The failure of Stalin to understand the Democratic Dictatorship (bourgeois-democracy), Proletarian Dictatorship (Workers' Democracy), and the relation between them, was made apparent in his speech to the Sixteenth Congress of the CPSU. Its clear that most of the “Left”, today, also do not understand these concepts and the relation between them.
The betrayal and defeat of the Chinese Revolution lay at the door of Stalin and the opportunist, petty-bourgeois nationalist strategy of The Popular Front, which gave primacy to the bourgeois-democratic, national revolution (national self-determination) over the international, socialist revolution (permanent revolution, the self-determination of the working-class). The same is true of the “Left's” position in every subsequent national revolution/struggle.
Stalin, clearly, did not want to discuss the defeat in China, but the historic nature of it meant he could not avoid it. He kept his comments however, to just five phrases out of a report of 10 hours! Even in these five phrases, however, Trotsky says, every one was wrong, and demonstrated the bankrupt nature of Stalinism.
1. “It would be ridiculous to think, [Stalin said] that this misconduct of the imperialists will pass for them unpunished. The Chinese workers and peasants have already replied to this by the creation of soviets and a Red army.” (p 296)
As Trotsky points out, if the misdeeds of imperialism are sufficient to provoke a response from workers, in the form of the creation of soviets and a Red Army, why does imperialism still exist? The same criticism can be made of the moralism of much of the Left, today, in regard to the genocide in Gaza. The same misdeeds have accompanied imperialism, and before it colonialism, since its inception. It provoked a response, just as the “misdeeds” of capitalism provoked a response, from workers, first in the form of Luddism, and later in the form of trades unions and social-democratic parties, but that is not the same as workers spontaneously developing a revolutionary class consciousness, manifest in the development of a revolutionary party, soviets and a Red Army. On the contrary, the spontaneous responses are, at best, bourgeois and reformist (trades unions, social-democratic parties), and, at worst, reactionary (petty-bourgeois socialism, Luddism).
In this Stalinist approach can be seen also that strand of petty-bourgeois catastrophism that has always occupied a place in the labour movement, in which the path to revolution passes through some economic, environmental or other catastrophe whose effect on workers provokes them, via some mysterious and spontaneous process, into a revolutionary awakening. All history shows the opposite to be the case. And, Trotsky sets out this implication in China too.
2. ““It is said that a soviet government has already been created there.” (p 296)
But, who is it that says this, Trotsky enquires. Was it true? Did Stalin not know whether a soviet government had been established or not? (If he didn't know, then why, as leader of the Communist International, did he not know?) Had it arisen without his knowledge, or the knowledge of the Chinese Communist Party that reported to him, and whose representative was in attendance at the Congress? If the Chinese Communist party did not know about it, then, presumably, it had no involvement in this soviet government, or Red Army, in which case, who was involved in their formation, which class did they represent, which party? This, of course, was significant in relation to all of the subsequent petty-bourgeois nationalist revolutions that cloaked themselves in communist colours, to quote The Theses On The National and Colonial Questions, to hide their reactionary, anti-working-class nature, and which it was the duty of Marxists to expose and oppose, rather than acting as their cheerleaders. Stalin did not even ask the question, and continued.
3 and 4. “I think that if [!] this is true then [!] there is nothing surprising in it.” (p 296)
Trotsky responds,
“There is nothing surprising in the fact that in China a soviet government was created about which the Chinese Communist Party knows nothing and about whose political physiognomy the highest leader of the Chinese revolution can give us no information. Then what is there left in the world to be surprised at?” (p 296-7)
The petty-bourgeois “Left” has continued in the same vein as Stalin ever since. It fails to ask the question of the class nature of those nationalist forces, because it has privileged these bourgeois-democratic, and particularly bourgeois national struggles over the interests of international socialism. It has done so because its petty-bourgeois moralism leads it into “lesser-evilism”, ideologically, whilst, practically, its need to “party-build”, to escape its tiny numbers, led it into the option of seeking to do so organically, by individual recruitment, fishing in the most fertile waters of studentism, and parachuting into existing middle-class protests against “imperialism”, or “fascism”, i.e. cross-class popular frontism.
Finally, Stalin continues,
5. “There is no doubt that only soviets can save China from complete dismemberment and impoverishment.” (p 297)
Again, this show a failure to distinguish form and content. It is not the form of soviets that provides the basis of opposing counter-revolution and the dismemberment of the country, but the revolutionary, class content. Trotsky notes,
“Up to now, we have seen all sorts of soviets: Tsereteli’s soviets, Otto Bauer’s and Scheidemann’s, on the one hand, Bolshevik soviets on the other. Tsereteli’s soviets could not save Russia from dismemberment and impoverishment. On the contrary, their whole policy went in the direction of transforming Russia into a colony of the Entente. Only the Bolsheviks transformed the soviets into a weapon for the liberation of the toiling masses.” (p 297)
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