Letter to the International Secretariat and the Leadership of the Belgian Section, November 1, 1934

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Austria, Spain, Belgium and the Turn

To the International Secretariat and the Leadership of the Belgian Section

Dear Comrades:

I have had an opportunity to peruse the minutes of the Viennese Schutzbund conference at which Otto Bauer and Julius Deutsch participated (June 1934). This document is full of lessons. It gives an authentic picture not only of what Austro-Marxism was but also of the unexpected and unhoped for gains of the Austrian Stalinists. After breaking with the Social Democracy, the most militant workers sought support in the Comintern. The minutes show that events have in all seriousness vaccinated the advanced workers against reformism, but have left them almost entirely defenseless against Stalinism. This means that the best elements in the proletariat have as yet to pass through other tragic experiences before they finally find their way.

These same minutes, ample enough and detailed though they are, do not make any mention whatsoever of the various groupings of the Left Opposition. It was in Austria that sectarianism, as exemplified by Landau and by Frey, raged altogether unhampered. And the results? The most formidable of crises came and passed entirely over the heads of these grouplets, despite the fact that there had always been broad sympathies for our ideas in Vienna. It is a very sad but, nevertheless, invaluable lesson. It must be said now openly: ever since the beginning of the crisis in the Austrian party, it was a supreme duty of our friends to enter the Austro-Marxist party, to prepare within it the revolutionary current. One cannot avow that on that condition events would have taken a different path of development But it is absolutely certain that no matter what development events would have produced, our tendency would have come out of it ten times, a hundred times stronger than it is now. The objection may be raised that entry into a Social Democratic party a year and a half ago would have been psychologically impossible, since the evolution of the reformist and Stalinist parties was not then advanced sufficiently to impose on us our new orientation. This objection would be quite correct. But in this letter we are not concerned with finding an explanation or a justification for the shortcomings of this or that section at one moment or another. We are concerned here with taking inventory of the fundamental tendencies arising in the labor movement since the defeat in Germany, which imposes upon us a much more daring turn towards the masses. Without this, entirely fresh layers of the proletariat will be pushed into the arms of Stalinism, and another whole period will be lost for the revolution.

The recent, as yet brief, experience of our French section already enables us to adduce a positive confirmation of the negative lessons of the Austrian experience. It is becoming self-evident that the French section has made a great step forward, which may have some genuinely salutary consequences … always on the condition, however, that the Bolshevik-Leninist Group learns to rid itself of propagandistic narrowness and, without losing sight for a moment of its clear ideas and slogans, shows an ability to adapt itself to the milieu of the masses in order to fuse our program with their experiences and their struggles. It may be said now almost with certainty that, if we had been able to bring about entry into the SFIO right after the departure of the Neos and, in any case, before the conclusion of the united front, we should already at the present be able to show considerable successes to our credit All this is said not in order to deplore things that are past but in order that we may learn — and we must all learn without any exceptions — to orient ourselves on a national scale more rapidly and more courageously.

I have not as yet received any documents on the recent events in Spain, generally, and on the role played by our section. But the general line of development suffices to draw the conclusion that our Spanish comrades should have joined the Socialist Party there at the very outset of the internal differentiation that began to prepare that party for the armed struggle. Our position in the Spanish situation would today be more favorable.

One of our Belgian comrades who plays quite a part in the youth movement has sent me some documents that describe the relationship existing among the Young Socialist Guard [JGS], the Stalinists and ourselves, and also a little about the internal life of the JGS. The conclusion that I have drawn from these documents is that our young comrades should immediately join the JGS. With this declaration, I will perhaps run headlong up against the impassioned objections of several dozen comrades. But I firmly hope that the French experience will be convincing enough for those of our friends who are more inclined to stress the dangers than the advantages of the new orientation. In any case, the question appears to me to be most urgent, a burning question even, and I pose it before the international as well as the national leadership.

The united front of the three youth organizations in Belgium was naturally an important principled acquisition. The fact alone that the question of so-called Trotskyism is posed before the Belgian Young Socialists is itself a step forward. But I do not believe that the triangular united front can last very long. Even if it does last, I do not believe that it can bring us any additional important gains. We are strong as a revolutionary tendency, but weak as an organization. Accordingly, the united front, not only in the hands of the opponents, but in those of the well-intentioned allies as well, becomes an instrument to paralyze the development of our ideological expansion through the very statutes of the united front The speeches of our comrades at the negotiations between the three organizations show the firm desire of our comrades to do their best and make the most of it. But it is also apparent how they are hampered, if we wish to avoid saying chained down, by the diplomacy of the united front. The disproportion between our forces and those of the Socialists imposes upon our comrades, as a matter of fact, a very modest attitude, and even too modest an attitude that corresponds to the relationship of the numerical forces, but not at all to the ideological role that we can and must play within the working-class youth.

The united front, as it is proceeding in France and elsewhere at present, is poisoned by the diplomatic hypocrisy that is a means of self-defense for the two bureaucracies. By placing ourselves on the level of the united front as a weak organization, we are condemned in the long run to play the part of a poor relation who must not raise his voice too high so as not to incur the displeasure of his host. In this manner, our organizational independence avenges itself upon our political and ideological independence. We have witnessed the same phenomenon in France after the events of February 6, and especially after the realization of the united front. La Vérité today is much more independent in its criticism than it was before the entry into the SFIO. That is not an accident The criticism that was banished from the domain of inter-organizational relations can only find its place in an intra-organizational form, not at all times and not in every place, but in any case inside of the SFIO and, as far as I am able to judge, inside of the JGS. In such a case, organizational independence must give the right of way to political independence. Inside the JGS, our comrades will be able to carry on much more systematic work and much more fruitful work than from the outside I have become definitely convinced of the necessity of entry there, ever since I heard that the JGS members with whom our comrades are in contact insisted that we come in and join them in their organization.

To postpone the decision would be a great mistake. The crisis in the POB, and especially between the youth and the party leadership, may become brusquely sharpened and lead to a split. In that case, the JGS would unquestionably look to the Stalinists for attachment, in the manner of the Austrian left. That would mean a whole series of demoralizing experiences with the bureaucracy, an unfavorable "purge," that is, a selection of docile camp followers and careerists, the expulsion of the embattled and independent characters. In order not to perish, the JGS requires an anti-Stalinist vaccination. Only our comrades can provide it for them. But in order to fill this sanitary requirement, our comrades must be entirely free from the embarrassment imposed upon them by the statutes of the united front It is necessary to go along with the JGS, to partake of their experiences, to inculcate them with our ideas and methods on the basis of these experiences.

I have not yet received any documents on the last congress of the POB. The question of the attitude of the left — including the Action Socialiste — is of extreme importance to the development of the proletarian vanguard in Belgium. But it seems to me that entry into the JGS is just as necessary, in case of an accentuation of the struggle inside the party as well as in the case of a momentary lapse. I shall await with the greatest impatience the opinions of the Belgian comrades.

Crux [Leon Trotsky]

P. S. The SFIO is, in a certain sense, a petty-bourgeois organization not only because of its dominant tendency but also because of its social composition: the liberal professions, municipal functionaries, labor aristocracy, teachers, white-collar workers, etc. This fact naturally limits the possibilities created by the entry itself. The POB, on the other hand, embraces the working class, and the composition of the JGS is proletarian in its overwhelming majority. That means that adherence to the JGS would open up even more favorable opportunities for us.