Mao Zedong On Dialectical Materialism полностью

This range of views perceives Mao as the product of two intellectual traditions, the Marxist and Chinese.[1-141] In such interpretations, however, there is considerable difference of opinion over the extent of influence of these traditions; in some, the resultant synthesis is one in which the Chinese aspect is dominant, the Marxist element representing a thin and rather insubstantial gloss; in others, there is something of a balance, the two traditions coexisting in uneasy juxtaposition; and finally, there is the view, similar to the Chinese position elaborated above, that, while Mao did draw on the Chinese intellectual tradition for sources of inspiration, his debt to Marxism was the more important. What links these apparently disparate approaches to the origins of Mao’s thought is the willingness to entertain the view that Mao’s thought was a combination, be it of whatever proportions, of both the Marxist and Chinese traditions.

The significant difference between Western and Chinese perceptions of the origins of Mao’s philosophical thought lies in the fact that there are Western interpretations which do not recognise Marxism as a significant influence.[1-142] From this perspective, the breadth and longevity of China’s philosophical and cultural tradition had an overwhelming influence, not just on the development of Mao’s thought, but on the course of the Chinese Revolution before and after Liberation. In this respect, Mao was no different from other Chinese in the sense that his thought and political responses were dictated by the very fact of his being Chinese. Mao was first and last a Chinese, and the Marxist terminology which entered the vocabulary of his generation was nothing more than a transparent and largely unimportant veneer overlaying Chinese sources of thought and action.

As we have seen, no contemporary Mao scholar in China would entertain this latter notion. The dominant perspective is that Mao was firstly a Marxist, but he was also Chinese, and his particular contribution was the integration of Marxist theory and principles with the concrete conditions of the Chinese Revolution. The basis of Mao’s philosophical thought was dialectical and historical materialism, and it was from this standpoint that he interpreted China’s past and present. Indeed, it is significant that the bulk of books written on Mao’s philosophical thought in contemporary China read like primers on dialectical and historical materialism. A short section within such volumes may be reserved for a discussion of parallels between Mao’s philosophy and traditional Chinese philosophy, but it is evident that this source of influence is regarded as very much less important than the Marxism imbibed by Mao during the 1920s and particularly the 1930s.

It is for this reason, it seems, that Chinese Mao scholars are not overly exercised by the issue of Mao’s plagiarism in his Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism. They point to Mao’s reliance on Soviet sources to indicate why the text has never been openly published as part of Mao’s officially sanctioned oeuvre. It does not, they contend, achieve the purpose of integrating abstract Marxist philosophical principles with the concrete conditions and problems of the Chinese Revolution; neither does Mao “sinify” (a word Chinese Mao specialists are not hesitant to use) Marxist principles through employment of illustrative material from traditional Chinese philosophy. Nevertheless, the philosophy contained in the Lecture Notes on Dialectical Materialism has never, as far as I am aware, been rejected as incorrect by Chinese philosophers and Mao scholars in post-Mao China. In this regard, it is instructive that this text has been reproduced in a number of neibu collections of study materials for academics and Party theorists, and it is quite widely and openly quoted in recent works on Mao’s philosophy and thought.[1-143] It is obviously regarded as a concise and quite useful introduction to the fundamental themes and categories of dialectical materialism, one put together by the major architect of Chinese Marxism, and thus possessing some legitimacy if not the hallmark of originality.