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On Contradiction in the Light of Mao Tse-tung's Essay on “Dialectical Materialism”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Dennis J. Doolin  and
Peter J. Golas
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Extract

The Chinese Communists have not hesitated to alter their Party documents—in effect rewriting history—when such changes have seemed desirable for political purposes. It is well known, for example, that the texts of various documents in Mao Tse-tung's Selected Works differ significantly from the originals. In this article we offer evidence suggesting that a fundamentally important Party document—On Contradiction (Mao-tun Lun)—was not written in the summer of 1937, as Party history asserts. Rather, it was composed at a much later date, copying the theses of Stalin and Zhdanov. By thus falsifying the date of composition, the Chinese Communists could bolster their covert assertion of Mao Tse-tung's primacy as a Marxist theoretician.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 19 , September 1964 , pp. 38 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1964

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References

1 On this point, see the excellent analysis by Cohen, Arthur A., “How Original is ‘Maoism’?,” Problems of Communism, X, No. 6, pp. 35–36.Google Scholar

2Mao Tse-tung Hsuan-chi (Selected Works), II, Chin-ch'a-chi Jih-pao She, 1st ed. of 05 1944, reprinted 03 1945).Google Scholar

3Mao Tse-tung Hsuan-chi, in one ts'e, Chin-ch'a-chi Jih-pao She, 03 1947; hsu-pien (supplement), 12 1947. Both the 1945 and the 1947 editions are available at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University, Stanford, California.Google Scholar

4Tse-tung, Mao, Mao-tun Lun (On Contradiction) (Peking: Jen-min Ch'u-pan She, 2nd ed., 6th printing, 05 1953). Publisher's note on back cover states that the first Peking edition was 03 1952.Google Scholar

5Mao Tse-tung Hsuan-chi, I, p. 288 (Peking: Jen-min Ch'u-pan She, 12th reprint of 2nd ed. of 07 1952, 01 1961).Google Scholar

6 For example, see Cheng-feng Wen-hsien (Rectification Documents) (Yenan: Chiehfang She, 1st ed., 1944).Google Scholar

7 See inter alia the volume Hsueh-hsi “Mao Tse-tung Hsuan-chi” (Study the “Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung”), edited by the Party's South China Information Bureau, XXXIX, in the Cadre Study Material Series (Canton: Hua-nan Jen-min Ch'u-pan She, 3rd ed., 02 1952), pp. 2, 6.Google Scholar

8 One popular Japanese monograph, in its fifth printing in 1953, still contained no reference to On Contradiction.Google ScholarMichio, wamura, Mō Takutō no shisō to sono hatten (Mao Tse-tung's Thought and Its Development) (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 03 1953), passim, but see especially pp. 160–173.Google Scholar

9 The writers surveyed this journal for the period May 1937 through 1938 (microfilm on file at the Hoover Institution). The writers also consulted the fascinating Yenan Notebooks of Nym Wales (Helen Foster Snow). Mrs. Snow was in Yenan during the summer of 1937 and no mention of On Contradiction was found in her notes. In a letter dated 03 29, 1963, Mrs. Snow wrote that Mao possibly discussed contradictions in a speech to the Party Conference in Yenan during 05 1937. On p. 50 of her Notebooks is an interview with David Yui, a Peking student leader. It appears from this interview that Mao's speech was non-theoretical; rather, it dealt with practical problems in the face of worsening Sino-Japanese relations. (Mimeographed copy of the Yenan Notebooks at the Hoover Institution.)Google Scholar

10Szu-ch'i, Ai, Li-shih Wei-wu-lun (Historical Materialism) (Peking (?): Hsin-hua Shu-tien, 6th printing, 07 1950).Google Scholar

11 For an opposite evaluation regarding the relative merits of these two pieces, see Schram, Stuart R., The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung (New York: Praeger, 1963), pp. 43–44.Google Scholar

12Whiting, Allen S. and Sheng, Shih-ts'ai, Sinkiang: Pawn or Pivot? (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1958), pp. 229–231.Google Scholar

13 See, for example, Ju-hsin, Chang, Mao Tse-tung T'ung-chih Tui Ma-k'o-szu Chu-i Pien-cheng-fa te Kung-hsien (Comrade Mao Tse-tung's Contribution to Marxist Dialectics) (Peking: Jen-min Ch'u-pan She, 08 1954), especially Part I, pp. 1–8: “Wei-wu Pien-cheng-fa Shih Ma-k'o-szu Chu-i te Ling-hun” (“Materialist Dialectics is the Soul of Marxism”).Google Scholar

14 For an abridged translation of this essay, see Schram, op. cit., pp. 120–124. (All footnotes are the translators'.)Google Scholar

15 It is interesting to note that this is the only appearance of the term “contradiction” in this essay.Google Scholar

16 This is a rather loose Chinese rendering of two passages from Lenin's “On the Question of Dialectics.” See Collected Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961), XXXVIII, p. 363.Google Scholar

17 It is uncertain whether Mao ever completed this essay. In any event, to the translators' knowledge, no other chapters are extant.Google Scholar