Letter to the Belgian Section, Autumn, 1933

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Doubts, Hesitations and Fears

To the Belgian Section

Dear Comrades,

It is with great interest that I read through Number 10 of your internal bulletin, which confirms the report of the negotiations with the League of Communist Internationalists. I rejoiced at the accuracy with which my friends put the questions. On the other hand, the words of Comrade Hennaut produced a most unfortunate impression on me. As he is now, he represents at least a complete model of theoretical and political confusion. There is not a single question to which he contributes anything but doubts, hesitations and fears. This is the most fatal condition for a man who wishes to be a revolutionist!

The first four congresses of the Comintern! But in them there was "something” erroneous, since the results have been so lamentable. Just what was wrong? Hennaut does not know. In fact, the fault is entirely on the part of Comrade Hennaut He thinks that the fate of the Comintern is determined not by the struggle of living social forces but by some original "error" that has to be discovered — as if it were a matter of mathematical calculation. Why not go further and say: three Internationals were born of the teachings of Marx, and all three were born to collapse — therefore we must find a "fundamental error” in Marx. We can go even further and say that in spite of science people continue to suffer and undergo calamities; it is dear there is some "fundamental error” in science. The problem is approached not historically or dialectically but dogmatically, in the spirit of the Catholic Church, which explains all human ills by original sin. Souvarine's theory about the Comintern is also the theory of original sin. And Hennaut — alas! — has become the disciple of the sterile scholastic that Souvarine is.

According to the same Hennaut (that is to say, Souvarine), our political line in Germany was wrong from start to finish. It is necessary to have a fair amount of impertinence to make such an assertion. And wherein lies our error? Not in our analysis, nor In our prognosis, nor in our directives, but in the fact that we called on the Communist workers to bring pressure on their party to force it onto the path of correct policies. Instead of this, we should have said to the workers: Don't waste your efforts; it is of no consequence; die Comintern is sunk. At the same time, Hennaut thinks: The time was not ripe to create the new International. Then what practical proposal were we to make to the German workers — to reject the old International without building a new one? Then we could all go to sleep. Our error — these pedants, divorced from reality, see error in the fact that, without hiding anything from the workers, we did not discourage them but bestirred ourselves to help them make the most out of the situation. Any strike leader would act in the same way. Otherwise, he is no leader, but an untrustworthy capitulator! Hennaut thinks the road to health is to start a "discussion" with Souvarine, the Bordigists, Urbahns and other hopeless groups. As if this discussion had not been conducted during the past years, as if it had not undergone the test of events, as if a round-table discussion at a "conference?' could add anything to political experience already clarified by a long theoretical discussion!

We must see, says Hennaut, if there is-not "something correct in Souvarine and all the "communist" groups and grouplets. Hennaut himself cannot make up his mind/to say clearly and simply just what he has found about them that is correct He recommends that we "search." But all our daily labor is to search out for each question the most exact answer. We have elaborated our methods', we have our answers', we have our criticisms of other points of view. Hennaut does not grant this enormous collective labor his approval, passes by all that we have done and proposes to busy himself with "researches" and "discussion" as if we were just born today. A sterile position, entirely impregnated with the spirit of Souvarinism!

It is particularly naive to say that our participation in the Paris conference, when we were "seated at the same table" with the PUPists and others, represents an "opportunist error." Thus, for Hennaut, what unites is not Marxist principles, but — the table! He does not say a word about the contents of our declaration and our resolution that received four signatures. He forgets or he cannot understand that we have preserved complete freedom of action and of criticism of our allies. The fact that the SAP and the OSP voted for the resolution of the seven without reservations and consequently entirely wrongly shows surely that our allies have not arrived at the clarity indispensable for Marxists. But were we not the first to herald this error in our press? Through joint labors as well as through criticism we can help our allies to attain the necessary clarity.

Hennaut's arguments against the struggle for the Fourth International are no less false and removed from life than the rest of his rationalizations. "For the creation of the Third International,” he says, "the war and the Russian Revolution were needed." Many repeat this formula without reflection and without reservation. The war did not facilitate but, on the contrary, rendered enormously more difficult the work of the revolution, especially internationally. That is why all skeptics like Hennaut considered the slogan for the Third International "inopportune? and even "absurd” during the war. Now, to a certain extent, fascism plays the role played by the war in 1914-18, all the more since fascism is preparing a new war. But — says Hennaut — to create the Third International the Russian Revolution was needed. A remarkable discovery! But did the Russian Revolution fall from heaven? For the October victory of the proletariat, the Bolshevik Party was necessary, permeated not with the spirit of Stalin-Kamenev (March 1917) but with the spirit of Lenin. In other words, it was necessary for Lenin, even at the beginning of the war under the most difficult and unfavorable circumstances, to begin the struggle for the Third International without reckoning with the skeptics, those who hinder and confuse everything. The creation of the Communist International took place not at the First Congress in 1919 (that was a pure formality) but in the preliminary processes of preparation, under the flying colors of the Third International. The deductions for our immediate tasks flow automatically from this historical analogy.

By this letter I do not in the least intend to interfere in your negotiations. If Hennaut's group, or a part of it, joins with our section, I can only rejoice. But Hennaut's idea that the condition of future success is the reunion of all the oppositional wreckage from the Third International is radically wrong. It is necessary to weigh and appraise this wreckage, not by names and pretensions, but by actual theoretical and political content Anyone who has something to say does not wait for a general conference of unknown date but publishes his ideas in the form of a program, of theses, articles and discourses. Whoever appeals to a future conference to save him, a conference that is to find "something," discover "something," only demonstrates that he has no ideas whatsoever. I have no doubt that this is as plain to you as it is to me.

With warmest good wishes for your success,

G. Gourov [Leon Trotsky]