Leon Trotsky: Diplomacy or Revolutionary Politics?

Letter to a Czech Comrade

July 1, 1929

[Writings of Leon Trotsky. Vol 1, 1929, New York 1975, p. 180-187]

If your letter had dealt mainly or exclusively with special questions of Czechoslovakia, I might have found it difficult to answer, for the situation in Czechoslovakia is, unfortunately, less familiar to me at this time than the situation in a number of other European countries. But your letter raises a number of questions of general significance for the whole Communist Opposition, which has become an international ideological current and is becoming an international faction.

What did our questions arise from? I drew attention to the fact that you in your statement formally distanced yourself from “Trotskyism." Of course, if you consider that the views defended by the Opposition are opposed to Leninism or are erroneous in themselves, our separation is politically obligatory and does not need justification.

But as I see it now, the matter is not that way at all. You consider that so-called “Trotskyism" is in fact an application of the methods of Marx and Lenin to the contemporary period. If you mark yourself off from Trotskyism it is, as you explain, not from considerations of principle but from tactical ones. The members of the party are so confused, in your words, by the specter of “Trotskyism" that it is necessary for the time being to present our views in disguise, and not declare openly that they are the views of the Communist Left Opposition.

I cannot at all agree with this. This method contradicts all my political experience. More than that, it contradicts the whole history of Bolshevism.

It is in fact possible to think that the centrist apparatus is waging its furious struggle against our name and not against our ideas. But this means underestimating the opponent. Such an approach simply ignores the political content of ruling centrism, and replaces politics by cheap pedagogics for backward children.

The whole policy of the Comintern for the past six years has passed either to the right or the left of the Marxist line. I do not know of a single major decision on questions of principle or current policies which has been correct. As far as I understand, you agree with this. In all cases, almost without exception, we oppose to the policy of the Comintern a Marxist line. Each time it has been condemned under the name of “Trotskyism.” This has been going on for six years now. Thus “Trotskyism” has ceased to be an indifferent label-it is filled with the content of the whole life of the Comintern from the past six years. You cannot subject the contemporary errors to criticism and propose a correct solution without expounding the views officially condemned under the name of “Trotskyism.” And if for pedagogical reasons you distance yourself in words from Trotskyism, there still remains politically the question of your relation to a definite international tendency: the Left Opposition. You risk falling victim tomorrow to the contradictions of your position. One of two things: either you must each time make clear in what you disagree with the Left Opposition, and consequently wage a factional struggle against it — or you will be forced to take off your mask and admit that you were only pretending to be an “anti-Trotskyist” in order to defend the ideas of the Communist Left Opposition. I do not know which is worse.

No, a game of hide-and-seek in politics is an absolutely impermissible thing. I have already quoted several times for various reasons the words of a certain French writer: “If you hide your soul from others, in the end you will no longer be able to find it yourself.” Experience prompts me to suggest that you are probably not ruled only by pedagogical considerations (which, I already said, in no way justify disguises). In fact you are ruled by the lack of readiness to oppose yourself to the bureaucratically dense public opinion of the party. Most often, this kind of lack of readiness is produced by an insufficiently clear understanding of all the depths of the differences of opinion and all the magnificence of the cause which our tendency is destined to complete.

The zigzags of Stalinist centrism may inspire some people today with the thought that things are not too bad with the official leadership; that if you avoid annoying them too much with a harsh formulation of a question it will be possible to penetrate gradually the consciousness of broad circles of the party, to create a “base” for yourself, and then to unfurl your banner completely.

This is a fundamentally wrong conception and an extremely dangerous one. There is no central organized base. We can step by step construct a base for ourselves only on the basis of ideological influence. The deeper the roots the persecution of Marxism has put down and the more stifling the character of the anti-Trotskyist terror, the more is firm, irreconcilable, and bold propaganda necessary on our part. A silenced and frightened, but honest, party member can turn to our side only if he understands that it is a matter of the life or death of the proletarian party. This means that you are obliged to pose all questions openly, without fearing “isolation” and an initial strengthening of the terror by the apparatus. Every reservation, every blurring of questions, every concealment will go in favor of centrism, which lives on reservations, blurring, and concealing.

Radek started from the position that we, the Marxist Opposition, ought to try to approach the centrists so as to push them to the left. To this end, Radek began to soften the contradictions and minimize the differences of opinion. And he finished by crawling on all fours to the centrists with a rope around his neck and conceding that they were right and not the Opposition. On the surface it might at first appear that Radek differed from us only on questions of inner-party tactics. But from the very beginning this was not so. Inner-party tactics depend on the basic political line. In fact, Radek always remained a left centrist within the Opposition. There is nothing unnatural in this. From 1923-27 the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party and the Comintern had, with the exception of the Zinoviev turn, a right- centrist character. At that time, the left-centrist elements inevitably gravitated toward us. But after the splitting of the right- centrist bloc and the Stalinists' tum to the left, the centrists within the Opposition see their “final goal” reached and even are beginning to fear that under the pressure of the Left Opposition Stalin might move still further left. That is why Radek and the others are already starting to defend official centrism against the Opposition and tomorrow will prove to be the fifth wheel on the right on the cart of the ruling bloc.

Here we approach a question which, I am told, deeply interests a large number of comrades in Czechoslovakia: the general question of our relation to the centrists and the Right. In Prague, they say, there is a special philosopher of Marxist strategy and tactics who, though gone from the political stage, does not refrain from the amusement behind-the-scenes of reproachfully shaking his head in the direction of the Opposition, which in his view fights too hard against the centrists and not enough against the Right.

Is it possible to think of a more pedantic, more lifeless, more laughable formulation of the question? I would have understood if someone had said that, carried away by the struggle on the right, i.e., against the centrists and the Right, we do not sufficiently criticize the ultraleft. Such a formulation of the question, irrespective of whether it is true or not at any given moment, has a basis of principle to it. In the struggle against the right we are in a common front with the ultraleft and ought therefore not to forget the appropriate ideological delimitation from them.

But the centrists, like the Right, are on the right of us. When we struggle against centrism, we thereby struggle doubly against the right, for centrism is only a modified, disguised, more deceptive form of opportunism.

Of course, if we limited our task only to the bare formula of party democracy, it might be possible to enter a bloc with the Right in the struggle with the bureaucratic center. But this danger threatens not us, but precisely those who obscure differences of opinion, soften contradictions, and in a tender voice demand only some “improvements” in the party regime.

True, the Czech Right is not averse to flirting with “Trotskyism.” They, you see, as supporters of “party democracy,” are against the arrest and exile of the Russian Opposition. But this is a cheap position, and they will not be able to maintain it. The class struggle, especially in a revolutionary epoch, is unthinkable without arrests, exiles, and repressions in general. But each time it is necessary to take stock of who is doing the arresting, whom they are arresting, and what they are arrested for. The question is solved by the political line. We Bolshevik-Leninists need democracy for the proletarian vanguard, as a weapon in the struggle with opportunism and for the preparation of revolution.

The fact is that all the defeats of the proletariat in all the countries of the world have in recent years been completed by new blows at the Left Opposition. The bourgeois and social democratic reaction is pressing on the Soviet republic, weakening the Communist Party in the whole world, and through the Stalinist apparatus striking at the so-called “Trotskyists.” The Opposition is one of the primary nodes of the whole political situation. In the struggle with “Trotskyism” Stalin has a common front with the bourgeoisie and the social democracy of all countries. The wretched slanders of Yaroslavsky are now in contradiction to the living and incontrovertible fact of world politics. There is no escaping from this. The Opposition is a small minority, but it is an accumulation of the revolutionary experience of the proletariat, the leaven for a revolutionary future.

A revolutionary majority can be won only by a tendency which is capable in the most difficult conditions of remaining true to itself. The present reformist-pacifist wing in Europe (the growth of the social democracy, the Labourites in Britain) will be wrecked, however official communism may help the social democracy by its policy. The demand for cadres with an ideological background and a revolutionary tempering will constantly grow. The masses have no need of those who waver, hesitate, and disguise themselves, supposedly in the name of the masses. The masses will reject them when the basic questions of the revolution are squarely posed.

The armchair pundits are contriving to accuse us of attacking the centrists too much and of sparing the Right. But surely this is just buffoonery? The very reason we attack centrism is that by its whole policy of unprincipled zigzags it feeds and strengthens the Right tendencies not only within the party or around it, but in the working class as a whole.

What significance has Stalin’s bureaucratic elimination of Tomsky and Bukharin, if the line of the trade unions has been further suppressed, if Pravda is still more an organ of ignorance and libel than yesterday, if the authority of the party among the working class is declining and the confidence of the bourgeois elements strengthened?

What significance has Thälmann's elimination of the Right or the conciliators, if the whole policy of the Communist Party feeds the social democracy, undermining in the consciousness of the workers their admiration and trust for the banner of communism?

The Rykovs, Bukharins, and Tomskys have no independent significance, nor have the Brandlers, Thalheimers, Eshchers, Kovandas, Ilekins, Neuraths,^* and others. The strengthening of the Right faction in communism only reflects a deeper process of a shift in forces in the direction of capitalist reaction. This process has many expressions, including the growth of the Thermidorean elements and attitudes in the Soviet republic, the growth of the parties of the Second International, the decline in the influence of communism, and the crushing of the revolutionary wing, i.e., the Communist Opposition.

Of course, it is not the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party or the presidium of the Comintern which determines the course of world history. There are also other factors. But inasmuch as the causes of the dreadful defeats in almost all countries of the world without exception go back directly to false leadership, the blame for this falls on centrism. Within the party, that is the chief enemy! The Right has now been expelled. Whether the group of conciliators is expelled or not has no serious significance. The leadership of the party is in the hands of the Stalinists, i.e., the centrists. Meanwhile, they continue to destroy the party, to sap trust in it, to undermine its future. That is why we concentrate the main blow at centrism. It is the main enemy within the party, for it is precisely what is hindering the solution of the basic problems of the revolution. In the USSR, centrism by its policy of vacillation is impeding economic development, angering the peasantry, and weakening the proletariat. In Germany, centrism is the most faithful henchman of the social democracy. Thus, all our struggle against the centrists is dictated by the necessities of our basic task within the working class: to overthrow the opportunist organizations and gather the overwhelming majority of workers around the banner of communism.

It is precisely the centrists who, in order to draw the attention of the party away from the basic questions, i.e., from their basic errors and omissions, are now in words reducing the whole life of the party to the struggle against the “right” enemy, i.e., the Right groups within the party. And the left centrists within the Opposition or close to the Opposition want to swim with the current and hasten to assume protective coloration. In fact, what could be simpler than, instead of posing to oneself the problems of changing the program, strategy, tactics, and organization of the Comintern, to occupy oneself with cheap, formal, incited, and even paid “struggle against the Right,” with the leading role in this struggle being played by such inveterate opportunists as Lozovsky, Petrovsky, Martinov, Kuusinen, Kolarov, and the rest of the crew. No, our formulation of the question is different.

The main enemy in the country is the imperialist bourgeoisie. The main enemy in the working class is the social democracy. And the main enemy in the party is centrism!

You mention that by “careful” circuitous methods, using disguises, the Czech Communist Party has been built up as a mass party. I believe you are wrong. The whole affair was in the great revolutionary upsurge of the Czech workers, produced by the postwar conditions and by disillusionment with the independent national republic. But even if we admit that the diplomacy of the leadership has attracted some additional masses into the party, which otherwise would not have entered it, it is still necessary to ask whether this is a plus or a minus. It is said that this year close to thirty thousand workers left the party. What is easily won is also easily lost. A revolutionary vanguard is not built up on misunderstandings and half-truths.

We have had a fresh and in its way classic example of this in Britain. The whole policy of Stalinist centrism there was directed at not allowing a counterposing of the Communists to the reformists, in order gradually to create an “organizational base” in the trade unions and then on this base unfurl the revolutionary banner. You know what came of this. When it came to counting heads, the Communist Party could muster a mere fifty thousand votes.

Lenin himself has more than once been accused of having forgotten about and helped the right in his struggle with the left centrists. I myself more than once made such an accusation against Lenin. It is in this, and not at all in permanent revolution, that the basic error of what is called “historical Trotskyism” lay. In order to become a Bolshevik not on a Stalinist passport but in actuality it is necessary to understand fully the meaning and significance of Lenin’s irreconcilability toward centrism, without which there is not and cannot be a road to proletarian revolution.

You should, therefore, advise the Prague philosopher either to come out on the stage and formulate his centrist prejudices against the Bolshevik line of the Opposition, or to keep silent entirely and not confuse the young comrades with pedantic and lifeless lamentations.

Whether we shall grow fast or slowly I do not know. This does not depend only on us. But we shall inevitably grow — with a correct policy. I would see practical tasks of our Czech cothinkers more or less as follows:

1. Immediately to publish in Czech the most important documents of the International Left Opposition from the recent period.

2. To devote all efforts to the setting up of a regular journal.

3. To start working out the national platform of the Czech section of the Bolshevik-Leninists (Opposition).

4. To set up a correct organization of the Czechoslovakian faction of the Bolshevik-Leninists.

5. To take an active part in the setting up of an international organ of the Opposition, to secure its ideological unity on an international scale.

6. To appear everywhere there is an opportunity — at CP meetings, at meetings of the Right Opposition, at open meetings of workers — without disguises, and with a clear and distinct exposition of your views.

7. To carry out untiring educational work, even though only with small circles or isolated individuals.

8. In all cases of mass actions, the Oppositionists must appear in the front rank, to show in deed their selfless devotion to proletarian revolution.