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The Struggle for Marxism in the United States

A History of American Trotskyism

By Tim Wohlforth

Written: 1964-1969.
First Published: 1971.
Source: A Bulletin Book for Labor Publications Inc., New York 1971.
Transcription / HTML Markup: Sean Robertson for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Copyleft: Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (marxists.org) 2013.
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American Trotskyism with Trotsky

The first five years of the American Trotskyist movement was a very difficult period, especially for the kind of people who made up the leadership and leading cadre of the movement. Cannon was a trained mass worker who was also very adept at organisational building work. Many of Cannon's followers and collaborators were like him in training. But the first period of the movement was not a period where much mass work could be done and it was not even a period where much of an organisation could be built. It was a period which required intensive study of theory and a propagandistic struggle for program in and around the Communist Party.

Cannon's two major collaborators, Max Shachtman and Martin Abern, were a little better equipped for this kind of work. Shachtman's abilities lay in the literary field. He could do a presentable job of putting forth even complex theoretical and political questions in a journalistic fashion – a very useful thing in a propagandistic period. Abern was an administrator like Cannon, but lacking Cannon's background in mass work. He was always a small-time administrator, particularly adept at working in the small circle-type existence forced upon the early movement.

While Shachtman and Abern, both quite young men at the time, fared quite well under these adverse circumstances, it was all very demoralising for Cannon. He was very much like a fish out of water, and this feeling comes through very clearly in his History of American Trotskyism. 1 What a tremendous relief it must have been for him when a new kind of activity began to open up for the movement in 1933! In 1929 and 1930, however, Cannon played less and less of a role in the movement. In fact he simply disappeared from the organisation for close to a year during this time. Shachtman and Abern began to fashion their own regime without Cannon.

But Cannon soon revived in spirits and came back into the organisation actively. This led to a big factional battle between Cannon, supported by the Minneapolis comrades and others, against Shachtman and Abern, who were not inclined to hand the regime back to Cannon voluntarily. It was necessary for Trotsky to intervene in this early dispute – which lacked completely any political or theoretical basis – in order to achieve a new working relationship between Cannon, Shachtman and Abern. Shachtman and Cannon in particular were able to arrive at a working relationship which was to dominate the central leadership of the party until 1939 and which contributed a good deal to the stability and growth of the party. Abern on the other hand soon retreated into his oppositional clique politics, forming unprincipled blocs with every major opposition group for the next eight years or so.

Trotsky's role in this early but important factional struggle is of some interest. He adamantly refused to support any organisational struggle against Cannon based simply upon complaints about his 'regime'. Shachtman himself testifies to this lack of support. 2 This is not to say that Trotsky was uncritical of Cannon in those days nor that his goal was to defend Cannon against every adversary. Rather he sought to bring about as much as possible a collective leadership fusing the various forces which made up the early American Trotskyist movement.

In particular Trotsky was critical of Cannon's tendency to utilise organisational methods in dealing with political problems. Trotsky felt Cannon tended to respond too quickly in a factional way to oppositional formations rather than in a patient political way, seeking to educate the cadres. In a letter to Farrell Dobbs in 1940 he refers back to this old difference with Cannon and others in the movement: ' . . . our own sections inherited some Comintern venom in the sense that many comrades are inclined to the abuse of such measures as expulsion, splits or threat of expulsions and splits. In the case of Molinier and in the case of some American comrades (Field, Weisbord and some others) I was for a more patient attitude'. 3

Trotsky was also well aware of Cannon's weaknesses in the field of theoretical development. Shachtman reports in the following manner on Trotsky's assessment of Cannon in this regard:

'As he indicated to some of the critics, it was necessary to understand that Cannon was a product of the American labour and revolutionary movements as they have developed in their own social and historical environment; that if he had some of the shortcomings of these movements he also had their virtues; and that he would be superseded by a superior leadership not as a result of a factional fight in which opponents would win a numerical majority, but only when the class struggle in the United States would lift the proletariat to a higher level and lift out of itself leaders who in turn stood on a higher level. These views, carefully reflected in some of his writings on the factional struggles in the American movement, were rather objective but somewhat philosophical. ' 4

Shachtman is, of course, anything but an unbiased observer as far as Cannon is concerned. That Trotsky took a critical approach toward Cannon in this period, especially on his organisational operations, is generally known throughout the SWP today and no one denies this. Furthermore, as we shall see, this assessment of Cannon in the early period is completely consistent with the kind of approach Trotsky was to take towards Cannon in later years. Above all it was a correct assessment of Cannon and not at all the kind of approach Shachtman was to take towards Cannon at a later period.

By 1932 a clear national and international division of labour had been worked out by the American Trotskyists. This division of labour was to have a deep impact on the whole future evolution of the movement and shows very clearly the approach of the American Trotskyists to theory and method. First and foremost was the division of labour between the American party and Trotsky. Trotsky supplied the basic theoretical and strategic outlook for the organization. It was Trotsky who assessed the developments within the USSR and within the Communist International. It was Trotsky who analysed the German events and other important international developments in the period. It was Trotsky who initiated the turn away from the Communist International and towards the formation of a Fourth International in 1933. But, even more striking, it was Trotsky who initiated the major tactical turns within the United States – such as a merger with the American Workers Party and the entry into the Socialist Party.

The 1928-1933 period was a period where political and theoretical training was most important. No matter how hard the comrades may have tried to break out of isolation they could not have succeeded. But they could and should have developed themselves theoretically so as to prepare for future openings. In a sense they did do this. That is, they went to school with Trotsky and learned from Trotsky many things that were useful to them in the next period. In this sense this international division of labour was extremely useful to the American Trotskyists. They learned from Trotsky much as the early American Communists had learned from the Comintern and the Russians.

But the relationship never went beyond a teacher-pupil form. While the American Trotskyists learned from Trotsky they did not participate in the international theoretical development of the Trotskyist movement as contributors in their own right. But without this kind of relationship there is a very severe limit upon how much one can learn. This is because the inability to contribute to the teaching process itself is a sign that one has not really absorbed the method of Marxism itself – one has not internalised this method.

Within the American organisation there was another division of labour paralleling in miniature the international division of labour. Cannon himself describes it this way:

'Shachtman and Burnham were by no means mere ornaments in the Political Committee. They were the editors of the magazine and of the paper, and they did practically all of the literary work. There was a division of labour between them and me, whereby I took care of the organizational and trade union direction, administration and finances – and all the rest of the chores that intellectuals don't like to bother with as a rule – and they did the writing, most of it. And when they were on the right line they wrote very well, as you know. ' 5

Cannon contributed nothing to the development of theory in this whole long period of essentially theoretical and propagandistic work, and in fact he contributed very little to putting theory forward in a propagandistic way. Just as in the Communist Party he left theory to others. In the late 1920s it was Bittleman who wrote the basic political programmatic statements of the opposition bloc; in the early thirties it was Shachtman and those close to him who wrote them for the American Trotskyists.

As far as writing was concerned Cannon viewed himself as an 'agitator'. In the field of popularising socialist ideas in a way that they are readily understandable to workers Cannon had no equal. His book, Notebook of an Agitator 6 is a testimony to this ability and deserves to be studied as a guide in this kind of writing, always needed in a movement which really seeks to reach workers. But there is almost nothing in this book, which covers the whole span of Cannon's career from the CP until recent times, of a deeper, even propagandistic nature. Also absent from the book are any writings at all for this 1928-1933 period. This was not a period conducive to agitational writing and activity and therefore Cannon had little or nothing to say.

But Shachtman and other intellectuals in the party did not develop beyond Cannon theoretically. While they utilised their literary gifts to popularise Trotsky's ideas in the United States, they too, simply took their ideas from Trotsky. They were never able to go beyond this task and eventually abandoned Marxism. Furthermore, they lacked Cannon's deep working-class orientation and perspective, based on his many years of experience and struggle in the American working class.

It was this strength of Cannon's which lay behind his actual break from Stalinism and the very birth of the Trotskyist movement in the United States. It was because of this strength that the working-class cadres of the movement always supported him. The history of the American Trotskyist movement was to be a test of whether this conviction in the revolutionary potentialities of the American working class by itself was enough.

The early American Trotskyist movement was thus a composite of Trotsky, the creator of its theoretical and political outlook; Cannon, the continuator of American revolutionary traditions and the administrator; and Shachtman, the skilled propagandist of Trotsky's ideas. It was not simply Cannon's party – it was also Trotsky's party and to some extent Shachtman's party. Most important of all there was no real fusion of these separate forces. Trotsky did his best to bring about such a fusion. He collaborated extensively with all the leaders of the party and learned much from them about American conditions. He intervened to bring about a collaboration between the two sections of the organisation represented by Cannon and Shachtman. But Cannon was content to take his basic political line as something given to him from abroad, and devoted his energies to building an organization around that political line. Shachtman translated Trotsky from the Russian and propagated his ideas. Within the party Cannon left literary tasks to Shachtman, and Shachtman was content with this, involving himself little in the work of the party in the class and learning little from this work. Collaboration is one thing and fusion is another. The early American party was essentially a series of blocs internally and externally.

While the first five years of the Trotskyist movement were extremely difficult ones, with severe limits set by the objective situation, the next seven years were to be marked by continual and growing opportunities for the growth and development of the movement. Thus the objective conditions for the solution of the very deep problems of the movement were certainly present. It is one thing to struggle for Marxist clarity under conditions of deep isolation from the masses and quite another to struggle for Marxist clarity under conditions of serious involvement in the mass movement.

The openings for the organisation began with the debacle of the Comintern's policies in Germany in 1933 and with the rise of Hitler to power. Soon after this negative vindication of Trotsky's line came a number of openings to our comrades in the mass movement. Combined with the growing involvement of the party in the mass movement were the serious leftward-moving trends in centrist circles in the United States. Thus the party had the opportunity to simultaneously deepen its work in the class and win over already radicalised forces. The winning over of these radical forces would both strengthen its trade union work and add new intellectual forces to the party.

The most important development of all in the class struggle was the leadership given by Trotskyists to the great Minneapolis teamsters' strike in 1934. This important class action played an important role in preparing the American working class for its next great step – the organisation of the industrial working class in the United States in the CIO. Just as importantly, it showed in the concrete the kind of leadership revolutionaries could give to the class struggle and raised the prestige of the Trotskyist movement in the eyes of the American workers and radicals. The ability of the American organisation to carry out this great action can be attributed to its heritage of American radicalism and what it learned from Trotsky in the preceding five years. It was a tribute to all that was healthy in American Trotskyism and in the Cannon section of the party in particular.

The fusion with the Musteites (the American Workers Party) was of no less importance in the development of the organisation. The Musteites had led that other great class action in the period just prior to the birth of the CIO – the Toledo Autolite strike. This fusion brought additional working-class cadres into the organisation. It also brought intellectuals into the party, not the least talented being James Burnham. Thus in the case of the Musteite fusion a political move towards another radical organisation strengthened rather than detracted from the work of the party in the mass movement. In this case, 'regroupment' was not a substitute for mass work but rather a way to deepen it.

At the same time the work of the party among the youth was also developing. The youth organisation, called the Spartacist Youth League, had begun on a modest scale in 1932 and by 1934 was showing real signs of growth. In the beginning its orientation was almost totally towards the members of the Young Communist League. By 1934 it was devoting more attention to student work and to centrist and social-democratic youth.

Flushed with the success of the merger with the Musteites, and urged on by Trotsky, the American Trotskyists prepared their entry into the Socialist Party. However, in certain important respects the SP entry was carried out in a more confused way than the Musteite merger. In the first place, little time had elapsed in order to assimilate the forces which had just entered the organisation through the Musteite fusion. Thus a section of these forces, joined with Oehler in opposing the entry and finally broke with the movement over this question. Others who stayed with the organisation undoubtedly had a rather vague concept of exactly what revolutionary politics were.

There is no doubt that this struggle against the Oehlerites assisted the development of the cadres, however, both those coming from the Trotskyist and those from the Musteite organisation. Essentially, the Oehlerite struggle was a rebellion of the propaganda circle 'revolutionaries' against the whole new dynamic politics of the Trotskyist movement. While it reflected itself in a sectarian opposition to entry, it was in reality a fight against the turn of the Trotskyists towards real political intervention and growth in the class itself. But it was not a clean sweep – many 'propagandists' remained in the party. Most notable were the Abernites, who first supported Oehler and then backed away as the split was carried through. But there were many others and there can be no doubt of the rather diffuse and immature nature of the Trotskyist forces at the time of the SP entry.

In the second place, while the Musteite unity took place almost simultaneously with important work in the class and greatly strengthened that work, the SP entry became such a dominant aspect of the organisation's work that the most important development in the American working class was virtually ignored in the American party. This is how Cannon himself later assessed it: 'Except in a few localities, we let the great movement of the CIO pass over our heads.' 7 This was no minor error, for the CIO was the most fundamental step taken by the American working class in its modern history. It is true that the Trotskyist movement was later to develop considerable influence inside CIO unions. True, many workers were recruited out of the SP, with facilitated this. But there is still no getting around the fact that failure to be in on the ground floor of the creation of the CIO seriously hindered our work for many, many years to come and greatly facilitated the Stalinists' gaining their stranglehold over such a large part of the CIO. The CIO, this not unimportant aspect of the American question, was simply not fully understood by the American Trotskyists at the time.

In the third place, the entry was carried on in a manner which greatly facilitated adaptation to centrist currents within the SP. So much emphasis was put on reaching centrists within the SP that during the initial period of entry no factional organisation of Trotskyists was maintained at all. After a while many comrades began to settle down to a more or less permanent existence as an oppositional current within the SP. Trotsky documents this in his important article, 'From a Scratch to the Danger of Gangrene' in In Defence of Marxism. On May 25, 1937, he wrote: 'I must cite two recent documents: (a) the private letter of "Max" about the convention, and (b) Shachtman's article, "Towards a Revolutionary Socialist Party". The title of this article alone characterises a false perspective. It seems to me established by the developments, including the last convention, that the party is evolving, not into a "revolutionary" party, but into a kind of ILP, that is, a miserable centrist political abortion without any perspective.' 8

While this attack is directed specifically against Shachtman, there is no evidence that Cannon objected to Shachtman's political position at the time. Cannon himself admits this in his History when he states: 'There is no doubt at all that the leaders of our movement adapted themselves a little too much to the centrist officialdom of the Socialist Party.' 9 In fact there is every indication that it was Trotsky's initiative which hardened up the faction inside the SP to the point where it was able to resist disintegration and to split from the SP in one piece. Cannon reports that Trotsky rejected their suggestions that they bow before the right wing to gain time so as not to jeopardise the Dewey Commission work. He goes on to state: 'Trotsky encouraged us and even incited us to go forward to meet their challenge and not permit them to push us any further for fear it might lead to disintegration of our own ranks, demoralisation of the people whom we had led that far along the road.' 10 Without this kind of intervention by Trotsky it is doubtful just how much of the American Trotskyist forces would have survived this entry tactic. The need for such intervention was a sign that the development of the American Trotskyist movement was far, far from complete in this period, that a tremendous educational task lay ahead of it.

The American Trotskyist movement, when it emerged from the SP as the Socialist Workers Party, was in appearance a very impressive organisation. It had gained a sizeable trade union cadre and had important fractions in major unions. It had a number of qualified intellectuals and a very large intellectual periphery, particularly around the publication Partisan Review. It had a sizeable youth organisation, in fact the majority of the former Socialist Party youth. It had all the human elements needed for the creation of a real Marxist movement in the United States for the first time in history.

Yet in less than two years from its emergence from the Socialist Party it was to enter into a deep crisis, a crisis which almost destroyed the organisation. While there is no doubt that the objective situation contributed to this crisis it is completely wrong to blame the objective situation for the depth of the crisis. The Socialist Workers Party of 1938 could not have been all it seemed.

In actual fact there had been little qualitative development in the period since 1933. Each component of the party had expanded quantitatively, but no component had developed qualitatively, and they still bore the same relationship to each other and to Trotsky. Cannon was joined by hundreds of working-class cadres, and his faith in the potential of the American workers was reinforced by constant day-to-day contact with the class. Shachtman was joined by intellectuals of the calibre of Burnham, people like Dwight McDonald, and many, many lesser-known younger intellectuals. The youth organisation had expanded tremendously and was now an important factor in the party, though it remained largely a student youth.

However, a qualitative fusion was far from occurring. The workers lacked any real theoretical development and, further, their native American hostility to theory was strengthened by the anti-intellectual prejudices which had long been deeply ingrained in the Cannon section of the party. They were all fine, class-conscious trade union militants, but they were far from being real Bolsheviks. The intellectuals in the party kept their distance from the workers and by and large travelled in their own circles. They felt themselves a part of the general intellectual stratum – the most radical part thereof – rather than an integral part of a working-class party. The youth were largely young intellectuals recruited from the campuses or out of the SP, which in turn had recruited them from the campuses. These young people, no doubt very sincere in their revolutionary convictions, had a political life separate from the workers in the party and made no real attempt to integrate themselves in a working-class party.

As the party continued to be made up a series of blocs internally, so externally the basic bloc with Trotsky was maintained by all the constituents. The intellectuals promulgated his ideas in a literary fashion and Cannon built an organisation around them. But independent theoretical development was as absent in this period as it had been in the previous period. No one can point to a single theoretical contribution made by any member of the SWP in this period.

There was also one important difference. Trotsky was now in Mexico. He was able to meet with a good cross-section of the party's leading cadre and to devote a good deal of thought to the development of the party. From 1937 on Trotsky was to watch the party much, much more closely and to develop a critical attitude towards all sections of it. This struggle on Trotsky's part to educate the SWP, to prepare it for serious qualitative development, was to continue right up to the time of his death.

The 1940 struggle with the Shachtman-Burnham-Abern minority was the most important internal struggle in which Trotsky participated in his battle to create the Fourth International. At stake was the very survival of the SWP. Considering the SWP's prominent place in the Fourth International at that time, its survival was closely linked to the survival of the Fourth International itself.

The 1940 struggle had been prepared by the previous twelve-year history of the American Trotskyist movement. The old internal blocs broke down and the groups turned on each other. Trotsky had to bloc with the healthiest force in the party and struggle against a bloc which could, and almost did, destroy the movement itself. The failures of the past 12 years created conditions in which such a crisis could occur. The strengths of the movement over the past 12 years allowed for the beginnings of a progressive solution to that crisis. It is important that we evaluate both the strengths and the failures.

In late 1939 the Shachtman-Cannon bloc broke down. Shachtman was impressionistically caught up in a petty-bourgeois reaction to the Soviet invasion of Finland. Abandoning all pretence of Marxist method he united in a faction with Burnham and Abern. This faction rallied the bulk of the petty-bourgeois elements in the party and was in fact a reaction to the panic of the petty-bourgeoisie as a whole as the war approached. This was no small force in the party. As the convention approached, Cannon was not at all sure if he could carry the majority. As it was he carried only 60 per cent of the organisation, and if one counts the non-party youth the organisation was split right down the middle. The Shachtman-Burnham-Abern faction was the result of the failure of the party as a whole to absorb its petty-bourgeois elements organically into the party.

In opposition to Shachtman-Burnham-Abern, Cannon mobilised the overwhelming bulk of the party's working-class cadres. But these cadres by themselves were incapable of waging an effective battle against the petty-bourgeois opposition. It was necessary for that other critical factor of the bloc that formed the SWP to intervene – Trotsky. This time Trotsky intervened as he had never intervened in an internal dispute before. The entire polemic on the majority side was waged by Trotsky himself. It was Trotsky who worked out the analysis of the Finnish and Polish events. It was Trotsky who analysed the very nature of the opposition and showed its class roots. And above all it was Trotsky who turned the discussion around the most fundamental of all axes – the question of method.

Cannon delivered a speech on the Russian question but this was no more than a restatement of Trotsky's position. Cannon wrote a lengthy piece on the organisation question but this did not add anything new that could not be found in Trotsky's own comments on that question during the polemics. 11 No, the political, theoretical and methodological struggle was conducted by Trotsky and by Trotsky alone. Cannon and his supporters simply advocated the positions initiated by Trotsky.

Many have pictured the struggle in 1940 as essentially a struggle over the Russian question. Certainly the Shachtmanites always liked to look at it that way. Many in the Trotskyist movement also see it in that light. However, even a cursory reading of In Defence of Marxism puts a different light on it. The struggle went far, far deeper than the Russian question. It was essentially a struggle in defence of the Marxist method itself. The defence of the Marxist method fell on the shoulders of Trotsky and Trotsky alone. No one else in the party saw this as the critical question in the beginning and no one else was in the least prepared to defend Marxist method.

Viewed within this framework the real significance of the 1940 struggle can be seen. Essentially the 1940 struggle was produced by the failure of the SWP as a whole to develop Marxist theory through an understanding of the Marxist method itself. This failure in method reflected itself in different ways through the different constituents which made up the party. One section of the party developed this failure of method into a factional program pitted against the program of the Fourth International. That was the petty-bourgeois section. Another section, the working-class section of the party, was instinctively repelled by the political course of the petty-bourgeois faction but was incapable itself of countering this course theoretically or really understanding it methodologically. This task fell to Trotsky.

Trotsky made clear this distinction between the weaknesses and errors of the majority and the systematic revisionism of the minority. He wrote in a letter to Joseph Hansen: 'In my article I admitted that on different questions the Majority comrades could have shared the errors of Shachtman but they never made a system of them, they never transformed them into a factional platform. And that is the whole question.' 12

Trotsky's deep shock at the extent of the basic educational work he had to carry out on the ABC of Marxism comes through in much of his writings of this period. He wrote in From a Scratch to the Danger of Gangrene, explaining his raising of the question of method:

'The character of the differences which have risen to the surface has only confirmed my former fears both in regard to the social composition of the party and in regard to the theoretical education of the cadres. There was nothing that required a change of mind or "artificial" introduction. This is how matters stand in actuality. Let me also add that I feel somewhat abashed over the fact that it is almost necessary to justify coming out in defence of Marxism within one of the sections of the Fourth International.' 13

In a letter to Cannon, the leader of the majority, he goes even further:

'Yesterday I sent the Russian text of my new article written in the form of a letter to Burnham. Not all comrades possibly are content with the fact that I give such a prominent place in the discussion to the matter of dialectics. But I am sure it is now the only way to begin the theoretical education of the party, especially of the youth, and to inject a reversion (sic) to empiricism and eclectics. ' 14

Note that Trotsky anticipates resistance to a discussion on dialectics from the majority comrades (this is a private letter to the majority leader) and also note that he speaks of beginning the theoretical education of the party – after 12 years of existence as a movement Trotsky must speak of beginning its theoretical education.

In order to understand exactly how the SWP reached such a point as this we must go back and trace the relationship of the various constituents of the SWP with Trotsky during that critical period of Trotsky's close collaboration with the SWP, starting with his coming to Mexico in 1937. We will try to learn both how Trotsky assessed these constituents and what he proposed should have been done to prevent the kind of situation which evolved in 1940. Trotsky's analysis of his relationship with the petty-bourgeois section of the party is well documented in his article 'From a Scratch to the Danger of Gangrene', and we will therefore only sketch this briefly here. Trotsky's relationship with the Cannon group in the party is not as well known or as clearly put forward, and to this aspect we therefore devote more space.

It will become clear that while one section of the party had developed 'gangrene' the rest of the party was far from unscratched. The sickness which necessitated the 1940 amputation was a sickness of the party's body as a whole. However, it had developed by 1940 to a point in one part of the party where surgery was necessary so that one could continue to struggle to cure the body as a whole.

The great crisis of 1940 was prepared by the previous history of the party – was the natural outgrowth of its weaknesses. Trotsky's assessment of the petty-bourgeois elements in the party comes out clearly in In Defence of Marxism. Trotsky details his patient efforts over a span of three years to properly orient the intellectual elements in the party.

This process began appropriately enough with his arrival in Mexico in 1937, He reports: 'It would not be amiss, therefore, to refer to the fact that my first serious conversation with Comrades Shachtman and Warde, in the train immediately after my arrival in Mexico in January 1937, was devoted to the necessity of persistently propagating dialectical materialism.' 15 Seventeen years earlier Lenin had raised the same question with another revolutionary intellectual, Louis C. Fraina, with unfortunately similar results. Following this discussion there is no sign that either Warde, who ended up supporting Cannon, or Shachtman, did anything to educate the party on questions of method.

In the 1937 and 1938 period Trotsky wrote to Shachtman repeatedly concerning the growing attention given by the SWP to petty-bourgeois intellectuals who were obviously not serious revolutionists. He urged the SWP to develop some kind of working-class defence work in connection with the Dewey Commission investigation of the Moscow trials but this was not done. He warned against devoting so much space in the New International to people like Eastman, Hook, and Lyons, and the friendly tone taken towards such people in the magazine. In 1939 he wrote his famous letter to Shachtman protesting against the Shachtman-Burnham article 'Intellectuals in Retreat', in which Burnham declared his opposition to dialectics and Shachtman declared his indifference to Burnham's opposition.

On all these points Trotsky was hitting at the essential weakness of the intellectual section of the SWP. This section saw itself as a part of the American intellectual community rather than as an integrated part of the proletarian revolutionary party. The indifference or actual opposition to dialectics was part of the dues these intellectuals needed to pay in order to be part of this community. As long as they used the same basic method as the Hooks, Eastmans and Lyons, then they spoke the same language, were part of the same community. The development of the SWP as a Marxist party required the breaking of these intellectuals methodologically from the basic empiricist method of the American intelligentsia.

It also required a more personal, subjective kind of break. The intellectuals needed to break from the petty-bourgeois circles and life and to integrate themselves personally in a working-class party. They needed to learn how to talk to workers, how to recruit workers, how to be an integral part of a working-class party. Trotsky wrote to Cannon especially on this question time and time again in the period from 1937 to 1940 but to no avail. Trotsky's appreciation of Cannon's Struggle for a Proletarian Party was undoubtedly based in large part on Cannon's strong emphasis on this point. 16

Over the years there has developed a simplified myth of Trotsky's attitude towards the role of intellectuals in the party. Trotsky is seen as taking a totally negative attitude toward intellectuals because of their petty-bourgeois background and conversely taking a totally uncritical attitude towards party members of proletarian origins. A close reading of Trotsky's writing shows nothing could be further from the truth. He valued the intellectual elements in the SWP most highly and made great efforts to facilitate their development.

He notes:

'After our American section split from the Socialist Party I insisted most strongly on the earliest possible publication of a theoretical organ, having again in mind the need to educate the party, first and foremost its new members, in the spirit of dialectic materialism. In the United States, I wrote at the time, where the bourgeoisie systematically instils vulgar empiricism in the workers, more than anywhere else is it necessary to speed the elevation of the movement to a proper theoretical level. ' 17

He viewed it as the task of the intellectuals to facilitate the general theoretical development of the proletarian section of the party. The proletarian section of the party, though prepared for rapid theoretical development by its actual position in capitalist society, would not develop theoretically if simply left alone. Thus he stated: 'It is precisely the party's penetration into the trade unions, and into the workers' milieu in general that demands heightening the theoretical qualification of our cadres. I do not mean by cadres the "apparatus" but the party as a whole.' 18 And further: 'If the proletarian section of our American party is "politically backward', then the first task of those who are "advanced" should have consisted in raising the workers to a higher level. But why has the present opposition failed to find its way to these workers? 19

So concerned was he about the role which this section of the movement could play in the development of the party that in the middle of the discussion itself he wrote to Shachtman: 'I believe that you are on the wrong side of the barricades, my dear friend. ' . . . If I had the possibility I would immediately take an airplane to New York City in order to discuss with you for 48 or 72 hours uninterruptedly.' 20

Thus Trotsky's approach towards the intellectuals in the party was clear. He sought to integrate them into the party by breaking them from the method of the petty-bourgeoisie and fusing them in the concrete with the proletarian section of the party. Such a fusion would have facilitated with great rapidity the theoretical development of the party as a whole. Instead these intellectuals deepened their split both with the method of Marxism and with the proletarian section of the party. Trotsky had no other course but to deepen his break with them and to hope that the struggle would lead to a development of the healthy section of the party which was willing to combat this desertion of Marxism.

Material on Trotsky's approach to the youth movement is not as easily documented as his relations with the older intellectual strata in the party. However, its general outlines are clear. Throughout this 1937-1940 period Trotsky actively sought to counter what he saw as an unserious, dilettante spirit in the Trotskyist youth organisation. He wished to instill in these young people the seriousness of the revolutionary struggle and the need to integrate themselves into a proletarian movement. He sought to break these students and young petty-bourgeois from their milieu and transform them from radical students into proletarian revolutionaries.

A turning point in this whole process was the resolution on the youth question at the Founding Convention of the Fourth International in 1938. 21 This resolution, which was in the tradition of the early days of the Young Communist International, 22 sought to orientate Trotskyist youth towards the problems of the young workers and the unemployed workers in particular. Following this convention the YPSL Fourth (as the Trotskyist youth organisation was known in that period) devoted considerably more attention in its publication, Challenge of Youth, to the problems of young workers. 23 However, this attention was clearly of an artificial journalistic nature, and very little concrete work was done by the young Trotskyists among working-class youth. Thus this whole vital, dynamic section of the American proletariat went largely untouched in this period. This itself had a serious negative effect on the SWP.

Following this Trotsky urged several measures on the YPSL Fourth: the point of these was obviously to break down the intellectual dilletantism of these youth. It was Trotsky who insisted that the YPSL Fourth get themselves a uniform, red flags and other paraphernalia and learn to march in proper style. No pacifist was Trotsky.

Again Trotsky's approach towards petty-bourgeois youth was not a hostile one. Such young people, he felt, could play a very vital role in the building of the party. But this would happen only if they really broke from their petty-bourgeois background and integrated themselves fully into the revolutionary movement. This did not happen. It is difficult to see how it could have happened in the SWP of the 1930s with its bloc, rather than fusion, of constituents, and with its almost total lack of theoretical development.

Trotsky always understood the critical importance of the working-class cadres of the party. The workers in the party were always his first concern. All his efforts and urgings on the intelligentsia were aimed at getting this intelligentsia also to recognise the critical importance of this section of the party and to assist him in aiding the proletarian comrades' development. He understood that critical in the long run were both the growth and the development of the proletarian section of the party.

Trotsky's approach towards Cannon flowed from this assessment of the working-class cadres of the party. Trotsky was not an uncritical defender of Cannon the man, nor of Cannon's regime. He had made his position clear in 1932 on many of the organisational weaknesses of Cannon. He could not help but be aware of his theoretical shortcomings. However, he had a high regard for Cannon's role in developing a proletarian orientation for the American party. It was precisely the solid organisational base of the American party and its constant work in the mass movement that distinguished it from all other Trotskyist parties, which made it the most important Trotskyist formation of the period. Cannon had contributed in no small way to this development.

Precisely because Trotsky valued so highly the proletarian cadres of the party, he did not take an uncritical attitude either towards those cadres or towards the Cannon group within the party, which had the confidence of those cadres. Workers in the trade unions are no more born 'natural' Bolsheviks than are intellectuals or students. While they are generally free from the kind of petty-bourgeois pressures which bear upon these other sections of the party, they have their own specific weaknesses and are under other pressures within the trade union movement. Their strength is that these weaknesses are the weaknesses of the class itself, and to the extent that a revolutionary party comes to grips with them it is involved in its most fundamental work of all – the education of the vanguard of the working class.

It is especially in a period when the party is expanding its working-class cadres that the most conscious attention must be paid to the theoretical development of these cadres. This is no automatic process and it requires the greatest of efforts and internal struggle on the part of a conscious leadership. As Trotsky summed it up in the previously quoted statement, which deserves restatement here: 'It is precisely the party's penetration into the trade unions, and into the workers' milieu in general, that demands the heightening of the theoretical qualification of our cadres.'

Just as with the intellectuals and students, Trotsky's concern about this section of the party dates back at least to his arrival in Mexico in 1937 – that is, to the beginning of the period in which Trotsky was able to observe the American Trotskyist movement from close at hand. Trotsky's essential concern was that the party was adapting to the 'progressive' anti-Stalinist elements inside the trade union movement and that this adaptation was paralysing the party as far as: (1) a concrete political struggle against Roosevelt whom these progressives supported and (2) an orientation towards the healthy forces within the Stalinist movement. This adaptation also meant that the trade union cadres of the SWP, while functioning as class-conscious trade union militants, were not being developed into revolutionary communists.

In particular Trotsky was highly critical of the party-dominated teamster paper, put out under the supervision of Farrell Dobbs, the North-west Organiser, which he felt was apolitical and which made no attempt to implement the line of favouring independent class political action worked out in connection with the Transitional Programme. In fact Trotsky pressed the party hard on this score precisely during the discussions around the Transitional Programme in early 1938. In 1939, as is testified in In Defence of Marxism, Trotsky urged a special orientation towards the Stalinist rank and file. He urged this on both Cannon and Shachtman but nothing was done about it. In 1940, when the question came up again for discussion with Trotsky after the split with Shachtman, Hansen summarised the past period as follows:

'Yesterday Comrade Trotsky made some remarks about our adaptation to the so-called progressives in the trade union, he mentioned the line of the North-west Organiser and also our attitude in connection with the elections and the Stalinists. I wish to point out that this is not something completely new on Comrade Trotsky's part. More than two years ago, during the discussions over the Transitional Programme, he discussed exactly these same points and had exactly the same position, with due regard for the differences in time and that then it was not the elections but the farmer-labour party that was to the fore. Comrade Trotsky also has written some letters regarding the Stalinists and the need for a more positive line towards them. ' 24

In April of 1939, just a few months before the outbreak of the factional struggle, Trotsky held a series of very important discussions with Johnson and other Negro comrades on the party's Negro work. It is important that it was Trotsky who forced upon the SWP the importance of the American Negro, a question almost totally neglected in the past period. In fact, in 1933, Arne Swabeck, in discussions with Trotsky on the same question, was not even aware as to whether American Negroes in the South spoke a different language! 25 In the course of this discussion Trotsky was deeply concerned as to why the SWP so far had neglected work in this field. As he sought to discover the reasons for this it was precisely the proletarian section of the party and its leadership that came under his criticism:

'I believe that the first question is the attitude of the Socialist Workers Party towards the Negroes. It is very disquieting to find that until now the party has done almost nothing in this field. It has not published a book, a pamphlet, leaflets, nor even any articles in the New International. Two comrades who compiled a book on the question, a serious work, remained isolated. That book is not published, nor are even quotations from it published. It is not a good sign. It is a bad sign. The characteristic thing about American workers' parties, trade union organisations, and so on, was their aristocratic character. It is the basis of opportunism. The skilled workers who feel set in the capitalist society help the bourgeois class to hold the Negroes and unskilled workers down to a very low scale. Our party is not safe from degeneration if it remains a place for intellectuals, semi-intellectuals, skilled workers and Jewish workers who build a very close milieu which is almost isolated from the genuine masses. Under this condition our party cannot develop – it will degenerate.

'We must have this great danger before our eyes. Many times I have said that every member of the party, especially the intellectuals and the semi-intellectuals, who, during a period of say six months, cannot each win a worker-member for the party, should be demoted to the position of sympathiser. We can say the same on the Negro question. The old organisations, beginning with the AFL, are the organisations of the workers' aristocracy. Our party is a part of the same milieu, not of the basic most exploited masses of whom the Negroes are the most exploited. The fact that our party until now has not turned to the Negro question is a very disquieting symptom. If the workers' aristocracy is the basis of opportunism, one of the sources of adaptation to capitalist society, then the most oppressed and discriminated are the most dynamic milieu of the working class.' 26

Over half a century earlier Engels used almost the same language to characterise the native-born workers of that period! The problem was still with the Marxist movement.

Once again during the actual factional struggle with Shachtman Trotsky was to raise this issue. This is particularly important because it meant criticising that section of the party which supported him, and thus running the risk of aiding his opponents. But he felt it was important enough to risk that, so important in fact that he put the critical section in italics in his 'From a Scratch to the Danger of Gangrene':

'It would be asinine to think that the workers' section of the party is perfect. The workers are only gradually reaching clear class consciousness. The trade unions always create a culture medium for opportunist deviations. Inevitably we will run up against this question in one of the next stages. More than once the party will have to remind its own trade unionists that a pedagogical adaptation to the more backward layers of the proletariat must not become transformed into a political adaptation to the conservative bureaucracy of the trade unions. Every new stage of development, every increase in the party ranks and the complication of the methods of work open up not only new possibilities but new dangers. Workers in the trade unions, even those trained in the most revolutionary school, often display a tendency to free themselves from party control. At the present time, however, this is not the question. ' 27

While this was not the pressing question at the time of this fundamental struggle Trotsky makes it clear that this could be a pressing question in the future unless the cadre was educated now. This idea guided to a great extent his whole approach to the discussion with Shachtman and Co. It was aimed, not only at reaching those who could be reached in the Shachtman camp but educating his own supporters. He went into detail on the ABC of dialectics in such a way that the average worker in the party could understand it.

Trotsky intervened in particular to prevent a premature split and to prolong the discussion as long as possible. It is clear from even the published exchange between Cannon and Trotsky on this point that Cannon as early as October 1939 was impatient with the struggle and wanted to bring it to an organisational conclusion while Trotsky sought to extend it as long as possible. Trotsky wrote a very sharp and clear letter to Cannon on October 28, 1939 28 in response to a letter of Cannon's of October 24, 1939. 29 Trotsky's letter was 'inadvertently' left out of In Defence of Marxism but was published in a footnote in The Struggle for a Proletarian Party. He warns, after reading Cannon's letter:

It would be extremely prejudicial if not fatal to connect this ideological fight with the perspective of a split, of a purge, or expulsions, and so on and so forth. You have many new members and uneducated youth. They need a serious educational discussion in the light of great events. If their thoughts at the beginning are obsessed by the perspective of personal degradation, ie, demotions, loss of prestige, disqualifications, eliminations from Central Committee, etc, and so on, the whole discussion would become envenomed and the authority of the leadership would be compromised. If the leadership on the contrary opens a ruthless fight against petty-bourgeois idealistic conceptions and organisational prejudices but at the same time assures all the necessary guarantees for the discussion itself and for the minority, the result would be not only an ideological victory but an important growth in the authority of the leadership.

Trotsky continued to press this point over and over again throughout the discussion right to the very eve of the split with the minority. 30 In fact every peaceful gesture aimed at extending the discussion and preventing a split came from Trotsky, not Cannon. Trotsky was especially disconcerted over the tendency of the rank-and-file majority supporters to grow impatient with the political struggle and to wish to get on with their concrete work unimpeded by such a struggle. In response to letters from Cannon expressing the impatience of many of the trade unionists in the party with the length of the discussion, Trotsky writes back, 'I understand the impatience of many Majority comrades (I suppose that this impatience is not infrequently connected with theoretical indifference).' 31 This educational need was also the reason for his proposal in a letter to Warde that he, Wright, and Gerland form 'the first nucleus' of a theoretical association within the party to promote dialectical materialism. 32

Fundamental to an understanding of this question was a discussion held with the leaders of this section, Cannon, Dobbs, and others, in June, 1940, after the split with Shachtman and less than two months before Trotsky's death. Luckily the stenogram of this discussion was published at the insistence of George Clarke in 1953 – otherwise it would have never seen the light of day. We append it to this article in its entirety so that the reader can see the actual give-and-take between Trotsky and the leadership of the SWP – to judge Trotsky's assessment of this leadership and his approach to it.

While the concrete issue in discussion was a proposal for a tactical orientation towards the Stalinists, in reality the discussion centred on the adaptation of the basic trade union cadres of the SWP to the progressives within the trade union movement and the SWP leadership's failure to do anything about this situation. Most important of all then is the documentation of the fear of the SWP leadership of being forced to break with its collaborators in the trade union movement in order to reach out to the Stalinist workers, then in crisis.

Hansen asks Trotsky point blank:

'I am wondering if Comrade Trotsky considers that our party is displaying a conservative tendency in the sense that we are adapting ourselves politically to the trade union bureaucracy.' 33

Trotsky answers frankly:

'To a certain degree I believe it is so. ' . . . In observing the North-west Organiser I have observed not the slightest change during a whole period. It remains apolitical. This is a dangerous symptom. The complete neglect of work in relation to the Stalinist party is another dangerous symptom. . . .It seems to me that a kind of passive adaptation to our trade union work can be recognised. There is not an immediate danger, but a serious warning indicating a change in direction is necessary. Many comrades are more interested in trade union work than in party work. More party cohesion is needed, more sharp manoeuvring, a more serious systematic theoretical training; otherwise the trade unions can absorb our comrades.' 34

We see a consistent thread in Trotsky's assessment of the Cannon section of the party. It was the most proletarian, and thus the most healthy, section of the party. Its existence is what gave the SWP of the 1930s its importance and was a credit to all that was positive and good in the American Trotskyist movement – and in the American radical tradition. The alliance of Trotsky with Cannon against the petty-bourgeois opposition was natural and necessary. It was an alliance of the party's strengths against its weaknesses.

However, it was not an uncritical alliance. Trotsky was fully aware that the Cannon section of the party, more than any other section, reflected the empiricism and syndicalism of the trade union rank and file in the United States. It had a disdain for theory and was itself aristocratic and quite distant from the most exploited layers of the proletariat in the United States – especially considering the party's failures in reaching young workers and Negroes. Lacking theoretical training and having an aristocratic position within the class it could not help but degenerate unless it was educated theoretically. Trotsky devoted his efforts in the last days of his life to seeking to impress upon the Cannon leadership the necessity of such theoretical development. The key to this theoretical development was, in Trotsky's view, a deeper understanding of the Marxist method itself. It was this, he hoped, that intellectuals like Warde and Wright would impart to the party.

Trotsky was fully aware of Cannon's weaknesses as well as his strengths. He knew as well as anyone that Cannon had contributed to the crisis of 1940 as much as Shachtman because Cannon was incapable of giving theoretical leadership in the party and in this way bringing about a fusion of the best elements in the intellectual and student sections of the party and raising the theoretical level of the proletarian section of the party. To blame Cannon for this is only to compliment him – it is to say that he was the real leader of the party and thus, more than the literary figure Shachtman, was responsible for the party's condition.

Trotsky summarises well his assessment of Cannon at the time of the Shachtman fight and thus explains why he supported Cannon so solidly against Shachtman. 'Cannon represents the proletarian party in process of formation. The historical right in this struggle – independent of what errors and mistakes might have been made – rests solely on the side of Cannon.' (emphasis ours) 35 He did not view Cannon as a finished Marxist leader nor his tendency, which emerged as the unchallenged leadership of the SWP which was to reign for the next 24 years, as a finished Marxist tendency. He saw it rather as a revolutionary party in the process of formation – as a force out of which could emerge a Marxist movement in the United States. His remarks of June 1940, just before his death, make it completely clear that the emergence of this tendency as a Marxist party would not be an automatic process, nor was it guaranteed success. The danger of its degeneration was clearly seen even at this time.

In his oft-quoted letter on Cannon's Struggle for a Proletarian Party, Trotsky refers to Cannon as a 'genuine workers' leader' 36 This was a correct assessment of Cannon. Cannon showed his ability as a workers' leader in the days of the IWW. He reasserted it once more in his long battle in the Communist Party for a proletarian orientation. Once again, he rose to the occasion in the American Trotskyist movement to battle to orientate the movement towards the class. Yes, Cannon was a genuine workers' leader. The challenge that Cannon has faced since his entrance into the CP was the need to be more than a genuine workers' leader. He needed to go beyond the simply empirical class struggle outlook of a Big Bill Haywood, a Vincent St John, and the many other fine workers' leaders in United States history. He needed to become a genuine revolutionary communist.

To become a revolutionary communist Cannon needed to master Marxist theory. In the 1920s Cannon sought to get over this by taking his theory as given from the Russians. But the Stalinization of the Comintern caused the Russians to turn on him. Emerging on his own in 1928 he looked to Trotsky to develop theory and Shachtman and his friends to present it propagandistically in this country. This division of labour broke down in the debacle of 1940. Shachtman turned on Cannon and Trotsky had to supplant Cannon for the duration of the battle in order to save the Fourth International itself.

But Trotsky soon was killed. Even if he was able to continue to play the role of leadership for the SWP, Stalin's axe prevented it. Cannon was now for the first time in his life really on his own. The next 24 years were to tell what Cannon had actually learned in the past period. In 1940, after 20 years of American communism, the challenge before the SWP was whether or not it was to become a revolutionary communist formation.

Discussions with Leon Trotsky in 1940

The following is a rough stenographic draft – uncorrected by the participants – of discussions with Trotsky on the Stalinists held on June 12-15, 1940.

[Reprinted from Internal Bulletin, Vol. 15, No. 10, April 1953 (Socialist Workers Party, New York)].

Cannon: . . . The general perspective is quite optimistic. The Stalinists are the problem. By their change in line they dealt a heavy blow. We were forging ahead when they made the switch, paralyzing our work. The workers are unable to distinguish the real difference between us, especially with the faction fight compelling us to give undue emphasis to our defence of the Soviet Union. We need a line of agitation to distinguish ourselves from them. The Stalinist party still has a powerful cadre of militants. It has a strong trade union machine which draws the workers. The pact seemed to disintegrate them, but it was losing just the democrats. The old militants are more devoted than ever. They believe that the party now has the 'real revolutionary' line. We need a more effective counterattack against the Stalinists.

Trotsky: We don't participate in the presidential elections?

Cannon: There are very rigorous election laws which prevent small parties from getting on the ballot.

Trotsky: And the CP?

Cannon: The CP buys its way on to the ballot. For example in upper New York where it is extremely reactionary, the CP simply buys signatures from those who make a business of dealing in signatures. For us there is no way to get on the ballot.

Trotsky: Your attitude toward the other parties?

Cannon: We are running local campaigns in some places for minor offices.

Trotsky: What do we tell the workers when they ask which president they should vote for?

Cannon: They shouldn't ask such embarrassing questions. We tried write-in campaigns in previous elections, but it is not serious. Nor can we support either the Stalinists or Thomas.

Trotsky: I see there is no campaign in the Socialist Appeal for a workers' candidate. Why haven't you proposed a congress of trade unions, a convention, to nominate a candidate for the presidency? If he were independent we would support him. We cannot remain completely indifferent. We can very well insist in unions where we have influence that Roosevelt is not our candidate and the workers must have their own candidate. We should demand a nationwide congress connected with the independent Labour Party.

Dobbs: For a while some people thought Lewis would run. But Lewis never seriously intended to run. He attempted to bargain with the Roosevelt administration. Now it appears certain that Roosevelt will run.

Trotsky: With the centrists the situation is clear. For a long time in the United States, the socialist movement was not necessary. Now with changed times when it is necessary, it can't have a reformist nature. That possibility is exhausted. At one time the United States was rich in reformist tendencies, but the New Deal was the last flare-up. Now with the war it is clear that the New Deal exhausted all the reformist and democratic possibilities and created incomparably more favourable possibilities for revolution.

I talked with E. a few weeks ago. For Roosevelt, but absolutely helpless about further possibilities of democracy. When I questioned him he was absolutely incapable of answering, and I thought he was going to break down in tears like a little boy.

The entrance into the war is the end of the last remnants of the New Deal and Good Neighbour policy. The Roosevelt of the third term will be completely different from the Roosevelt of the first two terms.

Dobbs: In the CIO and the AFL the leaders have been affected by Roosevelt's war drive, becoming more and more outspoken for unity. Tobin has become more expressive, more deeply involved. Behind the scenes he moves in co-ordination with the war moves. Dubinsky, one of the original CIO leaders, voted to re-affiliate with the AFL thus weakening Lewis. Hillman, a CIO leader, negotiated a jurisdiction agreement with Dubinsky and is cool toward Lewis. There is grave danger of capitulation on the part of the bureaucrats, weakening the industrial workers. Lewis may have to reach unity at the expense of industrial unionism. All these leaders are jumping as Roosevelt cracks the whip.

Trotsky: The Stalinists are clearly the most important for us. E. says they lost 15 per cent but that the workers remain true to the party. It is a question of attitude. Their dependence on the Kremlin was of great value to the national leaders. Their line was changed from patriotism to antiwar. In the next period their dependence on the Kremlin will create great difficulties for them.

They are antiwar and anti-imperialist, but so are we in general. Do we have a nucleus among them?

Cannon: We have a small nucleus in New York and in one or two other places.

Trotsky: Sent in?

Dobbs: No. They came to us and we advised them to stay and work within.

Cannon: We got some with our campaign against the fascists.

Trotsky: Theoretically it is possible to support the Stalinist candidate. It is a way of approaching the Stalinist workers. We can say, yes we know this candidate. But we will give critical support. We can repeat on a small scale what we would do if Lewis were nominated.

Theoretically it is not impossible. It would be very difficult, it is true – but then it is only an analysis. They, of course, would say, we don't want your support. We would answer, we don't support you, but the workers who support you. We warn them but go through the experience with them. These leaders will betray you. It is necessary to find an approach to the Stalinist party. Theoretically it is not impossible to support their candidates with very sharp warnings. It would guide them. What? How?

Kay: But in Boston the Stalinists wouldn't even permit us to enter their hall. They even threw our comrade outside.

Trotsky: I know. They have even shot at us. But some tens of thousands of workers are with them. I don't know exactly how many. It is very difficult to determine. Of course, we would suffer the indignation of Burnham. Shachtman would say, 'See, I predicted it – capitulation to Stalinism. ' There would even be considerable aversion in our ranks. But the question is the Stalinist workers. The working class is decisive. With guarantees, warnings, why not consider it? Is Browder a worse rascal than Lewis? I doubt it. Both are rascals.

Cannon: The Stalinist movement is peculiar. In France we could approach the Socialists and join them. The Stalinists are large compared to us but small compared with the CIO. The Stalinists are hated by the militants. It is not the psychological attitude of our members but the broad anti-Stalinist movement. If we started to play this kind of politics we would run into this indignation of these militants. For example, the food workers in New York. Our comrades succeeded in creating a strong progressive faction. They may possibly be elected to posts. We built our strength on opposition to Stalinist control of the union. Such a line would disrupt our work. The same is true in the maritime unions and in the auto union. The Stalinists are the main obstacle. A policy of manoeuvre would be disastrous. What we gained from the Stalinists we would lose otherwise.

Trotsky: Before entrance into the Socialist Party we tried to analyse the situation in the same way. Before entrance into the Socialist Party we had the perspective of exhausting all the possibilities. We were not closer to Thomas than we are to Browder. Those advocating entry predicted that we would finish with the SP and then turn to the CP. Imagine the CP without holding a specific hatred toward it. Could we enter it as we did the SP? I see no reason why not – theoretically. Physically it would be impossible but not in principle. After entrance into the SP there is nothing that would prevent our entrance into the CP. But that is excluded. We can't enter. They won't let us.

Can we make this manoeuvre from the outside? The progressive elements oppose the Stalinists but we don't win many progressive elements. Everywhere we meet Stalinists. How to break the Stalinist party? The support of the progressives is not stable. It is found at the top of the union rather than as a rank-and-file current. Now with the war we will have these progressives against us. We need a stronger base in the ranks. There are small Tobins on whom we depend. They depend on the big Tobins. They on Roosevelt. This phase is inevitable. It opened the door for us in the trade unions. But it can become dangerous. We can't depend on these elements or their sentiments. We will lose them and isolate ourselves from the Stalinist workers. Now we have no attitude toward them. Burnham and Shachtman opposed an active attitude toward the Stalinists. They represent a whole period from 1917 up to date. We can't move without them. The coincidence between their slogans and ours is transitory, but it can give us a bridge to these workers. The question must be examined. If persecutions should begin tomorrow, it would be first against them, second against us. The honest, hard members will remain true. The progressives are a type in the leadership. The rank and file are disquieted, unconsciously revolutionary.

Dobbs: It is not quite correct to say that the 'progressives' include only the tops of the unions. The progressives include the rank and file, especially is this true in the big unions.

Cannon: They are not cohesive, but in revolt against the Stalinists. Where the Stalinists control the union that is where a real anti-Stalinist movement is strongest. The Stalinists control the maritime unions by and large and we have a powerful experience in development of a progressive revolt against them.

Harold: The trade union movement grew by the millions. A new bureaucracy was formed, there was a new stream of union conscious members. In there were two currents, the Stalinists and the anti-Stalinists. Both streams included both rank and filers and bureaucrats.

Trotsky: But why the difference?

Harold: The differences began in 1934 when the Stalinists emerged from the red unions and were taken as a revolutionary movement. Many were corrupted. Many thought the New Deal swing a manoeuvre. The Stalinists made a deal with the CIO tops. They led many unions. They had a reputation of militancy. No one policy it is true, but they recruited as revolutionists. Now they are not considered revolutionists. Many of the best have dropped out. Those remaining are bureaucrats or confused.

Cannon: The problem is to get the CP out of the road. There is not a large percentage of revolutionary material in its ranks. They have discounted workers who saw no other force. They attract through the sheer inertia of a big apparatus and a big party. They use corruption where they do not already control the machinery. They use economic terrorism. They do everything the old-time bureaucrats did, but on a conveyor system. Unquestionably there are good workers among them, but only a small percentage. It is a terrible danger to risk the condemnation of non-Stalinist workers for the sake of a manoeuvre that would win little. The progressive movement is composed of anti-Stalinists and legitimate rank-and-file forces organised by us. The Stalinists even buy old-time fakers. They provide a legitimate movement of protest which is our main source of recruitment and which comes during the struggle against the CP. In the Los Angeles auto movement, for example, some ex-CPers organised a counter-movement from which we recruited. The Stalinists have built up a terrible hatred against themselves. Seventy-five per cent is genuine workers' grievances and consists of many former Stalinists animated by a terrible bitterness. A complicated manoeuvre giving the possibility of identifying us with the Stalinists would be wrong. Our main line must be towards the non-Stalinist workers. We must handle the Stalinist question within this framework.

Jeb: I am against the manoeuvre. Perhaps I am not entirely rational about this. Perhaps it is mostly from inertia. Cannon wrote about the Stalinists that they are an alien movement in the workers' movement, irresponsible. Our influence in the progressive groups is a top movement, not a rank-and-file movement, especially in New York. Our position is very precarious. Not something that we can look forward to as a big recruiting ground. The Stalinists' influence in the ranks is quite solid. They make deals with the old-time fakers, but also have a rank-and-file following. In the painters' union they made a deal with the gangsters but also were supported by the anti-gangster following. We built up a movement, kicked out the Stalinists but couldn't consolidate or recruit. Stalinists operate with corruption but different degrees of corruption. A worker in the TWU who quit the CP in 1938 told us that they are disillusioned with the CP but not enough to join us. They use corruption by degrees – the best jobs are given to the Stalinists, lesser jobs to the group surrounding them, lesser jobs to sympathisers. The militants don't regard themselves as corrupt – just members of the CP. 'If we don't get the jobs, the reactionaries will.' That seems to be their attitude.

But we don't have contact with the Stalinist rank and file. Before we could take such a manoeuvre we need to organise a nucleus in the Stalinists.

Trotsky: If the results of our conversation were nothing more than more precise investigation in relation to the Stalinists it would be very fruitful.

Our party is not bound to the Stalinist manoeuvre any more than it was to the SP manoeuvre. Nevertheless we undertook such a manoeuvre. We must add up the pluses and minuses. The Stalinists gained their influence during the past ten years. There was the depression and then the tremendous trade union movement culminating in the CIO. Only the craft unionists could remain indifferent. The Stalinists tried to exploit this movement, to build up their own bureaucracy. The progressives are afraid of this. The politics of these so-called progressives is determined by their need to meet the needs of the workers in this movement, on the other hand it comes from fear of the Stalinists. They can't have the same policy as Green because otherwise the Stalinists would occupy their posts. Their existence is a reflex of this new movement, but it is not a direct reflection of the rank and file. It is an adaptation of the conservative bureaucrats to this situation. There are two competitors, the progressive bureaucrats and the Stalinists. We are a third competitor trying to capture this sentiment. These progressive bureaucrats can lean on us for advisors in the fight against the Stalinists. But the role of an advisor to a progressive bureaucrat doesn't promise much in the long run. Our real role is that of third competitor. Then the question of our attitude toward these bureaucrats – do we have an absolutely clear position toward these competitors? These bureaucrats are Rooseveltians, militarists. We tried to penetrate the trade unions with their help. This was a correct manoeuvre, I believe. We can say that the question of the Stalinists would be resolved in passing insofar as we succeed in our main manoeuvre. But before the presidential campaign and the war question we have time for a small manoeuvre. We can say, your leaders betray you, but we support you without any confidence in your leaders in order to show that we can go with you and to show that your leaders will betray you. It is a short manoeuvre, not hinging on the main question of the war. But it is necessary to know incomparably better the Stalinists and their place in the trade unions, their reaction to our party. It would be fatal to pay too much attention to the impression that we can make on the pacifists and on our 'progressive' bureaucrat friends. In this case we become the squeezed lemon of the bureaucrats. They use us against the Stalinists but as the war nears call us unpatriotic and expel us. These Stalinist workers can become revolutionary, especially if Moscow changes its line and becomes patriotic. At the time of Finland, Moscow made a difficult turn, a new turn is still more painful. But we must have contact and information. I don't insist on this plan, understand, but we must have a plan. What plan do you propose? The progressive bureaucrats and dishonest centrists of the trade union movement reflect important changes in the base, but the question is how to approach the base? We encounter between us and the base, the Stalinists.

Kay: To support the Stalinists in the presidential campaign would kill us. They shift their line.

Trotsky: Nothing can kill us, Comrade Kay.

Kay: Our sympathisers would be driven away. The Stalinists cannot even talk with us. They are expelled for talking with us.

Trotsky: That is a blow against the party. They say that we are agents of this and that power. We say, if your leaders are serious against the war then we are with you, but your leaders will betray you. It is the politics of critical support. Tobin, for example, is a faker combined with a reactionary stupid petty-bourgeois, but would we vote for him if he were running on an independent ticket for president? Yes.

Kay: But Tobin or Lewis wouldn't kill us.

Trotsky: I am not so sure. Lewis would kill us very efficiently if he were elected and war came. It is not a sentimental question. It is how to break this hypnosis. They say the Trotskyites are agents – but we say if you are seriously against the war we are with you. Even the problem of making them listen to us – we meet that by explaining. It is a very daring undertaking. But the cohesion of our party is such that we could succeed. But if we reject this plan, then we must find another policy. I repeat then we must find another policy. What is it?

Carl: We must keep aware of the main task, to present ourselves to the American workers. I think that we would be swallowed up in this manoeuvre because of the size of the party. Now we are becoming able to separate ourselves from them – but this manoeuvre would swallow us up. We must be careful to make an independent stand, not as an opposition movement to the Stalinists.

Trotsky: It is not a question of entry. And such a manoeuvre would be very short and very critical. The manoeuvre itself presupposes that we are an independent party. The manoeuvre is a measure of our independence. The workers of the Stalinist party are in a closed milieu, hypnotised by lies for a long time. Now the persecution from the war begins. Our criticisms seem part of the persecution and suddenly we appear to support them – because of the bourgeois persecution. I don't say even that we will actually vote for them – by November the situation can change. The leaders can carry out their betrayal.

Hansen: The manoeuvre seems to me to bear some resemblance to our united front proposal to the CP at the time of the anti-fascist demonstrations. At the first demonstration, we made no such proposals. Many of the rank and file of our party criticised us. At the second demonstration we made such a proposal. It brought immediate response from the Stalinists. The rank and file were favourably impressed and questioned their leaders. The leaders were forced to launch a new campaign against us. We gained some members as a result.

Trotsky: The analogy holds except that then we had the initiative. Now they have the initiative. Good, we support this initiative. An investigation is needed, a small conference. I don't wish to exaggerate this manoeuvre. It is not our strategic line, but a tactical question. It is one possibility.

Dobbs: It seems to me you are considering two aspects of the question. One, you are weighing the question as to whether more is to be gained in numbers and quality than would be lost among the anti-Stalinists. Two, the manoeuvre is possible only while they have an antiwar attitude.

Trotsky: Yes. The Stalinist machine makes different turns and manoeuvres in obedience to Moscow. Now they make a turn corresponding to the most intimate feelings of the rank and file. Now we can approach them or remain indifferent. We can give support to them against their leaders or remain aside.

There is a presidential campaign besides this. If you are an independent party you must have politics, a line in relation to this campaign. I have tried to combine the two in a not decisive but important period. It combines the honest feelings of the Stalinist rank and file and also touches the masses at election time. If you had an independent candidate I would be for him, but where is he? It is either complete abstention from the campaign because of technical reasons, or you must choose between Browder and Norman Thomas. We can accept abstention. The bourgeois state deprived us of the possibility of running our candidate. We can proclaim that everyone is a faker. That is one thing, but events confirming our proclamation is another. Shall we follow negative or dynamic politics? I must say that during the conversation I have become still more convinced that we must follow the dynamic course. However, I propose only a serious investigation, a discussion, and then a conference. We must have our own politics. Imagine the effect on the Stalinist rank and file. It would be very good. They expect from such a terrible enemy as us that we will throw very cold water on them. We will surprise them with some terribly hot water.

Trotsky: Toledano's speech, reported today in the press, is important for our policy in America. The Mexican people, says Toledano, 'love' the United States and will fight the Nazis arms in hand. Toledano indicates complete fraternisation with the democracies. This is the first announcement of a new turn by Moscow. I have a concrete suggestion, that we publish a letter to the Stalinist workers: during five years your leaders were protagonists of the democracies, then they changed and were against all the imperialisms. If you make a firm decision not to permit a change in line then we are ready to convoke a convention to support your presidential candidate. You must give a pledge. It would be a letter of propaganda and agitation to the Stalinist workers. We will see. It is probable that the line will change in some weeks. This letter would give you free possibilities without having to vote for their candidate.

Cannon: They will probably make a change before we return.

Trotsky: Yes it is quite likely.

Cannon: We must exercise great caution in dealing with the Stalinists in order not to compromise ourselves. Yesterday's discussion took a one-sided channel regarding our relations in the unions, that we act only as attorneys for the progressive labour fakers. This is very false. Our objective is to create our own forces. The problem is how to begin. All sectarians are independent forces – in their own imagination. Your impression that the anti-Stalinists are rival labour fakers is not quite correct. It has that aspect, but it has other aspects too. Without opposition to the Stalinists we have no reason for existing in the unions. We start as oppositionists and become irreconcilable. Where small groups break their necks is that they scorn manoeuvres and combinations and never consolidate anything. At the opposite extreme is the Lovestone group.

In one union we began without any members, the way we usually begin. Up to the time of the war it was hard to find a more fruitful ground than the anti-Stalinist elements. We began with this idea, that it is impossible to play a role in the unions unless you have people in the unions. With a small party, the possibility to enter is the first essential. In this union we made a combination with syndicalist elements. It was an exceptional situation, a small weak bureaucracy, most of whose policies were correct and which was against the Stalinists. It was incomprehensible that we could play any role except as an opposition to the Stalinists who were the most treacherous elements in the situation. We formed a tacit bloc with the one possibility to enter the union freely. We were weak numerically, strong politically. The progressives grew, defeated the Stalinists. We grew too. We have 50 members and may possess soon 50 more. We followed a very careful policy – not to have sharp clashes which were not necessary anyway so far, so as not to bring about a premature split – not to let the main fight against the Stalinists be obscured. The maritime unions are an important section in the field. Our first enemy there is the Stalinists. They are the big problem. In new unions such as the maritime – which in reality surged forward in 1934, shattering the old bureaucracy, the Stalinists came to the fore. The old-fashioned craft unionists cannot prevail against the Stalinists. The struggle for control is between us and the Stalinists. We have to be careful not to compromise this fight. We must be the classical intransigent force. The Stalinists gained powerful positions in these unions, especially in the auto union. The Lovestoneites followed the policy outlined by Trotsky yesterday – attorneys for the labour fakers, especially in auto. They disappeared from the scene. We followed a more careful policy. We tried to exploit the differences between the Martin gang and the Stalinists. For a while we were the left wing of the Martin outfit, but we extricated ourselves in the proper time. Auto is ostensibly CIO but in reality the Stalinists are in control. Now we are coming forward as the leading and inspiring circle in the rank and file that has no top leaders, that is anti-Stalinist, anti-patriotic, anti-Lewis. We have every chance for success. We must not overlook the possibility that these chances developed from experiments in the past period to exploit differences between union tops. If we had taken a sectarian attitude we would still be there.

In the food unions there was an inchoate opposition to the Stalinists. There were office seekers, progressives, former CPers. We have only a few people. We must link ourselves with one or the other to come forward. Later we will be able to come forward. Two things can compromise us. One, confusion with the Stalinists. Two, a purist attitude. If we imagine ourselves a power, ignoring the differences between the reactionary wings, we will remain sterile.

Dobbs: The general situation leads me to believe that we would lose more than we would gain from giving the impression that we are locking arms with the Stalinists. We have made connections with reactionary people but at the same time we have gained some very good trade union elements, bringing them closer to true Bolshevism. We have gained additional footholds. In one basic union we have 22 comrades in the rank-and-file movement, some playing a very important role. At the last convention one comrade especially got the biggest ovation at the convention when he made his speech. Prior to the convention we had only a small nucleus. Since then we have grown among the rank and file.

Trotsky: Can we get them to go against Roosevelt?

Dobbs: Yes.

Trotsky: For whom will they vote?

Dobbs: I don't know. Maybe Roosevelt. For us to turn to the Stalinists will sow real confusion in their minds. It should not be rushed in any case.

Trotsky: I believe we have the critical point very clear. We are in a bloc with so-called progressives – not only fakers but honest rank and file. Yes they are honest and progressives but from time to time they vote for Roosevelt – once in four years. This is decisive. You propose a trade union policy not a Bolshevik policy. Bolshevik policies begin outside the trade unions. The worker is an honest trade unionist but far from Bolshevik politics. The honest militant can develop but it is not identical with being a Bolshevik. You are afraid to become compromised in the eyes of the Rooseveltian trade-unionists. They on the other hand are not worried in the slightest about being compromised by voting for Roosevelt against you. We are afraid of being compromised. If you are afraid, you lose your independence and become half-Rooseveltian. In peace time this is not catastrophic. In war time it will compromise us. They can smash us. Our policy is too much for pro-Rooseveltian trade unionists. I notice that in the Northwest Organiser this is true. We discussed it before, but not a word was changed; not a single word. The danger – a terrible danger – is adaptation to the pro-Rooseveltian trade unionists. You don't give any answer to the elections, not even the beginning of an answer. But we must have a policy.

It is not necessary now to vote for Browder. We are against Roosevelt. As for Norman Thomas he is just a political misunderstanding. Browder, however, is a tremendous handicap because he has a 'revolutionary' attitude toward the imperialist war, etc. I understand that the situation is difficult.

What I propose is a manifesto to the Stalinist workers, to say that for five years you were for Roosevelt, then you changed. This turn is in the right direction. Will you develop and continue this policy or not? Will you let the leaders change it or not? Will you continue and develop it or not? If you are firm we will support you. In this manifesto we can say that if you fix a sharp program for your candidate, then we will vote for him. I see no reason why we can't say this with these ifs. Does this signify that we have changed our trade union policy? Not at all. We continue to oppose them as before. We say, if you seriously consider your attitude to Roosevelt you would have such and such policy in the trade unions. But you don't have such a policy there. We can't go along with you in the trade unions.

I would be very glad to hear even one single word from you on policy in regard to the presidential election.

Cannon: It is not entirely correct to pose the problem in that way. We are not with the pro-Roosevelt militants. We developed when the Stalinists were pro-Rooseveltian. Their present attitude is conjunctural. It is not correct that we lean towards Roosevelt. Comrade Trotsky's polemic is a polemic for an independent candidate. If we were opposed to that then his account would be correct. For technical reasons we can't have an independent candidate. The real answer is independent politics.

It is a false issue: Roosevelt versus the Stalinists. It is not a bonafide class opposition to Roosevelt. Possibly we could support Browder against Roosevelt, but Browder would not only repudiate our votes, but would withdraw in favour of Roosevelt.

Trotsky: That would be the very best occurrence for us. After laying down our conditions for support, this capitulation would win us a section of the Stalinists. It is not a strategic policy but a policy for the presidential campaign only.

The fact is that they have developed this anti-war propaganda. We must consider this important fact in the life of the American workers. We begin with nothing being done about the Stalinists.

The 'progressive' rank and file are a kind of semi-fabrication. They have class-struggle tendencies but they vote for Roosevelt. They are not formed politically. The rank-and-file Stalinists are not worse. They are caught in a machine. They are disciplined, political. Our aim is to oppose the Stalinist worker to the machine. How accomplish this? By leaving them alone? We will never do it. By postponing? That is not a policy.

We are for an independent labour ticket, but we don't even have this expressed in our press. Why? Because our party is embarrassed. It has no line on the elections.

Last January we discussed a campaign in the unions to have our own trade union presidential candidate. We were to propose to him that we would vote for him if he were nominated. Even Lewis. We were to begin the campaigning for a labour president. But not a thing was done. Nothing appeared. Nothing in the Northwest Organiser.

Dobbs: Perhaps it was my fault –

Trotsky: No. That is the bad Hitler theory of history –

I can't explain it by negligence. Nor just because it is a trade union paper with just a trade union policy. The members of the party could write letters to the editor. What do their trade union leaders believe? Why can't our comrades write to the Northwest Organiser? We discussed in detail the technical details. But nothing was done. Why? It signifies an immediate clash with the Rooseveltians – not the rank and file – but a clash with our allies, the machine, the conscious Rooseveltians, who would immediately attack, a clash with our own class enemies such as Tobin.

Cannon: It is necessary to counterpose trade union candidates in the field. That would retain our following. But what I can't accept is Browder as a symbol of the class struggle.

Trotsky: That is a bit of false polemics. In January I didn't propose Browder, but you are reduced to Browder or Roosevelt. Why this lack of initiative? Why were these six months not utilised? Why? It is not reduced to an individual fight, it has general reasons. I discussed with O'Shea two years ago this same problem and this same necessity. With Jones too. But the Northwest Organiser remains unchanged. It is a photograph of our adaptation to the Rooseveltians.

Understand, I don't believe that it would be advisable for important comrades to start such a campaign. But even totally unknown comrades could write such letters. He could write the Executive Board of the union, asking them what will be the fate of the workers. What kind of a president do we need? At least five months were not utilised. Completely lost. So we should lose two or three months more?

And Browder suddenly becomes an ideal political figure for me! A little false polemics.

How reach a compromise? I ask two or three hundred Stalinist workers. That is the minimum requirement. We can get them by holding their leaders to a class struggle policy. Are you ready to impose this class struggle line on your leader, we ask. Then we will find common ground.

It is not just to write a manifesto, but to turn our political face to the Stalinist workers. What is bad about that? We begin an action against the Stalinists, what is wrong with that?

I propose a compromise. I will evaluate Browder 50 per cent lower than I estimate him now in return for 50 per cent more interest from you in the Stalinist party.

Cannon: It has many complications.

Jeb: On the question of adaptation to Roosevelt's program by our trade union comrades. Is it true? If so it was necessary for our trade union work. The trade unionists are for Roosevelt. If we want to make headway we have to adapt – by not unfolding our full program – in order to get a foothold for the next stage. We are still at the beginning despite all the work done. That is one thing, but to make it a permanent policy is another thing. We are against that. What is the right time to make the break? Have we exhausted the period of adaptation?

Cannon: The failure of the campaign to develop an independent ticket is due to inertia at the centre, the faction fight, the tendency to wait in place of energetic application of policies, a feeling of smallness of the party – psychological faults rather than conscious or unconscious adaptation to the Rooseveltians. The bloc in the trade unions is not a political bloc but a bloc over trade union policy. It is possible to have an active policy in opposition. In 1936 we supported the Socialist Party, not Roosevelt, despite the trade unionists giving open support to Roosevelt. The ideal situation would be for Comrade Trotsky to use his influence with the government to change the laws.

Trotsky: That is the job of the SWP.

Cannon: We should have started a campaign six months ago. During the faction fight there was a congressional campaign. Browder was running. Our policy was that it would be best to have our own candidate. We proposed this, but it was sabotaged by Abern.

But to go out and campaign for Browder, just at the time of war, when we are trying to explain our policy –

Trotsky: It is precisely one of the elements of explaining that theirs is a false policy.

Cannon: Support for a labour candidate can be justified, but the CP is entirely different. The CP is not a genuine workers' party.

Dobbs: We are caught short. The criticisms are very pertinent. They will be productive of better results, you may be certain, but we feel that this policy would be completely disastrous. We would prefer to sacrifice the manoeuvre for Jimmy Higgins work and put our own candidate on the ballot. It is not a question of Roosevelt. We will do anything short of supporting the Stalinists in order to go against Roosevelt.

Trotsky: Good. But why not write a manifesto, addressing them? Give them arguments understandable to them? But we don't have a candidate. It is now too late to have a candidate. What is your policy?

Good – we will abandon voting for Browder. We will abandon a manifesto. We will make a leaflet. You would agree with a leaflet on the above lines? We can state our differences with the CP: your party accepts the class struggle only on accidental grounds . . .

And if the Stalinist worker comes up to you and asks, will you vote for our candidate? We are a serious party, where do you stand? We must give him a serious answer. We must say, yes we will vote for him.

No party is homogeneous, not even the Stalinist party. We cannot change the party but only introduce a wedge to start some of them moving toward us.

Cannon: In 1920 in the first year of the CP in this country, we had a situation similar to this. We were in illegality. A few months before the election and impossible to run our own candidate. We openly boycotted the elections. It was completely ineffective.

Lenin wrote us a letter. He held that we should have voted for Debs, but at that time there was a strong psychological separation from the SP. Lenin's statement produced quite a shock. And Debs was in prison – not a Browder.

Trotsky: Yes. Although Browder is condemned to prison.

Cannon: There has not been a direct attack or approach to the Stalinists for some years. Could it be possible?

Hansen: Yesterday Comrade Trotsky made some remarks about our adaptation to the so-called progressives in the trade unions, he mentioned the line of the Northwest Organiser and also our attitude in connection with the elections and the Stalinists. I wish to point out that this is not something completely new on Comrade Trotsky's part. More than two years ago during the discussion over the Transitional Programme, he discussed exactly these same points and had exactly the same position, with due regard for the difference in time and that then it was not the elections but the farmer-labour party that was to the fore. Comrade Trotsky has also written some letters regarding the Stalinists and the need for a more positive line toward them. In the past faction fight too, Comrade Trotsky mentioned in his polemic 'From a Scratch to the Danger of Gangrene' the following point, which he underlined: 'More than once the party will have to remind its own trade unionists that a pedagogical adaptation to the more backward layers of the proletariat must not become transformed into a political adaptation to the conservative bureaucracy of the trade unions.' I am wondering if Comrade Trotsky considers that our party is displaying a conservative tendency in the sense that we are adapting ourselves politically to the trade union bureaucracy.

Trotsky: To a certain degree I believe it is so. I cannot observe closely enough to be completely certain. This phase is not reflected in the Socialist Appeal well enough. There is no internal bulletin for the trade unionists. It would be very good to have such a bulletin and to publish controversial articles on our trade union work. In observing the Northwest Organizer I have observed not the slightest change during a whole period. It remains apolitical. This is a dangerous symptom. The complete neglect of work in relation to the Stalinist party is another dangerous symptom.

Turning to the Stalinists does not mean that we should turn away from the progressives. It means only that we should tell the truth to the Stalinists, that we should catch the Stalinists beforehand in their new turn.

It seems to me that a kind of passive adaptation to our trade union work can be recognised. There is not an immediate danger, but a serious warning indicating a change in direction is necessary. Many comrades are more interested in trade union work than in party work. More party cohesion is needed, more sharp manoeuvring, a more serious systematic theoretical training; otherwise the trade unions can absorb our comrades.

It is a historic law that the trade union functionaries form the right wing of the party. There is no exception to this. It was true of the Social Democracy; it was true of the Bolsheviks too. Tomsky was with the right wing, you know. This is absolutely natural. They deal with the class, the backward elements: they are the party vanguard in the working class. The necessary field of adaptation is among the trade unions. That is why the pressure of the backward elements is always reflected through the trade union comrades. It is a healthy pressure; but it can also break them from the historic class interests – they can become opportunists. The party has made serious gains. These gains were possibly only through a certain degree of adaptation; but on the other hand we must take measures to circumvent dangers that are inevitable. I have noticed only some serious symptoms which indicate the need for more cohesion, more emphasis on the party. Our comrades must be in the first line party members, and only in the second line trade union members. This is especially true for trade union functionaries and editors . . .

Before we go on, I have just received the latest number of Labor Action. Shachtman is calling for a new slogan, 'Let's have a program for peace not war. ' But it is war, not peace. This is a pacifist tendency. It is no program for war, which is inevitable.

Cannon: Can the Stalinists be regarded in any important sense as different from any other labour party or grouping? Are tactics applicable to the socialists, etc, also applicable to them? There is a strong tendency to regard the Stalinists as different. Not as a labour tendency. The crassest expression of this tendency is exhibited in the American Labour Party in New York. They regard the Stalinists not as a working-class party but as an agency of a foreign power. This was the position of Lovestone and Hook on the Browder passport case. It was Burnham's position in the CC. We held for critical defence. If O'Neal, for example, were arrested we would defend him similarly. There is no fundamental difference between O'Neal of the Second International and Browder as representative of the Stalinist bureaucracy. Both are treacherous in the labour movement. Burnham held that the Stalinists are not a labour movement at all, that they are like German Nazis. We should defend neither. This point is important in elaborating our general political tactics. So long as the social democrats represents a force we must not only have direct opposition but a policy of manoeuvre. Can any fundamental distinction be made between them and Lewis, Green, etc? In my opinion we at least subjectively have made a distinction. We have not had a policy of manoeuvre since 1934, neither nationally nor internationally. In general should we not re-examine this again? Your proposal raises this drastically.

Trotsky: Of course, the Stalinists are a legitimate part of the workers' movement. That it is abused by its leaders for specific GPU ends is one thing, for Kremlin ends another. It is not at all different from other opposition labour bureaucracies. The powerful interests of Moscow influence the Third International, but it is not different in principle. Of course, we consider the terror of the GPU control differently; we fight with all means, even bourgeois police. But the political current of Stalinism is a current in the workers' movement. If it differs, it differs advantageously. In France the Stalinists show courage against the government. They are still inspired by October. They are a selection of revolutionary elements, abused by Moscow, but honest. If they are persecuted in the United States and remain anti-patriotic because Moscow delays its new turn, this would give them considerable political authority. Our revulsion from the Kremlin will not destroy this political authority. We must consider them objectively. We must consider them from the objective Marxist viewpoint. They are a very contradictory phenomenon. They have great courage. We can't let the antipathies of our moral feelings sway us. Even the assailants on Trotsky's house had great courage. I think that we can hope to win these workers who began as a crystallisation of October. We see them negatively: how to break through this obstacle. We must set the base against the top. The Moscow gang we consider gangsters, but the rank-and-file don't feel themselves to be gangsters, but revolutionaries. They have been terribly poisoned. If we show that we understand, that we have a common language, we can turn them against their leaders. If we win 5 per cent, the party will be doomed. They can then lead only a conservative existence. Disintegration will set in, because this 5 per cent connects them with new sources from the masses.

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