File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1997/97-03-08.233, message 38


Date: Fri, 7 Mar 1997 21:27:25 -0500 (EST)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: M-G: A few notes on Trotsky and China -- Reply to Bedggood and Bilenkin



Dr Bedggood,  another one -  man  "vanguard" from Australia writes during
that phase of the moon:        
       
>I proved my point against you that Trotsky did not 
>vote to make Chiang Kai-shek an `honorary member of the comintern'. 

Now listen up,  because this is the last time I'm going to bother with you
two vagabonds.    The notion that China needed time to develop first a
national (or bourgeois) revolution before socialism or communism goes back
to the joint declaration between Sun Yat-sen and Adolf A Yoffe,  Lenin's
personal emissary to China,   issued on January 26,  1923.    Dr Sun
declared that the Soviet system could not be introduced into China "because
the conditions do not exist here for the successful establishment of
Communism or Socialism".    Comrade Lenin absolutely agrees with this view."
(the full text can be found in Louis Fischer's *The Soviets in World
Affairs* [New York,  1960: Vintage Books],  Vol II,  pp. 540-541).
Following Sun's death,  Stalin urged continued membership for the Kuomintang
in the Third International,  even as it split into a left and right faction
(the latter led by Chiang).  Trotsky agreed.   This was done chiefly to
impede Japanese influence and to substitute Russian for Western influence
(Wilbur & Lien How,  *Missionaries of Revolutin: Soviet Advisors and
Nationalist China,  1920 - 1927* [Cambridge, Mass., 1989: Harvard University
Press]).   The vote to make Chiang and honorary member of the Comintern
"foreign council" occurred in December,  1925.    Trotsky voted in assent
(Branko Lazitch,  *Historie du Ille Internationale* [Preface by Raymond
Aron], Neuchatel,  Switzerland,  1954: Editions de la Baconniere,  pp.
336-38).      


The "doctor" continues:

:
>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. 
Absolutely false.    Trotsky still favored (in a confidential memo to Radek)
continued collaboration with Chiang as late as March 17,  1927 (!!): "One
can be an ally of Kuomintang,  but an ally is to be watched like an enemy;
one should not be sentimental about one's allies" (quoted in Ulam's *Stalin:
the Man and his Era*  [New York,  1973: Viking Press], p. 276).

 
>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.

This is more disingenuous nonsense from the good "doctor".    The Stalinist
policy was actually a slightly modified model of the Lenin policy which had
been in place regarding the Comintern and China since 1922.    And in 1926,
all things considered,  the Comintern policy seemed to be working out well.
And given Trotsky's endorsement of March 17,  1927of the Chiang - CCP
arrangement,  the "doctor" is doing nothing here but splitting hairs.


>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.       

So van de Ven's Harvard thesis is an example of "Menshivik" history that
goes against the near "unaniity"[sic] of Trotskyist and non-Trotskyist
historians.    What nonsense!!    Their is no unanimity -- "near" or
otherwise -- on any such thing.    The consensus among responsible
historians is reflected in EH Carr;  namely,  that Trotsky only "discovered"
a history of opposition to the Kuomintang only after the catastrophic events
of Aprll 1927.

As I wrote in my earlier post:  

>> 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.

Bedggood fantasizes about Communist armies -- armed to the teeth -- and
ready to foment revolution throughout China at the drop of a hat,  a common
Trotskyite fantasy.    Unfortunately,  it has no basis in reality.    The
truth is that,  while the CCP became between 1925 and 1927 a mass political
party  with an internal culture based on Marxism-Leninism and a centralized
organization,  it was badly riven by factional disputes due partly to the
influx of new members from a wide variety of social and regional backgrounds
and partly to the disagreements about how the Party should relate to the
rest of Chinese society.   It was not until 1927 in fact that the idea of
the Party *as a Party*,  demanding obedience and discipline,  finally
emerged.    Trotsky never understood Chinese society; in fact,  he
understood it less than he did Russian politics,  from which he always
emerged second-best.    A shrewd thinker and energetic organizer,  he was
nevertheless (as Lenin realized) fatally flawed as a politician.   This
often led him to invent scenarios after the fact,  as in the case of China;
it helped compensate for an almost heroic inability to predict the future.

The reasons for the failures of 1927 are varied and complex:  they cannot be
reduced to formulae.    It is part of the psyche of both Bedggood and
Bilenkin that they must continue to blame Stalin for everything.   To do
otherwise would be to repudiate the work and belief of a lifetime.     They
lack the maturity and political acumen for such a step..    Fortunately,  a
new generation of scholars,  with the aid of much new archival material in
both the Soviet 
Union and China,  is bringing these issues back into proper focus.

Louis Godena



     --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---



   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005