Stalin and The Chinese Revolution, 8. Stalin Repeats His Experiment with the “Left” Guomindang - Part 2 of 2

According to Stalin, after the coup, two camps/governments existed – a revolutionary government in Wuhan, i.e. that of the Left KMT, and a counter-revolutionary government of Chiang Kai Shek, in Nanking. Stalin said,

“This means that the revolutionary Guomindang in Wuhan, leading a decisive struggle against militarism and imperialism, will in reality be transformed into an organ of the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry ...” (p 275)

Trotsky comments,

“Now we finally know what the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry looks like!” (p 275)

In other words, this, according to Stalin, is what Chinese bourgeois-democracy looked like.

“From this it follows further [Stalin continues], that the policy of close collaboration of the lefts and the Communists inside the Guomindang acquires a particular force and a particular significance at the present stage. that without such a collaboration the victory of the revolution is impossible.” (p 275)

But, as in 1848, and previously, in 1927, the result was predictable. Having, now, subordinated the workers to the Left KMT, they too betrayed the revolution. Parallels with this can be found repeatedly inside the Labour Party, too, as each section of a broad left capitulates, and some new, less broad formation becomes the new hope, and subsequently new disaster.

“Without the collaboration of the counter-revolutionary bandits of the “Left” Guomindang, “the victory of the revolution is impossible”! That is how Stalin, step after step – in Canton, in Shanghai, in Hankow – assured the victory of the revolution.” (p 275)

Still, it is not as bad as the position of the social-imperialists of the USC/AWL/ACR etc., who, with the benefit of another century of such betrayals, still manage to ally themselves not only with the bourgeoisie and its state, but also with NATO imperialism, on the basis of a broad “anti-imperialist front”, against Russia, and the claim that the workers most visible, and most powerful class enemies, are, in fact, their saviours, and defenders of its interests!!!

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