[p. 150]
September 23, 1953
*Rough Translation*
Dear Comrade Burns,
We are aware in detail of what has just taken place at the meeting of your NC and of your attitude in particular.
Before the struggle is opened in your section and before the IS and the IEC take a position on it, as they have the duty to do, very firmly to preserve the political and organizational discipline of the International, more particularly in what concerns you as a member above all of the IEC and of the IS, and before this struggle demoralizes, as it will probably be in danger of doing, a series of elements of your organization which is so restrained in spite of everything, we advise you very strongly:
a. To circumscribe strictly the struggle on the political plane of ideas, conducting yourself as a member above all of the IEC and of the IS who defends until the 4th Wd. C. the majority line and the discipline of the International.
b. To cease to act as a member ofthe majority American faction and to await from it the political line to defend, and to cease to have circulated its documents in your faction in England, before you make known to the IS and to the IEC your eventual political divergences.
c. To abstain from any organizational measure in opposition to the comrades in your section who defend, as they ought, as you ought to do yourself first of all, the line and the discipline of the International.
[p. 151]
d. To reach thereon an agreement with the comrades on the normal functioning of the organization, as a section of the International and not as an independent national unit.
The IS and, we are certain, the IEC will never accept the organizational measures which you have proposed against the defenders of the line and the discipline of the International. They will judge with an extreme severity your attitude if you persist. We shall never in any case leave without defence the comrades who are devoted to the line and the discipline of the International. We shall invite them as we have the duty, to remain extremely firm on their bases and to accept no other discipline above that of the International. We shall address ourselves directly to the section.
You have reached a decisive crossroad in your political life in the International. Do not let yourself be carried away by your impulsive and authoritarian temperament. Pay attention, Comrade B, you are an element which the International wishes to keep in its bosom. No one prevents you from having finally reached political opinions which diverge from ours and the internal regime of the International gives you all guarantees to express them and make them known throughout the International. But in the framework of a sound democratic centralism which preserves the essence of our movement as a world party and not a mechanical assembly of national groups. We do not wish to return to what has been the prehistory of our movement. Do not deceive yourself on this.
Think again and again, without considerations of false prestige, pride, etc., but as a Bolshevik, Trotskyist leader. The fate of a part at least of your section and of yourself is at stake. The International will appreciate enormously if you recover possession of yourself again, even at this moment. It is our sense of responsibility which urges us to write to you thus, in spite of your extraordinary attitude all this recent time and at the time of your recent NC. Do not think that we are intimidated or machiavelian. We are in reality more convinced than ever of the support of the overwhelming majority of the International, including in the end your own section.
With our internationalist communist salutations,
The Bureau of the IS