Page:China in Revolt (1926).pdf/29

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pletely to put an end to the semi-feudal system of the militarists, we must solve the agrarian question, we must smash the weapons by which the big landowning class oppresses the peasant masses. Only thereby can the bases of the militarists be shattered. Under the rule of the Canton National Government we must win the support and sympathy of the broad masses of peasantry in order to maintain the victories we have won. We must enrole the peasantry in the united revolutionary battlefront.

We now come to the question of the Chinese labor movement and of the development and importance of the Communist Party of China. The Chinese proletariat will not only be the driving force of the future proletarian revolution, it is also the directing power in the present national revolution, Without a mighty labor movement the national struggle cannot develop further. The ups and downs of the labor movement in China at the same time mark the trend of the national movement as a whole, In the three stages of the Chinese labor movement, from the sailors' strike in 1922 up to the railwaymen's strike of 1923, from this to the Shanghai events, and from the Shanghai events to the present time, the Chinese working class has shown its fighting ability and its valour in the front ranks of the revolution. The whole Shanghai movement rallied around the strikes in Shanghai and Hankow. The Canton Government could wipe out the counter-revolutionary troops only with tha support of the masses of workers and peasants, And now also, after the oceupation of Hankow and Wuchang by the Canton troops, the victory can be maintained only of the labor movement is consolidated and strengthened.

The influence of the reformists in the Chinese labor movement must also be thwarted. The reformist movement can find no place among the Chinese laboring masses who suffer under a double oppression and exploitation by their own and by the foreign capitalists. The Asiatic Workers' Congress, which was called last

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