1. How to deal with class relations in history

Class contradiction and class struggle are the driving forces of history. When writing history, ignoring this point means committing an error of principle.

There are two sides to class contradiction, and one cannot write about just one side. It is necessary to focus on writing about revolution, but also on writing about counterrevolution.

Contradictions exist not only between hostile classes but also between various strata within the same class and even between various groups within the same class. Do not simplify class contradictions. It is necessary to focus on writing about the contradictions between hostile classes, while also writing about the contradictions within the ruling class.

When writing about contradictions, distinguish between primary and secondary contradictions. It is necessary to write about the primary contradictions while also writing about the secondary contradictions. It is also necessary to write about their interconnections and transformations.

Primary contradictions are different from fundamental contradictions. In a class society, the fundamental contradiction is always the contradiction between hostile classes. This contradiction runs through the history of the entire class society like a red thread. The contradiction between the hostile classes is often the primary contradiction in history, but the primary contradiction is not entirely the contradiction between hostile classes. Sometimes it is the contradiction within the ruling class, and sometimes it is the contradiction between ethnicities [民族]. Do not frame the primary contradiction in any and every historical period as the contradiction between hostile classes.

Peasant wars were the highest manifested form [表现形式] of class contradiction in feudal society, and their role in promoting history must be acknowledged. However, peasant wars occurred at different times, on different scales, for different lengths of time, and inflicted attacks of varying breadth and depth against feudal society. Their roles are therefore different and cannot be generalized.

After a major peasant war, the feudal ruling class sometimes made certain concessions to the peasants to restore the feudal order and stabilize the rule of the feudal landlord class. However, they did not make concessions in every peasant war; they would not make concessions to small, local peasant wars. Whether there were concessions and how many concessions were determined by the circumstances of the class confrontation and the changes the peasant war incurred in the balance of class power. Do not routinely write about the concessions made by the feudal ruling class after every peasant war without any analysis.

The peasants opposed feudal oppression and exploitation, but they did not have, nor could they have had, any consciousness [但没有, 也不可能意识到] to oppose feudalism as a system.

The peasants opposed the feudal landlords but did not have, nor could they have had, any consciousness to oppose the landlords as a class.

The peasants opposed the feudal emperor, but they did not have, nor could they have had, any consciousness to oppose imperial power as an ideology.

To say that the peasants did not have, nor could they have had, any consciousness to oppose the landlords as a class and feudalism as a system does not mean that the peasants did not oppose the feudal system and the landlord class. It only means that they opposed them without consciousness. In other words, the peasants waged a spontaneous [自发] rather than a conscious [自觉] class struggle against feudalism and the landlord class.

It is not surprising that the class consciousness [阶级觉悟] of peasants in feudal society had not yet, nor could they have, become conscious [还沒有, 也不可能意識到] that what oppressed and exploited them was not distinct individuals but a class and a system. This was also true of the working class in the early days of capitalism. In the beginning, they directed their opposition at machinery, rather than at the capitalist system. Until the 1890s, although Russian workers had already realized their conflict with the interests of factory owners, they had not yet, nor could they have, become conscious of the irreconcilable contradiction between their interests and the entire political order of modern society.

To say that the peasants’ anti-feudalist and anti-landlord class struggle was spontaneous does not exclude the gradual emergence of consciousness within spontaneity, but before the leadership of the working class, the peasant war was basically spontaneous, not conscious.

That peasants can establish their own political power is not a problem. The problem lies in the nature of this political power. In my opinion, it is impossible to establish two political powers of different natures on the same feudal economic basis. The political power established by the peasants could only be a feudal political power.

The leaders of the peasant wars should be affirmed, but we should not idealize or modernize them or even go so far as to say they are like revolutionary leaders of the modern proletariat. Due to historical limitations, they have shortcomings. We should not negate them because of their shortcomings, nor should we say that they have no shortcomings just because we want to affirm them.

Religion is the opium of the people, but in the peasant wars it played an important role in mobilizing and organizing. It is wrong to exaggerate the role of religion, but neither does denying the role of religion comport with historical facts.

Just as monarchism was not a unique feature of the Russian Peasant War, so religion was not a unique feature of the German Peasant War. Taoism, Buddhism, and Christianity were all used by the Chinese peasants as tools of mobilization and organization.

When writing about peasant wars, do not forget that they took place in the feudal era, nor that peasants were small owners, nor that they did not represent new productive forces. We should treat peasant wars from a historicist perspective, neither emphasizing their backwardness and blindness nor exaggerating their organization and consciousness.

2. How to deal with ethnic [民族] relations in history

My country has been a multiethnic country since ancient times. In addition to the Han ethnicity, there are many other ethnic groups. As ethnic groups, each is one ethnicity, but as members of a multiethnic country, they are all Chinese. Therefore, when we write Chinese history, we must be careful not to separate the history of the Han people from the history of other ethnic groups in China.

All ethnicities are equal. This is our principle in dealing with ethnic issues. If we deviate from this principle, we will make mistakes. However, applying this principle to dealing with historical ethnic relations does not mean using simple methods of erasing unequal ethnic relations from history, or selecting from those unequal relations some individual historical facts that resemble equality to prove that this principle was already realized in ancient China. Nor does it mean saying that the unequal ethnic relations in history are equal. Instead, we should expose the unequal relations in history and, using the perspective of historical materialism and a critical attitude, point out the historical roots and essence of these unequal ethnic relations.

Ethnic contradictions are essentially class contradictions, and ethnic contradictions must be analyzed from a class perspective. However, using a class viewpoint to analyze ethnic contradictions does not mean that all ethnic contradictions in history are class contradictions. Ethnic contradictions are a manifestation [表现] of class contradictions in ethnic relations, but they are not the same as class contradictions.

Opposing ethnic chauvinism is one of our principles in dealing with ethnic issues. However, this does not mean denying the leading role of the Han people in Chinese history. To say that the Han nationality has played a leading role in Chinese history does not violate the principle of ethnic equality, because what played a leading role was not the political privileges of the Han ethnicity but their advanced methods of production. Rights should be equal, but it is not possible for roles to be equal.

Opposing local nationalism is another principle we follow in dealing with ethnic issues. However, this does not mean that the various ethnic groups in ancient China did not have their narrow local nationalisms, as though a multiethnic country of China was a big family of ethnic groups rather than a big prison of ethnic groups before liberation.

Friendly interactions between people of all ethnic groups are the mainstream of ethnic relations, but it cannot be said that in the historical periods of class society there were no contradictions and conflicts between the ruling classes of every ethnic group. We should focus on writing about friendly exchanges between people of every ethnic group, but also about contradictions and conflicts between the ruling classes of every ethnic group.

When writing about ethnic relations, we must therefore distinguish between the ruling classes of each ethnic group and its people. To advance the interests of the ruling class, the ruling class of every ethnic group often launched wars in the name of ethnicity against another ethnic group or colluded with one another to suppress the exploited class within their own ethnic group. The instigation of these wars and such political collusion have nothing to do with the people of each ethnic group. But this does not mean that the people of each ethnic group only have class sentiments and do not have narrow ethnic sentiments and prejudices. Due to the long-term provocation by the ruling classes of each ethnic group, as well as geographical isolation, language barriers, and differences in lifestyles, customs, and religious beliefs, narrow ethnic sentiments and prejudices also exist among the people of each ethnic group. Even after liberation, we are still carrying out propaganda and education to oppose the remnants of Han chauvinism and local nationalism, to say nothing of such situations in ancient times.

We should not treat ethnic groups other than the Han as foreigners. All ancient ethnic groups that lived and operated within the territory of today’s China should be recognized as Chinese, regardless of their relationship with the Central Plain dynasties at other times. However, just because they are all Chinese, does not mean that the conflicts between them are not ethnic conflicts, or that we cannot even distinguish right from wrong.

We should acknowledge that there have been mutual invasions between ethnicities. As for who invades whom, this is not determined by the size of the ethnic group; it must be analyzed based on specific facts.

3. How to deal with international relations in history

As a country, China is an independent historical unit, and, as one of many countries in Asia and the world, it is also part of world history. Therefore, the history of all ethnicities of Chinese people should not be separated from the history of Asia as a whole, and generally should not be separated from world history.

Striving for the peaceful coexistence of countries with different systems is one of the principles recently raised at the Bandung conference. We cannot ask the ancients to abide by this principle, let alone say that the ancients handled their international affairs by this principle, as though our country and neighboring countries have always lived in peace since ancient times and always had the same “brotherly” relationship as we do now. Nor should we go so far as to apply modern terms like “as friendly as relatives” to describe this relationship.

In the entire historical period of class society, mutual incursions between countries have been inevitable. This is the manifestation [表现] of class politics in international relations. In ancient times, my country had various relations with neighboring countries. There were peaceful coexistence and mutual aggression. Concrete analysis should be conducted based on the facts. Do not write only about wars and not peace, but do not eliminate wars from history either, going so far as to erase well-known wars to write out, according to one’s subjective intentions, a situation of peaceful coexistence that has never and cannot have ever existed in history.

Opposing great-power chauvinism is another principle we follow in dealing with international issues, but we cannot say that the rulers of the historical period of class society did not have great-power chauvinism. In the historical period of class society, there was great-power chauvinism. Ancient Chinese historians often referred to their dynasty and country as the “heavenly empire” and the “greater country” and called neighboring countries “vassal states.” This was a manifestation [表现] of great-power chauvinism. Great-power chauvinism is precisely the worst historical legacy left to us by class society. When writing history, we must strictly criticize this kind of great-power chauvinism.

In the historical period of class society, the subordinate relationship between countries is often the result of conquest, but it should also be pointed out that violence alone cannot consolidate subordinate relations. Political subordination and economic dependence are inseparable.

By using world events of international significance, we should appropriately point out the influence of Chinese culture on Asia and even on the world while acknowledging other countries’ influence on China.

We must carefully handle border issues, especially those that have changed due to imperialist aggression since the Opium War.

4. How to treat the viewpoint of development

[Omitted]

5. How to deal with comprehensive viewpoints

Looking at a problem comprehensively is a fundamental principle when we write history, but it does not mean that there is no focal point. One must show the whole picture of history through the focal point.

To write the history of any period, one must grasp the historical situation of this period. It is necessary to look at not only the economy, but also politics and culture, and the intrinsic connections between them. A one-sided emphasis on politics and culture and denial of the decisive role of economics is idealism. However, unilaterally emphasizing the economic, making economic laws absolute, and denying people’s subjective initiative are not Marxism but economism.

We must see not only the leading role of the Han, but also the historical roles played by ethnicities other than the Han, as well as the mutual influence and contradictions between them. Only recognizing the role of the Han and not recognizing the status of other ethnic groups in Chinese history is Han chauvinism, but it is also wrong not to acknowledge the leading role of the Han in history, exaggerating the role of certain ethnic minorities to an inappropriate degree or narrating their histories in parallel without regard for their relative importance.

We need to see China and see the world, as well as the mutual influence between China and the world. It is a betrayal of Marxism to emphasize the particularity of China such that the general logic and principles of Marxism cannot be applied in the study of Chinese history. On the other hand, it is dogmatism only to emphasize the general logic and principles of world history and arrange Chinese history according to the history of foreign countries, as though what has existed in the history of foreign countries must exist in China without any difference.

History assumes a different character [色彩]in different countries. These different countries have gone through various stages of historical development in different historical eras. Individual [个别] countries can even jump over a certain historical stage, but these are individual cases. Do not use particular [个别] circumstances to deny the tendency toward general laws [一般规律性] in historical development.

We must look at history with two eyes, seeing both its bright and the dark sides. In any era of class society, darkness is always the main historical content; conversely, dark eras cannot be without a ray of light. We should not blindly praise our own history and beautify class society, nor should we adopt a nihilistic attitude towards our own history and write it as pale and colorless, as if it were merely an accumulation of sins.

6. The masses and individual historical figures

[Omitted]

7. Politics, economy, and culture

The economic is the backbone of history. This is a fundamental principle when we write history. But this principle does not exclude politics, culture, and art.

The economic is the skeleton of history, politics is the flesh and blood of history, and culture is the soul of history. We must write a history with bones, flesh, and blood, as well as a soul. Do not write a history that has no skeleton but also do not turn history into a soulless and lifeless thing.

No matter how turbulent society is, there will always be production. If production stops, human society cannot continue. We must write about production in periods of turmoil, as though people could make a living by plundering. You must know that, without production, there will be nothing to plunder.

It is necessary to write down what could be produced in each period and what more was produced in comparison to the previous period. But more important are the tools used for production, and the relations of production for the production process are of special significance. Were the relations of production between slaves and slave owners, between serfs and feudal lords, or between farmers and landlords?

Production relations are relations between people in production. In the end, they are relations between classes, but these relations always merge with material things [物]. When writing about relations of production, we must go behind material things to discover the relations between people and relations between classes.

Under the same relations of production, such as the same feudal relations of production, there are differences between the early and late stages, between the Central Plains and the border areas, between here and there. Do not generalize. Due to our country’s vast territory and the unevenness of historical development, some remote areas also have differences in social nature.

When writing about agriculture, handicrafts, and commerce, do not write about them in isolation but be mindful of their connections with one other. As an economic totality [总体], they have intrinsic, organic relationships [有机联系].

When writing about agriculture, we must focus on writing about landownership. Who owns the land is a decisive factor in judging the nature of society before capitalism.

When writing about handicrafts, we must pay attention to the division of labor, as the division of labor is a sign of the development of handicrafts.

When writing about commerce, you must write about the relationship between cities and villages, traffic and transportation, and commodities and currencies. Otherwise, it will carry an abstract quality.

Politics serves the economic. “Each mode of production produces its specific legal relations, political forms, etc.”Footnote ¹ When writing about politics, don’t lose touch with the economic.

It is necessary to write about political systems and political measures, which are how economic exploitation and oppression are accomplished. We need to write about laws, which as articles most precisely reflect economic life and class relations. We also need to write about political reforms and coups and so on. These are economic interests or contradictions surfacing [表面化].

In the culture of every era, there are two factions: progressive and conservative. The former always has a materialist tendency, and the latter always tends towards idealism [唯心论]. You should write about culture with materialistic tendencies, as well as the culture of idealism; do not just write about one side. If possible, it would be best to write about the struggle on the cultural front.

Culture is the sublation [升华, corresponding to the German Aufhebung] of the economic and is basically adapted to the economic. However, culture does not completely reflect economic life step by step. Some cultures move ahead of the economic, while others lag behind the economic. One must analyze it concretely and not make far-fetched assumptions.

In the historical period of class society, culture was basically in the hands of the ruling class. For example, in feudal culture, it was almost completely in the hands of the landlord class. However, some cultures of the landlord class also have the people’s character. Just because it is a culture created by the landlord class does not mean we repudiate it wholesale.

Folk literature is generally said to be of the people [人民性], but in it are also elements that are not of the people, or, one could say, feudalist.Footnote ² This is because it is impossible for authors of folk literature themselves to transcend beyond class society and not be limited by their times. Therefore folk literature must also be analyzed and not affirmed without analysis.

The saying that religion is the opium of the people refers to its function [作用]. Religion also has its essence [本质] and its process of development. Generally speaking, religion is the reflection of fantasies in people’s minds about otherworldly forces that dominate people, or, one could say, it is the distorted and inverted model of the material world in people’s minds. It is human power taking the form of nonhuman power. It did not descend from heaven to earth but rose from earth to heaven. It is not something thought up by the ruling class, but the highest sublation [升华] of the socioeconomic. When writing about religion, one must point out its role in narcotizing people and reveal its essence.

Religion is not static. Every religion has its own process of development. Generally speaking, the earliest religion was the fantastic form [幻想形式] of nature’s mysterious powers. Later, it acquired social attributes, and subsequently the natural attributes and social attributes were integrated, producing an omnipotent god and monotheism. From the totems of primitive people to the commodity fetishism of the bourgeoisie, these are all religions, but they are religions that appeared at different historical stages. One cannot say that, just because they are both religions, their functions are the same.

8. Theory, historical data, and essays

Letting theory take the lead is our principle in writing history.

Letting theory take the lead does not mean only using theory and not using historical data, nor does it mean replacing concrete history with empty and abstract general principles of the history of society’s development. It only means that such principles and theories should be used to analyze a concrete history.

Letting theory take the lead is not dogmatically shaping history [套历史] using general principles, shoehorning historical data into principles as footnotes to theory; rather, it is using theory to analyze historical data, and making theoretical generalizations about historical events or issues through the analysis of historical data. Instead of replacing history with principles, we should derive principles from history.

Letting theory take the lead is also not writing a paragraph of theory and then writing a paragraph of historical data, nor is it writing a paragraph of historical data and then writing a paragraph of theory, resulting in the separation of theory and historical data. Instead, it means dissolving historical data into theory, or embodying theory in historical data in order to unify viewpoints and materials, letting readers see the theory from the description and analysis of historical facts. Historical data should be dissolved in theory, not placed outside theory, “any more than the physical composition of paint, and of marble, lie outside the realm of painting and sculpture” (Marx’s Economic Manuscripts from 1857 to 1858).Footnote ³

The main task of general history is to draw the outline of historical development and point out the issues of historical development based on specific historical facts and relatively stable historical research results, using concise words and clear language. This line cannot be drawn with the broad stroke of a brush but is a synthesis made through meticulous scientific analysis.

Analysis should not shy away from being meticulous and profound, otherwise it will not be able to reveal the essence of historical events; synthesis should not shy away from comprehensiveness and generalization, otherwise it will not be able to show the full picture and clues of history. Therefore, when analyzing, we must delve into individual historical events and use a microscope to discover problems. When synthesizing, we must stand outside individual historical events, be bold and farsighted, and use a telescope to observe the historical situation.

We must strictly apply the principles of historical materialism, place historical events and figures under their own historical conditions, and explain them from the proletarian class perspective. If you leave the proletarian position and fail to conduct analysis from a class perspective, instead using only historical conditions, historical tendencies, historical limitations, and so on to defend the backwardness and reaction of a certain historical event or figure, then this is not historical materialism but objectivism. (See Lenin, “The Economic Content of Narodism” in Collected Works, Volume 1.)

Don’t make analogies. Historical analogies are dangerous. Historical events or figures of the same nature can’t appear from different historical foundations. For example, in the historical period of class society, there were proletarians, but don’t forget the pertinent words of Sismondi: “The Roman proletariat lived at the expense of society, while modern society lives at the expense of the proletariat.” (Marx: Preface to the second edition of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.)Footnote ⁴

Do not allude, using the past to allude to the present or using the present to allude to the past.

Do not make inferences. Repeated inferences will replace objective history with subjective ideas.

Do not make assumptions.

Do not look back or look forward too much. Historical events and characters should be written in the period when they appeared.

Do not quote too many passages from classic works. It is best to embody the spirit contained in the passages in the narration of historical facts.

History is a concrete science. To demonstrate history, we should not start from concepts but from specific historical facts, deriving precise conclusions from scientific analysis of specific historical facts. Don’t put forward a conclusion first and impose the conclusion on specific historical facts.

[Suggestions on writing style have been omitted in this abridged version.]

Historiography and the socialist reorganization of life in the People’s Republic of China (PRC)

How does one write history that articulates ideological positions befitting the revolutionary ambitions of a socialist China? In the 1950s and 1960s, Chinese historians attempted to answer this historiographical question. They sought to account for uneven development in China’s history, address the role of peasant rebellions in revolution, and determine the revolutionary or nonrevolutionary character of various historical actors, events, and social formations in China. This gave rise to a historiographical challenge: How could Chinese historians account for the specific historical situation in China without disavowing the claim to generalizability and universalizability in the Marxist historiographical tradition?

A key text in these historiographical discussions was Jian Bozan’s “Preliminary Opinions on How to Deal with Some Historical Problems.” The text reveals the tensions between the generalizability of a Marxist view of history as driven by class conflict and the historical particularities of Chinese history that seemed to contradict this view. Attempting to resolve this contradiction, Jian Bozan rejects subsuming all history under a single abstract principle of class conflict without attention to other conflicts, such as ethnic or religious conflicts. Yet his strict adherence to the determination of politics by economic relations of production limited his conception of peasant political subjectivity and the possibility of a truly revolutionary politics before the emergence of a proletariat class. Ultimately, the text reveals the conceptual contradictions in Marxist historiography that confronted Chinese historians, the resolution or non-resolution of which carried great ideological and political weight.

Jian Bozan and the debate on class viewpoint and historicism

Jian Bozan was a Uyghur Marxist historiographer who both engaged with and was cited extensively in historiographical debates of the 1950s and 1960s. The author of the earliest comprehensive account of historical materialism in Chinese, Jian Bozan was highly regarded as a key figure in the establishment of professional historical studies in the PRC. However, he was struggled against during the Cultural Revolution as his methods came to be seen as incompatible with a revolutionary view of history. This persecution drove him to commit suicide in 1968.Footnote ⁵

Jian’s intellectual career, as well as the critique of his ideas during the Cultural Revolution, speaks to the contested ideological positions of historical materialist thinkers in the PRC. Published in 1963, “Preliminary Opinions” was Jian’s response to the debate on the conflict between historicism [历史主义] and class viewpoint [阶级观点] that took place from 1963 to 1964.Footnote ⁶ Those advocating for the class-viewpoint approach believed that all history should be interpreted through the lens of class contradictions between oppressor and oppressed, while historicists believed that this approach was too general and that historians must instead place historical conflicts within their temporal contexts to understand the complexity of class relations.

Jian’s “Preliminary Opinions” was an attempt to reconcile the two positions. Written in eight sections, “Preliminary Opinions” begins with the question of how to deal with class relations. The subsequent six sections address how a given aspect of history interacts with class contradictions, while the eighth and final section addresses the historiographical question of how theories of historical materialism should be utilized in the writing of history. The text emphasizes the primacy of class contradictions between hostile classes, while also recognizing the complexity of class relations, especially when one observes historical relations between and within classes, as well as the interaction of class with other social formations such as ethnic and national groupings. For Jian, an overapplication of class viewpoint meant projecting the present onto the past in ways that distorted history, eliding historical factors other than class in ways that overlooked the specificities of China’s historical situation.

Despite this attempt to balance both perspectives in the debate, Jian’s advocacy for historicism ultimately incited struggle against him during the Cultural Revolution. In 1966, the theorist Qi Benyu criticized Jian Bozan’s historicism, arguing that “there is no history that transcends class.” Qi and his allies lambasted Jian’s historicist conclusions that peasants could not achieve the class consciousness necessary to truly challenge feudalism, given the limitations of historical conditions.Footnote ⁷ Jian’s acknowledgment of the role of feudal lords’ concessions in the development of relations of production also came to be heavily critiqued, most notably by Mao himself during the Hangzhou conference, for celebrating the role of oppressors in history.Footnote ⁸ The debate, however, was much more a historiographical one than a quibble over the historical accuracy of Jian’s assessment of peasant wars in history. Jian’s positions, Qi argued, resulted from bourgeois historicism—that is, a method of historical interpretation developed by the bourgeoisie to control the narrative of history.Footnote ⁹ What was at stake in the debate, therefore, was the ideological question whether Jian’s historicism served the interest of ruling classes that sought to diminish the revolutionary character of historical actors.

As noted by Alessandro Russo, the conflict between Qi and Jian reflected a conceptual void in historical materialism: “Historical materialism proved incapable of dealing with the dilemma posed by the political role of the peasants under socialism as it did with the political significance of—the value judgment to be accorded to— peasant revolts in the history of China proper.”Footnote ¹⁰ Jian’s approach emerged from his attempt to synthesize historical materialism and historicism. He advocated refraining from the blind use of schematics abstracted from the Marxist tradition, while also rejecting interpretations of historical facts that lacked political content. This historiographical conundrum meant that his approach was never divorced from the political or historical arguments at hand.

“Preliminary Opinions,” as an attempt to reconcile historicism and class viewpoint, demonstrates the troubling tensions between a generalizable historical-materialist view of history and the particularities of the PRC’s historical situation. The intellectual task of resolving these tensions demanded assessing the relative importance of various social formations and historical factors besides class conflict in the movement of history. This not only meant negotiating the political role of peasants but also brought to the fore difficult questions about ethnic and national differences, as well as the role of religion and culture vis-à-vis economic relations.

Spontaneity (自发) versus consciousness (自觉): the role of peasants under socialism

Jian Bozan was particularly critical of how peasant revolts were being treated as revolutions, which he considered ahistorical and erroneous. In the first section of “Preliminary Opinions,” Jian acknowledges the role of peasant rebellions in history but argues that peasants lacked the class consciousness for a revolutionary overthrow of feudalism, and that their rebellions could only be a revolt against feudal individuals rather than against “feudalism as a system.” Jian assessed, moreover, that the outcomes of peasant wars are concessions from feudal lords that consolidated rather than disrupted the feudal order.

“Preliminary Opinions” reflects Jian’s attempts to assess the revolutionary character of peasants in the context of feudalism without overtly denigrating their role in society. He emphasizes that “peasant wars were the highest manifestation of class contradictions in feudal society, and their role in promoting history must be acknowledged.” Because of the historical limits of feudalism, peasant revolts could only ever be spontaneous (自发) rather than conscious (自觉), and thus were limited in their revolutionary character. Thus the peasants “did not have, nor could they have had, any consciousness” to overthrow feudalism as a system. This argument emerged in a context when various other Marxist historiographers, such as Bai Shouyi, were attempting to recast historical peasant rebellions as having a revolutionary nature. As historian Alexander Day has pointed out, this debate speaks to how the peasant was “bifurcated into a revolutionary actor that carried the seeds of socialism, on the one hand, or a conservative and reactive class of small property owners that could never escape their own conditions without outside help, on the other.”Footnote ¹¹

Jian’s preoccupation with the limits of historical conditions for creating genuine revolution speaks to the tension between spontaneity and organization in thinking about the revolutionary character of the people throughout the history of Marxist thought. Jian’s discussion of “spontaneity” and “consciousness,” the repeated phrase “did not, nor could they” (没有, 也不可能), and his discussion of the limited consciousness of Russian workers in the 1890s, are no doubt references to Lenin’s discussion of the relationship between consciousness and spontaneity in Section II of the pamphlet What Is to Be Done?. Lenin argued that “there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers” without the organization and ideological work of revolutionaries, and that “it would have to be brought to them from without.” Thus the working class could only conduct spontaneous uprisings without being conscious of “the irreconcilable antagonism of their interests to the whole of the modern political and social system.”Footnote ¹² Jian attempts to make a similar argument about the peasants, stating that their consciousness can only emerge from outside; that is, under the leadership of the proletariat. Indeed, Jian argues that the historical conditions of feudalism meant that “the political power established by the peasants can only be a feudal political power.”Footnote ¹³ For Jian, therefore, the movement of history occurred through the replacement of one exploitative class with another, facilitated by concessions made by the ruling class to the exploited class, rather than through the conscious and victorious class struggle of the peasants against the landlord class.

Alessandro Russo has pointed out that Jian’s insistence on feudalism as a historical limitation meant that his assessment of the peasant departed significantly from Lenin’s assessment of the working class. Lenin felt that the proletariat can and must exceed their spontaneous ideological position and the social nonexistence determined by their class position; that is, that they will achieve a political leap into class consciousness and struggle. Jian, on the other hand, tended to return to the limitations of the peasant class as determined by the historical conditions of feudalism. More importantly, Russo has insightfully pointed out that both Qi and Jian, despite their seeming disagreements, turn the peasant into a passive manifestation of History. Qi ultimately argued that the consciousness of peasants was irrelevant to whether peasant wars were the culmination of class contradictions in feudal society. For both Qi and Jian, Russo argues, it was History which ultimately determined the existence of political subjectivities.Footnote ¹⁴

That both Qi and Jian returned to treating History as the primary determiner of politics reflects the thorny conundrums faced by Chinese Marxist historians. Unlike Lenin, who in What Is to Be Done? discussed the proletariat whom Marx had theorized as agents of revolution, Chinese Marxist historians were confronted with the question of how to theorize the role of the peasant, which had hitherto not been conceived as the primary subject of revolution. This question inevitably confronts the primacy of the proletariat as the revolutionary subject in the Marxist tradition, and the necessity of arriving at a capitalist stage of development for creating the possibility of socialism. In other words, the question of the role of the peasant inevitably meant interrogating the very “tendency towards general laws” (一般规律性), to use Jian’s words, in the development of productive forces embedded in the historical-materialist view of history. For advocates of the class viewpoint, the development of history through class contradiction occurred irrespective of peasant consciousness; for historicists like Jian, it meant that peasant consciousness was impossible without the development of capitalism and the emergence of a proletariat class. Both arguments, however, do not deny the historical necessity of the development of history through class contradiction that would inevitably generate new modes and relations of production, which, in a base–superstructure model, determined the social existence and political role of the peasant.

Jian, however, was careful to warn that “unilaterally emphasizing the economic, making economic laws absolute, and denying people’s subjective initiative are not Marxism but economism.” Such a statement echoes Lenin’s critique of economism in What Is to Be Done, but seemingly contradicts Jian’s emphasis on the historical limitations of peasants created by feudal economic conditions. This contradiction between subjective initiative and economism, as well as between the contribution of peasant wars to the movement of history and their shortcomings due to historical economic conditions, speaks to the unresolved tensions between the particular and the general in Jian’s work. For while Jian insists on a reckoning with the political limitations generated by relations of production in any historical period, he also resists schematic applications of class contradictions and developmental stages in generalized ways. Paradoxically, although Jian’s historicism limits his imagination of peasants’ social existences to their general determination by relations of production, it also forces him to look beyond class conflict to analyze China’s particular historical situation.

The general versus the particular: social differences in comprehensive perspective

For Jian, an additional problem of the class-viewpoint approach was its elision of other social formations and historical factors besides class conflict. As Jian points out, while class contradictions form the primary driver for the movement of history and development of relations of production, a historian could not neglect other contradictions. These other contradictions included not only the contradictions within classes but also the problem of ethnicity and nationality.

Jian himself belonged to an ethnic minority group in China and played an important role in the establishment of ethnic-minority studies in the PRC.Footnote ¹⁵ Jian was thus confronted with the question of how to narrate ethnic history in the context of a larger Chinese history, accounting for the problems of Han chauvinism while also asserting the unity of different ethnic groups. As Jian points out in “Preliminary Opinions,” the schematic application of peaceful coexistence between ethnic groups and nations throughout time simply did not comport with historical facts. Historians, therefore, had to address historical tensions between nations and ethnicities, confronting the problem of whether said tensions could be explained as the result of class conflicts, and whether ethnic contradictions could be said to be class contradictions.

Jian is clear that the class-viewpoint approach was insufficient for articulating the particularities of ethnic conflicts in history. As Jian notes, ethnic conflicts can occur within the same class, such as when the ruling classes of different ethnic groups go to war with one another. Moreover, the masses can betray their own class interests because of narrow ethnic sentiments and class prejudices. Jian is thus careful to emphasize that the ethnic element of conflicts among people in China should not be erased and reduced to class conflicts. This position, however, risks suggesting that ethnicity, rather than class, is the determining factor in the movement of history. Thus Jian attempts to tease out the distinction between class contradiction and ethnic contradictions, while still upholding class contradictions as history’s main motive force. To accomplish this in “Preliminary Opinions,” he makes two important conceptual moves. First, he distinguishes the “primary contradiction” and the “fundamental contradiction” in the first section of the text. Here, Jian introduces class contradiction as the “fundamental contradiction” throughout all history but suggests that other contradictions, such as ethnic contradictions, can sometimes be the “primary” contradiction of a particular historical period. The “fundamental” here gestures towards the general in a broad view of history, while the “primary” emerges from a narrower focus on the particularities of a historical period. That Jian does not elaborate extensively on this distinction reflects the difficulty of accounting for ethnic or intra-class hostilities that are irreducible to class conflicts, while remaining true to a historical-materialist understanding that class struggle drives the movement of history.

The other distinction that Jian makes is the difference between the manifestation or appearance (表现) of class contradictions and class contradictions themselves. As Jian writes, “Ethnic contradictions are a manifestation [表现] of class contradictions in ethnic relations, but they are not the same as class contradictions.” This use of manifestation, or “appearance,” is also articulated in his discussion of historical conflicts between nations, which Jian describes as a “manifestation [表现] of class politics in international relations.” This distinction between the appearance of a contradiction in other forms and the contradiction itself meant that Jian could advocate for a class viewpoint, not through the equating of all conflicts to class conflicts, but through the investigation of class relations that lay behind an appearance of said relations as an ethnic or international conflict. This allowed Jian to maneuver between class and other social formations, without equating the two or abandoning the primacy of class struggle in the movement of history.

Jian’s discussion of different types of contradiction speak to his resistance to generalizing historical phenomena under one conceptual scheme, which for him elided the temporal and spatial particularities of development within China and across the world. The attempt to balance between the totalizing schema of historical development and historical particularities is articulated as an aspiration towards comprehensiveness or totality (全面). In the fourth section on comprehensive viewpoints, Jian attempts to strike the balance between general principles and particular historical situations—between the leading role of the Han and the contributions of ethnic minorities, between the decisive role of economics (base) and the role of politics and culture (superstructure), between the general logic of world history and the particularities of Chinese history, and between empty praise for and total “nihilistic” dismissal of Chinese history. For Jian, comprehensiveness means attending to all historical facts of a particular historical situation, which allows historians to develop a nuanced interpretation of a historical moment without subsuming it under an abstract principle, such as class conflict, that is generalized as an explanatory factor throughout all history. This approach ultimately allows for an account of differences in region and nation—in other words, for the unevenness of development both within China and across the world. As Jian notes, differences between center and periphery within a society at a particular stage of development must be accounted for, as must the differences between China and other countries in the collective movement of world history.

This distinction between appearance and essence also allows Jian to develop his understanding of the base–superstructure relation between the economic on the one hand and the cultural and political on the other. Rather than “repudiate wholesale” certain cultural forms like landlord culture and blindly praise other forms like folk literature, Jian advocates reading these as sublations of an economic base, which must be interpreted for their “essence” and “function,” which differ across historical periods. Jian’s attention to concrete historical data, and his analysis of what lay behind appearance and form, demand acknowledging the historical role of political and cultural forms, such as religion, and actors, such as emperors and generals, that would otherwise have been dismissed as counterrevolutionary. This allows for an account of particularities in Chinese history, such as the role of religion in mobilizing peasants in peasant rebellions.

This attempt to comprehensively account for the historical role of seemingly antirevolutionary cultural forms, class formations, and historical actors eventually led to Jian being struggled against as an apologist for oppressive classes. Despite Jian’s best attempts to account for an array of historical factors besides class contradictions, his faithful adherence to common concepts of historical materialism at the time, such as the primacy of the economic in the base–superstructure model, as well as his insistence on a teleological movement of history, ultimately meant falling back into a level of “economism” that he had warned against. Although Jian acknowledged the role of folk literature, religion, and other cultural and political forms of appearances of class relations, he was ultimately unable to conceptualize the possibility of revolutionary potential in these forms, given the feudal relations of production that, for him, limited the historical possibilities for revolutionary consciousness.

Concluding remarks: theory versus historical data

The final section of “Preliminary Opinions” deals most explicitly with the historiographical question at hand—the relationship between theory (理论) and historical materials or data (史料). In contrast to advocates of the class-viewpoint approach, Jian was adamant that history should not be interpreted only to confirm abstract principles. As a historical materialist, the balance between theory and historical data meant navigating the generalizability of Marxist laws of economic and social development and the particularities of the historical case of China.

Despite Jian’s historicism, his historiographical contributions demonstrate that he recognized the ideological implications of historical narration and interpretation. Yet Jian foreclosed the possibility that class consciousness, determined by economic relations, could be ideologically overcome. This insistence on generalizing the historical limitations of economic relations, despite his attention to other particular and contingent factors, presented another ideological problem. If economic relations constitute the movement of history and determine social existence and political consciousness, what is the role of the ideological, including the writing of history, in organizing the masses towards socialism? Underlying this question is the problem of historical necessity in the historical-materialist tradition, and whether it created room for, in Jian’s own words, the “subjective initiative” of the people.

“Preliminary Opinions” reveals conceptual lacunae in historical materialism that not only present challenges in Chinese history but also incite broader questions about the generalizability of Marxism to the historical particularities of different societies across the world. Ultimately, neither Jian nor his critics were successful in overcoming a deterministic framework of class relations to develop a fuller conception of peasant political subjectivity. Nor did they fully account for the relationship between class contradictions and the contradictions arising from other factors, like ethnicity. Nonetheless, their debates on how to narrativize history opened a series of political and ideological possibilities—and invite us to contemplate what was foreclosed in the eventual narrowing of historiographical approaches.