MAO ZEDONG'S PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT: AN OUTLINE
📖 INTRODUCTION: THE THEORETICAL FOUNDATION OF MAOIST PHILOSOPHY
Beijing University Department of Philosophy, Mao Zedong Philosophical Thought Research and Teaching Office
Trial textbook, first edition November 1983, print run of 25,000 copies
Chief editor: Song Yixiu; chapter authors include Feng Guorui, Wang Dumei, Xu Quanxing, Chen Baohua, Zhang Wenchu, Chen Zhannan
Four major sections: Introduction, Epistemology, Dialectics, Practical Applications
🌍 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION — THE OBJECTIVE CONDITIONS FOR MAO'S PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
⚙️ Section 1: Historical and Material Conditions That Made Mao's Philosophy Inevitable
🌐 The World-Historical Context After the October Revolution
As Marx wrote, "every genuine philosophy is the spiritual quintessence of its time" — Mao's philosophy is no exception
October 1917: Lenin's revolution transforms world history, dividing the old era from the new, creating a bridge between the socialist West and the subjugated East
The proletariat's transition from "class in itself" to "class for itself" — posed as the defining revolutionary task of the 19th century — now required completion under new global conditions
By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, capitalism entered its imperialist stage: monopolistic, decaying, and dying — in Lenin's formulation, the eve of proletarian revolution
🔄 The Eastward Shift of Revolutionary Gravity
Marx and Engels operated when European bourgeois revolutions were incomplete; the proletarian revolution remained in its preparatory period
Lenin moved to the Leninist stage of Marxism, leading Russia — the weakest link in the imperialist chain — to socialist victory
Lenin declared: "After the awakening of the East, the modern revolution has entered a new period"; and further: "The outcome of the struggle ultimately depends on Russia, India, China, etc., which constitute the vast majority of the world's population"
Yet Lenin himself acknowledged: colonial and semi-colonial peoples faced tasks "you will not find in any Communist textbook" — solvable only "based on your own experience"
🇨🇳 China as the Focal Point of Eastern Contradictions
China: a semi-colonial, semi-feudal country of enormous population, extreme poverty, and politically and economically uneven development
From the Opium War onward, China became the most fiercely contested prize among imperialist powers
In 1930, Mao analyzed the contradictions converging on China: between imperialists themselves, between imperialism and colonies, between imperial powers and their domestic proletariats — all intersecting inside Chinese territory
India, by contrast, was merely Britain's sole colonial possession — it lacked China's multi-layered, multi-imperial contradictions; India's contradictions were far less concentrated, less fierce, less complex
China, therefore, was uniquely positioned as the site where a new Marxist theory of colonial revolution had to be forged
🏗️ The Second Historical Task: Building Socialism
After October 1917, a second great question confronted Marxists: how does the victorious proletariat construct the new society?
Lenin died seven years after the revolution, before completing socialist industrialization and collectivization
Stalin achieved industrialization and collectivization, built the world's first socialist state, defeated fascism — yet could not fully resolve the task of socialist construction
It fell to Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party to boldly explore the consolidation of People's Democratic Dictatorship and the building of socialist society
🔬 Section 2: Mao's Philosophy as Scientific Summation of Revolutionary Experience
🎖️ Mao's Emergence as China's Outstanding Revolutionary Leader
The CCP's 12th National Congress Party Charter declares Mao Thought to be "the crystallization of the collective wisdom of the Chinese Communist Party"
Mao himself repeatedly insisted: "Mao Zedong Thought is not my own — it comes from all of you" (1945, debating inclusion in the Party Constitution at the Seventh Congress)
In 1948, in a telegram to Wu Yuzhang, Mao explicitly rejected the term "Maoism," insisting "Chinese revolutionary experience" encompassed the collective contributions of the CCP
As Zhou Enlai stated: Mao "emerged from the revolutionary movements of a hundred years of modern Chinese history" — he was a people's leader, not a self-appointed genius
📚 On Practice and On Contradiction as Blood-Written Philosophy
Mao declared the Selected Works were "written in blood" — distilled from the deaths, defeats, and victories of the Chinese revolution
On Practice (1937) and On Contradiction (1937): not plagiarisms of Soviet textbooks, but the philosophical crystallization of the First and Second Civil Wars
These must be read alongside: Analysis of Chinese Social Classes (1926), Report on the Hunan Peasant Movement (1927), A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire (1930), Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War (1936)
Without having personally led and fought the revolution — without waging struggle against Chen Duxiu's opportunism and Wang Ming's dogmatism — these philosophical masterworks could never have been written
🤝 Collective Wisdom, Not Individual Genius
Mao's writings were frequently circulated among Party cadres before publication — Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun all contributed to the intellectual foundation
Many texts were issued as Party documents, products of collective deliberation
Other revolutionary leaders — Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De — also contributed their own theoretical works to what constitutes Mao Zedong Thought as a whole
🔗 Section 3: Mao's Philosophy and Its Relationship to Marxist Philosophy
✅ Inheritance, Not Repetition — Development, Not Rupture
Mao stated: "The October Revolution's cannon fire brought us Marxism-Leninism"; by summer 1920, he had become "a Marxist in theory and to some degree in action"
In January 1921, he wrote: "Historical materialism is the philosophical foundation of our Party"
Mao's philosophy is completely consistent with Marxist philosophy — both belong to the proletarian worldview — and any attempt to sever them is fundamentally absurd
Yet Mao's philosophy is equally not a mechanical repetition or wooden transplant — it answered new questions, summarized new experience, added new content
At Yan'an, Mao lectured on materialist dialectics at the Northern Shaanxi Public School and the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University, preparing a full outline of three chapters: idealism vs. materialism; dialectical materialism; laws of materialist dialectics
📜 Section 4: Mao's Philosophy and China's Classical Philosophical Heritage
🐉 "Seeking Truth From Facts" — A Term Reborn
The phrase "seek truth from facts" (实事求是) originated in Ban Gu's Book of Han, describing Prince Liu De of Hejian in the Han Dynasty as one who "studied earnestly and sought what was genuinely true"
Tang dynasty scholar Yan Shigu glossed it as: "strive to obtain actual facts, always seek genuine truth"
Mao elevated it to the level of dialectical-materialist epistemological line: "'Facts' are all objective things that exist; 'truth' is the internal connections among objective things, i.e., their regularity; 'seek' means we study"
⚖️ The Knowledge-Action Problem Resolved
China's philosophical tradition had long debated zhī-xíng (知行, knowledge and action): Zhu Xi argued "knowledge precedes action"; Wang Yangming posited "unity of knowledge and action"; Wang Fuzhi advocated "action precedes knowledge"; Sun Yat-sen reversed to "action is easy, knowledge is difficult"
Mao's On Practice scientifically resolved this millennia-long debate on the basis of revolutionary praxis
🌿 Chinese Classical Dialectics Absorbed and Transformed
British scholar Joseph Needham argued that dialectical materialism originated in China, was transformed by Marx, and returned to its source — a "not uninsightful" claim
The Book of Changes (Zhou Yi): abstracted natural and social phenomena into yin and yang — the two fundamental opposing forces; Hegel praised it, saying "the Chinese have also concerned themselves with abstract thoughts and pure categories"
Mao commented: "One-point-ism has existed since ancient times; two-point-ism has also existed since ancient times. The ancients said, 'one yin, one yang — that is the Tao.' This is the ancient two-point view"
Sun Tzu's Art of War: pairs of dialectical opposites — offense/defense, strong/weak, many/few, direct/indirect (qi/zheng) — providing Mao's military dialectics with ancient Chinese roots
Laozi's Tao Te Ching: "Misfortune is where fortune rests; fortune is where misfortune lurks" — cited directly by Mao to illustrate the conditionality of the transformation of opposites
🕰️ Section 5: Historical Development of Mao's Philosophical Thought
🌱 Phase One: Germination and Initial Formation (1921–1930)
🔰 Party Infancy and Philosophical Embryo
The Party, in Mao's own words, was "still an infant" — lacking experience in the united front, armed struggle, and party building; without full grasp of China's historical and social conditions
1922: CCP Second National Congress issued its Manifesto, identifying the semi-colonial, semi-feudal character of Chinese society, charting a two-stage revolutionary strategy
March 1926: Mao published Analysis of Chinese Social Classes — applying Marxist class analysis to China's uniquely complex class structure; refuting Chen Duxiu's denial of proletarian leadership and his overestimation of the national bourgeoisie
1927: Report on the Hunan Peasant Movement — scientific summation of peasant revolutionary experience; application of the principle that social being determines social consciousness; demonstration that the central question of revolution is the question of political power
August 1, 1927: Nanchang Uprising — first armed resistance against the Kuomintang; followed by Autumn Harvest Uprising, Guangzhou Uprising, and over 200 armed insurrections
1928–1930: Why Can Red Political Power Exist in China?; The Struggle on Jinggang Mountains; A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire — creative application of materialist dialectics to reveal the uneven development of Chinese political economy; theorizing "workers' and peasants' armed independent regime" (encircling cities from the countryside)
December 1929: Gutian Conference Resolution — drafted by Mao; laid down the founding principles of the Red Army's proletarian military ideology, distinguishing it from bourgeois conceptions; formulated the sixteen-character guerrilla formula: "Enemy advances, we retreat; enemy halts, we harass; enemy tires, we attack; enemy retreats, we pursue"
May 1930: Against Book Worship (originally Investigation Work) — first text in Party history to explicitly articulate "thought line" (思想路线) as a concept; proclaimed "no investigation, no right to speak"; declared "Chinese revolutionary struggle's victory depends on Chinese comrades understanding Chinese conditions"
📐 Phase Two: Systematization (1930–1937)
🔺 Wang Ming's Dogmatism and Its Defeat
Wang Ming's "Left" deviation: four years of dogmatic rule, mechanically applying Comintern instructions and Soviet experience; nearly brought the revolution to ruin
January 1935: Zunyi Conference — in the course of the Long March, at the moment of greatest crisis, the Party recognized Mao's correct line; Mao's leadership established over the whole Party; Left opportunism ended
December 1935: Wayaobao Conference — Mao's report On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism: dialectical analysis of shifting primary contradictions; identification of the Sino-Japanese contradiction as the new principal contradiction; theoretical foundation for the Anti-Japanese National United Front
December 1936: Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War — summation of Second Civil War; exposed dogmatists' mechanical transplant of general war laws; dialectics applied to military science: war's origins and essence, the relationship between war and politics, the dialectics of subjective and objective in war, the dialectic of overall and partial situations
🎓 The Two Philosophical Masterpieces: July–August 1937
On Practice and On Contradiction — lectures at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University in Yan'an
Philosophical summation of the First and Second Civil Wars; clearing the ideological remnants of Right and Left opportunism, especially Left dogmatism
Together: the systematization of Mao's philosophical thought — the epistemology of practice-based knowledge; the dialectic with contradiction at its core; the correct worldview and methodology for Chinese revolutionary victory
These two texts mark Mao's philosophy as a major contribution to the development of Marxist philosophy
🎯 Phase Three: Maturity and Multi-Dimensional Unfolding (1937–1949)
🔑 The "Living Soul" of Mao Thought Crystallized
This period's general feature: creative application of the philosophy of On Practice and On Contradiction to military affairs, politics, economics, culture, situation analysis, and Party building
The three essences of Mao Thought — seek truth from facts, the mass line, independence and self-reliance — were systematized and perfected during this era
1941–1942: The Yan'an Rectification Movement — CCP's first large-scale rectification; On Reforming Our Study, Rectify the Party's Style of Work, Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing; systematic articulation of the dialectical materialist thought line
Mao inscribed "seek truth from facts" for the Yan'an Central Party School in 1942; inscribed "seek truth from facts, resolutely oppose empty talk" for the Seventh Congress in 1945
1945: Seventh Congress — Party Constitution formally adopts Mao Zedong Thought as the Party's guiding ideology — the most important marker of philosophical maturity
🎖️ Military Philosophy Perfected
Problems of Guerrilla Warfare Against Japan (1938); On Protracted War (1938); War and Strategy Problems (1938)
Liberation War period: the famous Ten Military Principles (from The Present Situation and Our Tasks, 1947) — crystallization of People's War strategy and tactics; dialectics of quality vs. quantity, subjective vs. objective, roots vs. conditions in actual combat
The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party; On New Democracy (1940); On Coalition Government (1945)
Scientific analysis of China's two-stage revolution — new democracy followed by socialism; refutation of "accomplishing everything in one stroke"; complete theoretical system for the New Democratic Revolution
🏗️ Phase Four: Further Development in the Socialist Period (1949–1957)
🔩 Socialist Transformation — Dialectics of Quantity and Quality
"Peaceful redemption" of capitalist industry and commerce via state capitalism — the first realization in international communist history of Marx, Engels, and Lenin's conception of peaceful transformation
Deng Xiaoping declared this "one of the most brilliant victories in the history of our country and world socialism"
Agricultural collectivization via mutual aid cooperatives to collective economy: a masterwork of applying the law of quantitative-qualitative change
⚖️ The Theory of Two Types of Social Contradictions — A New Contribution
Against the international tendency (pre-Mao) to deny that socialist society contains contradictions; against the so-called "harmonious dialectics" that reduces dialectical opposites to mere "differences"
Mao: socialist society still has contradictions; productive forces and production relations, economic base and superstructure remain the basic contradictions of socialist society
Creation of the theory of two types of contradictions: antagonistic contradictions between the enemy and the people; non-antagonistic contradictions among the people — requiring strictly different methods of resolution
On the Ten Major Relationships (1956): after hearing reports from 34 industrial, agricultural, commercial, financial, and transportation departments, Mao applied the dialectical two-point view to 10 pairs of major contradictions in socialist construction
🌀 Phase Five: Tortuous Development (1957–1976)
⚠️ The Correct and the Erroneous: A Necessary Distinction
The Party's 11th Central Committee Sixth Plenum Resolution correctly evaluates Mao's merits as primary and his errors as secondary
Mao's late-period philosophical contributions include:
The law of humanity's leap from the Kingdom of Necessity to the Kingdom of Freedom (Speech at the Enlarged Central Work Conference, January 1962): "Freedom is the recognition of necessity and the transformation of the objective world"
Where Do Correct Ideas Come From? (1963): "Matter can become spirit; spirit can become matter" — deepening On Practice's epistemology; articulating the two leaps in the cognitive process
Theory of the Three Worlds (February 1974): creative application of materialist dialectics to international struggle; scientific strategy for the international anti-hegemony united front
On the Genius Question (1970, against Lin Biao's factional "theory of genius"): "Genius depends not on one person or a few people — genius depends on the Party, the vanguard of the proletariat; genius relies on the mass line, on collective wisdom"
Mao's late-period serious errors: the Great Leap Forward's reckless subjectivism; the Cultural Revolution's deviation from materialist epistemology and dialectics — departures from Mao Zedong Thought itself
The errors were not those of explicit philosophical idealism, but subjective idealism in practical activity — proceeding from beautiful ideals rather than China's actual conditions
🌅 Phase Six: New Development After 1976
🔄 The Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee — A Historic Turning Point
Smashing of the Gang of Four in October 1976: Party and revolution rescued from calamity
Repudiation of the "Two Whatevers" (whatever Mao said, whatever Mao decided); affirmation of the need to grasp Mao Thought as a scientific system; the great debate on the criterion of truth
Guiding principle: "Emancipate the mind, seek truth from facts, unite as one and look to the future"
Deng Xiaoping at the 12th National Congress opening: "Our modernization must proceed from China's actual conditions... combine Marxist universal truth with the concrete reality of our country, follow our own road, build socialism with Chinese characteristics — this is the fundamental conclusion drawn from our long historical experience"
Four new philosophical contributions of the post-1978 period:
Re-establishment of the dialectical materialist thought line
Further revelation of the objective laws of socialist construction
Establishment of the Chinese path to socialist modernization — based on the general and particular dialectic (universal laws of construction + socialist construction laws + specifically Chinese laws)
Dialectical relationship between material civilization and spiritual civilization — each a condition and purpose of the other; socialist spiritual civilization as an indispensable condition for building socialism
🔭 SECTION ON HISTORICAL STATUS: MAO'S PHILOSOPHY IN THE HISTORY OF MARXIST PHILOSOPHY
🎓 Contributions Across Five Philosophical Domains
1️⃣ Materialist Philosophy: "Practical Materialism" Deeply Elaborated
Engels: "The great basic question of all philosophy, especially modern philosophy, is the relation of thinking and being"
Mao's innovation: focused not on abstract propositions of matter and consciousness, but on the identity of thinking and existence in practical activity
Propositions like "theory and practice united," "subjective and objective unified," "matter becomes spirit, spirit becomes matter" all embody this identity
In Chinese revolutionary conditions, the battle was not against openly idealist academics, but against subjective idealism within the Party's practical activity — the "Left" adventurism that substituted wishful thinking for objective analysis
2️⃣ Epistemology: Systematic Theory of the "Active, Revolutionary Theory of Reflection"
Marx and Engels: introduced practice into epistemology as its foundation
Lenin: clarified the two paths — "from things to sensation and thought, or from sensation and thought to things"; articulated the dialectical path "from living perception to abstract thought, and from there to practice"; declared "dialectics is also the theory of knowledge of Marxism" — but without systematic elaboration
On Practice directly completed what Lenin proposed but left unfinished: systematic, comprehensive theory of practice-based revolutionary epistemology
3️⃣ Dialectics: Concentrated Exposition of the Law of the Unity of Opposites
Marx planned but never wrote a popular book on dialectics (letter to Engels, January 1858)
Lenin in the Philosophical Notebooks: proposed that dialectics "can be briefly defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites" — but only outlined, never systematically developed
On Contradiction: the first systematic Marxist monograph on dialectics centered on the law of the unity of opposites; elaborated the universality and particularity of contradiction, principal contradiction and principal aspect, identity and struggle of opposites, quantitative and qualitative change, affirmation and negation
Against the international "no-contradiction theory" in socialist society: Mao repeatedly taught the Party to act according to dialectics
4️⃣ Dialectics of Nature: Internal Contradiction and Infinite Divisibility of Matter
January 1955: at a conference on nuclear energy development, when told protons and neutrons were the "basic particles," Mao said: "I don't think so — protons, neutrons, electrons should still be divisible — one divides into two, unity of opposites!" — six months later, American scientists discovered the antiproton
1957: "The atomic nucleus is also divisible... the relationship of the nucleus and electron is also the unity of opposites"
1964: Reading Japanese physicist Sakata Shoichi's Dialogue on the New Concept of Elementary Particles — Mao declared its significance for enriching dialectical materialism
1965–1966: Chinese physicists developed the "Straton Model" of matter structure, inspired by this philosophical guidance
1977 Hawaii International Particle Physics Symposium: an American physicist proposed naming the particle (then called "straton" or "quark") "Maon" — in honor of Mao's theoretical prediction of deeper layers of matter
Qian Xuesen (internationally renowned Chinese physicist): "Chairman Mao made extremely incisive remarks on the infinite divisibility of matter from the height of materialist dialectics — he predicted the development of high-energy physics twenty years in advance"
5️⃣ Historical Materialism: Social Basic Contradiction as Central Theme
Engels on superstructure and economic base — initially emphasized the determining role of the economic base; later elaborated the reaction of superstructure, responding to Eugen Dühring's idealism and Paul Barth's vulgar sociology
Mao in On Contradiction: "It is true that the productive forces, practice, and the economic base generally play the principal and decisive role... but production relations, theory, and the superstructure in turn manifest their principal and decisive role under certain conditions — this must also be recognized"
In the socialist period: new concept of "basic social contradiction"; theory of two types of social contradictions (antagonistic vs. non-antagonistic); consistent affirmation that "the people, only the people, are the motive force in making world history"
6️⃣ Military Science: Complete System of Marxist Military Dialectics
Engels: founder of Marxist military science — 20+ years of military writings, systematic analysis of army organization, strategy, tactics, technology, leadership
Lenin: clarified war's relation to politics and revolution; theory of transforming imperialist war into civil war
Mao: applied dialectical materialism and historical materialism comprehensively to the concrete conditions of Chinese revolutionary war
Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War (1936): already contains the embryo of On Practice and On Contradiction — it is the On Practice and On Contradiction of war
On Protracted War (1938): the sequel to On Practice and On Contradiction in military application
Ten Military Principles (1947): crystallization of People's War strategy
Just as Marx's Capital is the paradigm of dialectics applied to political economy, Mao's military writings are the paradigm of dialectics applied to military science — they occupy a brilliant page in the history of Marxist dialectics
📣 INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION: THE WORLD VERDICT ON MAO'S PHILOSOPHY
🌐 Soviet Recognition (Before the Sino-Soviet Split)
Pravda editorial, December 18, 1950: On Practice "develops the basic principles of Marxist-Leninist epistemology... The feature of Mao Zedong's work is that the profound Marxist analysis of complex philosophical questions combines with the vividness and clarity of presentation"
Cominform journal, 1951: On Practice is "a living embodiment of the thesis of the unity of theory and practice" — recommended to all communist parties as a weapon against idealist distortions of Marxist epistemology
Soviet Academy of Sciences textbook on Marxist philosophy (1958): On Contradiction is "an outstanding, profound, and highly valuable contribution to Marxist dialectical materialism"
Rozental and Yudin's Concise Philosophical Dictionary (1955): On Practice and On Contradiction are "outstanding examples of the creative resolution of Marxist-Leninist philosophical questions based on concrete materials of Chinese history"
Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 26 (1954): Mao's works are "an enrichment of the treasury of Marxist science, of great theoretical and practical benefit to all national liberation and communist movements internationally"
🌏 Global Communist Recognition
Numerous Marxist-Leninist parties declared that "Mao Zedong's philosophical works helped lay the ideological foundation of our movement"
Asian, African, and Latin American theorists affirmed that "the dialectical materialist philosophical theory enriched by Mao Zedong is now and will continue to be a reliable criterion for analyzing and evaluating major events of human history, politics, and society"
🧑🎓 Even Bourgeois Scholars Concede
An American bourgeois scholar, after comparative study of Marxist thinkers, published in a West German journal: On Practice and On Contradiction "in neither style nor philosophical content are inferior to most comparable works of Marx and Engels" — "both are short and concise, yet rich and penetrating; complete and lucid... comparable to Marx's famous Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy"
After the Sino-Soviet split, certain theorists reversed course — as a French scholar noted, these same people "removed Mao Zedong Thought from the Marxist textbooks in which it occupied an honorable position only yesterday" for transparently political reasons
🔑 CHAPTER TWO: EPISTEMOLOGY — SEEK TRUTH FROM FACTS
💡 Section 1: Seek Truth From Facts as the Core of Mao's Epistemology
🎯 Deng Xiaoping's Definitive Formulation
"Seek truth from facts is the starting point and fundamental point of Mao Zedong Thought"; further: "The basic point of Mao Zedong Thought is seek truth from facts — the combination of Marxist-Leninist universal principles with the concrete practice of Chinese revolution"
🔁 What "Seek Truth From Facts" Actually Means
"Facts" = all objective things that exist
"Truth" = the internal connections among objective things, i.e., their lawfulness/regularity
"Seek" = our act of researching and investigating
It means: proceed from actual conditions, link theory to practice; combine Marxist-Leninist universal principles with Chinese revolutionary concrete practice
🚫 The Theoretical Crystal of Anti-Dogmatism
Right opportunism (Chen Duxiu's capitulation): applied 18th-century European bourgeois revolutionary theory to China, ignoring China's actual contradictions and class relations → surrenderist line → catastrophic defeat of the Great Revolution
"Left" dogmatism (Wang Ming): mechanically copied Comintern instructions and Sovietized every formula, treating the Comintern's word as sacred → "Left" adventurism → near-annihilation of the revolution
Both shared the same epistemological error: subjective-objective split; cognition-practice divorce
Mao's line: combine universal truth with concrete practice — from struggle, create new situations — this is the correct thought line
📌 Investigation and Research as the Basic Method
"Without investigation, no right to speak" — Against Book Worship (1930)
"All conclusions come at the end of investigation, not before it"
1961: Mao declared it "the year of investigation and research" — calling for bold flourishing of the investigative style
Marx and Engels spent their entire lives investigating; Lenin and Stalin similarly; Mao personally conducted extensive social investigations before writing his major theoretical works
Investigation must be conducted with the attitude of learning from the masses — treating the masses as teachers, not objects; as friends, not targets of surveillance: "The masses are the real heroes; we ourselves are often childishly naive"
🔄 Section 2: The Marxist View of Practice
🌐 Social Practice's Basic Forms and Their Interrelationship
Practice = "the subjective realized in the objective"; "doing or action"
Three basic forms of social practice (Mao's original systematization):
Production struggle (most fundamental; decisive for all other activities; the basic source of human knowledge)
Class struggle (in class society, gives the development of human knowledge its most profound impact; the working class as a knowing subject moves from "class in itself" to "class for itself")
Scientific experiment (a crucial form of social practice; the basis for mastering nature; socialism requires its modernization)
Marx, Engels, and Lenin each discussed these forms from different angles — but Mao was the first to subsume them all within the concept of social practice in a complete and integral theoretical formulation
📊 Practice as the Criterion of Truth
Before Marxism: "you have your logic, I have mine" — no scientific resolution to the criterion of truth
Marxism: practice is the sole criterion — addressed in Section 3 of Chapter 2 on the Dialectics of the Cognitive Process
🏆 Practice as the Foundation of Genius
1970, Lushan Conference: Lin Biao's faction promoted the "theory of genius" as political camouflage for seizing power
Mao's My Personal Opinion: is history made by heroes, or by the masses? Is knowledge innate (idealist apriorism) or acquired through practice (materialist reflection theory)?
"Genius is not created by one person or a few people — genius depends on the Party, the vanguard of the proletariat; genius relies on the mass line, on collective wisdom"
Ruzki: Lenin's assessment of Sverdlov — "his outstanding organizational talent was forged in long years of struggle"
Indian wolf-children (discovered 1920, documented by Rev. Singh): Amala (age 2) and Kamala (age 7–8) — raised by wolves, walked on all fours, howled at night; Kamala took two years to learn to walk, six years to walk independently, four years to learn six words, seven years to learn forty-five words — proof that isolated from social practice, human cognitive development cannot occur
🔬 Section 3: The Dialectics of the Cognitive Process
🚀 The Two Leaps in Cognition
Lenin: "From living perception to abstract thought, and from there to practice — that is the dialectical path of knowing truth"; "the idea of transforming the ideal into the real is profound and important for history"
Mao's systematic formulation in On Practice: "Cognition begins with practice; having obtained theoretical knowledge through practice, one must also return to practice. The active role of cognition not only manifests in the active leap from sensory to rational knowledge, but more importantly must manifest in the leap from rational knowledge to revolutionary practice"
Later, Where Do Correct Ideas Come From? (1963): articulated as "matter can become spirit; spirit can become matter" — the two leaps:
Material → Spirit: accumulation of sensory experience → leap to rational knowledge (scientific abstraction)
Spirit → Material: rational knowledge → revolutionary practice (transforming the objective world)
🔄 Cognition as Infinite Spiraling Process
A correct understanding often requires multiple cycles of practice → cognition → practice
"The development of social practice is endless; the development of human cognition is also endless"
History shows: old contradictions resolved → new contradictions arise → practice pushes cognition forward indefinitely
Mao in 1962: "Human history is a history of continuous development from the Kingdom of Necessity to the Kingdom of Freedom. This history will never end... Therefore humanity must always summarize experience, discover, invent, create, and advance" — refuting both arrogant complacency and pessimistic defeatism
⚡ CONCLUSION: THE IRREVERSIBLE HISTORICAL POSITION OF MAO'S PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
🏅 A Fact the Enemy Alone Denies
Mao's philosophical thought enriched and developed Marxist philosophy in both breadth and depth — this is acknowledged by the world's peoples as an objective historical fact, deniable only by its enemies
As Zhou Enlai stated: Mao read ancient books and used historical lessons with the greatest mastery — his knowledge was broader, deeper, and greater for it
In the great practice of socialist modernization, new experience will be accumulated, new theory created, new philosophical summaries and conclusions drawn — and Mao Zedong Thought will necessarily continue to blossom and bear fruit
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