Leon
Trotsky: Preliminary Comments on the Sixteenth Congress
July
25, 1930
[Writing
of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 2, 1930, New York 1975, p. 335 f.]
Here
in rough outline Eire some preliminary comments on the Sixteenth
Congress, although my familiarity with the proceedings is still quite
insufficient.
1.
In the party, the plebiscite regime has been established
conclusively. The bureaucracy, not daring to bring questions up for
decision by the masses, is forced to find a "boss" in order
to sustain its own monolithic unity — without which it would be
doomed to collapse. The preparatory work within the party for
Bonapartism has been completed.
2.
In the realm of industrialization, the bureaucracy, to the crash and
roar of ever so left-sounding phrases, has completely abandoned class
criteria, Marxist criteria. The scissors between industrial and
agricultural prices are proclaimed a bourgeois prejudice. Not a word
is said about the scissors between domestic industrial prices and
those on the world market. No matter that these are two vitally
important measures for determining the relative weight of socialism
both at home and abroad. Not a word about inflation either — that
is, about the monetary system, which is a vital index of economic
equilibrium or disequilibrium. Industrialization is proceeding with
all the lights turned out, now as never before.
3.
The raising of collectivization to the status of socialism means in
fact the prohibition of any study of differentiation within or
between collective farms. The countryside will again be painted over,
by the statistics of Yakovlev, in a single, solid "socialist
middle peasant's" color. Here too the lamps of Marxism are
snuffed out.
4.
The plebiscitary dictatorship in the Communist Party, now officially
authorized, means the same kind of dictatorship in the Comintern, if
only through the agency of proconsul Molotov. A dictatorship by
plebiscite cannot endure even simple doubts about the infallibility
of the leadership, never mind opposition. In the USSR this means that
the official party has been delivered into the hands of the
government apparatus once and for all. In the capitalist countries
this dooms the Communist parties to unending splits and
sectarian-bureaucratic degeneration.
5.
The very same kind of regime based on plebiscite is now carried over
bodily into the trade-union organizations linked with the Communist
parties. The Communist bureaucrats inside the trade unions cannot
permit (or are not allowed to permit) contact with people who do not
believe absolutely in the infallibility of the leadership endorsed by
plebiscite.
6.
One may live for a long time off the political capital of the
victorious proletarian revolution, especially on the basis of
economic successes assured by the revolution itself — as long as
there is no big new crisis. But it is impossible to accumulate
political capital by such methods. This means that the present regime
and the policies connected with it are sure to be the source of ever
new crises in the Comintern.
Conclusions:
Since
the ranks of the party have been atomized completely, the only way to
preserve the possibility, or increase the likelihood, of a
development toward reform
of the October Revolution and the party of Lenin is to build a
properly functioning, centralized Bolshevik-Leninist organization,
armed with sufficient technical means to systematically influence the
body of opinion within the atomized party.
Of
no less importance is the further development of a centralized
international faction of the Left Opposition.
The
most dangerous thing would be to lull oneself to sleep with false
Manilov-like hopes that somehow everything will turn out right, all
by itself. Any
further semi-passive policies would mean, besides everything else,
the gradual physical destruction of our best cadres.
A political offensive is the best defense. But here again, such an
offensive requires proper organization, aimed at systematic work
within the party.