On the Slogan "Down with the Communists!"

[stachkom]

On the Slogan "Down with the Communists!"
"- Here's how things stand. They
are through with revisionism, they
have rehabilitated Marx and become
Bolsheviks, but all the same, they
will live under the Kaiser.

- Who are "they," Vera Ivanovna?

- Why the German social-democrats."


L.D. Trotsky

On the slogan "Down with the Communists!"

For many of our overseas comrades, the slogan of the PDP, "Down with the
Communists and the Democrats" seems senseless and incomprehensible. And if
no objection is provoked on account of the "Democrats," then "Down with the
Communists!" calls forth bewilderment, thoroughly mixed with annoyance, at
this simple, comprehensible slogan.

In order to resolve the apparent "contradiction" it is essential to answer
one question; "Can a workers' party in Russia today, taking up revolutionary
tasks, call itself communist?" I would answer at once that it can. But in
that case it must always remember that, in calling itself communist, it is
unwittingly perpetrating the basest fraud on the proletariat.

Who, in Russia today, embodies the "communist movement?" Above all, the
KPRF, that distorted mirror of the Russian revolution. What can be seen in
the mirror? Pure theatre; the theatre of the absurd. Here we have comrades
Zhuganov and Ilyukhin, sweating with pleasure, shoulder to shoulder with the
bourgeois deputies, composing the law "On Bee-keeping," here we see Zhuganov
meeting with the former president of the USA, and comrade Selyoznev
exchanging firm handshakes with foreign parliamentarians at a reception in
the Kremlin. And what of those who so comfortably lounge in their
gubernatorial seats? Those such as comrades Tuleev and Starodubtsev,
"peoples leaders" of the masses on the provincial scale, hanging on to there
posts like drunks to their last bottle. They too are communists!

What sort of revolution is this? What sort of proletarian dictatorship? What
sort of struggle? What variety of communism? For them, what is most
important today is "common human values;" ideological diversity, freedom of
conscience, political pluralism, private property and reformism. In short,
all the gentleman's baggage of the ordinary bourgeois party. And can such a
party lead the proletariat?

Possibly. But where? From one tavern to the next. From one political brothel
to another, compelling the workers themselves to pick up the tab for this
dubious pleasure. But as they say, "After the feast comes the bill!" and
"Once you're marked as liar, who will believe you?" For many, many Russians,
not only was this party the "legal" successor to the thoroughly rotten CPSU,
but it even managed to disappoint those millions, who, 6 or 7 years latter
saw it as the only alternative to "Yeltsinism." As a result there was the
ever greater accommodation to power on the one hand, and the absolute
disgust of the majority of the population with the "communists" on the
other.

What remains unclear? Yes, it's an insult that the banner under which the
proletariat won its most shining victories has fallen into the hands of the
enemy and now flies over their fortress. An insult. But does this mean that
we must go over, in orderly ranks, to the side of the enemy "under our
flag?" It is no great tragedy that the new proletarian party must renounce
the old, comfortable name "communist," and battle energetically against
those who hide behind "communism" as if it were an indulgence. Especially
since the old lady, history, sticks to the scholastic principle that
"repetition is the mother of learning."

Once before, at the beginning of the last century, the Russian proletariat
was confronted with the question of changing the name of its party. Only
then, the party called itself social-democratic.

Then, Lenin concluded that "Objectively, the world situation is such that
the name of our party facilitates the deception of the masses, and inhibits
forward movement; for at each step, in every newspaper, in every
parliamentary fraction, the masses see leaders, i.e. people whose words are
clearly audible, whose deeds are quite conspicuous, (and all of them are
also "social-democrats,") who are all "for unity" with the traitors to
socialism, social-chauvinism, who are all for the payment of old promissory
notes, the betrayers of social-democracy." Is something still unclear? Well,
for "social-democrat" just substitute "communist" and the rest remains in
place.

At the same time, we don't forget that this tower of Babel, the KPRF, is not
held together by these sanctimonious party types and political perverts, but
by rank and file communists.

And to them our slogan does not apply. It is inapplicable also to those
overseas communists who rot in prisons and torture chambers, who are sent to
the gallows, who lead underground struggles and shape the revolutionary
consciousness of the masses. The sharp edge of our slogan is directed only
against the time-serving bureaucratic higher ups of the KPRF who have
brought our steam engine to a halt at the "Cushy Job" station.

It is in relation to these communists that we say, "Down With Them!"

M. Kochetkov