Questions for Communists (November 1932)

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Comrades: You want my reply to the question of why I belong to the Bolshevik-Leninist faction which is in sharp opposition to the current policy of the Communist International and the Soviet government. I will try to outline at least the most important points of the question.

The chief aim of the Communist Party is to construct the proletarian vanguard, strongly class-conscious, fit for combat, resolute, prepared for revolution. But revolutionary education requires a regime of internal democracy. Revolutionary discipline has nothing to do with blind obedience. Combativity cannot be prepared beforehand nor can it be dictated by an order from above: it must always be renewed and tempered. Revolutionary discipline poses the question to every honest and conscious Communist worker: Do we have democracy in the party – yes or no? To ask the question is to answer it. Even the smallest vestiges of party democracy are vanishing with every passing day.

In the Soviet Union the Communist Party is in power. The economic successes are incontestable. The number of workers in the country has doubled and tripled. The cultural level of the masses has been considerably raised in the last fifteen years. In these conditions, party democracy ought to be expanding. But we see just the opposite.

Despite all the achievements and successes, the proletariat as a whole and the Communist vanguard in particular have been fettered by the steel grip of the party and state bureaucracies. The unprecedented deterioration of the party regime must have profound social and political causes. We, the Left Opposition, have more than once analyzed and revealed these causes during the post-Lenin period. Has the official leadership of the party ever loyally submitted our arguments to discussion by the party? Never!

The less the functionary is controlled by the masses, the less consistent he is, the more subject to outside influences he becomes, and the more inevitably his political oscillations resemble the graph of a delirious fever. That is centrism. I repeat: that is centrism. The destruction of democracy clears an area for the development of petty-bourgeois, opportunist, or ultraleft influences.

The differences began in 1923 over the questions of the party regime, industrialization, and relations with the kulaks. Moreover, are you acquainted with the 1926 platform of the Russian Left Opposition? Have you followed the later development of the struggle around the five-year plan and collectivization? In all these questions, the "crime" of the Opposition is that, armed with the Marxist method, it could see clearly, anticipate some things, and give warning in time against mistakes.

Have you read the documents which were written in the factional struggle over the questions of the Chinese revolution? Do you know about the opposing conceptions over the Anglo-Russian Committee – the application of the "united front" only from above and in fact against the masses in struggle? Is the work of the Opposition in this field known to you? If not, it is your duty to familiarize yourself with these documents before taking a position against the Left Opposition.

You must certainly remember the senseless adventures of the "third period" which have badly compromised communism in the eyes of all conscious workers. Is there a single Communist who still can have any doubts on this subject?

The new development in Germany gives a striking example of the fundamentally wrong policy of the leadership of the proletariat: likening democracy to fascism, repudiating the policy of the united front, and consequently renouncing the creation of soviets – because soviets are not possible except as the achievement of a united front of workers belonging to different organizations as well as to different parties. Nothing has helped the German Social Democracy to maintain itself as much as the policy of the international Stalinist apparatus.

We, the Left Opposition, remain faithfully devoted to the Soviet Union and the Communist International, with a different devotion, a different fidelity than that of the majority of the official bureaucracy. The worker who considers himself a Communist but who accepts hearsay, and does not study the documents or verify the facts, is not worth very much. No, he is not worth very much. It was about such people that Lenin invented his harsh but true saying: He who takes anybody's word in politics is a hopeless idiot.

The tenth year since the founding of the Left Opposition is drawing near. Great events have verified and confirmed our attitude. Serious cadres have been educated. We face the future with confidence. No force can separate us from the international proletarian vanguard. The Soviet Union – it is our fatherland! We will defend it to the very end! The ideas and methods of Marx and Lenin will become the ideas and methods of the Communist International!