“Marxism is scientific truth and fears no criticism…. Carrying out the policy of letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend will not weaken, but strengthen, the leading position of Marxism in the ideological field.”
(Mao Zedong, “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People,” February 27, 1957)
When Mao launched the Hundred Flowers Campaign, China was in the throes of socialist construction, a time that is so far afield from our current context as to call into question the validity of using that movement as an example or model for what we hope to accomplish with the launch of our new journal, Material. However, because the ambition of Material is to foster the same kind of creative, non-sectarian, sharply critical debate and discussion in what we might loosely call and broadly define the “socialist camp,” we find the metaphor to be useful. What was at stake for China then was no less than the future of the socialist state and whether it would stagnate, allow the counter-revolutionary ideas to take hold and propagate a road to capitalism. Our stakes today are different, but no less dire.
We believe that today, what is lacking in the field of political and activist theory is a place for principled discussion and debate. As an impetus towards driving non-antagonistic contradictions among the revolutionary Left into antagonistic ones has come to dominate this current period, the space for thoughtful reflection has become increasingly marginalized, opening the way for attacks from the Right.
The question of the antagonizing of contradictions dividing the Left is of course posed differently in the imperialist centers than in the semi-colonies. Where, in most of Europe and North America, the subjective and objective conditions allow antagonistic oppositions between political currents within the Left opposed to the established order to exist only in germ form, they are often fully developed in the semi-colonies, where certain political groups claiming to adhere to Marxism may openly collaborate with the state in the repression of the revolutionary movement.
Material’s editorial framework is guided by a Maoist perspective, and so, this journal is a platform for contending schools of thought with non-antagonistic contradictions—for revolutionary communist thought: the kind of thinking that agrees capitalism cannot be reformed, that actual revolutionary work is required, and that collaboration with any kind of liberal or conservative thinking is exactly that, collaboration.
Material is a journal by and for revolutionary participants, rather than sequestered academics or intellectuals. However, writing in language with the content and purpose of engaging a readership that covers the span of revolutionary and proletarian intellectuals does not preclude the concept of rigor—for our goal is what we believe to be the most important purpose in any action today: to be of use to those grappling with the tasks of changing the world.
Contact
Editors
- D. Jin – Editor, Foreign Languages Press
- J. Moufawad-Paul – Author and Professor, Department of Philosophy, York University
- M. Van Herzeele – Editor, Foreign Languages Press
Advisory Committee
- Sonny Africa – Executive Director, IBON Foundation
- Amit Bhattacharyya – Journalist, retired Professor, Department of History, Jadavpur University
- Julie de Lima – Chairperson, National Democratic Front of the Philippines Peace Panel
- Murali – Author
- Steven Osuna – Professor, Department of Sociology, University of California–Long Beach
- Larissa Wynn – Proletarian feminist organizer