Comment on The Comintern Theses

Abstract

Ch'ü Ch'iu-pai, as the head of the Chinese delegation to the Sixth Comintern Congress, commented on the Comintern Theses on July 27. He alleged that the Theses had not made sufficient analysis of the questions of the peasantry, the Pacific Ocean, and postwar world capitalism. The "second" and "third" periods mentioned in the following text referred to Bukharin's periodization of the development of world capitalism after the World War. The first period Bukharin characterized as "the period of direct revolutionary actions of the proletariat." It supposedly culminated in 1921 with the consolidation of the power of the Soviet government, and ended in late 1923 with the communist failures in Germany and Bulgaria. The second period he called a period of temporary and partial stabilization of "the capitalist system," during which the proletariat suffered "severe defeats" despite the "success" in building up socialism in the Soviet Union. The third period, which began in 1928, was marked by "intense development of contradictions of world capitalism" which "inevitably" lead to a new series of wars and revolutions. Bukharin cited as evidence of signs of international antagonism the hostility of "capitalist states" toward the Soviet Union and the Japanese occupation of North China.