Translated from the German by Mike Jones, this extract gives us the best indication so far available, of the time when Trotsky first publicly called for a break between the Chinese Communist Party and the Guomindang. In a private letter to Radek (see the Pathfinder Press volume Leon Trotsky on China) a short time earlier, Trotsky was obviously of a similar opinion.

To the 15th Party Congress
(extract)

Mid September 1926

The position of the leading group in regard to the Guomindang has a wholly opportunist character. Now, when the national-democratic movement in China articulates itself more and more in class terms, when the young Chinese proletariat enters the arena of struggle with strikes which encompass millions of workers, when the trade unions organise hundreds of thousands of workers – now the Chinese CP can no longer remain a propaganda within the Guomindang but must take upon itself the task of constructing an independent proletarian class party which struggles for the hegemony of the proletariat in the national liberation struggle. The independence of the CP excludes its organisational absorption in the Guomindang but obviously not its entering into a lasting political block with the Guomindang. Nevertheless the Stalin group declares that even the question of organisational delimitation of the CP and Guomindang as ‘ultra-left’, ‘capitulationism’ liquidationism and hands out other terms of abuse behind which tailendist politics, is hidden a false attitude to the tasks of the Chinese CP and a degradation of its possible role in the liberation struggle.

K XV-oi konferenzii, T3006. First publication.

Note

As a letter (T894) of Trotsky (19.9.1926) suggests he wrote these draft theses seeking a clarification within the United Opposition in the context of the preparations for the 15th CPSU Conference (26 Oct.-3 Nov. 1926) They contain an extensive criticism of the Stalin-Bukharin leadership of which only the passages referring to China are reproduced here. This is the earliest text in which Trotsky calls for the CPC to split from the GMD. The eventual responses to it or to the whole text are unknown. Representatives of the opposition did not participate in the debate over the report by Bukharin on the international situation at the conference itself; for them the defence of the Opposition against their characterisation (adopted on a motion of Stalin’s) as a “social-democratic deviation” was the primary task.

Translated by Mike Jones. This text was apparently first published in a volume of Trotsky’s writings in German devoted to China and the text has “First German publication” appended to it. The Trotzki Schriften are published by Rasch und Röhring Verlag, Hamburg. Volume 2, on China is in two parts and the above quotation would appear to be in Vol.2 Book 1.