Prinkipo, September4, 1932

Dear Comrade Thibedi:-

Thank you for your communication which I am transmitting to Comrade
Witte.
It would be a very great step forward if we could establish an organ
in the negro language. I suppose that thc material hindrances would
be great in this time of deep crisis, Are many negro comrades unemployed
in Johannesburg and in South Africa in general?

The Stalinists state that the Left Opposition is almost non- existent.
The information is not correct. It is true that we are only at the
beginning of our great educational and organizational war, but our
progress in the last year is very satisfactory in many of the European
countries, and we can hope that the comrades who work in the double
persecution of the bourgeois state and the Stalinist bureaucracy
will become steeled into good revolutionaries. Discipline is necessary
but
discipline alone is sufficient for a capitalist army, not for a revolutionary
party. We are far from exaggerating our forces.

The revolutionary movement must remain very honest in the estimation
of its own power: it is the only way to win the confidence ofthe
workers.

Have you among your comrades, workers and students, and what is
the proportionof the one to the other? Have you any connections with
negroes in America? I hope that the hour is near when the great awakening
of the exploited negro masses will give rise to good Marxists and
theoreticians from among their ranks.
My Communist greetings and best wishes for the success ofyour work,

Leon Trotsky