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Main Document Index | ETOL Home Page | RH Vol.2 No.4 On the Nature of Revolution by Zheng Chaolin From Revolutionary History, Vol.2 No.4, Spring 1990. Used by permission. On the Nature of Revolution is an extract from an article published in the bulletin of the minority tendency of the Chinese Trotskyist movement, the Internationalist, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia. The article was probably written by Zheng Chaolin who, together with Wang Fanxi, edited and wrote most of the articles for the bulletin. It began publication after the split from Peng Shuzi in the summer of 1941. The split in the organisation was over their characterisation of the war of resistance against Japan and the revolutionaries’ attitude to Chiang Kai-shek’s leadership in the struggle. There were arguments over Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution, the nature of the coming Third Chinese Revolution and its implications for the tasks of revolutionaries. However, as the Chinese Trotskyist organisations at that time were mainly propagandist because of their size (approximately 400 in total), the disagreements were never tested in practice. Zheng Chaolin (1901- ) joined the Chinese Communist Parts as early as 1922 while still in Paris, returning in 1924 to edit the party’s Hsiang-tao (Guide Weekly). During the Second Chinese Revolution he served on the Hubei Provincial Committee of the CCP. In 1929 he joined the Trotskyist movement, and represented the Proletarian Society at the unification of the Chinese Trotskyists in May 1931, where he was put in charge of propaganda, only to be arrested three weeks later by the Guomindang. He was not released until 1937. During the Sino-Japanese War he held the position that it was part of the coming world war, and that to support China against Japan would be tantamount to supporting American against Japanese imperialism. When the Chinese Trotskyists split in May 1941 he shared the publication work of the Internationalist group with Wang Fanxi. He was arrested by the Maoist secret police during the general round-up of the Trotskyists in 1952, and was kept in prison without trial until 1979. A gifted and brilliant translator, he was responsible for the appearance of many of the classic works of Marxism in the Chinese language. The Trotskyist movement campaigned for years to secure the release of its martyrs in Chinese prisons. In 1974 Frank Glass and Peng Shuzi issued a pamphlet, Revolutionaries in Mao’s Prisons, and appeals for their release became increasingly frequent as the 1970s wore on (cf. InterContinental Press, 8 May 1972, 28 April 1975, 4 October 1976; Workers Vanguard, 28 February 1975; Chartist, December 1977). Particularly was this the case with Zheng, who might have been expected to have been treated more leniently after the utter discredit of Mao’s faction following his death (cf Gregor Benton, What Became of Cheng Chao-Lin? in Inprecor, new series no.18, December 1977, pp31-2, and in InterContinental Press, 28 November 1977). The survivors were finally released in 1979 (cf. Amnesty International Newsletter, Vol.ix, no.9, September 1979; Socialist Challenge, 23 August 1979; and Workers Vanguard, 12 October 1979), and fortunately Zheng Chaolin was among them (Gregor Benton, Trotskyist Leader Zheng Chaolin Released in China, in InterContinental Press, 1 October 1979). A tendency in the Chinese section of the Fourth International which holds the defencist (defence of China against Japanese occupation) position argued that, even though the leadership of the anti-Japanese war of resistance is in the hands of the bourgeoisie, the struggle itself is a manifestation of the national liberation struggle, and, as the fight for national liberation is the main content of a bourgeois democratic revolution, it is a stage that cannot be skipped over on the road to a proletarian Socialist revolution. However, in order to distinguish themselves from the Stalinists’ position on the [forthcoming] Chinese revolution, they added that there is no Chinese wall between the bourgeois democratic revolution and the proletarian Socialist revolution. We have discussed on many previous occasions, in concrete and factual terms rather than in theoretical terms, whether the anti-Japanese war of resistance can be considered as a struggle for national liberation. So we will not dwell on this question here. However, we need to examine another question, that is, whether the waging of a revolution for national liberation in China is a stage in a bourgeois democratic revolution. In other words, we need a broad discussion on the nature of revolutions. Is a national revolution bourgeois democratic or proletarian Socialist? This question did not arise in the era of classic bourgeois democratic revolutions. The fact that this question is being posed points to the fact that we are talking about revolution in a backward country. Indeed, this question about the nature of national revolutions is being raised and discussed in many backward countries. Furthermore, we can observe a common feature in these revolutions – all reactionary policies are carried out with the excuse that ‘the national revolution is a bourgeois democratic revolution’. We can begin with the Russian Revolution. From the outset, the Mensheviks had maintained that the Russian Revolution would be a bourgeois democratic revolution. They therefore supported the seizure of power by the party of the liberal bourgeoisie, the Cadets, whilst limiting themselves to being an opposition party and waiting for the right conditions for a Socialist revolution to develop in Russia. After the February Revolution, the ‘Old Bolsheviks’ also used the same excuse that the democratic tasks had not been fulfilled, and therefore the revolution must still be bourgeois democratic in nature.

They opposed Lenin’s new line in the April Theses, and maintained their slogan of the ‘democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants’. Let us turn to China. The Guomindang is not against all revolutions. It opposes only a proletarian Socialist revolution in China. Indeed, it massacred the worker and peasant masses in the name of ‘national revolution’ (that is a bourgeois democratic revolution in English). It was the Stalinist party that in 1927 suppressed the so-called ‘excesses’ of the peasants and workers, that refused to break with the Guomindang, that opposed the building of soviets, all based on the theory that ‘the Chinese revolution will be a bourgeois democratic revolution’. Ten years on, this party is still using this as a reason for following [Sun Yat-sen’s] ‘Three People’s Principles’ and accepting the leadership of the bourgeoisie. At present, the defencists argue for support for the defence of the Chinese motherland [against the Japanese] on the basis that ‘the present stage of the Chinese revolution is bourgeois democratic’. The only thing that distinguishes them from the Stalinist party is that they believe that the coming third revolution will be a proletarian Socialist revolution, whereas the Stalinist party thinks that there must still be a bourgeois democratic stage that cannot be skipped over, and that we are at this stage now. The defencists and the Stalinist party both oppose any attempts to bring about a proletarian Socialist revolution in China at the moment. Almost all the ills of a backward country can be blamed on the ‘bourgeois democratic revolution’! Unfortunately, Lenin and Trotsky are quoted in defence of these positions. Just as the Old Bolsheviks quoted Lenin’s past writings to oppose the living Lenin, our defencists are now using dead and past writings of Lenin and Trotsky to oppose the living, present day revolution, to resist the path forced upon them by a living revolution. If Lenin had died earlier, or had stayed abroad unable to return to Russia to initiate the struggle, it would not be difficult to imagine the confusion there would have been in revolutionary Russia. We can see this by comparison with the confused state of revolutionary ideas in China at the moment. This confusion is rooted in political theory, and we must first clarify it. Our method of clarification is the same method used by Lenin in April 1917. Dry The Old Bolsheviks, as represented by Kamenev, opposed the April Theses. ‘We cannot accept Comrade Lenin’s theses, because the starting point of these theses is to accept that the bourgeois democratic revolution has been completed, and that we must immediately turn this revolution into a Socialist revolution.’ Lenin’s reply was cut and dry: ‘State power in Russia has passed into the hands of a new class, namely, the bourgeoisie and landowners who had become bourgeois. To this extent, the bourgeois democratic revolution in Russia has been completed.’ In these sentences, Lenin spelt out clearly that the bourgeois democratic revolution in Russia belonged to the past, that there would be no more such revolutions in the future. Was Lenin correct in saying this? Certainly. Did his few words change the minds of the Old Bolsheviks? No. The Old Bolsheviks pointed to the fact that land reform had not yet begun (even Lenin admitted this). Yet Lenin had always considered the land question in Russia as central to the bourgeois democratic revolution. Before February, Lenin believed that the bourgeois democratic revolution was the revolution that could resolve the land question. Even after the October Revolution, when writing in The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky in 1918, he still maintained that the bourgeois democratic revolution was a revolution to resolve the land question. He wrote: Yes, our revolution is a bourgeois revolution as long as we march with the peasants as a whole ... Things have turned out just as we said they would. The course taken by the revolution has confirmed the correctness of our reasoning. First, with the whole of the peasants against the monarchy, against the landowners, against medievalism (and to that extent the revolution remains bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic). Then, with the poor peasants, with the semi-proletarians, with all the exploited, against capitalism, including the rural rich, the kulaks, the profiteers, and to that extent the revolution becomes a Socialist one. In other words, Lenin, both before and after 1917, characterised the revolution by the tasks to be fulfilled. However, during the revolution in 1917, he characterised the revolution according to which class had control of state power. The conclusions might be different, but that is because the criteria used to determine the character of the revolution were different, and there is no contradiction between the two positions. For the purpose of general theoretical analysis, Lenin had always characterised a revolution by its tasks. He did so before the eruption and after the success of the [1917] revolution. Yet, during revolutionary struggle, when there was contention about the way forward, particularly when those arguing for the wrong direction based their position entirely on the formula ‘the bourgeois revolution is not yet completed’, general criteria for analysis were insufficient. At that moment, we must look to the mechanics of the revolution as the criteria. (‘Mechanics’ refers to the action and interaction between classes, and includes the revolution’s motive force, but is more than the revolutionary motive force. There has never been a suitable translation. Some people translate it as ‘structure’, but this is not very fitting – author’s note). Why is a general definition not sufficient in this situation?

Why is a general definition not sufficient in this situation? Why is it not possible to determine the character of a revolution by its tasks? As Lenin had said, it was not certain at that time whether the peasants would follow the lead of the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. To solve the land question, the proletariat had to break with the petit-bourgeoisie and take the step towards the seizure of state power. It was only then that they could gain the trust of the peasants and resolve the land question once and for all. Because of this, they had to declare that ‘the slogan of the "democratic dictatorship of the peasants and workers’’ is obsolete, it is dead and cannot be resurrected’. For the same reason, they also had to proclaim that ‘the bourgeois democratic revolution in Russia is over’. This was Trotsky’s position as well as Lenin’s. The Old Bolshevik Preobrazhensky (though he later joined the Left Opposition) did not understand Lenin’s method. He wrote to Trotsky saying that ‘Your basic error lies in the fact that you determine the character of a revolution on the basis of who makes it, which class, i.e. by the effective subject, while you seem to assign secondary importance to the objective social content of the process’ (Leon Trotsky on China, p.278). Preobrazhensky represented the spirit of Kamenev in 1917, whilst Trotsky used Lenin’s method to counter his position. Sociological definitions of a bourgeois democratic revolution cannot foretell which class will bring about this revolution. This problem was at the root of the differences between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks advocated a proletarian revolution, yet in the midst of revolutionary struggle they could not solve this problem, and still characterised the revolution as bourgeois democratic on the basis of its historical tasks. We can learn from this that anyone who dogmatically holds the position of a bourgeois democratic revolution, or that of a bourgeois democratic stage that cannot be skipped over, can be misled into criminal policies. If we apply Lenin’s method to the Chinese revolution, the agrarian question in China has not been resolved, and the country has not been unified and gained independence. In sociological terms, that is, in terms of historical tasks, the Chinese revolution should be bourgeois democratic, and it could be said that at present we are in that bourgeois democratic stage. However, what are the implications of such a sociological definition? Does it clarify revolutionary theory and strategies? No, in fact it sows confusion, and is used by the Chinese Constitutional Democratic Party, the Chinese Mensheviks and the Chinese Old Bolsheviks to support their defencist position, and send the revolution to an early grave. We must therefore proclaim loudly, like Lenin, ‘State power in China is now in the hands of the bourgeoisie and the landlords who have become bourgeois, therefore the bourgeois democratic revolution in China has been completed’. Even if we do not use Lenin’s method and characterise the revolution by its tasks rather than by the control of state power, it can still be argued that the revolution is not bourgeois democratic. It is open to question, whether or not a task which had historically been completed by a bourgeois democratic revolution can be completed by another class in a future revolution, or whether it can still be completed within the confines of a democratic revolution. Unless these points are clarified, it would merely cause more confusion just mouthing the formulation of ‘bourgeois democratic tasks’. Liberation What are these ‘bourgeois democratic tasks’? They all boil down to national liberation and land reform. To view the question of national liberation in China as a bourgeois democratic task comparable to that of Holland, the United States, Italy, Norway and Belgium is to be concerned merely with form and not with content. The gaining of the national independence of these countries was undoubtedly a bourgeois democratic task, because they were seeking independence from what are generally capitalist or feudal ‘strong states’, but not from imperialist states, especially not from post World War imperialist states. It is possible to win independence from ‘strong states’ within the limits of a bourgeois democratic revolution. But to liberate China from the various imperialists is to strike a blow at the foundations of imperialism, and is characteristic of the proletarian revolution. This project cannot be carried out by the Chinese bourgeoisie. In historic terms, even the bourgeois democratic revolution (let alone a bourgeois democratic revolution led by the proletariat) cannot be completed. To complete this project, the revolution must rise above the limitations of bourgeois democracy. In doing so, it is necessary to bring about the dictatorship of the proletariat. What of land reform in China? Trotsky told us: The peasants’ revolt in China, much more than it was in Russia, is a revolt against the bourgeoisie. A class of landlords as a separate class does not exist in China. The landowners and the bourgeoisie are one and the same. The gentry and the tuchens [large landlords], against whom the peasant movement is immediately directed, represent the lowest link to the bourgeoisie and to the imperialist exploiters as well. In Russia the October Revolution, in its first stage, counterposed all the peasants as a class against all the landlords as a class, and only after several months began to introduce the civil war within the peasantry. In China every peasant uprising is, from the start, a civil war of the poor against the rich peasants, that is, against the village bourgeoisie. (Leon Trotsky on China, p.482) In other words, the Chinese revolution is at a different level from the Russian Revolution, it has even less bourgeois democratic content. Even assuming that an agrarian revolution in China could be realised as it was in Russia, would we still consider land reform as a bourgeois democratic task?

Even assuming that an agrarian revolution in China could be realised as it was in Russia, would we still consider land reform as a bourgeois democratic task? Yes, if we use a sociological definition. Both Lenin and Trotsky had always maintained this. However, we should cast off sociological viewpoints and examine historical facts. In historical terms the French Revolution was a bourgeois democratic revolution that resolved the agrarian question most fundamentally. However, how did the French Revolution solve the land question? Did it distribute land equitably to all peasants? No, the land was sold to peasants, and not only to peasants but to anyone with money. Peasants with no money still did not have land. The French Revolution commercialised land, to be freely bought and sold. This was the historic limit that could be achieved by a bourgeois agrarian revolution. It would be correct to say, judging from theoretical analysis and sociological definitions rather than from looking at historical events, that confiscation and equitable redistribution of land by the state to the peasants was not beyond the limits of a bourgeois democratic revolution. Lenin, writing in 1912 (Democratism and Nationalism in China) criticised Sun Yat-sen’s land reform programme: Is this land reform [nationalisation of the land] possible within capitalism? Not only is this possible, it will be the most perfect and most thorough-going ideal capitalism. Marx made this point in the Poverty of Philosophy, and demonstrated it in Capital Volume 3, and clearly expanded it especially in the debate with Rodbertus on the theory of surplus value. Yet we have never seen this ‘most pure and most absolutely perfect ideal capitalism’ being realised in any capitalist country, and we will never see it. However, this [perfect] ‘capitalism’ was realised. Where? In Russia after the October Revolution, under the leadership of Lenin, when the revolution had gone beyond capitalism, and was no longer within the bounds of capitalism. To see agrarian revolution in China as a reliable bourgeois democratic task is to want to resolve the Chinese land question as in the French Revolution – to ask the peasants to buy the land, to make land a commodity to be bought and sold. We do not need a new revolution for this. This is already happening in China. The future agrarian revolution in China must take on the character of the October Revolution in Russia, an agrarian revolution that cannot in practice (and not in theory) be carried out by capitalism. To realise this revolution, we must go beyond the limits of bourgeois democracy and set up the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Chinese revolution cannot be bourgeois democratic, not only in terms of state power but also in terms of the two important tasks of national liberation and land reform. Strictly speaking, these two important tasks cannot be seen as bourgeois democratic tasks, yet they will play vital roles in the Chinese revolution. Also, it would be incorrect to say that this is a stage that cannot be skipped over. Revolutionary struggle in China will develop along the lines of these two tasks. The proletariat will seize state power at the height of the struggles for national liberation and land reform. Nevertheless, we cannot deny that there can be another future – when the balance of forces in the world and in China can create a situation where the proletariat, as ordinary people, understand the need for a Socialist revolution and seizes state power. What we will have then is not just Chinese national independence, but a world or Asian soviet federation; not just equitable distribution of land to poor peasants, but a Socialist land system. This is a slim possibility, but it would be entirely wrong to deny that it could ever happen. Revolutionary History,Vol.2 No.4, Spring 1990 Editor: Al Richardson Deputy Editors: Ted Crawford and Bob Archer Reviews Editor: Keith Hassell Business Manager: Barry Buitekant Production and Design Manager: Paul Flewers Editorial Board: John Archer, David Bruce, William Cazenave, George Leslie, Sam Levy, Jon Lewis, Charles Pottins, Jim Ring, Bruce Robinson, Ernest Rogers and Ken Tarbuck ISSN 0953-2382 Copyright © 1990 Socialist Platform, BCM 7646, London WC1N 3XX Typeset and printed by Upstream Ltd (TU), 1 Warwick Court, Choumert Road, London SE15 4SE Tel: 01-358 1344 Main Document Index | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive Last updated on 23.8.2003

Main Document Index | ETOL Home Page Chen Duxiu and the Trotskyists by Zheng Chaolin Contents Part One: From the Moscow Group to the Chen Duxiu Group The Cadres Who Returned from Moscow in 1924 The Theory of National Revolution The Central Force in the Party The Moscow Group Splits Part Two From the Chen Duxiu Group to the Trotsky Group The Chen Duxiu Group after the August 7th Conference Under the Politiburo Elected by the August 7th Conference Under the Central Committee elected by the Sixth Congress The Chen Duxiu Supporters leap to Trotskyism Zheng Chaolin's memoirs written in 1945, were republished in China in 1979 as reference material for party historians, and then officially released for privileged categories of officials and researchers in 1986. The article was republished by Gregor Benton in 1996. Zheng spent a total of thirty four years in gaol seven under the Guomindang and for twenty seven under the CCP. His knowledge of the pre-revolutionary history of the CCP and in particular of the thought and life of its founder Chen Duxiu is second to none. We hope the Internet reproduction of his work will assist students of Chinese Communism better to understand Chen Duxiu, the course of the revolution, and the difference between Marxism and Maoism. Back to contents From the Moscow Group to Chen Duxiu Group The Cadres who returned from Moscow in 1924 1924 was an important year in the history of the CCP. It was the first year of formal cooperation between it and the Guomindang. Early on in 1924 the Guomindang, with the Communist Party’s help, convened the First Reorganization Congress; several Communist Party leaders were elected onto the Guommdang’s Central Executive Committee; the Huangpu (Whampoa) Military Academy was started up; Soviet political and military advisers started work; Guommdang branches in most places came under Communist control; the urban labour movement, which had become passive after the strike of February 7, 1923, livened up again; and Communist activity developed on an unprecedented scale. Even more cadres were needed to carry out Party tasks. To meet the need, the Moscow branch of the CCP dispatched back to China a number of Chinese comrades studying at Moscow’s KUTV They returned in batches; all in all they accounted for more than half the ongmal number of Chinese students at KUTV. Of those who stayed behind, some switched to the Military Academy and others were preparing to return to China after a further six months. The first batch returned before the 1924 summer holidays; the second set out from Moscow during the summer holidays; during and after the summer holidays, right through until the spring of the following year, people tackled back to China in smaller groups of two and three or four and five or even singly. All those who returned in 1924 or in the spring of 1925 took up high office in the Party. Peng Shuzhi sat in on the Central Committee as head of the Propaganda Department and attended all its meetings. Though he hadn’t been elected onto it by the Third Congress, he assumed the same powers as one of its normal members: he interviewed cadres and issued directives even Deng Zhongxia behaved respectfully in his presence, not to mention Zhuang Wengong, Secretary of the Shanghai District Committee. As for Chen Yannian, just a few days after arriving in Shanghai he was sent to Guangzhou to be Secretary of the Southern Regional Committee. Yin Kuan, who had returned before the summer holidays, had earlier gone to Shandong to be Provincial Secretary there. Zhao Shiyan, who had come to China on his own, took charge of the Northern Regional Committee in Beijing. This Committee was nominally under Li Dazhao, but Zhao Shiyan did the actual work. Wang Ruofei didn’t get back until early 1925, whereupon he was quickly appointed as Secretary to the Provincial Committee in Henan. Wang Zekai was sent to Anyuan to lead the Party there. Luo Yinong at first came to Shanghai but later went to Guangzhou and later still went to Beijing to run the Party school and to train cadres; finally, in late 1925 or early 1926, he came back to Shanghai to become Secretary to the Jiangsu-Zhejiang Regional Committee. Chen Qiaonian, who got back in early 1925, helped Zhao Shiyan on the Northern Regional Committee. Ren Bishi, like Peng Shuzhi in the adult Party, sat in on the Central Committee of the Youth League immediately after getting back to China, without having been elected to it. Xue Shilun at first worked as Treasurer and Secretary to the Central Committee in Shanghai, but he was not up to it, so he was sent to Hunan to help Li Weihan; Ren Zuomin took over his old jobs. Zheng Chaolin was appointed Secretary to the Central Committee’s Propaganda Department, where Zhang Bojian, who had gone back from Moscow before the summer holidays, was already working. Many of the other people who returned from Moscow were assigned to the labour movement; later Wang Yifei, Yan Changyi, and others returned to China after having studied military science in Moscow and some of them were assigned to the Party’s Military Committee. The students who returned to China from Moscow in 1924 (including the first half of 1925) were united as one and worked in close concert. They had received a common schooling, and just before returning they had received special training; their views on the theory of the Chinese Revolution and on methods of work were in close accord, as if printed from the same font. Party cadres and members from before 1924 looked askance on us and dubbed us the “Moscow people”. At first sight this was a neutral appellation, but secretly it reflected a mood of dissatisfaction among cadres and comrades from before 1924, who thought that these people had come to occupy a special position in the Party and formed a virtual clique. There had already been one such virtual clique in the Party-Zhang Guotao’s “National Trade Union group”.

Li Longzhi (who later changed his name to Li Lisan), Liu Shaoqi, and Xiang Delong (who later called himself Xiang Ying), all three of whom had worked in the labour movement in the South, didn’t belong to the “National Trade Union group” so they were more prepared to cooperate with the “Moscow people”. Li Weihan, the Provinclal Secretary in Hunan, had returned to China directly from France, without passing through Moscow, but he, too, counted as one of the Moscow people. Zhang Tailei and Qu Qiubai, on the other hand, were not members even though they had been in Moscow. Later, they gradually became hostile to the Moscow people. The “National Trade Union group” and cliques. The former had united around Zhang Guotao and Luo Zhanglong Zhang’s righthand man. It derived its solidarity from personal and work relationships; its solidarity could hardly be said to be grounded in theory or principle. Needless to say, the “workerist” views that Zhang Guotao developed in the early period of the CCP were not entirely without relevance to his group’s coherence. The Moscow group, however, was united mainly on the basis of theory and principle, though at the same time personal relationships also played a role in it. The theory of the Moscow group was called “the theory of national revolution”. Back to contents THE THEORY OF NATIONAL REVOLUTION In early 1924 – at the earliest in the fourth quarter of 1923 – comrades in the Comintern’s Far Eastern Bureau and leaders of the CCP’s Moscow branch met frequently to discuss the theory of national revolution. I knew about this, though I never attended any of the meetings, nor do I know who did. Naturally, Luo Yinong and Peng Shuzhi attended, but whether anyone else did I don’t know. The outcome of these meetings was the “theory of national revolution”. The content of the theory is set out in Peng Shuzhi’s programmatic essay in New Youth Quarterly no.4, which was specially devoted to “national revolution”, and in the political resolution passed by the Fourth Congress and drafted by the Comintern representative Voitinsky. The two documents are the same. That’s not surprising, for the “theory of national revolution” was worked out jointly by leaders of the Comintern’s Far Eastern Bureau and of the Moscow branch; or rather, it was worked out by the Comintern and embraced by the leaders of the Moscow branch. I haven’t seen those two documents in fifty-five years, and for the moment there’s no way in which I can borrow them to read, but I still recall their general drift. Basically, they promote two arguments: China cannot carry out proletarian-socialist revolution without first going through national revolution, i.e., bourgeois-democratic revolution; and the proletariat must strive for the leadership of the national revolution. 421 This was a new theory in the history of the CCP. We know that before the CCP’s First Congress everyone viewed the Chinese Revolution as similar in character to Russia’s October Revolution. I have to hand a copy of the Manifesto of the CCP, published in November 1920, 422 which says: “The first step toward realising our ideal society is to eradicate the present bourgeois system. That can only be done by forcefully overthrowing the capitalists’ state.” It also says: The Communist Party will lead the revolutionary proletariat to struggle against the capitalists and seize political power from the hands of the capitalists, for it is that power that maintains the capitalist state; and it will place that power in the hands of the workers and peasants, just as the Russian Communists did in 1917. I also have a copy of the programme approved by the First Congress, which describes its aim as “to overthrow the bourgeoisie with the revolutionary army of the proletariat and to re-establish the state on the basis of the toiling classes, until class differences are extinguished.” In sum, before and at the first Congress there was no theory – not even a glimmering of one – about first having to complete bourgeois-democratic revolution before starting proletarian-socialist revolution. After the First Congress the question of cooperating with the Guomindang was raised. It was discussed at the Second Congress and again at the West Lake Conference, and the Third Congress decided to join the Guomindang. But it was raised as a tactic, in terms of how can we even more quickly and effectively develop the revolutionary movement and Party forces. But after the decision to cooperate with the Guomindang had been taken and implemented and after the alliance between the Guomindang and Russia, when the Soviets sent advisers to China plus funds and weaponry to help the Guomindang, the old tactical formula was no longer enough and the question had to be reframed in strategic terms: the old line of “Guomindang-Communist cooperation” had to be replaced by one grounded in principle and basic Marxist theory. Thus was born the “theory of national revolution”, with its emphasis on the need to complete bourgeois-democratic revolution before going on to proletarian-socialist revolution. Were there grounds for such a theory? Yes, people cited the theoretical disputes in Russia before the Revolution as a basis for it. But they avoided talking about the actual course of events in 1917, for that showed that the Russians had already carried out the proletarian-socialist revolution even before completing the bourgeois-democratic one, that bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia was completed as a by-product of proletarian-socialist revolution. The second main argument connected with the “theory of national revolution”, i.e., that the proletariat must strive for leadership, is clearly subsidiary and, from a Marxist point of view, cosmetic. Before the revolution Lenin’s idea that the proletariat must lead Russia’s bourgeois revolution was premised in the belief that Russia’s bourgeoisie had already forfeited its revolutionary role. How could the view that China’s bourgeoisie still had a revolutionary role to play, that it should be richly aided with funds, weaponry, and advisers, and that the Communist Party should even be made to Join the Guomindang as a wing of it-how could this view be reconciled with striving for proletarian hegemony in the revolution?

Striving for proletarian hegemony was mere cosmetics, as the comments of senior members of the CCP clearly show. Peng Shuzhi, who imported the theory to China said that hegemony over the revolution “naturally” belonged to the proletariat so there was no need to strive for it; Qu Qiubai exposed this belief of Peng’s in his pamphlet Against Peng Shuzhi-ism. According to Peng there was no bourgeoisie in China, just the ghost of one. When Mao Zedong wrote his Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society in March 1926, more than a year after the proclamation at the Fourth Congress of the “theory of national revolution”, he didn’t say anything about the proletariat leading China’s other classes. The present version of that article in Mao’s Selected Works says that “the proletariat is the leading force in the revolutionary movement”, but the sentence was added later, when the Selected Works were edited for publication, and cannot be found in the 1926 text. In late 1924 or early 1925, the CCP officially proclaimed “national revolution” as the guiding theory for the entire revolutionary movement. The actual course of the Revolution of 1925 to 1927 showed this theory up as bankrupt. We who had been in Moscow studied this theory before returning home, and we all complied with it: it was the banner behind which we united. That it had been exposed as bankrupt Moscow group. Return to contents THE CENTRAL FORCE IN THE PARTY The Moscow group was not tangible but it undeniably existed. The Moscow branch was originally led by three people, Luo Yinong, Peng Shuzhi and Bu Shiqi. In early 1923, Bu Shiqi went back to China, leaving Luo and Peng in charge. After cooperation between the Guomindang and the CCP had been formally implemented, the “theory of national revolution” formally launched, and the order sending comrades back to China formally issued, the Moscow branch decided that Luo Yinong would stay on to continue to lead it and that Peng Shuzhi would go back to China to join the Central Committee of the CCP and at the same time rally and lead the returning cadres, i.e., the so-called Moscow people. Why didn’t Luo go instead of Peng? I don’t know. I was never told the reasons for that decision. In early 1925, not long after the Fourth Congress, Peng Shuzhi fell ill with typhoid fever after editing the Lenin number of the first issue of New Youth Monthly. Luo Yinong, who had just got back from Moscow, implied the dissolution of the came to the Propaganda Department to see us. He was sitting beside Peng’s bed. I happened to be standing there, and some of the things he said attracted my attention. I remember them to this day. The gist of his remarks was that we should form a central force in the Party so that we would be in a position to control the rest of it. The actual situation in the Party at that time was like this. The batch of cadres who had returned to China from the Soviet Union all supported Peng Shuzhi and Luo Yinong. (The exception was Jiang Guangchi, who had opposed Luo and Peng in Moscow; after getting back to China he supported not them but Qu Qiubai, but the rest of the Moscow people opposed Jiang) These cadres now occupied important positions in the Party. As long as they got on well with Chen Duxiu, they could control the feudal lords by using the emperor’s name and so take over the Party’s commanding heights. And that’s more or less what happened. Had Luo and Peng decided on such a plan before going back to China? Obviously not, or Luo would have had no need for his bedside talk with Peng. But the general tendency was there, even in Moscow. It’s worth noting that after Luo had spoken, Peng hummed and hawed and did not come out clearly in support of the proposal; but nor did he come out clearly against it. With the benefit of hindsight, I would judge Luo’s comments as follows. Peng Shuzhi was unlikely to oppose the idea of uniting the Moscow people around Chen Duxiu and using Chen’s name to control the “feudal lords”: of setting up a central force in the CCP to control the rest of it. The reason he didn’t actively support Luo’s proposal was certainly not because he was against it, and even less so because he supported the prohibition on factions passed at the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party. It was simply that he planned to keep the leadership of the Moscow group for himself rather than share it with Luo Yinong. In Moscow Luo played first fiddle and Peng second. On the surface they cooperated well together, but I’d already noticed that they had by no means completely merged. Luo invented for Peng the nickname Confucius, which caught on and still sticks. The nickname was meant to imply that Peng was a book-worm, that he’d read a lot, that he knew lots of theory, but that he was no good at doing things. Peng hated his nickname so we never used it to his face, but we did use it behind his back. Peng saw himself as China’s Lenin, but in Moscow he had to yield to Luo. Back in China, where he was elected onto the Central Committee at the Fourth Congress, he joined the Presidium (later called the Standing Committee) and simultaneously ran the Propaganda Department. By then Peng’s position was higher than Luo’s. Luo was simply a cadre awaiting assignment. How did Peng manage to force Luo to share the leadership of the Moscow people?

How did Peng manage to force Luo to share the leadership of the Moscow people? After their bedside talk, Peng decided to enter Baolong Hospital and arranged for Luo to move into the Propaganda Department building, where Luo slept on Peng’s bed. Before going to the hospital Peng told me to lock his desk-drawer and not to let Luo rummage in it. I was surprised, but I did as he said. Later, on account of Chen Bilan 423, Luo and Peng became enemies and stayed so. But that has nothing to do with what I’m now discussing, so let’s stop talking about it. As far as I remember Luo and Peng didn’t mention Chen Duxiu in their bedside talk. But they didn’t need to. In Moscow, if we were discussing the Central Committee of the CCP or the Party leadership, we had only Chen Duxiu in mind. Li Dazhao followed Chen in everything. We never mentioned the names Zhang Guotao, Qu Qiubai, Cai Hesen, or Tang Pingshan. In those days the leader cult had started up in the Soviet Union and the Soviet Central Committee was instilling it into the Party membership and the people. We worshipped Lenin as the supreme leader of the Soviet Republic – and in China we worshipped Chen Duxiu. But in Moscow the cult of Chen Duxiu meant something other to Peng and Luo than to the rest of us. Peng in Moscow saw himself as the Chinese Lenin, but he had to yield to Luo. Back in China in the autumn of 1924, he sneaked his way above Luo, but he still had to yield to Chen Duxiu. The only reason he clasped Chen’s leg was so that one day he could replace him. There were five members of the Standing Committee (or Presidium) after the Fourth Congress, namely Chen Duxiu, Cai Hesen, Zhang Guotao, Qu Qiubai, and Peng Shuzhi. At around the time of National Day 424 in 1925 after Cai had gone to Moscow to represent the CCP at the Comintern right up to the time when the Central Committee moved to Wuhan, it only had four members. I often sat in on its meetings. I used to hate Peng’s performance at them. Almost every time he would first wait for Chen Duxiu to say what he thought and then-at great length and with much pedantry-supply additional arguments to back Chen up. He used to speak at great length but no depth, so that the others in attendance became impatient at the loss of time, though Peng himself did not notice this. I must have betrayed my irritation and contempt, for Qu Qiubai – who was extremely sensitive – noticed it and told Jiang Guangchi. Jiang wrote it up in his novel Des sans-culottes 425 where I make a shadowy appearance. Needless to say, on several occasions at these meetings Peng expressed opinions that differed from those of Chen. He boasted to me once that at the meetings Qu Qiubai and Zhang Guotao used slavishly to follow the “Old Man’s” lead, and that only he Peng dared face up to Chen. “Qiubai is simply a higher technician,” he said. “Guotao is simply a higher administrator.” What he meant was that only he, Peng, was a “higher politician”, i.e., a politician of higher quality. We Moscow people, later to become followers of Chen Duxiu, were early on against Peng: we didn’t wait until after the Fifth Congress to chime in with Qu Qiubai against him. Wang Ruofei, Chen Qiaonian, Ren Xu, He Zishen, and others all despised Peng Shuzhi. Perhaps Chen Yannian’s opposition to Peng was a result of Borodin’s influence. Luo Yinong had personal reasons to be against Peng. Ren Bishi and Xiao Zizhang, who worked for the Youth League, were probably swayed by Qu Qiubai and the Youth International, but that’s another matter. We were opposed to Peng the man, not the “theory of national revolution” he brought back from Moscow; and even less did we oppose Peng as a cover for attacking Chen Duxiu. Naturally, a minority, like Wang Zekai and Liu Bozhuang, supported Peng all along. Return to contents THE MOSCOW GROUP SPLITS After the Fourth Congress, the development of the Chinese Revolution was accompanied by splits in the Moscow group. Luo and Peng’s plan was to use us as a central force with which to take over the entire Party, but as the Party grew the Moscow group – contrary to general expectations – split apart and was defeated and destroyed. The first people to split away were those in the group under Chen Yannian. Chen Yannian (Secretary of the Southern Regional Committee), Mu Qing (head of the Organisational Bureau), and Huang Guozuo (alias Huang Ping, head of the Propaganda Bureau) had all returned from Moscow, where they had studied and supported the “theory of national revolution”. But not long after Chen Yannian and others began working in Guangzhou, they became involved in the struggle between Borodin and Chen Duxiu, supporting the former against the latter. Borodin was a senior adviser to the National Government; perhaps he also represented the Comintern. Whatever the case, he meddled in the affairs of the CCP. He directly led the Party’s Southern Committee regardless of the opinion of the Central Committee of the CCP and did his best to control Party work – at least where the “national revolutionary movement” was concerned – across the whole of China. In so doing he encroached on the competencies of the official Comintern representative, Voitinsky. Before Chen Yannian took up his post in Guangzhou, in the summer of 1924, Borodin instigated Qu Qiubai (then staying in Guangzhou) to deal with the Guomindang in the name of the CCP, but many of Qu’s speeches and actions did not tally with the Central Committee’s position.

Before Chen Yannian took up his post in Guangzhou, in the summer of 1924, Borodin instigated Qu Qiubai (then staying in Guangzhou) to deal with the Guomindang in the name of the CCP, but many of Qu’s speeches and actions did not tally with the Central Committee’s position. Chen Duxiu and Cai Hesen in Shanghai were very angry about this, and in the name of the Central Committee ordered Qu to leave Guangzhou and return to Shanghai, which he did, leaving scars on his mind. Chen Yannian went to Guangzhou in the autumn, whereupon Borodin instigated Chen Yannian instead, regardless of whether the actions he encouraged Chen to undertake accorded with the wishes of the Central Committee. I know little about the struggle between Borodin and the Central Committee in Shanghai, for the issues in it were never publicly aired. All I know is that on one occasion when Chen Yannian came to Shanghai to deliver a report to the Central Committee, he stayed at my place and told me that Borodin had told him that the Central Committee in Shanghai only knew the slogan “Workers of the world, unite!” What Borodin meant was that the Central Committee in Shanghai only knew how to mouth principles, and was incapable of flexibly applying them. But Chen Yannian didn’t say exactly what principles were at stake. Borodin had arrived in China before the Comintern’s Far Eastern Bureau had settled on the “national revolution” formula, with which Voitinsky (who brought the idea to China) instructed the Fourth Congress I’m not saying that Borodin didn’t know about the theory, just chat “politicians” like Borodin put no price whatsoever on principle or theory and were only good at political conspiring. He behaved quite wilfully in Guangzhou, and paid not the slightest attention to the views of either the Shanghai Central Committee or Voitinsky, who was the official Comintern representative in China. Every time Borodin and Chen Duxiu clashed seriously, the Southern comrades led by Chen Yannian backed Borodin. In this way the Moscow people m Southern China set up their own banner under the leadership of Chen Yannian. The second group to split away from the Moscow group were leading members of the Youth League. The Youth League turned against Chen Duxiu much later than the Guangdong cadres. I can’t say for sure when the split began, but it was probably not until 1926. After the Fourth Congress of the CCP, the Youth League also held a Congress and changed its name from Socialist to Communist. At the same time Ren Bishi took over as its General Secretary from Zhang Tailei. The plan stemmed originally from Moscow: Peng Shuzhi, too, knew about and agreed with it. By 1926, the Youth League had gradually turned against Chen Duxiu, chiefly under the influence of the internal struggle in the Soviet Party. The Soviet Youth League (or Konsomol) did not agree with the Comintern’s China policy and was especially opposed to Voitinsky, the official Comintern representative m China. According to Konsomol leaders, Voitinsky was an “opportunist” and a “rightist”. I don’t know too clearly on what actual issues they opposed him. In 1923, the Trotsky opposition incited the Konsomol against the leading triumvirate in the Soviet Party, namely Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin. But Trotsky was overthrown and the Konsomol, too, was purged. By 1926, It was apparently no longer in a position to oppose from a Trotskyist point of view the China policy of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party and of the Comintern. But it’s a fact that the Konsomol leaders opposed Voitinsky and through him Chen Duxiu, who was supposedly under his influence. After the controversy in the Chinese leadership about the Northern Expedition, Qu Qiubai joined the Konsomol in opposing Chen. Qu Qiubai and Zhang Guotao both supported Chiang Kai-shek’s Northern Expedition. Zhang was a well-known schemer and intriguer, but even so his skills as such fell short of Qu’s. At the Central Committee meeting where the Northern Expedition was discussed, Zhang clashed frontally with Chen Duxiu but Qu – who supported the Northern Expedition no less than Zhang – pretended to comply with Chen. From then on, Qu plotted against Chen from behind the scenes. Whether Zhang did, too, I don’t know, but I do know that Qu Qiubai did. In the second half of 1926, he said he was ill and stopped attending Central Committee meetings or working for the Party. Wang Ruofei, head of the Central Committee’s Secretariat, early on became aware of what was happening. One morning in late autumn, while I was still asleep, he came to drag me from my lair and take me to Ximen Road where Qu lived. As we entered the upstairs room, Qu was sitting squarely at his desk working on an article. When he saw us he seemed a bit embarrassed. We exchanged a few words with him and then left. On the way back neither of us said anything about the incident, nor did we need to. It turned out that Qu wasn’t ill but was working hard on an article that he didn’t want anyone else to know about. It remained a mystery until the spring of 1927 in Wuhan, when it became clear that he had been writing up his pamphlet Against Peng Shuzhi-ism. Apart from that he had been inciting people against Chen Duxiu. These people included Ren Bishi and Xiao Zizhang, who had resumed from Moscow to work in the Youth League, and others like He Chang and Lu Dingyi who had never been in Moscow. All this happened behind the backs of Chen Duxiu and Peng Shuzhi. Qu never argued his positions openly at a meeting of the Central Committee. There must also have been a third group of Chen Duxiu supporters who fumed against Chen because of mistakes they detected in the way the leadership conducted actual struggles, but I can’t say exactly who they were.

Those of us who continued to support Chen learned early on to despise Peng Shuzhi as mean, dull-witted, vain, and unable to work together with other people. I wasn’t the only one who thought like this. So did Wang Ruofei, Chen Qiaonian, Zhao Shiyan, and above all Luo Yinong. Whenever Peng’s name came up, none of us liked to continue talking. But we all clearly distinguished between Peng and Chen Duxiu; we thought it was unseemly the way Peng always clung to Chen’s leg. The struggle against Chen broke out at the Fifth Congress. After Wuhan had fallen to the Northern Expedition, many senior officials of the CCP began to congregate there. People like Zhang Guotao, Tan Pingshan, Zhang Tailei, Li Lisan, Liu Shaoqi, Mao Zedong, Qu Qiubai, Luo Zhanglong, and Cai Hesen all went there. I can’t say exactly when each arrived, or from where. All I remember is that Qu Qiubai left Shanghai for Wuhan after the defeat of the second Shanghai insurrection in February 1927. Chen Duxiu and Peng Shuzhi, who were on the Standing Affairs Committee, stayed in Shanghai. Chen was still the Party’s General Secretary, but Qu Qiubai, Zhang Guotao, and Tan Pingshan re-established the Central Committee in Wuhan and started issuing directives. 427 For a while there were two Central Committees: the one in Wuhan lacked a General Secretary, but it dealt with the Central Committee of the Guomindang in the name of the Central Committee of the CCP; Chen Duxiu, acting on behalf of the Central Committee in Shanghai issued a joint declaration with Wang Jingwei, who had just got back from Moscow. It was not until just before April 12, 1927, at around the time of Peng and Chen’s departure for Wuhan, that the Shanghai Central Committee went out of existence. By the time that Chen and Peng arrived in Wuhan, Qu’s pamphlet attacking Peng had already appeared, and so had Mao’s Report on an Investigation of the Hunan Peasant Movement. The mood against right-opportunism had already been manufactured in Wuhan. I delayed leaving Shanghai for Wuhan until late April; when I arrived I went straight to the Central Committee offices to see them. The Central Committee was housed in a three-storey foreign-style building with the guard-room and the canteen on the ground floor, the conference room on the first floor, and the living quarters of Chen Duxiu, Cai Hesen, and Peng Shuzhi on the second floor. After chatting for a bit, we went downstairs to eat. Present were Chen, Peng, Cai, Huang Wenrong, and I. I can’t remember whether Chen Bilan and Li Yichun attended. While we were still eating, Peng mentioned Qu’s pamphlet. He addressed Chen Duxiu, probably with a request for support in a counterattack against Qu, I can’t remember exactly. Cai Hesen merely smiled. Chen said sternly, “You’re you, I’m me.” Chen had no intention of cooperating with Peng in an inner-Party struggle, so Peng had no choice but to fight alone. He stepped up work on his counterblast to Qu. By that time Qu Qiubai, Zhang Guotao, and Tang Pingshan controlled the Central Committee. They used to caucus before it met to harmonize their views. They distributed tasks and chimed in with one another at the meetings, so their views always ended up by winning out. Peng Shuzhi was like a pathetic daughter-in-law-whatever he did, he was in the wrong. 428 Chen Duxiu become a puppet of the Qu-Zhang-Tang troika and implemented its decisions. Needless to say, the members of the troika also harmonized their views in advance with Borodin. The Comintern wanted to replace Chen Duxiu as General Secretary, but soundings showed that his prestige was too high for that to happen easily. What’s more, it was hard to know who to replace him with. At one point the Comintern leaders settled on Tan Pingshan, but Qu and Zhang also considered themselves in contention for the post. Chen Yannian’s name came up too, but he refused. Some people said that he was not against replacing Chen Duxiu, but that he simply didn’t want to succeed him personally. So at the Fifth Congress the Comintern representative and the Qu-Zhang-Tan troika adopted the tactic of isolating Chen: they kept him on, but they got rid of all those who supported him. On the day the Congress opened, Luo Zhanglong, head of the Hubei delegation, proposed a slate of names for the Congress Presidium. Chen was on it, but none of his associates was. On the final day of the Congress, when the elections for the Central Committee were about to take place, this Presidium put forward another slate that like the first one had Chen Duxiu on it but none of his supporters. After the slate had been put forward, Roy stood up in the name of the Comintern and proposed adding the names of Peng Shuzhi and Luo Yinong to it. Congress agreed, but afterwards the new Central Committee immediately sent Peng to Beijing, Luo Yinong to Jiangxi, Wang Ruofei to Shanghai, Yin Kuan to Guangdong, and me to Hubei. In short, we were not allowed to remain on the Central Committee. The only exception was Chen Qiaonian, who became Secretary of the Central Committee’s Organisational Bureau.

The only exception was Chen Qiaonian, who became Secretary of the Central Committee’s Organisational Bureau. By the way, here’s an interesting anecdote. Although Li Weihan wasn’t among those people who had been in Moscow, like them he had in the past supported Chen Duxiu. During the Congress he at one point told Wang Ruofei that the other leaders were applying the trick known as “removing the emperor’s entourage”. It was not difficult for him to see what was really going on during the inner-Party struggle. I got this by hearsay, from Wang Ruofei. But after the Congress, Li resolutely opposed Chen. By then the “Moscow group” was no longer in existence. There were people who had returned from Moscow but there was no “Moscow group”. Those who stuck by Chen Duxiu, whether or not they’d been in Moscow, were known as the “Chen Duxiu group”. Return to contents PART TWO: FROM CHEN DUXIU GROUP TO TROTSKY GROUP THE CHEN DUXIU GROUP AFTER THE AUGUST 7 CONFERENCE Today everyone says with one voice that Chen Duxiu was removed as General Secretary at the August 7 Conference. But actually, he stepped down. I’ve always said so. Recently while re-reading Cai Hesen’s Dangde jihuizhuyi shi (History of opportunism in the Party), I came across a passage that said that sometime early in July Borodin had passed on a Comintern directive ordering Chen Duxiu and Tan Pingshan to go to Moscow and Qu Qiubai and Cai Hesen to go to Vladivostok, and that “the next day Duxiu stopped attending to his duties”. So Chen Duxiu himself relinquished the General Secretaryship a good month before the August 7 Conference. 429 Perhaps the August 7 Conference formally removed Chen from his post? No, it didn’t. I was at the August 7 Conference. I heard Qu Qiubai read out the Letter to Comrades and I heard other people deliver speeches. They all criticized past opportunist errors. Doubtless their criticisms were aimed at Chen Duxiu, but from start to finish no one at the Conference so much as mentioned his name, let alone resolved to sack him. The recently published collection of essays by Cai Hesen 430 includes a transcript of his speech to the Conference. In it he declares his support for the new line and criticizes the old opportunist line, but he, too, fails to mention the name Chen Duxiu. In the two months or more between the Fifth Congress and the August 7 Conference, the balance of power on the Central Committee changed greatly. The Qu-Zhang-Tan alliance had already come apart. Qu Qiubai now occupied the leading role, Zhang and Tan had marched South with the Ye-He army, Borodin had gone back to Russia, Roy and Voitinsky had resigned, and the “prodigy” Lominadze had arrived in China to replace them. Even more remarkably, the ex-Chen Duxiu-ite Luo Yinong, who had been transferred from his old post as Provincial Secretary in Jiangxi to do the same job in Hubei, rose on the eve of the August 7 Conference to become a member of the all-powerful Standing Committee 431 while simultaneously retaining his Hubei post. Luo was extremely capable, and in such critical times his support could hardly be dispensed with. But this is only an apparent explanation. I later heard that Luo had written to Zhang Guotao from Jiangxi saying that he would no longer back Chen Duxiu but would carry out the line of the Fifth Congress. This is hearsay and I have not yet been able to confirm it, let alone to see the letter. But I tend to think that it is the true reason for his sudden rise. Luo Yinong lacked followers and in Shanghai he relied on the Chen Duxiu people. While he was Secretary in Hubei both Liu Bojian (the head of his Organisational Bureau) and Zheng Chaolin (who continued to run his Propaganda Department) were Chen Duxiu supporters; Ren Xu, the head of his Peasant Department, who had worked in Mao Zedong’s Peasant Training Institute in Guangzhou, also became a Chen Duxiu-ite shortly after his transfer to Hubei. About one week after the August 7 Conference the Central Committee replaced Liu Bojian in Hubei with Chen Qiaonian and Zheng Chaolin with Hua Lin (also a Chen Duxiu supporter). Zheng Chaolin was switched back to the Central Committee, where he was assigned to revive the publication of Guide Weekly, which had been suspended for a long time. Just imagine: at around the time of the Fifth Congress the Central Committee did everything in its power to exclude followers of Chen Duxiu, but after the August 7 Conference they had to be allowed back onto the same body that had campaigned against them. But it’s not really so surprising. Chen Duxiu himself was no longer a member of the Central Committee, and Luo Yinong was no longer a Chen Duxiu-ite but a semi-Chen Duxiuite. Luo had no following, nor did Qu Qiubai; of the three members of the Standing Committee, only Li Weihan had a “following” that had escaped with him to Wuhan from Hunan, but the Central Committee could not be kept going exclusively by Hunanese. For example, they couldn’t revive Guide Weekly. In July Zhang Guotao had proposed getting Shen Yanbing to revive it, but Shen had a family to support. After the August 7 Conference it occurred to them that I could do it, for I was still a bachelor; what’s more, I had experience in publishing. So they brought me back to work in the Central Committee. In late September, when the Central Committee transferred back to Shanghai, I was formally appointed editor of the Party journal.

In late September, when the Central Committee transferred back to Shanghai, I was formally appointed editor of the Party journal. In Shanghai the Central Committee had originally appointed Deng Zhongxia as Secretary of the Jiangsu Provincial Committee, but the cadres of the Committee were Chen Duxiu supporters who ignored Deng and listened only to Wang Ruofei. “I’m only Deputy Secretary!” Deng complained to the Central Committee shortly after its transfer to Shanghai. What he meant was that real power in the Provincial Committee belonged to Wang Ruofei. Not long after that, he left the Jiangsu Provincial Committee. Yin Kuan in Guangdong was unable to cooperate with Zhang Tailei, so he returned to Shanghai; the Central Committee made him Provincial Secretary in Anhui. He Zishen ran the Hunan Provincial Committee’s Organisation Department and became its Secretary after Mao Zedong went up the mountains. The Hubei Committee was made up exclusively of Chen Duxiu supporters. In Beijing Peng Shuzhi took the post vacated by the death of Li Dazhao. And so on, and so forth. Wang Ruofei worked out a plan to get Chen Duxiu back onto the Central Committee, but nothing came of it. The first obstacle was the Comintern. It was precisely the Comintern, precisely Stalin, that forced Chen Duxiu to “throw away his official’s hat” in early July, 1927; Chen had no choice but to resign as General Secretary (or, as Cai Hesen put it, to “stop attending to his duties”). So the Comintern wouldn’t have let Chen Duxiu return as General Secretary. In the summer of 1927, the Chen Duxiu people could never have been defeated in the inner-Party struggle but for the intervention of the Comintern. The second obstacle was the Guomindang’s White terror, as a result of which Chen Qiaonian and Luo Yinong had been seized and martyred. Luo was a “semi-Chen Duxiu-ite” who at the time was sitting on the fence. If conditions had been right, he might have approved of Chen Duxiu’s return to power and backed him from his position on the Standing Committee as Director of the Organisation Bureau. The third obstacle was Chen Duxiu himself He was completely passive, and had no wish to take up work again after having just given it up. Lots of people went to talk with him, but as soon as politics came up he’d change the subject. For example, when Luo Qiyuan tried to discuss inner-Party matters with him, he took out his scheme for spelling Chinese characters and started asking Luo how you said this character or that character in Cantonese. He later said that at the time he had been pondering basic questions in the Chinese Revolution, including how much responsibility he himself should take for the defeat. He weighed the issues over a long period of time, but was unable to resolve them. On occasions he raised criticisms of various policies then being pursued by the Central Committee. He recorded them in letters, but needless to say the Central Committee was not prepared to accept them. 432 He knew that Wang Ruofei and Chen Qiaonian were working hard on his behalf, but he did nothing to encourage them, nor did he forbid them to do what they were doing. Some people thought that he was only pretending to be passive, and that he was secretly masterminding Wang and Chen’s campaign. I disagree, but 1, too, find it hard to explain why Chen had become so passive. Facts show that he could again become active once he had finished pondering the issues. In the second half of 1929, he was helped to do so by Trotsky’s articles. He then came out resolutely against Stalin, against the Communist International, and against the Central Committee of the CCP. In the face of these three obstacles, the Chen Duxiu-ites under the leadership of Wang Ruofei were doomed to failure. Return to contents UNDER THE POLITBURO ELECTED BY THE AUGUST 7 CONFERENCE The Central Committee elected by the August 7 Conference moved back very respectful toward Chen Duxiu. Two or three days after arriving in Shanghai, Qu went to visit him; his attitude toward him was the same as it had ever been. I don’t know what they talked about. At that time Huang Wenrong was still living in Chen’s house as his private secretary; he, too, didn’t tell me what they talked about. All I know is that Chen handed Huang back to the Central Committee, and Qu accepted him. A few days after that Luo Yinong also went to visit Chen; needless to say, he, too, behaved respectfully. Chen got Huang to make a record of his conversation with Luo, but I haven’t seen it. Not long after that, Huang was assigned to help me set up the editorial office of the Central Committee organ. In late December Luo Yinong came and asked me to invite Chen to stay in my house (i.e., in the editorial office) for three days so that he and Qu could have a discussion with the Old Man. On December 24, Huang hired a car to bring Chen over. Chen slept in Huang’s room.

Chen slept in Huang’s room. That evening I organized a dinner for to Shanghai in late September. Qu Qiubai and Luo Yinong were still Chen, Qu, Luo, Wang Ruofei, and some other guests. The next day Qu and Luo had their talk with Chen. I had some private business, so I did not attend. On the fourth day Huang took Chen back home. One day while we were chatting, Qu told me that the Old Man had said that if we had decided earlier to quit the Guomindang and carry out land revolution, he would have acted on the decision. Qu went on to express strong opposition to Chen’s statement. I seem to remember that he asked me what I thought, but I said nothing. The Standing Committee appointed Qu Qiubai, Luo Yinong, Deng Zhongxia, Wang Ruofei, and Zheng Chaolin to the editorial board of the Central Committee organ, with Qu Qiubai as chairman. I only recently saw the document, dated October 12, 1927, in which this decision was recorded. I’d always thought that I was editor and Qu was the bridge between us and the Standing Committee, that he represented the Standing Committee on the editorial board and told us what it thought and told it what we were doing. Clearly I remembered wrong. There’s no mistake about the document. I must have known about it, but I’d completely forgotten. The editorial board was a fiction, it never met even once. Qu and Luo represented the Central Committee, Deng and Wang represented the Jiangsu Provincial Committee, and I did the actual work. Shortly after his appointment Deng left the Jiangsu Provincial Committee. He never once came to my house. Luo and Wang often used to come, but not for the editorial board. The new organ no longer used the name Guide Weekly but called itself Bolshevik. I wrote an article for the founding issue titled What Next for the Chinese Revolution after the Betrayal of the Revolution by the Guomindang? The article concluded that the revolution had already been defeated, and that we would have to start again. After it came out, no one discussed it with me, but I myself discovered that my own viewpoint directly contradicted that of the Central Committee, i.e., of the Comintern. It turned out that the Central Committee, i.e., the Comintern, not only did not recognize that the Chinese Revolution had already been defeated but concluded that it was still in spate, and that the tide had risen even further. I delivered myself a private warning: in future write fewer articles on policy. No one pointed, out that my article ran counter to the Comintern line, and no one even noticed that it did. Wang Ruofei – not because he had noticed the article, but simply in the course of an idle conversation – once told me that he’d gone to see the Old Man with He Zishen and the Old Man said: Look, the British, US, and French troops stationed in Shanghai are withdrawing in batches, do you think that the imperialists would do that if the tide of the Chinese Revolution were still rising? Wang told me that it was as if Chen’s comment had suddenly jolted him awake. I thought to myself, so the Old Man thinks the same as me, that the Chinese Revolution has already been defeated. I invariably asked Qu Qiubai to write the Bolshevik editorials, for as a member of the Standing Committee he was familiar with Party policy. But for some reason he was too busy to attend the editorial conference that planned Bolshevik No.11, so the task devolved on me. The Guangzhou Insurrection had just ended, so I called my editorial Long Live Soviet Power. I said in it that China had only two possible futures: either a “Great Dragon Empire” under the dictatorship of the warlord Zhang Zuolin and a Guomindang Republic under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, or a Soviet Republic under the dictatorship of the proletariat. There was no third way. The editorial got me into a lot of trouble. About a fortnight after it came out, at a meeting of the editorial board, Qu Qiubai reported that according to Li Weihan speaking at a meeting of the Standing Committee, Zheng Chaolin’s editorial was at odds with Comintern policy; our slogan was “workers and peasants’ democratic dictatorship”, not “dictatorship of the proletariat”. So Qu wrote an editorial for Bolshevik No.14 rectifying my mistake. He energetically explained that the Soviets set up during the Guangzhou Insurrection were a “workers and peasants’ democratic dictatorship”, not a “proletarian dictatorship”. After that I stopped writing editorials, and I generally did my best to write as little as possible. But my heresy as yet found no echo in the views of Chen Duxiu. Quite the contrary. Later, after we came into contact with Trotsky’s writings, I immediately agreed with Trotsky’s views on the nature of the future Chinese revolutionary state, but Chen Duxiu stood out against Trotsky on this point for quite some time. After Qu Qiubai had returned to Shanghai from Wuhan, the first time he visited Chen Duxiu he asked him to write some articles for the forthcoming Party journal. Far from refusing, Chen sent me numerous items for his Inch of Iron column, all of which I published, in issue after issue. They’re in the recent repeat, you can read them for yourselves. He wrote them under the name Sa Weng, meaning “Old Man Sa”.

He wrote them under the name Sa Weng, meaning “Old Man Sa”. 433 I guess he wanted to say by using that name that he’d never again play any role in the leadership of the CCP. Apart from Inch of Iron, he also wrote some ballads satirising the Guomindang. Each issue of Bolshevik contained one or more of these spacefillers. They were omitted from the reprint series, but I still remember a few lines from one of them: The Three People’s Principles are a muddle. The Five Rights 434 are a mess. Education that conforms to Party propaganda is tyranny. Under military rule, only warlords have a say. In the period of tutelage, the bureaucrats hold sway. The period of constitutional rule is far, far away. 435 Later, I can’t remember when, he stopped writing Inch of Iron, and the verses stopped even earlier. I never learned what he thought of the various issues of Bolshevik that came out. In the first six months after the move to Shanghai, three people were very friendly to me: Qu Qiubai, Luo Yinong, and Wang Ruofei. All of them wanted to win me over, but I kept a certain distance from them. I knew about Wang Ruofei and Chen Qiaonian’s campaign, but I took no part in it. Wang never tried to force me to join them. He knew I’d never gang up with anyone against Chen Duxiu. Not long after the Central Committee elected by the Sixth Congress had returned to Shanghai from the Soviet Union and started work, Wang Maoting, Secretary of the Yunnan Provincial Committee, came to see me on his way back from Moscow and handed me a letter written in invisible ink. Wang Ruofei had asked him in Moscow to give it to me and to tell me how to make the characters appear. I got the two necessary chemicals and mixed them according to Wang Maoting’s prescription. I made the characters appear and handed the letter to Chen Duxiu, for it was addressed to him. Wang Ruofei had asked the Central Committee to pass the letter on to Chen Duxiu through ordinary channels, but knowing that that would not happen, he had made an invisible copy of it and asked Wang Maoting to deliver it into my hands. All I remember about the letter is that it reported on the proceedings of the Sixth Congress and Wang Ruofei’s own reactions to it, and that it mentioned Qu Qiubai’s Zero International and Cai Hesen’s History of Opportunism, both of which it called “shameful documents”. Wang Ruofei told Wang Maoting to ask me to send him Chen’s reply written in the same invisible ink. I was prepared to do so, but after Chen had read the letter his face registered not the slightest reaction, and he did not reply. The reason I recount this incident IS because it shows that Wang Ruofei trusted me completely, and it also shows that at that time Chen Duxiu was still not prepared to take an active part in the struggle. Return to contents UNDER THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE ELECTED BY THE SIXTH CONGRESS In September 1928, the Central Committee elected by the Sixth Congress took up its official duties in Shanghai. The General Secretary Xiang Zhongfa was a puppet: real power was in the hands of Cai Hesen, who ran the Propaganda Department. According to reports, before returning to China Cai had asked Qu Qiubai who should edit Bolshevik. Qu recommended that I be kept on to do so. I worked under Cai just as I had previously worked under Qu, but I got on with him less well than I had with Qu, though we still managed to push our way forward. That didn’t last for long, however. Very soon Cai was toppled and replaced by Li Lisan. I was even less happy about working together with Li Lisan, for he was openly opposed to Chen Duxiu and knew I was a Chen supporter. We not only got on badly: we were downright hostile to one another. There were several instances of friction between us. At a meeting of the editorial board I asked Li to find someone more suited to the job. To my face he refused to let me go, but behind my back he sought the opinion of Qu Qiubai, then in Moscow. Qu decided to send Wu Jiyan back to replace me. As an interim measure Li appointed Pan Wenyu, who had already got back from Russia, to take over from me. So I quit work and lived idly. Chen Duxiu told Peng Shuzhi that if Qu Qiubai had been on the Central Committee in Shanghai, Zheng Chaolin would never have ended up in such a way. While Li Lisan held power, that was exactly how followers of Chen were dealt with. Sharing my idleness were Yin Kuan, who resigned as Provincial Secretary in Anhui; Peng Shuzhi, who resigned as Provincial Secretary in Zhili; 436 Wang Zekai, who’d been active together with Wang Ruofei at the Sixth Congress and had been kept out of a job by the Central Committee Liu Bojian, who had escaped from Hubei, where he had been Provincial Secretary, to Shanghai, but was kept idle by the Central Committee; and Ren Xu, who was in the same boat as Wang Zekai. I and Jing moved out of the Central Committee office and went to stay with Cai Zhende.

I and Jing moved out of the Central Committee office and went to stay with Cai Zhende. Zhang Yisen, the wife of He Zishen, was living in the small room with her baby daughter, not yet weaned. He Zishen himself had been sent to Shandong on Party business, though the Central Committee had at the same time warned the Provincial Committee in Shandong not to ask him to do any “political work.” Not long afterwards something went wrong in the Provincial Committee and He Zishen was arrested and thrown in prison. Cai Zhende was at that time a member of the Jiangsu Provincial Committee. Starting with the Jiangsu-Zhejiang Regional Committee, most cadre members of the committees at all the different levels in Shanghai were Chen Duxiu supporters. After the Sixth Congress, when Wang Ruofei was detained in Moscow, Li Fuchun took over from him as Secretary of the Provincial Committee in Jiangsu and his followers were gradually replaced by Li’s friends; the only two to survive were Cai Zhende and Ma Yufu. In early 1929, the Jiangsu Provincial Committee and the Central Committee clashed. There was a struggle, and the Jiangsu Committee even declared its “independence”. I forget what the conflict was about, but it was personal rather than political. Li Lisan and Xiang Ying on the Politburo had both worked in the labour movement. In 1924, when I had first got back to China, Li was in charge of the labour movement in West Shanghai and Xiang in East Shanghai. They vied with one another to see who could achieve most. Li Lisan won, and became leader of the Shanghai General Labour Union. At some point, ill will grew up between them. By this time after the Sixth Congress, Xiang was on the Politburo but his power and status were below Li’s. I seem to remember that after the Sixth Congress Xiang Ying at first took over as Provincial Secretary in Jiangsu and it was not until later that Li Fuchun got that job. Xiang Ying incited Li Fuchun and the Jiangsu Provincial Committee against Li Lisan. He Mengxiong, head of the Organisational Department of the Provincial Committee in Jiangsu, also joined in the campaign. They asked Cai Zhende and Ma Yufu to see if Chen Duxiu was willing to help them. They especially needed help on the propaganda side, for they lacked people who could write. He Mengxiong said: get Zheng Chaolin. Cai Zhende heard him say this, and told me. Li Fuchun came personally to visit me. At that time I was living in the house of Li Minzhi. Li Fuchun told me about the conflict and said he hoped that I would help the Jiangsu Committee. I said I would. But he added that later he wanted me to take over as head of the Propaganda Department on the Jiangsu Provincial Committee. I took unkindly to that, and did not respond. During those days we Chen Duxiu supporters (Peng Shuzhi, Liu Bozhuang, Wang Zekai, Zheng Chaolin, Cai Zhende, and Ma Yufu) gathered at Cai Zhende’s place to hear Cai’s report on the conflict and to draft some necessary documents. In the end, the Jiangsu Committee lost its struggle after Zhou Enlai took measures against it. He called together comrades from all over China then in Shanghai for a meeting that passed a resolution reproaching the Jiangsu Committee in the name of the entire Party throughout China; at the same time the Politburo met and a majority jointly attacked Xiang Ying. So Xiang and Li Fuchun had no choice but to abandon their positions. The Jiangsu Committee was reformed, whereupon Cai Zhende and Ma Yufu, the two Chen Duxiu supporters who were Wang Ruofei’s friends on the Committee, withdrew from it. During this conflict Chen Duxiu neither egged us on nor held us back. It is especially noteworthy that this time there was no choice but to allow Peng Shuzhi to join in the campaign. A year earlier, when Wang Ruofei and Chen Qiaonian were campaigning on behalf of Chen Duxiu, there was no question of letting Peng join them, and even less of letting him lead them. But now Chen Qiaonian was dead and Wang Ruofei was under detention in Moscow. Cai Zhende, Ma Yufu, and Zheng Chaolin despised Peng, but Wang Zekai and Liu Bojian supported him, so we had little choice but to let him join our campaign. After Cai Zhende and Ma Yufu had withdrawn from the Jiangsu Provincial Committee, the Committee continued to provide for their livelihood and let Cai live in one of the furnished houses at the disposal of the Committee. Cai invited me and Jing to go and live with him. We moved there in mid February. Return to contents THE CHEN DUXIU SUPPORTERS’ LEAP TO TROTSKYISM Cai Zhende and his wife lived on the first floor of a three-storey building and Jing and I lived on the top floor. He Zishen’s wife Zhang Yisen lived in the smallest room with her newborn daughter. Ma Yufu often used to drop in for a chat. After the defeat of the Jiangsu Committee, the Chen Duxiu supporters’ campaign against the Central Committee was exposed. Why were we against the Central Committee?

Why were we against the Central Committee? From my own point of view there were four main reasons. First, the reproaches made at and after the August 7 Conference against the Central Committee represented by Chen Duxiu were unfair. The defeat of the revolution wasn’t Chen’s fault. Chen was simply carrying out the line of the Fourth Congress. Second, after the defeat had happened the August 7 Conference denied it and claimed that the revolution was on the crest of an even higher wave, so the Central Committee called for insurrections and many lost their lives in vain in armed risings, without benefiting the revolution in the slightest. Third, there was no democracy in the Party, and senior cadres were split into numerous unprincipled warring cliques pursuing private ends. Fourth, the Party’s various leaders were not acting in an upright way: they were base in character and morals. And so on, and so forth. Perhaps the other Chen Duxiu supporters saw things differently. In short, the issues we raised in the course of this struggle were all quite narrow and rarely touched on points of high principle. It’s a fact that we failed to grasp those fundamental questions of the revolution; save for Chen Duxiu, we knew very little about the reality of China. If we’d carried on like that then even if the Central Committee had tolerated us instead of attacking us our little group would soon have vanished. On March 18, less than a month after my wife and I went to live with Cai Zhende, officers of the Guomindang’s Public Security Bureau came to arrest Zhang Yisen and in passing unearthed documents in the rooms of our two families, so we were all taken off to prison. Ma Yufu, who had just happened to drop in at that moment, was also seized. The Military Committee of the Central Committee under Zhou Enlai did everything in its power to rescue us, and some social contacts of mine and Cai Zhende’s helped too, so except for Zhang Yisen, who spent several months in gaol, the rest of us left the Garrison Headquarters’ detention centre at Longhua on April 29. After we’d moved and settled down, Yin Kuan dropped in on us one day. Yin was meant to have visited us on the day we were arrested, but for some reason he hadn’t come, so he’d escaped the misfortune that befell the rest of us. Now he started coming regularly again. Probably in mid or late May 1929, he brought some unusual mimeographed documents for us to see, documents of the Trotskyist Opposition in the Soviet Union. They were poorly translated and poorly mimeographed, but still they were intelligible. Yin Kuan had obviously been affected by them. He excitedly introduced them to us. I can’t remember which documents they were, and whether he brought them separately or in one go, but they immediately gripped me. I had known that there was a fierce struggle going on in the Soviet Party, and that at first the Trotskyist Opposition had opposed the faction in power, consisting of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, and Stalin; and that later Zinoviev and Kamenev had somehow allied with the Trotskyist Opposition against Bukharin and Stalin, who in the meantime had taken over. But I didn’t know what the issues were, or even that they extended to the question of the Chinese Revolution. But now I had the documents in my hands. It turned out that Trotsky had publicly pointed out long before the defeat of the revolution that the Comintern’s basic line on the Chinese Revolution was wrong, and that after the defeat of the revolution he had publicly pointed out that Bukharin and Stalin should take the blame for it. It also turned out that Trotsky had pointed out even after the Wuhan debacle that the Chinese Revolution had already been defeated. This was exactly what Chen Duxiu and his followers thought. We immediately embraced Trotsky’s system of thought and steeped ourselves in his writings in order to discover on what grounds he had arrived at these two standpoints. They were not simply derived from his basic theory of “permanent revolution”. He had analysed and quoted a large number of documents, including a copy of the resolution of the Jiangsu Provincial Committee drafted by Wang Ruofei pointing out numerous errors committed by the Central Committee of the CCP. Wang Ruofei had published this document in Moscow and the Trotskyist students there had translated it into Russian for Trotsky. But it was very hard for us to achieve a thorough understanding of Trotsky’s basic theory. In Moscow we (for almost all of us who had now become Chen Duxiu supporters were Moscow people) had studied Marxism and Leninism, but not Trotskyism. We’d known for a long time that Trotsky had a “theory of permanent revolution”, but we had no idea what it said. In the past we’d also applied ourselves to questions like the nature of society, the nature of the revolution, the motive power of the revolution, the object of the revolution, the stages of the revolution, revolutionary strategy and tactics, the revolutionary state, and so on. But we’d studied them one by one, in isolation from one another: we were unable to assemble such a wide range of topics into a single whole, so the more we learned, the more muddled we became. Now, after studying the “theory of permanent revolution”, these topics suddenly sprang to life and became linked together in a coherent system, so they were no longer confusing. After that I dropped the question of who was to blame for the defeat of the revolution and whether the tide was high or low and went on to “indulge myself in abstract thinking”, i.e., to study basic principles and the theoretical aspect of how these various issues hung together. Another issue that attracted my attention while reading Trotsky was his consistent opposition to the CCP’s entry into the Guomindang. In 1922, in France, when the branches of the Communist Youth Party had discussed this question, I’d been against it and got into an argument with Yin Kuan who was for it. As for Peng Shuzhi, in Moscow in 1923, he enthusiastically supported entry. We all quickly embraced Trotskyism. After discussing and exchanging ideas for just a week or two, we basically became Trotskyists.

After discussing and exchanging ideas for just a week or two, we basically became Trotskyists. But Chen Duxiu held out for longer than the rest of us. At the same time as Yin Kuan gave Trotsky’s mimeographed articles to us (Cai Zhende and his wife Wang Tahoe Zheng Chaolin and his wife Wu Ginger, and Ma Yufu) to read, he also gave them to Peng Shuzhi and his wife Chen Bilan, to Wang Zekai and his wife Du Lin, and to Liu Bozhuang. The Peng and Wang families lived together in a house on Chunking Road opposite the high wall of Ward Road Gaol where Chen Duxiu often used to visit them. It was there that he read Trotsky’s documents. He discussed them with Peng Shuzhi, Yin Kuan, and Wang Zekai, and they convinced him. I personally did not take part in those discussions. We were not long out of gaol, and Chen Duxiu did not come to visit me in that period, nor did I go to visit him in his new house. Yin Kuan used to pass between my place and Peng’s, so it was mainly from Yin that I heard about the change in Chen’s thinking. After reading each of Trotsky’s documents, Chen would raise a disagreement, and then they would argue with him; but by the next time he came he would have abandoned his previous disagreement and would raise a new one on the shoulders of their old argument. In the course of his gradual conversion to their point of view, he had never once yielded to them in their presence, but next time he came face to face with them he would raise new differences on the basis of what they had previously told him. And so it went on. The person who put the most effort into winning him was Yin Kuan. But in the end, when it came to the question of the revolutionary power (should it be a dictatorship of the proletariat?), Chen was not persuaded, or at least not wholly persuaded. After Liu Rending came back to China, and even when we and the other three groups were holding talks, Chen still didn’t wholly accept Trotsky’s views on the nature of this power. In the course of this debate Chen not only spoke his views but also wrote them down in articles that he took along with him for Peng, Yin and Wang to read. There were probably seven or eight such articles, all of which I read. None was published or kept, which is a pity, nor was a record made of the discussions. Otherwise we could have used it and the articles to trace the entire process whereby one of China’s major modern thinkers came round to Trotskyism. All this probably happened between the second half of May and the first half of July 1929. The reason I’m paying so much attention to dates and times is in order to dispel some current myths. The most common myth is that Chen was unaware of Trotsky’s views until Liu Rending got back to China with a number of documents written by Trotsky, and that it was only then that Chen came under Trotsky’s influence and became his follower. Actually, by the time that Liu Rending met Chen Duxiu, Chen had already embraced Trotskyism (save for his above mentioned reservations on certain theoretical questions). We followers of Chen Duxiu were by then even more resolutely Trotskyist. Liu Rending reached Shanghai in September. He knew from the Chinese Trotskyist organization that had resumed to China from Moscow – he even knew it while he was still abroad, probably because Trotsky told him – that Chen Duxiu and his followers had already embraced Trotskyism. That’s why he got someone to bring a letter to Yin Kuan and me asking us to visit him in a hostel in the French Concession. We spoke a common Trotskyist language. Later, when I took Liu Rending to my home (on East Youheng Road) to meet Chen Duxiu, they, too, spoke a common Trotskyist language. Liu Rending brought three documents with him back to China: one was the Draft Programme of the Chinese Bolshevik-Leninists, which Trotsky had specially written while Liu was a guest in Trotsky’s house in Turkey; another, called Results and Prospects of the Chinese Revolution, was Trotsky’s criticism of the part relating to the Chinese Revolution in Bukharin’s draft programme for the Communist International; another was an article by Trotsky, titled The Chinese Question after the Sixth Congress, written after the Sixth Congress of the Communist International. The two articles were very long and in Russian, as, too, was the draft programme of the Chinese Opposition. Someone told me that Liu Rending recently told a visitor from the Party History Department of one of the Beijing universities chat the draft programme he brought back to China had already been translated into Chinese when it was handed over to Chen Duxiu, and that Zheng Chaolin later polished it for publication. That’s possible, I can’t remember. As for the two long articles, I remember clearly that we decided that Liu would translate Results and Prospects and I would translate After the Sixth Congress. The two translations formed the text of the second volume of On the Question of the Chinese Revolution. (The first volume consisted of the earlier articles by Trotsky that had come into our hands; it was published before Liu Rending returned to China.) Then there’s Pu Qingquan’s 457 theory. Pu says chat Chen Duxiu first learned about Trotsky’s views from his (Chen’s) nephew Wu Jiyan. According to Pu, Wu came to see Chen Duxiu and us at the end of 1929, after he’d been unmasked as a Trotskyist, sacked from his post, and expelled from the Party. That was even longer after Liu’s return to China. By then Chen Duxiu no longer needed a Wu Jiyan to show him Trotsky’s writings. Before his expulsion Wu had been Secretary of the Central Committee’s Propaganda Department and wouldn’t have dared have dealings with his uncle or with us Then there’s Peng Shuzhi’s theory.

Peng says that he got hold of Results and Prospects and After the Sixth Congress from some Trotskyist students who had returned from Moscow and showed them to Chen. What actually happened is that Yin Kuan got them from Wang Pingyi, 438 Yin gave them to Peng, and Peng gave them to Chen. Peng deliberately obscured Yin’s link in the chain; what Peng showed Chen was not the two long articles but a number of shorter articles, i.e., those collected in the first volume of the Chinese edition of On the Question of the Chinese Revolution. The two long articles weren’t translated into Chinese until after Liu got back from Europe. The story of how the two volumes were prepared and published is sufficient to refute Peng’s theory. Apart from this there are various other rumours, but what I’ve just said is the truth, and whatever does not accord with it should be rectified. All of us Chen Duxiu-ites became Trotskyists, but our motives, goals, and emphases were by no means identical. Roughly speaking, we were of two main sorts. One stressed the practical movement and recognized that given the defeat of the revolution, we should now conduct peaceful and legal campaigns, deeply enter into the masses, strike roots there, oppose the Central Committee’s ill-omened armed struggle, and wait until the mass movement revived before preparing to take up arms again. Absolutely no one proposed disbanding the underground Party. So the charge of “liquidationism” bandied about by the Comintern and the Central Committee was simply slander. The Liquidators in Russian revolutionary history proposed disbanding the underground Party, for in French liquider means to disband or dissolve. It’s a commercial term. If a company or an enterprise goes bankrupt and closes down, it “goes into liquidation.” The words “liquidate” and “liquidator” entered our language through Japanese. What is it that’s liquidated? The underground Party is liquidated, i.e., disbanded. So if no one proposes disbanding the Party, then it’s wrong to start calling people “liquidators”. Some Trotskyists of this variety opposed discussing theoretical questions concerning the nature of society, the revolution, and the state and wanted to confine discussion to questions concerning practical activity and the practical struggle. The second sort stressed theory; they wanted to discuss basic issues of the revolution. But like the first sort, they were not against practical activity. One of the biggest differences between the Chinese Revolution and the early Russian Revolution was that the Russians had only set up their Party after extensively debating and quarrelling about basic issues of the revolution, and continued to do so even afterwards. So the Russian revolutionaries had already clarified these issues in the course of their revolutionary activity, and they all had their own ways of looking at things. The Chinese Revolution was not like that. There was no clear and wide-ranging theoretical struggle before the founding of the Party, nor afterwards either, when we hurled ourselves into the raging fire. For theory we relied on foreign comrades and the Comintern: we trusted them to solve our problems for us. This may be why the CCP was repeatedly defeated. The emergence of Trotskyism in China might have provided an opportunity for steeling revolutionaries in polemic and increasing their knowledge of theory, but unfortunately by that time the Comintern and the CCP were in the rough grip of Stalinism, so the opportunity was missed and only a handful of revolutionaries got a thorough theoretical training. The intellectual preparation for China’s proletarian revolution was far inferior to that not only of Russia’s proletarian revolution but also of China’s own bourgeois revolution. The polemics waged between reformists and revolutionaries before the Revolution of 1911 shook the whole country, that goes without saying; before the Coup of 1898, there were even violent theoretical disputes between conservatives and reformists, between the Orthodox Confucianists and the Modern Text School. In the course of the polemic, both sides relied on their own resources to resolve the various theoretical issues in dispute, and certainly neither of them looked abroad for help, from organizations or individuals. The proletarian revolution is of course worldwide, unlike the bourgeois revolution, which is contained within national boundaries, so the theoretical struggle on a world scale can more or less be substituted for that in one country; but that by no means dispenses with the need for theoretical struggle within the state where the revolution is occurring. In this theoretical struggle Chen Duxiu was active, conscientious, and persistent, quite the opposite of his previous self. Many people had misunderstood his previous apathy. They had thought that he was just pretending, that he was deliberately letting Wang Ruofei campaign on his behalf while he hid behind the screen and pulled the strings. Others thought that he was genuinely apathetic about the revolution and about politics, that he had completely lost heart and given up. But now it can be shown that both suppositions were wrong. Between July 1927, when he “stopped attending to his duties”, and May 1929, when he first came across Trotsky’s writings, Chen was passive because he had not yet thought through to the end important questions of revolutionary theory; by himself he was not capable of resolving the weighty issues in the Chinese and world revolutions with which he was then wrestling. Those at his side, starting with Wang Ruofei, were unable to help him in this enterprise. Only Trotsky’s articles could do that. I don’t have his Letter to All Party Comrades to hand, nor do I have the statement Our Political Views signed by 81 people. But I do have his Reply to the Comintern dated 17 February 1930. In it he says: After the tragic and shameful defeat of the Chinese Revolution in 1927 for a while I was really at a loss as to what course of action to follow since I myself bore a heavy responsibility for the defeat. So I spent almost a whole year personally reflecting on those events.

So I spent almost a whole year personally reflecting on those events. Although I did not thoroughly grasp the lessons of the defeat in time, and failed to discover a new way forward, I am deeply aware on the basis of my own experience that this defeat was the inevitable outcome of the entire political line of the past period. He also says: Because of your deceiving ways and your blockade on the free passage of information, it was not until half a year ago that some documents by Comrade Trotsky on the Chinese question and some questions relating to the Soviet Union came into our hands. It was only then that we thoroughly and systematically understood the true source of the opportunism and adventurism perpetrated in the course of the Chinese Revolution. He also says: At present the main issues concerning the Chinese Revolution are: (1) Will the revolutionary power issuing from the future third revolution be a workers and peasants’ democratic dictatorship or a proletarian dictatorship? (2) Should we now directly prepare an armed insurrection, or should we raise political slogans appropriate to a transitional period in the revolution (e.g. the call for a National Assembly), and struggle for democracy? Trotsky’s writings had a big impact not only on Chen Duxiu but on Communists and revolutionaries the world over. When Trotsky’s Criticism of the Draft Programme of the Comintern was handed over to the Sixth Congress of the Comintern, it was initially kept from delegates; it was only when some delegates demanded to see it that the Comintern, under the control of the Soviet Party, allowed three delegates from each country to read it under the strict injunction to divulge its contents to no one. Many unprejudiced delegates-and even some prejudiced ones-were influenced by Trotsky’s critique and changed their view of the man. According to what someone told me, the Chinese delegation appointed Qu Qiubai, Guan Xiangying, and another person (whose name I forget) to read it. As a result Qu wavered but soon steadied; Guan was even more strongly moved, but he, too, later steadied. As for delegates of other countries, I read in James P. Cannon’s History of American Trotskyism that he and a number of other Americans at the Sixth Congress were swayed by what they read, stole a copy, smuggled it back to the US, and carried out Trotskyist activity inside the US Communist Party. When one of Cannon’s comrades, a militant, heard that Cannon had gone Trotskyist, he travelled from the West Coast all the way to New York to win him back. When Cannon realized what the visit was about, he asked the man to sit down and read the English translation of Trotsky’s Critique for himself. He did so, and stood up beaming. He, too, had become a Trotskyist. Let’s now go from theory to action. Main Document Index | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive Last updated on 23.8.2003

Evelyn Roy The Metamorphosis of Mr C. Das Source: Labour Monthly, Vol. 4, June 1923, No. 6, pp. 363-376. Transcription: Ted Crawford HTML Markup: Brian Reid Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2009). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source. On the eve of the Gaya Congress Mr. Das published his sensational programme calling for the destruction of the Reform Councils, the boycott of British goods, and the organisation of labour and peasant societies with the object of preparing the country for what was termed “the final blow”—a complete and protracted national strike, accompanied by the simultaneous and wholesale resignation of services under Government all over the country (especially in the ranks of the police and army), and a general declaration of civil disobedience in the form of non-payment of taxes. By this series of steps, as outlined in his short-lived organ, the Bangalar Katha, did Deshbandhu Das and his coterie of personal followers propose to restore life to the fast-ebbing nationalist movement and to attain the rapid consummation of Swaraj. This skeleton programme called further for the formation of an Asiatic Federation, the organisation of foreign centres of Congress propaganda to enlist “the support of all lovers of freedom in all free countries,” and for the drafting of a Swaraj constitution which would fully define the goal towards which Indian Nationalism was striving. The country had little time to discuss the project in full, launched as it was within a few weeks of the annual session of the National Congress, whose function it was to adopt a programme of action for the ensuing year. What comment there was time for concerned itself more with that other programme, published about the same time and precipitated upon the country in the third week of December—through the dubious connivance of Reuter—the programme of Social Democracy, drawn up for consideration at the Thirty-seventh Congress by the Communist Party of India. If the bureaucracy had hoped to kill two birds with one stone, to convict Mr. Das of being in collusion with Indian Bolshevism, and thereby damn his programme in advance, as it sought to damn that of the “Vanguard,” it was doomed to disappointment. The Deshbandhu was acquitted by the unanimous voice of his own countrymen of being in collusion with anybody but himself, but it was, nevertheless, considered by those who differed from him that his ideas bordered dangerously near to Socialism, if not dipped in the deeper dye of Bolshevism. His repeated protestations that he stood for the constructive programme, subject to the alterations mentioned above, and his declarations of faith in the revival of cottage industries, as exemplified by the sacred Charka, could not save him from the taint of dangerous heterodoxy. His frequent references to a need for change in tactics made him an object of suspicion to the high priests of orthodox Gandhism, while his apocryphal utterances about the “masses” alarmed the propertied classes and brought him into the limelight of official displeasure. Thus, on the eve of Gaya, Mr. Das stood practically alone with his own conscience; no party had yet rallied to his banner, though the air was thick with speculation. What he said and did may be regarded for all practical purposes as the utterances and acts of an individual mind, undeterred and uninfluenced by party responsibilities and allegiances. All factions awaited his presidential address at Gaya—here was the key which would unlock the mystery of his intentions and reveal the full purpose of the new leader. Negotiations behind the scenes there must have been and were, on the part of those discontented elements seeking a new standard to rally round, but as to which of those elements, exclusive of the rest, would relieve the isolation of the Deshbandhu and elect him their chief, Gaya alone could determine. The presidential speech at Gaya is a monumental record of Mr. Das’s legal mind at war with his poet’s soul. It is the Gotterdämmerung, where the gods of the earth and heavens wrestle in titanic conflict for supremacy. Beginning with an eloquent exposition of historical precedents, a host of facts is marshalled before his thousands of auditors (and for the benefit of the listening bureaucratic ear), to prove the legality of revolution. Then the Deshbandhu proceeds to prove, by another set of historical facts, the utter futility of exercising this indubitably legal right to rebel, and ends in a grandiose and self-contradictory climax, which seeks to demonstrate that India will succeed in doing that which history has failed to furnish any precedent for—the conquest of Swaraj by non-violence, such as will start a new chapter of human relationships and usher in a new historical era of peaceful revolutions. The inaugural address may be taken as the complete expression of the Deshbandhu’s individual philosophy and political ideology, worked over for many weeks with meticulous and loving care. It is likewise the last expression of pure Deshbandhuism, since events following rapidly on the conclusion of the Congress session swept Mr. Das and his personal devotees into the strong current of party politics, where his dominant personality no longer reigned supreme. A study of the Gaya presidential address is, therefore, a revelation of the full mind and heart of Chittaranjan Das, an authentic document of his own making at what may be regarded as the turning point in his career. There is little that is new. His speech at Dehra Dun, the statement to the Press at Amraoti, and the statement of policy in Calcutta appear to have been incorporated bodily in this wider and all-comprehensive document, wherein its author conscientiously attempts to indicate a new path for the national movement to follow.

His speech at Dehra Dun, the statement to the Press at Amraoti, and the statement of policy in Calcutta appear to have been incorporated bodily in this wider and all-comprehensive document, wherein its author conscientiously attempts to indicate a new path for the national movement to follow. Of greater interest than its objective statements are the subjective forces of his own mind that struggle for supremacy, now the cool, reasoning brain of the lawyer, now the passionate warmth of the rebel, and again the imaginative idealism of the romantic poet. In the beginning the lawyer reigns supreme, and Deshbandhu the barrister treats his hearers to a masterly exposition of “Law and Order” as the basis of all tyranny, and the legal right of the subject, as furnished by good historical precedents, to rebel against the tyrannical dictates of this doctrine. His arguments are irrefutable, and one imagines they re intended less for his Khaddar-clad auditors, the majority whom, perhaps, could not understand the language he addressed them in, than for that august tribunal of bourgeois justice and morality—western civilisation and history—that he proceeded later to hold up to such scorn. Here spoke the product of bourgeois English education, quoting English historical precedent to substantiate his country’s claims to freedom, and hoisting the British rulers of India on their own petard, so to speak, by proving from the Revolutions of 1640 and 1688 the legal right of a people to rebel. He concludes this part of his thesis as follows:— This, then, is the history of the freedom movement in England. The conclusion is irresistible, that it is not by acquiescence in the doctrines of law and order that the English people have obtained the recognition of their fundamental rights. It follows, firstly, that no regulation is law unless it is based on the consent of the people; secondly, where such consent is wanting, the people are under no obligation to obey; thirdly, where such laws profess to attack their fundamental rights, the subjects are entitled to compel their withdrawal by force or insurrection; fourthly, that law and order is and always has been a plea for absolutism; and lastly, there can be neither law nor order before the real reign of law begins. To all of which arguments there is and can be no answer, and were British rule in India a mere question of legal quibbling, the representatives of that haughty Empire must withdraw in confusion, and leave India bag and baggage for sheer lack of any adequate defence. But, unfortunately, British rule in India is based, not upon the justification of law courts, but upon the strength of armies, and Mr. Das would have done better to have based his arguments upon the latter supposition, or to have saved his breath. However, having concluded this phase of his pleading, Mr. Das takes his stand on another ground to prove the right of the Indian people to freedom—this time, not by historical precedent, but by “sacred and inalienable right.” And once more, to the confusion of his Christian preceptors, he quotes the Bible, and the words of Christ. Here he warms to his task and plunges into a dissertation on the sacred and inalienable right, not alone of individuals, but of whole peoples, to resist unjust oppression and “to take their stand upon Truth.” For myself, I oppose the pretensions of “law and order,” not on historical precedent, but on the ground that it is the inalienable right of every individual and of every nation to stand on truth and to offer a stubborn resistance to ruthless laws . . . . The development of nationality is a sacred task—if, therefore, you interpose a doctrine to impede that task, why, the doctrine must go. By this narrow bridge, Mr. Das, the lawyer, passes over into the precincts of Deshbandhu Das, the patriot and friend of the country. The realms of dry historical facts are forsaken for that richer field of political speculation and philosophy, already enriched by the minds of Jean Jacques Rousseau and his successors. But the tools of the lawyer are not abandoned—the appearance of proving his point by logical deduction, the falling back upon authority and precedent, this time not mundane but divine. The next part of the address is devoted to an exposition of Mr. Das’s theory of nationality, wherein western ideas and education are forgotten, and the Vedanta school of Spiritual Imperialism is given full play. The patriot, the poet, and the mystic are happily combined, and Mr. Das becomes once more intelligible to his own people as he soars into the realms of metaphysics:— What is the ideal which we must set before us? The first and foremost is the ideal of nationalism. Now what is nationalism? It is, I conceive, a process through which a nation expresses itself and finds itself—not in isolation from other nations, not in opposition, but as part of a great scheme by which, in seeking its own expression and identity, it materially assists the self-expression and self-realisation of other nations as well. Diversity is as real as unity. And in order that the unity of the world may be established, it is essential that each nationality should proceed on its own line and find fulfilment in self-realisation. Mr. Das then goes on to declare that his ideal of nationality must not be confused with that conception which exists in Europe to-day:— Nationalism in Europe is an aggressive nationalism, a selfish nationalism, a commercial nationalism of gain and loss—that is European nationalism.

Das then goes on to declare that his ideal of nationality must not be confused with that conception which exists in Europe to-day:— Nationalism in Europe is an aggressive nationalism, a selfish nationalism, a commercial nationalism of gain and loss—that is European nationalism. And in contradistinction to this horrid spectre he conjures up a vision more pleasing and familiar to his auditors, fed with the same spoon from other hands, that of the new nationality of spiritual India which is to be realised through soul force, non violence and love, and which will save the world. Throughout the pages of Indian history I find a great purpose unfolding itself . . . . The great Indian nationality is in sight. It already stretches its hands across the Himalayas, not only to Asia, but to the whole world; not aggressively, but to demand its recognition and to offer its contribution . . . . True development of the Indian nation must necessarily lie in the path of Swaraj. A question has often been asked as to what is Swaraj. Swaraj is indefinable, and is not to be confused with any particular system of government. Swaraj is the natural expression of the national mind, and must necessarily cover the whole life history of a nation. Nationalism is the same question as that of Swaraj. Here is the transcendentalism of Mahatma Gandhi, highly flattering to a people accustomed to think of itself as a special creation of Providence, and charged with a spiritual mission to save mankind from the materialistic abyss towards which it is speeding. The Mahatma was wont to declare: “First realise yourself, then Swaraj will come of itself”; the Deshbandu affirms: “Let each nation realise itself, then Swaraj will come, the Swaraj of entire humanity.” The soul of the poet had not purged itself of the mysticism bred of solitary confinement nor of the tendency to make politics a metaphysical adjunct of speculative philosophy. Mr. Das belongs by nature to the school of Transcendentalists who have picturesquely adorned the pages of Indian history in her transition from mediaevalism to modernism, and are now rapidly becoming extinct in the march of events. We cannot leave the subject of the presidential address without reference to a few more pronouncements which provide a key to the ideology of India’s new leader. Mr. Das reaffirmed in strong words his faith in the doctrine and tactics of non-violent non-co-operation, and gave as his reasons therefore, “apart from any question of principle,” the “utter futility of revolutions brought about in the past by force and violence.” Taking the French, American, English, Italian, and Russian Revolutions as historical precedents (the ghost of the lawyer still lingers), he proceeds to demonstrate to his own satisfaction, and presumably to that of his auditors, that it is impossible to attain Swaraj by violent means (Swaraj here taken in its mystical sense as described above). Says Mr. Das:— I maintain that no people has yet succeeded in winning freedom by force and violence. The use of violence degenerates those who use it, and it is not easy for them, having seized power, to surrender it. Non-violence does not carry with it that degeneration which is inherent in the use of violence. He seeks to prove this assertion by a hasty and dogmatic analysis of those great historical convulsions described as “national” revolutions, which in the past have ushered in new political institutions to correspond with fundamental changes in the economic and social orders. The vast upheaval in France from 1789 to 1812 means nothing more to Mr. Das than a struggle “as to which of the various sections shall rule France.” He fails to glimpse beneath the apparent clash of individual hatreds and ambitions, the grim struggle between two opposing and mutually-exclusive classes, the corrupt monarchy and decayed feudal order on the one hand, and on the other, the rising bourgeoisie whose allies were drawn from the ranks of the exploited peasantry and city proletariat. Against this struggle the whole of Absolutist Europe ranged itself, for the challenge of the French bourgeoisie was a challenge against feudal absolutism and corruption wherever it existed; and so we find, civil war and terror within, accompanied by invasion, starvation and blockade from without. Napoleonism was the answer of the new social order, determined to maintain itself; and the overthrow of Napoleon, followed by the reaction that overswept Europe, could not delay forever the inevitable triumph of the French bourgeoisie, and of the bourgeoisie in every country. The great French Revolution, the English Revolutions of 1640 and 1688, the American and the Italian Revolutions were successful, in that a new class came to power, shaping its own political institutions in accordance with the dictates of its economic needs and interests.

The great French Revolution, the English Revolutions of 1640 and 1688, the American and the Italian Revolutions were successful, in that a new class came to power, shaping its own political institutions in accordance with the dictates of its economic needs and interests. Modern bourgeois democracy is not the Utopia dreamed of by Jean Jacques Rousseau, nor the abstract Reign of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and Reason proclaimed by the Jacobins—but it remains, nevertheless, the logical heir and successor of the medieval feudal autocracy which reigned in Europe before its advent, and it represents one step forward on the road of progress that will lead mankind to its ultimate goal. The victory of the bourgeoisie over feudalism is but the prelude to another and fiercer class struggle, now being waged, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; which must end in the victory of the latter and the abolition of all classes with the institution of private property which gave them birth. The present-day politics of Europe bears this contention out. Such is history as viewed in the light of the Marxian dialectics, which reads success or failure, not in approximations to an abstract ideal, but in the development of new productive forces and the corresponding rise of new social classes, ideas and institutions. The faulty and shallow analysis which Mr. Das and all bourgeois libertarians bring to bear upon the great revolutions of the past is the result of their lack of understanding of the underlying social and economic forces involved. We can expect nothing better when we read, further on in the presidential address, that Mr. Das “looks upon history as the revelation of God to man.” With such an attitude towards history, where every event is a special dispensation of Providence and not the result of material economic laws, no wonder that Mr. Das fails to draw useful analogies from the great revolutionary movements of the past to apply to the Indian struggle, and no wonder that he declares that India will not repeat the history of other nations, but will offer the world something unique. And yet Deshbandhu Das and his associates are playing out their unconscious rôle as the leaders of India’s bourgeois revolution against the decayed feudal autocracy of the native princes, and the absolutism of the imperial overlord. The Congress and its leaders are but the tools and instruments of those powerful social forces that have been silently developing themselves within the past century—a native bourgeoisie, reinforced by a rebellious peasantry deprived of its land, and by an exploited industrial proletariat, the product of machine industry and a ruined system of handicrafts. The struggle of these social classes for supremacy is masked beneath vague phrases and idealistic abstractions about “Swaraj,” “Self-Realisation,” and “Truth,” even as the struggle of the French bourgeoisie, exploited peasantry and city proletariat was concealed beneath the eloquent perorations on “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das and his fellows, despite their sentimental Utopianism, are the Dantons, the Patrick Henrys, and the Garibaldis of the Indian Revolution, whose unexpressed and as yet half-conscious purpose it is to usher into power the Indian bourgeoisie. But is not Mr. Das something more, one is tempted to inquire, in the light of his eloquent pronouncements on the subject of “the masses,” whose cause he champions so valiantly against the “classes.” Is his role to be not that of eighteenth century Republicanism of America and France, but of a twentieth century Messiah of the masses? How nobly he champions their cause in his speech at Gaya, and on innumerable occasions before and after. Does he not say: — Many of us believe that the middle classes must win Swaraj for the masses. I do not believe in the possibility of any class movement being ever converted into a movement for Swaraj. If to-day the British Parliament grants provincial autonomy in the provinces with responsibility in the Central Government, I for one will protest against it, because that will inevitably lead to the concentration of power in the hands of the middle classes. I do not believe that the middle classes will then part with their power. How will it profit India if, in place of the white bureaucracy that now rules over her, there is substituted an Indian bureaucracy of the middle classes? � I desire to avoid the repetition of that chapter of European history. It is for India to show the light to the world—Swaraj by non-violence, and Swaraj by the people. And how does Mr. Das propose to realise this “Swaraj of, by, and for the people”? By the revival of the ancient Indian Panchayet, or village community, which he terms “real democracy.” According to his idea, “the most advanced thought of Europe is turning from the false individualism on which European culture and institutions are based to what I know to be the ideal of the ancient village organisation of India.” We do not know if Mr. Das confuses, in his ignorance of the facts, the idea of the Soviet system with that of the Panchayet. If he does, we would point out to him that the analogy lies, not between the Soviet and the Panchayet, but between the Panchayet and the ancient Russian village Mir, which like the old Teutonic Mark, constituted the basis of primitive village self-government. Such “ideal” democracies are to be found in the early history of every country, not alone in India, during the stage when agriculture was the prevailing mode of production and the small peasant proprietor was the dominant social class, in that remote past before feudalism, with its complicated social and political institutions, superseded this very primitive stage of decentralised government. It is useless to discuss the kind of democracy enjoyed by these village communities, except to observe that, being founded upon the system of private property, it contained the germ of modern bourgeois democracy into which, by slow and painful process of evolution, it has evolved, through the intervening stages of feudalism. Useless to discuss it we say, since even were it desirable, how were it possible to revive this archaic institution, which may have corresponded to the economic development of our remote ancestors, but which cannot possibly meet the manifold requirements of this twentieth century world in which we live, with its internationalised system of production, distribution and exchange?

If decentralisation is desired, why seek to revive the Panchayet? Its own natural extinction in the process of evolving society is the best proof of its own unfitness to survive. The very desire to hark back to an imagined Golden Age is but an indication of Utopianism on the part of Mr. Das and his fellow-worshippers of India’s mythical past, which savours strongly of reaction. Did not Jean Jacques Rousseau paint in glowing colours the “ideal democracy” of the primitive American Indians, whom those other seekers after democracy, the fathers of the American Revolution, were busily engaged in killing off to make room for themselves and their more advanced institutions? But Mr. Das goes further in his advocacy of the cause of the “masses.” In his presidential speech, as well as on other occasions, he specifically urged the organisation of labour and peasant societies “to further the cause of Swaraj,” and earned thereby the appellation of “Bolshevik.” We reproduce his words on this subject from the Gaya address, in order to discover if such an adjective is justified:— I am further of the opinion that the Congress should take up the work of Labour and peasant organisation�. Is the service of this special interest in any way antagonistic to the service of nationalism? To find bread for the poor, to secure justice to a class of people who are engaged in a particular class or avocation—how is that work any different from the work of attaining Swaraj? . . . We have delayed the matter already too long. If the Congress fails to do its duty, we may expect to find organisations set up in the country by labourers and peasants detached from you, disassociated from the cause of Swaraj, which will inevitably bring into the arena of the peaceful revolution class struggles and the war of special interests. If the object of the Congress be to avoid this disgraceful issue, let us take Labour and the peasantry in hand, and let us organise them from the point of view of their own interest and also from the point of view of the higher ideal which demands the satisfaction of their special interests and the devotion of such interests to the cause of Swaraj. We think Mr. Das should be absolved from all allegations of Bolshevism, and even of a pink shade of Socialism. What he advocates here is pure Hedonism—“pig-philosophy,”—let us help Labour in order to secure their help and to prevent their being used against us. No doubt this is put in such a utilitarian form in order to convince the more bourgeois among his audience—but it is the special pleading of what is at best, a bourgeois Utopian Liberal’s plea directed towards a bourgeoisie more hard-headed, less romantic and unsentimental than himself. That is the essential quandary of Mr. Das—to be a humanitarian bourgeois liberal intellectual, fallen among orthodox Gandhians and “Responsive Co-operators,”—each faction listening critically to all he had to say, ready to follow him if he voices their particular aspirations and unexpressed interests, but equally ready to pounce upon him and rend him to pieces should he violate any one of their cherished traditions or prove himself the standard bearer of a new economic class, which is not yet really represented in those chaste deliberations. We allude to the turbulent class of the industrial workers and landless agricultural proletariat, whose incipient spirit of revolt against unbearable economic conditions constitutes the only real menace to the established order of things in India, and upon whose dynamic power of mass action the Congress seeks to base its tactics of civil disobedience, without committing itself to a programme of economic reform which might antagonise the vested interests behind the bourgeois nationalist movement. The inaugural address at Gaya closed with Deshbandhu Das, the poet and sentimentalist, riding in the saddle of Pegasus, with the discomfited barrister lost amid the cloud pictures of an India reborn, waging “spiritual warfare” against the unnamed foe—a warfare waged by “spiritual soldiers” free from all anger, hatred, pettiness, meanness and falsehood. A quotation from the “Prometheus Unbound” of that other poet-mystic and knight-errant of Liberty, Percy Bysshe Shelley, constituted the climax and close of an undeniably eloquent oration, which equally undeniably is a masterpiece of contradictions and sentimental confusion. The die was cast. It remained for those who had heard to choose sides and elect their leader, either from among the doughty champions of No-Change or the Don Quixote of Pro-Change cum grano salis. The week of discussion and resolution-making came to an end, and Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, “Friend of the Country” and champion of the masses, found himself the head of a new party called the “Congress-Khilafat-Sawaraj Party,” pledged to work within the Congress for the achievement of Swaraj by non-violent non-co-operation, but along the lines of its own programme. This programme, it was announced, would be drawn up and submitted to the public for approval in the early months of 1923. Mr. Das, finding himself and his party in the minority, honorably resigned his post of Congress President, and betook himself to a tour of the country to rally his forces. The principal clauses of his temporary programme, as announced before the Congress session, included the capture of the Reform Councils, to mend or end them, the boycott of British goods, and the organisation of peasant and Labour unions, with the object of declaring a national stake for the speedy attainment of Swaraj. The names of those who rallied to Mr. Das’s side and swelled the ranks of the new party included as a preponderating majority, that group of “Responsive Co-operators” who, in various provinces, had been long and vainly chafing against the leading strings of orthodox Gandhism, and who beheld in this eloquent exponent of “Pro-Change,” a captain who would lead them on to storm the citadel of the Reform Councils.

While the question of Council entry was a secondary consideration in Mr. Das’s programme, the whole issue of the Gaya Congress turned upon this disputed point, and to the new faction which unexpectedly swelled the ranks of the “Congress-Khilafat-Swaraj Party” this question was all-important and supreme. Wherefore we find that by sheer force of numbers they overwhelm Mr. Das, and make this point supreme for him as well. It begins to figure in every speech and declaration of policy as the decisive point at issue, on the part of the leaders of the new party. On the other point—that of the organisation of the Indian workers and peasants—the statement of Mr. N.C. Kelker, one of the Chiefs-of-Staff of the new party, and veteran leader of the Tilak School of “Responsive Co-operation,” is exceedingly interesting. In an article called “The New Party,” published in the Mahratta of January 14, 1923, the first comprehensive statement of the purpose and intentions of this organisation is given from the viewpoint of that rationalist faction which constitutes its chief strength. Mr. Kelker’s views about Labour, as compared with those of Mr. Das’s, are significant:-- The new party will, I think, whole-heartedly favour the formation of Labour unions and peasant unions. And while the formation of co-operative societies may represent its constructive activity, its destructive activity may, if occasion demands it, be represented by the advocacy of Labour strikes for a just cause and the non-payment of unjust taxes or dues by the peasants, not necessarily in the big name of Swarajya, but as a legitimate measure of resistance to unlawful acts of authority. This measured statement of the case comes like a cold douche after the warm-hearted advocacy of the Deshbandhu, and should have somewhat prepared the unwary for a further shock that came towards the end of January in the form of a statement by the first convention of the Congress-Khilafat-Swaraj Party on the “Rights of Private Property.” This statement takes the form of a special clause in the first draft of the party programme that “private and individual property will be recognised, maintained, and protected, and the growth of individual wealth, both moveable and immoveable, will be permitted and encouraged.” This clause, it is remarked by contemporary journals, “seems to have been particularly included in order to counteract the statements made in some quarters that the non-co-operation movement represented a form of Bolshevism.” But the fact that such a statement was published, far in advance of any other clause of the party’s programme is an important indication of the true nature of the men who lead it. It is a frank declaration of class-affiliation and class-consciousness on the part of the rising Indian bourgeoisie, whose special interests the Swaraj Party is dedicated to defend. Under the influence and pressure of this class the school of liberal intellectuals to which Mr. Das belongs, is being willy-nilly converted from the erstwhile champion of the exploited masses, into the protector of bourgeois property rights. This is, indeed, a metamorphosis little expected on the part of those who were carried away by the eloquent speeches of the Deshbandhu in the cause of Labour and the Indian masses, but not very surprising to those who have learned to draw a hard, clear line between sentimentality on one hand, and class-interest on the other. The presence of a class-conscious bourgeois party within the ranks of the National Congress is rapidly beginning to crystallise the political ideology of the non-co-operation movement as a whole. The leaders of the new party are determined to protect their class-interests from the very outset against the rising flood-tide of mass-energy that may some day find an outlet in revolution. The day is fast approaching when Mr. Das must either abandon his own party and the social class to which he belongs, to throw in his lot with a purely proletarian movement conducted on the lines of the class-struggle against capitalist exploitation, both foreign and native, or give up altogether his sentimental effusions about the masses and take his stand unequivocally by the side of the propertied classes. The new party has been captured by a very clear-headed set of individuals who have long been the standard bearers of political rationalism inside the Congress ranks, and who will do their best to guide the movement back into the folds of parliamentarism and constitutional agitation, where they will eventually become His Majesty’s most loyal Opposition. The difference between this “Responsive Co-operation” and the co-operating Moderates is slight indeed. Mr. Das now finds himself in the anomalous position of being the nominal head of a party which will end by negating the very principles of non-co-operation upon which it was originally founded. As he was isolated on the eve of Gaya, a solitary figure of dreams and illusions, so is he isolated now—pushed into a minority within the ranks of his own party whose guidance has passed into other hands. Deshbandhu Das may be no less the friend of the country, no less the champion of the oppressed masses than he was before his spiritual kidnapping by the Responsive Co-operators. But he is caught upon the horns of a dilemma which correspond to the poles of his own temperament—the lawyer in him struggled to escape from the metaphysical toils of orthodox Gandhism and so fell into the meshes of bourgeois rationalism, against which his poet’s soul rebels. He still talks about “the masses,” still dreams of the coming of an Indian millenium wherein peace and prosperity shall descend upon the people through the medium of the village Panchayet. Even in his most recent utterances before the third session of the All-India Trade Union Congress, celebrated in Lahore towards the end of March and over which he presided, he declared:— If the middle classes ever win Swaraj, and I live to see that day, it will be my lot to stand by the workers and peasants and to lead them on to wrest power from the hands of the selfish classes. But ere this day dawns the metamorphosis of Mr. Das from bourgeois liberal intellectual and Don Quixote of the masses into a true leader of the Indian working class must be complete. Evelyn Roy Archive The Labour Monthly Index

MIA > Archive > Evelyn Roy Evelyn Roy The Colonies The Struggle of the Akali Sikhs in the Punjab (13 October 1922) From International Press Correspondence, Vol. 2 No. 88, 13 October 1922, pp. 669–670. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive. Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2020). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source. A struggle whose greatness and potentiality is little realized is being carried on in the Indian province of the Punjab, between the Government and property-holders on one side, and the insurgent peasants known as the Akali Sikhs on the other. This struggle is not a new one; it has been going on continuously, though less spectacularly, for many years. But of late it has broken out in such a form as to merit the august attention of the London Times and similar organs of Imperialism. The Sikhs are a rugged northern people inhabiting the province of the Punjab, of whose population they number about 11%. They are mainly agricultural by profession, the majority being small tenants or day laborers, the number of the latter having swelled enormously of late years, owing to the growing pauperization of the peasantry and the intensifying land-concentration in the hands of large capitalists holding directly from the Government. By religion, the Sikhs are a reformed sect of the Hindus, with a strong military tradition dating back to the days when the Moghul Empire was overthrown and the Sikhs under their tenth Guru or spiritual leader, Govind Singh, established an autonomous military state. The history of this militant sect resembles somewhat the semi-military, semi-religious Christian communities that flourished during the Middle Ages in Europe, and in the manner of living, customs and traditions, is not unlike the Russian Cossacks of the Don. Nine spiritual heads preceded the advent of Govind Singh, who died in 1708, after having reorganized the Sikhs into a strongly militarized political unit and laid down certain principles of religious and social reform which are scrupulously observed by his followers even today. According to his mandate, the Sikh population was divided into two main branches or professions, – 1. The Nirmalas, or Spotless Ones, who formed the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and 2. the Akalis or Immortal Ones, whose first duty was to be good soldiers and who constituted the military defenders of the Sikh State. Every member of this military brotherhood was enjoined to wear the “five K’s”, – the Kes or long hair, to protect head in battle; the Karra, or iron circlet; the Kangi, comb; the Kirpan, a knife or sword, and the Kadi, or short drawers. In addition, each Sikh wears a turban, folded upon his head in a particular fashion peculiar to his sect As time passed, the Nirmalas, whose functions were purely priestly, degenerated into a corrupt and licentious body, fattening on the rich proceeds of the worshippers, and handing on the guardianship of the numerous sacred shrines with their vast landed estates as an hereditary trust to their sons. The Akali, on the other hand, tilled the soil and were forced more and more into the ranks of the agricultural proletariat. Unemployment and their own strong military traditions, forced many of them to take service in the Indian army and police force to earn a livelihood. The Sikh regiments formed the flower of the British defense forces, and in this capacity, have acted not only as the jailors of their own people, but have been freely used to keep other races in bondage, beyond the confines of India. Sikh soldiery served in Europe and were sent to fight in Mesopotamia in the late war, and Imperialism thinks to have found in them an inexhaustible reservoir of mercenaries to carry out its plans of conquest. But Man proposes, and the Law of Economic Determinism disposes. The end of the war and the exigencies of the Indian budget, top-heavy with military expenditures, forced the demobilization of thousands of men who had learned more valuable lessons than manslaughter during their campaign abroad. Every Sikh soldier who returned to his village carried with him the seed of discontent and incipient revolt against the poverty and misery that he found there. This spirit added fuel to the flame that had already kindled the Punjab with sporadic agrarian revolts. The years from 1918–20 are filled with official reports about looting and burning, rioting and killing, on the part of the Punjab peasantry. In 1918, the Sikh League was formed to give political expression to this growing unrest, and in 1920, the Sikh community formally allied itself with the Indian National Congress to win Swaraj by means of Non-violent Non-cooperation, including non-payment of rent and taxes. The Akalis, who were the most aggressive members of the Sikh community, succeeded in forcing upon the acceptance of the Sikh League and the Congress leaders, the prosecution of their program of reform of the Sikh shrines, which they wished to remove from the guardianship of the Nirmalas and Udasis (an older Sikh sect closer to orthodox Hinduism than to reformed Sikhism), and administer in the interests of the Sikh peasants. There are upwards of three hundred of these shrines scattered throughout the province, dedicated to the memory of the ten Gurus, and used as places of worship by the people.

There are upwards of three hundred of these shrines scattered throughout the province, dedicated to the memory of the ten Gurus, and used as places of worship by the people. Up till now, these Gurdwaras, or shrines, have been in the keeping of rich and corrupt Mahants or guardians, some holding their office by hereditary succession, others by government appointment. Needless to say, the treasure and revenue from the vast estates attached to these Gurdwaras, whose annual income alone is estimated at over £700,000 sterling, are vested exclusively in the Mahant or custodian. The program forced upon the Sikh League and Congress Committee by the Akali Dal (peasant organization) was to take forcible possession of these shrines by direct action. The Congress agreed to back the Akalis provided their tactics were non-violent. Thereupon, between the latter part of 1920 to February 1921, several shrines were seized by orderly detachments of Akalis, who would descend suddenly and in a body upon the unprepared Mahant, demand the keys, evict him and take possession. The first to be captured in this manner was the famous “Golden Temple”, which the Akalis took by surprise and proceeded tranquilly to administer, despite the protests and wails for protection from the evicted Mahants. The Government held aloof in the beginning, not wishing to be accused of interfering in what was ostensibly a religious movement for reform. But the deeper conflict between the vested interests of the rich Sikhs and Manants and the direct action of the landless Akali peasantry was soon apparent, and forced the Government to take its stand by the side of the propertied classes, where it spiritually belongs. In February 1921, the whole of India was startled by the slaughter of 130 Akalis who had visited the shrine of Nankana Sahib to attend a Conference called there by the Sikhs, and who were attacked by armed Pathan soldiery hired by the Mahant. Thousands of Akalis rushed to the spot to vindicate the wrong perpetrated upon their brothers, and the forces of the government intervened. Hundreds of Akalis were arrested and sentenced to jail, while the Mahant who had caused the outrage, after being put on trial and condemned to death, had his sentence reduced to transportation for life. This incident united the Sikh community against the Government and made a political issue out of what had seemed a purely religious affair. A bill introduced by the Government in April 1921 for the reform of the Shrines had to be withdrawn because the Sikhs refused to cooperate in its discussion unless all Akalis held in jail were released, and the bill were drawn up according to the dictates of the Gurdwara. Prabandhak Committee (Committee for the Reform of the Shrines). Sikh members of the Legislative and Provincial Assemblies resigned, and one of them, Sirdar Mehtak Singh, former Government Advocate and Vice President of the Punjab Legislative Council, became Secretary of the Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee. The effect on the Sikh masses was instantaneous and alarming to the Government. Every Sikh, man, woman and child, armed himself with a kirpan, which grew overnight from a conventional religious symbol into a shining two-edged sword. Disaffection spread to the Sikh regiments, recruited directly from the peasantry, and soldiers appeared on parade in black turban and trousers, with their kirpans conspicuously displayed. Those sentenced for insubordination for refusing io remove these symbols went on hunger strike; whole companies followed their example. So serious did the situation appear that the Government was forced to make hurried concessions to save its face during the visit of the Prince of Wales. In January 1922 Sikh prisoners were released, the keys of the Golden Temple which had been taken by the Government were handed over unconditionally to the Gurdwara Reform Committee, and the Kirpan recognized as exempt from the Arms Act. The next few months witnessed a steady strengthening of the Akali movement, now organized into well-disciplined peasant societies known as the Akali Dal. Their program was access to land, free of rent and taxes, and their tactics that of passive resistance by the application of Civil Disobedience in the shape of non-payment of rent and taxes, to the landlords and Government. The repression that visited India on the departure of the Prince of Wales, fell heaviest of all on the Punjab. Over 3,000 Akalis were thrown into jail, martial law was declared throughout the province, and the press effectually muzzled to conceal the true state of affairs. Out of this state of darkness, the Punjab has once more leaped into the center of the world’s stage. The Akali Sikhs, after suffering temporary suppression, have recommenced their activities in a more determined and sensational manner than before. The forcible capture of shrines has been again resorted to, in the teeth of Government opposition, and Akali volunteers are marching in bands to the shrines, clad in black turban and kirpan, singing nationalist songs and refusing to obey the order of troops posted on the highroads to turn back whence they came. At Guru Ka Bagh, a shrine six miles from Amritsar, five Akalis were arrested by order of the Mahant for chopping down a tree on the estate of the shrine. They were sentenced on a charge of theft to six months imprisonment and a heavy fine. Next day five more Volunteers were called for and they came in hundreds, then in thousands. The railroads, by government order, refused to carry them, and so they walked, swinging along the high-roads in organized formation, singing their martial songs, and declaring themselves ready to die in the cause. Troops were rushed to the spot to defend the shrine, a cordon of armed soldiers and police was thrown around it for several miles, and pickets stationed on all the approaching roads to turn back the Akali volunteers. The latter refused to obey, and orders were given to fire. At Guru ka Bagh, six miles from the scene of the Amritsar massacre of 1919, more Indian blood has been shed in the defence of fundamental human rights.

The Government has openly declared its position. The efforts of the Akalis to take possession of the shrines will be resisted by all the resources of the state. The sacred rights of private property are declared to be in jeopardy, and a deputation of the mahants to the Government protesting against the action of the Akalis was received sympathetically. A second bill for the reform of the shrines, introduced in the last session of the Punjab Council, was rejected by the vested Sikh interests. It is proposed by the Government to introduce a third one, effectuating a compromise between the mahants and property-holders on one side, and the militant peasantry on the other. Meanwhile, the situation is described as “critical”. Battles are being fought, not alone at Guru ka Bagh, but in other parts of the Punjab, where the Akali bands have repeated their attempts to oust the mahants and put themselves in possession of the temple lends. Such lawless actions form stepping stones on the road to an open agrarian revolution, and the Government sees the danger ahead. The Akali revolt in the Punjab is but one manifestation of the widespread spirit of unrest that has seized every part of the Indian people, and which expresses itself in the case of the rich merchant and manufacturer in the demand for “home rule” and “fiscal autonomy”; on the part of the lower middle-class and intellectuals in the Non-cooperation agitation for “Swaraj”; on the part of industrial proletariat of all the great cities in numerous and prolonged strikes and on the part of the Indian peasantry, from Madras to the Punjab, from Bombay to Assam and Bengal, in riots and risings, in non-payment of rent and taxes, and in frequent bloody conflicts with the armed forces of the state. The ferment in India has many essences, but all are working together to produce, one fine morning, a monumental revolution which will not be a mere expression of resurgent nationalism, but a vast social and economic upheaval as well. In the final reckoning with British Imperialism, it is the Indian worker and peasant who must pay the price for freedom, and they will see to it that their blood has not been shed in vain. Top of the page Last updated on 3 December 2020

MIA > Archive > Evelyn Roy Evelyn Roy Politics Mr. Montagu, Martyr (22 March 1922) From International Press Correspondence, Vol. 2 No. 27, 15 April 1922, p. 203. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive. Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2020). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source. The arrest of Gandhi and the abrupt resignation (or dismissal) of Mr. Montagu, Secretary of State for India, following upon his publication of the telegram from the Indian government urging revision of the Treaty of Sèvres, may have come to the uninitiated as two surprising, but quite distinct shocks. In reality, they were phenomena closely related to one another, and may be designated as twin efforts of a single cause – the present political crisis in England and throughout the British Empire. India, Ireland, Egypt, the hydra-headed monster that guards the golden apples of British Imperialism caught the fever of world unrest and, forgetting its mission, threatened to upset the nice adjustment of world power by predetermined and concerted revolt. Coming at a time when British Capitalism found itself hard put to maintain itself at home, these nationalist upheavals gained in strength from the weakness of the enemy, like a modern Hercules, Mr. Lloyd George devised a means of beheading the monster that threatened the golden treasure and charming the British public into retaining him as their leader. Seizing the Hydra in his brawny arms and holding it in mid-air, he soliloquized: “Ireland is an obstreperous beast too notorious abroad to be tampered with. It will pay to compromise without losing the essentials of power. Egypt can be placated with a modicum of concession; what do we care? After all, a Protectorate by any other name will smell as sweet, and Public Opinion will Be edified by such a demonstration of British justice and fair play. As for India, the other two disposed of, we shall have a free hand. There can be no trifling with the granaries of Empire. Tanks, machine-guns and bombing-plans will soon put an end to this prattle about Swaraj. Dead men tell no tales.” The astute Prime Minister did not deceive himself. In the midst of the general rejoicing over the Irish Free State and the Egyptian Treaty, the groans of unhappy India fell unheeded upon the ears of indifferent world. The decencies had been complied with; British ability to compromise stood vindicated. There must be something wrong with those brown devils in remote India who reach so clamorously for things beyond their grasp and ken. The arrest of prominent leaders and of thousands of obscure patriots, their sentences of long-term imprisonments, the daily calling out of troops to shoot down the striking workers who combined political demands for freedom with their please for economic redress, was almost smothered beneath the flowery tributes of the sycophants who followed the triumphal progress of the Prince of Wales from Bombay to Calcutta, from Madras to Lahore. The outer world did not know, and if it knew, cared not that these trailing sycophants were the puppets and victims of British Imperialism – dummy princes, Junker landlords, bondholders and capitalists, who danced to Nero’s fiddling while Rome burned. Beneath the superficial rejoicing reigned pandemonium; the vast mass of three hundred million toiling peasants and exploited workers who had lain passive for centuries beneath a foreign yoke, had awakened to the tune of quite another piper – the strange, half-mystic call to Religion, Country and People uttered by the gentle prophet of Non-Resistance, Non-Cooperation and Civil Disobedience, Mahatma Gandhi. It signalized the re-birth of many peoples into a single nation, whose poor and exploited masses drew together for the first time across the barriers of race, speech, religion and caste to fight together for a common Swaraj, a common millennium under the banner of a universally adored prophet. Mr. Lloyd George, who seeks to revive the legendary exploits of the heroes of Greek epic in his modern political career, resembles an impudent child juggling with the forces of natural law. Like a cheap political harlequin, he must dance to the tune of his strongest constituents. Ireland and Egypt were the glittering toys to dazzle the eyes of Liberals and Labor; India is the bone he throws to the growling dogs of conservatism. The noble lords must somehow be placated; they too, in the cynical eyes of a political juggler, have their price. A strong hand in India, with Lord Reading at the helm, and in England, a lord swapped for a liberal in the high office of Indian Secretary of State, is a good bargain and good politics at the same stroke. “Montagu and Gandhi must go together,” said the Morning Post. Lloyd George assented; Mr. Montagu had to go, just as Mr. Gandhi had to go, but neither must he be done to death prematurely. The House of Peers was howling for their blood, but then, in India and throughout the Empire more disturbing howls had rent the air for self-determination, independence, freedom. The quaking Empire must first be steadied ere the noble lords could taste their blood. The Irish Free State and “Independent” Egypt calmed the heaving Empire; the massing of troops, the enlistment of Civil Guards and recruiting of armed police solved the Indian situation. Only then was the little brown prophet of Non-Resistance, of home-spun Khaddar and the homely Charka, staunch denunciator of satanic governments, clapped into jail and sentenced to six years’ rigorous imprisonment before the astonished gaze of India’s adoring millions, who waited dumbly like the Florentines before their martyred Savonarola, and cried for “a miracle, a miracle!” And only then was Mr. Montagu deprived of his office, as candy is taken from a baby, because forsooth, the naive infant forbore to consult the Cabinet before the publication of that transcendent telegram from the Government of India demanding, on behalf of Indian Mohammedans, “the evacuation of Constantinople, the suzerainty of the Sultan over the Holy Places, and the restoration of Ottoman Thrace”. Quite as though Indian Mohammedans were inured, during the past few years, to see their lightest whims catered to; and as though Mr. Montagu, a seasonal diplomat if not a politician, on the very eve of the Allied Greco-Turkish Conference in Paris, would dare (without previous sanction) to come out of his corner like little Jack Horner after sticking his thumb in the political plum, and cry “What a good boy am I!” Amid such a display of political imbecility, intended to camouflage the most profound political sagacity, one can only enquire sotto voce, of that modern Hercules, Mr. Lloyd George: What fitting compensation has been offered Mr. Montagu for his voluntary (or involuntary) immolation upon the altar of political exigency? Do you really believe that placating the noble lords by the twin martyrdom of Messrs. Gandhi and Montagu will compensate for the redoubled impetus which these victimizations will give to the Indian movement? Even by throwing this bone to the dog, have you insured yourself sufficiently against the next General Election? Moscow, March 22, 1922 Top of the page Last updated on 2 January 2020

Evelyn Roy Letter to Henk Sneevliet Source: Transcribed from a photocopy contained in the Evelyn Trent Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University. Thursday 4-9-24. Dear Jack Horner[1] � Arrived and was safely met. It is very peaceful here and I like Com. Betsy very much. But I am not peaceful and am feeling not well. Have decided to return Saturday, so do not send me any letters nor should any come. I will come up Saturday morning to your office and we will dine together once more. Best wishes, E. ___________________ [1] Pseudonym for Henk Sneevliet used by Evelyn and M. N. Roy. Evelyn Roy Archive

Evelyn Roy An Indian Communist Manifesto Written: Drafted in Berlin, en route from Mexico to Moscow for the II Congress of the Comintern. First Published: Glasgow Socialist, 24 June 1920. Source: Transcription sent by British intelligence agents, contained in "Nai-HPD, August 1920, File No. 110, Weekly Report of the Director, Central Intelligence, Simla, 2 August 1920—'The Bolshevik Menace'", cited in Om Prakash Ralhan (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Political Parties, Vol. 14, Anmol Publications Pvt Ltd, New Delhi, 1997, pp. 61-65. Transcription/HTML Markup: Juan Fajardo, 2 January 2011. Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2011). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source. THE time has come for the Indian revolutionists to make a statement of their principles in order to interest the European and American proletariat in the struggle of the Indian masses, which is rapidly becoming a fight for economic and social emancipation and the abolition of class rule. The appeal is made to the British proletariat because of their relation to revolutionary movements in countries dominated by British imperialism. The nationalist movement in India has failed to appeal to the masses, because it strives for a bourgeois democracy and cannot say how the masses will be benefited by independent national existence. The emancipation of the working class lies in the social revolution and the foundation of a communist state. Therefore, the growing spirit of rebellion in the masses must be organised on the basis of class struggle in close cooperation with the world proletarian movements. But, because British domination deprives Indians of the elementary rights indispensable for the organisation of such a struggle, the revolutionary movement must emphasise in its programme the political liberation of the country. This does not make its final goal a bourgeois democracy under which the native privileged class would rule and exploit the native workers in place of British bureaucrats and capitalists. All that the world is allowed to know of the Indian revolutionary movement is the agitation for political autonomy. This has naturally failed to enlist the sympathy of the working class in any country, which must always be indifferent to purely nationalist aspirations. The idea of class-conscious rebellion against capitalistic exploitation has been gaining ground in India, immensely stimulated by the war. The quickened industrial life, the rise in the cost of living, the employment of Indian troops overseas and the echoes of the Russian revolution have fanned the discontent always existing in the masses. The nationalist revolutionary movement, recruited from educated youths of the middle classes, tried to turn the discontent to an armed uprising against foreign rule. Since the beginning of the present century, terrorism, local insurrections, conspiracies and attempts to revolt have become more and more frequent until at last practically the whole country came under martial law. These activities did not inspire the masses with lasting enthusiasm: the leaders failed to prescribe remedies for the social and economic evils from which the workers suffer. But dynamic economic forces, which are destined to cause a proletarian revolt in every country, have grown acute in India and hence the spirit of rebellion has grown more and more manifest among the people who were not moved by the nationalist doctrines preached by the revolutionaries. Today there are two tendencies in the Indian movement, distinct in principles and aims. The nationalists advocate an autonomous India and incite the masses to overthrow the foreign exploiter upon a vague democratic programme or no programme at all. The real revolutionary movement stands for the economic emancipation of the workers and rests on the growing strength of a class conscious industrial proletariat and landless peasantry. This latter movement is too big for the bourgeois leaders and can only be satisfied with the social revolution. This manifesto is issued for those who fill the ranks of the second movement. We want the world to know that nationalism is confined to the bourgeois, but the masses are awakening to the call of the social revolution. The growth of class-consciousness in the Indian proletariat was unknown to the outer world until last year, when one of the most powerful and best organised strikes in history was declared by the Indian revolutionaries. Though the nationalists used it as a weapon against political oppression, it was really the spontaneous rebellion of the proletariat against unbearable economic exploitation. As the workers of the cotton mills owned by native capitalists were the first to walk out it cannot be maintained that the strike was nothing more than a nationalist demonstration. It is known in England how this revolt of the famished workers was crushed by British imperialism. But the British working class were misled into believing that it was merely a nationalist demonstration and therefore abstained from taking definite action according to the principles of class solidarity. A simultaneous general strik would have dealt a vital blow to imperialistic capitalism at home and abroad, but the British proletariat failed to rise to the occasion. The only step taken was very weak and of a petty nature—the protest against the manner of crushing the revolt signed by Smillie, Williams, Lansbury and Thomas. This was not the voice of the revolutionary proletariat raised to defend class interest. The bourgeois nationalist movement cannot be significant to the world proletarian struggle or to the British working class, which is learning the worthlessness of mere political independence and sham representative government under capitalism. But the Indian proletarian movement is of vital interest. The tremendous strength which imperialistic capitalism derives from extensive colonial possessions rich in natural resources and cheap human labour must no longer be ignored.

The tremendous strength which imperialistic capitalism derives from extensive colonial possessions rich in natural resources and cheap human labour must no longer be ignored. So long as India and other subject countries remain helpless victims of capitalist exploitation and the British capitalist is sure of his absolute mastery over millions and millions of human beasts of burden, he will be able to concede the demands of British trade unionists and delay the proletarian revolution which will overthrow him. In order to destroy it completely world capitalism must be attacked simultaneously on every front. The British proletariat cannot march towards final victory unless he takes his comrades in the colonies along to fight the common enemy. The loss of the colonies might alarm orthodoz trade union psychology with the threat of unemployment, but a class-conscious revolutionary proletariat, aiming at the total destruction of capitalist ownership and the establishment of a communist state, cannot but welcome such a collapse of the present system since it would lead to the economic bankruptcy of capitalism – a condition necessary for its final overthrow. To all possible misgivings of British comrades we declare that our aim is to prevent the establishment of a bourgeois nationalist government which would be another bulwark of capitalism. We wish to organise the growing rebelliousness of the Indian masses on the principles of the class struggle, so that when the revolution comes it will be social revolution. The idea of the proletarian revolution distinct from nationalism has come to India and is showing itself in unprecedented strikes. It is primitive and not clearly class-conscious so that it sometimes is the victim of nationalist ideas. But those in the van see the goal and the struggle and reject the idea of uniting the whole country under nationalism for the sole purpose of expelling the foreigners, because they realise that the native princes, landholders, factory owners, moneylenders, who would control the government, would not be less oppressive than the foreigner. "Land to the toiler" will be our most powerful slogan, because India is an agricultural country and the majority of the population belongs to the landless peasantry. Our programme also calls for the organisation of the Indian proletariat on the basis of the class struggle for the foundation of a communist state, based during the transition period on the dictatorship of the proletariat. We call upon the workers of all countries especially Great Britain to help us to realise our programme. The proletarian struggle in India as well as in other dependencies of Great Britain should be considered as vital factors in the international proletarian movement. Self-determination for India merely encourages the idea of bourgeois nationalism. Denounce the masked imperialists who claim it and who disgrace your name (of British workers). The fact that India is ruled by the mightiest imperialism known to history makes any kind of revolutionary organisation among the working class almost impossible. The first step towards the social revolution must be to create a situation favourable for organising the masses for the final struggle. Such a situation can be created only by the overthrow or at least the weakening of the foreign imperialism which maintains itself by military power. Cease to fall victims to the imperialist cry that the masses of the East are backward races and must go through the hell fires of capitalistic exploitation from which you are struggling to escape. We appeal to you to recognise the Indian revolutionary movement as a vital part of the world proletarian struggle against capitalism. Help us to raise the banner of the social revolution in India and to free ourselves from capitalistic imperialism that we may help you in the final struggle for the realisation of the universal communist state. Manabendra Nath Roy Abani Mukhetji Santi Devi Evelyn Roy Archive

Evelyn Roy Letter to Henk Sneevliet Source: Transcribed from a photocopy contained in the Evelyn Trent Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University. Paris Dec. 9 [1924] Dear Jack Horner,[1] Got your letter through the comrade. The Com. who came from Hamburg did not bring any news from you. He said that you went away for a few days. Your wavering between �two loves� is quite understandable. As a matter of fact, I am inclined to think that it is better for you to remain with your home movement, provided you do not go too far away from another C. I., as, I am afraid, you tend to do. I am still of the opinion that a serious talk will be useful, although I am still not quite certain how we stand here. We are going ahead with the work. At any rate, I will be glad to see you here in Christmas. The necessary arrangement will be made in time for your trip. I will not write anything in detail, since we will meet soon. I am afraid not much can be done about the comrade you sent. There is no chance in the French party. Then at present there is a great chase after foreigners. Our work cannot absorb any more collaborators just at this moment. Anyhow, I will try if something can be found. He can, of course, go to China any time; but he won�t get much help from the party in this respect also. Greetings, Evelyn ___________________ [1] Pseudonym for Henk Sneevliet used by Evelyn and M. N. Roy. Evelyn Roy Archive

MIA > Archive > Evelyn Roy Evelyn Roy The Colonies Mota Singh, Leader of the Indian Peasants (1 September 1922) From International Press Correspondence, Vol. 2 No. 75, 1 September 1922, pp. 563–564. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive. Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2020). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source. The arrest and conviction to five years penal servitude of Master Mota Singh by the Indian Government, on the charge of promoting disaffection, has received brief mention in the Indian press and still less in the outer world. Yet the Indian Government viewed his activities with greater concern and apprehension than those of Mahatma Gandhi, and enjoy a grimmer sense of triumph now that, after more than a year and a half of effort to arrest him, he lies at their mercy, under lock and key. But there is a section of the Indian people which is acutely aware of the loss of a friend and leader, and this is the starving, many-millioned peasantry of northern India, whose struggles and half-articulate demands for land and freedom from rent and taxes found expression through such leaders, and whose outbreaks of mass action during the past two years, in the shape of riots, insurrections, arson and looting, have struck unnamed terror into the hearts of native landlords and foreign bureaucracy alike. Mota Singh was the acknowledged leader of the Akali Sikhs, that militant section of the Punjab peasants which, under intelligent direction, has been conducting a successful campaign against their own corrupt religious leaders and British coadjutors, for the reclaiming of rich temple lands and their redistribution among the peasant masses, as well as for the lowering of rent and taxes payable to the Government overlord. Organized into a movement of their own class, the peasants of the Punjab were able to formulate a dear-cut program for the redress of their most crying grievances, and to unite together to demand its fulfillment. The Punjab Sikhs being the Government’s main reserve for army recruits, and this section of the population being known for its militant temper, a growing uneasiness was felt in bureaucratic circles over this peasant’s movement, which spread to neighboring provinces with lightning lapidify. Taking their cue from the Akali Sikhs, the landless peasants of the United Provinces inaugurated the Aika or Unity movement, which found similar expression in the formation of village societies united upon a common program of non-payment of rent and taxes, and access to land. Simultaneously the Bhils, an agricultural tribe of central India and Rajhutana, rebelled against their century-old oppression and exploitation, and commenced a series of uprisings which the Government, for all its armed strength, found difficult to suppress. In the south, the Moplahs of Malabar rose in a prolonged and bloody revolt. Throughout the country, since the Amritsar massacre of 1919, a growing peasant movement made itself felt, which responded with enthusiasm to the non-cooperation program of Mr. Gandhi and the Congress leaders, for the sake of the clause about civil disobedience and non-payment of rent and taxes. Joined with the strike movement of the city-proletariat, the popular awakening proved a truly formidable backing to the nationalistic campaign of the Congress extremists, and forced the Government to pay heed to the latter, for the first time in its hitherto innocuous career of resolution-mongering and humble petitioning Some substantial concessions might have been wrung from the foreign rulers, had not Mr. Gandhi’s timidity and religious horror of bloodshed stood in the way. While the latter was beseeching the workers and peasants to abstain from violence to life and property and to purify themselves spiritually for the attainment of Swaraj, at the same time denouncing every manifestation of mass energy as “criminal hooliganism”, the Government, wiser in its estimate of the situation, applied the two-edged sword of amelioration and repression. Amelioration came first, in the shape of land-legislation, hurriedly introduced and rushed through the various provincial legislatures where the peasant unrest was most acute. The opposition of the feudal landlords, the Zemindars and Talucdars, was brushed aside where it could not be conciliated. Some of the most glaring forms of forced labor were remedied, and slight concessions made to the peasants. Repression was visited upon the heads of the middle-class intellectuals who headed the nationalist movement, as well as upon those leaders of the masses, both in the cities and in the country, who had distinguished themselves as constituting a menace to the British Government “by law established”. Among these latter, Mota Singh stood head and shoulders above the rest. A son of the people, a water-carrier by trade, and born in a remote village of the Punjab, he received a fairly good education by dint of great sacrifices on the part of his humble parents. A man of strong build, like all the sons of Northern India, with a quick temper and a warm heart, he could find no settled employment for any length of time despite a knowledge of native languages and a gift for writing, none too common among Indian villagers even of the well-to-do class. In his heart burned the history of his conquered race, the Sikhs, and in his veins coursed the martial blood of a proud and soldierly people. All about him, in his everyday life, he witnessed the slow degeneration and decay of a once stalwart peasantry, evicted from its land by the money-lender and landlord, usually the Government at one and the same time, and forced either into the ranks of the Indian army, where for a miserable monthly pittance they assisted in the subjugation of their own kith and kin, or into the ranks of that greater army, daily increasing, of the landless agricultural worker, drifting about the countryside in search of seasonal employment, unable to buy for himself and his family a full meal a day, from one year’s end to the other.

The daily misery of his people ate into his thoughts, but these found no outward expression until the dramatic march of the northern peasantry on that April day in 1910, to Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, to protest against the passing of the Rowlett Bill which placed all India under martial law. The peaceful demonstration ended in the massacre of hundreds and the wounding of thousands of innocent people at the hands of a terror-stricken and cowardly government. Thenceforth, Mota Singh became a rebel, who went about the countryside preaching open resistance to the foreign rulers, and organizing the peasantry for a revolution which would end their sufferings and bring about new conditions. He was no follower of passive resistance; if he adopted the slogan of non-cooperation, it was because he saw the need for united effort on the part of the entire people, and like a disciplined soldier, he closed ranks under the banner of Mahatma Gandhi and the National Congress which promised Swaraj for India with land free of rent and taxes to all. It was thus that he and his simple followers interpreted the words of the Congress leaders who bid them join the national struggle. In November 1920, the order for the arrest of Mota Singh was issued, but there was none in the regions of his native province who dared to execute the mandate. His Akali banas numbering more than one hundred thousand men, rallied to their leader. A strong body guard was provided for him, and for a year and a half, Mota Singh moved about Northern India, now appearing suddenly on some public platform, where he would make a dramatic speech, now disappearing into the wilderness of the frontier territories, or merging into the vast, unfathomable sea of Indian villagers, who welcomed their chief amongst them and protected him to a man, against the evil intentions of the police. Mota Singh spoke to the Indian peasant about non-payment of rent and taxes, and the overthrow of British rule. But after 1921, while still evading arrest, a new development appeared in his speeches and writings. In November 1921 he made a dramatic appearance at the great annual fair held in Nankana Sahib, a holy shrine of the Sikhs, and delivered a stirring speech of more than three hours duration, which held his simple village auditors spellbound. He spoke not only of the overburdened life of the peasant, of the necessity of organization to resist the payment of rent and taxes, and the evils of British rule, but dwelt at length on the system which underlay it all, the system of private property, which he stigmatized as the true cause of all the wretchedness of the Indian workers and peasants. It was necessary, he said, to make war al one and the same time, against both the foreign government and the native landlords and capitalists who upheld it. His words were listened to with rapt attention. Police officers who were called to the spot by news of Mota Singh’s presence, tried to arrest him, but the people surrounded their leader, defended him from the police with their kirpans, the short daggers worn by the Sikhs as a religious symbol, and bore him off to a place of safety. The zealous defenders of law and order were powerless to touch this popular hero. Mota Singh continued in liberty until June of this year. He roamed throughout the northern provinces of India, preaching doctrines of simple Communism, learned practically from the hard life of his people, and made clear to him by the distant echoes of the great Russian Revolution, which woke the East from its age-long slumbers. Hiding in distant villages, moving from place to place, he still managed to conduct the Akali movement from his hiding places, speaking, writing and organizing with great zeal. Up to the moment of his arrest, he was editing a newspaper and contributing articles to many others, besides doing much translation work and active propaganda. News was brought to the police that he was revisiting his native village, and a whole posse was sent down to surround the place. The police found every house deserted. None knew of the whereabouts of Mota Singh. All denied his presence there. A house to house search commenced, and the village was surrounded by a police-cordon to prevent the escape of anyone. At length a man was observed on the outskirts of the place, clad in a loin-cloth, a black turban and a kirpan, claiming to belong to another village. He was detained, and identified by the Chief Inspector as Mota Singh. The latter, upon recognition, admitted his identity and was led off to jail by the authorities. As a non-cooperator, Mota Singh declined to defend himself in the law-courts of the British Government, and was sentenced to five years imprisonment on the evidence presented in court from his own speeches and writings. The whole world knew of Gandhi’s arrest and conviction, but very few know of Mota Singh; yet Gandhi belongs already to a stage of Indian history that is past, while Mota Singh belongs to the future. He is the type of new leader that is springing up throughout the length and breadth of India, straight from the lives and pressing needs of the people, knowing their sufferings and filled with an unbending determination to end them by any means within their power. Mota Singh lies in prison, but his spirit walks abroad among the Indian workers and peasants, who will rear up new leaders in his likeness to break their chains of slavery.

Mota Singh lies in prison, but his spirit walks abroad among the Indian workers and peasants, who will rear up new leaders in his likeness to break their chains of slavery. The international fellowship of workers throughout the world greet Mota Singh as one of them. Top of the page Last updated on 31 August 2020

Evelyn Roy Indian Political Exiles in France Source: Labour Monthly, Vol. VII, April 1925, No. 4. Transcription/HTML Markup: Brian Reid Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2007). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source. THE increasing severity with which Indian political exiles are treated in French territory leads one to believe that it is due to the policy of close co-operation entered into between the French and British Governments since the advent of the Conservatives to power in Great Britain. Three such cases have been brought to our attention in the past few weeks, and a fourth one has just been added. The first and most shocking is the expulsion front France of Manabendra Nath Roy, political exile and well-known revolutionary from British India, whose writings and organising activities have done so much to bring India into close touch with the outside world, and whose ideology has deeply impressed itself upon the Indian liberation movement, especially during the past four years. Manabendra Nath Roy has been actively associated with the nationalist and revolutionary movement in India since the age of fourteen years, that is to say, twenty years of his life have been dedicated to the cause of the suffering millions there. Severely persecuted on account of his activities by the British Indian Government, he was several times imprisoned and finally forced to escape in 1915 to avoid a heavy punishment. Since that time he has continued his activities on behalf of his country by means of writing, organising and arousing public opinion in various countries on behalf of his country’s cause. He is the author of several books—India in Transition, One Year of Non-Co-operation, India’s Problem, What Do We Want? and Political Letters—all severely prohibited in India. He came to Europe in 1920, and has travelled extensively in nearly every European country, his life tormented by the ceaseless activities of the British Secret Service, which has dogged his footsteps from the Orient to America, from America to Europe. The German Government, acting under British pressure, issued an order for his arrest in 1923, but he left Germany before it was executed and took up his residence in Switzerland. Here, also, pressure was brought to bear to bring about his expulsion, which was refused by the Swiss Government. He came to France in July of 1924, after the Herriot Government came to power,; hoping to find here a wider field of activity and a safe refuge on the soil of France. His expulsion, executed on January 30, can only be attributed to British pressure brought to bear upon the French Government, which has refused him the right to remain on French soil. A very ugly feature of his expulsion lies in the fact that reports were telegraphed out to India by Reuter, from an obviously inspired source, on February 6, “That M. N. Roy was on his way from France to India, under arrest on a warrant issued in India against him as a result of the Cawnpore Conspiracy Trial.” It appears that only a slight miscalculation of time prevented the British authorities from seizing him and putting him aboard a steamer bound for India, before any public protest could be made, or any preventive action taken on the part of his friends. The manner of his arrest and expulsion bears this supposition out. M. N. Roy was taken in the street, on photographs and information supplied by Scotland Yard; he was hustled to the nearest local police station by a detective and three policeman, without any warrant of arrest being shown to him, nor any proof of identity being provided. From there he would have been taken to the frontier without further formality had not the impatience of the detective to get rid of him obliged him to send his victim to the Prefecture of Police, where the writ of expulsion was executed with the same brutal haste. His demand for a delay of twenty-four hours, in order to arrange his affairs and to consult a lawyer, was roughly denied; he was not allowed to communicate with anyone before his departure, and was sent under escort to the frontier by the first train His wife, who was arrested with him, was kept in detention until his departure, without being allowed to see or speak with anyone. He was told by the detective who arrested him that he was going to be sent to England. The fact that he was sent to Luxembourg only shows that a country was selected where his abduction by British Secret Police would be an easy matter, His escape may be regarded as a miracle of good luck. The other cases which have been brought to our attention of the persecution of Indian political exiles at the hands of the French authorities include two refugees in the French colonies of Pondicherry and Chandernagore. Mr. R. C. L. Sharma, political refugee from British India since before the war, has been constantly harassed by the French and British Secret Police, acting in common. In September-October, 1924, he received a verbal order to leave French territory without delay, no reason being given. Through his lawyer, he was able to secure a delay by demanding a written order from the Governor, who gave him the choice of leaving French territory or going to live in a small village o� the interior, Canouvapeth. Here he has lived for the past six months, closely watched by the French and British Police, unable to leave without authorisation. No offence against French law has been alleged against him; he has done nothing to justify these arbitrary measures. At British instigation, the introduction, distribution and circulation of literature printed in English and freely circulated in Great Britain is severely prohibited in French India, because in these publications the truth about British rule in India is told. A third case, now occupying the attention of the Indian public, is that of Mr.

A third case, now occupying the attention of the Indian public, is that of Mr. Moti Lal Roy, political exile in Chandernagore from British India, the founder of an Ashram or religious school, and editor of a newspaper Prabartak. Mr. Mod Lal Roy is a highly religious man, whose pupils revere him as a “guru” or spiritual teacher. Besides religious instruction, his school aimed to teach the students to become self-supporting in after-life. He is the author of several religious books, and of Hundred Years of Bengal, proscribed in British India. At the instigation of the British-Indian government, the French authorities of Chandernagore suddenly began prosecuting Mr. Roy. He was called before the local Administrator and severely interrogated about his activities, in rude and insulting language. His school was searched, its pupils subjected to cross examination by the police, and his paper suspended. We will quote his own appeal to French public opinion at this unmerited treatment:— The great determination that for the last fifteen years has led me to dedicate myself to the service of God and country; the fire of sacrifice which has consumed my all, while ceaselessly labouring and waiting for its fruition; if all this is deemed to mean nothing else but a disturbance of law and order in the land, then must I not declare from the housetops that even the path of true self-discovery for this nation is closed, and its sadhana (realisation) of manhood in danger, Should I not then, even at the cost of my very life, demonstrate that a pure, blameless seat of religious culture is being made the target for destruction by the power of Europe priding itself upon its twentieth-century civilisation; that the sword of oppression hangs not only over British India, challenging the national manhood there, but the same menace shadows the face of French India was well? I appeal to the French nation, who preached the gospel of Equality, Freedom and Fraternity—to the national leaders and to my countrymen, and hereby draw their attention to see that the holy seat of national culture and spiritual sadhana is not endangered or baffled in its object under the ban of unjust oppression. We believe that the French people, once aware of these wrongs inflicted upon the sons of India who are struggling to free their country from one of the blackest tyrannies in history, will demand the protection of those exiles who have sought refuge from British persecution on the soil of France or her colonies. The position of Indian political refugees is seriously menaced; it lies with the French people who still believe in the rights of man to demand their protection at the hands of the French Government. Paris, March 10, 1925 The following letter has been addressed by M. N. Roy to the French “Ligue des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen,” in protest against his expulsion from France (described in the article above). SIRS, Permit me to submit the following facts for your consideration, thinking that they demand an intervention on your part. On January 30 I was arrested in Paris in fulfilment of an order of expulsion signed by the French Ministry of the Interior on January 3, and was immediately conducted to the frontier, without having been informed of the reasons for my expulsion, and without being given the means to consult a lawyer for my defence. Thus, by one stroke of the pen, the right of asylum for Indian political refugees has been destroyed, and with this right, the idea which Indian revolutionaries hold, that France is the home of Liberty and Democracy for all the oppressed peoples of the world. I appeal to the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme to obtain redress, and to this end I shall briefly recount the facts. For twenty years, that is to say since the age of fourteen, I have fought in the ranks of Indian revolutionaries to free ourselves from foreign rule. My activity, dedicated to the cause of the 320,000,000 oppressed people of my country, has brought upon me, as upon all Indian revolutionaries, the brutal persecution of the English police. I have been imprisoned several times. In 1915, I was forced to fly from India to escape the extreme penalty of the so-called “law” which holds the Indian people in their present state of slavery. The British police have not left me in peace, even in my exile. They have pursued me step by step, from one country to another, from Java to Japan, from China to the Philippines, to America, to Mexico and through most of the countries of Europe. Having taken refuge in Mexico in 1917, President Carranza, then at the head of the Government, gave me protection, and twice refused a demand for my expulsion presented by the British authorities. The exigencies of a revolutionary life have forced me on several occasions to adopt different names. The sympathy of the Mexican people and Government enabled me to live and travel with a Mexican name, which protected me to a certain extent since 1919, when I left for Europe with my wife. Since that time, we have lived and travelled in most of the European countries, writing, studying, organising and making propaganda for the liberation of India. We left Switzerland for France in 1924, and have lived here six months, working for our cause, without ever mixing ourselves in the internal politics of this country. My expulsion can only be attributed to foreign pressure brought to bear upon the French Government, as it was brought to bear upon the American, Mexican, German and Swiss Governments. The French authorities know whence this pressure comes, but it is difficult to believe that France has voluntarily agreed to become an instrument of British Imperialism. My case is not the only one. Acting under British pressure, the Government of M. Poincaré expelled and interned Indian political exiles who had sought asylum in Pondichery and Chandernagore. Two such cases were brought before the attention of the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme during the summer of 1924. Can the revolutionary traditions of the great French people accept such acts of oppression against Indian political refugees, seeking shelter from British persecution on French soil? In the name of all Indian revolutionaries, I call your attention to this violation of the right of asylum, and demand the annulation of the order of expulsion against me, and the right to enter and to live in France. With assurances of the highest esteem, I remain, Very truly yours, (Signed) MANABENDRA NATH ROY. Luxembourg, February 1, 1925. Evelyn Roy Archive