MIA: History: ETOL: Documents: International Communist League/Spartacists—PRS 5
Letter by Cannon to International Secretariat
15 August 1935
Written: 15 August 1935
Source: Prometheus Research Library, Prometheus Research Series No. 5, New York, 2000
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: John Heckman.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
Dear Comrades:
After too much delay—for which I acknowledge an inexcusable fault—I send you herewith a summary of our party situation. At the present moment the chief interest centers in the internal conflict, since the outcome of this conflict will determine the future course of the party and its capacity to utilize the great opportunities which are opening up before it.
The differences and the groupings were recorded at the June Plenum, although not yet in completed form. The forthcoming September Plenum will define the issues still more clearly in preparation for the discussion which will precede the party convention in December.
The system of ideas and methods worked out by our international movement and the cadres which have been assembled around them are put to a complicated test in our party struggle. This experience ought to be useful not only to us but also to the other sections which have yet to undertake a fusion with centrist elements. At one and the same time we have to fight the sterile sectarians—conservative passivity masked by verbal intransigence—which cannot understand or reconcile itself to the turn from a propaganda circle to political mass work, and a specific form of centrism represented by a part of the former AWP (Muste group) which is still far from understanding the Declaration of Principles which they signed jointly with us. We also have to contend with the unprincipled politics of the group of Weber and Glotzer who profess to agree with us on all the principled questions but always combine in one way or another with those who hold opposite opinions in order to fight what they call our “organizational methods.” Up until now these three groups have not been able to formulate a common resolution on a single political question, but in practice they work as a bloc against us on all the organizational questions.
The different positions have been put before the membership for discussion. In the New York District, which comprises one-third of the party membership, there has been a thoroughgoing discussion which culminated in the District Convention last weekend. Our tendency (Cannon-Shachtman resolutions) received a clear majority over the other three groups combined in elections conducted on the basis of proportional representation. We secured 20 delegates against seven for the Oehler group and two for the Muste group. The Weber-Glotzer group failed to elect a single delegate, having secured only twelve scattered votes in the branch elections. From reports we have received it appears that we will also have a decisive majority in the national organization.
The Party Groupings
Cannon-Shachtman group—Ours is the “orthodox” tendency which aims to apply the principles and tactics of the ICL as they are formulated in the Declaration of Principles without “modifications.” We take the international question as our point of departure, insist on close and loyal collaboration with the ICL in practical work, without unnecessary delay, for the building of the Fourth International. This attitude was concretized in the question of the Open Letter for the Fourth International. We took a determined stand for the WP to sign the letter without putting any impossible conditions and without delaying the issuance of the letter unduly. In short, we construe the independence of the WP as a formal relationship which does not in any way change our fundamental political solidarity with the ICL.
In the present deep ferment of the Socialist Party we see the possibility of crystallizing a serious left wing which, if it takes the right political line, can be brought to a break with the SP and a fusion with us. To this end we propose an active policy designed to aid this left socialist crystallization. To that end we devote considerable space in our press to the crisis in the SP, direct a heavy fire against the centrist “Militants,” strive to push the proletarian tendency forward to collision with them and, at the same time, strive to inoculate the left socialists against Stalinism. We have had a good success with this latter and, in general, exert quite a little influence on certain strata of the left socialists. We are accused of preparing an entry of the WP into the Socialist Party. But this is not true at all. We simply do not want to leave the evolution of the left socialists to the well-known “historic process”; we want a policy of active intervention and an unremitting striving for corrections in the SP which can become the starting point for a fraction on the platform of the Fourth International and, consequently, an eventual unification with us. As a part of this work we demand that the WP seize every opportunity for united-front actions and practical cooperation with the left socialists.
Our group represents the basic cadres of the former Communist League plus a good section of the former AWP, including two members of the National Committee—West and Ramuglia. These two comrades led the fight in the AWP for the fusion. West (Burnham) is the co-editor of the New International; Ramuglia is the president of the National Unemployed League, the principal mass organization under the leadership of the party.
Muste group—The present position of this group represents a relapse from the more-or-less consistently progressive position it took in uniting with us to form the WP and in cooperation with us in the first six months of the new party. In order to unite with us on a program of revolutionary Marxism, Muste had to break first with Hardman, a crude Menshevik who played a leading role in the AWP at its inception and exerted a corrupting influence in the proletarian elements in the ranks. Later came the withdrawal from the party of Budenz, Muste’s closest co-worker in former times, because he despaired of being able to impose his nationalistic program on the party. After a few feeble protests against “Trotskyism”—the standard phobia of all opportunists—he left the party. Several others, none of them of any importance, followed him. The proletarian elements, including the highly qualified mass workers who had been personally attached to Budenz, remained with the party. During this period Muste took a consistent position and cooperated closely with us. We, on our part, cooperated loyally with him and resisted the attempt of the Oehler group to convert the campaign against the “right wing,” as they designated the Muste group, into a sport. We followed a deliberate policy of education and assimilation and thereby succeeded in isolating Budenz in the course of a few months. At the same time we presented a solid front with the Muste group against the sectarian and ultra-factional activities of the Oehler group.
Muste broke with us suddenly, and without previous notice or any serious political reason, on the eve of the June Plenum. After having previously agreed (in correspondence from Toledo) with the proposal to sign the Open Letter for the Fourth International he began to invent objections and provisions for delay, rewriting, securing more signatures, etc., the purport of which could only be to delay the matter indefinitely. A study of the June Plenum resolutions on this question will be illuminating. On the question of the SP Muste took a position of unbridled radicalism reminiscent of the attitude taken by the right wing of the French Communist Party in regard to the united front in 1922. This brought him suddenly to a virtual bloc with the Oehler group, also reminiscent of the joint opposition of the right and the left to the united-front tactics in the early days of the Comintern. This right-about-face cost him the support of fully half of the former members of the AWP in New York where the plenum discussions were held openly before the membership.
At bottom, however, the present position of Muste represents a yielding to the pressure of the conservative and even reactionary tendencies of some of the former AWP elements on the question of internationalism. The Budenz agitation still has echoes in the party. Budenz wants an American party which will abolish capitalism by the simple device of an amendment to the constitution (literally), at the same time he—God knows why—is fiercely opposed to any mention of the Socialist Party and has a horror of “Trotskyism” which is the way he spells internationalism. Muste—and this to be sure does him credit—has written a public criticism of Budenz in a series of articles in the New Militant and, from a formal standpoint, has complied with the provisions of our Declaration of Principles in regard to the work for the Fourth International. But since the June Plenum he has drawn farther away from us.
He appears to see in the Oehler group a counterweight to us and gives them more and more protection against our political attacks. Incidentally, he falls more and more into their position. This complicates the struggle against this group which is heading toward a break with the party. We do not find it possible to yield on the political questions, but we are careful to avoid any sharpening of the struggle with the Muste group and reiterate our readiness to resume the collaboration in joint leadership on the basis that obtained until Muste broke it off. We find it necessary, however, to wage the most uncompromising struggle against the Oehler group and also against the Weber group whose unprincipled combinationism corrupts the party and obstructs the work of assembling cadres of principled fighters. To our proposals for conciliation and collaboration of the two main groups—our group and the Muste group—Muste counterposes a program of general conciliation of all the groups. In practice this results in a bloc of the three against us. We learned from the great teachers, and supplemented this instruction by our own experience, the folly of trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. With the Muste group alone it would be feasible to make practical compromises and concessions up to a certain point; with the Oehler group this would only deepen and aggravate the party conflict and cause it to reappear shortly in worse form.
Oehler group—This group is an emanation of the international tendency thrown to the surface at the time of the French turn. It combines the hopeless formalism and sterility of Lhuillier and Vereecken with the treachery of Bauer. At one time in the early days after the fusion this group assumed threatening proportions in New York; it came forward as the “left wing,” and it appeared to many comrades that we were following too careful and moderate a policy in dealing with the deviations of certain elements of the former AWP, Budenz, etc. Since the issues have been brought into the open since the plenum, however, and we have taken the fight to the membership, the Oehler group has been shown up in its true colors. Its recruiting power has long since been lost, it has become isolated and has begun to break up. Two members of the group made an open break at the New York District Convention and revealed the split program of the leaders and also the fact that a large section of the group is against the split. They had gone so far as to make all the plans to publish a separate international bulletin of their own despite the fact that they have free access to the internal bulletin and the international bulletin of the party. According to the reports of the two comrades they expect to take about 100 comrades with them in the split, but 50 would be nearer the mark.
They carry on an extremely provocative campaign of slander against the ICL, designating it as a capitulator to the Social Democracy, and argue formalistically, that since we support the French turn we must, willy-nilly, apply it in the same way here by entering the Socialist Party. They have 60 supporters in the New York District, almost entirely inexperienced people. In the rest of the country they have very little support. Their main campaign—since the defection of Muste, their sole campaign—is directed against the French turn and against the whole policy of the ICL. In their attacks on the ICL they deliberately calculate on the prejudices and concealed antagonism maintained by some of the Musteites to the internationalism of the Bolshevik-Leninists. Their agitation at the June Plenum and since, as well as the agitation of some of the Muste group, has had a decidedly reactionary tinge. Muste himself avoids any crude expressions along this line, but does not restrain it in his supporters. A recent motion brought forward in the Political Committee criticizing the New Militant for carrying too much international material had this motivation.
The Oehler group had been inspired to a large extent by Bauer and falls into similar contradictions; it also exhibits the same lack of fundamental loyalty. Prior to the fusion the Oehlerites opposed it on the ground that we would be swallowed up by the centrists of the AWP; now they have no difficulty in allying themselves with the same centrists against us. In the first months of the fusion they waged an unrestrained campaign against the “right wing”; now they strive in every way to combine with them against us. To hear them talk and to read their faction material it would appear that there is just one real enemy of the international revolution—the “Trotskyists.”
Weber group—This group is more properly described as a clique which motivates itself in internal relations exclusively on a subjective personal basis. On the main issue of principle—the International question—they agree with us. In this dispute over the French turn they differed from us, in opposition to the Oehler group, only by their opportunist conception of “organic unity.” As to the turn itself, the main question, they were for it and had no point of contact with the position of the Oehler group. Likewise, they supported the fusion with the AWP, after first opposing it and then later giving us half-hearted passive support against the Oehlerites who remained recalcitrant almost up to the last moment. In spite of that they made a bloc with the Oehler group against us in the elections to the National Committee. This incident alone is sufficient to characterize this clique. In the Workers Party they continue the same kind of politics.
For six months prior to the June Plenum they were unable to bring forward a single political proposal in opposition to ours; they did not even present a formulated criticism. At the plenum they supported our international resolution for the prompt acceptance of the proposal to publish the Open Letter against that of Muste which meant unreasonable delay and the position of Oehler which meant an outright sabotage of the whole proposition. (Oehler’s resolution proposed, as one of the “conditions” for acceptance, that the Open Letter contain a condemnation of the “new orientation of the ICL.”) On the question of the Socialist Party they have differed from us only in the same sense as they differed on the French turn. They, like us, have put the question of entry or non-entry as a tactical question, rejecting Oehler’s contention that it is a question everywhere of principle. But while we said decidedly that the French conditions do not apply here and that we must steer an independent course to a new party through fusion with the AWP, Weber’s resolution prior to the last CLA convention implied a readiness to follow the French course in the U.S.
Politically the Weber group has no position of its own; where they do not follow us they keep silent altogether. But on organization questions, among which they include such a trifle as the leadership of the party, they always combine with the other groups against us. At the present time they are at the point of forming a closer bloc with Muste. Meanwhile they maintain that they are the true Bolshevik-Leninists—100 percent. The corrupting influence of such politics is all the more dangerous because the national secretary of the Spartacus Youth—Gould—belongs to this clique and applies these methods there. The result is that the Oehler tendency has an undue influence in the New York youth. The straight-out fight which is needed to educate the youth against this tendency is continually muddled and sabotaged and the youth are thrown into confusion by this unprincipled game.
At the present time Weber and Glotzer agitate for “unity” as the main issue standing above the issues of principle and tactics involved in the party struggle. In doing so they obstruct to the full extent of their feeble powers the struggle to educate the party to the idea that the party unity must be established on a definite political basis. In the New York District elections the Weber-Glotzer group received a fraction more than five percent of the votes—a striking testimony to the long education of our cadres in the school of principled politics.
* * * * *
Objective conditions for the advancement of the party are beginning to develop very favorably. At the present time there is to be seen a considerable improvement in the economic activity of the country with rumblings of another, and probably deeper, strike movement. The threatened strike wave in the early part of the year was headed off by the labor bureaucracy in collaboration with the Roosevelt administration. Our party played a very important role in the Toledo strike which, for a time, threatened to result in a general strike of the automobile industry. It appears that rationalization of industry during the crisis years has virtually canceled out the effects of the rise in the economic conjuncture as far as employment is concerned. The number of the unemployed is still colossal—ten to fifteen million.
The prospects for the WP are greatly improved by the swing of both the Stalinist party and the Socialist Party to the right. The CP is rapidly applying the new turn of the CI and is becoming the left wing of patriotic liberalism. The Socialist Party has practically outlawed any opposition in its ranks to the theory of “democratic socialism,” i.e., socialism by means of the ballot box. The sects which have broken with our international movement—Weisbord, Field, etc.—are reduced to complete isolation and impotence.
Our party has approximately 1,000 members. An influx of new members following the fusion convention was followed by a lull, partly to be attributed to the internal conflict. Now the beginning of a new expansion is to be seen—several new branches have been formed in the past month. We are still, for the most part, a propaganda circle. The left elements of the Socialist Party, especially since the sharp turn of the National Committee to the right, offer especially favorable grounds for us. But they can be brought to our side only by means of a firm internationalist policy and a flexible tactic. As we see it, a small party such as ours, faced with rivals of the size of the CP and the SP, can hope to make headway only if it is hard and firm in principle and highly disciplined.
We appreciate the value of unity and will do all we can to avoid a split. The best means to that end, in our opinion, is to conduct an aggressive and irreconcilable struggle against the sectarian tendency of the Oehler group which, combined with its disloyalty, is a menace to the party. Our aim is to isolate this tendency so that it will be unable to make a split of any serious proportions. This, it appears to us, has already been largely accomplished.
The question remains of the Muste group. As stated before, we are doing all we can to moderate the conflict with them and to allow time and experience to demonstrate the correctness of our position. We realized the value of the fusion, especially from the standpoint of our international movement, and were willing to pay “extra charges” for it on that account. But it would be folly, in our opinion, to pay the price of continuous instability of party policy and leadership. Muste has had no experience in a communist political movement. He has been accustomed to a loose organization in which conflicting policies and tendencies exist side by side, break out into open warfare, the differences are “patched up” by a compromise and then break out into the open again—and so on indefinitely. His “peace proposals” at the June Plenum were animated by this conception of organization. He, as well as Weber, counterpose this policy to ours which they say is a split tendency.
We admit that we do not make a principle of “unity,” although we have no intention of taking the initiative for a split. Our interest is centered on the struggle to convince a majority of the party of the correctness of our political line and to have it reflected in the composition of the leadership as a guarantee that it will be carried out in practice. We would not deprive the Oehler group of representation in the leadership if they accept the decisions of the majority and observe discipline in action. But we are emphatically opposed to the idea of turning the party into a permanent discussion circle which begins the discussion all over again after the convention as though nothing had happened.
James P. Cannon