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 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 standpoints and proposals and their association with the democratic movement are not without relevance to China's present crisis of morals and authority.