According to recent Chinese commentaries on Mao’s annotations and marginalia, it was this text, A Course on Dialectical Materialism, which was most heavily annotated by Mao in the period prior to writing his own three philosophical essays.[1-110] Between November 1936 and April 1937, Mao studied the third edition of this volume, covering its margins and any blank spaces with close to 13,000 characters of annotations and commentary, a selection of which is contained in the translations in this volume. The third chapter of the third edition, entitled “The basic laws of dialectics”, attracted the most extensive commentary by Mao, the longest paragraph of the commentaries extending to almost one thousand characters. According to Mao specialists in China, the “overwhelming proportion of these marginal annotations were devoted to elaboration of Mao’s own dialectical materialist and historical materialist philosophical viewpoint, including development of the ideas in the text and criticism of them”.[1-111] In many places, they continue, Mao made connections between the history of China and other countries, including analysis of the experience and lessons of the Chinese Revolution. They are thus at pains to point out that Mao did not react to the philosophical content of A Course on Dialectical Materialism in a mechanical, uncritical manner; rather he reacted to the text critically, applying its abstract content to the historical situation of the Chinese Revolution.
Of particular interest here is the relationship between the content of this volume and Mao’s On Contradiction and On Practice. In his annotations throughout this volume regarding the particular aspect of a contradiction, Mao developed this concept through its application to the concrete conditions of China. Mao noted that not only does the particular aspect of a contradiction play a determining role, but that under certain conditions, the principal and secondary aspects of a contradiction can undergo mutual transformation (huxiang zhuanhua); “In the situation of antagonism between China and Japan, the Chinese factors are at present changing from a secondary to a principal position; if the national united front can be extended and consolidated, and because of international factors (the Soviet Union, the Japanese masses, other peaceful nations), the superiority of the Japanese aspect will be transformed”.[1-112] Elsewhere in this text, Mao wrote “in each process of the movement of a contradiction, identity is relative, struggle is absolute”.[1-113] Similarly, the fourth edition contains the following annotation on the two processes of cognition: “In the process of cognition, the particular determines the universal; in the process of practice, the universal determines the particular”.[1-114] These few examples suggest the importance of this volume in the preparation of Mao’s On Contradiction and On Practice. We will turn to a more detailed analysis of the relationship between these two essays and Soviet philosophy in a subsequent section.
2. Dialectical and Historical Materialism by M.B. Mitin et al., translated Shen Zhiyuan, and published in China under the title Bianzhengweiwulun yu lishiweiwulun in December 1936. This volume, of 538 pages, contains sections on the two lines in philosophy, mechanistic materialism, the materiality of the world and the form of material existence, matter and thought and the reflection theory of dialectical materialism, truth, the law of the unity of opposites, the law of the mutual transformation of quantity into quality, the law of the negation of the negation, essence and appearance, form and content, chance and necessity, possibility and reality, and formal logic and dialectics.
According to Chinese sources, Mao read and annotated this volume prior to August 1937.[1-115] As with A Course on Dialectical Materialism, this volume has a “direct relationship” with On Contradiction and On Practice, both in terms of context and content.[1-116]
