The slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which leads behind it the peasant poor, is inseparably bound up with the question of the socialist character of the coming, third revolution in China. And inasmuch as not only history repeats itself but also the mistakes which people counterpose to its requirements, we can already hear the objection that China has not yet matured for a socialist revolution. But this is an abstract and lifeless formulation of the question. For has Russia, taken by itself, matured for socialism? According to Lenin—NO! It has matured for the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only method for solving unpostponable national tasks. But the destiny of the dictatorship as a whole is determined in the last analysis by the trend of world development, which, of course, does not exclude but rather presupposes a correct policy on the part of the proletarian dictatorship, the consolidation and development of the workers’ and peasants’ alliance, an all-sided adaptation to national conditions on the one hand, and to the trend of world development on the other. This fully holds true for China as well.

In the same article entitled “On Our Revolution” (January 16, 1923), in which Lenin establishes that the peculiarity of Russia proceeds along the lines of the peculiar development of the Eastern countries, he brands as “infinitely hackneyed” the argument of European social democracy to the effect “that we have not matured for socialism, that we lack, as some of these ‘erudite’ gentlemen say, the objective economic prerequisites for Socialism.” But Lenin ridicules the “erudite” gentlemen not because he himself recognized the existence of the economic prerequisites for Socialism in Russia but because he holds that the rejection of the seizure of power does not at all follow, as pedants and philistines think, from the absence of these prerequisites necessary for an independent construction of socialism. In this article of his, Lenin for the hundred and first time, or, rather, for the thousand and first time replies to the sophisms of the heroes of the Second International: “This incontrovertible consideration [the immaturity of Russia for Socialism] . . . is not decisive for the evaluation of our revolution.” (Works, Vol. XVIII, Part 21, pp. 118f.) That is what the authors of the draft program refuse and are unable to understand. In itself the thesis of the economic and cultural immaturity of China as well as Russia—China, of course, more so than Russia—is incontrovertible. But hence it does not at all follow that the proletariat has to renounce the conquest of power, when this conquest is dictated by the entire historical context and the revolutionary situation in the country.

The concrete, historical, political, and actual question is reducible not to whether China has economically matured for “its own” socialism, but whether China has ripened politically for the proletarian dictatorship. These two questions are not at all identical. They might be regarded as identical were it not for the law of uneven development. This is where this law is in place and fully applies to the interrelationship between economics and politics. Then China has matured for the dictatorship of the proletariat? Only the experience of the struggle can provide a categorical answer to this question. By the same token, only the struggle can settle the question as to when and under what conditions the real unification, emancipation, and regeneration of China will take place. Anyone who says that China has not matured for the dictatorship of the proletariat declares thereby that the third Chinese revolution is postponed for many years to come.

Of course, matters would be quite hopeless if feudal survivals did really dominate in Chinese economic life, as the resolutions of the E.C.C.I. asserted. But fortunately, survivals in general cannot dominate. The draft program on this point, too, does not rectify the errors committed, but reaffirms them in a roundabout and nebulous fashion. The draft speaks of the “predominance of medieval feudal relations both in the economics of the country and in the political superstructure. . . .” This is false to the core. What does predominance mean? Is it a question of the number of people involved? Or the dominant and leading role in the economics of the country? The extraordinarily rapid growth of home industry on the basis of the all-embracing role of mercantile and bank capital; the complete dependence of the most important agrarian districts on the market; the enormous and ever-growing role of foreign trade; the all-sided subordination of the Chinese village to the city—all these bespeak the unconditional predominance, the direct domination of capitalist relations in China. The social relations of serfdom and semi-serfdom are undeniably very strong. They stem in part from the days of feudalism; and in part they constitute a new formation, that is, the regeneration of the past on the basis of the retarded development of the productive forces, the surplus agrarian population, the activities of merchants’ and usurers’ capital, etc. However, it is capitalist relations that dominate and not “feudal” (more correctly, serf and, generally, pre-capitalist) relations. Only thanks to this dominant role of capitalist relations can we speak seriously of the prospects of proletarian hegemony in the national revolution. Otherwise, there is no making the ends meet.

“The strength of the proletariat in any capitalist country is infinitely greater than the proportion of the proletariat in the total population. This is due to the fact that the proletariat is in economic command of the central points and nerve centers of the entire capitalist system of economy, and also because the proletariat expresses economically and politically the real interests of the vast majority of the toilers under capitalism.

“For this reason the proletariat, even if it constitutes the minority of the population (or in cases where the conscious and truly revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat comprises the minority of the population), is capable both of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and of attracting subsequently to its side many allies from among the masses of semi-proletarians and petty bourgeois, who will never come out beforehand for the domination of the proletariat, who will not understand the conditions and tasks of this domination, but who will convince themselves solely from their subsequent experiences of the inevitability, justice, and legitimacy of the proletarian dictatorship.” (Lenin, Works, “The Year 1919,” Vol. XVI, p. 458.)

The role of the Chinese proletariat in production is already very great. In the next few years it will only increase still further. Its political role, as events have shown, could have been gigantic. But the whole line of the leadership was directed entirely against permitting the proletariat to conquer the leading role.

The draft program says that successful socialist construction is possible in China “only on the condition that it is directly supported by countries under the proletarian dictatorship.” Thus, here, in relation to China, the same principle is recognized which the party has always recognized in regard to Russia. But if China lacks sufficient inner forces for an independent construction of socialist society, then according to the theory of Stalin–Bukharin, the Chinese proletariat should not seize power at any stage of the revolution. Or it may be that the existence of the U.S.S.R. settles the question in just the opposite sense. Then it follows that our technology is sufficient to build a socialist society not only in the U.S.S.R. but also in China, i.e., in the two economically most backward countries with a combined population of six hundred million. Or perhaps the inevitable dictatorship of the proletariat in China is “inadmissible” because that dictatorship will be included in the chain of the world-wide socialist revolution; thus becoming not only its link, but its driving force? But this is precisely Lenin’s basic formulation of the October Revolution, the “peculiarity” of which follows precisely along the lines of development of the Eastern countries. We see thus how the revisionist theory of socialism in one country, evolved in 1925 in order to wage a struggle against Trotskyism, distorts and confuses matters each time a new major revolutionary problem is approached.

The draft program goes still further along this same road. It counterposes China and India to “Russia before 1917” and Poland (“etc.,”?) as countries with “a certain minimum of industry sufficient for the triumphant construction of socialism,” or (as is more definitely and therefore more erroneously stated elsewhere) as countries possessing the “necessary and sufficient material prerequisites . . . for the complete construction of socialism.” This, as we already know, is a mere play upon Lenin’s expression “necessary and sufficient” prerequisites; a fraudulent and an impermissible jugglery because Lenin definitely enumerates the political and organizational prerequisites, including the technical, cultural, and international prerequisites. But the chief point that remains is: how can one determine a priori the “minimum of industry” sufficient for the complete building of socialism once it is a question of an uninterrupted world struggle between two economic systems, two social orders, and a struggle, moreover, in which our economic base is infinitely the weaker?

If we take into consideration only the economic lever, it is clear that we in the U.S.S.R., and all the more so in China and India, have a far shorter arm of the lever than world capitalism. But the entire question is resolved by the revolutionary struggle of the two systems on a world scale. In the political struggle, the long arm of the lever is on our side, or, to put it more correctly, it can and must prove so in our hands, if our policy is correct.

Again, in the same article “On Our Revolution,” after stating that “a certain cultural level is necessary for the creation of ‘socialism,’” Lenin adds: “although no one can tell what this certain cultural level is.” Why can no one tell? Because the question is settled by the struggle, by the rivalry between the two social systems and the two cultures, on an international scale. Breaking completely with this idea of Lenin’s, which flows from the very essence of the question, the draft program asserts that in 1917 Russia had precisely the “minimum technology” and consequently also the culture necessary for the building of socialism in one country. The authors of the draft attempt to tell in the program that which “no one can tell” a priori.

It is impermissible, impossible, and absurd to seek a criterion for the “sufficient minimum” within national states (“Russia prior to 1917”) when the whole question is settled by international dynamics. In this false, arbitrary, isolated national criterion rests the theoretical basis of national narrowness in politics, the precondition for inevitable national-reformist and social patriotic blunders in the future.