Leon Trotsky: Letter to Gerard Rosenthal

November 21, 1929

[Writings of Leon Trotsky. Vol 13, Supplement 1929-1933, New York 1979, p. 22]

November 21, 1929

Dear Comrade Gerard:

Yesterday I received your letter of November 5 with the electoral statistics. I thank you very warmly. Now I am armed.

The last issue of La Lutte de classes is very interesting. The lead article and the statement on the Sino-Soviet conflict are good, solid articles. The polemic against Louzon is excellent. In the article on the English movement, there is a theoretical mistake. The author says: “The capitalists who sell the wage earners their products take back with the left hand what they offered with the right. Under these conditions profit is impossible. . . .”

It follows from this that profit is not created in production, but in commerce. Even if society were composed of nothing but capitalists and workers, without foreign trade, profit would exist.

Neither could I sign the statement of A. A. (Andre Ariat, in other words Aime Patri) that “the new syndicalist minority tendencies in the CGTU arise from a very healthy spontaneous reaction to the errors of the Communist party.’ whole is neither more nor less healthy than the Brandlerite reaction, which was directed at first against the same errors.

The defects of La Lutte de classes are the same as those of La Vérité: it is outside the workers’ movement, without inside information on what is happening in the party and the CGTU.

It is absolutely necessary to establish a systematic division of labor between La Vérité and La Lutte, assuring the regular appearance and the theoretical character of the latter.

With communist greetings,