Leon Trotsky: Letter to the Executive Committee of the Communist League

December 22, 1930

[Writing of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 3, 1930-1931, New York 1973, p. 114-117, title: “National Conferences and Internationalism”]

To the Executive Committee of the Communist League [of France]

Copy to the Administrative Secretariat

Dear Comrades:

In a private letter of December 15, which I have received today, December 22, Comrade Naville informs me that the national conference of the League has been set for the middle of January. In other words, provisions have been made to deprive all sections of the possibility of expressing themselves in regard to disputed questions, upon the solution of which the future existence of our international organization depends.

The circular of the Administrative Secretariat concerning the European conference reads (in International Bulletin number 2):

"The conference of our German section, which is taking place at this moment, will undoubtedly contribute very important material toward the evaluation of the political situation and the tasks of the Opposition. The preparation of the conference of the French League will take place in the same sense."

The deplorable example of the German conference shows where the subordination of international and revolutionary tasks in general to second-rank organizational questions leads. To fix the date of the conference of the League for the middle of January would mean virtually the liquidation of the international organization of the Bolshevik-Leninists. Because for a Marxist, internationalism consists first of all of the active participation of every section in the life of the other sections. Only under these conditions is there any sense in calling an international conference later on.

In the same letter Comrade Naville informs me of his solidarity with my communication to Comrade Gourget concerning the trade-union question. I would be only too happy were the actual facts to permit me to attach the necessary political weight to this declaration. The line of La Vérité on the trade-union question during the last few months has taken a directly opposite direction, for which neither the Russian nor, I believe, the International Opposition can bear responsibility. In my opinion, the national conference must evaluate this line and reject it, in order to open up the possibility for a correct policy on the trade-union question.

Comrade Naville believes, to conclude from his letter, that the trade-union differences are the only ones. I cannot concur in this, unfortunately. It is true that at the present moment the trade-union question is posed most sharply. But experiences of an entire year force me to the conclusion that there has not been a single important question on which there have not been serious and sharp differences between the editorial board of the Russian Biulleten and the group (or sub-faction) of Comrade Naville.

On the question of our relations with the party and the working class, the group of Comrade Naville has represented and carried out in practice a completely false line. This is proved not only by a series of articles by Comrades Naville and Gerard in La Vérité. The question of the demonstrations in the days of the "third period," the question of solidarisation with the victims of the "frame-up" [of CP leaders by the police], the question of the Indochinese demonstration, the question of L'Humanité, and a series of others have formed for some time the subject of internal differences of opinion, in which I have always had to verify the fact that the Naville group adopted a wrong position on all these questions because it based itself on a wrong point of departure.

The objection may be raised that all this concerns the past. I myself would like to think so. Unfortunately, however, the policy of the Naville group in regard to the tactical "turn" in the party proves that the same old differences still exist under the cloak of a more careful phraseology. The mistake in this connection is all the greater since many comrades in the League have taken a position that is (in essence) quite correct, but for which they were subjected to a ruthless attack by the editors of La Vérité. When we review the whole past period in its entirety, we can only come to the conclusion that the group or the sub faction of Comrade Naville — of course against its will — has helped the party bureaucracy to extricate itself from the convulsions of the "turn" almost unpunished. Can we leave this important political experience without a national and international evaluation? I don't believe we can.

No less important is the question of the relation between the national and international organizations. Here too the differences arose almost on the day the group of Comrade Naville joined the Left Opposition. The struggle, which was carried on mainly in private letters and conversations, has lasted nearly one and a half years. The group of Comrade Naville estimates the role of the international organization for Bolshevik-Leninists altogether wrongly, a fact that has already brought us great damage during the last year. The tendency to carry through the League conference without the participation of the international organization is in itself a sufficiently graphic expression of the basic error of the group of Comrade Naville on the question of internationalism.

The leading comrades of the League are already familiar with the systematic and persistent divergences between the group of Comrade Naville and the editors of the Russian Biulleten. The serious correspondence over the disputed questions could fill a book. To these same questions I devoted my circular number 1, of June 21, 1930. For completely obvious reasons I avoided giving names and in general setting the dot on the i, as long as I still nurtured the hope that a mutual agreement could be reached privately; unfortunately my efforts brought no results. The experiences of the last few months have shown that the differences of opinion are just as great at present as they were a year and a half ago.

In politics there is nothing more dangerous than an apparent, external solidarity that covers up differences in fundamental tendencies. Under such conditions the struggle around ideas is inevitably replaced by personal conflicts and quarrels that poison the whole atmosphere.

I therefore subscribe to Comrade Naville's opinion that the question of further collaboration and the basis for it can only be solved by means of an open, principled discussion. But contrary to Comrade Naville I believe that this discussion must take on an international character. It is understood that the League, like every other section, is autonomous in its decisions. However, before it reaches these decisions, on which its unity and its place in the International Left Opposition depend, the League must also give the other sections an opportunity to express themselves, in order not to confront them with an accomplished fact. For this purpose it is indispensable that a period of at least four weeks be set aside between the publication of the draft theses and the call for a conference. At any rate, I appeal to you most urgently in the name of the Russian section to that effect, since I see in this way the only possibility to assure an actually international collaboration in the future.

I do not doubt that the crisis in the League, which has become a crisis of our international organization, can be solved without convulsions and splits. For this purpose two conditions are necessary: political clarity and goodwill on both sides.

With communist greetings,

L. Trotsky