Page THE MILITANT August 15, 292 the International Right Wing ideas? On will first be decided after the experiences in the Party Letter to Boris Souvarine by Trotsky and in the proletarian factory organizations.
In all the basic questions of the world revolution and NOTE goat when the responsibility for the catastrophe in the class struggle, Brandler and Thalheimer joined with The letter written by comrade Trotsky to Boris Souvarine Germany lay with the Zinoviev Stalin leadership of the Stalin Bucharin, who, precisely in these questions deals testintly with the standpoint of the Leninist Oppo Comintern as a whole. reached a negative estimation sition towards the Brandler Thalheimer group in Germany. of Brandler only when became convinced that he did (China, English trade unions, peasantry. were supNevertheless, all that is said in the letter applies with mul not for a single moment want to, nor could he, learn ported by the social democracy. Nevertheless, Thar tiplied force to the Right Wing group now being formed from the great events. His retrospective estimation heimer defines as Menshevism the demand for the secret ballot for the proletarian vanguard against the inside and outside the Communist Party of the United of the German situation of 1923 is quite similar to the States.
apparatus which is carrying out Menshevism with the The letter of comrade Trotsky, with which the criticism that the Mensheviks developed on the 1905 methods of terror.
Communist League of America (Opposition) is in thorough yevolution in the years of the reaction. had enough Can mccurd, will therefore also serve as a final reply to the prestime to reflect on all this.
one imagine a more wretched bankruptcy of drown ent Stalinist leaders of the Party who are seeking do not doubt that there are many workers but the echoes of their many years cooperation with the THALHEIMER ON THE RUSSIAN DISCUSSION in and around the Brandler group who, sickened with international Right Wing in the Comintern and its American The whole report of Thalheimer on the Russian dis the sordid management of Thaelmann and Co. leave section, Lovestone group, by shouting at the top of their cussion can summed up in one sentence: Trotsky their Party, but have not found their way to the right lungs that we are now in alliance with Lovestone. Every program demands a stronger financial pressure on the door. The Leninist Opposition must help these workers perious worker will realize the obvious impossibility of an peasantry. Thalheimer plays variations on this sen to find their way in the situation. But this can only alliance between the Leninist wing of the Communist movetence in his whole report. Can there be a more shame be achieved in an irreconcilable and relentless struggle ment and the Thermidorian Right Wing, in the fight ful position for a Marxist? The real question begins against the political course of Brandler Thalheimer and against which the Opposition was born and developed, for me with the negation of the peasantry as a whole.
and will finally conquer. Editor.
all those groups that solidarize with them or actually It is a question of the class struggle within the peas support them. received your letter of April 16th, which aston antry. The Opposition raised the demand to free forty THE VACILLATORS ished me somewhat. You emphasize that you expected to fifty percent of the peasantry from taxes entirely. The Stalin course in the Comintern has not yet something else from me with regard to the foreign Since 1923 the Opposition always warned that the spoken its last word. We are only entering upon a Opposition groups.
retardation in industry would signify the price scissors series of crises, splits, groupings and convulsions. should not express myself right away, but first and consequently also the strongest and most destruc Many years of work stand before us. Not everyone tive exploitation of the lowest sections of the village observe study, gather groups and people who are able will measure up to it. You speak of the vacillations to think and act as Marxists. You reproach me with by the Kulaks, the middlemen and the tradesmen.
of Radek, Smilga and Preobrazhenski. know all that Acting precipitately and warn me that will surely The middle section of the peasantry presents a social very well. They are vacillating not for the first day, repent not having left myself the time to observe, re protoplasm. Uninterruptedly and unalterably, it as not for the first month, not even for the first year.
flect and to discuss sumes certain forms in two directions: in the capitalist It was always noteworthy in the highest degree that In your criticism, which notice with pleasure, is direction through the Kulaks, and in the socialist direc these comrades vacillated or adopted an incorrect made in a very friendly tone, there is displayed the tion through the semi proletarians and the agricultural position in the basic questions of the international entire incorrectness of your present attitude. You workers. Whoever ignores this basic process, whoever revolution. Radek defended the incorrect line in the must be aware of the fact that up till now have not speaks of the peasantry in general, whoever does not expressed myself on a single one of the disputed inquestion of China, the Anglo Russian Committee, and see that the peasantry has two hostile faces, is irre up to 1927 he was doubtful if after all any other ternal questions that divide the French, German, trievably lost. The problem of the Thermidor and economic course than that of Stalin Bucharin was posAustrian and other Opposition groups. For the last Bonapartism is fundamentally the problem of the Ku sible. Preobrazhenski adopted a quite false position year have been too far apart from the life of the laks.
Whoever overlooks this problem, minimizes its in the Chinese question as well as in the question of European Parties and really need time to familiarize significance by seeking to draw off attention to the the Comintern program (conciliatory attitude towards myself with general political conditions as well as with questions of the Party regime, of bureaucracy, of dirty national socialism. Smilga, together with Radek, was the Opposition groups. If have nevertheless expressed polemical methods and other phenomena and manifesta against the withdrawal of the Communist Party from myself on the latter, it was only with regard to those tions of the offensive of the Kulaks against the dic the Kuo Min Tang, against the slogan of the dictatorthree questions that serve as fundamental questions tatorship of the proletariat, resembles a doctor who ship of the Chinese proletariat during the revolutionary of our period: The policies in the hunts for the symptoms without noticing the functional period and against the slogan of the legislative national the leadership of the Chinese revolution and the Anglo and organic disorders.
assembly in the period of the counter revolution. The Russian Committee. Is it not strange that you pro At the same time, Thalheimer repeats like a wellpresent vacillations of the above named comrades in the pose that precisely in these three questions should not coached parrot that the demand presented by us for of Party organization are the consequences be precipitate, that should gain time, to inform my. the secret ballot in the Party is Menshevism. He of the confusion and halfness of their general theoself and to reflect? At the same time you yourself must surely know that the worker members of the retical and political attitude. It was ever thus and do not relinquish your right to express yourself openly do not trust themselves to speak, to vote acthus it shall ever be.
on these three questions and what is more in a sense cording to their conscience. They are afraid of the Lenin taught us not to fear the departure, the splitdirectly opposed to the decisions that form the real apparatus which transmits the pressure of the Kulak, ting off, the desertion even of very respectable, inbasis of the Left, Leninist Opposition.
fluential comrades. In the final analysis the correctly of the official, of the specialist (technical specialist. maintained political line decides. To be able to hold POSITION OF THE BRANDLER GROUP of petty bourgeoisie, of the foreign bourgeoisie. Of course the Kulak also wants secret voting in the Sovito a correct line in declared in the press that was completely ready a period of political ebb, of the offensive of the bourgeoisie, the social democracy and to correct or to change my estimation of the Brandler ets, for he too is troubled by the apparatus which still group or their like in case am informed of any new the Right Centrist bloc in the Comintern (these are stands, as always, under the pressure of the workers.
These are precisely the elements of the dual power, manifestations of one and the same condition. that facts or documents. The Brandler group then very obligingly sent me all the writings published by them.
is now the main duty of a proletarian revolutionary.
covered up by the Centrist bureaucracy which maneuvThe correct estimation of the epoch and its dynamic In Arbeiter Politik of March 16 found Thalheimer crs between classes and just because of that continuously undermines the positions of the proletariat. The Menforces, the correct prevision of the morrow will force report on the Russian discussion. As a matter of fact did not need much time for study and reflection in sheviks want secret voting for the Kulak and the all the really revolutionary elements of the working class to regroup theroselves and to unite around the order to establish that the Brandler Thalheimer group petty bourgeois in the Soviets against the workers, against the Communists. want secret voting for the Bolshevik banner. That is my opinion on all these on the other side of the barricades. Let us worker Bolsheviks in the Party against the bureauquestions. That is how see the things.
remember some facts: In 1923 this group did not grasp the revolution crats, against the Thermidorians. But since ThalI would be glad if you could associate yourself with ary situation, nor did it understand how to utilize it. heimer belongs to those who overlook the classes, he the above mentioned observations. That would give us declares the demands of the Leninist Opposition identithe possibility of working together. am quite aware In 1924 Brandler endeavored to see the revolucal with the demands of the Mensheviks. With this of how useful such a collaboration would be for our tionary situation immediately ahead of him and not cause.
behind him.
nonsense he seeks to mask his purely bourgeois position in the peasant question.
Constantinople, April 25, 1929. In 1925 he declared that there had been no revoL. TROTSKY.
lutionary situation at all, only an overestimation on THE SECRET BALLOT Trotsky part.
Naturally the secret ballot in the Party will be The Rumor Factory In 1925 26 27 he was of the opinion that the utilized not only by the worker Bolsheviks but also by The Daily Worker and the Freiheit have both pub.
course based on the Kulak, the Stalin Bucharin course their enemies who have penetrated the Party. In lished stories about an alleged Trotskyist named Koniof that time, was correct.
other words, the class struggle within the Communist kov from Boston, who is working with the Right Wing 1923 25 Thalheimer as a member of the Party, now suppressed under the lid of the Bonapartist in the Independent Workmen Circle against the comProgram Commission supported Bucharin against me apparatus, will make its way into the open. That is munists and the Left Wing. As the correspondents in the essential program question (empty schema of just what we want. The Party will see itself as it and scribblers of these Stalinist organs know perfectly national capitalism, instead of the theory of the con really is. That would mean a real self cleansing of the well, the Konikov involved has nothing whatsoever to nection of world economy and world politios. Party as a a counterpoise to that bureaucratically do with the Opposition, unless it is by virtue of the So far as know, Brandler and Thalheimer never falsified purging that the apparatus is again under fact that he the former husband of one of our Boston raised their voice against the theory of socialism in a taking in the interest of its self preservation. Only comrades, Dr. Antoinette Konikov. But the Freiheit single country.
after the cleansing of the Party in the above men and Worker writers have had enough experience writ7. Brandler and Thalheimer sought to attain the tioned sense can the secret ballot be carried over into ing in the past for the yellow Jewish Forward and the leadership of the Party by availing themselves of the the trade unions. After a number of years of the capitalist press to utilize this pretty trick against an coloration of Stalin (as Foster does in bureaucratic levelling of the trade unions we will be inconvenient opponent.
America. able to establish only in this way how great the in Our Minneapolis comrades inform us that the Stalinfluence of the Mensheviks, the Social Revolutionaries In the question of the Chinese revolution Brandists there are busily engaged in spreading the story ler and Thalheimer hobbled along behind the official and the White Guards is in reality. Without seriously that comrade Martin Abern has sold out, left the Nat. leadership fathoming the whole class it will be impossible to hold Committee of the Opposition and become organizer of The same thing in the question of the Anglo firmly to the real dictatorship of the proletariat. At the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union in St. Louis, Russian Committee.
present, the diseases have been driven inside to such while comrade Max Shactman was made organizer And so have before me the experlence of a six an extent that extraordinary measures are necessary for the Cleveland. We hear that we have year period. It must be known to you that in the to bring them to the surface. One of these measures, also joined first with the Muste group and secondly condemnation of Brandler was in no way precipitate. not the only one, to be sure, should be precisely the that we are in joint committees with the Lovestone After the frightful collapse of the German Revoludemand for the secret ballot in the Party and then faction. Really, after our allisice with the Hoover tion of 1923 gave Brandler a qualified protection; also in the trade unions.
and the Austrian government, our new alliances declared it undeserved to put him up as the scapeSo far as the Soviets are concerned, the question should be considered a step forward!
stands In 13 protective