[p. 21]
Dear Comrades:
In 1953 your organizations broke with the International on the basis of affirmations of a political and organizational nature which we are asking you to reexamine now in the light of what have been since then the evolution of the objective situation, the evolution of each of your organizations, and the evolution of the policy of the International.
It would be easy for us today to prove, texts in hand, that this split—carried out in the name of the defense of "orthodox" Trotskyism against a so-called capitulation of the International to Stalinism—was not founded on even the most slightly serious basis.
Far from capitulating and breaking up, the International has distinguished itself by a political and organizational activity *never equalled in the past*, which has raised the political prestige of the International, enabled it to win new organizations and sections in several countries, and rooted it more deeply than ever in the real mass movement of those countries.
Never have the theoretical and political publications of the International been richer, more numerous, and of a higher level than at present, providing irrefutable proof of the International's capacity to develop revolutionary Marxism in a creative way by applying it to the real problems of the International communist movement.
Since the split of your organizations away from the International, two World Congresses have been held which were marked by a wider representation than ever before, and which worked out documents covering the world situation in all fields, documents published and distributed in several languages in the International's expanding theoretical and political press.
The leading organisms of the International have functioned regularly and given proof of intense political and organizational activity, taking positions on all important political questions, and stimulating the political and organizational life of the International as a whole.
In the period preparatory to the VIth World Congress of the Fourth International, scheduled for next year, the International is in better condition than ever, with the expansion of its organizations and contacts on all the continents, penetrating for the first time in the Arab countries, in Negro Africa, in Japan, in Indonesia, as well as in Eastern Europe, etc.; with the steady expansion of its press; with increased material and technical means.
Every sincere Trotskyist who has not been irremediably corrupted by a petty fractional spirit, should be heartened by these striking and visible advances and appreciate at its just value the tenacious effort that has been made since 1953 to overcome the effects of the criminal split, and to maintain and consolidate the International in the midst of all sorts of increased difficulties.
But what has happened in reality to the organizations of the International Committee? By what concrete theoretical, political, and organizational activity has it demonstrated its so-called effort to defend "orthodox" Trotskyism and the International against the "revisionists" and "liquidators"? Where are the theoretical and political documents which would show the ideological activity of the International Committee and which should normally provide political nutriment for the international movement to whose leadership the Committee has claimed to raise itself? Where are the congresses, the meetings, the publications, the persevering and effective activity of this organism? Where are the facts that might inspire confidence in the abilities and possibilities of those who took the decision of splitting the Trotskyist movement, allegedly in order to ensure it a more correct and effective activity?
[p. 22]
The truth is unfortunately quite different, and it must now be stated, forcefully and bluntly. This Committee has distinguished itself by its total deficiency as a pole of ideological and organizational regroupment of the international Trotskyist movement. And the reasons for this now plainly visible failure are not hard to discern:
The Committee has not had and still does not have any principled ideological unity in the front that it set up from the moment the split away from the International was consummated. Its organizations and groups have each followed their own policies, being united among themselves *only in their opposition to the organization of the International as a democratic-centralist world party.* Each of the organizations that form part of the Committee has evolved independently of any consideration of a general common formulation of an international line and discipline in accordance with the authentic tradition of our Trotskyist movement, international and internationalist in its essence.
We have witnessed the following spectacle and results:
The SWP—which at the moment of the split would not hear of either new perspectives opening up in the USSR, more particularly after Stalin's death, or of a modification of the correlation of forces between the Soviet bureaucracy and the masses in favor of the latter, or of the need for work in the direction of Stalinist milieux that could not escape the consequences of the crisis in Stalinism—made after the XXth Congress of the CP of the USSR, a complete turn, coming over to and even going beyond the allegedly most extreme positions of the International in this field.
Gradually, its main activity since the XXth Congress has been concentrated in the milieux originating in the American CP and its periphery, for whom the SWP has not hesitated to soft-pedal its line in a remarkable way on very important questions, to the point of provoking a grave new crisis in its ranks, with an important part of its own cadres—several of them workers—accusing it now of an "opportunism" more particularly adapted to the former right-Stalinist elements!
Now the SWP has never shown this flexibility toward the International, from which it preferred to break away rather than to discuss democratically, as it had always had a perfect possibility of doing. In 1953, it was isolation from the masses and the rigidity of the SWP's line concerning the new international perspectives and the work that it was necessary to do, *even though it was not the main work,* in the direction of Stalinist milieux in the United States, as well as some undeniably erroneous positions of the minority, which provoked the crisis and split in that organization, and not an alleged intervention of the International in favor of Cochran and Livingstone [Clarke]. Naturally, the International does not justify either the positions on which the SWP minority finally crystallized, or the organizational attitude it adopted. On the contrary, it was the International itself that fought with every ounce of energy against these false positions that would liquidate the International.
In 1958-59 it is the prolonged isolation from the masses, as well as the attitude adopted by the SWP in favor of right-wing and centre elements breaking with the American CP and not yet destalinized, which is provoking the crisis and split in the SWP, without any intervention—even indirectly—by the International. Once again, naturally, the International nowise justifies all the positions adopted by members of the new opposition, and more particularly their manifestly erroneous positions on the Hungarian revolution and toward Jugoslav communism. In both cases—both that of 1953 and that of 1958-59—the International has only noted the objective and subjective reasons for the crisis in the SWP.
At the same time that the SWP was gradually developing this line, the international and internationalist content of its press and activities steadily diminished. The International was really dismayed to observe to what a degree the *Militant* and the *International Socialist Review*—which, to please the ex-Stalinists, unfortunately abandoned its name of *Fourth International*—were reflecting less and less the international movement, concentrating on exclusively North American matters, and treating only partially and often erroneously—for lack of adequate documentation and comprehension—the colonial revolution, for example (Latin American, Arab, etc.), the developments in China, the European labor movement, etc.
The ideological regression in this domain is plain to be seen, and cannot but grieve every Trotskyist militant who remembers the totally different tenor of these organs in the days when the SWP was really part of the body of the international movement.
* * *
Let us now take up the evolution of the Burns [Healy] group, which has become, inside the International Committee, the real champion of the fight against the International and against unification. We do not want to insist here on all the zigzags of its policy in the various political fields (Stalinism, war, prospects for the future of the Labour Party, etc.). Our files are carefully filled with a view to any serious discussion that anyone might eventually wish to open, texts in hand, on all these questions. To the extent that this group has furnished documents and written positions, however rare and incomplete its stands have been, the International has noted them down with all the interest that it takes in the evolution of each of the Committee's organizations. Today we want to stress only the broad lines of the evolution of the Burns group.
After some progress scored in the entrist work in the Labour Party, this group also concentrated the essential part of its activity on those milieux pulling away from the British CP as a result of the crisis produced by the XXth Congress of the CP of the USSR, and then by the Hungarian revolution. Quite valuable elements coming from the British CP were won by this group on the basis of its activism. But instead of patiently reeducating these elements theoretically in the spirit of the real Trotskyist policy on the international and national levels, this group—also particularly "orthodox"—was imperceptibly subjected instead to the influence, activist and sectarian toward the Labour Party, of these elements who had been for years indoctrinated in the particularly empiricist and sectarian school of British Stalinism.
[p. 23]
The activity of the Burns group has since then developed more and more as an independent activity, which could not do other than destroy the possibilities of the essential entrist work in the Labour Party. Instead of showing themselves more prudent than ever in the face of the offensive of the rightist leadership of the Labour Party who were obviously trying to eliminate all revolutionary ferment from this party before it should, as a result of its once more polarizing the basic political current of the British masses, inevitably experience a deeper crisis than ever, the Burns group—intoxicated by some activist successes, and completely disoriented by a congenital empiricism that prevented it from making a correct evaluation of economic and political perspectives in Britain—plunged head first into the traps of the Labour Party bureaucracy. By inordinate attacks against the leaders of the LP and the trade unions; and by its "third period" activity at the rank-and-file level, disregarding the most elementary discipline necessary toward the party in which supposedly the essential work was to be done, the Burns group is now destroying all the positions won inside the LP and the trade unions, in a struggle—ill chosen both in terms of the correlation of forces and in terms of timing—with the reformist bureaucracy.
Not satisfied with destroying the positions that it had itself won in the LP, the Burns group by its present activity is also in reality compromising the future of the Trotskyist tendency inside the Labour Party. For what credit can it have among the politically educated workers of the country who have seen all the Trotskyist advocates of a patient, methodical, and long-term entrist policy in the LP successively give way to activist impatience, destroying their own positions within the mass movement and all inevitably falling back into the sterile "leftist" temptations of an independent "revolutionary" regroupment, whether it be in the British CP like Lawrence, or a new revolutionary party, such as is in fact the SLL now launched by Burns?
For years now the International has tried to persuade British Trotskyists that in Britain the road to the creation of the mass revolutionary party of tomorrow leads inevitably through long-term work within the Labour Party. All the arguments for and against this fundamental thesis about the development of revolutionary Marxism in Britain have been amply stated and debated. Burns was among the advocates of this line of the International in Britain. Only a year ago he was wrongly accusing the British Section of the Fourth International of wanting to do essentially independent work, and posing as a condition for unification the rejection of such a conception and the adopting of an integral entrist orientation.
And here he is today, with an essentially independent periodical and organization, launched on an open war against the reformist bureaucracy, which he in his turn has the pretention of vanquishing and eliminating by his pressure from outside! So many turn-abouts, recantations of old arguments and perspectives so long and completely debated in our movement; so many childish "leftist" mockeries leave each of us really skeptical about the seriousness of the artisans of such enterprises, literally catastrophic for the organizations that they lead, and also worried about the reputation of our movement in the ranks of politically educated workers.
It must be clearly and forcefully said: Burns' course in Britain can only throw numbers of valuable Trotskyist militants either completely out of all activity or into an activity that is again sectarian and without perspectives, which will after a certain time certainly lead into a blind alley. And that a turn of such capital importance could have been carried out without prior democratic discussion, without a conference, and with the tacit approval—either a priori or a posteriori—of the International Committee, is a proof of the irresponsibility of both in affairs concerning the future of Trotskyism in a country as important as Great Britain.
* * *
As for the evolution of the Lambert group in France, it is enough for us to quote the estimate that Cannon and Burns make of this group: simultaneously "opportunist and sectarian, empirical, isolated from the masses." (Excerpt from the minutes of the 3-4 January 1959 meeting of the International Committee.)
This group, whose line, sectarian toward the real mass movement still influenced by the French CP, has reduced it to a minimum, was long the advocate of a pro-MNA policy in the Algerian revolution, a policy into which it dragged the whole International Committee. For years, the unconditional support given to the MNA, the so-called "proletarian" and even "Bolshevik" wing of the Algerian revolution, led this group and all the organizations of the International Committee into extravagances concerning the real facts about the great Algerian revolution, which were most harmful for the prestige and interests of Trotskyism.
Since the logic of facts has succeeded in making these organizations understand to what an extent they were mistaken about Algeria, we have been witnessing, not a frank proletarian self-criticism, but just an ostrich policy: either the Algerian revolution is no longer mentioned at all, or it is spoken of in general terms, thus avoiding any concrete support (critical, of course) for its genuine leadership, the FLN, which has been for more than four years already fighting alone against a powerful and savage imperialism.
The Lambert group, which was mainly responsible for the Messalist mystification of the whole Committee, has now been led to liquidate its autonomy as a party, not in favor of serious work inside the real mass movement in France, but in all sorts of peripheral organizations with essentially petty-bourgeois bases, such as the UGS and the autonomous SP. It has furthermore ceased to stand publicly for the Fourth International.
In its case as well, Trotskyist "orthodoxy" is softening up in favor of entrist work in various "left" organizations other than the Communist Party, organizations which they now dream of regrouping into an even vaguer political formation. What is more, entrism, not into the real mass movement in each country, but in favor of organizations with a preeminently petty-bourgeois, pacifist, radical, "New Left"-style base, is now spreading to the Committee's little Swiss group, another indomitable advocate of "anti-Pabloist" "orthodoxy."
* * *
As for Moreno, the Committee's main "base" in Latin America, his opportunist adaptation to the Peronist bureaucracy, which he formerly defined as fascist, is another proof of the weight that principles can have for certain of the main champions of the struggle against the International.
[p. 24]
* * *
*Comrades:*
This political evolution of the organizations of the International Committee, despite its different variants, has this in common: a certain political and even organizational adaptation to peripheral milieux (radicals, ex-Communists, or Socialists, according to the country), because of an ideological and organizational softening-up of the integral "orthodox" aspect of Trotskyism, to the detriment of essential, patient, methodical, long-term work in the real mass movement.
This process is reflected not only in the ideological and tactical concessions that have been made under the pressure of these peripheral milieux, but also and *especially on the fundamental question of the International. It is striking to observe the disappearance of all propaganda for the International in the organizations of the Committee, the almost total forgetfulness of its past, its traditions, its struggles, and its existence; and also the almost total lack of education of their new members in the spirit of the International.*
The crusaders of the 1953 split—who allegedly wanted to save the International from its "liquidators"—have wiped out of their activity every sign that recalls the International, speak no more about it, and limit themselves to essentially national activity and concerns! Naturally they all still claim to be Trotskyist, but they forget that for real Trotskyists who have been educated and brought up in the school of Leon Trotsky, i.e., in the ranks of the international organization of the Left Opposition and then of the Fourth International, *international Trotskyism is a democratic-centralist international organization, a World Party.*
What has always distinguished our organized international movement, led by Leon Trotsky, from all the centrist currents and from all the renegades from our movement, from all those who at any given moment have broken with the International, is that, as against abstract propaganda for internationalism and even for an international organization, our movement has always counterposed *the reality, the existence, of an international organization of the revolutionary Marxist tendency.*
Leon Trotsky thrashed with the most extreme severity not only the various centrists who always shirked the task of creating and giving life to the International as a democratic-centralist world organization, but also the different turncoats of our movement who abandoned the international organization.
*The essence of Trotskyism is to be a democratic-centralist world organization,* and there is in reality no Trotskyist grouping that can be built on a national basis, with national autonomy, without its rapidly degenerating into a *centrist sect.*
That is the supreme lesson of the history of our movement.
The International Committee is engaged in repeating the disastrous experience of all those who in the past left the International organization while still claiming to be Trotskyists.
Its present course, *which has been persisted in for six years already,* as a loose front, without principles, of various national organizations fighting essentially to break up the existing International, stamps it with the indelible mark of a sure process of centrist degeneration.
It is high time to understand this truth, and to react with all one's strength against such a fatal development.
The International, conceived as a democratic-centralist world organization, as a single world party, is the essence of Trotskyism, or revolutionary Marxism. Whoever in practice gets away from that line is already on the road to centrism. Starting there, any centrist ideological evolution is possible and even inevitable. The degree to which the revolutionary Marxist tendency reacts to the always powerful pressures of reformism, Stalinism, and centrism, is indicated precisely by its ability to maintain its ideological and organic cohesion in one single international organization.
It is the highest irresponsibility to believe that small national organizations can develop harmoniously, as revolutionary Marxist organizations, in the midst of gigantic centrifugal and deforming forces, outside an international framework. Those who, after so many years in the international Trotskyist movement, has not understood this, run the risk of being irremediably lost to it. *To maintain and strengthen the International is the main task of the existence of the international revolutionary Marxist tendency.*
*Comrades:*
The International, independently of the observations that it makes about the policy of the organizations of the International Committee, has since the split never ceased calling for unification. It even went to the extreme of not replying, during a whole period, to attacks and calumnies, and refrained from criticizing positions that it considered erroneous.
This course had as its purpose, for a whole period, to let fractional fever calm down, to allow positions to be clarified by experience itself, and also to destroy illusions about the possibility of breaking up or weakening the International. All the appeals of the International for unification, including its last one dated November 1958, have remained practically unanswered.
The explanation of this attitude is now clear. The Committee is thinking not in terms of a sincere and loyal unification, but in terms of tactical manoeuvres to break up the International. "The question of reunification is above all a tactical question" in order to separate the greatest number of members and organizations away from the International, it was stated in the 3-4 January 1959 meeting of the International Committee, the Italians and Ceylonese being named as the goals to be attained.
It is needless to say that such practices and such hopes are absolutely unreal and doomed to total failure.
The International is a principled political organization and not an alliance or a compromise among fractions and persons. The International is furthermore a highly democratic organization that favors to the highest degree a free political life, free exchange of opinions, the formation and existence of tendencies, and fruitful ideological confrontation.
Despite the divergences that we observe with the organizations of the Committee, at the present moment mainly concerning the question of the International and that of tactics, the International is ready to consider the question of unification absolutely without any exclusivism toward anyone, provided that its general programme and discipline are accepted as a democratic-centralist world organization.
[p. 25]
The International is ready to grant tendency rights to those who do not share its present programme on all points, and fully to guarantee their rights as a tendency. The International is also prepared to consider broad organizational concessions to the organizations of the Committee, for example according them a representation in all the International's leading organisms considerably greater than what they effectively represent compared to the forces of the International.
The International will be the more disposed to make such organizational concessions to the extent that it verifies the existence of a sufficient political agreement to avoid paralyzing the activity of the International as a democratic-centralist world organization.
The International is ready to examine in a parity commission the points of agreement or disagreement that now exist, without insisting on the past divergences. Following upon such an examination, it is prepared to consider—in case of broad political agreement—the greatest organizational concessions. The International was, is, and will be in favor of unification as long as the organizations of the Committee claim to be Trotskyist and do not flatly degenerate into enemy centrist currents.
The International is nowhere pushing its supporters to new splits. It is ready to envisage, in the one country, Great Britain, where its organization constitutes a minority in comparison to the corresponding organization of the Committee, to instruct its supporters to integrate with the organization of the Committee, provided the latter grants them the right to be the International tendency and allows them to carry on their work in the mass organizations where they are integrated. This last point is particularly important: the work in the Labour Party is a basic condition for the development of the revolutionary Marxist tendency in Great Britain and no compromise is possible about this condition.
The International asks the comrades who share its points of view and who are still members of organizations of the Committee not to make splits but to demand within these organizations the right to be the International tendency struggling for unification.
At the same time it makes an appeal one more time to the leadership of the International Committee to be conscious of its historical responsibilities and to abandon its splitting course, to stop aiming by tactical manoeuvres at breaking up the International, and sincerely and loyally to take the road of reunification of the international Trotskyist movement within the Fourth International.
Any proposition it makes in this direction will be immediately examined with the greatest interest.
*Trotskyist militants everywhere, unite in the World Party of the Fourth International, the supreme expression of the essence of our existence as the international tendency of revolutionary Marxism!*
THE INTERNATIONAL SECRETARIAT OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL