Markin comment on this series:
No question today, 2011 today, Marxists in this wicked old world are as scarce as hen’s teeth. Leninists and Trotskyists even fewer. And to be sure there are so many open social and political wounds in the world from the struggle against imperialism in places like Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan, just to name the obvious America imperial adventures that come quickly off the tip of the tongue, to the struggles in America just for working people to keep heads above water in the riptide of rightist reaction on the questions of unemployment, unionism, social services, racial inequality and the like that it is almost hard to know where to start. Nevertheless, however dismal the situation may seem, the need for political clarity, for polemic between leftist tendencies, is as pressing today as it was going back to Marx’s time. Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, after all, is nothing but a long polemic against all the various misguided notions of socialist reconstruction of society of their day. And Marxists were as scarce as hen’s teeth then, as well.
When I first came under the influence of Marx in the early 1970s, as I started my search for some kind of strategy for systemic social change after floundering around with liberalism, left-liberalism, and soft social-democracy, one of the things that impressed me while reading the classics was the hard polemical edge to the writings. That same thing impressed me with Lenin and Trotsky (although as the “prince of the pamphleteers” I found that Trotsky was the more fluent writer of the two). That edge, and the fact that they all spent more time, much more time, polemicizing against other leftists than with bourgeois democrats in order to clarify the tasks confronting revolutionaries. And, frankly, I miss that give and take that is noticeably absent from today’s leftist scene. Or is dismissed as so much ill-will, malice, or sectarian hair-splitting when what we need to do is “make nice” with each other. There actually is a time to make nice, in a way, it is called the united front in order for the many to fight on specific issues. Unless there is a basic for a revolutionary regroupment which, frankly, I do not see on the horizon then this is proper vehicle, and will achieve all our immediate aims in the process.
So call me sentimental but I am rather happy to post these entries that represent the old time (1973, now old time) polemics between the Spartacist brand of Trotskyism and the now defunct Guardian trend of Maoism that the now far less radical Carl Davidson was then defending. Many of the issues, political tendencies, and organizations mentioned may have passed from the political scene but the broader questions of revolutionary strategy, from the implications of Trotsky’ s theory of permanent revolution to the various guises of the popular front still haunt the leftist night. Argue on.
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Carl Davidson's "Left in Form,Right in Essence:The two-stage revolution"
Trotsky’s last stand in his battle against the Comintern, while he was still within its ranks, was on the question of the Chinese revolution.
Today his contemporary followers stand in opposition to China’s path of socialist developmnent and its contribution to the strategy of world revolution.
What is the connection between the two?
The heart of the Trotskyist position on the Chinese revolution lies in its failure to grasp the essence of the revolution’s first stage as a bourgeois-democratic revolution combining the agrarian struggle against feudalism with the national liberation struggle against foreign imperialism.
China in the 1920s was a vast semi-colonial and semi-feudal country. Its population was overwhelmingly comprised of rural peasants under the yoke of a large feudal landholding class. The nation was disunited, torn apart by warlord rivalries throughout the country, and through competing imperialist powers dominating and looting its various coastal cities.
The Chinese industrial proletariat was small hut militant, concentrated in a few urban centers. The bourgeoisie was weak and divided. Its most powerful sector was a class of compradors or “bureaucrat capitalists” integrated with colonial interests and linked to feudal forces. In between there was a more numerous national or “middle” bourgeoisie, itself hemmed in by the feudal warlords and foreign capital, but exploiters of the workers and peasants nonetheless. At the other end was also a large urban petty bourgeoisie, comprised of many diverse strata.
Friends and enemies
This is a brief summary of a more detailed picture of China drawn by Mao Tsetung in his 1926 essay, Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society. Mao wrote the work in order to answer the question he posed as of “the first importance for the revolution: Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?” He answered in the following way:
Our enemies are all those in league with imperialism-the warlords, the bureaucrats, the comprador class, the big landlord class and the reactionary section of the intelligentsia attached to them. The leading force in our revolution is the industrial proletariat. Our closest friends are the entire semi-proletariat (the peasant masses) and petty bourgeoisie. As for the vacillating middle bourgeoisie, their right wing may become our enemy and their left wing may become our friend – but we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks.
Trotsky completely opposed this position, which was essentially the same as that of the Comintern’s call during the 1920s for a revolutionary “bloc of four classes” in China. The “bloc” was seen as a national united front of the workers, peasants, petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie. The spearhead of the struggle was to be aimed at foreign imperialism. Its leading force was to be the proletariat and its motive force was to be the agrarian revolution of the peasant masses against the feudal landlords.
Politically, the bloc took the form of an alliance between the Communist party and the Kuomintang (KMT), which was at that time waging a massive armed struggle against feudal and imperialist forces. The CP joined its ranks, following the guidance of the 1923 Third Congress of the Comintern, led by Lenin, to “push the Kuomintang leftward.” While members of the KMT and its armies, however, the CP was to maintain its political and organizational independence in order to bring into effect the leading role of the working class within the united front. While the KMT was comprised of all classes, it represented the interests of the national bourgeoisie. initially under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen and later of Chiang Kai-shek.
Trotsky considered the “bloc of four classes” counter-revolutionary and a manifestation of “Menshevism” imposed in China by Stalin. In his view the struggle had to be spearheaded against the bourgeoisie as a whole. At the same time, he played down or dismissed entirely the feudal and imperialist targets of the revolution.
“No landlords”
“There is almost no estate of landlords in China,” Trotsky wrote in a ludicrous passage in his 1929 work, The Permanent Revolution. “The landowners are much more intimately bound up with the capitalists than in Tsarist Russia, and the specific weight of the agrarian question is therefore much lighter than in Tsarist Russia.”
Stalin, in a reply to Trotsky at a 1927 meeting of the Comintern, noted the vast and elemental upsurge of the peasants against the feudal landlords and asked:
Where does the agrarian revolution in China, with its demand for the confiscation of the landlords’ land, come from? ... Surely, the agrarian revolution cannot have dropped from the skies?
Trotsky practically liquidated the agrarian content of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and limited its scope mainly to the interests of the national bourgeoisie. “The Chinese revolution,” he states in The Chinese Revolution and the Theses of Comrade Stalin, “has a national bourgeois character principally because the development of the productive forces of Chinese capitalism collideE with its governmental customs dependence upon the countries of imperialism.”
“The revolution in China,” Stalin answered Trotsky ironically, “is primarily, so to speak, an anti-customs revolution ...”
“Permit me to observe,” he continued, “that this is the viewpoint of a state counselor of His Highness’ Chang Tso-lin (China’s self- proclaimed emperor.)”
If Trotsky’s viewpoint is correct, then it must be admitted that Chang Tso-lin and Chiang Kaishek are right in not desiring either an agrarian or a workers’ revolution and in striving only for the abolition of the unequal treaties and the establishment of customs autonomy for China.
Rightist in essence
Thus through its “left” form of opposition to the national united front during the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist stage of the revolution, Trotsky’s viewpoint is revealed to be rightist in its essence.
How were these questions reflected in the actual practice of the Chinese revolution? The Trotskyists have claimed that Chiang Kai-shek’s betrayal of the united front and massacre of Communists in 1927 conclusively demonstrated the “counter-revolutionary” character of the Comintern line at the time as well as Mao’s line as it is still being developed and applied today.
The Chinese Communist party believes that its line was correct during “the early and middle stages of the 1924-27 period and was summed up by Mao in his Analysis of Classes ... Toward the end, however, as Chiang Kai-shek shifted increasingly to the right and the national bourgeoisie, in the main, deserted the revolution, the party’s line came to be dominated by the right opportunist policies of Chen Tu-hsiu, the CPC’s general secretary.
In the face of the KMT’s efforts to subordinate the CPC, spurred on by the growing fear of the worker and peasant upsurge within the KMT leadership, Chen Tu-hsiu pursued a policy of “all alliance and no struggle” within the united front, thus liquidating the proletariat’s leading role. (he also feared the peasant risings, believing they had “gone too far” and that they were a “conservative” force “unlikely to join the revolution.” In practice this meant capitulation to the betrayal of Chiang Kai-shek.
“Left” opposition to peasants
At the same time a second deviation arose in the CPC, the “left” opportunist line of Chang Kuo-tao, aimed at “all struggle and no alliance.” While Chen Tu-hsiu only curried favor with the KMT and discounted the peasants. Chang Kuotao urged reliance “only on the labor movement” and likewise discounted the peasants.
Opposed to what was identical in both the right and “left” opportunist lines was Mao Tsetung, who organized and supported the agrarian revolts, stating that “without the poor peasants there would be no revolution.” Mao’s policy on the united front throughout the Chinese revolution was one of both “unite with and struggle against,” always maintaining the independence of the CPC, its leading role among the masses and its armed power.
Mao’s position did not win hegemony at the time. “In 1927 Chen Tu-hsiu’s capitulationism,” Mao wrote later in 1937, “led to the failure of the revolution. No member of our party should ever forget this historical lesson written in blood.”
Which tendency was most represented by the general line of the Comintern? “I know that there are Kuomintangists and even Chinese Communists,” Stalin stated in 1926, “who do not consider it possible to unleash revolution in the countryside, since they fear that if the peasantry were drawn into the revolution it would disrupt the united anti-imperialist front. That is a profound error, comrades. The more quickly and thoroughly the Chinese peasantry is drawn into the revolution, the stronger and more powerful the anti-imperialist front in China will be.”
For as much as a year prior to Chiang Kaishek’s 1927 coup, the Comintern had urged and warned the Chinese CP to work for the “resignation or expulsion of Rights from the Kuomintang.” Six weeks prior to the coup, it stated, “It is necessary to adopt the course of arming the workers and peasants and converting the peasant committees in the localities into actual organs of governmental authority equipped with armed self-defense ... The Communist party must not come forward as a brake on the mass movement; the Communist i arty should not cover up the treacherous and reactionary policy of the Kuomintang Rights, and should mobilize the masses around the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist party on the basis of exposing the Rights.”
In the main, the Comintern advocated a policy put into practice independently by Mao and ignored or opposed by both Chen Tu-hsiu and Chang Kuo-tao. There were also a number of mistakes, some of which were corrected and others which had more serious consequences. Most significant was the role of Borodin, a key Comintern advisor in China at the time who vacillated on carrying out the Comintern line and took a number of positions close to Chen Tu-hsiu.
If Trotsky’s line can be said to have had anything in common with Chinese reality, however, it was closest to the “left” opportunism of Chang Kuo-tao. Trotsky later saw in Chiang Kai-shek’s coup the “completion” of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the onset of new period of “stabilization” in China. What actually transpired was a prolonged period of renewed crisis, civil war and “dual power” in the form of liberated bases in the countryside. Trotsky’s line here, which called for a “constituent assembly” and legal struggle for democratic rights, was thoroughly rightist and devoid of any connection with the actual course of class struggle.
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