‘Resolution of Executive Committee of the Communist International on Comrade Bukharin’ from the Daily Worker. Vol. 6 No. 162. September 13, 1929.

Having acquainted itself with the decision of the joint Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) of April 23^rd removing Comrade Bukharin from work in the Comintern, the Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International declares:

Already before the VI Congress of the Comintern, Comrade Bukharin showed signs of disagreement with the general political line of the C.P.S.U.(b). In the course of the struggle carried on by Bukharin and those who share his views against the policy of the Party, this disagreement assumed the form of a separate opportunist platform, in substance a Right deviation platform.

In accordance with the tasks of socialist reconstruction of the national economy of the U. S. S. R., and following the course of industrialization of the country, the C.P.S.U.(b) has developed a victorious offensive against the capitalist elements, has carried on an intensified struggle against kulakdom by molibilizing the poor peasantry and widely applying new, productive forms of alliance (smytchka) between the proletariat and the poor and middle sections of the peasantry, guaranteeing a decisive turn in the development of socialist forms of economy in the most backward sector of the national economy—in agriculture.

This policy of an intensified offensive against the capitalist elements and their elimination accompanied by a steadily increasing mass collectivization of peasant farms, an enormous swing in the construction of Soviet farms and widely developing organization of agricultural machinery and tractor centres, etc., was bound to lead at the present juncture to a sharpening of the class struggle which found expression in the increased efforts on the part of capitalist elements to resist socialist progress, and also in increased vacillations among the petty bourgeois elements.

Against this policy of the C.P.S.U.(b), the Right deviators, to whose position Comrade Bukharin has gone over, brought forward another line:—a line calling for the abandonment of the offensive against the capitalist elements, the denial of the necessity of intensified struggle against the kulaks, the reduction of socialist forms of construction, which practically means capitulation before the capitalist elements. Contrary to the line of the C.P.S.U.(b), Comrade Bukharin has slipped over to a liberal interpretation of N.E.P. which leads, under the banner of loosening up the circulation of commodities, to free development of capitalist elements in the country, to the relinquishment of pressure on the kulak elements who are maliciously speculating with grain, to denial of the necessity of individual taxation of kulaks, contrary to the policy of high taxes on capitalist elements, etc., pursued by the Party. This means that Comrade Bukharin is, in reality, slipping over to the policy of class collaboration with capitalist elements, substituting the policy of class struggle of the proletariat against the kulaks by the policy of “the kulak growing into socialism.”

Closely connected with this erroneous viewpoint of Comrade Bukharin, is his course of slackening the rapid tempo of the industrialization of the country pursued by the Party. While the C.P.S.U.(b) is steadily pursuing the line of ever increasing development of the industrialization of the country which is the basis of victorious construction of socialism, Comrade Bukharin and those who share his views, by capitulating before difficulties, are surrendering the positions of the proletariat in this fundamental question of construction of socialism, reflecting by their attitude the pressure which the petty bourgeois elements bring to bear on some strata of the Party. While the C.P.S.U.(b), marching at the head of the working class, which is with increasing enthusiasm building up socialism, is rallying around itself the widest masses of toilers, Bukharin, and those who share his views, are sowing petty bourgeois pessimism and disbelief in the strength of the working class which must be overcome if the success of socialist construction is to be ensured.

Finally, in the appraisement of the situation in the C.P.S.U.(b) and of its methods of leadership, Comrade Bukharin and his group are only reiterating Trotskyite views. At a time when the C.P.S.U.(b) is successfully carrying on, under the slogan of self-criticism and broad inner-Party democracy, a wide mobilization of the masses for struggle against bureaucracy and for the purging of its ranks from elements of degeneration, Bukharin and those who share his views are hiding behind phrases of struggle against bureaucracy, opposing at the same time the reconstruction—carried on under the leadership of the Party—of the whole work of the Party organizations, trade unions, cooperatives and the Soviet apparatus on the basis of new forms for the thorough consolidation of contact with the masses, and reflecting thereby the moods of the worst bureaucratic and fossilized elements who are resisting the Party line.

Comrade Bukharin’s errors in regard to the policy of the C.P.S.U.(b) are inseparably connected with his erroneous line in international policy. By underestimating the socialist offensive of the C.P.S.U.(b), as a factor undermining capitalist stabilization, Bukharin, together with Humbert-Droz, Serra, Ewert and others, is in fact providing an ideological-political basis for the policy of the Right elements throughout the Communist International. Contrary to the line of the Comintern, and especially, contrary to the decisions of the Sixth Congress, Comrade Bukharin is slipping over to the opportunist denial of the fact of the ever-growing shakiness of capitalist stabilization, which inevitably leads to denial of the rising of a new revolutionary tide in the labor movement. At the bottom of Comrade Bukharin’s attitude is his anti-Marxist “theory” of the weakening of the inner contradictions of capitalism which he tries to smuggle through by phrases about the preservation of capitalist anarchy exclusively on the world market. This kind of “theory” which serves as an ideological basis for all the Right elements in the Comintern is refuted by the whole development of capitalism and is, in substance, nothing but capitulation before reformist ideology (Hilferding theory of the “recuperation of capitalism”). Comrade Bukharin’s article “The Theory of Organized Economic Disorder” (Pravda, June 30, 1929) shows that far from repudiating his anti-Marxist “theory” about the weakening of the inner contradictions of capitalism he is persisting in his errors and is deepening them.

In this connection, it is perfectly clear that Comrade Bukharin’s and his followers’ lamentations about the “disintegration” of the Comintern are a method of cowardly support of the Right elements, the struggle against whom was and is the main task in the Communist International. Comrade Bukharin and his group are trying to discredit in every possible way the healthy process of purging the Communist Parties of social-democratic elements, an absolutely necessary process particularly in view of the rising revolutionary tide, and to weaken thereby the struggle of the Comintern against the Right renegades. Being the centre of attraction for all Right elements in the Comintern, Comrade Bukharin and his group, by preaching pessimism, defeatism and disbelief in the strength of the working class, are not only putting new life into all anti-Leninist tendencies, but are helping to undermine Bolshevik discipline.

Comrade Bukharin’s opportunist wobblings have resulted in him trying, behind the back of the Party, to constitute an unprincipled bloc with former Trotskyites for struggle against the C.P.S.U.(b) and the Comintern.

In view of all this, the Plenum of the E.C.C.I., while confirming the decision of the joint Plenum of the C.C. and C.C.C. of the C.P.S.U.(b) to remove Comrade Bukharin from work in the Comintern, resolves to relieve him of his post of member of the Presidium of the E.C.C.I.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

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