As the Chinese revolution approached in the mid-1920s, Stalin’s
leadership of the Comintern imposed on the young Chinese Communist Party
a policy of subordination to the bourgeois Guomindang, thus stifling
the Chinese Communists’ ability to bring together the workers and
peasants under the banner of social revolution. In Part Two, Daniel
Morley looks at the background to this situation.
As the Chinese revolution approached in the mid-1920s, Stalin’s
leadership of the Comintern imposed on the young Chinese Communist Party
a policy of subordination to the bourgeois Guomindang, thus stifling
the Chinese Communists’ ability to bring together the workers and
peasants under the banner of social revolution. In Part Two Daniel
Morley looks at the background to this situation.
A relatively
short span of time transpired between the first capitalist development
in China and the maturing of the conditions for social revolution. In
contrast, in Britain, where the working class first developed, almost
exactly two hundred years passed between the bourgeois revolution of
Cromwell and the beginning of the Chartist movement, the first working
class movement in the world.
A further ten years transpired before
the theory of Marxism was expressed in the Communist Manifesto, which
was the first time that historical materialism, a scientific
understanding of the class struggle, and the task of the working class
to consciously overthrow capitalism and initiate a plan of production,
was explicitly set forth.
In the meantime, the nascent working
class was accumulating experience, developing class consciousness and
forming the first trade unions. Many methods and ideas were tried out,
including Luddism, which was a historical dead end. Innumerable
anonymous proletarians sacrificed themselves in struggle before mass
trade unions and mass working class parties that could fight for power
could be formed. When the working class in the cities were still new and
relatively numerically weak, the theories and experiments of utopian
socialism were the only way in which the need for socialism could be
expressed. Literally hundreds of years of these experiences had to be
passed through before the ideas of Marxism could be formulated and
fought for.
But the lessons of the history of the working class
movement are global in their application, for the very reasons that were
explained in Part One – the shared interests of the working class the
world over, the interconnectedness of their struggle thanks to being
tied through the same world market, and therefore the general validity
of the most effective methods of struggle. These lessons can be, with an
international leadership, quickly adopted in colonial or developing
countries at their highest point of development. This is the essential
task of Marxist theory and leadership – to generalise the global
experiences of the working class and concretely apply them in specific
conditions. That there is no need in such countries to repeat the
mistakes and experiments once they have been made elsewhere is proven by
the whole experience of the Chinese revolution and the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP).
Despite being more economically backward
than Russia in 1917, not only did China go through no period of utopian
socialism or reformism, it never even experienced a peasant
revolutionary party in the style of the Russian Narodniks. Instead,
almost as soon as the working class moved, they came to the ideas of
Bolshevism, thanks to the existence of the very recent Russian
Revolution.
Chen DuxiuThe
aid of the Comintern was absolutely essential in getting a real
disciplined Bolshevik organisation capable of leading class struggle off
the ground. Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao were not from working class
backgrounds and had no experience of strikes or revolutions. Chen Duxiu
was from a family of wealthy government officials and was now a
university professor, Li Dazhao was from a peasant background. In fact,
when the CCP was formed, the whole of China had little experience of
strikes or open class struggle, and the experiences of Europe and other
countries were only just beginning to be discussed. That the revolution
was started by workers only four years after the founding of the CCP
shows there was no time to waste for the party charged with leading the
working class to power, and thus a substitute for decades of experience
and debate had to be found. This substitute was of course the material
and theoretical aid of the Comintern:
“Visits began in
the summer of 1919, when a member of the Russian Communist Party, N.
Burtman, who had been forced to take refuge in Tianjin, established
contact with Li Dazhao… Over the next year, a number of other Russian
émigrés called on Li Dazhao and others interested in Marxism. By late
1919, official Comintern representative had begun to arrive in China…
Voitinski met with Chen, explaining to him the basic structures and
purpose of a Chinese Communist party and helping him draft a programme
for it. With Comintern assistance, Chen was able to construct the first
official Communist cell, and in May 1920 he established a provisional
Central Committee for the new Communist party… Even before the arrival
of the Comintern representatives, Chen had taken steps to form a loose,
new political party based on what he had assumed to be Marxist
principles. But these Comintern representatives were important in
helping Chen to reorganise the party and gradually build a Leninist
style organisation, convincing him in 1921 to expel the anarchist
elements from the party… In spite of his commitment to the idea of a
Bolshevik-style organisation, it is clear that Chen was at first too
naive about Leninist organisation to be able to organise the party
without Voitinski’s help.” (Feigon, Chen Duxiu, our emphasis)”
Tasks
equal in greatness to those carried out by the Bolsheviks fell onto the
CCP four years after its founding, whereas the Bolsheviks had fully 19
years to prepare. For this reason the Chinese revolution depended on the
leadership of the Comintern. As the above quote indicates, Chen Duxiu’s
instinct was to form a more loosely organised party comprising many
disparate elements. No doubt left to themselves such an organisation
would have been a poll of attraction and would have played an important
role in the coming revolution. But without a clearly defined perspective
on what was to take place in China (a working class led revolution) and
what tasks would fall on the revolutionary party as a result, it is
likely that the nascent CCP would have lagged behind the mass of
revolutionary Chinese workers. Indeed, as we shall see, this did in the
end happen, although not because the CCP was isolated but precisely the
opposite – because of an erroneous leadership imposed onto the party by
Stalin. But the importance of the disciplined party, with a clear,
implacable revolutionary position, was only really grasped in Europe by
Lenin as a result of decades of experience and discussion in that
continent. So it is unsurprising that Chen Duxiu should not instantly
come to such a conclusion based purely on his own experiences.
The Independence of the Working Class
The
need for a disciplined, professional revolutionary party flows from the
need for the proletarian party to be completely independent of other
classes. History has shown that there is a constant tendency for the
leadership of workers’ parties to come under pressure from the bourgeois
and petty bourgeoisie, and as a result to become reformist, to give up
the struggle against capitalism. To combat this tendency what is needed
is a disciplined cadre of committed, conscious revolutionaries.
Tragically, it was precisely this lesson of Leninism which was to be
forfeited by the Comintern precisely when the CCP needed it most.
The
Chinese working class could not wait for the CCP to develop itself into
the necessary instrument for taking power. We have already explained
how the mass protests in 1919 involved mass strike action by the workers
for the first time, and they got a taste of their own power by
successfully freeing gaoled protestors. The May 30th Movement
of 1925, which marks the ‘official’ beginning of the revolution of
1925-7, was like a more intense rerun of the movement of six years
previously. In other words, the second Chinese Revolution was started by
the working class. Militant strikes had been taking place at a Japanese
owned cotton mill in 1925 in Shanghai. One of the Japanese foremen shot
dead a protestor. During the mass student solidarity demonstrations
that followed, British police shot at and killed several protestors,
sparking off a massive nationwide anti-imperialist conflagration. The
floodgates were opened, and over the next few months demonstration after
demonstration and strike after strike shook China. The imperialists and
their puppet government knew not what to do, so furious and
comprehensive was the revolt, and several more shootings like the ones
on May 30th followed. The working class was from the very
beginning at the forefront of this militancy, a fact of enormous social
significance and one that should have reminded leaders of the Comintern
of the victorious Russian Revolution that brought them to power.
“In
May 1922 the first national labour conference met in Guangzhou under
the leadership of the triumphant seamen. The conference was attended by
delegates of 230,000 union members… The labour movement grew with
astonishing speed and militancy. On May Day 1924, in Shanghai, 100,000
workers marched through the streets and twice that number marched in
Guangzhou… It is obvious that by the time the Kuomintang was
reorganised in 1924, workers in China had already begun to organise
themselves in a movement marked by its independent spirit and
militancy… G. Voitinski reported at the time that the delegates ‘gave a
cold and dubious reception to the declaration of the responsible
representative of the Kuomintang, who called upon the workers to form a
united front with the peasants and intellectuals, but not under the
hegemony of the proletariat’.” (Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution)
The
“hegemony” or leadership of a class in society is dependent on its
social strength determined by its relationship to the means of
production. By this time the Chinese working class was no doubt still
numerically small, but had an enormous social weight, first of all in
its essential economic role in carrying out the work in all the key
areas of the economy – transport, manufacturing, extraction of raw
materials and energy, and secondly in its ability to develop a
consciousness of this power, an ability which was clearly realised by
1925 in the form of mass unions and militant strike activity that was
largely victorious. Marxists do not measure a class’s political power
and role from a moralistic standpoint, nor with some sort of
arithmetical calculus which would automatically declare the most
numerous class as the rightful ruling class. Instead we measure it by
its objective economic strength in society. As the events of 1925-7 will
show, the Chinese working class was already extremely powerful despite
its small size. This social fact has remained the case in China ever
since.
Ultimately, any class which is capable of wielding power
and transforming society in accordance with its interests must manifest
this capability in a powerful political party. But it is not sufficient
to have a political party that some individual has merely given the
abstract name of the class, rather the class in question, the working
class, must see and understand that party as its own and express itself
through such a party on a mass scale. Only then is the party really
worthy of the name. In that case such a proletarian party has gigantic
potential power; it is the mightiest leaver with which to change
society. All that is then required is for the working class and its
leadership to be conscious of this fact.
Looking at the facts it
should be clear that by 1925, the Chinese working class was sufficiently
economically strong to lead the revolution, for as we shall see their
strikes had a decisive impact on society at that time. But it was also
sufficiently conscious and politically organised to carry through the
tasks of the revolution, i.e. to take power itself, rather than merely
to support another class in its endeavours. For the Chinese Communist
Party, with the publicly self-declared goal of leading the working class
to take power and overthrow capitalism, and its open association with
the Russian Revolution, had already gained a mass following and played a
decisive role in establishing and leading the very unions that were
organising the working class. According to Peng Shuzhi, “by the time the
revolution had reached its greatest height (March-April 1927) the CCP
had in fact become a mass party… it lead three million organised
workers and fifteen million organised peasants.” Its own membership
numbered in the hundreds of thousands only a few years after its
founding. The combination of these factors, with the addition of the
world’s first workers’ state with its powerful Communist International
on the Chinese border, should have assured the victory of the second
Chinese Revolution in 1925-7 as a workers’ revolution.
Incidentally,
this experience of sudden, dramatic revolutionary developments in a
country with no previous proletarian revolutionary or even reformist
tradition is very instructive today, and not just for China. There is a
constant and tedious chatter on “the left” about the parlous state of
the very same official “left” the world over. The apparent disappearance
of working class traditions and the electoral weakness of the workers’
parties are constantly drawn attention to as proof that no serious
revolutionary movement may again occur. Yet not only is it an
exaggeration to say these traditions have gone – indeed in many respects
the working class has a greater awareness of its rights than ever
before – but this fails to address the question as to how these
traditions were created in the first place?
This period of Chinese
history is extremely instructive on this matter. There was an explosive
combination of revolutionary events elsewhere, a global crisis of
imperialism (WWI), and the rapid creation of a new, urban and
super-exploited class in sharp opposition to the anachronistic
compradore bourgeois/landlord class. The objective necessity to better
their conditions, and the perception of intolerable injustice engendered
by imperialist occupation, forced the new working class to clash
violently with the ruling class. It is these unavoidable clashes,
historic events, which are the turning points in history after which all
else is changed. One has to speak of China “before” and China “after”
the 1920s. Unfortunately for the present bourgeois, the intolerable
contradictions of capitalism the world over are evidently reaching the
point at which dramatic events and class conflict are no longer
postponable, and these events will serve to renew militant traditions
and consciousness in a big way. Indeed, they already are.
A Revolutionary Policy
Thus
the leadership of the working class in the Chinese Revolution by the
early 1920s was fairly evident. Of course it is natural that the mass of
these politically inexperienced workers would, despite their newfound
militancy, tend to look to the “big names” of the bourgeois republican
nationalist movement, such as Sun Yat Sen, for leadership in this
outbreak of anti-imperialist struggle in 1925.
the beginning of all revolutions there is an optimistic striving for
unity with all the various progressive forces in society. It is only
after these initial experiences that a polarisation then takes place, as
the working class, unsatisfied with changes in personnel at the top, or
the promise of coming elections, begins to place its own more radical
demands on the agenda. As soon as the revolution begins there is an
embryonic split in the movement along class lines.
For instance,
in the case in question, the revolution was first set in motion by
workers on strike. Although it is true that the new trade unions were
already being organised by the CCP and not the Guomindang, their demands
were generally formally acceptable to the bourgeois Guomindang
leadership – simple economic demands for a shortening of the working
day, union recognition, and political demands for national sovereignty.
However,
the methods used by trade unions betrayed their class character, a
class just as much in contradiction with the burgeoning Chinese
capitalists and foremen as with the foreigners. Strikes would not be
welcomed by otherwise “anti-imperialist” Chinese businessmen, to the
extent that such nationalist businessmen even existed. With foresight of
the inevitable coming split along class lines within the nationalist
movement, the CCP could have lead the more uncompromising toiling masses
away from a compromising bourgeois leadership that would, as we shall
see, come to betray the nationalist movement.
Lenin’s awareness of
this class logic within the anti-imperialist movements lead him to lay
down the following formula for the Communist International’s strategy in
the colonial world,
“With regard to the more backward
states and nations, in which feudal or patriarchal and
patriarchal-peasant relations predominate, it is particularly important
to bear in mind:“[…] the need for a determined struggle against
attempts to give a communist colouring to bourgeois-democratic
liberation trends in the backward countries; the Communist International
should support bourgeois-democratic national movements in colonial and
backward countries only on condition that, in these countries, the
elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist not only
in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special
tasks, i.e., those of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic
movements within their own nations. The Communist International must
enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in the colonial
and backward countries, but should not merge with it, and should under
all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement
even if it is in its most embryonic form.” (Lenin, Draft Theses on the Colonial and National Questions, presented to the Second Comintern Congress 1920)
Thus
according to the programme of the Comintern under the leadership of
Lenin, the overarching strategy of the CCP should have been to
participate in the national movement under the leadership of the
Guomindang only on condition that the party maintain its independence.
It must freely criticise the Guomindang, and prepare always for the day
when the CCP would be strong enough to openly oppose the Guomindang. As
soon as the CCP was strong enough to do so, the Guomindang would quit
the revolution precisely in order to make a pact with the imperialists
to attack the too powerful CCP. As we have said, the Chinese bourgeois
would always have more to fear from their own aroused working class than
from British imperialism. At least with the latter in power they could
retain some of their privileges. And finally, the CCP must not give the
Guomindang a “communist colouring”, allowing the latter to fool the
masses as a “friend” of the people. All this is exactly in accordance
with the founding principles of the CCP as quoted in the previous part.
In
reality, even this programme of the Comintern, which was of course not
written for China but the colonial world in general, does not apply
exactly to the details of China in 1925. For one could not really
describe this revolution as “bourgeois democratic”, being led from the
beginning as it was by the CCP, or at least the unions it helped create,
and being carried out with working class methods in the towns and
peasant-insurrectionist methods in the countryside.
Although they
were linked with the Guomindang, which was the more well-known party,
the peasant organisations were from the start more influenced by the
working class than the merchants, “On May Day 1925, the 2nd National Labour Conference and the 1st
Provincial Assembly of the Peasant Association took place
simultaneously in Guangzhou… the delegates paraded jointly, together
with thousands of Guangzhou workers and farmers who poured into the city
from the countryside” (Isaacs, op cit.). Yes, immediately preceding the
revolution in 1924, the Guomindang did manage to use the rising tide of
the masses as a base to take control of Guangzhou, and yes, in the eyes
of most workers and peasants, probably both the CCP and the Guomindang
were to be supported as anti-imperialist. But considering that its
membership ran into the hundreds of thousands, and had organised
millions of workers, there was never really any need for the CCP to play
second fiddle to the Guomindang, even if it was, as Lenin outlined,
only to prepare itself for ultimately breaking with the Guomindang.
This
was indeed the attitude of Chen Duxiu and the other original leaders of
the CCP. “Chen… insisted that the Guomindang was the party of the
bourgeoisie.” (Feigon, op cit.). So what was the problem?
Peaceful Coexistence
The
source of the problem lay outside China’s borders. The necessary
internationalism of the socialist revolution works both ways – on the
one hand, the emergent working class in the colonial world needed the
speedy material help and experience of the Russian working class for
their own liberation, but on the other hand, the victorious Russian
proletariat desperately needed to export its revolution or suffer its
degeneration in isolation. The Russian working class needed the victory
of the German (and later the Chinese) working class to assist in the
building of socialism. Since the German revolution was defeated in 1918
and 1923, the German working class could offer no assistance. It is no
coincidence that only one year after this German defeat, Stalin’s
bureaucratic power began to consolidate itself and expressed his theory
of “socialism in one country”.
is no time here to go into a lengthy explanation of how the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) abandoned Bolshevik methods and
programme. Trotsky was of the opinion that in the mid 1920s Stalin’s
policy was not to consciously betray or destroy revolutions elsewhere.
Rather the outlook of “socialism in one country” expressed an inherent
bureaucratic need to seek so-called “peaceful coexistence” with the
powerful capitalist states. From the narrow point of view of preventing
an immediate attack from the imperialists, of course seeking to appease
them is the obvious answer. But the very existence of a successful
revolution and planned economy was anathema to imperialism, especially
one so disease ridden as European imperialism was in the first half of
the twentieth century, such that no amount of compromising could avert
their attempts to destroy the USSR. This is proven by the German
invasion of Russia even after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, as well the
whole of the Cold War.
Furthermore, the whole existence of the
Soviet Union and Russian Revolution should have been directed to the
realisation of world revolution, the only thing that could build
socialism in Russia. The conservative aim to simply maintain the
existence of the Soviet Union and, most importantly, the power and
privileges of its bureaucracy, was not only insufficient for realising
world revolution, but directly harmful to that cause. The Russian
bureaucracy, in establishing diplomatic relations and trade treaties
with bourgeois nations, came to know only their own counterparts in
those countries, namely the bureaucracies of bourgeois states. It
follows necessarily that consciously aiding a revolutionary struggle of
the toiling masses against the various bourgeois states would have a
deleterious effect on relations with said bourgeois states. For this
reason Stalin inverted Lenin’s formula of Internationalism, of the
subordination of the USSR’s interests to those of the world revolution,
into the subordination of the interests of the world revolution to those
of the USSR (and its most immediate interests at that). Stalin began to
use the Communist parties affiliated to the Comintern, such as the CCP,
as mere tools of Soviet diplomacy with the West.
“In
China, the line was directed toward a rapprochement with the ‘solid’
leaders, based on personal relations, on diplomatic combinations, while
renouncing in practice the deepening of the abyss between the
revolutionary or leftward developing masses and the traitorous leaders.
We ran after Chiang Kai-shek [leader of the Guomindang by mid 20s] and
thereby drove the Chinese communists to accept the dictatorial
conditions put by Chiang Kai-shek to the Communist party.” (Trotsky, Chinese Revolution and Theses of Stalin)
These
are the reasons, entirely external to China and the CCP, that the
Stalin/Zinoviev line for the Chinese Revolution contradicted Lenin’s
theses on work in colonial revolutions, directly contradicted Chen
Duxiu’s view of the Guomindang and the whole experience of its role
during the 1911 revolution. In spite of everything, the Stalin
controlled Comintern was to continually order from 1923 onwards that the
CCP and the working class could play no leading role in the coming
revolution, could at best offer an auxiliary to the Guomindang and the
Chinese bourgeoisie, and that the CCP must do everything in its power to
join the Guomindang and convince the working class and peasantry of the
Guomindang’s necessary and progressive role. All this was designed to
persuade the bourgeoisie that the CCP presented them with no danger
whatsoever in the hope that such friendly relations would win the USSR
an ally in China.
Stalin’s leadership of the Comintern was too
short sighted to understand the class dynamics of Chinese society, too
short sighted to spot the signs that the Chinese working class would
impress its own methods of strike action onto the revolution
irrespective of Comintern pleadings. Blinded by his desire for a
“respectable” ally in the form of the Guomindang, he could not
understand that the militancy of the Chinese workers would inevitably
drive the Chinese bourgeoisie away from the striking working
class and the CCP and into the hands of the imperialists, barring any
possibility of a meaningful Comintern/Guomindang alliance. Having
embarked on this bureaucratically driven policy, Stalin would cling to
it rather than cave in and admit that Trotsky and the CCP’s own
leadership were right for the sake of his own prestige.
The Revolutionary Policy Betrayed
Grigory ZinovievIt
is in no way an exaggeration to say that the source of the eventual
bureaucratic degeneration of the CCP, including its present role in
managing Chinese capitalism, is to be exclusively found in the
bureaucratic degeneration of the Comintern. We have already outlined how
without the leadership of the Comintern under Lenin and Trotsky, the
creation of a healthy, democratic CCP clearly committed to overthrowing
capitalism would not have taken place in 1921. Nevertheless, having been
established, there is no doubt that this party, under the leadership of
Chen Duxiu and committed to leading a socialist revolution in China,
would not have taken the contradictory step of suddenly capitulating to
the perspective of merely aiding a bourgeois national revolution were it
not for the imposition of the bureaucratised Comintern.
This is
proven by the opposition within the CCP to Stalin’s perspective of
joining the Guomindang. Because of Chen Duxiu’s and others’ opposition
to that erroneous perspective, the Comintern had to eventually force out
the founding leadership and install an anti-democratic regime in the
CCP to mirror that in the CPSU, creating an atmosphere of intolerance
mixed with deference to the USSR. The party moved from having yearly
conferences, a leadership freely elected from the membership and an open
atmosphere of democratic discussion focused on the tasks at hand, to
one of intrigues from Moscow, mass expulsions of those associated with
the Left Opposition in Russia (many young CCP comrades were sent to
Moscow to study, as a result of which a very large proportion joined or
were sympathetic to Trotsky’s Left Opposition) and ignorance of the
national and international situation as Moscow deliberately withheld
from the CCP information that would contradict its line. At one point
the CCP underwent 17 years without a conference!
“Most
of the leaders of the CCP had only the sketchiest understanding of
theory… the result was that Moscow did their thinking for them… But
unfortunately those doing the thinking were no longer Lenin and Trotsky,
who had brought the [Russian] revolution to fruition, but Stalin, who
had betrayed it. Although Trotsky and his fellow thinkers had a strategy
which could have led the Chinese Revolution to victory, their views
were suppressed by the Stalinists, who advanced what amounted to a
Menshevik line for China.” (Wang Fanxi, Chinese Revolutionary)
The
freedom to criticise is inadmissible to the maintenance of any
leadership whose existence is directly contrary to the needs of the
party.
Peng Shuzhi, a participant in these events, describes the
process whereby Chen Duxiu and the entire CCP leadership’s resistance to
the new Guomindang policy was overcome:
“Just as the
CCP was determining its policy toward the Chinese revolution at its
Second Congress, the Communist International made a
one-hundred-eighty-degree turn in its policy… In early August 1922,
Maring arrived at Shanghai and, after meeting with Sun Yat Sen [i.e. the
Comintern met with the leader of an opposing party over the heads of
the CCP leadership], asked the CCP Central Committee to call a special
meeting at which instructions from the Comintern would be discussed.
These instructions were: CCP members were to join the Guomindang as
individuals… all those in attendance at this meeting opposed this
proposal, the main reasons being: the Guomindang represents the
interests of the bourgeoisie.” (Peng Shuzhi, Introduction to Leon Trotsky on China)
Naturally
the basis for an international leadership of the revolutionary movement
is not the identity of conditions in each and every country, but rather
the unity of the world economy through difference. The wealth and power
of developed capitalist nations is not repeated elsewhere, but is
precisely the precondition for the poverty and weakness of undeveloped
nations. The one depends on the other. It is because of the specific
conditions in various parts of the world that a genuinely revolutionary
international leadership must take into account the experiences and
points of view of the respective sections of the International, rather
than arrogantly ignore them. Bureaucratically imposing a line onto a
national section that does not agree will only damage that section and
the International as a whole.
If it were the case that the CCP’s
anti-Guomindang instincts were wrong (and they weren’t), the Comintern
leadership should have respected the delicate condition of this new
party and opened a democratic, friendly discussion on the matter with
the CCP. Above all, despite their inexperience, no one could have known
what the real situation on the ground was better than the Chinese
communists, “domestic factors are, in the last analysis, decisive. We
must base our fundamental orientation on the development of these
internal forces.” (Trotsky, Problems of our policy with respect to China and Japan).
Instead
they went behind their backs, essentially striking a deal with the
Guomindang, and used this done deal as well as the prestige of the
Comintern leadership to twist the young CCP’s arm into agreeing. “Since
Chen Duxiu expressed this opposition when he attended the Fourth
Comintern Congress, the chairman of the Comintern, Zinoviev, formally
raised the question for discussion in the RCP Politburo in early January
1923. Except for Trotsky, all the others, such as Stalin, Zinoviev, and
Bukharin, approved having CCP members join the Guomindang” (Peng
Shuzhi, op cit.).
That they felt the need to use such underhand
tactics betrays a lack of confidence in their own position. The
resolution that came out of this meeting also expressed a criminal lack
of confidence in the Comintern’s own section in China, compromising the
whole purpose of the CCP as an independent party of the proletariat from
the start:
“The only serious national-revolutionary
group in China is the Guomindang, which is based partly on the
liberal-democratic bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie… since the
independent workers’ movement in the country is still weak… still
being insufficiently differentiated as a wholly independent social
force, the ECCI [executive committee of the Communist International]
considers it necessary that action between the Guomindang and the young
CCP should be coordinated.”
The agreed terms of this
“coordination” were not at all equal, the CCP comrades having to join
the Guomindang as individual members but were denied the right to
criticise its leadership. So the Comintern was not only ignoring the
fact that the workers’ movement was already independent and the
strongest progressive force in society at that time, but was also
producing a self-fulfilling prophecy – by tethering the CCP to a
bourgeois party, gagging the former in the process, their strategy could
only serve to prevent the CCP and workers’ movement from gaining the
necessary independence and strength. Despite their correct misgivings
the CCP submitted to the discipline of the Comintern leadership and
embarked on the policy of Guomindang cooperation.
The Struggle for a (Bourgeois) Revolutionary Party
When
a revolutionary party is being built, enormous attention must be paid
to the education of its first layers of membership, to prepare them for
the enormous tasks of the future but also so that they can carry out the
painstaking work of party building itself, which requires a lot of time
and patience. However, the effect of the policy of seeking greater
participation with the Guomindang under the understanding that the CCP could not
hope to lead the revolution and that it must instead merely pressurise
the Guomindang into carrying out the bourgeois national revolution, was
inevitably the neglect of the building of the CCP and an abdication of
responsibility towards leading the workers’ movement.
the pressure of the Comintern, Chen Duxiu retrenched his earlier views
regarding the Guomindang, saying that “cooperation with the
revolutionary bourgeoisie is the necessary road for the Chinese
proletariat.” Mao Zedong, at this point a young Central Committee
member, expressed the party’s newfound hope that the bourgeoisie would
take the lead that the CCP was so kindly giving them:
“This
revolution is the task of the people as a whole. The merchants,
workers, peasants, students should all come forward to take on the
responsibility for a portion of the revolutionary work; but because
of the historical necessity and current tendencies, the work for which
the merchants should be responsible in the national revolution is both
more urgent and more important than the work that the rest of the people
should take upon themselves… The merchants are the ones who feel these sufferings most acutely and most urgently.” (Mao Zedong, quoted in Peng Shuzhi, op cit.)
This characteristic of pleading with
the bourgeoisie, urging it to fulfil its “historical role”, signifies
that the bourgeoisie was not playing this role, was shirking the coming
revolution. If they were leading a struggle against imperialism, the
natural thing to do would be to organise independently to place demands
on them, not cheer them on from the rear. In truth it was the CCP and
the workers’ movement that were at the forefront, and so it was
necessary for them to issue a request that the bourgeois might take its
rightful role at the head of the revolution now that all else was in
place, like the sounding of the intermission bell calling theatre goers
to take their seats. In the classical national bourgeois revolutions,
the task of leadership naturally fell to the bourgeoisie since there was
no organised working class to speak of. Here we have the farce of an
organised, militant working class denying itself in the hope that the
revolution may thereby retain its bourgeois character!
So the CCP chased after the Guomindang instead of building its own forces.
“Mao
Zedong, a standing member of the Central Committee and organisational
secretary, put all of his time into propaganda work for the Shanghai
executive headquarters of the Guomindang and completely abandoned
organisational work for his own party… In other provinces and cities,
such as Hunan, Hupei, Sichuan, Beijing, and Tianjin, all CCP cadres
worked hard to reorganise the Guomindang and directly took over the
party’s work… thus putting a stop to the organisational work of the
CCP. The workers’ movement was forgotten, even to the point of
disbanding the CCP’s labour secretariat!” (Ibid)
Why
was it necessary to do this? Surely this party which was to inevitably
lead the revolution could organise itself? According to Gregor Benton,
the first hand experience of the Chinese communists, experience which
the Comintern should have sought out and listened to, taught them that
the Guomindang was “’dead’ even in the early 1920s” (Benton, China’s Urban Revolutionaries).
So weak was this famous party, that “early in 1924… Guomindang
branches in most places came under Communist control” (Zheng Chaolin, Chen Duxiu and the Chinese Trotskyists).
Only this “control” was purely organisational, i.e. not political,
since the CCP, operating under the illusion of Guomindang revolutionary
strength, used their work and influence in the party not to win over
more people to a Marxist programme, but to win the approval of its
leadership. In doing so they inevitably propped up that tottering
leadership, gave it a life line and bought it time with which to
reorganise in order to attack the labour movement it so feared.
Although
the Guomindang leadership must have welcomed the material aid (with no
strings attached!) from the Comintern, they maintained a class hatred
for the communists in their own country (Sun Yat Sen explicitly states
“it was not Chen Duxiu’s but Russia’s idea to befriend us”) and always
strove for a deal with the West, just as they had in WWI in the hope of
regaining Shandong Province, “since the Communist Party joined the
Guomindang… all its propaganda against British, American, French, and
Japanese imperialism has served to undermine the Guomindang’s
international image… and that [propaganda] against militarism has
served to destroy any chance for cooperation between the Guomindang and
powerful internal forces.” (Chang Chi et al., quoted in Peng Shuzhi, op
cit.).
So the CCP chased after the Guomindang, and the Guomindang
chased after the militarists and imperialists, i.e. the sworn enemies of
any change in the status quo! Truly, perceived dependence upon others
has always been the greatest weakness of the global labour movement.
In
this way, the CCP went from having the most promising of beginnings to
finding itself criminally unprepared for the revolution. One can only
imagine the confusion and demoralisation this process must have had on
its membership as they struggled to make sense of and implement the
Comintern’s mad policies. What could have been the world’s second
successful proletarian revolution was as a result doomed from the very
start.
