World Unemployment and the First Five Year Plan (Ceylon Edition)

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Note from MIA :

Presented here a two essays, written in 1930 while Trotsky was in exile in Turkey, but published together in the Ceylonese version, in 1952. The introduction was written by Colvin R. de Silva, the founder of Ceylonese Trotskyim, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, or LSSP. The LSSP was the dominant party on the left in Ceylon, now called Sri Lanka, when de Selva wrote this introduction as part of a celebration of national "Trotsky Day" sponsored by the LSSP and the various Tade Unions lead by the LSSP. We thank the Holt Labor Library in San Francisco, CA, for providing the Trotsky Internet Archive with a copy of this original pamphlet. To contact the Trotsky Internet Archive write to David Walters.

Introduction to Ceylon Edition, by Colvin R. de Silva

Economics is a sombre teacher. It teaches the hard way. But, as in the case of every good teacher, its lessons are concrete. It teaches through experienced facts.

The experienced facts of economics are certainly teaching the UNP Government and its capitalist backers some important lessons currently. Scouring the world for rice and seeking to sustain the price of rubber, they have discovered that the world economy of today consists not only of the imperialist orbit but also of the Soviet orbit. Failing to find either rice or sustenance for rubber prices in the imperialist orbit, they have been driven, to look towards the Soviet orbit. Such is the origin of the announced Trade Mission to China.

To us of the Samasamaja persuasion the UNP Government’s decision to send a Trade Mission to China constitutes a major political victory. It is, moreover, a victory not only over the UNP Government but also over its international patron, American Imperialism. It is a blow to American Imperialism’s effort to block any economic relations between Ceylon and the countries of the Soviet orbit. It is a breach in American Imperialism’s attempted economic blockade of the USSR, Eastern Europe and China. It is the first step towards making the Ceylon Government’s formal recognition of the new Chinese People’s Republic a reality.

Victories should not only be events for celebration but also occasions for intensifying the effort to build on them. The Government’s decision to send a Trade Mission to China must be made the occasion to intensify our efforts to compel it to establish with the countries of the Soviet orbit economic and political relations at least as thoroughgoing and systematic as Ceylon's existing economic and political relations with the countries of the imperialist orbit. To fail to do this would be to fail the struggle for Ceylon’s complete independence in an important respect. On the other hand, to carry forward the struggle for the establishment of such relations will also be to carry forward the struggle for Ceylon’s complete independence in an important way.

The publication in Ceylon at this juncture of the two articles by Leon Trotsky which follow is intended to be a direct contribution to the struggle to compel the establishment of proper economic and political relations between Ceylon and the countries of the Soviet bloc. These articles were written in 1930; that is to say, when the real and terrible dimensions of the Great Depression of 1929-33 were becoming manifest beyond challenging. They constitute an effort to combine in a single concrete programme of activity the struggle of the working class in the capitalist countries against unemployment and the high cost of living, and the struggle of the self-same working class to help the Soviet Union’s economic development. They propose what was then a novel line and content of revolutionary agitation in the conditions of depression and unemployment in the capitalist countries juxtaposed with the planned development of the Soviet economy. So novel indeed did it seem then that the Stalinists did not hesitate to subject it to the crudest public attack as appears from the second article, which is a reply to such an attack in the Czech Stalinist paper, Rude Pravo. Nevertheless, as the reader will readily see, the proposal would be taken almost as a commonplace today. Such has always been the fate of successful pioneers in the field of political thought.

Trotsky’s proposal, although it proceeded from a profound understanding of the problems posed for the international working-class both by the Great Depression which began in 1929 and by the First Five Year Plan in the Soviet Union, was indeed startlingly simple. Said he in the article entitled World Unemployment And The Five Year Plan: “By all these circumstances, the Communist Parties of the West are placed before the task of linking up, in their agitation, the question of unemployment with the most essential factors in world development, and, in the first place, with the economic development of the Soviet Union.” This he further pointed out, made it necessary, among other things, “to demonstrate that many tens, and later on hundreds, of thousands of workers would be able to find work in the annual, planned orders by the Soviet Union for machinery and agricultural implements” and “to explain that through these conditions the Soviet Union would receive the possibility to export a far greater quantity besides lumber and other raw material; – of grain, butter, meat and other products of consumption of the broadest masses.”

Moreover, he pointed out: “The importation of machinery and the exportation of raw material and food products could, by an adequate agreement, be set into direct dependence upon each other, on the basis of an extensive plan, equally accessible to the understanding and the verification of the Soviet as well as the foreign workers.” In other words, a long term trade agreement between the Soviet Union and the capitalist countries would be to the mutual benefit of both in that it would help to relieve unemployment in the capitalist sector and to remove certain obstacles to rapid economic development in the Soviet sector.

This proposition, treated as novel and singular then, has a quality of obviousness today. And yet, it has had to be taught anew to those in power in Ceylon today. They have agreed to go to China only under economic duress.

The relevance of Trotsky’s 1930 proposal to today’s conditions in Ceylon require little stressing. Ceylon is in economic difficulties. The prices of its export products have fallen precipitately and are continuing to fall steadily, if more slowly. This fact is tending to induce depression conditions. Dismissals have actually begun, even if they are not yet on a mass scale. That is to say, a certain contraction of our economy has already been set going. The Government faces a gaping budget deficit and the country a growing balance-of-payments deficit. The Government has therefore been compelled to slow down sharply on its developmental programme. Especially in face of our growing population, this means that both a further relative contraction of our economy and a further absolute restricting of employment opportunities has been set going by Government policy itself. The food-producing sector alone of our economy may make some advance in the present situation by reason of the risen food prices; but this advance cannot by any means compensate or even hope to compensate for the recession in the exports-producing sector which is our major source of money-income and of mass employment.

In the meantime this very rise in food prices has created another set of difficulties. We still have to import food on a large scale to feed our population. The financing of these imports is becoming increasingly difficult in face of the decline in our income from exports. In any event, it adds seriously to our balance-of-payment difficulties. And, as if to cap it all, there is no rice to be obtained for the love of money.

There is a further aggravating side to the situation. What with the fall in export income and the increasing proportion of our national income which has to be devoted to paying for food imports in general and for rice imports in particular, the amount of money which we can utilise for the purchase of imported commodities is sharply reduced. This Would not, of itself, have been very serious if import-prices also had fallen in step with the fall in our export-prices. We could then hare financed the same volume of imports as before with the reduced income. What has happened, however, is not only that import-prices have not kept step with the export price-fall but also, and which is worse, that import-prices have actually maintained themselves and even risen instead of falling at all. In the result, our importing capacity has been sharply reduced. The physical volume of our imports has already fallen and will continue to fall.

The principal impact of this development is on the standard of living of the masses. This is because the main mass of our imports consists of goods consumed 'by the broad masses. Any restriction in the volume of these imports, quite apart from the price question, must therefore result in a reduction of their standard of living.

Such then is the economic prospect for this country today:

the growing contraction of our economy, growing unemployment, a falling standard of living. All this, in turn. because of the fall in the prices of our export products and the contradictory movement of the prices of our imports. Our task therefore is, obviously, to find a means of reversing these two trends; that is to say, to stop the fall of our export-prices and to raise them again if possible, and to drive import-prices down if possible.

What this situation demands of us, obviously, is a search for new markets to export to and new sources to import from; that is to say, the expansion of our trading area. And, in the present world situation, the avenue for such expansion lies ready to hand. For, a specific feature of the current world situation is not only that the world is divided into two power-blocs but also that the world economy itself is substantially sundered as a result of deliberate imperialist policy. The imperialists have sustainedly endeavoured to limit and even wholly prevent systematic and developing economic relations with the countries of the Soviet bloc. But this attempt to continue, in different circumstances, the traditional imperialist policy of economically blockading the Soviet Union, today results only in converting the international economy into two almost self-contained units or circuits which have little effective contact with each other. One half of humanity is effectively separated from the other in matters economic by an imperialist-imposed iron curtain on trade with the Soviet bloc of countries.

That this situation stunts the economic development of both halves of the world economy will be obvious to anybody. That it certainly is stunting Ceylon’s economic development is plain to those who have thought over the impact of China’s rubber purchases on rubber prices. The experience constitutes a living demonstration of the advantages to be gained by expanding the area of our international trade. Rice, too, is providing us with a similar experience. We can apparently get to badly needed rice supplies if we will only go beyond the imperialist-imposed iron curtain in the trade field. We have to trade to live. It is now being borne in upon us that we must trade with thc whole world, and not only with half of it, in order, literally, to live. Why, then, limit the effort to expand our trade into the Soviet-dominated area only to buying rice or even making a deal for exchanging rubber for rice? Why should we not immediately set about seeking to expand our trade with these countries over the whole field of our exports and imports? Why not indeed? For, only then will we be rendering real, not only in the economic field but at all, the alleged foreign policy of our Government, viz: friendship with all countries; hostility to none!

We shall conclude with a fundamental point. If it is necessary, for our very existence, as we have shown, to aim at systematic and developing economic relations with the countries of the Soviet Bloc, then it is also necessary to establish systematic and sustained political relations with these countries, For, it is impossible to establish systematic and developing economic relations with a country or group of countrle8 without maintaining systematic and continuous political relations with such a country or countries. The question of ideological sympathies has no place here: economic relations are a business question and political relations are a business necessity. And what both economic relations and political relations require is not either a mere Trade Mission or even a Political Mission but a permanent channel for the linked relations of Ceylon with these countries. We have Embassies in London and Washington. Why shouldn’t Embassies be established also in Peking and Moscow? Why not indeed? Unless, of course, we are not free to do s& If that be indeed the ease, thee, the struggle to establish trade relations with the Soviet Bloc is also very much a part, and a vital part, of our struggle for complete independence. The economic road to Peking and Moscow coincides with the political road from Ceylon’s present semi-colonial status to complete independence from Imperialism.

Colombo, Ceylon,

Trotsky Day, 1952

COLVIN R. de SILVA

World Unemployment and The Five Year Plan

(March 1930)

The internal development of the Soviet Union has reached a critical point. No matter in what way we evaluate the present course of the collectivization which, in one year, has surpassed by two and a half times the plan elaborated for the whole live years (fifty percent of the peasant holdings collectivized Instead of the twenty percent prescribed at the end of the five years). it is clear that the tempo of collectivization has already blown up the whole five year-plan. Up to now, the official leadership has maintained silence on this point. But it would be impossible to be silent for long. To Imagine that all the other elements of the plan – industry, transportation, commerce, finance – can develop on the formerly prescribed scale while agriculture makes totally unforeseen jumps, would signify to see in the economic plan not an organic whole but a simple sum of departmental order. Until recently it was recognized, at least in principle, that the relations between industry and agriculture (smytchka) form the principal axis of the plan. Well, what has happened to this axis? If the smytchka was taken into consideration in the plan, then it must now have been destroyed by the prodigious leaps of the collectivization which nobody foresaw. In what direction will the line of the plan be straightened out?

At this very moment, “complete collectivization” has already called forth among the frightened leadership a certain movement backward. At what point will the commenced retreat come to a halt? It is as yet impossible to foretell. It is probable that this time also the retreat will extend much further than is required by the objective conditions, But the retreat itself is unavoidable. It is quite probable that because of the effects of the inflation there will begin a revision of the slogan: “The five year plan in four years.”

Retreat is always a painful operation, in the military field as well as in politics. But a retreat carried out in time and in an orderly manner can prevent unnecessary losses and prepare the possibility for developing an offensive in the future. The fatal danger is always a belated retreat, panic-stricken, under fire, when the enemy is at your heels. And that is why we, the Left Opposition, are not afraid to call to the bureaucracy which is running ahead blindly: Back! It is necessary to call a halt to the prize races of industrialization, to revise the tempo on the basis of experience and theoretical foresight, to coordinate collectivization with the technical and other resources, to subordinate the policy towards the kulak to the real possibilities of collectivization. In a word, after the periods of chvostism and adventurism, it is necessary to take the road of Marxian realism.

The plan corrected in this sense would present a minimal variant. It would necessarily proceed from the situation which has been created up to now as a result of great successes and no less great mistakes. Such a plan cannot eliminate the contradictions that flow from the historical past and the world environment. But it must reduce to a minimum the results of mistakes, partly mitigating and partly postponing the manifestations of a crisis and in this manner gain a new breathing space for the isolated workers’ state. The task of the moment is a planned retreat from the position of adventurism.

However, in addition to this “minimal” variant, it is necessary to prepare immediately another, more extended variant, calculated not only on the internal but also on the external resources. The perspective of the proletarian revolution in Europe is by no means less of a reality than the perspective of a genuine collectivization of the Russian peasants. More correctly, the second perspective becomes a reality only in connection with the first. The official leadership of the Communist International conductS its policy as though we were on the eve of the insurrection of the European proletariat. At the same time, the economic plan for ten-fifteen years is constructed with the aim of “outdistancing” the whole capitalist world by mean, of an isolated workers’ state. This duality flowing from the reactionary, utopian theory of socialism in one country, runs through the programme of the Comintern and all its policies. Nobody knows the dates, but one thing can be said with certainty: the conquest of power by the European proletariat is undoubtedly closer to this date than is the liquidation of the classes in the Soviet Union.

The elaboration of a minimal plan with the aim of mitigating the approaching crisis must necessarily proceed from the fact of the present isolated position of Soviet economy. But simultaneously it is necessary to create a variant based on the broad, mutual interlinking of Soviet and world economy. The general plan elaborated for ten, fifteen or more years cannot be constructed any other way.

Obviously, systematic and all-embracing economic cooperation of an international character will become possible only after the conquest of power by the proletariat of the advanced capitalist countries. Firstly, however, the time of this overthrow cannot be foreseen. That is why preparations must be made in time, politically as well as economically.

Secondly, there is every reason to count that under the conditions of the present commercial and industrial crisis – particularly in case of its further aggravation – the Soviet government, by a correct policy, can gain an incomparably larger access to the resources of the world market. Unemployment is a factor of huge importance which can make its impression upon the whole politics of the near future. Under the blows of unemployment the powerful edifice of the conservative trade unions and the social democracy can suffer deep-going cleavages before the infinitely more powerful edifice of the capitalist state begins to crack. But this will not happen of itself. The correct direction of the working class struggle acquires an exceptional significance in the conditions of a social crisis. The general strategic line of Communism must obviously, more than ever before, be directed towards the revolutionary conquest of power. But this revolutionary policy must be nourished by the concrete conditions and tanks of the transition period. Unemployment occupies an evermore, central place among them. One of the most important slogans of the transition period can and must become the demand for economic collaboration with the Soviet Union. But the agitation under this slogan must in turn have a thoroughly concrete character, armed with facts and figures. It must base itself on a general economic plan which takes into account the ever increasing interlinking of Soviet with world economy. This. signifies that the general plan must he built upon a genuine. Marxist foundation and not upon the theory of an isolated. socialist society.

In the present European and world unemployment, conjunctural events are bound up with the organic processes of capitalist decay. We have more than once repeated that conjunctural cycles are inherent in a capitalist society at every stage of its development. But at different stages these cycles have a different character. Just as in a person’s declining years a flow of strength is always uncertain and brief, and every illness, on the contrary, affects the whole organism, so the conjunctural cycles of imperialist capitalism, especially in Europe, show a tendency towards the diseased swelling of crisis by comparatively short rises. The question of unemployment, in these conditions, can become the central question for the majority of the capitalist countries. It is here that the knot is tied between the interests of the Soviet Union and the interests of the world proletariat.

The task by itself is clear and indisputable. It is only necessary to approach it correctly. But that is precisely where the difficulty lies. At the present time, the International education of the world proletarian vanguard is based on two ideas: “The Soviet Union will build socialism without us” and “The Soviet Union is the fatherland of all the toilers.” The first idea is false, the second abstract. Moreover, the one belies the other. This explains the astonishing fact that the struggle against unemployment is now directed by the pocket calendar of Kuusinen and Manuilsky (“March 6th,” etc.), and passes over the economic problems of the Soviet Union. Yet the connection between the one task and the other is quite obvious.

Complete collectivization on the basis of the peasants’ holdings is an adventure pregnant with a crisis in agricultural production and with dangerous political consequences. But if the possibility arises to fructify the collective farms in time by an influx of advanced technique, then collectivized agriculture could pass far more easily through the period of infantile illness and be able, almost in the next few years, to realize a greatly improved harvest, with such stock. for export as would radically change the picture of the grain market of Europe and later on put the consumption of the working masses on a new foundation. The menacing disproportion between the swing of collectivization and the state of technique flows directly from the economic isolation of the Soviet Union. If the Soviet government could even use only the capitalist credits “normal” in inter-state relations, the tempo of industrialization, as the framework of collectivization, could even now be considerably enlarged.

By all these circumstances, the Communist parties of the West are placed before the task: of linking up, in their agitation, the question of unemployment with the most essential factors in world development, and, in the first place, with the economic development of the Soviet Union. And what is needed for this?

First, to stop fooling the workers of the West with regard to the real situation in the Soviet Union. Together with the indisputable and immense successes arising out of nationalization, to show them honestly at the same time the internal contradictions arising out of the isolation of the Soviet Union and mistakes of leadership, which threaten it with political dangers.

Second, to explain to them that these dangers could be considerably diminished, and later overcome, by the establishment of a broad and coordinated interchange. between the Soviet Union, on the one side, and Germany and England. for example, on the other.

Third, to demonstrate that many tens, and later on. hundreds, of thousands of workers would be able to find work in the annual, planned orders by the Soviet Union fat machinery and agricultural implements.

Fourth, to explain that through these condition, the Soviet Union would receive the possibility to export a far greater quantity – besides lumber and other raw materials – of grain, butter, meat and other products of consumption-of the broadest masses.

The importation of machinery and the exportation of raw material and food products could, by an adequate agreement, be set into direct dependence upon each other, on the basis of an extensive plan, equally accessible to the understanding and the verification of the Soviet as wall as the foreign workers.

The successes hitherto achieved by Soviet Industry assure a necessary basis for this entrance into the International arena. It is not a question of bare agitation but of serious, well thought out economic proposals, motivated by all existing experiences and clearly formulated in the language of technique, economics and statistics. In this connection, the Soviet government must certainly proclaim Its full readiness to facilitate an all-sided examination of the accomplishments of the economic agreement for interested labour organizations (trade unions, shop stewards committees, etc).

If we approach the question politically, and in the first place, from the point of view of the relations towards the social democracy and Amsterdam, the task can be formulated as an application of the policy of the united front on a scale such as has not been and could not be practised up to now.

But is it possible to hope that MacDonald, Hermann Muller, the trade unionists of Amsterdam and the American Federation of Labour will consent to such a combination?

Then is it not utopian? Is it not conciliationism? And so forth. Such an objection will undoubtedly be made by those who yesterday hoped that the British trade unionists would struggle against Imperialism for the defence of the Soviet Union (Stalin and Company). We did not nourish these pitiful Illusions at that time and we do not nourish them now. But it must be considered that economic agreements of a social democratic government with the Soviets for the diminution of unemployment in its own country is nevertheless far more probable than a struggle of the reformists against imperialism. If the crisis develops further, the reformist governments, which base themselves upon millions of organized workers, can be wedged Into much a vice that they are compelled – to one extent or another – to yield to economic collaboration with the Soviet Union.

We have no desire or need to guess the extent to which it would be realized in actuality. Should the social democracy even be averse to the discussion – in the first period that is most likely to be the case – then the plan will at the very outset impel the masses of the workers to struggle against the social democracy. In any case, the reformists in power will find it more difficult to defend them. selves from an agitation based on a concrete plant of economically :advantageous collaboration with the Soviet Union than from the shrill outcries on the theme of “social fascism.” it is evident that this plan of campaign in no way assumes the softening of our political relations towards the social democracy. On the contrary, by correct direction the campaign outlined above can seriously shake the positions of the international social democracy which for the last few years was given invaluable support by the policies of Stalin-Molotov.

The necessity of posing the task of socialist construction in an international sense rises out of the internal needs of the economic development of the Soviet Union and, at the same time, represents the most persuasive and irrefutable propaganda in favour of international revolution. But in order to enter upon this road it is necessary to learn over again. Instead of a soporific optimism, the revolutionary tocin must be sounded. It is impermissible to be content with the ritualistic imprecations against military intervention. it is necessary to put the economic problem squarely. The Communist agitator must say openly and honestly to the masses of the West:

“ Do not think that socialism will be built up in Moscow without you. They have accomplished quite a bit. but they cannot accomplish everything. The many things they have already accomplished are only a small part of what is still to be done. In order to help them such measures must be taken now as will at the same time help you workers against unemployment and the high cost of living. The Soviet Government has an economic plan for collaboration with foreign industry. Everybody can familiarize himself with it. To be sure, you are not obliged to put blind faith in me or in the Soviet Government. Demand the examination of the Soviet proposals by your trade unions, your party, or by your social democratic government (Germany, England). This government must be compelled finally to take the road of economic agreement with the Soviet Union because that is the most effective and advantageous road of struggle against unemployment.”

But is there any hope that with their present leadership the Communist parties are capable of a serious revolutionary mobilization of the masses? We will not decide this question beforehand. The policy which we defend has such profound roots in the objective situation and in the historical interests of the proletariat, that it will finally make its way through all the obstacles. It Is entirely a question of time. But that is a very important question. The duty of the Left Communist Opposition, therefore, is to exert all its strength to shorten the period.

Prinkipo, March 14, 1930

A Letter to the Communist Workers of Czecho-Slovakia

(August 1930)

In the International press of the Left Opposition (Bolshevik-Leninists), we advanced several months ago the absolutely simple and irrefutable idea that the Communist parties of the capitalist countries, in connection with the enormous growth of unemployment, should raise an agitation for all round extension and facilitation of industrial commodity credits to the Soviet Union. We proposed to give this slogan even more concrete forms: on the basis of its Five Year Plan (the present plan or a modified one, we shall not deal with this question now), the Soviet government declares that it can give the United States, Germany, England, Czecho-Slovakia and others such and such quite definite orders for electro-technical units, agricultural machinery, and so forth, on the condition of credits for a definite number of years.

In this connection, the credit reliability of the Soviet government in the eyes of the capitalist world could be fully secured by the simultaneous growth of Soviet exports. Under the condition of large and well-apportioned industrial credits, the collective farms could really acquire a great economic significance in the near future, and the resources of agricultural exports could speedily increase. In the same way, with the receipt from abroad – on acceptable, that is, commonly capitalistic conditions of credit – of additional industrial equipment,, the export of oil, timber and so forth, could be considerably increased. With regard to Soviet exports, the conclusion of planned agreements for a number of years would also be possible.

The Soviet government is most directly interested in a detailed acquainting of workers’ delegations, factory committees and representatives of trade unions on the one hand, and representatives of capitalist governments and trusts on the other, with the corresponding planned propositions – it is understood, very strictly established technically and economically, and therefore capable of raising in the eyes of the workers the authority of the Soviet government as well as of warranting in the eyes of the capitalist, the credits demanded. Whoever knows how the economic relations of the Soviet Union to the capitalist governments were established, or, whoever knows even theoretically the ABC of the economic policy of the workers’ government in the capitalist encirclement, will not find anything contestable or dubious in the plan proposed above. At the same time, the necessity and urgency of an energetic campaign in favour of this campaign will flow quite obviously, from the present unemployment in capitalist countries, on the one hand, and from the acute need of foreign credits to the Soviet economy, on the other.

Nevertheless, with regard to our propositions, the Stalinist apparatus has given the signal: Reject, expose, condemn. Why? There are two reasons. There is no doubt that many Soviet bureaucrats consider that an education of this sort will not help but injure foreign credits. Let their 8okolnikov negotiate quietly with Henderson, and let the Communists keep rather still, so as not to frighten the bourgeoisie and not to repel it. There is no doubt that this is precisely the idea that animates the Stalinist bureaucracy and, above all, Stalin himself, when they come forward against the campaign proposed by us. For the august national-socialist bureaucrats talk with great contempt among themselves about the foreign Communist parties, considering them incapable of any serious action. The apparatus men, the Stalinists, have learned to place confidence only in the governmental summits and plainly fear the direct intervention of the masses in “ serious,” “practical” matters. This is the basic reason for the absurd and malicious rebuff which our proposal met with.

But there is also an additional reason. The Stalinists are in mortal fear of the growing influence of the Left Communist Opposition (Bolshevik-Leninists) throughout the world, and therefore they consider it necessary to reply with slander and vilification to every word it pronounces. Such directions are invariably issued to the whole apparatus of the Comintern.

The central organ of the Communist Party of Czecho-Slovakia, Rude Pravo, has fulfilled the commission as best it could. In its Issue of June 24, the campaign on behalf of unemployment proposed by the Czech Left Communists is subjected to a criticism which can only be termed rabid. With all its fury, it strikes one with its impotence. We will analyze the objections and accusations of Rude Pravo line by line. Not because we are interested in the officials who substitute the lack of ideas and arguments by rude abuse. but because we want to help the advanced workers of Czecho-Slovakia orientate themselves in this big and serious question.

Rude Pravo says that the Czech Left Communists (Bolshevik-Leninists) demand that the Soviet Government “together with the Czecho-Slovak government, shall elaborate an economic plan for the solution of the crisis!!” The paper derides this idea which really is absurd, but which was invented by the editors themselves. The Soviet government should arrive at an agreement with the capitalist trusts and the bourgeois governments (in the event the latter take it upon themselves to guarantee credits) about a definite system of employment. The worker-Communists and sympathisers pursue in this struggle also another, no less important, aim: to help the workers’ state. But the task of the struggle in itself is accessible to the understanding of the broadest and most backward circles of workers, consequently also to those who look upon the Soviet Union with indifference.

As for a common plan “far the solution of the crisis” nobody even speaks about that. Only a socialist revolution can abolish the crisis. To permeate the workers with this idea is the direct duty of the Communist party. But it does not at all flow from this that the workers should not advance immediate demands for the diminution of unemployment and the amelioration of its heaviest consequences. The reduction of the working day Is one of the most important demands of this kind. Alongside of this stand: the struggle against the present rapacious “rationalization,” the demand for a broader and more genuine insurance of the unemployed at the expense of the capitalists and government. Perhaps Rude Pravo is against these demands? The granting of industrial credits to the Soviet state would have as its. consequence, not the liquidation of the crisis, but the amelioration of unemployment in a number of branches of industry. This is precisely how we must pose the question. deceiving neither ourselves nor others.

Or perhaps Rude Pravo has the point of view that Communists in general must not demand any measures capable of ameliorating the disastrous consequences of capitalism in relation to the workers? Perhaps the slogan of the Czech Stalinists has become: “the worse the better” ? This was the point of view held by the anarchists before the Flood.

The Marxists never had anything in common with this position.

But here Rude Pravo advances the objection that according to our plan, “the contradiction of principle between the Soviet state and the capitalist world is to be replaced by their mutual collaboration.” What this phrase signifies is hard to understand. If it has any sense at all, it can only be one: The Soviet state, in order to insure the contradictions of principle, must avoid economic connections with the capitalist world, that is, must neither export and import nor seek credits and loans. But the whole policy of the Soviet government, from the first day of its existence has had the directly opposite character. It has proved unalterably that in spite of the contradictions of principle between two economic Systems, collaboration between them is possible on the very broadest scale. The leaders of the Soviet state have more than once declared that even the principle of the monopoly of foreign trade presents advantages to the large scale capitalist trusts in the sense that it insures systematic orders for a number of years ahead. It cannot be denied that many Soviet diplomats and administrators have fallen over themselves in their advocacy of peaceful collaboration of the Soviet Union with the capitalist world and presented arguments incorrect in principle and out of place. But this is a question of another order. At any rate, principle contradictions of two economic systems that co-exist for a comparatively long time are not destroyed and not weakened by the fact that they are compelled, In this transition period, to conclude large scale economic transactions with each other, and some. times even political agreements. Is it possible that there are still “Communists” who have not yet understood this?

Further on, Rude Pravo writes still better: “The chief concern of the Soviets should be the elimination (?) of the capitalist crisis so that (!) the capitalist system, the blessing of hundreds, should be further preserved.” Every new phrase increases in senselessness, multiplies it, raises it to a higher degree. Does Rude Pravo mean that the Soviet republic, in order not to alleviate the capitalist crisis, should renounce the import of foreign commodities, of American technique, of German and English commercial credits, etc.? Only by drawing these conclusions would the phrase quoted above have any sense. But we know that-the Soviet government acts to the contrary. At this very moment in London, Sokolnikov is negotiating economic relations with England, trying to obtain credits. Is America, the president of the Amtorg, Bogdanov, is engaged in a struggle against that part of the bourgeoisie which wants to break off economic relations with the Soviet Union, and, what is more, Bogdanov demands the extension of credits.

It is clear, that Rude Pravo was over zealous. It no longer strikes at the Opposition, but at the workers’ state. From the point of view of Rude Pravo, all the work of Soviet diplomacy and the Soviet commercial representatives appears to be work for the insurance of the capitalist system. This is not a new idea. The same point of view was held by the deceased Dutch author Gorter, and the leaders of the so-called Communist Labour Party of Germany, that is, by people of a utopian and semi-anarchist frame of mind, who thought that the Soviet government should conduct flu policy not as if it existed within a capitalist encirclement but in space. In their time, these prejudices were crushingly refuted by Lenin. Now the views of Garter are served up by the editors of the Czech Communist paper as profound arguments against the Left Communist Opposition (Bolshevik-Leninist).

These considerations take on a particularly ridiculous aspect by the fact that the Soviet government, especially in recent times, has considered it necessary once more to repeat that it even agrees, within certain limits, to pay the old czarist debt – provided that new credits are made available to it. On the other hand, the Soviet government recruits unemployed miners in Germany. Is it not thereby saving German capitalism? Repeating empty phrases, the pseudo-Communist officials simply close their eyes to everything that is going on in the world. Our proposal has two aspects: first, we want the bonds between Soviet and world economy, at present accidental, partial and unsystematic, to be included by the Soviet government itself into the framework of an extensive plan (we are not considering this question here now); and secondly, to draw into the struggle for the international economic positions of the Soviet Union the vanguard of the world proletariat, and through it – also the millions of workers. The whole essence of the campaign proposed by us lies in the fact that it can bind by a new and firm knot the need of the Soviet government for foreign products with the need of the unemployed for work, with the need of the proletariat for the alleviation of unemployment.

Further on, Rude Pravo becomes ironical: “It is a pity that the Messrs. Trotskyists did not tell us on what principals the general Czecho-Slovak-Soviet plan for the solution of the crisis should be constructed: on capitalist principles – but by that, aid would be given to the victory of capitalism within Russia; or on socialist principles – this would mean that the Trotskyists believe in the readiness of the capitalists themselves to introduce socialism.”

Human stupidity is truly inexhaustible, and the worst form of it is the stupidity of the self-contented bureaucrat.

On what principles could the economic relations of the Soviet Union with the world market be based? Of course, upon capitalist principles, that is, on the principles of buying and selling. This is how it has been up to now. It will be that way in the future as long as the workers of the other countries do not abolish capitalism. And they will not do that – let us observe parenthetically – until they carry out a merciless purging among their “leaders,” chasing out the self-contented chatterers, and replacing them with honest proletarian revolutionists capable of observing, learning and thinking. But this is a question of a different order. Here, we are concerned with economics.

But will not collaboration on capitalist principles lead in reality, to the victory of capitalism in Russia? This would be so if Russia had no monopoly of foreign trade, supplemented by the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the nationalization of land, factories, mills and banks. Without a monopoly of foreign trade in the hands of the workers’ state, the victory of capitalism would be inevitable. But do the Left Communists (Bolshevik-Leninists) propose to abolish the monopoly of foreign trade? It was Stalin, together with Sokolnikoy, Rykov, Bukharin and others, who made an attempt upon the monopoly in 1922. Together with Lenin, we fought for the monopoly of foreign trade and defended it. It is understood that the monopoly of foreign trade is not an all-saving remedy. Correct economic plans are necessary, correct leadership, a systematic drawing of the costs of production in the USSR closer to the costs of production of the world market. But this again, is a question of a different order. We, at any rate, have in view such plans for foreign orders and credits as flow from the internal needs and tasks of Soviet economy and which are to serve the consolidation of its socialist elements.

Then it means, Rude Pravo becomes ironical, that the bourgeoisie will aid socialism! A fabulous argument! But why does it come Into the world so late? The majority of the complicated machines in the Soviet factories are imported from abroad. The Soviet trusts have concluded scores of agreements with the world monopoly trusts for technical aid (machines, materials, plan., formulae, etc.). The enormous Dnieper hydro-electric station is constructed to a consider. able degree with the aid of foreign technicians and with the participation of German and American firms. It would appear, then, that the bourgeoisie Is helping to construct socialism. And at the same time, the Soviet government, by makIng purchases In foreign countries, and alleviating the crisis, saving capitalism. It would seem that the roles have changed. Only they have not changed in reality, but in the head of the functionary of Rude Pravo. Alas, it is an altogether unreliable head!

How do matters really stand with the exchange of “services”? Of course, economic collaboration between the workers’ state and the capitalist world gives rise to a number of contradictions. But these are contradictions of life, that is, they are not invented by the Left Opposition but are created by reality itself. The Soviet government considers that the capitalist machines it imports strengthen socialism to a greater degrees than gold paid for them strengthens capitalism. And that is true. On the other hand, the bourgeoisie, in selling its machinery, is primarily concerned with its own profits. Some capitalists simply do not believe in the possibility of ccnstructing socialism. Others do not even think of it. Finally, the bourgeoisie now finds itself under the lash of a crisis and it is worried about its own salvation. This circumstance should be utilized for the strengthening of the Communist positions among the unemployed.

Learning from us for the first time that the bourgeoisie, In spite of its will, helps to construct socialism, Rude Pravo exclaims: “In this case, the ultra-Left Trotskyists are spreading worse illusions about world developments than-the social-fascists”.

In this phrase, again, every word spells confusion. First of all, we appear as “ultra-Lefts”, when we never were such. The deceased Gorter, mentioned above, was an ultra-Leftlst and that is what his present followers remain. In their opinion, foreign trade, concessions, credits, loans, etc., mean the death of socialism. Rude Pravo repeats these arguments, only less literately. The whole article of Rude Pravo analysed by us is a sample of the most absurd ultra-Leftism directed against Leninism.

Further:: What “illusions about world developments” are they talking about? Economic negotiations and agreements between two governments are calculated, it is understood, for peaceful relations, but they are far from a guarantee for such relations. When war flares up, all agreements are blown to perdition, even between two capitalist states. It is also clear that if the proletarian revolution should conquer, let us say, in England, the agreements of Stalin with MacDonald would be thrown away and substituted by a brotherly union of two proletarian states. However, in spite of the inevitability of wars and revolution, the Soviet government has concluded and still concludes economic agreements, sometimes for long terms: thus, some concessions are made for ninety-nine years ! The ultra-Leftists concluded from this-that the Soviet government laid aside the proletarian revolution for ninety-nine years. We laughed at them. Now the officials of Rude Pravo have carried over this argument against ... the “Trotskyists.” But by the change of address, the argument has not become any wiser.

If Rude Pravo seriously considers it its duty to defend proletarian principles in the sphere of the international politics of the Soviet government, why was it silent when these were actually trampled underfoot by the present Stalinist leadership? Let us recall two examples out of scores.

After the union of the Stalinists with the British strikebreakers – the trade union leaders – had thoroughly revealed its reactionary character, Stalin and Bukharin explained to the Praesidium of the Comintern that the Anglo-Russian Committee could in no way be broken up because it would worsen the mutual relations between the USSR and England. Out of the hostility of Baldwin and Chamberlain, Stalin attempted to find cover for his friendship with Purcell. This disastrous policy, which undermined British Communism for a number of years and did not serve the Soviet Union one particle, met, so far as we know, with the unalterable support of Rude Pravo. And where were these saviours of principle, when the Soviet government adhered to the Kellogg Pact, committing at one and the same time a crime in principle and a stupidity in practice? The Kellogg Pact is an imperialist noose for the weaker states. And the Soviet government adhered to the pact as an instrument of peace. This is a sowing of illusions in reality, an inadmissible smearing over of contradictions, and outright deception of the workers In the spirit of the social democracy. Did Rude Pravo protest? No, it merely joined in the chorus. What was the reason for the Soviet government’s adherence to the Kellogg Pact? The absurd hope of Stalin that in this way he would secure the recognition of the American government, credits, etc. The capitalists pocketed the Soviet’s adherence, very advantageous in fooling the American workers, and, it is understood, they gave nothing in exchange ... Against such methods of struggle for capitalist credits, the Bolshevik-Leninist conduct an irreconcilable light, while the officials of Rude Pravo join the chorus of their superiors. On the other hand, however, the plan of the campaign proposed by us does not contain even the shadow of a surrender of principles to the bourgeoisie or to the social democracy.

These are all the arguments of the central organ of the Czecho-Slovak Communist Party. They should arouse a feeling of shame in every serious Communist for the political level to which the leadership of one of the largest sections of the Comintern has sunk.

But all these arguments probably pale before the concluding argument of the article. Rude Pravo declares that our whole proposition is a sort of snare and has as its aim to mask “the real attempt at a manoeuvre, to be precise: the responsibilities, for unemployment is to be thrown upon the Soviet Union which does not give us sufficient orders ... instead of compromising the worthless capitalist system, the industrial crisis is to serve to compromise the Soviet Union.”

These lines seem incredible, but here too we are quoting verbatim. If Rude Pravo considers our plan erroneous, it has, of course, the full right to prove that such a mistake may help the class enemy. Every mistake in the revolutionary strategy of the proletariat is of advantage to the bourgeoisie to one degree or another. Every revolutionist can make a mistake and thus unwillingly help the bourgeoisie. A mistake should be criticised mercilessly. But to accuse proletarian revolutionists of consciously constructing a plan with the aim of helping the bourgeoisie and compromising the Soviet Union can only be done by functionaries without honour and conscience. But it is not worth thought: all this is too stupid. It is only too obvious that it was done under orders. The executors of the order are but too miserable. But on the other hand, we must not forget for a minute that these gentlemen ceaselessly compromise the Soviet Union and the banner of Communism

So we Bolshevik-Leninists want to throw the responsibility for capitalist unemployment upon the Soviet Union. What opinion has Rude Pravo of the intellectual abilities of the Czech workers? It is understood that not one of them will take it into his head that the Soviet Union is capable of placing orders to an extent that would liquidate unemployment in the capitalist world, or even in one large capitalist country. Any one of ten workers met on the streets of Prague would declare the very idea absurd that such inconceivable demands can be made upon the Soviet Union or that It can be comprised for “insufficient” orders. Why is all this? What is all this good for? Matters are just the other way around. The political aim of the campaign is to attract to the side of the Soviet Union those workers who are at present indifferent to it or even hostile. In so far as the capitalist governments and parties, the social democratic Included, counteract the campaign, they will compromise themselves in the eyes of the workers. Their political loss will be all the greater, the more seriously and practically the Communists carry on the campaign. No matter what the economic results may be, the political advantages, at any rate, are guaranteed. The workers drawn into the campaign around this live and acute question of unemployment, will in the future also, come forward as the defenders of the USSR In the event of a war danger. Such methods of mobilization of the workers are far more substantial than the repetition of naked phrases about an imminent intervention.

But we will not conceal from our comrade workers that we would by no means entrust the execution of much a campaign to the editors of Rude Pravo. These people are capable of ruining every action. They do not want to think they are incapable of learning. But from this It does not flow that we should give us the mass struggles for the interests of the Soviet Union, but merely that we must renounce the good for nothing leaders. Here we approach the general question: the regime of the Comintern, its policy and the selection of its bureaucracy. We need a proletarian purging, a renewal of the apparatus, a renewal of the course, a renovation of the regime. This is precisely what the Left Communist Opposition (Bolahevik-Leninists) is fighting for. The most immediate aim of our struggle is the regeneration of the Communist International upon the basis of the theory and practice of Marx and Lenin.

L. Trotsky

PRINKIPO, August 21, 1930