Guest Column

...it enabled the Chinese Communists to expand so vigorously that, at the close of the war, Mao could claim control over more than a hundred million people...

...In this foreseeable future, to carry the Communist perspective still further, Mao might become the super-Gauleiter of all the peasants of East and South Asia...

...The decisive role of the agrarian revolution for China was postulated by Stalin prior to the Sixth World Congress of the Comintern, which took place in the summer of 1928...

...But this geo-military consideration, however valid it may be, does not touch upon the core of the matter...

...And, while we may expect Mao and his lieutenants to struggle for as much power as they can obtain within the economically determined international hierarchy of Communist "production relations," there is no reason to believe that, in their own hearts, they doubt the legitimacy of the hierarchy itself—at least for the foreseeable future, which involves not only the growth of industry in China, but also a further and substantial growth of industry in the already massive industrial centers of the U.S.S.R...

...and they certainly need not follow the Chinese Communist pattern...

...Mao can hope to survive this war successfully only if he remains what he has been thus far and most rewardingly: a member of the Communist camp...

...To survive and to grow as a giant junior partner in a Eurasian or global Communist system of total power is an ideologically consistent and a practically attractive goal...

...in 1920, at the Second World Congress of the Communist International, he recognized the applicability of this strategy to the so-called "colonial and semi-colonial countries," particularly in Asia...

...and turn "Tito...

...Asian Communist Revolution overlooks elementary institutional facts and basic human values...

...From the Marxist standpoint, this argument is indeed entirely convincing...

...Abysmal stupidities in Soviet policy excluded—these are, of course, possible but not too probable—we may conclude that, in view of Mao's Marxist-Leninist interpretation of the world situation, we have no right to base our Far Eastern policy on the likelihood of a Titoist development in Communist China...

...Six weeks prior to the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern, on June 15, Mao's government still advocated a United Front "against Japanese imperialism and Chiang Kai-shek," and it solemnly declared "that it had sentenced Chiang Kai-shek to death...

...But the state of Europe after World War II demonstrates the formidable possibilities of this Third Weapon of Soviet imperialism in the West...

...These leaders adhere—and adhere fanatically—to a Marxist-Leninist doctrine that appraises power in terms of economy...

...Measured by a multiplicity of criteria, which, in addition to technical advances, also include the freedom to check the "big" forces of society, the freedom of creative activity and the freedom of silence, it is manifest that historical developments may be retrogressive as well as progressive...

...And yet Moscow would know, and Mao would know, too, that he would still remain a giant junior partner...

...Maoism" versus "Leninism"?: The myth of a special "Maoist" version of Communism involves, among other things, an emphasis on the role of the peasants in the first phase of the Chinese Communist Revolution...

...But any attempt to base the assumption of a covertly anti-Leninist "Maoism" on the Chinese Communists' temporary policy of "limited" Soviets in essentially agrarian areas disregards fundamental and easily verifiable facts of Comintern doctrine...

...Lenin underrated the institutional novelty and unique oppressiveness of the regime he helped to create...

...As early as 1905, Lenin assigned a decisive role in the next Russian revolution to the revolutionary peasants...

...This article is based on Dr...

...Stalin's German policy, which, by paralyzing the anti-Fascist forces, fatally contributed to bringing Hitler to power and which, through the Pact, paved the way for Hitler's attack on Western Europe, involved enormous risks...

...And it did so through an honest reform and not through a dishonest revolution, Communist style (that is, an agrarian revolution that uses temporary land distribution to buy temporary peasant support and that reverses this distribution as soon as the new Communist masters are strong enough to plow the peasants under...

...GUEST COLUMN By Karl A. Wittfogel The Communist Strategy in Asia: An Expert Appraisal of Four Concepts The "Irresistible Asian Revolution": To acknowledge the existence of serious economic and national conflicts in Asia does not mean to accept the Communist claim that these conflicts can be solved only by violent revolution and only in one way—the Communist way...

...and that naturally the "world town" would remain in a position of leadership...

...As Lenin assumed, there were many adjustments and developments of detail...

...And, in a war between the Communist and capitalist worlds (a war which the Chinese Communists, like all other Communists, consider unavoidable), a Mao Tse-tung who had broken with the U.S.S.R...

...Wittfogel heads the Chinese History Project sponsored by the University of Washington and Columbia University...

...A victorious West—this must be his Marxist-Leninist conviction—will not tolerate his kind of Communism if it is strong enough to crush the "Number One" Communist power, the Soviet Union...

...But as such a junior partner Mao would exert power beyond anything he could hope for if he broke with the U.S.S.R...

...At the Sixth World Congress of the Comintern, Bukharin stated that even in a global Communist order there would be a "world town" as well as a "world village...

...Lenin himself recognized this in 1906 when he admitted that a new Russian revolution might lead not to socialism but to what he, following Plekhanov, called an "Asiatic Restoration"—a return to an Orientally despotic regime...

...The Comintern Congress began on July 25, and the first major speech by Wilhelm Pieck clearly laid down the new United Front line...

...The concept of the necessary—and necessarily progressive...

...It was only when these attempts failed that the great swing toward the United Front began, in the West in 1934, and in the Far East, after the conspicuous rapprochement between Hitler and Japan, in 1935...

...Only on August 1, that is, a week after the opening of the congress, did the Chinese Communists proclaim their version of the United Front policy by offering an alliance to the Nationalist Government...

...They are fully aware that, within the Communist orbit, the great centers of industry, and particularly heavy industry, today lie in the Eurasian Communist heartland, the U.S.S.R...

...And it was at this congress that the concept of peasant Soviets was elaborated with express reference to Lenin's original theses...

...But we will do well to remember his concept of a possible Asiatic Restoration when the Communists try to impose upon us their myth of the inevitable (and inevitably progressive) Communist wave of the future...

...The chances of a Titoist development in Communist China can be properly weighed only if we put ourselves in the position of the Chinese Communist leaders...

...but, for several years, in accordance with the Comintern line, they were careful not to single out Japan, but to denounce all "imperialist powers for encroaching upon China...

...temporarily, it endangered the very existence of the U.S.S.R...

...During this period, Moscow was trying to ally itself in the West with Hitler, and in the Far East with Japan...

...Thus, in the Far East, too, the Third Weapon destroyed the previous balance of power, and this again to the great advantage of the U.S.S.R...

...Far from spontaneously responding to national embitterment, the Chinese Communists followed what they later called their "sectarian" anti-Kuomintang policy until the summer of 1935...

...And this Chinese way, although it is definitely more than the restoration of an outmoded type of Oriental despotism, is certainly closer to an Asiatic Restoration than to the "association of free producers" that the Marxist Socialists, perhaps utopianly, set out to establish...

...Will Mao turn "Tito"?: Cool thinking is required in evaluating the possibility that the masters of such powerful Communist countries as China may desert the U.S.S.R...

...would be the loser whichever side won...

...Manifestly, a China that wishes to see its modest industry grow can least of all afford to break with the U.S.S.R., since China's industrially most important area, Manchuria, is open to, and half encircled by, the Far Eastern provinces of the Soviet Union...

...There is nothing originally "Maoist" in this emphasis...

...Thus, whatever political and institutional developments present-day Asia may require need not be revolutionary in the Communist sense of the term...

...A number of factors, of which our own policy is one, will decide whether or not the rest of Asia goes the Chinese way...

...Lenin formulated this idea tentatively and with the expectation that its details would be worked out when the opportunity presented itself...

...Obviously, Soviet strategy of expansion relies on more than internal fifth-columnists (native Communists and their friends) and external military aggression...

...The Third Weapon: After the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Chinese Communists cried out against Japanese aggression...

...The Soviet support of Chiang Kai-shek from the middle Thirties on, which crucially influenced Chiang's decision to go to war against Japan, was much less risky than Stalin's Hitler policy (the former immediately lessened the danger of a Japanese attack against the U.S.S.R...

...To cite an example from the sphere of economic conflict: The excellent land policy which, under our guidance, was initiated and implemented in Japan made the bulk of the Japanese peasants the owners of their land...

...Wittfogel's address to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies conference on "The Threat of Soviet Imperialism," the proceedings of which have just been published under that title by Johns Hopkins Press...

...Simultaneously, he asserted the possibility of peasant Soviets in such countries...

...Or, to cite an example from the sphere of national conflict: India and other former colonies have recently become independent by means of an intelligently promoted peaceful change, and not by means of a violent revolution...

...As Lenin said pointedly, and as Stalin repeated in his last public utterances, there is still a Third Weapon: the careful use of all tensions and "contradictions" in the free world for weakening the non-Communist camp through the promotion of open conflicts whose final fruits the Kremlin expects to reap...