Letter to the International Secretariat, March 7, 1933

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The Situation in the American League

To the International Secretariat

Dear Comrades:

The situation in the American League demands, as you have already indicated, a prompt and decisive intervention on the part of our organization. To the extent that I have been able to judge from the minutes of the Secretariat and the correspondence, we haven't any differences with your evaluation of the situation in the American League. Nevertheless I consider it my duty to explain to you as clearly as possible how I, after very detailed conversations with Comrade Swabeckand a study of the documents, regard the situation in the League and what measures appear to me to be necessary from our side.

1. For several years the action of the League bore mainly a literary propagandist character. The number of members hovered around the same figures, varying according to the improvement or the worsening of the work at the center. The lack of progress in the movement which has been the case aroused all sorts of personal antagonisms, group antagonisms, or local antagonisms. The same lack of progress in the movement does not permit these antagonisms to take on a political character. This has given and still gives the struggle an exceedingly poisoned character in the absence of a principled content clear to everybody. Members of the organization do not learn anything from such a struggle. They are forced to group themselves according to personal attachments, sympathies and antipathies. The struggle of the groups becomes in its turn an obstacle to the further progress of the movement

2. It is quite possible that in this struggle there are contained valid principled differences in embryonic form. Nevertheless it is unfortunate that the two groups anticipate too much and sharpen the organizational struggle between the groups and the members altogether out of proportion with the development of political work and of the questions raised by the latter. In the impatient organizational maneuvers which in a disruptive fashion are agitating the entire League by bringing prejudices to bear upon each group separately, it is impossible not to see the harmful influence of the methods and the procedure of the epigone Comintern, which has accustomed an entire generation to seek a way out of all sorts of difficulties through apparatus combinations at the expense of the whole organization. Therein lies one of the worst traits of bureaucratism!

3. A genuine solution to the internal difficulties can only be found along the path of expanding mass work. The League has taken that path. It is developing magnificent energy in this work in three directions: (a) campaign on the subject of the victory of fascism in Germany and the capitulation of the Communist International; (b) participation in the unemployed movement; (c) participation in the independent miners union (Illinois). In all these fields, the League has already achieved moral successes. But — and that is the most important feature of the present situation — these first successes are accompanied not by a lessening but by an aggravation of the internal struggle. What does this signify?

4. Of course it is theoretically possible that with the transition to broader work, the potential differences can assume an open and active political character. But up to now this has not at all been expressed in anything. More or less fully developed, serious, and firm differences have not been revealed in any of the three fields of work mentioned above. There remains another explanation: the aggravation of the crisis has been called forth by the very mechanics of the transition from one stage of work to another. This does not exclude the birth of serious differences in the future, but those do not necessarily have to correspond with the lineup of the present groupings.

5. A solution is impossible except by broadening and deepening the mass work, by drawing to the League fresh proletarian elements, by drawing all the centers of the League into the mass organizations. The beginnings have been made for this work. But the struggle of the groups has taken on such sharpness that a split is being put on the order of the day automatically. A split under these conditions would have a purely a priori character, a preventive one, so to speak, one that is incomprehensible to all except those who initiate the split. If it is difficult for us, the leading members of the International Left Opposition, to grasp the motives of the ferocious struggle, the American workers, including the members of the League itself would be all the less capable of understanding the causes of a split. This kind of split at the top would infinitely shatter the authority of both groups and compromise the cause of the Left Opposition in America for a long time. It would suffice today for the Stalinist bureaucracy to publish the numerous declarations of the two groups fighting each other in order to poison all sources of sympathy for the Left Opposition. In case of split, the situation would become a hundred times worse.

The two groups should fully understand that in case of a split neither of them could nor would be recognized as a section of the International Left Opposition. The two halves, condemned to impotence for a long time, would find themselves in a situation similar to that of the present groups in Czechoslovakia, who are not now members with full rights in the international organization but only sympathizing groups.

6. The preparation for the national conference of the League is taking place under the sign of the struggle between the two groups. At present one can already to a certain degree picture the perspectives of the conference: more or less unanimous acceptance of the principled political resolutions side by side with a poisoned struggle on the questions of approving the mandates and the composition of the future central committee. If we assume that the two groups are more or less the same size, the changes at the conference would be reduced to the group possessing 49 percent obtaining 51 percent and vice versa, and with the further application of the same methods that would mean a split

7. The task of our international organization is, it seems to me, quite evident: not to permit a split in any case at present, on the threshold of the transition of the League to mass work; to explain to all the members of the League that the leaders of the two groups are sharpening the struggle by means of impermissible organizational methods and by poisoned polemics; to condemn these methods resolutely; and to call upon the members of the League for the defense of its unity.

8. Independently of the possible opinions of any one of us separately on which of the two groups in the League will acquire a serious and genuine preponderance in mass work, we must as an organization leave the solution of this question to the future (it is quite possible that the leadership, after some regroupments, will be constituted from elements of both the present groups). But the next conference cannot in any case assure the domination of one group, due to the absence of political ground in preparation for this as well as of objective criteria. The task of the next conference should consist of saving the League from a preventive split imposed from the top and of preserving the authority of the League and its combativity for the near future. It is necessary to pose this task in quite an imperative form before all the local groups involved in the struggle of the central committee.

9. To the extent that it is possible to judge from correspondence, a considerable number of the members of the League, perhaps a majority, do not belong to either of the two groups and speak with indignation of the danger of a split. Given the absence or at least the non-obviousness of the principled basis of the struggle between the groups, conciliationism is quite justified and progressive in the League's internal life. It is necessary now, at the present stage, to support this tendency with all the authority of the international organization.

10. The preparation of the conference should, it seems to me, be conducted in the spirit of the considerations made above. That means:

a. All the local organizations should demand of the leaders of the two groups that they reduce their clashes within such limits that their speeches, declarations, etc., on both sides, cannot become a weapon in the hands of the enemy.

b. All the theses, countertheses, and amendments should be sent out in time, not only to all the members of the League but also to the International Secretariat so that a discussion of all the phases can take place before the eyes of all the sections and under the control of the latter.

c. The final time of the conference should be designated in agreement with the IS so that the latter will have the opportunity, in case of need, to delegate its representative to it.

d. Up to the time of the conference the present central committee, which of course remains in office, should enjoy the entire support of all the members of the organization. On its part, the central committee will abstain from artificial organizational manipulations within the committee which bear a factional character.

e. The local organizations should be guided in the election of delegates by consideration of sufficient firmness and independence in their representatives on the question of safeguarding the unity of the League; the instructions to the delegates should be voted upon in the same sense.

f. The forthcoming central committee should of course include leaders of both groups now engaged in the struggle; but along with them should be placed some solid, comrades, possessing authority, not having engaged in the struggle of the two groups, and capable of bringing about a healthier atmosphere inside the central committee. To this end the size of the committee should be considerably enlarged.

g. In case of need, the Secretariat should call a special plenum devoted to American problems with the participation of representatives of both groups.

Historical developments place exceptional tasks before the American League. Tremendous possibilities are opening for it. Our American friends must be aware that we are following their work with the greatest attention, that we are ready to bring them our support with all the forces at our command and with all our means, and that we firmly hope that they will put an end to the internal malady and that they will issue forth upon a broader path.

G. Gourov [L. Trotsky]