YAN’AN PERIOD (Old style: YENAN PERIOD)
The period in the Chinese Revolution from 1937 to 1947 when Yan’an, a city in Shaanxi province,
was the center of the Communist movement and headquarters of the Party and the people’s
government it led in large parts of rural China.
In addition, there was a distinctive style of
leadership of the masses (based on the mass line), and a more
modest and down-to-earth way of living by the CCP leadership who were closer to the life of the
people during this period. This was later called by Mao the “Yan’an Way”, and he and his closest
revolutionary followers always looked back on this period with fondness and seriously attempted
to recreate the Yan’an Way in all of China during the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution, unfortunately with only partial and short-term success.
YANG CHU (c. 395-335 BCE)
Early Chinese naive materialist philosopher, who severely
criticized religious views and the belief in immortality in particular. He urged people to enjoy
their lives and not worry about what will happen after death. He took a rather fatalistic view
about nature and society. In ethics he emphasized that people should work toward the greatest
satisfaction of their needs and wishes, but focused more on individual satisfaction than the
satisfaction of collective interests. However, his individualism was in reaction to the
reactionary Confucianism of his time which led to the differing
social gradation of people.
YOUNG HEGELIANS (or LEFT HEGELIANS)
“An idealist trend in German philosophy current in the thirties and forties of the nineteenth century; the Young Hegelians tried to deduce radical arguments from Hegel’s philosophy to prove the necessity for bourgeois reform of Germany. The leaders of the school were Strauss, the Bauer brothers, [Max] Stirner and some others; for a time they were joined by Feuerbach and also by Marx and Engels in their youth; Marx and Engels broke with the Young Hegelians and criticized the idealist, petty-bourgeois essence of the trend in The Holy Family (1844) and German Ideology (1845-46).” —Note 2 in Lenin, Selected Works (Moscow: 1967).
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