Abstract

In 1981, the People's Publishing House in Beijing published a collection of controversial writings on alienation and humanism entitled Man Is the Starting Point of Marxism. Edited by the philosopher and journalist Wang Ruoshui, the collection included contributions by twelve different authors, including two by an obscure associate professor of philosophy and former "bourgeois rightist" from Lanzhou University by the name of Gao Ertai. Together, in 1983, Wang and Gao were criticized by name in a Central Party Circular for having used Man Is the Starting Point of Marxism to propagate the politically suspect philosophical notion that alienation is no less common under socialism than under capitalism, and that humanism transcends class interests.