The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 5, 1927, Page 9

The Chinese Situation B Thea Cantonese (nationalist) troops are sweeping across central China. Between them and the cor- rupt Peking government which they hope to wipe out, stand the reactionary war lords and the troops of the imperialist powers which are pouring into China. Will the Cantonese succeed in defeating the war lords. who are the tools of the foreign. plundering nations; will they be able to reassert China’s inde- pendence by abrogating the unequal treaties wrung from them by the foreign powers? Will they, per- haps, succeed in establishing a workers’ and peasants’ republic that will stand shoulder to shoulder with Soviet Russia in its fight against the imperialist na- tions of the world? To attempt to answer these questions you’ve got to find out what all the shooting’s about; you’ve got to get an idea of the economic and social’ forces underlying the nationalist movement. You’ve got to find out who’s pulling this revolution and why. Ask an imperialist statesman who’s pulling the revolution and he’ll answer “Soviet Gold.” Soviet gold has purchased Sacasa, the Civil Liberties Union, Calles and the Emir of Afghanistan. Ask a socialist and he’ll give yousa more plausi- ble answer. “This is a bourgeois revolution,” he'll tell you. “The industrialization of China, which has taken place in the last few decades, has given birth to a Chinese middle class, This new native bour- geoisie wants to get the gravy that has been going to the foreign capitalist. The bourgeoisie and’ the students are the backbone of the revolution.” There is much in this theory that is correct. The native merchants and factory owners are a pow- erful factor in the revolution. They and the students supplied the fireworks at first. After the Shanghai massacre the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce called a protest meeting which- made the following de- mands: 1—The annulment of unequal treaties. 2—The return of all foreign concessions. 3—The dismissal of all foreign concessions. 4—The transference of the municipality of Shanghai to China. be release of those arrested the day be- ore. But in the last year or so, the leadership in the struggle for national liberation has been assumed by the working class. Beneath the hullabaloo and the froth raised by the students and the bourgeoisie has been the tremendous drive of labor. - The forces that haye created a bourgeoisie have created a proletariat—and if the Chinese industrial- ist has been: getting it in the neck, the Chinese worker has been getting it twice as hard. Forced from the farm by poverty and famine (the income of the average Chinese rural family of five ranges from fifty to seventy-five dollars a year) Chinese men, women, and children entered the foreign-financed factories springing up in the coast cities. All the horrible conditions that cus- tomarily attend capitalism in its early stages, exist in China. Children of six work twelve and fourteen hours a day, with not more than an hour off for meals, for twenty silver cents a day. Since 1920 organizations of the workers has proceeded rapidly. This Chinese worker is challeng- ing the bosses. In so far as he is challenging his foreign exploiter, he is a force (and the dominant force) in the nationalist movement; in so far as he challenges his native boss (and this angle will become infinitely more important when China has settled its scores with the imperialist powers) he is the dominant force in the creation of a Workers and Peasants’ Republic. It is a mistake, therefore, to assume as social- ists do, that the interests of the Chinese worker * By HARRY FLEMING Pty wi soe “tn Wey es v. oy From St. Louis Post-Dispateh The Giant Is Bursting His Bonds. and bourgeois are identical in China. The Chinese merchants and industrialists have often taken an openly hostile attitude toward the labor movement, as was the case in the strike of the Tian-Shang coal miners in 1922 which was suppressed by armed force and with great severity. . A word about the powers and the possibility of intervention on a large scale. Great Britain has —or will have in a few days—20,000 troops in China. Whether or not she is prepared to go much further on her limited budget and with opposition at home is open to question. The United States will probably follow England’s lead. The policy of the United States and Great Britain in the far East have been more or less allied, since the United States smashed the Anglo-Japanese alliance several years ago. Japan will probably refrain from armed inter vention. Her chief concern with China is com- mercial. She wants raw materials from China; she wants to sell finished goods to China’s vast popula- tion. Furthermore, she wants to keep on the good side of the Soviet Union. More likely than armed intervention is that the powers, particularly Great Britain and the United States, will support and subsidize the war lords, who have been opposing the Cantonese. Sun- Chuan-Fang, who has been standing between the nationalist troops and Canton, is already allied with Great Britain. The same is true of Wu Pei Fu. It is also likely that Chang Tso-Lin, who seems to have been deserted by Japan recently, will be. supported by the United States and Great Briain, in their attempt to prevent the liberation of China. _The World of William Clissold By _ H. G. WELLS (Published by Doran, N. Y., 2 v. $5). N 793 pages of words, Mr. Wells says the final word on science, industrialism, anthropology, the League of Nations, capitalism, psycho- analysis, love, Lenin, America, Marx, Russia and Communism. If the reader will, as he reads’ on, find too many quotations, it is for his amusement only. Mr. Wells tells us somewhere along in the first volume that—‘there is no more capitalism now than there was feudalism in the eleventh century.” -He cannot understand this consistent classification (by the Communists) of © people into classes such as capitalist and proletariat. But what Mr. Wells cannot understand should result in no comment from us. It is rather what he understands or thinks he under- stands and passes judgment on with such audacious finality, that bristles our spleen. For Mr. Wells does write well. In a book that is more than half replete with infantile notions on everything, one, still, cannot help but be struck by the amazing quality of his prose. It is masterful. Mr. Wells thas never written better—to less avail, The World of William Clissold is be- ihg received with great acclaim by the clergy here in America. They ser- monize over its tolérance and “revolu- tionary” utterances. And their ac- claim was to be anticipated. For here is a man who offers us the Kingdom of Heaven on earth and—even though he does speak against “god”—his rev- ‘olution will not oust those who sup- port the clergy, the rich. Truly the millenium, And.no more starvation, For when the big industrialists stop fighting among themselves, unite and make larger profits, then, of course, pers a" San shall get more pay. Easy, ie i Here is something that students of Leninism may have missed when studying revolutionary tactics—“for - the real revolution before mankind, I do not look to the mass of people for any help at all. I am thinking of an aristocratic and not a democratic revolution.” This may interest some. “The multitude can upset anything, but it cannot create anything.” Masses can only destroy. Their power in “in the strike, (where) it embodies itself in the machine-breaking ex- pert-hunting (7?) mob.” That ought to suffice for what Mr. Wells thinks of the masses and revolution. Let’s laugh! Mr. Wells on Marx and Socialism. He, Marx, was an “imperfectly aerated old gentleman sitting in the British Museum.” Some more, “I have accused Marx as the prime mover in the destruction of So- cialism.”. Emphasis mine. One is almost prompted to ask if Mr. Wells does not mean the Abe Cahan brand. And is this all Mr. Wells has to say about Marx? Oh no! Mr. Wells ac- “euses Marx of everything from wear- ing elastic-sided shoes to reading in the British Museum. He character- izes him as a “bearded Victorian.” Marx is psycho-analyzed. Psycho- analyzed by the super-realist, Wells, who finds that “at best, he (Marx) could only copy Hegel.” The book is an interesting exposi- tion of Fabian senility. Mr. Wells went to Russia expecting, presumably, to find the people walking around in Greek tunics and acting, in general, ala “Men Like Gods.” But, no! The people wore coarse linens and had very little to eat. They had the -real- istic task of building Communism in a socialized country. Mr. Wells could not see that, e book, as said before, is well written. It deserves being read for its presentation of the “liberal psychology. We are at present hear- ing echoes, here in America, of Mr. Wélls’-ideas, in the speeches and writ- ings of William Allen White, who de- clares that it is the advertiser who is revolutionizing the world, not the Communist. Mr. Wells’ boek is full of such ideas. Read it and laugh. Max Geltman. On Wall Street Business. SAN DIEGO, Cal. Feb. 4.—The San Diego marine base was depleted of marines today following the em- barkation yesterday afternoon of the Fourth Regiment, U. S. M. C., under command of Colonel Charles S. Hill, aboard the Transport Chaumont bound for Shanghai.