After reading the two articles "Li Genpan: A Brief Discussion on the Feudal View and Social Form View of Marxism-Leninism" and "Li Linzhi: The Great Debate in the Past - How Should Chinese History Be Staged?", I feel that China's 5,000-year history is indeed complicated enough, so it is difficult to classify it.
However, all Chinese have to learn their own history from Xi elementary school. I started studying history in the fifth or sixth grade of elementary school (1946 before liberation), and I didn't like history class. Only history and civics classes failed. I have the impression that ancient history is about memorizing the names of each dynasty and each emperor, and when I reach junior high school, I begin to study modern history, and modern history begins with the Opium War, one unequal treaty after another. This is what I remember as a boring and sad history lesson. It wasn't until the liberation of Shanghai and the opening of the History of Social Development in the school, turning history into a science, that I became interested in it.
The Marxist five-stage theory of history is not something that was conceived out of thin air. It is an inevitable historical process of the development of human society from the lower level to the higher level. No matter where on the earth, as long as there are human beings, human society will inevitably be formed. Human society, on the other hand, can only be maintained, developed, and sustained through productive labor.
Its development and continuation inevitably have to go through a series of processes from the lower level to the higher level. We can see a hint of the primitive communist society of mankind from the aborigines of the Americas, Latin America and Australia, the tribes of Africa, and the ethnic minority tribes of China. Archaeological excavations in China can also be found at this most rudimentary stage of historical development of human society. At that time, the harvest of daily collective labor could barely allow each person to support himself. Because of the low productive capacity, exploitation is not possible, and people are equal to each other.
The productive capacity of labor has developed to a certain historical stage, and the first great social division of labor between agriculture and animal husbandry has taken place. In the improvement of the tools of production from stone tools to bronze tools, until the smelting of iron tools, the second great social division of labor, the division of labor between handicraft and agriculture, appeared. This shows that production not only for one's own consumption, but also for the sake of selling, began to appear. The third great social division of labor separated the merchants who did not participate in production from agriculture, and the division of mental and physical labor also appeared. The growth of social wealth and the disparity in the distribution of power, so class antagonism inevitably arises.
With the development of social history, it has gradually become possible for one person to support more than two people, and society will inevitably split into a class society, and even one of two people will be able to earn something for nothing. The rate of productive labor is inevitably constantly increasing in human production. When the tools of production replaced stone tools with iron tools, that is, after the second great division of society, a slave society was inevitably created, which was not subject to the will of the people. This stage may be long or short in China, and the specific form may be different, but if you want to skip it, it should be impossible if there are no special circumstances.
It is a historical fact that a large amount of slave labor created brilliant art and architecture in ancient times. Due to the low productivity, slave labor can only increase productivity if it is carried out collectively, and exploitation is cruel. Slavery in Tibet before liberation is a practical example. As for what era of slavery in ancient China, in the past, it was believed that Yao and Shun were Zen concession systems, like clan societies, but after Xia, they gradually became the hereditary system of the emperor, and they should be slave societies. This is just an analysis of the historical community and can be referred to. If a slave owner had owned dozens or hundreds of slaves at that time, then the slave owner's life would have reached a considerable level. At this time, the slave owners had to have an army to suppress the slaves' rebellion, and the slave state came into being.
When society developed into slavery, the state as a class society was born. According to Engels's The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: "This class antagonism and class struggle constitute the entire written history up to the present day. That is to say, the recorded history of mankind is the history of the class struggle, that is, the history that began with the slave society.
If Chinese historians want to overthrow Marxist historical materialism. It is necessary to study the ancient history of China from archaeological oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions, as Guo Moruo did. It is necessary to prove how China's primitive clan society changed from a matrilineal clan society to a patrilineal clan society, and that it was a feudal society that could directly reach the level of development of the labor productivity of individual peasants without going through the collective labor of slaves and the suppression of slaves by slaves.
At the very least, as Engels did when he wrote "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State," we should prove with a solid foundation how the productive forces of China's primitive society developed step by step, and that it was possible to skip the stage of development of the productive forces in a slave society and directly reach the level of productive forces in feudal society.
Marxist historical materialism is the objective and inevitable law of the historical development of human society discovered by Marx and Engels who studied the entire historical process of the development of human society with a materialist scientific attitude and the results of historical research by historians throughout history. It is a science that is not subject to people's subjective will.
The development of human society is, first of all, the self-creation of man himself. Labor and the manufacture of labor tools separated man from the animal kingdom and gradually formed a human society. In the very early era of ignorance, human beings only had matrilineal clans, clans, and tribes, and there were no families. This is a long process of objectively existing human history developing from the lower level to the higher level, and it is not subject to people's subjective will. Whether you admit it or not, it is an objective existence of history. The difference is only whether you are a true historian who respects objective facts and adheres to scientific truth, or a pseudo-historian who does not respect objectivity and violates science.
Teacher Li Genpan said, "The theory of socio-economic form is the cornerstone of historical materialism, and if this cornerstone is removed, historical materialism will collapse." The theory of the successive evolution of the five modes of production is the specific application of the theory of socio-economic forms in the study of human history, and although the two are not completely equivalent, they are indeed inseparable. If the slave society, feudal society, and capitalist society are wiped out one by one, the theory of social and economic forms and historical materialism will basically be denied. If we are to talk about Marxism-Leninism, we should take this issue very seriously. ”
I think the problem should be reversed. If slave society, feudal society, and capitalist society can be wiped out one by one, historical materialism is not science. Science is an objective existence of history and cannot be erased. It is not whether we should talk about Marxism-Leninism or not, but whether we should study history as a science.
Judging from the actual situation of current research in the field of history, the development of world history and Chinese history is a complex and very different historical process. The five social forms of Marxist historical materialism are a highly abstract generalization. Its abstraction comes from countless historical facts, which should be scientific and impossible to erase. As for the demarcation between slave society and feudal society, there is still no conclusive conclusion in the world's historical circles, and it is an issue that can be continued to be studied. It is believed that with the excavation of archaeology, human beings will have a clearer and clearer understanding of themselves. We will certainly be able to put our history on the basis of scientific research. In the cause of studying the history of mankind itself, only a true historian can stand on the waves of history, and it is really infinite scenery at the dangerous peak!
[Related Reading]
Li Genpan: A brief discussion on the Marxist-Leninist view of feudalism and social form
Li Linzhi: The Centennial Controversy - How Should Chinese History Be Periodized?
Guo Moruo: The Periodization of Ancient Chinese History
(The author is a special commentator of Kunlunce; source: Kunlunce [original] revised draft, authorized by the author for the first release)