Leon
Trotsky: The Lesson of Mill's Treachery
October
13, 1932
[Writing
of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 4, 1932, New York 1973, p. 239-243]
The
case of Mill represents one of those episodes which, generally
speaking, are quite inevitable in the process of selecting and
educating our cadres. The Left Opposition is under terrific pressure.
But not all are up to it. There will still be not a few cases of
regrouping and of personal desertion. In this letter I would like to
draw out of the Mill episode certain lessons which it seems to me are
simple and not open to dispute.
Lenin
spoke of ultraleftism as an infantile malady. But we must remember
that ultraleftism is not the only political infantile malady; there
are others too. As everyone knows, children find it hard to realize
the nature of their illness or even its location. There is something
of this sort in politics too. It requires a fairly high degree of
maturity for two groups, at the very moment of their birth, to be
able to define more or less clearly the cardinal points of their
differences. More often young groups, like sick children, complain of
pains in the arm or leg, while the pain in reality is in the belly.
Individuals, or little groups, insufficiently hardened for a
tenacious and long-range task of organization and education,
disillusioned by the fact that success does not fall from the sky,
ordinarily do not take account of the fact that the source of their
failures lies in themselves, in their inconsistency, in their
softness, in their petty-bourgeois sentimentalism. They seek the
blame for their shortcomings outside of themselves and generally find
it in the bad character of X or Y. Often enough they end by making a
bloc with Z, with whom they do not agree on anything, against Y, with
whom, as they say, they are in agreement on everything. When serious
revolutionists are then astonished or indignant at their attitude,
they begin to protest that an "intrigue" is being woven
against them. This pernicious road, observed more than once in
various sections, has been followed to the end in the Mill episode
and that is why it is particularly instructive.
How
did Mill become a member of the Administrative Secretariat? I have
spoken of this in my note for the press. Objective conditions
demanded the presence at the Secretariat of a person who was closely
connected with the center of the Russian Opposition, able to
translate Russian documents, carry on correspondence, etc. Mill
appeared as the only possible candidate, practically speaking. He
declared his complete solidarity with the Russian Opposition, and
took part in the struggle against Landau, Rosmer, etc. All our
comrades will remember how Mill then, in the course of absolutely
unprincipled conflicts with the leading group of the French League,
suddenly tried to conclude a bloc with Rosmer, who had already
abandoned the ranks of the League.
What
did this fact mean? How was it possible for a responsible member, in
the course of twenty-four hours, to change his position on a highly
important question for the sake of personal considerations? Mill
himself continued to declare that he had no
kind of political differences with the Russian Opposition,
only that such and such French comrades "displeased him."
In other words, Mill had recourse to the same arguments which only
the day before he had condemned in Rosmer. Rosmer has even built on
the basis of the opposition between ideas and people a purely
anecdotal theory which shows beyond any doubt that Rosmer broke with
the Comintern not because he had raised himself to a higher
historical point of view, but because at bottom he had not grown to
an understanding of revolutionary policy and the revolutionary party.
The
only conclusion which could be drawn from the unworthy conduct of
Mill was this: for Mill, principles are in general clearly of no
importance; personal considerations, sympathies, and antipathies
determine his political conduct to a greater degree than principles
and ideas. The fact that Mill could propose a bloc with a man whom he
had defined as non-Marxist, against comrades whom he had held to be
Marxists, showed clearly that Mill was politically and morally
unreliable and that he was incapable of keeping his loyalty to the
cause. If on that day he betrayed on a small scale, he was capable of
betraying tomorrow on a larger scale. That was the conclusion which
every revolutionary should have drawn.
The
Russian Opposition, which more than all the other sections was
responsible for having brought Mill into the Secretariat, immediately
proposed his removal from that body. But what happened? This
proposal, natural, urgent, corresponding to the entire situation, met
with resistance among certain comrades. In the first rank were the
comrades of the Spanish section, who even considered it possible to
propose Mill as the representative of the Spanish section in the
International Secretariat. At the same time they declared that they
had no political differences with the leadership of the International
Left Opposition.
This
most unexpected step made a shocking impression on many of us at the
time. But we asked, by what do the Spanish comrades let themselves be
guided when they take up Mill as a cause? It is clear. They see in
Mill a comrade who has been "crossed," and they hasten to
take up his defense. In other words, on a political question of
exceptional importance they let themselves be guided by
considerations which are not political, not revolutionary, but
personal and sentimental.
If
Mill tried to conclude a bloc with the deserter Rosmer against the
French League, the leading Spanish comrades concluded a bloc with
Mill against the Russian, French, and a number of other sections,
although in their own words they had no differences with them. We see
in what a maze one can be lost by being guided, on important
questions, not by political revolutionary considerations, but by
impressions, sentimentalism, and personal sympathies and antipathies!
The
fact that Mill "in search of work" entered into
negotiations with the Stalinists and finally undertakes to "unmask"
the Left Opposition in the press shows definitely that Mill is a
corrupt petty bourgeois. Surely no one in our ranks will deny this.
But this alone is not enough: we must understand that the sudden turn
of Mill toward Rosmer was in its time only the dress rehearsal for
his present turn toward the Stalinists. The basis for both acts of
treason was the same inadequacy of the petty bourgeois who had fallen
into the sphere of revolutionary politics.
I
pause on this question with so much detail not on account of Mill,
but on account of the question of the selection and education of the
cadres of the Left Opposition. This process is far from finished,
although it is precisely in this field that we have important
successes to our credit.
The
Spanish Opposition at present is going through an extremely difficult
crisis. The leadership elected at the last conference has fallen
apart although no principled basis for this decomposition can be
found; for each member of the Central Committee, we are referred to
some particular personal
reason. Still, for anyone who in the past had seriously gone into the
position of the Central Committee of the Spanish Opposition toward
the Mill episode, it was even then clear that the Spanish Opposition
was on its way toward a crisis.
In
fact, if the leaders of the Spanish Opposition did not understand the
principled importance of the struggle which we were carrying on
against Rosmer, Landau, etc., if they thought it possible to ally
themselves with Mill against the fundamental cadres of the
International Opposition, if at the same time they repeated that they
had no differences with us and thus removed any justification for
their manner of acting, for all these reasons we could not fail to
say to ourselves with alarm, "The leaders of the Spanish
Opposition will scarcely give a correct orientation to their section;
but where a well-grounded orientation is lacking, there inevitably
appear personal motives and feelings." To weld into a whole
people of different training, character, temperament, and education
can be done only by means of clear revolutionary principles.
Otherwise the disintegration of the organization is inevitable. On
personal sympathies, on friendships and clique spirit, nothing can be
built but a lifeless debating club of the Souvarine type or a home
for political invalids of the Rosmer type, and not even that for
long.
Disagreeable
as the task is, I must again touch on a "delicate" point
because the interest of the cause demands it; no sound political
relations can be built on suppressions and conventionalities.
When
in our letters we asked the leading Spanish comrades by what
principled motives, by what political and organizational
considerations they let themselves be guided in taking up the defense
of Mill against the Russian, German, French, Belgian sections, etc.,
we received the following type of reply, "We have the right to
have our own opinion," "We refuse to be ordered about,"
etc. This unexpected reply seemed to us a highly alarming symptom.
Let
us admit that someone among us really has a tendency to order people
about Such a tendency should be resisted, and the stronger the
tendency the more the resistance. But the necessity for the most
resolute struggle against any such habits of simple command would not
free the Spanish comrades of the necessity of establishing a
political
foundation for their factional intervention in favor of Mill and
against the overwhelming majority of the sections. In the request for
principled motives for this or that action there is in no way a
tendency to simple command. Every member of the Left Opposition has
the right to ask the responsible institutions of the Left Opposition
the question: Why? To get rid of the burden of a concrete answer by
mere affirmation of the right to have one's own opinion is to replace
mutual revolutionary obligations by half-liberal, half-sentimental
commonplaces. After such an answer, one could not fail to say to
oneself again, "Certain leading Spanish comrades have not,
unfortunately, a sufficiently solid common ground with the
International Left Opposition. From this proceeds their inattention
to the history of the Left Opposition, to the struggles through which
it has gone, to the selection of cadres which it has carried through;
from this proceeds also the tendency to be guided by personal
impressions, by psychological estimations, by individual criteria;
from this also, the affirmation of 'liberty' of opinion instead
of a Marxist foundation for the opinion."
It
is unnecessary for us to say how far removed we are from the thought
of comparing any of the Spanish comrades to Mill. But it remains a
fact that the leading Spanish comrades have not understood in time
why we attacked Mill in an intransigent manner and why we demanded
that the others do the same. Let us hope that now, at least, this
serious lesson may lead to our coming together and not to additional
discussion.