Speech on Comrade Lenin’s Report: ‘Tactics of the Russian Communist Party’¶
Core Argument¶
In his speech on Lenin’s report concerning the tactics of the Russian Communist Party, Trotsky forcefully refutes any suggestion of serious divisions within the party over concessions and economic policy. He insists that only a tiny minority, represented by Kollontai, opposes the new course. Trotsky specifically challenges an article by the German Social Democrat Cunow, which falsely portrays him as a Left Communist demanding stricter controls and labour conscription. In reality, Trotsky argues, no principled opposition exists in the Central Committee, only practical disagreements.
Trotsky’s core argument is that capitalism has not yet exhausted its power to attack, and therefore Soviet Russia must utilise capitalist technology and concessions to survive. He rejects Kollontai’s metaphysical position that deriving any benefit from capitalism is impermissible, pointing out that the Soviet state already engages in capitalist relations through activities such as buying locomotives or selling lumber. Concessions, he contends, are merely an extension of this necessary practice. Trotsky also defends the employment of bourgeois technical specialists, drawing a parallel with the use of ex-tsarist officers to build the Red Army. The working class, he argues, cannot instantly master all technical fields and must harness alien forces for its own ends. He concludes that it is Kollontai’s faction, not the party leadership, which lacks faith in the proletariat’s ability to use such means without being subordinated to capital.
The historical context of this debate is crucial. The ‘Workers’ Opposition’, co-led by Kollontai and Shlyapnikov, sharply criticised the New Economic Policy from a syndicalist perspective. Shlyapnikov, a Civil War hero, was later jailed by Stalin and executed without trial in 1937. Kollontai, who had been a Menshevik before 1917, later became subservient to Stalinism, serving as ambassador to Norway. Sokolnikov, an old Bolshevik and former People’s Commissar of Finance, was framed in the second Moscow Trial of 1937 and allegedly murdered in prison. Bela Kun, the ultra-leftist leader of the Hungarian Communist Party, was executed in 1938. These figures represent the tragic fate of many who engaged in the polemics of this period, as Stalin’s purges consumed both Left and Right opponents of the emerging bureaucratic dictatorship.