The Impermissible Conduct of Comrade Nin

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Dear Comrades:

The recent letters and documents coming from the Central Committee of the Spanish section, led by Comrade Nin, provoke a feeling that can only be termed indignation. Most astonishing is the tone of these letters. They are strewn with the most caustic charges and offensive expressions, employed without a shadow of reason. In many cases they are simply insults. This tone alone testifies to how remote Nin and his close friends are from the spirit of revolutionary comradeship and a feeling of elementary personal responsibility. Only people devoid of any inner discipline could write this way, especially with respect to the organization — which in their deepest convictions they judge to be foreign and hostile.

The "charges" advanced by the Nin group have been disproved many times over. A representative of this group was at the preconference where he had the chance to present all his claims and accusations. What was the result? The politics of Nin and his friends were condemned by all the sections of the International Left Opposition without exception. One might have thought that this fact alone should have made Nin and his friends at least a little more prudent. Instead, they doubled and tripled the insults they directed from their center against the whole International Left Opposition.

For the moment, I want to touch on only one point: the Nin group dares to accuse the International Opposition of having — it seems, unjustly — expelled Rosmer, Landau, and the others from its ranks. However, the documents and the facts testify that it is precisely the contrary: Rosmer wanted to bring about the expulsion from the League of some comrades who were undesirable to him, and he remained in the League as a small minority; after that, he quit the League. Personally, I found myself with respect to that incident in constant correspondence with Nin. I shared with him all the measures I was taking to keep Rosmer from taking an obviously wrong step, resulting not from revolutionary considerations, but from personal whim. Nin, despite his friendship for Rosmer, wrote to me that "common sense is not on Rosmer's side." To my repeated questions, written to know if it was impossible for Nin still to carry out some supplementary steps to hold Rosmer back from an erroneous course, Nin proposed absolutely nothing, recognizing thereby that all possible measures had been exhausted.

So also with respect to Landau. No one, as is known, proposed to expel him. He was only asked to take part in the democratically called conference of the German section. … I submitted a resolution that was extremely conciliatory in its content and tone, to which Nin adhered in writing "entirely and unreservedly." We know that afterwards Landau "expelled" the majority of the Central Committee of the German section, and refused to participate in the conference, where he was to remain in a hopeless minority.

As a member of the International Bureau at that time, Nin participated in our entire policy and bears complete responsibility for it. Now, without providing facts or documents, he shifts the responsibility for Landau and Rosmer onto the International Left Opposition, forgetting or keeping silent about his own responsibility. How is such a method of action to be characterized?

Let us allow, for a moment, that Nin later came to conclude that our method of action with regard to Rosmer, Landau, and the others, was incorrect. He should then have said: "WE have made such and such an error; we must correct it in such and such a way." This would have been an absolutely legitimate course of action. All that is necessary is to say clearly how to correct the "errors." The Rosmer and Landau groups have publications and develop viewpoints that differ more and more from our positions on certain essential questions. If the issue of Rosmer and Landau was put forward not as an underhanded maneuver but with a practical aim — to bring the Rosmer-Landau group back into the International Left Opposition — the duty of Comrade Nin would then have consisted of evaluating their viewpoints and drawing the appropriate conclusion: are these positions compatible with the positions of the Bolshevik-Leninists? Are we being asked to make specific concessions, and exactly which ones? Or, on the contrary, must Rosmer and Landau renounce some specific positions and methods in order to rejoin the Left Opposition? To pose the question in such a serious, principled, and at the same time practical manner would have opened the opportunity to discuss and perhaps take this or that other practical step. Nin's present method of proceeding shows he is not concerned with any practical results whatsoever: all he wants is an artificial pretext for insinuations about the International Left Opposition.

What is even sadder is that Comrade Nin needs to act in this disloyal way in order to cover his own political vacillations and a whole series of errors, which have prevented the Spanish Left Opposition from winning the place opened up to it by the conditions of the Spanish revolution. Now, as a result of the radically incorrect policy of Comrade Nin, the Spanish section is growing not stronger but weaker. Unfortunately, discussing political questions with Comrade Nin leads to nothing: he beats about the bush, engages in diplomacy, equivocates, or what is even worse, replies to comrades’ political arguments with personal insinuations.

I ask you to bring this letter to the attention of all the sections, beginning with the Spanish section. I would like this letter to come to the attention of all our friends in South America: they will join all the more closely with our international organization, and they will work in their national arena with all the more success, the more rapidly they are persuaded of the falseness and danger of the politics of Comrade Nin.

Communist greetings,

L. Trotsky

P. S. This letter was already written when my friends showed me the documents of Comrade Nin and others in reply to the letter of Comrades Shachtman and Frank. Since that letter had been written at Prinkipo, Comrade Nin detects an intrigue, a "comedy," etc. … He implies that I am hiding behind the signers of the letter. For what reason? It is not out of fear of Nin and his associates, for I have many times expressed myself, I hope unequivocally, on the "politics" of Nin. My correspondence with him is now accessible to the comrades. I have not the least interest in hiding my opinion that Comrade Nin's activity is pernicious. Why should I hide behind the backs of Shachtman and Frank? Even if the initiative for the letter had come from me, that would not have changed its contents in the least. What counts are the facts and the arguments of the letter, and they are crushing for Nin. Now, the truth of the matter is that the responsibility for initiating and writing the letter lies totally and exclusively with the comrades who signed it. I became acquainted with the text of the letter only when I read it. And what right have Nin and his associates to represent Shachtman and Frank as incapable of having a judgment about these intrigues and of expressing it on their own initiative? If Nin has some doubt about the exact weight of this letter, let him inquire of the American and French sections and their central and local bodies. I am sure he will receive a clear if somewhat discomforting reply.

With his methods of shabby subterfuge, Nin defends his personal insinuations by quoting my comment — hardly a personal one — that politics is expressed through people. He forgets only that people can produce both good and bad politics, and that each politics selects the people suited to it and trains them accordingly.