Party Unity and the Danger of Split

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This is the chief issue in the discussion. It is the main and, in fact, the only slogan of the ruling faction. The Opposition is accused of violating, or of threatening to violate, party unity. This is the main accusation against the Opposition. The importance of party unity under the conditions of revolutionary dictatorship is understood by every party member and every non-party worker who is at all politically developed. This is the source of the tremendous significance of the question of party unity and the no less tremendous danger of an incorrect approach to this question.

It must be said loud and clear: The slogan of party unity, in the hands of the ruling faction, is more and more becoming an instrument of ideological terror (intimidation and bullying) against the overwhelming majority of the party.

The party is above all an action organization. The entire body of its members should be capable of mobilization for combat at any moment, under the leadership of the Central Committee. Such combat-readiness is inconceivable without the unanimity of the party. But it would be the crudest kind of error to think that unanimity can be created by nothing else but official handbook cliches handed down from above. Unanimity is produced by the party as a whole through the constant renewal and accumulation of collective experience, through a collective effort of thought, on the basis of the party’s program, rules, traditions, and past experience. This process is inconceivable without differences, criticism, and the clash of ideas. If revolutionary combat-readiness requires a powerful centralism, then the maintenance, development, and strengthening of ideological unity in a party with over a million members requires a no less powerful party democracy. Without centralism, party democracy is the organizational path to Menshevism. Without democracy, centralism is the apparatus road to the bureaucratic degeneration of the party.

The organizational policy of the ruling faction has the same kind of “scissors” as are found in all the rest of its policies: in words, the recognition of party democracy; in deeds, the ever increasing suppression of every manifestation of thought or criticism outside the framework of the closed-in ruling faction at the top. This is what constitutes the chief danger threatening the unity of the party.

The leading factional clique uses the entire apparatus of the party and state to defend its factional positions, including its factional errors. The concentration of the full complement of power in the hands of the Central Committee is an iron necessity. The concentration of all power in the hands of a closed-in secret faction is a terrible danger. Even a Central Committee, even the very best, can make mistakes. But the party, which lives a collective life, has the possibility, on the basis of its own experience, of correcting its Central Committee, But the situation changes radically when the resources of the party and the state are concentrated in the hands of a sealed-off faction, or of its tiny leading group (some “Septemvirate” or “Decemvirate”), which is bound by internal faction discipline, regarded as higher than the discipline of the party. The official institutions of the party, its conferences, and even congresses, are put in a position in which they have no choice but to assent, after the fact, to decisions already made or to accomplished facts. During the Fourteenth Congress, decisions of exceptional importance, radically altering the composition of the leading institutions of the party and the direction of its policies, were brought crashing down as complete surprises upon the heads of an unsuspecting party. The July plenum was confronted at the very last moment with a new, radical change in the party leadership, made behind the back of the party (the replacement of Comrade Zinoviev on the Politburo by Comrade Rudzutak, the revised listing of Comrade Kamenev as the eighth candidate member, and the introduction of new candidate members who in fact are members of the ruling faction’s central leadership). Even congress delegates and ordinary members of the CC and CCC are each time caught unaware by the ruling faction at the top and placed in the position of having either to accede in silence to a decision already made or to go over to the "Opposition.” But since any opposition, or even criticism, is declared a threat to party unity and is punished by the severest apparatus methods, the majority of congress delegates or CC and CCC members are left with no choice but to accede in silence to the measures taken by the factional ruling group.

The criticism of decisions already made is declared a crime. Under a normal party regime that would be correct. Criticism is much more timely during a discussion in preparation for a decision. But the whole crux of the present regime is to drop ready-made decisions on the party’s head, decisions that have been discussed and arrived at in gatherings of the ruling faction which are kept secret from the party and at which the disposition of forces is decided in advance, the formal majority is assured in advance, etc. Thus, before the decision is made, the party knows nothing about it, no matter how important it may be. And after the decision has been brought down on the party’s head as a total surprise, one is forbidden to discuss it on pain of being accused of violating discipline. Only by such methods, which are profoundly harmful and thoroughly against the party's interests, is the regime of unquestioned domination by a factional grouping maintained. Let them point to even one example of criticism in the party that has not immediately been proclaimed “opposition.” Let them point to one example of opposition that has not immediately been proclaimed, from on high, to be a “faction.” No one can point to such an example, and that alone is enough to give a complete characterization of the present party regime. Political retrogression from the class line inevitably drives them down the road of bureaucratic apparatus pressure on the party. Such a course inevitably leads to a closed-in factional grouping at the top and to a rigid selection of the entire apparatus by such a faction. In turn the concentration of power in the hands of a faction kept secret from the party inevitably encourages the tendency toward one-man rule. Collective leadership is inseparably connected with a regime of party democracy. A bureaucratized apparatus, imposing its will on the party, inevitably seeks a single will at the top. Under these conditions any independent expression of party thinking inevitably takes on a sharp oppositional character. The ruling faction suppresses any criticism, any opposition, with the slogan of party unity. The essence of the matter is that the factional group at the top, under the pretext of party unity, defends its monopoly on the leadership of the party by factional means.

But the whole problem is that the more violently the ruling faction defends “party unity,” the more it endangers it. Discussions, even if distorted and one-sided, become more and more frequent, more and more heated; organizational consequences become more and more severe and painful. The tendency toward one-man rule in the party leadership becomes crudely and harshly apparent. As a result of all this the party has at present been artificially divided into three rather sharply marked-off parts: (1) the ruling faction, which constitutes the backbone of the apparatus selected from above; (2) the Opposition elements, fighting for a rectification of the party line and a restoration of normality in the party regime; and (3) the broad mass of the party in between, atomized, disoriented, and in effect deprived of any chance to actively affect the fate of the party. This fundamentally unhealthy situation in the party is the real and undeniable source of every kind of danger, above all the danger of a split.

One may be reconciled to any regime as long as it accomplishes some purpose. But the present regime is not bringing the party closer to unity; instead it is carrying it farther away. Since Lenin retired from active work we have had the 1923 discussion, the 1924 discussion, the 1925 discussion (with the Leningrad Opposition), the new apparatus discussion against “Trotskyism” (spring 1926), the new sharp discussion against the Leningrad Opposition, formally geared to the Lashevich “affair” (June-July 1926), and now a newly unfolding discussion against “Trotskyism” in general and against the Leningrad Opposition, which is accused of “Trotskyism,” in particular. The character and methods of the present discussion are known to all and need no explanation. What until recently was clear only to the better informed circles is becoming clearer and clearer to the whole party, namely, that the aim of all these discussions and organizational measures is the complete defeat of the nucleus which until recently was called the Leninist Old Guard, and its replacement by the one-man rule of Stalin, relying on a group of comrades who always agree with him.

Only a dullard or a hopeless bureaucrat could think that the Stalinist struggle for “party unity” is capable of really achieving unity, even at the price of smashing the old leadership group and the entire present-day Opposition as a whole. From everything that has been said it is clear that the closer Stalin seems to come to his goal, the farther he is from it in fact. One-man rule in the administration of the party, which Stalin and his most intimate circle call “party unity,” requires not only the defeat, removal, and ouster of the present United Opposition but also the gradual removal of all authoritative and influential figures in the present ruling faction. It is quite obvious that neither Tomsky, nor Rykov, nor Bukharin — because of their past, their authority, etc. — is capable of playing the role under Stalin that Uglanov, Kaganovich, Petrovsky, et al. play under him. The ouster of the present Opposition would in fact mean the inevitable transformation of the old group in the Central Committee into an opposition. A new discussion would be placed on the agenda, in which Kaganovich would expose Rykov, Uglanov would expose Tomsky, and Slepkov, Sten, and Company would deglorify Bukharin.* Only a hopeless dullard could fail to see the inevitability of this prospect. But at the same time the more openly opportunist elements in the party would open fire against Stalin as one too much infected with “leftist” prejudices, one who hindered a more rapid and unconcealed retrogression.

★ ★ ★

Lenin wrote that a split in the party would become inevitable only if a split between the classes — the proletariat and the peasantry — proved to be inevitable. Can we say that that moment has come? Not at all. In spite of the mistaken shifts in economic, soviet, and other policies, the party still has the full capability of correcting these errors, straightening out the course of economic policy, and thus assuring a new consolidation of the "smychka” on a higher economic and political basis.

The question of the party regime and the party leadership is in a more perilous state. The party is the basic instrument of the revolution. If this instrument is blunted, that has a disastrous effect on all the tasks of the revolution and on its entire destiny. In order to achieve the correction of the economic errors and the rectification of the party line, the party must not only want this but also have the opportunity of putting its will into effect. That is why changing the party regime is the question of questions.

But is there not a danger that the very struggle to change the party regime could lead to a split? To deny this danger would be hypocritical. The source of this danger, however, is not the struggle against the disease but the disease itself, that is, above all, the policies of the Stalinist group. To refuse to try to cure the disease in time would mean only that it would develop further unhindered, which in the future could place the party in the position where it was too late for a cure.

To put it more simply: Can the party regime be changed without convulsions and above all without a disaster? We have no doubt that it can. At any rate, we are bending all our efforts in that direction. The bureaucratization of the party is far advanced but by no means so far as to have paralyzed the will of the party and especially of its proletarian vanguard. In practice the task boils down to giving party members a chance to make use of their rights and express their will — within the framework of the party rules and in the spirit of unity.

But this in turn means that the Stalin faction, which constitutes a faction within the ruling faction, must be prevented, no matter what, from convulsing the party any further with one-sided discussions and disorganizing it with organizational measures paving the way for a ruinous regime of one-man rule in the party.

If the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission could find in themselves the strength to put an end to this destructive work, to abolish management of the party by a secret faction, and to restore collective leadership, the Opposition would support this initiative wholeheartedly and the entire party would greet such a courageous step with a burst of enthusiasm. However, after the experience of the April plenum and, especially, the July plenum, very little hope can remain for a unifying initiative by the CC or CCC. Both in April and in July the Opposition loyally submitted its proposals to the highest body of the party. The most important of these proposals were rejected without consideration, and were even deleted from the record of the proceedings. The Opposition was obliged to remain silent, but representatives of the majority, despite the silence of the Opposition, began a vicious slander campaign against it, presenting the party with monstrously distorted versions of the views and proposals of the Opposition. This more and more one-sided discussion has been and is being conducted only to prepare the party for even more unhealthy organizational measures. Never before have the methods of intimidation, terrorizing, smearing, and expulsion been used so unrestrainedly as now. The most responsible assignments (to Vesenkha, the Commissariat of Trade, diplomatic work, etc.) are made exclusively from the point of view of factional selection, to the detriment of our most vital interests in the economic and political spheres. The Stalin group wants to finish matters off organizationally as quickly as possible. They seek to subordinate the coming October plenum and the Fifteenth Party Conference to this aim. They again want to confront the party with accomplished, irreversible facts, after which the Fifteenth Congress will have no choice but to sanction the split carried out by the Stalin group.

It is entirely within the party’s power to prevent these plans from being realized. To do so, the party members must simply make use of their party rights. What is needed is for a few members, or even just one member, in every party cell, in spite of all the grotesque pressure tactics applied from the top down, to take the floor at the crucial moment and say: “If the CC and the CCC are incapable of sparing the party new torments, they must at least stop preventing the party from receiving full information and having an open discussion of the differences which until now have been kept within the bounds of the ruling institutions of the party. We declare in advance that any attempt to decide fundamental questions of party life and party leadership behind the backs of the party and to confront the coming Fifteenth Party Congress with an accomplished fact is an anti-party and criminal act.’’

That is the path of genuine struggle for party unity.