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Mao's CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 20 (2018) Issue 3 Article 3 Mao's "On Contradiction," Mao-Hegel/Mao-Deleuze Kenneth Surin Duke University Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the American Studies Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Education Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Other Arts and Humanities Commons, Other Film and Media Studies Commons, Reading and Language Commons, Rhetoric and Composition Commons, Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons, Television Commons, and the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <[email protected]> Recommended Citation Surin, Kenneth. "Mao's "On Contradiction," Mao-Hegel/Mao-Deleuze." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 20.3 (2018): <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.3248> This text has been double-blind peer reviewed by 2+1 experts in the field. The above text, published by Purdue University Press ©Purdue University, has been downloaded 450 times as of 11/ 07/19. This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. This is an Open Access journal. This means that it uses a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. Readers may freely read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles. This journal is covered under the CC BY-NC-ND license. UNIVERSITY PRESS <http://www.thepress.purdue.edu> CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb> Purdue University Press ©Purdue University CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." In addition to the publication of articles, the journal publishes review articles of scholarly books and publishes research material in its Library Series. Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck- Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Langua-ge Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monog-raph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <[email protected]> Volume 20 Issue 3 (September 2018) Article 3 Kenneth Surin, "Mao's On Contradiction, Mao-Hegel/Mao-Deleuze" <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol20/iss3/3> Contents of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 20.3 (2018) Special Issue Rethinking Critical Theory and Maoism. Ed. Kang Liu <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol20/iss3/> Abstract: Mao Tse-Tung's famous 1937 essay "On Contradiction" is regarded as a significant attempt to redefine and reapply Marx's notion of a "dialectical contradiction" to the Chinese revolutionary conjuncture of Mao's time. I set out the principles outlined in Mao's essay, before arguing that the revolutionary conjuncture of his time no longer exists in the era of globalization and neoliberalism. I conclude that a new conception of "antagonism" is needed, and revise Mao's position with the aid of the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. Kenneth Surin, “Mao's On Contradiction, Mao-Hegel/Mao-Deleuze” page 2 of 8 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 20.7 (2018): <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol20/iss3/3> Special Issue Rethinking Critical Theory and Maoism. Ed. Kang Liu Kenneth SURIN Mao's On Contradiction, Mao-Hegel/Mao-Deleuze Mao Tse-Tung’s 1937 essay “On Contradiction” is a landmark contribution to Marxist philosophy, though it is more often praised than analyzed. Mao, like Lenin and Marx before him, was interested in the logic(s) of change, and for all three “dialectical materialism” was the preeminent of these logics. For Marx, Lenin, and Mao, the defining feature of dialectical materialism, as a logic of change was the pivotal role it gave to the notion of antagonism, cast by them in terms of contradiction. My aim in this paper is to give an account of Mao’s position on contradiction, and then to suggest that his insights on this issue can be retained, more or less faithfully, if recast in terms of a post-Hegelian conception of antagonism, involving the replacement of contradiction by a suppler set of categories which encapsulate all the principles associated with antagonism, but without the conceptual and practical inflexibility built into the notion of contradiction. Mao greatly modified the Hegelian-Marxist notion of contradiction to take China’s unique situation into account, but he was still beholden to an orthodoxy represented by these Hegelian-Marxist rubrics. That is to say, Mao was absolutely correct to say that historical, social, political, and economic processes are riven by antagonism, but, to depart from Mao, these antagonisms are not necessarily, or best, explained by the concept of contradiction.1 For the Marxist philosopher, all the above-mentioned processes are in a state of constant transformation—transformations which reflect, even as they purport to resolve, the antagonisms integral to these processes. Mao sought ways to theorize the Chinese embodiment of these (for him, antagonistic and contradictory) transformations, at a level both abstract and yet attentive to the uniquely specific. Mao begins “On Contradiction” by retaining Marx’s insight that capitalism involves a social system beset by contradictions because the social classes within it have incompatible class-bound goals. Following Marx and Lenin, Mao said these incompatibilities would lead to class conflict, economic crisis, and eventually revolution. In this revolution, the existing order would be supplanted by the oppressed classes, who would now possess the means to obtain political power. To quote Mao: Changes in society are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in society, that is, the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the contradiction between classes and the contradiction between the old and the new', it is the development of these contradictions that pushes society forward and gives the impetus for the supersession of the old society by the new. (70) Mao believed, somewhat simplistically, that there were two opposing worldviews, which he called the “metaphysical” and the “dialectical-materialist” (68-71). The former, deeply idealist (in the pejorative sense), had long prevailed in both the east and west. Again, perhaps simplistically, Mao maintained that historical forces enabled the European proletariats to find their way towards dialectical materialism, while the European bourgeoisie remained resolutely immured in the realm of “metaphysical”, and thus were unable to grasp how historical forces really operated. This blinded them to how exploitation takes place, not just in their own capitalist societies, but even in precapitalist societies (e.g. in slavery). Mao next follows Lenin in suggesting that contradiction is universal: [C]ontradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and … in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end…. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist…. Contradiction is universal and absolute, it is present in the process of development of all things and permeates every process from beginning to end. (72-74) This, to say the least, is a highly metaphysical claim. Mao was of course addressing his argument to comrades in a revolutionary situation, in which volatile and ever-changing conditions were the norm. “Contradiction” was a theoretical tool available to him at that time and in that circumstance, one extremely useful for a sense-making of these conditions and his revolutionary political practice, 1 All references to the English translation of Mao’s “On Contradiction” will be to the version in Žižek; as will be references to Mao’s “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions
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