On 9 July 1926, just over four months after his coup, believing he had made his rear safe from revolution, Chiang began the Northern Expedition for the military unification of China. The NRA was not large, it numbered only about 100,000 soldiers, against over half a million warlord troops. Its successes came from its dynamism and its popular support.[17] The NRA was accompanied by a swarm of agitators, organisers, and propagandists who so well prepared the ground that often the armies needed only to advance on a village or town for the warlord’s forces to evaporate. In support of the NRA, railway and telegraph workers attempted to paralyse the warlords’ communications, peasants spied on warlord troop movements and made them immediately known to the NRA, and formed guerrilla bands to attack the rear of the warlords’ armies. There were even cases where the local peasant association staged an uprising ahead of the NRA.[18]
The NRA proceeded in two columns, the western column headed for Wuhan, strategically placed in the middle of the Yangtze valley, on the river and an administrative, industrial and transport centre, and the eastern column, led by Chiang, headed for Nanchang, capital of Jiangxi province.
As the NRA began its march, the Central Committee of the CCP met in Shanghai (12-18 July 1926). It received and again rejected a motion submitted by Peng Shuzhi, supported by Chen Duxiu, for the withdrawal of Communists from the bloc within and the establishment of a United Front with the left wing of the KMT.[19] The published proceedings of this meeting were permeated with a desire to convince the bourgeoisie that the CCP was no threat to its interests. The resolution on the peasant question was typical, it proposed restricting the CCP policy to what was believed acceptable to the KMT; rent and interest rate reduction, lower taxes and removal of corrupt officials. Such an obsequious approach could only lead to further retreats.
The leadership of the CCP had voted to accept the instructions of the ECCI not only because the latter had behind it the prestige of the October Revolution and provided most of the resources that kept the Party afloat, but also out of loyalty to a body which had been a major factor in its foundation, providing essential leadership over its difficult first days. But now the ECCI was proposing a course of action that cut right across Leninist norms. In public, Chen Duxiu, as Secretary of the CCP, followed discipline and declared the KMT one of the pillars of the national-revolutionary movement but within the CCP worked hard to separate the two organisations.
In opposition to Chen and Peng, ECCI representatives made every effort to win the CCP leadership, one obvious method being to promote onto the CC those who agreed with ECCI perspectives. Under Comintern pressure the weaker, the opportunists, those jealous of their positions, and those who genuinely believed in a stagist approach followed Borodin’s lead. Incrementally, the character of the Central Committee was changed. Each time Chen and Peng raised the question of breaking the bloc within they received less support and within the Party most new recruits (the vast majority given the rapid growth of the Party) were joining on the basis of support for the Northern Expedition and Chiang.
MN Roy, ECCI representative in China and second only to Borodin, would later claim that by this time the majority of the leadership of the CCP endorsed the Stalinist perspective: “Almost all the Communist leaders believed the stories about the ‘excesses’ of the peasants and declared that the most effective method of combatting the counter-revolution would be to check them.”[20]
Wang Fan-hsi was in Beijing as the NRA progressed northwards. He described how the CCP deliberately mis-educated the membership by fostering the idea that, apart from a few old men, the KMT was solidly on the side of the Revolution; not one word of criticism was voiced against Chiang at CCP meetings. Soon after, Wang moved to Canton where he discovered reality was very different from what he had been told. He found the strength of the so-called left wing of the KMT was largely illusory. The numbers of left-wing individuals within the KMT prepared to stand up for their ideas were so few that they would never constitute a force to be reckoned with. On the other hand, Chiang and the forces of the right had real power, military power in their hands.[21]
As he gained confidence, Chiang suppressed trade unions, peasant leagues and the activities of Communists in the area under the control of the NRA. On 29 July 1926, he declared martial law. All labour disturbances were forbidden for the duration of the Northern campaign. The NRA’s triumphant progress continued and by September the Yangtze valley was in Chiang’s hands. The ECCI was delirious with joy.
On 9 August 1926, the KMT declared compulsory arbitration in all labour disputes, workers were forbidden to bear arms of any description, to assemble or to parade. Military patrols took possession of the streets. Stalin said: “The withdrawal of the Chinese communists from the Kuomintang at the present time would be a profound mistake. The whole course, character, and prospects of the Chinese revolution undoubtedly testify in favour of the Chinese communists remaining in the Kuomintang and intensifying their work in it.” In flagrant opposition to the facts available to him but as a smokescreen to justify his own policies, he presented the advance of Chiang’s troops as meaning “freedom of assembly, freedom to strike, freedom to organise for all the revolutionary elements in China in general, and for the workers in particular.”[22] The victories of the NRA and the propaganda of their own Party convinced many doubters within the CCP that the curbing of peasant attempts to seize the land was justified.
In Canton the local government had been under the control of the left KMT and initially had been supportive of the Canton-Hong Kong strike, but it soon moved to the right as the consequences of Chiang’s coup became clear. The bloc of four classes began to reveal its true face. In May, the Canton Government offered to ensure “the complete cessation of the boycott and of all other anti-British manifestations throughout the territory controlled by the Canton Government” in exchange for a $10,000,000 loan from the British. Squads of soldiers and police patrolled the streets of Canton and the food kitchens were discontinued. The betrayal by the Canton Government broke the back of the strike and on 10 October 1926, the strike and boycott were called off unconditionally. No loan was given.
The strike and boycott had opened the door to an independent working-class perspective and had demonstrated the capacity of the Chinese workers to organise and function in their own interests. The CCP described the abrupt termination of an historic fifteen months’ struggle without a single concession as “not a defeat but a great victory”.
The CCP had allowed an historic opportunity to slip without even realising it. The workers of Canton would pay dearly for this ‘victory’. The gangsters of Canton were mobilised into a Central Labour Union and carried the offensive against the revolutionary workers onto the streets.[23] Against the advice of the CCP, militants defended their organisations, but with the masses disheartened and defeated, this was to no avail.
In early October, the NRA took one of the most important of China’s industrial areas, the Wuhan complex comprising the three cities of Wuchang (railroad centre), Hanyang (industrial centre) and Hankou (important commercial port on the Yangtse) each with a substantial industrial population. In November, Chiang took Nanchang which then became the centre for the rightists within the KMT.
Borodin successfully persuaded the remaining left KMT leadership in Canton to move their government to Wuhan to take advantage of the working class base that existed there. No doubt the defeat of the Canton-Hong Kong strike weighed on his mind. The move coincided with the 7th Plenum of the ECCI (22 November – 16 December 1926). This was the first Plenum since the counter-revolutionary coup of 20 March and incredible as it might seem, not one word was said about the coup, not one word about the shootings of the workers and peasants carried out by the KMT in a number of provinces, not one word about the withdrawal of support for the Canton-Hong Kong strike, not one word about the efforts made by the Canton government to strangle and denigrate the peasants’ movement, to prevent its spread and development. The 7th Plenum passed over in silence the Central Committee of the CCP’s public undertaking not to criticise Sun Yat-senism, effectively endorsing the CCP’s renunciation of its right to function as an independent workers’ party.
The Plenum was guided by a resolution passed at the meeting of the Politburo of the Soviet Communist Party on 26 October 1926 which had decided the CCP should make a significant shift to the right.[24] The Plenum issued a manifesto drafted by Martynov (against whose ideas Lenin wrote What is to be Done?) who, by ignoring basic Marxism – that the power of a state was ‘bodies of armed men’ (e.g. the NRA) – was able to conclude that China was heading towards a multi-class state. On the key question of land to the peasant, the manifesto declared national liberation was impossible without agrarian revolution – nationalisation of the land was fundamental.[25] This sounded wonderful, but the lands and property of KMT leaders and the officers of the NRA were excluded. The heart of the CCP’s land programme was reduced to demands acceptable to Chiang Kai-shek.
Martynov proposed that Communists penetrate the new Government and use the state apparatus to confiscate land, reduce taxes and invest real power in peasant committees. But the 20 March coup had been precisely to stop such things happening, to ensure that real power would be kept out of the hands of peasant committees. In such a situation, taking posts within the state apparatus meant Party members punished peasants for revolutionary acts. That CCP members were volunteering to become magistrates to enforce bourgeois laws even before the manifesto arrived, demonstrated the level of mis-education within the CCP and the political level of the people being recruited.[26] The public face of the CCP was class-collaboration and this naturally attracted recruits who favoured such a policy.
Martynov justified the CCP entering the left KMT government by arguing that it would strengthen the ‘revolutionary’ left wing against the right, that it was possible to change the KMT into a ‘real Party of the People’. His classification of ‘revolutionary’ left was demonstrated by the first on his list of desirable participants – the KMT Government in Canton which was at that moment disarming workers, protecting yellow unions, and attempting to strangle the peasants’ movement.[27] Without independent bases in the proletariat and peasantry (which required the clear slogan of “Land to the Peasant”), the CCP did not have sufficient weight within the KMT to counter-balance the right wing which had military support.
The CCP was enmeshed in a net of contradictory requirements, the only way to break out and save the Revolution was to support the peasants’ seizure and distribution of the land – and that required Soviets. But by Stalin’s direct order Soviets were excluded. Instead the CCP was instructed to use the “apparatus of the National Revolutionary Government”, a formula for achieving nothing. In the army, for example, this was interpreted as manoeuvring individual sympathisers into command positions rather than winning the soldiers to a revolutionary position by setting up Communist nuclei of rank and file soldiers.
The Plenum did warn that the bourgeoisie were trying to “smash the revolution”, but failed to say who these people were (Stalin personally declared Chiang was loyal), when they would act, under what conditions they would do so, where they would act, and what they would do. The ECCI warning was abstract in the extreme, but the actions it demanded were immediate and concrete – capitulation to the bourgeois KMT.
As the leadership of the CCP tried to square the circle of supporting the peasants without introducing soviets and without offending the officer corps, it became caught up – and partners in – spinning a web of deceit. The CCP had to choose support for the KMT or support for the peasant revolution; rather than risk a break with the KMT it decided to block the revolution.[28] On 13 December 1926 in Hankou, in the presence of Borodin and Voitinsky, Chen Duxiu delivered a report on the current situation to the Party leadership. The published version of the report had the CCP bowing to ECCI discipline: unity with the KMT would be maintained and the disease of “left naivete” eliminated from the body of the CCP. The report argued that the rightists had been “frightened” by the CCP success in mobilising the mass movement, and by the dominance of the CCP at a rank and file level in the KMT. The solution was for CCP members to call for confidence in the KMT leadership but, and in particular, to try to stop the leftward movement of the masses. The political goal was to establish a left civilian government headed by Wang Jingwei.[29]
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Dorland, A. The Concept and Function of “China” in Trotsky MA thesis McGill Univ., Montreal, Canada. 1971.
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McColl, R. The Oyuwan Soviet, Jnl of Asian Studies, 1967, 27(1)41-60.
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Alexander, R. Op. cit.
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North, Op. cit. p102.
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Wang Fan-hsi, Memoirs of a Chinese Revolutionary, Columbia U.P., New York, 1980, p25.
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Degras, J. The Communist International, 1919-1943: Documents, O.U.P. 1965, Vol 2:337.
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Cliff, Trotsky, Op. cit. Vol 3:187-224.
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Pantsov, A. & Levine, S. Mao, Simon & Schuster, 2012, p163.
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James, C.L.R. The World Revolution, w.m.org.
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North, R. and Xenia E. M.N. Roy’s Mission to China, Univ. of California Press, 1963, p31.
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James, Op. cit.
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North and Xenia, Op. cit. p30-35.
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Saich, Op. cit. p219-228.