Reply to Two Conciliators, January 10, 1929

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Dear Comrades:

At this time I am surrounded by a nearly total postal blockade.

Your letter – unlike the other letters – was delivered to me by the post office, and in a very short time: fifteen days.

In essence your letter is the temporary, brief platform of a new grouping with the aim of moving away from the Opposition. It is very likely that you are not aware of this, but those who foisted this "platform" on you are apparently very well aware of where they are taking you.

I will answer you briefly, for the ideas you bring up are old and have long since been refuted by our entire experience in the battle of ideas.

1. You write that the "coming struggles for revolution in the West" are near at hand. That is possible, though it hasn't been proved. But what is to be done with the resolutions and reports of the Sixth Congress, which are incorrect to the core? And the eclectic program – a mixture of Marxism and social-nationalism? Perhaps you've been promised that this would be changed in the near future. Or, at least, that the pages of the press would be opened to you for a discussion of these questions. Meanwhile, the fate of the Comintern depends on these very questions.

2. You write: "The party of Lenin has shifted from the retreat to the taking of defensive positions and has partly assumed the offensive against the opportunist threat."

This is stated a little too grandly and exaggeratedly, but there has been a shift. Not the least important reason for this shift, however, is that we did not yield to the conciliators, the Zinovievists, the half-Zinovievists, and the quarter-Zinovievists. The centrists have stirred under the blows of our whip. Conclusion: shouldn't we now put away the whip? No, we should spur them on even more – with three whips.

3. You write that the Platform correctly indicated the dividing line between the rights (Rykovists) and the centrists (Stalinists). "The right is working in the direction of counterrevolution," you say, "and the Stalinists today (!) are working in the direction of revolution. It is impossible not to understand this." Severely put. "Today." But what about tomorrow? Or doesn't that concern you? Furthermore, if the Rykovists are working toward counterrevolution and the Stalinists toward revolution, how can they work together in the most decisive places (the Politburo, the Council of People's Commissars)? And why do they swear to the party that they have no differences with one another? And jointly thunder away at us?

4. Not only do you sidestep, in a cowardly way, the intensifying drive to smash the Bolshevik-Leninists; you yourselves are beginning to help the Stalinists with this work "in the direction of revolution." You yourselves are beginning to denounce such actions as "the pasting up of leaflets, the strike, and the secret ballot in the trade unions and Soviets" (apparently you're against the demand for a secret ballot in general).

What do you propose instead of "pasting up"? Distribution by hand? A mailing? Or perhaps the pages of Pravda have been opened to you? You praise the Platform. Perhaps it has been legalized? You should say openly what you think – that our views are correct, but we should stop fighting for them. That's how the Zinovievists started out. And look how they ended up.

5. Or perhaps our goals have already been achieved? Perhaps at least today's zigzag to the left is guaranteed? By what? Stalin's "principled" position? Or by the individual make-up of the leadership he dominates? Whoever thinks that should cross over openly to the Stalinists.

6. And that in fact is what you have come to. You write: "Already (?) the left wing, consisting of the former (?) centrists, is conducting a fight against the right."

If a left wing has indeed taken shape from the former (!!) centrists, they must not have any serious differences with us. Why then are they attempting to destroy us? Without any basis in principle. Is it merely out of personal rivalry? But that would mean political gangsterism. Is that what you want to say about Stalin's faction? Then you have a worse opinion of it than does the Opposition, from which you are breaking.

You ramble on without rhyme or reason about whether the main danger is from the rights or the Stalinists. The main danger is the world bourgeoisie. After that, the domestic bourgeoisie The right wing is the hook in our flesh which the bourgeoisie is tugging on. We have been calling the party's attention to this hook for several years now. The Stalinists shouted "slander!" Later they made the ever so slight admission that yes, there is a right danger. Rykov? Kalinin? Bukharin? Voroshilov? No, that is slander. Who then? Frumkin! Indeed, a gruesome, menacing hundred-headed monster. This is not fighting the rights; it is buffoonery and fraud against the party. It is concealment of the true right-wing leaders from the party. Who is doing the concealing? The centrists. Therefore, within the party, the chief danger is centrism. It is covering up for the right wing and trying to destroy the left.

8. The working class party member who is now moving from a right-centrist position to a left-centrist one is coming closer to the Bolshevik line. You, on the other hand, in moving away from the Opposition toward the left-centrist point of view, are taking your distance from Bolshevism. Farther along, we will meet up with the centrist worker moving to the left. But not with you, I'm afraid.

9. You say that by attacking the centrists, we are "helping the right." These words only show how completely you have slipped back toward the centrists – because you are repeating the main argument of the centrists against the left, their only argument and a thoroughly rotten one. This is what liberals have always said to Social Democrats, what Social Democrats have always said to Communists, and what centrists always say to genuine Bolsheviks.

With our relentless criticism we are helping the working class core of the party to free itself from the half-heartedness and falsity of centrism, thereby creating a real proletarian bulwark against the right danger. That is the way Bolsheviks have always acted, in big things and in small.

10. There is only one central point in the brief platform that you have signed: "It would be good to return to the party and establish peace and harmony." But return through which door? There are two doors: Zinoviev's, that of capitulation; and the Bolshevik way, through the continuation and expansion of the ideological battle. There is no third door; there hasn't been and there won't be. Pyatakov tried [to find one], Safarov tried, Sarkis tried. What are they now? Political corpses. Who will trust them? No one. They don't trust themselves. True, the door was opened to Pyatakov – but not into the party. Into the State Bank.

We of the Opposition are in the party now much more than that entire brotherhood of capitulators.

11. You propose that we "decisively dissociate ourselves from Democratic Centralist moods." My goodness, you surprise me. This was done as long ago as my theses in the fall of 1926. We dissociated ourselves not only from their "moods" but also from their ideas and methods. To the extent that deviations toward Democratic Centralism become evident we have corrected them and will correct them. As for your capitulationist line, there is absolutely nothing we can do with that.

12. You have not only drawn up a new platform (a temporary one, not meant to last long because it is just a short bridge to capitulation); you have also jotted down a rough list of "leaders." Besides myself, you name Smilga, Preobrazhensky, Radek, and – Ishchenko. A sternly made selection. Very sternly made! To the best of my knowledge, however, Comrade Ishchenko did not even sign our common declaration to the Sixth Congress. Politically this means he left the Opposition. Before November 7 [1927] Ishchenko was on the far left. Then he suddenly swung to the right. During the Fifteenth Congress he held the view that without the Zinovievists we would perish. He made every kind of bloc – with Pyatakov, with Sarkis, with Safarov – constantly blazing new paths "to the party." But all of his allies betrayed the Opposition, and themselves. After February, Ishchenko again began bringing up all sorts of profound arguments. After July he fell silent. Now again he is opening new roads. There is not two cents' worth of principle in this position. Only confusion and vacillation. Ishchenko keeps trying to find a special door for himself into the party. He won't find it. There is either Zinoviev's door (to the Centrosoyuz, the State Bank, and political death) or the other way – to march with the Opposition on the high road of principled, ideologically unyielding, Bolshevik struggle. This road will not be a fraud.

That is the best reply I can give you in a few words.

With anticapitulationist greetings, L. Trotsky

P.S. – I almost forgot your most farfetched argument. Since the Stalinists have severed the left wing from the party, according to you, they themselves must now perform the role of left wing. This is truly the most pure and most holy nonsense. You evidently are using the terms "left wing" and "center" in a parliamentary sense, that is, the positioning of seats in an assembly hall, not in a class sense. Otherwise, one would have to conclude that the more the opportunists hammer away at the Bolsheviks, the more they themselves become Bolshevized. The fact is that even if the centrists drove all of the proletarian revolutionaries out of the party (which cannot be done) and constituted themselves as a "left wing," that "left wing" would remain centrist. That's all there is to it.

On the other hand, you think that the centrists' fight against the right is a fight to the death. But that would mean that in driving out and smashing the rights, the centrists would themselves have to become – the right wing.

There is a grain of truth in all this. As the fight against the right and the left goes on, centrism will extrude from its own midst both right-centrist and left-centrist elements, that is, it will undergo a political differentiation and fall apart. The bureaucrats will go to the right and the workers to the left. That is what we need and want. The stronger, the more daring and principled our position is, the more quickly and healthily this differentiation process will take place. That and only that will bring the downfall of the right wing.

The conciliators and capitulators have long threatened us that we will end up totally "outside the party." Stalin was forced to admit at the November plenum that in addition to the 10,000 Bolshevik-Leninists who have been expelled, about twice as many remain in the party, that is, 20,000 [Stalin's Works, vol. 11, pp. 288-89]. If Stalin gives this figure, that means it must be doubled at least. There you have the left wing in a Marxist, not a topographical, sense. It is no longer possible to sever this portion of the party, because in place of every head cut off, two new ones will grow. And farther along there will come the moment when the best working class party members, shifting in their broad mass from the center to the left, will merge with us, so that the dividing line between us and them will be washed away. There you have the genuine road to the unity of the party on a Leninist basis.

All the rest is Zinoviev-itis and Safarov-itis, that is, nonsense, vanities, petty intrigue, and trifles.

L.T.