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Stalin School of Falsification -- Chapter 10 to the camp of reaction, you put your stakes on Wang Ching-wei, and then on Tang Cheng-chih, I wrote a letter to the E.C.C.I. It was on May 28. "The shipwreck of this policy is absolutely inevitable." What did I propose? Here is literally what I wrote. On May 28, I wrote: "The Plenum would do the right thing if it buried Bukharin's resolution, and replaced it with a resolution of a few lines. In the first place, peasants and workers should place no faith in the leaders of the Left Kuomintang but they should, instead, build their Soviets jointly with the soldiers. In the second place, the Soviets should arm the workers and the advanced peasants. In the third place, the Communist party must assure its complete independence, create a daily press, and assume the leadership of creating the Soviets. Fourth, the land must be immediately taken away from the landlords. Fifth, the reactionary bureaucracy must be immediately dismissed. Sixth, perfidious generals and counter-revolutionists generally must be summarily dealt with. And finally, the general course must be towards the establishment of a revolutionary dictatorship through the Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies." Now, compare this with: "There is no need for a civil war in the villages," "Do not alarm the fellow travellers," "Do not irritate the generals," "Minimum arming of the workers," and so on. This is Bolshevism! While our position is called in the Political Bureau . . . Menshevism. Having turned yourselves inside out, you have firmly resolved to call white, black. But your misfortune is that international Menshevism-from Berlin to New York-approves of the Chinese policy of Stalin-Bukharin, and being fully cognizant of the issue, solidarizes with your political line on the Chinese question. Please try to understand that in question here is not the individual betrayals of the Chinese members of the Kuomintang, or of the Right and Left Chinese army commanders, or English trade unionists, and Chinese or English communists. When one rides in the train, it is the earth that appears to be in motion. The whole trouble lies in the fact that you placed hopes on those who were not to be relied upon; you under estimated the revolutionary training of the masses, the principal requirement for which is inoculating the masses with mistrust towards reformists, vague "Left" Centrists, and all vacillators in general. The fullest measure of this mistrust is the supreme virtue of Bolshevism. Young parties have still to acquire and assimilate this quality. Yet, you have acted and are acting in a diametrically opposite direction. You inoculate young parties with the hopes that the liberal bourgeoisie and the liberal labor politicians from the trade unions will move to the Left. You hinder the education of the English and Chinese Bolsheviks. That is the source whence come these "betrayals" which each time catch you unaware. ON "CENTRISM," AND THE POLICY OF ROTTEN ROPES The Opposition warned that the Chinese Communist Party under your leadership would inevitably come to Menshevist policies -- for which the Opposition was at the time mercilessly condemned. It is with certainty that we now warn you that the British Communist Party, under the influence of the policies that you are foisting on it, is becoming inevitably poisoned by Centrism and conciliationism. If you do not turn the helm sharply, the consequences with respect to the British Communist Party will not be any better than those with respect to the Chinese party. The same thing applies to the Comintern as a whole. It is high time to understand that the Centrism of Bukarin-Stalin is unable to withstand the test of events. The greatest events in the history of mankind are revolution and war. We have put the Centrist policy to the test on the Chinese Revolution. The revolution demanded decisive conclusions from vacillating directives. The Chinese Communist Party found itself compelled to draw these conclusions. That is why it has arrived -- and it could not have failed to do so at Menshevism. The unprecedented collapse of your leader ship in China demands that you finally repudiate the policy which compelled you under the most http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1937-st2/sf10.htm (5 of 10) [06/06/2002 15:07:07]
Stalin School of Falsification -- Chapter 10 difficult conditions to clutch at rotten ropes. Next to the revolution the greatest historical test is war. We say beforehand: There will be no room during the events of war for the Stalinist and Bukharinist policy of zigzags, side-stepping and subterfuges -- the policy of Centrism. This applies to the entire leadership of the Comintern. Today, the only test put to the leaders of the foreign communist parties is the question: Are you ready to vote night and day against "Trotskyism"? But war will confront them with far weightier demands. Meanwhile, the policy with respect to the Kuomintang and the Anglo-Russian Committee has obviously made them turn their eyes towards the Amsterdam and social-democratic tops. No matter how you squirm-the line of the Anglo-Russian Committee was the line of relying upon the rotten rope of the Amsterdam bureaucracy, whose worst section at the present time is the General Council. In the event of war you will have to stumble time and again over "surprises." The rotten ropes will fall apart in your hands. War will cause a sharp differentiation among the present tops of the Comintern. A certain section will go over to the Amsterdam position under the slogan: "We want to defend the U.S.S.R. seriously -- we do not wish to be a handful of fanatics." Another section of the European communists-we firmly believe they will be in the majority -- will stand on the position of Lenin, on the position of Liebknecht that we are defending. There will be no room for the intermediate position of Stalin. That is why, permit me to say this frankly, all this talk of a handful of Oppositionists, of generals with out an army, and so forth and so on, seem utterly ludicrous to us. The Bolsheviks have heard all this more than once both in 1914 and in 1917. We foresee tomorrow all too clearly, and we are preparing for it. Never before did the heart of the Opposition beat with such an immutable conviction of its correctness. Never before was there such unanimity as now prevails. ZINOVIEV and KAMANEV: Absolutely correct! [Zinoviev and Kameney, as is well known, dld not hold out for long. -- L.T.] TROTSKY: Nor will there be any room for the gradual Centrist back-sliding with respect to biateri'l policies under the conditions of war. All the controversies will congeal, the class contradictions will become aggravated, the issues will be posed point-blank. It will be necessary to give clear and precise answers. Which do we need during war-time: "Revolutionary Unity" or "Union sacr(e"? The bourgeoisie has devised for the period of war and war danger a special political condition under the name of "civil peace" or "Union sacr(e." The meaning of this purely bourgeois concept is this, that the differences and squabbles of all bourgeois parties, including the social democracy, as well as internal disagreements within all parties must, you see, be silenced for the duration of the war-in the aim of the best possible befuddlement and deception of the masses. "Union sacr(e" is the highest form of the conspiracy of the rulers against the ruled. Needless to say, if our party has nothing to hide in the political sense from the working class during peace-time, then this is all the more true during war-time when the purity and clarity of the political line, the profundity of the ties with the masses are life-and- death questions. That is why, under the incomparably greater centralization of our party, as compared with any bourgeois party, we permitted ourselves in the heat of the civil war to discuss in the sharpest possible way and to resolve in a democratic party way, all the fundamental questions of political leadership. This was the inevitable overhead expense by means of which the party worked out and reinforced a correct line, and fortified its revolutionary unity. There are -- rather it would be more correct to say, only yesterday we still had -comrades who thought that after the death of Lenin, the absolute correctness of the leadership among us was assured to such an extent that it no longer required to be checked upon by the party. We, on the other http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1937-st2/sf10.htm (6 of 10) [06/06/2002 15:07:07]
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