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Is Mao Tse-tung's “Dialectical Materialism” a Forgery?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

John E. Rue
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In a recent interview with Edgar Snow, Mao Tse-tung asserted that he did not remember having written “Dialectical Materialism,” and that if he had written it, he surely would have remembered it. There is both internal and external evidence to support Mao's assertion. If the article was published under his name without his approval, then those who undertook this venture may have had the support of Soviet authorities, perhaps even of Stalin himself. There is also the possibility that it was forged and published by intriguers within the CCP who disapproved of the united front policies which Mao had just elaborated in his “New Democracy.” By first weakening his position with a damning forgery, they might then have hoped to overthrow him with Moscow's tacit approval. The Russian returned student leaders, Wang Ming and Po Ku, might well have devised such a plot.

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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , May 1967 , pp. 464 - 468
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Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1967

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References

1 Edgar Snow, “Interview with Mao,” New Republic, February 1965, p. 21; “Dialectical Materialism,” Min-chu (Democracy), Shanghai, March 1940Google Scholar. An abridged translation appears in Schram, Stuart R., The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung, (New York: Praeger, 1963), pp. 120–24Google Scholar. Two translations of the entire article have been published: Doolin, Dennis J. and Golas, Peter J., “‘On Contradiction’ in the Light of Mao Tse-tung's Essay on ‘Dialectical Materialism,’” China Quarterly, No. 19 (July-September 1964), pp. 38–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Tse-tung, Mao, “On Dialectical Materialism: A Fragment,” translated and annotated by C. S. Chao, Studies of Soviet Thought, III, No. 4 (December 1963), 270–77Google Scholar. Karl A. Wittfogel and Vsevolod Holubnychy have commented on the article: Wittfogel, Karl A., “Some Remarks on Mao's Handling of Concepts and Problems of Dialectics,” Studies of Soviet Thought, III, No. 4 (December 1963), 251–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holubnychy, Vsevolod, “Mao Tse-tung's Materialistic Dialectics,” China Quarterly, No. 19 (July-September 1964), pp. 3–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

Not doubting the authenticity of “Dialectical Materialism,” these students of Mao's thought have used the article as evidence that Mao did not develop his mature theory of contradictions until a relatively late date. Doolin contends that “Dialectical Materialism,” a “rambling, vague attempt at philosophical discourse,” must have preceded Mao's polished theoretical essay “On Contradiction.” He understandably concludes from the immaturity of “Dialectical Materialism” that “On Contradiction” is falsely dated 1937 and was actually written much later (1950–52). On the same basis, Wittfogel contends that Mao was not at ease when dealing with conceptual abstractions in his early attempts to write on contradictions and needed to thoroughly revise his work on that subject before it was finally published in 1952. Wittfogel and Chao thus point to “Dialectical Materialism” as an example of the intellectual unevenness characteristic of Mao's philosophic writing and call attention to his extensive borrowing from Chinese translations of Soviet philosophical authorities. Holubnychy contends that Mao has elaborated several new epistemological notions in his philosophical essays—notions which were not developed previously by Engels, Lenin, or Stalin. He cites “Dialectical Materialism” as an example of Mao's method of ascending from the abstract to the concrete. He believes the method of moving from practice to theory and back to practice that Marx used in his Capital was rediscovered independently by Mao. To prove his point he cites two passages from Mao's “Dialectical Materialism” (together with several from “On Practice”). Unfortunately for his argument, the first passage comes from a Chinese translation of Mitin's work on the subject, and the second, while not a quote, could be a restatement of Mitin's main point: that thought is always only a partial representation of reality and the real wholes in the material world can never be completely and faithfully represented in any man's thinking. (Holubnychy, p. 21 and p. 23.)

2 “On New Democracy” originally appeared in January 1940, in the first issue of Chung-kuo wen-hua (Chinese Culture), a magazine published in Yenan. Tse-tung, Mao, Mao Tse-tung Selected Worlds (New York: International Publishers, 1954), III, 106–56Google Scholar; Mao Tse-tung hsuan-chi (Peking: Jen-min ch'u-pan She, 1952), II, 655–704Google Scholar. Hereafter the Selected Works will be cited as SW and the Hsüan-chi as HC.

3 For a discussion of Mao's relations with the Comintern, Li Li-san and the Stalinist faction in the CCP (the group known as the Twenty-eight Bolsheviks), see my recently published book, Mao Tse-tung in Opposition, 1927–1535 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966), pp. 135–38, 141–58, 235–65 and 275–91Google Scholar.

4 Istoriya Vsesoyuznoy Kommunisticheskoy Partii (bol'shevikpv) Kratky kurs. Pod redaktsiey komissii Tsk. VKP (b). Odobron Tsk VKP (b) 1938 god (Moscow: 1938), pp. 99–127Google Scholar; English Version: History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (b), Short Course, edited by a Commission of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), (London: 1939), pp. 105–31Google Scholar.

5 Rosenthal, M. M. and Yudin, P., Kratky filosofsky slovar' (Short Philosophical Dictionary), (Moscow: State Publishing House, 1939)Google Scholar. The Chinese translation is Lo-ching-t'ai-erh, M. M. and Yu-chin, P., Chien-ming che-hsueh tz'u-tien, translated by Yeh-fang, Sun (Shanghai: Sheng-huo tu-shu, March 1940)Google Scholar. Also published by Hsin-hua shu-tien, September 1948 (no place given); Hua-pei (North China): Hsin-hua shu-tien, August 1948; Hong Kong: Hsin chung-kuo shu-ch'u, 1949; and Peking: San-lien shu-tien, April 1950. All five editions have been examined. For all items checked, die translations are identical in all editions. The August and September 1948 editions have an introduction different from that in the 1940, 1949, and 1950 editions. In the 1949 and 1950 editions, the 1940 introduction is reprinted verbatim. All editions have different pagination. The 1949 Hong Kong edition is hereafter cited simply as Tz'u-tien, unless another edition is specified. Tz'u-tien, preface to die 1949 edition, p. 3.

6 Liu Shao-ch'i, “Lun Kung-ch'an-tang yuan ti hsiu-yang” (On the Training of a Communist Party Member), K'ang-jih min-tsu t'ung-i chan-hsien chih-nan (Guide to the Anti-Japanese People's United Front), VIII (July 1940), 59–142. The first two passages quoted are on page 60 and the third on page 86 in this Guide reprint of Liu's speech. This speech was first published in Chieh-fang (Liberation), Numbers 82, 83, and 84. There is no complete translation of this speech in the English language. Only the last portion of the speech is reprinted in the various editions of the Rectification Documents. See Cheng-feng wen-hsien (Rectification Documents) (Yenan: Chieh-fang-she, first ed., 1944)Google Scholar. The part reprinted in that collection has been ably translated by Compton, Boyd, Mao's China: Party Reform Documents, 1942–44. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1952, pp. 108–55.Google Scholar)

7 Mao Tse-tung, “On Dialectical Materialism,” Chao trans., pp. 274 and 276; see also, Doolin and Golas, p. 44.

8 Mao, SW, III, 112–14, 137; HC, II, 662–64, 685.

9 Karl Wittfogel, “Some Remarks on Mao's Handling of Concepts and Problems of Dialectics,” pp. 264–65. Mao, “Dialectical Materialism,” Chao trans., pp. 270–74. Sixty-eight lines in this English translation are taken from Mitin's Dialectical Materialism published in Russian in 1933; seventeen lines first appeared in the Mitin article on the same subject published in the 1935 edition of the Bol'shaia sovetshfiia entziklopediia.

10 Mitin's encyclopedia article was translated into Chinese by Ai Ssu-ch'i and Chang I-li and published in Peking in June 1936, under the title Hsin che-hsueh ta-kang (Outline of the New Philosophy). Mitin, M., Hsin che-hsueh ta-kang, (Peking: Tu-shu sheng-huo chu-pan, 1936)Google Scholar. Widely distributed, it had been reprinted four times by early 1937. Mitin's Dialectical Materialism (1933) also was translated by Ai Ssu-ch'i and published as Chapters I and II of Che-hsueh hsuan-chi (Selected Philosophical Writings) published in Shanghai in March 1939. Ssu-ch'i, Ai, ed., Che-hsueh hsuan-chi (Selected Philosophical Writings) (Shanghai: 1939)Google Scholar.

11 Wetter, Gustav A., Dialectical Materialism (New York: Praeger, 1953), p. 178Google Scholar.

12 Whiting, Allen S. and Shih-ts'ai, Sheng, Sinkiang: Pawn or Pivot? (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1958), pp. 229–31Google Scholar.

13 Mao Tse-tung, “Dialectical Materialism,” Chao Trans., p. 276.

14 Ibid.

15 Mao, SW, III, 129; HC, II, 678.

16 Mao, “Dialectical Materialism,” Chao trans., p. 276.

17 Tz'n-tien, pp. 6–7 Sun's choice is kuan-nien lun. In Chinese, Sun writes, although the term kuan-nien lun is not as common as the term wei-hsin lun, he believes that the use of wei-hsin lun as a translation of the Marxist-Leninist term “idealism” might lead many Chinese readers to understand the concept in accordance with the unscientific reasoning of old China, “concerning the mind,” in which hsin stands for mind. Therefore he rejected wei-hsin lun as the best translation of “idealism,” although he retains it as a second choice.

18 Mao, HC, I, 280 and 284. In the official English version of the HC, wei-hsin lun and only wei-hsin lun is translated “idealism.” Mao, SW, I, 291 and 296. “Idealism” is a very touchy subject for Mao. Li Li-san had accused him of representing peasant consciousness (a form of idealism) shortly after the Sixth Congress of the CCP in 1928. In 1931, Stalin officially asserted that Trotsky was the leading “Menshevizing idealist” in the Communist movement, from which time onward idealism was associated with Trotskyism. After one of Stalin's agents drove an axe into Trotsky's head in March 1940, Mao has wisely avoided using even the same Chinese translation of idealism that was used in Moscow to characterize Trotskyites. In the Moscow Chinese translation of the Short Course, idealism is rendered wei-hsin chu-i. Sun must have strongly disagreed with the translator of the Moscow edition, for he does not even list wei-hsin chu-i as one of the possible correct translations of “idealism.” Only kuan-nien lun is used in the body of Tz'u-tien. In all editions of Mao's works the Chinese terms used to translate “idealism” differ from Sun's choice in Tz'u-tien and from the term used in the Moscow translations of the Short Course. Mao uses two terms, shifting from one to the other when his writings were revised for publication in the official HC in 1951. Before 1951, Mao's choice was wei-hsin kuan-nien. This term appears in Chapter I, section 5, of the “Resolutions for the Ninth Conference of Delegates from the Chinese Communist Fourth Red Army, December 1929” (the Ku-t'ien Conference), and it is used in all editions of the Cheng-feng wen-hsien published before 1951. See Mao Tse-tung, Chung-kuo kung-ch'an-tang hung-chun ti ssu-chun tai-piao ta-hui chueh-i-an, i-chiu-erh-shilt nien shih-erh yueh, Min-hsi, Ku-t'ien (Resolutionsfor the Ninth Conference of Delegates from the Chinese Communist Fourth Red Army, December 1929, Western Fukien, Ku-t'ien), (Hong Kong: Hsin-min-chu ch'u-pan she, 1949), p. 11. For an excellent translation see Compton, pp. 244–45. Professor Compton compared the 1945, 1949, and 1950 editions of the Cheng-feng wen-hsien in making his translation; all use wei-hsin kuan-nien. This term is altered in the revised edition of Mao's HC published in 1951. In that edition and in all subsequent reprints, the term used for “idealism” in this section of the Ku-t'ien resolutions has been changed to chu-kuan chu-i. This is officially translated as “subjectivism” in the SW. Wei-hsin lun is used only in Mao's essay “On Practice.”

19 Cf. note 3, above.