Li Da and an Outline of Sociology

Li Da (1890–1966), courtesy name Yongxi, was a native of Lingling, Hunan Province. He is one of the CPC’s most famous Marxist theorists. He started studying at the Capital Metropolitan School of Supreme Teacher Training in 1911. In 1913, he left China for further studies in Japan. He subsequently returned to China due to illness. In 1917, he traveled to Japan again, and was admitted to Japan’s No. 1 High School (later the Tokyo Imperial University) to study science. It was there that he began to study Marxism. Following the May 4th Movement of 1919, Li published a number of essays in the Enlightenment supplement where he described various European socialist parties. Li also worked actively to disseminate Marxist though, and translated a number of works such as Herman Gorter’s An Explanation of the Materialist Conception of History, Karl Kautsky’s The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx, and Motoyuki Takabatake’s Shakai Mondai Sōran (An Overview of Issues Relating to Society).