In Honor Of The 64th Anniversary Year Of The Chinese Revolution of 1949- From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-Problems Of The Chinese Revolution (1927) –Hankow and Moscow-May 28, 1927- Moscow
Markin comment (repost from 2012):
On a day when we are honoring the 63rd anniversary of the Chinese revolution of 1949 the article posted in this entry and the comment below take on added meaning. In the old days, in the days when I had broken from many of my previously held left social-democratic political views and had begun to embrace Marxism with a distinct tilt toward Trotskyism, I ran into an old revolutionary in Boston who had been deeply involved (although I did not learn the extend of that involvement until later) in the pre-World War II socialist struggles in Eastern Europe. The details of that involvement will not detain us here now but the import of what he had to impart to me about the defense of revolutionary gains has stuck with me until this day. And, moreover, is germane to the subject of this article from the pen of Leon Trotsky -the defense of the Chinese revolution and the later gains of that third revolution (1949) however currently attenuated.
This old comrade, by the circumstances of his life, had escaped that pre-war scene in fascist-wracked Europe and found himself toward the end of the 1930s in New York working with the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party in the period when that organization was going through intense turmoil over the question of defense of the Soviet Union. In the history of American (and international) Trotskyism this is the famous Max Shachtman-James Burnham led opposition that declared, under one theory or another, that the previously defendable Soviet Union had changed dramatically enough in the course of a few months to be no longer worth defending by revolutionaries.
What struck him from the start about this dispute was the cavalier attitude of the anti-Soviet opposition, especially among the wet-behind-the-ears youth, on the question of that defense and consequently about the role that workers states, healthy, deformed or degenerated, as we use the terms of art in our movement, as part of the greater revolutionary strategy. Needless to say most of those who abandoned defense of the Soviet Union when there was even a smidgeon of a reason to defend it left politics and peddled their wares in academia or business. Or if they remained in politics lovingly embraced the virtues of world imperialism.
That said, the current question of defense of the Chinese Revolution hinges on those same premises that animated that old Socialist Workers Party dispute. And strangely enough (or maybe not so strangely) on the question of whether China is now irrevocably on the capitalist road, or is capitalist already (despite some very un-capitalistic economic developments over the past few years), I find that many of those who oppose that position have that same cavalier attitude the old comrade warned me against back when I was first starting out. There may come a time when we, as we had to with the Soviet Union and other workers states, say that China is no longer a workers state. But today is not that day. In the meantime study the issue, read the posted article, and more importantly, defend the gains of the Chinese Revolution.
Leon Trotsky
Problems of the Chinese Revolution
Hankow and Moscow-May 28, 1927- Moscow
What is happening in Hankow now? We can only judge from the telegraphic fragments which Tass does not give to the press.
The Left Guomindang continues to chew the cud of the theory of the solidarity of the workers, peasants and the bourgeoisie in the “national revolution” and recommends to the workers and peasants to observe discipline – towards the bourgeoisie.The Central Committee of the Communist Party (or the Executive Committee of the Guomindang?) calls upon the trade unions to mind “their own affairs” and to leave to the authorities of the Guomindang the struggle against the counter-revolution.
The leader of the Communist Party, Chen Duxiu, adjures the peasants to wait for land until the external foe is conquered.
From Moscow comes the warning not to create soviets “prematurely”.
In the meantime, imperialism exerts pressure upon Chiang Kai-shek, and Chiang Kai-shek, through the bourgeoisie of Hankow, upon the Left Guomindang.
The Left Guomindang demands discipline and patience from the workers and the peasants.
This is the general picture. Its meaning is completely clear.
What is the Moscow leadership doing these days? We know nothing about it. But we need not doubt that under the influence of the recent extremely disquieting telegrams from Hankow, Moscow is sending advice there with approximately the following content: “As much of the agrarian revolution as possible”; “as many of the masses as possible in the Guomindang”, and so forth. The Communist ministers transmit these counsels to the government and to the Central Executive Committee of the Guomindang.
In this manner, the work of the Communist Party is divided into two parts: aloud, it implores the workers and peasants to wait; but in an undertone it whisperingly adjures the bourgeois government to make haste. But the revolution is a revolution precisely because the masses do not want to wait. The bourgeois “radicals” are afraid to make haste precisely because they are bourgeois radicals. And the Communist Party, instead of bringing the masses to their feet, instead of occupying the land, and building soviets, loses time with sterile counsels to both sides, in accordance with the sacrosanct prescription of Martynov on the bloc of four classes and on the replacement of the revolution by an arbitration committee.
The collapse of this policy is absolutely inevitable. Unless we correct it sharply, instantly and resolutely, the collapse will take place in the immediate future. Then a lot of papers, with Moscow’s advice on them, will be brandished before our eyes: “As much of the agrarian revolution as possible, as many of the masses as possible in the Guomindang.” But then we will repeat just what we say today: Such counsels are humbug. The whole revolution cannot be made dependent upon whether or not the pusillanimous bourgeois leadership of the Guomindang accepts our well-meaning advice. It cannot accept it. The agrarian revolution cannot be accomplished with the consent of Wang Jingwei, but in spite of Wang Jingwei and in struggle against him.
That is why the first task is to free our hands, to withdraw the Communist ministers from the national government, to call upon the masses to occupy the land immediately and to build up soviets.
But for this we need a really independent Communist Party, which does not implore the leaders, but resolutely leads the masses. There is no other road and there can be none.
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