Gramsci and Trotsky in the Shadow of Stalinism: The ... - Indymedia

160 Gramsci and Trotsky in the Shadow of Stalinismhimself. He had covered Stalin’s moves with a theoretical gloss, collaboratedon all essential questions (socialism in one country, the Comintern line, thesuppression of the opposition), and had looked to Stalin to provide muchof the institutional power necessary to secure his right wing economic program.But even leaving aside Bukharin’s central role in the degeneration ofthe party life, the fact remained that his economic outlook and programswere incompatible with that of the Left Opposition. 98 This left-right coalitionwould have been correctly denounced as an alliance without either principlesor a future. 99Here was thus another important moment in Trotsky’s high-wire act.At this point many more in the Left Opposition, most prominently KarlRadek, Evgeni Preobrazhensky, and Ivar Smilga, capitulated to Stalin. 100They thought that the apparent “objective” fulfillment of the Left Opposition’seconomic program deserved their conscious support and activeparticipation. The role of the masses, intraparty democracy, and the accumulatedtreachery of Stalinism—in a word, bureaucratism—were relegatedto a secondary status in theory, and reduced to nothing in practice, sincein entering the ranks of Stalinism under these conditions it was impossibleto raise them. In other words, leaving aside questions of personal couragein the face of repression and psychological attachment to the party or tothe center-stage of history—the Left Oppositionists at this stage had beeninternally deported to various remote corners of the Soviet Union—theircapitulation flowed from a truncated appraisal of the significance of the economicprogram. The question of the correctness of the economic programwas fetishized to such an extent that it came to trump not only concernsabout the intraparty regime and the enforced passivity of the masses, butalso another of the Left Opposition’s pillars: the rejection of the doctrineof socialism in one country. No doubt partially in order to facilitate theirre-entry into the party, Radek and Preobrazhensky began to echo the earlierStalinist critiques of Trotsky’s permanent revolution. 101 Those who capitulated,once again, assumed a grave historical responsibility and would in anycase personally pay dearly for their actions later.Trotsky did not deny that Stalin’s “left turn,” which had yet to revealits criminal and brutal implementation, was in and of itself a positive andnecessary development. Consequently, he gave an alliance with the center fullconsideration, at least in theory. But Trotsky never took a single step towardssuch an alliance in practice. Any sort of personal grovelling, renouncing politicalconvictions, or abandoning the demand for the restoration of intrapartydemocracy on his part was out of the question. 102 In the same way, while heconsidered in principle the gestures coming from Bukharin’s side, particularly