Draft Resolution on the Far East and India¶
Core Argument¶
Draft Resolution on the Far East and India
The conflict raging in the Far East is not a war between nations but a brutal contest between American, British and Japanese imperialists for dominion over the world’s richest markets, raw materials and fields for capital export. This war has deepened explosive contradictions, ruining workers, peasants and the petty bourgeoisie, who now seek a revolutionary way out. American imperialism has come to dominate the Pacific, displacing Britain, reduced to a second-rate power by military collapse and economic transformation. Japanese imperialism, resting on a weak economy, is in retreat; its collapse is only a matter of time. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union has gained strength and prestige, and its bureaucracy aims to extend its hegemony over parts of China, seeking a sphere of influence greater than tsarist Russia’s.
The imperialist war will trigger revolutions across colonial and semi-colonial Asia, initially bringing the Indian National Congress and Chinese bourgeoisie to power. Yet because the bourgeoisie is tied to feudal and landowning elements, neither the Kuomintang nor Congress can resolve the peasant or working-class problems, making their rule temporary. The Russian and Chinese Revolutions demonstrate that bourgeois democratic tasks in these countries can only be completed after the working class seizes power under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Sections of the Fourth International in India and the Far East must prepare for this democratic revolution’s transformation into a proletarian revolution.
Japan is the key: as the most industrialised Asian country, its revolution will ignite the entire region. Japan is the weakest imperialist link; its accumulated social contradictions will unleash a mass struggle. The Japanese working class, leading the peasantry, will smash the militarists, feudal landowners and capitalists, rejecting the Stalinist Popular Front and class collaboration. In China, the bourgeoisie cannot wage a revolutionary war; Chiang Kai-shek fights only as a tool of imperialism. The Fourth International gives critical support to China’s war as a colonial struggle against imperialism, while exposing Chiang’s corruption and sabotage. After Japan’s defeat, revolutionary possibilities will open, centred on agrarian revolution and workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ councils. In India, the post-1942 period is marked by mass demoralisation and bourgeois compromise. The main task is to prepare for sharp turns, with the united Bolshevik-Leninist Party growing despite repression. The Congress Socialist Party is gaining strength and must not be dismissed as sectarian folly.
The war has revolutionised class and national relations in Asia, intensifying contradictions for the thrice-exploited masses. Famine, war’s effects, and events in Europe will awaken Asia’s multitudes. Masses across India, China, Indo-China and the Dutch East Indies have been roused from passivity and will be propelled into motion. British soldiers in the Far East recognise the war is not in their interests. Bolshevik-Leninists in Britain must explain the war’s character, support colonial freedom struggles, and emphasise the interconnection between British workers’ struggle for power and colonial liberation, fighting for a Federation of Socialist Soviet Republics in Asia alongside a Socialist Britain and world.