The Opposition’s Fight for Clarity¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter Digest: The Opposition’s Fight for Clarity
This chapter dissects the systematic distortion of Trotsky’s positions through the propagation of politically convenient legends. A central calumny holds that Trotsky fears the harvest and regards the British Communist Party as a reactionary obstacle. In truth, Trotsky warned the Politburo that the British party, like its Bulgarian counterpart, might adopt a passive or temporising attitude during mass struggles under pressure from the bourgeois state and official working-class institutions. His argument was not to oppose the party but to help it understand and prepare for major battles, given that some British comrades had underestimated the depth of the crisis and the imminence of social clashes. Trotsky insisted the main duty was to warn before action, not to punish afterwards. The British Communists themselves acknowledged that during the strike, some regional organisations lagged behind the masses due to sectarian survivals and insufficient roots in the trade unions. Without such criticism, elements of passivity might have been more influential. The discrepancy between the party’s strength and its objective tasks is gigantic, and this must be spoken openly, replacing party legends with revolutionary policy.
The chapter then draws on comparative historical experiences to illuminate the dangers of opportunism. In May 1926, Józef Piłsudski overthrew the Wito government in a coup. The Communist Party supported the coup, claiming it would prevent fascism, and joined a general strike alongside social democrats, fighting Wito’s forces with Piłsudski’s troops in Warsaw. After seizing power, Piłsudski rejected left coalition proposals and established a dictatorship. Similarly, on 12 October 1923, three German Communists entered a coalition government in Saxony with left social democrats, following advice from the Comintern Executive under Zinoviev to access arms for a planned all-German uprising. Nine days later, troops from Berlin overthrew both the Saxon and Thuringian governments. At the 1924 Fifth World Congress, the Communist Party leadership was condemned not for hesitation or lack of revolutionary preparation, but for opportunist ministerial speeches and failure to demand arming workers at the critical moment.
These episodes underscore the polemical thrust: revolutionary clarity demands implacable opposition to bourgeois social opinion and its ‘worker’ organisations. The young British Communist Party must increase its implacability, while the British government’s supply of war materials to Chiang Kai-Shek’s government for counter-revolutionary operations against communists and the workers’ movement in China further demonstrates the global character of the struggle. The fight for clarity is thus a fight against both external enemies and internal illusions.