The Third International After Lenin (1928) by Trotsky Leon

Author:Trotsky, Leon [Trotsky, Leon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Marxists Internet Archive
Published: 2013-10-06T22:00:00+00:00

12. The Causes of the Defeat of the Opposition and Its Perspectives

The Left proletarian wing of the party which set down its views in a number of documents, the principal of which is the Platform of the Bolshevik-Leninists (Opposition), has been subjected, beginning with the Fall of 1923 to systematic, organizational campaigns of extermination. The methods of repression were conditioned upon the character of the internal party regime which became more bureaucratic to the degree that the pressure exerted by the non-proletarian classes upon the proletariat grew stronger. The possibilities for the success of such methods were created by the general political character of the period in which the proletariat suffered the greatest defeats, the social democracy came to life again, while in the communist parties the Centrist-opportunist tendencies grew stronger, in addition to which Centrist systematically slid to the Right up to the recent months. The first onslaught against the Opposition was perpetrated immediately after the defeat of the German revolution and served, as it were, as a supplement of this defeat. This onslaught would have been utterly impossible with a victory of the German proletariat which would have raised extraordinarily the self-confidence of the proletariat of the USSR and therefore also its power of resistance to the pressure of the bourgeois classes, internally as well as externally, and to the party bureaucracy which transmits this pressure.

To render clearer the meaning of the regroupings that took place in the Comintern since the end of 1923 it would be highly important to examine step by step how the leading group explained its organizational “victories” over the Opposition at the various stages of its down-sliding. We are not in a position to do so within the framework of a criticism of the draft program. But it is sufficient for our purposes to examine how the first “victory” over the Opposition in September 1924 was viewed and explained. In his debut article on the question of international policy, Stalin said the following:

“The decisive victory of the revolutionary wing in the communist parties is the surest indication of the deepest revolutionary processes that are now, taking place within the working class …”

And in another place in the same article:

“If we add to this the fact of the complete isolation of the opportunist currents in the CPSU, the picture is complete. The Fifth Congress only consolidated the victory of the revolutionary wing in the basic sections of the Communist International.” [37]

Thus, the defeat of the Opposition in the CPSU was proclaimed to be the result of the fact that the European proletariat was going to the Left, was marching directly towards the revolution and was giving the revolutionary wing the ascendancy over the opportunists in all the sections of the Comintern. Today, some five years later, after the greatest defeat of the international proletariat in the Fall of 1923, Pravda finds itself compelled to admit that “the wave of a certain apathy and dejection which set in after the defeat of 1923 and which permitted German capital to consolidate its position” is only now beginning to disappear.

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