Circular letters to a friend, June 24, 1928

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A Crudely Empirical Turn

Dear Friend:

Some comrades to this very day are toying with the idea of a conference, which was put into circulation by Preobrazhensky. Vardin (whom Sosnovsky calls deceased, though to be honest I don't know if he was ever alive) wrote to the CCC about our forthcoming application for a conference. With such an application one could apply only to make people laugh. However, I think that now argument is no longer necessary. Not only because the author himself has given up the idea, but also because certain events have occurred which define clearly enough both the limits and the mechanics of the "left course."

Completely correctly, Sosnovsky approaches all these questions from the point of view of the party regime. Rakovsky insists on this most tirelessly. And right now this is the only correct and reliable criterion. Not because the party regime is the independent source of all other phenomena and processes. No, to a large degree the party regime is a derivative factor. But at the same time it has a huge – and at certain moments, decisive – independent significance. Here, as everywhere, are dialectics. But since the party is the sole instrument by which we can consciously affect social processes, for us the criterion of the seriousness and depth of the turn is first of all the refraction of this turn within the party.

One noteworthy symptom was the case of the Kharkov machinist Bleskov, about which Sosnovsky has written a great deal. No need for me to repeat it. Even more significant is the decision in the case of Safarov and others of the "deceased." The CCC clearly and precisely established the limits of self-criticism: only the young can make mistakes. The elders not only are right today, but they always were right. Moreover, the Communist who recognizes the current correctness of the CC but does not recognize that it was correct yesterday not only does not have the right to give lectures about yesterday in a party school, he does not have the right to be a member of the party. You know, this decision alone shows how crudely empirical the turn is in relation to the kulak – crudely empirical and at the same time panic-stricken. Not the slightest connections are made between one thing and another. Moreover, they no longer even feel any need to make connections.

For if this need were even slightly felt, Yaroslavsky's decision in the affair of Safarov and the other deceased would be completely impermissible. Whoever does not learn this will make the most ridiculous mistakes.

One can say that there is an "objective logic of the situation" which will have to force its way, etc. But in the first place the objective logic also existed two years and three years and one year ago. While "objective logic" is cutting its teeth, it often happens that a lot of time goes by, during which the historical baby becomes quite feverish. It is possible to help the objective logic along, but not by changing our own subjective logic. That is, we must say what is and not discover that teeth are being cut when the gums are only starting to itch. Even if it be granted that objective logic will surely lead certain people in a certain period to understand what must be understood – even in that case the obligation of the revolutionary wing is not to praise people for what they have understood (that is, empirically conceded in panic), but to say loudly and clearly what they have not understood. And what they have not understood is nine-tenths, ninety-nine hundredths. And that endangers the little that has been understood. This is why Preobrazhensky's new proposal concerning the appeal to the congress seems to me to be a step backward even in comparison with his first proposal, although he has renounced the daydreamer Slavophile tradition of calling for a new Zemsky Sobor.

Another thing has happened which I consider decisive. That is the appearance of the draft program. We must understand that this is a bigger question than the question of the grain collections, an area where they can go back and forth ten more times – so long as the party remains silent – before the objective logic finally cuts its political teeth. The draft is a catastrophe. I am making the most conscientious effort to warn the congress of the consequences of this draft by analyzing all its component elements. Basically, this analysis sums up our collective work of the past few years. But I am compelled to take the responsibility for this analysis, precisely in view of the "unsuitable timing" of a Slavophile-type "assembly," which always proved to be ill-timed because it was "the overstimulated product of captive thought."

I consider the draft program a catastrophe in spite of the fact that there are no terrible remarks about our heresy in it. But there are none because, after all the zigzags that have been performed, it is difficult to say in precise programmatic form exactly what that heresy consists of. I tried to do this for the authors of the draft and had to put my pen down helplessly. It is all the more difficult to do this because three-quarters of the draft is spent on trying to imitate this heresy, but the contraband quality of the attempt is still there. The program studiously pretends to be a program of international revolution. In reality it is a program for the construction of socialism in one country, i.e., a program of social patriotism, not of Marxism. The disguise of left phrases changes nothing. The chapter on strategy draws none of the lessons flowing from the experience of the last decade. This signifies the sanctioning of the disastrous policies of the past five years. The section on the East sketches out the perspective for China of a worker-peasant democratic dictatorship which will grow over into a proletarian dictatorship at a later stage. This is preparation for a new Kuomintangism. We must carry out an open ideological struggle against those who did not understand this last fall. In such questions delays and deals are criminal.

I am making my critique of the draft program in the form of an extensive document which I will send to the congress and to the discussion bulletin of Pravda. It comes out to be of pamphlet length, the equivalent of several printer's sheets. While writing it, I was struck very vividly by how well timed Zinoviev's departure was. He came to us at a good time to help us inflict a mortal blow on the legend of "Trotskyism"; and he left us over half a year before the Sixth Congress, which freed our hands to criticize the mistakes of 1923, the mistakes of the Fifth Congress, etc. You know, up till now this was our weakest spot: because of our "allies" we ourselves were guilty for a while of national narrow-mindedness. Now we can fully correct this.

But how absurdly this ill-fated strategist acted in relation to his own capitulatory "line." If he had waited a few months he would have been able to seize onto the left turn and at the same time break with us on the question of our attitude toward the Sixth Congress. He would have left the bloc with some semblance of dignity and might have sown some confusion in the party ranks. But in his present woeful aspect he had done nothing but good for the party [ranks] and consequently for us, both in the way he came to us and in the way he left us. It is time to confer on him the rank of "socially necessary turncoat."

Now on the letter to the Sixth Congress. Since it is impossible to realize the idea of an "assembly," it will be necessary at the beginning of the letter to the Sixth Congress to say approximately the following:

Because of the conditions in which we find ourselves we are denied the opportunity to exchange views and formulate a collective declaration to the Sixth Congress. The present declaration was written by me personally, and I bear personal responsibility for it. However, on the basis of extremely incomplete correspondence with a significant number of co-thinkers, I consider it unquestionable that basically the present letter expresses our collective view.

I see no other way. Regarding the content of the letter, I already outlined this in the proposal that I sent. Regarding the tone, we must not change our tone in relation to the party and the Comintern: this is the tone of our inseparable bond and of our genuine party spirit. Regarding the leadership, its activities, and its mistakes, after the latest events (the Safarov affair, the draft program) a shift is necessary – not to the right, toward Slavophile daydreams, but strongly to the left, toward Westernizing realism. Now this will no longer be distrust "in advance," but distrust based on undeniable facts and rigorously argued proofs within a strictly party framework.

I firmly shake your hand.

P.S. – Word of my daughter's death took me by surprise during my work on the draft program, and the memory of her was joined forever for me with the problems of the international revolution. I have dedicated this work, devoted to the basis of the program of the Communist Party, to the memory of my daughter, who was a young but very staunch and loyal party member, our steadfast co-thinker By telegraph we received and are receiving expressions of sympathy from many friends.

Many thanks.