[104-10173-10134.pdf — page 10]
-5-Chinese workers. It is not evidence that a revolutionaryseizure of power is on the order of the day. It is evi-dence, along with the heroto sacrifices of thousands whohave lost lives and liberty in Chinese revolutionarystruggle during the last seven years of Kuomintang re-action, that it is possible to fight the monstrous whiteterror which Chinese Communists frecuently cite as areason for the insufficiency of their work. Yet, it islargely because this terror has not been fought effectivelythat the Kuomintang regime, despite the fact that it isrotting and crumbling, can still keep the lid down on theboiling, simmering hatred of the people it rules. Unlessthe martyrdom of thousands of China's finest workers,peasants and revolutionary intellectuals is to be in vain,we must turn resolutely away from the folly of calling toinsurrection when what is needed is painstaking education,organization and the sponsorship of day-to-day strugglesof the masses for democratic demands, the slow building upof a party and mase organizations and a movement whichwill be able to command the forces capable of carrying outan insurrection.In the case of the widespread but isolated and in-dividual cases of peasant uprisings, and this includesthe Red Armies in Kiangsi, these struggles await theleadership of a strong working class movement before theycan have a successful issue. The Red Armies in their re-stricted and surrounded areas and with their meagre re-sources have fought heroically against the Kuomintangattacks upon them. But until the Kuomintang is shakenfrom its bulwarks in the imperialist controlled workingclass centres, their prospect of revolutionary triumphremains necessarily dim. No revolutionary purpose isserved by taking refuge in the fiction that these armieshave proletarian leadership because individual workers,undoubtedly leaders of superior quality and courage, havebeen torn from their factories and their fellow-workereand sent down to occupy key positions in the Red Armydistricts and in the Red Armies themselves. Indeed, thiscommon practice of extracting the most conscious and pro-gressive working class elements from their working olassenvironment and sending them down to the Red districts isa good index to the oriminal transposition of emphasiswhich has helped paralyze the working class movement inthe cities. If the White Terror doesn't carry off theworkers' leaders as they arise, the C.P. does and has doneso in hundreds of cases. This helps in no small part toexplain why it has also been impossible to mobilize agenuine mass anti-Japanese movement in the fact of mili-tary aggression and why the White Terror of the Kuomin-tang has succeeded, by filling mass graves and innumer-able prisons with the martyred dead and living, in down-ing the anti-imperialist movement or efforts toward theorganization of such a movement and paving the way forthe ever increasing encroachments of the imperialists.The party has not yet gripped and directed the deep andbitter and often inarticulate hatred of the masses of thepeople for their oppressors and this includes large seо-tions of the lower netty bourgeoisie who could be won bysuccessful mass pressure from below. This is because theParty