Platform 15

Platform 15

Ex.

Out. No.

From_______27

To the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

Dear comrades,

For more than three years, the party has been in crisis. The disagreements that sparked the 1923 debate have not been resolved in the slightest; on the contrary, they are increasingly expanding and deepening. By 1925, even the group that had previously played a leading role in the Politburo had finally disintegrated. From this group, the Leningrad Opposition emerged, against which the rest of the former group waged a struggle just as fierce as against the 1923 opposition. In 1926, the 1923 and 1925 oppositions merged. At the same time, disagreements within the new leadership group are once again emerging, and a new "split" is once again possible. All this clearly demonstrates that the party is in a state of crisis as profound as it has not experienced since the revolution. And a resolution to this crisis is now more necessary than ever.

Directly related to the recent setbacks in China, which are largely due to the mismanagement of the Chinese revolution, the international situation has become dramatically more tense. The danger of war and intervention is undeniable. War against the USSR, as the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, cannot be an ordinary war of one state against another; it can only be a struggle of the bourgeoisie against the international proletariat. The struggle against international imperialism, since it assumes a military character, will inevitably provoke an extreme intensification of the class struggle in the rear of each of the contending sides, creating an internal front alongside an external one. A decisive role in this clash will be played by ties with the revolutionary movement of the world proletariat. Needless to say, in such a struggle, as in the historic battles of the civil war, that part of the party currently in opposition will play a significant role. But the success of the proletariat's class struggle, whatever its form, is only possible if it is led by a united, active party, closely aligned with the working class. This unity, this activity, is currently lacking, and this must be stated openly—in order to achieve it. The party's crisis must be resolved.

The Central Committee is attempting to resolve this by mechanically suppressing the opposition. "Corruption" follows "corruption," one campaign "against the opposition's foray" follows another. Comrades who support the opposition's viewpoint are being removed from the Politburo, and preparations are now underway to expel them from the Executive Committee of the Communist International and the Central Committee—just a few months before the convening of the Party Congress, where the new Central Committee composition is to be determined in the normal manner. With regard to rank-and-file Party members who share the opposition's views, the persecution is even more brutal, including expulsion from the Party, regardless of their revolutionary merits or the fact that they are blue-collar workers. Persecution begins against those who signed Declaration 84, sent to the Central Committee through the most legal Party procedure. Oppositionists are being brought before the Party Court simply for expressing views at Party meetings that disagree with the Central Committee's position. Party members are thus deprived of their most basic Party rights. There is an open preparation of public opinion for the exclusion of the opposition from the party.

This is not enough: in the fight against the opposition, the Central Committee openly employs non-party measures of influence, simultaneously creating a "case" against Comrade Zinoviev for his alleged "appeals to non-party members." "You'll laugh at the stock exchange!" Comrade Postyshev, a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPSU) Central Committee, recently threatened the opposition at a party meeting in Kharkov. "We'll fire you from your jobs," Comrade Kotov, Secretary of the Moscow Committee, intimidates them in Moscow. They want to silence the opposition with the threat of hunger. The Central Committee openly resorts to the aid of the state apparatus against party members.

One would have to be blind not to see that fighting the opposition with such methods is fighting against the Party. The Central Committee doesn't allow the grassroots Party masses the opportunity to sort out their differences. The Party knows the opposition's views only through distorted reports from Central Committee supporters. Articles and speeches by comrades who share the opposition's viewpoint are not published, and sometimes (as was the case at the April Central Committee plenum on the Chinese question) they aren't even transcribed. Even the reports of the plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, contrary to all previous traditions, were not published in the Party press. And in the section of these debates recently released to Party members, Comrade Trotsky's speech was not published under the pretext that he allegedly didn't have time to correct the transcript. If the oppositionists aren't allowed to speak, then the Party masses aren't allowed to know what the debate is about, forcing them to take the word of the official speakers.

Party members vote for the Central Committee at party meetings (unless they avoid voting) under threat of repression. This creates the famous "unanimity," a semblance of unity that has nothing in common with actual party unity. This semblance of unity is achieved by suppressing party activity. The path taken by the Central Committee is not the path of unity, but the path of the party's destruction. It is also a monstrous distortion of Lenin's methods of party leadership.

"What must be done to achieve the fastest and most reliable cure? All Party members must, with complete composure and the utmost honesty, begin to study, first, the essence of the disagreements, and second, the course of the Party struggle. Both must be studied without fail, demanding the most accurate documents, printed and available for verification from both sides. Anyone who takes anyone's word for it is a hopeless idiot, who will be given up on. If there are no documents, witnesses from both or several sides must be questioned, and "interrogation under duress" and "interrogation in the presence of witnesses" are essential."

This is how Lenin posed the question in 1921, and this is the only way it can be posed today. The party masses, and first and foremost the working class, are the sole judges who have the right to resolve, and alone can resolve, the protracted party crisis. Severing the oppositional section of the party behind the backs of the party masses—which includes hundreds and thousands of comrades who have endured the fire of three revolutions, fought on the fronts of the civil war, led the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, and headed the proletarian dictatorship in its most difficult moments—is no solution. Only by following the Leninist path can the party regain that genuine unity, which means, above all, the supreme activism of the entire party mass, its readiness to make every sacrifice for the sake of the victory of the proletarian revolution and socialism.

The Party membership has the right, and each party has the obligation, to present to it a precise and detailed statement of its views on all points of disagreement. We fulfill this duty in the attached document. The Central Committee must also fulfill its duty to the Party.

He must bring to the attention of the party masses all those documents, including ours, which could help them understand the current complex situation. He must print these documents and distribute them to all party organizations as material for the 15th Party Congress, which is only about four months away. The next plenum of the Central Committee should be devoted to discussing the agenda for the congress, the pre-congress campaign, and the materials submitted for the congress. We are confident that we will be given the opportunity to defend the views we have expressed at the plenum.

The 15th Party Congress is being convened after a two-year hiatus, at a time of acute party crisis. It must be prepared under conditions that preclude any possibility of terrorizing the party or any attempts at pressure. Elections to the congress must be conducted in full compliance with the party charter and Bolshevik traditions, based on a broad discussion by the entire party of all the most important issues facing it. Only then can its decisions be correct and authoritative.

June 27, 1927

PROSPECTS FOR WORLD REVOLUTION.

The 1917 revolution in Russia, the 1918 coup in Germany and Austria, and a series of revolutionary movements in other European countries (Hungary, Italy, England) between 1919 and 1921 represented the first onslaught of the revolutionary proletariat, the first outbreak of world revolution after "the world entered an era of wars and revolutions." This initial outbreak of socialist revolution was closely linked to the war and postwar crisis of the global economy. It ended victoriously only in Russia, with the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the remaining European countries, the bourgeoisie prevailed, with the active participation of the treacherous Social Democracy, with which it "shared power" during the revolutionary onslaught of the proletariat. Coalition governments were only a brief stage in the path to today's open dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. A second, weaker outbreak—the revolutionary movement of 1923 in Germany, which arose from the plunder of Germany by the victorious powers (the occupation of the Ruhr, etc.)—was also crushed. A second hiatus ensued, which became known as the "stabilization of capitalism."

Does this hiatus mean that capitalism has entered a new, more or less prolonged, era of peaceful development? Of course not. This would mean that the contradictions that led to the imperialist war and the subsequent wave of revolutionary movements have been resolved or weakened to some extent. Meanwhile, all the specific features of the imperialist period, far from weakening, are intensifying. Cartels are growing, the need for foreign markets is increasing, the impoverishment of the working class and unemployment are higher than ever, and class contradictions are becoming extremely acute. The revolutionary movement of the colonial peoples is spreading ever more widely, despite local and temporary setbacks. It is undermining the system of exploitation of oppressed nations by the imperialist powers, at each stage creating new contradictions between these powers and intensifying class contradictions within them. Even before the world war, the capitalist world entered an era of wars and revolutions, which can only end with the death of capitalism, with the triumph of the proletarian revolution.

We cannot predict how many years this victory will take. Marx and Lenin defined the possible duration of the era of wars and revolutions in decades, with varying successes for the working class (victories and defeats). It would be utopian to assume that the proletariat, once victorious in one country, will remain in power under any circumstances until the victory of the world revolution. Throughout the long period of wars and revolutions, victories for the working class in individual countries may alternate with defeats (e.g., the victories and defeats of the socialist revolutions in Hungary and Bavaria). It is also naive to assume that the entire period of wars and revolutions, that is, many decades, will be one continuous war and revolution, a continuous armed struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie. Interruptions during which more or less "peaceful" developments occur are inevitable. But these "peaceful" periods are in no way similar to the peaceful periods before the era of wars and revolutions. And during these times, class contradictions remain extremely tense and can at any moment again turn into an armed conflict.

Therefore, any debate about stabilization, as a certain, albeit temporary, period of peaceful existence and development of capitalism, is empty scholasticism. Any predictions, any assumption that revolution will not break out within a certain period of time (as the theorists of the "victory of socialism in one country" assume), is quackery in theory and opportunism in practice. Isolated outbreaks of the revolutionary movement and isolated wars (the general strike in England, the revolution and war in China) occur almost continuously and can always escalate into a decisive battle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat of Europe and the entire world. Predictions and diagnoses can only be made for months, not years. What we have now is merely a break in the armed struggle.

The post-war change in Europe's situation is particularly noteworthy. As a result of the war, it lost not only its dominant position but also its independence in the global economy. America became the dominant capitalist country. The influx of American capital into Europe means that the European bourgeoisie will have to hand over a portion of the surplus value extracted from its workers and colonies to America. This inevitably leads to even greater exploitation of the working class in Europe, on the one hand, and an even more intense struggle for the redistribution of colonies among the European imperialist powers, on the other. If the contradictions of capitalism intensified worldwide after the war, they became even more acute in Europe.

War-exhausted Europe only reached its pre-war level of production eight to nine years after the end of the world war. But this achievement of pre-war levels was accompanied by an incomparably greater intensification of contradictions between the various groups of imperialist states and between the various classes than had existed before the war. This clearly demonstrates that capitalism has exhausted itself, that it has lost the ability to advance productive forces, at least in its old homeland, Europe. Of course, one should not portray matters as if the development of productive forces automatically ceases beyond a certain point. In certain sectors of the economic front, capitalism is currently enjoying, and can continue to enjoy, some successes: technology is advancing, industry is becoming more rational. But overall, the volume of productive forces is expanding extremely slowly, and clashes between classes and imperialist cliques are once again eroding them.

All this places capitalist Europe primarily at risk from proletarian revolution. And revolution in Europe will inevitably provide a powerful impetus to socialist revolution in the United States, whose current "prosperity" is based on the temporary triumph of the bourgeoisie in Europe and its subordination to American capital.

The Comintern's tactics must be shaped by this assessment. This, of course, does not mean that communists should always advance only those methods that are acceptable in a directly revolutionary situation. During a break, they must defend and advance partial demands, boldly employing, in particular, the united front tactic. But we must not lose sight for a moment of the fundamental task to which all else must be subordinated, even during the current break, of preparing for the proletariat's open struggle to overthrow the bourgeoisie as the next stage of world history.

General evolution of class relations and

class struggle in the USSR.

The delay in the world revolution forced the USSR to develop its economy by relying almost exclusively on its internal resources. Given the enormous role of small-scale peasant farming and the enormous numerical superiority of the petty-bourgeois strata of the population, Soviet power could not help but feel pressure. "As long as classes exist, class struggle is inevitable." (11th Party Congress, "On the Role and Tasks of Trade Unions"). Therefore, on the one hand, the results of our policies must be assessed not only in terms of the development of productive forces but also in terms of the growth or elimination of class contradictions. On the other hand, we must most carefully consider the influence exerted on our policies by the non-proletarian classes of the population. An assessment of this influence on Party policy and an evaluation of the class results of this policy are imperative.

The general results of the changes in class relations during the NEP years are as follows:

1) A new bourgeoisie has emerged and grown stronger, primarily of a parasitic type, having seized strong positions in the sphere of trade, speculation and usury, but already partially capturing the sphere of production.

2) The stratification of the peasantry is rapidly growing. By the end of 1925, the poor portion of the village, according to estimates by the Central Committee's Peasant Commission, already constituted 40-45% of the total peasant population. The exodus from the village to the city is accelerating, and the number of farm laborers is rapidly increasing. The power of kulak elements is growing sharply. The kulak has achieved major economic concessions in the form of permission to hire labor and lease land. These concessions are becoming increasingly significant: hired labor, initially permitted only for labor farms, is now permitted for use on leased land. The maximum lease term, initially limited to three years, was increased to 12 years by the 3rd Congress of Soviets in May 1926. The kulak has gained access to the cooperative system, and its importance within it is so strong that it is already beginning to partially control it. It has also gained access to the Soviets. The kulak's political and economic significance in the village is constantly growing, and its influence on village councils and within the councils themselves is growing.

3) The growth of real wages is lagging sharply behind the growth of labor intensity. Moreover, since October 1925, wage growth has stagnated and even shown a downward trend, while output per worker has increased by no less than 15% during this period. At the same time, administrative pressure from economic bodies on workers has sharply increased, and management's powers have been significantly expanded. This is leading to increasing discontent among the working class.

4) During the NEP, the working class grew significantly, but since the beginning of this year, a sharp turnaround has occurred, and this growth has almost stopped. At the same time, unemployment is growing at an ever-increasing rate: already in 1926, the growth of the unemployed outpaced the growth in the number of workers. This year, unemployment has accelerated further, and the number of unemployed in the first half of 1926-27 has increased sharply by 385,000 people, or 36%.

Thus, the rather rapid expansion of the output of our economy in general and the state economy in particular (with, however, a very weak change in its technical base) has been accompanied by an increase in social inequality, a direct growth of class contradictions and class stratification (strengthening of the urban and rural bourgeoisie) outside the state economy, and within it by a significant “increase in the conflict of interests on issues of working conditions” between workers and the organs of the Soviet state.

The October Revolution created enormously important preconditions for socialist construction, the most important of which was the nationalization of industry. But the Central Committee's policy in recent years has made less and less use of these gains of the October Revolution. To claim, under these circumstances, that we are still witnessing the displacement of capitalist elements by socialist ones, that we have entered some kind of "higher phase" of the NEP, is to conceal from the Party and the working class what is actually happening. The true success of socialist construction means: 1) that productive forces, based on nationalized industry, are growing faster than they did under capitalism; 2) that the situation of workers, barring any events (war, intervention, etc.), is continually improving; 3) that the division of society into classes is gradually being eliminated and social inequality is diminishing.

In reality, this is far from the case. Until now, only the output of our state economy has grown rapidly, while the development of its productive forces has been much slower. The condition of basic transportation equipment and housing continues to deteriorate. As for industry, there has been only a slight improvement in its extremely worn-out basic equipment. Improvements in the workers' situation have stalled. Social inequality is growing, both as a result of stratification in the countryside and as a result of the formation and growth of a new bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, the working class's share of national income, which had steadily increased from the beginning of the NEP until 1925–26, remained, at best, at the same level as the previous year in 1926–27.

The so-called "recovery process," the process of expanding production without any significant strengthening of capital equipment, masked these negative phenomena and created the appearance of rapid development of productive forces. It is therefore no coincidence that these negative phenomena become increasingly apparent as the end of this "recovery process" approaches.

The slow growth of productive forces in the state economy, the growth of the bourgeoisie, the growth of class stratification in the village, the slowing growth of the number of workers in industry and the halt since mid-1925 of the rise in the material conditions of the working class, the strengthening in connection with all this of capitalist elements in the state economy itself, the growth of class contradictions and social inequality - all this means that, on the whole, in recent years the capitalist elements in our country have been growing faster than the socialist ones.

Our country's technological backwardness and the resulting low level of labor productivity are, of course, a huge obstacle to socialist construction. Because of this backwardness, the transition to a truly socialist organization of production (in which the worker is transformed from labor force into the master of production, and the commodity nature of production is eliminated) is impossible for us without the assistance of technologically advanced countries, without a world social revolution. This is precisely why world revolution is not only a guarantee against intervention, as the Stalin-Bukharin "theory of the victory of socialism in one country" asserts, but is also intimately linked to the most vital interests of our domestic socialist construction, particularly the situation of the working class and the poor peasantry. Only with world revolution, which enables us to utilize the undoubtedly higher level of productive forces and labor productivity of technologically advanced countries for our own construction, will we be able to create not only the "foundation of a socialist economy" (Lenin) but also truly socialist relations between people. But it would be utterly absurd to conclude from this that the current delay in the world revolution condemns the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR to ruin. There is no doubt that, even with our technological backwardness, within the framework of the NEP, we can, relying on the nationalization of industry, turn our economy toward socialism. And if in recent years capitalist elements have grown more rapidly than socialist ones, this is not due to the objective impossibility of building socialism, but to the policy of the Central Committee, with its constant concessions to pressure from the petty bourgeoisie.

Industrialization.

The crisis of 1923, caused primarily by the near-total absence of any economic management, created a panic among the Central Committee's leadership group over the supposedly too-rapid development of industry. "It is a mistake from the standpoint of socialist construction," stated the resolution of the 13th Party Conference, "to include in the prices of goods, in addition to production costs and minimum profit, the costs of such a rapid expansion of industry, which is clearly beyond the means of the bulk of the country's population. In the future, it is necessary to coordinate pricing policy to a much greater extent with the primary peasant market, and to align the pace of industrial development more strictly than hitherto with the overall expansion of the capacity of the peasant market." In practice, this meant a course toward moderate industrial growth, passively adapting it to the development of agriculture. Until the 14th Congress, when the slogan of "industrialization" was verbally advanced in the struggle against the "new opposition" (accompanied, however, by a furious campaign against so-called "super-industrialists"), the Central Committee continually restrained industrial growth. Production programs were consistently set at such a minimum that, right up until 1925–26, they were systematically exceeded in implementation. The forces of the market thus shaped the policy of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (CPSU). It is already clear from this that this policy was prompted by fear of the petty bourgeoisie, was a concession to its demands, and was detrimental not only to the development of industry but also to the development of the productive forces of our economy in general. The policy of so-called price reduction, established by the 13th Conference and retaining the force of an unshakable dogma to this day, is a similar concession to the utopian demands of the petty bourgeoisie.

The fundamental error of this policy is that the Central Committee strives to reduce industrial prices at all costs to the level of production costs plus a "minimum profit" (in practice, this minimum profit is sometimes below zero, with prices falling below production costs), regardless of the market's saturation with goods and regardless of technical improvements in production that would make it possible to reduce production costs and thereby achieve genuine, systematic price reductions. To please the "consumer" in general (i.e., including the bourgeoisie), the Central Committee decided to act contrary to the laws of the market, at a time when that market was developing alongside the NEP. In reality, only the bourgeoisie, and primarily the parasitic bourgeoisie, benefited from this policy "for the benefit of all classes."

The results of this policy of the Central Committee to date have been reduced to the following:

1. The so-called "reduction" of prices.

The decline in wholesale prices, which began in October 1923, lasted only until November 1924. During this time, they fell by 36%. Since then, i.e., for more than two years, no reduction even in wholesale prices has occurred—formally, they remain at the same level. In reality, however, they have risen, since, while prices remain unchanged, the quality of goods (in particular, manufactured goods) has declined sharply since 1926. Wholesale prices, which include the trade markups of state wholesale trade agencies, after a similarly sharp decline in late 1923 and early 1924, have slowly but steadily risen since July 1925—from that point until January 1927, they increased by 7% (see the movement of wholesale industrial prices according to the Gosplan wholesale index)—again, despite a deterioration in product quality, which in reality makes the increase significantly greater. Until July 1925, retail prices declined much more slowly than wholesale and retail prices (the maximum decline was only 20%). From then on, they rose rapidly again—by ​​a full 25%, thus returning to the October 1923 level by January 1926. Taking into account the declining quality of goods, they exceeded this level. The last price-cutting campaign, despite all the administrative pressure, resulted in only a few percent reduction (3-5%), while quality continued to deteriorate. Thus, consumers are now receiving goods of inferior quality at prices almost comparable to those of 1923. The policy of "price reduction" has in fact led to higher prices and counterfeit products.

2) Profits of the bourgeoisie and the growth of parasitic strata of the population.

As a result, the discrepancy between retail and selling prices is constantly growing: private trade markups, which, according to calculations by the Supreme Council of the National Economy in October 1923, amounted to 8% of selling prices, by October 1924, according to the same calculations, already amounted to 40%, in October 1925 – 51%, in October 1926 – 63%, and in January 1927 – 66.5%. During the latest price reduction campaign, this discrepancy further increased: the reduction in selling prices was greater than the insignificant reduction in retail prices. This undoubtedly led to a significant accumulation of private capital. But at the same time, a huge number of parasitic elements rushed into the trade sector. Some of them rushed into independent small-scale trade, increasing the number of small traders to a level that is completely unnecessary for the proper development of the retail network; others served larger merchants, standing in lines at state and cooperative stores for the hiring of these merchants. A huge amount of public money is spent on this circumvention of "low" prices, on feeding this army of parasites at the expense of the workers, selling a few meters of calico a day, standing in lines, on bribes and bribery of agents of trusts, state and cooperative trade, etc. Not only private capital, and again, most of all speculative-trading and usurious capital, is growing, but also unproductive and parasitic consumption.

According to official data, cooperative margins are somewhat lower than those of private trade, around 30-40%. However, these lower margins largely stem from the fact that cooperatives trade in less marketable goods, while the same goods for which there is maximum demand flow to private traders. And here, in addition to excessive profits for the cooperatives, high margins lead to a huge bloat in their trading apparatus, i.e., once again, to feed the unproductive strata of the population. Overall, due to this difference between wholesale and retail prices, we lost at least a billion rubles to private traders and to the parasitic strata of the population in 1925-26 alone, and we will likely lose even more this year. Overall, from 1923 to the beginning of this year, these losses amounted to over 2 billion rubles. If this enormous sum had been used for the socialist government, in particular for the re-equipment of industry, then we would in fact have seen a reduction in prices and a reduction in the cost of industrial production.

3) Industrial development and capital expenditures, cost price.

Industrial development, even in terms of increased production, is insufficient, as it clearly hasn't alleviated the goods shortage for three years now. Regarding the industrial plan for 1926–27, even the Supreme Council of the National Economy acknowledges that "the goods shortage will not yet be eliminated." Gosplan's control figures, however, indicate an even worsening of the goods shortage.

The situation with improving industrial technology, re-equipping, and overhauling is even worse. It can now be considered established that in a number of key industries (for example, the metal industry), alongside an expansion of output, the condition of the equipment has deteriorated. (Moreover, the situation with safety precautions is the worst, as a result of which the number of accidents at enterprises is constantly growing.) From this standpoint, the level of capital expenditures proposed for next year is also completely inadequate. This was openly acknowledged by almost all speakers at the February plenum of the Central Committee, and some have been noted in our press. This inadequacy of capital expenditures is one of the important reasons for the rise in the cost of industrial production in 1925-26, which continues this year. This rise in cost clearly demonstrates that the policy pursued by the Central Committee has nothing in common with a policy of genuine price reduction. With rising cost prices, any policy of price reduction is, of course, unthinkable.

5) Rising unemployment.

Finally, the rate of expansion of our industry is completely insufficient in terms of absorbing the increase in the labor force. Even last year, with the number of workers in industry subordinate to the Supreme Council of the National Economy increasing by 380,000, we saw unemployment rise by 150,000. This year, with the projected increase in the number of workers being only 136,000, unemployment has skyrocketed, increasing in the first half of the year alone by 2.5 times more than in the entire previous year. Under these circumstances, the so-called "rationalization" of production (which is a surrogate for technical progress, since it boils down primarily to increasing labor intensity in the absence of any significant technical improvements) results in the dismissal of workers. The insufficient pace of industrialization puts the interests of improving production at odds with those of the workers.

The Central Committee's policy in the field of industry is so permeated with petty-bourgeois deviations that it is unable to resolve not only the problems of building socialism, but even the problem of developing the productive forces necessary for the country.

The correct policy of industrialization, in contrast, should be as follows:

1) Industry cannot and should not passively adapt to the needs of agriculture. It must become a determining factor in the entire national economy, revolutionizing its technology, both in general and in agriculture in particular. By opening markets for agricultural raw materials, it must facilitate the development of industrial crops and the intensification and industrialization of agriculture (construction of factories for the primary processing of raw materials, electrification, etc.). It must thus, on the one hand, reduce the exodus of workers from the villages, and on the other, ensure that the increase in the labor force is absorbed by the development of industrial production.

2) Further development of industry should be based not on the use of strictly equipment and increased labor intensity, but on technical reconstruction.

The means for such development must and can be obtained through changes in pricing policy. Effectively controlling and regulating the market is possible only "based on the existence of the market and taking its laws into account" (resolution of the December 1921 conference). From unsuccessful and hopeless attempts to lower prices by administrative decree, it is necessary to move to a flexible pricing policy that takes into account the state of the market both as a whole and for each commodity group. Lowering the prices of industrial goods should be a consequence of lowering their value (and not an artificial reduction in the profits and wages necessary for industrial development) and sufficient market saturation. A policy of lowering selling prices and "minimum profits" in the face of poor product availability and rising production costs is, in fact, a policy of high and rising prices, leading to enormous profits for parasitic private capital and must be decisively rejected. The task of regulating the market and prices is not to fictitiously reduce selling prices at the expense of profits, but to use profits for the reconstruction of our industry, to actually carry out a policy of reducing industrial prices and to achieve truly cheap goods in sufficient quantities to saturate the market.

Along with this, it is necessary to increase resources for industrial development by reducing budget expenditures on administrative apparatus, increasing taxes on the kulak and NEPman (while lowering taxes for the poorer sections of the villages), and implementing, with the active participation of the working masses, a regime of austerity in factories and plants, not at the expense of the workers, but by reducing unproductive expenses. Naturally, these latter measures can be implemented and yield positive results only through the implementation of workers' democracy.

Labor issues.

1. Labor productivity and wages.

During the 1923 debate, inspired by the strikes that had broken out, and in an effort to win the workers' sympathies, the Central Committee proposed and enshrined in resolutions of the 13th Conference and 13th Congress "a course toward raising wages in line with the growth of industry and labor productivity." However, this decision, which was in clear contradiction with the main line of economic policy—moderate industrial growth and the Central Committee's price policy—remained on paper.

Forced by this policy to reduce costs, industry took the path of least resistance—pressure on the worker. From the autumn of 1924, in parallel with the campaign to "turn toward the countryside," a campaign to increase labor productivity (in fact, intensity) was pursued with the utmost energy and pressure on the working class, not only without a corresponding increase in wages, but even with a slight reduction. The policy of "low" prices, which led primarily to profiteering for speculators, dealt a blow not only to the pace of industrial expansion but also to the workers' situation. The "course of increasing wages in line with the rise of industry and labor productivity" was jettisoned as soon as the opposition was crushed.

The primary method for increasing labor "productivity" was the introduction of unlimited piecework and the systematic raising of production quotas and the reduction of piecework rates as productivity increased. Often, these changes in production quotas and rates were implemented in such a way that wages subsequently declined sharply. This inevitably led to conflicts between workers and the Soviet state and the undermining of the latter's authority.

The first campaign to "increase labor productivity" ended in mass strikes. They began in January 1925 and by the spring had already assumed a mass character. Under their pressure, a "New Deal" was announced in the spring of 1925. Wages had risen by approximately 25% by August, but had not yet reached pre-war levels. However, since then, real wage growth has stalled, and they are currently even lower than the level of the fall of 1925.

Despite the halt in wage growth, pressure on labor intensity continues. Standardization efforts are focused on establishing the maximum possible output for the most skilled workers and making it mandatory for everyone else. Rejection rates in piecework are increasing, even with no increase or even a decrease in rates. As a result, with wages that, even by the most optimistic estimates, are no higher than pre-war levels, and with equipment inferior to pre-war levels, output per worker significantly exceeds pre-war levels, often exceeding them by double or more. This leads to direct exhaustion and increased disability among workers.

Overall, from October 1924 to October 1926, in complete contradiction to the decisions of the 13th Conference, output per worker increased by 47.5%, while daily wages rose only by 26% and monthly wages by 15%. Now, however, the latest resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (VKP) on the rationalization of production officially rescinds this resolution. "In those enterprises," the resolution states, "where organizational and technical improvements in production have been and are being implemented, it is necessary to revise output standards and piecework rates in accordance with the results of these organizational and technical improvements. This revision, however, must not lead to a reduction in the daily wages of workers that existed before the introduction of technical and organizational improvements, but, on the contrary, allows for a further increase in wages with increased labor intensity."

Here, it is openly established that a worker can only receive a high wage for a large amount of labor. The increase in social wealth resulting from technological advances, according to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party, has no bearing on it, and the worker cannot count on any share of this increase. In words, the Central Committee, through the mouthpieces of the Bukharin school of theorists, asserts that labor power has ceased to be a commodity, but in reality, it establishes a purely capitalist principle of remuneration for workers.

The introduction of 40% vodka hit the workers the hardest. Low wages and high productivity created particularly favorable conditions for the development of alcoholism. Absenteeism increased sharply. Workers not only paid the "drink tax" at the expense of their other needs, not only poisoned themselves with alcohol, but also lost a portion of their earnings due to absenteeism. The introduction of vodka had a particularly devastating impact on young workers. Budgetary gains came at the expense of workers' health and earnings.

Low wages prevent workers from affording housing sufficient to maintain it in a more or less tolerable condition. This is one of the main reasons for the growing housing crisis, a systematic year-on-year decline even in living space per capita of the working population. The construction and maintenance of housing (especially for workers) is unprofitable. Attempts to resolve this situation are being made through budgetary allocations for housing construction, which are insignificant compared to the need, on the one hand, and by raising rents without raising wages, on the other. (It should also be noted here that our index of workers' consumption does not include rent, which is constantly rising.) Rents are therefore too high compared to the worker's wage and become a heavy burden, while they are too low compared to the necessary expenses for housing and condemn the worker to living in hovels. As with other goods, the worker receives a worthless product for a "cheap" price.

2) Economy mode and internal regulations at the factory.

The "austerity regime" has also turned into a form of pressure on workers: workers are being deprived of tram fares, and spending on crèches and other cultural needs is being cut. The fight against absenteeism, which is largely a consequence of the introduction of vodka, is evolving into a system of punitive measures, with workers being fired for the slightest tardiness. Insurance companies are reducing the number of sick days paid, refusing payment under the pretext that the patient is allegedly not following doctor's orders, or offering to transfer the sick and disabled to "easy" work. "This type of austerity regime has become epidemic in Moscow. It's not hard to imagine how provincial insurance companies 'ruled' the insured." ("Trud" 15/III-27, "Savings for the Insured").

Another type of savings is cutting costs on safety. When funds for capital projects are insufficient, safety costs are the first to be cut. "The number of accidents at enterprises is growing. At Moscow factories and plants, for example, 2,775 cases were registered in 1925, and in 1926, 6,111. According to the Central Statistical Office, in the first quarter of 1925, there were 22 accidents resulting in loss of productivity per 100,000 man-days worked, 24 in the second quarter, 29 in the third, 33 in the fourth, and so on." (Trud, 8-III-27, "The Number of Accidents is Growing").

Despite unemployment, the practice of overtime work is widely used—the People's Commissariat of Labor rarely refuses to allow it—as is the practice of hiring "temporary" workers. These temporary workers, subject to worse working conditions than permanent workers in terms of dismissal and severance pay (one or three days' notice or the same number of days' severance pay, as opposed to two weeks for permanent workers), often differ from them only in that, after the deadline, they are dismissed for a few days and then rehired as temporary workers. This abuse significantly leads to so-called "fluidity" of the workforce (according to the People's Commissariat of Labor, a full average turnover of the workforce occurs within 10 months, i.e., the number of newly hired workers exceeds the number of workers in the workforce each year), the displacement of skilled workers by unskilled ones, and a reduction in wages. Instead of combating these abuses, the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR increased the maximum period for hiring temporary workers from one to two months, which created even more favorable conditions for abuse.

In the area of ​​internal regulations, factory management increasingly asserts unlimited power. It is granted the absolute right to fire workers for misconduct. Workers are also hired by management itself, and the role of factory committees is reduced to merely registering those hired. This gives rise to petty bribery between foremen and workers. Pre-revolutionary relationships between foremen and workers are established.

Instead of gradually involving workers in enterprise management, the administration's authority and mechanical discipline are strengthened. Reports from production meetings and workers regarding sometimes glaring defects in production management are ignored, or, worse, dismissed as "riotous behavior." On the contrary, only those at odds with the union are considered good foremen (Kalinin's speech in Bezhitsa). The establishment of piece rates is entirely in the hands of the foremen. The internal order at the factory is increasingly reminiscent of pre-revolutionary times.

3) Trade unions and workers' democracy.

The role and tasks of trade unions under the New Economic Policy were formulated with exhaustive clarity and completeness at the 10th and 11th Party Congresses. "The main method of trade union work is not coercion, but persuasion," states paragraph 6 of the 10th Congress's resolution "On the Role and Tasks of Trade Unions." "The methods of workers' democracy, severely curtailed during three years of brutal civil war, must be restored first and foremost in the trade union movement. Within the trade unions, it is essential, first and foremost, to restore broad elections to all trade union bodies and eliminate appointments."

A trade union organization must be built on the principle of democratic centralism. At the same time, however, the trade union movement especially requires the most energetic and systematic struggle against the degeneration of centralism, militarism, and militarized forms of work into bureaucracy and bureaucracy. Furthermore, the 11th Party Congress, noting that the transition of state-owned enterprises to a cost-accounting system "inevitably gives rise to a certain conflict of interests regarding working conditions between the working masses and the directors, managers of state-owned enterprises, or the departments to which they belong," established that "in relation to socialized state enterprises" (not to mention private and concessionary ones), "trade unions are unconditionally obligated to protect the interests of workers." (The Role and Tasks of Trade Unions, Sec. 3). The same Congress recognized the permissibility of the use of strikes in state-owned enterprises, with the caveat that "the use of strike action in a state with proletarian state power can be explained and justified solely by the bureaucratic distortions of the proletarian state and all sorts of remnants of the capitalist past in its institutions" (ibid., paragraph 4). These resolutions, which so clearly defined the place of trade unions in the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat, have long since become a forgotten text.

Instead of fighting the bureaucratic distortions of economic bodies, party and trade union organizations, by assuming blanket protection of all economic activities, are effectively turning into their agents. This complete distortion of party and trade union functions, leaving workers without protection, discredits these bodies in their eyes, as Comrade Tomsky noted in his speech at the 14th Party Congress. A widespread phenomenon is the indifference, and in some cases, hostility, of workers toward their trade union organizations. Workers' meetings are held sluggishly, sometimes with the help of administrative coercion (closing gates, etc.). Interest in production meetings is waning. Outside of trade union organizations, workers are colluding not to produce above the established quota.

In the area of ​​resolving conflicts between business executives and workers, unions remain deprived of the right to resort to strikes at state-owned enterprises, even if all other avenues have been exhausted. Moreover, the resolution of the XIV Congress on the work of trade unions recognized the need to "extend the right of trade unions to refer conflicts to state arbitration courts to the other party—business entities." Thus, whereas previously a trade union could compel a business entity to comply with the arbitration court's decision in any conflict, now a business entity, regardless of the union's consent, can refer the case to arbitration court. As a result, illegal strike committees are usually elected during strikes, and the beginnings of illegal trade unions (e.g., mutual aid funds) exist.

The workers' struggle to improve their situation in a climate of developing contradictions is entirely inevitable. It proceeds independently of and against the Party and trade unions, and is thus driven into the channels of counterrevolutionary organizations, which are well aware of the importance of this policy. Relations between trade unions and the Party have also become completely distorted. The liquidation of the last vestiges of intra-Party democracy following the 1923-24 debate deprived trade union bodies, despite countless resolutions "on the inadmissibility of micromanagement," of full autonomy and concentrated direct management of trade union work in the hands of Party bodies. Selection of trade union workers is carried out primarily on the basis of "obedience." As a result, instead of overall management of trade union activities through their factions, Party bodies have effectively come to replace the trade unions. A consistent chain of events has emerged: bureaucratization of the party, bureaucratization of trade unions, transformation of both into subsidiary organs of economic organizations, creation of a united front of party, trade union, and economic bodies against non-party workers, and attempts among non-party workers to create a united front against all these organizations. Trade unions cease to be organizations "for the defense of workers against their state and for the workers' defense of our state" (Lenin), ceasing to be a school of communism.

In this regard, trade union organization is becoming increasingly bureaucratic. Union membership is becoming a formality, serving primarily as a means of securing employment and a measure of protection against dismissal in the event of layoffs. The election of trade union bodies is also a formality—given the established relations within the Party between the Party and trade unions, and between trade unions and the working masses, the leading members of each union cell are effectively simply appointed. Trade unions suffer from all the vices of bureaucratic organization, from a lack of independent opinion among their employees to wasteful spending.

In general, in the area of ​​workers' democracy we are moving backwards, while the activity of the non-proletarian classes is growing.

4. Unemployment.

The insufficient pace of industrialization leads to an ever-increasing rate of unemployment. Its general trend is as follows:

Number of registered unemployed.

Total.

Industr., qualification and semi-qualifier.

Ineligible. and black slave (without int. labor).

Total industrial unskilled and unskilled workers.

Number of workers,

hired in the past.

in thousands

V %

in thousands

V %

in thousands

V %

in thousands

V %

in thousands

V %

On 1/X–25

On 1/X–26

On 1/XII–26

On 1/IV–27 g.

920

1070

1254

1455

100

116

136

158

142,2

182,7

206,1

100

128,5

144,9

485,1

589,6

668,5

100

121,2

137,5

698,3

772,3

874,5

100

123,9

138,6

2034,5

2279,2

2285,5

100

112

112,2

Thus, the number of unemployed is growing faster than the number of workers. Moreover, the number of unemployed in industry is growing fastest. This shows that it's not just a matter of rural areas shedding large numbers of unemployed. The point is that our enterprises, taking advantage of this influx of workers from the countryside, are beginning to replace skilled labor with cheaper workers arriving from the countryside in every possible way. Only this can explain how, despite the slow growth of the workforce, the number of skilled unemployed grows faster than the unskilled.

Since the beginning of the current economic year, unemployment has sharply increased. This increase is directly related to the fact that the growth in the number of industrial workers has been declining sharply this year. The Supreme Council of the National Economy's industrial plan already anticipates an increase in the number of workers by only 136,000. However, this plan did not take into account "rationalization." In reality, during the first half of the year, the number of industrial workers increased by only 61,000, while in April there was a decrease of 33,000.

In this situation, business executives were faced with the choice of either abandoning "rationalization" or releasing workers. They were hesitant to do the latter. The issue became so pressing that all debates on the industrial plan at the February plenum boiled down to this question of "spitting out" workers. The Central Committee, instead of declaring the industrial plan insufficient and proposing its revision, directly instructed business executives to releasing workers. "In those cases," states the Central Committee's resolution on production rationalization, "when improvements in technology and production organization cannot be accompanied by expansion of a given enterprise, or when the available number of workers exceeds the enterprise's needs, it is necessary to relieve the enterprise of the surplus labor force."

At the same time, the People's Commissariat of Labor and the NKVD were instructed to draft a law that would provide for "the introduction of contractual principles and the use of factory apartments for a period, after which workers must vacate their apartments" and "the complete vacating of factory premises by persons not employed at the enterprise." The Central Committee also recognized the need to "limit the number of unexcused absences to three days per month."

Thus, faced with growing unemployment, the Central Committee is concerned only with how to relieve enterprises of surplus workers: management is obliged to fire workers without regard for their subsequent fate. It has the right to evict them from their apartments, and is even given a convenient pretext for dismissal in the form of three absences from work without "valid reasons." But the Central Committee offers no answer to what to do with these "liberated" workers. It limits itself to a general statement that "the industrial expansion plan must provide for such an expansion of production that the total number of workers does not decrease, but increases." But the issue isn't simply that the number of workers "does not decrease." The fact is that the growth of available labor rarely outpaces the growth of industrial workers. And if the Central Committee demands only that the number of workers increase, without specifying how much this increase must be to reduce unemployment, it is thereby admitting that it is incapable of resolving the unemployment issue with its current policies.

As a palliative measure, the Central Committee proposes only an increase in benefits for those laid off due to the rationalization of unemployment to 1.5–3 months' salary. Not a word is said about reducing the overtime work that is widely used, which could truly alleviate unemployment. Not a word is said about increasing assistance to the unemployed, although unemployment is now taking on the character of a natural disaster. On the contrary, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR publishes new regulations for registering the unemployed, permitting the removal of unemployed persons from "benefits and registration at the labor exchange for refusing, without good reason, a job offered, suitable work, even if not in their specialty, for refusing work offered in unemployed collectives or on public works projects, and for the refusal of single unemployed persons to work while traveling, as well as for the refusal of small families to work while traveling in cases where they are provided with housing at the place of work." ("Trud" 4/III–27, No. 52).

So, the real measures taken in connection with the colossal growth of unemployment come down to freeing factories from “excess” workers, reducing the registration of unemployed people at the labor exchange, and reducing spending on the unemployed.

Conclusions.

This state of affairs poses the greatest danger—a rift between the workers and the Soviet state. The growth of anti-Soviet sentiment among workers is undeniable. We will be able to eradicate it through neither agitation nor repression. The working masses can only feel themselves the ruling class, not in theory but in practice, if their material situation improves, if their participation in the management of production and the state increases. Therefore, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, it is absolutely unacceptable to relegate the issue of improving the workers' situation to the background or to disdain the so-called "guild interests" of the working class. A cultured worker living in humane conditions is as essential a condition for the proletarian dictatorship as the development of state industry. Forgetting this entails opposing the state, increasing the influence of the petty-bourgeois environment, and a passive attitude toward the construction of socialism. It is even more unacceptable under current conditions, when the Central Committee's policies are creating a sense of disillusionment and distrust among workers in Soviet power. The height of bureaucratic complacency is Comrade Stalin's statement at the 5th Conference of the Komsomol regarding "rationalization," stating that no major step is taken without some sacrifices on the part of individual groups of the working class in the interests of the entire working class of our country. "That is why I think we should not hesitate to make a few minor sacrifices in the interests of the working class."

To declare an increase in unemployment by 380 thousand people in half a year an insignificant sacrifice, to consider that such things are normal for a country of proletarian dictatorship, means to break away from the workers, means to demand that the worker bear sacrifices for the mistakes of the Central Committee's policy, and not in the name of socialist construction, means to discredit the dictatorship of the proletariat in the eyes of the workers and undermine its foundations.

The Communist Party must resolutely reject this disastrous policy. Instead, it must take a firm course toward strengthening its ties with the working class and increasing its activity, both by improving its situation and by truly implementing workers' democracy. In particular:

1) Since the intensity of the worker's labor has already exceeded the pre-war level, the immediate task is to raise wages to levels that exceed pre-war wages by at least the same amount as the worker's labor intensity exceeds pre-war intensity. Subsequently, wage growth should be at least proportional to the growth of productivity (and not just intensity) of labor; that is, the increase in social wealth must be accompanied by a constant, absolute and relative improvement in the worker's position. At the same time, we must discard the completely reactionary argument that wage increases can only occur as a result of increased labor productivity. An increase in the worker's standard of living is itself a significant factor in the growth of labor productivity and, therefore, should not follow from labor productivity, but rather constantly precede it.

2) Further growth in labor productivity should come not from increased labor intensity, but from technical and organizational improvements in the production process, coupled with rising wages. Maximum standards for labor intensity should be established, and wages should be set so that workers are not forced to exhaust themselves to earn a normal wage.

3) It is necessary to immediately begin reducing the production of vodka, especially in the city, with the aim of stopping its production completely within 2 years.

4) An equally urgent task is improving workers' housing conditions. Workers must be guaranteed a wage level sufficient to afford the satisfactory maintenance of their apartments without compromising their other needs. Without such a wage increase, rent increases are impossible. At the same time, enterprises must be required to increase spending on housing construction and expand budget allocations and loans for housing construction so that the housing crisis is eliminated within the next five years.

5) The internal regulations at the factory must be changed towards democratization. A firm course must be pursued toward conscious discipline, based on comradely cohesion between workers and management—both high and low—to strengthen the participation of the working masses in production management. To this end:

a) When appointing plant directors and their assistants, candidates proposed by the highest economic bodies must be submitted for discussion to general or shop-floor meetings of workers, who may also nominate their own candidates. A final appointment may be made only after such discussion, based on the workers' attitudes toward the nominated candidate and the proposals of the general meetings;

b) A permanent conference must be established under the plant director's control, consisting of senior management, the chairman of the production conference, and worker representatives elected at general workers' meetings. The director's decisions are not binding, but all major issues concerning the company's operations must be discussed there, so that the workers' representatives are fully informed about the company's affairs, and the administration is aware of the workers' attitudes toward the ongoing activities. The same system should be implemented in large workshops.

c) Instead of the current motley organization of production meetings, these meetings should be elected everywhere and held accountable to the workers. Their work should be closely linked to the work of the aforementioned standing meetings under the plant director.

6) Trade union bodies, starting with the factory committee, must be independent of management and genuinely protect the interests of workers, rather than serve as a tool for management action. In particular, hiring and firing workers, as well as transfers from one job to another for periods exceeding two weeks, must be handled through the factory committee. Management should only be granted the right to appeal factory committee decisions to higher trade union authorities, without suspending the decisions made by the factory committee.

7) Trade unions as a whole must be built on the foundation of genuine workers' democracy. Planned measures in the area of ​​labor policy must be discussed in advance at general and delegate meetings of workers so that the final decision is made based on and taking into account the results of discussions at the grassroots. On this basis, trade union organizations must be genuinely elected and accountable to the mass of union members.

8) In view of the increasing bureaucratic distortions of business entities amid growing class contradictions, and in order to transform trade unions into genuine organs of defense of the interests of the working class, trade unions must be effectively granted the opportunity to resort to strikes at concession enterprises, on an equal basis with other private enterprises, and, as a last resort, at state-owned enterprises. In the event of a conflict between trade unions and business executives, the case may be referred to an arbitration court only with the consent or at the request of the trade union organizations.

9) Party organizations, while guiding the work of trade unions to align it with the general class interests of the proletariat and monitoring their work from this perspective, must act on the basis of granting communist factions of trade unions a sufficient degree of independence. Petty interference in their work, which in practice leads to the replacement of trade union organizations by party organizations, must be resolutely rejected.

In turn, trade union organizations must build their work on the basis of the genuine participation of non-party workers, winning their trust and reducing the use of organizational coercion to a minimum.

10) It is necessary to resolutely combat violations of the Labor Code by business entities, vigorously combat the circumvention of the law on normal working hours, prevent the use of overtime except in cases of extreme necessity, and prevent the abuse of temporary labor, in particular, limiting the maximum period of temporary labor to two weeks. Repeal amendments made to the Labor Code in recent years that worsen the situation of workers, such as reducing the duration of vacations in hazardous jobs, expanding the scope of female labor, reducing the reserve for adolescents, etc. The introduction of unpaid apprenticeships is deemed unacceptable. Increase the liability of enterprises for accidents and establish the strictest penalties for failure to take measures to ensure workplace safety.

11) Recognize as unacceptable changes to collective agreements this year that worsen workers' conditions compared to those of the previous year. Collective agreements must be drafted in such a way as to prevent the management of individual plants and factories from circumventing them and worsening workers' working conditions compared to those established in the agreement.

12) Prevent further reductions in social insurance contributions and resolutely combat the actual non-payment to which some economic bodies resort. Conduct a vigorous campaign against "saving on the insured." Abolish the widespread practice of spending insurance fund funds on the needs of general public healthcare ("Fund I"). Strengthen spa and sanatorium care for workers. Eliminate the institution of so-called "trusted doctors" at insurance funds: doctors determining a worker's right to sick leave must be independent of both factory administration and the insurance funds. Establish grassroots local control of workers and employees over the activities of insurance funds through trade unions.

13) Increase pensions for workers. Pensions should be calculated not based on the worker's last earnings before transitioning to social security, but on the salary corresponding to their normal skills. Equalize the average pension benefit for blue-collar and white-collar workers.

14) The unemployment issue can essentially only be resolved by accelerating industrialization, i.e., by changing overall economic policy. However, the Soviet state cannot avoid bearing responsibility for the rise in unemployment. Given that it has recently become a social disaster, it is necessary:

a) Repeal the USSR Council of People's Commissars' Resolution of March 4, which allows for the removal of unemployed persons from benefits and registration at the labor exchange under various pretexts. Establish that the conditions for registering unemployed persons at labor exchanges shall not be further worsened;

b) take a course toward increasing unemployment benefits. Immediately increase the amount of benefits for industrial unemployed and establish a higher benefit than the general benefit for those unemployed laid off from enterprises due to layoffs;

c) if the established social insurance contributions are insufficient to implement these measures, increase the percentage of these contributions accordingly.

Only with this firm commitment to improving the situation of the working class and strengthening its activism will the Party and the Soviet state be able to establish a living connection with the working masses through the trade unions and resist the pressure of petty-bourgeois elements. However, pursuing this line is only possible with genuine internal party democracy, without which the labor movement inevitably assumes ugly forms, leading either to the separation of the trade unions from the Party or the separation of the working masses from the trade unions.

PARTY POLICY IN THE VILLAGE.

The fundamental line of the Party's policy in the countryside is "a line toward the abolition of classes, not toward the small producer. If we were to deviate from this fundamental line, we would cease to be socialists and would fall into the camp of those petty bourgeois, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, who are now the most bitter enemies of the proletariat." (Lenin, concluding remarks at the May 1921 Conference of the RCP on the Tax in Kind.) This means that our struggle against the kulak does not and cannot mean supporting small farming against large farming, or strengthening poor and middle peasant farms as individual farms: it means a struggle against the capitalist forms of large-scale farming, for the socialist form of large-scale farming, a struggle which we wage, relying on the poor peasant section of the village, which is hostile to the kulaks, and through them establishing a link with the middle peasantry.

Resolving this problem—the transition to large-scale socialist agriculture—presents enormous difficulties. A political alliance with the peasant poor is a prerequisite for its resolution. But this does not mean it is sufficient.

Small peasant farming, as its marketability develops (and we, of course, cannot help but set ourselves the task of developing agricultural marketability), spontaneously strives to develop along capitalist lines. To overcome this spontaneous tendency and to direct agricultural development along the lines of a transition (naturally, very slow and gradual) to socialist forms of large-scale farming, it is necessary not only to have the political sympathy of the lower peasantry but also an active economic policy and active material assistance from the state economy. Without this condition, the development of productive forces in the countryside can only proceed along capitalist lines. Moreover, attempts to combat capitalist elements in the countryside without material assistance from the state, or with insufficient assistance, would only lead to a retardation or degradation of productive forces and to the impoverishment of the countryside. Therefore, the “course against the kulak” cannot be counterposed to a “course against the poor”: the struggle against the kulak can only be successful if a course is established for the construction of a large-scale socialist economy in agriculture, in a political alliance with the poor peasant and, through him, a link with the middle peasant.

The Central Committee's policy, which, as we have seen above, had adopted a course of minimal accumulation in the state economy out of fear of the rural petty bourgeoisie, a course of passively adapting industry to agriculture, naturally could not even approach the solution of this problem. In the area of ​​rural policy, the Central Committee therefore adopted a passive position and followed a line of concessions to the petty bourgeoisie, which in reality turned into concessions to the kulak. During those brief periods when, under pressure from the opposition, the Central Committee was forced to retreat from this de facto kulak line, its measures were limited to handouts to the poor (poor funds, etc.), which have as little in common with a socialist line as giving alms to a beggar.

It is no coincidence that, following the clearly petty-bourgeois bias in industrial policy, a kulak bias in rural policy is growing. The campaign for a "turn toward the countryside" culminated in Comrade Bukharin's famous speech before the Fourteenth Conference: "Our policy toward the countryside must develop in such a direction as to expand and eliminate many of the restrictions that hinder the growth of prosperous and kulak farming. We must say to the peasants, to all peasants: enrich yourselves, develop your farming, and don't worry about being squeezed." (Pravda, April 24–25). This overtly kulak formulation, which, no matter how much the Central Committee and Bukharin himself disavowed it, best reveals the direction of the Central Committee's rural policy, was a necessary conclusion from the decisions of the Thirteenth Congress. Since state farming can only have minimal accumulation, the productive forces of agriculture can develop only on the basis of kulak accumulation.

The Central Committee's inability to pursue a genuine socialist policy in the countryside is leading to the spontaneous channeling of agricultural productive forces along capitalist lines. Already, the number of hired laborers employed in private capitalist farms (kulak and so-called productively powerful, prosperous, etc.) significantly exceeds the number of workers on collective farms, state farms, and other such farms, and the growth of these capitalist agricultural enterprises is rapidly outpacing the growth of socialized forms of agriculture. At the same time, a significant portion of these collective farms are, in fact, disguised kulak farms and their associations. The growth of capitalist elements is spontaneously tearing apart the formal restrictions of agrarian legislation (rent, hiring of labor, etc.), and this legislation is increasingly turning into a simple registration of facts and a bare legal formalization of the ongoing capitalist process (see the discussion surrounding the draft decree on the fundamental principles of land use and land management). More and more, the tendency to remove and eliminate barriers that hinder the development of the productive forces of the village on a capitalist basis, instead of actively promoting the socialist path of development, is making its way into the party’s agrarian policy.

Instead of pursuing socialist policies in the countryside, the Central Committee seeks only to gloss over the growth of capitalist development. A favorite method of this glossing over is the reference to land nationalization and the growth of cooperatives, which, supposedly, are in themselves unshakable bulwarks of socialism in the countryside. Nowhere is the influence of petty-bourgeois ideology more evident than in this desire to shield oneself from real forces through the bare forms of state ownership of land or the cooperative association of small producers, regardless of the content with which these forms are filled.

Land nationalization, even when fully implemented, in itself offers no guarantee against capitalism, since the tools of agricultural production are concentrated in private hands. On the contrary, as Lenin demonstrated, the abolition of private land ownership can, under certain conditions, accelerate capitalist development in the countryside. The proletarian state can turn agriculture onto a socialist path and utilize land nationalization to this end only if it accumulates sufficiently powerful funds to create socialized production on socialized land. But this presupposes a completely different policy of state accumulation than that actually pursued by the Central Committee.

The same applies to cooperatives. For them to become a form of socialist construction, state capital must participate, and they must be closely linked to the state economy. Otherwise, as is currently the case, peasant cooperatives must either eke out a miserable existence or rely on the kulaks. It is therefore no coincidence that the leaders of agricultural cooperatives are the most outspoken defenders of the kulak line: in the conditions under which cooperatives currently operate, nothing else is possible; without receiving funds from the state, they can only function by attracting kulak contributions and involving the kulaks in the cooperative.

The state's assistance to cooperatives is partly charitable, primarily through loans to small producers under a certain guarantee from the cooperative association of these small producers. Under these circumstances, the cooperative association is not the embryo of a unified collective-state large-scale enterprise, but rather an apparatus for distributing loans and a society of guarantors to the state for the fulfillment of loan obligations. Under these circumstances, these cooperative associations primarily lend to their most "robust" members, who guarantee repayment of the loans, while lending to the poor only under pressure from above or from the so-called "poor fund." A policy targeting the small producer, despite all its good intentions, inevitably turns into a policy targeting the kulak.

There is no doubt that in the last year we have had a number of signs which point to regressive phenomena in agriculture: 1) the area sown to industrial crops has stopped growing or has even decreased; 2) the exodus of workers from the village to the city has sharply increased, a phenomenon which indisputably shows that the proletarianizing strata of the village are increasingly unable to find work in agriculture, even in kulak agriculture; 3) by all appearances, the growth of the rural bourgeoisie is proceeding not so much along the lines of the formation of comparatively large farms, as along the lines of small forms of exploitation of small farms by means of leasing, usury, trade, etc. The result is a phenomenon entirely analogous to that which we have in the city: the growing rural bourgeoisie, just like the urban one, is a parasitic bourgeoisie, harmful not only from the point of view of the success of socialist construction, but also from the point of view of the development of the productive forces.

The Central Committee's industrial policy led to the kulak becoming essential for the development of productive forces in agriculture. Under these circumstances, following economic concessions to the kulak, the Central Committee could not help but make political concessions.

Despite the fact that the main accusation leveled by the Central Committee against the opposition in the 1923 discussion was that its demands for intra-party democracy allegedly untied the demands for political democracy, within six months of the Thirteenth Congress the Central Committee had already embarked on the path of developing peasant democracy. Frightened by the Georgian uprising, the Plenum of the Central Committee in the autumn of 1924 proclaimed a course towards "revitalizing" the Soviets in the villages. Subsequently, [inaudible] against Comrade Trotsky's "Lessons of October" and the so-called "underestimation of the peasantry" ended with a turn "towards the village," occurring simultaneously with a campaign to raise the "productivity" of labor in the city. Having embarked on the path of the so-called "revitalization" of the Soviets, the organs of Soviet legislation in their instructions so expanded the electoral rights of the kulaks and the "well-to-do" that even supporters of the Central Committee, for example, Comrade Karpinsky could only characterize them as "an unrestrained evolution toward bourgeois democracy, beginning with the granting of rights to individual strata in accordance with the land code and ending with rights for the entire progressive bourgeoisie" (Bolshevik, No. 13, 1926, p. 39). The scandalous results of the 1925-26 re-elections and the sharp criticism of them by the opposition forced the Central Committee to rescind these instructions. But already at the February Plenum of the Central Committee, when only the first preliminary results of the new re-elections held after the repeal of the expansive electoral instructions became known, all the Central Committee members came out with statements that we had veered too far to the left, that the "restriction of the kulak's rights" (which consisted only in the fact that their expansion was cancelled, and even then not completely) was hitting the "middle peasant" and depriving the peasant of the incentive to improve his farm. This clearly shows that the line has remained the same.

Thus, the liquidation of intra-party democracy in 1923, and with it workers' democracy, proved to be merely a pretext for the development of peasant-kulak democracy. The Central Committee's policy not only constrained the activity of the proletariat but also unleashed the activity of non-proletarian classes.

At the same time, the Central Committee obscures the true meaning of its policy in every way possible. All sorts of pseudonyms are invented for the kulak, such as "well-to-do peasant," "productively powerful middle peasant," and so on. Permitting the leasing and hiring of labor in the villages is viewed not as a concession to the kulak, but as a concession to the middle and poor peasants (Bukharin). Clearly biased calculations are made, understating the number of kulaks and inflating the number of middle peasants at their expense. This obfuscation of the process of class stratification in the villages and the true meaning of such measures as expanding the hiring of labor and leasing, as well as extending the term of leasing, weakens and partially nullifies the work of organizing the class struggle of the poor peasants and farm laborers against the prosperous kulak section of the village. Instead of pursuing a policy of class abolition, the Central Committee in fact adopts a policy of "reconciliation" of classes, which ties up the activity of the poor peasants in the struggle against the kulaks.

In contrast to this essentially kulak line and the glossing over of class contradictions, proletarian policy in the countryside must set as its primary task the organization of the basis for a large-scale socialist economy, on the one hand, and the organization of the class struggle of the farm laborer and the poor peasant in alliance with the middle peasant against their exploitation by the kulak, on the other. To this end:

1) It is essential to begin the actual organization of large state farms, with improved production techniques, with the most favorable combination of various branches of agriculture, depending on the region, and with factories for processing agricultural products and agricultural raw materials (cheese factories, sugar refineries, flax processing plants, etc.). Such farms must be closely linked with the poor section of the village, both in terms of preferentially purchasing from them the products they need, hiring from them the necessary labor force, and in terms of providing them with direct assistance in the form of advances, deposits, credit, etc. These measures, by undermining the economic significance of the kulak, should economically link the poor farms with the state. No matter how difficult this task may be, it must be set and persistently and systematically implemented, since without its resolution, the success of socialist policy in the countryside is impossible.

2) Strengthen the organization of collective farms, necessarily with the participation of state capital and ensuring that the latter has sufficient influence. Such farms should, whenever possible, introduce improved methods of farming, combined with subsidiary industrial enterprises.

3) Agricultural credit should also be structured on the same state-cooperative principles. The state cannot and should not limit itself to the role of creditor for grassroots credit associations. It must become a participant in these associations, ensuring that their work is carried out under the constant supervision and guidance of the state. The goal of such associations, in which only poor and middle peasants may participate, should be to organize credit with the goal of liberating these strata of the village from the bondage of the kulaks. Particular attention should be paid to the organization of credit in kind (grain in lean years, seeds, etc.), which, of course, should not degenerate into simple charity. While uniting the poor and middle classes of the village on the basis of the struggle against kulak bondage, these organizations must, at the same time, through a series of carefully devised measures, prepare their members for the transition to a state-collective organization of the economy, in particular, by facilitating, through credit, the organization of enterprises (mills, grain crushers, etc.), which no longer belong to individual farms, but to cooperative associations as a whole.

4) Conduct a corresponding organization in agricultural cooperatives, also with the participation of only poor and middle-class peasants, and also with the participation and control of state capital. Agricultural cooperatives, while organizing their members through marketing and purchasing operations, should also conduct their work with a view to gradually transitioning them to collective farming of the type described above.

5) Create a state grain fund in practice, which should have as its purpose not only the regulation of the consumer market, but also serve as an insurance fund for the poor and middle classes in case of natural disasters.

6) Resolutely reject the involvement of kulak elements in the cooperatives. Since the issue is about attracting the kulak elite's available funds through loans, this should be done through the development of a network of savings banks and state loans tailored to smallholders, but under no circumstances through the enslavement of the cooperatives.

7) Gradually, as the system and techniques of tax collection in the villages improve, increase taxation of the kulak elite. Immediately exempt at least 50% of all rural households from agricultural taxes. Prohibit the sale of agricultural equipment and essential household items to cover arrears.

8) Since class stratification in the village is a fact, and since such stratification will continue until socialist elements in agriculture gain strength through the measures outlined above, the Party cannot and must not gloss over the extent of this stratification. On the contrary, its immediate task is to organize the economic and political struggle of farm laborers and middle peasants against the village bourgeoisie, with the assistance of the state. To this end, a system of legislation must be developed to protect labor in the village and to combat enslaving forms of exploitation (the "rental" of land by a kulak from a poor peasant, the "hiring" of a kulak with horses and equipment to cultivate his land by a poor peasant, etc.), within the framework of which the Party and trade unions must expand their work to organize the poor peasants and farm laborers as widely as possible. In particular, it is necessary to reinstate the de facto abolished mandatory conclusion and registration of labor contracts with agricultural workers in village councils, with the participation of trade unions, and to establish local council control over the fulfillment of the terms of these contracts by farms.

It goes without saying that the aforementioned measures, which require a significant increase in the funds allocated by the state to agriculture, can only be carried out under the condition of abandoning the line of minimum accumulation in the state economy and only under the condition of moving to the line of real industrialization of the country.

SOVIET STATE.

Marx formulated the proletariat's task in relation to the state in the socialist revolution as follows: "All revolutions have perfected this machine instead of breaking it." "This conclusion," Lenin emphasized in State and Revolution, "is the main, fundamental principle of Marxist doctrine on the state."

"The Commune had to recognize from the very beginning that the working class, having achieved power, could not use the old state machinery for its own purposes; that if this class did not want to lose the state it had just won, it must abolish the entire old mechanism of oppression that had hitherto been directed against itself." (Engels's Preface to The Civil War).

This is how the proletariat began the October Revolution. It destroyed the old ministries and apparatuses of the zemstvos and cities, replacing them with soviets. It replaced the tsarist army with a workers' Red Guard, and then with a workers' Red Army, creating the Cheka (All-Russian Extraordinary Commission) to protect the revolution. Only thanks to this dismantling of old institutions could the victorious proletariat withstand the onslaught of the counterrevolution.

The state is a bourgeois institution, and according to the teachings of Marx and Engels, it remains so even in the first phase of communism. "It follows that not only under communism does bourgeois law persist for a certain period, but even the bourgeois state—without the bourgeoisie." (Lenin, "State and Revolution," Chapter V, Section 4). Right on target for some modern theorists, Lenin adds: "This may seem a paradox or a dialectical mental exercise, of which Marxism is often accused by people who have not taken the slightest trouble to study its extremely profound content." Therefore, firstly, "the emancipation of the oppressed class is impossible without the destruction of the apparatus of state power created by the ruling class." (Lenin, “State and Revolution,” Chapter I, Section 1), and secondly, instead of this old apparatus, “the proletariat needs only a withering state, i.e., one so structured that it immediately begins to wither away and cannot help but wither away.” (Ibid., Chapter 2).

The proletariat will inevitably be forced, just as in the Paris Commune, to immediately curtail as much as possible the worst aspects of this evil, until the new generation, raised in a new, free social order, is able to rid itself of all the rubbish, all state institutions (Engels's Preface to The Civil War). The state must be organized so that, while serving as a tool for suppressing the exploiters, its organs cannot, as is typical of the organs of an ordinary state, be transformed "from servants of society into masters of it." Such a state can be "not a state of bureaucrats, but a state of armed workers." (Lenin, State and Revolution, Chapter 5, Section 4). "The guarantee against the transformation of workers and employees working in the state apparatus into bureaucrats is: 1) not only election, but also replacement at any time, 2) pay no lower than the pay of a worker, 3) an immediate transition to everyone performing the functions of control and supervision, so that everyone becomes "bureaucrats" for a time, and so that no one can become a bureaucrat." (Ibid., Chapter 6, Section 2).

This is the fundamental approach of communists to the question of the state. The party program, adopted at the Eighth Congress, noting that "the insufficiently high cultural level of the broad masses, the lack of necessary management skills among workers promoted by the masses to responsible positions, the need to urgently recruit, under difficult conditions, specialists of the old school and the diversion of the most developed layer of urban workers to military work, has led to a partial revival of bureaucracy within the Soviet system," immediately puts forward the following measures "to completely overcome this evil:"

1. Mandatory involvement of each member of the Council in the performance of specific work on governing the state.

2. A consistent change of these works so that they gradually cover all branches of management.

3. Gradual involvement of the entire working population in the work of governing the state."

In reality, not only during the civil war, which diverted the best forces of the proletariat to military work, but also after its conclusion, this program of gradual approximation to a communal state was not implemented. On the contrary, precisely after the end of the civil war, the bureaucratization of the Soviet state grew monstrously.

Instead of elective and permanently replaceable state officials, which Engels saw as a way to "protect oneself from one's own employees and authorized representatives," the emphasis is now on competent officials. Pre-election and election meetings at politically active levels are transformed into electoral procedures, devoid of any political content, where workers, under threat of "organizational conclusions," vote for candidates nominated from above. Opposition party members are not allowed into the soviets, no matter how popular they may be among the workers. Under these conditions, voters have no right to recall their deputies. On the contrary, this right of recall becomes a tool used by the party apparatus to eliminate "recalcitrant" individuals. Deputies bear no responsibility to their voters, nor do executive committees answer to the soviets. The very deadlines for convening soviet congresses are increasingly extended. The reports of deputies and executive committees to voters take the form of sermons, not subject to criticism. The revolutionary content of the Soviet constitution is increasingly emasculated. Broad masses of the working class have not only been marginalized by the bureaucracy from direct control of the Soviet state but have also been deprived of the opportunity to truly enjoy the workers' democracy won in the October Revolution. Under these conditions, the working-class voter views elections as a formality, like fulfilling labor service. The authority of the Soviets in the eyes of the working masses diminishes. The working masses avoid elections. They have to be artificially restrained at election meetings (by locking gates, etc.). Involving the masses in governing the state is reduced to so-called "promoting" workers. These promotions are most often either a bribe through high stakes and privileges, or a way to "shove" workers at enterprises undesirable to the party apparatus away from the masses. Thanks to such practices, the organs of the dictatorship of the proletariat are transformed into a kind of parliamentary voting mechanism, and their apparatuses into enormous bureaucratic machines, swollen largely by officials of the "old apparatus" (Lenin). These apparatuses place a heavy burden on the shoulders of the working class, in contrast to the Paris Commune, which solved the "riddle of cheap government" (Marx).

The importance of the vast army of bureaucratic officials is growing. Unremovable, unresponsible to the working class, wielding control over the socialized means of production and the apparatus of coercion, this army is becoming economically and politically powerful and interested in preserving and strengthening bureaucracy. It is increasingly becoming a distinctive, independent social stratum.

Even the activities of the GPU, the successor to the Cheka, which assumed one of the decisive roles in the fight against counterrevolution and which carried out this role brilliantly, are now, in a climate of general bureaucratization, increasingly straying from the path of defending the proletarian revolution. Instead of combating the political and economic counterrevolution, its activities are increasingly directed toward combating the legitimate discontent of workers caused by bureaucratic and petty-bourgeois distortions, and even intra-party opposition.

A particularly dangerous situation is developing in the Red Army. Its command staff, contrary to the demands of the Party program on the need for "class cohesion" and "the closest possible ties between military formations and factories and plants, trade unions, and rural poor organizations" and the recruitment of "command personnel, at least at the lowest level, from among class-conscious workers and peasants," is largely composed of veteran officers and kulak elements of the peasantry. Restrictions on the participation of non-working elements in the army are increasingly being lifted. In territorial units, especially cavalry units, the lower command positions are dominated by wealthy peasants, primarily kulaks. As for the party members of the Red Committees, they are inevitably affected by the bureaucratization of the Party and the weakening of its ties with the workers. The influence of the proletariat in the army is weakening. Under these conditions, the Red Army threatens to become a convenient tool for Bonapartist-style adventures.

In 1920, Lenin defined the Soviet state thus: "A workers' state is an abstraction. But in reality, we have a workers' state, firstly, with the peculiarity that the country's population is predominantly peasant, not worker, and secondly, a workers' state with a bureaucratic distortion" (Lenin, "The Crisis of the Party"). And in 1923, he wrote: "Our state apparatus, with the exception of the People's Commissariat of Food, is, to a large extent, a relic of the old, least subjected to any serious changes. It is only lightly touched up on top, but in all other respects it is the most typical of our old apparatus" (Lenin, "How We Should Reorganize the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection").

Over the past three years of the Central Committee's misguided policies, the apparatus's negative aspects have multiplied manifold, the petty bourgeoisie's influence has increased, and the kulak has gained political rights (access to the soviets). Now, these "bureaucratic perversions" have gone so far that they clearly exhibit elements of petty bourgeois degeneration.

"What has been the characteristic feature of the state until now? By a simple division of labor, society created for itself special organs to protect its interests. But over time, these organs, and the first among them, the state power, serving their private

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...the party program. It is necessary to wage a decisive struggle against the election of Soviet dignitaries to the councils, who receive the title of member of the council as an honorary title.

5) Conduct a drastic reduction in the Soviet administrative apparatus in a planned manner, by approximately 50% over two years. Establish criminal liability for violating the reduction plan.

6) Commit to equalizing the material status of civil servants with that of workers, enforcing the slogan: the salaries of senior officials should not exceed those of workers. Eliminate all special material privileges for civil servants and senior officials. Abolish special "reserve" funds used to provide privileges to the bureaucracy.

7) While maintaining the principle of the need to utilize military specialists from the old army in the Red Army, the new command staff must be recruited exclusively from labor forces, primarily from blue-collar workers. Under no circumstances should non-labor elements be allowed into command positions, even at the lowest levels.

It goes without saying that the line of establishing Soviet democracy outlined in these measures can strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat only under the leadership of the Communist Party, in which, in turn, the regime of intra-party democracy must be restored.

Party.

In the area of ​​internal party development, the Central Committee's policy since Lenin's death has been one of continuous bureaucratization of the party. Alongside this, a rapid degeneration of its leadership is underway.

This process of degeneration at the top of the party and the bureaucratization of the party apparatus were facilitated by the difficult conditions in which the Russian Revolution was placed by the delay of the world revolution. The difficult civil war and intervention exhausted the proletariat. Its best elements were diverted to the front. The proletarian rear weakened. At the same time, in the difficult circumstances of the civil war, a "militarization of the party" took place, with a sharp intensification of command and appointment methods. All this, by the end of the civil war, led to a significant accumulation of bureaucratic elements within the party.

The end of the civil war and the transition to peaceful construction made it possible and urgently required the Party to eliminate this bureaucracy. At the same time, it became clear that the direct path to socialism, which we had attempted during the civil war, was impossible for us if the world revolution was delayed. The peasantry, which had tolerated the policy of War Communism during the civil war, protested decisively against it immediately after its end, in the form of peasant uprisings and the Kronstadt Rebellion. The objective situation demanded, under threat of the proletariat losing power, a shift from the direct path to socialism to the roundabout path of the New Economic Policy (NEP).

The transition to the NEP inevitably meant the legal development of capitalist tendencies and increased daily pressure on Soviet power from the non-proletarian classes: "When we changed our economic policy," Lenin wrote, "the danger became even greater, because, consisting of a huge number of economic, everyday trifles, to which people usually become accustomed and which they overlook, the economy demands of us special attention and effort and clearly demands the need to learn the correct methods for overcoming it. The restoration of capitalism, the development of the bourgeoisie, the development of bourgeois relations in the sphere of trade—this is the danger inherent in our current economic construction, our current gradual approach to solving a task far more difficult than previous ones. There must be no mistake here." (Lenin, speech at the Moscow Provincial Party Conference, 1921). The New Economic Policy posed the question of "who will win" not in a direct armed struggle, but in the daily struggle for socialist construction. The danger of a violent counterrevolutionary coup gave way to the danger of a degeneration of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The question became whether the NEP would prove a detour to socialism or become a direct path to capitalism, as the Smena Vekhov intelligentsia, led by Ustrialov, had been counting on since the transition to capitalism.

Resolving this issue in favor of the victory of socialism required the greatest activism of the working class under the leadership of the Party. The Party had to integrate itself most closely with the working class, organizing its constant, daily struggle against capitalism and the bureaucratic distortions of the Soviet state apparatus, under pressure from capitalist elements. This is precisely why the Tenth Congress, having recognized the necessary transition to the New Economic Policy, formulated the main task of party building as follows: "We must reassemble the Party, which during the war had been fragmented into separate detachments. We must bring together the upper and lower classes, military personnel and civilians, professionals and Soviets, old and new Party members, the 'young' and the 'old.' Without resolving this fundamental task, the gigantic constructive and economic role of the proletarian vanguard cannot be fulfilled."

"This task," the resolution continues, "cannot be accomplished by preserving the old organizational form. The immediate needs of the moment require a new organizational framework: that form is workers' democracy. The course toward workers' democracy must be pursued with the same decisiveness and implemented as the course toward 'militarization of the party' was pursued in the past" (Resolution of the Tenth Congress on the Central Committee's report, paragraphs 15 and 16).

"By workers' inner-party democracy," it is further stated, "is meant such an organizational form in the implementation of party communist policy that ensures all members of the party, including the most backward, active participation in the life of the party, in the discussion of all the questions put before it, in the resolution of these questions, as well as active participation in party building; workers' democracy excludes any appointment as a system, and finds its expression in the broad election of all institutions from top to bottom, in their accountability, controllability, etc. The methods of work are, above all, methods of broad discussion of all questions, discussion on them with complete freedom of inner-party criticism, methods of collective elaboration of general party decisions."

This well-defined line was not destined to be realized. The proletariat had not yet gained sufficient strength, and during Lenin's illness and after his death, a group of Central Committee members who had seized control of the party leadership viewed this leadership as their own monopoly. Striving at all costs to maintain this monopoly, yet lacking the authority to do so, this so-called "Leninist core" (which subsequently split) instead of pursuing a course of uniting the party with the proletariat on the basis of workers' democracy—which alone could resist hostile class influences and decide the question of "who will win" in our favor—set out to command the party.

It not only transformed a temporary retreat from democratic methods of party leadership into a normal party regime, but also pushed it to monstrous extremes never before reached, even in the most dangerous moments for the dictatorship of the proletariat. In direct contradiction to the resolutions of the Tenth Congress, a regime of unprecedented repression was established within the party, persecuting any criticism of the Central Committee's actions, not only collective but also individual, and any initiative, insofar as it did not originate with the Central Committee's leadership group.

As a result, by the end of 1923, the party had reached such a state that the workers' strikes that broke out at that time came as a complete surprise. As a result of these strikes and the economic crisis, discontent within the party masses erupted into debate. The pressure from the broad masses was so strong that the party leadership was forced to make concessions. But, having verbally proclaimed inner-party democracy (the December 5 resolution), it immediately launched a fierce struggle to maintain its leading position within the party at all costs, resorting to every means necessary, including rigging the resolutions of party organizations. Despite the fact that the majority of the party was against it, the party leadership, relying on the party apparatus against the party, failed to achieve victory, suppressing the proletarian section of the party, and declaring it a "petty-bourgeois deviation."

Seeking to consolidate the victory won against the party majority at the 13th Conference and "prepare" for the corresponding Party Congress, the party leadership, almost on the eve of the Congress, declared a "purge" of the party. Under the slogan of preserving the class purity of the party, genuine proletarian elements who had been in opposition were expelled. To cover up these reprisals, true self-interested elements were also removed from the party, but the opportunists, the "Leninists of yesterday," and the philistine elements who, fearing for their positions, were always ready to support the ruling group, remained untouched.

A system of transfers, disguised as promotions to higher-paying positions, was deployed within workers' units, on the one hand, and a system of repression in the form of demotions to lower categories or outright dismissals, on the other. A cadre of unemployed oppositionists emerged. In this atmosphere of repression, a "calm" and "conspiracy of silence" set in, many times worse than before the 1923 discussions. A wave of suicides occurred (by Lutovinov, Bosch, Seidler, and others). Discontent was driven inward. The 13th Congress, convened in this climate, unanimously adopted all the resolutions proposed by the leadership group, which declared it a victory for Leninism and a strengthening of party unity.

This victory was cemented during the so-called "literary discussion" surrounding Trotsky's "Lessons of October" in 1924. The pressure from the party apparatus and the threat of repression were so strong that, for the first time in the party's history, members "voted with their heels"—walked out of meetings. A few abstained, only a few voted against, and no one dared speak. For the first time, party members learned not to say what they thought or even to vote for something they didn't believe. The corrupting influence of this "discussion" on the party was enormous. The mass of party members were driven to a state of demoralization and passivity. The autocracy of the party apparatus was established.

Party committees had finally ceased to be agents of the will of the party masses. On the contrary, the party masses had become instruments in the hands of the committees. This was most clearly evident on the eve of the 14th Party Congress, when the conferences of the two largest proletarian organizations—Moscow and Leningrad—unanimously declared themselves—the Leningrad conference in favor of Comrade Zinoviev's position, and the Moscow conference in favor of Comrade Stalin's.

At the same time, power within the party committees themselves was shifting into the hands of secretaries effectively appointed from above. Party committees effectively became subordinate to the secretaries, just as the party masses were subordinate to the committees.

The same fate befell the highest party executive body, the Central Committee. Beginning in 1923, the actual leadership of the party passed from the Politburo to the Secretariat, headed by the General Secretary.

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In this situation, the united opposition attempted to initiate a discussion in the fall of 1926. The Central Committee, taking advantage of all the organizational advantages it enjoyed thanks to this new party organization, which precluded the possibility of a rapid unleashing of mass activity, did not hesitate to resort to brutally violent methods of struggle, including formal bans on discussion, expulsions from the party, threats of dismissal, and outright obstruction. Having achieved victory through these methods, it postponed the party congress for a year and consolidated its victory at the 15th conference by effectively banning the discussion forever. The conference resolution thus banned the method of party work that the 10th Congress, under Lenin's leadership, had recognized as fundamental.

The task of rallying the party, which had been "broken into separate detachments" during the civil war, thus remained unfulfilled. The party is now more fragmented than ever before and more sharply divided than ever before between the "upper crust," closely tied to the state apparatus, and the "lower crust," which enjoys virtually no party rights. Moreover, with the intensification of contradictions within the state economy, these "lower crust" are not only subordinate to the upper crust, along party lines, but are also directly economically dependent on them (the worker is a party member, and the administrator is a party administrator).

At the same time, the gap in material status between the "top" and "bottom" is growing. Groups are emerging within the party that differ not only in their views but also in their financial status and interests.

As the proletarian masses are suppressed, the party's "elite," no longer feeling under their control, begins to disintegrate. Habits and tendencies inherent in the bourgeoisie begin to increasingly permeate their ranks: careerism, protectionism, intrigue, and even criminality develop with alarming speed.

On the other hand, these elites are quickly infiltrated by wavering, half-hearted, and even simply selfish elements, attracted to the party by high positions and privileged positions. Given the shortage of workers created by the removal from responsible work of all those who would not blindly obey orders from above, the Central Committee is increasingly promoting these half-hearted and vacuous elements to leadership positions: Rafes, a former member of the Petliura government who had publicly endorsed the assassination attempt on Lenin in 1918, and Martynov, who reconciled himself to Soviet power only after the NEP, play a major role in the Comintern. Lyadov, who in the summer of 1917 swore to the Mensheviks that he had long ago severed all ties with the Bolsheviks and asked Chkheidze to accept him into the Menshevik organization as a paid worker, is nurturing communist students at Sverdlovsk University. Petrovsky (Lipets), a former Bundist, represents the Comintern in the British labor movement. Broido, a former Menshevik, is in charge of the State Publishing House, and even the Central Control Commission, despite his dirty deeds bordering on criminality, is powerless against him. The list of such "promoters" could easily be extended. "Groups and strata that would otherwise not be in the Communist Party, but rather in the ranks of the Social Democrats or other varieties of petty-bourgeois socialism, have rushed into the ranks of the only legal party, seeking to apply their energies. These elements, sometimes sincerely considering themselves communist, have in fact not cast off the 'old Adam' of petty-bourgeoisness and bring their petty-bourgeois psychology and habits of thought to the RCP." (Resolution of the 11th Party Congress). Now it is from the ranks of these people from petty-bourgeois parties that the Central Committee recruits its most loyal, "one hundred percent" supporters. This petty-bourgeois environment has a corrosive effect on the old Bolshevik

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its independence, about restoring its living connection with the working class. To this end, it is necessary:

1. Fully restore the regime of intra-party workers' democracy, as planned by the 10th Party Congress. The Party, driven so underground that even Central Committee supporters meet and discuss their affairs outside of regular party meetings, secretly from minor party members, illegally, must be legalized.

2. Subordinate party officials to the party organization. To this end, eliminate their material dependence on both higher-level party bodies and on government and economic bodies. Officials should be paid from membership dues. The practice of any privileges, particularly the issuance of secret allowances, must be abolished.

3. In the interests of the fight against bureaucracy, self-interest, careerism and against the excessive swelling of party apparatuses, the funds allocated from state and local budgets for the maintenance of party apparatuses should be initially reduced by approximately half, and then their allocation should be stopped completely.

4. Ensure that all party organizations and party members have the right to raise and discuss within the party, orally and in print, both individually and collectively, all questions of party, soviet, trade union, economic and cooperative development, the activities of the Comintern, the situation in its individual sections, etc. Any repression applied against speaking out party members must be punished as a crime against the party.

5. Grant party members the right to distribute their manuscripts among party members if for some reason it proves impossible to publish them in the party press.

6. Review the party charter and repeal all resolutions adopted in recent years that distort the principles of intra-party democracy and lead to the destruction of the elective nature of party bodies and the depersonalization of them and the entire party, in particular:

a) Restore completely and unconditionally the elective nature of all party organs from bottom to top;

b) Cancel the approval of secretaries of the bureau of cells and other party organs and persons by higher committees (including the Central Committee);

c) Restore the old Bolshevik tradition that every party member has the right to attend any general meeting of party members (cell, group, etc.), even if he is not a member of the given organization, and to exercise the right of an advisory vote there.

7. Abolish so-called "party purges," which have in fact become a tool for factional struggle and personal squabbles. Purging the party of alien elements can be fully achieved by establishing a genuine regime of intra-party democracy and free discussion of the behavior of party members, regardless of their position.

8. The entire activity of the Central Control Commission is a monstrous distortion of what Lenin proposed in his final articles: instead of "closely monitoring all circumstances that could lead to a split," instead of "forming a cohesive group which, regardless of who it is, will ensure that no authority can prevent them from making inquiries, verifying documents, and generally ensuring absolute awareness and the strictest correctness of their actions" (Lenin, "How We Should Reorganize the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection"), it has in fact become a tool of the Politburo for cracking down on the opposition, a subsidiary organ of factional struggle. The work of the Control Commissions must be fundamentally changed, making them, in fact, an instrument of worker party control over the activities of the party and state apparatus. Their composition must be completely renewed. Their core must consist of factory workers, periodically replaced to avoid isolation from the masses. The Central Control Commission must become in fact an organ that protects the unity of the party from the dangers of “the influence of purely personal and accidental circumstances” (Lenin, ibid.).

9. Eliminate the institution of so-called party informants, secretly sent by party committees to party meetings—not for the purpose of participating in their work, but for the purpose of monitoring the speeches of party members and reporting “unreliable” ones to the party committee.

10. Abolish all repressions imposed on party members on charges of opposition and cease the future practice of such repressions, in overt or covert form: “transfers,” dismissals from work, prohibitions from working in a particular area of ​​party work, etc.

11. Establish that the final authority for resolving cases of expulsion from the Party for intra-Party disagreements and so-called "factional work" is the Congress. Expulsion decisions in these cases by all other authorities are only preliminary. Party members who appeal these decisions retain all their Party rights until the Congress decides.

12. Reinstate the rights of party members of all comrades expelled from the party for opposition activities.

Comintern policy.

The All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) played a world-historic role in the revolutionary movement of the proletariat, firstly as the party that prepared and carried out the October Revolution, secondly as the party on whose initiative the Comintern was created and organized, and thirdly as the party that accumulated vast historical experience, both during the periods of open revolutionary struggle in 1905 and 1917 and during the reactionary periods of difficult underground work. All this ensured the All-Union Communist Party's leading role in the Comintern.

But precisely for this reason, the slide from proletarian positions in matters of domestic policy could not help but be accompanied by opportunistic distortions of the Comintern leadership, and these distortions had the most severe impact on the growth of the communist sections of the Comintern and on the world labor movement.

The Comintern's policy without Lenin was initially characterized primarily by the spread of the regime established in the All-Union Communist Party (VKP) to the Comintern sections. Instead of skillfully selecting all genuinely revolutionary elements for the still-young Western communist parties and educating them in the spirit of proletarian communism, as Lenin had done, Western communists were expected, above all, to obey unconditionally. A number of truly revolutionary elements were thus forcibly expelled from the communist movement, while, conversely, people who had nothing but obedience were promoted to leadership roles.

From this point on, the leadership of the Communist Parties degenerated into the command of the top brass of the All-Union Communist Party (VKP) over the sections of the Comintern abroad, while the party masses were poorly informed and even artificially excluded from issues concerning the global proletarian movement. Foreign delegations increasingly distanced themselves from the leadership of the Comintern. Thus, the domestic policy of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (VKP) was freed from Comintern control, and the proletarian parties of the West could no longer exert influence in the sense of countering the petty-bourgeois vacillations within the country, which naturally intensified with the development of the New Economic Policy (NEP). On the contrary, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (VKP) received unlimited rights to intervene in even the most trivial squabbles within one or another section abroad. Thus, the petty-bourgeois distortions in the policies of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (VKP) not only went unchecked by the Comintern, but, as they intensified, increasingly distorted the revolutionary tactics of the sections abroad.

At first, this degeneration of leadership into command had only the negative effect of weakening the revolutionary education of the young Western communist parties. A new stage began with the 1923 discussions. Facing difficulties in combating the opposition within the USSR, the Central Committee needed to demonstrate support from the Comintern. A change of leadership within the Communist parties began, based on their willingness to support the Central Committee against the opposition. The selection of leadership for the Comintern sections was conducted not with the interests of the international movement in mind, but with regard to the internal struggle within the All-Union Communist Party (VKP). These methods, which have since intensified, have led to a series of splits and defections, a significant loss of membership in the largest sections, a weakening of the authority of the communist sections in the eyes of the broad masses of workers, and the loss of millions of voters. But now they are complicated by new distortions closely linked to a further deviation from the proletarian line and the nationalist limitations of the Central Committee's policy. These new perversions were clearly evident in the policy towards the Anglo-Russian Committee and in the leadership of the Chinese revolution.

The Central Committee's supporters justify the preservation of the Anglo-Russian Committee by claiming that its preservation stems from the "united front tactics." But the essence of the united front tactics was to support these demands while opportunist leaders of the labor movement concealed their betrayal of the working class by defending the workers' particular demands, while simultaneously criticizing the leaders' opportunism and pointing out the inadequacy of these demands and the need to shift to revolutionary methods of struggle. However, when, during major events, the opportunists clearly betray the proletariat, a decisive break with them was to be made, their incompetence as leaders was to be decisively exposed, and the masses were to be won over from them.

From this perspective, the formation of the Anglo-Russian Committee and participation in it right up until the General Council's betrayal in May 1926 was correct and necessary. But no amount of subterfuge can justify why, after the outright betrayal of the General Council, after its direct collusion with the bourgeoisie during the general strike, we should sit alongside these traitors, discussing with them the practical issues of the workers' movement, thereby demonstrating to the masses that some good can still be expected from these traitors. The absurdity of this tactic was most clearly demonstrated by the fact that when the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, retaining the Anglo-Russian Committee, attempted to conduct an exposé campaign against the General Council's leaders, this campaign failed scandalously: placed in a most ambiguous position by the preservation of the Anglo-Russian Committee, the British Communist Party did not even dare publish the All-Union Central Council's appeal exposing the General Council.

The preservation of the Anglo-Russian Committee was, therefore, already then a blatantly opportunistic shift from the united front tactics to the conciliatory positions of social traitors. But at the Berlin meeting of the Anglo-Russian Committee in April 1927, the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions delegation took the path of directly justifying the betrayal of the General Council and reaching an agreement with the top British trade unions, to the detriment of the unity of the working masses from below.

This meeting stated that the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Conference of April 1925 "timely warned workers throughout the world of the impending attack on their wages and working conditions... The attack on British miners, the intensification of exploitation, the reduction of wages, and the lengthening of the working day for European workers demonstrate that this warning was timely and correct." With the consent of the delegation of communist unions, it was thus declared that the social traitors had allegedly "correctly and timely warned" workers of the danger of the capitalist offensive. However, the fact that at the very moment of this offensive, the General Council entered into a direct deal with the bourgeoisie, disrupted the general strike, and disorganized the miners' strike by any means necessary was not mentioned in a single word. The delegation of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions here directly uses its authority to cover up the crime of the traitors to the British strike.

"The sole representatives of the international and national unity of the British trade union movement are the British Trade Union Congress and its General Council," proclaims the same resolution. The All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions thus recognizes that the sole representatives of the trade unions organized in England are the traitors to the proletariat, with whose assistance even the miners' economic demands were rejected by the bourgeoisie. This further means that all communications between Russian and British trade unions can only take place through the General Council, and that any assistance to British workers from our side can only be provided with the consent of this General Council, which, during the general strike, refused to accept the "damned Russian money."

"The fraternal alliance between the trade union movements of both countries," the resolution further explains, "cannot and should not in any way hinder their (the General Council or the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions) activities in internal affairs or permit interference by one side in the internal affairs of the other..." This openly declares that the betrayal of English workers is an "internal matter" of the leaders of English trade unions, and that Russian trade unions "cannot and should not in any way interfere with this betrayal." This shameful surrender of all Bolshevik positions in the international trade union movement, this shift to the position of the Amsterdam trade union association, cannot be justified by any, even the most casuistic, interpretation of the united front tactics. And Tomsky, at the April plenum, could only argue that these "concessions" were necessary to preserve the Anglo-Russian Committee, and that when deciding on the Anglo-Russian Committee, its importance in protecting the USSR from the danger of war, as a bulwark of world revolution, must not be forgotten. The Anglo-Russian Committee must be preserved to mitigate the danger of intervention—that was the decisive argument for preserving the Anglo-Russian Committee. For this reason, traitors to the working class were declared the "sole representatives and spokesmen" of the organized trade unions of England. The interests of the international trade union movement were sacrificed here to the illusion that the opportunists of the English labor movement could and would fight against war.

"Anglo-Russian unity," the conference resolution states, "is especially necessary, as demonstrated most clearly by recent events, to avert the threat of attack on the Soviet Union, the seat of the first workers' republics." For this meaningless and non-committal phrase, the traitors to the British proletariat are declared the sole representatives of "the international and national unity of the British trade union movement." A more opportunistic violation of Bolshevik tactics cannot be imagined.

Lenin always emphasized that the opportunists' peaceful declarations were worthless, that any pacifist phrases were the most banal nonsense, and that the only way to fight war was to overthrow capitalism. Now the General Council, the very same one that "timely warned" British workers of the danger of capital's offensive and betrayed them during that offensive, is being declared a bulwark against war. Its current "timely" warning of the threat of attack on the Soviet Union only means that, at the moment of attack, it will betray the Soviet Union just as it betrayed its workers. The behavior of the British "Labour" Party during the parliamentary debate on severing trade relations with the USSR—a party that swore before the bourgeois parliament its hatred of communism and voted against the severance only because, in its view, the USSR's "criminality" was insufficiently proven—leaves no doubt about this.

An even more blatant departure from the fundamentals of revolutionary tactics is the Central Committee's policy toward the Chinese revolution. More than 75 years ago, in March 1850, the foundations of these tactics were outlined with complete clarity by Marx in a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist League, devoted to communist tactics before and during the revolution. "Instead of descending to the role of fat, applauding the bourgeois democrats," he wrote, "the workers, and above all the league, must work to create, alongside the official democrats, an independent secret and open organization of the workers' party and to transform each community into the center and core of workers' unions in which the positions and interests of the proletariat could be discussed independently of bourgeois influences... The intoxication of victory and joy over the state of affairs... they (the workers) should, in general, as far as possible, be restrained by a calm and cool understanding of events and an undisguised mistrust of the new government. Alongside the new official governments, they must establish their own revolutionary governments, whether in the form of communal boards, communal councils, workers' clubs, or workers' committees, so that the bourgeois-democratic governments not only lose their support among the workers, but also find themselves, from the very outset, under the surveillance and threat of authorities backed by the entire mass of the workers. In a word, from the very first moment of victory, it is necessary to direct mistrust no longer against the defeated reactionary party, but against their own allies, against the party that wants to exploit the common victory exclusively for itself." "The most they (the workers) can do for their final victory," the letter concludes, "is to clarify their class interests, to take, as soon as this is possible, their own independent class position, and not for a single moment allow the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeoisie to lead them astray from the path of independently organizing a proletarian party. Their fighting slogan must be 'uninterrupted revolution.'"

This tactic was implemented and tested in practice by the Bolshevik Party under Lenin's leadership in 1917. During the Chinese Revolution, those who supported Lenin in the October Revolution (and some of those who fought against it, such as Martynov and Rafes) acted in precisely the opposite way. The Executive Committee of the Comintern, under pressure from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party, consistently kept the Chinese Communist Party within the petty-bourgeois Kuomintang Party. After the Kuomintang's victory, there was no attempt to foster "mistrust of the new government" among the workers. On the contrary, the communists demonstrated their complete solidarity with the Kuomintang government, whose leadership was increasingly being seized by the Kuomintang, led by Commander-in-Chief Chiang Kai-shek. Finally, no attempt was made to organize, alongside the bourgeois government, the beginnings of a genuine revolutionary government, based on the broad masses of workers and peasants, in the form of councils of workers', peasants', and soldiers' deputies. These councils would simultaneously keep the bourgeois-democratic government under vigilant control and threat, preventing it from betraying the revolution by colluding with its enemies. Instead of orienting the Chinese Communist Party toward the development of a people's revolution as Marx and Lenin understood it, the Comintern leadership oriented the Chinese Communists toward the petty-bourgeois Kuomintang Party and the "revolutionary spirit" of this or that general. The guarantee against the betrayal of these generals was seen not in the revolutionary movement of the masses or in the arming of the workers, but in Kuomintang and communist instructors in the army.

"First complete the bourgeois revolution, and only then transfer it to socialist lines"—this arch-Menshevik "theory of stages" underlay all the tactics the Central Committee recommended to the Chinese Communist Party. But even the Mensheviks, in their own formulation of the question, never considered it possible to abandon the idea of ​​organizing their own party, openly advancing its own program and having its own separate organization.

The Central Committee essentially reduces the task of the Chinese revolution to a struggle against the imperialists, as if this struggle could be separated from the struggle against its own bourgeoisie. "The Chinese revolution," states the resolution of the Moscow party activists, "is a bourgeois-democratic national liberation revolution, its main thrust directed against imperialism, against feudal relations and the feudal-capitalist cliques in China upon which foreign imperialism relies."

Thus, even the struggle against the feudal classes is motivated solely by their support of the imperialists. The goals of the Chinese Revolution are narrowed to war against foreign oppressors.

Only from this perspective can one understand the policy the Central Committee, under the banner of the Comintern, is pursuing in China: in reality, it boils down to supporting all those who currently want to fight the imperialists. Hence the "bloc of four classes" tactic, hence the reluctance to "complicate" the war with a labor movement, hence the restraint on workers from striking, hence the disarmament of Shanghai workers to arm Chiang Kai-shek's troops before the Shanghai coup. Hence the opposition to the slogan of land seizure by the peasants. Hence, finally, the rejection of the slogan of soviets. All this hinders the war, frightens the bourgeoisie, frightens the generals and their mercenary armies.

The results of this policy are now evident. Relying on the Kuomintang government—the former Canton government or the current Wuhan government—is indifferent, just as misguided as relying on the British Labor Party as an instrument of peace in Europe. Literally a few days after Comrade Stalin told a Moscow party meeting that Chiang Kai-shek could not, even if he wanted to, carry out a counterrevolutionary coup because his army was under the influence of communist instructors—this coup and Chiang Kai-shek's deal with the imperialists became an accomplished fact. The Central Committee's tactics, dictated by the fear of frightening the Chinese bourgeoisie and throwing it into the arms of the imperialists, lead to this bourgeoisie, not feeling the pressure of the proletariat, itself making a deal with the imperialists. This was the lesson of Chiang Kai-shek's counterrevolutionary coup, which clearly demonstrated that the same story could repeat itself with the "revolutionary" Wuhan government, where the arch-rightist Sun Fo holds the Ministry of Finance and which has only mercenary armies under the command of right-wing generals. Now, the coup in Changsha and the conciliatory stance taken toward it by the "left" Kuomintang leave no doubt that the Wuhan government is no less capable of making a deal with the imperialists than Chiang Kai-shek.

The Central Committee's policy, therefore, continually veers from the line of the international proletariat's class struggle for world revolution to one of collaboration with petty-bourgeois parties—in England, for the sake of preserving peace, and in China, for the sake of war against the imperialists. But even these goals are not being achieved. Protecting the USSR, as the first state of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Europe, from imperialist attacks and undermining imperialist power in the East is possible only through the proletariat's class struggle to overthrow capitalism. As in other cases, the Central Committee here, too, is unable to resolve even the limited tasks it sets for itself.

The rejection of this opportunist line is a necessary condition for preserving the Comintern as the fighting headquarters of the world revolution. Therefore:

1. With regard to the Western European movement, an end must be put to the perversion of the united front tactic, which is a tactic of unity from below, rather than a tactic of agreements with social traitors at the top. The Anglo-Russian Committee must be dissolved.

2. In the Chinese Revolution, the Comintern must take a line not against the generals or the petty-bourgeois democrats, but toward developing a revolutionary movement of the masses of workers and peasants. Based on the fact that the revolution is developing despite the generals' betrayal, a course toward organizing soviets must be immediately proclaimed. The Communist Party must immediately advance undiminished slogans (land seizure by the peasants, i.e., the abolition of rent to private property owners, an eight-hour workday, freedom to strike, the abolition of compulsory arbitration, and the arming of workers), unafraid that such slogans will lead to expulsion from the Kuomintang.

3. The role of foreign parties, especially the most experienced (Germany, France, Italy), in the leadership of the Comintern must be strengthened. The Comintern must become the fighting headquarters of the world revolution, not only formally but also in the content of its policies and the composition of its executive bodies. All sections within it must be equally subordinated to the leadership of this headquarters, including the All-Union Communist Party, whose "internal affairs" are becoming, more than ever, the concern of the international proletariat.

4. But this headquarters can become the true headquarters of the world revolution only if it succeeds in organizing mass communist parties that lead the working class. And this is possible only if the current regime in the Comintern is liquidated and a regime of intra-party democracy is established.

5. Reinstate as members of the Comintern all those groups that were expelled from it for their opposition to the opportunist distortions of the Comintern line, and which, even outside the Comintern, remain on Bolshevik-Leninist positions.

Revision of Marxism and Leninism.

"During the lives of great revolutionaries, the oppressor classes repaid them with constant persecution, meeting their teachings with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred, the most reckless campaign of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to transform them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to speak, to grant their name a certain glory for the 'oppression' of the oppressed classes and for the duping of them, emasculating the content of revolutionary doctrine, blunting the revolutionary edge, and vulgarizing it. The bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the workers' movement now converge on such 'processing of Marxism'" (Lenin, State and Revolution, Chapter 1).

History repeats itself. The most intelligent bourgeois and opportunists within the All-Union Communist Party are now doing the same thing to Lenin's teachings as the bourgeoisie and Social Democrats did to Marx's. Ustrialov has already declared himself a Leninist and is defending Comrade Stalin against the Opposition, claiming that Comrade Stalin is allegedly faithful to Lenin's "cause," while the Opposition clings to the "letter" of his teachings. Literally following the example of his German comrades, who attempted to declare the revolutionary Marx a "national-German" Marx (see the same chapter on Lenin), he declares Lenin a "national-Russian" Lenin, the hero of "Russia's rebirth," who set her on the path leading to the "national pantheon prepared for her by history" (see his article "The Cathedral of the Twentieth Century"). On the other hand, the theoreticians of the Stalinist-Bukharinist persuasion, naturally in a much more veiled and disguised form, while paying lip service to Lenin's teachings and erecting a mausoleum for Lenin containing his "incorruptible corpse," gradually distort Lenin's teachings, passing off as "Leninism" what Lenin vehemently fought against during his lifetime. Comrade Bukharin, in order to smuggle in his views on the transitional period to socialism, invented the theory of Lenin's "two plans"—state capitalism and cooperative. The "link" with the peasantry, which Lenin considered "permissible, correct, and fundamentally possible only when it supports the dictatorship of the proletariat and is one of the measures aimed at the abolition of classes" (Report on the Tax in Kind at the All-Russian Conference of the RCP (Russian Communist Party) on May 26, 1921), is now transformed into an end in itself, an agreement with the peasantry. The contradictions between the state and the workers, the inevitability of which Lenin repeatedly and persistently emphasized throughout the transition period, are now declared nonexistent. The united front tactic, which Lenin advanced as one of the means of combating opportunists in the workers' movement, is increasingly transformed into a tactic of reaching an agreement with them.

In full accordance with the fact that the Central Committee, slipping further and further from the proletarian class line, is simultaneously forced to disguise this slippage, theoreticians of the Stalinist-Bukharin persuasion verbally advertise themselves as orthodox "Leninists," while in fact revising Lenin and increasingly "emasculating the revolutionary content" of his teachings. This revision of Leninism has manifested itself with complete clarity on three closely interrelated, crucial issues: the connection between socialist construction in our country and the world revolution (the "theory of the victory of socialism in one country"), the nature of our economy in general, and the nature of our state enterprises in particular.

Victory of socialism in one country.

"In these discussions (against 'Trotskyism'), we have, it seems to me, fully won for the entire party a clear and precise conviction that we will not perish because of class differences within our country, because of our technical backwardness, that we can build socialism even on this beggarly technical basis, that this growth of socialism will be many times slower, that we will crawl along at a snail's pace, and that, nevertheless, we are building this socialism and that we will build it" (Bukharin, "Three Speeches," p. 48). The significance of the international revolution for us boils down to the fact that "only the international socialist revolution can guarantee against intervention, against a new war, against restoration brought on the bayonets of capitalist armies" (ibid., p. 49).

This formulation of the question is a monstrously opportunistic distortion of the position the Party has held here to date, a position formulated by none other than Comrade Stalin, and as recently as April 1924 in his pamphlet "On the Foundations of Leninism." "The efforts of one country are sufficient to overthrow the bourgeoisie—the history of our revolution tells us so. For the final victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production, the efforts of one country, especially a peasant country like ours, are no longer sufficient—for this, the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries are necessary." One only has to look at the pathetic efforts with which Comrade Stalin now tries (for example, in his brochure “On the Questions of Leninism” and in his speeches at the 7th Enlarged Plenum of the ECCI) to explain this formulation in the sense that it is possible to build socialism in one country, but it is impossible to completely guarantee it from intervention without an international revolution - to understand with what speed, without even having time to cover his tracks, this “leader” of the party is sliding into the revisionist swamp, and how far he has already slid.

The opportunistic nature of this new theory is beyond doubt:

1) With this formulation of the question, international revolution becomes merely a means of defending our republic. This objectively signifies a fundamental shift toward a defensive stance vis-à-vis the international bourgeoisie, a point particularly clearly emphasized in a number of speeches by Comrade Stalin and his supporters, in which they note with satisfaction that the mere presence of the workers' movement in the West was sufficient to paralyze the danger of attack on us. The workers' movement in the West is viewed here primarily as a means of protecting the USSR from attack by imperialist powers, not as a path to international revolution. It is easy to see how the foregrounding of this significance of the revolutionary movement in the West is designed to justify the activities of the Comintern in the eyes of the petty bourgeoisie.

2) Everyone is well aware that our policy of international revolution is one of the main reasons for the hostility of the capitalist powers toward us, and that abandoning it would be a kind of "guarantee against intervention." Indeed, the theory of "guarantees against intervention" paves the way for attempts to seek these guarantees not in the development of world revolution, but in an agreement with the capitalist powers. Thus, the theory of socialism in one country leads directly to an agreement with the capitalists, to the detriment of the interests of world revolution.

3) The authors of this theory themselves believe that building socialism in our country will require 20–40 years (Comrade Rykov's speech on the Central Committee's political report at the 14th Congress). But then, this theory only makes practical sense if its authors consider it possible for the revolution in the West to be delayed for such a long period. Indeed, there is no doubt that the Central Committee's policy is based on the tacit recognition that the international revolution has been seriously and permanently delayed. This means rejecting Lenin's formula about the world entering an era of wars and revolutions, and adopting a liquidationist stance toward world revolution.

4) Since world revolution is, first and foremost, a "guarantee against intervention" and not a necessary condition for the completion of socialist construction, then in the eyes of the working class, world revolution ceases to be connected to its daily interests and becomes merely a moral and sometimes unpleasant obligation. This leads directly to the isolation of our proletariat from the international proletariat.

The Central Committee's supporters' assertion that the opposition is trying to prove that without a world revolution, we will perish any day now is a demagogic slander. The question of the fate of the dictatorship of the proletariat is decided not in theoretical debates, but in the actual class struggle. The debate is about our own demise, about whether we can transition to a socialist organization of production without the help of more advanced countries, whether we can move beyond the NEP with all its inherent contradictions and dangers. Here we come to the question of the nature of our economy and our state-owned enterprises.

Our economy as a whole.

Lenin clearly gave the main characteristics of our economic system in the following words:

But what does the word "transition" mean? Doesn't it, when applied to the economy, imply that the current system contains elements, bits, and pieces of capitalism or socialism? Everyone admits that it does. But not everyone, while acknowledging this, reflects on what exactly are the elements of the various socio-economic systems present in Russia, and this is the crux of the matter. Let's list these elements:

1. Patriarchal, i.e., to a large extent, natural peasant economy.

2. Small-scale commodity production, this includes the majority of peasants who sell grain.

3. Private capitalism.

4. State capitalism.

6. Socialism".

(Lenin, vol. XVIII, p. 103).

Here we are talking about elements of various socio-economic structures. Only in Comrade Bukharin's free exposition were the "elements of the various socio-economic structures present in Russia" transformed into five types of economy. This means that Lenin, in defining our economic system as transitional and mixed, by no means understood matters to mean that some economies are patriarchal (i.e., entirely subsistence), others are small-scale commodity producers (i.e., producing exclusively for the market), others are private capitalist (i.e., living exclusively on surplus value, unlike the kulak, for example, who also employs his own labor force), others are state capitalist, and others are purely socialist. On the contrary, he never tired of emphasizing that in the transitional period the struggle between the elements of socialism and capitalism is taking place along the entire front, that various elements are mixed in different combinations and different proportions everywhere, that “millions of tentacles of the petty-bourgeois hydra are embracing here and there individual strata of workers, that speculation, instead of state monopoly, is breaking into all the pores of our socio-economic life.”

The essence of his plan was to rely on this sector of the economy that we had most firmly secured—state industry—through concessions, mixed companies, and cooperatives to take over private economy, place capitalist elements under the control of the proletarian state, and, by gradually weakening them, approach a socialist organization of production. Instead of this profoundly dialectical formulation of the question, the Bukharin-Stalinist theory metaphysically divides our entire economy into sectors—socialist, state-capitalist, and so on—referring to socialism everything in the hands of the state (i.e., credit, state trade, and monetary circulation). Hence, its conclusion is that since "state-capitalist" enterprises—concessions and leases—have failed, on the one hand, while the role of the state economy, on the other, has grown during this time, the significance of state capitalist forms has been reduced to insignificant proportions. Lenin himself supposedly shifted to a different "cooperative plan" for the development of our economy, and that the entire task of socialist construction now boils down to strengthening the role of state and cooperative enterprises in the national economy. This theory strenuously glosses over the fact that capitalist elements also exist in the state economy, and that their role has increased with the transition to a monetary economy, forgetting that Lenin himself viewed the transition from commodity circulation in kind to a monetary one as a further retreat and warned of the dangers of such a retreat. ("Nothing came of the exchange of goods. The private market proved stronger than us, and instead of exchange of goods, it became simply 'buying and selling.' 'Now we find ourselves in a situation where we must retreat a little further not only to state capitalism, but also to state regulation of trade and money circulation.'" Speech at the Moscow Party Conference, October 29, 1921.) The "Stalinists" and "Bukharinists" prefer to turn a blind eye to these dangers. Therefore, they pose the question of the struggle between capitalism and socialism in our economy quite differently.

"Either we subject this petty bourgeois to our control and accounting, or he will inevitably and inexorably overthrow our workers' power, just as the Napoleons and Cauvaignacs, who grew up on precisely this petty property foundation, overthrew the revolution. That's how the question stands. That's the only way the question stands." This is how Lenin posed the question. (Lenin, "On the Tax in Kind")

The Stalin group poses the question differently: "One cannot compare Russian agriculture with Western agriculture. There, agricultural development follows the usual lines of capitalism... Not so in Russia. Here, agricultural development cannot follow such a path, if only because the existence of Soviet power and the nationalization of the main instruments and means of production preclude such development" (Stalin, "On the Foundations of Leninism").

"The peasantry is not socialist by its very nature. But it must and will certainly take the path of socialist development, for there is not and cannot be any other way to save the peasantry from poverty and ruin" (Stalin, "On Questions of Leninism," p. 56).

The question of "who will win?" doesn't exist for the new theory. It's already been decided: since industry is in our hands, it is socialist; since it is socialist, the peasantry will inevitably follow the path of socialism, for since the peasantry doesn't want poverty and ruin, it will be able to ensure that such poverty and ruin do not exist. A concrete analysis of reality is replaced by this logical reasoning, which reeks of Narodism a mile away and leads to the same consequences as Narodism. Optimistic speeches about the inevitability of socialist development in the countryside, dispelling any "panic before the kulak," only contribute to ignoring how the "petty-bourgeois hydra is invading every pore of our socio-economic life" and weakening our struggle against the capitalist elements of our economy.

“Whoever does not see this,” Lenin said on this subject, “reveals precisely by his blindness his complete captivity to petty-bourgeois prejudices.”

Our state-owned enterprises.

The same scholasticism permeates the reasoning of the “Stalinists” and “Bukharinists” on the question of the nature of our enterprises.

Their view on this issue was most clearly articulated at the 14th Moscow Conference. In the speeches of Comrade Rykov and Comrade Bukharin, our industry was explicitly defined as socialist. Not a word was said about its existence, even of isolated elements of capitalism. All its shortcomings, in their opinion, boiled down to the fact that "our industry is poor, the workers live in poverty, wages are low, and our workers earn less than Ford" (Comrade Rykov's Report). Only in the reports at and after the 14th Congress did reservations appear, stating that although our enterprises are of a consistently socialist type, within the framework of state industry, relations between people are not entirely socialist" (Bukharin, report at a meeting of active workers of the Moscow organization on January 5, 1926). But these timid reservations cannot conceal the general tendency to declare the structure of our industry simply socialist, especially if we recall that, even in his polemic with Kautsky, Bukharin, in the face of growing unemployment, had the incomprehensible audacity to declare that "in the strict sense of the word, the term 'hired laborer' is inapplicable to workers in state industry. We use it only for lack of another term" ("The International Bourgeoisie and Karl Kautsky, Its Apostle," p. 64). It was not without reason that Lenin said of Bukharin: "He never studied, and I think never fully understood, dialectics." All this doctrinaire scholasticism, in fact, brings grist to the mill of opportunism.

Our enterprises are state-owned, and the proletariat is at the helm of this state. This represents a fundamental and enormous difference from capitalist enterprises, thanks to which, as long as the power of the proletariat is preserved and strengthened, our enterprises naturally strive to evolve toward socialist forms of production. This also distinguishes them from all other economic forms currently existing in our country: while the latter can (like cooperatives) or spontaneously strive (like peasant, artisan, and private enterprises), even with the inviolability of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to evolve along capitalist lines, maintaining the proletarian dictatorship is the only condition necessary to ensure the development of our state enterprises toward socialism. Only the overthrow of this dictatorship or its degeneration can change the direction of their development. In this sense, within the overall system of our economy, they are the true foundation of our socialist construction, but this does not mean that they are already socialist.

Socialism differs from capitalism in that labor power ceases to be a commodity. Meanwhile, under the NEP, labor power is purchased, albeit by the proletarian state, on the market, and only as a commodity, becoming, along with the means of production, an element of the production process. That this circumstance is not merely a "capitalist mask," as some young theorists of the Bukharin school put it, which a consistently socialist enterprise must wear for some reason, but leads to very practical consequences, becomes apparent immediately as soon as this labor power, for one reason or another, proves superfluous for production. The worker then becomes unemployed. We may then provide him with greater benefits than the capitalist and care for him more, but all this does not eliminate the fundamental difference from the socialist structure of production, in which an excess of human labor relative to the need for it entails a reduction in the amount of labor of each individual worker, not a reduction in the number of workers. To call socialism (even a bad one) those forms of production organization in which labor power remains a commodity, means to engage in the most vulgar embellishment of reality, which only discredits socialism in the eyes of the workers, to declare the task that still faces us solved - to declare the NEP to be socialism.

By concentrating the bulk of the means of production in the hands of the state, we have created the preconditions for the transition to socialism. But even in such a crucial area as the relationship between enterprise and worker, we are still forced to maintain capitalist (albeit without capitalists) forms. We are forced to maintain them because our national level of labor productivity is excessively low, because we are unable, at this level, to ensure even a modest standard of living for the entire mass of the free labor force available in the country (as a result, we are forced to keep part of it as a reserve labor army), and because the countryside, unable, given the weakness of our industry, to develop its productive forces without class stratification, is throwing out masses of unemployed. Only by building on the high level of technology in Western Europe will we be able to overcome all these phenomena to the point of not only improving the condition of the worker (which we must and can do within our own economy), but also transforming him from a wage laborer into a member of socialist society, who is always guaranteed both work and a livelihood. Herein lies the organic link between our socialist construction and the international revolution. By abandoning this position, the Stalinist group moves to the position of national socialism, and this national socialism, in turn, is reduced to the level of the NEP.

It would be naive to believe that this distortion of both Marxism and Lenin's teachings remains merely theoretical—it has very practical implications. These were most clearly expressed by Comrade Molotov in his speech at the 14th Moscow Conference.

"Our state is a workers' state, and therefore we cannot under any circumstances accept the opposition of workers to the state. The Party cannot and must not admit even the germ of such an idea." And further: "How can we bring the workers closer to the state, i.e., bring the workers themselves closer to the working class in power?" One has only to compare this reasoning with Lenin's speech against Comrades Bukharin and Trotsky at the faction of the Eighth Congress of Soviets on the question of trade unions to understand how shamelessly Lenin is distorted by today's "Leninists." Even at the beginning of 1921, i.e., even during War Communism, Lenin emphasized with the utmost severity that "the universally organized proletariat must defend itself, and we must utilize these workers' organizations to defend the workers from their state, and for the workers to defend their state." This was also confirmed at the Eleventh Party Congress, during the transition to the expanded form of the New Economic Policy (NEP), to business accounting in state enterprises, and to monetary trade circulation. "The transition of state enterprises to business accounting," states the congress's resolution on the role and tasks of trade unions, "inevitably gives rise to a certain antagonism of interests on labor issues between the working masses and the directors, managers of state enterprises, or the departments to which they belong." Now, in a context of an even more expanded NEP, the intensification of class stratification among the peasantry, the emergence of a new bourgeoisie, and the incomparably greater pressure these classes exert on the workers' state than they had then, the old scholasticism, which Lenin denounced as "intellectual talk" and "abstract reasoning," is being revived, asserting that the workers and the workers' state are one and the same. This means, in the midst of the NEP, reviving the theory of nationalization of trade unions, declaring any demand of workers to the state as almost a rebellion, at the moment of unleashing petty-bourgeois democracy, tying the working class hand and foot, thereby opening wide the gates to the workers' state for petty-bourgeois elements, leading Soviet power along the path of degeneration.

We have seen this theory being put into practice by the Central Committee's policy on the labor question over the past few years. At every economic difficulty, whether arising from objective conditions or from the Central Committee's petty-bourgeois errors, sacrifices are demanded of the workers, supposedly in the name of socialist construction, in the name of "general class interests." Any resistance on the part of the workers is declared to be "defense of craft interests." We have seen Comrade Stalin now construct an entire theory claiming that not a single major step has been taken without some sacrifices on the part of individual groups of the working class in the interests of the entire working class of our country, and that "we must not hesitate to make a few insignificant sacrifices in the interests of the working class as a whole."

The party of the proletariat has no need to embellish reality. On the contrary, it must, as Lenin did, clearly and precisely explain to the working class the true extent of our approach to socialism, without the slightest exaggeration. It is not our fault, but our misfortune, which the proletarian party has no need to conceal, that labor power increasingly remains a commodity. And as long as this remains the case, we cannot equate state enterprises with socialism, nor can we equate workers with a workers' state. In defining the relationship between them, we must adhere to Lenin's original formulation, which reflects the existing contradictions and provides the key to overcoming them: our task is to organize the workers to defend them against our imperfect enterprises and the imperfect workers' state, and for the workers to defend these imperfect enterprises and the imperfect state against their class enemies.

The theoretical speculations of the new “Leninists,” who now claim to become the official ideology of the party, are no more similar to Lenin’s teachings than the Marxism of the leaders of the Second International of the pre-war era was similar to the teachings of Marx.

1) A clearly expressed petty-bourgeois bias in relation to industry, leading to a delay in the growth of the country's productive forces, an increase in the discrepancy between industry and agriculture, an increase in unemployment and the growth of a parasitic bourgeoisie;

2) Pressure on workers, low wages and high levels of labor intensity, leading to a conflict between the interests of the Soviet state and the worker;

3) An essentially kulak line in the village, leading to complete impotence in the area of ​​measures to develop socialist elements in agriculture, on the one hand, and a weakening of the class struggle against the kulak, on the other;

4) Bureaucratization of the Soviet state along with the strengthening of the influence of non-proletarian classes in it;

5) Wobble in the area of ​​Comintern policy, leading to a distortion of the united front tactics, right up to unification with the traitors of the proletariat in the Anglo-Russian Committee and to the rejection of the revolutionary tactics of class struggle in China;

6) A departure from Lenin’s theory on the question of socialism in one country, on the nature of the economy of the transition period and the nature of nationalized enterprises during the transition period, which in fact means a transition to the position of “national socialism” and the declaration of the NEP as socialism;

7) The internal party regime, which suppresses the activity of the working part of the party, separates the party from the masses of the working class, leads to the degeneration of the top of the party and threatens to liquidate the party as the vanguard of the proletariat, turning it into an auxiliary organ of state power - all this shows that the current leaders of the Central Committee are approaching the final limits of sliding away from proletarian positions.

This, of course, does not mean that the party has degenerated. Despite the Central Committee's policy of holding back the USSR's industrialization out of fear of the petty bourgeoisie, the proletariat is growing and uniting. The resistance of the working-class section of the party to petty-bourgeois wavering is growing stronger. Campaigns "against the opposition's forays" are meeting with diminishing success. Faced with the danger of the degeneration of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the party must find the strength to fundamentally change its internal party regime, reestablish itself as the vanguard of the proletariat, strengthen weakened ties with the proletariat, and, together with it, organize a powerful resistance to the growing pressure of the petty-bourgeois classes. These slogans must underpin preparations for the 15th Congress, which must repel petty-bourgeois wavering and establish a firm proletarian Bolshevik line in opposition to it.

Zavar'yan N. - 1906. Party card No. 0040175

Emelyanov (Kalin) B. - 1910 No. 0040174

Sapronov T.V. - 1911

Mino M.N.— 1917 g.No0051235

Minkov M.I. - 1912 No. 0009836

Smirnov V.M. - 1907, No. 0064227

Kharechko T. - 1914 No. 0008787

Oborin V.P. - 1904, No. 0051244

Dashkovsky I.K. - 1917 No. 0293317

Schreiber S. - 1908, No. 0751642

Smirnov M. - 1917, No. 0603155

Pylypenko F.Y.— 1917 No. 0009345

Dune E.— 1917 No. 0051603

Slidovker A.L.— 1917 №0052874

Tikhonov L.— 1917 g.No0095213

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Original signatures are attached. Consent to Mr. Sapronov's signature has been received.

27/VI–1927.