On the Secret Ballot

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

On the question of the secret ballot, as far as I recall, it was stated clearly in my letter: it must be applied first in the party, then in the trade unions, then, according to the results obtained, in the soviets. The open ballot was introduced in order to keep the enemy in hand through the pressure of the public opinion of the workers and above all their vanguard. But at present the party bureaucracy is using this instrument against the masses in the party and, in the unions, turns it against the mass of workers in general. We can clearly see where things have come to, thanks to the following fact: in a whole number of regions, the party masses had understood for one, two, or three years that at the head of the regional committee of the party and of the regional executive committee of the soviets were to be found adventurers, disloyal elements, future traitors; they knew it and yet they kept silent. Given such a situation, a secret ballot is the first condition necessary for the reestablishment of democracy within the party.

In the unions, control must begin through organizations exclusively composed of industrial workers, through the most important political centers, through the most educated sections of the proletariat; it is necessary to proceed by extending this control in concentric circles. As for the soviets, it is necessary to be even more careful. I was not able to give a categorical opinion about the latter until after the experiment was made in the party and in the industrial unions (not those of the functionaries). Obviously, in the event that the data furnished by the experiment in the unions is favorable, the secret ballot could, at first, be applied only partially in the elections to the soviets, in no way obliging us to introduce it generally under any circumstances. It goes without saying that we do not make a fetish of democratic forms. The protection of the dictatorship overrides all other considerations. But the dictatorship is threatened from two sides: externally by the counterrevolution which openly flaunts itself (SRism, Menshevism, anti-Semitism); internally by insinuating Thermidor. The bureaucracy uses the ideas and methods of the dictatorship to terrorize the moving force of this dictatorship: the vanguard of the proletariat. Once the masses seriously assert themselves, the first task on the agenda will be to take stock of the cadres, to cleanse them, renew them, and put them under the authority of the party. It may be that the secret ballot is the only avenue permitting us to approach this task. It is superfluous to add that the slogan of the secret ballot in no way has the character of a principle or of universality, obligatory on all occasions. It is an ad hoc slogan, derived from the crisis of the contradictions existing between the cadres and the party. But in the present situation it is a very important slogan.