Letter to the International Secretariat, November 1934

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How to Answer the London-Amsterdam Bureau

Dear Friends:

I do not believe that it would be proper to participate in the London-Amsterdam Bureau conference. They are at an impasse because of their heterogeneity. They can do nothing but repeat once again the hollow phrases of their previous resolutions. The vacuousness of their conference must inevitably become apparent now. But if we participate in their conference, they would all rise up as one against us in order to unmask our “sectarianism” and to teach us some lessons in political realism, etc., and this diversion would give an appearance of content to their conference: they would all become very self-satisfied and more conservative than ever.

I propose to respond somewhat as follows:

“Dear Comrades:

“You set forth two tasks for your conference at the end of November: (1) to assure the homogeneity of the positions of the various independent organizations regarding the movement toward proletarian unity; (2) to give each other mutual support for the purpose of participating in the united front.

“As far as we are concerned, we believe that it is absolutely impossible to assure a homogeneous position in the absence of a common foundation of principles, or, more precisely, in the absence of any principled foundation at all. The essential characteristic of your international grouping is its avoiding discussion of questions upon which the struggle and destiny of the proletariat depend. Your conferences are occupied, as a rule, with generalizations whose object is to obscure the absence of revolutionary principles and methods. Thus, despite the participation of a party as important as the NAP in your ranks, you have never settled your position — “homogeneous” or otherwise — on the disastrous politics of the leadership of that party, and that question is a hundred times more important than a homogeneous attitude toward the unity movement. To be frank, you replace revolutionary politics with the politics of summit diplomacy. In the past, all of our attempts to provoke a straightforward response from you or from the various organizations composing your bureau on fundamental principles have failed (our declaration at the time of your [1933] conference in Paris, the Declaration of Four in favor of the Fourth International,, our theses on war, our offer to elaborate jointly a program for the Fourth International, that is, the fundamental principles which must guide the struggle of the proletarian vanguard in our epoch). Never have you declared your position on fundamentals; you always hide behind procedural formalities to avoid doing so; the agenda you propose is a continuation of the same policy.

“At such a time as you decide to place discussion of the Declaration of Four on the agenda of your conference — or discussion of our theses on war, or discussion of other similar documents, and above all the Norwegian question: namely, what the correct proletarian policy ought to be in Norway in order to save that country, and with it Scandinavia and indirectly all of Europe, from fascism — at that time you will be able to count on our active participation in your work. With Bolshevik-Leninist greetings, etc.”