The opportunity to attempt this more detailed and constructive analysis has been made possible by the publication in Chinese of a number of versions of the complete text of Dialectical Materialism. Prior to the early 1970s, Mao scholars were constrained to make their judgements on the basis of fragments of the larger work. The judgements rendered by Wittfogel, and Doolin and Goias, for example, were based on analysis of Chapter 1 only;[1-13] and Schram’s position was founded on an examination of Chapter 1 and sections 1‒6 of Chapter 2.[1-14] Since the early 1970s, however, two seemingly complete versions of Dialectical Materialism have been published.[1-15] The first appeared in Mao Zedong ji (Collected Writings of Mao Zedong), an edited collection published in Japan under the auspices of the Japanese Mao scholar Takeuchi Minoru; the second appeared in 1984 in the supplementary volumes of the Mao Zedong ji. The discovery and publication of this latter version is significant in a number of important respects. First, it is very clear from a comparison of this document with that published in the early 1970s in the Mao Zedong ji that there are a number of differences between the two texts. Indeed, the annotations appended to the translation which appears below indicate over ninety variations between the texts. Many of these are minor variations, for example, the alteration of a word or phrase; others are more significant and include redrafting of several sentences. Such variations indicate that Dialectical Materialism was revised in the early to mid-1940s prior to its republication in the two sources drawn on in the supplements to the Mao Zedong ji. Whether Mao himself was responsible for this revising and editing remains a matter of conjecture, but it is certainly probable that at the very least he gave his blessing to editorial changes made to the text by others. Consequently, it is now clear that the text of Dialectical Materialism has its own history in which a number of versions have appeared. This history includes: the creation of the text in 1937 involving heavy reliance on Soviet philosophical sources and writings of the influential Chinese Marxist philosophers Li Da and Ai Siqi,[1-16] its complete publication in 1938,[1-17] publication of fragments in 1938 and 1940,[1-18] its revision during the early 1940s,[1-19] its republication in a number of sources in 1944 and 1946,[1-20] and its publication as a neibu document in post-Liberation China in 1958 (complete text),[1-21] in 1960 (text divided into extracts),[1-22] in 1972 (Chapter 3 only),[1-23] and in 1982 (complete text).[1-24] Dialectical Materialism also circulated during the Cultural Revolution in a compilation entitled Mao zhuxi wenxuan [Collected Essays of Chairman Mao].[1-25] The links in the history of Dialectical Materialism are thus much less shrouded in mystery than was hitherto the case, and reveal that the text which was originally written in July and August of 1937 (and republished in 1958 and 1982 in that form) has appeared in other versions. The comparison and analysis of textual variations in Mao’s writings constitutes an important component in the development of Mao studies; for, as John Bryan Starr has suggested, until Mao scholars are able to work from a definitive set of Mao texts, interpretations and judgements rendered by them will unavoidably be based on an uncertain empirical foundation.[1-26] The textual comparison of the different versions of Dialectical Materialism and the other texts on philosophy which appear in translation in this volume represents a modest contribution to the larger project of compiling a definitive corpus of the Mao texts.
