The Debates on Revolution in China
News of Comintern debates apparently reached Chinese revolutionaries in the course of 1927 and induced similar debates there which no doubt fed upon the prevalent uncertainty and conflict over the course the Chinese revolution should take. We are familiar with the nature of those debates only in the form they were expressed from 1928.[28] The controversy in China was complicated from the beginning by the presence of a left KMT position which disagreed with that of the Communists and, presenting an alternative, instigated the further elaboration of the two Communist standpoints. Moreover, all three groups, perceiving the problem not from Moscow but from China, shifted the emphases of the Comintern leaders in new directions.
In his 1932 history, Wang I-ch'ang identified three positions on Chinese society in the "reevaluation period" that lasted from
[27] G. Zinoviev, "Theses on the Chinese Revolution," April 15, 1927. In Problems , p. 316. The greatest advocate of this view was K. Radek, who will be discussed in the next chapter.
[28] T'ao Hsi-sheng told me in our interview in 1969 that the revolutionaries in Wuhan were aware of the views of Stalin, Trotsky, Bukharin (who defended Stalin's views), and K. Radek, and conducted a debate of their own through pamphlets. Wang I-ch'ang also reports that K. Radek's lectures on China in Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow were known as early as 1927, even though they were not printed in book form until 1928. Wang, "Chung-kuo she-hui shih lun shih," p. 21.
1928 until 1932. According to Wang, two of these positions were represented by journalistic clusters while the third one lacked an organizational focus and found expression in the works of individual authors.[29] Wang I-ch'ang's classification — which has also been accepted by other authors of historical materialism in China — was not free of fault but it provided an accurate description of the divisions over the problem of revolution among revolutionary intellectuals following the debacle of 1927.[30]
According to Wang, the first standpoint represented the radical KMT position on Chinese society and was publicized in journals of the "New Life Group" (Hsin sheng-ming p'ai), which included the journal whose name identified the group, Hsin sheng-ming yueh-k'an (New Life Monthly) as well as the Tung-fang tsa-chih (Eastern Miscellany), Ko-ming p'ing-lun (Revolutionary Critic), and a number of lesser and short-lived journals such as the Shuang shih (Double Ten) and Ch'ien-chin (Forward).[31] The contributors to these journals included some of the most eminent members of the KMT left such as Ch'en Kung-po, who edited the Ko-ming p'ing-lun, and Ku Meng-yu, who was the editor of Shuang shih .[32] But the name that acquired the greatest prominence in the defense of the left KMT position through his social-historical analyses was T'ao Hsisheng. His own name came to describe this position among its opponents, who frequently referred to "T'ao Hsi-shengism" (T'ao Hsi-sheng chu-i ) in their critiques of left KMT view of Chinese society and history.[33]
[29] Ibid., pp. 22–24.
[30] Namely because it is more difficult to classify some journals than others — for example, the Tung-fang tsa-chih, which was not a political journal in the sense that the other journals cited here were. And, of course, the people that Wang included in the various groupings sometime wrote for journals of another grouping. The Hsin sheng-ming (hereafter HSM) published articles both by T'ao and his major opponent at this time, Chu P'ei-wo, and Kuo Mo-jo contributed to the Tung-fang tsa-chih . With this proviso, however, Wang's classification is satisfactory.
[31] Wang, ibid., p. 22.
[32] Ch'en Kung-po and Ku Meng-yu were leaders of the "reorganization" faction of the KMT, established in the winter of 1928 to promote the principles put forth in the KMT reorganization of 1924 that also initiated the United Front. For further discussion of their political position, see Dirlik, "Mass Movements and the Left Kuomintang."
[33] See editorial in Shih Huo (Food and Commodities), 2.11 (November 1, 1935).
Wang described the journals which represented the official Communist party position as the "New Thought Tide Group" (Hsin ssu ch'ao p'ai) after the journal of that name which provided the most rigorous analyses (especially in a special issue often referred to in the Controversy). Other journals in this group were Ssu-hsiang yueh-k'an (Thought Monthly), Shih-chieh yueh-k'an (The World Monthly), and Mo-teng ch'ing-nien (Modern Youth). The most prominent names to appear in these journals were those of Kuo Mo-jo, Li Li-san, P'an Tung-chou, and Wang Hsueh-wen.[34] These authors all defended the official Stalinist line on the Chinese revolution, which the Communist party accepted after 1927. Briefly, according to Wang I-ch'ang, they argued the position that Chinese society was a "special" society, but they quickly turned to the defense of the view that China was feudal.[35] Their views were opposed by the Trotskyires, who were relatively quiet in print until 1929, when they were finally expelled from the Communist party. Following their expulsion, the Trotskyites began to publicize their own analyses of Chinese society. The two authors that provided the most thorough analyses (though they were also opposed to each other!) were Jen Shu and Yen Ling-feng.[36] The Trotskyites also
[34] Wang, "Chung-kuo she-hui shih lun shih," pp. 22-23. Wang Hsueh-wen and P'an Tung-chou were often taken as the representative authors of this group. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find any information of significance on these two authors.
[35] Ibid., pp. 30–31.
[36] The two books were Jen Shu's Chung-kuo ching-chi yen-chiu hsu-lun (Introduction to the Examination of the Chinese Economy) (Shanghai, 1932) and Yen Ling-feng's Chung-kuo ching-chi wen-t'i yen-chiu (Examination of the Chinese Economic Problem) (Shanghai, 1931). Little is known about these two authors, especially Jen Shu whom some readers of the Tu-shu tsa-chih took to be Ch'en Tu-hsiu (see editor's note, TSTC , 1.4–5). Even fellow Trotskyite Yen was in the dark about his identity. In a letter to the editor in TSTC , 2.2–3, Jen announced that he was no other than Jen Shu. Apparently he had been a factory worker, joining the revolution between 1925 and 1928 when he was involved with the Central Peasant Bureau (Chung-yang nung-min pu). He left China in 1928, presumably for Moscow. In the same issue, Wang Li-hsi stated that Jen had not been heard from since early 1932 and inquired about his whereabouts. Yen Ling-feng went to Canton in 1926 but left in October for Moscow, dissatisfied with what he found in Canton. He was apparently disillusioned in Moscow also and returned to China after graduating from the Tung-fang (Eastern) University. He went into teaching for awhile and then served the KMT in a number of consultative positions, which has continued to this day in Taiwan. For Yen's intellectual development before 1926, see his "Wo yu she-hui k'o-hsueh" (Social Science and I), TSTC , 3.1:1–44. I am indebted to Richard Kaganfor information on Yen's present career. The Trotskyites, it should be evident, did not constitute a cohesive group similar to the others, although they were occasionally referred to as the "Tung-li p'ai" after the journal of that name.
published a short-lived journal of their own, Tung-li (Der Motor) in 1930, but their most important contributions to historical analysis appeared after 1931 in the Tu-shu tsa-chih, which many of them supported in opposition to the Communist party.
The opposing views of these three groups defined the limits of controversy after 1927. China was predominantly feudal, with imperialism supporting (or perpetuating) the feudal social structure in China; or China was predominantly capitalist, with imperialism, by its very nature, helping the development of capitalist forces in Chinese society (or, more often, of the bourgeoisie); or China was neither feudal nor capitalist but a society where the ambiguity of the class structure had enabled parasitic political forces of a feudal nature to retain their power, with these forces, at the same time, serving the cause of imperialists.
The debate was initiated by supporters of the third view — left KMT radicals associated with Wang Ching-wei after the autumn of 1927, who felt that the revolutionary promises of the 1924 party reorganization and the United Front had been betrayed both from the right and the left in 1927.[37] These non-Communist radicals started to wage a theoretical struggle from 1928, purportedly in a final effort to keep the revolution alive against rightist encroachment and to prevent its dissolution into anarchy under leftist pressure. It was the challenge of their social analysis, which dominated the scene at the end of the decade, that gradually forced the Communists to define their own position. Their evaluation of the various strategies of revolution in terms of social structure, even if rigid, raised revolutionary polemics to a new level of sophistication.
Kuomintang Dissenters and the Chinese Revolution: KMT leftists continued after 1927 to describe the dominant powers of
[37] Dirlik, "Mass Movements and the Left Kuomintang."
Chinese society as "feudal." Unlike the Communists but very much in the spirit of pre-1927 premises, they relegated the "feudal forces" to the superstructure of society. They argued that the feudal system in China had disappeared long ago, from about the middle of the Chou dynasty (1122-255 B.C .) under the impact of commerce.[38] But though feudalism had come to an end as a system at that time, China, unlike Europe at the end of the medieval period, had never completed the transition to the next historical stage of capitalism and had remained suspended in a transitional stage. The economy throughout this period had been dominated by agriculture, subject to the chronic disintegrative function of commercial capital. The major characteristic of Chinese society in this long transitional period had been the ambiguity of its class structure. The developments in Chou that had brought about the downfall of feudalism had led to the fusion of landed wealth and commercial capital so that a new economic elite had arisen which simultaneously invested in land and engaged in mercantile and usurious activities. Commerce, an impetus to capitalist development in the West, had subsisted in China on the exploitation of land and the mediation of regional specialization, with little incentive for the development of productive forces. This had produced pernicious results. Commercial capital, constantly encroaching on land, had served to periodically concentrate landownership and impoverish the peasants, leading to the disorders of dynastic changes. It had furthermore perpetuated disunity, as it had a stake in regional differences of production.[39]
The Marxist theory of society expects the political superstructure to reflect the interests of the dominant class in society — at least on ordinary occasions. KMT Marxists were well
[38] T'ao Hsi-sheng, Chung-kuo she-hui chih shih ti fen-hsi (Analysis of the History of Chinese Society hereafter Fen-hsi ) (Shanghai, 1929), p. 26. Also see Yu Chih, pseud. Ku Meng-yu, "Nung-min yu t'u-ti wen-t'i" (The Peasantry and the Land Question) in T'ao Hsi-sheng (ed.), Chung-kuo wen-t'i chih hui -ku yu chan-wang (The Chinese Question: Retrospect and Prospect) (Shanghai, 1930), pp. 261–262.
[39] Many of T'ao's early writings deal with the question of commercial capital in Chinese society. For a discussion of the early period, see Chung-kuo feng-chien she-hui shih (History of Chinese Feudal Society, hereafter, Feng-chien she-hui ) (Shanghai, 1929), pp. 41–60.
aware of this requirement but devoted themselves to proving that such had not been the case in China over most of Chinese history. They argued that since Chinese society had not had a clearly dominant economic class, no one group, such as land-owners or capitalists, had been able to establish its control over the state. At the end of the Chou period, the concentration of economic and political power in the same group that had characterized feudal society had come to an end. While the new landowner-merchant class had established its dominance over the economy, political power had passed to bureaucrats recruited from the gentry (shih-tai-fu ), which was an educational and political elite rather than an economic one. The interests of the bureaucrats often coincided with those of landowners against the peasants, and the two constantly encroached on each other's spheres (bureaucrats buying land to become landowners and merchant-landowners entering office), but a distinction nevertheless remained between the political and the economic elite.[40]
The bureaucrats and the military, which overshadowed the bureaucracy in times of disorder, constituted the political elite of imperial China. This political elite, which did not engage in productive activities and on the whole led a parasitic existence, was feudal in nature.[41] "Feudal" in this sense ranged from military-bureaucratic localism to patriarchal family organization and to the dominance of Confucian thought, itself a product of the feudal period. Confucian emphasis on agriculture as the backbone of society was not a result of altruism, as the Confucians claimed, but a reflection of the subsistence basis of the political elite who feared the effects of mercantile activities on their position in society. Merchants, suppressed by this political elite, were never able to develop into an independent class, establishing instead a symbiotic relationship with the landlords.
[40] T'ao, Fen-hsi , pp. 83–105. T'ao regarded the gentry as a status group intermediating between the formally economic landlords and the formally political bureaucracy. He was somewhat ambiguous on this issue, trying to present them as not belonging to any class but sometimes also referring to them as a class. Li Chi, as we shall see further on, criticized him severely for his veiws on the gentry.
[41] Ibid. For the distinction between feudal lords and the shih-tai-fu , see p. 38.
The net result of these characteristics was the confusion of the class structure.
This situation continued into the present century with the addition of a major new external force — imperialism. Whereas the dominant political elite of the past had served the interests of landlords, now this same elite of bureaucrats and militarists, traditionally lacking in national consciousness,[42] served the imperialists and their agents, the compradors who were themselves shih-tai-fu that had managed to develop new skills. Chinese capitalism was still weak in spite of new economic pressures.
Because of the intermediacy of the shih-tai-fu , the capitalist class has a strong shih-tai-fu nature and finds it very easy to ally with military groups. Also, since the development of capitalism was not internal to the Chinese economic structure but was enforced from the outside, the result is that although one sees the establishment of a capitalist class, one does not see the destruction of feudal thought or the success of the democratic revolution.[43]
Not only did capitalism have difficulty growing roots in Chinese soil, but the effects of imperialism, ironically, aggravated the existing situation. China's growth under Western pressure was lopsided; appendages of modern industrialism preceded the establishment of an industrial basis — for example, railroads were introduced before the building of factories and contributed more to China's centrifugal tendencies by increasing the mobility of warlords than they did to the growth of economic activity. The large feudal state of the imperial period now appeared to be divided into many smaller feudal municipalities.[44]
In addition, imperialism augmented the exploitative nature of commercial capital in China. Contemporary imperialism was primarily financial. During the present period, native commercial capital was subordinated to imperialist finance, helping the latter in its exploitation of China. Where once it had been tied to interregional trade, this capital now served to link the
[42] T'ao, "Chung-kuo chih shang-jen tzu-pen chi ti-chu yu nung-min."
[43] T'ao Fen-hsi , p. 42.
[44] Ibid., p. 142.
Chinese village with the outside world. The exploitation of the Chinese peasant, the worst sufferer, stretched from the remotest corners of China to the bankers in New York and London.[45]
While they regarded foreign and Chinese finances as fused together, the KMT Marxists made a distinction between Chinese and foreign industries. They argued that the available finance and the rapidly growing labor force, two preconditions of capitalism, helped only foreign industries, not Chinese ones.[46] As the foreign industries continued to grow, Chinese industries stagnated and, occasionally, even regressed.[47] The causes of stagnation were numerous: the destruction of native handicrafts due to the spread of foreign commodities; the outflow of China's wealth through opium, indemnities, and so on; and the impoverishment of the people, which contracted the market and also increased disorder by providing militarists with manpower. The major causes, however, were competition from foreign industries, the strength of commercial and finance capital, and the disunity caused by the activities of bureaucrats and militarists.
Competition from foreign industries limited Chinese enterprises to light industry while foreigners controlled the more strategic sectors. Chinese industrial development was further hampered by the importation of commodities from abroad. Foreigners who had technical advantages over their Chinese competitors in the abundance of their capital, their expertise in labor and management, and their technological superiority controlled finances and transportation. Added to these were political advantages such as tariff limitations and extraterritoriality, which made foreigners immune to the many exactions that Chinese entrepreneurs suffered at the hands of political authorities.[48]
[45] T'ao, "Chung-kuo chih shang-jen tzu-pen chi ti-chu yu nung-min" (Chinese Merchant Capital and Landlords and Peasants), HSM , 3.2 (February 1930):7.
[46] Ibid., p. 12.
[47] Ibid. See also Ho Ssu-yuan, "Chung-kuo tsai shih-chieh ching-chi ti ti-wei ho Chung-kuo wei-chi" (China's Place in the World Economy and the Chinese Crisis), HSM , 2.5 (May 1929):1–4, and Lin Min, "Tzu-pen chu-i she-hui yen-chiu (Examination of Capitalist Society), ibid., 3.12 (December 1930):1, 11.
[48] The articles dealing with these issues are too numerous to cite. For a detailed discussion of the advantages of foreigners over Chinese, see Chou Ku-ch'eng, "Hsien-tai Chung-kuo ching-chi pien-ch'ien kai-lun" (General Discussion of Economic Changes in Contemporary China), TSTC , 2.7–8 (August 1932):1–69. See especially pp. 50–55 for these issues.
Finance capital not only worked through Chinese merchants to impoverish Chinese society, it also encouraged the flow of capital to unproductive investments. Since industrial growth was slow and erratic, many people preferred to invest in land or engaged in urban speculation where the returns were faster and higher. These were all unproductive, and the capital that flowed into the cities ended up in the hands of foreigners. That which went to the countryside, as of old, furthered the exploitation and the expropriation of the peasant, who was the biggest loser, as was obvious from the decline of agriculture.[49]
Finally, this whole sorry situation was made worse by the disunity of China caused by the uneven development of the Chinese economy, for which commerce had been chiefly responsible. KMT writers, though they isolated the state from social classes, stressed the interdependent nature of the political and economic problems in China.[50] The Chinese economy had a regionally splintered organization. This not only helped commercial capital but also provided the foundation for the political and military power of warlords, who, products themselves of disunity, became its agents. Some writers compared China to Germany and Italy in the nineteenth century where the primary task had been unification and not, as in the case of France and Russia, revolution.[51] Given this situation, KMT theoreticians argued, the most suitable strategy for the Chinese revolution was that devised by Sun Yat-sen. Chinese revolution had two tasks, destructive and constructive. The destructive aspect was to be aimed at the traditional exploiters of society, bureaucrats
[49] T'ao, "Chung-kuo chih shang-jen tzu-pen chi ti-chu yu nung-min." KMT leftists played down the exploitative role of the landlord, blaming exploitation on commercial capital instead.
[50] Some important ones are T'ao, "T'ung-i yu sheng-ch'an" (Unity and Production), HSM , 3.4 (April 1930), and "Ch'ang ch'i ho-p'ing chih chen-tuan" (Diagnosis of a Long Period of Peace), ibid., 3.11 (November 1930); Sa Meng-wu, "Kuo-min ko-ming yu she-hui ko-ming (National Revolution and Social Revolution), ibid., 1.8 (August 1928), and "Ti-i t'ung-i ti-erh sheng-ch'an (First Unity, Then Production), ibid., 3.5 (May 1930), and "Ko-ming yu t'ung-i" (Revolution and Unity), ibid., 3.6 (June 1930).
[51] Sa, "Ko-ming yu t'ing-i."
and militarists, who still dominated the political superstructure, as well as imperialists. Destruction should not extend to class struggle for several reasons. First, because of the ambiguity of class structure, there was no dominant class. Capitalists were weak and suffered themselves from foreign oppression and warlords. Landlords were subject to the ill effects of commercial capital, their only advantage being their ability to pass on their exploitation to the shoulders of peasants; they were not a ruling class as such.[52] Second, China's greatest need was integration. Class struggle would only undermine efforts to achieve political and economic integration, making China more vulnerable than before. As for imperialism, most urgent was the achievement of tariff autonomy and the abolition of extraterritoriality, which were the prime weapons of the imperialist penetration of China.[53]
The task of construction, on the other hand, was to consolidate the gains of revolution and establish the foundations of true socialism. Most important in this respect was to develop productive forces and advance the industrial sector of the Chinese economy. This would establish the dominance of the cities over the countryside (or of the industrial sector over agriculture) and subordinate commercial capital to industrial capitalism, eliminating the harmful effects of the former and leading it into productive channels. Charging the Communists with "consumer socialism" much in the fashion of the Confucian bureaucracy, KMT writers argued that true scientific socialism could be founded only upon an advanced industrial economy. Not class struggle but the cooperation of all patriots to develop China's productive forces was the means to that goal.
Finally, KMT theoreticians, aware of the problem of classes in society, argued after Sun Yat-sen that China's backwardness diminished the significance of classes in Chinese society but that the party should nevertheless take measures to prevent this becoming a problem in the future. The KMT should preserve itself as a mass party, thus not only to guarantee its revolution-
[52] T'ao, "Chung-kuo chih shang-jen tzu-pen chi ti-chu yu nung-min," p. 16. Also Yu Chih, "Nung-min yu t'u-ti wen-t'i," p. 265.
[53] T'ao, "Min-tsu wen-t'i yu min-tsu chu-i," p. 13.
ary purity against militarists and bureaucrats, always ready to sneak into the party as they had been doing since 1926, but also to curb the risk of future class conflict.
Communists and the Nature of Contemporary Chinese Society: Communist disagreement with the ideas of the KMT writers just described revolved around the issue of class. While the latter regarded class struggle as unnecessary and inimical to national integration, Communist writers saw class struggle as a precondition to such unification. The Communists, however, differed among themselves as to the nature of the ruling class in Chinese society and, hence, on the targets of revolution.
The new leadership of the Community party after 1927, in accordance with Stalinist policy, continued to insist that the Chinese revolution was still antifeudal and anti-imperialist in nature.[54] Writers representative of this position in the controversy argued that Chinese society was feudal or, more commonly, semifeudal and that imperialism strengthened feudal forces in Chinese society. Unlike KMT writers who relegated "feudal forces" to the political superstructure, they saw feudalism as the essential characteristic of the Chinese socioeconomic structure, or the relations of production. Mindful of the differences between contemporary China and medieval Europe, they justified their use of the term feudal by arguing that, though superficially there was no resemblance between the two societies, the basic exploitative structure (po-hsiao hsing-shih ) was the same in both.[55] Many conceded, however, that feudalism
[54] At the August Seventh Conference in 1927, Ch'u Ch'iu-pai replaced Ch'en Tu-hsiu as the secretary-general of the party. Ch'u retained this portion for close to a year, after which it passed to Hsiang Chung-fa in the Sixth National Congress of the CCP held in Moscow in 1928. Finally, the second plenary session of the sixth central committee marked the rise of Li Li-san to leadership within the party. These changes, however, reflected no more than tactical changes. Through this period, those who followed the party leadership were referred to as the kan-pu p'ai (cadre clique), whereas the Trotskyites were called the fan-tui p'ai (oppositionists).
[55] The mode of exploitation of the peasant by the landlord, described variously as "noneconomic" or "extraeconomic," was taken by many holding the view as crucial to the definition of feudalism. See Chu Ch'i-hua, pseud. Chu P'ei-wo, Chungkuo she-hui ti ching-chi chieh-kou (The Economic Structure of Chinese Society) (Shanghai, 1932), p. 277.
had been eliminated from the feudal superstructure, and hence that semifeudal was the more appropriate term for describing Chinese society (pan-feng-chien ).[56]
On the other hand, CCP writers did not reject the existence of capitalism in China altogether but restricted it to the foreign-controlled sector of China's economy, in similar fashion to KMT theoreticians. The European section of the industrial and commercial sector continued to flourish; few Chinese were involved in that sector, and even those few were confined to insignificant enterprises which were stagnating if not deteriorating. The transforming effect of imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, did not extend beyond a few coastal, urban areas which themselves had become the exploiters of the vast majority of the Chinese nation.[57]
The dilemmas involved in describing, in Marxist developmental categories, a society modernizing under outside pressure and the inherently conflicting activities of imperialism in such a situation are most obvious in the case of this group of writers, who literally had to qualify every one of their statements with some concession to arguments of an opposite nature. Chinese society in the 1920s was suffering from severe economic and social dislocations. To many, economic breakdown in the Chinese countryside, under way for a century, appeared not as a strain created at least partially by economic modernization, but wholly as the consequence of imperialist aggression and native ruling-class subversion. This impression was magnified by the relative stagnation of Chinese industrial enterprises in the 1920s, after a brief period of rapid growth during the First World War when European activities had been diverted elsewhere. Added to this was the support of foreign powers in the 1910s and 1920s for one or other of the warlord-bureaucratic
[56] Li Li-san, "Chung-kuo ko-ming ti ken-pen wen-t'i" (Fundamental Problems of the Chinese Revolution), Pu-erh-sai-wei-k'o (The Bolshevik), 3.2–3 (March 15, 1930): 60.
[57] For this common view, see P'an Tung-chou, "Chung-kuo kuo-min ching-chi ti kai-tsao wen-t'i" (The Question of Changing the Chinese National Economy), in She-hui k-o-hsueh chiang-tso (Symposium on Social Science) (Shanghai, n.d.) vol. 1, pp. 246–251.
cliques that dominated political life in China at this time. The latter, engaged in constant internecine strife, plundered and destroyed the countryside as well as making life difficult for the budding Chinese bourgeoisie by their numerous extortions and exactions. Whatever the precise contribution of these activities to economic stagnation and breakdown, they certainly contributed to social disorder and confusion, and helped to create an atmosphere unconducive to economic progress. Imperialism, supporting the warlords, appeared paradoxically as the supporter of backward "feudal" forces in Chinese society which, theoretically, it should have eliminated.
The dilemma is evident in the tortuous arguments offered by CCP writers who theoretically accepted capitalism and imperialism as historically progressive but had difficulty in reconciling this abstract conviction with their resentment of the effects of these forces in Chinese society. Their effort to deal with a complex transitional society was encumbered further by their categorical manner of thinking. They sought to explain what was happening to Chinese society in terms of Marxian historical categories derived from the European experience. One of the most illustrative examples of the efforts to deal with these contradictions is provided in the following statement by P'an Tung-chou, which was often quoted by historians of the Controversy as representative of this position:
Because China is a backward agricultural country, the superiority of semifeudal forces within agriculture means that they hold a superior position within the whole of China's economy. . . . When we speak of the totality of economic relations in China, urban capitalism definitely holds a leading [ling-tao ] position; the tendency of the development of the whole economy is toward capitalism. But in their relative weight [pi-chung ] within the whole country, semifeudal relations are still superior [yushih ]. . . . We are only saying that feudal relations are superior in China's economy; we are definitely not saying that China does not have capitalism. China has not only been subjected to control by finance imperialism in the cities, but even in the villages, [class] divisions [fen-hua ] have appeared. But no matter what, in the national economy of the whole country (to be distinguished from the foreign sector) feudal relations still hold an extreme degree of superiority. Speaking of capitalism, we cannot but note that
imperialism is absolutely superior. Imperialism, using the power of its abundant finances, increasingly assaults the whole of China's economy.[58]
Thus, while capitalism might be the "leading," dynamic force in China's economy, the backward "feudal forces" carried more weight, a seeming play on words vehemently objected to by the Trotskyites who were quick to note the inconsistency and to point out that what is "leading" is also "superior" and that to claim otherwise was to play into the hands of the reactionary bourgeoisie.[59] An ambivalence toward imperialism was also evident in the statement. P'an could not but agree that imperialism drove China toward capitalism, a more progressive stage than feudalism in the historical scheme of things, but he also seemed to complain that it "assaulted" China's economy, appearing simultaneously as a regressive force.
What these writers referred to as "feudal relations" can be described as the traditional agrarian features of Chinese society, ranging from social-economic structure to customary practices. The quotation by P'an, and other similar references, cited the very existence of a backward agrarian economy conducted by primitive methods as evidence of "feudalism." A concomitant of backwardness was the regionally uneven development of the Chinese economy or, in other words, the lack of a national market. But the cornerstone of the argument that China was feudal was the mode of exploitation that prevailed in the Chinese village. Most of the arguments along this line followed the formulation of the problem in the manifesto of the Fifth Congress of the CCP in May 1927.[60] This manifesto mentioned the following specifically as examples of the feudal mode of exploitation: high rate of tenancy; arbitrary and exorbitant rent; political and economic subjection of peasants to landlords; control of rural China by militarists and bureaucrats, subject to merchant's capital and usury which, being in the hands of landlords, was regarded as a tool of feudal exploitation. P'an
[58] P'an, "Chung-kuo ching-chi chih hsing-chih" (The Nature of the Chinese Economy), quoted in Jen Shu, Chung-kuo ching-chi yen-chiu hsu-lun , pp. 23–24.
[59] Yen Ling-feng, Chung-kuo ching-chi wen-t'i yen-chiu , p. 50.
[60] C. Brandt, B. Schwartz, and J. K. Fairbank (eds.), A Documentary History of Chinese Communism (New York: Atheneum, 1967), p. 496.
elaborated these as rents which exceeded 50 percent of the yield, high taxes and miscellaneous exactions, and the power of local despots,[61] while Chu P'ei-wo, a prolific writer who subscribed to the view that China was feudal even though he had parted ways with the CCP at this time, added to the list rent-in-kind, forced labor, tribute obligations (in luxury items such as poultry and wine), the use of coercion by the landlord against the peasant which equaled in severity the violence of the feudal lord against the serf, and persisting status differences.[62] All of these comprised the definition for this group of Marx's reference to feudal exploitation as "extraeconomic" or "non-economic."[63]
The landlord in this view was far from being the innocent victim of imperialism and Warlords that KMT authors made him out to be. The landlord provided the support for warlord and military oppression of the people and colluded with imperialists to exploit the peasants economically and shared the spoils of peasant misery. He was, in fact, the active agent of imperialist exploitation:
The method employed by imperialism in obtaining raw materials from the Chinese peasant is to ally itself with the feudal landlords and commercial capital in the village. They use their compradors [commercial capital] to purchase raw materials from the landlords, raising the hopes of the latter and leading them to even deeper exploitation of the peasant. Furthermore, [the landlord] taking advantage of the peasant's plight, uses interest and money to force down the prices of the [peasant's] products. With all these ties, imperialism uses landlords and commercial capital to make the exploitation of the peasant harsher under the old methods and relations of production.[64]
Imperialism, while by its very nature propelling China toward capitalism, itself benefited from the feudal mode of exploitation and strove to perpetuate it against the wishes of the more
[61] P'an, "Chung-kuo kuo-min ching-chi kai-tsao wen-t'i," p. 242.
[62] Chu Hsin-fan. "Kuan-yu Chung-kuo she-hui chih feng-chien hsing ti t'ao-lun" (Discussion of the Feudal Nature of the Chinese Economy), TSTC , 1.4–5 (August 1931):45.
[63] See Chapter 4 for the significance of this interpretation of Marx's categories.
[64] P'an, "Chung-kuo ching-chi lun" (The Chinese Economy), quoted in Ho Kan-chih, Chung-kuo she-hui hsing-chih wen-t'i lun-chan (Controversy on the Nature of Chinese Society) (Shanghai, 1937), p. 64.
progressive forces in the country.[65] But the problem did not consist simply of imperialists dumping surplus commodities in the Chinese market or their rape of China's resources. Even the developing sector of the economy was under total imperialist control, so that any further advances would accrue to their benefit. In other words, while China could have developed economically under such circumstances, it would have been at the cost of political enslavement. As Wang Hsueh-wen expressed it,
Speaking from the viewpoint of its major forces and its direction of development, the Chinese economy is one that preserves strong feudal forces but has entered the path of capitalism in a colony. This is to say, on the one hand, China has already started developing toward capitalism under the control of international imperialism which is propelling it toward semicolonialism, while, on the other hand, she preserves very strong feudal forces.[66]
Such a view ruled out a revolution led by the bourgeoisie (a bourgeois-democratic revolution under bourgeois leadership) or the development of capitalism in China. The revolution would have to be accomplished by the proletariat leading the peasantry, and it would be directed at feudal forces (which included more than the KMT writers envisioned) and the imperialists, the two forces obstructing China's development. Furthermore, since the alliance of these two forces depended on the perpetuation of the feudal mode of exploitation, China's revolutionary aims could not be achieved unless such exploitation were abolished: national liberation could be achieved only through social revolution (or, in this case, land revolution, as it was referred to).
[65] P'an's ambiguity is further evident in the following passage: "After imperialism invaded China, it had to build railroads and open ports in order to export its commodities into the country. In order to exploit cheap Chinese labor and to utilize its natural treasures, it had to establish modern capitalist enterprises. China's revolution in production certainly started after the eastward expansion of capitalism. Imperialism brought to China new-style capitalist techniques and opened up the country. Following this, it dealt a heavy blow to China's fedual economy, guild system, and natural economy, driving China's economic organization onto a new path." Quoted in ibid., pp. 63-64. P'an's statements are vaguely reminiscent of Marx's hyperbolic statements on the historical achievements of capitalism in the Communist Manifesto !
[66] Wang Hsueh-wen in She-hui k'o-hsueh chiang-tso . Quoted in Ho, Chung-kuo she-hui hsing-chih wen-t'i lun-chan , pp. 61–62.
China would then embark on a course of "noncapitalist" (fei tzu-pen chu-i ) development toward socialism. One important consequence of this strategy should be noted. Although the native bourgeoisie was deemed incapable, by its very situation, of leading the national revolution, it was not included among the targets of revolution, as it was by the Trotskyites. The bourgeoisie itself, as the native/foreign capitalism distinction implied, was subject to oppression by feudal forces and imperialism, and might yet join the revolution in a future realliance!
The Trotskyite View of Chinese Society: This issue of the bourgeoisie was an important factor in the split of the Communist party in China after 1927, resulting in the expulsion of Trotskyites from the party in late 1929. The Trotskyites differed from both of their rivals in the debate in their insistence that the Chinese bourgeoisie could not be distinguished from the foreign and must be included among the targets of the revolutionary struggle for liberation. With greater theoretical consistency, if not political prescience, they contended that imperialism, being the most advanced form of capitalism, had the historical mission of destroying feudal forces and supporting the spread of capitalism everywhere.[67] China was now part of a world dominated by capitalism; it was ludicrous to make distinctions between native and foreign capitalism and to declare China feudal on those grounds.
More so than Trotsky himself, the Chinese Trotskyites were quick to deduce from bourgeois dominance in China that Chinese society was already a capitalist society, or at least a transitional society with capitalist forces shaping social relationships. As has been noted, Yen Ling-feng criticized P'an Tungchou vehemently for his distinction of "superior" versus "leading" forces, pointing out that if capitalist forces were the "leading" forces in Chinese society, they were also "superior" and hence the chief target of revolution.
[67] Jen Shu, Chung-kuo ching-chi yen-chiu hsu-lun , p. 37.
The Trotskyites rejected the question on the nature of contemporary society as it was posed by their rivals. In their opinion, the either/or form of question (that is, feudal or capitalist) characterized formal, not dialectical logic and led to unorthodox hybrid categories such as "transitional" or "Asiatic" society. In place of this "static" and "mechanistic" way of looking at history, they suggested the identification of the dynamic progressive forces of historical development. If several forms coexisted in Chinese society, analysts needed to stress the "leading" forces of history, not its condemned remnants as the CCP theoreticians were doing.[68] Injecting an explicitly political note, they pointed out that to equivocate on this issue was tantamount to support for "reactionaries," who wanted to take advantage of the persistence of traditional remnants to enhance their own power. The Trotskyites themselves differed in their evaluation of the complexity of the Chinese economy. At the one extreme were Jen Shu and Liu Kuang, who uncompromisingly denied any role whatsoever to the backward aspects of the Chinese economy and assigned capitalism in China the same role that it was playing in advanced capitalist societies.[69] At the other extreme was Liu Ching-yuan, who recognized the bourgeoisie as the dominant class in Chinese society but argued nevertheless that the Chinese bourgeoisie flourished on feudal methods of exploitation.[70] In the middle of these two positions was Yen Ling-feng. Yen made a distinction between the "leading" forces and the social structure. While there was no doubt that the leading dynamic forces in China were capitalist, he conceded that the social structure was complex and contained elements of different modes of production.[71]
The Trotskyires further disagreed with their opponents in their definition of feudalism and in their evaluation of the role imperialism played in Chinese society. They all agreed in reject-
[68] Yen, Chung-kuo ching-chi wen-t'i yen-chiu , pp. 181–182.
[69] Liu Kuang, preface to Jen, Chung-kuo ching-chiyen-chiu hsu-lun , pp. 13–16; for Jen's views, see ibid., pp. 61-62, where Jen criticized Radek's suggestion that imperialism is an obstacle to development. For Radek, see next chapter.
[70] Liu Ching-yuan, "P'ing liang-pen lun Chung-kuo ching-chi ti chu-tso" (A Critique of Two Books on the Chinese Economy), TSTC , 1.4–5 (August 1931):8.
[71] Yen, Chung-kuo ching-chi wen-t'i yen-chiu , pp. 187–192.
ing the mode of exploitation as a valid criterion for deciding whether or not China was feudal. In their opinion, selfsufficiency versus dependency on a market economy provided the surest test for distinguishing a feudal from a capitalist economy: A feudal society consisted of self-sufficient economic units where any involvement in the market was incidental.[72] With less agreement, they pointed to the further distinguishing feature between the two modes. (1) There were differences in class relations (in contrast to exploitative relations) which determined the nature of exploitation (in contrast to the form that the exploitation took). Under feudalism, relations were not purely economic; other factors such as political privilege molded the nature of the exploitation.[73] (2) In consequence, relations to the means of production also differed. The capitalist landlord did not have the same relationship to the land as the feudal landlord. In China, where land had been an alienable commodity for a long time, the landlord was not a feudal landlord.[74] (3) Commercial capital did not serve the feudal economy, therefore, but represented the primitive accumulation of capital.[75]
Second, the Trotskyires interpreted the role imperialism played in China differently from their rivals. They accused their
[72] This definition of feudalism was probably derived from Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (New York: International Publishers, 1935): "Medieval society: individual production on a small scale. Means of production adapted for individual use; hence primitive, ungainly, petty, dwarfed in action. Production for immediate consumption, either by the producer himself or of his feudal lords. Only where an excess of production over consumption occurs is such excess offered for sale, enters into exchange. Production of commodities, therefore, is only in its infancy" (p. 73). This is one of the working assumptions accepted by Lenin in his Development of Capitalism in Russia, where the growth of market society is the primary concern of the author. See Lenin, Collected Works , vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964). These works were frequently cited in Trotskyite writings.
[73] Yen, Chung-kuo ching-chi wen-t'iyen-chiu , pp. 101–104.
[74] Ibid., p. 106. Also see Liu Ching-yuan, "Chung-kuo ching-chi ti fen-hsi chi ch'i ch'ien-t'u chih yu-ts'e" (Analysis of the Chinese Economy and Evaluation of Its Future), TSTC , 2.2–3 (March 1932):1–47, especially p. 25. These authors, along with Li Chi, argued that capitalism in some limited form had developed in China before the coming of the West. Jen Shu disagreed violently with this view.
[75] Yen, Chung-kuo ching-chi wen-t'i yen-chiu , pp. 9–10. Also Cheng Hsueh-chia, "Tzu-pen chu-i fa-chan chung chih Chung-kuo nung-ts un" (The Chinese Village in the Midst of Capitalist Development), TSTC , 2.7–8 (August 1932):1–52, especially p. 9.
opponents of a "village standpoint" that drew lines between village and city, between the national and the international economy. The Trotskyite argument ultimately hinged on the assumption of the insignificance of national boundaries and the oneness of the world and the national economy in the period of imperialism. Hence they regarded the development of capitalism in China as not only inevitable but an accomplished fact from which there could be no return. Jen Shu was once again the most unequivocal in this respect. Yen Ling-feng took the position that while imperialism "absolutely" (chueh-tui ti ) encouraged the growth of capitalism in China, it "relatively" (hsiang-tui ti ) retarded its development, just as feudal forces obstructed capitalist development while their own basis was being eroded by it. Liu Ching-yuan reversed Yen's estimate and stated that imperialism "relatively" encouraged capitalist growth while it "absolutely" opposed it.[76]
In a more positive vein, the Trotskyires used the manifestations of a modern economy in China to prove their point that China was capitalist. Dependency on the market and the advance of industrial technology provided the main props for their arguments. Their works were loaded with statistics on consumption and production, and on the increase of steamships and of the mileage of railroads in China to show that capitalism was making headway in China daily, rather than regressing as their rivals claimed. But they used statistics without much regard for significance and were often more mechanical than their rivals in explaining away the complexity of the situation in China.[77]
[76] Ibid., p. 10. Liu Ching-yuan, "Chung-kuo ching-chi ti fen-hsi chi ch'i ch'ient'u chih yu-ts'e," p. 18.
[77] Liu Kuang (preface to Jen Shu, Chung-kuo ching-chi yen-chiu hsu lun ) compared Chinese industry to the Russian in 1917 (p. 22) and to the European in 1864 (p. 27), both significant dates in the history of revolution. Outside of China, he compared customs revenues to agricultural revenues to illustrate the dominance of the modern sector over the traditional (p. 32). Jen Shu's study (just cited) of foreign trade, of industries, and communications is the most detailed (pp. 81–110). He examined the following specifically: maritime communications (p. 83); financial institutions (pp. 83–84); textiles (cotton and silk), a comparison of the factory and handicrafts sectors in China as well as of China with other countries (pp. 85–91); imports of machinery (pp. 94–95). One set of figures he used became an object of ridicule and is worth giving in detail as an extreme example of the formalistic use of evidence that was not rare in the Controversy. In this case, the inspiration apparentlycame from Lai-mmu-ssu (W. Reimes?), She-hui ching-chi fa-chan shih (History of the Development of Social Economy), where the author referred to modern communications as the "nerves and pipelines" of modern life. Jen took off from this to compare junks and steamships, modern and native financial institutions as concrete criteria of the degree of transition from feudalism to capitalism: "If we can say that Chinese junks manifest the means of communication of the feudal economy and steamships represent the means of communication of the capitalist period, then looking at the following:
Percentage of the tonnage of junks and steamships entering all the ports over the years:
|
And for financial institutions
Percentage of capital investment in 1912 and 1920:
|
From these we see that China is no different from the economy of the whole world; she has already begun the transition to the period of dominance of financial capital" (pp. 82–84). Enterprises like the Commercial Press provided Jen with sufficient reason to conclude that China was more advanced than Europe in certain respects. Yen (Chung-kuo ching-chi wen-t'i yen chiu ) saw the following as signs of capitalist dominance (pp. 18–25): imports of machinery, increase in number of textile factories, increases in heavy industries (coal production equal to Russia's in 1913). He reexamined some of these and added others in a later section (pp. 77–84): increase in machines; investments in railroads, telegraph, and telephone companies; increases in number of mines and heavy industries, light industries, industrial and agricultural companies, and banks.
But they did challenge their opponents effectively with their argument that self-sufficiency had disappeared in China with the subjection even of the rural economy to worldwide market forces. Of course, commercial capital played an important role in this situation but, as already noted, Trotskyites regarded commercial capital as a feature of capitalism — primitive accumulation (yuan-shih tzu-pen ti chi-lei ) — not an independent or a feudal element of exploitation.
While the Trotskyites differed from the other two groups in their evaluation of what was happening to the structure of Chinese society and economy, their predictions as to China's future were barely distinguishable from those of their opponents. Since imperialism was the dominant factor in the dynamics of world society, China must inevitably be drawn under greater imperialist control as its economy advanced — that is,
the greater the advance, the deeper China's colonization. Where the Trotskyites differed from their rivals most radically was in their inclusion of the bourgeoisie among the targets of revolution. The Chinese bourgeoisie were indistinguishable from the foreign; hence, as Trotsky had argued, the anti-imperialist struggle for national liberation was also a class struggle against the Chinese bourgeoisie, urban and rural, which seemed to include all but the proletariat and the peasantry. It was this uncompromising alienation of all except the proletariat and the peasantry from revolutionary ranks which earned the Trotskyites the sobriquet "liquidationists" (ch'u-hsiao p'ai ) and made their strategy less popular than it might otherwise have been.