THE CHINESE REVOLUTION

Marxism
an instrument of analysis and criticism
approaches the revolution as a revolutionist
only a revolutionist
equipped with the scientific method – is capable of laying bare the objective dynamics of the revolution
The element of will is indispensable for penetrating the secrets of nature and society
a revolutionist, if he has a serious attitude toward his task, is obliged with strict conscientiousness to analyse the structure of society, its functions and reflexes.
To understand the present war between Japan and China one must take the Second Chinese Revolution as a point of departure
we meet not only identical social forces
the same personalities
Chiang Kai-Shek occupies the central place
the real task of the second world war
to divide the planet anew in accord with the new relationship of imperialist forces
The principal arena
the basin of the Pacific
most important object
will be China
the world war will not produce the final decision:
it will be followed
by a new series
of revolutions

not only the decisions of the war but all those property conditions which give rise to war.
it is impossible not to see that the laws of revolutions are least understood precisely in the Anglo-Saxon countries
English Revolution
French Revolution
subjecting it to the laws of free competition
seemed to be the laws of “common sense.”
the Puritan revolution draped itself in Biblical dress
incapacity to understand its own significance
French Revolution
influence on progressive thought in the United States
guided by formulas of pure rationalism
Common sense, which
esorts to the mask of Biblical prophets, or secularized common sense, which
as the product of a rational “contract,”
real society of history has not been constructed, following Rousseau, upon a rational “contract,”
nor
Bentham
the “greatest good,” but has unfolded “irrationally
on the basis of contradictions and antagonisms.
For revolution to become inevitable class contradictions have to be strained to the breaking point

“Irrational” does not, however, mean arbitrary
Revolutions
have a logic of their own
not the logic of Aristotle
less the pragmatic demi-logic of “common sense
It is the higher function of thought: the logic of development and its contradictions, i.e., the dialectic.
a well-to-do society, unused to convulsions and habituated to uninterrupted “progress,” is incapable of understanding the dialectic of its own development
History is preparing to give Great Britain as well as the United States serious lessons in the dialectic.
deduce the character of the Chinese Revolution
from the living structure of Chinese society and from the dynamics of its inner forces
the march of events
their social mainsprings
the uncompleted Chinese Revolution is “bourgeois
it is necessary to check it in the light of a concrete sociological analysis
What are the classes which are struggling in China?
Colonial and semi-colonial – and therefore backward – countries
differ extraordinarily
from one another
in their degree