Prophets Unarmed

Prophets Unarmed is an authoritative sourcebook on the Chinese Communist Party's main early opposition, the Chinese Trotskyists, who emerged from the Chinese Communist Party, in China and Moscow, in reaction to its 1927 defeat. In spite of being Trotskyism’s main section outside Russia, they were crushed by Stalin in Moscow and by Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong in China, thus becoming China’s most persecuted party. Their strategy in the Japan war, when they failed to take up arms, was short-sighted and doctrinaire, and they had scant impact on the revolution. Even so, their association with Chen Duxiu and Wang Shiwei, their attachment to democracy, and their critique of Mao’s bureaucratic socialism brought them a scintilla of recognition after Mao’s death. Their standpoints and proposals and their association with the democratic movement are not without relevance to China's present crisis of morals and authority.

Gregor Bentonis a Research Professor at Nanyang Technological University. His books include Mountain Fires, honoured by the University of California Press as a ‘special book in Asian studies’ and by the Association of Asian Studies as the Best Book on Modern China. His translation of Hu Feng’s Prison Years won the English Pen Award.

“The book is the culmination of Benton’s life-long interest in the fate of Trotsky’s supporters in China and in the Chinese diaspora. As the world’s leading expert, he analyses the movement sympathetically and with great insight, but never uncritically. […] All in all, this is a work of thorough and humane scholarship, and all of us are in debt to Benton for excavating the forgotten history of those who found themselves on the ‘wrong side’ of history.” – Steve Smith, University of Oxford, in: The International Newsletter of Communist Studies XXIV/XXV, 31-32 (2018/19) [Full review]