But the Chinese proletariat and millions of land-hungry peasants were moving into action. The CCP placed itself, the authority of the October Revolution and the Communist International as barriers to this movement. In Hunan, Mao put the party line to a meeting of more than 300 peasant delegates: “The time for us to overthrow the landlords has not come … Now is the time … to reduce rents, to reduce interest and to increase the wages of farm labourers.”[30] The response was not reported which in itself is significant.
As the summer progressed and the NRA advanced, it became clear that the Chinese countryside was on the verge of widespread revolt. Behind the NRA the peasants spontaneously organised to demand rent reductions and an end to arbitrary taxation. But such moves have a logic of their own and the peasantry in Hunan and Hopeh, having unilaterally reduced their rents, soon took the obvious next step of paying no rent, and then seizing the land.[31]
1926 saw not only a spectacular growth of the peasant movement, but a parallel strike wave of great depth and intensity in all the major industrial centres, with the Canton–Hong Kong strike acting as an example. Well over one million workers were directly involved. In Hunan, trade union membership increased from 60,000 to 150,000, in Wuhan 300,000 workers were organised, and nationally there were 2,800,000 unionised workers, a greater number than in the Russia of October, 1917. Naturally, the great majority of the strikes were fought for wage increases and improvement in working conditions and most were wholly or partially successful. The workers of China were raising their heads as never before. By the end of 1926 – despite the defeat in Canton – the strike wave was stretching beyond economic demands into open political struggle, which demonstrates that individual defeats, even major ones, can be overcome when the mass movement is on the rise.
In a single leap, the workers of Hankou took the lead of the anti-imperialist struggle. On 4 January 1927, a demonstration took place at the boundary of the British Concession in Hankou. Spontaneously the cry went up: “Take it now!” Teams of workers tore down the barbed-wire barricades and joyful crowds stormed the Concession and claimed it for China. This was done without any leadership, either from the KMT or the CCP. When the KMT politicians in Hankou recovered from their fright at the nerve of the workers, the British retreat gave them courage. They stepped in to negotiate and emerged with agreements which returned the Hankou and Kiukiang Concessions to China, a ‘diplomatic victory’ made possible by the actions of the Hankou workers and their comrades (James, Op. cit).
The reaction of the CCP to these events was a short period of silence and then a statement to the effect that the actions had been incorrect![32] This is an object lesson in the harm a revolutionary organisation can inflict upon itself when it moderates its programme to obtain unity with non-revolutionary forces. In its attempts not to damage the bloc within, the policies of the CCP became less revolutionary, less anti-imperialist than those of the local KMT.
As Chiang’s troops swept into new territories the peasants self-mobilised and between November 1926 and March 1927, over ten million peasants joined peasant leagues in the southern provinces of Jiangxi (Kiangsi), Guangdong (Kwangtung), Hunan (the most radical) and Hopeh alone. In Hunan peasant associations grew to over 2,000,000. In a manner similar to Russia in 1905 and early 1917, the peasants organised themselves, with rural agitators eager to push way beyond the limits set by the CCP or KMT.[33]
It was in this context in February of 1927, that Mao wrote his Report of an Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan[34] and it was referred to at the 8th Plenary Session of the ECCI (18-30 May, 1927) by Bukharin as ‘excellent’. Sections were published in Communist International. The Report made Mao’s name within the CI.[35] Mao presented his Report first to the leaders of the CCP in Wuhan and then to the 3rd Enlarged Plenary Session of the CEC of the KMT on 10 March 1927. The Report, written as advice to “the revolutionary authorities in Hunan”, was first published in a condensed form in the Weekly Organ of the Central Executive Committee of the KMT on 15 March.[36]
The writings of Mao Zedong as they appear today are often not the same as when first published. Cohen has demonstrated that many of the claims for the originality of Mao’s ideas come from the re-writing of important texts years later when the questions had been decided by actual events, and Mao’s Report is one such. It contains Mao’s supposed innovation that it would be the middle and (particularly) the poor peasants who would be the most important and reliable allies of the proletariat in the democratic revolution. In fact, Lenin had stated this a quarter of a century earlier and had carried through a successful socialist revolution based on just such an analysis. The political content of the original text was in line with the ECCI and CCP decision to designate the KMT not the proletariat as the leader of the national democratic revolution. Thus, the original Report makes no mention of the industrial proletariat being the leading force in the Chinese Revolution, nor of a worker-peasant alliance, these concepts were added in 1951.[37]
Importantly, in the original version of the Report, Mao avoided discussing the land question as part of the agrarian revolution, no doubt because of the curbs the CCP imposed to maintain the bloc within, but a very significant omission when viewed from post-revolution China. In 1951 Mao added the words in italics – “An economic struggle should also be started immediately in order that the land problem and other economic problems of the poor peasants can be completely solved.” The lack of any mention in the original version of the CCP as an independent body was another serious omission. Mao had exhorted “all revolutionary parties” to face up to the leadership test presented by the rising peasant movement. In the 1951 version, the Communist Party suddenly appears in numerous places such as “The poor peasants …. are the most responsive to Communist Party leadership.”[38]
The language of the Report was militant and strident:
In a very short time, in China’s central, southern and northern provinces, several hundred million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back. … They will sweep all the imperialists, warlords, corrupt officials, local tyrants and evil gentry into their graves. …. In force and momentum the attack is tempestuous; those who bow before it survive and those who resist perish. As a result, the privileges which the feudal landlords enjoyed for thousands of years are being shattered to pieces.
The form was militant and radical but the content was class collaborationist (private ownership of the land would remain with rich peasants and even some landlords as suitable allies, it was the feudalists who would be swept away), and quite acceptable to Moscow and the left KMT.
Other texts received similar treatment[39] so it is difficult to take current publications as a genuine expression of what was said at the time. Re-writing historic texts is a feature of a regime in ideological crisis, a dishonest regime that cannot face its own past, it is a de facto admission that its policies at the time were wrong and it shows a total lack of respect for its own Party members.
Re-writing took other forms; in 1930 a booklet was published in Russia entitled A Brief History of China’s Labour Movement, written by Deng Zhong-xia, a labour leader executed by the Nationalists. It made no mention of Mao. When the booklet was re-published in Yenan during the rectification campaign in 1943 a passage was inserted: “In 1922, thanks to the leadership of comrade Mao Zedong, the workers’ movement in Hunan developed stormily …”[40] Taking his lead from Stalin, Mao also had the military history of the Long March re-written, every defeat was due to those who did not follow his lead, successes such as the ‘Great Victory at Pingxing Guan’ against the Japanese army were credited to Mao.
In early 1927, Chiang established himself at Nanchang. Pending the conquest of Shanghai, Chiang Kai-shek attempted to take absolute control of the KMT. He demanded that the seat of Government be moved to Nanchang, but the petty-bourgeois radicals, buoyed up by the victory over the British refused. The 4th January events had stiffened the resolve of the left leaders at Wuhan and demonstrated how important it was for the CCP to have an independent base outside the KMT if the left was to be won to an anti-imperialist position.
In response, Chiang announced his intention to root out the Communists from the KMT:
No more differences or tendencies among us! … every true member of the (KMT) must be just that and nothing else. Whoever goes against the aims and methods indicated by Sun Yat-sen will not be a comrade but an enemy who must not remain among us.[41]
The left KMT held its own Central Executive Committee in Hankou on 10-17 March, its decisions reflecting its buoyant mood. It took back the powers assumed by Chiang Kai-shek just a year before. Resolutions were passed in support of an agricultural policy which reflected Mao’s Report in sounding militant in its attacks on local bullies, bad gentry and the feudal landlord class, but in content was mildly reformist. The left was all for ‘co-operation’ with the CCP, and called upon the latter to send “responsible comrades to join in the Nationalist and Provincial Governments.”[42] In open opposition to Lenin’s principle that the CCP must retain its freedom of criticism, it was agreed: “the Press organs of the Third International, of the Chinese Communist Party, and of the Kuomintang shall not violate the spirit of co-operation in their reports and criticise one another.”
The KMT in March, 1927, launched a Land Commission which began its sessions on 27 April. It was composed of the principal Kuomintang leaders, with Tang Ping-shan representing the Communist Party. This was supposed to find ways of enacting the KMT Platform for Workers and Peasants which had been approved the previous October and promised the peasants a 25% reduction in land rent and the ‘prohibition’ of usury, limiting interest on loans to 20% per annum. Instead of taking the movement forward, this Commission stepped back even from the 25% reduction in land rents by recommending that land rents should not exceed 40% of the harvest.[43] During these discussions the CCP replaced Marxist class-based analysis by moral categories such as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ gentry. Unity with the former was essential so their land was inviolate. But it soon turned out that the KMT could find something good to say about every landlord.
The Mensheviks and SRs had got themselves into just such a swamp of inaction in 1917 from which Lenin had deduced that a Bolshevik Government was necessary to complete the bourgeois democratic revolution in Russia. As in Russia, so in China, the Commission proved wholly ineffective and demonstrated to the peasants that partial reforms would not work; the question that had to be addressed was who owned the land.
Even the mild reforms demanded by the left KMT terrified the possessing classes. This fear, supported by the anxious imperialist powers, expressed itself in the murder of workers, peasant agitators, and Communists in the areas controlled by Chiang (Dorland, Op. cit.). The nearer their protector and ally got to Shanghai, the clearer became his intentions on taking power.
On the ground in Jiangxi province strikes were squashed, workers and peasants disarmed, the bourgeoisie was allowed to organise its own forces (gangsters and the ming tuan militias) to suppress strikes and kill workers. At the time no reports of these events appeared either in the left KMT or Communist press: both were too anxious to maintain their links with Chiang and the NRA. It would be revealed later that Chiang waged a terror campaign against the peasant unions from at least the beginning of 1927, but these acts were covered up by the CCP on the grounds that at a critical time in the national revolution it was imperative to maintain the united front and this meant “the crimes of those who fight against imperialism” could be “temporarily” overlooked.[44]
The strategy of the bloc of four classes demanded unity with these reactionaries for the success of the anti-imperialist struggle, and this led to the CCP and ECCI deceiving themselves and the world communist movement. Wuhan, simply closed its eyes to Chiang’s activities, and declared that the national revolutionary movement was moving forwards unhampered by any suggestion of inner conflict. This fitted well with Chiang’s strategy. He would break with the left when he was ready.
What could the left KMT and CCP have done to halt Chiang’s counter-revolutionary moves? The best course would have been to launch a campaign among the masses exposing Chiang’s actions, to promote the most radical social reforms (above all, land to the peasant) so that if Chiang Kai-shek fought back he would have had to do so from an openly reactionary position and against the mass movement. Instead, with Stalin’s praise for Chiang ringing in its ears the CCP took no action and left the way open for him.
Lenin’s advice was to get the peasants to form Soviets as soon as practicable. In China there could have been no better time than from the spring of 1926 to the summer of 1927 to form Soviets. In the urban centres the workers were already on the move and in the countryside Soviets could have been based on the peasant leagues around the slogans ‘Land to the Peasant’ and ‘End Debt Repayment’. This would have given structure to the mass opposition to the bourgeois and begun the task of creating a genuinely revolutionary army based on the actual movement unfolding in the liberated areas and in the cities.
-
Schram, S. Mao’s Road to Power Sharpe, 1992, Vol 2 p421-422.
-
Cliff, Trotsky Op. cit. Vol 3:203.
-
James, Op. cit.
-
(ibor, M. The Chinese Revolution, London, Thames and Hudson 1961, p73-79.
-
Mao Zedong, Report of an Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan March 1927 w.m.org.
-
Wittfogel, K. The Legend of Maoism, The China Quarterly 1960 Vol 2: 72-86.
-
Wittfogel, Op. cit.
-
Cohen, A. The Communism of Mao Tse-tung. Univ. Chicago Press, 1966, p30 and 49.
-
Wittfogel, Op. cit.
-
Cohen, Op. cit. p37.
-
Kwan, D. Marxist Intellectuals and the Chinese Labour Movement, Univ. of Washington Press, 1997, p249.
-
Isaacs, H. Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, Secker & Warburg, 1938 p143.
-
Lescot, Op. cit. p75/7.
-
Tawney, R. Land and Labour in China, Allen & Unwin, 1932.
-
Isaacs, Op. cit. p235.