THE STRANGLED REVOLUTION

February 9, 1931

The book by Andre Malraux, Les Conquerants,'52 has been sent to me from various parts and I think in four copies, but to my regret I read it after a delay of a year and a half or two. The book is devoted to the Chinese revolution, that is, to the greatest subject of the last five years. A fine and well-knit style, the discriminating eye of an artist, original and daring observation— all confer upon the novel an exceptional importance. If we write about it here it is not because the book is a work of talent, although this is not a negligible fact, but because it offers a source of political lessons of the highest value. Do they come from Malraux? No, they flow from the recital itself, unknown to the author, and they go against him. This does honor to the author as an observer and an artist, but not as a revolutionist. However, we have the right to evaluate Malraux from this point of view, too; in his own name and above all in the name of Garine, his other self, the author does not hesitate with his judgments on the revolution.

This book is called a novel. As a matter of fact, we have before us a romanticized chronicle of the Chinese revolution, from its first period to the period of Canton. The chronicle is not complete. Social vigor is sometimes lacking from the picture. But for that there pass before the reader not only luminous episodes of the revolution but also clear-cut silhouettes which are graven in the memory like social symbols.

thanks to his knowledge of English, he "insured contact with the foreign parties"; he was arrested in Glasgow in 1922; then he was delegated to China as representative of the Comintern. Having quit Russia before the first revolution and having returned after the third, Borodin appeared as the consummate representative of that state and party bureaucracy that recognized the revolution only after its victory. When it is a question of young people, it is sometimes nothing more than a matter of chronology. With people of forty or fifty, it is already a political characterization. If Borodin rallied successfully to the victorious revolution in Russia, it does not in the least signify that he was called upon to assure the victory of the revolution in China. People of this type assimilate without difficulty the gestures and intonations of "professional revolutionists." Many of them, by their protective coloration, not only deceive others but also themselves. The audacious inflexibility of the Bolshevik is most usually metamorphosed with them into that cynicism of the functionary ready for anything. Ah! to have a mandate from the Central Committee! This sacrosanct safeguard Borodin always had in his pocket.

Garine is not a functionary, he is more original than Borodin and perhaps even closer to the revolutionary type. But he is devoid of the indispensable education; dilettante and theatrical, he gets hopelessly entangled in the great events and he reveals it at every step. With regard to the slogans of the Chinese revolution, he expresses himself thus: ". . . democratic chatter— 'the rights of the proletariat,' etc." (p. 32). This has a radical ring but it is a false radicalism. The slogans of democracy are execrable chatter in the mouth of Poincare, Herriot, Leon Blum, sleight-of-hand artists of France and jailors of Indochina, Algeria, and Morocco. But when the Chinese rebel in the name of the "rights of the proletariat," this has as little to do with chatter as the slogans of the French revolution in the eighteenth century. At Hong Kong, the British birds of prey threatened, during the strike, to reestablish corporal punishment. "The rights of man and of the citizen" meant at Hong Kong the right of the Chinese not to be flogged by the British whip. To unmask the democratic rottenness of the imperialists is to serve the revolution. To call the slogans of the insurrection of the oppressed "chatter" is to aid involuntarily the imperialist.

A good inoculation of Marxism would have preserved the author from fatal contempt of this sort. But Garine in general considers that revolutionary doctrine is "doctrinary rubbish" (le fatras doctrinal). He is, you see, one of those to whom the revolution is only a definite "state of affairs." Isn't this astonishing? But it is just because the revolution is a "state of affairs," that is, a stage in the development of society conditioned by objective causes and subjected to definite laws, that a scientific mind can foresee the general direction of processes. Only the study of the anatomy of society and of its physiology permits one to react to the course of events by basing oneself upon scientific foresight and not upon a dilettante's conjectures. The revolutionist who "despises" revolutionary doctrine is not a bit better than the healer who despises medical doctrine which he does not know, or than the engineer who rejects technology. People who without the aid of science try to rectify the "state of affairs" that is called a disease are called quacks or charlatans and are prosecuted by law. Had there existed a tribunal to judge the quacks of the revolution, it is probable that Borodin, like his Muscovite inspirers, would have been severely condemned. I am afraid Garine himself would not have come out of it unscathed.

Two figures are contrasted to each other in the novel, like the two poles of the national revolution; old Chen-Dai, the spiritual authority of the right wing of the Kuomintang, the prophet and saint of the bourgeoisie, and Hong, the young leader of the terrorists. Both are depicted with great force. Chen-Dai embodies the old Chinese culture translated into the language of European breeding; with this exquisite garment, he "ennobles" the interests of all the ruling classes of China. To be sure, Chen-Dai wants national liberation, but he dreads the masses more than the imperialists; he hates the revolution more than the yoke placed upon the nation. If he marches toward it, it is only to pacify it, to subdue it, to exhaust it. He conducts a policy of passive resistance on two fronts, against imperialism and against the revolution, the policy of Gandhi in India, the policy which, in definite periods and in one form or another, the bourgeoisie has conducted at every longitude and latitude. Passive resistance flows from the tendency of the bourgeoisie to canalize the movement of the masses and to make off with it.

When Garine says that Chen-Dai's influence rises above politics, one can only shrug one's shoulders. The masked policy of the "upright man" in China as in India expresses in the most sublime and abstractly moralizing form the conservative interests of the possessors. The personal disinterestedness of Chen-Dai is in no sense in opposition to his political function: the exploiters need "upright men" like the corrupted ecclesiastical hierarchy needs saints.

Who gravitates around Chen-Dai? The novel replies with meritorious precision: a world of "aged mandarins, smugglers of opium and of obscene photographs, of scholars turned bicycle dealers, of Parisian barristers, of intellectuals of every kind" (p. 124). Behind them stands a more solid bourgeoisie bound up with England, which arms General Tang against the revolution. In the expectation of victory, Tang prepares to make Chen-Dai the head of the government. Both of them, Chen-Dai and Tang, nevertheless continue to be members of the Kuomintang which Borodin and Garine serve.

When Tang has a village attacked by his armies, and when he prepares to butcher the revolutionists, beginning with Borodin and Garine, his party comrades, the latter with the aid of Hong, mobilize and arm the unemployed. But after the victory won over Tang, the leaders do not seek to change a thing that existed before. They cannot break the ambiguous bloc with Chen-Dai because they have no confidence in the workers, the coolies, the revolutionary masses; they are themselves contaminated with the prejudices of Chen-Dai whose qualified arm they are.

In order "not to rebuff" the bourgeoisie they are forced to enter into struggle with Hong. Who is he and where does he come from? "The lowest dregs" (p. 36). He is one of those who are making the revolution and not those who rally to it when it is victorious. Having come to the idea of killing the English governor of Hong Kong, Hong is concerned with only one thing: "When I have been sentenced to capital punishment, you must tell the young to follow my example" (p. 36). To Hong a clear program must be given: to arouse the workers, to assemble them, to arm them, and to oppose them to Chen-Dai as to an enemy. But the bureaucracy of the Comintern seeks Chen-Dai's friendship, repulses Hong and exasperates him. Hong exterminates bankers and merchants one after another, the very ones who "support" the Kuomintang, Hong kills missionaries: "those who teach people to support misery must be punished, Christian priests or others. . ." (p. 274). If Hong does not find the right road, it is the fault of Borodin and Garine, who have placed the revolution in the hands of the bankers and the merchants. Hong reflects the mass which is already rising but which has not yet rubbed its eyes or softened its hands. He tries by the revolver and the knife to act for the masses whom the agents of the Comintern are paralyzing. Such is the unvarnished truth about the Chinese revolution.

Meanwhile, the Canton government is "oscillating, in its attempt to stay straight, between Garine and Borodin, who control the police and the trade unions, on the one hand, and Chen-Dai, who controls nothing, but who exists all the same, on the other" (p. 68). We have an almost perfect picture of the duality of power. The representatives of the Comintern have in their hands the trade unions of Canton, the police, the cadet school of Whampoa, the sympathy of the masses, the aid of the Soviet Union. Chen-Dai has a "moral authority," that is, the prestige of the mortally distracted possessors. The friends of Chen-Dai sit in a powerless government willingly supported by the conciliators. But isn't this the regime of the February revolution, the Kerenskyist system, with the sole difference that the role of the Mensheviks is played by the pseudo-Bolsheviks? Borodin has no doubt of it even though he is made up as a Bolshevik and takes his makeup seriously.

The central idea of Garine and Borodin is to prohibit Chinese and foreign boats, cruising toward the port of Canton, from putting in at Hong Kong. By the commercial boycott these people, who consider themselves revolutionary realists, hope to shatter British domination in South China. They never deem it necessary first of all to overthrow the government of the Canton bourgeoisie which only waits for the moment to surrender the revolution to England. No, Borodin and Garine knock every day at the door of the "government," and hat in hand, beg that the saving decree be promulgated. One of them reminds Garine that at bottom the government is a phantom. Garine is not disconcerted. Phantom or not, he replies, let it go ahead while we need it. That is the way the priest needs relics that he himself fabricates with wax and cotton. What is concealed behind this policy which weakens and debases the revolution? The respect of a petty-bourgeois revolutionist for a solid conservative bourgeois. It is thus that the reddest of the French Radicals is always ready to fall on his knees before Poincare.

But perhaps the masses of Canton are not yet mature enough to overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie? From this whole atmosphere, the conviction arises that without the opposition of the Comintern the phantom government would long before have been overthrown under the pressure of the masses. But let us suppose that the Cantonese workers were still too weak to establish their own power. What, generally speaking, is the weak spot of the masses? Their inclination to follow the exploiters. In this case, the first duty of revolutionists is to help the workers liberate themselves from servile confidence. Nevertheless, the work done by the bureaucracy of the Comintern was diametrically opposed to this. It inculcated in the masses the notion of the necessity to submit to the bourgeoisie and it declared that the enemies of the bourgeoisie were their own enemies.

Do not rebuff Chen-Dai! But if Chen-Dai withdraws in spite of this, which is inevitable, it would not mean that Garine and Borodin will be delivered of their voluntary vassaldom toward the bourgeoisie. They will only choose as the new focus of their activity Chiang Kai-shek, son of the same class and younger brother of Chen-Dai. Head of the Whampoa Military Academy, founded by the Bolsheviks, Chiang Kai-shek does not confine himself to passive resistance; he is ready to resort to bloody force, not in the plebeian form, the form of the masses, but in the military form and only within limits that will permit the bourgeoisie to retain an unlimited power over the army. Borodin and Garine, by arming their enemies, disarm and repulse their friends. This is the way they prepare the catastrophe.

But are we not overestimating the influence of the revolutionary bureaucracy upon the events? No, it showed itself stronger than it might have thought, if not for good then at least for evil. The coolies who are only beginning to exist politically require a courageous leadership. Hong requires a bold program. The revolution requires the energies of millions of rising men. But Borodin and his bureaucrats require Chen-Dai and Chiang Kaishek. They strangle Hong and prevent the worker from raising his head. In a few months, they will stifle the agrarian insurrection of the peasantry so as not to repulse the bourgeois army command. Their strength is that they represent the Russian October, Bolshevism, the Communist International. Having usurped authority, the banner, and the material resources of the greatest of revolutions, the bureaucracy bars the road to another revolution which also had all chances of being great.

The dialogue between Borodin and Hong (pp. 182-84) is the most terrific indictment of Borodin and his Moscow inspirers. Hong, as always, is after decisive action. He demands the punishment of the most prominent bourgeois. Borodin finds this sole objection: Those who are "paying" must not be touched. "Revolution is not so simple," says Garine for his part. "Revolution involves paying an army," adds Borodin. These aphorisms contain all the elements of the noose in which the Chinese revolution was strangled. Borodin protected the bourgeoisie which, in recompense, made contributions to the "revolution," the money going to the army of Chiang Kai-shek. The army of Chiang Kai-shek exterminated the proletariat and liquidated the revolution. Was it really impossible to foresee this? And wasn't it really foreseen? The bourgeoisie pays willingly only for the army which serves it against the people. The army of the revolution does not wait for donations: it makes them pay. This is called the revolutionary dictatorship.

Hong comes forward successfully at workers' meetings and thunders against the "Russians," the bearers of ruin for the revolution. The way of Hong himself does not lead to the goal but he is right as against Borodin. "Had the T'aip'ing leaders Russian advisers? Had the Boxers?" (p. 190).154 Had the Chinese revolution of 1924-27 been left to itself it would perhaps not have come to victory immediately but it would not have resorted to the methods of hara-kiri, it would not have known shameful capitulations, and it would have trained revolutionary cadres. Between the dual power of Canton and that of Petrograd there is the tragic difference that in China there was no Bolshevism in evidence; under the name of Trotskyism, it was declared a counterrevolutionary doctrine and was persecuted by every method of calumny and repression. Where Kerensky did not succeed during the July days,l55 Stalin succeeded ten years later in China.

Borodin and "all the Bolsheviks of his generation," Garine assures us, were distinguished by their struggle against the anarchists. This remark was needed by the author so as to prepare the reader for the struggle of Borodin against Hong's group. Historically it is false. Anarchism was unable to raise its head in Russia not because the Bolsheviks fought successfully against it but because they had first dug up the ground under its feet. Anarchism, if it does not live within the four walls of intellectuals' cafes and editorial offices, but has penetrated more deeply, translates the psychology of despair in the masses and signifies the political punishment for the deceptions of democracy and the treachery of opportunism. The boldness of Bolshevism in posing the revolutionary problems and in teaching their solution left no room for the development of anarchism. But if Malraux's historical investigation is not exact, his recital shows admirably how the opportunist policy of Stalin-Borodin prepared the ground for anarchist terrorism in China.

Driven by the logic of this policy, Borodin consents to adopt a decree against the terrorists. The firm revolutionists, driven onto the road of adventurism by the crimes of the Moscow leaders, are declared outlaws by the bourgeoisie of Canton—with the benediction of the Comintern. They reply with acts of terrorism against the pseudorevolutionary bureaucrats who protect the monied bourgeoisie. Borodin and Garine seize the terrorists and destroy them, no longer defending the bourgeoisie alone but also their own heads. It is thus that the policy of conciliation inexorably slips down to the lowest degree of treachery.

The book is called les Conquerants. With this title, which has a double meaning when the revolution confuses its aims with those of imperialism, the author refers to the Russian Bolsheviks, or more exactly, to a certain part of them. The conquerors? The Chinese masses rose for a revolutionary insurrection, with the influence of the October upheaval as their example and with Bolshevism as their banner. But the "conquerors" conquered nothing. On the contrary, they surrendered everything to the enemy. If the Russian revolution called forth the Chinese revolution, the Russian epigones strangled it. Malraux does not make these deductions. He does not even suspect their existence. All the more clearly do they emerge upon the background of his remarkable book.