However, the point that emerges from our brief comparison of the content of these three Soviet philosophical texts is the similarity of the material presented. Expositions of the fundamental laws and basic categories of dialectical materialism and critiques of formal logic appear in each of these texts. Almost identical expositions and critiques appear in Li Da’s Shehuixue dagang (Elements of Sociology), which Li modelled on Shirokov and Aizenberg’s A Course on Dialectical Materialism, and also in Ai Siqi’s Sixiang fangfalun (Methodology of thought) and Dazhong zhexue (Philosophy for the masses). These three texts by Chinese Marxist philosophers were also almost certainly employed by Mao in the preparation of his philosophical essays of 1937.[1-121] While it may be possible, therefore, to pinpoint passages in these texts which Mao inserted into his own writings on dialectical materialism, the importance of this exercise is overshadowed by the similarity of the content and style of language of all the sources employed, even when these were written by different authors. It is clear from a comparison of their writings that originality was not the issue, but the elaboration of the basic concepts and categories of dialectical materialism within the strict guidelines imposed by orthodoxy.
Let us pursue this issue of plagiarism a little further and explore how this might affect interpretation of Mao’s philosophical writings of 1937. The first point to be made is that the concept of plagiarism in the English language implies not only the borrowing of textual material from a source written by another, it also suggests intent to deceive the reader into believing that the borrowed material is one’s own. There can be no denying that the Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism do indeed use a significant amount of material lifted wholesale from Chinese translations of the Soviet philosophical texts previously mentioned. In this sense there can be no doubt that an act of plagiarism took place. But did Mao consciously intend an act of deception, one in which his readers would be deceived into accepting the material from Soviet philosophical texts as his own? There are a number of considerations which suggest against such an interpretation. First, in the classical Chinese tradition, it was not at all common for an author to attribute his sources. The educated person was expected to be able to identify the text from which the saying or quote had been extracted. This practice undoubtedly extended into early Marxist writings in China, and it is one of the frustrations of working with such documents that sources of quotes or precis of another author’s views are not provided. It was a problem I encountered in the translation and annotation of not only the Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism, but also the pre-Liberation text of On Contradiction. The sources of quotes had to be tracked down by sifting through texts by Engels, Lenin, and other authors from which the quotes may have been taken; but in these cases, no intention to deceive was ever suspected. This failure to identify the source of quotes or information is certainly not acceptable in the Western academic tradition as it has developed, but the judgement reserved for a Western academic writer who indulged in such a practice may not be entirely appropriate to a Chinese author, even as late as the 1930s, who did so. My suggestion here is that a condemnation of Mao for plagiarism in the second sense outlined above may rest on something of a cultural misunderstanding, and a failure to appreciate different cultural norms of academic propriety.
Second, the point needs to be emphasised that the Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism were just that – lecture notes. The words “lecture notes” (jiangshou tigang) are clearly included in the title, and would warn the reader that the content of the document did not necessarily represent an original or highly polished contribution to the realm of intellectual inquiry of dialectical materialism. One also must recall the context within which these Lecture Notes were written. Mao was not, like Kant, involved in a lengthy period of isolated philosophical rumination. Rather, Mao was engaged in a protracted process of dialogue with colleagues and philosophers who were close to hand in the far from private world of Yan’an. A group of Party members with a bent toward philosophy developed around Mao, and Mao was later to institutionalise this study group (either towards the end of 1937 or the beginning of 1938),[1-122] meeting initially in Mao’s own office on three nights a week. Seven or eight attended (probably including Ai Siqi, Zhou Yang, He Sijing, Ren Beigou, Pei Yuan, and Chen Boda),[1-123] and the subjects discussed were the various laws of dialectical materialism and aspects of dialectical materialism generally. In a context such as this, could Mao hope to get away with a conscious act of plagiarism in which deception was intended, when there were those present (like Ai Siqi) whose familiarity with the philosophy of dialectical materialism was far more advanced than Mao’s, and who in fact had been responsible for translating into Chinese some of the texts which Mao relied on? It seems hardly likely.[1-124]
The Lecture Notes, and particularly the plagiarised sections, may well have constituted the raw material which Mao elaborated in the course of an oral explication of the basic tenets of dialectical materialism. It seems unlikely that the text of the Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism that is available to us in its various versions is the exact transcription of the lecture Mao presented to old cadres of the Red Army.[1-125] Although a record of the lecture was taken by the Political and Propaganda departments, it was subsequently tidied up by them and Mao himself before it was published in the journal of the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University in 1938. It is probable that Mao never regarded the published piece as anything more than a roughly edited version of his own lecture notes, useful as instructional material in a context where teaching materials on philosophy were notoriously scarce, but not pretending to any high degree of originality. His final words of the Lecture Notes display a becoming modesty which suggests as faulty the view that Mao was attempting to pass the document off as anything more than notes designed for a lecture, and hopefully of use to the novice in the subject:
The reason why people feel dialectics is difficult is that there exist no books which explain dialectics well. In China, there are many books on dialectics which, while not incorrect, are explained poorly or none too well, and which frighten people off. Books which are good at explaining dialectics employ everyday language and relate moving experiences. Sooner or later such a book must be put together. This talk of mine is far from adequate since I have myself only just begun to study dialectics. There has been no possibility of writing a useful book on the subject as yet, although perhaps the opportunity may present itself in the future. I wish to do so, but this will be decided by how my study proceeds.[1-126]
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It is also interesting that Ai Siqi’s translation of Mitin’s