MAO’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO MARXISM AND DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

This article raises the question of whether the thought of Mao Zedong is simply de-rivative from Marxist thought, whether it represents a deviation from Marxist thought, or whether it contains any original contribution to Marxist thought. It discusses such topics as Mao’s concepts of the principal and the non-principal aspect of the contradic-tion, Mao’s concept of permanent revolution, Mao’s replacement of the industrial prole-tariat with the peasant farmer class, Mao’s inversion of the classical Marxist position of the base determining the superstructure, Mao’s concept of the complementarity of oppo-sites, Mao’s concept of antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions, Mao’s reduc-tion of all laws of dialectic to one law.