In this section: November 1934 - July 1936, Trotsky's writings (plus explanatory texts) on:
a) The failure of Nin to support the Bolshevik-Leninists joining the Socialist Party.
b) Civil war, insurrection, and the defeat of the 'Asturian Commune'.
c) The 'treachery of the POUM' in joining the 'Popular Front'.
d) Tasks after the February 1936 election of the Popular Front government.
Context to this section of writings
The prefaces to the Pathfinder Press collection of Trotsky's writings on the Spanish Revolution sets out the key events in this period, concentrating on the electoral issues, as set out below:
The Socialist Party dropped from 116 to 58 seats. ... The government parties secured a total of only 99, compared to 104 for Lerroux's Radicals and 207 for the openly rightist parties. The largest party in the Cortes was now the newly formed ultrareactionary CEDA of Gil Robles. The Communist Party and the Falange of José Antonio Primo de Rivera each won a single seat.
Lerroux became prime minister. He immediately faced a series of violent strikes called mainly by the Anarchists. Apart from crushing these strikes, the government's main preoccupation was repealing the limited reforms enacted under Azaña.
The Asturian rising of the Anarchists and left Socialists began on October 4, 1934, in protest at Lerroux's inclusion of representatives of the CEDA in the government. This was accompanied by a revolt in Catalonia led by the bourgeois Catalan nationalists of Luis Companys. Both uprisings were put down by the military. Companys and Largo Caballero were among those imprisoned in the wave of reprisals by the government after the defeat.
The suppression of the Asturian commune was followed by a series of governmental crises, capped by a major financial scandal that directly implicated the leaders of the Radical Party.
Finally, Alcalá Zamora dissolved the Cortes on January 4, 1936, and called new elections for February 16. The left, with the exception of the Anarchists and the small Spanish section of the International Left Opposition, were grouped in the Popular Front electoral bloc with a common slate (winning 278 seats after the final round of voting). The rightist parties formed a counter bloc under the name 'National Front.' (winning 134 seats). The bourgeois centre of Lerroux was split several ways but all of its components suffered a marked loss of support (winning 55 seats).
Azaña became prime minister. Ignoring the support he had received from the Communist and Socialist parties, his government was composed entirely of members of the bourgeois partners in the Popular Front, drawn mainly from his own party.
The new government was hardly installed before the generals began to plan its overthrow ..."
However, a better idea of the mighty movements, not least the 'Asturian Commune', that took place within this period is given by this section from Morrow's 'Civil War in Spain':
"Though governmental crises changed cabinet personnel six times during the next two years, Lerroux's Radicals remained ostensibly at the helm, with either Lerroux or his lieutenants - Samper, Martinez Barrios - as Premier. The Radicals gave a pledge to the left that no Gil Robles man would enter the cabinet. Actually, this arrangement was dictated by Gil Robles. He had studied the methods of Hitler and Mussolini, and felt he dared not openly take power until his fascist movement had acquired a mass base. ...
The legal structure provided by the republican-socialist coalition proved most useful to Lerroux-Gil Robles. Over a hundred issues of El Socialista were seized within a year. The Socialist International estimated in September 1934 a total of 12,000 imprisoned workers. ... All the laws which the socialists had thought to use against 'irresponsibles' were now used against them.
Gil Robles' main problem was to secure a mass base, a difficult task because Spain has an extremely small middle class. Outside of the small group of prosperous peasant-owners in the North - Basque and Navarra - where a force similar to the Austrian clerical-fascist militia was organised, Gil Robles would have much difficulty in recruiting from the lower classes.
There were, however, the million and a half unemployed city and land workers: to win them, Gil Robles introduced a bill providing unemployment benefits, seeking to exploit the fact that the unemployed had been neglected by the republican-socialist government. The clericals set up a programme of government reforestation, the work camps being schools for fascism. ...
Even to unfriendly observers it appeared that Gil Robles was rolling up a mass following. But when, after months of patient labour and huge expenditure, the clerical fascists attempted to show results by marshalling great mass gatherings, they were smashed and disintegrated by the socialist proletariat.
Why? It is true that clerical fascism was often inept. Nevertheless, the lack of a convincing demagogy had not prevented clerical-fascism from smashing the proletariat in Austria. Spanish clerical-fascism did not succeed for the reason that the proletariat, unlike that of Germany, did fight and, unlike the Austrians, fought before it was too late.
For the Spanish proletariat evidenced a real determination not to allow itself to be beaten by fascism. The leftward evolution of the international social-democracy after the defeats of Germany and Austria, came in Spain more rapidly than elsewhere. Caballero joined the left wing, of which the Socialist Youth, deeply critical of both the Second and Third Internationals, was the mainstay.
The left wing declared for preparing the proletarian revolution, to be achieved by armed insurrection. The centre wing of the party, led by Prieto and Gonzales Pena, publicly pledged, in the Cortes, that any attempt at a fascist regime would be met by armed revolution. ...
In the UGT, Caballero introduced a regime of bold struggle and the right-wing socialists who objected were forced to resign from its executive. Precisely because they had been so ideologically dependent on the Kautskys and Bauers (historic leaders of German and Austrian Social Democracy), the fall of their teachers enabled the Spanish socialists to make an extraordinarily sharp break with their past.
The bourgeoisie, reading proletarian politics by way of bourgeois analogies, thought this was all bluff until they were scared into conviction by the discovery of large depots of arms in socialist homes and buildings.
With the Socialist Party ready to struggle, the fight against fascism was enormously facilitated, indeed it is not too much to say that only the leftward turn of the Socialist Party made possible, under the existing conditions, the victory over fascism. To have rallied the masses in spite of the socialists, would have required a revolutionary party of such calibre and mass proportions as simply did not exist in Spain.
It proved impossible, however, to instil the Socialist Party with the Marxist conception of the insurrection ... The broad character of the proletarian insurrection was explained by the Communist Left (Trotskyist). It devoted itself to efforts to build the indispensable instrument of the insurrection: workers' councils constituted by delegates representing all the labour parties and unions, the shops and streets; to be created in every locality and joined together nationally; a veritable mass leadership which as it functioned would succeed in drawing to it all non-party, non-union and anarchist workers seriously desirous of fighting against capitalism.
Unfortunately, the socialists failed to understand the profound need of these Workers' Alliances. The bureaucratic traditions were not to be so easily overcome; Caballero, no more than Prieto, could understand that the mass leadership of the revolution must be broader than the party leadership; the socialist leaders thought that the Workers' Alliances meant that they would have merely to share leadership with the Communist Left and other dissident communist groups.
Thus, though the Communist Left was persuasive enough to achieve their creation in Asturias and Valencia, and they nominally existed in Madrid and elsewhere, actually in most cases they were merely 'top' committees, without elected or lower-rank delegates, that is, little more than liaison committees between the leadership of the organizations involved; and even these were never completed by being joined together through a national committee. ...
In their partial struggles against the fascist menace, however. the socialists acquitted themselves magnificently. Gil Robles put his greatest efforts on three carefully-planned concentrations: that at Escurial, near Madrid, on April 22. 1934: that of the Catalonian landowners in Madrid on September 8 against liberal tenancy laws adopted by the Catalonian government, and that on September 9 at Covadongas, Asturias. Not one of these was successful.
The workers declared general strikes covering each area: street car rails were torn up: trains were stopped; food and accommodations were made impossible: roads were blocked by barricades, and with fists and weapons the reactionaries were turned back and dispersed. The small groups of wealthy young bloods and their servants, clergy and landowners, who managed to get through with the aid of the army and Civil Guard, presented such a ludicrous contrast to the forces of their opponents that the clerical-fascist claim to represent all Spain received an irreparable blow.
The workers' opposition was reinforced by the struggle for national liberation. Moves against its semi-autonomous status roused the Catalonian nation; Companys, still in power, had to endorse a series of huge demonstrations against Gil Robles. ...
The clerical-fascists dared wait no longer. They had failed to build a mass base; but with every day the opposition grew stronger. The disunity within the workers' ranks was slowly but surely tending to disappear. Despite Lerroux's clever game of gentle treatment for the CNT, in order to reinforce the anti political elements who were arguing that all governments were equally bad and Lerroux's government no worse than the last, socialist proposals were beginning to meet with acceptances; in a number of strikes the CNT cooperated with the UGT and in several places, notably in Asturias, the anarchists had entered the Workers' Alliances.
Even the Stalinists were compelled to come along. Since November 1933, they had met each socialist step to the left by the foulest kind of invective. ... but by September the pressure from its own ranks was irresistible, its delegates taking their seats in the Alliances on September 23 - just a few days before the armed struggle began.
If the chief exponents of the theory of social-fascism had to join the proletarian united front, the anarchist-led workers of the CNT would soon take the same road. Gil Robles dared wait no longer; he struck.
Zamora named Lerroux to form a new cabinet; three of Gil Robles' nominees entered it. The socialists had declared they would answer such a move with arms. If they now retreated, the initiative would pass to Gil Robles, the masses would be demoralised. The socialists took up the challenge within six hours. At midnight of October 4, the Workers' Alliances and the UGT declared a nationwide general strike. ...
Despite the absence of real soviets, the lack of clarity concerning the goal of the struggle, the failure to call the peasants to take the land and the workers to seize the factories, the workers heroically threw themselves into the struggle. The backbone of the struggle was broken, however, when the refusal of the CNT railroad workers to strike enabled the government to transport goods and troops.
The few hours between the general strike call and the mobilisation of the workers' militia was sufficient delay to enable the government to arrest the soldiers who were depended upon to split the army; the failure to arm the workers beforehand could not be made up for within a few hours, while government troops and police were raiding every likely building. There were many outright betrayals of arms depots; many key men fled when victory appeared out of the question.
In Catalonia, which should have been the fortress of the uprising, dependence on the petty-bourgeois government of Companys proved fatal; more fearful of arming the workers than of capitulating to Gil Robles, Companys broadcast reassuring statements until, surrounded by Madrid troops, be abjectly surrendered.
And yet, in spite of all this, the workers put up a tremendous struggle. In Madrid, Bilbao and other cities, armed clashes went no further than guerrilla sniping by the workers: but the general strikes were carried on for a long period, sustained by the proletariat with exemplary enthusiasm and discipline, and paralysing industrial and commercial life as no previous struggle had ever done in Spain.
The greatest and most glorious struggle took place in Asturias. Here the Workers' Alliances were most nearly like soviets, and had been functioning for a year under socialist and Communist Left leadership. Pena and Manuel Grossi led the miners, who made up for lack of arms by dynamite, tool of their trade, in a victorious insurrection.
The 'Workers and Peasants Republic' of Asturias gave the land to the peasants, confiscated the factories, tried their enemies in revolutionary tribunals and for fifteen historic days held off the Foreign Legion and Moorish troops. There is a saying in Spain that had there been three Asturiases, the revolution would have been successful. Only the failure of the rebellion elsewhere enabled the government to concentrate its full force on Asturias.
Nor did there follow a period of pessimism in the workers' ranks. On the contrary, there was widespread recognition that they had not been defeated in a general engagement; the masses had merely gone on strike and confined their fighting to driving off scabs: their ranks were still intact. They would fight again very soon, and this time would know better how to fight.
The dread story of how 3.000 Asturian workers had been slaughtered, most of them after surrender, only served to steel the determination of the masses. Gil Robles' attempts to seize workers' headquarters, close down unions, confiscate funds, met with the fiercest resistance. To take the place of the confiscated labour press, illegal organs sprang up and were openly circulated. Executions of October prisoners were met with general strikes.
Numerous economic strikes demonstrated the unshaken morale of the proletariat. On May 1, 1935, despite the most frenzied efforts of the government, there was a complete stoppage of work, an absolute paralysis of everything except the public services manned by government troops. The amnesty campaigns, for reprieves of condemned men and release of the prisoners, drew in large sections of the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie. ...
Great anti-fascist rallies took place around the demand for dissolution of the Cortes and new elections. Meetings of a hundred thousand, of two hundred thousand, became regular occurrences.
Within the working class, the sentiment for unity was the dominant note. Terribly discredited for their refusal to join the October revolt, the anarchists sought to apologise by pointing to the repressions they were undergoing at the time from Companys and asserted they were ready to join with socialists in the struggle for freedom; Angel Pestana led a split and organized the Syndicalist Party for participation in the coming elections; and even the CNT leadership made it clear they would let their followers vote against the semi-fascist regime.
With the tide, most of the bourgeois press turned against Gil Robles. It needed only the final touch of financial scandal involving the Lerroux government. The clerical-fascists had arrived at an impasse; they had to retreat.
They had no idea, however, of the extent of the tidal wave which was to sweep over them. They thought that the February elections would give the balance of power to centre groups. So, too, thought Azana who, eight days before the elections. sought a postponement, fearing the republican-workers' coalition had not had enough time for its propaganda. But the masses of peasants and workers, men and women, had their say. They swept the semi-fascist regime away.
In addition to knowing about these events, to understand Trotsky's writings on Spain during this period, it's also important to recognise a significant change in strategy being carried out by the International Left Opposition at this time. An article in 'Socialism Today' outlining the history of the founding of the 'Fourth International' explains this political context:
"Comintern policy in the 1920s and 1930s resulted in disasters for the international and Soviet working class. Trotsky’s warnings were proved correct but, paradoxically, the mood of isolation and despair among the Russian masses resulting from these international defeats strengthened the Stalinist bureaucracy. ...
Until 1933, Trotsky opposed calls for a new international made by some oppositional trends to Stalinism. He argued that the communist parties still represented the most militant sections of the working class, despite their Stalinist leaderships. Although Stalin did not allow any real opposition within the Third International, if the Left Opposition turned its back on those workers, it would be further isolated as Stalin wished. Trotsky believed that big events, inside and outside the Soviet Union, could stir the masses and give the Left Opposition the chance to grow rapidly.
However, Trotsky changed his position when Adolf Hitler took power in 1933 and smashed the mighty organisations of the German working class. As the Nazi menace had grown, Trotsky advocated a united front of the mass workers’ organisations – the social democrats and communists. But, under the leadership of the Comintern, the German communists followed an ultra-left policy of denouncing social democrats as ‘social fascists’ and kept the working class divided, thus allowing Hitler to come to power. ...
For Trotsky, the destruction of the German working class without a struggle signalled the collapse of the Third International and the adoption of the Stalinist leadership of a policy of conscious counter-revolution. When the leaders of the Comintern declared its policy in Germany had been flawless and banned any communist party debating the issue, which they docilely followed, Trotsky declared: "An organisation which has not been wakened up by the thunderbolt of fascism… is dead and cannot be revived".
After Hitler's victory, the Left Opposition concluded in August 1933 that further efforts to regenerate or reform the Comintern were futile. The Left Opposition ceased to be a faction of the Comintern and became an independent movement towards the creation of a new international and new revolutionary parties throughout the world. To express this change, it changed its name to the International Communist League (Bolshevik-Leninists). The ICL also came to the conclusion that a ‘political revolution’ would be necessary in the Soviet Union to overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy and to restore real workers’ democracy. ...
Growing radicalisation in Western Europe in the 1930s led to the growth of the social-democratic parties, especially to the growth of their youth wings and the leftwing. The ICL called on its sections to orientate towards these leftward moving elements to win them to a revolutionary position. In October 1934, a resolution was passed at an ICL meeting which pressed the French comrades to enter the French Socialist Party. The ‘French turn’ was subsequently carried out by other sections, as well. ...
The possibilities for advancing the emerging new international were dealt a severe blow when the Spanish section, one of the largest, broke with Trotsky and merged with the centrist workers’ and peasants’ bloc to form the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) in 1935. Eventually the POUM joined the Spanish Popular Front government. ...
In 1936, fearing that the heroic example of the Spanish revolution could inspire a resurgence of class militancy in the Soviet Union, Stalin unleashed the Moscow show trials and the mass extermination of Left Opposition supporters and ‘old Bolsheviks’ in the Soviet Union. ...
It was with the background of these historic defeats for the working class that the founding congress of the Fourth International (the ‘World Party of Socialist Revolution’) was held on 3 September 1938 in France".
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a) Trotsky on the failure of Nin to support the Bolshevik-Leninists joining the Socialist Party.
As Morrow explains above, "the leftward evolution of the international social-democracy after the defeats of Germany and Austria, came in Spain more rapidly than elsewhere".
Like broad layers of the working-class in general, after the experience of the 1931-33 government, Caballero had turned sharply left, and was supported by the socialist youth. In Spain therefore, above all, the Left Opposition had a clear opportunity to successfully apply the 'French Turn' and ensure that their small forces could then significantly impact events. Joining the Socialist Party as a clear faction could have brought thousands of workers around them, particularly the youth, and drawn them towards a genuinely revolutionary program.
However, apart from a small minority, Nin and the Left Communists refused to heed Trotsky's advice. Instead they went ahead with a complete fusion with Maurin's 'Bloque Obrera y Campesino' to form a new party, the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM).
The failure to take this opportunity to join with the socialist youth led to the Stalinists winning their support instead.
As Broué explains, "an alliance was also effected between the Socialist Youth and the Communist Youth within the ranks of the JSU (United Socialist Youth). This alliance, which Largo Caballero apparently had not intended but which his policy (of 'unity') made possible, deprived the old UGT leader and the Socialist party of 200,000 young militants, the élite of the young working-class generation. In effect, a few months later, as the result of a visit to the USSR, the entire JSU leadership joined the Communist party. ... This was an important victory for the orthodox Communists ... (that) guaranteed them a mass basis and a lever for activities within the Socialist party".
Trotsky himself wrote as follows in November 1934, following the events around the 'Asturian Commune':
"I have not as yet received any documents on the recent events in Spain generally, and on the role played by our section. But the general line of development suffices to draw the conclusion that our Spanish comrades should have joined the Socialist Party there at the very outset of the internal differentiation that began to prepare that party for the armed struggle. Our position in the Spanish situation would today be more favorable.
and again in December 1934:
"Much more disturbing is the passivity of our Spanish comrades (with a few honourable exceptions) during the great revolutionary events. We have always criticised the leader of the Spanish section as being permeated with a purely propagandistic and timid spirit. Each comrade can and should reread the international discussions with the Spanish leadership.
And here is what makes it significant: the Spanish comrades have declared themselves frankly hostile to the French turn. A new confirmation that their "intransigence" on this question is only the facade on a passivity that is purely propagandistic and journalistic. For our part, we will always repeat: of all the errors committed by all the sections, the greatest was committed by the Spanish section, which did not have the sense to join the Socialist Party in time at the beginning of the preparation for the armed struggle".
In a later June 1936 letter to Victor Serge, Trotsky summed up his experience with Nin as follows:
"If I have understood your letter from Paris, you are dissatisfied with our behaviour toward Andrés Nin, behaviour that you find "sectarian." You do not and cannot know the political and personal history of our relations. ...
You can easily imagine how happy I was when Nin arrived abroad. For several years, I corresponded with him quite regularly. Some of my letters were veritable "treatises" on the subject of the living revolution, in which Nin could and should have played an active role. ...
In his answers, Nin affirmed over and over again his agreement in theory, but he always avoided discussing practical problems. He asked me abstract questions about soviets, about democracy, etc. ... but he never said one word about the general strikes that were occurring in Catalonia.
Of course, no one is obligated to be a revolutionary. But Nin was the head of the Spanish Bolshevik-Leninists, and by that fact alone, he had a serious responsibility, which he failed to carry out in practice, all the while throwing dust in my eyes.
Believe me, dear friend, I have a certain gift for these things: if I am guilty of anything with regard to Nin, it is of having nourished illusions for too long on his account, and thereby of having given him the opportunity of maintaining under the banner of Bolshevism-Leninism the passivity and confusionism of which there is already a surfeit in the Spanish workers' movement - and I mean in its highest echelons. ...
How did the rupture come about? Nin announced that he was absolutely opposed to the tactical entry of our comrades into the French Socialist Party. Then, after long hesitations, he declared that in France it was a correct tactic and that he should act in the same way in Spain. But instead of that, he joined with the provincial organisation of Maurin, which had no perspective at all, but which allowed him to lead a peaceful existence. Our International Secretariat wrote him a critical letter. Nin responded by breaking off relations ..."
... and again in July 1936:
"The greatest misfortune for the Spanish section was the fact that a man with a name, with a certain past and the halo of a martyr of Stalinism, stood at its head and all the while led it wrongly and paralysed it".
The splendid Socialist Youth came spontaneously to the idea of the Fourth International. To all our urgings that all attention be devoted to the Socialist Youth, we received only hollow evasions. Nin was concerned with the "independence" of the Spanish section, that is, with his own passivity, with his own petty political comfort; he didn't want his captious dilettantism to be disturbed by great events. The Socialist Youth then passed over almost completely into the Stalinist camp.
The lads who called themselves Bolshevik-Leninists and who permitted this, or better yet, who caused this, have to be stigmatised forever as criminals against the revolution.
At the moment when Nin's bankruptcy became clear even to his own supporters, he united with the nationalist-Catalan philistine Maurin, breaking off all relations with us by the declaration that "the International Secretariat understands nothing of Spanish affairs." In reality Nin understands nothing of revolutionary policy or of Marxism".
b) Trotsky on civil war, insurrection, and the defeat of the 'Asturian Commune' - November 1934
"The impotence of parliamentarianism under the conditions of crisis of the whole capitalist system is so obvious that the vulgar democrats in the camp of the workers ... do not find a single argument to defend their petrified prejudices. All the more readily do they seize upon every defeat and every failure suffered along the revolutionary road.
The development of their thought is this: if pure parliamentarianism offers no way out, armed struggle does no better. The defeats of the proletarian insurrections in Austria and in Spain are now, of course, their choice argument.
No one has said that the revolutionary method automatically assures victory. What is decisive is not the method in itself but its correct application, the Marxist orientation in events, powerful organisation, the confidence of the masses won through long experience, a perspicacious and bold leadership. The issue of every struggle depends upon the moment and conditions of the conflict and the relation of forces.
Marxism is quite far from the thought that armed conflict is the only revolutionary method, or a panacea good under all conditions. Marxism in general knows no fetishes, neither parliamentary nor insurrectional. There is a time and place for everything. There is one thing that one can say at the beginning: On the parliamentary road the socialist proletariat has nowhere and never conquered power nor ever, as yet, even drawn close to it. ...
On the other hand, historical experience shows that the revolutionary method can lead to the conquest of power by the proletariat - in Russia in 1917, in Germany and Austria in 1918, in Spain in 1930. In Russia there was a powerful Bolshevik Party, which prepared for the revolution over a long period of years and knew solidly how to take over power.
The reformist parties of Germany, Austria, and Spain did not prepare the revolution, did not lead it, but suffered it. Frightened by the power that had come into their hands against their own will, they benevolently handed it over to the bourgeoisie. In this way they undermined the confidence of the proletariat in itself, and further, the confidence of the petty bourgeoisie in the proletariat. They prepared the conditions for the growth of fascist reaction and fell victims to it.
Civil war, we have said, following Clausewitz, is a continuation of politics but by other means. This means that the result of the civil war depends for one-fourth, not to say one-tenth, upon the development of the civil war itself, its technical means, its purely military leadership, and for three-fourths, not for nine-tenths, on the political preparation.
Of what does this political preparation consist? Of the revolutionary cohesion of the masses, of their liberation from servile hopes in the clemency, generosity, and loyalty of "democratic slave owners," of education of revolutionary cadres who know how to defy official public opinion and who know how to display towards the bourgeoisie one-tenth the implacability that the bourgeoisie displays towards the tollers.
Without this temper, civil war when conditions force it - and they always end by forcing it - will take place under conditions most unfavourable for the proletariat, will depend upon many hazards, and even then, in case of military victory, power can escape the hands of the proletariat.
Whoever does not foresee that the class struggle leads inevitably to armed conflict is blind. But he is no less blind who fails to see behind this armed conflict and its outcome the whole previous policy of the classes in struggle. ...
In Spain ... the Socialist Party, like the Russian Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, shared power with the republican bourgeoisie to prevent the workers and peasants from carrying the revolution to its conclusion. For two years the Socialists in power helped the bourgeoisie disembarrass itself of the masses by crumbs of national, social, and agrarian reforms. Against the most revolutionary strata of the people, the Socialists used repression.
The result was twofold. Anarcho-syndicalism, which would have melted like wax in the heat of revolution had the workers' party pursued a correct course, was strengthened and drew around it the militant layers of the proletariat. At the other pole, social catholic demagogy succeeded in skillfully exploiting the discontent of the masses with the bourgeois-socialist government.
When the Socialist Party was sufficiently compromised, the bourgeoisie drove it from power and took over the offensive on the whole front. The Socialist Party had to defend itself under the most unfavourable conditions, which had been prepared for it by its own previous policy. The bourgeoisie already had a mass support at the right. The anarcho-syndicalist leaders, who during the course of the revolution committed all the mistakes typical of these professional confusionists, refused to support the insurrection led by the traitor "politicians."
The movement did not take on a general character but remained sporadic. The government directed its blows at the scattered sections of the workers. The civil war forced by the reaction ended in defeat of the proletariat. ...
In Spain as in Austria it was not revolutionary methods that were defeated but opportunist methods in a revolutionary situation. It is not the same thing!"
c) On 'the treachery of the POUM' in joining the 'Popular Front'.
Trotsky wrote the following in an article in January 1936:
"The Spanish organisation of 'Left Communists', which was always a muddled organisation, after countless vacillations to the right and to the left, merged with the Catalan Federation of Maurin into a party of "Marxist (?) Unification" on a centrist program. Some of our own periodicals, misled by this name, have written about this party as though it were drawing close to the Fourth International. There is nothing more dangerous than to exaggerate one's own forces with the aid of.. a credulous imagination. ...
The newspapers report that in Spain all the "left" parties both bourgeois and working class, have made an electoral bloc on the basis of a common program, which in the nature of things differs in no way from the program of the French Popular Front and all other fake programs of the same type. ...
The program records the rejection of the nationalisation the land by the bourgeois republican members of the blow but "in return," along with the customary cheap promises favour of the peasantry (credits, higher prices for agricultural products, etc.), the program declares for the "recovery (!) of industry" and protection for small industry and petty merchants.
Then follows the inevitable "control over the banks which - since the bourgeois republicans, according to the text of the program, reject workers' control - boils down to control over the banks ... by the bankers themselves, through the medium of their parliamentary agents like Azaña and similar gentlemen. ...
Signatories to this infamous document are the representative of two left bourgeois parties, the Socialist Party, the General Workers Union (UGT), the Communist Party (of course!) the Socialist Youth (too bad!), "Syndicalist Party" (Pestaña) and finally the "Workers Party of Marxist Unification" (POUM).
Most of these parties stood at the head of the Spanish revolution during the years of its upsurge and they did everything in their power to betray it and trample it underfoot. The new angle is the signature of the party of Maurin-Nin-Andrade. The former Spanish "Left Communists" have turned into a mere tail of the "left" bourgeoisie. It is hard to conceive of a more ignominious downfall! ...
In this connection, it is in order to recall that the Spanish "Left Communists," as their very name indicates, posed on every appropriate occasion as incorruptible revolutionists. In particular, they thunderously condemned the French Bolshevik-Leninists for entering the Socialist Party. Never! Under no conditions!
To enter temporarily into a mass political organisation in order to carry on an uncompromising struggle in its ranks against the reformist leaders for the banner of the proletarian revolution - that is opportunism; but to conclude a political alliance with the leaders of a reformist party on the basis of a deliberately dishonest program serving to dupe the masses and cover up for the bourgeoisie - that is valour! Can there be any greater debasement and prostitution of Marxism?".
Trotsky also wrote in June 1936:
"The question of questions at present is the Popular Front. The left centrists seek to present this question as a tactical or technical manoeuvre, so as to be able to peddle their wares in the shadow of the Popular Front. In reality, the Popular Front is the main question of proletarian class strategy for this epoch. It also offers the best criterion for the difference between Bolshevism and Menshevism.
For it is often forgotten that the greatest historical example of the Popular Front is the February 1917 revolution. From February to October, the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries, who represent a very good parallel to the "Communists" and the Social Democrats, were in the closest alliance and in a permanent coalition with the bourgeois party of the Cadets, together with whom they formed a series of coalition governments.
Under the sign of this Popular Front stood the whole mass of the people, including the workers', peasants', and soldiers' councils. To be sure, the Bolsheviks participated in the councils. But they did not make the slightest concession to the Popular Front. Their demand was to break this Popular Front, to destroy the alliance with the Cadets, and to create a genuine workers' and peasants' government".
d) Tasks after the February 1936 election of the Popular Front government
Trotsky wrote the following in an article in April 1936, entitled "The tasks of the Fourth International in Spain"
"The situation in Spain has again become revolutionary. The development of the Spanish revolution is taking place at a slow tempo. For this reason, the revolutionary elements have acquired a fairly long period of time in which to take shape, to rally the vanguard around themselves, in order to measure up to their task at the decisive moment.
We must now say openly that the Spanish "Left Communists" have allowed this exceptionally favourable interval to slip by ... With a correct policy, the "Left Communists" as a section of the Fourth International might have been at the head of the Spanish proletariat today. Instead, they are vegetating in the confused organisation of Maurin - without a program, without perspectives, and without any political significance. ...
What does the removal of President Zamora mean? It means that political developments have once more entered into an acute stage. Zamora was, so to speak, the stable pole of the ruling echelons. ...
Modern Bonapartism is the expression of the most extreme class antagonisms in the period when these antagonisms have not yet led to open struggle. Bonapartism may find its point of support in the quasi-parliamentary government, but also for that matter in the "supraparty" president; this depends exclusively on the circumstances.
Zamora was the representative of the Bonapartist equilibrium. The sharpening of the antagonism led to a state of affairs in which both of the main camps sought first to use Zamora and then to get rid of him. The right wing did not succeed in doing this in its time, but the "Popular Front" did. This means, however, the beginning of an acute revolutionary period.
Both the profound ferment in the masses and the continual violent explosions demonstrate that the workers of town and country, as well as the poor peasants, deceived over and over again, are continually directing all their forces toward a revolutionary solution. And what role does the Popular Front play in the face of this powerful movement? The role of a gigantic brake, built and set into motion by traitors and servile scum. ...
After Zamora's removal, Azaña, hand in hand with the new president of the republic, must take over the role of the stable Bonapartist pole; that is, he must try to elevate himself above the two camps in order to be better able to direct the arms of the state against those revolutionary masses who assisted him to power.
The workers' organisations, however, remain completely enmeshed in the net of the Popular Front. The convulsions of the revolutionary masses (without a program, without a leadership worthy of confidence) thus threaten to throw the gates wide open to the counterrevolutionary dictatorship!
That the workers are driving ahead in a revolutionary direction is shown by the development of all their organizations, most particularly by that of the Socialist Party and the Socialist Youth.
Two years ago we raised the question of the entry of the Spanish Bolshevik-Leninists into the Socialist Party. This proposal was rejected by the Andrés Nins and Andrades with the disdain of conservative philistines: they wanted "independence" at all costs, because it left them in peace and put them under no obligations. And yet, affiliation to the Socialist Party in Spain would have yielded immeasurably better results under the given circumstances than was the case, for example, in France (on the condition, of course, that in Spain the terrible mistakes committed by the leading French comrades had been averted).
Meanwhile, however, Andrade and Nin united with the confusionist Maurín, in order to jointly trot along behind the Popular Front. The Socialist workers, however, in their striving for revolutionary clarity, fell victim to the Stalinist deceivers. The fusion of the two youth organisations [Socialist and Stalinist] signifies that the best revolutionary energies will be abused and dissipated by the Comintern's mercenaries. ...
Nobody can know what form the next period in Spain will take. In any case, the upsurge that has borne the clique of the Popular Front to power is too mighty to ebb in a short period of time and to leave the battlefield free to the reaction.
The truly revolutionary elements still have a certain period of time, not too long, to be sure, in which to take stock of themselves, gather their forces, and prepare for the future. This refers above all to the Spanish supporters of the Fourth International.
Their tasks are as clear as day:
1. To condemn and denounce mercilessly before the masses the policy of all the leaders participating in the Popular Front.
2. To grasp in full the wretchedness of the leadership of the "Workers Party of Marxist Unification" and especially of the former "Left Communists"- Andrés Nin, Andrade, etc. - and to portray them clearly before the eyes of all the advanced workers.
3. To rally around the banner of the Fourth International on the basis of the "Open Letter." (setting out the need for a new international).
4. To join the Socialist Party and the United Youth in order to work there as a faction in the spirit of Bolshevism.
5. To establish fractions and other nuclei in the trade unions and other mass organisations.
6. To direct their main attention to the spontaneous and semi-spontaneous mass movements, to study their general traits, that is, to study the temperature of the masses and not the temperature of the parliamentary cliques.
7. To be present in every struggle so as to give it clear expression.
8. To insist always on having the fighting masses form and constantly expand their committees of action (juntas, soviets), elected ad hoc.
9. To counterpose the program of the conquest of power, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the social revolution to all hybrid programs (à la Caballero, or à la Maurin).
This is the real road of the proletarian revolution. There is no other."
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