In 1917, the Provisional Government represented the interests of the Russian bourgeoisie. After it fell, the Bolsheviks formed a government with the Left S.R.'s, as a party representing the revolutionary elements of the peasants and petty-bourgeoisie. But, in China, no such development occurred.
“The workers of Canton prohibited the Guomindang, proclaiming all its tendencies illegal. This means that to solve the basic national tasks, not only the big bourgeoisie but also the small bourgeoisie failed to advance a political power, a party, a faction, in conjunction with which the proletarian party might be able to solve the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution. The key to the position lies in the fact that the problem of winning the movement of the poor peasants already fell entirely on the shoulders of the proletariat, and the Communist Party directly; the approach to a real solution of the bourgeois-democratic tasks of the revolution necessitated the concentration of all the power in the hands of the proletariat.” (p 123-4)
But, as in February 1917, when Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev were still advancing the Menshevik stages theory, and the idea that the revolution could only be a bourgeois-democratic one, exercised by a Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry, so too, now, in China. In 1917, Lenin and Trotsky had set out that this aspect of the revolution had already been accomplished. The Democratic Dictatorship already existed in the form of the soviets. But, reality meant that it could not remain at that stage, because the workers and peasants demanded more radical measures, and, the workers, in particular, were not going to accept attempts to hold them back, to accept wage cuts, and so on, given that it was they that had made the revolution.
The revolution had become permanent, flowing over from the bourgeois-democratic revolution to proletarian revolution. The reality was the same, in China, but the Stalinists insisted on calling the revolution a bourgeois-democratic revolution, and trying to contain it within the model of the Democratic Dictatorship. In part, this was in line with Stalin's Theses, and their concept of the stages theory, and desire not to break with the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie, but, in part, it was also, now, a reflection of the development of Stalin's Theory of Socialism In One Country, established as a theoretical division with Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution. The Stalinists had been keen to avoid the idea that they were exporting proletarian revolution to China, and, thereby, invoking the wrath of imperialism. This was also consistent with their policy of sucking up to the pro-imperialist leaders of the TUC, via the ARC.
Trotsky lists a series of decrees issued by the Canton soviet, including workers' control of production via factory committees, the nationalisation of large industries, transport, and banks; confiscation of large houses of the bourgeoisie, for use by workers.
“The question arises: If these are the methods of a bourgeois revolution what will the proletarian revolution in China look like?” (p 124)
In fact, Canton had a more petty-bourgeois character than Shanghai, and other industrial centres, and yet, even here, the dynamic of the revolution, again, confirmed the hypothesis of permanent revolution.
“the revolutionary upheaval effected against the Guomindang led automatically to the proletarian dictatorship which, at its very first steps, found itself compelled by the entire situation to take more radical measures than those with which the October revolution began. And this fact, in spite of its paradoxical appearance, is quite a normal outcome of the social relations of China as well as of the whole development of the revolution.” (p 124-5)
In Russia, before the revolution, there was a large land-owning class, reflecting the peculiar combination of feudalism and Asiatic despotism. As in all feudal societies, the landlord class stood in opposition to the bourgeoisie. But, in China, this did not exist, partly as a result of its different history, and role of the Asiatic Mode of Production, and partly because of the role of foreign colonialism and imperialism.
“Large- and middle-scale landownership (as it exists in China) is most closely intertwined with urban, including foreign capitalism. There is no landowning caste in China in opposition to the bourgeoisie. The most widespread, generally-hated exploiter in the village is the usurious wealthy peasant, the agent of urban banking capital. The agrarian revolution has therefore just as much of an anti-bourgeois as it has of an anti-feudal character in China.” (p 125)
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