Li Da and Marxist Philosophy in China (review)

i66 China Review International: Vol. 6, No. i, Spring 1999 Nick Knight. Li Da and Marxist Philosophy in China. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1996. x, 304 pp. Hardcover, isbn 0-8133-8993-3. André Malraux's classic novel of the 1927 Chinese revolution, Man's Fate, portrays a crucial debate between Kyo, an organizer of the Shanghai workers' insurrection, and Vologin, a representative ofthe Communist International. Both men seek to advance the cause of socialist revolution, but they disagree on a central question ofstrategy: should the Communist Party-led workers, who have already seized the city, sever their alliance with the Nationalists and organize an armed militia in anticipation of Chiang Kai-shek's treachery, or should they do anything necessary—even lay down their weapons—in order to maintain the united front with Chiang's Guomindang? Vologin, over Kyo's protests, provides a host ofreasons why the conditions are not ripe in China for an independent Communist movement and counsels endorsement of the latter course of action. Kyo momentarily raises the debate to the level of theory and replies, "Yes. But in Marxism there is the sense of a fatality, and also the exaltation of a will. Every time fatality comes before will, I'm suspicious."1 Malraux's concern with the Marxian tension between determinism and human agency, as expressed in Kyo's response to Vologin, parallels the major concern ofNick Knight's impressive study ofLi Da and his contributions to Marxism in China. Knight presents, through Li's writings, a very strong case that, indeed, dialectical materialism (as opposed to mechanical materialism) acknowledges the predominance, under certain conditions, ofsubjective human will over objective material limitations. Knight thus challenges the notion, common among Western historians of communism in China, that a stress on the role ofhuman agency in advancing social change represents a heterodox, idealist interpretation of Marx. To advance this thesis, Knight shoulders the monumental task ofexplicating the copious and challenging works ofLi Da, China's most prolific Marxist philosopher, over a period stretching from the 1910s to the 1960s. Li was one of the earliest Chinese converts to Marxism. A cofounder of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, he left the organization two years later in a principled dispute with Party chief Chen Duxiu over the nature of the united front with the Nationalists. He nevertheless persisted with his strong commitment to Marxism and revolution, and served the cause in China through his continuous efforts to publish important Marxist theoretical works. Li maintained a warm relationship© 1999 by University with Mao, and the two shared a mutual interest in—and interpretation of—diaofHawai 'i Presslectical materialism. With the CCP victory in 1949, Li was invited to rejoin the Party, and he spent the better part ofthe following years, until his death in 1966, championing the philosophical cause ofMao Zedong Thought. Reviews 167 By analyzing both the materials that Li chose to translate and the writings that Li himselfauthored, Knight marshals compelling evidence that, over the decades, this pivotal Chinese interpreter ofMarxist theory consistently embraced the views of a broad array ofEuropean and Japanese Marxists—all ofwhom maintained that the deterministic aspects ofthe material world (the base) stand in dialectical relationship to human thought, institutions, and political action (the superstructure ). That is to say, Li Da's Marxism (which both informed and elaborated on Mao's philosophical writings) reflected the commonly held view ofMarxists around the globe that, rather than economics constantiy and inevitably determining all human behavior, the relation between the two was interactive and changing. The fact that Malraux, a French leftist, expressed in his 1933 novel this same understanding ofMarxism as a system ofboth fate and will adds weight to Knight's contention that the importance Mao and Chinese communists came to attach to human volition was in no way uniquely Chinese, nor was it a Marxian heterodoxy. Knight thus calls for a réévaluation of "orthodoxy." He suggests that a point ofview considered "orthodox" at any one time may be "unorthodox" or "heterodox " at another. The key issue is the relationship ofthat point ofview to power. The "orthodoxy" of the Second International was the point ofview ofEduard Bernstein and the German Social Democratic...