History Of Historical Materialism And Its Guidance To Promote The Course In 20th Century China

The dissemination and development of historical materialism in the 20th century China has dual significance: social revolutionary and history research. Former scholars dissertated on its centennial development mainly in the social revolutionary perspective and less systematic research has been conducted about its influence on the evolution of the historical science. This article analyzes the academic logic and change course of historical materialism in China by expounding the academic history from the historical angle.This article is composed of three parts: introduction, main text and conclusion.The introduction concerns the title selection, the aim of the research, the basic contents and a summary of researches referred to, etc.The main text consists of eight chapters.Chapter 1 analyzes the historical background of the dissemination of historical materialism in China. In the early 20th century, a "history revolution" broke out, which advocated abolishing the "official history" and setting up the "civilian history" which was more adapted to the times, with the purpose of abrogating convention. The "civilian history" promoted by Liang Qichao was aimed to transform the emperors' genealogy, the private history of the imperial families, into the civilian history which reflected the changes in the national life of the grassroots. The theory of evolution being its guiding ideology, the civilian history emphasized the combination of history and science, and proposed the establishment of scientific history study. The causes and structure of social change were explained, starting from the analysis of socio-economic conditions. This transformation fitted in with the requirements of the "History revolution" and was logic academically in the historical perspective.Chapter 2 introduces the early enlightenment of historical materialism in China. A "historical materialism fever" appeared around May 4th Movement, which was facilitated by the socialism movement worldwide after World War I and the development of Chinese revolution. It also had a direct correlation with the introduction of western learning to the east and the evolving of academic ideology. Its disseminators varied from the Marxists like Li Dazhao, Li Da Chen Duxiu, Yang Paoan, and bourgeois revolutionary personages like Hu Hanmin, Zhu Zhixin, Dai Jitao, Lin Yungai, Liao Zhongkai, to party-independent patriotic intellectuals such as Chen Boxian, Chen Qixiu and scholars like Chang Naide. Besides "New Youth", publications like "Construction" established by Kuomintang also introduced and disseminated historical materialism. Nevertheless, only new thinkers such as Li Dazhao, Chen Duxiu, etc transformed from the "warm disseminators" into the "firm believers". In the early enlightenment period, historical materialism was interpreted as "the fundamental tool of social transformation", "the evolution theory of society" and "the economic interpretation of history".Chapter 3 analyzes the development of historical materialism in the 1920s' democratic revolution. As the theory of social revolution, historical materialism became more influential because of the Chinese communists political propaganda and revolutionary practice. Society reformers like Hu Shi and Liang Qichao were strongly opposed the idea of "fundamental transformation"; To fight for the revolutionary guiding ideology, Sun Yat-sen from the KMT put forward the concept of "people's livelihood" as opposed against historical materialism. Chen Duxiu, Li Da, Qu Qiubai, Cai Hesen developed and improved historical materialism in the complex struggles, drawing a clear line from the "economic determinism" and "mechanism determinism". In the 1920s class struggle and social revolution is the centre of historical materialism. The theory system of Chinese historical materialism began to take shape. In the field of history, scholars discarded the concept "history determined by economic" and proposed the "universal law of history", which is the initial application of historical materialism in the research on history.The fourth chapter describes the formation of the social history controversy and the historical materialism historical school during 20-30 age. After the Great Revolution was defeated, the Chinese communism movement fell into the ebb tide, but the Marxism dissemination presented the new high tide, the historical materialism and the dialectical materialism was united initially. During the period, the argument between the Chinese revolution nature and the future initiated the unprecedented scale social history controversy in the academic circle and the political realm, this controversy urged the research on the historical materialism to turn from paying great attention to the theory explanation to lay emphasis on analyzing the Chinese national condition and discussing the rules of China historical development. Many people, like Guo Moruo, Lu Zhenyu etc. resting on the basic principle of the historical materialism, carried on the thorough analysis actually to the Chinese history , explained the China historical development basic regularity, explicitly answered a series of questions proposed in the social history controversy and then established the historical materialism historical school.The fifth chapter analyzes the changes of the historical materialism and the history in the 1930-40s. During the Anti-Japanese War as well as the Liberation War , it was the time when the Chinese nation crisis was deepened and the national consciousness grew vigorously, during which the Marxism started in China; in the meantime, the historical materialism and the history had the immense changes under this background and corrected "the formulaic tendency ", paying great attention to "the nationalization" connected with the Chinese history and the trend was becoming obvious day by day. Taking the research on the Chinese people's historical function seriously and stressing the unification of the universality and the particularity of the historical rules became the main trend in historical materialism history in this period. At the same time, the historical materialism history criticized the errors that colonized historical school made . They studied China's history with the scientific method and the historical studies in the revelation historical development tended to "scientific style". The Mao Zedong historical materialism history thought was mature, which symbolized that the Chinese historical materialism thought formed gradually.The sixth chapter elaborates the legitimate status establishment of the new nation historical materialism at its early years and how to construct the history guiding principle. After new China was established, they took the historical materialism and the social development history as the central content's nationwide scale's Marxism education, which urged to establish the historical materialism basic idea from the academic circle to the people from various social classes. At the beginning of the foundation of our country, the critique of the historical idealism, as well as the transformation of intellectual conception of history's materialism established the historical materialism's legitimate status. The people's standard and the class analysis are the new Chinese history basic guiding principle, the historical principle taken as the supplement of the class analysis is also taken seriously in the early years of the new nation by the history educational world. The history new system , which in turn took five kinds of forms of society as the universal historical rule, established and presented he history theories, such as "five artificial flowers with gold-foil" and so on, impelling the new history to make the remarkable progress.The seventh chapter analyses the historical materialism history's mistake changes. After 1957, leaders ,like Mao Zedong and so on made their different opinion, ranging from the domestic to foreign situation and to class struggle's understanding, the class struggles by subjectively the magnification, taking the class struggle as the outline becomes the Party's route. History educational world counter-dogmatism was substituted for the counter-right wing movement, academic critique movements, such as "the history revolution" in 1958, the following revisionism of criticizing Shang Cheng and so on indicated that the historical materialism history deviated gradually from the correct track, becoming the dependency of the political activity. The historical principle critique from the history educational world in the late 50s to the early 60s's initiated the witch hunts to historians like Jian Bozan ,Wu Han and so on, Qi Benyu proposed that "studied the history for the revolution", which developed into the bright subjective idealist color "the counterfeit history" during the Great Cultural Revolution. From then on, history became the political tool completely.The eighth chapter reflects on the idea of the historical materialism history at its age. Having Experienced the Great Cultural Revolution, the historical materialism history idea was twisted seriously, after smashing "Gang of Four", Starting from the critique "the counterfeit history", the history educational world began the historical materialism history idea's reconsideration and the reconstruction. The history educational world first put forward "the return history principle", denied the exaggerating class viewpoint and then presented the complete understanding of the Marxism accurately, initiating the ' reconsideration on the historical materialism history idea. The discussions about the issues, like"the historical development power", "the historical creator" and so on, liberated historian's thought, which symbolized that the reconsideration about the historical materialism history idea was launched comprehensively. The reflection on the Asia production method and Eastern society theory attacked the thought that five kinds of forms of society changed in turn directly are taken as the historical materialism history rules. As a result, the historical materialism history idea are questioned and its reconstruction is on the list.The conclusion is mainly about that the historical materialism has restored its scientific characteristics since the 80s; meanwhile, under the multiple impacts from "the fact that the textual criticism is hot" and "the natural science method" the seepage as well as the modern West history thought and so on, it had the serious difficult position. The reconstruction steering the future of the historical materialism will have a long way.