Cardinal Questions Facing the ILP¶
Core Argument¶
In this letter of January 1934, Trotsky addresses the Independent Labour Party’s terminal decline, arguing that its leadership bears direct responsibility for the organisation’s enfeeblement. The ILP had fallen to perhaps 4,000 members, and Trotsky poses the cardinal question: what political motive would impel any worker to join it? The Labour Party attracts the politically unawakened; the Communist Party draws those disillusioned with reformism, who see in it the image of the Soviet Union. The ILP, by contrast, offers no clear banner, no great slogans, no far-seen position.
Trotsky grants that the ILP’s break from the Labour Party was correct: a revolutionary lever cannot have its handle left in opportunist hands. But having broken away, the ILP failed to turn back toward the Labour Party’s mass base. It sought a road to the masses not against the reformist leaders but through the Communist Party, which had conclusively proven its bureaucratic dullness. Trotsky insists on the Leninist method of the united front—temporary practical agreements with reformist-led mass organisations—as distinct from lasting political alliances with reformist leaders, which he denounces as the worst opportunism, citing the Anglo-Russian Committee as the classic example.
The ILP’s international position is incoherent. It belongs to the London Bureau, whose chief characteristic is the absence of all position, allying it with the Norwegian Labour Party under the treacherous opportunist Tranmael, who is steering back toward the Second International. Simultaneously, through the SAP and OSP, the ILP is a semi-ally of the Fourth International; outside the Bureau, it maintains a temporary alliance with the British Communist Party, i.e., the Third International. Trotsky asks sardonically whether there are too many Internationals for one party. The ILP hangs in mid-air, and every thinking worker wants a party with a definite international position.
Trotsky polemicises against those who counsel waiting, who say “do not hurry with the Fourth International”. This, he argues, is not realism but the worst utopianism, spun from passivity and belief in miracles. The masses’ fear of a new International is a reflection of defeat and bewilderment, but the vanguard must not bow before these prejudices. It must unfurl its banner now. Trotsky concludes with a blunt prognosis: the ILP must place itself under the banner of the Fourth International or disappear from the scene without a trace.
A supplementary summary from an August 1934 discussion notes that the experience of the British section confirmed Trotsky’s line: the minority that entered the ILP maintained internal solidarity and achieved successes, while the majority that insisted on organisational autonomy suffered constant internal strife and defections.