Dear Comrades,
Now that the Fifth World Congress of the Fourth International has completed its labors, and we are caught up again on the numerous matters therefrom arising, I should like, as the one who engaged in the exploratory talks and first steps in negotiations with you last Spring, to write you on the subject of unity.
It is hardly necessary to say that your absence from the Congress was generally much regretted. It had been originally hoped that the proposed successive steps toward unification might have been steadily taken in the ample intervening time so that the process might have been successfully completed at the congress itself. And even though you did not take even the first step in this direction, we had hoped that you would at least have accepted our invitation to send an observer to what was the most numerous, most representative, and most dynamic World Congress ever held by the Fourth International. The figures and facts of the attached communique speak for themselves; and you need only talk with anyone fortunate enough to have been present to sense the revolutionary enthusiasm and redoubled energy with which it filled all its participants. Had one or more fraternal delegates from the SWP been present, I think you would now have a more accurate idea of the International's world scope, solidity, and seriousness than you can possibly form in your wishful-thinking isolation. Even so, the significance of the Congress, in terms of historic progress, political cohesion, and relationship of forces, can hardly have escaped your attention even at the distance you insist on keeping between us.
[p. 71]
The occasion for this letter is our receipt of a communication, dated September 9th, from your International Committee, informing us that it had endorsed the July resolution of the SWP's Political Committee, which was attached for our information. Both the communication and your PC resolution are profoundly disappointing to all of us who sincerely wish to see ended the present deplorable division of Trotskyist forces because both documents seem to reflect a basic unwillingness to face up to the desirability of unification and take refuge instead in stalling behind an obfuscating screen of confused pretexts.
The September 9th letter of your International Committee is particularly absurd when it insists that "Comrade Cannon's proposals remain the only real basis for unity," as if we rejected them out of hand, whereas on the contrary our immediately precedent letter of August 25th to that committee had particularly specified:
"We state once more our decision to accept point 1 of comrade J.C.'s proposals and to consider the other points as a basis for discussion."
Indeed, there are "none so deaf as those who will not hear."
I must say that the July resolution of your Political Committee is also somewhat less than candid. In all conversations I had with the principal SWP leaders, the point of departure was agreement on two basic points. First, I made it perfectly clear that most of the conceptions expressed in Comrade Cannon's letter to Comrade Gunawardene closely paralleled our own thinking—particularly on the need of proceeding by stages, the advisability of postponing examination of the causes of the 1953 split to a later educational discussion after the unification had been solidified, and the necessity of what JPC's letter defined as "a sweeping organizational compromise, which would permit the formal unification of the international movement before the dispute is settled." Second, there was unanimous recognition on both sides that the political lines of the International and of the SWP had drawn closer and closer together, removing any major political obstacle to unification. About these points there was no question; they were, to use a term from geometrical theorems, the "givens" of the problem. The remaining differences requiring negotiation thus concerned neither political conceptions nor political programs, but the technical organizational modalities of the fusion, especially "guarantees."
How then can your PC's resolution honestly say that we of the International act as if the letter to Gunawardene did not exist? We have been, on the contrary, operating on its basic assumptions even before it had been written. I made perfectly clear our agreement with it and the May 7th IS letter specifically stated that we had carefully studied it. As for its point about procedure by stages, it was agreed before I left New York that as a first stage you would internationally consult with the other members of your International Committee while nationally discussing and taking decisions on our proposals in first your National Committee and next in your National Convention, then soon to be held; and it was hoped that as a second stage you would, if passport possibilities permitted, send a serious and qualified representative to attempt to compose the differences between Comrade Cannon's proposals in his letter to me and my proposals complemented by the IS letter of May 7th, in order to bring about factual unification—if possible before the Fifth World Congress which would then crown the work. Instead, I regretfully note in passing, rather than giving an opportunity to your entire NC and to the membership in convention to study and discuss the question, your PC, after waiting two months, decided on this not very seriously motivated "brush-off" and even that we did not receive until another two months had elapsed. As for the point about postponing discussion of the causes of the 1953 split, the IS has continued to avoid polemics on the subject (a basic fact which is unchanged by your attempting to blow up some obscure marginal discussion in Britain into world-wide proportions as a major obstacle). And as for the "sweeping organizational compromise," we carefully studied your proposals, made our own, and asked nothing better than to continue negotiations to iron out the differences between them in precisely the form of a "sweeping organizational compromise."
To the second point of basic agreement, on the closeness of political lines, your PC resolution makes no reference whatsoever, an absence which seems to us amazing and indeed rather suspect, particularly since your principal ally in your International Committee, the British group, has taken a position diametrically opposed to yours, stating that the political divergences are "wider and wider" and the gulf "deeper." Where do you stand on this? Have you completely reversed your opinions on this point? And if not, what does your silence mean? For the question of basic political agreement is the starting point of everything in this situation. As one of you soundly had succinctly stated to me: "For any principled politician, the drawing together of political lines logically and pressingly raises the question of organizational unity." It seems to me that you owe, not only to us, but to the world movement in general, a clear answer to the questions: "Do fundamental political differences preclude unification? Or does fundamental political agreement exist, and the only obstacles are organizational?"
I hope that your answers to these two questions will be respectively, No and Yes. And that you will draw therefrom the serious and responsible conclusion that efforts must be renewed to remove these organizational obstacles. Our position thereon is unequivocally stated in the IS letter of August 25th to your International Committee as follows:
"We repeat that, in our opinion, once the political basis has been laid for reunification, the difficulties about organizational questions could be easily smoothed out.
"We are completely in agreement with the viewpoint expressed by Comrade J.C. according to which it is a question of reaching, in this field, a sort of organizational compromise, giving you, more than concessions, genuine organizational guarantees. Such was, indeed, the meaning of the proposals made by Comrade O'Daniel to Comrade Cannon."
May I remind you that another point of widespread agreement that I found in my talks with you was that both sides must avoid being ultimatistic? We have repeatedly indicated that we take your proposals as a basis for discussion; have you done the same about ours? Your PC's resolution states that the IS letter of May 7th "implicitly constitutes a total rejection of the basic premise laid down in the letter to Goonewardene, according to which a possible unity could be realized only by way of 'an agreed-on compromise.'" "Implicitly"—what a weasel word! And what a (I am sorry to have to use so strong a term) dishonest statement. There was no rejection whatever, implicit or otherwise. Far from it—in that letter, as in all of our other efforts, it is precisely an agreed-on compromise that we are seeking. And compromises are reached, comrades, not by presenting a series of demands and banging the door if they are not integrally accepted but by negotiators sitting down with two sets of parallel proposals and trying to iron out the differences between them. That is all we ask. But we ask it with all the more insistence and urgency at this moment when, filled with deep revolutionary enthusiasm by what the Fifth World Congress demonstrated concerning the International's political maturity and organizational progress, we feel more than ever, amid the rapidly increasing opportunities for the Trotskyist movement on a world scale, the tragedy of needlessly divided forces and organizational rivalries that cannot but waste part of our strength and confuse in several important countries the vanguard elements among the masses that are turning toward us. We feel a historical responsibility to try to overcome this politically unjustified division of forces, and we hope that your attitude is equally serious, as would be shown by your willingness to resume negotiations.
[p. 72]
You have in fact put yourselves outside the International, as its Fifth World Congress at last formally recognized. But that does not necessarily mean an end to negotiations for reunification. On that matter let me quote the specific proposal incorporated in the August 25th letter of the IS to your International Committee:
"Hence, comrades, we sincerely see no obstacle to your accepting a commission which would immediately begin to draw up a 'joint draft of political agreement' and to discuss the other terms of unification on the basis of both the proposals of comrade JC and those presented by Comrade P. O'D. and the IS."
I sincerely hope that you also see no obstacle to this proposal and will act accordingly. We are very desirous of hearing from you on this matter.
And let me add one additional thought, comrades: the problem of unification will not be solved by pretending it does not exist.
With internationalist-communist greetings
s/Patrick O'Daniel