[p. 174]
France
Feb. 15, 1954
Dear Comrades:
The IS has just been acquainted with the answer of your CC to the Open Letter of the majority of the leadership of the SWP. Your answer raises many questions. We wish to give you our point of view on the main ones, i.e., your contacts with the International, the fundamental political divergences in the International, and the nature of the enterprise undertaken by the majority of the SWP.
### Your Contacts with the International
In your document, you say that you have had "very weak contacts with the International" owing to "extremely difficult circumstances." Therefore you add that in the recent crisis in the International due to "technical reasons" you have received *only* the Open Letter of the SWP and no other document. It is very true that the relations of the IS with you have always been very weak owing to circumstances independent from you as well as from us. It is very true that in the years following the end of the war our contacts with you have been very irregular. However since about two years we have not had direct relations with you, because *Comrade Peng told us that there was no safe address to write to you and to send you documents.* For the last two years we have only learned from time to time from Comrade Peng that he received private letters from China but that it was impossible for safety reasons to send you the material of the international. The only letter he delivered us from you was a letter dated November 1953 asking us questions about the situation inside the International, at a time when the SWP majority had already split from the International. This letter was also without an address and Peng told us again that there was none to send you an answer.
Until recently we believed Peng's word. Today we must observe that his statements about the lack of safe addresses have started about at the time when the IEC adopted a resolution on the Chinese revolution against which he voted. These facts are well known by all the members of IEC and also by Manuel, an observer at the sessions of the IEC.
Concerning the relations between Peng and the International, it is not true as he has written recently that he was not convoked to the 14th Plenum. He was informed of it more than a fortnight before by Comrade Germain. He received, as usual for the other sessions, an appointment from a French comrade, under instructions of the IS, to bring him to the session. This comrade waited for him for more than an hour. To this 14th Plenum were convoked not only Peng, but also the members of the IEC who had joined with the SWP in a public attack against the IS.
### The Political Divergences
In your answer it is briefly stated that we have "capitulated to Stalinism." We are accused of having said that "Stalinism will gradually transform itself and adopt the Trotskyist program under the pressure of the masses." In no document of us are formulated such things and they even cannot honestly be deducted from any IS document. Until recently such an accusation was thrown against our movement by the POUM, Shachtman, the Yugoslavs . . . This slander has now been taken up by the SWP majority.
If you would have had our documents, especially the one most criticized by the Cannon faction called "Rise and Decline of Stalinism" you would have known our real positions on the present process of disintegration of Stalinism. You would have seen that they have nothing common with the distortion presented by Cannon, but that they are a careful attempt made by the overwhelming majority of the International to apply our Trotskyist methods to a situation greatly changed by comparison with the past, and to deal with new problems in the light of the events in the Soviet Union, in the last year. The whole International — and Cannon and Peng — at the time of the Third World Congress — thought that one of the main dangers for our movement would be to misunderstand the present situation and to live on past schemas. The majority of the International — and the Cannonites — had drawn this lesson first of all from the events in the Yugoslav and Chinese revolutions.
Everyone in our movement is entitled to have other views about the way through which Stalinism is disintegrating as on any political problem. We would welcome a discussion with facts and arguments. But to distort our views and slander us about "capitulation to Stalinism" is not a discussion. The SWP Open Letter was first published without any previous discussion with the International. Only later did they publish another document aiming to give a political justification to their split.
We have to emphasize strongly the unprincipled attitude of the Cannonites on the question of the Chinese revolution. They approved the resolution adopted on this question by the 11th Plenum in June 1952. They since then had never said that they were mistaken and for what reasons. But in their Open Letter they defend a position opposed to one they voted for. Moreover because we defend this very position they supported for nearly two years they accuse us of "capitulation to Stalinism." Such an unprincipled attitude can be explained only by their intention to associate Peng in their fight against the International.
There is also another fundamental divergence between the Cannonites and the International. Our movement has been built and can live only as a centralized world party. We are for democratic centralism on an international scale and not only a national scale. Cannon who for many years defended such a point of view has repudiated it in the following terms: "We conceive of internationalism as international collaboration, in the process of which we get the benefit of the opinions of international comrades, and they get the benefit of ours, and by comradely discussion and collaboration we work out, if possible a common line." (May 18, 1953)
[p. 175]
Collaboration only, meaning that he is against a centralized world party and in favor of a bureau of international contacts without any political authority. This is truly *the biggest revision of Trotskyism.* And Cannon applied these views in the recent conflict. For a long time there has been a discussion inside the SWP. The IS did not put the question on the agenda of the IEC not (as Peng pretends it) because we wanted to hide the matter, known by all sections which received the SWP internal bulletins. We did not put it on the agenda, first because the divergences on the American problems were not clearly formulated and also because we were conscious that Cannon would have admitted from the International nothing else than a pure and simple approval of his tendency and of the measures of expulsion he wanted to take against the minority. Last May, at a session of the CC of the SWP, the two tendencies came to an organizational truce, we, the IS, greeted this decision. Unfortunately, for Cannon this truce was only a move to prepare — as he wrote confidentially to a friend four days later — a faction "on a military basis" against the IS. At that time, he had not discovered our alleged "capitulation to Stalinism" nor any important political divergence. He did it, according to his own words, preventively in case the IS would organize a factional fight in the SWP. Three months later we learned about his organization of a secret faction. We wrote to the American majority warning it of the danger of such an attitude and proposed a meeting in order to have a frank explanation. This letter as well as others from us (the copies of which have since been presented to the world movement) remained unanswered. The IS was only informed in October that a new session of the CC of the SWP would be held in November. Neither we nor the members of the American minority were told the agenda of this session. In the first half hour of it the minority was expelled. The IS, the IEC, even the individual members of the IEC had never received previously a single document of the SWP leadership expressing a political divergence with the International internal discussion. The whole International learned about divergences, "capitulation to Stalinism" and so on when they received the issue of the Militant with the Open Letter. It was no more a discussion to convince someone, but a fight against the bodies elected by the Third World Congress.
### The Aims of the Battle
The SWP majority did not ask from the sections, as you seem to have understood by your letter, "the dismissal of Pablo and the reorganization of the IS." This could have been done and can be done by bringing this proposal to the proper body, the IEC, or even better to the coming Fourth World Congress, which had been convoked by the 13th Plenum of the IEC, and for which the discussion was already open in the International. The SWP majority started by a public attack in its public organ, and asked all the sections to split with the elected bodies of the FI, launching the accusation of "capitulation to Stalinism" against positions it had approved.
Immediately after this public attack a "Committee of the FI" was created. You find in it: a minority of the British section led by Burns — the Swiss section, a sectarian group which has always been on the verge of indiscipline in the International — and the French group, Bleibtreu, which had been expelled for indiscipline from the International in 1952 with the vote or the approval of Burns, Peng and the SWP.
This Committee is not seeking to convince the International that its policy is wrong, it does not try to change the policy of International. This committee has never presented a genuine political platform upon which it wants to win the International. It is only carrying a public struggle against the International. That is the reason why the overwhelming majority of the sections have taken a clear stand against the split organized with the Open Letter and the Committee. The following sections: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Ceylon, Chile, Cyprus, France, Germany, Great Britain (majority), Greece, Holland, Italy, Indochina, Peru, Uruguay, that is the overwhelming majority have said that their organization is only the FI and condemn the split committee. All these sections, not an alleged "Pablo clique" know as well as Cannon or Peng where is Stalinism and revisionism and bureaucratism, and they would certainly have taken a clear position if they had seen manifestations of such orientation in the leading body of the International.
The SWP majority, their allies have organized their committee against the International because they are actually opposed to the idea of the International as a centralized world party, and intend to follow each one in his country his own policy, whatever is the opinion and the decision of the International as a whole. In their alliance there is no unity of position on essential problems, but they unite on one point: each one is free to act as he likes in his own country. In the present world situation where every man and every organization is submitted to tremendous pressures from alien forces, the main source of power to resist such pressures is in our international organization and its unity. Who acts otherwise makes himself most vulnerable to the alien pressures. Already there are signs of such pressures in the policy of SWP.
We will do our utmost to have this letter delivered to you. We have no confidence in Peng to honestly inform you on the situation in the International; we take in consideration that during two years he said that there was no safe address to send you the documents of the International, but as soon as the Open Letter against us appears, you receive it. Please write us where we can send with all due precautions the documents you have not received for such a long time. You will then be able to take a position after a full knowledge of the opposed points of view and the facts. We are confident that after having studied them, you will — as all the sections of the International mentioned above — condemn the splitters and remain inside the International.
Yours fraternally,
The IS