Chen Duxiu (1879–1942), the principal founder of the Chinese Communist Party, ignited the political awakening of the Chinese working class only to be cast out in the ashes of the 1925–27 Great Revolution. Then scapegoated by the Stalinist Comintern for its traitorous, opportunist “bloc of four classes” policy that subjugated the CCP to the nationalist Kuomintang, he refused to be silenced. Deposed, Chen found his way to Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, after which he founded the Chinese Left Opposition. Yet the 1930s saw world capitalism writhe in its death agony. As imperialists and fascists geared up for war, these dark times did not stop Chen — incarcerated, isolated, ill — from committing his final years to reclaiming class independence and proletarian democracy. Till death, his intellectual independence and revolutionary resolve remained unbroken. The Essential Writings of Chen Duxiu curates his battles against capitalist decay and bureaucratic centralism. Translated and contextualized for a new generation of workers and youth, they are key to our learning from the past, no less to our charting of the future, of socialist revolution in China and beyond.