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×   1932.
3 
 1932.
   ë
 Official Organ Of The Communist
League Of Struggle (Adhering to the International Left
Opposition), Volume 2 Number 5, May 16, 1932.
›  
   Vera Buch & Albert Weisbord Internet
Archive.
   
  Albert Weisbord Internet
Archive/David Walters.


1. The fundamental cause of the crisis can be put in one
word: capitalism. The special character of this crisis is
explained by another notion: Imperialism, that is to say,
monopoly capitalism which is beginning to put reify in its
own blind contradictions. The rise and fall of Ivar Kreuger
symbolize all present day capitalism. The official moralists
when all is done hurl their thunderbolts against the match
king. But he could answer: why did you allow me to dispose
at my own will of the productive forces of which should be
serving human society, under its own direction?

Will the world capitalist order overcome the present

crisis? The answer depends upon what is understood by
the term crisis. Variations of conjuncture accompany the
whole history of capitalism. In past epochs, the curve of
capitalism was rising through all the variations in
conjuncture. Today, it is falling. This does not exclude
further variations of conjuncture in the future. On the
contrary, such are inevitable. But the sharp present crisis
can be softened only by leading into a higher paroxysm in
the following stage which is not far off. All this extremely
painful process can be ended only by a transformation of
the whole social system.

2. Have I any hopes for the success of the Disarmament

Conference? Not in the least. But in that, I am hardly an
exception. The French plan is characterized sufficiently by
the fact that it is presented by the Tardieu government. At
the same time that France supports the bloody work of
Japan in the Far East, Japan gratefully supports the
pacifist initiative of France at Geneva. A lesson beyond
compare for all peoples! France¶s plan aims to create,
under the cloak of the League of Nations a new entente
with the sole aim of stabilizing the hegemony of French
finance capital with the aid of the ³international´ army.

But the American plan also opens up no perspective. The

present war are not conducted with the arms which the
belligerents possess on the eve of the war, but with those
which they manufacture in the course of the war itself.
From this point of view the US has given a lesson to the
whole world and especially to Germany. The outcome of
the future war will be determined by the technical capacity
of the warring countries. The higher the industrial
development of a country, the more this country is
interested in provisional limitation of armaments; then it
will really be easier for it than for its adversaries to equip
its army with everything necessary.

At the best, the Conference will end with hollow

formulas. The inevitable failure of the Geneva Conference
will constitute a new impulse for the armament race and
will increase the danger of war.

The Franco-Japanese policy, the warlike one as well as

the ³pacifist´, is directed always more and more openly not
only against China but against the Soviet Union. That
Litvinoff at the Geneva Conference expresses the honest
will of the USSR not to resort to war, cannot be doubted by
any attentive observer. But I should like to hope that the
Soviet delegation will find a moment to pass from
technico-pacifist proposals which, even from a pedagogic
point of view, have not much importance, to a more active
policy, that is, to tell the Conference openly how things are,
and thus to warn the peoples of the threatening danger.
For, if there is a force on our planet which can ³limit´
armaments on land and sea, it is the will of the masses of
the people.
 3. The rumors of the press as to my near return to the
USSR ... do not rest upon any serious foundation. It is
rather a case of inventions caused by the strained general
situation. It is needless to say that that fraction to which I
belong will place itself entirely and completely at the
disposition of the Soviet Government. As a precedent, it
may be shown that at the time of the civil war, in 1918-20,
Stalin, Voroshiliov, and others were in sharp oppositio n to
the methods of conducting the war which I was following
in full accord with Lenin, which did not prevent the
oppositionists of that time from taking an active part in the
struggles.