Mao's Dialectical Materialism: Possibilities for the Future

In this paper I present Mao's historical view based on dialectical materialism, and I propose that this socialist historiography can help the current PRC regime to reflect on its relationship to its past and its future. As we know, the contradictions of capitalism and communism lie not only in the economic and political realms but also in the completely different senses of time they offer. In the case of Maoism, it is the unfixed future that agitates people to revolutionary action. I will explore what dialectics means to Maoism by exploring both the original texts of Mao and the exegesis of various Maoist scholars, and I will also study poems written by Mao to explore his romantic view of history.