Documents 3 to 17 and 19 to 24 originally published in Internal Bulletins of the SWP and the International Bulletins of the International Committee
The City Convention has registered a victory for the majority here in Local New York. Now we take on the job of using that victory responsibly; not, as Bartell insinuated in his inimitable manner, 'to divide the spoils,' but to share the work, in implementing the programme set forth by the National Plenum for this Local as well as all others.
This marks the opening of the second phase in the reanimation of the New York Local. Now we can proceed to put our house in order, insofar as that can be done under the given conditions. The first household task is to help de-odorize the atmosphere generated by the minority at the Convention. I refer to their efforts to scandalize the proceedings and poison inner party life by reading excerpts from supposedly sinister documents and letters purporting to demonstrate the existence of a Great Conspiracy, a super-sensational intrigue on our part.
We have already become somewhat familiar with these cloak-and-dagger manoeuvres. The minority has pulled them before. Most of you will recall the onion-skin letter from Cannon, which, in the early stage of the struggle last spring, was waved in front of selected comrades with the insinuation that this was part of an intrigue to organize a faction in order to perpetrate the most nefarious deeds. And Bartell, at the close of his presentation in the debate with Cannon, tried to make a similar sensation, quoting reports from various members of the minority on the National Committee about real or alleged conversations with Comrade Dobbs.
Now what were the aims of the minority leaders in springing their latest would-be sensation? First, they thought to belittle the majority victory and derail the Convention proceedings. Second, they were seeking to extricate themselves from the corner into which they felt themselves pushed by the whole development and internal movement of the factional struggle -- the consolidation of an authoritative majority in the national leadership at the Plenum, and subsequently the similar consolidation of a majority here in the New York Local. Third, they are endeavouring to keep their faction whipped up to white heat against the majority. Fourth, they are vying to becloud the opening of the new phase in the discussion of the political differences in the party here, and whatever differences may be put forward in the discussion which will precede the Fourth World Congress. Finally they are using this 'scandal' as a pretext for their refusal of collaboration in party work and the renewal of their split offensive.
I will now read to you the full text of Comrade Cannon's letter. Those of you who heard Comrade Cannon's report on 'Internationalism and the SWP' -- the other document Bartell quoted from -- will, I believe, find in this letter nothing essentially new. The main points in the letter were either stated or alluded to in that report; the letter is a follow-up to the general viewpoint already set forth in that report by Comrade Cannon.
(Here Comrade Novack read the full text of Comrade Cannon's letter of June 4 to Tom, which was forwarded earlier to all caucus leaders and, if it has not already been done, should be made available to all the majority caucus to read.)
* * *(After reading Comrade Cannon's letter, Comrade Novack continued:)
First of all, let me make two brief explanations. (1) On the point of Jerome's 'dissimulating answer.' When Comrade Stone broke with the minority, he reported to us that the minority claimed they were not only the true interpreters and defenders of the Third World Congress line, but that Comrade Clarke was the closest associate and most authoritative spokesman for Pablo in this country. We therefore felt duty-bound to report what may well have been a misuse of the a authority of that comrade in the factional situation. We believed that we were entitled for a removal of any ambiguity on that score. However, the answer we received neither affirmed nor denied these rumours which the minority had been spreading. That is why Comrade Cannon characterized the letter as a dissimulating answer.
(2) Bartell tried to make it 'unprincipled' that Cannon wanted an explicit understanding with Tom that there would be the closest collaboration, given their agreement on political fundamentals. Tom, for his part, recognized the principled character of Cannon's approach to the establishment of collaboration and was in full accord with it.
Tom's attitude stands in marked contrast to that of Clarke, who when he was given the responsibility for making known our views in advance of the Third World Congress, violated that trust and -- as he personally boasted at the Plenum -- burned the document containing our views.
Now this letter by Comrade Cannon -- which as you see is consistent with the international report he previously made to you -- is similar to letters he has been writing to leading comrades throughout the movement for the past 25 years, whether or not there was a factional situation to worry about. I have no doubt that in the course of this struggle the minority also has conducted and is conducting a voluminous correspondence with quite a number of people. As a matter of fact, one reason which led us to conclude that the reply by Jerome was 'dissimulating' was the fact that we had been reliably informed that he had been corresponding with the minority leadership, and that such a correspondence had not been made known to the leaders of the party.
Comrade Cannon pointed out in his international report how completely contrary such procedure is to the relationship we had with Comrade Trotsky in his lifetime, and to the procedures which have always been normal and correct in our movement. Comrade Trotsky would often reply to a comrade with differences, but he would always send a copy of his reply to comrade Cannon or to the leadership so that they could rest assured he was not attempting to tamper with the inner life of the party or doing anything behind the back of the responsible leadership. Otherwise, we would never be able to have a responsible elected leadership administering the organization, or have any kind of normal atmosphere in the party. Scrupulous adherence to such procedure is all the more necessary in the case of a faction fight threatening the unity of the party.
Comrade Cannon's apprehension that factionalism could be whipped up after the Plenum only by the introduction of the international factor has certainly been confirmed by the minority's conduct at the ; Convention. There is no justification whatever for the continuance of any power fight or red-hot factional atmosphere, on any national or local grounds, after the Plenum and this Convention. But as I said, the minority leadership needed a fresh diversion in order to heat up the atmosphere. And Bartell, in his report at the Convention, very clearly made the implicit threat of split if we dared continue the course which he assumed was projected in the letter he waved.
Now this implicit threat of split is in itself a clear violation of the unanimous agreement to which the minority bound themselves in the Plenum truce. Therefore they had to manufacture a new alleged scandal to substitute for all those pre-Plenum and pre-Convention beefs which have now collapsed. But this new 'scandal' will be exposed and exploded too. We do not know whether the minority cooked up this would-be scandal on their own initiative, or whether it was undertaken in order to encourage some kind of intervention or action by others. In any event, we intend, as before, to repel any attempt from any quarter to stir up or encourage factional strife. For us, that is the only way to safeguard the peace and the unity of the party.
This letter, and other similar letters and documents, will be published, at the proper time, to insure that the comrades have a rounded picture and can give serious, objective consideration to the matters therein -- just as all the material which has had a bearing on the issues in dispute up to this time have been presented either to our caucus or to the membership. You remember the hue and cry they raised about Cannon's onion-skin letter, about the Dobbs-Hansen-Stein memorandum, etc., all of which the minority challenged and dared us to produce -- and all of which, in good time, we published. The comrades will understand that neither in the caucus, nor for that matter at all times in the party, is it possible, necessary, or desirable to bring everything at one time to the attention of the membership. But, sooner or later in the course of party life, whatever is essential is conveyed to all the comrades -- and so it will be to you.
The minority has a wider aim in vying to raise a cloud of supposed scandal at the present moment, because they are now in the midst of a new smuggling operation. This time it is Comrade Clarke's smuggling operation in connection with the magazine. The method they are using is the same one Cochran used last spring when, while launching a broadside against party election policy in Los Angeles, he raised in the PC the charges of financial irregularity, discrimination against the minority leading comrades on the staff, etc. Now we are confronted with this same method of crying 'Scandal!' as a screen for smuggling in revisions of established party policy.
In the current issue of the magazine, Clarke has an article entitled 'Stalin's Role -- Stalinism's Future.' This article was not shown to a single one of the majority leadership before its publication. More serious still, there are in it many misleading statements. Most important is the attempted revision of the established Trotskyist position on the inevitability of a political revolution by the workers to overthrow the Soviet bureaucracy. In the PC we challenged Clarke sharply on this point. Soon after, he presented two further pieces for the next issue of the magazine, one on the events in East Germany, the other on the Beria purge. These present a different line than the one given in the paper, which is the official line of the party. At the same time, they constitute a veiled polemic against this established line.
Now we have never permitted, and cannot permit, two different lines to appear in the organs of the movement. But that would be the outcome -- whatever Clarke's intent -- if these two pieces appeared as editorials in the magazine.
We have initiated two steps in order to bring the issues in dispute out plainly before the working-class public and before the party. We will publish the two pieces as signed articles by Clarke, prefacing them with an editorial note that these are his personal views, and that his editorial associates hold to a different analysis which will be printed in the following issue of the magazine. This will be a rounded piece counterposing the party policy to the line of Clarke's articles. In the same issue with his two articles, we are publishing a letter by Comrade Stein which, from the traditional standpoint of Trotskyism, justifiably takes exception to two main positions in Clarke's article on 'Stalin's Role -- Stalinism's Future.'
The positions to which we take exception are: (1)Clarke's assertion that the Soviet economy is 'nationalized in form, socialist in essence' -- which Comrade Trotsky polemicized against in his debates against the Stalinist theoreticians. (2) This in turn is connected with Clarke's further proposition that is now not entirely clear what form the struggle between the Soviet workers and the bureaucracy will take. 'Will the process,' he wrote, 'take the form of a violent upheaval against bureaucratic rule in the USSR! Or will concessions to the masses and sharing of power -- as was the long course in the English bourgeois revolution in the political relationship between the rising bourgeoisie and the declining nobility -- gradually undermine the base of the bureaucracy! Or will the evolution be a combination of both forms! That we cannot now foresee.'
I won't go into this at any length -- but how on earth is it possible to combine two diametrically opposite forms: a 'violent upheaval' against bureaucratic rule, and a 'sharing of power' with it' That is something better brains than mine will have to figure out. But this internal contradiction is only one part of Clarke's throwing overboard, with no motivation or substantiation, our established position on the inevitability of political revolution in the Soviet Union. Our articles in the magazine will open a new phase in the political discussion here of our differences on theory, and they will very likely play a part in the coming pre-Congress discussion.
Neither in the discussion here,nor in the broader discussion, do we propose to allow any ambiguities to be contained in any new documents. We want resolutions that mean what they say and say what they mean -- and we intend to get them. This squabble over who is the best interpreter of documents, or who is the best interpreter of what may or may not go on in the mind of Pablo, is something entirely new in the history of our movement, and alien to our movement.
But not entirely new elsewhere. I have here a letter from Comrade Cannon in which he remarks: 'We had that sort of business in the Comintern, in the later days of our sojourn in that jungle of machinations, intrigue and double-talk. Resolutions of the Comintern were always so worded that the factional battles would hinge around their interpretation. Many times the resolutions gave 'concessions' to our point of view -- at least, that's what we, in our peasant ignorance, took them to be. But the Lovestoneites always claimed that the intention was different and that they had inside information to this effect. I must admit that the Lovestoneites always proved to be right in this respect, even if in nothing else.
'Under the regime of Trotsky in our international movement, however, I cannot recall a single time or occasion when there was the slightest doubt or dispute as to what the resolutions, articles and theses drafted by him really meant. They meant exactly what they said, every time. That, in my opinion, is the best system. We cannot feel easy about the state of affairs in our international movement until this tradition of the "old Trotskyism" is again reinstated as the invariable rule and not the exception.'
We intend to participate fully, with our contributions and our point of view, in the forthcoming discussions on Stalinism and on all other questions. But our main job now is the work we have cut out for us here in the United States, on the basis of the line set forth in the Plenum resolutions -- not only on American Stalinism, but on our perspectives for building an independent Socialist Workers Party in the United States. We have to offset the partial creeping paralysis that has been felt so strongly here. The positive outcome of the City Convention is that we can now put into practice in our daily work the recommendations for party building in the Plenum resolution.
So, having broken the factional log-jam, let's get moving forward.
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Last updated 18.10.2003