Issuing body: James P. Cannon, National Secretary, Socialist Workers Party (USA)
Reply from J. P. Cannon to Daniel Renard
Dear Comrade Renard,
I received your letter of 16 February. I gave copies of it to the members of our National Committee and, in drafting this reply, I had the advantage of discussing it with them. If I have waited this long to reply, it is only because I am always cautious about intervening in the affairs of another party without knowing all the pertinent facts and the persons concerned. I say this to assure you that I did not intend any disrespect by delaying my reply to your letter.
Quite the contrary. My purpose was to give your communication the serious and considered reply it deserved.
In the meantime, the Tenth Plenum of the IEC was held, and its fundamental document on "the tactical application of the line of the Third World Congress," as well as its organizational resolution on the French situation, have been received here. We have also received a copy of the "Declaration of the Majority of the PB on the Agreements Concluded at the IEC." These documents — the decisions of the Tenth Plenum and the declaration of the majority of your Political Bureau — seem to me to have brought the discussion to a new stage and to have clarified it further.
I have used the time that has elapsed since receiving your letter to study carefully all the documents relating to the discussion, including those mentioned above. Naturally, being so far away, I cannot feel qualified to judge the numerous secondary questions and personal antagonisms that inevitably arise in a discussion as bitter as the one your party is experiencing. However, the general picture from the political point of view now seems clear enough to me to allow me to offer you and other French comrades a frank opinion in the following terms.
I believe that the Third World Congress made a correct analysis of the new postwar situation in the world and of the unforeseen turns that this situation has taken. Proceeding from this analysis, the congress drew correct conclusions for the orientation of the national Trotskyist parties toward the living mass movement as it has developed since the war. Furthermore, the Tenth Plenum, in its fundamental document on the tactical application of the line of the Third World Congress, faithfully interpreted, amplified, and made concrete the line of the Third World Congress with regard to its tactical application under the different conditions in different countries.
I note your statement that the majority is not "hostile" to "the idea of entry into the CP" as "the eventuality for which we must prepare." This would seem to place the majority in fundamental agreement with the line of the IEC and to clear the way for jointly establishing a program of practical actions leading to an end on which there is agreement. The differences seem to be reduced to questions of timing and pace. I would like, however, to remind you that in a fluid situation, timing and pace can be decisive for the success or failure of an action. In such a situation, if there is agreement in principle on the objective, my personal preference is for decisiveness and speed.
I disagree in part with your formulation on the question of entry as being "above all a question of fractional work which cannot change the work of the independent party and above all cannot change the independent character of the Trotskyist program in relation to Stalinism." Two different questions, which must be kept separate, are combined in this formula.
Of course, neither entry nor any other conceivable policy or tactic can "in any way change the independent character of the Trotskyist program in relation to Stalinism." But "the work of the independent party" in France, in the present historical conjuncture, can and must be radically changed, and without unnecessary delay, for there is not much time left to seize the opportunity now offered. We must enter the Stalinist workers' movement while there is still time and with the means and methods that the situation permits, and not with those we might prefer or on which we would like to insist arbitrarily.
A policy of maintaining the French party as an essentially independent party, with fractional work in organizations controlled by the Stalinists as complementary and secondary, would run entirely counter to the needs of the situation. The situation in France now imperatively demands a policy of entry (of a particular type) into the Stalinist movement. The independent press and party must serve to stimulate and guide the entrist movement, not to substitute for it or contradict it. It is true, as every Trotskyist knows, that the independence of the revolutionary vanguard party is a principle. Its creation is an invariable objective of the revolutionary vanguard, always and everywhere and under all conditions. But the function of the party is not to exist for itself; it is to lead the workers in the revolution. In order to make new progress in building a revolutionary party capable of leading the revolutionary masses, it is now necessary to make in France a broad and prolonged detour through the workers' movement controlled by the Stalinists, and even eventually through a section of the Stalinist party itself.
The goal — that is, making the Trotskyist party a mass party — remains constant and unchanging, but the path toward it in France is by no means a straight line. If our French comrades were to persist and formally insist on the functioning of the independent party as the primary and essential task in the given situation, the living mass movement, with its unlimited revolutionary potential, would certainly pass it by and leave us with a form without substance.
The breakup of the trade-union coalition around the newspaper l'Unité was a progressive development for our party. Those reformist trade unionists who specialize in "anti-Stalinism" in order to cover and justify their pro-imperialist policy are an international breed, and we know them well. They are not suitable allies for Trotskyists in the United States, in France, or anywhere else. The logic of their Stalinophobia drives them inexorably to the right, and no tactical diplomacy on our part can stop this process. On the other hand, the Stalinist workers of France, by the logic of the irreversible international march of events, must be pushed more and more toward a radical course. It is a matter of life and death for our comrades to establish links with them and to form an alliance with them against imperialism. The breakup of the Unité coalition, provoked by the right wing, should be taken as a fortunate and highly favorable springboard toward this new and more fruitful arena.
As for the anarchist windbags — in the United States, in France, or anywhere else — idle chatter and coalitions with them with a view to waging the class struggle against the imperialist bourgeoisie would make a mockery of matters that must be taken seriously. That would not be a revolutionary policy but a substitute for one.
Your letter, Comrade Renard, together with the declaration of the majority of your Political Bureau on the Tenth Plenum, explains that the political essence of your position in the conflict is opposition to "Pabloism." You define it as a revisionist tendency, aiming at a "pure and simple integration into Stalinism" and thus at capitulation to it. This question, as you may know, has a history within the Socialist Workers Party, and consequently is familiar to us. As early as 1950, when the new tactical turn was first indicated, the Johnsonites tried to terrify the party with the bogeyman of "Pabloism." They sought to stage a struggle of "Cannonism against Pabloism" within the international Trotskyist movement. Since we had from the outset been entirely in favor of the new tactical turn, we saw no basis for such an opposition of tendencies, and we said so when the question was first raised by the Johnsonites — and there is no doubt that our answer hastened their departure from our ranks.
For our part, we have been orthodox Trotskyists since 1928 and consequently uncompromising enemies of Stalinism and of any conciliation toward it, not to speak of capitulation.
I do not think I exaggerate in saying that if any pro-Stalinist tendency were to appear in our international movement, we would be the first to note it and to say: "This is a foreign tendency with which no compromise can be made." We see no such tendency in the international leadership of the Fourth International, nor any sign or symptom of such a tendency.
We judge the policy of the international leadership by the line it elaborates in its official documents — in the recent period, by the documents of the Third World Congress and the Tenth Plenum. We see no revisionism in them. All we see is a clarification of the postwar evolution of Stalinism and the broad outlines of a new tactic for combating it more effectively. We consider these documents to be entirely Trotskyist. They differ from earlier documents of our movement neither in principles nor in methods, but only in their confrontation and analysis of the new reality and the tactical adjustment to it.
It is the unanimous opinion of the leading cadres of the SWP that the authors of these documents have rendered a great service to the movement, a service for which they deserve to be appreciated and supported fraternally, and not to be suspected and disparaged.
I am certain that the international movement will neither approve nor support a factional struggle based on suspicion of future intentions that cannot be demonstrated or even deduced from the present proposals and positions formulated in the documents. No one can learn anything from such struggles, and the party will emerge from them the loser. If you, majority comrades, were to insist on a struggle against a "revisionism" that is not evident to others, you could only disorient a number of worker comrades in the party's ranks, isolate them from the rest of the international movement's cadres, and lead them into a dead end. Unfortunately, this has been done often enough in the past history of the French party by impulsive leaders who did not reflect on their own course or take into account the opinions of international comrades who sought to help them with friendly advice. I sincerely hope that this will not happen again this time.
It would be much better, in my opinion, to set aside suspicions — or at least not to make them the axis of the discussion — and to seek agreement with the SI on practical steps toward penetration of the Stalinist workers' movement, leaving the different views on perspectives to be tested by experience. Political tendencies that are not clearly revealed cannot be fruitfully discussed. If in fact there is either some illusion about Stalinism on the one hand, or a fetishism about formal independence on the other, the test of experience will bring such errors to maturity and clarify them, making it possible to deal with them politically. Conversely, if there is no serious latent divergence in the conflict, experience will eliminate any basis for suspicion from every point of view.
An entry into the Stalinist workers' movement, and eventually into the Stalinist party itself, given its rigid bureaucratic structure, is an extremely difficult and dangerous undertaking under the best of circumstances. It will be all the more difficult if there is no unity in the party leadership. The situation would be made far worse if the French party were to be punished with yet another needless split. This possibility cannot be ignored.
Do not deceive yourselves, Comrade Renard. There is a great danger of a split, even if both sides have renounced any intention of one. A split is implicit in the situation as it has developed in the recent period. In my opinion, the best way — perhaps the only way — to avoid such a calamity would be to shift the discussion for the time being toward a concrete program of successive measures, worked out jointly by the party leadership and the SI, in order to carry out the entry so imperatively dictated into the Stalinist workers' movement and eventually into a section of the Stalinist party itself.
Along this path — if our judgment is correct — the French party would soon be in a position to extend its influence and prepare itself for the great role that history has assigned it in the war and revolution to come. You may certainly count on the sympathy and support of the international comrades in this great undertaking. Fraternally.
29 May 1952
James P. Cannon