Problems of the Development of the USSR

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Draft Theses of the International Left Opposition on the Russian Question

1. Economic Contradictions of the Transition Period

The Class Nature of the Soviet Union

The contradictory processes in the economy and politics of the USSR are developing on the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat The character of the social regime is determined first of all by the property relations. The nationalization of land, of the means of industrial production and exchange, with the monopoly of foreign trade in the hands of the state, constitute the bases of the social order in the USSR. The classes expropriated by the October Revolution, as well as the elements of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois section of the bureaucracy being newly formed, could reestablish private ownership of land, banks, factories, mills, railroads, etc., only by means of a counterrevolutionary overthrow. These property relations, lying at the base of class relations, determine for us the nature of the Soviet Union as a proletarian state. The defense of the USSR from foreign intervention and from attack by internal enemies — from the monarchists and former landowners to the "democrats," the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries — is the elementary and indisputable duty of every revolutionary worker, all the more so of the Bolshevik-Leninists. Ambiguity and reservations on this question, which in essence reflect the waverings of petty-bourgeois ultraleftism between the world of imperialism and the world of the proletarian revolution, are incompatible with adherence to the International Left Opposition.

World Historical Significance of the High Tempo of Economic Development

The possibility of the present truly gigantic successes of the Soviet economy was created by the revolutionary overturn of the property relations which established the preconditions for a planned elimination of market anarchy. Capitalism never gave and is incapable of giving that progression of economic growth which is developing at present on the territory of the Soviet Union. The unprecedentedly high tempos of industrialization, which have unfolded in spite of the expectations and plans of the epigone leadership, have proved once and for all the might of the socialist method of economy. The frantic struggle of the imperialists against so-called Soviet "dumping" is an involuntary but for that an all the more genuine recognition on their part of the superiority of the Soviet form of production. In the field of agriculture, where backwardness, isolation, and barbarism have their deepest roots, the regime of the proletarian dictatorship also succeeded in revealing a mighty creative power. No matter how great future setbacks and retreats may be, the present tempos of collectivization, possible only on the basis of the nationalization of the land, credit, and industry, with the workers in the leading role, signify a new epoch in the development of humanity, the beginning of the liquidation "of the idiocy of rural life." Even in the worst case historically conceivable, if blockade, intervention, or internal civil war should overthrow the proletarian dictatorship, the great lesson of socialist construction would retain all its force for the further development of humanity. The temporarily vanquished October Revolution would be fully justified economically and culturally, and consequently would be reborn. The most important task of the proletarian vanguard, however, is to bar the doors to this worst historical variant, by defending and strengthening the October Revolution and by transforming it into a prologue to the world revolution.

Basic Contradictions of the Transition Period

Absolutely false is the official doctrine of fatalistic optimism prevailing today, according to which the continued speedy growth of industrialization and collectivization is assured in advance and leads automatically to the construction of socialism in a single country.

If a highly developed socialist economy is possible only as a harmonious, internally proportionate, and consequently free-from-crisis economy, then, on the contrary, the transitional economy from capitalism to socialism is a crucible of contradictions where, moreover, the deeper and sharper ones lie ahead. The Soviet Union has not entered into socialism, as the ruling Stalinist faction teaches, but only into the first stage of the development in the direction of socialism.

At the core of the economic difficulties, the successive crises, the extreme tension of the whole Soviet system and its political convulsions, lie a number of contradictions of diverse historical origin which are interlinked in various ways. Let us name the most important ones: (a) the heritage of the capitalist and precapitalist contradictions of old czarist-bourgeois Russia, primarily the contradiction between town and country; (b) the contradiction between the general cultural-economic backwardness of Russia and the tasks of socialist transformation which dialectically grow out of it; (c) the contradiction between the workers' state and the capitalist encirclement, particularly between the monopoly of foreign trade and the world market.

These contradictions are not at all of a brief and episodic character; on the contrary, the significance of the most important of them will increase in the future.

Industrialization

The realization of the five-year plan would represent a gigantic step forward compared to the impoverished inheritance which the proletariat snatched from the hands of the exploiters. But even after achieving its first victory in planning, the Soviet Union will not yet have issued out of the first stage of the transition period. Socialism as a system of production not for the market but for the satisfying of human needs is conceivable only on the basis of highly developed productive forces. However, according to the average per capita amount of goods, the USSR even at the end of the five-year plan will still remain one of the most backward countries. In order really to catch up with the advanced capitalist countries, a number of five-year plan programs will be needed. Meanwhile the industrial successes of recent years in themselves do not at all assure an uninterrupted growth in the future. Precisely the speed of industrial development accumulates disproportions, partly inherited from the past, partly growing out of the complications of the new tasks, partly created by the methodological mistakes of the leadership in combination with direct sabotage. The substitution of economic direction by administrative goading, with the absence of any serious collective verification, leads inevitably to the inclusion of the mistakes in the very foundation of the economy and to the preparation of new "tight places" inside the economic process. The disproportions driven inward inevitably return at the following stage in the form of disharmony between the means of production and raw materials, between transport and industry, between quantity and quality, and finally in the disorganization of the monetary system. These crises conceal within themselves all the greater dangers the less the present state leadership is capable of foreseeing them in time.

Collectivization

"Complete" collectivization, even were it actually to be carried out in the coming two or three years, would not at all signify the liquidation of the kulaks as a class. The form of producers' cooperatives, given the lack of a technical and cultural base, is incapable of stopping the differentiation within the small commodity producers and the emergence from their midst of capitalist elements. Genuine liquidation of the kulak requires . a complete revolution in agricultural technique and the transformation of the peasantry, alongside of the industrial proletariat, into workers of the socialist economy and members of the classless society. But this is a perspective of decades. With the predominance of individual peasant implements and the personal or group interest of their owners, the differentiation of the peasantry will inevitably be renewed and strengthened precisely in the event of a comparatively successful collectivization, that is, with the general increase in agricultural production. If we should further assume that collectivization, together with the elements of new technique, will considerably increase the productivity of agricultural labor, without which collectivization would not be economically justified and consequently would not maintain itself, this would immediately create in the village, which is even now overpopulated, ten, twenty, or more millions of surplus workers whom industry would not be able to absorb even with the most optimistic plans. Corresponding to the growth of surplus, that is, of semiproletarian, semi-pauperized population unable to find a place in the collectives would be the growth at the other pole of rich collectives and more wealthy peasants inside the poor and medium collectives. With a shortsighted leadership, declaring a priori that the collectives are socialist enterprises, capitalist-farmer elements can find in collectivization the best cover for themselves, only to become all the more dangerous for the proletarian dictatorship. The economic successes of the present transition period do not, consequently, liquidate the basic contradictions but prepare their deepened reproduction on a new, higher historical foundation.

The USSR and the World Economy

Capitalist Russia, in spite of its backwardness, already constituted an inseparable part of the world economy. This dependence of the part upon the whole was inherited by the Soviet republic from the past, together with the whole geographic, demographic, and economic structure of the country. The theory of a self-sufficient national socialism, formulated in 1924-27, reflected the first, extremely low period of a revival of the economy after the war, when its world requirements had not yet made themselves felt. The present tense struggle for the extension of Soviet exports is a very vivid refutation of the illusions of national socialism. The foreign-trade figures increasingly become the dominating figures in relation to the plans and tempos of socialist construction. But foreign trade must be continued; and the problem of the mutual relation between the transitional Soviet economy and the world market is just beginning to reveal its decisive significance.

Academically, it is understood, one can construct within the boundaries of the USSR an enclosed and internally balanced socialist economy; but the long historic road to this "national" ideal would lead through gigantic economic shifts, social convulsions, and crises. The mere doubling of the present crop, that is, its approach to the European, would confront the Soviet economy with the huge task of realizing an agricultural surplus of tens of millions of tons. A solution to this problem, as well as to the no less acute problem of growing rural overpopulation, could be achieved only by a radical redistribution of millions of people among the various branches of the economy and by the complete liquidation of the contradictions between the city and the village. But this task — one of the basic tasks of socialism — would in turn require the utilization of the resources of the world market in a measure hitherto unknown.

In the last analysis, all the contradictions of the development of the USSR lead in this manner to the contradiction between the isolated workers' state and its capitalist encirclement. The impossibility of constructing a self-sufficient socialist economy in a single country revives the basic contradictions of socialist construction at every new stage on an extended scale and in greater depth. In this sense, the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR would inevitably have to suffer destruction if the capitalist regime in the rest of the world should prove to be capable of maintaining itself for another long historical epoch. However, to consider such a perspective as the inevitable or even the most probable one can be done only by those who believe in the firmness of capitalism or in its longevity. The Left Opposition has nothing in common with such capitalist optimism. But it can just as little agree with the theory of national socialism which is an expression of capitulation before capitalist optimism.

The World Crisis and Economic "Collaboration” Between the Capitalist Countries and the USSR

The problem of foreign trade in its present exceptional acuteness caught the leading bodies of the USSR unawares, and by that alone became an element of disruption of the economic plans. In the face of this problem, the leadership of the Comintern also proved to be bankrupt. World unemployment made the question of developing the economic relations between the capitalist countries and the USSR a vital problem for broad masses of the working class. Before the Soviet government and the Comintern there opened up a rare opportunity to attract the social democratic and nonparty workers on the basis of a vital and burning question and so to acquaint them with the Soviet five-year plan and with the advantages of the socialist methods of economy. Under the slogan of economic collaboration and armed with a concrete program, the communist vanguard could have led a far more genuine struggle against the blockade and intervention than through repetition of one-and-the-same bare condemnations. The perspective of a planned European and world economy could have been raised to unprecedented heights and in this manner could have given new nourishment to the slogans of the world revolution. The Comintern did almost nothing in this field.

When the world bourgeois press, including the social democratic press, was suddenly mobilized for a campaign of incitement against alleged Soviet dumping, the Communist parties marked time at a loss for what to do. At a time when the Soviet government, before the eyes of the whole world, seeks foreign markets and credits, the bureaucracy of the Comintern declares the slogan of economic collaboration with the USSR a "counterrevolutionary'' slogan. Such shameful stupidities, as if especially created for confusing the working class, are a direct consequence of the ruinous theory of socialism in one country.

2. The Party in the Regime of the Dictatorship

The Dialectical Interrelationship Between Economics and Politics

The economic contradictions of the transitional economy do not develop in a vacuum. The political contradictions of the regime of the dictatorship, even though in the final analysis they grow out of the economic, have an independent and also a more direct significance for the fate of the dictatorship than the economic crisis. The present official teaching, according to which the growth of nationalized industry and collectives automatically and uninterruptedly strengthens the regime of the proletarian dictatorship, is a product of vulgar "economic" and not dialectic materialism. In reality, the interrelationship between the economic foundation and the political superstructure has a far more complex and contradictory character, particularly in the revolutionary epoch. The dictatorship of the proletariat, which grew out of bourgeois social relations, revealed its might in the period preceding the nationalization of industry and collectivization of agriculture. Later on, the dictatorship passed through periods of strengthening and weakening, depending upon the course of the internal and world class struggle. Economic achievements were often bought at the price of politically weakening the regime. Precisely this dialectic interrelation between economy and politics directly produced sharp turns in the economic policy of the government, beginning with the New Economic Policy and ending with the latest zigzags in collectivization.

The Party as a Weapon and as a Measure of Success

Like all political institutions, the party is in the last instance a product of the productive relations of society. But it is not at all an automatic recorder of the changes in these relationships. As the synthesis of the historical experiences of the proletariat, in a certain sense of the whole of humanity, the party rises above the conjunctural and episodic changes in the economic and political conditions, which only invest it with the necessary power of foresight, initiative, and resistance.

It can be considered entirely irrefutable that the dictatorship was achieved in Russia and afterwards withstood the most critical moments because it had its center of consciousness and determination in the form of the Bolshevik Party. The inconsistency and, in the final analysis, the reactionary nature of all species of anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists consists precisely in the fact that they do not understand the decisive significance of the revolutionary party, particularly at the highest stage of the class struggle, in the epoch of the proletarian dictatorship. Without a doubt, social contradictions can reach such an acute point that no party can find a way out. But it is no less true that with the weakening of the party or with its degeneration even an avoidable crisis in the economy can become the cause for the Ml of the dictatorship.

The economic and political contradictions of the Soviet regime intersect within the leading party. The acuteness of the danger depends, with each succeeding crisis, directly upon the state of the party. No matter how great the significance of the rate of industrialization and collectivization may be in itself, it nevertheless takes second place before the problem: has the party retained Marxist clarity of vision, ideological solidity, the ability to arrive collectively at an opinion and to fight self-sacrificingly for it? From this point of view, the state of the party is the highest test of the condition of the proletarian dictatorship, a synthesized measure of its stability. If, in the name of achieving this or that practical aim, a false theoretical attitude is foisted on the party; if the party ranks are forcibly ousted from political leadership; if the vanguard is dissolved into the amorphous mass; if the party cadres are kept in obedience by the apparatus of state repression — then it means that in spite of the economic successes, the general balance of the dictatorship shows a deficit.

Replacement of the Party by the Apparatus

Only blind people, hirelings, or the deceived can deny the fact that the ruling party of the USSR, the leading party of the Comintern, has been completely crushed and replaced by the apparatus. The gigantic difference between the bureaucratism of 1923 and the bureaucratism of 1931 is determined by the complete liquidation of the dependence of the apparatus upon the party that took place in this span of years, as well as by the plebiscitary degeneration of the apparatus itself.

Not a trace remains of party democracy. Local organizations are selected and autocratically reorganized by secretaries. New members of the party are recruited according to orders from the center with the methods of compulsory political service. The local secretaries are appointed by the Central Committee, which is officially and openly converted into a consultative body of the general secretary. Congresses are arbitrarily postponed, delegates are selected from the top according to their demonstration of solidarity with the irreplaceable leader. Even a pretense of control over the top by the lower ranks is removed. The members of the party are systematically trained in the spirit of passive subordination. Every spark of independence, self-reliance, and firmness, that is, those features which make up the nature of a revolutionist, is crushed, hounded, and trampled underfoot.

In the apparatus there undoubtedly remain not a few honest and devoted revolutionists. But the history of the post-Lenin period — a chain of ever-grosser falsification of Marxism, of unprincipled maneuvers, and of cynical mockeries of the party — would have been impossible without the growing predominance in the apparatus of servile officials who stop at nothing.

Under the guise of spurious monolithism, double-dealing permeates the whole of party life. The official decisions are accepted unanimously. At the same time, all the party strata are corroded by irreconcilable contradictions which seek roundabout ways for their eruption. The Bessedovskys direct the purging of the party against the Left Opposition on the eve of their desertion to the camp of the enemy. The Blumkins are shot down and replaced by Agabekovs. Syrtsov, appointed chairman of the People’s Commissars of the RSFSR in place of the "semi-traitor" Rykov, is very soon accused of underground work against the party. Ryazanov, the head of the most important scientific institution of the party, is accused, after the solemn celebration of his jubilee, of being a participant in a counterrevolutionary plot. In freeing itself of party control, the bureaucracy deprives itself of the possibility of controlling the party except through the GPU, where the Menzhinskys and Yagodas put up the Agabekovs.

A steam boiler, even under rude handling, can do useful work for a long time. A manometer, however is a delicate instrument which is very quickly ruined under impact. With an unserviceable manometer the best of boilers can be brought to the point of explosion. If the party were only an instrument of orientation, like a manometer or a compass on a ship, even in such a case its derangement would spell great trouble. But more than that, the party is the most important part of the governing mechanism. The Soviet boiler hammered out by the October Revolution is capable of doing gigantic work even with poor mechanics. But the very derangement of the manometer signifies the constant danger of explosion of the whole machine.

Dissolution of the Party into the Class?

The apologists and attorneys for the Stalinist bureaucracy attempt at times to represent the bureaucratic liquidation of the party as a progressive process of the dissolution of the party into the class, which is explained by the successes of the socialist transformation of society. In these theoretical throes, illiteracy competes with charlatanry. One could speak of the dissolution of the party into the class only as the reverse side of the easing of class antagonisms, the dying away of politics, the reduction to zero of all forms of bureaucratism, and primarily the reduction of the role of coercion in social relations. However, the processes taking place in the USSR and in the ruling party have a directly opposite character in many respects. Coercive discipline is not only not dying away — it would be ridiculous even to expect this at the present stage — but, on the contrary, it is assuming an exceptionally severe character in all the spheres of social and personal life. Organized participation in the politics of the party and the class is actually reduced to zero. The corruption of bureaucratism knows no limits. Under these conditions, to represent the dictatorship of the Stalinist apparatus as the socialist dying away of the party is a mockery of the dictatorship and of the party.

The Brandlerite Justification of Plebiscitary Bureaucratism

The right-wing camp followers of centrism, the Brandlerites, try to justify the strangulation of the party by the Stalinist bureaucracy with references to the "lack of culture" of the working masses. This does not at all prevent them, at the same time, from awarding the Russian proletariat the dubious monopoly in the construction of socialism in one country.

The general economic and cultural backwardness of Russia is unquestionable. But the development of historically retarded nations has a combined character: in order to overcome their backwardness, they are compelled in many fields to adopt and to cultivate the most advanced forms. The scientific doctrine of proletarian revolution was created by the revolutionists of backward Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century. Thanks to its retardation, German capitalism later outstripped the capitalism of England and France. The industry of backward bourgeois Russia was the most concentrated in the whole world. The young Russian proletariat was the first to show in action the combination of a general strike and an uprising, the first to create soviets, and the first to conquer power. The backwardness of Russian capitalism did not prevent the education of the most farsighted proletarian party that ever existed. On the contrary, it made it possible.

As the selection of the revolutionary class in a revolutionary epoch, the Bolshevik Party lived a rich and stormy internal life in the most critical period of its history. Who would have dared, prior to October or in the first years after the revolution, to refer to the "backwardness" of the Russian proletariat as a defense of bureaucratism in the party! However, the genuine rise in the general cultural level of the workers which had occurred since the seizure of power did not lead to the flourishing of party democracy, but, on the contrary, to its complete extinction. The references to the stream of workers from the village explain nothing, for this factor has always been in operation and the cultural level of the village since the revolution has risen considerably. Finally, the party is not the class, but its vanguard; it cannot pay for its numerical growth by the lowering of its political level. The Brandlerite defense of plebiscitary bureaucratism, which is based upon a trade-union and not a Bolshevik conception of the party, is in reality self-defense, because in the period of the worst failures and the degradation of centrism, the right-wingers were its most reliable prop.

Why Did the Centrist Bureaucracy Triumph?

To explain as a Marxist why the centrist bureaucracy triumphed and why it was compelled to strangle the party in order to preserve its victory, one must proceed not from an abstract "lack of culture" of the proletariat, but from the change in the mutual relations of the classes and the change in the moods of each class. After the heroic straining of forces in the years of revolution and civil war, a period of great hopes and inevitable illusions, the proletariat could not but go through a lengthy period of weariness, decline in energy, and in part direct disillusionment in the results of the revolution. By virtue of the laws of the class struggle, the reaction in the proletariat resulted in a tremendous flow of new hope and confidence in the petty-bourgeois strata of the city and village and in the bourgeois elements of the state bureaucracy who gained considerable strength on the basis of the NEP. The crushing of the Bulgarian uprising in 1923, the inglorious defeat of the German proletariat in 1923, the crushing of the Estonian insurrection in 1924, the treacherous liquidation of the general strike in England in 1926, the crushing of the Chinese revolution in 1927, the stabilization of capitalism connected with all these catastrophes — such is the international setting of the struggle of the centrists against the Bolshevik-Leninists. The abuse of the "permanent," that is, in essence, of the international revolution, the rejection of a bold policy of industrialization and collectivization, the reliance upon the kulak, the alliance with the "national" bourgeoisie in the colonies and with the social imperialists in the metropolis — such are the political contents of the bloc of the centrist bureaucracy with the forces of Thermidor. Supporting itself on the strengthened and emboldened petty-bourgeois and bourgeois bureaucracy, exploiting the passivity of the weary and disoriented proletariat and the defeats of the revolution the world over, the centrist apparatus crushed the left revolutionary wing of the party in the course of a few years.

The Zigzag Course

The political zigzags of the apparatus are not accidental. In them is expressed the adaptation of the bureaucracy to conflicting class forces. The course of 1923-°S, if we leave aside occasional waverings, constituted a semi-capitulation of the bureaucracy to the kulaks at home and the world bourgeoisie and its reformist agency abroad. Having felt the increasing hostility of the proletariat, having seen the bottom of the Thermidorean abyss to whose very edge they had slid, the Stalinists leaped to the left. The abruptness of the leap corresponded to the extent of the panic created in their ranks by the consequences of their own policy, laid bare by the criticism of the Left Opposition. The course of 1928-31 — if we again leave aside the inevitable waverings and backslidings — represents an attempt of the bureaucracy to adapt itself to the proletariat, but without abandoning the principled basis of its policy or, what is most important, its omnipotence. The zigzags of Stalinism show that the bureaucracy is not a class, not an independent historical factor, but an instrument, an executive organ of the classes. The left zigzag is proof that no matter how far the preceding right course had gone, it nevertheless developed on the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The bureaucracy, however, is not a passive organ which only refracts the inspirations of the class. Without having absolute independence, the illusion of which lives in the skulls of many bureaucrats, the ruling apparatus nevertheless enjoys a great relative independence. The bureaucracy is in direct possession of state power; it raises itself above the classes and puts a powerful stamp upon their development; and even if it cannot itself become the foundation of state power, it can, with its policy, greatly facilitate the transfer of power from the hands of one class into the hands of another.

The Policy of Zigzags Is Incompatible with the Independence of the Proletarian Party

Standing above all the other problems of the bureaucracy is the problem of self-preservation. All its turns result directly from its striving to retain its independence, its position, its power. But the policy of zigzags, which requires a completely free hand, is incompatible with the presence of an independent party, which is accustomed to control and demands an accounting. From this flows the system of the violent destruction of party ideology and the conscious sowing of confusion.

The kulak course, the Menshevik-saboteur program of industrialization and collectivization, the bloc with Purcell, Chiang Kai-shek, La Follette, and Radić, the creation of the Peasants' "International," the slogan of a two-class party — all this was declared to be Leninism. On the contrary, the course of industrialization and collectivization, the demand for party democracy, the slogan of soviets in China, the struggle against the two-class parties on behalf of the party of the proletariat, the exposure of the emptiness and falsehood of the Krestintern, the Anti-Imperialist League, and other Potemkin villages — all these were given the name of "Trotskyism."

With the turn of 1928, the masks were repainted but the masquerade continued. The proclamation of an armed uprising and soviets in China at a time of counterrevolutionary ascent, the adventuristic economic tempos in the USSR under the administrative whip, the "liquidation of the kulak as a class" within two years, the rejection of the united front with reformists under all conditions, the rejection of the slogans of revolutionary democracy for historically backward countries, the proclamation of the "third period" at a time of economic revival — all this was now called Leninism. On the contrary, the demand for realistic economic plans adapted to the resources and needs of the workers, the rejection of the program of the liquidation of the kulaks on the basis of the peasant inventory, the rejection of the metaphysics of the "third period" for a Marxist analysis of the economic and political processes throughout the world and in each country — all this was now declared to be "counterrevolutionary Trotskyism."

The ideological connection between the two periods of the bureaucratic masquerade remains the theory of socialism in one country, the basic charter of the Soviet bureaucracy which it holds over the world proletarian vanguard and which it uses to sanctify in advance all its actions, turns, errors, and crimes. The fabric of party consciousness is created slowly and requires constant renewal by means of a Marxist evaluation of the road passed, of an analysis of the changes in the situation, of a revolutionary prognosis. Without tireless critical internal work, the party inevitably falls into decline. However, the struggle of the bureaucracy for self-preservation excludes an open contrast of today's policy with that of yesterday, that is, the testing of one zigzag by the other. The heavier the conscience of the ruling faction, the more it is transformed into an order of oracles, who speak an esoteric language and demand an acknowledgment of the infallibility of the chief oracle. The whole history of the party and the revolution is adapted to the needs of bureaucratic self-preservation. One legend is heaped upon the other. The basic truths of Marxism are branded as deviations. Thus, in the process of zigzagging between classes for the last eight years, the basic fabric of party consciousness has been ripped apart and torn to pieces more and more. Administrative pogroms did the rest.

The Plebiscitary Regime in the Party

Having conquered and strangled the party, the bureaucracy cannot permit itself the luxury of differences of opinion within its own ranks, so as not to be compelled to appeal to the masses to settle the disputed questions. It needs a standing arbitrator, a political superior. The selection for the whole apparatus takes place around the "chief." That is how the plebiscitary apparatus regime has come into being.

Bonapartism is one of the forms of the victory of the bourgeoisie over the uprising of the popular masses. To identify the present Soviet regime with the social regime of Bonapartism, as Kautsky does, means consciously to conceal from the workers, in the interests of the bourgeoisie, the difference in class foundations. Notwithstanding this, one can speak with full justification of the complete plebiscitary degeneration of the Stalinist apparatus or of the Bonapartist system of administering the party as one of the preconditions for a Bonapartist regime in the country. A new political order does not arise out of nowhere. The class which has come to power builds the apparatus of its domination from the elements that are at hand at the moment of the revolutionary or the counterrevolutionary overthrow. The Soviets led by the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries were, in Kerensky's day, the last political resource of the bourgeois regime. At the same time, the Soviets, above all in their Bolshevik form, were the crucible of the dictatorship of the proletariat which was in the process of creation. The present-day Soviet apparatus is a bureaucratic, plebiscitary, distorted form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is also, however, a potential instrument of Bonapartism. Between the present function of the apparatus and its possible function, the blood of civil war would still have to flow. Yet the victorious counterrevolution would find precisely in the plebiscitary apparatus invaluable elements for the establishment of its domination, just as its very victory would be unthinkable without the transfer of decisive sections of the apparatus to the side of the bourgeoisie. That is why the Stalinist plebiscitary regime has become a main danger for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

3. Dangers and Possibilities of a Counterrevolutionary Upheaval

The Relationship of Forces Between Socialist and Capitalist Tendencies

Through the combined effect of economic successes and administrative measures, the specific gravity of the capitalist elements in the economy has been greatly reduced in recent years, especially in industry and trade. The collectivization and the de-kulakization have strongly diminished the exploitive role of the rural upper strata. The relationship of forces between the socialist and the capitalist elements of the economy has undoubtedly been shifted to the benefit of the former. To ignore, or even to deny this fact, as the ultralefts or the vulgar oppositionists do, repeating general phrases about Nepman and and kulak, is entirely unworthy of Marxists.

It is no less false, however, to regard the present percentual relationship of forces as assured or, what is worse yet, to measure the degree of the realization of socialism by the specific gravity of state and private economy in the USSR. The accelerated liquidation of the internal capitalist elements, with methods of administrative dizziness here as well, coincided with the accelerated appearance of the USSR on the world market. The question of the specific gravity of the capitalist elements in the USSR, therefore, should not be posed independently of the question of the specific gravity of the USSR in the world economy.

Nepman, middleman, and kulak are undoubtedly natural agents of world imperialism; the weakening of the former signifies at the same time the weakening of the latter. But this does not exhaust the question: besides the Nepman there still exists the state official. Lenin recalled at the last congress in which he participated that not infrequently in history did a victorious people, at least its upper stratum, adopt the customs and mores of the culturally superior people conquered by it, and that analogous processes are also possible in the struggle of classes. The Soviet bureaucracy, which represents an amalgam of the upper stratum of the victorious proletariat with broad strata of the overthrown classes, includes within itself a mighty agency of world capital.

Elements of Dual Power

Two trials — against the specialist-saboteurs and against the Mensheviks — have given an extremely striking picture of the relationship of forces of the classes and the parties in the USSR. It was irrefutably established by the court that during the years 1923-28 the bourgeois specialists, in close alliance with the foreign centers of the bourgeoisie, successfully carried through an artificial slowdown of industrialization, counting upon the reestablishment of capitalist relationships. The elements of dual power in the land of the proletarian dictatorship attained such a weight that the direct agents of the capitalist restoration, together with their democratic agents, the Mensheviks, could play a leading role in all the economic centers of the Soviet republic! How far, on the other hand, had centrism slipped down in the direction of the bourgeoisie when the official policy of the party for a number of years could serve as the legal cover for the plans and methods of capitalist restoration! The left zigzag of Stalin, objective evidence of the powerful vitality of the proletarian dictatorship, which turns the bureaucracy around on its own axis, in any case created neither a consistent proletarian policy nor a full-blooded regime of the proletarian dictatorship. The elements of dual power contained in the bureaucratic apparatus have not disappeared with the inauguration of the new course, but have changed their color and their methods. They have undoubtedly even become stronger as the plebiscitary degeneration of the apparatus has progressed. The wreckers now invest the tempos with an adventurist scope and thereby prepare dangerous crises. The bureaucrats zealously hang the banner of socialism over the collective farms in which the kulaks are hiding. Not only ideological but also organizational tentacles of the counterrevolution have penetrated deeply into the organs of the proletarian dictatorship, assuming a protective coloration all the more easily since the whole life of the official party rests upon lies and falsification. The elements of dual power are all the more dangerous the less the suppressed proletarian vanguard has the possibility of uncovering them and purging its ranks in time.

The Party and Socialist Construction

Politics is concentrated economics, and the politics of the dictatorship the most concentrated of any politics conceivable. The plan of economic perspectives is not a dogma given at the outset, but a working hypothesis. Collective examination of the plan must take place in the process of its execution, in which the elements of verification are not only bookkeeping figures but also the muscles and the nerves of the workers and the political moods of the peasants. To test, to check up, to summarize, and to generalize all this can only be done by an independent party, acting of its own free will, sure of itself. The five-year plan would be inconceivable without the certainty that all the participants in the economic process, the managements of the factories and trusts on the one hand and the factory committees on the other, submit to party discipline, and that the nonparty workers remain under the leadership of the central units and the factory committees.

Party discipline, however, is completely fused with administrative discipline. The apparatus showed itself — and still shows itself even today — as all-powerful, insofar as it has the possibility of expending the basic capital of the Bolshevik Party. This capital is large, but not unlimited. The overstraining of bureaucratic command reached its highest limits at the moment of the crushing of the right wing. One can go no further on this road. But this has prepared the way for the collapse of administrative discipline.

From the moment when party tradition for some and fear of it for others ceases to hold the official party together, and hostile forces break through to the surface, the state economy will suddenly feel the full force of the political contradictions. Every trust and every factory will cancel the plans and directives coming from above, in order to insure their interests by their own means. Contracts between single factories and the private market, behind the back of the state, will become the rule instead of the exception. The struggle between the factories for workers, raw materials, and markets will automatically impel the workers to struggle for better working conditions. The planning principle, inescapably abrogated in this manner, would not only signify the reestablishment of the internal market but also the disruption of the monopoly of foreign trade. The managements of the trusts would quickly approach the position of private owners or agents of foreign capital, to which many of them would be compelled to turn in their struggle for existence. In the village, where the types of collective farms which are not very capable of offering resistance would hardly have time to absorb the small commodity producers, the collapse of the planning principle would precipitously unleash elements of primitive accumulation. Administrative pressure would be unable to save the situation if only for the fact, that the bureaucratic apparatus would be the first victim of the contradictions and centrifugal tendencies. Without the idealistic and cementing force of the Communist Party, the Soviet state and the planned economy would consequently be condemned to disintegration.

Degeneration of the Party and the Danger of Civil War

The collapse of plebiscitary discipline would not only embrace the party, administrative, economic, trade-union, and cooperative organs, but also the Red Army and the GPU; under certain conditions, the explosion might begin with the latter. This already shows that the passage of power into the hands of the bourgeoisie could in no case be confined simply to a process of degeneration alone, but would inevitably have to assume the form of an open violent overthrow. In what political form could this take place? In this respect, only the main tendencies can be revealed. By Thermidoreanoverthrow, the Left Opposition always understood a decisive shift of power from the proletariat to the bourgeoisie, but accomplished formally within the framework of the Soviet system under the banner of one faction of the official party against the other. In contrast to this, the Bonapartist overthrow appears as a more open, "riper" form of the bourgeois counterrevolution, carried out against the Soviet system and the Bolshevik Party as a whole, in the form of the naked sword raised in the name of bourgeois property. The crushing of the right wing of the party and its renunciation of its platform diminish the chances of the first, step-by-step, veiled, that is Thermidorean form of the overthrow. The plebiscitary degeneration of the party apparatus undoubtedly increases the chances of the Bonapartist form. However, Thermidor and Bonapartism represent no irreconcilable class types, but are only stages of development of the same type — the living historic process is inexhaustible in the creation of transitional and combined forms. One thing is sure: were the bourgeoisie to dare to pose the question of power openly, the final answer would be given in the mutual testing of class forces in mortal combat.

The Two Camps of the Civil War

In the event that the molecular process of the accumulation of contradictions were to lead to an explosion, the unification of the enemy camp would be accomplished under fire around those political centers which yesterday were still illegal. Centrism, as the commanding faction, together with the administrative apparatus, would immediately fall victim to political differentiation. The elements of its composition would divide into opposite sides on the barricades. Who would occupy the main place at first in the camp of the counterrevolution: the adventurist-praetorian elements of the type of Tukhachevsky, Blücher, Budenny, downright refuse of the type of Bessedovsky, or still weightier elements of the type of Ramzin and Osadchy? That will be determined by the time and the conditions of the turn of the counterrevolution to the offensive. Still the question itself could only be of episodic significance. The Tukhachevskys and Bessedovskys could serve only as a step for the Ramzins and Osadchys; they, for their part, will only be a step for the imperialist dictatorship that would very soon fling aside both, should it not succeed in leaping over them immediately. The Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries would form a bloc with the praetorian wing of centrism and serve to cover for the imperialists on the precipitous decline of the revolution as they sought to cover for them in 1917 during the revolution's sharp ascent.

In the opposing camp, a no less decisive regrouping of forces would take place under the banner of the struggle for October. The revolutionary elements of the Soviets, the trade unions, the cooperatives, the army, and, finally and above all, the advanced workers in the factories would feel, in the face of the threatening danger, the need to join together closely under clear slogans around the tempered and tested revolutionary cadre which is incapable of capitulation and betrayal!. Not only the centrist faction but also the right wing of the party would produce not a few revolutionists who would defend the October Revolution with arms in hand. But for this they would need a painful internal demarcation, which cannot be carried out without a period of confusion, vacillation, and loss of time. Under these decisive circumstances, the faction of the Bolshevik-Leninists, sharply marked out by its past and steeled by difficult tests, would serve as the element for a crystallization within the party. All around the Left Opposition would take place the process of the unification of the revolutionary camp and the rebirth of the true Communist Party. The presence of a Leninist faction would double the chances of the proletariat in the struggle against the forces of the counterrevolutionary overthrow.

4. The Left Opposition and the USSR

Against National Socialism For Permanent Revolution

The democratic tasks of backward Russia could be solved only through the road of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Having captured power at the head of the peasant masses, the proletariat could not, however, stop short at the democratic tasks. The democratic revolution was directly interwoven with the first stage of the socialist revolution. But the latter cannot be completed except on the international arena. The program of the Bolshevik Party formulated by Lenin regards the October upheaval as the first stage of the proletarian world revolution, from which it is inseparable. This is also the kernel of the theory of the permanent revolution.

The extraordinary delay in the development of the world revolution, which creates gigantic difficulties for the USSR and produces unexpected transitional processes, nevertheless does not change the fundamental perspectives and tasks which flow from the world-embracing character of capitalist economy and from the permanent character of the proletarian world revolution.

The International Left Opposition rejects and condemns categorically the theory of socialism in one country, created in 1924 by the epigones, as the worst perversion of Marxism, as the principal achievement of Thermidorean ideology. Irreconcilable combat against Stalinism (or national socialism), which has found its expression in the program of the Communist International, is a necessary condition for correct revolutionary strategy, in the questions of the international class struggle as well as in the sphere of the economic tasks of the USSR.

Elements of Dual Power in the Regime of the Proletarian Dictatorship

If we proceed from the incontestable fact that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has ceased to be a party, are we not thereby forced to the conclusion that there is no dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR, since this is inconceivable without a ruling proletarian party? Such a conclusion, entirely consistent at first sight, is nevertheless a caricature of the reality, a reactionary caricature that ignores the creative possibilities of the regime and the hidden reserves of the dictatorship. Even if the party as a party, that is, as an independent organization of the vanguard, does not exist, this does not yet mean that all the elements of the party inherited from the past are liquidated. In the working class, the tradition of the October overthrow is alive and strong; firmly rooted are the habits of class thought; unforgotten in the older generation are the lessons of the revolutionary struggles and the conclusions of Bolshevik strategy; in the masses of the people and especially in the proletariat lives the hatred against the former ruling classes and their parties. All these tendencies in their entirety constitute not only the reserve of the future, but also the living power of today, which preserves the Soviet Union as a workers' state.

Between the creative forces of the revolution and the bureaucracy there exists a profound antagonism. If the Stalinist apparatus constantly comes to a halt at certain limits, if it finds itself compelled even to turn sharply to the left, this occurs above all under the pressure of the amorphous, scattered, but still powerful elements of the revolutionary party. The strength of this factor cannot be expressed numerically. At any rate, it is today powerful enough to support the structure of the dictatorship of the proletariat. To ignore it means to adopt the bureaucratic manner of thinking and to seek out the party wherever the Stalinist apparatus commands and nowhere else.

The Left Opposition categorically rejects the analysis of the Soviet state not only as a bourgeois or petty-bourgeois state, but also as a "neutral" state that has remained in some way without class rulers. The presence of elements of dual power in no way way signifies the political equilibrium of the classes. In evaluating social processes, the establishment of the degree of maturity attained and the point of termination is especially important. The moment of change from quantity to quality has a decisive significance in politics as well as in other fields.

The correct determination of this moment is one of the most important and at the same time most difficult tasks of the revolutionary leadership.

The evaluation of the USSR as a state standing between the classes (Urbahns) is theoretically inadequate and politically equivalent to a surrender in whole or in part of the fortress of the world proletariat to the class enemy. The Left Opposition rejects and condemns categorically this standpoint as incompatible with the principles of revolutionary Marxism.

The Road of the Left Opposition in the USSR: The Road of Reform

The analysis given above of the possibilities and chances of a counterrevolutionary overthrow should in no sense be understood to mean that the present contradictions must absolutely lead to the open explosion of civil war. The social sphere is elastic and — within certain limits — opens up various possibilities, in accordance with the energy and the penetration of the battling forces, with the internal processes dependent upon the course of the international class struggle. The duty of the proletarian revolutionist consists under all circumstances in thinking out every situation to the end and also of being prepared for the worst outcome. The Marxist analysis of the possibilities and chances of a Thermidorean-Bonapartist overthrow has nothing in common with pessimism, just as the blindness and bragging of the bureaucracy has nothing in common with revolutionary optimism.

The recognition of the present Soviet state as a workers' state not only signifies that the bourgeoisie can conquer power only by means of an armed uprising but also that the proletariat of the USSR has not forfeited the possibility of subordinating the bureaucracy to it, of reviving the party again, and of regenerating the regime of the dictatorship — without a new revolution, with the methods and on the road of reform.

It would be sterile pedantry to undertake to calculate in advance the chances of proletarian reform and of the attempts at a bourgeois upheaval. It would be criminal lightheartedness to contend that the former is assured, the latter excluded. One must be prepared for all possible variants. In order, at the moment of the inevitable collapse of the plebiscitary regime, to assemble and to push ahead the proletarian wing promptly, without letting the class enemy gain time, it is absolutely necessary that the Left Opposition exist and develop as a firm faction, that it analyze all the changes in the situation, formulate clearly the perspectives of development, raise fighting slogans at the right time, and strengthen its connections with the advanced elements of the working class.

The Left Opposition and the Brandlerites

The attitude of the Left Opposition to centrism determines its attitude to the Right Opposition, which only constitutes an uncompleted bridge from centrism to the social democracy.

In the Russian question, as well as in all others, the international right wing leads a parasitic existence, nourishing itself chiefly upon the criticism of the practical and secondary mistakes of the Comintern, whose opportunist policy it approves in fundamental questions. The unprincipledness of the Brandlerites shows itself most nakedly and cynically in the questions which are bound up with the fate of the USSR. In the period of the government's betting on the kulaks the Brandlerites completely supported the official course and demonstrated that no policy other than that of Stalin-Rykov-Bukharin could be carried out. After the turn of 1928, the Brandlerites were reduced to an expectant silence. When the successes of the industrialization, unexpected by them, showed themselves, the Brandlerites uncritically adopted the program of the "five-year plan in four years" and the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class." The right-wingers demonstrated their complete incapacity for a revolutionary orientation and Marxist foresight, coming forward at the same lime as the advocates of the Stalinist regime in the USSR. The characteristic feature of opportunism — to bow before the power of the day — determines the whole attitude of the Brandlerites to the Stalinists: "We are prepared to acknowledge uncritically everything you do in the USSR, permit us only to carry out our policy in our Germany." The position of the Lovestoneites in the United States, of the Right Opposition in Czechoslovakia, and their related semi-social democratic, semi-communist groups in other countries, bears a similar character.

The Left Opposition conducts an irreconcilable struggle against the right-wing camp followers of the centrists, especially and principally on the basis of the Russian question and at the same time endeavors to liberate from the disintegrating influence of the Brandlerite leaders those worker-revolutionists who were driven into the Right Opposition by the zigzags of centrism and its worthless regime.

The Principle of the Left Opposition: To Say What Is

The petty-bourgeois camp followers, the "friends" of the Soviet Union, in actuality friends of the Stalinist bureaucracy, including also the officials dependent upon the Comintern in the various countries, lightheartedly close their eyes to the contradictions in the development of the Soviet Union, in order later, at the first serious danger, to turn their backs upon it.

Political and personal conflicts, however, not infrequently also push into the ranks of the Left Opposition frightened centrists or, still worse, unsatisfied careerists. With the sharpening of the repressions, or when the official course is having momentary success, these elements return to the official ranks as capitulators, where they constitute the chorus of the pariahs. The capitulators of the Zinoviev-Pyatakov-Radek type are only very little distinguished from the Menshevik capitulators of the type of Groman-Sukhanov, or from the bourgeois specialists of the type of Ramzin. With all the distinctions in their points of departure, all three groups now meet in recognition of the correctness of the present "general line," only to scatter in different directions at the next accentuation of the contradictions.

The Left Opposition feels itself a component part of the army of the proletarian dictatorship and of the world revolution; it approaches the tasks of the Soviet regime not from without but from within, fearlessly tears down the false masks, and exposes the real dangers, in order to fight against them with self-sacrifice and to teach others to do the same.

The experience of the whole post-Lenin period bears testimony to the incontestable influence of the Left Opposition upon the course of development of the USSR. All that was creative in the official course — and has remained creative — was a belated echo of the ideas and slogans of the Left Opposition. The half breach in the right-center bloc resulted from the pressure of the Bolshevik-Leninists. The left course of Stalin, springing from an attempt to undermine the roots of the Left Opposition, ran into the absurdity of the theory and practice of the "third period." The abandonment of this attack of fever, which led to the downright catastrophe of the Comintern, was once more the consequence of the criticism of the Opposition. The power of this criticism, despite the numerical weakness of the left wing, lies in general where the power of Marxism lies: in the ability to analyze, to foresee, and to point out correct roads. The faction of the Bolshevik-Leninists is consequently even now one of the most important factors in the development of the theory and practice of socialist construction in the USSR and of the international proletarian revolution.

The Living Standard of the Workers and Their Role in the State Are the Highest Criteria of Socialist Successes

The proletariat is not only the fundamental productive force, but also the class upon which the Soviet system and socialist construction rest. The dictatorship can have no powers of resistance if its distorted regime leads to the political indifference of the proletariat. The high rate of industrialization cannot last long if it depends on excessive strain which leads to the physical exhaustion of the workers. A constant shortage of the most necessary means of existence and a permanent state of alarm under the knout of the administration endanger the whole socialist construction. "The dying away of inner-party democracy," says the platform of the Opposition of the USSR, "leads to a dying away of workers' democracy in general — in the trade unions and in all the other nonparty mass organizations." Since the publication of the platform, this process has made more ravaging advances. The trade unions have finally been degraded to auxiliary organs of the ruling bureaucracy. A system of administrative pressure has been built up, under the name of shock troops, as if it were a question of a short mountain pass and not of a great historical epoch. In spite of this, the termination of the five-year plan will find the Soviet economy before a new, still steeper ascent. With the aid of the formula "overtaking and outstripping," the bureaucracy partly misleads itself but mainly misleads the workers in regard to the stage attained, and prepares a sharp crisis of disappointment.

The economic plan must be checked on from the point of view of the actual systematic improvement of the material and cultural conditions of the working class in town and country. The trade unions must be brought back to their basic task: the collective educator, not the knout. The proletariat in the USSR and in the rest of the world must stop being lulled by exaggerations of what has been attained and the minimizing of the tasks and the difficulties. The problem of raising the political independence of the proletariat and its initiative in all fields must be put in the foreground of the whole policy. The genuine attainment of this aim is inconceivable without a struggle against the excessive privileges of individual groups and strata, against the extreme inequality of living conditions, and, above all, against the enormous prerogatives and favored position of the uncontrolled bureaucracy.

5. Conclusions

1. The economic successes of the USSR, which have made a way for themselves in spite of the long-lasting alliance between centrists, right-wingers, Mensheviks, and saboteurs in the field of planning, represent the greatest triumph of the socialist methods of economy and a powerful factor of the world revolution.

2. To defend the USSR, as the main fortress of the world proletariat, against all the assaults of world imperialism and of internal counterrevolution is the most important duty of every class-conscious worker.

3. The crises in the economic development of the USSR spring from the capitalist and precapitalist contradictions inherited from the past, as well as from the contradiction between the international character of modern productive forces and the national character of socialist construction in the USSR.

4. Built upon the lack of understanding of the latter contradiction, the theory of socialism in one country in turn appears as the source of practical mistakes, which provoke crises or deepen them.

5. The strength of the Soviet bureaucracy has unfolded on the basis of the abrupt decline in the political activity of the Soviet proletariat after a number of years of the highest exertion of forces, a series of defeats of the international revolution, the stabilization of capitalism, and the strengthening of the international social democracy.

6. Socialist construction, under the conditions of class contradictions at home and of capitalist encirclement abroad, demands a strong, farsighted, active party as the fundamental political precondition for planned economy and class maneuvering.

7. Having reached power with the direct support of social forces hostile to the October Revolution and after the crushing of the revolutionary internationalist wing of the party, the centrist bureaucracy could nevertheless only maintain its domination by measures of suppression of party control, election, and the public opinion of the working class.

8. Now that the centrist bureaucracy has strangled the party, that is, has lost its eyes and ears, it moves along gropingly and determines its path under the direct impact of the classes, oscillating between opportunism and adventurism.

9. The course of development has completely confirmed all the essential principles of the platform of the Russian Opposition, in their critical parts as well as in their positive demands.

10. In the last period, the features of the three fundamental currents in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and in the Communist International have emerged with particular lucidity: the Marxist-Leninist, the centrist, and the right. The tendency of ultraleftism makes its appearance either as the crowning of one of the zigzags of centrism or at the periphery of the Left Opposition.

11. The policy and the regime of the centrist bureaucracy became the source of the most acute and direct dangers for the dictatorship of the proletariat. The systematic struggle against ruling centrism is the most essential part of the struggle for the rehabilitation, the strengthening, and the development of the first workers' state.

12. The ignoring of the material state and the political mood of the working class constitutes the most essential feature of the bureaucratic regime which, with the aid of the methods of naked command and administrative pressure, hopes to construct the realm of national socialism.

13. The bureaucratic forcing of the tempos of industrialization and collectivization, based upon a false theoretical position and not verified by the collective thought of the party, means a relentless accumulation of disproportions and contradictions, especially along the lines of the mutual relations with the world economy.

14. The property relations in the USSR, like the reciprocal political relations of the classes, prove incontestably that the USSR, in spite of the distortions of the Soviet regime and in spite of the disastrous policy of the centrist bureaucracy, remains a workers' state.

15. The bourgeoisie could come to power in the USSR in no other way than with the aid of a counterrevolutionary upheaval. The proletarian vanguard still has the possibility of putting the bureaucracy in its place, subordinating it to its control, insuring the correct policy, and, by means of decisive and bold reforms, regenerating the party, the trade unions, and the soviets.

16. Yet, with the maintenance of the Stalinist regime, the contradictions accumulating within the framework of the official party, especially at the moment of the sharpening of the economic difficulties, must lead inevitably to a political crisis, which may raise the question of power anew in all its scope.

17. For the fate of the Soviet regime, it will be of decisive significance whether the proletarian vanguard will be in a position to stand up in time, to close its ranks, and to offer resistance to the bloc of the Thermidorean-Bonapartist forces backed by world imperialism.

18. The Left Opposition can fulfill its duty towards the proletarian vanguard only by uninterrupted critical work, by Marxist analyses of the situation, by the determination of the correct path for the economic development of the USSR and for the struggle of the world proletariat, by the timely raising of living slogans, and by intransigent struggle against the plebiscitary regime which fetters the forces of the working class.

19. The solution of these theoretical and political tasks is conceivable only under the condition that the Russian faction of the Bolshevik-Leninists strengthens its organizations, penetrates into all the important units of the official party and other organizations of the working class, and at the same time remains an inseparable part of the International Left Opposition.

20. One of the most urgent tasks consists in making the experience of the economic construction in the USSR the object of an all-sided free study and discussion within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist International.

21. The criteria for the discussion, the elaboration and verification of the economic programs, are: (a) systematic raising of the real wages of the workers; (b) closing of the scissors of industrial and agricultural prices, that is, assuring the alliance with the peasantry; (c) closing of the scissors of domestic and world prices, that is, protection of the monopoly of foreign trade against the onslaught of cheap prices; (d) raising of the quality of production, to which the same significance should be attached as to its quantity; (e) stabilization of the domestic purchasing power of the Chervonets, which together with the principle of planning will for a long time to come remain a necessary element of economic regulation.

22. The administrative chase after "maximum" tempos must give way to the elaboration of optimum (the most advantageous) tempos which do not guarantee the fulfillment of the command of the day for display purposes, but the constant growth of the economy on the basis of its dynamic equilibrium, with a correct distribution of domestic resources and a broad, planned utilization of the world market

23. For this it is necessary above all to abandon the false perspective of a complete, self-sufficient national economic development which flows from the theory of socialism in one country.

24. The problem of the foreign trade of the USSR must be put as a key problem in the perspective of a growing connection with the world economy.

25. In harmony with this, the question of the economic collaboration of the capitalist countries with the USSR should be made one of the current slogans of all the sections of the Comintern, especially in the period of the world crisis and unemployment.

26. The collectivization of peasant farms should be adjusted in accordance with the actual initiative of the agricultural proletariat and the village poor, and their alliance with the middle peasants. A serious and all-sided reexamination of the experiences of the collective farms must be made the task of the workers and the advanced peasants. The state program of building collective farms must be brought into harmony with the actual results of experience and with the given technical and total economic resources.

27. The bureaucratic utopia of the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class" in two to three years on the basis of the peasants' stocks should be rejected. A firm policy of the systematic restriction of the exploitive tendencies of the kulaks must be conducted. Toward this end, the inevitable process of differentiation within the collective farms, as well as between them, must be followed attentively, and the collective farms in no case identified with socialist enterprises.

28. Stop being guided in the economy by considerations of bureaucratic prestige: no embellishment, no concealment, no deception. Don't pass off as socialism the present transitional economy of the Soviet Union, which remains very low in the level of its productive forces and very contradictory in its structure.

29. There must be an end once and for all to the ruinous practice, unworthy of a revolutionary party, of the Roman Catholic dogma of the infallibility of the leadership.

30. The theory and practice of Stalinism must be condemned.Return to the theory of Marx and to the revolutionary methodology of Lenin.

31. The party must be reestablished as the organization of the proletarian vanguard.

Regardless of the greatest economic successes on the one hand and the extreme weakening of the Comintern on the other, the revolutionary specific weight of Bolshevism on the world political map is infinitely more significant than the specific weight of the Soviet economy on the world market While the nationalized and collectivized economy of the USSR is expanded and developed by all means possible, the correct perspective must be retained. It must not be forgotten for a minute that the overthrow of the world bourgeoisie in the revolutionary struggle is a far more real and immediate task than "overtaking and outstripping" the world economy, without overstepping the boundaries of the USSR in doing it.

The present profound crisis of capitalist economy opens up revolutionary possibilities to the proletariat of the advanced capitalist countries. The inevitable rise in the militant activity of the working masses will sharply delineate all the problems of the revolution again, and will tear the ground from under the autocracy of the centrist bureaucracy. The Left Opposition will enter into the revolutionary period armed with a clear understanding of the road already traversed, of the mistakes already committed, of the new tasks and perspectives.

The complete and final way out of the internal and external contradictions will be found by the USSR on the arena of the victorious revolution of the world proletariat, and only there.