The Chinese Question After The Sixth Congress, 1) The Permanent Revolution and the Canton Insurrection - Part 5 of 8

Stalin, and the Comintern leadership had told the Chinese communists that a revolutionary situation existed, and so it was not surprising that this is interpreted as meaning that the seizure of power, and rebellions, in various areas, are seen, on the ground, as justified, and having the basis for success and spreading across the country. Only after the inevitable defeat of this adventure did Stalin and the ECCI talk about a failure to resist “putschistic moods”, having led to the uprisings in Hunan, Hupeh etc.

“But on the theatre of events, in China itself, every honest revolutionist was duty bound to do everything he could in his corner to hasten the uprising, since the Communist International had declared that the general situation was propitious for an insurrection on a national scale. It is on this question that the régime of duplicity reveals its deliberately criminal character.” (p 160-1)

And, this became characteristic of Stalinism, which, after each catastrophe, looked for scapegoats to blame for having following the line advanced by the leadership that led to it. The Communist International resolved,

“The Congress deems it entirely inexact to attempt to consider the Canton insurrection as a putsch. It was a heroic rearguard [?] battle of the Chinese proletariat, fought in the course of the period which has just passed in the Chinese revolution; in spite of the crude mistakes committed by the leadership, this uprising will remain the standard of the new soviet phase of the revolution.” (p 160)

In other words, the Comintern could not divorce itself from the Canton Uprising, and its failure is, at least partly, attributed to the crude mistakes of the Chinese leaders, but its failure is also turned into a success, by claiming that it was a “rearguard action”, and model.

“Here confusion reaches its zenith. The heroism of the Cantonese proletariat is brought in evidence as a screen to cover up the faulty leadership, not of Canton (which the resolution casts off completely) but of Moscow, which only yesterday spoke not of a “rearguard battle” but of the overthrow of the government of the Guomindang.” (p 161)

Lominadze had claimed, at the Fifteenth Congress of the CPSU, that the Canton insurrection was necessary, because it inaugurated a period of direct struggle for power. No objection to this nonsense was raised. It sought to hide the mistakes of the leaders behind the bravery of the Chinese workers and peasants, much as the mistakes of Churchill and the British and French leaders was hidden behind the bravery of the troops left on the beaches of Dunkirk.

“The proletarians of Canton are guilty, without having committed mistakes, simply of an excess of confidence in their leadership. Their leadership was guilty of having had a blind confidence in the leadership of the Communist International which combined political blindness with the spirit of adventurism.” (p 162)

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