Master Yuan, start!

"Our leader, the President of the Republic of China, Yuan!" Ma Jianzhong spoke very slowly.

"I've heard of your great name for a long time, Mr. Bernstein!" Yuan Xiangcheng was the first to extend his right hand.

"I thought you were in London, but I didn't expect you to arrive in Brussels." Bernstein prided himself on being a well-known social activist in Europe, so he naturally didn't want to appear restrained or timid in front of this heavyweight from the Far East.

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He quickly adjusted his expression, revealing a polite and confident smile, and shook Yuan Xiangcheng's hand: "Your Excellency the President is really well-informed, but since you are already here, why not continue with the previous topic?"

Upon hearing this, Yuan Xiangcheng raised a meaningful smile.

Right on my mind!

He looked around, his eyes sweeping over the faces of everyone present, and then he slowly spoke:

"Mr. Bernstein, I heard some of your arguments outside the door. Please allow me to correct your "chauvinism"

We are not acting as an imperialist, we are saving Africans.

"Oh?" Bernstein raised his eyebrows. "Please tell me, Mr. President."

Upon hearing this, Yuan Xiangcheng smiled and said slowly: "It's very simple, the lives of yellow people are lives too, and the lives of black people are lives too!

What's wrong with letting East Asian farmers who lost their homes due to floods go to South Africa to find a way out?

What's wrong with us sending troops to quickly end the war between the British and the Boers?

I know that your Excellency may ask why we chose to send troops to help the British rather than the Boers.

Your Excellency is in Europe and should be more aware of Britain's strength than I am.

If we help the Boers, the war will inevitably last for a long time. The British Empire can mobilize global forces and their support is endless.

On the contrary, if the British were helped, the war could be ended quickly.

In fact, I have no good feelings towards either the Boers or the British because they were both colonizers who invaded South Africa.

What the Chinese would rather do is help the indigenous people there, the Zulus, and help them stay away from the war.

I think you all know better than I do what the original Latin meaning of proletariat is.

In Roman times, it represented the lowest class in the Roman Empire.

You two are both German, do you need me to explain this English sentence?

The only contribution of the proletariat to the country is one offspring.

In other words, those who are so poor that they only have offspring left are the proletariat.”

Yuan Xiangcheng's eyes were as sharp as torches, sweeping across everyone's face one by one, finally stopping on Bernstein.

"Then I would like to ask Mr. Bernstein, according to these six criteria.

Workers in European steel mills, textile mills, and shipyards are considered proletarians.

Are the farmers in the paddy fields of Asia and the Zulu blacks on the grasslands of Africa not considered proletarians?"

This series of questions was like a stone thrown into a lake, causing ripples among the crowd. Yuan Xiangcheng did not give anyone a chance to refute and continued to explain his point of view:

“In Europe, textile workers and steel workers sell their labor for meager wages every day, allowing themselves to be exploited by capitalists. Even their minor children are forced to work in factories.

In East Asia, tenants and sharecroppers who cultivate the landlords' land also shed their sweat on farmland that does not belong to them, and their descendants also have to help in the fields barefoot.

Aren’t both of them proletarians?

The agricultural situation in Asia is very different from that in Europe.

Some time ago, some friends from the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party traveled to the Far East to investigate China's socialist construction.

I learned from them that after Tsar Alexander II announced the serfdom reform, although the peasants' land was reduced to a certain extent, even the poorest peasants in Russia could own 3-4 mu of land per person. In some areas, the amount was less, but still 1-2 mu.

The average land ownership per household in the European region of Russia is generally 8-10 mu, while in the Volga River Basin or Western Siberia, it can even reach 20 mu or 40 mu per household.

Based on the lowest per capita land area among the poorest Russian peasants, 1 Russian mu is equivalent to 1 hectare.

Converted into Huamu, it is approximately 15 Huamu.

15 mu of land, ladies and gentlemen, do you know how such an area of ​​arable land would be divided in China?

They are rich peasants, and at worst they are middle peasants.

Moreover, these 15 acres of land are calculated based on the average household land use, not the per capita land use.

In other words, even the poor Russian peasants at the bottom of the European peasantry would become rich peasants or even landlords after arriving in East Asia!

How, then, can you turn a blind eye to such peasants and exclude them from the ranks of the proletariat?

Yes, farmers are indeed conservative, but this is not a reason for us to give up on absorbing farmers.

They may lose their land due to natural disasters at any time and become impoverished refugees.

Doesn’t such a person fit the definition of the proletariat in Volume 1 of Capital as having nothing but their own labor power?

As you all know, I advocate socialism and have founded a socialist party in my country.

At the Munich Conference of the Fifth Congress of the Second International, there was a discussion on whether to include the Social Revolutionary Party D from China as a member.

Although you all eventually agreed to our joining the Second International, I know that a considerable number of Second International members still believe that this self-proclaimed socialist regime from East Asia is a peasant collective and not a purely socialist organization.

After saying so much in one breath, Yuan Xiangcheng had to stop and take a deep breath, while observing the expressions of everyone present.

In the 19th century, the theory of "bourgeoisie-proletariat" opposition proposed by Marxism was indeed extremely innovative and foresighted, and pointed out a clear path for the future development of society.

But Marx was, after all, an intellectual, a scholar who lived and worked in German and British cities in the second half of the 19th century.

This identity of his meant that he paid excessive attention to the development of the "working class" during the Second Industrial Revolution in his daily creations and observations.

On the contrary, the peasant class was too far away and there was no good understanding of it, which led to the lack of explanatory power of the initial Marxist theory in agricultural society.

This was not intentional on Marx's part, but rather an inevitable narrowness of perspective.

Just like a nation living in the desert, they will not study how many kinds of fish there are in the sea, but will only give them a general name "fish".

Yuan Xiangcheng did not speak again, and the theater was silent. Everyone was deeply attracted by Yuan Xiangcheng's speech.

At this moment, no one doubted that he was not a socialist, and no one could ignore the new perspective on the proletariat that he brought.

Chapter 520 International Revolutionary Mentor

Yuan Xiangcheng stood in the center of the theater, scanning everyone present with his sharp eyes.

At this moment, he was not just expounding his own views, but more like a mentor from future generations, pointing the way for the confused socialists in the late 19th century.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began slowly, his tone revealing a hint of helplessness and determination, "We are living in a critical era where socialist practice is facing difficulties."

After he finished speaking, he paused for a moment, as if waiting for everyone to digest the weight of his words. Then, he raised his hand, tapped his palm lightly with his fingers, and continued:

"Excluding the unrealistic experiments of the utopian socialists, there are only two truly meaningful practices in this century: the establishment of the unemployment relief system by the Berlin Workers' Congress in 1848 and the Paris Commune in 1871."

When mentioning these two events, Yuan Xiangcheng's voice rose slightly, but his tone remained steady.

However, when he talked about the German Social Democratic Party, a hint of sarcasm appeared between his brows: "The German Social Democratic Party, which calls itself a socialist party, became the largest party in the German Imperial Parliament in 1890, accounting for 19.7% of the votes.

"But what was the result?" He snorted coldly and shook his head. "Under the enormous power of the German Emperor, they did nothing at all. All their efforts in elections, voting, and promoting issues were basically in vain."

Having said this, he paused and his eyes fell on Bernstein, his eyes so sharp that it seemed to pierce the other's soul.

Bernstein was an important figure in the German Social Democratic Party and the main force behind its entry into parliament.

The only achievement of the German Social Democratic Party worth mentioning is that it promoted the strict implementation of labor protection laws and raised the child labor age in Germany to 13.

But will police agencies across the country actually enforce this law? They simply have no ability to supervise it." Yuan Xiangcheng's tone gradually grew heavier, and to those around him, it seemed as if he was suppressing some kind of anger or disappointment.

He turned around, facing away from everyone, folded his hands behind his back, took a few slow steps, then turned around abruptly, speaking in a loud and resounding voice:

“Actually, this isn’t the first time I’ve failed!

Since the early 19th century, the three major stages of development under socialist thought have failed!"

He held up three fingers and listed them one by one:

“At the beginning of the century, Utopian socialists made many attempts, but due to the lack of scientific theory to guide them, the experiments could not proceed and had to be declared failures;

Fifty years ago, after the publication of the Communist Manifesto, the Paris Commune, guided by its theories, united the workers and, although they destroyed the French state apparatus, were strangled, declaring the failure of workers’ revolutionism.

Ten years ago, the socialists gained an advantage in the German parliamentary struggle, but were unable to implement socialist principles throughout the country, and reformism was declared a failure.

Yuan Xiangcheng's voice became more and more passionate, and every word seemed to hit everyone's heart. He paused for a moment, looked around the audience, and his tone was low but full of power.

Actually,

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, whether it was the utopian experiments of thinkers, the armed struggle of workers, or the peaceful reforms in parliament, socialists all reached a dead end.

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They don't know how to practice socialism in the future.

This period of low tide also laid the groundwork for the split of the Second International.

Because some people feel that the road ahead is bleak and they become discouraged; while others feel that they need to continue to practice hard and improve their theories in order to achieve success.

So after the outbreak of World War I, the former packed up and defected to the bourgeois regime, while the latter went underground.

...

In his later years, Marx viewed capitalism as a famous canyon in Europe, the Caucasus Gorge.

He believed that in order to reach the other side of socialism, one had to cross the canyon representing capitalism.

So is there any way to reach the other side without going through this canyon?

In other words, is it possible to directly skip the capitalist stage and enter the socialist production stage based on public ownership from the pre-capitalist mode of production?

Some brothers, yes.

In his later years, Marx placed this hope on the East and on Russia.

He learned that after the reforms of Alexander II, while Russia was developing rapidly, internal contradictions were also accumulating.

For example, the rural commune during the Tsarist Russia period, also known as the village commune.

After the serfdom reform, peasants were prohibited from leaving the village community, which led to the fact that Russian peasants had to rely entirely on the village community to survive.

The village commune managed the peasants, owned the peasants' land in disguise, and helped the government collect taxes. In fact, disguised public ownership of land was achieved in the vast Russian rural areas.

The way of land distribution within the village community, the growth of private property in the village community, the plunder and exploitation of the village community by the Russian emperor, the erosion of the village community by capital, etc., will all lead to the disintegration of the village community.

1. In this way, Marx judged that Russia had the foundation for a proletarian revolution, but by the time he realized it, it was too late.