Certain comrades, while completely agreeing with my point of view in estimating the forces behind the Chinese revolution and in assessing the perspectives of this revolution, raise objections to the democratic slogan of the constituent assembly. Naturally this difference of opinion does not have the same importance from the standpoint of principles as the problem of evaluating the main tendencies and forces of the revolution. Nevertheless, at a certain point this question can acquire an enormous importance as was the case with the Bolsheviks in regard to the attitude to be taken toward the Third Duma. To my great surprise, one comrade, in criticizing the slogan for a constituent assembly, seriously claimed to see in this a maneuver that I was supposedly carrying out with the aim of "deceiving" the Chinese bourgeoisie. It was for this reason that he cited against me a quotation drawn from my "Criticism of the Draft Program of the Communist International" that began with the following words: "Classes cannot be deceived…," etc.

There is an obvious misunderstanding here of the greatest importance. Everything of political significance on the slogan of the constituent assembly for China has been said in my essay, "The Chinese Question After the Sixth Congress." I will not repeat it here. If one looks in the "Criticism of the Draft Program" for the general theoretical basis given to the argumentation on this slogan, it will be found in the chapter on "The Fundamental Peculiarities Inherent in the Strategy of the Revolutionary Epoch," which says:

Without an extensive and generalized dialectical comprehension of the present epoch as an epoch of abrupt turns, a real education of the young parties, a correct strategical leadership of the class struggle, a correct combination of tactics, and, above all, a sharp and bold and decisive re-arming at each successive breaking point of the situation is impossible. [The Third International AfterLenin (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), p. 86.]

One of my critics declares: "It is the slogan of the abolition of the tuchuns and the unification of China under the power of the soviets that remains correct." As for the call for the constituent assemblY' that would be "unacceptable." I ask why? If one regards as correct the resolution of the February plenum (1928) of the Executive Committee of the Communist International in declaring that "it is correct to continue to orient toward the insurrection," then, clearly, one must also grant the correctness of the slogan of soviets. This is only logical. But I considered, and I still consider, that proclaiming an insurrectional course in February 1928 was the most criminal stupidity that can be imagined.

Well before February the counterrevolution in China overwhelmed the working class and the party. In "The Chinese Question After the Sixth Congress" I clearly established the main chronological milestones of the changes in the situation in China, basing my presentation on indisputable facts and documents. This country is at present going through not a revolution but rather a counterrevolution. In the course of such a period the slogan of soviets makes no sense except for a limited number of cadres, in preparing them for the third Chinese revolution, in the future.

This preparation clearly has an enormous importance. To accomplish it, the slogan of soviets must be accompanied by the slogan of the struggle of the proletariat for its dictatorship at the head of all the impoverished masses of the population, and, above all, of the poor peasants. But side by side with theoretical and propagandistic preparation of the revolutionary cadres for the future revolution there still remains the question of mobilizing the broadest possible layers of the workers to participate actively in the political life of the period we are in.

The country is now being administered by a military dictatorship serving the top sectors of the bourgeoisie and the foreign imperialists This dictatorship, which was recently installed after the revolutionary struggle (which we shamefully and criminally lost), cannot yet be stable. It seeks only to become stable by establishing a "transitional regime" on the road to the creation of the Five Chambers of Sun Yat-sen.108 This absurd and reactionary invention (which one hears praised among ourselves without much critical sense, even at a time when these ideas above all retard the revolutionary development of China), this philistine fantasy now becomes an instrument serving as "national," "constitutional" camouflage for the fascist regime, that is to say, for the military domination by a centralized party, the Kuomintang, representing the interests of capital in their most concentrated form. 109

By the same token, questions of the political regime and of the state are on the agenda in China. These problems are inevitably of interest to large working class circles. In a situation that is not revolutionary it is impossible to give any other reply to these questions than the slogans and formulas of political democracy.

When the mass movement progresses, under the conditions of a general revolutionary crisis, the soviets, arising through this movement, serve its current needs, become a natural form of the unity of the masses, comprehensible, close to the "national" point of view, and aid the party to bring the masses to the insurrection. But what does the slogan of soviets signify now, under the present circumstances in China? Don't forget that there is no soviet tradition there. Such a tradition would have remained even in the event of a defeat, but it didn't exist. The cause of that is the reactionary leadership of Stalin-Bukharin.

The slogan of soviets, which is not sustained by a mass movement and which is not even supported by the experience of the past, is only an empty phrase: do as they did in Russia, that is to say, it is the slogan of the socialist revolution in its purest, most abstract, and most absolute form.

Soviets have to be created to win power by the proletariat and the poor peasants through an insurrection. But today it is necessary to oppose to the fascist machine of the Kuomintang the slogans of democracy, that is, those which, under the domination of the bourgeoisie, open the widest avenue for popular political activity.

The stage of democracy has a great importance in the evolution of the masses. Under definite conditions, the revolution can allow the proletariat to pass beyond this stage. But it is precisely to facilitate this future development, which is not at all easy and not at all guaranteed to be successful in advance, that it is necessary to utilize to the fullest the interrevolutionary period to exhaust the democratic resources of the bourgeoisie. This can be done by developing democratic slogans before the broad masses and by compelling the bourgeoisie to place itself in contradiction to them at each step.

The anarchists have never understood this Marxist policy. The opportunists conducting the Sixth Congress, mortally frightened by the fruits of their labor, do not understand it either. But we, thank heavens, are neither anarchists, nor opportunists covered with shame, but Bolshevik-Leninists, that is, revolutionary dialecticians who have understood the meaning of the imperialist epoch and the dynamic of its abrupt turns.