A Letter to Friends in Peking

October 3, 1932

What are at present the chief elements of the political situation in China?

The two most important revolutionary problems, the national problem and the agrarian problem, have again become aggravated. The pace of the peasant war, slow and crawling but generally victorious, is evidence that the Kuomintang dictatorship has proved incapable of satisfying the countryside or of intimidating it further. The Japanese intervention in Shanghai and their effective annexation of Manchuria have placed in relief the military bankruptcy of the Kuomintang dictatorship. The crisis of power, which at bottom has not stopped for a single moment during these last years, had to grow fatally worse. The struggle between the militarist cliques is destroying what remains of the unity of the country.

If the peasant war has radicalized the intellectuals who have connections with the countryside, the Japanese intervention, on the other hand, has politically stimulated the petty bourgeoisie of the cities. This again has only aggravated the crisis of power. There is not a single section of the bourgeoisie called "nationalist" which does not tend to arrive at the conclusion that the Kuomintang regime devours much and gives little. To demand an end to the period of "tutelage" by the Kuomintang is to demand that the military dictatorship give way to parliamentarism.

The Left Opposition press has sometimes labeled the regime of Chiang Kai-shek as fascist. This definition was derived from the fact that in China, as in Italy, the military-police power is  concentrated in the hands of a single bourgeois party to the exclusion of all other parties and, notably, of the workers' organizations. But after the experience of the last years, an experience complicated by the confusion the Stalinists brought to the question of fascism, it would not be correct to identify the dictatorship of the Kuomintang with fascism. Hitler, like Mussolini before him, supports himself above all on the counterrevolutionary petty bourgeoisie: this is the essence of fascism. The Kuomintang does not have this point of support. In Germany the peasants march behind Hitler and by this fact indirectly support von Papen; in China the peasants carry on a raging struggle against Chiang Kai-shek.

The regime of the Kuomintang contains more of Bonapartist traits than of fascist; not possessing a social base, not even the smallest, the Kuomintang stands between the pressure of the imperialists and compradors on the one hand and of the revolutionary movement on the other. But Bonapartism can make a pretence of stability only when the land hunger of the peasants is satisfied. This is not true in the case of China. Hence the impotence of the military dictatorship which can only maintain itself thanks to the dispersion of its enemies. But under their growing attack even this begins to fall apart.

In the revolution of 1925-27, it was the proletariat that morally and physically suffered the most. That is why the workers are now in the rear of the other classes, not only of the petty bourgeoisie, starting with the students, but also in a certain sense of the peasants. It is precisely this which proves that the third Chinese revolution cannot win, cannot even develop, as long as the working class has not again entered into the struggle.

The slogans of revolutionary democracy correspond best to the prerevolutionary political situation in China today.

It is elementary for a Marxist that the peasants, whatever their banner, fight for the aims of agrarian petty-bourgeois democracy. The slogan of the independence of China, raised anew to a white heat by the Japanese intervention, is a slogan of national democracy. The impotence of the military dictatorship and the division of the country among the militarist cliques put on the agenda the slogan of political democracy.

The students cry: "Down with the Kuomintang government!" Groups of the workers' vanguard support this slogan. The "national" bourgeoisie demands a constitutional regime. The peasants revolt against the dearth of land, the yoke of the militarists, government officials, usurious loans. Under these circumstances, the party of the proletariat must support as the central political slogan the call for a constituent assembly.

Does this mean—it will be asked—that we demand the government convoke the constituent assembly or that we attempt to organize it ourselves? This way of posing the question, at least at this stage, is too formalistic. For a number of years the Russian revolution coordinated two slogans: "Down with absolutism" and "Long live the constituent assembly." To the question who would convoke the constituent assembly we answered: the future will tell, that is, the relation of forces, as they establish themselves in the process of the revolution itself. This approach to the question is equally correct for China. If the Kuomintang government at the moment of its collapse tries to convoke some kind of a representative assembly, what shall our attitude be toward it, that is, how shall we best utilize it in the interests of the revolution, by boycotting the elections or participating in them? Will the revolutionary masses succeed in forming an independent governmental body that takes on itself the convocation of a constituent assembly? Will the proletariat succeed, in the course of the struggle for democratic demands, in creating soviets? Will the existence of soviets make the convocation of a constituent assembly superfluous? These questions cannot be answered in advance. But our task consists not in making predictions on a calendar but in mobilizing the workers around the slogans that flow from the political situation. Our strategy is a strategy of revolutionary action, not abstract speculation.

Today, by the force of events, revolutionary agitation is directed above all against the Kuomintang government. We explain to the masses that the dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek is the main obstacle that stands in the way of the constituent assembly and that we can rid China of the militarist cliques only by means of an armed insurrection. Agitation, spoken and written, strikes, meetings, demonstrations, boycotts, whatever concrete goals they aim at, must have as a corollary the slogans: "Down with the Kuomintang!" "Long live the constituent assembly!"

In order to achieve real national liberation it is necessary to overthrow the Kuomintang. But this does not mean we postpone the struggle until such time as the Kuomintang is overthrown. The more the struggle against foreign oppression spreads, the more difficulties the Kuomintang will have. The more we mobilize the masses against the Kuomintang, the more the struggle against imperialism will develop.

At the critical moment of Japanese intervention the workers and the students called for arms. From whom? From the Kuomintang. It would be a sectarian absurdity to abandon this demand on the plea that we want to overthrow the Kuomintang. We want to overthrow it, but we haven't yet reached that point. The more energetically we demand the arming of the workers, the sooner we shall reach it.

The official Communist Party, despite its ultraleftism, favors "the resumption of Russian-Chinese diplomatic relations." This is a slogan that is directed against the Kuomintang. To advance it does not at all mean that one has "confidence" in the Kuomintang. On the contrary, the effect of this slogan is to make the government's situation more difficult before the masses. Certain Kuomintang leaders already have had to take up the slogan for the reestablishment of relations with the USSR. We know that with these gentlemen there is a big gap between words and deeds, but here, as in all other questions, mass pressure will decide.

If under the whip of the revolution the Kuomintang government begins to make petty concessions on the agrarian question, tries to call a semblance of a constituent assembly, is forced to give arms to the workers or to reestablish relations with the USSR, it goes without saying that we will at once take advantage of these concessions. We will firmly cling to them at the same time that we correctly show their insufficiency and in this way use these concessions by the Kuomintang as a weapon to overthrow it. Such in general is the reciprocal relation of reforms and revolution in Marxist politics.

But doesn't the scope the peasant war is reaching mean that there is no longer time or place for the slogans and problems of parliamentary democracy in China? Let us go back to this question.

If today the revolutionary Chinese peasants call their fighting organizations "soviets," we have no reason to give up that name. We must simply not get intoxicated with words. To believe that soviet power in essentially rural regions can be an important stable revolutionary power is proof of great frivolity. It is impossible to be ignorant of the experience offered by the only country where soviet power has been effectively established. Although in Petrograd, Moscow, and other industrial centers and regions of Russia soviet power has been firm and constant since November 1917, in all the immense peripheral areas (Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, Transcaucasia, Urals, Siberia, Central Asia, Archangel, Murmansk) this power has appeared and disappeared several times, not only because of foreign intervention but also thanks to internal revolts. The Chinese soviet power has an essentially rural, peripheral character, and to this day entirely lacks a point of support in the industrial proletariat. The less stable and sure this power is, the less it can be described as soviet power.

Ko Lin's article, which appeared in the German paper Der Rote Aufbau, claims that in the Red armies the workers represent 36 percent, the peasants 57 percent, and the intellectuals 7 percent. I confess that these figures arouse serious doubts. If the figures apply to all the insurrectionary armed forces, which according to the author number 350,000, the army includes about 125,000 workers. If the 36 percent applies only to the Red armies, of 150,000 soldiers there are more than 50,000 workers. Is this really so? Did they previously belong to the unions, to the party? Did they take part in the revolutionary struggle? But even that does not settle the question. Because of the absence of strong, independent proletarian organizations in the industrial centers, the revolutionary workers, inexperienced or too little experienced, become totally lost in the peasant, petty-bourgeois environment.

Wang Ming's article, which appeared at the beginning of the year in the Comintern press, singularly exaggerates, as far as I can judge, the scope of the movement in the cities, the degree of independence of the workers in the movement, and the importance of the influence of the Communist Party. The trouble with the present official press is that it mercilessly distorts facts for its factional interests. Thus it is not hard to realize, even by Wang Ming's article, that the leading place in the movement that began in the autumn of last year belonged to the students and to the school youth in general. The university strikes had an appreciable importance, greater than the factory strikes.

To arouse the workers, to organize them, to give them the possibility of relating to the national and agrarian movements in order to take the leadership of both: such is the task that falls to us. The immediate demands of the proletariat as such (length of the workday, wages, right to organize, etc.) must form the basis of our agitation. But that alone is not enough. Only these three slogans can raise the proletariat to the role of the head of the nation: the independence of China, land to the poor peasants, the constituent assembly.

The Stalinists imagine that the minute the insurgent peasants call their organizations soviets, the stage of revolutionary parliamentarism is already over. This is a serious mistake. The rebel peasants can serve as a point of support to soviets only if the proletariat shows in practice its ability to lead. Without the leadership of the proletariat, the peasant movement can only serve to advance one bourgeois clique against another, finally to break up into provincial factions. The constituent assembly, thanks to its importance as a centralizing force, would mark a serious stage in the development of the agrarian revolution. The existence of rural "soviets" and "Red armies" would help the peasants to elect revolutionary representatives. At the present stage this is the only way to link up the peasant movement politically with the national and proletarian movements.

The official Chinese Communist Party declares that its current "principal slogan" is that of the national-revolutionary war against Japanese imperialism (see Wang Ming's article in the Communist International, no. 1 in 1932). This is a one-sided and even adventurist way to pose the question. It is true that the struggle against imperialism, which is the essential task of the Chinese proletariat, cannot be carried through to the end except by insurrection and revolutionary war. But it does not follow in the least that the struggle against Japanese imperialism constitutes the central slogan at the present moment. The question must be solved in an international context.

At the beginning of the year, they thought in Comintern circles that Japan had launched its military action against China in order to immediately push things to a war against the Soviet Union. I wrote then that the Tokyo government would have to be completely out of its mind to run the risk of a war with the Soviet Union before it had at least to some extent consolidated the military base that Manchuria represents for it. In reply to this evaluation of the situation, the American Stalinists, the most vulgar and stupid of all, declared that I was working in the interests of the Japanese general staff. Yet what have the events of these last months shown? The fear of the consequences of a military adventure in Japan's leading circles was so great that the military clique had to liquidate a certain number of Japanese statesmen in order to arouse the mikado's government to complete the annexation of Manchuria.160 There is no doubt that even today a war against the Soviet Union remains a very real perspective, but in politics time is very important.

If the Soviet government considered war with Japan right now inevitable, it would have neither the right nor the possibility of carrying out a peace policy, that is, an ostrich policy. In fact, in the course of the year, the Soviet government has concluded an agreement with Japan to furnish Soviet naphtha to the Japanese war fleet. If war is inevitable right now, furnishing naphtha to Japan is equivalent to committing treason toward the proletarian revolution. We won't discuss here the question of knowing to what extent this or that declaration or step of the Soviet government is correct. One thing is clear: contrary to the American Stalinists, whose zeal is beyond measure, the Moscow Stalinists have been oriented toward peace with Japan, not war.

Pravda of September 24 writes: "With vast impatience the world bourgeoisie was expecting a Japanese-Soviet war. But the fact that the USSR has rigorously abstained from intervening in the Sino-Japanese conflict and the firm peace policy she is following has forestalled war...." An admission that if the attitude of the American and other windbags had any political meaning at all, it was this: to push the Soviet power on the same road the world bourgeoisie was pushing it. We don't mean that they were consciously serving the Japanese general staff. Suffice it to say they are incapable of consciously serving the proletarian revolution.

The Chinese proletariat inscribes on its banner not only the resumption of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union but also the conclusion of a close offensive and defensive alliance with it. This indicates that the policy of the Chinese proletariat must be in conformity with the whole of the international situation and above all with the policy of the Soviet Union. If Japan were to thrust war upon the Soviet Union today, drawing China into that war would be a life-and-death question for the Chinese proletariat and its party. The war would open up boundless horizons for the Chinese revolution. But to the extent that the international situation and internal conditions oblige the Soviet Union to make serious concessions in the Far East in order to avoid war, or to defer it as long as possible, to the extent that Japan does not feel itself strong enough to begin hostilities, the war against Japanese imperialism cannot constitute, at least at the present time, the central fighting slogan of the Chinese Communist Party.

Wang Ming quotes the following slogans of the Left Opposition in China: "Reconstitution of the mass movement," "Convocation of the constituent assembly," and "Resumption of diplomatic relations between China and the Soviet Union." Simply because these slogans seem to be poorly motivated in an article appearing in the legal organ of the Opposition, Wang Ming calls the Left Opposition in China a "counterrevolutionary Trotskyist-Ch'en Tu-hsiu group."

Even if we were to admit that the revolutionary slogans were poorly motivated, this does not make the slogans or the organization that formulated them counterrevolutionary. But Wang Ming and his like have to speak about the counterrevolutionary spirit of the "Trotskyists" if they want to keep their jobs and their pay.

While they express themselves so sharply against the Bolshevik-Leninists, who have been proved right in the course of events in China from 1924 to 1932, the Stalinists are extremely indulgent toward themselves, toward their uninterrupted chain of errors

When Japan attacked Shanghai, the Kuomintang proposed "the united front of the workers, peasants, soldiers, merchants and students to combat imperialism." But this is the famous "bloc of four classes" of Stalin-Martynov! Since the second revolution, foreign oppression has not weakened, but on the contrary has grown. The antagonism between the needs of the country's development on the one side and the regime and imperialism on the other has also sharpened. The rationale of the old Stalinist arguments in favor of the bloc of four classes has acquired double strength. But now the Stalinists have interpreted the Kuomintang's proposal as a new attempt to deceive the masses. Very well! But they have forgotten to explain why the Comintern leadership helped the Chinese bourgeoisie's fatal deception, and why the philosophy which consisted in being at the beck and call of the Kuomintang found expression in the program of the Comintern.

It is clear that we can and must support the slogan of democratic self-government: of the election of representatives by the people, etc. The democratic program represents a great step forward in relation to the regime of military dictatorship. We must tie in the isolated, partial democratic slogans with the principal slogans and connect them to the problems of the revolutionary organization and arming of the workers.

The question of "patriotism" and "nationalism," like some other questions contained in your letter, is of a terminological rather than fundamental character. The Bolsheviks, in favor of the national liberation of oppressed people by revolutionary means, support the movement of the masses of the people for national liberation by any means, not only against the foreign imperialists, but also against the bourgeois exploiters of the Kuomintang type inside the national movement.

Must we introduce the term "patriotism," which has been thoroughly discredited and corrupted? I doubt it. Isn't this a tendency to adapt to petty-bourgeois ideology and terminology? If such a tendency were really to appear in our ranks, we would have to fight it mercilessly.

Many questions of a tactical and strategic character will appear insoluble if approached formalistically. But they will fall into place if we pose them dialectically, that is, in the context of the living struggle of classes and parties. The revolutionary dialectic is best assimilated in action. I have no doubt that our Chinese friends and comrades in ideas, the Bolshevik-Leninists, not only passionately discuss the complex problems of the Chinese revolution, but also no less passionately participate in the developing struggle. We are for a strategy of action, not speculation.