Chronicles of a revolution (9.2)

Although there was not a concrete guideline of the CCP (but in agreement with the advices of Lenin and of the COMINTERN), Mao was working IN PRACTICE on a revolutionary alliance between peasants and workers under leadership of the working class.

“In 1923 Mao Tsetung organised the first workers-peasant union at Yuehpei in Hunan; his adopted sister Mao Tse-chien, was to work there for over two years, as also did his wife Yang Kai-hui. He recruited Anyuan workers in 1925 and sent them to train in Kuangchow at the Peasant Institute, and again in 1926[1]. He was to pay more visits to the Anyuan mines in September 1927, before the Autumn Harvest Uprising, when he recruited one thousand soldiers and cadres from the miners.[2]”

The First United Front….

But each organisation representing other interests of other classes and each individual having an ideological CLASS-position of a certain class and so defending those respective CLASS-interests (formulated in whatever “revolutionary” phraseology), had another idea of this “First United Front”)

“In his first visit to China in 1920, Sneevliet (alias Maring or Ma-lin), later said to be present at the CCP First Congress, had suggested to Chen Tu-hsiu a 'grand anti-imperialist alliance to take in all classes' based on the 'bloc of four classes' urged by Lenin. Trotsky had opposed Lenin on this point; Chang Kuo-tao at the First Congress also opposed a united front.

Sun Yatsen, sounded out by Chicherin and other Russian envoys[3], was at first obdurate. He would have no alliance with Communism. But according to Dr Percy Chen, the eminent lawyer now resident in Hongkong, it was his father, Dr Eugene Chen, together with the eminent and respected scholar Dr Liao Chung-kai, Sun Yatsen's most trusted friend, who successfully persuaded Sun Yatsen to agree to such an alliance. Sun's disheartening experiences with various warlords helped him to take this decision; since 1911 Sun had been several times at the mercy of militarists; Yuan Shih-kai among others. They would help him to power, but topple him when he did not serve their mercenary purposes. They were out for personal gain; Sun was an idealist and a revolutionary. (...)

But Sun Yatsen now realised the Russians needed a friendly China, as China needed allies in her struggle against domination by the Western powers and Japan. It was with him that the Soviet government finally decided that cooperation would be most fruitful; overtures to various warlords had proved futile. Lenin had spoken favourably of Sun Yatsen's party in 1912; Sun had cabled Lenin, hailing the October Revolution of 1917. Though mistrustful of Communism, Sun was now disgust with Western democracy. And after 4 May 1919, Sun Yates’s opinions began to change. He began to read the works of Marx and Lenin. The combined persuasion of Dr Liao Chung-kai and of Sun's own wife, the brilliant and courageous Soong Ching-ling[4], finally convinced Sun of the usefulness of an alliance. He started to write down his political credo, the 'Three People's Principles',  now incorporating socialism in his third principle, 'People's livelihood', 'Nationalism, democracy and socialism' became his new formula for he three principles which at various times he had enunciated, but which had remained vague in content until now, revised and redefined, they began to look like a definite programme. It was not until 1923, however, that this identification with socialism occurred; it was 1924 when he clearly opted for socialism. (...)

Sun Yatsen encountered great opposition in his own party to this leftward switch. 'If Communism is a good ally, why do members of the Kuomintang oppose the Communist Party? The reason may be that members of the Communist Party do not themselves understand what is Communism; and thus they have spoken against the Three People's Principles.' Sun was obviously referring to the unflattering comments made about him and his party at the First Congress of the CCP in July 1921. 'We cannot use the actions of some individuals for opposing a whole group ... then why has this trouble arisen among our Kuomintang comrades? Because they not realise that my third principle is a form of Communism.'

This forthright endorsement, made in 1923, opened the door for the admission of Communist Party members into the Kuomintang, and for a Communist-Kuomintang alliance, which would last till 1927 and be known as the First United Front. (...)

At the Second Congress of the CCP in 1922, which Mao had missed ('I forgot the name of the place where it was to be held, could not find any comrade, and missed it'), alliance and cooperation with the Kuomintang had again been discussed, but the majority of the delegates still remained opposed to united front strategy. But from the autumn of 1922, and throughout the next year, the violent suppression of fomented strikes, and the massacres of the railway workers on 4 February 1923, by Wu Pei-fu, had forced rethinking. The tiny Communist Party could not remain isolated. It was not growing fast, except in Hunan. Many activists were already being slaughtered.

The manifesto of the Second Congress already stated: ' The Chinese Communist Party must, in the interest of the workers and the poor peasants, support the national democratic revolution, and forge a democratic united front of workers, poor peasants, and the petty bourgeoisie'. But no united front policy was spelled out till the Third Congress, held in June 1923 in Kuangchow.

Coming via Shanghai to Kuangchow, Mao attended the Third Congress, where he gave a detailed report on the workers' movement in Hunan. ‘There must be a great revolutionary union. One cannot fight alone.' Mao is reputed to have stated. All this Third Congress, however, the right wing of the CCP headed by Chen Tu-hsiu advocated virtual dissolution of the CCP. Frightened by repression, Chen suggested that the KMT make his own bourgeois revolution first, and that the CCP begin its proletarian revolution 'after the historic period' of KMT rule. Chen Hu-hsiu, possessed by discouragement, told his friends that he hated 'violence'. The ultra-left wing, with Chang Kuo-tao, maintained that the Communist Party should be free from bourgeois entanglements, and again castigated the KMT.

Mao Tsetung, together with his friend Ho Shu-feng and a young intellectual called Chu Ciu-pai[5], opted for the united front, but with the Communist Party keeping its own autonomy, Mao and Chu were elected members of the Central Committee, and a majority voted for Mao's proposal. The Chen Hu-hsiu 'right'-wing and Chang Kuo-tao 'left'-wing theses were both criticised.

Some historians say this was due to Russian pressure. At the Comintern in Moscow, Karl Radek had scolded the Chinese delegation for its opposition to a united front. They were too theoretical, and just as the old Chinese scholars studied Confucius behind closed doors and pretended to know the world merely by reading books, they were reading Marxism but did not know how to apply it. This observation was pertinent, but it must be noted that Mao Tsetung had already indicated his option for a united front in 1922, as his articles indicate.

However, he stressed that the CCP must keep its independence of action and the leadership of the working class and the peasantry in its hands. Leadership of the Revolution could not be handed over to the .Kuomintang. He made this point forcefully. It agreed with the Leninist thesis on a united front. And Mao was already a Leninist. (....)

At the time of the Third Congress, there were only 342 Communist Party members in the whole of China.

An agreement between the CCP and the KMT was concluded at the end of 1923. In that autumn Michael Borodin, a Comintern agent, arrived in China with other Russian personnel to advise Sun Yatsen's Kuangchow government in shaping policies and institutions. The organisation of a nationalist army, under officers and cadres trained by the KMT, was a top priority. The goal was to fight the warlords and to unite China. Sun Yatsen was convinced that without an army to implement the national policies of the KMT the Revolution would always be at the mercy of sundry warlords.

This development gave a great impetus to the KMT. A new hope animated its ranks, and new personages were to come into the limelight, among them Chiang Kai-shek, known at the time as a disciple of Sun Yatsen. Chiang made a good impression on Borodin, and was sent to Russia in the autumn of 1923 to study Russian military methods. He stayed in Russia five months. By June 1924 thirty Soviet instructors were attached to the newly built military academy, known as the Whangpoo Military Academy, and Chiang Kai-shek had returned from Moscow to head it as director. Once again the prestige of the 'Russian-returned student' label resulted in promotion to a position of influence and command.

The admission of Communists to the KMT was formally blessed by Sun himself at the First Congress of the KMT in January 1924. Li Ta-chao, China's first Marxist, was personally inducted by Sun Yatsen into the KMT. Sun insisted that Communists should be admitted without any curtailment of their activities as Communists and no one dared to contradict him openly. (...)

One of the Communists who became member of both parties was Mao Tsetung, who was given the task of liaison between the CCP and the KMT. To be entrusted with this important and delicate work was a tribute to his merit as organiser, recruiter, persuader, orator and his staunch advocacy of the alliance. But due to the composition of the Kuomintang it was an almost impossible responsibility as the contradiction between the two parties became intractable[6] (...)

In later years Mao would analyse what was wrong with this first united front. The strategy of a united front had been correct, but the CCP had failed to recognize that leadership must never be relinquished. 'The Party .... was in its infancy .... inexperienced in the three basic problems of the united front, armed struggle and Party building, a party without much knowledge of China's historical and social conditions[7]. No other Communist Party member at the time seems to have given so much thought to Sun Yatsen's own programme, and to the structure of the Kuomintang Party, as well as to the study of Lenin's united front techniques, as Mao did.[8]”

This text “On New Democracy” of Mao Zedong, you can read here, (or here, but to which I am adding my own study-notes while studying the text)

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[1]     See further chapters.

[2] Out “The Morning Deluge – Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese Revolution”, Han Suyin, http://www.amazon.com/morning-deluge-Tsetung-revolution-1893-1954/dp/0316342890

[3]     The Comintern envoys also contacted the powerful warlord Wu Pei-fu and even Chao Heng-ti, the reactionary governor of Hunan.

[4]     See the Selected Works of Madame Soong Ching-ling (in Chinese). The book of Emily Hahn, The Soong Sisters, does not do justice to the greatest and noblest of the three sisters. Another sister, Soong Mei-ling, is de widow of Chiang Kai-shek.

[5]     Chu Ciu-pai had joined the Moscow precursor group of the CCP in 1921. See T. A. Hsia, 'Chu Chiu-pai's Autobiographical Writings', China Quarterly, January-March 1966.

[6]     A note on the Kuomintang: From 1885 to 1905 Sun Yatsen's organisation was known as the Hsin Chung-hui; it was after 1905 and in Japan that it was renamed the Tung Meng Hui. It became the Kuomintang (National Party) in 1912, on the eve of the first elections to China's first 'parliament', the National Assembly. Until 1911 it was an anti-Manchu, anti-dynastic alliance vaguely democratic and republican but without a very definite programme.

[7]     Introducing The Communist, 4 October 1939; also On New Democracy, January 1940; both in Selected Works, Vol II.

[8] Out “The Morning Deluge – Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese Revolution”, Han Suyin, http://www.amazon.com/morning-deluge-Tsetung-revolution-1893-1954/dp/0316342890

Chronicles of a revolution (9.1)

So in the Chinese Communist Party were gathered people who can not all be seen as “Communists”. Communists are people who once made the choice to put their life in function of the objective interests of the by imperialism oppressed masses: the overthrow of imperialism by revolution and the installing of new communist production relations.
Whatever class-origin, a communist make the free choice (by practice of the struggle, by study and by analysis of the society in which he is living) to put his life in function of the objective interests of the working class and to become a VANGUARD element of the working class, propagating, mobilising and organising as much as people around the objective interests of the working class which should become the interests of the majority of the people: overthrowing imperialism and proceeding into the socialist revolution.
The way certain members and cadres of the Chinese Communist Party developed their practice, their engagement in the class struggle and in the measure that they made – or did NOT made - a real ideological choice for the OBJECTIVE interests of the working class (which are the interests of ALL the people suffering from exploitation of imperialism), FROM THE BEGINNING (of the existence of the CCP)  are an explanation of their later ideological development…. and their final revolutionary or counterrevolutionary choice.

(You can follow the history of the revolutionary developments in China and the practice and engagement of the different classes IN these developments here)

Mao was implementing the concluded congress-decision as far in a revolutionary direction as possible

“In December 1921 Mao returned again to Anyuan with his brother Mao Tse-min, whom he was training in Party work, and they lodged in a small eating house. The first Anyuan Party cell was organised in a warehouse in January 1922 in Five Happiness Lane with several miners, five of whom would be killed before 1931. In that same January 1922 Mao went to the city of Hengyang in south Hunan and organised a Party cell there at the Normal College in Changsha. The railway workers on the Kuangchow – Hankow Railway at Hengyang and at Changsha also were organised into Party-cells and Communist trade unions. All together 12.000 workers were thus enrolled.

The establishment of workers' cooperatives at Anyuan in 1922 was an initiative taken by Mao's brother Mao Tse-min, who seemed to have a financial talent (...)

Mao Tse-min ran the cooperative, but was difficult to maintain, as there was no capital and a total hostility from the administration.

Mao Tsetung the set up a school for Anyuan workers, as he had done in Changsha. The miners were at first reticent. What was the use of a school when they spent their lives in the pits? He then conceived the idea of a day school for the children of the miners. This had a magic effect – the miners all wanted education for their children, and there were no schools for them. Mao brought a weekly paper from the Cultural Bookstore, through the medium of this school circulated it among the miners, and established a branch bookstore. He then tried to get the men learn reading and writing; urged them to write their own articles in their own newspaper – a suggestion which stunned the hard-driven illiterates who worked naked and had almost come to accept their half-beast condition. But the suggestion caught on, and some of the survivors are today's (in 1972, when Han Suyin wrote her book - NICO) most brilliant high-level officials and ambassadors. (...)

Mao Tsetung's activity among the Anyuan miners was based on a concept to be given nationwide propagation in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: Revolutionisation of the proletariat by itself, through awareness, political education, action, organisation. Hence his action in Anyuan is a model. Both there and in Pinghsiang the workers were to become a source of future Party cadres. Mao Tsetung's stature as a leader of the proletariat, not of the peasantry alone, rests upon the work he began with the coal miners, which received no publicity in China until 1967.

The workers' club, founded to give the workers education in the form of lectures, reading newspapers, and so on, was in late summer to be put under the direction of Li Li-san, appointed by the Politburo in Shanghai. Mao's work was commended as 'of great value', and Li Li-san was sent, as was later Liu Shao-chi, to reinforce this working-class nucleus of potential Communist cadres. (...)

Mao sent Chiang Hsien-yun, one of his recruits and a member of the Socialist Youth Corps of Hunan, to help in Anyuan when the membership of the club swelled from a few hundred to over 60 percent of workers. Mao was busy with the mass education movement, with a club of railway workers at Changsha, at Hengyang. Railway workers' unions, Communist-controlled, were being set up in the north to south railways between Peking and Wuhan, and between Wuhan and Kuangchow. Mao journeyed to Liling and Pingshiang, both mining areas, ostensibly to inspect schools (was he not a director of a school?) but actually to set up labour unions and to organise Party cells. Thus he spun a web of Party cells throughout the province in all the key industrial enterprises.[1]”

Liu Shao-chi, president of the CCP  after the revolution of 1949 until the Cultural Revolution and who always opposed Mao Zedong, trying to marginalising Mao in the CCP, was FROM THE BEGINNING a REFORMIST, not a revolutionary

“There were then 123 Communist Party members in Hunan, but the labour union of Anyuan miners had just been disbanded by order of Governor Chao Heng-ti, who also put a ban on railway labour unions and workers' clubs. The famous railway workers' strike was about to begin, to be followed by a strike of the Anyuan miners.

Because these strikes were Communist-inspired, great attention was paid to them at the Shanghai headquarters of the Communist Party. Liu Shao-chi was sent by the All-China Labour Federation in Shanghai, where he worked with Chang Kuo-tao, to reinforce and to direct the strike at Anyuan. Liu Shao-chi, who as we have seen had gone to Moscow in December 1920 via Vladivostok, enrolled at the Communist University for Eastern Toilers in 1921. In 1922, he travelled back to China via Japan and became secretary of the All-China Labour Federation. He had no direct experience of labour organisation before this first immersion in a full-blown strike at Anyuan. But due to the enormous prestige of the Soviet Union, 'returned students from Russia' were held in great reverence, a reverence almost Confucian in attitude, based on the concept of knowledge elite. This attitude would bedevil the CCP for some years.

Liu arrived in Anyuan on 11 September, three days before the strike explode on 14 September. Mao Tsetung, who had begun the agitation, had drawn up thirteen articles or demands for the workers, and was now proceeding to stimulate a general strike all over Hunan in sympathy with the miners and railway workers. By November more then twenty unions had formed themselves into an association of labour unions with Mao as chairman. This was a very strong movement, which Mao would lead towards an All-Hunan Federation of Labour.

Today (1972, when Han Suyin finished her book, NICO), at such a distance, it is difficult to tell what really happened, but obviously Liu's idea of the goals of the strike were widely different from Mao's. Liu saw it as a temporary, limited protest, useful for acquiring an improved standard of living and social benefits for a circumscribed number of coal miners. Mao saw it as a political spearhead to form a powerful base organisation upon which to be build the Hunan CCP branch. Nothing could be more different than the basic view of the two men as regards this single event.

Liu dismissed Mao's deputy, Chiang Hsien-yun. He and Li Li-san proceeded to lead the strike towards negotiated agreement with the mine management. Clippings from newspapers of that time relate that Liu issued 'guarantees that the strike would be peaceful'. Talks with the managers resulted in a compromise agreement; Liu told the workers to give up their demands – formulated under Mao's advice – as 'too drastic'. The Anyuan episode looms large in the struggle – between the two lines or two politics, between Mao's and Liu's vision of the world – which was to form the focus of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, forty-odd years later.

Repression continued, however, both in the mines and on the railways after the strike had terminated on 18 September. Wage increases were granted to the Anyuan miners, but after some minor and partial concessions they were rescinded and the strike leaders were expelled. However, for many years Liu Shao-chi was to base his reputation as a labour leader on the successful Anuyan strike, and a film was made in the early 1960s to extol his role as a 'leader of the proletariat'.

On 7 February 1923, a railway workers' strike at Chengshow on the Peking – Hankow Railway was put down by the warlord Wu Pei-fu, who had also once been hailed as 'liberal and progressive' until this slaughter revealed him as of the same stuff as any other tyrant. Over a hundred workers were killed or injured. In early 1923 Mao Tsetung returned to Anyuan to warn the workers that they must prepare for protracted struggle. 'The bent bow must wait to be released' is the way he phrased it at the time.

In August 1923, and again in 1924, Liu was to argue that 'in China's present situation, with such a childish proletariat, it will be a long time before any revolution happens, so let us not discuss it' He spoke against 'this infantile disease, blind struggle .... strike at every occasion ..... adventurist impulses'. In 1924, in his article Save the Han Yeping Company, Liu appealed to the workers to 'keep order' and not to disrupt anything during strikes. He also dismissed 140 workers from the Anyuan workers' club for 'indiscipline'. Liu 'only talked to the bosses .... did not go down the pits .... wrote rules and regulations for us'[2] This is the gist of what old Anyuan workers say of Liu Shao-chi. Without trying to assess whether the strike, handled otherwise, would have led to a greater upsurge and benefited the revolution, we may still pass a qualified judgment: that Liu was the kind of functionary who likes order and regulations, social benefits dispensed to the working class, rather than violent seizure of power, is the ideal to be achieved. Liu may have been a social reformist, but he was not a revolutionary.[3]”

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[1] Out “The Morning Deluge – Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese Revolution”, Han Suyiin http://www.amazon.com/morning-deluge-Tsetung-revolution-1893-1954/dp/0316342890

[2]     Interview with Anyuan miners, 1968.

[3] Out “The Morning Deluge – Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese Revolution”, Han Suyin, http://www.amazon.com/morning-deluge-Tsetung-revolution-1893-1954/dp/0316342890

Propageerde Lenin het ordewoord "arbeiders-controle"?

Aan mijn trotskistische, EX-trotskistische, “stalinistische” vrienden en die vrienden die nu duidelijk afstand nemen van Stalin…..:

Allemaal baseren jullie je op het werkje van Lenin “De dreigende catastrofe en hoe die te bestrijden” (http://marx.org/nederlands/lenin/1917/catastrofe/index.htm  ) om uit te leggen dat “arbeiderscontrole” een (bijna) revolutionair ordewoord was voor een periode net voor de revolutie tot en met de volledige “onteigening” van de (grote) kapitalisten.

Met hand en tand probeerde jullie mij uit te leggen dat daarom NU een programma propageren van HERVORIMINGEN de juiste stap is naar toekomstige revolutie.

Maar NIEMAND van jullie heeft mij tot nu toe CONCREET kunnen uitleggen wat “arbeiderscontrole” nu eigenlijk inhield of kon dit vertalen naar een concreet te propageren ordewoord.

Welnu als dat orde-woord “arbeiderscontrole” (en ikzelf zal hier een concrete inhoud voor voorstellen verderop) ooit actueel en dringend was, dan is dat wel NU!

Zijn we akkoord over het volgende?

De “financiele” crisis, de “krediet”-crisis, de “schulden”-crisis zijn een uitvloeisel van de fundamentele OVERPRODUKTIE-crisis (zoals Marx die definieerde) waarin het kapitalisme (in zijn huidig IMPERIALISTISCH stadium) zich  sinds -pakweg- 1974 bevindt.

En wat betekent OVERPRODUKTIE (gedeeltelijk in de vorm van over-CAPACITEIT)?

Het hele kapitalistisch produktie-sisteem bestaat eruit om WAREN te produceren die VERKOCHT moeten worden om de MEER-WAARDE te realiseren (die dan door de kapialisten kan TOEGEËIGEND worden) De geproduceerde WAREN zouden eigenlijk moeten dienen om de BEHOEFTES te lenigen. Maar ten eerste zijn de kapitalistisch geproduceerde WAREN slechts de door de kapitalisten ontworpen waren ZOALS ZIJ die beschouwen als bevredigend voor bepaalde behoeften en beantwoorden zij daarom niet aan de ECHTE behoeften. Ten tweede zijn de behoeftes groter, massaler an bij MEER mensen aanwezig dan dat zijn omgezet kunnen worden in een KOOPKRACHTIGE vraag.

Zo zullen zeker 4 à 5 MILJARD mensen bepaalde MOBILITEITS-behoeftes hebben, doch slechts 800 miljoen kunnen dit omzetten in de AANKOOP van een personen-wagen. Als de CAPACITEIT van auto-productie die 800 miljoen overstijgt, spreekt men van OVER-CAPACITEIT.

De TIJDELIJKE en GEDEELTELIJKE “oplossing” bestond er (ondermeer) in in de levering van KREDIET:

Het gebrek aan inkomen en dus van de koopkrachtige vraag en de daarmee overeenkomende overcapaciteit werd dan tijdelijk “opgelost” door het KREDIET. De financiële instellingen van het kapitalisme konden degene met teweinig inkomen (om bepaalde aankopen te doen) een VOORSCHOT geven op zijn of haar TOEKOMSTIG inkomen. (in de toekomst dus terug te betalen….MET interest).

Dus PARADOXAAL: degenen die TE WEINIG inkomen heeft om CASH te betalen, betaalt uiteindelijk een HOGERE prijs: de prijs + de interest op het “voorgeschoten” toekomstig inkomen….En algemeen werd aangenomen (of voorgespiegeld) dat je toekomstig inkomen toch hoger zou liggen dus was er geen probleem.

….en nu kan men zijn of haar krediet niet af betalen…..omdat het inkomen niet gestegen is of zelfs WEGGEVALLEN.

Om kort te gaan: NU proberen AL die financiele instellingen toch te zorgen voor een terugbetaling van dat krediet. In de laatste instantie zullen dus de werkers COLLECTIEF gedwongen worden om al die ONBETAALDE leningen of schulden (mét interest) af te betalen. (ook al zijn die leningen of schulden niet van hen PERSOONLIJK)

“Arbeiderscontrole” NU actueel!

Aangezien dus de kapitalistische produktiewijze, met zijn kapitalistische produktie-verhoudingen (waarbij een relatief kleine groep van monopolie-kapitalisten het volledig productiesisteem controleren, beheren (in eigendom hebben) bestaat de enige oplossing erin dat de werkende klasse de volledige CONTROLE overneemt van dit produktiesisteem, om zo op basis van de onstane krachtsverhouding de problemen van die crisis af te wentelen op de monopolie-kapitalisten (en hun financiële instellingen) en NIET op de werkers.

Doorheen de komende stakingen en protesten tegen bezuinigingen, besparingen en sociale afbraak opgelegd door EUROPA en uitgevoerd door de respectievelijke lidstaat-regeringen, moet aan de uitbouw van één Europese werkersstrijdbeweging gewerkt worden die op basis van de ervaringen opgedaan in de stakingen een strategie ontwikkeld van het “in handen nemen” van de basis-industrie, de grondstoffen-industrie en hun aanvoerlijnen: dus de grote raffinaderijen, de basis-chemie, de energie-bedrijven, de aanvoerlijnen in de havens. De stakers en betogers uit andere sectoren zullen door hun stakingen en betogingen de aandacht van de repressie-diensten moeten verdelen. Tegelijk zullen stakers en betogers de bezettingen – de “controle”-macht in de basis-industrie (en hun aanvoerlijnen) versterken. Wijkcomitees, organisaties van werklozen, studenten kunnen deel uitmaken en taken opnemen (ofwel zelf strijdbewegingen ontketenen) in die eengemaakte werkersstrijdbeweging die zich zal uitstrekken op héél het Europees grondgebied.

De strijd tegen de hervormingen in het pensioenstelsel in Frankrijk won aan kracht toen de raffinaderijen werden stilgelegd en de mamoettankers noodgedwongen op zee moesten rondddobberen.(Er heerste dus “arbeiderscontrole” in die raffinaderijen en havens!) Het was alleen toen de “deeleisen” in die sectoren werden ingewilligd dat de Franse overheid kon het werk doen hervatten in die raffinaderijen en havens….waardoor het élan van de algemene staking gebroken was.

Chronicles of a revolution (12)

How the revolutionary strength and energy of the people can be unleashed by revolutionary leadership which has to be an integrated part OF those masses? .... And how those can be bound and chained by a 'false' leadership having another agenda than that of the revolution?

A “self-declared” leadership, but who is just “following” events and the tide, is objectively compliant to that conscious-working-for-another-agenda leadership.

“Allowing” the recuperation of the revolutionary energy of the workers is compliancy to the bourgeoisie.

“On 9 July 1926, the Nationalist Army left Kuanchchow for the Northern Expedition in the greatest enthusiasm. To the exultant crowds cheering in the grey-clad battalions, Chiang had promised to defeat all the warlords, unify China, secure the abolition of unequal treaties and extra-territoriality, the abolition of imperialism and the achievement of 'universal peace'. Chiang was the man of the hour, hero of the land. This was great timing; Chiang had again wrested the initiative; the CCP appeared a captive chained to his triumph.

Within two months Kiangsi, Hunan, Hupei provinces fell to Nationalist armies. On 12 September the army of General Tang Sheng-chih, a Hunan 'liberal' militarist who had rallied to Sun Yatsen's Kuangchow government in 1923, entered Changsha. By the end of September the province was in his hands, and Tang became acting governor; the other warlords fled.

In these swift victories, it became evident that success was largely due to organised strikes of city workers and to the peasant uprisings behind enemy lines. The fervour and self-sacrifice of the workers was unequalled; they formed militia battalions and took the warlord garrisons by surprise. The peasants in the countryside marched to seize police posts, acted as porters, couriers, guides, stretcher-bearers, fed and watered the Nationalist Army – all without pay. In Hunan, especially, where Mao Tsetung had worked so hard, the Nationalist Army was assisted by peasant self-mobilised militia which continued to expand on their own. The battles were won for the army before the battalions arrived. This massive demonstration of popular power frightened many of the officer cadets and big capitalists. Here was might and power, it could make a thoroughgoing revolution. The more victories, the more they feared for themselves.

In December 1926 Mao was back in Changsha. His presence there was of great importance, for he addressed the first Peasants and Workers Congress of Hunan (20-29 December 1926), of which he had been elected chairman. At this congress of workers and peasants whose significance has been blurred and even ignored, Mao made a speech important in its timing and also challenging, for it went against Chen Tu-hsiu's orders.

According to a report in the Changsha newspaper dated 29 December 1926, Mao said that a great chance was coming to China. Already 1.200.000 peasants had been organised; a united front of workers, peasants, traders and students was necessary. The Revolution needed a union of all revolutionary classes, but fundamentally the national revolution was a peasant revolution under leadership of the working class, and it therefore depended on the peasantry. He then analysed the market for the commercial trades in the countryside. He also analysed the situation of the students and intellectuals; most of them were non-revolutionary, some were progressive, a few were reactionary; if they wanted to make revolution they must ally themselves with workers and peasants[1]. We can imagine how unwelcome this speech was to Chen Tu-hsiu. But even more significant is the situation in which Mao found himself at that time.[2]”

When a REFORMIST line rules the Communist Party, “(commanding or demanding) party-discipline” turns into its CONTRADICTION

“Mao was torn between what he felt ought to be done and what he had been ordered to do. Complaints by the Kuomintang through its delegates in Moscow about 'excesses' of the peasants and workers had even reached Stalin. Borodin received truculent messages from Chiang Kai-shek declaring that Hunan was 'out of control' and that there would be incidents due to peasant excesses. Strict orders were given to labour unions to restrict the workers and to peasant cadres to 'restrain' the peasantry in Hunan. This also was Mao's mission; he had been told to 'check and thwart', to tell the Congress of Peasants and Workers to submit to orders. But as he faced the tremendous tide of peasant power he saw the dreadfulness of the wrong decisions and the betrayal of the Revolution they entailed. The speech he made was therefore more militant than expected by Chen Tu-hsiu.

Meanwhile Stalin, who and advocated rousing the peasants, had now been swayed; this explains a telegram from Stalin in October 1926, in which he enjoined 'caution and restraint'. Stalin, who did not know the situation, could not imagine how Chen Tu-hsiu would jump at this chance to stop effective action.

In November Stalin reversed himself. 'The information we got is incorrect,' he said, and a telegram was then sent in November which reinforced the line of peasant mobilisation. In the same month the Comintern (seventh plenum) under Stalin's directive also reversed its resolution advising 'restraint'. But it is a pointer to the confusion and contradictoriness which existed – not to mention translation difficulties, misreporting, misinterpretation – that Chen Tu-hsiu did not show this later reversal to Mao, nor, it appears, to other members of the Politburo until much later, 'No one can direct a revolution by telegraph,' Stalin is reported to have said, yet this was now happening. The Comintern resolutions, Stalin's directives, came thick and fast because the CCP leadership was incapable of making its own decisions. But it was also incapable of making its own decisions. But it was also incapable of implementing those of others, and this 'think-tank help' from afar added to the disaster, so much that even today the tangle has led to erroneous interpretation[3] Moscow cables gave a stream of advice to China, but never knew in what circumstances it would misapply. The Comintern organised committees to work on the 'documentary material' and submit theses; these took time; two committees produced two divergent theses. Envoys were sent who squabbled openly and contradicted each other. And there was the time element; the situation changed so rapidly that by the time 'advice' came from Moscow all was radically different. And in Moscow.  Itself the Stalin – Trotsky struggle did not make things easier.

In the midst of this appalling muddle[4], what was Mao to do? A photograph shows him at this December Peasants and Workers Congress singularly gaunt, standing in a loose-fitting jacket, hands on his hips. His face is not happy. All we know is that he did not restrain the peasants and workers at the Congress, who passed resolutions for confiscation of land from the landlords.

In the meantime, the revolutionary army swept forward to Wuhan, which fell in December, Chiang Kai-shek arrived in Changsha and delivered a speech, in his role as a 'people's hero', calculated to please and audience of militant workers and banish all suspicion of himself.

'Only after imperialism is overthrown can China obtain independence ... The Third International is the headquarters of the world revolution ... We must unite with Russia to overthrow imperialism .... The Chinese revolution is part of the world revolution.... We must unite all partisans of world revolution to overthrow imperialism.' Thus he spoke, and already the workers in Kungchow were being murdered by his lieutenants.

'In Hunan I inspected peasant organisations and political conditions in five districts, Changsha, Liling, Hsiang Tan, Hungshan and Hsiang Hsiang, and made my report urging the adoption of a new line in the peasant movement.' This was Mao's famous Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan[5] based on a five-week tour, 4 January to 5 February 1927.

Suppression of the peasants' associations had begun right after Nationalist Army victory in Hunan at the end of September 1926. Yet the registered membership in the peasant associations had increased in two months, November and December, from one million to two million families; fifty-four counties out of seventy-five now had peasant associations. But the head of the CCP Peasant Department pelted Mao with angry telegrams urging that the 'riff-raff' be restrained so as not to antagonise the KMT. What were Mao's feelings as he clutched the telegrams, knew the policies wrong and heard round him the ovations of the peasantry? He could not 'check and thwart'. He investigated. Between 30 December and 3 January Mao spent five days in Shaoshan preparing his spirit for the great battle he would now begin.

The peasants had already started on their own to confiscate landlords' land, to punish bullies and corrupt officials; these actions, described as 'atrocities' by the fleeing landlords, had the approval of Mao Tsetung. Considering what they had suffered, the peasants were remarkably fair-minded and lenient. This was revolution, and Mao Tsetung found himself on the side of the peasant masses in the midst of this tornado, this tempest, as he was to describe it, outpouring of revolutionary energy, cosmic, elemental, irresistible; an avalanche capable of 'changing heaven and earth'.

All his life he would remember the impact of this extraordinary strength, 'mightier than any' when once set in motion, animated by the ideas that would 'teach the sun and moon to change places'. Every day and night of these thirty-two days he would remember as a bone-deep experience, shaping his thoughts.

'During my recent visit to Hunan I made a firsthand investigation of conditions ... I called together fact-finding conferences in villages and county towns ... I listened attentively ... Many of the hows and whys of the peasant movement were the exact opposite of what the gentry in Hankow and Changsha are saying. I saw and heard of many strange things of which I had hitherto been unaware. All talk directed against the peasant movement must be speedily set right. All the wrong measures taken by the revolutionary authorities concerning the peasant movement must be speedily changed. Only thus can the Future of the Revolution be benefited. For the present upsurge of the peasant movement is a colossal event. In a very short time ... several hundred million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back. They will smash all the trammels that bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation.'

Mao Tsetung went on to describe, paragraph by paragraph, all he had seen, drawing anecdotes, vivid word pictures. The development of the peasant movement fell into two periods: before September 1926 a period of organisation, but from 'last October to January or this year ... of revolutionary action'. This latter period did coincide with the Northern Expedition, and during it the membership in peasant associations had jumped to 2 million families, which meant 10 million people[6] 'Almost half the peasants in Hunan are now organised.’

They were attacking the local tyrants – landlords who respected no law or common humanity, who killed, raped the daughters and wives of peasants or kidnapped them at will – 'the privileges which the feudal landlords enjoyed for thousands of years are being shattered to pieces'. ' “All power to the peasant associations” has become a reality. Even trifles such a quarrel between husband and wife are brought to the peasant association.' So powerful were they that small landlords sought admission to the peasant association. 'Who wants your filthy money?' the poor peasants would reply, and refuse them.

But more telling is Mao's pointed remark on the reaction to all this. ' “It's terrible” ore “It's fine” ... When the news from the countryside reached the cities, it caused immediate uproar.' Even quite revolutionary-minded people in the cities were 'down-hearted,' said Mao, and thought 'It's terrible.' But Mao asserted that it was fine.

'The great peasant masses have risen to fulfil their historic mission ... In a few months the peasants have accomplished what Dr Sun Yatsen wanted but failed to accomplish in the forty years he devoted to the national revolution. This is a marvellous feat ... It's fine.'

If your revolutionary viewpoint is firmly established and if you have been to the villages and looked around, you will undoubtedly feel thrilled as never before. Countless thousands of the enslaved - the peasants – are striking down the enemies who battened on their flesh. What the peasants are doing is absolutely right; what they are doing is fine!

The peasants are clear-sighted. Who is bad and who is not ... the peasants keep clear accounts ... A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.'

Mao made fun of those who said the peasants were going too far. 'Proper limits have to be exceeded in order to right a wrong, or else the wrong cannot be righted.'

Mao listed 'fourteen great achievements' of the peasantry. These achievements sound very much like the suggestions and proposals which then being made by the Comintern. Mao was proving that the peasants were indeed carrying out the agrarian revolution and doing the things they were supposed to do, according to Communist dicta. They were organising themselves, hitting the landlords politically and economically, overthrowing feudal rule, defeating landlord armies, organising their own self-defence, eliminating bandits, abolishing levies and starting movements for education and cooperatives. They were also building roads and repairing embankments. And all this they were doing by their own strength, through their own organisations. Mao ended with a gibe at the Chen leadership: 'To talk about “arousing the masses of the people” day in and day out and then to be scared to death when the masses do rise – what difference is there between this and Lord She's love of dragons?' .This referred to a famous lord who loved dragons in paint, but when a real live dragon came to visit him, he nearly died of fear.

Back Mao went to Changsha with this piece, to find that things had very much deteriorated during the thirty-two days that he had been gone in the countryside. For now all was fear and faint-heartedness. In Wuhan, where the Kuomintang government[7] had moved from Kuangchow, he found things highly unpleasant. This corruption of the cities under the Kuomintang we must trace briefly; for much had happened during the time Mao was away in the countryside seeing peasant power ' teach the sun and the moon to change places.'

In Kuangchow and in other cities under the KMT actually under Chiang Kai-shek's military control, public meetings, the press, the workers' and peasants' volunteer corps, the right to strike, were restricted in the name of 'maintaining discipline to ensure the success of the Northern Expedition'. All strikes were labelled 'counterrevolutionary'. The secret society men from Shanghai had been pouring into Kuangchow since the summer of 1926; they came by sea from Hong Kong, laden with money and weapons (supplied in great part by the British and the French), to destroy Communist organisations.

The secret society men formed spurious labour unions. One gang became a 'policeman's union', and was then turned in armed attacks on the real workers' unions, a dress rehearsal for the massacres to take place the next year. The ferocity of the gangs, the cruel tortures they inflicted, gravely affected morale. More than fifty workers were killed in a few days, and hundreds crippled. The employers threw out the crippled workers without compensation; they were upheld by the 'collective bargaining' teams instituted and accepted by the CCP Labour Department[8].

In December, in a speech on the peasant question, Stalin himself had suggested the formation of elected revolutionary committees by the peasantry to carry out the agrarian revolution. He had added, 'I know there are people in the KMT, even in the Chinese Communist Party, who think it is impossible to have a revolution in the countryside, who are afraid that pushing the peasantry in the revolution will break the united anti-imperialist front ....This is a profound error ....The peasant question must be linked to the perspectives of the Chinese final aim.'

There is nothing in his speech of Stalin's supporting the restraint preached by Chen Tu-hsiu.[9]”

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[1]     Documents on Mao's speech seen by the author in Changsha museum, 1971.

[2] Out “The Morning Deluge – Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese Revolution”, Han Suyin, http://www.amazon.com/morning-deluge-Tsetung-revolution-1893-1954/dp/0316342890

[3]     See Kostas Mavrakis, Du Trotskysme, François Maspero, Paris, 1971, pp. 151-62.It is now reported in the USSR that the Russian General Galen established a plan for the Northern Expedition and all the military operations; but neither he or any of the other Russian advisers drew attention to the class struggle; they divided the KMT into 'right' and 'left' and stated that the 'left', 'due to the objective course of events',would 'remain with the CCP'. The Russian documents are interesting in that although they assess clearly most of the Chinese generals, they only mention Chiang Kai-shek favourable (the documents were prepared six months or more before Chiang's coup of March 1926). The Russians thought Chiang would be forced to keep 'left' because he depended on the Kuangchow government for funds and resources. In this way they signally failed to understand the financial network of Western big business in China.

[4]     M. N. Roy, the Comintern Indian who became a Trotskyte, and Bukharin, later to be purged by Stalin, hammered out between October and December 1926 two entirely divergent lines of action for the Chinese revolutionary situation. Tan Ping-shan, director of the CCP Labour Department, who was in Moscow as head of a delegation to the Comintern in November 1926, contradicted himself twice in his report. At one moment he was strongly urging that the peasant revolution should not be restricted but later urged that it should be. Borodin emphasised that the main task was military victory over the militarists, and Borodin's thesis was supported. The seventh plenum of the Comintern, however emphasised that ' the party of the proletariat must put forward a radical agrarian programme... or it will lose hegemony in the national revolutionary movement'. 

[5]     Selected Works, Vol. I.

[6]     As Mao explained, each family registered only one name.

[7]     The Kuomingtang government, previously sited in Kuangchow, installed itself in Wuhan on 1 Januari 1927.

[8]     To some foreign delegates of the Third International who visited Kuangchow in Januari 1927 (among them J. Doriot, then a French agent of the Comintern, later a fascist) General Li Chih-seng, Chiang's henchman there, declared that he 'loved and cherished tenderly the working class'! He was at that very moment beating, jailing and shooting them.

[9] Out “The Morning Deluge – Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese Revolution”, Han Suyin, http://www.amazon.com/morning-deluge-Tsetung-revolution-1893-1954/dp/0316342890

Chronicles of a revolution (11)

Opportunist (dogmatic, eclectic, sectarian, reformist,  pseudo-”Marxist” ...) analyse which is not been FOUGHT INSIDE the Communist Party (by “the struggle between two lines”) is serving the same BOURGEOIS and imperialist class-interests as the misleading “anti-imperialist” “internationalist” “revolutionary” rhetoric CONSCIOUSLY developed out of a BOURRGEOIS class-position in order to PREVENT the workers from overthrowing capitalism and the imperialist colonialist production-relations.

“As the winter of 1925 yielded to the spring, one by one the Communist positions were being eroded away. The great mass protests of 1925 throughout China had shown that it was no longer possible for foreign interests to hold China down by a show of military force, by gunboats on rivers or the shooting of demonstrators. The fear that all China would 'go up in flames' and 'become red' now pervaded Western business in China.

Chinese businessmen were assiduously wooded by British, American and other financial conglomerates. There were renewed promised of taking up the question of Chinese tariff rights and extra-territoriality (because of the unequal treaties of 1922 imposed since 1842[1]). The Washington Conference of 1922 had promised to 'look into the matter', but nothing had been done. Now a solemn declaration was issued to the Chinese merchants that tariff autonomy would be restored to China by 1 January 1930. Other lures were dangled before Chinese businessmen to wean them away from 'the Reds'. Suddenly British bankers and taipans[2] became 'concerned' about Chinese culture. 'Save the priceless heritage of China's ancient civilisation,' they clamoured. The Western community of Shanghai even did an unprecedented thing; it actually invited to dinner, at the Majestic Hotel, representatives of the Shanghai Chinese business community. 'The first time in history ... any such gathering has taken place,’ crowed the Anglo-American-owned China Weekly Review. At this dinner the American chairman of Shanghai's Foreign Municipal Council begged the countermeasures against Bolshevism. He asked: 'Why not take advantage of the extreme credulousness of the Chinese working classes .... take advantage of it for their goods and for ours.' he suggested that the Chinese businessmen present would make better 'leaders' of the Chinese society than these ' mad ... rebels’. Three weeks later, again making history, three Chinese members were admitted to the all-European Shanghai Municipal Council, which ran the International Settlement.

Through businessmen, secret societies, through a thousand and one strands of guile and corruption, seduction and deceit, approaches were made to all and sundry in Kuangchow. Foreign interests were then reassured by the secret societies, many of whose members were also agents of the European police in China, that 'our man' in Kuangchow would take care of the Communists when time came. That man was Chiang Kai-shek.[3]”

OBJECTIVELY serving SAME class-interests: Reformists and Bourgeoisie

“Yet when Chiang stepped on the platform of the Third All-China Labour Federation Conference held in Kuangchow at the end of May 1926 ( with Liu Shao-chi and Li Li-san in charge), which represented 400 unions and 1.240.000 workers, of whom 800.000 had taken part in more than 200 political and economic strikes in the preceding year, he sounded wholeheartedly left. 'The  worker-peasant masses ... have swept away all counter-revolutionaries and consolidated the basis of the national government ... From this one can see that the workers and peasants are already able to fight imperialism with their own forces, without reliance upon the forces in the army,' said Commander-in-Chief Chiang Kai-shek, greeted with thunderous applause by the workers there. Chiang then clenched his fist and shouted: ’Long live the world revolution!' To anyone versed in Chinese ways of doing things, Chiang was warning his own adherents that the workers were still too strong; the comedy must be played a little longer. As Mao Tsetung said then: 'Chiang Kai-shek speaks well. Let us see what he will do.' What Chiang was doing was actually very clear. He was’ curbing' Communist influence.

On 15 May 1926, at the KMT Central Executive Committee plenary session, Chiang had introduced a special resolution to 'readjust party affairs'. It was designed to limit the role of Communists in the KMT party and its organisations. A complete list of all CCP members who were also KMT members was to furnished to him; directing posts in the KMT should not go to Communists; all instructions issued by the CCP to its own members were to be submitted first for approval to him. The response of the CCP leadership was abject. Chiang also asked to be apprised of all messages and directives of the Comintern to the CCP. Mao was the only one present to voice dissent. (...)

The KMT was being transformed from a nationalist party with revolutionary elements to a counter-revolutionary instrument in the hands of a military dictator, Chiang Kai-shek. From that time Chen Tu-hsiu, in fact if not in word, abdicated leadership in the united front, the Revolution, and even in the CCP. From that time the Northern Expedition to unify China was being subverted to become a military campaign to launch Chiang's rule.[4]”

The First United Front was no mistake! It was the opportunist BETRAYAL which was wrong

“For decades controversy has rage over this First United Front policy of 1924-7.It has been asserted that Leon Trotsky, with his warnings of betrayal and his demands that the CCP 'come out of the KMT' and disrupt the united front, was right, while Stalin's recommendation to preserve the united front was wrong and led to the massacres.

There is no doubt that Stalin was not only misinformed on the Chinese Revolution but never understood its complexity. The Comintern, in its resolutions and directives, would become increasingly out of touch, and especially out of time, with the situation. But this does not make Trotsky's thesis correct. The 'left' of the CCP, like Chang Kuo-tao, followed Trotsky in their clamour  for a rupture of the united front; but a rupture of the united front would not cure the weakness within the Communist Party; it would have meant its extermination, and Chiang would then have brought in foreign troops to 'aid' in the liquidation. This would have meant the disintegration of the whole nationalist movement Sun Yatsen had given a lifetime to build up.

The substance of the matter was not the retention of the united front, but Chen Tu-hsiu's policy of capitulation, practically handing the leadership of the revolutionary movement to the counter-revolutionary leaders of the Kuomingtang. The importance of this United Front and this first betrayal, is precisely the lesson it gave to those capable of learning it.

Trotsky's condemnation of the united front was a repudiation of Lenin's thesis of 'temporary alliance' with bourgeois parties. Lenin had said in 1920 that the bourgeoisie would try to seize and keep control of the national revolutionary movements. However radical they sounded, they would betray and compromise with imperialism. Hence the Communist Party must preserve its own independence and keep the leadership of the workers and peasants in its hands. This strategy of the united front only Mao Tsetung seems to have understood. Ten years later, when the Second United Front was formed, he would hammer the terrible lesson of the first into the Chinese Communist Party.[5]”

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[1]    End of the first Opium War – the first unequal treaty imposed on China.

[2]    Big merchant princes – a word fallen into disuse since 1949.

[3] Out “The Morning Deluge – Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese Revolution”, Han Suyin, http://www.amazon.com/morning-deluge-Tsetung-revolution-1893-1954/dp/0316342890

[4] Out “The Morning Deluge – Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese Revolution”, Han Suyin, http://www.amazon.com/morning-deluge-Tsetung-revolution-1893-1954/dp/0316342890

[5] Out “The Morning Deluge – Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese Revolution”, Han Suyin, http://www.amazon.com/morning-deluge-Tsetung-revolution-1893-1954/dp/0316342890