And, lastly, it is worth noting that there is not agreement amongst Chinese Mao scholars as to the relative influence of the Soviet and Chinese texts on philosophy of the mid-1930s as compared to Mao’s earlier exposure in the 1920s and early 1930s to currents of Marxist thought which were at that time penetrating Chinese intellectual circles. For example, Mao scholars at Wuhan and Sichuan universities object to the notion that Mao was entirely reliant in the writing of his philosophical essays on materials from Soviet sources that became available during the mid-1930s.[1-144] In the first place, they contend, Mao knew well in the 1920s a number of Chinese intellectuals who had already been influenced by and were elaborating dialectical materialist concepts in essays and letters which Mao read. In the second place, a significant number of books by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other Marxists had become available in the 1920s and early 1930s, and Mao had read and studied these. Some examples from a lengthy list include Engels’ Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (often translated into Chinese as On Feuerbach), Dialectics of Nature (extracts), and Anti-Dühring; Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, and Philosophical Notebooks (extracts); Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy, and Capital, Volume One; and Stalin’s On Problems of Leninism. They point to Mao’s interest in the translation of Marxist classics and his personal use of these to broaden and deepen his understanding of dialectical materialism. For instance, Mao took a personal interest in the translation of Anti-Dühring into Chinese, and its translator, Wu Liping, has recorded that Mao did refer to this text in the writing of On Contradiction.[1-145] Similarly, Li Yongtai has pointed to Mao’s study of Capital in the year prior to writing his three essays on philosophy, suggesting that Mao absorbed the dialectical materialist methodology contained therein.[1-146] Moreover, it is possible that Marxist texts on philosophy which Mao had not read in the original reached him via the writings of Ai Siqi and Li Da who had written extensively in the 1920s and early 1930s on problems of Marxist philosophy. The picture which emerges, these contemporary Chinese Mao specialists contend, is a much more complex one than might be assumed if excessive emphasis is placed on the Soviet texts on philosophy of the mid-1930s employed by Mao prior to and during the writing of his three philosophical essays of 1937. The translated works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, and their elaboration by Chinese Marxist philosophers such as Li Da and Ai Siqi “encouraged the spread and transmission of Marxist philosophy in China and helped the development and maturation of Mao Zedong’s philosophical thought; all exerted an important influence and played an important role”.[1-147] According to this view, the immediate influences on Mao’s philosophical thought at the time he wrote his essays on philosophy were the translations of the Soviet texts on philosophy and writings by Li Da and Ai Siqi; but the concepts and viewpoints contained in these sources were employed by Mao to extend an already firmly established foundation of philosophical thought, a foundation created through a decade and a half of interest in and exposure to Marxist philosophy.

<p><strong>The influence of Li Da and Ai Siqi</strong></p>