The supporters of Pablo have splintered from the Canadian section of the Fourth International. They pulled out two days prior to a national convention scheduled to formally determine the position of the Canadian section on the struggle that the international forces of Trotskyism have been waging against Pabloist liquidationism.
Immediately following their walkout they announced a farcical reconstitution of the Canadian section of the Fourth International under their auspices, and their intention to endorse a person, to masquerade as a delegate from the Canadian section to the Pabloite rump Fourth World Congress.
The Pabloists claim to represent the majority of Trotskyists in the most highly industrialized section of the country and 35 percent of the movement nationally. The mechanics behind the trick of setting themselves up as THE Canadian section of the Fourth International, while only claiming to have a minority of 35 percent of the Trotskyists in Canada, are: that to support the International Committee (which is an international faction already speaking for the basic cadres of Leon Trotsky's Fourth International), is to have split from the Fourth International. Pablo—who had been entrusted by the Third World Congress to carry its line and who has completely revised it, at the same time highhandedly purging from its continuing bodies all those who opposed his traitorous course he says so, and it is therefore so.
While the Pabloists remained in the Canadian section, that is up until last week, they recognized that the forces of orthodox Trotskyism were the overwhelming majority, and not just 65 percent either. The West, representing one half of the numerical strength of the movement, was almost 100 percent in support of the International Committee. The Pabloists were never able to rally more than one-third of the forces in the main Eastern concentration.
Now, having deserted the party, the Pabloists suddenly claim to have 35 percent of the Canadian Trotskyists. But like the earlier reports of Mark Twain's death, this is an exaggeration--in fact it is a lie of the whole cloth.
Their splintering off from the movement was heralded on April 7 by a pitiful handful walking out of the only party group where they had influence. This miserable little group is attempting to deceive itself, probably more than anyone else who might be interested, by going through the motions of adding to itself a scattering of persons who are more or less sympathizers of the movement, a handful of disreputable elements who walked out of the section 10 months ago after almost three years of sectarian disruption of the party's work, and then, through a series of arithmetical manipulations, turning up with the total of 35 percent. The bulk of them are persons who have become demoralized and defeated under the difficulties of attempting to build the revolutionary party.
The Canadian section remains solid and confident of its capacity to build the mass Marxist party of the Canadian revolution. Its cadre, in the process of coming to grips with the revisionist concepts of the Pabloists, has tremendously matured, developing a clearer concept of its tasks and in short order will more than make up for whatever it lost through the Pabloist desertion.
The Canadian section's experience with Pabloism has been a rich one. Last November the Socialist Workers Party, in an open letter to Trotskyists throughout the world warned against Pablo's international faction which was revising Trotskyist fundamentals and purging its opponents from the movement. The Canadian Political Committee, admitting inadequacy of information, made the mistake of disapproving the act of an open statement, while declaring its neutrality on the political issues at dispute. Pablo and his aides quickly circulated the International to the effect that Canada supported his politics as against the views of his opponents.
Immediately, in keeping with its democratic traditions, a wide open discussion developed within the Canadian section. Very shortly some of the party's main concentrations, along with the majority of its national committee, made known their political support of the SWP Open Letter and of the International Committee that had been organized by the French, British, Swiss, New Zealand and Chinese sections. No sooner was this a fact than did Pablo, through a rump meeting of the International Executive Committee, suspend, along with all other IEC members who took similar positions, the Canadian national secretary who had been elected to the IEC by the Third World Congress. At the same time the Pabloite IEC suspended the majority of the leadership of the Canadian section from the posts that the Canadian section in convention had elected them to.
The two leading Canadian Pabloists expressed their complete agreement with Pablo's Stalin-like attempt to decapitate the Canadian section with the astounding comment that, due to the nature and the political level of the Canadian section, this instruction was inoperative here. The Canadian section of course refused out-of-hand to submit to the Pablo ukase.
With the refusal of the Canadian section to be stampeded by him and his pitiful handful of supporters through false accusations of split, Pablo made a slight tack in his course. Ignoring the refusal to implement his orders, he wrote, "Take the time to know and discuss all the documents of the International on the crisis... adjourn your final decision until you have heard the reports of your representatives to the World Congress."
This tactical shift from plying the axe to an attempt to seduce sections into not taking positions on documents up for discussion, urging them to send along delegates chosen by undetermined means on undetermined views to vote an international policy and international leadership — which would be discussed and approved later by national sections when everything is sealed, signed and delivered — resulted in a sudden veer on the part of his Canadian supporters to get out from under a national convention which they themselves had proposed be held to determine the position of the Canadian section.
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Early in the dispute, when it had already become apparent that the overwhelming majority of the section supported the International Committee, one of the leading Pabloites stated that he would never submit to the Canadian section supporting the IC without a full-fledged convention. As this was agreeable to all, plans for such a convention were immediately made.
During the pre-convention discussion it was only with the greatest difficulty that the party was able to force the discussion from the organizational plane onto the. political issues at dispute. The Pabloites at first claimed that there were no real political differences. But once the discussion got underway, on the East German uprising, the French General Strike, the political revolution in the USSR, Stalinism, and finally the orientation of the Canadian section itself, their deep-going differences were brought out.
All this time the documents of the Pabloist International Executive Committee were freely circulated. A leading spokesman of Pablo's Cochranite supporters was even permitted to address one of the main party groups. But, the Pabloites were strangling on this democracy. The Trotskyist cadres of the movement rallied to the defense of their doctrine and the Pabloites moved from weakness to weakness. 0
As the convention approached, and in receipt of Pablo's instructions, the Pabloites commenced to desperately attempt to get out from under it. One week before their walkout the minority presented a statement bewailing the apparent fact that the convention was going to ally the Canadian section with the International Committee. The statement flung in the face of the party the challenge that the Pabloists "refuse to be a part, even as an objecting minority," to such an action.
Despite the disloyal statements of leading minorityites and this outrageous attempt to blackmail the party into not carrying out its democratic will, the majority remained unprovoked. Their very failure to provoke the majority into any disciplinary actions against their disloyal conduct only goaded the Pabloists into greater fury.
They revealed that they were collaborating with a handful; of sectarian disrupters who had walked out of the party, along with some party property, some 10 months previously, and who, when the international dispute erupted, had come to life again only in order to announce their ] enthusiastic support of Pablo and call for a split from the party to their so-called Committee for Socialist Regroupment At the time of this split appeal the Pabloists sharply dissociated themselves from this Committee, labelling them disrupters of the party "who have seized upon the dispute in the International to further disrupt the party and its work."
At a meeting two days prior to the convention, in collusion with these disrupters, the Pabloites presented their applications for re-admission to the party. The majority, in view of the pre-convention agreement to freeze the membership, voted that the applications be held over until after the convention and further experience could be had with these persons. With this the minority stomped out.
The next day the Pabloists circulated a statement over the name of three leading members which bore the return address of the so-called Committee for the Socialist Regroupment. In the statement the Pabloites label the party convention a rump convention without authority .They condemn the convention for lack of documentation although the minority presented no documentation whatsoever, not even a statement on its own behalf all during the discussion, other than its infamous threat that it would not be a minority, even an objecting minority.
They, condemn the convention for its alleged non-representative character — its failure to represent "the real relationship of forces." Part of the evidence to back up this charge is that the basis of representation to which they had previously agreed does not allow voting representation to- a point where the party had one member, and that the split-calling deserters, the so-called Committee for Socialist Re-groupment, do not have representation at the convention of the Canadian section of the Fourth, International
The Canadian experience demonstrates, that Pabloism considers itself to be completely incompatible with orthodox Trotskyism; that Pabloism is totally unprepared, to accept a position of a loyal minority within the ranks of any of the parties of the, Fourth International The Canadian experience confirms to the hilt the charge that Pabloism is attempting to liquidate the Fourth International, to wreck and disperse the precious cadres of international Trotskyism.
The solidity of the Canadian section, now in alliance with its co-thinkers in the International Committee of the Fourth International, who already encompass the overwhelming majority of the forces of the Fourth International, is striking testimony to the indestructible temper of Leon Trotsky's world movement, against its enemies from within as well as its class enemy without.
April 9, 1954