The ECCI imposed on the CCP the stagist theory that China had to complete the democratic revolution before proceeding to the socialist, and that the appropriate strategy was the bloc within. Maintenance of the KMT-CCP block was deemed essential for a successful anti-imperialist revolution, and as this was a stage that could not be bypassed the CCP had to surrender its own particular interests and submit itself to the nationalist party foregoing an independent, critical voice. The way to hell is paved with good intentions, so it is said, and the attempt to form an unbreakable anti-imperialist front with the national bourgeoisie was one such. The newly-founded CCP, as a member of the CI accepted its discipline and the leadership of Moscow even though the ECCI perspective was increasingly clashing with reality.
The Russian proletariat (and the peasants in the army garrisons) spontaneously created Soviets in February 1917 based on democratic demands. The Soviets were key to destroying the army as a functioning counter-revolutionary force. It was through Soviets that the Bolshevik party was able to make contact with the masses, assess their revolutionary spirit, mobilise them for action and realise the slogan ‘Land to the Peasants’. The Soviets mobilised the masses that neither the party, nor trade unions nor even peasant associations could reach, and educated and organisationally prepared them for insurrection. During 1905 and 1917, based on its own experiences and guided by the Bolshevik Party, the Russian proletariat rose from lower to higher levels of understanding. However, in China such a perspective meant a break with the bloc within, with the concept of stages and with the bloc of four classes.
The NRA advance to the Yangtze and the gigantic upsurge of the mass movement had brought the class contradictions in the Nationalist movement to breaking-point. The Communists hid the issues from the masses and, especially, from the Shanghai workers. Unwarned, and unprepared, they would first become Chiang’s pawns and then his victims. Chiang Kai-shek, for his part, had concluded that this time the mass movement could be halted only by decapitation.