Secondly, we will briefly examine the information released recently in China about Mao’s annotations on two of these three Soviet texts.
1. A Course on Dialectical Materialism by M. Shirokov and A. Aizenberg et al., translated into Chinese by Li Da and Lei Zhongjian under the title Bianzhengfa weiwulun jiaocheng. This volume went through a series of editions, and it was the third edition published in June 1935 and the fourth edition published in December 1936 that Mao studied.[1-109] The volume contains 582 pages. The contents of A Course on Dialectical Materialism include inter alia sections on mechanistic materialism, knowledge and practice and the unity of subject and object, stages and causes of movement in the process of cognition, truth, the law of the mutual transformation of quantity into quality, the law of the unity and struggle of opposites as the essence of contemporary dialectics, the significance of the principal aspect of a contradiction, the movement of contradiction from the beginning to the end of a process, the relativity of identity and the absoluteness of struggle within the law of the unity of opposites, on equilibrium, the negation of the negation, essence and appearance, form and content, possibility and reality, chance and necessity, basis and condition, necessity and freedom, dialectical and formal logic, the fundamental laws of formal logic, and the function of experience and practice in knowledge.
According to recent Chinese commentaries on Mao’s annotations and marginalia, it was this text, A Course on Dialectical Materialism, which was most heavily annotated by Mao in the period prior to writing his own three philosophical essays.[1-110] Between November 1936 and April 1937, Mao studied the third edition of this volume, covering its margins and any blank spaces with close to 13,000 characters of annotations and commentary, a selection of which is contained in the translations in this volume. The third chapter of the third edition, entitled “The basic laws of dialectics”, attracted the most extensive commentary by Mao, the longest paragraph of the commentaries extending to almost one thousand characters. According to Mao specialists in China, the “overwhelming proportion of these marginal annotations were devoted to elaboration of Mao’s own dialectical materialist and historical materialist philosophical viewpoint, including development of the ideas in the text and criticism of them”.[1-111] In many places, they continue, Mao made connections between the history of China and other countries, including analysis of the experience and lessons of the Chinese Revolution. They are thus at pains to point out that Mao did not react to the philosophical content of A Course on Dialectical Materialism in a mechanical, uncritical manner; rather he reacted to the text critically, applying its abstract content to the historical situation of the Chinese Revolution.
Of particular interest here is the relationship between the content of this volume and Mao’s On Contradiction and On Practice. In his annotations throughout this volume regarding the particular aspect of a contradiction, Mao developed this concept through its application to the concrete conditions of China. Mao noted that not only does the particular aspect of a contradiction play a determining role, but that under certain conditions, the principal and secondary aspects of a contradiction can undergo mutual transformation (huxiang zhuanhua); “In the situation of antagonism between China and Japan, the Chinese factors are at present changing from a secondary to a principal position; if the national united front can be extended and consolidated, and because of international factors (the Soviet Union, the Japanese masses, other peaceful nations), the superiority of the Japanese aspect will be transformed”.[1-112] Elsewhere in this text, Mao wrote “in each process of the movement of a contradiction, identity is relative, struggle is absolute”.[1-113] Similarly, the fourth edition contains the following annotation on the two processes of cognition: “In the process of cognition, the particular determines the universal; in the process of practice, the universal determines the particular”.[1-114] These few examples suggest the importance of this volume in the preparation of Mao’s On Contradiction and On Practice. We will turn to a more detailed analysis of the relationship between these two essays and Soviet philosophy in a subsequent section.
2. Dialectical and Historical Materialism by M.B. Mitin et al., translated Shen Zhiyuan, and published in China under the title Bianzhengweiwulun yu lishiweiwulun in December 1936. This volume, of 538 pages, contains sections on the two lines in philosophy, mechanistic materialism, the materiality of the world and the form of material existence, matter and thought and the reflection theory of dialectical materialism, truth, the law of the unity of opposites, the law of the mutual transformation of quantity into quality, the law of the negation of the negation, essence and appearance, form and content, chance and necessity, possibility and reality, and formal logic and dialectics.
According to Chinese sources, Mao read and annotated this volume prior to August 1937.[1-115] As with A Course on Dialectical Materialism, this volume has a “direct relationship” with On Contradiction and On Practice, both in terms of context and content.[1-116]
In their identification of Mao’s plagiarism, both Wittfogel and Schram[1-117] have compared sections of Ai Siqi’s translations of Mitin’s 1933 work Dialectical Materialism which appear in a volume entitled Zhexue xuanji published in Shanghai in 1939 with Mao’s Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism. While there can be no doubt that Schram and Wittfogel are correct in identifying Mitin as the author of these passages, it is highly probable that the exact textual source was the volume Dialectical and Historical Materialism under consideration here, and published in December 1936. Some textual comparisons are provided in the notes and in the tables appended to this Introduction.[1-118]
3. Outline of New Philosophy, edited by M.B. Mitin et al., translated by Ai Siqi and Zheng Yili, and published in Chinese as Yin zhexue dagang in June 1936.[1-119] This volume, of 454 pages, contains sections on the historical origins of dialectical materialism, the two tendencies in philosophy, the object of dialectical materialism, matter and motion, space and time, the law of the unity of opposites, the law of the mutual transformation of quantity into quality, the law of the negation of the negation, essence and appearance, basis and condition, form and content, chance and necessity, possiblity and reality, a critique of formal logic, and the process of cognition.
Mao’s personal copy of this volume has not survived, although Chinese Mao scholars believe it very likely that Mao did annotate it in the same manner as the two volumes previously discussed.[1-120] Indeed, it is largely on the basis of the similarity between Outline of New Philosophy and Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism that Schram and Wittfogel identified Mao’s reliance on Soviet sources to an extent tantamount to plagiarism.
1-109
Tian Songnian, “Dui ji ben zhexue shuji de pizhu”, p. 70; however, cf. Ran Changuang’s chapter in Sichuan daxue Mao Zedong zhexue sixiang yanjiu shi (ed.),
1-110
Tian Songnian, “Dui ji ben zhexue shuji de pizhu”, pp. 70‒71; also Shi Zhongquan, “Yanjiu Mao Zedong zhexue sixiang de xin wenxian” [New Documents for the study of Mao Zedong’s philosophical thought],
1-112
Tian Songnian, “Dui ji ben zhexue shuji de pizhu”, pp. 73‒74. See also
1-115
1-117
Wittfogel, “Some Remarks”, esp. p. 276; Schram, “Mao Tse-tung and the Theory of the Permanent Revolution”, pp. 223‒224.
1-118
A few examples of Mao’s direct appropriation of sections of this text appear below:
| Mao Zedong ji bujuan, Vol. V | 188 | 188 | 189 | 189 | 192 | 199 |
| Dialectical and Historical Materialism | 47 | 48 | 50 | 51 | 156‒7 | 158‒9 |