China's Urban Revolutionaries: Explorations in the History of Chinese Trotskyism, 1921-1952.by Gregor BentonReview by: Arif DirlikPacific Affairs, Vol. 70, No. 2 (Summer, 1997), pp. 268-269Published by: Pacific Affairs, University of British ColumbiaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2760785 .Accessed: 06/05/2012 10:18

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Pacific Affairs

Whatever the case, his son appears from his lifestyle to be the richest person in the village today, despite a paltry salary.

Regardless of possible corruption within his family, Wang himself is per- turbed by the overall corruption of the new age, as well as the local gambling fever and decline in law and order. His mentality is revealed in his statement that this decline in public order is partly due to the party's deci- sion to "take the hats off" bad-class villagers: "That meant we could not control people by calling them class enemies" (p. 96). Wang acknowledges that few villagers would like to return to the collectives and politics of the Maoist period, but he nonetheless looks back nostalgically to a time when "the government stressed agriculture and made a real attempt to help agri- culture. There were no fake fertilizers and fake insecticides" (p. 128). His son, surprisingly, shares his nostalgia: "Now we have enough to eat, but everyone curses Deng Xiaoping because there is no security and too much corruption" (p. 127).

Throwing the Emperor from His Horse is an easy read and students will enjoy it as a "primary" source that can be discussed and analyzed in class.

The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia JONATHAN UNGER

CHINA'S URBAN REVOLUTIONARIES: Explorations in the History of Chinese Trotskyism, 1921-1952. By GregorBenton. NewJersey: Humanities Press International. 1996. v, 269 pp. (Map.) US$55. 00, cloth, ISBN 0-391- 03921-0; US$18.50, paper ISBN 0-391-03947-4.

THE AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK describes his undertaking "as a conspectus or digest of research and thinking embodied in various other studies on Chinese Trotskyism published or prepared over the past fifteen years" (p. 5). The book is a welcome addition to the sparse literature on the subject. The reader who seeks a grasp of Trotskyism in China, however, is likely to be disappointed by Benton's arbitrary delimitation of the subject, and his often tendentious interpretations.

The work consists of two parts: a discussion by the author of problems in the history of Trotskyism in China, and three appendices. Benton's dis- cussion is in the nature of an introduction, a gloss on and an elaboration of issues raised in the appendices, especially Zheng Chaolin's memoir, "Chen Duxiu and the Trotskyists." It ranges in coverage from the origins of Trotskyism among Chinese Communists in China and Russia, to commen- taries on prominent Trotskyists Chen Duxiu and Peng Shuzhi, to the relationship of Trotskyism to questions of democracy in Chinese Communism, to the impact of Trotskyism on the Chinese "world of letters." The author portrays "Chinese Trotskyism" as the expression of "an authen- tically indigenous tradition of revolutionary democracy" (p. 109), embodied above all in the revolutionary career of Chen Duxiu. Accordingly,

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Book Reviews

he questions the Trotskyism of those who parted ways with Chen, such as Peng Shuzhi and Liu Renjing, who in the past have been associated more closely with Trotskyism than Chen; as Chen's political orientation retained considerable ambiguity after 1927, when Trotskyism assumed recognizable form in China. Contamination by Stalin's Moscow seems to be Benton's major criterion for the distinction.

The book is valuable for its coverage of new scholarship on Trotskyism in China, for clarifying a number of historical details, for its effort to res- cue Trotskyism from its malignation by the Communist party (which is not entirely new, partly thanks to Benton's own past work) and, above all, for its appendices (that also include an interview with Wang Fanxi, and a bio- graphical list). Trotskyists in China have been erased from history, partly because they were almost literally erased, as the united Trotskyist organiza- tion that was founded in 1931 lasted for only two weeks, before most of the Trotskyists found themselves in jail. Those who remained on the mainland after 1949 suffered further tragedy. Treated as enemies of the regime, they were jailed in 1952 to remain in jail, in the case of Zhang Chaolin, for the next twenty-seven years. Any work that contributes to recovering this history is to be welcomed not just for historiographical but more importantly for political and moral reasons.

It is too bad, then, that the work suffers from serious exaggerations and flawed interpretations. It is not clear why Benton insists on the "indi- genism" of Chinese Trotskyism, which he qualifies offhandedly by a parenthetical remark that the word "indigenous" may not mean anything in the contemporary world. Theoretical/historical debates of the thirties in which Trotskyists (or Trotskyites) participated, which might be crucial to evaluating such a claim, are not part of his discussion (although there is a brief discussion in Zheng's memoir of the issue of "permanent revolution"). The many virtues of Trotskyism that Benton extols are made possible by call- ing into question the authenticity of the majority of those who identified themselves as Trotskyist, and identifying Trotskyism almost exclusively with Chen Duxiu, and those who remained loyal to Chen, such as Zheng Chaolin and Wang Fanxi. This also ends up appropriating Chen, and all the radical activities in which Chen played a part (including the May Fourth Movement of 1919, and its lingering memories in 1989), for an "indigenous tradition of revolutionary democracy," which is then expressed through Trotskyism. Even Lu Xun is brought into a Trotskyite revision of the Chinese world of letters because he had read, and admired, Trotsky's Literature and Revolution!

This book, then, is valuable mostly for providing materials toward a crit- ical history of Trotskyism in China that remains to be written.

Duke University, Durham, NC, U.S.A. APJF DIRLIK

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