Documents 3 to 17 and 19 to 24 originally published in Internal Bulletins of the SWP and the International Bulletins of the International Committee
Dear Jerry:
I just received your letter of August 31. I had already commented on the occurence at your last Executive Committee meeting in a letter written to New York yesterday. I enclosed a copy for Harry and he should have received it by this time.
The attempt to impose hierarchical committee discipline at the beginning of an important discussion is unheard of in our movement. It is the most reprehensible practice imaginable. It is right out of the Stalinist book. I realize that this is a harsh expression, but it is the plain and simple truth and the sooner it is said out loud the better. The system which would impose IS discipline on you in the discussion of new documents before your own national committee presupposes the imposition of National Committee discipline on all its members in the discussion before the membership. This is a sure way to deprive the rank and file of any real opportunity to weigh and consider possibly different opinions, or shadings of difference, and thereby to deprive them of any real opportunity to form their own deliberate opinions before taking a vote.
For you to tolerate such procedure on any pretext whatever would be to betray your duty as a leader of the British movement. It would be a criminal offence against the members who have trusted you to teach them and help them to learn how to think for themselves on the basis of full information on the questions under consideration.
Trotsky once said, 'Honest information is the first prerequisite for democratic discussion.' One of the most important elements of honest information in a discussion by the party membership consists of the opinions of all the leaders who are more familiar with the questions under consideration. To suppress these opinions at the start of a discussion, especially a discussion which may be fateful for the whole future of our movement, would be a crime and a betrayal.
* * *You are at a decisive turning point in your whole lifetime activity as a revolutionist right now. All the fruits of all your previous work and struggle to consolidate a principled cadre are threatened by this disloyal attempt to intimidate you by pointing the pistol of an opposition faction at your head. You know that the same thing was tried in the SWP, and you know how we responded to it. I most earnestly recommend to you the same procedure, and I assure you that there is no other way.
I know very well that constructive workers, eager to build a movement in open struggle against the class enemy, are always strongly tempted to hope that in the internal situation things will work out for the best; that good faith and good work will prevail; and that factionalism will somehow or other disappear of itself, without taking time out to meet it on its own ground and knock it down. But that is a terrible mistake.
I have given much time and thought, during my past year's residence in California, to a review of the whole past experience of our movement and of my part in it, as well as to the prospects of its future. I truly believe that the best service I ever rendered to our party, to help prepare it for its great future, was rendered during this past year. And the essence of this service, as I see it, was my determined and unceasing effort to make the party members in general and the leading cadre in particular, understand the mortal danger of permitting an unprincipled faction to grow and develop without forcing it into the open, calling it by its right name, and declaring uncompromising war on it.
The hardest part of all my struggle during this past year, and as I judge it in retrospect the most important part, was my insistent warnings to the constructive elements in the party, in the leadership as well as in the ranks, against the fatal illusion that factional brawlers can be overcome by good works in the class struggle alone. In this connection I earnestly recommend to you and your friends a careful reading of my letter to the Chicago party trade unionists on 'Mass Work and Factional Struggle,' which begins on page 49 of Internal Bulletin No. 12, May, 1953; and my letter to Ted Grant on 'Perspectives of the Struggle,' which begins on page 21 of the same bulletin.
The English comrades, who have in recent times enjoyed such a long period of constructive work in an ascending mass movement of labour radicalism, and who have witnessed the rich fruits of their labour, may well be impatient with any diversion of energy toward internal disputes and factionalism. It is your foremost duty to convince them, at the cost of no matter how much time and effort, that precisely this illusion can bring all their work to nothing, and in a very short time at that.
It is particularly necessary now for the members of your movement, the newly recruited ones as well as those who come from the past, to recognize that the organization through which they did this work did not fall from the sky. The conditions for all their constructive work in recent times, in an atmosphere of internal unity and harmony, were prepared by your long-drawn-out, exhausting and at times discouraging, factional struggle against the Hastens and others who were not much better than the Hastens. You have a fight on your hands now again. And you will not have internal peace and the possibility to develop another long period of constructive work, unhindered by factionalism, until you have settled accounts with this new faction which has risen up to challenge you.
This faction is a challenge to the leadership of the cadre consolidated by historic struggles. Even more than that, it is a challenge to the right of the British party to select out of its own ranks leaders of its own choosing; leaders who are known to the rank and file members and subject to their constant observation and control. Your friends in the leading circles will have to face this problem squarely, as the leading cadre of the SWP eventually faced it. That, for us, was the beginning of the solution of the crisis. Everything followed from that.
If we can say now with absolute assurance that the crisis which threatened the existence of the SWP during the past year has been overcome; and that it is no longer within the power of anyone to wreck the party by a serious split, or even to paralyze its work by further factional struggle -- it is due, first of all, to the fact that the leading people recognized the reality of the situation and its necessities, and then resolutely set to work to mobilize the party membership on that basis. I have no doubt that the same results will be recorded in England, if the leading people of your group recognize the realities of the situation in time, and then proceed with a full knowledge of what they want and where they are going.
* * *It is not at all a question of a struggle of a national section 'against the International.' The question is formulated that way by people who have -- to speak plainly -- a Stalinist conception of the International as something outside of ourselves, as a power giving orders which loyal people have only to obey. The international as we conceive it -- as we were taught by Trotsky -- is all of us, is all the parties, and all the members of all the parties. When questions are up for discussion, nobody represents the international: all members have equal rights. In the last analysis, every individual member of every party has the right and the duty to form his own opinion and make it known, and in that way to contribute to the collective judgment of the whole movement. This collective judgment, as experience has shown, is far better, and far more reliable, than the arbitrary judgement of a few individuals who may want to give orders and to recognize no control.
It is not a question of a struggle 'against the leadership' of the International, as the devotees of the new leader cult represent. What is involved is a difference of opinion within the leadership.
For the leadership of international Trotskyism, rightly considered, is broader than a small exclusive circle. It includes the leading people who have distinguished themselves in the work of the different parties and given serious proofs of their capacities and their loyalty.
We don't know yet how serious the present differences will turn out to be, for the discussion is only now really beginning. We do know that on the plane of organizational system and method, as exemplified first in the experience of the SWP, and now beginning in England, the differences are very serious indeed and must be fought out to a definite conclusion. I, for my part, am against the authoritarian system and method and will openly fight against it, regardless of any agreements or disagreements which might obtain among ourselves on other questions.
I know, and have even tried to explain to others more than once, that organizational questions and procedures are subordinate to political considerations, and in the long ran can only serve them. But it is no less true that, in certain situations and to a certain extent, organizational conceptions, methods and practices have an independent character and must be dealt with as such.
A shining example of this exception to the general rule was the notorious Hasten group itself. Its organizational methods were so false, so incompatible with the functioning of a democratic organization of revolutionary workers, that agreement on this or that political policy at one time or another made no real difference. The whole Hasten system had to be blown up before a genuine Trotskyist organization could get started in England. The saddest part, which is to be regretted to this day, is that the recognition of this simple necessity was so long delayed. If one were to undertake to write the real history of British Trotskyism, he would have to set the starting point as the day and date on which your group finally tore itself loose from the Hasten regime and started its own independent work. What happened before that is nothing but a series of squandered opportunities, material for the pre-history of British Trotskyism.
* * *In my opinion, it would be a mistake to over-simplify matters by passing off the organizational methods employed in the present dispute as simply the instrument of a false political line. No, in this case the authoritarian concept of leadership, and the obscene personal cultism, are wrong in themselves, and would have no justification no matter what political line they may serve at the moment. Democratic centralism is not an empty phrase.
The Trotskyist movement, internationally, could be stifled and eventually smothered to death simply by some of the conceptions and methods of organization and leadership which some people are now trying to force upon it. If I don't think there is any real danger of that, it is precisely because these attempts are going to meet the determined resistance of the SWP, of the British Trotskyists, and of other parties when the issue becomes clear.
We are not so apprehensive about a possible 'crisis' over this question in the International movement, and we are not even thinking of a split. We are thinking, rather, in terms of heading off a crisis over this question, and of making any talk of a split absurd, by preventing and refusing to tolerate the encroachments of a system of organization and leadership which could do nothing but guarantee permanent crisis and chronic disruption and unending splits.
* * *On the side of political differences, we have no way yet of knowing how serious they will be. Judgment on this score can rest only on the basis of written documents when they take definitive form. I indicated in yesterday's letter to New York that I think the extent of the differences should first be probed and tested by amendments to the present drafts.
The attempt to head off the presentation of any amendments, and thereby prevent a serious and honest discussion by invoking an authoritarian 'committee discipline,' is a rather ominous sign. But this attempt obviously will not work. The SWP will pay no attention whatever to it, and I assume that the same course will be taken by you and the others in England. Then we will get down to the amendments and reformulations themselves and see how they are received.
A discussion is now going on in the ranks of our leading cadre on the nature of these amendments and reformulations. I must admit that I have not studied the documents yet with sufficient line-by-line attentiveness. We do not want to reject any of the basic Lines laid down by the Third World Congress. But this time, in view of all the confusion and disruption that has been created over conflicting 'interpretations,' the documents for the Fourth Congress must be amended and reformulated on every point where there is the slightest possibility of ambiguity, double meaning or error.
I personally am inclined to agree with the general line of the amendments drawn up by Tom. But I think the opinion of the SWP leadership will be crystallized in favour of more thorough and extensive amendments and reformulations, without changing or throwing out any basic lines we have supported up to now.
In your place, I would present such amendments as have been clearly formulated already, and reserve the right to add others after further consideration and discussion. Why all this rush and pressure to force a vote and then shut people up? That game is not going to work with the SWP.
One of the most important things to bear in mind in this connection is that we must take time. We must take all the time we need for thorough study and consideration of everything designed to formulate the position of our international movement. We must make it clear that we don't intend to be hustled into quick decisions which foreclose our right to further consideration and to the formulation of new amendments in the course of the discussion. We must take time for a really thorough and democratic discussion, free from any intimidations, threats or resorts to 'discipline.' The SWP leadership will surely insist on this, and I presume you will do the same.
* * *If the purpose of the emergency meeting in Paris is to launch the crucial international discussion with a scandal, we can leave the initiative to them. You are certainly not called upon to take any responsibility for the letter to Tom, the speech on 'Internationalism and the SWP,' or any other 'document' which may be introduced in evidence against us. Those documents represent the deliberate opinion of the leadership of the SWP, and we are fully prepared to take all responsibility for them. We are not engaged in any conspiracy, and we have nothing to conceal, and no 'exposures' to fear.
The most important point involved in the way this 'scandal' was presented by the Cochranites in the New York City Convention, and by implication in the Paris letter of August 10, is the assumption that certain personages are immune from all criticism, and that ail such criticism is a scandal regardless of its merits. Therefore, we have no right to object to procedures which we consider to be wrong, and to 'make contact' with other comrades in other parties and inform them of our opinions.
From all that has been said above on the question of organization, it follows that these Cominternist pretensions must be flatly rejected. The right of anybody in the International movement to criticize another, and to consult anyone else he pleases, must be defended in principle. We, for our part, not only intend to defend this right for others, but also to exercise it freely ourselves to the fullest extent we consider necessary, and without bothering to ask anybody's permission beforehand.
I have no doubt that your position on this aspect of the question the only one that has any real importance -- will be the same as ours. If the 'scandal' of these documents is launched in England, in an attempt to stampede the membership -- as was tried in the US without success -- that is the way to meet it. Your struggle will not be decided in Paris, but in England. If this 'scandal' is introduced there, it can become a boomerang, if you meet it squarely and take the offensive along the lines suggested above.
Fraternally,
PS. Since writing the above I just received a copy of W's Sept. 4 letter to you. The line is virtually the same. Some of the suggestions in W's letter, regarding your course in Paris, are more specific and perhaps better than mine. You can use your own judgment. We can discuss among ourselves the one point of difference -- amendments or a separate resolution -- and come to an agreement one way or another before acting. I agree with the suggestion in W's letter to defer decision until we get your report on the forthcoming Paris meeting.
The most important field of action for you -- let me repeat once again -- is England. If you succeed with your task there everything else will fall into place.
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Last updated 18.10.2003