What is a "Mass Paper"?
By Leon Trotsky, 30 November 1935, published in The Crisis of
the French Section (1935-36)
To the Members of the Bolshevik-Leninist Group:
I have just learned that my letter to the Political Bureau on the
new "mass paper" ["Turn to the Masses!"] was read to the general meeting. I can
only rejoice if it succeeded in clarifying the situation a little. I addressed
myself first to the Political Bureau in the hope that the question could be
solved without a new discussion on the foundations determined by the last
national conference. But it developed that the initiators of La Commune,
after having prepared their undertaking outside the organization, and in
fact against both the national and international organizations, decided to
provoke a discussion after the fait accompli. In these circumstances it would
perhaps not be without value if I enlarged in a more precise manner upon the
criticisms and suggestions contained in my letter to the Political Bureau.
1. What is a "mass paper"? The question is not new. It can be said
that the whole history of the revolutionary movement has been filled with
discussions on the "mass paper." It is the elementary duty of a revolutionary
organization to make its political newspaper as accessible as possible to the
masses. This task cannot be effectively solved except as a function of the
growth of the organization and its cadres, who must pave the way to the masses
for the newspaper--since it is not enough, of course, to call a publication a
"mass paper" for the masses to really accept it. But quite often revolutionary
impatience (which becomes transformed easily into opportunist impatience) leads
to this conclusion: The masses do not come to us because our ideas are too
complicated and our slogans too advanced. It is therefore necessary to simplify
our program, water down our slogans--in short, to throw out some ballast.
Basically, this means: Our slogans must correspond not to the objective
situation, not to the relation of classes, analyzed by the Marxist method, but
to subjective assessments (extremely superficial and inadequate ones) of what
the "masses" can or cannot accept. But what masses? The mass is not
homogeneous. It develops. It feels the pressure of events. It will accept
tomorrow what it will not accept today. Our cadres will blaze the trail with
increasing success for our ideas and slogans, which will be shown to be
correct, because they are confirmed by the march of events and not by
subjective and personal assessments.
2. A mass paper is distinguished from a theoretical review or from
a journal for cadres not by the slogans but by the manner in which
they are presented. The cadre journal unfolds for its readers all the steps
of the Marxist analysis. The mass paper presents only its results, basing
itself at the same time on the immediate experience of the masses themselves.
It is far more difficult to write in a Marxist manner for the masses than it
is to write for cadres.
3. Let us suppose for a moment that the GBL consented to
"simplify" our program, to renounce the slogans for the new party and for the
Fourth International, to renounce implacable criticism of the social patriots
(naming them by name), to renounce systematic criticism of the Revolutionary
Left and of Pivert personally. I do not know if this newspaper would become,
with the help of a magic wand, a mass paper. I doubt it. But it would in any
event become a SAPist or Pivertist paper. The essence of the
Pivert tendency is just that: to accept "revolutionary" slogans, but not to
draw from them the necessary conclusions, which are the break with Blum and
Zyromsky, the creation of the new party and the new International. Without
that, all the "revolutionary" slogans become null and void. At the present
stage the Pivert agitation is a sort of opium for the revolutionary workers.
Pivert wants to teach them that one can be for revolutionary struggle, for
"revolutionary action" (to borrow a phrase now in vogue), and remain at the
same time on good terms with chauvinist scum. Everything depends on your
"tone," you see? It is the tone that makes the music. If the tiger cooed like a
pigeon the whole world would be enchanted. But we, with our rude language, we
must say that the leaders of the Revolutionary Left are demoralizing and
prostituting revolutionary consciousness.
I ask you: If we renounced the slogans which are dictated by the
objective situation, and which constitute the very essence of our program, in
what shall we be distinguished from the Pivertists? In nothing. We would only
be second-rate Pivertists. But if the "masses" should have to decide for the
Pivertists, they would prefer the first-rate to the second.
4. I take up the little appeal printed for "La
Commune--organ of revolutionary (?) action (?)." This document provides us
with a striking demonstration (unsought by its authors) of some of the ideas
expressed above. "La Commune will speak the language of the factories
and the fields. It will tell of the misery which reigns there; it will express
its passions and rouse to revolt."
This is a very laudable intention, although the masses know
perfectly well their own misery and their feelings of revolt (stifled by the
patriotic apparatuses with the aid of the Pivertists). What the masses can
demand of a newspaper is a clear program and a correct orientation. But
precisely on this question the appeal is utterly silent. Why? Because it wants
more to conceal its ideas than to express them. It accepts the SAPist
(centrist) recipe: in seeking the line of least resistance do not say what
is. The program of the Fourth International, thats for "us," for the
big shots of the leadership. And the masses? What are the masses? They can rest
content with a quarter, or even a tenth, of the program. This mentality we call
elitism, of both an opportunist and, at the same time, an adventurist type. It
is a very dangerous attitude, comrades. It is not the attitude of a
Marxist.
We find in the appeal, after the sentence quoted, a number of
historical reminiscences: "To the sons and grandsons of the fighters of the
Croix-Rousse, of those who manned the barricades of June 1848, of the
Communards of 1871, La Commune says," etc. (followed by rhetoric
à la Magdeleine Paz). I do not know, truly, if the rebelling masses need
literary reminiscences and somewhat hollow rhetoric disguised as a program.
But here is where the most important part begins: "La
Commune is not going to add itself to the multiplicity of tendencies in the
workers movement." What sovereign scorn for the "multiplicity" of
existing tendencies! What does that mean? If all the tendencies are wrong or
insufficient, a new one has to be created, the true one, the correct one. If
there are true and false tendencies, then the workers must be taught to
distinguish among them. The masses must be called on to join the correct
tendency to fight the false ones. But no, the initiators of La Commune,
somewhat like Romain Rolland, place themselves "above the battle." Such a
procedure is absolutely unworthy of Marxists.
After this a number of names are proclaimed in order to
particularize, however little, the utterly vague character of the new paper. I
set aside my own name, which La Commune claims without the slightest
justification. Being among the living, I can at least defend myself. But the
others, our common teachers, the real leaders of revolutionary socialism?
Unfortunately, they are defenseless. The appeal names Marx and Blanqui. What
does that mean? Do they want to create a new "synthesis" of Marxism and
Blanquism? How will the masses disentangle themselves from the combination of
these two names? A little farther on we find Lenin. But the Stalinists claim
him also. If you do not explain to the masses that you are against the
Stalinist tendency, they will have to prefer lHumanité to
La Commune. This combination of names explains nothing. It only extends
and deepens the ambiguity.
And here is the high point: "La Commune is launched by
militants belonging to various tendencies to bring about the rise of a great
army of communards." What does this mean, this unknown crew of anonymous,
unknown "various tendencies"? What tendencies are involved? Why are they
(still unknown) grouped outside and against the other tendencies? The purpose
of creating a "great army of communards" is laudable. But it is necessary not
to forget that this army, once created (1871), suffered a terrific catastrophe
because that magnificent army lacked a program and a leadership.
The conclusion: The appeal could have been written by Marceau
Pivert (in collaboration with Magdeleine Paz) except for one point--the name of
the author of these lines. But as for me, I repeat, I am implacably opposed to
this equivocal and anti-Marxist appeal.
5. The adherence of the GBL to the SFIO has proved absolutely
correct. It was a step forward. The Mulhouse congress was the high point of the
Bolshevik-Leninist influence in the SFIO. It was necessary to understand that
the limit of the possibilities within the Socialist Party was being reached (at
least for the adults). It was necessary to utilize the newly won and fresh
authority to influence new and virgin elements outside the Socialist Party,
whose social composition is miserable. It is this suggestion which I expressed
in a letter since published in an internal bulletin of the GBL (no. 6, letter
of June 10), and which I permit myself to recommend to the comrades for
rereading in connection with the present letter. Passing through Paris [on the
way to Norway] I met with several comrades, especially some of the future
promoters of La Commune, who were in strong opposition to the idea of a
new turn. These comrades had taken a liking to their activity in reformist and
centrist circles and hoped to be able to progress further and further. It was a
mistake. Time and strength were wasted fruitlessly instead of emulating the
youth, whose orientation was more correct because it was directed toward the
young workers outside the Socialist Party.
Then came the expulsions at Lille. I, for my part, regarded them
as an act of liberation, because they expressed the reality: the
impossibility of fruitful future activity in the ranks of the SFIO,
especially with the approach of war and fusion with the Stalinists. It
seemed that the fact of the expulsion was so eloquent as to spare us the need
for any discussion as to what road to take. It was necessary to open up a
vigorous and implacable offensive against the expellers, not as "splitters"
(thats the small talk of Pivert), but primarily as the valets of French
imperialism. It was necessary at the same time to criticize Pivert openly,
since he had taken the place of Zyromsky in covering the left wing of the
Peoples Front. It was necessary to develop the program of committees
of action, to oppose collaboration with the Radicals, and to proclaim
openly the necessity for preparing a new party to save the proletariat
and its younger generation. Instead of that, the Commune group sought
above all to win the sympathies of the Revolutionary Left by personal
maneuvering, by combinations in the lobbies, and above all by abdication of our
slogans and of criticism of the centrists. Marceau Pivert declared two or three
months ago that the struggle against "Trotskyism" is the sign of a reactionary
tendency. But now he himself, led by the SAP people, represents this
reactionary tendency. The Revolutionary Left has become the most immediate
and most noxious obstacle in the development of the revolutionary vanguard.
That is what has to be said openly and everywhere, i.e., especially in a
mass newspaper. But the Commune group has gone so far in its romance
with the Pivertists that one is forced to ask if these comrades are still with
us or if they have passed over to centrist positions. That is where one gets
when one throws principles overboard and adapts oneself longer than is
necessary to the reformist apparatus and its centrist valets.
6. We may ask: and Révolution? It is also not the
paper of our tendency. Nevertheless we participate in it. That is correct, but
Révolution is the paper of an organization which everybody
knows--the Young Socialists. The newspaper is led by two tendencies
which are drawing close and which must inevitably fuse. The progressive
character of the Revolutionary Socialist Youth is determined precisely by this
fact: that they are turning toward the Bolshevik-Leninists and not toward the
Revolutionary Left. (The episodic adherence of Comrade Zeller to the
Revolutionary Left, after all that had happened, was a mistake the
responsibility for which must be shared by the Commune group.)
Révolution is a living, moving paper which can
become the paper of the proletarian youth. To accomplish this task, however,
Révolution must not fall into the shadows of La
Communes confusion, but must concretize its positioni.e.,
definitively accept the slogans of the Bolshevik-Leninists.
7. La Vérité is an absolute necessity. But it
must liberate itself from the centrist influences which resulted in the appeal
of La Commune. La Vérité must resume its fighting,
intransigent character. The most important object of its criticism is
Pivertism, which is opposed to Leninism and has thus become, by its own
characterization, a reactionary tendency.
8. I do not want to analyze in this letter the extraordinary
methods employed by the Commune group vis-à-vis its own national
and international tendency. It is a very important question but nevertheless
secondary in comparison with the question of program and banner.
I believe, dear comrades, that you have the greatest opportunities
before you. You are at last going to reap the fruits of your efforts up to now,
but on one condition: that you do not permit a confusion of tendencies, of
ideas and banners; that you practice Leninist intransigence more than ever and
orient yourselves openly and vigorously toward the new party and the Fourth
International.
L. Trotsky |