The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-04-10

lie. There is a direct presentation of the ques
ton of the position of the Masses the question of
the mass struggle; there is warm sympathy for
the tOiling masses and the exploited, belief in
the legitimacy of their cause and in their
strength.
We see a really great theology Of really great
people, which is not only able to lament its cen
turies'old slavery, not only able to dream of free
dom and equality, but also to FIGHT against the
perpetual oppressors of China.
One cannot but compare the acting president
of the republic in this barbaric dead, Asiatic
China with the various presidents of republics in
Europe, in America, in the countries of advanced
culture. There the presidents of republics are
almost without exception business men, agents
or puppets in the hands of the bourgeoisie rotten
thru and thru, stained from head to foot with
| filth and blood, not the blood of Mandarins and
Chinese emperOrs, but the blood of workers, who
in the name of progress and civilization have
been shot for striking. There the presidents are
representatives of bourgeoisie which long ago
disowned the ideals of it's youth, which has pros
tituted itself to the last degree sold itself en-
tirely to the millionaires and milliardaires, to
feudal landowners who have become bourgeois,
etc.
/ Here we see the Asiatic acting president of the
republic revolutionary democrat full of no
bleness and of the heroism belonging to that class
which does not go down hill but up hill, which
does nto fear the future but believes in it and
selfsacrifcingly fights for tia class which
hates the past and is capable of casting off the
deadening rot of this andestroying pasta class
that does not cling to the preservation and res
toration of the past for the sake of guarding its
own privileges.
1 Does not this mean, then, that the materialistic
West has decayed and that light is only shining
from the mystic, religious East? No, it is Just
the contrary. This means that the East has
definitely stepped on to the path of the West,
that fresh hundreds of millions of people will
heneeforth participate in the struggle for ideals
that the West has already achieved 1t is the
Western bOurgeoisie that has decayed and its
gravedigger-the prOletariat-is already stand
ing by. But in Asia there is still bourgeoisie
capable of representing a sincere, militant, con-
sistent democracy, worthy comrade of the great
teachers and great workers of the end of the
eighteenth century in France.
The chief representative or the most important
social support of the Asiatic bourgeoisie-a bour-
geoisie still capable of acknowledgements
works. the peasant Side by side with the lat
tier there is already a liberal bourgeoisie whose
representatives, such as Yuang-Shi-Kai are more
capable of treachery than of anything else yes
terday they feared the emperor and fawned be-
fore him; afterwards, when they saw the force and
teit the victory of revolutionary democracy they
betrayed the emperor, and tomorrow they will
betray the democrats for the sake of deal with
some old or new constitutional" emperor.
Without high and sincerely democratic en-
thuslasm which ignites the toiling masses and
renders them capable of performing miracles,
such as can be seen in every phrase of Sun-Yat
sens program, the real liberation of the Chinese
people from age-long slavery would be impossible
But with the Chinese Populists this militant
democratic theology is combined firstly with So
cialist Dreams with the hope of escaping the
path of Chinese capitalism, of averting capital
ism, and secondly with the planning and preach
ing OF radical agrarian reform. 1t is just these
two ideologicalpolitical tendencies which repre-
sent the element that goes to make up the Popu
list movement in the specific meaning of the
term i.e., as distinct from democracy and supple
mentary to democratic theory
j IL