*When The Capitalist World Was Young- William Manchester's View

In Honor Of The 500th Anniversary Of Martin Luther's Refromation Pleas-*When The Capitalist World Was Young- William Manchester's View

BOOK REVIEW

A World That Was Lit Only By Fire, William Manchester, Little, Brown and Co., Boston 1994

The last time that the name of the late well-known journalist and history writer William Manchester was mentioned in this space was in a review of his biography of the self-promoting American Caesar, World War II and Korean War General Douglas MacArthur. Previously Manchester had also done an analysis of the John F. Kennedy assassination so that he is well versed in the meaning of history and the importance of particular historical facts-as opposed to the self-serving and fraudulent press releases.

The central story of Manchester’s effort here, that takes up about one third of the book, also concerns one of those larger than life historical figures from an earlier period in Western history, the career of the Portuguese explorer extraordinaire Ferdinand Magellan. However, if this was solely Manchester’s purpose that might be worthily satisfied by an extended monogram. He has here provided as well, despite his penchant for great heroic figures, a very readable look at the dawn of capitalism as it merged out of the mire of what used to be known in historical studies as the “Dark Ages”.


In the process of that exposition Manchester has done an interesting job of detailing much of the history of those dark ages- a period of history that today’s readers may not be familiar with but which was an important precursor to the development of European capitalism and to the history of the international labor movement that Karl Marx wrote about in the 19th century. Manchester runs quickly through the decline of the Roman Empire, the rise and stabilization of the Christian church in the wake of that decline and its role as the international (at least for Europe) arbiter of the political, economic and social world of the times. With the proviso that Manchester’s effort here is of a piece with his general theory about the role of heroes in history those of us more familiar with the period can begin to understand something of the nature of the changes that were occurring at the time that his protagonist Magellan was accomplishing his feat in the early 16th century (circumnavigating the earth and therefore empirically proving that the earth was a sphere).


The heart of the book for us, however, is the detailed description that Manchester provides for the bulk of the 16th century an extraordinary period that saw the breakthrough of international trade westward as well as eastward, the rise of nation-states as segments of society gain literacy and begin to express themselves in their home languages, the development of cities as centers of commerce creating the conditions for a division of labor that would later form the basis for industrial capitalism, the struggle between the secular and the sacred in determining the course of social life including some very saucy stories about Popes, princes and their ladies(the Borgias in particular), the feuding between various religious factions most notably between the Roman Church and Martin Luther of Germany and Henry VIII of England and the flowering of artistic culture and learning that we can observe remnants of today in any major art museum.

As historical materialists we look at the history of any period to determine its main thrust. Manchester has done a more than adequate job of detailing those events and movements that caused the decline of Europe for approximately one thousand years from the demise of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance and then the upward curve mentioned above. The most important aspect of this book and the one that makes me want to recommend it to today’s readers is its study of the late 15th and early 16th century- a time when dramatic changes were occurring that would begin the long process of accumulating the expertise to create the progressive capitalist system. Without the changes in the manner of religious thinking, ways of producing goods and notions of culture it is possible that Europe, and through it the world might be very different- and not for the better.

As long as we don’t forget in that content the down side of this spurt in human culture- the rise of colonialism that accompanied international exploration, the religious wars that torn apart families and nations and the rise of a middle class cultural ethos that has placed more than its fair share on individual self-fulfillment at the expense of the social and gone some distance to slow the struggle for socialism down. If you need a quick look at the broad picture of what happened to make Europe a central cog in world history from the 15th century on read this little work to whet your appetite. Then go out and get some more specialized books to appease it.

*On The Anniversary Of The Chinese Revolution- The Heroic Age of The Chinese Communist Party- 1921-1949- A Review

Click on title to link to Mao's "THE TASKS OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY IN THE PERIOD OF RESISTANCE TO JAPAN", May 3, 1937. Mao Tse-tung delivered this report at the National Conference of the Communist Party of China, held in Yenan in May 1937.

BOOK REVIEW

A History Of The Chinese Communist Party 1921-1949, Jacques Guillermaz, Random House, New York, 1972

I am using the then current spelling of names and places as they are used in this edition of the book.

For militant leftists the defense of October 1917 Russian Revolution was the touchstone issue of international politics for most of the 20th century. In the end the demise of the Soviet Union and the other non-capitalists states of East Europe in the early 1990’s formally, at least, put an end to that question in those areas. However, the issue of the fate of China in the first half of the 21st century is in an important sense the touchstone Russian question of international politics today. The question, forward to socialism or back to some neo-capitalist formation like those in Russia and East Europe to this reviewer is an open question today. With that perspective in mind, and not unmindful of the publicity given China recently as the host of the 2008 Olympics, it is high time that this reviewer spent more time on this issue than he has thus far in this space. As preparation, it is always best to get some historical background, especially so for that new generation of militants who are unfamiliar with the last hundred years of leftist history.

As I have recently mentioned in another China review in this space, that of Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China, the Communist International and Russian Communist Party fights over strategy for the Chinese revolution between the Stalinists and the Trotsky-led Left Opposition in the mid-1920’s are must reading. As is the history of the defeat of the Second Chinese Revolution in the cities in 1927 and a little later. And I would add here, as well, an overview of the creation and evolution of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) before the seizure of power is also necessary, especially for those who were neither pro-Maoists in the 1960’s and 1970’s nor Soviet Stalinists in any period. To that end Jacques Guillermaz’s well-researched and reasonably balanced academic efforts is a solid way to get the basics of the Chinese Communist political perspective in this period down in the same way that Edgar Snow chronicled the organized soviets under the tutelage of the CCP in the late 1930’s.

I do not believe that it is incorrect to label the Chinese Revolution of 1949 and thus the CCP as extensions of the Soviet Russian and Bolshevik experiences. With this caveat, however, that after 1927 (if not before) these two experiences were reflected through a Stalinist prism. Thus, with the defeat of the Second Chinese Revolution and the exodus from the cities to the countryside the CCP’s strategy, tactics, organizational structure and political prospective changed in the same manner (if not to the same degree) that the Russian party’s changed. A very strong argument can be made, and is made in this book although tangentially, that the CCP was in essence the Eastern border guards for the Soviets rather than a though-going Bolshevik revolutionary organization fighting for political power in its own right-except when backed up against the wall by the Nationalist forces under Chiang kai-shek. That in turn created the distortions of politics and organization that were endemic to the early consolidation of CCP after 1949 and continue in diluted form today.

Needless to say that an academic (although quite readable) book that has detailed, in over four hundred pages, the history of early Chinese communism is not going to get its proper fully worked out review in this small space. However, I would point out the highlights that readers should think through as they read. A nice job has been done by Guillermaz in setting the framework of Chinese communism in the context of the first Chinese revolution of 1912, the various nationalist, anti-imperialist and left-wing tendencies that existed prior to the formation of the CCP in 1921 and the thorny question of the relationship between the CCP and the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) that was to, in the end, lead to a massive quarter century battle between these two forces. To emphasize how very important the correct analysis (or in the actual case, incorrect) of that relationship were I would note here that Leon Trotsky changed and extended his Theory of Permanent Revolution (basically that worldwide, not just in the advanced capitalist countries, the proletariat would have to led the national liberation struggle and the fight for the first steps into socialism) based on the Chinese experiences. That, in the end, is how important those political fights were.

After a full exposition of the role of the CCP in the cities in the Second Chinese Revolution the key areas that this book is helpful in evaluating are the rather murky periods from the defeat in the cities until Mao’s accession of leadership in the mid1930’s. That period entailed the establishment of rural soviets in Kiangsi, the on again, off again Nationalist (KMT) campaigns to destroy the CCP-led peasant armies that culminated in the famous Long March to Yenan; the fight against the Japanese and then after the defeat of the Japanese in World War II the renewed fight for political power that culminated in victory in 1949.

Along the way we get a glimpse at the internal power struggle between the various factions, the role of the Soviet Union in those fights and the various factions in the post-World War II power struggle. Well done. I might also add, in conclusion, that this book was written at the tail end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and just before the breakout pact with American imperialism under the Nixon-Kissinger worldwide anti-Soviet front doctrine so that we find out the fates of many of the early leaders of the CCP and other state and party functionaries as well as KMT personalities. There is more than enough information to bolster the case of those of us who still see the Chinese experience as a socialist one, if a rather wobbly one at this time.

*In Honor Of The Chinese Revolution-Peasants -Rebellion or Revolution?- A Chinese Case Study- Professor Perry’s View

Click on title to link to Leon Trotsky's 1927 article "Class Relations In The Chinese Revolution".

Book Review

In Honor Of The 60th Anniversary Of The Chinese Revolution


Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China 1845-1945, Elizabeth Perry, Stanford University Press, 1980

As a follower of the orthodox Marxist tendency of historical development I have long tipped my hat to the famous dictum attributed to Karl Marx himself about the peasantry being a “sack of potatoes”. That, in Marx’s time, correctly reflected its place in the modern, revolutionary scheme of things. And over the long historical cycle that has ended, or will do so shortly, now that the bulk of the world’s population no longer lives a rural existence, Marx was right. He certainly was correct that the peasantry, by itself as a class, could not and has not created political systems based on their supremacy. However, Marx and this writer, frankly, underestimated the longevity of the peasant’s place in the world economy (a reflection, in part, of the continuing dominance of international capitalism and the failure of communist-led regimes to “solve” their agrarian questions in due course) and played a far greater, if subordinate, role in 20th century politics than I would have estimated.

All of the above is by way of noting, as we approach the 60th anniversary of the peasant-based Chinese revolution, that that revolution was probably the premiere example, in the 20th century, of the both the autonomous peasant rebellion in modern society and the need to harness nascent peasant rebellion to an urban-based revolutionary party in order to be successful. The book under review, Elizabeth Perry’s 1980 “Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China 1845-1945”, does as good as job as any in making the case for the limits of peasant rebellion, the various organization forms it takes, its place in local social structure and, finally, what conditions are necessary to take that tradition rebellion beyond localized conditions and gather it in to fight for state power.

As noted above, Professor Perry uses the now fashionably classic academic historical case study of a local geographic area method (Huai-pei-North China). She thereafter goes through the various phases of regional peasant organization and resistance to the state over the century under discussion. In the process she poses a question that is of interest, or at least should be, to current students of revolutions: why do some geographic areas have a history of rebellion while others do not and what that fact means for those who come later to organize those populations? Those of us who follow the urban Marxist tradition have our Paris Commune, the Vyborg district in the Russian Revolution, Hamburg in the various German uprisings of the early 1920s, or in the United States the great Midwestern autoworker sit-ins in the 1930s. Some of those traditional centers led to revolution others did not. China, as a reading of this book will reveal, also had its tradition centers or rebellion and revolt.

Of course in a rural setting the conditions for rebellion (or not) will of necessity center on the structure of the agrarian economy and not the least the ecology of the area as well. Ms. Perry goes through the contours of that ecology in North China (and this notion forms a central premise of her thesis), the role and reach of the central government, the creation of various protective or predatory, as the case may be, societies to deal with the changing conditions. Central emphasis is placed on the Red Spear societies that blossomed and became a force in Republican China in 1920s and the rise of the Chinese Communist Party, especially in the anti-Japanese struggle prior to and during World War II. The tension between those two poles of attraction, including cooperation and conflicts, drives the main sections of the book. While none of Professor Perry’s general conclusions may be of help to today’s students of revolution she has presented an interesting thesis and plenty of information about North China during a critical period of history while defending her thesis. I have not checked to see if she has updated her work but that might be helpful, as well.

*In Honor of The Chinese Workers and Students of 1989

Click On Title To Link To Wikipedia Tiananmen 1989 entry. I will not vouch for the acurracy of the factual or political information found there but the entry can be used as a starting point in finding out more about this important event in Chinese, and world, history.

Commentary

Twenty years ago in 1989 in China there was an incipient political revolution a-brewing against the Stalinist Chinese Communist Party's stranglehold on the reins of power. That was only a beginning, and something of an open-ended question about which way the Chinese revolution would go- forward to socialism or back to imperialist subjugation through a capitalist counter-revolution similar to what occurred in the Soviet Union and East Europe. That question is still open today. Below is a segment from a recent article in "Workers Vanguard" (No. 933, March 27, 2009) that articulates those tasks for the present century. All honor to the pro-socialist fighters in Tianamen Square in 1989!

"For Proletarian Political Revolution!

In The Revolution Betrayed, his classic analysis of the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy, Trotsky emphasized: “Under a nationalized economy, quality demands a democracy of producers and consumers, freedom of criticism and initiative—conditions incompatible with a totalitarian regime of fear, lies and flattery.” The CCP regime’s policies and practices create a climate in which some of the proponents of “democratic” counterrevolution could gain a hearing, at least among a layer of intellectuals, peasants and even some workers. At the same time, the increasing antagonism between the bureaucracy and China’s toiling masses is also preparing the ground for a proletarian political revolution to oust the parasitic ruling Stalinists.

The potential for a pro-socialist workers uprising was shown in the May-June 1989 Tiananmen upheaval. In its article on Charter 08, the PSL endorses the line of the Chinese Stalinists on these events, calling them “a counterrevolutionary effort painted in the West as a ‘struggle for democracy’.” In reality, protests that began among students opposing corruption and seeking political liberalization were joined by masses of Chinese workers, driven into action by their own grievances against the impact of the regime’s market measures, especially high inflation.

Workers assemblies and motorized flying squads were thrown up, pointing to the potential for the emergence of authentic worker, soldier and peasant councils. The entry into struggle of the working class terrified the CCP rulers, who eventually unleashed fierce repression. But the bureaucracy, including the officer corps of the military, began to fracture under the impact of the proletarian upsurge. The first army units that were mobilized refused to act in the face of enormous popular support for the protests among Beijing’s working people. Other more regime-loyal army units had to be brought in to carry out the massacre of June 1989, which was overwhelmingly targeted at workers rather than students. This was an incipient proletarian political revolution, drowned in blood by the Stalinist bureaucracy (see “The Spectre of Tiananmen and Working-Class Struggle in China Today,” WV Nos. 836 and 837, 12 and 26 November 2004).

The crucial missing element, during the Tiananmen events as well as today, is an authentic Bolshevik—i.e., Leninist-Trotskyist—party to rally the working masses around the banner of workers democracy and communist internationalism. Such a party would be forged in political combat not only with currents emerging out of the decomposing Stalinist bureaucracy but also with the anti-Communist purveyors of Western-type “democracy,” including some who will doubtless posture far to the left of the Charter 08 group.

The survival and advancement of China’s revolutionary gains hinges on the fight for socialist revolution in the advanced capitalist countries of Japan, North America and West Europe, the only road toward the all-round modernization of China as part of an international planned economy. A proletarian political revolution producing a China of worker and peasant councils would be a beacon for the oppressed working masses of Asia and the entire world, dealing a deathblow to the bourgeoisie’s “death of communism” propaganda, lifting up the downtrodden masses of the former Soviet Union and East Europe and inspiring the workers in the imperialist heartlands. This, ultimately, is the only perspective that can defeat the siren call of “democracy” pushed by imperialist-backed outfits as well as fake “socialists” who are enemies of the gains of the Chinese Revolution."