A Letter to James P. Cannon [1]¶
Core Argument¶
In this brief letter dated 28 May 1940, Leon Trotsky addresses the resignation of James Burnham from the so-called ‘Workers Party’, the organisation established by the minority faction following their split from the Socialist Workers Party in April of that year. Trotsky writes in English directly to James P. Cannon, the central leader of the SWP, and his comrades. The core argument is that Burnham’s departure is not a surprising or isolated event but rather an “excellent confirmation” of the analysis and prognosis Trotsky and his co-thinkers had already made concerning the former Minority. Trotsky asserts that this resignation is not the final break; further separations are anticipated.
The letter draws on the immediate political context of the 1940 split within American Trotskyism. The Minority, led by Burnham and Max Shachtman, had broken with the SWP over fundamental questions, including the nature of the Soviet Union and the character of the coming war. Burnham’s resignation letter, dated 21 May 1940, proclaimed his open repudiation of socialism itself. Trotsky seizes on this as vindication. The evidence he cites is not elaborated in the note itself but is implicit in the historical record: Burnham’s trajectory from a position within the revolutionary Marxist movement to an outright rejection of its foundational principles. For Trotsky, this proves that the political differences that led to the split were not merely tactical or secondary but reflected a deeper, irreconcilable opposition to Marxism. The resignation is thus the logical endpoint of a political degeneration that Trotsky had already identified and warned against.
The polemical target is twofold. First, it is Burnham himself, whose desertion is presented as the inevitable outcome of his earlier political errors. Second, and more significantly, the letter is a polemic against the remaining Minority—Shachtman and his followers—who had not yet followed Burnham out of the socialist movement. By stating that this is not the last separation, Trotsky warns that the logic of the Minority’s position will drive further defections. The letter functions as a sharp, condensed political judgment: the split was correct, the analysis of the Minority as unstable and prone to liquidation was accurate, and the SWP’s course has been vindicated. Trotsky’s tone is one of grim satisfaction, not surprise. The brevity of the note underscores the certainty of his conviction; no lengthy argument is needed because events have already spoken.