Mao Zedong On Dialectical Materialism полностью

Marx’s Capital must be regarded above all others as the finest model of the utilisation of dialectical materialism to resolve the mutual relationship between things logical and things historical. Capital contains firstly an understanding[2-205] of the historical development of capitalist society, and simultaneously incorporates the logical development of that society. What Capital analyses is the dialectics of the development of the various economic categories which reflect the emergence, development and passing away of capitalist society. The materialist character of the solution to this problem resides in the fact that it takes material objective history as its basis, resides in taking concepts and categories as reflections of this actual history. The identity of the theory and history of capitalism, of the logic and epistemology of capitalist society, is expressed in model form in Capital. From it we can gain access to some understanding of the identity of dialectics, logic, and epistemology.

What has been discussed above is the question of the object of dialectical materialism.

(p. 281) Marxism continued and developed the materialist line within philosophy, and correctly resolved the question of the relationship between thought and existence; that is, it thoroughly and in a materialist manner indicated the materiality of the world and objective reality, and the material origins of thought (or, the dependent relationship of thought to existence).

The recognition that matter is the origin of thought has as its premise the materiality of the world and its objective existence. The first condition of belonging to the materialist camp is the acknowledgement that the material world is separate from and exists independently of human consciousness – it existed prior to the appearance of humankind, and following the appearance of humankind it remained separate from and existed independently of human consciousness. The recognition of this point is the fundamental premise of all scientific research.

How can this point be verified? There are numerous proofs. At the very moment humankind comes in contact with the external world, it must employ harsh means to cope with the oppression and resistance of the external world (the natural world and society); humankind not only should but can overcome such oppression and resistance. All of the actual conditions of human social practice manifested in the historical development of human society are the best proof of this point. Throughout the course of the ten-thousand li Long March, the Red Army had no doubts about the objective existence of the regions it traversed, the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the snow-covered mountains, and the grasslands, or the enemy armies which did battle with it, etc.; neither did it doubt the objective existence of the Red Army itself.[2-206] China[2-207] does not doubt the objective existence of an invading Japanese imperialism, nor of the Chinese people themselves; neither do students of the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University doubt the objective existence of this university and the students themselves. These are all material things which exist independently and are separate from our consciousness; this is the fundamental viewpoint of all materialism, it is the materialist viewpoint of philosophy.

The philosophical materialist viewpoint and the materialist viewpoint of natural science are not identical. If we say that the philosophical material viewpoint resides in its pointing out the objective existence of matter, that what is described as [p. 203] so-called matter is the entire world which is separate from human consciousness and exists independently (this world acts on the sense organs of humans which produces human sense perceptions, and from these sense perceptions reflection is achieved), then that way of portraying it is permanent and unchangeable, it is absolute. The material viewpoint of natural science resides in its study of material structures, for example, previous atomic theory and subsequent electron theory, etc; and the way in which this is described changes in line with progress in natural science; it is relative.

The distinction, based on the insights of dialectical materialism, between the materialist viewpoint of philosophy and the materialist viewpoint of natural science, is a necessary condition for thoroughly implementing the orientation of the philosophy of materialism, and is of great significance in the struggle with idealism and mechanical materialism.