Revisiting the Dissemination of Marxism in May Fourth China: A Perspective of Cultural Field

Abstract

The dissemination of Marxism in May Fourth China has always been a heated topic among Chinese historians, and the perspective of social history has influenced this issue over the last 20 years. Current opinion tends to regard the spread of Marxism as a rebellion of marginalized intellectuals against the whole establishment while the cultural elite tried to return to the center of society. Nevertheless, I argue that the dissemination of Marxism in the May Fourth period relied heavily on the existing cultural hierarchy and that a three-tiered configuration began to form among intellectuals that was dominated by top-down rather than bottom-up flow of knowledge of Marxism. The farewell to existing authority had to wait until these intellectuals gradually transformed themselves into revolutionaries after 1922.