On Contradiction in the Light of Mao Tse-tung's Essay on “Dialectical Materialism”

The Chinese Communists have not hesitated to alter their Party documents—in effect rewriting history—when such changes have seemed desirable for political purposes. It is well known, for example, that the texts of various documents in Mao Tse-tung's Selected Works differ significantly from the originals. In this article we offer evidence suggesting that a fundamentally important Party document—On Contradiction (Mao-tun Lun)—was not written in the summer of 1937, as Party history asserts. Rather, it was composed at a much later date, copying the theses of Stalin and Zhdanov. By thus falsifying the date of composition, the Chinese Communists could bolster their covert assertion of Mao Tse-tung's primacy as a Marxist theoretician.