A Letter to Albert Goldman [1]¶
Core Argument¶
In this brief but caustic letter from 5 June 1940, Leon Trotsky delivers a polemical post-mortem on a recent factional rupture within the American socialist movement, specifically targeting the defection of James Burnham and its consequences for Max Shachtman. The core argument is that Burnham’s rejection of dialectical materialism does not exempt him from its operation; rather, dialectics ensnares him regardless of his disbelief. Trotsky presents the split as an objective confirmation of Marxist method, unfolding at a historically accelerated tempo that renders theoretical verdicts almost immediately rather than after decades.
The key claim is that Burnham’s blow to Shachtman is “irreparable,” and Trotsky frames the entire episode as a living lesson on the distinction between principled and unprincipled blocs. He draws a direct parallel between Shachtman’s current predicament and an earlier factional manoeuvre four years prior, when Martin Abern sought protection for his “family clique” by aligning with A. J. Muste—described here with biting sarcasm as “Holy Father”—and his “altar boy” Maurice Spector. Trotsky argues that Shachtman has merely repeated the same error, now substituting the “secularised Catholic” Burnham and his “attorney” Shachtman for the earlier religious figures. The implication is that Shachtman’s bloc with Burnham was always opportunistic and doomed, lacking any principled theoretical foundation.
The letter draws on the immediate context of the 1940 split in the Socialist Workers Party, which saw Burnham and Shachtman break with Trotsky over the nature of the Soviet Union and the character of the coming war. Trotsky’s reference to the “good old days” when verification of a prognosis took years or decades contrasts sharply with the “feverish” tempo of events in 1940, a period of world war and revolutionary crisis. This acceleration, he suggests, has exposed Shachtman’s political bankruptcy with brutal speed.
The polemic is directed squarely at Burnham, Shachtman, and Abern. Burnham is dismissed as a man who does not recognise dialectics but is nonetheless caught “as a fly in a web.” Shachtman is pitied with evident contempt—“Poor Shachtman!”—as a figure who has learned nothing from past mistakes. The letter is a terse, sardonic demonstration of Trotsky’s conviction that factional betrayals are not merely personal failings but objective expressions of political confusion that history will swiftly punish.