Again, this is seen in the zig-zags of today's bureaucratic-centrist sects, in which mistakes are never acknowledged, and positions are put forward ad hoc, as each new event arises, positions which contradict those previously adopted to similar or near identical events. In order to justify each new position, whilst claiming continuity and consistency, not only must a strict, bureaucratic discipline be applied, but deliberate bowdlerisation of past positions and theory must be undertaken. Any significant challenge to leaders results in expulsion or splits, as well as demoralisation amongst activists, other than those that attach themselves to dominant cliques, in the hope of their own advance, if only in feeding their ego. Indeed, the internal life of such gangs is based on such cliques, in the absence of principled factional debate. Its no wonder that the leaders of these sects remain in position longer than any dictator, or that the sects have not only shrunken in size, but decayed politically, and morally.
“Such a method, which, in and by itself, is incompatible with the development of a revolutionary party, becomes an especially heavy obstacle to young parties that can and should learn independently from the experiences of defeats and mistakes.” (p 19)
Where China differed from Russia, in 1905, is that, as the earlier comments set out, China had always suffered from the effects of colonialism, as well as Orientalism. In 1917, one reason the Bolsheviks were led to push through the proletarian revolution was not only the experience of 1848, and the Paris Commune, i.e. the lessons of permanent revolution, but that the example of China's history showed what could happen when imperialism is enabled to take advantage of weak governments, in such large, resource rich areas. As Trotsky pointed out, imperialism not only assisted Milyukov/Kerensky, in removing Tsarism, but also assisted Kerensky in opposing the workers, with its own eyes on Russia's immense resource wealth. The same well-grounded fears influence Russian and Chinese leaders down to today.
“A policy that disregarded the powerful pressure of imperialism on the internal life of China would be radically false. But a policy that proceeded from an abstract conception of national oppression without its class refraction and reflection would be no less false. The main source of the mistakes in the theses of comrade Stalin, as in the whole leading line in general, is the false conception of the role of imperialism and its influence on the class relationships of China.” (p 20)
This is also the basis of the wrong-headedness of the "Left", in relation to imperialism and national independence, as it developed after WWII. In that period, Stalinism continued to weigh heavily on the world labour movement, and it allied itself with bourgeois-nationalist movements, in the same way that Stalin did with the KMT, in the 1920's. That was all the more the case where, during a period of decolonisation, many former colonies, and newly industrialising countries, adopted state-capitalism as a development model. That was codified in the Third World Movement.
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