Crisis in the Party

Before considering the basic points of the controversy between the leaders of our party and the Workers’ Opposition, it is necessary to find an answer to the question: How could it happen that our party – formerly strong, mighty, and invincible because of its clear-cut and firm class policy – began to deviate from its program.

The dearer the Communist Party is to us just because it has made such a resolute step forward on the road to the liberation of workers from the yoke of capital, the less right we have to close our eyes to the mistakes of leading centers.

The power of the party must lie in the ability of our leading centers to detect the problems and tasks that confronted the workers, and to pick up the tendencies, which they have been able to direct so that the masses might conquer one more of the historical positions. So it was in the past, but it is no longer so at present. Our party not only reduces its speed but ever oftener “wisely” looks back and asks: “Have we not gone too far? Is this not the time to call a halt? Is it not wiser to be more cautious, and to avoid the daring experiments unseen in the whole of the history.”

What was it that produced this “wise caution” (particularly expressed in the distrust of the leading party centers toward the economic industrial abilities of the labor unions) – caution that has lately overwhelmed all our centers. Where is the cause?

If we begin diligently to search for the cause of the arising controversy in our party, it becomes clear that the party is passing through a crisis which was brought about by three fundamental causes.

The first main basic cause is the distressful environment in which our party must work and act. The Russian Communist Party must build communism and carry into life its program: (1) In the environment of complete destruction and breakdown of the economic structure. (2) In the face of the never diminishing ruthless pressure of the imperialist states and white guards. (3) To the working class of Russia has fallen the lot to realize communism, create new communist forms of economy in an economically backward country with a preponderant peasant population, where the necessary economic prerequisites for socialization of production and distribution are lacking, and where capitalism has not been able as yet to complete the full cycle of its development (from the unlimited struggle of competition of the first stages of capitalism to its highest form – to the regulation of production by capitalist unions – the trusts).

It is quite natural that all these factors hinder the practical realization of our program (particularly in its essential part – in the reconstruction of industries on the new basis) and inject into our soviet economic policy diverse influences and a lack of uniformity.

Out of this basic cause follow the two others. First of all, the economic backwardness of Russia and the domination of the peasantry within its boundaries create that diversity, and inevitably detract the practical policy of our party from . the clear-cut class direction, consistent in principle and theory.

Any party standing at the head of a heterogeneous soviet state is compelled to consider the aspirations of peasants with their petty-bourgeois inclinations and resentments towards communism, as well as lend ear to the numerous petty bourgeois elements, remnants of the former capitalists in Russia, to all kinds of traders, middlemen, petty officials, etc., who have very rapidly adapted themselves to the soviet institutions and occupy responsible positions in the centers, appear in the capacity of agents of different commissariats, etc. No wonder that Zurupa, the People’s Commissar of Supplies, at the Eighth Congress quoted figures which showed that in the service of the Commissariat of Supplies there were engaged 17 per cent of workers, 13 per cent of peasants, less than 20 per cent of specialists, and that of the remaining, more than 50 per cent were “tradesmen, salesmen, and similar people, in the majority even illiterate.” (Zurupa’s own words.) In Zurupa’s opinion this is a proof of their democratic composition, even though they have nothing in common with the class proletarians, with the producers of all wealth, with the workers in factories and mills.

These are the elements – the elements of petty-bourgeois widely scattered through the soviet institutions, the elements of the middle class with their hostility toward communism, and with their predilections toward the immutable customs of the past, with resentments and fears toward revolutionary acts, – these are the elements that bring decay into our soviet institutions, breeding there an atmosphere altogether repugnant to the working class. They are two different worlds and hostile at that. And yet we in Soviet Russia are compelled to persuade both ourselves and the working class that the petty-bourgeoisie and middle classes (not speaking of well to do peasants) can quite comfortably exist under the common motto: “All power to the soviets,” forgetful of the fact that in practical everyday life the interests of the workers and those of the middle classes and peasantry imbued with petty-bourgeois psychology must inevitably clash, rending the soviet policy asunder, and deforming its clear-cut class statutes.

Beside peasant-owners in the villages and burgher elements in the cities, our party in its soviet state policy is forced to reckon with the influence exerted by the representatives of wealthy bourgeoisie now appearing in the form of specialists, technicians, engineers, and former managers of financial and industrial affairs, who by all their past experience are bound to the capitalist system of production. They can not even imagine of any other mode of production but only that one which lies within the traditional bounds of capitalist economics.

The more Soviet Russia finds itself in need of specialists in the sphere of technique and management of production, the stronger becomes the influence of these elements, foreign to the Working class elements, on the development of our economy. Having been thrown aside during the first period of the revolution, and being compelled to take up an attitude of watchful waiting or sometimes even open hostility toward the soviet authorities, particularly during the most trying months (the historical sabotage by the intellectuals), this social group of brains in capitalist production, of servile, hired, well-paid servants of capital, acquire more and more influence and importance in politics with every day that passes.

Do we need names? Every fellow worker carefully watching our foreign and domestic policy recalls more than one of such names.

As long as the center of our life remained at the military fronts the influence of these gentlemen directing our soviet policy, particularly in the sphere of industrial reconstruction, was comparatively negligible.

Specialists, the remnants of the past, by all their nature closely, unalterably bound to. the bourgeois system that we aim to destroy, gradually began to penetrate into our Red Army, introducing there their atmosphere of the past (blind subordination, servile obedience, distinction, ranks, and the arbitrary will of superiors in place of class . discipline, etc.), but to the general political activity of the Soviet republic their influence did not extend.

The proletariat did not question their superior skill to direct military affairs, fully realizing through their healthy class instinct that in military matters the working class as a class can not express a new word, is powerless to introduce substantial changes into the military system – to reconstruct its foundation on a new class basis. Professional militarism – inheritance of the past ages – militarism, wars, will have no place in the communist society. The struggle will go on along other channels, will take quite different forms inconceivable to our imagination. Militarism lives through its last days, through the transitory epoch of dictatorship, and therefore, it is only natural that the workers, as a class, could not introduce into the forms and systems of militarism anything new, and conducive to the future development of society. Even in the Red Army, however, there were innovating touches of the working class, but the nature of militarism remained the same, and the direction of military affairs by the former officers and generals of the old army did not draw the soviet policy in military affairs away to the opposite side sufficiently for the workers to feel any harm to themselves or to their class interests.

In the sphere of national economy it is quite different, however. Production, its organization – this is the essence of communism. To debar the workers from the organization of industry, to deprive them, that is, their industrial organizations, of the opportunity to develop their powers in creating new forms of production in industry through their unions, to deny these expressions of the class organization of the proletariat, while placing full reliance on the “skill” of specialists trained and taught to carry on production under a quite different system of production, – is to jump off the rails of scientific Marxian thought. This is, however, just the thing that is being done by the leaders of our party at present.

Taking into consideration the utter collapse of our industries while still clinging to the capitalist mode of production (payment for labor in money, graduations in wages received according to the work done) our party leaders, in a fit of distrust in the creative abilities of workers’ collectives, are seeking salvation from the industrial chaos – where? In the hands of scions of the bourgeois-capitalist past-businessmen and technicians, whose creative abilities in the sphere of industry are subject to the routine, habits and methods of the capitalist system of production and economy. They are the ones who introduce the ridiculously naive belief that it is possible to bring about communism by bureaucratic means. They “decree” where it is now necessary to create and carry on research.

The more the military front recedes before the economic front, the keener becomes our crying need, the more pronounced the influence of that group which is not only inherently foreign to communism, but absolutely unable to develop the right qualities for introducing new forms of organizing the work, of new motives for increasing production, of new approaches to production and distribution. All these technicians, practical men, men of business experience, who just now appear on the surface of soviet life, by exerting their influence on the economic policy bring pressure to bear upon the leaders of our party through and within the soviet institutions.

The party, therefore, finds itself in a difficult and embarrassing situation regarding the control over the soviet state, and is forced to lend ear and adapt itself to three economically hostile groups of the population, each different in social structure. The workers demand a clear-cut, uncompromising policy, a rapid, forced advance toward communism; while the peasantry with its petty-bourgeois proclivities and sympathies demand different kinds of “freedom,” including freedom of trade and non-interference into their affairs. The latter are joined in this demand by the burgher class in the form of “agents” of soviet officials, commissaries in the army, etc. who have already adapted themselves to the soviet regime, and sway our policy toward petty-bourgeois lines.

As far as the center is concerned, the influence of these petty-bourgeois elements is negligible, but in the provinces and in local soviet activity their influence is great and a harmful one. Finally, there is still another group of men, that of the former managers and directors of the capitalist industries. These are not the magnates of capital, like Riabushinsky or Rublikoff, whom the soviet republic got rid of during the first phase of the revolution, but they are the most talented servants of the capitalist system of production, “the brains and genius” of capitalism, its true creators and sponsors. Heartily approving the centralist tendencies of the soviet government in the sphere of economics, well realizing all the benefits of trustification and regulation of production (this, by the way, is being carried on by capital in all advanced industrial countries), they are striving for just one thing – they want that this regulation should be carried on not through the labor organizations (the industrial unions) but through themselves – acting flow under the guise of soviet economic institutions – the central industrial committees, industrial centers of the Supreme Council of National Economy, where they are already firmly rooted. The influence of these gentlemen on “the sober” state policy of our leaders is great, considerably greater than is desirable. This influence is reflected in the policy which defends and cultivates bureaucratism (with no attempts to change it entirely, but just to improve it). This policy is particularly obvious in the sphere of our foreign trade with the capitalist states, which is just beginning to spring up: the commercial relations are carried on over the heads of the Russian a« well as the foreign organized workers. It finds its expression, also, in a whole series of measures restricting the self-activity of the masses and giving the initiative to the scions of the capitalist world.

Among all these various groups of the population our party, by trying to find a middle ground, is compelled to steer a course which would not jeopardize the unity of the state interests. The clear-cut policy of our party in the process of identifying itself with soviet state institutions is being gradually transformed into an upper-class policy, which in essence is nothing else but an adaptation of our directing centers to the heterogeneous and irreconcilable interests of the socially different mixed population. This adaptation leads to inevitable vacillation, fluctuations, deviations and mistakes. It is only necessary to recall the zigzag-like road of our policy toward the peasantry, which from “banking on the poor peasant” brought us to placing reliance on “the industrious peasant-owner.” Let us admit that this policy is proof of the political soberness and “statecraft wisdom” of our directing centers, but the future historian analyzing without bias the stages of our domination will find and point out that in this is evident “a dangerous digression” from the class line toward “adaptation” and a course full of harmful possibilities or results.

Let us take again the question of foreign trade. There exists in our policy an obvious duplicity. This is attested by the constant, unending friction between the Commissariat of Foreign Trade and the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. This friction is not of administrative nature alone; its cause lies deeper, and if the secret work of the directing centers were exposed to the view of rank and file elements, who knows what the controversy dividing the Commissariat on Foreign Affairs and the trade representatives abroad might lead to?

The seemingly administrative friction that is essentially a serious, deep, social friction, concealed from the rank and file, and makes it absolutely necessary for soviet politics to adapt itself to the three heteregeneous social groups of the population (workers, peasants, and representatives of the former bourgeoisie), constitutes another cause bringing crisis into our party. And we can not but pay attention to this cause. It is too characteristic, too pregnant with possibilities. It is, therefore, the duty of our party in behalf of party unity and future activity to ponder over this cause and derive a necessary lesson from the wide-spread dissatisfaction generated by it in the rank and file.

As long as the working class, during the first period of the revolution, felt itself as being the only bearer of communism there was perfect unanimity in the party. In the days immediately following the October revolution none could even think of “ups” as something different from “downs,” for in those days the advanced workers were busily engaged in realizing point after point in our class-communist program. The peasant who received the land did not at that time assert himself as a part of and a full-fledged citizen of the Soviet republic. Intellectuals, specialists, men of affairs – the entire petty-bourgeoisie class and pseudo-specialists climbing at present up the soviet ladder rung by rung, under the guise of “specialists,” in watchful waiting stepped aside, giving freedom for the advanced working masses to develop their creative abilities.

At present, however, it is just the other way. The worker feels, sees and realizes at every step that specialists, and, what is still worse, untrained illiterate pseudo-specialists, and practical men, throw out the worker and fill up all the high administrative posts of industrial and economic institutions. And the Party, instead of putting the brakes on this tendency from the elements which are altogether foreign to the working class and communism, encourages it and seeks salvation from the industrial chaos not in the workers, but in these very elements. Not in the workers, not in their union organizations does the Party repose its trust, but in these elements. The working masses feel it, and instead of unanimity and unity in the party there appears a break.

The masses are not blind. Whatever words the most popular leaders might use in order to conceal the deviation from the clear-cut class policy and the compromises made with the peasants and world capitalism, and the trust that they place in the disciples of the capitalist system of production, the working masses feel where the digression begins.

The workers may cherish an ardent affection and love for such personalities as Lenin; they may be fascinated by the incomparable flowery eloquence of Trotzky and his organizing abilities; they may revere a number of other leaders, as leaders, but when the masses feel that they and their class are not trusted, it is quite natural that they say: “No, halt. We refuse to follow you blindly. Let us examine the situation. Your policy of picking out the middle ground between the three socially opposed groups is a wise one indeed but it smacks of the well-tried and familiar adaptation and opportunism. For the present day we may gain something with the help of your sober policy, but let us beware lest we find ourselves on a wrong road that through zig-zags and turns will lead from the future to the debris of the past ...

Distrust of the leaders toward the workers is steadily growing, and the more sober these leaders are getting, the more clever statesmen they become with their policy of sliding over the blade of a sharp knife between communism and compromise with bourgeoisie past, the deeper becomes the abyss between the “ups” and the “downs,” the less understanding there is and the more painful and inevitable becomes the crisis within the party itself.

The third reason enhancing the crisis in the party is that in fact, during these three years of the revolution the economic situation of the working class, of those who work in factories and mills, has not only not been improved, but become more unbearable. This nobody dares to deny. The suppressed and widely spread dissatisfaction among workers (workers – mind you) has a real justification.

Only the peasants gained directly by the revolution; as far as the middle classes are concerned they very cleverly adapted themselves to the new conditions, together with the representatives of the rich bourgeoisie who had occupied all the responsible and directing positions in the soviet institutions (particularly in the sphere of directing state economy), in the industrial organizations and the reestablishment of commercial relations with foreign nations. Only the basic class of the Soviet republic which bore all the burdens of the dictatorship as a mass ekes out a shamefully pitiful existence.

The workers’ republic controlled by the communists, by the vanguard of the working class which, to quote Lenin’s words, “has absorbed all the revolutionary energy of the class,” has not had time enough to ponder over and improve the conditions of all the workers (those not in individual establishments which happened to gain the attention of the Council of the People’s Commissars in one or another of the so-called “shock industries”) but of all the workers in general and lift their conditions of life to a human standard of existence.

The Commissariat of Labor is the most stagnant institution of all the commissariats. In the whole of the soviet policy there was never seriously raised on a national scale and discussed, the question: what must and can be done in the face of an utter collapse of industry at home and a most unfavorable external situation, in order to improve the workers’ conditions and preserve their health for productive labor in the future, and to better the lot of workers in the shops?

Until recently the soviet policy was devoid of any worked-out plan for improving the lot of the workers and their conditions of life. All that was done in this field was done rather incidentally, or at random, by local authorities under the pressure of the masses themselves. During these three years of civil war the proletariat heroically brought to the altar of the revolution their innumerable sacrifices. They waited patiently, but at present, at the turn of affairs, when the pulse of life in the republic is again transferred to the economic front, the rank and file worker considers it unnecessary “to suffer and wait.” Why? Is he not the creator of life on the communist basis? Let us ourselves take up this reconstruction for we know better than the gentlemen from the centers where it hurts us the most.

The rank and file worker is very observant. He sees that so far the problems of hygiene, sanitation, improving conditions of labor in the shops – in other words, the betterment of the workers’ lot has occupied the last place in our policy. Further than housing of workers’ families in the inconvenient bourgeois mansions we did not go in our solution of the housing problem, and, what is still worse, so Tar we have not even touched the practical problem of housing in regard to workers. To our shame, in the heart of the republic, in Moscow itself, they are still living in filthy, overcrowded and unhygienic working men’s quarters, one visit to which makes one think that there was no revolution at all. We all know that the housing problem can not be solved in a few months, even years, and that due to our poverty its solution is confronted with serious difficulties, but the facts of ever growing inequality between the privileged groups of the population in Soviet Russia and the rank and file workers, “the framework of the dictatorship,” breed and nourish the dissatisfaction.

The rank and file worker sees how the soviet official and the practical man lives and how lives he – he on whom rests the dictatorship of the proletariat? He can not but see that during the revolution the life and health of the workers in the shops commanded the least attention; that where prior to the revolution there existed more or less bearable conditions, they are still maintained by the shop committees, and where the latter did not exist, where dampness, foul air and gases poisoned and destroyed the workers* health, these conditions remained unchanged. “We could not attend to that; pray, there was the military front.” And yet whenever it was necessary to make repairs in any of the houses occupied by the soviet institutions they were able to find both the materials and the labor power. What would happen if we tried to shelter our specialists or practical men engaged in the sphere of commercial transactions with foreign capitalists in those huts, in which the masses of workers still live and labor? They would raise such a howl that it would become necessary to mobilize the entire housing department in order to correct “the chaotic conditions” that interfere with the productivity of our specialists.

The service of the Workers” Opposition consists in that it included the problem of improving the workers’ lot together with all the other secondary demands of workers into the general economic policy. The productivity of labor can not be increased unless the life of workers will have been organized on the new communist basis.

The less that is undertaken and planned out (I do not speak of something that has been carried out) in this sphere, the deeper fa the misunderstanding, the estrangement, and still greater is the mutual distrust between the directing centers of the party and the rank and file workers. There is no unity, no sense of their identity of needs, demands and aspirations. “The leaders are one thing, and we are something altogether different. Maybe it is true that the leaders know better how to rule over the country, but they fail to understand our needs, our life in the shops, its requirements, and immediate needs; they do not understand, and do not know.” From this reasoning follows the instinctive leaning toward the unions, and consequent dropping out of the party. “It is true that they are a part of us, but as soon as they get into the centers, they leave us altogether; they begin to live differently; if we suffer what do they care; our sorrows are not theirs, any longer.”

And the more our industrial establishments and unions are drained of their best elements by the party which sends them either to the front or to the soviet institutions, the weaker becomes the direct connection between the rank and file workers and the directing party centers. A chasm is growing, and at present, therefore, this division manifests itself even in the ranks of the party itself. The workers through their Workers’ Opposition ask: Who are we? Are we really the prop of the class dictatorship, or are we just an obedient flock that serves as a support for those who, having severed all ties with the masses, carry out their own policy and build up industry without any regard to our opinions and creative abilities under the reliable cover of the party label?

Whatever the party leaders might do in order to, drive away the Workers’ Opposition the latter will always remain that growing healthy class force, which is destined to inject vitalizing energy into the rehabilitation of the economic life as well as into the communist party which begins to fade and bend low to the ground.

Thus, there are three causes that bring about a crisis into our party; there are first of all the supreme objective conditions under which communism in Russia is being carried out and realized (the civil war, economic backwardness of the country, its utter industrial collapse as an aftermath of the long years of war; the second cause is the heterogeneous composition of our population – (7 millions of workers, the peasantry, the middle classes, and, finally, the former bourgeoisie, men of affairs of all professions, who influence the policy of soviet institutions and penetrate into the party); the third cause is the inactivity of the party in the field of immediate improvement of the workers’ life coupled with the inability and weakness of the corresponding soviet institutions to take up and solve these problems.

What then is that the Workers’ Opposition wants? What is its service?

If its sendee consists in that it put up before the party all the perturbing questions, that it gave form to all that heretofore was causing only a subdued agitation in the masses and led the non-partisan workers ever further from the party; that it clearly and fearlessly shouted to the leaders: “Stop, look and think! Where do you lead us? Do we not go off the right road? It will be very bad for the party to find itself Without the foundation of the dictatorship, the party will remain by itself, and the working class by itself. In this lies the greatest danger to the revolution.”

The task of the party at its present crisis is to fearlessly face the mistakes and lend its ear to the healthy class call of the wide working masses: Through creative powers of the rising class in the form of industrial unions we shall go toward reconstruction and development of creative forces of the country; toward purification of the party itself from the elements foreign to it; toward correction of the activity of the party by means of going back to democracy, freedom of opinion and criticism inside the party.

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Last updated on 1 February 2023