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 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.
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Leon Trotsky
Problems of the Chinese Revolution
First Speech
on the
Chinese Question
May 1927
Moscow
Comrades! In the question under discussion you have been given the theses of comrade Zinoviev which have remained unknown to the Russian party up till now. Zinoviev was not permitted to come here, although he has the full right – politically as well as formally – to do so. I am defending here the theses of comrade Zinoviev as common to us both. The first rule for the political education of a mass party is: It must know not only what is adopted by the Central Committee but also what it rejects, for only in this way does the line of the leadership become clear and comprehensible to the Party masses. And that is how things have always been with us until now. The refusal to show the Party Comrade Zinoviev’s and my own reveals the intellectual weakness, the lack of certainty in their own position, the fear that the theses of the Opposition will appear more correct to the public opinion of the Party than the theses of the majority. There can be no other motives for the concealment of our theses.
My attempt to publish a criticism of Stalin’s theses in the theoretical organ of the Party was unsuccessful. The Central Committee, against whose line in this question my theses are directed, prohibited their publication, as well as the publication of other articles by Zinoviev and me.Yesterday a decision of the Editorial Committee, signed by comrade Kurella, was distributed here. It relates to information on our proceedings. What is meant by this is not quite clear to me. In any case, the Executive Committee is meeting in a strange atmosphere of silence by the press. Only one article in Pravda has been devoted to the Plenum and this article contains a phrase of unheard-of impudence: “He would be a criminal who would think of shaking the unity of the ranks of the Comintern”, etc., etc. Everyone understands what is meant by this. Even before the drafts of the resolutions have been published, Pravda brands as a criminal whoever argues against the future resolutions. One can imagine how Pravda will inform the Party tomorrow about what is taking place here. Meanwhile, here in Moscow every expression of opinion, oral or written, in favour of the Opposition on the basic problems of the Chinese revolution is treated as a crime against the Party. The completely false theses of comrade Stalin have been declared de facto inviolable. Still more, in the very days of the proceedings of the Executive, those comrades who, in the discussions in their Party cells, protested against the baiting of comrade Zinoviev, are simply expelled from the Party or are at least threatened with expulsion. It is in this atmosphere, comrades, that you are acting and deciding. I propose that the Executive decide that every party, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union included, shall publish completely exact and objective reports on our deliberations, supplemented by all the theses and documents distributed here. The problems of the Chinese revolution cannot be stuck into a bottle and sealed up.
Comrades, the greatest of all dangers is the ever-sharpening Party régime. Every mistake of the leadership is made “good”, so to speak, through measures against the Opposition. The day the telegram on Chiang Kai-shek’s coup d’état was made known in Moscow, we said to each other: The Opposition will have to pay dearly for this – especially as demands for payment on their part have not been lacking recently.
The opportunity is always found to frame up a new “case” of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Piatakov, Smilga, etc., so as to distract the attention of the Party from the most burning questions; expulsions of the Opposition, despite the approach of the Party congress – or rather just because of it – constantly increase. The same methods in every section of the Party: in every factory, in every district, in every city. In this situation there frequently emerge, of necessity, those elements who are always ready to accept in advance everything from above, because nothing is difficult for them. They lull themselves into the hope that after Trotsky or Zinoviev have been overcome, everything will be in order. On the contrary: the régime has its own inner logic. The list has only been opened, not closed. Along this road there are only difficulties and further convulsions.
This régime weighs heavily on the International. Nobody trusts himself to speak a word of criticism openly, on the false pretence of not wanting to harm the Soviet Union. But that is exactly how the greatest harm is done. Our internal policy needs revolutionary international criticism, for the wrong tendencies in foreign policy are only an extension of the incorrect tendencies in our internal policy.
I now turn to the draft resolution of comrade Bukharin. First, a question which directly touches the point on the agenda already acted upon. Listen, comrades:
“The Communist International is of the opinion that parties, and in general all organizations that call themselves workers’ parties and workers’ organizations, which do not conduct the most decisive struggle against intervention in China, which lull the vigilance of the working class and propagate a passive attitude on this question, objectively (sometimes also subjectively) help the imperialists ... in the preparation of war against the Soviet Union and in the preparation of new world wars in general.”
These ring like honest words. But they become honest only when they are applied also to the Anglo-Russian Committee. For does it “conduct the most decisive struggle against intervention in China”?No! Does it not lull the vigilance of the working class? It does. Does it not propagate a passive attitude on this question! Without a doubt. Does it not thereby objectively (in its British half also subjectively) help the imperialists of Britain in their work of preparing the war? Obviously and without a doubt.
Compare this with what was declaimed here yesterday by Kuusinen on the Anglo-Russian Committee, in the language of Kuusinenized Purcellism. Whence this duplicity? The philosophy of customs certificates is far more appropriate in the customs office of a border state than on the tribune of the Comintern. This false and unworthy philosophy must be swept away with a broom.Let us listen further to Bukharin’s resolution:
“The ECCI declares that the development of events [in the Chinese revolution, the estimate of its driving forces made at the last Enlarged Plenum of the CI] has confirmed the prognosis. The ECCI declares especially that the course of events has fully confirmed the prognosis of the Enlarged Plenum on the inevitable departure of the bourgeoisie from the national revolutionary united front and its going over to the side of the counter-revolution.”
The workers of Shanghai and Hankow will certainly be surprised when they read that the April events developed in complete harmony with the historical line of march which comrade Bukharin had previously outlined for the Chinese revolution. Could one ever imagine a more malicious caricature and more ridiculous pedantry? The vanguard of the Chinese proletariat was smashed by that same “national” bourgeoisie which occupied the leading role in the joint party of the Guomindang, subordinating the Communist Party, on all decisive questions, to the organizational discipline of the joint party. After the counter-revolutionary coup, which struck the Chinese workers and the huge majority of the working class of the world like a bolt from the blue, the resolution says: It all took place in accordance with the best rules of the Bukharinist prognosis. This really sounds like a bad joke.
What is to be understood here by a prognosis, what does this so-called prognosis signify under the given conditions? Nothing but an empty phrase on the fact that the bourgeoisie, at a given stage of the bourgeois revolution, must separate itself from the oppressed masses of the people. That this commonplace is pathetically called a “prognosis”, is a disgrace to Marxism. This banality does not separate Bolshevism from Menshevism for an instant. Ask Kautsky, Otto Bauer or Dan, and their answer will be: the bloc of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie cannot last for ever. Dan scribbled that in his rag only a short time ago.But the kernel of the question is the following: To say that the bourgeoisie must separate itself from the national revolution is one thing. But to say that the bourgeoisie must take hold of the leadership of the revolution and the leadership of the proletariat, deceive the working class and then disarm it, smash it, and bleed it to death, is something quite different. The whole philosophy of Bukharin, in his resolution, is founded on the identity of these two prognoses. But this means that one does not want to make any fundamental contrast between the Bolshevik and Menshevik perspectives.
Let us listen to what Lenin said on this question:
“The bourgeois politicians have fed and deceived the people with promises in every bourgeois revolution. Our revolution is a bourgeois revolution – therefore the workers must support the bourgeoisie. This is what the good-for-nothing politicians of the liquidator camp say. Our revolution is a bourgeois revolution, is what we Marxists say, and therefore the workers must open the eyes of the people to the deceit of the bourgeois politicians, teach them not to believe them, but to rely on their own forces, on their own solidarity, on their own arms.” (March 1917)
Foreseeing the inevitable departure of the bourgeoisie, Bolshevik policy in the bourgeois revolution is directed towards creating an independent organization of the proletariat as soon as possible, impregnating it as deeply as possible with mistrust of the bourgeoisie, uniting the masses as soon and as broadly as possible and arming them, aiding the revolutionary uprising of the peasant masses in every way. The Menshevik policy in foreseeing the so-called departure of the bourgeoisie is directed towards postponing this moment as long as possible; while the independence of policy and organization of the proletariat is sacrificed to this aim, the workers are instilled with confidence in the progressive role of the bourgeoisie, and the necessity of political self-restraint is preached. In order to maintain the alliance with Purcell, the great strike-breaker, he must be appeased by declaiming about cordial relations and political agreement. In order to maintain the so-called bloc with the Chinese bourgeoisie, they must always be whitewashed anew, thereby facilitating the deluding of the masses by the bourgeois politicians.
Yes, the moment of the departure of the bourgeoisie can thereby be postponed. But this postponement is utilized by the bourgeoisie against the proletariat: It seizes hold of the leadership thanks to its great social advantages, it arms its loyal troops, it prevents the arming of the proletariat, political as well as military, and after it has acquired the upper hand it organizes a counter-revolutionary massacre at the first serious collision.It is not the same thing, comrades, whether the bourgeoisie is tossed to one side or it tosses the proletarian vanguard to one side. These are the two roads of the revolution. On what road did the revolution travel up to the coup? The classic road of all previous bourgeois revolutions, of which Lenin said:
The bourgeois politicians have fed and deceived the people with promises in every bourgeois revolution.
Did the false position of the leadership obstruct or facilitate this road of the Chinese bourgeoisie? It facilitated it to a great extent.
To prevent the departure of the bourgeoisie from becoming the destruction of the proletariat, the miserable theory of the bloc of four classes should have been denounced from the very beginning as genuine theoretical and political treason to the Chinese revolution. Was this done? No, just the contrary.I have not time enough to present a historical description of the development of the revolution and of our differences, which Bukharin had full opportunity to do – extensively and falsely. I am prepared to undertake this retrospective treatment in the theoretical organ of the Party or of the International. Unfortunately, Bukharin touches on this question only where we have no opportunity to answer him properly, that is, with facts and quotations.
The following will suffice for today:
1) On March 16, one short month before the coup by Chiang Kai-shek, an editorial in Pravda indicted the Opposition for believing that the bourgeoisie stands at the head of the Guomindang and the national government and is preparing treason. Instead of making this truth clear to the Chinese workers, Pravda denied it indignantly. It contended that Chiang Kai-shek submitted to the discipline of the Guomindang, as if the conflicting classes, especially in the feverish tempo of the revolution, could submit to common political discipline. Incidentally: if the Opposition never had anything to say against the official line, as was said here by Smeral in his ponderous manner, then why are the speeches and articles by Bukharin for the last year filled with accusations against the Opposition on the most burning questions of the Chinese revolution?
If I have time, I will read here a letter by Radek: it is a repetition of his letter of last July. This letter was written last September and takes up the most burning questions of the Chinese revolution.
2) Only on April 5, that is, only a week before the coup d’état by Chiang Kai-shek, Stalin rejected Radek’s opinion at a meeting of Moscow functionaries and declared again that Chiang Kai-shek was submitting to discipline, that the admonitions were baseless, that we would use the Chinese bourgeoisie and then toss it away like a squeezed-out lemon. The whole speech of Stalin meant the soothing, the allaying of the uneasiness, the lulling to sleep of our party and the Chinese party. Thousands of comrades listened to this speech. This was on April 5. Truly, the prognosis is not so remarkable as Bukharin may claim. The stenogram of this speech by Stalin was never made public, because a few days later the squeezed-out lemon seized power with his army. As a member of the CC, I had the right to get the stenogram of this speech. But my efforts and attempts were in vain. Attempt it now, comrades, perhaps you will have better luck. I doubt it. This concealed stenogram of Stalin alone, without any other document, suffices to reveal the erroneousness of the official line, and to demonstrate how out of place it is to maintain that the events in Shanghai and Canton “confirmed” the very line that Stalin defended in Moscow a week before.
3) The CC received a report on March 17 from China, from three comrades who were sent there by the CC. This highly important document gives an actual description of what the line of the CI really looked like. Borodin acted, in the words of the document, sometimes as a right, at other times as a Left Guomindang man, but never as a Communist. The representatives of the CI also acted in the same spirit, by transforming it a little into the Guomintern; they hindered the independent policy of the proletariat, its independent organization and especially its armament; to reduce this to a minimum they considered their sacred duty. Heaven forbid, with arms in hand the proletariat would frighten the great spirit of the national revolution, hovering over all the classes. Demand this document! Read it! Study it, so that you will not have to vote blindly.
I could name dozens of other articles, speeches and documents of this type over a period of about one and a half to two years. I am prepared to do it in writing at any moment, with complete accuracy and a statement of date and page. But what has been said is already enough to prove how basically false is the assertion that the events confirmed the “prognosis” of that time.Read further in the resolution:
“The ECCI is of the opinion that the tactic of a bloc with the national bourgeoisie in the period of the revolution already passed was fully correct.”
Still more. Bukharin contends even today that the renowned formula of Martynov that the national government is the government of the bloc of four classes, suffers from only one trifling defect, that Martynov did not emphasize that the bourgeoisie stands at the head of the bloc. A quite insignificant trifle! Unfortunately, Martynov’s masterpiece shows many other defects. For Martynov contends quite openly and clearly in his Pravda article that this national Chiang Kai-shek government was no (no!) bourgeois government, but (but!) the four-class-bloc government. Thus is it written for him in the holy scriptures.
What does this mean, anyway – bloc of four classes? Have you encountered this expression in Marxist writing before? If the bourgeoisie leads the oppressed masses of the people under the bourgeois banner, and takes hold of the state power through its leadership, then this is no bloc but the political exploitation of the oppressed masses by the bourgeoisie. But the national revolution is progressive, you reply. To be sure. Capitalist development in backward countries is also progressive. But its progressive character is not conditioned by the economic co-operation of the classes, but by the economic exploitation of the proletariat and the peasantry by the bourgeoisie. Whoever does not speak of the class struggle but of class co-operation in order to characterize capitalist progress, is not a Marxist but a prophet of peace dreams. Whoever speaks of the bloc of four classes so as to emphasize the progressive character of the political exploitation of the proletariat and peasantry by the bourgeoisie, has nothing to do with Marxism, for herein really lies the political function of the opportunists, of the “conciliators”, of the heralds of peace dreams.The question of the Guomindang has the closest connection with this. What Bukharin makes out of it is real political trickery. The Guomindang is so “special”, something unprecedented, something that can only be characterized by the blue flag and blue smoke – in a word: whoever does not understand this highly complicated “special thing“ – and it cannot be understood for, according to Bukharin, it is just too “special“ – understands nothing about the Chinese revolution. What Bukharin himself understands about it, however, is not to be understood at all from Bukharin’s words. The Guomindang is a party, and in time of revolution, it can be understood only as a party. In the recent period, this party has not embodied the “bloc of four classes”, but the leading role of the bourgeoisie over the masses of the people, the proletariat and the Communist Party included. The word “bloc” should not be misused, especially not in the this case where it is done only for the good of the bourgeoisie. Taken politically, a bloc is the expression of an alliance of sides “with equal rights”, who come to an understanding on a certain joint action. Only, this was not the case in China, and still is not to this day. The Communist Party was a subordinated part of a party at whose head stood the national-liberal bourgeoisie. Last May, the Communist Party bound itself not to criticize even the teachings of Sun Yat Sen, that is, the petty-bourgeois doctrine which is aimed not only against imperialism but also against the proletarian class struggle.
This “special” Guomindang has assimilated the lesson of the exclusiveness of the party which exercises the dictatorship and draws from this the conclusion as regards the Communists: “Hold your tongue!”, for in Russia – they say – there is also only one party at the head of the revolution.
With us the dictatorship of the party (quite falsely disputed theoretically by Stalin) is the expression of the socialist dictatorship of the proletariat. In China we have the bourgeois revolution, and the dictatorship of the Guomindang is directed not only against the imperialists and the militarists but also against the proletarian class struggle. In that way, the bourgeoisie, supported by the petty bourgeoisie and the radicals, curbs the class struggle of the proletariat and the uprisings of the peasantry, strengthens itself at the cost of the masses of the people and the revolution. We stood for this, we made it easier for them to go on with it, we want to sanction it now also by talking nonsense about the “special nature” of the Guomindang without showing the proletariat the vicious class manoeuvres that have been and are concealed behind this “special nature”.
The dictatorship of a party is a part of the socialist revolution. In the bourgeois revolution, the proletariat must absolutely insure the independence of its own party – at any price, cost what it may. The Communist Party of China has been a shackled party in the past period. It did not have so much as its own newspaper. Imagine what this means in general and especially in a revolution! Why has it not had, and has not yet to this day, its own daily paper? Because the Guomindang does not want it. Can we tolerate anything like this? This means disarming the proletariat politically. Then withdrawal from the Guomindang – cries Bukharin. – Why? Do you want to say thereby that the Communist Party cannot exist within the “revolutionary” Guomindang as a party? I can accept remaining within a really revolutionary Guomindang only under conditions of complete political and organizational freedom of action for the Communist Party, with a guaranteed common bias for action by the Guomindang together with the Communist Party.
The political conditions for this have been enumerated in the thesis of Zinoviev as well as in my own (no. 39) more precisely in points a, b, c, d, e, f, g, and h. These are the conditions for remaining in the Left Guomindang. If comrade Bukharin is for remaining unconditionally – under all circumstances and at any price – then we do not go along with him.
(Remmele: Where is that in the resolution?)
The maintenance of a bloc or the organizational form of a bloc at any price leads to the necessity of throwing oneself at the feet of one’s partner. The Berlin session of the Anglo-Russian Committee teaches us that.
The Communist Party must create its own completely independent daily press, at any price. Thereby it will for the first time really begin to live and act as a political party.Let us read further:
“The ECCI considers radically false the liquidatory [Look, look!] view that the crisis of the Chinese revolution is a long-term defeat.”
On this point, we have expressed ourselves in our thesis with complete clarity. That the defeat is great I consider self-evident. To seek to minimize it only means to stand in the way of the education of the Chinese party.
No one is today in a position to prophesy exactly if the defeat will last, or for how long. At any rate, in our theses we proceed from the possibility of the speedy overcoming of the defeat by the proletariat. But the preliminary condition for this is a correct policy on our part. The policy represented by comrade Chen Duxiu, the leader of the party, in his speech at the latest convention of the Communist Party of China (published recently in Pravda) is basically false on the two most important questions: that of the revolutionary government, and that of the agrarian revolution. If we do not correct with the greatest energy the policy of the Chinese and our own party on these two decisive questions, the defeat will become deeper and weigh heavily on the Chinese working people for a long time. What is most essential concerning this has been said in my thesis, in the postscript to the speech of comrade Chen Duxiu. I must limit myself greatly, and I point to the theses and other documents. I have promised to read also the letter from Radek to the Central Committee. Unfortunately I cannot here refute wholly frivolous and absurd assertions about the “surrender” of the Chinese Eastern Railway, etc. Bukharin, like myself, has no documents on this, because the question was considered quite cursorily at one session of the Politburo.
(Bukharin: It is shameless to deny this.)
If I am given three minutes for it, I will immediately refute the shamefaced Bukharin, for what he says is a lie. The only thing I proposed at that time – after the words of comrade Rudzutak, who said this railway becomes an instrument of imperialism now and then (for which Bukharin attacked Rudzutak) – was a declaration from our side in which we repeat, in an open and solemn manner, that which we had already said once in the Peking decisions: The moment the Chinese people has created its own democratic unified government, we will freely and gladly hand over the railway to them on the most favourable conditions. The Politburo said: No, at this time such a declaration will be interpreted as a sign of weakness, we will make this declaration a month from now. Although not in agreement with this, I raised no protest against it. It was a fleeting discussion which was only later transformed in a wretched manner, in an untruthful way, then, turned into a rounded-off formula, launched in the Party organization, in the Party cells, with warped insinuations in the press – in a word, dealt with just as has become the custom and practise with us in recent times.
Chairman: Comrade Trotsky, I call your attention to the fact that you have only eight more minutes to speak. The Presidium granted you forty-five minutes and after that I must let the Plenum decide.
Remmele: Besides that, I must request the Plenum to reject certain imputations and expressions; to speak of a shameless Bukharin is the lowest I have yet heard.
Trotsky: If I am reproached for shamelessness and I speak of the shamefaced, protest is made – against me. I speak of the shamefaced Remmele who accuses me of shamelessness. It is you who speak of shamelessness, I always speak only of shamefacedness.
Chairman: I strongly request you to abstain from such expressions. Do not think that you can behave here just as you please.
Trotsky: I bow before the objectivity of the chairman, and withdraw every suspicion of “shamefacedness”.
I cannot read the whole of Radek’s letter; perhaps I will do it when I speak a second time. The letter from Radek, which was sent to the CC in full agreement with myself and Zinoviev, and which raised the most burning questions of the Chinese revolution which we are discussing here today, was not answered by the Politburo of the Party. I must therefore now speak only on the general political consequences created by the very heavy defeat of the Chinese revolution.Comrade Bukharin has already made the attempt to refer to the fact that Chamberlain broke off diplomatic relations. We were – I have already observed – in a very difficult situation, where we were surrounded by enemies, and Bukharin and other comrades participated then in a great party discussion to find the correct way out of the difficult situation. A revolutionary party can renounce its right to analyse the situation and draw the necessary conclusions for its policy just as little in a difficult situation as in a favourable one. For I repeat again, if a false policy can be harmless in a favourable situation it can become fatal in a difficult situation.
Are the differences of opinion great? Very great, very significant, very important! It cannot be denied that they have become deeper in the course of the last year. No one would have believed in the possibility of the Berlin decisions of the Anglo-Russian Committee a year ago, no-one in the possibility that the philosophy of the bloc of four classes would be flaunted in Pravda, that Stalin would present his squeezed-out lemon on the eve of Chiang Kai-shek’s coup d’état, just as Kuusinen yesterday presented his customs certificate. Why did this quick development become possible? Because the incorrect line was checked by the two greatest events of the last year, the great strikes in Britain and the Chinese revolution.
Comrades have come forward – and we shall certainly hear such voices again – who said: since the contradictions have become sharpened, the road leads necessarily to two parties. I deny this. We live in a period where contradictions do not ossify, because great events teach us better. There is a great and dangerous push towards the right in the line of the CI. But we have enough confidence in the force of the Bolshevik idea and the power of great events to reject decisively and determinedly every prophecy of split.
The theses of comrade Bukharin are false. And, moreover, in the most dangerous manner. They suppress the most important points of the question. They contain the danger that we shall not only fail to make up for lost time but that we shall lose still more time.
1) Instead of continually sounding alarms about wanting to withdraw from the Guomindang (which is not proposed at all) the political independence of the Communist Party must be put above all other considerations, even that of remaining in the Guomindang. A separate daily press, relentless criticism also against the Left Guomindang.
2) The postponement of the agrarian revolution until the territory is secured militarily – the idea of Chen Duxiu – must be condemned formally, for this program endangers the life of the revolution.
3) The postponement of the reorganization of the government until the military victory – a second idea of Chen Duxiu’s – must also be characterized as endangering the life of the revolution. The bloc of Hankow leaders is not yet a revolutionary government. To create and spread any illusions on this score means to condemn the revolution to death. Only the workers’, peasants’, petty-bourgeois and soldiers’ soviets can serve as the basis for a revolutionary government.
Naturally, the Hankow government will have to adapt itself to the soviets in some way or other, or else – disappear.
4) The alliance between the Communist Party and a really revolutionary Guomindang must not only be maintained but must be extended and deepened on the basis of mass soviets.
Whoever speaks of arming the workers without permitting the workers to build soviets is not serious about arming them. If the revolution develops further – and we are fully confident that it will – the impulse of the workers to build soviets will grow ever stronger. We must prepare, strengthen and extend this movement, but not hamper and apply brakes to it as the resolution proposes.The Chinese revolution cannot be advanced if the worst right deviations are abetted, and smuggled Menshevik goods are allowed to be circulated under the customs seal of Bolshevism – comrade Kuusinen did this for a whole hour yesterday – while on the other hand the really revolutionary warnings of the left are mechanically smothered.
Bukharin’s resolution is false and dangerous. It directs the attack towards the left. The Communist Party of China, which can and must become a really Bolshevik Party in the fire of the revolution, cannot accept this resolution. Our party and the entire Comintern cannot declare this resolution their own. The world historical problem must be openly and honestly discussed by the whole International. The discussion, may it be ever so sharp politically, should not be conducted in the tone of envenomed, personal baiting and slander. All the documents, the speeches, the theses, the articles must be made available to the membership of the International.
The Chinese revolution cannot be stuffed into a bottle and sealed from above with a signet.
Leon Trotsky
Problems of the Chinese Revolution
Second Speech
on the
Chinese Question
May 1927
Moscow
We are all of the opinion that the Chinese revolution lives and will continue to live. That is why the main question is not whether the Opposition issued a warning and when, and where (I assert that it did warn and take it upon myself to prove it); the question is not whether Trotsky or Maslow wanted to surrender the Chinese Eastern Railway; the question is rather what is to be done from now on to pull the revolution out of the morass into which it was led by false policy and to set it on the correct road. I want, in a few words, to go to the heart of the question and show the irreconcilable divergence between our position and Stalin’s.
Stalin has again declared himself here against workers’ and peasants’ soviets with the argument that the Guomindang and the Wuhan government are sufficient means and instruments for the agrarian revolution. Thereby Stalin assumes, and wants the International to assume the responsibility for the policy of the Guomindang and the Wuhan government, as he repeatedly assumed the responsibility for the policy of the former “national government” of Chiang Kai-shek (particularly in his speech of April 5, the stenogram of which has, of course, been kept hidden from the International).We have nothing in common with this policy. We do not want to assume even a shadow of responsibility for the policy of the Wuhan government and the leadership of the Guomindang, and we urgently advise the Comintern to reject this responsibility. We say directly to the Chinese peasants: The leaders of the Left Guomindang of the type of Wang Jingwei and Co. will inevitably betray you if you follow the Wuhan heads instead of forming your own independent soviets. The agrarian revolution is a serious thing. Politicians of the Wang Jingwei type, under difficult conditions, will unite ten times with Chiang Kai-shek against the workers and peasants. Under such conditions, two Communists in a bourgeois government become impotent hostages, if not a direct mask for the preparation of a new blow against the working masses. We say to the workers of China: The peasants will not carry out the agrarian revolution to the end if they let themselves be led by petty-bourgeois radicals instead of by you, the revolutionary proletarians. Therefore, build up your workers’ soviets, ally them with the peasant soviets, arm yourselves through the soviets, draw soldiers’ representatives into the soviets, shoot the generals who do not recognize the soviets, shoot the bureaucrats and bourgeois liberals who will organize uprisings against the soviets. Only through peasants’ and soldiers’ soviets will you win over the majority of Chiang Kai-shek’s soldiers to your side. You, the advanced Chinese proletarians, would be traitors to your class and to your historic mission, were you to believe that an organization of leaders, petty-bourgeois and compromising in spirit, which has no more than 250,000 members (see the report of Tang Pingshan), is capable of taking the place of workers’, peasants’, and soldiers’ soviets embracing millions upon millions. The Chinese bourgeois-democratic revolution will go forward and be victorious either in the soviet form or not at all.
We will say to the Chinese Communists: The program of comrade Chen Duxiu, namely, to postpone the “reorganization” of the Hankow régime and the confiscation of the large landowners’ land until the war danger is eliminated, is the surest and swiftest road to ruin. The war is a class danger. It can only be ended by crushing the great landowners, by annihilating the agents of imperialism and of Chiang Kai-shek and by the building of soviets. Precisely in that lies the agrarian revolution, the people’s revolution, the workers’ and peasants’ revolution, i.e., the genuine national revolution (in the Leninist, but not in the Martinovist sense of the term).
Now on the internal questions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
At critical moments like the present, the principal rule of revolutionary policy consists of thinking out a question to the very end and expressing one’s opinion completely, with entire clarity, without any hypocrisy, without reservations. It is a question of the Opposition in the CPSU and of what is going to happen in connection with the international difficulties and the prospect of war.
It would be manifestly absurd to believe that the Opposition can simply renounce its views. Such questions are decided by the test of events. An examination of the last half year since the Seventh Plenum has, in our opinion, shown and proved that the line of the Opposition stood the test of the greatest events of the Chinese revolution and made it possible to foresee and foretell correctly every stage in the question of the Anglo-Russian Committee, that is, in essence, the question of Amsterdam, and consequently also of the Second International.
Is common work possible? I have enumerated our diplomats to you, and I named only the most important ones. I could name hundreds and thousands of Opposition party workers in various posts at home. Will anyone dare to say that such Oppositionists, for example, as the People’s Commissar for Postal and Telegraphic Communications, Ivan Nikitich Smirnov, or the head of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection for the Army and Navy, Muralov, or the People’s Commissar for the interior, Byeloborodov, fulfil their duties worse than others? But the whole trick of the Party apparatus consists of removing the Oppositionists from their work, beginning with the skilled workers in the factories. They are persecuted, shifted around, driven out, regardless of the quality of their work, solely and exclusively because of their Opposition viewpoint, which they defend with party methods. As the Party Congress approaches, they are trying to send a member of the Central Committee, comrade Smilga, one of the oldest Bolsheviks, one of the heroes of the October revolution and the civil war, one of our outstanding economists, to the Far East, to Khabarovsk, for planning work, that is, simply to isolate him politically. In the same manner, they are trying to get rid of comrade Safarov, who has more than twenty years of uninterrupted Party work behind him, by proposing to him to leave as soon as possible, be it for Turkey, or Tierra del Fuego, or the planet Mars, or anywhere else, so long as he disappears. They are trying at all costs to ship one of the oldest Party members, Kuklin, a proletarian to the core, a former member of the Central Committee (he was removed from it for supporting the Opposition) to Britain, where he would be practically like a fish out of water. All of them are stainless revolutionists, fighters of the October revolution and the civil war. The number of examples could be multiplied endlessly. This method is ruinous. It disorganizes the Party. Common practical work is entirely possible. This has been demonstrated by all our experience. The guarantee for such common work in the interest of our workers’ state depends entirely upon the Central Committee which is, it is true, pursuing an exactly contrary course.
I repeat: conscientious common work is possible, despite the deepening of the differences during the last year. On international questions this has appeared clearly, because tremendous events have taken place there. But now developments are entering a new phase in internal questions. Not only war, but also war danger itself puts all questions harshly before us. Every class necessarily examines the fundamental questions of policy when faced with war. The kulak, the functionary, and the NEP-man raise their heads and ask: What kind of war will this be, what will we get out of it, with what methods will it be conducted? On the other hand, the town worker, the land worker and the poor peasant will also examine more sharply, in face of the war danger, the achievements of the revolution, the advantages and disadvantages of the soviet régime, and will ask: In which direction will the relationship of forces be changed by the war? Will it increase the role of the men on top or the masses below? Will it straighten out the proletarian class line of the Party or will it accelerate the shift towards the high-ups under the pretext of a “national war” (in the Stalinist interpretation)?
The bourgeois elements among us have grown very strong; the struggle of the two tendencies has its roots in the classes. Since there is only one party in our country, the struggle goes on inside our party.
With the greatest light-mindedness, or more correctly, with the most criminal light-mindedness, they have spoken here of shattering the Opposition, of splitting off the Opposition, and the speakers were those whose whole past gives them the least right to do so. But I shall not dwell on them. Such people are washed ashore by one wave and washed away by another.
Ustryalov, the shrewdest enemy of Bolshevism, has for some time demanded the expulsion of the Opposition and a split with it. Ustryalov is the representative of the new bourgeoisie which grows out of the NEP, and of the most virile section of the old bourgeoisie which wants to support itself upon the new. Ustryalov does not want to “skip over any stages”. Ustryalov openly supports the policy of Stalin and only demands of Stalin greater determination in liquidating the Opposition. Ponder over these facts.
On the other hand, when MacDonald appeals against intervention, he demands that the sensible “practical politicians” should not be prevented from putting an end to “the propagandists of the Third International“ – these are literally MacDonald’s words – , that is, that Stalin should not be disturbed in his work of smashing the Opposition. Chamberlain, with his brigand’s methods, wants to hasten the same process. The various methods are directed towards one aim: to smash the proletarian line, to destroy the international connections of the Soviet Union, to force the Russian proletariat to renounce its intervention in the affairs of the international proletariat. Can it be doubted that MacDonald will raise no objection to your refusal to permit comrade Zinoviev to attend the sessions of the Comintern? MacDonald will boast of his own farsightedness if you should carry out the policy of destroying and splitting off the opposition. MacDonald will say: The practical politicians are breaking with the propagandists of the Third International.
The attempt to depict the Opposition as a group of leaders is a gross deception. The Opposition is an expression of the class struggle. The organizational weakness of the Opposition by no means corresponds to its specific weight in the Party and the working class. The strength of the present Party régime lies, among other things, in the fact that it changes the relation of forces in the Party by artificial means. The present heavy bureaucratic régime in the Party reflects the pressure of other classes upon the proletariat. Yesterday, eighty old Party members, tested Bolsheviks, sent a declaration to the Central Committee in which they fully support the standpoint which we are developing here. They are all comrades who have behind them ten, fifteen, twenty and more years of uninterrupted work in the Bolshevik Party. To speak of any kind of “Trotskyism” in the face of all these facts, is to falsify the question in a ridiculous and wretched manner. The revisionists label the revolutionary content of Marxism with the word Blanquism, the more easily to enable them to fight against Marxism. The comrades who are turning away from the Bolshevik line label the revolutionary content of Leninism “Trotskyism”, the more easily to enable them to fight against Leninism. We have had a classic example of this in the speech of comrade Kuusinen, out of whose mouth spoke a provincial German Social Democrat.
During the most recent period of Party development, the blows have been directed only against the left. The basic reason for this is the defeats of the proletariat in the international field and the strengthening of the right course flowing from them. The whole history of the working-class movement proves that great defeats result in a temporary triumph of the opportunist line. After the defeat of the great strikes in Britain and of the Chinese Revolution, they want to deliver a new blow to the Opposition, that is, to the left, revolutionary line in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist International. There is no doubt that the most principled, most consummate speech was delivered here by the new leader of the new course, Martynov, the mountebank of the bloc of four classes. What does this signify? A still greater strengthening of the shift to the right. It means the threat that the tendencies of Ustryalov will triumph. The Ustryalovs do not want to skip over any stages or phases, that is why the Ustryalovs are now openly for Stalin. But they do not, of course, think of remaining with him. For them, he is only a stage. For them, it is a question of destroying the left barrier in the CPSU, of weakening the proletarian line, of transforming the soviet system into an instrument of the petty bourgeoisie, so as to proceed from there on the direct road towards the restoration of capitalism, most probably in the Bonapartist form.
The war danger puts all questions harshly. Stalin’s line is the line of indecision, of vacillation between left and right tendencies with actual support for the right course. The growth of the war danger will force Stalin to choose. He has made an effort here to show that the choice has already been made. After the massacre of the Chinese workers by the bourgeoisie, after the capitulation of the Political Bureau to Purcell, after the speech of Chen Duxiu in Pravda, Stalin sees the enemy only on the left and directs his fire against them. Dozens of old and tested Bolshevik Party comrades, chiefly from Moscow and Leningrad, warn the Party in their collective letter of the threatening internal dangers. We do not doubt that thousands of Party fighters will join with them, fighters who do not fear threats or provocations, and who, despite all mechanical barriers, will understand how to penetrate to the public opinion of the Party, and to redress the revolutionary line of Bolshevism through the Party and by Party methods.
Fraternizing with Purcell and baiting Zinoviev, eulogizing and painting up the bourgeois leaders of the Guomindang and baiting the Left Opposition in the CPSU and in other parties – one goes closely together with the other. This is a definite course. Against this course we will fight to the end. Stalin said the Opposition stands in one front with Chamberlain, with Mussolini and Zhang Zuolin. To that I answer: Nothing has facilitated the work of Chamberlain so much as the false policy of Stalin, particularly in China. The revolution cannot be made by halves. The London blow is the pay-off for the Martinovist course in China. On this path, only defeats can be accumulated.
Stalin obviously wants to make the attempt to present the Opposition as something like a defence corps for Chamberlain. This is wholly in the spirit of his methods. Yesterday Michael Romanov, today Chamberlain. But here he will miscalculate even more than he did with his hopes in Chiang Kai-shek and Purcell. Chamberlain must be seriously fought against, and the working class in the country and throughout the world must be brought to its feet and united. The masses can be brought to their feet, united and strengthened only through a correct class line. While we fight for a correct revolutionary line against the line of Stalin, we are preparing the best conditions for the struggle against Chamberlain. It is not we who are helping Chamberlain; it is the false policy.
Not a single honest proletarian will believe the insane infamy about the united front between Chamberlain and Trotsky. But the reactionary section of the petty bourgeoisie, the rising kulakdom of the Black Hundreds, can believe this, or pretend to believe this, so as to carry through to the end the suppression of the revolutionary proletarian line and its representatives. If you give the devil of chauvinism a finger, you perish. With his poisoned accusations, Stalin is extending this finger. We say this here and we will say it openly before the international proletariat.
Leon Trotsky
Problems of the Chinese Revolution
The Sure Road
May 12, 1927
Moscow
The Shanghai correspondent of the Daily Express reports:
“The peasants of Henan province are occupying the land and executing the big landlords who resist most stubbornly. Everywhere, control is in the hands of the Communists. Workers’ soviets are formed locally which take over administrative authority.” [1]
We do not know to what extent the telegram is correct in depicting the situation with such bold strokes. We have no other reports save the telegram. What is the real extent of the movement? Is it not deliberately exaggerated in order to influence the power of imagination of Messrs. MacDonald, Thomas, Purcell and Hicks with the intention of making them more pliant to the policy of Chamberlain? We do not know. But in this case, it has no decisive significance.The peasants are seizing the land and exterminating the most counter-revolutionary big landlords. Workers’ soviets are formed locally which take over administrative authority. That is what a correspondent of a reactionary paper communicates. The editorial board of Pravda considers this report sufficiently important to incorporate it in the contents table of the most important daily events in the world. We too are of the opinion that this is correct. But it would naturally be premature to contend that the Chinese revolution, after the April coup d’état of the bourgeois counter-revolution, has already entered a new and higher stage. After a great defeat, it frequently happens that a part of the attacking masses, which was never submitted to any direct blows, passes over to the next stage of the movement and for a while outstrips the leading detachments which suffered with especial severity in the defeat. Were we to have before us such a phenomenon, the soviets of Henan would soon disappear, temporarily washed away by the general revolutionary ebb-tide.
But there is not the slightest reason to contend that we have before us only sharp rearguard encounters of a revolution which is ebbing for a long period. In spite of the fact that the April defeat was no separate “episode”, but a very significant stage in the development of the counter-revolution; in spite of the agonizing blood drawn from the vanguard detachments of the working class, there is not the least reason to contend that the Chinese revolution has been beaten back for years.
The agrarian movement, since it is more scattered, is less subject to the direct operations of the hangmen of the counter-revolution. There is the possibility that the further growth of the agrarian movement will give the proletariat the opportunity to rise again in the relatively near future and to pass over once more to the attack. Naturally, exact predictions on this point are impossible, especially from afar. The Chinese Communist Party will have to follow attentively the actual course of events and the class groupings in order to catch the moment of a new wave of attack.
The possibility of a new attack, however, will depend not only on the evolution of the agrarian movement but also upon the side towards which the broad, petty-bourgeois masses of the towns develop in the next period. The coup d’état of Chiang Kai-shek does not signify only the consolidation of the power of the Chinese bourgeoisie (perhaps less so), but also the re-establishment and the consolidation of the positions of foreign capital in China with all the consequences that flow from them. From this follows the probability, perhaps even the inevitability – and this in the fairly near future – of a turn of the petty-bourgeois masses against Chiang Kai-shek. The petty-bourgeoisie, which is subjected to great sufferings not only by foreign capital but also by the alliance of the national Chinese bourgeoisie with foreign capital, must, after some vacillations, turn against the bourgeois counter-revolution. It is precisely in this that lies one of the most important manifestations of the class mechanics of the national democratic revolution.
Finally, the young Chinese proletariat, by all the conditions of its existence, is so accustomed to privation and sacrifice, has so well “learned”, together with the whole of the oppressed Chinese people, to look death in the eye, that we may expect from the Chinese workers, once they are properly aroused by the revolution, highly exceptional self-abnegation in struggle.
All this gives us the full right to count upon the new wave of the Chinese revolution being separated from the wave which ended with the April defeat of the proletariat, not by long years but by short months. Naturally, nobody can establish the intervals for this either. But we would be incompetent revolutionists if we were not to steer our course upon a new rise, if we were not to work out any program of action for it, any political road or any organizational forms.
The April defeat was no “episode”, it was a heavy class defeat; we will not take up here an analysis of the reasons for it. We want to speak in this article of tomorrow and not of yesterday. The heaviness of the April defeat lies not only in the fact that the proletarian centres were struck a sanguinary blow. The heaviness of the defeat lies in the fact that the workers were crushed by those who until then had stood at their head. Such a violent turn must produce not only physical disorganization but also political confusion in the ranks of the proletariat. This confusion, which is more dangerous to the revolution than the defeat itself, can be overcome only by a clear, precise, revolutionary line for tomorrow.
In this sense, the telegram of the Shanghai correspondent of the reactionary British newspaper has especial significance. In it is shown what road the revolution in China can tread should it succeed in the next period in reaching a higher level.
We have said above that the peasants’ liquidation of the big landlords of Henan, like the creation of workers’ soviets, may be the sharp conclusion of the last wave or the commencement of a new one, since the matter is considered from afar. This contrast of two waves can lose its significance if the interval between them is long, namely, a few weeks or even a few months. However the matter may be (and here only advice can be given, especially from a distance), the symptomatic significance of the Henan events is thoroughly clear and incontestable, regardless of their extent and sweep. The peasants and the workers of Henan are showing the road which their movement can tread, now that the heavy chains of their bloc with the bourgeoisie and the big landlords have been smashed. It would be contemptible and philistine to believe that the agrarian problem and the workers’ problem in this revolution, gigantic in its tasks and in the masses it has drawn in its train, can be solved by decree from above and by arbitration committees. The worker himself wants to break the backbone of the reactionary bourgeoisie and to teach the manufacturers to respect the proletarian, his person and his rights. The peasant himself wants to sever the ties of his dependence upon the big landlords who exhaust him with their usurious practices and enslave him. Imperialism, which violently hampers the economic development of China by its customs, its financial and its military policy, condemns the worker to beggary and the peasant to the cruellest enslavement. The struggle against the big landlords, the struggle against the usurer, the struggle against the capitalists for better working conditions, is thus raised by itself to the struggle for the national independence of China, for the liberation of its productive forces from the bonds and chains of foreign imperialism. There is the principal and the mightiest foe. It is mighty not only because of its warships, but also directly by its inseparable connections with the heads of the banks, the usurers, the bureaucrats and the militarists, with the Chinese bourgeoisie, and by the more indirect but no less intimate ties with the big commercial and industrial bourgeoisie.
All these facts demonstrate that the pressure of imperialism is in no sense an external, mechanical pressure which welds all the classes together. No, it is a very deep-lying factor of internal action which accentuates the class struggle. The Chinese commercial and industrial bourgeoisie carries behind it the supplementary force of foreign capital and foreign bayonets in every one of its serious collisions with the proletariat. The masters of this capital and these bayonets play the role of more experienced and more adroit operators, who included the blood of the Chinese workers in their accounts just as they do with raw rubber and opium. If one wants to drive out foreign imperialism, if one wants to conquer the enemy, then his “peaceful”, “normal” hangman’s and robber’s work in China must be rendered impossible. This cannot be attained, naturally, on the road of compromise of the bourgeoisie with foreign imperialism. Such a compromise may increase the share of the Chinese bourgeoisie in the product of the labour of the Chinese workers and peasants by a few per cent. But it will signify the deeper penetration of foreign imperialism into the economic and political life of China, the deeper enslavement of the Chinese worker and peasant. Victory over foreign imperialism can only be won by means of the toilers of town and country driving it out of China. For this, the masses must really rise, millions strong. They cannot rise under the bare slogan of national liberation, but only in direct struggle against the big landlords, the military satraps, the usurers, the capitalist brigands. In this struggle, the masses are already rising, steeling themselves, arming themselves. There is no other road of revolutionary training. The big bourgeois leadership of the Guomindang (the gang of Chiang Kai-shek) has opposed this road with all means. At first, only from within, by means of decrees and prohibitions, but when the “discipline” of the Guomindang did not suffice, with the aid of machine guns. The petty-bourgeois leadership of the Guomindang hesitates out of fear of a too stormy development of the mass movement. By their whole past, the petty-bourgeois radicals are more accustomed to looking to the top, to seeking combinations of all sorts of “national” groups, than to looking down below, to the real struggle of millions of workers. But if vacillations and irresolution are dangerous in all things, then in the revolution they are disastrous. The workers and peasants of Henan are showing the way out of the vacillations, and by that, the road to save the revolution.
It is not necessary to explain that only this road, that is, the deeper mass sweep, the greater social radicalism of the program, the unfurled banner of workers’ and peasants’ soviets, can seriously preserve the revolution from military defeats from without. We know this from our own experience. Only a revolution on whose banner the toilers and the exploited plainly inscribe their won demands is capable of winning the living sympathy of the soldiers of capitalism. We experienced and tested this out in the waters of Archangel, Odessa and other places. The leadership of compromise and treason did not preserve Nanking from destruction, and gave the enemy ships access to the Yangtze. A revolutionary leadership, given a mighty social sweep of the movement, can succeed in making the waters of the Yangtze too hot for the ships of Lloyd George, Chamberlain and MacDonald. In any case, it is only along this road that the revolution can seek and find its defence.
We have repeatedly said above that the agrarian movement and the formation of soviets can signify the conclusion of yesterday and the beginning of tomorrow. But this does not depend upon objective conditions alone. Under present conditions, the subjective factor has an enormous, perhaps a decisive significance: a correct formulation of the tasks, a firm and clear leadership. If a movement like the one that has begun in Henan is left to its own resources, it will inevitably be crushed. The confidence of the insurrectionary masses will be increased tenfold as soon as it feels a firm leadership and greater cohesion with it. A clear-headed leadership, generalizing matters in the political field and connecting them up organizationally, is alone capable of preserving the movement to a greater or lesser degree from incautious or premature side-leaps and from so-called “excesses”, without which, however, as the experience of history teaches, no really revolutionary movement of the millions can reach its goal.
The task consists of giving the agrarian movement and the workers’ soviets a clear program of practical action, an internal cohesion and a broad political goal. Only on this basis can a really revolutionary collaboration of the proletariat and the petty-bourgeoisie be constituted and developed, a genuine alliance of struggle of the Communist Party with the Left Guomindang. The cadres of the latter can in general only constitute and steel themselves if they do it in most intimate contact with the revolutionary struggles of the peasants and the poor population of the city. The agrarian movement, led by peasants’ and workers’ soviets, will confront the Left Guomindang people with the necessity of finally choosing between the Chiang Kai-shek camp of the bourgeoisie and the camp of the workers and peasants. To put the fundamental class questions openly, that is the only way under present conditions to put an end to the vacillation of the petty-bourgeois radicals and to compel them to tread the only road which leads to victory. This can be done by our Chinese party with the support of the whole Communist International.
Note
1. Pravda, May 11, 1927.
