Pablo 'Answers' the Open Letter

[p056] PABLO ‘ANSWERS’ THE OPEN LETTER By Joseph Hansen Pablo, who was elected Secretary of the Fourth International and charged with the duty of preserving the integrity of the Trotskyist programme of world socialist revolution, but who utilized his position to attempt to foist a revisionist programme on the organ- isation founded by Leon Trotsky, held a three-day meeting in Paris at the end of December with the principal European lieutenants of his faction. He took a series of measures that completely confirm the warning issued by the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party in the open letter addressed to Trotskyists throughout the world (see The Militant, November 16, 1953) about the danger represented by the uncontrolled, personal faction organised in secret by the secretary in whom the Trotskyist movement placed too much trust. In its open letter, the SWP warned: ‘The Pablo faction has demonstrated that it will not permit demo- cratic decisions truly reflecting majority opinion to be reached. They demand complete submission to their criminal policy. They are determined to drive all orthodox Trotskyists out of the Fourth International or to muzzle and handcuff them.’ And that is precisely what the Pabloite leaders did at their meeting. They demanded complete submission to their criminal policy under threat of expulsion from the Fourth International. The Pabloite faction leaders labelled their meeting the ‘Fourteenth Plenum of the International Executive Committee’ although no one was present outside of themselves and none of the major sections of the Fourth International had representatives present. Then they proceeded to pass a ‘unanimous’ motion without precedent in the Fourth International: ‘To suspend from membership in the International all the members of the IEC who subscribed to the split appeal which appeared in the Militant of November 16, 1953, as well as the appeal of the “Committee of the Fourth International’, or who approved it and are trying to rally on this base the sections of the International. ‘To suspend from their posts of leadership in the sections all those who signed these appeals, or approved them and are trying to rally on this base the sections of the International. ‘To refer the final decision on these cases to the Fourth World Congress.’ What the Open Letter Did The open letter, which this fiat refers to as a ‘split appeal’—although it was nothing of the kind—did three things: (1) On the political level, it called the attention of Trotskyists everywhere to the fact that in flagrant violation of the programme of the Fourth International the Pablo faction had covered up and apologised for the Stalinist betrayal of the French general strike in August; had failed to call for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from East Germany when they were used to crush the June 17 workers’ uprising against the Stalinist gauleiters; had painted up the treacherous temporary concessions granted by these besiged rulers; had similarly painted up the concessions deceptively promised by the Malenkov regime to allay mass unrest in the Soviet Union; and had projected the possibility of self-reform of the Stalinist bureaucracy and even the Soviet workers sharing power with it. (The revisionist ‘sharing of power’ concept was advanced by Clarke, a Pabloite high priest, in the magazine, Fourth International. When Clarke was called to order by M. Stein and the editorial board, Pablo’s response was an attack—on M. Stein and the editorial board.) (2) On the organisational level, the latter called public attention to the secret faction Pablo had organised in the Fourth International as part of his preparation for a ‘coup’. It noted that in line with this aim, Pablo had unjustly expelled the majority of the French section of the Fourth International and committed other acts of a similar character in flagrant violation of the organisational methods bequeathed the Fourth International by Leon Trotsky. The letter charged that Pablo was systematically injecting Stalinist conciliationism into the organisation, utilising ‘piecemeal’ tactics for the operation, and in similar piecemeal fashion trying to ‘get rid those who come to see what is happening and raise objections’. (3) On what to do about this, the letter urged the orthodox Trotskyist majority of the Fourth Inter- national to assert their will against Pablo’s usurpation of authority, to remove Pablo and his agents from office and ‘to replace them with cadres who have proved in action that they know how to uphold orthodox Trotskyism and keep the movement on a correct course both politically and organisationally’. These conclusions about Pablo’s organisational methods and the danger they represent to the Fourth International were not reached lightly. For a time, some of the facts seemed incredible to us, but they turned out nevertheless to be only too real. Here are three typical ones: (1) In May 1953, almost two years after the event, a shocking example of how the Pabloites operate came to light. One of their leaders revealed that at the Third World Congress of the Fourth International held in August-September 1951, certain criticisms of some of the formulations in the documents under discussion were sent in by the New Zealand section. But they never reached the delegates for consideration, the reason being that this Pabloite leader, in his own words, ‘burned’ them. (2) Some months ago, Burns, one of the outstanding leaders of the British section of the Fourth Inter- national, indicated his sympathy with the political

[p057] DOCUMENT No. 7 position of the majority of the SWP in its struggle with the revisionist minority headed by Cochran. Burns also indicated that he disagreed with certain revisionist views held by Pablo. . He was ordered by Pablo to keep his mouth shut and not reveal his differences to the British rank and file. When Burns refused to obey this Stalinist-type ukase, Pablo immediately organised a ‘with Pablo’ faction in England that sought to cut Burns down. To accomplish this aim the faction did not hesitate to publicly violate party discipline in the pattern of the revisionist Cochranite faction secretly fostered and inspired by Pablo in the Socialist Workers Party. (3) The Pablo faction misrepresented the hounded and persecuted Chinese section of the Fourth Inter- national as ‘sectarians’ and ‘fugitives from a revolution’. The truth is that they participated in the revolution against Chiang Kai-shek as revolutionary socialist representatives of the Chinese working class and are stout defenders of the New China in its struggle against world imperialism. Pablo even went so far as to suppress two of the appeals of the heroic Chinese comrades for help against assassinations carried out against them by Mao’s secret police. We do not know whether Pablo burned them as the New Zealand criticisms were burned. But up to this day he has maintained a guilty silence about them. They were made public only after they reached The Militant by an indirect route, appearing in the issues of October 19 and November 2. Pablo did not care to see the appeals published, perhaps because they clearly indicated the genuine position of the Chinese Trotskyists, perhaps because they placed the Mao regime in a sinister light for murdering revolutionary socialists. These three cases are all that space permits me to cite. They should prove sufficient, however, to give every militant trained in Trotsky’s school an idea of the grounds that led the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party to raise the alarm and the British, French, Swiss and New Zealand sections to set up an International Committee to struggle for the life of the Fourth International against ruin by Pabloism. ‘Irremovable’ Secretary The reaction of the secretly formed Pablo faction to the political and organisational charges levelled by these two bodies and the remedial measures they propose, was, aS indicated above, to further abuse its control of the administrative apparatus of the Fourth International by suspending from membership all who subscribed to the critical document, honestly and openly presented by the Socialist Workers Party, or the declaration of the International Committee of the Fourth International that raises the banner of orthodox Trotskyism. In addition to actual subscribers to these two documents, the Pablo action ordered all leading Trotskyists suspended who have the temerity to 51 approve these documents or seek to rally support for them. This means that Pablo has now in effect declared that serious political differences with him or his arbitrary interpretations of programme, or an effort to replace him in office, constitute crimes equivalent to organised sabotage, calling for summary expulsion from the Fourth International. He has in effect, in the well-known tradition of Stalin, declared himself irremovable, even though he represents only a minority faction. In the same familiar tradition he has declared for monolithism in the Fourth International—the monolithism of a per- sonal cult. In accordance with this programme of utter per- version of everything that Trotsky stood for, the leaders of the Pablo faction issued Papal bulls from their December meeting, labelling them ‘resolutions’ of the ‘International Executive Committee’, These edicts of the cult head declared the Socialist Workers Party beyond the pale and also excommunicated the overwhelming majority of the British section from the Fourth International. Although the Swiss section was not specifically named as also expelled, the blanket resolution excommunicating all who disagree with Pablo politically applies to them too. By such desperate organisational methods, borrowed right out of the corrupt school of Stalinism, Pablo hopes to maintain the personal control he usurped of the administrative apparatus. Typical Pabloite Propaganda To what lengths the Pabloites are prepared to go to maintain the pretence that their revisionist views and Stalinist methods represent the views and will of the majority of the Fourth International can be judged from their latest propaganda about the British section. There the Pabloites ended up in the minority as they did first in France and then the United States. Never- theless, they are circulating the false story that the British section is ‘with Pablo’. This is a lie. Pablo read the rank-and-file-elected leadership out of office, appointed a personal lieutenant to take over like a receiver sent by a trade union czar to handle a rebellious local, and thus converted his minority in England into an ‘official’ British ‘section’. Naturally, the newly born ‘section’, small and despon- dent though it be, raised an ‘overwhelming’ majority of hands for their Pope in Paris. Thus the cult could claim the British ‘section’ was ‘with Pablo’, and could also claim they were not lying about it. In England the rank-and-file majority only laughed at this flimsy ruse, as it served no political end there except to further expose Pablo’s affinity for Stalinist methods. Elsewhere it seems to have taken in some people for the time being. The Shachtmanite Labour Action, for instance, which was chosen by the American Pabloites as a sympathetic forum for their first public declaration, printed as good coin the mis- information that ‘the size of each group is approxi- mately equal at the moment’.

[p058] 52 ‘Strong’ Moves These edicts of excommunication undoubtedly appear to Pablo as ‘strong’ moves, the strongest possible answer to the political fire levelled at him in the letter of the Socialist Workers Party and the appeal of the International Committee of the Fourth International. The fact is that such stringent measures are simply the organisational reflection of Pablo’s political line which is to liquidate the Fourth International as an independent organisation. To dissolve the Fourth International politically, it is necessary to first break up its cadres by expelling them, or reducing them to silence if not acquiescence. In this way, Pablo seeks to smash those organisations where the orthodox Trotskyists are the strongest and the resistance to his revisionist course the greatest. Cochran, under the slogan ‘junk the old Trotskyism’, laid down a similar tactical line for the American con- FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, SUMMER 1965 tingent of the Pablo cult. The tactics included organised sabotage of party finances and party activi- ties. To ‘junk the old Trotskyism’, especially the concept of an independent revolutionary socialist party, you first have to break up the existing organisa- tion. These moves by both Cochran and Pablo thus represent, in the form required by their faction, the substitution of organisational manoeuvres for principled politics, the classic symptom of a _petty-bourgeois tendency. This becomes deadly clear on examination of Pablo’s political explanation of the crisis now occurring in the Fourth International, for this explanation is so shallow, so self-contradictory and so evasive that it amounts to no more than pretence—a cover for the organisational manoeuvres which he really counts on to save his political neck and his administrative post. New readers of FourTH INTERNATIONAL will find it useful to refer to the following articles in back numbers of Labour Review and FouRTH INTERNATIONAL which have dealt with the Cuban question and associated problems. Together with the documents here brought together, they show how absurd is the suggestion of our avoiding dis- cussion of Cuba. Also, they bring out very clearly the need to establish a correct theoretical framework for the discussion of each question. 1. ‘World Prospect for Socialism’—resolution of the Socialist Labour League covering the general perspectives of the international revolutionary movement. The general line of this resolution was adopted by the International Committee of the Fourth International in 1961. Labour Review, Vol. VI, No. 3 (Winter 1961). 2. ‘Cuba: The First Stage’ by F. Rodriguez, translation of an article in La Vérité (Autumn 1961). Written in April 1961, it provides essential background material and analysis of the first years of the Cuban Revolution. Labour Review, Vol. VII, No. 1 (Spring 1962). 3. ‘A caricature of Marxism’—editorial in the same issue of Labour Review, dealing with current writings of Pablo on Cuba and Algeria. 4. ‘Revisionism and the Fourth International’ by C. Slaughter. Based on the report on international problems at the Socialist Labour League Conference, June 1963. Especially concerned with the speech by Castro after the dismissal of Escalante. Labour Review, Vol. VII, No. 5 (Summer 1963). 5. ‘The Future of the Fourth International’, report of C. Slaughter to the conference of the International Committee of the Fourth International, September 1963; deals With the theory and method behind the ‘reunification’ of 1963, and the whole approach of revisionism and Marxism to the building of an international revolutionary movement. FourTH INTERNATIONAL, Vol. I, No. 1 (Spring 1964). All available from FourTH INTERNATIONAL, 186A Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4, at 2s. 6d. per copy.

[p059] LIMITED NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS 186A Clapham Street, High S.W.4 London, MACaulay 7029 Write Free for Book List The New Course By Leon Trotsky A collection of articles written in 1923 during the lull before the great storm of persecution which was later to overwhelm Russian Bolshevism. Here Trotsky, analyses the incipient stages of the degeneration of the Communist Party, uncovers its causes and proposes measures for combating its further decline. He here analyses the party in a historical, that is dialectical way. the relationships between generations, social strata, groups, factional forma- tions, tradition and the multitude of factors that go to make a revolutionary party. 111 pages, 3/6 Palen This document is a landmark in the development of 20th century Marxism. It sums up the experience of an entire period of struggle against the Soviet bureaucracy. This Platform also represents the highest point in the fortunes of the Joint Opposition (Trotskyist-Zinovievite) to Stalin. It is the programme of the last of the Bolshevik-Leninists who insisted that they remained communists despite all the per- secution, jailings, violence and slander inflicted on them. But this document also represents a watershed—the end of Left Opposition se one phase and the beginning of another—in the evolution of ee ' Trotskyist politics. 112 pages, 5/- The Draft Programme of the Communist International by Leon Trotsky This is part of the author’s criticism of the draft programme submitted by the Executive Committee of the Third (Communist) International to the 6th Congress of the Comintern which was held in July 1928. The manuscript of that criticism was written by Trotsky during his exile in Alma-Ata (Central Asia). It was sent to the Congress in Moscow together with an appeal for reinstatement into the party from which he had been expelled a few months before by the Stalinist faction in 1927. Stalin and his supporters had invented the theory of ‘Socialism in one country’, which was made party policy in 1925 and converted into an article of faith to be defended by the world institutions of Stalinism. It is this theory which Trotsky criticises in these pages. 64 pages, 1/- This is a polemic against Radek in 1928. Trotsky examines the arguments against his pre-war theory of the permanent revolution (as expounded in Results and Prospects) and takes up the history of his differences with Lenin before 1917, of which Stalin and his henchmen made so much. Trotsky shows that it was Lenin’s criticisms of his attitude to the centralised Marxist party, which he afterwards understood and accepted, that kept them apart, and not their differences on the permanent revolution. 254 pages, 15/- soft cover, 25/- hard cover mo mi 6This is the basic programmatic document of the world The death agony Nj movement founded by Leon Trotsky and his comrades. By 1938 the revolutionary Marxists had found it necessary to lay the foundations of the Fourth International in order to restore working-class leadership after the defeats prepared by the Stalinist bureaucracy in control of the Third (Communist) International. The defeat of the German Revolution in tasks of the 1923, of the British General Strike in 1926, and of the : Chinese Revolution in 1927, followed by Hitler’s victory over Ath Intervational the German working class in 1933, finally ruled out the woes perspective of transforming the Communist International “ by internal opposition. 60 pages, 1{- The capitalism wes Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (T.U.), r/o 180 Clapham High Street. London, S.W.4

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[p061] Subscribe to Fourth International FourTH INTERNATIONAL is the theoretical journal of the International Committee of the Fourth Inter- national. FourRTH INTERNATIONAL continues the work of Lasour REviEW which concluded its 12th year of publication with its last issue, the fifth number of volume 7. FourTH INTERNATIONAL continues the work and traditions of Revolutionary Communism since the death of Lenin. FourTH INTERNATIONAL represents the unbroken chain of theoretical journals in the Bolshevik tradition, whose continuators were the Left Opposition led and inspired by Leon Trotsky. FourTH INTERNATIONAL follows in the traditions of that Opposition and in the traditions of the Fourth International of Leon Trotsky. FourTH INTERNATIONAL continues the decades of work by Trotskyists in the International Labour movement and here in Britain. FourTH INTERNATIONAL is now the product of a continuous struggle of the Marxists in the International and British Labour movement against Stalinism and Reformism. FourTH INTERNATIONAL represents the successful fusion of Marxist trends in the International and British Labour movement, from the Trotskyist to Communist, Social-Democratic and Trade Union movements. FourRTH INTERNATIONAL, with this issue, continues a new period of activity in the international and British Labour movements and simultaneously prepares and equips the Marxist movement for its future intervention in the battles of the working class which promise to eclipse and transcend all previous struggles both in their depth and scope. To: New Park Publications Ltd., 186A Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4 I enclose cheque/postal order/money order/draft for £ S. d. to pay for _ issues of FoURTH INTERNATIONAL. Price 2/6 (postage 6d. per issue) ee ae? ee ee ee ee Some writings by Leon Trotsky The First Five Years of the Communist International Vol. 2 (soft cover) 12s. 6d. (hard cover) 18s. Od. The New Course 3s. 6d The Permanent Revolution (soft cover) 15s. Od. (hard cover) 25s. Od. Draft Programme of the Communist International A Criticism of Fundamentals, 1928 Is. Od. The Revolution Betrayed 10s. 6d. Where is Britain Going? 7s. 6d. Whither France? 5s. Od. In the Middle of the Road Is. Od. Stalinism and Bolshevism 6d. Radio, Science, Technique and Society 1s. Od, I Stake My Life! (Dewey report of the Moscow Trials) 6a. Problems of Life 2s. Od. Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay 2d. The Russian Revolution (The Copenhagen Speech) Culture and Socialism and Art and Revolution 2s. 6d. To: New Park Publications Ltd., 186A Clapham High St., London, S.W.4. I enclose cheque/postal order/money order/ draft for £ s. d. to pay for