SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The focus of this work is on the formation and the development of the principles underlying contemporary Chinese political theory. The concern is with the definition of the categorical framework explaining the meaning of the adaptation of Marxism to China, and with the effect of these categories on the structure of the concepts of theory. Thus, this is a study of the ground of the condition of reason, and of the expression of this ground in the activity of thought. This is brought out through an analysis of the dominant theoretical controversies of the two periods in which the philosophical principles of Chinese Marxism were first posited, and then established: 1935-1940 and 1949-1955. These two eras are linked by the publication in 1952 of "On Contradiction," which was the culmination of the attempt to define the categories governing this political thought. It is the argument of this study that "On Contradiction" was Mao's philosophical declaration of China's Marxist independence. And that in the early 1950s, this was recognized and understood by leading Party intellectuals, who, in turn, realized the postulates of theory by denying the applicability of a Soviet model for China. This principle of a Marxist identity through opposition was informed, in part, by the contributions of Party theorists in Shanghai and Beijing, in the mid- to late 1930s. Therefore, through an analysis of the dialectic of formulation, of that which was both preserved and cancelled in the statement of intention, the character of this Marxism is made clear. In conclusion, it is shown that, that the codification of principle which arranged meaning for theory has continuously represented the interests of the state. Reason has been defined instrumentally, as a philosophy of and for national construction.