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From Fourth International, Vol.11 No.1, January-February 1950, pp.23-27.
Originally published in The Militant, October 15, 1932, pp.2-3.
Transcription & mark-up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: The triumph of the Chinese peasant armies led by the Stalinist Mao Tse-tung over the Chiang Kai-shek regime lends particular timeliness to the re-publication of this article by Leon Trotsky. It was written eighteen years ago as a letter to the Chinese Trotskyists and deals primarily with the peasant revolts in that country which were then becoming the subject of considerable interest and comment. After the defeat of the Second Chinese Revolution (1925-1927) – due principally to the capitulation of Stalin’s Comintern to Chiang Kai-shek – the Chinese Stalinists turned their backs on the cities and the city workers. They quit the urban centers almost entirely to try to gain leadership over the peasantry whose risings followed belatedly in the wake of the defeats of the proletariat in the cities. By 1932, the peasant bands under Stalinist command, which they had named the “Red Army” had won control over a fairly large area called “Soviet China.” After the second Stalinist deal with Chiang in 1937, the armies and the area it controlled were re-named to harmonize with the People’s Front policy, names which were, in fact, more in accord with their real class character. In all essentials Trotsky’s predictions have literally proved prophetic. The peasant armies under Stalinist leadership conquered the big cities as an anti-proletarian force. The class character of the Mao Tse-tung regime is shaped by its peasant, i.e. its petty-bourgeois base, rather than by its ritual acceptance of Marxism, the science of the working class in its struggle for socialism. The conflict with the workers became an actuality in the very first city that Mao’s troops entered. While the peasants had been granted certain reforms such as division of the land, reduction of rent and interest, workers’ demands for an improvement of their terrible conditions have been brutally denied by the Stalinist warlords. Strikes have been violently smashed, the “ringleaders” executed and the workers driven back to the factories and ordered to “work harder.” For reports of such incidents we refer the reader to the report from Hong Kong in the December Fourth International, to C. Liu’s article in the current issue. These were further confirmed by Drew Pearson who wrote in his column on February 12th that a riot of 20,000 textile workers in January in Shanghai had been suppressed by troops with machine guns and the arrest of 100 workers. During their struggle against the cancellation (in effect) of their annual bonus, the workers tore down pictures of Mao Tse-tung and Chu Teh. The report does not say that the Stalinists accused the workers of being “counter-revolutionary Trotskyists” but we know from rich experience that this is how they characterize all working class and revolutionary resistance to their reactionary policies. For as Trotsky points out the “struggle between ... the Stalinists and the Bolshevik-Lenin-ists bears in itself an inner tendency toward transformation into a class struggle.” The reader should bear in mind that this letter was written in 1932 when the Trotskyists still considered themselves a faction of the Communist International and the Communist Parties, whose chief aim was to bring about the Marxist reform of these parties. The designation “Left Opposition” was changed in 1934 after Hitler’s rise to power had proved that reform of the Communist Parties was no longer possible. New revolutionary parties and an international had to be created. Similarly life itself had demonstrated that the characterization of Stalinism as “bureaucratic centrism” was no longer valid; it had become an open counter-revolutionary force. |
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Dear Comrades:
After a long delay we received your letter of June 15. Needless to say we were overjoyed by the revival and the renascence of the Chinese Left Opposition after the most ferocious police persecutions it had endured. So far as one may judge from here, handicapped as we are by extreme lack of information, the position expressed in your letter corresponds to ours.
Our irreconcilable attitude toward the vulgar democratic Stalinist position on the peasant movement has, of course, nothing in common with a careless or passive attitude to the peasant movement itself. The Manifesto of the International Left Opposition (The Tasks and Perspectives of the Chinese Revolution), that was issued two years ago and that evaluated the peasant movement in the southern provinces of China, declared: “The Chinese revolution, betrayed, crushed and bled white, gives us proof that it is alive. Let us hope that the time is not far off when it shall once again lift up its proletarian head.” Further on, it says: “The far-flung flood of peasant insurrections can unquestionably provide the impulse for the revival of political struggle in the industrial centers. On this we bank firmly.”
Your letter bears witness that under the influence of the crisis and of the Japanese intervention, against the background of the peasant war, struggle of the city workers is flaring up once again. In the Manifesto we wrote on this score with the necessary caution. “No one can foretell whether the bulwarks of the peasant uprisings will maintain themselves without a break through the course of that extended period which will be required by the proletarian vanguard to gather its own strength, to lead the working class into the battle, and to align its struggle for power with the general offensive of the peasants against their most immediate enemies.”
At the present time, it is obvious, there are substantial ground for expressing the hope that – through a correct policy – it will be possible to fuse the workers, and the urban movement, in general, with the peasant war; and this would constitute the beginning of the third Chinese revolution. But meanwhile this still remains only a hope and not a certainty. The most important work lies ahead.
In this letter I should like to pose only one question, which appears to me, at least from afar, to be important and acute to the greatest degree. Once again I must remind you that the information at my disposal is altogether insufficient, accidental and disjointed. I would indeed welcome all amplifications and corrections.
The peasant movement has created its own armies, has seized great territories and has installed its own institutions. In the event of further successes – and all of us, of course, passionately desire such successes – the movement will become linked up with the urban and industrial centers and, through that very fact, it will come face to face with the working class. What will be the nature of this encounter? Is it certain that its character will be peaceable and friendly?
At first glance the question might appear to be superfluous. The peasant movement is headed by Communists or sympathizers. Isn’t it self-evident that in the event of their coming together the workers and the peasants must unanimously unite under the Communist banner?
Unfortunately the question is not at all so simple. Let me refer to the experience of Russia. During the years of the civil war the peasantry in various parts of the country created, its own guerrilla detachments, which sometimes grew into full-fledged armies. Some of these detachments considered themselves Bolshevik, and were often led by workers. Others remained non-party and most often were led by former non-commissioned officers from among the peasantry. There was also an “anarchist” army under the command of Makhno.
So long as the guerrilla armies operated in the rear of the White Guards, they served the cause of the revolution. Some of them were distinguished by exceptional heroism and fortitude. But within the cities these armies often came into conflict with the workers and with the local party organizations. Conflicts also arose during encounters of the partisans with the regular Red Army, and in some instances they took an extremely painful and sharp character.
The grim experience of the civil war demonstrated to us the necessity of disarming peasant detachments immediately after the Red Army occupied provinces which had been cleared of the White Guards. In these cases, the best, the most class conscious and disciplined elements were absorbed into the ranks of the Red Army. But a considerable portion of the partisans strived to maintain an independent existence and often came into direct armed conflict with the Soviet power. Such was the case with the anarchist army of Makhno, entirely kulak in spirit. But that was not the sole instance; many peasant detachments, which fought splendidly, enough against the restoration of the landlords, became transformed after victory into an instrument of counter-revolution.
Regardless of their origin in each isolated instance – whether caused by conscious provocation of the White Guards, or by tactlessness of the Communists or by an unfavorable combination of circumstances – the conflicts between armed peasants and workers were rooted in one and the same social soil: the difference between the class position and training of the workers and of the peasants. The workers approaches questions from the socialist standpoint; the peasant’s viewpoint is petty bourgeois. The worker strives to socialize the property that is taken away from the exploiters; the peasant seeks to divide it up. The worker desires to put to common use palaces and parks; whereas the peasant, insofar as he cannot divide them, inclines to burning the palaces and cutting down the parks. The worker strives to solve problems on a national scale and in accordance with a plan; the peasant, on the other hand, approaches all problems on a local scale, and takes a hostile attitude to centralized planning, etc.
It is understood that a peasant also is capable of raising himself to the socialist viewpoint. Under a proletarian regime ever larger masses of peasants become re-educated in the socialist spirit. But this requires time, years, even decades. It should be borne in mind that in the initial stages of revolution, contradictions between proletarian socialism and peasant individualism often take on an extremely acute character.
But after all aren’t there Communists at the head of the Chinese Red Armies? Doesn’t this alone exclude the possibility of conflicts between the peasant detachments and the workers’ organizations? No, that does not exclude it. The fact that individual Communists are in the leadership of the present armies does not at all transform the social character of these armies, even if their Communist leaders bear a definite proletarian stamp. And how do matters stand in China?
Among the Communist leaders of Red detachments there are indubitably many declassed intellectuals and semi-intellectuals who have not gone through the school of proletarian struggle. For two or three years they live the lives of partisan commanders and commissars, they wage battles, seize territories, etc. They absorb the spirit of their environment. Meanwhile the majority of the rank and file Communists in the Red detachments unquestionably consists of peasants, who assume the name Communist in all honesty and sincerity but who in actuality remain revolutionary paupers or revolutionary petty proprietors. In politics he who judges by denominations and labels and not by social facts is lost. All the more so, when the politics concerned is carried out arms in hand.
The true Communist party is the organization of the proletarian vanguard. Meanwhile, we must not forget that the working class of China during the last four years has been kept in an oppressed and amorphous condition and only recently has it evinced signs of revival. It is one thing when the Communist party, firmly resting upon the flower of the urban proletariat, strives, through the workers, to lead the peasant war. It is an altogether different thing when a few thousand or even tens of thousands of revolutionists assume the leadership of the peasant war and are in reality Communists or take that name, without having serious support from the proletariat. This is precisely the situation in China. This acts to augment in the extreme the danger of conflicts between the workers and the armed peasants. In any event, there will be no dearth, one may rest assured, of bourgeois provocateurs.
In Russia, in the eopch of civil war, the proletariat was already in power in the greater part of the country; the leadership in the struggle was in the hands of a strong and tempered party; the entire commanding apparatus of the centralized Red Army was in the hands of the workers. Notwithstanding all this, the peasant detachments, incomparably weaker than the Red Army, often came into conflict with it, after it victoriously moved into peasant guerrilla sectors.
In China the situation is radically different, and moreover completely to the disadvantage of the workers. In the most important regions of China the power is in the hands of bourgeois militarists. In other regions, in the hands of leaders of armed peasants. Nowhere is there any proletarian power as yet. The trade unions are weak. The influence of the party among the workers is insignificant. The peasant detachments, flushed with victories they have achieved, stand under the wing of the Comintern. They call themselves, “the Red Army,” i.e., they identify themselves with the armed forces of the Soviets. What results consequently is that the revolutionary peasantry of China, in the person of its ruling stratum, seems to have appropriated to itself beforehand the political and moral capital which should by the nature of things belong to the Chinese workers. Isn’t it possible that things may turn out so that all this capital will be directed at a certain moment against the workers?
Naturally, the peasant poor – and in China they constitute the overwhelming majority – to the extent they think politically – and these comprise a small minority – sincerely and passionately desire alliance and friendship with the workers. But the peasantry, even when armed, is incapable of conducting an independent policy.
Occupying in daily life an intermediate, indeterminate and vacillating position, the peasantry, in decisive moments, can follow either the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. The peasantry does not find the road to the proletariat easily but only after a series of mistakes and defeats. The bridge between the peasantry and the bourgeoisie is provided by the urban petty bourgeoisie, chiefly by the intellectuals, who commonly come forward under the banner of Socialism and even Communism.
The commanding stratum of the Chinese “Red Army” has no doubt succeeded in inculcating itself with the habit of issuing commands. The absence of a strong revolutionary party and of mass organizations of the proletariat renders control over the commanding stratum virtually impossible. The commanders and commissars appear in the guise of absolute masters of the situation and upon occupying cities will be rather apt to look down from above upon the workers. The demands of the workers might often appear to them either inopportune or ill-advised.
Nor should one forget such “trifles” as the fact thai within cities, the staffs and offices of the victorious armies are established not in the proletarian huts but in the finest city buildings, in the houses and apartments of the bourgeoisie; and all this facilitates the inclination of the upper , stratum of the peasant armies to feel itself part of the “cultured” and “educated” classes, nowise the proletariat.
Thus, in China, the causes and grounds for conflicts between the army, which is peasant in composition and petty bourgeois in leadership, and the workers, not only are not eliminated but on the contrary all the circumstances are such as to greatly increase the possibility and even the inevitability of such conflicts; and in addition the chances of the proletariat are in advance far less favorable than was the case in Russia.
From the theoretical and political side the danger is increased manifold because the Stalinist bureaucracy covers up the contradictory situation by its slogan of “democratic dictatorship” of workers and peasants. Is it possible to conceive of a snare more attractive in appearance and more perfidious in essence? The epigones do their thinking not by means of social concepts, but by means of stereotyped phrases; formalism is the basic trait of bureaucracy.
The Russian Narodniki (”Populists”) used to accuse the Russian Marxists of “ignoring” the peasantry, of not carrying on work in the villages, etc. To this the Marxists replied: “We will arouse and organize the advanced workers and through the workers we shall arouse the peasants.” Such in general is the only conceivable road for the proletarian party.
The Chinese Stalinists have acted otherwise. During the revolution of 1925-27 they subordinated directly and immediately the interests of the workers and the peasants to the interests of the national bourgeoisie. In the years of the counter-revolution they passed over from the proletariat to the peasantry; i.e., they undertook that role which was fulfilled in our country by the SRs when they were still a revolutionary party. Had the Chinese Communist Party concentrated its efforts for the last few years in the cities, in industry, in the railroads: had it sustained the trade unions, the educational clubs and circles; had it, without breaking off from the workers, taught them to understand what was occurring in the villages – the share of the proletariat in the general correlation of forces would have been incomparably more favorable today,
The party actually tore itself away from its class. Thereby in the last analysis it can cause injury to the peasantry as well. For should the proletariat continue to remain on the sidelines, without organization, without leadership, then the peasant war even if fully victorious will inevitably arrive in a blind alley.
In old China every victorious peasant revolution was concluded by the creation of a new dynasty, and subsequently also by a new group of large proprietors; the movement was caught in a vicious circle. Under the present conditions the peasant war by itself without the direct leadership of the proletarian vanguard can only pass on the power to a new bourgeois clique, some “Left” Kuomintang or other, “a third party,” etc., etc., which in practice will differ very little from the Kuomintang of Chiang Kai-shek. And this would signify in turn a new massacre of the workers with the weapons of “democratic dictatorship.”
What then are the conclusions that follow from all this? The first conclusion is that one must boldly and openly face the facts as they are. The peasant movement is a mighty revolutionary factor, insofar as it is directed against the large landowners, militarists, feudalists and usurers. But in the peasant movement itself are very powerful proprietary and reactionary tendencies and at a certain stage it can become hostile to the workers, and sustain that hostility already equipped with arms. He who forgets about the dual nature of the peasantry is not a Marxist. The advanced workers must be taught to distinguish from among “communist” labels and banners the actual social processes.
The activities of the “Red Armies” must.be attentively followed, and the workers must be given a detailed explanation of the course, significance and perspectives of the peasant war; and the immediate demands and the tasks of the proletariat must be tied up with the slogans for the liberation of the peasantry.
On the bases of our own observations, reports and other documents we must painstakingly study the life processes of the peasant armies and the regime established in the regions occupied by them; we must discover in living facts the contradictory class tendencies and clearly point out to the. workers the tendencies we support and those we oppose.
We must follow the interrelations between the Red Armies and the local workers with special care, without overlooking even the minor misunderstandings between them. Within the framework of isolated cities and regions, conflicts, even if acute, might appear to be insignificant local episodes. But with the development of events, class conflicts may take on a national scope and lead the revolution to a catastrophe, i.e., to a new massacre of the workers by the peasants, hoodwinked by the bourgeoisie. The history of revolutions is full of such examples.
The more clearly the advanced workers understand the living dialectic of the class interrelations of the proletariat, the peasantry and the bourgeoisie, all the more confidently will they seek unity with the peasant strata closest to them, the more successfully will they counteract the counter-revolutionary provocateurs, within the peasant armies themselves as well as within the cities.
The trade union and the party nuclei must be built up; the advanced workers must be educated, the proletarian vanguard must be fused together and must be drawn into the battle.
We must turn to all the members of the official Communist party with words of explanation and challenge. It is quite probable that the rank and file Communists who have been led astray by the Stalinist faction will not understand us at once. The bureaucrats will set up a howl about our “underestimation” of the peasantry, perhaps even about our “hostility” to the peasantry. (Chernov always accused Lenin of being hostile to the peasantry.) Naturally, such howling will not confuse the Bolshevik-Leninists. When prior to April 1927 we warned against the inevitable coup d’état of Chiang Kai-shek, the Stalinists accused us of hostility to the Chinese national revolution. Events have demonstrated who was right. Events will provide a confirmation this time as well.
The Left Opposition may turn out too weak to direct events in the interests of the proletariat at the present stage. But we are sufficiently strong right now to point out to the workers the correct way and, by depending upon the development of the class struggle, to demonstrate to the workers our correctness and political insight. Only in this manner can a revolutionary party gain the confidence of the workers, only thus will it grow, become strong and take its place at the head of the national masses.
PRINKIPO, September 1932.
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P.S. In order to express my ideas as clearly as possible, let me sketch the following variant which is theoretically quite possible.
Let us assume that the Chinese Left Opposition carries on in the near future widespread and successful work among the industrial proletariat and attains the preponderant influence over it. The official party, in the meantime, continues to concentrate all its forces on the “Red Armies” and in the peasant regions. The moment arrives when the peasant troops occupy the industrial centers and are brought face to face with the workers. In such a situation, in what manner will the Chinese Stalinists act?
It is not difficult to foresee that they will counterpose the peasant army in a hostile manner to the “counter-revolutionary Trotskyists.” In other words, they will incite the armed peasants against the advanced workers. This is what the Russian SRs and the Mensheviks did in 1917; having lost the workers, they fought might and main for support among the soldiery, inciting the barracks against the factory, the armed peasant against the worker Bolshevik. Kerensky, Tseretelli and Dan, if they did not label !he Bolsheviks outright as counter-revolutionists, called them either “unconscious aids” or “involuntary agents” of counter-revolution. The Stalinists are less choice in their application of political terminology. But the tendency is the same, malicious incitement of the peasant – and generally petty-bourgeois elements against the vanguard of the working class.
Bureaucratic centrism, as centrism, cannot have an independent class support. But in its struggle against the Bolshevik-Leninists it is compelled to seek support from the Right, i.e., from the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie, counterposing them to the proletariat. The struggle between the two Communist factions, the Stalinists and the Bolshevik-Leninists thus bears in itself an inner tendency toward transformation into a class struggle. The revolutionary development of events in China may draw this tendency to its conclusion, i.e., to a civil war between the peasant army led by the Stalinists and the proletarian vanguard led by the Leninists.
Were such a tragic conflict to arise, owing entirely to the Chinese Stalinists, it would signify that the Left Opposition and the Stalinists ceased to be Communist fractions and had become hostile political parties, each having a different class base.
However, is such a perspective inevitable? No, I do not think so at all. Within the Stalinist faction (the official Chinese Communist Party) there are not only peasant, i.e., petty bourgeois tendencies but also proletarian tendencies. It is important in the highest degree for the Left Opposition to seek to establish connections with the proletarian wing of the Stalinists, by developing for them the Marxist evaluation of “Red Armies” and the interrelations between the proletariat and the peasantry in general.
While maintaining its political independence, the proletarian vanguard must be invariably ready to assure the united action with revolutionary democracy. While we refuse to identify the armed peasant detachment with the Red Army as the armed power of the proletariat and, while we have no inclination to shut our eyes to the fact that the Communist banner hides the petty-bourgeois content of the peasant movement – we, on the other hand, take an absolutely clear view of the tremendous revolutionary-democratic significance of the peasant war. We teach the workers to appreciate its significance and we are ready to cio all in our power in order to achieve the necessary military alliance with the peasant organizations.
Consequently our task consists not only in not permitting the political and military command over the proletariat on the part of the petty-bourgeois democracy that leans upon the armed peasants but also in preparing and assuring the proletarian leadership of the peasant movement, its “Red Armies,” in particular.
The more clearly the Chinese Bolshevik-Leninists comprehend the political environment and the tasks that spring from it. all the more successfully they will extend their bases within the proletariat; and the more persistently they carry out the policy of the united front in relation to the official party and the peasant movement led by it, all the more surely will they succeed not only in shielding the revolution from the frightfully dangerous conflict between the proletariat and the peasantry, and in assuring the necessary united action between the two revolutionary classes, but also in transforming their united front into the historical step toward the dictatorship of the proletariat.
PRINKIPO, September 26, 1932
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