Dear Jim,
Yesterday I made a special trip to Paris for a discussion with Comrade Peng. He is very much isolated and under all sorts of pressure from the Pabloites. This takes the form of a "unity" drive. The theme goes like this. In 1953 the IS was right against Cannon and Co., but events have forced us, the orthodox Trotskyists, to change and now we take the line of the Pabloite IS. This they say is disclosed by the Militant and Pablo goes around declaring his support for the article on the 20th Congress. They then top all this off with declarations about "our wonderful future" if only we were "united."
[p. 11]
For those of us who have been through all this type of maneuver before, of course, there is no problem. In fact it very much reminds me of the old days in the Haston outfit when the Shachtman-Morrow "unity" feelers were around. During this period we were constantly bombarded with arguments that "the past was not the important thing," and did we or did we not think that the two tendencies could live side by side in one organization. Against this we had to patiently point out that in the past, life had shown that they could not, so it was difficult to answer a concrete yes and no to such a question. At that time, as you know, Germain was peddling his "conception" of unity and did in fact contact at one time Shachtman direct.
The Pabloite leaders today approach the unity issue superficially and it is always easy on this plane to trap isolated people who tend to forget the past. Comrade Peng, of course, has no illusions about Pabloism politically, but he is naive on the organisational issues. I stressed with him that we have to answer the question of why we split in the first place, if unity can be achieved now. To those of us who were in the leadership of the struggle at that time, there was no misunderstanding about Pablo's role. The one time we slipped up was when we gave him the benefit of the doubt for so long. Today there is in my view absolutely no grounds for believing that Pabloism is compatible with orthodox Trotskyism.
There is much in this tendency to remind us of past experience. The old WIL [Workers International League] was never tired of repeating its loyalty to the program of the FI and on occasions its spokesmen wrote with apparent conviction around this or that aspect of it. Superficial people, I well remember then, used to emphasize such things as positive proof that Haston and Co., despite their past errors on the 1938 Founding Conference split of the WIL, were now good Trotskyists. Of course, this was not so at all—the whole history of this tendency was wrong from way back to its organizational origin early in 1938, and these things, despite episodic proclamations supporting the program persisted right through the RCP [Revolutionary Communist Party] to the day when they practically took off for Social Democracy.
All these tendencies from time to time used this "agreement" argument as a sort of trick mechanism for unwary people. Pablo wrote 95% of the 3rd World Congress resolution in a way that won our applause, but it was the 5% which had the sting in the tail and this was, as history has shown, decisive during the 1953 split.
What we have primarily to contend with today, as we have recognized for some time, is that a number of people are trapped in Pablo's groupings—but we cannot help them much if we do not adopt a principled position on all the issues.
I feel that we should prepare a statement on this "unity" issue which would help steady any people who may be sucked in by it and at the same time raise the political level. There is still a lot of inexperience around and we are always having to warn people against impressionistic reasoning. Unless this is done some smart aleck will always be found on the make trying to fool people with short memories. Comrade Peng is OK and we are bringing him to England for some time where we can let him see an organisation working. I am expecting a full report any day from one of our leading comrades who has been in Ceylon for several weeks. As soon as it is to hand I will mail it on. I would like your opinions on this Pablo issue. I will write you later on other aspects of international problems.
Warmest regards,
s/Gerry