The Communists have, therefore, cooperated as far as they are able, without emerging from the infallibilities of their cult. They retain the Marxian rationalization apparatus, and the linkage with Moscow. As such, they are welcome but not completely trustworthy allies. Their presence is undoubtedly the greatest check to the development of democracy in China; the presence of a totalitarian party, respecting no rules but its own, jeopardizes the entire experiment. The Communists want democracy, but they want it quite frankly as a step toward "working-class" (Marxist) power; they accept the _San Min Chu I_ on the condition that it be read as elementary Marxism. They do not insist on the term Communism, but employ the terms "working-class" interests for their party, "scientific objectivity" for their ideology, and "a people's movement" for radical, arbitrary reforms to rip Free China open with social revolution. The Kuomintang leaders are fully aware of the support in name plus subversion in fact which the Communists offer, and complain bitterly about the principles of Sun being twisted about to Marxism as in the form of "'independent' nationalism, 'free' democracy, and 'beneficent' livelihood," the qualifying terms sufficing for the alignment.[12] They understand that the Communists are incapable of sincere extra-class democracy; the Communists are hurt by the Kuomintang's unwillingness to admit that it is not a Party of patriots, but the Party of a transitional, historically doomed middle class. [Footnote 12: Ch'ao Shê [The Morning Club], _Niu-wu Yen-lun Chien-t'ao Kang-yao_ [A General Review of Fallacious Utterances], Chungking, XXIX (1940), p. 7. The work is a Kuomintang reply to Communist theses in a debate on the nature of national union.] COMMUNISM: PATRIOTISM OR BETRAYAL?