This leads to a second and related point. In a number of places in the Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism, Mao insists that no ontological distinction can be made between matter and thought. As we noted in an earlier section, Mao believed thought to be a particular form of matter; that is, matter in motion. Given this insistence, it follows that thought must inevitably obey the same natural laws as does matter generally. It can do no other. Consequently, the conception of a universe possessed of a rational structure refers equally to mind and thought as it does to an external reality. Both thought and reality (in ontological terms the distinction is an artificial one) are ordered in the same way and governed by the same imperatives. It is thus entirely possible for the rational structure of the universe to be replicated in thought, a position which emerges in the pages of both On Contradiction and the Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism.
Third, in all of these philosophical essays we find references to the “essence” of objects. The conception of an “essence” of a phenomenon is one which is entirely foreign to the empiricist tradition to which Mao is so often purported to belong. From the empiricist (or positivist) perspective, no distinction is made, or can be made, between the surface appearance of a phenomenon and its “true” nature; the data apprehended by sensory perceptions (the visual character of a phenomenon, for example) is all that is available for the human subject of cognition to arrive at knowledge of a phenomenon, and indeed all that is necessary. If Mao had been a genuine empiricist, the concept of an “essence” would have been absent from his philosophical writings, and yet it is very clearly present. And the reason is that Mao did not subscribe to the empiricist assumption that it is possible to know an object of cognition on the basis of a sensory familiarity with its surface appearance. This latter position was guilty of superficiality and one-sidedness, he believed, and the subject of cognition had to move beyond this and progress in a dialectical process to a deeper and deeper understanding of the nature of a phenomenon until its “essence” was grasped; and only when this had been achieved was true knowledge created.
Fourth, we can find in a variety of the Mao texts an explicit rejection of empiricism (jingyanzhuyi). It must be noted, however, that Mao appeared to understand the epistemology of empiricism as one which limited the subject of cognition to a one-sided and superficial perception of its object. For example, in the Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism Mao attacks the “strident realism” of Machism for its view that “truth is already established in final form in sense perceptions”.[1-91] This “narrow viewpoint”[1-92] was empiricist in preventing a dialectical progression from sense perceptions to rational knowledge and back again; it remained locked in the stage of sense perceptions. Mao’s rejection of “empiricism” did not, therefore, betoken a rejection of experience, and it remained an important element of his epistemology.
Given the importance of the concept of experience in Mao’s epistemology, on what basis is it possible to challenge the received view that Mao’s epistemology was an undiluted empiricism? The answer lies in the elaboration in the Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism of a theoretical framework which could provide direction and focus to the process of experience. As we have noted, the most fundamental laws of the universe are articulated in these Lecture Notes, laws seemingly not capable of formulation through empiricism with its deference to experience. Such laws were of necessity posited a priori, as premises which constituted the foundation for the epistemological project. An example is Mao’s insistence on the materiality of the universe:
The first condition of belonging to the materialist camp is the acknowledgement that the material world is separate from and exists independently of human consciousness -it existed prior to the appearance of humankind, and following the appearance of humankind it remained separate from and existed independently of human consciousness. The recognition of this point is the fundamental premise of all scientific research.[1-93]
The interesting point about this statement of philosophical premises is that Mao posits the existence of a material reality prior to the existence of humankind, a position incapable of validation through the agency of human experience for the simple reason that no humans existed. It is also very clear that Mao regarded the materialist “premise” as one which had to be “acknowledged”, and although he does subsequently proceed to elaborate “proofs” for this premise, they are proofs ultimately grounded on the acceptance of the premise itself, namely, that a material reality exists independently of human consciousness.
Consequently, the epistemological picture which emerges from an evaluation of the philosophy contained in the three philosophical essays under question is one of a tension between a rationalist and an empiricist approach to epistemology.[1-94] On the one hand it is rationalist: the universe is a rational order; the relationships between objects in the universe constitute a rational structure; the universe and its constituent objects are ordered according to a series of objectively existing universal laws, these laws providing criteria of truth by which propositions about reality are to be evaluated; thought (as matter) is structured in a way which parallels external reality; phenomena possess “essences” not immediately apprehendable by sensory perceptions. Each of these rationalist dictums appears in these philosophical essays, and particularly so in Dialectical Materialism. On the other hand, however, it is empiricist: knowledge derives from experience; the first stage in the knowledge process is perceptual knowledge; perceptual knowledge is transformed into conceptual knowledge (how we are not told);[1-95] the criterion of truth for conceptual knowledge is practice; in the contradiction between theory and practice, practice is “under normal conditions” the principal aspect;[1-96]knowledge of reality is progressively deepened through a process of practice in which reality and the subject of cognition are transformed; and so on. Each of these empiricist propositions too can be located within these philosophical essays. How is this tension in Mao’s epistemology to be reconciled? Is it possible to reconcile it?
In the final analysis, there can be no reconciliation of the conflicting imperatives within Mao’s epistemology. One cannot at the same time elevate experience as the privileged site of knowledge production and defer to the primacy of thought in the rationalist mould (as Mao does in the pre-Liberation text of On Practice, for example)[1-97] without becoming entangled in a contradiction. The important point, it seems to me, is to recognise the significant rationalist element which exists in Mao’s philosophical position, and abandon the myth so prevalent in Western Mao studies that Mao was a crude empiricist and that the analysis of his thought and action should therefore employ an empiricism equally as crude.[1-98] For the existence of a rationalist element in Mao’s thought indicates that his actions were, contrary to empiricist expectations, driven by theory, often at a very abstract level.
1-94
I am indebted to Dr Paul Healy for his views on this subject. For his brilliant analysis of the tension between rationalist and empiricist epistemologies in Mao’s post-1955 writings, see his doctoral dissertation.
1-95
Mao was to comment in 1964 that “as to the reasons for the leaps from practice to perception, and from perception to reasoning, neither Marx nor Engels discussed it very clearly. Nor did Lenin discuss it very clearly”.
1-96
See the pre-Liberation text of
1-97
See
1-98
For my critique of empiricism in the field of Mao studies, see “The Marxism of Mao Zedong: Empiricism and Discourse in the Field of Mao Studies”,