At a New Stage

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The crisis in the party refracts the crisis of the revolution itself. The crisis of the revolution was produced by the shift in class relations. The fact that the Opposition is a minority in the party and finds itself constantly under attack reflects the pressure of the domestic and world bourgeoisie on the government apparatus; the pressure of the government apparatus on the party apparatus; and the pressure of the party apparatus on the left, proletarian wing of the party. Today the Opposition is the focus upon which the most powerful worldwide pressures against the revolution are concentrated.

I. The Danger of Thermidor

Proletarian dictatorship or Thermidor?

1. Bukharin puts it this way: If it is a proletarian dictatorship, then we must unconditionally support everything that is given that name. If it is Thermidor, then we must wage just as unconditional a struggle against everything. In fact, the elements of Thermidor — in conjunction with the whole international situation — have been growing in the country far more rapidly over the last few years than the elements of the dictatorship. Defending the dictatorship means fighting against the elements of Thermidor. Not only in the country as a whole but among influential layers of the party itself.

2. But even in a process of retrogression there must come a critical point at which quantity passes over into quality, i.e., when the state power changes its class character and becomes bourgeois. Hasn’t such a point been reached already? An individual worker may come to the conclusion from his daily experiences that power is no longer in the hands of the working class: in the factory the “triangle” reigns supreme; criticism has been banned; in the party the apparatus is all-powerful; behind the backs of the soviet organizations high-ranking bureaucrats give all the orders; and so on. But it is sufficient to look at the question from the viewpoint of the bourgeois classes in town and countryside to see very clearly that power is not in their hands. What is taking place is the concentration of power in the hands of the bureaucratic agencies which rest on the working class, but which are pushing more and more in the direction of the petty-bourgeois upper layers in town and countryside, and partly intermeshing with them.

3. The struggle against the danger of Thermidor is a class struggle. The struggle aimed at tearing the power from the hands of another class is revolutionary. The struggle for changes (sometimes of a decisive character but still under the rule of the same class) is a reformist struggle. Power has not yet been torn from the hands of the proletariat. It is still possible to rectify our political course, remove the elements of dual power, and reinforce the dictatorship by measures of a reformist kind.

4. Predominance in the party, and therefore in the country too, is in the hands of the Stalin faction, which has all the features of centrism — moreover, centrism in a period of retrogression, not upsurge. That means slight zigzags to the left, and deep zigzags to the right. There can be no doubt that the latest move to the left (the anniversary manifesto) will produce a need to placate the right wing and its real sources of support in the country — not in words but in deeds.

5. The zigzags to the left are not only expressed in half-baked anniversary manifestos. The Canton rising is unquestionably an adventurist zigzag by the Comintern to the left, after the disastrous consequences of the Menshevik policy in China have made themselves fully apparent. The Canton episode is a worse and more pernicious repetition of the Estonian putsch of 1924, after the revolutionary situation of 1923 in Germany had been missed. Menshevism plus bureaucratic adventurism have dealt a double blow to the Chinese revolution; we need not doubt that the revenge for Canton will be a new and much deeper zigzag to the right in the field of international politics, especially Chinese.

6. The objective task of a Thermidorian regime would be to place the most important political commanding heights in the hands of the left wing of the new possessing classes.

The most important (but not the only) condition for a victory of Thermidor would be to crush the Opposition so thoroughly that it no longer needed to be “feared,” In the party and state apparatuses, the pure wheeler-dealers who have managed to interweave with the new bourgeoisie, using every possible thread, would gain predominance over the purely political figures, the centrists — that is, the Stalinist apparatchiks — who frighten the “practical workers” with the Opposition and thereby maintain their temporary independence. What would happen in this case with the centrists of the Stalinist type is a secondary question. Some of them might perhaps swing to the left. Others, in larger numbers, would simply drop out of the game. Still others would abandon their present pseudo “independence” (centrism) and enter into a new, purely Thermidorian combination. And that would be how the first stage on the bourgeoisie’s rise to power would look.

7. What causes the backsliding? The pressure from the anti-proletarian class forces on the Soviet state could meet with organized resistance only from the ranks of the veteran party cadres and the proletarian part of the state apparatus and the party. Meanwhile, the proletarian part of the state apparatus, which was earlier sharply divided from the cadres of the old bourgeois intellectuals and did not trust them, in the last few years has separated itself more and more from the working class and, in its style of life, has drawn closer to the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois intellectuals, and has become more susceptible to hostile class influences. On the other hand, after the terrible exertions of the revolution and in its present material conditions during the period of reconstruction, the main mass of the proletariat, which gave the bureaucratic apparatus its vanguard, has developed great political passivity. The series of defeats of the international revolution during the last few years has had no small influence in the same direction. Then there is also the effect of the party regime. The proletariat bears within itself a large inheritance from the capitalist past. The first years of the revolution raised up the most active revolutionary Bolshevik elements of the class. At the moment a selection of the servile and obedient is taking place. The “restless” elements are suppressed and persecuted. That weakens the party and the class as a whole, disarms the class in the face of the enemy. Thus the increasing pressure of the bourgeois forces on the workers' state has until very recently proceeded without active resistance from the main mass of the proletariat.

Such a situation cannot last forever. We have reason to suppose that the great interest which the non-party masses of workers showed in the party discussion before the Fifteenth Congress, as well as the phenomena associated with the campaign for collective agreements, signify the awakening of interest of the broad mass of workers in the main political problems of our days and increasing anxiety about the fate of the proletarian dictatorship. The more the activity of the proletariat grows, the more demand there will be for the Opposition among the workers. During the years of its struggle against backsliding within the party (1923-27) the Opposition was able only to slow down this process. This process can be seriously restrained only by a widespread class struggle of the proletariat, directed against the new bourgeoisie, against the non-proletarian influence on the state, against world imperialism. The proletariat is in the habit of perceiving dangers and reacting to them through the party. The monopoly position of the party after 1917 has strengthened this role of the party still more. The whole acuteness of the situation consists in the fact that the party regime acts as a brake on and paralyzes the activity of the proletariat, while official party theory at the same time lulls the proletariat and puts it to sleep. Under these conditions the Opposition bears an even greater responsibility.

II. Ustryalovism and Menshevism

8. Bukharin likens the Opposition’s standpoint to that of Ustryalov. What is the essence of this theoretical charlatanism? Ustryalov speaks openly of the inevitability of Thermidor as the saving stage in the national development of the Russian revolution. The Opposition speaks of the dangers of Thermidor and indicates the ways to struggle against the danger. Centrism, drifting to the right, is forced, with its eyes shut to the danger, to deny its very possibility theoretically. Thermidor can be rendered no greater service than denying the reality of the Thermidorian danger.

9. The attempt to liken the views of the Opposition on Thermidor to those of the Mensheviks is the same kind of charlatanism. The Mensheviks think that the main source of Bonapartist danger is the system of proletarian dictatorship itself, that it is a fundamental error to count on the international revolution, that a correct policy would necessarily be to abandon political and economic restrictions on the bourgeoisie, and that salvation from Thermidor and Bonapartism lies in democracy, i.e., in the bourgeois parliamentary system.

The Opposition, however, in no way denies the dangers of Thermidor; on the contrary, it strives to concentrate the whole attention of the proletarian vanguard on it; it holds that the greatest failing of the proletarian dictatorship is the insufficiently deep connection with the international revolution, the extraordinary softness toward the internal and external bourgeoisie. Parliamentary democracy for us is only one of the forms of capitalist rule.

10. Menshevism is Thermidorian through and through. Ustryalov is realistic in his Thermidorianism. Menshevism is utopian through and through. Is it actually likely that in the event of the defeat of the dictatorship, bourgeois democracy will replace it? No, that is the least likely of all possible variants. Revolutionary dictatorship has never in history been replaced by democracy. Thermidor is in its essence a transitional regime, a kind of Kerenskyism in reverse. Kerenskyism in 1917 was a screen over dual power, and in that situation it floundered around and, against its will, helped the proletariat to wrest power from the bourgeoisie. A Thermidorian regime would mean legalization once again of a dual power situation, this time with the bourgeoisie holding the upper hand, and once again, against its own will, such a regime would help one class, the bourgeoisie, wrest power from the other, the proletariat. The Thermidorian regime would, by its essence, be of short duration; its objective role would be to cover the bourgeoisie’s acquisition of power with a screen of Soviet forms, to which the workers are accustomed. But there would inevitably be resistance by the proletariat; it would attempt to hold on to its positions or win back those it had lost. To beat back these attempts and to consolidate their hold in a genuine way, the bourgeoisie would soon need, not a transitional, Thermidorian regime, but a more serious, solid, and decisive kind — in all probability, a Bonapartist or, in modem terms, a fascist regime.

The Mensheviks, as the left wing of bourgeois society, would fight under Bonapartism for legality. In doing this they would serve as a safety valve for the bourgeois regime. The Bolshevik-Leninists, however, would fight for the conquest of power in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

III. The Question of “Timing”

11. The general question of the danger of Thermidor brings up more concrete questions: How near is this danger? Has Thermidor not already begun? What are the real indications of whether it has been carried through or not?

The question of the rate at which the various shifts are going on is of great importance for [our] tactics. The pace of political realignments within the classes and between the classes is much more difficult to determine than the pace of the economic processes in the country. In any case, those who expect that the backsliding process will continue at the present rate for a number of years may make a major error. That is the most improbable of all perspectives. In the process of decline, very precipitous shifts can and will occur under the pressure of domestic and external bourgeois forces. How long these shifts will take cannot be predicted. They could take a much shorter time than we think. Those who do not want to take this into account, who put this thought out of their minds, will inevitably be caught unprepared. There is no need to recall that the capitulation of Zinoviev and Kamenev has confronted them from the very first with the need to gloss over the situation, minimize the danger, and lull the left wing of the party to sleep.

Some comrades have connected the question of the pace of Thermidor with the question of the composition of the CC as the revolution’s embodiment of authority and power. As long as Oppositionists were tolerated on the CC, they acted as an internal brake on the backsliders and the policy of the CC was, in the words of Comrade Tomsky, “neither fish nor fowl,” i.e., the drift toward Thermidor encountered internal hindrances. The removal of the Oppositionists from the CC — such was the thinking of the comrades I have mentioned — would mean that the backsliders could no longer bear to collaborate with the representatives of the consistent proletarian internationalist line. It would mean, in effect, the official inauguration of Thermidor. Putting the question in such a way is, to say the least, incomplete, and for this reason could lead to incorrect conclusions.

The strength of the Opposition is that, equipped with the Marxist method, it can foresee the course of developments and warn of it. The “strength” of the Stalin faction consists in its abandonment of the Marxist orientation; the Stalin faction today is playing a role that can only be played by wearing blinders, by looking to neither side and by not looking ahead to future consequences. The Stalin faction regards the Marxist predictions of the Opposition as personal insults, slander, etc. In this the Stalinists reveal the typical characteristics of petty-bourgeois narrow-mindedness. And this is why they attack the Opposition with redoubled fury.

However, does the expulsion of Oppositionists and even the formal amputation of the Opposition as a whole mean that Thermidor is an accomplished fact? No, so far there has only been preparation for Thermidor within the framework of the party. The Stalin faction, by knocking over the left proletarian barrier, is, independently of its own wishes, making the bourgeoisie’s progress toward power easier. But this process is yet to be consummated — in politics, in the economy, in culture, and in daily life. In order to assure the victory of Thermidor in fact, first of all, the monopoly of foreign trade must be removed (or limited), the electoral instructions must be revised, etc.

12. Within the party and in the immediate layers around the party we can see the reflection and get a foretaste, in a very sharp form, of much deeper processes inside the classes, which are maturing and must someday break through to the surface. A gigantic role in these processes falls to the party and its groupings, but the class will decide matters. As the real struggle between the classes for power intensifies, the very groupings within the classes will be more sharply defined. To the Opposition’s advantage or disadvantage? That depends both on the objective conditions, including international conditions, and on the work of the Opposition itself, again not only on a national but also on an international scale.

13. The strength of the Thermidorian onslaught and the strength of the proletarian resistance will only become apparent in the process of the actual class struggle. For that reason it is wrong to think that the expulsion of the Opposition from the party means that Thermidor has already been accomplished. Or, more exactly, such an evaluation could prove to be correct, if the further course of events showed that no more working class elements within the party would move toward the Opposition, that the working class had no more strength to resist the bourgeois offensive, and that accordingly the appearance of the numerically small Opposition was the last historical ripple of the October wave. But there is no basis for such an evaluation. There is no ground for supposing that the proletariat, despite the phenomena of passivity and apathy observed in the last few years, is incapable of defending the conquests of October against its own bourgeoisie, as well as against the external bourgeoisie; that would mean capitulating before the battle and without a battle. There can be no doubt that further pressure from the right will strengthen the influx of proletarian elements in the party into the ranks of the Opposition and reinforce the influence of the ideas of the Opposition on the working class as a whole. The question of the timing of Thermidor and the chances of its success or lack of success cannot at all be a question of abstract theoretical analysis or prognosis. What is involved is a struggle of living forces. The outcome will be determined by the struggle itself. The struggle within the party, despite all its intensity, is only the introduction to an epoch of class battles. Our job still lies wholly and entirely before us.

14. It is clear that it will be much easier for the Opposition to carry out its historical task if there is a more rapid and more favorable course of the revolutionary movement in West and East. But even with a slower course of the world revolution things are not at all hopeless. Of course the Opposition is not going to undertake to “build socialism in one country.” If one starts from , the assumption that imperialism will remain victorious for a number of decades in West and East, it would be extremely childish to think that the proletariat of the USSR could hold on to power and build socialism — over victorious world imperialism. But there is no basis for such a pessimistic international perspective. The contradictions of the world economy are not diminishing, but sharpening. There will be no lack of great upheavals. The whole problem will be to use them in the interest of the victory of the proletariat. It is precisely this lesson that the Opposition is trying to teach based on the example of the Chinese events, the Anglo-Russian Committee, etc. Success on this path is possible only on condition that the continuity and activist character of genuine Bolshevism is preserved, even if for the moment only by a small minority.

15. But even if the whole course of the struggle in the immediate future turned out to be fundamentally unfavorable for the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR and resulted in its downfall, even in that case the work of the Opposition would retain all its significance. The completion of Thermidor would inevitably mean the splitting of the party. The Opposition would lead the revolutionary cadres of Bolshevism over to the struggle against the bourgeois state. Our left wing would then constitute not a “second” party, but the continuation of the historical party of the Bolsheviks. The [real] “second” party would arise out of the interpenetration of bureaucratic and property-owning elements, which even today have points of support in the right wing. This “second” party would only be a stepping stone for the real bourgeoisie, that is, the imperialist bourgeoisie, both domestic and foreign. The task of the Bolshevik Party — after a bourgeois overturn — would be the preparation of the second proletarian revolution.

Now, however, the task is to prevent such a turn of events — by means of the proletarian core of the AUCP and the working class as a whole.

IV. The Perspectives

16. Now, after the formal ouster of the Opposition, the non-proletarian classes will feel more confident. The pressure will increase still further. The forms and methods of this pressure will become more and more varied and comprehensive: from the pressure of the foreman in the shop up to the pressure of the American and European bourgeoisie on the question of the monopoly of foreign trade.

But even on the assumption that the pressure from the domestic and international bourgeoisie would end with its victory {which is not at all foreordained), it should still not be imagined that the process would go smoothly along the road of more rapid backsliding, without any obstacles, with no resistance from below, without any attempt at proletarian counter pressure from below. It is precisely the growing offensive by the non-proletarian classes that is bound to push ever wider layers of the proletariat onto the path of active defense. In order for this defensive struggle to have a political leadership, the proletarian core of the party and the proletariat as a whole have need of the Opposition even in the event of the most unfavorable course of developments. There is no need to explain that the proletarian core of the party and the working class will turn in even broader layers to the Opposition if the Opposition itself is able to show that its views truly correspond with the genuine interests of the proletariat on all questions of the life and struggle of the masses. This presupposes the activism of the Opposition itself, its continual intervention in all aspects of the economic, political, and cultural life of the working class.

17. The Stalin faction is threatened not only by increasing pressure from the right, but also by inevitable resistance from the left. The Stalinists persecute the Opposition, hoping that they themselves will succeed in controlling the inevitable resistance from the left against the forces encroaching from the right.

Elements in the right wing of the party, as well as Ustryalovist elements in the state apparatus, “understand” the need for a certain maneuver to the left, but they fear that this maneuver might go too far. The right-wing elements, both those belonging to the party and those who do not, but who nevertheless take part in all decisions of the party, are characterized by their organic connection with the new property-owners. They can only accept those maneuvers which signify a certain “sacrifice" to benefit the proletariat but at the same time do not reduce the material standard of living for the exploiting classes, nor challenge their growing political role. And it is precisely from this viewpoint that they look at the questions of the seven-hour day, wages, help to the poor peasants, etc. The left maneuvers will not save Stalin’s policy; the tail will hit the head.

The growth of the right wing is directly expressed in the ever-increasing predominance of the state apparatus over the party apparatus. This process can be closely followed in the two-year period between the Fourteenth and Fifteenth congresses. The Fourteenth Congress was the apogee of the party apparatus and, along with it, of Stalin. The Fifteenth Congress revealed an already substantial rightward shift of forces. The proud declarations of the centrist apparatchiks that, in passing, they would also crush the right wing, never came about. The Politburo remained just as unstable as it was before the Fifteenth Congress. Several new figures came onto the new CC and CCC, based exclusively on their official “duties.” The Fifteenth Party Congress rather clearly revealed a reduction in the relative weight of the party apparatus in the general system of the Soviet regime. The Stalin-Rykov conflict reflects to a significant extent the struggle between the two apparatuses, which in turn refracts the struggle of classes. The pressure from the non-proletarian classes is expressed much more broadly and directly through the state apparatus. This does not mean, however, that the conflict between Stalin, Rykov, and others has any directly corresponding class framework. No. If the policy of marking time and putting things off, the perennial wait-and-see policy, becomes impossible in the future, Stalin could succeed in changing horses, mounting the one on the right, and eliminating Rykov by simply taking his place. But even this question of personnel cannot be resolved without deep-going new shifts and upheavals in the party.

18. Economic difficulties are approaching with irresistible force. The Opposition has proved to be right both in its understanding of the economic situation in the country and in its predictions on the further course of events. The sudden lack of success in grain procurement in the first half of the year [1927] shows a serious disturbance in the equilibrium of the whole economy of the USSR. The export plan has already suffered serious damage, and consequently the import plan too. The shortage of provisions has already caused such an important proletarian center as Leningrad, in practice, to go over to the ration card system. For 1927 and 1928 monetary inflation will be the specific cause of economic difficulties. Inflation is precisely what has so greatly intensified the difficulties that exist in our economy as a result of the lagging state of industry, the disproportion, etc. Inflation is the expression of the fact that, first, the real outlays of the state sector of the economy have proved to be much larger than the real earnings of that sector and, second, that such a situation in our country inevitably leads to a disruption of the smychka, the bond between town and countryside.

Real resources for a more rapid industrialization of the country can be obtained only by a substantial reallocation of the national income in favor of the socialist elements of our economy. Without that even the plan for capital outlays now being carried out has put too great a strain on our capacities for issuing solvent currency. The struggle now being waged against material shortages (the increased supply of industrial goods to the villages, while the markets in the towns are stripped bare) can lead to partial success in some areas — but only by creating new difficulties in other areas. The whole economic situation shows the bankruptcy of the present policy, which leads to case-by-case decisions with a false general line.

The Opposition’s plan has been rejected; the Stalin group has no plan at all; the right is afraid for the moment of making its real intentions clear — that’s how the economic leadership looks at the present moment. The most likely thing is that in the event of a further aggravation of the economic situation, the line taken by the right, which was foreseen quite correctly in the Platform of the Opposition, will triumph.

The roots of the present manifestations of severe crisis lie in the disproportion between industry and agriculture. This disproportion can be evened out in two ways: either by methods of planned regulation, through an appropriate policy on taxes, prices, credits, etc., or by the anarchic methods of the market, not only the domestic market — which would be inadequate for this purpose — but also the world market. The first way is that of a more correct distribution of the national income. The second is the way of abolition of the monopoly of foreign trade.

19. The key to the situation is the question of the monopoly of foreign trade. There is no doubt that the abolition of the monopoly of foreign trade or a substantial reduction in the monopoly would at first lead to a significant rise in the productive forces. Goods would become cheaper, wages higher, the purchasing power of the peasant’s ruble would increase. But all this together would mean an accelerated shift of the economy onto the capitalist track and the growing economic and political subjugation of the Soviet Union to world capital. The dictatorship of the proletariat could then last only for a short time, a period to be measured not in years but in months. Renewed dependence on foreign capital would mean the direct or indirect division of Russia into spheres of influence, its incorporation into imperialist world politics, and military upheavals — with the prospect of ruin and decline after the pattern of China. Nevertheless, in the first phase the abolition of the monopoly of foreign trade undoubtedly would give an impetus to the development of the productive forces and give the masses a temporary improvement in living conditions. Both the kulaks, who withhold the grain, and the American capitalists, who withhold credits, are pressing precisely in this direction.

One need not think that the slogan of the abolition of the foreign trade monopoly will immediately be raised by the right wing. There are more than a few partial and roundabout ways, as the history of the electoral instructions showed. At first the pressure will find expression through these roundabout ways. But the demand to abolish the foreign trade monopoly can soon enough be raised in its fullest form. The workers will be told, “Of course Lenin was for the monopoly. But everything depends on the circumstances of time and place. Our theory is not a dogma. The situation has changed. The development of the productive forces requires …” etc. There can be no doubt that if the present blind-alley policy continues, the slogan of the gradual abolition of the monopoly of foreign trade can draw a certain part of the working class behind it.

20. At the same time the pressure from the right will move along other lines as well. The revision of the electoral instructions will be placed on the agenda again. On matters of tax policy, the rights of factory administrators, credit policy, especially in the village, etc., etc., pressure will again be exerted from the right. The Stalin apparatus will run up against this pressure very soon and will reveal its impotence in the face of it. Rykov’s people may be dismissed, the dismissal of Rykov himself may be prepared, but these bureaucratic tricks will not solve the problem. Refraction of the pressure from the right makes its way not only through the Rykov group; the pressure itself has roots far more profound than just the Rykov faction. The sources are the new property-owners and the bureaucrats connected with them. One must base oneself either on the new property-owners against the workers or on the workers against the new property-owners.

All this means that the formation of the right-wing faction will proceed at a faster pace, both inside the party and outside its boundaries. The class pressure cannot be contained by the barrel hoop of the bureaucratic apparatus alone. The logic of the situation is such that the Fifteenth Congress will, by all indications, signify the beginning of increased pressure on the party from the right, tending to break it into factions. The role of the left wing under these circumstances will be decisive for the fate of the party and the dictatorship. The critique of opportunism, correct class orientation, and correct slogans for the revolutionary education of the best elements of the party — this work is under all circumstances the most necessary and our greatest obligation.

The main task of the Opposition is to ensure the continuance of a genuinely Bolshevik party. For the present period, that means — to swim against the stream.

V. The Opposition and the Comintern

21. The resolution of the Fifteenth Congress says, according to the CC report: “At the present time in Europe the short-term ebb in the revolutionary wave (after the defeat of the German revolution in 1923) is being replaced by an upsurge, an increase in militant activity by the proletariat.” There we have for the first time an official and open admission that after the defeat of the German revolution in 1923 an ebb in the European workers’ movement commenced, and lasted, at least on the European continent, around four years. The beginning of this ebb could and should have been foreseen as early as November-December 1923. Precisely at that time the Opposition predicted the inevitable beginning of a certain “normalization,” a certain “pacification” in the capitalist conditions, the inevitable increase of American intervention in Europe’s politics and economy and consequently the inevitable increase of the influence of Social Democracy at the expense of communism. This Marxist prediction was at the time called liquidationist. The entire Fifth World Congress in 1924 was conducted on the basis that the revolutionary upsurge was continuing and the direct “organization of the revolution” was the task arising from that. The Estonian rising was one of the most glaring results of this false position. The so-called Bolshevization of the Comintern parties, proclaimed by the Fifth Congress, combined both the tendency to exclude the really worthless and rotten elements and the struggle against the correct Marxist analysis of the particular phases within the imperialist epoch, the ebbs and flows of the period, without which a revolutionary Bolshevik strategy in general is impossible. The incorrect orientation of the Fifth Congress inevitably nourished ultra-left errors and tendencies. When the new Comintern leadership, which is strong in wisdom after the fact, recognized the full depth of the ebb, it struck at the left elements of the party. The system of leaders who serve as orderlies in the Comintern has become even more firmly entrenched during the last two years.

The most important tasks of the Sixth Congress will be the correct evaluation of the main errors in the position of the Fifth Congress and the decisive condemnation of a leadership which, at each new sharp change in events, takes reprisals for its own helplessness and tail-endism on the leaderships of the national sections, thereby disorganizing them and giving them no chance to form leadership cadres capable of orienting themselves correctly within the workers’ movement as the periods of ebb and flow shift back and forth.

22. In the European working class an unquestionable swing to the left is apparent. This is shown in the growing strike movement and in the growth of Communist votes. But this is only the first stage in a leftward shift. The number of Social Democratic voters is growing, parallel to the number of Communist voters, and is partly still overtaking it. If this process broadens and deepens, the next stage, the swing from Social Democracy to Communism, will begin. At the same time, the Communist parties must consolidate themselves, which by all appearances cannot yet be said to have happened. One of the greatest hindrances to the growth and consolidation of the Communist parties is the political course of the Comintern and its internal regime. The continued campaign against the left wing is creating a new “scissors” between the right course of the party and the leftward-moving working class. The revolutionary situation can arise at one of the next stages in the countries of Europe with exactly the same strength and force as it did in Vienna. Everything will depend on the strength of the Comintern parties, on their political line and their leadership. The recent events in Canton — an adventuristic addendum to a Menshevik policy — shows that it would be the greatest crime to entertain any illusions about the leadership’s present line on international questions.

Only the Opposition, with systematic, constant, stubborn, uninterrupted work, can help the Communist parties of the West and East to come onto the Bolshevik road and prove themselves equal to the challenge of the revolutionary situations, of which there will be no shortage in the next few years. The Opposition in the USSR can fulfill its tasks only as an international factor. All the more scandalous, therefore, is Zinoviev and Kamenev’s abandonment of the Comintern left.

VI. The Question of Two Parties

23. The official struggle against the Opposition is being waged with two main slogans: against “two parties” and against “Trotskyism.” The Stalinist pseudo-struggle against two parties conceals the formation of dual power in the country and the formation of a bourgeois party within the right wing of the AUCP, using its banner for camouflage. In a whole series of government agencies and in the offices of party secretaries, secret meetings between party apparatchiks and “specialists,” i.e., Ustryalovist professors, are being held, to work out methods and slogans for the fight against the Opposition. That is the real formation of a second party, which is striving with all its might to subjugate the proletarian core of the party to itself — and partly succeeding in that, too — and to wipe out its left wing. The apparatus, while concealing the formation of this second party, accuses the Opposition of attempting to set up a second party — precisely because the Opposition is striving to wrest the proletarian core of the party from the growing pressure and influence of the bourgeoisie; if it is not wrested away, the unity of the Bolshevik Party is beyond salvation. The idea that the dictatorship of the proletariat can be maintained by mere verbal incantations about party unity is the purest illusion. The question of one or two parties in the material, class sense, not just in the words of official propaganda, is decided by whether and to what extent the forces of resistance within the party and within the proletariat can be awakened and mobilized. The Opposition can achieve this only provided that it is thoroughly imbued with an understanding of the whole depth of the developing class processes, if it does not allow itself to be frightened or intimidated by the bogey of two parties and the charlatan hogwash about “Trotskyism.”

24. In Comrade Zinoviev’s theses “The Results of the July Plenum,” the following is said about two parties: “But Stalin is expelling whole batches of Oppositionists from the party, and tomorrow he may go on to even more massive expulsions from the ranks of the AUCP. Yes, that is so. Nevertheless the slogan of two parties by no means follows from that. Things have come to the point that under the Stalin regime the only way one can fight for the views of Lenin is at the risk of expulsion from the AUCP. That is indisputable. Those who have not yet solved this question for themselves, those who say, ‘We are ready for anything — except expulsion from the party,’ cannot under the present conditions be genuine fighters for Leninism, i.e., cannot be resolute Oppositionists. It is highly possible that substantial numbers of Oppositionists (including all the leading elements of the Opposition) will find themselves for a certain time outside the party. Their task, however, will be to continue pursuing their course, even if formally they are no longer members of the party, and not to deviate from Lenin’s teachings one iota. Their task will be, in the most difficult times, to maintain a course not toward the formation of a second party but toward return to the AUCP and the rectification of its line. There is no question that it would be extremely hard for Leninists to be outside the party. But that is absolutely necessary from the standpoint of our fundamental aims.”

And further: “As the whole experience of the struggle has shown, the Opposition is unanimous in believing that the struggle for the unity of the party on a Leninist basis can in no case turn into groveling before the apparatus, playing down differences, reducing the sharpness of political expression. When fellow travelers of the Opposition diverge from it to go to the right, they usually do not attribute their departure to their own capitulation to Stalin’s standpoint on the main questions of domestic and foreign policy; rather, they accuse the Opposition of steering toward a second party; in other words, they only repeat the Stalinist charges to cover up their own retreat” (pp. 14-15).

It is true that now it is not July but November, but what was said in these lines still holds true today.

25. Once again: If the right wing in the party and outside the party merge, and in the immediate future subjugate a significant part of the proletarian core of the party to themselves, then two parties would be historically inevitable, which would mean, however, the downfall of the dictatorship and the consequent crushing of the workers who would raise their heads in revolt. That is the political road of triumphant Ustryalovism. An opposite road can be envisaged only through the isolation of the right wing by the struggle of the Opposition against apparatus centrism for influence over the proletarian core of the party. The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot long endure with ever new defeats being dealt to the left proletarian wing. On the contrary. The dictatorship is not only compatible with the isolation and political liquidation of the right wing, but energetically demands such liquidation. Capitulation to apparatus centrism in the name of party unity would therefore also be direct work for the two parties, i.e., for the downfall of the proletarian dictatorship.

VII. On the Capitulation of Zinoviev and Kamenev

26. If the Opposition at the congress had unanimously submitted a firm and loyal declaration — a single one, and not half a dozen — open and firm on all political questions, especially on the reasons for factional activity, our situation would [now] be incomparably more favorable. The vacillations in the ranks of the Opposition came not from below, but from above. The behavior of Comrades Zinoviev and Kamenev constitutes something unprecedented in the history of the revolutionary movement — one may even say, in the history of political struggle altogether. Formally, Zinoviev and Kamenev base themselves on party unity as the highest criterion. By this they are saying that the attainment of unity is conceivable not only by struggling for one’s views, but by ideological renegacy. But that is the most merciless condemnation of the party that one can imagine. In reality, this kind of behavior does not contribute to the maintenance of party unity, but to demoralization. All double-dealing and careerist elements concerned with saving their own skins thus seem to gain ideological justification. Abandoning the defense of one’s views means in particular justifying that broad layer of corrupted Philistines in the party who sympathize with the Opposition but vote with the majority.

The renegacy of Zinoviev and Kamenev was fed by the false belief that one can get oneself out of any historical situation by a cunning maneuver, instead of by maintaining a principled political line. That is the worst caricature of Leninism. Characterizing Lenin’s maneuvering policy, our Platform says: “Under him [Lenin] the party always knew the reasons for each maneuver, its meaning, its limits, the line beyond which it ought not to go, and the position at which the proletarian advance should begin again. … Thanks to that, the maneuvering proletarian army always preserved its unity, its fighting spirit, its clear consciousness of the goal”.

All these conditions for maneuvering in a Leninist way have been trampled on by Zinoviev and Kamenev in the most unprincipled manner.

The hope that after a few months the capitulation document would be “buried” by new events and a new struggle is a pathetic self-deception. Indifferent elements in the party and working class will of course overlook these documents, but the cadres of the Stalinist faction and of the Opposition will not forget them, and at a new turn they will remind the working class of them.

Politically, Zinoviev and Kamenev’s renegacy means an attempt to go from a revolutionary position to a left-centrist one, as a counterweight to Stalin’s right-centrist position. Centrism can maintain itself for a long time in the epoch of slow development (Kautskyism before the war). Under the conditions of the present epoch, centrism rapidly surrenders its positions to the right or to the left. In a period of upsurge left centrism is quite often the bridge to a revolutionary position. In a period of decline, such as the present one, left centrism is only a little bridge from the Opposition to Stalin. The Zinoviev-Kamenev group will not play any independent role; their capitulation is a shift in forces at the top under the colossal national and international pressure on the revolutionary wing of the AUCP and the Comintern. Events will “bury” the capitulationist declaration of December 18, but only in the sense that they will roll right over Zinoviev and Kamenev.

VIII. On Trotskyism

27. Zinoviev and Kamenev, who in 1924-25 played a leading role in the creation of the legend of Trotskyism, said in the July 1926 declaration: “Now, as the evolution of the present ruling faction has shown, there can no longer be any doubt that the basic core of the 1923 Opposition correctly warned about the dangers of a shift away from the proletarian line and about the growing threat of the apparatus regime.” It is quite clear that if the 1923 Opposition had warned two years earlier of dangers threatening the party and the proletarian dictatorship, then the accusation of so-called “Trotskyism” against the Opposition can be based only on the gravest misconception of the whole situation and of the task arising therefrom. Together with the leaders of the 1923 Opposition, Zinoviev and Kamenev worked out the most important documents of the Opposition, including the most important of all, the Platform. It is clear that the accusation of petty-bourgeois deviation, “Trotskyism,” and so on, are thereby reduced to nought. The belated attempt to renew the struggle against the “regurgitators” of “Trotskyism” constitutes nothing but a pathetic “regurgitation” of Zinoviev’s and Kamenev’s own errors of 1923, errors which aided the fateful shift of the party regime from the Leninist road to the road of decline into the swamp of centrism and opportunism.

IX. The Balance Sheet of the Bloc

28. The capitulation of Zinoviev and Kamenev again raises the question whether the bloc as a whole was not an error. The individual comrades who incline to this conclusion do not consider the history of the bloc as a whole, but only the closing chapter of that history. The Opposition of 1923 was born in Moscow; the Opposition of 1925-26 in Leningrad. The right wing has its base of support in the Northern Caucasus, where the fight between the Stalinists and the Rykov people was played out most starkly and clearly. This local distribution of the political groups is not accidental, and it alone explains the bloc of Moscow and Leningrad, i.e., of the two most important proletarian centers of the Soviet Union. Irrespective of the various vacillations at the top, the bloc was nevertheless produced by deep class tendencies. Under these circumstances it is wretched jabbering to speak of the “unprincipled” nature of the bloc. The Leningrad Opposition, thanks to its highly skilled proletarian basis, also made a very valuable contribution in theoretical respects to the bloc. The coming together of the advanced workers of Moscow and Leningrad still persists on the basis of the Platform despite the renegacy of the leading elements of the Leningrad Opposition. The same may also be said of the Opposition in the Comintern. The most revolutionary elements keep finding their way back to each other after some vacillations, which were mainly produced by the measures of the Fifth Congress. The best elements of the Oppositions of 1923 and 1925-26 are also uniting on an international scale. Zinoviev and Kamenev’s capitulation will not stop the process.

X. Evaluation of the Opposition’s Tactics

29. Three periods may be discerned in the history of the Opposition bloc: (a) from April 1926 to October 16, 1926; (b) from October 16, 1926, to August 8, 1927; and (c) from August 8,1927, to the Fifteenth Party Congress. Each of these periods is characterized by a rise in Oppositional activity, mounting to a certain critical point, after which came an unwinding to a greater or lesser degree, accompanied by a declaration renouncing factional activity. This peculiar “cyclical pattern” in the Opposition’s tactics suggests that certain general causes are present here. These are to be sought on the one hand in the general conditions of proletarian dictatorship in a peasant country, and on the other in the special conditions of the ebbing of the revolution and the general political backsliding.

In its struggle against the left wing, the apparatus is equipped with all the methods and resources of the dictatorship. The Opposition’s weapon is propaganda. The distribution of speeches, work with individuals, the private meetings (smychki), and the carrying of placards on the street on November 7 are all only different forms of propaganda. The apparatus strives to transform these forms of propaganda into the initial forms first of a faction, then of a party, and finally of a civil war. The Opposition will not follow this path. Each time it has gone as far as the line at which the apparatus confronts it with the necessity of renouncing some types and methods of propaganda. All three declarations of the Opposition — October 16, August 8, and November-December — had the aim of showing the party masses once more that the goal of the Opposition is not a second party or civil war but rectification of the line of the party and the state by the methods of deep going reform.

The critics of the Opposition’s tactics from outside, who point to its “zigzag” character, criticize it as though the Opposition could determine its tactics freely, as if there were no furious pressure from the hostile classes, as if there were no apparatus power, no political backsliding by the leadership, no relative passivity of the working class, etc. The Opposition’s tactics, with their unavoidable internal contradictions, can only be understood if one does not forget for a moment that the Opposition is swimming against the stream, fighting against difficulties and obstacles unprecedented in history.

In the cases where critics do not confine themselves to individual, partial points, some just, some unjust, but attempt to counterpose to our tactics, which arose from real conditions, some other tactics, they usually end up hinting at capitulation.

As for the actual capitulators, they try to characterize the present tactics of the Opposition in such words as “Neither peace nor war.” “Peace” they call capitulation, “war” two parties. But Zinoviev’s own theses on the “Results of the July Plenum” are thoroughly permeated with the thought “Neither capitulation nor two parties.” That was the whole line of the Opposition. But the capitulators must of course always spit upon their own past.

There are no textbooks telling how to set things right in a proletarian dictatorship that is being buffeted by the forces of Thermidor. The ways and means must be sought by starting with the real situation. These ways will be found if the fundamental orientation is correct.

Some Conclusions

1. Theoretical self-education is at the present moment the most important task of every Oppositionist, the only pledge of firmness which can be taken seriously. Study of the proceedings of the Fifteenth Party Congress in the light of the Opposition’s counter-theses and the new facts of economic and political life must be the main work of every Oppositionist, especially after the dissolution of the faction.

2. Oppositionists, quite irrespective of whether they are inside the party or outside it, must set themselves the task of becoming actively involved in all proletarian organizations and all soviet organizations in general (the party, trade unions, soviets, clubs, etc.). Oppositionists can in no case restrict themselves to the role of critics; they must do constructive work and do it better and more conscientiously than the paid officials. Only on this basis will principled criticism reach the consciousness of the masses.

3. It is necessary to appeal to the Comintern, so that the question of the Opposition will be presented in its full dimensions at the Sixth Congress.