15.07.1999

Trotsky on China, 1928

I have already received several telegrams [from left Trotskyists] raising objections to ... the democratic demand for popular representation ... I must say, some of the objections in the telegrams did seem quite incredible to me. For example, two comrades say that the call for a constituent assembly is “not a class demand,” and that, therefore, they reject it. Such an understanding of the class character of demands has an anarcho-syndicalist, and not a Marxist character ...

... the class interests of the proletariat, correctly understood, require “democratic slogans to be carried out to the fullest extent”. Don’t forget that in 1912 the Bolsheviks in the legal press called themselves “consistent democrats”. This pseudonym to pass the censors expressed all the same a very important tendency of the party’s work at that time.