As Lenin sets out, in Left-Wing Communism, having, from the start, made that clear, having spelled out to the revolutionary masses that bourgeois-democracy is a sham, and only a more efficient means for the bourgeoisie to exercise its social dictatorship, having set out that, in the era of imperialism, there can be no such thing as truly independent nation states/national self-determination (and if there could it would be reactionary) we say to them that we recognise that they do not yet agree with us, and so we will go through that process of the bourgeois-democratic/national revolution with them, and seek to convince them along the way. But, that certainly does not mean appeasing those delusions, or tailing them. On the contrary, it requires a determined struggle by the revolutionary party, along the way, to break the masses from those delusions.
By contrast, the Stalinists had made Permanent Revolution, “a scholastic formula guaranteeing at one blow and for all time a revolutionary situation “for many years”. The permanent character of the revolution thus becomes a law placing itself above history, independent of the policy of the leadership and of the material development of revolutionary events. As always in such cases, Lominadze and company resolved to announce their metaphysical formula regarding the permanent character of the revolution only after the political leadership of Stalin, Bukharin, Chen Duxiu and Tang Pingshan had thoroughly sabotaged the revolutionary situation.” (p 158)
In other words, it became an excuse, a cover for the mistakes that had been made, and the same thing was seen, elsewhere, as in Germany, and the victory of Hitler. In China, the Opposition had set out the permanent nature of the revolution, which required proceeding on the basis described above. The fact of a large, organised working-class, many of whom already followed the Communist Party, and who looked to the success of the Russian Revolution, for inspiration, made that entirely possible.
The condition was that the Chinese Communist Party insist on its independence from the KMT, that it relentlessly criticise and oppose the KMT, and its bourgeois-democratic, national objectives. It required that the Chinese Communist Party, as the Bolsheviks had done, pursue the immediate objective of the bourgeois-democratic, national revolution, not by the methods of bourgeois-democracy, but by the methods of proletarian revolution, as described by Permanent Revolution, and contained in The Theses on The National and Colonial Questions. It is the method that Trotsky also applies to the struggle against fascism, as set out in The Action Programme for France, and his writings on the Spanish Revolution.
It required the creation of workers' and peasants' councils, and the arming of the proletariat and revolutionary peasantry, independent of its class enemies, but temporary allies, in the KMT. The existence of the USSR, as with later, in Spain, should have facilitated that, and massively strengthened the revolutionary forces, as against the bourgeoisie, represented by the KMT. But, the opposite to that was done by the Stalinists, and that was not simply a mistake made by leaders of a young Chinese party, but was driven by Stalin/Bukharin, and the leadership of the Comintern, itself.
The Stalinists, on the basis of the stages theory, emphasised the bourgeois national nature and tasks of the revolution, and subordinated the workers and peasants interests to it. Instead of insisting on the political, military and organisational independence of the Communist Party, they insisted that it liquidate itself within the KMT. Instead of insisting on establishing workers and peasants soviets, as the revolutionary organs, via which the revolution be carried through, thereby, directly, linking the bourgeois-democratic tasks to those of proletarian revolution, they opposed the creation of soviets even when they arose spontaneously from the initiative of workers and peasants, and insisted on the limitation of purely bourgeois-democratic institutions. Instead of arming the worker and peasant communists, the Stalinists disarmed them, in favour of arming the KMT, for fear of alienating the bourgeoisie.
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