1 This article, written in November 1963, is in part a condensation of the author's earlier monograph, Der dialektische Materialismus Mao Tse-tungs im Vergleich mit den Klassikern des Marxismus-Leninismus, untersucht als Faktor zur Beurteilung der chinesisch-sowjetischen Beziehungen, which was first published in September 1962, in the quarterly report of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Bonn, Germany (Der Ostblock und die Entwicklungsländer, Nos. 8–9, 1962). The parts of the original paper that are here largely omitted contain, in particular, more details on the comparison of Mao's dialectics with that of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and modern Russian philosophers; a discussion of interpretations of Mao's philosophy in China, the U.S.S.R. and the West; a survey of the preceding literature on the subject of this paper; and some specific examples of the relation of Mao's dialectics to the development of the CCP's ideological conflict with the CPSU prior to 1962. A shorter German summary of the original paper appeared also under the title “Der dialektische Materialismus Mao Tse-tungs” in Merkur, Deutsche Zeitschrift für europäisches Denken (München), XVII, No. 185 07 1963.Google Scholar In referring to the Chinese language sources I was aided by my wife, Mrs. Lydia Holubnychy.

2 Chang, Tung-sun, “A Chinese Philosopher's Theory of Knowledge” (in English), The Yenching Journal of Social Studies, I, No. 2 01 1939Google Scholar, pp. 164, 168, 169, 171, 184. An even earlier paper in Chinese is also known, but it was not available: Chang, Tung-sun, “Ts'ung Yen-yü Kou-tsao Shang K'an Chung-hsi Che-hsüeh Te Ch'a-i” (“Sino-Western philosophical differences as seen through the structure of language”), Tung-fang Tsa-chih (Eastern Miscellany), XXXIII, No. 7 1936.Google Scholar

3 Cf. Needham, who touches upon “the extent to which the structure of the Chinese language itself encouraged [China's] ancient thinkers to develop an approach to the type of thinking usually called Hegelian.” Joseph, Needham, Science and Civilization in China, II: History of Scientific Thought (London: Cambridge Univ. 1956)Google Scholar, p. 77 et passim. See also Mei, Tsu-lin, “Chinese Grammar and the Linguistic Movement in Philosophy,” The Review of Metaphysics (New Haven, Conn.), XIV, No. 3(55), 03 1961.Google Scholar A short and still uncertain step in this direction was also taken in Communist China; see Wang, Teh-ch'un, “Discussion Pertaining to ‘The Relationship of Language with Thinking’ and ‘The Relationship of Language with Politics,’” Wen-hui Pao (Shanghai), 08 19, 1959Google Scholar (translated in Survey of the China Mainland Press (Hong Kong: U.S. Consulate-General), No. 2105Google Scholar). Some parallel comparisons between philosophical terms of clearly religious origin in Russian and the peculiarity of their uses in Lenin's philosophy can be found in this writer's German monograph, cited in Note 1. A different hypothesis concerning the importance of connection between the Chinese written language (hieroglyphs) and Chinese thought is in Fairbank, John K., The United States and China (Cambridge: Harvard Univ., 1958), pp. 65–66.Google Scholar

4 Graham, A. C., “‘Being’ in Western Philosophy Compared with Shih/fei and Yu/wu in Chinese Philosophy,” Asia Major (London), N.S., VII, Parts 1–2, 1959.Google Scholar

5 Marx had died before he could read Engels' two main contributions to materialistic dialectics, Dialectics of Nature and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of the Classical German Philosophy. Marx himself did not contribute much to dialectics per se; rather, his contribution was to materialism, materialistic epistemology, and to the criticism of idealistic dialectics.

6 Cf. Engels, F., Anti-Dühring, Chap. XIII of Part I in any complete edition. The same definition appears also in Ludwig Feuerbach, etc., Chaps. I and IV.Google Scholar

7 Cf. David, Joravsky, Soviet Marxism and Natural Sciences, 1917–1932 (New York: Columbia Univ., 1961).Google Scholar

8 Editorial Departments of Renmin Ribao (People's Daily) and Hongqi (Red Flag), The Origin and Development of the Differences between the Leadership of the CPSU and Ourselves (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1963), p. 22.Google Scholar

9 Cf. Brière, O., “L'Effort de la philosophie marxiste en Chine,” Bulletin de l'Université l'Aurore (Shanghai), Série III, Tome VIII, No. 3 1947.Google ScholarCf. in addition his “Les courants philosophiques en Chine depuis 50 ans (1898–1950),” Ibid. Tome X, No. 40, 1949. His earlier work on the subject, “Philosophie marxiste en Chine,” Dossiers de la Commission synodale (Peking), Tome XIII, 1940, was not accessible.Google Scholar

10 Ibid. and also Kuo, Chan-po, Chin Wu-shih-nien Chung-kuo Ssu-hsiang Shih (Intellectual History of China of the Last Fifty Years) (Peking: Jen-wen Shu-tien, 1935), Chap. VIII and the appendix.Google Scholar

11 Brière, “L'Effort …,” pp. 322, 327–331.

12 It is, of course, true that Mao “has not claimed to be a philosopher, and he has not been labelled as such” even in Communist China, as witnesses Wing-tsit, Chan, “Chinese Philosophy in Communist China,” Philosophy East and West (Honolulu), XI, No. 3 10 1961, p. 115.Google Scholar Some three articles on philosophical subjects are too modest an output for a professional philosopher. However, Wing-tsit Chan agrees with many other writers in the West that these articles are philosophical in their contents, method and purpose. Others, of course, may call them ideological rather than philosophical, reserving the term “philosophy” only for pure metaphysics, logic, ethics and aesthetics.

13 It is well known, of course, that Mao does not read in any foreign language.Google Scholar

14 Main bibliographies of the pre-1949 Chinese translations of the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin are: Chang, Ching-lu (ed.), Chung-kuo Ch'u-pan Shih-liao Pu-pien (A Supplementary Collection of Historical Materials on Publishing in China) (Peking: Chung-hua Shu-chü, 1957), pp. 442–475Google Scholar; Hsia, Tao-yüan and Kao, Ning-che, “Publication of Writings of the Classics of Marxism-Leninism in China” (in Russian), Voprosy Istorii KPSS (Problems of History of the CPSU) (Moscow), No. 4 1957, pp. 133–139Google Scholar; Chang, Yun-hou, “Dissemination of V. I. Lenin's Philosophical Writings in China” (in Chinese), Che-hsueh Yen-chiu (Philosophical Research) (Peking), Nos. 11–12 1959, p. 26Google Scholar; Smolin, G. Y. and Tutov, I. I., “Publication of the Works of Marxist-Leninist Classics in China” (in Russian), Voprosy Istorii (Problems of History) (Moscow), No. 10 10 1954, pp. 180–187Google Scholar; Alekseyev, V. M., “V. I. Lenin in Chinese” (in Russian), Vestnik Akademil Nauk SSSR (Newsletter of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences) (Moscow), No. 1 1933, pp. 13–20.Google Scholar

15 Its complete translation was made only in 1957 (cf. Jen-min Jih-pao (People's Daily), 10 22, 1959). All thirty-eight volumes of the 4th Russian edition of Lenin's works were translated and published in China only during 1955–59.Google Scholar

16 Chang Ching-lu, op. cit., p. 450.Google Scholar

17 Ibid.

18 This thing was also unknown to Lenin, by the way. The latest advertisement on the back cover of the Ching-chi Yen-chiu (Economic Research) (Peking), No. 1 1963, announces that thirteen out of the planned thirty volumes of the 2nd Russian edition of the works of Marx and Engels were translated and published in China by the end of 1962.Google Scholar

19 Chang Ching-lu et al., loc. cit.

20 Kratkiy Filosofskiy Slovar (Concise Philosophical Dictionary, ed. by Rozental, M. and Yudin, P.), 3rd ed. (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1952), p. 558.Google Scholar

21 Brière, “Les courants …,” op. cit., p. 638.Google Scholar Lately the writers in China refer to the 1955 edition of Dialectics of Nature, published by the Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she.

22 Chang Ching-lu, op. cit., p. 471.Google Scholar

23 Cf. Mao Tse-tung Hsuan Chi (Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung) (Peking: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1951), I, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

24 Cf. Mao Tse-tung Chiu-kuo Yen-lun Hsuan-chi (Mao Tse-tung's Selected Speeches on National Salvation) (Chungking: Hsin-chih Shu-tien, 1939).Google Scholar

25 Cf. Hsiao, T'ang (ed.), Mao Tse-tung Ssu-hsiang Ch'u-hsueh Ju-men (Beginner's Introduction to the Thought of Mao Tse-tung) (Tientsin: Tu-che Shu-tien, 1949).Google Scholar Part One of this book deals explicitly with Mao's dialectical materialism, but all quotations and references stem from his political and military writings only. Cf. also Strong, Anna L., The Thought of Mao Tse-tung, Chefoo News Co., 1947;Google Scholar and her article, “The Thought of Mao Tse-tung,” Amerasia (New York), XI, No. 6 06 1947.Google Scholar

26 However, as far as this article of Stalin is concerned, no evidence has been found that it was translated into Chinese before April 1952, when the last of Mao's articles appeared. Moreover, the translation and publication of the thirteen volumes of the last Russian edition of Stalin's works were completed in China in 1958, but it did not include Marxism and the Problems of Linguistics.

27 To be exact, in his On Contradiction, Mao speaks at two places of the “different forms of leap” and of “non-antagonistic contradictions”; cf. his Selected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1954)Google Scholar, II, pp. 38 and 50–51. However, he does not explain there what he means by “different forms” of the qualitative leap, and while speaking of the “non-antagonistic contradictions” he says explicitly that they may appear “in a socialist country and in our revolutionary bases.” If the “revolutionary bases” are not a 1952 insertion into the 1937 text, then these words evidently mean that Mao thought of the notion of “non-antagonistic contradictions” before Stalin. That this may be so is suggested by the fact that Mao explicitly postulates an obviously non-Stalinist proposition that “based on the concrete development of things, some contradictions, originally non-antagonistic, develop and become antagonistic, while some contradictions, originally antagonistic, develop and become non-antagonistic” (Ibid. p. 50). Neither Stalin nor Lenin assumed anything similar. That this particular postulate of Mao's dialectics is not only non-Stalinist but also anti-Stalinist has recently been pointedly stressed by a Yugoslav professor, Predrag, Vranicki, in his Historija Marksizma (History of Marxism) (Zagreb: Naprijed, 1961), pp. 512–514.Google Scholar Vranicki also points out that while writing again on the subject of non-antagonistic contradictions in his 1957 paper, On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, Mao assumed the possibility of non-antagonistic relations even among the classes of exploited and exploiters under the particular conditions of a socialist régime (Ibid. p. 514).

28 Ch'en, Po-ta, Stalin and the Chinese Revolution (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1953), pp. 24–25.Google Scholar In fact, subsequently, on p. 27, Ch'en implies that Mao read Stalin's History of the CPSU Short Course, which contained the On Dialectical and Historical Materialism, only in 1942.

29 Mao, Tse-tung, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 27.Google Scholar

30 Ibid. p. 46.

31 Ibid. p. 17.

32 Cf. in particular Siegbert, Hummel, Polarität in der chinesischen Philosophie (Leipzig: O. Harrassowitz, 1949)Google Scholar; and his Zum ontologischen Problem des Dauismus (Taoismus) (Leipzig: O. Harrassowitz, 1948)Google Scholar; Derk, Bodde, “Harmony and Conflict in Chinese Philosophy,” in Wright, A. F. (ed.), Studies in Chinese Thought (Chicago: Chicago Univ., 1953)Google Scholar, especially p. 59; Creel, H. G., Chinese Thought from Confucius to Mao Tse-tung (Chicago: Chicago Univ., 1953), pp. 63–65Google Scholar; Liu, Pai-min, “The Epistemology of the Great Appendix of the Yi-ching,” Journal of Oriental Studies (Hong Kong), II, No. 2 07 1955, pp. 215–259Google Scholar; Joseph Needham, loc. cit., pp. 518–582 et passim; Lau, D. C., “The Treatment of Opposites in Lao Tzu,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, XXI, Part 2, 1958, pp. 344–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Of great interest is also Tang, Chün-i, “A Comparison between the Hegelian Metaphysics of Change and Chuang Tzu's Metaphysics of Change” (in Chinese), Chung-shan Wen-hua Chiao-yu Kwan Chi-kan (Quarterly of the Sun Yatsen Institute for Culture and Education), III, No. 4 1936, pp. 1301–1315.Google Scholar

33 Hsiang, Lin-ping, Chung-kuo Che-hsueh Shih Kang-yao (Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy), (n.p.: Sheng-huo Shu-tien, 1939), 662 pp.Google Scholar

34 The first non-Chinese Communist study of the classical Chinese philosophy was that of Thalheimer, A., Einführung in den dialektischen Materialismus (Vienna: Verlag für Politik und Literatur, 1928).Google Scholar A leading German member of the Comintern for a while, Thalheimer discusses on pp. 153 et seq., Lao Tzu et al. But finds that the latter “can be designated as an objective or absolute idealist” (p. 166).

35 Today, of course, this is a widely-held view among the communist philosophers in China. See, e.g., Chang, Tai-nien, Chung-kuo Wei-wu Chu-i Ssu-hsiang Chien-shih (A Short History of the Chinese Materialistic Thought) (Peking: Chung-kuo Ch'ing-nien Ch'u-pan-she, 1957).Google Scholar Also Hou, Wai-lu, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1959).Google Scholar In some cases their views are not unanimous, however. For example, in 1959, there was a discussion held in Peking on the nature of Lao Tzu's philosophy. Some interpreted it as idealistic, others as materialistic. Feng Yu-lan, whom many know in the West, interpreted Tao as a “material substance.” Cf. Feng, Yu-lan, “Two Questions About the Philosophy of Lao Tzu,” People's Daily, 06 12–13, 1959 (English in SCMP 2048).Google Scholar

36 Brière, “L'Effort de la philosophie marxiste en Chine,” loc. cit., p. 322.Google Scholar

37 “With the spread of Marxism in China, Mao Tse-tung, inheriting the excellent tradition of Chinese philosophy, developed Marxism …,” Hou Wai-lu, op cit., p. 3 of the foreword. See also Feng, Yu-lan, “Mao Tse-tung et la philosophie chinoise,” La Pensée (Paris), No. 55 05–06 1954.Google ScholarCf. also “Philosophy in New China According to Feng Yu-lan,” East and West (Rome), III, No. 2 07 1952.Google Scholar

38 Cf. among others, Creel, H. G., Chinese Thought from Confucius to Mao Tse-tung, loc. cit.Google Scholar; Levenson, J. R., Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: The Problem of Intellectual Continuity (Berkeley: California Univ., 1958)Google Scholar; Callis, H. G., China, Confucian and Communist (New York: Holt, 1959)Google Scholar; Debon, G. and Speiser, W., Chinesische Geisteswelt von Konfuzius bis Mao Tse-tung (Baden-Baden: Holle, 1957)Google Scholar; Nivison, D. S., “Communist Ethics and Chinese Tradition,” Journal of Asian Studies (Ann Arbor), XVI, No. 1 11 1956Google Scholar; Étiemble, “New China and Chinese Philosophies,” Diogenes (Chicago), No. 11 1955Google Scholar; Thomas, R., “La Philosophie classique chinoise et sa valeur de resistance au marxisme,” L'Afrique et l'Asia (Paris), No. 38 1957Google Scholar; Masamichi, Inoki, “Leninism and Mao Tse-tung's Ideology,” in London, K. (ed.), Unity and Contradiction: Major Aspects of Sino-Soviet Relations (New York: Praeger, 1962)Google Scholar; Yuji, Muramatsu, “Revolution and Chinese Tradition in Yenan Communism,” Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics (Tokyo), III, No. 2 06 1963.Google Scholar

39 Explanatory footnotes and references to foreign sources in the foreign language translations of Mao's works are, of course, not his but those of the Party Central Committee's Commission on the Publication of Mao's works. For the study of Mao's references only the Chinese edition of his writings is suitable.

40 The Autobiography of Mao Tse-tung, 2nd rev. ed. (Canton: Truth Book Co., 1949)Google Scholar, pp. 4, 6–7, 11. See also Emi, Siao, Mao Tse-tung: His Childhood and Youth (Bombay: People's Publishing House, 1953).Google Scholar Also Boorman, Howard L., “Mao Tse-tung: the Laquered Image,” The China Quarterly, No. 16 11–12 1963, pp. 4–11.Google Scholar

41 Editorial in People's China (Peking), No. 9 05 1, 1952, p. 10.Google Scholar

42 Cf. for example, Vranicki, P., Historija Marksizma (History of Marxism) (Zagreb: Naprijed, 1961)Google Scholar, pp. 504, 516. Also Althusser, L. “Sur la Dialectique matérialiste (De l'inégalité des origines),” La Pensée (Paris), No. 110 07–08 1963, pp. 26–30.Google Scholar

43 Soviet philosophy has never conceded anything to Mao, for example. In fact, it never discussed Mao's contributions in any other form but in reviews of individual volumes of his writings as they appeared in Russian translation. There the Russian reviewers unanimously insisted that Mao merely “followed” Lenin and Stalin, was their “pupil,” etc.

44 The only partial exception encountered so far was Ai Szu-ch'i, who came to be specific in saying that Mao “added new elements to” and “developed in particular” (a) the Marxist-Leninist epistemology, especially the methods of discovery of dialectical laws in objective reality, and (b) Lenin's theory of the unity of opposites within a contradiction. Cf. Ai Szu-ch'i, “Ts'ung ‘Mao-tun Lun’ K'an Pien-cheng-fa Te Li-chie Ho Yün-yung” (Comprehension and use of dialectics according to On Contradiction), in Hsueh-hsi “Mao-tun Lun” (The Study of On Contradiction), a collection of articles, Hsin Chien-she Tsa-chih She Ch'u-pan, 1952, Vol. I, pp. 1–5.

45 In addition to On Practice, On Contradiction and On Dialectical Materialism, several other of Mao's writings of political, military and ideological nature contain important passages of epistemological and dialectical character. Among them of particular interest have been found the following writings: On Rectification of Incorrect Ideas in the Party (1929); Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War (1936); On the Protracted War (1938); The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party (1939); On New Democracy (1940); Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art (1942); Talk with the American Correspondent Anna Louise Strong (1946); The Present Situation and Our Tasks (1947); The Bankruptcy of the Idealistic Conception of History (1949); On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People (1957).

46 Pien-cheng-fa Wei-wu Lun (On Dialectical Materialism), Min-chu (Democracy), I, No. 2 1940, p. 24.Google Scholar

47 Chang Tung-sun says: “Western thought is consistently based on the idea of substance. Consequently there is the need for a substratum, and the final result of this trend of thought gives rise to the idea of ‘pure matter.’ … There is no trace of the idea of substance in Chinese thought. … In China there is no such word as substance. … It makes no difference to the Chinese mind, whether or not there is any ultimate substratum underlying all things.” Chang, Tung-sun, “A Chinese Philosopher's Theory of Knowledge,” The Yenching Journal of Social Studies, I, No. 2 01 1939, pp. 173–174.Google Scholar Joseph Needham, loc. cit., pp. 199–200, also remarks: “At any rate, Chinese thought, always concerned with relation, preferred to avoid the problems or pseudo-problems of substance, and thus persistently eluded all metaphysics.”

48 L. Althusser, loc. cit.

49 On Chinese epistemology cf. Chang, Tai-nien, “Chung-kuo Chih-luen Ta-yueh” (Outline of the Chinese theories of knowledge), Tsing Hua Hsueh-pao (Tsing Hua Studies) (Peking), IX, No. 2 04 1934.Google Scholar Also Chang, C., “Is There No Epistemological Background for the Chinese Philosophy of Reason?” Oriens Extremus (Wiesbaden), I, No. 2 12 1954.Google Scholar

50 Cf. this opinion: “Sur la Pratique apporte une solution scientifique à un important problème traditionnel de la philosophie chinoise, le problème des rapports entre la connaissance et l'action.” Feng, You-lan, “Mao Tse-toung et la philosophie chinoise,” La Pensée (Paris), No. 55 05–06 1954, p. 80.Google Scholar

51 Sceptics should better beware at this point, however. There is really nothing unusual about this belief of Mao, for the same innate belief is evident in pronouncements of all other philosophers. One of the most amusing experiences is to watch, for example, our Anglo-American pragmatism as it denounces and spurns all ideologies in devout belief that they are all useless and foolish, without realising at the same time that it too is nothing else but another ideological creed.

52 It is undoubtedly “logical” to think as the editors of the valuable volume of the Sources of Chinese Tradition (New York: Columbia Univ., 1960), p. 894Google Scholar, did when they said that, inasmuch as On Contradiction “is of a more general nature” than On Practice, it should have preceded the latter in the course of writing and publication. But this is exactly what is not logical about materialistic dialectics, but dialectical: in it, practice is more important than generalisations, and only those generalisations are good which arise from practice.

53 On Practice, pp. 291–292.Google Scholar The edition quoted here and subsequently is the English translation of Mao's, Selected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1954)Google Scholar, I. The original edition was: Mao, Tse-tung, Shih-chien Lun (Peking: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1951).Google Scholar

54 He says: “What Marxist philosophy regards as the most important problem does not lie in understanding the laws of the objective world and thereby becoming capable of explaining it, but in actively changing the world by applying the knowledge of the objective laws. … Marxism emphasises the importance of theory precisely and only because it can guide action. If we have a correct theory, but merely prate about it, pigeon-hole it, and do not put it into practice, then the theory, however good, has no significance.” On Practice, p. 292.

55 Pien-cheng-fa Wei-wu Lun, p. 23.Google Scholar

56 A similar method called “ascending from the abstract to the concrete” was also used by Marx in his Capital. It also has been widely misunderstood, especially by all those who think they saw a contradiction between the first and the third volumes of Capital. However, Marx explained this method in the first draft of Capital, called Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie (Rohentwurf) (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1953), pp. 21–22Google Scholar, which has not been translated into any other language. The fact that Mao uses a very similar method can probably be explained only in terms of an independent convergence, however amazing it is. In Mao's case this method probably arose from the typically Chinese objectivisation and concretisation of reality.

57 On Contradiction, p. 18.Google Scholar Quoted here and subsequently in the translation of On Contradiction in Mao's, Selected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1954), Vol. 2.Google Scholar The original edition is entitled: Mao, Tse-tung, Mao-tun Lun (Peking: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1952).Google Scholar

58 On Practice, p. 296.Google Scholar

59 Mao Tse-tung's anti-doctrinairism was recognised even by some Russian writers in Stalin's times. Cf. Sobolev, A. I., “Vydayushchiysya obrazets tvorcheskogo marksizma” (“An outstanding example of creative Marxism”), Voprosy Filosofü (Problems of Philosophy) (Moscow), No. 6 1952Google Scholar, p. 195, which is a review of the Russian edition of Vol. 2 of Mao's, Selected Works.Google Scholar

60 On Contradiction, p. 25.Google Scholar

61 Pien-cheng-fa Wei-wu Lun, p. 23.Google Scholar

62 As Engels used to say: “Being, indeed, is always an open question beyond the point where our sphere of observation ends.” Anti-Dühring, end of Chap. IV, Part I.

63 On Contradiction, p. 33.Google Scholar

64 Pien-cheng-fa Wei-wu Lun, p. 23. In this connection, on p. 24, Ibid., Mao criticises “mechanistic materialism” for having attributed only a “passive role” to thinking and for “regarding the thought as a mirror that reflects nature.” In view of this criticism of the “mirror” one must wonder whether Lenin's “photography” was also not pure “mechanistic materialism” to Mao.

65 On Contradiction, p. 24.Google Scholar

66 Needham noted recently that the classical Chinese philosophy came “not only to the type of thinking usually called Hegelian, or approximating to that of Whitehead, but even more fundamentally or exactly, to what is now being investigated under the head of combinatory logic.” Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, loc. cit., II, p. 77.

67 On Practice, p. 296.Google Scholar

68 Here are Lenin's words, quoted in full from the place to which Mao made his reference: “Thus, in accordance with its nature, man's thinking is capable of giving and gives us an absolute truth, which adds up as a sum total of relative truths.” Lenin, V. I., Materializm i empiriokrititsizm (Materialism and Empiriocriticism) (Moscow: Gospolizdat, 1951), p. 118, or in Chap. 2, Section 5, of all other editions.Google Scholar

69 Ibid. p. 116.

70 Engels, Anti-Dühring, beginning of Chap. IX, Part I. In principle, Engels classified truths according to their scientific exactness, starting with what he called “eternal truths” of the platitude type and going up to more and more complex but inexact truths. Cf. ibid.

71 To Engels “nothing remains as absolutely universally valid except motion.” Dialectics of Nature (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954)Google Scholar, p. 317. “The whole vast process goes on in the form of interaction [and within it] everything is relative and nothing absolute.” Marx, and Engels, , Selected Correspondence (Moscow: F.L.P.H., 1953), p. 507Google Scholar. “Dialectical philosophy dissolves all conceptions of final, absolute truth. … For it nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and passing away, of endless ascendancy from the lower to the higher.” (Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, beginning of Section I.)

72 Perhaps it may be worth mentioning here that the Yugoslavs, too, have recently concluded that the Chinese do not recognise Lenin's conception of the absolute. Cf. Edvard, Kardelj, Socialism and War (Belgrade: International Affairs, 1960), pp. 39–40.Google Scholar It thus appears that all “Greek Orthodox” Marxist-Leninist “believers” are united in the incompatibility of their way of thinking with that of the “Taoist” Marxist-Leninist “practitioners.” This may sound, of course, as a joke, but there is something serious in it too.

73 Cf. also a revealing discussion that took place in China, beginning with the paper by Shih Ch'eng, “Is the ‘Identity of Thought and Existence’ a Materialistic Principle?” Che-hsueh Yen-chiu (Philosophical Research) (Peking), No. 11–12 12 14, 1959. English in JPRS, Communist China Digest, No. 38, 04 18, 1961.Google Scholar

74 On Practice, p. 293.Google Scholar

75 Ibid. p. 294.

76 Ibid. p. 288. In this connection a hypothesis may be tendered that, unlike to the modern Russian metaphysical “dialectics,” it ought to be easy for the Chinese dialectical materialism to accept the “indeterminacy principle” of modern nuclear physics and chemistry, since it recognises the change in the state of matter resulting from an experiment.

77 Ibid. pp. 295–296.

78 Ibid. pp. 283–284 and 294.

79 Cf. Joseph, Needham, “Human Laws and Laws of Nature in China and the West,” Journal of the History of Ideas (New York), XII, 1951, pp. 3–30Google Scholar and 194–230. Also Dirk, Bodde, “Evidence for ‘Laws of Nature’ in Chinese Thought,” Harvard Journal of Oriental Studies (Cambridge, Mass.), XX, No. 3–4 12 1957, pp. 709–727.Google Scholar

80 Cf. Joseph, Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1952), p. 7 et passim.Google Scholar

81 For the fact that Mao's views in this respect are solidly shared by others, cf., for example, the following argument by Liu Shao-ch'i against the critics of the Great Leap Forward: “Some people assert that the adoption of a leap forward rate of advance will violate objective economic laws and give rise to disproportions in the various branches of the national economy. But … objective laws cannot be violated. … If those laws are violated it is impossible for the national economy to develop by leaps and bounds.” Liu, Shao-ch'i, “The Victory of Marxism-Leninism in China,” Peking Review, II, No. 39 10 1, 1959, p. 13. According to this interpretation of laws, therefore, the failure of the Great Leap Forward merely proved their inviolability.Google Scholar

82 Remarkable in this respect is his 1936 declaration that “if we copy and apply without change” the Soviet Union's revolutionary experience and strategy in China, “we shall be ‘cutting the feet to fit the shoes’ and be defeated.” Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-tung (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1963), p. 77.Google Scholar

83 In Mao's view, “the initiative is not something imaginary but is concrete and material.”Google ScholarIbid. p. 130.

84 Cf. ibid. pp. 24, 51–52.

85 Ibid. p. 44.

86 Ibid. pp. 11 and 17.

87 Cf. Imperialism and All Reactionaries Are Paper Tigers (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1961).Google Scholar

88 This suggestion was first made still in the summer of 1962, in the first German version of this study. Since then, of course, Mao has eaten a good bite of this particular pear to learn its taste, as he likes to say.Google Scholar

89 Cf., for example, L. Althusser, loc. cit., p. 18.Google Scholar

90 Althusser, op. cit., p. 30, stresses his conclusion that Mao's dialectics does not contain “any trace of the originally Hegelian categories,” such as the “division of one,” “alienation,” “Aufhebung,” etc. Although this is undoubtedly true in the literal sense, i.e., in the sense that there is indeed no connection between Mao and Hegel, still one must not disregard, as Althusser does, the fact that many of Mao's postulates and propositions lead essentially and formally to that what is meant by “alienation,” “Aufhebung,” etc., in Marxian dialectics.

91 On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, Section 10.

92 One reader of the earlier draft of this paper has, it seems, aptly observed that there is a noticeable difference in emphasis and tone between these early views of Mao and his On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, written twenty years later. Although in this later work Mao still stresses the universality of contradictions, his long discussion of the non-antagonistic contradictions leaves the reader with the impression that now Mao tends to be more Confucian in his stress on a more balanced and harmonious unity of opposites than in his earlier days.

93 Talk with the American Correspondent Anna Louise Strong; in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, IV (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1961), p. 98.Google Scholar

94 On Contradiction, pp. 19, 21, 34 and 52.Google Scholar

95 Ibid. pp. 21 and 34.

96 Ibid. pp. 45, 44. At several places Mao uses the term “identity” here as synonymous with “complementarity.” The nonsensical phrase, “identity of opposites,” he took from Lenin in one of the quotations, and had to struggle with it at several instances until he arrived at the concept of “complementarity.” Lenin used his “identity of opposites” in logical, rather than dialectical, sense, and also because in Russian “tozhdestvo” (identity) is synonymous with “yedinstvo” (unity) in the sense of “polnoye skhodstvo” (complete overlapping, coincidence). Lenin had never come to the idea of complementarity of opposites as the prerequisite of their unity inside a contradiction. Cf. for more details the first German edition of this paper.

97 On Contradiction, p. 43.Google Scholar

98 It seems that in practice Mao used the principle of the unity of opposites more than Lenin and Stalin did. For instance, Mao chose to unite “national bourgeoisie” with the CCP's revolution, while the Bolsheviks chose to alienate all bourgeoisie without exception; Mao permitted, after some time, the former rich peasants and landlords to join the collective farms, while the Russians liquidated all of them physically in advance, and so forth. Somehow it seems that Lenin and Stalin tended more to divide the opposites than to unite them, perhaps because they did not recognise complementarity of opposites, as mentioned in note 96; whereas for Mao it was easier to think in terms of unity of opposites because of its overwhelming presence in Chinese thought and dialectics.

99 On Contradiction, pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

100 Ibid. p. 35.

101 Ibid. p. 28.

102 Ibid. p. 50.

103 Ibid. p. 37.

104 Ibid. p. 42.

105 Ibid. p. 38.

106 Ibid. p. 46. On p. 44 Mao postulates again: “Each of the two contradictory aspects within a thing, because of certain conditions, tends to transform itself into the other, to transfer itself to the opposite position.”

107 Ibid. p. 48.

108 Ibid. p. 44.

109 Asian Peoples' Anti-Communist League, A Research on Mao Tse-tung's Thought of Military Insurrection, Taipei, 10 1961, p. 28 et passim.Google Scholar

110 Cf. Vsevolod, Holubnychy, “Maos Dialektik zum Atomkrieg,” Echo der Zeit (Münster), No. 38 09 22, 1963, p. 10.Google Scholar