The Evolution of a Peasant Movement Policy Within the Chinese Communist Party

THE EVOLUTION OF A PEASANT MOVEMENT POLICY WITHIN THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY by Gerald w. Berkley Modern China scholars have almost invariably· held this common 1 generalization concerning the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) involvement in the peasant movement: Despite attempts by certain individual Party members such as P'eng P'ai to call attention to the need to tap the revolutionary inclinations of the Chinese peasants, the CCP as a formal organization did not elaborate a peasant movement policy before 1927. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that this thesis is not tenable. Before attempting to document the pre-1927 evolution of a peasant movement. policy within the CCP, however, a brief caveat emptor is necessary. This article will deal almost solely with the formally enunciated position of the CCP on the peasant movement. It will not attempt to come face-to-face with implementation and action. Such an investigation of the operational consequences of the official pronouncements would require an article of several times this length. •The First Decision as to the Object of the Communist Party of China 1921.[1) focused almost entirely on the Chinese working class. The only statement concerning the peasants to come out of the First Chinese Communist Party Congress was a resolution in •The First Program of the Communist Party of China 1921• calling for the confiscation of land and the entrustment of this land to social ownership.[2) After the First Congress the CCP began to devote the vast majority of its energy to the Chinese labor movement. A special bureau, the Chinese Labor Union Secretariat, headed by Chang Kuot 'ao, was established to direct the labor movement[3] and nearly half of all Party members were enrolled as members of the Secretariat. To quote c. Martin Wilbur, •Mass organization at that time (1921-1922) was practically synonymous with labor organization.•[4) The Second CCP Congress held in July 1922, contained strong statements affecting both the Chinese proletariat and the Chinese peasantry. It appears that the CCP had, in the year since the First Congress, become a bit more sober.about labor movement prospects for there are statements such as •the struggle of the labor class is only a sporadic movement.• The following demands were issued on behalf of the peasants: (1) unrestricted suffrage; (i) abolish the likin tax and other extra taxes; (3) exact laws restricting land rental.(S] 44 The Third CCP Congress is of particular interest because at this meeting was held the first full-scale discussion of the revolutionary role of the peasants in the Comintern-proposed United Front between the CCP and the Nationalist Party (KMT). Ch'en Tu-hsiu, general secretary .of the Party, proposed that peasant movement work in particular, but also labor activities, be shared by both participating parties of the United Front. Ch'en•s rationale for this policy was that the CCP needed the KMT apparatus to organize and develop a socialist consciousness in the masses and that not allowing mass activity to be a cooperative venture by both parties was to greatly lessen the usefulness of the United Front.(6] The final Congress resolution noted that •the KMT should have influence among the working ma~ses, especially the peasantry.• Further, it spoke of a reduction of rent and the limitation of land holdings. In the •Fourth Declaration of the Chinese Communist Party Concerning Contemporary Affairs,• the CCP's central headquarters acknowledged in November 1924 the necessity of forming peasant associations and village self-defense units.[?] At the Fourth Congress of the CCP, held in Shanghai in January, 1925, however, the Party was only willing to go as far as to say that the peasantry was the basic force in China's bourgeois-led national-democratic revolution, th~ first stage of Lenin's two-stage revolutionary process and the stage to be led by the KMT.[B] The Congress did reiterate the November decision on the advisability of organizing peasants, but nowhere in the Congress resolutions was it suggested that this task be done in the name of the CCP rather than the KMT. Finally, in what was undoubtedly an attempt to restrain some individuals in the CCP who...