Imagine that a Communist has to enter premises in which
agents of the bourgeoisie are carrying on their propaganda at a fairly largo
meeting of workers. Imagine also that the bourgeoisie demands from us a high
price for admission to these premises. If the price has not been agreed to
beforehand we must bargain, of course, in order not to impose too heavy a
burden upon our Party funds. If we pay too much for admission to these
premises we shall undoubtedly commit an error. But it is better to pay a
high price at all events until we have learned to bargain properly than to
reject an opportunity of speaking to workers who hitherto have been in the
exclusive “possession ”, so to speak, of the reformists, i.e.,
of the most loyal friends of the bourgeoisie.

This analogy came to my mind when in today’s Pravda I read a
telegram from Berlin stating the terms on which agreement has been reached
between the representatives of the three Internationals.

In my opinion our representatives were wrong in agreeing to the following
two conditions: fitst, that the Soviet Government should not apply the death
penalty in the case of the forty-seven Socialist-Revolutionaries; second,
that the Soviet Government should permit representatives of the three
Internationals to be present at the trial.

These two conditions are nothing more nor less than a political
concession on the part of the revolutionary proletariat to the reactionary
bourgeoisie. If anyone has any doubt about the correctness of this
definition, then, to reveal the political navet of such a person, it
is sufficient to ask him the following questions. Would the British or any
other contemporary government permit representatives of the three
Internationals to attend the trial of Irish workers charged with rebellion?
Or the trial of the workers implicated in the recent rebellion in South
Africa? [1] Would the British or any other government, in
such, or similar circumstances, agree to promise that it would not impose
the death penalty on its political opponents? A little reflection over these
questions will be sufficient to enable one to understand the following
simple truth. All over the world a struggle is going on between the
reactionary bourgeoisie and the revolutionary proletariat. In the present
case the Communist International, which represents one side in this
struggle, makes a political concession to the other side, i.e., the
reactionary bourgeoisie; for everybody in the world knows (except those who
want to conceal the obvious truth) that the Socialist-Revolutionaries have
shot at Communists and have organised revolts against them, and that they
have done this actually, and sometimes officially, in a united front with
the whole of the international reactionary bourgeoisie.

The question is—what concession has the international bourgeoisie
made to us in return? There can only be one reply to this question, and it
is that no concession has been made to us whatever.

Only arguments which becloud this simple and clear truth of the class
struggle, only arguments which throw dust in the eyes of the masses of
working people, can obscure this obvious fact. Under the agreement signed in
Berlin by the representatives of the Third International we have made two
political concessions to the international bourgeoisie. We have obtained no
concession in return.

The representatives of the Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals acted
as blackmailers to extort a political concession from the proletariat for
the benefit of the bourgeoisie, while emphatically refusing, or at any rate
making no attempt, to induce the international bourgeoisie to make some
political concession to the revolutionary proletariat. Of course, this
incontrovertible political fact was obscured by shrewd bourgeois diplomats
(the bourgeoisie has been training members of its class to become good
diplomats for many centuries); but the attempt to obscure the fact does not
change it in the least. Whether the various representatives of the Second
and Two-and-a-Half Internationals are in direct or indirect collusion with
the bourgeoisie is a matter of tenth-rate importance in the present case. We
do not accuse them of being in direct collusion. The question of whether
there has been direct collusion or fairly intricate, indirect connection has
nothing to do with the case. The only point that has anything to do with it
is that as a result of the pressure of the representatives of the Second and
Two-and-a-Half Internationals, the Communist International has made a
political concession to the international bourgeoisie and has obtained no
concession in return.

What conclusion should be drawn from this?

First, that Comrades Radek, Bukharin and the others who represented the
Communist International acted wrongly.

Further. Does it follow from this that we must tear up the agreement that
they signed? No. I think it would be wrong to draw such a conclusion. We
ought not to tear up the agreement. All we have to do is to realise that on
this occasion the bourgeois diplomats proved to be more skilful than ours,
and that next time, if the price of admission is not fixed beforehand, we
must bargain and manoeuvre more skilfully. We must make it a rule not to
make political concessions to the international bourgeoisie (no matter how
skilfully these concessions may be concealed by intermediaries, no matter of
what sort) unless we receive in return more or less equivalent concessions
from the international bourgeoisie to Soviet Russia, or to the other
contingents of the international proletariat which is fighting
capitalism.

Perhaps the Italian Communists and a section of the French Communists and
Syndicalists, who were opposed to united front tactics, will infer from the
above argument that united front tactics are wrong. But such an inference
will obviously be wrong. If the communist representatives have paid too much
for admission to premises in which they have some, even if small,
opportunity of addressing workers up to now in the exclusive
“possession” of reformists, such a mistake must be rectified
next time. But it would be an incomparably greater mistake to reject all
terms, or all payment for admission to these fairly well-guarded and barred
premises. The mistake that Comrades Radek, Bukharin and the others made is
not a grave one, especially as our only risk is that the enemies of Soviet
Russia may be encouraged by the result of the Berlin Conference to make two
or three perhaps successful attempts on the lives of certain persons; for
they know beforehand that they can shoot at Communists in the expectation
that conferences like the Berlin Conference will hinder the Communists from
shooting at them.

At all events, we have made some breach in the premises that were closed
to us. At all events, Comrade Radek has succeeded in exposing, at least to a
section of the workers, the fact that the Second International refused to
include among the slogans of the demonstration a demand to annul the Treaty
of Versailles. The great mistake the Italian Communists and a section of the
French Communists and Syndicalists make is in being content with the
knowledge they already possess. They are content with knowing well enough
that the representatives of the Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals,
and also Paul Levi, Serrati and others, are very shrewd agents of the
bourgeoisie and vehicles of their influence. But people, workers, who really
know this, and who really understand its significance, are undoubtedly in
the minority in Italy, Britain, the U.S.A. and France. Communists must not
stew in their own juice, but must learn to penetrate into prohibited
premises where the representatives of the bourgeoisie are influencing the
workers; and in this they must not shrink from making certain sacrifices and
not be afraid of making mistakes, which, at first, are inevitable in every
new and difficult undertaking. The Communists who refuse to understand this
and who do not want to learn how to do it cannot hope to win over the
majority of the workers; at all events, they are hindering and retarding the
work of winning this majority. For Communists, and all genuine adherents of
the workers’ revolution, this is absolutely unpardonable.

Once again, the bourgeoisie, in the persons of their diplomats, have
outwitted the representatives of the Communist International. Such is the
lesson of the Berlin Conference. We shall not forget this lesson. We shall
draw all the necessary conclusions from it. The representatives of the
Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals need a united front, for they hope
to weaken us by inducing us to make exorbitant concessions; they hope to
penetrate into our communist premises without any payment; they hope to
utilise united front tactics for the purpose of convincing the workers that
reformist tactics are correct and that revolutionary tactics are wrong. We
need a united front because we hope to convince the workers of the
opposite. We shall put the blame for the mistakes on our communist
representatives who committed them, and on those parties which commit them,
while we shall try to learn from these mistakes and to prevent a repetition
of them in the future. But under no circumstances shall we thrust the blame
for the mistakes of our Communists upon the proletarian masses, who all over
the world are facing the onslaught of advancing capital. We adopted united
front tactics in order to help these masses to fight capitalism, to help
them understand the “cunning mechanism” of the two fronts in
international economics and in international politics; and we shall pursue
these tactics to the end.

April 9, 1922

Endnotes

[1]
Workers’ uprisings broke out in March 1922 in Johannesburg, Benoni and
Brakpan in South Africa. In order to preserve their profits following the
drop of the price of gold in the world market, the owners of the goidlields
began lowering the wages of European workers and discharging them en
masse. On January 9, 1922, this provoked a strike in the gold-fields. In
March the strike developed into an uprising. The workers seized the towns of
Benoni and Brakpan, and two workers’ suburbs (Fordsburg and
Geppestown) of Johannesburg. The then young Communist Party of South Africa
was active in the uprising. Many Communists heroically sacrificed their
lives during the armed struggle. On March 10, the reactionary government of
General Smuts declared the above towns in a state of siege, and brought in
troops, artillery and aircraft. On March 14, the uprising was suppressed and
more than 10,000 persons were arrested. Thousands of workers were tried by
military tribunals.