Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 02:08:17 -0400
From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki)
Subject: M-G: COCKROACH! #64 (China Revisited!) 


COCKROACH! #64 (China Revisited!)

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1. China Revisited!

2. China, Trotsky and bourgeois-conciliationism...

3. marxism vs. nationalism

4. One of he LIT-CI and the WI(RFI 21 points!

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China revisited!

> 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.
--------------------------------------------------------
China, Trotsky and bourgeois-conciliationism..

> Proyect writes on Trotsky's concept of permanent revolution:

> David, this formula is not even worth 2 cents. You like to repeat it like
> a parrot but this is not Marxism. You show an eagerness to answer my
> Trotsky quotes with other Trotsky quotes, but this is not the method of a
> Marxist but of scholasticism. What interests is not what Trotsky said
> about China in 1927, but what happened afterward in 1937, 1947 and 1957,
> etc. Trotskyism is simply not the place to go on these matters since it is
> satisfied with repeating the "lessons of 1927".
> 
 The reason I stopped with 1927 is that if you dont understand what 
was going on then there is no way you can make it up afterwards. The 
Trotsky quotes I used were fuller quotes expanding on your own 
quotes.  They showed that we agreed on a national-democratic 
revolution going over to a socialist revolution, its timing dependent 
on the SU and the world revolution.  What you do not accept is that 
the initial democratic revolution must be led by the armed 
proletariat itself mobilising the `plebian masses' - the poor 
peasantry etc - which was not possible unless the CCP broke from the 
KMT and established its organisation and political independence. 
Hence Trotsky's distinction between the two methods of fighting: 
bourgeois-conciliationist vs the worker-peasant. (147). The 
bourgeois-conciliationist method (liquidation in the KMT) would see
the national-democratic revolution succumb to the reaction of the KMT. 
Trotsky was proven right.

This lesson is crucial for understanding what happened then. The 
beheading of the second Chinese revolution led to a Maoist deviation 
in which the peasantry became the leading class. The Third Chinese 
revolution was therefore a national revolution led by the CCP at the 
head of the peasantry. This revolution was bureaucratic from birth 
without the active leading role of the proletariat and created a 
transitional deformed workers state. Because it fell short of 
socialism it was also an incomplete national-democratic revolution.
 A political revolution in which the workers kicked out the bureaucracy 
would have opened the way to socialism; instead today we see an advanced 
capitalist restoration underway under the reactionary bourgeois 
`sign' of completing the national-democratic revolution.The crime of 
1927 comes back to haunt the second Chinese counter-revolution. 

As for Nicaragua.  The Sandinistas led a partly successful  national
revolution but remained trapped inside the "bourgeois-conciliationist" 
method. Because they had a menshevik view of history and their role 
in it, they could not  establish their political and organisational 
independence from the bourgeoisie on the basis of the 
"worker-peasant" method Trotsky spoke of in China.  As a result their  
regime failed to make the transition to socialism, and of course 
failed to realise  the national-democratic revolution, and predictably 
succumbed to the bourgeois reaction, again in the name of `completing 
the national-democratic revolution. 

In this way Stalinism/menshevism, by suppressing the opposition and 
Trotskyism,  contained the world revolution, limited national 
revolutions to at best bureaucratic workers states, and set the scene 
for todays counter-revolutionary defeat of those workers gains and 
the restoration of capitalism.  

So the significance of 1927 is that it confirms the lessons of 
permanent revolution in 1917 and provides a method for understanding 
and concsiously intervening in every national-democratic revolution since. 
The Chinese Trotskyists did that.  In Nicaragua real Trotskyism, 
rather than fake SWP-type `trotskyism', was also suppressed like every 
other expression of independent working class politics.

Dave.
--------------------------------------------------------
marxism vs. nationalism

I think there can be little doubt that the capitalists
and their state have been cutting back on workers
wage and benefit levels for at leasts 2 decades. 
The "Welfare States" social reforms  are all being 
"downsized' for workers to provide more
 Welfare for the Rich so that the big national capitals
can be more competitive..

"Keynesian' reformism  has been cast overboard by the
rulers . It was never any "step toward socialism"  but
began as a way to save capitalism --in the late 30s,
it was promoted along with "national salvation govts"
that led workers to the 2nd imperialist wars slaughter.
Anyway the workers in the post WW2 paid the lions shares
of taxes to fund the reforms their own militant  struggles had
scared the rich into granting.
This was a policy of the rulers to "buy' social peace.

 But the material base for Keynesianism has been 
collapsing for 20 years. In fact the proof of this
 is that whether we get  the liberals -laborites or tory
types in the state control, all these  groups of bourgeois 
politicos  persue virtually the same policy of make 
the workers pay.

In the USA and  the UK, the liberals and labourists 
started the attacks in the late 70s that the conservatives
and tories extended in the 80s. Hyperinflation and
workers readiness to strike and slow down 
to get pay boosts to  try to keep up led the bourgeois
to reduce state $$$ for social spending  and
ditch Keynesism..

Growth rates have fallen and unemployment
(redundancy!!) rates have still remained high 
in spite of the 80s cuts.
No w in the 90s, the cap states are in a rat race 
for new brutal cuts , restructurings of   capital
formation, privatizations, financial sleaze rip-offs ,
and of course Welfare slashings.

The cuts are the sure proofof emergent real capitaist crisis,
(in spite of  lying smiley-happy face  news TV anchors)
In the heyday of Keynesianism  states had 
bigger blocs of capital  than  any blocs of private 
caps could hoe to deploy. So states had more
breathing room to grant concessions to workers
when  we pressed and fought for better conditions..

But by the 70s this changed as monoplolies 
and transnationals  drove to more  centralization 
and concentration of capital  then closing 
the gap and surpassing the liquid capital of states
that they could move around  and turn around 
faster profits thru "globalization"  operations than could
any state capitals. 
Finance  capital was now (the late 70s)  'first past the post"
over the state (mainly constant)  capital  which could not
keep up with the velocity   and turnover of capital
which has not yet been able to overcome the falling
rate of profits overall.

Nowadays the states are in prone position 
opening up finacial markets  to 'foreign'
monopolies to make big profits--then repatriate 
these to the 'home' nations.

The USA was creamingall competition till the
70s, but since Japan and now other big
capitalist sharks are challenging for
the markets at hostility is heating up.
States that want investment must yield
to balance budgets and havelower fiscal
(tax etc. demands). So the bourgoeis
monopolies/corps order 'jump" & cut social spending
down more to 'compete'  and states liberal,
labor and tory say 'how high?"

So today the national state has in
a way been superceeded-- but the
crisis has not been 'solved' and now the
national states are also punishing the
workers more. to keep the workers
divided , all sorts of reactionary 
ideas, groups are being trotted out
to stupify the workers, numb their 
minds , prepare to round up the
scapegoats, etc. Nationalism ,
however 'populistic" is a big weapon in the
bourgeois & state artillery to keep the workers
in line, patriotic, and chauvinistic beacuse with 
capital in this age , the crisis of markets lost
 and pauperization of large blocs of  workers
in the 'home' country leads each national
 state capital and its  rulers to gear up 
and  build new blocs for another 
imperialist world war.

Globalization can only proceed with more attacks
on the standards of workers in tha advanced and
well as less advanced states. . Workers need to build better
serious fightbacks to defend our class and our livlihoods ,
we also need to build up closer political relations amongst
socialists/marxists . Social democracy /Keynesianism is 
a dead letter with its false promises and parliamentary 
scheming .
Building new movements of mass action and struggle
with our fellow workers  is a main tactic now . This 
can be achieved faster  when workers see "national" loyalty
for what it is--subservience to exploitation. In the  
class motion that come up in various industires ,
we should strive for unity of all nationalites and
struggle against capital --in whatever "nationality' 
 it comes garbed in. 
We should strive to sprad the struggles to include
workers of all nationalities even as each "nation'
has its own national/cultural peculiarities -which
surely we be conscoius of and attend to --but
in no way to sow illusions in bourgoeis nationalism.

Neil.
-------------------------------------------------------
One of he LIT-CI and the WI(RFI 21 points!

Hugh R. has posted a document to a number of lists on the Internet which he and
the LIT-CI and the WI(RFI say is a bases at present in the struggle to 
reforge the Fourth International which was destroyed by Pabloism after the 
second world war.

So I would like to take the opportunity to take up one point of disagreement 
and comment on them and see where it leads.

Point 6..they write;

The discussion is more about what these states are today, after the events
of 1989-91, than about what they were in the past.  This discussion
involves the emphasis put on certain tasks (anti-bureaucratic,
anti-imperialist, socialist) in the development of the revolution in these
states. We believe that we are faced with a far-reaching theoretical,
historical, programmatic and political debate and the Liaison Committee
should initiate this.

Exactly! Because if we do not have a clear line on the characterization of 
these states foremost the question that a capitalist counter-revolution has 
taken place then this poses far reaching programmatical and tactical 
questions for any organisation that claims to be authodox Trotskyist. And it 
appears as if Hugh organisation unfortunately are confused about whether a 
counter-revolution has taken place when they say:

"This discussion will take a long time but we know that both organization
have agreements in programatic and political points like:
- The downfall of the bureaucracies through the revolutionary action of the
masses was a highly positive development because it destroyed the world
Stalinist apparatus, although the process of total destruction of the
bureaucracy has not been completed through the control of the working class
over its organisations."

This I unfortunately must say is very confusing! Because if the downfall of 
the bureaucracies was partially because of the "revolutionary" action of the 
working class in these countries then the picture would not be the one we 
see today.
Would it not be more honest to say that after years of Stalinist betrayal 
and mismanagement, the workers beheaded of any kind of real Bolshevik 
Leninist Trotskyist leadership, were led by the nose by various leaders down 
the path of capitalist counter-revolution rather then a political revolution 
to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy. Why this worship of workers action if it 
led to counter-revolutionary
pro capitalist regimes? And if the Stalinist apparatus has been destroyed 
what has replaced it?

Hugh continues
- What has happened in the former USSR and those countries where the
bourgeoisie has been expropriated is the destruction of the reactionary
Stalinist utopia of 'socialism in one country'.

Bob
What has happened is that there no longer exists a degenerated workers state 
in the form of the Soviet Union, nor deformed workers states in the form of 
the east european states. They have been replaced with regimes that are the 
deadly enemies of the proletariat with a program of privatization and 
capitalist restoration. As I see it your organisation is unable to say this 
today which means far reaching tactical and programatical conclusions which 
make it impossible to build a revolutionary International unless this point 
is cleared up and everybody in the common organisation understands this fact..

Hugh organisation continues;
- In the revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of the Stalinist bureaucracy,
history has pronounced its final verdict on the revisionist idea that the
Stalinist bureaucracy, or any section of it, could have a revolutionary
nature. The break-up of the bureaucracy and its parties, and the struggle
of the working class in every country to recover its class conscicousness
and rebuild its independent class movement, constitute an unprecedented and
complex process, which can be understood only through continuous political
intervention and analysis.

What revolutions in 1989? ARe you people seriously trying to tell me that a 
revolution has taken place somewhere to the east that has given the working 
class power. Where and When? And if not then the revolution you are talking 
about must be something new and profound even for Trotskyists..The bottom 
line of this document is some sort of stage theroy of a state that exists 
between a Stalinist deformed and degenerated workers state and a counter 
revolutionary state in the hands of the capitilists and their lackies which 
is supportable? This I see as and adaption to empirical movements of the 
"masses" without a Bolshevik Party who in these states would have fought for 
a political revolution.There can not be any in betweens. We have either a 
conter-revolution in these states or Stalinist regimes or a political 
revoilution led by Bolshevik Leninists Trotskyists which I must have missed. 
Either that or something new which your statement sees these states as some 
sort of halfway house between something linked to the "revolutionary" 
activity of the masses. This is a fundemental revision of Leninism and 
liquidation of a Trotsyist line if it is true.

The movement of the "revolutionary" masses at least according to Lenin is 
linked not only to the objective movement, but the subjective movement of 
the leadership of those masses. This is the essence of Leninism. The essence 
of Trotskyism is and was that unless the Trotskyists of the Fourth 
International were successful then the ultimate destruction of these 
deformed and degenerated workers states through capitalist counter-revolution. 

As I see it your document hardly expresses the subjective factor in the sense of
actually analising the situation and saying one of three things about these 
states.

1. They are still degenerated or deformed workers states.

2. They are no longer this but a capitalist counter-revolution has taken 
place in these states.

3. A Bolshevik Leninist Party was created and a political revolution has 
taken place.

These are the ONLY three alternatives. And any serious Trotskyist must take 
a position on this central question. Period there is no other way or does 
your organisation claim that something other exists or happened that changes 
these fundementals..

The rest of this section is just fine because it is tactically correct in 
regards to these states. (Cuba,China,Vietnam,North Korea) But if you mean 
that these tactics have something to do with the former Soviet Union and 
East European States it is dead wrong. Because in these states a 
counter-revolution has taken place and the tactics and politics for 
(Cuba,China,Vietnam,North Korea) do not apply.

Fundementally Malecki thinks that a capitalist counter-revolution has taken 
place in these states in some cases backed by massive workers protests with 
a pro-capitaslist and counter-revolutionary leadership. Until those who 
claim to be Trotskyist have a clear line on this question unity will be 
impossible because the question is so central in the program,tactics and 
politics involving building and International..Disagreement on this issue 
can not fit in a future reforged International because of this.. 

All so called "Trotskyist" organisations because of our history find 
themselves all over the map on this question. A question which for any kind 
of future International must be avbsolutely clear. You document Hugh is very 
unclear. I think it tries to encompasses the workers movement in these 
countries as some sort of romantic 
anti capitalist force that can not be sucked into all kinds of shit. Germany 
and the failure of the Stalinists proves that workers without leadership can 
even become storm troopers for fascism. Just as in the Eastern European and 
former Soviet Union they can be led down the path of unfortunately 
supporting leaders who have taken them down the road of capitalist 
counter-revolution..

One of the other fundemental principled differences is Yugoslavia. You know 
the difference we have their. I support the ICL line on the national 
question their which involves the theory of "interpenetrating peoples". 
However this difference is not as strategic as the question of the former 
degenerated and deformed workers states. However one must point out that in 
Jugoslavia organisations calling themselves "Trotskyist" wound up supporting 
one side or the other in this which put them on the opposite side of the 
barricades. The ICL contribution on this question I consider a great step in 
marxist revolutionary clarity.. 

However the first is your organisations line on the former Soviet Union and 
East block countries which at best is unclear and which is so fundemental to 
Trotskyism can not be any compromise or centrist adaption. This will only  
can and will lead to both organisational,programatical and tactical 
conclusions which could put members n your organisation on the opposite side 
of the barricades..Here we are not talking just about the Balkans but one of 
the central programatic pillars of Trotskyism. So no one without and 
absolute clear line on this question can be successful in attempting to 
build and International..

Warm regards
Bob Malecki
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