Our Tone in the Discussion

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1. The overriding importance of the Platform is that it reduces the differences to their class foundations and views the party regime as the consequence of a class shift in politics, that is, the result of the party leadership’s backsliding from the proletarian line to the petty-bourgeois line. The fight is being waged, consequently, over the class character of the party and the class character of the state.

2. Only this kind of open, clear, and distinct presentation of the basic questions can make clear to rank-and-file worker-members of the party why the dispute is so sharp, and only this can justify the dispute in their eyes. A purely formal presentation of questions of the “inner-party regime,” “discipline,” etc., without any connection to the revolutionary line, is fundamentally contradictory to Bolshevism. The apparatus, which violates the party rules at every turn, at the same time strives to place all questions on the plane of formal discipline, or, more precisely, of respect for rank. The less the mass of the party understands the meaning and depth of the differences, the more the apparatus will succeed in this effort.

3. That is why any speech which blurs over and avoids the most sharply disputed differences can do the Opposition harm rather than help it. “Is it worth upsetting the party over second-rate disagreements?” party members will wonder, if they hear a speech whose tone and character are more like a self-justification than an indictment.

4. The apprehension voiced by some individual comrades to the\ effect that a sharp presentation of the questions could drive “buffer-minded” elements away from us is, in its way, a "classical” error of a kind that arises in any serious struggle within the party. This error is all the more unforgivable in this instance because it has already been tested by experience. We have several cases of “buffer” statements by party members who enjoy well-deserved respect. These buffer positions have gathered a minimal number of votes. On the other hand, the more openly, decisively, and distinctly the Opposition speaks out, the more votes it wins. Any toning down, any drawing toward the buffer group, would unavoidably weaken us and encourage the enemy to redouble the pressure of his onslaught.

5. The Stalin-Molotov faction is trying to “intimidate” the Opposition with the Fifteenth Congress, which is supposedly going to declare that acceptance of the Opposition Platform is incompatible with membership in the party.

Such a resolution would mean an attempt by organizational pressure tactics to bring about political self-denial, that is, renegacy. There is no need to say that not one serious and honest party member would agree to that. Even if we grant that the Stalinist party membership, in the name of the Fifteenth Congress, would support a decision so destructive to the party, it is not hard to foresee that the implementation of that decision would encounter enormous and constantly increasing difficulties, which — with a correct policy on our part — could and should strengthen the Opposition in the party.

6. Approximately a month and a half remains until the congress. The ranks of the Opposition — slowly, perhaps, but surely — are growing and becoming stronger. With a firm, decisive, aggressive political line on our part we will be strengthened significantly over the next month and a half. Every group of Oppositionists in a party cell is surrounded by the sympathy and semi-sympathy of a significant section of party members. Under these conditions the attempt to expel Oppositionists in whole batches from party cells, especially working class cells, will inevitably provoke resistance and protest by a significant sector in each cell. Party members will want to know what the Oppositionists are being expelled for. The question of the Platform will confront the party with renewed sharpness after the Fifteenth Congress if the congress decides to take the road of expelling the Opposition. The discussion, stifled in the period before the Fifteenth Congress, could heat up after the congress. Everything must be done to turn this possibility into a reality.

7. Comrades expelled from the party, such as Mrachkovsky, Serebryakov, Preobrazhensky, Sharov, Sarkis, Griunshtein, etc., will not allow themselves to be torn away from the party. An attempt to expel several thousand Oppositionists would be ineffective as far as breaking our ties with the party is concerned, especially our ties with the proletarian section of the party.

8. Arrests of party members, again, cannot prevent those expelled from the party from carrying out their party duty. The expulsion of Oppositionists by the thousands would inevitably mean the arrests of thousands. The policies of Stalin and Molotov will drive the party down this road. The party will feel instinctively that this is the road of ruin for the proletarian dictatorship. Stalin and Molotov will try to reassure party members. They will say that things won’t go that far, that the Opposition will "get frightened” and will submit to the arbitrariness of the apparatus faction, which has placed itself above the party. (It is precisely the arbitrariness of the apparatus toward the party that is now called party discipline.)

It is absolutely clear that every accidental toning down will be interpreted by the apparatchiks as a retreat by (he Opposition and as a confirmation of the correctness of the Stalinist policy of an organizational onslaught.

Thus the line of a political offensive by us is not only the surest means of organizational self-defense and of promoting the growth of the Opposition; it is also the only means of safeguarding the unity of the party against the deliberate splitting line of Stalin.