BY LEON TROTSKY  
The participation of the CCP in the Kuomintang was perfectly correct in the period when the CCP was a propaganda society which was only preparing itself for future independent political activity but which, at the same time, sought to take part in the ongoing national liberation struggle. The last two years have seen the rise of a mighty strike wave among the Chinese workers. The CCP report estimates that the trade unions during this period have drawn in some 1.2 million workers. Exaggeration in such matters is of course inevitable. Moreover, we know how unstable new union organizations are in situations of constant ebb and flow. But the fact of the Chinese proletariat’s mighty awakening, its desire for struggle and for independent class organization, is absolutely undeniable.

This very fact confronts the CCP with the task of graduating from the preparatory class it now finds itself in to a higher grade. Its immediate political task must now be to fight for direct independent leadership of the awakened working class—not of course in order to remove the working class from the framework of the national-revolutionary struggle, but to assure it the role of not only the most resolute fighter, but also of political leader with hegemony in the struggle of the Chinese masses.

Those who favor the CCP’s remaining in the Kuomintang argue that “the predominant role of the petty bourgeoisie in the composition of the Kuomintang makes it possible for us to work within the party for a prolonged period on the basis of our own politics.” This argument is fundamentally unsound. The petty bourgeoisie, by itself, however numerous it may be, cannot decide the main line of revolutionary policy. The differentiation of the political struggle along class lines, the sharp divergence between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, implies a struggle between them for influence over the petty bourgeoisie, and it implies the vacillation of the petty bourgeoisie between the merchants, on the one hand, and the workers and communists, on the other. To think that the petty bourgeoisie can be won over by clever maneuvers or good advice within the Kuomintang is hopeless utopianism. The Communist Party will be more able to exert direct and indirect influence upon the petty bourgeoisie of town and country the stronger the party is itself, that is, the more it has won over the Chinese working class. But that is possible only on the basis of an independent class party and class policy.

We have taken the above-quoted argument in favor of the CCP’s remaining in the Kuomintang from the July 14, 1926, resolution of the CCP Central Committee plenum. This resolution, along with other documents of the plenum, testifies to the extremely contradictory policies of the CCP and to the dangers flowing from that. The documents of the July plenum of the CCP Central Committee testify at every step to the “intensified process, during the past year, by which each of the two poles—bourgeoisie and proletariat—has defined its own separate position” (quoted from the same resolution).

The resolutions, documents, and reports record, first, the growth of the Kuomintang right wing, then the rightward movement of the Kuomintang center, and after that, the vacillations and splits in the Kuomintang left. And all of this has followed the pattern of stepped-up attacks on the communists. For their part, the communists have been retreating steadily, from one position to the next, within the Kuomintang. Their concessions, as we shall see, are both of an organizational nature and of the kind involving matters of principle….

The drawing of organizational lines, which inevitably flows from the class differentiation, does not rule out but, on the contrary, presupposes—under existing conditions—a political bloc with the Kuomintang as a whole or with particular elements of it, throughout the republic or in particular provinces, depending on the circumstances. But first of all, the CCP must ensure its own complete organizational independence and clarity of political program and tactics in the struggle for influence over the awakened proletarian masses. Only with this kind of approach can one speak seriously of drawing the broad masses of the Chinese peasantry into the struggle.  
 
 
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