In his Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism, Mao referred to the “negation of the negation” as one of the “three basic principles (faze) of materialist dialectics” and incorporated a quote from Engels to reinforce his position.[1-71] Similarly, the “negation of the negation” figures quite prominently in the pre-Liberation text of On Contradiction. In a section subsequently entirely excised from the official text, Mao analysed and critiqued the three basic laws of formal logic. In doing so, Mao employed the “negation of the negation” as a foil to formal logic’s law of excluded middle:
Correct thought should not exclude the third factor, should not exclude the law of the negation of the negation…. The law of excluded middle in formal logic also supplements its law of identity, which only recognises the fixed condition of a concept, and which opposes its development, opposes revolutionary leaps, and opposes the principle of the negation of the negation…. Why do formal logicians advocate these things? Because they observe things separate from their continual mutual function and interconnection; that is, they observe things at rest rather than in movement, and as separate rather than in connection. Therefore, it is not possible for them to consider and acknowledge the importance of contradictoriness and the negation of the negation within things and concepts, and so advocate the rigid and inflexible law of identity.[1-72]
Although it is evident from this document that Mao was employing the concept of the “negation of the negation” in a positive way during the Yan’an period, it is also evident, as we have seen, that Mao had arrived at a position which perceived the unity of opposites as the most important of the philosophical categories; as Mao was to point out in the same section of the pre-Liberation text of On Contradiction, “the revolutionary law of contradiction (namely the principle of the unity of opposites) therefore occupies the principal position in dialectics”.[1-73]
In the Mao texts of the 1950s and early 1960s, we find that Mao was still employing the concept of the “negation of the negation”, and not by any means in a dismissive way. By the same token, this concept appears far less frequently than does the unity of opposites, and references to it are sometimes rather enigmatic. For example, in January 1957, Mao employed the concept of the “negation of the negation” to indicate Stalin’s lack of ability as a dialectician; “Stalin made mistakes in dialectics. ‘Negation of the negation’. The October Revolution negated capitalism but he refused to admit that socialism may be negated too”.[1-74] In May 1958, Mao again employed the concept to explain and illustrate change and supercession in the historical process; “The dialectics of Greece, the metaphysics of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance…. It is the negation of the negation…. Lenin’s dialectics, Stalin’s partial metaphysics, and today’s dialectics are also the negation of the negation”.[1-75]Similarly, in his July 1957 criticism of Wen Hui Bao, Mao had perceived the “negation of the negation” at work in the rapid fluctuations which characterised the political situation at the time: “Two meetings were called by the Journalists’ Association, the first a negation and the second a negation of the negation, and the fact that this took place in a little over a month indicates the swift changes in the situation in China”.[1-76] A further reference occurs in a text of May 1958, in which Mao called for a “negation of the negation” in rectifying the Chinese attitude toward foreigners; “By the end of the Ch’ing dynasty, when the foreigners attacked and entered China, the Chinese were frightened, became slaves, and felt inferior. Arrogant before, now we are too humble. Let us have the negation of the negation”.[1-77] In the same speech, Mao also referred cryptically to developments in the area of cooperativization as the “negation of the negation”.[1-78]
As late as September 1962, Mao continued to employ this concept. In his important speech at the Tenth Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee, he referred to the “negation of the negation” as constituting an aspect of the transformation of opposites into one another:
This kind of reversal is also possible in socialist countries. An example of this is Yugoslavia which has changed its nature and become revisionist, changing from a workers’ and peasants’ country to a country ruled by reactionary nationalist elements. In our country we must come to grasp, understand and study this problem really thoroughly … otherwise a country like ours can still move towards its opposite. Even to move towards its opposite would not matter too much because there would still be the negation of the negation, and afterwards we might move towards our opposite yet again.[1-79]
It is evident, therefore, that one can find a good number of references to the concept of the “negation of the negation” in the Mao texts of the late 1950s and early 1960s, It would appear that Mao’s August 1964 “rejection” of the concept is thus at odds with his otherwise relatively frequent and positive references to it. However, parallel to such references to the “negation of the negation” emerges a different appellation for the concept, one which suggests that Mao was seeking a label more in keeping with the more fundamental philosophical category of the unity of opposites. In his important “Sixty Articles on Work Methods” of January 1958, we discover that in referring to the three categories of Marxist philosophy, Mao did not actually employ the title of the “negation of the negation”:
The law of the unity of opposites, of quantitative to qualitative changes, and of affirmation and negation, will hold good universally and eternally.[1-80]
The formula used here to describe the third philosophical category – “affirmation” (kending) and “negation” (fouding) – is identical to that used by Mao in his August 1964 talk on philosophy; “affirmation, negation … in the development of things, every link in the chain of events is both affirmation and negation”.[1-81] What we have here is merely a change in title, for the substance of the concept remains unchanged. The concept of the “negation of the negation” assumes that the factor which negates the negative (for example, capitalism’s negation of feudalism) will initially constitute a positive factor, the affirmative. Over time, however, its positive character will transform into its opposite, the affirmative becoming the negative, as a new and historically progressive force emerges to challenge it. This cycle, of negation, affirmation, negation as described by Mao in August 1964, is in essence no different from that described earlier by himself and other Marxist philosophers, including Lenin and Engels, under the rubric of the “negation of the negation”.[1-82] Mao’s demonstrable predilection for linking and using oxymoronic categories (life and death, truth and falsehood, materialism and idealism, right and wrong, finite and infinite, advanced and backward, to name but a few) suggests that he would have been unsympathetic to a formula which described a contradictory process and yet appeared to link like to like: the negation of the negation. By renaming the concept “affirmation and negation”, Mao could leave the substance of the concept unaltered while bringing its title into line with the pervasive idea that the unity of opposites exists in all things and processes.
1-82
For a description and evaluation of the law of the “negation of the negation”, see Wetter,