It is strange that one must again raise so elementary, such an ABC question. Unfortunately, Trotsky and Bukharin force one to do so. Both of them reproach me for "substituting" the question, or approaching it "politically," while they approach it "economically." Bukharin even inserted this into his theses and attempted to "rise above" both disputants: I allegedly combine both the one and the other.

The theoretical incorrectness is glaring. "Politics is the concentrated expression of economics" — I repeated this in my speech, because I had heard earlier this absurd reproach, entirely inadmissible from the lips of a Marxist, for my "political" approach. Politics cannot but have priority over economics. To reason otherwise means forgetting the ABC of Marxism.

Perhaps my political evaluation is incorrect? Say so and prove it. But to say (or even indirectly to permit the thought) that the political approach is equivalent to the "economic" approach, that one can take "one and the other," this means forgetting the ABC of Marxism.

In other words. The political approach means: if one approaches trade unions incorrectly, this will ruin Soviet power, the dictatorship of the proletariat. (A split of the party with the trade unions, given that the party is in the wrong, would surely have toppled Soviet power in such a peasant country as Russia.) One can (and must) check this consideration on its merits, i.e., examine it carefully, delve into it, decide whether this approach is correct or incorrect. But to say: I "appreciate" your political approach, "but" it is merely political, we need the "economic" one as well — this is the same as saying: I "appreciate" your reasoning that by taking such a step you will break your neck, but also weigh the fact that being well-fed and well-clothed is better than being hungry and ragged.

Bukharin has theoretically slid into eclecticism by preaching a combination of the political and economic approach.

Trotsky and Bukharin depict the matter as if they care about the growth of production, while we care only about formal democracy. This depiction is false, because the question stands (and, in the Marxist way, can only stand) thus: without the correct political approach to the matter, a given class cannot maintain its rule, and consequently cannot solve its production task either.

More concretely. Zinoviev says: "You are making a political error by driving things to splits in the trade unions. As for the growth of production, I spoke and wrote about it already in January 1920, citing as an example the building of a bathhouse." Trotsky replies: "What a fuss, as if it's something (p. 29), to write a pamphlet with an example about a bathhouse, but you have 'not a word,' 'not a single word' (p. 22) about what the trade unions should do."

False. The example with the bathhouse is worth, pardon the pun, ten "production atmospheres" with several "production democracies" thrown in. The example with the bathhouse speaks clearly, simply, precisely for the masses, precisely for the "rank and file," about what the trade unions should do, while "production atmospheres" and "democracies" are rubbish clouding the eyes of the working masses, hindering their understanding.

Comrade Trotsky also reproached me that "Lenin said not a word" (p. 66) about "what role the levers play and should play, which are called the trade union apparatus."

Pardon, Comrade Trotsky: having read through in full the theses of Rudzutak and having endorsed them, I said about this more fully, more correctly, more simply, more clearly than all your theses and your entire report or co-report and closing remarks. Because, I repeat, in-kind bonuses and disciplinary comradely courts are worth a hundred times more for mastering the economy, for managing industry, for increasing the production role of trade unions, than completely abstract (and therefore empty) words about "production democracy," about "fusion," and so forth.

Under the pretext of advancing the "production" viewpoint (Trotsky) or overcoming the one-sidedness of the political approach and combining this approach with the economic one (Bukharin), we have been given:

1) a forgetting of Marxism, expressed in a theoretically incorrect, eclectic definition of the relationship between politics and economics;

2) a defense or concealment of that political error which is expressed in the politics of reshuffling, which permeates through and through all of Trotsky's pamphlet-platform. And this error, if it is not recognized and corrected, leads to the fall of the dictatorship of the proletariat;

3) a step backward in the sphere of purely production questions, economic questions, questions about how to increase production; precisely a step backward from the businesslike theses of Rudzutak, which pose concrete, practical, vital, living tasks (develop production propaganda, learn to distribute in-kind bonuses properly and use coercion more correctly in the form of comradely disciplinary courts), to abstract, detached, "hollowed-out," theoretically incorrect, intellectually formulated general theses, with a forgetting of what is most businesslike and practical.

This is the actual relationship between Zinoviev and myself, on the one hand, and Trotsky and Bukharin, on the other, on the question of politics and economics.

I therefore could not read without a smile the objection which Comrade Trotsky made public on December 30: "Comrade Lenin in his closing remarks at the VIII Congress of Soviets on the report on our situation said that we need less politics, more economic activity, but on the question of trade unions he placed the political side of the matter in the forefront" (p. 65). These words seemed to Comrade Trotsky to be "extremely apt." In fact, they express the most desperate confusion of concepts, an "ideological turmoil" truly boundless. Of course, I have always expressed, do express, and will express the wish that we busy ourselves with less politics, more economy. But it is easy to understand that to fulfill these wishes, there must be no political dangers and political errors. The political errors committed by Comrade Trotsky and deepened, aggravated by Comrade Bukharin, distract our party from economic tasks, from "production" work, force us, unfortunately, to waste time correcting these errors, on disputing with the syndicalist deviation (leading to the fall of the dictatorship of the proletariat), disputing against the incorrect approach to the trade union movement (an approach leading to the fall of Soviet power), disputing about general "theses" instead of carrying on a businesslike, practical, "economic" dispute about who better and more successfully distributed in-kind bonuses, organized courts, achieved fusion on the basis of the theses of Rudzutak, adopted on November 2-6 by the Fifth All-Russian Conference of Trade Unions: the Saratov millers, coal miners in the Donbass, metalworkers in Petrograd, and so forth.

Take the question of the benefit of "broad discussion." Here we shall see as well how political errors distract from economic tasks. I was against the so-called "broad" discussion and considered, and still consider, Comrade Trotsky's disruption of the trade union commission, in which a businesslike discussion should have taken place, a political error. I consider it a political error of the buffer group with Bukharin at its head that they did not understand the tasks of the buffer (they substituted eclecticism for dialectics here as well); from the standpoint of the "buffer" they were precisely supposed to come out with fierce energy against the broad discussion and for shifting discussion to the trade union commission. Look at what came of it.

On December 30 Bukharin came to the point of saying: "we proclaimed a new sacred slogan of workers' democracy, which consists in discussing all questions not in narrow collegiums, not in small meetings, not in some corporate body of our own, but bringing all questions before broad meetings. And so, I assert that by bringing the question of the role of trade unions before such an enormous meeting as today's, we thereby take a step not backward, but forward" (p. 45). And this man accused Zinoviev of water-carrying and exaggerating democracy! Sheer water-carrying and "idle chatter," complete lack of understanding that formal democratism must be subordinated to revolutionary expediency!

No better with Trotsky. He comes forth with the accusation: "Lenin wants at any cost to suppress the discussion on the merits of the question, to disrupt it" (p. 65). He declares: "Why I did not join the commission, about this I spoke clearly to the Central Committee: as long as I am not permitted, on equal terms with all other comrades, to raise these questions in full scope in the party press, I expect no benefit from a secret consideration of these questions, and therefore no benefit from work in the commission" (p. 69).

The result? Not even a month has passed since Trotsky began the "broad discussion" on December 25, and one would hardly find 1 out of 100 responsible party workers who does not feel sick of this discussion, who does not recognize its uselessness (if not worse). Because Trotsky stole time from the party with a dispute about words, about bad theses, berating as "secret" consideration precisely the businesslike, economic consideration in the commission, which would have set itself the task of studying and checking practical experience in order, learning from this experience, to move forward in genuine "production" work, and not backward, from living practice to dead scholasticism of all sorts of "production atmospheres."

Take the much-talked-of "fusion." I advised on December 30 to keep quiet about it, because we have not studied our own practical experience, and without this condition disputes about fusion inevitably degenerate into water-carrying, into an empty diversion of the party's forces from economic work. I called bureaucratic scheming the theses of Trotsky on this point with proposals to introduce into the composition of the Councils of National Economy from 1/3 to 1/2 and from 1/2 to 2/3 representatives of trade unions.[24]

Bukharin was very angry with me over this, and as I see from p. 49 of the record, carefully and in detail proved to me "that when people gather and talk about something, they should not play deaf-mute" (literally thus printed on the indicated page!). Trotsky was also angry, exclaiming:

"I ask each of you to write down in your notebook that Comrade Lenin called this bureaucratism on such-and-such a date, and I venture to predict that within several months this will be adopted and taken note of and taken as a guide, so that in the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions and the Supreme Council of the National Economy, in the Central Committee of the Metalworkers and in the Metal Department, and so forth, there would be common workers from one-third to one-half…" (p. 68).

Having read this, I asked Comrade Milyutin (Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Council of the National Economy) to send me the available printed reports on the question of fusion. I thought to myself: let me begin at least to study somewhat our practical experience, for it is unbearably tiresome to engage in "general party chatter" (Bukharin's expression, p. 47, which will perhaps become as much of a "stock phrase" as the famous "reshuffling") — in vain, without material, without facts, sucking out of thin air disagreements, definitions, "production democracies."

So then, even now the participation of workers, on average, amounts to 61.6%, i.e., closer to 2/3 than to one-half! The bureaucratic-scheming character of what Comrade Trotsky wrote about this in his theses is already proved. To speak, to dispute, to write platforms "from 1/3 to 1/2" or "1/2 to 2/3," all this is the most empty "general party chatter," a diversion of forces, means, attention, time from production work, pure politicking without serious content. But in a commission where people with experience could be found, where people would not agree to write theses without studying facts, one could profitably occupy oneself with checking the experience — say, by questioning a dozen or so (out of a thousand "common workers"), comparing their impressions and conclusions with objective statistical data, attempting to achieve businesslike, practical directives for the future: should one, given such results of experience, move forward now in the same direction or somewhat alter and how exactly to alter the direction, methods, approach, or, in the interests of the work, stop, check the experience yet again, redo some things perhaps, and so forth and so on.

A genuine "economist," comrades (allow me too to engage a little in "production propaganda"!), knows that capitalists and trust organizers even in the most advanced countries spent many years, sometimes ten years and more, studying and checking their own (and others') practical experience, correcting, redoing what they had begun, going back, correcting many times, in order to achieve a system of management fully suited to the given work, selecting senior and junior administrators, and so forth. This was so under capitalism, which throughout the civilized world rested in its economic work on the experience and habits of centuries. But we are building on new soil, requiring the longest, most stubborn and patient work of re-educating the habits which capitalism left us as an inheritance, and whose transformation is possible only very gradually. To approach this question as Trotsky approaches it is fundamentally wrong. "Do our workers, do our party and trade union workers have production education?" he exclaimed in his speech on December 30. "Yes or no? I answer: no" (p. 29). To approach such a question in this way is absurd. As if you were asking: does this division have a sufficient quantity of felt boots? Yes or no?

Even in ten years we shall surely have to say that all party and trade union workers do not have sufficient production education. Just as in ten years there will not be sufficient military education among all party and trade union workers and military officials. But the beginning of production education among us has been created by the fact that approximately a thousand workers, members and delegates of trade unions, participate in and manage enterprises, chief administrations, and higher. The fundamental principle of "production education," the education of ourselves, old illegal workers and professional journalists, consists in the fact that we ourselves should undertake and teach others to undertake the most careful and detailed study of our own practical experience, according to the rule: "measure seven times, cut once." Persistent, slow, cautious, businesslike, business-minded checking of what this thousand has done, even more cautious and business-minded correction of their work and movement forward only after the benefit of the given method, given system of management, given proportion, given selection of persons, and so forth, has been fully proved. This is the fundamental, root, unconditional rule of "production education," and it is precisely this rule that Comrade Trotsky violates with all his theses, with his entire approach to the question. Precisely all the theses, the entire pamphlet-platform of Comrade Trotsky are such that their errors diverted the attention and forces of the party from businesslike "production" work to empty, contentless word-mongering.