The Stalin School of Falsification by Leon Trotsky

Author:Leon Trotsky [Trotsky, Leon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: political science, World, Russian & Former Soviet Union, history, Russia & the Former Soviet Union, Political Ideologies, Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, Fascism & Totalitarianism
ISBN: 9781789123487
Google: PF2LDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2019-01-13T23:27:53.272361+00:00

ON “CENTRISM,” AND THE POLICY OF ROTTEN ROPES

The Opposition warned that the Chinese Communist Party under your leadership would inevitably come to Menshevist policies—for which the Opposition was at the time mercilessly condemned. It is with certainty that we now warn you that the British Communist Party, under the influence of the policies that you are foisting on it, is becoming inevitably poisoned by Centrism and conciliationism. If you do not turn the helm sharply, the consequences with respect to the British Communist Party will not be any better than those with respect to the Chinese party. The same thing applies to the Comintern as a whole.

It is high time to understand that the Centrism of Bukharin-Stalin is unable to withstand the test of events. The greatest events in the history of mankind are revolution and war. We have put the Centrist policy to the test on the Chinese Revolution. The revolution demanded decisive conclusions from vacillating directives. The Chinese Communist Party found itself compelled to draw these conclusions. That is why it has arrived—and it could not have failed to do so at Menshevism. The unprecedented collapse of your leader ship in China demands that you finally repudiate the policy which compelled you under the most difficult conditions to clutch at rotten ropes.

Next to the revolution the greatest historical test is war. We say beforehand: There will be no room during the events of war for the Stalinist and Bukharinist policy of zigzags, side-stepping and subterfuges—the policy of Centrism. This applies to the entire leadership of the Comintern. Today, the only test put to the leaders of the foreign communist parties is the question: Are you ready to vote night and day against “Trotskyism”? But war will confront them with far weightier demands. Meanwhile, the policy with respect to the Kuomintang and the Anglo-Russian Committee has obviously made them turn their eyes towards the Amsterdam and social-democratic tops. No matter how you squirm—the line of the Anglo-Russian Committee was the line of relying upon the rotten rope of the Amsterdam bureaucracy, whose worst section at the present time is the General Council. In the event of war you will have to stumble time and again over “surprises.” The rotten ropes will fall apart in your hands. War will cause a sharp differentiation among the present tops of the Comintern. A certain section will go over to the Amsterdam position under the slogan: “We want to defend the U.S.S.R. seriously—we do not wish to be a handful of fanatics.” Another section of the European communists—we firmly believe they will be in the majority—will stand on the position of Lenin, on the position of Liebknecht that we are defending. There will be no room for the intermediate position of Stalin. That is why, permit me to say this frankly, all this talk of a handful of Oppositionists, of generals without an army, and so forth and so on, seem utterly ludicrous to us. The Bolsheviks have heard all this more than once both in 1914 and in 1917.

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