Guy A. Aldred Archive
Written: 1935.
Source: RevoltLib.com
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
It was impossible for the Communist International to destroy the Chinese revolution, the British General Strike, and two German revolutions, without developing a proletarian retreat in Soviet Russia. The fact that the Kulak problem still remains demonstrates the fallacy of regarding Soviet Russia as the workers’ fatherland.
The Trotskyist elements, down to their liquidation in 1935, maintained that Soviet Russia was still the socialist fatherland, notwithstanding the errors of Stalinism. But the Trotskyists clung to the idea of the reform of the Third International and of the official Communist Party in the Soviet Union until 1933. It was left to the anti-parliamentarian elements to proclaim correctly, years before, the death of the Third International, and the necessity either of a fourth or a new international, or else of no formal international at all. The anti-parliamentarians were divided on this question, for although they all wished to link up the revolutionary movement in the different countries, some anti-parliamentarians did not see the usefulness of solemn conclaves and mixed language gatherings. The Trotskyists were reluctantly driven to accept the view that the Third International was dead, when the fact could be disputed no, longer. It was only a matter of time for such Trotskyists as retained their integrity of understanding to be driven round to the viewpoint that Soviet Russia is not the socialist fatherland.
On the disputed question of the socialist fatherland, the view of the Anarchists and of the Antiparliamentarians is that although Soviet Russia may retain some elemental after effects of her premature but inevitable working-class revolution — and it would be strange indeed if such a tremendous upheaval served no useful purpose at all -fundamentally she is a capitalist country. Only the world revolution can no longer come from Europe. It has been smashed in Italy, in Germany and in Spain. That world revolution cannot come from Asia, for in Japan Fascism is rising, and in China the Kou Min Tang represents the triumph of the counter-revolution.
In 1934 the final pretended hopes of Communism, the last line of Moscow’s red generals, surrendered to Chiang Kai Shek ; in August of that, year, in the district of Hunan, Li Chien Wu, commander of the independent red regiments, and the other red general, Le Tse-liang. The month before, Kung Ho Chung, who had been the pet of the Stalinists for several years, after events compelled them to give up praising Chiang Kai Shek, surrendered to the latter and offered his services for the suppression of Communism in China.
Kung was a member of the general executive committee of the so-called Soviet government of Juikin. He surrendered on July the 27th, and at once proceeded to Chiang Kai Shek’s military headquarters at Nanchung. He received an immediate military command, and his anti-communist declarations were widely circulated with a full account of his career as a communist general. Chiang Kai Shek extolled Kung’s five years’ military prowess, and declared that his alliance was a tremendous event in the history of China. Kung declared that he joined the communists in 1927 with the idea of working for the masses, but that he now realized that Communism was impossible in China, and that to pursue its realization was to imperil the best interests of the Chinese people. Hence his surrender and his allegiance to the Kou Min Tang.
Kung’s surrender meant the complete triumph of the counter-revolution in Asia, and settled reaction in Russia until the World revolution cries a halt. That revolution can be brought about only in the English-speaking countries and only there if parliamentary social democracy and the futile Communist International are repudiated, the existing communist parties and social democratic factions destroyed, and a direct revolutionary movement started among the workers. It is the duty of the workers of Britain and America to look no longer to Germany or Russia, but to, unite in building up a new and closely-federated communist movement of action and of struggle.