[p. 201]
London
April 26, 1954
To the IS Secretary:
Dear comrade,
I have received your letter to all IEC members in which you motivate your proposed appeal to the splitters to come to the World Congress.
As you know, I am completely opposed to your method in this question. I do not think that our task is "the reconstruction of the unity of our movement." The splitters have done what they have done because they are sectarians — a dying cult with absolutely no future. We should leave them to die while we concentrate on the really urgent task of educating a solid cadre of Bolsheviks capable of understanding and facing up to the present reality and our place in it.
Let us square up to the fact that there is a split It was not perpetrated by us or encouraged by us, and there is no way of healing it unless we are prepared to capitulate to their disastrous political conceptions. To restore these splitters to the ranks could only bring confusion and internal disruption into the FI at a timewhen clarity above all things is absolutely necessary. Numbers at this stage are not decisive. The loss of some hundreds of what you call "backward people" in the States and fifty or so hopeless confusionists in Britain is notreally a bad thing. In any case, far worse than this loss is to continue this undignified trading of curses across the Atlantic in the hope that in some miraculous way this will bring "unity." Let us abandon this unseemly diversion of our energies and instead prepare seriously a World Congress of Bolsheviks.
Comradely greetings,
M. Collins