毛泽东选集/反对党八股

# I now want to discuss the ways subjectivism and sectarianism use stereotyped Party writing (or the Party "eight-legged essay") as their instrument of propaganda or form of expression.

# We are fighting against subjectivism and sectarianism, but they will still have a hiding-place to lurk in if at the same time we do not get rid of stereotyped Party writing.

# If we destroy that too, we shall "checkmate" subjectivism and sectarianism and make both these monsters show themselves in their true colours, and then we shall easily be able to annihilate them, like "rats running across the street with everyone yelling: Kill them!

# If he passes them on to someone else, the number of readers is doubled, and already no small harm is done.

# If he has them posted up, mimeographed, printed in newspapers or published in book form, then the problem becomes indeed a big one, for they can influence many people.

#§Stereotyped Party writing is, moreover, one brand of the "foreign stereotype",

# Why then do we call it the Party "eight-legged essay"?

#§Stereotyped Party writing has a long history in our Party; particularly during the Agrarian Revolution, it sometimes became quite rampant.

#§Viewed historically, stereotyped Party writing is a reaction to the May 4th Movement.

#§During the May 4th Movement, modern-minded people opposed the use of the classical Chinese language and advocated vernacular Chinese, opposed the traditional dogmas and advocated science and democracy, all of which was quite right.

# The movement then was vigorous and lively, progressive and revolutionary.

# In those days the ruling classes indoctrinated students with Confucian teachings and compelled the people to venerate all the trappings of Confucianism as religious dogma, and all writers used the classical language.

# In short, what was written and taught by the ruling classes and their hangers-on was in the nature of stereotyped writing and dogma, both in content and in form.

# That was the old stereotype and the old dogma.

# A tremendous achievement of the May 4th Movement was its public exposure of the ugliness of the old stereotype and the old dogma and its call to the people to rise against them.

# Another great and related achievement was its fight against imperialism, but the struggle against the old stereotype and the old dogma remains one of the great achievements of the May 4th Movement.

# Running counter to Marxism, certain people in our Party developed the foreign stereotype and dogma into subjectivism, sectarianism and stereotyped Party writing.

# These are the new stereotype and the new dogma.

# They have become so deeply ingrained in the minds of many comrades that today we still have a very strenuous job of remoulding to do.

# Thus we see that the lively, vigorous, progressive and revolutionary movement of the May 4th period which fought the old feudal stereotyped writing and dogma was later turned by some people into its very opposite, giving rise to the new stereotyped writing and dogma.

# The latter are not lively and vigorous but dead and stiff, not progressive but retrogressive, not revolutionary but obstacles to revolution.

# That is to say, the foreign stereotyped writing, or stereotyped Party writing, is a reaction to the original nature of the May 4th Movement.

# The May 4th Movement, however, had its own weaknesses.

# Many of the leaders lacked the critical spirit of Marxism, and the method they used was generally that of the bourgeoisie, that is, the formalist method.