The Stalinists accused the Opposition of seeking to break with the Kuomintang.
““This is tantamount,” say the theses, “to deserting the field of struggle and leaving our allies in the Guomindang in the lurch to the delight of the enemies of the revolution.”” (p 53)
That is, of course, what the social-imperialists argue, now, in response to the revolutionary stance of Marxists that “The Main Enemy Is At Home”, in relation to the NATO/Ukraine – Russia~China War. As stated earlier, the position of the United Opposition was to remain inside the KMT, even though Trotsky and the Left Opposition opposed that. Trotsky always voted in line with his own position, but, in public statements abided by the United Opposition line. Even that line, however, was clearly demarcated from that of the Stalinists.
“The Communist Party can gain a petty-bourgeois ally, not by prostrating itself before the Guomindang at every one of its vacillations, but only if it appeals to the workers openly and directly, in its own name, under its own banner, organizes them around it and shows the Guomindang by example and by deed what a party of the masses is, by supporting every forward step of the Guomindang, by relentlessly unmasking every vacillation, every step backward, and by creating a real revolutionary foundation for a bloc with the Guomindang in the form of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ soviets.” (p 53-4)
The Stalinists accused the Opposition of seeking the political isolation of the Communist Party. The irony, here, is that, within a year, following the defeat of the Chinese Revolution, it was the Stalinists, not the Trotskyists, that engaged in such political isolation, as they swung from Popular Front opportunism to Third Period ultra-Leftism and sectarianism, just as they swung from a position of industrialisation a snail's pace, to ultra-industrialisation. Each zag was as disastrous as the previous zig had been. And, of course, as the period of ultra-left zag led to Hitler coming to power, in Germany, it was followed by another zig, back to the original opportunist policy of the Popular Front that now led to disaster in Spain, the derailing of the workers in France, and prepared the way for WWII.
The Stalinists had, similarly, accused the opposition of seeking to withdraw from the British trades unions. The charge was nonsense, and what they had actually argued for was withdrawing from the Anglo-Russian Committee, which was a diplomatic bloc with the opportunist, pro-imperialist leaders of the TUC. The Opposition argued that, on the basis of the need to build a United Front with the rank and file members of the unions, the very opposite of withdrawing from them. The reason for advocating that was to prepare those workers for the inevitable betrayal, by their leaders, that the Stalinists were giving Left cover to, just as they did for Chiang Kai Shek and the KMT. In both cases, the oppositions warnings of coming betrayal was correct, but, in both cases, the Stalinists' line failed to prepare them for it.
In the case of the KMT, withdrawal from it, by a Communist Party of more than 100,000 workers, in any case, did not mean abandoning it. As Trotsky says, it simply means setting out, clearly, the conditions of any tactical alliance with it, in action. The best forum for that was actually the soviet, just as the Bolsheviks engaged with Mensheviks, anarchists and S.R.'s in the soviets, in 1917. What it did not require was to substitute the KMT for the soviet, or for the communists to hide their red banner under the KMT's blue banner.
“The Opposition is energetically in favour of strengthening and developing the bloc with the revolutionary elements of the Guomindang, for a compact fighting alliance of the workers with the poor population of the city and country, for the course towards the revolutionary dictatorship of the workers, peasants and the urban petty-bourgeoisie.” (p 54)
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