The Theses of Stalin, noted that they had predicted that the bourgeoisie would withdraw from the national revolution, as though this excused them from the failure of their strategy of aligning with it in the KMT. Trotsky notes, again, the article by the Menshevik, Dan, in response to the Stalinist policy, pursued by Martynov.
“Dan writes: “In a movement that embraces such antagonistic classes, the united front cannot of course last forever.”
So Dan also acknowledges the “inevitability of the bourgeoisie’s withdrawal”. In practice, however, the policy of Menshevism in the revolution consists of retaining the united front at any cost, as long as possible, at the price of adapting its own policy to the policy of the bourgeoisie, at the price of cutting down the slogans and the activity of the masses, and even, as in China, at the price of the organizational subordination of the workers’ party to the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie. The Bolshevik way, however, consists of an unconditional political and organizational demarcation from the bourgeoisie, of a relentless exposure of the bourgeoisie from the very first steps of the revolution, of a destruction of all petty-bourgeois illusions about the united front with the bourgeoisie, of tireless struggle with the bourgeoisie for the leadership of the masses, of the merciless expulsion from the Communist Party of all those elements who sow vain hopes in the bourgeoisie or idealize them.” (p 34)
This Menshevist position is the ancestor of the position of the USC, as set out by Jim Denham, as described by Sraid Marx.
“One other contributor, Jim Denham, shows no fear in stating more clearly what this means in political terms, in the process showing that the emperor is naked and certainly wearing no socialist arguments. In a comment, I accused him of believing that ‘the Ukrainian capitalist state and imperialism are defending the Ukrainian working class”. To which he replies – “OF COURSE they effin’ well are – for their own reasons – right now. WE warn that this will not last, but the Ukranian workers are right to make use of it. What sort of fantasy world do you live in?”
The problem for China, as for Russia, and other non-advanced countries, was to accomplish the process of industrialisation that Britain and other advanced economies had undertaken in the 19th century. There were two paths to that, and only two, as Lenin had set out in his polemics against the Narodniks. Either it is undertaken under the heel of the national bourgeoisie, inevitably in the form of Bonapartism, usually in conjunction with some dependence on imperialism, or else it is undertaken under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
“But in order that this second prospect of the bourgeois-democratic revolution should not remain an empty phrase, it must be said openly and plainly that the whole leadership of the Chinese revolution up to now has been in irreconcilable contradiction to it.” (p 34)
Not only did the Stalinists subordinate the Chinese workers to the KMT, and so disarm them, but they simultaneously attacked the Trotskyist opposition, verbally and physically, for having argued the Leninist position.
“From the theses of Stalin it follows that the proletariat can separate itself from the bourgeoisie only after the latter has tossed it aside, disarmed it, beheaded it and crushed it under foot. But this is precisely the way the abortive revolution of 1848 developed, where the proletariat had no banner of its own, but followed at the heels of the petty-bourgeois democracy, which in turn trotted behind the liberal bourgeoisie and led the workers under the sabre of Cavaignac.” (p 34)
That is the strategy too of the USC, as outlined by Jim Denham, in his faith that imperialism and the capitalist state will defend workers interests “for their own reasons”.
No comments:
Post a Comment