Letter to Comrade Monatte¶
Core Argument¶
In this letter of July 1921, Trotsky addresses the revolutionary syndicalist leader Monatte with a mixture of fraternal warmth and sharp political warning. The core argument is that French revolutionary syndicalism, having achieved a dominant position within the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), stands at a decisive crossroads. Trotsky contends that the movement cannot simply fall back on the Charter of Amiens of 1906 as a sufficient programme for the new epoch. He dismisses any such appeal as an evasion, not an answer. The Charter, he argues, was a precious document of pre-war militancy, but it has been historically overtaken by the World War, the foundation of Soviet Russia, the revolutionary wave across Europe, and the formation of the Third International. To seek a return to the positions of 1906, to a ‘pure’ pre-war syndicalism, is in principle no different from the Social Democratic ‘reconstructionists’ who dream of restoring a pre-war socialism unsullied by the war. This position, Trotsky insists, is amorphous, conservative, and threatens to become reactionary.
Trotsky presses Monatte on the practical question of leadership. Once the revolutionary syndicalists control the CGT, who will formulate proposals, slogans, and methods of struggle for the millions of organised workers? The circle around La Vie Ouvrière cannot suffice; other circles will inevitably challenge it. The presence of organised party communists within the unions creates a real danger of divergence between the slogans of the La Vie Ouvrière group and those of the Communist Party. If this contradiction is not resolved, Trotsky warns, victory over the reformist leadership of Jouhaux, Dumoulin, and Merrheim could be followed within months by their return to power.
The letter’s central polemical thrust is against the anarchist-inherited suspicion of parties and politics that still pervades French syndicalism. Trotsky acknowledges this mood cannot be broken by a single blow, but insists the goal must be clear: the fusion of revolutionary syndicalists and communists within a single party. He is emphatic that this is not a question of subordinating the unions to the party, but of uniting the revolutionary vanguard so that its members can carry out a harmonious, centralised line within the syndicates, which remain organisationally autonomous. The psychological obstacle to joining a party, Trotsky argues, is a refusal to shed an obsolete form while damaging the essential content. Pre-war revolutionary syndicalism was itself a Communist Party in embryo; to return to the embryo would be a monstrous retrogression. The letter closes with a direct appeal: the moment demands an inner revolution, a renunciation of the outworn part of one’s past, and a decisive turn toward the Communist Party.