But is it not dangerous to let the representatives of such classes join the government of the people's republic?

But is it not dangerous to let the representatives of such classes join the government of the people's republic? No. The workers and peasants are the basic masses of the republic. In giving the urban petty bourgeoisie, the intellectuals and other sections of the population who support the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal programme the right to have a voice in the government of the people's republic and to work in it, the right to vote and stand for election, we must not allow the interests of the workers and peasants, the basic masses, to be violated. The essential part of our programme must be the protection of their interests. With their representatives comprising the majority in this government and with the Communist Party exercising leadership and working within it, there is a guarantee that the participation of other classes will present no danger. It is perfectly obvious that the Chinese revolution at the present stage is still a bourgeois-democratic and not a proletarian socialist revolution in nature. Only the counter-revolutionary Trotskyites [31] talk such nonsense as that China has already completed her bourgeois-democratic revolution and that any further revolution can only be socialist. The revolution of 1924-27 was a bourgeois-democratic revolution, which was not carried to completion but failed. The agrarian revolution which we have led since 1927 is also a bourgeois-democratic revolution, because it is directed not against capitalism, but against imperialism and feudalism. This will remain true of our revolution for quite a long time to come.

Basically, the workers, the peasants and the urban petty bourgeoisie arc still the motive forces of the revolution, but now there may be the national bourgeoisie as well.

The change in the revolution will come later. In the future the democratic revolution will inevitably be transformed into a socialist revolution. As to when the transition will take place, that will depend on the presence of the necessary conditions, and it may take quite a long time. We should not hold forth about transition until all the necessary political and economic conditions are present and until it is advantageous and not detrimental to the overwhelming majority of the people throughout China. It is wrong to have any doubts on this matter and expect the transition to take place soon, as some of our comrades did when they maintained that the transition in the revolution would begin the moment the democratic revolution began to triumph in key provinces. They did so because they failed to understand what kind of country China is politically and economically and to realize that, compared with Russia, China will find it more difficult, and require much more time and effort, to complete her democratic revolution politically and economically.