[p. 172]
Confronted with the firm resolutions of almost unanimously all the sections and of the 14th Plenum of the IEC, which condemn its splitting action, its lies and revolting slanders, what we may now well call the *unprincipled clique* of the Cannonites replies by decreeing the "liquidation by the Pabloite IS of the International Executive Committee elected by the 3rd World Congress."
Did they imagine that the international leadership would congratulate the splitters without sanctioning them, or that it would yield, frightened in the face of their literally gangster-like tactics?
Actually, no longer entertaining any hope of winning over democratically the overwhelming majority of the International outside of its framework, the Cannonites thus put the seal on their own split with the International. They proclaim themselves the "International," avoiding the issue of presenting themselves at the 4th World Congress, and prepare their own "Congress."
They have begun to attack individual members of the IS, as well as the IS, as "usurpers." They now extend their attacks to the overwhelming majority of the IEC, the cadres and sections of the International. The "Pabloite clique of usurpers" turns out to be the overwhelming majority of the International.
Lying and bluffing to the face of their own ranks which is kept in the most complete ignorance of anything concerning the real reactions of the International (they have not published any of the answers by the sections to their "Open Letter"), they send hypocritical bouquets to the sections of Ceylon and Bolivia, they "greet" them and seek to have us believe that these sections still "hesitate" between their counterfeit "Committee" and the IV International! They claim further, always in the same cynical and lying manner, to have the self-styled "majority" in England. They now are launching a new "scandal" that of Peng, whose allegaiance to the "Committee" they now announce.
There is every reason to believe they have utilised this last-mentioned deliberately for a scandal, and that Peng lent himself to this task with eagerness. Peng, for two years now, has left nothing undone to break off all direct contact between the IS and the International and the Chinese group of Hongkong. No correspondence exists with this group, and no document of the International can have gotten through, Peng using as pretext the absence of reliable addresses.
These facts are well known to all members of the IEC, including the observer Warde and Burns, present at the 11th and 12th Plenums of the IEC where this question was brought up. In actuality Peng never discontinued correspondence with these men on the spot, and maneuvered to destroy the majority tendency of the Chinese section which declared itself in agreement with the line of the International on the Chinese question and condemned its own policy. By his political positions, his character, his mentality, Peng was ready from way back to join such a "Committee." The split in the International gave him an unexpected chance to save the face he had lost through his bankrupt politics and to rehabilitate himself, thanks to Cannon's generosity, as an "authentic representative of Trotskyism in China," naturally of "orthodox Trotskyism."
But having done this, Cannon, the "principled" man who now, equipped with such criminal cynicism, juggles with the most burning problems and ideas, most serious at the present time, clearly indicated once again where he stands politically, what is the true political character of the political tendency he sponsors, as well as the value of his "principles."
Peng was visited a first time by Comrade Germain immediately after the publication of the "Open Letter" of the Cannonites so that the former could make known his own position. He then declared "in favor of Cannon" and his splitting action. In spite of this declaration he was summoned to the 14th Plenum, as was done for all other IEC members without exception, including the splitters Burns and Jacques and the Americans. Comrade Privas, under instruction of the IS, had set an appointment for the very day of the Plenum in order to assure his presence; he waited for Peng *for over an hour* without the latter making his presence.
[p. 173]
In a conversation subsequent to the Plenum, between Peng and the IS Bureau, he pretended to still desire to continue discussion with the International and to remain in it. But at that very moment he was sending letters to his acolytes of the "Committee" denouncing the "scandal" as well as a "resolution" of the "leadership" of his group dated the 10th December 1953 supporting the splitting act of the Cannonites. The "Committee" of these "principled" men is now enlarged with another bluffer, not to say more.
Some day it will clearly come to light — we are sure of this — that Peng, exploiting the absence of contact by the International with the Chinese section, an absence of which he was purposefully an interested artisan, maneuvered to present a "resolution" at the time specified by the "Committee" abusing the good faith of the majority of Chinese Trotskyists. In acting thus, Peng delivers a supplementary blow to the blows already struck on them by his bankrupt policy — prize specimen of "orthodox Trotskyism" — in the light of the experience of the great Chinese Proletarian Revolution.
COMRADES:
The Cannonites, disapproved vigorously by the very great majority of the International, want to burn the last bridges with the latter. They well know that the 4th WC is open to all Trotskyists respecting the discipline of the International, as a *centralized world party.* But it is the *reality* and the *discipline* of the International as a centralized world party which they flee.
Their unprincipled coalition has no other reason for existence than their hate and their common struggle against the International.
It is only outside the framework of the International, outside of its discipline, that each one of them can act as he pleases, as they do now, breaking all discipline of thought, developing all sorts of false ideas, contradictory, sectarian and confusionist ideas and directing their organizations like uncontrollable tin gods.
Cannon, the "principled man" who swore only in the name of Lenin and Trotsky to cynically cover over his unworthy methods and his thought in full defeat, now open to all winds from any direction, as was the case for all those who left the International, has transformed *The Militant* into an organ of slander and tearing down the International. That is how he understands the transformation of this organ into a more agitational paper against the alleged views of the minority whom he reproached for wishing to remove the paper from the level of understanding of American workers!
In May 1953, still undergoing the atmosphere of the International, he greeted in his final speech to the Plenum of his organization:
"According to all signs, a rebirth of the October Revolution, in all its spendor and power, is dawning in the Soviet Union, bringing into the world arena a factor independent of all others, the immeasurable power of the new Soviet proletariat, which now rivals the powerful American proletariat in numbers and social weight."
Now he no longer sees anything in the USSR, gazing through the spectacles provided him by far-sighted and intelligent collaborators, but the pure and simple continuation of the Stalin regime by Malenkov's team, the "new Stalin" "bloody purges" on the same scale as 1936-38, the usual "self-criticism" on order by the Soviet intellectuals, concessions not to the masses but to the "restorationist" elements alone, setbacks, grave crisis and failure of Soviet economy.
Together with his acolytes of the "Committee," he sheds warm tears over the execution of the arch-policeman Beria, "promoter" according to Bleibtreu of the "liberal" wing of the bureaucracy, an execution which constitutes "an open challenge to the Soviet toilers" and a "new blow to the Soviet Union"!
The pressure of the Soviet masses, favored by the international revolutionary progress, as well as economic and cultural forward steps of the USSR itself despite the bureaucracy, putting the latter on the defensive, wresting from it concessions, no longer exists for Cannon, and this whole process is interpreted by him exactly in the opposite direction. However events and facts more and more deep-going will completely smash the confusionist sectarians who, to the degree that they claim to be Trotskyists, dishonor and ridicule Trotskyism before the advanced workers, thus feeding in the best way grist to the Stalinist slanders.
Comrades:
Let us prepare with greater fervor for the 4th World Congress and let us make of it *the broadest, the most enthusiastic assemblage of world Trotskyist cadres, representatives of living revolutionary Marxism.*
The presence of the greatest possible number of delegates from all sections at the next congress is of *cardinal importance for the future of our movement.*
*No sacrifice will be great enough to achieve this goal.*
*We ask you to push with untiring energy the campaign for the political preparation of the Congress and the sending of delegates.*
*We ask you to make the campaign for 1,000 French francs* ($3) per member, as decided by the 14th Plenum, *a complete success:* to take charge firmly, scrupulously of the collection of these sums and their speedy remittance to the IS once the whole commitment due from the section has been collected, without forgetting the deadline: April 15, 1954.
Bureau of the IS, Feb. 1, 1954