Shanghai Commune of 1927

[Cryotank Screams]

Does anyone know much about this? All I could really find about it was the wiki article.

"In China, before Mao Zedong and the communists took power, the Shanghai Commune of 1927 was created as a grassroots movement by the workers of Shanghai. It was created after a massive rebellion overthrew the local warlord. However, this movement was crushed on April 12, 1927, when Chiang Kai-shek entered the city and launched purges."-Wiki.

Thoughts?

[Great Helmsman]

The roots of the 1927 Shanghai Commune go back to the May 4th movement, and it was a broad-based uprising for local governance against the warlord Sun Chuanfang. There were actually three uprisings in the city. The third one directed by the CCP succeeded by mobilizing the most workers to the cause, although it wasn't strictly a worker's revolution. The new governing committees included workers and the local bourgeoisie who were upset with warlord control. The new revolutionary committee had 11 members from the CCP, GMD, Shanghai General Labour Union, and Shanghai Student Federation. The committee determined that there would direct election and recall of the Citizen's Representative Congress. There would be 1200 representatives, 800 of which would be reserved for workers. There were two levels of representation: district, and city-wide. All citizens enjoyed freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and voting rights. Much like the Paris Commune, the Shanghai Commune disarmed the warlord's soldiers and armed worker's militias.

The Shanghai Commune was closely modeled on the 1871 Paris Commune, and Jiang Gaishek's April Coup suppressed the revolution after only one month.

This information was summarized from: From Paris to the Paris of the East and Back: Workers as Citizens in Modern Shanghai by Elizabeth J Perry.

[Cryotank Screams]

Thank you comrade, I do have two more questions though.



The Shanghai Commune was closely modeled on the 1871 Paris Commune


Any information on how they were similar and how (if it all) they differed?


This information was summarized from: From Paris to the Paris of the East and Back: Workers as Citizens in Modern Shanghai by Elizabeth J Perry.

Any more sources?

[Alf]

The Shanghai uprising of 1927 was the last gasp of the international revolutionary wave that began in 1917. It demonstrated the counter-revolutionary nature of the Stalinist policy of alliances with 'progressive' factions of the bourgeoisie. Parroting this line, the Chinese CP handed the workers over to their executioners in the nationalist Kuomingtang led by Chiang Kai-shek. Extract from the ICC's article http://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/china-march-1927

The Northern Expedition was the fateful backcloth to the bloody events in Shanghai in 1927. Chiang’s troops made spectacular progress against the northern militarists, largely thanks to the waves of workers’ strikes and peasant revolts which helped disintegrate the northern forces from the rear. The proletariat and poor peasants were fighting against their dreadful living conditions under the illusion that a Kuomintang victory would materially improve their lot. The Communist Party, far from struggling against these illusions, reinforced them to the hilt, not only by calling on the workers to fight for the victory of the Kuomintang, but also by restraining workers’ strikes or peasant land seizures when they threatened to go too far. In the words of Borodin, the task of the Chinese Communists and the Chinese working class was to “do coolie service for the Kuomintang”.
While the CCP and the CI were busy preventing the ‘excesses’ of the class struggle, Chiang set about crushing the very proletarian and peasant forces which had assisted his victories. Having forbidden all labour disputes for the duration of the northern campaign, Chiang suppressed the workers’ movement in Canton, Kiangsi, and other towns in the line of his advance. In Kwangtung province the peasant movement against the landlords was violently smashed. The Shanghai tragedy was simply the culmination of this process.


The Shanghai insurrectionShanghai with its ports and industry contained the flower of the Chinese proletariat. It was under the control of the war-lords and the workers’ bitter struggles against their local rulers was portrayed by the Kuomintang and the CCP as a prelude to the triumph of the 'national revolution'. As the Kuomintang army advanced towards the city, the CCP-led General Labour Union issued a call for a general strike to overthrow the city’s ruling clique and so “support the Northern Expeditionary Army” and “hail Chiang Kai-shek”. This initial attempt was brutally beaten back after fierce street-fighting. The city authorities unleashed a grim reign of terror against the working population, but its spirit remained unbroken. On March 21, the workers rose again, better organized this time, with a 5,000-strong workers’ militia and between 500,000 and 800,000 workers actively taking part in the general strike and insurrection. Police stations and army garrisons were attacked and seized, and arms distributed to the workers’ forces. By the next morning the whole city, except for the foreign concession, was in the hands of the proletariat.
An ominous transition period ensued. Chiang had arrived at the gates of Shanghai and, confronted with an armed working class uprising, immediately set about contacting the local capitalists, imperialists, and criminal gangs in order to prepare its suppression, just as he had done in all the other ‘liberated’ towns. And yet although Chiang’s intentions were growing clear all the time, the CI and the CCP continued to advise the workers to trust in the national army and welcome Chiang as their liberator. By now Chiang’s record of repression had alerted a vocal minority about the need for the working class to prepare to fight Chiang as well as the northern war-lords. In Russia Trotsky demanded the formation of workers’, peasants’, and soldiers’ soviets as a basis for an armed struggle against Chiang and for the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship. In China a dissident group of CI representatives - Albrecht, Nassonov, and Fokkine - took up a similar position, criticizing the spinelessness of the CCP leadership. Within the CCP itself, pressure was growing for a break with the Kuomintang. But the party leadership remained faithful to the line of the CI - that any move against Chiang would play into the hands of the ‘counter-revolution’. Instead of calling for the formation of soviets, the CCP organized a ‘provisional municipal government’ in which it sat as a minority alongside the local bourgeoisie. Instead of warning the workers about Chiang’s intentions, the CCP welcomed his forces into the city. Instead of accentuating the class struggle, the only means of defence and offence available to the proletariat, the GLU opposed spontaneous strike actions and began to curb the power of the armed workers’ pickets which had effective control of the streets. Thus Chiang was able to carefully prepare his counter-attack. On April 12th when he unleashed his mercenaries and criminal bands (many of whom were dressed as ‘workers’ of the newly formed ‘moderate’ unions, the Workers’ Trade Alliance), the workers were caught off guard and were thoroughly confused. Despite vigorous resistance from the workers, Chiang quickly re-established ‘order’ in an orgy of bloodshed in which workers were decapitated in the streets or buried alive in mass graves alongside their murdered comrades. The backbone of the Chinese working class had been broken.