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Special pages :
Letter to the National Committee Majority of the SWP, December 26, 1939
Checked against: Leon Trotsky, In Defence of Marxism, London 1966, pp.83-88.
These letters were written by Trotsky in English.
Coyoacan, D.F.
December 26, 1939
Dear Friends,
I was previously disposed in favor of transmitting the discussion in the Socialist Appeal and the New International, but I must recognize that your arguments are very serious especially in connection with the arguments of Comrade Burnham.[1]
The New International and Socialist Appeal are not instruments of the discussion under the control of a special discussion committee, but rather instruments of the Party and its National Committee. In the discussion bulletin the opposition can ask for equal rights with the majority, but the official party publications have the duty to defend the point of view of the Party and the Fourth International until they are changed. A discussion on the pages of the official party publications can be conducted only within the limits established by the majority of the National Committee. It is so self-evident that arguments are not necessary.
The permanent juridical guarantees for the minority surely are not borrowed from the Bolshevik experience. But they are also not an invention of Comrade Burnham; the French Socialist Party has had for a long time such constitutional guarantees which correspond completely to the spirit of envious literary and parliamentary cliques, but never prevent the subjugation of the workers by the coalition of these cliques.
The organizational structure of the proletarian vanguard must be subordinated to the positive demands of the revolutionary fight and not to the negative guarantees against their degeneration. If the Party is not fit for the needs of the socialist revolution, it would degenerate in spite of the wisest juridical stipulations. On the organizational field, Burnham shows a complete lack of revolutionary conception of the party, as he showed it on the political field in the small but very significant question of the Dies Committee. In both cases he proposes a purely negative attitude, as, in the question of the Soviet State, he gave a purely negative definition. It is not sufficient to dislike the capitalist society (a negative attitude), it is necessary to accept all the practical conclusions of a social revolutionary conception. Alas, this is not the case of Comrade Burnham.
My practical conclusions?
First, it is necessary to officially condemn before the Party the attempt to annihilate the party line by putting the party program on the same level with every innovation not accepted by the Party.
Second, if the National Committee finds it necessary to devote one issue of the New International to the discussion (I don’t propose it now), it should be done in such a way that the reader sees where the party position is and where the attempt at revision, and that the last word remain with the majority and not with the opposition.
Third, if the internal bulletins are not sufficient, it would be possible to publish a special symposium of articles devoted to the agenda of the convention.
The fullest loyalty in the discussion, but not the slightest concession to the petty bourgeois, anarchistic spirit!
W. RORK [Leon Trotsky]
- ↑ The minority of the National Committee demanded that the discussion be carried in the Socialist Appeal and the New International. This was rejected by the majority. – Ed.