Correspondence. (1956)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Glasgow, C.2, 22/8/56.

Sir.

In the Socialist Standard for August your contributor F. Offord, says “At the conclusion of the Second World War when the Japanese capitulated to Russia their arms and ammunition and their control of Manchuria were handed over by Stalin, not to the Communists who had borne the brunt of the Chinese war against the Japanese, but to their mortal enemies the Nationalists.”

These statements are not merely incorrect—they are the very reverse of the truth. When withdrawing from Manchuria, the Russians, instead of handing over Manchuria to Chiang Kai-shek, whose authority they had by treaty recognised, gave advance notice to the Communist forces who were able to take up positions before the Nationalists arrived. The Russians surrendered immense quantities of captured Japanese arms to the Chinese Communists and this was one of the principal factors in ensuring Mao Tse-tung’s success.

Neither is it true, but the very opposite of the truth, to say that the Chinese Communists bore the brunt of the fighting against Japan. The Communists reserved as much of their strength as possible for the coming struggle for China while the Nationalist forces were exhausted by their long and terrible campaign against the Japanese. Lin Yutang did not exaggerate when he said, in 1945: “For every Japanese the Communists claim to have killed they have killed at least five Chinese; for every town they have captured from the Japanese, they have captured fifty towns from the Chinese.”

The Communists directed their struggle mainly against their own countrymen and the immense aid which Russia gave them was a direct breach of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship of August 1945 in which Stalin recognised the National Government as the central Government of China.

Yours faithfully.

H. W. Henderson.

Reply to Mr. Henderson.

On Mr. Henderson's first main point that Russia surrendered to the Chinese Communists the arms and ammunition left by the Japanese in Manchuria and also assisted, with advice, he does not give proof of his assertion. As for the statements in the article, they are fully supported by the following quotations from the generally-recognised historian on China, Professor C. P. Fitzgerald, and quoted from his work “Revolution in China.” “Late in the war, in 1945, Stalin could say to Harry Hopkins that he did not regard the Chinese Communists as a serious factor, and recognised only Chiang’s Government as that of China. ... It was this regime [that of Chiang Kai-shek] that the victorious powers recognised as the legitimate Government of China. The Communists were treated as dissident forces who should properly submit to the authority of Chiang Kai-shek. Their claim to share in the surrender of the Japanese, or to administer the provinces in which they had maintained resistance for eight years, was not accepted ” (page 83). On page 86 is a description of how Chiang Kai-shek (the leader of the Nationalist Kuomintang Party) obtained “the surrender of the Japanese to the forces of the Kuomintang, not to those of the Communists.”

As to which side bore the brunt of the fighting against Japan—on page 64 “Chiang devoted his time and his German-trained armies to fruitless campaigns against the Communist rebels in South China. Huge sums of money were wasted on these vain attacks, heavy losses of material, many casualties among the best trained troops. None of these troops were ever permitted to fight the Japanese. . . .” On page 77, “. . . the Communists, who had ten years of experience of guerrilla warfare behind them, could be sure of being able to keep the field, for years if need be, till they, and they alone, represented Chinese resistance.” Again, on page 80, “.The Nationalist Government, from the end of 1939, never made any further military effort to recover lost territory . .  It did not engage to any serious extent in guerrilla warfare behind the Japanese lines. This task was left to the Communists. . . ." Incidentally it was the constant fight against the Japanese which the Communists maintained that was such an important factor in rallying the patriotic Chinese behind the Communist Party, and that, in turn, really was a factor which enabled the Communists eventually to conquer China.

F. Offord.

Letter: The Death Penalty in Soviet Russia (1942)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received from a reader the following letter about the paragraph in our August issue : —

24/8/42.

Dear Sirs,

In the August issue of the Socialist Standard it is stated that a reader, on enquiring by telephone at the Soviet Embassy as to the truth or otherwise of Boris Souverine’s statement that children in the U.S.S.R. are liable to the death penalty for theft from the age of 12 years upwards, was informed that this statement is false, and that the death penalty applies only to people of 18 years of age and more.

Boris Souverine (formerly leader of the Communist Party of France, and a man with considerable experience of Soviet life) makes the charge on page 612 of his biography entitled “Stalin,” but unfortunately does not give the reference.

The reference, however, can be found by anyone who is interested, in “Stalin’s Russia,” by Max Eastman, friend of Lenin and Trotsky, and formerly editor of the “Liberator,” the only American magazine to support the Bolsheviks from the day they came to power.

On pages 28 and 29 of that work Max Eastman says :

“In the spring of 1935 Stalin’s government issued a decree which made the death penalty for theft—adopted for adults three years before—applicable to minors from the age of twelve. When this fact was announced at a congress of the French Teachers’ Federation in August of the same year, the Stalinists in the Federation indignantly denied it. Being shown a copy of Isvestia (April 8, 1935) containing the decree, they lapsed into silence, but they were ready next day with the information that ‘under Socialism children are so precocious and well educated that they are fully responsible for their acts’ ! It is but a reflection of the manner in which this ideology is being stretched to cover every saddest thing in Russia.”

The law is referred to in many other works on Soviet conditions and I should imagine it is too late in the day for the matter to be disposed of by an anonymous telephone message from the Soviet’s Embassy. The Soviet Government denied the reality of the famine of 1932-33 (in which upwards of 4,000,000 peasants died of hunger), but the facts are now admitted by every prominent newspaper correspondent who was in Russia at the time, many of them (such as Eugene Lyons and W. H. Chamberlin) Communists or Communist sympathisers. The Stalin Constitution to-day guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press to the Russian workers, but no one dares to raise his voice against the prevailing administration nor can anyone mention the name of a single newspaper published in opposition to the Government.

As many are puzzled by what is taking place in Russia to-day and at a loss to understand what conditions in Russia really are, I would ask your permission to append a list of several of the most informative works on the subject for the benefit of those who wish to investigate the matter further : —

“I was a Soviet Worker ” : Andrew Smith.

“The Russian Enigma ” : Anton Ciliga.

“Stalin ” : Boris Souverine.

“Stalin’s Russia ” : Max Eastman.

“The Destiny of a Revolution ” : Victor Serge.

“Assignment in Utopia ” : Eugene Lyons.

“A Fake Utopia ” : W. H. Chamberlin.

“I Speak for the Silent ” : Professor Tchernavin.

“Russia Under Soviet Rule ” : N. A. De Basily.

“Russia in Chains ” : Ivan Solonevich.

The first six of these works were written by former Communists, but all are informative, and give a picture of Soviet life and conditions that is as different from the “facts” of Communist propaganda as night is different from day. They should be obtainable at any public library.

—Yours faithfully,

H. W. Henderson

Letter: Socialism and Equality (1938)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

Glasgow, W.2.

March 10th, 1938.

Dear Sirs,

If space permits, I would like to make a brief reply to your arguments in the March issue of The Socialist Standard.

Let me say, then, that I entirely disagree with your contention that the failure of equality in colonies, such as Lane's, does not prove the impracticable character of the system. If the seed is healthy, it should multiply and flourish; if unhealthy, we should expect it to wither and decay. Colonies such as Lane's, if they were founded upon scientific principles should have proved successful, grown and multiplied, and set an example to the world. We know that under capitalism groups of pioneers have ventured into barren wildernesses and made them into flourishing towns. The seed here was healthy; the seed of equality is definitely not. It withers and decays wherever it is planted.

The S.P.G.B. has frequently asserted that the Russian experiment in equality was bound to fail because the people neither understood nor consciously desired a Socialist system. But no such argument (even if valid in regard to Russia) can be applied to Lane's experiment in Paraguay. For the people here were all picked Socialists, men who understood Socialism and were convinced that the equalitarian principle was sound. They failed because the system was contrary to human nature, at variance with the strongest human emotions. And if the S.P.G.B. ever obtained a majority for the system in this country it would fail for the same reason.

There is one other point with which I wish to deal —the question of whether men will work and study without material reward, and merely for the joy of exercising their natural faculties. Upon this point considerable confusion exists, but the question, clearly seen, presents no difficulty. As I have said before, there is a kind of labour which is an end in itself and a kind of labour which is a means to an end. The philosopher pursues truth because he loves truth; the miner does not dig coal because he loves coal. Marx did not ask how much he was going to make before he wrote a book. With him, as with many noble pioneers, the labour was its own reward. But this does not prove that in the ordinary humdrum affairs of life men will labour to the utmost merely for the joy of exercising their natural faculties. We are dealing here with two entirely different motives, and these motives are not interchangeable. If everyone could choose the kind of activity that made him happy the question would be easier to deal with, and your argument easier to prove. But most of us do, and will under any conceivable system continue to do, daily tasks which are not to our liking and for which we will demand compensation in the form of material reward!

Yours fraternally,

H. W. Henderson.

Reply.

Our correspondent argues that the Lane experiment would have succeeded if the “equality" idea is sound, and would have been followed by other such colonies; and that, as it failed, that proves the "equality" idea to be unsound. Our reply is that the failure of such colonies proves that the idea of isolated social experiments is unsound, but leaves the Socialist case untouched. Socialism needs a high development of society's powers of industrial production on an international basis, plus a majority of Socialists. Even if we accept that the Lane experiment had the Socialists, it lacked the developed powers of production and was an isolated colony, not an international working class movement. The idea “to each according to his needs" requires as its basis a high level of industrial productivity, i.e., the capacity to produce wealth in abundance. It is not sufficient merely that a group

of men should have convinced themselves that they believe in it.

On the question of the incentive for work and study, our correspondent makes a distinction between the philosopher seeking truth and the miner hewing coal. He says: "The philosopher pursues truth because he loves truth; the miner does not dig coal because he loves coal." But need there be any such distinction? The problems of mining and engineering, even the detailed problems with which the individual worker has to deal, are intrinsically just as interesting as the problems facing the philosopher. Capitalism denies to vast numbers of workers the possibility of interesting themselves in these problems, but Socialism would not do so. On the other hand, under Socialism, all kinds of workers will be helped and given greater incentive by the knowledge that their work is for the good of the whole human society of which they are part, and in the welfare of which they share.

Our correspondent would say that Socialism must give special rewards to men with special capacities. We say that Socialism’s task will be to improve the capacity of all, partly by knowledge and training, partly by inspiring them with the realisation that the good of the community is the good of the individual. The men with special capacity will not be found less socially minded than their fellows.

Ed. Comm.