Letter from Michel Pablo, Ernest Germain, and Pierre Frank to Farrell Dobbs, Morris Stein, and Joseph Hansen

From Towards a History of the Fourth International, Part 4, vol. 2: Struggle in the Fourth International — International Secretariat Documents 1951-1954, Volume 2 of 4 volumes (Education for Socialists, Socialist Workers Party, New York, March 1974), pp. 81-82. Reproduced with the permission of Pathfinder Press. Scan: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line.

[Although Pablo declined to take an open stand in the early stages of the dispute, the Cochran-Clarke-Bartell faction in the SWP insisted with great confidence that it represented his views in the SWP. When James P. Cannon wrote to Pablo seeking clarification on this, he received an answer that was evasive except on one point: Pablo expressed a clear preference for Harry Frankel's document on Stalinism over that written by Joseph Hansen (see the previous volume of this series). He also admitted in a letter to George Novack that he had been maintaining correspondence with the minority faction without informing the SWP leaders of this fact. Despite a statement from the International Secretariat praising the unity agreement reached at the May 1953 Plenum of the SWP National Committee by the two factions, (see *Speeches to the Party*, Pathfinder Press, 1973 for material from this plenum) the SWP majority leadership was becoming convinced by Pablo's evasiveness that he was indeed giving encouragement to the Cochran-Clarke-Bartell grouping behind the scenes. They objected to the fact that this political intervention in the SWP struggle was carried on without the knowledge of the party leadership. Even more serious, if Pablo was encouraging a revisionist faction in the SWP, it meant that he must be in fundamental agreement with them on the political questions in dispute. The SWP leaders decided to raise a discussion of these issues internationally. Pablo, backed by the Bureau (Pablo, Ernest Germain, and Pierre Frank) of the International Secretariat, responded to these developments by adopting an increasingly threatening tone. The SWP leaders were warned against any attempt to organize a tendency against what was called "the whole international leadership." In these letters, the Pablo leadership criticized positions taken by the SWP on East Germany and other questions. These criticisms made their sympathy with the views of Cochran-Clarke-Bartell much clearer. Pablo replied in September to Cannon's speech, "Internationalism and the SWP" (reprinted in *Speeches to the Party*, Pathfinder Press, 1973, pp. 67). In this article, "Some Very Strange Conceptions of Internationalism and the International," he challenged Cannon's opposition to the use of Comintern-like centralism in the Fourth International. According to Pablo, internationalism required "relying with full confidence on the line, the judgement and the discipline of the international movement as a whole." Pablo indicated his perspectives for the coming struggle by the tone of his remarks (he describes Cannon's speech as the "most revolting projections of a complex which is now exploding with unprecedented brutishness."). He threatened, in effect, to split politically with the SWP unless it changed its course. The language of this document was not calculated to assuage fears that Pablo headed a secret faction that intended to finish with the older cadres of the International, unless they agreed to "rely with full confidence" on Pablo's line.]

February 13, 1953

Dear Comrades FD, MS and JH:

Manuel has shown us your letter to him. It gives notice of the rupture of the truce, the beginning of a violent struggle of tendencies. It goes without saying that we desire to receive as quickly as possible all the documents which will enable us to understand the precise meaning of the positions of the two tendencies.

We are very much troubled by the international consequences of this struggle. Before decisive political steps are taken in one sense or another, we deem it necessary to make precise our view on the two paramount questions:

(a) We will be resolutely against any tendency or attempt to transform the American organisation into a propaganda group whose essential activity would be directed towards the workers following the Stalinists in the United States. Our documents, those of the Third World Congress, the report to the 10th Plenum as well as the report to the 12th Plenum, do not lend themselves to any equivocation on the subject.

[p. 82]

In order to carry out your fundamental tasks, your organization should center its main efforts on the real mass movement of your country, out of which will inevitably emerge the major forces of opposition to imperialism and the war within the United States.

(b) We will be no less resolutely against all attempts to bring in question the general line of the Third Congress. As to the question of Stalinism especially, which you see as involved in your discussion, we would like you to know our point of view which is as follows:

It is evident that in the period now facing us of settlement of final accounts, the Soviet bureaucracy will provide us with some demonstrations of the most abominable betrayals ever perpetrated by it against the world socialist revolution, but it is no less evident that the counter-revolutionary character of the Soviet bureaucracy does not sum up and will not sum up the whole policy of this bureaucracy. In this policy, in effect, the no less ferocious desire of the bureaucracy enters in of defending its privileges and its power against imperialism, that is, of defending the Soviet Union in its own manner. This contradictory nature of the Soviet bureaucracy, its double role, will be exacerbated, both sides, more and more by the new objective conditions in which this bureaucracy is now placed. Only this double role can enable us to understand such questions as: the evolution of the peoples' democracies from 1944 to 1950 ending in the destruction by bureaucratic-military means of capitalism after a phase of preserving capitalism in these countries; the different phases in Stalin's attitude towards the Chinese revolution ending in the present alliance with the Chinese Peoples' Republic in the face of the threat of imperialism which weighs on both countries; the war in Korea and Vietnam; the current policies of the CP's; the relations between the Soviet bureaucracy, the CP's and the revolutionary mass movements; the Kremlin's policy in the face of the accelerated war preparation of imperialism, etc.

All attempts to place in question this line of our movement established by the Third World Congress and based fundamentally on the traditional Trotskyist conceptions of Stalinism which might develop out of the discussion in your party on the problems concerning the tactics to be adopted at present in the United States; all attempts to create new confusion in one sense or another on this problem will immensely hurt our international movement.

Our movement was armed by the Third World Congress with a correct analysis of all these questions concerning Stalinism, with a clear, revolutionary perspective, and with a general orientation of sinking roots in the real mass movement of each country. It is this analysis, this perspective, this orientation which has already permitted it to make remarkable progress in several countries and which assures its future. We note moreover with satisfaction that you affirm your complete agreement with this fundamental line of the Third World Congress.

On the eve of decisive class battles on a world scale; on the eve of very serious tests for your own organization, the loss of the ideological cohesion of the international Trotskyist movement would be the worst blow which could come to us. We place our confidence in all the cadres of the American organization avoiding such an eventuality as placing in question the acquisitions of the Third World Congress.

Very fraternally,

Gabe, Germain, Pierre.