BY LEON TROTSKY AND LEA SHERMAN
The following is an excerpt from a June 1936 letter by Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky to the Central Committee of the Internationalist Workers Party (POI) in France. Writing during the most powerful rise of factory occupations and workers mobilizations in France in the 20th century, Trotsky made a series of proposals urging the POI to begin functioning as a proletarian party and break from the petty- bourgeois methods and factionalism of leaders such as Raymond Molinier and Pierre Naville. The POI, Trotsky insisted, needed to make a radical turn in response to the mass upsurge in order to pose a revolutionary alternative to the Stalinist and Social Democratic parties and their class- collaborationist support to the new People's Front government formed in coalition with the bourgeois Radical Party. The letter is published in The Crisis of the French Section (1935-36) by Leon Trotsky, published by Pathfinder Press. It is copyright c 1977 by Pathfinder and is reprinted by permission.

For several years I have insisted upon the necessity of the French section's having its own printshop, which could be of inestimable value for the revolutionary period. Unfortunately, in this question, as in all others, I was unable to convince the leadership. Why? Because even the meaning of a revolutionary organization is not understood. Naville unfortunately has not the slightest interest in these things. Molinier considers the revolutionary organization from the point of view of a "promoter": colored posters, kiosks, phony publicity - in short, bluff, which costs a great deal but produces nothing. The revolutionary organization must base itself not on quasicapitalist methods but on the devotion of its members, on untiring work, intensive and at the same time systematic; on its own printshop, with two printers entirely devoted to the organization; on a fast and efficient mailing system; on energetic and tireless salespeople; on perfect bookkeeping. There is no other way for a revolutionary organization.

La Vérité(1) devoured enormous sums, enough for two printshops. The American comrades, with more modest means, have created a printshop which does magnificent work. Besides the weekly and monthly, it issues 400-page books. And the Americans were neither richer nor more numerous than the French.

You are now suffering repression, which should win you sympathy. Couldn't you start a special collection for the printshop? Better late than never!

1. The newspaper of one of the two groups that fused in 1936 to form the POI.  
 
 
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