After the war, commencing May 1st 1919, there opened a period of militant workers’ struggles and growth of the working class movement in China. In the spring of 1923 Lenin wrote his last article, declaring that the revolution in the east was approaching. From then on, seized by his fatal disease, Lenin never worked again. Towards the end of 1923, Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev who were at the head of affairs decided in spite of all the teachings of Lenin which pointed to the necessity of or-ganising the working class independently of and against the bourgeoisie, and notwithstanding the experience of the Russian Revolution itself, that the young Communist Party of China should join the bourgeois nationalist Kuo-mintang. Trotsky opposed this measure, but to no avail.
In the middle of 1925 there occurred the General Strike in Shanghai as a protest against the shooting of workers and students by the British Imperialist police. The Chinese bourgeoisie supported the strike at the start but withdrew their support after a month. This strike showed clearly that the working class of China was the class that was destined to lead the assault against imperialism. The strike was settled in Shanghai but was the signal for over a hundred strikes of sympathy all over China, The mightiest of these was the famous Hongkong-Canton strike.
Both in Canton and British owned Hong Kong a boycott of British goods and a general strike was declared. The strike was complete. The workers set up their strike committee which functioned as the executive committee of an embryo soviet. It organised the strike, built up an armed guard of pickets and set up a strikers’ court which tried offenders. After a year the strike continued as strong as ever with the British capitalists losing half a million pounds a day! The Communist Party of China played a leading part. There was a rapid growth of trade unions all over China. The Communist Party membership, 800 in 1925, by January 1926 had risen to 30,000. To add to all this, the peasants, suffering under the feudal-militar-ist landlords and harassed by money-lenders, began to unite in a vast agrarian movement. The Chinese revolu-tion had started. With a correct leadership there were tremendous possibilities before it.
THE PERMANENT REVOLUTION
Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, the correctness of which was borne out by the whole ex-perience of the Russian revolution, is the sole means by which we can comprehend the revolutionary process in backward countries like China, India and Spain. It is the only sure guide to the success of the revolution in colonial and semi-colonial countries.
Trotsky points out that in the present imperialist epoch in which capitalism has become a world wide system, we have the phenomenon in backward countries of feudal and pre-capitalist forms existing side by side with the most modern capitalist forms. This is what he calls the law of combined development. The wooden plough and the bullock cart of the village co-exist with the power-driven machine and modern means of locomotion of the town. Together with semi-feudal relations in the land the most modern capitalist relations are reproduced in indus-try. This co-existence of the old with the new, of pre-capitalist with modern capitalist relations, has the most profound implications for the course of development of such backward countries.
The bourgeois-democratic revolution clearing the way for capitalist development which occurred in the advanced capitalist countries in previous centuries (in England in the 17th and in France in the 18th centuries) had not yet taken place in these backward countries. The tasks of this belated bourgeois revolution, particularly the abolition of a semi-feudal land system, have still not been completed. These backward countries therefore face a bourgeois-de-mocratic revolution, the basis of which is the land question. Now, in what manner will this revolution occur? In pre-vious centuries, the rising bourgeoisie provided leadership to the peasants who rose against the feudal landlords, and the revolution was accomplished in this manner. But the bourgeoisie of backward countries, which has come into existence only after the progressive role of the bourgeoisie in the world as a whole had been exhausted, can no longer perform this revolutionary role.
In the first place, having come late on the scene, they do not have the independence and strength of the early bourgeoisie of former times. They are from their birth connected with and dependent on international finance capital, that is, the big bourgeoisie of the leading imperialist countries. This is particularly evident in the bourgeoisie of colonial and semi-colonial countries. Here, although the local bourgeoisie may on occasion be prepared to play an oppositional role to the imperialists they do so not for the purpose of embarking on a revolutionary struggle to secure their independence, but only for striking a bargain with the imperialists. Even where they embark on a genuine struggle against one section of imperialism, they generally do so with the help, overt or secret, of another imperialist group and are in no case prepared to struggle for freedom from all imperialism.
Secondly, unlike the once revolutionary bourgeoisie of the advanced countries referred to earlier, which arose in opposition to the feudal landowning, classes and in struggle against it, the bourgeoisie of backward countries has deve-loped largely from the landowning class itself, and in any case is closely connected with the landlords, particularly through loans and mortgages. It is not surprising, therefore, that they are not prepared to help the peasants to overthrow landlordism.
Finally, and most important, the bourgeois-democratic revolution in England and France occurred at a time when there was no industrial proletariat in the modern sense. But the bourgeois democratic revolutions in backward countries are unfolding at a time when large con-centrations of workers already exist in these countries. And these workers are in daily conflict not only with the imperialist owners of capital but with the local bourgeoisie. The workers moreover, being a product not only of in-digenous capital, but also and in fact, predominantly—of foreign capital, have as a class grown to a degree out of all proportion to the size of the indigenous bourgeoisie. The suspicion and fear engendered by this realisation in the hearts of the indigenous bourgeoisie consequently not only prevents them from leading the bourgeois-democratic revolution but actually drives them to the camp of the imperialists and landlords on the approach of revolution.
The peasantry, history has taught us, is incapable of leading a revolution. The urban petty bourgeoisie in backward countries is a declining class. The only class, therefore, that can lead the bourgeois-democratic revolu-tion at the head of the peasantry for the overthrow of the power of the imperialists, of landlordism and for the remnants of feudalism is the working class. But this places before the working class the prospect of seizing the power and proceeding with the execution of its socialist tasks, and thus the bourgeois-democratic revolution de-velops uninterruptedly into the proletarian revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In Russia the workers proceeded with their socialist tasks of the expropriation of the capitalists only several months after they had seized the power. In countries like India and China, however, where the imperialists are directly the main owners of capital, we can expect this stage to arise much earlier. The bourgeois democratic stage of the revolution in these countries will be much shorter and the proletarian stage arise much earlier than in Russia.
But the revolution cannot be established even at this stage. The world as we remarked at the outset has today become united in a single inter-connected economic system. And the contradiction of this world capitalist system can finally be resolved only on a world scale. The working class of any particular country after its victorious seizure of power is immediately faced with the task of effecting a socialist transformation of its property relations and of making the transition to Socialism. But this task it cannot accomplish alone. The international division of labour and the inter-dependence—produced by capital-ism itself—of the different parts of world economy, de-mand that this task of the establishment of socialism can be accomplished only on a world scale. The working class of the victorious country will of course proceed with the socialist transformation so far as it is able under the concrete circumstances, but the establishment of socialism will depend on the spread of the revolution to other coun-tries. In other words, the revolution in one country is a link in the inter-connected chain of world revolution. Either the revolution will spread step by step from country to country until it is victorious all over the globe, or it will recede and end ultimately in capitalist counter-revolution, This is Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, as founded on the experience of the Russian revolution of 1905 and confirmed by the subsequent experiences of Russia, China and Spain.
THE BLOC OF FOUR CLASSES OR THE CHINESE NATIONAL FRONT
On the basis of the strategy dictated by the theory of permanent revolution and on the basis of the strategy of Lenin and in the Russian revolution, the broad line of policy should have been clear. It was necessary in China to teach the workers from the very beginning to be mis-trustful of the native bourgeoisie, on the outbreak of the revolution to organise the workers independently of and against the bourgeoisie in Soviets, to help the peasants to organise in Soviets, to give full support to the peasant movement for the seizure of the land, and with the development of the revolution assured to it by the leadership of the working class, to establish the dictatorship of the prole-tariat.
But for Stalin the revolution was a bourgeois-democratic revolution which was to be led by the bourgeoisie in the Kuomintang. And the business of the workers, apparently, was to do nothing to impede the bourgeoisie. By the infamous policy of the “National United Front” or the “bloc of four classes” (workers, peasants, urban petty bourgeoisie and “national” bourgeoisie), which is the counterpart of the “National Front” in India, the workers were forced to follow the bourgeoisie, and the Chinese revolution ended in an unmitigated tragedy.[1]
In early 1926, Chiang Kai Shek at the head of the Na-tionalist forces in the South planned to leave Canton in order to defeat the pro-imperialist war-lords of the North and to bring the whole of China under the Kuomintang Government. In order to get the help of the Chinese work-ers and peasants for this campaign, Chiang needed the support of the Comintern which the Chinese masses trusted.
But on March 20th 1926 Chiang Kai Shek with a sudden military coup seized the power in Canton, disarmed the Strike Committee headquarters, imprisoning the Com-munist Party leaders and other left-wingers. The Communists however learned nothing from this experience. In May they came to an agreement with Chiang. They promised not to criticise the anti-class struggle doctrines of Sun Yat Sen (the now dead Chinese nationalist leader) and to give a list of Communist Party members to Chiang. Members of the Communist Party were in future not to hold any important position in the Kuomintang or in the Government. And members of the Kuomintang were forbidden to join the Communist Party.
There were protests in the Chinese Communist Party. The necessity of a change of course became apparent even to the leaders. In June 1926 the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party adopted a decision to withdraw from the Kuomintang and to continue work by means of a bloc with it from outside. This was however peremptorily overruled by the leadership of the Comintern. Even the organisation of Left-wing fractions within the Kuomintang was forbidden. Borodin, the representative of the Co-mintern in China declared “The present period is one in which the Communists should do coolie service for the Kuomintang”! (Isaac’s—The Tragedy of the Chinese Revo-lution ). The Communist Party was thus tied finally to the Kuomintang itself and the workers and peasants to the bourgeoisie.
Having thus tied hand and foot the revolution in the South, Chiang embarked on his Northern campaign with the full support of the Communists. He received the enthusiastic support of the workers and peasants on his journey, thanks to the prestige of the Russian revolution and the Soviet State which he was able to exploit through his association with the Comintern. But he forbade the Communist Party from agitating for Soviets or the confis-cation of the land, and permitted agitation only for in-creased wages and rent reduction. In October 1926 the Moscow leadership wired the Chinese Communists to keep the peasant movement in check in order not to alienate the Generals. Some months earlier, soon after the March coup the Politbureau of the Communists Party of the Soviet Union had—with Trotsky alone opposing— approved the admission of the Kuomintang as a “sympathising party” into the Communist International.
In Canton, the bourgeois Canton Government had in the meantime called off both strike and boycott, after a struggle of over 15 months. Regulations were issued providing for compulsory arbitration of trade disputes, forbidding workers to possess arms and to picket workplaces. The Com-munist Party, anxious to propitiate the Government, raised no protest.
THE SHANGHAI INSURRECTION
In February 1927 the revolutionary workers of Shan-ghai hearing of the triumphant approach of Chiang whom they had been taught to regard as the military General of the revolution, made a spontaneous general strike, 300,000 workers participating. The reactionary Military Governor of Shanghai embarked on a campaign of widespread repression and shooting of the workers. Meanwhile Chiang who had professedly come to Shanghai to defeat the reactionary military government there, had arrived at the gates of the city. But the “revolutionary General” made no attempt to come to the aid of the workers. The workers’ strike was brutally crushed. But their organisations were still intact and on March 21st the heroic workers rose again on one last great effort, and completely defeated and drove out the reactionary forces. All of Shanghai with the exception of the International Settle-ment and the French Concession was in their hands. More than half a million workers were ready to rise as one man at a word from the Union headquarters in defence of their conquests. They even set up a provisional govern-ment, apparently fully under Communist control.
On March 26th Chiang entered Shanghai and entered immediately into negotiations with Chinese bankers and merchants and the imperialists in order to make a bloody settlement with the workers. The Communists in a des-perate effort to placate him organised a reception and ban-quet in his honour, which he did not condescend to attend. Instead he was busy organising his forces for the attack. Gangsters of the Shanghai underworld were organised, soldiers sympathetic to the workers were replaced by fresh and ‘loyal’ battalions. The Communists of Shanghai, still acting under Stalin’s orders, made no attempt even now to warn the workers against the danger that was impend-ing. No propaganda was attempted among Chiang’s own soldiers, though not inconsiderable sections of them were already sympathetic to the workers.
In Moscow, Trotsky and the Opposition were warning against a counter-revolutionary blow and demanding the unconditional independence of the Chinese Communists. On April 3rd Trotsky submitted an article “Class relations in the Chinese revolution” warning against Chiang the “Chinese Pilsudski” and demanding immediate withdrawal from the Kuomintang. The article was refused publi-cation. On April 5th in a speech in the Hall of Columns in Moscow Stalin himself replied as follows to the Oppo-sition that the Soviet public were not permitted to hear “Chiang Kai Shek is submitting to discipline. The Kuomintang is a bloc, a sort of revolutionary parliament, with the Right, the Left, and the Communists. Why make a coup d’etat? Why drive away the Right when we have the majority and when the Right listens to us? …. Chiang Kai Shek has perhaps no sympathy with the revo-lution, but he is leading the army and cannot do otherwise than direct it against the Imperialists”. (see Issac’s -The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution —for the account of the suppression of this speech by Stalin when his words were refuted by events ten days later).
However, when the inevitability of a blow became apparent, the Executive Committee of the Comintern, still attempting to avoid a conflict with Chiang, wired to the Chinese Communists not to give up their arms, indeed not to use them, but to hide them. The revolutionary troops of the 1st Division whom Chiang had ordered to leave Shanghai were prepared to defy the orders and to stay be-hind to fight alongside the workers. But in view of the above instructions the Communist leaders did not accept the offer. The troops were transferred. On April 12th Chiang launched his terror on the workers of Shanghai. The Communist Party, the trade unions, and all workers’ organisations were completely and thoroughly smashed. The Communist Party had nothing to tell the workers. Without leadership, some offered no resistance. Others fought and were massacred.
As an epitaph to the Shanghai massacre Stalin announced on April 21st that “events have fully and entirely proved the correctness” of the Comintern line. (The Questions of the Chinese Revolution , by Stalin, published in International Press Correspondence of April 28th, 1927).
THE WUHAN DEBACLE
The Opposition, led by Trotsky, had all along demanded that the Communist Party should withdraw from the Kuomintang and should put forward the slogan of Soviets, since the Soviets are the only form of organisation that, drawing as they do, the wide masses of the toilers into them, can generate the strength to meet the blows of the reac-tionaries as well as to take the revolution forward. The Shanghai defeat had strikingly if not tragically demon-strated the correctness of the analysis of the Opposition. But the Shanghai defeat, though it was a staggering blow to the revolution need not have been fatal. In Hupeh and Hunan provinces the revolutionary tide among the peasantry was gathering force, and the workers here were capable of supplying leadership to the peasants.
But even now, after the example of Shanghai, the Comintern refused to recognise the necessity for the with-drawal of the Communist Party from the Kuomintang. Faith was now placed in the petty bourgeois government of Wang Chin Wei and others in Wuhan, and efforts were concentrated on turning this “Left” section against Chiang “the revolutionary Kuomintang in Wuhan,” now wrote Stalin, will in fact be converted into an organ of the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the prole-tariat and peasantry … (we must adopt) the policy of concentrating the whole power in the country in the hands of the revolutionary Kuomintang.” The slogan of Soviets was inadmissible, continued Stalin. This would mean “issuing the slogan of a fight against the existing power in this territory … of the fight against the power of the revo-lutionary Kuomintang.” (Stalin—The Questions of the Chinese Revolution ). On May 18th at the 8th Plenum Trotsky declared, “The leaders of the Left Kuomintang of the type of Wang Chin Wei and Co. will inevitably betray you if you follow the Wuhan heads instead of forming your own independent Soviets. The agrarian revolution is a severe thing. Politicians of the Wang Chin Wei type, under difficult conditions, will unite ten times with Chiang Kai Shek against the workers and peasants”—(Problems of the Chinese Revolution by Trotsky). Prophetic words, which were to be fulfilled in the space of two months.
The land question was the most important and imme-diate question facing the Chinese revolution. The petty bourgeois government at Wuhan however, had no inten-tion of giving the peasants the land. They only passed a paper resolution to make a 24 per cent. reduction on land rent. The Communists concurred. At this time a mass upsurge of the peasantry was developing which in strength and magnitude is comparable only with the rising of the peasantry in the Russian revolution. The land was seized, landlords driven off, peasants’ courts, peasant committees and peasant associations set up, women liberated, foreign missionaries packed off, and superstitions swept away in the mighty storm of the peasant revolt. Ten million peasants were drawn into the peasant organisation. But a peasant war, as we know, cannot achieve victory unless there is a more advanced class there to lead it. And the Comintern, by tying the class to the bourgeoisie in the Kuomintang, prevented the workers from supplying this leadership.
Towards the end of May the troops of the feudal mili-tarists raided the labour headquarters in Changsha, the capital of the province of Hunan, and killed hundreds of workers and peasants. On receiving this news thousands of peasants armed themselves and marched on Changsha, but were persuaded to disperse at the request of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Reaction now worked its revenge. The landlords came back with the militarists and in the course of the next few months over twenty thousand peasant men and women were killed in Hunan. After Changsha the terror spread to the province of Hupeh.
By the end of June Wang Chin Wei and the Wuhan Government had come to terms with Chiang Kai Shek and agreed to exterminate the Communists. By the middle of July the attacks on the trade unions were in full swing. Executions followed. Borodin, the Comintern represent-ative who had been sent to guide the Communist Party, hurriedly departed on his long journey to Russia. The Communist leaders fled. In Canton, Shanghai, Changsha, and now in Wuhan, the Chinese masses had seen the Kuo-mintang leaders whom the Communists taught them to regard as friends of the revolution, suddenly change into the cruel butchers of workers and peasants. Reaction now reigned from North to South. The Chinese revolution had been defeated.
The extent of the defeat cannot be measured merely by the actual physical annihilation. The workers and peas-ants had not merely fallen before a stronger enemy. They had been decapitated by their own leaders, by the very men and organisations that the Communists had taught them to trust. The demoralisation resulting from this, incal-culably deepened the effects of the counter-revolution.
But this did not prevent Stalin from writing as follows “Should the Chinese Communists have set up the slogan six months ago: ‘Down with the leadership of the Kuomintang’? No, for that would have been a very dan-gerous and precipitate step and it would have rendered the approach to the masses more difficult for the Communists, for the masses at that time still believed in the leadership of the Kuomintang. At that time the leadership of the Kuomintang in Wuhan had not achieved its highest point as a bourgeois-revolutionary government and had not yet discredited itself in the eyes of the masses through its fight against the agrarian revolution and by its defection to the counter-revolution. Should the Chinese Communists now set up the slogan ‘Down with the leadership of the Kuomintang?’ Yes, of - course, they must” he ponderously concludes. (International Press Correspondence , 4th August 1927). So according to Stalin the Communist Party must wait passively until the bourgeoisie is exposed by taking the open road to counter-revolution. It little, matters, apparently, that the revolutionary vanguard is exterminated. For the bourgeoisie will be exposed! It goes without saying that the workers and peasants could do infinitely better without such leadership.
The Opposition in Russia pointed out that the best that could be done now was to make an orderly retreat as the Bolsheviks had done under the leadership of Lenin after the defeat of the revolution of 1905 in Russia. It was necessary now to conserve the revolutionary forces in pre-paration for the next mass upsurge, even though that might take years to come. But the prestige of the Moscow ruling clique had to be maintained. The Opposi-tion was now attacked as liquidationists having no faith in the revolution. It was stated that the Slogan of Soviets was correct now and that the Chinese revolution had en-tered a higher stage.
The Old Chinese leadership was removed by the Comin-tern, and new leaders hastily appointed to carry out the new line. Mass expulsion of Chinese Communists who refused to accept the new line, took place. A series of armed uprisings were now organised which never had a chance of success and all ended in crushing defeat. The masses, instead of making the tremendous response that was expected simply refused to co-operate.
THE CANTON MASSACRE
The correctness of the criticisms of the Opposition was being demonstrated at every step. After the series of blunders and defeats, the Moscow leadership was now im-posing a policy of putschist adventures in a desperate effort to save their face. The most tragic of these disasters was at Canton.
Canton was the last industrial city in which the Com-munists still had a following. Though small in number, they consisted of those workers who had stuck to the Com-munist Party through all the difficulties and defeats. They constituted the best elements of the Canton proletariat and would have provided a splendid base for the slow and difficult tasks of the future. But the Opposition had to be proved wrong and Stalin correct. Under direct instruc-tions from Moscow the policy of insurrection was applied to Canton. If the mass insurrections of history, and parti-cularly the October insurrection, can teach us anything, it is that although the technical preparation of insurrection can be made to order, it cannot be successfully carried out except in conjunction with and indeed at the peak of the mass movement. But the Comintern leadership thought otherwise.
The Canton insurrection was timed to take place at the same time as the meeting of the 14th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, at which it was to be proved that the Chinese revolution had entered a higher stage. It is difficult to believe that this was accidental. On December 11th the Canton Communists and their mili-tant working class followers, in all numbering no more than a few thousand, staged an insurrection. A Soviet Govern-ment was declared. But the ill-fated Canton Commune as it afterwards came to be known, was not destined to last long. The masses who had accomplished miracles of revolutionary heroism in the Canton-Hongkong strike of a year ago had by now been disillusioned and demoralised. They merely stood aside and watched while the flower of the Canton proletariat fought a hopeless battle against Kuomintang troops numbering well over 50,000. About 1500 people escaped. The remainder stood their ground until the last of them was slaughtered by the attackers in the afternoon of December 13th. After the overcoming of the last resistance terror was let loose on the men, women and children of working class Canton. The exact number of killed is not known. The final toll of the count-ed dead was 5,700.
Reaction now reigned supreme. Under the Kuomin-tang terror men, women, children were mutilated, tortured, imprisoned and killed. It is estimated that between 1927 and 1930 over 100,000 were killed.
So great and disastrous was the defeat under the leader-ship of Stalinism that the Chinese workers have not re-covered to this day. The defeated Communists and worker militants who escaped from Canton and other cities now made their way to the mountainous districts of the central provinces and there formed partisan armies. With the spread of the peasant revolt to these previously untouched areas they formed peasant Soviets and declared the widely separated areas under their control “Soviet China.” But all this belongs to a period when the bureaucracy in Moscow having suffered defeat after defeat in the international as well as the national field by their rightist mistakes, had been compelled by circumstances to change their policy of going to the other extremes and embarked on a policy of ultra-leftism. It suffices to mention here that the peasant soviets of Red China without the workers in the towns to supply leadership, were doomed to defeat. The fact that it took Chiang Kai Shek six years to defeat them does not disprove the elementary truth of Marxism that the peasantry alone cannot accomplish a revolution. It is only a testimony to the heroism and self-sacrifice of the downtrodden Chinese peasantry. It also provides us with a glimpse of what might have been poss-ible if the proletariat in the towns, following a policy independent of the bourgeoisie had formed a worker-peasant alliance under its own leadership.
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The Russian revolution had demonstrated the correctness of the theory of permanent revolution. The Chinese revolution of 1925-27 provided added confirmation, though from the negative side. It proved that a backward coun-try could accomplish its bourgeois democratic revolution only by the establishment of the dictatorship of the pro-letariat. The “democratic dictatorship of proletariat and peasantry,” a formula which Lenin had abandoned in time to save the Russian revolution, was demonstrated in China to be nothing more than the Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. That the victory of the revolution can be accomplished not by “national fronts” but by the leadership of the pro-letariat in the bourgeois democratic revolution and the uninterrupted development of the latter into the prole-tarian revolution is the chief lesson to be learnt from the tragic experience of China.
[1] In February 1917 too, Stalin and the Bolshevik leaders in Russia believed that the Russian revolution was only a bourgeois-demo-cratic revolution and that Russia could not by her own forces proceed to the proletarian revolution. Since this was not substan-tially different from the position of the Mensheviks, Stalin actually prepared proposals for the merging of the Bolsheviks and Menshevik parties. Till the arrival of Lenin in April the Bolsheviks played the role of a constitutional Opposition party to the bourgeois Provisional Government. Lenin of course changed all this and set the party on the road to proletarian revolution. Stalin , Zinoviev, Kamenev and others at first opposed him, but soon gave in.