“The Chinese revolution of 1925-27 remains the greatest event of modern history after the 1917 revolution in Russia. Over the problems of the Chinese revolution the basic currents of Communism come to clash. The present official leader of the Comintern, Stalin, has revealed his true stature in the events of the Chinese revolution. The basic documents pertaining to the Chinese revolution are dispersed, scattered, forgotten. Some are carefully concealed.” (p 261)
This work, by Trotsky, acts as a useful basis of a summary of all the preceding history and analysis.
1. The Bloc of Four Classes
The policy of Stalin, and the Comintern, was based on the concept of The Popular Front (often misleadingly termed the national united front). That is, it was based on class collaboration between the proletariat and bourgeoisie, in pursuit of the bourgeois-democratic, national revolution. This collaboration also draws in the peasants and petty-bourgeoisie. The same strategy was put forward, by the Stalinists, centrists, Menshevists and social-democrats as the basis of opposing fascism, in the 1930's, following the disaster of the Third Period, and consequential victory of Hitler. It, necessarily, involves the workers being subordinated to the bourgeoisie, and even just bourgeois-liberal politicians, for fear of them dissolving the alliance.
The Stalinists do not deny that the bourgeoisie only make this alliance “for their own interests”, nor that, at some point, they will break it, but still insist on the need, until then, to ally with them, to refrain from criticism of them, to play up their revolutionary credentials, and so subordinate the workers to them, and, thereby, disarm and disorientate the workers. It is the same stance taken by the Ukraine Solidarity Committee, in allying with Zelensky's corrupt, right-wing, capitalist government, and NATO, and of the inane comment of Jim Denham, of the AWL, that imperialism and the capitalist state, “defends workers' interests”!
Trotsky quotes an article from International Communist, March 1st 1927, setting out this subordination.
“On April 10 [1927], Martynov, in Pravda, most effectively and in a quite Menshevik manner, showed the correctness of the official position which insists on the necessity of retaining the bloc of four classes, on not hastening to overthrow the coalition government, in which the workers sit side by side with the big bourgeoisie, not to impose 'socialist tasks’ upon it prematurely.” (p 263)
In Ukraine, the government of Zelensky, supported by the USC, Ukrainian social-patriots, and western social-imperialists, openly attacks Ukrainian workers rights, and their trades unions. All of the above are left able, only, to bleat, impotently, about these attacks, carried out by their bourgeois allies, unable to effectively mobilise the workers against them, for fear of breaking their one-sided alliance with Zelensky and NATO standing behind him.
Indeed, as I write this (a year ago, in June 2023), a conference is taking place, in London, on 'the reconstruction of Ukraine' after the war, which, currently, shows no sign of ending with the victory of Ukraine, and its NATO backers, still less the fantasy that Russia would be made to pay (Versailles style) for that reconstruction.
In fact, such is the failure of NATO, and its G-7 economic manifestation in that regard that it has had to undermine its own international rules based order, and essentially seize Russian assets held in western countries, by using the interest on those, previously frozen assets, as a pot out of which to loan $50 billion to Ukraine. That is something not even done during WWII, where the western allies maintained normal relations with the German central bank throughout. That opens the door to Russia, China and others to follow suit and simply seize western assets in their own countries. It means that, immediately, China and other countries (and their citizens and corporations) are likely to be more wary about buying western bonds or other paper assets, as the form in which their foreign reserves are held. Already, that is one reason that countries have been returning to gold, for such reserves, sending the price of gold to new highs, whilst this restriction on bond buying leads to interest rates rising to higher levels than they would have been.
What the conference (which excluded representatives from Ukrainian workers or their organisations) is really about, as one of the main backers of the USC, Paul Mason, was forced to admit, is that it is preparing the ground for the US and EU imperialist capital to take advantage and move into Ukraine, to exploit Ukrainian workers and Ukrainian natural resources.
That is in conditions where their leaders have debased themselves, in their subordination to Zelensky, where their organisations have been destroyed by Zelensky, and anti-worker laws introduced, under cover of a bourgeois-nationalist war. That same corrupt, anti-worker government has strengthened its ties not only with imperialism, but also with Ukrainian Nazis like the Azov Battalion and Right Sector, themselves connected to international organisations of white supremacists and other such paramilitaries. It is in conditions where, despite the population falling by huge proportions, as Ukrainians left the country, unemployment has soared. In 2013, the unemployment rate was 6.3%, and rose to 10.6% at the end of 2014, following the coup, and stayed around that rate until the end of 2019, where it had fallen to 7.2%. Since, then, it has doubled to 14.5%, with the actual number of unemployed rising from 2 million in October 2021 to 2.8 million in 2024.
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