IN DEFENCE OF SERIOU5 POLEMICS 63 by critical analysis can be particularly harmful for the development of Marxist theory. We feel that SS is not unaware of this. Yet why does it abjure it in practice? Is it unrelated to the encompassing faith in the politics of parliamentarism among Marxists? While we would like to believe this, there are disturbing pointers to the contrary: 1) strident opposition to the study of historical conjunctures which would bring to the fore the question of class struggle and internal class contradictions; 2) the pre-eminence accorded to the external contradiction between post-colonial states and imperialism; 3) the substitution of the particular by the general in social analysis. The criticism of the'New Left', Mao and Indian Marxist-Leninists, we hope, is not part of an overall strategy of legitimising opportunist politics with radical rhetoric. PRANAB KANTI BASU* ANJAN GHOSH** EDITOR'S NOTE: The authors are wholly mistaken in believing that in the phrase "New Left and other similar critics of Lenin" used in the editorial note of Social Scientist (No. 107, April 1982), the words "other similar critics" referred to Mao Zedong. Whatever one may think of Mao Zedong's writings or his interpretation of Lenin, he cannot be called a "critic" of Lenin without doing serious violence to the English language. The editorial note was quite explicit in identifying the positions taken by all these critics, and none of those positions can be attributed to Mao; it also explicitly stated in what particular way EMS Namboodiripad's review article joined issue with these critics. From the fact that the review article also talked of Mao, to infer that the word "other similar critics" referred to Mao is entirely illegitimate. Of course, Mao's writings need to be evaluated and assessed, but even a cursory reading of the editorial note should have made it abundantly clear that no opinion on Mao was being expressed therein. Incidentally, the word "anti-Leninist" does not occur once in the editorial note; so the authors are guilty of misquoting from the editorial note in the fourth paragraph of their paper. 1 cf. Louis Althusser: "On the Materialist Dialectic", 'in his For Marx, Penguin, 1969; Maurice Godelier: Rationality and Irrationality in Economics (particularly the section on "The Fundamental Difference between Hegel's Dialectics and Marx's"), New Left Books, 1972. 2 New Left Review-23, 1964. 3 The Socialist Register, 1965. 4 New Left Review-35, 1966. 5 New Left Review-50, 1968. 6 Perry Ander son. Arguments within English Marxism, New Left Books, 1980, p 194. ^Lecturer in Economics, Asutosh College, Calcutta. ^Research Fellow in Sociology, I I M, Calcutta.