Marxist Theory in the May Fourth Period

For the purposes of this study, the first of these phases does not call for much elaboration. If those radicals who showed an

[1] M. Bernal, Chinese Socialism to 1907 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976), p. 37.

interest in socialism in the first decade of the century were cognizant of the historical outlook that underlay Marxism, they did not make use of their knowledge in their polemics on Chinese society and politics. When Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and T'ungmeng hui theoreticians debated the relevance of socialism to China, they did not even refer to historical or dialectical materialism.^[2] On the contrary, they concurred that Marxist analysis was not very relevant to China.^[3] Nevertheless, the first materialist analysis of Chinese history was undertaken a dozen years later by Hu Han-min, one of the major spokesmen for the T'ung-meng hui in 1905–1907, and Hu's interpretation of early Chinese society as "primitive communist" provoked the first controversy on Chinese social history triggered by Marxist historical ideas.^[4]

If historical materialism entered Chinese historical vocabulary before 1918, it failed to make any significant impact on the conceptualization of Chinese history. In terms of intellectual significance, its origins go back to 1918, when Chinese intellectuals undertook the first serious discussions of Marxist theory in the wake of the Russian Revolution. Thereafter, interest in and knowledge of Marxist theory expanded without interruption. Even though Chinese intellectuals remained dependent on secondary sources for their knowledge, the proliferation of publications on historical materialism reflected the new interest. Until the mid-twenties when students educated in the Soviet Union and Europe began to undertake translations of Marxist texts into Chinese, Japanese writers served as the conduit through which knowledge of Marxist theory (as distinct from its political applications) reached Chinese intellectuals, continuing a trend that had started in the first decade of the century. Some of the texts central to materialist theory were translated into Chinese from their Japanese versions, and Japanese names were more conspicuous than any others in the interpretive discussions of materialist theory as well as in the references of Chinese

[2] Li Yu-ning, The Introduction of Socialism to China (New York: Columbia East Asian Institute, 1971), p. 21.

[3] For these discussions, see ibid. Also Bernal, Chinese Socialism , chap. 7, and R. Scalapino and H. Schiffrin, "Early Socialist Currents in the Chinese Revolutionary Movement," Journal of Asian Studies , 16 (1957):321–342.

[4] The controversy over the well-field system. See following section.

writers. Without doubt the most frequently encountered name was that of Kawakami Hajime, one of the most prolific writers on materialist theory in Japan.^[5] Translations from Kawakami were an important source of Marxist texts, and the interpretations he placed on those texts were accepted by many Chinese writers. Other Japanese authors whose works were translated into Chinese were Yamakawa Hitoshi (b. 1880), Kuwaki Genyoku (1874–1946), Kushida Tamizo (1885–1934), and Takahata Motoyuki (1886–1928), who had translated Capital into Japanese.^[6]

Through these authors, Chinese Marxists became familiar with those writings of Marx and Engels that outlined the formal ideas of historical materialism. The preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (hereafter, the Critique ), which is Marx's most cogent statement of his historical ideas, was made available as early as 1920 in an article by Kawakami translated in the Chien she (The Construction).^[7] As this was a text that Kawakami deemed especially important, it was included in many of his articles translated into Chinese and printed in a variety of journals.^[8] Kawakami's article in Chien she also contained copious quotations from Capital that were relevant to history. The Communist Manifesto , parts of which had been translated into Chinese in the first decade of the century, was translated in whole at this time. Chinese Marxists also had access to Engels's ideas on Marxism through his Socialism: Scientific and Utopian , which had been translated in part in 1912.^[9] Hu Han-min, in his 1920 article "Wei-wu shih-kuan ti

[5] At this time, Kawakami himself had converted to Marxism only recently, and though his writings displayed an awareness of the problems of materialist theory, his interpretations lacked depth. One biographer has even questioned the extent of his Marxism. See G. Bernstein, "Kawakarni Hajime: A Japanese Marxist in Search of the Way," in B. Silberman and H. Harootunian (eds.), Japan in Crisis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), p. 89.

[6] These were mostly articles published in journals that did not necessarily hold a Marxist position. The more outstanding were Hsin ch'ing-nien, Tung-fang tsa-chih, and Hsueh I .

[7] Kawakami, "Chien yu Tzu-pen-lun ti wei-wu shih-kuan" (A Look at the Materialist View of History in Capital ), Chien she , 2.6 (August 1, 1920): 1151–1171.

[8] For example, see "Ching-chi-hsueh p'i-p'ing hsu chung chih wei-wu shih-kuan kung-shih" (Formula of the Materialist View of History in the Preface to The Critique of Economy [sic]), Hsueh I (Wissen und Wissenschaft), 4.1 (July 1922).

[9] Published by Hsin shih-chieh (New World). See Chang Ching-lu, Chung-kuoch'u-pan shih-liao: pu-p'ien (Materials on Chinese Publications: Supplement) (Peking: Chung-hua Bookstore, 1957), p. 442.

p'i-p'ing ti p'i-p'ing" (Critique of Critiques of Historical Materialism), quoted extensively from passages on history in The Holy Family, The Poverty of Philosophy, The Communist Manifesto, Wage-Labor and Capital, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte , the Critique , and Capital .^[10] These works were referred to over and over again in the writings of the period and were accessible to all who were interested in Marxist historical ideas.

By the middle of the decade, examples of applications of materialist theory, as well as treatises on historical materialism by later Marxists, had been introduced to China. Around 1920 Yun Tai-ying translated Karl Kautsky's Class Struggle , and Tai Chi-t'ao published in Chien she the same author's Oekonomische Lehren under the title "Ma-k'o-ssu tzu-pen-lun chiehshuo" (Explanation of Marx's Theory of Capitalism) based on a Japanese translation.^[11] Wang I-ch'ang, who provides considerable information on the status of Marxism at this time, reported that Engels's The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State was translated into Chinese around 1925.^[12] More significant because of their impact on Chinese materialist thought were exegeses on materialism by Russian Marxists. Li Yu-ning found out through interviews with early socialists that Bukharin and Preobrazhensky's The ABC of Communism , which represented the official Soviet view, was a popular source of information on Marxism at this time.^[13] Especially relevant to materialist theory was Bukharin's Historical Materialism , which was adapted into Chinese by Ch'u Ch'iu-pai under the title She-hui k'o-hsueh kai-lun .^[14] Bogdanov's Outline of Economic Theory

[10] Chien-she , 1.5 (December 1, 1919). Reprinted in Hu's book Wei-wu shih-kuan yu lun-li ti yen-chiu (Researches in Historical Materialism and Ethical Theory) (Shanghai, 1925).

[11] Chien-she , 1.4, 5.6 (November–December, January 1920) and 2.2, 3.5 (March–April, June 1920).

[12] Wang I-ch'ang, "Chung-kuo she-hui shih lun shih" (History of Discussions on Chinese Social History), Tu-shu tsa-chih (Research Magazine, hereafter TSTC ), 2.2–3 (March 1932), p. 19.

[13] Li Yu-ning, The Introduction of Socialism to China , p. 110. The earliest reference to this book I have seen was in an advertisement in Hsin ch'ing-nien , 9.5 (September 1, 1921).

[14] N. Bukharin, Historical Materialism (New York: Russell and Russell, 1965; reprint of 1925 ed.). T'ao Hsi-sheng says in his memoirs that Ch'u's version waspublished in 1925. See Ch'ao-li yu tien-ti (The Tide and the Drop) (Taipei, 1964), p. 81.

was also translated into Chinese in part between 1925 and 1927, and some Chinese authors attempted to apply Bogdanov's ideas to China, but the real effects of the work were not felt until after 1927.^[15] In its May 1926 issue, the Hsin Ch'ing-nien published the introduction to Pokrovsky's Russian History in the Briefest Outline, which provided one of the rare instances of the discussion of historical formations published before 1927.^[16] Finally, one non-Marxist author worth mentioning here because of his popularity with Chinese Marxists was E. R. A. Seligman, whose Economic Interpretation of History informed many Chinese interpretations of historical materialism at this time.

This broad, if fragmentary, selection of material imparted a fairly good notion of the outlines of materialist theory. In contrast to their predecessors, Chinese writers of the early twenties appreciated the importance of history to Marxist theory and were much impressed by the implications of historical materialism for social analysis, even though their interest was at first expressed at a philosophical level. Materials on Marxism available to Chinese intellectuals at this time drove home the centrality of history to social analysis. Kawakami had written the article cited previously to demonstrate the inseparability of economic analysis from historical analysis and repeatedly stressed this point throughout his essay. An article by Kushida Tamizo, after surveying the role history occupied in Marx's works, concluded that "Marxist theory stands and falls with historical materialism."^[17] Among Chinese authors, the most

[15] Wang I-ch'ang, "Chung-kuo she-hui shih lun shih," pp. 19–20.

[16] "Ma-k'o-ssu chu-i ti li-shih yen-chiu kuan" (The Marxist View of Historical Research), tr. by Wang I-wei, Hsin ch'ing-nien chi-k'an (New Youth Quarterly, the successor to Hsin ch'ing-nien ). Note that the translator simply took Pokrovsky's view as "Marxist." Other discussions of social formations available by the mid-twenties were Chou Fo-hai, "Sheng-ch'an fang-fa chih li-shih ti kuan-ch'a" (An Historical Examination of Modes of Production) (tr. of chap. 1 of H. M. Hyndman, Socialist Economics ), Hsin ch'ing-nien chi-k'an , 3 (August 1, 1924), and Chiang Kuang-ch'ih, "Ching-chi hsing-shih yu she-hui kuan-hsi chih pien-ch'ien" (Economic Formations and Changes in Social Relations), Hsin ch'ing-nien chi-k'an , 2 (December 20, 1923).

[17] "Wei-wu shih-kuan tsai Ma-k'o-ssu hsueh shang ti wei-chih" (The Place of Historical Materialism in Marxist Theory), tr. by Shih Ts'un-t'ung, Tung-fang tsa-chih (Eastern Miscellany), 19.11 (June 10, 1922): 33–46. Quote, p. 46.

prolific writer on history was Li Ta-chao. Li not only stressed the centrality of history to Marxism but he regarded historical materialism as Marx's single most important intellectual achievement.^[18] Marx, he pointed out, had done more than anyone else to weld together history and sociology and by doing so had for the first time demonstrated the autonomy of history. Before Marx, history had been restricted to the study of great men or politics, and political and theological concerns had dominated historical studies.^[19] Marx had pointed to the social roots of historical change and had encompassed all phenomena of life within history. Li waxed poetic when he described the success of historical materialism in demonstrating the unity of life which, for the first time, promised the liberation of mankind by offering a genuine explanation of history and the ties that bound together the past, the present, and the future.^[20]

The new appreciation of historical materialism was also evident in the immediate, if short-lived, attempts to examine current problems of Chinese society from the Marxist perspective. The first historical analysis to claim Marxist inspiration appeared in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. In September 1919, Chien-she published Tai Chi-tao's "An Economic Analysis of the Origins of Disorder in China."^[21] During the next few months, the same journal also published two long articles by Hu Han-min on the history of Chinese thought and the evolution of kinship organization in China, which were the most ambitious, and impressive, attempts in this period to apply historical materialism to Chinese history.^[22] An essay by Li Ta-chao published in 1920 applied Marxist analysis to recent

[18] Li discussed this problem in a number of articles. The earliest and most direct was "Wei-wu shih-kuan tsai hsien-tai shih-hsueh shang ti chia-chih" (The Value of Historical Materialism in Contemporary Historiography), Hsin ch'ing-nien , 8.4 (December 1, 1920):515–520.

[19] Ibid., p. 517.

[20] Ibid., p. 518.

[21] Tai Chi-t'ao, "Ts'ung ching-chi shang kuan-ch'a Chung-kuo ti luan-yuan" (Examination of the Origins of Disorder in China from the Economic Perspective), Chien-she , 2.1 (September 1, 1919): 1–19.

[22] Hu Han-min, "Chung-kuo che-hsueh chih wei-wu ti yen-chiu" (A Materialist Research into Chinese Philosophy), Chien-she , 1.3 (October 1, 1919): 513–543, and 1.4 (November 1, 1919):655–691; "Ts'ung ching-chi ti chi-ch'u kuan-ch'a chia-tsu chih-tu" (An Examination of Kinship from Its Economic Basis), Chien-she , 2.4 (May 1, 1920):731–777.

intellectual changes in China.^[23] These essays exhaust the list of Marxist analyses of Chinese history during the New Culture Movement period.

Despite divergent themes and the widely different interests of the authors, these initial attempts to apply historical materialism to Chinese history shared two salient characteristics. First, they used Marxism eclectically, freely blending Marxist concepts with socioeconomic concepts derived from other sources. Second, they concentrated mainly on the question of the relationship between economic dislocation and institutional and intellectual change. They all bypassed fundamental problems of Marxist historical theory, especially the role of class relations in history and their structural expression, social formations corresponding to particular class relations.

The eclectic use of concepts provides one reason why, despite their authors' formal professions of loyalty to Marxism, these analyses were not readily recognizable as Marxist. Tai stated the necessity of using Marx's methods for understanding the crisis in Chinese society, and his article referred to Marx, Engels, and Kautsky to bolster specific arguments. But he also advocated the combination of Darwin's methods with those of Marx, and among the hodgepodge of ideas he drew on, those of Sun Yat-sen on livelihood were the most conspicuous in his explanation of the sources of disorder in China as well as in the remedies he offered for its alleviation.^[24] Li, who was expressly committed to Marxism by 1920, was even more eclectic than Tai in the concepts he employed, and freely blended Marxism with the social Darwinism of Spencer and the geographic determinism of Montesquieu and Buckle.^[25] The same was the case

[23] Li Ta-chao, "Yu ching-chi shang chieh-shih Chung-kuo chin-tai ssu-hsiang pien-tung ti yuan-yin" (An Economic Explanation of the Causes of Recent Intellectual Changes in China), Hsin ch'ing-nien , 7.2 (January 1, 1920). The references here are to the reprint in Li Ta-chao hsuan-chi (Selected Works of Li Ta-chao) (Peking, 1962), pp. 295–302.

[24] Tai, "Ts'ung ching-chi shang kuan-ch'a Chung-kuo ti luan-yuan," p. 11. Also see pp. 1, 6.

[25] Li explained the strength of the family in terms of the agricultural basis of Chinese society, which he in turn attributed to China's location in the "southern climatic zone." For the same reason, he argued, natural resources were abundant in China, which obviated the need for struggle. He used Yen Fu's static-dynamic culturedistinction to contrast Eastern to Western civilization. For Yen's distinction, see B. Schwartz, In Search of Health and Power: Yen Fu and the West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961).

with Hu Hanomin. Hu explicitly stated his adherence to the materialist view of history, but his analysis did not preclude the use of other sociological theories. In his study of the family in particular, he relied more on the German sociologist Grosse than on Marx and freely utilized theoretical insights derived from late-nineteenth-century social theories that were only remotely, if at all, Marxist.^[26]

Neither were these writers primarily interested in testing the validity for Chinese society of Marxist theoretical formulations; rather they sought in historical materialism confirmation of the convictions that dominated the New Culture intellectual scene. Tai Chi-t'ao concentrated on the relationship between "people's livelihood" (min-sheng ) and order. His essay was devoted to demonstrating that both in the past and in contemporary China disorder (which he equated with revolution, ko-ming ) arose from the destabilization of livelihood by the emergence of excessive differences of wealth due to extreme circumstances of unduly harsh exploitation or natural disasters.^[27] Li Ta-chao's primary interest lay in the fate of the Chinese family which he regarded, as did other New Culture intellectuals, as the soil which nurtured and perpetuated Confucian thought and values. His essay viewed the patriarchal family as an offshoot of the agrarian economy and predicted that as industrialization progressed in China this type of family would disappear and with it the hold of Confucianism over Chinese thought. The premise that "economic change was the cause of all intellectual change" represented the extent of the materialist contribution to his analysis.^[28]

[26] The reference is to Ernst Grosse, Die Formen der Familie und die Formen der Wirtschaft (1896). Hu utilized Grosse's categorization of the evolution of kinship into four historical forms. See "Ts'ung ching-chi ti chi-ch'u kuan-ch'a chia-tsu chih-tu," p. 741. The article also referred to the works of Engels, Howard, Westermaarck, Starcke, McLennan, L. H. Morgan, J. Lubbock, and G. Schmoller, nineteenth and early twentieth century sociologists and anthropologists, most of whom were only remotely Marxist.

[27] Tai, "Ts'ung ching-chi shang kuan-ch'a Chung-kuo ti luan-yuan," p. 10.

[28] Li, "Yu ching-chi shang chieh-shih Chung-kuo chin-tai ssu-hsiang pien-tung ti yuan-yin," p. 296.

The same premise was echoed in Hu Han-min's statement that "changes in the method of material production [wu-chih sheng-ch'an ti fang-fa ] initiated changes in all social relations" as well as the intellectual and attitudinal components of culture.^[29] Hu's studies of Chinese philosophy and the evolution of the Chinese family deserve lengthier treatment not only because they were a great deal more sophisticated than the other analyses, but also because they represented the first genuine applications of the materialist method to Chinese history. Unlike Tai and Li, whose interests lay primarily in contemporary society, Hu extended his analyses over the length of Chinese history. And whereas Tai and Li barely mentioned historical materialism, Hu's preface to his essay on Chinese philosophy explicitly stated his acceptance of the materialist interpretation of history and offered a methodological outline which enumerated the principles that, he believed, constituted the essence of the materialist method. His analyses also were considerably more attentive to the details of the interrelationship between economic change and social organization and philosophy. Nevertheless, Hu's essays had a good deal in common with those of Tai and Li both in subject matter and in his understanding of historical causation in Marxism. His essay on philosophy was designed to demonstrate that while periods of instability instigated intellectual diversity as thinkers turned to the search for new principles of social organization, periods of stability curtailed intellectual creativity by subjecting thinkers to political authority and thought to political exigency.^[30] His essay on the family tied the various forms of kinship organization throughout history to the division of labor demanded by the prevailing economic system.^[31] While his analyses were highly perceptive and original, the interpretations offered were not peculiarly Marxist. His observation that social change arose from the "disharmony" between social relations and material production caused by economic change was a highly diluted expression of

[29] Hu, "Chung-kuo che-hsueh chih wei-wu ti yen-chiu," Chien-she , 1.3:513–514. 1.3:513–514.

[30] Ibid., p. 514.

[31] Hu, "Ts'ung ching-chi ti chi-ch'u kuan-ch'a chia-tsu chih-tu," pp. 741–755.

Marx's premise that the contradiction between the mode and the relations of production lay at the source of the social revolutions that guaranteed historical progress. More importantly, in stressing economics as the motive force of change in history, Hu's interpretation disguised the dialectical relationship between the mode of production and the relations of production, which is one of the most problematic aspects of Marxist historical theory. By ignoring the dialectical nature of this relationship, Hu denied the relations of production an independent role as a source of change in history.

Indeed, in these early analyses, historical materialism appeared as a variant of evolutionist theory based on economic change. All three authors stressed the importance of economic to social, political, and ideological stability and change; they paid little attention to the question of class relations in history and, therefore, displayed little appreciation of the difficulties involved in applying Marxist categories to Chinese history. These attitudes reflected, in part, the interpretation of Marxism in the sources available to Chinese intellectuals. They also pointed to the limitations on the Chinese interest in Marxist theory in the early twenties.

Chinese Marxists were familiar with the fundamental ideas of historical materialism through the works just cited, in particular the preface to the Critique . Their formulaic phraseology, however, imposed a mechanical and even diagrammatic quality on those ideas.^[32] The following statement of the basics of historical materialism by Shih Ts'un-t'ung, one of the more active Marxist writers and translators of the period, gives an impression of the flavor that pervaded contemporary expositions of materialist theory:

In order to discuss the application of historical materialism to China, we must first understand historical materialism. The essence of historical

[32] The term formula (kung-shih ) was actually used in many of the theoretical discussions at this time, probably under the influence of Kawakami who frequently employed the term (note the article cited in footnote 8). For a methodical survey of the "formula" by a Chinese author who based his views on Kawakami's, see Kao I-han, "Wei-wu shih-kuan ti chieh-shih" (Explanation of the Materialist View of History), She-hui k'o-hsueh chi-k'an (Sociological Quarterly of Peking University), 2.4 (July–September 1924):473–487.

materialism is as follows: (1) Economic organization (method of production and distribution) is the foundation of social organization; all aspects of spiritual culture such as law, politics, religion, art, philosophy, etc. constitute a superstructure built upon this foundation. (2) When the material forces of production in society advance to a certain level, they come into conflict with the existing relations of production. Society can advance only after this conflict has been resolved. Social revolution resolves this question. Once the conflict has been resolved and the economic basis changes, the superstructure changes accordingly. (3) The basis of all spiritual revolution (whether in law, politics, religion, art, philosophy, etc.) is the conflict between the forces of production and the relations of production (or property relations); spiritual revolution emerges to resolve that conflict. All "dangerous thought" [wei-hsien ssu-hsiang] reflects the economic situation. (4) All revolutionary class struggle (whether political, economic or intellectual) originates in the conflict between the relations and the forces of production. The greater the consciousness of such conflict, the greater the effort to resolve it and the sooner the revolution. (5) When the material conditions are ripe, all questions are resolved.^[33]

This step-by-step textbook approach, reminiscent of Hu's outline of materialist method, established a tight hierarchy of causation and abolished the dynamic tension between economy and society which in historical materialism supplies the motive force of historical development. Chinese Marxists were aware of the importance of society as a component of equal status to the economy in the dialectic of development,^[34] but the feature of historical materialism that most impressed them seemed to be "the economic interpretation of history." In their descriptions of the social manifestations of economic modes, Marxist writers rarely referred to class relations, more commonly employing the broader term social organization (she-hui tsu-chih ), which did not necessarily exclude classes but did not give any hint of their primary role in historical dynamics either.

This attitude mirrored the interpretation of historical materialism in the secondary works available to the Chinese at this

[33] Shih Ts'un-t'ung, "Wei-wu shih-kuan tsai Chung-kuo ti ying-yung" (The Application of Historical Materialism in China), She-hui chu-i t'ao-lun chi (Discussions on Socialism) (Shanghai: Hsin ch'ing-nien Society, 1922), pp. 427–428.

[34] This distinction was made and rejected by Kawakami in his article in Chien-she , even though Kawakami's articles in Chinese ignored the question of society. For another example, see Yamakawa Hitoshi, "Ts'ung k'o-hsueh ti she-hui chu-i tao hsing-tung ti she-hui chu-i" (From Scientific Socialism to Socialism in Action), Hsin ch'ing-nien , 9.1 (May 1, 1921):7–10.

time. Kawakami Hajime, even with his appreciation of the complexity of the Marxist theory of historical dynamics, almost completely ignored the role social relations played in historical development and concentrated mainly on the causative function of productive forces which he identified with technology.^[35] Even when he discussed the relations of production explicitly, he referred only to "social organization" in the abstract and dwelt on whether or not relations of production included communications, exchange, and distribution, without once mentioning classes.^[36] Kawakami was taken to task for his lack of attention to social relations by his Japanese critics, and one Western historian of Japanese thought has remarked significantly that Kawakami's approach to historical development was closer to that of E. R. A. Seligman than to that of Marx.^[37] The same attitude was echoed in Bukharin's treatment of historical dynamics in his Historical Materialism , the only formal treatise of European origin available at the time, and was even more forcefully stated in Ch'u Ch'iu-pai's adaptation of that book. The so-called "tool view of history" (kung-chu shih-kuan ) dominated Ch'u's book, which presented a scheme of historical development based entirely on technological accretions to labor that advanced productivity through history.^[38]

These works left the overall impression that historical materialism was a version of evolutionist theory based on technological progress, and Chinese writers not infrequently remarked the parallelism between Marxism and evolutionist theory.^[39] They

[35] "Wei-wu shih-kuan chung suo-wei 'sheng-ch'an,' 'sheng-ch'an li,' 'sheng-ch'an kuan-hsi' ti i-i" (The Meanings of the So-Called "Production," "Productive Forces," and "Relations of Production" in Historical Materialism), Hsueh I , 4.3 (September 1, 1922): 1–18, especially p. 12.

[36] Ibid., pp. 15–18.

[37] Gino Piovesana, Recent Japanese Philosophical Thought, 1862–1962 (Tokyo: Enderie Bookstore, 1963), p. 171.

[38] See Bukharin, Historical Materialism, and Ch'u, She-hui k'o-hsueh kai-lun, pp. 17–19, especially the table.

[39] Kao I-han described it simply as evolutionist theory. See "Wei-wu shih-kuan ti chieh-shih," p. 481. Ch'u's book gave the same impression, and Bukharin himself acknowledged that revolution was not necessary to change (Historical Materialism , chap. 8). Revolutionaries rejected Marxism as an evolutionist theory but it was another matter for historical materialism, which some distinguished from Marxism: See the exchange between Ts'ai Ho-sen and Ch'en Tu-hsiu in Hsin ch'ing-nien , 9.4: 555–560. Ts'ai suggested that Marx had synthesized "evolution and revolution."The interesting point was that Ts'ai separated historical materialism from class struggle as two components of Marxism, a distinction reminiscent of Seligman's.

displayed little awareness of the differences between historical materialism and European sociological and anthropological studies of the second half of the nineteenth century that stressed the economic basis of society.^[40] The work that went the farthest in reducing historical materialism to its economic component was, however, that of Seligman. There is direct evidence of Seligman's influence on Chinese materialist thought only in the case of one important Marxist author — Li Ta-chao — who was not only a Marxist but a confirmed Communist by this time, but the approach taken by many of the Chinese authors at this time recalled Seligman's view of historical materialism.^[41] Li Ta-chao's evaluation of historical materialism was derived almost in its entirety from Seligman's Economic Interpretation of History . Seligman not only played down the importance of class analysis in historical materialism; he even regarded it as coincidental that Marx the socialist and Marx the economic historian were one and the same person.^[42] In his view, Marx's greatest contribution was in formulating a unitary perspective on social organization with economics as its fundamental motive force. Marx appeared in Seligman's work as one of the outstanding exponents of an historical approach that infused European and American sociology in the second half of the nineteenth century.^[43] These ideas were echoed by Li, who even agreed with Seligman that the phrase economic interpretation of history described Marx's theories better than the more vague historical materialism , which did not indicate the distinction between Marxist materialism and other materialistic explanations of society.^[44] Although Li formally emphasized the importance of sociological explanation in Marxist theory, he did not dwell on

[40] This is true of all the applications of historical materialism discussed previously.

[41] Edwin R. A. Seligman, The Economic Interpretation of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1924; first published in 1902).

[42] Ibid., pp. 108–109.

[43] Ibid., part 2, chap. 6. See also part I, where Seligman treats materialism as simply a new current of sociology of which Marxism was one, if the most powerful, exponent.

[44] Li, "Wei-wu shih-kuan tsai hsien-tai shih-hsueh shang ti chia-chih," p. 515.

the social mechanisms that served as the propelling forces of history in his theoretical discussions or in the analysis just discussed.

Even if available sources inclined Chinese intellectuals to interpret Marxism as an economic theory of evolution, it was obviously not lack of familiarity with the sociological concepts of Marxism that led Marxists such as Li Ta-chao, Tai Chi-t'ao, and Hu Han-min to ignore the importance of class analysis. The first Marxists who turned to historical analysis after 1927 were not much more sophisticated than these early Marxists in their familiarity with Marxist literature, yet they had a considerably more comprehensive grasp of the complexities of the theory. Li was a leader of the Communist party, where the issue of class struggle was presumably a matter of daily debate. Hu Han-min and Tai Chi-t'ao were among the best-informed Marxists of the early twenties. Their uses of Marxism in the analyses discussed here suggest that classes were simply not the issue of the day, as is confirmed by other Marxist writings from the period. The response to Hu Han-min's studies yields an illuminating insight in this regard.

Hu in his analysis referred to classes only to dismiss class conflict as an important datum of Chinese history, as did Tai in his article.^[45] This is significant in itself because it came to characterize a basic premise of Kuomintang Marxists' analyses of Chinese history in the late twenties. In this case Hu did not elaborate on his reasons for dismissing class in Chinese history but even more interesting, his statement did not stir any significant response among other Marxists. Similar statements by Kuomintang Marxists after 1927 were largely responsible for triggering the Social History Controversy. The only response Hu's article evoked was a letter from Hu Shih to the editor of Chien-she , criticizing Hu Han-min for his unquestioning acceptance of the existence of the well-field system as the basis of Chou economy.^[46] Hu Shih questioned the veracity of historical records pertaining to the well-field, and attributed the latter to

[45] Hu, "Chung-kuo che-hsueh chih wei-wu ti yen-chiu," Chien-she , 1.4:657; Tai, "Ts'ung ching-chi shang kuan-ch'a Chung-kuo ti luan yuan," p. 10.

[46] Chien-she , 2.1 (February 1, 1920):1–4.

the utopian imagination of Mencius. Hu Han-min, and the Kuomintang theoreticians who rushed to his defense, did attempt a defense on the grounds that this kind of system was characteristic of the early period of human history; their arguments in terms of sociological validity were overshadowed, however, by their not-so-successful defense of the empirical basis of Hu Han-min's argument.^[47] In the so-called "controversy over the well-field" that followed, the debate was conducted mostly on the grounds delineated by Hu Shih and, in a larger sense, by the intellectual preoccupation of the New Culture period with the veracity of received traditions. Within the decade, the grounds for controversy would change as a new generation of Marxists discovered the ideological implications of historical documents. Then it would be up to Hu Shih to prove that the well-field system had no bearing on historical reality and represented simply a utopian dream rather than nostalgia for a passing social system.

If the political tracts devoted to the defense of communism are excluded, Marxists in this period mainly sought in historical materialism answers to questions that dominated the New Culture intellectual scene. The political analyses produced at this time contained little social analysis but rather transferred to China Lenin's views on class structure and political organization in non-European societies under imperialist penetration, defending communism and Bolshevik organization against anarchists and liberal socialists (see Chapter 3).^[48] The few applications of Marxism to social analysis addressed contemporary intellectual preoccupations; the relationship between intellectual change and material change, voluntarism and determinism, the nature of morality, and the basis of kinship organization were the dominant themes which provided contemporary Marxists with their subject matter and overshadowed the rare expression of interest in class relations or social formations in history. Chinese intellectuals discovered in Marxism functional explanations of

[47] For this controversy, see "Ching-t'ien chih-tu yu-wu chih yen-chiu" (Examination of Whether or Not the Well-Field System Existed) Chien-she , 2.1 (February 1, 1920):149–176, 2.2 (March 1, 1920):241–250, 2.5 (June 1, 1920):877–914.

[48] These essays were collectively published as She-hui chu-i t'ao-lun chi .

ideas, values, and social organization which augmented New Culture arguments on the insufficiency of traditional values and institutions for contemporary China. The new standpoint enabled a more plausible and deterministic rejection of the trans-historical claims of Chinese tradition than was available in liberal attacks on tradition in the name of values of Western origin: The materialist argument rendered the conflict between East and West superfluous by arguing the historicity of tradition. Marxist authors consigned traditional values and institutions to the superstructure of society and predicted their "natural" extinction as a new economic structure replaced the old ones. Values, they argued, represented the projection into spiritual life of particular social-historical needs; as the material basis of life was transformed, old values lost their function and yielded to values more suitable to the sustenance of the new society.^[49] The immediate effect of Marxism in the May Fourth period was to confirm and enrich the more prevalent Darwinian views of change by providing social evolution with an economic dimension.

At the same time, the Marxist argument represented a departure from New Culture thought in introducing a sense of the burden of history and society into the dialogue on change that was missing in the writings of contemporary non-Marxist thinkers. While Marxists such as Li Ta-chao and Hu Han-min were reluctant to accept the deterministic implications of historical materialism, their arguments implicitly challenged the New Culture faith in social transformation through general public enlightenment.^[50] If economic change was ultimately responsible

[49] Li Ta-chao, "Wu-chih pien-tung yu tao-te pien-tung" (Material Change and Change in Morality), Hsin ch'ao (The Renaissance), 2.2 (December 1919):207–224. Li combined Darwin and Marx to explain the historical nature of morality. Morality, he argued, was no more than "social instinct" (she-hui pen-neng ) and its major function was to preserve social cohesion. Once society had changed, the old morality became dysfunctional and had to go. Hu Han-min acknowledged that Li's article had influenced him (see "Ching-t'ien chih-tu yu-wu chih yen-chiu," Chien-she , 2.5:872). He went even further than Li in describing morality as class morality, meant to preserve the power of the ruling class. See "Chieh-chi yu tao-te hsueh-shuo" (Classes and the Theory Of Morality) in Wei-wu shih-kuan yu lun-li ti yen-chiu , pp. 221–224, 225.

[50] This was true even of those who took a very deterministic position on the progress and ends of history. See Chiang Hsia-tseng, "Wei-wu shih-kuan tui-yu jen-leishe-hui li-shih fa-chan ti chieh-shih" (The Explanation of Historical Development in Historical Materialism), Hsin ch'ing-nien , 13.3:356–372. For the tension between determinism and voluntarism in Li Ta-chao's thought, see M. Meisner, Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967).

for dooming traditional society, the creation of a new society had likewise to await changes in material conditions and could not be achieved through education alone, as New Culture liberalism suggested. Materialism introduced into political discourse an awareness of historical and material factors as the preconditions as well as the limiting conditions of change, as was to become clear in the course of the decade.