To give the necessary affirmation to the historical role played by the Legalists and to study and analyze the Legalists' writings from the Marxist point of view is a major task on the ideological front called for by the deepening of the Campaign to Criticize Lin Piao and Confucius. Han Fei was an outstanding representative of the Legalists of the late Warring States period. He summed up the experience, both positive and negative, of the newly emerging landlord class in the (...) process of instituting reform, and he criticized the reactionary Confucianism. He thus fully and theoretically formed a comprehensive system of Legalist thought which served as a direct theoretical preparation for the establishment of a unified feudal state under a centralized authority. The "Wu Tu" is representative of the more than one hundred thousand words of Han Fei's writings. This important political essay made a revolutionary criticism of the reactionary ideology hindering the progress of the newly emerging landlord class and outlined a theoretical program by which the landlord class could exercise an all-round dictatorship over the slave-owning class. Acquiring a clear understanding about this will help us see further through the ultra-Right essence of Lin Piao's practice of honoring Confucius and opposing Legalism. (shrink)

Increasingly skillful forgery of Marxism and increasingly skillful disguise of various antimaterialist theories as Marxism are the characteristics of modern revisionism in political economy, tactics, and general philosophy ." In this remark, Lenin unmistakably pointed out the old tricks of the various revisionists who frenziedly attacked Marxism. In philosophy, veteran revisionists such as Bernstein and his ilk who followed on the tail of bourgeois professors of philosophy called for "return to Kant," integration of Marxism with Kantianism, and replenishment of Marxism (...) with Kantianism. Russian revisionists such as Bogdanov and his ilk advocated integration of Marxism with Machism and of socialism with religion and replenishment of Marxism with Machism. In short, they disguised various idealist theories as Marxist philosophy and used these theories to "replenish" or supersede Marxist philosophy while at the same time saying that this was the development of Marxist philosophy. (shrink)

The book entitled the Huang Ti nei ching [Canonical Works of Huang Ti] has two sections - the "Su Wen" section and the "Ling Shu" section - and each section contains eighty-one articles. It was written by several authors in different historical periods. According to historical records and scholars' studies of the content and context of the book, we can roughly say that it was written in the period between the late years of the Warring States era and the early (...) years of the Eastern Han dynasty. Seven articles in the "Su Wen" section were materials from an "older version" and were merged into the book by Wang Fing in the Tang dynasty. They were probably written by scholars in the Eastern Han period or a little later. The two articles on acupuncture and pathology have been proved forgeries made in the Tang-Sung period. They should not have been included in the book because they contain more idealist dregs than do the other articles. (shrink)