Leon Trotsky: Letter to the Administrative Secretariat

May 22, 1932

[Writing of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 4, 1932, New York 1973, p. 99-103, title: “Who Should Attend the International Conference?”]

To the Administrative Secretariat

Dear Comrades:

Some sections are once again raising the question of the international conference. There is no doubt that the convocation of the conference has suffered extraordinary delay in comparison with our original general intentions. The causes for this are of two types: general causes, arising from the conditions of the world labor movement, and specific causes, arising from the conditions of the development of the International Left Opposition itself.

Despite exceptionally favorable objective conditions, communism is experiencing defeats and is retreating all over the world. This fact of necessity also grips the Left Opposition to a certain extent, since the working masses see it only as a part of communism. This process will inevitably reach a critical turning point in the direction of the Left Opposition. But this point has not yet been reached.

Insofar as the Left Opposition itself is concerned, its ranks have from the very beginning been interspersed with elements that are completely alien to our ideas and methods. No one has caused and no one causes the Opposition more damage than characters of the type of Paz, Gorkin, Landau, etc. Unfortunately they have not yet been altogether eliminated from our ranks. Cleansing our ranks of them is itself an indispensable prerequisite for the possibility of convoking an international conference

We must clearly take into account in advance what can be demanded of the international conference and what it is capable of offering to us. The dead or half-dead groups and individually demoralized elements of the Landau type conceive of the international conference as an arena in which they will be able to preoccupy themselves with personal combinations and intrigues, in general, and to imitate a sort of political activity. It would be suicidal stupidity to offer them such a possibility.

Nevertheless, there are honest followers of the Left Opposition who dream of such an international conference, to which access will be gained without exception by all the groups who believe or declare that they stand on the ground of the Left Opposition's ideas. We must offer determined resistance to this erroneous conception.

Only political infants can believe that the international conference by itself can create anything new in principle or, conversely, that it can undo what has been done. In reality, the conference will only be able to register and to confirm what has been already actually tested and gained by experience. Therein and only therein lies the significance of the conference. To demand more than this means to sow organizational fetishism.

No serious section, no serious revolutionary, will agree to a conference constructed according to the model of Noah's ark, for that would mean to throw the development of the Opposition back by at least two years. The political character of the various organizations and individual persons is recognized and tested not at conferences, but in daily work, in the course of months and years. The conference will not offer anything to those for whom the past of the Landau group, the Austrian Mahnruf group, the Greek Spartakos group, the Parisian Rosmer group, etc., is unknown. And those groups which have broken with the above-mentioned on the basis of lengthy and dearly paid for experience will naturally not agree to a common conference with them.

We need a conference of genuine co-thinkers, that is, a conference of such sections whose solidarity on all the basic questions has been tested by the experiences of common struggle. A conference must take as its point of departure the delineation and cleansing of the ranks of the Left Opposition which have already been achieved, and not begin the whole story all over again.

Someone might object: But there are groups which did not participate in the preceding ideological struggles, which did not follow them and have formed no opinion on them — what about them? Quite correct Such groups do exist And it is in most cases precisely they who nurture the thought of calling a "universal" conference which is to analyze and bring everything into order. To such groups we can give only one piece of advice: study the old questions of dispute already decided in the Left Opposition, on the basis of the documents, and form your collective opinions on the question. There is no other way. The international conference will, as a matter of fact, have meaning only when the delegates express not just their personal opinions but represent the opinions of their organizations. However if these questions of dispute are not discussed within the International Left Opposition, what significance can the accidental vote of a delegate at a conference have?

Every organization and group that wants to belong to the International Opposition is not only duty-bound to follow the internal struggle in the other sections, but also to make a choice openly between the most important sections of the International Left Opposition and those groups which have been forced to break with the Bolshevik-Leninists or which have been eliminated from their midst.

The Austrian Opposition (Frey group) left the ranks of the International Opposition about a year and a half ago under the pretext of the incorrect organizational methods of the International Left In reality, the Frey group would not tolerate critical attitudes towards its own often erroneous methods. After a rather prolonged existence outside of the International Opposition, the Frey group has applied to the Secretariat for readmission. Does this mean that the Austrian Opposition has renounced its erroneous methods? Let's hope that this is so. In any case, we have no right to refuse the attempt of renewed collaboration with the Austrian Opposition, with the earnest intention of achieving complete unity.

In an analogous manner we must proceed with regard to all of the other groups, which, although they declare their solidarity with the Left Opposition, in practice very light-mindedly come into conflict with its principles and methods and basically do not give sufficient weight to their adherence to our international organization. It is a hundred times better to leave such a group to itself for the time being than to permit it to exercise its influence over the decisions of the Left Opposition and to obstruct its development For a group which rises and develops to the stage of solidarity with our faction we always leave the door open.

In France the struggle was carried on around three questions: (a) one or two parties (the second party very often appeared under the pseudonym of an "independent" faction); (b) the relation between the party and the trade unions; (c) the relationship between the national sections and the international organization. On the basis of these questions and by no means out of personal motives, the split with the Rosmer-Naville group took place. Naville himself has, to be sure, preferred to remain inside the League, but that does not at all change the character of his group as one alien in principle to the Left Opposition.

In the Belgian section the internal struggle revolved around the questions of the relationship to the party, the Comintern, the Soviet Union on the one hand and the mass organizations on the other. Remaining for a long time without international support, the workers' organization of Charleroi showed remarkable endurance and energy in its struggle against the Overstraeten group, which compromised the cause of the Left Opposition. Will anyone propose to turn back to Overstraeten? Nevertheless the Naville-Rosmer tendency only represents in slightly adulterated form the ideas and methods of Overstraeten.

The Landau group consists of the degenerated refuse of the factional struggle, without any principled ground under its feet In Austria the Mahnruf group changed in principle its various platforms several times. The Berlin Landau group is in a bloc with the semi-syndicalist Rosmer group in Paris although it itself has nothing to do with syndicalism whatsoever. To those within the ranks of the Left Opposition who are not familiar with the history of the Landau-Mahnruf group, the leadership of each national section must at least furnish the most important documents on this question. Every serious worker will understand without any difficulty that we can have nothing in common with such elements as Landau and Co.

According to all information we have on hand, the Greek Spartakos group belongs in the same category as the Landau group. The development of the Opposition in Greece is carried on by the faction of the Archio-Marxists.

The Italian Prometeo group was and still is an alien body inside the Left Opposition. The Prometeo group is bound by its own internal discipline with regard to the International Left and does not permit the propagation within its ranks of our fundamental views. In the period of the struggle of the Left Opposition with the right-center bloc, when the main question of the struggle was that of the independence of the party in the policy of communism (Kuomintang, Anglo-Russian Committee, worker-peasant parties, etc.), there was much that brought the Bordigists close to us; ultralefts very often prove to be on the side of Marxism in the struggle against the reformists. In the period when bureaucratic centrism began its ultraleft zigzag, the Bordigists actually proved to be far closer to the Stalinists than to us. In the bulletin of the New Italian Opposition, in the organ of the French section La Lutte des Classes (the article of Comrade Souze), in the International Bulletin, and finally in the publications of the Bordigists themselves there are enough documents and articles to prove conclusively and completely that the Bordigists have forgotten nothing and learned nothing and that according to their basic views they do not belong to the International Left Opposition. Their participation at the international conference would only mean the reopening of endless debates on the themes of whether we should or should not apply the united-front policy to the Social Democracy and on political questions in general: whether in fascist Italy, not to speak of China and India, we should or should not mobilize the masses with democratic slogans. Debates on these questions would mean a return for the Opposition to its kindergarten stage and would transform the international conference into a caricature that would only compromise us.

On the basis of what has been presented above I take occasion to submit the following proposals to all sections for a vote:

1. The International Left Opposition stands on the ground of the first four congresses of the Comintern. It considers especially and particularly that the policy of the united front is unconditionally correct as it was formulated by the Third and Fourth Congresses of the Comintern and categorically rejects the basically false views of the Prometeo group on this question as well as on the question of the struggle for democratic slogans under definite historical conditions.

2. Only those sections can participate in the international conference which have participated in the life and work of the International Left Opposition not less than one year and whose solidarity with the Opposition has been tested by common work.

3. On all questions that concern the preparation of the international conference, decisions not only by the leadership (central committee), but without exception by all members of the organization are necessary. To this end the most important documents must be translated in time into the national languages and be discussed by all units of every national section. The figures in the votes must be brought to the attention of the International Secretariat in time.

Consequently there can be no question of participation at the conference of competitive or expelled groups side by side with the regular sections.

G. Gourov [L. Trotsky]