Letter to the Ligue Communiste, July 19, 1934

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The Stalinists and Organic Unity

Dear Comrades:

After the National Committee meeting of the SFIO, the situation and, at the same time, the course to follow have become so clear and so obvious that you have to deliberately close your eyes not to see them.

The representatives of the CAP [Permanent Administrative Committee of the SFIO] and the Central Committee [of the CP] have already had a preliminary discussion on the possibility of organic unity. Thorez has declared that he too considers unity in action as a stage leading toward organic unity. This conversation was stenographically recorded. Severac gave the stenographic report to the National Committee to read. (We must at all costs get a copy of the text.)

This fact gives us an idea of the extent of the historic retreat carried out especially on the level of the party. Let’s consider it carefully. The necessity of breaking with the Social Democratic parties was already proclaimed in 1914. This break was effected in France in 1921. The years of party purges followed, and today, in 1934, the heads of the Communist Party proclaim openly that their goal is organic unity with the Social Democratic party. What a formidable retreat!

We are not the ones who either wanted it or created it. It is a fact presented by the situation, especially by the influence of the Stalinist bureaucracy. But it is also a fact that those who try to reject or underestimate this basic fact will inevitably break their necks. But the retreat has not run its full course. It is not enough that the CP leadership sees itself compelled — no matter what its ulterior motives — to broach the perspective of organic unity with the Social Democracy, after thirteen years of independent existence and twenty-nine years after proclaiming that it was impossible to work together in the same party with the Social Democrats.

Things could be better, and things could also be worse. We Marxists are obliged to recognize that for the moment fusion of the two parties would constitute an advance, not with respect to Lenin’s slogans of 1914, nor with respect to the congress at Tours, but with respect to the present situation, such as it is. The fusion of the two parties would mean the opportunity to begin again. Therein lies everything. The workers’ movement has been thrust into a historic impasse. It is the consciousness of the impasse that has pushed the Stalinists into “capitulationist” schemes, and it is the existence of this impasse that makes a progressive fact out of this “capitulation.” The fusion of the two parties would unavoidably open the path to discussion, analysis, study, the struggle of factions on a grand scale, and at the same time to the crystallization of a new revolutionary party, a section of the Fourth International.

The historic retreat — I repeat for emphasis — consists not only of the fact that the Stalinist bureaucracy is forced to adapt to the exigencies of the working class by fraternization with the Social Democrats, but also of the fact that this fraternization — which is trite, sentimental, without content — represents a tremendous step forward compared to the absolute impasse of yesterday. To see this in its proper light, we have to understand the extraordinary dialectic inherent in the development of everything that has occurred during the last twenty years in the French workers’ movement. Without this, we are condemned to become slaves of our own subjectivism or of proud but empty formulas. Faced with the situation I have briefly characterized above, anyone who says “I never will belong to the Social Democracy! Capitulation! Treason! etc.,” is nothing but a sentimental wretch who perhaps knows some greenhouse Marxist formulas, but who is frightened by living trees, and especially by a forest.

If objective analysis tells us — and let anyone try to deny it! — that the fusion of the two parties, such as they are, would constitute at this time a big step forward, how can anyone claim for the League the right to remain isolated, standing apart from this great new perspective?

I do not mean to say that the fusion of the two parties is assured in advance. No, there are too many factors involved for us to be able to mathematically predict the result. The Stalinist bureaucracy, which is today in a panic, may later become cocksure again and try to provoke an abortive split in the SFIO. Doriot may rejoin the latter, new sections may go from the CP to the SP, etc., but all these possible episodes change nothing in our characterization of the current situation in the workers’ movement and its urgent requirements.

If the fusion doesn’t take place, if the Stalinists try to disrupt the SP with their customary methods (zigzags, demagogy, even individual bribery), only our ideas and our methods can inoculate the new revolutionaries of the SP with the power to resist complete disintegration. The ILP would be a different thing today if our British section had entered it a year ago to defend within it the policy we had developed in a series of articles and letters. It is also the answer to the possible objection: “Well, let’s wait till unity has been established between the two big parties, and then we will present ourselves with our calling card.” That would mean that instead of anticipating, acting, and preparing, we would be waiting around for the moment when we would be practically wiped out by the actions of others.

Comrades, our responsibility before the French proletariat and before international Marxism is enormous. We must look reality in the face, and shake off the prejudices of a small closed circle.

There is no other course but this is a sure one.

V. [Leon Trotsky]