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Special pages :
Letter to Max Shachtman, December 20, 1939
Checked against: Leon Trotsky, In Defence of Marxism, London 1966, p.82.
All footnotes stem from the latter edition.
This letter was written by Trotsky in English.
December 20, 1939
Dear Comrade Shachtman
I am sending you a copy of my last article.[1]You will see from my polemics that I consider the divergences as of decisive character. I believe that you are on the wrong side of the barricades, my dear friend. By your position you give courage to all the petty-bourgeois and anti-Marxist elements to fight our doctrine, our program, and our tradition. I don’t hope to convince you with these lines, but I do express the prognosis that if you refuse now to find a way towards collaboration with the Marxist wing against the petty-bourgeois revisionists, you will inevitably deplore for years and years the greatest error of your life.
If I had the possibility I would immediately take an airplane to New York City in order to discuss with you for 48 or 72 hours uninterruptedly. I regret very much that you don’t feel in this situation the need to come here to discuss the questions with me. Or do you? I should be happy.
L. TROTSKY, Coyoacan, D.F.
- ↑ The article referred to is A Petty-Bourgeois Opposition in the Socialist Workers Party. – Ed.