Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.1, 2018

 

The Intrinsic Theoretical Contradictions in Sun Yat-Sen’s Principle of the People’s Livelihood: Sun’s Class Viewpoint(Abstract)

 

Zhang Haipeng

 

As a theoretical position, Sun Yat-Sen’s principle of the people’s livelihood has profound inner contradictions and several theoretical pitfalls that are hard to rationalize. He acknowledged that class struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie had emerged and would continue in the course of the development of capitalism in Europe and America, but subjectively he sought to avoid the emergence of similar class struggle in China. At the same time, his theory of class struggle was divorced from the practice of class struggle. Epistemologically, acknowledging European class struggle is materialistic, but subjectively, trying to prevent the emergence of class struggle in the course of the development of Chinese capitalism is idealistic. His subjective attempt at prevention shows that Sun is epistemologically dualistic both in relation to class struggle and to his principle of the people’s livelihood, which is obviously idealistic.