Leon Trotsky: Questions for the Leninbund

August 24, 1929

[Writings of Leon Trotsky. Vol 1, 1929, New York 1975, p. 247-249]

Dear Comrades:

This letter is not meant for publication. It represents an attempt to establish clarity on fundamental questions of the Opposition’s strategy. This is not the first such attempt. In a number of letters I have tried to ascertain the principled line of Volkswille and the Leninbund because one cannot get a clear picture on the basis of the extremely contradictory articles.

Recently — on June 13, 1929 — I addressed an official inquiry to the Leninbund leadership. I was promised an answer. But, once again, I am waiting in vain for a reply. This matter, of course, is not simply a personal concern. The Communist Opposition as a whole, in Germany as well as in other countries, has a right to know what positions the Leninbund leadership takes on the fundamental problems of the international revolution.

The Opposition is a small minority. Its success can be ensured only if it has a clear line. The Leninbund does not have such a line. This, unfortunately, must be stated before anything else. Both on Germany’s domestic problems and on international problems, Volkswille vacillates between Brandler and Korsch. I hope to speak in more detail on the Leninbund leadership’s positions on Germany’s domestic problems in a special article. Here I want only to reiterate and make more precise the questions that I have repeatedly, but in vain, posed to the Volkswille editors and the Leninbund leadership.

You have more than once accused the Russian Opposition of “not going far enough” because, you say, it does not understand that Thermidor has already taken place. I have asked you again and again: What does this mean? What options then remain for the International Opposition with respect to the USSR?

If Thermidor “has been completed,” this means that development in Russia has definitely taken the capitalist road. Your thesis can have no other meaning. What, then, do you think of the planned economy and the legislation restricting capitalist expansion and curtailing private accumulation? What is your attitude toward the monopoly of foreign trade? From the standpoint of capitalist development all these institutions, decrees, and measures are utopian and reactionary hindrances to the development of the productive forces. What is your point of view?

You have advanced the call for freedom to organize in the USSR as in the capitalist countries. Again, it is absolutely impossible to understand what this means. Freedom to organize never has been and cannot be an isolated demand. It is a component of the bourgeois democratic regime. Freedom to organize is inconceivable without freedom of assembly, press, etc. — in other words, without parliamentary institutions and party struggle. What is your position on this question? Despite all my attempts, to this day I have not been able to find out.

Just as unclear is your position on the question of defending the USSR against imperialism. The exceptional importance of this question was again revealed under the impact of the Sino-Soviet conflict. A number of Opposition publications have taken an obviously mistaken position on this question. The lead article in Contre le Courant, number 35, dated July 28, carried this mistake to the extreme.

What has the editorial board of Volkswille and Die Fahne des Kommunismus done in this case? It has not committed itself. It opened up a discussion. The Korschist H.P. as well as the Marxist Landau are allowed to take part in this discussion on an equal basis. But the editorial board is “elevating itself’ above Marxism and above Korschism. On the one hand Die Fahne des Kommunismus prints Contre le Courant's grossly mistaken article and on the other it specially emphasizes that the article is the official position of the French editors. But does a communist publication really have the right to remain silent about the fact that this article, even if it be ten times more official, represents a flagrant break with Marxism? At a critical moment of international conflict the readers of your publication are being ideologically disarmed. They are being offered a choice: either the views of the Russian Opposition or the views of Korsch, who in turn is merely repeating the arguments of the social democracy.

It is impossible to even imagine that your entire leadership and especially all the members of the Leninbund share this position or this lack of a position. Unfortunately, it is not possible to form an opinion about the internal ideological life of the Leninbund on the basis of Volkswille. I will not assume for one minute that there is no internal ideological life. But I am compelled to conclude that Volkswille does not reflect it. This in and of itself is an extremely alarming sign.

A ruling majority in a state or in a party, with a strong apparatus, abundant funds, a well-financed press, can live a long time on omissions, vacillations, and ambiguity. Stalinist bureaucratic centrism is the best proof of this. But every Opposition minority that imitates this centrism compromises the banner it stands under and will inevitably be doomed to destruction. In its present shape, the Leninbund cannot lead the vanguard of the German proletariat or even the vanguard of this vanguard. The Leninbund needs to rearm ideologically, and to rebuild its ranks accordingly. The first condition for this is the clarification of its principled position. I do not think that you can any longer avoid answering the questions posed above. They far from exhaust the full range of problems facing the international revolution, but the answer to them will create the prerequisite for a correct approach to a number of other problems.

The Leninbund needs a platform. Your publications, instead of devoting their columns to Jimmie Higgins and sensations of the day, should become the instrument for working out a Marxist platform for the German Communist Left.

With communist greetings,

L. Trotsky