On l’Humanité , the Central Organ of the French Party¶
Core Argument¶
In this letter of 23 July 1921, addressed to Lucie Leiciague of the French Communist Party’s Central Committee, Leon Trotsky delivers a sweeping and unsparing critique of l’Humanité, the party’s central organ. The core argument is that the newspaper fails utterly in its revolutionary duty: it lacks clarity, firmness, and a consistently Marxist class line, and in doing so disorients the masses rather than forging them into a conscious revolutionary force.
Trotsky’s key claims are precise and damning. First, the paper’s treatment of the Dissidents—the Longuetist split—is fatally conciliatory. He cites Comrade Launat’s article of 17 April 1921, which expresses hope that Paul Boncour’s bill might prove differences less irreconcilable than Léon Blum claims. This, Trotsky insists, is not comradely discussion but a failure to recognise an irreconcilable political struggle. The paper must mercilessly expose, make ludicrous and hateful the leaders and press of the Dissidents; only then can the broad party mass attain political distinctness. Second, the paper’s tone is insufficiently energetic. Comrade Frossard’s article ‘Sang Froid et Discipline’ is correct in outline but fails to give vent to the working class’s protest. The parliamentary fraction’s speeches were feeble and wrong in principle, and l’Humanité did not supplement them with adequate protest. Third, Trotsky attacks a 3 April leading article, ‘Christianity and Socialism’, as a glaring contradiction with Marxism. It seeks to justify socialism with biblical platitudes and confuses the Soviet state’s necessary toleration of religious prejudice with the Communist Party’s duty to conduct genuine educational activity. Mystic-intellectuals who exploit the party for religious ravings will, he warns, become a brake on revolutionary action. Fourth, colonial questions are treated far too weakly. A 20 May article on an alleged conspiracy in Indo-China is written in a democratic, not communist, spirit. Trotsky insists that the social revolution in France implies not only proletarian uprising but also colonial revolt against the metropolises; any vagueness covers chauvinism. Fifth, the paper’s handling of syndicalism violates Marxist principles: communist articles are directed against the party line, syndicalist resolutions are published without editorial commentary, and the board vacillates, creating pandemonium rather than principled clarity. Finally, trivial but symptomatic: the paper publishes photographs of German and English Social Democratic ministers rather than communists, failing to bring parties closer in personal respects.
The historical context is the immediate aftermath of the Tours Congress (December 1920), where the French Socialist Party split, with the majority forming the Communist Party and the minority (Longuetists, or Dissidents) retaining the old party. Trotsky writes as a leading figure in the Communist International, demanding that the French party’s press adopt the combative, agitational, and theoretically rigorous methods of Bolshevism. The polemic is directed against centrism, conciliationism, and any vestige of reformist or democratic socialism within the communist movement—against Longuet, Blum, and those like Frossard and Méric who would later leave the party. The letter is a model of Leninist press criticism: the newspaper is not a forum for debate but a weapon for class war.