Leon Trotsky: Our Response to the French CP’s New Turn

June 16, 1934

[Writing of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 14, New York 1979, p. 485 f.]

A new abrupt turn by the Stalinists in the policy of the united front seems to be an accomplished fact. There can be no question of a new theoretical orientation. The immediate cause of the turn is their panic before the disintegration of the CP of France. An eventual coming together of Saint-Denis and the Communist League, this is what frightens the Stalinists and with good reason.

They reply to the danger by a maneuver, which in its external features corresponds to the confused but intense desires of the working masses.

Some hundreds, perhaps some thousands, of class-conscious workers will have verified the adventurism and lack of principles of the Stalinists and the correctness of our policy. But scores and hundreds of thousands will only grasp the main fact that the CP is for common action.

Not to appreciate the importance of this fact would be a serious mistake. Saint-Denis can this day lose the ground from under its feet, given the fact that its whole program reduces itself to unity in action.

We shall have to observe a skillful plot of two bureaucracies whose “unity of action” will consist of mutual assurances of each other’s privileges, by means of common struggle against the real necessities of revolutionary class action.

That is why the center of gravity must be shifted from the abstract formula of the united front to the real content of the struggle. This is the tendency of the two documents: the article of Comrade Feroci (I omit the question of the socialist government, which has been dealt with by me elsewhere) and the directives concerning the militia. This poses the question of the struggle very practically.

If the [French] program of action is already drawn up, above all if the practical tasks of the struggle are made evident, this program can and must become the important instrument for thwarting the plot of the two bureaucracies. But this instrument cannot work by itself. It is necessary to have bases, connections, channels of influence. In the event of the creation of a mutual benefit society by Cachin and Blum, the Committees of Vigilance will be swept away at one stroke, and this will be precisely the first aim of the mutual benefit society. In order not to be ousted from the movement, the League must be present not only outside the mutual benefit society but also and above all within its very cadres.

Practically, today this means within the Socialist Party. Now what is the League’s activity within the bosom of the Socialist Party? It appears that it is at a minimum, which can mean that the policy carried out in that respect was false. Assiduous and systematic work inside, the creation of a fraction of sympathizers, a reasonable adaptation to the milieu, regrouping, education seem to have been replaced by some articles in La Vérité and by rather vague talk about joint actions.

There is no other path if we are not to remain isolated. The most correct ideas, if one does not know how to apply them, adapt them, and make them enter people’s minds, must remain false and sterile. It is necessary to have a new orientation toward the Socialist Party. It is necessary to penetrate it, to give it ten times the forces that has been done till now. This is the only possibility for gaining influence in the CP and even in Saint-Denis.