In the February resolution of the E.C.C.I. the representatives of the Comintern, “Comrade N. and others,” are made responsible for the “absence of an elected Soviet in Canton as an organ of insurrection.” (Emphasis in the original.) Behind this charge in reality lies an astounding admission.

In the report of Pravda (No. 31), written on the basis of first-hand documents, it was stated that a Soviet government had been established in Canton. But not a word was mentioned to indicate that the Canton Soviet was not an elected organ, i.e., that it was not a Soviet—for how can there be a Soviet which was not elected? We learn this from the resolution. Let us reflect for a moment on the significance of this fact. The E.C.C.I. tells us now that a Soviet is necessary to effect an armed insurrection, but by no means prior to that time. But lo and behold! When the date for the insurrection is set, there is no Soviet. To create an elected Soviet is not an easy matter. It is necessary that the masses know from experience what a Soviet is, that they understand its form, that they have learned something in the past to accustom them to an elected Soviet organization. There was not even a sign of this in China, for the slogan of Soviets was declared to be a Trotskyist slogan precisely in the period when it should have become the nerve center of the entire movement. When, however, helter-skelter, a date was set for an insurrection so as to skip over their own defeats, they simultaneously had to appoint a Soviet as well. If this error is not laid bare to the core, the slogan of Soviets can be transformed into a strangling noose of the revolution.

Lenin in his time explained to the Mensheviks that the fundamental historical task of the Soviets is to organize, or help organize, the conquest of power so that on the day after the victory they become the organ of that power. The epigones—and not the disciples—draw from this the conclusion that Soviets can be organized only when the 12th hour of the insurrection has struck. Lenin’s broad generalization they transform post factum into a little recipe which does not serve the interests of the revolution but imperils it.

Before the Bolshevik Soviets in October 1917 captured power, the S.R. and Menshevik Soviets had existed for nine months. Twelve years before, the first revolutionary Soviets existed in Petersburg, Moscow, and scores of other cities. Before the Soviet of 1905 was extended to embrace the mills and factories of the capital, there was created in Moscow, during the strike, a Soviet of printers’ deputies. Several months before this, in May 1905, a mass strike in Ivanovo-Voznesiensk set up a leading organ which already contained all the essential features of a Soviet of workers’ deputies. Between the first experiment of setting up a Soviet of workers’ deputies and the gigantic experiment of setting up a Soviet government, more than twelve years rolled by. Of course, such a period is not at all required for all other countries, including China. But to think that the Chinese workers are capable of building Soviets on the basis of the little recipe that has been substituted for Lenin’s broad generalization is to substitute impotent and importunate pedantry for the dialectic of revolutionary action. Soviets must be set up not on the eve of the insurrection, not under the slogan of immediate seizure of power—for if the matter has reached the point of the seizure of power, if the masses are prepared for an armed insurrection without a Soviet, it means that there have been other organizational forms and methods which made possible the performance of the preparatory work to insure the success of the uprising. Then the question of Soviets becomes of secondary importance and is reduced to a question of organizational technique or merely to a question of denomination. The task of the Soviets is not merely to issue the call for the insurrection or to carry it out, but to lead the masses toward the insurrection through the necessary stages. At first the Soviet rallies the masses not to the slogan of armed insurrection, but to partial slogans, so that only later, step by step, the masses are brought towards the slogan of insurrection without scattering them on the road and without allowing the vanguard to become isolated from the class. The Soviet appears most often and primarily in connection with strike struggles which have the perspectives of revolutionary development, but are in the given moment limited merely to economic demands. The masses must sense and understand while in action that the Soviet is their organization, that it marshals the forces for a struggle, for resistance, for self-defense, and for an offensive. They can sense and understand this not from an action of a single day nor in general from any single act, but from the experience of several weeks, months, and perhaps years, with or without interruptions. That is why only an epigonic and bureaucratic leadership can restrain the awakening and rising masses from creating Soviets in conditions when the country is passing through an epoch of revolutionary upheavals and when the working class and the poor peasants have before them the prospect of capturing power, even though this is a perspective of one of the subsequent stages and even if this perspective can be envisaged in the given phase only by a small minority. Such was always our conception of the Soviets. We evaluated the Soviets as that broad and flexible organizational form which is accessible to the masses who have just awakened at the very first stages of their revolutionary upsurge; and which is capable of uniting the working class in its entirety, independent of the size of that section which, in the given phase, has already matured to the point of understanding the task of the seizure of power.

Is any documentary evidence really necessary? Here, for instance, is what Lenin wrote about the Soviets in the epoch of the first revolution:

“The Social Democratic Labor Party of Russia [the name of the party at that time] has never refused to utilize at moments of greater or smaller revolutionary upsurge certain non-party organizations of the type of Soviets of Workers’ Deputies in order to strengthen the influence of the social democrats on the working class and to consolidate the social democratic labor movement.”
(Works, Vol. VIII, p. 215.)

One could cite voluminous literary and historic evidence of this type. But one would imagine that the question is sufficiently clear without them.

In contradistinction to this the epigones have converted the Soviets into an organizational parade uniform with which the party simply dresses up the proletariat on the eve of the capture of power. But this is precisely the time when we find that the Soviets cannot be improvised in 24 hours, by order, for the direct purpose of an armed insurrection. Such experiments must inevitably assume a fictitious character and the absence of the most necessary conditions for the capture of power is masked by the external ritual of a Soviet system. That is what happened in Canton where the Soviet was simply appointed to observe the ritual. That is where the epigone formulation of the question leads.

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During the polemics on the Chinese events the Opposition was accused of the following alleged flagrant contradiction: whereas from 1926 on the Opposition advanced the slogan of Soviets for China, its representatives spoke against the slogan of Soviets for Germany in the Autumn of 1923. On no other point perhaps has scholastic political thought expressed itself so glaringly as in this accusation. Yes, we demanded for China a timely start for the creation of Soviets as independent organizations of workers and peasants, when the wave of revolutionary upsurge was mounting.

The chief significance of the Soviets was to be that of opposing the workers and peasants to the Kuomintang bourgeoisie and its Left Kuomintang agency. The slogan of Soviets in China meant above all the break with the suicidal and infamous “bloc of four classes” and the withdrawal of the communist party from the Kuomintang. The center of gravity consequently lay not in bare organizational forms, but in the class line.

In the Autumn of 1923 in Germany it was a question of organizational form only. As a result of the extreme passivity, backwardness, and tardiness of the leadership of the Comintern and the Communist Party of Germany, the moment for a timely call for the organization of Soviets was missed. The factory committees, due to pressure from below and of their own accord, had occupied in the labor movement of Germany by the Autumn of 1923 the place which would no doubt have been much more successfully occupied by Soviets had there been a correct and daring policy on the part of the communist party. The acuteness of the situation had in the meantime reached its sharpest point. To lose any more time would have meant definitely to miss the revolutionary situation. The insurrection was finally placed on the order of the day, with very little time left. To advance the slogan of Soviets under such conditions would have been the greatest pedantic stupidity conceivable. The Soviet is not a talisman with omnipotent powers of salvation. In a situation such as had then developed, the hurried creation of Soviets would only have duplicated the factory committees. It would have become necessary to deprive the latter of their revolutionary functions and to transfer them to the newly created and still utterly unauthoritative Soviets. And when was this to be done? Under conditions in which each day counted. This would have meant to substitute for revolutionary action a most pernicious game in organizational gew-gaws.

It is incontestable that the organizational form of a Soviet can be of enormous importance; but only at a time when it furnishes a timely reflection of the correct political line. And conversely, it can acquire a no less negative meaning if it is converted into a fiction, a fetish, a bagatelle. The German Soviets created at the very last moment in the Autumn of 1923 would have added nothing politically; they would only have caused organizational confusion. What happened in Canton was even worse yet. The Soviet which was created in a hurry to observe the ritual was only a masquerade for the adventurist putsch. That is why we discovered, after it was all over, that the Canton Soviet resembled an ancient Chinese dragon simply drawn on paper. The policy of pulling rotten strings and paper dragons is not our policy. We were against improvising Soviets by telegraph in Germany in September 1923. We were for the creation of Soviets in China in 1926. We were against the masquerade Soviet in Canton in 1927. There are no contradictions here. We have here instead the profound unity of the conception of the dynamics of the revolutionary movement and its organizational forms.

The question of the role and significance of the Soviets, which had been distorted and confused and obscured by the theory and practice of recent years, has not been illuminated in the least in the draft program.