is therefore called mechanical materialism.<br />
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Let's see an example: How did these materialists explain thinking? In this way: "the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile"! That's a bit simplistic! Marx's materialism, on the contrary, gives a series of clarifications. Our thoughts do not come only from the brain. We have to see why we have certain thoughts, certain ideas, rather than others, and then we realize that society, our surroundings, etc., select our ideas. Mechanical materialism considers thought as a simple mechanical phenomenon. But it is much more than that!<blockquote>This exclusive application of mechanics to phenomena of a chemical and organic nature, in which mechanical laws certainly also acted, but were rejected in the background by laws of a higher order, constitutes a specific, but inevitable narrowness at that time of classical French materialism. <ref name=":0" group="note" /></blockquote>This is the first major fault of eighteenth-century materialism.<br />
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The consequences of this error were that it ignored history in general, that is, the point of view of historical development, of process: this materialism considered that the world did not evolve and that it returned at regular intervals to similar states, nor did it conceive of an evolution of man and animals.<blockquote>This materialism ... in its inability to consider the world as a process, as matter engaged in historical development ... corresponded to the level reached at the time by the natural sciences and the metaphysical way,<ref group="note">''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy#Study of metaphysics|Study of metaphysics]]''</ref> i.e. antidialectical, of philosophizing that resulted from it. It was known that nature was engaged in a perpetual movement. But this movement, according to the conception of the time, also described a perpetual circle and, therefore, never moved a single place; it always produced the same results.<ref name=":0" group="note" /></blockquote>This is the second flaw of this materialism.<br />
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Its third mistake was that it was too contemplative; it did not see enough of the role of human action in the world and in society. Marx's materialism teaches that we must not only explain the world, but transform it. Man is an active element in history that can bring change to the world.<br />
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The action of the Russian communists is a living example of an action capable not only of preparing, making and succeeding in the revolution, but, since 1918, of establishing socialism in the midst of enormous difficulties.<br />
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Pre-Marxist materialism was unaware of this concept of human action. At that time, it was thought that man is a product of his environment, whereas Marx teaches us that the environment is a product of man and that man is therefore a product of his own activity under certain conditions given at the outset. If man undergoes the influence of his environment, he can transform this environment, society; he can, therefore, transform himself.<br />
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The materialism of the 18th century was therefore too contemplative, because it ignored the historical development of everything, and this was inevitable then, since scientific knowledge was not advanced enough to conceive the world and things differently than through the old method of thinking: "metaphysics".<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote><br />
''Marx and Engels: [[Library:The holy family|The holy family]]''<br />
<br />
''Marx: [[Library:Theses on Feuerbach|Theses on Feuerbach]]''<br />
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''Plekhanov: [[Library:Essays on the history of materialism|Essays on the history of materialism]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
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''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions#The philosophical materialism|Control questions]]''<br />
<br />
== Study of metaphysics==<br />
=== What is the "metaphysical method"? ===<br />
{{top}}<br />
We know that the defects of the materialists of the 18th century come from their form of reasoning, from their particular method of research which we have called "metaphysical method". The metaphysical method thus translates a particular conception of the world, and we must notice that, if to pre-Marxist materialism we oppose Marxist materialism, in the same way to metaphysical materialism we oppose dialectical materialism.<br />
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====The characteristics of this method ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
What we are going to study here is this <blockquote>old method of investigation and thought which Hegel calls “metaphysical” <ref name=":7" group="note">Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|''Ludwig Feuerbach'']]'': [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy#Marx|Marx]]''</ref></blockquote>Let's start immediately with a simple remark. Which seems more natural to most people: movement or stillness? What is the normal state of affairs for them: rest or mobility?<br />
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In general, it is thought that rest existed before movement and that something, in order for it to be able to move, was first in a state of rest.<br />
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The Bible also tells us that before the universe, which was created by God, there was immobile eternity, i.e. rest.<br />
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Here are words we will often use: rest, stillness, and also movement and change. But these last two words are not synonymous.<br />
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Movement, in the strict sense of the word, is displacement. Example: a falling stone, a moving train are in motion.<br />
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Change, in the strict sense of the word, is the passage from one form to another. Example: A tree that loses its leaves has changed shape. But it is also the passage from one state to another. Example: The air has become unbreathable: it is a change.<br />
<br />
So movement means change of place, and change means change of shape or state. We will try to respect this distinction, in order to avoid confusion (when we study the dialectic, we will be called upon to review the meaning of these words).<br />
<br />
We have just seen that, generally speaking, we think that movement and change are less normal than rest, and it is certain that we have a kind of preference to consider things at rest and without change.<br />
<br />
Example: We bought a pair of yellow shoes and after some time, after multiple repairs (replacement of soles and heels, gluing of many parts), we still say: "I'm going to put on my yellow shoes", without realizing that they are not the same anymore. For us, it is always the yellow shoes that we bought on such and such an occasion and that we paid such and such a price. We will not consider the change that has occurred to our shoes, they are always the same, they are identical. We neglect the change to see only the identity as if nothing important had happened. This is the principle of identity.<br />
<br />
=====The principle of identity=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
It consists in preferring immobility to movement and identity to change in the face of events.<br />
<br />
From this preference, which constitutes the first character of this method, a whole conception of the world is derived. We consider the universe as if it were frozen," Engels says. The same will be true for nature, society and mankind. Thus it is often claimed: "There is nothing new under the sun", which means that there has always been no change, since the universe has remained motionless and identical. It is also often understood to mean a periodic return to the same events. God created the world by producing fish, birds, mammals, etc., and since then nothing has changed, the world has not moved. It is also said: "Men are always the same", as if men have always been the same.<br />
<br />
These common expressions reflect this conception which is deeply rooted in us, in our minds, and the bourgeoisie exploits this error to the full.<br />
<br />
When one criticizes socialism, one of the arguments most readily given is that man is selfish and that it is necessary for some force to intervene to constrain him, otherwise disorder would reign. This is the result of this metaphysical conception that man has forever a fixed nature that cannot change.<br />
<br />
It is quite certain that if we suddenly had the possibility of living in a communist regime, that is to say, if we could distribute the products immediately to each one according to his needs and not according to his work, it would be a rush to satisfy whims, and such a society would not be able to hold out. And yet this is communist society and this is what is rational. But it is because we have a metaphysical conception rooted in us that we picture the future man who will live in a relatively distant future as similar to the man of today.<br />
<br />
Therefore, when we affirm that a socialist or communist society is not viable because man is selfish, we forget that if society changes, man will also change.<br />
<br />
Every day we hear criticisms of the Soviet Union that reveal to us the difficulties of understanding of those who formulate them. This is because they have a metaphysical conception of the world and of things.<br />
<br />
Among the many examples we could cite, let us take just this one. We are told: "A worker in the Soviet Union receives a salary that does not correspond to the total value of what he produces, so there is a surplus value, that is to say, a deduction from his salary. So it is stolen. In France, it is the same, workers are exploited; there is therefore no difference between a Soviet worker and a French worker.<br />
<br />
Where is the metaphysical conception in this example? It consists in not considering that there are two types of societies here and in not taking into account the differences between these two societies. To believe that as long as there is added value here and there, it is the same thing, without considering the changes that have taken place in the Soviet Union, where man and machine no longer have the same economic and social meaning as in France. Now, in our country, the machine exists to produce (at the service of the boss) and man to be exploited. In the U.S.S.R., the machine exists to produce (at the service of man) and man to enjoy the fruit of his labor. The surplus value in France goes to the boss; in the USSR to the socialist state, that is to say, to the community without exploiters. Things have changed.<br />
<br />
We see therefore, from this example, that the defects of judgment come, in those who are sincere, from a metaphysical method of thinking, and particularly from the application of the first character of this method, a fundamental characteristic which consists in underestimating change and in preferring to consider immobility or, in other words, which tends to perpetuate identity in the midst of change. <br />
<br />
But what is this identity? We saw a house being built that was completed on January 1, 1935, for example. On January 1, 1936, as well as all the years that followed, we will say that it is identical, because it still has two floors, twenty windows, two doors on the façade, etc., because it always remains itself, does not change, is not different. So to be identical is to remain the same, not to become different. And yet this house has changed! It is only at first glance, superficially, that it has remained the same. The architect or the mason, who see the thing more closely, know that the house is already not the same one week after its construction: here, a small crack occurred, there a stone played, there the color is gone, etc.... So it is only when you look at things "roughly" that they look the same. In analysis, in detail, they change constantly.<br />
<br />
But what are the practical consequences of the first character of the metaphysical method?<br />
<br />
Since we prefer to see identity in things, that is, to see them remaining themselves, we say, for example: "Life is life, and death is death. "We affirm that life remains life, that death remains itself, death, and that's all.<br />
<br />
As we become accustomed to seeing things in their identity, we separate them from each other. To say "a chair is a chair" is a natural statement, but it is to emphasize identity and at the same time it means: what is not a chair is something else.<br />
<br />
It is so natural to say this that emphasizing it seems childish. In the same vein, we will say: "The horse is the horse, and what is not the horse is something else. "So we separate the chair on one side and the horse on the other, and we do that for each thing. So we make distinctions, strictly separating things from each other, and that's how we are led to turn the world into a collection of separate things, and that's what the second characteristic of the metaphysical method:<br />
<br />
=====Isolation of things=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
What we have just said seems so natural that one may ask: why say that? We will see that, in spite of everything, it was necessary, because this system of reasoning leads us to see things from a certain angle.<br />
<br />
It is still in the practical consequences that we are going to judge the second character of this method.<br />
<br />
In everyday life, if we consider animals and if we reason about them by separating beings, we do not see what is common between those of different genera and species. A horse is a horse and a cow is a cow. There is no connection between them.<br />
<br />
This is the point of view of ancient zoology, which classifies animals by clearly separating them from each other and sees no connection between them.<br />
<br />
This is one of the results of the application of the metaphysical method.<br />
<br />
As another example, we can cite the fact that the bourgeoisie wants science to be science; that philosophy remains itself; the same goes for politics; and, of course, there is nothing in common, absolutely no connection between the three.<br />
<br />
The practical conclusions of such a reasoning is that a scientist must remain a scientist and does not have to mix his science with philosophy and politics. It will be the same for the philosopher and the man of a political party.<br />
<br />
When a man of good faith reasons in this way, we can say that he reasons as a metaphysician. The English writer Wells went to the Soviet Union a few years ago and visited the great writer, now deceased, Maxim Gorky. He proposed to him to create a literary club where politics would not be made, because, in his mind, literature is literature, and politics is politics. Gorky and his friends apparently started laughing and Wells was offended. Wells saw and conceived of the writer as living outside of society, while Gorky and his friends knew that this is not the case in life, where, in truth, all things are connected - whether we like it or not.<br />
<br />
In everyday practice, we try to classify, isolate things, see them, study them only for themselves. Those who are not Marxists see the state in general by isolating it from society, as independent of the form of society. To reason in this way, to isolate the state from society is to isolate it from its relationship with reality.<br />
<br />
The same mistake is made when we speak of man by isolating him from other men, from his environment, from society. If we also consider the machine for itself by isolating it from the society in which it produces, we make the mistake of thinking: "Machine in Paris, machine in Moscow; added value here and there, there's no difference, it's absolutely the same thing.<br />
<br />
Yet this is a reasoning that can be read continuously and those who read it accept it, because the general and usual point of view is to isolate, to divide things. This is a habit characteristic of the metaphysical method.<br />
<br />
===== Eternal and impassable divisions=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
After having given our preference to consider things as immobile and unchanging, we have classified and catalogued them, creating divisions among them that make us forget the relationships they may have with each other.<br />
<br />
This way of seeing and judging leads us to believe that these divisions exist once and for all (a horse is a horse) and that they are absolute, impassable and eternal. This is the third character of the metaphysical method.<br />
<br />
But we have to be careful when we talk about this method; because, when we Marxists say that in capitalist society there are two classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, we also make divisions that may seem to be metaphysical. However, it is not simply by introducing divisions that one is a metaphysician, it is the way in which one establishes the differences, the relations that exist between these divisions.<br />
<br />
When we say, for example, that there are two classes in society, the bourgeoisie immediately thinks that there are rich and poor. And, of course, it will tell us, “There have always been rich and poor.”<br />
<br />
"There has always been" and "there always will be" is a metaphysical way of reasoning. Things are forever classified independently of each other, and partitions, insurmountable walls are established between them.<br />
<br />
Society is divided into rich and poor, instead of acknowledging the existence of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and even if we admit this last division, we consider them outside their mutual relations, that is, outside the class struggle. What are the practical consequences of this third character, which establishes definitive barriers between things? It is that between a horse and a cow there can be no kinship. It will be the same for all sciences and for everything that surrounds us. We will see further on if this is right, but we still have to examine what are the consequences of these three different characters we have just described and it will be the fourth characteristic of the metaphysical method:<br />
<br />
=====Opposition of opposites =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
It follows from all that we have just seen that when we say, "Life is life, and death is death," we are affirming that there is nothing in common between life and death. We set them apart from each other by seeing life and death each for itself, without seeing the relationships that can exist between them. Under these conditions, a man who has just lost his life must be considered dead, because it is impossible for him to be both alive and dead at the same time, since life and death are mutually exclusive.<br />
<br />
By considering things as isolated, definitely different from each other, we manage to set them against each other.<br />
<br />
This is the fourth character of the metaphysical method, which opposes opposites to one another and affirms that two opposites cannot exist at the same time.<br />
<br />
Indeed, in this example of life and death, there can be no third possibility. It is absolutely necessary for us to choose one or the other of the possibilities that we have distinguished. We consider that a third possibility would be a contradiction, that this contradiction is an absurdity and, therefore, an impossibility.<br />
<br />
The fourth character of the metaphysical method is therefore the horror of contradiction.<br />
<br />
The practical consequences of this reasoning is that, when we talk about democracy and dictatorship, for example, well! the metaphysical point of view demands that a society choose between the two: because democracy is democracy, and dictatorship is dictatorship. Democracy is not dictatorship; and dictatorship is not democracy. We have to choose, otherwise we are faced with a contradiction, an absurdity, an impossibility.<br />
<br />
The Marxist attitude is quite different.<br />
<br />
We think, on the contrary, that the dictatorship of the proletariat, for example, is at the same time the dictatorship of the mass and democracy for the mass of the exploited.<br />
<br />
We think that life, the life of living beings, is only possible because there is a perpetual struggle between cells and that, continually, some die to be replaced by others. Thus, life contains within it death. We think that death is not as total and separate from life as metaphysics thinks, because on a corpse all life has not completely disappeared, since certain cells continue to live for a certain time and from this corpse other lives will be born.<br />
<br />
==== Development ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
So we see that the different characteristics of the metaphysical method force us to look at things from a certain angle and lead us to reason in a certain way. We see that this way of analyzing has a certain "logic" that we will study later, and we also see that it corresponds very much to the way of seeing, thinking, studying, analyzing that we encounter in general.<br />
<br />
We begin - and this enumeration will allow us to summarize - with <br />
<br />
# Seeing things in their immobility, in their identity.<br />
# Separating things from one another, detaching them from their mutual relationships.<br />
# Establishing eternal divisions between things, impassable walls.<br />
# Opposing opposites, affirming that two opposites cannot exist at the same time.<br />
<br />
We have seen, when we have examined the practical consequences of each character, that none of this corresponds to reality.<br />
<br />
Does the world conform to this conception? Are things immobile and without change in nature? No. We see that everything changes and we see movement. So this conception is not in agreement with the things themselves. It is obviously nature that is right, and it is this conception that is wrong.<br />
<br />
We have defined, from the beginning, philosophy as wanting to explain the universe, man, nature, and so on. Since the sciences study particular problems, philosophy is, as we have said, the study of the most general problems that join and extend the sciences.<br />
<br />
However, the old "metaphysical" way of thinking which applies to all problems is also a philosophical conception which considers the universe, man and nature in a very particular way.<blockquote>To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. "His communication is 'yea, yea; nay, nay'; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another, cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to the other. <ref group="note" name=":8">Engels: [[Library:Anti-Dühring|Anti-Dühring]]: [[Library:Anti-Dühring#Introduction|Introduction]]</ref> </blockquote>The metaphysical conception thus considers "the universe as a set of fixed things". In order to grasp this way of thinking, we will study how it conceives of nature, society and thought.<br />
<br />
====The metaphysical conception of====<br />
=====Nature=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Metaphysics considers nature as a set of things definitively fixed.<br />
<br />
But there are two ways of looking at it this way.<br />
<br />
The first way considers that the world is absolutely motionless, movement being only an illusion of our senses. If we remove this appearance of motion, nature does not move.<br />
<br />
This theory was defended by a school of Greek philosophers called the Eleates. This simplistic conception is so in violent contradiction with reality that it is no longer supported today.<br />
<br />
The second way of considering nature as a set of fixed things is much more subtle. We don't say that nature is immobile, we want it to move, but we affirm that it is animated by a mechanical movement. Here, the first way disappears; movement is no longer denied, and this does not seem to be a metaphysical conception. This conception is called "mechanistic" (or the "mechanism").<br />
<br />
It constitutes an error that is very often committed and that we find among the materialists of the 17th and 18th centuries. We have seen that they do not consider nature as motionless, but in movement, only, for them, this movement is simply a mechanical change, a displacement.<br />
<br />
They admit the whole solar system (the earth revolves around the sun), but they think that this movement is purely mechanical, that is to say a pure change of place, and they consider this movement only in this aspect.<br />
<br />
But things are not so simple. The fact that the earth rotates is certainly a mechanical movement, but it can, while it is rotating, be subject to influences, such as cooling down, for example. So there is not only a displacement, there are also other changes that take place.<br />
<br />
What characterizes this conception, called "mechanistic", is that we consider only the mechanical movement.<br />
<br />
If the earth keeps turning and nothing more happens to it, the earth changes its place, but the earth itself does not change; it remains identical to itself. It only continues, before us as well as after us, to turn again and again. Thus everything happens as if nothing had happened. So we see that to admit movement, but to make of it a pure mechanical movement, is a metaphysical conception, because this movement is without history.<br />
<br />
A watch with perfect organs, built with indestructible materials, would work forever without changing in any way, and the watch would have no history. It is such a conception of the universe that we constantly find in Descartes. He seeks to reduce to mechanics all the physical and physiological laws. He has no idea of chemistry (see his explanation of the circulation of blood), and his mechanical conception of things will still be that of the materialists of the 18th century.<br />
<br />
(We will make an exception for Diderot, who is less purely mechanistic, and who, in some writings, glimpses the dialectical conception).<br />
<br />
What characterizes the materialists of the eighteenth century is that they make nature a clockwork mechanism.<br />
<br />
If this were really so, things would continually return to the same point without leaving a trace, nature would remain identical to itself, which is indeed the first character of the metaphysical method.<br />
<br />
=====Society=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The metaphysical conception is that nothing changes in society. But, in general, this is not presented as such. It is recognized that changes occur, for example, in production, where raw materials are used to produce finished objects; in politics, where governments succeed one another. People recognize all this, but they consider the capitalist regime to be definitive, eternal, and sometimes even compare it to a machine.<br />
<br />
That's how we talk about the economic machine that sometimes breaks down, but we want to repair it in order to preserve it. We want this economic machine to be able to continue to distribute, like an automatic machine, dividends to some and misery to others.<br />
<br />
We also talk about the political machine, which is the bourgeois parliamentary regime, and we ask only one thing of it: it is, sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right, to function in order to preserve the privileges of capitalism.<br />
<br />
This is a mechanistic, metaphysical conception of society.<br />
<br />
If it were possible for this society, in which all these cogs work, to continue its march continuously, it would leave no trace and, consequently, no continuation in history.<br />
<br />
There is also a very important mechanistic conception that is valid for the whole universe, but especially for society, which consists in spreading the idea of a regular march and a periodic return of the same events, under the formula: "history is a perpetual beginning again".<br />
<br />
It should be noted that these conceptions are very widespread. They do not really deny the movement and change that exist and that we see in society, but they falsify the movement itself by transforming it into a simple mechanism.<br />
<br />
=====Thought=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
What is, around us, our conception of thought?<br />
<br />
We believe that human thought is and was eternal. We believe that if things have changed, our way of reasoning is the same as that of the man who lived a century ago. Our feelings, we consider them to be the same as the Greeks, goodness and love as having always existed; this is how one speaks of "eternal love". It is very common to believe that human feelings have not changed.<br />
<br />
This is what makes people say and write, for example, that a society cannot exist without having another basis than individual and selfish enrichment. This is why we often hear that the "desires of the men are always the same".<br />
<br />
We often think that way. Far too often. In the movement of thought as in all the others, we let the metaphysical conception penetrate. This is because, at the basis of our education, is this method,<blockquote>this way of thinking which seems to us at first sight extremely plausible, because it is that of what is called common sense. <ref name=":8" group="note" /></blockquote>The result is that this way of seeing, this metaphysical way of thinking is not only an conception of the world, but also a way of thinking.<br />
<br />
While it is relatively easy to reject metaphysical reasoning, it is, on the other hand, more difficult to get rid of the metaphysical way of thinking. On this subject, we must make a clarification. We call the way in which we see the universe: a conception; and the way in which we seek explanations: a method.<br />
<br />
For example: <br />
<br />
# The changes we see in society are only apparent, they renew what has already been - that is a conception".<br />
# When we look at the history of society to see what has already taken place and conclude that "there is nothing new under the sun", this is what "method" is.<br />
<br />
And we find that design inspires and determines the method. Of course, once inspired by the design, the method in turn reacts to it, directing it, guiding it.<br />
<br />
We have seen what metaphysical conception is; we are going to see what is its method of research. It is called logic.<br />
<br />
====What is logic?====<br />
{{top}}<br />
It is said of "logic" that it is the art of thinking well. To think according to the truth is to think according to the rules of logic. What are these rules? There are three main rules:<br />
<br />
1. The principle of identity: it is, as we have already seen, the rule that a thing is identical to itself, does not change (the horse is the horse).<br />
<br />
2. The principle of non-contradiction: a thing cannot be at the same time itself and its opposite. It is necessary to choose (life cannot be life and death).<br />
<br />
3. The principle of the excluded third party - or exclusion of the third case, which means: between two contradictory possibilities, there is no room for a third. One must choose between life and death, there is no third possibility.<br />
<br />
Therefore, to be logical is to think well. To think well means not forgetting to apply these three rules.<br />
<br />
We recognize here principles that we have studied and that come from the metaphysical conception.<br />
<br />
Logic and metaphysics are, therefore, intimately linked; logic is an instrument, a method of reasoning that proceeds by classifying each thing in a well determined way, that obliges us, therefore, to see things as identical to themselves, that then obliges us to choose, to say yes or no, and, in conclusion, that excludes between two cases, life and death for example, a third possibility.<br />
<br />
When we say: "All men are mortal; this comrade is a man; therefore this comrade is mortal", we have what is called a syllogism (this is the typical form of logical reasoning). By reasoning in this way, we have determined the place of the comrade, we have made a classification.<br />
<br />
Our tendency of mind, when we meet a man or a thing, is to say to ourselves: Where should we classify it? This is the only problem we have in our mind. We see things as circles or boxes of different sizes, and our concern is to fit those circles or boxes into each other, and into a certain order.<br />
<br />
In our example, we first determine a large circle that contains all mortals; then a smaller circle that contains all men; and only then that fellow.<br />
<br />
If we want to classify them, we will then, according to a certain "logic", fit the circles into each other.<br />
<br />
The metaphysical conception is therefore constructed with logic and syllogism. A syllogism is a group of three propositions; the first two are called premises, which means "sent before"; and the third is the conclusion. Another example: "In the Soviet Union, before the last constitution, there was the dictatorship of the proletariat. Dictatorship is dictatorship. In the USSR it is dictatorship. So there was no difference between the USSR, Italy and Germany, countries of dictatorship."<br />
<br />
We are not looking here for whom and on whom the dictatorship is exercised, just as when we praise bourgeois democracy, we are not saying for whose benefit it is exercised.<br />
<br />
This is how one manages to pose problems, to see things and the social world as part of separate circles and to bring the circles into each other.<br />
<br />
These are certainly theoretical questions, but they lead to a way of acting in practice. Thus we can cite the unfortunate example of Germany in 1919, where social democracy, in order to maintain democracy, killed the dictatorship of the proletariat without seeing that by doing so it was allowing capitalism to continue and giving Nazism a grip.<br />
<br />
Seeing and studying things separately is what zoology and biology did, until it was seen and understood that there was an evolution of animals and plants. Before that, all beings were classified by thinking that things had always been what they were.<blockquote>And in fact, while natural science up to the end of the last century was predominantly a ''collecting'' science, a science of finished things, in our century it is essentially a systematizing science, a science of the processes, of the origin and development of these things and of the interconnection which binds all these natural processes into one great whole. <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>But to conclude, we must give:<br />
<br />
====The explanation of the word: "metaphysics"====<br />
{{top}}<br />
There is an important part of philosophy called metaphysics. But it has such importance only in bourgeois philosophy, since it deals with God and the soul. Everything there is eternal. God is eternal, unchanging, remaining identical to himself; the soul too. It is the same with good, evil, etc., all being clearly defined, definitive and eternal. In this part of philosophy called metaphysics, we therefore see things as a fixed whole and we proceed in reasoning by opposition: we oppose spirit to matter, good to evil, etc., that is to say we reason by opposition of the opposites between them.<br />
<br />
We call this way of reasoning, of thinking, this conception: "metaphysical", because it deals with things and ideas that are outside of the physical, such as God, goodness, the soul, evil, etc., and it is a way of reasoning that is called "metaphysical". Metaphysics comes from the Greek meta, which means "beyond", and from physics, the science of the phenomena of the world. Therefore, metaphysics is what deals with things beyond the world.<br />
<br />
It is also because of a historical accident that we call this philosophical conception "metaphysics". Aristotle, who wrote the first treatise on logic (the one we still use today), wrote a lot. After his death, his disciples classified his writings; they made a catalog and, after a writing entitled Physics, they found an untitled writing, which dealt with things of the mind. They classified it by calling it After Physics, in Greek: Metaphysics.<br />
<br />
Let us insist, in conclusion, on the link that exists between the three terms we have studied:<br />
<br />
Metaphysics, mechanism, logic. These three disciplines are always presented together and are called each other. They form a system and can only be understood by each other.<br />
<br />
<br />
''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions#Study of metaphysics|Control questions]]''<br />
<br />
== Study of dialectics ==<br />
=== Introduction to the study of dialectics ===<br />
==== Preliminary precautions ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
When we talk about dialectics, it is sometimes with mystery and by presenting it as something complicated. Not knowing what it is, we also talk about it wrongly. All this is regrettable and leads to mistakes that must be avoided.<br />
<br />
Taken in its etymological sense, the term dialectic simply means the art of debate, and this is how we often hear it said of a man who discusses at length, and even by extension of one who speaks well: he is a dialectician!<br />
<br />
It is not in this sense that we are going to study dialectics. From a philosophical point of view, it has taken on a special meaning.<br />
<br />
Contrary to what one thinks, dialectics, in its philosophical sense, is within everyone's reach, because it is something very clear and without mystery.<br />
<br />
But if dialectics can be understood by everyone, it still has its difficulties, and this is how we must understand them.<br />
<br />
Among the manual works, some are simple, others are more complicated. Making packing cases, for example, is a simple job. Assembling a radio set, on the other hand, is a job that requires a lot of skill, precision, and manual dexterity.<br />
<br />
Hands and fingers are for us working instruments. But thought is also a working instrument. And if our fingers don't always do precise work, the same is true for our brain.<br />
<br />
In the history of human work, Man, in the beginning, could only do rough work. Progress in science has made more precise work possible.<br />
<br />
It is exactly the same for the history of thought. Metaphysics is that method of thinking which is only capable, like our fingers, of crude movements (such as nailing up boxes or pulling out the drawers of metaphysics).<br />
<br />
Dialectics differs from this method because it allows for greater precision. It is nothing more than a method of thinking with great precision.<br />
<br />
The evolution of thinking has been the same as that of manual work. It is the same history, and there is no mystery; everything is clear in this evolution.<br />
<br />
The difficulties we encounter come from the fact that, for twenty-five years, we nailed crates and suddenly we are placed in front of a radio set to assemble them. It is certain that we will have big difficulties, that our hands will be heavy, our fingers unwieldy. It is only little by little that we will manage to soften ourselves and to carry out this work. What was very difficult at the beginning will then seem simpler to us.<br />
<br />
The same is true for dialectics. We are embarrassed, heavy with the old method of metaphysical thinking, and we have to acquire the dexterity, the precision of the dialectical method. But we see that, here again, there is nothing mysterious or very complicated.<br />
<br />
====Where did the dialectic method originate?====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We know that metaphysics considers the world to be a complex of fixed things and that, if we look at nature, we see that, on the contrary, everything moves and changes. We find that the same holds true for thought. The result of these findings is a disagreement between metaphysics and reality. In order to give a simple definition of the main idea conveyed by these words, we might say that “metaphysics” implies “immobility” and that “dialectics” implies “motion.”<br />
<br />
Motion and change, which exist in everything which surrounds us, form the basis of dialectics.<blockquote>When we reflect on Nature, or the history of mankind, or our own intellectual activity, the first picture presented to us is of an endless maze of relations and interactions, in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes out of existence. <ref name=":8" group="note" /></blockquote>According to this very text by Engels, we see that, from the dialectical point of view, everything changes, nothing remains where it is, nothing stays what it is and that, consequently, this point of view is in perfect agreement with reality. Nothing remains in the place which it occupies since even that which seems immobile to us moves; it moves with the revolution of the earth around the sun and the rotation of the earth on its axis. In metaphysics, the principle of identity maintains that a thing must remain itself. We see that, on the contrary, nothing remains what it is.<br />
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We have the impression that we always remain the same, and yet Engels tells us that “the same are different.” We think that we are identical but we have already changed. From the child which we were, we have become an adult and this adult, physically, never remains the same but gets older every day.<br />
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Hence, the misleading appearance is not motion, as the Eleatic philosophers claimed, but immobility, since, in fact, everything moves and changes.<br />
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History also proves to us that things do not remain as they are. At no moment is society immobile. There was first, in antiquity, a slave society; this was then succeeded by a feudal society and then capitalist society. The study of these societies shows us that the factors permitting the birth of a new society continually and imperceptibly developed within them. In this way, capitalist society changes every day and has ceased to exist in the USSR. Because no society remains immobile, the socialist society erected in the Soviet Union is also destined to disappear. It is already visibly transforming, and this is why metaphysicians do not understand what is taking place there. They continue to judge a completely transformed society with the feelings of a man who is still under capitalist oppression.<br />
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Our feelings themselves change, which we hardly notice. We see what was only an attraction turn into love, then sometimes degenerate into hatred.<br />
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What we see everywhere, in nature, history and thought, is change and motion. It is with this observation that dialectics begins.<br />
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The Greeks were startled by the fact that change and motion are encountered everywhere. We have seen that Heraclitus, who is called the “father of dialectics,” was the first to give us a dialectical concept of the world, i.e., he described a world in motion and not fixed. Heraclitus’ way of seeing can become a ''method''.<br />
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But this dialectical method was able to assert its authority only a long time after that, and we must see why dialectics was dominated by the metaphysical concept for such a long time.<br />
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====Why has dialectics long been dominated by metaphysical conception?====<br />
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We have seen that the dialectical point of view was born very early in history, but that man’s insufficient knowledge enabled the metaphysical concept to develop and take precedence over dialectics.<br />
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We can draw a parallel here between idealism, which arose from the great ignorance of men, and the metaphysical concept, which derived from the insufficient knowledge of dialectics.<br />
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How and why was this possible?<br />
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Men began the study of nature in a state of complete ignorance. In order to study the phenomena which they found, they began by classifying them. But a mental habit resulted from this way of classifying. By making categories and separating them from each other, our minds get used to making such separations and we find in this the first characteristic of the metaphysical method. Hence, it was really from the insufficient development of science that metaphysics emerged. Only 150 years ago, people studied the sciences by separating them from each other. For example, chemistry, physics, and biology were studied separately and no relation was seen between them. This method was further applied within the sciences: physics was concerned with sound, heat, magnetism, electricity, etc. but it was thought that these different phenomena were totally unrelated; each was studied in separate chapters.<br />
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We easily recognize in this practice the second characteristic of metaphysics which requires that one disregard the relations between things and that there be nothing in common between them.<br />
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Likewise, it is easier to conceive of things in a state of rest than in motion. Let us take photography as an example. We see that, firstly, pictures are taken of things in their immobility (this is photography), then, only later, in motion (this is cinema). So, this example of the development of photography and cinema mirrors that of the sciences and the human mind. We study things at rest before studying them in motion.<br />
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Why is this so? Because ''people were ignorant''. In order to learn, people took the easiest point of view. Now, immobile things are easier to grasp and study. Certainly the study of things at rest is a necessary stage of dialectical thought—but only an insufficient, fragmentary ''stage'', which must be integrated into the study of things which are becoming.<br />
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We run across this state of mind in biology, for example, in the study of zoology and botany. Because they were not well known, animals were first classified into breeds and species, since it was thought that there was nothing in common between them and that it ''had always been this way'' (third characteristic of metaphysics). From this was derived the theory called “fixism” (which maintains, contrary to “evolutionism,” that animal species have always been what they are, that they have never ''evolved''), which is, consequently, a metaphysical theory which stems from man’s ignorance.<br />
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====Why was eighteenth-century materialism metaphysical?====<br />
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We know that mechanics played a large role in the materialism of the 18th century and that this materialism is often called “mechanistic materialism.” Why was this so? Because the materialist concept is linked to the development of all the sciences and among these it was mechanics which developed first. In common speech, mechanics is the study of machines; in scientific language, it is the study of motion as displacement. Mechanics was the science which developed first because mechanical motion is the simplest kind of motion. It is much easier to study the motion of an apple on a tree which is blowing in the wind than to study the change produced in a ripening apple. The effect of the wind on the apple can be more easily studied than the ripening of the apple. But the former study is “partial” and thus opens the door to metaphysics.<br />
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Although they do indeed notice that everything is in motion, the ancient Greeks cannot make use of this observation, for their knowledge is insufficient. So, things and phenomena are observed and classified, and people are satisfied with studying their displacement, from which mechanics is derived; and the inadequacy of scientific knowledge gives rise to the metaphysical concept.<br />
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We know that materialism is always based on science and that in the 18th century science was dominated by the metaphysical spirit. Of all the sciences, the most developed during this period was mechanics. “This is why it was inevitable,” says Engels, “that the materialism of the 18th century be a metaphysical and mechanistic materialism, because the sciences were like that.”<br />
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We shall say, then, that this mechanistic and metaphysical materialism was materialist because it answered the fundamental question of philosophy by saying that the primary factor is matter; but it was metaphysical because it considered the universe to be a complex of fixed and mechanical things and because it studied and saw everything from the point of view of mechanics.<br />
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There comes a day when, through the accumulation of research, one finds that the sciences are not immobile; one notices that they have been transformed. After having separated chemistry from biology and physics, one comes to the realization that it has become impossible to deal with one of the sciences without having recourse to the others. For example, the study of digestion, which belongs to the domain of biology, becomes impossible without chemistry. Towards the 19th century, the interconnection of the sciences is clearly seen and a retreat of the metaphysical spirit in the sciences ensues, due to a more profound knowledge of nature. Up to then, the phenomena of physics had been studied separately; now, no one could deny that all these phenomena were of the same nature. This is how electricity and magnetism, which used to be studied separately, have come to be united in a single science: electromagnetism.<br />
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Likewise, by studying the phenomena of sound and heat, scientists have realized that both derive from phenomena of a similar nature.<br />
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By banging with a hammer, one obtains a sound and produces heat. It is motion which produces heat. And we know that sound consists of vibrations in the air; vibrations are also motion. Hence, these two phenomena are similar in nature.<br />
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In biology, by classifying more and more minutely, scientists have succeeded in discovering species which are incapable of being classified as either plant or animal. Hence, there was no abrupt separation of plants and animals. After further study, they arrived at the conclusion that animals have not always been what they are. The facts condemned fixism and the metaphysical spirit.<br />
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It was during the 19th century that the transformation we have just seen and which enabled materialism to become dialectical occurred. Dialectics is the spirit of science, which, in the course of its development, abandoned the metaphysical concept. Materialism was able to be transformed because the sciences changed. Metaphysical sciences were in harmony with metaphysical materialism just as the new sciences are in harmony with a new materialism, i.e., dialectical materialism.<br />
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==== How dialectical materialism was born: Hegel and Marx ====<br />
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If we ask how this transformation of metaphysical materialism into dialectical materialism was brought about, the answer we generally get is:<br />
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# There was the metaphysical materialism of the 18th century;<br />
# The sciences changed;<br />
# Marx and Engels stepped in; they cut metaphysical materialism in two; abandoning the metaphysics, they kept the materialism and added dialectics to it.<br />
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If we have a tendency to present things in this way, it is due to the metaphysical method, which demands that we simplify things in order to make a schema. We must, however, always keep in mind that ''the facts of reality should never be schematized''. Facts are more complicated than they seem or than we think. It follows that there was not such a simple transformation of metaphysical materialism into dialectical materialism.<br />
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Dialectics was, in fact, developed by a German idealist philosopher, Hegel (1770-1831), who was able to understand the change which had taken place in the sciences. Reverting to the old idea of Heraclitus, he found, with the help of scientific progress, that everything in the universe is motion and change, that nothing is isolated, but rather everything is dependent on everything else, and this is how he created dialectics. It is due to Hegel that we speak today of the dialectical motion of the world. What Hegel first grasped was the motion of thought, and he called it naturally dialectics.<br />
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But Hegel is an idealist, i.e., he gives primary importance to spirit and, consequently, he entertains a particular idea about motion and change. He thinks that it is spiritual changes which provoke changes in matter. For Hegel, the universe is idea become matter and, before the universe, there was first spirit which discovered the universe. In short, he finds that both spirit and the universe are in perpetual change, but concludes that changes in spirit determine changes in matter.<br />
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Example: The inventor has an idea; he realized this idea, and it is this materialized idea which creates changes in matter.<br />
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Hence, Hegel is certainly a dialectician, but he subordinates dialectics to idealism.<br />
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It is then that Marx (1818-1883) and Engels (1820-1895), followers of Hegel, but materialist followers and therefore giving primary importance to matter, think that his dialectics makes assertions which are correct but upside down. Engels says in this regard that with Hegel dialectics was standing on its head and it had to be put back on its feet. Hence, Marx and Engels transfer the initial cause of this motion of thought defined by Hegel to material reality and call it naturally dialectics, borrowing the same term from him.<br />
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They think that Hegel is right to say that thought and the universe are perpetually changing, but that he is mistaken to declare that it is changes in ideas which determine changes in things. It is, rather, things which give us ideas, and ideas have been altered because things have been altered.<br />
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Therefore, we ought to avoid saying, “Marx and Engels possess, on the one hand, materialism, inherited from the French materialism of the 18th century, and, on the other hand, Hegel’s dialectics; consequently, it remained for them only to join the two together.”<br />
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This is a simplistic, schematic concept, which forgets that phenomena are more complicated; it is a metaphysical concept.<br />
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Marx and Engels will certainly take dialectics from Hegel, but they will transform it. They will do the same with materialism in order to give us dialectical materialism.<br />
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=== The laws of dialectics ===<br />
==== 1. The dialectical change ====<br />
===== What is meant by dialectical change =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The first law of dialectics begins by remarking that “nothing stays where it is; nothing remains what it is.” Dialectics implies motion and change. Consequently, when one speaks of seeing things from a dialectical viewpoint, this means seeing them from the point of view of motion and change. When we want to study things according to dialectics, we shall study them ''in'' their motion and ''in'' their change.<br />
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Here is an apple. We have two ways of studying this apple: either from the metaphysical or from the dialectical point of view.<br />
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In the first case, we shall give a description of this fruit, its shape and color. We shall list its properties; we shall speak of its taste, etc. Then we can compare the apple with the pear, see their similarities and differences and finally conclude that an apple is an apple and a pear is a pear. This is how things were formerly studied, as numerous books will attest.<br />
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If we want to study the apple from the dialectical point of view, we shall place ourselves within the framework of motion; not the motion of the apple when it rolls and moves from place to place, but rather the ''motion of its evolution''. Then we shall find that the ripe apple has not always been what it is. Before that it was a green apple; before being a flower, it was a bud. In this way, we shall go back to the condition of the apple tree in spring. The apple has not always been an apple: it has a history. Likewise, it will not remain what it is. If it falls, it will rot, decompose and scatter its seeds, which will, if all goes well, produce a shoot and then a tree. Hence, neither has the apple always been what it is nor will it remain what it is.<br />
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This is what is called studying things from the point of view of motion. It is study from the point of view of the past and the future. By studying in this way, the present apple is seen only as a ''transition'' between what it was, the past, and what it will be, the future.<br />
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In order to clearly explain this way of seeing things, we are going to take two more examples: the Earth and society.<br />
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From a metaphysical point of view, we shall describe the shape of the Earth in all its details. We shall find that on its surface there are seas, land and mountains; we shall study the nature of the soil. Then we can compare the Earth to other planets or to the Moon, and we shall finally conclude that the Earth is the Earth.<br />
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Whereas by studying the history of the earth from the dialectical point of view, we shall see that it has undergone transformations and that, consequently, the earth will undergo in the future even more transformations. We must then take into account today that the present state of the Earth is but a transition between past changes and changes to come. This transition is such that the changes which take place are imperceptible, although they are on a much larger scale than those which occur during the ripening of an apple.<br />
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Let us now look at the example of society, which is of particular interest to Marxists.<br />
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Let us still apply our two methods. From the metaphysical point of view, we will be told that there have always been rich and poor. We shall find that there are large banks and enormous factories. We will be given a detailed description of capitalist society, which will be compared with past societies (feudal, slave-owning) by looking for similarities and differences, and we will be told that capitalist society is what it is.<br />
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From the dialectical point of view, we shall learn that capitalist society has not always been what it is. When we find that in the past other societies lived for a while, we shall deduce from this that capitalist society, like all societies, is not permanent and has no intangible basis, but rather it is only a provisional reality for us, a transition between the past and the future.<br />
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From these few examples, we see that to consider things from the dialectical point of view means to consider them to be provisional, having a history in the past and about to have a history in the future; having a beginning and going to have an end.<br />
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=====For dialectics, there is nothing definitive, absolute, sacred =====<br />
{{top}}<blockquote>For it [dialectical philosophy], nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away. <ref name=":6" group="note" /></blockquote>Here is a definition which underlines what we have just seen and what we are going to study:<br />
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''“For dialectics, there is nothing final.”'' This means that, for dialectics, everything has a past and will have a future; consequently, it is not here once and for all and what it is today is not final. (Examples of the apple, earth, society.)<br />
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For dialectics, there is no power in the world, nor beyond the world, which can hold things in a permanent state, hence there is "nothing absolute." (''Absolute'' means not subject to any condition, hence, universal; eternal, perfect.)<br />
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''"Nothing is sacred,"'' this does not mean that dialectics despises everything. No! A sacred thing is a thing which is regarded as immutable, which must neither be touched nor be discussed but only venerated. Capitalist society, for example, is "sacred". Well, dialectics tells us that ''nothing'' can escape from motion, change or the transformations of history.<br />
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''"Transitory"'' comes from "transire" which means to pass; a transitory thing is one which grows old and must disappear. Dialectics shows us that anything which is transitory eventually has no longer any reason for being, that everything is destined to disappear. What is young grows old; what is living today dies tomorrow, and nothing exists, for dialectics, "except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away."<br />
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Hence, to assume the dialectical point of view means to consider nothing to be eternal, except change. It means understanding that no particular thing can be eternal except "becoming."<br />
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But what is this "becoming" which Engels speaks of in his definition?<br />
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We have seen that the apple has a history. Let us now take the example of a pencil which has its own history, too.<br />
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This pencil, which is worn down today, was once new. The wood from which it is made came from a board, and this board came from a tree. We see then that the apple and the pencil both have a history and that neither one has always been what it is. But is there a difference between these two histories? Certainly!<br />
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The green apple became ripe. When it was green, could it, if all went well, not become ripe? No, it ''had'' to ripen, just as, if it falls to the ground, it has to rot, decompose, and scatter its seeds.<br />
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Whereas the tree from which the pencil comes may not become a board, and this board may not become a pencil. The pencil itself can always remain whole and not be sharpened.<br />
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Hence, we notice a difference between these two histories. In the case of the apple, if nothing abnormal occurs, the flower becomes an apple and the green apple ''becomes'' ripe. Thus, given one stage, the other stage ''necessarily'' and inevitably follows (if nothing stops the evolution).<br />
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In the history of the pencil, on the other hand, the tree may not become a board, the board may not become a pencil, and the pencil may not be sharpened. Hence, given one stage, the second stage ''may not follow''. If the history of the pencil proceeds through all its stages, it is due to foreign intervention—that of man.<br />
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In the history of the apple, we find stages which succeed one another, the second stage deriving from the first, etc. This history follows the “becoming” which Engels speaks of. In the history of the pencil, the stages are placed side by side, without deriving from each other. This is because the apple is following a natural process.<br />
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=====The process=====<br />
{{top}}(Word coming from Latin and meaning: forward motion, or the act of advancing, of progressing.)<br />
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Why does the green apple become ripe? Because of what it contains. It is due to internal sequences which stimulate the apple to ripen; ''it is because it was an apple even before it was ripe; it is because it could not help but ripen''.<br />
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When one examines the flower which will become an apple, then the green apple which will ripen, one finds that these internal sequences, stimulating the apple in its evolution, act under the pressure of internal forces. This latter is called ''autodynamism'', which means a force which comes from the being itself.<br />
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When the pencil was still a board, the intervention of man was necessary in order to make it become a pencil, for never would a board transform itself into a pencil. There were not internal forces at work, thus no autodynamism and no process. Hence, dialectics implies not only motion but also autodynamism.<br />
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We see then that dialectical motion contains within itself processes or autodynamism, which is its essential feature. For not every motion or change is dialectical. If we approach the study of a flea from the dialectical viewpoint, we shall say that it has not always been what it is and that it will not always be what it is. If we crush it, this certainly represents a change for it, but will this change be dialectical? No. Without us, it would not have been crushed. Hence, this change is not dialectical, but ''mechanical''.<br />
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Therefore, we must be careful when we speak of dialectical change. We think that if the earth continues to exist, capitalist society will be replaced by a socialist and then a Communist society. This will be a dialectical change. But, if the earth explodes, capitalist society will disappear not through an autodynamic change, but through a mechanical change.<br />
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In another context, we say that there is a mechanical discipline when this discipline is not natural. But it is autodynamic when it is freely consented to, i.e., when it comes from its natural milieu. A mechanical discipline is imposed from the outside; it is a discipline coming from leaders who are different from those they command. (We understand then to what extent non-mechanical discipline, autodynamic discipline, is not within the reach of every organization!)<br />
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Therefore, we must avoid using dialectics in a mechanical fashion. This is a tendency which we derive from our metaphysical habits of thinking. We mustn’t repeat like a parrot that things have not always been what they are. When a dialectician says that, he must look for how things were before. For saying that is not the end of an argument, but the beginning of scrupulous research into what things were like ''before''.<br />
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Marx, Engels and Lenin studied at length and in detail what capitalist society was like before them. They observed the smallest details in order to take note of dialectical changes. Lenin, in order to describe and criticize the changes in capitalist society, and to study the imperialist period, made very detailed studies and consulted numerous statistics.<br />
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When we speak of autodynamism, we should never turn it into a literary phrase either; we should only use this word knowingly and for those who understand it totally.<br />
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Finally, when studying something, after having seen what its autodynamic changes are and stated what change one has found, one must look for the reason why this change is autodynamic.<br />
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This is why dialectics, research and science are closely linked.<br />
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Dialectics is not a way of explaining and knowing things without having studied them, but rather a way of studying well and making good observations, by looking for the beginning and the end of things, where they come from and where they are going.<br />
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==== 2. Reciprocal action ====<br />
===== Sequencing of processes =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have just seen, in connection with the history of the apple, what a process is. Let’s have another look at this example. We have looked for where the apple came from and we were obliged to push our research as far back as the tree. But this problem of research also arises in regard to the tree. The study of the apple leads us to the study of the origins and destiny of the tree. Where does the tree come from? From an apple. It comes from an apple which has fallen and rotted in the earth, giving birth to a shoot. This leads us to study the ground, the conditions in which the seeds of the apple were able to sprout, the influences of the air, sun, etc. In this way, starting with the study of the apple, we are led to study the soil, proceeding from the process of the apple to that of the tree. The latter process has its sequence in turn in that of the soil. We have here what is called a “sequence of processes.” This will enable us to express and study the second law of dialectics: the law of reciprocal action. Let us take another example of the sequence of processes, that of the Workers’ University in Paris.<br />
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If we study this school from the dialectical point of view, we shall look for where it came from, and find at first this answer: in the autumn of 1932, some comrades meeting together decided to found a Workers’ University in Paris in order to study Marxism.<br />
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But where did this committee get this idea of teaching Marxism? Obviously because Marxism exists. But then, where does Marxism come from?<br />
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We see that research into the sequence of processes involves us in detailed and complete studies. Much more: by looking for the source of Marxism, we shall find that this doctrine is the very conscience of the proletariat. We see (whether we are for or against Marxism) that the proletariat then does exist; and so again we ask the question: where does the proletariat come from?<br />
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We know that it derives from an economic system, viz., capitalism. We know that the division of society into classes, that class struggle, was not caused, as our adversaries claim, by Marxism. On the contrary, we know that Marxism observes the existence of this class struggle and draws its force from the already existing proletariat.<br />
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Hence, from process to process, we arrive at the examination of the conditions of existence of capitalism. We have in this way a sequence of processes which shows us that everything influences everything else. This is the law of reciprocal action.<br />
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As a conclusion to these two examples of the apple and of the Workers’ University in Paris, let us see how a metaphysician would have proceeded.<br />
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In the example of the apple, he could only have thought, ’’Where does the apple come from?" And he would have been satisfied with the answer, “The apple comes from the tree.” He would not have looked any further.<br />
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For the Workers’ University he would have been satisfied with saying, about its origin, that it was founded by a group of men who wished “to corrupt the French people” or some such nonsense.<br />
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But the dialectician sees the entire sequence of processes which end, on the one hand, with the apple, and, on the other, with the Workers’ University. The dialectician connects the particular fact, the detail, to the whole.<br />
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He connects the apple to the tree, and he goes back further, all the way to nature in its entirety. The apple is not only the fruit of the apple tree, but also that of all of nature.<br />
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The Workers’ University is not only the “fruit” of the proletariat, but also the “fruit” of capitalist society.<br />
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Hence, we see that, contrary to the metaphysician who conceives of the world as a complex of fixed things, the dialectician will see the world as a complex of processes. And, if the dialectical point of view is true for nature and for the sciences, if is also true for society. <blockquote>“The old method of investigation and thought which Hegel calls “metaphysical”, which preferred to investigate ''things'' as given, as fixed and stable, a method the relics of which still strongly haunt people’s minds, had a great deal of historical justification in its day.” <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>Consequently, things and society were studied during this period as a complex of “ready-made, fixed objects,” which not only do not change, but, particularly in the case of society, are not destined to disappear.<br />
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Engels points out the great importance of dialectics, this:<blockquote>“... great basic thought that the world is not to be comprehended as a complex of readymade ''things'', but as a complex of ''processes'', in which the things apparently stable no less than their mind images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away, in which, in spite of all seeming accidentally and of all temporary retrogression, a progressive development asserts itself in the end...” <ref name=":7" group="note" /> </blockquote>Hence, neither should capitalist society be regarded as a “complex of ready-made things”; rather, it should be studied as a complex of processes.<br />
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Metaphysicians realize that capitalist society has not always existed, and they say that it has a history; but they think that, with its appearance, society has stopped evolving and will remain “fixed” from now on. They regard all things as finished and not as the beginning of a new process. The story of the creation of the world by God is an explanation of the world as a complex of completed things. God accomplished a completed task each day. He made plants and animals and man once and for all; whence the theory of fixism.<br />
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Dialectics judges things in a different way. It does not regard things as “fixed” objects, but rather as objects “in motion.” Nothing is complete; it is always the end of one process and the beginning of another process, always changing and developing. This is why we are so sure of the transformation of capitalist society into a socialist society. Since nothing is permanently finished, capitalist society is the end of a process to which socialist society and then Communist society and so forth will succeed. There is and there will continually be a development.<br />
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But we must be careful here not to look upon dialectics as something inevitable, from which one might conclude, “Since you are so sure of the change which you desire, why do you struggle?” For, as Marx says, “in order to deliver socialist society, a midwife is necessary;” whence the necessity of revolution, of action.<br />
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The fact is, things are not so simple. One mustn’t forget the role of men who may advance or slow down this transformation (we shall take up this question again in chapter 5 of this part, when we speak of historical materialism).<br />
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For the moment, all we wish to point out is the existence of a sequence of processes in everything which is produced through the internal force of things (autodynamism). We repeat, for dialectics, ''nothing is complete''. We must understand the development of things as having no final act. At the end of one theatrical production of the world the first act of another play begins. More precisely, this first act had already begun in the last act of the preceding play.<br />
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=====The great discoveries of the 19th century=====<br />
{{top}}What determined the abandonment of the metaphysical spirit and obliged first scientists, then Marx and Engels, to consider things in their dialectical movement, is, as we know, the discoveries made in the 19th century. As Engels points out in ''[[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach]]'', there were three especially great discoveries of this period which caused dialectics to advance.<br />
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======The discovery of the living cell and its development======<br />
{{top}}Before this discovery, “fixism” had been adopted as the basis of all reasoning. Species were considered to be foreign to each other. Moreover, two kingdoms were categorically differentiated: the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom.<br />
<br />
Then this discovery takes place, enabling the idea of “evolution,” which thinkers and scientists of the 18th century had already started to spread, to become more precise. This discovery leads to the understanding that life is made up of a succession of births and deaths and that every living being is an association of cells. This finding then leaves no boundary remaining between animals and plants and thus dispels the metaphysical concept.<br />
<br />
======The discovery of energy transformation======<br />
{{top}}Formerly, science believed that sound, heat and light, for example, were completely alien to each other. Yet now it is discovered that all these phenomena can be transformed into each other, that there are sequences of processes in ''inert'' matter as well as in living nature. This revelation brings still another blow to metaphysical thinking.<br />
<br />
======The discovery of evolution in humans and animals======<br />
{{top}}Darwin, says Engels, reveals that all the products of nature are the result of a long process of development of originally single-celled microorganisms: everything is the product of a long process having the cell for its origin.<br />
<br />
Engels concludes that, thanks to these three great discoveries, we can follow the sequence of all these natural phenomena not only within the different domains, but also ''between'' the different domains.<br />
<br />
It is, therefore, the sciences which made the elaboration of the second law of reciprocal action possible.<br />
<br />
Between the plant, animal and mineral kingdoms there is no sharp break, but rather only processes; everything is connected. And this is true for society as well. The different societies which have spanned the history of mankind should be regarded as a series of sequences of processes in which one society has necessarily come from the one which preceded it.<br />
<br />
Hence, we should remember that science, nature and society must be seen as a sequence of processes, and that the motor working to develop this sequence is ''autodynamism''.<br />
<br />
=====Historical development or spiral development=====<br />
{{top}}If we examine the process which we are beginning to know a little more closely, we see that the apple is the result of a sequence of processes. Where does the apple come from? The apple comes from the tree. Where does the tree come from? From the apple. We may then think that we have here a vicious circle in which we always return to the same point. Tree, apple. Apple, tree. Likewise, if we take the example of the egg and the hen. Where does the egg come from? From the hen. Where does the hen come from? From the egg.<br />
<br />
If we regarded things in this way, this would not be a process, but a circle. This appearance, moreover, has created the idea of the “eternal return.” That is to say, we always come back to the same point, the point of departure.<br />
<br />
But let us see exactly how the problem is stated.<br />
<br />
# Here is an apple.<br />
# When it decomposes, it engenders a tree or some trees.<br />
# Each tree does not produce one apple, but several apples.<br />
<br />
Hence, we do not return to the same point of departure; we come back to the apple, but on another level.<br />
<br />
Similarly, if we begin with the tree, we have:<br />
<br />
# A tree which produces<br />
# some apples, which in turn produce<br />
# some trees<br />
<br />
Here again we return to the tree, but on another level. The scope has widened.<br />
<br />
Hence, we do not have a circle, as appearances might make us think, but a process of development which we shall call a historical development. History shows us that time does not go by without leaving any traces. Time passes, but the same developments do not return. The world, nature and society constitute a development which is historical, a development which, in philosophical language, is called “spiral.”<br />
<br />
We use this image in order to make our ideas clear; it is a comparison to illustrate the fact that things evolve according to a circular process, but do not return to the point of departure; they come back a bit above, on another level, and so on, which produces an ascending spiral.<br />
<br />
Hence, the world, nature and society have a historical (spiral) development, and what stimulates this development, let us not forget, is autodynamism.<br />
<br />
=====Conclusion=====<br />
{{top}}We have just studied, in these first chapters on dialectics, the first two laws: that of change and that of reciprocal action. This was indispensable in order to approach the study of the law of contradiction, for it is this law which will enable us to understand the force which stimulates dialectical change, viz., autodynamism.<br />
<br />
In the first chapter relative to the study of dialectics, we saw why this theory had been dominated for so long by the metaphysical concept and why the materialism of the 18th century was metaphysical. After having rapidly seen the three great discoveries of the 19th century which enabled materialism to develop in order to become dialectical, we understand better now why it was necessary for the history of this philosophy to go through the three great periods which we have seen: 1) materialism of antiquity (theory of atoms); 2) materialism of the 18th century (mechanistic and metaphysical); finally culminating in 3) dialectical materialism.<br />
<br />
We have maintained throughout that materialism derives from the sciences and is linked to them. We can see, after these three chapters, how true this is. We have seen in this study of dialectical motion and change and of the law of reciprocal action that all our arguments are based on science.<br />
<br />
Today, when scientific studies are specialized to the extreme and when scientists (generally ignorant of dialectical materialism) sometimes cannot understand the importance of their discoveries in relation to the totality of the sciences, it is the role of philosophy, whose mission, we have said, is to provide an explanation of the world and of the most general problems, and, in particular, it is the mission of dialectical materialism, to unite all the particular discoveries of each science into a synthesis, thereby establishing a theory which makes us more and more, as Descartes said, “masters and possessors of nature.”<br />
<br />
====3. Contradiction====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen that dialectics regards things as being in perpetual change, continually evolving, in a word, undergoing a dialectical motion (first law).<br />
<br />
This dialectical motion is possible because everything, at the moment when we are studying it, is but the result of a sequence of processes, i.e., a sequence of stages come from each other. And, continuing our study further, we have seen that this sequence of processes necessarily develops in time into a progressive motion, “in spite of any momentary backsliding.”<br />
<br />
We have called this development “historical” or “spiral,” and we know that it generates itself, through autodynamism.<br />
<br />
But what are the laws of autodynamism? What are the laws which enable the stages to proceed from each other? They are called the “laws of dialectical motion.”<br />
<br />
Dialectics teaches us that things are not eternal: they have a beginning, a maturity, and an old age, which has an end, a death.<br />
<br />
All things pass through these stages: birth, maturity, old age, end. Why is this so? Why are things not eternal?<br />
<br />
This is an old question which has always interested humanity. Why must we die? We do not understand this necessity; throughout history, men have dreamed of eternal life, of the ways of changing this state of affairs. For example, in the Middle Ages, they invented magic potions for eternal youth or life.<br />
<br />
Why then is everything which is born obliged to die? This is a great law of dialectics which we should compare with metaphysics in order to really understand it.<br />
<br />
=====Life and death=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
From the metaphysical point of view, things are considered in an isolated fashion, taken by themselves, and, because metaphysics studies things in this way, it considers them unilaterally, i.e., from one side. This is why it can be said that those who see things one-sidedly are metaphysicians. Briefly, when a metaphysician studies the phenomenon called life, he does so without relating this phenomenon to any other. He sees life for itself and by itself, unilaterally. He sees it from one side only. If he examines death, he will do the same thing; he will apply his unilateral point of view and conclude by saying: life is life and death is death. Between the two there is nothing in common; one cannot be both alive and dead, for the two are opposite things and completely contrary to each other.<br />
<br />
To see things in this way is to view them superficially. Upon closer examination, it will be seen firstly, that they cannot be opposed, nor even can they be so brutally separated, since experience and reality show us that death continues life and that it derives from the living.<br />
<br />
As for life, can it derive from death? Yes. The transformation of the elements of the dead corpse will give birth to other lives and be used as fertilizer for the earth, making it more fertile, for example. Death, in many cases, will help life; death will enable life to be born; and, in living bodies themselves, life is only possible because there is a continual replacement of dead cells by those which are newly-born. (See Translator’s notes.)<br />
<br />
Hence, life and death are constantly being transformed into each other, and in everything we observe the invariability of this great law: ''everywhere, things are transformed into their opposites''.<br />
<br />
=====Things turn into their opposite=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Metaphysicians set opposites against each other, but reality shows us that opposites are ''transformed'' into each other, that things do not remain themselves, but are transformed into their opposites.<br />
<br />
If we examine truth and error, we tend to think that there is nothing in common between them. Truth is truth and error is error. This the unilateral point of view, which sets the two opposites at loggerheads, as one might do with life and death.<br />
<br />
And yet, sometimes when we exclaim, "Hey, it's raining!", no sooner have we finished saying so than the rain has stopped. The sentence was correct when we began it, but it was transformed into an error. (The Greeks had already observed this fact, so they said that in order not to be mistaken it was best to keep silent!)<br />
<br />
In the same vein, let us go back to the example of the apple. We see a ripe apple on the ground and we say, “There is a ripe apple.” However, it has been on the ground for some time and already it is beginning to decompose, so that truth becomes error.<br />
<br />
Science also provides us with numerous examples of laws, considered for many years to be “truths” and which scientific progress has proven to be “errors” at a certain moment.<br />
<br />
Hence, we see that truth changes into error. But does error ever change into truth?<br />
<br />
In the beginning of civilization, notably in Egypt, men imagined fights between the gods in order to explain the rising and setting of the sun. This is an error to the extent that it was said that the gods push or pull the sun to make it move. But science says that this theory is partially justified in that there are in fact forces which make the sun move. So we see that error is not diametrically opposed to truth.<br />
<br />
If, then, things do change into their opposites, how is this possible? How does life change into death?<br />
<br />
If there were only life, 100 percent pure life, it could never be death, and if death were totally itself, 100 percent pure death, it would be impossible for the one to change into the other. But there is already some death in life and thus some life in death.<br />
<br />
By looking closely, we see that a living being is composed of cells, that these cells are renewed, that they disappear and reappear in the same place. They live and die continually in a living being, in which there is therefore both life and death.<br />
<br />
We also know that the beard of a dead man continues to grow. The same is true for his nails and hair. These are clear-cut phenomena which prove that life continues after death.<br />
<br />
In the Soviet Union, the blood of the dead is preserved under special conditions for blood transfusions: thus, with the blood of a dead person a living person is remade. Consequently, we can say that in the midst of death there is life. “Life is therefore also a contradiction which is present in things and processes themselves, and which constantly asserts and solves itself; and as soon as the contradiction ceases, life too comes to an end, and death steps in.” <ref name=":4" group="note" /><br />
<br />
Hence, things not only change into each other, but also a thing is not only itself, but another thing which is its opposite, for everything contains its opposite.<br />
<br />
If we represent a thing by a circle, we have force which pushes this thing toward life, pushing from the center outwards, for example (expression), but we also have forces which push this thing in the opposite direction, forces of death, pushing from the exterior inwards (compression).<br />
<br />
Thus, within everything opposed forces, antagonisms, exist.<br />
<br />
What happens between these forces? They struggle with each other. Consequently, a thing is not only moved by a force acting in a single direction, but everything is really moved by two forces acting in opposing directions: one towards the affirmation and one towards the negation of things, one towards life and one towards death. What does the affirmation and negation of things mean?<br />
<br />
In life, there are forces which maintain life, which tends toward the affirmation of life. Then there are also forces in living organisms which tend towards negation. In everything, some forces tend towards affirmation and others towards negation, and, between affirmation and negation there is a contradiction.<br />
<br />
Hence, dialectics observes change, but why do things change? Because they are not in agreement with themselves, because there is a struggle between forces, between internal antagonisms, because there is contradiction. Here is the third law of dialectics: ''Things change because they contain contradictions within themselves''.<br />
<br />
(If we are obliged, at times, to use more or less complicated words—like dialectics, autodynamism, etc.—or terms which seem contrary to traditional logic and difficult to understand, it is not because we like to complicate things at whim as the bourgeoisie does. No. But this study, although elementary, seeks to be as complete as possible and to facilitate the later reading of the philosophical works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, who use these terms. In any case, since we must utilize something other than everyday language, we are determined to make it comprehensible to everyone in the framework of this study.)<br />
<br />
To see things in this way is to view them superficially. Upon closer examination, it will be seen firstly, that they cannot be opposed, nor even can they be so brutally separated, since experience and reality show us that death continues life and that it derives from the living.<br />
<br />
As for life, can it derive from death? Yes. The transformation of the elements of the dead corpse will give birth to other lives and be used as fertilizer for the earth, making it more fertile, for example. Death, in many cases, will help life; death will enable life to be born; and, in living bodies themselves, life is only possible because there is a continual replacement of dead cells by those which are newly-born.<br />
<br />
Hence, life and death are constantly being transformed into each other, and in everything we observe the invariability of this great law: ''everywhere, things are transformed into their opposites''.<br />
<br />
=====Affirmation, negation and negation of negation=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Here we must make a distinction between what is called a verbal contradiction—which means that, when someone tells you “yes,” you answer “no”—and the contradiction which we have just seen and which is called a dialectical contradiction, i.e., a contradiction ''in facts'', in things themselves.<br />
<br />
When we speak of the contradiction which exists in the heart of capitalist society, this does not mean that some people say yes and others say no about certain theories. This means that there is a contradiction in factual reality, that there are real forces which are fighting each other: first, a force which tends to ''affirm'' itself, viz., the bourgeois class which tends to maintain itself; then, a second social force which tends toward the negation of the bourgeois class, viz., the proletariat. Hence the contradiction does exist in reality, because the bourgeoisie cannot exist without creating its opposite, the proletariat. <br />
<br />
As Marx says, <blockquote>“What the bourgeoisie, therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.” <ref group="note">Marx and Engels: [[Library:Manifesto of the communist party|Manifesto of the communist party]]: [[Library:Manifesto of the communist party#Bourgeois and proletarians.5BEngels_1.5D|Bourgeois and proletarians]]</ref></blockquote>In order to prevent this, the bourgeoisie would have stop being itself, which would be absurd. Consequently, by affirming itself, it creates its own negation.<br />
<br />
Let us take the example of an egg which is laid and sat on by a hen: we find that in the egg there is a seed which develops at a certain temperature and under certain conditions. This seed, while developing, will produce a chick; hence, the seed is already the negation of the egg. We see then that in the egg there are two forces: one which tends to make it remain an egg and one which tends to make it become a chick. Therefore, the egg is in disagreement with itself and all things are in disagreement with themselves.<br />
<br />
This may seem difficult to understand, because we are used to the metaphysical way of reasoning, but this is why we should make an effort to become accustomed to seeing ''things in their reality''.<br />
<br />
A thing begins by being an ''affirmation'' which comes from ''negation''. The chick is an affirmation born from the negation of the egg. It is one stage of the process. But the chick, in turn, will be transformed into a hen. During this transformation, there will be a contradiction between the forces which fight to make the chick become a hen and those which fight to make the chick remain a chick. The hen will thus be the negation of the chick, the latter having derived from the negation of the egg.<br />
<br />
The hen will therefore be the negation of the negation. And this is the general course of the stages of dialectics.<br />
{|<br />
|Affirmation<br />
|also called<br />
|thesis<br />
|-<br />
|Negation<br />
|or<br />
|antithesis<br />
|-<br />
|Negation of the negation<br />
|or<br />
|synthesis<br />
|}<br />
These words summarize dialectical development. They are used to represent the sequence of stages, to indicate that each stage is the destruction of the preceding one.<br />
<br />
Destruction is a negation. The chick is the negation of the egg, since by being born it destroys the egg. Similarly, the ear of wheat is the negation of the grain of wheat. The grain will germinate in the soil; this germination is the germination of the grain of wheat and will produce a plant. This plant, in turn, will flower and produce an ear; the latter will be the negation of the plant or the negation of the negation.<br />
<br />
Hence, we see that the negation which dialectics speaks of is another way of speaking of destruction. There is a negation of what disappears, of what is destroyed.<br />
<br />
# Feudalism was the negation of the slave state.<br />
# Capitalism is the negation of feudalism.<br />
# Socialism is the negation of capitalism.<br />
<br />
Just as when we made a distinction between verbal contradiction and dialectical contradiction, here we must clearly understand what verbal negation, which says “no,” is and what dialectical negation, which means “destruction,” is.<br />
<br />
But while negation means destruction, it does not mean just any kind of destruction, but dialectical destruction. Thus, when we crush a flea, it does not die from internal destruction, from dialectical negation. Its destruction is not the result of autodynamic stages; it is the result of a purely mechanical change.<br />
<br />
Destruction is a negation only if it is a product of affirmation, if it comes from it. Thus, the egg which is sat on, being the affirmation of what an egg is, engenders its own negation: it becomes a chick, and the latter symbolizes the destruction or the negation of the egg, by piercing and destroying the shell.<br />
<br />
In the chick we observe two adverse forces; “chick” and “hen.” In the course of this development of the process, the hen will lay eggs, whence a new negation of the negation arises. From these eggs, then, a new sequence of the process will begin.<br />
<br />
In the case of wheat we also see an affirmation, then a negation and negation of the negation.<br />
<br />
Let us take materialist philosophy as another example.<br />
<br />
In the beginning, we find a primitive, spontaneous materialism, which, due to its ignorance, creates its own negation: idealism. But the idealism which negates the old materialism will itself be repudiated in turn by modern or dialectical materialism, because philosophy, along with the sciences, develops and provokes the destruction of idealism. Hence, here also, we have affirmation, negation and negation of the negation.<br />
<br />
We may also observe this cycle in the evolution of society.<br />
<br />
In the beginning of history we find the existence of a primitive Communist society, a society without classes, based on the common ownership of the land. But this form of ownership becomes a hindrance to the development of production and, in this way, creates its own negation: a class society, based on private ownership and the exploitation of man by man. But this society as well carries its own negation within itself, because a superior development of the means of production brings about the necessity of negating the division of society into classes, of negating private ownership. So we return to the point of departure: the necessity for a Communist society, ''but on another level''. In the beginning, there was a lack of commodities; today, we have a very high capacity of production.<br />
<br />
Notice that for all the examples we have given we return to the point of departure, but on another level (spiral development), ''a higher level''.<br />
<br />
We see then that contradiction is the great law of dialectics. That evolution is a fight between antagonistic forces. That not only do things change into each other, but also everything is transformed into its opposite. That things do not agree with themselves because there are struggles inside them between opposed forces, because there are internal contradictions within them.<br />
<br />
''Note.'' The expressions “affirmation,” “negation,” and “negation of the negation” are only verbal shorthand for the moments of dialectical evolution. Therefore, we should be careful not to run about trying to find these three stages everywhere. Sometimes we shall not find all of them because the evolution is not complete. So we mustn’t mechanically try to see these changes as such in everything. Let us especially remember that contradiction is the great law of dialectics. That is the essential point.<br />
<br />
=====Summary=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We already know that dialectics is a method of thinking, of reasoning and of analyzing which enables us to make good observations and to study well, for it obliges us to look for the source of everything and to describe its history.<br />
<br />
We have seen that the former method of thinking certainly had its necessity in its time. But to study with the dialectical method is to observe, let us repeat, that all things, apparently immobile, are but a sequence of processes in which everything has a beginning and an end, where in everything, “in spite of all seeming accidents and of all temporary retrogression, a progressive development asserts itself in the end...” <ref name=":7" group="note" /><br />
<br />
Only dialectics enables us to understand the development and the evolution of things; it alone permits us to understand the destruction of ancient things and the birth of new ones. Only dialectics lets us understand all developments in their transformations by letting us know them as entities made up of opposites. For, as far as the dialectical concept is concerned, the natural development of things, evolution, is a continual struggle between antagonistic forces and principles.<br />
<br />
Hence, while for dialectics the first law is the observation of motion and change—“Nothing remains what, where and as it was.” (Engels)—we now know that the explanation of this law resides in the fact that things change not only by transforming themselves into each other, but also by transforming themselves into their opposites. Contradiction is therefore a great law of dialectics.<br />
<br />
We have studied what contradiction is from the dialectical point of view, but we must again lay stress on this in order to add certain details and to point out certain errors which we should not commit.<br />
<br />
It is quite certain that we must first familiarize ourselves with this assertion, which is in harmony with reality: the transformation of things into their opposites. Certainly, this shocks our understanding and surprises us, because we are accustomed to thinking with the old metaphysical method. But we have seen why this is so. We have seen in detail, with examples, that this ''exists'' in reality and why things are changed into their opposites.<br />
<br />
This is why it can be maintained that, if things are transformed, if they change and evolve, it is because they are in contradiction with themselves, because they carry their opposites within themselves, because they contain within themselves ''an interpenetration, a unity and struggle of opposites''.<br />
<br />
=====The unity of opposites=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Each thing is an interpenetration of opposites.<br />
<br />
To declare such a thing at first appears absurd. "A thing and its opposite have nothing in common." This is what is generally thought. For dialectics, however, each thing is, at the same time, itself and its opposite; each thing is an interpenetration of opposites, and we must explain this.<br />
<br />
For a metaphysician, the unity and struggle of opposites is an impossible thing. For him, things are made up of a single piece, in harmony with themselves. Here we are declaring just the opposite, namely that things are made up of two pieces—themselves and their opposites—and that there are two forces in them which fight each other because things are not in harmony with themselves, because they contradict themselves.<br />
<br />
If we take the example of ignorance and science, i.e., knowledge, we know that from the metaphysical point of view these are two totally opposed and contrary things. Someone who is ignorant is not a scientist and someone who is a scientist is not ignorant.<br />
<br />
However, if we look at the facts, we see that they do not give rise to such a rigid opposition. We see that at first ignorance prevailed, then science appeared; and we thereby ascertain that one thing is transformed into its opposite: ignorance is transformed into science.<br />
<br />
There is no ignorance without science or knowledge. There is no 100 percent pure ignorance. An individual, no matter how ignorant he may be, can at least recognize objects and his food. ''There is never absolute ignorance'': there is always some knowledge in ignorance. The seeds of knowledge have already been planted in ignorance. Therefore, we are correct in maintaining that the opposite of a thing is found in the thing itself.<br />
<br />
Let us look at knowledge now. Can there be 100 percent pure knowledge? No. One is always ignorant of something. Lenin says, “The object of knowledge is inexhaustible,” which means that there is always something to be learned. ''There is no absolute knowledge''. All knowledge and every science contains some ignorance.<br />
<br />
What exists in reality is ''relative'' knowledge and ignorance, a mixture of knowledge and ignorance.<br />
<br />
Hence, in this example it is not the ''transformation'' of things into their opposites which we observe, but rather the existence of opposites ''in the same thing'', or, in other words, the ''interpenetration of opposites''. <br />
<br />
We could go back to the examples which we have already seen: life and death, truth and error, and we would find that, in both cases, as in everything, an interpenetration of opposites exists, i.e., each thing contains at the same time itself and its opposite. This is why Engels says:<blockquote>If, however, investigation always proceeds from this standpoint, the demand for final solutions and eternal truths ceases once for all; one is always conscious of the necessary limitation of all acquired knowledge, of the fact that it is conditioned by the circumstances in which it was acquired. On the other hand, one no longer permits oneself to be imposed upon by the antitheses, insuperable for the still common old metaphysics, between true and false, good and bad, identical and different, necessary and accidental. One knows that these antitheses have only a relative validity; that that which is recognized now as true has also its latent false side which will later manifest itself, just as that which is now regarded as false has also its true side by virtue of which it could previously have been regarded as true. <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>This text by Engels clearly shows us how dialectics should be understood and the true meaning of the interpenetration of opposites.<br />
<br />
=====Mistakes to avoid=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
This great law of dialectics, contradiction, must be clearly explained in order not to create any misunderstandings.<br />
<br />
First, it should not be interpreted in a mechanical way. We mustn’t think that in all knowledge there is truth ''plus'' error, or ''both'' something true ''and'' something false.<br />
<br />
If this law were applied in this way, it would justify those who say that there is something true plus something false in all opinions, so “let’s remove what is false, and what is true and good will remain.” This is said in certain so-called Marxist circles, where it is thought that Marxism is right to point out that, in capitalism, there are factories, trusts and banks which hold economic life in their hands, that it is correct to say that this economic life is going badly; but what is false in Marxism, they add, is class struggle: let’s leave out the theory of class struggle and we shall have a good doctrine. It is also said that Marxism applied to the study of society is correct and true “but why mix in dialectics? This is the false side, let’s remove dialectics and keep the rest of Marxism as true!”<br />
<br />
These are mechanical interpretations of the interpenetration of opposites.<br />
<br />
Here is another example: Proudhon, after having learned of this theory of opposites, thought that there was a good and a bad side in everything. So, observing that there is a bourgeoisie and a proletariat in society, he said, “Let’s remove what is bad, the proletariat!” That is how he constructed his system of credits which was to create "parcelled out property," i.e., to allow the proletarians to become owners. In this way, there would only be the bourgeoisie and society would be good.<br />
<br />
However, we know very well that there can be no proletariat ''without'' the bourgeoisie and that the bourgeoisie exists only ''through'' the proletariat: these are two opposites which are inseparable. This unity and struggle of opposites is internal and real: it is an inseparable union. Hence, in order to get rid of the opposites it is not sufficient to cut one from the other. In a society based on the exploitation of man by man, there necessarily exists two antagonistic classes: masters and slaves in antiquity, lords and serfs in the Middle Ages, bourgeoisie and proletariat today.<br />
<br />
In order to abolish capitalist society, to create a society without classes, both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat must be eliminated - in order to enable free men to create a materially and intellectually more advanced society, to go towards communism in its superior form and not to create, as our adversaries claim, a communism which is "egalitarian in poverty."<br />
<br />
Hence, we must be very careful when we explain or when we apply the interpenetration of opposites to an example or to a study. We should avoid trying to find everywhere and to apply mechanically, for example, the negation of the negation, or to find the interpenetration of opposites everywhere, for our knowledge in general is limited and this can lead us to blind alleys.<br />
<br />
What counts is this principle: dialectics and its laws oblige us to study things in order to discover their evolution and the forces, the opposites, which determine this evolution. We must therefore study the interpenetration of opposites contained in things, and this interpenetration of opposites is tantamount to saying that ''an affirmation is never an absolute affirmation'', since it contains within itself a negative portion. And this is the essential point: ''It is because things contain their own negation that they are transformed''. Negation is the “solvent”: if it did not exist, things would not change. As, in fact, things do change, they must then contain a solvent principle. We can declare beforehand that it exists since we see things evolving, but we cannot discover this principle without a detailed study of the thing itself, for this principle does not have the same appearance in everything.<br />
<br />
=====Practical consequences of dialectics=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Hence, in practice, dialectics obliges us always to consider both, not one, sides of things: never to consider truth without ignorance. The big mistake of metaphysics is precisely to consider only one side of things, to judge unilaterally. If we make many mistakes, it is always to the extent that we see but one side of things, because we often reason unilaterally.<br />
<br />
While idealist philosophy maintains that the world exists only in the ideas of men, we must recognize that, in truth, there are some things which exist only in our thoughts. This is true. But idealism is unilateral: it sees only this aspect. It sees only man who invents things which are not found in reality and it then concludes that nothing exists outside of our ideas. Idealism is correct to point out this faculty in man, but, by not applying the criterion of practice, it sees only that.<br />
<br />
Metaphysical materialism is also mistaken because it sees but one side of problems. It sees the universe as a mechanism. Does mechanics exist? Yes! Does it play an important role? Yes! Metaphysical materialism is thus correct to say this, but it is a mistake to see only mechanical motion.<br />
<br />
Naturally, we are prone to seeing only one side of things and people. If we judge a comrade, almost always we see only his good or his bad side. We must see ''both'', without which it would not be possible to have cadres in organizations. In political practice, the unilateral method of judgment leads to sectarianism. If we encounter an adversary belonging to a reactionary organization, we judge him by his bosses. Yet, he is perhaps only an embittered, discontent employee, and we should not judge him like a fascist boss. Likewise, we can apply this reasoning to bosses and understand that, while they may seem bad to us, it is often because they themselves are dominated by the structure of society and, ''under different social conditions'', they would perhaps be different.<br />
<br />
If we keep the interpenetration, the unity and struggle of opposites in mind, we look at things in their multiple aspects. We see then that this reactionary is, on the one hand, reactionary, but, on the other, he is a worker and in his case there is a contradiction. We should look and find out why he has joined this organization and, at the same time, why he should not have joined. In this way we can judge and discuss his case in a less sectarian manner.<br />
<br />
In accordance with dialectics then, we must consider things from all the angles which we can differentiate.<br />
<br />
To summarize, and as a theoretical conclusion, we shall say: Things change because they include an internal contradiction (themselves and their opposites). The opposites are in conflict, and changes arise from these conflicts. Thus change is the ''solution'' of the conflict.<br />
<br />
Capitalism contains an internal contradiction, the conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Change is explained by this conflict and the transformation of capitalist society into a socialist society is the end of this conflict.<br />
<br />
There is change and motion wherever there is contradiction. Contradiction is the negation of the affirmation. When the third term, negation of the negation, is achieved, the solution appears, for, at that moment, the reason for the contradiction is eliminated, ''obsolete''.<br />
<br />
Hence, it can be said that, while the sciences—chemistry, physics, biology, etc.—study the laws of change particular to them, dialectics studies the most general laws of change. Engels says, <blockquote>“Dialectics is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of Nature, human society and thought.” <ref name=":4" group="note" /></blockquote><br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote>''Engels: [[Library:Anti-Dühring|Anti-Dühring]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
==== 4. Transformation of quantity into quality or the law of progress by leaps ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Before tackling the problem of the application of dialectics to history, it remains for us to study one last law of dialectics.<br />
<br />
This will be facilitated by the studies which we have just made wherein we have seen what negation of the negation is and what is meant by the interpenetration, the unity and struggle of opposites.<br />
<br />
As always, let us proceed by examples.<br />
<br />
===== Reforms or revolution =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
When speaking of society, people ask, “Should we instigate reforms or make a revolution?” They debate whether, in order to transform capitalist society into a socialist society, successive reforms or an abrupt transformation—revolution—is needed.<br />
<br />
With respect to this problem, let us recall what we have already studied. Every transformation is the result of a struggle between opposing forces. When something evolves, it is because it contains its opposite, everything being an interpenetration of opposites. We can observe the struggle of opposites and the transformation of the thing into its opposite. ''How does this transformation take place?'' This is the new problem which confronts us.<br />
<br />
One may believe that this transformation occurs little by little, through a series of small transformations, that the green apple changes into a ripe apple through a series of progressive changes.<br />
<br />
Many people think in this way that society is transformed little by little and that the result of a series of these small transformations will be the transformation of capitalist society into a socialist society. These small transformations are reforms and it will be their total, the sum of the small, gradual changes, which will give us a new society.<br />
<br />
This theory is called ''reformism''. The supporters of this theory are called reformists, not because they demand reforms, but because they think that reforms are ''sufficient'', that their accumulation will ''imperceptibly'' transform society.<br />
<br />
Let us see if this is true:<br />
<br />
======The political argument======<br />
{{top}}<br />
If we look at the facts, i.e., what has happened in other countries, we shall see that, where this system has been tried, it has not been successful. The transformation of capitalist society—its destruction—has succeeded in a single country: the U.S.S.R., and we find that it was not through a series of reforms, but through revolution.<br />
<br />
======The historical argument======<br />
{{top}}<br />
Generally speaking, is it true that things are transformed by small changes, by reforms?<br />
<br />
Let us still look at the facts. If we examine historical changes, we see that they do not occur ''indefinitely'', that they are not continuous. There comes a moment when, instead of ''small'' changes, change takes place with an abrupt leap.<br />
<br />
In the history of societies, the outstanding events which we find are abrupt changes, revolutions.<br />
<br />
Even those who are not familiar with dialectics know, nowadays, that violent changes have occurred in history. However, until the 17th century, it was believed that “nature does not jump,” that it makes no leaps. People refused to see any abrupt changes in the continuity of change. But science stepped in and revealed, with facts, that changes did occur abruptly. The revolution of 1789 opened people’s eyes even better; it was in itself an obvious example of a clean break with the past. It came to be seen that all the decisive stages of history had been important, abrupt and sudden upheavals. For example, as friendly as they may have been, the relations between two states grew colder, more strained and bitter, then took on a hostile character—and, all of a sudden, it was war, an abrupt rupture with the continuity of events. Another example: in Germany, after the war of 1914-1918, there was a gradual rise of fascism, then one day Hitler took power: Germany entered a new historical stage.<br />
<br />
Today, those who do not deny these abrupt changes maintain that they are accidents, an accident being something which happens but which might not have happened.<br />
<br />
In this way, people explain revolutions in the history of societies by saying, “They were accidents.”<br />
<br />
With regard to the history of France, for example, it is maintained that the fall of Louis XVI and the French Revolution occurred because Louis XVI was a weak and soft man. “If he had been an energetic man, we would not have had a revolution.” We even read that, if he had not prolonged his meal at Varennes, he would not have been arrested and the course of history would have been changed. Hence, the French Revolution was just an accident, it is said.<br />
<br />
Dialectics, on the contrary, recognized that revolutions are necessities. There are, indeed, gradual changes, but their accumulation ends up producing abrupt changes.<br />
<br />
======The scientific argument======<br />
{{top}}Let us take the example of water, if we start at 0° Centigrade, and raise the temperature of the water from 1°, 2°, 3° up to 98°, the change is continuous. But can it continue indefinitely? We can go again up to 99°, but, at 100° Centigrade, we have an abrupt change: the water is ''transformed'' into steam.<br />
<br />
If, inversely, from 99° we go down to 1°, again we have a continuous change; but we cannot lower the temperature like this indefinitely, for, at 0° Centigrade, the water is ''transformed'' into ice.<br />
<br />
From 1° to 99° the water still remains water; only its temperature changes. This is what is called a ''quantitative'' change, which answers the question “How much?”, i.e., “How much heat is there in the water?”. When the water changes into ice or steam, we have a ''qualitative change'', a change in quality. It is no longer water: it has become ice or steam.<br />
<br />
When a thing does not change its nature, we have a quantitative change (in the example of water, we have a change in the degree of heat, but not in nature). When it changes in nature, when a thing becomes ''another'' thing, this change is qualitative.<br />
<br />
Hence, we see that the evolution of things cannot be quantitative indefinitely: things which change finally undergo a qualitative change. ''Quantity changes into quality''. This is a general law. But, as always, we mustn’t be satisfied with only this abstract formula.<br />
<br />
In Engels’ book ''[[Library:Anti-Dühring|Anti-Dühring]]'', in the chapter entitled “[[Library:Anti-Dühring#Quantity and quality|Dialectics, quantity and quality]]” we can find a large number of examples illustrating how exact this law is, not only in the natural sciences, but in everything else; a law according to which <blockquote>quantitative change suddenly produces, at certain points, a qualitative difference <ref name=":4" group="note" /></blockquote>Here is another example, cited by H. Wallon in volume VIII of the ''French Encyclopédie'' (in which he refers to Engels): nervous energy which accumulates in a child provokes laughter; but, if it continues to grow, laughter changes into a fit of tears; in this way, children who become excited and laugh too hard end up crying.<br />
<br />
We shall give one last well-known example: that of someone running for an elected office. If 4,500 votes are needed for an absolute majority, the candidate is not elected with 4,499 votes; he remains what he is: a candidate. With one more vote, this quantitative change determines a qualitative change, since the candidate becomes an elected official.<br />
<br />
This law provides us with the solution to the problem: reform or revolution.<br />
<br />
Reformists tell us: “You want the impossible which happens only by accident; you are utopians.” But with this law we can see who really is the one who is dreaming the impossible! The study of the phenomena of nature and science shows us that changes are not gradual indefinitely, but that at a certain moment change becomes abrupt. We are not declaring this arbitrarily; rather it is science, nature and reality which declare this to be true.<br />
<br />
We might then ask, “What role do we play in these abrupt changes?”<br />
<br />
We are going to answer this question and develop this problem by applying dialectics to history. Here we have come to a very famous part of dialectical materialism: historical materialism.<br />
<br />
=====Historical materialism=====<br />
{{top}}What is historical materialism? It is simply, now that we know what dialectics is, the application of this method to the history of human societies.<br />
<br />
In order to clearly understand this, we must clarify what history is. History implies change, change in society. Society has a history throughout which it is constantly changing; we see great events taking place in it. So, the following question is raised: since, in history, societies change, what explains these changes?<br />
<br />
======How to explain history?======<br />
{{top}}In this regard it is often asked, “For what reason must there always be war? Men ought to be able to live in peace!”<br />
<br />
To these questions we are going to provide materialist answers.<br />
<br />
A cardinal might explain that war is a punishment from God; this is an idealist answer, for it uses God to explain events. This is explaining history by spirit. It is spirit which creates and makes history.<br />
<br />
Speaking of Providence is also an idealist answer. Hitler, in ''Mein Kampf'', tells us that history is the work of Providence, and he thanks the latter for having placed his place of birth on the Austrian border.<br />
<br />
To make God or Providence responsible for history is a convenient theory; men can do nothing and, consequently, we can do nothing to stop war, we must let it happen.<br />
<br />
From a scientific point of view, can we support such a theory? Can we find its justification in facts? No.<br />
<br />
The first materialist affirmation in this discussion is that history is not the work of God, but the ''work of men''. So then, men can act on history and prevent the war.<br />
<br />
======History is the work of people======<br />
{{top}}<br />
<blockquote>Men make their own history, whatever its outcome may be, in that each person follows his own consciously desired end, and it is precisely the resultant of these many wills operating in different directions and of their manifold effects upon the outer world that constitutes history. Thus it is also a question of what the many individuals desire. The will is determined by passion or deliberation. But the levers which immediately determine passion or deliberation are of very different kinds. Partly they may be external objects, partly ideal motives, ambition, enthusiasm for whims of all kinds. But, on the one hand, we have seen that the many individual wills active in history for the most part produce results quite other than those they intended— often quite the opposite; their motives therefore in relation to the total result are likewise of only secondary significance. On the other hand, the further question arises: What driving forces in turn stand behind these motives? What are the historical causes which transform themselves into these motives in the brains of the actors? <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>This text of Engels tells us then that it is men who act according to their will (desires), but that these desires do not always go in the same direction! What is it then which ''determines'', which decides the actions of men? Why do their desires not go in the same direction?<br />
<br />
Some idealists will agree that it is the actions of men which make history and that these actions result from their will: it is will which determines action, and it is our thoughts and our feelings which determine our will. We would then have the following sequence: idea—will—action. In order to explain action, we must revert back to find the determining idea-cause.<br />
<br />
Now we make it immediately clear that the action of great men and of doctrine is undeniable, but that it needs to be explained. It is not the sequence “idea—will—action” which explains it. In this way some people claim that in the 18th century Diderot and the Encyclopedists, by spreading to the public the ideas of the Rights of Man, seduced and won, by these ideas, the will of those men who, consequently, made the revolution. Similarly, in the U.S.S.R. the ideas of Lenin were spread and people acted in conformity with these ideas. People then conclude from this that, if there were no revolutionary ideas, there would be no revolution. This point of view leads to the conclusion that the motor forces of history are the ideas of great leaders, that it is these leaders who make history. You know the formula of ''Action Française'', “Forty kings made France”; we might add, kings who did not have many “ideas”!<br />
<br />
What is the materialist point of view on this question?<br />
<br />
We have seen that there were many points in common between 18th century materialism and modern materialism, but that the former materialism had an idealist theory of history.<br />
<br />
Hence, whether frankly idealist or disguised behind an inconsistent materialism, this idealist theory which we have just seen and which seems to explain history explains nothing. For ''what provokes action''? Engels says:<blockquote>The old materialism never put this question to itself. Its conception of history, in so far as it has one at all, is therefore essentially pragmatic; it divides men who act in history into noble and ignoble and then finds that as a rule the noble are defrauded and the ignoble are victorious. hence, it follows for the old materialism that nothing very edifying is to be got from the study of history, and for us that in the realm of history the old materialism becomes untrue to itself because it takes the ideal driving forces which operate there as ultimate causes, instead of investigating what is behind them, what are the driving forces of these driving forces. <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>Will, ideas, it is claimed. But why did the philosophers of the 18th century have ''precisely'' these ideas? If they had tried to propound Marxism, no one would have listened to them, for, at this time, people would not have understood. It is not only the fact that ideas are conveyed which counts; they must also be understood. Consequently, there are ''definite times'' for accepting ideas as well as for forging them.<br />
<br />
We have always said that ideas are of great importance, but we must see where they come from.<br />
<br />
We must then search for the causes which give us these ideas, and for what are, in the final analysis, ''the motor forces of history''.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote><br />
''Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]''<br />
<br />
''Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions#Study of dialectics|Control questions]]''<br />
== The historical materialism ==<br />
=== The driving forces of history ===<br />
{{top}}<br />
As soon as the question, “Where do our ideas come from?” is raised, the need for pursuing our research further becomes apparent. If we reasoned in the manner of the 18th century materialists, who thought that “the mind secretes thought as the liver secretes bile,” we could answer this question by saying that it is nature which produces the mind and that, consequently, our ideas are the product of nature and the product of our minds.<br />
<br />
It could then be said that ''history'' is made by the ''action'' of men driven by their will, the latter being the expression of their ''ideas'' which are themselves derived from their brains. But watch out!<br />
<br />
==== One mistake to avoid ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
If we explained the French Revolution by saying that it was the result of the application of the ideas which arose in the minds of philosophers, this would be a narrow and insufficient explanation and a poor application of materialism.<br />
<br />
What must be seen is ''why'' the ideas launched by the thinkers of this period were adopted by the masses. Why was Diderot not alone in conceiving of them and for what reason were the great majority of minds since the 16th century developing the same ideas? Is it because these minds suddenly had the same weight, the same convolution? No. There were changes in ideas, but no change took place inside the skull.<br />
<br />
This explanation of ideas by the brain seems like a materialist explanation. But to speak of Diderot’s brain is really to speak of the ideas in Diderot’s brain. Hence, this is a falsified and improper materialist theory, in which we witness the revival of the idealist tendency to give primary importance to ideas.<br />
<br />
Let us go back to the sequence: history — action — will — ideas. Ideas have a meaning, a content. The working class, for example, struggles for the elimination of capitalism. This is an idea held by the struggling workers. They think because they have brains, certainly, and the brain is therefore a ''necessary condition'' for thinking; but it is not a ''sufficient'' condition. The brain explains the material act of having ideas, but it does not explain why one has certain ideas rather than others. “Everything which sets men in motion must go through their minds; but what form it will take in the mind will depend very much upon the circumstances.” <ref name=":7" group="note" /><br />
<br />
How can we then explain the content of our ideas, that is, how does the idea of overthrowing capitalism come to us?<br />
<br />
==== The "social being" and consciousness ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We know that our ideas are the reflection of things. The goals which our ideas contain are also the reflection of things, but which things?<br />
<br />
In order to answer this question, we must see where men live and where their ideas appear. We find that men live in a capitalist society and that their ideas appear in this society and are derived from it. <blockquote>“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.” <ref name=":12" group="note">Marx: ''[[Library:A contribution to the critique of political economy|A contribution to the critique of political economy]]: [[Library:A contribution to the critique of political economy#Preface|Preface]]''</ref></blockquote>In this definition, what Marx calls “their being,” signifies what we are; “consciousness” is what we think, what we desire.<br />
<br />
We are struggling for an ideal profoundly rooted in us, it is generally said, and as a result of this, it is our ''consciousness'' which determines our being. We act in a certain way because we think in a certain way, because we want to.<br />
<br />
It is a grave error to speak this way, for in reality it is our social being which determines our consciousness.<br />
<br />
A proletarian ''thinks'' like a proletarian, and a bourgeois ''thinks'' like a bourgeois (we shall see later why this is not always the case). But, generally speaking, “A man thinks differently in a palace and in a hut.” <ref group="note">Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach]]: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy#Feuerbach|Feuerbach]]</ref><br />
<br />
==== Idealist theories ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Idealists say that a proletarian or a bourgeois is one or the other because he thinks like one or the other.<br />
<br />
We say, on the contrary, that, while one may think like a proletarian or a bourgeois, this is because one is one or the other. A proletarian has a proletarian class consciousness because ''he is'' a proletarian.<br />
<br />
We should pay close attention to the practical consequences of this idealist theory. Accordingly, if one is a bourgeois, it is because one thinks like a bourgeois. Hence, in order to stop being one, it is sufficient to change the way of thinking in question; and in order to halt bourgeois exploitation, it is sufficient to make the bosses change their ''convictions''. This is a theory defended by Christian socialists; it was also shared by the founders of utopian socialism.<br />
<br />
Moreover, it is also held by the fascists who fight against capitalism, not to eliminate it, but to make it more “rational”! As soon as management understands that it exploits workers, they say, it will no longer do so. Here we have a completely idealist theory whose dangers are obvious to us.<br />
<br />
====The "social being" and the conditions of existence====<br />
{{top}}Marx speaks of “social being.” What does he mean by this?<br />
<br />
“Social being” is determined by the material conditions of existence in which men live in society.<br />
<br />
It is not the consciousness of men which determines their material conditions of existence, but these material conditions which determine their consciousness.<br />
<br />
What are the material conditions of existence? In society, there are rich people and poor people, and their way of thinking is different, their ideas on the same subject are different. Taking the subway, for someone poor and unemployed, is a luxury, but it is a disgrace for someone rich who has a car.<br />
<br />
Does a poor person entertain these ideas about the subway because he is poor or because he takes the subway? Because he is poor. Being poor is his condition of existence.<br />
<br />
So, we must see ''why'' there are rich people and poor people in order to be able to explain men’s conditions of existence.<br />
<br />
In the economic process of production, a group of people occupying an analogous place (i.e., in the present capitalist system, possessing the means of production—or, on the contrary, working on the means of production which do not belong to them), and consequently having to a certain extent the same material conditions of existence, form a ''class''. However, the notion of class is not simply that of wealth or poverty. A proletarian may earn more than a bourgeois. He is, nonetheless, a proletarian because he is dependent on a boss and because his life is neither ''secure'' nor ''independent''. The material conditions of existence consist not only of money earned, but also of ''social function''. Therefore, we have the following sequence:<br />
<br />
People make their ''history'' through their ''actions'' according to their ''will'', which is the expression of their ''ideas''. The latter are derived from their material conditions of existence, i.e., their membership in a ''class''.<br />
<br />
==== Class struggles, the driving force of history ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
People act because they have certain ideas. They owe these ideas to their material conditions of existence, because they belong to one class or another. This does not mean that there are only two classes in society. There are a number of classes, of which two are principally in conflict: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.<br />
<br />
Hence, ''beneath ideas there are classes''.<br />
<br />
Society is divided into classes which struggle against each other. Thus, if we examine the ideas which man has, we see that these ideas are in conflict, and that, beneath these ideas, we find classes which are themselves in conflict as well.<br />
<br />
Consequently, the motor forces of history, i.e., ''the explanation of history, is class struggle''.<br />
<br />
If we take the permanent deficit of the budget, for example, we see that there are two solutions: one consists of continuing what is called financial orthodoxy: savings, loans, new taxes, etc.; the other solution consists of making the rich pay.<br />
<br />
We observe a political struggle around these ideas. Generally, one is “sorry” that one cannot reach an agreement on this matter. The Marxist, however, wants to understand and looks for what is underneath the political struggle. He then discovers the social struggle, i.e., class struggle. Struggle between those who favor the first solution (capitalists) and those who favor making the rich pay (middle classes and proletariat). Engels says:<blockquote>In modern history at least it is, therefore, proved that all political struggles are class struggles, and all class struggles for emancipation, despite their necessarily political form — for every class struggle is a political struggle — turn ultimately on the question of ''economic'' emancipation. <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>Thus we have another link to add to the sequence we have used to explain history. We now have: action, will, ideas, beneath which are found classes and, behind classes, is the economy. ''Hence, it is indeed class struggles which explain history, but it is the economy which determines classes''.<br />
<br />
If we wish to explain a historical fact, we must examine which ideas are in conflict, look for the classes beneath these ideas and, finally, define the economic mode which characterizes these classes.<br />
<br />
One may still wonder where classes and the economic mode come from (and dialecticians are not afraid of asking all these successive questions because they know that we must find the source of everything). This is what we shall study in detail in the next chapter, but we can already say:<br />
<br />
In order to know where classes come from, one must study the history of society, and then one will see that the existing classes have not always been the same. In Greece: slaves and masters: in the Middle Ages: serfs and lords; next, to simplify the enumeration, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.<br />
<br />
In the above description, we find that classes change, and, if we look for the reason why they change, we shall see that it is because the ''economic conditions'' have changed (by economic conditions we mean: the structure of production, of distribution, of exchange, of the consumption of goods, and, as the ultimate condition of all the rest, the way of producing, or technology).<br />
<br />
Here follows a text by Engels:<blockquote>Bourgeoisie and proletariat both arose in consequence of a transformation of the economic conditions, more precisely, of the mode of production. The transition, first from guild handicrafts to manufacture, and then from manufacture to large-scale industry, with steam and mechanical power, had caused the development of these two classes. <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>Hence, in the last analysis, we see that we may represent the motor forces of history by the following sequence:<br />
<br />
# History is the work of ''people''.<br />
# Action, which creates history, is determined by their ''will''.<br />
# This will is the expression of their ''ideas''.<br />
# These ideas are the reflection of the ''social conditions'' in which they live.<br />
# It is these social conditions which determine ''classes'' and their struggles.<br />
# Classes are themselves determined by ''economic conditions''.<br />
<br />
To clarify in what forms and under what conditions this sequence takes place, let us say that:<br />
<br />
# ''Ideas'' find their expression in life in the ''political'' sphere.<br />
# ''Class struggles'', which are behind the struggles of ideas, are manifested in the ''social sphere''.<br />
#''Economic conditions'' (which are determined by the state of ''technology'') find their expression in the ''economic sphere''.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote><br />
''Marx and Engels: [[Library:Manifesto of the communist party|Manifesto of the communist party]]''<br />
<br />
''Marx: [[Library:A contribution to the critique of political economy|A contribution to the critique of political economy]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
===Where do classes and economic conditions come from?===<br />
{{top}}We have seen that, in the last analysis, the motor forces of history are classes and their struggles determined by ''economic conditions''.<br />
<br />
This may be expressed by the following sequence: people have ideas in their heads which make them act. These ideas are derived from the material conditions of existence in which they live. These material conditions of existence are determined by the social place they occupy in society, i.e., by the class to which they belong, and classes are themselves determined by the economic conditions in which society evolves.<br />
<br />
But it remains for us to see what it is which determines economic conditions and the classes they create. This is what we propose to study below.<br />
<br />
==== First major division of labor ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
By studying the evolution of society and taking into account the events of the past, the first observation one makes is that the division of society into classes has not always existed. Dialectics demands that we search for the origin of things. Now we find that, in a far-distant past, there were no classes. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels tells us:<blockquote>Production at all former stages of society was essentially collective: there was not one class, one category, then another. Likewise, consumption of the products created by men was collective. This is primitive communism.</blockquote>All men participate in production; the individual instruments of labor are private property, but those which are used in common belong to the community. The division of labor exists at this lower stage only between the sexes. Man hunts, fishes, etc.; woman takes care of the house. There are no “private” interests at stake.<blockquote>But men did not remain in this period; the first change in the life of men will be the division of labor in society. “But the division of labor slowly insinuates itself into this process of production.” <ref name=":9" group="note">Engels: ''[[Library:The origin of the family, private property and the state|The origin of the family, private property and the state]]: [[Library:The origin of the family, private property and the state#Barbarism and civilization|Barbarism and civilization]]''</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
This first event occurs where men:<blockquote>found animals which could be tamed and, when once tamed, bred. The wild buffalo cow had to be hunted; the tame buffalo cow gave a calf yearly and milk as well. A number of the most advanced tribes— the Aryans, Semites, perhaps already also the Turanians—now made their chief work first the taming of cattle, later their breeding and tending only. Pastoral tribes separated themselves from the mass of the rest of the barbarians—the first great social division of labor. <ref name=":9" group="note" /></blockquote>Hence we have, as the first mode of production: hunting and fishing; as the second mode of production: cattle raising, which gives rise to pastoral tribes.<br />
<br />
This first division of labor is the basis for:<br />
<br />
====First division of society into classes====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The increase of production in all branches—cattle raising, agriculture, domestic handicrafts—gave human labor power the capacity to produce a larger product than was necessary for its maintenance. At the same time it increased the daily amount of work to be done by each member of the gens, household community or single family. It was now desirable to bring in new labor forces. War provided them; prisoners of war were turned into slaves. With its increase of the productivity of labor and therefore of wealth, and its extension of the field of production, the first great social division of labor was bound, in the general historical conditions prevailing, to bring slavery in its train. From the first great social division of labor arose the first great cleavage of society into two classes: masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited. <ref name=":9" group="note" /><br />
<br />
We have now reached the threshold of civilization. Civilization opens with a new advance in the division of labor. At the lowest stage of barbarism men produced only directly for their own needs; any acts of exchange were isolated occurrences, the object of exchange merely some fortuitous surplus. In the middle stage of barbarism we already find among the pastoral peoples a possession in the form of cattle which, once the herd has attained a certain size, regularly produces a surplus over and above the tribe’s own requirements, leading to a division of labor between pastoral peoples and backward tribes without herds, and hence to the existence of two different levels of production side by side with one another and to the conditions necessary for regular exchange. <ref name=":9" group="note" /><br />
<br />
Thus, at this moment, we have two classes in society: masters and slaves. Thereafter society will continue to live and to undergo new developments. A new class will appear and grow.<br />
<br />
==== Second major division of labour ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
<blockquote>Wealth increased rapidly, but as the wealth of individuals. The products of weaving, metalwork and the other handicrafts, which were becoming more and more differentiated, displayed growing variety and skill. In addition to corn, leguminous plants and fruits, agriculture now provided wine and oil, the preparation of which had been learned. Such manifold activities were no longer within the scope of one and the same individual; the second great division of labor took place—handicraft separated from agriculture. The continuous increase of production and simultaneously of the productivity of labor heightened the value of human labor power. Slavery… now be-comes an essential constituent part of the social system; slaves ... are driven by dozens to work in the fields and the workshops. With the splitting up of production into the two great main branches, agriculture and handicrafts, arises production directly for exchange, commodity production; with it came commerce, … <ref name=":9" group="note" /></blockquote><br />
<br />
==== Second division of society into classes ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
In this way, the first great division of labor increases the value of human labor, and creates a growth of wealth, which again increases the value of labor and makes a second division of labor necessary: handicrafts and agriculture. At this moment, the constant increase of production and with it of the value of the human labor power makes slaves ’’indispensable" and creates commercial production and with it a third class: merchants.<br />
<br />
Hence, at this moment in society, we have a triple division of labor and three classes: farmers, artisans, merchants. For the first time we see a class appear which ''does not participate in production'', and this class, the merchant class, will dominate the other two.<blockquote>The upper stage of barbarism brings us the further division of labor between agriculture and handicrafts, hence the production of a constantly increasing portion of the products of labor directly for exchange, so that exchange between individual producers assumes the importance of a vital social function. Civilization consolidates and intensifies all these existing divisions of labor, particularly by sharpening the opposition between town and country (the town may economically dominate the country, as in antiquity, or the country the town, as in the middle ages), and it adds a third division of labor peculiar to itself and of decisive importance. It creates a class which no longer concerns itself with production, but only with the exchange of the products—the merchants…. (This class) makes itself into an indispensable middleman between any two producers and exploits them both. Under the pretext… (of becoming) the most useful class of the population, a class of parasites… who, as a reward for their actually very insignificant services, skim all the cream off production at home and abroad, rapidly amass enormous wealth and a corresponding social influence, and for that reason receive under civilization ever higher honors and ever greater control of production until at last they also bring forth a product of their own — the periodical trade crises. <ref name=":9" group="note" /></blockquote>Hence, we see the sequence which, beginning with primitive communism, leads us to capitalism.<br />
<br />
# Primitive communism.<br />
# Division between barbarians and pastoral tribes (first division of labor: masters and slaves).<br />
# Division between farmers and artisans (second division of labor).<br />
# Birth of a merchant class (third division of labor) which<br />
# Engenders periodic commercial crises (capitalism).<br />
<br />
Now we know where classes come from; it remains for us to study:<br />
<br />
====This determines the economic conditions ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We should first review very briefly the different societies which have preceded us.<br />
<br />
We lack documents with which to study in detail the history of societies which preceded those of antiquity. But we know, for example, that with the Greeks, masters and slaves existed and that the merchant class was already beginning to develop. Then, in the Middle Ages, feudal society, with its lords and serfs, enabled the merchants to gain more and more importance. They clustered near the castles, in the heart of the ''bourgs'' (whence the name “bourgeois”). Moreover, in the Middle Ages, before capitalist production, there were only small enterprises, whose primary condition was that the producer be the owner of his instruments of labor. The means of production belonged to the individual and were adapted only to individual use. Consequently, they were paltry, small, and limited. The historical role of capitalist production and the bourgeoisie was to concentrate and enlarge these means of production, transforming them into the powerful levers of modern production.<blockquote>...since the 15th century this has been historically worked out through the three phases of simple co-operation, manufacture, and modern industry. But the bourgeoisie, as is shown there, could not transform these puny means of production into mighty productive forces without transforming them, at the same time, from means of production of the individual into ''social'' means of production only workable by a collectivity of men. <ref name=":10" group="note">Engels: ''[[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific|Socialism: utopian and scientific]]: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific#Historical%20materialism|Historical materialism]]''</ref></blockquote>Hence, we see that, parallel with the evolution of classes (masters and slaves; lords and serfs), there is an evolution of the conditions of production, of distribution and of exchange of wealth, i.e., of economic conditions, and that this economic evolution follows step by step and coincides with the evolution of the modes of production. It is therefore the<br />
<br />
==== Modes of production ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
that is, the condition of instruments and tools, their utilization, labor methods, in a word, the state of technology, which determines economic conditions.<blockquote>The spinning-wheel, the hand-loom, the blacksmith’s hammer were replaced by the spinning machine, the power-loom, the steam-hammer; the individual workshop, by the factory, implying the cooperation of hundreds of thousands of workmen. In like manner, production itself changed from a series of individual into a series of social acts, and the products from individual to social products. <ref name=":10" group="note" /></blockquote>Here we see that the evolution of modes of production totally transformed the productive forces. Now, while the tools of labor have become collective, the ownership of property has remained individual! Machines which can function only through collective implementation have remained the property of a single man. For this reason we see that<blockquote>“[The productive forces], as they grow more and more powerful, against their quality as capital, this stronger and stronger command that their social character shall be recognized ''(...)'', tends to bring about that form of the socialization of great masses of the means of production which we meet with in the different kinds of joint-stock companies ''(...)'' At a further stage of evolution, this form also becomes insufficient ''(...)'', the official representative of capitalist society — the state — will ultimately have to undertake the direction of production ''(...)'' show how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose <ref name=":10" group="note" /><br />
<br />
“All [the capitalist's] social functions are now performed by salaried employees.” <ref name=":11" group="note">Engels: ''[[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific|Socialism: utopian and scientific]]: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific#Historical materialism|Historical materialism]]: [[Library:Socialism:_utopian_and_scientific#Capitalist_revolution|Capitalist_revolution]]''</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
Thus the contradictions of the capitalist system become clear to us:<blockquote>On the one hand, perfecting of machinery, made by competition compulsory for each individual manufacturer, and complemented by a constantly growing displacement of laborers. ''Industrial reserve-army''. On the other hand, unlimited extension of production, also compulsory under competition, for every manufacturer. On both sides, unheard-of development of productive forces, excess of supply over demand, over-production and products — excess there, of laborers, without employment and without means of existence. <ref name=":11" group="note" /></blockquote>There is a contradiction between work which has become social and collective and property which has remained private. And so, with Marx, we shall say:<blockquote>From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. <ref name=":12" group="note" /></blockquote><br />
<br />
==== Remarks ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Before ending this chapter, we must make a few comments and underline the fact that, in this study, we find all the characteristics and laws of dialectics which we have just studied.<br />
<br />
Indeed, we have just very quickly traced the history of societies, of classes and of modes of production. We see how dependent each part of this study is on the others. We find that this history is essentially in motion and that the changes which occur at each stage of the evolution of society are provoked by an internal struggle between the different conservative and progressive elements, a struggle which ends in the destruction of one society and in the birth of a new one. Each society has a character and a structure quite different from the society which preceded it. These radical transformations occur after an accumulation of events which, in themselves, seem insignificant, but which, at a certain moment, create by their accumulation a situation which provokes an abrupt, revolutionary change.<br />
<br />
Hence, here we recognize the characteristics and the great general laws of dialectics namely:<br />
<br />
* The interdependence of things and events.<br />
* Dialectical motion and change.<br />
* Autodynamism.<br />
* Contradiction.<br />
* Reciprocal action.<br />
* And evolution by leaps (transformation of quantity into quality).<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote>''Engels: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific|Socialism: utopian and scientific]]''<br />
<br />
''Engels: [[Library:The origin of the family, private property and the state|The origin of the family, private property and the state]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions#The historical materialism|Control questions]]''<br />
<br />
== Dialectical materialism and ideologies ==<br />
=== Application of the dialectical method to ideologies ===<br />
==== What is the importance of ideologies for Marxism? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We are accustomed to hearing that Marxism is a materialist philosophy which denies the role of ideas in history. Denying the role of the ideological factor, it only considers economic influences.<br />
<br />
''This is false''. Marxism does not deny the important role of the mind, of art or of ideas in life. Quite to the contrary, it attaches a particular importance to these ideological forms. We are going to end this study of the elementary principles of Marxism by examining how the method of dialectical materialism may be applied to ideologies. We shall see what the role of ideologies in history, i.e., the influence of the ideological ''factor'', is and what ideological ''forms'' are.<br />
<br />
This part of Marxism which we are about to study is the least known part of this philosophy. The reason for this is that, for a long time, attention has been centered on the part of Marxism which deals with political economy. As a result, this subject has been arbitrarily separated, not only from the great “whole” which Marxism forms, but from its very foundation. For what enabled political economy to become a true science was historical materialism, which is, as we have seen, an application of dialectical materialism.<br />
<br />
We might point out, parenthetically, that this manner of proceeding derives from the metaphysical spirit which we have so much trouble ridding ourselves of. It is, let us repeat, to the extent that we isolate things and study them unilaterally, that we commit mistakes.<br />
<br />
Incorrect interpretations of Marxism derive, therefore, from the fact that the role of ideologies in history and in life has not been sufficiently underlined. Ideologies have been separated from Marxism. As a result, Marxism has been separated from dialectical materialism, that is to say, from itself!<br />
<br />
We are happy to see that, in recent years, thanks in part to the work of the Workers’ University in Paris, through which several thousands of students have come to know Marxism, thanks also to the work of our intellectual comrades who have contributed to the cause through their work and their books, Marxism has regained its true character and the place which belongs to it.<br />
<br />
====What is an ideology? (Ideological factors and forms)====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We shall open this chapter, which is dedicated to the role of ideologies, with a few definitions.<br />
<br />
What do we call an ''ideology''? Ideology implies, above all, ''ideas''. Ideology is a collection of ideas which form a whole, a theory, a system or even at times simply a state of mind.<br />
<br />
Marxism is an ideology which forms a whole and which offers a method of resolving all problems. A republican ideology is the collection of ideas which we find in the mind of a republican. <ref group="note">“Republican” as in someone who supports a republic.</ref><br />
<br />
But an ideology is not only a collection of pure ideas, supposedly void of any feeling (this is a metaphysical concept); an ideology necessarily includes feelings, likes, dislikes, hopes, fears, etc. In the proletarian ideology, we find the ideal elements of class struggle, but we also find feelings of solidarity with those who are exploited by the capitalist system, with the “imprisoned,” as well as feelings of revolt, of enthusiasm, etc. All of these elements make up an ideology.<br />
<br />
Now let us see what is meant by the ''ideological factor'': this is ideology considered as a cause or a force which acts, which is capable of exerting influence. This is why one speaks of the ''influence of the ideological factor''. Religions, for example, are an ideological factor which we must take account of; they have a moral force of considerable influence.<br />
<br />
What is an ''ideological form''? This term designates a collection of particular ideas which form an ideology in a specialized field. Religion and ethics are forms of ideology, as are science, philosophy, literature, art and poetry.<br />
<br />
Hence, if we want to examine the role of the history of ideology in general and of all its forms in particular, we must conduct our study, not by separating ideology from history, i.e., from the life of society, but by determining the role of ideology, its factors and forms, ''in'' and beginning with society.<br />
<br />
==== Economic structure and ideological structure ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
In our study of historical materialism, we saw that the history of societies may be explained in the following sequence: men make history by their actions, the expression of their will. The latter is determined by their ideas. We have seen that what explains men’s ideas, i.e., their ideology, is the social milieu in which we find classes, themselves determined by the economic factor, i.e., in the last analysis, by the mode of production.<br />
<br />
We have also seen that between the ideological factor and the social factor there is the political factor, which appears in the ideological struggle as the expression of the social struggle.<br />
<br />
If, then, we examine the structure of society in the light of historical materialism, we see that its foundation is the economic structure, then, above it, there is the social structure, which supports the political structure, and finally the ideological structure.<br />
<br />
We see that, for materialists, the ideological structure is at the top of the social edifice, while, for idealists, the ideological structure is at its base.<blockquote>In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. <ref name=":12" group="note" /></blockquote>Consequently, we see that it is the economic structure which forms the foundation of society. We might also say that it is the infrastructure (which means inferior, or lower, structure).<br />
<br />
Ideology, including all its forms: ethics, religion, science, poetry, art and literature, constitutes the supra—or superstructure (which means structure at the top).<br />
<br />
Since we know, as materialist theory shows, that ideas are the reflection of things, that it is our social existence which determines our consciousness, we may say that the superstructure is the reflection of the infrastructure.<br />
<br />
Here is an example by Engels, which clearly shows this to be so:<blockquote>Calvin's creed was one fit for the boldest of the bourgeoisie of his time. His predestination doctrine was the religious expression of the fact that in the commercial world of competition success or failure does not depend upon a man's activity or cleverness, but upon circumstances uncontrollable by him. It is not of him that willeth or of him that runneth, but of the mercy of unknown superior economic powers; and this was especially true at a period of economic revolution, when all old commercial routes and centres were replaced by new ones, when India and America were opened to the world, and when even the most sacred economic articles of faith – the value of gold and silver – began to totter and to break down. <ref group="note">Engels: ''[[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces|Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces]]: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces#History of the English middle-class|History of the English middle-class]]''</ref></blockquote>What happens in the economic life of merchants? They compete with each other. Merchants and bourgeois alike have experienced this competition, in which there are victors and vanquished. Quite often, the most resourceful and intelligent are defeated by competition, by a crisis which crops up and downs them. For them, this crisis is unpredictable, a blow of fate. It is this idea, that, for no apparent reason, the least clever sometimes survive crises, which is transposed in the Protestant religion. It is this observation, that some accidentally “make it,” which creates the idea of ''predestination'' according to which men must submit to a fate which is fixed, for all eternity, by God.<br />
<br />
From this example of the reflection of economic conditions, we see how the superstructure is the reflection of the infrastructure.<br />
<br />
Here is another example: let us take the mentality of two non-union, i.e., politically undeveloped, workers. One works in a big factory, where the work is rationalized; the other for a small craftsman. It is certain that both of them will have a different conception of their boss. For one, the boss will be the ferocious exploiter, characteristic of capitalism. The other will see the boss as a worker, certainly well-off, but a worker and not a tyrant.<br />
<br />
It is surely the reflection of their conditions of work which will determine their conception of management.<br />
<br />
This important example causes us, in order to be precise, to make certain observations.<br />
<br />
==== True and false consciousness ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have just said that ideologies are the reflection of the material conditions of society, that social being determines social consciousness. One might conclude from this that the proletariat must automatically have a proletarian ideology.<br />
<br />
But such a supposition does not correspond to reality, for there are workers who do not have a worker’s consciousness.<br />
<br />
Hence, we must make a distinction: people may live in certain conditions, but their consciousness of it may not correspond to reality. This is what Engels terms “having a false consciousness.”<br />
<br />
Example: some workers are influenced by the doctrine of corporatism which is a return towards the Middle Ages and handicrafts. In this case, there is a consciousness of the misery of workers, but it is not a true and correct consciousness. Ideology certainly is, in this case, a reflection of the conditions of social life, but it is not a loyal or exact reflection.<br />
<br />
In people’s consciousness, this reflection is often “upside down.” To observe the existence of misery is a reflection of social conditions, but this reflection becomes false when one thinks that a return to handicrafts would be the solution to the problem. Hence, here we see a consciousness which is partly true and partly false.<br />
<br />
The worker who is a royalist also has a consciousness which is both true and false. True because he wants to eliminate the misery which he observes; false because he thinks a king can do that. And, simply because he has reasoned badly, because he has poorly chosen his ideology, this worker can become a class enemy for us, even though he belongs to our class. Thus, to have a false consciousness is to be mistaken or deceived about one’s true condition.<br />
<br />
We can say, then, that ideology is the reflection of the conditions of existence, but that it is not an ''inevitable'' reflection.<br />
<br />
Moreover, we must point out that everything possible is done to give us a false consciousness and to develop the influence of the ideology of the ruling classes on the exploited classes. The first elements of a life conception which we receive, our education and instruction, give us a false consciousness. Our connections in life, a peasant background for some of us, propaganda, the press, the radio also falsify our consciousness at times.<br />
<br />
Consequently, ideological work is of extreme importance for us as Marxists. False consciousness must be ''destroyed'' in order for us to attain a true consciousness. Without ideological work, this transformation cannot be realized.<br />
<br />
Those who consider Marxism to be a fatalistic doctrine are, therefore, wrong, since, in reality, we believe that ideologies play a large role in society and that one must teach and learn the philosophy of Marxism so that it may become an efficient tool and weapon.<br />
<br />
==== Action and reaction of ideological factors ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
From the examples of true and false consciousness above, we have seen that we mustn’t always try to explain ideas only by the economy, thereby denying that ideas exert any influence. To proceed in this way would be to interpret Marxism incorrectly.<br />
<br />
Ideas can be explained, certainly, in the ''last analysis'', by the economy, but they also have an activity of their own.<blockquote>…According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure... also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents (that is, of things and events whose inner interconnection is so remote or so impossible of proof that we can regard it as nonexistent, as negligible), the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary. <ref group="note">Engels letter to J. Bloch In Königsberg<br />
<br />
Available in MIA: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm</ref></blockquote>Hence, we see that we must examine ''everything'' before looking for the economic factor and that, while the latter is the cause in the last analysis, we must always remember that it is not the ''only'' cause.<br />
<br />
Ideologies are ''reflections'' and the ''effects'' of economic conditions, but the relation between the two is not simple, for we also observe a ''reciprocal action of ideologies'' on the infrastructure.<br />
<br />
If we want to study the mass movement which developed in France after February 6, 1934 <ref group="note">The authors are referring to the Popular Front, a coalition of left-wing parties (Socialists, Communists and Radicals) which came to power in France in 1936. <br />
<br />
The riot of February 6, 1934, was crucial to this movement, for it led first to a spontaneous grouping of the masses with the leaders of the left-wing parties and, later in the year, to an agreement “against fascism and war,” signed between Communists and Socialists. <br />
<br />
After the success of the Popular Front in the elections of May 1936, Leon Blum constituted a left-wing government which was to remain in power until June 1937</ref>, we shall do so from two angles, in order to demonstrate what we have just discussed.<br />
<br />
# Some explain this movement by saying that its cause was the economic crisis. This is a materialist, but unilateral, explanation. This explanation takes only one factor into consideration: the economic one, in this case, the crisis.<br />
# This reasoning is, therefore, partly correct, but on the condition that another explanatory factor be added: what people were thinking, their ideology. Now, in this mass movement, people were “anti-Fascist.” These feelings were due to the propaganda which gave rise to the Popular Front. But, in order for this propaganda to be effective, a favorable terrain was necessary. What one was able to do in 1936 was not possible in 1932. Finally, we know how, afterwards, this mass movement and its ideology in turn influenced the economy by the social struggle which they inspired.<br />
<br />
Hence, in this example we see that ideology, which is the reflection of social conditions, becomes in turn a cause of events.<blockquote>Political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., development is based on economic development. But all these react upon one another and also upon the economic basis. It is not that the economic situation is cause, solely active, while everything else is only passive effect. There is, rather, interaction on the basis of economic necessity, which ultimately asserts itself. <ref group="note">Engels letter to Borgius<br />
<br />
Available on MIA: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_25.htm</ref></blockquote>Accordingly,<blockquote>The basis of the right of inheritance—assuming that the stages reached in the development of the family are the same—is an economic one. Nevertheless, it would be difficult to prove, for instance, that the absolute liberty of the testator in England and the severe restrictions in every detail imposed upon him in France are due to economic causes alone. Both react back, however, on the economic sphere to a very considerable extent, because they influence the distribution of property. <ref group="note">Engels letter to C. Schmidt<br />
<br />
Available on MIA: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_10_27.htm</ref></blockquote>To cite a more contemporary example, we shall take that of taxes. We all have an idea about taxes. The rich want theirs reduced and so favor indirect taxes; workers and the middle classes want, on the contrary, a fiscality based on direct and progressive taxation. So then, the idea which we have about taxes, and which is an ideological factor, has its origin in our economic situation, which is created and imposed by capitalism. The rich wish to keep their privileges and fight to preserve the present mode of taxation and to reinforce the laws in this direction. Now, these laws, which derive from ideas, react on the economy, for they destroy small commerce and the handicrafts and accelerate capitalist concentration.<br />
<br />
Consequently, we see that economic conditions give rise to modifications in economic conditions, and that is by taking into account this ''reciprocity of relations'' that we should examine ideologies, all ideologies. It is only in the last analysis that we see economic necessities always prevail.<br />
<br />
We know that it is the mission of writers and thinkers to propagate, if not defend, ideologies. Their thoughts and writings are not always very typical or straightforward, but, in fact, even in simple tales or stories, upon analysis we can always find an ideology. To make this type of analysis is a very delicate operation, and we must be very prudent. We are going to indicate a dialectical method of analysis, which will be of great assistance, but we must be careful not to be mechanical and try to explain the unexplainable.<br />
<br />
==== Dialectical method of analysis ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
In order to apply the dialectical method properly, one must know many things. If you do not know your subject, it must be studied carefully, otherwise, your judgment will amount to only a caricature of the truth.<br />
<br />
# In order to make an analysis of a literary work, a book or story, we are going to indicate a method which may be applied to other subjects as well. You must first pay attention to the content of the book or story you wish to analyze. Examine it independently of any social question, for not everything is derived from class struggle or economic conditions. There are literary influences which we must take into consideration. Try to see to which “literary school” the work belongs. Take into account the internal development of ideologies. Practically speaking, it would be good to make a summary of the subject under analysis and to note down anything you found remarkable.<br />
# Next observe the social types the heroes of the intrigue belong to. Look for the class to which they belong. Examine the action of the characters and see if what takes place in the novel can be linked in some way to a social viewpoint. If this is not possible, if it cannot reasonably be done, it is better to abandon the analysis rather than invent. You must never invent an explanation.<br />
# After you have discovered what class or classes are involved, you must determine the economic foundation, i.e., the means of production and the way of producing at the moment when the action of the novel takes place. If, for example, the action is contemporary, the economic system is capitalism. At present we see numerous stories and novels which criticize and fight capitalism. But there are two ways to fight capitalism:<br />
## As a revolutionary seeking to go forward.<br />
## As a reactionary, who wants to return to the past. It is often this form which we encounter in modern novels, in which one longs for the “good old days.”<br />
# Once we have obtained all this, we can then look for the ideology, i.e., see what the ideas and feelings, the way of thinking, of the author is. While searching for the ideology, we shall keep in mind the role it plays, its influence on the minds of those who read the book.<br />
# We can then conclude our analysis, by saying why such a story or novel was written at ''such a moment''. And criticize or praise, according to the case, the author’s intentions (often unconscious).<br />
<br />
This method of analysis can be effective only if one remembers, while applying it, everything which has been said previously. We must remember that dialectics, while it provides us with a new way of conceiving things, also demands that we know them well in order to discuss and analyze them.<br />
<br />
Consequently, now that we have seen what our method consists of, we must try, in our studies and in our personal and militant lives, to see things in their motion, in their changes, in their contradictions and in their historical significance and not in a static, immobile state. We must try to study them as well in all their aspects and not unilaterally. In short, we must always try to apply the dialectical spirit everywhere.<br />
<br />
==== The need for ideological struggle ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We know better now what dialectical materialism is, the modern form of materialism founded by Marx and Engels and developed by Lenin. In the present work we have made particular use of texts by Marx and Engels, but we cannot end this course without pointing out that the philosophical work of Lenin is also considerable. That is why today we speak of Marxism-leninism.<br />
<br />
''Marxism-leninism and dialectical materialism are inseparably united''. Only through the knowledge of dialectical materialism can one measure the entire scope and wealth of Marxism-leninism. This leads us to the conclusion that ''the militant is not truly armed ideologically unless he is familiar with the entirety of this doctrine''. Having understood this, the bourgeoisie attempts to introduce, by any means, its own ideology into the consciousness of workers. Knowing perfectly well that, of all the aspects of Marxism-leninism, it is dialectical materialism which is, at present, least known, the bourgeoisie has organized a campaign of silence against it. It is painful to note that the official instruction is oblivious to this method, and that teaching methodology in schools and universities has not changed in the last hundred years.<br />
<br />
If, formerly, the metaphysical method dominated the dialectical method, this was due, as we have seen, to the ignorance of people. Today, science has provided us with the means to demonstrate that the dialectical method is most suitable to scientific research. It is scandalous that our children continue to be taught how to think and study with a method born of ignorance.<br />
<br />
While in their scientific research scientists can no longer study, in their specializations, without taking into account the interpenetration of the sciences, in this way unconsciously utilizing a part of dialectics, too often they apply the intellectual training given to them and which is infused with the metaphysical spirit. How much progress would have been realized by those great scientists who have already contributed to humanity—for example, Pasteur and Branly, who were idealists and believers—if they had had a dialectical training!<br />
<br />
But there is a form of struggle against Marxism-leninism which is even more dangerous than this campaign of silence, namely, those distortions which the bourgeoisie tries to organize even within the workers’ movement. At this moment, we witness the blossoming of numerous “theoreticians,” who claim to be “Marxists” and who pretend to be “renewing” or “rejuvenating” Marxism. ''Campaigns of this nature often choose for their foundation those aspects of Marxism which are least known, in particular, materialist philosophy''.<br />
<br />
Thus, for example, there are people who claim to accept Marxism as a concept of revolutionary action, but not as a general conception of the world. They maintain that one can be perfectly Marxist without accepting materialist philosophy. In conformity with this general attitude, diverse attempts at adulteration occur. People who still call themselves Marxists try to introduce into Marxism concepts which are incompatible with its very foundation, namely, materialist philosophy. We have seen such attempts in the past. It was against them that Lenin wrote ''[[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]''. At the present time, in a period of large diffusion of Marxism, we are witnessing the rebirth and multiplication of these attempts. How can we expect to recognize and uncover those who attack Marxism in its philosophical aspect, if we do not know the true philosophy of Marxism?<br />
<br />
==== Conclusion ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Fortunately, for several years now, and in the working class in particular, we have observed a tremendous thrust towards the study of the whole of Marxism and a growing interest precisely in the study of materialist philosophy. This is clearly an indication that, in the present situation, the working class has perfectly understood the justice of the reasons which we gave in the beginning for studying materialist philosophy. Through their own experience, workers have learned the necessity of linking practice to theory and, at the same time, the necessity of extending theoretical study as far as possible. The role of every militant must be to reinforce this tendency and to give it a proper direction and content. We are happy to see that, thanks to the Workers’ University in Paris, (Today “Université Nouvelle” [New University] 8, Avenue Mathurin-Moreau, Paris, France.), several thousand have learned what dialectical materialism is. While this illustrates in a striking manner our struggle against the bourgeoisie and shows us ''which side'' science is on, it also shows us our duty. ''We must'' study. We must know and make Marxism known in all circles. Parallel with the struggle in the streets and at work, militants must lead an ''ideological'' struggle. Their duty is to defend our ideology against all forms of attack and, at the same time, to lead the ''counter-offensive'' for the destruction of bourgeois ideology in the consciousness of workers. But, in order to dominate all aspects of this struggle, we must be armed. The militant can truly be armed only through the knowledge of dialectical materialism.<br />
<br />
Until we have constructed a classless society in which nothing will thwart the development of science, such is the essential part of our duty.<br />
<br />
''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions#Dialectical materialism and ideologies|Control questions]]''<br />
<br />
==Notes==<br />
<references group="note" /><br />
[[Category:Library works by Georges Politzer]]<br />
[[Category:Library works about philosophy]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Library:Elementary_principles_of_philosophy&diff=64265Library:Elementary principles of philosophy2024-03-16T18:06:53Z<p>CriticalResist: /* Reciprocal action */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Library work<br />
| title = Elementary principles of philosophy<br />
| author = Georges Politzer<br />
|publisher=International Publishers|edition_date=1976| type = Book<br />
|source=[https://annas-archive.org/md5/5212d271f108a89b4dbd54b658b4fbda anna's archive]|audiobook=[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrodPcAMP2OsMmlF6pGphTSKU1z03GH5N youtube audiobook]| published = February 1946 in France<br />
}}<br />
''This book features control questions available [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions|here]].''<br />
<br />
== Preface by Maurice Le Goas ==<br />
This elementary textbook reproduces the notes taken by one of the students of [[Georges Politzer]], during the classes taught by him at the Workers' University ''(l'Université Ouvrière)'' in the school year 1935-1936. In order to understand its character and scope, it is first necessary to specify the aim and method of our teacher. <br />
<br />
We know that the Workers' University was founded in 1932 by a small group of professors to teach [[Marxism|Marxist]] science to manual [[Proletariat|workers]] and to give them a method of reasoning that would allow them to understand our times and to guide their actions, as much in their technique as in the political and social fields.<br />
<br />
From the very beginning, Georges Politzer took on the task of teaching Marxist philosophy, [[dialectical materialism]], at the Workers' University: a task all the more necessary as official teaching continued to ignore or distort this philosophy.<br />
<br />
None of those who had the privilege of attending these courses – he spoke each year before a large audience of people of all ages and professions, but dominated by young workers – will forget the deep impression that everyone felt before this big redheaded young man, so enthusiastic and learned, so conscientious and fraternal, so attentive to bringing an arid and ungrateful subject to an inexperienced audience.<br />
<br />
His authority imposed on his class a pleasant discipline, which knew how to be severe, but always remained just, and there was emanating from his person such a power of life, such a radiance that he was admired and loved by all his pupils.<br />
<br />
In order to make himself understood, Politzer first removed from his vocabulary all philosophical slang, all the technical terms that only the initiated could hear. He wanted to use only simple words known to all. When he was forced to use a particular term, he did not fail to explain it at length using familiar examples. If, in discussions, one of his students used learned words, he would take it back and mock it with the biting irony that was familiar to all who approached him.<br />
<br />
He wanted to be simple and clear and always appealed to common sense, without ever sacrificing the accuracy and truthfulness of the ideas and theories he put forward. He knew how to make his lessons extremely lively by involving the audience in discussions before and after the lesson. At the end of each lesson, he would give what he called one or two control questions, which were designed to summarize the lesson or apply the content to a particular topic. Students were not required to cover the topic, but many did and brought a written assignment with them at the beginning of the next lesson. He would then ask who had completed the assignment, raise his hand, and select a few of us to read our text and complete it with oral explanations if necessary. Politzer would criticize or praise and provoke a brief discussion among the students, and then he would conclude by learning from the discussion. This lasted about half an hour and allowed those who had missed the previous class to fill in the gap and relate it to what they had learned before; it also allowed the teacher to see how well it had been understood; he insisted on delicate or obscure points if necessary. <br />
<br />
He would then begin the day's lesson, which lasted about an hour; then the students would ask questions about what had just been said. These questions were generally interesting and insightful, and Politzer would take the opportunity to clarify and rephrase the essence of the lesson from a different perspective.<br />
<br />
Georges Politzer, who had a thorough knowledge of his subject and an intelligence of admirable flexibility, was concerned above all with the reactions of his audience: he took the general "temperature" each time and constantly checked the degree of assimilation of his students. He was also followed by them with passionate interest. He helped to train thousands of activists, many of whom are now in "responsible" positions.<br />
<br />
We, who understood the value of this teaching and who thought of all those who could not hear it, and especially our provincial comrades, wanted the publication of his lectures. He promised to think about it, but, in the midst of his immense work, he never found the time to carry out this project.<br />
<br />
Then, during my second year of philosophy at the Workers' University, where they had created a higher course, I had the opportunity to ask Politzer to correct some homework for me, and I gave him, at his request, my course notebooks. He found them well done, and I suggested that he write the lessons of the elementary course according to my notes. He encouraged me to do so, promising to review and correct them. Unfortunately, he could not find the time. His occupations being more and more heavy, he left the upper course of philosophy to our friend René Maublanc. I informed him of our plans and asked him to review the first lessons I had written. He eagerly accepted and encouraged me to finish this work which we were then to present to Georges Politzer. But the war came: Politzer was to die a heroic death in the struggle against the [[German Reich (1933–1945)|Hitlerian occupier]].<br />
<br />
Although our professor was no longer there to finalize a work he had approved and encouraged, we thought it would be useful to publish it according to my lecture notes.<br />
<br />
Georges Politzer, who began his philosophy course at the Workers' University each year by establishing the true meaning of the word [[materialism]] and protesting against the slanderous deformations that some people subjected him to, energetically recalled that the materialist philosopher is not lacking in ideals and that he is ready to fight to make this ideal triumph. Since then he has been able to prove it by his sacrifice, and his heroic death illustrates this initial course, in which he affirmed the union, in Marxism, of theory and practice. It is not useless to insist on this devotion to an ideal, this abnegation and this high moral value at a time when, once again, one dares to present Marxism as "a doctrine which transforms man into a machine or an animal barely superior to the gorilla or the chimpanzee" (Lenten Sermon at Notre-Dame de Paris, pronounced, on February 18, 1945, by the R. P. Panici.).<br />
<br />
We can never protest enough against such outrages to the memory of our comrades. Let us only remind those who have the audacity to pronounce them the example of Georges Politzer, Gabriel Péri, Jacques Solomon, Jacques Decour, who were Marxists and who professed at the Université Ouvrière de Paris: all good comrades, simple, generous; fraternal, who did not hesitate to devote a good part of their time to come to a lost neighborhood to teach the workers philosophy, political economy, history or science. <br />
<br />
The Workers' University was dissolved in 1939. It reappeared, after the Liberation, under the name ''New University''. A new team of dedicated professors, taking over from those who had been shot, came to resume the interrupted work.<br />
<br />
Nothing can encourage us more in this essential task than to pay tribute to one of the founders and animators of the Workers' University, and no tribute seems to us more just and useful than to publish Georges Politzer's ''Elementary principles of philosophy''.<br />
<div style='text-align:right;width:90%;'>''Maurice Le Goas.''</div><br />
<br />
== The philosophical problems ==<br />
=== Introduction ===<br />
==== Why should we study philosophy? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
In the course of this work, we propose to present and explain the elementary principles of materialist philosophy.<br />
<br />
Why is this? Because Marxism is intimately linked to a philosophy and a method: those of dialectical materialism. It is therefore indispensable to study this philosophy and this method in order to understand Marxism and to refute the arguments of bourgeois theories as much as to undertake an effective political struggle.<br />
<br />
Indeed, Lenin said: "Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. "(Lenin: [[Library:What is to be done?|What is to be done?]]) This means, first of all: it is necessary to link theory with [[Praxis|practice]].<br />
<br />
''What is practice?'' It is the act of realizing. For example, industry, agriculture realize (i.e., put into reality) certain theories (chemical, physical or biological theories).<br />
<br />
''What is theory?'' It is the knowledge of the things we want to achieve.<br />
<br />
We can be practical only — but then we realize by routine. We can be theoretical only — but then what we conceive is often impossible to achieve. So there has to be a connection between theory and practice. The whole question is to know what this theory should be and how it should relate to practice.<br />
<br />
We think that the worker activist needs a method of analysis and reasoning that is just in order to be able to carry out a just revolutionary action. That he needs a method that is not a dogma giving him ready-made solutions, but a method that takes into account facts and circumstances that are never the same, a method that never separates theory from practice, reasoning from life. Now this method is contained in the philosophy of dialectical materialism, the basis of Marxism, which we propose to explain.<br />
<br />
==== Is the study of philosophy a difficult thing? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
It is generally thought that the study of philosophy is for workers a difficult thing, requiring special knowledge. It must be admitted that the way in which bourgeois textbooks are written is well done to confirm these ideas and can only repel them. <br />
<br />
We do not intend to deny the difficulties involved in the study in general, and in the study of philosophy in particular; but these difficulties are perfectly surmountable, and they come above all from the fact that they are new things for many of our readers. <br />
<br />
From the outset, we will, moreover, by making things clearer, call upon them to review certain definitions of words that are distorted in everyday language.<br />
<br />
==== What is philosophy? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Vulgarly, we understand by, philosopher: either the one who lives in the clouds, or the one who takes things in their good side, the one who does not "worry". But, on the contrary, the philosopher is the one who wants to give precise answers to certain questions, and, if we consider that philosophy wants to give an explanation to the problems of the universe (where does the world come from? where are we going? etc.), we see, therefore, that the philosopher is concerned with many things, and, contrary to what is said, "cares a lot". <br />
<br />
We will therefore say, in order to define philosophy, that it wants to explain the universe, nature, that it is ''the study of the most general problems''. Less general problems are studied by the sciences. Philosophy is therefore an extension of the sciences in the sense that it is based on the sciences and ''depends on them''. <br />
<br />
We immediately add that Marxist philosophy provides a method for solving all problems and that this method comes under what is called: materialism.<br />
<br />
==== What is the materialist philosophy? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Here again, there is a confusion that we must immediately denounce; vulgarly speaking, the materialist is the one who only thinks of enjoying material pleasures. By playing on the word materialism — which contains the word ''matter'' — we have thus come to give it a completely false meaning. <br />
<br />
By studying materialism - in the scientific sense of the word - we are going to give it back its true meaning; being materialist does not prevent us, as we shall see, from having an ideal and from fighting to make it triumph. <br />
<br />
We have said that philosophy wants to give an explanation to the most general problems of the world. But, in the history of humanity, this explanation has not always been the same. <br />
<br />
The first men did try to explain nature, the world, but they did not succeed. What makes it possible to explain the world and the phenomena that surround us are the sciences, and the discoveries that have allowed the sciences to progress are very recent. <br />
<br />
The ignorance of the first men was therefore an obstacle to their research. This is why, in the course of history, because of this ignorance, we see ''religions'' arise, which also want to explain the world, but by supernatural forces. This is an anti-scientific explanation. But as, little by little, over the centuries, science will develop, men will try to explain the world by material facts based on scientific experiments, and it is from there, from this desire to explain things by science, that materialist philosophy is born. <br />
<br />
In the following pages, we are going to study what materialism is, but, from now on, we must remember that ''materialism is nothing other than the scientific explanation of the universe''. <br />
<br />
By studying the history of materialist philosophy, we will see how bitter and difficult the struggle against ignorance has been. It must be noted that this struggle is not yet over, since materialism and ignorance continue to exist side by side, side by side. <br />
<br />
It is at the heart of this struggle that Marx and Engels intervened. Understanding the importance of the great discoveries of the nineteenth century, they enabled materialist philosophy to make enormous progress in the scientific explanation of the universe. This is how dialectical materialism was born. They were the first to understand that the laws that govern the world can also explain the workings of societies; they formulated the famous theory of historical materialism. <br />
<br />
In this book, we propose to study first materialism, then dialectical materialism and finally historical materialism. But, above all, we want to establish the relations between materialism and Marxism.<br />
<br />
==== What is the relationship between materialism and Marxism? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We can summarize them as follows: <br />
<br />
# The philosophy of materialism constitutes the basis of Marxism.<br />
# This materialist philosophy which wants to bring a scientific explanation to the problems of the world progresses, in the course of history, at the same time as the sciences. Consequently, Marxism stems from the sciences, rests on them and evolves with them.<br />
# Before Marx and Engels, there were, on several occasions and in different forms, materialistic philosophies. But in the nineteenth century, with the sciences taking a great step forward, Marx and Engels renewed this ancient materialism from the modern sciences and gave us the ''modern'' materialism, which is called ''dialectical materialism'', and which forms the basis of Marxism.<br />
<br />
We see from these few explanations that the philosophy of materialism, contrary to what is said, has a history. This history is intimately linked to the history of science. Marxism, based on materialism, did not come out of one man's brain. It is the culmination, the continuation of ancient materialism, which was already very advanced in Diderot. Marxism is the flowering of materialism developed by the Encyclopedists of the 18th century, enriched by the great discoveries of the 19th century. Marxism is a living theory, and to show right away how it sees problems, we will take an example that everyone knows: the problem of class struggle. <br />
<br />
What do people think about this issue? Some think that the defense of bread dispenses with political struggle. Others think that it is enough to punch in the street, denying the need for organization. Still others claim that only political struggle will bring a solution to this issue. <br />
<br />
For the Marxist, class struggle includes: <br />
<br />
# An economic struggle. <br />
# A political struggle.<br />
# An ideological struggle. <br />
<br />
The problem must therefore be posed simultaneously on these three terrains: <br />
<br />
# One cannot fight for bread without fighting for peace, without defending freedom and without defending all the ideas that serve the struggle for these objectives.<br />
# The same is true in the political struggle, which since Marx has become a true science: one is obliged to take into account both the economic situation and ideological currents in order to wage such a struggle.<br />
# As for the ideological struggle, which manifests itself through propaganda, in order for it to be effective, one must take into account the economic and political situation. <br />
<br />
We see, therefore, that all these problems are intimately linked and, therefore, that no decision can be taken in front of any aspect of this great problem of class struggle - in a strike, for example. - without taking into consideration every aspect of the problem and the whole problem itself. <br />
<br />
It is therefore the one who is capable of fighting on all terrains that will give the movement the best direction. <br />
<br />
This is how a Marxist understands this problem of class struggle. Now, in the ''ideological'' struggle that we have to wage every day, we are faced with problems that are difficult to solve: immortality of the soul, existence of God, origins of the world, etc. It is the dialectical materialism that will give us a method of reasoning, that will allow us to solve all these problems and, as well, to unveil all the campaigns of falsification of Marxism, which pretend to complete and renew it.<br />
<br />
==== Bourgeois campaigns against Marxism ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
These attempts at falsification are based on a wide variety of bases. One seeks to set against Marxism the socialist authors of the pre-Marxist period (before Marx). This is how we very often see the "utopians" used against Marx. Others use Proudhon; others draw on the revisionists of before 1914 (though masterfully refuted by Lenin). But what must be emphasized above all is the campaign of silence that the bourgeoisie is waging against Marxism. It has done everything in particular to prevent materialist philosophy from being known in its Marxist form. Particularly striking in this respect is the whole of philosophical teaching as it is given in France. <br />
<br />
Philosophy is taught in secondary schools. But one can follow all this teaching without ever learning that there is a materialist philosophy elaborated by Marx and Engels. When, in philosophy textbooks, we talk about materialism (because we have to talk about it), we always talk about Marxism and materialism ''separately''. Marxism, in general, is presented only as a political doctrine, and when historical materialism is spoken of, the philosophy of materialism is not mentioned; in short, all of dialectical materialism is ignored. <br />
<br />
This situation does not only exist in schools and high schools: it is exactly the same in Universities. The most characteristic fact is that one can be a "specialist" in philosophy in France, with the highest diplomas awarded by French universities, without knowing that Marxism has a philosophy, which is materialism, and without knowing that traditional materialism has a modern form, which is Marxism, or dialectical materialism. <br />
<br />
We want to demonstrate that Marxism has a general conception not only of society, but also of the universe itself. It is therefore useless, contrary to what some people claim, to regret that the great defect of Marxism is its lack of philosophy, and to want, like some theorists of the workers' movement, to go in search of this philosophy that Marxism lacks. For Marxism has a philosophy, which is dialectical materialism. <br />
<br />
The fact remains, moreover, that despite this campaign of silence, despite all the falsifications and precautions taken by the ruling classes, Marxism and its philosophy are beginning to become more and more known.<br />
<br />
=== The fundamental problem of philosophy ===<br />
==== How should we begin the study of philosophy? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
In our introduction, we said several times that the philosophy of dialectical materialism was the basis of Marxism. <br />
<br />
Our goal is the study of this philosophy; but to reach this goal we must advance in stages. <br />
<br />
When we speak of dialectical materialism, we have before us two words: ''materialism'' and ''dialectical'', which means that materialism is dialectical. We know that before Marx and Engels materialism already existed, but that it was they, with the help of the discoveries of the nineteenth century, who transformed this materialism and created "dialectical" materialism. <br />
<br />
Later we will examine the meaning of the word "dialectical," which refers to the modern form of materialism. <br />
<br />
But since, before Marx and Engels, there were materialist philosophers (for example, Diderot in the 18th century), and since there are points in common to all materialists, we need to study the ''history'' of materialism before discussing dialectical materialism. We also need to know the conceptions that are opposed to materialism.<br />
<br />
==== Two ways of explaining the world ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen that philosophy is the "study of the most general problems" and that it has to to explain the world, nature, man. <br />
<br />
If we open a textbook of bourgeois philosophy, we are astonished by the multitude of different philosophies that can be found in it. They are designated by multiple more or less complicated words ending in "ism": criticalism, evolutionism, intellectualism, etc., and this multitude creates confusion. The bourgeoisie, moreover, has done nothing to clarify the situation, quite the contrary. But we can already sort out all these systems and distinguish two great currents, two clearly opposed conceptions: <br />
<br />
# The scientific conception.<br />
# The non-scientific conception of the world.<br />
<br />
==== Matter and spirit ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
When philosophers set out to explain the world, nature, mankind, everything that we Finally, they were called upon to make distinctions. We see for ourselves that there are things, objects that are material, that we see and touch. Then, other realities that we do not see and that we cannot touch or measure, like our ideas. <br />
<br />
So we classify things in this way: on the one hand, those that are material; on the other hand, those that are not material. are not material and are in the realm of mind, thought, ideas. <br />
<br />
This is how philosophers found themselves in the presence of ''matter'' and ''spirit''.<br />
<br />
==== What is matter? What is the spirit? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have just seen in a general way how we have been led to classify things according to whether they are matter or spirit. <br />
<br />
But we must specify that this distinction is made in different forms and with different words. <br />
<br />
Thus, instead of talking about spirit we talk about thought, our ideas, our consciousness, the soul, just as when we talk about nature, the world, the earth, being, it is matter that we are talking about.<br />
<br />
So again, when Engels, in his book ''[[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy]]'', talks about being and thinking, being is matter; thinking is spirit. <br />
<br />
To define what is thought or spirit, and what is being or matter, we will say: <br />
<br />
''Thought'' is the idea that we have of things; some of these ideas usually come to us from our sensations and correspond to material objects; other ideas, such as those of God, philosophy, infinity, thought itself, do not correspond to material objects. The essential thing we must remember here is that we have ideas, thoughts, feelings, because we see and feel. <br />
<br />
''Matter'' or being is what our sensations and perceptions show and present to us, it is, in a general way, everything that surrounds us, what we call the "external world". Example: My sheet of paper is white. Knowing that it is white is an idea, and it is my senses that give me this idea. But the matter is the sheet itself. <br />
<br />
That is why, when philosophers talk about the relationship between being and thinking, or between mind and matter, or between consciousness and the brain, etc., it all concerns the same question and means: what is, of matter or mind, of being or thinking, the most important term? Which is the one that precedes the other? This is the fundamental question of philosophy.<br />
<br />
==== The fundamental question or problem of philosophy ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Each of us has asked ourselves what we become after death, where the world came from, how the earth was formed. And it is difficult for us to admit that there has ''always'' been something. We tend to think that at some point there was nothing. That's why it's easier to believe what religion teaches: “The spirit hovered above the darkness... then came the matter.” In the same way, we wonder where our thoughts are, and so the problem arises for us of the relationship between mind and matter, between brain and thought. There are many other ways of asking the question. For example, what is the relationship between will and power? Will is, here, mind, thought; and power is what is possible, it is being, matter. We also often encounter the question of the relationship between "social consciousness" and "social existence". <br />
<br />
The fundamental question of philosophy thus presents itself under different aspects and we can see how important it is to always recognize the way in which this problem of the relationship between matter and spirit arises, because we know that there can only be two answers to this question: <br />
<br />
# a scientific answer.<br />
# a non-scientific answer.<br />
<br />
==== Idealism and materialism ====<br />
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This is how philosophers have been led to take a stand on this important issue. The first men, completely ignorant, having no knowledge of the world and of themselves, and having only weak technical means to act on the world, attributed to supernatural beings the responsibility for everything that astonished them. In their imaginations, excited by the dreams in which they saw themselves and their fellow creatures living, they came to this conception that each of us had a double existence. Troubled by the idea of this “double”, they came to believe that their thoughts and feelings were produced not by their <blockquote><br />
their bodies, but of a distinct soul which inhabits the body and leaves it at death. <ref name=":0" group="note">Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach]]: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy#Materialism|Materialism]]</ref> <br />
</blockquote>This idea of the immortality of the soul and of a possible life of the spirit outside of matter was born later on. <br />
<br />
Likewise their weakness, their anxiety before the forces of nature, before all those phenomena which they did not understand and which the state of the art did not allow them to control (germination, storms, floods, etc.) led them to suppose that, behind these forces, there were all-powerful beings, "spirits" or "gods", beneficent or evil, but, in any case, capricious. <br />
<br />
In the same way, they believed in gods, in beings more powerful than men, but they imagined them in the form of men or animals, as material bodies. It was only later that souls and gods (and then the One God who replaced the gods) were conceived as pure spirits.<br />
<br />
This led to the idea that in reality there are spirits that have a very specific life, completely independent of that of bodies, and that do not need bodies to exist.<br />
<br />
Subsequently, this question was posed in a more precise way according to religion, in this form: <blockquote><br />
Did God create the world or has the world been in existence eternally?<br />
<br />
The answers which the philosophers gave to this question split them into two great camps. <ref name=":0" group="note" /><br />
</blockquote>Those who, adopting the non-scientific explanation, admitted the creation of the world by God, i.e. affirmed that spirit had created matter, these were the camp of idealism. <br />
<br />
The others, those who tried to give a scientific explanation of the world and thought that nature, matter was the main element, belonged to the different schools of materialism. <br />
<br />
Originally, these two expressions, idealism and materialism, did not mean anything other than that. <br />
<br />
Idealism and materialism are therefore two opposite and contradictory answers to the fundamental problem of philosophy. <br />
<br />
Idealism is the non-scientific conception. Materialism is the scientific conception of the world. <br />
<br />
We will see later the proof of this affirmation, but we can say, from now on, that if we observe well in experience that there are bodies without thought, like stones, metals, earth, we never observe, on the other hand, the existence of mind without body. <br />
<br />
To end this chapter with an unequivocal conclusion, we see that to answer this question: how is it that man thinks? There can only be two completely different and totally opposite answers: <br />
<br />
#Man thinks because he has a soul.<br />
# Man thinks because he has a brain.<br />
<br />
Depending on which answer we give, we will be trained to give different solutions to the problems that arise from this question. <br />
<br />
Depending on our answer, we will be either idealistic or materialistic.<br />
=== Idealism ===<br />
==== Moral idealism and philosophical idealism ====<br />
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We denounced the confusion created by everyday language with regard to materialism. The same confusion is found with regard to idealism.<br />
<br />
We must not in fact confuse moral idealism with ''philosophical'' idealism.<br />
<br />
Moral idealism consists in devoting oneself to a cause, to an ideal. The history of the international labor movement teaches us that an incalculable number of revolutionaries, of Marxists, devoted themselves even to the sacrifice of their lives for a moral ideal, and yet they were the adversaries of this other idealism which one calls philosophical idealism.<br />
<br />
Philosophical idealism is a doctrine based on the explanation of the world by the mind.<br />
<br />
It is the doctrine which answers the fundamental question of philosophy by saying: “it is the thought which is the principal element, the most important, the first”. And idealism, by affirming the primary importance of thought, affirms that it is this which produces being or, in other words, that “it is the spirit which produces matter”.<br />
<br />
This is the first form of idealism; it found its full development in religions by affirming that God, “pure spirit”, was the creator of matter.<br />
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The religion which has claimed and still claims to be outside philosophical discussions is, in reality, on the contrary, the direct and logical representation of idealistic philosophy.<br />
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However, science intervening over the centuries, it soon became necessary to explain matter, the world, things other than by God alone. For, from the 16th century, science began to explain the phenomena of nature without taking God into account and by dispensing with the creation hypothesis.<br />
<br />
To better combat these scientific, materialist and atheistic explanations, it was therefore necessary to push idealism further and ''deny the very existence of matter''.<br />
<br />
This is what an English bishop, Berkeley, who has been called the father of idealism at the beginning of the 18th century.<br />
<br />
==== Why should we study Berkeley's idealism? ====<br />
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The goal of his philosophical system will therefore be to destroy materialism, to try to show us that material substance does not exist. He writes in the preface of his book Three dialogues of Hylas and Philonoüs:<blockquote>If these principles are accepted and regarded as true, it follows that atheism and skepticism are, by the same token, completely shot down, obscure questions cleared up, almost insoluble difficulties solved, and men who enjoyed paradoxes brought back to common sense. </blockquote>Thus, for Berkeley, what is true is that matter does not exist and that it is paradoxical to claim the contrary.<br />
<br />
We will see how he goes about demonstrating this to us. But I think it's not useless to insist that those who want to study philosophy should take Berkeley's theory very seriously.<br />
<br />
I know that Berkeley's theses will make some people smile, but we must not forget that we live in the 20th century and that we benefit from all the studies of the past. And we will see, moreover, when we study materialism and its history, that the materialist philosophers of the past also sometimes make people smile.<br />
<br />
It should be known, however, that Diderot, who was, before Marx and Engels, the greatest of materialist thinkers, attached some importance to the Berkeley system, since he described it as an <blockquote>extravagant system which, to the shame of the human mind and philosophy, is the most difficult to refute, despite being the most absurd of all <ref group="note">Diderot, “Letter on the blind”.</ref></blockquote>Lenin himself devoted many pages to the philosophy of Berkeley and wrote: <blockquote>For the present we shall confine ourselves to one conclusion: the “recent Machians” have not adduced a single argument against the materialists that had not been adduced by Bishop Berkeley. <ref group="note">Lenin: ''[[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces|Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces]]: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces#In lieu of an introduction|In lieu of an introduction]]''</ref></blockquote>Finally, here is the assessment of Berkeley's immaterialism given in a textbook on the history of philosophy, used in high schools:<blockquote>A theory which is still imperfect, no doubt, but admirable, and which must destroy forever, in philosophical minds, the belief in the existence of a material substance.</blockquote>That is to say the importance for everyone - although for different reasons, as these quotations have shown you - of this philosophical reasoning.<br />
<br />
==== Berkeley's idealism ====<br />
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The purpose of this system is therefore to demonstrate that matter does not exist.<br />
<br />
Berkeley said:<blockquote>Matter is not what we think it is by thinking that it exists outside our mind. We think that things exist because we see them, because we touch them; it is because they give us these sensations that we believe they exist.<br />
<br />
But our sensations are only ideas that we have in our mind. So the objects that we perceive through our senses are nothing but ideas, and ideas cannot exist outside our mind.</blockquote>For Berkeley, things exist; he does not deny their nature and existence, but he asserts that they exist only in the form of the sensations that make them known to us, and concludes that our sensations and objects are one and the same thing.<br />
<br />
Things exist, that's for sure, but in us, he says, in our mind, and they have no reality outside the mind.<br />
<br />
We conceive things with the help of sight; we perceive them with the help of touch; smell tells us about smell; taste tells us about taste; hearing tells us about sound. These different sensations give us ideas, which, combined with each other, make us give them a common name and consider them as objects.<blockquote>“Thus, for example, a certain color, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple; other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things.”<ref group="note">Berkeley, as cited by Lenin in [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces|Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces]], [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces|''In lieu of an introduction'']]</ref></blockquote>So we are victims of illusions when we think, when we know the world and things as external, since all that exists only in our mind.<br />
<br />
In his book ''Three dialogues between Hylas and Philonous'', Berkeley demonstrates this thesis in the following way:<blockquote>Isn't it absurd to believe that the same thing at the same time can be different? For example, hot and cold at the same moment? So imagine that one of your hands is hot and the other is cold, and that both of them are immersed at the same time in a vase full of water at an intermediate temperature: won't the water appear hot to one hand and cold to the other?</blockquote>Since it is absurd to believe that a thing at the same time can be, in itself, different, we must conclude that this thing exists only in our mind.<br />
<br />
So what does Berkeley do in its method of reasoning and discussion? He strips objects, things, of all their properties.<br />
<br />
“You say that objects exist because they have a color, a smell, a flavor, because they are big or small, light or heavy? I will show you that this does not exist in objects, but in our spirits.<br />
<br />
“Here's a coupon of cloth: you tell me it's red. Is that right? You think the red is in the fabric itself. Is that certain? You know that there are animals with eyes different from ours that will not see this red cloth; likewise a man with jaundice will see it yellow! Then what color is it? It depends, you say? So the red is not in the cloth, but in the eye, in us.<br />
<br />
“You say that this cloth is light? If you drop it on an ant, she will certainly find it heavy. Who is right? Do you think it's warm? If you had a fever, you'd think it was cold! So is it hot or cold?<br />
<br />
“In a word, if the same things can be red, heavy, hot at the same time for some, and for others exactly the opposite, it is because we are victims of illusions and things only exist in our minds”<br />
<br />
By removing all their properties from objects, we come to say that they only exist in our thinking, that is to say that ''matter is an idea''.<br />
<br />
Already, before Berkeley, the Greek philosophers said, and this was right, that certain qualities such as flavor, sound were not in the things themselves, but in us.<br />
<br />
But what is new in Berkeley's theory is precisely that he extends this remark to ''all'' the qualities of objects.<br />
<br />
The Greek philosophers had, in fact, established the following distinction between the qualities of things: <br />
<br />
On the one hand, the ''primary qualities'', i.e., those that are in objects, such as weight, size, resistance, etc., are the qualities that are in objects.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, the ''secondary qualities'', that is, those that are in us, such as smell, taste, warmth, etc., and that are in objects, such as weight, size, resistance, etc.<br />
<br />
Berkeley applies to first qualities the same thesis as to second qualities, namely that all qualities, ''all properties are not in objects, but in us''.<br />
<br />
If we look at the sun, we see it round, flat, red. Science teaches us that we are wrong, that the sun is not flat, is not red. We will therefore abstract, with the help of science, certain false properties that we give to the sun, but without concluding that it does not exist! It is however to such a conclusion that Berkeley reaches.<br />
<br />
Berkeley was certainly not wrong in showing that the distinction of the ancients did not stand up to scientific analysis, but he commits a fault of reasoning, a sophism, in drawing from these remarks consequences that they do not entail. He shows, in fact, that the qualities of things are not such as our senses show us, that is to say that our senses deceive us and distort material reality, and he concludes immediately that material reality does not exist.<br />
<br />
==== Consequences of idealist reasoning ====<br />
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The thesis being: "Everything exists only in our mind", we must conclude that the outside world does not exist.<br />
<br />
Pushing this reasoning to its logical conclusion, we would come to say: "I am the only one who exists, since I only know other men through my ideas, that other men are for me, like material objects, only collections of ideas". This is what in philosophy is called ''solipsism'' (which means ''me only'').<br />
<br />
Berkeley, Lenin tells us in his already quoted book, instinctively defends himself against the accusation of supporting such a theory. We even note that solipsism, an extreme form of idealism, has not been supported by any philosopher.<br />
<br />
This is why we must try, when discussing with idealists, to emphasize that the reasonings that effectively deny the matter, in order to be logical and consequent, must come to this absurd extremity that is solipsism.<br />
<br />
==== The idealist arguments ====<br />
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We have endeavored to summarize Berkeley's theory as simply as possible, because it was he who, most frankly, set out what philosophical idealism is.<br />
<br />
But it is certain that, in order to fully understand this reasoning, which is new to us, it is now indispensable to take it very seriously and to make an intellectual effort. Why? Because we will see later on that, if idealism presents itself in a more hidden way and under the cover of new words and expressions, all idealistic philosophies only take up the arguments of "old Berkeley". (Lenin).<br />
<br />
Because we will also see how much, the idealistic philosophy that has dominated and still dominates the ''official'' history of philosophy, bringing with it a method of thought that we are impregnated with, has been able to penetrate in us despite an entirely secular education.<br />
<br />
The basis of the arguments of all idealistic philosophies being found in the reasoning of Bishop Berkeley, we will therefore, to summarize this chapter, try to identify what are these main arguments and what they try to demonstrate to us.<br />
<br />
===== The spirit creates matter =====<br />
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This, as we know, is the idealistic answer to the fundamental question of philosophy; it is the first form of idealism that is reflected in the different religions, where it is asserted that the spirit created the world.<br />
<br />
This assertion can have two meanings:<br />
<br />
Either God created the world, and the world really exists outside of us. This is the ordinary idealism of theologies.<ref group="note">Theology is the ''“science” (!)'' that deals with God and divine things.</ref> <br />
<br />
Or God created the ''illusion'' of the world by giving us ideas that do not correspond to any material reality. This is Berkeley's "immaterialist idealism" which wants to prove to us that spirit is the only reality, matter being a product made by our spirit.<br />
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This is why the idealists assert that:<br />
<br />
===== The world does not exist outside of our thinking =====<br />
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This is what Berkeley wants to demonstrate to us by saying that we are making a mistake by attributing to things properties and qualities that would be their own, whereas these only exist in our mind.<br />
<br />
For the idealists, benches and tables do exist, but only in our thinking, and not outside of us, because<br />
<br />
===== It's our ideas that create things =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
In other words, things are a reflection of our thinking. Indeed, since it is the mind that creates the illusion of matter, since it is the mind that gives our thought the idea of matter, since the sensations we feel in front of things do not come from things themselves, but only from our thought, the source of the reality of the world and of things is our thought and, therefore, everything that surrounds us does not exist outside our mind and can only be the reflection of our thought.<br />
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But since, in the case of Berkeley, ''our'' mind would be incapable of creating these ideas ''by itself'', and since, moreover, it does not do what it wants with them (as would happen if it created them on its own), we must admit that it is another, more powerful mind that is the creator. It is therefore God who creates our spirit and imposes on us all the ideas of the world we encounter in it.<br />
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These are the main theses on which the idealistic doctrines rest and the answers they bring to the fundamental question of philosophy. It is now time to see what is the response of materialist philosophy to this question and to the problems raised by these theses.<br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<br />
<blockquote><br />
''Berkeley: Three dialogues between Hylas and Philonous'' </br>''Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
=== Materialism ===<br />
==== Why should we study materialism? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen that, for the question “What are the relations between being and thought?” there can only be two opposed and contradictory answers. In the preceding chapter we have studied the idealist answer and the arguments presented to defend idealist philosophy.<br />
<br />
We now have to examine the second answer to this fundamental problem (a problem, let us repeat, which is at the basis of all philosophy) and see what arguments materialism brings to the defense. All the more so because materialism is for us a very important philosophy, since it is that of Marxism.<br />
<br />
It is, therefore, indispensable to know materialism well. Indispensable especially because the conceptions of this philosophy are very badly known and have been falsified. Indispensable also because, by our education, by the instruction we have received — whether primary or more developed —, by our habits of living and reasoning, we are all, more or less, without realizing it, impregnated with idealistic conceptions. (We will see, moreover, in other chapters, several examples of this affirmation and why it is so).<br />
<br />
It is therefore an absolute necessity for those who want to study Marxism to know its basis: materialism.<br />
<br />
==== Where does materialism come from? ====<br />
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We have broadly defined philosophy as an effort to explain the world, the universe. But we know that, according to the state of human knowledge, its explanations have changed and that two attitudes have been adopted throughout the history of humanity to explain the world: one, anti-scientific, calling upon one or more superior minds, upon supernatural forces; the other, scientific, based on facts and experiences.<br />
<br />
One of these conceptions is defended by idealistic philosophers; the other by materialists.<br />
<br />
This is why, from the very beginning of this book, we have said that the first idea we should have of materialism is that this philosophy represents the "scientific explanation of the universe".<br />
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If idealism was born out of human ignorance — and we will see how ignorance was maintained, nurtured in the history of societies by cultural and political forces that shared idealistic conceptions — materialism was born out of the struggle of science against ignorance or obscurantism.<br />
<br />
This is why this philosophy was so much fought against and why, in its modern form (dialectical materialism), it is little known, if not ignored or misunderstood by the official academic world.<br />
<br />
==== How and why materialism has evolved ====<br />
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Contrary to the claims of those who fight this philosophy and who say that this doctrine has not evolved for twenty centuries, the history of materialism shows us in this philosophy something alive and always in motion.<br />
<br />
Over the centuries, man's scientific knowledge has progressed. At the beginning of the history of thought, in Greek antiquity, scientific knowledge was almost nil, and the first scholars were, at the same time, philosophers, because, at that time, philosophy and the nascent sciences formed a whole, one being the extension of the others.<br />
<br />
Later on, as the sciences brought precisions in the explanation of the phenomena of the world, precisions that hindered and even contradicted the dogmas of idealistic philosophies, a conflict was born between philosophy and the sciences.<br />
<br />
The sciences being in contradiction with the official philosophy of that time, it had become necessary for them to separate from it. Also,<blockquote>they were in no more hurry than to free themselves from the philosophical hodgepodge and leave the philosophers the vast hypotheses to make contact with restricted problems, those which are ripe for a solution in the near future. So this distinction is made between science... and philosophy. <ref group="note">René Maublanc: La vie ouvrière, November 25, 1935</ref></blockquote>But materialism, born with the sciences, linked to them and dependent on them, has progressed, evolved with them, to arrive, with modern materialism, that of Marx and Engels, at reuniting, once again, science and philosophy in dialectical materialism.<br />
<br />
We will study this history and this evolution, which are linked to the progress of civilization, but we already see, and this is what is very important to remember, that materialism and science are linked to each other and that materialism is absolutely dependent on science.<br />
<br />
It remains for us to establish and define the bases of materialism, bases that are common to all philosophies which, under different aspects, claim to be materialistic.<br />
<br />
==== What are the arguments and principles of materialism? ====<br />
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To answer, we must return to the fundamental question of philosophy, that of the relationship between being and thinking: which of one or the other is the main one?<br />
<br />
The materialists affirm first of all that there is a determined relationship between being and thinking, between matter and spirit. For them, it is the being, the matter, which is the first reality, the first thing, and the spirit which is the second, posterior reality, dependent on the matter.<br />
<br />
Therefore, for materialists, it is not spirit or God who created the world and matter, but it is the world, matter, nature that created spirit: <blockquote>mind itself is merely the highest product of matter <ref name=":0" group="note" /></blockquote><br />
<br />
This is why, if we take up the question we asked in the second chapter: "From whence does man think?" the materialists answer that man thinks because he has a brain and that thought is the product of the brain. For them, there can be no thought without matter, without a body.<blockquote>our consciousness and thinking, however supra-sensuous they may seem, are the product of a material, bodily organ, the brain. <ref name=":0" group="note" /></blockquote>Therefore, for materialists, matter, being are something real, existing outside of our thought, and do not need thought or mind to exist. Likewise, since spirit cannot exist without matter, there is no immortal soul independent of the body.<br />
<br />
Contrary to what the idealists say, the things around us exist independently of us: they are what give us our thoughts; and our ideas are only the reflection of things in our brain.<br />
<br />
This is why, in front of the second aspect of the question of the relationship between being and thinking:<blockquote>in what relation do our thoughts about the world surrounding us stand to this world itself? Is our thinking capable of the cognition of the real world? Are we able in our ideas and notions of the real world to produce a correct reflection of reality? In philosophical language this question is called the question of identity of thinking and being.<ref name=":0" group="note" /> </blockquote>Materialists declare: Yes, we can know the world, and the ideas which we entertain about this world are more and more correct, since we can study it with the help of the sciences, and since the latter are continually proving to us through experience that the things which surround us have indeed a reality which is their own, independent of us, and that man can already in part reproduce these things by creating them artificially.<br />
<br />
To sum up, we will say that the materialists, faced with the fundamental problem of philosophy, assert:<br />
<br />
===== It is matter that creates the spirit =====<br />
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It is matter that produces spirit and, scientifically, we have never seen spirit without matter.<br />
<br />
===== Matter exists outside any spirit=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Matter exists outside of all mind and it does not need a mind to exist, having an existence that is particular to it. Contrary to what idealists say, it is not our ideas that create things, but, on the contrary, it is things that give us our ideas.<br />
<br />
===== Science and experience allow us to know the world =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We are capable of knowing the world, the ideas we have of matter and of the world are becoming more and more accurate, since, with the help of science, we can clarify what we already know and discover what we do not know.<br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote>''Plekhanov: [[Library:Fundamental problems of marxism|Fundamental problems of Marxism]]''</blockquote><br />
<br />
=== Which is right, idealism or materialism? ===<br />
==== How we should state the problem ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Now that we know the theses of the idealists and the materialists, we will try to find out who is right.<br />
<br />
Let us recall that we must first of all note, on the one hand, that these arguments are absolutely opposed and contradictory. On the other hand, as soon as one defends one or the other theory, it leads us to conclusions which, by their consequences, are very important.<br />
<br />
In order to know who is right, we must refer to the three points by which we have summarized each argument.<br />
<br />
The idealists say:<br />
<br />
#That it is spirit that creates matter;<br />
#That matter does not exist outside our thoughts, and that it is therefore for us only an illusion;<br />
#That it is our ideas that create things.<br />
Materialists, on the other hand, affirm exactly the opposite. To facilitate our work, we must first study what is common sense and what surprises us most.<br />
#Is it true that the world exists only in our thoughts?<br />
#Is it true that it is our ideas that create things?<br />
<br />
These are two arguments defended by Berkeley's "immaterialist" idealism, whose conclusions lead, as in all theologies, to our third question:<br />
<br />
<ol start="3"><br />
<li>Is it true that spirit creates matter?</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
These are very important questions since they relate to the fundamental problem of philosophy. It is, therefore, by discussing them that we will know who is right, and they are particularly interesting for materialists, in that materialist answers to these questions are common to all materialist philosophies - and, therefore, to dialectical materialism.<br />
<br />
==== Is it true that the world only exists in our thinking? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Before studying this question, we need to explain two philosophical terms that we are called upon to use and that we will often encounter in our readings.<blockquote>''Subjective reality'' (which means: reality that exists '''only in''' our thoughts).<br />
<br />
''Objective reality'' (reality that exists '''outside''' of our thoughts).</blockquote>Idealists say that the world is not an objective reality, but a subjective one.<br />
<br />
Materialists say that the world is an objective reality.<br />
<br />
To show us that the world and things exist only in our thinking, Bishop Berkeley breaks them down into their properties (color, size, density, etc.). He shows us that these properties, which vary according to individuals, are not in the things themselves, but in the minds of each one of us. He deduces that matter is an aggregate of non-objective, but subjective properties and that, consequently, it does not exist.<br />
<br />
If we take again the example of the sun, Berkeley asks us if we believe in the objective reality of the red disc, and he shows us with his method of discussing properties, that the sun is not red and is not a disc. Therefore, the sun is not an objective reality, because it does not exist by itself, but it is a simple subjective reality, since it exists only in our thinking.<br />
<br />
Materialists say that the sun exists anyway, not because we see it as a flat, red disc, because that is naive realism -- that of the children and the first men who had only their senses to control reality -- but they say that the sun exists by invoking science. Science allows us, in fact, to rectify the errors that our senses make us commit.<br />
<br />
But we must, in this example of the sun, clearly pose the problem.<br />
<br />
With Berkeley, we will say that the sun is not a disk and that it is not red, but we do not accept its conclusions: the negation of the sun as an objective reality.<br />
<br />
We are not discussing the properties of things, but their existence.<br />
<br />
We are not discussing whether our senses deceive us and distort material reality, but whether this reality exists outside our senses.<br />
<br />
Well then! Materialists assert the existence of this reality outside us and they provide arguments that are science itself.<br />
<br />
What do idealists do to show us that they are right? They argue about words, make great speeches, write many pages.<br />
<br />
Let us suppose for a moment that they are right. If the world exists only in our thinking, then did the world not exist before mankind? We know that this is false, since science shows us that man appeared very late on earth. Some idealists will then tell us that before man there were animals and that thought could inhabit them. But we know that before the animals there was an uninhabitable earth on which no organic life was possible. Still others will tell us that even if only the solar system existed and man did not exist, thought and spirit existed in God. This is how we arrive at the supreme form of idealism. We have to choose between God and science. Idealism cannot sustain itself without God, and God cannot exist without idealism.<br />
<br />
So this is exactly how the problem of idealism and materialism arises: Who is right? God or science?<br />
<br />
God is a pure spirit creator of matter, an affirmation without proof.<br />
<br />
Science is going to show us by practice and experience that the world is an objective reality and will allow us to answer the question:<br />
<br />
==== Is it true that it is our ideas that create things? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Take, for example, a bus that passes as we cross the street in the company of an idealist with whom we discuss whether things have an objective or subjective reality and whether it is true that it is our ideas that create things. Of course, if we don't want to be crushed, we will be very careful. Therefore, in practice, the idealist is obliged to recognize the existence of the bus. For him, practically speaking, there is no difference between an objective bus and a subjective bus, and this is so right that practice provides the proof that idealists, in life, are materialists.<br />
<br />
We can, on this subject, cite many examples where we would see that the idealistic philosophers and those who support this philosophy do not disdain certain 'objective' baseness to obtain what, for them, is only subjective reality!<br />
<br />
This is why we no longer see anyone asserting, like Berkeley, that the world does not exist. The arguments are much more subtle and hidden.<ref group="note">See, as an example of the idealists' way of arguing, the chapter entitled [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism#“The discovery of the world-elements”|“The discovery of the world-elements”]], in Lenin's book: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]].</ref><br />
<br />
It is therefore, according to Lenin's words, "the criterion of practice" that will allow us to confound idealists.<br />
<br />
The latter, moreover, will not fail to say that theory and practice are not the same, that they are two quite different things. This is not true. If a conception is right or wrong, it is practice alone which, through experience, will demonstrate it to us.<br />
<br />
The example of the bus shows that the world therefore has an objective reality and is not an illusion created by our mind.<br />
<br />
It remains to be seen now, since Berkeley's theory of immaterialism cannot stand up to the sciences nor can it withstand the criterion of practice, if, as all the conclusions of idealistic philosophies, religions and theologies affirm, that ''spirit creates matter''.<br />
<br />
==== Is it true that spirit creates matter? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
As we have seen above, the spirit, for idealists, has its supreme form in God. It is the final answer, the conclusion of their theory, and that is why the ''mind-matter'' problem arises in the last analysis, of who, the idealist or the materialist, is right, in the form of the problem: 'God or science'.<br />
<br />
Idealists assert that God has existed from all eternity, and that, having undergone no change, he is always the same. He is the pure spirit, for whom time and space do not exist. He is the creator of matter.<br />
<br />
To support their affirmation of God, here again the idealists do not present any arguments.<br />
<br />
To defend the creator of matter, they resort to a lot of mysteries, which a scientific mind cannot accept.<br />
<br />
When we go back to the origins of science and we see that it was in the heart and because of their great ignorance that primitive men forged in their minds the idea of God, we see that the idealists of the 20th century continue, like the first men, to ignore everything that patient and persevering work has made it possible to know. For, in the end, for the idealists, God cannot be explained, and there remains for them a belief without any proof. When the idealists want to "prove" to us the necessity of the creation of the world by saying that matter could not always have existed, that it had to have a birth, they resort to a God who never had a beginning. In what way is this explanation clearer?<br />
<br />
To support their arguments, the materialists, on the contrary, will use the science that men have developed as they pushed back the "limits of their ignorance".<br />
<br />
But does science allow us to think that the spirit created matter? No.<br />
<br />
The idea of creation by a pure spirit is incomprehensible because we know nothing of the sort in experience. For this to be possible, it would have been necessary, as idealists say, that spirit existed alone before matter, whereas science shows us that this is not possible and that there is no spirit without matter. On the contrary, spirit is always linked to matter, and we see in particular that the mind of man is linked to the brain, which is the source of our ideas and thoughts. Science does not allow us to conceive that ideas exist in a vacuum...<br />
<br />
It would therefore be necessary for the mind of God, in order for it to exist, to have a brain. This is why we can say that it is not God who created matter, and man as well, but that it is matter, in the form of the human brain, that created the God-mind.<br />
<br />
We will see further on whether science gives us the possibility to believe in a God, or in something over which time would have no effect and for which space, movement and change would not exist.<br />
<br />
Already now we can conclude that in their answer to the fundamental problem of philosophy:<br />
<br />
==== The materialists are right and science proves their assertions ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Materialists are right to assert:<br />
<br />
# Against Berkeley's idealism and against the philosophers who hide behind his immaterialism: that the world and things, on the one hand, exist well outside of our thoughts and that they do not need our thoughts to exist; on the other hand, that it is not our ideas that create things, but that, on the contrary, it is the things that give us our ideas.<br />
# Against all idealist philosophies, because their conclusions end in affirming the creation of matter by spirit; that is to say -- in the last instance, in affirming the existence of God and in supporting theologies -- materialists, relying on science, assert and prove that it is matter which creates spirit and that they do not need the “God hypothesis” to explain the creation of matter.<br />
<br />
''Note'' — We have to be careful how idealists pose problems. They claim that God created man when we saw that it was man who created God. They also assert, on the other hand, that it is spirit that created matter when we see that it is, in truth, exactly the opposite. This is a way of reversing the perspectives that we had to point out.<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote><br />
''Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism#Did nature exist prior to man?|Did nature exist prior to man?]]''<br />
<br />
''Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
=== Is there a third philosophy? Agnosticism ===<br />
==== Why a third philosophy? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
It may seem to us, after these first chapters, that, after all, it must be quite easy to recognize ourselves in the midst of all philosophical reasoning, since only two great currents share all the theories: idealism and materialism. And that, moreover, the arguments that fight in favor of materialism carry it in a definitive way. <br />
<br />
It thus appears that, after some examination, we have found our way back to the philosophy of reason: materialism.<br />
<br />
But things are not so simple. As we have already pointed out, modern idealists do not have Bishop Berkeley's frankness. They present their ideas<blockquote>“in a much more artful form, and confused by the use of a ‘new’ terminology, so that these thoughts may be taken by naive people for ‘recent’ philosophy!” <ref name=":1" group="note">Lenin: ''[[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces|Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces]]''</ref> </blockquote>We have seen that two answers can be given to the fundamental question of philosophy, which are totally opposed, contradictory and irreconcilable. These two answers are very clear and do not allow for any confusion.<br />
<br />
And, in fact, until about 1710, the problem was posed as follows: on the one hand, those who asserted the existence of matter outside our thinking -- these were the materialists; -- on the other hand, those who, with Berkeley, denied the existence of matter and claimed that it exists only in us, in our minds -- these were the idealists.<br />
<br />
But, at that time, as the sciences progressed, other philosophers intervened, who tried to separate the idealists from the materialists, creating a philosophical current that created confusion between these two theories, and this confusion has its source in the search for a third philosophy.<br />
<br />
==== Argumentation of this third philosophy ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The basis of this philosophy, which was developed after Berkeley, is that it is useless to try to know the real nature of things and that we will only ever know appearances.<br />
<br />
This is why this philosophy is called agnosticism (from the Greek ''a'', negation, and ''gnosticos'', capable of knowing; therefore “incapable of knowing”).<br />
<br />
According to the agnostics, one cannot know whether the world is, at its core, spirit or nature. It is possible for us to know the appearance of things, but we cannot know their reality.<br />
<br />
Let us take the example of the sun. We have seen that it is not, as the first men thought, a flat, red disc. This disc was therefore only an illusion, an appearance (appearance is the ''superficial'' idea that we have of things; it is not their reality).<br />
<br />
This is why, considering that idealists and materialists argue about whether things are matter or spirit, whether or not these things exist outside our thinking, whether or not it is possible for us to know them, agnostics say that we can know appearance well, but never reality.<br />
<br />
Our senses, they say, allow us to see and feel things, to know their external aspects, their appearances; these appearances therefore exist for us; they constitute what is called, in philosophical language, the "thing for us". But we cannot know the thing independent of us, with its own reality, what is called the "thing in itself".<br />
<br />
Idealists and materialists, who continually discuss these subjects, are comparable to two men who would have one of the blue glasses, the other of the pink glasses, walking in the snow and arguing over what is the true color of the snow. Suppose they would never be able to take off - their glasses. Will they ever be able to know the true color of the snow?.... No. Well! idealists and materialists arguing over who is right and who is wrong wear blue and pink glasses. They will never know reality. They will have a knowledge of snow "for them"; everyone will see it in their own way, but they will never know snow "in itself". This is the reasoning of agnostics.<br />
<br />
==== Where does this philosophy come from? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The founders of this philosophy were [[Hume]] (1711-1776), who was Scottish, and [[Immanuel Kant|Kant]] (1724-1804), a German. Both tried to reconcile idealism and materialism.<br />
<br />
Here is a passage from Hume's reasoning quoted by Lenin in his book [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|''Materialism and empiriocriticism'']]:<br />
<blockquote><br />
“It seems evident, that men are carried, by a natural instinct or prepossession, to repose faith in their senses; and that, without any reasoning, or even almost before the use of reason, we always suppose an external universe, which depends not on our perception, but would exist though we and every sensible creature were absent or annihilated. Even the animal creations are governed by a like opinion, and preserve this belief of external objects, in all their thoughts, designs, and actions....<br />
<br />
But this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us, that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, and that the senses are only the inlets, through which these images are conveyed, without being able to produce any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object. The table, which we see, seems to diminish, as we remove farther from it: But the real table, which exists independent of us, suffers no alteration: It was therefore, nothing but its image, which was present to the mind. These are the obvious dictates of reason…<br />
<br />
But this primordial and universal opinion is promptly shaken by the most superficial philosophy, which teaches us that nothing but images or perception will ever be accessible to our mind and that sensations are only channels followed by these images and are not in a position to establish themselves a direct relationship, whatever it may be, between the mind and the object. The table we see seems smaller when we move away from it, but the real table, which exists independently of us, does not change; our mind has therefore perceived nothing but the image of the table. These are the obvious indications of reason.” <ref group="note" name=":2">Hume, as cited by Lenin in ''[[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces|Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces]]: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism/Prefaces#In lieu of an introduction|In lieu of an introduction]]''</ref><br />
</blockquote><br />
We see that Hume first of all admits what falls under the common sense: "existence of an external universe" which does not depend on us. But he immediately refuses to admit this existence as an objective reality. For him, this existence is nothing more than an image, and our senses which observe this existence, this image, are incapable of establishing any relation whatsoever between mind and object.<br />
<br />
In a word, we live in the midst of things as in the cinema, where we observe on the screen the image of objects, their existence, but where, behind the images themselves, that is, behind the screen, there is nothing.<br />
<br />
Now, if we want to know how our minds know objects, can this not be due to <blockquote>the energy of the mind itself, or from the suggestion of some invisible and unknown spirit, or from some other cause still more unknown to us? <ref name=":2" group="note" /></blockquote><br />
<br />
==== Its consequences ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Here is an attractive theory which, moreover, is very widespread. We find it in different aspects, throughout history, among philosophical theories and, nowadays, among all those who claim to "remain neutral and maintain themselves in a scientific reserve".<br />
<br />
We therefore need to examine whether this reasoning is correct and what consequences flow from it.<br />
<br />
If it is really impossible for us, as agnostics assert, to know the true nature of things and if our knowledge is limited to their appearances, then we cannot affirm the existence of objective reality, and we cannot know whether things exist by themselves. For us, for example, the bus is an objective reality; the agnostic tells us that it is not certain, that we cannot know if the bus is a thought or a reality. He therefore forbids us to maintain that our thinking is a reflection of things. We see that we are there in the middle of idealistic reasoning, because, between affirming that things do not exist or simply that we cannot know if they exist, the difference is not great!<br />
<br />
We have seen that the agnostic distinguishes between "things for us" and "things in themselves". The study of things for us is therefore possible: this is science: but the study of things in themselves is impossible, because we cannot know what exists outside of us.<br />
<br />
The result of this reasoning is the following: the agnostic accepts science -- and, since science can only be made on the condition of expelling all supernatural forces from nature -- before science he is a materialist.<br />
<br />
But he hurries to add that, since science only gives us appearances, nothing proves, moreover, that there is not in reality anything other than matter, or even that there is matter or that God does not exist. Human reason cannot know anything about it and therefore has no business interfering in it. If there are other ways of knowing "things in themselves," such as religious faith, the agnostic does not want to know it either and does not recognize the right to discuss it.<blockquote>As soon, however, as our agnostic has made these formal mental reservations, he talks and acts as the rank materialist he is at heart. He may say that, as far as we know, matter and motion, or as it is now called, energy, can neither be created nor destroyed, but that we have no proof of their not having been created at some time or other. But if you try to use this admission against him in any particular case, he will quickly put you out of court. If he admits the possibility of spiritualism in abstracto, he will have none of it in concreto. As far as we know and can know, he will tell you there is no creator and no Ruler of the universe; as far as we are concerned, matter and energy can neither be created nor annihilated; for us, mind is a mode of energy, a function of the brain; all we know is that the material world is governed by immutable laws, and so forth. Thus, as far as he is a scientific man, as far as he knows anything, he is a materialist; outside his science, in spheres about which he knows nothing, he translates his ignorance into Greek and calls it agnosticism. <ref name=":3" group="note">Engels: ''[[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces|Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces]]:'' [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces#General introduction and the history of materialism|''General introduction and the history of materialism'']] </ref></blockquote>The consequence is that by doubting the profound value of science, by seeing in it only appearances, this third philosophy proposes that we attribute no truth to science and consider it perfectly useless to seek to know something, to try to contribute to progress.<br />
<br />
Agnostics say: In the past, men saw the sun as a flat disk and believed that this was the reality; they were wrong. Today, science tells us that the sun is not as we see it, and claims to explain everything. We know, however, that it is often wrong, one day destroying what it built the day before. Error yesterday, truth today, but error tomorrow. Thus, argue the agnostics, we cannot know; reason brings us no certainty. And if means other than reason, such as religious faith, claim to give us absolute certainties, it is not even science that can prevent us from believing it. By diminishing confidence in science, agnosticism thus prepares the way for the return of religions.<br />
<br />
==== How can we refute this "third" philosophy? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen that, to prove their claims, materialists use not only science, but also experience, which allows them to control science. Thanks to the "criterion of practice", one can know things.<br />
<br />
Agnostics tell us that it is impossible to assert that the outside world exists or does not exist.<br />
<br />
However, through practice, we know that the world and things exist. We know that the ideas we have about things are well-founded, that the relationships we have established between things and ourselves are real.<blockquote>From the moment we turn to our own use these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense perceptions. If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt must fail. But if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended it for, then that is positive proof that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves. And whenever we find ourselves face to face with a failure, then we generally are not long in making out the cause that made us fail; we find that the perception upon which we acted was either incomplete and superficial, or combined with the result of other perceptions in a way warranted by them—what we call defective reasoning. So long as we take care to train and to use our senses properly, and to keep our action within the limits prescribed by perceptions properly made and properly used, so long we shall find that the result of our action proves the conformity of our perceptions with the objective nature of the things perceived. Not in one single instance, so far, have we been led to the conclusion that our sense perceptions, scientifically controlled, induce in our minds ideas respecting the outer world that are, by their very nature, at variance with reality, or that there is an inherent incompatibility between the outer world and our sense perceptions of it. <ref name=":3" group="note" /></blockquote>Taking up Engels' phrase, we will say "the proof of the pudding is that you eat it" (English proverb). If it did not exist, or if it was only an idea, after eating it, our hunger would not be alleviated at all. Thus it is perfectly possible for us to know things, to see if our ideas correspond to reality. It is possible for us to control the data of science through experience and industry that translate the theoretical results of science into practical applications. The reason we can make synthetic rubber is that science knows the "thing in itself" that is rubber.<br />
<br />
So we see that it is not useless to try to find out who is right, because through the theoretical errors that science can make, experience always gives us proof that science is right.<br />
<br />
==== Conclusion ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Since the 18th century, among the various thinkers who have borrowed to a greater or lesser extent from agnosticism, we see that this philosophy is sometimes torn by idealism and sometimes by materialism. Under cover of new words, as Lenin says, even pretending to use science to support their reasoning, they only create confusion between the two theories, allowing some to have a convenient philosophy, which gives them the possibility to declare that they are not idealists because they use science, but that they are not materialists either, because they don't dare to go to the end of their arguments, because they are not consistent with themselves.<blockquote>What, indeed, is agnosticism, ''writes Engels'', if not shameful materialism? The agnostic's conception of nature is entirely materialistic. The entire natural world is governed by laws and does not admit the intervention of external action; but he adds, as a precaution: “We do not possess the means to affirm or deny the existence of any supreme being beyond the known universe.” <ref name=":3" group="note" /></blockquote>Hence, this philosophy is playing into the hands of idealism and, all told, because they are inconsistent in their reasoning; agnostics lead right back to idealism. “Scratch an agnostic,” says Lenin, “and you will find an idealist.”<br />
<br />
We have seen that one can know which is right between materialism or idealism.<br />
<br />
We now see that the theories that claim to reconcile these two philosophies can, in fact, only support idealism, that they do not provide a third answer to the fundamental question of philosophy and that, consequently, there is no third philosophy.<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote><br />
''Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]''<br />
<br />
''Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach]]''<br />
<br />
''Engels: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific|Socialism: utopian and scientific]]: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces#General introduction and the history of materialism|General introduction and the history of materialism]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions#The philosophical problems|Control questions]]''<br />
== The philosophical materialism ==<br />
=== Matter and materialists ===<br />
{{top}}<br />
After defining:<br />
<br />
First, the ideas common to all materialists, second, the arguments of all materialists against idealistic philosophies, and finally, demonstrating the error of agnosticism, we will draw conclusions from this teaching and strengthen our materialist arguments by providing our answers to the following two questions:<br />
<br />
# What is matter?<br />
# What does it mean to be materialist?<br />
<br />
==== What is matter? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
''Importance of the issue''. Whenever we have a problem to solve, we need to ask the questions clearly. In fact, here it is not so easy to give a satisfactory answer. To do so, we must make a theory of matter.<br />
<br />
In general, people think that matter is what can be touched, what is strong and hard. In ancient Greece, this is how matter was defined.<br />
<br />
We know today, thanks to science, that this is not true.<br />
<br />
==== Successive theories of matter ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
(Our goal is to review the various theories relating to matter as simply as possible, without going into scientific explanations.)<br />
<br />
In Greece, it was believed that matter was a full and impenetrable reality that could not be divided into infinity. A moment arrives, it was said, when the pieces are no longer divisible; and we called these particles atoms (atom = indivisible). A table is then an agglomerate of atoms. It was also believed that these atoms were different from each other: there were smooth and round atoms like those of oil, others rough and crooked, like those of vinegar.<br />
<br />
It was [[Democritus]], a materialist of antiquity, who established this theory; he was the first to try to give a materialistic explanation of the world. He thought, for example, that the human body was made up of coarse atoms, that the soul was an agglomeration of finer atoms and, as he recognized the existence of gods but still wanted to explain everything as a materialist, he claimed that the gods themselves were made up of super-fine atoms.<br />
<br />
In the 19th century this theory changed profoundly.<br />
<br />
It was always thought that matter divided into atoms, that the latter were very hard particles attracted to each other. The theory of the Greeks had been abandoned, and these atoms were no longer crooked or smooth, but it was still argued that they were impenetrable, indivisible and undergoing a movement of attraction towards each other.<br />
<br />
Today, it is demonstrated that the atom is not an impenetrable and indivisible grain of matter (that is to say indivisible), but that it is itself composed of particles called electrons rotating at very high speed around a nucleus where almost all of the atom's mass is condensed. If the atom is neutral, electrons and nucleus have an electric charge, but the positive charge of the nucleus is equal to the sum of the negative charges carried by the electrons. Matter is an agglomeration of these atoms, and if it opposes a resistance to penetration, it is because of the very movement of the particles that compose it.<br />
<br />
The discovery of these electrical properties of matter, and in particular the discovery of electrons, provoked at the beginning of the twentieth century an assault by idealists against the very existence of matter. “The electron has nothing material,” they claimed. “It is nothing more than an electric charge in motion. If there is no matter in the negative charge, why would there be any in the positive nucleus? So matter has vanished. There is only energy!”<br />
<br />
Lenin, in [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|''Materialism and empiriocriticism'']] (chapter V), put things right by showing that energy and matter are inseparable. Energy is material, and movement is only the mode of existence of matter. In short, the idealists interpreted the discoveries of science backwards. At the time when this one highlighted aspects of the matter ignored until then, they concluded that the matter does not exist, under the pretext that it does not conform to the idea that one had of it long ago, when we believed that matter and motion were two distinct realities.<br />
<br />
==== What is matter for materialists ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
On this subject, it is essential to make a distinction: it is a question of seeing first:<br />
<ol start="1"><br />
<li>What is matter?</li><br />
</ol><br />
then<br />
<ol start="2"><br />
<li>What is matter like?<br />
</li><br />
</ol>The materialists' answer to the first question is that matter is an external reality, independent of spirit, and does not need spirit to exist. Lenin says on this subject:<blockquote>Matter is that which, acting upon our sense-organs, produces sensation; matter is the objective reality given to us in sensation.<ref group="note">Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism#What is matter? What is experience?|What is matter? What is experience?]]</ref></blockquote>Now, to the second question: "What is matter like?" the materialists say: "It is not for us to answer, it is for science."<br />
<br />
The first answer is invariable from antiquity to the present day.<br />
<br />
The second answer has varied and must vary because it depends on the sciences, on the state of human knowledge. It is not a definitive answer.<br />
<br />
We see that it is absolutely indispensable to pose the problem well and not to let the idealists mix up the two questions. It is necessary to separate them well, to show that it is the first which is the main one, and that our answer to it has always been invariable.<blockquote>For the ''sole'' “property” of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of ''being an objective reality,'' of existing outside our mind. <ref group="note">Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism#“Matter has disappeared”|“Matter has disappeared”]]</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
==== Space, time, motion and matter ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
If we claim, because we see it, that matter exists outside of us, we also need to make it clear that:<br />
<br />
# Matter exists in time and space.<br />
# Matter is in motion.<br />
<br />
Idealists, on the other hand, think that space and time are ideas of our mind (Kant was the first to support this). For them, space is a shape that we give to things, space is born from the mind of man. The same goes for time.<br />
<br />
The materialists affirm, on the contrary, that space is not in us, but that it is we who are in space. They also affirm that time is an indispensable condition for the unfolding of our life; and that, consequently, time and space are inseparable from what exists outside of us, that is, from matter.<blockquote>... The basic forms of all being are space and time, and being out of time is just as gross an absurdity as being out of space. <ref name=":4" group="note">Engels: [[Library:Anti-Dühring|Anti-Dühring]]: [[Library:Anti-Dühring#Philosophy|Philosophy]]</ref></blockquote>We therefore believe that there is a reality independent of consciousness. We all believe that the world has existed before us and will continue to exist after us. We believe that the world, in order to exist, does not need us. We believe that Paris existed before we were born and that unless it is definitively razed it will exist after our death. We are certain that Paris exists, even when we don't think about it, just as there are tens of thousands of cities that we have never visited, whose names we don't even know, and which nevertheless exist. This is the general conviction of humanity. Science has given this argument a precision and solidity that nullifies all idealistic finery.<blockquote>The natural sciences affirm positively that the earth existed in such states that neither man nor any living being inhabited it and could not inhabit it. Organic matter is a late phenomenon, the product of a very long evolution. <ref name=":5" group="note">Lenin: ''[[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]''</ref></blockquote>If the sciences thus provide us with proof that matter exists in time and space, they teach us, at the same time, that matter is in motion. This last precision, which is provided to us by modern science, is very important because it destroys the old theory that matter is incapable of motion, inert.<blockquote>Motion is the mode of existence of matter... Matter without motion is as inconceivable as motion without matter. <ref name=":4" group="note" /></blockquote>We know that the world in its present state is the result, in all fields, of a long evolution and, consequently, the result of a slow but continuous movement. We thus specify, after having demonstrated the existence of matter, that<blockquote>the universe is only moving matter, and this moving matter can only move in space and time. <ref name=":5" group="note" /></blockquote><br />
<br />
==== Conclusion ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
It follows from these observations that the idea of God, the idea of a "pure spirit" creator of the universe, is meaningless, because a God outside of space and time is something that cannot exist.<br />
<br />
It is necessary to share the idealistic mysticism, consequently not to admit any scientific control, to believe in a God existing outside time, that is to say not existing at any time, and existing outside space, that is to say not existing anywhere.<br />
<br />
Materialists, strengthened by the conclusions of science, affirm that matter exists in space and at a certain moment (in time). Therefore, the universe could not have been created, because it would have taken God to create the world at a moment that was at no time (since time for God does not exist) and it would also have sprung the world out of nothing.<br />
<br />
In order to admit creation, one must therefore first admit that there was a moment when the universe did not exist, and then that out of nothing something came out, which science cannot admit.<br />
<br />
We see that the idealistic arguments, confronted with science, cannot be supported, while those of the materialist philosophers cannot be separated from the sciences themselves. We thus underline, once again, the intimate relationship between materialism and science.<br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<br />
<blockquote><br />
''Engels: [[Library:Anti-Dühring|Anti-Dühring]]''<br />
<br />
''Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
=== What does it mean to be a materialist? ===<br />
==== Union of theory and practice ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The purpose of our study is to know what Marxism is, to see how the philosophy of materialism, by becoming dialectical, identifies itself with Marxism. We already know that one of the foundations of this philosophy is the close connection between theory and practice.<br />
<br />
This is why, after having seen what matter is for materialists, and then how matter is, it is indispensable to say, after these two theoretical questions, what it means to be materialist, that is to say how the materialist acts. This is the practical side of these problems.<br />
<br />
The basis of materialism is the recognition of being as the source of thought. But is it enough to keep repeating this? To be a true partisan of consequent materialism, one must be: 1. in the field of thought; 2. in the field of action.<br />
<br />
==== What does it mean to be a supporter of materialism in the field of thought? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
To be a partisan of materialism in the field of thought means knowing the fundamental formula of materialism: '''being produces thought''', knowing how this formula can be applied.<br />
<br />
When we say: being produces thought, we have here an abstract formula, because the words: being and thought are abstract words. "Being" is being in general; "thought" is thought in general that we want to talk about. Being, as well as thought in general, is a subjective reality (see part one, chapter IV, the explanation of "subjective reality" and "objective reality"); it does not exist: it is what is called an abstraction. To say: "being produces thought" is thus an abstract formula, because it is composed of abstractions.<br />
<br />
So, for example: we know a lot about horses, but if we talk about the horse, it is the horse in general that we want to talk about; well! the horse in general is an abstraction.<br />
<br />
If we put in the place of the horse, man or being in general, they are still abstractions.<br />
<br />
But if the horse in general doesn't exist, what does exist? It's the horses in particular. The veterinarian who would say: "I treat the horse in general, but not the horse in particular" would be laughed at, as would the doctor who would say the same thing about men.<br />
<br />
So there is no such thing as being in general, but there are particular beings with particular qualities. It is the same with thought.<br />
<br />
We will therefore say that being in general is something abstract, and that particular being is something concrete; thus of thought in general and of particular thought.<br />
<br />
''The materialist is the one who knows how to recognize in all situations, who knows how to recognize where is the being and where is the thought.''<br />
<br />
Example: The brain and our ideas.<br />
<br />
We must know how to transform the abstract general formula into a concrete formula. The materialist will thus identify the brain as being and our ideas as being the thought. He will reason while saying: it is the brain (the being) which produces our ideas (the thought). This is a simple example, but let's take the more complex example of human society and see how a materialist will reason.<br />
<br />
The life of society is composed (roughly) of an economic life and a political life. What is the relationship between economic life and political life?... What is the primary factor in this abstract formula that we want to make a concrete formula?<br />
<br />
For the materialist, the first factor, that is to say, the being, the one that gives life to society, is economic life. The second factor, the thought that is created by the being, which can only live through it, is political life.<br />
<br />
The materialist will therefore say that economic life explains political life, since political life is a product of economic life.<br />
<br />
This statement, made here summarily, is at the root of what is called ''historical materialism'' and was first made by Marx and Engels.<br />
<br />
Here is another more delicate example: the poet. Certainly, there are many elements involved in explaining "the poet," but here we want to show one aspect of this question.<br />
<br />
We will generally say that the poet writes because he is driven by inspiration. Is that enough to explain that the poet writes this rather than that? No. The poet may have thoughts in his head, but he is also a being who lives in society. We will see that the first factor, the one that gives the poet his own life, is society, since the second factor is the ideas that the poet has in his brain. Therefore, one of the elements, the fundamental element, that "explains" the poet will be society, that is, the environment in which he lives in that society. (We will find the "poet" again when we study the dialectic, because then we will have all the elements to study this problem properly).<br />
<br />
We can see from these examples that the materialist is the one who knows how to apply the formula of materialism everywhere and always, at every moment, and in every case.<br />
<br />
==== What is materialism in practice? ====<br />
<br />
===== First aspect of the question =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen that there is no third philosophy and that if one is not consistent in the application of materialism, one is either an idealist or one obtains a mixture of idealism and materialism.<br />
<br />
The bourgeois scholar, in his studies and in his experiences, is always materialist. This is normal, because, in order to advance science, it is necessary to work on matter, and if the scientist really believed that matter exists only in his mind, he would find it useless to make experiments.<br />
<br />
So there are several varieties of scientists:<br />
<br />
# Scientists who are conscious and consistent materialists.<br />
# Scientists who are materialists without knowing it: i.e. almost all of them, because it is impossible to do science without positing the existence of matter. But, among the latter, one must distinguish:<br />
## Those who begin to follow materialism, but who stop, because they don't dare to call themselves such: these are the agnostics, those whom Engels calls the "shameful materialists".<br />
## Then there are the scholars, unknowingly materialistic and inconsistent. They are materialists in the laboratory, but when they come out of their work, they are idealists, believers, religious.<br />
<br />
In fact, the latter did not know or did not want to put their ideas in order. They are in perpetual contradiction with themselves. They separate their work, necessarily materialist, from their philosophical conceptions. They are "scientists", and yet, if they do not expressly deny the existence of matter, they think, unscientifically, that it is useless to know the real nature of things. They are "scientists" and yet they believe without any proof in impossible things. (See the case of Pasteur, Branly and others who were believers, whereas the scientist, if he is consistent, must abandon his religious beliefs). Science and belief are absolutely opposed.<br />
<br />
===== Second aspect of the question =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
''Materialism and action'': If it is true that the true materialist is the one who applies the formula that is at the basis of this philosophy everywhere and in all cases, he must be careful to apply it well.<br />
<br />
As we have just seen, one must be consistent, and to be a consistent materialist, one must transpose materialism into action.<br />
<br />
To be a materialist in practice is to act in accordance with philosophy, taking ''reality'' as the first and most important factor, and ''thought'' as the second factor.<br />
<br />
We are going to see what attitudes are taken by those who, without realizing it, take thought as the first factor and are therefore at this moment idealists without knowing it.<br />
<br />
<ol start="1"><br />
<li>What do we call the one who lives as if he were alone in the world? The ''individualist''. He lives within his shell; the outside world exists only for him. For him, the important thing is ''himself'', his thought. He is a pure idealist, or what is called a solipsist. <ref group="note">See explanation of this word, [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy#Consequences of idealist reasoning|section “Consequences of idealist reasoning”]]</ref></li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
The individualist is selfish, and being selfish is not a materialist attitude. The selfish limits the universe to his own person.<br />
<br />
<ol start="2"><br />
<li>He who learns ''for the sake of learning'', as a dilettante, who assimilates well, has no difficulties, but keeps it all for himself. He attaches primary importance to himself, to his thought.</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
The idealist is closed to the outside world, to reality. The materialist is always ''open'' to reality; that is why those who take courses in Marxism and who learn easily must try to transmit what they have learned.<br />
<br />
<ol start="3"><br />
<li>He who reasons about all things in relation to himself undergoes an idealist deformation.</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
He will say, for example, of a meeting where things were said that were unpleasant to him: "This is a bad meeting". This is not the way to analyze things; one must judge the meeting in relation to the organization, to its purpose, and not in relation to oneself.<br />
<br />
<ol start="4"><br />
<li>''Sectarianism'' is not a materialist attitude either. Because the sectarian has understood the problems, because he agrees with himself, he claims that others should be like him. It is still giving primary importance to oneself or to a sect.</li><br />
<br />
<li>The ''doctrinaire'' who has studied the texts, has drawn definitions from them, is still an idealist when he is content to quote materialist texts, when he lives only with his texts, because then the real world disappears. He repeats these formulas without applying them in reality. He gives primary importance to the texts, to the ideas. Life unfolds in his consciousness in the form of texts, and, in general, we see that the doctrinaire is also sectarian.</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
To believe that the revolution is a question of education, to say that in explaining "once and for all" to the workers the necessity of the revolution they must understand and that if they do not want to understand, it is not worth trying to make the revolution, that is sectarianism and not a materialist attitude.<br />
<br />
We have to note the cases where people do not understand; we have to look for reasons why this is so, note the repression, the propaganda of the bourgeois newspapers, radio, cinema, etc., and look for all possible means to make people understand what we want, through leaflets, brochures, newspapers, schools, etc.<br />
<br />
To have no sense of reality, to live on the moon and, practically, to make projects without taking into account the situations and realities, is an idealist attitude that gives primary importance to beautiful projects without seeing if they are feasible or not. Those who continually criticize, but do nothing to make things better, proposing no remedies, those who lack critical sense themselves, all of them are inconsistent materialists.<br />
<br />
==== Conclusion ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
By these examples, we see that the faults, which we can see more or less in each of us, are idealistic faults. We have it because we separate practice from theory and the bourgeoisie, which has influenced us, likes us not to attach importance to reality. For her, who supports idealism, theory and practice are two completely different and unrelated things. These flaws are therefore harmful, and we must fight them, because they ultimately benefit the bourgeoisie. In short, we must note that these defects, engendered in us by society, by the theoretical bases of our education, of our culture, rooted in our childhood, are the work of the bourgeoisie -- and get rid of them.<br />
<br />
=== History of materialism ===<br />
{{top}}<br />
So far we have studied what materialism is in general and what ideas are common to all materialists. We will now see how it has evolved from antiquity to modern materialism. In short, we are going to trace the history of materialism.<br />
<br />
We don't pretend to explain in so few pages the 2000 years of the history of materialism; we simply want to give some general indications that will guide the readings.<br />
<br />
In order to study this history properly, even summarily, it is indispensable to see at every moment why things have unfolded in this way. It would be better not to quote certain historical names than not to apply this method. But, while we do not want to clutter up our readers' brains, we think it is necessary to name in chronological order the main materialist philosophers more or less known to them.<br />
<br />
This is why, in order to simplify the work, we will devote these first pages to the purely historical side, and then, in the second part of this chapter, we will see why the evolution of materialism has had to undergo the form of development that it did.<br />
==== The need to study this history====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The bourgeoisie does not like the history of materialism, and that is why this history, taught in bourgeois books, is completely incomplete and always false. Various falsification processes are used:<br />
<br />
<ol start="1"><br />
<li>Since we cannot ignore the great materialist thinkers, we name them by talking about everything they have written except their materialist studies, and we forget to say that they are materialist philosophers.</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
There are many such cases of oblivion in the history of philosophy as it is taught in high schools and universities, and we shall cite as an example Diderot, who was the greatest materialist thinker before Marx and Engels.<br />
<br />
<ol start="2"><br />
<li>There have been many thinkers throughout history who were unknowingly materialistic or inconsequential. That is to say, in some of their writings they were materialists, but in others they were idealists: Descartes, for example.</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
Now the history written by the bourgeoisie leaves in the shade all that, in these thinkers, not only influenced materialism, but gave birth to a whole current of this philosophy.<br />
<br />
<ol start="3"><br />
<li>Then, if these two falsification processes do not succeed in camouflaging certain authors, they are simply concealed.</li><br />
</ol><br />
<br />
This is how the history of literature and philosophy of the eighteenth century is taught by "ignoring" Holbach and Helvetius, who were great thinkers of that time.<br />
<br />
Why is this so? Because the history of materialism is particularly instructive for knowing and understanding the problems of the world; and also because the development of materialism is harmful to the ideologies that support the privileges of the ruling classes.<br />
<br />
These are the reasons why the bourgeoisie presents materialism as a doctrine that has not changed, frozen for twenty centuries, while on the contrary materialism was something alive and always in motion.<blockquote>But just as idealism underwent a series of stages of development, so also did materialism. With each epoch-making discovery even in the sphere of natural science, it has to change its form.<ref name=":0" group="note" /></blockquote>We now have a better understanding of the need to study, even summarily, this history of materialism. To do so, we must distinguish two periods: 1° from the origin (Greek antiquity) up to Marx and Engels; 2° from the materialism of Marx and Engels to the present day. (We will study this second part with dialectical materialism).<br />
<br />
We call the first period "pre-Marxist materialism", and the second "Marxist materialism" or "dialectical materialism".<br />
<br />
==== Pre-Marxist materialism ====<br />
===== Ancient Greece =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Let us recall that materialism is a doctrine that has always been linked to the sciences, that has evolved and progressed with the sciences. When, in Greek antiquity, in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E., the sciences began to manifest themselves with the "physicists", a materialist current was formed which attracted the best thinkers and philosophers of that time (Thales, Anaximene, Heraclitus). These first philosophers will be, as Engels says, "naturally dialecticians". They are struck by the fact that movement and change are everywhere and that things are not isolated, but intimately linked to each other. <br />
<br />
Heraclitus, who is called the "father of dialectic", said:<blockquote>Nothing is still; everything flows; you never bathe twice in the same river, because it is never, in two successive moments, the same: from one moment to the next, it has changed; it has become different.</blockquote>Heraclitus, the first, seeks to explain the movement, the change, and sees in the contradiction the reasons for the evolution of things.<br />
<br />
The conceptions of these first philosophers were right, and yet they were abandoned because they were wrong to be formulated a priori, that is, the state of science at that time did not allow us to prove what they maintained. On the other hand, the social conditions necessary for the dialectic to flourish (we shall see what they are later on) were not yet realized.<br />
<br />
It is only much later, in the 19th century, that the conditions (social and intellectual) allowing the sciences to prove the correctness of the dialectic will be realized.<br />
<br />
Other Greek thinkers had materialistic conceptions: Leucippe (5th century B.C.E.), who was the master of Democritus, had already discussed this problem of atoms, whose theory we have seen established by the latter.<br />
<br />
Epicurus (341-270 B.C.E.), a disciple of Democritus, was a very great thinker whose philosophy was completely falsified by the Church in the Middle Ages. Out of hatred of philosophical materialism, the Church presented Epicurean doctrine as profoundly immoral, as vindication of the lowest passions. In reality, Epicurus was an ascetic and his philosophy aimed at giving a scientific (and therefore anti-religious) foundation to human life.<br />
<br />
All these philosophers were aware that philosophy was linked to the fate of humanity, and we can already see there, on their part, an opposition to official theory, an opposition to materialism.<br />
<br />
But one great thinker dominates ancient Greece: it was Aristotle, who was rather idealistic. His influence was considerable. And that's why we must cite him in particular. He drew up an inventory of human knowledge of that time, filling in the gaps created by the new sciences. A universal mind, he wrote many books on all subjects. Through the universality of his knowledge, of which only idealistic tendencies were retained, neglecting its materialistic and scientific aspects, he had a considerable influence on philosophical conceptions until the end of the Middle Ages, that is, for twenty centuries.<br />
<br />
During all this period, therefore, the ancient tradition was followed, and only Aristotle was thought of. A savage repression raged against those who thought otherwise. Nevertheless, towards the end of the Middle Ages, a struggle broke out between idealists who denied the existence of matter and those who thought there was a material reality.<br />
<br />
In the 11th and 12th centuries, this dispute continued in France and especially in England.<br />
<br />
In the beginning, it was mainly in the latter country that materialism developed. Marx said:<blockquote>Materialism is the true son of Great Britain.<ref group="note">Marx-Engels: "The Holy Family", Philosophical Studies, Social Editions, 1961</ref></blockquote>A little later, it was in France that materialism flourished. In any case, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries we see two currents manifest themselves: one, English materialism, and the other, French materialism, whose coming together will contribute to the prodigious blossoming of materialism in the eighteenth century.<br />
<br />
=====English materialism =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
<blockquote>The authentic father of English materialism and of all modern experimental science is Bacon. The science of nature is for him the true science, and physics, based on sensible experience, is the noblest fundamental part of it. <ref group="note">Engels: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific|Socialism: utopian and scientific]]</ref></blockquote>Bacon is famous as the founder of the experimental method in the study of science. For him, the important thing is to study science in the "great book of nature", and this is particularly interesting at a time when science is studied in the books that Aristotle had left a few centuries earlier.<br />
<br />
To study physics, for example, this is how you would do it: on a certain subject, take the passages written by Aristotle; then take the books of St. Thomas Aquinas, who was a great theologian, and read what he had written about Aristotle's passage. The professor did not make any personal comment, let alone say what he thought, but referred to a third book that repeated Aristotle and St. Thomas. This was the science of the Middle Ages, which was called scholasticism: it was a bookish science, because it was studied only in books.<br />
<br />
It is against this scholasticism, this set and rigid teaching, that Bacon reacted by calling for study in the Great book of nature.<br />
<br />
At that time, a question arose:<br />
<br />
Where do our ideas come from? Where does our knowledge come from? Each of us has ideas, the idea of a house, for example. This idea comes to us because there are houses, the materialists say. Idealists think that it is God who gives us the idea of a house. Bacon, for his part, said that the idea only existed because we saw or touched things, but he could not yet demonstrate this.<br />
<br />
It was Locke (1632-1704) who set out to demonstrate how ideas come from experience. He showed that all ideas come from experience and that only experience gives us ideas. The idea of the first table came to man before it existed, because, through experience, he was already using a tree trunk or a stone as a table.<br />
<br />
With Locke's ideas, English materialism passed to France in the first half of the 18th century, because, while this philosophy was developing in a particular way in England, a materialist current had formed in our country.<br />
<br />
=====Materialism in France=====<br />
{{top}}One can date from Descartes (1596-1650) the birth in France of a clearly materialistic current. Descartes had a great influence on this philosophy, but, in general, few speak about it!<br />
<br />
At this time when the feudal ideology was very alive, even in the sciences, where one studied in the scholastic way that we saw, Descartes enters in fight against this state of affairs.<br />
<br />
The feudal ideology is imbued with religious mentality. It therefore considers that the Church, representing God on earth, has the monopoly of truth. It follows that no man can claim the truth if he does not subordinate his thought to the teachings of the Church. Descartes defeats this conception. He certainly does not attack the Church as such, but he boldly professes that every man, believer or not, can reach the truth through the exercise of his reason ("natural light").<br />
<br />
Descartes declares from the beginning of his Discourse of the method: "Common sense is the thing of the world best shared". Consequently, everyone in front of science has the same rights. And if he makes, for example, a good criticism of the medicine of his time (''The Imaginary Invalid'', of Molière, is an echo of the criticisms of Descartes), it is because he wants to make a science which is a true science, based on the study of nature and rejecting that taught until him, where Aristotle and saint Thomas were the only "arguments".<br />
<br />
Descartes lived at the beginning of the seventeenth century; in the following century, the [[French Revolution|Revolution]] was going to break out, and that is why we can say of him that he comes out of a world that is going to disappear to enter a new world, in the one that is going to be born. This position makes Descartes a conciliator; he wants to create a materialistic science and, at the same time, he is idealistic, because he wants to save religion.<br />
<br />
When, in his time, people used to ask: Why are there animals that live? They answered according to the ready-made answers of theology: because there is a principle that makes them live. Descartes, on the contrary, maintained that the laws of animal life are simply matter. He believed, moreover, and affirmed that animals are nothing other than machines of flesh and muscles, just as other machines are of iron and wood. He even thought that they both had no sensations and when, at the Abbey of Port-Royal, during the weeks of study, men who claimed to follow his philosophy would prick some dogs, they would say: "As nature is well done, it looks like they are suffering!"<br />
<br />
For Descartes, the materialist, the animals were thus machines. But Man is different, because he has a soul, says Descartes the idealist.<br />
<br />
Ideas developed and defended by Descartes will be born, on the one hand, a clearly materialist philosophical current and, on the other hand, an idealist current.<br />
<br />
Among those who continue the materialist Cartesian branch, we will retain La Mettrie (1709- 1751). Taking up this thesis of the animal-machine, he extends it to man. Why shouldn't man be a machine?.... The human soul itself, he sees it as a mechanics where ideas would be mechanical movements.<br />
<br />
It was at this time that English materialism penetrated into France with Locke's ideas. From the junction of these two currents was born a more evolved materialism. It will be:<br />
<br />
=====The materialism of the 18th century=====<br />
{{top}}This materialism was defended by philosophers who also knew how to be admirable fighters and writers; continually criticizing social institutions and religion, applying theory to practice and always fighting against power, they were sometimes locked up in the Bastille or in Vincennes.<br />
<br />
It was they who gathered their works in the great Encyclopedia, where they set the new direction of materialism. They had, moreover, a great influence, since this philosophy was, as Engels says, "the conviction of all cultivated youth".<br />
<br />
It was even the only time in the history of philosophy in France when a philosophy with a French character became truly popular.<br />
<br />
Diderot, born in Langres in 1713, died in Paris in 1784, dominated the whole movement. What must be said above all, and what bourgeois history does not say, is that he was, before Marx and Engels, the greatest materialist thinker. Diderot, Lenin said, almost arrives at the conclusions of contemporary (dialectical) materialism.<br />
<br />
He was a true militant; always in battle against the Church, against the social state, he knew the dungeons. The history written by the contemporary bourgeoisie has largely escaped him. But one must read the Interviews of Diderot and d'Alembert, Rameau's Nephew, Jacques the Fatalist to understand the enormous influence of Diderot on materialism.<br />
<br />
In the first half of the 19th century, because of historical events, we see a retreat of materialism. The bourgeoisie of all countries makes a great propaganda in favor of idealism and religion, because not only does it no longer want progressive (materialist) ideas to spread, but it also needs to put thinkers and the masses to sleep in order to stay in power.<br />
<br />
It is then that we see Feuerbach in Germany asserting, in the midst of all the idealistic philosophers, his materialist convictions, <blockquote>by putting materialism squarely back on the throne. <ref group="note" name=":6">Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach]]: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy#Hegel|Hegel]]</ref></blockquote>Essentially developing a critique of religion, he takes up in a healthy and contemporary way the bases of materialism that had been forgotten and thus influences the philosophers of his time.<br />
<br />
We arrive at this period of the nineteenth century when we see an enormous progress in the sciences, due in particular to these three great discoveries: the living cell, the transformation of energy, and evolution (from Darwin), which will allow Marx and Engels, influenced by Feuerbach, to make materialism evolve to give us modern, or dialectical, materialism.<br />
<br />
We have just seen, in a very brief way, the history of materialism before Marx and Engels. We know that the latter, while agreeing with the materialists who preceded them on many points in common, also judged that the latter's work, on the other hand, had many flaws and shortcomings.<br />
<br />
In order to understand the transformations they brought to pre-Marxist materialism, it is therefore absolutely necessary to investigate what these defects and shortcomings were, and why they were so.<br />
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In other words, our study of the history of materialism would be incomplete if, after listing the various thinkers who contributed to the progress of materialism, we did not try to find out how and in what direction this progress was made and why it underwent this or that form of evolution.<br />
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We are particularly interested in the materialism of the 18th century, because it was the culmination of the different currents of this philosophy.<br />
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We are going to study what were the errors of this materialism, what were its shortcomings, but, as we must never see things in a unilateral way, but on the contrary as a whole, we will also underline what were its merits.<br />
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Materialism, which was dialectical in its beginnings, has not been able to continue to develop on this basis. Dialectical reasoning, because of the insufficiency of scientific knowledge, had to be abandoned. It was first necessary to create and develop the sciences.<blockquote>One had first to know what a particular thing was before one could observe the changes it was undergoing.<ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>It is thus the very intimate union of materialism and science that will allow this philosophy to become once again, on a more solid and scientific basis, the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels.<br />
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We will thus find the birth certificate of materialism next to that of science. But, if we always find where materialism comes from, we must also establish where idealism comes from.<br />
<br />
====Where does idealism come from?====<br />
{{top}}If, in the course of history, idealism has been able to exist alongside religion, tolerated and approved by it, this is because in reality, it was born from and comes from religion. <br />
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Lenin wrote a formula on this subject that we must study. "Idealism is nothing but a refined form of religion. "What does it mean? It means that idealism is able to present its conceptions much more flexibly than religion. To claim that the universe was created by a spirit floating above the darkness, that God is immaterial, and then suddenly, as religion does, declaring that he speaks (through the Word) and that he has a son (Jesus), is a series of brutally presented ideas. Idealism, by affirming that the world exists only in our thoughts, in our mind, presents itself in a more hidden way. In fact, as we know, it is the same in substance, but the form is less brutal, more elegant. That is why idealism is a refined form of religion."<br />
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It is also refined because idealistic philosophers know, in discussions, how to anticipate questions, how to lay traps, like Philonous to poor Hylas in the Berkeley dialogues.<br />
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But to say that idealism stems from religion is simply to put the problem off, and we must ask ourselves this immediately:<br />
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====Where does religion come from?====<br />
{{top}}Engels gave us a very clear answer on this subject: "Religion is born from the limited conceptions of man."<br />
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For the first men, this ignorance was twofold: ignorance of nature and ignorance of themselves. One must constantly think of this double ignorance when studying the history of primitive men.<br />
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In Greek antiquity, which we already consider an advanced civilization, this ignorance seems childish, for example when we see that Aristotle thought that the earth was immobile, that it was the center of the world and that planets revolved around the earth. (The latter, of which he thought numbered 46, were attached like nails on a ceiling, and the whole thing revolved around the earth...)<br />
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The Greeks also believed that there were four elements: water, earth, air and fire, and that it was not possible to decompose them. We know that this is not true, since we are now decomposing water, earth and air and we do not consider fire as a body of the same order.<br />
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About human beings themselves, the Greeks were also very ignorant, since they did not know the function of our organs and they considered, for example, the heart as the seat of courage!<br />
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If the ignorance of the Greek scholars was so great, they whom we already consider to be very advanced, then what must have been the ignorance of the men who lived thousands of years before them? The concepts that primitive men had of nature and of themselves were limited by ignorance. But these men still tried to explain things. All the documents we have about primitive men tell us that these men were very preoccupied with dreams. We have seen, from the first chapter, how they solved this question of dreams by believing in the existence of a "double" of man. In the beginning, they attributed to this double a kind of transparent and light body, still having a material consistency. It is only much later that this conception is born in their minds that man has in him an immaterial principle that survives after death, a spiritual principle (the word comes from ''spiritus'', which in Latin means breath, the breath that goes away with the last breath, at the moment when one gives up the soul and the "double" alone remains). It is then the soul that explains the thought, the dream.<br />
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In the Middle Ages, there were strange ideas about the soul. It was thought that in a fat body one had a thin soul and in a thin body a great soul; that is why, at that time, ascetics used to make long and numerous fasts to have a great soul, to make a great dwelling for the soul.<br />
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Having admitted in the form of the transparent, then in the form of the soul, a spiritual principle, the survival of man after death, primitive men created the gods.<br />
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Believing at first in who were more powerful than men existing in a still material form, they imperceptibly came to this belief in gods existing in the form of a soul superior to ours. And so, after having created a multitude of gods, each with its defined function, as in ancient Greece, they came to this conception of one God. Then the monotheistic religion of today was created. We can see that the origin of religion, even in its present form, was ignorance.<br />
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Idealism was thus born from the limited conceptions of man, from his ignorance; while materialism, on the contrary, is born from the retreat of these limits.<br />
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In the course of the history of philosophy, we are going to witness this continuous struggle between idealism and materialism. The latter wants to push back the limits of ignorance, and this will be one of its glories and one of its merits. Idealism, on the contrary, and the religion that feeds it make every effort to maintain ignorance and to take advantage of this ignorance of the masses to make them tolerate oppression, economic and social exploitation.<br />
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==== The merits of pre-Marxist materialism ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen materialism born among the Greeks as soon as an embryo of science existed. Following this principle that when science develops, materialism develops, we see in the course of history:<br />
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# In the Middle Ages, a weak development of science, a halt to materialism.<br />
# In the 17th and 18th centuries, a great development of science corresponds to a great development of materialism. The French materialism of the 18th century is the direct consequence of the development of the sciences.<br />
# In the nineteenth century, we witness many great discoveries, and materialism undergoes a very great transformation with Marx and Engels.<br />
# Today, science is progressing enormously and so is materialism. We see the best scholars applying dialectical materialism in their work.<br />
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Idealism and materialism therefore have completely opposite origins; and we see, over the centuries, a struggle between these two philosophies, a struggle that still lasts today, and which was not only academic.<br />
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This struggle that crosses the history of humanity is the struggle between science and ignorance, it is the struggle between two currents. One is pulling humanity towards ignorance and keeping it in this ignorance, the other, on the contrary, tends towards the emancipation of men by replacing ignorance with science.<br />
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This struggle has sometimes taken serious forms, as in the time of the Inquisition, where we can take, among others, the example of Galileo. The latter asserts that the Earth revolves. This is a new piece of knowledge, which is in contradiction with the Bible and also with Aristotle: if the earth revolves, it is not the center of the universe, but simply a point in the universe, and we must then widen the limits of our thoughts. What do we do then in the face of this discovery of Galileo?<br />
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In order to keep humanity in ignorance, a religious court is instituted, and Galileo is condemned to make amends. This is an example of the struggle between ignorance and science.<br />
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We must therefore judge the philosophers and scientists of that time by placing them in this struggle of ignorance against science, and we will see that by defending science they were defending materialism without knowing it themselves. Thus Descartes, by his reasoning, provided ideas that could advance materialism.<br />
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We must also see that this struggle in the course of history is not simply a theoretical struggle, but a social and political struggle. The ruling classes in this battle are always on the side of ignorance. Science is revolutionary and contributes to the emancipation of humanity.<br />
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The case of the bourgeoisie is typical. In the 18th century, the bourgeoisie was dominated by the feudal class; at that time, it was in favor of science; it led the fight against ignorance and gave us ''L'Encyclopédie''. In the twentieth century, the bourgeoisie is the ruling class, and in this struggle against ignorance and science, it is for ignorance with much greater savagery than before (see Hitlerism).<br />
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So we see that pre-Marxist materialism has played a considerable role and has had a very great historical importance. During this struggle between ignorance and science it was able to develop a general conception of the world that could be opposed to religion, and therefore to ignorance. It is also thanks to the evolution of materialism, to this succession of his works, that the indispensable conditions for the blossoming of dialectical materialism were realized.<br />
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==== The defects of pre-Marxist materialism ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
To understand the evolution of materialism, to see its flaws and shortcomings, we must never forget that science and materialism are linked.<br />
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In the beginning, materialism was ahead of science, and that is why this philosophy could not assert itself from the outset. Science had to be created and developed to prove that dialectical materialism was right, but this took more than twenty centuries. During this long period, materialism was influenced by the sciences and particularly by the spirit of the sciences, as well as by the most developed particular sciences.<br />
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That is why<blockquote>The materialism of the last century ''[that is, of the 18th century]'' was predominantly mechanical, because at that time, of all natural sciences, only mechanics, and indeed only the mechanics of solid bodies — celestial and terrestrial — in short, the mechanics of gravity, had come to any definite close. Chemistry at that time existed only in its infantile, phlogistic form. Biology still lay in swaddling clothes; vegetable and animal organisms had been only roughly examined and were explained by purely mechanical causes. What the animal was to Descartes, man was to the materialists of the 18th century — a machine. <ref name=":0" group="note" /></blockquote>This, then, is what materialism was, the result of a long and slow evolution of science after the "hibernation period of the Christian Middle Ages".<br />
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The great mistake in this period was to consider the world as a great mechanics, to judge everything according to the laws of this science called mechanics. Considering motion as a simple mechanical movement, it was believed that the same events had to happen over and over again. We saw the machine side of things, but we did not see the living side. This materialism is therefore called mechanical materialism.<br />
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Let's see an example: How did these materialists explain thinking? In this way: "the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile"! That's a bit simplistic! Marx's materialism, on the contrary, gives a series of clarifications. Our thoughts do not come only from the brain. We have to see why we have certain thoughts, certain ideas, rather than others, and then we realize that society, our surroundings, etc., select our ideas. Mechanical materialism considers thought as a simple mechanical phenomenon. But it is much more than that!<blockquote>This exclusive application of mechanics to phenomena of a chemical and organic nature, in which mechanical laws certainly also acted, but were rejected in the background by laws of a higher order, constitutes a specific, but inevitable narrowness at that time of classical French materialism. <ref name=":0" group="note" /></blockquote>This is the first major fault of eighteenth-century materialism.<br />
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The consequences of this error were that it ignored history in general, that is, the point of view of historical development, of process: this materialism considered that the world did not evolve and that it returned at regular intervals to similar states, nor did it conceive of an evolution of man and animals.<blockquote>This materialism ... in its inability to consider the world as a process, as matter engaged in historical development ... corresponded to the level reached at the time by the natural sciences and the metaphysical way,<ref group="note">''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy#Study of metaphysics|Study of metaphysics]]''</ref> i.e. antidialectical, of philosophizing that resulted from it. It was known that nature was engaged in a perpetual movement. But this movement, according to the conception of the time, also described a perpetual circle and, therefore, never moved a single place; it always produced the same results.<ref name=":0" group="note" /></blockquote>This is the second flaw of this materialism.<br />
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Its third mistake was that it was too contemplative; it did not see enough of the role of human action in the world and in society. Marx's materialism teaches that we must not only explain the world, but transform it. Man is an active element in history that can bring change to the world.<br />
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The action of the Russian communists is a living example of an action capable not only of preparing, making and succeeding in the revolution, but, since 1918, of establishing socialism in the midst of enormous difficulties.<br />
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Pre-Marxist materialism was unaware of this concept of human action. At that time, it was thought that man is a product of his environment, whereas Marx teaches us that the environment is a product of man and that man is therefore a product of his own activity under certain conditions given at the outset. If man undergoes the influence of his environment, he can transform this environment, society; he can, therefore, transform himself.<br />
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The materialism of the 18th century was therefore too contemplative, because it ignored the historical development of everything, and this was inevitable then, since scientific knowledge was not advanced enough to conceive the world and things differently than through the old method of thinking: "metaphysics".<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote><br />
''Marx and Engels: [[Library:The holy family|The holy family]]''<br />
<br />
''Marx: [[Library:Theses on Feuerbach|Theses on Feuerbach]]''<br />
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''Plekhanov: [[Library:Essays on the history of materialism|Essays on the history of materialism]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
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''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions#The philosophical materialism|Control questions]]''<br />
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== Study of metaphysics==<br />
=== What is the "metaphysical method"? ===<br />
{{top}}<br />
We know that the defects of the materialists of the 18th century come from their form of reasoning, from their particular method of research which we have called "metaphysical method". The metaphysical method thus translates a particular conception of the world, and we must notice that, if to pre-Marxist materialism we oppose Marxist materialism, in the same way to metaphysical materialism we oppose dialectical materialism.<br />
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====The characteristics of this method ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
What we are going to study here is this <blockquote>old method of investigation and thought which Hegel calls “metaphysical” <ref name=":7" group="note">Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|''Ludwig Feuerbach'']]'': [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy#Marx|Marx]]''</ref></blockquote>Let's start immediately with a simple remark. Which seems more natural to most people: movement or stillness? What is the normal state of affairs for them: rest or mobility?<br />
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In general, it is thought that rest existed before movement and that something, in order for it to be able to move, was first in a state of rest.<br />
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The Bible also tells us that before the universe, which was created by God, there was immobile eternity, i.e. rest.<br />
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Here are words we will often use: rest, stillness, and also movement and change. But these last two words are not synonymous.<br />
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Movement, in the strict sense of the word, is displacement. Example: a falling stone, a moving train are in motion.<br />
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Change, in the strict sense of the word, is the passage from one form to another. Example: A tree that loses its leaves has changed shape. But it is also the passage from one state to another. Example: The air has become unbreathable: it is a change.<br />
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So movement means change of place, and change means change of shape or state. We will try to respect this distinction, in order to avoid confusion (when we study the dialectic, we will be called upon to review the meaning of these words).<br />
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We have just seen that, generally speaking, we think that movement and change are less normal than rest, and it is certain that we have a kind of preference to consider things at rest and without change.<br />
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Example: We bought a pair of yellow shoes and after some time, after multiple repairs (replacement of soles and heels, gluing of many parts), we still say: "I'm going to put on my yellow shoes", without realizing that they are not the same anymore. For us, it is always the yellow shoes that we bought on such and such an occasion and that we paid such and such a price. We will not consider the change that has occurred to our shoes, they are always the same, they are identical. We neglect the change to see only the identity as if nothing important had happened. This is the principle of identity.<br />
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=====The principle of identity=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
It consists in preferring immobility to movement and identity to change in the face of events.<br />
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From this preference, which constitutes the first character of this method, a whole conception of the world is derived. We consider the universe as if it were frozen," Engels says. The same will be true for nature, society and mankind. Thus it is often claimed: "There is nothing new under the sun", which means that there has always been no change, since the universe has remained motionless and identical. It is also often understood to mean a periodic return to the same events. God created the world by producing fish, birds, mammals, etc., and since then nothing has changed, the world has not moved. It is also said: "Men are always the same", as if men have always been the same.<br />
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These common expressions reflect this conception which is deeply rooted in us, in our minds, and the bourgeoisie exploits this error to the full.<br />
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When one criticizes socialism, one of the arguments most readily given is that man is selfish and that it is necessary for some force to intervene to constrain him, otherwise disorder would reign. This is the result of this metaphysical conception that man has forever a fixed nature that cannot change.<br />
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It is quite certain that if we suddenly had the possibility of living in a communist regime, that is to say, if we could distribute the products immediately to each one according to his needs and not according to his work, it would be a rush to satisfy whims, and such a society would not be able to hold out. And yet this is communist society and this is what is rational. But it is because we have a metaphysical conception rooted in us that we picture the future man who will live in a relatively distant future as similar to the man of today.<br />
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Therefore, when we affirm that a socialist or communist society is not viable because man is selfish, we forget that if society changes, man will also change.<br />
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Every day we hear criticisms of the Soviet Union that reveal to us the difficulties of understanding of those who formulate them. This is because they have a metaphysical conception of the world and of things.<br />
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Among the many examples we could cite, let us take just this one. We are told: "A worker in the Soviet Union receives a salary that does not correspond to the total value of what he produces, so there is a surplus value, that is to say, a deduction from his salary. So it is stolen. In France, it is the same, workers are exploited; there is therefore no difference between a Soviet worker and a French worker.<br />
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Where is the metaphysical conception in this example? It consists in not considering that there are two types of societies here and in not taking into account the differences between these two societies. To believe that as long as there is added value here and there, it is the same thing, without considering the changes that have taken place in the Soviet Union, where man and machine no longer have the same economic and social meaning as in France. Now, in our country, the machine exists to produce (at the service of the boss) and man to be exploited. In the U.S.S.R., the machine exists to produce (at the service of man) and man to enjoy the fruit of his labor. The surplus value in France goes to the boss; in the USSR to the socialist state, that is to say, to the community without exploiters. Things have changed.<br />
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We see therefore, from this example, that the defects of judgment come, in those who are sincere, from a metaphysical method of thinking, and particularly from the application of the first character of this method, a fundamental characteristic which consists in underestimating change and in preferring to consider immobility or, in other words, which tends to perpetuate identity in the midst of change. <br />
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But what is this identity? We saw a house being built that was completed on January 1, 1935, for example. On January 1, 1936, as well as all the years that followed, we will say that it is identical, because it still has two floors, twenty windows, two doors on the façade, etc., because it always remains itself, does not change, is not different. So to be identical is to remain the same, not to become different. And yet this house has changed! It is only at first glance, superficially, that it has remained the same. The architect or the mason, who see the thing more closely, know that the house is already not the same one week after its construction: here, a small crack occurred, there a stone played, there the color is gone, etc.... So it is only when you look at things "roughly" that they look the same. In analysis, in detail, they change constantly.<br />
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But what are the practical consequences of the first character of the metaphysical method?<br />
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Since we prefer to see identity in things, that is, to see them remaining themselves, we say, for example: "Life is life, and death is death. "We affirm that life remains life, that death remains itself, death, and that's all.<br />
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As we become accustomed to seeing things in their identity, we separate them from each other. To say "a chair is a chair" is a natural statement, but it is to emphasize identity and at the same time it means: what is not a chair is something else.<br />
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It is so natural to say this that emphasizing it seems childish. In the same vein, we will say: "The horse is the horse, and what is not the horse is something else. "So we separate the chair on one side and the horse on the other, and we do that for each thing. So we make distinctions, strictly separating things from each other, and that's how we are led to turn the world into a collection of separate things, and that's what the second characteristic of the metaphysical method:<br />
<br />
=====Isolation of things=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
What we have just said seems so natural that one may ask: why say that? We will see that, in spite of everything, it was necessary, because this system of reasoning leads us to see things from a certain angle.<br />
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It is still in the practical consequences that we are going to judge the second character of this method.<br />
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In everyday life, if we consider animals and if we reason about them by separating beings, we do not see what is common between those of different genera and species. A horse is a horse and a cow is a cow. There is no connection between them.<br />
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This is the point of view of ancient zoology, which classifies animals by clearly separating them from each other and sees no connection between them.<br />
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This is one of the results of the application of the metaphysical method.<br />
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As another example, we can cite the fact that the bourgeoisie wants science to be science; that philosophy remains itself; the same goes for politics; and, of course, there is nothing in common, absolutely no connection between the three.<br />
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The practical conclusions of such a reasoning is that a scientist must remain a scientist and does not have to mix his science with philosophy and politics. It will be the same for the philosopher and the man of a political party.<br />
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When a man of good faith reasons in this way, we can say that he reasons as a metaphysician. The English writer Wells went to the Soviet Union a few years ago and visited the great writer, now deceased, Maxim Gorky. He proposed to him to create a literary club where politics would not be made, because, in his mind, literature is literature, and politics is politics. Gorky and his friends apparently started laughing and Wells was offended. Wells saw and conceived of the writer as living outside of society, while Gorky and his friends knew that this is not the case in life, where, in truth, all things are connected - whether we like it or not.<br />
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In everyday practice, we try to classify, isolate things, see them, study them only for themselves. Those who are not Marxists see the state in general by isolating it from society, as independent of the form of society. To reason in this way, to isolate the state from society is to isolate it from its relationship with reality.<br />
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The same mistake is made when we speak of man by isolating him from other men, from his environment, from society. If we also consider the machine for itself by isolating it from the society in which it produces, we make the mistake of thinking: "Machine in Paris, machine in Moscow; added value here and there, there's no difference, it's absolutely the same thing.<br />
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Yet this is a reasoning that can be read continuously and those who read it accept it, because the general and usual point of view is to isolate, to divide things. This is a habit characteristic of the metaphysical method.<br />
<br />
===== Eternal and impassable divisions=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
After having given our preference to consider things as immobile and unchanging, we have classified and catalogued them, creating divisions among them that make us forget the relationships they may have with each other.<br />
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This way of seeing and judging leads us to believe that these divisions exist once and for all (a horse is a horse) and that they are absolute, impassable and eternal. This is the third character of the metaphysical method.<br />
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But we have to be careful when we talk about this method; because, when we Marxists say that in capitalist society there are two classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, we also make divisions that may seem to be metaphysical. However, it is not simply by introducing divisions that one is a metaphysician, it is the way in which one establishes the differences, the relations that exist between these divisions.<br />
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When we say, for example, that there are two classes in society, the bourgeoisie immediately thinks that there are rich and poor. And, of course, it will tell us, “There have always been rich and poor.”<br />
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"There has always been" and "there always will be" is a metaphysical way of reasoning. Things are forever classified independently of each other, and partitions, insurmountable walls are established between them.<br />
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Society is divided into rich and poor, instead of acknowledging the existence of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and even if we admit this last division, we consider them outside their mutual relations, that is, outside the class struggle. What are the practical consequences of this third character, which establishes definitive barriers between things? It is that between a horse and a cow there can be no kinship. It will be the same for all sciences and for everything that surrounds us. We will see further on if this is right, but we still have to examine what are the consequences of these three different characters we have just described and it will be the fourth characteristic of the metaphysical method:<br />
<br />
=====Opposition of opposites =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
It follows from all that we have just seen that when we say, "Life is life, and death is death," we are affirming that there is nothing in common between life and death. We set them apart from each other by seeing life and death each for itself, without seeing the relationships that can exist between them. Under these conditions, a man who has just lost his life must be considered dead, because it is impossible for him to be both alive and dead at the same time, since life and death are mutually exclusive.<br />
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By considering things as isolated, definitely different from each other, we manage to set them against each other.<br />
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This is the fourth character of the metaphysical method, which opposes opposites to one another and affirms that two opposites cannot exist at the same time.<br />
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Indeed, in this example of life and death, there can be no third possibility. It is absolutely necessary for us to choose one or the other of the possibilities that we have distinguished. We consider that a third possibility would be a contradiction, that this contradiction is an absurdity and, therefore, an impossibility.<br />
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The fourth character of the metaphysical method is therefore the horror of contradiction.<br />
<br />
The practical consequences of this reasoning is that, when we talk about democracy and dictatorship, for example, well! the metaphysical point of view demands that a society choose between the two: because democracy is democracy, and dictatorship is dictatorship. Democracy is not dictatorship; and dictatorship is not democracy. We have to choose, otherwise we are faced with a contradiction, an absurdity, an impossibility.<br />
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The Marxist attitude is quite different.<br />
<br />
We think, on the contrary, that the dictatorship of the proletariat, for example, is at the same time the dictatorship of the mass and democracy for the mass of the exploited.<br />
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We think that life, the life of living beings, is only possible because there is a perpetual struggle between cells and that, continually, some die to be replaced by others. Thus, life contains within it death. We think that death is not as total and separate from life as metaphysics thinks, because on a corpse all life has not completely disappeared, since certain cells continue to live for a certain time and from this corpse other lives will be born.<br />
<br />
==== Development ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
So we see that the different characteristics of the metaphysical method force us to look at things from a certain angle and lead us to reason in a certain way. We see that this way of analyzing has a certain "logic" that we will study later, and we also see that it corresponds very much to the way of seeing, thinking, studying, analyzing that we encounter in general.<br />
<br />
We begin - and this enumeration will allow us to summarize - with <br />
<br />
# Seeing things in their immobility, in their identity.<br />
# Separating things from one another, detaching them from their mutual relationships.<br />
# Establishing eternal divisions between things, impassable walls.<br />
# Opposing opposites, affirming that two opposites cannot exist at the same time.<br />
<br />
We have seen, when we have examined the practical consequences of each character, that none of this corresponds to reality.<br />
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Does the world conform to this conception? Are things immobile and without change in nature? No. We see that everything changes and we see movement. So this conception is not in agreement with the things themselves. It is obviously nature that is right, and it is this conception that is wrong.<br />
<br />
We have defined, from the beginning, philosophy as wanting to explain the universe, man, nature, and so on. Since the sciences study particular problems, philosophy is, as we have said, the study of the most general problems that join and extend the sciences.<br />
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However, the old "metaphysical" way of thinking which applies to all problems is also a philosophical conception which considers the universe, man and nature in a very particular way.<blockquote>To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. "His communication is 'yea, yea; nay, nay'; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another, cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to the other. <ref group="note" name=":8">Engels: [[Library:Anti-Dühring|Anti-Dühring]]: [[Library:Anti-Dühring#Introduction|Introduction]]</ref> </blockquote>The metaphysical conception thus considers "the universe as a set of fixed things". In order to grasp this way of thinking, we will study how it conceives of nature, society and thought.<br />
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====The metaphysical conception of====<br />
=====Nature=====<br />
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Metaphysics considers nature as a set of things definitively fixed.<br />
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But there are two ways of looking at it this way.<br />
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The first way considers that the world is absolutely motionless, movement being only an illusion of our senses. If we remove this appearance of motion, nature does not move.<br />
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This theory was defended by a school of Greek philosophers called the Eleates. This simplistic conception is so in violent contradiction with reality that it is no longer supported today.<br />
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The second way of considering nature as a set of fixed things is much more subtle. We don't say that nature is immobile, we want it to move, but we affirm that it is animated by a mechanical movement. Here, the first way disappears; movement is no longer denied, and this does not seem to be a metaphysical conception. This conception is called "mechanistic" (or the "mechanism").<br />
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It constitutes an error that is very often committed and that we find among the materialists of the 17th and 18th centuries. We have seen that they do not consider nature as motionless, but in movement, only, for them, this movement is simply a mechanical change, a displacement.<br />
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They admit the whole solar system (the earth revolves around the sun), but they think that this movement is purely mechanical, that is to say a pure change of place, and they consider this movement only in this aspect.<br />
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But things are not so simple. The fact that the earth rotates is certainly a mechanical movement, but it can, while it is rotating, be subject to influences, such as cooling down, for example. So there is not only a displacement, there are also other changes that take place.<br />
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What characterizes this conception, called "mechanistic", is that we consider only the mechanical movement.<br />
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If the earth keeps turning and nothing more happens to it, the earth changes its place, but the earth itself does not change; it remains identical to itself. It only continues, before us as well as after us, to turn again and again. Thus everything happens as if nothing had happened. So we see that to admit movement, but to make of it a pure mechanical movement, is a metaphysical conception, because this movement is without history.<br />
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A watch with perfect organs, built with indestructible materials, would work forever without changing in any way, and the watch would have no history. It is such a conception of the universe that we constantly find in Descartes. He seeks to reduce to mechanics all the physical and physiological laws. He has no idea of chemistry (see his explanation of the circulation of blood), and his mechanical conception of things will still be that of the materialists of the 18th century.<br />
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(We will make an exception for Diderot, who is less purely mechanistic, and who, in some writings, glimpses the dialectical conception).<br />
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What characterizes the materialists of the eighteenth century is that they make nature a clockwork mechanism.<br />
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If this were really so, things would continually return to the same point without leaving a trace, nature would remain identical to itself, which is indeed the first character of the metaphysical method.<br />
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=====Society=====<br />
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The metaphysical conception is that nothing changes in society. But, in general, this is not presented as such. It is recognized that changes occur, for example, in production, where raw materials are used to produce finished objects; in politics, where governments succeed one another. People recognize all this, but they consider the capitalist regime to be definitive, eternal, and sometimes even compare it to a machine.<br />
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That's how we talk about the economic machine that sometimes breaks down, but we want to repair it in order to preserve it. We want this economic machine to be able to continue to distribute, like an automatic machine, dividends to some and misery to others.<br />
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We also talk about the political machine, which is the bourgeois parliamentary regime, and we ask only one thing of it: it is, sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right, to function in order to preserve the privileges of capitalism.<br />
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This is a mechanistic, metaphysical conception of society.<br />
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If it were possible for this society, in which all these cogs work, to continue its march continuously, it would leave no trace and, consequently, no continuation in history.<br />
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There is also a very important mechanistic conception that is valid for the whole universe, but especially for society, which consists in spreading the idea of a regular march and a periodic return of the same events, under the formula: "history is a perpetual beginning again".<br />
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It should be noted that these conceptions are very widespread. They do not really deny the movement and change that exist and that we see in society, but they falsify the movement itself by transforming it into a simple mechanism.<br />
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=====Thought=====<br />
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What is, around us, our conception of thought?<br />
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We believe that human thought is and was eternal. We believe that if things have changed, our way of reasoning is the same as that of the man who lived a century ago. Our feelings, we consider them to be the same as the Greeks, goodness and love as having always existed; this is how one speaks of "eternal love". It is very common to believe that human feelings have not changed.<br />
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This is what makes people say and write, for example, that a society cannot exist without having another basis than individual and selfish enrichment. This is why we often hear that the "desires of the men are always the same".<br />
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We often think that way. Far too often. In the movement of thought as in all the others, we let the metaphysical conception penetrate. This is because, at the basis of our education, is this method,<blockquote>this way of thinking which seems to us at first sight extremely plausible, because it is that of what is called common sense. <ref name=":8" group="note" /></blockquote>The result is that this way of seeing, this metaphysical way of thinking is not only an conception of the world, but also a way of thinking.<br />
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While it is relatively easy to reject metaphysical reasoning, it is, on the other hand, more difficult to get rid of the metaphysical way of thinking. On this subject, we must make a clarification. We call the way in which we see the universe: a conception; and the way in which we seek explanations: a method.<br />
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For example: <br />
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# The changes we see in society are only apparent, they renew what has already been - that is a conception".<br />
# When we look at the history of society to see what has already taken place and conclude that "there is nothing new under the sun", this is what "method" is.<br />
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And we find that design inspires and determines the method. Of course, once inspired by the design, the method in turn reacts to it, directing it, guiding it.<br />
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We have seen what metaphysical conception is; we are going to see what is its method of research. It is called logic.<br />
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====What is logic?====<br />
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It is said of "logic" that it is the art of thinking well. To think according to the truth is to think according to the rules of logic. What are these rules? There are three main rules:<br />
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1. The principle of identity: it is, as we have already seen, the rule that a thing is identical to itself, does not change (the horse is the horse).<br />
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2. The principle of non-contradiction: a thing cannot be at the same time itself and its opposite. It is necessary to choose (life cannot be life and death).<br />
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3. The principle of the excluded third party - or exclusion of the third case, which means: between two contradictory possibilities, there is no room for a third. One must choose between life and death, there is no third possibility.<br />
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Therefore, to be logical is to think well. To think well means not forgetting to apply these three rules.<br />
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We recognize here principles that we have studied and that come from the metaphysical conception.<br />
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Logic and metaphysics are, therefore, intimately linked; logic is an instrument, a method of reasoning that proceeds by classifying each thing in a well determined way, that obliges us, therefore, to see things as identical to themselves, that then obliges us to choose, to say yes or no, and, in conclusion, that excludes between two cases, life and death for example, a third possibility.<br />
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When we say: "All men are mortal; this comrade is a man; therefore this comrade is mortal", we have what is called a syllogism (this is the typical form of logical reasoning). By reasoning in this way, we have determined the place of the comrade, we have made a classification.<br />
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Our tendency of mind, when we meet a man or a thing, is to say to ourselves: Where should we classify it? This is the only problem we have in our mind. We see things as circles or boxes of different sizes, and our concern is to fit those circles or boxes into each other, and into a certain order.<br />
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In our example, we first determine a large circle that contains all mortals; then a smaller circle that contains all men; and only then that fellow.<br />
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If we want to classify them, we will then, according to a certain "logic", fit the circles into each other.<br />
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The metaphysical conception is therefore constructed with logic and syllogism. A syllogism is a group of three propositions; the first two are called premises, which means "sent before"; and the third is the conclusion. Another example: "In the Soviet Union, before the last constitution, there was the dictatorship of the proletariat. Dictatorship is dictatorship. In the USSR it is dictatorship. So there was no difference between the USSR, Italy and Germany, countries of dictatorship."<br />
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We are not looking here for whom and on whom the dictatorship is exercised, just as when we praise bourgeois democracy, we are not saying for whose benefit it is exercised.<br />
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This is how one manages to pose problems, to see things and the social world as part of separate circles and to bring the circles into each other.<br />
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These are certainly theoretical questions, but they lead to a way of acting in practice. Thus we can cite the unfortunate example of Germany in 1919, where social democracy, in order to maintain democracy, killed the dictatorship of the proletariat without seeing that by doing so it was allowing capitalism to continue and giving Nazism a grip.<br />
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Seeing and studying things separately is what zoology and biology did, until it was seen and understood that there was an evolution of animals and plants. Before that, all beings were classified by thinking that things had always been what they were.<blockquote>And in fact, while natural science up to the end of the last century was predominantly a ''collecting'' science, a science of finished things, in our century it is essentially a systematizing science, a science of the processes, of the origin and development of these things and of the interconnection which binds all these natural processes into one great whole. <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>But to conclude, we must give:<br />
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====The explanation of the word: "metaphysics"====<br />
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There is an important part of philosophy called metaphysics. But it has such importance only in bourgeois philosophy, since it deals with God and the soul. Everything there is eternal. God is eternal, unchanging, remaining identical to himself; the soul too. It is the same with good, evil, etc., all being clearly defined, definitive and eternal. In this part of philosophy called metaphysics, we therefore see things as a fixed whole and we proceed in reasoning by opposition: we oppose spirit to matter, good to evil, etc., that is to say we reason by opposition of the opposites between them.<br />
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We call this way of reasoning, of thinking, this conception: "metaphysical", because it deals with things and ideas that are outside of the physical, such as God, goodness, the soul, evil, etc., and it is a way of reasoning that is called "metaphysical". Metaphysics comes from the Greek meta, which means "beyond", and from physics, the science of the phenomena of the world. Therefore, metaphysics is what deals with things beyond the world.<br />
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It is also because of a historical accident that we call this philosophical conception "metaphysics". Aristotle, who wrote the first treatise on logic (the one we still use today), wrote a lot. After his death, his disciples classified his writings; they made a catalog and, after a writing entitled Physics, they found an untitled writing, which dealt with things of the mind. They classified it by calling it After Physics, in Greek: Metaphysics.<br />
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Let us insist, in conclusion, on the link that exists between the three terms we have studied:<br />
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Metaphysics, mechanism, logic. These three disciplines are always presented together and are called each other. They form a system and can only be understood by each other.<br />
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''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions#Study of metaphysics|Control questions]]''<br />
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== Study of dialectics ==<br />
=== Introduction to the study of dialectics ===<br />
==== Preliminary precautions ====<br />
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When we talk about dialectics, it is sometimes with mystery and by presenting it as something complicated. Not knowing what it is, we also talk about it wrongly. All this is regrettable and leads to mistakes that must be avoided.<br />
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Taken in its etymological sense, the term dialectic simply means the art of debate, and this is how we often hear it said of a man who discusses at length, and even by extension of one who speaks well: he is a dialectician!<br />
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It is not in this sense that we are going to study dialectics. From a philosophical point of view, it has taken on a special meaning.<br />
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Contrary to what one thinks, dialectics, in its philosophical sense, is within everyone's reach, because it is something very clear and without mystery.<br />
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But if dialectics can be understood by everyone, it still has its difficulties, and this is how we must understand them.<br />
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Among the manual works, some are simple, others are more complicated. Making packing cases, for example, is a simple job. Assembling a radio set, on the other hand, is a job that requires a lot of skill, precision, and manual dexterity.<br />
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Hands and fingers are for us working instruments. But thought is also a working instrument. And if our fingers don't always do precise work, the same is true for our brain.<br />
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In the history of human work, Man, in the beginning, could only do rough work. Progress in science has made more precise work possible.<br />
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It is exactly the same for the history of thought. Metaphysics is that method of thinking which is only capable, like our fingers, of crude movements (such as nailing up boxes or pulling out the drawers of metaphysics).<br />
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Dialectics differs from this method because it allows for greater precision. It is nothing more than a method of thinking with great precision.<br />
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The evolution of thinking has been the same as that of manual work. It is the same history, and there is no mystery; everything is clear in this evolution.<br />
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The difficulties we encounter come from the fact that, for twenty-five years, we nailed crates and suddenly we are placed in front of a radio set to assemble them. It is certain that we will have big difficulties, that our hands will be heavy, our fingers unwieldy. It is only little by little that we will manage to soften ourselves and to carry out this work. What was very difficult at the beginning will then seem simpler to us.<br />
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The same is true for dialectics. We are embarrassed, heavy with the old method of metaphysical thinking, and we have to acquire the dexterity, the precision of the dialectical method. But we see that, here again, there is nothing mysterious or very complicated.<br />
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====Where did the dialectic method originate?====<br />
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We know that metaphysics considers the world to be a complex of fixed things and that, if we look at nature, we see that, on the contrary, everything moves and changes. We find that the same holds true for thought. The result of these findings is a disagreement between metaphysics and reality. In order to give a simple definition of the main idea conveyed by these words, we might say that “metaphysics” implies “immobility” and that “dialectics” implies “motion.”<br />
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Motion and change, which exist in everything which surrounds us, form the basis of dialectics.<blockquote>When we reflect on Nature, or the history of mankind, or our own intellectual activity, the first picture presented to us is of an endless maze of relations and interactions, in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes out of existence. <ref name=":8" group="note" /></blockquote>According to this very text by Engels, we see that, from the dialectical point of view, everything changes, nothing remains where it is, nothing stays what it is and that, consequently, this point of view is in perfect agreement with reality. Nothing remains in the place which it occupies since even that which seems immobile to us moves; it moves with the revolution of the earth around the sun and the rotation of the earth on its axis. In metaphysics, the principle of identity maintains that a thing must remain itself. We see that, on the contrary, nothing remains what it is.<br />
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We have the impression that we always remain the same, and yet Engels tells us that “the same are different.” We think that we are identical but we have already changed. From the child which we were, we have become an adult and this adult, physically, never remains the same but gets older every day.<br />
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Hence, the misleading appearance is not motion, as the Eleatic philosophers claimed, but immobility, since, in fact, everything moves and changes.<br />
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History also proves to us that things do not remain as they are. At no moment is society immobile. There was first, in antiquity, a slave society; this was then succeeded by a feudal society and then capitalist society. The study of these societies shows us that the factors permitting the birth of a new society continually and imperceptibly developed within them. In this way, capitalist society changes every day and has ceased to exist in the USSR. Because no society remains immobile, the socialist society erected in the Soviet Union is also destined to disappear. It is already visibly transforming, and this is why metaphysicians do not understand what is taking place there. They continue to judge a completely transformed society with the feelings of a man who is still under capitalist oppression.<br />
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Our feelings themselves change, which we hardly notice. We see what was only an attraction turn into love, then sometimes degenerate into hatred.<br />
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What we see everywhere, in nature, history and thought, is change and motion. It is with this observation that dialectics begins.<br />
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The Greeks were startled by the fact that change and motion are encountered everywhere. We have seen that Heraclitus, who is called the “father of dialectics,” was the first to give us a dialectical concept of the world, i.e., he described a world in motion and not fixed. Heraclitus’ way of seeing can become a ''method''.<br />
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But this dialectical method was able to assert its authority only a long time after that, and we must see why dialectics was dominated by the metaphysical concept for such a long time.<br />
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====Why has dialectics long been dominated by metaphysical conception?====<br />
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We have seen that the dialectical point of view was born very early in history, but that man’s insufficient knowledge enabled the metaphysical concept to develop and take precedence over dialectics.<br />
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We can draw a parallel here between idealism, which arose from the great ignorance of men, and the metaphysical concept, which derived from the insufficient knowledge of dialectics.<br />
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How and why was this possible?<br />
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Men began the study of nature in a state of complete ignorance. In order to study the phenomena which they found, they began by classifying them. But a mental habit resulted from this way of classifying. By making categories and separating them from each other, our minds get used to making such separations and we find in this the first characteristic of the metaphysical method. Hence, it was really from the insufficient development of science that metaphysics emerged. Only 150 years ago, people studied the sciences by separating them from each other. For example, chemistry, physics, and biology were studied separately and no relation was seen between them. This method was further applied within the sciences: physics was concerned with sound, heat, magnetism, electricity, etc. but it was thought that these different phenomena were totally unrelated; each was studied in separate chapters.<br />
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We easily recognize in this practice the second characteristic of metaphysics which requires that one disregard the relations between things and that there be nothing in common between them.<br />
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Likewise, it is easier to conceive of things in a state of rest than in motion. Let us take photography as an example. We see that, firstly, pictures are taken of things in their immobility (this is photography), then, only later, in motion (this is cinema). So, this example of the development of photography and cinema mirrors that of the sciences and the human mind. We study things at rest before studying them in motion.<br />
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Why is this so? Because ''people were ignorant''. In order to learn, people took the easiest point of view. Now, immobile things are easier to grasp and study. Certainly the study of things at rest is a necessary stage of dialectical thought—but only an insufficient, fragmentary ''stage'', which must be integrated into the study of things which are becoming.<br />
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We run across this state of mind in biology, for example, in the study of zoology and botany. Because they were not well known, animals were first classified into breeds and species, since it was thought that there was nothing in common between them and that it ''had always been this way'' (third characteristic of metaphysics). From this was derived the theory called “fixism” (which maintains, contrary to “evolutionism,” that animal species have always been what they are, that they have never ''evolved''), which is, consequently, a metaphysical theory which stems from man’s ignorance.<br />
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====Why was eighteenth-century materialism metaphysical?====<br />
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We know that mechanics played a large role in the materialism of the 18th century and that this materialism is often called “mechanistic materialism.” Why was this so? Because the materialist concept is linked to the development of all the sciences and among these it was mechanics which developed first. In common speech, mechanics is the study of machines; in scientific language, it is the study of motion as displacement. Mechanics was the science which developed first because mechanical motion is the simplest kind of motion. It is much easier to study the motion of an apple on a tree which is blowing in the wind than to study the change produced in a ripening apple. The effect of the wind on the apple can be more easily studied than the ripening of the apple. But the former study is “partial” and thus opens the door to metaphysics.<br />
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Although they do indeed notice that everything is in motion, the ancient Greeks cannot make use of this observation, for their knowledge is insufficient. So, things and phenomena are observed and classified, and people are satisfied with studying their displacement, from which mechanics is derived; and the inadequacy of scientific knowledge gives rise to the metaphysical concept.<br />
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We know that materialism is always based on science and that in the 18th century science was dominated by the metaphysical spirit. Of all the sciences, the most developed during this period was mechanics. “This is why it was inevitable,” says Engels, “that the materialism of the 18th century be a metaphysical and mechanistic materialism, because the sciences were like that.”<br />
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We shall say, then, that this mechanistic and metaphysical materialism was materialist because it answered the fundamental question of philosophy by saying that the primary factor is matter; but it was metaphysical because it considered the universe to be a complex of fixed and mechanical things and because it studied and saw everything from the point of view of mechanics.<br />
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There comes a day when, through the accumulation of research, one finds that the sciences are not immobile; one notices that they have been transformed. After having separated chemistry from biology and physics, one comes to the realization that it has become impossible to deal with one of the sciences without having recourse to the others. For example, the study of digestion, which belongs to the domain of biology, becomes impossible without chemistry. Towards the 19th century, the interconnection of the sciences is clearly seen and a retreat of the metaphysical spirit in the sciences ensues, due to a more profound knowledge of nature. Up to then, the phenomena of physics had been studied separately; now, no one could deny that all these phenomena were of the same nature. This is how electricity and magnetism, which used to be studied separately, have come to be united in a single science: electromagnetism.<br />
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Likewise, by studying the phenomena of sound and heat, scientists have realized that both derive from phenomena of a similar nature.<br />
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By banging with a hammer, one obtains a sound and produces heat. It is motion which produces heat. And we know that sound consists of vibrations in the air; vibrations are also motion. Hence, these two phenomena are similar in nature.<br />
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In biology, by classifying more and more minutely, scientists have succeeded in discovering species which are incapable of being classified as either plant or animal. Hence, there was no abrupt separation of plants and animals. After further study, they arrived at the conclusion that animals have not always been what they are. The facts condemned fixism and the metaphysical spirit.<br />
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It was during the 19th century that the transformation we have just seen and which enabled materialism to become dialectical occurred. Dialectics is the spirit of science, which, in the course of its development, abandoned the metaphysical concept. Materialism was able to be transformed because the sciences changed. Metaphysical sciences were in harmony with metaphysical materialism just as the new sciences are in harmony with a new materialism, i.e., dialectical materialism.<br />
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==== How dialectical materialism was born: Hegel and Marx ====<br />
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If we ask how this transformation of metaphysical materialism into dialectical materialism was brought about, the answer we generally get is:<br />
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# There was the metaphysical materialism of the 18th century;<br />
# The sciences changed;<br />
# Marx and Engels stepped in; they cut metaphysical materialism in two; abandoning the metaphysics, they kept the materialism and added dialectics to it.<br />
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If we have a tendency to present things in this way, it is due to the metaphysical method, which demands that we simplify things in order to make a schema. We must, however, always keep in mind that ''the facts of reality should never be schematized''. Facts are more complicated than they seem or than we think. It follows that there was not such a simple transformation of metaphysical materialism into dialectical materialism.<br />
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Dialectics was, in fact, developed by a German idealist philosopher, Hegel (1770-1831), who was able to understand the change which had taken place in the sciences. Reverting to the old idea of Heraclitus, he found, with the help of scientific progress, that everything in the universe is motion and change, that nothing is isolated, but rather everything is dependent on everything else, and this is how he created dialectics. It is due to Hegel that we speak today of the dialectical motion of the world. What Hegel first grasped was the motion of thought, and he called it naturally dialectics.<br />
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But Hegel is an idealist, i.e., he gives primary importance to spirit and, consequently, he entertains a particular idea about motion and change. He thinks that it is spiritual changes which provoke changes in matter. For Hegel, the universe is idea become matter and, before the universe, there was first spirit which discovered the universe. In short, he finds that both spirit and the universe are in perpetual change, but concludes that changes in spirit determine changes in matter.<br />
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Example: The inventor has an idea; he realized this idea, and it is this materialized idea which creates changes in matter.<br />
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Hence, Hegel is certainly a dialectician, but he subordinates dialectics to idealism.<br />
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It is then that Marx (1818-1883) and Engels (1820-1895), followers of Hegel, but materialist followers and therefore giving primary importance to matter, think that his dialectics makes assertions which are correct but upside down. Engels says in this regard that with Hegel dialectics was standing on its head and it had to be put back on its feet. Hence, Marx and Engels transfer the initial cause of this motion of thought defined by Hegel to material reality and call it naturally dialectics, borrowing the same term from him.<br />
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They think that Hegel is right to say that thought and the universe are perpetually changing, but that he is mistaken to declare that it is changes in ideas which determine changes in things. It is, rather, things which give us ideas, and ideas have been altered because things have been altered.<br />
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Therefore, we ought to avoid saying, “Marx and Engels possess, on the one hand, materialism, inherited from the French materialism of the 18th century, and, on the other hand, Hegel’s dialectics; consequently, it remained for them only to join the two together.”<br />
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This is a simplistic, schematic concept, which forgets that phenomena are more complicated; it is a metaphysical concept.<br />
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Marx and Engels will certainly take dialectics from Hegel, but they will transform it. They will do the same with materialism in order to give us dialectical materialism.<br />
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=== The laws of dialectics ===<br />
==== 1. The dialectical change ====<br />
===== What is meant by dialectical change =====<br />
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The first law of dialectics begins by remarking that “nothing stays where it is; nothing remains what it is.” Dialectics implies motion and change. Consequently, when one speaks of seeing things from a dialectical viewpoint, this means seeing them from the point of view of motion and change. When we want to study things according to dialectics, we shall study them ''in'' their motion and ''in'' their change.<br />
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Here is an apple. We have two ways of studying this apple: either from the metaphysical or from the dialectical point of view.<br />
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In the first case, we shall give a description of this fruit, its shape and color. We shall list its properties; we shall speak of its taste, etc. Then we can compare the apple with the pear, see their similarities and differences and finally conclude that an apple is an apple and a pear is a pear. This is how things were formerly studied, as numerous books will attest.<br />
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If we want to study the apple from the dialectical point of view, we shall place ourselves within the framework of motion; not the motion of the apple when it rolls and moves from place to place, but rather the ''motion of its evolution''. Then we shall find that the ripe apple has not always been what it is. Before that it was a green apple; before being a flower, it was a bud. In this way, we shall go back to the condition of the apple tree in spring. The apple has not always been an apple: it has a history. Likewise, it will not remain what it is. If it falls, it will rot, decompose and scatter its seeds, which will, if all goes well, produce a shoot and then a tree. Hence, neither has the apple always been what it is nor will it remain what it is.<br />
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This is what is called studying things from the point of view of motion. It is study from the point of view of the past and the future. By studying in this way, the present apple is seen only as a ''transition'' between what it was, the past, and what it will be, the future.<br />
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In order to clearly explain this way of seeing things, we are going to take two more examples: the Earth and society.<br />
<br />
From a metaphysical point of view, we shall describe the shape of the Earth in all its details. We shall find that on its surface there are seas, land and mountains; we shall study the nature of the soil. Then we can compare the Earth to other planets or to the Moon, and we shall finally conclude that the Earth is the Earth.<br />
<br />
Whereas by studying the history of the earth from the dialectical point of view, we shall see that it has undergone transformations and that, consequently, the earth will undergo in the future even more transformations. We must then take into account today that the present state of the Earth is but a transition between past changes and changes to come. This transition is such that the changes which take place are imperceptible, although they are on a much larger scale than those which occur during the ripening of an apple.<br />
<br />
Let us now look at the example of society, which is of particular interest to Marxists.<br />
<br />
Let us still apply our two methods. From the metaphysical point of view, we will be told that there have always been rich and poor. We shall find that there are large banks and enormous factories. We will be given a detailed description of capitalist society, which will be compared with past societies (feudal, slave-owning) by looking for similarities and differences, and we will be told that capitalist society is what it is.<br />
<br />
From the dialectical point of view, we shall learn that capitalist society has not always been what it is. When we find that in the past other societies lived for a while, we shall deduce from this that capitalist society, like all societies, is not permanent and has no intangible basis, but rather it is only a provisional reality for us, a transition between the past and the future.<br />
<br />
From these few examples, we see that to consider things from the dialectical point of view means to consider them to be provisional, having a history in the past and about to have a history in the future; having a beginning and going to have an end.<br />
<br />
=====For dialectics, there is nothing definitive, absolute, sacred =====<br />
{{top}}<blockquote>For it [dialectical philosophy], nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away. <ref name=":6" group="note" /></blockquote>Here is a definition which underlines what we have just seen and what we are going to study:<br />
<br />
''“For dialectics, there is nothing final.”'' This means that, for dialectics, everything has a past and will have a future; consequently, it is not here once and for all and what it is today is not final. (Examples of the apple, earth, society.)<br />
<br />
For dialectics, there is no power in the world, nor beyond the world, which can hold things in a permanent state, hence there is "nothing absolute." (''Absolute'' means not subject to any condition, hence, universal; eternal, perfect.)<br />
<br />
''"Nothing is sacred,"'' this does not mean that dialectics despises everything. No! A sacred thing is a thing which is regarded as immutable, which must neither be touched nor be discussed but only venerated. Capitalist society, for example, is "sacred". Well, dialectics tells us that ''nothing'' can escape from motion, change or the transformations of history.<br />
<br />
''"Transitory"'' comes from "transire" which means to pass; a transitory thing is one which grows old and must disappear. Dialectics shows us that anything which is transitory eventually has no longer any reason for being, that everything is destined to disappear. What is young grows old; what is living today dies tomorrow, and nothing exists, for dialectics, "except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away."<br />
<br />
Hence, to assume the dialectical point of view means to consider nothing to be eternal, except change. It means understanding that no particular thing can be eternal except "becoming."<br />
<br />
But what is this "becoming" which Engels speaks of in his definition?<br />
<br />
We have seen that the apple has a history. Let us now take the example of a pencil which has its own history, too.<br />
<br />
This pencil, which is worn down today, was once new. The wood from which it is made came from a board, and this board came from a tree. We see then that the apple and the pencil both have a history and that neither one has always been what it is. But is there a difference between these two histories? Certainly!<br />
<br />
The green apple became ripe. When it was green, could it, if all went well, not become ripe? No, it ''had'' to ripen, just as, if it falls to the ground, it has to rot, decompose, and scatter its seeds.<br />
<br />
Whereas the tree from which the pencil comes may not become a board, and this board may not become a pencil. The pencil itself can always remain whole and not be sharpened.<br />
<br />
Hence, we notice a difference between these two histories. In the case of the apple, if nothing abnormal occurs, the flower becomes an apple and the green apple ''becomes'' ripe. Thus, given one stage, the other stage ''necessarily'' and inevitably follows (if nothing stops the evolution).<br />
<br />
In the history of the pencil, on the other hand, the tree may not become a board, the board may not become a pencil, and the pencil may not be sharpened. Hence, given one stage, the second stage ''may not follow''. If the history of the pencil proceeds through all its stages, it is due to foreign intervention—that of man.<br />
<br />
In the history of the apple, we find stages which succeed one another, the second stage deriving from the first, etc. This history follows the “becoming” which Engels speaks of. In the history of the pencil, the stages are placed side by side, without deriving from each other. This is because the apple is following a natural process.<br />
<br />
=====The process=====<br />
{{top}}(Word coming from Latin and meaning: forward motion, or the act of advancing, of progressing.)<br />
<br />
Why does the green apple become ripe? Because of what it contains. It is due to internal sequences which stimulate the apple to ripen; ''it is because it was an apple even before it was ripe; it is because it could not help but ripen''.<br />
<br />
When one examines the flower which will become an apple, then the green apple which will ripen, one finds that these internal sequences, stimulating the apple in its evolution, act under the pressure of internal forces. This latter is called ''autodynamism'', which means a force which comes from the being itself.<br />
<br />
When the pencil was still a board, the intervention of man was necessary in order to make it become a pencil, for never would a board transform itself into a pencil. There were not internal forces at work, thus no autodynamism and no process. Hence, dialectics implies not only motion but also autodynamism.<br />
<br />
We see then that dialectical motion contains within itself processes or autodynamism, which is its essential feature. For not every motion or change is dialectical. If we approach the study of a flea from the dialectical viewpoint, we shall say that it has not always been what it is and that it will not always be what it is. If we crush it, this certainly represents a change for it, but will this change be dialectical? No. Without us, it would not have been crushed. Hence, this change is not dialectical, but ''mechanical''.<br />
<br />
Therefore, we must be careful when we speak of dialectical change. We think that if the earth continues to exist, capitalist society will be replaced by a socialist and then a Communist society. This will be a dialectical change. But, if the earth explodes, capitalist society will disappear not through an autodynamic change, but through a mechanical change.<br />
<br />
In another context, we say that there is a mechanical discipline when this discipline is not natural. But it is autodynamic when it is freely consented to, i.e., when it comes from its natural milieu. A mechanical discipline is imposed from the outside; it is a discipline coming from leaders who are different from those they command. (We understand then to what extent non-mechanical discipline, autodynamic discipline, is not within the reach of every organization!)<br />
<br />
Therefore, we must avoid using dialectics in a mechanical fashion. This is a tendency which we derive from our metaphysical habits of thinking. We mustn’t repeat like a parrot that things have not always been what they are. When a dialectician says that, he must look for how things were before. For saying that is not the end of an argument, but the beginning of scrupulous research into what things were like ''before''.<br />
<br />
Marx, Engels and Lenin studied at length and in detail what capitalist society was like before them. They observed the smallest details in order to take note of dialectical changes. Lenin, in order to describe and criticize the changes in capitalist society, and to study the imperialist period, made very detailed studies and consulted numerous statistics.<br />
<br />
When we speak of autodynamism, we should never turn it into a literary phrase either; we should only use this word knowingly and for those who understand it totally.<br />
<br />
Finally, when studying something, after having seen what its autodynamic changes are and stated what change one has found, one must look for the reason why this change is autodynamic.<br />
<br />
This is why dialectics, research and science are closely linked.<br />
<br />
Dialectics is not a way of explaining and knowing things without having studied them, but rather a way of studying well and making good observations, by looking for the beginning and the end of things, where they come from and where they are going.<br />
<br />
==== 2. Reciprocal action ====<br />
===== Sequencing of processes =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have just seen, in connection with the history of the apple, what a process is. Let’s have another look at this example. We have looked for where the apple came from and we were obliged to push our research as far back as the tree. But this problem of research also arises in regard to the tree. The study of the apple leads us to the study of the origins and destiny of the tree. Where does the tree come from? From an apple. It comes from an apple which has fallen and rotted in the earth, giving birth to a shoot. This leads us to study the ground, the conditions in which the seeds of the apple were able to sprout, the influences of the air, sun, etc. In this way, starting with the study of the apple, we are led to study the soil, proceeding from the process of the apple to that of the tree. The latter process has its sequence in turn in that of the soil. We have here what is called a “sequence of processes.” This will enable us to express and study the second law of dialectics: the law of reciprocal action. Let us take another example of the sequence of processes, that of the Workers’ University in Paris.<br />
<br />
If we study this school from the dialectical point of view, we shall look for where it came from, and find at first this answer: in the autumn of 1932, some comrades meeting together decided to found a Workers’ University in Paris in order to study Marxism.<br />
<br />
But where did this committee get this idea of teaching Marxism? Obviously because Marxism exists. But then, where does Marxism come from?<br />
<br />
We see that research into the sequence of processes involves us in detailed and complete studies. Much more: by looking for the source of Marxism, we shall find that this doctrine is the very conscience of the proletariat. We see (whether we are for or against Marxism) that the proletariat then does exist; and so again we ask the question: where does the proletariat come from?<br />
<br />
We know that it derives from an economic system, viz., capitalism. We know that the division of society into classes, that class struggle, was not caused, as our adversaries claim, by Marxism. On the contrary, we know that Marxism observes the existence of this class struggle and draws its force from the already existing proletariat.<br />
<br />
Hence, from process to process, we arrive at the examination of the conditions of existence of capitalism. We have in this way a sequence of processes which shows us that everything influences everything else. This is the law of reciprocal action.<br />
<br />
As a conclusion to these two examples of the apple and of the Workers’ University in Paris, let us see how a metaphysician would have proceeded.<br />
<br />
In the example of the apple, he could only have thought, ’’Where does the apple come from?" And he would have been satisfied with the answer, “The apple comes from the tree.” He would not have looked any further.<br />
<br />
For the Workers’ University he would have been satisfied with saying, about its origin, that it was founded by a group of men who wished “to corrupt the French people” or some such nonsense.<br />
<br />
But the dialectician sees the entire sequence of processes which end, on the one hand, with the apple, and, on the other, with the Workers’ University. The dialectician connects the particular fact, the detail, to the whole.<br />
<br />
He connects the apple to the tree, and he goes back further, all the way to nature in its entirety. The apple is not only the fruit of the apple tree, but also that of all of nature.<br />
<br />
The Workers’ University is not only the “fruit” of the proletariat, but also the “fruit” of capitalist society.<br />
<br />
Hence, we see that, contrary to the metaphysician who conceives of the world as a complex of fixed things, the dialectician will see the world as a complex of processes. And, if the dialectical point of view is true for nature and for the sciences, if is also true for society. <blockquote>“The old method of investigation and thought which Hegel calls “metaphysical”, which preferred to investigate ''things'' as given, as fixed and stable, a method the relics of which still strongly haunt people’s minds, had a great deal of historical justification in its day.” <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>Consequently, things and society were studied during this period as a complex of “ready-made, fixed objects,” which not only do not change, but, particularly in the case of society, are not destined to disappear.<br />
<br />
Engels points out the great importance of dialectics, this:<blockquote>“... great basic thought that the world is not to be comprehended as a complex of readymade ''things'', but as a complex of ''processes'', in which the things apparently stable no less than their mind images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away, in which, in spite of all seeming accidentally and of all temporary retrogression, a progressive development asserts itself in the end...” <ref name=":7" group="note" /> </blockquote>Hence, neither should capitalist society be regarded as a “complex of ready-made things”; rather, it should be studied as a complex of processes.<br />
<br />
Metaphysicians realize that capitalist society has not always existed, and they say that it has a history; but they think that, with its appearance, society has stopped evolving and will remain “fixed” from now on. They regard all things as finished and not as the beginning of a new process. The story of the creation of the world by God is an explanation of the world as a complex of completed things. God accomplished a completed task each day. He made plants and animals and man once and for all; whence the theory of fixism.<br />
<br />
Dialectics judges things in a different way. It does not regard things as “fixed” objects, but rather as objects “in motion.” Nothing is complete; it is always the end of one process and the beginning of another process, always changing and developing. This is why we are so sure of the transformation of capitalist society into a socialist society. Since nothing is permanently finished, capitalist society is the end of a process to which socialist society and then Communist society and so forth will succeed. There is and there will continually be a development.<br />
<br />
But we must be careful here not to look upon dialectics as something inevitable, from which one might conclude, “Since you are so sure of the change which you desire, why do you struggle?” For, as Marx says, “in order to deliver socialist society, a midwife is necessary;” whence the necessity of revolution, of action.<br />
<br />
The fact is, things are not so simple. One mustn’t forget the role of men who may advance or slow down this transformation (we shall take up this question again in chapter 5 of this part, when we speak of historical materialism).<br />
<br />
For the moment, all we wish to point out is the existence of a sequence of processes in everything which is produced through the internal force of things (autodynamism). We repeat, for dialectics, ''nothing is complete''. We must understand the development of things as having no final act. At the end of one theatrical production of the world the first act of another play begins. More precisely, this first act had already begun in the last act of the preceding play.<br />
<br />
=====The great discoveries of the 19th century=====<br />
{{top}}What determined the abandonment of the metaphysical spirit and obliged first scientists, then Marx and Engels, to consider things in their dialectical movement, is, as we know, the discoveries made in the 19th century. As Engels points out in ''[[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach]]'', there were three especially great discoveries of this period which caused dialectics to advance.<br />
<br />
======The discovery of the living cell and its development======<br />
{{top}}Before this discovery, “fixism” had been adopted as the basis of all reasoning. Species were considered to be foreign to each other. Moreover, two kingdoms were categorically differentiated: the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom.<br />
<br />
Then this discovery takes place, enabling the idea of “evolution,” which thinkers and scientists of the 18th century had already started to spread, to become more precise. This discovery leads to the understanding that life is made up of a succession of births and deaths and that every living being is an association of cells. This finding then leaves no boundary remaining between animals and plants and thus dispels the metaphysical concept.<br />
<br />
======The discovery of energy transformation======<br />
{{top}}Formerly, science believed that sound, heat and light, for example, were completely alien to each other. Yet now it is discovered that all these phenomena can be transformed into each other, that there are sequences of processes in ''inert'' matter as well as in living nature. This revelation brings still another blow to metaphysical thinking.<br />
<br />
======The discovery of evolution in humans and animals======<br />
{{top}}Darwin, says Engels, reveals that all the products of nature are the result of a long process of development of originally single-celled microorganisms: everything is the product of a long process having the cell for its origin.<br />
<br />
Engels concludes that, thanks to these three great discoveries, we can follow the sequence of all these natural phenomena not only within the different domains, but also ''between'' the different domains.<br />
<br />
It is, therefore, the sciences which made the elaboration of the second law of reciprocal action possible.<br />
<br />
Between the plant, animal and mineral kingdoms there is no sharp break, but rather only processes; everything is connected. And this is true for society as well. The different societies which have spanned the history of mankind should be regarded as a series of sequences of processes in which one society has necessarily come from the one which preceded it.<br />
<br />
Hence, we should remember that science, nature and society must be seen as a sequence of processes, and that the motor working to develop this sequence is ''autodynamism''.<br />
<br />
=====Historical development or spiral development=====<br />
{{top}}If we examine the process which we are beginning to know a little more closely, we see that the apple is the result of a sequence of processes. Where does the apple come from? The apple comes from the tree. Where does the tree come from? From the apple. We may then think that we have here a vicious circle in which we always return to the same point. Tree, apple. Apple, tree. Likewise, if we take the example of the egg and the hen. Where does the egg come from? From the hen. Where does the hen come from? From the egg.<br />
<br />
If we regarded things in this way, this would not be a process, but a circle. This appearance, moreover, has created the idea of the “eternal return.” That is to say, we always come back to the same point, the point of departure.<br />
<br />
But let us see exactly how the problem is stated.<br />
<br />
# Here is an apple.<br />
# When it decomposes, it engenders a tree or some trees.<br />
# Each tree does not produce one apple, but several apples.<br />
<br />
Hence, we do not return to the same point of departure; we come back to the apple, but on another level.<br />
<br />
Similarly, if we begin with the tree, we have:<br />
<br />
# A tree which produces<br />
# some apples, which in turn produce<br />
# some trees<br />
<br />
Here again we return to the tree, but on another level. The scope has widened.<br />
<br />
Hence, we do not have a circle, as appearances might make us think, but a process of development which we shall call a historical development. History shows us that time does not go by without leaving any traces. Time passes, but the same developments do not return. The world, nature and society constitute a development which is historical, a development which, in philosophical language, is called “spiral.”<br />
<br />
We use this image in order to make our ideas clear; it is a comparison to illustrate the fact that things evolve according to a circular process, but do not return to the point of departure; they come back a bit above, on another level, and so on, which produces an ascending spiral.<br />
<br />
Hence, the world, nature and society have a historical (spiral) development, and what stimulates this development, let us not forget, is autodynamism.<br />
<br />
=====Conclusion=====<br />
{{top}}We have just studied, in these first chapters on dialectics, the first two laws: that of change and that of reciprocal action. This was indispensable in order to approach the study of the law of contradiction, for it is this law which will enable us to understand the force which stimulates dialectical change, viz., autodynamism.<br />
<br />
In the first chapter relative to the study of dialectics, we saw why this theory had been dominated for so long by the metaphysical concept and why the materialism of the 18th century was metaphysical. After having rapidly seen the three great discoveries of the 19th century which enabled materialism to develop in order to become dialectical, we understand better now why it was necessary for the history of this philosophy to go through the three great periods which we have seen: 1) materialism of antiquity (theory of atoms); 2) materialism of the 18th century (mechanistic and metaphysical); finally culminating in 3) dialectical materialism.<br />
<br />
We have maintained throughout that materialism derives from the sciences and is linked to them. We can see, after these three chapters, how true this is. We have seen in this study of dialectical motion and change and of the law of reciprocal action that all our arguments are based on science.<br />
<br />
Today, when scientific studies are specialized to the extreme and when scientists (generally ignorant of dialectical materialism) sometimes cannot understand the importance of their discoveries in relation to the totality of the sciences, it is the role of philosophy, whose mission, we have said, is to provide an explanation of the world and of the most general problems, and, in particular, it is the mission of dialectical materialism, to unite all the particular discoveries of each science into a synthesis, thereby establishing a theory which makes us more and more, as Descartes said, “masters and possessors of nature.”<br />
<br />
====3. Contradiction====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have seen that dialectics regards things as being in perpetual change, continually evolving, in a word, undergoing a dialectical motion (first law).<br />
<br />
This dialectical motion is possible because everything, at the moment when we are studying it, is but the result of a sequence of processes, i.e., a sequence of stages come from each other. And, continuing our study further, we have seen that this sequence of processes necessarily develops in time into a progressive motion, “in spite of any momentary backsliding.”<br />
<br />
We have called this development “historical” or “spiral,” and we know that it generates itself, through autodynamism.<br />
<br />
But what are the laws of autodynamism? What are the laws which enable the stages to proceed from each other? They are called the “laws of dialectical motion.”<br />
<br />
Dialectics teaches us that things are not eternal: they have a beginning, a maturity, and an old age, which has an end, a death.<br />
<br />
All things pass through these stages: birth, maturity, old age, end. Why is this so? Why are things not eternal?<br />
<br />
This is an old question which has always interested humanity. Why must we die? We do not understand this necessity; throughout history, men have dreamed of eternal life, of the ways of changing this state of affairs. For example, in the Middle Ages, they invented magic potions for eternal youth or life.<br />
<br />
Why then is everything which is born obliged to die? This is a great law of dialectics which we should compare with metaphysics in order to really understand it.<br />
<br />
=====Life and death=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
From the metaphysical point of view, things are considered in an isolated fashion, taken by themselves, and, because metaphysics studies things in this way, it considers them unilaterally, i.e., from one side. This is why it can be said that those who see things one-sidedly are metaphysicians. Briefly, when a metaphysician studies the phenomenon called life, he does so without relating this phenomenon to any other. He sees life for itself and by itself, unilaterally. He sees it from one side only. If he examines death, he will do the same thing; he will apply his unilateral point of view and conclude by saying: life is life and death is death. Between the two there is nothing in common; one cannot be both alive and dead, for the two are opposite things and completely contrary to each other.<br />
<br />
To see things in this way is to view them superficially. Upon closer examination, it will be seen firstly, that they cannot be opposed, nor even can they be so brutally separated, since experience and reality show us that death continues life and that it derives from the living.<br />
<br />
As for life, can it derive from death? Yes. The transformation of the elements of the dead corpse will give birth to other lives and be used as fertilizer for the earth, making it more fertile, for example. Death, in many cases, will help life; death will enable life to be born; and, in living bodies themselves, life is only possible because there is a continual replacement of dead cells by those which are newly-born. (See Translator’s notes.)<br />
<br />
Hence, life and death are constantly being transformed into each other, and in everything we observe the invariability of this great law: ''everywhere, things are transformed into their opposites''.<br />
<br />
=====Things turn into their opposite=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Metaphysicians set opposites against each other, but reality shows us that opposites are ''transformed'' into each other, that things do not remain themselves, but are transformed into their opposites.<br />
<br />
If we examine truth and error, we tend to think that there is nothing in common between them. Truth is truth and error is error. This the unilateral point of view, which sets the two opposites at loggerheads, as one might do with life and death.<br />
<br />
And yet, sometimes when we exclaim, "Hey, it's raining!", no sooner have we finished saying so than the rain has stopped. The sentence was correct when we began it, but it was transformed into an error. (The Greeks had already observed this fact, so they said that in order not to be mistaken it was best to keep silent!)<br />
<br />
In the same vein, let us go back to the example of the apple. We see a ripe apple on the ground and we say, “There is a ripe apple.” However, it has been on the ground for some time and already it is beginning to decompose, so that truth becomes error.<br />
<br />
Science also provides us with numerous examples of laws, considered for many years to be “truths” and which scientific progress has proven to be “errors” at a certain moment.<br />
<br />
Hence, we see that truth changes into error. But does error ever change into truth?<br />
<br />
In the beginning of civilization, notably in Egypt, men imagined fights between the gods in order to explain the rising and setting of the sun. This is an error to the extent that it was said that the gods push or pull the sun to make it move. But science says that this theory is partially justified in that there are in fact forces which make the sun move. So we see that error is not diametrically opposed to truth.<br />
<br />
If, then, things do change into their opposites, how is this possible? How does life change into death?<br />
<br />
If there were only life, 100 percent pure life, it could never be death, and if death were totally itself, 100 percent pure death, it would be impossible for the one to change into the other. But there is already some death in life and thus some life in death.<br />
<br />
By looking closely, we see that a living being is composed of cells, that these cells are renewed, that they disappear and reappear in the same place. They live and die continually in a living being, in which there is therefore both life and death.<br />
<br />
We also know that the beard of a dead man continues to grow. The same is true for his nails and hair. These are clear-cut phenomena which prove that life continues after death.<br />
<br />
In the Soviet Union, the blood of the dead is preserved under special conditions for blood transfusions: thus, with the blood of a dead person a living person is remade. Consequently, we can say that in the midst of death there is life. “Life is therefore also a contradiction which is present in things and processes themselves, and which constantly asserts and solves itself; and as soon as the contradiction ceases, life too comes to an end, and death steps in.” <ref name=":4" group="note" /><br />
<br />
Hence, things not only change into each other, but also a thing is not only itself, but another thing which is its opposite, for everything contains its opposite.<br />
<br />
If we represent a thing by a circle, we have force which pushes this thing toward life, pushing from the center outwards, for example (expression), but we also have forces which push this thing in the opposite direction, forces of death, pushing from the exterior inwards (compression).<br />
<br />
Thus, within everything opposed forces, antagonisms, exist.<br />
<br />
What happens between these forces? They struggle with each other. Consequently, a thing is not only moved by a force acting in a single direction, but everything is really moved by two forces acting in opposing directions: one towards the affirmation and one towards the negation of things, one towards life and one towards death. What does the affirmation and negation of things mean?<br />
<br />
In life, there are forces which maintain life, which tends toward the affirmation of life. Then there are also forces in living organisms which tend towards negation. In everything, some forces tend towards affirmation and others towards negation, and, between affirmation and negation there is a contradiction.<br />
<br />
Hence, dialectics observes change, but why do things change? Because they are not in agreement with themselves, because there is a struggle between forces, between internal antagonisms, because there is contradiction. Here is the third law of dialectics: ''Things change because they contain contradictions within themselves''.<br />
<br />
(If we are obliged, at times, to use more or less complicated words—like dialectics, autodynamism, etc.—or terms which seem contrary to traditional logic and difficult to understand, it is not because we like to complicate things at whim as the bourgeoisie does. No. But this study, although elementary, seeks to be as complete as possible and to facilitate the later reading of the philosophical works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, who use these terms. In any case, since we must utilize something other than everyday language, we are determined to make it comprehensible to everyone in the framework of this study.)<br />
<br />
To see things in this way is to view them superficially. Upon closer examination, it will be seen firstly, that they cannot be opposed, nor even can they be so brutally separated, since experience and reality show us that death continues life and that it derives from the living.<br />
<br />
As for life, can it derive from death? Yes. The transformation of the elements of the dead corpse will give birth to other lives and be used as fertilizer for the earth, making it more fertile, for example. Death, in many cases, will help life; death will enable life to be born; and, in living bodies themselves, life is only possible because there is a continual replacement of dead cells by those which are newly-born.<br />
<br />
Hence, life and death are constantly being transformed into each other, and in everything we observe the invariability of this great law: ''everywhere, things are transformed into their opposites''.<br />
<br />
=====Affirmation, negation and negation of negation=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Here we must make a distinction between what is called a verbal contradiction—which means that, when someone tells you “yes,” you answer “no”—and the contradiction which we have just seen and which is called a dialectical contradiction, i.e., a contradiction ''in facts'', in things themselves.<br />
<br />
When we speak of the contradiction which exists in the heart of capitalist society, this does not mean that some people say yes and others say no about certain theories. This means that there is a contradiction in factual reality, that there are real forces which are fighting each other: first, a force which tends to ''affirm'' itself, viz., the bourgeois class which tends to maintain itself; then, a second social force which tends toward the negation of the bourgeois class, viz., the proletariat. Hence the contradiction does exist in reality, because the bourgeoisie cannot exist without creating its opposite, the proletariat. <br />
<br />
As Marx says, <blockquote>“What the bourgeoisie, therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.” <ref group="note">Marx and Engels: [[Library:Manifesto of the communist party|Manifesto of the communist party]]: [[Library:Manifesto of the communist party#Bourgeois and proletarians.5BEngels_1.5D|Bourgeois and proletarians]]</ref></blockquote>In order to prevent this, the bourgeoisie would have stop being itself, which would be absurd. Consequently, by affirming itself, it creates its own negation.<br />
<br />
Let us take the example of an egg which is laid and sat on by a hen: we find that in the egg there is a seed which develops at a certain temperature and under certain conditions. This seed, while developing, will produce a chick; hence, the seed is already the negation of the egg. We see then that in the egg there are two forces: one which tends to make it remain an egg and one which tends to make it become a chick. Therefore, the egg is in disagreement with itself and all things are in disagreement with themselves.<br />
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This may seem difficult to understand, because we are used to the metaphysical way of reasoning, but this is why we should make an effort to become accustomed to seeing ''things in their reality''.<br />
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A thing begins by being an ''affirmation'' which comes from ''negation''. The chick is an affirmation born from the negation of the egg. It is one stage of the process. But the chick, in turn, will be transformed into a hen. During this transformation, there will be a contradiction between the forces which fight to make the chick become a hen and those which fight to make the chick remain a chick. The hen will thus be the negation of the chick, the latter having derived from the negation of the egg.<br />
<br />
The hen will therefore be the negation of the negation. And this is the general course of the stages of dialectics.<br />
{|<br />
|Affirmation<br />
|also called<br />
|thesis<br />
|-<br />
|Negation<br />
|or<br />
|antithesis<br />
|-<br />
|Negation of the negation<br />
|or<br />
|synthesis<br />
|}<br />
These words summarize dialectical development. They are used to represent the sequence of stages, to indicate that each stage is the destruction of the preceding one.<br />
<br />
Destruction is a negation. The chick is the negation of the egg, since by being born it destroys the egg. Similarly, the ear of wheat is the negation of the grain of wheat. The grain will germinate in the soil; this germination is the germination of the grain of wheat and will produce a plant. This plant, in turn, will flower and produce an ear; the latter will be the negation of the plant or the negation of the negation.<br />
<br />
Hence, we see that the negation which dialectics speaks of is another way of speaking of destruction. There is a negation of what disappears, of what is destroyed.<br />
<br />
# Feudalism was the negation of the slave state.<br />
# Capitalism is the negation of feudalism.<br />
# Socialism is the negation of capitalism.<br />
<br />
Just as when we made a distinction between verbal contradiction and dialectical contradiction, here we must clearly understand what verbal negation, which says “no,” is and what dialectical negation, which means “destruction,” is.<br />
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But while negation means destruction, it does not mean just any kind of destruction, but dialectical destruction. Thus, when we crush a flea, it does not die from internal destruction, from dialectical negation. Its destruction is not the result of autodynamic stages; it is the result of a purely mechanical change.<br />
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Destruction is a negation only if it is a product of affirmation, if it comes from it. Thus, the egg which is sat on, being the affirmation of what an egg is, engenders its own negation: it becomes a chick, and the latter symbolizes the destruction or the negation of the egg, by piercing and destroying the shell.<br />
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In the chick we observe two adverse forces; “chick” and “hen.” In the course of this development of the process, the hen will lay eggs, whence a new negation of the negation arises. From these eggs, then, a new sequence of the process will begin.<br />
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In the case of wheat we also see an affirmation, then a negation and negation of the negation.<br />
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Let us take materialist philosophy as another example.<br />
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In the beginning, we find a primitive, spontaneous materialism, which, due to its ignorance, creates its own negation: idealism. But the idealism which negates the old materialism will itself be repudiated in turn by modern or dialectical materialism, because philosophy, along with the sciences, develops and provokes the destruction of idealism. Hence, here also, we have affirmation, negation and negation of the negation.<br />
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We may also observe this cycle in the evolution of society.<br />
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In the beginning of history we find the existence of a primitive Communist society, a society without classes, based on the common ownership of the land. But this form of ownership becomes a hindrance to the development of production and, in this way, creates its own negation: a class society, based on private ownership and the exploitation of man by man. But this society as well carries its own negation within itself, because a superior development of the means of production brings about the necessity of negating the division of society into classes, of negating private ownership. So we return to the point of departure: the necessity for a Communist society, ''but on another level''. In the beginning, there was a lack of commodities; today, we have a very high capacity of production.<br />
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Notice that for all the examples we have given we return to the point of departure, but on another level (spiral development), ''a higher level''.<br />
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We see then that contradiction is the great law of dialectics. That evolution is a fight between antagonistic forces. That not only do things change into each other, but also everything is transformed into its opposite. That things do not agree with themselves because there are struggles inside them between opposed forces, because there are internal contradictions within them.<br />
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''Note.'' The expressions “affirmation,” “negation,” and “negation of the negation” are only verbal shorthand for the moments of dialectical evolution. Therefore, we should be careful not to run about trying to find these three stages everywhere. Sometimes we shall not find all of them because the evolution is not complete. So we mustn’t mechanically try to see these changes as such in everything. Let us especially remember that contradiction is the great law of dialectics. That is the essential point.<br />
<br />
=====Summary=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We already know that dialectics is a method of thinking, of reasoning and of analyzing which enables us to make good observations and to study well, for it obliges us to look for the source of everything and to describe its history.<br />
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We have seen that the former method of thinking certainly had its necessity in its time. But to study with the dialectical method is to observe, let us repeat, that all things, apparently immobile, are but a sequence of processes in which everything has a beginning and an end, where in everything, “in spite of all seeming accidents and of all temporary retrogression, a progressive development asserts itself in the end...” <ref name=":7" group="note" /><br />
<br />
Only dialectics enables us to understand the development and the evolution of things; it alone permits us to understand the destruction of ancient things and the birth of new ones. Only dialectics lets us understand all developments in their transformations by letting us know them as entities made up of opposites. For, as far as the dialectical concept is concerned, the natural development of things, evolution, is a continual struggle between antagonistic forces and principles.<br />
<br />
Hence, while for dialectics the first law is the observation of motion and change—“Nothing remains what, where and as it was.” (Engels)—we now know that the explanation of this law resides in the fact that things change not only by transforming themselves into each other, but also by transforming themselves into their opposites. Contradiction is therefore a great law of dialectics.<br />
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We have studied what contradiction is from the dialectical point of view, but we must again lay stress on this in order to add certain details and to point out certain errors which we should not commit.<br />
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It is quite certain that we must first familiarize ourselves with this assertion, which is in harmony with reality: the transformation of things into their opposites. Certainly, this shocks our understanding and surprises us, because we are accustomed to thinking with the old metaphysical method. But we have seen why this is so. We have seen in detail, with examples, that this ''exists'' in reality and why things are changed into their opposites.<br />
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This is why it can be maintained that, if things are transformed, if they change and evolve, it is because they are in contradiction with themselves, because they carry their opposites within themselves, because they contain within themselves ''an interpenetration, a unity and struggle of opposites''.<br />
<br />
=====The unity of opposites=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Each thing is an interpenetration of opposites.<br />
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To declare such a thing at first appears absurd. "A thing and its opposite have nothing in common." This is what is generally thought. For dialectics, however, each thing is, at the same time, itself and its opposite; each thing is an interpenetration of opposites, and we must explain this.<br />
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For a metaphysician, the unity and struggle of opposites is an impossible thing. For him, things are made up of a single piece, in harmony with themselves. Here we are declaring just the opposite, namely that things are made up of two pieces—themselves and their opposites—and that there are two forces in them which fight each other because things are not in harmony with themselves, because they contradict themselves.<br />
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If we take the example of ignorance and science, i.e., knowledge, we know that from the metaphysical point of view these are two totally opposed and contrary things. Someone who is ignorant is not a scientist and someone who is a scientist is not ignorant.<br />
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However, if we look at the facts, we see that they do not give rise to such a rigid opposition. We see that at first ignorance prevailed, then science appeared; and we thereby ascertain that one thing is transformed into its opposite: ignorance is transformed into science.<br />
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There is no ignorance without science or knowledge. There is no 100 percent pure ignorance. An individual, no matter how ignorant he may be, can at least recognize objects and his food. ''There is never absolute ignorance'': there is always some knowledge in ignorance. The seeds of knowledge have already been planted in ignorance. Therefore, we are correct in maintaining that the opposite of a thing is found in the thing itself.<br />
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Let us look at knowledge now. Can there be 100 percent pure knowledge? No. One is always ignorant of something. Lenin says, “The object of knowledge is inexhaustible,” which means that there is always something to be learned. ''There is no absolute knowledge''. All knowledge and every science contains some ignorance.<br />
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What exists in reality is ''relative'' knowledge and ignorance, a mixture of knowledge and ignorance.<br />
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Hence, in this example it is not the ''transformation'' of things into their opposites which we observe, but rather the existence of opposites ''in the same thing'', or, in other words, the ''interpenetration of opposites''. <br />
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We could go back to the examples which we have already seen: life and death, truth and error, and we would find that, in both cases, as in everything, an interpenetration of opposites exists, i.e., each thing contains at the same time itself and its opposite. This is why Engels says:<blockquote>If, however, investigation always proceeds from this standpoint, the demand for final solutions and eternal truths ceases once for all; one is always conscious of the necessary limitation of all acquired knowledge, of the fact that it is conditioned by the circumstances in which it was acquired. On the other hand, one no longer permits oneself to be imposed upon by the antitheses, insuperable for the still common old metaphysics, between true and false, good and bad, identical and different, necessary and accidental. One knows that these antitheses have only a relative validity; that that which is recognized now as true has also its latent false side which will later manifest itself, just as that which is now regarded as false has also its true side by virtue of which it could previously have been regarded as true. <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>This text by Engels clearly shows us how dialectics should be understood and the true meaning of the interpenetration of opposites.<br />
<br />
=====Mistakes to avoid=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
This great law of dialectics, contradiction, must be clearly explained in order not to create any misunderstandings.<br />
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First, it should not be interpreted in a mechanical way. We mustn’t think that in all knowledge there is truth ''plus'' error, or ''both'' something true ''and'' something false.<br />
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If this law were applied in this way, it would justify those who say that there is something true plus something false in all opinions, so “let’s remove what is false, and what is true and good will remain.” This is said in certain so-called Marxist circles, where it is thought that Marxism is right to point out that, in capitalism, there are factories, trusts and banks which hold economic life in their hands, that it is correct to say that this economic life is going badly; but what is false in Marxism, they add, is class struggle: let’s leave out the theory of class struggle and we shall have a good doctrine. It is also said that Marxism applied to the study of society is correct and true “but why mix in dialectics? This is the false side, let’s remove dialectics and keep the rest of Marxism as true!”<br />
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These are mechanical interpretations of the interpenetration of opposites.<br />
<br />
Here is another example: Proudhon, after having learned of this theory of opposites, thought that there was a good and a bad side in everything. So, observing that there is a bourgeoisie and a proletariat in society, he said, “Let’s remove what is bad, the proletariat!” That is how he constructed his system of credits which was to create "parcelled out property," i.e., to allow the proletarians to become owners. In this way, there would only be the bourgeoisie and society would be good.<br />
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However, we know very well that there can be no proletariat ''without'' the bourgeoisie and that the bourgeoisie exists only ''through'' the proletariat: these are two opposites which are inseparable. This unity and struggle of opposites is internal and real: it is an inseparable union. Hence, in order to get rid of the opposites it is not sufficient to cut one from the other. In a society based on the exploitation of man by man, there necessarily exists two antagonistic classes: masters and slaves in antiquity, lords and serfs in the Middle Ages, bourgeoisie and proletariat today.<br />
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In order to abolish capitalist society, to create a society without classes, both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat must be eliminated - in order to enable free men to create a materially and intellectually more advanced society, to go towards communism in its superior form and not to create, as our adversaries claim, a communism which is "egalitarian in poverty."<br />
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Hence, we must be very careful when we explain or when we apply the interpenetration of opposites to an example or to a study. We should avoid trying to find everywhere and to apply mechanically, for example, the negation of the negation, or to find the interpenetration of opposites everywhere, for our knowledge in general is limited and this can lead us to blind alleys.<br />
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What counts is this principle: dialectics and its laws oblige us to study things in order to discover their evolution and the forces, the opposites, which determine this evolution. We must therefore study the interpenetration of opposites contained in things, and this interpenetration of opposites is tantamount to saying that ''an affirmation is never an absolute affirmation'', since it contains within itself a negative portion. And this is the essential point: ''It is because things contain their own negation that they are transformed''. Negation is the “solvent”: if it did not exist, things would not change. As, in fact, things do change, they must then contain a solvent principle. We can declare beforehand that it exists since we see things evolving, but we cannot discover this principle without a detailed study of the thing itself, for this principle does not have the same appearance in everything.<br />
<br />
=====Practical consequences of dialectics=====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Hence, in practice, dialectics obliges us always to consider both, not one, sides of things: never to consider truth without ignorance. The big mistake of metaphysics is precisely to consider only one side of things, to judge unilaterally. If we make many mistakes, it is always to the extent that we see but one side of things, because we often reason unilaterally.<br />
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While idealist philosophy maintains that the world exists only in the ideas of men, we must recognize that, in truth, there are some things which exist only in our thoughts. This is true. But idealism is unilateral: it sees only this aspect. It sees only man who invents things which are not found in reality and it then concludes that nothing exists outside of our ideas. Idealism is correct to point out this faculty in man, but, by not applying the criterion of practice, it sees only that.<br />
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Metaphysical materialism is also mistaken because it sees but one side of problems. It sees the universe as a mechanism. Does mechanics exist? Yes! Does it play an important role? Yes! Metaphysical materialism is thus correct to say this, but it is a mistake to see only mechanical motion.<br />
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Naturally, we are prone to seeing only one side of things and people. If we judge a comrade, almost always we see only his good or his bad side. We must see ''both'', without which it would not be possible to have cadres in organizations. In political practice, the unilateral method of judgment leads to sectarianism. If we encounter an adversary belonging to a reactionary organization, we judge him by his bosses. Yet, he is perhaps only an embittered, discontent employee, and we should not judge him like a fascist boss. Likewise, we can apply this reasoning to bosses and understand that, while they may seem bad to us, it is often because they themselves are dominated by the structure of society and, ''under different social conditions'', they would perhaps be different.<br />
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If we keep the interpenetration, the unity and struggle of opposites in mind, we look at things in their multiple aspects. We see then that this reactionary is, on the one hand, reactionary, but, on the other, he is a worker and in his case there is a contradiction. We should look and find out why he has joined this organization and, at the same time, why he should not have joined. In this way we can judge and discuss his case in a less sectarian manner.<br />
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In accordance with dialectics then, we must consider things from all the angles which we can differentiate.<br />
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To summarize, and as a theoretical conclusion, we shall say: Things change because they include an internal contradiction (themselves and their opposites). The opposites are in conflict, and changes arise from these conflicts. Thus change is the ''solution'' of the conflict.<br />
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Capitalism contains an internal contradiction, the conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Change is explained by this conflict and the transformation of capitalist society into a socialist society is the end of this conflict.<br />
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There is change and motion wherever there is contradiction. Contradiction is the negation of the affirmation. When the third term, negation of the negation, is achieved, the solution appears, for, at that moment, the reason for the contradiction is eliminated, ''obsolete''.<br />
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Hence, it can be said that, while the sciences—chemistry, physics, biology, etc.—study the laws of change particular to them, dialectics studies the most general laws of change. Engels says, <blockquote>“Dialectics is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of Nature, human society and thought.” <ref name=":4" group="note" /></blockquote><br />
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'''Further reading'''<blockquote>''Engels: [[Library:Anti-Dühring|Anti-Dühring]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
==== Transformation of quantity into quality or the law of progress by leaps ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Before tackling the problem of the application of dialectics to history, it remains for us to study one last law of dialectics.<br />
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This will be facilitated by the studies which we have just made wherein we have seen what negation of the negation is and what is meant by the interpenetration, the unity and struggle of opposites.<br />
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As always, let us proceed by examples.<br />
<br />
===== Reforms or revolution =====<br />
{{top}}<br />
When speaking of society, people ask, “Should we instigate reforms or make a revolution?” They debate whether, in order to transform capitalist society into a socialist society, successive reforms or an abrupt transformation—revolution—is needed.<br />
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With respect to this problem, let us recall what we have already studied. Every transformation is the result of a struggle between opposing forces. When something evolves, it is because it contains its opposite, everything being an interpenetration of opposites. We can observe the struggle of opposites and the transformation of the thing into its opposite. ''How does this transformation take place?'' This is the new problem which confronts us.<br />
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One may believe that this transformation occurs little by little, through a series of small transformations, that the green apple changes into a ripe apple through a series of progressive changes.<br />
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Many people think in this way that society is transformed little by little and that the result of a series of these small transformations will be the transformation of capitalist society into a socialist society. These small transformations are reforms and it will be their total, the sum of the small, gradual changes, which will give us a new society.<br />
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This theory is called ''reformism''. The supporters of this theory are called reformists, not because they demand reforms, but because they think that reforms are ''sufficient'', that their accumulation will ''imperceptibly'' transform society.<br />
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Let us see if this is true:<br />
<br />
======The political argument======<br />
{{top}}<br />
If we look at the facts, i.e., what has happened in other countries, we shall see that, where this system has been tried, it has not been successful. The transformation of capitalist society—its destruction—has succeeded in a single country: the U.S.S.R., and we find that it was not through a series of reforms, but through revolution.<br />
<br />
======The historical argument======<br />
{{top}}<br />
Generally speaking, is it true that things are transformed by small changes, by reforms?<br />
<br />
Let us still look at the facts. If we examine historical changes, we see that they do not occur ''indefinitely'', that they are not continuous. There comes a moment when, instead of ''small'' changes, change takes place with an abrupt leap.<br />
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In the history of societies, the outstanding events which we find are abrupt changes, revolutions.<br />
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Even those who are not familiar with dialectics know, nowadays, that violent changes have occurred in history. However, until the 17th century, it was believed that “nature does not jump,” that it makes no leaps. People refused to see any abrupt changes in the continuity of change. But science stepped in and revealed, with facts, that changes did occur abruptly. The revolution of 1789 opened people’s eyes even better; it was in itself an obvious example of a clean break with the past. It came to be seen that all the decisive stages of history had been important, abrupt and sudden upheavals. For example, as friendly as they may have been, the relations between two states grew colder, more strained and bitter, then took on a hostile character—and, all of a sudden, it was war, an abrupt rupture with the continuity of events. Another example: in Germany, after the war of 1914-1918, there was a gradual rise of fascism, then one day Hitler took power: Germany entered a new historical stage.<br />
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Today, those who do not deny these abrupt changes maintain that they are accidents, an accident being something which happens but which might not have happened.<br />
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In this way, people explain revolutions in the history of societies by saying, “They were accidents.”<br />
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With regard to the history of France, for example, it is maintained that the fall of Louis XVI and the French Revolution occurred because Louis XVI was a weak and soft man. “If he had been an energetic man, we would not have had a revolution.” We even read that, if he had not prolonged his meal at Varennes, he would not have been arrested and the course of history would have been changed. Hence, the French Revolution was just an accident, it is said.<br />
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Dialectics, on the contrary, recognized that revolutions are necessities. There are, indeed, gradual changes, but their accumulation ends up producing abrupt changes.<br />
<br />
======The scientific argument======<br />
{{top}}Let us take the example of water, if we start at 0° Centigrade, and raise the temperature of the water from 1°, 2°, 3° up to 98°, the change is continuous. But can it continue indefinitely? We can go again up to 99°, but, at 100° Centigrade, we have an abrupt change: the water is ''transformed'' into steam.<br />
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If, inversely, from 99° we go down to 1°, again we have a continuous change; but we cannot lower the temperature like this indefinitely, for, at 0° Centigrade, the water is ''transformed'' into ice.<br />
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From 1° to 99° the water still remains water; only its temperature changes. This is what is called a ''quantitative'' change, which answers the question “How much?”, i.e., “How much heat is there in the water?”. When the water changes into ice or steam, we have a ''qualitative change'', a change in quality. It is no longer water: it has become ice or steam.<br />
<br />
When a thing does not change its nature, we have a quantitative change (in the example of water, we have a change in the degree of heat, but not in nature). When it changes in nature, when a thing becomes ''another'' thing, this change is qualitative.<br />
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Hence, we see that the evolution of things cannot be quantitative indefinitely: things which change finally undergo a qualitative change. ''Quantity changes into quality''. This is a general law. But, as always, we mustn’t be satisfied with only this abstract formula.<br />
<br />
In Engels’ book ''[[Library:Anti-Dühring|Anti-Dühring]]'', in the chapter entitled “[[Library:Anti-Dühring#Quantity and quality|Dialectics, quantity and quality]]” we can find a large number of examples illustrating how exact this law is, not only in the natural sciences, but in everything else; a law according to which <blockquote>quantitative change suddenly produces, at certain points, a qualitative difference <ref name=":4" group="note" /></blockquote>Here is another example, cited by H. Wallon in volume VIII of the ''French Encyclopédie'' (in which he refers to Engels): nervous energy which accumulates in a child provokes laughter; but, if it continues to grow, laughter changes into a fit of tears; in this way, children who become excited and laugh too hard end up crying.<br />
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We shall give one last well-known example: that of someone running for an elected office. If 4,500 votes are needed for an absolute majority, the candidate is not elected with 4,499 votes; he remains what he is: a candidate. With one more vote, this quantitative change determines a qualitative change, since the candidate becomes an elected official.<br />
<br />
This law provides us with the solution to the problem: reform or revolution.<br />
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Reformists tell us: “You want the impossible which happens only by accident; you are utopians.” But with this law we can see who really is the one who is dreaming the impossible! The study of the phenomena of nature and science shows us that changes are not gradual indefinitely, but that at a certain moment change becomes abrupt. We are not declaring this arbitrarily; rather it is science, nature and reality which declare this to be true.<br />
<br />
We might then ask, “What role do we play in these abrupt changes?”<br />
<br />
We are going to answer this question and develop this problem by applying dialectics to history. Here we have come to a very famous part of dialectical materialism: historical materialism.<br />
<br />
=====Historical materialism=====<br />
{{top}}What is historical materialism? It is simply, now that we know what dialectics is, the application of this method to the history of human societies.<br />
<br />
In order to clearly understand this, we must clarify what history is. History implies change, change in society. Society has a history throughout which it is constantly changing; we see great events taking place in it. So, the following question is raised: since, in history, societies change, what explains these changes?<br />
<br />
======How to explain history?======<br />
{{top}}In this regard it is often asked, “For what reason must there always be war? Men ought to be able to live in peace!”<br />
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To these questions we are going to provide materialist answers.<br />
<br />
A cardinal might explain that war is a punishment from God; this is an idealist answer, for it uses God to explain events. This is explaining history by spirit. It is spirit which creates and makes history.<br />
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Speaking of Providence is also an idealist answer. Hitler, in ''Mein Kampf'', tells us that history is the work of Providence, and he thanks the latter for having placed his place of birth on the Austrian border.<br />
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To make God or Providence responsible for history is a convenient theory; men can do nothing and, consequently, we can do nothing to stop war, we must let it happen.<br />
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From a scientific point of view, can we support such a theory? Can we find its justification in facts? No.<br />
<br />
The first materialist affirmation in this discussion is that history is not the work of God, but the ''work of men''. So then, men can act on history and prevent the war.<br />
<br />
======History is the work of people======<br />
{{top}}<br />
<blockquote>Men make their own history, whatever its outcome may be, in that each person follows his own consciously desired end, and it is precisely the resultant of these many wills operating in different directions and of their manifold effects upon the outer world that constitutes history. Thus it is also a question of what the many individuals desire. The will is determined by passion or deliberation. But the levers which immediately determine passion or deliberation are of very different kinds. Partly they may be external objects, partly ideal motives, ambition, enthusiasm for whims of all kinds. But, on the one hand, we have seen that the many individual wills active in history for the most part produce results quite other than those they intended— often quite the opposite; their motives therefore in relation to the total result are likewise of only secondary significance. On the other hand, the further question arises: What driving forces in turn stand behind these motives? What are the historical causes which transform themselves into these motives in the brains of the actors? <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>This text of Engels tells us then that it is men who act according to their will (desires), but that these desires do not always go in the same direction! What is it then which ''determines'', which decides the actions of men? Why do their desires not go in the same direction?<br />
<br />
Some idealists will agree that it is the actions of men which make history and that these actions result from their will: it is will which determines action, and it is our thoughts and our feelings which determine our will. We would then have the following sequence: idea—will—action. In order to explain action, we must revert back to find the determining idea-cause.<br />
<br />
Now we make it immediately clear that the action of great men and of doctrine is undeniable, but that it needs to be explained. It is not the sequence “idea—will—action” which explains it. In this way some people claim that in the 18th century Diderot and the Encyclopedists, by spreading to the public the ideas of the Rights of Man, seduced and won, by these ideas, the will of those men who, consequently, made the revolution. Similarly, in the U.S.S.R. the ideas of Lenin were spread and people acted in conformity with these ideas. People then conclude from this that, if there were no revolutionary ideas, there would be no revolution. This point of view leads to the conclusion that the motor forces of history are the ideas of great leaders, that it is these leaders who make history. You know the formula of ''Action Française'', “Forty kings made France”; we might add, kings who did not have many “ideas”!<br />
<br />
What is the materialist point of view on this question?<br />
<br />
We have seen that there were many points in common between 18th century materialism and modern materialism, but that the former materialism had an idealist theory of history.<br />
<br />
Hence, whether frankly idealist or disguised behind an inconsistent materialism, this idealist theory which we have just seen and which seems to explain history explains nothing. For ''what provokes action''? Engels says:<blockquote>The old materialism never put this question to itself. Its conception of history, in so far as it has one at all, is therefore essentially pragmatic; it divides men who act in history into noble and ignoble and then finds that as a rule the noble are defrauded and the ignoble are victorious. hence, it follows for the old materialism that nothing very edifying is to be got from the study of history, and for us that in the realm of history the old materialism becomes untrue to itself because it takes the ideal driving forces which operate there as ultimate causes, instead of investigating what is behind them, what are the driving forces of these driving forces. <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>Will, ideas, it is claimed. But why did the philosophers of the 18th century have ''precisely'' these ideas? If they had tried to propound Marxism, no one would have listened to them, for, at this time, people would not have understood. It is not only the fact that ideas are conveyed which counts; they must also be understood. Consequently, there are ''definite times'' for accepting ideas as well as for forging them.<br />
<br />
We have always said that ideas are of great importance, but we must see where they come from.<br />
<br />
We must then search for the causes which give us these ideas, and for what are, in the final analysis, ''the motor forces of history''.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote><br />
''Lenin: [[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]''<br />
<br />
''Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions#Study of dialectics|Control questions]]''<br />
== The historical materialism ==<br />
=== The driving forces of history ===<br />
{{top}}<br />
As soon as the question, “Where do our ideas come from?” is raised, the need for pursuing our research further becomes apparent. If we reasoned in the manner of the 18th century materialists, who thought that “the mind secretes thought as the liver secretes bile,” we could answer this question by saying that it is nature which produces the mind and that, consequently, our ideas are the product of nature and the product of our minds.<br />
<br />
It could then be said that ''history'' is made by the ''action'' of men driven by their will, the latter being the expression of their ''ideas'' which are themselves derived from their brains. But watch out!<br />
<br />
==== One mistake to avoid ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
If we explained the French Revolution by saying that it was the result of the application of the ideas which arose in the minds of philosophers, this would be a narrow and insufficient explanation and a poor application of materialism.<br />
<br />
What must be seen is ''why'' the ideas launched by the thinkers of this period were adopted by the masses. Why was Diderot not alone in conceiving of them and for what reason were the great majority of minds since the 16th century developing the same ideas? Is it because these minds suddenly had the same weight, the same convolution? No. There were changes in ideas, but no change took place inside the skull.<br />
<br />
This explanation of ideas by the brain seems like a materialist explanation. But to speak of Diderot’s brain is really to speak of the ideas in Diderot’s brain. Hence, this is a falsified and improper materialist theory, in which we witness the revival of the idealist tendency to give primary importance to ideas.<br />
<br />
Let us go back to the sequence: history — action — will — ideas. Ideas have a meaning, a content. The working class, for example, struggles for the elimination of capitalism. This is an idea held by the struggling workers. They think because they have brains, certainly, and the brain is therefore a ''necessary condition'' for thinking; but it is not a ''sufficient'' condition. The brain explains the material act of having ideas, but it does not explain why one has certain ideas rather than others. “Everything which sets men in motion must go through their minds; but what form it will take in the mind will depend very much upon the circumstances.” <ref name=":7" group="note" /><br />
<br />
How can we then explain the content of our ideas, that is, how does the idea of overthrowing capitalism come to us?<br />
<br />
==== The "social being" and consciousness ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We know that our ideas are the reflection of things. The goals which our ideas contain are also the reflection of things, but which things?<br />
<br />
In order to answer this question, we must see where men live and where their ideas appear. We find that men live in a capitalist society and that their ideas appear in this society and are derived from it. <blockquote>“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.” <ref name=":12" group="note">Marx: ''[[Library:A contribution to the critique of political economy|A contribution to the critique of political economy]]: [[Library:A contribution to the critique of political economy#Preface|Preface]]''</ref></blockquote>In this definition, what Marx calls “their being,” signifies what we are; “consciousness” is what we think, what we desire.<br />
<br />
We are struggling for an ideal profoundly rooted in us, it is generally said, and as a result of this, it is our ''consciousness'' which determines our being. We act in a certain way because we think in a certain way, because we want to.<br />
<br />
It is a grave error to speak this way, for in reality it is our social being which determines our consciousness.<br />
<br />
A proletarian ''thinks'' like a proletarian, and a bourgeois ''thinks'' like a bourgeois (we shall see later why this is not always the case). But, generally speaking, “A man thinks differently in a palace and in a hut.” <ref group="note">Engels: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy|Ludwig Feuerbach]]: [[Library:Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy#Feuerbach|Feuerbach]]</ref><br />
<br />
==== Idealist theories ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Idealists say that a proletarian or a bourgeois is one or the other because he thinks like one or the other.<br />
<br />
We say, on the contrary, that, while one may think like a proletarian or a bourgeois, this is because one is one or the other. A proletarian has a proletarian class consciousness because ''he is'' a proletarian.<br />
<br />
We should pay close attention to the practical consequences of this idealist theory. Accordingly, if one is a bourgeois, it is because one thinks like a bourgeois. Hence, in order to stop being one, it is sufficient to change the way of thinking in question; and in order to halt bourgeois exploitation, it is sufficient to make the bosses change their ''convictions''. This is a theory defended by Christian socialists; it was also shared by the founders of utopian socialism.<br />
<br />
Moreover, it is also held by the fascists who fight against capitalism, not to eliminate it, but to make it more “rational”! As soon as management understands that it exploits workers, they say, it will no longer do so. Here we have a completely idealist theory whose dangers are obvious to us.<br />
<br />
====The "social being" and the conditions of existence====<br />
{{top}}Marx speaks of “social being.” What does he mean by this?<br />
<br />
“Social being” is determined by the material conditions of existence in which men live in society.<br />
<br />
It is not the consciousness of men which determines their material conditions of existence, but these material conditions which determine their consciousness.<br />
<br />
What are the material conditions of existence? In society, there are rich people and poor people, and their way of thinking is different, their ideas on the same subject are different. Taking the subway, for someone poor and unemployed, is a luxury, but it is a disgrace for someone rich who has a car.<br />
<br />
Does a poor person entertain these ideas about the subway because he is poor or because he takes the subway? Because he is poor. Being poor is his condition of existence.<br />
<br />
So, we must see ''why'' there are rich people and poor people in order to be able to explain men’s conditions of existence.<br />
<br />
In the economic process of production, a group of people occupying an analogous place (i.e., in the present capitalist system, possessing the means of production—or, on the contrary, working on the means of production which do not belong to them), and consequently having to a certain extent the same material conditions of existence, form a ''class''. However, the notion of class is not simply that of wealth or poverty. A proletarian may earn more than a bourgeois. He is, nonetheless, a proletarian because he is dependent on a boss and because his life is neither ''secure'' nor ''independent''. The material conditions of existence consist not only of money earned, but also of ''social function''. Therefore, we have the following sequence:<br />
<br />
People make their ''history'' through their ''actions'' according to their ''will'', which is the expression of their ''ideas''. The latter are derived from their material conditions of existence, i.e., their membership in a ''class''.<br />
<br />
==== Class struggles, the driving force of history ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
People act because they have certain ideas. They owe these ideas to their material conditions of existence, because they belong to one class or another. This does not mean that there are only two classes in society. There are a number of classes, of which two are principally in conflict: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.<br />
<br />
Hence, ''beneath ideas there are classes''.<br />
<br />
Society is divided into classes which struggle against each other. Thus, if we examine the ideas which man has, we see that these ideas are in conflict, and that, beneath these ideas, we find classes which are themselves in conflict as well.<br />
<br />
Consequently, the motor forces of history, i.e., ''the explanation of history, is class struggle''.<br />
<br />
If we take the permanent deficit of the budget, for example, we see that there are two solutions: one consists of continuing what is called financial orthodoxy: savings, loans, new taxes, etc.; the other solution consists of making the rich pay.<br />
<br />
We observe a political struggle around these ideas. Generally, one is “sorry” that one cannot reach an agreement on this matter. The Marxist, however, wants to understand and looks for what is underneath the political struggle. He then discovers the social struggle, i.e., class struggle. Struggle between those who favor the first solution (capitalists) and those who favor making the rich pay (middle classes and proletariat). Engels says:<blockquote>In modern history at least it is, therefore, proved that all political struggles are class struggles, and all class struggles for emancipation, despite their necessarily political form — for every class struggle is a political struggle — turn ultimately on the question of ''economic'' emancipation. <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>Thus we have another link to add to the sequence we have used to explain history. We now have: action, will, ideas, beneath which are found classes and, behind classes, is the economy. ''Hence, it is indeed class struggles which explain history, but it is the economy which determines classes''.<br />
<br />
If we wish to explain a historical fact, we must examine which ideas are in conflict, look for the classes beneath these ideas and, finally, define the economic mode which characterizes these classes.<br />
<br />
One may still wonder where classes and the economic mode come from (and dialecticians are not afraid of asking all these successive questions because they know that we must find the source of everything). This is what we shall study in detail in the next chapter, but we can already say:<br />
<br />
In order to know where classes come from, one must study the history of society, and then one will see that the existing classes have not always been the same. In Greece: slaves and masters: in the Middle Ages: serfs and lords; next, to simplify the enumeration, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.<br />
<br />
In the above description, we find that classes change, and, if we look for the reason why they change, we shall see that it is because the ''economic conditions'' have changed (by economic conditions we mean: the structure of production, of distribution, of exchange, of the consumption of goods, and, as the ultimate condition of all the rest, the way of producing, or technology).<br />
<br />
Here follows a text by Engels:<blockquote>Bourgeoisie and proletariat both arose in consequence of a transformation of the economic conditions, more precisely, of the mode of production. The transition, first from guild handicrafts to manufacture, and then from manufacture to large-scale industry, with steam and mechanical power, had caused the development of these two classes. <ref name=":7" group="note" /></blockquote>Hence, in the last analysis, we see that we may represent the motor forces of history by the following sequence:<br />
<br />
# History is the work of ''people''.<br />
# Action, which creates history, is determined by their ''will''.<br />
# This will is the expression of their ''ideas''.<br />
# These ideas are the reflection of the ''social conditions'' in which they live.<br />
# It is these social conditions which determine ''classes'' and their struggles.<br />
# Classes are themselves determined by ''economic conditions''.<br />
<br />
To clarify in what forms and under what conditions this sequence takes place, let us say that:<br />
<br />
# ''Ideas'' find their expression in life in the ''political'' sphere.<br />
# ''Class struggles'', which are behind the struggles of ideas, are manifested in the ''social sphere''.<br />
#''Economic conditions'' (which are determined by the state of ''technology'') find their expression in the ''economic sphere''.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote><br />
''Marx and Engels: [[Library:Manifesto of the communist party|Manifesto of the communist party]]''<br />
<br />
''Marx: [[Library:A contribution to the critique of political economy|A contribution to the critique of political economy]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
===Where do classes and economic conditions come from?===<br />
{{top}}We have seen that, in the last analysis, the motor forces of history are classes and their struggles determined by ''economic conditions''.<br />
<br />
This may be expressed by the following sequence: people have ideas in their heads which make them act. These ideas are derived from the material conditions of existence in which they live. These material conditions of existence are determined by the social place they occupy in society, i.e., by the class to which they belong, and classes are themselves determined by the economic conditions in which society evolves.<br />
<br />
But it remains for us to see what it is which determines economic conditions and the classes they create. This is what we propose to study below.<br />
<br />
==== First major division of labor ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
By studying the evolution of society and taking into account the events of the past, the first observation one makes is that the division of society into classes has not always existed. Dialectics demands that we search for the origin of things. Now we find that, in a far-distant past, there were no classes. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels tells us:<blockquote>Production at all former stages of society was essentially collective: there was not one class, one category, then another. Likewise, consumption of the products created by men was collective. This is primitive communism.</blockquote>All men participate in production; the individual instruments of labor are private property, but those which are used in common belong to the community. The division of labor exists at this lower stage only between the sexes. Man hunts, fishes, etc.; woman takes care of the house. There are no “private” interests at stake.<blockquote>But men did not remain in this period; the first change in the life of men will be the division of labor in society. “But the division of labor slowly insinuates itself into this process of production.” <ref name=":9" group="note">Engels: ''[[Library:The origin of the family, private property and the state|The origin of the family, private property and the state]]: [[Library:The origin of the family, private property and the state#Barbarism and civilization|Barbarism and civilization]]''</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
This first event occurs where men:<blockquote>found animals which could be tamed and, when once tamed, bred. The wild buffalo cow had to be hunted; the tame buffalo cow gave a calf yearly and milk as well. A number of the most advanced tribes— the Aryans, Semites, perhaps already also the Turanians—now made their chief work first the taming of cattle, later their breeding and tending only. Pastoral tribes separated themselves from the mass of the rest of the barbarians—the first great social division of labor. <ref name=":9" group="note" /></blockquote>Hence we have, as the first mode of production: hunting and fishing; as the second mode of production: cattle raising, which gives rise to pastoral tribes.<br />
<br />
This first division of labor is the basis for:<br />
<br />
====First division of society into classes====<br />
{{top}}<br />
The increase of production in all branches—cattle raising, agriculture, domestic handicrafts—gave human labor power the capacity to produce a larger product than was necessary for its maintenance. At the same time it increased the daily amount of work to be done by each member of the gens, household community or single family. It was now desirable to bring in new labor forces. War provided them; prisoners of war were turned into slaves. With its increase of the productivity of labor and therefore of wealth, and its extension of the field of production, the first great social division of labor was bound, in the general historical conditions prevailing, to bring slavery in its train. From the first great social division of labor arose the first great cleavage of society into two classes: masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited. <ref name=":9" group="note" /><br />
<br />
We have now reached the threshold of civilization. Civilization opens with a new advance in the division of labor. At the lowest stage of barbarism men produced only directly for their own needs; any acts of exchange were isolated occurrences, the object of exchange merely some fortuitous surplus. In the middle stage of barbarism we already find among the pastoral peoples a possession in the form of cattle which, once the herd has attained a certain size, regularly produces a surplus over and above the tribe’s own requirements, leading to a division of labor between pastoral peoples and backward tribes without herds, and hence to the existence of two different levels of production side by side with one another and to the conditions necessary for regular exchange. <ref name=":9" group="note" /><br />
<br />
Thus, at this moment, we have two classes in society: masters and slaves. Thereafter society will continue to live and to undergo new developments. A new class will appear and grow.<br />
<br />
==== Second major division of labour ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
<blockquote>Wealth increased rapidly, but as the wealth of individuals. The products of weaving, metalwork and the other handicrafts, which were becoming more and more differentiated, displayed growing variety and skill. In addition to corn, leguminous plants and fruits, agriculture now provided wine and oil, the preparation of which had been learned. Such manifold activities were no longer within the scope of one and the same individual; the second great division of labor took place—handicraft separated from agriculture. The continuous increase of production and simultaneously of the productivity of labor heightened the value of human labor power. Slavery… now be-comes an essential constituent part of the social system; slaves ... are driven by dozens to work in the fields and the workshops. With the splitting up of production into the two great main branches, agriculture and handicrafts, arises production directly for exchange, commodity production; with it came commerce, … <ref name=":9" group="note" /></blockquote><br />
<br />
==== Second division of society into classes ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
In this way, the first great division of labor increases the value of human labor, and creates a growth of wealth, which again increases the value of labor and makes a second division of labor necessary: handicrafts and agriculture. At this moment, the constant increase of production and with it of the value of the human labor power makes slaves ’’indispensable" and creates commercial production and with it a third class: merchants.<br />
<br />
Hence, at this moment in society, we have a triple division of labor and three classes: farmers, artisans, merchants. For the first time we see a class appear which ''does not participate in production'', and this class, the merchant class, will dominate the other two.<blockquote>The upper stage of barbarism brings us the further division of labor between agriculture and handicrafts, hence the production of a constantly increasing portion of the products of labor directly for exchange, so that exchange between individual producers assumes the importance of a vital social function. Civilization consolidates and intensifies all these existing divisions of labor, particularly by sharpening the opposition between town and country (the town may economically dominate the country, as in antiquity, or the country the town, as in the middle ages), and it adds a third division of labor peculiar to itself and of decisive importance. It creates a class which no longer concerns itself with production, but only with the exchange of the products—the merchants…. (This class) makes itself into an indispensable middleman between any two producers and exploits them both. Under the pretext… (of becoming) the most useful class of the population, a class of parasites… who, as a reward for their actually very insignificant services, skim all the cream off production at home and abroad, rapidly amass enormous wealth and a corresponding social influence, and for that reason receive under civilization ever higher honors and ever greater control of production until at last they also bring forth a product of their own — the periodical trade crises. <ref name=":9" group="note" /></blockquote>Hence, we see the sequence which, beginning with primitive communism, leads us to capitalism.<br />
<br />
# Primitive communism.<br />
# Division between barbarians and pastoral tribes (first division of labor: masters and slaves).<br />
# Division between farmers and artisans (second division of labor).<br />
# Birth of a merchant class (third division of labor) which<br />
# Engenders periodic commercial crises (capitalism).<br />
<br />
Now we know where classes come from; it remains for us to study:<br />
<br />
====This determines the economic conditions ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We should first review very briefly the different societies which have preceded us.<br />
<br />
We lack documents with which to study in detail the history of societies which preceded those of antiquity. But we know, for example, that with the Greeks, masters and slaves existed and that the merchant class was already beginning to develop. Then, in the Middle Ages, feudal society, with its lords and serfs, enabled the merchants to gain more and more importance. They clustered near the castles, in the heart of the ''bourgs'' (whence the name “bourgeois”). Moreover, in the Middle Ages, before capitalist production, there were only small enterprises, whose primary condition was that the producer be the owner of his instruments of labor. The means of production belonged to the individual and were adapted only to individual use. Consequently, they were paltry, small, and limited. The historical role of capitalist production and the bourgeoisie was to concentrate and enlarge these means of production, transforming them into the powerful levers of modern production.<blockquote>...since the 15th century this has been historically worked out through the three phases of simple co-operation, manufacture, and modern industry. But the bourgeoisie, as is shown there, could not transform these puny means of production into mighty productive forces without transforming them, at the same time, from means of production of the individual into ''social'' means of production only workable by a collectivity of men. <ref name=":10" group="note">Engels: ''[[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific|Socialism: utopian and scientific]]: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific#Historical%20materialism|Historical materialism]]''</ref></blockquote>Hence, we see that, parallel with the evolution of classes (masters and slaves; lords and serfs), there is an evolution of the conditions of production, of distribution and of exchange of wealth, i.e., of economic conditions, and that this economic evolution follows step by step and coincides with the evolution of the modes of production. It is therefore the<br />
<br />
==== Modes of production ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
that is, the condition of instruments and tools, their utilization, labor methods, in a word, the state of technology, which determines economic conditions.<blockquote>The spinning-wheel, the hand-loom, the blacksmith’s hammer were replaced by the spinning machine, the power-loom, the steam-hammer; the individual workshop, by the factory, implying the cooperation of hundreds of thousands of workmen. In like manner, production itself changed from a series of individual into a series of social acts, and the products from individual to social products. <ref name=":10" group="note" /></blockquote>Here we see that the evolution of modes of production totally transformed the productive forces. Now, while the tools of labor have become collective, the ownership of property has remained individual! Machines which can function only through collective implementation have remained the property of a single man. For this reason we see that<blockquote>“[The productive forces], as they grow more and more powerful, against their quality as capital, this stronger and stronger command that their social character shall be recognized ''(...)'', tends to bring about that form of the socialization of great masses of the means of production which we meet with in the different kinds of joint-stock companies ''(...)'' At a further stage of evolution, this form also becomes insufficient ''(...)'', the official representative of capitalist society — the state — will ultimately have to undertake the direction of production ''(...)'' show how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose <ref name=":10" group="note" /><br />
<br />
“All [the capitalist's] social functions are now performed by salaried employees.” <ref name=":11" group="note">Engels: ''[[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific|Socialism: utopian and scientific]]: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific#Historical materialism|Historical materialism]]: [[Library:Socialism:_utopian_and_scientific#Capitalist_revolution|Capitalist_revolution]]''</ref></blockquote><br />
<br />
Thus the contradictions of the capitalist system become clear to us:<blockquote>On the one hand, perfecting of machinery, made by competition compulsory for each individual manufacturer, and complemented by a constantly growing displacement of laborers. ''Industrial reserve-army''. On the other hand, unlimited extension of production, also compulsory under competition, for every manufacturer. On both sides, unheard-of development of productive forces, excess of supply over demand, over-production and products — excess there, of laborers, without employment and without means of existence. <ref name=":11" group="note" /></blockquote>There is a contradiction between work which has become social and collective and property which has remained private. And so, with Marx, we shall say:<blockquote>From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. <ref name=":12" group="note" /></blockquote><br />
<br />
==== Remarks ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Before ending this chapter, we must make a few comments and underline the fact that, in this study, we find all the characteristics and laws of dialectics which we have just studied.<br />
<br />
Indeed, we have just very quickly traced the history of societies, of classes and of modes of production. We see how dependent each part of this study is on the others. We find that this history is essentially in motion and that the changes which occur at each stage of the evolution of society are provoked by an internal struggle between the different conservative and progressive elements, a struggle which ends in the destruction of one society and in the birth of a new one. Each society has a character and a structure quite different from the society which preceded it. These radical transformations occur after an accumulation of events which, in themselves, seem insignificant, but which, at a certain moment, create by their accumulation a situation which provokes an abrupt, revolutionary change.<br />
<br />
Hence, here we recognize the characteristics and the great general laws of dialectics namely:<br />
<br />
* The interdependence of things and events.<br />
* Dialectical motion and change.<br />
* Autodynamism.<br />
* Contradiction.<br />
* Reciprocal action.<br />
* And evolution by leaps (transformation of quantity into quality).<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Further reading'''<blockquote>''Engels: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific|Socialism: utopian and scientific]]''<br />
<br />
''Engels: [[Library:The origin of the family, private property and the state|The origin of the family, private property and the state]]''<br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions#The historical materialism|Control questions]]''<br />
<br />
== Dialectical materialism and ideologies ==<br />
=== Application of the dialectical method to ideologies ===<br />
==== What is the importance of ideologies for Marxism? ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We are accustomed to hearing that Marxism is a materialist philosophy which denies the role of ideas in history. Denying the role of the ideological factor, it only considers economic influences.<br />
<br />
''This is false''. Marxism does not deny the important role of the mind, of art or of ideas in life. Quite to the contrary, it attaches a particular importance to these ideological forms. We are going to end this study of the elementary principles of Marxism by examining how the method of dialectical materialism may be applied to ideologies. We shall see what the role of ideologies in history, i.e., the influence of the ideological ''factor'', is and what ideological ''forms'' are.<br />
<br />
This part of Marxism which we are about to study is the least known part of this philosophy. The reason for this is that, for a long time, attention has been centered on the part of Marxism which deals with political economy. As a result, this subject has been arbitrarily separated, not only from the great “whole” which Marxism forms, but from its very foundation. For what enabled political economy to become a true science was historical materialism, which is, as we have seen, an application of dialectical materialism.<br />
<br />
We might point out, parenthetically, that this manner of proceeding derives from the metaphysical spirit which we have so much trouble ridding ourselves of. It is, let us repeat, to the extent that we isolate things and study them unilaterally, that we commit mistakes.<br />
<br />
Incorrect interpretations of Marxism derive, therefore, from the fact that the role of ideologies in history and in life has not been sufficiently underlined. Ideologies have been separated from Marxism. As a result, Marxism has been separated from dialectical materialism, that is to say, from itself!<br />
<br />
We are happy to see that, in recent years, thanks in part to the work of the Workers’ University in Paris, through which several thousands of students have come to know Marxism, thanks also to the work of our intellectual comrades who have contributed to the cause through their work and their books, Marxism has regained its true character and the place which belongs to it.<br />
<br />
====What is an ideology? (Ideological factors and forms)====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We shall open this chapter, which is dedicated to the role of ideologies, with a few definitions.<br />
<br />
What do we call an ''ideology''? Ideology implies, above all, ''ideas''. Ideology is a collection of ideas which form a whole, a theory, a system or even at times simply a state of mind.<br />
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Marxism is an ideology which forms a whole and which offers a method of resolving all problems. A republican ideology is the collection of ideas which we find in the mind of a republican. <ref group="note">“Republican” as in someone who supports a republic.</ref><br />
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But an ideology is not only a collection of pure ideas, supposedly void of any feeling (this is a metaphysical concept); an ideology necessarily includes feelings, likes, dislikes, hopes, fears, etc. In the proletarian ideology, we find the ideal elements of class struggle, but we also find feelings of solidarity with those who are exploited by the capitalist system, with the “imprisoned,” as well as feelings of revolt, of enthusiasm, etc. All of these elements make up an ideology.<br />
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Now let us see what is meant by the ''ideological factor'': this is ideology considered as a cause or a force which acts, which is capable of exerting influence. This is why one speaks of the ''influence of the ideological factor''. Religions, for example, are an ideological factor which we must take account of; they have a moral force of considerable influence.<br />
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What is an ''ideological form''? This term designates a collection of particular ideas which form an ideology in a specialized field. Religion and ethics are forms of ideology, as are science, philosophy, literature, art and poetry.<br />
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Hence, if we want to examine the role of the history of ideology in general and of all its forms in particular, we must conduct our study, not by separating ideology from history, i.e., from the life of society, but by determining the role of ideology, its factors and forms, ''in'' and beginning with society.<br />
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==== Economic structure and ideological structure ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
In our study of historical materialism, we saw that the history of societies may be explained in the following sequence: men make history by their actions, the expression of their will. The latter is determined by their ideas. We have seen that what explains men’s ideas, i.e., their ideology, is the social milieu in which we find classes, themselves determined by the economic factor, i.e., in the last analysis, by the mode of production.<br />
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We have also seen that between the ideological factor and the social factor there is the political factor, which appears in the ideological struggle as the expression of the social struggle.<br />
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If, then, we examine the structure of society in the light of historical materialism, we see that its foundation is the economic structure, then, above it, there is the social structure, which supports the political structure, and finally the ideological structure.<br />
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We see that, for materialists, the ideological structure is at the top of the social edifice, while, for idealists, the ideological structure is at its base.<blockquote>In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. <ref name=":12" group="note" /></blockquote>Consequently, we see that it is the economic structure which forms the foundation of society. We might also say that it is the infrastructure (which means inferior, or lower, structure).<br />
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Ideology, including all its forms: ethics, religion, science, poetry, art and literature, constitutes the supra—or superstructure (which means structure at the top).<br />
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Since we know, as materialist theory shows, that ideas are the reflection of things, that it is our social existence which determines our consciousness, we may say that the superstructure is the reflection of the infrastructure.<br />
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Here is an example by Engels, which clearly shows this to be so:<blockquote>Calvin's creed was one fit for the boldest of the bourgeoisie of his time. His predestination doctrine was the religious expression of the fact that in the commercial world of competition success or failure does not depend upon a man's activity or cleverness, but upon circumstances uncontrollable by him. It is not of him that willeth or of him that runneth, but of the mercy of unknown superior economic powers; and this was especially true at a period of economic revolution, when all old commercial routes and centres were replaced by new ones, when India and America were opened to the world, and when even the most sacred economic articles of faith – the value of gold and silver – began to totter and to break down. <ref group="note">Engels: ''[[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces|Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces]]: [[Library:Socialism: utopian and scientific/Prefaces#History of the English middle-class|History of the English middle-class]]''</ref></blockquote>What happens in the economic life of merchants? They compete with each other. Merchants and bourgeois alike have experienced this competition, in which there are victors and vanquished. Quite often, the most resourceful and intelligent are defeated by competition, by a crisis which crops up and downs them. For them, this crisis is unpredictable, a blow of fate. It is this idea, that, for no apparent reason, the least clever sometimes survive crises, which is transposed in the Protestant religion. It is this observation, that some accidentally “make it,” which creates the idea of ''predestination'' according to which men must submit to a fate which is fixed, for all eternity, by God.<br />
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From this example of the reflection of economic conditions, we see how the superstructure is the reflection of the infrastructure.<br />
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Here is another example: let us take the mentality of two non-union, i.e., politically undeveloped, workers. One works in a big factory, where the work is rationalized; the other for a small craftsman. It is certain that both of them will have a different conception of their boss. For one, the boss will be the ferocious exploiter, characteristic of capitalism. The other will see the boss as a worker, certainly well-off, but a worker and not a tyrant.<br />
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It is surely the reflection of their conditions of work which will determine their conception of management.<br />
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This important example causes us, in order to be precise, to make certain observations.<br />
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==== True and false consciousness ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We have just said that ideologies are the reflection of the material conditions of society, that social being determines social consciousness. One might conclude from this that the proletariat must automatically have a proletarian ideology.<br />
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But such a supposition does not correspond to reality, for there are workers who do not have a worker’s consciousness.<br />
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Hence, we must make a distinction: people may live in certain conditions, but their consciousness of it may not correspond to reality. This is what Engels terms “having a false consciousness.”<br />
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Example: some workers are influenced by the doctrine of corporatism which is a return towards the Middle Ages and handicrafts. In this case, there is a consciousness of the misery of workers, but it is not a true and correct consciousness. Ideology certainly is, in this case, a reflection of the conditions of social life, but it is not a loyal or exact reflection.<br />
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In people’s consciousness, this reflection is often “upside down.” To observe the existence of misery is a reflection of social conditions, but this reflection becomes false when one thinks that a return to handicrafts would be the solution to the problem. Hence, here we see a consciousness which is partly true and partly false.<br />
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The worker who is a royalist also has a consciousness which is both true and false. True because he wants to eliminate the misery which he observes; false because he thinks a king can do that. And, simply because he has reasoned badly, because he has poorly chosen his ideology, this worker can become a class enemy for us, even though he belongs to our class. Thus, to have a false consciousness is to be mistaken or deceived about one’s true condition.<br />
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We can say, then, that ideology is the reflection of the conditions of existence, but that it is not an ''inevitable'' reflection.<br />
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Moreover, we must point out that everything possible is done to give us a false consciousness and to develop the influence of the ideology of the ruling classes on the exploited classes. The first elements of a life conception which we receive, our education and instruction, give us a false consciousness. Our connections in life, a peasant background for some of us, propaganda, the press, the radio also falsify our consciousness at times.<br />
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Consequently, ideological work is of extreme importance for us as Marxists. False consciousness must be ''destroyed'' in order for us to attain a true consciousness. Without ideological work, this transformation cannot be realized.<br />
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Those who consider Marxism to be a fatalistic doctrine are, therefore, wrong, since, in reality, we believe that ideologies play a large role in society and that one must teach and learn the philosophy of Marxism so that it may become an efficient tool and weapon.<br />
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==== Action and reaction of ideological factors ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
From the examples of true and false consciousness above, we have seen that we mustn’t always try to explain ideas only by the economy, thereby denying that ideas exert any influence. To proceed in this way would be to interpret Marxism incorrectly.<br />
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Ideas can be explained, certainly, in the ''last analysis'', by the economy, but they also have an activity of their own.<blockquote>…According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure... also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents (that is, of things and events whose inner interconnection is so remote or so impossible of proof that we can regard it as nonexistent, as negligible), the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary. <ref group="note">Engels letter to J. Bloch In Königsberg<br />
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Available in MIA: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm</ref></blockquote>Hence, we see that we must examine ''everything'' before looking for the economic factor and that, while the latter is the cause in the last analysis, we must always remember that it is not the ''only'' cause.<br />
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Ideologies are ''reflections'' and the ''effects'' of economic conditions, but the relation between the two is not simple, for we also observe a ''reciprocal action of ideologies'' on the infrastructure.<br />
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If we want to study the mass movement which developed in France after February 6, 1934 <ref group="note">The authors are referring to the Popular Front, a coalition of left-wing parties (Socialists, Communists and Radicals) which came to power in France in 1936. <br />
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The riot of February 6, 1934, was crucial to this movement, for it led first to a spontaneous grouping of the masses with the leaders of the left-wing parties and, later in the year, to an agreement “against fascism and war,” signed between Communists and Socialists. <br />
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After the success of the Popular Front in the elections of May 1936, Leon Blum constituted a left-wing government which was to remain in power until June 1937</ref>, we shall do so from two angles, in order to demonstrate what we have just discussed.<br />
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# Some explain this movement by saying that its cause was the economic crisis. This is a materialist, but unilateral, explanation. This explanation takes only one factor into consideration: the economic one, in this case, the crisis.<br />
# This reasoning is, therefore, partly correct, but on the condition that another explanatory factor be added: what people were thinking, their ideology. Now, in this mass movement, people were “anti-Fascist.” These feelings were due to the propaganda which gave rise to the Popular Front. But, in order for this propaganda to be effective, a favorable terrain was necessary. What one was able to do in 1936 was not possible in 1932. Finally, we know how, afterwards, this mass movement and its ideology in turn influenced the economy by the social struggle which they inspired.<br />
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Hence, in this example we see that ideology, which is the reflection of social conditions, becomes in turn a cause of events.<blockquote>Political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., development is based on economic development. But all these react upon one another and also upon the economic basis. It is not that the economic situation is cause, solely active, while everything else is only passive effect. There is, rather, interaction on the basis of economic necessity, which ultimately asserts itself. <ref group="note">Engels letter to Borgius<br />
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Available on MIA: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_25.htm</ref></blockquote>Accordingly,<blockquote>The basis of the right of inheritance—assuming that the stages reached in the development of the family are the same—is an economic one. Nevertheless, it would be difficult to prove, for instance, that the absolute liberty of the testator in England and the severe restrictions in every detail imposed upon him in France are due to economic causes alone. Both react back, however, on the economic sphere to a very considerable extent, because they influence the distribution of property. <ref group="note">Engels letter to C. Schmidt<br />
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Available on MIA: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_10_27.htm</ref></blockquote>To cite a more contemporary example, we shall take that of taxes. We all have an idea about taxes. The rich want theirs reduced and so favor indirect taxes; workers and the middle classes want, on the contrary, a fiscality based on direct and progressive taxation. So then, the idea which we have about taxes, and which is an ideological factor, has its origin in our economic situation, which is created and imposed by capitalism. The rich wish to keep their privileges and fight to preserve the present mode of taxation and to reinforce the laws in this direction. Now, these laws, which derive from ideas, react on the economy, for they destroy small commerce and the handicrafts and accelerate capitalist concentration.<br />
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Consequently, we see that economic conditions give rise to modifications in economic conditions, and that is by taking into account this ''reciprocity of relations'' that we should examine ideologies, all ideologies. It is only in the last analysis that we see economic necessities always prevail.<br />
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We know that it is the mission of writers and thinkers to propagate, if not defend, ideologies. Their thoughts and writings are not always very typical or straightforward, but, in fact, even in simple tales or stories, upon analysis we can always find an ideology. To make this type of analysis is a very delicate operation, and we must be very prudent. We are going to indicate a dialectical method of analysis, which will be of great assistance, but we must be careful not to be mechanical and try to explain the unexplainable.<br />
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==== Dialectical method of analysis ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
In order to apply the dialectical method properly, one must know many things. If you do not know your subject, it must be studied carefully, otherwise, your judgment will amount to only a caricature of the truth.<br />
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# In order to make an analysis of a literary work, a book or story, we are going to indicate a method which may be applied to other subjects as well. You must first pay attention to the content of the book or story you wish to analyze. Examine it independently of any social question, for not everything is derived from class struggle or economic conditions. There are literary influences which we must take into consideration. Try to see to which “literary school” the work belongs. Take into account the internal development of ideologies. Practically speaking, it would be good to make a summary of the subject under analysis and to note down anything you found remarkable.<br />
# Next observe the social types the heroes of the intrigue belong to. Look for the class to which they belong. Examine the action of the characters and see if what takes place in the novel can be linked in some way to a social viewpoint. If this is not possible, if it cannot reasonably be done, it is better to abandon the analysis rather than invent. You must never invent an explanation.<br />
# After you have discovered what class or classes are involved, you must determine the economic foundation, i.e., the means of production and the way of producing at the moment when the action of the novel takes place. If, for example, the action is contemporary, the economic system is capitalism. At present we see numerous stories and novels which criticize and fight capitalism. But there are two ways to fight capitalism:<br />
## As a revolutionary seeking to go forward.<br />
## As a reactionary, who wants to return to the past. It is often this form which we encounter in modern novels, in which one longs for the “good old days.”<br />
# Once we have obtained all this, we can then look for the ideology, i.e., see what the ideas and feelings, the way of thinking, of the author is. While searching for the ideology, we shall keep in mind the role it plays, its influence on the minds of those who read the book.<br />
# We can then conclude our analysis, by saying why such a story or novel was written at ''such a moment''. And criticize or praise, according to the case, the author’s intentions (often unconscious).<br />
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This method of analysis can be effective only if one remembers, while applying it, everything which has been said previously. We must remember that dialectics, while it provides us with a new way of conceiving things, also demands that we know them well in order to discuss and analyze them.<br />
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Consequently, now that we have seen what our method consists of, we must try, in our studies and in our personal and militant lives, to see things in their motion, in their changes, in their contradictions and in their historical significance and not in a static, immobile state. We must try to study them as well in all their aspects and not unilaterally. In short, we must always try to apply the dialectical spirit everywhere.<br />
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==== The need for ideological struggle ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
We know better now what dialectical materialism is, the modern form of materialism founded by Marx and Engels and developed by Lenin. In the present work we have made particular use of texts by Marx and Engels, but we cannot end this course without pointing out that the philosophical work of Lenin is also considerable. That is why today we speak of Marxism-leninism.<br />
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''Marxism-leninism and dialectical materialism are inseparably united''. Only through the knowledge of dialectical materialism can one measure the entire scope and wealth of Marxism-leninism. This leads us to the conclusion that ''the militant is not truly armed ideologically unless he is familiar with the entirety of this doctrine''. Having understood this, the bourgeoisie attempts to introduce, by any means, its own ideology into the consciousness of workers. Knowing perfectly well that, of all the aspects of Marxism-leninism, it is dialectical materialism which is, at present, least known, the bourgeoisie has organized a campaign of silence against it. It is painful to note that the official instruction is oblivious to this method, and that teaching methodology in schools and universities has not changed in the last hundred years.<br />
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If, formerly, the metaphysical method dominated the dialectical method, this was due, as we have seen, to the ignorance of people. Today, science has provided us with the means to demonstrate that the dialectical method is most suitable to scientific research. It is scandalous that our children continue to be taught how to think and study with a method born of ignorance.<br />
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While in their scientific research scientists can no longer study, in their specializations, without taking into account the interpenetration of the sciences, in this way unconsciously utilizing a part of dialectics, too often they apply the intellectual training given to them and which is infused with the metaphysical spirit. How much progress would have been realized by those great scientists who have already contributed to humanity—for example, Pasteur and Branly, who were idealists and believers—if they had had a dialectical training!<br />
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But there is a form of struggle against Marxism-leninism which is even more dangerous than this campaign of silence, namely, those distortions which the bourgeoisie tries to organize even within the workers’ movement. At this moment, we witness the blossoming of numerous “theoreticians,” who claim to be “Marxists” and who pretend to be “renewing” or “rejuvenating” Marxism. ''Campaigns of this nature often choose for their foundation those aspects of Marxism which are least known, in particular, materialist philosophy''.<br />
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Thus, for example, there are people who claim to accept Marxism as a concept of revolutionary action, but not as a general conception of the world. They maintain that one can be perfectly Marxist without accepting materialist philosophy. In conformity with this general attitude, diverse attempts at adulteration occur. People who still call themselves Marxists try to introduce into Marxism concepts which are incompatible with its very foundation, namely, materialist philosophy. We have seen such attempts in the past. It was against them that Lenin wrote ''[[Library:Materialism and empiriocriticism|Materialism and empiriocriticism]]''. At the present time, in a period of large diffusion of Marxism, we are witnessing the rebirth and multiplication of these attempts. How can we expect to recognize and uncover those who attack Marxism in its philosophical aspect, if we do not know the true philosophy of Marxism?<br />
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==== Conclusion ====<br />
{{top}}<br />
Fortunately, for several years now, and in the working class in particular, we have observed a tremendous thrust towards the study of the whole of Marxism and a growing interest precisely in the study of materialist philosophy. This is clearly an indication that, in the present situation, the working class has perfectly understood the justice of the reasons which we gave in the beginning for studying materialist philosophy. Through their own experience, workers have learned the necessity of linking practice to theory and, at the same time, the necessity of extending theoretical study as far as possible. The role of every militant must be to reinforce this tendency and to give it a proper direction and content. We are happy to see that, thanks to the Workers’ University in Paris, (Today “Université Nouvelle” [New University] 8, Avenue Mathurin-Moreau, Paris, France.), several thousand have learned what dialectical materialism is. While this illustrates in a striking manner our struggle against the bourgeoisie and shows us ''which side'' science is on, it also shows us our duty. ''We must'' study. We must know and make Marxism known in all circles. Parallel with the struggle in the streets and at work, militants must lead an ''ideological'' struggle. Their duty is to defend our ideology against all forms of attack and, at the same time, to lead the ''counter-offensive'' for the destruction of bourgeois ideology in the consciousness of workers. But, in order to dominate all aspects of this struggle, we must be armed. The militant can truly be armed only through the knowledge of dialectical materialism.<br />
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Until we have constructed a classless society in which nothing will thwart the development of science, such is the essential part of our duty.<br />
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''See: [[Library:Elementary principles of philosophy/Control questions#Dialectical materialism and ideologies|Control questions]]''<br />
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==Notes==<br />
<references group="note" /><br />
[[Category:Library works by Georges Politzer]]<br />
[[Category:Library works about philosophy]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Essay:Wiki_SEO_guide&diff=64251Essay:Wiki SEO guide2024-03-16T14:58:15Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
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<div>{{Infobox essay|title=Wiki SEO guide|author=CriticalResist|date=2024-03-16|excerpt=A guide to writing SEO content on ProleWiki or other wikis|name=Wiki SEO/Search Engine Optimization guide}}<br />
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== Introduction (can skip) ==<br />
This guide was written for ProleWiki editors, but we have no reason to keep it private and its contents could help others.<br />
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SEO stands for '''Search Engine Optimization'''. This refers to a set of practices one employs to improve their discoverability on, well, search engines. This guide will mostly be covering Google search as they set the bar for everything else, although this trend is reversing and following the TikTok model on social media.<br />
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Regardless, when writing for a wiki, it is mostly the organic content (content that we don't necessarily have to upload ourselves but gets crawled automatically without our involvement) that will drive clicks.<br />
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I'm not an SEO expert and I don't think anyone can be simply due to how opaque it all is -- purposely, so that people cannot cheat the system. Algorithms change every so often to try and stay one step ahead of such cheaters, and the best analysts can do is simply experiment with the algorithm and try to reverse-engineer it. As the algorithm changes often, I can't guarantee that everything laid out in this guide is still relevant by the time you read this.<br />
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It aims to go through some best practices editors should go through when writing a new page or editing a page. I will not explain the theory behind SEO as there are plenty of websites that do that already and it would needlessly overload this guide.<br />
[[File:Google results for keyword "yellow parenti".png|alt=Search results example on Google with the keyword "yellow parenti", showing ProleWiki appearing in 11th place.|thumb|Search results example on Google with the keyword "yellow parenti", showing ProleWiki appearing in 11th place.]]<br />
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== how Google results work ==<br />
The goal of search engines is, by definition, to get a webpage served '''to the right person at the right time'''. Google, as you may be aware, has started changing how their search engine works in what many people call an 'enshittification'. I don't disagree with them but Google remains -- for the moment at least -- the most used search engine.<br />
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The point of doing SEO is to try and appear as high as possible in the search results anywhere. On Google, we know that the first organic result (not sponsored) receives 10x as many clicks as the tenth result, despite appearing on the same page. The proportion of users who even look at the second page of results is almost negligible; if a result is not on the first page, users will usually try different keywords entirely.<br />
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And the way of doing SEO is by editing what we control, which is the content of our pages. We can't control where Google decides to place our page for a given keyword, but we can try to nudge it by changing the content of the page.<br />
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When someone types a search query on Google, they submit '''keywords''', such as 'yellow parenti'. 'yellow parenti' ''is'' the keyword here, not "yellow" and "parenti". This is their search term. It is different from "yellow lecture", "parenti lecture", etc. which are their own keywords.<br />
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Our goal is to influence our keywords so as to cover our bases and appear in as many search queries as possible.<br />
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If you're interested in more figures: https://backlinko.com/google-ctr-stats<br />
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If you want to know more about SEO in general, I recommend Hubspot's tutorials and guides.<br />
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=== Wikis are SEO machines ===<br />
It bears clarifying that Wikis, by their nature, are SEO machines. In other words, the way a wiki works aligns perfectly with what search engines want to promote to the top.<br />
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Let's break it down:<br />
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* Wikis usually have '''lots of pages'''. This is important by itself to search engines.<br />
* Those pages usually contain '''images'''. This helps in displaying a thumbnail and also helps being discovered through Image searches.<br />
* They also contain a '''lot of text'''. This is the main (but not sole) driver of SEO, when combined with keywords.<br />
* This text often repeats a given '''keyword'''. Keywords are the words you search for on Google, such as "yellow parenti" as seen in the picture on the right. Repeating and varying them is important to make a page discoverable.<br />
* Due to various editors working on the content of such pages, they get '''updated often'''. This is useful as Google will try to serve more recent pages instead of possibly deprecated or later-proven-wrong content.<br />
* Wikis link to their own pages a lot (blue links). These are '''internal links''' and they help Google discover all our pages.<br />
* Wikis also normally get '''linked a lot''' on the Internet. This builds 'authority', which is a metric (a quantitative measure for a given purpose) that determines, well, the authority your website holds with its peers.<br />
* To a certain extent, linking back to '''other websites''' is also important. This already naturally happens through the citations system.<br />
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If you have high authority, which you build mostly through backlinks (people linking to your website), this will help you appear higher in search results. Backlinks don't work from known social media sites such as Reddit and Twitter mind you, as search engines purposely exclude them to their large amount of user-generate content -- this means you can't just post 100 links to your website on Reddit and reach #1 on the SERP ('''Search Engine Result Pages'''), these links will not be counted. Nonetheless, they are still interesting to get people to look at your website.<br />
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All of the above naturally happens on a Wiki, and is exactly what Google wants to look at to determine if it should serve a page or not.<br />
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Remember that the point of a search engine, in ideal conditions, is to get the right webpage to the right person at the right time. If you search for "yellow parenti", you likely want to watch the speech by Michael Parenti, and not a Photoshop of one's Italian relatives. Google and other search engines need to use indicators and metrics to determine what "yellow parenti" refers to, and then ''which'' pages that mention those two words to serve you at the top.<br />
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So by simply upgrading the content of our pages, that is already one way to naturally improve our search engine results. Having pages with images, lots of content (as encyclopedias should have), being linked by people and other websites and linking back to them as well is already enough.<br />
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But we can certainly go deeper.<br />
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=== Why care about SEO ===<br />
Just to give you an idea on the importance of SEO: we have made more than '''1 million impressions''' in search results on Google in the past 3 months. 'Impression' is simply the number of times we've appeared in someone's search results; they have not necessarily clicked on the link (and in some cases will never click because it's not relevant to what they were actually looking for). Imagine how many more clicks and impressions we can make by properly applying SEO principles!<br />
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Likewise, we place highly on several search terms such as patriotic socialism (on average, we are the second result for this query) or the aforementioned 'yellow parenti'. <br />
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If a page is not being discovered, it's not because people are not searching for that information or Google doesn't like us. It's because it doesn't place high enough to be clicked on. Trillions of searches are made on Google every day, and the goal is to have our results appear before others -- if we make it available, people will come to it. This is how we should see SEO and work alongside it.<br />
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=== How Google understands your page ===<br />
Google doesn't manually read your pages; it sends what's called a crawler (a script or a bot) that will read your page automatically and try to understand it. To show your page on search results, the crawler will then set what we call meta tags. If you don't set these tags yourself, the search engine will try to fill them in from the content on the page. This is all automated, and can lead to subpar results sometimes.<br />
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The pattern goes like this:<br />
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<big>Page content is written → Google crawler reads it → Human reads it</big><br />
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In other words, we want to write for ''humans'', not for Google bots, so that when we appear in Search results, humans understand what the page is about and click on the link. If we take our search result for "yellow parenti" again:<br />
[[File:Search result for "yellow parenti" highlighting ProleWiki specifically.png|alt=Search result for "yellow parenti" highlighting ProleWiki specifically|center|frameless|770x770px]]<br />
We see that this isn't really clear to a human reader. First, let's break down the result elements (and pardon my French):<br />
[[File:Search engine results and meta tags.png|alt=search engine results and meta tags|center|frameless|937x937px]]<br />
Tags such as site_name, title and description can be set by the site owner manually and for each page. Generally, we would only need to look at the description tag though. In pure HTML, this is done through the <meta> tag used in the <head> tag. On ProleWiki, we have a plugin that makes editing these tags much easier.<br />
<br />
The only thing Google does is essentially take the value of these tags and display them in the way of their choosing on their SERPs. There's other tags as well that Google can display, such as the date (February 21st 2024 in this case), or ratings, number of comments, etc, but these don't really apply to ProleWiki or don't need to be set manually.<br />
<br />
Normally, you wouldn't need to change the site_name tag and title tag. You may want to change the description tag, however. This is done through the SEO plugin.<br />
<br />
== Use the SEO plugin on pages you create ==<br />
We have the [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikiSEO SEO plugin] (links to plugin documentation) on ProleWiki. This plugin allows you to manually determine SEO meta-tags for the page. <br />
<br />
This plugin is quite easy to use, but requires you to use the source editor. Once it's set however, you can use the visual editor as well.<br />
<br />
The basic syntax to set these meta tags through the plugin looks like this:SEO plugin is like this:<br />
<nowiki>{{#seo:<br />
|title=Your page title<br />
|title_mode=append<br />
|keywords=these,are,your,keywords<br />
|description=Your meta description<br />
|image=Uploaded_file.png<br />
|image_alt=Wiki Logo<br />
}}</nowiki><br />
[[File:Example of embed result with picture on Discord.png|alt=example of embed result with picture on Discord|thumb|example of embed result with picture on Discord]]<br />
If you're familiar with using templates, it works the same way. However, note the use of the pound # sign, which indicates this is not a template but a plugin function.<br />
<br />
Regardless, you simply add a pipe character and then the meta-tag you wish to change. The list of all available meta-tags can be found in the plugin [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikiSEO#Parameters_supported_by_all_generators documentation].<br />
<br />
This plugin can be used on ''all'' pages, whether they are Library, Essays, User or wiki pages. We can also use it (and do use it) on templates such as infobox essay (you can see that display at the very top of this page, under "Back to all essays" up to the reading time). When you fill in that infobox, you are asked to provide an excerpt of your essay. This is used on the Essays main page, and it also sets it as the meta description for search engines to pull from. Likewise, the picture of your essay, if you set one, will be used as the thumbnail through the use of this SEO plugin, etc. etc. for all fields you fill in in this template.<br />
<br />
For plain wiki pages (our bread and butter content pages), generally, what you'll want to work on is the <code>image</code> and <code>description</code> parameters. However, you don't necessarily need to do it manually through the use of this plugin.<br />
<br />
=== Working with the image parameter ===<br />
The image parameter is important to get a picture in embed formats, such as on Discord (see on the right). But to set a thumbnail picture, you don't need to use the SEO plugin, you can simply upload an image on the page and place it at the very very top of the page, before any text. This will automatically set it as the default picture for embeds. Look at the code on the [[History of China]] page if you need a visual example. I imagine in some cases you may want to use another picture than any used in the article, or you don't necessarily want that page to appear at the very top of the page. In that case, you can use the SEO plugin like so:<br />
<nowiki>{{#seo:<br />
|image=File_name_here.jpg<br />
}}</nowiki><br />
That's it! <br />
<br />
In the History of China page, for example, instead of using the topographical map of China (which is useful to the reader as the first section talks about the geography of China), we could use a historical Chinese painting, or an image that is used later down in the article which we can't move somewhere else. The strength of the image tag is that the image we want to use for embed thumbnails doesn't have to even appear anywhere on the page!<br />
<br />
=== Working with the description parameter ===<br />
Likewise, you might not want to change the ''description'' tag. The reason you "might" want to is that I'm not sure if, when you change it, google is still able to pull relevant content from the page itself for its results and to which extent it uses this description.<br />
<br />
However, in some fringe cases, this could be useful. If we look back at our 'yellow parenti' search result for example:<br />
[[File:Search result for "yellow parenti" highlighting ProleWiki specifically.png|alt=Search result for "yellow parenti" highlighting ProleWiki specifically|center|frameless|770x770px]]<br />
The description is not very evocative. Remember, the search was for 'yellow parenti', but here we have "US Interventionism, the Third World..." in the title and "Yellow Lecture" in the description. The search terms, 'yellow parenti', don't appear anywhere.<br />
<br />
In this case, we could do two things:<br />
<br />
# Set a manual description with the tag that contains the words 'Yellow Parenti' in it.<br />
# Simply write more on the [[Library:US Interventionism, the Third World, and the USSR|page itself]] in a way that incorporates the words 'Yellow Parenti'.<br />
<br />
When applicable, I would use method 2 as more content on the page is always better. We could simply add something like "''this lecture is affectionately called Yellow Parenti by fans''<nowiki/>', and that would likely be enough.<br />
<br />
To use the description tag:<br />
<nowiki>{{#seo:<br />
|description=Hello world etc etc<br />
}}</nowiki><br />
And to use both tags at once:<br />
<nowiki>{{#seo:<br />
|image=File_name_here.jpg<br />
|description=Hello world etc etc<br />
}}</nowiki><br />
<br />
== How to write content for SEO ==<br />
By and large as we've seen, SEO should naturally build up our website<br />
<br />
=== Provide alt descriptions ===<br />
Alternative descriptions are a very important part of making ProleWiki accessible, and help to some extent in search results.<br />
<br />
I say 'some extent' (feel free to skip this paragraph) because in the early days of the Internet, search engines used the alt description to serve an image in results (such as Google Images). Nowadays, engines are advanced enough that they can understand the context around which an image is published on a page, and serve that picture based on the content of the page outside of the alt tag.<br />
<br />
I understand the alt tag is still used by search engines to some extent, but is not as important as it used to be for SEO.<br />
<br />
Still, they are very important for our blind comrades to be able to visit the website. To set an alt tag, you just need to upload your image in a page and then, in the visual editor, edit it and go here:<br />
[[File:Example of how to set an alt tag on ProleWiki using visual editor.png|center|frameless|example of how to set an alt tag on ProleWiki using visual editor]]<br />
You should also take some time to write a meaningful image title. When you upload an image, you are invited to change its filename. The filename is used by search engines to understand what your image is about, as well as used by us so that we don't upload duplicates.<br />
<br />
To recap, write an alt text and change the filename to something that makes sense to a human and is readable.<br />
<br />
We rank quite high for the keywords '[[patriotic socialism]]', for example. Looking at the page, this seems understandable: the keyword is repeated often; the page is quite long (and likely longer than other pages in the search pages) and we likely see it linked on several websites. All of this contributes to it ranking highly.<br />
<br />
It is, incidentally, one of our most visited pages day after day, likely because we place so high in search results!<br />
<br />
=== Writing content ===<br />
We've seen also that adding content on pages is good for SEO and, of course, the encyclopedia as a whole. More content = better articles (generally speaking).<br />
<br />
There is a ''way'' to add content, though. Remember that everything happens through keywords: people type something on Google and hit enter, and this becomes the keywords they search for, like we've seen with 'yellow parenti'. As such, repeating the name of a person in their biography page can help rank better for that person (this is known as keyword density and we've seen Google likes this, it helps it know what the content of your page is about). Keeping up with current events and adding such information, either to existing pages or by creating new pages, is also great for SEO.<br />
<br />
The 'game' of SEO is to predict what people will search for and serving those keywords on a page. We have seen a surge in the popularity of our [[Claudia de la Cruz]] page, for example, as she's announced her Presidential run for 2024. Adding this fact on the page and generally adding more content to it can help direct more traffic when people search for 'claudia de la cruz candidate' or 'claudia de la cruz president', for example. This means we would need to add the words 'candidate' and 'president' in some way to the page.<br />
<br />
Likewise, if people search for "state and revolution read online" more than they search<br />
<br />
This is where '''intent''' comes into play. People who search for "state and revolution" might not all want to read the book; some might just want to see the cover, some want to remember the author, some want to find a summary, etc. Whereas the search for "state and revolution read online" is much more meaningful, people who search for that want to read it. Conveniently, we have it on our [[Library:The state and revolution|Library]].<br />
<br />
You can use [https://trends.google.com/trends/ Google Trends] to compare how often different keywords are being searched.<br />
<br />
'''Beware bad SEO practices!''' Adding keywords needs to be done naturally, and flow in the text. There is no point in stringing words together without context just to hit them as keywords (like adding a list of words at the end of the page). Firstly because it looks horrible to any reader and secondly because search engines know this trick and penalize pages that use it.<br />
<br />
Remember above all to keep writing naturally on ProleWiki as you've already been doing.<br />
<br />
=== Add redirects ===<br />
Redirects are very useful, as they can help cover other keywords (and generally make the website more browsable once on it). To create a redirect is very easy. First, create a page which will redirect to another. For example, if our "main" page is ''Library:Manifesto of the Communist Party'', and we want to redirect people to the right page when they search for ''Library:Communist Manifesto'', we need to create the Communist Manifesto page and, through the source editor, add this:<br />
<nowiki>#REDIRECT [[Library:Manifesto of the Communist Party]]</nowiki><br />
<br />
==== Don't neglect updates ====<br />
Updates have become really useful to give an older page a little bit of boost. On Wikis, this is very easy to do.<br />
<br />
Simply take a page that has fallen out of favor on Google, and make a few changes to it. Add a paragraph, rewrite it, add the latest developments, etc. It doesn't have to be long, a paragraph is enough. Then, save your edit.<br />
<br />
Google now prioritizes recent pages to show. Like I said earlier, this is to avoid serving outdated information. By making slight updates to a page, we can give it a little boost in the search results and upload the displayed date in the search results to be more recent (which is more interesting for readers; in a normal search, they will more likely click on the guide published in 2024 than the one publishing in 2012).<br />
<br />
==== The place of AI on Google search ====<br />
Google wants to penalize pages that are written by AI. This is all the information they have given however, and we're not quite sure how they do that exactly since there's no surefire way to detect AI generations. They also said they want to give priority to pages written for humans and not for their robot, but have given no indication on that either. From my own experience, I've found that keyword density (repeating the keyword a whole lot, like 30-40 times on a page), and updating your pages periodically (every 6 months, even if the update is small), is a great way to improve your ranking in SERPs.<br />
<br />
== Last note: How to search your results on Google ==<br />
You can make pretty deep searches on Google by using operators. For example, I can type and search for:<br />
site:prolewiki.org "yellow parenti"<br />
This will give me results that are ONLY on ProleWiki.org and contain '''both''' Yellow '''and''' Parenti on the page. That is to say, if the page contains Yellow but '''not''' Parenti (such as the Yellow River in China), that page will not appear in this type of search.<br />
<br />
This can help you investigate how a given page displays on Google for a given keyword. However, note that searching for a keyword to see where we are placed is not a great way to learn that. This is because from one search to the next and by just changing a letter in the keywords, you can appear in a different spot (such as third or fourth instead of eight or tenth).<br />
<br />
Your search results are also influenced by your location, your user profile (what Google knows about you), browser language, and probably other things as well.<br />
<br />
We have another tool to help us know where we rank in search results, which is the Google Search Console. Only ProleWiki admins have access to it, and this tool gives us data on which keywords people find us with.<br />
<br />
Also note that results can take a few days to change on Google once you've changed the content of a page. Their crawler needs to visit the page again, save the changes since their previous visit, then relay that to Google to update the search results.<br />
<br />
Some pages are also simply not indexed (they will never appear in a Google search, it's as if Google doesn't know they exist). This happens simply because Google attributes a score to pages to determine if it should index it, and it will naturally not index every single of your website if you have several thousand. We can't really do much about that, that I know of.<br />
[[Category:Essays]]<br />
[[Category:Essays by CriticalResist]]<br />
[[Category:How tos (essays)]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Essay:Wiki_SEO_guide&diff=64250Essay:Wiki SEO guide2024-03-16T14:57:36Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{Infobox essay|title=Wiki SEO Guide|author=CriticalResist|date=2024-03-16|excerpt=A guide to writing SEO content on ProleWiki or other wikis|name=Wiki SEO/Search Engine Optimization guide}}<br />
<br />
== Introduction (can skip) ==<br />
This guide was written for ProleWiki editors, but we have no reason to keep it private and its contents could help others.<br />
<br />
SEO stands for '''Search Engine Optimization'''. This refers to a set of practices one employs to improve their discoverability on, well, search engines. This guide will mostly be covering Google search as they set the bar for everything else, although this trend is reversing and following the TikTok model on social media.<br />
<br />
Regardless, when writing for a wiki, it is mostly the organic content (content that we don't necessarily have to upload ourselves but gets crawled automatically without our involvement) that will drive clicks.<br />
<br />
I'm not an SEO expert and I don't think anyone can be simply due to how opaque it all is -- purposely, so that people cannot cheat the system. Algorithms change every so often to try and stay one step ahead of such cheaters, and the best analysts can do is simply experiment with the algorithm and try to reverse-engineer it. As the algorithm changes often, I can't guarantee that everything laid out in this guide is still relevant by the time you read this.<br />
<br />
It aims to go through some best practices editors should go through when writing a new page or editing a page. I will not explain the theory behind SEO as there are plenty of websites that do that already and it would needlessly overload this guide.<br />
[[File:Google results for keyword "yellow parenti".png|alt=Search results example on Google with the keyword "yellow parenti", showing ProleWiki appearing in 11th place.|thumb|Search results example on Google with the keyword "yellow parenti", showing ProleWiki appearing in 11th place.]]<br />
<br />
== how Google results work ==<br />
The goal of search engines is, by definition, to get a webpage served '''to the right person at the right time'''. Google, as you may be aware, has started changing how their search engine works in what many people call an 'enshittification'. I don't disagree with them but Google remains -- for the moment at least -- the most used search engine.<br />
<br />
The point of doing SEO is to try and appear as high as possible in the search results anywhere. On Google, we know that the first organic result (not sponsored) receives 10x as many clicks as the tenth result, despite appearing on the same page. The proportion of users who even look at the second page of results is almost negligible; if a result is not on the first page, users will usually try different keywords entirely.<br />
<br />
And the way of doing SEO is by editing what we control, which is the content of our pages. We can't control where Google decides to place our page for a given keyword, but we can try to nudge it by changing the content of the page.<br />
<br />
When someone types a search query on Google, they submit '''keywords''', such as 'yellow parenti'. 'yellow parenti' ''is'' the keyword here, not "yellow" and "parenti". This is their search term. It is different from "yellow lecture", "parenti lecture", etc. which are their own keywords.<br />
<br />
Our goal is to influence our keywords so as to cover our bases and appear in as many search queries as possible.<br />
<br />
If you're interested in more figures: https://backlinko.com/google-ctr-stats<br />
<br />
If you want to know more about SEO in general, I recommend Hubspot's tutorials and guides.<br />
<br />
=== Wikis are SEO machines ===<br />
It bears clarifying that Wikis, by their nature, are SEO machines. In other words, the way a wiki works aligns perfectly with what search engines want to promote to the top.<br />
<br />
Let's break it down:<br />
<br />
* Wikis usually have '''lots of pages'''. This is important by itself to search engines.<br />
* Those pages usually contain '''images'''. This helps in displaying a thumbnail and also helps being discovered through Image searches.<br />
* They also contain a '''lot of text'''. This is the main (but not sole) driver of SEO, when combined with keywords.<br />
* This text often repeats a given '''keyword'''. Keywords are the words you search for on Google, such as "yellow parenti" as seen in the picture on the right. Repeating and varying them is important to make a page discoverable.<br />
* Due to various editors working on the content of such pages, they get '''updated often'''. This is useful as Google will try to serve more recent pages instead of possibly deprecated or later-proven-wrong content.<br />
* Wikis link to their own pages a lot (blue links). These are '''internal links''' and they help Google discover all our pages.<br />
* Wikis also normally get '''linked a lot''' on the Internet. This builds 'authority', which is a metric (a quantitative measure for a given purpose) that determines, well, the authority your website holds with its peers.<br />
* To a certain extent, linking back to '''other websites''' is also important. This already naturally happens through the citations system.<br />
<br />
If you have high authority, which you build mostly through backlinks (people linking to your website), this will help you appear higher in search results. Backlinks don't work from known social media sites such as Reddit and Twitter mind you, as search engines purposely exclude them to their large amount of user-generate content -- this means you can't just post 100 links to your website on Reddit and reach #1 on the SERP ('''Search Engine Result Pages'''), these links will not be counted. Nonetheless, they are still interesting to get people to look at your website.<br />
<br />
All of the above naturally happens on a Wiki, and is exactly what Google wants to look at to determine if it should serve a page or not.<br />
<br />
Remember that the point of a search engine, in ideal conditions, is to get the right webpage to the right person at the right time. If you search for "yellow parenti", you likely want to watch the speech by Michael Parenti, and not a Photoshop of one's Italian relatives. Google and other search engines need to use indicators and metrics to determine what "yellow parenti" refers to, and then ''which'' pages that mention those two words to serve you at the top.<br />
<br />
So by simply upgrading the content of our pages, that is already one way to naturally improve our search engine results. Having pages with images, lots of content (as encyclopedias should have), being linked by people and other websites and linking back to them as well is already enough.<br />
<br />
But we can certainly go deeper.<br />
<br />
=== Why care about SEO ===<br />
Just to give you an idea on the importance of SEO: we have made more than '''1 million impressions''' in search results on Google in the past 3 months. 'Impression' is simply the number of times we've appeared in someone's search results; they have not necessarily clicked on the link (and in some cases will never click because it's not relevant to what they were actually looking for). Imagine how many more clicks and impressions we can make by properly applying SEO principles!<br />
<br />
Likewise, we place highly on several search terms such as patriotic socialism (on average, we are the second result for this query) or the aforementioned 'yellow parenti'. <br />
<br />
If a page is not being discovered, it's not because people are not searching for that information or Google doesn't like us. It's because it doesn't place high enough to be clicked on. Trillions of searches are made on Google every day, and the goal is to have our results appear before others -- if we make it available, people will come to it. This is how we should see SEO and work alongside it.<br />
<br />
=== How Google understands your page ===<br />
Google doesn't manually read your pages; it sends what's called a crawler (a script or a bot) that will read your page automatically and try to understand it. To show your page on search results, the crawler will then set what we call meta tags. If you don't set these tags yourself, the search engine will try to fill them in from the content on the page. This is all automated, and can lead to subpar results sometimes.<br />
<br />
The pattern goes like this:<br />
<br />
<big>Page content is written → Google crawler reads it → Human reads it</big><br />
<br />
In other words, we want to write for ''humans'', not for Google bots, so that when we appear in Search results, humans understand what the page is about and click on the link. If we take our search result for "yellow parenti" again:<br />
[[File:Search result for "yellow parenti" highlighting ProleWiki specifically.png|alt=Search result for "yellow parenti" highlighting ProleWiki specifically|center|frameless|770x770px]]<br />
We see that this isn't really clear to a human reader. First, let's break down the result elements (and pardon my French):<br />
[[File:Search engine results and meta tags.png|alt=search engine results and meta tags|center|frameless|937x937px]]<br />
Tags such as site_name, title and description can be set by the site owner manually and for each page. Generally, we would only need to look at the description tag though. In pure HTML, this is done through the <meta> tag used in the <head> tag. On ProleWiki, we have a plugin that makes editing these tags much easier.<br />
<br />
The only thing Google does is essentially take the value of these tags and display them in the way of their choosing on their SERPs. There's other tags as well that Google can display, such as the date (February 21st 2024 in this case), or ratings, number of comments, etc, but these don't really apply to ProleWiki or don't need to be set manually.<br />
<br />
Normally, you wouldn't need to change the site_name tag and title tag. You may want to change the description tag, however. This is done through the SEO plugin.<br />
<br />
== Use the SEO plugin on pages you create ==<br />
We have the [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikiSEO SEO plugin] (links to plugin documentation) on ProleWiki. This plugin allows you to manually determine SEO meta-tags for the page. <br />
<br />
This plugin is quite easy to use, but requires you to use the source editor. Once it's set however, you can use the visual editor as well.<br />
<br />
The basic syntax to set these meta tags through the plugin looks like this:SEO plugin is like this:<br />
<nowiki>{{#seo:<br />
|title=Your page title<br />
|title_mode=append<br />
|keywords=these,are,your,keywords<br />
|description=Your meta description<br />
|image=Uploaded_file.png<br />
|image_alt=Wiki Logo<br />
}}</nowiki><br />
[[File:Example of embed result with picture on Discord.png|alt=example of embed result with picture on Discord|thumb|example of embed result with picture on Discord]]<br />
If you're familiar with using templates, it works the same way. However, note the use of the pound # sign, which indicates this is not a template but a plugin function.<br />
<br />
Regardless, you simply add a pipe character and then the meta-tag you wish to change. The list of all available meta-tags can be found in the plugin [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikiSEO#Parameters_supported_by_all_generators documentation].<br />
<br />
This plugin can be used on ''all'' pages, whether they are Library, Essays, User or wiki pages. We can also use it (and do use it) on templates such as infobox essay (you can see that display at the very top of this page, under "Back to all essays" up to the reading time). When you fill in that infobox, you are asked to provide an excerpt of your essay. This is used on the Essays main page, and it also sets it as the meta description for search engines to pull from. Likewise, the picture of your essay, if you set one, will be used as the thumbnail through the use of this SEO plugin, etc. etc. for all fields you fill in in this template.<br />
<br />
For plain wiki pages (our bread and butter content pages), generally, what you'll want to work on is the <code>image</code> and <code>description</code> parameters. However, you don't necessarily need to do it manually through the use of this plugin.<br />
<br />
=== Working with the image parameter ===<br />
The image parameter is important to get a picture in embed formats, such as on Discord (see on the right). But to set a thumbnail picture, you don't need to use the SEO plugin, you can simply upload an image on the page and place it at the very very top of the page, before any text. This will automatically set it as the default picture for embeds. Look at the code on the [[History of China]] page if you need a visual example. I imagine in some cases you may want to use another picture than any used in the article, or you don't necessarily want that page to appear at the very top of the page. In that case, you can use the SEO plugin like so:<br />
<nowiki>{{#seo:<br />
|image=File_name_here.jpg<br />
}}</nowiki><br />
That's it! <br />
<br />
In the History of China page, for example, instead of using the topographical map of China (which is useful to the reader as the first section talks about the geography of China), we could use a historical Chinese painting, or an image that is used later down in the article which we can't move somewhere else. The strength of the image tag is that the image we want to use for embed thumbnails doesn't have to even appear anywhere on the page!<br />
<br />
=== Working with the description parameter ===<br />
Likewise, you might not want to change the ''description'' tag. The reason you "might" want to is that I'm not sure if, when you change it, google is still able to pull relevant content from the page itself for its results and to which extent it uses this description.<br />
<br />
However, in some fringe cases, this could be useful. If we look back at our 'yellow parenti' search result for example:<br />
[[File:Search result for "yellow parenti" highlighting ProleWiki specifically.png|alt=Search result for "yellow parenti" highlighting ProleWiki specifically|center|frameless|770x770px]]<br />
The description is not very evocative. Remember, the search was for 'yellow parenti', but here we have "US Interventionism, the Third World..." in the title and "Yellow Lecture" in the description. The search terms, 'yellow parenti', don't appear anywhere.<br />
<br />
In this case, we could do two things:<br />
<br />
# Set a manual description with the tag that contains the words 'Yellow Parenti' in it.<br />
# Simply write more on the [[Library:US Interventionism, the Third World, and the USSR|page itself]] in a way that incorporates the words 'Yellow Parenti'.<br />
<br />
When applicable, I would use method 2 as more content on the page is always better. We could simply add something like "''this lecture is affectionately called Yellow Parenti by fans''<nowiki/>', and that would likely be enough.<br />
<br />
To use the description tag:<br />
<nowiki>{{#seo:<br />
|description=Hello world etc etc<br />
}}</nowiki><br />
And to use both tags at once:<br />
<nowiki>{{#seo:<br />
|image=File_name_here.jpg<br />
|description=Hello world etc etc<br />
}}</nowiki><br />
<br />
== How to write content for SEO ==<br />
By and large as we've seen, SEO should naturally build up our website<br />
<br />
=== Provide alt descriptions ===<br />
Alternative descriptions are a very important part of making ProleWiki accessible, and help to some extent in search results.<br />
<br />
I say 'some extent' (feel free to skip this paragraph) because in the early days of the Internet, search engines used the alt description to serve an image in results (such as Google Images). Nowadays, engines are advanced enough that they can understand the context around which an image is published on a page, and serve that picture based on the content of the page outside of the alt tag.<br />
<br />
I understand the alt tag is still used by search engines to some extent, but is not as important as it used to be for SEO.<br />
<br />
Still, they are very important for our blind comrades to be able to visit the website. To set an alt tag, you just need to upload your image in a page and then, in the visual editor, edit it and go here:<br />
[[File:Example of how to set an alt tag on ProleWiki using visual editor.png|center|frameless|example of how to set an alt tag on ProleWiki using visual editor]]<br />
You should also take some time to write a meaningful image title. When you upload an image, you are invited to change its filename. The filename is used by search engines to understand what your image is about, as well as used by us so that we don't upload duplicates.<br />
<br />
To recap, write an alt text and change the filename to something that makes sense to a human and is readable.<br />
<br />
We rank quite high for the keywords '[[patriotic socialism]]', for example. Looking at the page, this seems understandable: the keyword is repeated often; the page is quite long (and likely longer than other pages in the search pages) and we likely see it linked on several websites. All of this contributes to it ranking highly.<br />
<br />
It is, incidentally, one of our most visited pages day after day, likely because we place so high in search results!<br />
<br />
=== Writing content ===<br />
We've seen also that adding content on pages is good for SEO and, of course, the encyclopedia as a whole. More content = better articles (generally speaking).<br />
<br />
There is a ''way'' to add content, though. Remember that everything happens through keywords: people type something on Google and hit enter, and this becomes the keywords they search for, like we've seen with 'yellow parenti'. As such, repeating the name of a person in their biography page can help rank better for that person (this is known as keyword density and we've seen Google likes this, it helps it know what the content of your page is about). Keeping up with current events and adding such information, either to existing pages or by creating new pages, is also great for SEO.<br />
<br />
The 'game' of SEO is to predict what people will search for and serving those keywords on a page. We have seen a surge in the popularity of our [[Claudia de la Cruz]] page, for example, as she's announced her Presidential run for 2024. Adding this fact on the page and generally adding more content to it can help direct more traffic when people search for 'claudia de la cruz candidate' or 'claudia de la cruz president', for example. This means we would need to add the words 'candidate' and 'president' in some way to the page.<br />
<br />
Likewise, if people search for "state and revolution read online" more than they search<br />
<br />
This is where '''intent''' comes into play. People who search for "state and revolution" might not all want to read the book; some might just want to see the cover, some want to remember the author, some want to find a summary, etc. Whereas the search for "state and revolution read online" is much more meaningful, people who search for that want to read it. Conveniently, we have it on our [[Library:The state and revolution|Library]].<br />
<br />
You can use [https://trends.google.com/trends/ Google Trends] to compare how often different keywords are being searched.<br />
<br />
'''Beware bad SEO practices!''' Adding keywords needs to be done naturally, and flow in the text. There is no point in stringing words together without context just to hit them as keywords (like adding a list of words at the end of the page). Firstly because it looks horrible to any reader and secondly because search engines know this trick and penalize pages that use it.<br />
<br />
Remember above all to keep writing naturally on ProleWiki as you've already been doing.<br />
<br />
=== Add redirects ===<br />
Redirects are very useful, as they can help cover other keywords (and generally make the website more browsable once on it). To create a redirect is very easy. First, create a page which will redirect to another. For example, if our "main" page is ''Library:Manifesto of the Communist Party'', and we want to redirect people to the right page when they search for ''Library:Communist Manifesto'', we need to create the Communist Manifesto page and, through the source editor, add this:<br />
<nowiki>#REDIRECT [[Library:Manifesto of the Communist Party]]</nowiki><br />
<br />
==== Don't neglect updates ====<br />
Updates have become really useful to give an older page a little bit of boost. On Wikis, this is very easy to do.<br />
<br />
Simply take a page that has fallen out of favor on Google, and make a few changes to it. Add a paragraph, rewrite it, add the latest developments, etc. It doesn't have to be long, a paragraph is enough. Then, save your edit.<br />
<br />
Google now prioritizes recent pages to show. Like I said earlier, this is to avoid serving outdated information. By making slight updates to a page, we can give it a little boost in the search results and upload the displayed date in the search results to be more recent (which is more interesting for readers; in a normal search, they will more likely click on the guide published in 2024 than the one publishing in 2012).<br />
<br />
==== The place of AI on Google search ====<br />
Google wants to penalize pages that are written by AI. This is all the information they have given however, and we're not quite sure how they do that exactly since there's no surefire way to detect AI generations. They also said they want to give priority to pages written for humans and not for their robot, but have given no indication on that either. From my own experience, I've found that keyword density (repeating the keyword a whole lot, like 30-40 times on a page), and updating your pages periodically (every 6 months, even if the update is small), is a great way to improve your ranking in SERPs.<br />
<br />
== Last note: How to search your results on Google ==<br />
You can make pretty deep searches on Google by using operators. For example, I can type and search for:<br />
site:prolewiki.org "yellow parenti"<br />
This will give me results that are ONLY on ProleWiki.org and contain '''both''' Yellow '''and''' Parenti on the page. That is to say, if the page contains Yellow but '''not''' Parenti (such as the Yellow River in China), that page will not appear in this type of search.<br />
<br />
This can help you investigate how a given page displays on Google for a given keyword. However, note that searching for a keyword to see where we are placed is not a great way to learn that. This is because from one search to the next and by just changing a letter in the keywords, you can appear in a different spot (such as third or fourth instead of eight or tenth).<br />
<br />
Your search results are also influenced by your location, your user profile (what Google knows about you), browser language, and probably other things as well.<br />
<br />
We have another tool to help us know where we rank in search results, which is the Google Search Console. Only ProleWiki admins have access to it, and this tool gives us data on which keywords people find us with.<br />
<br />
Also note that results can take a few days to change on Google once you've changed the content of a page. Their crawler needs to visit the page again, save the changes since their previous visit, then relay that to Google to update the search results.<br />
<br />
Some pages are also simply not indexed (they will never appear in a Google search, it's as if Google doesn't know they exist). This happens simply because Google attributes a score to pages to determine if it should index it, and it will naturally not index every single of your website if you have several thousand. We can't really do much about that, that I know of.<br />
[[Category:Essays]]<br />
[[Category:Essays by CriticalResist]]<br />
[[Category:How tos (essays)]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Essay:Wiki_SEO_guide&diff=64249Essay:Wiki SEO guide2024-03-16T14:57:13Z<p>CriticalResist: v1</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Infobox essay|title=Wiki SEO Guide|author=CriticalResist|date=2024-03-16|excerpt=A guide to writing SEO content on ProleWiki or other wikis|name=Wiki SEO (Search Engine Optimization) guide}}<br />
<br />
== Introduction (can skip) ==<br />
This guide was written for ProleWiki editors, but we have no reason to keep it private and its contents could help others.<br />
<br />
SEO stands for '''Search Engine Optimization'''. This refers to a set of practices one employs to improve their discoverability on, well, search engines. This guide will mostly be covering Google search as they set the bar for everything else, although this trend is reversing and following the TikTok model on social media.<br />
<br />
Regardless, when writing for a wiki, it is mostly the organic content (content that we don't necessarily have to upload ourselves but gets crawled automatically without our involvement) that will drive clicks.<br />
<br />
I'm not an SEO expert and I don't think anyone can be simply due to how opaque it all is -- purposely, so that people cannot cheat the system. Algorithms change every so often to try and stay one step ahead of such cheaters, and the best analysts can do is simply experiment with the algorithm and try to reverse-engineer it. As the algorithm changes often, I can't guarantee that everything laid out in this guide is still relevant by the time you read this.<br />
<br />
It aims to go through some best practices editors should go through when writing a new page or editing a page. I will not explain the theory behind SEO as there are plenty of websites that do that already and it would needlessly overload this guide.<br />
[[File:Google results for keyword "yellow parenti".png|alt=Search results example on Google with the keyword "yellow parenti", showing ProleWiki appearing in 11th place.|thumb|Search results example on Google with the keyword "yellow parenti", showing ProleWiki appearing in 11th place.]]<br />
<br />
== how Google results work ==<br />
The goal of search engines is, by definition, to get a webpage served '''to the right person at the right time'''. Google, as you may be aware, has started changing how their search engine works in what many people call an 'enshittification'. I don't disagree with them but Google remains -- for the moment at least -- the most used search engine.<br />
<br />
The point of doing SEO is to try and appear as high as possible in the search results anywhere. On Google, we know that the first organic result (not sponsored) receives 10x as many clicks as the tenth result, despite appearing on the same page. The proportion of users who even look at the second page of results is almost negligible; if a result is not on the first page, users will usually try different keywords entirely.<br />
<br />
And the way of doing SEO is by editing what we control, which is the content of our pages. We can't control where Google decides to place our page for a given keyword, but we can try to nudge it by changing the content of the page.<br />
<br />
When someone types a search query on Google, they submit '''keywords''', such as 'yellow parenti'. 'yellow parenti' ''is'' the keyword here, not "yellow" and "parenti". This is their search term. It is different from "yellow lecture", "parenti lecture", etc. which are their own keywords.<br />
<br />
Our goal is to influence our keywords so as to cover our bases and appear in as many search queries as possible.<br />
<br />
If you're interested in more figures: https://backlinko.com/google-ctr-stats<br />
<br />
If you want to know more about SEO in general, I recommend Hubspot's tutorials and guides.<br />
<br />
=== Wikis are SEO machines ===<br />
It bears clarifying that Wikis, by their nature, are SEO machines. In other words, the way a wiki works aligns perfectly with what search engines want to promote to the top.<br />
<br />
Let's break it down:<br />
<br />
* Wikis usually have '''lots of pages'''. This is important by itself to search engines.<br />
* Those pages usually contain '''images'''. This helps in displaying a thumbnail and also helps being discovered through Image searches.<br />
* They also contain a '''lot of text'''. This is the main (but not sole) driver of SEO, when combined with keywords.<br />
* This text often repeats a given '''keyword'''. Keywords are the words you search for on Google, such as "yellow parenti" as seen in the picture on the right. Repeating and varying them is important to make a page discoverable.<br />
* Due to various editors working on the content of such pages, they get '''updated often'''. This is useful as Google will try to serve more recent pages instead of possibly deprecated or later-proven-wrong content.<br />
* Wikis link to their own pages a lot (blue links). These are '''internal links''' and they help Google discover all our pages.<br />
* Wikis also normally get '''linked a lot''' on the Internet. This builds 'authority', which is a metric (a quantitative measure for a given purpose) that determines, well, the authority your website holds with its peers.<br />
* To a certain extent, linking back to '''other websites''' is also important. This already naturally happens through the citations system.<br />
<br />
If you have high authority, which you build mostly through backlinks (people linking to your website), this will help you appear higher in search results. Backlinks don't work from known social media sites such as Reddit and Twitter mind you, as search engines purposely exclude them to their large amount of user-generate content -- this means you can't just post 100 links to your website on Reddit and reach #1 on the SERP ('''Search Engine Result Pages'''), these links will not be counted. Nonetheless, they are still interesting to get people to look at your website.<br />
<br />
All of the above naturally happens on a Wiki, and is exactly what Google wants to look at to determine if it should serve a page or not.<br />
<br />
Remember that the point of a search engine, in ideal conditions, is to get the right webpage to the right person at the right time. If you search for "yellow parenti", you likely want to watch the speech by Michael Parenti, and not a Photoshop of one's Italian relatives. Google and other search engines need to use indicators and metrics to determine what "yellow parenti" refers to, and then ''which'' pages that mention those two words to serve you at the top.<br />
<br />
So by simply upgrading the content of our pages, that is already one way to naturally improve our search engine results. Having pages with images, lots of content (as encyclopedias should have), being linked by people and other websites and linking back to them as well is already enough.<br />
<br />
But we can certainly go deeper.<br />
<br />
=== Why care about SEO ===<br />
Just to give you an idea on the importance of SEO: we have made more than '''1 million impressions''' in search results on Google in the past 3 months. 'Impression' is simply the number of times we've appeared in someone's search results; they have not necessarily clicked on the link (and in some cases will never click because it's not relevant to what they were actually looking for). Imagine how many more clicks and impressions we can make by properly applying SEO principles!<br />
<br />
Likewise, we place highly on several search terms such as patriotic socialism (on average, we are the second result for this query) or the aforementioned 'yellow parenti'. <br />
<br />
If a page is not being discovered, it's not because people are not searching for that information or Google doesn't like us. It's because it doesn't place high enough to be clicked on. Trillions of searches are made on Google every day, and the goal is to have our results appear before others -- if we make it available, people will come to it. This is how we should see SEO and work alongside it.<br />
<br />
=== How Google understands your page ===<br />
Google doesn't manually read your pages; it sends what's called a crawler (a script or a bot) that will read your page automatically and try to understand it. To show your page on search results, the crawler will then set what we call meta tags. If you don't set these tags yourself, the search engine will try to fill them in from the content on the page. This is all automated, and can lead to subpar results sometimes.<br />
<br />
The pattern goes like this:<br />
<br />
<big>Page content is written → Google crawler reads it → Human reads it</big><br />
<br />
In other words, we want to write for ''humans'', not for Google bots, so that when we appear in Search results, humans understand what the page is about and click on the link. If we take our search result for "yellow parenti" again:<br />
[[File:Search result for "yellow parenti" highlighting ProleWiki specifically.png|alt=Search result for "yellow parenti" highlighting ProleWiki specifically|center|frameless|770x770px]]<br />
We see that this isn't really clear to a human reader. First, let's break down the result elements (and pardon my French):<br />
[[File:Search engine results and meta tags.png|alt=search engine results and meta tags|center|frameless|937x937px]]<br />
Tags such as site_name, title and description can be set by the site owner manually and for each page. Generally, we would only need to look at the description tag though. In pure HTML, this is done through the <meta> tag used in the <head> tag. On ProleWiki, we have a plugin that makes editing these tags much easier.<br />
<br />
The only thing Google does is essentially take the value of these tags and display them in the way of their choosing on their SERPs. There's other tags as well that Google can display, such as the date (February 21st 2024 in this case), or ratings, number of comments, etc, but these don't really apply to ProleWiki or don't need to be set manually.<br />
<br />
Normally, you wouldn't need to change the site_name tag and title tag. You may want to change the description tag, however. This is done through the SEO plugin.<br />
<br />
== Use the SEO plugin on pages you create ==<br />
We have the [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikiSEO SEO plugin] (links to plugin documentation) on ProleWiki. This plugin allows you to manually determine SEO meta-tags for the page. <br />
<br />
This plugin is quite easy to use, but requires you to use the source editor. Once it's set however, you can use the visual editor as well.<br />
<br />
The basic syntax to set these meta tags through the plugin looks like this:SEO plugin is like this:<br />
<nowiki>{{#seo:<br />
|title=Your page title<br />
|title_mode=append<br />
|keywords=these,are,your,keywords<br />
|description=Your meta description<br />
|image=Uploaded_file.png<br />
|image_alt=Wiki Logo<br />
}}</nowiki><br />
[[File:Example of embed result with picture on Discord.png|alt=example of embed result with picture on Discord|thumb|example of embed result with picture on Discord]]<br />
If you're familiar with using templates, it works the same way. However, note the use of the pound # sign, which indicates this is not a template but a plugin function.<br />
<br />
Regardless, you simply add a pipe character and then the meta-tag you wish to change. The list of all available meta-tags can be found in the plugin [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikiSEO#Parameters_supported_by_all_generators documentation].<br />
<br />
This plugin can be used on ''all'' pages, whether they are Library, Essays, User or wiki pages. We can also use it (and do use it) on templates such as infobox essay (you can see that display at the very top of this page, under "Back to all essays" up to the reading time). When you fill in that infobox, you are asked to provide an excerpt of your essay. This is used on the Essays main page, and it also sets it as the meta description for search engines to pull from. Likewise, the picture of your essay, if you set one, will be used as the thumbnail through the use of this SEO plugin, etc. etc. for all fields you fill in in this template.<br />
<br />
For plain wiki pages (our bread and butter content pages), generally, what you'll want to work on is the <code>image</code> and <code>description</code> parameters. However, you don't necessarily need to do it manually through the use of this plugin.<br />
<br />
=== Working with the image parameter ===<br />
The image parameter is important to get a picture in embed formats, such as on Discord (see on the right). But to set a thumbnail picture, you don't need to use the SEO plugin, you can simply upload an image on the page and place it at the very very top of the page, before any text. This will automatically set it as the default picture for embeds. Look at the code on the [[History of China]] page if you need a visual example. I imagine in some cases you may want to use another picture than any used in the article, or you don't necessarily want that page to appear at the very top of the page. In that case, you can use the SEO plugin like so:<br />
<nowiki>{{#seo:<br />
|image=File_name_here.jpg<br />
}}</nowiki><br />
That's it! <br />
<br />
In the History of China page, for example, instead of using the topographical map of China (which is useful to the reader as the first section talks about the geography of China), we could use a historical Chinese painting, or an image that is used later down in the article which we can't move somewhere else. The strength of the image tag is that the image we want to use for embed thumbnails doesn't have to even appear anywhere on the page!<br />
<br />
=== Working with the description parameter ===<br />
Likewise, you might not want to change the ''description'' tag. The reason you "might" want to is that I'm not sure if, when you change it, google is still able to pull relevant content from the page itself for its results and to which extent it uses this description.<br />
<br />
However, in some fringe cases, this could be useful. If we look back at our 'yellow parenti' search result for example:<br />
[[File:Search result for "yellow parenti" highlighting ProleWiki specifically.png|alt=Search result for "yellow parenti" highlighting ProleWiki specifically|center|frameless|770x770px]]<br />
The description is not very evocative. Remember, the search was for 'yellow parenti', but here we have "US Interventionism, the Third World..." in the title and "Yellow Lecture" in the description. The search terms, 'yellow parenti', don't appear anywhere.<br />
<br />
In this case, we could do two things:<br />
<br />
# Set a manual description with the tag that contains the words 'Yellow Parenti' in it.<br />
# Simply write more on the [[Library:US Interventionism, the Third World, and the USSR|page itself]] in a way that incorporates the words 'Yellow Parenti'.<br />
<br />
When applicable, I would use method 2 as more content on the page is always better. We could simply add something like "''this lecture is affectionately called Yellow Parenti by fans''<nowiki/>', and that would likely be enough.<br />
<br />
To use the description tag:<br />
<nowiki>{{#seo:<br />
|description=Hello world etc etc<br />
}}</nowiki><br />
And to use both tags at once:<br />
<nowiki>{{#seo:<br />
|image=File_name_here.jpg<br />
|description=Hello world etc etc<br />
}}</nowiki><br />
<br />
== How to write content for SEO ==<br />
By and large as we've seen, SEO should naturally build up our website<br />
<br />
=== Provide alt descriptions ===<br />
Alternative descriptions are a very important part of making ProleWiki accessible, and help to some extent in search results.<br />
<br />
I say 'some extent' (feel free to skip this paragraph) because in the early days of the Internet, search engines used the alt description to serve an image in results (such as Google Images). Nowadays, engines are advanced enough that they can understand the context around which an image is published on a page, and serve that picture based on the content of the page outside of the alt tag.<br />
<br />
I understand the alt tag is still used by search engines to some extent, but is not as important as it used to be for SEO.<br />
<br />
Still, they are very important for our blind comrades to be able to visit the website. To set an alt tag, you just need to upload your image in a page and then, in the visual editor, edit it and go here:<br />
[[File:Example of how to set an alt tag on ProleWiki using visual editor.png|center|frameless|example of how to set an alt tag on ProleWiki using visual editor]]<br />
You should also take some time to write a meaningful image title. When you upload an image, you are invited to change its filename. The filename is used by search engines to understand what your image is about, as well as used by us so that we don't upload duplicates.<br />
<br />
To recap, write an alt text and change the filename to something that makes sense to a human and is readable.<br />
<br />
We rank quite high for the keywords '[[patriotic socialism]]', for example. Looking at the page, this seems understandable: the keyword is repeated often; the page is quite long (and likely longer than other pages in the search pages) and we likely see it linked on several websites. All of this contributes to it ranking highly.<br />
<br />
It is, incidentally, one of our most visited pages day after day, likely because we place so high in search results!<br />
<br />
=== Writing content ===<br />
We've seen also that adding content on pages is good for SEO and, of course, the encyclopedia as a whole. More content = better articles (generally speaking).<br />
<br />
There is a ''way'' to add content, though. Remember that everything happens through keywords: people type something on Google and hit enter, and this becomes the keywords they search for, like we've seen with 'yellow parenti'. As such, repeating the name of a person in their biography page can help rank better for that person (this is known as keyword density and we've seen Google likes this, it helps it know what the content of your page is about). Keeping up with current events and adding such information, either to existing pages or by creating new pages, is also great for SEO.<br />
<br />
The 'game' of SEO is to predict what people will search for and serving those keywords on a page. We have seen a surge in the popularity of our [[Claudia de la Cruz]] page, for example, as she's announced her Presidential run for 2024. Adding this fact on the page and generally adding more content to it can help direct more traffic when people search for 'claudia de la cruz candidate' or 'claudia de la cruz president', for example. This means we would need to add the words 'candidate' and 'president' in some way to the page.<br />
<br />
Likewise, if people search for "state and revolution read online" more than they search<br />
<br />
This is where '''intent''' comes into play. People who search for "state and revolution" might not all want to read the book; some might just want to see the cover, some want to remember the author, some want to find a summary, etc. Whereas the search for "state and revolution read online" is much more meaningful, people who search for that want to read it. Conveniently, we have it on our [[Library:The state and revolution|Library]].<br />
<br />
You can use [https://trends.google.com/trends/ Google Trends] to compare how often different keywords are being searched.<br />
<br />
'''Beware bad SEO practices!''' Adding keywords needs to be done naturally, and flow in the text. There is no point in stringing words together without context just to hit them as keywords (like adding a list of words at the end of the page). Firstly because it looks horrible to any reader and secondly because search engines know this trick and penalize pages that use it.<br />
<br />
Remember above all to keep writing naturally on ProleWiki as you've already been doing.<br />
<br />
=== Add redirects ===<br />
Redirects are very useful, as they can help cover other keywords (and generally make the website more browsable once on it). To create a redirect is very easy. First, create a page which will redirect to another. For example, if our "main" page is ''Library:Manifesto of the Communist Party'', and we want to redirect people to the right page when they search for ''Library:Communist Manifesto'', we need to create the Communist Manifesto page and, through the source editor, add this:<br />
<nowiki>#REDIRECT [[Library:Manifesto of the Communist Party]]</nowiki><br />
<br />
==== Don't neglect updates ====<br />
Updates have become really useful to give an older page a little bit of boost. On Wikis, this is very easy to do.<br />
<br />
Simply take a page that has fallen out of favor on Google, and make a few changes to it. Add a paragraph, rewrite it, add the latest developments, etc. It doesn't have to be long, a paragraph is enough. Then, save your edit.<br />
<br />
Google now prioritizes recent pages to show. Like I said earlier, this is to avoid serving outdated information. By making slight updates to a page, we can give it a little boost in the search results and upload the displayed date in the search results to be more recent (which is more interesting for readers; in a normal search, they will more likely click on the guide published in 2024 than the one publishing in 2012).<br />
<br />
==== The place of AI on Google search ====<br />
Google wants to penalize pages that are written by AI. This is all the information they have given however, and we're not quite sure how they do that exactly since there's no surefire way to detect AI generations. They also said they want to give priority to pages written for humans and not for their robot, but have given no indication on that either. From my own experience, I've found that keyword density (repeating the keyword a whole lot, like 30-40 times on a page), and updating your pages periodically (every 6 months, even if the update is small), is a great way to improve your ranking in SERPs.<br />
<br />
== Last note: How to search your results on Google ==<br />
You can make pretty deep searches on Google by using operators. For example, I can type and search for:<br />
site:prolewiki.org "yellow parenti"<br />
This will give me results that are ONLY on ProleWiki.org and contain '''both''' Yellow '''and''' Parenti on the page. That is to say, if the page contains Yellow but '''not''' Parenti (such as the Yellow River in China), that page will not appear in this type of search.<br />
<br />
This can help you investigate how a given page displays on Google for a given keyword. However, note that searching for a keyword to see where we are placed is not a great way to learn that. This is because from one search to the next and by just changing a letter in the keywords, you can appear in a different spot (such as third or fourth instead of eight or tenth).<br />
<br />
Your search results are also influenced by your location, your user profile (what Google knows about you), browser language, and probably other things as well.<br />
<br />
We have another tool to help us know where we rank in search results, which is the Google Search Console. Only ProleWiki admins have access to it, and this tool gives us data on which keywords people find us with.<br />
<br />
Also note that results can take a few days to change on Google once you've changed the content of a page. Their crawler needs to visit the page again, save the changes since their previous visit, then relay that to Google to update the search results.<br />
<br />
Some pages are also simply not indexed (they will never appear in a Google search, it's as if Google doesn't know they exist). This happens simply because Google attributes a score to pages to determine if it should index it, and it will naturally not index every single of your website if you have several thousand. We can't really do much about that, that I know of.<br />
[[Category:Essays]]<br />
[[Category:Essays by CriticalResist]]<br />
[[Category:How tos (essays)]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Patriotic_socialism&diff=64245Patriotic socialism2024-03-16T14:14:30Z<p>CriticalResist: /* Positions */ blue link</p>
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<div>[[File:Haz speaking at CPI 2022.webp|thumb|416x416px|Haz (of [[Infrared]]) speaking in front of an [[Abraham Lincoln]] cutout at [[Center for Political Innovation]] general assembly in 2022.]]<br />
'''Patriotic socialism''' (abbreviated '''Patsoc''') is an [[Opportunism|opportunist]] and [[Revisionism|revisionist]] movement, born in the [[United States of America|United States]], that advocates for [[patriotism]] within the [[imperial core]]. It is distinct from patriotism within [[Anti-imperialism|anti-imperialist]], [[Colonialism|colonized]], and [[Socialism|socialist]] countries. Patriotic socialism has grown to become its own strand of "socialist" theory, especially within the Communist movement in the United States. However, this trend is wholly different from "patriotism as applied to socialism". The confusion however is often exploited by followers of this ideology so as to associate themselves with more progressive (and successful) patriotic movements, such as are seen in the [[State of Palestine|Palestinian]] struggle or in [[Mao Zedong|Mao]]'s [[People's Republic of China|People's Republic China]].<br />
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It should be noted that the name ''patriotic socialism'' was also coined by its followers and remains the name they prefer to be called, thus marking a clear difference with ''socialist patriotism'' or other similar terms.<br />
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The people who are commonly associated as current leaders of patriotic socialism include [[Haz]], [[Caleb Maupin]], and [[Jackson Hinkle]].<ref name=":0">[https://regenerationmag.org/american-patriotism-or-national-liberation/ American Patriotism or National Liberation?]</ref><ref name=":2">[https://www.socialist.net/left-patriotism-an-opportunist-disorder.htm 'Left patriotism': An opportunist disorder]</ref><ref name=":1">{{Web citation|author=[[Infrared]]|newspaper=Youtube|title=Socialist Patriotism: America vs. America|date=2022-10-26|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eveOKE4Ones&t=915s|retrieved=2022-10-3}}</ref><br />
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== Origin ==<br />
Patriotic socialism originated from the [[American exceptionalism]] of [[Jay Lovestone]], the leader of a rightist faction in the [[Communist Party of the United States of America|CPUSA]] during the 1920s. He believed that [[capitalism]] was so strong in the United States that a revolution would be impossible and encouraged passively waiting for capitalism to decline.<ref name=":3">{{Web citation|author=Gaius Gracchus|newspaper=[[The Red Clarion]]|title=A True Accounting of the CPUSA In Its Members Own Words|date=2024-02-22|url=https://clarion.unity-struggle-unity.org/2024-02-22-cpusa-hypocrisy/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240301215326/https://clarion.unity-struggle-unity.org/2024-02-22-cpusa-hypocrisy/|archive-date=2024-03-01}}</ref><br />
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After the [[Communist International (1919–1943)|Comintern]] purged Lovestone, [[Earl Browder]] took control of the party. During the 1930s, he called for a [[united front]] with the [[bourgeoisie]] and claimed that "[[Communism]] is 20th-century Americanism." In 1944, he dissolved the CPUSA, but the [[French Communist Party]] intervened to reestablish the party the next year. The 1957 party convention argued for a [[Reformism|gradual and peaceful transition]] to [[socialism]] and encouraged the CPUSA to support progressive [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrat]] campaigns. It also rejected [[self-determination]] for the [[Black Belt]].<ref name=":3" /><br />
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==Positions==<br />
Patriotic socialism is a rapidly evolving ideology, and as a consequence of the disorganization and cliquishness among is adherents, may change its appearance quickly and often as needed, and often lacks any sort of commonly-agreed upon theory or principles that go beyond a few basic tenets. <br />
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For instance, the patriotic socialist collective [[Infrared]] published a manifesto presenting ''[[MAGACommunism|MAGAcommunism]]'' in September 2022 as their official ideology. It should be noted that the [[Center for Political Innovation]] dissolved a month prior the publishing of this essay due to allegations of abuse brought up by members against Caleb Maupin.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Haz Al-Din|newspaper=[[Infrared]]|title=THE RISE OF MAGA COMMUNISM|date=2022-9-18|url=https://showinfrared.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-maga-communism?sd=pf|retrieved=2022-9-22}}</ref><br />
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Other general positions can similarly be identified. Patriotic socialists advocate for an alliance with, and indeed commonly tail the interests and ideological tendency of, the [[petty bourgeoisie]] (whom they conflate with the [[proletariat]]).<ref>{{Web citation|author=[[Infrared]]|newspaper=Youtube|title=Rise of the Mecha-Tankies|date=2022-7-19|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPojH2KtLks|retrieved=2022-10-3}}</ref> They further tend to promote [[Aleksandr Dugin|Dugin]] and [[Lyndon LaRouche|LaRouche]] to their followers and align with them; two [[Anti-communism|anti-communist]], quasi-[[Fascism|fascist]] and [[Mysticism|mystic]] writers. They also align with [[right-wing]] [[Populism|populist]] protest movements, such as the Tea Party movement, or the [[2022 Truckers' Protest|2022 Trucker protests]].<br />
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Several patriotic socialists were very vocal about the 2022 Cuban constitutional referendum that abolished the monopoly of the nuclear family and recognized many other forms of family. They decried it as "degeneracy" and considered Cuba to no longer be socialist. This indicates a large share of chauvinist and reactionary opinions in the movement that are not being addressed. <br />
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Finally, they wholly reject [[decolonization]] in the United States, holding instead that if workers are liberated, it would include Native and minority workers too.<ref name=":1" /><br />
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==Praxis==<br />
Patriotic socialism, even after several years of existence, is a movement that remains almost entirely online, focusing on the of social media to create virality and thus visibility.<br />
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Patriotic socialists have yet to form a political party, instead promoting the ''CPUSA 2036'' slogan: an attempt at infiltrating the [[Communist Party of the United States of America|Communist Party of the USA]] and win the 2036 presidential election through it. The Center for Political Innovation is registered as a private enterprise by Caleb Maupin and not as a party, applying different laws to the entity.<br />
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Patriotic socialists tend to attack the left—including the projects and efforts of communists and [[Marxism–Leninism|Marxist-Leninists]], particularly when it is internet-based, but almost never the right. In fact, they often agree with conservatives and boost their message.<br />
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== Marxist views on patriotism and nationalism ==<br />
[[Mao Zedong|Mao]] only supported patriotism for [[Anti-imperialism|anti-imperialist]] or [[Colonialism|colonized]] countries. An example of this tactic is [[Republic of China|China]]'s United Front against [[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Japanese]] imperialism. Mao condemned patriotism for imperialist [[Fascism|fascist]] countries like [[German Reich (1933–1945)|Germany]] and Japan:<br />
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{{Quote|Can a Communist, who is an [[proletarian internationalism|internationalist]], at the same time be a patriot? We hold that he not only can be but must be. The specific content of patriotism is determined by historical conditions. There is the "patriotism" of the Japanese aggressors and of [[Hitler]], and there is our patriotism. Communists must resolutely oppose the "patriotism" of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler. The Communists of Japan and Germany are defeatists with regard to the wars being waged by their countries. To bring about the defeat of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler by every possible means is in the interests of the Japanese and the German people, and the more complete the defeat the better. This is what the [[Japanese Communist Party|Japanese]] and [[Communist Party of Germany|German Communists]] should be doing and what they are doing. For the wars launched by the Japanese aggressors and Hitler are harming their own people as well as the people of the world. China's case is different, because she is the victim of aggression. Chinese Communists must therefore combine patriotism with internationalism.|[[Mao Zedong]]|[https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_10.htm The Role of the Communist Party of China in the National War]|October 1938}}<br />
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Lenin also opposed patriotism and [[nationalism]] for oppressor nations and called for [[self-determination]] for oppressed nations:<br />
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{{Quote|Consequently, the interests of the Great-Russian proletariat require that the masses be systematically educated to champion—most resolutely, consistently, boldly and in a revolutionary manner—complete equality and the right to self-determination for all the nations oppressed by the Great Russians.|[[Vladimir Lenin]]|[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/dec/12a.htm On the National Pride of the Great Russians]|1914}}<br />
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[[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] stated that nationalism is not inherently good or bad and that Marxists should only support national movements that weaken imperialism and not those that strengthen it:<br />
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{{Quote|This does not mean, of course, that the [[proletariat]] must support every national movement, everywhere and always, in every individual concrete case. It means that support must be given to such national movements as tend to weaken, to overthrow imperialism, and not to strengthen and preserve it. Cases occur when the national movements in certain oppressed countries came into conflict with the interests of the development of the proletarian movement. In such cases support is, of course, entirely out of the question. The question of the rights of nations is not an isolated, self-sufficient question; it is a part of the general problem of the proletarian revolution, subordinate to the whole, and must be considered from the point of view of the whole. In the forties of the last century [[Marx]] supported the national movement of the [[Poland|Poles]] and [[Hungary|Hungarians]] and was opposed to the national movement of the [[Czechia|Czechs]] and the South Slavs. Why? Because the Czechs and the South Slavs were then "reactionary peoples," "[[Russian Empire (1721–1917)|Russian]] outposts" in Europe, outposts of [[absolutism]]; whereas the Poles and the Hungarians were "revolutionary peoples," fighting against absolutism.|[[Joseph Stalin]]|[https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch06.htm The Foundations of Leninism: The National Question]|1924}}<br />
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==See also==<br />
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*[[National Bolshevism]]<br />
*[[Welfare Chauvinism]]<br />
*[[Strasserism]]<br />
*[[Fascism]]<br />
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==References==<br />
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[[Category:Far-right groups in the United States]]<br />
[[Category:Reactionaries]]<br />
[[Category:Right-wing ideologies]]</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=File:Example_of_how_to_set_an_alt_tag_on_ProleWiki_using_visual_editor.png&diff=64241File:Example of how to set an alt tag on ProleWiki using visual editor.png2024-03-16T13:22:26Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
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<div>example of how to set an alt tag on ProleWiki using visual editor</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=File:Example_of_embed_result_with_picture_on_Discord.png&diff=64240File:Example of embed result with picture on Discord.png2024-03-16T13:11:43Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
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<div>example of embed result with picture on Discord</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=File:Search_engine_results_and_meta_tags.png&diff=64238File:Search engine results and meta tags.png2024-03-16T13:01:36Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
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<div>search engine results and meta tags</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=File:Search_result_for_%22yellow_parenti%22_highlighting_ProleWiki_specifically.png&diff=64237File:Search result for "yellow parenti" highlighting ProleWiki specifically.png2024-03-16T12:55:44Z<p>CriticalResist: </p>
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<div>google search results for keyword "yellow parenti"</div>CriticalResisthttps://en.prolewiki.org/index.php?title=Socialism_Betrayed:_Behind_the_Collapse_of_the_Soviet_Union_(2004)&diff=64222Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union (2004)2024-03-16T10:50:29Z<p>CriticalResist: removed italics in display title</p>
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<div>{{Infobox work|title=Socialism betrayed: behind the collapse of the Soviet Union|type=Book|written by=Roger Keeran & Thomas Kenny|published=2004}}<br />
'''''Socialism betrayed: behind the collapse of the Soviet Union''''' is a 2004 book by historians Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny which investigates the factors which determined the [[Overthrow of the Soviet Union|overthrow]] of the [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics]]. Both authors are members of the [[Communist Party of the United States of America]].<br />
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Members of the [[Communist Party of Greece]] (KKE) invited the authors to attend to an international conference in Athens on December 2007 to discuss the contents of the book. The book has been translated to Bulgarian, Russian, Persian, Greek, Portuguese and French.<ref>{{Citation|year=2004|title=Socialism betrayed: behind the collapse of the Soviet Union|chapter=Preface to the second edition|quote=Since 2004, Socialism Betrayed has been translated into several languages. [...] Irina Malenko and Blagovesta Doncheva, have been great friends and enthusiastic and tireless advocates of the book, and their efforts were primarily responsible for the book’s publication in Bulgarian and Russian. [...] The Persian edition of the book was due to Mohammad Mehryar and Feridon Darafshi, who took the book from the U.S. to Iran and introduced it to one of the heroes of the struggle for Iranian freedom, Mohammad Ali Amooii (sometimes spelled Amoui), who liked the book well enough to translate it himself. [...] In Greece, part of the book appeared in KOMEP, the journal of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) edited by Eleni Bellou. She and her colleagues Kyrillos Papastavrou, Vasilis Opsimou, Babis Angourakis and Nikos Seratakis arranged for the authors to attend in December 2007 an international conference in Athens on the causes of the Soviet demise. This conference acquainted others with the book, including Francisco Melo, editor of Vertices. He and his colleagues, including Maria Antunes, engineered the translation and publication of the book in Portugal, where under the title, O Socialismo Traido, the book has gone through two printings. Aytek Alpan initiated the publication of the book in Turkey. Henri Alleg and Emmanuel Tang played a similar role in France, and through their initiative the book will be published by Editions Delga headed by Aymeric Monville. In expressing our thanks, we would point out that the considerable effort on the part of all of these people arose not from material gain but entirely from their belief that the book had value and deserved a wide readership.|publisher=International Publishers|isbn=9780717807376|lg=http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=3043D96567CEAB152A0992313BCF82B9}}</ref> <br />
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== References ==<br />
<references /></div>CriticalResist