Issuing body: First International Meeting of the Communist Left Opposition (Paris)
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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 entire 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 wage 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, in Austria, in Spain, in England, in America, in China, in India, etc. The legendary prosperity of the United States itself has been transformed into a crisis expressed in particular by growing unemployment. This crisis has spread across the entire world.
Despite all its efforts, the bourgeoisie is showing itself incapable of resolving its permanent crisis. Against the bourgeoisie stands the mass of workers, whom social democracy helps to enslave. In Austria, social democracy sells the workers to the fascists and to reaction. In Germany, it subjects them to the shootings of Zoergiebel and Muller. In England, it plainly plays the 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 revolutionary Hindu proletarians.
Only the revolutionary movement can, together with the proletarian party, 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 the call of the masses to struggle, and the capacity and degree of preparedness of the official communist parties. A profound crisis is currently 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 diseases eating away at the movement's living strength. In the last period, an entire 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, thus the Workers' and Peasants' Party of Louis Sellier in France, thus the Lovestone group in the United States. On the other hand, the Left Opposition, which includes 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 directed 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 so, it has had to expel the founders of the Communist International and those who led it during that period. The crisis is developing in full, and 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 the most part, a reflection and a direct consequence of the crisis unfolding within the Russian Communist Party and within the Soviet Union as a whole. 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 to the Russian proletariat the aid without which it cannot carry through to completion the revolution it victoriously began. The USSR cannot on its own liquidate 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 city over the village, that systematically raises the standard of living of the workers and of the poor peasants, and that bases its general policy on the perspectives of the international revolution. Such was the policy during the first period of the October revolution. But, after Lenin's death, 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 subordinating 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 handed to the bureaucracy of the factory and trade-union leaderships; instead of extending workers' democracy within the party, the party was smothered under an unprecedented bureaucratic apparatus. In order to carry out this policy of reaction, this policy of "national socialism", a monstrous campaign of falsification, suppression, alteration, intimidation and mobilisation of all the reactionary elements in the country was launched against the Leninists. 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 repercussion within the Communist International a zigzagging policy 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 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 the 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 wished to liquidate them as a class within a few years. They set up a programme of industrialisation and collectivisation of agriculture, bureaucratically conceived and executed. 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. This is why the recent course of the Stalinist apparatus has forced the International Left Opposition to cry out to the working class of the entire world: the Russian revolution is in danger, the Soviet Union is approaching a critical period, every effort 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 city, the proletariat, is in the process of losing its leadership over the village. The vanguard is becoming ever more disorganised; within the party itself, disintegration is proceeding in two directions: on the one hand, the gap between the apparatus and the base has become an abyss, and, on the other, the sharp and 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 allows for no period of collective rest. The dangers of inflation are becoming more serious every day. Even the apparatus has been compelled to retreat in the face of the latest results of its adventurous course. But all past experience shows that this retreat will not prevent a fall into the opposite extreme: passivity towards the classes hostile to the proletariat, the dragging of the party onto the liquidationist road of the right. Now a reversal of the policy pursued has begun and is starting to develop broadly. 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 field; in Germany, in France, the strident phrase-mongering, the evocation of the barricades at every moment of trade-union and political activity, is being followed by a worsened resumption of opportunist practices: passivity, hypocrisy and lies told to the proletariat.
It is necessary to know how to transform this retreat into a victory for the line of the Opposition, and to call on the workers to impose a serious tactic upon their party.
The International Left Opposition tells the class-conscious workers of the entire world openly that the Soviet Union, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Communist International, vanguard of the working class, are in danger, that the regime prevailing in Russia and the International are being dragged towards catastrophe. Everywhere, communist militants, revolutionary fighters, must join the Left Opposition and raise the flag 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 come together with the Opposition (Bolshevik-Leninists) of the Russian Communist Party, in order to centralise, clarify and organise the struggle. It will be accused of wanting to create a "fourth international". This baseless and groundless accusation 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. The moral and political heritage of Lenin's International is what the International Left Opposition proudly claims as its own possession. 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 its entire 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, strengthened by the weakening of the revolutionary movement, made use of every advantage the situation offered. Having at its disposal a powerful press, the telegraph, the radio, etc., it systematically distorted, over a period of several years, the views of the Opposition, making it responsible for its own past errors. It threw the ranks of communism into confusion, and it was at this price that it achieved its objective, that is, 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 it extremely difficult to create a common ideological basis. 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 exercise extreme reserve. But the centrist bureaucracy found the means to crush the Opposition through organisational methods, always at the cost 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 slogans did not spread beyond fairly restricted circles. The lack of numerous cadres capable of working actively for our ideas in every branch of the workers' movement greatly facilitated the struggle of centrism against the Opposition.
Lacking sufficient cadres and close international contacts, the International Left Opposition became, in its first period, a certain number of scattered national groups, whose principal activity was propaganda. Each had to seek its own way by its own means. It is in this fact that the danger of disagreements, of irresolution and of national limitation resides today. It must also be added that, at every one of its turns, centrism expelled from the Communist International elements of a very diverse and often 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 suffices to name the Urbahns faction 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 was sufficiently rich in distortions of the views of the Left Opposition. This phenomenon, moreover, appeared to varying degrees in most countries. It is thus that the very same conditions which gave rise to the necessity of the Left Opposition's later progress also brought about a certain weakening of it in its first stage.
Nevertheless, in the recent period, entirely real successes must already be recorded, along with the beginning of a new development in the direction of international cohesion. To a large extent, these are due to good work of ideological demarcation, to a purging of minds and cadres. In certain cases, this work was accomplished only with difficulty and seemed to weaken the Opposition. But, in reality, it has prepared a serious foundation for new progress in the near future.
In France, the appearance of la Vérité (in August 1929) and the transformation of la Lutte de classes into a monthly theoretical review fighting for the Ligue communiste (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 which ended in an inevitable split within the Leninbund. This made possible the fusion of the best elements of the Leninbund with the Wedding Opposition and that of the Palatinate, within the Unified Opposition of the German Communist Party. In this way, the German Left Opposition is now finally assured of making substantial progress along the road of political action. Already the appearance of its fortnightly journal, Der Kommunist, and its ardent struggle alongside the party's workers, have set it on this road.
In the United States and Canada, the Opposition rose after the Sixth World Congress 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 in the heat of action that it must now carry on the struggle among the working and peasant masses. In Czechoslovakia, a group is preparing to publish its own journal.
However, in Austria and Belgium, two countries where the Communist International is accumulating mistakes, defeats and impotence, and where social democracy is particularly strong, the Opposition has not achieved great progress in the recent period. In Belgium there has even been a certain regression. Only thoroughgoing discussion and merciless criticism of the mistakes committed will make the Opposition progress once again.
Within the Italian Communist Party, a new, ardent stratum of oppositionists has arisen, convinced of the need to refound 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 rising. In South America, there exist two groups which publish their own journals; in China too, under very harsh conditions, our comrades have engaged in the struggle for a correct policy in the proletarian revolution. In Indochina, finally, cadres are rising who, together with the Opposition, will form the leaven of the proletarian revolution.
The Communist Left Opposition, whatever its strength may be in this or that country, can develop only in direct contact with the real course of the workers' 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 many countries the most active section of the working class. This is why the Opposition rejects the slogan of a second party and of a fourth international. It considers itself 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 mercy the political errors of the official leadership in demonstrations, strikes, etc. 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, municipalities, etc., the Opposition calls on the workers to vote for the candidates of the Communist Party, while nonetheless freely developing its criticisms and endeavouring to compel the candidates to make formal political commitments.
The general policy of the Marxist left is facilitated by the formation of a declared right wing, expelled by the centrists. The right Opposition is essentially national in character. It refuses to take a position on the question of the character of the Russian revolution. Its internationalism is limited 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 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 all its concrete precision. If, in our general assessment of the situation, we proceed from the general to the particular, in our action and our daily 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 understand the whole. This 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 use of each national particularity.
The Communist Left Opposition, whose first international meeting was held in the month of April 1930, calls on all communist workers, on all revolutionary militants, to rally to its banner. The profound crisis that the communist movement is going through today, the tasks it now confronts and which it must resolve within the shortest possible time, demand the strengthening of the bond that unites the International Left Opposition.
It is necessary that, through its daily action, through the medium of its newspapers, alongside the revolutionary vanguard, the Opposition draw communist workers to enter its ranks and to struggle there with energy.
Nothing will contribute more powerfully to this than the deep bond which 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 the Communist International of Lenin! Long live the world revolution!