MIA > Archive > Glass (Li Fu-jen)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 51, 20 December 1948. p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Editor:
In The Militant of Dec. 6, in the article New Defeats Hit Chiang Regime, the writer concludes his interpretation of the events in China with the flat statement that “the Chinese Stalinists continue to score successes not because of their own policies but despite them.” This is in contradiction to the facts.
The peasants are flocking to the Stalinist banners by the millions because of the current land program which the Stalinists are putting into effect. Tens of thousands of Chiang Kai-shek’s soldiers are turning over to the “Red” armies because they agree with this program and, being peasants themselves, are able to recognize where their interests lie. Let me, for the benefit of our readers, quote from the Basic Program on Chinese Agrarian Law promulgated by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on Oct. 10, 1947.
“Article 1. The agrarian system of feudal and semi-feudal exploitation is abolished and the agrarian system of Land to the Tiller is to be realized.
“Article 2. Land ownership rights of all landlords are abolished.
“Article 3. Land ownership of all ancestral shrines, temples, monasteries, schools, institutions and'organizations is abolished.
“Article 4. All debts incurred [by the peasants – LFJ] prior to the reform of the agrarian system are cancelled.
“Article 6. Except as provided in Article 9, Section b [referring to forests, mines, lakes, etc. – LFJ] all land in the villages owned by landlords, and all public land shall be taken over by the village peasants’ unions, and together with all other village land, in accordance with the total population of the village irrespective of sex or age, shall be unified and equally distributed; with regard to quantity, surplus land shall be taken to relieve dearths, and with regard to quality, fertile land shall be taken to supplement infertile, so that all village inhabitants shall equally share the land, and it shall be the individual property of each person.
“Article 10. Section d. Landlords and their families shall be given land and properties equivalent to that of the peasants. Section e: All families of Kuomintang military officers and soldiers, government officials and personnel, party members and other enemy personnel, whose homes are in rural areas, shall be given land and properties equivalent to that of the peasants.
“Article 11. The government shall issue to the people deeds of ownership of the land, and moreover, recognize their rights to free management, trading, and under specially determined conditions, to renting their land. All land deeds, and all notes on debts contracted prior to the reform of the agrarian system shall be turned in and shall be declared pull and void.
“Article 12. The property and legal operation of industrial and commercial elements shall be protected from encroachment.”
It is hardly necessary for me to emphasize the tremendous attractive power which this program has for the land-hungry, debt-ridden peasants of China, and also for the Kuomintang soldiery. Except for Article 12, which considerations of space will rot allow me to discuss here, the program is drastic, radical – yes, revolutionary. I doubt if a Trotskyist, government would proceed very differently in tackling the land problem in the initial stages. It certainly is not the case that the Stalinists are winning successes in spite of this obviously revolutionary program.
The land question, of course, is only one side of the Chinese problem, and the Stalinist program is decidedly one-sided. They offer nothing to the city proletariat except a continuation of wage-slavery in industries owned by capitalists, with whom they hope to forge a coalition government after they have conquered China. This contemptuous disregard of the needs and interests of the most revolutionary class is dictated by bureaucratic self-interest, a desire to hold the revolution within “safe” limits. The Stalinists hope to rule China, in coalition with the bourgeoisie, with a. satisfied peasantry as their class base.
But Chinese agriculture cannot be reorganized and made to yield higher living standards without collectivization and mechanization. For this the development of industry is necessary. The belated and feeble Chinese bourgeoisie cannot develop industry. It can only retard and strangle it. Moreover, unless the bourgeoisie is stripped of its property, it can and will, at some future unfavorable turn of events, become the base and spearhead of a counter-revolution which will nullify the land reforms now being put into effect.
It is in its one-sidedness, its opportunism, its cynical disregard of the interests of the Chinese revolution considered as a whole, that the Chinese Stalinist program is false, illusory and treacherous. This does not alter the fact that this program is rallying millions to struggle against the Kuomintang and that lhe Stalinists are winning because of it, not in spite of it.
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Li Fu-Jen |
Last updated on 30 March 2023