The Canton Insurrection, Stages of The Chinese Revolution - Part 4 of 4

Its impossible to say that had a correct line been adopted, in 1925, the proletarian revolution would have succeeded, but, Trotsky says, nor can it be said that it was impossible.

The proletarian and peasant forces were adequate, and the bourgeoisie weak. The proletarian and peasant masses only lined up behind the bourgeoisie, represented by the KMT because the Comintern corralled them into it. The same mistake was made in the Popular Front strategies adopted after 1934, in France, Spain and elsewhere.

“Had the Comintern pursued a more or less correct policy, the outcome of the struggle of the Communist Party for the masses would have been determined in advance: the Chinese proletariat would have supported the Communists, while the peasants’ war would have supported the revolutionary proletariat.” (p 128)

The experience in Russia had shown that, by establishing soviets, in liberated areas, the Chinese communists would have built their own army, and it would have been tied to the proletarian masses in the industrial centres, and the supply of weapons etc. that entails. Even had it not carried through the revolution, in the whole of China, it could have been established in a large part of it, linked to the USSR, and giving stimulus to revolution elsewhere.

“But precisely in the sphere of leadership something absolutely monstrous occurred, a veritable historical catastrophe: the authority of the Soviet Union, of the Bolshevik Party and of the Comintern went entirely to the support, first of Chiang Kai-shek, against an independent policy of the Communist Party, and then to the support of Wang Jingwei, as the leader of the agrarian revolution. After having trampled underfoot the very basis of Lenin’s policy and paralysed the young Chinese Communist Party, the ECCI determined in advance the victory of Chinese Kerenskyism over Bolshevism, of the Chinese Milyukovs over the Kerenskys, and of Japanese and British imperialism over the Chinese Milyukovs.

In this and in this alone lies the meaning of what happened in China in the course of 1925-27.” (p 128-9)

That error has been repeated endlessly, in the period after WWII, including, now, in Ukraine, and in Palestine.

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