Leon Trotsky: What About China?

From: The War Danger — the Defense Policy and the Opposition

August 1, 1927

[Leon Trotsky on China, New York 1976, p. 252-255. I tried to use the Pīnyīn spelling of Chinese names. I use the spelling from the original text in a hyperlink, if it differs significantly]

Let us take the entire tactical, or rather strategical line in China as a whole. The Guómíndǎng is the party of the liberal bourgeoisie in the period of revolution — the liberal bourgeoisie that draws behind it, deceives, and betrays the workers and peasants.

The Communist Party, in accordance with your directives, remains throughout all the betrayals within the Guómíndǎng and submits to its bourgeois discipline.

The Guómíndǎng as a whole enters into the Comintern and does not submit to its discipline, but merely utilizes the name and the authority of the Comintern to dupe the Chinese workers and peasants.

The Guómíndǎng serves as a shield for the landlord-generals who hold in their grip the soldier-peasants.

Moscow — at the end of last October — demands that the agrarian revolution be kept from developing so as not to scare away the landlords in command of the armies. The armies become mutual insurance societies for the landlords, large and small alike.

The landlords do not raise any objection to their military expeditions being called national revolutionary, so long as the power and the land remain in their hands. The proletariat, which composes a young revolutionary force in no way inferior to our own proletariat in 1905, is driven under the command of the Guómíndǎng.

Moscow offers counsel to the Chinese liberals: “Issue a law for the organization of a minimum of workers’ detachments.” This, in March 1927! Why the counsel to the tops — Arm yourselves to the minimum? And why not a slogan to the rank and file — Arm yourselves to the maximum? Why the minimum and not the maximum? In order not to “scare away” the bourgeoisie, so as not to “provoke” a civil war. But the civil war came inevitably, and proved far more cruel, catching the workers unarmed and drowning them in blood.

Moscow came out against the building of soviets in the “army’s rear” — as if the revolution is the rump of an army! — in order not to disorganize the rear of the very same generals who two days later crushed the workers and peasants in their rear.

Did we reinforce the bourgeoisie and the landlords by compelling the communists to submit to the Guómíndǎng and by covering the Guómíndǎng with the authority of the Comintern? Yes, we did,

Did we weaken the peasantry by retarding the development of the agrarian revolution and of the soviets? Yes, we did.

Did we weaken the workers with the slogan of “minimum arming” — nay, not the slogan but the polite counsel to the bourgeois tops: “minimum arming,” and “no need for soviets”? Yes, we did. Is it to be wondered at that we suffered a defeat, having done everything that could have made victory difficult?

Voroshilov gave the most correct, conscientious, and candid explanation for this entire policy. “The peasant revolution,” he said, “might have interfered with the Northern Expedition of the generals.” You put a brake on the revolution for the sake of a military expedition. That is exactly how Jiǎng Jièshí viewed the matter. The development of the revolution might, you see, make an expedition difficult for a “nationalist” general. But, after all, the revolution itself is indeed an actual and a real expedition of the oppressed against the oppressors. To help the expedition of the generals, you put a brake on the revolution and disorganized it. Thereby the expedition of the generals was turned into a spearhead not only against the workers and the peasants but also — precisely because of that — against the national revolution.

Had we duly secured the complete independence of the Communist Party, assisted it to arm itself with its press and with correct tactics; had we given it the slogans “Maximum arming of the workers!” “Extend the peasant war in the villages!” the Communist Party would have grown, not from day to day, but from hour to hour, and its cadres would have been tempered in the fires of revolutionary struggle. The slogan of soviets should have been raised from the very first days of the mass movement. Everywhere, wherever the slightest possibility existed, steps for the actual realization of soviets should have been taken. Soldiers should have been drawn into the soviets. The agrarian revolution would have disorganized the pseudo-revolutionary armies but it would have likewise transmitted the infection to the counterrevolutionary armies of the enemy. Only on this foundation could it have been possible to forge gradually a real revolutionary, i.e., workers’ and peasants’ army.

Comrades! We have heard here a speech made not by Voroshilov, the people’s commissar for the army and navy, but by Voroshilov, a member of the Political Bureau. This speech, I say, is in itself a catastrophe. It is equivalent to a lost battle.

(Shouts from the Opposition benches: “Correct!”)

Trotsky: Last May, during the plenum of the ECCI, when after finally assigning Jiǎng Jièshí to the camp of reaction, you put your stakes on Wāng Jīngwèi, and then on Táng Shēngzhì, I wrote a letter to the ECCI. It was on May 27. “This policy is erroneous, and it is ruinous.” What did I propose? Here is literally what I wrote. On May 27, I wrote:

“The plenum would do well to bury Bukharin’s resolution, replacing it with a resolution of a few lines:

In the first place, peasants and workers should place no faith in the leaders of the left Guómíndǎng but they should instead build their soviets jointly with the soldiers. In the second, place, the soviets should arm the workers and the advanced peasants. In the third place, the Communist Party must assure its complete independence, create a daily press, and assume the leadership in creating the soviets. Fourth, the land must be immediately taken away from the landlords. Fifth, the reactionary bureaucracy must be immediately dismissed. Sixth, perfidious generals and other counterrevolutionists must be summarily dealt with. And finally, the general course must be toward the establishment of a revolutionary dictatorship through the soviets of workers’ and peasants’ deputies.” [“It Is Time to Understand, Time to Reconsider, and Time to Make a Change.”]

Now, compare this with: “There is no need for a civil war in the villages”; “Do not alarm the fellow travelers”; “Do not irritate the generals”; “Minimum arming of the workers”; and so on. This is Bolshevism! While our position is called in the Political Bureau … Menshevism. Having turned yourselves inside out, you have firmly resolved to call white, black. But your misfortune is that international Menshevism — from Berlin to New York — approves of the Chinese policy of Stalin-Bukharin, and being fully cognizant of the issues, solidarizes with your political line on the Chinese question.

Please try to understand that in question here is not the individual betrayals of the Chinese members of the Guómíndǎng, or of the right and left Chinese army commanders, or British trade unionists, and Chinese or British communists. When one rides in the train, it is the earth that appears to be in motion. The whole trouble lies in the fact that you placed hopes on those who were not to be relied upon; you underestimated the revolutionary training of the masses, the principal requirement for which is inoculating the masses with mistrust toward reformists, vague “left” centrists, and all vacillators in general. The fullest measure of this mistrust is the supreme virtue of Bolshevism. Young parties have still to acquire and assimilate this quality. Yet you have acted and are acting in a diametrically opposite fashion. You inoculate young parties with the hopes that the liberal bourgeoisie and the liberal labor politicians from the trade unions will move to the left. You hinder the education of the British and Chinese Bolsheviks. That is the source whence come these “betrayals” that each time catch you unaware.