In the first, Mao’s philosophical thought is regarded as being overwhelmingly of Marxist origin.[1-137] From this perspective, Mao is considered to be above all a Marxist, his thought emerging in an almost natural progression from the development of the Marxist intellectual tradition. The structure of his thought, its concepts and categories, derived from Marxism, and not from the Chinese classics. The reason for the rejection of Chinese traditional philosophy as a source of influence runs along class lines.
This philosophy, the argument runs, was produced within a class society dominated by a feudal landlord class. According to basic Marxist tenets, such a philosophy was a reflection at a superstructural level of the economic interests of this class; it is thus inevitably coloured by a class characteristic, and it is therefore not possible to employ eclectically elements of it without at the same time absorbing its negative and deleterious class values. As a Marxist, Mao was thus constrained to reject the Chinese intellectual tradition, emerging as it did from and serving the interests of a largely stagnant feudal mode of production. This viewpoint appears to be very much in the minority, particularly as its rejection of traditional Chinese philosophy tends to undermine the claim that Chinese Marxism developed its own national form and characteristics while abiding by the universal principles of Marxism. A rejection in toto of the Chinese tradition is perceived by other scholars as leaving Chinese Marxism in something of a cultural no-man’s-land, with no sense of historical continuity or cultural adaptation to provide it a form recognisable by and acceptable to the Chinese people.
The second perspective regards Mao’s philosophical thought to be the product of both the Marxist and Chinese intellectual traditions, plus the influence of Soviet and Chinese texts on philosophy of the 1930s. The distinguishing characteristic of this perspective is that it highlights the immediate influence of texts on philosophy from the Soviet Union and China.
The third and dominant perspective does not distinguish such philosophical texts from the Marxist tradition generally, and avers that the origins of Mao’s philosophical thought are to be found in Marxist philosophy and Chinese traditional philosophy. In terms of the weighting of influence between these two intellectual traditions, the emphasis is placed overwhelmingly on Marxism. Consequently, Mao was first and foremost a Marxist; his methodology, standpoint, and world view were constituted of dialectical and historical materialism, and in this respect Mao owed a considerable intellectual debt to the writings of the 1930s which elaborated the philosophical laws and categories of Marxism in a concise and accessible form. While Mao’s philosophical thought drew largely on the Marxist tradition, he was also influenced by modes of dialectical thought which had been present in Chinese philosophy from very early times. Mao did not, however, draw on this tradition of thought in an undiscerning way, but critically inherited and continued (pipan jicheng) those positive aspects which were compatible with Marxism and which served to provide Marxism with a national form which was Chinese.[1-138]
The influence of Chinese philosophy and Mao’s critical continuation of it, this perspective suggests, can be discerned in five areas. First, Mao directly utilised the correct principles and propositions of ancient Chinese dialectics. In particular, the concepts of yin and yang which appeared in the Yi Jing and were subsequently elaborated in the Dao De Jing created an intellectual predisposition to view the world as constituted of opposites – life and death, large and small, strength and weakness, difficulty and facility, above and below – which was further elaborated by philosophers such as Han Fei Zi. This dialectical approach within traditional Chinese philosophy was to facilitate Mao’s development of the Marxist theory of contradictions, with its emphasis on the unity of opposites. Nevertheless, early Chinese dialectics was not based on a scientific foundation, was simplistic, and often mixed together materialism and idealism, and dialectics and metaphysics; it could not, therefore, be incorporated into modern Chinese Marxism without undergoing a process of critical scrutiny and selection, in which elements incompatible with dialectical materialism were sifted out and rejected.
Second, Mao took propositions from traditional Chinese philosophy and transformed or developed them to provide them with a new significance. For example, xiangfan-xiangcheng (things that are in opposition are also complementary) did not in the Han Shu extend the concept of the unity of opposites universally. Mao, however, was to take this idea and employ it in On Contradiction to illustrate the message that there is both struggle and identity between the two opposing aspects of a contradiction, and that this was a universally occurring phenomenon.[1-139] A further example is Mao’s employment of Lao Zi’s maxim that things that are in opposition undergo a process of mutual transformation, each changing into its opposite; here again, Mao could absorb this dialectical conception while excluding its metaphysical and idealist aspects, basing it on a materialist conception of the universe.
Third, Mao used propositions or categories from traditional dialectics which were readily understandable and lively in form to express the principles of dialectical materialism. A particular example is the concept of “one divides into two” (yi fen wei er), which appears in a large number of traditional sources. While being incorporated within an idealist and mystical system, it contained the dialectical conception of the two aspects of a contradiction and was expressed in a form which could be readily appreciated by all.
Fourth, Mao employed examples of dialectics which appear in classical Chinese stories and proverbs. Of particular importance here were the Shui Hu Zhuan (Water Margin), Xi You Ji (Journey to the West), San Guo Yan Yi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), amongst others. These sources were well known amongst the masses of the people, and the use of material from them to illustrate his expositions of dialectical materialism would have the effect of making a rather abstruse and unfamiliar subject more accessible to ordinary Chinese people.
Fifth, Mao drew on the oral tradition of the Chinese people, a tradition replete with sayings with a dialectical flavour. Examples are “the east wind prevails over the west wind”, and “failure is the mother of success”.
It was the employment and incorporation of these aspects of traditional Chinese philosophy and culture which provided Mao’s philosophical thought and his Marxism generally with a distinctly Chinese flavour. While this perspective on the origins of Mao’s philosophical thought emphasises the influence of Chinese traditional concepts and categories on Mao’s thought, it is emphatic in its assertion that this influence was never to become the dominant aspect. His achievement was to draw critically on the dialectical and materialist themes already present in an often undeveloped and confused form within traditional Chinese philosophy. Nevertheless, the basic categories, concepts, and principles which characterised Mao’s philosophical thought were Marxist, and these formed the foundation which provided the standpoint and method from which the Chinese tradition could be evaluated. And of course, the foundation of Mao’s philosophy was dialectical materialism, which he elaborated and developed in a systematic way in his essays of 1937.
1-137
“Dangqian Mao Zedong zhexue sixiang de yanjiu qingkuang” [The current situation of research on Mao Zedong’s philosophical thought], in
1-138
See also Sichuan daxue Mao Zedong zhexue sixiang yanjiu shi (ed.),