[p. 203]
The position taken by the leading comrades of the Socialist Union, with regard to the appeal decided upon by the IEC inviting the leadership of the splitters to participate in the world congress, poses basically the question of our conception of the International and of the struggle going on within it. It was Cannon who was the first to express these opinions differing strongly from ours and it is on this terrain that he first of all prepared and launched the struggle against the International.
His speech to the New York SWP majority on May 18, 1953, his letter to Tom of June 4, 1953, his answer to Kane published in the Militant, as well as his entire last letter to the Ceylonese comrades, illustrates sufficiently his conceptions on this subject. His acts only confirm and emphasize this more. For Cannon the International does not exist as a centralized world organization whose functioning is regulated by statutes and rules, which has its congresses and its leading bodies and its discipline just as a national organization, as a section.
What exists are sections, several sections, among whom the SWP itself stands first and foremost and between these sections on the international plane there are ideological exchanges and cooperation. When differences break out and tendencies form within the International, Cannon has little concern with regulating them within the framework of the International and its democratic centralist functioning. His major preoccupation in such a case is to transform the tendencies into factions, that is, into groupings having their own discipline above the International and the national organizations, considering the whole struggle to be led from the point of view of the interests and the position of the SWP leadership.
He sees only "friends" or "enemies" within the International and he throws himself into the factional struggle with all the "Irish" ardor which is characteristic of him and with which he flatters himself. (See his picture in the Militant with sleeves rolled up for the "fight" in his "historic" attitude at the time of the struggle against Shachtman).
From then on the organizational framework of the International, its rules, its organisms, its discipline cease to exist. What counts is to achieve by all means, political and extra-political (above all the latter) a change in the relationship of forces to the advantage of the Cannon faction, since as a worthy son of the United States of 1954 which he probably considers himself, he believes that all struggles are for "power" and can be conducted only by force. This conception, which is in reality monstrous within the framework of a principled proletarian organization such as the International, Cannon can in all modesty consider as his specific contribution to the enrichment of the Leninist theory of the party. He hasn't hesitated on a number of occasions — when his "Irish" spirit was at the highest point of excitation — to confide in some (among others myself during the meeting with him in 1946-47) this modest conviction rooted deeply within himself that Trotsky, for example, was "soft" on the organizational plane, that he had never assimilated what Cannon believed to be Lenin's conception of the party, and that he, Cannon, knew more in this field than Trotsky.
Once he started the struggle for "power" and for a favorable relationship of forces, Cannon naturally sees himself obliged to dress up his factional conception of the International with high "ideological," "principled," "fundamental" motives. The manner in which he proceeded in his struggle against the minority in his organization and following that against the International, changing constantly the principal political motive of his attacks, is in this respect sufficiently clear.
[p. 204]
Cannon is above all a clever and eloquent propagandist of the general ideas of communism and Trotskyism. He is less at ease when it comes to translating the generalities of Marxism and Trotskyism into every-day reality on the international arena.
When he was alive Trotsky furnished the correct analysis of the international situation, of the situation in the different countries, of the different aspects of the situation in the United States itself, and of tactics. Cannon tried to assimilate and defend Trotsky's ideas as best he could. On the rare occasions when he wanted to contradict Trotsky, such as on the question of the labor party in the United States and the question of the attitude to be followed in relation to the American Stalinists in 1940, did not make a particularly fortunate demonstration of his political perspicacity. Cannon probably knows himself better than anybody else knows him.
He compensates for his inferiority on other planes by the idea that he is a great specialist on the organizational question, on the building of the party, on factional struggles, and also a guardian of "principles," of tradition, of "orthodoxy." '
In reality the greatest "specialists" on organizational questions in the history of the workers' movement were those who were at the same time the most political, the most capable of grasping the dialectical and eminently political and flexible nature of the relations between the leadership and the ranks of the party, of the class, and of the class struggle at every stage: Marx, Lenin, Trotsky.
The others, the "specialists" of "Bolshevism," come in reality either from the school of Stalinism or from elements who are theoretically and politically less capable, but who are on the other hand endowed with a domineering, egocentric temperament. Without the control which can be imposed upon them by broad democratic organizations, they degenerate almost always into insupportable petty bureaucrats.
The present Cannon phenomenon, his conceptions, his acts, his attitude, is the product of a number of personal and objective factors. That Cannon has always had similar conceptions of the International and the struggles within it is beyond a doubt. But for an entire period he pushed them into the background. When Trotsky was alive, it was his powerful influence that stamped a high ideological level upon the struggles in which Cannon and his party participated; for example, the struggle against Shachtman.
In the years since the last war, Cannon's conviction that he was in a way shaping the International, which never looked for a quarrel with him, flattered his self-esteem and led him to adopt a responsible attitude that was particularly profitable for the general progress of the International.
His present attitude can only be explained by the consciousness he meanwhile acquired, especially since the Third World Congress, of the fact that the International was reaching maturity, that it was in every sense a reality and that this occurred at a time when the national situation in the United States weighed with enormous reactionary weight on the entire workers' movement of the country. Under such conditions all the weak sides of a person, all his moral and intellectual limitations began to gain the upper hand and make him the banner bearer of a tendency whose ideas and actions are indisputably alien and hostile to the nature of the International and its present revolutionary policy.
We cannot follow Cannon and the Cannonites on this road. Our conceptions on these very matters are profoundly, principledly, fundamentally different.
For us the International must be and is a well defined reality: a centralized world organization regulated by statutes and rules and with a discipline, exactly (or by and large) like the national organizations.
It is not a tendency or even less a faction of elements grouping themselves on the basis of a conjunctural political agreement. It embraces in one world organization all those who accept its general program, which is a resume of the general theses of revolutionary Marxism in our epoch, that is, the general theses concerning the appreciation of the present stage of capitalism, the USSR (and now also the other anti-capitalist states), of the two other principal currents of the workers' movement, Social Democracy and Stalinism, and the strategy and program of the world proletarian revolution in our epoch.
Since these theses on these questions are necessarily of a general character, and since reality and life are constantly enriched by new problems and phenomena, it is inevitable that tendencies should arise within this world organization having among themselves divergent views on one or another question. As for us, we are for the co-existence of all these tendencies within the International if they respect the rule of majority decisions and external discipline following such decisions.
We leave to more protracted experience proof as to what tendencies are in practice incompatible with membership in the International. Those who claim, upon appearance of any difference over tactics, or the estimate of a situation, or the present developments in the USSR and Stalinism, that one or another trait of a tendency already represents a political crystallization incompatible with membership in the International commit the frequent error of vulgar Marxism which simplifies situations and problems by simply telescoping several intermediate stages of nuances of an entire process.
I fear that the leadership of the Socialist Union now shares ideas close to those of Cannon and the Cannonites on the question of the International. How else explain their violent opposition to the appeal of the IEC and their thinly veiled allusions, so unpleasant and so revolting, that are included particularly in the resolution of the Union in respect to the IS, its members and its politics? How explain otherwise such phrases as "the IS from the beginning has been engaged in desperate backdoor maneuvers, in sowing fear and demoralization in the ranks," "horse-trading compromise" offered by Comrade Germain, is "disloyal and arbitrary action," "the fatal course of the IS by muffling political line for false organizational considerations of 'world leadership,'" "the sectarian past of the International," etc. Could one not most legitimately interpret all this as the expression of a contempt for the organizational framework of the International, equal to that of Cannon and the Cannonites, on the part of these comrades who wish to make the leadership of the International the leadership of a faction organized on the basis of a conjunctural political agreement at the time of a struggle in the International?
[p. 205]
And how interpret the practical attitude of these comrades toward the IS[*] other than as a kind of punishment for the IS, because of its "soft," "conciliatory" and even "capitulatory" attitude, by limiting their collaboration and aid to a strict minimum, by sulking, by spreading all sorts of outrageous and inacceptable corridor gossip?
[*] Which had its origin (although Cannon thought of it as "plots" and "intrigues" of the IS) a number of months ago at the time of the struggle in the SWP and has since been aggravated.
The tragic-comic note in this present crisis the International is going through is that from the outset, at the very moment when Cannon, enveloped by the atmosphere of spying and suspicion which presently prevails in the United States, saw without any proof "plots" and sinister "intrigues" being woven around his person and his faction by the diabolical Pablo and his "clique," — at that very moment the comrades of the minority begin to suspect these same people of "capitulation" to Cannon, to accuse and deprecate them as leaders chosen "on the basis of practical availability!"
It is not superfluous to repeat that concerning me personally — independently of my reservations at the outset of the struggle in the SWP about Cannon's accusations against the minority, and my revulsion against the extremely factional form which Cannon gave to the struggle: and independently even of the critical sympathy I felt for several political points of view of the minority — I did not start this struggle in the SWP (it had its own causes) nor was I in any way for overthrowing the Cannon leadership in the SWP, nor was I for the denigration of his authority within the SWP ranks and the International.
I even went so far in this direction that I wrote to Comrade Livingstone, for example, the following:
"To change (the Cannon leadership) is neither possible nor desirable under the present conditions. To break up and discredit his leadership risks breaking up the entire organization which is under the heavy pressure of the present situation in the United States and its own isolation. It would moreover be an error to forget or to minimize the huge positive accomplishments of that leadership (and of Jim in particular) independently of one or another weakness." (March 28, 1953)
When a truce was reached at the May 1953 Plenum I was among the first to consider it sincere and workable, to salute the "responsible" attitude manifested at that Plenum by Cannon, to propose in the IS (under the sarcastic smiles of Burns who was already aware of the cynical and revolting letter from Cannon to Tom) the text of a letter from the IS praising that attitude and insisting to the minority that they loyally respect the agreement. Even afterward, when I became aware of the letter to Tom, I hastened to telegraph Livingstone that the minority should not make public use of that revolting letter in the party, but should be patient and wait.
For all these acts and for all this conduct I found myself — I personally and all the other comrades of the IS Bureau — rewarded since May 1953 not only with the factional fury of Cannon but also with the growing discontent of the "hards" within the tendency in agreement with the International.
The resolution of the leadership of the Socialist Union, in several of its terms and phrases so encouraging and so flattering about our present work here, is the expression of the opinion that these comrades had of that attitude.
But we have not arrayed ourselves against the organizational conceptions and acts of Cannon in order to fall at the same time under the tutelage of another variety of organizational sectarianism.
That must be perfectly clear.
Never, with us in the leadership of the International, will there be a leadership that is in reality that of a faction and not of a world organization necessarily including several tendencies at a given moment that could co-exist on the basis of the rules of democratic centralism applied on an International scale.
This being well understood the comrades who think otherwise are naturally obliged to concern themselves with endowing the IS and IEC as the "rallying center for an ideological regroupment" of people more disposed to line up in a faction. It should not be so difficult to choose such "International leaders" strictly "on the basis of practical availability."
As for the idea that we suffer from some kind of a "world leadership" complex, these comrades should rest easy. Unanimously named to our posts up to now by the Congresses of the International, we have sought to defend, as was our duty, the rights and competence of our leading organisms without which the concept of the International as a centralized world organization would no longer exist. Whether or not we are members of these leading organisms of the International, we will in the future defend with the same firmness this functioning of the International.
On the other hand, the reproach that the comrades of the Socialist Union address to us of having passed from would-be organizational intransigeance to organizational capitulation before the unreasonable demands that Cannon would perhaps formulate in case of his participation in the next World Congress, etc., is again manifestly based on an erroneous interpretation on the part of these comrades of the democratic centralist functioning of the International. Between congresses of the International it is the IEC and the IS who lead within the limits of power explicitly defined by the statutes of the International. But the supreme decision on truly important political and organizational matters belongs in our movement only to the World Congress.
Faced with the revolting splitting action of the Cannonites, we, as the IEC and IS, have taken every action in defense of the International permitted by the statutes of the International. But since the crisis broke out in the midst of the discussion preparatory to the Fourth World Congress, it is absolutely normal that the whole affair should be brought before the Congress itself. No one, neither the IS nor the IEC, has the right to definitively decide an affair of such magnitude. On the other hand, Cannon and his initiates claim — demagogically and hypocritically, of course — that they confront a "clique of usurpers" and other similar revolting stupidities.
[p. 206]
Let them come to explain and justify all that before the Congress, that is to say, before the most representative and responsible assembly that can exist within an organized workers' movement. Should we fear that they will win a majority there? I affirm, at least in my name and in all responsibility, that if such is the decision of the majority of the International movement through normal consultation, I shall adopt the attitude of a loyal minority.
Would such an attitude signify organizational fetishism to the detriment of the political line, an "ideological capitulation"?
Such a conception could arise only among comrades for whom — to repeat — the organizational framework of the International does not exist and who do not admit beforehand any possibility of considering themselves a minority in the International movement, comrades who in reality reason on this question in the same manner as Cannon.
We are less inclined than ever to consider the political differences that have developed during this struggle — independently of the manner in which they have arisen — as secondary. They are very important and it is possible that, if they should continue and become crystallized, they would in reality make impossible co-existence within the same International organization. But a more prolonged experience is in any case necessary before arriving at such a conclusion.
To act otherwise and to declare forthwith that the differences are "principled," "fundamental," incompatible with membership within a single organization, is to proceed in the arbitrary manner of Cannon who, at the beginning of the struggle, without sufficient practical and theoretical proofs, extrapolated on the future developments, thus preparing and justifying a split.
From everything I know of Lenin and Trotsky, above all of the latter, his general attitude at the time of the formation of the Left Opposition and later of the International and at the time of the struggle against Shacht-man, nothing would justify such a sectarian, bureaucratic and even infantile organizational conception.
That is Cannon's conception; it is not and cannot be ours.
As for the argument that we have neglected the ideological struggle, properly so-called, against Cannon and the Cannonites, it is at least odd on the part of comrades who, since they have "ruled" their own affairs in their country, have thereafter made no contribution at all to the ideological struggle that is still unfolding in the International. We have the impression, perhaps erroneously, that in this struggle it is still the IS which is making the greatest contribution within the limits, of course, of its capacities. The question of the International, of its nature, of its functioning, is one of the central political stakes in the current struggle. It has been posed from the beginning by the acts and the ideas of Cannon on this matter. It is also posed by the conceptions and attitude of comrades in the International.
The Congress will have to discuss and resolve this question. If it should appear that certain comrades and organizations admit only conditionally the principle of the International as a centralized world party, it seems to me that it would be more sincere on their part to request, for example, a statute for organizations sympathetic to the Fourth International which would permit them to act largely in their own manner, leaving it to others to maintain at the same time a firm international organization governed by its present rules and statutes.
To weaken the present structure and functioning of the International would in my view represent the annulment of the greatest progress made by our movement in recent years and would be the greatest defeat we could suffer on the eve of decisive class battles.
The building of an International is the most difficult task of the workers' movement, against which stand all the weak and backward aspects of the movement, nationally divided and under the pressure of prejudices and alien ideas hostile to its historic mission.
But on the other hand, the existence of an International is the best weapon of all to preserve the movement in each country from consequent deviation from the revolutionary Marxist line. For a movement like ours, still weak, subject to increasing social pressures from all sides, and facing the perspective of decisive struggles which reinforce still more these pressures, to loosen in any manner the common bonds that unite us in the International, to weaken these bonds, would prove to be literally fatal. We must resist such an eventuality with all our strength. I am personally certain that will continue to be the determination of the great majority of the International.
April 25, 1954
P. S. I don't want to linger over the frankly displeasing allusions of the resolution from the comrades of the Socialist Union on the subject of the IEC appeal, which is called "a reply to the unofficial negotiations between Cannon and Tilak," etc., and of the pressure that these negotiations have exercised on us. The dates of the letters published in this same Internal Bulletin show that the decision on the appeal made by the IS on March 14, 1954, after a great deal of prior consultation among our members, has no relation with the Cannon-Tilak negotiations.
As for the procedure adopted by the IS for the approval of the appeal, this was the only practical means at our disposal. All the European members of the IEC, with the exception of Comrade Collins, were long since agreeable to such a procedure. As for the extra-European members, there was no practical possibility for them to meet with the others in Europe.
Is it necessary to remind the comrades of the Socialist Union of the present conditions under which the IS works?
Is it also necessary to point out to them that, despite these conditions, the impossible has been achieved in maintaining its functioning and preparing the World Congress?
The allusion of the comrades to an arbitrary changing by the IS of the decisions of the 14th Plenum is no less unfounded. We have already stressed that in other documents: these decisions have excluded no one from the International and the definitive decisions are postponed until the World Congress itself from which no one has been excluded by that plenum.