Engels talked about the three categories, but as for me I don’t believe (xiangxin) in two of those categories. (The unity of opposites is the most basic law, the transformation of quality and quantity into one another is the unity of the opposites quality and quantity, and the negation of the negation does not exist at all (fouding zhi fouding genben mei you).) The juxtaposition, on the same level, of the transformation of quality and quantity into one another, the negation of the negation, and the law of the unity of opposites is “triplism” (san yuan lun), not monism. The most basic thing is the unity of opposites. The transformation of quality and quantity into one another is the unity of the opposites quality and quantity. There is no such thing as the negation of the negation (mei you shenme fouding zhi fouding). Affirmation, negation, affirmation, negation … in the development of things, every link in the chain of events is both affirmation and negation. Slave-holding society negated primitive society, but with reference to feudal society it constituted, in turn, the affirmation. Feudal society constituted the negation in relation to slave-holding society but it was in turn the affirmation with reference to capitalist society. Capitalism was the negation in relation to feudal society, but it is, in turn, the affirmation in relation to socialist society.[1-69]
A number of points can be made about this passage. First, when called on to address the issue of categories of Marxist philosophy, Mao commences by invoking Engels. We made the point earlier that the genealogy of the philosophical concepts and categories employed by Mao could be traced back to Engels, rather than Marx, and here is provided further substantiation of that judgement. Second, this is, as far as I am aware, the only textual evidence available to support the proposition that Mao did reject the category of the “negation of the negation”. It is possible to find many other positive references to this category in his writings from the 1930s to the 1960s, and the existence of these references calls into question the propriety of taking this one reference as final proof that Mao had cut his links with the orthodox Marxist philosophical tradition.[1-70] I will argue below that Mao’s rejection of the “negation of the negation” was a rejection of the title, rather than the substance, of this philosophical category, that he was seeking a nomenclature more in keeping with his predilection to perceive a unity of opposites in all things and processes. To pursue this argument, let us first of all place Mao’s 1964 statement in the broader context of his other textual references to the “negation of the negation”.
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:
