EDITORS NOTE: In his famous pamphlet “Whither China?” (1967) leading British Marxist R. Palme Dutt explored the class background of Chinese revolutionary politics. An excerpt is below. The full text of the pamphlet can be be found at marxists.org.

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Background of the Chinese Revolution

Every revolution has its unique concrete character, within the general principles of the historical epoch in which it takes place, and can therefore never be measured by ready-made formulas. Never was this more true than in the case of the Chinese revolution.

The Chinese revolution, the second greatest socialist revolution, was different in character from the previous socialist revolutions.

Marxism had no roots in China prior to 1917. It is true that in 1906 parts of the Communist Manifesto were translated. But it was the guns of the victorious October revolution in 1917, as Mao has said, which first brought knowledge of Marxism and Communism to China. Prior to that the Chinese people had a long record of valiant national armed struggles against Western imperialism and reactionary rulers, and revolts of the peasantry against feudal lords. The Chinese revolution, which opened in 1911 with the victorious overthrow of the Manchu Empire, developed from the outset as a national anti-imperialist, anti-feudal armed battle against the armed counter-revolution of imperialism and its satellite warlords. The working-class movement developed more slowly and later. There was a significant strike movement in 1912 and 1913. There was no record of any trade union in China until in 1915 in Hong Kong.

1917 Revolution: The victory of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 transformed the character of the national revolution in China, and drew the most progressive national fighters to friendship with the Soviet Union and to the beginning of assimilation of the ideas of Communism. Sun Yat-sen, the foundation leader of the national movement and its party the Kuomintang, and the first President of the Chinese Republic, recognised the significance of the Soviet revolution as the pioneer of the world revolution and the indispensable ally of the victory of the Chinese revolution. In his final testament, in his letter to the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, the leading organ of the Soviet state, written on the day before his death in 1925, he recorded his last instructions to his party to keep ‘constant contact’ with the Soviet leadership:

You are at the head of the Union of Free Republics — that heritage left to the oppressed peoples of the world by the immortal Lenin. With the aid of that heritage the victims of imperialism will inevitably achieve emancipation from that international regime whose foundation has been rooted for ages in slavery, wars and injustice.

With this object I have instructed the party to be in constant contact with you. I firmly believe in the continuance of the support which you have hitherto accorded to my country.

Taking my leave of you, dear comrades, I want to express the hope that the day will soon come when the USSR will welcome a friend and ally in a mighty free China, and that in the great struggle for the liberation of the oppressed peoples of the world both these allies will go forward to victory hand in hand.

The younger militant students, including Mao Tse-tung, already active in the national struggle, notably the 4 May 1919 movement, and imbued with national revolutionary enthusiasm, adopted Communism as a whole in 1920. Mao thus came to Communism with no direct experience of the intense struggles which all Communists from before the Bolshevik revolution had been ceaselessly waging, during those preceding years, against the flood of ultra-leftist anti-Soviet slanders accusing the Soviet Union and Lenin of betraying the revolution, of passing over to capitalism and becoming allied with imperialism. These allegations (subsequently vulgarised by Trotskyism against the post-Lenin leadership of the Soviet Union) have now been revived like a novel discovery by the present Chinese Communist leadership, who had no knowledge or experience at the time of these early struggles to help them to realise how hoary and discredited is the tune they are now playing.

Thus the evolution to Marxism was here notably different from the older type. Previously in those centres where Marxism first took root, there had been a long process of development of generations of the working-class movement reaching gradually, through the battle of trends and policies and practical experience, to the acceptance of Marxism by the vanguard of the organised workers. In most of Asia, apart from Japan, Marxism was only introduced after the Russian revolution of 1917. In China the first Marxist groups were created in 1920, in the midst of an anti-imperialist armed struggle, and the Communist Party formed a year later.

Workers and Peasants: The Chinese working class conducted heroic struggles. But the industrial working class was only one per cent of the population before the revolution (three per cent today). After the dominant right-wing Kuomintang leadership, under Chiang Kai-shek, had passed over to imperialism with the betrayal of Shanghai, won by the blood of the workers, in 1927, the domination of imperialism over the coastal cities and main urban centres, through the Kuomintang, cut off the main body of the working class for many decisive years from directly leading the national revolutionary armed struggle, expressed in the guerrilla warfare of the liberation armies, mainly based on the peasantry, and centred in Yenan after the suppression of the Canton rising and the Long March. It is worth noting that during this period of prolonged and arduous civil war, while Mao Tse-tung at the head of the party led the liberation armies and areas mainly based on the peasantry, Liu Shao-chi, on behalf of the party, had the task of leading the struggle in the cities and areas controlled by the Kuomintang, that is, leading and organising the struggle of the main body of the working class (there was only a small minority of the industrial workers in the liberation areas) under illegal conditions.

All these special characteristics of background and class alignment need to be taken into account in order to understand the problems of the Chinese revolution. The victory of the Chinese socialist revolution, led by the Communist Party, took place in a predominantly peasant country, where the main preceding content of the revolution was the national anti-imperialist and anti-feudal armed struggle, with the main basis in the peasantry; where the main body of the working class was for prolonged periods cut off from directly leading the national revolutionary armed struggles based on the peasantry; and where the leadership of the working class was in consequence expressed through the leadership of the Communist Party, drawn from the most progressive national revolutionary fighters who had come over to Communism. In this background and class alignment the potentiality of all the problems which have broken out into the forefront in the present phase can be traced.

Victory and Initial Advance

The victory of the Chinese revolution in 1949 was an integral part, and the highest achievement, of the advance of the world socialist revolution after the Second World War. This victory was made possible both by internal and by international factors…