Page THE MILITANT July 1, 1929 THE DRAFT PROGRAM OF THE COMINTERN of open (CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS ISSUE. have originated partly in the days of feudalism, tional narrow mindedness in politics, the prere THE QUESTION OF THE CHARACTER they partly constitute a new formation which re quisite for inevitable national reformist and social OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION. generates the old on the basis of the retarded develpatriotic blunders in the future.
opment of the productive The slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat e forces, the surplus agra: rian population, the activities of merchants and ON THE REACTIONARY IDEA OF which leads behind it the rural poor is inseparably usurers capital, etc. However, not feudal (more WORKERS AND PEASANTS PARTIES bound up with the question of the Socialist charcorrectly, serf and, generally, pre capitalist) relaFOR THE EAST.
acter of the coming, third revolution in China.
tions DOMINATE but capitalist relations. Only The lesson of the second Chinese Revolution is And inasmuch as not only history, but also mis. thanks to this unconditional role of capitalist re a lesson for the entire Comintern, first and foretakes which people make in meeting its require lations can we speak seriously of the prospects of most for all Eastern countries.
ments, repeat themselves, we can already hear the proletarian hegemony in the national revolution. All arguments brought forward in defense of objection raised that China has not yet matured Otherwise we find that the different ends do not the Menshevik policy in the Chinese Revolution for a Socialist revolution. But this is an abstract meet.
must, if we take them for what they are worth, and lifeless formulation of the question. Has Russia, if isolated from the rest of the world, matured The role of the Chinese proletariat in production be held trebly good for India. The imperialist yoke for Socialism? According to Lenin it has not. It is already very great. In the next few years it will has in India, in that classic colony, immeasurably has matured for the dictatorship of the proletariat increase still further. Its political role, as events higher palpable forms than in China. The survivals of feudal and serf relations in India are immeasur as the only method of solution of national prob have shown, could have been gigantic. But the lems which cannot be delayed.
policy of the leadership was, as has been shown, ably deeper and greater. Nevertheless, or, more But the general destiny of the dictatorship as a entirely directed against the capture of a leading correctly, precisely because of that, the methods role by the proletariat.
applied in China which undermined the revolution whole is in the final analysis determined by the trend of world development, which, of course, does The draft program says that successful Socialist must result in India in even more destructive con sequences. To abolish Indian serfdom and overnot exclude but presupposes a correct policy on construction is possible in China only on condi of the proletarian dictatorship, the con tion of direct support from countries under the prothrow the Anglo Indian bureaucracy and British solidation militarism is a thing which can be accomplished any letarian dictatorship. Thus, here, in relation to only by a gigantic and irresistible mass movement peasants alliance, flexible adaptation to national China, the same principle is recognized which the of the people, and precisely because of its power conditions on the one hand, and the trend of world Party always, recognized in regard to Russia. ful sweep and irresistibility, its international purdevelopment on the other. This fully holds good But if China has no sufficient inner forces for an INDEPENDENT construction of Socialist society poses and relationships, it will not tolerate any half way and compromising opportunist measures Revolution (January 16, 1923) in which Lenin then, according the theory of Stalin and Buchar.
establishes that the peculiarity of Russia lies in on the part of the leadership.
in, the Chinese proletariat should not take power fact that it proceeds along the lines of the pecu in any of the stages of the Revolution. Or per The Comintern leadership has already made not a few mistakes in India. Conditions have not yet liar development of the Eastern countries, he dubs haps the existence of the settles the ques allowed these errors to reveal themselves on such a as endlessly hackneyed the argument of Euro tion otherwise? Then it follows that our technique scale as in China. It is, therefore, to be hoped that pean Social Democracy to the effect that we have is sufficient to build Socialist society not only not developed enough for Socialism, that we have here in the but also in China, viz. in the the lessons of the Chinese events will straighten not, as some learned gentlemen say, the neces two economically most backward big countries. Or out in good time the line of the leading policy in India and in other Eastern countries.
sary objective economic prerequisites for Social perhaps the inevitable dictatorship of the prole The central question for us here, as everywhere ism. But Lenin ridicules the learned gentle tariat in China is admissable because that dic men not because he himself believes in the existtatorship will be included in the chain of the world.
and always, is the question of the Communist ence of the necessary economic prerequisites for Party, its complete independence, its irreconcilable wide Socialist revolution thus becoming not only Socialism in Russia but because he holds that class character. The greatest danger on this path its link, but its driving force? But this is precisely is constituted by the organization of so called from the absence of these prerequisites necessary for an INDEPENDENT construction of Socialism volution, the peculiarity of which lies precisely Workers and Peasants Parties in the Eastern countries.
it does not at all follow, as the pedants and philis along the lines of development of the Eastern tines think, that the idea of the conquest of power countries. We see thus how the revisionist theory In 1924, a year which will be regarded as a year revisic of a eries of fundamental ideas has to be rejected. In that article Lenin for the of Socialism in one country evolved in 1925 in the of Marx and Lenin, Stalin advanced the idea of hundred and first or perhaps for the thousand and struggle against Trotskyism confuses and mud.
dual composition of Workers and Peasants first time replies to the sophisms of the heroes of dles up matters in approaching any new big revothe Second International: Parties for the Eastern countries. It was based lutionary problem.
on the same ground of national oppression. Cables This INCONTROVERTIBLE consideration from India, as well The draft program goes still further along these as from Japan, where there is (about the immaturity of Russia for Socialism. is not decisive in an evaluation of our revolution. lines. It distinguishes China and India from Rus no national oppression, have of late frequently re(Volume 18, part page 118 and 119. sia of 1917, Poland (etc. as countries with a cer. ported about activities of provincial Workers and Peasants Parties as of organizations which tain MINIMUM of industry sufficient for sucThat is what the authors of the draft program cessful Socialist construction or (which is more are related, and friendly to the Comintern, as if will not and cannot understand. Notice that the they were almost definitely and therefore more erroneously stated own organizations, argument about the economic and cultural immaelsewhere) as countries possessing the necessary out, however, giving a more or less concrete state turity of China as well as Russia China of course for the more so than Russia is incontrovertible.
and sufficient material prerequisites. ment as to their political physiognomy; in a word, But from here it does not in the least follow that the complete construction of Socialism. Here as we it is exactly what has not so very long ago been written about the Kuomintang. The least dubiousproletariat has to give up the idea of capturing already know there is a mere word play on Lenin power, which capture is dictated by the whole expression necessary and sufficient prerequisites, ness in this sphere is destructive. It is a question false and inadmissable play because def here of an absolutely new, entirely false and thor historical position and revolutionary situation in initely enumerates the political and organizational oughly un Marxian orientation on the main ques.
the country.
tion of the Party and of its relations to the class prerequisites, including the TECHNICAL, CUL The concrete historical, political and actual ques.
TURAL AND INTERNATIONAL prerequisites and the classes.
tion is not whether China has economically ripened But the other is HOW can one decide The necessity for the Communist Party of China for Socialism, but whether she has ripened politia priori whether a cally for the proletarian dictatorship. These two MINIMUM to be affiliated with the Kuomintang was defended OF INDUSTRY for the complete building up of Sois sufficient on the ground that the social composition of the questions are not by any means identical. They cialism once it is a question of an uninterrupted Kuomintang was a Party of workers and peasants, might have been identical were it not for the fact that we have a law of uneven development. That world struggle between two economic systems, that nine tenths of the Kuomintang this figure was repeated hundreds of times belong to the is where the law holds good and fully applies to two social orders, of which our ECONOMIC revolutionary elements and are ready to march the inter relationships between eco and basis is in this struggle immeasurably weaker?
If we take the economic lever only, it is clear hand in hand with the Communist Party. How politics. Thus, has China matured for a prole.
ever, during and since the coups Etat that we in the and particularly so in Shantarian dictatorship? Only the progress of the struggle can give a categoric answer to this ques.
China and India, are sitting on the incomparably ghai and Wuchang, these revolutionary nine tenths shorter end than world capitalism. But the of the Kuomintang have disappeared. No one has tion.
Likewise only the struggle can settle the as yet found their traces. And the theoreticians of question as to when and under what conditions whole question is determined by the REVOLU.
TIONARY STRUGGLE between the two systems class collaboration in China, Stalin, Bucharin and will the real unification, emancipation and regen eration of China take place. Anyone who says on a world scale. The political long end of the others, have not even taken the trouble what has become of the workers and peasants, the that China has not ripened for the dictatorship of lever is ON OUR SIDE, or, to speak more correctthe proletariat declares thereby that the third ly, must be in our hands, provided we pursue a cor revolutionary, friendly and entirely our own nine tenths of the Kuomintang membership. How Chinese revolution is postponed for many years.
rect political line.
ever, an answer to this question is of decisive im Of course matters would be quite hopeless if In the same article As to Our Revolution. after portance if we are to understand in the future the feudal survivals would really DOMINATE in the words that a certain cultural level is necessary fate of all these dual composition parties and Chinese economics, as the resolution of the for the establishment of Socialism. Lenin ré have a clear idea of their very conception which asserts. But unfortunately, SURVIVALS in gen marks: Although no one can tell exactly what throws us back far behind not only the program eral cannot dominate. The draft program also on this certain cultural level might be. Why can no of the of 1919, but even the manifesto this point does not rectify the committed errors, one tell? Because the question is settled by the of the Communist Party of 1847.
but repeats in a roundabout and loose manner. struggle, by the competition between the two soThe draft speaks of the predominance of feudal The question as to what has become of the celecial systems and the two cultures, ON AN IN brated nine tenths becomes clear to us only if we medieval relations both in the economics of the TERNATIONAL SCALE. Fully departing from understand, first, the impossibility of a dual com country as well as in the superstructure.
this idea of Lenin s, which follows from the very This is fundamentally wrong.
position, that is, a dual class Party, expressing sim substance of the question, the draft program de.
What does PRE ultaneously two mutually exclusive historical lines DOMINATE mean? Is it by the number of peo clares that Russia had in 1917 precisely the mini. the proletarian and petty bourgeois lines. secple involved? Or it it by the dominant and lead mum technique and hence also the culture neces ondly, the impossibility to have in capitalist so ing role in the economics of the country? The sary for the building up of Socialism in one coun. ciety an independent peasant party, that is, a party extraordinarily rapid growth of home industry on try. The authors of the draft are trying to say independent of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
the basis of the all embracing role of merchant and in the program that which no one can say Marxism has always taught, and that was acbank capital. complete dependence of the chief ori.
cepted by Bolshevism, that the peasantry and the agrarian districts on the market, enormous and It is impossible, one cannot, and it is stupid to proletariat are two different classes, that every ever growing foreign trade, all around subordina seek a criterion for the sufficient minimum with identification of their interests in capitalist society tion of the Chinese villages to the towns goes to in national statics. Russia prior to 1917. when is false, and that the peasant can join the Com show the unconditional predominance, the direct the whole question is decided by international munist Party if, from the property viewpoint, he sway of capitalist relations in China. Serf and semi dynamics. In thienphitam and isolated na adopts the views the proletariat. An alliance serf rann nandeniably very. Th.
of na of the walores roletarian with our Lenin chief point is to explain them in a political a. ch