Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 13:49:22 -0500 (EST)
From: Dan Axtell <dax-AT-panix.com>
Subject: China and Trotskyism


This is a response to the posting about the Shanghai massacre.
It is from the book, "On Trotskyism: Problems of theory and history" by 
Kostas Mavrakas.

CH'EN TU-HSIU'S IDEOLOGICAL ITINERARY

As the Trotskyists have presented Ch'en Tu-hsiu as a much more profound 
and clever theoretician than Mao Tse-tung, we have deemed it useful to 
bring together here a few passages outlining his ideological itinerary 
drawn from Y. C. Wang's book, 'Chinese Intellectuals and the West 1872 - 
1949'. (1) It emerges fairly clearly from these that the opportunism of 
his policy had other causes than Stalin's instructions.

The son of a mandarin, Ch'en became Dean of Peking University.  He played 
a big role in the May 4 Movement as editor of the journal 'New Youth'. In 
1919, John Dewey, the American philosopher and pedagogue, made a lecture 
tour in China. It was under the inspiration of his teachings that Chten 
Tu-hsiu wrote an article entitled 'The basis for the realization of 
democracy in China' for the December issue of 'New Youth', in which he 
suggested two programmer: local self-government and a new guild system. 
The two were possible, he believed, because (pp. 311-12):

under the traditional laisser-faire policy there had been many 
self-governing bodies in the Chinese body-politic The guilds should be 
both the employers and the employees because, 'except in a few big 
factories, railroads and mines the status of employers and employees 
differs little in China'. One of the general principles for the 
organization of these self-governing bodies was that 'stress should be 
given to the practical needs of the group concerned rather than to the 
broad problems facing the nation'

In another article Ch'en urged the Chinese to study Christianity and to 
incorporate 'the loftiness and greatness of Jesus Christ into their 
blood' (p. 312).

In May 1919, 'New Youth' published a special issue devoted to Marxism. 
'The spirit that pervaded the issue was one of disapprobation' (p. 316). 
'But by May 1920, his stand had completely changed (he) switched his 
belief from (bourgeois) democracy to Marxism-Leninism' (pp. 313-16).

When it was founded in 1921, Chten Tu-hsiu was elected General Secretary 
of the Chinese Communist Party. He remained in this post until the 
extraordinary meeting of the Central Committee on 7 August 1927, at which 
his opportunist line was criticised.  In 1928-9, he publicly attacked the 
party, which led to his expulsion in August 1929. (2) Then he joined the 
Trotskyists and in December published his 'Letter to all members of the 
Chinese Communist Party'.

Arrested in 1932 by the Kuomintang authorities, he was condemned to 
thirteen years' imprisonment but was freed by 1937. He died in 1942. (3)

In an article in 1940, Ch'en wrote: 'If Germany and Russia are to emerge 
victorious (from the war) humanity will face a dark age for
at least half a century. Only if the capitalistic democracy can be 
preserved through a victory by England, France and America can there
be a path to proletarian democracy.'

To those who were shocked by his new views, Ch'en replied (pp. 318-19):

The difference between the so-called proletarian democracy and the 
capitalistic democracy is only one of scope. There does not exist a 
proletarian democracy with a different content. After the October 
Revolution efforts were made to destroy the substance of capitalistic 
democracy. It was replaced by a mere abstract term: proletarian 
democracy. The result is the Stalinist regime in Russia today, which is 
in turn imitated by Italy and Germany.

Y. C. Wang concludes his intellectual portrait of Chten Tu-hsiu in these 
terms (pp. 319-20):

Viewing Ch'en's life as a whole, it is difficult to detect any profound 
conviction on his part. He embraced Democracy and Science in 1919, when 
he was already forty years old. A bare few months later he forsook them 
for Communism. As leader of the party, he could not agree with the 
Comintern line, but yet lived by it for 'disciplinary reasons'. These, 
however, disappeared as soon as he lost the secretary-generalship, for 
contrary to the communist practice of democratic centralism he started to 
criticise the policy of the Politburo. For this he was expelled, and the 
setback immediately turned his thought to the formation of a Trotskyist 
faction. After his release from prison in 1937, his attitude once again 
changed. Trotsky and Lenin now in turn yielded the place of honour to 
Western Democracy. What were
the factors that underlay his volatility? One reason clearly was his 
intellectual shallowness. At no time did Ch'en really understand the 
causes that he either supported or opposed. A year was to elapse between 
his declaration for democracy and his attempt to elaborate on it. When it 
did appear, the elaboration was no more than an adaptation of Dewey's 
lectures with some shallow observations on China's guild system and 
village democracy. As a recent writer has shown, [Cf. Bejamin Schartz, 
Chinese Communism and the rise of Mao'] even when Ch'en had become 
totally committed to Marxism-Leninism, he was blissfully unaware of the 
myriad theoretical difficulties confronting Lenin and other Marxists.




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