Monatte Crosses the Rubicon¶
Core Argument¶
In this polemical article from December 1930, Leon Trotsky delivers a definitive break with the French syndicalist Pierre Monatte, who has aligned with Dumoulin, a figure Trotsky condemns as a perfidious enemy of the proletarian revolution. The chapter’s core argument is that Monatte has crossed a political Rubicon, moving from centrist ally to direct enemy by forming a bloc with Dumoulin under the banner of trade union unity. Trotsky insists this is not a legitimate effort to work within reformist unions while combating traitors—as Bolsheviks did with Mensheviks—but a political factional alliance that legitimises Dumoulin’s record of betrayal. Monatte, by presenting himself as Dumoulin’s tutor, effectively tells workers they can march with counter-revolutionaries against the October Revolution and the Red International of Labour Unions.
Trotsky draws on the recent history of French syndicalism and the Second International’s collapse, citing figures like Jouhaux, Merrheim, and Sébastien Faure as examples of unpunished betrayal. He uses Monatte’s own proposal from Révolution Prolétarienne—that Communist and Socialist deputies send an investigative commission to Indochina after executions of revolutionaries—as evidence of Monatte’s political naivety. Trotsky argues this ignores that social-patriots like Zyromsky are part of a colonialist party; MacDonald’s dispatch of armed forces to India, endorsed by British trade unionists, proves the point.
The chapter’s polemic is directed at centrist empiricism and the “cheap sophisms” of French syndicalists who invoke trade union neutrality to cover opportunism. Trotsky also attacks “toothless French anarchists” and the false amnesty granted to political traitors. He interprets Monatte’s shift as symptomatic: the years of bourgeois stabilisation produced fatigue and despair among workers, driving some rightward. Yet the world crisis is deepening—unemployment reaches France, Germany’s situation is strained—and the CGT bureaucracy now needs a left wing to manage rising militancy. Dumoulin serves this function, compromising Monatte to cover Jouhaux’s flank. Trotsky concludes that the new period will not favour false neutrality but reinforce Communist positions, and the Left Opposition need only remain faithful to itself.