Third, Shi argues that on the basis of the positive conclusions of the Soviet texts absorbed by Mao, he raised a number of new ideas (sixiang), and developed the philosophical theories of Marxism. Original ideas in On Practice include the concept of the two leaps in the process of cognition, and the notion that knowledge is a concrete historical unity of subjective and objective, theory and practice, and knowledge and action (zhi he xing); Mao also expressed the general laws of the movement of knowledge in a way not to be found in the Soviet texts. In On Contradiction, Mao provided an elaboration of the abstract category of the universality of contradiction which went beyond that to be found in the Soviet sources; Mao also systematised the elaboration to be found there on the important issue of the particularity of contradiction, and most importantly employed analysis of the complex particular contradictions of the Chinese Revolution to explicate this principle in a way which was innovative. Shi goes on to assert that the Soviet texts on philosophy did not contain mention of the concepts of the relationship of the principal and non-principal contradiction, or the transformation of the principal and non-principal aspects of a contradiction. A Course on Dialectical Materialism did, he concedes, raise the issue of the determining role of the principal contradiction and the principal aspect of a contradiction, but these concepts were not elaborated. In his annotations on this Soviet text, Mao wrote the longest paragraph of any of his marginal notes on this issue (amounting to some 1200 characters), elaborating a position which was to find its way into On Contradiction; Mao’s formulation on this problem can be regarded as a development of Marxist dialectics, according to Shi. He proceeds to list a series of categories whose elaboration by Mao constituted a development of the material contained in the Soviet texts; these include generality (gongxing) and individuality, the idea that the relationship of absolute and relative are central to the question of the contradiction in things, the two important meanings of the concept of identity (tongyixing) and also the difference between concrete and imaginery identity, and the mutual relation between conditional relative identity and unconditional absolute struggle.
Shi Zhongquan concludes by saying that the definite theoretical relationship between On Contradiction and On Practice and the Soviet texts on philosophy has been either not acknowledged or underemphasized in the past, and there has been a tendency to exaggerate (bagao) the achievements and significance of Mao’s philosophical essays, something not in keeping with the current emphasis on “seeking truth from facts”. Nevertheless, the opposite tendency, that of completely denying or underemphasizing the important position of On Contradiction and On Practice in the history of the development of Marxism, is also an unscientific attitude.
The position advanced by Shi Zhongquan is clearly of significance for the line of argument I have been pursuing throughout this introduction. On the one hand, it emphasizes the debt to the philosophy of the orthodox Marxist tradition by Mao, while on the other hand stressing the areas in which Mao can be perceived to have either made a contribution of some originality or to have applied the abstract principles of Marxism in a novel way which could function as a model in the subsequent development of the theories, strategies, and tactics which were to become part-and-parcel of the ideology of Chinese Marxism. The conclusion arrived at by Shi appears to me to be a balanced and persuasive one, avoiding as it does the extremes of Wittfogel and Cohen on the one side and the political culture school[1-132] on the other, with its view of overwhelming dominance of traditional Chinese philosophy and culture on the formation of contemporary Chinese thought. The adoption of this middle path allows a recognition of influence and originality, source and subsequent development in the philosophical thought of Mao Zedong.
