--- Notes



Comments on Articles Such as “A Discussion on the Identity and Struggle of Contradictions”〔1〕 (November 12, 1960) Please have Lin Ke〔2〕 locate the journals and newspapers that carried those articles and send them to me for review. Mao Zedong, November 12.

Printed from the manuscript. Notes 〔1〕 These comments were written on page 7 of the People’s Daily of November 12, 1960, which in its “Academic Trends” section published two review articles: “A Discussion on the Identity and Struggle of Contradictions” and “Philosophical Workers in Henan Discuss the Driving Force Behind the Development of Things.” The first article stated that recently a number of philosophers had been debating whether thought and existence are identical, the relationship between identity and struggle, whether qualitative change involves identity, and the question of what drives the development of things. This debate was sparked by Xue Jing’s essay “The Relationship Between Unity and Struggle,” published in the sixth issue of New Construction in 1960. Subsequently, Yan Li expressed dissenting views in the seventh issue of the same journal. Thereafter, the Guangming Daily, Academic Monthly, and Wen Hui Bao also printed discussion pieces by Zhou Shuwen, Wu Bingyuan, Tang Kailin, Huo Ji, and others. The debate has now been preliminarily launched. The article also briefly outlined their differing viewpoints. The second article reported, according to Issue 18 of Zhongzhou Review, that some philosophical workers in Henan Province held a discussion at the end of August and beginning of September concerning the driving force behind the development of things, with two main positions: one held that not only the struggle of contradictions but also their unity serves as the driving force; however, the majority disagreed, maintaining that it is the struggle, rather than the unity, of the contradictory aspects that propels development. 〔2〕 Lin Ke was then serving as secretary to Mao Zedong’s office.