Leon Trotsky: Letter to the International Secretariat

From: Conclusion of a Long Experience

January 21, 1938

[Leon Trotsky: Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay. New York etc. 1990, p. 67, title: “Letters on the Dutch trade union situation”]

All that the International Secretariat has written about and against Sneevliet was and still is absolutely correct That is precisely the reason why Sneevliet has never dared to respond with political arguments, utilizing instead — and this is his manner — abusive language that is absolutely intolerable and not at all justified. Sneevliet does not take the slightest interest in Marxism, in theories, in a general orientation. What interests him is the NAS, a tiny bureaucratic machine, a parliamentary post. Sneevliet utilizes the banner of the Fourth International above all in order to protect his opportunistic work in Holland. Since the NAS depends financially entirely upon the government, Sneevliet has evaded all precise politics, that is to say, Marxist politics, in order not to provoke the thunder of the government against the NAS. The RSAP has been and still is nothing more than a political appendage of the NAS, which itself is not viable and which has fallen in the last years from 25,000 to 12,000 members and very likely still lower.