Letter to Alfonso Leonetti, December 29, 1931

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Why Mill Should Be Removed

Dear Comrade Souzo:

I do not find your explanations satisfactory, for the following reasons:

1. There are only two possible leaderships for the French League — the present one or the Naville-Rosmer group. Only a fool could believe that the Jewish Group could lead the League. Just look at Mill’s behavior. He is sabotaging a leadership that is far from perfect, but is the only one possible. Given that Mill is still, unfortunately, the “full-time functionary,” his behavior is criminal.

How can it be tolerated for even a single week? You do not accept responsibility for the Jewish Group (or rather, for Mill and Felix, who disorient and take advantage of this group), but have you officially condemned Mill’s behavior, through a decision of the Secretariat? Have you explained to him that his attitude is incompatible with his position as a member of the Secretariat? No. And so you bear full responsibility for his criminal behavior.

2. Even on the altogether secondary question of whether or not the Spanish letter had been sent to the other sections, Mill’s role remains the same. I have explained the “technical” side of the misunderstanding. But look at the minutes you have sent me: the Spanish letter was not sent to the Jewish Group “as such,” says Mill. “As such”! How charming! It’s pure Landau! As if it makes any difference whether Mill “as such” circulates the letter or does it through someone else.

3. I learned for the first time from your letter that the question has been posed in the League of “asking the Russian Opposition to remove Mill from the Secretariat.” What does that mean? Does anyone really think Mill is in any way linked to the Russian Opposition? Do you really think we can put our slightest confidence in Mill, who had fought with us in the long struggle against the Landau-Naville-Rosmer faction and who suddenly jumped into the arms of Rosmer, after the latter had deserted our ranks? Is there a serious ideological foundation behind all this, or any consistency of behavior? It would he bad enough in the case of a rank-and-file comrade. But we are talking about a “full-time functionary” (!!) of the International Secretariat. No, no, we cannot tolerate such things. It makes a mockery of the struggle we are waging, of our ideas, and of our methods. In my opinion, Mill should long ago have been demoted to the ranks, so that by hard work over a couple of years he could try to regain the confidence of the Left Opposition that he has totally lost.

4. You say that comrades should be judged on the basis of political questions. Here you — like many others — give an abstract, inconsistent, and even false interpretation to a correct principle. Like Paz, they blithely accept general ideas, so long as they don’t carry any great obligations. But when it comes to personal involvement, they act in the opposite way. In other words, officially recognizing general ideas cannot transform a person’s whole mentality.

Let us take the same example of Mill. His letters from Spain were an outrageous scandal for the Left Opposition. That was, I trust, a political question. I have not minced words on that subject. Perhaps he should have disavowed them openly. We could easily have said to ourselves that our cadres are young and uneducated, and we must be a bit more patient. But that presupposes at least goodwill, a profound devotion to the tendency, and a capacity to learn and to listen carefully to others. And what does Mill do? He has never formulated his aims, but he wages a tireless internal struggle. What does he want? What are his “political ideas”? What characterizes Mill, Landau, and many others is not “correct or false” ideas, but rather the absolute lack of connection between their actual activity and the “political ideas” they pretend to espouse.

That is where the real misfortune lies. This misfortune is organic; it characterizes a large layer of socially uprooted elements, without solid links to the workers’ milieu, lacking in revolutionary education, and having a certain ability to toss around platitudes under the name of “political ideas.”

5. Now consider the composition of the Secretariat: (a) Mill, whose behavior I have characterized above; (b) Myrtos, who in total disagreement with the Greek organization supports Mill, and even wants to make him the Spanish ambassador; (c) Souzo, who is “not responsible” for Mill’s sabotage, but tolerates it; (d) Frank, who, being absorbed in other things, spends little time on Secretariat work. It is a very unfortunate situation. In its present state the Secretariat “as such” has become an instrument of decomposition. For the same reasons that Mill pits the Jewish Group against the League, he is forced to pit the Spanish section against the French, German, and Russian sections. He is doing everything that Naville did without openly declaring his sums and plans. He uses the passage [through Paris] of a Glotzer or a Shachtman to poison the International atmosphere. Half measures are no longer useful. The Pontius Pilate formula “I’m not responsible” is no longer sufficient. The situation has to be dealt with. If the Secretariat is incapable of saving itself, the sections must intervene.

I shall await your reply with interest. I will be very pleased if this time it brings a bit of clarity to the discussion.

Communist greetings,

L. Trotsky