On a "Socialist" Ally of Chamberlain (1940) (original) (raw)

Leon Trotsky

(May 1940)

Written: 14 May 1940.
First Published: Fourth International, Vol.1 No.5, October 1940, p.124.
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters.
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Transcriber’s Comments

This letter is a part of a series of letters published in this issue of Fourth International

under the heading of Trotsky’s Last Letters,
– D.W., 2002.

(The following letter is in reply to one from Miss Suzanne LaFollette, requesting an article for the American Mercury. The title to be The Coming Peace_. Miss LaFollette proposed that Trotsky’s article appear beside one by H.N. Brailsford, British Laborite, entitled_ Can Europe Federate?, which advocated something similar to the League of Nations but with “real power.” – Editor, Fourth International)

May 14, 1940

My dear Miss LaFollette, I would be ready to move heaven and earth in order to grant your request, but I cannot. I am writing now a large document for the Fourth International on the war and I must finish it during the next week.

But I must also confess that I felt a horror at the idea of seeing my article published at the side of one by Mr. Brailsford. When I publish an article in Life or in Liberty it’s the same as when I use the tramway: I am not interested in knowing who are the other passengers because nobody can identify me with them. An “opinion” magazine is quite another thing. Mr. Brailsford considers himself a left author, a kind of socialist and so on. But in my eyes he is only a petty bourgeois reactionary shadow of the conservative Mr. Chamberlain. Politically I prefer to deal with Chamberlain than with Brailsford. The idea itself, that I could have common ground with Mr. Brailsford is for me a thousand times less acceptable than would be an occasional contribution to the Hearst press.

I appreciate too highly your moral personality, my dear friend, not to tell you the whole truth – ”_Hier stehe ich und ich kann nicht anders._”

With my warmest greetings and wishes.

Last updated on: 22.4.2007