Lynn Walsh: Letter – Lynn Walsh Answers Johnstone

[Militant No. 346, 11th March 1977, p. 9]

Dear Comrades

The real issues in the debate with Monty Johnstone (of the Communist Party) is the fundamentally mistaken strategy and tactics of the Comintern under Stalin in the Chinese revolution of 1925-7. Comrade Johnstone seems to have lost sight of this. In his letter last week, while perfunctorily retreating on Trotsky’s alleged “inconsistency”, Monty again returns to details where he claims we are mistaken.

Comrade Johnstone, for example, objects to my statement that the proceedings of the 8^th Plenum of the International Executive (May 1927) were never published. What is the truth? Literally while Stalin was justifying support for the “left” leaders of the Kuomintang at the Plenum, the “left” KMT general, Hsu K’e-hsiang, was massacring the workers in Changsha.

Yet these vital discussions were held in secrecy. Whereas the proceedings of previous Plenums had been extensively reported at the time in the Soviet and Comintern press, reports of this Plenum were prohibited by the bureaucracy. The pamphlet referred to by Monty [“Die Chinesische Frage auf dem 8. Plenum der Exekutive der Kommunistischen Internationale”] was not a full report, but a brief selection of resolutions and speeches published a year later after the Opposition had published Trotsky’s material on the Plenum.

Comrade Johnstone concedes that our material on Trotsky’s position “helps to explain some of the inconsistencies to which I drew attention.” In fact, we clearly demonstrated that the alleged “inconsistencies” were manufactured by Monty by means of selective quotation and misrepresentation.

He draws attention to a slip where I wrongly gave the date for the United Opposition’s formation as 1925, not 1926. This involved no distortion as I accurately quoted Trotsky as writing: “Up to 1926 I always voted independently…” But Monty himself yet again resorts to selective quotation to imply that Trotsky opposed work in the KMT only after it had proved disastrous: “We approve of Communist support of the KMT party, which we are endeavouring to revolutionise.” (“Prospects and Tasks in the Far East”, 1924).

In the next line, however, Trotsky spoke of the “risk of a national democratic revival” and it is clear that he was advocating critical support for the KMT from an independent Marxist position, not prolonged work inside the KMT, “… it is clear as daylight that the young Marxists of the East run the risk of being torn out of the ‘Emancipation of Labour’ group [i.e. the tiny Chinese CP before the great 1925 events, which corresponded to the preparatory stage of Russian Marxism – LW] and of becoming permeated with nationalist ideology.” This advance warning proved fully justified, mainly because the leadership of the Comintern became permeated with nationalist ideology under Stalin and Bukharin.

Comrade Johnstone again demands “independent” proof of when and where the KMT was admitted to the Comintern as a sympathising party. He knows, however, that the documents necessary to prove exactly what happened – which we admitted are obscure – are still kept under lock and key by the Kremlin bureaucrats. He may well call for their publication. But meanwhile, unabashed, Monty rejects out of hand the account of Trotsky, who always demonstrated a scrupulous regard for the truth and whose archives are open to inspection.

The fact that at the 6^th Plenum, attended by Hu Han-min from the KMT, met from 17 February to 15 March 1926 before the Politburo meeting (held after 26 March) which Trotsky says sanctioned the acceptance of the KMT as a sympathetic section is only a serious inconsistency if one regards the time and place, the formality of acceptance as decisive in itself. The fact remains that, by the way he was built up at the Plenum, Hu Han-min – a top right-wing KMT leader, at that time exiled from Canton because of his involvement in the murder [in August 1925] of the left KMT leader, Liao Chung-K’ai – was lent the authority of the International. Stalin lulled the workers, instead of politically arming them against the treacherous capitalist/nationalist leaders.

Here we have taken up only the points raised in Monty’s rejoinder. As promised, we will return to the fundamental issues of the Chinese revolution (which Monty largely avoids, not even mentioning, for example, Stalin’s infamous idea of the “bloc of four classes”) in a future issue of ‘Militant International Review’.

Yours fraternally

Lynn Walsh

The Editors have received a number of letters on this dispute, but given the amount devoted to this subject already, we have decided to end correspondence in the paper and perhaps continue it in our theoretical journal ‘Militant International Review’.