To Ai Siqi¹

(1937)²

Comrade Siqi:

Your *Philosophy and Life*³ is the profoundest of all your books. I have derived
great benefit from reading it and have taken some notes. I am sending them to you
with the request that you see whether what I have written is correct. In the notes,
there is one question regarding which I take a somewhat different view (it is not a
fundamental disagreement).⁴ Please give further consideration to this point, and
tell me frankly and in detail what you think. Today, whenever I have some free
time, I will come to see you.

Mao Zedong

Our source for this text is *Mao Zedong ji*, Vol. 5, p. 277, where it is reproduced from a Red
Guard publication.

Our source for this letter is *Mao Zedong shuxin xuanji*, pp. 112-13, where it is reproduced
from the handwritten manuscript.
1. Ai Siqi (1910–1966) had published in 1934 an extremely influential work of popularization of Marxism, entitled *Dazhong zhexue* (*Philosophy for the Masses*) and was admitted into the Chinese Communist Party a year later. In 1936 he had taken the side of "literature for national defense," rather than that of "people's literature," and in 1937 he had gone
to Yan'an, where he rapidly became one of the Party's most influential propagandists.
2. The letter is dated simply 1937 in the available sources, but it must have been written
no earlier than October, since Ai Siqi arrived in Yan'an only at that time.
3. This work had been published in Shanghai in April 1937.
4. For details regarding the point on which Mao disagreed with him, see below, in the
section of this volume devoted to his reading notes, his comments on *Philosophy and Life*.