It is wrong to lump the KMT and the SPD together. The KMT was a bourgeois nationalist party. The SPD, despite its well documented problems, was a workers party with enormous political significance. Absolutely not tbe same, hence the difference in policy toward the two.
I don’t agree with that assessment. The KMT at the time was led by Sun Yat-Sen, who was much more left-leaning than his successor Chiang Kai-Shek. The KMT was originally a revolutionary party that deposed the monarchy, and it had left-wing elements within the party (as well as cooperating with the CCP) before Chiang purged them. Also worth noting that as a pre-industrial, colonized society, the class distinctions were not precisely the same as in Western countries, as demonstrated by the fact that it was by mobilizing the peasants rather than the much smaller industrial proletariat that the Chinese revolution was eventually successful. As argued by Frantz Fanon, class collaboration with the bourgeoisie in poor countries is potentially viable because the primary conflict in those cases is with foreign colonizers.
If you ask me to choose between the early KMT under Sun that overthrew a monarchy and cooperated with communists, and the SDP who betrayed and murdered communists, denounced them as being as bad as fascists, and enacted austerity policies that contributed to the Nazis’ rise, I’m picking the early KMT every time.
It is wrong to lump the KMT and the SPD together. The KMT was a bourgeois nationalist party. The SPD, despite its well documented problems, was a workers party with enormous political significance. Absolutely not tbe same, hence the difference in policy toward the two.
I don’t agree with that assessment. The KMT at the time was led by Sun Yat-Sen, who was much more left-leaning than his successor Chiang Kai-Shek. The KMT was originally a revolutionary party that deposed the monarchy, and it had left-wing elements within the party (as well as cooperating with the CCP) before Chiang purged them. Also worth noting that as a pre-industrial, colonized society, the class distinctions were not precisely the same as in Western countries, as demonstrated by the fact that it was by mobilizing the peasants rather than the much smaller industrial proletariat that the Chinese revolution was eventually successful. As argued by Frantz Fanon, class collaboration with the bourgeoisie in poor countries is potentially viable because the primary conflict in those cases is with foreign colonizers.
If you ask me to choose between the early KMT under Sun that overthrew a monarchy and cooperated with communists, and the SDP who betrayed and murdered communists, denounced them as being as bad as fascists, and enacted austerity policies that contributed to the Nazis’ rise, I’m picking the early KMT every time.
Alright. Goes to show the Stalinist hostility to the revolutionary working class and their affinity for bourgeois nationalism is as strong as ever.