The 100th Anniversary Of The Russian Revolution-Leon Trotsky On Andre Malraux In His Revolutionary Days
Leon Trotsky
Problems of the Chinese
Revolution
The Strangled Revolution
February 9, 1931
Prinkipo
The book by André Malraux, Les Conquérants, was sent to me
from various quarters and I think in four copies, but to my regret I read it
after a delay of a year and a half or two. The book is devoted to the Chinese
revolution, that is, to the greatest subject of the last five years. A fine and
well-knit style, the discriminating eye of an artist, original and daring
observation – all confer upon the novel an exceptional importance. If we write
about it here it is not because the book is a work of talent, although this is
not a negligible fact, but because it offers a source of political lessons of
the highest value. Do they come from Malraux? No, they flow from the recital
itself, unknown to the author, and they go against him. This does honour to the
author as an observer and an artist, but not as a revolutionist. However, we
have the right to evaluate Malraux too from this point of view; in his own name
and above all in the name of Garine, his other self, the author does not
hesitate with his judgements on the revolution.
This book is called a novel.
As a matter of fact, we have before us a romanticized chronicle of the Chinese
revolution, from its first period to the period of Canton. The chronicle is not
complete. Social vigour is sometimes lacking from the picture. But for that
there pass before the reader not only luminous episodes of the revolution but
also clear-cut silhouettes which are graven in the memory like social symbols.
By little coloured touches,
following the method of pointillisme, Malraux gives an unforgettable
picture of the general strike, not, to be sure, as it is below, not as it is
carried out, but as it is observed from above: the Europeans do not get their
breakfast, they swelter in the heat, the Chinese have ceased to work in the
kitchens and to operate the ventilators. This is not a reproach to the author:
the foreign artist could undoubtedly not have dealt with his theme otherwise.
But there is a reproach to be made, and not a small one: the book is lacking in
a congenital affinity between the writer, in spite of all he knows, understands
and can do, and his heroine, the revolution.
The active sympathies of
the author for insurgent China are unmistakable. But chance bursts upon these
sympathies. They are corroded by the excesses of individualism and by aesthetic
caprice. In reading the book with sustained attention one sometimes experiences
a feeling of vexation when in the tone of the persuasive recital one perceives
a note of protective irony towards the barbarians capable of enthusiasm. That
China is backward, that many of its political manifestations bear a primitive
character – nobody asks that this be passed over in silence. But a correct
perspective is needed which puts every object in its place. The Chinese events,
on the basis of which Malraux’s “novel” unfolds itself, are incomparably more
important for the future destiny of human culture than the vain and pitiful
clamour of Europe parliaments and the mountain of literary products of stagnant
civilization. Malraux seems to feel a certain fear to take this into account.
In the novel, there are
pages, splendid in their intensity, which show how revolutionary hatred is born
of the yoke, of ignorance, of slavery, and is tempered like steel. These pages
might have entered into the Anthology of the Revolution if Malraux had approached
the masses with greater freedom and intrepidity, if he had not introduced into
his observations a small note of blasé superiority, seeming to excuse
himself for his transient contact with the insurrection of the Chinese people,
as much perhaps before himself as before the academic mandarins in France and
the traffickers in spiritual opium.
* * *
Borodin represents the Comintern in the post of “high counsellor”
in the Canton government. Garine, the favourite of the author, is in charge of
propaganda. All the work is done within the framework of the Guomindang.
Borodin, Garine, the Russian “General” Galen, the Frenchman Gérard, the German
Klein and others, constitute an original bureaucracy of the revolution raising
itself above the insurgent people and conducting its own “revolutionary” policy
instead of the policy of the revolution.
The local organizations of
the Guomindang are defined as follows: “groups of fanatics – brave of a few
plutocrats out for notoriety or for security – and crowds of students and
coolies”. (p.24) Not only do bourgeois enter into every organization but they
completely lead the Party. The Communists are subordinate to the Guomindang.
The workers and the peasants are persuaded to take no action that might rebuff
the devoted friends of the bourgeoisie. “Such are the societies that we control
(more or less, do not fool yourself on this score).” An edifying avowal! The
bureaucracy of the Comintern tried to “control” the class struggle in China,
like the international bankocracy controls the economic life of the backward
countries. But a revolution cannot be controlled. One can only give a political
expression to its internal forces. One must know to which of these forces to
link one’s destiny.
“Today coolies are
beginning to discover that they exist, simply that they exist.” (p.26) That’s
well aimed. But to feel that they exist, the coolies, the industrial workers
and the peasants must overthrow those who prevent them from existing. Foreign
domination is indissolubly bound up with the domestic yoke. The coolies must
not only drive out Baldwin or MacDonald but also overthrow the ruling classes.
One cannot be accomplished without the other. Thus, the awakening of the human
personality in the masses of China, who exceed ten times the population of
France, is immediately transformed into the lava of the social revolution. A
magnificent spectacle!
But here Borodin appears on
the scene and declares: “In the revolution the workers must do the coolie work
for the bourgeoisie,” wrote Chen Duxiu in an open letter to the Chinese
Communists. The social enslavement from which they want to liberate themselves,
the workers find transposed into the sphere of politics. To whom do they owe
this perfidious operation? To the bureaucracy of the Comintern. In trying to
“control” the Guomindang, it actually aids the bourgeoisie which seeks
“notoriety and security” in enslaving the coolies who want to exist.
Borodin, who remains in the
background all the time, is characterized in the novel as a “man of action”, as
a “professional revolutionist”, as a living incarnation of Bolshevism on the
soil of China. Nothing is further from the truth! Here is the political
biography of Borodin: in 1903, at the age of 19, he emigrated to America; in
1918, he returned to Moscow where, thanks to his knowledge of English, he
“ensured contact with the foreign parties”; he was arrested in Glasgow in 1922;
then he was delegated to China as representative of the Comintern. Having quit
Russia before the first revolution and having returned after the
third, Borodin appeared as the consummate representative of that state and
Party bureaucracy which recognized the revolution only after its victory. When
it is a question of young people, it is sometimes nothing more than a matter of
chronology. With people of 40 or 50, it is already a political
characterization. If Borodin rallied successfully to the victorious revolution
in Russia, it does not in the least signify that he was called upon to assure
the victory of the revolution in China. People of this type assimilate without
difficulty the gestures and intonations of “professional revolutionists”. Many
of them, by their protective colouration, not only deceive others but also
themselves. The audacious inflexibility of the Bolshevik is most usually
metamorphosed with them into that cynicism of the functionary ready for
anything. Ah! to have a mandate from the Central Committee! This sacrosanct
safeguard Borodin always had in his pocket.
Garine is not a
functionary, he is more original than Borodin and perhaps even closer to the
revolutionary type. But he is devoid of the indispensable formation; dilettante
and theatrical, he gets hopelessly entangled in the great events and he reveals
it at every step. With regard to the slogans of the Chinese revolution, he
expresses himself thus: “democratic chatter – ‘the rights of the proletariat’,
etc.” (p.32.) This has a radical ring but it is a false radicalism. The slogans
of democracy are execrable chatter in the mouth of Poincaré, Herriot, Léon
Blum, sleight-of-hand artists of France and jailers of Indochina, Algeria and
Morocco. But when the Chinese rebel in the name of the “rights of the
proletariat”, this has as little to do with chatter as the slogans of the
French Revolution in the eighteenth century. At Hong Kong, the British birds of
prey threatened, during the strike, to re-establish corporal punishment. “The
rights of man and of the citizen” meant at Hong Kong the right of the Chinese
not to be flogged by the British whip. To unmask the democratic rottenness of
the imperialists is to serve the revolution: to call the slogans of the
insurrection of the oppressed “chatter”, is involuntarily to aid the
imperialists.
A good inoculation of
Marxism would have preserved the author from fatal contempt of this sort. But
Garine in general considers that revolutionary doctrine is “doctrinaire
rubbish” (le fatras doctrinal). He is, you see, one of those to whom the
revolution is only a definite “state of affairs”. Isn’t this astonishing? But
it is just because the revolution is a “state of affairs”, that is, a stage in
the development of society conditioned by objective causes and subjected to
definite laws, that a scientific mind can foresee the general direction of
processes. Only the study of the anatomy of society and of its physiology
permits one to react to the course of events by basing oneself upon scientific
foresight and not upon a dilettante’s conjectures. The revolutionist who
“despises” revolutionary doctrine is not a bit better than the healer who
despises medical doctrine which he does not know, or than the engineer who
rejects technology. People who without the aid of science, try to rectify the
“state of affairs” which is called a disease, are called sorcerers or
charlatans and are prosecuted by law. Had there existed a tribunal to judge the
sorcerers of the revolution, it is probable that Borodin, like his Muscovite inspirers,
would have been severely condemned. I am afraid Garine himself would not have
come out of it unscathed.
Two figures are contrasted
to each other in the novel, like the two poles of the national revolution; old
Chen Dai, the spiritual authority of the right wing of the Guomindang, the
prophet and saint of the bourgeoisie, and Hong, the young leader of the
terrorists. Both are depicted with great force. Chen Dai embodies the old
Chinese culture translated into the language of European breeding; with this
exquisite garment, he “ennobles” the interests of all the ruling classes of
China. To be sure, Chen Dai wants national liberation, but he dreads the masses
more than the imperialists; he hates the revolution more than the yoke placed
upon the nation. If he marches towards it, it is only to pacify it, to subdue
it, to exhaust it. He conducts a policy of passive resistance on two fronts,
against imperialism and against the revolution, the policy of Gandhi in India,
the policy which, in definite periods and in one form or another, the
bourgeoisie has conducted at every longitude and latitude. Passive resistance
flows from the tendency of the bourgeoisie to canalize the movement of the
masses and to make off with it.
When Garine says that Chen
Dai’s influence rises above politics, one can only shrug his shoulders. The
masked policy of the “upright man”, in China as in India, expresses in the most
sublime and abstractly moralizing form the conservative interests of the
possessors. The personal disinterestedness of Chen Dai is in no sense in
opposition to his political function: the exploiters need “upright men” as the
corrupted ecclesiastical hierarchy needs saints.
Who gravitate around Chen
Dai? The novel replies with meritorious precision: a world of “aged mandarins,
smugglers of opium and of obscene photographs, of scholars turned bicycle
dealers, of Parisian barristers, of intellectuals of every kind”. (p.124.)
Behind them stands a more solid bourgeoisie bound up with England, which arms
General Tang against the revolution. In the expectation of victory, Tang
prepares to make Chen Dai the head of the government. Both of them, Chen Dai
and Tang, nevertheless continue to be members of the Guomindang which Borodin
and Garine serve.
When Tang has a village
attacked by his armies, and when he prepares to butcher the revolutionists,
beginning with Borodin and Garine, his party comrades, the latter with the aid
of Hong, mobilize and arm the unemployed. But after the victory won over Tang,
the leaders do not seek to change a thing that existed before. They cannot
break the ambiguous bloc with Chen Dai because they have no confidence in the
workers, the coolies, the revolutionary masses, they are themselves
contaminated with the prejudices of Chen Dai whose qualified arm they are.
In order “not to rebuff”
the bourgeoisie they are forced to enter into struggle with Hong. Who is he and
where does he come from? “The lowest dregs.” (p.36) He is one of those who are
making the revolution and not those who rally to it when it is victorious.
Having come to the idea of killing the British governor of Hong Kong, Hong is
concerned with only one thing: “When I have been sentenced to capital
punishment, you must tell the young to follow my example.” (p.36) To Hong a
clear program must be given: to arouse the workers, to assemble them, to arm
them and to oppose them to Chen Dai as to an enemy. But the bureaucracy of the
Comintern seeks Chen Dai’s friendship, repulses Hong and exasperates him. Hong
exterminates bankers and merchants one after another, the very ones who
“support” the Guomindang, Hong kills missionaries: “those who teach people to
support misery must be punished, Christian priests or others” (p.274) If Hong
does not find the right road, it is the fault of Borodin and Garine who have
placed the revolution in the hands of the bankers and the merchants. Hong
reflects the mass which is already rising but which has not yet rubbed its eyes
or softened its hands. He tries by the revolver and the knife to act for
the masses whom the agents of the Comintern are paralysing. Such is the
unvarnished truth about the Chinese revolution.
* * *
Meanwhile, the Canton government is “oscillating, in its attempt
to stay straight, between Garine and Borodin, who control the police and the
trade unions, on the one hand, and Chen Dai, who controls nothing, but who
exists all the same, on the other.” (p.68) We have an almost perfect picture of
the duality of power. The representatives of the Comintern have in their hands
the trade unions of Canton, the police, the cadet school of Whampoa, the
sympathy of the masses the aid of the Soviet Union. Chen Dai has a “moral
authority”, that is, the prestige of the mortally distracted possessors. The
friends of Chen Dai sit in a powerless government willingly supported by the
conciliators. But isn’t this the régime of the February revolution, the
Kerenskyist system, with the sole difference that the role of the Mensheviks is
played by the pseudo-Bolsheviks? Borodin has no doubt of it even though he is
made up as a Bolshevik and takes his make-up seriously.
The central idea of Garine
and Borodin is to prohibit Chinese and foreign boats, cruising towards the port
of Canton, from putting in at Hong Kong. By the commercial boycott these
people, who consider themselves revolutionary realists, hope to shatter British
domination in southern China. They never deem it necessary first of all to
overthrow the government of the Canton bourgeoisie which only waits for the
moment to surrender the revolution to England. No, Borodin and Garine knock
every day at the door of the “government”, and hat in hand, beg that the saving
decree be promulgated. One of them reminds Garine that at bottom the government
is a phantom. Garine is not disconcerted. Phantom or not, he replies, let it go
ahead while we need it. That is the way the priest needs relics which he
himself fabricates with wax and cotton. What is concealed behind this policy
which weakens and debases the revolution? The respect of a petty-bourgeois
revolutionist for a solid conservative bourgeois. It is thus that the reddest
of the French radicals is always ready to fall on his knees before Poincaré.
But perhaps the masses of
Canton are not yet mature enough to overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie?
From this whole atmosphere, the conviction arises that without the opposition
of the Comintern the phantom government would long before have been overthrown
under the pressure of the masses. But let us admit that the Cantonese workers
were still too weak to establish their own power. What, generally speaking, is
the weak spot of the masses? Their inclination to follow the exploiters. In
this case, the first duty of revolutionists is to help the workers liberate
themselves from servile confidence. Nevertheless, the work done by the
bureaucracy of the Comintern was diametrically opposed to his. It inculcated in
the masses the notion of the necessity to submit to the bourgeoisie and it
declared that the enemies of the bourgeoisie were their own enemies.
Do not rebuff Chen Dai! But
if Chen Dai withdraws in spite of this, which is inevitable, it would not mean
that Garine and Borodin will be delivered of their voluntary vassaldom towards
the bourgeoisie. They will only choose as the new focus of their activity,
Chiang Kai-shek, son of the same class and younger brother of Chen Dai. Head of
the military school of Whampoa, founded by the Bolsheviks, Chiang Kai-shek does
not confine himself to passive resistance; he is ready to resort to bloody
force, not in the plebeian form, the form of the masses, but in the military
form and only within limits that will permit the bourgeoisie to retain an
unlimited power over the army. Borodin and Garine, by arming their enemies,
disarm and repulse their friends. This is the way they prepare the catastrophe.
But are we not
overestimating the influence of the revolutionary bureaucracy upon the events?
No, it showed itself stronger than it might have thought, if not for good then
at least for evil. The coolies who are only beginning to exist politically require
a courageous leadership. Hong requires a bold program. The revolution requires
the energies of millions of rising men. But Borodin and his bureaucrats require
Chen Dai and Chiang Kai-shek. They strangle Hong and prevent the worker from
raising his head. In a few months, they will stifle the agrarian insurrection
of the peasantry so as not to repulse the bourgeois army command. Their
strength is that they represent the Russian October, Bolshevism, the Communist
International. Having usurped authority, the banner and the material resources
of the greatest of revolutions, the bureaucracy bars the road to another
revolution which also had all chances of being great.
The dialogue between
Borodin and Hong (pp.182-4) is the most terrific indictment of Borodin and his
Moscow inspirers. Hong, as always, is after decisive action. He demands the
punishment of the most prominent bourgeois. Borodin finds this sole objection:
Those who are “paying” must not be touched. “Revolution is not so simple,” says
Garine for his part. “Revolution involves paying an army,” adds Borodin. These
aphorisms contain all the elements of the noose in which the Chinese revolution
was strangled. Borodin protected the bourgeoisie which, in recompense, made
contributions to the “revolution”, the money going to the army of Chiang
Kai-shek. The army of Chiang Kai-shek exterminated the proletariat and
liquidated the revolution. Was it really impossible to foresee this? And wasn’t
it really foreseen? The bourgeoisie pays willingly only for the army which
serves it against the people. The army of the revolution does not wait for
donations: it makes them pay. This is called the revolutionary dictatorship.
Hong comes forward successfully at workers’ meetings and thunders against the
“Russians”, the bearers of ruin for the revolution. The way of Hong himself
does not lead to the goal but he is right as against Borodin. “Had the Tai Ping
leaders Russian advisers? Had the Boxers?” (p.190) Had the Chinese revolution
of 1924-27 been left to itself it would perhaps not have come to victory
immediately but it would not have resorted to the methods of hara-kiri, it
would not have known shameful capitulations and it would have trained
revolutionary cadres. Between the dual power of Canton and that of Petrograd
there is the tragic difference that in China there was no Bolshevism in
evidence; under the name of Trotskyism, it was declared a counter-revolutionary
doctrine and was persecuted by every method of calumny and repression. Where
Kerensky did not succeed during the July Days, Stalin succeeded ten years later
in China.
Borodin and “all the
Bolsheviks of his generation”, Garine assures us, were distinguished by their
struggle against the anarchists. This remark was needed by the author so as to
prepare the reader for the struggle of Borodin against Hong’s group.
Historically it is false. Anarchism was unable to raise its head in Russia not
because the Bolsheviks fought successfully against it but because they had
first dug up the ground under its feet. Anarchism, if it does not live within
the four walls of intellectuals’ cafés and editorial offices, but has
penetrated more deeply, translates the psychology of despair in the masses and
signifies the political punishment for the deceptions of democracy and the treachery
of opportunism. The boldness of Bolshevism in posing the revolutionary problems
and in teaching their solution left no room for the development of anarchism in
Russia. But if the historical investigation of Malraux is not exact, his
recital shows admirably how the opportunist policy of Stalin-Borodin prepared
the ground for anarchist terrorism in China.
Driven by the logic of this
policy, Borodin consents to adopt a decree against the terrorists. The firm
revolutionists, driven on to the road of adventurism by the crimes of the
Moscow leaders, the bourgeoisie of Canton, with the benediction of the
Comintern, declares them outlaws. They reply with acts of terrorism against the
pseudo-revolutionary bureaucrats who protect the moneyed bourgeoisie. Borodin
and Garine seize the terrorists and destroy them, no longer defending the
bourgeois alone but also their own heads. It is thus that the policy of
conciliation inexorably slips down to the lowest degree of treachery.
The book is called Les
Conquérants. With this title, which has a double meaning when the
revolution paints itself with imperialism, the author refers to the Russian
Bolsheviks, or more exactly, to a certain part of them. The conquerors? The
Chinese masses rose for a revolutionary insurrection, with the influence of the
October upheaval as their example and with Bolshevism as their banner. But the
“conquerors” conquered nothing. On the contrary, they surrendered everything to
the enemy. If the Russian Revolution called forth the Chinese revolution, the
Russian epigones strangled it. Malraux does not make these deductions. He does
not even suspect their existence. All the more clearly do they emerge upon the
background of his remarkable book.
Leon Trotsky
Problems of the Chinese Revolution
A Strangled Revolution
and Its Stranglers
June 13, 1931
Kadikoy
Urgent work prevented me from reading sooner the article by
Malraux in which he defends, against my criticism, the Communist International,
Borodin, Garine, and himself. As a political publicist, Malraux is at a still
greater distance from the proletariat and from the revolution than as an
artist. By itself, this fact would not justify these lines, for it is nowhere
said that a talented writer must necessarily be a proletarian revolutionist. If
I nevertheless return to the same question again, it is for the sake of the
subject, and not of Malraux.
The best figures of the novel, I said, attained the stature of social
symbols. I must add: Borodin, Garine and all their “collaborators” constitute
symbols of the quasi-revolutionary bureaucracy, of that new “social type” which
was born thanks to the existence of the soviet state on the one hand, and on
the other to a definite régime in the Comintern.
I declined to classify Borodin among the “professional revolutionists”, as
he is characterized in the novel. Malraux endeavours to show me that Garine has
enough mandarin’s buttons to give him the right to this title. Here, Malraux
finds it in place to add that Trotsky has a greater quantity of buttons. Isn’t
it ridiculous? The type of the professional revolutionist is not at all some
sort of an ideal type. But in all events, it is a
definite type, with a definite political biography
and with salient traits. Only Russia created this type during the last decades;
in Russia, the most perfect of this type was created by the Bolshevik Party.
The professional revolutionists of the generation to which Borodin belonged
began to take shape on the eve of the first revolution, they were put to the
test in 1905, they tempered and educated (or decomposed) themselves during the
years of the counter-revolution; they stood the supreme test in 1917. From 1903
up to 1918, that is, during the whole period when, in Russia, was being formed
the type of professional revolutionist, Borodin, and hundreds, thousands of
Borodins, remained outside of the struggle. In 1918, after the victory, Borodin
arrived to offer his services. This does him honour: it is worthier to serve
the proletarian state than the bourgeois state. Borodin charged himself with
perilous missions. But the agents of bourgeois states in foreign countries,
especially in colonial countries, also and that quite frequently, accomplish
perilous tasks. Yet they do not become revolutionists because of that. The type
of the functionary-adventurer and the type of the professional revolutionist,
at certain moments and by certain qualities, can find points of similarity. But
by their psychological formation as much as by their historical function, they
are two opposite types.
The revolution pursues its course together with its class. If the
proletariat is weak, if it is backward, the revolution confines itself to the
modest, patient and persevering work of the creation of propaganda circles, of
the preparation of cadres; supporting itself upon the first cadres, it passes
over to mass agitation, legal or illegal, according to the circumstances. It
always distinguishes its class from the enemy class, and conducts only such a
policy as corresponds to the strength of its class and consolidates this
strength. The French, the Russian or the Chinese proletarian revolutionist,
will look upon the Chinese workers as his own army, of today or of tomorrow.
The functionary-adventurer raises himself above all the classes of the Chinese
nation. He considers himself predestined to dominate, to give orders, to
command, independently of the internal relationship of forces in China. Since
the Chinese proletariat is weak today and cannot assure the commanding
positions, the functionary conciliates and joins together the different
classes. He acts as the inspector of the nation, as the viceroy for the affairs
of the colonial revolution. He arranges combinations between the conservative
bourgeois and the anarchist, he improvises a program ad hoc, he erects policies
upon ambiguities, he creates a bloc of four classes, he swallows swords and
scoffs at principles. With what result? The bourgeoisie is richer, more
influential, more experienced. The functionary-adventurer does not succeed in
deceiving it. But for all that, he deceives the workers, filled with the spirit
of abnegation, but not experienced, by turning them over to the hands of the
bourgeoisie. Such was the role of the bureaucracy of the Comintern in the
Chinese revolution.
Considering as natural the right of the “revolutionary” bureaucracy to
command independently of the forces of the proletariat, Malraux informs us that
one could not participate in the Chinese revolution without participating in
the war, and one could not participate in the war without participating in the
Guomindang, etc To this, he adds: the break with the Guomindang would have
meant, for the Communist Party, the necessity of passing into illegality. When
one thinks that these arguments sum up the philosophy of the representatives of
the Comintern in China, he cannot refrain from saying: Indeed, the dialectic of
the historical process sometimes plays bad jokes upon organizations, upon men
and upon ideas! How easy it is to solve the problem: in order to participate
successfully in the events directed by the enemy class, one must submit to this
class; in order to avoid repressions on the part of the Guomindang, one must
paint oneself up in its colours! There you have the secret of Borodin-Garine.
Malraux’s political estimate of the situation, of the possibilities and the
tasks in China in 1925, is entirely false; it hardly reaches the border line
where the real problems of the revolution begin. I have said elsewhere all that
had to be said on this subject, and Malraux’s article gives no ground for a
re-examination of what has been said. But even by standing on the ground of the
false estimate Malraux gives of the situation, one can in no case justify the
policy of Stalin-Borodin-Garine. In order to protest in 1925 against this
policy, certain things had to be foreseen. In order to defend it in 1931, one
must be incurably blind.
Did the strategy of the functionaries of the Comintern bring the Chinese
proletariat anything but humiliations, the extermination of its cadres and
above all, a terrific confusion in the mind? Did the shameful capitulation
before the Guomindang avert repression for the Party? On the contrary, it only
accumulated and concentrated the repressions. Was not the Communist Party
compelled to pass into illegality? And when? In the period of the crushing of
the revolution! If the Communists had begun by illegal work, at the beginning
of the revolutionary tide, they would have emerged upon the open arena at the
head of the masses. By effacing and demoralizing the Party with the aid of the
Borodins and Garines, Chiang Kai-shek compelled it later, with all the greater
success to take refuge in illegality during the years of the
counter-revolution. The policy of Borodin-Garine entirely served the Chinese
bourgeoisie. The Chinese Communist Party must begin all over again at the
beginning, and that on an arena encumbered with debris, with prejudices, with
uncomprehended mistakes and with the distrusts of the advanced workers. Those
are the results.
The criminal character of this whole policy reveals itself with particular
acuteness in isolated questions. Malraux presents as a merit of Borodin and
Company the fact that in turning over the terrorists to the hands of the
bourgeoisie, he deliberately pushed under the knife of the terror the leader of
the bourgeoisie, Chen Dai. This machination is worthy of a bureaucratic Borgia
or of the “revolutionary” Polish
szlachta
(gentry and nobility) who always preferred to fire with the hands of others
behind the backs of the people. No, the task was not to kill Chen Dai in
ambush, but to prepare the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. When the party of the
revolution is obliged to kill, it does it on its open responsibility, in the
name of tasks and immediate aims understood by the masses.
Revolutionary morals are not abstract Kantian norms, but rules of conduct
which place the revolutionist under the control of the tasks and aims of his
class. Borodin and Garine were not bound up with the masses, they did not
absorb the spirit of responsibility before the class. They are bureaucratic
supermen who consider that “everything is permitted” within the limits of the
mandate received from above. The activity of such men, effective as it may be
at certain moments, can only be directed, in the last instance, against the
interests of the revolution.
After having killed Chen Dai with the hands of Hong, Borodin and Garine then
turn over Hong and his group to the hands of the executioners. This stamps
their whole policy with the brand of Cain. Here too Malraux poses as a
defender. What is his argument? Lenin and Trotsky also punished the anarchists.
It is hard to believe that this is said by a man who came near the revolution,
even if but for a moment. Malraux forgets or does not understand that the
revolution takes place in the name of the domination of one class over another,
that it is only from this task that revolutionists draw their right to
violence. The bourgeoisie exterminates the revolutionists, sometimes also the
anarchists (more and more infrequently, because they become ever more obedient)
in the name of safeguarding the régime of exploitation and baseness. Under the
domination of the bourgeoisie, the Bolsheviks always defend the anarchists
against the Chiappes. After having conquered power, the Bolsheviks did
everything to draw the anarchists over to the side of the dictatorship of the
proletariat. They succeeded in actuality in drawing the majority of the
anarchists behind them. Yes, the Bolsheviks severely punished those anarchists
who undermined the dictatorship of the proletariat. Were we right or weren’t
we? That depends upon the manner in which one evaluates our revolution and the
régime instituted by it. But can one imagine for a single instant that the
Bolsheviks – under Prince Lvov or under Kerensky, under the bourgeois régime –
would act as its agents in the extermination of anarchists? It is enough to
formulate the question clearly, to turn aside in disgust. Just as Bridoison
interests himself only in the form and ignores the essence, so the quasi-revolutionary
bureaucracy and its literary attorney interest themselves only in the mechanics
of the revolution, ignoring the question of what class and what régime they
should serve. Here lies the abyss between the revolutionist and the functionary
of the revolution.
What Malraux says about Marxism is a joke. The Marxian policy was not
applicable in China because, you see, the proletariat was not class-conscious.
It would seem then that from this flows the task of awakening this
class-consciousness. But Malraux deduces a justification of the policy directed
against the interests of the proletariat.
The other argument is no more convincing and still less amusing: Trotsky
speaks of the need of Marxism for revolutionary politics; but isn’t Borodin a
Marxist? And Stalin, isn’t he a Marxist? Then it is not a question of Marxism.
I defend, against Garine, the revolutionary doctrine, just as I would defend,
against a sorcerer, the medical sciences. The sorcerer will say to me in his
defence that diplomaed doctors also very often kill their patients. It is an
argument unworthy of a moderately educated burgher, and not only of a
revolutionist. The fact that medicine is not omnipotent, that the doctors do
not always effect cures, that one finds among them ignoramuses, blockheads and
even poisoners – can this fact serve as an argument for giving the right to
practise medicine to sorcerers, who have never studied medicine and who deny
its significance?
I must make one correction, after having read Malraux’s article. In my
article I expressed the idea that an inoculation of Marxism would do Garine
good. I don’t think so any more.
