ABSTRACT
Chen Duxiu wrote this letter three months after leaving prison on August 23, 1937. In prison, he had fallen out irreparably with the Trotskyist Peng Shuzhi, and his relations with other Trotskyist leaders (who had expelled him for “opportunism” in 1935) were also poor. Chen had no wish to join with these people, and indeed denounces them as Stalinists in this letter; but in 1937 and 1938 he did maintain good relations in Wuhan with a small number of his old comrades. Chen’s political project in 1937 was quite the opposite of that of the Shanghai Trotskyists: they refused to engage in practical activity and confined themselves to commenting from the sidelines on the war against Japan; he believed that, for the duration of the war, the Trotskyists should put their main energy into building a united front of all democratic parties independent of the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party, including patriotic soldiers, on the basis of a broad programme of freedom and democracy. Chen was even prepared to cooperate with the Chinese Communists, but he was shrewd enough to see that they would only take him seriously if he represented real forces. In the event, nothing came of his attempt to foster a “democratic upsurge”. Does Chen’s assertion in this letter that “I no longer belong to any party” represent a definitive break with the Trotskyists? Not according to Zheng Chaolin, whose arguments are contained in Appendix 8. Chen was given to making sweeping statements and categorical assertions that in reality were qftenfarfrom immutable. The question of the late Chen’s Trotskyism can best be judged on the basis of the other letters and articles in this volume, which suggest an enduring interest in Trotsky’s Fourth International, if not in its Chinese section.
