The Chinese Revolution After The Sixth Congress, 5. Appendix – A Remarkable Document - Part 8 of 10

Trotsky quotes the Committee's resolution, summarising the basis of the erroneous evaluation of the situation by the Chinese party.

““1. The revolutionary movement was estimated as an uninterrupted ascent [the “permanent revolution” à la Bukharin-Lominadze! – L.T.].

“2. No attention was paid to the loss of contact between our party and the masses, nor to the decomposition of the mass organizations at the turning point of the revolution.

“3. No account was taken of the new regrouping of class forces inside the enemy camp during this turn.

“4. No consideration was given to leading the movement in the cities.

“5. No attention was paid to the importance of the anti-imperialist movement in a semicolonial country.

“6. During the insurrection, no account was taken of the objective conditions, nor of the necessity of applying different methods of struggle in conformity with them.

“7. A peasant deviation made itself felt.

“8. The Central Committee, in its estimation of the situation, was guided by a subjective point of view.” (p 216-7)

But, this applied even more to the ECCI, and the Stalin/Bukharin leadership, of which the Chinese party were merely instruments. In essence, the resolution, based on the experience, directly, on the ground, copied, almost exactly, the analysis and theoretical evaluation of the Opposition, based on the insights of Marxist class analysis, and its experience of previous revolutions in Russia, in 1905 and 1917. Trotsky highlights the fifth point, the failure to take account of the problems of anti-imperialism in a semi-colonial country. Again, this is illustrative, in relation to the pro-NATO, social-imperialists, in relation to Ukraine, but also in relation to idiot anti-imperialism in general.

“How could this happen? By the force of the dialectic of the false political line; mistakes have their dialectic like everything else in the world. The point of departure of official opportunism was that the Chinese revolution is essentially an anti-imperialist revolution, and that the yoke of imperialism welds together all the classes or at the very least “all the living forces of the country”. We objected that a successful struggle against imperialism is only possible by means of an audacious extension of the class struggle, and consequently, of the agrarian revolution. We rose up intransigently against the attempt to subordinate the class struggle to the abstract criterion of the struggle against imperialism (substitution of arbitration commissions for the strike movement, telegraphic advice not to stir up the agrarian revolution, prohibiting the formation of soviets, etc.).” (p 217-8)

This is seen in the idiot anti-imperialism of the petty-bourgeois, nationalist “Left”, in every such struggle, but is even more glaring, in relation to Ukraine, for the simple reason that it clearly is not a colony, nor semi-colony, but a fully functioning – if grossly corrupt – imperialist, nation state, in its own right, and, indeed, one clearly tied to, and seeking membership of, the largest, most powerful imperialist bloc on the planet!!

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