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From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 54, 9 December 1933, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
In joining the Left Opposition I am doing that which every thinking revolutionary Marxist should not fail to do. That the Stalinist bureaucracy has forsaken the idea of the world revolution and uses the phrase only in the ritual on holiday celebrations should by this time be clear to everyone who keeps fairly well informed with ideas and events.
What it is incumbent upon every revolutionary Marxist to assert and emphasize is that the abandonment of the world revolution represents the greatest danger to the Soviet Union. To the middle class intellectuals Stalin gives evidence of his great “statemanship” by concentrating on “building socialism in one country”. To them comrade Trotsky is the wild revolutionary without a sense of “realism”. To the working class revolutionist Stalin’s path means inevitable disaster and betrayal of the international working class, including the Russian. This explains why so many of the New Republic and Nation enthusiasts are flocking to the banner of Stalinism at the time when revolutionary Marxists are expelled from the Communist parties.
When in the early part of 1930 [1] I became acquainted with Trotsky’s Criticism of the Draft Program I immediately knew who represented the truth of revolutionary Marxism. I hoped, however, that the Communist International would be compelled by the force of events to change its policies. I was not convinced that it was necessary to follow comrade Trotsky in making an open and intransigent struggle against the destructive ideas and tactics of the Comintern. Only my very closest friends knew where my sympathies lay. The party functionaries knew that I followed Trotsky’s writings very closely and expressed some displeasure but attributed my interest to the fact that I was not a worker but an intellectual.
My five months in the Soviet Union in 1931 left me more disturbed than ever. On the one hand I saw the successful building of huge factories, while on the other hand I saw evident signs of degeneration in the party, and working class and peasant dissatisfaction. Fortunately in the last month of my stay I came in contact with an American-Jewish worker in Kharkov, and my first enthusiasm engendered by the appearance of huge factories was tempered by a more intimate knowledge of the life of the Soviet worker as revealed to me by the New York machinist who left the United States because he heard Olgin, in a lecture, describe the Soviet Union as a veritable paradise.
The economic hardships for the workers and peasants, however, were not in themselves sufficient to cause one to change his views on basic principles. Difficulties and hardships are to be expected. In 1931, the effect of the adventurous policies of the “liquidation of the kulak as a class” and “the five year plan in four” was not yet fully apparent. There was a great deal of hope that the end of the five year plan would witness a marked improvement.
What was most disturbing was the intellectually stifling atmosphere in the party. Several times party members, when with me alone, asked me in a whisper concerning the whereabouts of Trotsky. They did not even know that he was in Turkey. The party members had a grotesque picture of conditions in capitalist countries. Discussion in the party units revolved around how best to carry out the party line. It was no longer a Communist party – that is, a living, thinking, functioning group of class-conscious workers but a huge machine unthinkingly carrying out the behests of “the leader”.
Upon my return to the United States I was determined to give the Chicago workers who were interested a more realistic picture of the Soviet Union. Though more convinced than ever that Trotsky was right in his criticism of Stalin’s economic policies in the Soviet Union, I was not yet prepared to begin a struggle in the open. I therefore omitted many things in my lectures on the Soviet Union. I simply warned my listeners not to go to the Soviet Union for the purpose of remaining there.
It was the German situation and the insane policies followed by the C.I. bureaucrats that convinced me of the necessity of an open fight against these policies. It became obvious that not to struggle against the Comintern “line” amounted to an actual betrayal. Comrade Trotsky was absolutely correct in his open and uncompromising struggle against the revisionism of Stalin and his fellow-bureaucrats. No longer quiet, but speaking openly against the C.I. line, I was immediately expelled.
I knew, of course, that I belonged to the Left Opposition. Nevertheless 1 would not join without getting in touch with the “Lovestoneites” and reading their literature over again. The more I read of their position, the more I talked with their representatives, the more disgusted I became. The two-Stalin idea – one the correct Stalin for the Soviet Union and the other the incorrect one for the capitalist countries – was sickening. Herberg’s article in the Modern Monthly explaining the position of the “Lovestoneites” was the last straw. It is pitiful for anyone to attempt to make such a sharp distinction between Stalinism in the Soviet Union and in the capitalist countries. It is a denial of Marxism for anyone to say: the principles are correct, only the tactics are wrong.
I have joined the Left Opposition because it represents the interests of the international revolutionary working class. It is clear to me that the principles upon which it stands are based upon the teachings of Marx and Lenin and free from the filth and revisionism of Stalin and his obedient satellites in the Soviet Union and in the capitalist countries.
He who understands the principles of revolutionary Marxism and who is not afraid to struggle for those principles has only one road to follow – to build a new party and a new international under the leadership of the Left Opposition.
1. In printed text “1903”, which is obviously incorrect.
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