The influence of Li Da and Ai Siqi
While there exists significant disagreement amongst Mao scholars in contemporary China over the origins of Mao’s philosophical thought, there is apparent consensus on the importance of the writings of Li Da (1890‒1966) and Ai Siqi (1910‒1966) to the development of Chinese Marxism. Both of these prolific philosophers were responsible for the systematization and popularization of the philosophy of dialectical materialism, and are widely regarded as the first of China’s home-grown Marxist philosophers. Ai Siqi, in particular, took it upon himself to present the rather arcane formulations of dialectical materialism in forms accessible to students and interested laypersons, and his writings of the early-to-mid 1930s contributed to the philosophical background against which Mao’s own views on philosophy were to develop. Li Da’s writings on Marxist philosophy date from the early 1920s, and he, more than any other Chinese philosopher, was responsible for making accessible to the early Chinese Communist movement a wealth of sources and commentary. Through their translations of Marxist classics into Chinese, Li Da and Ai Siqi were instrumental in making available the new philosophy, and in the 1930s especially, their translations brought to China information on developments within the philosophical world of the Soviet Union, particularly its emerging orthodoxy.
How important was the influence of these philosophers on the development of Mao’s philosophical thought? In terms of accessibility of Soviet philosophical sources, their translations brought to Mao material which, as we have seen, he employed heavily in the writing of his three philosophical essays. Two of these Soviet sources were translated by them; A Course on Dialectical Materialism was translated by Li Da and Lei Zhongjian; and Outline of New Philosophy was translated by Ai Siqi and Zheng Yili. Mao also thought extremely highly of their own philosophical writing, and it is probable that two of the five main texts used by Mao in 1937 were authored by Li Da and Ai Siqi.[1-148]
Li Da’s Shehuixue dagang (Elements of Sociology) was completed in 1936, and published in May 1937. Immediately on its publication, Li sent Mao a copy. According to the diary Mao kept of his own reading activity (which he began to keep on 1 February 1938), he annotated this text between 17 January and 16 March 1938.[1-149] However, some Chinese Mao scholars now believe it possible that Mao read the text shortly after its publication, which would mean he had access to it during the months of writing his philosophical essays.[1-150] The recollections of Guo Huaruo, in Yan’an from August 1937, suggest that Mao did indeed read it at the time he was preparing lectures on philosophy in 1937,[1-151] and the fact that Mao claimed to have read the book ten times[1-152] (the book contains 430,000 characters) indicates a continuing and deepening familiarity with the work over a lengthy period of time. It is also possible that the annotated copy of Shehuixue dagang which survives is not the one Mao originally received from Li Da immediately on publication, for Mao wrote to Li asking him to send an additional ten copies for the Yan’an Anti-Japanese Military and Political University, and the annotated copy which survives may well be one of these.[1-153]
The contents of Li Da’s Shehuixue dagang would obviously have been of great significance for Mao, attempting as he was to master orthodox Marxist philosophy and to prepare lectures on this subject for delivery at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University.[1-154] The text is divided into five major sections: Materialist dialectics, historical materialism, the economic structure of society, the political structure of society, and social ideology.[1-155] Each section contains subject matter discussed by Mao in his own philosophical essays. For example, the section on materialist dialectics contains a chapter on the laws (faze) of dialectical materialism, in which Li Da not only discusses the three major laws discussed in a previous section of this Introduction, but also the categories of essence and appearance, form and content, chance and necessity, and possibility and reality, to which Mao refers in his Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism. In describing the unity of opposites, Li employs language remarkably similar to that which appears in both On Contradiction and the Lecture Notes. The law of the unity of opposites is the “basic law” of dialectics, it is its kernel; all of the things existing in the world contain contradictions, for without the struggle between contradictions, there would be no movement, development, or life.[1-156] Virtually all areas covered by Mao in his own philosophical essays are covered in like fashion in Li’s volume, and couched in language very similar to that employed by Mao.
Are we then to assume that Li Da’s exposition of the philosophy of dialectical materialism constituted a major influence on Mao’s thought at the time he was writing On Contradiction, On Practice, and the Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism? On the assumption that Mao did indeed have access to Shehuixue dagang in mid-1937 when he was writing these texts, there can be no doubt that the contents of this volume would have been extremely useful as source material. However, it would be wrong to exaggerate this work as an influence in its own right, for it is evident that one of Li Da’s major purposes in writing the text was to systematise and explain the philosophy of dialectical materialism as this was emerging in the Soviet Union following the overthrow of the Deborin school in 1931. As such, Shehuixue dagang, while a massive tome and clearly a work of considerable scholarship, does not project an impression of originality. Li consciously employed the philosophy contained in the Soviet texts of the early to mid-1930s as the basis for his own exposition, and indeed took A Course on Dialectical Materialism (which he had translated) as the model for Shehuixue dagang.[1-157] We know this Soviet text, A Course on Dialectical Materialism, was the one most heavily annotated by Mao in late 1936 and early 1937. It could be suggested, then, that the influence of Li Da’s Shehuixue dagang was thus limited to that of reinforcing the views expressed in this and other Soviet texts on philosophy, and providing in one accessible volume discussion of the whole range of issues canvassed by Mao in his own writings on dialectical materialism. Consequently, Li Da’s writings should not be seen as an influence separate from the influence of Soviet philosophy generally.
1-150
1-154
According to one Chinese source, Mao’s lecturing involved quite a heavy teaching load. From May (perhaps April) 1937, Mao presented lectures to two classes every Tuesday and Thursday mornings. This lasted until August, and Mao gave a total of more than 110 lectures. He was unable to finish his series of lectures due to problems associated with the Anti-Japanese War. See Wu Jun, “Mao Zedong shengping, sixiang yanjiu gaishu” [Comment on research on Mao Zedong’s life and thought], in
1-155
1-157
Li Qiju et al., “Li Da yijiusijiu nian qian lilun huodong ji zhuzuo biannian” [A chronology of Li Da’s theoretical activities and compositions prior to 1949], in