The defeat reinforced the bureaucratic reaction in Russia. With Lenin dying, Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev intrigued against Trotsky. These moves simply served to reinforce Stalin’s position and strengthen the grip of the bureaucracy. Never particularly interested in the broader international perspectives, Stalin now became increasingly sceptical about the prospects of international revolution. This began to manifest itself in the Soviet Union with the theory of ‘socialism in one country’, the shift to the right in economic policy and the pandering to the kulaks and NEPmen. This ‘theory’ sprang directly from the defeat which the revolution had suffered in Germany. It indicated a turning away from the principles of revolutionary internationalism on which the Russian Revolution had been based and on which the Third International was founded.
At that time, Stalin had not the slightest notion of where the theory of socialism in one country would lead the Soviet Union and the Comintern. The transition from the policy of world revolution to that of socialism in one country expressed a sharp turn to the right in the Comintern. The young and immature leaders of the International were quickly brought under the control of the Stalin clique in the Kremlin which cynically used them as agents of its foreign policy. Those who showed resistance were purged.
In 1928, Leon Trotsky predicted that the acceptance by the Communist International of the theory of socialism in one country could mark the beginning of a process which would inevitably culminate in the national-reformist degeneration of every Communist Party in the world – whether in or out of power. In a brilliant prediction, Trotsky warned the leaders of the Communist Parties:
If it is at all possible to realise socialism in one country, then one can believe in that theory not only after but also before the conquest of power. If socialism can be realised within the national boundaries of backward Russia, then there is all the more reason to believe that it can be realised in advanced Germany. Tomorrow the leaders of the Communist Party of Germany will undertake to propound the theory. The draft programme empowers them to do so. The day after tomorrow the French party will have its turn. It will be the beginning of the degeneration of the Comintern along the lines of social patriotism. (Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, p. 73.)
Foreign policy became dominated by Stalin, who had lost complete confidence in the working class internationally, and was desperate to find allies to “defend the Soviet Union from attack”. The Comintern was already being reduced to the role of a border guard and the passive tool of Moscow’s foreign policy. In regard to the Chinese Revolution during 1925-27, where millions were being stirred into action in Asia, the Comintern, instead of relying on the workers and peasants to carry through the revolution, as was the Leninist policy in Russia, preferred to subordinate itself to the Chinese capitalists and generals around Chiang Kai-shek in the nationalist Guomindang. Stalin described the Guomindang as a revolutionary “bloc of four classes”. In early 1926, it was admitted as a member of the Communist International. Chiang was elected, against the solitary vote of Trotsky, an honorary member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. The Left Opposition warned about the consequences of this Menshevik policy. The Chinese Communist Party was the sole workers’ party and had a dominating influence over the working class; the peasantry was looking towards the example of Russia to show them the way out of their centuries-long suffering at the hands of the landlords, through the seizure of the land.
Under Stalin’s orders, and for fear of alienating the capitalists and landlords of the Guomindang, the Chinese Communists were prevented from putting themselves at the head of the agrarian revolution. The Comintern stubbornly refused to take the road of working class independence, which Lenin had insisted on as a prerequisite for communist policy in relation to the revolutionary-democratic and anti-imperialist revolutions in the East. On 20 March 1926, the militarist leadership of the Guomindang under Chiang Kai-shek staged a counter-revolutionary coup. Chiang then proceeded to arrest leading Communists and trade unionists. In order to shield Stalin’s authority, all news of this right-wing coup was suppressed in the Soviet Union. Inprecor (the organ of the Third International at the time) dismissed the coup reports as “an invention of the imperialists”. Chiang staged a further coup in the revolutionary stronghold of Shanghai, carrying through a massacre of Communist workers. Only when the defeat of the revolution was complete did Stalin order a bloody insurrection in Canton – a pure adventure – that beheaded the proletarian vanguard. Stalin drew the conclusion that “Chiang Kai-shek’s coup is one of those zigzags in the course of the Chinese Revolution, one that was needed in order to cleanse the revolution of dross and to impel it forward…” (Stalin, Collected Works, Vol. 9, p. 265.)
Meanwhile, a similar opportunist policy was pursued in Britain where the masses were undergoing a process of intense radicalisation. As a means of combating intervention against the Soviet Union the Russian trade unions entered into an agreement with the General Council of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) to co-operate through an Anglo-Russian Committee. The tendency towards revolutionary developments in Britain is seen in the fact that a million members, a quarter of the trade union membership, were organised in the Minority Movement. Trotsky, analysing the situation in Britain, had predicted the outbreak of a general strike. The task of the Communist Party and the Communist International should have been to prepare the workers for the inevitability of a betrayal on the part of the trade union leadership. Instead, they sowed illusions in the minds of the workers, especially as the British trade union bureaucrats had covered themselves with the prestige of the Anglo-Russian Committee. After the betrayal of the 1926 General Strike by the trade union bureaucracy, Trotsky demanded that the Russian trade unions break off relations with the British TUC. This Stalin and the Comintern refused to do. After using the Anglo-Russian Committee for as long as they needed, more than a year after the General Strike, the British trade union leadership took the initiative to break off relations. The Comintern let out a howl that they had been betrayed.
The young British Communist Party should have increased its membership and influence by leaps and bounds as a result of these great events. Unfortunately, following the line of the International, it trailed behind the ‘lefts’ on the TUC General Council, who in turn, trailed behind the likes of right wingers, Citrine and Thomas. It was disoriented by the opportunist policy of the International, and proved unable to take advantage of the opportunities that had opened up. Their outlook was summed up by JT Murphy, a Central Committee member, who wrote on the eve of the strike:
Our party does not hold the leading positions in the trade unions. It is not conducting the negotiations with the employers and the government. It can only advise and place its forces at the service of the workers led by others… To entertain any exaggerated views as to the revolutionary possibilities of this crisis and visions of new leadership ‘arising spontaneously in the struggle’, etc., is fantastic… (Quoted in The History of Communism in Britain, by Brian Pearce and Michael Woodhouse, p. 99. London, 1995.)
These defeats for the Communist International in China and Britain, due directly to the policy of Stalin and the bureaucracy, paradoxically, increased the power of the bureaucracy within the Soviet Union. The Left Opposition led by Trotsky, which had correctly analysed and forecast these developments, was now expelled from the Communist Party and from the International.