Letter to Max Shachtman, July 4, 1932

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After the CLA Plenum

Dear Comrade Shachtman:

Your letter of June 18 was a great relief to me in every respect. First, I hope that our friendly association will now be developed further unhampered and will gain in mutual frankness. Second, the fact that the disputed questions were decided unanimously at the plenum and you personally were unanimously assigned to the editorship of The Militant is a guarantee of the unity and solidity of the League for the future. Third, your statement on the international questions in connection with the decisions of the plenum is highly important for the adjustment of the Spanish question, which now disturbs me most keenly.

The more determinedly the international public opinion of our organization shows itself towards the obvious politically false steps of the Spanish section, the greater hope will exist that the Spanish comrades will be assisted to tread the right road again without personal convulsions. Unfortunately, the most difficult thing in connection with the leading comrades in Madrid and Barcelona is that they consider a programmatic rejoinder or a political criticism always only from purely personal standpoints and thereby render a discussion difficult in the highest degree. If I ask them: on what political grounds have you done this or that? — they answer me: we have the right to our own opinion; as if anybody disputes this right and as if the question did not consist of what concrete use one makes of this right in the concrete case.

Really healthy party democracy presupposes a certain public opinion, which has crystallized itself out of common experience. Without this foundation, one would each time have to begin from the beginning, and that is the case with the Spanish comrades: instead of learning from our previous experiences, they want to compel us to begin again from the first letters of the alphabet.

With best greetings and wishes.

Yours,

L. Trotsky