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Waistline writes: "You simply believe that social revolution is always possible given the right balance of subjective forces and the disposition of the revolutionary vanguard. You proceed from an assumption called "proper revolutionary demands and correct program." I don't think David S. is making that point. But he can speak for himself. Do you mean a 'social' revolution in that it's "Socialist" or a revolution that simply overturns the current political state from feudalistic warlord and colonial dismemberment to a moder democratic one? No one states, that I'm aware of, that what was on the agenda in 1925-1927 was a "socialist revolution", per se. It was question of an anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, pro-land reform "democratic" tasks. I think *everyone* was for this, even Bukharin, who Stalin tailed after during this period. The problem and the debate, Waistline, was what class was going to lead this. In the view of the Stalin and Bukharin factions in the CPSU and the Comintern, the mechanical 'stageist' approach still seemed apparent. The Left Opposition and the leadership of the *Chinese themselves* disagreed. They believed, as the events of 1927 showed and the subsequent years of of KMT rule, that only the working class could lead such a revolution through an alliance with the peasantry that came to power in the form of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. That is, for the CCP to lead them to power. That NO wing of the capitalist class, manifested politically in the KMT, could lead such a revolution in the age of Imperialism. They would *always* side with Imperialism, against the working class, against the peasantry yearning for the land they worked. This included the your much vaunted "left wing" that itself *arrested* and murdered members of the CCP. That the CCP was screaming at the Comintern to allow them to break with the KMT during this period and organize communes throughout the cities, use their influence in the massive peasant unions to seize power, was *stomped* by the CPSU. The united front with the KMT *broke down* when the Comintern ordered its *end* by redefining such a front as subordination of the CP to the KMT. This is where your 'stages' or 'phases' approach lead to. Your view that, "it doesn't matter because the CCP came to power in 1949" is not something any communist, the term you like to use so much, can ever say with any sense of history or understanding of revolutionary Marxism. The suffering of the Chinese masses for 2 and half decades because of this 'error' is dismissed as...what? Historically inevitable? Like KDP leader Thamlmen who said "After Hitler, then US!" as the KDP was murdered en masse in 1932? This is your view of history? ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
