When we launched La Vérité, we set ourselves a period of six months for the indispensable preparatory work. It was necessary to show in an entirely precise manner what we are, what we want, and we knew very well that a preliminary declaration, however explicit it might be, would not suffice. That it would need to receive an indispensable complement through our commentaries on the events of the week, through our answers to the problems posed.
We had to show in what way our action differed from that conducted by other opposition groups, to bring out the points on which profound political divergences existed. This differentiation was all the more necessary because, at the very moment we were setting out, new currents were manifesting themselves within the CGTU, currents that were to engender a sharp internal struggle within the unitary trade unions.
This period of six months proved barely sufficient to allow us to attain this first goal. The task of an opposition that intends to remain communist is a hard one. It finds itself caught between those who, in leaving the party, abandon communism at the same stroke, and the small army of officials hardened in the battle against those who refuse to servilely apply the watchwords of the leadership. Blows rain down from both sides.
We have received them. We have also given them, and have finally succeeded in imposing ourselves for what we are, and not as some would have wished to represent us. We are communists. We gave our adherence to communism after due reflection; we remain attached to it as we remain attached to the Russian Revolution; we defend it against the dangerous Stalinist deformations and we defend the Soviet Union against the Thermidorian forces that threaten it from within. That is why, even when we are outside the party, we keep in contact with all the sound elements of the party.
The results of this work of clarification and delimitation have shown themselves in two areas. We first had to attend to the most pressing matters, devoting the greater part of our efforts to the newspaper, to its improvement, to its influence, to its circulation. But the comrades whom we have brought together have insisted ever more strongly on the necessity of a methodical organisation of our group. And it is the details of this organisation that we have just settled. We sought the best name and finally confined ourselves to taking up again the name Communist League (Opposition), adopted by our American comrades.
Our Left Opposition has an international character, on which we have often insisted. We have done so because this has seemed to us more necessary than ever in a period characterised by dispersion, by the withdrawal into oneself that leads to national labour movements, at the very moment when the internationalism of the bourgeoisie continues to expand. We have already spoken of the necessity of an International Secretariat serving as a first link between the groups of the Left Opposition in the various countries. We were counting on setting it up by a simple exchange of letters, given the material difficulty that there was, for the present, in holding an international conference.
New circumstances having led us to glimpse the possibility of such a meeting, we hastened to organise it, and it was thus that, last Sunday, we were able to meet with comrades belonging to the most important groups, to settle the material details of the constitution of the secretariat, to exchange experiences and ideas, which already made it possible to broach the problems that our international conference will have to resolve. The atmosphere of this first meeting was most heartening and most encouraging for all those who took part in it. At the close of that good day, we all felt ourselves stronger to undertake the new stage.
But there is one thing that we have already said and that we must repeat: the Left Opposition cannot develop, it cannot accomplish its task, unless each of its members devotes to it all his effort, all his activity. The influence of the newspaper must be increased; groups must be created around oneself which will be so many rallying points for all those communists whom the disastrous Stalinist zigzags alarm and who no longer know how or where to fight; in the grave crisis through which the CGTU is passing, we must fight without respite to check the drift towards autonomy that the confederal leadership has brought about through its absurd policy and which risks drawing in an ever-increasing number of minority members; above all we must save the young people, literally abandoned by their official organisation: the Left Opposition must appear to them as their home.
The central question posed by the present situation is to know who will profit from the crisis that is ravaging the communist organisations. The bourgeoisie and its reformist lackeys are on the watch. They have already had too many occasions for rejoicing. It is high time to bring communism back onto the path along which it draws and guides the working class, the path that leads to victory.
Alfred Rosmer, La Vérité, no. 31, 11 April 1930.