Leon Trotsky

“ The import and the limits of a maneuver must always be clearly considered and demarcated. A concession must be called a concession, and a retreat a retreat. It is infinitely less dangerous to exaggerate one’s own concessions and retreats than to underestimate them. The vigilance of the class and the organized distrust of our own party must be maintained and not lulled.
The essential instrument of a maneuver, as in every historical action of the working class in general, is the party. ”

“ Thus, the questions of the mortal class struggle between English capital and the proletariat, between the General Council and the mine workers, were transformed, as it were, into questions of a friendly discussion between allies in the same bloc, the English General Council and the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, on the subject of which of the two roads was better at that moment: the road of an agreement, or the road of an isolated economic struggle. ”

“ After Stalin, the Moscow Committee of our party lectured to the workers of Moscow:
“The Anglo-Russian Committee can, must, and will undoubtedly play an enormous role in the struggle against all possible interventions directed against the U.S.S.R. It will become the organizing center of the international forces of the proletariat for the struggle against every attempt of the international bourgeoisie to provoke a new war.” ”

“ Under such conditions, to put point blank the question of the date of the insurrection is to awake the party out of fatalistic passivity and to turn it towards the basic revolutionary task, that is, to the conscious organization of the armed insurrection in order to tear the power out of the hands of the enemy. ”

“ In a maneuver, one must always proceed from the worst and not the best assumptions with regard to the adversary to whom concessions are made, or the unreliable ally with whom an agreement is concluded. It must be constantly borne in mind that the ally can become an enemy on the morrow. This applies even to such an ally as the peasantry:
“We must be distrustful towards the peasantry, always organize ourselves separately from it, and be ready for a struggle against it, in so far as the peasantry shows itself to be reactionary or anti-proletarian.” ”

“ For the seizure of power, it is necessary to organize the armed insurrection on the basis of the general strike. To be sure, the entire development of Rosa Luxemburg tended in this direction: she departed from the stage before she had said her last words, or even her penultimate words. However, up to the very latest period, very strong tendencies towards revolutionary fatalism have prevailed within the German Communist Party. The revolution is on the way, the revolution is nigh, the revolution will bring with it the armed insurrection and give us power and the party ... ”

“ It is the worst and most dangerous thing if a maneuver arises out of the impatient opportunistic endeavor to outstrip the development of one’s own party and to leap over the necessary stages of its development (it is precisely here that no stages must be leaped over) , by binding, combining, and uniting superficially, fraudulently, diplomatically, through combinations and trickery, organizations and elements that pull in opposite directions. Such experiments, always dangerous, are fatal to young and weak parties. ”

“ But the alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry is by no means given ready-made by history and it cannot be created by means of oily maneuvers, contemptible attempts at wheedling, and pathetic declamations. The alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry is a question of the political relation of forces and consequently of the complete independence of the proletariat in relation to all other classes. The ally must first be educated. ”

“ The world experience of the latter is so great, their class instinct so refined, and their organs of espionage so varied that an attempt to deceive them by posing as somebody else must lead in reality to trapping, not the enemy, but one’s own friends. ”

“ Once and for all it must be grasped that a maneuver can never decide anything in great matters. If combinations appear to solve something in small affairs, it is always at the expense of great matters. A correct maneuver can only facilitate the solution by providing the possibility of gaining time or of attaining greater results with smaller forces. It is impossible to escape from fundamental difficulties by means of a maneuver.
The contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is a fundamental one. ”

“ Her formative period was spent mainly in struggle against the bureaucratic apparatus of the German social democracy and the trade unions. She demonstrated tirelessly that this apparatus stifled the initiative of the masses and she saw the way out and salvation in a spontaneous movement from below that was to overthrow all social democratic obstructions and barriers. A revolutionary general strike that inundates all the banks of bourgeois society became for Luxemburg a synonym for the proletarian revolution. ”

“ Even a correctly contrived maneuver is, generally speaking, all the more dangerous for a revolutionary party, the younger and weaker the latter is in relation to its enemies, allies, and semi-allies. That is why’ and we arrive here at a point which is of paramount importance for the Comintern’ the Bolshevik party did not at all begin with maneuvering as a panacea but came to it, grew into it in the measure that it sunk its roots deeply into the working class, became strong politically and matured ideologically. ”

“ The transition of the mass movement into the open revolutionary stage threw back into the camp of the bourgeois reaction those liberal labor politicians who had become somewhat Left. They betrayed the general strike openly and deliberately; after which they undermined and betrayed the miners’ strike. The possibility of betrayal is always contained in reformism. But this does not mean to say that reformism and betrayal are one and the same thing at every moment. ”

“ The struggle to convert the economic strike into a political strike should have signified, therefore, a furious political and organizational war against the General Council. The first step to such a war had to be the break with the Anglo-Russian Committee. which had become a reactionary obstacle, a chain on the feet of the working class.
No revolutionist who weighs his words will contend that a victory would have been guaranteed by proceeding along this line. But a victory was possible only on this road. A defeat on this road was a defeat on a road that could lead later to victory. ”

“ The correctness of a strategical plan is verified by whether it follows the line of the actual development of class forces and whether it estimates the elements of this development realistically. The gravest and most disgraceful defeat which has the most fatal consequences for the movement is the typically Menshevist defeat, due to a false estimate of the classes, an underestimation of the revolutionary factors, and an idealization of the enemy forces. ”

“ A maneuver can consist either of a concession to the enemy, or an agreement with a temporary and, therefore, always dubious ally, or a well-timed retreat calculated to keep the enenly from our throat, or, finally, the raising of partial demands and slogans in such succession as to split the enemy camp. ”

“ These maneuvers not only inflicted a defeat upon the revolution and the working class but also crushed, weakened, and undermined for a long time to come the fundamental instrument of future struggle, the young communist parties. At the same time they have also introduced elements of political demoralization into the ranks of the oldest party of the Comintern, the C.P.S.U.
The chapter of the draft dealing with strategy remains obstinately silent about maneuvering’ that hoby horse of late years’ as if its mouth were filled with water. Indulgent critics may say: silence is good enough. ”

“ It was a great illusion to continue in the belief that an isolated economic strike of the mine workers would alone achieve what the general strike did not achieve. That is precisely where the power of the General Council lay. It aimed with cold calculation at the defeat of the mine workers, as a result of which considerable sections of the workers would be convinced of the “correctness” and the “reasonableness” of the Judas directives of the General Council. ”

“ The contradiction between the U.S.S.R. and the capitalist world is a fundamental one. There is no escape from it by way of maneuvers. By means of clear and candidly acknowledged concessions to capital, and by utilizing the contradictions between its various sections, the breathing spell can be extended and time gained, but even this, only under certain historical conditions, and by no means under any and all circumstances. ”

“ That is why the attempt to bridle the Chinese bourgeoisie by means of organizational and personal maneuvers and to compel it to submit to combinationist plans is not a maneuver but contemptible self-deception, even though it be colossal in scope. Classes cannot be tricked. ”

“ Even the fact that the strike was long sustained financially by the great self-sacrifice on the part of the Russian working class, did not serve the mine workers or the English Communist Party, but the self-same General Council. As the upshot of the greatest revolutionary movement in England since the days of Chartism, the English Communist Party has hardly grown while the General Council sits in the saddle even more firmly than before the general strike. ”

“ The adventurist Leftism gave way to an open opportunism of the Right-Centrist type. To comprehend the character and the tempo of this organizational Rightward swing, it must be recalled that Stalin, the director of this turn, back in September 1929 appraised the passing of party leadership to Maslow, Ruth Fischer, Treint, Suzanne Girault, and others, as the expression of the Bolshevization of the parties and an answer to the demands of the Bolshevik workers who are marching toward the revolution and “want revolutionary leaders. ”

“ They prefer to remain silent on the favorite theme and to leave the leadership of the Comintern a free hand. And this is precisely what must not be permitted. It is necessary to tie the hands of the combinationists and their candidates. This is precisely the purpose the program should serve. Otherwise, it would be superfluous.
A place must be found in the chapter on strategy for the fundamental rules which determine and delimit maneuvering as an auxiliary method of the revolutionary struggle against the class enemy which can be only a life-and-death struggle. ”

“ The majority declared its basic principle to be the maneuver. Zinoviev maneuvered back in 1925 with Radic and LaFollette. Stalin and Bukhrarin thereafter maneuvered with Chiang Kai-shek, with Purcell, and with the kulaks. The apparatus continually maneuvered with the party. Zinoviev and Ramenev are now maneuvering with the apparatus.
A whole corps of specialists in maneuvers for bureaucratic requirement arose which consists predominantly of people who never were revolutionary fighters, and who now bow all the more ardently before the revolution after it has already conquered power. ”

“ Others, again, obtained the secrets of combinationism at second and third hand, and after becoming convinced that with them wonders are sometimes achieved in small matters, they concluded that these methods are all the more applicable to great matters. ”

“ Only such a study can provide a certain guarantee against steps of panic and capitulation at moments when supreme courage and decisiveness are required, as well as against adventurist leaps in periods which require prudence and patience. ”