[p. 167]
Comrades:
The American majority has just betrayed our cause.
In an infamous communique published in its paper *The Militant,* it breaks in practice with our international movement, calumniously accuses it of having capitulated to Stalinism and takes over the infamies and ignoble lies of the confusionist and sectarian Bleibtreu group in France, with which it is now allied, as well as with all the sectarian Stalinophobe and politically compromised and bankrupt elements, in order to fight us.
On the other hand it announces the exclusion of the American minority, about a third of the organization, which includes the majority of its working class base, especially the proletarian cadres of the automobile and steel industry in Detroit, Flint and Buffalo.
It launches an appeal "To the Trotskyists of the Whole World" to rid themselves "of Pablo and his agents" but it dares not present itself before the leading organisms of the democratically and unanimously elected International, the IEC and the IS, to back up its grotesque accusation and ask for the change of leadership it now desires.
The International is a democratic organization which does not bear any comparison with the gangster-like clique procedures now used by the Cannonites against their own organization and against our international movement. This mode of behavior will forever remain a shame in the history of the latter.
It can only be explained by the complete degeneration of the Cannonites, resulting from their prolonged isolation from the masses and from the terrible pressure exerted on all social milieu in the United States by American imperialism preparing its counter-revolutionary war. From every viewpoint it is absolutely inexcusable.
The Cannonites who cynically exhibit their anti-International fury and joyously embark upon chasing "Stalinists" out of their own organization and the International, are really adapting themselves to the atmosphere prevailing in the citadel of imperialism and camouflaging under "extreme left" language their own buckling under this reactionary pressure.
In the most lamentable manner they exemplify the ultimate consummation of sectarianism and Stalinophobia in the present concrete conditions of the preparation by the united forces of imperialism of its counter-revolutionary crusade. All tendencies in the workers movement are now subjected to the supreme test: with or against the real revolution in our time, with or against the real movement of the masses in each country.
The crisis Trotskyism is now passing through is relatively benign compared to what is happening and will further take place amongst the reformists and Stalinists. It is a deep-going social and class differentiation, but highly progressive in the last analysis, through which the entire workers movement placed face to face with its own destiny, is passing: the decisive and final struggle between the revolution in all its forms and the counter-revolution in all its forms, now relatively close at hand.
Individuals with their faculties of political intelligence and revolutionary courage diminished by their long life of frustration and isolation from the masses, deformed, who have lost their sense of reality and the measure of their own capacities and their objective importance in our movement, in history, are now desperately trying to turn back the wheel of our revolution, of our destiny, and to thrust us once again into sectarianism and the most desolating ossification of thought.
Comrades:
Let the dead bury their dead. Let us redouble our energy. Let us rapidly repair the losses. Let us resume our irresistible march forward.
There is no force now capable of burying living Trotskyism, living revolutionary Marxism.
There is no force capable of burying the Fourth International.
The Fourteenth Plenum of the IEC will be held in December and among other matters will decide the definitive date of our Fourth World Congress, which will once more bring together the very great majority of the Trotskyists, won and animated by the spirit of the Third World Congress.
Collect the biggest possible financial means to sustain the functioning and activity of the International. Let each leadership pose this question with extreme acuteness in its section.
The greatest sacrifices are now necessary to maintain and increase the activity of the International.
Put above any other obligation ample and prompt aid to the International. We have to go through a difficult moment, to hold on, to act by multiplying our efforts, by developing a spirit of sacrifice to the highest point, to quickly conquer the current of deserters and capitulators before the pressure of the class enemy who in a desperate and ignoble attempt aims to stab the International cowardly in the back.
Let the IS know as soon as possible your efforts and their results.
Long live the Fourth International!
November 20, 1953