Leon
Trotsky: Problems of the Development of the USSR
Draft
Theses of the International Left Opposition on the Russian Question
April
4, 1931
[Writing
of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 3, 1930-1931, New York 1973, p. 204-233]
1. Economic
Contradictions of the Transition Period
The
Class Nature of the Soviet Union
The
contradictory processes in the economy and politics of the USSR are
developing on the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat The
character of the social regime is determined first of all by the
property relations. The nationalization of land, of the means of
industrial production and exchange, with the monopoly of foreign
trade in the hands of the state, constitute the bases of the social
order in the USSR. The classes expropriated by the October
Revolution, as well as the elements of the bourgeoisie and the
bourgeois section of the bureaucracy being newly formed, could
reestablish private ownership of land, banks, factories, mills,
railroads, etc., only by means of a counterrevolutionary overthrow.
These property relations, lying at the base of class relations,
determine for us the nature of the Soviet Union as a proletarian
state.
The
defense of the USSR from foreign intervention and from attack by
internal enemies — from the monarchists and former landowners to
the "democrats," the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries
— is the elementary and indisputable duty of every revolutionary
worker, all the more so of the Bolshevik-Leninists. Ambiguity and
reservations on this question, which in essence reflect the waverings
of petty-bourgeois ultraleftism between the world of imperialism and
the world of the proletarian revolution, are incompatible with
adherence to the International Left Opposition.
World
Historical Significance of the High Tempo of Economic Development
The
possibility of the present truly gigantic successes of the Soviet
economy was created by the revolutionary overturn of the property
relations which established the preconditions for a planned
elimination of market anarchy. Capitalism never gave and is incapable
of giving that progression of economic growth which is developing at
present on the territory of the Soviet Union. The unprecedentedly
high tempos of industrialization, which have unfolded in spite of the
expectations and plans of the epigone leadership, have proved once
and for all the might of the socialist method of economy. The frantic
struggle of the imperialists against so-called Soviet "dumping"
is an involuntary but for that an all the more genuine recognition on
their part of the superiority of the Soviet form of production. In
the field of agriculture, where backwardness, isolation, and
barbarism have their deepest roots, the regime of the proletarian
dictatorship also succeeded in revealing a mighty creative power. No
matter how great future setbacks and retreats may be, the present
tempos of collectivization, possible only on the basis of the
nationalization of the land, credit, and industry, with the workers
in the leading role, signify a new epoch in the development of
humanity, the beginning of the liquidation "of the idiocy of
rural life."
Even
in the worst case historically conceivable, if blockade,
intervention, or internal civil war should overthrow the proletarian
dictatorship, the great lesson of socialist construction would retain
all its force for the further development of humanity. The
temporarily vanquished October Revolution would be fully justified
economically and culturally, and consequently would be reborn. The
most important task of the proletarian vanguard, however, is to bar
the doors to this worst historical variant, by defending and
strengthening the October Revolution and by transforming it into a
prologue to the world revolution.
Basic
Contradictions of the Transition Period
Absolutely
false is the official doctrine of fatalistic optimism prevailing
today, according to which the continued speedy growth of
industrialization and collectivization is assured in advance and
leads automatically to the construction of socialism in a single
country.
If
a highly developed socialist economy is possible only as a
harmonious, internally proportionate, and consequently
free-from-crisis economy, then, on the contrary, the transitional
economy from capitalism to socialism is a crucible of contradictions
where, moreover, the deeper and sharper ones lie ahead. The Soviet
Union has not entered into socialism, as the ruling Stalinist faction
teaches, but only into the first stage of the development in the
direction of socialism.
At
the core of the economic difficulties, the successive crises, the
extreme tension of the whole Soviet system and its political
convulsions, lie a number of contradictions of diverse historical
origin which are interlinked in various ways. Let us name the most
important ones: (a) the heritage of the capitalist and precapitalist
contradictions of old czarist-bourgeois Russia, primarily the
contradiction between town and country; (b) the contradiction between
the general cultural-economic backwardness of Russia and the tasks of
socialist transformation which dialectically grow out of it; (c) the
contradiction between the workers' state and the capitalist
encirclement, particularly between the monopoly of foreign trade and
the world market.
These
contradictions are not at all of a brief and episodic character; on
the contrary, the significance of the most important of them will
increase in the future.
Industrialization
The
realization of the five-year plan would represent a gigantic step
forward compared to the impoverished inheritance which the
proletariat snatched from the hands of the exploiters. But even after
achieving its first victory in planning, the Soviet Union will not
yet have issued out of the first stage of the transition period.
Socialism as a system of production not for the market but for the
satisfying of human needs is conceivable only on the basis of highly
developed productive forces. However, according to the average per
capita amount of goods, the USSR even at the end of the five-year
plan will still remain one of the most backward countries. In order
really to catch up with the advanced capitalist countries, a number
of five-year plan programs will be needed. Meanwhile the industrial
successes of recent years in themselves do not at all assure an
uninterrupted growth in the future. Precisely the speed of industrial
development accumulates disproportions, partly inherited from the
past, partly growing out of the complications of the new tasks,
partly created by the methodological mistakes of the leadership in
combination with direct sabotage. The substitution of economic
direction by administrative goading, with the absence of any serious
collective verification, leads inevitably to the inclusion of the
mistakes in the very foundation of the economy and to the preparation
of new "tight places" inside the economic process. The
disproportions driven inward inevitably return at the following stage
in the form of disharmony between the means of production and raw
materials, between transport and industry, between quantity and
quality, and finally in the disorganization of the monetary system.
These crises conceal within themselves all the greater dangers the
less the present state leadership is capable of foreseeing them in
time.
Collectivization
"Complete"
collectivization, even were it actually to be carried out in the
coming two or three years, would not at all signify the liquidation
of the kulaks as a class. The form of producers' cooperatives, given
the lack of a technical and cultural base, is incapable of stopping
the differentiation within the small commodity producers and the
emergence from their midst of capitalist elements. Genuine
liquidation of the kulak requires . a complete revolution in
agricultural technique and the transformation of the peasantry,
alongside of the industrial proletariat, into workers of the
socialist economy and members of the classless society. But this is a
perspective of decades. With the predominance of individual peasant
implements and the personal or group interest of their owners, the
differentiation of the peasantry will inevitably be renewed and
strengthened precisely in the event of a comparatively successful
collectivization, that is, with the general increase in agricultural
production. If we should further assume that collectivization,
together with the elements of new technique, will considerably
increase the productivity of agricultural labor, without which
collectivization would not be economically justified and consequently
would not maintain itself, this would immediately create in the
village, which is even now overpopulated, ten, twenty, or more
millions of surplus workers whom industry would not be able to absorb
even with the most optimistic plans. Corresponding to the growth of
surplus, that is, of semiproletarian, semi-pauperized population
unable to find a place in the collectives would be the growth at the
other pole of rich collectives and more wealthy peasants inside the
poor and medium collectives. With a shortsighted leadership,
declaring a priori that the collectives are socialist enterprises,
capitalist-farmer elements can find in collectivization the best
cover for themselves, only to become all the more dangerous for the
proletarian dictatorship.
The
economic successes of the present transition period do not,
consequently, liquidate the basic contradictions but prepare their
deepened reproduction on a new, higher historical foundation.
The
USSR and the World Economy
Capitalist
Russia, in spite of its backwardness, already constituted an
inseparable part of the world economy. This dependence of the part
upon the whole was inherited by the Soviet republic from the past,
together with the whole geographic, demographic, and economic
structure of the country. The theory of a self-sufficient national
socialism, formulated in 1924-27, reflected the first, extremely low
period of a revival of the economy after the war, when its world
requirements had not yet made themselves felt. The present tense
struggle for the extension of Soviet exports is a very vivid
refutation of the illusions of national socialism. The foreign-trade
figures increasingly become the dominating figures in relation to the
plans and tempos of socialist construction. But foreign trade must be
continued; and the problem of the mutual relation between the
transitional Soviet economy and the world market is just beginning to
reveal its decisive significance.
Academically,
it is understood, one can construct within the boundaries of the USSR
an enclosed and internally balanced socialist economy; but the long
historic road to this "national" ideal would lead through
gigantic economic shifts, social convulsions, and crises. The mere
doubling of the present crop, that is, its approach to the European,
would confront the Soviet economy with the huge task of realizing an
agricultural surplus of tens of millions of tons. A solution to this
problem, as well as to the no less acute problem of growing rural
overpopulation, could be achieved only by a radical redistribution of
millions of people among the various branches of the economy and by
the complete liquidation of the contradictions between the city and
the village. But this task — one of the basic tasks of socialism —
would in turn require the utilization of the resources of the world
market in a measure hitherto unknown.
In
the last analysis, all the contradictions of the development of the
USSR lead in this manner to the contradiction between the isolated
workers' state and its capitalist encirclement. The impossibility of
constructing a self-sufficient socialist economy in a single country
revives the basic contradictions of socialist construction at every
new stage on an extended scale and in greater depth. In this sense,
the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR would inevitably have
to suffer destruction if the capitalist regime in the rest of the
world should prove to be capable of maintaining itself for another
long historical epoch. However, to consider such a perspective as the
inevitable or even the most probable one can be done only by those
who believe in the firmness of capitalism or in its longevity. The
Left Opposition has nothing in common with such capitalist optimism.
But it can just as little agree with the theory of national socialism
which is an expression of capitulation before capitalist optimism.
The
World Crisis and Economic "Collaboration” Between the
Capitalist Countries and the USSR
The
problem of foreign trade in its present exceptional acuteness caught
the leading bodies of the USSR unawares, and by that alone became an
element of disruption of the economic plans. In the face of this
problem, the leadership of the Comintern also proved to be bankrupt.
World unemployment made the question of developing the economic
relations between the capitalist countries and the USSR a vital
problem for broad masses of the working class. Before the Soviet
government and the Comintern there opened up a rare opportunity to
attract the social democratic and nonparty workers on the basis of a
vital and burning question and so to acquaint them with the Soviet
five-year plan and with the advantages of the socialist methods of
economy. Under the slogan of economic collaboration and armed with a
concrete program, the communist vanguard could have led a far more
genuine struggle against the blockade and intervention than through
repetition of one-and-the-same bare condemnations. The perspective of
a planned European and world economy could have been raised to
unprecedented heights and in this manner could have given new
nourishment to the slogans of the world revolution. The Comintern did
almost nothing in this field.
When
the world bourgeois press, including the social democratic press, was
suddenly mobilized for a campaign of incitement against alleged
Soviet dumping, the Communist parties marked time at a loss for what
to do. At a time when the Soviet government, before the eyes of the
whole world, seeks foreign markets and credits, the bureaucracy of
the Comintern declares the slogan of economic collaboration with the
USSR a "counterrevolutionary'' slogan. Such shameful
stupidities, as if especially created for confusing the working
class, are a direct consequence of the ruinous theory of socialism in
one country.
2. The
Party in the Regime of the Dictatorship
The
Dialectical Interrelationship Between Economics and Politics
The
economic
contradictions of the transitional economy do not develop in a
vacuum. The political
contradictions of the regime of the dictatorship, even though in the
final analysis they grow out of the economic, have an independent and
also a more direct significance for the fate of the dictatorship than
the economic crisis.
The
present official teaching, according to which the growth of
nationalized industry and collectives automatically and
uninterruptedly strengthens the regime of the proletarian
dictatorship, is a product of vulgar "economic" and not
dialectic materialism. In reality, the interrelationship between the
economic foundation and the political superstructure has a far more
complex and contradictory character, particularly in the
revolutionary epoch. The dictatorship of the proletariat, which grew
out of bourgeois social relations, revealed its might in the period
preceding the nationalization of industry and collectivization of
agriculture. Later on, the dictatorship passed through periods of
strengthening and weakening, depending upon the course of the
internal and world class struggle. Economic achievements were often
bought at the price of politically weakening the regime. Precisely
this dialectic interrelation between economy and politics directly
produced sharp turns in the economic policy of the government,
beginning with the New Economic Policy and ending with the latest
zigzags in collectivization.
The
Party as a Weapon and as a Measure of Success
Like
all political institutions, the party is in the last instance a
product of the productive relations of society. But it is not at all
an automatic recorder of the changes in these relationships. As the
synthesis of the historical experiences of the proletariat, in a
certain sense of the whole of humanity, the party rises above the
conjunctural and episodic changes in the economic and political
conditions, which only invest it with the necessary power of
foresight, initiative, and resistance.
It
can be considered entirely irrefutable that the dictatorship was
achieved in Russia and afterwards withstood the most critical moments
because it had its center of consciousness and determination in the
form of the Bolshevik Party. The inconsistency and, in the final
analysis, the reactionary nature of all species of anarchists and
anarcho-syndicalists consists precisely in the fact that they do not
understand the decisive significance of the revolutionary party,
particularly at the highest stage of the class struggle, in the epoch
of the proletarian dictatorship. Without a doubt, social
contradictions can reach such an acute point that no party can find a
way out. But it is no less true that with the weakening of the party
or with its degeneration even an avoidable crisis in the economy can
become the cause for the Ml of the dictatorship.
The
economic and political contradictions of the Soviet regime intersect
within the leading party. The acuteness of the danger depends, with
each succeeding crisis, directly upon the state of the party. No
matter how great the significance of the rate of industrialization
and collectivization may be in itself, it nevertheless takes second
place before the problem: has the party retained Marxist clarity of
vision, ideological solidity, the ability to arrive collectively at
an opinion and to fight self-sacrificingly for it? From this point of
view, the state of the party is the highest test of the condition of
the proletarian dictatorship, a synthesized measure of its stability.
If, in the name of achieving this or that practical aim, a false
theoretical attitude is foisted on the party; if the party ranks are
forcibly ousted from political leadership; if the vanguard is
dissolved into the amorphous mass; if the party cadres are kept in
obedience by the apparatus of state repression — then it means that
in spite of the economic successes, the general balance of the
dictatorship shows a deficit.
Replacement
of the Party by the Apparatus
Only
blind people, hirelings, or the deceived can deny the fact that the
ruling party of the USSR, the leading party of the Comintern, has
been completely crushed and replaced by the apparatus. The gigantic
difference between the bureaucratism of 1923 and the bureaucratism of
1931 is determined by the complete liquidation of the dependence of
the apparatus upon the party that took place in this span of years,
as well as by the plebiscitary degeneration of the apparatus itself.
Not
a trace remains of party democracy. Local organizations are selected
and autocratically reorganized by secretaries. New members of the
party are recruited according to orders from the center with the
methods of compulsory political service. The local secretaries are
appointed by the Central Committee, which is officially and openly
converted into a consultative body of the general secretary.
Congresses are arbitrarily postponed, delegates are selected from the
top according to their demonstration of solidarity with the
irreplaceable leader. Even a pretense of control over the top by the
lower ranks is removed. The members of the party are systematically
trained in the spirit of passive subordination. Every spark of
independence, self-reliance, and firmness, that is, those features
which make up the nature of a revolutionist, is crushed, hounded, and
trampled underfoot.
In
the apparatus there undoubtedly remain not a few honest and devoted
revolutionists. But the history of the post-Lenin period — a chain
of ever-grosser falsification of Marxism, of unprincipled maneuvers,
and of cynical mockeries of the party — would have been impossible
without the growing predominance in the apparatus of servile
officials who stop at nothing.
Under
the guise of spurious monolithism, double-dealing permeates the whole
of party life. The official decisions are accepted unanimously. At
the same time, all the party strata are corroded by irreconcilable
contradictions which seek roundabout ways for their eruption. The
Bessedovskys direct the purging of the party against the Left
Opposition on the eve of their desertion to the camp of the enemy.
The Blumkins are shot down and replaced by Agabekovs. Syrtsov,
appointed chairman of the People’s Commissars of the RSFSR in place
of the "semi-traitor" Rykov, is very soon accused of
underground work against the party. Ryazanov, the head of the most
important scientific institution of the party, is accused, after the
solemn celebration of his jubilee, of being a participant in a
counterrevolutionary plot. In freeing itself of party control, the
bureaucracy deprives itself of the possibility of controlling the
party except through the GPU, where the Menzhinskys and Yagodas put
up the Agabekovs.
A
steam boiler, even under rude handling, can do useful work for a long
time. A manometer, however is a delicate instrument which is very
quickly ruined under impact. With an unserviceable manometer the best
of boilers can be brought to the point of explosion. If the party
were only an instrument of orientation, like a manometer or a compass
on a ship, even in such a case its derangement would spell great
trouble. But more than that, the party is the most important part of
the governing mechanism. The Soviet boiler hammered out by the
October Revolution is capable of doing gigantic work even with poor
mechanics. But the very derangement of the manometer signifies the
constant danger of explosion of the whole machine.
Dissolution
of the Party into the Class?
The
apologists and attorneys for the Stalinist bureaucracy attempt at
times to represent the bureaucratic liquidation of the party as a
progressive process of the dissolution of the party into the class,
which is explained by the successes of the socialist transformation
of society. In these theoretical throes, illiteracy competes with
charlatanry. One could speak of the dissolution of the party into the
class only as the reverse side of the easing of class antagonisms,
the dying away of politics, the reduction to zero of all forms of
bureaucratism, and primarily the reduction
of the role of coercion
in social relations. However, the processes taking place in the USSR
and in the ruling party have a directly opposite character in many
respects. Coercive discipline is not only not dying away — it would
be ridiculous even to expect this at the present stage — but, on
the contrary, it is assuming an exceptionally severe character in all
the spheres of social and personal life. Organized participation in
the politics of the party and the class is actually reduced to zero.
The corruption of bureaucratism knows no limits. Under these
conditions, to represent the dictatorship of the Stalinist apparatus
as the socialist dying away of the party is a mockery of the
dictatorship and of the party.
The
Brandlerite Justification of Plebiscitary Bureaucratism
The
right-wing camp followers of centrism, the Brandlerites, try to
justify the strangulation of the party by the Stalinist bureaucracy
with references to the "lack of culture" of the working
masses. This does not at all prevent them, at the same time, from
awarding the Russian proletariat the dubious monopoly in the
construction of socialism in one country.
The
general economic and cultural backwardness of Russia is
unquestionable. But the development of historically retarded nations
has a combined
character: in order to overcome their backwardness, they are
compelled in many fields to adopt and to cultivate the most advanced
forms. The scientific doctrine of proletarian revolution was created
by the revolutionists of backward Germany in the middle of the
nineteenth century. Thanks to its retardation, German capitalism
later outstripped the capitalism of England and France. The industry
of backward bourgeois Russia was the most concentrated in the whole
world. The young Russian proletariat was the first to show in action
the combination of a general strike and an uprising, the first to
create soviets, and the first to conquer power. The backwardness of
Russian capitalism did not prevent the education of the most
farsighted proletarian party that ever existed. On the contrary, it
made it possible.
As
the selection of the revolutionary class in a revolutionary epoch,
the Bolshevik Party lived a rich and stormy internal life in the most
critical period of its history. Who would have dared, prior to
October or in the first years after the revolution, to refer to the
"backwardness" of the Russian proletariat as a defense of
bureaucratism in the party! However, the genuine rise in the general
cultural level of the workers which had occurred since the seizure of
power did not lead to the flourishing of party democracy, but, on the
contrary, to its complete extinction. The references to the stream of
workers from the village explain nothing, for this factor has always
been in operation and the cultural level of the village since the
revolution has risen considerably. Finally, the party is not the
class, but its vanguard; it cannot pay for its numerical growth by
the lowering of its political level. The Brandlerite defense of
plebiscitary bureaucratism, which is based upon a trade-union and not
a Bolshevik conception of the party, is in reality self-defense,
because in the period of the worst failures and the degradation of
centrism, the right-wingers were its most reliable prop.
Why
Did the Centrist Bureaucracy Triumph?
To
explain as a Marxist why the centrist bureaucracy triumphed and why
it was compelled to strangle the party in order to preserve its
victory, one must proceed not from an abstract "lack of culture"
of the proletariat, but from the change in the mutual relations of
the classes and the change in the moods of each class.
After
the heroic straining of forces in the years of revolution and civil
war, a period of great hopes and inevitable illusions, the
proletariat could not but go through a lengthy period of weariness,
decline in energy, and in part direct disillusionment in the results
of the revolution. By virtue of the laws of the class struggle, the
reaction in the proletariat resulted in a tremendous flow of new hope
and confidence in the petty-bourgeois strata of the city and village
and in the bourgeois elements of the state bureaucracy who gained
considerable strength on the basis of the NEP. The crushing of the
Bulgarian uprising in 1923, the inglorious defeat of the German
proletariat in 1923, the crushing of the Estonian insurrection in
1924, the treacherous liquidation of the general strike in England in
1926, the crushing of the Chinese revolution in 1927, the
stabilization of capitalism connected with all these catastrophes —
such is the international setting of the struggle of the centrists
against the Bolshevik-Leninists. The abuse of the "permanent,"
that is, in essence, of the international revolution, the rejection
of a bold policy of industrialization and collectivization, the
reliance upon the kulak, the alliance with the "national"
bourgeoisie in the colonies and with the social imperialists in the
metropolis — such are the political contents of the bloc of the
centrist bureaucracy with the forces of Thermidor. Supporting itself
on the strengthened and emboldened petty-bourgeois and bourgeois
bureaucracy, exploiting the passivity of the weary and disoriented
proletariat and the defeats of the revolution the world over, the
centrist apparatus crushed the left revolutionary wing of the party
in the course of a few years.
The
Zigzag Course
The
political zigzags of the apparatus are not accidental. In them is
expressed the adaptation of the bureaucracy to conflicting class
forces. The course of 1923-°S, if we leave aside occasional
waverings, constituted a semi-capitulation of the bureaucracy to the
kulaks at home and the world bourgeoisie and its reformist agency
abroad. Having felt the increasing hostility of the proletariat,
having seen the bottom of the Thermidorean abyss to whose very edge
they had slid, the Stalinists leaped to the left. The abruptness of
the leap corresponded to the extent of the panic created in their
ranks by the consequences of their own policy, laid bare by the
criticism of the Left Opposition. The course of 1928-31 — if we
again leave aside the inevitable waverings and backslidings —
represents an attempt of the bureaucracy to adapt itself to the
proletariat, but without abandoning the principled basis of its
policy or, what is most important, its omnipotence. The zigzags of
Stalinism show that the bureaucracy is not a class, not an
independent historical factor, but an instrument, an executive organ
of the classes. The left zigzag is proof that no matter how far the
preceding right course had gone, it nevertheless developed on the
basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The bureaucracy,
however, is not a passive organ which only refracts the inspirations
of the class. Without having absolute independence, the illusion of
which lives in the skulls of many bureaucrats, the ruling apparatus
nevertheless enjoys a great relative independence. The bureaucracy is
in direct possession of state power; it raises itself above the
classes and puts a powerful stamp upon their development; and even if
it cannot itself become the foundation of state power, it can, with
its policy, greatly facilitate the transfer of power from the hands
of one class into the hands of another.
The
Policy of Zigzags Is Incompatible with the Independence of the
Proletarian Party
Standing
above all the other problems of the bureaucracy is the problem of
self-preservation. All its turns result directly
from
its striving to retain its independence, its position, its power. But
the policy of zigzags, which requires a completely free hand, is
incompatible with the presence of an independent party, which is
accustomed to control and demands an accounting. From this flows the
system of the violent destruction of party ideology and the conscious
sowing of confusion.
The
kulak course, the Menshevik-saboteur program of industrialization and
collectivization, the bloc with Purcell, Chiang Kai-shek, La
Follette, and Radić, the creation of the Peasants' "International,"
the slogan of a two-class party — all this was declared to be
Leninism. On the contrary, the course of industrialization and
collectivization, the demand for party democracy, the slogan of
soviets in China, the struggle against the two-class parties on
behalf of the party of the proletariat, the exposure of the emptiness
and falsehood of the Krestintern, the Anti-Imperialist League, and
other Potemkin villages — all these were given the name of
"Trotskyism."
With
the turn of 1928, the masks were repainted but the masquerade
continued. The proclamation of an armed uprising and soviets in China
at a time of counterrevolutionary ascent, the adventuristic economic
tempos in the USSR under the administrative whip, the "liquidation
of the kulak as a class" within two years, the rejection of the
united front with reformists under all conditions, the rejection of
the slogans of revolutionary democracy for historically backward
countries, the proclamation of the "third period" at a time
of economic revival — all this was now called Leninism. On the
contrary, the demand for realistic economic plans adapted to the
resources and needs of the workers, the rejection of the program of
the liquidation of the kulaks on the basis of the peasant inventory,
the rejection of the metaphysics of the "third period" for
a Marxist analysis of the economic and political processes throughout
the world and in each country — all this was now declared to be
"counterrevolutionary Trotskyism."
The
ideological connection between the two periods of the bureaucratic
masquerade remains the theory of socialism in one country, the basic
charter of the Soviet bureaucracy which it holds over the world
proletarian vanguard and which it uses to sanctify in advance all its
actions, turns, errors, and crimes. The fabric of party consciousness
is created slowly and requires constant renewal by means of a Marxist
evaluation of the road passed, of an analysis of the changes in the
situation, of a revolutionary prognosis. Without tireless critical
internal work, the party inevitably falls into decline. However, the
struggle of the bureaucracy for self-preservation excludes an open
contrast of today's policy with that of yesterday, that is, the
testing of one zigzag by the other. The heavier the conscience of the
ruling faction, the more it is transformed into an order of oracles,
who speak an esoteric language and demand an acknowledgment of the
infallibility of the chief oracle. The whole history of the party and
the revolution is adapted to the needs of bureaucratic
self-preservation. One legend is heaped upon the other. The basic
truths of Marxism are branded as deviations. Thus, in the process of
zigzagging between classes for the last eight years, the basic fabric
of party consciousness has been ripped apart and torn to pieces more
and more. Administrative pogroms did the rest.
The
Plebiscitary Regime in the Party
Having
conquered and strangled the party, the bureaucracy cannot permit
itself the luxury of differences of opinion within its own ranks, so
as not to be compelled to appeal to the masses to settle the disputed
questions. It needs a standing arbitrator, a political superior. The
selection for the whole apparatus takes place around the "chief."
That is how the plebiscitary apparatus regime has come into being.
Bonapartism
is one of the forms of the victory of the bourgeoisie over the
uprising of the popular masses. To identify the present Soviet regime
with the social regime of Bonapartism, as Kautsky does, means
consciously to conceal from the workers, in the interests of the
bourgeoisie, the difference in class foundations. Notwithstanding
this, one can speak with full justification of the complete
plebiscitary degeneration of the Stalinist apparatus or of the
Bonapartist system of administering the party as one of the
preconditions for a Bonapartist regime in the country. A new
political order does not arise out of nowhere. The class which has
come to power builds the apparatus of its domination from the
elements that are at hand at the moment of the revolutionary or the
counterrevolutionary overthrow. The Soviets led by the Mensheviks and
the Social Revolutionaries were, in Kerensky's day, the last
political resource of the bourgeois regime. At the same time, the
Soviets, above all in their Bolshevik form, were the crucible of the
dictatorship of the proletariat which was in the process of creation.
The present-day Soviet apparatus is a bureaucratic, plebiscitary,
distorted form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is also,
however, a potential instrument of Bonapartism. Between the present
function of the apparatus and its possible function, the blood of
civil war would still have to flow. Yet the victorious
counterrevolution would find precisely in the plebiscitary apparatus
invaluable elements for the establishment of its domination, just as
its very victory would be unthinkable without the transfer of
decisive sections of the apparatus to the side of the bourgeoisie.
That is why the Stalinist plebiscitary regime has become a main
danger for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
3. Dangers
and Possibilities of a Counterrevolutionary Upheaval
The
Relationship of Forces Between Socialist and Capitalist Tendencies
Through
the combined effect of economic successes and administrative
measures, the specific gravity of the capitalist elements in the
economy has been greatly reduced in recent years, especially in
industry and trade. The collectivization and the de-kulakization have
strongly diminished the exploitive role of the rural upper strata.
The relationship of forces between the socialist and the capitalist
elements of the economy has undoubtedly been shifted to the benefit
of the former. To ignore, or even to deny this fact, as the
ultralefts or the vulgar oppositionists do, repeating general phrases
about Nepman and and kulak, is entirely unworthy of Marxists.
It
is no less false, however, to regard the present percentual
relationship of forces as assured or, what is worse yet, to measure
the degree of the realization of socialism by the specific gravity of
state and private economy in the USSR. The accelerated liquidation of
the internal capitalist elements, with methods of administrative
dizziness here as well, coincided with the accelerated appearance of
the USSR on the world market. The question of the specific gravity of
the capitalist elements in the USSR, therefore, should not be posed
independently of the question of the specific gravity of the USSR in
the world economy.
Nepman,
middleman, and kulak are undoubtedly natural agents of world
imperialism; the weakening of the former signifies at the same time
the weakening of the latter. But this does not exhaust the question:
besides the Nepman there still exists the state official. Lenin
recalled at the last congress in which he participated that not
infrequently in history did a victorious people, at least its upper
stratum, adopt the customs and mores of the culturally superior
people conquered by it, and that analogous processes are also
possible in the struggle of classes. The Soviet bureaucracy, which
represents an amalgam of the upper stratum of the victorious
proletariat with broad strata of the overthrown classes, includes
within itself a mighty agency of world capital.
Elements
of Dual Power
Two
trials — against the specialist-saboteurs and against the
Mensheviks — have given an extremely striking picture of the
relationship of forces of the classes and the parties in the USSR. It
was irrefutably established by the court that during the years
1923-28 the bourgeois specialists, in close alliance with the foreign
centers of the bourgeoisie, successfully carried through an
artificial slowdown of industrialization, counting upon the
reestablishment of capitalist relationships. The elements of dual
power in the land of the proletarian dictatorship attained such a
weight that the direct agents of the capitalist restoration, together
with their democratic agents, the Mensheviks, could play a leading
role in all the economic centers of the Soviet republic! How far, on
the other hand, had centrism slipped down in the direction of the
bourgeoisie when the official policy of the party for a number of
years could serve as the legal cover for the plans and methods of
capitalist restoration!
The
left zigzag of Stalin, objective evidence of the powerful vitality of
the proletarian dictatorship, which turns the bureaucracy around on
its own axis, in any case created neither a consistent proletarian
policy nor a full-blooded regime of the proletarian dictatorship. The
elements of dual power contained in the bureaucratic apparatus have
not disappeared with the inauguration of the new course, but have
changed their color and their methods. They have undoubtedly even
become stronger as the plebiscitary degeneration of the apparatus has
progressed. The wreckers now invest the tempos with an adventurist
scope and thereby prepare dangerous crises. The bureaucrats zealously
hang the banner of socialism over the collective farms in which the
kulaks are hiding. Not only ideological but also organizational
tentacles of the counterrevolution have penetrated deeply into the
organs of the proletarian dictatorship, assuming a protective
coloration all the more easily since the whole life of the official
party rests upon lies and falsification. The elements of dual power
are all the more dangerous the less the suppressed proletarian
vanguard has the possibility of uncovering them and purging its ranks
in time.
The
Party and Socialist Construction
Politics
is concentrated economics, and the politics of the dictatorship the
most concentrated of any politics conceivable. The plan of economic
perspectives is not a dogma given at the outset, but a working
hypothesis. Collective examination of the plan must take place in the
process of its execution, in which the elements of verification are
not only bookkeeping figures but also the muscles and the nerves of
the workers and the political moods of the peasants. To test, to
check up, to summarize, and to generalize all this can only be done
by an independent party, acting of its own free will, sure of itself.
The five-year plan would be inconceivable without the certainty that
all the participants in the economic process, the managements of the
factories and trusts on the one hand and the factory committees on
the other, submit to party discipline, and that the nonparty workers
remain under the leadership of the central units and the factory
committees.
Party
discipline, however, is completely fused with administrative
discipline. The apparatus showed itself — and still shows itself
even today — as all-powerful, insofar as it has the possibility of
expending the basic capital of the Bolshevik Party. This capital is
large, but not unlimited. The overstraining of bureaucratic command
reached its highest limits at the moment of the crushing of the right
wing. One can go no further on this road. But this has prepared the
way for the collapse of administrative discipline.
From
the moment when party tradition for some and fear of it for others
ceases to hold the official party together, and hostile forces break
through to the surface, the state economy will suddenly feel the full
force of the political contradictions. Every trust and every factory
will cancel the plans and directives coming from above, in order to
insure their interests by their own means. Contracts between single
factories and the private market, behind the back of the state, will
become the rule instead of the exception. The struggle between the
factories for workers, raw materials, and markets will automatically
impel the workers to struggle for better working conditions. The
planning principle, inescapably abrogated in this manner, would not
only signify the reestablishment of the internal market but also the
disruption of the monopoly of foreign trade. The managements of the
trusts would quickly approach the position of private owners or
agents of foreign capital, to which many of them would be compelled
to turn in their struggle for existence. In the village, where the
types of collective farms which are not very capable of offering
resistance would hardly have time to absorb the small commodity
producers, the collapse of the planning principle would precipitously
unleash elements of primitive accumulation. Administrative pressure
would be unable to save the situation if only for the fact, that the
bureaucratic apparatus would be the first victim of the
contradictions and centrifugal tendencies. Without the idealistic and
cementing force of the Communist Party, the Soviet state and the
planned economy would consequently be condemned to disintegration.
Degeneration
of the Party and the Danger of Civil War
The
collapse of plebiscitary discipline would not only embrace the party,
administrative, economic, trade-union, and cooperative organs, but
also the Red Army and the GPU; under certain conditions, the
explosion might begin with the latter. This already shows that the
passage of power into the hands of the bourgeoisie could in no case
be confined simply to a process of degeneration alone, but would
inevitably have to assume the form of an open violent overthrow.
In
what political form could this take place? In this respect, only the
main tendencies can be revealed. By Thermidorean
overthrow,
the Left Opposition always understood a decisive shift of power from
the proletariat to the bourgeoisie, but accomplished formally within
the framework of the Soviet system under the banner of one faction of
the official party against the other. In contrast to this, the
Bonapartist
overthrow appears as a more open, "riper" form of the
bourgeois counterrevolution, carried out against the Soviet system
and the Bolshevik Party as a whole, in the form of the naked sword
raised in the name of bourgeois property. The crushing of the right
wing of the party and its renunciation of its platform diminish the
chances of the first, step-by-step, veiled, that is Thermidorean form
of the overthrow. The plebiscitary degeneration of the party
apparatus undoubtedly increases the chances of the Bonapartist form.
However, Thermidor and Bonapartism represent no irreconcilable class
types, but are only stages of development of the same type — the
living historic process is inexhaustible in the creation of
transitional and combined forms. One thing is sure: were the
bourgeoisie to dare to pose the question of power openly, the final
answer would be given in the mutual testing of class forces in mortal
combat.
The
Two Camps of the Civil War
In
the event that the molecular process of the accumulation of
contradictions were to lead to an explosion, the unification of the
enemy camp would be accomplished under fire around those political
centers which yesterday were still illegal. Centrism, as the
commanding faction, together with the administrative apparatus, would
immediately fall victim to political differentiation. The elements of
its composition would divide into opposite sides on the barricades.
Who would occupy the main place at first in the camp of the
counterrevolution: the adventurist-praetorian elements of the type of
Tukhachevsky, Blücher, Budenny, downright refuse of the type of
Bessedovsky, or still weightier elements of the type of Ramzin and
Osadchy? That will be determined by the time and the conditions of
the turn of the counterrevolution to the offensive. Still the
question itself could only be of episodic significance. The
Tukhachevskys and Bessedovskys could serve only as a step for the
Ramzins and Osadchys; they, for their part, will only be a step for
the imperialist dictatorship that would very soon fling aside both,
should it not succeed in leaping over them immediately. The
Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries would form a bloc with the
praetorian wing of centrism and serve to cover for the imperialists
on the precipitous decline of the revolution as they sought to cover
for them in 1917 during the revolution's sharp ascent.
In
the opposing camp, a no less decisive regrouping of forces would take
place under the banner of the struggle for October. The revolutionary
elements of the Soviets, the trade unions, the cooperatives, the
army, and, finally and above all, the advanced workers in the
factories would feel, in the face of the threatening danger, the need
to join together closely under clear slogans around the tempered and
tested revolutionary cadre which is incapable of capitulation and
betrayal!. Not only the centrist faction but also the right wing of
the party would produce not a few revolutionists who would defend the
October Revolution with arms in hand. But for this they would need a
painful internal demarcation, which cannot be carried out without a
period of confusion, vacillation, and loss of time. Under these
decisive circumstances, the faction of the Bolshevik-Leninists,
sharply marked out by its past and steeled by difficult tests, would
serve as the element for a crystallization within the party. All
around the Left Opposition would take place the process of the
unification of the revolutionary camp and the rebirth of the true
Communist Party. The presence of a Leninist faction would double the
chances of the proletariat in the struggle against the forces of the
counterrevolutionary overthrow.
4. The
Left Opposition and the USSR
Against
National Socialism For Permanent Revolution
The
democratic tasks of backward Russia could be solved only through the
road of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Having captured power at
the head of the peasant masses, the proletariat could not, however,
stop short at the democratic tasks. The democratic revolution was
directly interwoven with the first stage of the socialist revolution.
But the latter cannot be completed except on the international arena.
The program of the Bolshevik Party formulated by Lenin regards the
October upheaval as the first stage of the proletarian world
revolution, from which it is inseparable. This is also the kernel of
the theory of the permanent
revolution.
The
extraordinary delay in the development of the world revolution, which
creates gigantic difficulties for the USSR and produces unexpected
transitional processes, nevertheless does not change the fundamental
perspectives and tasks which flow from the world-embracing character
of capitalist economy and from the permanent character of the
proletarian world revolution.
The
International Left Opposition rejects and condemns categorically the
theory of socialism in one country, created in 1924 by the epigones,
as the worst perversion of Marxism, as the principal achievement of
Thermidorean ideology. Irreconcilable combat against Stalinism (or
national socialism), which has found its expression in the program of
the Communist International, is a necessary condition for correct
revolutionary strategy, in the questions of the international class
struggle as well as in the sphere of the economic tasks of the USSR.
Elements
of Dual Power in the Regime of the Proletarian Dictatorship
If
we proceed from the incontestable fact that the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union has ceased to be a party, are we not thereby forced
to the conclusion that there is no dictatorship of the proletariat in
the USSR, since this is inconceivable without a ruling proletarian
party? Such a conclusion, entirely consistent at first sight, is
nevertheless a caricature of the reality, a reactionary caricature
that ignores the creative possibilities of the regime and the hidden
reserves of the dictatorship. Even if the party as a party, that is,
as an independent organization of the vanguard, does not exist, this
does not yet mean that all the elements of the party inherited from
the past are liquidated. In the working class, the tradition of the
October overthrow is alive and strong; firmly rooted are the habits
of class thought; unforgotten in the older generation are the lessons
of the revolutionary struggles and the conclusions of Bolshevik
strategy; in the masses of the people and especially in the
proletariat lives the hatred against the former ruling classes and
their parties. All these tendencies in their entirety constitute not
only the reserve of the future, but also the living power of today,
which preserves the Soviet Union as a workers' state.
Between
the creative forces of the revolution and the bureaucracy there
exists a profound antagonism. If the Stalinist apparatus constantly
comes to a halt at certain limits, if it finds itself compelled even
to turn sharply to the left, this occurs above all under the pressure
of the amorphous, scattered, but still powerful elements of the
revolutionary party. The strength of this factor cannot be expressed
numerically. At any rate, it is today powerful enough to support the
structure of the dictatorship of the proletariat. To ignore it means
to adopt the bureaucratic manner of thinking and to seek out the
party wherever the Stalinist apparatus commands and nowhere else.
The
Left Opposition categorically rejects the analysis of the Soviet
state not only as a bourgeois or petty-bourgeois state, but also as a
"neutral" state that has remained in some way without class
rulers. The presence of elements
of dual power in no way way signifies the political
equilibrium of the classes.
In evaluating social processes, the establishment of the degree of
maturity attained and the point of termination is especially
important. The moment of change from quantity to quality has a
decisive significance in politics as well as in other fields.
The
correct determination of this moment is one of the most important and
at the same time most difficult tasks of the revolutionary
leadership.
The
evaluation of the USSR as a state standing between the classes
(Urbahns) is theoretically inadequate and politically equivalent to a
surrender in whole or in part of the fortress of the world
proletariat to the class enemy. The Left Opposition rejects and
condemns categorically this standpoint as incompatible with the
principles of revolutionary Marxism.
The
Road of the Left Opposition in the USSR: The Road of Reform
The
analysis given above of the possibilities and chances of a
counterrevolutionary overthrow should in no sense be understood to
mean that the present contradictions must absolutely
lead
to the open explosion of civil war. The social sphere is elastic and
— within certain limits — opens up various possibilities, in
accordance with the energy and the penetration of the battling
forces, with the internal processes dependent upon the course of the
international class struggle. The duty of the proletarian
revolutionist consists under all circumstances in thinking out every
situation to the end and also of being prepared for the worst
outcome. The Marxist analysis of the possibilities and chances of a
Thermidorean-Bonapartist overthrow has nothing in common with
pessimism, just as the blindness and bragging of the bureaucracy has
nothing in common with revolutionary optimism.
The
recognition of the present Soviet state as a workers' state not only
signifies that the bourgeoisie can conquer power only by means of an
armed uprising but also that the proletariat of the USSR has not
forfeited the possibility of subordinating the bureaucracy to it, of
reviving the party again, and of regenerating the regime of the
dictatorship — without a new revolution, with the methods and on
the road of reform.
It
would be sterile pedantry to undertake to calculate in advance the
chances of proletarian reform and of the attempts at a bourgeois
upheaval. It would be criminal lightheartedness to contend that the
former is assured, the latter excluded. One must be prepared for all
possible variants. In order, at the moment of the inevitable collapse
of the plebiscitary regime, to assemble and to push ahead the
proletarian wing promptly, without letting the class enemy gain time,
it is absolutely necessary that the Left Opposition exist and develop
as a firm faction, that it analyze all the changes in the situation,
formulate clearly the perspectives of development, raise fighting
slogans at the right time, and strengthen its connections with the
advanced elements of the working class.
The
Left Opposition and the Brandlerites
The
attitude of the Left Opposition to centrism determines its attitude
to the Right Opposition, which only constitutes an uncompleted bridge
from centrism to the social democracy.
In
the Russian question, as well as in all others, the international
right wing leads a parasitic existence, nourishing itself chiefly
upon the criticism of the practical and secondary mistakes of the
Comintern, whose opportunist policy it approves in fundamental
questions. The unprincipledness of the Brandlerites shows itself most
nakedly and cynically in the questions which are bound up with the
fate of the USSR. In the period of the government's betting on the
kulaks the Brandlerites completely supported the official course and
demonstrated that no policy other than that of Stalin-Rykov-Bukharin
could be carried out. After the turn of 1928, the Brandlerites were
reduced to an expectant silence. When the successes of the
industrialization, unexpected by them, showed themselves, the
Brandlerites uncritically adopted the program of the "five-year
plan in four years" and the "liquidation of the kulaks as a
class." The right-wingers demonstrated their complete incapacity
for a revolutionary orientation and Marxist foresight, coming forward
at the same lime as the advocates of the Stalinist regime in the
USSR. The characteristic feature of opportunism — to bow before the
power of the day — determines the whole attitude of the
Brandlerites to the Stalinists: "We are prepared to acknowledge
uncritically everything you do in the USSR, permit us only to carry
out our
policy in our
Germany." The position of the Lovestoneites in the United
States, of the Right Opposition in Czechoslovakia, and their related
semi-social democratic, semi-communist groups in other countries,
bears a similar character.
The
Left Opposition conducts an irreconcilable struggle against the
right-wing camp followers of the centrists, especially and
principally on the basis of the Russian question and at the same time
endeavors to liberate from the disintegrating influence of the
Brandlerite leaders those worker-revolutionists who were driven into
the Right Opposition by the zigzags of centrism and its worthless
regime.
The
Principle of the Left Opposition: To Say What Is
The
petty-bourgeois camp followers, the "friends" of the Soviet
Union, in actuality friends of the Stalinist bureaucracy, including
also the officials dependent upon the Comintern in the various
countries, lightheartedly close their eyes to the contradictions in
the development of the Soviet Union, in order later, at the first
serious danger, to turn their backs upon it.
Political
and personal conflicts, however, not infrequently also push into the
ranks of the Left Opposition frightened centrists or, still worse,
unsatisfied careerists. With the sharpening of the repressions, or
when the official course is having momentary success, these elements
return to the official ranks as capitulators, where they constitute
the chorus of the pariahs. The capitulators of the
Zinoviev-Pyatakov-Radek type are only very little distinguished from
the Menshevik capitulators of the type of Groman-Sukhanov, or from
the bourgeois specialists of the type of Ramzin. With all the
distinctions in their points of departure, all three groups now meet
in recognition of the correctness of the present "general line,"
only to scatter in different directions at the next accentuation of
the contradictions.
The
Left Opposition feels itself a component part of the army of the
proletarian dictatorship and of the world revolution; it approaches
the tasks of the Soviet regime not from without but from within,
fearlessly tears down the false masks, and exposes the real dangers,
in order to fight against them with self-sacrifice and to teach
others to do the same.
The
experience of the whole post-Lenin period bears testimony to the
incontestable influence of the Left Opposition upon the course of
development of the USSR. All that was creative in the official course
— and has remained creative — was a belated echo of the ideas and
slogans of the Left Opposition. The half breach in the right-center
bloc resulted from the pressure of the Bolshevik-Leninists. The left
course of Stalin, springing from an attempt to undermine the roots of
the Left Opposition, ran into the absurdity of the theory and
practice of the "third period." The abandonment of this
attack of fever, which led to the downright catastrophe of the
Comintern, was once more the consequence of the criticism of the
Opposition. The power of this criticism, despite the numerical
weakness of the left wing, lies in general where the power of Marxism
lies: in the ability to analyze, to foresee, and to point out correct
roads. The faction of the Bolshevik-Leninists is consequently even
now one of the most important factors in the development of the
theory and practice of socialist construction in the USSR and of the
international proletarian revolution.
The
Living Standard of the Workers and Their Role in the State Are the
Highest Criteria of Socialist Successes
The
proletariat is not only the fundamental productive force, but also
the class upon which the Soviet system and socialist construction
rest. The dictatorship can have no powers of resistance if its
distorted regime leads to the political indifference of the
proletariat. The high rate of industrialization cannot last long if
it depends on excessive strain which leads to the physical exhaustion
of the workers. A constant shortage of the most necessary means of
existence and a permanent state of alarm under the knout of the
administration endanger the whole socialist construction. "The
dying away of inner-party democracy," says the platform of the
Opposition of the USSR, "leads to a dying away of workers'
democracy in general — in the trade unions and in all the other
nonparty mass organizations." Since the publication of the
platform, this process has made more ravaging advances. The trade
unions have finally been degraded to auxiliary organs of the ruling
bureaucracy. A system of administrative pressure has been built up,
under the name of shock troops, as if it were a question of a short
mountain pass and not of a great historical epoch. In spite of this,
the termination of the five-year plan will find the Soviet economy
before a new, still steeper ascent. With the aid of the formula
"overtaking and outstripping," the bureaucracy partly
misleads itself but mainly misleads the workers in regard to the
stage attained, and prepares a sharp crisis of disappointment.
The
economic plan must be checked on from the point of view of the actual
systematic improvement of the material and cultural conditions of the
working class in town and country. The trade unions must be brought
back to their basic task: the collective educator, not the knout. The
proletariat in the USSR and in the rest of the world must stop being
lulled by exaggerations of what has been attained and the minimizing
of the tasks and the difficulties. The problem of raising the
political independence of the proletariat and its initiative in all
fields must be put in the foreground of the whole policy. The genuine
attainment of this aim is inconceivable without a struggle against
the excessive privileges of individual groups and strata, against the
extreme inequality of living conditions, and, above all, against the
enormous prerogatives and favored position of the uncontrolled
bureaucracy.
5.
Conclusions
1.
The economic successes of the USSR, which have made a way for
themselves in spite of the long-lasting alliance between centrists,
right-wingers, Mensheviks, and saboteurs in the field of planning,
represent the greatest triumph of the socialist methods of economy
and a powerful factor of the world revolution.
2.
To defend the USSR, as the main fortress of the world proletariat,
against all the assaults of world imperialism and of internal
counterrevolution is the most important duty of every class-conscious
worker.
3.
The crises in the economic development of the USSR spring from the
capitalist and precapitalist contradictions inherited from the past,
as well as from the contradiction between the international character
of modern productive forces and the national character of socialist
construction in the USSR.
4.
Built upon the lack of understanding of the latter contradiction, the
theory of socialism in one country in turn appears as the source of
practical mistakes, which provoke crises or deepen them.
5.
The strength of the Soviet bureaucracy has unfolded on the basis of
the abrupt decline in the political activity of the Soviet
proletariat after a number of years of the highest exertion of
forces, a series of defeats of the international revolution, the
stabilization of capitalism, and the strengthening of the
international social democracy.
6.
Socialist construction, under the conditions of class contradictions
at home and of capitalist encirclement abroad, demands a strong,
farsighted, active party as the fundamental political precondition
for planned economy and class maneuvering.
7.
Having reached power with the direct support of social forces hostile
to the October Revolution and after the crushing of the revolutionary
internationalist wing of the party, the centrist bureaucracy could
nevertheless only maintain its domination by measures of suppression
of party control, election, and the public opinion of the working
class.
8.
Now that the centrist bureaucracy has strangled the party, that is,
has lost its eyes and ears, it moves along gropingly and determines
its path under the direct impact of the classes, oscillating between
opportunism and adventurism.
9.
The course of development has completely confirmed all the essential
principles of the platform of the Russian Opposition, in their
critical parts as well as in their positive demands.
10.
In the last period, the features of the three fundamental currents in
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and in the Communist
International have emerged with particular lucidity: the
Marxist-Leninist, the centrist, and the right. The tendency of
ultraleftism makes its appearance either as the crowning of one of
the zigzags of centrism or at the periphery of the Left Opposition.
11.
The policy and the regime of the centrist bureaucracy became the
source of the most acute and direct dangers for the dictatorship of
the proletariat. The systematic struggle against ruling centrism is
the most essential part of the struggle for the rehabilitation, the
strengthening, and the development of the first workers' state.
12.
The ignoring of the material state and the political mood of the
working class constitutes the most essential feature of the
bureaucratic regime which, with the aid of the methods of naked
command and administrative pressure, hopes to construct the realm of
national socialism.
13.
The bureaucratic forcing of the tempos of industrialization and
collectivization, based upon a false theoretical position and not
verified by the collective thought of the party, means a relentless
accumulation of disproportions and contradictions, especially along
the lines of the mutual relations with the world economy.
14.
The property relations in the USSR, like the reciprocal political
relations of the classes, prove incontestably that the USSR, in spite
of the distortions of the Soviet regime and in spite of the
disastrous policy of the centrist bureaucracy, remains a workers'
state.
15.
The bourgeoisie could come to power in the USSR in no other way than
with the aid of a counterrevolutionary upheaval. The proletarian
vanguard still has the possibility of putting the bureaucracy in its
place, subordinating it to its control, insuring the correct policy,
and, by means of decisive and bold reforms, regenerating the party,
the trade unions, and the soviets.
16.
Yet, with the maintenance of the Stalinist regime, the contradictions
accumulating within the framework of the official party, especially
at the moment of the sharpening of the economic difficulties, must
lead inevitably to a political crisis, which may raise the question
of power anew in all its scope.
17.
For the fate of the Soviet regime, it will be of decisive
significance whether the proletarian vanguard will be in a position
to stand up in time, to close its ranks, and to offer resistance to
the bloc of the Thermidorean-Bonapartist forces backed by world
imperialism.
18.
The Left Opposition can fulfill its duty towards the proletarian
vanguard only by uninterrupted critical work, by Marxist analyses of
the situation, by the determination of the correct path for the
economic development of the USSR and for the struggle of the world
proletariat, by the timely raising of living slogans, and by
intransigent struggle against the plebiscitary regime which fetters
the forces of the working class.
19.
The solution of these theoretical and political tasks is conceivable
only under the condition that the Russian faction of the
Bolshevik-Leninists strengthens its organizations, penetrates into
all the important units of the official party and other organizations
of the working class, and at the same time remains an inseparable
part of the International Left Opposition.
20.
One of the most urgent tasks consists in making the experience of the
economic construction in the USSR the object of an all-sided free
study and discussion within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
and the Communist International.
21.
The criteria for the discussion, the elaboration and verification of
the economic programs, are: (a) systematic raising of the real wages
of the workers; (b) closing of the scissors of industrial and
agricultural prices, that is, assuring the alliance with the
peasantry; (c) closing of the scissors of domestic and world prices,
that is, protection of the monopoly of foreign trade against the
onslaught of cheap prices; (d) raising of the quality of production,
to which the same significance should be attached as to its quantity;
(e) stabilization of the domestic purchasing power of the Chervonets,
which together with the principle of planning will for a long time to
come remain a necessary element of economic regulation.
22.
The administrative chase after "maximum" tempos must give
way to the elaboration of optimum (the most advantageous) tempos
which do not guarantee the fulfillment of the command of the day for
display purposes, but the constant growth of the economy on the basis
of its dynamic equilibrium, with a correct distribution of domestic
resources and a broad, planned utilization of the world market
23.
For this it is necessary above all to abandon the false perspective
of a complete, self-sufficient national economic development which
flows from the theory of socialism in one country.
24.
The problem of the foreign trade of the USSR must be put as a key
problem in the perspective of a growing connection with the world
economy.
25.
In harmony with this, the question of the economic collaboration of
the capitalist countries with the USSR should be made one of the
current slogans of all the sections of the Comintern, especially in
the period of the world crisis and unemployment.
26.
The collectivization of peasant farms should be adjusted in
accordance with the actual initiative of the agricultural proletariat
and the village poor, and their alliance with the middle peasants. A
serious and all-sided reexamination of the experiences of the
collective farms must be made the task of the workers and the
advanced peasants. The state program of building collective farms
must be brought into harmony with the actual results of experience
and with the given technical and total economic resources.
27.
The bureaucratic utopia of the "liquidation of the kulaks as a
class" in two to three years on the basis of the peasants'
stocks should be rejected. A firm policy of the systematic
restriction of the exploitive tendencies of the kulaks must be
conducted. Toward this end, the inevitable process of differentiation
within the collective farms, as well as between them, must be
followed attentively, and the collective farms in no case identified
with socialist enterprises.
28.
Stop being guided in the economy by considerations of bureaucratic
prestige: no embellishment, no concealment, no deception. Don't pass
off as socialism the present transitional economy of the Soviet
Union, which remains very low in the level of its productive forces
and very contradictory in its structure.
29.
There must be an end once and for all to the ruinous practice,
unworthy of a revolutionary party, of the Roman Catholic dogma of the
infallibility of the leadership.
30.
The theory and practice of Stalinism must be condemned.
Return
to the theory of Marx and to the revolutionary methodology of Lenin.
31.
The party must be reestablished as the organization of the
proletarian vanguard.
Regardless
of the greatest economic successes on the one hand and the extreme
weakening of the Comintern on the other, the revolutionary specific
weight of Bolshevism on the world political map is infinitely more
significant than the specific weight of the Soviet economy on the
world market While the nationalized and collectivized economy of the
USSR is expanded and developed by all means possible, the correct
perspective must be retained. It must not be forgotten for a minute
that the overthrow of the world bourgeoisie in the revolutionary
struggle is a far more real and immediate task than "overtaking
and outstripping" the world economy, without overstepping the
boundaries of the USSR in doing it.
The
present profound crisis of capitalist economy opens up revolutionary
possibilities to the proletariat of the advanced capitalist
countries. The inevitable rise in the militant activity of the
working masses will sharply delineate all the problems of the
revolution again, and will tear the ground from under the autocracy
of the centrist bureaucracy. The Left Opposition will enter into the
revolutionary period armed with a clear understanding of the road
already traversed, of the mistakes already committed, of the new
tasks and perspectives.
The
complete and final way out of the internal and external
contradictions will be found by the USSR on the arena of the
victorious revolution of the world proletariat, and only there.