The Chinese Revolution And The Theses of Comrade Stalin - Part 21 of 47

The Chinese Stalinists had a mass workers' party, but they neutered it, by subordinating it to the KMT.

“The Communist Party signed the obligation not to criticize Sun-Yat-Sen-ism, a petty-bourgeois theory which is directed not only against imperialism, but also against the class struggle. The Communist Party did not have its own press, that is, it lacked the principal weapon of an independent party. Under such conditions, to speak of the struggle of the proletariat for hegemony means to deceive oneself and others.” (p 35-6)

Today, the “Left” is tiny, and it is not a question of it subordinating itself inside the organisations of these petty-bourgeois nationalists, in the same way. Despite the SWP's slogan that “We are all Hezbollah now”, the SWP did not join Hezbollah, in the way that the Chinese CP joined the KMT, though the SWP's creation of Respect, had many similarities. Sections of the “Left”, in Scotland, also subsumed themselves into the SNP and so on. But, in general, the subordination of this petty-bourgeois, opportunist “Left”, comes in the form of its support for broad popular frontist organisations. They do have their own sects and press, but they are so small as to be irrelevant, their caveats and attempts to demarcate themselves from the reactionaries they align with, drowned out in the overwhelming din of the reactionary, petty-bourgeois movements they submerge into, as with the USC.

The Stalinists justified submerging the Chinese CP into the KMT, on the grounds of the need to maintain a national front – "the bloc of four classes" – for the purpose of fighting for national independence, from which, according to Martynov, the national bourgeoisie could not withdraw. The Bolshevik theory said the national bourgeoisie inevitably would withdraw, if they felt their position threatened.

“To justify such a policy by the necessity for an alliance of the workers and peasants, is to reduce this alliance itself to a phrase, to a screen for the commanding role of the bourgeoisie. The dependence of the Communist Party, an inevitable result of the “bloc of the four classes”, was the main obstacle in the path of the workers’ and peasants’ movement, and therefore also of the real alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry, without which the victory of the Chinese revolution cannot even be thought of.” (p 36)

In other words, here, is the difference, again, between he revolutionary and reformist position, as also set out, by Lenin, in the Theses On The National and Colonial Questions. There, Lenin makes clear that the communists only support the revolutionary forces, and do not merge with the purely bourgeois-democratic forces, against whom they must prepare to fight. As Trotsky points out, Lenin notes the need to make temporary, tactical alliances with the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie, but, by this, he means not with the parties representing those classes, but with the masses themselves, in action.

Trotsky, elsewhere gives some examples of such practical alliances, such as joining with petty-bourgeois students on a demonstration, or calling on shopkeepers to support striking workers, and so on. In respect of the peasantry, in particular, it was only by the independent activity of the Communist Party that it could present its revolutionary solutions that would win the peasants away from their illusions in bourgeois-democracy.

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