Letter to Comrades Cachin [1] and Frossard [2]¶
Core Argument¶
In this letter of 14 July 1921, Trotsky addresses the French Communist leaders Cachin and Frossard to dispel rumours that the March 1921 revolutionary events in Germany were provoked by orders from Moscow to relieve pressure on the Russian Soviet Republic. He insists this is a slander of the bourgeois press and that the Third World Congress has resolved any doubts. Trotsky argues it is “absolutely self-evident” that even from a narrowly Russian standpoint, only the genuine revolutionary victory of the European proletariat, not partial or artificially provoked uprisings, could render real assistance. Moscow does not hold a “Muscovite” point of view; the Russian Republic is merely the “point of departure” for world revolution, and the interests of the latter are decisive.
Trotsky then analyses the French political situation. He predicts an epoch of “French Kerenskyism” approaching, characterised by the “extreme shakiness of the state apparatus” produced by the Radical-Socialist Bloc, which combines petty-bourgeois irritation, peasant conservatism, and the egotism of privileged workers. Between the imperialist clique and the growing proletarian revolution, a “buffer” will be formed by the impotent bloc of Radicals and Socialists—Caillaux, Longuet and Company—which will serve as an “excellent prologue” to revolution. Trotsky welcomes the prospect of the Briand-Barthou law against communists, arguing that police persecution will prove an “extremely useful school” for French Communism.
Trotsky criticises l’Humanité for carrying virtually no letters from workers or factory correspondence, failing to reflect the daily life of the masses. He insists a revolutionary newspaper must “sink many roots into the masses” through a network of worker-correspondents, which could become the apparatus of revolutionary uprising. The central question of the party’s relation to the working class is its relation to the syndicates. Trotsky warns that the La Vie Ouvrière group, if it maintains its “isolation and shut-in character,” risks becoming a sect and a brake on development. The party must conquer the syndicates from within, not by subordinating them or depriving them of autonomy, but by communists becoming the best trade unionists and gaining the confidence of the masses. The Central Committee must include worker-communists prominent in the syndicalist movement. Communist cells within the syndicates must be “firmly welded and disciplined” to recruit anarcho-syndicalist elements. Trotsky warns against slurring over differences with syndicalists and anarchists, as these could “break catastrophically over our heads at the decisive moment.” He draws on the fresh experience of the Russian Revolution and expresses disappointment that Cachin and Frossard were absent from the Congress, urging them to visit Moscow before the next French Party Congress.