Abstract
In a recent interview with Edgar Snow, Mao Tse-tung asserted that he did not remember having written “Dialectical Materialism,” and that if he had written it, he surely would have remembered it. There is both internal and external evidence to support Mao's assertion. If the article was published under his name without his approval, then those who undertook this venture may have had the support of Soviet authorities, perhaps even of Stalin himself. There is also the possibility that it was forged and published by intriguers within the CCP who disapproved of the united front policies which Mao had just elaborated in his “New Democracy.” By first weakening his position with a damning forgery, they might then have hoped to overthrow him with Moscow's tacit approval. The Russian returned student leaders, Wang Ming and Po Ku, might well have devised such a plot.
