War by the imperialists against the Soviet Union is not only probable but inevitable.
To postpone this danger, to gain as much time as possible for strengthening the Soviet Union and consolidating the international revolutionary proletariat, must be one of our foremost practical tasks. Only victorious proletarian revolutions in the decisive countries can eliminate this danger.
The danger of a world war is increasing for the following reasons:
1. The past several years of struggle on the part of capitalism to strengthen itself, and the partial success obtained in that struggle, have made the question of markets a burning question for all the leading capitalist states.
2. The imperialist bourgeoisie has been convinced beyond any question that the economic might of the Soviet Union is growing, and it sees that the proletarian dictatorship, protected by the monopoly of foreign trade, will never give the capitalists a "free" market in Russia.
3. The imperialist bourgeoisie is speculating on the inner-party difficulties in the Soviet Union.
4. The defeat of the revolution in China, following the defeat of the British General Strike, has inspired the imperialists with the hope that they may succeed in crushing the Soviet Union. 5.
The break in diplomatic relations between Britain and the Soviet Union was prepared long ago, but the defeat of the Chinese revolution hastened it. In this sense it was a reward for the Central Committee's refusal to adopt a real Bolshevik policy in China. It would be a great mistake to imagine that this matter reduces itself to a mere change in the form of trade between Britain and us. ("We will trade as we trade with America.") It is perfectly clear now that imperialist Britain has a broader plan of action. It is preparing a war against the Soviet Union, with a "moral mandate" from the bourgeoisie of several other countries, and intends by one means or another to drag Poland, Rumania, and the Baltic states, and perhaps Yugoslavia, Italy, and Hungary, into war against us.
Poland, it appears, would prefer to have a longer preparation for war against us. But it is not impossible that Britain will compel Poland to fight sooner than it likes.
In France, the British pressure for a united front against the Soviet Union is finding support from an influential part of the bourgeoisie. They are becoming more and more irreconcilable in their demands, and, of course, at a favorable moment they will not hesitate to break diplomatic relations.
The more German diplomacy has dithered about recently, the clearer it has become that its general "orientation" is toward the West. The German bourgeoisie is already saying openly that in a war against the Soviet Union, Germany would perhaps at the beginning remain "neutral" (in the manner of America in 1914) so as to profit as much as possible from the war, and later openly sell its neutrality to the Western imperialists at a good price. Nothing could be worse for the fundamental interests of the Soviet Union than to gloss over this shift by the German bourgeoisie that we did not expect could have decisive significance. Only a perfectly open "statement of things as they are," only an awakening of the vigilance of the workers of the Soviet Union and the workers of Germany, could protect us against such a blow, or at least make it difficult for the German bourgeoisie to deliver it.
The Japanese bourgeoisie is maneuvering no less skillfully than the German in relation to the Soviet Union. It is very cleverly covering up its tracks, and pretending to be "friendly." It has even delayed the seizure of the Chinese Eastern Railroad by Chang Tso-lin for a while. But it is secretly holding the reins in China and may soon take off its mask in relation to us.
In the Near East, (Turkey and Persia) we have not, to say the least, achieved a situation which would guarantee a firm neutrality in case the imperialists attack us. We should expect, rather, that in such a case the governments of these states, under pressure from the imperialists, would be inclined to render them the services required.
In the event of an attack on us, America, having preserved her wholly irreconcilable attitude to the Soviet Union, would play the role of the imperialist "rear." The significance of this role would be the greater because this is exactly the country which can provide the financing for a war against the Soviet Union.
To sum up: Whereas the years 1923-25 were years of diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union by a series of bourgeois states, the period beginning now will be a period of diplomatic breaks. The recognitions of the preceding period did not necessarily mean that peace was assured, that there was a solid and lasting breathing spell. The diplomatic breaks of the present period do not necessarily mean that war is inevitable in the immediate future. But that we have entered into a new period of extreme tension in the international situation, containing the possibility of attacks against the Soviet Union, is unquestionable.
The contradictions within the capitalist world are very great. It would be extremely difficult for the world bourgeoisie to maintain a united front against us for a long period. But a partial union of several bourgeois states against us, for a certain length of time, is entirely possible.
All this taken together ought to impel our party: (1) To recognize that the international situation is dangerous; (2) To again bring the problems of international politics to the attention of the broad masses of the population; (3) To carry on a most intense and all-sided preparation of the Soviet Union for defense in case of war.
The parties of the bourgeoisie, including official Social Democracy, will try in every way to deceive their people as to the real character of the war which imperialism is preparing against the Soviet Union. Our task is to explain now to the broadest masses of the peoples of the whole world that this will be a war of imperialists and slave-owners against the first proletarian state and dictatorship - a war of capitalism against socialism. In this war the imperialist bourgeoisie will be fighting essentially to preserve the whole system of capitalist wage slavery. The Soviet Union will be fighting for the interests of the international proletariat, the colonial and semi-colonial and enslaved countries, for the international revolution and socialism.
Even now all of our work ought to proceed under these slogans:
(1) Down with the war of the imperialists against the state of the proletarian dictatorship;
(2) Turn the imperialist war into a civil war in all states attacking the Soviet Union;
(3) Defeat all bourgeois states making war on the Soviet Union. All honest proletarians in the capitalist countries ought to actively work for the defeat of "their own" governments;
(4) All foreign soldiers who do not wish to help the slave-owners of "their own" countries should go over to the Red Army. The Soviet Union is the fatherland of all workers;
(5) The slogan "Defense of the Fatherland" would be a false disguise serving the interests of imperialism in all bourgeois countries, except colonial and semi-colonial countries that are carrying on a national revolutionary war against the imperialists. In the Soviet Union the slogan "Defense of the Fatherland" is correct, because we are defending a socialist fatherland and the base of the world working class movement;
(6) We have been defensists since October 25, 1917. Our patriotic war will be a war "for the Soviet Republic, as one of the units of the international army of socialism." Our "patriotic" war is not a step toward a bourgeois state, but a step to an international socialist revolution (Lenin). Our defense of the fatherland is defense of the proletarian dictatorship. Our war will be waged by the workers and farmhands with the support of the poor peasants and in alliance with the middle peasants against "our own" kulaks, new bourgeoisie, bureaucrats, specialists of the Ustryalov school, and White emigrŽs. Our war will be a truly just war. Whoever is not a defender of the Soviet Union is unquestionably a traitor to the international proletariat.
The defeat of the Chinese revolution has changed the real relation of forces to the advantage of imperialism - of course, only temporarily. New revolutionary conflicts, a new revolution in China, are inevitable. That is guaranteed by the whole situation.
The opportunist leaders are trying, after the event, to explain their own failure by the so-called "objective relationship of forces." They forget that only yesterday they were predicting a speedy socialist revolution in China upon the basis of this same relationship of forces.
The decisive cause of the unfavorable outcome of the Chinese revolution at the present stage was the fundamentally mistaken policy of the leadership of the Russian Communist Party and the whole International. The net result was that at the decisive period there existed in China, no real Bolshevik Party. To lay the blame now upon the Chinese Communists alone is superficial and contemptible.
We had in China a classic experiment in the application of the Menshevik tactic in the bourgeois-democratic revolution. That is why the Chinese proletariat not only did not reach its victorious "1905" (Lenin), but has played, so far, essentially the same role that the European proletariat played in the revolutions of 1848. The peculiarity of the Chinese revolution in the present international situation is not that there exists in China a so-called "revolutionary" liberal bourgeoisie - upon which Stalin-Martynov-Bukharin rested the hopes of their entire policy. Its peculiarities are as follows:
1. The Chinese peasantry, more oppressed than the Russian under tsarism, groaning under the yoke not only of their own but also of foreign oppressors, could rise, and did rise, more powerfully than the Russian peasantry in the revolution of 1905. 2. The slogan of "soviets" proposed by Lenin for China as early as 1920 had every possible justification in the conditions existing in 1926-27. Soviets in China would have offered a form through which the forces of the peasantry could have been consolidated under the leadership of the proletariat. They would have been real institutions of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. And that means institutions of real resistance to the bourgeois Kuomintang, and to the Chinese Cavaignacs emerging from it.
3. The doctrine of Lenin, that a bourgeois democratic revolution can be carried through only by a union of the working class and the peasants (under the leadership of the former) against the bourgeoisie, is not only applicable to China, and to similar colonial and semi-colonial countries, but in fact indicates the only road to victory in those countries.
4. It follows from this tat a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, taking the form of soviets in China, would have every chance, in the present age of imperialist wars and proletarian revolutions and given the existence of the USSR, of developing relatively rapidly into a socialist revolution.
5. Without that perspective the only alternative is the Menshevik road of alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie, which leads unavoidably to the defeat of the working class. And that is what happened in China in 1927.
All the decisions made in Lenin's time by the Second and Fourth Congresses of the Communist International - the decision on soviets in the Orient, on the full independence of workers' Communist parties in countries with a national-revolutionary movement, and on the union of the working class with the peasants against "their own" bourgeoisie and the foreign imperialists - all these decisions were completely forgotten.
The resolution of the seventh enlarged plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (November 1926) not only did not give a true Leninist evaluation of the already powerfully developing events in China, but it wholly and completely went over to the Menshevik course advocated by Martynov. In the resolution, incredible as it may seem, not one word was said about the first counterrevolutionary coup d'Žtat of Chiang Kai-shek in March 1926. Not one word about the shootings of workers and peasants and other repressive measures carried out by the Canton government in a whole series of provinces during the summer and autumn of 1926. Not one word about the measures of compulsory arbitration directed against the working class. Not one word about the putting down of working class strikes by the Canton government, about the protection given by the Canton government to the yellow company unions of the employers. Not one word about the efforts made by the Canton government to strangle the peasants' movement, to spit upon it, prevent its spread and development. In the resolution of the Seventh Plenum, there is no demand for the arming of the workers, no summons to struggle against the counterrevolutionary General Staff. The troops of Chiang Kai-shek are described in this resolution as a revolutionary army. No call is given for the creation of a daily Communist press, and it is not even stated clearly and definitely that we must have a genuinely independent Chinese Communist Party. To complete it all, the seventh plenum urged the Communists to enter the national government, a step which under the existing circumstances could only bring the greatest conceivable disaster.
The resolution of the International says: "The apparatus of the national revolutionary government (that is, the government of Chiang Kai-shek) offers a very real road to solidarity with the peasants." In the same place it says (this was in November 1926) that "even certain strata of the big bourgeoisie (!) may still for a certain time march hand in hand with the revolution."
The resolution of the seventh plenum passed over in silence the fact that the Central Committee of the Chinese party, after March 1926, undertook not to criticize Sun Yat-senism, renounced its elementary rights as an independent workers' party, adopted a Cadet agrarian program, and, lastly, permitted the secretary of the Central Committee, Comrade Chen Tu-hsiu, in an open letter dated July 4, 1926, to recognize Sun Yat-senism as the "common faith" of the workers and the bourgeoisie in the national movement.
At approximately the same time the most responsible Russian comrades were given advice to the effect that the development of a civil war in the country might weaken the fighting capacity of the Kuomintang. In other words, they officially forbade the development of an agrarian revolution.
On April 5, 1927, when the situation, it might seem, was already sufficiently clear, Comrade Stalin, at a meeting of the Moscow party organization in the Hall of Columns, announced that Chiang Kai-shek was a fighter against imperialism, that Chiang Kai-shek submitted to the discipline of the Kuomintang and was therefore our trusted ally. In the middle of May 1927, when the situation had become still more clear, Comrade Stalin announced that the Kuomintang in Wuhan was a "revolutionary Kuomintang," a "revolutionary center purged of rightist elements."
The eight enlarged plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (May 1927) could not find the strength to correct these Menshevik mistakes.
The Opposition introduced at this eighth plenum the following statement: "The plenum would do well to bury Bukharin's resolution replacing it with a resolution of a few lines:
"In the first place, peasants and workers should place no faith in the leaders of the left Kuomintang but should instead build their own soviets jointly with the soldiers. In the second place, the soviets should arm the workers and the advanced peasants. In the third place, the Communist Party must assure its complete independence, create a daily press, and assume the leadership in creating the soviets. Fourth, the land must be immediately taken away from the landlords. Fifth, the reactionary bureaucracy must be immediately dismissed. Sixth, perfidious generals and other counterrevolutionists must be summarily dealt with. And finally, the general course must be toward the establishment of a revolutionary dictatorship through the soviets of workers' and peasants' deputies" ["It Is Time to Understand, Time to Reconsider, and Time to Make a Change," in Leon Trotsky on China, pp. 241-42].
The attempt of the Opposition to warn the party that the Kuomintang in Wuhan was not by any means a revolutionary Kuomintang was denounced by Stalin and Bukharin as "a struggle against the party," an "attack upon the Chinese revolution," etc.
Dispatches stating the facts as to the real course of the revolution and the counterrevolution in China were concealed and falsified. Things went so far that the central publication of our party (Pravda, July 3, 1927) announced the disarmament of the workers by the Chinese generals under the headline "Fraternization of the Soldiers with the Workers." In mockery of Lenin's teaching, Stalin asserted that the slogan of soviets in China would meant he demand for an immediate formation of the proletarian dictatorship. As a matter of fact Lenin, as long ago as in the revolution of 1905, advanced the slogan of soviets as organs of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasants. The slogan of Soviets for China, proposed at the proper time by the Opposition, was met by Stalin and Bukharin with the accusation of "aiding and abetting the counterrevolution," etc. When the strongholds of the revolt of the workers and peasants were smashed by "our" generals, the "revolutionary" generals, Stalin and Bukharin, in order to cover up their own bankruptcy, suddenly advanced the slogan of soviets for China - and then forgot it again the next morning.
At first the Chinese Communist Party was declared to be "a model section of the International," and the slightest criticism of it from the Opposition - at a time when its mistakes might still have been corrected - was suppressed and denounced as a "spiteful attack" upon the Chinese party. Afterward, when the dismal failure of Martynov-Stalin-Bukharin became perfectly clear, they attempted to throw all the blame upon the young Chinese Communist Party.
At first they staked everything upon Chiang Kai-shek, then upon T'ang Sheng-chih, then upon Feng YŸ-hsiang, then the "tried and true" Wang Ching-wei. One after the other every one of these hangmen of the workers and peasants was hailed as a "fighter against imperialism" and "our" ally.
This Menshevik policy is now being completed by the frank and open emasculation of the revolutionary teaching of Lenin. Stalin-Bukharin and the "young school" are now busy trying to "prove" that Lenin's teachings on the national-revolutionary movement amount in effect to the gospel of "alliance with the bourgeoisie."
In 1920, at the Second Congress of the Communist International, Lenin said: "There has been a certain rapprochement between the bourgeoisie of the exploiting countries and that of the colonies, so that very often - perhaps in most cases- the bourgeoisie of the oppressed countries, while it does support the national movement, is in full accord with the imperialist bourgeoisie, i.e. joins forces with it against all revolutionary movements and revolutionary classes"[Collected Works, vol. 31, p.242].
How Lenin would denounce these people who dare refer to him today for justification of their Menshevik policy of union with this very thing in March 1917: "Ours is a bourgeois revolution; therefore the workers must support the bourgeoisie, say [the Liquidators] the Potresovs, Gvozdyovs, and Chkheidzes, as Plekhanov said yesterday.
Ours is a bourgeois revolution, we Marxists say; therefore the workers must open the eyes of the people to the deception practiced by bourgeois politicians, teach them to put no faith in words, to depend entirely on their own strength, their own organization, their own unity, and their own weapons"[Collected Works, vol. 23, p.306].
There could be no greater crime against the international proletariat than this attempt to represent Lenin as the apostle of "alliance with the bourgeoisie." You will rarely find in the history of revolutionary struggle a case where Marxist predictions were confirmed so swiftly and so accurately as were the views of the Opposition on the problems of the Chinese revolution in 1926-27.
A study of the course of events in the Chinese revolution and the causes of its defeat is the urgent and immediate task of Communists throughout the world.
These questions will tomorrow become questions of life and death for the working class movement, not only in China but in India and other Eastern countries - and thus, for the entire international proletariat. In the debates on these questions, which touch the very foundations of the Marxist world outlook, the genuine Bolshevik cadres of the coming revolution will be formed.
One of the fundamental tenets of Bolshevism is that the epoch beginning with World War I and our revolution is the epoch of socialist revolution. The Communist International was founded as a "party of world revolution." A recognition of this fact was recorded in the "twenty-one points." And it was primarily along this line that the Communists split with the Social Democrats, Independents, and Mensheviks of all sorts and kinds.
A recognition of the fact that the war and October opened an epoch of world revolution does not mean, of course, that at every given moment an immediately revolutionary situation is at hand. In certain periods, in individual countries, and in individual branches of production, "dying capitalism" (Lenin) is capable of a partial reestablishment of the productive forces. The epoch of world revolution will have its periods of rise and fall. So much the greater will be the importance of the preparedness of the working class and its party, the degree of influence exercised by counterrevolutionary Social Democracy, and correct leadership of the Comintern. But this ebb and flow of the revolution will not change the fundamental Leninist evaluation of the present historical epoch taken as a whole. Only this evaluation can form the basis of the revolutionary strategy of the Communist International.
Nevertheless, as a result of a series of defeats of the international revolutionary movement and the pessimistic moods growing out of them, the Stalin group, without itself even noticing, has arrived at a completely "new" and essentially Social Democratic appraisal of the present epoch. The whole "theory" of socialism in one country derives fundamentally from the assumption that the "stabilization of capitalism will last for a number of decades. This whole "theory" is essentially a product of the degenerate mood of the apostles of "stabilization." It is no accident that the "theory" of socialism in one country has been welcomed by the Social Revolutionaries, both right and left. Chernov himself has written on this theme about the "Communist Narodism" of Stalin and Bukharin. The publication of the Left Social Revolutionaries wrote: "Stalin and Bukharin affirm, exactly like the Narodniks, that socialism can win in one country" (Znamya Borby, nos. 17-18, 1926). The Social Revolutionaries support this theory because they see in it a renunciation of the orientation toward world revolution.
In the resolution of the Fourteenth Party Congress, adopted on the report of Stalin, the following obviously incorrect statement is made: "In the sphere of international relations we have a reinforcement and lengthening itself into a whole period" (Report of the Fourteenth Congress, p. 957). At the seventh enlarged plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (December 7, 1926), Stalin based the whole policy of the International upon the same radically incorrect evaluation of the world situation (verbatim report, p.12). This evaluation has already proved quite obviously incorrect.
The resolution of the joint plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission (July-August 1927) refers without any reservations to the technical, economic, and political stabilization of capitalism. This brings the Stalinist evaluation of the world situation very much nearer to that of the leaders of the Second International (Otto Bauer, Hilferding, Kautsky, and others).
Since the Fourteenth Congress something over a year and a half has passed. During that time, taking only the most important events, we have had the General Strike in Britain, the gigantic events of the Chinese revolution, the workers' uprising in Vienna. These events, irreversibly lodged in the very conditions of the present "stabilization," show us how much explosive material has been accumulated by capitalism, how unstable its "stabilization" is. All these events hammer away at the "theory" of socialism in one country.
The reverse side of the "stabilization" of capitalism is the unemployed population of twenty million, the colossal underutilization of productive capacity, the insane growth of military preparations, the extreme shakiness of the international economic relations. Nothing so surely reveals the futility of the hope for a long peaceful period as the present new danger of war that hangs over Europe. It is the petty bourgeois who dreams about stabilization for "decades," blinded by the technical, economic, and political successes of capitalism. But the real facts are developing in the direction of a war which will explode every "stabilization." Moreover, the working class and the oppressed colonial masses of the East have attempted time and time again to overthrow this "stabilization" by force. First in Britain, then in China, then in Vienna.
A General Strike in Britain - and only 5,000 members in the British Communist Party! A workers' insurrection in Vienna, with enough victims for a whole revolution - and only 6,000 members in the Austrian Communist Party! A military uprising of the masses of workers and peasants in China - and the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party turns out to be a mere appendage to the bourgeois leadership of the Kuomintang! This is the most crying contradiction of the present world situation. This is what supports and prolongs the "stabilization" of capitalism. Our biggest task is to help the Communist parties raise themselves to the height of the gigantic demands which the present epoch places upon them. But this assumes, in the first place, a correct understanding of the Character of the world situation on the part of the Communist International itself. Our international Communist Party (the Communist International) ought to apply itself to the task of rallying the whole international working class for the struggle to prevent war, to defend the Soviet Union, and to turn any imperialist war into a war for socialism. To this end the Communist worker ought above all to win over the revolutionary-minded worker who non-Communist, nonparty, Social Democrat, syndicalist, anarchist, trade unionist, and also that honest worker who is still a member of a purely bourgeois organization. "By the united workers' front must be understood the unity of all workers who desire to struggle against capitalism, and that includes the workers still following the anarcho-syndicalists, etc. In the Latin countries, the number of these workers is still considerable." This was the resolution of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, in Lenin's time. It retains its full force and applicability today. The present activities of the leaders of the Second International and the Amsterdam Trade Union International make it perfectly clear that their conduct in a future war will exceed, in vileness and unscrupulous betrayal, the role they played in 1914-18. Paul-Boncour (France) has introduced a law surrendering the workers in advance to the bourgeois dictators in time of war. The General Council of Trade Unions Congress (Britain) is defending the murders of Voikov and has approved the sending of troops to China. Kautsky (German) is advocating an armed insurrection against Soviet power in Russia, and the Central Committee of the German Social Democracy is organizing the "artillery shell campaign." The Social Democratic ministers of Finland and Latvia, and the leaders of the Polish Socialist Party, are "always at the ready" for a war against the Soviet Union. The leaders of the official American trade unions are speaking in the manner of the most venomous reactionaries, openly opposing recognition of the Soviet Union. The Balkan "socialists" are supporting the hangman of "their own" workers and are "for the Soviet Union" in words, but people who have helped their own fascists drown the workers' insurrection of Vienna in blood will obviously, at the decisive moment, be on the side of the capitalists. The Russian Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries are not advocating intervention against the Soviet Union only because there are not yet any strong interventionist powers. The leaders of the so-called "Left Social Democracy," who are covering up for the counterrevolutionary essence of Social Democracy, are the chief danger, because they more than anybody else prevent the workers who are following the Social Democratic banner from decisively breaking with these agents of the bourgeoisie in the workers' movement. Former members of the Communist International (such as Katz, Schwartz, Korsch, Rosenburg) are playing an equally traitorous role, having broken with communism by way of ultraleftism.
Flirting with these Social Democratic leaders (absolutely anti-revolutionary in all their shades, from the open rightists to the purported "leftists") becomes increasingly dangerous as war draws near. The tactic of the united front should under no conditions be interpreted as a bloc with the traitors of the General Council or as a rapprochement as a bloc with the traitors with Amsterdam. Such a policy weakens and confuses the working class, increases the prestige of those who are undeniably traitors, and prevents the maximum consolidation of our own forces. The incorrect Stalinist policy summed up in the slogan "Fire Against the Left" has had the result in the last year or two that the predominant role in the leadership of the important sections of the international has passed, against the will of the Communist workers, into the hands of the right wing (in Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, Italy, and Britain).
The policy of these right-wing leadership groups, aimed at the surgical removal of the whole left wing of the Communist International, erodes the forces of the International and stores up tremendous dangers for us to face.
In particular the removal of the Urbahns group in Germany was dictated by this policy of getting rid of the whole left wing of the International. Unduly emphasizing certain sharply polemical phrases used by the left-wing partisans of Urbahns and Maslow, in response to those who slandered and baited them without conscience as "renegades," "counterrevolutionaries," "agents of Chamberlain," etc., the Stalin group is obstinately pushing the German left wing into the road of a second party. The Stalin group is trying its best to bring about a split in the ranks of the German Communists as a fait accompli.
In reality, on all fundamental questions of the international working class movement, the Urbahns group holds Leninist views. It defends the USSR and, at the decisive hour, it will undoubtedly continue to defend it to the end. The group includes hundreds of veteran rank-and-file worker-Bolsheviks, who are closely linked with the broad masses of the proletariat. It has the sympathy of many thousands of working class Communists who have remained in the German Communist Party.
Readmission into the International of all these expelled comrades, who accepted the decisions of the congresses of the International - and first among them the Urbahns group - is the first step toward correcting the moves made by Stalin toward a split in the International. In his "Left-Wing" Communism, Lenin exposed the mistakes of the real ultraleftists, but wrote that the chief enemy of Bolshevism within the workers' movement is and remains opportunism. "It still remains the principal enemy on an international scale" [Collected Works, vol. 31, p. 31]. At the Second Congress of the International, Lenin added to this the statement that "compared with this task, the rectification of the errors of the 'left' trend in communism will be an easy one" [Ibid., p. 231]. When he spoke of the "left," Lenin had in mind the ultraleftists; whereas when Stalin speaks of the struggle against ultraleftism, he has in mind the revolutionary Leninists.
A decisive struggle with the right opportunist movement as the chief enemy, and a correction of the mistakes of the "left" tendency - that was the slogan of Lenin. We, the Oppositionists, propose the same slogan.
The power of "socialist" opportunism is in the last analysis the power of capitalism. During the first years after the war crisis (1918-21), when capitalism was swiftly sliding into the abyss, the official Social Democracy was weakening and falling with it. The years of partial stabilization of capitalism have brought a temporary strengthening of the Social Democracy. The defeat of the Italian workers in 1920-21, of the German proletariat in 1921-23, the defeat of the general strike in Britain in 1926, and the defeat of the Chinese proletariat in 1927, whatever may have been their causes, have themselves become the cause of a temporary decline in the revolutionary mood among the upper layers of the proletariat. These events have for a certain period strengthened the Social Democracy at the expense of the left. The role of the labor aristocracy, the labor bureaucracy, and its petty-bourgeois associates, becomes at such a period especially great and especially reactionary.
To a certain extent these processes must inevitably affect the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The administrative "center" has opened fire exclusively against the left and by purely mechanical methods has created a new relationship of forces, still more disadvantages to the left, Leninist wing. A situation has been created in which in fact the party never votes, but only the apparatus.
Such are the general causes of the weakening of the influence of the Leninist wing upon the policies of the Communist International, the Russian Communist Party, and the Soviet state. At the same time, right-wing Social Democratic elements, who long after October were still in the ranks of the enemy, and were at last admitted into the Communist International more or less on probation (Martynov, Smeral, Rafes, D. Petrovsky, Pepper, and others), are speaking more and more frequently and more and more loudly in the names of the International. And to them must be added the names of outright adventurers like Heinz Neumann and others of the same kind. Among the masses, however, the elements of a new movement to the left, a new revolutionary upsurge, are already accumulating. The Opposition is preparing both theoretically and politically for that new day.
1. Within the circles of the ruling majority, under the impact of the break in Anglo-Soviet relations and other difficulties, both foreign and domestic, a "plan" approximately as follows has been germinating: (a) recognize the tsarist debts; (b) more or less abolish the monopoly of foreign trade; (c) withdraw from China, that is, withdraw for "a time" our support of the Chinese revolution and of the national-revolutionary movement in general; and (d) within the country, carry out a maneuver to the right, that is, expand the NEP a little more. By paying this price, they hope to eliminate the danger of war, improve the international position of the USSR, and put an end to (or at least mitigate) the domestic difficulties. The whole "plan" is based on the sole assumption that capitalism is assured for decades. 2.
In reality this would not be a "maneuver" but in the present situation a full capitulation on the part of the Soviet power - through a "political NEP," a "neo-NEP," back to capitalism. The imperialists would accept all our concessions and proceed all the more swiftly to a new attack and even to war. The kulaks, the NEPmen, and the bureaucrats, taking cognizance of our concessions, would all the more persistently organize the anti-Soviet forces against our party. Such a "tactic" on our part would result in the closest possible union of our new bourgeoisie with the foreign bourgeoisie. The economic development of the Soviet Union under the complete control of international capital - a penny of loan for a ruble of slavery. And the working class and the bulk of the peasants would begin to lose their faith in the might of the Soviet state, their faith that the Soviet state knows where it is leading the people.
We are bound to try to "buy ourselves out" of war, if that is possible. But for that very reason we must be strong and united, unwaveringly defend the orientation toward world revolution, and reinforce the International. Only in this way will we really have a chance of postponing war as long as possible, without paying a price that would undermine the foundations of our power, and at the same time, in case war proves inevitable, of gaining the support of the international proletariat and winning.
Lenin made certain economic concessions to the imperialists in order to buy us out of war or to attract international capital upon acceptable terms. But neither in these circumstances nor in the hardest moments of the revolution did Lenin consider even for a moment the idea of abolishing the monopoly of foreign trade, of offering political rights to the kulak, or of easing away from the orientation toward world revolution in general.
We must, first of all, wholly and without reserve affirm and reinforce our support to the international revolution. We must offer a firm resistance to all "stabilization" tendencies, to all this pseudo-statesmanship which expresses itself in the remarks that we have no business "butting in" in China, that we had better "get out of China as quick as we can," that if we behave "reasonably," they will "leave us alone," etc. The "theory" of socialism in one country is now playing a directly harmful and destructive role, clearly hindering the consolidation of the international forces of the proletariat around the Soviet Union. It is lulling the workers of other countries, dulling their awareness of the danger.
3. Another task, of equal importance, is to consolidate the ranks of our party, to put an end to the open speculation of the imperialist bourgeoisie and the leaders of the Social Democracy on a split or expulsion, or "removal," etc. All this has the most direct connection with the question of the war, for at present the "probing" of the imperialists is being carried out chiefly along this moral-political line. All the agencies of the international bourgeoisie and the Social Democrats are now showing a quite unusual interest in our inner-party disputes. They are openly encouraging and spurring on the present majority of the Central Committee to expel the Opposition from the leading bodies of the party, and if possible from the party, and if possible, indeed, to put them out of the way altogether. Beginning with the richest bourgeois newspaper, the New York Times, and ending with the slimiest paper of the Second International, the Vienna Arbeiter Zeitung (Otto Bauer), all the publications of the bourgeoisie and the Social Democrats are saluting the "government of Stalin" for its struggle against the Opposition. They are urging this government to prove still further its "statesmanlike intelligence" by decisively removing these Oppositional "propagandists of international revolution." Other things being equal, a war will come so much the later in proportion as these hopes of the enemy for the removal of the Opposition, etc., remain unrealized. Moreover, we can buy ourselves out of a war, if that is possible - and win the war, if we have to fight - only if we preserve complete unity: if we disappoint the hopes of the imperialists for a split or an expulsion. Such a thing would benefit only the capitalists.
4. It is necessary to rectify our class line in the international workers' movement, stop the struggle against the left wing in the International, restore to the International those expelled members who accept the decisions of its congresses, and once and for all put an end to the policy of "entente cordiale" with the traitorous leaders of the British General Council. A break with the General Council will have the same significance in the present situation as in 1914 the break with the International Socialist Bureau of the Second International. Lenin demanded in an ultimatum that the break be made by every revolutionist. To remain in a bloc with such a General Council means now, as it did then, to help the counterrevolutionary leaders of the Second International.
5. We must decisively correct our line in the national-revolutionary movement - first of all in China, but also in a number of other countries. We must liquidate the policy of Martynov-Stalin-Bukharin and return to the course outlined by Lenin in the resolutions of the Second and Fourth Congresses of the Communist International. Otherwise, instead of being an accelerator we shall become a brake upon the national-revolutionary movement and inevitably lose the sympathy of the workers and peasants of the East. The Chinese Communist Party must dissolve all organizational and political dependence upon the Kuomintang. The Communist International must expel the Kuomintang from its ranks.
6. We must consistently, systematically, and stubbornly wage the struggle for peace. We must postpone war, "buy ourselves out of the danger of war." Everything possible and permissible must be done to this end (see point 1). At the same time we must get ready for war immediately, not folding our arms for one instant. And our first duty is to put an end to the political and ideological confusion and disagreement on whether an immediate danger of war exists.
7. We must decisively correct our class line in domestic policy. If war is inevitable, only a strictly Bolshevik policy can win: the worker and the farmhand, with the support of the poor peasant, in alliance with the middle peasant, against the kulak, the NEP-man, and the bureaucrat.
8. An all-sided preparation of our entire economy, budget, etc., for the event of war. 9.
Capitalism is entering a new stage of upheaval. A war with the Soviet Union, like a war with China, will mean a series of catastrophes for international capitalism. The war of 1914-18 was a gigantic "accelerator" (Lenin) of the socialist revolution. New wars, and especially a war against the Soviet Union - in which with a correct policy on our part we should win the sympathy of the laboring masses of the entire world - could become an even greater "accelerator" of the downfall of world capitalism. Socialist revolutions will develop without new wars. But new wars will inevitably lead to socialist revolutions.
The international situation is more and more bringing to the fore the question of the defense of the Soviet Union. The party, the working class, and the peasantry must again give great attention to the Red Army and Navy.
All aspects of economics, politics, and culture are combined in the problem of defense. The army is a copy in miniature of the whole social structure. It reflects, in the sharpest possible manner, not only the strong but the weak sides of the existing regime. Experience teaches that in this sphere least of all is it safe to rely upon appearances. Here especially it is better to err in the direction of checking ourselves in everything three times over and engaging in strict self-criticism than to err in the direction of easygoing trust and confidence.
The question of the relations between classes in our country, and a correct policy of our party in this sphere, has a decisive significance for the inner cohesion of the army and for the relations between the commanding staff and the mass of the soldiers. The question of industrialization has decisive significance for the technical resources of our defense. All the measures advocated in the present Platform - in the sphere of international politics and the international workers' movement, industry, agriculture, and the Soviet system, the national question, the party, and the Communist League of Youth - all these questions are of prime importance in strengthening the Red Army and Navy.
Our practical proposals in this field have been presented to the Poliburo.
Nothing testifies so much to the erroneous political course of the Stalin group as its constant effort to argue, not with our real opinions, but with artificially manufactured views that we do not hold and never did.
When the Bolsheviks argued against the Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries, and other petty-bourgeois tendencies, the Bolsheviks explained to the workers the actual system of opinions held by their opponents. But when the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries argued against the Bolsheviks, instead of refuting their real opinions they would attribute to the Bolsheviks things they had never said. The Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries could not present the real views of the Bolsheviks to the workers with even partial accuracy because in that case the workers would have supported the Bolsheviks. The whole mechanism of the class struggle compelled these petty-bourgeois groups to combat the Bolsheviks by calling them "conspirators," "allies of the counterrevolution," and later "agents of Kaiser Wilhelm." In the same way now, the petty-bourgeois deviation in our own party cannot struggle against our Leninist views in any way other than by attributing to us things which we never thought or said. The Stalin group knows perfectly well that if we could defend our true opinions with even a semblance of free speech, a huge majority of party members would support us.
The most elementary conditions for an honest inner-party debate are not observed. On the question of the Chinese revolution, a question of world-importance, the Central Committee has not to this day printed a single word of what the Opposition says. After bottling up all discussion in the party and cutting off Opposition access to the party press, the Stalin group has carried on a continual, one-sided debate against us, day after day attributing to us greater and greater stupidities and crimes. But the rank-and-file party member is less and less inclined to believe these accusations.
1. When we state that the present stabilization of capitalism is not a stabilization for decades, and that our epoch remains an epoch of imperialist wars and social revolutions (Lenin), the Stalin group attributes to us a denial of all elements of stabilization in capitalism.
2. When we say, in the words of Lenin, that for the construction of a socialist society in our country, a victory of the proletarian revolution is necessary in one or more of the advanced capitalist countries, that the final victory of socialism in one country, and above all a backward country, is impossible, as Marx, Engels, and Lenin all argued, the Stalin group makes the wholly false assertion that we "have no faith" in socialism and in socialist construction in the Soviet Union.
3. When, following Lenin, we point out the growing bureaucratic distortions of our proletarian state, the Stalin group attributes to us the opinion that our Soviet state is not proletarian at all. When we announce before the entire Communist International that "whoever tries, directly or indirectly, to solidarize with us while at the same time denying the proletarian character of our party and our state and the socialist character of construction in the Soviet Union will be ruthlessly opposed and rejected by us" - the Stalin group conceals our announcement and continues its slander against us [see the declaration by Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Trotsky, December 14, 1926, at the seventh enlarged plenum of the ECCI, paragraph 1, pp. 190-1].
4. When we point out that the Thermidorian elements with a rather substantial social base are growing in our country; when we demand that the party leadership offer a more systematic, coordinated, and firm resistance to these phenomena and their influence upon certain sections of our party, the Stalin group accuses us of stating that the party is Thermidorian, and that the proletarian revolution has degenerated. When we announce to the entire International: "It is not true that we accuse the majority of our party of representing a 'right-wing deviation.' We believe only that in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union there are right-wing currents and groupings which now have a disproportionate influence, but which the party will be able to overcome" - the Stalin group conceals our announcement and continues to slander us [Ibid., paragraph 13, p.193].
5. When we point to the enormous growth of the kulak; when we, following Lenin, continue to assert that the kulak cannot peacefully "grow into socialism," that he is the most dangerous enemy of the proletarian revolution - the Stalin group accuses us of wishing to "rob the peasants."
6. When we draw the attention of our party to the reality of the strengthening position of private capital, the excessive increase in the accumulation of such capital and of its influence in the country, the Stalin group accuses us of attacking the NEP and calling for the restoration of war communism.
7. When we point to the incorrectness of party policy in regard to the material condition of the workers, the inadequacy of the measures against unemployment and the housing shortage; and especially when we point out that the share of the nonproletarian elements in the national income has increased excessively - they say that we are guilty of a "narrow craft-oriented" deviation, and of "demagogy."
8. When we point to the systematic lagging of industry behind the need of the national economy, with all its inevitable consequences - the price disproportion, the goods famine, rupture of the bond between town and countryside - they call us "superindustrializers."
9. When we point to the incorrect price policy, which is not reducing the high cost of living but making possible frenzied profiteering by private traders, the Stalin group accuses us of advocating a policy of raising prices. When a year ago we announced to the entire International: "The Opposition never in any of its utterances demanded or proposed a raising of prices, but saw as the chief mistake of our economic policy precisely the fact that it does not lead with sufficient energy to a reduction of the goods famine with which the high retail prices are inevitably bound up" - our announcement was concealed from the party and the slander continued.
10. When we speak against the "entente cordiale" with the betrayers of the General Strike, the counterrevolutionists of the British General Council, who are openly playing the role of Chamberlain's agents, we are accused of being opposed to the work of Communists within the trade unions and against the tactic of a united front.
11. When we oppose the entry of the trade unions of the Soviet Union into the Amsterdam Trade Union International, or any kind of flirting with the leaders of the Second International, we are accused of a "Social Democratic deviation."
12. When we oppose a policy based on the Chinese generals, when we oppose the subjection of the Chinese working class to the bourgeois Kuomintang, when we oppose the Menshevik tactics of Martynov, we are accused of being against "the agrarian revolution in China," of being "in cahoots with Chiang Kai-shek."
13. When, on the basis of our evaluation of the world situation, we come to the conclusion that war is approaching and warn the party of this in good time, the Stalinists bring forward against us the dishonest accusation that we "desire war."
14. When, true to the teaching of Lenin, we point out that the approach of war makes it all the more urgent that we have a firm, definite, and clear-cut class policy, the Stalinists shamelessly assert that we do not want to defend the Soviet Union, that we are "conditional defenders," semi-defeatists, etc.
15. When we point out the absolutely undeniable fact that the entire world press of the capitalists and Social Democrats is supporting Stalin's struggle against the Opposition in the Russian Communist Party, praising Stalin for his repression of the left wing, urging him to remove the Opposition, to expel it from the Central Committee and from the party, Pravda and the entire party and Soviet press day after day deceitfully pretend that the bourgeoisie and Social Democracy are "for the Opposition."
16. When we oppose the passing of the leadership in the Communist International into the hands of the right wing, and the expulsion of hundreds and thousands of workers-Bolsheviks, the Stalinists accuse us of attempting to split the Communist International.
17. The present deformations of the party regime are such that when Oppositionists who are loyal party members attempt to inform the membership of their real opinions, they are thrown out of the Russian Communist Party. They are accused of "factionalism." They are "brought up on charges" for allegedly trying to split the party. The most important party questions, instead of being discussed, are buried under a heap of rubbish.
18. But the favorite accusation is that we supposedly believe in "Trotskyism." We announce to the whole Communist International: It is not true that we defend "Trotskyism." Trotsky has stated to the International that on all the fundamental questions over which he had differences with Lenin, Lenin was right - in particular on the questions of the permanent revolution and the peasantry [see the declaration of Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Trotsky, December 14, 1926, paragraph 12, p. 193]. That announcement, made to the whole Communist International, the Stalin group refuses to print. It continues to accuse us of "Trotskyism." The above-quoted announcement relates, of and not to those differences with Lenin which existed in fact and not to those unscrupulously invented by Stalin and Bukharin. The relation which they pretend to discover between our differences in the remote past and the practical disagreements which arose in the course of the October Revolution is imaginary. We not the use of unacceptable methods in the attempt of the Stalin group to distract attention away from the views of the Opposition, as expounded in the present Platform, by references to earlier disagreements between the 1923 group and the 1925 group. These disagreements have now been resolved on the basis of Leninism. The mistakes and exaggerations committed by both groups of obscurities in the state of affairs in the party and the country, have now been corrected, and do not constitute an obstacle to collaboration and joint struggle against opportunism and for Leninism. (According to Max Eastman, who translated and published the Platform under the title The Real Situation in Russia (1928) this paragraph was inserted in the Platform at the insistence of Zinoviev and Kamenev. - Eds.) 19.
By tearing quotations out of context, by using a biased and one-sided selection of old polemical statements by Lenin in a rude and disloyal way, by hiding from the party other, far more recent statements of Lenin's, by openly falsifying party history and the events of the past, and even more important, by distorting all the questions at present in dispute, and by flagrantly substituting artificial issues for real ones, the group of Stalin and Bukharin, departing farther and farther from the principles of Lenin, is trying to deceive the party into believing that this is a struggle between Leninism and Trotskyism. The struggle is, in actual fact, between Leninism and Stalinist opportunism. In exactly the same way the revisionists, under the pretext of a struggle against "Blanquism," waged their battle against Marxism. Our collaboration and joint struggle against the Stalin course has been possible only because we are all completely united in the desire and determination to defend the real Leninist political line.
The present Platform is the best answer to the accusation of "Trotskyism." Everyone who reads it will see that every line, from beginning to end, is based on the teachings of Lenin and is inspired by the genuine spirit of Bolshevism.
Let the party find out our real opinions. Let the party familiarize itself with the original documents on the disputed issues, especially on that question of such great international importance, the Chinese revolution. Lenin taught us that when there are differences, we should not believe anything on somebody's say-so, but should demand documents, listen to both of the contending sides, and find out conscientiously what the real disagreements are, setting false issues aside. We, the Opposition, repeat this advice of Lenin's.
We must, once and for all, put an end to the very possibility of what happened at the Fourteenth Congress, when the differences came crashing down on the heads of the party membership two or three days before the congress. We must create the conditions for an honest debate and an honest resolution of the real issues in dispute, as was always done in Lenin's time.
We have frankly set forth our opinion of the serious mistakes committed by the majority of the Central Committee in all the fundamental areas of foreign and domestic policy. We have shown how these mistakes of the Central Committee have weakened our party, which is the fundamental instrument of the revolution. We have shown that, in spite of everything, our party can correct its policy from within. But in order to correct the policy, it is necessary clearly and candidly to define the character of the mistakes committed by the party leadership.
The mistakes made have been opportunist mistakes. Opportunism in its fully developed form - according to the classic definition of Lenin - is a bloc formed by the upper strata of the working class with the bourgeoisie and directed against the majority of the working class. In the conditions now existing in the Soviet Union, opportunism in such fully developed form would express the desire of the upper strata of the working class to compromise with the newly resurrected native bourgeoisie (kulaks and NEPmen) and with world capitalism, at the expense of the interests of the broad mass of the workers and the poor peasants.
When we call attention to the existence of such tendencies in certain circles of our party - in some places just appearing and in others fully developed - it is absurd to accuse us, on those grounds, of slandering the party. It is precisely to the party that we are appealing against these tendencies which threaten it. It is equally absurd to claim that we are accusing this or that section of the party or the Central Committee of disloyalty to the revolution, of betraying the interest of the proletariat. A false political line can be dictated by the most sincere concern for the interests of the working class. Even the most extreme representatives of the right wing are convinced that the compromises they are prepared to make with the bourgeois elements are necessary in the interests of the workers and peasants and that such compromises are only maneuvers with the enemy of the kind that Lenin considered entirely permissible. Even the right-wing group, which represents and open tendency to abandon the proletarian revolution, does not consciously desire a Thermidor. And this is still more true of the "center," which is carrying out a typical policy of illusion, self-consolation, and self-deception.
Stalin and his closest adherents are convinced that, with their powerful apparatus, they can outwit all the forces of the bourgeoisie rather than having to overcome them through an open struggle. Stalin and the Stalinists undoubtedly believed in all sincerity that they could "toy with" the Chinese generals for a certain period of time and then toss them away like so many squeezed lemons after using them in the interests of the revolution. Stalin and the Stalinists undoubtedly believed in all sincerity that they were "toying with" the Purcells and not vice versa. Stalin and the Stalinists believe in all sincerity that they can "freely" make concessions to "their own" bourgeoisie, and afterward with equal freedom take these concessions back.
In their bureaucratic self-importance, the Stalinists think they can make such maneuvers "easier" for themselves by in effect removing the party from all participation in policy-making decisions, thus avoiding any resistance by the party. The Stalinist group at the top decides and acts, leaving it to the party to "study" its decisions. But this weakens, if it does not entirely paralyze, the very force which could make effective use of a correct political maneuver, if the maneuver were necessary and appropriate, or which could minimize or overcome the bad consequences of maneuvers by the leadership if they were obviously incorrect. Thus, the conciliationist tendencies of the right wing in the Central Committee and the maneuvers of the centrist group have cumulative results - results which, taken together, add up to a weakening of the international position of the USSR, a weakening of the position of the proletariat in relation to other classes within the Soviet Union, a relative deterioration of its material living conditions, a weakening of its bond with the poor peasants, thus threatening its alliance with the middle peasants, a weakening of its role in the state apparatus, and a slowing down of the tempo of industrialization. It was these consequences of the policies of the majority of the Central Committee and not its intentions, that the Opposition had in mind when it raised the question of the danger of a Thermidor, that is, a shift from the path of proletarian revolution in a petty-bourgeois direction. The enormous difference between the history and character of our party and those of the parties of the Second International is clear to everybody. The Russian Communist Party has been tempered in the fires of three revolutions. It has seized and held power against a world of enemies. It has organized the Third International. Its fate is the fate of the first victorious proletarian revolution. The revolution determines the tempo if its inner life. All ideological processes within the party, taking place under intense class pressures, have a tendency to develop and come to a head swiftly. For this very reason it is especially necessary in our party that there be a timely and decisive struggle against every tendency to depart from the Leninist line.
The opportunist tendencies in the Russian Communist Party have, in the present circumstances, deep objective roots: (1) The international bourgeois encirclement and the temporary partial stabilization of capitalism give rise to "stabilizational" moods; (2) The New Economic Policy, undoubtedly necessary as a road toward socialism, by partially resurrecting capitalism, has also revived forces hostile to socialism; (3) The elemental social force of the petty bourgeoisie, in a country where the peasantry is in the vast majority, is bound to flow over not only into the soviets, but also into the party; (4) The fact that the party has a monopoly in the political field, something absolutely necessary for the revolution, creates a further series of special dangers. The Eleventh Congress of the party, in Lenin's time, pointed out bluntly and openly that there already existed in the party entire groups of people (from the well-to-do peasantry, the upper strata of office workers, and the intelligentsia) who would have been in the Social Revolutionary or Menshevik parties, if those parties had not been illegal; (5) The state apparatus, which is directed by the party, in turn feeds much that is bourgeois and petty bourgeois into the party, infecting it with opportunism; (6) Through the specialists and the upper strata of office workers and intellectuals, necessary as they are to the work of construction, a steady stream of non-proletarian influences flows into our state, economic, and party apparatuses.
That is why the Leninist Oppositional wing of the party sounds the alarm so insistently over the obvious and dangerous deviations of the Stalin group, which increase daily. It is criminal light-mindedness to assert that the great past of the party, and its old cadres of Bolsheviks, constitute a guarantee in all circumstances and for all time against the danger of opportunist degeneration. Such an idea has nothing whatever in common with Marxism.
Lenin did not teach such ideas. At the Eleventh Party Congress he said: "History knows of all sorts of metamorphoses. Relying on firmness of convictions, loyalty, and other splendid moral qualities is anything but a serious attitude in politics." [Collected Works, vol. 33, p. 287].
The workers who constituted the immense majority of the socialist parties of the West before the imperialist war were undoubtedly opposed to opportunist deviations. But they did not over come in time the opportunist mistakes of their leaders, which at first were not very great. They underestimated the significance of these mistakes. They did not understand that the first serious historical disturbance after that prolonged period of peaceful development which had given birth to so powerful a workers' bureaucracy and aristocracy, would compel not only the opportunists but the centrists as well to capitulate to the bourgeoisie, leaving the masses disarmed at that critical moment. If you can reproach the revolutionary Marxists, who constituted the left wing of the Second International before the war, with anything, it is not that they exaggerated the danger of opportunism when they called it national-liberal labor politics, but that they relied too much upon the working class composition of the Socialist parties of those days. They relied upon the revolutionary instincts of the proletariat and upon the sharpening of class contradictions. They underestimated the real danger and were not energetic enough in mobilizing the revolutionary rank and file against it. We are not going to repeat that mistake. We are going to correct, in good time, the course of the party leadership. By that fact we answer the charge that we desire to split our party and form a new one. The dictatorship of the proletariat demands a single and united proletarian party as the leader of the working masses and the poor peasantry. Such unity, unweakened by factional strife, is unconditionally necessary to the proletariat in the fulfillment of its historic mission. This can be realized only on the basis of the teachings of Marx and Lenin, undiluted with personal interpretations and undistorted by revisionism.
In fighting for a certain rate of industrialization as the premise for socialist construction, in combating the growth of the kulak and his aspiration toward supremacy in the countryside, in fighting for a timely improvement in the living conditions of the workers and for democracy within the party, trade unions, and the soviets - the Opposition is not advocating ideas which might bring about a separation of the working class from its party; on the contrary its effort is to reinforce the foundations of real unity in the All-Union Communist Party. Without correcting the opportunist mistakes, you can have nothing but a show of unity, which will weaken the party as it faces mounting pressures from the growing internal bourgeoisie, and which, in the event of war, will mean that the party will have to reorganize itself under fire and on the march. When they find out our real views and proposals, the proletarian nucleus of the party - of this we are sure - will accept them and fight for them, not as "factional" slogans but as the very banner of party unity.
Our party has not yet clearly recognized and for that reason has not corrected, the mistakes of its leadership. The extraordinarily swift growth of our industry during the restoration period has been one of the fundamental sources of the opportunist illusions which the majority of the Central Committee has systematically encouraged in the party and the working class. The first rapid betterment in the conditions of the workers, by comparison with their conditions during the civil war, fostered hopes in wide layers of the working class for a swift and painless overcoming of the contradictions of the NEP. This prevented the party from detecting soon enough the danger of an opportunist deviation.
The growth of the Leninist Opposition in the party has impelled the worst elements of the bureaucracy to resort to methods previously unheard of in the practice of Bolshevism. No longer able to prevent discussion of political questions in the party units by just issuing orders, a section of the bureaucracy is now resorting - on the eve of the Fifteenth Congress - to the creation of gangs whose job is to break up all discussions of party problems by means of shouting, whistling, turning off lights, etc.
This attempt to bring the methods of naked physical violence into the party will arouse the indignation of all honest proletarian elements and will inevitably boomerang on its own organizers. No machinations by the worst part of the party apparatus will succeed in separating the party mass from the Opposition. Behind the Opposition stand the Leninist traditions of our party, the experience of the whole international workers' movement, the contemporary state of international politics and of our economic work of construction as seen by the international proletariat. Class contradictions, inevitably growing sharper after the restoration period, will more and more confirm our views on the way out of the present crisis. They will more and more consolidate the vanguard of the proletariat in the struggle for Leninism.
The growing danger of war has already prompted working class party members to think more deeply about the fundamental problems of the revolution. In the same way they will inevitably be compelled to undertake more actively the work of correcting opportunist mistakes.
The working class section of our party has largely forced out of the party leadership in recent years. It has been subjected to the devastating influence of a long campaign of slander, whose goal has been to prove that left is right and right is left. This working class section of the party will reawaken. It will find out what is really happening. It will take the fate of the party into its own hands. To help the vanguard of the workers in this process is the task of the Opposition. It is the task of this Platform.
The more important, the most urgent, question, and the one which troubles all members of our party, is the question of party unity. And in truth it is upon this question that the further fate of the proletarian revolution depends. Innumerable class enemies of the proletariat are listening intently to our inner-party disputes and are waiting with unconcealed delight and impatience for a split in our ranks. A split in our party, the formation of two parties, would represent an enormous danger to the revolution.
We, the Opposition, unconditionally condemn any attempt whatsoever to create a second party. The slogan of two parties is the slogan of the Stalin group in its effort to force the Leninist Opposition out of the All-Union Communist Party. Our task is not to create a new party, but to correct the course of the All-Union Communist Party. Only with a united Bolshevik Party can the proletarian revolution be completely victorious. We are struggling within the Communist Party for our views, and we decisively condemn the "two parties" slogan as the slogan as the slogan of the adventurers. The call for "two parties" expresses, on the one hand, the desire of certain elements in the party apparatus for a split, and, on the other, a mood of despair and a failure to comprehend that the task of Leninists is to win a victory for Lenin's ideas within the party, notwithstanding all difficulties. Nobody who sincerely defends the line of Lenin can entertain the idea of "two parties" or play with the suggestion of a split. Only those who desire to replace Lenin's course with some other can advocate a split or a movement along the two-party road.
We will fight with all our power against the idea of two parties, because the dictatorship of the proletariat demands as its very core a single proletarian party. It demands a single party. It demands a proletarian party - that is, a party whose policy is determined by the interests of the proletariat and carried out by a proletarian nucleus. Correction of the line of our party, improvement of its social composition - that is not the two-party road, but the strengthening and guaranteeing of its unity as a revolutionary party of the proletariat.
On the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, we express our profound conviction that the working class did not make countless sacrifices and overthrow capitalism in order to prove unequal now to the task of correcting the mistakes of its leadership, carrying the proletarian revolution forward with a firm hand, and defending the Soviet Union, which is the center of the world revolution.
Against opportunism! Against a split! For the unity of the Leninist party!