12. Leaders and Masses
“All the organizations of the working class were utilized by the “leaders” in order to restrain, to curb, to paralyse the struggle of the revolutionary masses.” (p 282)
The Chinese workers had been subordinated to the KMT, as representative of the Chinese bourgeoisie, solely on the basis of an “anti-imperialist” struggle, by that bourgeoisie, and despite the fact that this bourgeoisie, was inextricably tied to imperialism. This same bourgeois nationalism, dressed up as “anti-imperialism”, has characterised much of the Left, for the last century. Its latest manifestation is the support not only for the corrupt, anti-working-class regime of Zelensky (idiot anti-imperialism), but for NATO imperialism, standing behind it (pro-imperialism, masquerading as “anti-imperialism”!).
“Here is what Khitarov related:
“The congress of the trade unions [in Wuhan] was postponed from day to day and when it was finally convened no attempt whatsoever was made to utilize it for the organization of resistance. On the contrary, on the last day of the congress, it was decided to stage a demonstration before the building of the National government with the object of expressing their sentiment of loyalty to the government.” (p 282)
Again, the tireless work of the “idiot anti-imperialists”, backing Zelensky, and of the pro-imperialist, “anti-imperialists”, backing NATO, in pushing for union conferences to pass gushing resolutions, backing Ukraine, i.e. Ukrainian capitalism and its anti-working-class, capitalist state, demanding more weapons be sent to that corrupt regime, are just a repeat of the approach of the Stalinists, in 1927.
The social-imperialists, today, deny the reality of a war between two capitalist states, both being part of the two main imperialist camps, butting heads against each other, across the globe, and, instead, present a fantasy of a “people's war” being conducted for their own interests. The same was true of the Stalinists, in 1927. Trotsky quotes the statement of Lozovsky,
““The proletariat has become the dominant force in the struggle for the national emancipation of China.” [Workers’ China, p.6.]” (p 283)
But, as with the claims of a “People's War” in Ukraine and Russia, that was manifestly untrue. At least, had the Chinese workers been independently organised in the Communist Party, whilst they would still not have comprised the dominant force, as Lozovsky claimed, they would have been defending their own interests. In neither Ukraine nor Russia is even that the case. There is no immediate possibility of a meaningful, independent, military organisation of revolutionary forces in either country. As in WWI and WWII, the working-class is reduced to the role of simply being grunts under the command of the bourgeoisie and its state, and to shed their blood needlessly for the interests of that corrupt, anti-working bourgeoisie and its state.
Prior to Chiang Kai Shek's coup, the Stalinists claimed that it was the KMT, i.e. the Chinese bourgeoisie that was leading the revolution, i.e. the dominant force, which was the basis upon which they argued for the workers to subordinate themselves to it, but, after this coup, it was quite clear the workers were not the dominant force. They had been slaughtered, abandoned by the CP, and went into retreat.
Today, the social-imperialists like Jim Denham and the AWL, likewise justify their subordination to the Ukrainian capitalist state and NATO, by claiming that they “defend workers interests”. They also similarly claim that its necessary to subordinate the working-class to it, on the basis of its dominant role, by again perverting the argument of Trotsky. They write, for example,
“This is how Trotsky advocated military support for Spain’s Republican government in the Spanish civil war:
'We accuse this government of protecting the rich and starving the poor. This government must be smashed. So long as we are not strong enough to replace it, we are fighting under its command. But on every occasion we express openly our nonconfidence in it…'
“… we are fighting under its command”. And this in a situation where Spain, unlike Ukraine now, had a mass revolutionary workers’ movement not far off the possible conquest of power – a movement the Republican government attacked and ultimately suppressed.”
So, from Trotsky's words, here, such as “accuse”, “must be smashed”, “nonconfidence in it”, the AWL derive the conclusion that this amounted to Trotsky's “support” for this Popular Front government, and use as their only basis for this perverse conclusion, his acceptance of the obvious reality that the revolutionaries, i.e. the few hundred Trotskyists (and not the hundreds of thousands of socialists and anarchists/centrists that comprised the majority of the labour movement, and its component of the Popular Front government), were too weak to replace it, and so were forced to fight “under its command”!
What did that mean? In WWI, revolutionaries and centrists, opposed to the war, also found themselves in a minority, compared to the reformists and social-democrats. They continued to oppose the war, and argued the position that “The Main Enemy Is At Home”. Did that in any way mean they “supported” the bourgeois governments, and capitalists states? Of course not. If those governments and states were the enemy of the workers before the shooting started, they remained the enemy of the workers after the shooting started, and its only vulgar opportunists that argue otherwise.
It flies in the face of everything that Lenin and Trotsky wrote on the national and colonial questions, of Trotsky's vehement denunciation of the centrists of the POUM, in supporting the Popular Front, and of Trotsky's extensive opposition, outlined here, of the Stalinist/Menshevist position of supporting the bourgeois government of the KMT in China.
“This was said about a proletariat whose head was being squeezed in the iron manacles of Chiang Kai-shek. This is how the general secretary of the Red International of Labour Unions deceived the workers of the whole world. And after the crushing of the Chinese workers (with the aid of all sorts of “general secretaries”), Lozovsky derides the Chinese trade unionists:” (p 283)
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