Written: June 1932.
Source: The Militant, Vol. V No. 23 (Whole No. 119), 4 June 1932, p. 4.
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The secret unity negotiations between the Party bureaucrats and Lovestone revealed once more the unprincipledness and the cynicism which the disciples of Stalin bring to all important questions, including the question of unity. On this point we have commented before, in connection with the reports of the negotiations which first appeared in the Militant. But this affair – our reports of which have been fully confirmed in all essential particulars, no less by the denials of the Stalinists than by the explanations of Gitlow – has another important aspect. By it, with a more compelling logic than ever before, the hopeless position of the Right wing is acknowledged.
If the unfinished horse trade stamps the rabid campaign of the Stalinists against the Right “renegades” with insincerity – and thereby serves to discredit it – the effect on the position of the Lovestoneites is still more annihilating. One has only to read the material on the latest unity maneuvers all together – the letters in the Militant, the self-refuting denials of the Stalinists and the long winded apologetics of the Workers’ Age – to understand that Lovestone is seeking a favorable basis for “capitulation”.
The collapse of the Right wing on an International scale is undoubtedly the chief reason for this move to give up the separate organization in America. A small item in the recent issue of the Workers’ Age, announcing a session of the International Bureau of the Brandler “International”, gives the most convincing evidence of this disintegration. It is stated there that a session of the Bureau would be meaningless without the participation of the American section. Swallowing the flattery, which contains not the least nourishment, the Lovestone politicians could not help asking themselves: “If the international organization of the Right wing depends on us, what good is it?” A man who is unable to swim himself cannot help another who is drowning by jumping into the water after him. Besides, Lovestone was never a follower, of Christ, of whom it was said: “He saved others, himself he could not save”. His motto is more modern and more American: “Look out for number one.”
This philosophy can draw no comfort from the catastrophic situation of the International Right wing. Bucharin in the Russian party capitulated to Stalin. A number of the most prominent Brandlerists in Germany have gone over to the new Socialist Labor Party, while Brandler and Thalheimer knock patiently at the door of Stalin. The leader of the Czechoslovakian Brandlerists – Neurath – is breaking away in the direction of the Left Opposition. Everywhere is stagnation and break-up. No progress, no internal consolidation, no firm ideology, no perspectives.
The hopelessness, the futility, of the Brandler “International” becomes clearer day by day. No wonder that the Lovestone leaders, foreseeing the inevitable end – which, it must be admitted, required no special political acumen – prepare to desert the lost cause for another venture in the ranks of Stalinism.
Last updated on: 27.6.2013