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Zheng Chaolin helped found the Chinese Communist Party’s European branch in Paris in 1922 and its Trotskyist Opposition in Shanghai in 1931. He held the world record in political imprisonment – seven years under Chiang Kai-shek (as a revolutionary) and 27 under Mao (as a ‘counterrevolutionary’), thus beating by a year Auguste Blanqui’s previous record. After joining the revolution in his teens, his commitment never wavered. His life – which spanned from 1901 to 1998 – was coterminous with the century and a dramatic embodiment of its vicissitudes. The writing collected in this book reflects that, and provides an indispensable record of his contribution to revolutionary thought in China.
List of contents
Introduction
Gregor Benton
1 ABC of Permanent Revolution (1942)
tr. John Sexton
2 Commemorating Comrade Chen Duxiu (1942)
tr. Donald Gasper
3 Love and Politics (1945)
tr. Gregor Benton
4 Discussion on Problems of Revolution (1946–79)
tr. Sean A. James
5 State Capitalism (1950)
ed. and with an introduction by Walter Daum
6 Poems on Political Themes (1958–90)
tr. and with explanatory notes by Gregor Benton
7 Chen Duxiu and the Trotskyists (1980–1)
tr. Gregor Benton
8 On Chinese Cadreism (1985)
tr. Kevin Lin
9 The Young Karl Marx and the Theory of Alienation (1988)
tr. Gregor Kneussel
10 Reflections on the 1989 Tian’anmen Incident (June 20, 1989)
tr. Tsim Shum Kow, ed. and with an introduction by Owen Miller
11 The October Revolution, Thermidor, and the Stalinist Mode of Capitalism (1991)
tr. Yang Yang
12 On Cadreism (c. 1992)
tr. Huang Ting
13 Letters across the Sea (1996–8)
tr. and with explanatory notes by Gregor Benton
Appendices
Zheng Chaolin’s Life and Death
Obituary of Zheng Chaolin by Wang Fanxi
A Self-Description at the Age of Ninety (written 1 May 1990)
References
Index
About the author
Gregor Benton is Emeritus Professor in Modern Chinese History at Cardiff University. He has published more than a score of books on China and other subjects. His principal research areas are modern Chinese history, dissent under communism, Chinese Trotskyism, and Chinese diaspora.
John Sexton is a researcher and translator. His publications include Alliance of Adversaries (Brill and Haymarket, 2018–19) and Red Friends: Internationalists in China’s Struggle for Liberation (Verso, 2023).
Summary
Zheng Chaolin helped found the Chinese Communist Party’s European branch in Paris in 1922 and its Trotskyist Opposition in Shanghai in 1931. He held the world record in political imprisonment – seven years under Chiang Kai-shek (as a revolutionary) and 27 under Mao (as a ‘counterrevolutionary’), thus beating by a year Auguste Blanqui’s previous record. After joining the revolution in his teens, his commitment never wavered. His life – which spanned from 1901 to 1998 – was coterminous with the century and a dramatic embodiment of its vicissitudes. The writing collected in this book reflects that, and provides an indispensable record of his contribution to revolutionary thought in China.
Foreword
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