Dear Sherry,
Received your letters of April 9 and 10. We thank you very much for them. We very much appreciate the seriousness with which you conduct the matter as well as the conclusions you draw from it. We agree with you completely: It is a question of a negotiation which, as a matter of fact, revolves around the existence or nonexistence of the International as a democratic-centralist world organization. By making mistakes we might unconsciously involve ourselves along a path of veritable liquidationism. The way they pose the question of the International, their reflections and reactions show that from the time of the split there was already something rotten in the state of Denmark, and it is just this which precisely explains the split. I am afraid that this ideological rottenness may have gotten worse since then. The goal of the negotiation now is to exert the maximum pressure on them so that they may pull themselves together, so that they accept reasonable terms which will turn out in the future to have helped their own health as a really Trotskyist tendency. There is no question for us of transforming the International as a loose federation of national groups nor of agreeing to present two internationals to the outside ("theirs" and "ours" announcing our "reunification"). The concessions we are ready to make are along the following plane: We are ready to consider a broad representation of their tendency in the leadership bodies of the International, far greater than what they represent numerically; we are ready to grant them broad guarantees concerning the democratic functioning of the International (which is certainly infinitely more democratic than their national organizations); we are prepared to reinforce the prerogatives of the world congress and of the International Executive Committee at the expense of the IS if they so wish. On all that we can arrive at an agreement before a world congress. But that is all. Naturally, when we face concrete proposals from their side, we will see if there is ground for making other concessions to them.
I think that the key to the question, what kind of ending the negotiations will come to, is now to be found more than ever in Jim's hands. One must speak to him at length, frankly, firmly. Make him understand his historic error of 1953, explain to him who are his international "allies" (because he has forgotten about them), the Swiss, the Lamberts, etc.; describe our progress since that time to him, which he doesn't know about or which his advisers, informants, knowingly minimize; make him understand that if we want reunification it isn't because of weakness (he has a power complex) but because of a spirit of responsibility.
Our advances are real and have qualitatively changed our movement. We are the ones who animate what may be called at the present time the left wings of the SPs and the CPs in a series of countries. This is tremendous and it is a brilliant justification of our entryist tactics, contrasting with the hollow boasting of the "independent" groups a la Lambert. . . .
He must understand what's happening. If he doubts all of this, let him send some qualified person in all seriousness to the World Congress or better yet, let him come himself; he will have the proofs. You must insist heavily on that point as well as the necessity to pursue negotiations here with one of them and not with Burns [Healy] or some other lunatic. That would not be serious and we have neither the time nor the desire for wasted chatter. We mean business, real business. [English in original.] He has to be shaken up. One must open a little window for him, a view towards the real world, across the opaque wall of his "America uber alles" tower and his American "go it alone." That is not thinking seriously and along that line he will destroy his life's work.
You will possess, I am sure, all the necessary patience to bear with his sarcasms, his occasional cynicism, his lack of comprehension, his narrowmindedness. He has to be shaken up. . . .
Very fraternally,
Gabe [Pablo]