Date: Fri, 07 Mar 1997 19:08:28 -0500
From: Vladimir Bilenkin <achekhov-AT-unity.ncsu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-G: Godena stalinist apologist


dr.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz wrote:
> 
> > Date:          Fri, 7 Mar 1997 08:40:30 -0500 (EST)
> > To:            marxism-international-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
> > From:          louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
> > Subject:       M-I: "Dr" Bedggood,  Cracker-jack historian
> > Reply-to:      marxism-international-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
> 
> >
> > Now,  I honestly don't know how Dave Bedggood manages to eke out his living,
> > but if someone is paying him to teach history or even read it,  they should
> > insist on some remedial courses for the good doctor.
> >
> > He disapprovingly quotes EH Carr declaration that Trotsky only discovered
> > his opposition to the KMT after the April 1927 disaster,  and goes on to
> > "prove" his (Bedggood's) point by prolific quotes from Leon Trotsky -- ALL
> > written AFTER April 1927!!
> 
> Why don't you read my reply instead of skipping the bits that you
> dont agree with.
> 
> Point one:
>  I proved my point against you that Trotsky did not
> vote to make Chiang Kai-shek an `honorary member of the comintern'.
> One down.
> 
> Point two:
> Trotsky's calls to get the CCP out of the KMT began in print in April
> 1926, one month after the first Chiang `coup' not as Carr claims
> about the same time as the second Chiang `coup' April 1927.
> Two down.
> 
> Point Three:
> The Trotsky archive editors are the ones who document Trotsky's
> positions and timing on China. I explained that the reference in the
> 1926 article that "approves" of a CCP-KMT ENTRY  not ALLIANCE is
> specific to the CP before 1925 while in a propaganda stage. For
> Trotskyists entrism is something very different from stalinist
> liquidation, which is what the Comintern `"Bloc-inside" amounted to.
> Three down.
> 
> Point Four:
> I would not take van de Ven (*From Friend to Comrade*, seriously
> given the near unaniity of Trotskyist and non-trotskyist historians
> who show that it was not the immaturity of the CCP as such but the
> active collaborationist bloc with the KMT which destroyed the
> revolution.  Van de Ven is a latter day menshevik whose method and
> arguments a circular and flawed. Here is a key example of his
> circular sociological reasoning. Referring to the cause of the defeat
> of the CCP by the KMT:
> "The essential assumption of Brandt and Meisner, as well as those
> made by PRC historians, is that the CCP could have succeeded in
> defeating Chiang Kai-shek. A crucial element of the case is that
> Stalin prevented the CCP from building  an independent military
> force. ONE PROBLEM WITH THIS ARGUMENT IS THAT THE CHINESE COMMUNISTS
> DID NOT RAISE THE IDEA OF SETTING UP AN ARMY UNTIL 1927, WHEN IT WAS
> MUCH TOO LATE.  IT WAS NOT THAT THE CCP MEMBERS OPPOSED THE USE OF
> FORCE; MANY SERVED IN THE NATIONAL REVOLUTIONARY ARMY AS SOLDIERS OR
> POLITICAL COMMISSARS, AND THEY ORGANISED ARMED PICKETS AND PEASANT
> SELF-DEFENCE CORPS.  HOWEVER, ITS MEMBERS DID NOT CONCEIVE OF THE CCP
> AS AN ORGANISATION THAT SHOULD HAVE ITS OWN MILITARY APPARATUS."
> (182)
> 
> I wonder why. It does not accur to the author or his brief, Godena,
> to ask why when the CCP was quite capable of engaging in organised
> military activity, they had not separate army.  The reason, is
> simple. It was a condition of the cominterns agreement of the CCP
> "bloc-inside" the KMT that is HAVE NO SEPARATE ARMY. That in fact its
> members serve in a common army.  This was precisely the whole point
> of the popular front,  to disarm the CCP and prevent it building its own
> indepenent revolutionary army which would have not
> only defended Shanghai from the thugs in Chaing's pay, but carried
> the revolution to the rest of China.  If you read the numerous other
> sources, including Chang Kuo-tao's Autobiography, you will find that,
> right from 1922, significant elements of the CCP resisted the
> Comintern liquidationist bloc.  At the time of the second Coup there
> was evidence of KMT troops sympathetic to the CCP.  KMT troops came
> over the the CCP after April 1927 during Stalin's ultra-left turn. So
> had the menshevik line of subordinating the proletariat and the poor
> peasantry to the reactionary bourgsoisie beeen overturned in the
> Cominitern by the Left opposition the revolution would have
> stood a fighting  chance. As it was the heroic CCP cadres had one
> hand tied behind their backs by the Comintern.
> 
> To conclude this point it is completely clear that  van de Ven's
> apologetic sociology is a revision of the revolutionary history of
> China masquerading as `new' empirical evidence of the weakness of the
> Chinese CCP.  This is the old familiar menshevik line, when a
> revolutionary fails because of a popular front betrayal,  blame the workers.
> At the time the Comintern blamed some of the CCP leaders for their own crime.
> Today,  Godena's  sophistication demands a bit of anthropology, a sprinkle of
> sociology, and a whole heap of  bourgeois formal logic, and comes up
> with guess what - blame the immaturity of the workers!
> Four down!
> 
> Godena makes this point against himself:
> 
> > The catastrophe of April 1927 resulted from the Chinese Party's feeble
> > organization and lack of a secure social foundation,  made worse by a lack
> > of military back-up.   This is equally true of the Nanchang and Autumn
> > Harvest uprisings later that year.   Anti-Marxists like Bedggood are always
> > looking for "evil people" betraying, *ad finitum*,  heroic larger-than-life
> > revolutionaries imbued with the Grand Truth of Revolution,  rather than
> > looking the dynamics of the societies in which these "betrayals" occur.   It
> > is a child-like view,  less becoming in squat,  aging "revolutionaries" like
> > our good doctor but still enormously attractive to those still obsessed by
> > the bogey of Josef Stalin.
> >
> Well  I am now an aging, squat,  but child-like anti-marxist because I explain
> history in terms of "evil people".  You might have noticed that the
> dynamics which I point to in the Chinese revolution are class forces,
> not individuals. Class forces which underpinned the cominterns
> menshevik politics, and class forces that were reflected in
> differences in the CCP over the liquidationist policy.  On the
> contrary I have never claimed Stalin to be an `evil person'.  For Trotsky
> and Trotskyists stalinism is a class phenomenon, not a personality
> defect, though we can make allowances in Godena's case. . The only reference
> to Trotsky as an individual in my last post, is his single opposing vote
> to the admission of Chiang Kai-shek to the Comintern. The tables are
> turned, it was Stalin who personified politics.
> Five  down!
> 
> Dave.

Bravo, Dave! It's a good day on M-I too. Proyect got himself in a terrible mess by
proclaiming some Felix Morrow, another SWP renegade, his ideological forefather.
By a stroke of luck, an expert on American Trotskyism and not a member of M-I
has informed the list that Morrow was a CIA advisor and a FBI informer! 
Two down for the day!

Vladimir


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