Comrades,
With profound astonishment, we have learned the contents of the internal bulletin of your English organization, which publishes our document, "Decline and Fall of Stalinism," intended for the discussion preparatory to the Fifth World Congress, accompanied by a preface and a critical article with the title, "The Struggle Against Pabloite Revisionism," signed W. Sinclair [Hunter].
It is clear—indeed, the preface declares among other things, "The gulf between Pabloite revisionism and ourselves grows wider and wider"—that Sinclair's article takes the official position of your organization which, if maintained, would naturally close the door to all serious discussion on reunification.
That it is the official position of this organization is equally clear from the letter—completely ultimatist—addressed by Comrade Burns [Healy] to the organization sympathetic to the International in England, the Revolutionary Socialist League. An exact copy of this letter is attached.
We will reply very soon to the criticisms, completely without foundation, which the said bulletin contains on the text of the International's "Decline and Fall of Stalinism." We will publish in an internal bulletin of the IS the criticisms of Sinclair as well as our reply, as is the custom of all members of the International. We hope that you will not fail to act in like manner in seeing that these documents are circulated among all the members of your organizations.
What we wish to emphasize in this letter is the gravity of taking such a position in the midst of negotiations on reunification which are going on, as you know, in the United States between the leadership of the SWP, our representative Comrade Patrick [Mangan], and the IS. These negotiations were enabled to start and to continue after the letter addressed by Comrade Cannon to Comrade Goonewardene, a letter in which the opinion is explicitly expressed, which is also our own opinion, of an undeniable political agreement, especially after the 20th Congress of the CP of the USSR, between the SWP and the International. This position has been reaffirmed by all the leading comrades of the SWP to our representative, Comrade Patrick.
To say now that this not only does not correspond to the truth, but that "the gulf . . . grows wider and wider" signifies that it is a question of a "tragic misunderstanding" between us on the basis upon which the negotiations for unification have started and would be pursued.
Only people who have an interest in perpetuating the split and a lamentable ideological confusion could act thus, in order to exert pressure to stop the reunification negotiations and which again take up a "war to death" against the International.
We appeal to your sense of responsibility that this alternative may not be realized. The International has decided—as we have expressed it again and again—to make very great organizational concessions to your tendency in order to achieve unification of the Trotskyist international movement and to thus better exploit the formidable crisis of international Stalinism. But, on the other hand, strong as its awareness is that it must exhaust the possibilities of arriving at such an outcome, it will obliged at the time of its next world congress to draw all the conclusions in the eventuality of a new check in the negotiations, and to act accordingly.
With our Communist Internationalist Salutations,
The IS