The Semi Monthly Organ of the Opposition Group in the Workers (Communist) Party of America It is necessary that every member of the Party should study calmly and with the greatest objectivity, first the substance of the differences of opinion, and then the development of the struggles with in the Party. Neither the one nor the other can be done unless the documents of both sides are published. He who takes somebody word for it is a hopeless idiot, who can be disposed of with a simple gesture of the hand. Lenin MILITANT VOL. NO.
NEW YORK, DECEMBER 15, 1928.
855 PRICE CENTS The July Plenum and the Right Danger carry notre Rykov one of first victory of appeared in in Pravda short few weeks ago, the official Party press carried the first stories cic written in July of this year. Just as Stalin fruitlessly attempted to deny the from Moscow about the opening of a new struggle within the existence of a Right danger, as analyzed by Trotsky then, so he is now These storics revealed that the struggle between the Right wing (Rykov.
Tomsky) and the Center (Stalin. with Bucharin playing the customary buf.
trying to deny the existence of this danger in the Political Bureau (Rykov, etc. and continues to lull the membership of the and the Com fer rold could no longer be concealed behind the curtains of the Political intern into a false security. The article of Trotsky printed below was abso Bureau of and had broken out in the Moscow and other organi. lutely correct when it was written, and is even more correct now. It throws a zations of the Party, where advance scouts for the Right wing had been pre penetrating searchlight upon the present situation within the Soviet Union senting in the lower units of the Party the policies already proposed by Rykov. Party, exposes the inexorable class forces represented by the contending Tomsky Kalinin in the Political Bureau. The dispatches in the Party press, groups, and proves again the irrefutable accuracy of the predictions and pro however, throw no light on the actual situation and the real issue at stake. gram of the Leninist Opposition. This article was sent to the Sixth Congress The entire course of the present developments in the was of the Communist International but was not distributed to the delegates. It predicted with amazing precision by comrade Trotsky in his platform as far is printed here for the first time in English. Other suppressed documents of back as the 15th Party Congress (1927) and in the following suppressed arti equal importance will be printed in subsequent issues of The Militant.
danger. What should we deduce from it in order meeting of the Moscow Party workers on the By TROTSKY to establish the new line of conduct? change in outcome of the July Plenum of the Central Com the distribution of the national income which should mittee was an event of capital political importance.
very slight material results. Measures of admindivert to to the industries a part of what had gone to Here was expounded the program of the most au istrative violence do not belong to a correct course. the Kulak, thereby diverting it from capitalism tothoritative representative of the right wirely unThey are the price we pay for an incorrect onc. wards socialism, and accelerating the development ing his banner to the tribune iſ not The attempt of Rykov to attribute to the Opposition of both light and heavy industry. Contrary to the half way. In his report did not pause an instant upon the program of the Com derived from the period of Military Communism (which merely repeated in this question the arguHe devoted his speech exclusively to the question the Opposition considered these perquisitions in the is purely and simply ridiculous. From the very first ments of the Opposition) Rykov discovered the cause of the collection crisis. not in the lagging of of the grain collections. Moreover it is not with country, the re establishment of flying squadrons, the development of industry but in that of agriculout good reason that his report was delivered in the tone of a victor. The Right has issued entirely etc. not as the beginning of a new course but as ture. To offer such an explanation is to make fun the failure of the old. Article 107 on of the Party and of the working class. It is to from its first skirmish with the Center, victorious hoarding is not an instrument of a Leninist policy, it deceive the Party in order to accomplish a swerve after four or five months of left politics. The marks the program of the Opposition administrative tion in the manner of the Ustrialov professors.
soof the Rykov policy. In trying to pre to the right. It is the old of Rykav aver Stalin, gained to be sure measures of economic disorganization for which he It is perfectly obvious that our agriculture is incowith the consent of the latter.
of Rykov report is that the swerve towards the e left is himself entirely responsible, Rykov is behaving herent, scattered, backward, that it has a barbarous which occurred in February was only an episode duc as all petty bourgeois politicians do, for they always character, and that this backwardness is the fundeto extraordinary circumstances, that this episode Communist by depicting the latter as a bandit and ought to be buried and forgotten, that we must also an expropriator.
cial resources due to industry towards the individual on the shelf not only Article 107, but also what What is the significance of the change of course peasant estate, is to choose not only the bourgeois in February, that we must abandon the former urse and turn not to the left lagging of industry, of the threatening class differ reactionary bourgeoisie. It is to become a Soviet but to the right and is done the better. To clear the road Rykov ackcntiation in the country, and of the extreme Kulak CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE powledged (be would not do otherwise before the three of his the moment crisis arose GANGSTERIS M!
judged it to be less profound than it really was; but, second, thought that thanks to extraordinary measures we would succeed in overcoming completely this crisis On Monday evening, December 10th, two women arc worse than Mussolini and his Fascists. We of grain supply. We did not succeed. Third, comrades, Maria Reinl and Pauline Gutringer, must beat them politically and physically. Party hoped that the whole campaign comrades have been directly instructed by such who were selling The Militant on the sidewalk in of grain collection would be carried on in reliance on the poor peasant, front of the Workers Center on Union Square, New functionaries as Miller and Benjamin that they must and maintaining in perfect stability our union with York City, were set upon by an organized squad not speak to the of the Opposition but the masses of middle peasants. Upon this point also which had been detailed to execute the slogan given should spit upon them. More than that, physical was mistaken.
Militant at all costs and beat up the Oppositionists. Militant on the streets, have been directly discussed Now this whole crisis of grain supply, with all the political phenomena which accompanied it, was Get out here, you counter revolutionary proand planned in committee meetings of the Party in the New York district, where every kind of bourforeseen by the opposition in its counter theses, stitutes. This and similar commands, mixed with which showed Rykov accurately all that he did not unprintable obscenities, were hurled at the two work geois and anti Communist literature is freely sold in the Party book store.
comprehend and did not foresee. It was just in ing class women before a crowd of several hundred The methods of violence which the bureaucrats are order to avoid tardy and exaggerated administrative which quickly gathered measures, adopted in haste and without coordinaScreaming cpithets and calling the women com copying from the labor fakers are necessary only for tion, that the Opposition proposed in good season every name in the vocabulary of the under a false policy. Their methods condemn their policy loan of grain from the rich elements of world, they seized the two comrades by the arms and and will defeat it, for Communist ideas are stronger the villages. To be sure this measure also was an began to push them away. The Communist women than the gangster fist.
exceptional one. The entire None of the Foster comrades participated in the made exceptional measures inevitables policy bad resisted and stood their ground. The papers were If the loan torn from their hands. Comrade Reinl attempted shameful gangster attack. It is primarily the prehad been made methodically and soon enough, that to recover some of the papers and received a fist letarian revolutionists in the Party ranks who 12ust would have reduced to a minimum these adminisblow in the face.
defeat this course. They must burn the incipient trative excesses, which are too high a payment for The police appeared and immediaely seized the two Fascist tactics out of the Party with a white let women leaving their attackers unmolested. The iron. They must compel a free discussion of the 1) The Plenum of the Central Committee of the was held in July 1928, was devoted to conomic difficulties and to The Militant on the sidexvalk were then forcibly which two Communist women who had attempted to sell disputed questions in a normal Communist way.
For our part we will take up the challenge of after. bitter struggle arose at this plenum, or more exactly behind driven away by the police.
gangsterism incited and organized by poltroons who As appears later, it was in fact the Right which carried the day, with These events are the direct result of a planped never yet took a blow on the picket line or in a raid.
Rykov and Bucharin at its head.
2) Article 107 of the Penal Code deals with the struggle against campaign of incitement by Party officials who them. Our task and duty is to reach the Communist workselves never yet took part in a fight and who lacked ers with our views. Since we are deprived of our the courage to participate in the on the Party rights by expulsion and suppression we must women comrades. Wolfe, who ran away from the do this through The Militant. We will sell the Party like a craven during the Palmer raids and Militant before every workers institution and meettime in the discussion supplement of also after the Bridgeman raid, directly incited to ing. The rights of the revolutionary workers are of Party policy in the country and the five year plan for the develop physical violence against the Opposition in his speech higher than the rights of landlordism. We will 4) Foreseeing the imminent crisis of grain hoarding, the Opposiat the Workers Forum on November 25. Dr. Mar maintain these rights by struggle. In this struggle tion proposed in its platform a forced loan of Brain from the rich koff in his speech to the Italian Party membership our strength will be multiplied by stead fast belief elements of the villages which should yield 150, 000, 000 to 200, 000, 000 puds.
meeting on November 28 said, The Oppositionists in our views and by our courage to defend them.
facts)
small crrors: wire First, at when the cried members rades a even speculation and the fraudulent concealment of surplus merchandize.
This article was widely applied last Spring as an extraordinary measure for requisitioning grain from the peasants.
3) This refers to the Counter theses, which the Opposition opposed to the official theses presented by the Central Committee at the 15th Congress of the Party. These Counter which appeared were ed at the