TROTSKYISM VERSUS REVISIONISM A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY VOLUME TWO The split in the Fourth International NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS TROTSKYISM VERSUS REVISIONISM A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY edited by C. Slaughter VOLUME TWO The split in the Fourth International NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS Published by New Park Publications Ltd., 186a Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UG 1974 Set up, Printed and Bound by Trade Union Labour Distributed in the United States by: Labor Publications Inc., 135 West 14 Street, New York, New York 10011 ISBN 0 902030 55 8 Printed in Great Britain by Plough Press Ltd.(TU) r/o 180 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UG Contents FOREWORD CHAPTER ONE: THE METHOD OF ERNEST MANDEL Document 1 a Letter from Ernest Mandel to George Breitman, November 15, 1953 1 b Letter from George Breitman to Ernest Mandel, December 3, 1953 1 c Letter from Ernest Mandel to George Breitman, December 9, 1953 1 d Letter from George Breitman to Ernest Mandel, January 15, 1954 Document 2a Letter from James P. Cannon to Farrell Dobos, December 7, 1953 2b Letter from James P. Cannon to George Breitman, January 12, 1954 2c Letter from James P. Cannon to George Breitman, March 1, 1954 CHAPTER TWO: THE STRUGGLE IN THE BRITISH SECTION Document 3a Letter from G. Healy to the British section, December 15, 1953 3b Letter from G. Healy to the British section, December 28, 1953 3c Letter from G. Healy to members of the International Committee, January 1,1954 3d Letter from G. Healy to L Goonewardene, April 21,1954 CHAPTER THREE: ROOTS OF THE CEYLON BETRAYAL Document 4a Letter from L. Goonewardene to James P. Cannon, January 26, 1954 86 4b Letter from James P. Cannon to L. Goonewardene, February 23,1954 89 CHAPTER FOUR: THE SWP BLOCKS DISCUSSION Documents Pablo Answers' the Open Letter by Joseph Hansen 116 Document 6a Letter from James P. Cannon to Farrell Dobbs, April 13, 1954 122 6b Letter from James P. Cannon to Farrell Dobbs April 24, 1954 126 6c Letter from James P. Cannon to Farrell Dobbs, April 28, 1954 129 6d Letter from Farrell Dobbs to James P. Cannon, May 8, 1954 134 6e Letter from James P. Cannon to Farrell Dobbs, May 12, 1954 141 Document 7 Resolutions adopted by the International Committee on May 11, 1954 145 Document 8a LetterfromJamesP.CannontoL.Goonewardene,May 12, 1954 150 8b Letter from James P. Cannon to Farrell Dobbs, June 3, 1954 155 8c Letter from G. Healy and Sam Gordon to Farrell Dobbs, July 8, 1954 157 8d Letter from Farrell Dobbs to James P. Cannon, July 14, 1954 160 Be Letter from James P. Cannon to Farrell Dobbs, July 16, 1954 163 Document 9a Letter from Farrell Dobbs to G. Healy, December 8,1954 166 9b Letter from S.T.Peng to Farrell Dobbs, September 8,1955 170 9c Letterfrom Farrell DobbstoS.T.Peng, September29,1955 174 CHAPTER FIVE: PABLOISM REVIEWED Document 10 Pabloism Reviewed by S.T.Peng, January 1955 178 APPENDIX: THE LSSP AND THE INTERNATIONAL SECRETARIAT Document 11a IS reply to the Central Committee of the LSSP, March 23, 1954 206 11b LSSP repeats request for postponement of the World Congress, April 12, 1954 209 11c LSSP proposals for reunification, April 12,1954 210 11d Appeal of the IEC, April 15, 1954 211 11e Letterfrom John Lawrence to Michel Pablo, April 26,1954 214 11 f Letter from Colvin R. de Silva and L. Goonewardene to the IS, April 13, 1954 215 GLOSSARY OF NAMES 216 INDEX 220 Note on sources The documents published in these volumes have been collected from the journals, internal bulletins and correspondence of the Trotskyist movement over the period since 1951. The series is designed to provide the basic documentation of the fight within the Fourth Inter­ national during that time. Editing of the text has been kept to a minimum: footnotes and bracketed explanatory notes have been added only for essential reference. In all other respects the documents have been reproduced as they appeared in the sources indicated below. Each volume has a foreword introducing the reader to the main developments covered in it, with a glossary of names and an index provided as additional guides to the documents. The sources for the documents in this volume are as follows: Documents 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11 all originally appeared in International Bulletins of the International Committee and Internal Discussion Bulletins of the Socialist Workers Party. Document S is printed here as reproduced in Fourth International, Vol.2, No. 1, Summer 1965. Document 10 appeared in pamphlet form in January 1955 Foreword 'The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of revolutionary leadership' (Transitional Programme, 1938). These words express the conclusions of Trotsky and the founders of the Fourth International from the international class struggles of the period 1914-1938, struggles of a scope and depth far surpassing any in history. The First World War exposed to Marxists the essence of the questions facing the working class: Social Democracy in every major capitalist country took the side of its 'own' bourgeoisie. Only the Bolsheviks, taking the unswerving principled line, 'turn the imperialist war into civil war', prepared the party which was able to lead the October revolution and found the Third (Communist) Inter­ national. The defeat of the German revolution at the hands of the social democrats between 1918 and 1923 was the political basis of the reactionary turn made by Stalin in the period following. The strengthening of the bureaucracy in Russia, its interests represented by Stalin's invention of the 'theory' of 'socialism in one country', enabled it to take control of the Communist International — with disastrous results for the British General Strike of 1926 and the Chinese Revolution in 1927. Stalin's defeat of the Left Opposition — by bureaucratic police methods and the expulsion of Trotsky — was followed by the violent lurch to the left of the famous 'Third Period'. Faced by immediate threats to the Soviet economy the Stalinists, reactionary in politics, nonetheless sensed that the Soviet economy was their own base. They set about defending it in the international labour movement in their 'own way' — by branding the Social Democrats as 'social fascists'. vn VIII THE SPLIT IN THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL The first and disastrous result of this 'left turn' was the accession to power of Hitler in January 1933, the direct consequence of the rejec­ tion by the Stalinists of the tactic of the united front to defeat fascism. Now Trotsky and his comrades understood that a qualitative change had occurred. It was no longer possible to reform the Bolshevik Party and the Communist International. The power of the bureaucracy in the USSR would have to be broken by political revolution. The Third International had gone over definitively to the side of counter­ revolution, as the Spanish experience would soon confirm. Now the Fourth International must be founded. By 1938 the founding confer­ ence was convened. The delegates understood their responsibility: 'The building of national revolutionary parties as sections of the Fourth International is the central task of the transitional epoch'. The documents published in these volumes are the record of the struggle which developed some fifteen years later to defend this principled position against the revisionist attempt to destroy it and to liquidate the Fourth International. The leading representative of this revisionism was Michel Pablo, at that time secretary of the International Secretariat (IS) of the Fourth International. By December 1953 the International Committee (IC), comprising those sections determined to defend the Transitional Programme and the building of revolutionary parties, had been estab­ lished. Its basic positions were expressed in the 'Open Letter to Trotskyists throughout the world' published by the American Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in December 1953 (see Volume One). Today the SWP harks back to 1953 only for its own opportunist reasons. Because of reactionary legislation (the Voorhis Act) in the USA, the SWP is not permitted to affiliate officially to an interna­ tional organization, but it has played a central role in the political development of the Fourth International. Since 1963 the SWP has been instrumental in maintaining the same revisionists whom it opposed ten years earlier. The Pabloites formed their 'United Sec­ retariat' in that year, with the support of the SWP (this development is fully documented in the subsequent volumes in this series). Then, the International Committee pointed out forcefully to the SWP leaders that they were abandoning the principled position of 1953. Above all, they suppressed discussion of the questions which produced the 1953 split in the International. According to them, such discussion would stand in the way of the desirable unity. Together with the Pabloite FOREWORD IX leaders they had come round to the viewpoint that forces such as the peasant movement led by Castro had 'objectively' removed the histor­ ical necessity for building independent revolutionary parties of the Fourth International. Because the SWP leaders had refused to deepen the struggle against Pablo's revisionism in 1953, and take up a fight for the Marxist method, they now gave way to the same forces. Whereas Pablo had maintained that the Stalinist Parties and the Soviet bureaucracy would take on a revolutionary role, the SWP now capitulated in the same way to the petty bourgeois nationalists in the colonial countries and their middle class friends in the United States. American pragmatism thus triumphed in the SWP, confirming Trotsky's warning in 1939-40 about the dangers of failing to fight consciously for dialectical materialism in that party. It is here that the roots of the SWP's degeneration lie, as a study of the documents in this volume confirms.