Page THE MILITANT Saturday, May 24, 1930 An Open Letter to the Members of the (6)
Lear Comrades: cesses, still encouraged yesterday without By TROTSKY The present letter is promoted by a feelany restraint, are today checked in full ing of the greatest anxiety over the future of the world conjuncture.
at the very moment when the existence swing. Of course, diplomatic and adminof the Soviet Union and the destinies of the The first five year plan elaborated in level of the working classes is manifestly istrative maneuver can sometimes assume proletarian dictatorship. The policy of the a character of brutality: but abrupt turns 1925 forsaw a growth of industry from being depressed. The abrupt leaps of the present leadership, that is, of the narrow 10 10 percent per year. Under the pressure industrialization lower the quality of the reverberatng to the vital foundations of group of Stalin, is leading the country at 25, 000, 000 peasant holdings and flinging of the criticisms of the Opposition based products which in turn rebound at the full speed towards the most dangerous on the living experience of facts the five expense of the consumer and endangers tothem Left to right for a whole year cancrisis and the worst catastrophes.
year plan was completely revised and the morrow producton.
not pass with impunity for the Party. ShortEverything that served for years to co efficient of growth raised to 20 percent. That is how on the plan for industry, sighter Centrism and bureaucratic adcombat the Opposition, under the pretext But from that moment on the leadership, as well as on that of rural economy or tbat venturism will come out of this experience that it would not admit it the question taking alarm at its own spirit of indecision, of finances, the present leadership is lead irremediably compromised.
of the smytchka, a correct policy towards no longer know any restraint. Bebind tbe ing the country to painful crises and polit correct policy in the S, is the peasant. has suddenly been forgotten, prescribed tempos were veritled by exper ical catastrophes.
conceivable only in harmony with an inor rather transformed into its opposite ience, before the first ternational polley of the proletarian vansuccesses were At the very moment these lines are The most elementary principles of Marxguaranteed, before the conditions of the guard writ. en, the first signs reach us of the reThe leadership of the Communist ism are trampled under foot. This has workers were improved, the Stalinist leadInternational has fallen to a much lower treat that has just been begun. First an been particularly marked in the question level than the leadership of the Russian ership launched the new slogan: The article by Stalin, then a new circular of of collectivization. Under the direct effect five year plan in four years!
the Central Committee. Caught the claws Communist Party.
of che purely administrative measures in At the same time, the production pro of additional contradictions for which he The Theory of the Third Period 1928 and 1929, in the struggle for bread, gram for agricultural implements adopted bears the direct responsibillty, Stalin, gen Since 1923, the Communist Internathe collectivization has attained proportions a still more accelerated tempo. As for the erous with words, warns against the dizzitional has not rid Itselt of its tragic ways that nobody had ever forseen and which collectivization of the small peasant hold ness from success, his wisdom reducing which undermine the organization and find no Justification in the real state of ings which constituted, by themselves, the itself remarking that one should not col weaken to influence upon the working the means of production. From that flows most dangerous and slowest task It lett lectivize what is only fit for back yard clasy. Dragging at the tail of events and without fail the perspective of the collapse far behind it all the other economic prob poultry. That Just where the trouble stumbling each time against their echoes, of most of the kolkhoz, the institution of lems. As has frequently happened in his. Ag though the utopian reactionary the leadership of the for these seven profound Internal dissensions and the entory, chvosti. being at the tail of character of the generalized collectivization years has constantly had an opportunisu dangering for a long time of the productive events) gave way directly to its opposite held only because of the fact of a premature policy during the phases of revolutionary forces of rural economy which are already adventurism. But never before had this collectivization of domestic fowls and not high tide and a policy of putchism during so diminished for the moment.
metamorphosis attained such a scale. And at all of having wanted to force the cretion the phases of ebb tide. The most recent kulak and Kholkhoz Above all, never before had the historical of lage larms while lacking the technical years, after the Chinese revolution had But even the minority of kolkhoz that stake been so important, namely: the very bases which alone could have assured the been lost thanks to the Icadership of Stalinhave vitality, while constituting incontest fate of the October revolution, predominance of these large farms over Bucharin, after the saboteurs of English able progress, is not yet equivalent to The Threatening. risis the small ones.
trade unionism had succeeded with the aid of socialism. With their present means of Economics cannot be violated.
the blind bureaucracy of Moscow, in stampThe The Stalinist Retreat production and the conditions of market ing down the uprising of the revolutionary Accelerated pace wbich outstrips the ex Tht circular of the Central Committee economy that accompany them, the kolkhoz Isting possibilities soon leads to the cre already goes much further than Stalin masses, the leadership of the has will unfailingly cause to emerge from their proclaimed the event of the third period ation of imaginary resources where there article. In retreat, Just As in offensive, ranks a new layer of peasant exploiters.
as a period of direct revolutionary struge are no real ones. That bears the name of the Centrist leadership unfailingly Jrage The destruction of the Kulak class outside gle. Since then, that 18 for two years, paper money inflation. All the symptoms along beliind the tail of organic processes of the kolkhoz is. not only powerless to of it already there and they are at the the aspect of world revolution has been and their repercussion in the apparatus revive the economie progress of the peassystematically falsified by deforming it in ant class but it is not even able to prevent same time the symptoms of a threatening After the collectivization had embraced the spirit required by the third period.
economic crisis. Before it reaches its ex. only within a few months of time. more the birth of the Kulak inside the kolkhoz.
Revolutionary policy reposing upon the real plosive form It is already pressing heavily than halt of the seasant class, the leaders This truth will be demonstrated primarily state of the class struggle gves way to upon the dally existence of the masses, suddenly perceived that the well known in the artels that achieve the best economic policy of fireworks.
causing a rise in prices or preventing. recommendation of lenin is being violBuccesses. By proclaiming that the kolkhöz Now it happens that the years of to:their reduction, are socialist enterprises, the present leadated concerning the indispensible charlles of the were the years of the reership furnishes by that very fact an exThe problem of the distribution of the acter of the free distribution that must inforcement of the social democracy. revenues of the collectives between the preside over all socialization.
cellent camouflage for the Kulaks within The circular new generation of workers had come forthe kolkhoz. It goes without saying that immediate dally needs and the needs of ac at the same time profits by the occasion ward; generation that did not live It doesn do this deliberately but the miscumulation, that is, of an extended pro presented to accuse the executors of havthrough the treason of the social democracy duction, constitutes the basic problem of ing equally violated the code of the artel of fortune is that its whole policy has always during the war, but which has, on the other been that way: it thinks of nothing, foresocialist construction, a problem Intimate rural economy published by the Central hand, known the indecision of the Comsees nothing dragging behind the tail of ly bound up with that of the mutual rel Executive Committee. Now this code apmmunist Parties during these six or seven events and fringing itself from one exteme ations between the working class and the peared only quite recently, that is, after years. Hoping to attract this whole mass into the other.
peasantry as well as between the different the collectivization had already embraced and to kill two birds with one stone, the To back up technically, no matter how layers within the pensant class itselt. These more than fifty percent of the peasants Sixth Congrexo adopted the theory of little, the generalized collectivization, one problems cannot be solved a priori, that holdings. And moreover, this code some soclal fascism. As it one could con1s now forced to augment:sharply the 19, bureaucratically. It is a matter of the thing far more important is full of conquer the power of the enemy by means production program for agricultural imple daily life of the masses, and these masses tradictions and gaps because it deliberately of magic formulae.
ments. But this production depends in turn themselves must have the possibility to ignores all differentiation among the collecIn resolving to contuse the democratie upon a series of other industrial branches. bring correctives to the economic pro tivized peasants, presenting matters, as it bodyguard, the hay rendered the 60The plan of production, without this, had grams a priori. That is the place where outside of the especially excluded Kulaks, cial democracy signal service. In the already reached a very high degree of the economic questions are indissolubly the remainder of the peasant class concountries where fascism presents a real welded to those of the Party regime, the stituted a homogeneous mass. The whole tension.
Even admitting that the new torce, such as Italy, then Austria and Gerproduction program for agricultural impletrade unions and the Soviets.
policy of colletivization amounts to the many, the social democracy has not found ments could be realized which is far from A9 has already been said, the fundapolicy of the ostrich. The circular of 10 very difficult to show the masses not certain the present tempo of collectiviz mental causes for the existing contradicMarch 15 charges the unforunate exonly the difference but the antagonism ation will still exceed comsiderably the tions are inherent in the state of Isolation ecutore. with all the mortal sins up to that there is between it and fascism. By material. possibilities.
of the Soviet Union.
treating them in the name of the Central the same token, It absolves itself from One must never lobe, sight of the fact But instead of attentuating them, the Committee. as dangerous zealote, thus showing that it is not the democratic serthat the collectivization was not born out policy of the present, leadership only ac shifting rudely, and disloyally. 18 Is the vant of capitalism. The whole political of a broad test that should have been made centuates them. There is a basic defeat custom, the mletakes of the leadership of the superiorities of collective economy sUrugegle is thus transposed to an artiin the wbole economic plan. This plan on to the inferior agents who took seriously Acidi plane, and that to the greatest protit over individual economy, but exclusively should have had its aim to consolidate the the logan of the liquidation of the classes to the social democracy.
of administrative measures in the struggle dictatorship of proletariat and its union In the brieteet time. After the impotent Having thus erected a wall between 10 for bread. These measures, in turn, were with the peasant class with the aid of adeAnd gross circular of March 15 the unlucky and the social democratic masses, the Comnecessitated by the detective economic pol quate and internally, harmonized economic executors, and following them, the entire munist bureaucracy has in actuality ceased icy towards the poor peasant and towards tempos, based on the estimate of the vital Party, find themselves definitely driven inAll struggle against the social democracy, the Kulak. It is true that the fundamental necessities of the masses in the present to an impasse. And now? more than hall reducing ite task to tumultous mobilizadifficulties of socialist construction are. out period which is a period of preparation of the immense peasant ocean. 1s already tions of that small working class minority side the power of the leadership. They he and transition, and tha: up to the next socialized. What share in this result, falls over which Communist lófluence extends.
in the impossibility of establisbing the stage on the road of the world revolution.
upon the dangerous zealots? Five per That is what the Red Days serve for.
socalist society, iq, single country, which Instead of this, the plan set itselt an uncent or 18 it forty? In other words, does The work within the trade unions is 18, moreover, a particularly backward coun realizable, utopian and economically rethe character of the collectivization ac invested with the same character. Refertry. But that 18 precisely why one must actionary aim, namely: to profit by our complished, seen as a whole, rest upon an ring to the indubitable necessity of utildemand of the leadership a clear under backward situation and our poverty in economic or a purely bureaucratic foundaizing the economic conficts for revolustanding of all the factors of evolution, and order to construct in the briefest time don? The circular does not reply to this tionizing the masses and preparing the to know how to determine in time what lies an isolated, Independen: socialist society fundamental question. Yet the reply 18 within the realm of the poseible and of the general strike and uprising, the CommunPreviously, it had considered that this not only obvious but merciless for the gen 1st bureaucracy, under the lash of the impossible. Within these limits, the real task was realizable only at a sball pace eral lines of the leadership.
theory of the Third Period. applies an ization of certain successes on the road of (Bucharin. Now, the leadership, fleeing But the retreat will not halt at these adventurist tactic which can lead only to socialist construction is a perfertly poss the inconveniences of the prolonged delays first manifestauons, not in the field of deteats. The study of the concrete conible thing, particularly the maintenance of rushes headlong at a mad gallop (the economic policy any more than in relation ditions of the struggle by strikes gives the dictatorship of the proletariat up to the same Bucharin, restored. to the internal life of the Party. This time way to quotations taken from the latest time of the revolutionary victory in the ad In the name of adventuriet tempos, bundness of the leadership has been dem directives. from Manwisky or Molotov.
vanced countries. Unfortunately the Cen whose cadences vary in the very course of onstrated outwardly in too striking a man The political utilization (the politizatrist leadership shows a fatal Incapacity execution, which they have not cren troub ner. The Party will have to stand the gate, tlon. of strikes is most frequently renot only in evaluating exactly the Internal eld to harmonize or to check up, and which the de Kulaklzation, the collectivization in duced to substituting sham slogans, behind Tesources of the dictatorship but to grasp often undermine each other, the workers mass, the bureaucratic, transformation of the back of the disorientated masses. For their interdependence upon the active forces strength suffers the most violent pressure the artels into communes all these pro the Party bureaucry, above all other prob