[p. 177]
The open letter of the National Committee of the SWP, published in *The Militant* of November 16, 1953, is the most shameful manifestation of an unprincipled policy which has ever occurred in the history of the Trotskyist movement. It reveals the existence of a terrible sickness which has possessed a part of the Trotskyist cadres in the USA and the no less terrifying rapidity with which this sickness has progressed. It is necessary to tear away from the authors of the Open Letter the claim to be covering themselves with a political argument. It is necessary to expose their real object; to provoke an unprincpled split in the Fourth International. It is necessary to reveal the sad degeneration of method and policy which characterizes the effort to reach such a criminal objective.
### "The Pablist Minority"
The Open Letter selects Comrade Pablo, secretary of the International, as the principal target of its attacks. It designates with contempt the leadership of the Fourth International, in the term "Pablo and his agents." It accuses them of constitution a "secret personal faction." It treats the international leadership as a "Pablist minority" which by bad faith and with bad intentions, claims to represent the majority of the movement and "prepare a foul blow" to impose its line "by splits and expulsions."
[p. 178]
What are the facts? The political line of the Fourth International, the political resolutions adopted by the leadership of the Fourth International, are the product neither of Pablo nor of some fancied "Pablism" but the work of the leading bodies, regularly elected, of the collective leadership of our world movement. The present International Secretariat is composed, in addition to Pablo, of representatives of the four most important sections in Europe. It was elected by a unanimous vote of the International Executive Committee, itself composed of members of all the important sections of the International. The International Executive Committee, in turn, had been elected at the Third World Congress by the representatives of 27 sections of the International, including the representatives of the Bleibtreu group, the new allies in Europe of the authors of the Open Letter. What this Open Letter calls the "Pablist minority" is therefore the official collective leadership of the Fourth International, the authorized representative of the collectivity of the international organization.
The preparatory documents for the Fourth World Congress, which suddenly revealed to the majority of the National Committee of the SWP the existence of a "revisionist" danger in the Trotskyist movement, were drafted collectively by the International Secretariat, were unanimously approved — subject to minor amendments — by the Secretariat, and received the written approval of the majority of members of the International Executive Committee. Insofar as documents have been published, they have been published in the organ of the International Executive Committee, "Quatrieme Internationale" in just the same way as such documents were published before the Second and Third World Congresses of our International, and as they were published before the Founding Conference of our movement in 1938, as was the custom of the Communist International in the time of Lenin.
The cynical accusation which is now hurled at the collective leadership, universally recognized, of the Fourth International, that it represents only a "small minority" which is supposed to have usurped its functions, this accusation turns back completely against its authors. It shows clearly the unprincipled organizational attitude of the majority of the SWP leadership towards the world Trotskyist movement. They have basically nothing but deep contempt for the Fourth International, its sections in 35 countries, its Congress and its democratically elected leading bodies. For them, all this represents only a handful of individuals, a "small minority." The true orthodox Trotskyist movement, for them, is simply the leadership of the SWP itself and some "key-men" scattered around the world. As long as the world movement, its cadres and leading organisms, approve the actions of the leaders of the SWP then the latter can collaborate with the former and generously accord to them "liberty for every violent criticism." But as soon as they fear that differences may appear, they exclude the major part of the movement from the body of the faithful, establishing by definition that they can be dealing only with "liquidators" and "capitulators before Stalinism."
But the extraordinary incoherence of the accusations in the Open Letter suffice to unmask its authors as vulgar slanderers. For the majority of the National Committee of the SWP does not shrink from revealing to the world that the elected leadership of the Fourth International "is working *consciously* and *deliberately* for the liquidation of the Fourth International." It is not therefore a question of the objective consequences of a policy which they consider to be wrong. No, it is a question of conscious and deliberate plans. Every reader of the Letter will conclude that the leadership of the Fourth International is accused of being composed of Stalinist agents, an accusation frequently raised by the imperialist press since our movement declared itself to be unreservedly for the support of the Korean people and the Chinese people during the Korean war. But the leadership of the SWP have discovered in the space of a few weeks that for years they have been supporting and approving the actions of Stalinist agents, that they have filled their press and their bulletins with the writings of these same agents. These same lucid minds write in the same Letter that, to consolidate the leadership of the Fourth International — which they now accuse of wishing knowingly to destroy our movement — they have refrained from all criticism of it. Can one imagine a more lamentable failure of judgment? Does it not strangely resemble the Stalinist affirmation that Lenin was surrounded for years only with agents and enemy spies as intimate collaborators?
The monstrous methods used by the authors of the Open Letter take on an even more disturbing aspect when you compare their present writing with those of the very recent past. On the occasion of his 60th birthday, Cannon sent a letter of greeting to the members of the International Secretariat, expressing his admiration for the "splendid job" that they were doing. In July 1952, the Political Committee of the SWP unanimously adopted a resolution on the Third World Congress, which began in the following way:
"The 15th National Congress of the SWP salutes the work of the Third World Congress as an important realization of international Trotskyism in the field of analysis of Trotskyist strategy and tactics."
In February 1953, a secretary of the SWP wrote to Comrade Pablo: "We are not speaking diplomatically when we say that we are fully in agreement with the line of the Third Congress. In the struggle which will develop we shall defend this line."
On the 6th of April 1953, another secretary of the SWP described to Comrade Pablo an interview with Cannon in the following terms: "There is no divergence with the line of the Congress or with any important document since. He believes that they have marked a great step forward in re-adapting our thought to the changed reality of the post-war world. We have forced ourselves here to assimilate these ideas and apply them in the specific conditions.
And even, on June 4, 1953, in a letter sent to its European representative, giving him instructions for the organization of a secret faction in the international Trotskyist movement, Cannon reaffirms his fundamental agreement with the line of the Third Congress! What can be said of a revolutionary leader who is incapable over a period of years of distinguishing "the conscious and deliberate liquidation" of our movement from "a great step forward" of the same movement? How can we believe that the brusque change of front on the authors of the Letter has a political character, when we are confronted with these quotations?
[p. 179]
### Revisionism?
The Open Letter accuses the "Pablist minority," that is to say, the normally elected leadership of the Fourth International, with the crime of "revision of the Trotskyist program." We ask for proofs of this accusation. What proofs? Would someone dare to question the rightness of Cannon's judgment?
Fortunately the Trotskyist movement possesses a different tradition. In the long and hard school of struggle, it has learned not to believe anyone's unsupported statements, to attach no importance to gossip or statements by third parties, to analyze documents carefully, to separate rigorously the truth from half-truths and lies. This healthy tradition in our movement, of instinctive watchfulness and critical spirit which dominates our movement will not help the prestige of Cannon in the world Trotskyist organizations, confronted with the slanderous accusations brutally made against the leadership of the Fourth International.
Has the leadership of the Fourth International "revised" the Trotskyist program on the question of the USSR and Stalinism? What a shameful lie! This program characterizes the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers' state, the Soviet bureaucracy as a privileged caste which has politically expropriated the proletariat, the nature of this caste being dual and contradictory with a world-wide counter-revolutionary record of activity. Hence on the one hand the need to defend the USSR unconditionally against imperialism, and on the other hand the need to overthrow the bureaucratic dictatorship by a political revolution to ensure the victory of Soviet democracy in the USSR. No document coming from the International leadership or one of its members changes a comma in these programmatic conceptions on the question of the USSR. They have been underlined, reaffirmed, reinforced by proofs drawn from recent events in each resolution worked out by the International Secretariat or the International Executive Committee, since they were reconstituted in 1946 and even more recently in the draft preparatory resolution for the Fourth World Congress. The Militant and the *Fourth International* themselves have published in recent months numerous articles from members of the IS to reinforce and defend these orthodox Trotskyist conceptions on the question of the USSR. There exists no trace of proof to the contrary.
The leadership of the Fourth International has perhaps revised the Trotskyist program of political revolution in the USSR? What a shameful lie! The draft resolution, "Rise and Decline of Stalinism" (published in the November issue of "Quatrieme Internationale") repeats in numerous places that only a victorious political revolution in the USSR, only the uprising of the Soviet masses following the example of the masses of East Germany, will open the road to the socialist regeneration in the USSR. It salutes the events of the last year and a half as proofs that the Soviet masses are reawakening, beginning slowly to regroup their forces and will take the road of political struggle. It explicitly warns the Trotskyist movement against any illusion that the socialist regeneration of the USSR has already begun. The review "Quatrieme Internationale" publishes in its issue of November 1953 a polemic by a member of the IS against the writer Deutscher precisely upon this question. The IS intervened in the most energetic fashion in the discussion within the Ceylonese section to fight such ideas. And now the authors of the Open Letter claim, without any proof, to attribute to the international leadership ideas which it has clearly combatted!
Has the leadership of the Fourth International refused to "express the revolutionary political aspirations of the insurgent workers of East Germany" and to call for the withdrawal of the occupying troops? What a shameful lie! The declaration of the IS on the events in East Germany, intended not for the agitation of the German workers in the course of the events but to explain these events correctly for the use of world proletarian opinion, and published in *The Militant* as in the whole international Trotskyist press, characterized these events as the beginning of a political revolution, and formulated a precise program of revolutionary demands which proved to correspond at every point with the demands advanced by the insurgents themselves. As to the slogan of "withdrawal of Soviet troops" during the events, two things should be said: (a) The German workers, for tactical reasons and correctly kept this out of their *agitation* so as not to have to fight from the beginning both the German Stalinist bureaucrats and the Soviet troops at the same time; (b) The propaganda for this always correct demand should always be made within the framework of the more general demand for "withdrawal of all occupying troops from Germany."
It is only with these two conditions that the Trotskyists, especially the American Trotskyists, could show their will effectively to help the German workers without helping the game of the imperialists.
The analysis of the events in East Germany published in the official organ of the IEC, "Quatrieme Internationale," called specifically for the withdrawal of all occupying troops from Germany. The world Trotskyist press was filled with articles saluting the beginning of the political revolution against the bureaucracy in East Germany, branding the counter-revolutionary repression by the Soviet bureaucracy and its Stalinist agents — articles written by the members of the International Secretariat, the "revisionist Pablist minority." The "capitulators to Stalinism" in the leadership of the Fourth International did not just chatter about the political revolution. They took steps to rebuild a secret revolutionary organization in East Germany itself.
### Camouflage?
All these facts are well known to the leaders of the SWP majority and their allies in Europe. Every man of normal intelligence, moreover, will find them by reading any public Trotskyist organ. The authors of the Open Letter themselves dare not deny it. But they keep in reserve a special argument for anyone who may oppose these facts to their unfounded accusations. They write that the "Pablists" aim to "inject their conciliation towards Stalinism by small doses . . . this is the explanation of the strange ambiguity of many of the Pablist formulas and their diplomatic lack of clarity." That is all. That suffices, it appears. Cannon at least appears to think that this is sufficient to provoke the disintegration of the Fourth International. We think that it is sufficient to reveal the terrible methods to which Cannon must now resort?
[p. 180]
Proofs? Documents? Speeches? Resolutions? An analysis? Actions? Current activity? Who is interested in all that? For the prophets of Revealed Truth, a phrase picked out here and there and brutally distorted are quite enough to characterize the policy and leadership of an organization like the Fourth International. There are no secrets for them; they probe into the hearts of the leaders of the Fourth International and there discover that they are really revisionists and criminal liquidators.
But this method of accusation arouses in all of us echoes which we cannot fail to recognize. Who were the sages who claimed, before Cannon, that all the activity and all the writings of a group or a person represent nothing but a camouflage of his real intentions? Poor Harry Truman, who can be proud of a career well filled with services rendered to his imperialist class and who will go down to history as the man who tried to check the rise of the colonial revolution by starting the Korean war, has not this former President of the USA just been accused in his turn of capitulating before Stalinism because he dared to express his disagreement on a secondary question with Senator McCarthy? And was there not another Joseph, yet more sinister, who explained confidentially to his supporters that all the revolutionary activity of Trotsky, all his writings, all his efforts to combat imperialism and defend the USSR was no more than a vulgar "camouflage" of his real criminal intentions revealed in a single phrase, naturally distorted: "It is necessary to eliminate Stalin"?
The world revolution, the supreme truth of our epoch, needs neither lies nor calumnies to defend it, said Trotsky. Why do the *majority leaders of the SWP resort to* the most contemptible witchhunting methods of McCarthy and Stalin against the Fourth International? Why are the only arms of which they dispose the arms of lies and slander. Is this fact not sufficient to condemn the whole policy of this leadership as a policy without principle and the whole course on which they have embarked a course towards political suicide?
### "Liquidators"
The Open Letter accuses the leadership of the Fourth International of wishing "knowingly and deliberately" to liquidate the world Trotskyist organization. For an accusation of such gravity two proofs alone are offered in this letter: It is claimed that the leadership of the Fourth International has "slanderously distorted" the political positions of the Chinese section of the FI denying that it constitutes "genuine representatives of the Chinese proletariat" and has gone so far as to white-wash the murder of the Chinese Trotskyists by the Mao regime. They claim further that in the course of the last general strike in France in August 1953, the French section of the FI became "jointly responsible" for a real betrayal of the revolution committed by the Stalinists, and crowned this "joint responsibility" by "officially denouncing Trotskyist militants to the Stalinists."
The ignoble effort to mobilize the Chinese Trotskyists who died for the FI for the purpose of destroying that organization, represents a new record "low" on the part of the authors of the Letter. Their contempt for truth is equalled only by their contempt for the Trotskyist readers to whom they address themselves and whom they do not give credit for any memory or political intelligence.
In fact, the IS and the IEC have published two strong public protests against the repression inflicted on our comrades by Mao's regime. These protests were published in all the international Trotskyist press, including the Militant. But we have learned from Trotsky never to confuse a revolution with its leadership, nor a leadership which consciously strangles the revolution with a leadership which accomplishes it partially with a thousand mistakes and hesitations. Whoever cannot understand these differences ought to refrain from engaging in revolutionary politics. It is unfortunately a fact, recognized by many cadres and leaders of our Chinese section itself — as numerous internal bulletins published by the IS witness — that the leadership of this section, far from having always given proof of a "firm, principled attitude" has made catastrophic errors. Even after the decisive offensive of Mao's armies began, it continued to defend the demand for the reestablishment of peace and convocation of a Constituent Assembly, confusing the ebb of the revolution with its flow. Even after the proclamation of the Chinese People's Republic, it hesitated for two years before recognizing that Mao was not in the process of repeating 1927, that is to say, reestablishing bourgeois power, but was in the process of liquidating this power. Until a recent date it has defended the point of view that the Chinese CP is a peasant party. All these errors in no way justify, we must say, the repression carried out against these comrades, who have loyally contributed to the fight to reinforce the People's Republic of China, to fight the capitalists and defeat the imperialists in Korea. But this repression in its turn cannot prevent us from criticizing what was incorrect and fighting for a correct political line. The defense of our Chinese comrades cannot be adequately done if one adopts a false analysis of the reality in China and if still today one closes one's eyes to the gigantic importance of the Chinese Revolution.
The majority leadership of the SWP which in another document ridicules the IS for being infected with "revolutionary romanticism" because it salutes the enormous extension of the revolutionary movement of the masses in most colonial and semi-colonial countries, suddenly discovers, *on information from its friend Bleibtreu,* that a revolution was betrayed this summer in France. For not having denounced this betrayal, naturally committed by the Stalinists, the leadership of the Fourth International in its turn has "betrayed."
In reality the general strike of four million workers and employees in the public services in France was not the beginning of a revolution nor even, as the Letter claims, the most important general strike in French history. By contrast with 1936 and 1944, there was little occupation of factories, little or no political demands, little or no spontaneous establishment of workers' organs of self-representation, little or no participation of the decisive sector of the proletariat, the metal workers. This is not surprising. The general strike of August 1953 was the first great movement for immediate demands of great scope in France since the defeat of the miners' strike in 1948. The split in the trade union movement and the absence of unity of workers' action were considered by all the French Trotskyists from 1948 to 1953 as being the essential cause of the retreat of the workers. All the Trotskyists, including those who split with Bleibtreu, have always considered that the struggle for unity of action on all levels represented the principal objective to be attained by the French workers' movement in this period. Further, it is precisely because the CGT under Stalinist leadership left to the non-Stalinist unions the initiative and the leadership of the strike of August 1953 that it robbed them of all excuse for not supporting this movement. This tactic was perfectly correct at the *initial stage* of the workers' counter-offensive. It was perfectly correct that, in order not to embarrass the united front which was established in action the CGT did not advance any political demand which might have risked breaking this unity. We have criticized the Stalinist party because it did not match this action in favor of a trade union united front with action in favor of a political united front with the Socialist Party. We criticized the Stalinists because they did not raise the question of the government, because they did not fight for a communist-socialist government. We have insisted that only the struggle for a governmental objective could make the strike general. But to attack the CP because it "did not take power" and did not do so on purpose "in order to restore capitalism which was on the point of collapse" is to replace politics with delirium. To confuse, on the basis of the fantastic information of which the Bleibtreu group appears to have the absolute monopoly, the beginning of a working-class offensive with its end, the awakening of the masses with a decisive struggle for power, the task of reestablishing the workers' united front with that of organizing the armed insurrection — this is a sad proof of political disorientation. That is what is revealed by the accusation, according to which the Fourth International is infected with "Gompersism," that is to say, forbidding trade unions to engage in politics.
[p. 181]
As to the accusation of having "officially denounced Trotskyist militants to the Stalinists," this is absolutely incomprehensible. The French section of the FI has publicly declared to the Renault workers that two militants who have left its ranks and who continue to proclaim themselves as representatives of our movement have not the right to speak in the name of the FI and do not follow the political line of the Trotskyist organization. In what is this a "denunciation"? These militants have always operated in the name of Trotskyism. Does the majority leadership of the SWP think that the Stalinists will attack them any more because we have revealed that they are no longer Trotskyists? Or perhaps the "denunciation" signifies merely that these militants will have more difficulty in getting themselves accepted *as Trotskyists* by the workers? Militants who break the discipline of our movement, who leave it, who spread publicly false and fantastic political positions and risk making us ridiculous or endangering us, these militants perfectly deserve that every worker shall know that they speak only for themselves and not for the FI.
What is hidden in reality behind the accusation that the IS wants to "liquidate" the FI appears clearly in the passage of the Letter which discusses the polemic of the IS against the "struggle for the building of *independent* revolutionary Socialist parties." Thus the tactic of partial or complete entry by our organizations into the mass parties is really the question, the tactic which, certainly all the sectarians have continually called "liquidationist" since the day when Trotsky — and Lenin before him — defended it for the first time. Like all the sectarian groups, the Bleibtreu group claims to lead general strikes effectively with an insignificant number of militants. We recognize that we are fully guilty of the sin of wanting to "liquidate" ridiculous boasts of this kind. Experience has shown for a long time to all serious revolutionaries that such infantile efforts at self-deception result in the end in the demoralization and real liquidation of an organization. The still recent fate of the Haston group in Great Britain is a typical example. Experience has equally proved that it is not sufficient to proclaim oneself the "proletarian vanguard" of the "new working-class leadership" to be able to play this role in practice. It is still necessary that the masses shall be convinced from their own experiences that we are capable of acting as their leaders. The merit of the present leadership of the International consists precisely in the fact that it tries to establish, for each country, the appropriate organizational tactic to permit our cadres to become real and not imaginary leaders of the mass movement.
Why does the majority leadership of the SWP openly attack the application of the entrist tactic in numerous countries, which it actually does by its accusations of "liquidationism"? For the very simple reason that this tactic was not decided during recent months, but two years ago, and the SWP leadership completely approved it! It approved it in the letter from a secretary of the SWP to Comrade Pablo which we quoted above. The tactic was approved by Cannon himself in a letter addressed to Renard on May 29, 1952. In this letter, speaking of the documents of the Third World Congress and of the 10th Plenum of the IEC — documents in which the very wide application of the entrist tactic were first sketched and then widely developed — Cannon wrote in these words: "It is the unanimous advice of the leadership of the SWP that the authors of these documents have rendered a great service to the movement, for which they deserve the appreciation and support of comrades, and not mistrust and denigration."
This advice was given yesterday to Renard. Cannon could well give it today to himself. A policy which, purely for organizational ends, condemns today as revisionist a tactic which it lauded to the skies yesterday, without any changes at all in the objective situation, is the prototype of unprincipled political bankruptcy.
### The Starting Point of the Real Disagreements
The manifestation of sterile sectarianism which really hides itself behind the accusation launched against the leadership of the International of liquidationism gives us the common denominator of the real political differences which the majority SWP leadership is in the process of developing with the International. Clear away the insults, the lies and the slanders which flow so freely from the pen of the majority SWP leadership, and you easily recognize that real political differences are in the process of arising and developing with surprising rapidity.
[p. 182]
It is naturally a slander in the Open Letter when it accuses the IS of presenting the thesis that the world revolution has already triumphed and therefore the construction of the FI has become useless. The preparatory documents of the Fourth World Congress speak with complete clarity on this question. Not only do we remain more firmly convinced than ever that the building of the FI and of new revolutionary mass parties in all countries is indispensable to the victory of the world revolution; we even insist on the fact that in countries like Yugoslavia and China where the revolution has achieved a first decisive victory, experience has shown that a Trotskyist leadership and policy are necessary not to endanger the gains of this revolution and to ensure that it is fused with the world revolution. But you will not find a trace of "revisionism" in this analysis with a microscope.
But in reality, another matter is in question. It comes clearly out in the document of Morris Stein, "Some Remarks on the 'Rise and Decline of Stalinism,'" which provides the theoretical basis of the political attacks made by the majority leadership of the SWP against the IS, that they bring into question the traditional Trotskyist conception of the dialectical relations between the spontaneous rise of a mass revolutionary movement and the building of a new revolutionary leadership.
The Transitional Program of the FI starts from the proposition that the crisis of humanity is the crisis of the revolutionary leadership. From that flows the task of building new revolutionary parties and a new international, the Fourth, as the central task of our time. It is true for the whole epoch of declining capitalism, since 1914, if we include in this task the effort undertaken by Lenin and the Third International which he led to build new revolutionary parties, an effort which failed as a result of the degeneration of the Comintern under the Stalinists. But only inveterate sectarians will conclude from this general analysis that so long as there exists no new revolutionary leadership no fundamental change can develop in the general world situation. On the contrary, Trotsky spent twenty years of his life in showing that, in the general framework of the agony of capitalism, fundamental changes can be produced by the autonomous eruption of the masses. Naturally this movement does not suffice in itself to assure the *final victory* of the revolution; for that an adequate revolutionary leadership is necessary. But it creates precisely the preconditions for successfully building the mass revolutionary parties.
The appreciation of the relations of world forces between the classes represents the "fundamental starting point for all revolutionary policy" wrote Lenin. In dozens and dozens of articles and speeches, Trotsky has explained that the fundamental cause of the victory of Stalinism in the USSR and in the Third International was the development of these relations of forces in a way *unfavorable* to the international and Soviet proletariat, that is to say, the retreat of the world revolution. Every other fundamental explanation of the degeneracy of the USSR and the CI would replace historical materialism with futile idealistic methods. Certainly, from 1923 to 1938 numerous opportunities offered themselves in numerous countries to *reverse* this fundamental tendency of retreat of the revolution which characterized the whole period. The Trotskyist movement fought with all its strength that these opportunities should not again be missed. But as the years passed, no Trotskyist expressed the least doubt about the fundamental tendency to retreat of the revolution in the period 1923-43.
When the world leadership of the FI reconstituted itself on the morrow of the Second World War, it had to reply first to this fundamental question before engaging in any serious political activity: what is the general dynamic of the relations of class forces on the world scale? Are we still living in a period of retreat of the revolution, as on the eve of the Second World War, or rather has a new period of rise and revolutionary flood begun? Our reply, like that of the leaders of the SWP was clear and precise; the fall of Mussolini inaugurated a new period of revolutionary advance, in which the relations of forces are fundamentally evolving in a way favorable to the proletariat. For lack of revolutionary leadership, many struggles can end in this or that country in partial retreats, but the power of the autonomous movement of the masses on the world scale is such that, facing a terribly weakened capitalism, it would need a whole historic period before we could speak of a new world-wide ebb of the revolution. And when the Chinese revolution triumphed in 1949, this fundamental analysis received such reinforcement that all idea of a decisive defeat of the world revolution became identified in reality with the more and more limited possibility of a complete victory of imperialism in the war.
Shachtman, Morrow, the emigre leadership of the IKD and partially Haston opposed a subjective sectarian thesis to this analysis: "How can we talk of a rising revolutionary tide, or progress by the world revolution, when the FI in practice is so weak?" Yesterday we, in common with the leadership of the SWP, replied to this confused chatter that the spontaneous movement of the masses has its own logic, fundamentally determined *in its initial stage* not by the existence of a revolutionary party but by the sicknesses of decadent capitalism. Today, unhappily, the majority leaders of the SWP are beginning to use the same non-Marxist arguments against us.
The Third World Congress started in its analysis of the fundamental estimation of the relations of world forces between the classes on the world scale sketched above. The leadership of the SWP, in agreement with this analysis still yesterday, is beginning today to revise it. It does not oppose clear conceptions to it; it opposes to it an eclectic game made of mental reservations, hesitations and doubts. Perhaps the revolution is too strong to permit a *durable* compromise over its body between imperialism and bureaucracy? Perhaps such compromises are after all still possible? Perhaps imperialism will find other solutions, even so? Perhaps a "little crisis" will provoke a revolutionary wave in the USA which will prevent the war? Perhaps a "big" crisis will precipitate the outbreak of the war. Careful reading of the Militant in the course of recent months — especially the series of articles by Hansen on the world situation — reveal the pell-mell display of all these hypotheses. The most confused eclecticism begins to replace the rigor of Marxist analysis. This is what explains the real differences on the interpretation of the events which have taken place in the USSR since the death of Stalin.
[p. 183]
### Capitulation before Stalinism
Shachtman discovered a long time before the majority leadership of the SWP and Bleibtreu that we had "capitulated before Stalinism." He discovered this when we explained that the Kremlin could not long maintain its control over the buffer countries without destroying capitalist production there and making them into deformed workers' states. He discovered it when we characterized the French and Italian Communist parties as mass parties of the working class of these countries. He discovered it when we analyzed, unfortunately late, the proletarian revolution which had triumphed in Yugoslavia. He finally discovered it when we defined the Chinese Civil War resulting in the victory of Mao Tse-tung as a decisive victory of the Third Chinese Revolution.
In other terms, for Shachtman, our "capitulation before Stalinism" consists in our Marxist analysis of *reality* . . . to which he opposes "his position on the Russian question." The sectarians of all kinds have always the habit of refusing the "recognition" of facts when they do not fit into their schemas.
Alas, the majority leadership of the SWP is today applying exactly the same method to accuse us in its turn of "capitulating before Stalinism." What is in question — leaving aside the slanders — is our analysis of the events in the USSR since the death of Stalin. The facts prove that a pressure, a growing discontent of the masses has obliged the bonapartist tops of the bureaucracy to make great economic concessions to the workers and peasants, and to seek at least to create the impression that the arbitrary dictatorship of the police would in future be limited. All the serious observers in the world, from the London "Economist" to the Paris "Monde," the "Tribune" of Bevan and the "Borba" of Kardelj are agreed on this fundamental interpretation. The "Economist" notably published in its issues of August 29, September 12 and October 10 a series of articles on the evolution of the policy of Malenkov, in which we find numerous formulas of the kind that "consumers no longer accept goods of bad quality." "The pressure from below forces the planners to," etc., etc. It is true that, for McCarthy, the "Economist" and the "Monde" have long since "capitulated before Stalinism."
In our opinion, one must have a mind completely deformed by suspicion, fear and demoralization to discover any trace of "capitulation before Stalinism" in the *fact* of recognizing a *fundamental* change in the relations of forces between the Soviet bureaucracy and the proletariat, a change favorable to the latter. Parallel to the change in the relation of forces on the world scale in favor of the proletariat, it obliges the bureaucracy to make real concessions to the masses. Every serious Trotskyist will, on the contrary, salute this *fact* as an important, if not decisive turn in the world situation. He will not find therein the proof that the bureaucracy has changed its nature. He will not find therein reason to make peace with Malenkov. He will not find therein reasons to create illusions about the possibility of the regeneration of the Soviet Union by reforms. On the contrary, he will salute this fact as a proof that his *class,* the Soviet proletariat, is in the process of reawakening. He will conclude that this same proletariat which today obliges Malenkov to make serious concessions will pass to action tomorrow, when it will feel still more sure of itself and will overthrow the bureaucratic dictatorship. Hardly was the ink dry on our first projects of analysis of what is going on in the USSR when the events in East Germany came to offer a striking confirmation of our forecasts. That is another reason for feeling confident and proud of our Trotskyist movement which had been the sole political current in the world to forecast an extension of the revolutionary rise into the countries dominated by the Soviet bureaucracy!
But demoralized people, frightened and disoriented by the brusque development of the world situation, without real confidence in the world proletariat, in the Soviet masses and especially in the international Trotskyist movement, fear that to "admit" the Malenkov concessions to the masses is to build up the prestige of the bureaucracy and not confidence in the power of the proletariat. They rationalize their fears by denying the facts. Thus we have seen the sad sight offered by *The Militant* seriously affirming that nothing has changed in the Soviet Union since the death of Stalin, that we have seen nothing there but "bloody purges" and "concessions to the bureaucracy and the rich peasants"! The Open Letter itself, does it not sum up the generality of the evolution of the USSR in the last year by one formula only, "maneuvers to reinforce greatly the usurping bureaucracy forming part of preparations to hand to a leading bureaucrat the mantle of Stalin"? The struggle of social forces, the reawakening of the proletariat, the appreciation of the relations of forces between proletariat and bureaucracy and their dynamic, all this has disappeared in the analysis, henceforth replaced by hysterical imprecations. This is the price to pay for an empirical policy, without principle.
However, the affair does not stop there. The majority leadership of the SWP, which at the time of its congress of July 1952 accepted in full the estimation of the Third World Congress of the FI about the dynamic of the relation of forces between the classes on the world scale, is in the process of revising, with giant strides this same estimation. It is in the process of adopting the subjectivist thesis of demoralization contained in the Stein document, according to which there is no fundamental difference between the present period and the pre-war period of retreat of the revolution, "because the FI is feeble," "because there is no adequate revolutionary leadership." The Open Letter goes even so far as to reproach the leadership of our movement for *"not placing the stress (sic) on the danger of a new barbarism"!* In the framework of such a perspective it naturally becomes plausible to play with the notion of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. The first sample of this discovery incontestably comes from the Bleibtreu group, which for some time has replaced the method of Marxist analysis by using secret information about the poisoning of Stalin, the reestablishment of capital in the USSR and the presence of Stalinist agents at the head of the FI. In fact, if as before the war, the world revolution is tottering from defeat to defeat, the destruction of what remains in the USSR of the conquests of October lies logically at the end of this road. But if we start from the correct analysis of the world situation as it is, which is not a situation of ebb but of flood-tide of the world revolution, interrupted with armistices and partial retreats; if you admit that it is not the revolution but world capitalism which is ebbing and is fundamentally weakening, though still retaining immense resources and reserves, essentially in the USA, then equally logically the perspective of a real danger of the reestablishment of capitalism in the USSR seems to come out of a sick brain. We think that that is actually the case.
[p. 184]
### What has really been revised?
To understand that we are living today in a period fundamentally different from that of pre-war days, a period of flood and not of ebb of the revolution, is to understand that it is necessary for our movement effectively to revise something; not its program, but its analysis and tactics. He who considers it "revisionist" to modify one's analysis and tactics when the objective conditions have changed should learn all over again what revolutionary tactics are.
When there were treacherous compromises between the Soviet bureaucracy and world imperialism, which delivered to defeat the Spanish and French revolutions in 1936, the Greek revolution, the French and the Italian in 1944-45, we were the first to denounce the infamous acts of the Kremlin. We added however at once that the success of these betrayals depended in the last analysis not on the counter-revolutionary intentions of the Kremlin, but on the relative feebleness, the narrow limits, in which the revolutionary flood was still confined. If we believe that the Kremlin is capable of breaking any and every revolutionary rising, it is not worth while making the victory of the world revolution the axis of one's work.
Is it possible for a serious revolutionary to place in doubt that the "Prague coup" of February 1948 was not the product of a "treacherous compromise" between the Kremlin and Wall Street, but was indeed a self-defensive reflex of the bureaucracy *against* imperialism? Is it possible to place in doubt that the seizure of power by Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese-Soviet alliance which resulted from it in no way signify that the Kremlin "is imposing the consolidation of capitalism in China" but on the contrary that, faced with imperialist threats, the bureaucracy has been obliged to ally itself with the Chinese revolution, which has become too powerful to be simply strangled or sold in the same way as the Spanish and Greek revolutions? To repeat mechanically about China or Korea the accusations levelled in the past against Stalinist policy in Spain or Greece, that is not to remain an "orthodox Trotskyist," it is to appear on the political scene as blind spinners of myths, and is to reinforce the hold of Stalinism upon the vanguard of the workers, which we can never win with the aid of obvious untruths.
It is in this sense that a "revision" of the analysis and tactics of our movement are imperiously necessary in the situation of the "cold war" and the accelerated preparation of the world counter-revolutionary war of imperialism against the anti-imperialist forces of every kind. Without this "revision," it became impossible to fight Stalinism *effectively,* and we risked seeing truly pro-Stalinist tendencies developing in the organization. Without this revision our organization risked ossifying in false positions and cutting itself off from the revolutionary masses in action. The new analysis of the world situation carried out by the Third World Congress, we must repeat, changed in no way our judgment of the Soviet bureaucracy, its conservative and counter-revolutionary intentions, its desire to arrive at a lasting *modus vivendi* with imperialism. It only laid down that the power of the revolutionary upswing and the mortal danger which threatens imperialism make these desires ineffective and incapable of being realized, at least on the world scale (which does not exclude that the Stalinists in this or that isolated country, or at this or that moment, may unfortunately succeed in veritable treacheries).
The majority leadership of the SWP which today reproaches us for our "revisionism" was so conscious of the effective need to revise the analysis and tactics which events have out-dated that it adopted a resolution at its Congress of July 1952 notably stipulating:
"The 15th National Congress of the SWP considers correct the estimation made in the different theses and resolutions (of the Third World Congress); on the nature of the coming war, of the rhythm of the preparations for war, of the analysis of the contradictions of the Kremlin and the national Stalinist bureaucracies, of the characterization of the class nature and evolution of Yugoslavia and the countries of Eastern Europe, of the significance of the Chinese revolution, etc. *The tactic developed by the resolution flows as the logical conclusion of the political premises.*"
Writing to Renard, a leading member of the Bleibtreu tendency, Cannon wrote:
"We see no revisionism at all (in the documents of the Third World Congress and the 10th Plenum of the IEC). All that we find there is a clarification of the post-war evolution of Stalinism and a sketch of a new tactic to fight it more effectively. We consider that these documents are completely Trotskyist. They differ from the previous documents of our movement, not in principles but only in the confrontation and analysis of a new reality and in a tactical adjustment to this reality. It is the unanimous opinion of the leadership of the SWP that the authors of these documents have done a great service to the movement for which they merit the appreciation and support of comrades, not mistrust and denigration."
Sectarian resistances to a tactical change flowing from the objective situation, these have appeared on numerous occasions in the history of the revolutionary movement, and of our movement in particular. Polemicizing at the beginning of 1940 against Shachtman, Trotsky ridicules the idea that the Soviet bureaucracy wishes everywhere and at all times to "consolidate capitalism."
"Shachtman clings doggedly to the fact that the program of Kuusinen is formally the program of the 'democratic bourgeoisie.' Does he mean by that that the Kremlin is more interested in the establishment of the democratic bourgeoisie in Finland than in introducting Finland within the framework of the USSR? Shachtman himself does not know what he means. In Spain which Moscow was not preparing to attach to the USSR, it was effectively a question of proving the capacity of the Kremlin to safeguard the democratic bourgeoisie against the proletarian revolution. This objective flowed from the interests of the Kremlin in a particular international situation. Today the situation is different . . ."
[p. 185]
His polemic against Shachtman, who claimed that any and every action by the Kremlin was always counter-revolutionary, has known a recent revival when Hansen characterized Stalinism as being "counter-revolutionary through and through."
"The Red Army entered Poland solely as a 'counter-revolutionary force' (claims Shachtman) with the object of suppressing the movement (of the masses). But why did the workers and peasants in Western Poland conquered by Hitler not organize a revolution? Why was it principally the revolutionaries, the 'democrats' and the Jews who had to flee from there, while in Eastern Poland it was principally the landed proprietors and the capitalists who cleared out?"
What was implied then in this polemic was Shachtman's inability to understand the double, contradictory character of the Soviet bureaucracy, which is not only counter-revolutionary in relation to the international proletariat but still in its great majority attached to the new eminently revolutionary mode of production in the USSR of today. It is from this contradictory nature of the bureaucracy that rises the possibility, the necessity for it to modify its policy "when the objective situation is different." Trotsky explained to Shachtman that his method was that of a "superficial and pretentious person who refuses to deepen the internal dialectical logic of the events." Cannon, in a more polite tone, addressed the same reproach to Renard in May 1952. We ourselves are obliged today to address the same reproach to Cannon.
It is not only our fundamental Trotskyist conception on the nature of the Soviet bureaucracy which is in the balance here. The effective revision of this conception by our opponents has dangerous political implications. We know how Shachtman developed in the space of a few months from his affirmation of the "uniquely and entirely counter-revolutionary" character of Stalinism to the abandonment of the defense of the USSR and to his position of the third camp. The majority leadership of the SWP swears that it represents "orthodox Trotskyism." But all these solemn declarations have not prevented it in the course of the recent months from supporting the infamous action of the "Eisenhower packages" in Berlin, designed to support the electoral campaign of Adenauer and to disorganize the revolutionary socialist front of the anti-Stalinist opposition in East Germany. These declarations have not prevented them from passing over completely in silence *the organization by American imperialism* of the coup d'etat in Iran which overthrew Mossadegh, and of denouncing only "the Stalinist treachery" in this affair. These are for the moment small signs, but signs full of significance. They acquire all their significance from the fact that they appear in the USA as it is today, dominated by a climate of anti-Communist hysteria. They obtain all their significance from the fact that they happen at the moment when this leadership is preparing to break with the international Trotskyist movement.
### Cominternist Methods
The Open Letter accuses the leadership of the FI of using bureaucratic maneuvers and "Cominternist methods" in the Trotskyist movement, of their "preparing splits and expulsions." This accusation rests on the strange case of "duplicity" of our relations with the leadership of the SWP which we will examine later, and the split which took place last year in the French Section of the International. In this section there was a group of comrades representing at that moment 55% of the forces of the organization and who were opposed to the political line determined by the Third World Congress. The leadership of the International showed great patience towards it. It never questioned the right of the international majority to see the line applied in *all* sections, a right implied by the structure of our movement as a world party. It always claimed to want to apply the line of the international. The facts have shown however that it had no real desire to apply this line and that, in the words of Cannon, it "played with the decisions of the World Congress." These maneuvers were discussed at the Third World Congress, at the 10th, 11th and 12th Plenums of the IEC. When all efforts at conciliation and compromise were exhausted, the IEC decided, almost unanimously, to modify the composition of the leadership of the French Section, handing it over to comrades convinced of the correctness of the line of the International. To the Bleibtreu-Lambert tendency were offered all the rights of an international minority tendency. It preferred however not to recognize the decision of the IEC, not to carry it out, but to split the French Section and publicly attack the Fourth International. Even after intolerable acts of indiscipline, the International offered to this tendency reintegration in the movement. It was never a question of discriminating against it for its ideas or stopping it from defending its ideas *within the movement.* The Bleibtreu-Lambert group refused afresh the unity proposals of the IEC and the affair was closed. That is the record of the "bureaucratic crimes" of the International leadership.
But let us look now at these virtuous democrats who reproach us bitterly for "Cominternist methods." The last Plenum of the National Committee of the SWP expelled over 35% of the party members, including the principal working-class sections in Detroit, Flint, Youngstown and Buffalo. These comrades had not attacked the line of the Party or defended their opinions in public. The pretext for the exclusion was that they did not participate in a meeting. The real reason for their exclusion, as the Open Letter cynically explains, was that they "support and defend" the line of the International on the recent events which have happened in the USSR. In other words, these comrades have been excluded for their ideas, and only for their ideas! This is confirmed by the fact that even before the public meeting in New York which served as the pretext for exclusion, the leadership of the SWP refused to tell the IS and the American minority the agenda for the Plenum of the National Committee.
The few European allies of Cannon follow faithfully in their master's footsteps. The Bleibtreu group has excluded one of its oldest leaders, secretary of the party during the illegality under the Nazi occupation, for the "crime" of having participated, as an elected trade union leader, in a delegation of reformist trade unions going to the USSR. This is called "breach of proletarian morality"! The same group reproaches the IS for not having ordered the immediate exclusion of the minority of our Ceylon section at the moment when it included 45% of the forces of the party. Burns, the ally of Cannon in England, has not hesitated for a minute to exclude all the members of the PB and the CC who remained faithful to the International, even though he was confronted with a petition of over 60% of the members opposing all organizational measures and demanding the calling of a national conference. These are the "organizational principles" of these strange defenders of the internal democracy in our movement.
[p. 186]
The leadership of the International has always applied a rigorously principled method in relation to persons or tendencies. It will not change this method on the pretext that there is a crisis in the movement. We do not know "friends" or "enemies"; we only know tendencies which are politically right or wrong, which respect or violate democratic centralism. As our movement has not yet discussed the positions of the SWP minority on American problems, the IEC as a whole cannot express an opinion on the subject. They will deal with this task very shortly. In any case, it is now and already profoundly convinced that the accusations of "capitulation before Stalinism," "pessimism," "petty-bourgeois ideology," of "running away from work among the trade union masses" levelled by the Open Letter at these comrades, are as false and slanderous as the analogous accusations levelled at the International leadership. It takes this opportunity to salute the courage with which these comrades have tried to defend the policy of the International and the integrity of its leadership in very difficult conditions. It solidarizes itself with their struggle against slander and split and assures them of all its political and moral support. Never will our movement recognize brutal acts of exclusion. Never shall we dishonor our democratic tradition to "have peace" with whomsoever it may be!
### The Origin of the Crisis
This and this alone lies at the origin of the present crisis in the relations between the majority leadership of the SWP and the international Trotskyist movement. There is a revealing passage in the Open Letter dealing with the "duplicity" of Pablo in showing one face to the leadership of the SWP, while at the same time secretly collaborating with the "revisionist Cochranite tendency." This accusation was expressed for the first time in a letter written on June 4, 1953 by Cannon to a friend in Europe, Tom, in which the IS is accused of having "organized" the struggle of the tendencies in the SWP. But 15 days before, speaking at a meeting of his tendency in New York, the same Cannon stated that he had no proof that the IS was giving political support to the American minority. . . .
The truth is that such support never existed anywhere but in the fears and suspicions of the majority leadership. The publication of a correspondence will show that these fears and suspicions had no foundation. The international leadership took in this matter as in every other a principled attitude. It declared that, as the political differences did not yet appear clearly to it, it would refrain from all intervention, except counselling moderation of tone and the rejection of organizational threats. The unanimous English leadership, Burns included, further sent a letter in exactly the same sense to the SWP against on May 26. The American majority did its utmost up to the month of May to steer its factional struggle so as to appear as being, by its own account, the best interpreter and defender of the policy of the International.
The fact that the fears and suspicions of "duplicity," not confirmed by any fact, could have led the majority leadership of the SWP to unleash a violent factional struggle against the leadership of the international and to break publicly with the FI, would suffice in itself to unmask the unprincipled character of the attitude of this leadership. Cannon, replying to Renard in May 1952, said all that needs saying on this subject:
"I am sure that the international movement will not sanction or support a factional struggle based on suspicions of future intentions, which cannot be demonstrated, or even deduced, from propositions or positions now formulated in documents. No one can learn anything from such struggles and the party will certainly lose from them. If you, comrades of the majority, insist on a struggle against 'revisionism' which is not evident to other people, you will be able only to disorient a number of worker comrades in the party, to isolate other cadres from the international movement and lead them into an impasse."
What an excellent reply of Cannon in 1952 to Cannon in 1953!
But in reality, this apparent "misunderstanding" about the attitude of the international leadership in the internal struggle of the SWP has a broader and more substantial basis. The majority leadership of the SWP might doubt whether the IS would support it in all the enterprises which it contemplated against the minority. Cannon was preparing for months the bureaucratic expulsion of the American minority. He awaited the approval in advance of such an act; he did not get it. That is what today he considers as "duplicity."
The international leadership has never had the attitude or intention of approving any and every action by Cannon or any tendency in the SWP. It has taken up its position in each struggle in principled fashion. The struggle against Shachtman was a principled struggle, in which Trotsky and the international movement supported Cannon for obvious reasons of political agreement. The struggle against Goldman and Morrow was another principled struggle, in which the international found itself in agreement with Cannon, even though it expressed its concern at the brutal organizational measures which concluded this struggle. The case of the minority today was different. The International has never condemned its political positions as against those of the majority, to the extent that there were political differences clearly expressed. To expect in these conditions that the international leadership would leave the field clear to Cannon to settle the organizational aspect "in his own way" was to consider that the International is led by a bureaucratic clique and not by a political leadership. If Cannon ever had this illusion and this conception of the International, he was badly wrong.
But let us admit even for a moment that the American majority is correct politically in its struggle against the minority. Let us admit that the IS is wrong in not approving completely and in advance any and every action by the leadership against the minority. If that were so, the majority leadership of the SWP, which very well knows the structure and the democratic morality of our movement, had ample opportunity of addressing itself to the International and defending its cause, even though the reactionary Voorhis law obliged the SWP to disaffiliate from the FI. Why has the leadership of the SWP not acted in this way, in accordance with the normal working rules of every revolutionary organization? Why did it prefer immediately to address the broad public and publicly betray the cause of International Trotskyism? This crowns in a certain way the unprincipled acts of the SWP majority, for it treads underfoot the supreme principle of Trotskyism; proletarian internationalism.
[p. 187]
Marxists do not play with the idea of the revolutionary international. For them, the succession of the internationals is not a numerical succession but a succession of historic epochs with different historic tasks for the working class. In order that an international can achieve its progressive function, there must be events of colossal power. The FI is the world party of the socialist revolution in the epoch of the death agony of capitalism and Stalinism. Has it achieved its historic function? Has it "betrayed"? Is it not the worst irresponsibility to attack the leadership and its line publicly, that is to say, in fact to break with the world Trotskyist movement, without fighting within it for their ideas as long as such a "betrayal" has not been clearly established? Did not Trotsky desire to remain within the Third International after the betrayal of the British General Strike and the Chinese Revolution, after even the beginning of the terrible degeneration in the USSR, and was he not ready to observe strictly the discipline of the movement externally, on the sole condition of being permitted to defend his ideas within the movement? How can we explain the sudden and terrible irresponsibility of the SWP majority on the question of the International if not as a brutal violation of the principles of proletarian internationalism?
The fidelity to principles which we demand of others, we apply ourselves. Even after all that has happened, there is a place for the Cannonites in our movement, on the condition that they submit to the traditional rules of working. We do not want to exclude anyone who is in agreement with our general program, nor to oblige anyone to be silent. We challenge the Cannonites to come to explain themselves before the forum of the Trotskyists of the entire world. But the latter will no doubt say: "Begin by showing by acts that you are ready to submit to the rules of democratic centralism. He who demands the rights must strictly apply the duties."
### What the Crisis has revealed
The whole of this unprincipled attitude shows that the majority of the leadership of the SWP has been deeply infected with degeneration. The degeneration in organizational methods is the result of political degeneration. The sickness, held in check for a certain period, broke out suddenly and developed rapidly. How can we explain it in a group which, for a long period, has incontestably been the principal standard-bearer of our international movement?
The SWP experienced its period of rise between 1934 and 1946, in a period when the international working-class movement was retreating under the advance of fascism and war and when the American working-class movement underwent a period of slow radicalization, culminating in the struggle against the no-strike pledge in the course of the war and the post-war strike wave. The ebb of the international working-class movement was accompanied by a disorganization of the Trotskyist movement, with Trotsky killed and dozens of cadres struck down by the counter-revolution. The slow radicalization of the American working-class movement was accompanied by a numerical and ideological reinforcement of the SWP, which struck good roots in the mass movement and combined intelligent Trotskyist propaganda activities with activities of general working-class leadership under numerous forms. The fidelity of the SWP to the principles of Trotskyism and its activity in the mass movement made it an example and a rallying point for the serious revolutionaries of the whole world.
But in the course of the last years the situation changed completely on this subject too. A rising revolutionary tide, which has not ceased to grow, took the place of the international ebb of the international revolution. A period of ebb under the growing pressure of the counter-revolution took the place of the radicalization of the American working-class movement. A period of regroupment and of organizational progress and important theoretical progress following the progressive striking of roots of our organizations in the mass movement, took the place of the period of disorientation and disorganization of the international Trotskyist movement. A period of organizational stagnation and of retreat from the mass movement replaced the numerical and ideological reinforcement of the SWP, not through its fault but in consequence of the pressure of reaction in the trade unions.
In these conditions, the leadership of the SWP ought to have understood the very great dangers which this new situation presented to its organization. It ought to have understood that the climate of reaction and the stagnation of the party endangered part of the organization with demoralization. Signs have not been lacking that such a danger was real. They should have reacted on the one hand by drawing closer their political links with the international movement, taking inspiration greatly from the progress of the international revolution and the international Trotskyist movement, and on the other hand by examining with extreme attention all the new possibilities for getting themselves, on a modest scale, to be sure, into the real working-class movement in the USA of today.
Alas, part of the leadership of the SWP reacted in the opposite way. They thought that they could resist the pressure of reaction and the threat of demoralization by putting the accent on the past of the party, on the worth which it had won, on its tradition, on its faith and certitude of victory. These are valuable means to combat demoralization, when they rest upon a real progress in deeds. But in a period of stagnation and retreat, they risk ossifying the cadres of the party, turning them away from reality, hiding real dangers from them, making them find the source of difficulties in internal "sabotage" instead of recognizing their objective basis. This is exactly what has happened with the majority of the SWP. Like the "old Bolsheviks" of 1923, these "old Trotskyists" give way to the hostile pressure of the environment, because they seek safety not in Marxist analysis but in tradition.
[p. 188]
"There has been more than one case in history," wrote Trotsky, "or more exactly it has never happened otherwise in history, that in the passing of the party from one period to another, elements who played a progressive role in the past, but who show themselves incapable of adapting themselves in time to new tasks, are blind before the danger and reveal, not their positive characteristics but almost exclusively their negative characteristics."
That is exactly what has happened now with the Cannon tendency. If in the past Trotsky or the international movement have been able to think that this or that action by Cannon was too brutal, this never played more than a secondary role in the political struggle, since Cannon defended principled positions. But today, when he is going not in opposition to imperialism but in opposition to the international revolution, all these traits, potentially present in the past, burst out and reveal themselves with extraordinary crudity. When you compare the calm, assured, principled style of "The Struggle for a Proletarian Party" with the hysterical slanders of the Open Letter, you see at once what an abyss separates the Cannon of former times whom we have all esteemed, from the Cannon of today who is on the way to becoming an enemy of the movement.
### The "Committee of the Fourth International"
At the same time as it was secretly preparing its public political break with the International, the majority of the leadership of the SWP was secretly seeking allies not merely within the International but also around it. That is why immediately after the Open Letter there appeared a document announcing the creation of a "Committee for the Fourth International."
This document, like the Open Letter, witnesses that the majority leadership of the SWP had renounced in advance any effort to secure the victory of their positions in the preparatory discussion of the Fourth World Congress. Cannon has wanted to organize a faction secretly "on a military basis" not to participate in a discussion but to break with the maximum of explosion.
In this "Committee" the basis of formal agreement is constituted by the "principles of orthodox Trotskyism," a pedantic repetition of the first truths of the Communist Manifesto on Capitalism and Socialism, plus a summary stand, sectarian and mechanical, towards the question of Stalinism ("definitely a petty-bourgeois agency of imperialism") which denies all the achievements of the International in this domain and can only disarm our movement completely anew. In relation to the idea, the structure and the functioning of the International as a centralized world party, all these elements and groups of the "Committee" are distinguished by a common rebellion against such a conception of the International and oppose to it the idea of a federal union, a sort of Bureau of "contacts and ideological exchanges" leaving to each one in fact full autonomy and freedom of action.
Organizationally the basis of the "Committee" permits thus each to behave as he pleases in his own country on the most essential problems. Cannon and Burns declared for the tactic laid down by the International for the Trotskyists of France; they previously condemned Bleibtreu for his opposition to this orientation which he presented as a "capitulation before Stalinism." Today they preserve silence on the tactic for France, but in their agreement with Bleibtreu against the FI they support in fact his "independent" orientation. Another example: On a question as important as the Chinese Revolution the declaration of the "Committee" is silent. For while the Open Letter presents it as being as degenerated as the Russian Revolution, the Bleibtreu group did not hesitate right up till today to present Mao Tse-tung as one of the champions of anti-Stalinist communism.
This "Committee" does not act as a faction which wants to win the International to an analysis, to perspectives and a coherent tactic opposed to those which the International has followed since the Third World Congress, but as an agglomeration which dodges the most essential problems in order to unite in an effort to dislocate the International as a centralized world party.
To conceal as well as possible the nature of this operation, to give a "theoretical" justification to those whom they desire to draw behind them in their rupture with the International, they wave the scarecrow of "Pabloism." They introduce nothing original in this domain, for they have contented themselves with taking up again the war-horse of the ex-faction of Johnson and Forrest on the eve of their rupture with the International, and which Cannon was the first to denounce by affirming that there is no such thing as "Pabloism."
But the less the associates of the "Committee" can speak in political terms, the more they feel themselves constrained to give a personal character to their attacks. Thus is explained the accumulation of the most scandalous and treacherous attacks against Comrade Pablo who has stood at the head of the battle to arm the International in the face of the problems of the existing situation.
### The Fourth International will Triumph!
The leadership of the International is conscious of the fact that it has done its utmost to check Cannon and the majority leadership of the SWP on the road of political degeneration. It is ready today to do all that is still possible. But it is not ready to betray our political and organizational principles. Our movement was born and has developed only thanks to its highly principled character. In the face of the opportunistic and unprincipled maneuvers of the reformists and Stalinists, which pave the way for the worst betrayals in reality of the interests of the proletariat, our movement has only survived because it incarnated the purity and firmness of principles and internal regime. It will equally be so in the future.
The Open Letter sought to provoke the split-up and disintegration of the FI. It has succeeded only in proving the degeneration and decline of its authors. All the Trotskyist movement rises to defend the political and organizational tradition of Trotskyism. The undertaking of the splitters will fail lamentably. The blow which Cannon has given us is severe. But the success which the progress of the world revolution will bring us is infinitely more important. It is on this map that we set forth; it is on this map that the founders of our movement set forth. After having passed through the test of Hitler and Stalin, the FI cannot be destroyed or seriously weakened. Striking roots in the real workers' movement of all countries, strong in its incomparable revolutionary program and with a capacity for political elaboration confirmed by facts of historic proportions, it will face the future serenely and confidently, convinced that the victory of the international revolution will coincide with its own victory.
[p. 189]
*The 14th Plenum of the IEC*
(Adopted unanimously)
December 1953
This text has also been signed by the following members of the IEC and leading cadres so far consulted:
Collins (England), Edo and Wilhelm (Germany), Pierre Frank, Jacques Privas, Michel Mestre (France), Livio Maitan, Franco Villani (Italy), Emile and Pierre (Belgium), Ernesto (Spain), Sal and Theo (Holland), Ler and Saxe (Austria), Posadas and Arroyo (Argentina), Serrano (Bolivia), Robert (Vietnam), Ortiz and Costa (Uruguay), Manuelo and Marcelo (Brazil), E. Germain, M. Pablo.