Leon Trotsky: The Main Lessons of the Third Congress

(10 July 1921)

[My own translation of the German text in “Kommunist”, 4 August 1921, Corrections by English native speakers would be extremely welcome.]

Classes have their origin in production. They are viable as long as they play the necessary role in the process of the general organisation of labour. The classes lose their footing when the conditions of their further existence come into contradiction with the growth of production, i.e., with the further development of the economy. This is the situation in which the bourgeoisie now finds itself.

But this does not at all mean that the class whose root has died and which has become a parasite must immediately perish. Even if the foundation of class rule is the economy, the classes nevertheless maintain themselves directly through the state-political apparatuses and organs such as the army, the police, the parties, the courts, the press, and so on. With the help of these organs, which constitute the "superstructure" of the economic foundation, the ruling class can hold on to power for years and decades after it has already become a direct obstacle to social development. If this state of affairs drags on too long, the ruling class can sweep the country and the people it rules along with it in its downfall.

Hence the necessity of revolution. The new class, the new root of economic development, lies in the proletariat. The proletariat must overthrow the bourgeoisie, tear power out of its hands and must transform the state apparatus into a weapon for the reorganisation of society.

The bourgeoisie had already become a parasite, an anti-social class, before the world war. But it was in the war that it was most clearly shown that the rule of the bourgeoisie is in contradiction with the further development, even with a further maintenance of the economy. The war not only brought this contradiction to light, but intensified it and sharpened it to the extreme. During the war, the political organs of bourgeois rule, the state, the army, the police, the parliament, the press, discredited and weakened themselves to the extreme. In the first period after the war, the bourgeoisie was completely disoriented, feared the reckoning, had lost confidence in the old methods and habits of rule, anxiously probed the ground, wavered and made concessions. In 1919, the critical year for the bourgeoisie, the European proletariat could have seized state power with the least sacrifice if it had been headed by a genuinely revolutionary organisation that had set itself clear goals and was capable of pursuing them, i.e. if it had been headed by the Communist Party. But this was not the case. On the contrary, the working class, which after the war tried to conquer for itself new conditions of existence and attacked bourgeois society, dragged on its back the parties and trade unions of the Second International, whose efforts – consciously or instinctively – were essentially directed towards the preservation of capitalist society.

The bourgeoisie, covering itself behind the Social Democracy, took advantage of the pause in the struggle in the most excellent way. It recovered from the panic, restored its state organs, supplemented them with counter-revolutionary armed bands, recruited political specialists to fight with the open revolutionary movement, using combined methods of intimidation, bribery, provocation, isolation, division, and so on. The main task of these specialists is to deliver a series of struggles to the separate sections of the proletarian vanguard, to let them bleed, and thereby to rob the working class of its faith in possible success.

In the field of the restoration of the economy, the bourgeoisie has achieved nothing essential in the three years after the war. On the contrary, it is only now that the consequences of the war are unfolding in their full extent in the form of a crisis unprecedented in capitalist history. In this way we see particularly clearly that, for example, the political conditions of the trade union, although ultimately dependent on the economic conditions, do not at all run parallel and automatically with them. Whereas in the field of transport and production the world capitalist apparatus is in a state of total collapse, so that the condition of the year 1919 means the highest welfare in comparison with the present, in the political field the bourgeoisie has understood how to tie up the organs and weapons of its rule to a high degree. The leaders of the bourgeoisie see very clearly the economic abyss that is opening up before them. But they are ready and will fight to the end. They see the situation created as a question of political strategy. They are boldly following every movement of the proletariat, striving to weaken it, especially in Germany, where they are splintering it in a series of bloody individual struggles.

The workers have fought much over these three years and have made heavy sacrifices. They did not succeed in seizing power. The working class therefore became more cautious than it had been in 1919-20. In a series of elementary and semi-elementary attacks, the workers met a better organised resistance each time and were repulsed. They understood and felt that firm leadership and revolutionary strategy were necessary for success. If the masses of workers now no longer respond immediately to revolutionary slogans as they did in 1918 and 1919, it is not because they have become less revolutionary, but because they have become less naive. They want a guarantee of victory. Only that party can lead them to the decisive struggle which in practice, under all circumstances and conditions, proves not only its willingness to fight, i.e., its courage, but also its ability to lead masses in struggle, to manoeuvre, to attack, to lead out of the fire when conditions are unfavourable, to gather all forces and means for the blow and thereby systematically increase its influence on the masses and its authority. There is no doubt that the parties of the Communist International have not given themselves sufficient account of this task. Therein lies the main source of the tactical errors and internal crises of the individual communist parties.

The purely mechanical conception of the proletarian revolution, arising only from the fact of the continuing decay of capitalist society, led some groups of comrades to the basically false theory of the initiative of the minority, which by its heroism breaks down the "wall of general passivity" of the proletariat, and of the incessant attacks of the proletarian vanguard as a new method of struggle of partial struggles, playing with the use of methods of armed insurrection, etc. (this tendency is most clearly found in the Vienna journal "Kommunismus"). It goes without saying that this kind of tactical theory has nothing in common with Marxism. Its application is tantamount to the strategy of the military-political leaders of the bourgeoisie.

There is no doubt that the adventurist methods and theories, as a reaction against the reformist and centrist currents, originated in the working class and are their direct complement. While the reformist and centrist currents are an external force and an open enemy, the adventurist and subjective currents are mainly an internal danger whose underestimation would be unforgivable. The evil of revolutionary subjectivity, according to an expression of Dr. Herzen, is that it assumes a two- or five-month pregnancy instead of a nine-month one. This has never gone unavenged.

The Third Congress noted the further deterioration of the world economic foundations of bourgeois rule. At the same time, however, it vigorously warns the conscious workers against the naive idea that the downfall of the bourgeoisie automatically follows from this by way of incessant offensives of the proletariat. Never before has the instinct of class self-preservation of the bourgeoisie been equipped with such diverse methods of defence and attack as now. The economic preconditions of the victory of the working class are obvious. Without this victory, the decay and ruin of the whole civilisation menaces in the near or distant future. But this victory can only be won through a rational conduct of the struggles and, in the first place, through the conquest of the majority of the working class. This is the main lesson of the 3rd Congress.