It is worth pausing at this point to make some comparisons with the views of Western Mao scholars on the origins of Mao’s thought. We notice at once that there is considerable overlap. At one pole of a continuum of interpretation, there are those scholars who approach Mao’s thought and philosophy as Marxist.[1-140] From this perspective, Mao’s writings are replete with the categories of Marxism – economic base/ideological superstructure, relations and forces of production, a teleological conception of history based on materialism, class and class struggle, revolution, etc. – and his sources of theoretical inspiration are taken to be those of the Marxist tradition. Scant if any attention is given to the Chinese cultural and philosophical tradition, for these were the product of a class-based society which Mao was determined to destroy and reconstruct on the basis of Marxist conceptions of a communist future. Further along the continuum of interpretation lies the bulk of Western views on the origins of Mao’s thought.
This range of views perceives Mao as the product of two intellectual traditions, the Marxist and Chinese.[1-141] In such interpretations, however, there is considerable difference of opinion over the extent of influence of these traditions; in some, the resultant synthesis is one in which the Chinese aspect is dominant, the Marxist element representing a thin and rather insubstantial gloss; in others, there is something of a balance, the two traditions coexisting in uneasy juxtaposition; and finally, there is the view, similar to the Chinese position elaborated above, that, while Mao did draw on the Chinese intellectual tradition for sources of inspiration, his debt to Marxism was the more important. What links these apparently disparate approaches to the origins of Mao’s thought is the willingness to entertain the view that Mao’s thought was a combination, be it of whatever proportions, of both the Marxist and Chinese traditions.
The significant difference between Western and Chinese perceptions of the origins of Mao’s philosophical thought lies in the fact that there are Western interpretations which do not recognise Marxism as a significant influence.[1-142] From this perspective, the breadth and longevity of China’s philosophical and cultural tradition had an overwhelming influence, not just on the development of Mao’s thought, but on the course of the Chinese Revolution before and after Liberation. In this respect, Mao was no different from other Chinese in the sense that his thought and political responses were dictated by the very fact of his being Chinese. Mao was first and last a Chinese, and the Marxist terminology which entered the vocabulary of his generation was nothing more than a transparent and largely unimportant veneer overlaying Chinese sources of thought and action.
As we have seen, no contemporary Mao scholar in China would entertain this latter notion. The dominant perspective is that Mao was firstly a Marxist, but he was also Chinese, and his particular contribution was the integration of Marxist theory and principles with the concrete conditions of the Chinese Revolution. The basis of Mao’s philosophical thought was dialectical and historical materialism, and it was from this standpoint that he interpreted China’s past and present. Indeed, it is significant that the bulk of books written on Mao’s philosophical thought in contemporary China read like primers on dialectical and historical materialism. A short section within such volumes may be reserved for a discussion of parallels between Mao’s philosophy and traditional Chinese philosophy, but it is evident that this source of influence is regarded as very much less important than the Marxism imbibed by Mao during the 1920s and particularly the 1930s.
It is for this reason, it seems, that Chinese Mao scholars are not overly exercised by the issue of Mao’s plagiarism in his Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism. They point to Mao’s reliance on Soviet sources to indicate why the text has never been openly published as part of Mao’s officially sanctioned oeuvre. It does not, they contend, achieve the purpose of integrating abstract Marxist philosophical principles with the concrete conditions and problems of the Chinese Revolution; neither does Mao “sinify” (a word Chinese Mao specialists are not hesitant to use) Marxist principles through employment of illustrative material from traditional Chinese philosophy. Nevertheless, the philosophy contained in the Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism has never, as far as I am aware, been rejected as incorrect by Chinese philosophers and Mao scholars in post-Mao China. In this regard, it is instructive that this text has been reproduced in a number of neibu collections of study materials for academics and Party theorists, and it is quite widely and openly quoted in recent works on Mao’s philosophy and thought.[1-143] It is obviously regarded as a concise and quite useful introduction to the fundamental themes and categories of dialectical materialism, one put together by the major architect of Chinese Marxism, and thus possessing some legitimacy if not the hallmark of originality.
And, lastly, it is worth noting that there is not agreement amongst Chinese Mao scholars as to the relative influence of the Soviet and Chinese texts on philosophy of the mid-1930s as compared to Mao’s earlier exposure in the 1920s and early 1930s to currents of Marxist thought which were at that time penetrating Chinese intellectual circles. For example, Mao scholars at Wuhan and Sichuan universities object to the notion that Mao was entirely reliant in the writing of his philosophical essays on materials from Soviet sources that became available during the mid-1930s.[1-144] In the first place, they contend, Mao knew well in the 1920s a number of Chinese intellectuals who had already been influenced by and were elaborating dialectical materialist concepts in essays and letters which Mao read. In the second place, a significant number of books by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other Marxists had become available in the 1920s and early 1930s, and Mao had read and studied these. Some examples from a lengthy list include Engels’ Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (often translated into Chinese as On Feuerbach), Dialectics of Nature (extracts), and Anti-Dühring; Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, and Philosophical Notebooks (extracts); Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy, and Capital, Volume One; and Stalin’s On Problems of Leninism. They point to Mao’s interest in the translation of Marxist classics and his personal use of these to broaden and deepen his understanding of dialectical materialism. For instance, Mao took a personal interest in the translation of Anti-Dühring into Chinese, and its translator, Wu Liping, has recorded that Mao did refer to this text in the writing of On Contradiction.[1-145] Similarly, Li Yongtai has pointed to Mao’s study of Capital in the year prior to writing his three essays on philosophy, suggesting that Mao absorbed the dialectical materialist methodology contained therein.[1-146] Moreover, it is possible that Marxist texts on philosophy which Mao had not read in the original reached him via the writings of Ai Siqi and Li Da who had written extensively in the 1920s and early 1930s on problems of Marxist philosophy. The picture which emerges, these contemporary Chinese Mao specialists contend, is a much more complex one than might be assumed if excessive emphasis is placed on the Soviet texts on philosophy of the mid-1930s employed by Mao prior to and during the writing of his three philosophical essays of 1937. The translated works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, and their elaboration by Chinese Marxist philosophers such as Li Da and Ai Siqi “encouraged the spread and transmission of Marxist philosophy in China and helped the development and maturation of Mao Zedong’s philosophical thought; all exerted an important influence and played an important role”.[1-147] According to this view, the immediate influences on Mao’s philosophical thought at the time he wrote his essays on philosophy were the translations of the Soviet texts on philosophy and writings by Li Da and Ai Siqi; but the concepts and viewpoints contained in these sources were employed by Mao to extend an already firmly established foundation of philosophical thought, a foundation created through a decade and a half of interest in and exposure to Marxist philosophy.
1-140
See, for example, Michael Dutton and Paul Healy, “Marxist Theory and Socialist Transition: the construction of an Epistemological relation”, in Bill Brugger (ed.),
1-141
See, for example, Vsevolod Holubnychy, “Mao Tse-tung’s Materialist Dialectics”,
1-142
See Solomon,
1-143
See notes 2, 21, 22, 23 above. See also Sichuan daxue Mao Zedong zhexue sixiang yanjiu shi (ed.),
1-144
Li Yongtai, “Mao Zedong tongzhi dui zhexue de xuexi he changdao” [Comrade Mao Zedong’s initiatives in and study of philosophy],
1-145
Wu Liping, “Mao zhuxi guanxin ‘Fan Dulin Lun’ de fanyi” [Chairman Mao’s interest in the Translation of “Anti-Dühring”], in
1-146
Li Yongtai, “Mao Zedong tongzhi dui zhexue de xuexi he changdao”, pp. 12 ff. See also Li Ji, “Mao Zedong you gemingjia zhuanbian wei gemingjia jian zhexuejia de biaozhi” [The watershed between Mao as revolutionary and Mao as revolutionary and philosopher],