Sixth Question

“Is a Kemalist revolution possible in China?”

I consider it improbable in China, and therefore impossible. A Kemalist revolution is possible only in countries like Turkey, Persia or Afghanistan, where there is no industrial proletariat, or practically none, and where there is no powerful agrarian-peasant revolution. A Kemalist revolution is a revolution of the top stratum, a revolution of the national merchant bourgeoisie, arising in a struggle against the foreign imperialists, and whose subsequent development is essentially directed against the peasants and workers, against the very possibility of an agrarian revolution.

A Kemalist revolution is impossible in China because :

1. a) there is in China a certain minimum of militant and active industrial proletariat, which enjoys enormous prestige among the peasants;
2. b) there is in that country a developed agrarian revolution which in its advance is sweeping away the survivals of feudalism.

The vast mass of the peasantry, which in a number of provinces has already been seizing the land, and which is led in its struggle by the revolutionary proletariat of China—that is the antidote against the possibility of what is called a Kemalist revolution.

The Kemalist Party cannot be put on a par with the Left Kuomintang party in Wuhan, just as Turkey cannot be put on a par with China. Turkey has no such centres as Shanghai, Wuhan, Nanking, Tientsin, etc. Ankara falls far short of Wuhan, just as the Kemalist Party falls far short of the Left Kuomintang.

One should also bear in mind the difference between China and Turkey as regards their international position. In relation to Turkey, imperialism has already secured a number of its principal demands, having wrested from it Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia and other points of importance to the imperialists. Turkey has now been reduced to the dimensions of a small country with a population of some ten to twelve million. It does not represent for imperialism a market of any importance or a decisive field of investment. One of the reasons why this has happened is that the old Turkey was an agglomeration of nationalities, with a compact Turkish population only in Anatolia.

Not so with China. China is a nationally compact country with a population of several hundred million, and constitutes one of the most important markets and fields for capital export in the world. Whereas in Turkey imperialism could content itself with severing from it a number of very important regions in the East, exploiting the national antagonisms between the Turks and the Arabs within the old Turkey, in China imperialism has to strike at the living body of national China, cutting it to pieces and severing whole provinces from it, in order to preserve its old positions, or at least to retain some of them.

Consequently, whereas in Turkey the struggle against imperialism could end with a curtailed anti-imperialist revolution on the part of the Kemalists, in China the struggle against imperialism is bound to assume a profoundly popular and distinctly national character and is bound to deepen step by step, developing into desperate clashes with imperialism and shaking the very foundations of imperialism throughout the world.

One of the gravest errors of the opposition (Zinoviev, Radek, Trotsky) is that it fails to perceive this profound difference between Turkey and China, confuses the Kemalist revolution with an agrarian revolution, and lumps everything indiscriminately into one heap.

I know that among the Chinese nationalists there are people who cherish Kemalist ideas. There are pretenders in plenty to the role of a Kemal in China today. The chief among them is Chiang Kai-shek. I know that some Japanese journalists are inclined to regard Chiang Kai-shek as a Chinese Kemal. But that is all a dream, the illusion of frightened bourgeois. In China victory must go either to Chinese Mussolinis like Chang Tso-lin and Chang Tsung-chang, only for them to be overthrown later by the sweep of the agrarian revolution, or to Wuhan.

Chiang Kai-shek and his followers, who are trying to hold a middle position between these two camps, are inevitably bound to fall and share the fate of Chang Tso-lin and Chang Tsung-chang.

1. V. Stalin

Talk with Students of the Sun Yat-Sen University

May 13, 1927

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1927/05/13.htm

Even though the petty Kemalist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie [9] did emerge in Turkey after the first imperialist world war and the October Revolution owing to certain specific conditions (the bourgeoisie’s success in repelling Greek aggression and the weakness of the proletariat), there can be no second Turkey, much less a “Turkey” with a population of 450 million, after World War II and the accomplishment of socialist construction in the Soviet Union. In the specific conditions of China (the flabbiness of the bourgeoisie with its proneness to conciliation and the strength of the proletariat with its revolutionary thoroughness), things just never work out so easily as in Turkey. Did not some members of the Chinese bourgeoisie clamour for Kemalism after the First Great Revolution failed in 1927? But where is China’s Kemal? And where are China’s bourgeois dictatorship and capitalist society? Besides, even Kemalist Turkey eventually had to throw herself into the arms of Anglo-French imperialism, becoming more and more of a semi-colony and part of the reactionary imperialist world. In the international situation of today, the “heroes”‘ in the colonies and semi-colonies either line up on the imperialist front and become part of the forces of world counter-revolution, or they line up on the anti-imperialist front and become part of the forces of world revolution. They must do one or the other, for there is no third choice.

Judging by the domestic situation, too, the Chinese bourgeoisie should have learned its lesson by now. No sooner had the strength of the proletariat and of the peasant and other petty bourgeois masses brought the revolution of 1927 to victory than the capitalist class, headed by the big bourgeoisie, kicked the masses aside, seized the fruits of the revolution, formed a counter-revolutionary alliance with imperialism and the feudal forces, and strained themselves to the limit in a war of “Communist suppression” for ten years. But what was the upshot? Today, when a powerful enemy has penetrated deep into our territory and the anti-Japanese war has been going on for two years, is it possible that there are still people who want to copy the obsolete recipes of the European and American bourgeoisie? A decade was spent on “suppressing the Communists” out of existence, but no capitalist society under bourgeois dictatorship was “suppressed” into existence. Is it possible that there are still people who want to have another try? True, a “one-party dictatorship” was “suppressed” into existence through the decade of “Communist suppression”, but it is a semi-colonial and semi-feudal dictatorship. What is more, at the end of four years of “Communist suppression” (from 1927 to the Incident of September 18, 1931), “Manchukuo” was “suppressed” into existence and in 1937, after another six years of such “suppression”, the Japanese imperialists made their way into China south of the Great Wall. Today if anyone wants to carry on “suppression” for another decade, it would mean a new type of “Communist suppression”, somewhat different from the old. But is there not one fleet-footed person who has already outstripped everyone else and boldly undertaken this new enterprise of “Communist suppression”? Yes, Wang Ching-wei, who has become the new-style anti-Communist celebrity. Anyone who wishes to join his gang can please himself; but wouldn’t that turn out to be an added embarrassment when talking big about bourgeois dictatorship, capitalist society, Kemalism, a modern state, a one-party dictatorship, “one doctrine”, and so on and so forth? And if, instead of joining the Wang Ching-wei gang, someone wants to come into the “fight Japan” camp of the people but imagines that once the war is won he will be able to kick aside the people fighting Japan, seize the fruits of the victory of the fight against Japan and establish a “perpetual one-party dictatorship”, isn’t he just daydreaming? “Fight Japan!” “Fight Japan!” But who is doing the fighting? Without the workers and the peasants and other sections of the petty bourgeoisie, you cannot move a step. Anyone who still dares to try and kick them aside will himself be crushed. Hasn’t this, too, become a matter of common sense? But the die-hards among the Chinese bourgeoisie (I am referring solely to the die-hards) seem to have learned nothing in the past twenty years. Aren’t they still shouting: “Restrict communism”, “Corrode communism” and “Combat communism”? Haven’t we seen “Measures for Restricting the Activities of Alien Parties” followed by “Measures for Dealing with the Alien Party Problem” and still later by “Directives for Dealing with the Alien Party Problem”? Heavens! With all this “restricting” and “dealing with” going on, one wonders what kind of future they are preparing for our nation and for themselves! We earnestly and sincerely advise these gentlemen: Open your eyes, take a good look at China and the world, see how things stand inside as well as outside the country, and do not repeat your mistakes. If you persist in your mistakes, the future of our nation will of course be disastrous, but I am sure things will not go well with you either. This is absolutely true, absolutely certain. Unless the die-hards among the Chinese bourgeoisie wake up, their future will be far from bright–they will only bring about their own destruction. Therefore we hope that China’s anti-Japanese united front will be maintained and that, with the cooperation of all instead of the monopoly of a single clique, the anti-Japanese cause will be brought to victory; it is the only good policy– any other policy is bad. This is the sincere advice we Communists are giving, and do not blame us for not having forewarned you.

Moreover, the “one doctrine” theory is an absurdity. So long as classes exist, there will be as many doctrines as there are classes, and even various groups in the same class may have their different doctrines. Since the feudal class has a feudal doctrine, the bourgeoisie a capitalist doctrine, the Buddhists Buddhism, the Christians Christianity and the peasants polytheism, and since in recent years, some people have also advocated Kemalism, fascism, vitalism,[13] the “doctrine of distribution according to labour”,[14] and what not, why then cannot the proletariat have its communism? Since there are countless “isms”, why should the cry of “Fold it up !” be raised at the sight of communism alone? Frankly, “folding it up” will not work. Let us rather have a contest. If communism is beaten, we Communists will admit defeat in good grace. But if not, then let all that stuff about “one doctrine”, which violates the Principle of Democracy, be “folded up” as soon as possible.

9. After World War I the British imperialists instigated their vassal Greece to commit aggression against Turkey, but the Turkish people, with the help of the Soviet Union, defeated the Greek troops in 1922. In 1923, Kemal was elected President of Turkey. Stalin said:

A Kemalist revolution is a revolution of the top stratum, a revolution of the national merchant bourgeoisie, arising in a struggle against the foreign imperialists, and whose subsequent development is essentially directed against the peasants and workers, against the very possibility of an agrarian revolution. (“Talk with Students of the Sun Yat-sen University”, Works, Eng. ed., FLPH Moscow, 1954, Vol. IX, p. 261.)

13. Vitalism was an exposition of Kuomintang fascism, a hotchpotch ghostwritten by a number of reactionary hacks for Chen Li-fu, one of the notorious chiefs of Chiang Kai-shek’s secret service.
14. The “doctrine of distribution according to labour” was a high-sounding slogan shamelessly put forward by Yen Hsi-shan, warlord and representative of the big landlords and big compradors in Shansi Province.

Kaynak:

Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung

ON NEW DEMOCRACY

January 1940

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_26.htm