Trotsky sets out what the Menshevist/Stalinist line of subordinating the workers interests to the need to retain the alliance with the bourgeoisie really means. His description was not only accurate for what had happened in China, but prophetic of what was to happen, a decade later, in Spain.
“In order to maintain the alliance with Purcell, the great strike-breaker, he must be appeased by declaiming about cordial relations and political agreement. In order to maintain the so-called bloc with the Chinese bourgeoisie, they must always be whitewashed anew, thereby facilitating the deluding of the masses by the bourgeois politicians.
Yes, the moment of the departure of the bourgeoisie can thereby be postponed. But this postponement is utilized by the bourgeoisie against the proletariat: It seizes hold of the leadership thanks to its great social advantages, it arms its loyal troops, it prevents the arming of the proletariat, political as well as military, and after it has acquired the upper hand it organizes a counter-revolutionary massacre at the first serious collision.” (p 83)
Indeed, that has been the experience with all national liberation struggles, in which the interests of workers have always been subordinated to supporting the petty-bourgeoisie, and bourgeois nationalist agenda. This should also be borne in mind when the petty-bourgeois nationalist epigones misuse Trotsky's arguments, set out in “Learn To Think”, as well as in his interview with Matteo Fossie, in relation to Brazil.
Trotsky's assumption, in both these cases, is that what is being supported, by Marxists, is a struggle by revolutionary forces against imperialism, as set out as the precondition for support in the Theses On The National and Colonial Questions. In the first case, what Trotsky is arguing for, in line with the Theses, is Italian workers ensuring that arms get to revolutionary workers in Algeria. What he is arguing in relation to Brazil is that he would be supporting revolutionaries in Brazil, resisting a British invasion, and who would, on the basis of defeating it, go on to overthrow Vargas too, whereas a British victory would not only defeat the Brazilian revolutionaries, but also install another dictator in place of Vargas.
Considering Permanent Revolution, The Theses on The National and Colonial Questions, and Trotsky's extensive writing on the Chinese Revolution, and warnings against the threat from the KMT, the need to keep the Chinese communists separate and armed, there is no other interpretation.
“To prevent the departure of the bourgeoisie from becoming the destruction of the proletariat, the miserable theory of the bloc of four classes should have been denounced from the very beginning as genuine theoretical and political treason to the Chinese revolution. Was this done? No, just the contrary.” (p 84)
In his speech, Trotsky sets out the way the Opposition had warned that the KMT was led by the bourgeoisie, and was preparing to betray the workers. Does this sound like someone who is blasé about such a struggle being led by the bourgeoisie? No, of course not. It was, rather, the Stalinists that attacked the Opposition for having set out such warnings, even in March 1927, just a month before those warnings were proved accurate. It was the Stalinists/Menshevists who argued that the bourgeois national revolution is naturally led by the bourgeoisie, and whose forces must then be supported and armed, in order to undertake that revolution, even in the knowledge that they would, at some point, break with, and turn their fire on the workers!
Even a week before Chiang Kai Shek's coup, Stalin had rejected warnings, from Karl Radek, that it was coming. After it happened, the Stalinists tried to cover their mistakes by saying that it was always known that the bourgeoisie would break with the revolution, but, as Trotsky notes,
“It is not the same thing, comrades, whether the bourgeoisie is tossed to one side or it tosses the proletarian vanguard to one side. These are the two roads of the revolution. On what road did the revolution travel up to the coup? The classic road of all previous bourgeois revolutions, of which Lenin said:
The bourgeois politicians have fed and deceived the people with promises in every bourgeois revolution.
Did the false position of the leadership obstruct or facilitate this road of the Chinese bourgeoisie? It facilitated it to a great extent.” (p 83)
In fact, right up to the coup, the Stalinists had argued that it was necessary to hold on to the bourgeoisie for as long as possible, and presented the idea that they were using them, so that, when when the bourgeoisie did abandon the revolution, the Stalinists would cast them aside. But, as the Opposition had warned, it was the opposite that was occurring. And, the same is true, today, when social-imperialists like the AWL, in the USC, claim that “of course”, the capitalist state and imperialism “defends workers' interests”.
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