Even after the slaughter of the Chinese communists, by the KMT, and despite, now, a period of counter-revolution, Stalin proposed that, in preparation for the proletarian revolution, the CP should still see in the KMT (the party of the Chinese national bourgeoisie) an ally, but, now, one to which they related as an external party.
“In order to carry out the socialist revolution, the Communists were only permitted to get out of the ranks of the Guomindang, but by no means to break the bloc with it. As is known, the alliance with the bourgeoisie was the best condition for the preparation of the “Chinese October”. And all this was called Leninism.” (p 293)
In similar terms, the USC and its affiliates defend their alliance with the corrupt, capitalist regime of Zelensky and NATO, whilst their mirror image defends their alliance with Putin and Xi. In both cases, they ally with vile bourgeois regimes against the working-class and international socialism, just as, in the past, alliances with the Viet Cong, Algerian NLF, Khomeni, Sadrists, Gaddafi, the Libyan jihadists, Hamas, Hezbollah, Galtieri and so on was justified. “Idiot ant-imperialism” is too kind a name for it.
The revolutionary content of the demand for soviets is recognition of a developing revolutionary situation, in which the question of workers' power and expropriation of the bourgeoisie is on the agenda. That was the situation, in China, between 1925-7. Yet, during that period, Stalin used that reality, not to argue the necessity of soviets, but to argue the necessity of opposing their creation. If anyone asks what Lenin was thinking, in 1917, in demanding “All Power To The Soviets”, and the carrying through of the proletarian revolution, point them to the experience of China, in 1925-7, where that was not done, or similarly Chile in 1973.
The failure to create soviets, arm the communist workers and poor peasants, and push forward to the proletarian revolution led to the coups of the KMT and Left KMT, murder of thousands of communist workers, and introduction of the Bonapartist military regime of Chiang Kai Shek, much as had happened in Europe in 1848. But, it also facilitated the continued neocolonial dismemberment of China, and created the conditions for the Second Sino-Japanese War, much as the demobilising of the rising wave of the French workers, by the Popular Front, created the conditions for the invasion of France in 1940, by Nazi Germany.
But, Stalin turned the argument on its head.
“... in 1925-27 Stalin posed the question of soviets very categorically, connecting the formation of soviets with the immediate socialist expropriation of the bourgeoisie. It is true he needed this “radicalism” at that time not in defence of the expropriation of the bourgeoisie but on the contrary in defence of the bourgeoisie from expropriation. But the principled posing of the question was at any rate clear: the soviets can be only and exclusively organs of the socialist revolution. Such was the position of the Political Bureau of the CPSU, such was the position of the ECCI.” (p 294)
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