Foundation of the struggle against

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Many of the Left Opposition supporters were from the ranks of the youth like these Red Army cadets Stalin (left) with Bukharin, Kamenev and Zinovier These two docume nts, written in 1923 and 1! respectively, mark the beginning and the end of the open existence of the Left Opposition • in the Soviet Union.

The Platform of the Left Opposition, presented to the Central Committee in September 1927, soon prompted the expulsion of 1500 Oppositionists, and their hounding into exile as well as the capitulation of 2500 Zinovievists back into the Stalin camp.

The New Course was produced two months after Trotsky's first open attack on the party leadership and the signing of a platform statement by 46 leading members of the Stalin responded by refusing to publish the statement and by disciplinary reprisals, but news of it spread, and in November Pravda opened its pages to discussion.

The response was strong. The triumvirate now stepped up its repression, including dissolving the central committee of the Communist Youth League, which had overwhelmingly supported the platform.

But they also adapted to the pressure by issuing a resolution entitled the 'New Course" which declared the need for improved inner party democracy and for the carrying out of the economic policies adopted at the Twelfh Congress-those proposed by Trotsky.

Adopted

The resolution, bearing the amendments of Trotsky, was unanimously adopted by the Politburo on December 5, 1923.

The articles in The New Course are Trotsky's contributions to this discussion.

The intensity of the response within the party, the openness of discussion at that point and the concessions made by the leadership explain the optimistic tone of the articles.

They are much less sharp than his original letter to the Central Committee two months before, and his preface asserts that despite the "impenetrable mists' that have surrounded the questions of the internal regime of the party and the economy of the country:

"The dust clouds will disperse. The questions will stand out in their true form."

The effect of the resolution, even if interpreted in 'reverse gear' is bound to be intensification. of "the independent activity of the entire party collectivity"

The immediate stimulus to Trotsky's attack was the sharpening economic crisis in August 1923, to which Stalin responded by further measures against industry in favour of the peasants.

• This produced a massive strike wave as unemployment mounted. The question was now whether i Dzerzhinsky, head of the GPU, who had been asked to report on the strike wave and the participation of party members in it, would propose that the GPU be used against party members.

Economic policies

Here, all too vividly, was illustrated that interrelationship between the internal organisation of the party on the one hand and economic policies on the other, an interrleationship which Trotsky had come to see as crucial, and which is the central argument in both the New Course and in the Platform of the Left Opposition.

Trotsky insists that it is only by a central economic plan, controlled by a constantly renewed Rabkrin, the Workers and Peasants Inspection, and fully discussed within the ranks of the party, that the state administration can be controlled by the party rather than vice versa.

Only in this way can new layers of workers be trained in politics and economics, and party democracy be fostered.

Such policies were crucial for the working class to maintain its leadership over other classes in society.

Opposite course

Stalin's rule was leading to the opposite of all this. But a full year earlier, in November 1972, Lenin had come to be convinced of Trotsky's views.

Lenin's turn' followed Stalin's moves to weaken the state monopoly of foreign trade and also to control the national minorities by autocratic methods.

Lenin proposed to Trotsky that they should form a joint bloc against Stalin and seek to remove him as General Secretary at the 12th Congress. He also proposed that the Central Committee should be enlarged to 50 or 100 and that Rabkrin, then contfolled by Stalin, should be thoroughly overhauled.

It should be reduced to 300 or 400 and staffed by 'rank and file workers and peasants, who, however, do not fall into the category of direct or indirect exploiters,' combined with the party Central Control Commission, and allowed to attend any meetings of the Politburo.

Nothing said Lenin; should prevent the revamped Rabkrin from 'keeping themselves fully informed of all things and from exercising the strictest controi over the proper conduct of affairs!

In addition he proposed that the State Planning Commission (Gosplan) should be given legislative powers.

In fact Lenin suffered his last stroke a month before the 12th Congress.

His two articles on these questions, Better Fewer but Better' and 'How we should Reorganise the Workers and Peasants Inspections' were published only after a fight.

However, Krupskaya held back his 'Last Testament' until the next year's congress, and Trotsky refrained from an open attack on Stalin and also from insisting on the publication of the discussion on Rabkrin.

Theses on industry

Trotsky was no doubt greatly encouraged by the Congress adopting his own Theses on Industry.

But in the event no five year plan was to be instituted until 1928, when it was imposed in the most bureaucratic and barbaric fashion by the Stalinists as a last ditch stand against the overweening power of the about this background to The prosperous peasants, the Kulaks, New Course would do well to and the technocrats and mana- read Lenin's Fight against Staligerial bureaucrats known as nism and also to read The New Nepmen' Course in the Pathfinder volume Trotsky has been warning of entitled The Challenge of the the dangers from such quarters Left Opposition 1923-25' since 1920! which reprints Trotsky's letter Comrades who want to learn to the CC and the Platform of 1879.

In' 1905 he was the leading force in the St Petersburg Soviet. In 1917 he fought as a Bolshevik for the dictatorAffairs after the October Revolution.

After Lenin's death Trotsky fought against the bureaucratisation of the Soviet state by the forces led by Stalin.

This is one of a series of articles on his main writings to mark Trotsky's centenary.

the 46 as well as the Politburo's resolution.

In fact The New Course stands on its own as a spirited but serious appraisal of the problem of bureaucracy.

Trotsky himself had banned trade unions during the period of 'war communism' and also banned factions in 1921. But here he warns of the terrible dangers of permanently stifling criticism and independent thought.

The party apparatus he argues must not paralyse but organise the initiative of the party and political opposition must be overcome politically. not crushed-otherwise it would simply express itself in ultraleftism.

The most important means of combatting bureaucratisation and of bringing the older generation of the party into a correct relationship with the new was "the education of the party youth, based on personal initiative' Conservatism Most deadly to revolutionary leadership was 'conservatism' of the kind which had afflicted the right wing who insisted on old formulae in April 1917 and who wanted to draw back from insurrection in October 1917.

The same conservatism strangled the necessary turn of policy. in 1921 and 1923 in Germany.

He insists on Leninism as supreme revolutionary honesty towards the party • and the working class-quite the opposite to the cunning, subterfuge and deception which must be used against the enemy. The problems of bureaucracy in the party were hugely exacerbated by the syphoning off of active party militants into administrative posts, and of youth into higher education. The party was also swamped by careerist petty bourgeois functionaries and the army, always a source of bureaucratisation, was predominantly peasant in composition.

The danger was that wrong economic policies would bring the peasantry under the sway of the new embryonic bourgeoisie, the kulaks and Nepmen. Only the implementation of the policies of the 12th Congress-a central economic plan to develop industry-could develop the working class numerically and in confidence and bring the correct relationship or 'smychka' with the pea'santry.

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Sociaiisi Press, Hednesday 19 September 1979

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