The Academic Research On Hua Gang

With a limitless supply of scholars and academics, the academic teams have always improved the academic research and academic innovation. The growth of Chinese Marxist academic teams works as the prerequisite for the academic development of Chinese Marxism. With the unremitting efforts of Marxist scholars, the Chinese Marxist studies have made great progress and development since the beginning of the20th century. Chinese Marxist academic teams, with a large number of members, have distributed in the various fields and made different contributions. However, most of those who make contributions to the construction of Chinese Marxist academic system are well-learned scholars. Among them, Hua Gang is one who is underestimated and rarely known. Summarizing the history of his pursuit of learning, researching in his academic achievements, extracting his academic thinking, and revaluing his academic achievements are of great help to not only the construction of Marxist academic history, but also the Marxist Sinicization.Hua Gang’s identity, firstly as a fighter and secondly as a scholar, decided that his academic road was always closely connected with times and politics and his experience of pursuing knowledge was in accordance with the mainstream development of Marxist studies in China. Before1925, deeply influenced by democratic and scientific thoughts during the May Fourth Movement and guided by Yun Daiying, Hua Gang started to learn and accept Marxist theories, and decided to take Marxism as his political belief and participated in democratic revolutionary activities. From1925to1937, Hua Gang’s academic activities, for the purpose of meeting needs of revolutions and realities, laid a foundation for his lifetime academic pursuit, particularly compiling History of China’s Great Revolution:1925-1927and translating The Communist Manifesto. From1937to1949, after academic accumulation of the previous period, Hua Gang’s academic research went mature. Hua Gang, who was in his prime age, overcame various difficulties to make new achievements in the field of history, extended his research interest to such fields as military studies, sociology and literature, and preliminarily built his own academic system. It was since1930that Marxism started to influence the fields of humanities and social sciences in China and the system of disciplines came into being. At the same time, with the development of Marxist Sinicization, Chinese Marxist academia demonstrated unprecedented academic vitality and innovation. From1949to1955, Marxism became the mainstream of academia. At that time, Hua Gang integrated literature, history and philosophy, and devoted to publicizing and popularizing dialectical materialism and historical materialism in academia with the founding of The Literature, History and Philosophy as its symbols.In the light of his status of CPC theorist, Hua Gang involved many fields into his academic pursuit with statements in historical sciences, literature, philosophy, military studies, sociology, political science, and so forth. It is not exaggerated to say that he is a great scholar with many works to his credit. Among all academic achievements, works in fields of historical science, literature and philosophy demonstrate Hua Gang’s academic thoughts and outline his academic general view to the utmost extent.In the field of history, Hua Gang not only conducted historic practice, but also gave theoretical summary and elevation. History of China’s Great Revolution:1925-1927changed the previous methods of non-Marxist historians who just narrated the process of the great revolution, and paid attention to both vertical and horizontal research on historical reasons, social foundations, preparatory phases, experience and lessons. He conducted overall and systematical study of the truth from historical phenomenon to historical nature of the great revolution, therefore established a precise research system. History of Chinese National Liberation Movement, History of May Fourth Movement and History of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Revolution and War follows this system and perfects it from different aspects. History of Chinese National Liberation Movement summarized the experience of national liberation movement of around one hundred years and served the anti-Japanese war. At the same time, it completed the development process of China’s history of around one hundred years raised by Mao Zedong, being regarded as one of the masterpieces which laid a solid foundation for modern and contemporary history of China. History of May Fourth Movement, combining historical events, narrates a series of judgments regarding the May Fourth Movement which Mao Zedong discussed in such essays as the May Fourth Movement, Chinese Revolutions and Communist Party of China, and On New Democracy, and so forth. It is the first specific history works discussing the May Fourth Movement with Marxist views. History of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Revolution and War, guided by the materialist conception of history, criticized the wrong thoughts of history of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement raised by Jian Youwen, and drew a series of constructive conclusions.Hua Gang realized the significance of the study on the law of the development of social history to China’s revolution. Issues like the basic dynamic, law of social development, China’s particularity concerning the development of China’s social history etc., are analyzed thoroughly and systematically in articles including On Elements Hindering China’s Development of Social History, Three Issues on Ancient History etc., as well as the book Outline of Social Development. Among them, Hua researched the general law of human development history while deeply discussed China’s development history and its special laws. It is of great significance for the development of Chinese Marxist historiography. To answer questions of the nature and purpose of the Chinese revolution, China’s Marxist historians previously focused on investigating Chinese history with the universal law of historical materialism and ignored the particularity of Chinese history. With the deepening of the democratic revolution, Hua Gang corrected this viewpoint consciously when he noticed its one-sidedness and harm. Hua Gang’s thought of the universality and particularity of social development, reflected the historical materialism, at that time, was trying to overcome the absolutization tendency, caused by emphasizing too much on universality, and was devoted to a balance between the universality and the particularity. It is an important change in Marxist view of history and indicates China’s Marxist historiography was gradually becoming mature.Hua Gang contributes much to historical theory study. His analysis on historical scientification is especially profound, in which statements concerning historicism is regarded as the source of this historiographical trend in the1950s. To review generally, Hua’s theoretical conception of history is in line with that of Mao Zedong, Jian Bozan and others. Firstly, study the society as an organic integrity, including productive forces and productive relations, as well as economic basis and superstructure. Secondly, regard history as a development process, which is beyond human’s mind and has an objective law to follow. Thirdly, based on the struggle for production and class struggle, regard the people as the main body of the history. Fourthly, adhere to the principles of "social existence determines social consciousness" and "economic basis determines superstructure"In literature, Hua, under the influence of "literary revolution" and "revolutionary literature", emphasizes the significance of "revolutionary literature" on a theoretical level. He further advocates that literature has the function to serve for Real Politics, explaining the close connection between literature and social life, hence enriching the content of Marxist view of literature. In aesthetics, what Hua contributes most is that he presents a new prototype of values on aesthetic essence which different from four well-known aestheticians’ thoughts:The objectivity of beauty first is the objectivity of natural phenomenon, and second is the objectivity of social phenomenon. This view, on the one hand, adheres to the fundamental standpoint of materialism, absorbing the rational factors in the view of "Beauty is Nature". While on the other hand, it also adopts rational factors in views that "Beauty is subjective" and "Beauty is the unity of the subject and object", which emphasizes the role of subjective consciousness. Hence, it avoids the bias to mechanical materialism while manifests its difference in essence from all the other above. In June of1941, Hua made a summary of Chinese Anti-Japanese War literature from1937to1941, took part in discussions on the nation’s style, emphasized the importance of unification of content and form, and raised views which were highly practical and theoretical. In the study of Lu Xun, Hua takes the lead in the academia to systematically analyze and criticize Lu Xun and his works from the broad perspectives of "China-style" and "China-way", which raises the study of Lu Xun to a higher level. Logic Development of Lu Xun’s Thought opens up new frontiers and directions for the study of Lu Xun, forming a significant basis for the later subject of Lu Xun Study. In philosophy, Hua Gang is dedicated to exploring materialistic philosophy, especially on the sinicization and popularization of Marxism. Hua, in colleges, spread and popularized dialectical materialism through public lectures on politics, which turned out effective and has been inspirational till present days. Hua incessantly devotes to explorations on regularity. His Regularity Theory, centering around problems on regularity, describes detailedly a set of issues concerning dialectical materialism such as the "nature" and "basic characteristics" of regularity,"the relations between common and special regularities and their functions", and several basic laws in dialectical materialism etc. The book reflects upon and seeks to answer the significant problems arising from reality, which manifests Hua’s courage and responsibility in his academic study as a Marxist scholar. From present day’s view, Regularity Theory has been a work that provides the most systematic philosophical thinking towards regularity. To some degree, it can be regarded as a summary of our academia’s studies on regularity conducted before the1960s. Meanwhile, under the guidance of Marxism, Hua also conducted research on ancient Chinese scholars like Wang Chong and Lao Tse who believed in naive materialism. He discovered the elements of materialism in their thoughts which were ignored and re-estimated their value in modern times. While analyzing Hua Gang’s academic thinking, a clear framework gradually takes shape:It follows the guiding ideology and methodology of dialectical materialism and historical materialism with an academic basis on regularity theory. It turns to focus on exploring the general law of social development and the special law of Chinese history’s development. Meanwhile, in the study of literature, it turns to focus on studying laws of literary creation, especially in aesthetic regularity study, and particularly praised Lu Xun’s realistic writing style. Such an academic framework, so to speak, also serves as the fundamental architecture of China’s Marxist academic system. In establishing this, Hua has contributed a great share as one of the first Marxist scholars in establishing, enriching and deepening studies of history, literature and philosophy respectively. Therefore, Hua Gang, with his outstanding academic attainments in the fields of literature, history and philosophy contributing to the development of sinicization of Marxism and academic Marxism, deserves respect in the Chinese Marxist academic history, and furthermore, in the Chinese modern academic history.