Introduction

In societies which call themselves ‘socialist’, Marxism is, on the one hand, a method for understanding and changing social life and, on the other, an ideology which rationalises the interests of those in power. In this, it is no different from any other system of thought. It has, however, long been the central concern of political theory to disentangle the ideological from other elements; and Marxism itself offers a fruitful way of doing just that. This point needs to be stressed because of the renewed tendency in China studies to dismiss all Chinese official thought as ideological rationalisation, and the emphasis in current studies to seek some ‘real world’ which dispenses with Marxist categories. Whilst rejecting official Chinese statements as ‘ideological’, ‘the real world’ analysts paradoxically are only too eager to scan such statements for elements which reinforce their non-Marxist view of the world.