ABSTRACT
Li Da's writings on theory and philosophy of the 1950s and 1960s can be divided into four categories. The first of these were Li's explication of the philosophical thought of Mao Zedong. The second incorporates Li's polemical writings from the 1950s, in which he critiqued other intellectuals whose philosophical and theoretical views were deemed by the Party to be erroneous and a threat. The third includes his writings of the period of the Great Leap Forward. The fourth involved his revision, under the prompting of Mao Zedong, of Elements of Sociology, his classic work from the 1930s. Li's critique focuses on a number of presumed deficiencies in Hu Shi's philosophy of pragmatism. Li Da had hoped that Elements of Marxist Philosophy, when completed, would be a text used in the Third World where texts on Marxism had come primarily from the Soviet Union.
