WHAT IS HAPPENNING IN CHINA?

A Question Every Communist Must Ask Himself

November 9, 1927

It is not long ago that we decisively condemned the ramblings on the necessity of handing over so important an instrument a the Chinese Eastern from the hands of the Russian revolution to those of the Chinese counterrevolution. We called to mind the elementary duty of the international proletariat in this conflict to defend the republic of the Soviets against the Chinese bourgeoisie and all its possible instigators and allies. But on the other hand it is quite clear that the proletariat of the USSR, which has the; power and the army in its hands, cannot demand that the vanguard of the Chinese proletariat begin a war at once against Chiang Kai-shek, that is, that it apply the means which the Soviet government itself does not find it possible, and correctly so, to apply.

Had a war begun between the USSR and China, or rather between the USSR and the imperialist patrons of China, the duty of the Chinese communist would be to transform this war in the shortest time into a civil war. But even in that case the launching of the civil war would have to be subordinated to general revolutionary policy; and even then the Chinese communists would be unable to pass over arbitrarily, and at any moment at all, to the road of open insurrection, but only after having assured themselves of the necessary support of the worker and peasant masses. The rebellion at Chiang Kai-shek's rear, in this situation, would be the extension of the front of the Soviet workers and peasants; the fate of the insurgent Chinese workers would be intimately bound up with the fate of the Soviet republic, the tasks, the aims, the perspectives would be quite clear.

But what is the perspective opened up by this uprising of the today isolated Chinese communists in the absence of war or revolution? The perspective of a terrific debacle and of an adventurist degeneration of the remnants of the Communist Party.

In the meantime, it must be said openly: Calculations based upon guerrilla adventure correspond entirely to the general nature of Stalinist policy. Two years ago, Stalin expected gigantic gains for the security of the Soviet state from the alliance with the imperialists of the General Council of the British trade unions. Today, he is quite capable of calculating that a rebellion of the Chinese communists, even without any hope, would bring "a little profit" in a precarious situation. In the first case, the calculation was grossly opportunist; in the second, openly adventurist; but in both cases, the calculation is made indepent of the general tasks of the world labor movement, against ~e tasks, and to the detriment of the correctly understood interests of the Soviet republic.

We have not at our disposal all the necessary data for a definite conclusion. That is why we ask:

What is happening in China? Let it be explained to us! The ~munist who does not pose the question to himself and to the "dership of his party will be unworthy of the name of ~mmunist. The leadership that would like to remain discreetly on the sidelines in order, in case of a defeat of the Chinese artisans' to wash its hands and transfer responsibility to the central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party—such a leadership would dishonor itself—not for the first time, it is true— by the most abominable crime against the interests of the international revolution.

We ask: What is happening in China? We will continue to pose this question until we have forced a reply.