Issuing body: 7th Plenum of the International Executive Committee (IEC) of the Fourth International
---
RESOLUTION ON THE THIRD CHINESE REVOLUTION (7th Plenum of the IEC, 9–18 April 1949)
"Crushed in the vice of world contradictions, on the solution of which its fate depends one way or another, the Chinese peasantry is even less capable than the Russian peasantry of playing a leading role.
"Despite China's great backwardness, or rather precisely because of this great backwardness by comparison with Russia, there will be no 'democratic' period, not even a period of six months, such as the one the October revolution had (from November 1917 to July 1918); it will be obliged from the very outset to carry out the most decisive upheaval and the abolition of bourgeois property in town and countryside. (…)
"The unification and emancipation of China today is an international task, every bit as much as the existence of the USSR. This task can only be resolved by means of a desperate struggle, under the immediate leadership of the proletarian vanguard, on the part of the trampled, starving and persecuted masses; a struggle directed not only against world imperialism, but also against its economic and political agency in China, against the bourgeoisie, including the 'national' bourgeoisie and all its democratic lackeys. And this is nothing other than the road to the dictatorship of the proletariat."
L. Trotsky
1. Developments in the economic, political and social situation in the Far East are becoming ever more important and even decisive for the future of the world revolution, as the Second World Congress had already declared (resolution on the colonial question). In particular, the evolution of the situation in China, which directly affects about a quarter of the human race, is of exceptional importance. The collapse of Chiang Kai-shek closes the chapter that began with the defeat of the second Chinese revolution (1925–1927), constitutes a heavy defeat for world imperialism and opens a new chapter that will considerably affect:
a) the class struggle within China itself, clearing the way for the third Chinese revolution;
b) the situation and revolutionary developments throughout the Far East;
c) the situation of American capitalism and international relations;
d) Stalinism.
In posing the main problems raised by the new situation in China, as the present resolution intends to do, it should not be forgotten that the pace of processes in the Far East is relatively slower than that of Europe, and that complex intermediate situations may arise in great number.
THE THIRD CHINESE REVOLUTION
2. The tragic experience of the second Chinese revolution has proved that:
a) The agrarian problem, which constitutes the motive force in the Chinese revolution, cannot be resolved by the peasantry alone, even by the very poor peasantry that makes up the overwhelming majority of the Chinese population. The agrarian revolution can triumph only if the poor peasantry finds a leader in a class of the towns, one interested in the victory of the poor peasants.
b) The question of national unification is of decisive importance for ensuring the development of the productive forces and enabling China to free itself from the yoke of imperialism. Without complete national unification, without the total abolition of what remains of the unequal treaties, without customs autonomy, China would find itself condemned to remain in chaos, division and provincial rivalries, the oppression of warlords and dependence on imperialism.
c) The Chinese bourgeoisie, tied on the one hand to imperialism and on the other to the remnants of feudalism in China, is incapable of resolving even a single one of the fundamental problems of the bourgeois revolution (agrarian revolution, unification of China and independence from imperialism). On the contrary, its class interests and its fear of the movements of the masses give it an eminently reactionary role against the demands of the workers and the aspirations of the poor peasants.
d) The Chinese proletariat, despite its numerical weakness, is the only class of the towns capable of taking the lead of the movement of the oppressed masses of town and countryside for the satisfaction of their demands.
e) The theory of the development of the revolution "by stages," of a Menshevik character, has been condemned by experience, for it serves in the last analysis the bourgeoisie, limiting and strangling revolutionary movements and favouring, in the course of the revolution, the constitution of reactionary bastions destined to crush the masses at the first opportunity.
f) The third Chinese revolution can only triumph as a permanent revolution, combining, under the leadership of the proletariat, the bourgeois tasks and the socialist tasks, the struggle against the remnants of feudalism with the struggle against the native bourgeoisie and against imperialism, and uniting the struggle of the oppressed masses of China with those of the masses of the Far East, of the USSR and of the imperialist metropolises.
The third Chinese revolution can only triumph with the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat resting on the poor peasants.
It is on the basis of these guiding lines that the programme of action of the Bolshevik-Leninists of China must be elaborated, and that all events unfolding in China and all currents which, both in China and in the world, intervene in the struggle of the workers and peasants of China, must be assessed in the course of the third Chinese revolution.
THE COLLAPSE OF CHIANG KAI-SHEK AND THE MILITARY VICTORY OF THE ARMIES OF MAO TSE-TUNG
3. Chiang Kai-shek disappears after more than twenty years of the most odious of military and police dictatorships, following the war against Japanese imperialism, the disintegration and total corruption of the administration, inflation, and under the blows of the armies of Mao Tse-tung. The military clique grouped around Chiang Kai-shek has found itself increasingly isolated, even from decisive layers of the Chinese bourgeoisie. The Kuomintang is breaking apart between a faction of Chiang Kai-shek that refuses any compromise with Mao Tse-tung and multiple factions that seek, in the achievement of a compromise, the means of gaining time and preparing to retake the initiative at a still imprecise later stage. American imperialism has once again, on the occasion of the victories of the armies of Mao Tse-tung, clearly expressed through Hoffman's statements its refusal to continue supporting the Chiang Kai-shek clique, and has not concealed its desire for a compromise either, which the Marshall mission had failed to obtain in the aftermath of the war.
4. The Chinese labour movement, ferociously crushed in 1927 and 1928, only experienced a revival after the Japanese defeat in 1945. However, the strikes and demonstrations have at no point reached a level comparable to that of the movement in Japan, for example. Even now, it is not under the blows of the masses of the great working-class centres that the collapse of the Kuomintang government proceeds. Up to now, the panic in the ranks of the bourgeois of Shanghai, Nanking, etc., stems not from movements of the working masses but from the prospect of such movements, arising on the basis of the collapse of the Kuomintang regime.
In fact, the very fall of the Kuomintang regime, whatever the forms of transition through which it may be effected (with the complicity and agreement of the imperialists on one hand and the Stalinists on the other), cannot fail to open a period of revolutionary crisis, to place on the order of the day the fundamental problems of the Chinese revolution and to put to the test all the classes and all the organisations of Chinese society, and consequently to considerably accelerate the political development of the Chinese proletariat.
THE FUNDAMENTAL TASKS OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION
5. The agrarian upheaval constitutes the most explosive force in the Chinese revolution. In the North, it is above all a matter of suppressing the remnants of feudalism, and in the South it is above all a matter of freeing the peasants from the scourge of usury and debt. Now, the usurers form an integral part of the capitalists of the towns, who draw a very large part of their profits precisely from the indebtedness of the peasants. The agrarian upheaval therefore presupposes the total cancellation of all peasant debts. But it also presupposes the creation of a regime that does not bring back to China the cycle to which the peasantry of that country has been accustomed for millennia, through several regimes and several dynasties.
The countryside produces capitalism every day. The maintenance of native and imperialist capitalist property in China would inevitably entail a new crystallisation of bourgeois elements in the countryside, and the peasantry would fall back into the conditions from which it is trying to emerge.
The struggle of the peasants for their emancipation is therefore intimately bound up with that of the workers of the towns, first of all because they have the same enemy, the bourgeoisie of the towns, and because the suppression of the conditions producing peasant indebtedness, to be definitively assured, must be accompanied by an expropriation of capitalist enterprises by the workers.
6. Moreover, the development of the productive forces, both in the towns and in the countryside, cannot be the work of a bourgeoisie whose principal function is that of a comprador bourgeoisie in the service of world imperialism. Under these conditions, the establishment of a state unifying China is excluded. Under the regime of a comprador bourgeoisie, the only possible state apparatus turns out to be, as was the case after the victory of Chiang Kai-shek, an apparatus that is led to live at the expense of the peasants; it inevitably takes the form of a bureaucracy and of military cliques that can only maintain China in a state of division and chaos.
The only centralising apparatus possible in so vast a country can only be that of the masses themselves, organised in democratically elected committees.
7. Imperialism (and above all American imperialism) regards China both for its raw material resources and for the market it could constitute as an outlet for its own products. Whatever immediate interest it may have in favouring a certain improvement in the conditions of the Chinese peasant masses, and this notably in order to delay the outbreak of an economic crisis (the "fourth point" of Truman's programme), imperialism cannot go very far down this road, for the social equilibrium of the metropolitan countries depends considerably on keeping the colonial and semi-colonial peoples in a backward state; and American imperialism will certainly not commit too considerable capital to a country where social instability is as great as in China.
Imperialism, just like the native bourgeoisie, is therefore an obstacle to China's advance out of the regime from which it has already sought to free itself in the course of two revolutions.
8. The agrarian upheaval, national unification and liberation from the yoke of imperialism are three intimately linked tasks.
"The agrarian upheaval without national unification and without customs autonomy (essentially the monopoly of foreign trade) would open no way out and no prospect for China." (L. Trotsky)
The accomplishment of these tasks is possible only within the framework of the dictatorship of the proletariat supported by the poor peasants. The peasant movement that wins military victories has no other possibility of triumphing politically than by allying itself with the proletariat of the towns, accepting its leadership and bringing to it its power, in order to establish a power of the workers and poor peasants resting on the masses for the accomplishment of profound agrarian upheavals, freeing China from the tutelage of the imperialists and setting this country on the road to the construction of socialism.
The backwardness of China and its immense peasant mass, the scale of the problems that arise, far from setting aside the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat allied with the poor peasants, make of this question, more than anywhere else, an imperious necessity, precisely the only means of counteracting all the centrifugal tendencies and all the tendencies to bring Chinese society back to the anarchy, chaos and division in which it has been mired.
THE ARMIES AND PARTY OF MAO TSE-TUNG
9. The armies of Mao Tse-tung originate in the peasant formations that arose during the decline and in the aftermath of the defeat of the Chinese revolution of 1925–1927.
The movement of Mao Tse-tung has remained, over recent years, what it was at its origin: a peasant movement led by Stalinists. Until quite recently, the armies of Mao Tse-tung fought only in the form of guerrilla warfare, avoiding the towns, and took great care not to offer a front to the nationalist armies of the Kuomintang. Even now, at the moment of victory over the nationalist armies in full decomposition, the armies of Mao Tse-tung show extreme caution as they approach the great cities. Instead of calling for the uprising of the masses of southern China and the Yangtze valley, the government of Mao Tse-tung is oriented toward achieving a compromise with a certain number of bourgeois politicians and formations. The victory of Mao Tse-tung over Chiang Kai-shek is the military victory of peasant uprisings over a regime in full decomposition.
China has already known many examples of victories of peasant movements, but the fact that these movements today find themselves under a Stalinist leadership confers an altogether new character on the future of these movements and on the prospects for China.
10. The Chinese CP, which animates the armies and the administration under the control of these armies, is, like most of the Stalinist parties of the Far East, characterised on the one hand by its link with Moscow and, on the other, by the overwhelming preponderance of peasant elements within it. Socially, the Chinese CP is a typical realisation of the two-class party advocated during the second Chinese revolution by Bukharin and Stalin, a two-class party which to this day has practically only an insignificant base among the urban proletariat while disposing of a considerable armed force in the purely peasant regions. The leadership of this party is characterised, like every Stalinist leadership, by a highly elastic attitude toward its programme and slogans, which it can change from one day to the next in order to be able to maintain its control over the mass movements.
11. Despite profound modifications since 1925, the policy of the Chinese CP and of Moscow has remained based on a conception of revolution by stages. This, according to the Stalinists, should begin with a first phase of bourgeois development, essentially accomplishing the liquidation of feudalism in favour of a development of the capitalist elements of the countryside and the towns; hence the development of a proletariat which would subsequently pose the question of socialist society. But whereas in 1925 the Chinese CP tied itself to the coat-tails of the Kuomintang and renounced all independent activity, today, in order to carry out essentially the same policy, the Stalinists advocate the formation of a "people's" state managed by a coalition government with representatives of bourgeois political formations, in which representatives of the Stalinist party predominate. This policy corresponds to the conjunction of various elements: the Soviet bureaucracy is organically hostile to any development of the mass movement that might escape its control, it cannot supply China with the industrial products and capital it needs, it does not wish to clash head-on with American imperialism at so sensitive a point and, on the contrary, seeks to profit from the victory of the armies of Mao Tse-tung the better to arrive at a compromise with American imperialism. Despite a relation of forces far more favourable to the Stalinist bureaucracy than during the second Chinese revolution, this policy is condemned to as resounding a failure as that of the leadership of the Comintern in 1925–1927, and the third Chinese revolution would be condemned to ruin if the working class fails to free itself from the Stalinist straitjacket and to give itself a new revolutionary leadership which, through all the vicissitudes of the struggle, will place its confidence only in the forces of the working class and the poor peasants.
12. Up to now, the Chinese Communist Party has found its base and its strength among the poor peasants, the middle peasants and, in certain cases, among rich peasants, in order to carry out certain agrarian reforms.
The development of the peasant war has compelled Mao Tse-tung to give an increasingly radical character to his programme even on the terrain of the peasant struggle: from a reduction in rents and interest rates to a division of the land by peasant committees. None of these measures goes beyond the framework of timid agrarian reforms.
The military triumph and the formation of a government confront the Chinese Communist Party with a certain number of problems whose solution, as indicated above, is decisive for the triumph of the revolution: the struggle for the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, the appeal to the masses to constitute, through committees, the only "apparatus" truly capable of unifying China and freeing it from the yoke of imperialism.
Now, the policy followed by the Stalinists of instituting a "bourgeois democracy," which in fact means respect for capitalist property (native and international), even with restrictions, will only provide the bourgeois elements inevitably developing in the countryside with a point of crystallisation in the towns. What was seen as a threat during the years of the NEP in the USSR, and as a grave danger in the early years of the "people's democracies" of Eastern Europe, would be repeated with considerably increased force in China.
The realisation of a "new capitalism" and a "new democracy" for "several decades" (Mao Tse-tung) can in fact only lead to the same results as those of the preceding regime: the maintenance of China in a backward state, in anarchy and chaos, the creation of a military apparatus that will fragment and live at the expense of the peasantry, the return of usury.
13. In the state of decomposition of the regime in China, it is by no means excluded that certain factions of the Chinese bourgeoisie, with the assent of American imperialism, may enter into agreements with the Chinese Stalinist party, which is visibly in search of bourgeois "allies" and which, in its programme, offers them a certain number of advantages. There can be no question in this case of far-reaching agreements on a programme designed to create a truly democratic regime and to ensure the development of the country's productive forces: it would be a matter, on the part of the bourgeoisie, in the service of imperialism, of gaining time, of regrouping its forces around new axes and of working toward a dissociation of the movement that has just triumphed, while awaiting a more favourable period for the advance of imperialism in Asia.
14. But might the Chinese Stalinists not "succeed" in China in the manner of the Stalinists of the countries of the European "buffer zone"? That is, might they not be led, for various reasons, to modify their objectives, to attack their bourgeois allies of today and to pursue a structural assimilation, through a series of bureaucratic measures in which the worker and peasant masses would be mobilised, when needed, only as an auxiliary element? To pose the question thus is to forget all the differences between China and the "buffer zone."
The essential means of the Stalinists in the "buffer zone" were above all the presence of the Red Army, the direct pressure of the USSR, the action of the GPU, and an apparatus possessing very great power but at the same time itself very controllable. Now, the Chinese CP does not have the direct or nearby support of Soviet armies, except in Manchuria (which the Kremlin seeks to control exclusively, without Chinese participation). In no case can the USSR dispose of the means necessary to control a territory as immense as that of China. Nor can it supply China with what it needs. On the economic plane, the problems that arise and the means available to the Chinese Stalinists are of considerable disproportion in relation to the problems and the means at the disposal of the Stalinists of Eastern Europe. The profound instability of the "buffer zone" countries of Eastern Europe is only kept in check with difficulty by the many turns of the Stalinist apparatus, which controls the life of town and countryside through the police. But in China, the intensity of the problems that arise, the limited means of the apparatus — everything indicates that the period opening with the elimination of Chiang Kai-shek is a long period of instability and social crisis.
Sensing their incapacity to form a central government bureaucratically controlling the country, the Stalinists seem to be oriented toward the formation, in agreement with sections of the bourgeoisie, of provincial governments, perpetuating the state of division of China. This policy constitutes one of the greatest obstacles to the historical development of China.
THE THIRD CHINESE REVOLUTION AND THE FAR EAST
15. The collapse of the Kuomintang government and the development of the third Chinese revolution will have enormous consequences for revolutionary developments in all the colonies and throughout the Far East.
Already this could be observed in the course of the recent elections in Japan, which testified to a considerable growth of the Communist Party.
Whereas the lag in political developments in China in the aftermath of the Second World War had left the revolutionary movements isolated, notably in Burma, Vietnam and Indonesia, and allowed the imperialists to go over to the offensive to re-establish part of their former privileges, the advance of the armies of Mao Tse-tung will not fail to strengthen the resistance of the peoples of Vietnam against French imperialism and of the peoples of Indonesia against Dutch imperialism.
The revolutionary movements in India, Siam, Burma and Malaya will likewise be stimulated by the surge of the worker and peasant masses of China.
The collapse of the Kuomintang government constitutes not only a defeat for the Chinese bourgeoisie and for American imperialism, directly interested in China, but a defeat entailing a considerable weakening of the general positions of imperialism in the colonial world; it is certainly the harshest blow dealt to imperialism in many years.
On this plane too, the Chinese revolution will show its character as a permanent revolution, spilling over the frontiers of China, forming an integral part of an overall movement of the colonial world against imperialism, which will have its repercussions on the revolutionary struggle in the metropolitan countries. Aware of this danger, the Indian bourgeoisie has just attempted, taking advantage of the Pan-Asian Conference against the Dutch intervention [in Indonesia — printed source reads "Japan," evidently an error for Indonesia], to lay the foundations of an anti-communist defence bloc in the Far East.
THE EVENTS IN CHINA AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
16. As regards US–USSR relations, the events in China bring about an improvement in the position of the USSR at the expense of that of the USA. Already the American tendency to abandon China as an anti-Soviet bastion, expressed from the return of the Marshall mission, whose purpose had been to reach an agreement between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung, is intensifying. The USA and Great Britain are falling back on Japan and India. Part of the leading circles of American policy even doubt the possibility of being able to hold Japan in the event of war (denied statements by Kenneth Royall).
But this shift in the relation of forces in the Far East, however important it may be, is far from decisive in relation to the developments taking place in Europe. Despite the decline of Europe, it is still there that the main game is being played for the moment. For this reason, while the Cold War continues and may even intensify in Europe, it is by no means excluded that we shall witness in China agreements between the USSR (which may find there a terrain for political operations) and the USA (which may find there a terrain for profitable commercial operations). But this terrain of possible understanding would be quite limited and temporary.
In China, as in other countries, the Kremlin bureaucracy thinks only of using the struggles of the masses to obtain the best compromise in its own favour.
THE EVENTS IN CHINA AND STALINISM
17. The victory of the armies of Mao Tse-tung cannot fail to have as its immediate consequence a rise in the prestige of the Stalinists among the labouring masses of China and of most of the countries of the Far East. Since the betrayal of the Chinese revolution of 1925–1927, new generations unaware of this past have grown up, and they will begin by placing their trust in the Stalinists, despite their moderate bourgeois-democratic programme, for the realisation of their aspirations. The masses will begin by identifying the fall of Chiang Kai-shek, the first stage on the revolutionary road, with the victory of the revolution itself.
But the problems posed by the national and international conditions of China will subject the Chinese Stalinists to insurmountable difficulties within the framework of Stalinist policy, that is, within the framework of a bourgeois national transformation bureaucratically directed and controlled from above.
Developments in recent years, and more particularly the example of Yugoslavia, have shown that the expansion of Stalinism entails the inclusion, within the Stalinist movement, of new contradictions that lead to muffled conflicts within the bureaucracy itself, to potential and latent oppositions to the Kremlin bureaucracy, tending toward ruptures precisely where the Stalinist parties attain government, for although apparently disposing of absolute power over the state and the economy of a country, they become, with their arrival in government, subject to class forces that stand strongly opposed to the interests of the Kremlin bureaucracy.
From this point of view, the development of the Stalinist movement in China must be followed with particular attention. On the one hand, the leadership of Mao Tse-tung rests on a very powerful (peasant) mass movement, difficult to hold within a bureaucratic framework; on the other, Moscow's control over the Chinese CP cannot be easily assured; and finally the class forces that will bear upon the Chinese CP wherever it exercises power will be incomparably more powerful than the class forces that bear upon the CPs of the "buffer zone" countries.
THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL AND THE CHINESE REVOLUTION
18. The task of the Chinese Trotskyists, who have preserved their organisation against Stalinist repression as well, will be to formulate, under the new conditions in China, the programme of intransigent struggle against imperialism and the native bourgeoisie, which is, for that very reason, a programme of irreducible struggle against Stalinist opportunism and bureaucratism. As during the war against Japan and during the peasant armies' struggle against Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese Trotskyists will fight side by side with the Chinese peasants and workers to complete the defeat of the Kuomintang or its remnants, as well as that of their imperialist protectors. They will place themselves in the front rank of every class action, will support every economic or political measure taken against reaction (bourgeoisie and feudal elements) and will strive to push every movement in the direction of an assertion of the power of the masses.
They will insist in particular that the transformations in the countryside be carried out for the benefit of the poor peasants, and of them alone. They will support every demand of the workers that tends to protect their standard of living and their freedoms, and will lead every struggle of the masses against any attack on these rights. They will call on the workers, the poor peasants and the soldiers to constitute elected committees (soviets), in order to ensure the victorious march of the third Chinese revolution. At the same time, they will unify the mass struggles by advancing the slogan of a Constituent Assembly representing the Chinese masses in the broadest possible way.
They will denounce any coalition government with any wing whatsoever of the bourgeoisie, as well as any Stalinist dictatorship, and will advocate that all power pass into the hands of democratically elected committees of workers, poor peasants and soldiers, as the sole guarantee of the development and victory of the Chinese revolution.
They will denounce all the unequal treaties between China and other countries, whether with the capitalist powers (Hong Kong, Macao…) or with the Soviet government (Outer Mongolia, Dairen).
They will denounce as a historically absurd and politically reactionary limitation the march "by stages" beginning with a "bourgeois-democratic" stage, and will counterpose to it the conception of permanent revolution with the objective of the dictatorship of the proletariat supported by the poor peasants, a dictatorship carrying out the bourgeois-democratic tasks while at the same time taking up the socialist demands of the proletarians at the expense of the native bourgeoisie and of imperialism.
19. On the international scale, the Fourth International will strive to ensure the coordination of the revolutionary movements of the peoples of the Far East. It will oppose every action of imperialism against the worker and peasant masses of China and of the countries of the Far East. The struggle against the expeditions in Vietnam, Malaya and Indonesia constitutes one of the most important tasks of the Trotskyists at the present time.
At the same time, they will warn the workers against the opportunist policy of the Stalinists, will recall the heavy responsibilities of the Stalinist leadership in the crushing of the second Chinese revolution, and will show that struggle on the programme of the Stalinists and under their leadership would lead to the defeat of the third Chinese revolution.
Resolution adopted by 14 in favour, 2 against (English RCP).