Sociólogos argentinos aceitan el engranaje Por Daniel Goldstein
PROYECTO DE MARGINALIDAD Y SUBSIDIOS
In the debate among historians over the place of the bourgeoisie in the United Front of socialist construction the failure of the bourgeoisie to identify its enemies during the 1911 Revolution was just as important as the failure of bourgeoisie to identify its friends. As with the debate over the relationship between the Revolutionary Alliance and its friends in the masses, historians between 1949 and 1957 argued whether the failure of the bourgeoisie to correctly identify its enemies stemmed from a lack of revolutionary experience or the class interests of the bourgeoisie. Some historians argued that the bourgeoisie allowed its enemies into the movement of the 1911 Revolution due to a lack of revolutionary experience, and therefore that the bourgeoisie could learn through experience to correctly differentiate friend from enemy. Other historians argued that the bourgeoisie allowed counterrevolutionaries into the Revolutionary Alliance because an alliance with the counterrevolutionaries served the class interests of the bourgeoisie, making the latter an enemy of the contemporary socialist
revolution.
Like the question of the nature of the bourgeoisie’s alliance with the working classes covered above, many authors during the early years of the PRC argued that the bourgeoisie’s
conciliation with reactionaries resulted from inexperience. In the context of the contemporary debate about the role of the bourgeoisie in the PRC, these historians argued that the
bourgeoisie could reform and contribute to the continuing revolution. Wu Yuzhang wrote, “The reason that China’s past 50 years of revolutionary activity has not led China to escape its semi-feudal semi-colonial place, in addition to many other important reasons, is mainly that it was injured by the reformist and conciliatory factions, forcing the revolution to not be
thorough and inhibiting it from obtaining real progress or liberation”.84 The failure of the 1911
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Revolution, according to Wu, was due to the attacks of reactionaries rather than the class interests of the bourgeoisie. In another article, Wu expanded on the reasons that the reformist and conciliatory factions were part of the revolution in the first place: “The
Revolutionary Alliance that led [the 1911] Revolution, particularly after reorganising into the Nationalist Party, was an extremely irresolute and lax organisation. It wavered on the questions of anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism, and did not unite with the masses. Therefore, Yuan Shikai stole authority and started the chaos of warlord-ism, so the 1911 Revolution was essentially a failure”.85 According to Wu, the faulty organisational methods of
the Revolutionary Alliance allowed counterrevolutionary elements into the revolution who then sabotaged the revolution from the inside. Wu hinted that ideology was the source of this laxity: the Revolutionary Alliance wavered on important questions of ideology and thus
allowed ideologically impure members to join. So long as the leadership of the revolution rested in a party better organised around a unifying and correct ideology—a party like the CCP—no such mistakes would be made again. The United Front worked in theory but not in application during the 1911 Revolution, meaning that the participation of the bourgeoisie was not the weak link leading to the failure of the 1911 Revolution and that it could participate in the ongoing socialist revolution.
Other authors argued that the 1911 Revolution failed due to the inability of the bourgeoisie to establish its authority after the revolution, a mistake of knowledge and awareness rather than the pursuit of class interests. Deng Zihui邓子恢 (1896-1972)86 wrote that, “While the
bourgeois-led 1911 Revolution overthrew the authority of Qing government, it did not take authority in its own hands and voluntarily gave authority to the feudal landlord class, causing
History] (Shanghai: Xin hua shudian, 1950), 21-22.
85 Wu Yuzhang, “Wuxu Bianfa de lishi jiaoxun 戊戌变法的历史教训 [Historical Lessons of the Hundred
Days Reform]” in Wu, Lishi wen ji, 65-66.
86 Deng Zihui was a member of the CCP since 1926 and an important military officer and writer on
problems in the villages. He held prominent positions in the PRC but was criticised and eventually left untreated to die of illness during the Cultural Revolution. Deng was posthumously rehabilitated.
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the eventual failure of the 1911 Revolution”.87 The bourgeoisie, according to Deng,
misunderstood what made a class a friend or enemy of the revolution; because some in the feudal landlord class opposed Manchu rule of China, the bourgeoisie allowed them to join the Revolutionary Alliance and infiltrate the revolution. Now that the CCP clarified the friend- versus-enemy distinction the bourgeoisie could learn not to make the same mistake. Hu Wenyan wrote that:
The most critical weakness of the democratic revolutionaries was their failure to recognise the importance of revolutionary authority. Therefore, the [revolutionaries] thought that their prestige was not high enough to be the leaders of a new authority, so they made Qing military officials who had no connection with the democratic revolution the leaders of the military government…. As a result, revolutionary warriors were on the front lines giving their lives, while the constitutional monarchists were back in the government breaking down the revolution, slowly altering the revolution’s makeup.88
Deng and Hu both argued that the bourgeoisie failed to correctly differentiate friend from enemy during the 1911 Revolution and that the revolution failed when it allowed the enemies of the revolution to take over authority. According to Mao’s master narrative of history during the Yan’an period, it was only after the 1911 Revolution that Sun Yat-sen and the CCP fully learned the nature of the Chinese revolution and correctly differentiated friend from enemy. By supporting this interpretation of the United Front of the 1911 Revolution these historians argued that the bourgeoisie could remake itself like Sun Yat-sen and learn from revolutionary experience to identify friend from enemy.
87 Deng Zihui, “Wei gonggu renmin minzhu zhuanzheng de guojia zhengquan er fendou 为巩固人民民主
专政的国家政权而奋斗 [Struggle for the Consolidation of the People’s Democratic Dictatorship over National Authority]”, Renmin ribao, 1 July 1951, 6.
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Other historians disagreed and saw the failure of the 1911 Revolution arising from the bourgeoisie advancing its class interests through alliances with reactionary elements. These historians argued that the bourgeoisie knowingly allowed reactionaries to take authority during the revolution because the bourgeoisie itself was an enemy of the revolution. Such historians used historical narratives of the 1911 Revolution to suggest that in the
contemporary debate over the role of the bourgeoisie in socialist construction, the bourgeoisie could not join the socialist revolution due to a conflict of class interests between it and the masses. Zhang Shouchang wrote that Chinese capitalism was not yet fully developed by the 1911 Revolution and therefore that:
After the establishment of the Wuchang military government, according to the Revolutionary Alliance’s prepared foreign announcement, all Manchu Qing era unequal treaties would be acknowledged in order to secure the ‘neutrality’ of imperialism and isolate the Manchu Qing. In reality, it was an expression of its weakness in not daring to accuse imperialism, allowing the fetters of imperialism to continue.89
Contrary to the stated goals of the Revolutionary Alliance, Zhang argued that the
Revolutionary Alliance could not repudiate the unequal treaties because the bourgeoisie could not attack a system which served its class interests. Shui Zhaoxiong added that all classes had innate weaknesses at the time, claiming that, “During the age of imperialism, the
representatives of the semi-feudal semi-bourgeoisie reformist faction were timid and incapable. The representatives of the peasantry in the Boxer Rebellion followed a blind and ignorant road. The representatives of the bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie—the leaders of the 1911 Revolution—were conciliatory by nature”.90 Shui’s obvious implication was that only
89 Zhang Shouchang, Zhongguo jindaishi gangyao, 99. 90 Shui Zhaoxiong, Zhongguo jindaishi xuexi gangyao, 86.
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the proletariat could lead China. Each class had defined class interests and capabilities and would contribute to, or oppose the revolution according to those interests and capabilities. The interests of the bourgeoisie made it an enemy of the revolution. Therefore, without the leadership of the proletariat, according to this analysis, obtaining victory in the revolution was impossible.
Historians during the early 1950s agreed that the 1911 Revolution failed due to the inability of the bourgeoisie to correctly distinguish friends from enemies. The reasons for that failure differed as some argued that innate class traits determined the alliances during the revolution while others argued that the bourgeoisie’s inexperience and lack of recognition of friend versus enemy sealed the fate of the revolution. Authors sometimes stood in both camps simultaneously. Shui Zhaoxiong identified inexperience as ruining the potential alliance between the bourgeoisie and working classes yet also noted that the innate weakness of the bourgeoisie caused it to ally with imperialism. Hu Wenyan argued that the intrinsic class weakness of the bourgeoisie prohibited it from allying with the working classes, but that poor foresight caused the bourgeoisie to deliver authority to the reactionaries. The debate over the role of the bourgeoisie in the United Front of the 1911 Revolution reflected the contemporary debate about the ability of the bourgeoisie to contribute to the United Front: no clear answer yet existed and each side claimed to inherit and develop upon the master narrative of history written by Mao Zedong prior to 1949. After the Anti-Rightist Movement, however, the issue became far clearer as Mao iterated a revised interpretation of Mao Zedong Thought and his master narrative of history that defined the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie as fundamental to the period of socialist construction.