Nohara Shiro, until his death in 1981, was a #Marxist #historian specializing in Chinese history and #ChinesePolitics who had also become strongly involved in the movement to eradicate pre-war feudal and fascist influences from #Japanese education and learning. The essay translated here originally appeared in his 1960 collection, History and Ideology in #Asia (Ajia no rekishi to shisb). Despite his personal preference for #Marxism over anarchism, Nohara’s approach to the subject is quite open-minded. The strengths of his essay are its focus upon practical organizing attempts rather than intellectual activities, and its revelation of the considerable #anarchist influence upon Li Dazhao, whom the #Communist Party has long claimed as its own. Whilst most of the early intellectual exponents of the anarchist idea either drifted away into obscurity, were converted to Marxism, or joined the bandwagon of the nationalist movement (some even becoming outright fascists), the organizing activities described here often became the building blocks for the subsequent communist movement. Nohara’s work is thus invaluable not only for shedding light on the role of anarchism as an intellectual stimulus for the Chinese #revolutionary movement as a whole, but also for making clear the political debt owed the anarchists in terms of practical activities.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/nohara-shiro-anarchists-and-the-may-4-movement-in-china

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