Documents 3 to 17 and 19 to 24 originally published in Internal Bulletins of the SWP and the International Bulletins of the International Committee
Dear Jim
Yesterday I met Pablo and Frank in Paris.
They started out with a 'get tough' policy by demanding we put all our cards on the table. I replied by requesting an explanation of their decisions. These are the following:
a. A letter to Tom (copy enclosed) with an instruction to me that I place it before my N.C.
b. A letter to our EC attacking me for asking for a postponement of the IS. (I did this in order to study the documents,etc. They say that it is a matter of discipline.)
c. A letter to the NC SWP following up the August 10 letter. This must have reached you by now.
d. An instruction that I was to read your letter to Tom before my EC and NC.
Pablo viciously attacked me, Tom, and yourself. He said he would fight Cannon to the end. He and Frank declared they were going to proceed at once to reply to your speech, 'Internationalism and the SWP.' They are also going to reply and attack the majority Plenum Resolution on American Stalinism.
The strategy is to launch the discussion with a scandal -- your letter to Tom, the speech on Internationalism, the NC minutes (your questions to Clarke), etc. They also have your letter to Warde in which you comment on their draft. They plan to do the same thing in our section. This has been arranged through their agent Lawrence, already.
Following their opening attempt to intimidate me by the question and answer method, they got 'soft' in their approach. They asked me what was my comment on your letter to Tom and I replied that this would be conveyed when I had seen your reply. They then began to tell me what a fool I was to join with you and they promised to withdraw all attacks against me and to restrain Lawrence provided I had a discussion with them politically and came out against you, etc. I was sickened at the whole business which amounted to nothing more than intimidation.
However, I countered by proposing that they should call off all discussion on organizational matters until we could discuss the documents on the Russian question -- but nothing doing. They proceed as all their prototypes before them have proceeded -- muddy up the political discussion and stampede weak people as much as possible.
We then had some political discussion. Frank is very enthusiastic about Deutscher's book -- the only error he can see is that Deutscher does not visualize sufficiently the intervention of the masses and struggles with the bureaucracy (Clarke's line). Both he and Pablo disagreed violently with Wright's article in The Militant on Malenkov's speech. They say that Malenkov has begun to tolerate some Trotskyist statements of the past and has modified the traditional violence and hostility toward us. They believe that in East Germany large sections of the CP bureaucracy went with the workers. Right down the line, the whole thing amounts to a complete break with our traditional conceptions, leaving the way open for revisionism on all matters. This is the real root of the situation. There is no question but we have to prepare a counter document to their one on Stalinism. The more I read it and dissect the formulations, the more I am convinced that the nub of the whole struggle is contained there.
I tried to see Clarke, as I thought it was as well whilst I was at it to have a real day out. However, he was not at his hotel. He is now the guiding man in Paris, especially on organizational matters. He also influences a lot politically. I was struck when speaking to the others and also to Lawrence here, how close they all keep to the same political formulations. Your minority have now the backing of Pablo on the recent Plenum decisions. I asked him a point blank question, if this were so, and he evaded replying by saying he hadn't read the documents. In the same breath he carried on a most violent attack on the position of the majority.
From all these events there is but one conclusion -- we are engaged in the greatest struggle in the whole history of our movement to defend our basic principles. It will be a stiff vicious struggle. Our opponents are capable of all sorts of things. It will be up to us to fight it as one and in the end we shall defeat them -- of that I am confident.
Pablo attacked your conception of our international with great bitterness. This man proceeds with all the old cominternist vices. His methods sickened me to the point that it almost made me physically unwell. Many things flashed before my mind whilst we talked. They hate the old cadres of our movement. They want an international of spineless creatures who will accept revisionism to the point where they become the left cover for Stalinism. These are hard words, but if you went through what I did, you would, I know, agree.
Please write us here, as we must have an up to the minute contact. As you will appreciate, great care must be taken of this letter.
Warmest regards,
J.
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Last updated 17.10.2003