Letter to Karl Radek, May 14, 1927

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1) Underestimation of imperialism. It would be appropriate to add that in general the pressure of imperialism does not soften class contradictions, but sharpens them, on the one hand, and on the other, that the struggle against all powerful imperialism demands the greatest possible revolutionary concentration of the worker and peasant masses, and this is indissolubly connected with their struggle for the alteration of their own economic and political situation in the country.

2) To page 38. The question of the seizure of concessions, railways, banks, etc. I think that there is a lot of vagueness and disagreement even among us in the presentation of this question. The revolution is being conducted against foreign imperialism.Its main outposts are the banks, the railways, industrial concessions, etc. The seizure of these enterprises is conceivable in a double sense: as the socialist expropriation of the expropriators, and as a military-revolutionary measure in the struggle with imperialism. In China, this means the second and not the first sense. Here the difference is very substantial, not just in the sense of the historical perspective, but also in the sense of a direct revolutionary policy. From the point of view of the socialist revolution, such seizures must be guided by the economic importance of the enterprise, its role in the economy. From the point of view of the struggle against imperialism, the ‘nationality’ of the enterprise may have decisive importance, its military significance, etc. The military-revolutionary seizure of foreign enterprises does not predetermine their future economic fate. I think in general that we need to speak more accurately and carefully about socialist perspectives in China: without a victory of the proletariat of the advanced countries, there cannot be even a mention of the transition of China to socialism by its own forces, even with the assistance of the USSR. If we fail to say this, we risk feeding China with populist, maximalist instead of Marxist theories. It is understood that if soviets are created in China and they win, the task of policy would consist in giving them the possibility to hold out as long as possible, carrying out all that ‘purgative’ and preliminary work, so as to later to catch the towrope of proletarian England, Germany, the USSR, etc. I say all this not for inclusion in your reply, but with the aim of ‘mutual clarification’.

3) I have made minor observations in the text.

14 May 1927

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4) The chapter ‘The Comintern warned, the Chinese Communist Party knew the danger’, in my view, understates what took place. The Comintern essentially gave no warning about anything, and the Communist Party did not know the danger. Otherwise, how do we explain what happened? The so-called ‘warnings’ of the Comintern are cheap general points, of which one can find a surplus in Dan’s {Sotsialisticheskii vestnik}. In his last article, he defends the ‘desirability’ of the preservation of a united front with the bourgeoisie, but also warns that a united front with the bourgeoisie is ‘not eternal’. You even quote Manuilskii’s speech about the danger of ‘a deviation from a proletarian footing’. Even in your dictionary there are no such remarkable expressions! … You seem to take all these considerations seriously, i.e. load them with a content which they lack. Meanwhile, in the mouths of their authors these are traditional reminiscences that carry no obligations. In my opinion, it is necessary to recast or completely omit thischapter. It seems to me that the chapter on feudalism (the polemic with Bukharin) in its current form is capable of giving rise to misunderstandings.

5) It concludes that if there were powerful elements of serfdom in agriculture, then Bukharin’s political line would be correct. However, it is not so. In Russian agrarian relations, serfdom played a major role, and tsarism was fundamentally a landowning-serf organisation. Even so, the policy of a bloc with the bourgeoisie was of no use even in 1905. Bourgeois property was intermingled with feudal property. The movement of the masses, directed in the first instance against feudal property, cut into the property of the bourgeoisie, and pushed capitalist profit into the embrace of land rent.

6) Money lending disrupts feudal economic relations, without making way for new ones. But just as a kidney infected with cancer is still a kidney, so feudalism corroded by money lending is still feudalism. That’s how Bukharin answered you at that point in the argument which is devoted to feudalism.

7) In what does the bourgeois character of the revolution consist?, c[om.] Bukharin asks. You talk of the defence of private peasant property from money lending, and nothing more. This casts very little light on the question. It seems to me that we must approach it from the point of view of the characteristics of the economy of a colonial country, in its mutual relations with the imperialist countries. The bourgeois character of the revolution consists in the first place in the removal of those complex and multiple obstacles, which overripe capitalism presents to the young capitalism of a colonial country. These hindrances support ever more backward forms of relations in a colonial country, advance to the first place the disruptive tendencies of capitalism and link them with all the remnants of the past. In such concrete, numerical and qualitative relations, remnants of feudalism are mixed with various transitional and purely capitalist forms, about which I will not bother to judge. Of course, these relations have great political significance, determining the potential scale of the agrarian revolution, as bourgeois but not as anti-bourgeois. It is entirely possible that the bourgeois character of the Chinese revolution consists to a considerable extent in the struggle with the more backward forms, which cannot themselves be consigned to the feudal or the serf. This needs concrete analysis. But Bukharin’s tactics are incorrect, however the matter stands over the proportions of feudalism and capitalism. It seems to me, therefore, that you pose the fundamental struggle against the Menshevik policy in too direct a dependence on the resolution of a very important but still only partial question.

These are my notes. I am fully in agreement with all the rest.