Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1997 09:53:02 +0100 (MET)
From: rolf.martens-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Rolf Martens)
Subject: Re: M-G: Re: M-I: Dialectics


Jay wrote, on 22.01:

>On Tue, 21 Jan 1997, Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin-AT-utkux.utcc.utk.edu> wrote:
>
>>As Mao said, "To know the apple, you have to eat the apple, and you 
>>therefore change the apple" (or something like this). 
>
>Folks should know that there is now no longer any excuse to misquote
>the great revolutionary Mao Tse-tung. There are now a bunch of works of Mao's
>in the Mao Tse-tung Archives located on the Marx-Engels Archive webspace.
>
>Put this URL in your hotlists menu;  
http://csf.Colorado.EDU/psn/marx/Other/Mao/ 
>
>A couple of Mao's awesome contributions to be found there are 
>"On Practice" and On "Contradictions."  Austin's distorted quote
>from "On Practice" actually goes:
>
>	"Whoever wants to know a thing has no way of doing so except
>	by coming into contact with it, that is, by living (practising)
>	in its environment ... If you want knowledge, you must take 
>	part in the practice of changing reality.  If you want to know
>	the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it 
>	yourself ... If you want to know the theory and methods of
>	revolution, you must take part in revolution.  All genuine
>	knowledge originates in direct experience."
>
>	From "ON PRACTICE"  (July, 1937)
>	Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, Vol. l, pp 299-300
>
Good stuff!

And speaking of Andrew's "apples", as is known there's a kind of
"apples" which some people have been selling internationally since
1984 and which are known as the "RIM". They're nice and red on the
ouside, completely rotten on the inside. How to apply the philosophy
of Mar, Lenin and Mao Zedong to this phenomenon? To warn all
customers very clearly, to see to it that those apples are thrown
on to the garbage heap of history as soon as possible. I've been
doing this for some years now, and on the Net for a year or so,
but so far, I haven't got much help on that important point by
others who must be able to see the same thing, have I?

This has to do also with the discusion of the historical facts
concerning the class struggle in socialist China, facts which
the "RIM" have been massively distorting. It's a good thing that
you've agreed to such a discussion, Jay, and I'm looking forward
to your reply to my latest in it. (Let's take all the time 
necessary to think the matters over and get them sorted out.)

Rolf M.



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