Abstract

In 1960- 1961 Chinese Marxist thinkers engaged in an enormous effort in clarifying and explicating the law of identity of contradictions in general and its particular application to contradiction and unity between thought and existence. There seem to be four major issues involved: first, there is the issue of reaffirming the primary nature of existence ; second, there is the issue of explaining the validity of identity of contradictions based on Marx, Engels, and Mao Tse-tung; third, there is the issue of upholding the universal applicability of the identity of contradictions, in particular, applicability to the contradictions between thought and existence; fourth, there is the issue of interpreting past, present, and future social and political actions in the interests of socialism as necessitated by the law of identity between thought and existence. Though there are many thinkers who oppose the universal application of the identity of contradictions, while accepting the general dialectical truth of opposition and unity of contradictions, and thus regard the identity between thought and existence as an unsolved problem, most of the influential thinkers such as Ai Ssu-ch'i and Kuan Feng strongly reject those dissenting views and insist on absolute, positive answers to all the above issues. Furthermore, they hold the following on the basis of the identity between thought and existence: man's subjectivity can transform the objective world through practice in society; political activity should lead all human activities in a progressive society; continuing revolution is essential for the creation of a better socialist world; capitalism and socialism can transform into each other in certain given conditions, thus implicitly permitting an explanation of Russian revisionism as a form of capitalism.