6. How The Shanghai Overturn Took Place
Chiang Kai Shek, and the KMT, formed the government, in Wuhan. It formed the nationalist centre. But, in Shanghai, the Popular Front government had a majority of communists. However, as has been described, with all Popular Front governments, and popular frontist organisations, even where the “communists” form a majority, they always subordinate their programme, and the interests of workers, to those of the bourgeois components of the alliance, for fear of the latter splitting from them. Jeremy Corbyn made exactly that mistake when he became Labour Leader, again following this same advice from his Stalinist backers and advisors. Corbyn's failure to move against the Right, in the PLP, and party machine, is a replica of the Stalinist failure, in Shanghai, in 1927.
A detailed account of the events leading to the April coup was provided to the Fifteenth Congress of the CPSU, which even gave Khitarov additional time to recount his gripping story. But, it was, itself, a clear indictment of the policy of Stalin, leading Stalin to ensure that it was never made public. Khitarov, who had participated in the Chinese events, noted,
“This Communist government, however, showed complete inactivity in spite of the fact that the coup by Chiang Kai-shek was expected any day.” (p 269)
In other words, the Stalinists knew that the coup was coming, but failed to act to arm the workers, physically or ideologically, against it. That is much like Corbyn knew the Right would organise a coup against him – they had already done so, in the PLP vote of no confidence – and, yet, he failed to move against them, a failure the Right have not repeated, in launching their attack on the party members, and Corbyn's expulsion. Having won an even larger vote, in the subsequent leadership election, he turned the other cheek, and attempted to appease them even more, offering his enemies, like Starmer, prominent positions, and, at the same time, arguing against even the basic demands of the party members for a democratisation of the party, mandatory reselection, and so on, required to get rid of the bourgeois class enemies of the workers that form a minority, and yet exercise control over it.
Worse still, just as the Stalinists invited the KMT into the Comintern, at the same time as expelling the Left Opposition, so Corbyn appeased, and brought in the Right, including allowing external, and hostile bourgeois forces, like the EHRC, to interfere in the internal operation of the party, as the Right mounted a witch hunt of the Left. Corbyn threw the Left under the bus, just as he had cut himself off from the vast majority of members that opposed his continued Brexitism. The appeasement of the Right did not bring any “breathing space”, but only invited their inevitable response to perceived weakness.
The same happened to the workers in China in April 1927, to the revolutionaries, in Spain, in 1936, and has happened on multiple occasions such as Vietnam, Algeria, and so on since, as the Stalinists and petty-bourgeois, “Left” nationalists sacrificed the interests of workers and workers' lives for the limited bourgeois goal of national self-determination, and their alliance with the national bourgeoisie. A similar story can be told of Venezuela, Cuba, Chile and so on. In all cases, the result is disastrous for workers.
No comments:
Post a Comment