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   Vol. 67/No. 25           July 28, 2003  
 
 
How POUM betrayed Spanish Revolution
(Books of the Month column)
 
Below is an excerpt from “Interview with Havas,” taken from The Spanish Revolution (1931-39), one of Pathfinder’s books of the month in July. The author, Leon Trotsky, was a leader of the October 1917 Russian Revolution. After the death of V.I. Lenin—the central leader of the Bolsheviks and of the Russian Revolution—Trotsky led the international fight to continue implementing Lenin’s political course and the program developed by the Communist International under Lenin’s guidance, in opposition to the Stalinist counterrevolution in the Soviet Union. Havas was a French newspaper agency. The interview was published in 1937.

Less than a year earlier the fascist general Francisco Franco had launched a war against the republican government in Spain. The republic had been established in 1931 amidst an ascending wave of revolutionary struggles by workers and peasants.

The main forces in the workers movement, however, squandered the opportunity to lead the overthrow of capitalist rule. They increasingly allied themselves with representatives of the liberal bourgeoisie, formalizing this class collaboration in the Popular Front—a coalition of the Socialist and Communist parties with liberal capitalists, backed by the anarcho-syndicalists and centrists, which won the national parliamentary elections in February 1936. The Popular Front policy was promoted internationally by the Stalinized Soviet Communist Party.

The most prominent among the centrist groups was the POUM, or Workers Party of Marxist Unification. Trotsky explained that in verbally proposing revolutionary solutions to the crisis, while hesitating to take decisive steps to put them into practice, the POUM acted as a principal roadblock to the formation of a revolutionary socialist party with broad popular support in Spain. Copyright © 1973 by Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission. Footnotes are by the Militant.
 

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BY LEON TROTSKY  
On the left wing of the Spanish governmental coalition, and partly in the opposition, is the POUM. This party is not “Trotskyite.” I have criticized its policies on many occasions, despite my warm sympathy for the heroism with which the members of this party, above all the youth, struggle at the front. The POUM has committed the error of participating in the electoral combination of the “Popular” Front; under the cover of this combination, General Franco during the course of several months boldly prepared the insurrection which is now ravaging Spain. A revolutionary party did not have the right to take upon itself, either directly or indirectly, any responsibility for a policy of blindness and criminal intolerance. It was obliged to call the masses to vigilance. 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 civil war, incomparably more than in ordinary war, politics dominates strategy. Robert Lee, as an army chieftain, was surely more talented than Grant, but the program of the liquidation of slavery assured victory to Grant.1 In our three years of civil war the superiority of military art and military technique was often enough on the side of the enemy, but at the very end it was the Bolshevik program that conquered. The worker knew very well what he was fighting for. The peasant hesitated for a long time, but comparing the two regimes by experience, he finally supported the Bolshevik side.

In Spain the Stalinists, who lead the chorus from on high, have advanced the formula to which Caballero, president of the cabinet, also adheres: First military victory, and then social reform.2 I consider this formula fatal for the Spanish revolution. Not seeing the radical differences between the two programs in reality, the toiling masses, above all the peasants, fall into indifference. In these conditions, fascism will inevitably win, because the purely military advantage is on its side. Audacious social reforms represent the strongest weapon in the civil war and the fundamental condition for the victory over fascism.

The policies of Stalin, who has always revealed himself as an opportunist in revolutionary situations, are dictated by a fear of frightening the French bourgeoisie, above all the “200 families” against whom the French Popular Front long ago declared war—on paper. Stalin’s policies in Spain repeat not so much Kerensky’s policies in 1917 as they do the policies of Ebert-Scheidemann in the German revolution of 1918. Hitler’s victory was the punishment for the policies of Ebert-Scheidemann. In Germany the punishment was delayed for 15 years. In Spain it can come in less than 15 months.3

However, would not the social and political victory of the Spanish workers and peasants mean European war? Such prophecies, dictated by reactionary cowardice, are radically false. If fascism wins in Spain, France will find itself caught in a vise from which is will not be able to withdraw. Franco’s dictatorship will mean the unavoidable acceleration of European war, in the most difficult conditions for France. It is useless to add that a new European war would bleed the French people to the last drop and lead it into its decline, and by the same token would deal a terrible blow to all humanity.

On the other hand, the victory of the Spanish workers and peasants would undoubtedly shake the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler. Thanks to their hermetic, totalitarian character, the fascist regimes produce an impression of unshakable firmness. Actually, at the first serious test they will be the victims of internal explosions. The victorious Russian revolution sapped the strength of the Hohenzollern regime….4 The task of the true Spanish revolutionists consists in strengthening and reinforcing the military front, in demolishing the political tutelage of the Soviet bureaucracy, in giving a bold social program to the masses, in assuring thereby the victory of the revolution and, precisely in that way, upholding the cause of peace. Therein alone lies the salvation of Europe!
 


1Robert Lee led the proslavery southern forces and Ulysses Grant commanded the northern armies in the 1861-65 American Civil War.
2Francisco Largo Caballero was a leader of the Socialist Party and prime minister of the Spanish republic from mid-1936 to mid-1937.
3Alexander Kerensky was the most prominent figure in the Provisional Government in Russia established after the overthrow of the tsar in February 1917. That government was overthrown in the October Revolution. Friedrich Ebert and Philipp Scheidemann were Social Democratic Party leaders in the 1919-25 Weimar Republic in Germany. They helped crush a workers’ uprising in 1919.
4The Hohenzollern dynasty was the ruling house of imperial Germany from 1871 to 1918.  
 
 
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