The Anglo-Russian Committee

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

The Anglo-Russian Committee and Comintern Policy

1. The plenum states that for the whole direction of our work in the British labour movement, especially for the correct understanding and carrying out of the tactic of the united front, the question of the Anglo-Russian Committee at the present moment has a decisive significance. Without a clear principled attitude to this question, the Comintern and above all the British Communist Party will be condemned to ever newer mistakes and vacillations. In the struggle against the war danger, the resolution of the question of the Anglo-Russian Committee is the basic prerequisite for resolving all other questions, just as (by way of example) in the year 1914, no step forward could be made without first resolving the question whether Social-Democratic deputies could vote for the war budget.

2. In the British trade union movement, just as in the Labour Party, the leading role is played by reformists of different varieties, the majority of whom are liberal Labour politicians. In view of the profound leftward development of the working masses, it must be acknowledged that the most dangerous variety of the liberal Labour politicians are politicians of the type of Purcell, Hicks, Brailsford and Co. The tottering structure of British imperialism is being supported at present not so much on Thomas and MacDonald as on Purcell, Brailsford and the like, without whom politicians such as Thomas and MacDonald, despite the fact that they are supported by the bourgeoisie, would no longer be able to maintain their leading position in the workers” movement. The irreconcilable and relentless struggle against the left lackeys of imperialism, both in the trade unions and in the Labour Party, is becoming especially urgent now, when the sharpening international and domestic situation will strike mercilessly at every indecision and hypocrisy.

3. The trade unions and the party have without doubt their special characteristics, their special methods of work, in particular their special methods of carrying out the united front. But it is precisely on the question of the political bloc with the reformist leaders that the distinction between the trade unions and the party is completely effaced. In all important and critical cases, the General Council proceeds hand in hand with the Executive Committee of the Labour Party and the parliamentary fraction. In calling off the great strike, the leading politicians and trade unionists went hand in hand. In such conditions, not a single honest worker will understand why Purcell is said to be politically a left lackey of the bourgeoisie, while on the other hand with respect to the trade unions we stand in “cordial relations,” “mutual understanding” and “unanimity” with him.

4. In particular cases, the tactic of the united front can lead to temporary agreements with this or that left group of reformists against the right wing. But such agreements must not in any circumstance be transformed into a lasting political bloc. Whatever concessions of principle we make for the purpose of artificially preserving such a political bloc must be recognized to be contrary to the basic aim of the united front and to be extremely harmful for the revolutionary development of the proletariat. During the last year the Anglo-Russian Committee has become just such an extremely harmful, thoroughly conservative factor.

5. The creation of the Anglo-Russian Committee was at a certain juncture an absolutely correct step. Under the leftward development of the working masses, the liberal Labour politicians, just like the bourgeois liberals at the start of a revolutionary movement, made a step to the left in order to maintain their influence among the masses. To reach out to them at that time was absolutely correct. However, it had to be clearly kept in mind that, just like all liberals, the British reformists would inevitably make a leap backwards to the side of opportunism, as the mass movement openly assumed revolutionary forms. This is just what happened at the moment of the General Strike. From the time of this gigantic event, the temporary agreement with the leaders had to be broken. and the break with the compromising of the “left” leaders used to advantage among the broad proletarian masses. The attempt to cling to the bloc with the General Council after the open betrayal of the General Strike, and even after the betrayal of the miners” strike, was one of the greatest mistakes in the history of the workers” movement. The Berlin capitulation is a black mark in the history of the Comintern and represents the inevitable consequence of this false line.

6. One must be blind or a hypocrite to see the “main defect” of the Berlin decisions in the fact that they narrowed the competence of the Anglo-Russian Committee instead of broadening it. The “competence” of the Anglo-Russian Committee during the last year consisted of this: that the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions [AUCCTU] was trying to support the General Strike, while the General Council was breaking it. The AUCCTU was helping the miners” strike on a broad scale, while the General Council was betraying it. If one talks about the broadening of the activity of the Anglo-Russian Committee (cf. no. 29 of the Resolution of the Commission), one is hypocritically pretending that this activity served some real interest of the workers, while in reality the Anglo-Russian Committee merely shielded and covered over the base and treacherous work of the General Council. To broaden this “activity’ contradicts the basic interests of the working class. Ridiculous and disgraceful is the attempt to get free from the Berlin decisions simply by appealing to the fact that the General Council bears responsibility for them (cf. again no. 29 of the draft Resolution). That strike-breakers who descend lower and lower, seek to protect their strike-breaking work from outside intervention; that strike-breakers take pains to cover over their strike-breaking with the capitulation of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions; all that is quite in the order of things. But all that does not justify our capitulation one iota.

7. The plenum indignantly rejects the vulgar, philistine, thoroughly Menshevik argument that Chamberlain “also” wants the break-up of the Anglo-Russian Committee. The very attempt to determine our revolutionary line according to the arbitrary guidance of the enigma of what at every given moment Chamberlain wants or doesn’t want is nonsensical. His task consists in getting the left lackeys, as far as possible, into his hands. For this purpose he squeezes them, unmasks them, blackmails them, and demands they break with the Bolsheviks. Under the influence of this pressure and this blackmail, the General Council blackmails the All-Union Council of Trade Unions and, for its part, threatens it with a split. Under the pressure of the General Council, the AUCCTU agrees to capitulate. In, this devious way Chamberlain’s task has been completed, for his blackmail has led to the capitulation of the AUCCTU.

8. If we were to break with the General Council in order to discontinue all intervention in the affairs of the British working class; if, after the break, we were to confine ourselves to our internal affairs, while the British Communist Party was not developing with redoubled energy its campaign against the General Council; then Chamberlain would have every cause to be satisfied with this state of affairs. But the break-up of the Anglo-Russian Committee ought to mean the very opposite. Since we flatly reject the Berlin principle of non-interference as the principle of chauvinism and not of internationalism, we must support with redoubled energy the British Communist Party and the Minority Movement in their redoubled struggle against the left lackeys of Chamberlain. In the presence of such a policy, Chamberlain will very soon be convinced that the revolutionary wing of the movement grew stronger after it shed the reactionary connection with the General Council.

9. The plenum therefore considers it absolutely necessary to break up in the shortest space of time the political bloc, which carries a disastrous ambiguity into our whole policy towards British reformism. The plenum is of the opinion that the British Communist Party must at once openly pose the question of the mutual relationship between the AUCCTU and the General Council. The British Communist Party, as well as the left-wing trade union Minority Movement, must demand the immediate summoning of the Anglo-Russian Committee in order to develop, in the name of the AUCCTU, a clear revolutionary programme of struggle against war and the offensive of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. The programme must be so formulated that it provides no scope to the charlatan trickery of Baldwin’s pacifist party. Refusal of the General Council to summon the Anglo-Russian Committee, or refusal of its delegation to accept the programme of struggle, is to lead to immediate breaking up of the bloc from our side and to a broad campaign against the reformists, especially the left variety who, better and on a wider scale than all the rest at the present moment, are helping the British Conservatives drag the British working class into war, without themselves being aware of it.

10. While giving all-round support to the movement of the truly revolutionary minority and particularly while giving support to acceptable candidacies of representatives of this minority for this or that position in the trade union movement (always on the basis of a specific practical programme), the British Communist Party must not in any circumstances or under any conditions identify itself with the Minority Movement or merge the organizations. The British Communist Party must maintain full freedom of criticism with respect to the Minority Movement as a whole as well as with respect to its individual leaders, their mistakes and vacillations.

11. The sharpening class struggle in Britain and the approaching danger of war are creating conditions under which the policy of the particular “labour” parties, organizations, groups and “leaders” will quickly be put to the test by the course of events.

The inconsistency of word and deed should manifest itself in the shortest space of time. In such a period the Communist Party can rapidly enhance its revolutionary authority, its numbers, and especially its influence, provided that it conducts a clear, firm, bold, revolutionary policy, calls everything by its right name, makes no concessions of principle, keeps a sharp eye on its temporary alliance partners and fellow travellers and their vacillations, and mercilessly exposes trickery and above all direct treachery.

Amendments to the ECCI resolution on the situation in Britain,

first published in Documents de l’Opposition de Gauche

de l’Internationale Communiste, October 1927

The Chinese Revolution and the Theses of Comrade Stalin (Extract)

In the direction of the Chinese revolution we are confronted not by tactical errors, but by a radically false line. This follows clearly from everything that has been presented above. It becomes still clearer when the policy in China is compared with our policy towards the Anglo-Russian Committee. In the latter case the inconsistency of the opportunistic line did not express itself so tragically as in China, but no less completely and convincingly.

In Britain, as in China, the line was directed towards a rapprochement with the “solid” leaders, based on personal relations, on diplomatic combinations, while renouncing in practice the deepening of the abyss between the revolutionary or leftward-developing masses and the traitorous leaders. We ran after Chiang Kai-shek and thereby drove the Chinese Communists to accept the dictatorial conditions put by Chiang Kai-shek to the Communist Party. In so far as the representatives of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions ran after Purcell, Hicks, Citrine and Co. and adopted in principle the position of neutrality in the trade union movement, they recognised the General Council as the only representative of the British proletariat and obligated themselves not to interfere in the affairs of the British labour movement.

The decisions of the Berlin Conference of the Anglo-Russian Committee mean our renunciation of support in the future to strikers against the will of avowed strike-breakers. They are tantamount to a condemnation and a flat betrayal of the trade union minority, all of whose activity is directed against the traitors whom we have recognised as the sole representatives of the British working class. Finally, the solemn proclamation of “non-interference” signifies our capitulation in principle to the national narrowness of the labour movement in its most backward and most conservative form.

Chiang Kai-shek accuses us of interfering in the internal affairs of China just as Citrine accuses us of interfering in the internal affairs of the trade unions. Both accusations are only transcriptions of the accusation of world imperialism against a workers” state which dares to interest itself in the fate of the oppressed masses of the whole world. In this case as in others, Chiang Kai-shek, like Citrine, under different conditions and at different posts, remain the agents of imperialism despite temporary conflicts with it. If we chase after collaboration with such “leaders”, we are forced ever more to restrict, to limit and to emasculate our methods of revolutionary mobilisation.

Through our false policy we not only helped the General Council to maintain its tottering positions after the strike betrayal, but, what is more, we furnished it with all the necessary weapons for putting impudent demands to us which we meekly accepted. Under the tinkling of phrases about “hegemony”, we acted in the Chinese revolution and the British labour movement as if we were morally vanquished, and by that we prepared our material defeat. An opportunist deviation is always accompanied by a loss of faith in one’s own line.

The businessmen of the General Council, having received a guarantee of non-interference from the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, are undoubtedly persuading Chamberlain that their method of struggle against Bolshevik propaganda is far more effective than ultimatums and threats. Chamberlain, however, prefers the combined method and combines the diplomacy of the General Council with the violence of British imperialism.

If it is alleged against the Opposition that Baldwin or Chamberlain “also” wants the dissolution of the Anglo-Russian Committee, then one understands nothing at all of the political mechanics of the bourgeoisie. Baldwin justly feared and still fears the harmful influence of the Soviet trade unions upon the leftward-developing labour movement of Britain. The British bourgeoisie set its pressure upon the General Council against the pressure of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions upon the treacherous leaders of the trade unions, and on this field the bourgeoisie triumphed all along the line. The General Council refused to accept money from the Soviet trade unions and to confer with them on the question of aid for the mineworkers. In exercising its pressure upon the General Council, the British bourgeoisie, through it, exerted pressure upon the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions and at the Berlin Conference obtained from the latter’s representatives an unprecedented capitulation on the fundamental questions of the class struggle. An Anglo-Russian Committee of this kind only serves the British bourgeoisie (cf. the declaration of The Times). This will not hinder it from continuing its pressure in the future upon the General Council, and demanding of it a break with the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, for by such a policy of pressure and blackmail the British bourgeoisie wins everything we lose by our senseless and unprincipled conduct.

The insinuations that Chiang Kai-shek is “in solidarity’ with the Opposition, because he wants to drive the Communists out of the Kuomintang, have the same value. A remark by Chiang Kai-shek is being circulated in which he is supposed to have said to another general that he agrees with the Opposition in the All-Union Communist Party on this point. In the text of the document from which this “quotation” was picked out, the words of Chiang Kai-shek are not adduced as an expression of his views, but as a manifestation of his readiness and aptitude to deceit, to falsehood, and even to disguise himself for a few days as a “Left Communist” in order to be better able to stab us in the back. Still more, the document in question is one long indictment against the line and the work of the Comintern’s representatives in China. Instead of picking quotations out of the document and giving them a sense contrary to that contained in the text, it would be better to make the document itself known to the Comintern. Leave aside, however, the misuse of alleged “quotations” and there remains the “coincidence” that Chiang Kai-shek has always been against a bloc with the Communists, while we are against a bloc with Chiang Kai-shek. The school of Martynov draws from this the conclusion that the policy of the Opposition “generally” serves the reaction. This accusation is not new either. The whole development of Bolshevism in Russia proceeded under the accompaniment of Menshevik accusations that the Bolsheviks were playing the game of the reaction, that they were aiding the monarchy against the Cadets, the Cadets against the SR’s and Mensheviks, and so on without end. Renaudel accuses the French Communists of rendering aid to Poincaré; when they attack the bloc of the radicals and the socialists. The German social-democrats have more than once pretended that our refusal to enter the League of Nations plays the game of the extreme imperialists, etc., etc.

The fact that the big bourgeoisie, represented by Chiang Kai-shek, needs to break with the proletariat, and the revolutionary proletariat on the other hand needs to break with the bourgeoisie, is not an evidence of their solidarity, but of the irreconcilable class antagonism between them. The hopeless compromisers stand between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and accuse both the “extreme” wings of disrupting the national front and rendering assistance to the reaction. To accuse the Opposition of playing the game of Chamberlain, Thomas or Chiang Kai-shek is to show a narrow-minded opportunism, and at the same time to recognize involuntarily the proletarian and revolutionary character of our political line.

The Berlin Conference of the Anglo-Russian Committee which coincided with the beginning of British intervention in China, did not even dare to allude to the question of effective measures to take against the hangman’s work of British imperialism in the Far East. Could a more striking proof be found that the Anglo-Russian Committee is incapable of moving as much as a finger towards really preventing war? But it is not simply useless. It has brought immeasurable harm to the revolutionary movement, like every illusion and hypocrisy. By referring to its collaboration with the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions in the “struggle for peace”, the General Council is able to soothe and lull the consciousness of the British proletariat, stirred by the danger of war. The All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions now appears before the British working class and the working class of the whole world as a sort of guarantor for the international policy of the traitors of the General Council. The criticism directed by the revolutionary elements in Britain against the General Council thereby becomes weakened and blunted. Thanks to Purcell, Hicks and Company, the MacDonalds and Thomases get the possibility of keeping the working masses in a stupor up to the threshold of war itself, in order to call upon them then for the defence of the democratic fatherland. When comrade Tomsky, in his last interview (Pravda, May 8), criticized the Thomases, Havelock Wilsons and the other hirelings of the Stock Exchange, he did not mention by a single word the subversive, disintegrating, lulling, and therefore much more pernicious work of Purcell, Hicks and Company. These “allies” are not mentioned by name in the interviews as though they do not even exist. Then why a bloc with them? But they do exist. Without them Thomas does not exist politically. Without Thomas there exists no Baldwin, that is, the capitalist regime in Britain. Contrary to our best intentions, our support of the bloc with Purcell is actually support of the whole British regime and the facilitation of its work in China. After all that has happened, this is clew to every revolutionary who has gone through the school of Lenin. In a like manner, our collaboration with Chiang Kai-shek blunted the class vigilance of the Chinese proletariat, and thereby facilitated the April coup d’état.

From The Chinese revolution and the theses of comrade Stalin

(dated 7th May, 1927), first published in Documents de l’Opposition

de Gauche de l’Internationale Communiste, October 1927

The Struggle for Peace and the Anglo-Russian Committee

The whole international situation and all the tendencies of its development make the struggle against war and for the defence of the USSR as the first workers’ state the central task of the international proletariat. But it is just the tension of the situation that demands clarity, a precise political line and firm correction of the errors made ...

1. War is the continuation of politics by other means. The struggle against war is a continuation of revolutionary policy against the capitalist regime. To grasp this idea means to find the key to all opportunist errors in questions relating to war. Imperialism is no external factor existing by itself; it is the highest expression of the basic tendencies of capitalism. War is the highest method of imperialist policy. The struggle against imperialist war can and must be the highest expression of the international policy of the proletariat.

Opportunist, or radicalism that is turning to opportunism, always inclines to estimate war as such an exceptional phenomenon that it requires the annulment of revolutionary policy and its basic principles. Centrism reconciles itself to revolutionary methods but does not believe in them. That is why it is always inclined, at critical moments, to refer to the peculiarity of the situation, to exceptional circumstances, and so on, in order to substitute opportunist methods for revolutionary ones. Such a shift in the policy of centrism or pseudo-radicalism is of course acutely provoked by the war danger. With all the greater intransigence must this touchstone be applied to the main tendencies of the Communist International.

2. It is already clear to everybody that the Anglo-Russian Committee must not be regarded as a trade union organization into which the Communists enter to fight for influence over the masses, but as a “peculiar” political bloc with well-defined aims, directing its activities primarily against the war danger. With tenfold attention to the experience and the example of the Anglo-Russian Committee, the methods of struggle against the war danger must be closely re-examined so as to be able to tell the revolutionary proletariat openly and precisely what must not be done if the Comintern is not be destroyed and the bloody work of imperialism against the international proletariat and the USSR facilitated.

3. In the presidium of the ECCI [Executive Committee of the Comintern] on May 11, Comrade Bukharin advanced a new interpretation of our capitulation to the General Council in Berlin. He declared that the capitulation must not be considered from the standpoint of the international revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, but from the standpoint of a “diplomatic” counteraction to the offensive of imperialism against the USSR.

Various weapons of international action are at our disposal: the party (Comintern), the trade unions, diplomacy, the press, etc. Our activities in the trade union field are dictated to us by the tasks of the class struggle. But only “as a general rule.” In certain cases, as exceptions, we must – according to Bukharin – use the organs of the trade union movement as instruments of diplomatic action. This is what happened with the Anglo-Russian Committee. We capitulated to the General Council not as the General Council, but as the agent of the British government. We obligated ourselves not to interfere not out of party reasons, but for reasons of state. That is the substance of the new interpretation of the Berlin capitulation which, as we will soon show, only makes it still more dangerous.

4. The Berlin agreement of the Trade Union Central Council of the Soviet Union with the General Council was discussed a short time ago at the April plenum of the Central Committee of our party. The decisions of the Berlin Conference were defended by Comrades Tomsky, Andreev and Melnichansky, that is, our outstanding trade unionists, but not our diplomats. All these comrades, in defending the Berlin capitulation, accused the Opposition of not understanding the role and methods of the trade union movement, and declared that the masses of trade unionists cannot be influenced by breaking with the apparatus, that the apparatus cannot be influenced by breaking with its upper sections, and that these were just the considerations that dictated the attitude of our trade unionists in Berlin.

Now Comrade Bukharin explains that the decisions of the Berlin Conference constitute, on the contrary, an exceptional case, an exception from the principled Bolshevik method of influencing the trade unions, an exception in the name of temporary, but acute, diplomatic tasks. Why did not Comrade Bukharin, and Comrade Tomsky with him, explain this to us at the last plenary session of our Central Committee? ...

5. Where did such an appalling contradiction come from in the course of a few weeks? It grew out of the impossibility of standing, if even for a single month, on the April position. When our delegation left for Berlin, it did not have Bukharin’s subsequent explanation of the position it was to take. Did Comrade Bukharin himself have this explanation at that time? At all events, it was nowhere expressed by anybody ... It is quite clear that this explanation was thought up after the event.

6. It becomes still clearer when we go back further, that is, to the origin of the question. After the criminal calling off of the General Strike by the General Council, the “left” wing with the right for the palm, the Opposition in the All-Union Communist Party demanded an immediate break with the General Council so as to make easier and accelerate the liberation of the proletarian vanguard from the influence of the traitors. The majority of the Central Committee opposed to this their viewpoint that the retention of the Anglo-Russian Committee was allegedly required in the interests of our revolutionary influence on the British proletariat, despite the counter-revolutionary policy of the General Council during the strike.

It was precisely at this moment that Comrade Stalin advanced his theory of stages that cannot be skipped over. By the word “stage”, in this case, must not be understood the political level of the masses, which varies with different strata, but of the conservative leaders who reflect the pressure of the bourgeoisie on the proletariat and conduct an irreconcilable struggle against the advanced sections of the proletariat.

In contradiction to this, the Opposition contended that the maintenance of the Anglo-Russian Committee after its open and obvious betrayal, which closed the preceding period of “left development,” would have as its inevitable conclusion an impermissible weakening of our criticism of the leaders of the General Council, at least of its “left” wing. We were answered, primarily by this same Bukharin, that this is a revolting slander; that the organizational alliance does not hinder our revolutionary criticism in the slightest degree; that we would not permit any kind of principled concessions; that the Anglo-Russian Committee would only be an organizational bridge to the masses for us. It occurred to nobody at that time to justify the maintenance of the Anglo-Russian Committee by referring to grounds of a diplomatic character which necessitate a temporary abandonment of the revolutionary line ...

7. The Opposition foretold in its writings that the maintenance of the Anglo-Russian Committee would steadily strengthen the political position of the General Council, and that it would inevitably be converted from defendant to prosecutor. This prediction was explained as the fruit of our “ultra-leftism.” Incidentally, an especially ridiculous theory was created, namely, that the demand for the dissolution of the Anglo-Russian Committee was equivalent to the demand for the workers to leave the trade unions. By that alone, the policy of maintaining the Anglo-Russian Committee was invested with the character of an exceptionally important question of principle.

8. Neverthelsss, it was very quickly proved that the choice must be made between maintaining organizational connections with the General Council or calling the traitors by their name. The majority of the Politburo inclined more and more to maintain the organizational connections at any cost. To achieve this aim, no “skipping over stages” was required, it is true; but it did require sinking politically one degree after another. This can most distinctly be followed in the three conferences of the Anglo-Russian Committee: in Paris (July 1926), in Berlin (August 1926), and most recently in Berlin (April 1927). Each time our criticism of the General Council became more cautious, and completely avoided touching on the “left”, that is, on the most dangerous betrayers of the working class.

9. The General Council felt all along, by its consistent pressure, that it held the representatives of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions in its hand. From the defendant it became the prosecutor. It understood that if the Bolsheviks did not break on the question of the General Strike, which had such a tremendous international importance, they would not break later on, no matter what demands were placed before them. We see how the General Council, under the pressure of the British bourgeoisie, conducted its offensive against the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions with ever greater energy. The Central Council retreated and yielded. These retreats were explained on the grounds of revolutionary strategy in the trade union movement, but by no means for diplomatic motives ...

The line of the Politburo ended naturally and inevitably with the Berlin conference of the Anglo-Russian Committee at the beginning of April. The capitulation of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions on the basic questions of the international working class movement was neither an unexpected side-leap nor an abrupt manoeuvre. No, it was the inevitable crowning, predicted by us long before, of the whole line followed in this question.

10. At the beginning of June of last year (1926), Comrade Bukharin, as we said, was the creator of a theory according to which the necessity of working in reactionary trade unions allegedly brought with it the maintenance of the Anglo-Russian Committee under all circumstances. In the face of all the evidence, Bukharin at that time flatly denied that the Anglo-Russian Committee was a political bloc and called it a “trade union organization”.

Now Bukharin creates a new theory, according to which our remaining in the Anglo-Russian Committee, bought at the price of an absolutely unprincipled capitulation, was not called forth by the needs of a “trade union organization,” but by the necessity of maintaining a political bloc with the General Council in the name of diplomatic aims.

Bukharin’s theory of today is in direct contradiction to his theory of yesterday. They have only this in common, that they are both 100 per cent deceitful, that they were both dragged in by the hair in order to justify after the fact, at two different stages, the sliding down from a Bolshevik to a compromising line.

11. That the right will betray us in the event of war, is recognized as indisputable even by Bukharin. So far as the “left” is concerned., it will “probably” betray us. But if it betrays us, it will do it, according to Bukharin, “in its own way,” by not supporting us but by playing the role of ballast for the British government. Pitiful as these considerations may be, they must nevertheless be demolished.

Let us assume for a moment that all of this is really so. But if the “left” betrays us “in its own way,” that is, less actively, in a more veiled manner than the right, it will surely not be because of the lovely eyes of the delegation of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, but because of the British workers. That is the general line of policy of the “left” in all questions, internal as well as external: to betray, but “in its own way.” This policy is profitable for it. Then why are we obliged to pay the “left” with the abandonment of our policy, for a policy which they are forced in any case to carry out in their own interests?

12. But in what sense will the “left” be a ballast for the British government? Obviously, in the same sense that they were “ballast” during the imperialist war, or are now, during the war of Britain against revolutionary China, and during the campaign of the Conservatives against the trade unions. The “left” criticizes the government within such limits as do not interfere with its role as exploiter and robber. The “left” gives expression to the dissatisfaction of the masses within these limits, so as to restrain them from revolutionary action.

In case the dissatisfaction of the masses breaks through to the outside, the “left” seeks to dominate the movement in order to strangle it. Were the “.left” not to criticize it, not to expose, not to attack the bourgeoisie, it would be unable to serve it “in its own way.”

If it is admitted that the “left” is a ballast, then it is admitted that it is the useful, appropriate, necessary, succouring ballast without which the ship of British imperialism would long ago have gone down.

To be sure, the (Tory] diehards are fulminating against the “left.” But this is done to keep the fear of God in it, so that it will not overstep the bounds prescribed for it, so that no unnecessary expense be incurred for their “ballast”. The diehards are just as necessary an ingredient in the imperialist mechanism as the “left”.

13. But under the pressure of the masses cannot even the “left” overstep the bounds prescribed for it by the bourgeois regime? This unexpected argument is also launched.

That the revolutionary pressure of the masses can undo the game of Chamberlain-Thomas-Purcell is incontestable. But the dispute does not hinge on whether the international revolutionary movement of the proletariat is advantageous for a workers’ state, but rather whether we are helping or obstructing it by our policy.

The pressure of the masses, all other conditions being equal, will be all the stronger the more the masses are alarmed by the perspective of war, the less they rely upon the General Council, and the less confidence they have in the “left” traitors (traitors “in their own way”). If we sign “unanimously” a pitiful, lying, hypocritical declaration on the war together with the General Council, we thereby pacify the masses, appease their restlessness, lull them to sleep, and consequently reduce their pressure on the “left”.

14. The Berlin conference can be justified by the “international interests of the USSR”! Here the mistake of Bukharin becomes especially atrocious. Precisely the interests of the USSR will suffer chiefly and most directly as a result of the false policy of the political bureau towards the General Council. Nothing can cause us such harm as mistakes and hypocrisy in the revolutionary camp of the proletariat. We will not deceive our enemies, the experienced and shrewd imperialists. Hypocrisy will help the vacillating pacifists to vacillate in the future. And our real friends, the revolutionary workers, can only be deceived and weakened by the policy of illusions and hypocrisy.

15. Bukharin will reply to this: “The Berlin decisions would be inadmissible if we worked only in the trade union movement. However, everything we have done in Berlin can be extended and improved with the means that the party has. Just look: we even criticize the General Council in Pravda, in speeches by British Communists, etc.’

This argument amounts to poisoning of the revolutionary consciousness. Bukharin’s words mean only that we support the General Council “in our fashion” while it in turn “in its fashion” supports the imperialist state. If we criticize the General Council, then under the present circumstances, that is only to cover our political support of it and our political alliance with it.

The articles in Pravda (which are extremely foolish in regard to Purcell and Co.) are not read by the British workers. But the decisions of the Berlin conference are distributed through the press over the whole world. For the moment only a small minority of the British proletariat knows anything of the articles by the British Communists. But all the British workers know one thing: that Purcell and Tomsky maintain “friendly relations” with each other, “understand each other”, and “are in agreement with each other.” The attitude of the Russian trade union delegation, which represents the victorious proletariat of the Soviet Republic, is much more decisive than the speeches of the British Communists and thus belies their criticism, which – by the way – is inadequate, since their freedom is limited by the Anglo-Russian Committee.

In short: the capitulation of the Russian trade union movement in the name of the alliance with Purcell is one of the most important facts in the international workers’ movement at the present moment. The “critical” articles in Pravda and Bukharin’s ever-new theories are only the sauce on it.

That is just why Lenin wrote in his instructions for our delegation to the pacifist congress at the Hague, where we had to deal with the same trade unionists, co-operators, and so forth:

I think that if we have several people at the Hague Conference who are capable of delivering speeches against war in various languages, the most important thing would be to refute the opinion that the delegates at the Conference are opponents of war, that they understand how war may and will come upon them at the most unexpected moment, that they to any extent understand what methods should he adopted to combat war, that they are to any extent in a position to adopt reasonable and effective measures to combat war. [Lenin, Collected Works, Vol.33 p.479]

What interests did Lenin have in mind in writing these words: the international interests of the USSR or the revolutionary interests of the international proletariat? In such a basic question Lenin did not and could not set the one against the other. Lenin was of the opinion that the slightest yielding to the pacifist illusions of the trade unionists would render more difficult the real struggle against the war danger and injure the international proletariat as much as the USSR.

Lenin had conscientious pacifists in mind here, and not branded strike-breakers who are condemned by the their whole position after May 1926 to a further chain of betrayals ....

16. In what manner can the thoroughly rotten, pseudo-pacifist agreement with traitors, whom we have already declared by common accord to be the “only representatives” of the British proletariat, strengthen our international position? How? The Berlin conference took place in the period of the opening of hostilities by the British government against China and the preparation of similar hostilities against us. The interests of our international position demanded above all that these facts be openly called by their proper name. Instead, we passed them over in silence.

Chamberlain knows these facts and is obliged to conceal them. The British masses do not correctly know these facts and are obliged to learn them from us. Honest pacifists among the workers can go over to a revolutionary line in the face of these facts. The base merchants of pacifism in the General Council cannot speak aloud about facts which would, at best and without doubt, expose their silent conspiracy with Chamberlain against the British workers, against China, against the USSR, and against the world proletariat.

Now what did we do in Berlin? With all the authority of a workers’ state, we helped the “pacifist” lackeys of imperialism to preserve their thieves’ secret. We proclaimed before the whole world that we are “in unanimous accord” with the agents of Chamberlain in the General Council in the cause of the struggle against war. We thereby weakened the resistance power of the British workers against the war. We thereby increased Chamberlain’s freedom of action. We thereby injured the international position of the USSR.

It must be said more concretely: the Berlin capitulation of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions to the General Council extraordinarily facilitated Chamberlain’s attack on the Soviet institutions in London, with all the possible consequences of this act.

17. It must not be forgotten that thanks especially to the insular position of Britain and the absence of a direct threat to its borders, the British reformists, during the war, allowed themselves a somewhat greater “freedom” of words than their brothers-in-treason on the Continent. But in general they played the same role. Now, with the experiences of the imperialist war, the reformists, especially of the “left,” will endeavour in the event of a new war to throw even more sand in the eyes of the workers than in the years 1914-18.

It is entirely probable that as a result of the attack on the Soviet institutions in London, which was prepared by the whole policy of the “left”, they will protest in a little louder tone than the Liberals. But if the Anglo-Russian Committee were in any way capable of helping, not Chamberlain, but us, then would not both sides have come to an agreement in the first twenty-four hours, sounded the alarm, and spoken to the masses in a language corresponding to the seriousness of the circumstances? But nothing of the sort occurred, and nothing will. The Anglo-Russian Committee did not exist during the General Strike when the General Council refused to accept the “damned gold” of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions: the Anglo-Russian Committee did not exist during the miners’ strike; the Anglo-Russian Committee did not exist during the bombardment of Nanking; and the Anglo-Russian Committee will not exist in the event of the breaking of diplomatic relations between England and the USSR. These harsh truths must be told the workers. They must be honestly warned. That will strengthen the USSR!

18. It may be replied: But concessions on our part to the bourgeoisie are permissible, and if the present General Council is considered an agent of the bourgeoisie within the working-class movement, why should we not make concessions to the General Council out of the same considerations that we make concessions to imperialism? Certain comrades are beginning to play with this formula which is a classic example of the falsification and overthrow of Leninism for opportunist political aims.

If we are forced to make concessions to our class enemy, we make them to the master himself, but not to his Menshevik clerk. We never mask and never embellish our concessions. When we resigned ourselves to Curzon’s ultimatum, we explained to the British workers that at the present moment we, together with them, are not yet strong enough to take up the challenge of Curzon immediately. We bought ourselves off from the ultimatum to avert a diplomatic break, but we laid bare the real relations of classes by a clear presentation of the question; by that, we weakened the reformists and strengthened our international position as well as the position of the international proletariat.

In Berlin, however, we got absolutely nothing from Chamberlain. The concessions we made to the interests of British capitalism (new crowning of the General Council, principle of “non-interference,” and so forth), were not exchanged for any concession at all on their part (no breaking-off of relations, no war). And at the same time we camouflaged everything by depicting our concessions to capitalism as a triumph of the unity of the working class. Chamberlain received a great deal gratis. The traitors of the General Council received a great deal. We received – a compromise. The international proletariat received – confusion and disorder. British imperialism came out of the Berlin conference stronger. We came out weaker.

19. But, it is said, to break with the General Council at such a critical moment would mean that we could not so much as live in peace with the organized workers of Britain; it would give the imperialists a trump card, and so on and so forth.

This argument is false to its very roots. Of course it would have been incomparably more advantageous had we broken with the General Council immediately after its betrayal of the General Strike, as the Opposition demanded. The year would then not have been frittered away with doleful gallantries towards the traitors, but would have been used for their merciless exposure. The past year was not lacking in occasions for this.

Such a policy would have forced the “left” capitulators of the General Council to fight for remnants of their reputation. to separate themselves from the right, to half-expose Chamberlain, in a word, to show the workers that they, the “left,” are not half as bad as the Moscow people present them. This would have deepened the split in the General Council. And when the swindlers of reformism come to blows, many secrets come to light, and the workers can only gain by it. Such a struggle against the General Council would have been the sharpest form of struggle against the policy of Chamberlain in the labour movement. In this struggle, the revolutionary working class cadres in Britain would have learned in a year more skilfully to catch the sharpers of the General Council at their swindles and to expose the policy of Chamberlain. British imperialism would have had to face much greater difficulties today. In other words: Had the policy proposed by the Opposition been adopted in June of last year, the international position of the USSR would now be stronger.

Even if belatedly, the break should have been made at least during the miners” strike, which would have been quite clear to the million miners, as well as the millions of workers betrayed in the General Strike. But our proposals in this respect were rejected as incompatible with the interests of the international trade union movement. The consequences are well known. They were registered in Berlin. Today it is declared that the radically false line that already caused so much harm must be maintained in the future as well because of the difficulties of the international situation, which means in essence that the international position of the USSR is being sacrificed in order to conceal the errors of the leadership. All the new theories of Bukharin have no other meaning.

20. A correction of the errors now, even after a years delay, would only be of benefit and not detriment. Chamberlain will say, of course, that the Bolsheviks are not able to maintain peace with his trade unionists. But every honest and even partly conscious British worker will say: the far too patient Bolsheviks, who did not even break with the General Council during our strikes, could no longer maintain any friendship with it when it refused to struggle against the suppression of the Chinese revolution and the new war that is being hatched by Chamberlain. The putrid decorations of the Berlin Anglo-Russian Committee will be cast aside. The workers will see the real facts, the real relationships. Who will lose thereby? Imperialism, which needs putrid decorations! The USSR and the international proletariat will gain.

21. But let us return again to the latest theory of Bukharin. In contradiction to Tomsky, Bukharin says, as we know, that the Berlin decisions are not the policy of the united front, but an exception to it, evoked by exceptional circumstances.

What are these circumstances? The war danger, that is, the most important question of imperialist policy and the policy of the world proletariat. This fact alone must forthwith compel the attention of every revolutionist. It would appear from this that revolutionary policy serves for more or less “normal” conditions; but when we stand before a question of life or death, the revolutionary policy must be substituted by a policy of compromise.

When Kautsky justified the iniquity of the Second International in 1914, he thought up the ex post-facto theory that the International was an instrument of peace but not of war. In other words, Kautsky proclaimed that the struggle against the bourgeois state is normal, but that an exception must be made under the “exceptional conditions” of war. and a bloc made with the bourgeois government, while we continue to “criticise” it in the press.

For the international proletariat, it is now a question not only of the struggle against the bourgeois state, but of the direct defence of a workers’ state. But it is precisely the interests of this defence that demand of the international proletariat not a weakening but a sharpening of the struggle against the bourgeois state. The war danger can only be averted or postponed for the proletariat by the real danger to the bourgeoisie that the imperialist war can be transformed into a civil war. In other words, the war danger does not demand a passing over from the revolutionary policy to a policy of compromise, but on the contrary, a firmer, more energetic, more irreconcilable execution of the revolutionary policy. War poses all questions forcefully. It admits of evasions and half-measures infinitely less than does a state of peace. If the bloc with the Purcells who betrayed the General Strike was a hindrance in peaceful times, in times of war danger it is a millstone around the neck of the working class.

If one admits that the turning back from Bolshevism to opportunism is justified by circumstances on which the life and death of the workers’ state depend, then one capitulates in principle to opportunism: for what value has a revolutionary policy that must be abandoned under the most critical circumstances?

22. In general, can the trade unions be utilized at one time in the interests of international class policy, and at another time for any sort of alleged diplomatic aims? Can such a situation be established where the same representatives of the AUCP(B), the Comintern, and the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions say at one moment that the General Council is a traitor and strike-breaker, and at another time that it is a friend with whom we are in hearty accord? Is it sufficient to whisper secretly that the former must be understood in the revolutionary class sense and the latter in a diplomatic sense? Can such a policy be spoken of seriously? Can one speak seriously to people who propose and defend such a policy?

After the Berlin conference, the word “traitor,” as used for a Menshevik agent of the bourgeoisie, became terribly cheap. But such expressions as “hearty accord”, “mutual understanding,” and “unanimity” (the words of Comrade Tomsky), became equally cheap. Who benefits by this unusually artful combination of methods? It does not deceive our enemy for a moment. It only confuses our friends and reduces the weight of our own words and deeds.

23. Bukharin’s new theory is not an isolated one. On the one hand, we are told that the unprincipled agreement with the notoriously treasonable General Council allegedly facilitated the defence of the USSR. On the other hand, we hear ever more loudly that the building of workers’ and peasants’ soviets in China would be a threat to the defence of the USSR. Doesn’t this mean turning the foundations of Bolshevik policy upside down? Workers’ and peasants’ soviets in China would signify a magnificent extension of the soviet front and the strengthening of our world position. The agreement with the General Council signifies on the contrary a weakening of the internal contradictions in Britain and the greatest facility to Chamberlain in his work of brigandage against China and against us.

Once it is avowed that soviets in China are harmful to our international position, but that the General Council is useful, then the recognition of the principle of “non-interference” is essentially correct; but then supplementary conclusions must be drawn, at least with regard to Amsterdam. One can be sure that these conclusions will be drawn today or tomorrow, if not by Bukharin himself then by someone else. The new principle of opportunist exceptions “in particularly important cases” can find a broad application. The orientation on the opportunist chiefs of the labour movement will be motivated everywhere by the necessity of avoiding intervention. The possibility of building socialism in one country will serve to justify the principle of “non-interference.” That is how the various ends will be knotted together into a noose that will strangle to death the revolutionary principles of Bolshevism. And end must be made to this once and for all!

We must make up for lost time. A broad and politically clear international campaign against war and imperialism is necessary. Our bloc with the General Council is now the principal obstacle in the road of this campaign, just as our bloc with Chiang Kai-shek was the chief obstacle in the road of the development of the workers’ and peasants’ revolution in China and, because of that, was used by the bourgeois counter-revolution against us, The more acute the international situation becomes, the more the Anglo-Russian Committee will be transformed into an instrument of British and international imperialism against us. After all that has happened, only he can fail to understand who does not want to understand. We have already wasted far too much time. It would be a crime to lose even another day.

Dated 16th May, 1927, and first published in Documents de l’Opposition

de Gauche de l’Internationale Communiste, October 1927

The Break-up of the Anglo-Russian Committee

1. We declare that we shall continue to criticize the Stalinist régime so long as you do not physically seal our lips. Until you clamp a gag on our mouths we shall continue to criticize this Stalinist régime which will otherwise undermine all the conquests of the October Revolution. Back in the reign of the Tsar there were patriots who used to confuse the fatherland with the ruling administration. We have nothing in common with them. We will continue to criticize the Stalinist régime as a worthless régime, a régime of back-sliding, an ideologically emasculated, narrow-minded and short-sighted régime.

For one year we tried to hammer into your heads the meaning of the Anglo-Russian Committee. We told you that it was ruining the developing revolutionary movement of the British proletariat. In the meantime, all your authority, the entire accumulated experience of Bolshevism, the authority of Leninism – all this you threw on the scales in support of Purcell. You will say, “But we criticize him!” This is nothing else than a new form of support to opportunism by backsliding Bolsheviks. You “criticize” Purcell – ever more mildly, ever more rarely – and you remain tied to him. But what is he enabled to say in reply to revolutionists in his own country when they brand him as the agent of Chamberlain? He is able to say, “Now look here! Tomsky himself, a member of the Political Bureau and Chairman of the All-Russian Central Council of the Trade Unions who sent money to the British strikers, has made criticisms of me but nevertheless we are working hand in hand. How dare you call me the agent of imperialism?” Would he be right or wrong? He would be right. In a devious way you have placed the entire machinery of Bolshevism at the disposal of Purcell. That is what we accuse you of. This is a very grave accusation – far graver than bidding Smilga farewell at the Yaroslav station. What have you done to Bolshevism? What have you done in the space of a few years to all the authority of Bolshevism, all its experience, and the entire theory of Marx and Lenin? You have told the workers of the world, and above all our Moscow workers, that in the event of war the Anglo-Russian Committee would be the organizing centre of the struggle against imperialism. But we have said and still say that in the event of war the Anglo-Russian Committee will be a ready-made trench for all the turn-coats of the breed of the false, half-way friends of the Soviet Union, and for all the deserters to the camp of the enemies of the Soviet Union. Thomas gives open support to Chamberlain. But Purcell supports Thomas, and that is the main thing. Thomas maintains himself upon the support of the capitalists. Purcell maintains himself by deceiving the masses and lends Thomas his support. And you are lending support to Purcell. You accuse us of giving support to Chamberlain. No! It is you yourselves who are linked up with Chamberlain through your Right wing. It is you who stand in a common front with Purcell who supports Thomas and, together with the latter, Chamberlain. That is the verdict of a political analysis and not a charge based on calumny.

The devil only knows what is already being said about the Opposition at meetings, particularly at meetings of workers’ and peasants’ nuclei. Questions are raised as to the “resources” used by the Opposition to carry on its “work”. It may be that illiterate and unconscious workers, or your own plants, are sending up such questions as are I worthy of the Black Hundred. And there are scoundrels acting as reporters who have the audacity to give evasive answers to such written questions. If you were really a Central Control Commission, you would be duty-bound to put an end to this dirty, abominable, contemptible and purely Stalinist campaign against the Opposition. We, on the other hand, are not preoccupied with spreading calumny. We present an open political declaration: Chamberlain and Thomas are in a common front; they are supported by Purcell, without whose support they are ciphers; but you are supporting Purcell and thereby weakening the USSR and strengthening imperialism. This is an honest political declaration! And you yourselves are feeling the weight of it at this very moment.

From a Speech to a Session of the Central Control Commission (June 1927)

Trotsky: Is it possible to pose seriously the question of a revolutionary struggle against war and of the genuine defence of the USSR while at the same time orienting toward the Anglo-Russian Committee? Is it possible to orient the working class masses toward a general strike and an armed insurrection in the course of a war while simultaneously orienting towards a bloc with Purcell, Hicks and other traitors? I ask: Will our defencism be Bolshevik or trade unionist? That is the crux of the question!

Let me first of all remind you of what the present leadership has taught the Moscow proletariat during the whole of the List year. Everything centres round this point. I read you the verbatim directives of the Moscow Committee: “The Anglo-Russian Committee can, must and undoubtedly will play a tremendous r61e in the struggle against all types of intervention directed at the USSR. It [the Anglo-Russian Committee!] will become the organizing centre for the international forces of the proletariat in the struggle against all attempts of the international bourgeoisie to start a new war”.

Molotov has made here the remark that “through the Anglo-Russian Committee we disintegrated Amsterdam”. It is as clear as noon-day that even now he has grasped nothing. We disintegrated the Moscow workers together with the workers of the entire world, deceiving them as to where their enemies were, and where their friends.

Skrypnik: What a tone!

Trotsky: The tone is suited to the seriousness of the question. You consolidated Amsterdam, and you weakened yourselves. The General Council is now more unanimously against us than ever before.

It must be said, however, that the scandalous directive I just read expresses much more fully, clearly and honestly the actual standpoint of those who favoured the preservation of the Anglo-Russian Committee than does the scholastic hocus-pocus of Bukharin. The Moscow Committee taught the Moscow workers and the Political Bureau taught the workers of the entire Soviet Union that in the event of a war danger our working class would be able to seize hold of the rope of the Anglo-Russian Committee. That is how the question stood politically. But this rope proved rotten. Saturday’s issue of Pravda, in a leading article, speaks of the “united front of traitors” in the General Council. Even Arthur Cook, Tomsky’s own beloved Benjamin, keeps silent. “An utterly incomprehensible silence!” cries Pravda. That is your eternal refrain: “This is utterly incomprehensible!” First you staked everything on the group of Chiang Kai-shek; I mean to say Purcell and Hicks, and then you pinned your hopes on “loyal” Wang Ching-wei, that is, Arthur Cook. But Cook betrayed even as Wang Ching-wei betrayed two days after he had been enrolled by Bukharin among the loyal ones. You turned over the Minority Movement bound hand and foot to the gentlemen of the General Council. And in the Minority Movement itself you likewise refuse to counterpose and are incapable of counterposing genuine revolutionists to the oily reformists. You rejected a small but sturdier rope for a bigger and an utterly rotten one. In passing across a narrow and unreliable bridge, a small but reliable prop may prove one’s salvation. But woe to him who clutches at a rotten prop that crumbles at a touch – for, in that case, a plunge into the abyss is inevitable. Your present policy is a policy of rotten props on an international scale. You successively clutched at Chiang Kai-shek, Feng Yu-hsiang, Tang Cheng-chih, Wang Ching-wei, Purcell, Hicks and Cook. Each of these ropes broke at the moment when it was most sorely needed. Thereupon, first you said, as does the leading article in Pravda in reference to Cook, “This is utterly incomprehensible!” in order to add on the very next day, “We always foresaw this.’

From a speech to the Central Committee and Central Control Commission joint plenum, lst August, 1927

What We Gave and What We Got

In his report at the general membership meeting of the Moscow railwaymen, Comrade Andreev made the first – and still the only – attempt to put two and two together in the question of the Anglo. Russian Committee. Comrade Andreev did not succeed in putting two and two together, but instead – despite his own intentions – he did make a serious contribution toward explaining just where lies the difference between opportunist and Bolshevik policies.

1. Comrade Andreev begins by very plaintively relating how the British busted up the ARC just at the time when it should have gone on living for many, many years. Imperialism has passed over to the offensive, strangling China, preparing a war against the USSR: “That is why the existence and activities of the ARC and similar organizations are most urgently needed right now.” Again, further on: “It is precisely right now, at the time of this offensive of capital against the working class, that the urgent need for the existence of the ARC becomes especially clear.” And so on, in the same vein.

Concurrently, Comrade Andreev supplies a lot of direct information about the measures that were taken to preserve the ARC (in enumerating these measures, however, he religiously avoids the Berlin conference of the ARC in April of this year). But all these exertions availed nothing: the ARC broke up just at the moment when the need for it became most acute.

As a matter of fact, this presentation as it stands is of itself a merciless condemnation of the very policy that Andreev is defending. One may suffer defeat at the hands of an enemy despite the most correct policy ... because the enemy is stronger. But when, in the course of many months, one forges a weapon against the enemy and then complains that this weapon went to pieces in one’s hands on the eve of the battle – that is tantamount to self-condemnation: either the blacksmith is bad, or he forged out of worthless material.

2. After the General Council had broken the general strike in May 1926, the defenders of the official line said to us: “But didn’t we know all along that the General Council is composed of reformist traitors?” Let us allow that we knew. But did we foresee that the General Council would collapse precisely when the need for it would be most urgent? Obviously this was not foreseen. Because not even the worst blacksmith would begin forging a weapon that he knew beforehand would fall apart on the eve of the battle.

Yet the controversy between the Opposition and the majority revolved precisely around this question. The Opposition said:

The members of the General Council are liberal Labour politicians of diverse shades. As is always the case with liberals, they have been plunged to the left by the first and still formless revolutionary wave. The General Strike swept them to the right. They can have no independent policy; swept to the right, they become transformed into the active agency of the bourgeoisie. Their role will be counter-revolutionary. Since they have betrayed the general strike of their own workers, and the strike of their own miners, only a pathetic philistine can pin any hope on the possibility that these people would protect the Chinese revolution or the Soviet Union from the blows of British imperialism. Quite the contrary. In the critical moment they will come to the aid of imperialism against the revolution.

Such was our prognosis in this question. But after the British had broken the ARC, Comrade Andreev comes before the Soviet workers ii with his pathetic lamentations: the ARC left this world just at the time when its activity was “most urgently needed.’

In politics, Comrade Andreev, this is called bankruptcy!

3. We said above: let us allow that the representatives of the official line did actually know whom they were dealing with – in which case their responsibility would be all the greater. As a matter of fact, they are vilifying themselves after the event. Their appraisal of the General Council was false, they did not understand the internal processes in the British working class, and they sowed illusions because they shared them themselves.

a) There is no need of going into the period prior to the strike: during that period Purcell, Hicks, and the others were pictured as our most trustworthy friends, almost our adherents. A veritable cloud of proof can be produced. We shall confine ourselves to a single instance. In his pamphlet, The Practical Questions of the Trade Union Movement, published in 1925, Comrade Tomsky said:

Those [trade unionists] who have entered into the agreement with us are maintaining themselves staunchly both against bourgeois lies and slanders, and against the former [?] leaders of the British movement: Thomas, Clynes and MacDonald. The leaders of the British trade unions, the section that is farthest to the left – one can say with assurance, the majority – are working harmoniously with us. This gives us the assurance of and the occasion for hoping that the British who are averse to striking quick agreements, who take a long time to think, weigh, discuss, and hesitate prior to coming to this or another decision, will strictly fulfil the agreement; and that we shall not have to put to ourselves the question: What will the unity of the world trade union movement give the Russian worker? [p.48)

(b) In the nature of things, matters did not improve very much after the strike was broken, either. Even after the Opposition came out with utmost decisiveness for a break with the Anglo-Russian Committee as an institution which was false and rotten to the core and which served only to befuddle the workers by its existence, the Moscow Committee lectured the party as follows in the special theses issued against the Opposition:

The Anglo-Russian Committee can, must, and undoubtedly will play a tremendous role in the struggle against all types of intervention directed against the USSR. It will become the organizing centre for the international forces of the proletariat in the struggle against all attempts of the international bourgeoisie to start up a new war. (Materials Toward the Summary of the July [1926] Plenum of the CC of the AUCP(B), Agitprop Department of the Moscow Committee)

As a matter of fact, in the agitation among the rank and file, that is, in the really important agitation embracing the masses, the fundamental, chief and pertinent argument against the Opposition was the following: We are threatened by the war danger and the General Council will help us to ward it off, but the Opposition, pursuing its “factional Aims,” demands that we break with the General Council. And from this sprang the stupid and base accusation of semi-defencism, defeatism, etc.

On the other hand, the Opposition maintained that the General Council would dilly-dally so long as no serious danger threatened its masters, the bourgeoisie, and then later on it would break with us at the moment when it best serves the bourgeoisie, i.e., when most dangerous to us.

Now Comrade Andreev comes forward and tearfully laments that the General Council broke with us, you see, just at a time when the activity of the ARC was “most urgently needed”. Needed by whom – us or the British bourgeoisie? For the General Council is the agency of the British bourgeoisie in the workers’ movement. It is clear that it broke the bloc with us when this break happened to be “most urgently needed” by Chamberlain.

In politics, Comrade Andreev, this is precisely what is meant by bankruptcy.

c) As for the famous argument of Comrade Rykov to the effect that since Baldwin was demanding the dissolution of the ARC, therefore the Opposition was aiding Baldwin – didn’t this argument in its entirety flow from the false appraisal of the General Council, from the misunderstanding of its class nature and its social role?

The General Council is the agency of the British bourgeoisie. A good master must watch his agency like a hawk. Agents have their own personal interests. The agent in his operations may go further than is profitable to the master. Baldwin watches sharply after his agency, he exerts pressure on it, frightens it and presents it with demands for an accounting. Baldwin had to see to it that the General Council makes no extra promises, and that it will be able to make a timely break with us. The closer the approach of great problems the more inevitable the rupture. Among us, those who made a false appraisal of the General Council, painted it up, cherished illusions on this score and hoped that in a major and serious question the ARC would carry out a policy directed against Chamberlain – they failed to understand this. The Opposition took its point of departure from the fact that a break was inevitable and that this break must occur over such questions as would be most clear and comprehensible to the British working masses.

4. But even during the very last period, even after the Berlin conference, Comrade Tomsky continued to paint up the General Council. He rejected indignantly all references to the fact that the ARC had become a reactionary impediment in the way of the workers’ movement. He asserted that the ARC is playing and can play a progressive role, even in the case of war. True, in April 1927 he expressed himself much more cautiously: 99 per cent in favour of the General Council’s betraying us in case of war, as against one chance in a hundred that it might not betray. Can we – demanded Tomsky – reject even one chance against ninety-nine in so great a cause?

To reason in such a manner is to turn politics into a lottery. But guaranteeing the defence of the USSR by lottery methods is a pitiful policy indeed, all the more so since the odds to lose are 100 per cent. And when the loss became patent, Comrade Andreev, with many sighs, told the assembled railwaymen how fine it would have been had the opportunists turned out to be not as they are in reality but as Comrade Andreev had imagined them to be.

All this, Comrade Andreev, is precisely what is called the opportunistic policy of illusions.

5. Today, after the event, there is no lack of volunteers anxious to renounce the wretched crib of Comrade Uglanov upon the subject that the Anglo-Russian Committee “will become the organizing centre of the international forces of the proletariat in the struggle against all attempts of the international bourgeoisie to start up a new war.”

But precisely in this hope lay the crux of our entire official policy. It was precisely in this that the party was fooled. It was precisely by this that the Opposition was “beaten”.

In the July 1926 joint plenum, Comrade Stalin lectured to us complacently:

The aim of this bloc [the ARC] consists in organizing a wide working-class movement against new imperialist wars in general, and against intervention into our country on the part [especially so!] of the most powerful of the imperialist powers of Europe – on the part of Britain in particular. [Minutes, first issue, p.71]

Instructing us Oppositionists that it is necessary to “be concerned about the defence of the first workers’ republic in the world from intervention,” Stalin added for good measure:

If the trade unions of our country in this cause, meet with the support on the part of the British, even if reformist, trade unions, then this should be hailed. Voices: Correct! [Idem., p.71]

We may be quite sure that among those shouting “correct” was also the voice of Comrade Andreev. Yet these were the voices of blind men who were exposing the defence of the USSR to the danger of a sudden blow. It is not enough for one to “be concerned about the defence of the USSR,” one must also be concerned about the Marxist line of the policies; one must know the basic forces of the world struggle, understand class relations and the mechanics of parties; and one must be a Marxist-Leninist and not a philistine.

Stalin keeps chewing his ideas with the smugness of a provincial wiseacre. Each vulgarity is numbered: first, second, third, and fourth. First, pinning hope on Chiang Kai-shek; second, pinning hope on Wang Ching-wei; third, on Purcell; fourth on Hicks. Today’s hope is being pinned on the French Radicals, who, if you please, will “repel the French imperialists,” but this falls under fifth ... It is not enough for one to “be concerned about the defence”; one must have some inkling as to what’s what. In the same speech Stalin goes on to sermonize:

If the reactionary British trade unions are willing to enter into a bloc with the revolutionary trade unions of our country against the counter-revolutionary imperialists of their own country – then why not hail this bloc? [p.71]

Stalin cannot understand that were the “reactionary trade unions” capable of waging a struggle against their own imperialists, they would not be reactionary trade unions. Falling into middle-class superficiality, Stalin loses all sight of the line of demarcation between the concepts reactionary and revolutionary. Out of sheer habit he refers to the British trade unions (i.e., obviously their leadership) as reactionary, but he really cherishes entirely Menshevik illusions about them.

Stalin sums up his philosophy as follows:

And so, the ARC is the bloc between our trade unions and the reactionary trade unions of Britain ... for the purpose of struggle against imperialist wars in general, and against intervention in particular. [p.71]

That’s just it: both in general and in particular. In general, and in particular – middle class narrowness (suggested topic for the “red” professors of the Stalinist school).

With the smugness of a provincial wiseacre, Stalin concludes his sermonizing with an attempt at irony: “Comrades Trotsky and Zinoviev should remember this, and remember it well.” [p.72]

That’s just it! We have remembered everything very firmly indeed. We have remembered that our criticisms of the Stalinist hopes in Purcell as the guardian angel of the workers’ state were called by Stalin a deviation from “Leninism to Trotskyism.’

Voroshilov: Correct!

A Voice: Voroshilov has affixed the seal!

Trotsky: Fortunately all this will appear in the minutes. [p.71]

Yes, this is all to be found in the minutes of that very same July plenum which removed Zinoviev from the Politburo, which thundered against “Trotskyism”, which assumed the defence of the Uglanov-Mandelstamm crib.

We now propose that the speeches of Stalin together with our speeches on the question of the ARC be published for the congress. This would provide an excellent examination as to whose views stand the test of events and of time: the views of Stalin or the views of the Opposition?

6. We shall pass over the scholastic constructions of Bukharin. Upon this question he observed seven theoretical Fridays a week. Here is the sophism that the ARC is a trade union organization and not a political bloc. Here is also the sophism that the ARC is not the union of leaders but the union of the masses. Here, too, is the defence of the April capitulation in Berlin by an argumentation of a state and diplomatic character. And many, many other things besides.

We evaluated these theories in their own time for what they were worth. It would be a fruitless waste of time to unwind, after the event, Bukharin’s talmudic knots. The course of events has swept away Bukharin’s scholasticism, as so much rubbish, out of which only one fact emerges clearly: the ideological and political bankruptcy. And just to think that all this put together is being served up as the general line of the Comintern]

From the moment the General Strike was broken [relates Andreev] there was begun the preparation of a plan how best to destroy the ARC, or to reduce the ARC completely to a cipher, to such a position as would keep it from being a hindrance to the General Council ... This is what the plan of the present leaders of the General Council amounted to. And what happened at the last congress was the fulfilment of this plan.

All of which is entirely correct. The General Council did have its own plan, and it did execute this plan methodically. “The break is the fulfilment of a carefully thought-out plan which the General Council had prepared and which it executed during the last congress.” It is absolutely correct. The General Council knew what it wanted. Or rather, the masters of the General Council knew where it had to be led. But did Comrade Andreev know where he was going? He did not. Because not only did he fail to hinder but he also assisted the General Council to fulfil its perfidious plan to the greatest benefit of the General Council itself and its actual political principals i.e., the British bourgeoisie.

8. If the General Council did have a plan and if it was able to execute this plan methodically, then couldn’t this plan have been understood, deciphered and foreseen? The Opposition did foresee. As early as June 2, 1926, two weeks after the General Strike was broken, we wrote to the Politburo:

But may not the General Council itself take the initiative to break away? This is more than probable. It will issue a statement that the CEC of the Russian trade unions is striving not toward the unity of the world working class but to fan discord among trade unions, and that it, the General Council, cannot travel along the same road with the CEC of the Russian unions. Then once more we shall call after them: Traitors! – which will express all the realism there is in the policy that consists of supporting rotten fictions. [Minutes of the Politburo, June 8, 1926, p.71]

Hasn’t this been confirmed literally, almost letter for letter? We did not break with the General Council after it had betrayed the General Strike and had aroused against itself the extreme exasperation of millions of English workers. We did not break with it under conditions already less favourable to us, after it had broken the miners’ strike, together with the priests of the bourgeoisie. Nor did we break with it under still less favourable conditions – on the question of British intervention in China. And now the British have broken with us over the question of our interfering in their internal affairs, our striving to “give orders” to the British working class, or to turn the English trade unions into instruments of our state policies. They broke on those questions which are most favourable to them, and which are most apt to fool the British workers. Which is precisely what we had been forecasting. Whose policy, then, turns out to be correct, sober and revolutionary? The one that penetrates the machinations of the enemy and foresees the morrow? – or the policy that blindly assists the enemy to carry its perfidious plan to completion?

9. During the July 1926 plenum, a cable was received from the General Council with its gracious consent to meet with the representatives of the CEC of the Russian unions. At that time, this cable was played up as a victory not over the General Council but over the Opposition, What an effect there was when Comrade Lozovsky brought up this telegram!

What will you do [he demanded from the Opposition] if they [the General Council] do consent; more than that, what will you do if they have already consented? We have received such a cable today.

Trotsky: They have consented that we shield them temporarily by our prestige, now when they are preparing a new betrayal. [Disorder, laughter] [p.53]

All this is recorded in the minutes. At that time our forecasts were the subject for taunts, disorder, and laughter. Comrade Tomsky did indeed crow over the receipt of the cable.

Tomsky: Our little corpse is peering out of one eye ... [Loud laughter] [p.58]

Yes, the laughter was loud. Whom were you laughing at then, Comrade Andreev? You were laughing at yourselves.

And how Comrade Lozovsky did taunt the Opposition with the fact that its expectations had not materialized.

What makes you so certain [he inquired] that your second supposition will materialize? Wait ... [p.53]

To which we answered.

Trotsky: This means that for the moment the wiser and the more astute among them have gained the day, and that is why they have not broken as yet. [Disorder] [p.53]

Again “disorder”. To Andreev, Lozovsky, and others it was absolutely clear that the Opposition was motivated by “gross factional considerations”, and not by the concern for how we should distinguish correctly friends from enemies, and allies from traitors. Hence, the laughter and the disorder in the production of which Comrade Andreev by no means took the last place. “What makes you so certain that your second supposition will materialize?” inquired Comrade Lozovsky. “Wait ...’The majority was with Andreev and Lozovsky. We had to wait. We waited more than a year. And it so happened that the Anglo-Russian Committee, which according to Rykov should have tumbled bourgeois strongholds – assisted instead its own bourgeoisie to deal us a blow, and then screened Chamberlain’s blow by dealing its own supplementary blow.

When the test of great events comes, Comrade Andreev, one must always pay heavily for the policy of opportunistic illusions.

10. We have already recalled that Andreev in his report skipped completely over the Berlin conference of the ARC, April 1927, as if no such conference had ever been. Yet this conference marks the most important stage in the history of the ARC after the General Strike was broken. At the Berlin conference, the delegation of the CEC of the Russian unions renewed its mandate of faith in the General Council. The delegation behaved as if there had been neither the betrayal of the General Strike, nor the betrayal of the coal miners’ strike, nor the betrayal of the Chinese revolution, nor the betrayal of the USSR. All the notes of credit were renewed and Comrade Tomsky boasted that this was done in the spirit of perfect “mutual understanding” and “heart-to-heart relations”.

It is impossible to give traitors aid. What did we get for it? The disruption of the ARC within four months, at the time when our international position became worse. In the name of what did we capitulate in Berlin? Precisely upon this question, Comrade Andreev didn’t have a word to say to the membership meeting of the railwaymen.

Yet in Berlin capitulation was no accident. It flowed in its entirety from the policy of “preserving” the ARC at all costs. From the end of May 1926, the Opposition hammered away that it was impermissible to maintain a bloc with people we call traitors. Or the converse: we cannot call traitors people with whom we maintain a bloc.

We must break with the traitors at the moment of their greatest betrayal, in the eyes of loyal and indignant masses, aiding the masses to invest their indignation with the clearest possible political and organizational expression. This is what the Opposition demanded. And it also forewarned that if the bloc was not broken, the criticism of the General Council would necessarily have to be adapted to the bloc, i.e., reduced to nothing. This forecast was likewise completely verified.

The manifesto of the CEC of the Red International of Labour Unions on June 8, 1926, contained a rather sharp, although inadequate, criticism of the General Council. Subsequent manifestos and resolutions became paler and more diffuse. And on April 1, 1927, the Russian delegation capitulated completely to the General Council.

At no time was the position of the British trade union leaders so difficult as in May, June and July 1926. The fissure between the leaders and the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat stood revealed during that period as never before.

We had two courses open to us: to deepen this fissure or to assist the General Council to plug it up. Thanks to the assistance we gave the strikers, our prestige was very high. Our breaking relations with the General Council would have been a powerful supplementary blow to its authority and position. On the contrary, the preservation of the political and organizational bloc assisted the General Council to negotiate with least losses the frontier most dangerous to it. “Thank you,” it said to those who helped keep it in the saddle. “I can go on from here myself.” Incidentally, there was no gratitude expressed; the CEC of the Russian trade unions merely received, a kick.

On one point Andreev is correct: this break is the fulfilment of a carefully thought-out plan.

11. But did Andreev have a plan himself? We have already stated that he had none whatever. Perhaps the most severe indictment of Andreev lies in his silence about the Berlin conference of April 1927. Yet at the April plenum of the CEC, Comrade Andreev spoke very decisively in defence of this conference. Here is what he said then:

What did we set as our task? At this Anglo-Russian Committee [in Berlin] we set as our task to force the British to give us a direct and clear [!] answer to what their views were about continuing the existence of the Anglo-Russian Committee. And in my opinion, we did force them to do this [?!] jointly with us, they said that they were for continuing the existence of the Anglo-Russian Committee, for activizing it, and so forth. At this Anglo-Russian Committee we were to force through a definite decision upon the question of unity and to a certain degree the condemnation of the Amsterdam International for its evasion of unity proposals ... We forced such a decision. [?!] We forced through a resolution on this question. We had to force an answer from them on the question of the war danger, and imperialist mobilization. In my opinion, in this sphere also, we forced through, of course not a 100 per cent Bolshevik decision [?!], but a maximum possible decision that could have been forced through under the given conditions. [p.32]

Such were the victories gained by Comrade Andreev at the Berlin conference: the British expressed themselves “directly and clearly” in favour of continuing the existence of the ARC; more than that, in favour of “activizing it”. It is no laughing matter indeed! Andreev forced a clear answer from the British on the question of trade union unity, and finally – hear! hear! – on the question of war. Small wonder that in that very same speech of his, Comrade Andreev – poor fellow! – spoke of how the Opposition “has hopelessly sunk in the mire of its mistakes”.

But what to do now? In April “we forced the General Council to give us clear and direct answers.” The Opposition, sunk in the mire of its mistakes, alone failed to understand these successes. But in September, the Trades Union Congress arranged by the General Council broke with the Anglo-Russian Committee. Whence comes this contradiction between April and September? Right now, Andreev admits that the collapse of the ARC is the fulfilment of a plan conceived back at the time of the General Strike, that is, in May 1926. What then was the import of the “clear and direct” answers of the British in April 1927? Hence, it follows that these answers were neither clear nor direct, but swindles. The job of the General Council consisted in hoodwinking, gaining time, causing a delay, preparing the congress, and using it as a shield.

The Opposition issued timely warning on this score as well. Open the minutes of the April 1926 plenum to page 31. We said at that time:

“A particular danger to world peace is lodged in. the policy of the imperialists in China.”

This is what they have countersigned. How come their tongues didn’t turn inside out, or why didn’t we pull them by the tongue and compel them to speak out precisely who the imperialists were? It is no mere coincidence that all this was signed on the first day of April, this date is symbolic ... [Laughter]

Kaganovich: You mean to say we fooled them!

As may be observed, Comrade Kaganovich hit the bull’s eye. Now it has become quite clear as to who fooled whom. Andreev has some cause to be plaintive over the fact that after all his victories in April 1927 the British liquidated the ARC at that very moment when it was most urgently needed.

This, Comrade Andreev, is what one would call having hopelessly sunk in a mire.

12. But this wasn’t enough; Comrade Andreev expressed himself even more harshly about the Opposition at the April plenum:

Our Opposition comes out with the demand that we break with the British unions. Such a position is a position to isolate us at the most difficult moment, when imperialism is mobilizing its forces against us. You maintain that your position is presumably revolutionary, but you are giving objective aid to the Chamberlains because the Chamberlains want no connections whatever between our trade union movement and the English trade union movement, and they want no Anglo-Russian Committees to hinder them. [p.33]

The Opposition proposed that we do not seize hold of a rotten twig while passing over a precipice. But the policies defended by Comrade Andreev did bring us into isolation “at the most difficult moment, when imperialism is mobilizing its forces against us.” That is the job which was literally fulfilled by the official policies. By supporting the General Council, we weakened the Minority Movement.

Within the minority itself, by our conciliationist line, we supported the right elements against the left. By this policy we put a brake on the revolutionary education of the proletarian vanguard, including the Communist Party among the number. We assisted the General Council to hold its position without losses, to prepare a reactionary congress of trade union bureaucrats in Edinburgh, and to break with us against the resistance only of a small minority. We assisted the General Council to isolate us in our most difficult moment and thus to realize the plan conceived by the General Council far back during the time of the General Strike.

This, Comrade Andreev, implies giving objective aid to the Chamberlains!

13. But now, defending the policies of bankruptcy before a non-party meeting, Comrade Andreev says:

A few hotheads from the Opposition in our Communist Party proposed to us during the entire period the following tactic: “Break with the English traitors, break with the General Council.”

This utterly cheap, philistine phrase about “hotheads” is taken from the dictionary of middle-class reformism and opportunism, which are incapable of a long-range policy, that is to say, the policy of Marxist prescience and Bolshevik resolution. In April 1927, Andreev reckoned that he had forced serious commitments from the British. To this we replied:

Political swindlers in the staff of the Amsterdam agency of capitalism commonly sow pacifist bargains of this type in order to lull the workers and thus keep their own hands free for betrayal at the critical moment [p.38]

Who proved to be correct? Policies are tested by facts. We saw above what Andreev expected in April of this year, and what he received in September. Wretched niggardliness, shameful near sightedness! That is the name for your policy, Comrade Andreev!

14. Andreev has one remaining solace: “The responsibility (!) for the breaking up of this organization [the ARC] falls entirely and squarely (!!) upon the leaders of the British trade union movement.” This statement proves that Andreev has learned nothing. The “responsibility” for the breaking of the ARC! One might think that this was the most frightful of crimes against the working class. The General Council broke the General Strike, assisted the coal barons to enslave the miners, screened the destruction of Nanking, supported the policies of Chamberlain against the workers’ state, and will support Chamberlain in case of war. And Andreev seeks to scare these people by “responsibility” for breaking the ARC.

What did the British workers see of the ARC, particularly from the time of the General Strike: banquets, hollow resolutions, hypocritical and diplomatic speeches.

And on the other hand, since when have we become afraid of assuming the responsibility for breaking with traitors and betrayers? What sort of a pathetic, wishy-washy, rotten liberal way is this of putting the question, anyway! To prolong the life of the ARC for four months we paid by the most disgraceful capitulation it Berlin. But in return, don’t you see, we have rid ourselves of the most horrendous “responsibility” – the responsibility of having broken with the betrayers of the working class. But the entire history of Bolshevism is impregnated with the determination to assume responsibility of this sort!

Comrade Andreev, you axe also one of those who babble about Trotskyism but who have yet to grasp the main thing in Bolshevism.

15. The perplexed reporter says: “Now every proletarian must give himself a clear accounting, weigh the documents, and compare our policy with theirs” (Andreev, Report at the Meeting of Railwaymen).

This is, of course, a praiseworthy manner of putting the question. One shouldn’t accept anyone’s say so. On this score Lenin had the following to say: “He who accepts somebody’s word is a hopeless idiot.” This Leninist aphorism applies to all countries, the Soviet Union among them. It is essential that our workers gain a clear conception of the policies of Comrade Andreev, i.e., the entire official policy in the question of the Anglo-Russian Committee. To this end, all the documents must be published and made available to every worker.

We trust that Comrade Andreev will support this proposal of ours. Otherwise he’ll be in the position of one who maintains that what is good for the British is death for Russians. But this is the viewpoint of chauvinists and not internationalist revolutionists.

16. But what to do now, after the rotten stage decoration has collapsed completely? Comrade Andreev replies: “The leaders refuse to make agreements with us – we will carry on this policy of the united front over the heads of the leaders and against their wishes, we shall carry it on from below, by means of our ties with the masses, their rank-and-fide organization, and so forth.”

Fine. But didn’t Manuilsky say more than a year ago, at the July plenum:

Comrade Zinoviev appears here to console us that after breaking with the Anglo-Russian Committee we shall have to build new bridges to the workers’ movement. But I want to ask – have you seen these bridges? Did Comrade Zinoviev outline new ways for realizing the idea of trade union unity? What is worst in the entire Opposition of Comrades Zinoviev and Trotsky is this state of helplessness (!!!). [p.24]

Thus a year ago the proclamation read that the liquidation of the Anglo-Russian Committee must create a state of helplessness: there being no other bridges in sight. He was considered a true revolutionary optimist who believed in the Purcellian bridge. And now this bridge has collapsed. Cannot one draw the conclusion that precisely Manuilsky’s position is the position of helplessness and occlusion? It may be objected that no one would take Manuilsky seriously. Agreed. But didn’t all the other defenders of the official line declare that the ARC is the “incarnation” of the brotherhood between the Russian and British proletariat, the bridge to the masses, the instrument of the defence of the USSR, and so forth and so on ...?!

To the Opposition – such was the objection of the representatives of the official line – the Anglo-Russian Committee is the bloc between leaders, but for us it is the bloc of toiling masses, the incarnation of their union. Now, permit us to ask: Is the breaking of the ARC the breaking of the union of the toiling masses? Comrade Andreev seems to say – no. But this very same answer goes to prove that the ARC did not represent the union of toiling masses, for it is impossible to make a union with strikers through the strike-breakers.

17. It is incontestable that we must find ways other than the General Council. Moreover, after this reactionary partition has been eliminated, only then do we obtain the possibility of seeking genuine connections with the genuine masses. lle first condition for success on this road is the merciless condemnation of the official line toward the Anglo-Russian Committee for the entire recent period, i.e., from the beginning of the General Strike.

18. The tremendous movements of the English proletariat have naturally not passed without leaving a trace. The Communist Party has become stronger – both in numbers and in influence – as a result of its participation in the mass struggles. The processes of differentiation within the many-millioned masses continue to take place. As is always the case after major defeats, certain and rather wide circles of the working class suffer a temporary drop in activity. The reactionary bureaucracy entrenches itself, surmounting internal shadings. At the left pole a selection of revolutionary elements and the strengthening of the Communist Party takes place at a rate more rapid than prior to the strike.

All these phenomena flow with iron inevitability from the gigantic revolutionary wave which broke against the resistance not only of the bourgeoisie but also of its own official leadership. One can and must continue building on this foundation. However, the thoroughly false policy restricted to the extreme the sweep of the offensive and weakened its revolutionary consequences. With a correct policy, the Communist Party could have garnered immeasurably more abundant revolutionary fruits. By the continuation of the incorrect policies it risks losing what it has gained.

19. Comrade Andreev points to the workers’ delegations as one of the ways toward establishing connections with the British masses. Naturally, workers’ delegations, well-picked and well-instructed, can also bring benefit to the cause of workers’ unity. But it would be a rock-bottom mistake to push this method to the foreground. The import of workers’ delegations is purely auxiliary. Our fundamental connection with the British working class is through the Communist Party.

It is possible to find the road to the toiling masses organized into trade unions not through combinations, nor through false deals at the top but through the correct revolutionary policy of the British Communist Party, the Comintern, Profintern and the Russian unions. The masses can be won over only by a sustained revolutionary line. Once again this stands revealed in all its certainty, after the collapse of the ARC. As a matter of fact, the point of departure for the erroneous line in the question of the ARC was the straining to supplant growth of the influence of the Communist Party by skilled diplomacy in relation to the leaders of the trade unions.

If any one tried to leap over actual and necessary and inevitable stages, it was Stalin and Bukharin. It seemed to them that they would be able through cunning manoeuvres and combinations to promote the British working class to the highest class without the Communist Party, or rather with some co-operation from it. This was also the initial error of Comrade Tomsky. Again, however, there is nothing original in this mistake. That is how opportunism always begins. The development of the class appears to it to be much too slow and it seeks to reap what it has not sown, or what has not ripened as yet. Such, for example, was the source of the opportunistic mistakes of Ferdinand Lassalle.

But after the methods of diplomacy and combination have described a complete circle, opportunism then returns, like the fishwife in the fable, to its broken trough. Had we from the very beginning correctly understood that the ARC is a temporary bloc with reformists which can be maintained only up to their first shift to the right; had we generally understood that a united front with the “leaders” can have only an ephemeral, episodic, and subordinate significance; had we, in correspondence with all this, broken with the Anglo-Russian Committee on that very day when it refused to accept the assistance of the Russian workers to the British strikers – this entire tactical experiment would have been justified. We would have given impetus to the movement of the left minority and the British Communist Party would have received a lesson in the correct application of the tactic of the united front.

Instead of this we shifted the tactical axis over to the side of the bloc with the reformist leaders. We attempted to transform a temporary and an entirely legitimate agreement into a permanent institution. This institution was proclaimed by us to be the core of the struggle for the unity of the world proletariat, the centre of the revolutionary struggle against war, and so forth and so on. Thus we created political fictions, and we preached to the workers to have faith in these fictions, i.e., we were performing work which is profoundly harmful and inimical to the revolution.

To the extent that the treacherous character of our allies became revealed – to which we tried to shut our eyes as long as possible – we proclaimed that the crux of the matter lay not in them, not in the General Council: that the ARC is not a bloc between leaders but a union of masses, that the ARC is only the “incarnation,” only a “symbol,” and so forth and so on. This was already the direct policy of lies, falsehoods, and rotten masquerades. This web of falseness was crumpled by great events. Instead of lisping, “the responsibility for this does not fall on us,” we must say, “to our shame – we deserve no credit for it.”

Andreev says that the whole truth must be told to every British worker. Of course, everything possible must be done. But this is not at all easy. When Andreev says: “Now no one will believe the members of the General Council any longer,” that is simply a cheap phrase. As the Edinburgh congress shows, our policy strengthened the General Council. The Berlin conference alone – disregarding all the rest – did not pass scot-free for us. We shall have not only to scrub but to scrape away the ideological confusion we have spread. This primarily refers to the British Communist Party, and in the second place to the left-wing Minority Movement.

As far back as the time of the General Strike, as well as the miners’ strike, the leadership of the British Communist Party was far from always able to display initiative and resolution. One must not forget that the CEC of the British Communist Party long refused to print the July 8 manifesto of the Russian unions as too sharp toward the General Council.

For him who is able to judge symptoms, this episode must appear as extremely alarming. A young Communist Party, whose entire strength lies in criticism and irreconcilability, reveals at the decisive moment a surplus of qualities of the opposite order. At bottom of it is the false understanding and the false application of the policy of the united front.

Day in and day out the British Communist Party, was taught that the union with Purcell and Hicks would aid the cause of the defence of the USSR and that the Russian Opposition, which does not believe this, was guilty of defeatism. Everything was stood on its head. This could not pass without leaving its traces upon the consciousness of the British Communist Party ...

This could not and it did not pass scot-free. The right-wing tendencies have become extremely strengthened among the leading circles of the British Communist Party: enough to recall the dissatisfaction of a number of the members of the British Central Committee with the Comintern theses on war as being too far “left”; enough to recall Pollitt’s speech in Edinburgh, the speeches and articles of Murphy, and so on.

All these symptoms indicate one and the same thing: for a young Party, still lacking real Bolshevik tempering, the policies of the Anglo-Russian Committee inevitably implied the opportunistic dislocation of its entire line.

This applies even to a larger measure to the left-wing Minority Movement. The evil caused here is not so easily remedied. It is pregnant with party crises in the future. Of course these words will supply pathetic functionaries with the pretext to speak of our hostility toward the British Communist Party and so forth. We have witnessed this in the past more than once, particularly in the case of China. Up to the last moment the Chinese Communist Party was proclaimed as the exemplar of Bolshevik policies, and after the collapse – as the progeny of Menshevism. We have nothing in common with such repulsive political sliminess. It has already brought the greatest harm both to our party and to the Comintern. But this will not cause us to pause on the road of fulfilling our revolutionary duty.

Andreev’s report aims to smear over one of the greatest tactical lessons of the recent period. In this lies the most serious harmfulness of the report and of similar speeches and documents. It is possible to move forward only on the basis of an all-sided examination of the experience with the Anglo-Russian Committee. To this end all the basic documents that shed light on this question must be made available to all Communists. In order to move forward it is necessary to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, both to the Russian and British workers.

Dated 23rd September, 1927; first published

in The New International, September-October 1934

Trotsky on the Struggle in Britain in Retrospect

In the hunt after an artificial acceleration of the periods, not only were Radic, LaFollette, the peasant millions of Dombal, and even Pepper clutched at, but a basically false perspective was also built up for Britain. The weaknesses of the British Communist Party gave birth at that time to the necessity of replacing it as quickly as possible with a more imposing factor. Precisely then was born the false estimate of the tendencies in British trade unionism. Zinoviev gave us to understand that he counted upon the revolution finding an entrance, not through the narrow gateway of the British Communist Party, but through the broad portals of the trade unions. The struggle to win the masses organized in the trade unions through the communist party was replaced by the hope for the swiftest possible utilization of the ready-made apparatus of the trade unions for the purposes of the revolution. Out of this false position sprang the later policy of the Anglo-Russian Committee which dealt a blow to the Soviet Union, as well as to the British working class; a blow surpassed only by the defeat in China.

In the Lessons of October, written as early as the summer of 1924, the idea of an accelerated road – accelerated through friendship with Purcell and Cook, as the further development of this idea showed – is refuted as follows:

Without the party, independently of the party, skipping over the party, through a substitute for the party, the proletarian revolution can never triumph. That is the principal lesson of the last decade. To be sure, the British trade unions can become a powerful lever of the proletarian revolution. They can, for example, under certain conditions and for a certain period, even replace the workers’ Soviets. But they cannot play such a role without the Communist Party and certainly not against it, but only provided that communist influence in the trade unions becomes decisive. We have paid too dearly for this conclusion as to the role and significance of the party for the proletarian revolution to renounce it so lightly or even to have it weakened. (Trotsky, Works, Vol.III, part 1, p.9)

The same problem is posed on a wider scale in my book Where is Britain Going?. This book, from beginning to end, is devoted to proving the idea that the British revolution, too, cannot avoid the portals of communism and that with a correct, courageous and intransigent policy which steers clear of any illusions with regard to detours, the British Communist Party can grow by leaps and bounds and mature so as to be equal in the course of a few years to the tasks before it.

The Left illusions of 1924 rose thanks to the Right leaven. In order to conceal the significance of the mistakes and defeats of 1923 from others as well as from oneself, the process of the swing to the Right that was taking place in the proletariat had to be denied and revolutionary processes within the other classes optimistically exaggerated. That was the beginning of the down-sliding from the proletarian line to the centrist, that is, to the petty bourgeois line which, in the course of the increasing stabilization, was to liberate itself from its ultra-Left shell and reveal itself as a crude collaborationist line in the USSR, in China, in Britain, in Germany and everywhere else ...

As to the Anglo-Russian Committee, the third most important question from the strategical experiences of the Comintern in recent years, there only remains for us, after all that has already been said by the Opposition in a series of articles, speeches, and theses, to make a brief summary.

The point of departure of the Anglo-Russian Committee, as we have already seen, was the impatient urge to leap over the young and too slowly developing communist party. This invested the entire experience with a false character even prior to the General Strike.

The Anglo-Russian Committee was looked upon not as an episodic bloc of the tops which would have to be broken and which would inevitably and demonstratively be broken at the very first serious test in order to compromise the General Council. No, not only Stalin, Bukharin, Tomsky and others, but also Zinoviev saw in it a long lasting “co-partnership” – an instrument for the systematic revolutionization of the British working masses, and if not the gate, at least an approach to the gate through which would stride the revolution of the British proletariat. The further it went, the more the Anglo-Russian Committee became transformed from an episodic alliance into an inviolable principle standing above the real class struggle. This became revealed at the time of the General Strike.

The transition of the mass movement into the open revolutionary stage threw back into the camp of the bourgeois reaction those liberal labour politicians who had become somewhat Left. They betrayed the General Strike openly and deliberately; after which they undermined and betrayed the miners’ strike. The possibility of betrayal is always contained in reformism. But this does not mean to say that reformism and betrayal are one and the same thing at every moment. Not quite. Temporary agreements may be made with the reformists whenever they take a step forward. But to maintain a bloc with them when, frightened by the development of a movement, they commit treason, is equivalent to criminal toleration of traitors and a veiling of betrayal.

The General Strike had the task of exerting a united pressure upon the employers and the state with the power of the five million workers, for the question of the coal mining industry had become the most important question of state policy. Thanks to the betrayal of the leadership, the strike was broken in its first stage. It was a great illusion to continue in the belief that an isolated economic strike of the miners would alone achieve what the General Strike did not achieve. That is precisely where the power of the General Council lay. It aimed with cold calculation at the defeat of the mineworkers, as a result of which considerable sections of the workers would be convinced of the “correctness” and the “reasonableness” of the Judas directives of the General Council.

The maintenance of the amicable bloc with the General Council, and the simultaneous support of the protracted and isolated economic strike of the mineworkers, which the General Council came out against, seemed, as it were, to be calculated beforehand to allow the heads of the trade unions to emerge from this heaviest test with the least possible losses.

The role of the Russian trade unions here, from the revolutionary standpoint, turned out to be very disadvantageous and positively pitiable. Certainly, support of an economic strike, even an isolated one, was absolutely necessary. There can be no two opinions on that among revolutionists. But this support should have borne not only a financial but also a revolutionary-political character. The All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions should have declared openly to the British mineworkers’ union and the whole British working class that the mineworkers’ strike could seriously count upon success only if by its stubbornness, its tenacity, and its scope, it could prepare the way for a new outbreak of the General Strike. That could have been achieved only by an open and direct struggle against the General Council, the agency of the government and the: mine owners. The struggle to convert the economic strike into a political strike should have signified, therefore, a furious political and organizational war against the General Council. The first step to such a war had to be the break with the Anglo-Russian Committee, which had become a reactionary obstacle, a chain on the feet of the working class.

No revolutionist who weighs his words will contend that a victory would have been guaranteed by proceeding along this Line. But a victory was possible only on this road. A defeat on this road was a defeat on a road that could lead later to victory. Such a defeat educates, that is, strengthens the revolutionary ideas in the working class. In the meantime, mere financial support of the lingering and hopeless trade union strike (trade union strike – in its methods; revolutionary-political – in its aims), only meant grist to the mill of the General Council, which was biding calmly until the strike collapsed from starvation and thereby proved its own “correctness”. Of course, the General Council could not easily bide its time for several months in the role of an open strike-breaker. It was precisely during this very critical period that the General Council required the Anglo-Russian Committee as its political screen from the masses. Thus, the questions of the mortal class struggle between British capital and the proletariat, between the General Council and the mineworkers, were transformed, as it were, into questions of a friendly discussion between allies in the same bloc, the British General Council and the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, on the subject of which of the two roads was better at that moment: the road of an agreement, or the road of an isolated economic struggle. The inevitable outcome of the strike led to the agreement, that is, tragically settled the friendly “discussion” in favour of the General Council.

From beginning to end, the entire policy of the Anglo-Russian Committee, because of its false line, provided only aid to the General Council. Even the fact that the strike was long sustained financially by the great self-sacrifice on the part of the Russian working class, did not serve the mineworkers or the British Communist Party, but the self-same General Council. As the upshot of the greatest revolutionary movement in Britain since the days of Chartism, the British Communist Party has hardly grown while the General Council sits in the saddle even more firmly than before the general strike.

Such are the results of this unique “strategical manoeuvre”.

The obstinacy evinced in retaining the bloc with the General Council, which led to downright servility at the disgraceful Berlin session in April 1927, was explained away by the ever recurring reference to the very same “stabilization”. If there is a setback in the development of the revolution, then, you see, one is forced to cling to Purcell. This argument, which appeared very profound to a Soviet functionary or to a trade unionist of the type of Melnichansky, is in reality a perfect example of blind empiricism – adulterated by scholasticism at that. What was the significance of “stabilization” in relation to British economy and politics, especially in the years 1926-1927? Did it signify the development of the productive forces? The improvement of the economic situation? Better hopes for the future? Not at all. The whole so-called stabilization of British capitalism is maintained only upon the conservative forces of the old labour organizations with all their currents and shadings in the face of the weakness arid irresoluteness of the British Communist Party. On the field of the economic and social relations of Britain, the revolution has already fully matured. The question stands purely politically. The basic props, of the stabilization are the heads of the Labour Party and the trade unions which, in Britain, constitute a single unit but which operate through a division of labour.

Given such a condition of the working masses as was revealed by the General Strike, the highest post in the mechanism of capitalist stabilization is no longer occupied by MacDonald and Thomas, but by Pugh, Purcell, Cook and Co. They do the work and Thomas adds the finishing touches. Without Purcell, Thomas would be left hanging in mid-air and along with Thomas also Baldwin. The chief brake upon the British revolution is the false, diplomatic masquerade “Leftism” of Purcell which fraternizes sometimes in rotation, sometimes simultaneously with churchmen and Bolsheviks and which is always ready not only for retreats but also for betrayal. Stabilization is Purcellism. From this we see what depths of theoretical absurdity and blind opportunism are expressed in the reference to the existence of “stabilization” in order to justify the political bloc with Purcell. Yet, precisely in order to shatter the “stabilization”, Purcellism had first to be destroyed. In such a situation, even a shadow of solidarity with the General Council was the greatest crime and infamy against the working masses.

Even the most correct strategy cannot, by itself, always lead to victory. The correctness of a strategical plan is verified by whether it follows the line of the actual development of class forces and whether it estimates the elements of this development realistically. The gravest and most disgraceful defeat which has the most fatal consequences for the movement is the typically Menshevist defeat, due to a false estimate of the classes, an underestimation of the revolutionary factors, and an idealization of the enemy forces. Such were our defeats in China and Britain.

What was expected from the Anglo-Russian Committee for the USSR?

In July 1926, Stalin lectured to us at the joint plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission as follows:

“The task of this bloc [the Anglo-Russian Committee] consists in organizing a broad movement of the working class against new imperialist wars and generally against an intervention in our country (especially) on the part of the mightiest of the imperialist powers of Europe, on the part of Britain in particular.”

While he was instructing us Oppositionists, to the effect that “care must be taken to defend the first workers’ republic of the world against intervention” (we, naturally, are unaware of this), Stalin added:

“If the reactionary trade unions of Britain are ready to conclude a bloc with the revolutionary trade unions of our country against the counter-revolutionary imperialists of their own country, then why should we not hail such a bloc?”

If the “reactionary trade unions” were capable of conducting a struggle against their own imperialists they would not be reactionary. Stalin is incapable of distinguishing any longer between the conceptions reactionary and revolutionary. He characterizes the British trade unions as reactionary as a matter of routine but in reality he entertains miserable illusions with regard to their “revolutionary spirit”.

After Stalin, the Moscow Committee of our party lectured to the workers of Moscow:

“The Anglo-Russian Committee can, must, and will undoubtedly play an enormous role in the struggle against all possible interventions directed against the USSR. It will become the organizing centre of the international forces of the proletariat for the struggle against every attempt of the international bourgeoisie to provoke a new war.” (Theses of the Moscow Committee)

What did the Opposition reply? We said:

“The more acute the international situation becomes, the more the Anglo-Russian Committee will be transformed into a weapon of British and international imperialism.”

This criticism of the Stalinist hopes in Purcell as the guardian angel of the workers’ state was characterized by Stalin at the very same plenum as a deviation “from Leninism to Trotskyism”.

Voroshilov: “Correct”

A Voice: Voroshilov has affixed his seal to it.”

Trotsky: “Fortunately all this will be in the Minutes.”

Yes, all this is to be found in the Minutes of the July plenum at which the blind, rude and disloyal opportunists dared to accuse the Opposition of “defeatism”.

This dialogue which I am compelled to quote briefly from my earlier article, What We Gave and What We Got, is far more useful as a strategical lesson than the entire sophomoric chapter on strategy in the draft programme. The question – what we gave (and expected) and what we got? – is in general the principal criterion in strategy. It must be applied at the Sixth Congress to all questions that have been on the agenda in recent years. It will then be revealed conclusively that the strategy of the ECCI, especially since the year 1926, was a strategy of imaginary sums, false calculations, illusions with regard to the enemy, and persecutions of the most reliable and unwavering militants. In a word, it was the rotten strategy of Right-Centrism.

From Strategy and tactics in the imperialist epoch

(dated 28th June, 1928), first published in Die Internationale

Revolution und die Kommunistische Internationale, 1929

Errors of Syndicalism (Extract)

2. ... In the capitalist states, the most monstrous forms of bureaucratism. are to be observed precisely in the trade unions. It is enough to look at America, Britain and Germany. Amsterdam is a powerful international organization of the trade union bureaucracy. It is thanks to it that the whole structure of capitalism now stands upright, above all in Europe and especially in Britain. If there were not a bureaucracy of the trade unions, then the police, the army, the courts, the lords, the monarchy would appear before the proletarian masses as nothing but pitiful ridiculous playthings. The bureaucracy of the trade unions is the backbone of British imperialism. It is by means of this bureaucracy that the bourgeoisie exists, not only in the metropolis, but in India, in Egypt and in the other colonies. One would have to be completely blind to say to the British workers: “Be on guard against the conquest of power and always remember that your trade unions are the antidote to the dangers of the state”. The Marxist will say to the British workers: “The trade union bureaucracy is the chief instrument for your oppression by the bourgeois state. Power must be wrested from the hands of the bourgeoisie and for that its principal agent, the trade union bureaucracy, must be overthrown”. Parenthetically, it is especially for this reason that the bloc of Stalin with the strike-breaker Purcell was so criminal.

From the example of Britain, one sees very clearly how absurd it is to counterpose in principle trade union organization to state organization. In Britain, more than anywhere else, the state rests upon the back of the working class which constitutes the overwhelming majority of the population of the country. The mechanism is such that the bureaucracy is based directly on the workers, and the state indirectly, through the intermediarv of the trade union bureaucracy.

Up to now, we have not mentioned the Labour Party which, in Britain, the classic country of trade unions, is only a political transposition of the same trade union bureaucracy. The same leaders guide the trade unions, betray the General Strike, lead the electoral campaign and later on sit in the ministries. The Labour Party and the trade unions – these are not two principles, they are only a technical division of labour. Together they axe the fundamental support of the domination of the British bourgeoisie. The latter cannot be overthrown without overthrowing the Labourite bureaucracy. And that cannot be attained by opposing the trade union as such to the state as such, but by the active opposition of the Communist Party to the Labourite bureaucracy in all fields of social life. In the trade unions, in strikes, in the electoral campaign, in parliament and in power. The principal task of a real party of the proletariat consists of putting itself at the head of the working masses, organized in trade unions and unorganized, to wrest power from the bourgeoisie and to strike a death-blow to the “dangers of state-ism”.

From The Errors in Principle of Syndicalism,

Byulleten Oppozitsii, November-December 1929

My Life (Extract)

3. Stalin, Bukharin and, in the first period, Zinoviev as well, considered as the crowning achievement of their policy, the policy of a diplomatic bloc between the top circles of the Soviet trade unions and the General Council of the British trade unions. In his provincial narrowness Stalin had imagined that Purcell and the other trade union leaders were ready or capable of giving support to the Soviet republic against the British bourgeoisie in a difficult moment. As for the trade union leaders they, not without grounds, considered that in view of the crisis of British capitalism and the growing discontent of the masses it would be advantageous for them to have a cover from the left in the shape of an official friendship with the leaders of the Soviet trade unions that committed them to nothing. Both parties beat carefully about the bush most of all fearing above all to call things by their real names. A rotten policy has more than once before foundered on great events. The General Strike of May 1926 was a great event not only in the life of Britain but also in the internal life of our party.

Britain’s fate after the war presented exceptional interest. The abrupt change in her world position could not but produce an equally abrupt change in the internal balance of forces. It was absolutely clear that even if Europe, including Britain, was again to reach a certain social equilibrium for a more or less prolonged period Britain could not arrive at such an equilibrium other than through a series of the gravest conflicts and upheavals. I considered it probable that the conflict in the coal industry in Britain especially could lead to a general strike. From this I deduced that in the near future the deep contradiction between the old organisations of the working class and its new historical tasks would be inevitably revealed. In the winter and spring of 1925 in the Caucasus I wrote a book on this topic (Where is Britain Going?). The book was in essence directed against the Politburo’s official conception with its hopes for a leftward swing in the General Council and for a gradual and painless penetration of communism into the ranks of the Labour Party and the trade unions. Partly in order to avoid unnecessary complications and partly in order to test out my opponents I passed the manuscript of the book for scrutiny by the Politburo. As it was a question of a prognosis and not a criticism in retrospect none of the Politburo members decided to make observations. The book passed the censorship favourably and it was printed just as it was written without the slightest alternation. It quickly appeared in English too. The official leaders of British socialism treated it as the fantasy of a foreigner who did not know British conditions and dreamt of transplanting a “Russian” general strike onto the soil of the British Isles. Such reactions could be counted in dozens if not in hundreds beginning with MacDonald himself to whom in the political banalities competition first place must unquestionably belong. Meanwhile hardly had several months passed when the miners’ strike turned into a general strike. I had not at all reckoned on such a speedy confirmation of the prognosis. If the General Strike demonstrated the correctness of a Marxist prognosis as opposed to the homespun estimations made by British reformism then the behaviour of the General Council during the General Strike signified the dashing of Stalin’s hopes in Purcell. In the clinic I gathered and brought together with great eagerness all the material characterizing the course of the General Strike and the inter-relations of the masses and the leaders in particular. I was above all exasperated by the nature of the articles in the Moscow Pravda. Its main task lay in covering up bankruptcy and saving face. This could not be achieved in any other way than by a cynical distortion of the facts. There can be no greater ideological decline for a revolutionary politician than deceiving the masses!

Upon my arrival in Moscow I demanded the immediate break of the bloc with the General Council. Zinoviev after the inevitable wavering supported me. Radek was against. Stalin clung to the bloc and even to the semblance of one for all his worth. The British trade union leaders waited until the end of their sharp internal crisis and then shoved their generous if dull-witted ally out with an impolite movement of the foot.

From Chapter 42 of My Life (1930)

Mistakes of the Right Elements ... (Extract)

4. The disastrous experience with the Anglo-Russian Committee was based entirely upon effacing the independence of the British Communist Party. In order that the Soviet trade unions might maintain the bloc with the strike-breakers of the General Council (allegedly in the state interests of the USSR!) the British Communist Party had to be deprived of all independence. This was obtained by the actual dissolution of the party into the so-called “Minority Movement”, that is, a “left” opposition inside the trade unions.

The experience of the Anglo-Russian Committee was unfortunately the least understood and grasped even in the Left Opposition groups. The demands for a break with the strike-breakers appeared even to some within our ranks as ... sectarianism. Especially with Monatte, the original sin which led him into the arms of Dumoulin was most clearly manifested in the question of the Anglo-Russian Committee. Yet, this question has a gigantic importance: without a clear understanding of what happened in Britain in 1925-1926, neither Communism as a whole nor the Left Opposition in particular will be able to find its way on the road.

Stalin, Bukharin, Zinoviev – in this question they were all in solidarity, at least in the first period – sought to replace the weak British Communist Party by a “broader current” which had at its head, to be sure, not members of the party, but “friends”, almost Communists, at any rate, fine fellows and good acquaintances. The fine fellows, the solid “leaders”, did not, of course, want to submit themselves to the leadership of a small, weak Communist Party. That was their full right; the party cannot force anybody to submit himself to it. The agreements between the Communists and the “Lefts” (Purcell, Hicks and Cook) on the basis of the partial tasks of the trade union movement were, of course, quite possible and in certain cases unavoidable. But on one condition: the Communist Party had to preserve its complete independence, even within the trade unions, act in its own name in all the questions of principle, criticize its “Left” allies whenever necessary, and in this way, win the confidence of the masses step by step.

This only possible road, however, appeared too long and uncertain to the bureaucrats of the Communist International. They considered that by means of personal influence upon Purcell, Hicks, Cook and the others (conversations behind the scenes, correspondence, banquets, friendly back-slapping, gentle exhortations), they would gradually and imperceptibly draw the “Left” opposition (“the broad current”) into the stream of the Communist International. To guarantee such a success with greater security, the dear friends (Purcell, Hicks and Cook) were not to be vexed, or exasperated, or displeased by petty chicanery, by inopportune criticism, by sectarian intransigence, and so forth ... But since one of the tasks of the Communist Party consists precisely of upsetting the peace of and alarming all centrists and semi-centrists a radical measure had to be resorted to by actually subordinating the Communist Party to the “Minority Movement”. On the trade union field there appeared only the leaders of this movement. The British Communist Party had practically ceased to exist for the masses.

What did the Russian Left Opposition demand in this question? In the first place, to re-establish the complete independence of the British Communist Party towards the trade unions. We affirmed that it is only under the influence of the independent slogans of the party and of its open criticism that the Minority Movement could take form, appreciate its tasks more precisely, change its leaders, fortify itself in the trade unions while consolidating the position of communism.

What did Stalin, Bukharin, Lozovsky and company reply to our criticism? “You want to push the British Communist Party on to the road of sectarianism. You want to drive Purcell, Hicks and Cook into the enemy’s camp. You want to break with the Minority Movement.”

What did the Left Opposition rejoin? “If Purcell and Hicks break with us, not because we demand of them that they transform themselves immediately into Communists – nobody demands that! – but because we ourselves want to remain Communists, this means that Purcell and company are not friends but masked enemies. The quicker they show their nature, the better for the masses. We do not at all want to break with the Minority Movement. On the contrary, we must give the greatest attention to this movement. The smallest step forward with the masses or with a part of the masses is worth more than a dozen abstract programmes of circles of intellectuals, but the attention devoted to the masses has nothing in common with capitulation before their temporary leaders and semi-leaders. The masses need a correct orientation and correct slogans. This excludes all theoretical conciliation and the patronage of confusionists who exploit the backwardness of the masses.”

What were the results of the Stalinists’ British experiment? The Minority Movement, embracing almost a million workers, seemed very promising, but it bore the germs of destruction within itself. The masses knew as the leaders of the movement only Purcell, Hicks and Cook, whom, moreover, Moscow vouched for. These “left” friends, in a serious test, shamefully betrayed the proletariat. The revolutionary workers were thrown into confusion, sank into apathy and naturally extended their disappointment to the Communist Party itself which had only been the passive part of this whole mechanism of betrayal and perfidy. The Minority Movement was reduced to zero; the Communist Party returned to the existence of a negligible sect. In this way, thanks to a radically false conception of the party, the greatest movement of the English proletariat, which led to the General Strike, not only did not shake the apparatus of the reactionary bureaucracy, but, on the contrary, reinforced it and compromised Communism in Great Britain for a long time.

From The mistakes of the Right elements of

the French Communist League on the trade union question

(dated 4th January 1931), Byulleten Oppozitsii, March 1931