A Letter to Farrell Dobbs [1]¶
Core Argument¶
In this letter of 10 January 1940, Leon Trotsky addresses two political questions raised by his factional intervention in the American Socialist Workers Party, writing to Farrell Dobbs to clarify his positions against the arguments of the minority leadership. The first question concerns the concept of bureaucratic conservatism. Trotsky insists that bureaucratic conservatism cannot be explained as a mere personal trait of individual leaders, such as James P. Cannon. To do so would be to substitute a psychological explanation for a political one. Instead, bureaucratic conservatism must be understood as rooted in the material interests of a definite social stratum: the privileged workers’ bureaucracy in capitalist and imperialist states, and to an incomparably greater degree in the USSR. Trotsky argues that if the majority supports Cannon despite any alleged bureaucratic tendencies, then the minority’s invocation of bureaucratic conservatism fails to touch the actual social foundations of the factional struggle. The minority’s approach, he contends, is not political but psychological, and therefore inadequate.
The second question concerns Trotsky’s alleged defence of the French Trotskyist Raymond Molinier. The minority had used this to compromise Trotsky’s defence of Cannon. Trotsky rejects the charge, stating that he never supported Molinier’s false theories. The dispute was over Molinier’s personal character—brutality, lack of discipline, and private financial affairs—not over programme. Trotsky opposed immediate expulsion, arguing instead for the organisation to try to discipline Molinier. When Molinier in 1934 attempted to replace the party programme with four slogans and launched a paper on that basis, Trotsky was among those who proposed his expulsion. Trotsky explains that his patient approach was guided not by Molinier’s personal interests but by the need to educate the party away from the Comintern’s legacy of expulsions, splits, and threats thereof. He draws a parallel with his attitude toward certain American comrades such as Field and Weisbord. Trotsky does not regret this patience, though he acknowledges it sometimes failed. He concludes with a pointed contrast: he would oppose expelling Comrade Burnham, but would conduct the most strenuous ideological fight against Burnham’s anti-Marxist conceptions. The letter thus defends a strategic patience in organisational discipline while insisting on uncompromising ideological struggle, and rejects attempts to reduce factional differences to personal psychology rather than social analysis.