Letter to Alfonso Leonetti, February 11, 1931

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You Should Help the New Leadership

Dear Comrade:

I have received your letter of February 5, which explains the long gap in our correspondence. “The incident is closed.”

I see no point in reopening the discussion on the personal character of the various comrades in question. I believe I know them well enough through my conversations with them, by their letters, their actions, and also a bit by their confrontation at Prinkipo. Now I do not in any way share Comrade Rosmer’sopinion of Comrade M[olinier]. In addition, I refer you again to my correspondence with Naville, which also touches a bit on this question.

Personal questions are not at issue now. There is a Gourget group which is de jure communist, but de facto syndicalist. Its position is irreconcilable with ours. If I do not propose a split, it is because I hope that the discussion and the experience will influence these comrades, whom I consider honest. This “waiting-and-seeing,” patient, and “liberal” policy is possible only because these comrades are in a minority. Imagine that they were in the majority; then an immediate split would become necessary. You will understand that I would not collaborate for a single day with a Vérité run by semi-syndicalists.

With the Naville group the situation is different. But my impression is that instead of supporting the new leadership against the Gourget group, the Naville group instead supports Gourget against the new leadership. This de facto, unprincipled bloc leads directly to a split. No one could learn anything from a crisis in which Naville, while “recognizing” my theses, supports Gourget, against whom these theses are irreconcilably directed. The Naville group is now an element of intolerable confusion, and is on the way to compromising itself definitively.

Where is the outcome? There are only two possibilities. Either a coalition of the Molinier group with the Naville group or, if Naville cannot accept remaining in a minority, the present leadership. Which of these two possibilities is preferable? From my viewpoint, the former. But that presumes loyal collaboration on the part of Naville. And from this point of view I am, out of experience, very uneasy.

If you set about promoting the loyal collaboration of the Molinier group with the Naville group (also in the leading bodies of the League), I will be very pleased to help you. Unfortunately, it appears to me that you do not yet have a set purpose. You are trying to pin down all their faults, their omissions, even the unfortunate formulations of the new editors, instead of giving them your help and your experience. As was to be expected, your article joining in the attacks of Gourget and Naville, defending them, has provoked a violent response. I don’t think that is the correct way. I am quite convinced that we can get good results from the present editors with only a tenth of the effort that I have spent on correcting the line of the Naville group.

But I repeat: as soon as you set about working for the collaboration of the majority with the Naville minority, I am completely on your side, without sharing your personal assessments, which are by no means necessary to achieve the common goal. '

One small note: You speak of some letters on the turn which should have been communicated to the League, and likewise my “observations on trade union policy.” I do not know what letters you mean. The collective letter signed by Le Pape and others, a very unfortunate letter, appeared in L’ Avant-Garde. As for my “observations on trade union policy,” I sent them to Comrades Rosmer, Naville, and Gourget. I found it necessary to delay communicating them to the members of the League so as not to provoke a superfluous discussion without having tried to settle the matter privately.

Now I repeat: There are only two leaderships to which I could lend my support. That which exists now or, even better, the same plus the representatives of the Naville group. Naturally, that is not for all eternity, but for the present time and the immediate future.

My best regards,

L. Trotsky

I am sending a copy of the passages concerning political questions to the [French] Executive Committee.

L.T.