Even a national democratic revolution now requires a global democratic revolution

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The following passage on China in the 20's illustrates fairly concisely the
progressive role of a national democratic revolution and how this stage can
prepare the ground for socialism, although not itself socialist.


>>>
How can and must the question of the capitalist and socialist paths of
China's development be posed in reality?
Above all it must be made clear to the vanguard of the Chinese proletariat
that China has no prerequisites whatever economically for an independent
transition to socialism; that the revolution now unfolding under the
leadership of the Kuomintang is a bourgeois-national revolution, that it
can have as its consequence, even in the event of complete victory, only
the further development of productive forces on the basis of capitalism.
But it is necessary to develop no less forcefully before the Chinese
proletariat the converse side of the question as well: The belated
bourgeois-national revolution is unfolding in China in conditions of the
imperialist decay of capitalism. As Russian experience has shown -- in
contrast, say, to the English -- politics does not at all develop in parity
with economics. China's further development must be taken in an
international perspective. Despite the backwardness of the Chinese economy,
and in part precisely due to this backwardness, the Chinese revolution is
wholly capable of bringing to political power an alliance of the workers
and peasants, under the leadership of the proletariat. This regime will be
China's link with the world revolution.

In the course of the transitional period, the Chinese revolution will have
a genuinely democratic, worker-peasant character. In its economic life,
commodity-capitalist relations will inevitably predominate. The political
regime will be primarily directed to secure the masses as great a share as
possible in the fruits of the development of the productive forces and, at
the same time, in the political and cultural utilization of the resources
of the state. The further development of this perspective -- the
possibility of the democratic revolution growing over into the socialist
revolution -- depends completely and exclusively on the course of the world
revolution, and on the economic and political successes of the Soviet
Union, as an integral part of this world revolution.
<<<<

But through an irony of history, not even a progressive national democratic
revolution, let alone a socialist revolution, is longer possible in one
country.


Yoshie did not pick up the questions in my oringinal thread on the Current
Implications for South Africa, that if there is still some logic in a
national democratic struggle within an individual country, its problems of
retaining sufficient surplus within its borders in the much more fluid
international economic economy, requires a global democatic revolution in
political economy.

But is the spirit of that proposition any different from the spirit behind
the passage on China above?

Chris Burford

London