Chiang understood the threat the uprising posed to the Chinese bourgeoisie and took the political offensive against both the CCP and the left KMT. Co-ordinated gangster attacks on trade unions and peasant associations in the territories controlled by Chiang accelerated. Local union HQs were attacked and smashed up and those defending them beaten and even killed. Peasant associations received the same treatment. In those cases where the pickets successfully defended themselves, police or the NRA would appear and in a neutral capacity disarm and then arrest them, after which the gangsters would take over and ‘reorganise’ the union. In all cases the unions soon re-appeared as yellow unions. Despite the frequency and widespread occurrence of these attacks, the CCP was so blinded by the desire to keep Chiang on side that they closed their eyes to their co-ordinated nature and limited themselves to resolutions urging the military to protect the workers!
On 21 March 1927, the General Labour Union led the Shanghai workers in a second insurrection that took control from the local warlord and within two days armed workers controlled the city. However, the workers fought under slogans provided by the CCP and local KMT: ‘Hail the National Revolutionary Army!’, ‘Welcome to Chiang Kai-shek!’ Internationally the Stalinist press rallied to praise Chiang. Rote Fahne in Germany and L’Humanite in France went so far as to claim that Chiang’s entry into Shanghai would not only be the liberation of Shanghai, not only inaugurate the ‘Chinese Commune’ but would be the beginning of the liberation for the workers of the world.[5] This complete mis-reading of the situation flowed quite naturally from the anti-Marxism of the bloc of four classes. The ECCI and CCP voluntarily restricted the workers’ and peasants’ struggles, limited the goals to what was acceptable to the bourgeoisie, and paved the way for Chiang to carry out in Shanghai the destruction of the mass movement, but in a more thorough and determined manner than he had been doing elsewhere.
While the Shanghai proletariat fought, Chiang Kai-Shek delayed his march waiting for the warlord’s troops to drain the blood of the workers. However, the workers took the city and held it, spontaneously declaring they did not want Chiang to enter. Despite the CCP, they were prepared to fight to stop him. It was this victory of the Shanghai workers that confirmed to Chiang that he could wait no longer. Simultaneously, the ECCI sent a telegram instructing the CCP “to avoid clashes with the National Army and its leaders in Shanghai at any price”, arms were to be surrendered and control of Shanghai given to the NRA.[6,7]
On 26 March Chiang entered the city. On 28 March martial law was declared. Chiang did everything to hide the assault he was planning, a veritable avalanche of statements was produced denying any split with the left KMT or CCP. Chiang even invited Wang Jingwei to return to China and vowed to show ‘explicit obedience’ to the Wuhan KMT. These devices worked better than he could ever have hoped because the left KMT leaders and ECCI wanted to believe him.[8]
On 31 March 1927, Trotsky, on the basis of a permanentist analysis, wrote to the CC and in complete antithesis to Stalin, he argued that without extending and deepening the agrarian revolution through Soviets there was a real risk of a Chinese Bonapartist coup based on the officer cadre.[9] The ECCI and the majority of the CC of the CCP followed the Stalinist line and insisted that feudal forces not the bourgeoisie were behind the reactionary activities. The result was that they disregarded the main and immediate enemy of the revolution – Chiang and the NRA.[10] Their hopes rested on Wang Jingwei, who returned to China (Shanghai), from France (via Moscow), on 1 April 1927.
On 3 April, in an unpublished article Trotsky, argued that in giving up its political independence and submitting to the discipline of the KMT, the CCP was failing to act as a pole of attraction not only to militant workers and peasants but even to radical petty-bourgeois elements within the KMT. This inaction meant, de facto, the strengthening of the power and authority of the bourgeois wing. The consequences of their actions would be just the opposite of what the ECCI expected. At a time when class divisions were accelerating rapidly, the ECCI policy of appeasing Chiang was preparing conditions for a military coup.[11]
Stalin offered the alternative perspective in a speech on 5 April 1927 when he told 3,000 Party members in the Pillar Hall of the Kremlin that “Chiang Kai-Shek cannot do otherwise than lead the army against the imperialists” irrespective of his lack of sympathy for the revolution.[12] Stalin and the ECCI in a major mis-assessment, evaluated the left KMT government in Wuhan as key to the national revolution; events in Shanghai were secondary. Peng Shuzhi and Chen Duxiu pointed out, to no avail, that Chiang Kai-shek had proved in March 1926 that he was the more important factor in the Chinese Revolution and that the Shanghai workers had to defend themselves and their city against the NRA. Chen considered Wang Jingwei the secondary force who would, most likely, fold if tested in action.
To allay the concerns of the workers, the CCP and KMT issued a joint manifesto in Shanghai on 6 April. In all the documents of Stalinism this stands out as one of the most criminal:
… counter-revolutionaries both inside and outside China are spreading false reports … that the leaders of the KMT intend to make war on the Communist Party, to suppress the labour unions and to dissolve the workers’ defence organisations. … The military authorities in Shanghai have declared their complete allegiance to the Central Committee of the KMT. If differences of opinion exist they can be amicably settled. The Communist Party is striving to maintain order in the freed territories. … there is no basis whatever for these malicious rumours …[13]
Wang Jingwei, arrived in Wuhan on 10 April. With full support promised by Borodin, the CCP and the Soviet government, and with Chiang a safe distance away, he sought to re-establish himself as leader of the KMT. Wang called a KMT Central Executive Committee in Hankou at which Chiang (in his absence) was removed from his Party posts but allowed to keep the title of Commander-in-Chief.[14] Chen Duxiu arrived to meet with Wang Jingwei and found him surrounded by known anti-Communists. The weakness of the CCP, demonstrated by its failure to organise opposition to the attacks on workers and peasants in the area controlled by Chiang Kai-shek, pushed Wang and the leaders of the left KMT rapidly to the right, and closer to Chiang.
Until spring 1927, the CCP had a wonderful opportunity before it. If it had followed the proposals of Chen and Peng and assisted the peasants to launch soviets to coincide with and lead the wave of land seizures, there was every likelihood that the CCP could have gained governmental and state power (certainly in southern and central China). The rebellion might initially have had the form of a traditional peasant uprising but with Soviets to act as organising centres, structuring demands on the key and essential agrarian and anti-imperialist questions, the rebellion would soon have become a revolution because only proletarian leadership could ensure the Soviets carried through the agrarian revolution to completion.
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Isaacs, H. The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, w.m.org, p179.
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Pantsov, A., and Levine, S. Mao, Simon & Schuster, 2012, p178.
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Chen Duxiu Appeal … Op. cit.
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Isaacs, Op. cit. p176.
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Trotsky, L. To the Politburo of the AUCP(B) CC. 31 March 1927. www.oocities.org.
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Chen Duxiu Appeal … Op. cit.
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Trotsky, L. Class Relations in the Chinese Revolution, 3 April 1927, w.m.org.
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Isaacs, Op. cit. p185.
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CCP and KMT joint manifesto issued in Shanghai on 6 April, International Press Correspondence, 14 April, 1927.
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North, R. Moscow and the Chinese Communists, Stanford U.P., 1963. p92-94.