What if the POUM really was Trotskyist?

There are all sorts of misconceptions about the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, i.e., "Workers' Party of Marxist Unification") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POUM and its role in the Spanish Civil War. Of these, probably the most widespread is the notion that the POUM was "Trotskyist." Of course the Stalinists liked to characterize it as such in order to discredit it, since the Moscow Trials had "proven" that Trotskyism equalled Fascism, but there is no reason for anyone else to accept this characterization.

What gave the characterization its superficial plausibility was that Andrés Nin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrés_Nin_Pérez who was the leader of the POUM in 1936-7 had briefly worked as secretary to Trotsky in Russia, and was later to lead the Trotskyist Left Opposition in Spain (the Izquierda Comunista de España or"Communist Left of Spain," known as ICE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Left_of_Spain) However, using this to label the POUM Trotskyist ignores two things.

First, the POUM was not the ICE under a new name. Rather it was the result of a merger between the ICE and the Workers and Peasants' Bloc (BOC) of Joaquín Maurín. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joaquín_Maurín As I have written elsewhere:

"During the 1930s the international Communist movement was divided into three groups. The first and infinitely the most powerful was of course the Stalin-dominated "official" Communist International. The second was the Trotskyites. The third was the Right Opposition--essentially those Communists who were expelled from the Comintern in 1929 for supporting Bukharin and objecting to the ultraleft "Third Period" line of the Stalinists at this time. This third group has had almost nothing written about it apart from Robert J. Alexander's *The Right Opposition: The Lovestoneites and the International Communist Opposition of the 1930s* (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 1981). As Alexander notes, the Right Opposition, organized in the International Communist Opposition (ICO) actually had more adherents world wide than the Trotskyites in the 1930s. Admittedly that's not saying much in itself--but according to Alexander, Right Opposition parties (mostly affiliated with the ICO) existed in fifteen countries during the 1930s, and some of them were not without influence. In the US, though a tiny group, they had considerable power in at least two major labor unions--the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) (where Charles Zimmerman, a leading Lovestoneite, headed the powerful Local 22 and was a member of the union's executive board) and the United Auto Workers (UAW) whose President Homer Martin relied heavily on Lovestoneite advisers. In Sweden most Communists went over to the Opposition; in the Riksdag elections of 1932 the Oppositionists got 5.7 percent of the vote compared to 3.9 for the Comintern party (and 41.7 for the Social Democrats). In Germany the Brandler-Thalheimer group (the KPO) won twenty-one seats in the municipal elections in Thuringia in late 1932 (compared to thirty-eight for the official Communists). In India, M. N. Roy, who was the founder of the Communist Party of India, led the Oppositionists for a while.

"Most important was Spain where the Bloque Obrero y Campesino (BOC) was for most of its existence "larger and more important in national politics than the official Spanish Communist Party, and BOC leader Joaquin Maurin was the country's outstanding Marxist thinker." (Alexander, p. 185) The BOC's successor, the POUM, is often mistakenly referred to as a "Trotskyite" party, partly because Stalinist propaganda constantly referred to it as such, and partly because Andres Nin had been a Trotskyist. ..But in the merger of the BOC with Nin's Izquierda Comunista to form the POUM in 1935 it was Maurin who was elected secretary general, and the BOC clearly brought far more members into the POUM than did Nin's group."

Second, apart from the POUM being more the product of BOC than of any "Trotskyist" group, there is another reason why characterizing it as "Trotskyist" is misleading. Trotsky was harshly critical not only of the POUM but *especially* of the ex-Trotskyists in it, above all his ex-secretary Nin. BY 1934 Nin and Trotsky had completely parted company, and in 1937 Trotsky wrote that for six years Nin had made "nothing but mistakes".

To give some examples of Trotsky's hostility to Nin and the POUM:

(1) Trotsky did not approve of the formation of the POUM in 1935. "The International Secretariat [of the International Left Opposition] presumably seconded by Trotsky, strongly opposed the decision to form POUM. In a letter dated July 1935, the IS wrote to the Executive Committee of ICE that this would amount to "your absorption by the Workers and Peasants Bloc." It added that "if you had at least had the right to form fractions and had entered with your flag and your own ideas, the question might have been judged differently." However, the agreement reached by ICE was declared "totally unacceptable."

"The IS letter attacked the fact that the program agreed upon by ICE did not have any specific call for the formation of the Fourth International, and allowed POUM to belong to the London Bureau. [The London Bureau, which included the Independent Labour Party, was in Trotskyist terms a "centrist" organization--that is, one that vacillated between reformist and revolutionary socialism.--DT [1]] It went on to say that "our fraction could have played a very different role if it had openly entered with its Bolshevik-Leninist flag into the Spanish Socialist Party, which is the traditional party of the Spanish working class." It warned that without the ICE members inside the Socialist Left there was great danger of its being attracted to the Stalinists...

"In their insistence that the Spanish Trotskyists enter the Socialist Party Trotsky and the International Secretariat, aside from wishing to brush aside the almost unanimous wishes of the Spaniards, overlooked another essential fact about the situation: Spanish Socialists would not have admitted the Trotskyists under the conditions in which Trotsky wanted them to enter the PSOE. Jean Rous, sent by the International Secretariat to report on the formation of POUM, later recognized this: "It is necessary however, to note that the SP will not tolerate the B-L [Bolshevik-Leninist--DT] traction (flags flying). Hence the necessity for underground work." (I'm quoting from Robert J. Alexander again, but this time from his *International Trotskyism, 1929-1985,* a massive work available at https://archive.org/stream/robert-j...tary-history-of-the-movement#page/n1/mode/2up All further quotes in this post are from that work.)

(2) Although Trotsky did eventually acquiesce in the formation of the POUM, in only a few months he was bitterly denouncing it--and *especially* the ex-Trotskyists in it. This was over the POUM's decision to back the Popular Front in the 1936 elections. Trotsky had always made a distinction between the "United Front" (an alliance of workers' parties--Communists cooperating with Socialists) and the "Popular Front" (larger coalitions involving not only Communists and Socialists, but "bourgeois" parties like the Republican Left in Spain). He strongly disapproved of the latter, and would make no exception for Spain:

"This action of his ex-followers in POUM brought a blistering attack from Trotsky. In an "open letter" which appeared in the U.S. Trotskyist periodical New Militant on February 15, 1936, entitled "The Treachery of the POUM," Trotsky charged that "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! " After noting that [Juan] Andrade had recently sent him a book with a handwritten dedication to Trotsky as his "leader and teacher," Trotsky proclaimed that "that compels me at present to announce all the more decisively in public that I never taught anybody *political betrayal*. And Andrade's conduct is nothing else than *betrayal of the proletariat for the sake of an alliance with the bourgeoisie.*" He ended this blast by suggesting that "in Spain genuine revolutionists will mercilessly expose the betrayal of Maurin, Nin, Andrade, and their associates, and lay the foundation for the Spanish section of the Fourth International..."

"On various occasions, Trotsky was to refer to the POUM participation in the electoral coalition of February 1936 as a "betrayal." He apparently never knew about, or ignored, that fact that POUM regarded the Popular Front as purely an electoral alliance, involving no postelection commitments for the party. Nor did he ever take public note of the fact that on March 8, 1936, Maurin, the only POUM candidate elected in February, announced that POUM was withdrawing from the Popular Front. According to Maurin, "The main task of the proletariat today ... is to concentrate on extraparliamentary activities. It is prevented from doing so by its alliance with the petty bourgeoisie."..

(3) The POUM further displeased Trotsky by entering into the official government of Catalonia in September 1936 (Nin became Catalan Minister of Justice.) This was indeed a short and rather unhappy experience for the POUM. Their presence in the government was strongly opposed by the PSUC (the Communist-dominated "merged" party of the Catalan Communists and Socialists). "But until the Soviet Union began substantial shipments of arms to the Republic the PSUC, whose popular support was quite limited, had very little leverage. However, Soviet aid began in October when a Soviet consul, Antonov-Ovsenko (an ex-Trotskyist), appeared in Barcelona. By December, PSUC, with the direct help of Antonov-Ovsenko, had succeeded in provoking a "crisis " in the Catalan regime which resulted in the ouster of the POUM from the government. Thereafter, PSUC mounted an unceasing and scurrilous campaign against POUM, increasingly picturing them as "allies of Franco"..."

There were two reasons why the Stalinists were so obsessed with destroying the POUM. First of all, it was a dissident communist party--and one that was largely led by people like Nin, who had at least once been Trotskyists. Second, it was relatively weak, and destroying its influence would be a prelude to destroying the two more important groups on the Left that stood in the way of the Stalinization of the Spanish Republic: the left-Socialists led by Largo Caballero, and the Anarchists of the CNT-FAI. "At the time of the exit of POUM from the government of Catalonia on December 16, *Pravda* made quite clear the meaning of the Stalinists' success in forcing POUM out: "In Catalonia has begun the elimination of the Trotskyites and anarchosyndicalists; it will be carried to completion with the same energy as was used in the USSR."

"The growing persecution of POUM and anarchists in Catalonia reached a climax early in May 1937 when the Communist-led police attempted to seize some of the key posts still held by the CNT. This provoked three days of street fighting, "the May Days" which ended only after intervention of the CNT members of the Spanish government, who appealed to their followers to lay down their arms. When the anarchists agreed to do so, POUM had little choice but to do the same.

"Shortly after the end of the May Days most of the top leaders of POUM were arrested and the party was outlawed. Because of his refusal to authorize these actions, Francisco Largo Caballero, leader of the Socialist UGT, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unión_General_de_Trabajadores was forced out as prime minister of the Republican government, which from then on was dominated by pro-Stalinist elements..." Nin was shortly to be murdered by the NKVD. In 1938 there was to be what was called the "Moscow Trial in Barcelona" of the POUM leaders, though actually it showed that even in 1938 Barcelona was not quite totally Stalinized--the defendants vigorously denied their guilt, and while the court found most of the POUM leaders guilty of insurrection, it specifically rejected the accusation that they were Francoist agents, and did not impose the death penalty on any of them.

What was Trotsky's view of the POUM during these months? Again, unfavorable. On February 19, 1937, "after citing "POUM's error" of participating in the February 1936 election coalition, Trotsky commented that "the leadership of the POUM committed the second error of entering the Catalan coalition government; in order to fight hand in hand with the other parties at the front, there is no need to take upon oneself any responsibility for the false governmental policies of these parties. Without weakening the military front for a moment, it is necessary to know how to rally the masses politically under the revolutionary banner."

In March 1937, Trotsky went further and called Nin "the Spanish Martov"--there could hardly be a worse insult for a Bolshevik. It was not until after Nin's murder by the Stalinists that Trotsky relented a little, saying that Nin was "an old and incorruptible revolutionist": "Quite apart from the differences of opinion that separate me from the POUM, I must acknowledge that in the struggle that Nin led against the Soviet bureaucracy, it was Nin who was right. He tried to defend the independence of the Spanish proletariat from the diplomatic machinations and intrigues of the clique that holds power in Moscow. He did not want the POUM to become a tool in the hands of Stalin. He refused to cooperate with the GPU against the interests of the Spanish people. This was his only crime. And for this crime he paid with his life..."

Nevertheless, well after Nin's death and the destruction of the POUM, "orthodox Trotskyists" were still denouncing the "errors" the POUM made even after it had left the Catalan government. The argument was, If only the CNT and POUM had not surrendered during the May Days, they could have defeated the Stalinists and this would have been the spark that would have lit the European social revolution. One anarchosyndicalist, responding to this argument, noted "That the workers supported by the CNT units stood a good chance of victory in the case of this new civil war, can be readily granted. But this would be a Pyrrhic victory at best, for it is clear that a civil war behind the front lines resulting in the demoralization of the front and the withdrawal of the troops for the participation in this new civil war would open wide the gates to the triumphant sweep of the fascists." He also ridiculed the idea that the workers of a country like France--who were mostly either Socialists or Stalinists--would come to the rescue of a Barcelona revolution directed against Socialists and Stalinists.

So much for the "Trotskyism" of the POUM. Here I want to ask: What if the POUM really *had* been Trotskyist and had followed his advice? In other words, how well does Trotsky's evaluation of the situation in Spain hold up? My answer is, Not very well.

Trotsky's basic problem is that he saw things in Spain through the lens of Russia in 1917. For example, for years he insisted on the slogan of soviets in Spain. As Robert J. Alexander notes, "The soviets had arisen in Russia largely because of the absence of well-established trade unions and mass-based workers parties; whereas in Spain there existed strong trade unions and political organizations with which several generations of workers had been affiliated, and which both exerted discipline over their own followers, and were not at all ready to get out of the way to make room for some new type of workers organization." This was above all true of the anarchist workers of the CNT which was very strong in Catalonia. Trotsky seems to have viewed the CNT as no better than the Mensheviks, and was constantly urging the POUM on to policies that would have alienated the CNT workers.

For example, take the POUM's *limited* participation in the Popular Front at the time of the 1936 elections. It supported the Front purely as an electoral alliance at a time when failing to do so would have alienated the entire Spanish Left. Even the Anarchists gave up their traditional electoral abstention because a Popular Front victory was the only way to get an amnesty for political prisoners. But to Trotsky, even this limited support for the Popular Front was "class collaboration"--again based on Russia in 1917. He seems to have paid no attention to the fact that after the election Maurin announced POUM's withdrawal from the Popular Front.

Above all, there was this difference between Spain and Russia: In Russia, the Bolsheviks could win popularity by denouncing the increasingly unpopular war with Germany. In Spain, the war was with Franco, and it was essential not to alienate the non-POUM workers and peasants who made winning this war their first priority. Trotsky's reply to this was that the only way to win the war was through social revolution--agrarian reform, etc. But this ignored that, as Alexander notes, in Spain a social revolution *had already occurred* and the task was to defend it: "in Spain the peasants under anarchist and Socialist leadership had seized the land in the first days of the Civil War. Similarly, he seemed to give no recognition to the fact that the workers in Catalonia and many other parts of Republican Spain had seized control of their factories, railroads, and utilities the day the military revolt had been suppressed.

"To a large degree, therefore, the workers organizations in Spain — whether anarchists of the CNT-FAI, POUMists or left-wing Caballero Socialists — were faced with the problem of how to defend the revolutionary conquests they had made during the first days and weeks of the Civil War. Their choices were difficult in the extreme. They may have erred from time to time, although it is by no means clear that alternate choices would have brought any better results for them. But in any case, Trotsky tended to regard errors of judgment — if that is what they were — as "betrayal"..

An example of this is Trotsky's denunciation of POUM's September 1936 decision to join the Catalan government. This may indeed have been a mistake. "But in utterly condemning that decision, Trotsky certainly gave no weight to the fact that to have stayed apart from the Catalan government would have been for POUM to isolate itself totally from the CNT-FAI under circumstances in which the CNT-FAI was the principal bulwark of the revolution in Catalonia. Trotsky seemed not at all to recognize the need for POUM to maintain a relationship with the CNT-FAI which might permit it to influence the thinking and actions of the anarchists, not only to defend the revolution, but to defend the very existence of POUM itself in the face of the onslaught of the Stalinists..."

In short, "The POUM, led largely by Trotsky's ex-comrades, was not at all in the position of the Bolsheviks of 1917. Rather than being able to lead a crusade against an unpopular war and for yearned-for reforms, it had to find ways to defend a revolution which had already occurred — in the face of overwhelming pressures from other supposed "Marxist-Leninists" against it — and to do so without endangering the prosecution of a war the winning of which everyone (including Trotsky) agreed was the sine qua non for revolution of any kind. They may have made errors in judgment, but they were certainly not "betraying" the revolution..."

Of course one could go back further and note that apart from mistaken analogies with Russia, Trotsky also generalized from the experience of other countries, ignoring Spanish conditions. For example, 1934-36 was the period of the "French turn" in Trotskyist politics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Turn Trotsky ordered his French followers to join the French socialist party, the SFIO. He mistakenly thought that this tactic could be applied to Spain as well and sought to have the Spanish Trotskyists of ICE join the Spanish Socialist Party (instead of merging with the BOC as in OTL). "In the Spanish case he not only completely swept aside the fact that the ICE leaders and members were almost unanimous in opposition to the tactic, but also the fact that the Spanish Socialist Party was very different from that of France. Whereas the French party allowed formal factional groupings within its ranks, that of Spain did not. The Trotskyists would not have been admitted to the PSOE if they had tried to go in, as the International Secretariat described it, "with their flags flying."

"To greatly understate the case, Leon Trotsky did not show himself at his best in dealing with his Spanish followers. Certainly the totality of the blame for the ultimate break between them did not rest on his shoulders, but most of it did. His dogmatism, his lack of knowledge about the situation, his ultimate insistence on obedience on the part of his supporters all created a gulf which proved unbridgeable. But perhaps had Leon Trotsky acted differently in this case, he would not have been Leon Trotsky."

So much for "what if the POUM had been more Trotskyist?" In a subsequent post I will ask in effect "what if the POUM had been *less* Troskyist?" That is, what if Maurin had not been captured by the Francoists in the early days of the Civil War, and what if Maurin (who was never a Trotskyist, even after merging BOC into POUM) had led the POUM in the early Civil War years instead of Nin? As will be seen, Maurin had some ideas different from Nin's, who arguably was still too influenced by Trotskyist formulas, despite his break with Trotsky...

[1] The membership in the London Bureau goes some way to justify the poet Kenneth Rexroth's remark that "The POUM was not in any sense Trotskyite. Any book you read that says they were is either by a Stalinist or a dupe. They were Left Social Democrats affiliated with the British Independent Labour Party." http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/autobio/6.htm (The most famous ILP member to fight in Spain on the side of the POUM was of course George Orwell.) But that perhaps goes a bit too far; it may be true of Maurin, but Nin argued that the POUM participated in the London Bureau to influence it in a Trotskyist direction. However, that may just have been Nin's excuse in an attempt to appease Trotsky. Maurin says that Nin agreed with him that POUM should have no organizational ties with international Trotskyism.
 
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