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Philosophy is No Mystery: Peasants Put Their Study to Work
Chinese Communist propoganda pamphlet urging ordinary people to study and use philosophy like those of the Chinchein Production Brigade, a people's commune.
- GenresChina
74 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1972
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 30, 2022
A very good, elucidating text on how questions of philosophy were handled at the base level in rural China. Useful as a reminder that philosophy at its best is a weapon in the hands of the masses.
August 8, 2023
At first, I didn't understand much because I'm not well versed in any of their MLM theory. But, as I read on, their problems and relationships and solutions with one another became more clear, every subchapter, and how they relate it back to the words of Mao — this, I find remarkable, as they see him as their prophet where every single one of his words must be infallibly true.
Highlighting the decisions they took and how they got there, this serves as a learning experience of how one lived in the commune and how it changed from the early to late 60s.
mild-passing notes:
1.“Liberate philosophy from the confines of the philosophers' lecture rooms and textbooks, and turn it into a sharp weapon in the hands of the masses.” — Chairman Mao
2.By 1963, there was great over-all improvement to livelihoods:
1.“the average grain yield of the [Chinchien Production B]rigade[, one of the people's communes in China's Chekiang Province,] had increased from 300 jin (1/2 kilogram) per mu [666⅔m²] in the early years after liberation to 813 jin.”
■nota bene: there were “temporary difficulties” from 1960 to 1962, slightly attributing it to an “evil” “sān zì yī bāo” (三自一包) — i.e. “the extension of the free market, extension of private plots, increase of small enterprise with sole responsibility for their own profits or losses, and the fixing of output quotas on the individual households” — which is contrary to Wikipedia's portrayal that this 'reform' alleviated famine.
2.“number of commune members built new houses”
3.“collective economy throve”
4.“Average grain yield per mu surpassed the targets set in the National Program for Agricultural Development, and the next year [1964] it jumped to 824 jin.”
5.In 1965, “After the brigade had [made the fertilizer sufficient, improved the seeds, expanded the double-crop rice average, improved the irrigation work, etc.] grain yield jumped to 914 jin per mu.”
3.Contrary to Wikipedia's claim that the elimination of pests caused famine via lack of crops — an old production leader said that when “they had insect pests in 1964, the other production teams suffered little loss because they worked hard to eliminate the pests”
4.Winter of 1967, during that drought year, grain yield per mu came to 994 jin, solely to hard labour.
5.“The door of the court is wide open, but not to those of the who have no money though they are in the right”
6.“According to proletarian policy a person with a counter-revolutionary history must be given a way out in order to better supervise and reform him.”
7.“Let a day pass without repudiation and you won't see through capitalism; let two days pass and you'll find yourself standing on the wrong side; go three days without criticizing what's wrong and you'll be a prisoner of revisionism.” — Chiang Chien-wei
Highlighting the decisions they took and how they got there, this serves as a learning experience of how one lived in the commune and how it changed from the early to late 60s.
mild-passing notes:
1.“Liberate philosophy from the confines of the philosophers' lecture rooms and textbooks, and turn it into a sharp weapon in the hands of the masses.” — Chairman Mao
2.By 1963, there was great over-all improvement to livelihoods:
1.“the average grain yield of the [Chinchien Production B]rigade[, one of the people's communes in China's Chekiang Province,] had increased from 300 jin (1/2 kilogram) per mu [666⅔m²] in the early years after liberation to 813 jin.”
■nota bene: there were “temporary difficulties” from 1960 to 1962, slightly attributing it to an “evil” “sān zì yī bāo” (三自一包) — i.e. “the extension of the free market, extension of private plots, increase of small enterprise with sole responsibility for their own profits or losses, and the fixing of output quotas on the individual households” — which is contrary to Wikipedia's portrayal that this 'reform' alleviated famine.
2.“number of commune members built new houses”
3.“collective economy throve”
4.“Average grain yield per mu surpassed the targets set in the National Program for Agricultural Development, and the next year [1964] it jumped to 824 jin.”
5.In 1965, “After the brigade had [made the fertilizer sufficient, improved the seeds, expanded the double-crop rice average, improved the irrigation work, etc.] grain yield jumped to 914 jin per mu.”
3.Contrary to Wikipedia's claim that the elimination of pests caused famine via lack of crops — an old production leader said that when “they had insect pests in 1964, the other production teams suffered little loss because they worked hard to eliminate the pests”
4.Winter of 1967, during that drought year, grain yield per mu came to 994 jin, solely to hard labour.
5.“The door of the court is wide open, but not to those of the who have no money though they are in the right”
6.“According to proletarian policy a person with a counter-revolutionary history must be given a way out in order to better supervise and reform him.”
7.“Let a day pass without repudiation and you won't see through capitalism; let two days pass and you'll find yourself standing on the wrong side; go three days without criticizing what's wrong and you'll be a prisoner of revisionism.” — Chiang Chien-wei
January 4, 2026
How to put theory into practice? This work is about how communes applied Mao's teaching to increase the production, mould the politics, ideology, organisation and economy, and how the message was taken to masses. Will serve as a useful guide to understand how a philosophical ideology can be taken to the masses, and work it out in the praxis of problem, perosnal experience and theory. I highly recommend this to everyone interested in understanding the propoagation of an ideology to read this book.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews