[Militant No. 343, 18 February 1977, p. 6-7]
An answer to the letter from Monty Johnstone , of the British Communist Party, by Lynn Walsh
Last week [‘Militant’ No 342] we printed a letter from Monty Johnstone of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Comrade Johnstone took up a number of points, particularly on the question of the Chinese revolution, that we had made in the Editor’s reply [see ‘Militant’ No. 335] to a letter from the Editor of “Cogito”, theoretical and discussion journal of the Young Communist League, which recently printed Part II of Monty Johnstone’s “major critique” of Trotsky.
In his letter (to which we would ask readers to refer back), Monty Johnstone deals with two main things:
Comrade Johnstone is completely mistaken on these points – as we will demonstrate. First, however, we should, perhaps, apologise to our readers for devoting so much space to a refutation of these distortions and misrepresentations, which may seem somewhat obscure and academic. It would certainly be much more valuable to activists in the labour movement to debate the fundamental perspectives, strategy and tactics of the Chinese revolution and their relevance to the colonial revolution today. We will return to this in later issues of the paper.
But it is Comrade Johnstone who has chosen to surround the fundamental issues with a cloud of scholastic quibbling. Nevertheless, we consider that it is necessary to take him up. The truth is, that by his attempt to discredit Trotsky, Monty Johnstone is attempting in a roundabout way to discredit those who stand on Trotsky’s ideas in the labour movement today. For this reason alone it is necessary to put the record straight.
Background
What was the historical background to this theoretical debate? The Chinese revolution 1925-27 arose from a magnificent movement of the young Chinese working class. Despite its numerical weakness in a mainly agrarian country, the working class emerged after the first world war as the most dynamic political force in Chinese society. From the time of the first big strike wave in 1919, the Chinese workers undertook struggle after struggle against their imperialist exploiters and their home-grown stooges.
The revolutionary movement that erupted in 1925 brought millions who had previously lived like pack animals on to the stage of history. With enormous energy, and inspired by the success of the Russian revolution, the advanced layers of the workers attempted to find a path to the socialist transformation of society. All the conditions existed for a development on the same lines as the October revolution, with the working class drawing the other oppressed sections, especially the exploited poor peasantry, behind it to complete the unfinished business of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and begin the tasks of building socialism.
Revolution
The revolution of 1925-27, however, was tragically derailed by the completely misconceived policies of the leadership of the Communist International, which in this period was in the hands of Stalin and Bukharin. The enormous authority of the Comintern gave the International Executive an absolutely decisive influence over the young Chinese Communist Party (formed in 1921). But after 1923 the leadership completely abandoned the perspectives adopted by the first four congresses of the International under Lenin.
From the premise that the immediate tasks in China were those of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, Stalin and Bukharin drew the utterly false conclusion that the working class should therefore concede the political leadership of the revolution to the national bourgeoisie. They supported the ill-fated idea of the “bloc of four classes” – the national bourgeoisie, the petit-bourgeoisie, the peasantry, and the working class – which was to carry through the revolution in China. This, according to Stalin and Bukharin, necessitated the long-term participation of the Chinese CP in the Kuomintang, the party of the national capitalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek – the butcher of the Chinese revolution.
Leon Trotsky consistently opposed the policies of the Comintern leadership at this time, repeatedly warning of the terrible consequences that would flow from them. It will not be possible within the scope of this article to give a complete account of Trotsky’s position. Readers who want to go into it more fully, however, can now turn to the excellent collection, “Leon Trotsky on China” (1976), which brings together all his published writings on China together with unpublished material from the Trotsky archive. Here, we will have to concentrate of the issues raised by Comrade Johnstone.
Comrade Johnstone, however, does not raise the vital political issues in his letter. Instead he concentrates on trying to refute the idea that the KMT was ever admitted to the Comintern as a “sympathising section”. Presumably, he hopes in this way to discredit Trotsky by showing that he falsified history for the sake of a factional point – as if Trotsky needed to invent a detail like this, which is really incidental to the disastrous policies of the Stalin-Bukharin leadership.
But we will look at the evidence.
The facts surrounding the exact organisational relationship of the KMT to the Comintern are, it is true, somewhat obscure. But this is more a comment on the methods that prevailed under Stalin – with the selective reporting of events and proceedings, or even their complete suppression – than on the likely authenticity of this particular episode. The official reports, however voluminous, of the International Executive Committee (ECCI) can by no means be taken as gospel – as we shall see.
In his article “Stalin and the Chinese Revolution: Facts and Documents” (26 August 1930), first published in “Problems of the Chinese Revolution” (1932) and reprinted in “Leon Trotsky on China” (1976) (pp 443-474), Trotsky wrote:
“After the Canton coup, engineered by Chiang Kai-shek in March 1926 and which our press passed over in silence, when the communists were reduced to miserable appendages of the Kuomintang and even signed an undertaking not to criticise Sun Yat-seninism, Chiang Kai-shek – a remarkable detail indeed! – came forward to insist on the acceptance of the Kuomintang into the Comintern: in preparing himself for the role of an executioner, he wanted to have the cover of world communism – and he got it. The Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-shek and Hu Han-min, was accepted into the Comintern (as a ‘sympathising party’). While engaged in the preparation of a decisive counter-revolutionary action in April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek at the same time took care to exchange portraits with Stalin.”
The last “remarkable detail” is confirmed by the copy from Trotsky’s archives of a letter (18 April 1927) sent by Trotsky to the Eastern Secretariat of the ECCI strongly protesting at their having sent him the photograph of Chiang Kai-shek with “the request promptly to send him my autographed picture… it is absolutely incomprehensible to me why the Eastern Department of the ECCI – the international organisation of the communist vanguard of the proletariat – occupies itself with such a thoroughly compromising matter as the spreading of portraits of Chiang Kai-shek.” (“Trotsky on China” p. 157) Is Comrade Johnstone going to claim that Trotsky fabricated such remarkable details to substantiate his case?
No Myth
In his 1930 article, Trotsky went on to say: “After the Shanghai overturn, the bureaus of the Comintern, upon Stalin’s order, attempted to deny that the executioner Chiang Kai-shek still remained a member of the Comintern. They had forgotten about the vote at the Political Bureau, when everybody against the vote of one (Trotsky), sanctioned the admission of the Kuomintang into the Comintern with a consultative voice.” (“Trotsky on China” p. 446)
We still have, however, the claim of Monty Johnstone that the acceptance of the KMT into the Comintern as a sympathetic section is “one of the myths of vulgar Trotskyism”, stemming from Trotsky himself. Yet nearly every serious academic authority, the very “authorities” Johnstone is usually only too ready to use when they are critical of Trotsky, accepts Trotsky’s account. We may list a few : Julius Braunthal (“History of the International” vol. II p. 234); Jane Degras (“The Communist International: Documents” vol. II p. 245); Conrad Brandt (Stalin’s Failure in China” p. 57) and also Trotsky’s biographer, Isaac Deutscher (“The Prophet Unarmed” p. 320).
Even Monty Johnstone, for that matter, does not categorically assert that the vote in the Politburo referred to by Trotsky did not take place. Instead, he takes his cue from a footnote in E. H. Carr’s monumental History of the Soviet Union (“Socialism in One Country” vol. III part ii, p. 766/Penguin p. 792).
But Carr does not refute Trotsky. More tentatively than Johnstone, he says, “if the decision was taken, it was apparently not carried out.” Under the circumstances, Carr’s “apparently” makes all the difference. There were many decisions, of more fundamental importance than this, that were not communicated to all ranks of the international in “International Press Correspondence” (“Inprecor”). The proceedings of the Eighth Plenum of the ECCI, for example, which in spite of Chiang’s bloody coup against the CP claimed that “events fully justified the prognosis of the Seventh Plenum”, were never published at all – not surprisingly!
Then, as his own contribution, Johnstone throws in the point that “The Politbureau of the Soviet Party of course had no powers to admit parties to the Comintern.” Come off it, Monty! This is an astounding argument!
Whether the Politbureau had the formal authority to affiliate or disaffiliate sections of the international – or to appoint and dismiss leaders with the sections, for that matter, is an entirely academic point. In practice, in the period after 1925, the Stalin-Bukharin clique did make such decisions frequently behind the backs of the other Politbureau and ECCI members, and used the bureaucratic apparatus to make sure they were carried out. To ignore this, hiding behind the formal procedures that were supposed to apply, is a complete falsification of the Comintern’s history.
A further indication of the status afforded in practice to the KMT by Stalin was the attendance of KMT delegates at the 6th and 7th Plenums of the ECCI. At the Sixth Enlarged Plenum (Feb/March 1926) there were 77 voting and 53 non-voting delegates, representing 32 parties. Among them was Hu Han-min, a right-wing member of the KMT leadership. If the KMT was not regarded as a “sympathising section”, what was Hu Han-min doing there?
At the Seventh Enlarged Plenum (Nov/Dec 1926), there were 100 voting and 91 non-voting delegates. On this occasion also there was a KMT delegate, Shao Li-tse who attended as Chiang’s personal representative.
KMT-Comintern
In his speech, Shao said: “We are convinced that the Kuomintang, under the leadership of the Communist Party and the Comintern, will fulfil its historic role” (“Inprecor” 30 December 1926). As Chiang was, at that very time, in the process of suppressing the movement of the workers and peasants that arose in the wake of his northern expedition, these words were deeply ironic. But there is no doubt that they were intended to reinforce the impression that the KMT was part of the International.
This was certainly the impression fostered by Stalin’s leadership, “Comrade Shao” (as the official record puts it) was greeted with (according to the record) indescribable enthusiasm when, “in the name of the Kuomintang”, he declared: “We expect the support of the Comintern and all its affiliated parties… Long live the Comintern! Long live the world revolution!” (“Inprecor” 1 December 1926)
In this way, the leadership of Stalin lulled the consciousness of the Chinese and world working class, lent capitalist butchers the authority of the International, and prepared the way for the bloody defeat of the Chinese labour movement by the Kuomintang generals.
Whether the KMT was or was not formally accepted into the Comintern is, in the light of this, a purely scholastic point. We can go further: if the formal status of the KMT was not mentioned in official Comintern journals, it seems much more likely that it was in order to blur the distinction between full membership and sympathetic status, rather than because the KMT was not in fact a sympathising section.
Yet there is another piece of evidence that has recently come to light. This is a document which records Trotsky’s speech to the Presidium of the ECCI on 27 September 1927, the occasion of which Trotsky was expelled from the Executive – mainly because of his consistent opposition to the leadership’s fatal policies in China. This is published for the first time in any language in “Trotsky on China” (1976).
In it, Trotsky is recorded as saying: “Even worse, the Kuomintang, to this day, remains a member of the Comintern. Which Kuomintang? The Kuomintang of Chiang Kai-shek or that of Wang Ching-wei [according to Stalin, a “left” KMT leader, after Chiang had “turned to the right” – L.W.]? But now they have united. Thus the united Kuomintang of Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Ching-wei still belongs to the Comintern. You are in a hurry to expel Vujović and myself. But you have forgotten to expel the comrades-in-arms Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Ching-wei. Perhaps you will agree to place this question on the agenda today as well.” (p. 273)
If the KMT had never been a sympathising section of the Comintern, this would hardly be a very effective point, to say the least, for Trotsky to make in a private meeting to the leaders of the ECCI who were obviously well acquainted with its recent history.
Perhaps Comrade Johnstone will say that this document, which has lain for so long in Trotsky’s archives at Harvard, is a forgery, manufactured just to prove Trotsky’s point? But then Stalin and the world CP leaders for years denounced Lenin’s “Testament”, first published by Trotsky in 1928, as a forgery – until after Kruschev’s secret speech at the Twentieth Congress, when it was published for the first time in Russia.
If Monty Johnstone does not accept the accuracy of Trotsky’s account of the Comintern’s fatal policies in China, or the authenticity of the documents he produces, let him apply to the Kremlin bureaucrats for the publication of all the relevant official documents. Why is it that most of the vital minutes, reports and resolutions of the leading bodies of the Soviet Party and the International are still not available, even to scholars, while Trotsky’s large archives have been open to inspection for many years?
Second Point
Now we can turn to the second main point in Monty Johnstone’s letter, “As last as May 1927,” he writes, “Trotsky protested against suggestions that he wanted a Communist withdrawal from the Kuomintang ‘ which is not proposed at all’ (Trotsky, “Problems of the Chinese Revolution” p. 24).” By means of this mini-quotation, torn out of context, Comrade Johnstone attempts to demonstrate that Trotsky’s position was inconsistent and that Trotsky, by not calling for a break with the KMT in 1927, was as responsible as anyone else for the tragedy that followed.
Johnstone’s quotation is actually culled from Trotsky’s speech to the Presidium of the Eighth Plenum of the ECCI, in May 1927, (printed later in “Problems of the Chinese Revolution”, p. 97; and also available now in “Trotsky on China” p. 231 and Trotsky’s “Writings 1930-31” p. 87). By brazenly ignoring the context of this speech, and glossing over its actual contents, Johnstone completely distorts Trotsky’s position. While it is true that there was not a formal proposition for withdrawal from the KMT before the Plenum, it is quite untrue to say that Trotsky therefore supported continued CCP activity within the nationalist party.
Dishonesty?
But Monty’s method takes no account of such “subtleties”. In his “Cogito” article (page 6), a few lines before he refers to this 1927 quotation, Johnstone quotes Trotsky as saying: “I personally was from the very beginning, that is from 1923, resolutely opposed to the Communist Party joining the Kuomintang.” By counterpoising these two quotations, Johnstone attempts to “prove” Trotsky’s inconsistency and also, by implication, his dishonesty. In reality, however, this example simply reveals the sheer dishonesty of Johnstone’s own method.
The last quotation is actually taken from a letter to Max Shachtman , extensively quoted in the latter’s introduction to “Problems of the Chinese Revolution” (Johnstone’s source), which explains the differences between Trotsky’s own personal position and that of the “United Opposition” in which Trotsky was working in 1927. Trotsky explains that the majority of the Left Opposition, formed in 1923, fully supported his position of complete opposition to work in the Kuomintang. But a majority of the “United Opposition”, formed in 1925 {actually 1926 – ID}, which included the group of Zinoviev and Kamenev, as well as Trotsky’s own group, decided against publicly calling for the CCP to leave the KMT.
Trotsky’s Mistake
“Up to 1926,” wrote Trotsky (Letter to Shachtman), “I always voted independently in the Political Bureau on this question [i.e. work of the CP within the KMT – L.W.], against all the others.” Radek and Piatakov, however, two of the leading members of the “1923 Opposition”, supported the Zinoviev group on this question. “…since it was a question of splitting with the Zinovievists, it was a general decision [of the “United Opposition” – L.W.] that I must submit publicly in this question and acquaint the Opposition in writing with my standpoint. And that is how it happened that the demand [for withdrawal from the KMT – L.W.] was put up by us so late, in spite of the fact that the Political Bureau and the Central Committee always contrasted my view with the official view of the Opposition. Now I can say with certainty that I made a mistake by submitting formally in this question.” (“Problems” p. 13-14)
This letter, incidentally, also provides an answer to some of the other allegations that Comrade Johnstone, repeating the old Stalinist calumnies of the past, levels against Trotsky: for example, that Trotsky’s “incorrect understanding” resulted, among other things, from “considerations of a factional character” (“Cogito”, p. 4).
Yet here we have clear evidence that Trotsky made what he later acknowledged as a serious tactical error that flowed from his concern to bring together a united Marxist opposition against the disastrous policies of the Stalin-Bukharin leadership. Limiting his public criticism of the leadership, Trotsky attempted to formulate a policy which would allow the Central Committee “to retreat from its erroneous course to a correct one” – without loss of face to the Opposition, or to Trotsky personally.
This is one mistake, published by Trotsky himself in the 1930s, that Comrade Johnstone, who otherwise devotes so much effort to revealing Trotsky’s “mistakes”, passes over in silence. In a letter to the United Opposition (June 23 1927), recently published for the first time in “Trotsky on China” (p. 249), Trotsky frankly analysed the tactical mistake – “a serious blunder” – that had been made, and corrected it by advocating an immediate open call for Communist withdrawal from the Kuomintang.
Trotsky wrote: “We have proceeded from the fact that the Communist Party has spent too much time in the Kuomintang … but that openly calling for immediate withdrawal from the Kuomintang would even further sharpen the contradictions within our own party. We formulated the kind of conditions for the Chinese Communist Party’s remaining in the Kuomintang, which – in practice, if not on paper – essentially excluded the possibility that the Chinese Communist Party would remain with the Kuomintang organisation for a long period. We tried in this way to devise a transitional formula that could become a bridge our Central Committee could use to retreat from its erroneous course to a correct one. We posed this question pedagogically and not politically… this turned out to be a mistake. While we were busy trying to enlighten a mistaken leadership, we were sacrificing political clarity with respect to the ranks. Because of this, the very way in which the question was raised was distorted. The Central Committee did not use our bridge, crying that the Opposition was in fact in favour of withdrawal from the Kuomintang. We were compelled to ‘justify’ ourselves and argue that we were not in favour of withdrawal…
“Our basic approach on this question was correct, since we all held to the course for withdrawal from the Kuomintang. Our mistake was in pedagogically watering down, softening and blunting our position on the basic question … We are putting an end to this error by openly calling for immediate withdrawal from the Kuomintang!” This in our opinion, demonstrates with the new evidence, long buried, the consistency of Trotsky’s position, and the scrupulous honesty of his approach.
Conclusion
In “Cogito” Monty Johnstone claims that his attackes on Trotsky does not necessarily imply support for the policies of Stalin. But how can any Marxist appraise Trotsky’s ideas apart from the events and policies to which they were related? In reality, Comrade Johnstone’s method, of scholastically disputing details in Trotsky’s writings, is a shamefaced way of justifying Stalin’s policies – and their continuation by today’s leaders of the world’s “Communist” Parties. What is at stake, after all, is not theoretical correctness in the abstract, but the fate of the socialist revolution, yesterday and today.
The erroneous policies of the Comintern in China led to the slaughter of thousands of Communist militants, the flower of the working class. While Trotsky fought, at each calamitous new turn of the situation, to correct the strategy and tactics of the leadership, the leaders of the International simply tried to conceal their mistakes and renewed their onslaught against the Left Opposition as “consolation”.
Time after time, the Stalin-Bukharin leadership taught the workers to welcome Chiang Kai-shek as their revolutionary leader, completely submerging the Marxist identity of the Chinese CP, thus disarming the workers in the face of reaction. Heroic risings of the workers in Canton and Shanghai were put down in blood, and the trade unions and workers’ parties smashed by the Kuomintang generals.
The Comintern leaders, in short, bound the Chinese proletariat and held its head on the block for Chiang, their own appointed executioner, to wield the axe. It is from this that Monty Johnstone, by concentrating his attack on Trotsky’s alleged “errors”, is trying to divert attention.
But, as we have previously promised, we will return in more detail to the events of the Chinese revolution, and Comrade Johnstone’s polemics, in subsequent editions of ‘Militant’ and ‘Militant International Review’.
£5 Claim
Finally, Comrade Johnstone owes at least £5 to the Militant Fighting Fund. In his letter he generously, but foolishly, offered £5 to “any reader who can demonstrate one single fabrication in my article.” Any impartial reader would surely agree that, even in this short article, taking up a couple of issues, we have demonstrated more than one.
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