Supplementary Arguments and Suggestions for Articles

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

If the Communist Party were to open its doors to our comrades today, would the irreconcilable comrades agree to enter? Yes or no? It would do them too great an injustice to presume that they would refuse to join. From this it follows that some of our comrades see a fundamental difference between the Communist Party and the Socialist Party. They disregard our analysis, which has demonstrated that we are faced with two kinds of centrism: one evolving to the left and another stagnating or even orienting toward the right.

It is precisely at the present moment that events are furnishing a striking confirmation of this analysis. Abandoning criticism altogether, the Stalinist leadership declares that its objective is organic unity. By that in itself they prove that there is no fundamental difference between the CP and the SP. The comrades who are prepared to join the CP but threaten to split if we should join the SP reveal not only that they are still prisoners of their own past and of traditional terminology, but also that they do not recognize the real evolution of the two parties and their current condition.

All members of the League would be prepared to join with the Saint-Denis organization in principle. On the other hand, those comrades who have dealt with that organization are unanimous in recognizing the extremely low level of ideological development of its membership. Doriot shows by his actions that he is no closer to Marxism than Marceau Pivert or even Zyromsky.Only the Saint-Denis organization is much more conservative and even more permeated with paralyzing prejudices than, for example, the Socialist Party in the Paris area. What arguments can be made for the platonic defense of defrocked Stalinists like Doriot, on the one hand, and on the other this aversion to a Socialist organization that is rapidly developing in a revolutionary direction?

Some comrades are threatening us with a split. What will they do then? It is still not possible to enter the CP without repudiating our program, and the correctness of that program is at present clearer than ever. But by refusing to enter the SP in principle, the irreconcilables, the intransigents, will have to repudiate their principles in order in the last analysis to fuse with the Socialists all the same. Where is the logic of that?

Each new day brings fresh confirmation that the politics of the so-called united front, with its fanfare, its publicity, and its hollowness, serves no purpose except to conceal from the working class the real dangers, the real tasks at hand, and the real means for accomplishing them. It is more necessary than ever to pose the concrete questions of the struggle and its tactics.

It is necessary to ask the Socialists and Stalinists whether they continue to hope that Doumergue, Sarraut and Tardieu will disarm the fascists and disperse their gangs. Yes or no? And if they do not cling to that idiotic hope, what do they plan to use against the fascists, who are certain to make speedy progress over the summer? The question of the workers’ militia must be posed in the sharpest, most aggressive, most precise way. It is necessary to put out leaflets with plans for organizing the workers’ militia. It is necessary to publish H.’s article on the July 8 demonstration in La Vérité and to initiate an important new column in the paper to deal with these questions. At the same time, in every issue, it is necessary to make use of short excerpts from our program of action as political slogans.

Every section [of the International] must be kept fully informed about all the discussions that are taking place in the French League. The comrades who say that entry into the SP is part of an international policy that signals the liquidation of our international organization are badly mistaken. Joining the SP — like the ILP in Britain — is determined by a particular national situation. It is not a principle but an opportunity. However, if we let it pass, we take the risk of making our principles meaningless for years and years to come. There is not and could not be any mechanical precept that would oblige all the national sections to enter the SP. It would be completely absurd to want to impose that kind of “policy.” Nevertheless, more or less analogous situations could develop in other countries, and all the sections must have the opportunity to follow step by step the evolution of the discussion in the French League.