Age THE MILITANT Saturday April O, 1930 The Period of Right Centrist Down Sliding in the The policy of the most important conby TROTSKY The role of the Russian trade unions munist Parties, decided upon at the Fifth here, from the revolutionary standpoin, was Congress, very soon showed itself to be The following section represents chapter eight from the larger work a very unfavorable and positively pitiful completely inadequate. The mistakes of of Trotsky entitled, Revolutionary Strategy and Tacties in the Imperialist one. Of course, a support of the economic the specious Leftism which hampers tho Epoch. which will be pubished soon in book form by the Communist Leagne. strike, even an isolated one, was absolutely development of the Communist Parties, la Revolutionary Strategy and Tacties in the Imperialist Epoch. at the same necessary. There can be no two opinions on ter gave the impetus to new empirical zig time represents the third section of the document, The Criticism of the Draft that among revolutionaries. Yet this supzag deviations, and those to an accelerated Program of the Communist International which was presented to the oth port should have borne not only a financia, sliding down towards the Right. When Congress of the Comintern on behalf of the Russian Opposition.
but also a revolutionary political character.
people are burned by hot milk, they begin The entire book was suppressed from the delegates to the Gth Congress, The All Russian Central Council of Trade to blow cold on water, too. The Left in violation of the statutes of the Communist International. The Program Unions should have declared openly to the Central Committees of a whole series of ParCommission of the Congress was permitted to read only two of the sections of English Mine Workers nion and the whole ties were just as violently overthrown as comrade Trotsky historic document, and then compelled to return them to the English working class, that the mine workthey had been formed before the Fifth Con archives. But this particular section Revolutionary Strategy and Tacties in the ers strike could count seriously upon suc.
gress. The adventurist Leftism made way Imperialist Epoch. which presents an exhaustive analysis of the strategy and cess only if, by its stubbornness, its tenacfor an open opportunism of a Right Centrist tactics of the Communist movement in this period, was totally suppressed from ity and its impetus, it could prepare the way type. To comprehend the character and the the entire Congress. The Communist League has obtained a copy of it, along with for a new outbreak of the General Strike.
tempo of this organizational Rightward other documents mentioned in another column, of which this chapter is now That would have been achieved, however, swing, it must be recalled that Stalin, the presented to our readers. This entire book will appear shortly in book form at only by an open direct struggle against leader of this swing, back in September popular prices. Ed.
the General Council, that agency of the 1774, characterized the passing of Party government and the mining employers. The leadership to Maslow, Ruth Fischer, Trelat, thetic understanding of our cpoch and its The Results of the Anglo Russian struggle to transform the economic strike Suzanne Girault and others, as the expres inner tendencies, only after the feelings into a political strike signified, therefore, sion of the Bolshevization and as an answer (Stalin) and alled the fragments of concluCommittee an intense political and organizational war to the demands of the Bolshevik workers sions thus received every time with scholagainst the General Council. The first who, on their way to the revolution want The point of departure of the Angloastic schemas (Bucharin. The political step to such a war had to be the break with to have revolutionary leaders too.
Russian Committee, as we have already seen, line as a whole, therefore, represents a lay in the impatient endeavor to leap over the Anglo Russian Committee which had beStalin wrote, the last half year is chain of zig zags: the ideological bond, a the young and too slowly developing Comcome a reactionary hindrance, a chain on noteworthy in the respect that it brought kaleidoscope of schemata that have the tenmunist Party. The circumstances gave the the feet of the working class.
a fundamental reversal in the life of the dency to lead every fragment of the StalinNo revolutionary who weighs his words whole experiment a false character already Communist Parties of the West, in the ist zig zag to absurdity.
even before the general strike.
will maintain that a victory would have sense that the social democratic remnants The Sixth Congress would act correctly been assured along this direction. Yet the were liquidated, the Party cadres BolsheThe Anglo Russian Committee was perif it were to decide to elect a special comvictory on the whole was only possible on vised and an isolation of the opportunist ceived, not perhaps as only a purely episthis road. defeat on such a road, which elements took place. Pravda, September mission which would have the task to gatli odic bloc of leaders that would unfailingly er all those theories that were created by have to be and would be torn demonstracan lead later to victory, would ripen les20, 1924. sons, that is, implant the revolutionary idea Bucharin, for instance only for motivating tively at the first serious test in order to But only ten months later the true the various stages of the Anglo Russian in the working class in the meantime. Bolsheviks and revolutionary leaders compromise the General Council. No, in it, Committee. This commission would have to Whereas, the mere financial support of the were declared social democrats and renenot only Stalin, Bucharin, Tomsky and lingering and inextricable trade union strike put these theories together chronologically gades, removed from Party leadership and others, but also Zinoviev saw a long lived and bring them into a system so as to at(trade union strike in its methods; revo friendship. a weapon for the systematic thrown out of the Party.
tempt to draw a malarial curve of the ideas revolutionization of the English working lutionary political in its aim) only meant Despite this panicky character of the contained in them.
That would begrist to the mill of the General Council, masses, and if not the gate, at least its amputation of leaders, very often through come one of the most instructive strawhich could await calmly until the crumbrude and disloyal mechanical means of the threshhold, over which the revolution of ling of the strike was forced thro startegical diagrams. The same also holds for the English proletariat would stride. The apparatus, somewhat rigid ideological the Chinese revolution, the economic devation and it was thereby proved that it Anglo Russian Committee became transdividing line between the ultra Left policy velopment of the Union of Socialist Soviet formed the further the greater from an was right. It was not of course easy for the and the period of opportunist down sliding Republics and also every less important General Council to await this end as an that followed it, episodic understanding to an untouchable can nevertheless be open strike breaker for several months.
question.
Blind empiricism, sometimes principle that stood above the real class drawn.
scholasticism, that is the course that still Precisely for this very critical period did struggle. That became obvious at the time The Revisionism Stalin and awaits its condemnation. The effects of this the General Council need the Anglo Russian of the general strike.
course showed themselves more fully in the Committee as its political protection from Bucharin The entry of the mass movement into the the masses. In this manner the questions three most important questions: the inopen revolutionary stage threw even those of the mortal class struggle between Engternal policy of the Union of Socialist Soviet In the questions of Industry and agriliberal labor politicians who had become culture in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, in the Chinese revolution and in lish capital and the proletariat, between the somewhat Lett back into the camp of the the question of the Anglo Russian Com bourgeois reaction. They betrayed the genGeneral Council and the mine workers, Republics, of the colonial bourgeoisie, of were, so to speak, transformed into ques.
the peasant parties in the capitalist mittee. In the same direction, even if not eral strike openly and consciously and then tions of a friendly discussion between the countries, of socialism in one country, of 60 obvious and less fatal with regard to the also undermined and betrayed the miners two allies of the bloc, the English General the role of the Party in the proletarian consequences, this course of the Comintern strike. The possibility of betrayal is al Council and the All Russian Central Counrevolution, the revisionist theories already was also reflected in all the other political ways imbedded in reformism. That does cil of Trade Unions on the subject of which appeared in fullest bloom in 1924 25. They questions.
not mean of course that reformism and be of the two roads was better: the road of cloaked themselves with the banner of the So far as the internal questions of the trayal are one and the same at every mo an agreement or the road of an isolated struggle against Trotskyism and found Union of Socialist Soviet Republics are ment. Agreements can be temporarily made economic struggle. The inevitable outcome their plainest, most distinct opportunist ex concerned, a sufficiently detailed character with the reformists, it they make a step of the strike was the agreement, that is, pression in the resolutions of the April Ization of the policy of down sliding is given forward. But to keep up a bloc with them the tragic decision of the friendly discusconference of the Communist Party of the in the Platform of the Bolshevik Leninists when they commit treason shortly before sion in favor of the General Council.
Soviet Union in 1925. Opposition. We must limit ourselves here the development of a movement, signifles Taken as a whole, the course to the with a reference to this Platform. This criminal neglect and carelessness towards The Bloc with the General Council Right represents the attempt at a half blind, Platform, moreover, now receives an apparthe traitors and a velling of betrayal. and «Stabilization purely empirical and belated adaptation to ently unexpected confirmation by the fact The general strike had the task of exthe retardation of the revolution caused by that all the attempts of the present leadercercising a united pressure upon the emThe entire policy of the Anglo Russian the defeat of 1923. The original attitude of ship of the Communist Party of the Soviet ployers and the state with the power of Committee, as a result of its false line, Bucharin, as has already been mentioned, Union to free itself from the consequences the five million workers, for the question of was from beginning to end only an ald to was founded in the permanent develop of the policy of the years 1923 to 1928 are mining was becoming the most important the General Council, a support and a ment of the revolution, and that in the lit motivated through nearly literal quotations question of State policy. Thanks to the strengthening of it. Even the long financial eral, purely mechanical sense of this word. from this Platform, whose authors and ad betrayal of the leadership, the strike was support with which the strike was sugBucharla granted no breathing spaces. herents are dispersed in the prisons and in already strangled in the first stage. It was tained by the great self sacrifice on the interruptions or defeats of any kind and exile. The faet, however, that the present a very strong illusion, still to believe part of the Russian working class, did not considered it a revolutionary duty to con leadership has recourse to the Platform onafter that, that an isolated economic strugserve the mine workers or the English Comtinue the offensive under all circum ly in sections and particles, without con gle of the mine workers alone would achieve munist Party, but only the same General Btances.
necting one end with the other, makes the that which the General Strike did not Council. And, as a result of this greatest In the above quoted in its way pro new Left turn extremely unsteady and achlove.
revolutionary movement in England since grammatical article of Stalin On the In hopeless, but at same time gives the That is where the power of the General the time of Chartism, no growth of the ternational Situation. which presents the Platform, as the generalizing expression of Council lay. It aimed with cold calcula English Communist Party, while the Genvery first entry by Stalin into International real Leninist course, an all the greater tion at the defeat of the mine workers, in eral Council sits in the saddle even more questions, we are shown that the second value.
the course of which considerable sections of firmly than before the General Strike.
author of the draft also professed the very The question of the Chinese revolution the workers would be convinced of the These are the results of tbls unique same purely mechanical Left conception is dealt with in the Platform insufficiently, correctness and the common sense of strategical maneuver.
In the first period of the struggle against not concretely and in part is positively false the Judas directions of the General Council. The obstinacy with which the retention Trotskyism. For this conception, only a (Zinoviev. In consideration of the declof the bloc with the General Council was decay of the social democracy, a Left sive importance of this question for the The Role of the Russian Unions in advocated, which was converted to direct ward turn of the workers, a growth of Comintern we are obliged to subject it to the Bloc servility at the disgraceful Berlin session the Communist Parties and an approach a more detailed investigation in a special in April, 1927, was likewise motivated by of the revolution, existed always and un section (III. The retention of the friendship bloc reference to the stabilization.
During alterably. Put the one who could look So far as the Anglo Russian Commit with the General Council, with simultaneous a retardation in the revolutionary developabout him and discern things was and is tee is concerned, the third most important support of the lingering economic strike of ment, one is forced to cling to liquidator. This new tendency needed question from the strategical experiences of the mine workers, against which the Gen Purcell, you see. This argument, which apa year and a half in order to observe some the Comintern in the last years, there still eral Council came forward, was to peared to be very convincing, perlaps to thing new after the change in the situation remains for us, after all that has already some extent calculated to create the pos Soviet official or a trade unionist of the in Europe in 1923, so as then to transform been said by the Opposition in a series of sibility for the head of the trade unions to type of a Melnitchansky, forms in reality Heol in panic into its opposite. The lead articles, speeches and theses, to sum up the come out of this heaviest test with the perfect example of blind empiricism Drship orientated itselt, without any syn results here brief. y.
lightest possible loss of confidence. Continued on Page