Nationalism no answer (1974)

From the June 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 70th anniversary issue of the Socialist Standard carried throughout its pages a series of snippets from old Socialist Standard articles highlighting the SPGB's unique position on issues of the day. Where possible, I've provided a link to the full article.

We recognise, as Marx recognised, that China, like other backward countries, must pass through the stage of capitalist development, but that is no reason for deluding the workers there or here into the belief that nationalism is anything but a capitalist movement. Premature attempts to seize power before economic conditions are ripe and before the workers are numerous enough and conscious enough to make success thinkable, are foredoomed to failure.

[From “The Mask off China”, Socialist Standard, May 1927]

Life & Times: Work in China and the UK (2024)

The Life and Times column from the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The other day I had a conversation with someone who told me he’d recently visited China and, having worked there in the past, now found things significantly changed. The context of this was a university academic, a social scientist, coming to speak with his trade union’s volunteer personal case officer (myself). He (I’ll call him Simon) was dissatisfied with his work situation largely owing to the volume of work he was being given, consisting of teaching, administration and research. In particular he was concerned that the teaching and administration had become so overwhelming that he was being left with little time to get on with and publish his research, which is what would dictate the progress of his career. What could be done? I made a few suggestions, among which was an approach by the union to his head of department protesting at his treatment and its apparent unfairness. He seemed happy with this – as a first step anyway.

‘Dire’

But in mentioning China at the start of our conversation, he’d also told me that, on his recent visit there with his wife, also a social scientist and herself Chinese, both of them had been offered jobs at a Chinese university. They’d thought about it but decided not to take up the offer because the current situation in China was ‘dire’ (his word). This made me curious, so after talking about Simon’s current employment issues, I asked him what he meant by ‘dire’ in relation to China. He was only too ready to explain.

He said there were three main reasons. The first one had been of particular concern to his wife – a noticeable increase in what he called misogyny. He explained that China’s ‘one-child’ policy having been abandoned quite some time ago, the government was concerned that the population now wasn’t replacing itself and so was putting considerable pressure on women to have more children and stay at home to bring them up. Women insisting on being employed were being portrayed almost as betrayers of the nation. The second thing was that they had noticed, since they last spent time there, that the climate had become noticeably more repressive. This manifested itself, for example, in university academics having to seek special permission simply if they wanted to spend a weekend away in another city or another part of the country and in it having become more difficult to get colleagues they knew to speak openly about any subject that might be considered sensitive or political. The third thing was that it was being made increasingly difficult for foreigners to obtain visas to stay in the country or to continue residence there, one consequence of which was that it was not unusual for western media correspondents not to have their visas renewed. Simon also told me they noticed a definite deterioration in economic conditions with signs that the government seemed nervous about possible unrest or protest and was seeking ways (eg, the furore about Taiwan) of distracting attention from deteriorating prospects and living conditions for its citizens. He ended by wondering, tongue in cheek of course, whether, given the increasingly repressive atmosphere, a comparison with the Ming dynasty might not be appropriate.

Xi Jinping: a ruler for ever?

All of this is anecdotal of course, but there does seem a lot of backing for Simon’s take on China from a good many other sources. For example, recent newspaper coverage has reported on the shrinking of China’s population and government concern about the low birth rate leading potentially to a loss of young workers. China’s apparently permanent leader Xi Jinping has been quoted as referring to women playing ‘a unique role in promoting traditional virtues’ and to the ‘need to cultivate a new marriage and childbearing culture to tackle the ageing population’. There is also evidence that, after decades of relatively high economic growth under a mixture of state and private capitalism, China’s economy is losing momentum, with significant downturns in various sectors (eg, building and construction, property, private tutoring, data management and transfer), unrest and unemployment leading to strikes and demonstrations among workers and also concern within the small Chinese private capitalist class, some of them fabulously rich, about government crackdowns, as the one-party regime seeks to tighten its control over both state and private economic activity.

As long ago as the 1980s, many people thought that China was moving towards less authoritarian, more democratic political institutions. Such hopes were dashed by the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, but there are again some commentators who consider that the current regime will find it difficult in the longer term to contain social unrest and this may lead to more enlightened government policies or at least a relaxation of repression – as happened for example in Eastern Europe where, against most people’s expectations, seemingly stable regimes crumbled almost overnight. This is obviously to be hoped for, since not only is the current anti-democratic, repressive regime an obstacle to the needs of continuing capitalist development, bumping up against the free circulation and exchange of ideas that need to go with that development, but it is also an obstacle to the subsequent development of socialist consciousness that we are looking for.

Socialism (with Chinese characteristics?)

To return to Simon and his wife, their perception of the way the Chinese regime currently operates (which it laughably called ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’) and their rationale for not staying there seem fully corroborated. There seems little doubt that their work situation and their freedoms, academic and otherwise, would have been far more restricted in China than in the UK. Of course, Simon had complaints about the way he was being treated by his employer here. But at least he was able to seek to address this via his trade union, a body independent of government or other ‘higher’ authority. How much more difficult would he have found the same kind of thing in China, where unions do exist but are closely government monitored and controlled? Would the outcome be a cancelled visa? Anyway, hasten the day when all such autocracies give way to at least the limited democracy that capitalism can offer and provide the ground for workers to decide collectively that they want to move on the road to that genuine alternative system of society beyond the system of wages, money and profit, which we call socialism.

Howard Moss

China in the 19th Century (1974)

From the October 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

In communist theory the feudal era in China ended with the fall of the Manchu dynasty in 1911 — preceded by a period of embryonic capitalism, and followed by the capitalist era. In reality, though this marked the end of Imperial and dynastic China, its economic effects were minimal. But for the 1914-18 war, it is quite probable that Yuan Shih-Kai’s bid to inaugurate a new dynasty with himself as emperor would have been successful; from the founding of the republic, he had the support of the western powers against the revolutionary Sun Yat sen.

The preoccupation with the war in Europe deprived Yuan of foreign support when he claimed imperial legitimacy, and also let in the Japanese as a new predator. After the war the western powers, expecting to return to the status quo, imagined they could buy off Japan by admitting her to the wolf-pack and allowing her to have the former German interests in Shantung province. This was China’s ultimate disillusionment with the west; it sparked off the May the Fourth movement from which Chinese Communism was to spring, nationalism and all. Confident that Japan had been appeased, the western powers went about their business of exploiting China. This was the period of warlordism, which was only a reflection of other rivalries. And when Japan wanted more, the western powers sank their differences and jointly supported Chiang Kai-shek as the best bet for defence against Japan.

During this period, though capitalism waxed fat in China, it was practically entirely western capitalism. Very little indigenous industrial enterprise started up. What did arise was a flourishing finance capitalism. Bankers, direct heirs of the usurious pawnshops of traditional China, were able to negotiate foreign loans and act as agents for raising Chinese capital to go into foreign enterprises. But agriculture continued to account for 90 per cent. of the population, and the torments of the peasants intensified as it was upon their backs that the burden of others’ money-making rested. To speak of this as China’s capitalist era is a delusion.

Before the 1911 pseudo-revolution China is supposed to have been undergoing the pangs of nascent capitalism. It is convenient to start the story of what was happening with the First Opium War of 1840, although it really opens with the Lord Macartney mission in 1793. The western mercantile nations were affronted and indignant at China’s refusal to enter into trading relations with them. China deliberately saw no benefit in foreign trade; to the rapacious young capitalist class this was an incomprehensible denial of the laws of political economy and of God. By 1840, they were prepared to force China at gun-point to accept their trade.

China’s subjugation followed as a matter of course, helped by the degeneracy of the ruling dynasty and civil strife. By 1860, after the sack of Pekin by the Anglo-French Expedition, both the Dragon Throne and the bureaucracy were in despair. The traditionalists interpreted these troubles as the consequence of the Emperor’s departure from Confucian virtue; but there was a more realistic school of thought which held that western force could only be met by Chinese force. They were agreed on the need to maintain traditional Chinese society, but advocated the introduction of western technology so that China could build the only weapons — both military and economic — which the intruders understood. They became known as the Self Strengthening Movement. Their practical problem was the declining revenue into the Treasury.

After the 1860 war the Maritime Customs was set up; it was for a long time administered wholly by western nations, mainly British, with Sir Robert Hart at the head. Its object was to collect payment of the various indemnities charged against China, and to fix low tariffs so that western goods could compete against Chinese products. Western goods were also exempt from internal taxation, so that the revenue crisis was very serious.

At the same time the Taiping Rebellion was raging. The first massive successes of the Taipings were due largely to the incompetence of the Manchu bannermen, who had become effete in a century of peace. The Taipings were eventually defeated with some help from the western nations, and this gave ground for military reorganization. The Manchu generals were replaced by Chinese commanders, some of whom introduced new tactics and were rewarded for their success with provincial governorships. A number of them were sympathetic to the Self Strengthening Movement.

The movement’s first obstacle was the raising of capital to set up modern industries. Generally, liquid capital was in the hands of merchants who were uninterested in the risks of industry; their favourite investment was in land as the means to entering the gentry class. A second obstacle was that no enterprise of any size could be set up without official approval. However, the Court’s own difficulties gave it no alternative but reluctantly to approve of some of the proposals of the Self Strengthened. The Maritime Customs returns seldom covered the indemnities, which increased with every minor incident of a European affronted by a Chinese, and there was the Court’s own extravagance. Something had to be done: industry of a sort came to China.

Despite the merchants’ general reluctance to invest in industry, a few with comprador experience saw that fortunes might be made. Sheng Hsuan-huai was at one time reputed to be the richest man in all China, and his rise to wealth is typical of the small number of merchants who turned to industry. Sheng came from a powerful merchant class with wide comprador associations, and his own family had taken the first step into the gentry class by becoming landowners. He had passed the local examinations for the civil service but failed in the provincial ones; when he became a rich man, he purchased several official positions.

China at an early stage began appointing to office by merit. This was Confucian doctrine, and even in Han times examinations were held; by the Tang dynasty they were firmly established. They produced the scholar élite , bringing a professionalism into the government service that assured continuity in the administration in whatever crisis. In the 15th century, during the Ming dynasty, office purchase was introduced. This was a device to dilute the bureaucracy so that it would not become too powerful, though it was justified on the score of introducing experience in practical affairs. When the Manchu dynasty was in full vigour office purchase fell into disuse, but was revived again during its degeneracy as a source of revenue. Eventually the purchase system so degraded office-holding that the abolition of the examinations, and the abrupt demise of the scholar class, passed by almost unnoticed.

Until Sheng was wealthy enough to purchase office he could claim only a lowly “official gentry” status. He saw the possibilities of enrichment through industry, and during his life controlled at one time and another steamships, posts and telegraphs, railways, ironworks, iron and coal mines, and interests in shipbuilding and cotton-mills. He began with steamships. After the Taiping Rebellion parts of the Grand Canal from Shanghai to Pekin were in disrepair, and there was a serious problem in transporting tribute rice from the south to feed Pekin and the north. Another route had to found. Some of the rice began to be carried by foreign steamships, and Sheng was unable to persuade members of his clan of the possibilities in buying steamships.

Success was assured when the approval of the clan head was given — this made investment by other clan members an obligation. Nobody expected a capitalist’s return on his investment. In fact none of Sheng’s companies ever paid much in the way of dividends, nor was there ever a policy of accumulation and growth (although quite large amounts of capital were required initially, except for posts and railways where the government invested for its own needs). But the investors, by applying traditional Chinese nepotism, could pack the higher offices with clan members and operating the peculation which also was taken for granted, cream off rich personal rewards — to be invested in even more lucrative pawnshops or in land to achieve status.

Sheng was eventually able to ingratiate himself with a provincial governor who was a Self Strengthener. Li Hungchang had been one of the successful generals in the Taiping defeat, and his reward was the metropolitan province of Chihili. He was also Controller of the Northern Ports; he and Sheng were made for each other. They were not unique. Other governors and high officials also tried to build up partnerships with merchants, and the struggles between factions were quite unscrupulous. Li’s patronage was Sheng's good fortune, enabling him to obtain a monopoly of the tribute rice shipments.

In fact in all Sheng’s undertakings the essential ingredient was an official monopoly. He had to reward his patrons lavishly, and the Throne also demanded recompense in “return for Imperial grace”. By employing Europeans almost exclusively as technicians, he showed no vision of a capitalist China. After the Boxer Rebellion, when the dying dynasty traded nominal survival for subservience to the west, he became little more than a super - comprador, though this still enabled him to increase his riches: he became probably the most hated man in China. His son’s biography of him says his aim was to amass a sufficient fortune to ensure the wellbeing of his family for many subsequent generations; this is a worthy Confucian aim but not a capitalist one.

*

The social status of the Chinese merchant was like that of the mediaeval Jew; he was despised as a usurer, yet tolerated because no-one could see how the services he performed could be dispensed with. Their wealth, like Jewish wealth in Europe, could always be sequestered. At the same time, the Chinese merchant had greater mobility for escape from his calling. If wealthy enough, he could become a landowner and his heirs qualify for entry into the scholar-gentry class. There was therefore no strong urge for a separate merchant class to struggle for political recognition.

As important as the combination of social mobility with rigid social stratification was the absence of truly free labour as it arose in the west. Although China’s expanding population in the 19th century brought great pressure on the land, there was relatively little urban drift. The family persisted with remarkable stability; every member from the toddler to the aged grandmother had their allotted tasks, with a total interdependence. In the cities handicrafts manufactures were carried on under a family basis. There were also small factories employing families from the same clan operating a joint enterprise.

To be a totally alienated individual was the most terrifying prospect facing any Chinese. It was common for the new arrival in the city, especially when he was alone, to carry an introduction to a secret society. These go back into ancient Chinese history, and some have histories which span centuries as friendly societies, dissident groups, political opposition and resistance bodies, bandits — in fact any cause either to affirm or to deny conformity. The large factory in the Chinese city recruited its labour from the labour boss of the appropriate secret society. The labour bosses had their own territories; in return for the wages he paid over to the society boss the labourer received enough rice just to keep alive, adulterated opium to make his misery just tolerable, and a minimum of rites for the comfort of his spirit when he died.

Inescapable despotism, abysmal living conditions and low capital investment made a strong propulsion for Chinese people to get out of China if they could. In the 17th and 18th centuries it was a capital offence for a Chinese to leave his homeland; many, nevertheless, took their heads in their hands and went to the Philippines. As early as 1855 Australia restricted Chinese immigration. Subsequently New Zealand and South Africa legislated for their exclusion, and the first restrictive immigration laws in the USA concerned them. Canada did the same. Chinese went to the East Indies, Malay, Burma and anywhere open to them. The greatest wave, however, was in this century, started about 1900 by the construction of the Russian railway across Manchuria and the large expenditure of the Russian army of occupation. When the Japanese took Manchuria in 1932 emigration was re-stimulated by Japanese recruitment and apparent “opportunities”; altogether, from 1900 to 1945 the Chinese population of Manchuria grew from 10 million to 40 million. It hardly needs saying that wherever they have gone the Chinese have found only what capitalism offers to the rest of the world’s population. Peasants went to the cities and became indentured coolies, and left — to become cheap labour all over the world.

Mary B.

Australian Communists Answered. (1928)

From the April 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the March issue, under the title “Socialism or Chinese Nationalism,” we replied to certain criticisms of our policy which appeared in the Australian Workers’ Weekly, organ of the Communist Party. Immediately after going to press we received from an Australian reader, J. McElligott, a copy of correspondence between himself and the writer of the Workers’ Weekly article. It is hardly necessary to say that the Workers’ Weekly first ignored the reply to their attack, and then, in answer to a letter of enquiry, refused to print it on the ground of lack of space. A final letter from our comrade McElligott was likewise ignored.

As the letter by McElligott is a concise and clear statement of the policy of the Socialist Party, we have printed it below. Some other Australian readers may be interested to note the cowardly attitude of our Communist critics. Possibly the knowledge that there are local comrades willing and able to defend the Socialist position will deter the Workers’ Weekly from again misrepresenting us.

Editorial Committee.

Townsville, 28/8/27.

The Editor,

The Workers’ Weekly,

395, Sussex Street, Sydney.

Dear Sir,

As a supporter of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, I wish to draw your attention to a number of inaccurate statements in an article entitled “History and the Workers,” published in the Workers’ Weekly for Friday, July 15th, 1927.

Under the heading “The New Opportunism,” the Socialist Party of Great Britain is attacked on account of an article, “Socialism or Chinese Nationalism,” which appeared in the Socialist Standard of March, 1927. The S.P.G.B. has been in existence since September, 1904, and during all that time its policy has been as constant as the Pole Star; it has “waged war on all other political parties, whether allegedly Labour or avowedly Capitalist”; … it has supported no Capitalist war and no Nationalist movement; it has always from the platform and press promulgated Socialism.

Your writer’s choice of a heading, “The New Opportunism,” was therefore an unhappy one.

Your article quotes the second paragraph ending with …”including a possible war in China,” and devotes 25 lines to exposing the definitely opportunist ending of the first question,” because, ”Despite the facts that the principal representations of Imperialism are piling up men and munitions in China, bombarding defenceless towns, murdering thousands of inhabitants,” etc., the S.P.G.B. traitorously says, “including a possible war in China.”

But your article was written in July, after “the bombardment of defenceless towns,” etc., by “the principal representatives of Imperialism” ; the article of the S.P.G.B. was written in February, before these events took place.

Your writer is therefore a fool or a rogue, and if a rogue he is still a fool, because others of your readers will remember, as I do, that the first time allied or foreign troops or warships were engaged in the recent Chinese disturbances was on March 23rd, 1927.

The term used by the S.P.G.B., “including a possible war in China,” was therefore correct, and not “definitely opportunist” (the Socialist Standard is published on the 1st of the month).

Your article goes on to say, “Let us suppose that Southampton, Liverpool and London were being bombarded from sea and air—would the theoreticians of the S.P.G.B. refer to it as a possible war on England?”

I suppose some term of reproach is implied in that “theoreticians,” but what it is or where he got it from Mr. Loughron does not say. If he cares to elaborate the term a little, I will deal with it.

The paragraph following in your article also leaves me mystified, and would, I think, be better, much better, for a little elaboration. I refer to the paragraph beginning, “We admit the weakness of our arguments lies in the fact that we imply the equality of Chinese and Britons,” etc. Can Loughron produce anything written or published by the S.P.G.B. claiming any “superiority for hundred per cent. freedom loving Britishers over mere chows”? If not, why does he make these dirty insinuations? Is it trying to live up to his self-imposed title, a “Leader of Revolutionists”?

In keeping with his unique style, Loughron goes on to say, “In the allegedly ‘ unambiguous No,’ the S.P.G.B. brand themselves as the henchmen of their Imperialist Masters. All their ‘No can amount to is the advocacy of a free hand for Imperial Piracy, which means the uninterrupted flow of members of our class as uniformed hirelings to strangle the aspirations of subject peoples such as India, Egypt or China, and guard the loot for their Imperial Masters.”

This, despite the fact that the article, “Socialism or Chinese Nationalism,” said, “Where the capitalist economic system exists (whether the government is Conservative, Liberal or Labour), armed forces are maintained for the protection of capitalist private property and capitalist interests generally. Foreign trade is one of the forces constantly creating friction with other capitalist competing’ countries and with ‘backward’ races which are unfortunate enough to dwell in parts of the earth endowed with rich natural resources. When the governing sections of the capitalist class think their interests seriously menaced, they set the armed forces in motion either at home or abroad. These armed forces are organised and controlled by these governing sections, and they are never used for any other purpose than the protection of capitalist interests. Wars waged by capitalist states involve, therefore, no working-class issue, and on no account would Socialists support them. The Socialist Party alone in this country consistently opposed the last war on Socialist grounds, and opposes any and every capitalist war. …”

That is what Loughron calls “the advocacy of a free hand.”

It is quite evident that Loughron does not understand English, and, if it were not reckoned presumption on my part, I would like to advise him to read more slowly, not to proceed to a fresh sentence until the last one is thoroughly understood, and, if necessary, to re-read an article several times, because, after all, it’s a pretty poor game writing such stuff; reading it is a waste of time and effort; and I cannot see that it does the workers’ cause or any other cause any good.

After the foregoing, one is not greatly surprised to read,

“The necessity of the National Revolution as the forerunner of the Social Revolution in subject countries is ignored, despite the fact that the class-conscious of all subject countries lend their driving force to the National movement, not as an end in itself, but for the weakening of the might of the Imperialist State, the getting of our propaganda to the broad masses, the gaining of their confidence, their acceptance of our leadership—the prerequisites for the Social Revolution.”

Prefaced by the usual lies—for on page 107 of the Socialist Standard for March, in the article “Socialism or Chinese Nationalism,” one reads :

“We are interested in one kind of struggle only, class struggle, and primarily in that phase which consists in the endeavour by wage-earners to overthrow capitalist private property and all forms of the wages system. The Nationalist movements blazing away in different parts of the world are not working class, but capitalist, in their aim. We therefore oppose them. Patriotism has the effect of binding together the classes in each geographical area. Socialists desire that conflicting class interests shall be recognised, not obscured. Socialism and patriotism are irreconcilably antagonistic. Patriotism is anti-working class, and Chinese Nationalism is no less so than is British. The one encourages the other. We wish to strangle both.”

That, according to Loughron, is “ignoring the necessity of National Revolution as the forerunner of the Social Revolution in subject countries” !

The last few lines of Loughron’s paragraph, “the getting of our propaganda to the broad masses, the gaining of their confidence, their acceptance of our leadership,” are more to the point. Herein is the profound difference between the S.P.G.B. and the Communist Party. The S.P.G.B. does not desire “the gaining of the confidence of the broad masses or their leadership.” There are no “leaders” in the S.P.G.B., “revolutionary” or otherwise.

The S.P.G.B. holds that “the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself,” and to that end the Party devotes all its activities to the making of Socialists, knowing full well that when a sufficient number of our class realise their class interest, they will organise and put Socialism into operation. “Leaders” will not be required; all will know the way.

So there is no need for “con men” or “magomen” to gain the confidence of the “broad masses” by taking up and advocating whatever rostrum happens to be prominent at the moment, the “Labour Party,” “Child endowment,” “Full pay for the unemployed,” etc.

All that is required is workers who will propagate the knowledge of Socialism. Socialism is “a system of Society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by and in the interest of the whole community.”

I remain,

Yours faithfully,

J. McElligott

Socialism or Chinese Nationalism: A Criticism from Australia. (1928)

From the March 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the March, 1927, issue appeared an article under the title “Socialism or Chinese Nationalism.” In it was set out the Socialist attitude towards the plea of the patriot that all citizens ought to defend the independence of the country in which they live. Our answer—the answer we gave in 1914—is plain and definite. Under capitalism all the workers in every land are wage slaves. They have, under capitalism, no means as a class of escaping from wage slavery. Victory or defeat, in wars between capitalist nations, each leaves their position in society unchanged. Even the standard of living of the workers in both the “victorious” and “defeated” countries has altered little or not at all since 1914. The abolition of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism is the only first-class issue for the Socialist. The enemy of the working class is the capitalist class.

Therefore to urge the workers to fight for Irish, or Indian, or Chinese, or English, or German national independence, is to ask them to neglect the problems and the interests of their class. Such propaganda under capitalism, on whatever pretext, is anti-Socialist.

The Communists, like other reformist organisations, urge the workers on various tactical pleas to take this anti-Socialist course of action. The Irish workers, having been told to fight for Sinn Fein, are now told to support their equally capitalist opponents in De Valera’s party. German workers were urged to resist the French occupation of the Ruhr. Communists in Alsace are now agitating for independence. Indians and Chinese workers are told by the Communists to support first one and then another of the various capitalist nationalist parties in the respective countries.

The Australian Communist journal, The Workers’ Weekly (Sydney, 15th July, 1927). angrily attacks the attitude of the Socialist Party. They are angry first of all because the article in question referred to a “possible war in China.” This, says The Workers’ Weekly, is “opportunism” and is “traitorous,” because in fact hostile acts were being committed even if war had not openly been declared. The criticism is pointless and childish. Our attitude is the same whether hostilities are veiled or open; we tell the English workers and the Chinese workers that the attack and the resistance to attack are alike not deserving of the support of the working class.

In comparison with the loss of working class life and limb in war the difference between exploitation by Chinese capitalists and exploitation by foreign capitalists matters nothing at all to the Chinese workers. (The Kuomintang Party estimates that already 100,000 lives have been lost in the Chinese wars of the past year or two, in the Nationalist Army alone.)

The Workers’ Weekly goes on to state the hypothesis of a bombardment of Southampton, Liverpool and London, and asks whether we would refer to that as a “possible war on England.” Our critic forgets the fact that during the war 1914-1918 we did consistently maintain the attitude we now place before the Chinese workers, the attitude of unqualified hostility to capitalist wars. (It would, incidentally, be interesting to know if our critics can offer as consistent a record.)

We are branded as “henchmen” of our “Imperialist masters” because we tell the workers that rule by one section of the capitalist class does not differ in essentials from rule by another section. We are asked to enthuse over the “aspirations of subject peoples such as India, Egypt or China.” Instead we tell the truth, which is that Indian or Chinese “independence” matters no more to the workers there than does English “independence” matter to us. They are all capitalist movements. Just as we told the English workers in 1914 not to support the war against Germany, so we tell the Chinese workers now. Perhaps our critic will enlighten us by explaining what the Chinese workers stand to gain by defending Chinese capitalism against European capitalist Governments, and what the English workers stood to gain in 1914 by defending English capitalism against German.

The Workers’ Weekly repeats the familiar Communist arguments about supporting nationalist capitalist movements for tactical reasons.

The national movement should be supported, they say, 

“not as an end in itself, but for the weakening of the might of the Imperialist State, the getting of our propaganda to the broad masses, the gaining of their confidence, their acceptance of our leadership, the prerequisites for the Social Revolution.”

China is an excellent example of the suicidal nature of that policy. Capitalism as a world system is not weakened but strengthened by the emergence of new and powerful independent or semi-independent capitalist nations like Ireland, China, India, Egypt, etc.

The entry of Communists into nationalist parties like the Kuomintang in China did not aid Communist propaganda. Communist propaganda was in the first place inevitably subordinated, as it was in Ireland, to nationalist propaganda in the interests of the so-called “national crisis.” And as soon as the various Chinese nationalist leaders, whom the Communists supported in turn, had no further use for their Communist supporters, they got rid of them by execution and other means. Literally thousands of lives of politically active Chinese workers were needlessly sacrificed in this way.

In fact the Communists in China have not succeeded in winning the confidence of the masses, or in getting positions of leadership, but if they had it would not materially help Communism. Teaching Chinese workers that the “national independence” is a working class issue is not Communist propaganda. Winning positions of power and eminence as Chinese patriots, or Irish or English or German patriots, is playing the capitalist game. It is not destroying but building up the dangerous illusions of patriotism. For the Russians it may well prove an exceptionally dangerous double-edged weapon. China is rapidly moving towards the position of an independent capitalist republic, and it may very well be that the Chinese nationalism fostered for “tactical” reasons by Russian Communists will provide the screen behind which the Chinese capitalists will prepare to enforce their class interests should these conflict with Russian territorial and other claims.

In conclusion, let us remind the Communist Party of Australia that the Socialist Party of Great Britain can boast that it has never urged the workers to fight in or prepare for capitalist wars, and has never, directly or indirectly, aided any party doing so. The Communist Party of Australia, on the other hand, actively supports the Australian Labour Party, which is notorious for its support of the last war and for its “big navy” and air force programme.

Edgar Hardcastle

World View: The two Chinas (2000)

From the March 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

The President of Taiwan (the Republic of China) is today Li Têng-hui, a spokesman for the big capitalists with the greatest stake in the island’s wealth. Opposing him and his colleagues of the Kuomintang are the island’s smaller capitalists, campaigning for Taiwan’s independence as a nation-state. China has threatened to invade Taiwan and impose Beijing’s rule should the Taiwan nationalists ever topple the Kuomintang. The large capitalists of China and Taiwan now engage in full trade relations and the difference in flag colour is largely irrelevant. While Taiwan remains under the rule of the Kuomintang and its new sister parties it remains a province of China in reality, under “renegade” rule in name alone. In the eyes of China’s—and Taiwan’s Chinese—capitalists, the real “renegades” are the Taiwanese capitalists seeking a “completely separate” nation-state, an ambition which is unlikely to be realised.

Li Têng-hui and Têng Hsiao-p’ing possibly manipulated the Taiwanese national elections by the staging of Chinese military manoeuvres in the Taiwan Strait at which Li could pose as the champion of Taiwanese independence and an opponent of China, stealing votes from the nationalists. Whatever the future of the two states, workers in Taiwan have to realise they have no interest in supporting either side in what is a struggle between gangs of rival businesspeople for the right to exploit the workers most efficiently.

Têng Hsiao-p’ing, the hero of the Chinese peasants, is now dead. A hero for the peasants of the 1930s fighting against the feudal landlords, he was no friend of China’s workers at the end of the century and is not to be missed by them any more than any other engineer of mass exploitation. While China’s government is still run by the so-called “Communist” Party, private businesses are proliferating and the greater exploitation of people and resources in the interest of profit is gaining ground as never before. Rampantly exploitative and pollutant capitalist industry is booming. (This includes the clearing of the Yangtse for greater commerce through the extermination of one of the world’s rarest species of dolphin.) China is now a trading superpower and the seeds of future conflict with the United States are steadily being sown.

None of this is in the interest of the Chinese working class nor of the majority of humankind, who must still face the task of organising to establish a world community of common ownership of the Earth—if we, human beings, are to avert another, and final, world war, and survive as a life-form at all.

Anthony Walker

Socialism or Chinese nationalism? (1927)

From the March 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Although our attitude towards Chinese Nationalism has been stated several times, there are still readers who do not understand it or cannot reconcile it with what they supposed to be the socialist point of view.

Let us first separate two quite distinct questions which have unfortunately been confused in the agitation carried on by various wings of the Labour Party : First, ought the workers to support wars waged by capitalist States, including a possible war in China? Secondly, should the workers support nationalist movements, aimed at securing national independence, including the struggle to rid China of foreign control?

The only socialist answer in both cases is an unambiguous no ! We support no capitalist war and we support no nationalist movement.

Where the capitalist economic system exists (whether the government is Conservative, Liberal or Labour) armed forces are maintained for the protection of capitalist private property and capitalist interests generally. Foreign trade is one of the forces constantly creating friction with other capitalist competing countries and with “backward” races which are unfortunate enough to dwell in parts of the earth endowed with rich natural resources. When the governing sections of the capitalist class think their interests seriously menaced they set the armed forces in motion either at home or abroad. Those armed forces are organised and controlled by these governing sections and THEY ARE NEVER USED FOR ANY OTHER PURPOSE THAN THE PROTECTION OF CAPITALIST INTERESTS. Wars waged by capitalist State involves, therefore, no working-class issue, and on no account would socialists support them. The Socialist Party alone in this country consistently opposed the last war on socialist grounds, and opposes any and every capitalist war. The particular circumstances are to us a matter of supreme indifference. The German invasion of Belgium, the French occupation of the Saar, the Chinese threat to Shanghai, the Russian attempts to damage the British Empire, Irish or Indian or Egyptian demands for independence, Mexican threats to the property of oil companies, each and every one leaves us cold. In every instance the driving motive is the desire to seize or to protect captalist private property. Capitalist States fight only over the division of the loot obtained by the exploitation of wage workers. We are wage workers and are only concerned with the abolition of exploitation.

But to come to the second question, if we will not fight to prevent the German capitalist class from plundering the Belgian and British capitalist class, we most emphatically will not assist Irish, Indian, German or Chinese captalists against British capitalists. We are interested in one kind of struggle only, class struggle, and primarily in that phase which consists in the endeavour by wage earners to overthrow capitalist private property and all forms of the wages system. The national movements blazing away in different parts of the world are not working-class, but capitalist, in their aim. We therefore oppose them. Patriotism has the effect of binding together the classes in each geographical area. Socialists desire that conflicting class interests shall be recognised, not obscured.

Socialism and patriotism are irreconcilably antagonistic. Patriotism is anti-working class and Chinese nationalism is no less so than is British. The one encourages the other. We wish to strangle both.

The Labour Party leads the workers to believe that hostility to a war with China implies the necessity of supporting Chinese nationalism. This is an anti-socialist attitude. Nationalism is merely an aspect of the rise of capitalism. Its history is a tragic record of working-class lives lost, working-class energies wasted and self-sacrifice betrayed. It has no relieving feature; it has brought no material gain to the workers. Nationalism has ever in the long run proved a treacherous basis for working-class organisation. In the capitalist French Revolution the great majority of the victims of the guillotine were not aristocrats but workers. The French commercial class did not hesitate to slaughter the misguided wage-earners who interpreted Liberty as meaning the Liberty of themselves.

In the revolutions which swept over Europe in 1848 under the twin capitalist cries of Democracy and Nationalism, the workers who fought under capitalist leadership were invariably betrayed and their hopes disappointed whenever the demands of the capitalists against their Feudal enemies were wholly or partly conceded. What have Italian or Balkan workers gained by the blood they poured out winning “freedom” from Austria and Turkey? In our own day, what have Irish workers benefited by the years of assassination and guerilla warfare against the armed forces of the British capitalist state? Does any intelligent observer believe for one moment that Irish, or Polish, or Indian, or Egyptian, or Chinese capitalists are one whit less brutal in their exploitation of their workers than are British, or German, or American, or any other Imperialist capitalist class?

The Chinese workers will be no better off when they have exchanged British and Japanese for Chinese masters. The Chinese workers are few in comparison with the enormous mass of peasants; they are not, or at best only weakly, organised. They cannot impose their will on the Nationalist Movement and, if they cannot do so now, much less will they be able to do so when Chinese Capitalism, flushed with victory over its foreign enemies, turns its attention to the paramount home problem of keeping the, workers in subjection. After generations of struggle and experience, the British and other European trade union movements are impotent to control their own sections of the capitalist class, yet their leaders do not hesitate to assume that the Chinese workers have done this or will succeed in doing so in a year or two.

We have already in these pages given the evidence of unprejudiced observers as to the essentially capitalist origin and aims of the Cantonese movement. To reply, as some of their apologists do, that the organised Chinese workers support this movement, is evidence only of the political inexperience of the Chinese workers. We have hardly had time to forget that in 1914 the organised workers in Europe rushed madly into the slaughter under their respective national flags. Will anyone now suggest that this is proof of the non-capitalist origins and objects of that war? And, further, can anyone assert that the working class gained anything whatever by their support? Many of those who were preaching hatred then in the name of Nationalism and in the service of the capitalist class, are now parading the same anti-socialist principles on behalf of China. Ben Tillett “hailing the new spirit in China” on the platform of the Albert Hall (Daily Herald 7th February), and being rapturously cheered by workers, is as pitiful a spectacle as was shown during the war, when similar unthinking people were misled by the same Ben Tillett, while he was earning an honest penny on the music halls, devoting his oratorical gifts to inflaming bestial passions with filthy lies about German atrocities.

Merely to assume that the enemies of British capitalists are necessarily the friends of socialism is too shallow to need refutation, but another cause of confusion about China is the fact that the Russian Government is actively supporting the Kuomintang Party. What must be remembered is that the Russian Government has other reasons for its activity besides its direct working-class sympathies. Russian foreign policy, for instance, led to some kind of tacit understanding with Fascist Italy, because, for a time, both Russia and Italy happened to be at loggerheads with Rumania. And, in China, while the Bolshevists have no illusions about the Nationalist Movement, they do urgently want a strong independent China, able to resist European and particularly British influences in the East.

Lewis S. Gannett, writing on his visit to China in the New Masses (New York, February, 1927, an “unofficial” Communist journal), has the following :—

“The Russians …. want to see in China a strong National State which will resist the encroachments of those Western States which Russia perforce regards as enemies; and they know full well that a semi-bourgeois Nationalist China, if strong, will mean far more help to Soviet Russia than a struggling little Communist nucleus, pure but ineffective,”

and again

“They [the Russians] know perfectly well that there is no more chance of a Communist revolution in China to-day than there was in America in 1776.”

According to Gannett there are only some 3,000 Communists in China.

A recent Thesis of the Communist International on the Chinese question, states that no less than five out of six of the Commissars of the Kuomintang Party belong to the right wing, i.e., represent purely capitalist interests, recognising, however, that at present they cannot dispense with working-class support.

(For extracts from Thesis, see Manchester Guardian, 14th February.)

Further, leaders of the daily press will have noticed that various religious organisations are supporting the Nationalist Movement. The Executive of the National Christian Council, “which represents the vast majority of Protestant Churches in: China and the great majority of Missionary Societies, British, American and Continental,” has issued a manifesto declaring that they “share in the Nationalist aspirations . . . They are prepared to accept risks and even to face persecution rather than: oppose the most hopeful movement in modern China.” (Manchester Guardian, 14th February). A working-class movement, whether in China or England, would not move organised religious movements to such enthusiasm.

There is a last and fairly powerful argument in favour of supporting Nationalist Movements. It is true that the existence of foreign control enables capitalist politicians to blame the evils of their system on to the “foreigner.” Thus it was not until Ireland became “free” that Irish workers fully learned what Irish capitalists are capable of. Against this, however, must be placed the great harm wrought by the exaggeration of national feeling, and hatred of foreigners. This breeds a state of mind quite unsuited to working-class organisation: and saps the solidarity of members of the working-class to each other. It cannot be doubted that the virtual suspension of organised trade union activities in Ireland during the Civil War and in England during the “Great” War, enormously weakened the strength of the organisations concerned, and buried their avowed objects under masses of the vilest war propaganda.

True, it is not easy to oppose mass patriotic movements, whether in Ireland, or England, or China, but that difficulty is not removed by closing one’s eyes to it, nor is it lessened by postponing it until “after the war.” If those who wish to organise and educate the Chinese workers lend themselves to Nationalist propaganda now, they will find it immeasurably more difficult to return to working-class principles after they have won for their masters the reality and for themselves the illusion of Chinese independence. Our advice to the Chinese workers is to build up organisations to fight their own capitalist class—they will need them soon enough. Our advice to British workers is to acquaint themselves with their own class interests and get rid of the two illusions that organisations which have suffered for five or six years an almost unbroken series of defeats at home at the hands of the powerful British ruling class, is able, by passing resolutions, to dictate foreign policy to its masters, or wise to urge young movements like the Chinese, to follow the disastrous British policies, which have wrought such tragic results.

Blogger's Note:

This article was unsigned but it was the case that other substantive articles that were written on China in the Socialist Standard during the 1920s were usually written by Edgar Hardcastle. There's a strong case that Hardcastle also wrote this article.

Editorial: The Socialist View of the Situation in China. (1925)

Editorial from the August 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

The present disturbances in those of China occupied by foreign settlements may be said to have had their immediate origin in a strike which took place in February last. Chinese workers employed in Japanese textile factories in Shanghai protested against the ill-treatment of a girl who was seriously injured by a Japanese foreman. Her offence was that she was found asleep after a twelve-hour night shift. The strikers demanded that fines and personal violence of this kind be abolished, and a 10 per cent, increase of their wages. The strike appears to have been unsuccessful, but even so the employers failed to keep the terms of settlement.

In May this and many long-standing grievances led to a general strike movement in Shanghai, and feeling was quickly inflamed by the death of a striker at the hands of a Japanese factory official. On May 30th a number of Chinese students paraded in protest after having been forbidden to do so by the police. Some students were arrested and the remainder demanded their release. Shanghai police in the charge of a British inspector were then ordered by him to “shoot to kill” only 10 seconds after he had announced his intention to the few bystanders who were near enough to hear his words. The result was that 6 were killed and 40 wounded. Within 6 days the victims in the ensuing riots numbered 70 dead and 300 wounded —all Chinese.

The movement rapidly spread to Hong Kong, Canton and other industrial and commercial centres, being added to and made more complex by the race hatred of British, French, Japanese and other foreigners who have at different times occupied Chinese territory and maintained their occupation by force, in spite of the opposition of Chinese governments. It has been easy enough to induce the strikers to believe that their enemy is the “foreigner,” because the majority of the factories happen to be foreign owned. There is actually, of course, no question of the Chinese exploiter being any less brutal in his treatment of his employees than are his alien rivals. The abominable conditions which prevail in the foreign mills—as bad as those common in this country in the early days of the factory system—are equalled, if not surpassed, by those in Chinese establishments in and outside the foreign settlements.

The foreign settlers, backed by their respective governments, are thus threatened by two quite different but at present associated movements—by their Chinese employes, who want better conditions, and by the propertied and educated Chinese, who burn with hatred of the foreign invaders and demand independence. They resent their position of political and social inferiority and (most intolerable of all the burdens a would-be ruling class can be made to bear) they have had to suffer the indignity of seeing the proceeds of the exploitation of Chinese workers pocketed by European and Japanese capitalists. The first principle of patriotism in China, as elsewhere, is that robbery, like charity, should begin—and end—at home.

For their part the foreigners are by no means more than superficially united. Great Britain arrived early and obtained the best ports and most extensive spheres of interest, and now in consequence has to face the hardly disguised hostility of the late arrivals who seek to gain commercial and financial advantage by other means than those adopted by Great Britain. Thus Russia and U.S.A. both go out of their way to pose as friends of China. Russia has already relinquished all special privileges in China, and America chooses this moment to announce that it foregoes the last instalments of the Boxer indemnity. American missionaries supported the policy of their Government by giving evidence on behalf of the arrested Chinese students, while British and others were defending and glorifyingf the brutality of the British controlled police.

As for the disturbances, we are familiar enough with the customary violent and hypocritical attitude of the European ruling classes towards their workers not to be surprised at the use of similar methods in Shanghai. All the blame was as a matter of course laid on the Chinese students and “agitators,” but little by little evidence has accumulated which badly damages the pretensions of the guardians of “law and order.”

In the demonstration the only casualties were Chinese; two out of three doctors stated at the trial that the wounds were nearly all in the back, which would be inexplicable if the crowd had been attacking the police; the third doctor said, “I am not sure whether the bullets were shot from the back or the front.” (Daily Herald, July 21st.) The judges found “that there was no violence or indication of violence, that most of the arrests took place before the shooting. …” The students were all acquitted. The Commission appointed by the diplomatic body blamed the police and recommended the dismissal of those responsible (Daily Herald, 22nd July). This finding has been overlooked or suppressed by most of the Press.

The recent movement is, however, only a symptom of a change which coming over China—the change from a static peasant system to an aggressive and progressive capitalism.

“China is passing through the first phases of the industrial revolution. … In the seven years from 1915 the number of spindles rose from one to two millions.”—” Manchester Guardian,” 19th June, 1925.

A propertyless industrial working class is massing and slowly learning to organise against vile factory conditions and low wages. Whether they will or no they are being brought into dependence on world capitalism, and they will in time take their part in the struggle for the overthrow of that system.

Unfortunately this critical phase finds them overwhelmed with interested parties offering them bad advice, anxious to divert them into various blind alleys.

The Chinese capitalists, the Communists and the Labour Party are all “friends” of the Chinese worker. If the Chinese workers are led to support the Chinese capitalist independence movement, experience will soon teach them that nationality means nothing whatever to the workers ; their lot will be no degree better if and when their exploiters are all Chinese.

The Communists’ willingness to deceive other people is only equalled by the ability to deceive themselves. They disregard the fact that at present only a small fraction of China is industrialised, they slur over the Capitalist aims of the independence movement and urge the workers to support anti-working class political groups to fight issues of no moment except to Chinese capitalists.

What they cannot or do not wish to see is plainly visible to others. The Chinese representative in London of the “Sin Po” (Batavia) writes as follows in “Foreign Affairs” (July, 1925):

“China, a land of conservatism and tradition, of peasant proprietorship, is the worst imaginable ground for the sowing of Marxian ideas. China being so vast, it is not surprising that in certain parts of the country the extreme Left wing of the Kuomintang is Communist ; but the body of the organisation is bourgeois and capitalistic with the mediaeval capitalism (“distributism”) of Mr. G. K. Chesterton. Let not Europeans be deceived by their newspapers: the present trouble in China, in so far as it is political, is a manifestation of nationalism in which merchants and bourgeois join with workers and students to resist foreign exploitation.”

The British Labour Party and Trades Union Congress have passed resolutions of sympathy protesting their solidarity with the Chinese workers. How little their socialist understanding and how little the value of their sympathy is shown by the fact that on 25th May the General Council sent a deputation to the President of the Board of Trade

“To protest against the continued employment of Chinese and cheap Asiatic labour on British steamers. The deputation asked the Government to introduce a Bill to make illegal such employment west of the Suez Canal.”—” Daily Herald,” 26th May.

The industrial workers of China are few at present. They should organise and work to defend their class interests on the economic field against capitalists irrespective of nationality, and prepare for the future when conditions will have been prepared making working class emancipation possible through Socialism.

The Chinese in Britain (1969)

From the May 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

One more minority problem is developing here and seems likely to be dumped on the government’s plate should unemployment increase sufficiently to force the matter into the front rank of problems.

According to L. Wong (Overseas Chinese in Britain) there are 45,000 Chinese here; 30,000 immigrant workers from Hong Kong, with the remaining 15,000 consisting of students and nurses from other countries such as Malaysia and the West Indies, and more are coming in all the time.

They are not a homogeneous group in terms of dialect spoken, education, or country of origin, and moreover each group looks upon all others as alien. For instance, many of the Chinese here are villagers from the Hong Kong area, but are subdivided into Hakkas (the original inhabitants of the province of Canton, centuries before the Cantonese arrived) and the Cantonese. But these days the mutual hostility has greatly diminished, and intermarriage is quite common. Then again, the urbanised educated from Hong Kong find little in common with the villagers.

The Malaysian Chinese students regard Hong Kong Chinese students as ‘different’, and vice versa.

Many of the working-class Chinese find employment in the Chinese restaurants which have become quite a popular institution in Britain, enlivening our world of bricks and mortar with an exotic splash of colour, and sometimes relieving the housewife of her chores at the kitchen stove. There are about 1,000 of them, with more opening all the time, of which 200 are in London.

Some restaurant workers are resentful of the long hours they have to work and complain that employers are able to conceal this from the officials.

There are clubs and associations for each of the different groups here, including restaurant workers. Some of these clubs hold one or two religious observances during the year, but in common with workers all over the world, the Chinese are steadily dropping all mystic beliefs. On Ch’ung Yand day, one of the Chinese traditional days of mystic ritual, at the Chinese cemetery in London’s East End a few years ago only 25 people were present, Ng Kwei Choo reports in The Chinese in London.

The clubs are the battlegrounds where the Nationalists and so-called Communists compete for political loyalties.

The Nationalists are the political party who represented the capitalism of developing China before the second world war. Since last century, when China was overrun by Western capitalists, exploitation was carried on through a Chinese middleman—a compradore, a variety of capitalist peculiar to China. For instance, commercial crops were bought and collected by a compradore’s organisation in the interior of of China which also provided transport to the required treaty port where the Western merchant company took over and proceeded to clean, sort, pack, ship to the West, and finance. The compradores, though originally tied to Western enterprises, began over the years to operate in their own right and eventually with other budding capitalists formed their own political party under the leadership first of Sun Yat-sen then Chiang Kai-shek. Their policy, although phrased in pseudo-socialist terms, was to develop China largely by private enterprise for the benefit of the indigenous ruling-class. They lost the civil war with the Communist Party and retired to the island of Formosa. Here, with American aid, they act as a thorn in the side of the Chinese government on the mainland.

On the other hand, the so-called Communist Party of China, who control the Chinese government, are committed to state capitalism for the major industries, and battle for the support of the Chinese in Britain.

For instance, a visit to a Communist Party film-show in London typically starts with a playing of the national anthem, at which the audience stands to attention. Among the films is one entitled A Stroll in Peking depicting the contrast between Peking under the Nationalists’ regime and the new Peking. Another entitled Change of Circumstances depicts the Communist Chinese as saviours of the oppressed with the Nationalists and Japanese as the villains of the piece. This film works up hatred for the Japanese and helps the audience to become patriotic Chinese.

The Chinese in Britain are in many ways a miniature of the Chinese in the world at large; they have their sectarian loyalties but it is no contradiction to say that in essentials they have very much more in common with British workers than they have differences. We are all workers of the world.

Frank Offord

Capitalism victorious in China. (1926)

From the December 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

In our issue of August, 1925, we set out our view of the situation in China and explained why Socialists cannot share the extravagant hopes raised in certain quarters by the progress of the Kuomintang Party. As in the pioneer capitalist countries, so also in those which have been subject to foreign imperialists, the capitalists are always anxious to obtain the help of the workers in the fight against their own enemies, whether those enemies be feudal proprietors or foreign capitalists. No doubt there was a gain in the grant to Ireland of “self-government." That gain is a gain in clarity. It is no longer possible for the Irish defenders of capitalism to pretend that the poverty and unemployment suffered by the Irish workers are due to “foreign” government. So also in China. It is better that the Chinese workers should be able to realise that they suffer from exploitation just as much whether at the hands of Chinese exploiters or European and Japanese exploiters. The rise of a strong independent capitalist Chinese Republic will enormously hasten the economic and political development of the Eastern workers. But we must at the same time point out that nothing is gained and much is lost by misinterpreting the outcome of these national struggles.

If the Chinese workers are encouraged to see in national independence a solution of their economic problems they will—like the Irish, the Poles and many others—suffer a grievous disappointment. It is the duty of the Socialist to work to destroy the present illusion and thus avoid the future disillusion. Let the Chinese workers organise not as Chinamen alongside their home capitalists, but as workers. They should reject the fallacious argument of foreign political parties which urge them to do otherwise. In England this fallacy is based on an old saying that “The enemies of my enemies are my friends.” In truth the capitalist enemies of the British capitalists are not, and cannot, be the friends of the workers, British or non-British. If the Chinese capitalists happen to be at loggerheads with the British capitalists, that is no reason why British or Chinese workers should imagine they have a friend in the Chinese employing class.

In the Sunday Worker (November 14th) the position in China with all its pitfalls to the workers is shown in a nutshell :

  The native merchant class saw the trade of the country growing under the domination of the foreign financial groups while their own share of the booty grew smaller. The foreign imperialists had to be fought.
  Unable to fight the battle alone the native capitalists sought salvation in the Kuomintang. They planned to use the revolt of the Workers and Peasants to drive out the foreign imperialists and to establish a new imperialism of their own.
  The right wing of the party has therefore grown to an alarming extent, and unless the Left Wing can retain control the Workers of China and Europe will find that when European imperialism has been smashed a Chinese imperialism will have risen in its stead. This is the real “Yellow Peril.”

And not only does the approaching victory of the Kuomintang lead the Chinese capitalists to prepare for the inevitable future clash with their own exploited classes, but it seems likely also that they will follow the path already trodden by their fellow capitalist-nationalists in Ireland and India. In the long run they will find that as capitalists they have lasting and important interests in common with some or other of their late capitalist enemies. The Sunday Worker correspondent reports that the British Foreign Office is now in favour of supporting the Kuominatung capitalists, who in turn will no doubt be glad of this outside help in time of trouble at home with the Chinese workers. The real task of the Chinese workers is that of the workers everywhere—to fight against capitalism whatever the national flag under which it hides. The duty of Socialists is to keep this issue always to the fore, not to rouse deadly national hatreds which obscure the class divisions in society and retard the growth of Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

The "Plebs" on China (1927)

From the July 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the June "Plebs,” a writer signing himself “Zed,” tries to explain the meaning of the Chinese Nationalist movement for the benefit of the Marxists who can see in it "no more than in the various bourgeois nationalist movements of the past.” As we are Marxists who can see in capitalist nationalist movements nothing but capitalist nationalism (except, maybe, nationalised capitalism) possibly "Zed” is speaking of and to us. When, however, he says that the “defection of Chiang-Kai-Shek” must seem to these Marxists "an inexplicable surprise,” we can assure him that the boot is on the other foot. The people who were most surprised—apart from the Chinese workers whose heads Chiang-kai-Shek cut off when he had no further use for their propaganda activities, were precisely those who urged the workers to support the Chinese Nationalist Movement and its leaders. As was pointed out in our May issue, almost at the moment when Chiang was openly suppressing the trade unions, the Labour Research Department was explaining why the workers could go on supporting him with confidence in his aims and integrity. It is not a personal question, but one of class interests, as "Zed” correctly remarks, but it is emphatically not correct that the Chinese Nationalist Movement is “a bloc united by a common interest . . . against Imperialism.” "Zed” is led astray by his unquestioning acceptance of the view that peasants and workers can be lumped together as one class. This is as unsound as his further assumption that these two classes and the Chinese capitalists have a common interest in resisting foreign capitalism. True, peasants and workers are both, in their different ways, exploited, but the formers’ desire for private ownership of the land free from punitive taxation, and their desire for good marketing facilities for their products, do not make them allies for the workers, either in the struggle for higher wages or for the abolition of capitalist. In the fight for and against private property they are on opposite sides.

"Zed” does not offer one scrap of evidence that the Chinese workers have an interest in fighting foreign capitalist governments. The interests served in China by the Nationalist Movement are those of the Chinese capitalists and peasants, not those of the Chinese workers. We therefore expected from the first that the leaders of that movement would never permit their own workers to get out of hand, and that any danger to capitalist interests from that quarters would be ruthlessly suppressed. Nor are we surprised to learn that Chang, the Northern anti-Nationalist dictator, who represents another section of the exploiters, contemplates hoisting the flag of nationalism to cover the too blatant class interests he represents. It is only the too-trustful "Zed” and the Chinese dupes of this anti-working-class theory who are surprised at what takes place.

“Zed" goes on to consider why, in such movements, the capitalist nationalists ultimately ally themselves—on terms—with their "Imperialist enemies." It is because we recognise that this is inevitable that we urge the workers everywhere to oppose their own capitalist class from the outset and build up their own independent organisations. If this were done, so soon as the organisations of the workers became anything of a power, the employers would come to terms with foreign capitalists, and the confusion of a nationalist struggle, with its obscuring effect on the class issues, would be avoided. To justify the alternative policy “Zed" needs to offer some substantial evidence that the workers have ever gained by supporting the employing class in a struggle with foreign capitalists. In which of the European nations between 1914 and 1918 did defence of the "fatherland” bring: gains to the working-class movement.

What were the concessions won from capitalist governments by the fraudulent “National Socialist Parties” which littered Europe in those days, whether our own Labour Party, that in Germany or those in the new Polish, Czecho-Slovak and other republics?

Let "Zed” tell us what the Indian, Egyptian and Irish workers have secured by pursuing the will o' the wisp of nationalism. In truth, of course, none of these movements ever pretended to aim at working- class emancipation. The Kuomintang, like Sinn Fein, has purely propertied-class aims. In "Lansbury’s Labour Weekly" (another journal urging support of what it is pleased to call "Socialist-nationalism”) Feng-Yu-hsiang, Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese Revolutionary Army, sets out "Our Programme" (June 4th). It contains not the slightest reference to any working-class problem. It is "revolutionary” enough : it involves, among other things, the complete evacuation of all foreign troops, but "Zed" must surely appreciate the fact that revolutions are not the monopoly of the working-class, a change over from feudal land tenure to peasant proprietorship in China is a revolutionary change, but it is not one which will aid the workers.

May we advise "Zed” to read in the same issue of the "Plebs" an article on Ireland. In it A. Ellis writes as follows:— 

  Republican capitalism once it had become a partner with European capitalism sets about to share the exploitation of the Irish workers. Their reactionary measures have strengthened the hands of the reactionaries in the North, providing additional material for the division of the workers as Loyalists, Republicans, Nationalists, Catholic and Protestant, to the confusion of the real issue of capital versus Labour.

The Irish workers have gained nothing by helping the Republican Movement. There are yet hardly the beginnings of a genuine working-class movement in Ireland. The war for independence has only embittered the relations between the Irish workers, and workers outside the Free State, by stressing racial and religious divisions, and by strengthening the illusion of a common bond between the classes in the Free State. "Zed" wants us to persuade the Chinese workers to copy this fatal example.

In passing, it is amusing to notice that, in exchange for the spilling of much blood, the Irish have not even won the sentimental satisfaction of having done for ever with the hated British troops. Their Minister for External Affairs recently declared in the Dail that the Free State troops "would co-operate in resisting a general attack" on Great Britain, and Ireland, and that "it is practically inconceivable that our army would be opposed to the British Army.” (“New Statesman,” February 19th).

In the last war the Irish effectively resisted the application of conscription in that country. Having fought voluntarily for "freedom,” they have great hopes next time of enjoying the compulsory privilege of being enrolled with their British fellow-dupes. What a victory for nationalism!

Edgar Hardcastle