Trotskyism or Leninism?

Stalin’s speech delivered at the Plenum of the Communist Party Group in the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, on November, 1924. It was first published in Pravda issue No. 269, November 26, 1924. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 6 of the Complete Works of Stalin.

Soon before and after Lenin’s death, within the Central Committee there was a heated debate between the minority represented by Trotsky and the majority represented by Stalin. The main purpose of Stalin’s article was to distinguish Trotskyism from Leninism, so as to eliminate the influence of Trotskyism ideologically.

The work consists of three parts. The first part is the facts about the October uprising. According to the minutes of the party’s meeting on October 10, 1917, Stalin pointed out that Trotsky played an important role in the uprising, but he did not alone as a person and could not play any special role in the October uprising. After the discussion, Comrade Lenin's resolution on the uprising was put to the vote. The resolution was adopted by a majority, thus Lenin was the inspirer and leader of the October Revolution.

The second part is about the Party and the preparation of the October Revolution. In response to Trotsky’s exaggeration of the disagreements in the party during the preparations for the October Revolution, Stalin pointed out that during the period of the Party's new policy orientation of March to April, the party members had a unified consensus on the new orientation. During the period of revolutionary mobilization of the masses (May to August), there were only differences on practical issues within the party. During the period of of organisation of the assault (September to October), the Central Committee had fairly important disagreements of opinion.

In view of Trotsky’s assertion that Lenin underrated Soviet legality, that Lenin failed to appreciate the great importance of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets taking power on October 25, and that this underrating was the reason why he insisted that power be taken before October 25. Stalin pointed out that facts have proved that Lenin was correct, and Trotsky’s lengthy arguments about the importance of Soviet legality are quite misleading and beside the point.

The third part is to demonstrate the characteristics and essence of Trotskyism. Stalin put forward that Trotsky needs “desperately” to discredit the Party, and its cadres who carried through the uprising, in order, after discrediting the Party, to proceed to discredit Leninism, while making another attempt to create the conditions for substituting Trotskyism for Leninism.

Stalin pointed out that Trotskyism possesses three specific features which bring it into irreconcilable contradiction with Leninism: (1) The theory of “permanent” (uninterrupted) revolution, which is a revolution that fails to take the poor peasantry into account as a revolutionary force and so will make the proletariat lose its most important ally. (2) Trotskyism is distrust of the Bolshevik Party principle, of the monolithic character of the Party, of its hostility towards opportunist elements. In the sphere of organisation, Trotskyism is the theory that revolutionaries and opportunists can co-exist and form groups and coteries within a single party. (3) Trotskyism is distrust of the leaders of Bolshevism, an attempt to discredit, to defame them. Stalin talked about the August bloc led by Trotsky which included opportunist factions, Leninism regarded the destruction of the August bloc as a guarantee of the development of the proletarian party, whereas Trotskyism regarded this August bloc as the basis for building a "real" party.

Stalin said: How could it happen that Trotsky, who carried such a nasty stock-in-trade on his back, found himself, after all, in the ranks of the Bolsheviks during the October movement? It happened because at that time Trotsky abandoned (actually did abandon) that stock-in-trade; he hid it in the cupboard. Had he not made this turn real co-operation with Trotsky would have been impossible. Any long-term collaboration between the Leninists and Trotsky is possible only if the latter completely abandons his old stock-in-trade, only if he completely accepts Leninism. Stalin regarded that “the old stock-in-trade of Trotskyism that was hidden in the cupboard in the period of the October movement is now being dragged into the light again in the hope that a market will be found for it, seeing that the market in our country is expanding.

Next, Stalin summed up the characteristics of the new Trotskyism. Instead of openly defending the theory of “permanent” revolution, it "simply" asserts that the October Revolution fully confirmed the idea of "permanent" revolution. Thus divides Leninism into two parts: the part of Leninism that existed before the war, before the October Revolution, the “old” ,“useless” Leninism with its idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, and the new, post-war, October Leninism, which they count on adapting to the requirements of Trotskyism, which undermines the integrity of Leninism and replaces it with Trotskyism.

Different from the old Trotskyism, which tried to destroy Bolshevik party spirit by keeping in line with the Mensheviks, the new Trotskyism divided the history of the Party into two parts of unequal importance: pre-October and post-October. The pre-October part of the history of the Party is, properly speaking, not history, but “pre-history”, the unimportant or, at all events, not very important preparatory period of the Party. The post-October part of the history of the Party, however, is real, genuine history. This is a way of undermining the party spirit of the Bolsheviks. The old Trotskyism tried to discredit Lenin more or less openly, without fearing the consequences but the new Trotskyism is more cautious, it tries to achieve the purpose of the old Trotskyism by pretending to praise and exalt Lenin.

At the end of the speech, Stalin pointed out that the danger of new Trotskyism is that it is likely to become the center and assembly point of the non-proletarian elements who are trying to weaken and disintegrate the dictatorship of the proletariat. Therefore, it is the duty of the Party to bury Trotskyism as an ideological trend.

This speech is an important document reflecting the struggle within the C.P.S.U. (B) after Lenin’s death.