Chen Duxiu and the 100-year anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party

 

By Steve Halpern

Recently 70,000 people celebrated the 100-year anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Chinese President Xi Jimping spoke at the occasion. However, one of the two founders of the CCP was probably never mentioned at this event. His name was Chen Duxiu. 

Chen studied French, English, and naval architecture in his early years. He studied in China and Japan, and became a leader of the 1911 Xinhai Revolution. That revolution ended the Qing Dynasty that ruled China for over a century. 

In 1917 Chen became a professor and Dean of Peking University. At that time, Chen also became a leader of the May 4th Movement that reflected a cultural awakening in China. Chen criticized the philosophy of Confucianism, he advocated for the study of the sciences, and even a reforming of the Chinese language Mandarin. 

However, the new Chinese government didn’t like Chen’s ideas. He spent a few months in prison and fled to Japan for a short period of time. These were some of the reasons why Chen became critical of the Kuomintang, that was under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek. That opposition to the Kuomintang explains why Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao first organized the Chinese Communist Party.

Several of the initial members of the CCP went to the Soviet Union to study Marxism in a school outside of Moscow. Karl Radek was a leader of the Soviet government who headed the school to train Chinese communists. 

Peng Shu-tse was one of those students, who also became a leader of the CCP. Peng recruited Liu Shaoqi, who became President of China in later years. Liu Shaoqi was also a mentor to Deng Xiaoping who also became President of China.

Both Chen Duxiu and Peng Shu-tse were critical of the Kuomintang and felt that the Chinese Communist Party needed to become the leader of the Chinese Revolution. These opinions agreed with the position of Leon Trotsky who had been a central leader of the Russian Revolution. By 1927, the CCP had a membership of about 60,000, and close ties to large peasant organizations.

However, after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died, the Soviet Union was in an unimaginably difficult situation. Millions of soldiers lost their lives in the First World War, and then in the war to defend the Soviet Union from an invasion of 14 nations. The infrastructure of the country had been destroyed and the government needed to implement emergency measures so people would have food to eat. Under those circumstances, Joseph Stalin came to power and reversed the goals of the Russian Revolution. Stalin organized to murder the entire leadership of the Revolution, and this included Leon Trotsky and Karl Radek.

Stalin disagreed with Lenin’s idea that the revolution would advance with an alliance of workers and farmers. Stalin argued that the Chinese Revolution needed to advance as a block of four classes. Those classes included capitalists, the middle class, workers, and peasants. Because of this perspective, the Soviet Union gave Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang considerable support. Stalin also demanded that members of the Chinese Communist Party follow the orders of Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang. Mao Zedong was initially an ardent supporter of the Kuomintang. 

Then, in the year 1927, there was a revolution in China. In one city after another, Chiang Kai-shek ordered members of the Chinese Communist Party to give up their arms. So, instead of leading a revolution that might have placed workers in power, Chang ordered the mass executions of thousands of members of the CCP. The Long March of the CCP was the result of the defeat of the 1927 Revolution, and the need to escape the determined attempt by the Kuomintang to destroy that organization. 

In the Soviet Union, Stalin blamed this disaster on the politics of Leon Trotsky. In China, the CCP blamed the disaster of the 1927 revolution on Chen Duxiu. Then, in 1929 the CCP expelled Chen from the party. Both Chen Duxiu and Peng Shu-tse served several years in a prison run by the Kuomintang. They both escaped when the Japanese bombed the prison.

Chen Duxiu also argued against Mao Zedong’s belief that the Chinese Revolution needed to be centered around the struggle of the peasantry. Chen advanced the Marxist position that socialism can only become a reality when the working class takes power. Today, the Chinese working class has engaged in 20,000 strikes every year for the past several years. This is clear evidence that Chinese workers continue to battle against capitalist exploitation.  

So, we might ask the question: How is the life of Chen Duxiu relevant to the Chinese people today? There is no question that most of the 1.4 billion people in China have experienced a significant improvement in their standard of living. In the past twenty years, China has become the manufacturing center of the world. There were several reasons for this. 

300 million Chinese people from the countryside came into the cities and worked in factories.

Factories that used to be located in developed countries closed their doors and many moved to China.

The wages of Chinese workers were lower than in other relatively underdeveloped nations. 

The Chinese government used the vast revenue and credit it had established to carry out a huge development of the country.

However, there is one thing we know about the capitalist system. The years of relative capitalist prosperity are always followed by years of economic collapse. The Chinese economy will not be able to continue to grow as it has over the past twenty years. This means that Chinese workers will need to find their own voice to demand a government where human needs are more important than profits. 

Today, there are members of the Chinese Communist Party who are billionaires. The Chinese government has carried out a brutal repression of the Uighur nationality. There is a sharp wage disparity between workers in the cities and workers in the countryside. The demonstrations in Hong Kong demanding democratic reforms have been repressed. All these measures support the argument that today the Chinese Communist Party continues to support Stalin’s perspective of a block of four classes, rather than Lenin’s idea of a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat that includes an alliance with farmers. 

I’m confident that the Chinese working class will find its own independent voice. When it does, my opinion is that the Chinese people will rediscover the origins of the Chinese Communist Party, as well as the names of Chen Duxiu, Peng Shu-tse, and Leon Trotsky.

Saying that, we can also say that the United States has always been hostile to the working class of the world, as well as competing capitalist powers. This is what drives Washington’s hostility to China. Ultimately that hostility is about the drive to maximize profits for corporations located in this country. Saying that, I’m opposed to any and all measures of the United States government against China. Let the Chinese people decide for themselves their own destiny.