As Marx describes, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, the peasantry, due to their individualist ideology, and heterogeneous nature, as a class, cannot lead the revolution, or become ruling-class. Even where the industrial proletariat forms a minority, relative to the peasantry, it takes on this leading role, which is why Lenin dropped the slogan of The Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry, and replaced it with the slogan of The Dictatorship of The Proletariat Leading The Peasantry.
In China, it was necessary for the workers to have had time to recover from the defeats in Shanghai etc., to fight defensive battles, as part of regaining confidence, replacing leaders, and rebuilding organisations, as happened in Germany, between 1921 and 1923. During such time, the role of the communists was to advise them to pick their battles, to that end, avoid any general battles that might further lead to defeat and depletion of their resources. Under those conditions, its unlikely the workers in Canton would have spontaneously risen in revolt, but, if they had, that would be a different matter, again requiring the Marxists to respond to it.
“But it is just the reverse that happened. The uprising had been commanded in advance, deliberately and with premeditation, based upon a false appreciation of the whole atmosphere. One of the detachments of the proletariat was drawn into a struggle which obviously held out no hope, and made easier for the enemy the annihilation of the vanguard of the working class. Not to say this openly, is to deceive the Chinese workers and to prepare new defeats. The Sixth Congress did not say it.” (p 166)
The Canton insurrection, however, Trotsky says, has more significance than just seeing it as an adventure by that leadership. It took place in less than propitious conditions. It came after all of the defeats and betrayals, with poor leadership, in an area that was more characterised by the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie than the industrial proletariat. Yet, despite all of these disadvantages, the insurrection succeeded, and established a revolutionary government.
“We have here a fact of enormous importance. It shows anew how considerable is the weight of the proletariat in its own right, how great is the political role which it can eventually play, even if the working class is relatively weak in numbers, in a historically backward country, where the majority of the population is composed of peasants and scattered petty-bourgeois. This fact, once more after 1905 and 1917, completely demolishes the philistines à la Kuusinen, Martynov and consorts, who teach us that one cannot dream of speaking of the dictatorship of the proletariat in “agrarian” China. Yet the Martynovs and the Kuusinens are at the present time the daily inspirers of the Communist International.” (p 166-7)
Of course, outside of the concept of Permanent Revolution, this coming to power is itself a meaningless adventure. As Lenin and Trotsky explained, the workers had come to power, in Russia, but, without them utilising that to support revolution internationally, to come to their aid, that power could only be short lived. Even had the Chinese workers come to power, in 1927, that would have benefited the Russian revolution, but it would still have been two backward, largely agricultural economies, which required the support of revolutions in industrialised economies in Europe and Japan.
It showed something else, which was that, even in this area, heavily dominated by the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie, with an associated history of petty-bourgeois nationalism, of Sun Yat Senism, the workers had not been able to find an ally for its government from those classes. That was in contrast to Russia, in 1918, in which the Bolsheviks were able to form a government in alliance with the S.R.'s.
“This means that the vital task of establishing the alliance between the workers and the poor peasants in China devolves exclusively and directly upon the Communist Party. The accomplishment of this task is one of the conditions for the triumph of the coming third Chinese revolution. And the victory of the latter will restore the power to the vanguard of the proletariat, supported by the union of the workers and the poor peasants.” (p 167)
In fact, under Mao, the Communist Party based itself on the peasants, rather than the workers. Rather than a proletarian revolution, it undertook a prolonged rural, guerrilla war that became a model for other such forces, across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. That disproved Trotsky's conclusion from these events.
“The Canton insurrection showed that only the proletarian vanguard in China is capable of carrying out the uprising and of capturing power.” (p 167)
However, it proved the further part of that conclusion.
“The revolt showed, after the experience of collaboration between the Communist Party and the Guomindang, the complete lack of vitality and the reactionary character of the slogan of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, opposed to the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat drawing the poor peasants behind it.” (p 167)
The Peasant War, conducted by Mao, as well as similar “revolutions” undertaken in Korea, Vietnam and Cuba, in the specific conditions, following WWII, did not result in proletarian revolutions, but the creation, from the start, of Bonapartist regimes, resting upon the petty-bourgeoisie and peasantry (as all Bonapartist regimes do) and implementing totalitarian, anti-working-class policies. Only the inevitable requirement of these regimes to industrialise their economies, which they did on the basis of having liquidated the old forms of property, and classes based on them, represented an objectively progressive development, in a similar manner to the role of colonialism, as described by Marx, in relation to India. Where these Bonapartist regimes failed to do that, as with the Khmer Rouge, and instead tried to create agrarian societies, they collapsed. A similar fate awaited the petty-bourgeois nationalists backing Brexit, as seen with the collapse of Truss's government in a matter of weeks.
Trotsky's second conclusion was that the Canton insurrection, and its aftermath deepened the decline of the revolutionary wave, already taking place, and so facilitated the bourgeois counter-revolution, and destruction of proletarian forces.
“This stamps the inter-revolutionary period with a painful, chronic and lasting character. The greatest problem now is the renascence of the Communist Party as the organization of the vanguard of the proletariat.” (p 168)
That was entirely vindicated, and the Communist Party was never to achieve any such renascence, going from one mistake to another, turning into outright betrayal, as it became the hang man of revolutions, not just in China, but across the world.
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