February 15, 1929.
THE MILITANT Page inated.
Prior to the them.
army and the international faction which is undermining the to find a legal expression for its opposition to opportunism and bureaucratic corruption which Comintern and weakening the position of the So the Lovestone Pepper regime. These proletarian are undermining them. The struggle against these viet Union. This faction of Lovestone Pepper is elements who have not yet developed the full im deadly perils takes precedence over all others. The combination of the old ultra Left and Goose plications of the struggle and do not yet under struggle facing the Communist vanguard in all caucus elements of the underground Party (who stand its international character have mobilized Parties today is the struggle to preserve the Comfought the formation of the legal Party) and the around the Foster Bittelman faction. The leaders munist movement. This is is the historic mission of Centrist leaders of the Workers Council group of this faction exploit these proletarian tendencies on an international scale. The task (who fought the underground Communist Party)
the Opposition is to fight with all its power the hot organisational polition. They thus play the parte against the opportunist and anced between them, reconciled their differences of a shield for the opportunist adventurers who tion of the Party, without slipping onto the side and shifted the leadership to control the Party. Their role is to restrain and track of sectarian isolation. This requires first of the alt firmness of undamental the petty bourgeois, intellectual and careerist ele confuse the proletarian tendency; to muddle up and a realistic line of ments. This faction was patched over in the gether for the issues and hold back the struggle into channels tactics based on principles.
purpose of securing and prescribed by the international Stalin regime; to This, the actual line of the Opposition, is perat all costs and under all circumstances. It prevent an understanding of the great world ques fectly clear to the Social Democrats as well as to has no roots or traditions in the working class and tions which are bound up with the conflict be those elements within the Party who stand farno firm or definite line of policy. Its course is an tween the proletarian and the petty bourgeois tenopportunist adventurist shifting from day to day dencies in our Party.
the Workers Council which joined the Party as according to factional and inner Party exigency This faction of inner Party opportunists, lack late as 1922, the opportunist trade union leaders to which its external policies are always ing firm principle, has a deep internal conflict be in the needle trades, the entire bureaucracy of the In the struggle against the opposition tween the impulse for struggle against the Party Finnish section all these have unanimously and sorted to methods of a prendersidera fascist en met regime, which comes from below, and the mood enthusiastically denounced the opposition, lyhange (gansterism, burglary. staggering back and forth between them. Their Massachusetts who have come into conflict with The personal records of the leaders of this fac frequent and contradictory statements and the Party regime, on questions of the Finnish tion are so malodorous as to render them absolutely declarations reflect this antagonism from which movement, have likewise rejected the platform of ineligible for leading positions in a Communist the faction cannot escape and which it cannot re the Opposition. All these facts are known.
Party which must gain and hold the confidence of concile. Their difficulties grow from day to day The attempt of the Party leadership in its stateand a collapse of the faction, foreshadowed by the ment in the Daily Worker of Feb, 15, to make the leaders. Pepper, the Moscow representative of the Foster Bittelman split, is by no means improbable Opposition responsible for alleged combinations faction, was a social patriot during the war, a war at the Party Convention with reactionary and anti Party elements against. An attempt to continue the faction struggle after the Party. The American Trotskyists, the ren.
the Hungarian Soviet Republic he was a the convention will bring new blows from the egade Cannon group, have now formed openly an Minister the bourgeois government who arrested Communist International and organizational per Clutionaries. dende under ettean malle feccorn teenste seunigay bureaucre ideal stande in deadley factions are in eine hood hitam pe the Finnish cists, with the white guardist followers of MannerLovestone, while a proletariat, Executive Committee of the Party in 1920, testified draw their thesis that the Lovestone Pepper leader social democrats member of the Central this and they are preparing to capitulate and with with the fakers of the salvation for the State of New York in the trial of Harry ship constitutes the Right Wing and the main dan against the Workerbere Communist hea Regavan Winitsky, securing thereby the dismissal of two ger to the Party. On the other hand the prolet America. is a deliberate slander worthy of indictments against himself while comrade Winit ariani supporters of the faction demand a continua the school which invented the infamous tale about sky went to prison. Wolfe ran away from the tion of the struggle and will revolt against a capitthe Wrangel officer and the Russian Opposition.
Party during the Palmer raids in 1919 and disap ulation, and move closer to the Opposition which All tendencies to break away from the Party to peared for two years. After the Bridgman raid in fights on a principle line.
the right, to moderate the struggle against the The politics of the faction leaders consists of Socialist Party or to form an indiscriminate comMexico against Party instructions, returning in the search for an expedient formula to reconcile bination of opportunist and anti Party elements this conflict. But the whole situation excludes and against the Party have nothiny in common with body of business men in Gary, Indiana, in the prohibits such a reconciliation. In any case, fure our views against the Communists, as a reformed redhe tand then splits and disintegration of the faction which we fight as a detachment of the Internationai. Leninist Opposition for the regeneration of the the Communist movement and the itable.
Communist movement in the struggle against steel strike. Olgin fought the Russian Revolution and the Communists in the columns of the yellow have participated in the founding of the Party and The Opposition is a nucleus of Communists who opportunism from without as well as from within the Party. While excluded from the Party we carry on our revolutionary work in the class strugthe Bolshevik Revolution in the capitalist press.
gle on the basis of our platform.
Trachtenberg Engdahl and Kruse fought on the inception. Most of them were active in the revol The Stalin Bucharin regime converts the faction side of Berger and Hillquit against the Communists utionary movement for years before the Party was struggle into a game of be fuddling the Party memward. At the Socialist Party convention in 1921 organized. They constitute a group of comrades bership and pulling wires in Moscow. The Opposition in the American Party, uniting with the Kruse protested against and branded as a lie the accusation that he wanted to join the Communist the Party a longer time than any group that ever existed in line of the Russian Opposition, breaks through International without reservations. Kruse expelled this disgraceful and corrupting game. It brings Communists from the Socialist Party and the The present Opposition was in the forefront of clarity into the Party struggle and gives the prolYoung People Socialist League and is expelling ism. Pat formulated and fought in the front ranks the struggle to an International principle basis. some of the same comrades from the Party in the Chicago District today.
for the correct trade union policy, for the legal gives it a revolutionary content and begins the education of the Party in struggle for Leninist fundaAlmost the entire editorial staff of the Frei pelled Communists Cannon, Swabeck, Abern and mentals on the great world questions of the period.
heit was trained in the school of the Forward and Edwards were International and lead the success to the Fourth Congress of Our fight as a part of the International Opposithe reactionary Zionist press and conducted there the Communist tion for the Leninist line on a world scale is at the fa campaign against the Communful fight there on these questions after a pro same time a fight to preserve the Communist move.
ist Party which they now conduct against the Op: tracted struggle in the Party: They were the first ment in America and to build it into a working of the lower and district functionaries of the pres Labor Party and the adventurous politics connected power able to fulfill its great historic mission, ent regime will reveal similar facts. The Love with it in 1923. They were the organizers of the The present Opposition fought for the Russian stone Pepper faction leaders are a distinct type of revolt against the Pepper regime and the movement Revolution since 1917 and for the Communist Inadventurers in the movement. These are the peoternational since the first day its banner was raised.
ple who expel and calumniate us.
which began then to form the proletarian tendency Our fight today is a continuation on the same line into a group. The present Opposition lead the and for the same basic principles.
The Foster Bittelman group represents a section fight in 1925 against the narrow base of our trade We raise before the Party convention the quesof the forces organized in the beginning of the union work and thereby helped the Party to again struggle in 1923 which signalized the crystalliza break its isolation and get the miners mass movetion of restoring the Party membership of the ex.
pelled comrades of the Opposition on the basis of tion of the proletarian tendency. It is now divid ment under way. The Opposition as at present the foregoing statement of aims and views. We ing itself into two parts. the Foster wing and the constituted has worked together as a unit for a also propose to the Convention that it take a stand as a result of the contradictions in its position. Its main correct and works today along the same line.
for the re establishment of the Unity of the Comattempt to struggle against the ruling faction on The decisive role of the present. Opposition in munist International by calling for the re instatement of the Russian and International Opposition, the historic struggle against underground sectarianregime in the International which this faction repand for the immediate cessation of those measures resents, renders position untenable.
which especially undermine the Party and the stand. We see no more tradictory to Proletarian Dictatorship and strengthen the en Lack of principle, characterlessness, intellectual virtue in Left radicalism now than we saw then emies of the working Cláss the arrests, exile and and political cowardice on the part of the Foster and we offer no ultra Left panaceas to the Party. banishment of the Russian Opposition.
gustingly revealed in the whole pre convention the circumstances have placed the danger of Cen: and anti Trotsky campaign, are the manifesta trism and Opportunism in the foreground (alttions and the result of their contradictory and in hough sectarianism, particularly on the trade union The sections of our Platform dealing with the Party possible position.
and Labor Party questions, is by no means liquidOrganization, the Agrarian Questions and the Young Worker League, which are not included here on ac The support these leaders have received in the ated. count of lack of space, will appear in the next issue pre convention struggle represents in the main the The present struggle in our Party and in the effort of the proletarian tendency within the Party entire International is before all a struggle against the same kind of class its whole NOTE of The Militant. Contribute to the Fund for a WEEKLY MILITANT)