Once Again on the Trade Unions, the Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin

Lenin’s critique on Trotsky’s and Bukharin’s mistaken views and expounded the article on the role of trade unions under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

It was written on January 21, 1921. At that time, Lenin was resting in the Gorki village due to illness. When he returned to Moscow on the evening of January 22, most of the pamphlet was finished. The draft was completed on January 25, and it was arranged on the same day. On the night of January 25, a part of the printed pamphlet was distributed to the members of the Party Central Committee who participated in the dispute over trade union issues.

On January 27, the pamphlet was printed and the on cover it was stated that it was only for the Party members to read. It was first printed as a single edition by the Soviet Press Department on behalf of the Moscow workers, peasants and the Red Army. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 40 of the second edition of the Complete Works of Lenin.

In November 1920, Trotsky provoked the debate on the trade union issue within All-Russian Communist Party (B). After the end of the civil war, in order to adapt to the new situation, the Central Committee of All-Russian Communist Party (B) had decided to change the military work methods used in the work of trade-unions and adopted a working style which expanded democracy.

Trotsky strongly opposed to this decision and insisted on strengthening military working methods and centralism. At the Fifth All-Russia Conference of Trade Unions on November 3rd, Trotsky declared that the trade unions are faced with “the most profound internal crisis”, and to solve the crisis, we must implement the policy of “reorganizing trade unions” and implement the policy of “nationalization of trade unions”.

In the face of this situation, the Central Committee of All-Russian Communist Party (B) discussed the issue of trade unions. At the plenary session of the Central Committee of All-Russian Communist Party (B) on November 8th, Lenin put forward a draft resolution against Trotsky’s views, and at the same time, the plenary session of the Central Committee also made a decision not to resort to public discussion on the disagreements on the trade-union issue within the Central Committee, instead, the issue would be handled by a special commission for further discussion.

However, Trotsky not only refused to participate in this special commission, but also insisted that the issue and the debate should be made public in the party newspaper. Therefore, on December 24th, the Central Committee of All-Russian Communist Party (B) decided to discuss the issue of trade unions within the whole party. On the same day, Trotsky gave a speech at Bolshoi Theatre, and the next day, he published a pamphlet “The Role and Tasks of the Trade Unions”, saying it was a “platform pamphlet” which elevated the debate to an issue of principle struggle between the two trends within the trade union movement”. On December 30th, Lenin delivered a report to All-Russian Communist Party (B) cadres meeting entitled as “On the Trade Unions, the Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin”.

In the face of Lenin and Trotsky’s debate on the issue of trade unions, Bukharin took a vacillating position and declared his group and himself as a “buffer group” to mediate the dispute, with the support of nine other Central Committee members. Lenin expressed his opposition to this “buffer group” position of Bukharin as compromising with factionalism in the Party and decided to publish the pamphlet “Once Again on the Trade Unions, the Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin”.

In this pamphlet, Lenin criticized Trotsky’s and Bukharin’s wrong views, and expounded on the role of trade unions under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The pamphlet was divided into seven parts, including the following main ideas:

First of all, on the basis of criticizing Trotsky’s factional position, the pamphlet expounded on the nature, tasks and functions of trade unions under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin pointed out that, Trotsky on the pretext of opposing the bureaucracy in the trade union movement, advocated “reorganizing the trade unions”, and moreover Trotsky’s publication of the pamphlet “The Role and Tasks of Trade Unions” was obviously factional activity, which damaged the unity of the Party and the trade union movement. Lenin argued that looking the narrow perspective of formal democracy, Trotsky had the right to publish any factional platform of proposals. However, looking from the perspective of the revolutionary interest, his “new tasks and new methods” such as “reorganizing trade unions” and “nationalization of trade unions” were wrong, his very approach would be damaging to himself, the Party, the trade union movement, the training of millions of trade union members and the Soviet Republic.

Lenin, opposed the trade unions regarded as a state organ, because the state is a sphere of coercion. Instead, the trade unions are a reservoir of the state power, a school of communism and a school of learning management. The specific and cardinal thing in this sphere is not administration but persuasion and education. If we do not have a correct understanding of the nature and tasks of the trade unions, any difference, even an insignificant one, may become politically dangerous if it has a chance to grow into a split, “and a division in the trade union movement precisely means the split of the proletariat.” Trotsky’s “shake-up-from-above” policy a catchword used in his pamphlet “The Role and Tasks of the Trade Unions” reflected that the danger of splits within the trade union movement was not imaginary but real. Lenin demonstrated through a large number of facts and examples “that the essence of the the actual disagreements really boiled down to a demand that certain unwarranted and harmful exccesses of bureaucracy, and the current appointments system should not be justified or defended, but corrected and in a country under the dictatorship of the proletariat, a split in the ranks of the proletariat, or between the proletarian party and the mass of the proletariat, is not just dangerous; it is extremely dangerous.”

Secondly, Lenin criticized Bukharin’s concept of “industrial democracy”, as well as his eclectic position and other erroneous views. Lenin wrote: this term “industrial democracy”, is theoretically wrong and ridiculous, it’s just playing with concepts. In the final analysis, every kind of democracy, as political superstructure in general (which must exist until classes have been abolished and a classless society established), serves production and is ultimately determined by the relations of production in a given society. It is, therefore, meaningless to single out “industrial democracy”, from any other democracy, because this leads to confusion, and the result is a dummy.

Lenin also solemnly pointed out that Bukharin repeated Shlyapnikov’s mistaken slogan of “nationalization of trade unions” and advocated that the top organs such as the Supreme Economic Commission should be handed over to the corresponding trade unions for management. This is a complete deviation from communism and back to trade-unionism which the Party repudiated in principle long ago. Trade unions are a school of communism that inspire, educate and train workers, and if the trade union becomes engaged in the management of various industrial sectors, it will lead to the standpoint of trade-unionism.

Thirdly, Lenin criticized the eclecticism advocated by Bukharin, and pointed to the cause of its mistakes, he expressed: “Bukharin’s so-called effort to overcome a one-sided political approach and combine it with an economic approach, is an eclectic definition of the relation between politics and economics.” In response to Bukharin’s argument on trade union issues and his argument on behalf of establishing he and his group as a “buffer group”, Lenin wrote: Bukharin and his buffer group made the political mistake of misunderstanding the tasks of the buffer in which case they had once again substituted eclecticism for dialectics.

In this context Lenin asserted that politics is the concentrated expression of economy, compared with economy, or a Marxist. Politics must take precedence over economics. To argue otherwise is to forget the ABC of Marxism. but you forget the ABC of Marxism when you say (or imply) that the political approach is equivalent to the “economic”, and that you can take “the one and the other”. The wrong attitude to the trade unions will ruin the Soviet power and topple the dictatorship of the proletariat. In a peasant country like Russia, the Soviet power would surely go down in the event of a split between the trade unions and a Party.

Lenin argued: the essence of Bukharin’s theoretical mistake in this case is substitution of eclecticism for the dialectical interplay of politics and economics (which we find in Marxism). His theoretical attitude is: “on the one hand, and on the other”, “the one and the other”. That is eclecticism. Dialectics requires an all-round consideration of relationships in their concrete development but not implementing a patchwork of bits and pieces.

Fourthly, Lenin summed up the mistakes made by Trotsky and Bukharin and put forward the idea that the party was tempered in the struggle against factional activities. Lenin argued that Bukharin’s theoretical mistake was to substitute eclecticism for dialectics, and Trotsky’s mistake was one-track thinking, compulsiveness, exaggeration and obstinacy. Trotsky’s factional statement a month ago which was inappropriate in form and wrong in essence, has diverted the Party from its practical economic and production efforts and pushed us to deal with rectifying political and theoretical mistakes.

However, it is in the struggle against factional activities that the party was trained to learn not to exaggerate and blow up its disagreements and learn to promote each other. The Party’s enemies not been able—and will never be able—to take advantage of some of the inevitable disagreements within the Party to inflict harm on it and on the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia.

In his work “Once Again on the Trade Unions, the Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin”, Lenin criticized the erroneous views of Trotsky and Bukharin, guided the broad masses of Party members and workers to correctly understand the nature and role of trade unions, which was of great significance to prevent the party from split and consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat.