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I
WHEN ASKED, IN 1954, which book he read the previous year had the most impact on him, Bertolt Brecht indicated it was Mao Tse Tung's On Contradiction.1 Brecht was, of course, as serious a philosophical scholar as he was a brilliant artist. As Wolfgang Haug states, "[B]ehind Brecht's world fame as a playwright and poet it is still a widely kept secret that he was one of the most outstanding Marxist philosophers."2 Given this, it is unlikely that Brecht would have arbitrarily designated any text as being the most significant if it did not have considerable impact on him. While Brecht's European influences are fairly well documented in the literature, very little is written that explores his Eastern philosophical influences, particularly those of Mao.
Brecht read On Contradiction just a few years before his death. By then, he had already established himself as a serious Marxist thinker. His work had been influenced by such Marxist figures as Engels, Lenin, Korsch, and Marx himself. Although these thinkers clearly had more influence on Brecht's work in general, Mao was not without influence. This paper seeks to systematically unravel the philosophical connections between Mao's and Brecht's thinking and work. Specifically, it seeks to answer the question, "What is it about Mao's treatise that made Brecht choose it as the most important reading of an entire year?"
While it is possible that Brecht favored the book because it was largely a reiteration of Lenin's reading of Marx's material dialectics (a reading Brecht subscribed to), it is unlikely that he would consider the work the most important book he read that year solely for this reason. My analysis of Brecht's philosophical thought suggests it is Mao's treatment of higher order antagonisms-that is, between "dominant" and "secondary" contradictions-that appealed to Brecht. In fact, Brecht used Mao's treatise as a means of teaching others, particularly his cast about "dominant" and "secondary" contradictions. One primary source in particular, "Study of the First Scene of Shakespeare's 'Coriolanus'"3 attests to Brecht using Mao's treatise in this manner (see Brecht on Theatre [endnote 7], pp. 252-65). In this dialogue, Brecht makes reference to having asked his collaborators to read On Contradiction and their responses indicate that they did.
I begin with a discussion of Mao's...