From Sun Yat-sen by Lyon Sharman, 1934

SUN YAT-SEN AND COMMUNISM

The section on “The People’s Livelihood” (Min Sheng) contains the socialistic doctrine which makes the book useful to the left wing. Sun Yat-sen asserts that people have not yet grasped the meaning of this Third Principle. He says they began by grasping only the Principle of Nationalism, have progressed now to some apprehension of Democracy, but still fall short of comprehending the meaning of the People’s Livelihood, or the People’s Socialism, as others would translate it.¹ The first of the for lectures is a theoretical discussion of socialism, and dissents at some points from Marxism. John Dewey was not slow in observing that this lecture is much indebted to a book to which Sun Yat-sen makes incidental reference, namely, William’s The Social Interpretation of History. The use of material borrowed from a book that was then but recently published is typical of the avid absorption of Western books by Chinese lecturers. In this case Sun Yat-sen seems to have been characteristically unaware of certain implications of the ideas which he was expounding. Perhaps some communist friend raised a few queries before the next lecture, which came a week later ; Sun Yat-sen began it by frankly abandoning the discussion of socialistic theories a confusing. “The more we discuss them,” he says, “the less we shall understand them.” He observed that Western socialists are at variance—one party advocating revolutionary methods, and another advocating peaceful changes through political action. Which method shall china use ?   {Etc.)

( Page 277 )

    ¹ The ‘livelihood’ is by no means ‘co-terminous’ with ‘socialism’ : even, say, a Robinson Crusoe (example used by Sun in 1919) was facing problems of ‘livelihood’ where no ‘socialism’ could have been present. The study of the Chinese character or characters used in the texts under consideration might be in order. (WPT).

 

Economic policies aside, the element in the lectures on Livelihood that has the most historical interest is Sun Yat-sen’s attitude toward communism. Inasmuch as he was responsible for admitting communists into membership in the Kuomintang, and in view of their later drastic expulsion from it, this material is historically important.

What is the Principle of Livelihood? It is communism and it is socialism. (Etc.)  . . .  It is not a form original with Marx. . . .  The first society formed by man was a communistic society and the primitive age was a communistic age.

We cannot say . . . that the theory of communism is different from our Min-sheng Principle. Our Three Principles of the People means government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”— that is, a state belonging to all the people, a government controlled by all the people  . .etc.

That such statements are eminently usable by communists seems a gratuitous thing to say. They are being used by communists in China today is a fact to be reported concerning their influence. Over and over the communists are saying it; that they are more truly following Sun Yat-sen than the anti-communist group in power at Nanking. But was Sun Yat-sen a communist ? It is being argued that he was; it is being argued that he was not. The important thing to notice is that he made statements which can be effectively used by communists ; he also made statements which can be cited by those who feel it important to detach I his influence from communism. Here again the fruitful controversial method is to select such ideas as please the partisan.

( Pages 278, 279, 280 )

Comment the primitive ‘communism’ alluded to by Sun had no organization other than within a single community.

There is, one may presume, virtually nothing wrong with some forms of ‘communism’ such as are results of truly spontaneous actions by some individuals to organize themselves into a ‘commune’, a self-sufficient community of some order ; on their own responsibility and without any interference “from the above”. This seems entirely compatible with “free enterprise”.

There may be, one presumes, virtually nothing wrong with some manifestations of ‘socialism’ such as are results of truly spontaneous actions by some individuals to organize themselves into a ‘co-operative’ of some sort or other — so long as there is no interference “from above” by any kind of centralized government who do not need to mind any such matters.

Apparently, the statements by Sun Yat-sen were rather vague ; one can do no better than study of the actual Chinese language – and its structures – used in any of such discussion, in so far as any be necessary. (One hopes for a minimum.). — (WPT)

 

The desire to clear Sun Yat-sen of communism has found expression in America. It is the purpose of a recent book, Sun Yat-sen versus Communism by Maurice William, author of The Social Interpretation of History, of which Sun Yat-sen made such a characteristic and liberal use in his first lecture on the People’s Livelihood. Dr. William goes so far as to affirm that Sun Yat-sen was, until near the end of his life, “a convinced Marxist,” but holds that, in the three-months interval between the first twelve San Min Chu I lectures and the last four, Sun Yat-sen happened to read the Social Interpretation of History and was by it won away from Marxism and communism to Dr. William’s own philosophy. I have no desire to combat a conclusion that Sun Yat-sen was not a communist. I should be more inclined to challenge what Dr. William takes for roven—that Sun Yat-sen at one time “accepted Marxism without reservation.” Sun Yat-sen was nothing if not eclectic ; he was nobody’s exclusive disciple ; he picked over foreign ideas, chose what appealed to him and conglomerated what he had selected. In his treatise, China’s Revolution, dated January, 1923, he definitely says that his Third Principle was arrived at by comparative examination of social theories and the selection of the best ideas from among them. . . .

That the reader may think for himself, it should be pointed out that the statements on communism just quoted are all taken from the Lectures on Livelihood, and were made subsequent to eh time when Dr. William believes Sun Yat-sen had come to “an ultimate rejection of communism.” Reservations as to Marxism are certainly there ; but if communism is repudiated, it is done with friendly, outstretched, and welcoming hands.

( Pages 280-1 )

Comment one remembers that all this ‘communism’ is ever vague in this discussion.

So far as I have read, Dr. William was perhaps over-enthusiastic on the subject and had projected some of his own views on Sun Yat-sen’s ; this would have stemmed from the influence of William’s book on Sun, which is beyond any question.

The early writings by Sun which I have seen betray little or no Marxian influence. One of the books may have been written under the influence of Michael Grusenberg alias Borodin, other Bolshevik advisers, who for a time were very much present in China and certainly were influential.

Then came Dr. William’s book — which, by the way, is not without faults of its own. One can note, with profit, the repudiation of ‘class-struggle’, common to William and Sun ; a few other articles would bear some critical examination. — (WPT)

New York : John Day, 1934.