Mao Zedong On Dialectical Materialism полностью

While there exists significant disagreement amongst Mao scholars in contemporary China over the origins of Mao’s philosophical thought, there is apparent consensus on the importance of the writings of Li Da (1890‒1966) and Ai Siqi (1910‒1966) to the development of Chinese Marxism. Both of these prolific philosophers were responsible for the systematization and popularization of the philosophy of dialectical materialism, and are widely regarded as the first of China’s home-grown Marxist philosophers. Ai Siqi, in particular, took it upon himself to present the rather arcane formulations of dialectical materialism in forms accessible to students and interested laypersons, and his writings of the early-to-mid 1930s contributed to the philosophical background against which Mao’s own views on philosophy were to develop. Li Da’s writings on Marxist philosophy date from the early 1920s, and he, more than any other Chinese philosopher, was responsible for making accessible to the early Chinese Communist movement a wealth of sources and commentary. Through their translations of Marxist classics into Chinese, Li Da and Ai Siqi were instrumental in making available the new philosophy, and in the 1930s especially, their translations brought to China information on developments within the philosophical world of the Soviet Union, particularly its emerging orthodoxy.

How important was the influence of these philosophers on the development of Mao’s philosophical thought? In terms of accessibility of Soviet philosophical sources, their translations brought to Mao material which, as we have seen, he employed heavily in the writing of his three philosophical essays. Two of these Soviet sources were translated by them; A Course on Dialectical Materialism was translated by Li Da and Lei Zhongjian; and Outline of New Philosophy was translated by Ai Siqi and Zheng Yili. Mao also thought extremely highly of their own philosophical writing, and it is probable that two of the five main texts used by Mao in 1937 were authored by Li Da and Ai Siqi.[1-148]

Li Da’s Shehuixue dagang (Elements of Sociology) was completed in 1936, and published in May 1937. Immediately on its publication, Li sent Mao a copy. According to the diary Mao kept of his own reading activity (which he began to keep on 1 February 1938), he annotated this text between 17 January and 16 March 1938.[1-149] However, some Chinese Mao scholars now believe it possible that Mao read the text shortly after its publication, which would mean he had access to it during the months of writing his philosophical essays.[1-150] The recollections of Guo Huaruo, in Yan’an from August 1937, suggest that Mao did indeed read it at the time he was preparing lectures on philosophy in 1937,[1-151] and the fact that Mao claimed to have read the book ten times[1-152] (the book contains 430,000 characters) indicates a continuing and deepening familiarity with the work over a lengthy period of time. It is also possible that the annotated copy of Shehuixue dagang which survives is not the one Mao originally received from Li Da immediately on publication, for Mao wrote to Li asking him to send an additional ten copies for the Yan’an Anti-Japanese Military and Political University, and the annotated copy which survives may well be one of these.[1-153]