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NEWS & LETTERS,
January-February 2002
Wang Ruoshui, Marxist-Humanist
The passing of Chinese
philosopher and Marxist Humanist Wang Ruoshui on Jan. 10 is a sad event for all
those aspiring for a human alternative to capitalism. One of the most creative
and innovative thinkers of modern China, Wang was an untiring advocate of social
justice, democracy, and human dignity. His legacy will far outlast the
platitudes of those who look down upon his "idealism" in the name of
finding comfort with the status quo. Wang, born in 1926, was a
student of philosophy at Beijing University from 1946 to 1948, but interrupted
his studies to go to the liberated zones as an active supporter of the communist
movement. Quickly recognized as one of its most promising young intellects, he
became editor of the theory department of People's Daily shortly after the
Communists took power in 1949. Even in the 1950s and early
1960s, when Wang largely held to the party line, he displayed an independence of
mind that could not be confined within the framework of "orthodox"
Marxism. He became famous in 1963 for his essay "The Philosophy of the
Table," which argued against the notion that ideas simply reflect
pre-existing realities. Just as the carpenter must first have the idea of the
table in his mind before creating it, so too, he argued, creating a new society
requires not only material conditions but also the idea of socialism as a living
theory. The essay was praised by no one
less than Mao, and Wang rose in the party hierarchy. But this did not compromise
his decency of character or independence of mind. Wang was later ordered to
write an attack on humanism, and as part of this he was given access to a number
of banned works by Western Marxists. After reading them (especially Erich
Fromm's SOCIALIST HUMANISM) he decided that the humanist interpretation of Marx
was correct. This is also how he first encountered the work of Raya Dunayevskaya.
Wang was one of the first party
intellectuals to openly attack Mao's cult of personality, at a 1979 conference
of the Communist Party. But it was his vigorous defense of humanism and his
contention that alienation existed in "socialist" China that earned
him his name as a pioneering figure in the effort to break free from party
orthodoxy. In a public debate in the early
1980s, Wang argued (in "Discussing the Problem of Alienation"):
"Socialism is supposed to abolish alienation, but has it done so in fact,
or does alienation [in China] still exist? I think we should admit that practice
has proven that alienation still exists. Not only is there intellectual
alienation, there is also political and even economic alienation." He did
not shy away from denouncing the fetish of the party as an expression of how
something created by the masses becomes alienated from them and turns into an
agent of their oppression. In 1983 he also wrote, "A
specter is haunting the Chinese intellectual world—the specter of
humanism." In response to those who condemned humanism as
"non-Marxist," he wrote in "A Defense of Humanism": "'Humanism is bourgeois
ideology'—if this statement means that humanism has been a bourgeois ideology,
this is an objective historical fact and is indisputable; if it means that
humanism can only be bourgeois ideology, it deserves a question mark. These two
senses are not to be muddled, and the second sense should not be inferred from
the first. "Materialism, too, has
been the ideology of the bourgeoisie (and even of slave-owning and feudal
classes), but this did not prevent it from becoming the world-view of the
proletariat. Indeed, Marxist materialism and the old materialism were as
different as heaven and earth. In exactly the same way that the materialism we
advocate is Marxist and no other, the humanism we advocate is Marxist (or
socialist, or revolutionary). In the present period we need socialist
humanism." The Communists responded by
dismissing him from his position with PEOPLE'S DAILY in 1983 and expelling him
from the party in 1987. Unlike many other ex-Party intellectuals, however, he
never renounced his adherence to Marxism. Raya Dunayevskaya closely
followed Wang's debates on alienation and humanism in the 1980s and often spoke
of her desire to meet him. That proved impossible; she died in 1987. Wang finally met U.S.
Marxist-Humanists while on a visit here in 1993-94. He was glad to learn of
Raya's interest in his work and fascinated by how many similar philosophic
concepts they had independently developed. I will never forget his excitement
when I showed him Dunayevskaya's copy of Lenin's PHILOSOPHIC NOTEBOOKS on Hegel,
which was heavily annotated with her marginalia. He looked at her critique of
Lenin's comment that Hegel's "Absolute Idea = Objective Truth," and
proclaimed, "That is exactly what I've been trying to say. Lenin only got
as far as objectivity, but not the unity of subjectivity and objectivity!" As he wrote in
"Epistemology Must Not Lose Sight of Man": "The unity of subject
and object refers not only to the correspondence of knowledge and objectivity
but also to man realizing his objective through the practice of reconstructing
objectivity." After returning to China, Wang
was largely restricted from issuing public statements. But his commitment to
Marxist Humanism did not wane. In 1999 he wrote the Preface to the Chinese
edition of Dunayevskaya's MARXISM AND FREEDOM. The obituary in THE NEW YORK
TIMES found it surprising that Wang fervently embraced "principles like
free speech, human rights and the rule of law" while "remaining a
committed Marxist to his death." But for him there was no contradiction. To
him Marx's humanism was the most revolutionary as well as most open of
philosophies, the most transformative as well as the most democratic. As he wrote in "Marxism
and Intellectual Emancipation": "Today there are some of the young who
go into a frenzy of adulation of Western capitalism, treating bourgeois culture
as a fashion to be imitated: this is superstition, not intellectual
emancipation. Marxism is not something that confines the intellect, but
something that emancipates it." We are honored to have known
Wang Ruoshui and are determined to see to it that his vision of a humanist
Marxism takes on new life in the 21st century. —Peter Hudis |
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