In order to distinguish himself from Trotsky, after Lenin's death, Stalin chose Permanent Revolution as the ground for his faction fight, a logic which led him into the irrational and reactionary theory of socialism in one country. In China, in opposing permanent revolution, Stalin reverted to the formula of The Democratic Dictatorship of The Proletariat and Peasantry. Yet, that formula was clearly dead. Events, again, proved the correctness of permanent revolution, but, following the defeat of the revolution, Stalin and his acolytes sought to cover themselves by tacitly ditching the formula of The Democratic Dictatorship, and replacing it with a reactionary and corrupted version of permanent revolution. The process begins with an article by Manuilsky, in Pravda.
“In the anniversary number of Pravda (November 7), Manuilsky once more shows the value of the present leadership of the Comintern. We will analyse briefly that part of his anniversary reflections devoted to China, and which amounts in essence to a cowardly, deliberately confused, and therefore all the more dangerous, semi-capitulation to the theory of the permanent revolution.” (p 231)
In fact, Manuilsky begins by talking not about a Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry, but a “revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the peasantry and proletariat in China”. In other words, this assigns the leading role to the peasants not the workers. Manuilsky, then, seeks to compare this to The Democratic Dictatorship “outlined” by the Bolsheviks in 1905. But, as Trotsky says, what he compares it to, is that theoretical outline, the algebraic formula, set out, not only in 1905, but, also, in 1917. What is the point of comparing it to this theoretical outline, when, in fact, history, in 1917, led the Bolsheviks to ditch it and move on?
“Therefore these gentlemen do not compare the Chinese revolution with the real Russian Revolution, but with the one that was “outlined”. It is much easier in this way to confuse and to throw dust in the eyes.” (p 231-2)
Manuilsky seeks to distinguish the Chinese Revolution from the Russian Revolution, by arguing that it is “directed against the “whole system of world imperialism”!” (p 232) It was on this basis, however, that Manuilsky along with Stalin and Bukharin had previously argued that it welded together all of Chinese society into a “bloc of four classes”, represented by the KMT. The pro-NATO social-imperialists make the same argument, in relation to Zelensky's government.
“It is true that this was the basis upon which Manuilsky yesterday depended for the revolutionary role of the Chinese bourgeoisie as against the Bolshevik position “outlined in 1905”.” (p 232)
Today, we have the abhorrent sight of people who claim to be Trotskyists, similarly, claiming that Zelensky's corrupt, capitalist government, the Ukrainian capitalist state, and NATO are defenders of the working-class, and one supporter of the USC even proclaiming that NATO is “the most progressive, anti-imperialist force on the planet”! The Stalinists, at least, only proposed and led the workers into the nationalist “bloc of four classes”, whereas today's social imperialists have led them into a global bloc of US imperialism, corrupt oligarchs, feudalists, Zionists and fascists.
The reality, in China, however, manifest itself when that “revolutionary” KMT launched its coup, and murdered thousands of worker-communists. Manuilsky, therefore, points to the tremendous problems the revolution faced, not now being confronted by that KMT, but by the Chinese Communist Party that was now pursuing the revolution, not by the methods of proletarian struggle, centred in the towns and cities, but via the Chinese Red Army of peasant guerrillas, in the rural areas.
“It would have been much more simple and honest to say that the partisan peasant detachments, in the absence of revolutionary uprisings in the cities, found themselves powerless to take possession of the industrial and political centres of the country. Wasn’t this clear to Marxists beforehand?” (p 232)
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