THE STRANGLED REVOLUTION his destiny.
they The enslaving the Tcheng Dai and Hong viks?
The book by André Malraux, Les ConBy LEON TROTSKY In order not to rebuff the bourgeoisie querants (The Conquerors) has been sent they are forced to enter into struggle with to me from various parts and, even be geois enter into each organization but they tish birds of prey threatened, during the HOR: Who is he and where does he come lieve in four copies, but unfortunately completely lead the party. The Commun strike, to re establish corporal punishment. from? From misery (page 41. He is read it after a delay of eighteen months or ists extol the Kuo Min Tang. The workers The rights of man and of the citizen of those who are making the revolution and two years. The book is devoted to the Chi and the peasants are persuaded to take meant at Hongkong the right of the Chi not of those who rally to it when it is nese revolution, that is, to the greatest sub no action that might rebuff the devoted nese not to be flogged by the British whip. victorious. Having come to the idea of ject of the last five years. fine and well friends of the bourgeoisie. Such are the To unmask the democratic rottenness of killing the English governor of Hongkong, knit style, the discriminating eye of an ar societies that we control (more or less, do the imperialists is to serve the revolution; Hong is concerned with only one thing: tist, original and daring observation all not deceive yourselves about it. see page to call the slogans of the insurrection of When am condemned to capital punishconfer upon the novel an exceptional im. 29. An edifying a vowal. The bureaucracy of the oppressed prattling. is to aid involun ment, the young people will have to be told portance. If we write about it here it is the Comintern tried to control the clase tarily the imperialists.
to imitate me (page 40. To Hong a clear not because the book is a work of talent, struggle in the economie life of the back good inoculation of Marxism would program must be given: raise the workalthough this is not a negligible fact, but ward countries. But a revolution cannot have preserved the author from fatal con ers, to assemble them, to arm them and to because it offers a source of political les be controlled. One can only give a poli tempt this order. But Garine in gen oppose them to Tcheng Dai as to an ensons of the highest value. Do they come tical expression to its internal forces. One eral, considers that revolutionary doctrine emy. But the bureaucracy of the Cominfrom Malraux? No, they flow from the must know to which of these forces te link is doctrinary rubbish. He is, you see, tern looks for Tcheng Dai friendship, rerecital itself unknown to the author and one of those for whom the revolution is pulses Hong and exasperates him. Hong against him. This does honor to coolies are about to discover that only a definite state of affairs. Isn this exterminates bankers and merchants one the observer and to the artist, but not to they exist, simply that they exist (see astonishing? But it is just because the after another, the very ones who support the revolutionist. However, we have the page 31. That well aimed. But to feel revolution is a state of affairs. that is, the Kuo Min Tang, Hong kills missionaries: right to evaluate Malraux too from this that they exist, the coolies the industrial a stage in the development of society con those who teach people to support misery point of view; in his own name and above workers and the peasants must overthrow ditioned by objective causes and subjected must be punished, Christian priests or all in the name of Garine, his self self, those who prevent them from existing. to definite laws, that a scientific mind can others. page 274. If Hong does the author does not hesitate to expose his Foreign domination is indissolubly bound toresee the general direction of processes. not find the right road, it is the fault of judgments on the revolution.
up with the domestic yoke. The coolies Only the study of the anatomy of society Borodin and Garine who have placed the The book is called a novel. In fact, must not only drive ont Baldwin or Mac and of its physiology permits one to react revolution in the tow of the bankers and we have before us a romanticized chronicle Donald hut also overthrow the ruling class to the course of events by basing oneself the merchants. Hong reflects the mast of the Chinese revclution, from its first per es. One canot be accomplished without upon cientific foresight and not upon the which is already rising but which has 20t iod to the period of Canton. The chronicle the other. Thus, the malening of the hu conjunctures of a dilletante. The revolu yret rubbed Its eyes or softened its hande is not comple:e. Social sor is sometimes man er allty in the mass of China, tionist who despiseg revolutionary doc He tries by the revolver and the knife to act lacking from the picture. But for that who exceed ten times the population of trine is wor no more than the healer who for the masses whom the agents of the there pass before the reader not only lumFrance, is immediately transformed into the despises medical doctrine which he does not Comintern are paralyzing. That is, frankinous episodes of the revolution but also lava of the social revolution, magni know or than the engineer who challenges ly, the truth about the Chinese revolution.
clear cut silhouettes which are graven in ficent spectacle!
technology. People who, without the aid of the memory like social symbols.
But here Borodin appears on the scene science to rectify this state of af Nevertheless, the Canton government and declares: In the revolution, the fairs which is a disease, are called sorcer vacillates while seeking not to fall from An Unforgettable Picture workers must do the coolie work for the ers or charlatans and are prosecuted in Borodin and Garine who hold the police By little colored touches following the bourgeoisie. The social enslavement from conformity with law. Had there existed a and the trade unions to Tcheng Dai who which they want method of stipplers, Malraux gives an unliberate themselves is tribunal to judge the sorcerers of the rev holds nothing at all but nevertheless exforgettable picture of the General strike. found by the workers to be transposed into elution, it is probable that Borodin, like ists (page 72. We have an almost perthe sphere of politics. To whom do they his Muscovite inspirers, would have been not, to be sure, as it is below, not as it feet picture of the duality of power. The ove this pertidious operation? To the bur severely condemned. am afraid that is carried out, but as it is observed from representatives of the Comintern have in cancracy of the Comintern. In trying to Garine himself would not have issued unabove: the Europeans do not get their their hands the trade unions of Canton, dinner, the Europeans wwelter in the heat, control the Kuo Min Tang. it actually Rcathed from the affair.
the police, the cadet school of Whampoa, the Chinese have censed to work in the alls the bourgeoisie which seeks consithe sympathy of the masses, the aid of the kitchens and to make the rentilators work. deration and security in Soviet Union. Teheng Dal as a moral This is not a reproach to the author: the colies who want to exist.
authority, that is, the prestige of the morTwo figures are opposed to each other foreign artist could undoubtedly not have Borodin, who remains in the background tally distracted possessors. The friends of in the novel, like the two poles of the denlt with his theme oberwise. But an all the time characterizes himself in the national revolution: old Tcheng Dai, the Tcheng Dai sit in a powerless benevolent other complaint can be made which is of novel as a man of action. as a prospiritual authority of the Right wing of the uovernment supported by the conciliators.
importance to him, the book is lacking in a fessional revolutionist. as a living incarBut is that not the regime of the FebruKuo Min Tang, the prophet and the saint ary congenital affinity between the writer, in nation of Bolshevism on the soil of China, revolution, the Kerenskylst system, of the bourgeoisie and Hong, the young spite of all he knows, understands and can Nothing is further from the truth! Here with the sole difference that the role of the leader of the terrorists. Both are depicted do and his heroine, the revolution.
is the political biography of Borodin: in Mensheviks is played by the peendo Bolshewith great force. Tcheng Dai embodies the The sympathies of the author, which 1903, the age of 19, he emigrated to Borodin has no doubt of it even old Chinese culture translated into the are active ones, for insurgent China are un America; in 1918, he returned to Moscow though he is made up as a Bolshevik and language of European culture; by this exmistakable. But chance bursts upon there where, thanks to his knowledge of English, take his make up seriously.
quisite garment, he ennobles the intersympathies. They are corroded by the ex he insured contact with the foreign partests of all the ruling classes of China. To The ruling thought of Gurine and of cesses of individualism and by aesthetic les. he was arrested in Glasgow in 1922 be sure, Tcheng Dai wants national liberBorodin is to prohibit Chinese and foreign caprice. In reading the book with sustained then he was delegated to China as repreation, but he dreads the masses more than boats, cruising towards the port of Canattention one sometimes experiences a feel. sentative of the Comintern. Having quit the imperialists: he hates the revolution toul. from putting in at Hongkong. These ing of rexation, when, in the tone of the Russia before first revolution and havmore than the yoke placed upon the nation. people who consider themselves realistic persuasive recital perceives a note of ing returned there after the third. Borodin If he marches ahead of it, it is only to revolutionists hope. by the commercial protecting irony towards the barbarians appeared as the consummate representative pacify it. to subdue it. to exhaust it. Ile blockad. to shatter English domination in capable of enthusiasm. That China is back of that bureaucracy of the state and of conducts a policy of rexistance on two southern China. They never deem it nec ward, that many of its political manifest the party which recognized the revolution fronts, against imperialism and against the essary first of all to overthrow the gor.
ations bear a primitive character nobody only after its victory. When it is a ques.
revolution, the policy of Gandhi in India, ernment of the Canton bourgeoisie which asks that they be passed over in silence.
tion of young people, it is sometimes noththe policy which, in definite periods and in only waits for the moment to surrender the But a correct perspective is needed which ing more than a matter of chronology. With one form or another. the hourgeoisie has revolution to England. No. Borodin and puts erery object its place. The Chi people of the age of 40 or 50, it is already conducted at every longitude and latitude.
Garine knock every day at the door of the nse events, on the basis of which the a political characterization. If Borodin Passive resistance is born of the tendency government. and hat in hand, ask that porel of Malraux unfolds itself, are in rallied brilliantly to the victorious revolu of the bourgeoisie to canalize the movement the saving deeree be promulgated. One of coinparably more important for the future tion in Russia, it does not in the least of the masses and to forfeit it.
them reminds Garine that at bottom the destiny of human culture than the vain signify that he was called upon to assure When Garine says that Tcheng Dai government is a phantom. Garine is not and pitiful uproar of European parliaments the victory of the revolution in China.
disconcerted. Phantom or not. he replies, iet and the mountain of literary products of influence rises above politics, one can only People of this type assimilate without ditshrug one shoulders. The masked policy it go ahead while we need it. That is the stagnant civilizations. Malraux seems to ficulty the gestures and intonations of proof the upright man in China as in India way the priest needs relie which he himfeel a certain timidity to take this into acfessional revolutionists. Many of them, expresses the sublime and abstractly self fabricates with wax and cotton.
What count.
by their protective coloration, not only demoralizing form the conservative interests is concealed behind this policy which weakIn the novel, there are pages, fine in ceive others but most frequentiy themselves.
of the possessors. The personal disinterdebases the revolution? The consitheir intensity which show how revolu The audacious intiexibility of the Bolshevik estedness of Tcheng Dai is in no sense in deration entertained by a revolutionist from tionary hatred is born of the yoke, of ig is metamorphosed with them into that opposition to his political function: the exthe petty bourgeoisie for a bourgeois with norance, of slavery, and is tempereul like cynicism of the functionary ready for anya solid conservatism. It is thus that the ploiters need upright men like the ecsteel. These pages might have entered into thing. Ah! to have a mandate from the clesiastical hierarchy needs saints.
reddest of the French radicals is always the Anthology of the Revolution if lal Central Committee. This sacrosant saferendy to fall on his knees before Poincare.
raux had approached Who gravitate around Tcheng Dai? The the masses with gnard Borodin always had in his pocket.
greater freedom and intrepidity, if he had novel replies with meritorious precision: a The Weakness of the Masses not introduced into his study a small note Garine False Radicalism world of old mandarins. smugglers of of blase superiority, seeming to excuse opium or of photographs, men of letters But perhaps the masses of Canton are Garine is not a functionary, he is more who have become merchants, lawyers from himself for his translent contact with the not yet mature enough to overthrow the insurrection of the Chinese people as much griginal than Borodin and perhaps the faculty of Paris, intellectuals of all government of the bourgeoisie? From this perhaps before himself as before the acacloser to the revolutionary type. But he sorts (page 125. Behind them stands a whole atmosphere, the conviction arises demle mandarins in France and the trafficis deprived of the indispensable formation: solid bourgeoisie bound up with England, that without the opposition of the Comin.
kers in opium for the mind.
dilletante and transient sentry, he and which arms General Tang against the gets tern, the phantom government would long hopelessly entangled in the great events revolution. In the expectation of victory, before have been overthrown under the and this is revealed at every step.
Comintern in With Tang prepares to make Tcheng Dai the pressure of the masses. Let us admit that Borodin represents the regard to the slogans of the Chinese revthe post of high counsellor in the Canton head of the government. Both of them, the Cantonese workers were still too weak olution, he expresses himself thus: Tcheng Dai and Tang, nevertheless continue government. Garine, the favorite of the to establish their own power. What, gendemocratie prattling, rights of the people, to be members of the Kuo Min Tang which anthor, is charged with propaganda.
erally speaking, is the weak spot of the All Borodin and Garine serve.
etc. see page 36. This has a radical the work is done within the framework of masses? Their inclination to follow the er.
ring but it is a false radicalism. The the Kuo Min Tang. Borodin, Garine, the When Tang has a village attacked by ploiters. In this case, the first duty of slogans of democracy are execrable prat his armies, and when he prepares to butcher Russian general Galen the Frenchman Gerrevolutionists is to help the workers libard, the German Klein, constitute a pritling in the mouth of Poincare Herriot, the revolutionists, beginning with Borodin erate themselyes from servile confidence.
Leon Blum, sleight of hand artists of France and Garine, his party comrades, the latter Nevertheless, the work done by the bureaumitive bureaucracy of the revolution raising itself above the insurgent people and and jailors of Indo China, of Algeria and with the aid of Hong, mobilize and arm cracy of the Comintern was diametrically of Morocco. But when the Chinese rebel the unemployed. But after the victory won opposed to this. It inculcated in the massconducting its own revolutionary policy in the name of the rights of the people. over Tang. the leaders do not seek to change es the notion of the necessity to submit to of instead of conducting the policy the this has as little to do with prattling as the revolution a thing that existed before. They cannot the bourgeoisie and it declared that the The local organizations of the Kuo Min ſlogans of the French revolution in the break the party which is doubly connected enemies of the bourgeoisie were their own eighteenth century. At Hongkong, the BriTang are defined as follows: Unions of a with Tcheng Dai because they have no enemies.
few fanatics, manifestly brave, of a few confidence in the workers, the coolies, the Not to rebuff Tcheng Dai? But if moneyed men who seek consideration or See the letter of Tchen Du Hsiu to the revolutionary masses, they are themselves Tcheng Dai moves off in spite of that, security, of numerous students, of coolleg Chinese Communists in the Militant last contaminated with the prejudices of Tcheng which is inevitable, it would not mean that see pages 29 and 30. Not only do bour (Continued to page 7)
year.
Dai whose chosen arm they are.
ens even