Markin comment:
In October 2010 I started what I anticipate will be an on-going series, From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America), starting date October 2, 2010, where I will place documents from, and make comments on, various aspects of the early days of the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Worker Party in America. As I noted in the introduction to that series Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement than in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League.
After mentioning the thread of international linkage through various organizations from the First to the Fourth International I also noted that on the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I was speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Eugene V. Debs' Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that led up to the Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive. Further, I noted that beyond the SWP that there were several directions to go in but that those earlier lines were the bedrock of revolutionary Marxist continuity, at least through the 1960s.
I am continuing today what I also anticipate will be an on-going series about one of those strands past the 1960s when the SWP lost it revolutionary appetite, what was then the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) and what is now the Spartacist League (SL/U.S.), the U.S. section of the International Communist League (ICL). I intend to post materials from other strands but there are several reasons for starting with the SL/U.S. A main one, as the document below will make clear, is that the origin core of that organization fought, unsuccessfully in the end, to struggle from the inside (an important point) to turn the SWP back on a revolutionary course, as they saw it. Moreover, a number of the other organizations that I will cover later trace their origins to the SL, including the very helpful source for posting this material, the International Bolshevik Tendency.
However as I noted in posting a document from Spartacist, the theoretical journal of ICL posted via the International Bolshevik Tendency website that is not the main reason I am starting with the SL/U.S. Although I am not a political supporter of either organization in the accepted Leninist sense of that term, more often than not, and at times and on certain questions very much more often than not, my own political views and those of the International Communist League coincide. I am also, and I make no bones about it, a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization linked to the ICL and committed, in the traditions of the IWW, the early International Labor Defense-legal defense arm of the Communist International, and the early defense work of the American Socialist Workers Party, to the struggles for freedom of all class-war prisoners and defense of other related social struggles.
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When Polemic Ruled The Leftist Life- Trotskyism vs. Stalinism In It Maoism Phase, Circa 1973
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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The Stalin School of Falsification Revisited
These articles were originally serialized in Workers Vanguard, in 1973, starting in the 22 June issue [No.23] and concluding in the 10 October issue [No. 30]
Reply to the Guardian
THE STALIN SCHOOL OF FALSIFICATION REVISITED
6. THE THIRD CHINESE REVOLUTION
The core of the Guardian series on "Trotsky's Heritage" is a simple assertion: "History has proved Mao correct." The Chinese revolution, according to Davidson, is the model for backward and colonial countries. The great beacon of Mao Tse-tung Thought shows the way. Is this so?
Let us take first the myth of Mao the great proletarian leader who has always struggled for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as opposed to traitors like Liu Shao-chi who tried to hold him back. In an earlier article Davidson wrote that in 1927 "the Comintern advocated a policy put into practice independently by Mao and ignored or opposed by both Chen Tu-hsiu [head of the Chinese Communist Party at this time] and Chang Kuo-tao." Nothing could be further from the truth. In the first place, Chen unfortunately only carried out orders from Moscow even when he sharply disagreed; he did not have the proletarian spirit to refuse to obey these orders even when they literally sent thousands of Chinese comrades to their graves.
Second, it is to Mao's credit that he refused to carry out instructions from the Communist International during the 1926-27 Northern Expedition of General Chiang Kai-shek, when Moscow wanted to hold down mass struggles at all costs. On 26 October 1926 Stalin had sent a telegram ordering the peasant movement to be restrained lest it alienate the Kuomintang generals who, after all, were often landlords themselves. Mao was given the task of carrying out this restraining order in the key province of Hunan by the Central Committee of the party. He immediately returned to his home province and proceeded to do just the opposite, rousing tens of thousands of peasants to form peasant associations and seize and redistribute land belonging to the gentry. This vast wave of peasant unrest enormously aided the rapid northward march of the KMT armies. It also made the generals "uneasy," as can be easily imagined.
Mao's policies in this period were not always more militant than the CP leadership's, however. In the fall of 1924 he was removed from the Politburo of the party because of too-close ties to right-wing Kuomintang circles. But Mao's most general pattern of "protest" against a policy he disagreed with was to simply go off to the hills and carry out the policies he believed correct. When a Comintern telegram on 31 March 1927 ordered the Shanghai party and trade unions to hide their guns with Chiang's armies at the gates, the inevitable result was a massacre of tens of thousands of militants. Chen protested and carried out the suicidal orders; Mao never protested.
During 1930 Mao again came into conflict with the party leadership, over land reform policy in the "peasant soviet" area. Wang Ming, then CP head, accused Mao of having a "rich peasant line" because he simply called for equal redistribution of land, not confiscating all the land of the rich peasants, but simply giving them equal shares. It would be more accurate to call it a middle-peasant line, for the rich peasants (kulaks in Russia) generally oppose violent upheavals in favor of gradual solutions which allow them greater opportunity to accumulate land and capital. It is the middle peasants who have the most to gain from a radical elimination of the feudal landlord class, and historically it has been middle peasants who have put forward such schemes for "black distribution" of the land. These were the leaders of the Russian peasant revolt of summer and autumn of 1917.
Most important, however, this is the most radical land-reform line that can be taken without totally disrupting the village. Guerrilla warfare depends on support from the general peasant population, not just the poorest of the poor, for isolated, poorly-equipped guerrilleros are extremely vulnerable to betrayal. And faced with modern weapons the only weapon of the peasants is overwhelming numbers, which again presumes unity. It is no accident that all guerrilla movements opt for a middle--or rich--peasant policy rather than taking the class struggle into the village; and one more reason why revolutionary Marxists insist that the proletariat is the only consistently revolutionary class, and oppose guerrillaism.
Period of the "Anti-Japanese United Front"
But Mao was not simply an astute guerrilla leader. Gradually he came to a quite clear understanding of the essence of Stalinism--capitulation to the bourgeoisie while maintaining bureaucratic control over the workers and poor peasants. Thus, when he finally achieved predominance in the CP Central Committee it was as the most energetic proponent of a second "united front" with the Kuomintang, following the Long March. This corresponded to the shift in line at the Seventh Congress of the Communist International and the popular-front period.
Shortly thereafter, on I August 1935, the CCP issued an appeal to all patriotic classes to join the Communists to fight against Japan. In line with the new popular-front policy, Mao issued new guidelines for moderating agrarian policy in order to win support from the rich and middle peasants. The Politburo statement of 25 December 1935 read:
"The Soviet People's Republic will change its policy toward rich peasants; rich peasant land, except for that portion of it in feudal exploitation, regardless of whether it is under self-cultivation or whether tilled by hired labor, will not be confiscated. When land is being equally distributed in a village, rich peasants will have the right to receive the same share of land as poor and middle peasants."
Now here was a real rich-peasant policy. Six months later it was amplified by a Central Committee statement: "Lands of all anti-Japanese soldiers and those involved in anti-Japanese enterprises must not be confiscated." This permitted even large landlords to retain their land through the simple device of enlisting a son in the Red Army.
This land policy had its equivalent at the political level as well. The "Workers and Peasants Soviet Government" became the "Soviet People's Republic," which proclaimed:
"It [the "people's republic"] is willing to have the broad petty-bourgeois class unite with the masses in its territory. All petty-bourgeois revolutionary class elements will be given the right to vote and be elected in the Soviet."
In the meantime, in the fall of 1936 orders were issued to ban the use of the name "Communist Party" at the sub-district level, replacing it with that of the "Anti-Japanese National Salvation Association."
Having indicated its willingness to capitulate, the CCP sent a telegram to the KMT on 10 February 1937 proposing a united front. (In recent years the Maoists have made much of "the Great Helmsman's" writings against those who placed sole emphasis on the united front and not enough on the party. Considering the terms of this "patriotic united front," it was an outright betrayal of the masses to enter this front at all, even though all Trotskyists unequivocally supported China against Japan up to the point where this struggle for national independence was submerged by World War II.) In response to the CCP proposal the Kuomintang adopted a "Resolution for Complete Eradication of the Red Menace" which agreed to reconciliation if the Red Army and Soviet government were abolished, all Communist propaganda ended and calls for class struggle dropped. The CCP accepted, although the actual integration of the Communist base areas into Kuomintang rule as well as the absorption of the Communist army remained solely on paper.
With the onset of World War II Mao's Class collaboration became even more blatant, if that is possible. He renamed Stalin's "bloc of four classes" with the slogan "new democracy," which was defined as the "dictatorship of all revolutionary classes over the counterrevolutionaries and traitors." Davidson dishes up a sweetened version of new democracy, according to which this intermediate stage would last only until the end of the civil war, after which "the revolution would immediately and uninterruptedly pass over to its second stage of socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat" (Guardian, 25 April 1973). Mao never said anything of the kind. Rather:
"The progress of the Chinese revolution must be divided into two stages: (1) the democratic revolution; (2) the socialist revolution....As to the first stage or the first step in this colonial and semi-colonial revolution-according to its social nature, it is fundamentally still a bourgeois-democratic revolution in which the objective requirement is still basically to clear away the obstacles in the way of capitalist development....
"The Chinese revolution can only be achieved in two steps: the first being that of new democracy; the second, that of socialism. Moreover, the period of the first step will be a considerably long one and can never be accomplished overnight."
--"On New Democracy," January 1940
In another document from this period, Mao made the point even more explicit:
"Why do we call the present stage of the revolution a 'bourgeois-democratic revolution'? Because the target of the revolution is not the bourgeoisie in general, but imperialist and feudal oppression, the program of the revolution is not to abolish private property but to protect private property in general, the results of this revolution will clear the way for the development of capitalism....So the policy of 'land to the tiller' is a bourgeois-democratic policy, not a proletarian and socialist one....
"Under the New Democratic system of government a policy of readjusting the relations between capital and labor will be adopted. On the one hand, the interests of workers will be protected. An eight-to ten-hour-day system...and the rights of labor unions. On the other hand, reasonable profits of state, private, and cooperative enterprises will be guaranteed....We welcome foreign investments if such are beneficial to China's economy...."
--"On Coalition Government," April 1945
So much for Brother Davidson's "uninterrupted passing over" into socialism. And as for the meaning of this "new democracy" in social and economic terms we only have to look at the land policy enforced during the "anti-Japanese united front" which contained such "progressive" measures as the following:
"Recognize that most of the landlords are anti-Japanese, that some of the enlightened gentry also favor democratic reforms. Accordingly, the policy of the Party is only to help the peasant in reducing feudal exploitation but not to liquidate feudal exploitation entirely....
"...peasants should be advised to pay rent and interest as well as to protect the civil, political, land and economic rights of the landlord."
--"Decision of the Central Committee on Land Policy in the Anti-Japanese Base Areas," January 1942
As to this mythical and completely anti-Marxist concept of a joint revolutionary dictatorship of all revolutionary classes, Mao had something very specific in mind, namely a real coalition government with the fearless anti-imperialist patriot Chiang Kai-shek, under which the KMT would control a majority of the government and the vast majority of the military units. This arrangement was worked out, and agreed to by the CCP, at a "Political Consultative Conference" in January 1946. The government would be made up of 40 persons entirely chosen by Chiang, half from the Kuomintang and half from other parties (including the CCP). The Nationalist armies would be restricted to 90 divisions and the Communist forces to 18 divisions respectively. It was only because of the hostility to any compromise with the Communists on the part of certain sectors of the KMT, particularly the military, that this agreement was never implemented.
Thus over a twenty-year period, from the late 1920's to the late 1940's, Mao repeatedly sought to conciliate the Chinese bourgeoisie and even, at times, feudal elements while espousing doctrines which are classic expressions of the Menshevik theory of two stage revolution. That there was no Indonesia-type disaster, with the liquidation of the party and murder of hundreds of thousands of militants, was due solely to the fact that the KMT government was so corrupt that Chiang could not afford to risk a coalition government. But the bourgeoisie was not always so weak. In the aftermath of the Shanghai massacre, Chiang had been able to stabilize Kuomintang rule, and during the period 1927-36 he was able to systematically wipe out most of the Communist base areas.
New Democracy or Permanent Revolution?
This leads to a second aspect of the Chinese revolution, namely who was proven right by history? Davidson quotes Trotsky's observation that Stalin's attempt to resurrect the policy of a "revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry," which Lenin explicitly abandoned in April 1917 (see part 1 of this series), was completely inappropriate to China:
"The formula of the democratic dictatorship has hopelessly outlived its usefulness....The third Chinese revolution, despite the great backwardness of China, or more correctly, because of this great backwardness as compared with Russia, will not have a 'democratic' period, not even such a six-month period as the October Revolution had (November 1917 to July 1918); but it will be compelled from the very outset to effect the most decisive shake-up and abolition of bourgeois property in city and village."
--Third International After Lenin, 1928
Davidson claims that Mao's theory of new democracy was proven correct as against this prediction by Trotsky. Let's look at the facts: First, despite Mao's repeated attempts, he was never able to achieve a coalition government with Chiang. Second, when the Communists were sweeping through China at the end of the civil war, the bulk of the Chinese bourgeoisie fled to Taiwan with Chiang, eliminating the crucial bourgeois element of "new democracy."
Most important of all were the changes in the property relations which followed the establishment of the "People's Republic of China" in October 1949. It is important to note that not until 10 October 1947 did Mao even raise the slogan for the overthrow of the KMT regime. It was the occupation of the Yenan base area by Kuomintang troops and Mao's realization that no compromise was possible and a coalition government of the "new democratic type" was a pipe dream, that finally forced the CCP to strike out for state power--in violation of Stalin's explicit orders. At the same time the Communist Party decided to overthrow Chiang it took a logical corollary step, namely announcing an agrarian reform scheme similar to the "rich-peasant policy" Mao had followed in 1930, but far more radical than the timid rent reduction (and Red Army-enforced rent collection) of the period 1942-47.
Furthermore, following the proclamation of the Chinese People's Republic in October 1949, the CCP set up a "coalition regime" in which, despite the presence of a few "democratic" petty-bourgeois politicians, government power was clearly in the Communists' hands. Most important, the state power was based on the unquestioned military dominance of the Red Army. The bulk of the bourgeoisie had fled to Taiwan.
With the help of Soviet aid, the Communists set about building up a state sector of heavy industry, while arranging for the continuation of private ownership of some industrial concerns under state control and supervision. Finally, this policy was further tightened with the Chinese entry into the Korean War, which led to a series of measures against domestic capitalists, beginning in early 1952.
So please, Brother Davidson, will you inform us where the extended democratic stage was? This whole evolution is dramatic proof of the utterly fantastic utopianism which Mao's theories amounted to. Over and over the CCP declared its desire to set up a democratic bourgeois regime, but the property relations that resulted were those of a workers state.
Can Peasants Establish a Workers State?
It has been estimated that in 1949 workers constituted no more than five percent of the membership of the Chinese Communist Party; it was by then overwhelmingly a party of peasants and petty-bourgeois intellectuals. Yet Trotsky held that only the working class, under revolutionary leadership, could set up the dictatorship of the proletariat. How then do we explain the "third Chinese revolution"? First we must be clear that this was not the pattern foreseen by Trotsky. Marxism has shown that in the sharp class polarization which occurs in every revolutionary period, the peasantry will be divided between elements following the bourgeoisie and those following the proletariat; that the peasantry alone does not have the social power to overthrow the determined resistance of the capitalist exploiters, nor the united class interests necessary to establish socialist property forms. However, the Chinese revolution of 1949 was accomplished by a predominantly peasant party and army under the leadership of a petty-bourgeois military bureaucracy. But though this was different from the Trotskyists' expectations, it did not contradict the essential Marxist program calling for the working class to establish its own class rule, supported by the peasantry, even in backward countries as the only means to solve the democratic tasks of the bourgeois revolution.
The most fundamental reason for the success of the peasant-based Chinese Communists was the absence of the proletariat struggling in its own right for power. The Chinese working class was demoralized and decimated by the continuous defeats suffered during the second Chinese revolution (1925-27). And the CCP's subsequent policy was the deliberate discouraging of proletarian action. The second fundamental point is that the result of the 1949 military victory of the CCP was not at all a healthy workers state such as that created by the Russian Revolution of 1917, but a bureaucratically deformed workers state, in which the proletariat does not hold political power. Rather the state power is and has been since 1949 in the hands of a tight Stalinist bureaucratic-military caste composed of the upper layers of the CCP, the People's Liberation Army and the state bureaucracy. As demonstrated by the repeated failure of the economic policies of the Chinese regime (notably the "Great Leap Forward") and the inability to create democratic forms of workers' rule (even in the period of the demagogic "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution"), the only way that the road to socialism--the complete abolition of classes--can be opened in China is through a political revolution to throw out this military-bureaucratic caste.
In addition, in the late 1940's the Chiang regime was so hopelessly corrupt that it virtually toppled by itself. Mukden, Peking and Canton all surrendered without a shot at the end of the civil war. Moreover, the U.S. ruling class had become so discouraged with the KMT government that it essentially withdrew its material backing in the 1948-49 period. Finally, the Communist army which had been starved for weapons was suddenly supplied with large quantities of modern Japanese arms following the Russian occupation of Manchuria. It is essential that these special circumstances be understood. To put it another way, had the Chinese proletariat been struggling under its own banners, the banners of the Fourth International, and had the bourgeois regime not simply disintegrated, the victory of Mao's peasant armies would have been impossible.)
Today after the mystification of the "Cultural Revolution" has worn off and the bureaucracy has reasserted direct control over the Chinese government, it is much easier to understand that China, like the USSR, the Eastern European countries, Cuba, North Vietnam, etc., is a deformed workers state. Yet only the orthodox Trotskyists have held this position from the very early stages of the Mao regime. The resolution of the 1955 SWP Convention on the Chinese revolution stated:
"Throughout the revolution Mao & Co. continued to impose arbitrary restrictions and limits upon its course. The agrarian reform was carried out 'in stages' and was completed only when the assault of American imperialism stimulated the opposition of the landlords during and after Korea....The Chinese Stalinists were able to ride into power because the Chinese working class had been demoralized by the continuous defeats it suffered during and after the second Chinese revolution, and by the deliberate policy of the CCP, which subordinated the cities, above all, the proletariat, to the military struggle in the countryside and thereby blocked the emergence of the workers as an independent political force. The CCP thus appeared in the eyes of the masses as the only organization with political cadres and knowledge, backed, moreover, by military force."
--"The Third Chinese Revolution and its Aftermath," October 1955
What is needed is a party which has the courage to tell this truth to the masses, even at times when this may be unpopular, and which understands the dynamic of permanent revolution so that it can defend these gains from imperialist attack and carry the struggle forward to socialism. The Maoists with their reactionary dreams of "united fronts" with the "progressive bourgeoisie" and mindless enthusing over the so-called "Cultural Revolution," which solved nothing, have proven themselves incapable of this task. It falls to the partisans of the Fourth International the true heirs of the tradition of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky.
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