Workers World, Vol. 1 No. 15
China is a revolution under barricade and quarantine. Blockaded by the U.S. Seventh Fleet in the east, hemmed in by the imperialists to the southeast, rebuffed by the United Nations, it is making Herculean efforts and unheard-of mass sacrifices in order to develop itself. To do this, it needs peace on its borders and peaceful trade with all countries.
It also needs, for the same reason, the integration of its land and the security of its borders. This may at times require an assertion of what these borders are, or even a correction of these imperialist-dictated borders, if it feels strong enough to correct them.
The Militant, organ of the Socialist Workers Party, takes the opposite stand. It lines up with the imperialist bourgeoisie.
Workers’ China has given semi-colonial, feudal-capitalist India every advantage in the past, including even the maintenance of Indian currency in Tibet. Now India has opened a boundary dispute which Nehru is using to divert the mass discontent of the Indian workers and peasants, attacking revolutionary China. (One need only remember the recent food riots in Calcutta where Nehru’s troops opened fire on the unarmed masses, to know how badly Nehru needs the diversion of this border incident.) Nehru is acting here as a stooge for imperialism just as he was action in the case of the Dalai Lama in the Tibet affair. For the first time in years, Nehru is getting the applause of the imperialists. And the Militant chooses just this time to conciliate with – Nehru!
Giving long quotations from its sister periodical, the Militant of India, and from its co-thinker, Colvin de Silva of Ceylon, it headlines its Oct. 5 story: “Indian-Chinese Conflict Alarms Asian Socialists.”
The essence of the Indian Militant’s position is as follows:
“Whatever be the motive (our emphasis – ed.), the Chinese border incursions cannot be supported by revolutionary socialists in India. They must be condemned unreservedly because of the damage they do to the revolutionary movement.”
Colvin de Silva says:
“The Sino-Indian border incidents, especially as they come on the morrow and in the context of the disturbing events in Tibet (again our emphasis), help nobody except reaction.”
Let us see just who is guilty of “damage to the revolutionary movement”!
In the present case, China is absolutely in the right, even from a bourgeois-nationalist point of view, which is the real point of view of these “socialists.” But since they want to make sure that China is “condemned unreservedly,” they are compelled to employ some double-talk:
“If bourgeois India is guilty of keeping the boundary lines vague (although Nehru has said that repeated attempts made from New Delhi for a settlement remained unresponded to by Peking for over ten years), the Chinese Government is equally guilty of not taking the initiative to settle the dispute” (Militant of India – parentheses theirs).
The authors of this statement blandly equate the guilt for the dispute (India’s) with the guilt for not settling the dispute (China’s)! Even bourgeois lawyers would not be guilty of such an outrageous formulation!
The McMahon line which India now claims as the proper northeast border between China and India was drawn by British imperialism in 1913-14. It was considerably north of the traditional border, and was never accepted by any regime in China. It was protested by Tibet immediately after India became “free” of Britain in 1947. So much for the Indian Militant’s insinuation that the line has been accepted by China.
It is important to add that Britain never felt the need of a boundary to India as far north as the McMahon line until after the Chinese Revolution of 1911, when the handwriting on the wall began to indicate that China was going to be free. (Britain used to rule both China and India!)
Nor has the Chinese-Indian boundary line ever been changed on Chinese maps. The area between the McMahon line and the old India-China line to the south of it was unguarded for a long time. The Indian troops, however, moved north to the edge of the McMahon line in 1951 after the Chinese re-established their connection with Tibet (during the Korean War). The Chinese did not feel strong enough to protest at that time.
Recently, in the aftermath of the counter-revolutionary uprising in Tibet, the Chinese had to guard the border with special care. The Dalai Lama crossed this border into India to raise counter-revolutionary troops if possible. Many similar crossings took place. Indian troops moved north to protect refugee Tibetan rebels. Border clashes were inevitable. After all, the reactionaries of the world not only wanted to move the border a few miles into Tibet. They wanted all of Tibet.
But suppose China were compelled to make an “incursion” across the real boundary by some other necessity of the revolution than merely adjusting a false border or defending its real border (as in this case). What then?
During the Russian Revolution, the Red Army, under the leadership of Trotsky, was compelled to yield up the Chinese Eastern Railroad (Czarist enterprise) to the Chinese capitalists. But in 1924, Trotsky supported a Soviet-Chinese treaty which returned the railroad to the Soviet Union. This was a correction of the boundary line, so to speak, and very much in Russia’s favor as against then-capitalist-colonial China.
Later the Chinese again seized this strategic railroad and in 1929 Soviet troops, under Stalin’s rule, recovered it. Trotsky, of course, supported the Soviet side.
Trotsky was reproached about this by certain critics who claimed this was “soviet imperialism.”
In his answer, it is only necessary to substitute for the word China, the present India (since the general class nature of China at that time was roughly the same as India today).
“Departing from the class standpoint for the sake of an abstract-nationalistic position, the ultra-lefts necessarily slide away from a revolutionary position into a purely pacifist one. Louzon relates how the Soviet troops captured in their day the Siberian railway and how later ‘the Red Army, in conformity with Lenin’s anti-imperialist policy, carefully came to a halt at the frontiers of China. There was no attempt to recapture the territories of the Chinese Eastern Railway’ (Revolution Proletarienne, p. 228). The highest duty of the proletarian revolution, it appears, is to carefully dip its banners before national frontiers. Herein, according to Louzon, is the gist of Lenin’s anti-imperialist policy! One blushes with shame to read this philosophy of revolution in one country. The Red Army halted at the frontier of China because it was not strong enough to cross the frontier and meet the inescapable onslaught of Japanese imperialism. ... Wherein lies the misfortune of Louzon and others like him? In this, that he has substituted a national-pacifist policy for the internationalist-revolutionary policy. This has nothing in common with Lenin.” (Reprinted in Fourth International, October 1946.)
The national-pacifist Colvin de Silva also has nothing in common with Lenin. He says:
“The capacity of the Chinese revolution to influence to the full the common people in other countries and especially in neighboring countries depends considerably upon the Chinese Government’s capacity to maintain good relations with such of the newly independent non-revolutionary countries of Asia as strive to maintain friendly relations with the Chinses People’s Republic. India certainly belongs to that category.”
India is a capitalist country, still dependent on imperialism (not merely a “non-revolutionary” country). Its ruling class is the mortal enemy of Workers’ China as well as of the Indian working class. Its capitalist Prime Minister Nehru imprisons workers and peasants daily and hourly. In Bombay, his troops open fire upon them.
It is the first duty of proletarian revolutionists to explain the class character of the Nehru Government to the Asian masses. But this can hardly be expected from left-handed supporters of Nehru!
Trotsky taught that a revolutionary country’s “capacity to influence ... the common people in other countries” depended on quite other things than remaining friendly with the capitalist oppressor-governments of those countries.
You are betraying Trotsky, as well as the “common people,” Mr. de Silva! Knowingly or unknowingly, you and your Indian friends are preparing a still bigger betrayal, because you are already disarming the revolutionary vanguard in the name of a cowardly “impartiality” between revolution and reaction. In the event of an open conflict, the logic of your line would be “neutralism” at the very best!
But how do matters stand with the American Militant? Its editors greet “New China’s Tenth Anniversary” on the same page in which all the foregoing treacherous nonsense (and more of the same) appears.
The editorial, a harmless, rambling thing, quite appropriate for an “anniversary,” ends on the following lyrical note.
“As the workers take power in the West and proceed to build socialism, they will extend unstinting aid to the Chinese working people.”
The workers of China can be thankful indeed for this promise of aid after the American socialist revolution! But we make so bold to suggest that the Chinese workers need some of that “unstinting aid” – against Indian capitalism right now.
The American Militant’s China editorial, like its much-belated recognition of the character of the Chinese Revolution, is purely platonic, that is, formal and literary. It is only meant to impress those Guardian supporters with whom the Militant still maneuvers for a phony electoral bloc. It cannot be taken seriously.
It is easy to recognize a revolution long after the event. The question for revolutionists is: where to you stand during the event; which side are you on?
Three times in the last six months, the Militant has been on the same side as the world bourgeoisie on fundamental world class conflicts.
These conflicts were: 1. Tibet. 2. Kerala. 3. The India-China border dispute. Each time, the Militant spoke through its Asian co-thinkers. Each time, the Militant made no editorial comments.
One more point. The 16-page Stalinist Worker has not found space for a single word about the India-China dispute. The Worker kept a similar silence in the case of Kerala. What is the reason for this shabby conduct? Why does the Worker fail to support its own comrades abroad when they are under fire from the capitalist class?
And why, for that matter, does Khrushchev not take a resolute position in defense of China in this dispute? (How quick Nehru was to praise Khrushchev for his stand!)
But whatever the phony “friends” and “leaders” of the Soviet Union may do, we revolutionists must do our duty. Let us tell the imperialists of all stripes, including their colonial stooges and semi-stooges (like Nehru), and their “socialist” apologists (like de Silva, etc.) that Workers World is for the uncompromising defense of both the Soviet Union and China!
Last updated: 11 May 2026