9. Against the Opposition – For the Guomindang
The Opposition argued for leaving the KMT. Did this mean abandoning the revolution? Of course not. As Marx had set out, in 1850, it does not prevent the workers from establishing tactical alliances with other forces, on an ad hoc, or even more structured basis. What it does do is to protect the class interests of workers, emphasise their separate and antagonistic interests to those of the bourgeoisie, petty-bourgeoisie, and peasantry. It emphasises that, at some point, these bourgeois classes will betray them, and prepares for it.
Today, when Marxists argue against supporting the war of the Ukrainian state, this is presented as abandoning the defence of Ukrainian workers. Not at all. We argue that such defence can only, really, be achieved by the independent organisation of those workers, and not by their subordination to the Ukrainian capitalist state, or Zelensky's corrupt regime. The same applies to Russian workers. The liberal opportunist position, in that regard is the same as that put forward by the Russian liberal Ivan Kirillovic, in 1912, to justify liberal interventionism by imperialism in the Balkan Wars. Kirillovic argued in identical words to that of the social-imperialists today,
“... we can't shut our eyes to the fact that what is involved here is the liberation of Slav people from Turkish rule. Not to sympathise with such a war, not to support it, would simply mean to support, indirectly if not directly, Turkish rule over Slavs.”
(The Balkan Wars, p 325)
Rejecting this idea that socialists and the working-class have the same shared goal as “liberal” or “democratic” imperialism, in overthrowing such oppression, Trotsky wrote, in response to Kirillovich,
“The emancipation of the Macedonian peasantry from feudal landlord bondage was undoubtedly something necessary and historically progressive. But this task was undertaken by forces that had in view not the interests of the Macedonian peasantry but their own covetous interests as dynastic conquerors and bourgeois predators...No, there is consequently no need to idealise the Turkish regime or the regime of Russia's village community in order to express at the same time one's uncompromising distrust of the uninvited 'liberators' and to refuse any solidarity with them.”
(ibid)
Trotsky, expanded on that, in a response to the Russian liberal Miliukov,
“But it is not at all a matter of indifference by what methods this emancipation is being accomplished. The method of “liberation” that is being followed today means the enslavement of Macedonia to the personal regime in Bulgaria and to Bulgarian militarism; it means, moreover, the strengthening of reaction in Bulgaria itself... only a struggle against the usurpation of history's tasks by the present masters of the situation will educate the Balkan peoples to play the role of superseding not only Turkish despotism but also those who, for their own reactionary purposes, are, by their own barbarous methods, now destroying that despotism...
Our agitation, on the contrary, against the way that history's problems are at present being solved, goes hand in hand with the work of the Balkan Social Democrats. And when we denounce the bloody deeds of the Balkan 'liberation' from above we carry forward the struggle not only against liberal deception of the Russian masses but also against enslavement of the Balkan masses.”
(ibid, p 293-4)
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