1. Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism: The translation which appears below is of a composite text drawn from the two versions to be found in the Mao Zedong Ji and its supplements. The construction of a composite text was found to be necessary as the text to be found in the Mao Zedong ji contained passages which were either obscure or marred by apparent typographical errors which in some instances altered the meaning of the text.[1-170] The version of this document to be found in the supplements to Mao Zedong ji also suffers from a number of similar problems (problems in both texts, I hasten to add, in the original Chinese text and not due to the editorship of Takeuchi Minoru). The translation proceeded through a comparison of the two texts, identifying differences and points of interest, reference to which are contained in annotations appended to the translation. No attempt has been made to indicate in the translation itself those parts of the text which Mao appropriated from the Soviet and Chinese sources discussed in this Introduction. As I have argued in previous sections, Mao drew on a series of texts on philosophy, all extremely alike in terms of style and content matter. It would therefore be a problematic exercise to insist on any one text as the source of Mao’s information or wording. Nevertheless, a table of possible sources has been appended to the notes following this Introduction. The reader wishing to pursue the issue of plagiarism further may use this as a guide.
The version of Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism contained in the supplements to the Mao Zedong ji also contains On Contradiction and On Practice as integral parts of that text. The decision to separate them for purposes of translation may thus be queried, particularly as I have stressed throughout this Introduction that these do, as Schram has argued, belong to “a single intellectual enterprise”. However, the translations of On Contradiction and On Practice have a very different purpose to the translation of the Lecture Notes.
2. On Contradiction: The availability of the pre-Liberation version of On Contradiction (discovered in the late 1970s by Takeuchi Minoru) allows textual comparison with the post-Liberation official version to determine the extent of revision and additions to the earlier text before it was deemed suitable for publication as part of Mao’s Selected Works. This textual comparison has been performed in the translation of the pre-1949 text which appears in this anthology. A major purpose of this translation is to make as explicit as possible the points at which the pre-Liberation and official texts intersect and parallel each other, and where they diverge and differ. This has been achieved by two methods: (a) Points at which this text and the official text exactly parallel each other have been indicated by the use of bold type (for example, the principal contradiction). By this means, it is evident at a glance which sections of the pre-Liberation text have been incorporated into the official text. At such places where the two texts do exactly parallel each other, I have utilized without exception the official English translation.[1-171] This was felt necessary to facilitate comparison of the texts; moreover, the official English translation is, apart from a few minor exceptions, quite satisfactory and little would have been gained by its alteration, (b) Points at which the pre-Liberation text have been revised or added to on republication as the official text have been indicated by annotations appended to the end of the translation. The use of these two methods makes immediately evident the variations and similarities between the two texts.
3. On Practice: The translation of the pre-Liberation version of On Practice included in this volume is of the text contained in the supplements to the Mao Zedong ji. This is the text originally incorporated in Bianzheng weiwulun (Dialectical materialism) and published by Dazhong Shudian (no date of publication, but almost certainly 1946). As with the translation of On Contradiction, the purpose of this translation is to make as explicit as possible points of similarity and difference between the pre-1949 version of On Practice and the official post-Liberation text. Unlike the translation of On Contradiction, however, only sections not included in the official version have been indicated by the use of bold type. This reversal of the strategy used in the translation and annotation of On Contradiction was made necessary by the fact that there are far less differences between the pre- and post-Liberation versions of On Practice than is the case with On Contradiction. Annotations appended to the translation nevertheless disclose almost one hundred minor differences between the texts, a number of them of significant interest for an understanding of Mao’s epistemology. A number of minor differences between the two existing pre-Liberation versions of On Practice have also been noted. The official English translation contained in Mao’s Selected Works has been used as the basis for this translation.[1-172]
4. “Extracts from Ai Siqi’s Philosophy and Life” (September, 1937): This is not a coherent essay as are the three previous texts. The document is made up of a series of extracts taken from and notations on Ai Siqi’s book Philosophy and Life. The extracts and notations in isolation thus have very little significance. The translator of these “Extracts”, Dr John Hanafin, has therefore chosen to translate the extracts parallel to the sections of Ai Siqi’s book from which they were taken. The extracts are thus placed in textual relationship to their original source. Dr Hanafin has employed the edition of Zhexue yu shenghuo (Philosophy and Life) published by Yunnan People’s Publishing House in 1980 (the volume was first published in April 1937), which also employs this device. Ai Siqi’s Philosophy and Life was comprised of a series of essays written in response to problems readers encountered in reading the journal Dushu Shenghuo (Intellectual Life) edited by Ai in Shanghai in the mid-1930s. The essays in the book from which Mao took extracts are those concerned with relativism and absolutism, formal and dialectical logic, and internal and external cause.
Mao’s extracts are shown in the left column and the corresponding section from Zhexue yu shenghuo in the right column. The left column (from a1 to a31) gives the complete content of Mao’s “Extracts”, but the right column (from b1 to b31) only the relevant, corresponding sections of Ai’s essays.
5. Philosophical Annotations and Marginalia: From late-1936 to mid-1937 Mao annotated and wrote marginal comments on two Chinese translations of Soviet texts on philosophy. These were M. Shirokov and A. Aizenberg et al., A Course on Dialectical Materialism (third edition) and M.B. Mitin et al., Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism (Volume I). Limitations of space prevent a complete translation of these annotations and marginalia here, for to make sense of Mao’s often cryptic comments would require reproduction of large sections of the original text which Mao annotated. This is the strategy employed by the editors of Mao Zedong zhexue pizhuji (The Philosophical Annotations of Mao Zedong), a strategy which required 189 pages. I have chosen rather to select those annotations and marginal comments which are of sufficient coherence and significance to stand alone. I have, nevertheless, included the page numbers of the two texts on philosophy on which the annotations appear, as well as the relevant page numbers of Mao Zedong zhexue pizhuji. The interested reader can therefore locate any annotation in its original textual context should the need arise.