The Lesson of Mill's Treachery, October 13, 1932

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The case of Mill represents one of those episodes which, generally speaking, are quite inevitable in the process of selecting and educating our cadres. The Left Opposition is under terrific pressure. But not all are up to it. There will still be not a few cases of regrouping and of personal desertion. In this letter I would like to draw out of the Mill episode certain lessons which it seems to me are simple and not open to dispute.

Lenin spoke of ultraleftism as an infantile malady. But we must remember that ultraleftism is not the only political infantile malady; there are others too. As everyone knows, children find it hard to realize the nature of their illness or even its location. There is something of this sort in politics too. It requires a fairly high degree of maturity for two groups, at the very moment of their birth, to be able to define more or less clearly the cardinal points of their differences. More often young groups, like sick children, complain of pains in the arm or leg, while the pain in reality is in the belly. Individuals, or little groups, insufficiently hardened for a tenacious and long-range task of organization and education, disillusioned by the fact that success does not fall from the sky, ordinarily do not take account of the fact that the source of their failures lies in themselves, in their inconsistency, in their softness, in their petty-bourgeois sentimentalism. They seek the blame for their shortcomings outside of themselves and generally find it in the bad character of X or Y. Often enough they end by making a bloc with Z, with whom they do not agree on anything, against Y, with whom, as they say, they are in agreement on everything. When serious revolutionists are then astonished or indignant at their attitude, they begin to protest that an "intrigue" is being woven against them. This pernicious road, observed more than once in various sections, has been followed to the end in the Mill episode and that is why it is particularly instructive.

How did Mill become a member of the Administrative Secretariat? I have spoken of this in my note for the press. Objective conditions demanded the presence at the Secretariat of a person who was closely connected with the center of the Russian Opposition, able to translate Russian documents, carry on correspondence, etc. Mill appeared as the only possible candidate, practically speaking. He declared his complete solidarity with the Russian Opposition, and took part in the struggle against Landau, Rosmer, etc. All our comrades will remember how Mill then, in the course of absolutely unprincipled conflicts with the leading group of the French League, suddenly tried to conclude a bloc with Rosmer, who had already abandoned the ranks of the League.

What did this fact mean? How was it possible for a responsible member, in the course of twenty-four hours, to change his position on a highly important question for the sake of personal considerations? Mill himself continued to declare that he had no kind of political differences with the Russian Opposition, only that such and such French comrades "displeased him." In other words, Mill had recourse to the same arguments which only the day before he had condemned in Rosmer. Rosmer has even built on the basis of the opposition between ideas and people a purely anecdotal theory which shows beyond any doubt that Rosmer broke with the Comintern not because he had raised himself to a higher historical point of view, but because at bottom he had not grown to an understanding of revolutionary policy and the revolutionary party.

The only conclusion which could be drawn from the unworthy conduct of Mill was this: for Mill, principles are in general clearly of no importance; personal considerations, sympathies, and antipathies determine his political conduct to a greater degree than principles and ideas. The fact that Mill could propose a bloc with a man whom he had defined as non-Marxist, against comrades whom he had held to be Marxists, showed clearly that Mill was politically and morally unreliable and that he was incapable of keeping his loyalty to the cause. If on that day he betrayed on a small scale, he was capable of betraying tomorrow on a larger scale. That was the conclusion which every revolutionary should have drawn.

The Russian Opposition, which more than all the other sections was responsible for having brought Mill into the Secretariat, immediately proposed his removal from that body. But what happened? This proposal, natural, urgent, corresponding to the entire situation, met with resistance among certain comrades. In the first rank were the comrades of the Spanish section, who even considered it possible to propose Mill as the representative of the Spanish section in the International Secretariat. At the same time they declared that they had no political differences with the leadership of the International Left Opposition.

This most unexpected step made a shocking impression on many of us at the time. But we asked, by what do the Spanish comrades let themselves be guided when they take up Mill as a cause? It is clear. They see in Mill a comrade who has been "crossed," and they hasten to take up his defense. In other words, on a political question of exceptional importance they let themselves be guided by considerations which are not political, not revolutionary, but personal and sentimental.

If Mill tried to conclude a bloc with the deserter Rosmer against the French League, the leading Spanish comrades concluded a bloc with Mill against the Russian, French, and a number of other sections, although in their own words they had no differences with them. We see in what a maze one can be lost by being guided, on important questions, not by political revolutionary considerations, but by impressions, sentimentalism, and personal sympathies and antipathies!

The fact that Mill "in search of work" entered into negotiations with the Stalinists and finally undertakes to "unmask" the Left Opposition in the press shows definitely that Mill is a corrupt petty bourgeois. Surely no one in our ranks will deny this. But this alone is not enough: we must understand that the sudden turn of Mill toward Rosmer was in its time only the dress rehearsal for his present turn toward the Stalinists. The basis for both acts of treason was the same inadequacy of the petty bourgeois who had fallen into the sphere of revolutionary politics.

I pause on this question with so much detail not on account of Mill, but on account of the question of the selection and education of the cadres of the Left Opposition. This process is far from finished, although it is precisely in this field that we have important successes to our credit.

The Spanish Opposition at present is going through an extremely difficult crisis. The leadership elected at the last conference has fallen apart although no principled basis for this decomposition can be found; for each member of the Central Committee, we are referred to some particular personal reason. Still, for anyone who in the past had seriously gone into the position of the Central Committee of the Spanish Opposition toward the Mill episode, it was even then clear that the Spanish Opposition was on its way toward a crisis.

In fact, if the leaders of the Spanish Opposition did not understand the principled importance of the struggle which we were carrying on against Rosmer, Landau, etc., if they thought it possible to ally themselves with Mill against the fundamental cadres of the International Opposition, if at the same time they repeated that they had no differences with us and thus removed any justification for their manner of acting, for all these reasons we could not fail to say to ourselves with alarm, "The leaders of the Spanish Opposition will scarcely give a correct orientation to their section; but where a well-grounded orientation is lacking, there inevitably appear personal motives and feelings." To weld into a whole people of different training, character, temperament, and education can be done only by means of clear revolutionary principles. Otherwise the disintegration of the organization is inevitable. On personal sympathies, on friendships and clique spirit, nothing can be built but a lifeless debating club of the Souvarine type or a home for political invalids of the Rosmer type, and not even that for long.

Disagreeable as the task is, I must again touch on a "delicate" point because the interest of the cause demands it; no sound political relations can be built on suppressions and conventionalities.

When in our letters we asked the leading Spanish comrades by what principled motives, by what political and organizational considerations they let themselves be guided in taking up the defense of Mill against the Russian, German, French, Belgian sections, etc., we received the following type of reply, "We have the right to have our own opinion," "We refuse to be ordered about," etc. This unexpected reply seemed to us a highly alarming symptom.

Let us admit that someone among us really has a tendency to order people about Such a tendency should be resisted, and the stronger the tendency the more the resistance. But the necessity for the most resolute struggle against any such habits of simple command would not free the Spanish comrades of the necessity of establishing a political foundation for their factional intervention in favor of Mill and against the overwhelming majority of the sections. In the request for principled motives for this or that action there is in no way a tendency to simple command. Every member of the Left Opposition has the right to ask the responsible institutions of the Left Opposition the question: Why? To get rid of the burden of a concrete answer by mere affirmation of the right to have one's own opinion is to replace mutual revolutionary obligations by half-liberal, half-sentimental commonplaces. After such an answer, one could not fail to say to oneself again, "Certain leading Spanish comrades have not, unfortunately, a sufficiently solid common ground with the International Left Opposition. From this proceeds their inattention to the history of the Left Opposition, to the struggles through which it has gone, to the selection of cadres which it has carried through; from this proceeds also the tendency to be guided by personal impressions, by psychological estimations, by individual criteria; from this also, the affirmation of 'liberty' of opinion instead of a Marxist foundation for the opinion."

It is unnecessary for us to say how far removed we are from the thought of comparing any of the Spanish comrades to Mill. But it remains a fact that the leading Spanish comrades have not understood in time why we attacked Mill in an intransigent manner and why we demanded that the others do the same. Let us hope that now, at least, this serious lesson may lead to our coming together and not to additional discussion.