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 Burns:
We have your letters of November 9, 12 and 13. We realize that you are now engaged in a fast-moving showdown struggle in which you will need all the help you can get. We have not yet broken through the legal entanglements in our efforts to send someone to consult with you, but be assured we will keep working at it. In the meantime, we will do the best we can by mail.
You seem to think that our tactical proposals set forth in my letter of November 3 would speed up things too much in regard to your internal situation. You state you are not yet in a position to come out openly for a rival centre to challenge Pablo's Comintern-like centre, but you will work in that direction across a period of time. You agree with our proposal not to attend the Pablo-rigged IEC and urge that we join you in issuing a call for an early Emergency Conference of all who participated in the Third Congress, including the French. By projecting such an Emergency Conference at which you say the political line would be decisive, you seem to feel that we would avoid organizational snares and place ourselves on the offensive with a positive proposal.
Although we agree with the broad tactical objectives you obviously have in mind in making this proposal, our analysis of the present situation leads us to the conclusion that a call for an Emergency Conference at the present time would enable Pablo to lay a new trap for us of the same kind he had planned for the IEC. The lines of division are not yet clearly drawn internationally; not everybody knows the score. Too many people are still susceptible to being duped by Pablo. The open confrontation of orthodox Trotskyism against Pablo's revisionist-liquidationist line is only just beginning. It has not yet reached a point where fundamental political issues can fully and clearly break through the web of Pablo's intrigue. Thus, if an Emergency Conference were held at the present stage, Pablo would be in a good position to rig it like he has done with the IEC, keeping his grip on the administration and continuing the stab-in-the-back policy he has been using against orthodox Trotskyists, at least since 1951.
We are, therefore, of the opinion that it would be wrong to call for an Emergency Conference or an early Congress. What is needed above all right now is to expose Pablo's politics and organization methods while we carry on an honest discussion among genuine Trotskyists. In this way we can prepare for an honest and democratic international gathering under the aegis of genuine Trotskyists and out of which a genuine Trotskyist international leadership will be created, a leadership that will defend and apply the orthodox Trotskyist principles of the movement. To achieve this objective an orthodox Trotskyist centre must be openly created to contest the Pablo faction for allegiance of the sections. Although this has to be done soon, we do not insist it be done at one stroke. It can be done in stages. You don't have to call it a centre. The name International Committee of the Fourth International (Trotskyist) should be adequate for the creation of an actual centre without formally proclaiming it as such.
It could be developed, for example, something like the CIO developed from within the AFL. The CIO did not immediately proclaim itself a rival organization to the AFL. It fought from within the AFL for a policy of organizing industrial unions in the basic industries. However, the CIO did not hesitate to organize its own centre inside the AFL in opposition to the craft union centre of the old-line bureaucrats; and the CIO openly contended for the allegiance of international unions and even launched an organizational drive in basic industry, remaining all the time within the AFL and fighting for the adoption of an industrial-union policy by that organization. The question of who would split or be expelled was not at all settled in advance. By pursuing this policy, the CIO gathered around itself most of the viable forces within the AFL got a good start in organizing the unorganized before the break came, and in the end the AFL craft union bureaucrats were branded the splitters of the union movement.
This method is similar to the tactics we recommend in the present fight. We do not propose that orthodox Trotskyists break with the Fourth International. On the contrary, the task is to remove the revisionist-liquidationist Pabloite administration and replace it with an orthodox Trotskyist administration. The declared objective should be to preserve the orthodox Trotskyist programme of the International and continue a true revolutionary course in the present complex world situation. To do so, it is necessary for the orthodox Trotskyists to move systematically and decisively toward the creation of their own centre, with the same boldness that the CIO moved against the AFL craft union bureaucrats. Our battle cry should be: No concessions to Cominternism! We intend to organize a democratic discussion among genuine Trotskyists in order to prepare an honest and democratic Congress, and in order to restore a genuine Trotskyist administration to the International. This cannot be done without an International Committee publishing its own bulletin.
As we see it, the problem for you within your party is not so much to find an organizational device with reference to the international battle but rather to make a concerted attack on Pablo's political and organizational methods. The Pabloite scandal-mongering and their organizational manoeuvres pale into insignificance before the vital and decisive political issues involved in the present great international controversy. We want to do everything we can to help you convey this understanding to your membership in order to harden and prepare them for the split that is bound to come in your party just as it came in ours.
You will have received by now the full text of our Open Letter to the Trotskyists of the World. Let us know what you think of it. We believe you will find helpful its restatement of Trotskyist fundamentals and its attack on Pablo's revisionism as manifested on East Germany, France, etc. In addition, the final draft of our criticism of 'The Rise and Decline of Stalinism' is now being mimeographed and will be forwarded to you within a day or two. An article by us on East Germany in the issue of Fourth International now on the press should also be an aid to you.
We realize the Open Letter will come as a shock to many comrades in your organization. But that is not at all negative. It will compel every comrade to ask himself what is happening to the International under Pablo's leadership. Each comrade will be compelled to raise himself above the low level of Pabloite chatter, gossip and scandal-mongering, and ask himself some very serious questions. Has the 25-year record of the SWP leadership shown them to be lightminded with regard to the world movement? Or have they been firm and consistent supporters of the world movement, sensitive to its needs and problems? Does not the 25-year record of the SWP leadership make it objectively necessary for the comrades to carefully study the questions raised in the Open Letter before they permit themselves to be influenced by the Pabloite school for scandal? We think that a strong statement in this vein by yourself and other leading comrades as to why our Open Letter should be supported would be helpful.
You and other leading comrades are no doubt already telling your own story as to why you have broken with Pablo and what you think should now be done to prevent his unprincipled faction from breaking up the International.
We think it would also be a help to you if you would see Peng as soon as you can and get from him the whole story of the Pabloite intrigue against the Chinese. The appeal from Shanghai and Peng's open letter to the Chinese CP, which we recently printed in the paper, had been bottled up by Pablo since last spring. We learned of the existence of these documents only when we received them from Peng last month. The Pabloites over here are trying to defend the shameful suppression of the Shanghai appeal on the ground that it was 'poorly written. The whole brutal tale of Pablo's treatment of Peng and the Chinese should be told to your membership. It will be most revealing to them. All indications ate that Peng is completely with the orthodox Trotskyists as against the Pabloite revisionists and liquidators. We think close collaboration with him should be established.
In addition to the bill of indictment contained in our Open Letter, you might also tell the British comrades about Pablo's attempts to gag our press and impose his false line upon us. In his letters to us, Pablo has attacked the articles in our paper and magazine on the Beria purge, East Germany, etc. as 'based on schemas and old reminiscences.' He has demanded that the line set forth in 'The Rise and Decline of Stalinism' be followed in our press. We have been told that any objections we may have to his line should be confined to internal discussion.
Pablo thus tries to set himself up as the fount of all wisdom in interpreting events and determining the policy of the movement on a day-to-day basis. If anybody disagrees, he says, put it in the internal bulletin, but follow my line in your press. Then he tries to put a gag on the leading comrades in the internal discussion by means of the 'IS discipline' trick that he tried to pull on you and with which you are entirely familiar.
We read with interest the letter from Germain which you seem to think indicates he is wobbling. We are more inclined to the view that he is still straddling or trying to straddle. But it is too late for that. He has to make up his mind one way or the other, just as everyone else must now do. If you talk with him, we believe you should make that unmistakably clear to him. However, if you can't succeed in getting him to join us now, you may be able at least to neutralize him. This is Pablo's battle, not Germain's. If he is not prepared to join us, he should stand aside.
In the final analysis, Germain and Pablo must come to a break. Germain's tendency is toward orthodoxy. His spirit, however, was broken by Pablo and Clarke in 1951. Joe can tell you about this. It was in January of 1951 when Clarke informed us that he and Pablo were preparing a break with the French and Germain. We protested against this and stopped it for the moment. Later Germain became taken in by them. The real problem for Germain is to regain his equilibrium. If he fails to do it now, he may do it later. He sought to arrange a talk with us during his recent trip. We indicated our readiness to see him and even offered to help finance his trip, but apparently Pablo succeeded in short-circuiting the project.
There is little for me to add concerning our Plenum which you do riot already know from my previous report, from the information in the paper, and from the criticism of 'The Rise and Decline of Stalinism,' which will be sent to you soon. Right now we are in the process of ironing out, branch by branch, a few minor problems created by the split. Our ranks have taken the break in their stride and are everywhere manifesting an eagerness to go forward with party-building work.
Yours in solidarity,
Smith
Trotskyism Versus Revisionism Document Index | Toward a History of the Fourth International | Trotsky Encyclopedia Home Page
Last updated 17.8.2003