Monatte — Advocate of the Social-Patriots

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In the article devoted to the fraternization of Monatte with the reformists and social-patriots, we pointed out that Monatte is concealing from the workers and supplying a cover for the most monstrous betrayals by the social-patriots, and in this way is facilitating such betrayals. What does Monatte say in reply to this? Trotsky, he says, is himself connected with Cachin, who played a shameful role during the war. From modesty, Monatte does not mention that he himself, having entered the Communist Party provisionally, worked alongside Cachin. But that has nothing to do with what we are talking about. The fact that the Comintern admitted into its ranks Cachin and other former social-patriots is placed by Monatte on the same level as his "fraternization" with Dumoulin, Zyromsky, and the others. That is the argument of a man who, fallen into a desperate situation, is obliged to use the petty maneuvers of an advocate without choice.

We did not go to Cachin; Cachin came to us. To get into the Comintern, he was obliged not only to condemn openly his past and the past of the French Socialist Party — especially in the war period — but also to break organizationally with the reformists and social-patriots. He was obliged to sign the twenty-one conditions we had laid down. Let Monatte read this document again: each one of the twenty-one paragraphs applies a white-hot brand to the wounds of reformism and patriotism. Independently of Cachin's own qualities — we are not speaking of the person but of the politician — the former social-patriots' shift to the side of the October Revolution and Bolshevism signified one of the most severe blows to the social-patriots. We had no illusions from the beginning. We said that each one of the "recruits" will be tested in the struggle before the advanced workers. Revolutionary selection and communist reeducation will form a truly proletarian party in France. Despite all the mistakes and crimes of the epigones, and independently of the personal qualities of one Cachin or another, our foresight was incontestably correct. It retains its validity even today.

How do things stand with Monatte? He broke with communism. He abandoned the concept of the revolutionary party of the proletariat, i. e., the proletarian revolution.

After that, he went over to the camp of Dumoulin, Zyromsky, and the others who do not even think of breaking with the social democracy and national syndicalism. They remain the "left" wing of the enemy camp which defends the bourgeois state and bourgeois property. By breaking with communism Monatte has associated himself with this "left" wing of the class enemy.

That is how things stand in the matter. Woe to the "revolutionist" who is obliged to mask his position with the petty maneuvers of an advocate.