Issuing body: First international meeting of the Communist Left Opposition
The first international meeting of the Communist Left Opposition, held on 6 April in Paris, bringing together German, American, Belgian, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Italian, and Czechoslovak delegates, sends its warm greetings and the testimony of its close solidarity to the imprisoned and deported Bolshevik comrades, and to their exiled leader, L.D. Trotsky.
Appeal to the Proletarians of the World!
The International Communist Left Opposition addresses itself not only to its own adherents, but to all communists and to the workers of the whole world. It brings together the best forces, the Marxist wing of the parties of the Communist International. Now it is uniting firmly, through the unbreakable bond of proletarian internationalism, in order to work out a firm political line, in order to carry out a genuine international struggle.
Everywhere the imperialist world is living through very grave social convulsions which show, ever more clearly, its inability to resolve the crises that it constantly engenders. Millions of unemployed exist on a permanent basis. Profound social and political crises are unfolding in Germany, Austria, Spain, England, America, China, India, etc. Even the legendary prosperity of the United States has itself been transformed into a crisis expressed notably in growing unemployment. This crisis has spread throughout the whole world.
Despite all its efforts, the bourgeoisie shows itself incapable of resolving its permanent crisis. Against the bourgeoisie stands the working mass, which social democracy helps it to enslave. In Austria, social democracy sells the workers to the fascists and to reaction. In Germany, it subjects them to the shootings carried out by Zörgiebel and Müller. In England, it plays the flat role of an agent of the bourgeoisie, betraying even the moderate promises it had made before the elections brought it to power; it commands the massacre of the revolutionary proletarians of India.
Only the revolutionary movement, together with the proletarian party, can, thanks to the teachings of Marx and Lenin, lead the proletariat to its liberation, thereby creating the foundations of the new society that will liberate the whole of humanity.
Today it is precisely within the revolutionary movement itself that grave difficulties are arising. The principal contradiction that exists today within the revolutionary movement is the growing divergence between the revolutionary possibilities, the circumstances favourable to calling the masses to struggle, and the capacity and degree of preparedness of the official communist parties. A profound crisis is at present ravaging the Communist International. In every country the parties have lost considerable numbers of members. Their influence over the masses and the development of mass organisations have diminished. In many countries they have ruined and discredited the revolutionary movements for many years to come. Never has the political and theoretical level of the communist parties been lower than it is today. Corruption, the artificial selection of leaderships, arbitrariness, bureaucratism, the spasmodic leaps from right to left and back again, are maladies that gnaw at the living force of the movement. In the recent period a whole wing of the official movement has broken away from it and now occupies a position more or less close to social democracy. Thus the Brandlerite Opposition in Germany [1], thus the Workers' and Peasants' Party of Louis Sellier in France [2], thus the Lovestone group in the United States [3]. On the other hand, the Left Opposition, which comprises the best workers and militants of the Communist International, has been and continues to be expelled almost in its entirety. The most brutal repression, especially in the USSR, is exercised against it. The structure of the International has undergone profound changes. It has abandoned the policy laid down by the first four congresses of the Communist International, in which Lenin took part; but, in order to do this, it had to expel the founders of the Communist International and those who led it during that period. The crisis is in full development; it is helping to render the revolutionary proletariat powerless in the new struggles and in the accomplishment of its historic mission.
This crisis is, for a great part, a reflection and a direct consequence of the crisis unfolding within the Russian Communist Party and throughout the whole of the Soviet Union. The root of this crisis lies in the general circumstances stemming principally from the failure of the revolution of the Western proletariat in the years immediately following the imperialist war; the Western proletariat has not been able to give the Russian proletariat the aid without which it cannot bring to completion the revolution it victoriously began. The USSR cannot, on its own, do away with class-divided society or build socialism. It can defend the foundations of a socialist society against the encirclement of the capitalist world until the proletariat of the advanced capitalist countries comes to its aid.
This requires a correct class policy that maintains the supremacy of the socialist elements over the capitalist elements, that also maintains the supremacy of the industrialised town over the village, that systematically raises the standard of living of the workers and poor peasants, and that founds its general policy on the perspectives of the international revolution. Such was the policy during the first period of the October revolution. But, after the death of Lenin, after the heavy defeats suffered in Germany, Bulgaria and Estonia, the Soviet Union entered a period of social and political reaction, both within the party and throughout the country as a whole.
It was at this time that, neglecting the course of the international revolution, the theory of socialism in one country crystallised. Instead of mastering the capitalist elements of the country, they were strengthened: instead of helping the poor peasant, the kulak was allowed to grow stronger; instead of favouring the factory workers, full power was given to the bureaucracy of the factory and trade-union managements; instead of extending workers' democracy within the party, the party was stifled beneath an unprecedented bureaucratic apparatus. In order to carry through this policy of reaction, of "national socialism", a monstrous campaign of falsification, suppression, alteration, intimidation, and the mobilisation of all the reactionary elements of the country against the Leninists was undertaken. For having fought against the growth of the new bourgeoisie, the opposition (Bolshevik-Leninists) was expelled from the party, exiled, deported, imprisoned.
This policy had as its counterpart, within the Communist International, a zigzagging policy that swung from opportunism to adventurism, a policy dictated by the Russian party in its capacity as a state power. Thus did Stalin and Bukharin bind the Chinese workers and peasants to the power of Chiang Kai-shek; thus did they prevent the English communists from fighting against the traitors of the general strike; thus, reacting bureaucratically to the blows of the opposition and to the pressure of the working class, did the centrist apparatus, devoid of any policy of its own, drag the parties into adventures such as the Canton putsch of 1 August 1929, and its whole philosophy of the "third period".
The adventurist policy of the Communist International naturally found its counterpart in the economic adventurism of the Stalin faction in the USSR. Having supported the kulaks for years, the centrists suddenly wanted to liquidate them as a class within a few years. They set up a programme of industrialisation and collectivisation of agriculture, bureaucratically conceived and carried out. But any attempt to carry out a programme of proletarian dictatorship and the liquidation of the capitalist class on the basis of the theory of socialism in one country is doomed to failure. That is why the recent course of the Stalinist apparatus has forced the International Left Opposition to cry out to the working class of the whole world: the Russian revolution is in danger, the Soviet Union is approaching a critical period, all efforts must be intensified to rectify its course!
The arbitrary bureaucratic pressure exerted on the collectivisation of the countryside, of agriculture, has sharpened the contradictions between town and village, between industry and agriculture. The town, the proletariat, is in the process of losing its leadership over the village. The vanguard is becoming increasingly disorganised; within the party itself, disintegration is proceeding in two directions: on the one hand, the breach between the apparatus and the base has become a chasm, and, on the other, the strong, clear distinction of the party as the vanguard of the class is being lost in a tendency to dissolve the party into the class. Its theoretical level has fallen; its political life, its initiative, have been strangled by the apparatus; its cohesion has been broken by the uninterrupted working week, which provides for no period of collective rest. The dangers of inflation are becoming more serious every day. Even the apparatus has been forced to retreat before the latest results of its adventurous course. But all past experience shows that this retreat will not prevent a fall into the other extreme: passivity towards the classes hostile to the proletariat, the dragging of the party onto the liquidationist road of the right.
A reversal of the policy hitherto followed has now begun and is starting to develop on a broad scale. After a period of adventurist over-excitement, the parties are falling back, weakened and demoralised, into apathy and opportunist routine, masked beneath a few bureaucratically optimistic phrases. In the USSR, the Sixteenth Congress of the Bolshevik Party has just curbed the right while retreating in disorder in the economic sphere; in Germany, in France, the strident phrase-mongering, the invocation of the barricades at every moment of trade-union and political activity, is being succeeded by a worsened resumption of opportunist practices: passivity, hypocrisy, and lying to the proletariat.
This retreat must be turned into a victory for the line of the opposition, and the workers must be called upon to impose a serious tactic on their party.
The International Left Opposition tells the class-conscious workers of the whole world openly that the Soviet Union, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Communist International, the vanguard of the working class, are in danger, that the ruling regime in Russia and the International are being dragged towards catastrophe. Everywhere, communist militants, revolutionary fighters, must join the Left Opposition and raise the banner of Bolshevism.
Such is now the great task, the historic task, of all revolutionaries, wherever they may be. It is in order to accomplish it that the communist opposition groups of Europe and America have joined together with the opposition (Bolshevik-Leninists) of the Russian Communist Party, so as to centralise, illuminate, and organise the struggle. We shall be accused of wanting to create a "fourth international". This accusation, without proof or motive, will not stop us. It is not these accusing bureaucrats who founded and built Lenin's Communist International. It is not they who have inherited the teachings of Lenin, nor of Marx, nor the lessons of the revolutionary struggle. It is the International Left Opposition that proudly claims possession of the moral and political heritage of Lenin's International. It cannot be torn from it.
The International Left Opposition was born out of the development of the Communist International, to which it is indissolubly bound by the whole of its past. The weakening of the Communist International could not fail to bring about the development of the opposition. The defeats suffered and the strengthening of social democracy have struck above all at the left wing of communism.
The central apparatus, which grew stronger as the revolutionary movement weakened, made use of every advantage the situation offered. Having at its disposal a powerful press, the telegraph, the radio, and so on, it systematically distorted, over a period of several years, the views of the opposition, holding it responsible for its own past errors. It sowed confusion within the ranks of communism, and it was at this price that it achieved its objective, namely the weakening of the Leninist wing of the Communist International.
The International Left Opposition must not forget its origin. It was born in the USSR. At the outset it was limited by the exceptional conditions of the proletarian dictatorship, and subsequently by the regime of bureaucratic strangulation of the party. The views of the Russian Opposition spread only in fragments, thereby making the creation of a common ideological basis extremely difficult. Thus, while the Russian Opposition pursued a policy of rectifying the party without shocks or convulsions dangerous to the dictatorship, the communist left of the capitalist countries was necessarily compelled to extreme reserve. But the centrist bureaucracy found the means to crush the opposition through organisational methods, always at the price of strangling the party. The complete absence of democracy within the Communist International long delayed the development and education of the opposition's cadres. The theoretical work of the opposition, its analyses, its assessments, its perspectives and its watchwords did not go beyond fairly restricted circles. The lack of numerous cadres capable of working actively for our ideas in every branch of the labour movement greatly facilitated the struggle of centrism against the opposition.
Without sufficient cadres, without close international contacts, the International Left Opposition was transformed, in an initial period, into a certain number of scattered national groups, whose principal activity was propaganda. Each had to find its own way by its own means. It is in this fact that there resides today the danger of disagreements, of irresolution, and of national narrowness. It must further be added that, at every one of its turns, centrism expelled from the Communist International elements of the most varied kinds, often of opposite character. All of them claimed to belong to the opposition, but many of them systematically compromised it through manifestations of opportunism, anarcho-syndicalism, and petty-bourgeois dilettantism. It is enough to name the Urbahns faction [4], which, in Germany, did the greatest damage to the communist left by persisting in embodying the caricatured ideas that Stalin attributed to the opposition. France has been sufficiently rich in distortions of the views of the Left Opposition. This phenomenon has moreover appeared, to varying degrees, in most countries. It is thus that the very same conditions that gave rise to the necessity of the Left Opposition's subsequent progress also brought about a certain weakening of it in its first stage.
Nevertheless, in the recent period, quite real successes must already be recorded, along with the beginnings of a new development in the direction of international cohesion. To a large extent these are due to good work of ideological delimitation, to a healthy clarification of minds and of cadres. In certain cases this work was accomplished with difficulty and appeared to weaken the opposition. But in reality it prepared a serious basis for fresh progress in the near future.
In France, the appearance of La Vérité (in August 1929) and the transformation of Lutte de Classes into a monthly theoretical review fighting for the Communist League (Opposition), which is the left fraction of the party, marked an important milestone in the development of the French Left Opposition. In Germany, the past year was filled with an internal struggle that ended in an inevitable split within the Leninbund. This made possible the fusion of the best elements of the Leninbund with the Wedding [5] and Palatinate Oppositions, within the United Opposition of the German Communist Party. In this way the German Left Opposition is now assured of making broad progress along the path of political action. Already the appearance of its fortnightly paper Der Kommunist, and its ardent struggle at the side of the party's workers, have set it upon this path.
In the United States and Canada, the opposition arose after the Sixth World Congress [6] and succeeded in transforming its central organ into a combative weekly, backed by the Communist League of America, which is fighting for the regeneration of the party.
In recent months the Spanish Left Opposition has made great progress. It is now in the heat of action that it must carry on the fight among the worker and peasant masses. In Czechoslovakia, a group is preparing to publish its own newspaper.
In Austria and Belgium, however — two countries where the Communist International is piling up errors, defeats and impotence, and where social democracy is particularly strong — the opposition has not, in the recent period, made great progress. In Belgium there has even been a certain setback [7]. Only a thoroughgoing discussion and a merciless critique of the errors committed will enable the opposition to make progress once again.
Within the Italian Communist Party a new, ardent layer of oppositionists has arisen [8], convinced of the necessity of recasting the party on the basis of the platform of the International Left Opposition.
In every country where communism is rooted, where it wins over the best revolutionary elements and where centrism causes it to degenerate, the Left Opposition is arising. In South America there exist two groups publishing their own papers; in China too, under very harsh conditions, our comrades have taken up the struggle for a correct policy in the proletarian revolution. In Indochina, finally, cadres are arising who, together with the opposition, will form the leaven of the proletarian revolution.
The Communist Left Opposition, whatever its strength in this or that country, can develop only in direct contact with the real course of the labour movement, and above all with the revolutionary struggle of the proletarian vanguard, with the communist party. Thanks to the tradition of the October revolution, official communism, notwithstanding its weakening, still brings together, in numerous countries, the most active section of the working class. That is why the opposition rejects the watchword of a second party and of a fourth international. It regards itself as a fraction whose objective is the rectification of the Communist International, on the true basis of Marx and Lenin. For the same reason, it never departs from the activity of the proletarian vanguard.
The International Left Opposition takes a position on every question. It criticises without pity the political errors of the official leadership in demonstrations, strikes, and so forth. At the same time it takes part in the battles of the proletarian vanguard and wins its confidence, without making any concessions whatsoever to the official leaders. During elections to parliaments, municipal councils, etc., the opposition calls on the workers to vote for the candidates of the Communist Party, while nonetheless freely developing its criticisms and trying to compel the candidates to make formal political commitments.
The general policy of the Marxist left is facilitated by the formation of an avowed right wing, expelled by the centrists. The right opposition has an essentially national character. It refuses to take a position on the question of the character of the Russian revolution. Its internationalism is confined to the exchange of friendly visits between each "national group". It is guided by the old social-democratic principle: "live and let live". The finished type of this is provided by the Workers' and Peasants' Party, formed in France a few months ago after the expulsion of a few municipalist leaders, a party that is already openly heading towards social democracy.
The communist left builds its policy on the basis of an analysis of world developments as a whole. From this flows the necessity of studying each national situation in the whole of its concrete precision. If, in our general assessment of the situation, we proceed from the general to the particular, in our action and in our day-to-day struggles we proceed from the particular to the general. The particularities of each situation appear to us all the more precisely and concretely the better we know the whole. That is why the international unification of the communist left is the premise for a correct revolutionary policy in each country, that is, for the revolutionary utilisation of each national particularity.
The Communist Left Opposition, whose first international meeting was held in April 1930, calls on all communist workers, all revolutionary militants, to rally to its banner. The profound crisis through which the communist movement is passing today, and the tasks with which it is now confronted and which it must resolve at the earliest possible moment, demand the strengthening of the bond that unites the International Left Opposition.
Through its daily action, through its newspapers, and at the side of the revolutionary vanguard, the opposition must draw communist workers into its ranks and induce them to fight there with energy.
Nothing will contribute more strongly to this than the profound bond that unites, and will continue to unite ever more closely, the International Left Opposition in the revolutionary struggle.
Long live the proletarian dictatorship in Russia! Long live Lenin's Communist International! Long live the world revolution!
Notes
[1] Right-wing opposition (KPO) of the German CP, allied with the Bukharinist right.
[2] Formed at the end of 1929 by municipal councillors expelled from the CP, it became the PUP [Parti d'unité prolétarienne], which later joined the SFIO.
[3] Group expelled from the American CP because of its support for the Soviet right-wing opposition (Bukharin).
[4] In 1928 the Leninbund was a reflection of the United Opposition in the USSR. Zinovievists and Trotskyists subsequently left it. The disagreements with the Trotskyists concerned Urbahns' leftism, his definition of the USSR as state capitalism, and the creation of a new party.
[5] A working-class district of Berlin.
[6] At the Sixth Congress of the Comintern (July 1928), James P. Cannon, the American delegate, and Maurice Spector, the Canadian delegate, were given, as members of the programme commission, part of Trotsky's critique of the Comintern's draft programme, which had been written by Bukharin. They "forgot" to hand the text back; once it reached the United States, Trotsky's text became a key document in the struggle against Stalinism.
[7] A split occurred in 1930 within the Belgian Opposition, involving Van Overstraeten and Hennaut, former secretaries of the CP, over the analysis of the USSR and over the question of a new party.
[8] Three members of the Political Bureau of the Italian CP, Tresso, Leonetti and Ravazzoli, were expelled by Togliatti in February 1930 and joined the International Left Opposition in April, forming the New Italian Opposition (NOI).