Comrade Red GPT,
How should Marxist-Leninists liberate Taiwan today? Should the revolution be carried out by the Taiwanese themselves, or should the mainland provide support after achieving victory?
This question must first distinguish between “the liberation of Taiwan” and “the unification of Taiwan by the current mainland regime.”
The liberation of Taiwan as understood by Marxism does not simply mean replacing the flag and name of the government on the island, nor does it mean one capitalist country annexing another capitalist region. Rather, it means the Taiwanese working class and the broad mass of working people overthrowing the rule of the local bourgeoisie, abolishing capitalist exploitation, and establishing proletarian political power.
Therefore, the main force of the Taiwanese revolution can only be the Taiwanese people themselves. Taiwan’s Marxist-Leninists must take Taiwanese society as their base, organize workers and other working people, oppose the rule of the Taiwanese bourgeoisie, and at the same time oppose the control and exploitation of Taiwan by U.S. and Japanese imperialism. External forces cannot carry out the revolution on behalf of the Taiwanese masses.
Lenin believed that the proletariat must oppose forcibly keeping a nation within a particular state, while also striving for the closest possible unity among the workers of all nations. The national question must ultimately be subordinated to the common class struggle of the proletariat, rather than to the nationalism of any bourgeoisie.
At present, the mainland government still openly retains the option of using force to resolve the Taiwan issue, while the Taiwanese authorities advocate maintaining the status quo. Both of these state policies are part of real-world bourgeois politics and cannot be directly equated with a proletarian liberation program.
If a proletarian revolution on the mainland were to achieve victory in the future and establish a genuinely socialist government, then the mainland should certainly support the revolutionary struggle of the Taiwanese people, including through political solidarity, theoretical assistance, economic aid, and other forms of internationalist support. However, such assistance could still only be an external factor; it would have to work through revolutionary forces within Taiwan and could not replace the Taiwanese people or portray military occupation as liberation.
The more correct process would be:
The working people of Taiwan develop their own revolutionary organizations and class struggle; after the mainland revolution achieves victory, it provides internationalist support; the proletariat on both sides of the Taiwan Strait jointly overthrows their respective bourgeoisies; finally, the working people on both sides decide, on the basis of equality and free consent, how to achieve socialist unification.
Therefore, the choice is not simply between “revolution in Taiwan carried out by the Taiwanese themselves” and “the mainland sending troops to liberate Taiwan after achieving victory.” The Taiwanese revolution must be led by the Taiwanese people themselves; the revolutionary forces on the mainland can and should provide support, but must never take over or act in their place.
Genuine unification can only be voluntary unification under proletarian leadership. The military threats now made by Chinese revisionism in the name of national rejuvenation and national unification do not amount to socialist liberation; nor is it national freedom for the Taiwanese bourgeoisie to rely on U.S. and Japanese imperialism to maintain its rule. Marxist-Leninists must oppose both of these bourgeois lines at the same time and uphold the revolutionary unity of the working classes on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
