Letter to Frankfurt Comrades of the SAP, December 14, 1931

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The Founding of the German SAP

Dear Comrades:

I thank you for the confidence you show in me by your letter of November 12. I see no reason to accuse you of "dishonesty" and "betrayal" of the proletarian united front, as you put it, because of your membership in the SAP. I do not doubt in the least that you are quite serious about the proletarian revolution. Your critique of the Communist Party is correct However, what you are now counterposing to the Communist Party is not another, consistently revolutionary party but your own idea of such a party. The idea might be excellent, and it really isn't bad. Nevertheless the party of which you speak is yet to be created. The SAP, however, stands before the public as a rather confused organization with a leadership that is completely foreign to revolutionary Marxism and politically inadequate.

You call yourselves communists and declare your solidarity with the ideas that I represent. You set yourselves the goal of winning the SAP to true Marxist communism. Naturally, I can only welcome this goal and seek to support you in this course to the best of my ability. I would not, however, represent the SAP in its present condition to anyone as being a party but rather as a transitional formation on whose territory various tendencies are trying to recruit to themselves. Within the framework of this transitional "party," then, you, the Marxist communist elements, constitute a fraction which presents a sharply delineated platform and openly and energetically leads the fight for this platform.

I cannot approve the corollary idea you propose: that all of the oppositional communist groups join the SAP. In the first place, these various organizations have quite different tendencies and are — as you yourselves correctly say — not mass organizations, but cadres, and cadres only have value when they are quite clear and conscious about their goals. To unite with Brandlerites, ultralefts, anti-parliamentarists, etc., would be absurd.

Secondly, the German Communist Party has behind it millions of workers. Quite obviously you underestimate this fact One can influence these workers, especially now, when the questions are being posed in their sharpest form by the events themselves. The Communist Left Opposition (Bolshevik-Leninists), though excluded from the party, regards itself as a component of the Communist Party and tries in every way possible to influence its proletarian membership. Clearly it would render this task immeasurably more difficult for itself by suddenly going over to the SAP. No, there can be no talk of this. It's also excluded that the Communist Left Opposition enter into any connections with the SAP without the Communist Party also participating. However, the Left Opposition can establish quite close and friendly relations with the communist fraction of the SAP on the basis of common ideas, provided that it turns out that such really exist, without setting up any organizational structures too hastily.

Do you have any kind of relationship with the Left Opposition? Do you receive their literature?

I shall follow the further developments with great interest and will be very grateful if you keep me up to date.

With revolutionary greetings.

Yours,

L. Trotsky