JOSEPH LIU

MAO'S 'ON CONTRADICTION'

I. OUR ORIENTATION
To study Mao's thought with the intention of destroying the Chinese
People's Republic because the latter is Communist - this prejudice has
been rejected by the twenty year's existence of the People's Republic,
which, politically and economically, has been - if not always - quite
successful. Philosophically, this kind of thing is an attempt to attack
the theory of Chinese Communism from the outside. The result is a simple
monologue.
To study Mao's thought with the intention of only applauding is ex-
cluded by the very principle of Mao's thought which is not trained to see
unity (except as a temporary, transitory and the non-essential aspect of
things). It is trained to see contradictions, and in particular, the intrinsic
contradictions.
To see the intrinsic contradictions of Mao's thought is, in our opinion,
not a small matter. We believe that one has to put himself in Mao's social
and cultural context and to know what kind of Chinese history he was
talking about, to feel what a Chinese would have felt in the face of a
national collapse, and to try to follow him in the real battle for China's
independence. Then, and only then, one is perhaps ready to analyse his
philosophical theory such as the On Contradiction.
"Has anybody to go through the same process, one would object, in
order to study Mao or any philosopher? It sounds ridiculous." No, one
does not have to, for there are thousands ways of doing one thing. It
depends what goal one wants to achieve. But for us, this study is not only
philosophical (we mean here a study of all the concepts involved in a
problem) but a reflection on the justification or the lack of justification for
the whole of Chinese history in the light of current political developments.
Our study is also existential as well as of future value for us. This is our
orientation - after all, Mao wrote On Contradiction in this state of mind.

II. THE SITUATION WHEN MAO WROTE*ON CONTRADICTION'

On Contradiction was written in July 1937, shortly after the beginning of

Studies in Soviet Thought U (1971) 71-89. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 1971 by D. ~eidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland
72 JOSEPH LIU

open hostilities between China and Japan. The declaration of the Sino-
Japanese war brought the sworn enemies - Nationalists and Communists-
temporarily together for the confrontation of the common enemy, the
Japanese. This was a turning point of the bloody civil war which had been
going on for almost ten years. On Contradiction was written specifically
for the Chinese Communists, who spent 10 years being chased by Chiang
Kai-shek's army and who paid heavily for the Revolution. Now, all of a
sudden, the wind had changed. They were told by the Party to campaign
for the united front of the Nationalists and the Communists. From the
point of view of dogma, this was almost impossible for the Chinese
Communists who had made it clear since 1927 that the Nationalists were
the representatives of the great capitalists of China and the agents of
imperialism. Emotionally, it was much harder for the Communists to
accept the policy of the unitedfront, for a good 90 per cent of the Commu-
nist army was killed by the Nationalists and a good number of their
relatives were killed as well, including Mao's first wife, Yang Kai-hui. It
would have been much easier for the Communists to fight on two fronts,
against both the Japanese and the Nationalists. But this would have meant
suicide for them and most probably the suicide of the Chinese nation, as
well.
This was the occasion for Mao's philosophical treatise, On Contra-
diction, where he interpreted the historical and political situations of both
China and the world. He still holds this theory today, as can be seen from
his speeches since 1950.
But why did Mao adopt the dialectics of historical materialism as the
base of his philosophical theory? Let us go back a little into the past.

III. THE PAST

In 1893, the year when Mao was born, China was already in turmoil. Since
the Opium War (1839-1842), China was so weak that she yielded almost to
any foreign force which ventured to attack her. Later on, the Chinese
people always talked about 'since the Opium War', for it was the beginning
of a long breakdown, a crisis the likes of which Chinese civilization had
never known, The West, when it talks about the series of unhappy events
following the Opium War, has always been concerned with the humiliation
of China, as if China only lost face. Yes, to those whose fortune and social
MAO'S 'ON CONTRADICTION' 73

position were not influenced, it was perhaps purely a matter of face. But
the Opium War and its consequences had ruined the rural economy;
furthermore, the West's industrial invasion had worsened the already
crippled China, so much so that the Taiping movement (1850-1864) easily
roused the peasantry to rebellion. Social contradictions were felt by the
peasants much more keenly than loss of face by the intellectuals: the
peasants simply t o o k up arms and fought.
The Taiping rebellion was in reality an antithesis to the whole social
structure of the Manchu Dynasty and the Confucian culture: it negated
what the thesis had claimed.
Then, in 1900, there was the Boxer movement: a challenge to foreign
domination. It was a tragic event, but it showed, nevertheless, the contra-
dictions existing between the foreign exploiters and the Chinese population.
Successively, China had lost to the West lands, rights, and money, by
being defeated again and again militarily. W h a t saved China from total dis-
integration was the fact that she was too big to be swallowed by any
foreign power; she had to be divided piecemeal; any attempt to take her
over completely would have roused loud protests - not from the Chinese,
but f r o m the interested foreign countries! Then came the Republican
Revolution (1911) of Sun Yat-sen (1860-1925). Just in the middle of the
Republican reform and the incessant bargaining between the foreign
powers and the Nationalists, between the Nationalists and the Warlords,
between the Warlords and the foreign powers, the Chinese Communist
Party was founded (1921). The reason was, as M a o said:
The troubles that have befallen our nation are extremely serious, and only a scientific
approach and a spirit of responsibility can lead it on to the road of liberation. 1
But what could be that scientific approach and spirit of responsibility?
Marxism-Leninism, M a o answered:
For a hundred years, the finest sons and daughters of the disaster-ridden Chinese
nation fought and sacrificed their lives, one stepping into the breach as another fell, in
quest of the truth that would save the country and the people. This moves us to song
and tears. But it was only after World War I and the October Revolution in Russia that
we found Marxism-Leninism, the best of truths, the best of weapons for liberating our
nation. 2
But Marxism-Leninism was not only a tool to find the solution to the
Chinese problem, the very use of this tool required a complete re-
examination of Chinese history, and that was what M a o did:
74 JOSEPH LIU

The ruthless economic exploitation and political oppression of the Chinese peasants
forced them into numerous uprisings against landlord rule. There were hundreds of
uprisings, great and small, all of them peasant revolts or peasant revolutionary wars -
from the uprisings of the Chen Sheng, Wu Kuang, Hsiang Yu and Liu Pang 8 in the
Chin Dynasty, those of Hsinshih, Pinglin, the Red Eyebrows, the Bronze Horses 4 and
the Yellow Turbans 5 in the Hart Dynasty, those of Li Mi and Tou Chien-teh 6 in the
Sui Dynasty, those of Wang Hsien-chih and Huang Chao 7 in the Tang Dynasty, those
of Sung Chiang and Fang La s in the Sung Dynasty, that of Chu Yuan-chang 9 in the
Yuan Dynasty, and that of Li Tzu-cheng 10 in the Ming Dynasty, down to the uprising
known as the War of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the Ching Dynasty. The scale
of peasant uprisings and peasant wars in the Chinese history has no parallel anywhere
else. The class struggle of the peasants, the peasant uprisings and peasant wars constituted
the real motive force of historical development in Chinese feudal society. For each
of the major peasant uprisings and wars dealt a blow to the feudal regime of the time,
and hence more or less furthered the growth of the social productive forces. However,
since neither new productive forces, nor new relations of production, nor new class
forces nor any advanced political party existed in those days, the peasant uprisings and
wars did not have correct leadership such as the proletariat and the Communist Party
provide today: every peasant revolution failed, and the peasantry was invariably used
by the landlords and the nobility, either during or after the revolution, as a lever for
bringing about dynastic change. 11

How was it that valuable Chinese civilization, so praised, defended and

developed by the Confucians over two thousand years had produced so
many bloody, wide-scale peasant revolutions? How was it that at the
mere challenge of the foreign powers, China - this wonderfully civilized
country - was ready to collapse? Only by putting up an antithesis to the
whole system did Mao begin to see light and hope for the survival and
the future of China.
But Chinese history was only part of world history. It had become
exceedingly clear for the Chinese in Mao's time that China was not the
middle kingdom surrounded by vassal states. Therefore what happened
in China could no longer be considered as the norm for the rest of the
world. The fact that England, France, the United States and Japan, as
well as many Western countries, were prosperous but not following
Marxism and not breaking definitely with their traditions should have
been taken into serious consideration by Mao and the Communists, and in
fact was. 12 This was the practical side. Theoretically, Western-style
capitalism was rather foreign to Chinese intellectuals, too. A Chinese,
when he is not just minding his own affairs and those of his family, is
bound by the very Confucian tradition to think in terms of humanity and
human history as a whole. The very notion of the middle kingdom over
MAO'S 'ON CONTRADICTION' 75

many thousands of years had made virtually every Chinese intellectual an

internationalist. Confucius said: "Within the four seas (the world) we are
all brothers. ''la A Chinese intellectual will find it hard to be interested
only by profit-seeking, sometimes purely nationalistic ambitions. Marxism-
Leninism simultaneously satisfied the practical and the intellectual needs
of the Chinese intellectual.

IV. ' O N C O N T R A D I C T I O N ' : THE THEORETICAL PART

In order to make things clearer, it does not seem out of place to divide
On Contradiction into two parts - the theoretical, and the practical.
Right from the beginning, Mao quoted Lenin: "Dialectics in the proper
sense is the study of contradiction in the very essence of objects. T M
Based on this affirmation, Mao proceeded to discuss the various aspects of
dialectics. He divided the topic into six parts, but the first part is not
really an aspect of the dialectics but rather an opposition that the ma-
terialistic dialectics assumed vis-/t-vis idealism and a reaffirmation of the
stand of the materialists. Mao affirmed that historically there could only
be two philosophical tendencies, namely idealism and materialism.
Since the essay was not written for the purpose of refuting idealism but
to help the Chinese Communist dogmatists to be aware of the nature of
dialectics and to have a sense of its multiple dimensions, one should not
seek the justification in it of the battle against idealism. It is true that there
are continous refutations of idealism; but still it remains essentially a
document for the explanation of dialectics.
The other five aspects are as follows.

1. The Universality of Contradiction

"There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contra-
diction nothing would exist. ''1~ What he meant here is that from the
smallest particle to the universe, from a human event to the whole of
human history, there is contradiction which is the very condition of the
motion of all.

2. The Particularity of Contradiction

"The contradiction in each form of the motion of matter has its particu-
larity. ''16 The point is that different things have different natures, so
76 JOSEPH LIU

different things have different contradictions, and "the particular contra-

dictions and the essence of each process lie in the long course of develop-
ment of each form of the motion of matter. In every form of motion, each
process of development which is real (and not imaginary) is qualitatively
different.''17 The different processes are determined by their different
nature which is not of quantity but of quality. In a lengthy process, the
conditions usually differ at each stage. Although the essence of process
remains unchanged since determined by the nature of contradiction, yet
in the long process, "fundamental contradiction becomes more and more
intensified as it passes from one stage to another in the lengthy process.
In addition, among the numerous major and minor contradictions which
are determined or influenced by the fundamental contradiction, some
become intensified, some are temporarily or partially resolved or mitigat-
ed, and some new ones emerge; hence the process is marked by
stages."ls

3. The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction

Here Mao wanted the readers to develop a sense of distinction in a complex
situation between what was a principal contradiction and what are but the
aspects of a principal contradiction; 19 yet the principal and non-principal
aspects of a contradiction can transform themselves into each other, and
the nature of the thing changes accordingly.20 Mao made then a point
with regard to the essential aspects of materialism and their changeable
nature under certain circumstances: "Although a materialist holds that
the productive forces, practice and the economic base generally play the
principal and decisive role..., it must also be admitted that under certain
conditions such aspects as the relations of production, theory and the super-
structure in turn manifest themselves in the principal and decisive role." 21

4. The Identity and Struggle of the Aspects of a Contradiction

Identity means that one of two aspects of a contradiction in the process of
development of a thing presupposes the existence of the other aspect, and
both aspects coexist in a single entity. Secondly, under given conditions,
each of the two contradictory aspects transforms itself into its opposite. 22
The struggle of the mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, but the unity
(coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary,
transitory, relative." 23
MAO'S 'ON C O N T R A D I C T I O N ' 77

5. The Place of Antagonism in Contradiction

Antagonism is one form, but not the only form, of the struggle of opposites,
according to Mao. This aspect of contradiction is brought out to answer
the century-old human question: "When will we have real peace and
tranquillity?" Everybody knows that as long as there is antagonism, it is
impossible to have real peace and tranquillity. If contradiction is the very
essence of things, then will we always have antagonism? In answer Mao
quoted Lenin: "Antagonism and contradiction are not at all one and the
same. Under socialism, the first will disappear, the second will remain." 25
As the theory stands, it seems that the most important affirmation was
the universality of contradiction; once this is established, everything else
follows. Again, in this affirmation, there are two main fields: the scientific
field and the social science one. We prefer to leave the former one for some
other time, for what Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao did was to seek
scientific support for their social theory. Today, if they had to do it again,
they would have to do it in a quite different way in accordance with the
progress of scientific data. But social science seems to be Mao's main pre-
occupation in this article On Contradiction. This brings us to the second
part: the practical side of On Contradiction.

V. ' O N C O N T R A D I C T I O N ' : THE PRACTICAL PART

In this thirty-five page essay almost one third is devoted to the explication
of the contradictions of class struggle and its stages, of the October Revolu-
tion - to illustrate the theoretical part. One has the impression that the
search for a solution of these current political problems helped to lay
down foundations necessary for the insight into dialectics, which was
grasped only after a political position was taken and a fighting spirit was
born.
The task Mao faced in writing On Contradiction was how to convince
his comrades of the necessity of a united front with the Nationalists. The
contradiction between the Nationalists and the Communists was absolute,
yes, but that was not all. One had to distinguish which was the principal
contradiction and which were the secondary ones in a given complex
situation - in this case, the Communist-Nationalist conflict. It had always
been the principal contradiction, but it could develop, and in different
78 JOSEPH LIU

stages; the forms of struggle could be changed; the principal contra-

diction could turn temporarily to unity. These possibilities had occurred
precisely in the Communist-Nationalist contradiction, because an utterly
new element entered, the Japanese invasion. The principal contradiction
of the Communist Revolution - the Nationalists - now ceded the place
to the Japanese and they could turn even into some sort of a friend for
fighting the common enemy, the Japanese, although the contradiction
between the Nationalists and the Communists could be in no way mini-
mized. In trying to understand the complexity of the contradiction of the
Sino-Japanese war in a semi-feudal and semi-colonial China, Mao
advanced the theory of the dialectics by introducing certain new elements,
namely the particularity of a contradiction, the different stages of process
of a contradiction, the interchangeable roles of the principal and the
secondary contradictions in a complex situation.

VI. T H E C U L T U R A L B A C K G R O U N D OF ' O N C O N T R A D I C T I O N '

People often wonder how China, such a 'peaceful' country with two
thousand years of 'splendid' Confucian tradition, could turn out to be
Communist. After all, Communism is a blatant foreign importation. And
how could Mao, a Chinese, advocate Communism? Is Mao a Chinese at
all? Or has he possibly been too much influenced by the West?
From Mao's autobiography,26 it is clear that he was well groomed in the
old educational system even though he did not seem to like Confucianism
when he was an adolescent. In his normal school days, he was very in-
fluenced by his teacher, Yang Chen-ch'i, 27 later on his father-in-law, and
Yang was a neo-Confucian. Judging from his abundant quotations of both
classical and popular literature. Mao is certainly one of those who know
China and her traditions better than most Chinese living today. The
published poems of Mao are in classical style: to be able to do so one has
to be very well acquainted with the Chinese literary and historical tradi-
tions. But still, what made him embrace Marxism, a foreign product?
Is Marxism a foreign product? The Sung Idealist philosopher, Lu
Xiang-shan (1139-1192), said: "All man has the same heart, and all heart
has the same reasoning. ''2s The peasants of ancient China revolted
throughout centuries; they did everything to overthrow the emperors.
This was patricide according to their current Confucian concept of an
MAO'S 'ON C O N T R A D I C TION' 79

emperor. This was happening when the German race was still largely
hunters and Marx was not even born. Take more recent events such as the
workers' movement in China, a movement that had all the characteristics
of a class struggle; this was happening before the Marxist literature was
translated into Chinese, before the first founder of the Chinese Communist
Party was interested in Marxism, 29 before the Chinese Communist Party
was founded. This workers' movement could have nothing to do with
Marx. 80
In the intellectual world, however, it had been much more difficult to
put up a real antithesis, though in the peasant revolts there had always
been intellectuals going to the peasant side. Still, a philosophical synthesis
was unlikely if not impossible, for the Confucian influence and indoc-
trination were too strong in China. However, a prominent Chinese
philosopher did form an antithesis as radical as one can think. He is Lao
Tze, the contemporary of Confucius.
Lao Tze, about two thousand five hundred years ago, said no to the
whole feudal system which Confucius tried hard to revive:

"When the great Tao is rejected,

Love and justice arise;
When wisdom and artifact appear,
Great knavery emerges;

When the six family relationships 81 lack of harmony

There comes filial piety;
When the country is disturbed,
There will be loyal ministers.

Do away with sanctity, and wisdom,

The people will profit hundredfold;
Do away with love and justice,
The people will love their parents and be kind to
their children;
Do away with skillfulness and profit,
There will be no robbers and bandits." 82

A total negation of the feudal moral and social values! Thus, Lao Tze
came to the philosophical discovery of dialectics: "Reversing is the move-
80 JOSEPH LIU

ment of T a t . " 88 The translation of the Chinese word fan into 'reversing'
is not exact, fan can mean to rebel, to contradict, to turn to the opposite
side. The common use of fan in the tradition was to act against authority,
particularly in armed revolutions. The philosophical sense of the word
fan, in modern use, can be simply rendered as 'contradiction', 'antithesis'
or 'total negation'. It would be clearer in our translation: "Contradiction
is the movement of T a t " rather than"Reversing is the movement of T a t . "
What can the word ' T a t ' be then? From the universe down to the
smallest particle, from human being to the lowest form of living thing,
there is T a t , and this is only one aspect of T a t . We can translate T a t into
our modern language as essence, principle, thingness (in contradistinction
to nature). Thus the phrase of Lao Tze will become: "Contradiction is
the movement of the essence of things."
Much more could be said about Lao Tze and dialectics. It suffices for
our purposes here, to show that the dialectical spirit is not alien to the
Chinese.
If we go back further, we find that another important philosopher,
Kwan Tze (almost a century before Confucius) - by no means a Taoist
but rather a legalist politician - was very acquainted with the use of
dialectics. 84 Here we must make a distinction between those who hold
that dialectics is the ultimate principle of the universe as M a t and the
materialists do, and those who limit themselves to certain use of dialectics,
holding that the dialectic is subordinated to the unchangeable T a t and
heaven. 85 Most of the ancient Chinese philosophers, though idealists
themselves, were quite at home with the use of dialectcs. But they still
held fast to the Confucian principle that the truth was unchangeable -
that is to say that the nature of a society is unchangeable.
The most striking version of dialectics is found in the most ancient and
respected classic, the I Ching.36 The I Ching principle is traditionally
believed to have been founded by a very ancient wise man, Fu Shi. The
most fundamental ideas are designated as follows:
Ying (feminine principle)
Yang (masculine principle)

These are the two inseparable yet opposite, complementary principles

which can be applied to all the things in the universe. These two principles
are perpetually acting and reacting, acting and being acted upon, acting
MAO'S 'ON CONTRADICTION' 81

in being acted upon and reacting in acting. These actions constitute the
motion of the universe as well as that of humanity and of every single
thing in the world.
The spirit of I Ching has strongly influenced Chinese civilization
the Taoist school and Confucian school as well, that it is perhaps what
the French call la sagesse chinoise-an awareness of the counterbalance of
opposites, and the acceptance of their reality.

VII. THE H I S T O R I C A L PROCESS AND 'ON C O N T R A D I C T I O N '

On Contradiction served not only as the theoretical base for analysing the
Civil War of 1927-1937, the Sino-Japanese war of 1937-1945, the Civil
War of 1946-1949, but also for interpreting all the political movements
after the establishment of the People's Republic. It is not that we are
following the principle of 'nothing succeeds better than success', but we
want to see whether the analysis and predictions based on On Contradiction
worked out or not. By this test of reality, we may be able to shed some light
on the inner structure this theory. Evidently we cannot here go through
events one by one. We can only select the most important ones briefly.
In 1928, when an armed Communist Revolution had begun, to many
people it was a madman's adventure. Mao had only several hundred men 37
plus his collaboration with a local bandit chief; together they numbered
about 3000. They occupied the mountains of Chingkang in the Hunan-
Kiangsi border area, surrounded by white powers. Mao analysed:
The long term survival inside a country of one or more small areas under Red political
power completelyencircledby a White regime is a phenomenon that has never occurred
anywhere else in the world. There are special reasons for this unusual phenomenon, it
can exist and develop only under certain conditions.88
From October 1930 to October 1934, Chiang Kai-shek, in person or
through other generals, waged four national campaigns to wipe out the
red force and he failed. The number of soldiers Chiang employed for
these campaigns was incredible. In the first campaign, Chiang employed
100000 men; in the second, 200000; in the third, 300000, led by Chiang
himself; in the fourth, the number is unknown.
The fifth campaign was launched with a million-man army and 150
planes with general Von Seeckt (1866-1936) as military adviser, the
German general who reorganized the German army after the defeat of
82 JOSEPH LIU

1918. Ten months later, owing to the wrong strategy of the Communist
leaders, the Red Army had to abandon their base; then they started the
Long March.
Mao's analysis proved the possible existence of a red base surrounded
by a white regime, and this possibility was due to the contradictions
between China and the foreign powers, within the Nationalist regime
itself and between the Nationalists and the Warlords. The Red Army was
very inferior in number and weaponry to the White Army, but morally
much stronger. After the fifth campaign, although the Red Army lost
90% of their military effectives, they still had 30000, ten times more than six
years before. 39
Mao predicted the general Japanese invasion of China in 1931,40 and
it happened in 1937.41
Mao predicted the growth of the Red Army in the face of great difficul-
ties: "...our forces, although small at present, will grow very rapidly. In
the conditions prevailing in China, their growth is not only possible but
indeed inevitable." 42 Chiang Kai-shek was not able to wipe the Red Army
out; neither were the Japanese. After 8 years of Sino-Japanese war, the
Communists held regions where 100000000 people lived, with a million-
man army.
After the World War II, Chiang Kai-shek started almost immediately
the campaign of 'unity', as he had done in 1927-1937, but this time with
much more military help from the Americans. 48 Mao's strategy was to
abandon certain cities. 44 This makes us remember the phrase of Lao Tze:
"(in war) One gives first in order to take." 45 and in Kwan Tze: "The art
of governing is to know that to give is to take. ''46 This strategy was
inaugurated in July 1946. In about ten months, Chiang's army was
defeated on all fronts.
The civil war was soon over. Among all the reconstruction movements,
almost all came true except the movement of the People's Commune at
the end of 1958. The People's Commune project has never been abandoned
but rather reinforced. As far as we can see, the future of China is being
directed to the Commune. For how long? Nobody seems to be able to tell.
But it is certain that the calculations of Mao and of the Central Committee
were wrong over a matter of major importance. When the movement
started in August 1958, the Central committee of the Chinese Communist
Party stated:
MAO'S 'ON CONTRADICTION' 83

At the present stage our task is to build socialism. The primary purpose of establishing
people's communes is to accelerate the speed of socialist construction and the purpose
of building socialism is to prepare actively for the transition to Communism. It seems
that the attainment of Communism in China is no longer a remote future event. We
should actively use the form of the people's communes to explore the practical road of
transition to communism.47

This bold attempt is based on wishful thinking about popular enthusiasm

and shows a serious contradiction between the leaders of the country
and the rural population:
The fact that the broad masses enthusiastically welcome the establishment of people's
communes shows that this is the logical trend of development of the present situation.
The main foundations of cultural production is the constantly growing political con-
sciousness of the 500 million peasants.4S

This movement ended at the end of 1958. Subsequently, China suffered

for three years from the bad crops, officially we are told because of the
bad weather, the Soviet withdrawl of their technicians, bad organization,
etc. 49 These were certainly serious reasons for the upset of the crops, but
to such a degree? One wonders if the true reason was not the utter failure
of the commune system and its repercussions. The estimation of the enthu-
siasm of the rural population was wrong, and the so-called 'logical
development' of the communes was not so logical. Worst of all, perhaps,
was the relationship between the Party and the masses. The first point
indicated well why Mao started the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Every
Marxist recognizes that a highly centralized government and a power-
centralized Communist Party with regard to Communist society - a
society without power structure - is the principal contradiction in a
socialist country. How is this going to be resolved is the problem that
faces the Communist Party in China.

VIII. THE PROBLEM OF ANTAGONISM IN 'ON CONTRADICTION'

The world is full of contradictions and it will have contradictions as long

as it moves; otherwise, it will end its life: "There is nothing that does not
contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist." 50 In
the 20th century, the main contradiction is the one between capitalism
and socialism. When this contradiction is resolved, what principal contra-
diction will mankind have? This question is a logical one but seems to be
without a possible answer: until now, all human experience has been
84 JOSEPH LIU

limited to the contradictions between capitalism and socialism; beyond

this we cannot possibly know. We know that there will not be any im-
portant contradiction like we have today. This is not a tautology; on
the contrary, it means a lot: man will be free from all the by-products of
capitalism: police, army, war, etc. Fine, but will there be antagonism?
First of all, here is what M a o meant precisely by antagonism:

In human history, antagonism between classes exists as a particular manifestation of

the struggle of opposites. Consider the contradiction between the exploiting and the
exploited classes• Such contradictory classes coexist for a long time in the same society,
be it slave society, feudal society or capitalist society, and they struggle with each
other; but it is not until the contradiction between the two classes develops to a cer-
tain stage that it assumes the form of open antagonism and develops into revolution.
The same holds for the transformation of peace into war in class society.51

And this antagonism is a necessity in a class society:

• . . r e v o l u t i o n s and revolutionary wars are inevitable in class society and [that] without
them, it is impossible to accomplish any leap in social development and to overthrow
the reactionary ruling classes and therefore impossible for the people to win political
powerP ~

We know at the same time that contradiction and struggle are universal
and absolute. 5~ We know also that antagonism is one form but not the
only form of the struggle of opposites. 54 We now want to ask, with all the
conditions cited above, will the classless society be free from the capitalist-
socialist antagonism, will it have contradictions that will lead to anta-
gonism and revolutionary antagonism? I f not, on what factual or theo-
retical base is this answer given? I f yes, what is the qualitative difference
between a socialist society and a society beyond the socialist society? For
qualitative difference there must be; this is the law of materialism, stated
in the very beginning of M a o ' s On Contradiction. In the struggle of the
opposites, will there be revolutionary antagonism for a qualitative
change?
The above is a theoretical question concerning the very foundation of
materialistic dialectic. N o w we want to ask a practical question. Is there
any qualitative difference with regard to antagonism between a capitalist
country and a socialist one ? In reality, we have:
Russia, after the death of Stalin, has turned out to be a'social-imperialist'
country, 54 as if the direction of a socialist country rested up on the shoulders
of one person. H o w good thus is a 'socialist' Russia?
MAO'S ' O N C O N T R A D I C T I O N ' 85

Czechoslovakia was invaded by the W a r s a w pact powers in 1968 under

the pretext o f defending 'international' C o m m u n i s m .
In Poland, after m o r e than 25 years of 'socialist' existence, the workers
o f G d a n s k clashed with the authorities, and tanks and troops were used
to supress them, in w h a t the c o m m e n t a t o r o f Renmin Ribao qualified as a
'revolutionary tempest'. 55 A n d now, the workers' m o v e m e n t is going on
in the Szczecin shipyards.
Only two years ago China was still in the Cultural Revolution which
Lin Piao termed as:

Our present congress is convened at a time when a great victory has been won in the
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, personally initiated and led by Chairman Mao.
This great revolutionary storm has shattered the bourgeois headquarters, headed by
the renegade, hidden traitor and scab, Liu Shao-chi, exposed the handful of renegades,
enemy agents and absolutely unrepentant persons in power, taking the capitalist road
within the Party... 56

We find revolutionary antagonism all over the socialist countries. W h e n

will this disappear? Lenin said, as quoted by M a o in On Contradiction:
" A n t a g o n i s m and contradiction are n o t at all one and the same. U n d e r
socialism, the first will disappear, the second will remain." 57 But when?
The idea o f the People's C o m m u n e in China was in the main to prepare
a classless society by way o f decentralization o f political p o w e r ; this does
n o t seem to be possible in the very international conflict o f the present day,
n o r in the near future. F o r the international conflict is requiring more and
more concentration o f p o w e r - the opposite direction o f real socialism.
Therefore, real socialism requires international collaboration, and M a o
is aware o f it. As he said in 1968:

We have won great victory. But the defeated class will still struggle. These people are
still around and this class still exists. Therefore, we cannot speak of final victory. Not
even for decades. We must not lose our vigilance. According to the Leninist viewpoint,
the final victory of a socialist country not only requires the efforts of the proletariat and
the broad masses of the people at home, but also involves the history of the world
revolution and the abolition of the system of exploitation of man by man over the
whole globe, whereupon all mankind will be emancipated. 5s

IX. C O N C L U S I O N

On Contradiction was a historical document, based on Marxism-

Leninism's dialectical materialism. The concrete political situations f r o m
86 JOSEPH LIU

the 1930's up to now have largely confirmed the author's analysis, and
these confirmations and this analysis provided new insights into Marxist-
Leninist theory. The world is moving ahead, and countless events are
happening. The theories of Marx, of Lenin and of Mao are there to offer
occasions for reflexion and perhaps experimentation. But is there some-
thing new to be added to On Contradiction? Will there be an utter re-
thinking or a creative understanding of it?

NOTES

1 Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Foreign Language Press, 1967,
Vol. II, p. 339.
Ibid., Vol. III, p. 17.
3 Chert Sheng, Wu Kuang, Hsiang Yu and Liu Pang were leaders of the first great
peasant uprising in the Chin Dynasty. In 209 B.C. Chert Sheng and Wu Kuang who
were among nine hundred conscripts on their way to take up garrison duty at a frontier
post, organized a revolt in Chihsien County (now Suhsien County in Anhwei Province)
against the tyranny of the Chin Dynasty. Hsiang Yu and Liu Pang were the most
prominent of those who rose in response to this armed uprising all over the country.
Hsiang Yu's army annihilated the main forces of Chin, and Liu Pang's troops took
Chin's capital. In the ensuing struggle between Liu Pang and Hsiang Yu, Liu Pang
defeated Hsiang Yu and founded the Hart Dynasty.
4 The Hsinshih, the Pinglin, the Red Eyebrows and the Bronze Horses are the names
of peasant uprisings in the latter years of the Western Hart Dynasty when peasant
unrest was widespread. In A.D. 8, Wang Mang overthrew the reigning dynasty, as-
cended the throne and introduced a few reforms to stave off the peasants' unrest. But
the starving masses in Hsinshih (in what is now Chingshan County in Hupeh) and
Pinglin (in what is now Suihsien County in Hupeh) rose in revolt. The Bronze Horses
and the Red Eyebrows were the peasant forces which revolted during his reign in what
are now central Hopei and central Shantung Provinces. The Red Eyebrows, the largest
of the peasant forces, were so named because the soldiers painted their eyebrows red.
5 The Yellow Turbans, a peasant force which revolted in A.D. 184, were named after
their headgear.
6 Li Mi and Tou Chien-teh were leaders of great peasant uprisings against the Sui
Dynasty in Honan and Hopei respectively at the opening of the 7th century.
7 Wang Hsien-chih organized an uprising in Shantung in A.D. 874. In the following
year Huang Chao organized an uprising to support him.
s Sung Chiang and Fang La were famous leaders of peasant uprisings early in the
12th century; Sung Chiang was active along the borders between Shantung, Hopei,
Honan and Kiangsu, while Fang La was active in Chekiang and Anhwei.
9 In 1351, the people in many parts of the country rose in revolt against the rule of the
Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty. In 1352, Chu Yuan-chang joined the rebel forces led by
Kuo Tzu-hsing and became their commander upon the latter's death. In 1368, he
finally succeeded in overthrowing the rule of the Mongol Dynasty, which had been
tottering under the attacks of the people's forces, and founded the Ming Dynasty.
MAO'S 'ON C O N T R A D I C T I O N ' 87

10 Li Tzu-cheng, also called King Chuang (the Dare-AU King), native of Michih,
northern Shensi, was the leader of a peasant revolt which led to the overthrow of the
Ming Dynasty. The revolt first started in northern Shensi in 1628. Li joined the forces
led by Kao Ying-hsiang and campaigned through Honan and Anhwei and back to
Shensi. After Kao's death in 1636, Li succeeded him, becoming King Chuang, and
campaigned in and out of the provinces of Shensi, Szechuan, Honan and Hupeh.
Finally he captured the imperial capital of Peking in 1644, whereupon the last Ming
emperor committed suicide. The chief slogan he spread among the masses w a s " Support
King Chuang, and pay no grain taxes". Another slogan of his to enforce discipline
among his men ran: "Any murder means the killing of my father, any rape means the
violation of my mother." Thus he won the support of the masses and his movement
became the main current of the peasant revolts raging all over the country. As he, too,
roamed about without ever establishing relatively consolidated base areas, he was
eventually defeated by Wu San-kuei, a Ming general, who colluded with the Ching
troops in a joint attack on Li.
11 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 308.
12 Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 1476, Chinese ed., Mao said: "The West has the capitalist type of
republic, but China cannot have it, for China is a country oppressed by Imperialism."
la Confucius, Analeets, ch. 12 Yen Yuan.
14 Selected Works, op. eit., Vol. I, p. 311. This quotation is from Lenin's Conspectus o f
Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow,
1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 249. Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 346, note 1.
15 Ibid., p. 316.
16 Ibid., p. 319.
17 Ibid., p. 321.
18 Ibid., p. 325.
19 Ibid., p. 331.
2o Ibid., p. 333.
21 Ibid., p. 336.
22 Ibid, p. 337.
23 Ibid., pp. 341-342. Quotation from V. I. Lenin's On the Question of Dialectics,
Collected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 358. Selected Works,
Vol. I, p. 347, note 22.
24 Ibid., p. 343.
25 Ib!d., p. 345. Quotation from V. I. Lenin's Remarks on N. J. Bukharin's Economies
of the TransitionaIPeriod, Selected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow-Leningrad, 1931, Vol. XI,
p. 357. Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 347, note 25.
26 Edgar Snow, RedStar Over China, Grove, New York, 1961, Part II, pp. 121-188.
~7 Ibid., p. 143. Mao told Snow: "The teacher who made the strongest impression on
me was Yang Chen-ch'i, a returned student from England, with whose life I was later
to become intimately related. He taught ethics, he was an idealist, and a man of high
moral character. He believed in his ethics very strongly and tried to imbue his students
with the desire to become just, moral, virtuous men, useful in society. Under his in-
fluence, I read a book on ethics translated by Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei and was inspired to write
an essay which I entitled 'The Energy of the Mind.' I was then an idealist and my essay
was highly praised by Professor Yang ch'en-ch'i, from his idealist viewpoint. He gave
me a mark of 100 for it.
2 6 Lu Xiang-shan, Collected Works, ell. 22, Miscellaneous Talks.
29 Cf. Jean Cheneaux, Le Mouvement Ouvrier Chinois 1919-1927, Mouton, Paris, 1962.
88 JOSEPH LIU

3o O. Bri~re, Fifty Years of Chinese Philosophy 1898-1948, transl, from the French,
Praeger, 1965, p. 24.
31 Father and son; elder brother and younger brother; (wife).
32 Lao Tze, Tao Te King, ell. 18-19.
83 Ibid., ch. 40.
34 Kwan Tze, Kwan Tze, Vol. V, ch. 15: "It is determined by the Tan of heaven that
anythingis pushed to the extreme, it is the time of reversing; that anythingis blossoming,
it is the time of fading." Equally Vol. 15, ch. 42 which reads: "The real ruler is he who
does nothing." We give here two examples out of many.
35 Mao used as example in On Contradiction the saying of a famous Confucian, Tung
Chung-shu (179-104 B.C.): "Heaven changes not, likewise the Tao changeth not."
Selected Works, Vol. 1, p. 346, note 4.
a6 I Ching, the complete translation of it is done by James Legge in 1882, collected in
Max Muller's The Sacred Books o f the East, Vol. XVI. Legge's introduction to I Ching
well explained the origin and the evolution of the book from King Wen down to
Confucius and his followers.
37 Jacques Guillermaz, Histoire deParti Communiste Chinois, Payot, Paris, 1967, p. 157.
38 Selected Works, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 64
39 Ibid., cf. pp. 179-254, the details of the military effectiveness of the five campaigns.
40 1bid., p. 154. Commenting on the Japanese seizure of Shenyang on September 19,
1931, Mao predicted: "The Incident of September 18, 1931, began the present stage of
Japan's colonization of China. As Japanese aggression was temporarily limited to the
four northeastern provinces, some people felt that the Japanese imperialists would
probably advance no further. Today things are different. The Japanese imperialists
have already shown their intentionof penetrating south of the Great Wall and occupying
all China."
41 1bid., p. 289.
42 1bid., p. 119.
a3 1bid., Vol. IV, Ch. ed., p. 1519. According to the White Paper published by the
United States, during and after the War, the U.S. Government gave to Chiang's
Government 4.5 billion dollars.
44 1bid., p. 1183.
45 Lao Tse, op. cit., ch. 36; Kwan Tze, op. cir., Vol. I, ch. 1.
46 Resolution of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on the Establish-
ment of People's Communes in the Rural Areas, Foreign Language Press, Peking, 1958.
47 Greet the Upsurge in Forming People's Communes, editorial in Red Flag, September 1,
1958.
48 Cf. Han su-ying, La Chine en An 2000 (transl. from the English), Stock, Paris, 1967,
section on Commune's failure.
49 Selected Works, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 316.
~o 1bid., p. 343.
51 Ibid., p. 344.
53 Ibid.
53 Ibid., p. 343.
54 Since we are discussing the article of Mao, it seems to be proper to use the Chinese
Communist terms to make things simpler.
55 Peking Review, December 28, 1970, No. 52, p. 16.
56 Lin Piao, Report to the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China,
Foreign Language Press, Peking, 1969, p. 1.
MAO'S 'ON CONTRADICTION' 89

5~ Selected Works, op. cit., p. 345. Quotation taken from V. I. Lenin's Remarks on
N. L Bukharin's Economics of the Transitional Period, Selected Works, Russ. ed.,
Moscow-Leningrad, 1931, Vol. XI, p. 357. Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 347, note 25.
58 Lin Piao, op. eit., pp. 63-64, Lin quoted a talk given by Mao in October 1968.