Capitalism or Socialism: A Comparative Analysis of Sun Yat-Sen and Lenin

This study aims to provide a deep perspective on the debate between two camps in the beginning of the 20th century: the Chinese bourgeois revolutionary ideology represented by Sun Yat-sen (孫中山) and Marxism represented by Lenin. By studying Sun Yat-sen’s speech “Principles of People’s Livelihood and Social Revolution” and Lenin’s article “Democracy and Narodism in China,” which is in response to Sun Yat sen’s speech, this research attempts to reassess the nature of the Chinese bourgeois revolutionary road represented by the thoughts of Sun Yat-sen and remind researchers of the difficult choices between capitalist and socialist development in China as a latecomer country. This study first explains how Sun Yat-sen’s speech expressed his views on capitalism, the definition of the Principle of People’s Livelihood, and his claim of the equalization of land rights. Then, Lenin’s evaluation of Sun Yat-sen’s speech is discussed. The different views of Sun Yat-sen and Lenin on the stage of capitalism, the means and power of social revolution, and the solution of the land problem are thus presented. This study argues that the split between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1927 came less from the KMT’s betrayal of the revolutionary road than from the fundamental difference between Sun Yat-sen’s thoughts and Marxism. Although the ideology of Sun Yat-sen has an anti-capitalist component, he paid attention to the use of the state, rather than the society as a tool, and reconciliation, rather than revolution to ease the gap between the rich and the poor brought by capitalism. This thinking compels us to reconsider the particularity of the development path of China.

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