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Special pages :
Letter to Albert Goldman, February 19, 1940
Checked against: Leon Trotsky, In Defence of Marxism, London 1966, pp.190-191.
Dear Comrade Goldman,
A convention of the minority is only a caucus on a national scale.[1] This is why it does not signify, in itself, a principled change of the situation. It is only a new step on the same road, a bad step on the road of split, but not necessarily the split itself. Possibly, even surely, there are two or three tendencies inside the opposition in respect to the split question and the aim of the convention is to unify them. On what basis? Probably some leaders donât see in their desperation any other way than a split.
Under these conditions a vigorous intervention in favor of unity by the majority could possibly make more difficult the task of the conscious splitters. Could not your caucus or possibly even better, the official majority of the NC or the PC address the Cleveland convention with a message concerning one question only, namely the unity of the party. In such a letter I wouldnât introduce the question of the character of the Soviet Union or of the mixed war, otherwise it could be understood that their position on these questions must be abandoned as a precondition for remaining in the party. Not at all. You accept them as they are, if they have a real devotion to the party and the 4th International and are ready to accept discipline in action.
With best greetings,
LEON TROTSKY
- â The minority convoked a conference of their group in cleveland on February 24-25, 1940. This conference resolved that there existed two politically irreconcilable tendencies in the party and that âthe party must extend to whichever group is the minority at the convention the right to publish a public political journal of its own defending the general programme of the Fourth International [and which] would at the same time present in an objective manner the special position of its tendency on the disputed Russian question.â The majority rejected the demands of the minority. â Ed.