Durgan: Spanish Trotskyists and the POUM (Part 1)
Andy Durgan
The Spanish Trotskyists and the Foundation of the POUM
In September 1935 the Spanish Trotskyist group, the Communist Left (ICE), fused with the Workers and Peasants Bloc to form the POUM. Both at the time and retrospectively, this decision was widely criticised within the international Trotskyist movement. Whilst the political development of the POUM, or at least Trotsky's criticisms of it, are relatively well known [1], the history of the Spanish Trotskyists and their reasons for helping to found this party are far less known. [2]
The Left Opposition in Spain
The Communist Opposition of Spain (OCE), as it was first called, was founded in Liege, Belgium, on 28 February 1930 at a meeting of Spanish Communist exiles resident in that country, Luxembourg and France. The leader of this group, a founder member of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE), was 'Henri Lacroix' (Francisco Garcia Lavid). Lacroix, a house painter by trade, had spent some years in the Soviet Union, at least between 1925 and 1927, before living in Luxembourg and Belgium. It was here where he had entered into contact with French oppositionists. Inside Spain a number of former leading members of the PCE also sympathised with the Left Opposition, and soon formed part of the OCE. The most important of these was Juan Andrade in Madrid, a founder member and leader of the PCE and editor of its paper La Antorcha until 1926. Andrade had opposed the increasingly bureaucratic tendencies inside the PCE, and had been expelled from the party in 1927.
Following the fall of the dictator Primo de Rivera in January 1930, many political exiles, including the Trotskyists, returned to Spain to take advantage of the relative liberalisation. During 1930 the OCE was able to establish groups in a handful of centres, and probably had some 50 militants at this time. [3]
The group was strengthened by the return of Andreu Nin to Spain from the Soviet Union in September 1930. Nin, originally a teacher, had first entered into organised political activity in 1911 at the age of 19 as a member of a left wing Catalan nationalist group, but his concern for social issues led him to join the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) barely two years later.
In 1918, under the impact of the postwar revolutionary upsurge, both in Spain and the rest of Europe, he joined the Anarcho-Syndicalist trade union federation, the CNT, becoming one of its leaders in its stronghold of Barcelona. A sympathiser of the Russian Revolution, he had been fully won over to Communism after attending the founding congress of the Red International of Labour Unions in 1921 as part of the CNT delegation. Unable to return to Spain because his name was connected, unjustly, with the assassination of the Prime Minister, Eduardo Dato, he stayed in the Soviet Union. He became the Assistant Secretary of the RILU, joined the CPSU, and was elected onto the Moscow Soviet. Nin sided with the Left Opposition, probably in 1926, and consequently was stripped of all his official responsibilities. He was expelled from both the CPSU and PCE in 1928. Until 1930 he lived precariously in the Russian capital, and only his status as a foreigner saved him from arrest. [4]
Over the next few years the Spanish Trotskyist group included in its ranks many talented militants, most of whom were later to play a leading role in the POUM. Apart from Nin and Andrade, the other principal intellectuals of the group were Esteben Bilbao, the Basque doctor Jose Luis Arenillas, and Enrique Fernandez Sendon ('Person'). Bilbao, like Lacroix and another leading Trotskyist militant, Gregorio Ibarrondo ('Carnicero'), had been founding members of the Basque PCE. Other militants of note were the lawyer of the CNT miners' union in Asturias, Jose Loredo Aparicio; the Catalan journalist, Narcis Molins i Fabrega; the group's organiser in Estremadura, Luis Rastrollo; and a founding member of the Madrid PCE and former leader of the Communist Youth, Luis Garcia Palacios.
The group's many working class cadres included such militants as the petroleum workers' leader in Astillero (Santander), Eusebio Cortezon; Emilio Garcia, a leading member of the CNT woodworkers' union in Gijon, and like Cortezon a founder member of the PCE; Julio Alutiz, the railway worker from Pamplona, Emiliano Diaz in Seville, and Manuel Sanchez in Salamanca.
Among the many outstanding younger activists were Ignacio Iglesias, a former Socialist Youth leader from Sama de Langreo (Asturias); Enrique Rodriguez and Jesus Blanco, recruited from the Madrid Communist Youth; G. Munis (Manuel Fernandez Grandizo) from Llerena (Estremadura), who was also active in the Mexican Trotskyist movement, and Julio Cid, recruited from the Socialist Youth of Gerena (Andalusia) in 1933. £5]
Although the OCE was small, it was able to take advantage of the complete disarray of the PCE and the new political opportunities opened up by the collapse of the dictatorship and the subsequent rise in mass struggle. The PCE had barely 500 members during the late 1920s, and most of these had either been in jail or exile. [6] Moreover, many of its leaders, albeit for different reasons, were in opposition to the official party line.
The establishment of the Republic on 14 April 1931 led to a further extension of political freedoms, a massive strike wave, and the growth of all working class organisations, including the PCE.
Despite being relatively few in number, the Trotskyists" level of analysis was in stark contrast with the general theoretical poverty of Spanish Marxism at this time. In particular, their monthly theoretical journal Comunismo, which was published from May 1931 through to October 1934, stands out as the most serious Marxist journal published in Spain during the years prior to the Civil War. |7J
Organisationally, however, the Spanish Trotskyists were less successful. The domination of the Spanish workers' movement by Anarcho-Syndicalism and reformist Socialism was a problem for all the Communist factions. Despite all its weaknesses, the PCE, as the defender of official orthodoxy, proved more attractive to most workers sympathetic to Communism than the much maligned and generally isolated Trotskyists. Only the Catalan dissidents, the Workers and Peasants Bloc (BOC), were able seriously to challenge the PCE at an organisational level.
But although small, the Spanish group compared favourably with Trotskyist organisations elsewhere in the world. According to Pelai Pages, by 1934 the ICE (as the OCE had become in March 1932) had around 800 members. [8] They were mostly in small groups scattered throughout the country. The exception was in the province of Badajoz (Estremadura), where nearly half their membership was concentrated in and around the town of Llerena. [9] This was the only area where the Trotskyists won a real mass base, mainly among farm workers, in part thanks to their leadership of peasant strikes between 1932 and 1934, and the efforts of Luis Rastrollo and the peasant leaders Jose Martin, Felix Galan and others. Elsewhere, there were relatively important Trotskyist nuclei in Madrid, Asturias, Galicia, Seville, Salamanca and Astillero (Santander), as well as scattered groups in Northern Castille, the Basque Country and in and around Barcelona. In contrast, the PCE probably had some 10 000 members by 1934, and the BOC around 4000, mainly in Catalonia. [UJ]
Notes
1. It is not the aim of this article to comment on Trotsky's extensive and generally excellent writings on Spain between 1930 and 1940.
2._ References to much, although not all, of the material cited in this article can also be found in P. Pages, El movimiento trotskista en Espana 1930-1935, Barcelona 1977, and Pierre Broue's extensive notes and appendices to the Spanish edition of Trotsky's writings on Spain, La revolution espanola, two volumes, Barcelona 1977.
3. V. Alba, Dos revolucionarios, Madrid 1975, p.358. We know of the existence of OCE groups at this time in Madrid, Bilbao, Asturias and, perhaps, Valencia.
4 On Nin's life in Moscow at this time, Cf. V. Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, Oxford 1975, pp.275-6.
5. Munis and Cid were members of the Spanish Bolshevik-Leninists during the Civil War, Cid being killed during the 'May Days' in Barcelona in 1937. Biographies of most of the leading militants of the OCE can be found in Trotsky, op. cit, Volume 2, pp.529-43.
6. According to one Communist International leader at the time, Piatnitsky, the PCE had only 120 members by 1930 (Communist International, 20 February 1934).
L An anthology of the most important articles from Comunismo was published in Madrid in 1978.
JL P. Pages, op. cit, pp.70-94.
9. La Batalla, 5 June 1936, states that the POUM had 122 members in Llerena at this time.
10. The PCE's own membership figures are notoriously unreliable. According to its own figures, the party grew from around 3,000 members in May 1931 to 8,800 by the end of that year. By February 1936 there were supposedly 20,000 members, and 83,967 in July, on the eve of the Civil War.
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The Spanish Trotskyists and the Foundation of the POUM
The Trotskyists and the Workers and Peasants Bloc 1931-32
The relationship between the Spanish Trotskyists and the international movement of which they were a part was never very harmonious. The first of various disputes arose in early 1931 over how the OCE should be built. Nin was initially against an exclusive orientation towards the PCE, of which the Trotskyists considered themselves a faction, proposing instead that the OCE should also work inside the various dissident Communist groups, in particular the Workers and Peasants Bloc in Catalonia.
This disagreement with the official line of the Left Opposition at an international level was reflected in the correspondence between Nin and Trotsky during the first half of 1931. £11] Trotsky urged his supporters in Spain not to waste their time trying to influence the BOC, which he considered as a confused and rightist organisation, but to direct their energies to strengthening their own independent organisation with its own publications, and to orientate themselves towards the PCE. The official parties, despite all their manifold weaknesses, still represented the political 'centre' of the international Communist movement, unlike 'national' and 'opportunist' groups like the BOC.
The BOC had been formed as a result of the fusion in March 1931 of two groups: the former Catalan Federation of the PCE and the Catalan Communist Party. The majority of the Catalan Federation's leaders had been members of a pro-Communist grouping inside the CNT in the early 1920s, which had included Andreu Nin. Led by Joaquim Maurin, this group had not formally joined the PCE until October 1924.
Due to its Syndicalist origins and the more or less complete disorganisation of the PCE during the mid-1920s, the Catalan Federation had never been fully integrated into the party. The bureaucratisation of the PCE, in line with developments on an international level, was vigorously opposed by Maurin, who was in prison from 1925 to the end of 1927, and then in exile in France.
The opposition of the Catalan Federation's leaders came to a head in 1929-30. Not only did they oppose the bureaucratic methods of the party leadership, but also its general analysis of the situation in Spain and its call, inspired by the Communist International, for a 'workers' and peasants' democratic dictatorship'. The Catalans claimed that the forthcoming revolution in Spain would be democratic, although given the political weakness of the middle classes, it could only be completed under proletarian leadership, thus leading to a Socialist revolution. The Catalan Federation also opposed the PCE's attempts to split the CNT. A similar position was taken by the PCE's Madrid and Levante Federations, as well as an important part of the party's organisation in Asturias.
The Catalan Federation was finally expelled from the PCE in June 1930 as "bourgeois agents", "counter-revolutionary elements" and for its relations with the "petit-bourgeois" Catalan Communist Party. The latter had been formed in November 1928 by young militants, some from a left wing nationalist background, and others from the Catalan Federation itself, although most of them were new to political activity. They were attracted to Communism mainly on the basis of the Soviet Union's apparent solution of the national question.
Rather than join the PCE, which they saw as bureaucratic and unsympathetic to the national liberation movement in Catalonia, they decided to form a new party. The PCC was fairly loosely organised, and by 1930 it was working closely with the dissident Catalan Federation. At the unification congress it was decided to keep the name Catalan-Balearic Communist Federation (FCC-B), and also to form a broader organisation of sympathisers, the Workers and Peasants Bloc (BOC). In practice the FCC-B and the BOC were the same organisation, having the same press, the same leaders and, more often than not, the same membership.
Like other opposition groups in Spain, with the exception of the Trotskyists, the Catalan dissidents initially blamed the PCE leaders, rather than the Communist International, for the party's disastrous policies. In fact, until Maurin was formally expelled from the Communist International in July 1931, they appealed to it to intervene in Spain and throw out the party leadership. In the face of the divisions inside the Soviet party, the Catalans adopted an abstentionist position, describing themselves as "neither Stalinists nor Trotskyists but Communists". Events were to force them to clarify their views of the international Communist movement, and to adopt an increasingly anti-Stalinist stance.
Nin favoured working inside the BOC basically for two reasons. Firstly, by early 1931 the majority of Spanish Communists were outside the PCE, and the formation of an independent Communist grouping appeared as a real possibility. During early 1931 Nin favoured forming part of such a grouping rather than maintaining the fiction of the OCE being a faction of the PCE. Perhaps more significant was Nin's friendship with the BOC's undisputed leader, Joaquim Maurin. Outside the ranks of the Trotskyists, Maurin was the most able Communist leader and theoretician in Spain. His writings on the historical development of the Spanish revolution alone testify to that. [12]
In December 1930 Maurin, Nin and other Catalan Communists found themselves in prison together following the failure of a revolutionary uprising against the monarchy. Whilst in prison Maurin read Trotsky's letters to his Spanish followers and appeared to be in general agreement with his analysis. Moreover, Nin wrote for the Federation's press and helped Maurin to draft the BOC's first political thesis - the general line of which was practically identical with that of the Trotskyists. £13]
Nevertheless, Nin does not seem to have taken into account the general nature of the BOC, Maurin apart. Although in opposition to the PCE leadership, the BOC's leaders had yet to question the Stalinist leadership of the international Communist movement. Despite Nin's influence on its first political programme, the FCC-B/BOC soon reverted towards more 'official' positions, because of its continued aim to avoid a final rupture with the Communist International. Thus in April 1931, only two months after the publication of its political thesis, the BOC stood candidates in the local elections under the Third Period slogan of "class against class". £14]
And despite breaking from the Communist International as a result of Maurin's expulsion in July 1931, references to "Social Fascism" continued to appear in the BOC's press until early 1932. In addition, as Trotsky himself had feared, [15] the Federation's leaders were not prepared to tolerate open factional work by the Trotskyists inside their organisation. Once this work started, Nin's apparently cosy relationship with the BOC came to an end. In May 1931 Nin's formal request to join the BOC was turned down, and mutual attacks soon began to appear in the press of both groups. However, the formal constitution of the OCE in Barcelona did not take place until September 1931. [16] A tiny group of Trotskyists continued to try and defend their ideas inside the BOC, but they were expelled in October 1931 for "factional activity aimed at destroying the party". £17]
Thus by late 1931 the OCE finally appeared to be taking a more orthodox position, presenting itself unequivocally as a faction of the official party, and submitting the BOC's "confused" and "vacillating" politics to the "pitiless and incessant criticism" that Trotsky had advocated. "Maybe it would not be possible", one Spanish Trotskyist leader wrote in April 1932, "to find in today's working class movement an organisation crippled by a more unhealthy opportunism than that from which the Catalan Federation suffers." £18] The OCE's attacks were centred on the BOC's initial refusal to take up a position in relation to the Communist International, its organisational structure, its nationalism, its confusion over the question of revolutionary power, and its trade union policy.
Maurin's party, because of its "national" outlook, was seen by the Trotskyists as being on the right, close to the politics of Bukharin or Brandler. Lacroix argued, as he had in 1930, that the real aim of the leaders of the Catalan Federation was to replace the current PCE leadership, hence their refusal to differentiate themselves openly from the Stalinist line of the Communist International. £19] The relationship between the FCC-B and the BOC was far from clear. Was the latter a broad front, or was it a party? The OCE reminded the Federation of a similar confusion that had been made by the Chinese Communists in 1927, with terrible results. In reality the two organisations were increasingly one and the same, as was later admitted by the BOC leaders themselves [20], although Nin had already pointed this out as early as January 1932. £2JJ
Even more disturbing was the FCC-B's position on the national question. Rather than just defend the right to self-determination of existing national movements, the BOC went much further. In June 1931 Maurin declared himself in favour of "separatism", albeit not from Spain but from the Spanish state, the disintegration of which could give way to genuine Iberian unity. It was not sufficient, the BOC argued, to win over the leadership of existing national liberation movements, it was actually necessary to participate in their formation. Thus, where national movements did not exist, be it in Andalusia, Aragon, Castille or elsewhere, it was necessary for Communists to help create them.
Maurin believed that "the prospects for Socialist revolution were greatly favoured by the presence of a national problem", so much so that "if it did not exist, it would be necessary to create it". [22] Not surprisingly, the Trotskyists were scathing in their attacks on what they described as the FCC-B's predilection for "separatist rather than class politics", and even described it as "more Catalanist than the Catalan Republican Left", the principal petit-bourgeois nationalist party in Catalonia. [23]
Equally alarming was the FCC-B's position on revolutionary power. After initially adopting a fairly benevolent attitude towards the new Republican regime, in June 1931 Maurin's party, influenced by the increasingly radicalised strike movement led by the Anarcho-Syndicalists, suddenly lurched to the left. The FCC-B/BOC now called on the CNT itself to "take power", arguing that the illusions of the masses in the bourgeois Republic were "burnt out". Maurin defended his party's position by claiming that the hegemony of the CNT in the strike movement, coupled with the radicalisation of its rank and file, meant that the Anarcho-Syndicalist unions could perform the role which Soviets had played in Russia. The BOC leader argued that in the same way that a soviet system had developed in Russia, a "Syndicalist system" could develop in Spain. He predicted that his position would "horrify the mimics of fossilised Marxism" with their "grotesque equation of Spain with Russia". [24]
The BOC leaders recognised, however, that the CNT, given its Anarcho-Syndicalist principles, was not interested in "taking power". Thus the BOC's task was to "create an atmosphere" through its propaganda whereby the leadership would be swept aside, and the unions would pass into the hands of the Communists. Parallel with this call for "power to the CNT", the BOC still defended the need to form workers', peasants' and soldiers' councils.
Understandably, the Trotskyists attacked the position of the FCC-B/BOC on a number of levels. [25] To call for the CNT unions to take power was pure Syndicalism, and appeared to show that the BOC had forgotten all the most basic lessons of the Russian Revolution. In addition, the exact role of the unions in the revolutionary process was hardly clear when Maurin and his comrades continued to call for councils to be set up through a "congress of all working class organisations".[26] Moreover, by talking of a revolutionary movement based solely on the CNT, the BOC was ignoring the great mass of workers, especially outside of Catalonia, who were in Socialist or other unions, or, as in the case of the majority, still unorganised.
The Trotskyists also argued that despite the strike wave, the majority of workers and peasants still had illusions in the Republic. In order to dispel these illusions, Communists had to continue to call for partial demands and for the Socialists to end their collaboration with the bourgeois parties, and not to reject such agitation, as the BOC had done, in favour of generalised calls for "the proletariat to take power".
The abortive Anarchist uprising in the Alt Llobregat region of Catalonia in January 1932, and the increasing persecution of Communists inside the Catalan CNT, led the BOC to drop its calls for the unions to take power. But the Trotskyists now saw another error arising in that the BOC saw itself as being forced to leave the CNT altogether. The ICE considered that whilst the BOC formally opposed any splits in the unions, many of its trade unionists did little to fight to stay in such a hostile environment. The Trotskyists, in contrast, recognised the importance of trying to remain at all costs within the CNT. The BOC's decision in 1933 effectively to build a separate trade union federation would render later attempts to influence the Anarcho-Syndicalists that much more difficult. [27]
The confusion and opportunism that characterised the FCC-B/BOC's politics, especially in 1931-32, was not merely due to its lack of programmatic clarity in relation to a Stalinised international Communist movement. As the Catalan Trotskyist and future POUM leader, Narcis Molins i Fabrega, was to point out, it was also a reflection of its social base. [21] In the towns the BOC related to a "section of the working class which feels itself to be above the rest of the proletariat, and closer to the petit-bourgeoisie". Most of its urban members were not factory workers, Molins claimed, but shop assistants and clerks. In the countryside the BOC was based on medium peasants, "who had no argument with the bourgeoisie other than over the right to land". This social composition, he concluded, had led the Catalan Federation "to break its links with Communism", and it was now in "the front line of the extreme left of the petit-bourgeoisie".
After 1932 the attacks of the Trotskyists on Maurin's party became less frequent and more moderate in tone. This was partly due both to changes inside the BOC itself and changes within the Trotskyist movement after 1933 in relation to the need to build parties independent of the Communist International. By mid-193 3 the Trotskyists recognised that some sections of the BOC's rank and file believed that there was little between themselves and the ICE on most major issues. However, "nothing could have been further from the truth". The BOC may have made similar criticisms to the Trotskyists of other sections of the workers' movement, but there was "no continuity in their politics". [29] Even as late as June 1934, when the two organisations were working quite closely, the ICE press described the BOC as "opportunist" and "lacking any clear programme". It was, the Trotskyists concluded, repeating Trotsky's prediction of three years previously, "doomed to collapse". 110]
If the Trotskyists were harsh in their criticism of the BOC, the latter was even more so in its treatment of Trotskyism. Maurin himself had been accused of "Trotskyism" by the PCE leadership during the late 1920s, and this had been one of the reasons given for his eventual expulsion. Maurin and other Federation leaders were, however, quite contemptuous of Trotskyism, and dismissed the OCE as a divisive and irrelevant sect condemned to the sidelines of the working class movement, from where it "would blindly follow the positions handed down by Trotsky". They even accused the Trotskyists of being the "mirror image of Stalinism" whose same "mechanical centralist methods" they had copied.
Nin, in an obvious reference to his stay in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, was accused of having deserted the Spanish workers' movement in its "most difficult moments", and of having at first sided with the PCE leadership against the Catalans. "Experience has shown", the FCC-B stated in September 1931, that Nin could easily change his position, and that he would soon be "knocking on the door of the BOC". [31] The BOC's attitude towards the Trotskyists remained basically unchanged over the next three years, although attacks on them became less frequent. At the end of 1933 Maurin described Trotskyism as "the antithesis of organisation" which introduced "civil war" wherever it intervened in the workers' movement.{32]
Whilst the FCC-B/BOC were totally dismissive of Trotskyist organisations, they were less so when it came to Trotsky himself. Articles by Trotsky still occasionally appeared in the BOC press, and the former Bolshevik leader was even defended from Stalinist slanders, being described as "Lenin's best comrade ... the man of the October Revolution ... a great fighter for the Communist cause" and "one of the most extraordinary brains of world Socialism". {33} More contradictory was the BOC's treatment of the speech which Trotsky gave to young Social Democrats in Copenhagen in December 1932. Whilst its weekly, La Batalla, praised his speech and printed extracts from it, Maurin was talking elsewhere of Trotsky's "definitive political failure". [34]
Notes
1L Cf. L.D. Trotsky, The Spanish Revolution 1931-39, New York, 1973 pp.370-400.
12. J. Maurin, La revolucion espanola, originally published in 1931, and republished in Barcelona, 1977; Hacia la segunda revolucion, originally published in 1935, republished as Revolucion y contrarrevolucion en espafia, Paris 1966.
13. La Batalla, 12 February 1931. The demands in the FCC-B's first Political Thesis are similar to those contained in Trotsky's pamphlet The Revolution in Spain (Cf. The Spanish Revolution 1931-39, op. cit, pp.67-89). Nin mentioned his participation in writing the Thesis in a letter to Trotsky dated 17 January 1931 (ibid., pp.3 71-2). Molins i Fabrega speaks of how Maurin and other BOC leaders read Trotsky's letters whilst in prison with Nin, Cf. Una linea politica: el Bloque Obreroy Campesino, Comunismo, April 1932.
14. La Batalla, 19 and 26 March 1931.
15. Cf. Trotsky's letter to Nin, 15 March 1931, The Spanish Revolution 1931-39, op. cit., p.386.
16. According to Molinier the Catalan group had a dozen members at this time. Cf. R. Molinier, Rapport sur la delegation en Espagne, 21 September 1931.
17. La Batalla, 12 November 1931. The Trotskyist faction's own account can be found in the document Organization Comunista de Izquierda, For la unidad de todos los comunistas de Espana, Barcelona, December 1931.
18. L. Fersen, Acerca del congreso de la FCC-B, Comunismo, April 1932.
19± La Verite, 13 June 1930; El Soviet, 15 October 1931.
20. Cf. for example the BOC's Organisation Thesis, La Batalla, 11 May 1933.
21. A. Nin, iBloque, partido u organization de simpatizantes?, Comunismo, January 1932.
22. La Batalla, 4 July 1931; J. Maurin, La revolution espanola, op. tit., p.128.
23. Tesis sobre las nacionalidades, Comunismo, April 1932; N. Molins i Fabrega, La position politico yfuerzas del Bloque Obrero y Campesino, Comunismo, December 1931.
24. J. Maurin, La revolution espanola, op. tit., p. 168.
25. See the article by Nin, Los comunistas y el momenta presents. A proposito de unas declaraciones de Maurin, El Soviet, 22 October 1931; ^A donde va el Bloque Obrero y Campesino?, Comunismo, September 1931; La huelga general de Barcelona, Comunismo, October 1931. Cf. L. Fersen, Elcongreso delBOC, Comunismo, March 1932.
26i La Batalla, 30 July 1931.
27. Underestimation of the Catalan CNT became widespread on the Spanish Marxist left. Nin claimed in May 1936 that the Anarcho-Syndicalists had "definitely lost their hegemony" over the region's labour movement (La Batalla, 15 May 1936). The CNT's dramatic loss of members in Catalonia between 1931 and 1936 - from 300,000 to 140,000, according to its own undoubtedly inflated figures - led many to believe mistakenly that the Anarcho-Syndicalists were losing their grip over the Catalan workers' movement. Such a view is also expressed by a member of the Bolshevik-Leninist group during the war, Cf. G. Munis, Jalones de derrota, promesa de victoria, Madrid 1977, first published in Mexico in 1948, p.l 18.
28. N. Molins i Fabrega, La position politico y las fuerzas del Bloque Obrero y Campesino, Comunismo, December 1931.
29. Comunismo, July 1933.
30L La Antorcha, 30 June 1934; L.D. Trotsky, A Narrow or a Broad Faction, The Spanish Revolution 1931-39, op. tit., p. 165.
3L La Batalla, 17 September 1931.
32L J. Maurin, La quiebra del trotskismo, La Batalla, 26 October 1933.
33. La Batalla, 22 and 29 December 1932, 27 April 1933 and 26 October 1933.
34. La Batalla, 22 December 1932; J. Maurin, Trotsky alpais d'Hamlet, Front, 17 December 1932. 28.7.2003
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The change in name also reflected the group's relative consolidation both organisationally (it now claimed 1,000 members) and politically. Despite their insistence on not having established themselves as an independent party as such, the Spanish Trotskyists' decision appeared to the ILO to be just that. [38] Moreover, the ICE, with the aim of posing this tactical change on an international level, called upon the International Secretariat to call a conference as soon as possible. The ICE also called for both the expelled Rosmer and Landau groups to be represented at the proposed conference, although not as official delegates, so that they could present their case.
This new crisis in the relations between the Spanish Trotskyists and the ILO was further complicated by the 'Lacroix case'. At the third conference Lacroix had resigned as General Secretary of the Spanish Opposition, supposedly for "health reasons". [39] His subsequent factional activity gave his resignation a political character - although he did not state this explicitly until a year later. [40] In fact Lacroix's role in the growing crisis both inside the ICE and in its relations with the ILO is highly suspect. With hindsight, Lacroix's activities were at least opportunist, if not, as Georges Vereeken has argued, a deliberate provocation.
Hi]
Internationally, the German and French sections were particularly incensed by the ICE's apparent defence of Landau and Rosmer. In late 1932 first the Germans and then the French Trotskyists produced documents criticising the position of the Spanish group. [42] Apart from attacking the latter's change of name, and its positions on elections and the Rosmer and Landau cases, both groups spoke of the ICE's lack of a concrete programme for the Spanish revolution and of not wanting to pose its differences openly with the International Secretariat. Basically similar criticisms were made by the International Secretariat and by Trotsky himself.
The ICE replied to these attacks by pointing out that it still considered itself to be a faction of the PCE and not a new party.[43.] In fact in both the Catalan elections of November 1932 and the general election a year later, the Trotskyists not only called for a vote for the PCE (and not the BOC), but also distributed the PCE's propaganda, and in a few areas held joint meetings with its local branches. The Spanish Trotskyists argued that they were obliged by circumstances to counter the influence and the tactics of the PCE in a more positive fashion. Moreover, both the French and US sections had changed their names from "Opposition" to the "Communist League". The ICE insisted on its complete "loyalty to the ILO, the International Secretariat and comrade Trotsky". It had differences over questions of "detail and organisation but not fundamental political questions". According to the Spanish section, the fact that it had defended the right of the Rosmer and Landau groups to put their case did not mean that it supported these groups in any way.
In retrospect, Trotsky's criticisms of the ICE at this time seem particularly harsh. In August 1933 he was to describe the "struggle of Nin and company against the ILO [as] ... violating every fundamental principle of Marxism". The ICE's position on the independence of its group with regard to the PCE would soon differ little from that adopted by the international Trotskyist movement during 1933. The severe tone of Trotsky's polemic with the Spanish section was probably due to his fears that Nin would form a bloc with his old friend Rosmer.
The choice of Communist Left as the Spanish group's new name, denounced by Trotsky as "an obviously false name from the standpoint of theory", appeared particularly significant because it was the same as Rosmer's group, the Gauche Communiste. Nin had, in fact, initially supported Trotsky and the International Secretariat over the question of Landau and Rosmer, only to change his attitude in late 1931. The failure of Molinier, one of Rosmer's principal opponents in France, to provide the OCE with the financial support he had promised, may well have contributed to Nin's change of position.
Parallel to these criticisms of the ICE inside the ILO, Lacroix formed an opposition faction, which in the first edition of its bulletin accused the ICE leadership of being opposed to the international movement, and of using "Stalinist practices". In addition, it accused Nin, who had replaced Lacroix as General Secretary, of being a "petit-bourgeois opportunist", and called on the International Secretariat to intervene inside the Spanish section. [44] However, it was not until January 1933, that is after the International Secretariat and the French and German groups had attacked the ICE's positions, that Lacroix came out with an identical line of argument. The ICE leaders initially tried to counter Lacroix's opposition by inviting him to take up the post of General Secretary once more. This being refused, the Spanish section moved the headquarters of its Executive Committee to Barcelona to avoid the disruptive activities of Lacroix's group in Madrid.
Meanwhile the International Secretariat had begun to talk of the "profound differences" in the Spanish section, speaking of the "Lacroix current" and the "Nin current", thus giving each equal credibility. In fact, Lacroix's group was based upon six or seven militants in Madrid. [45] What is more, throughout this crisis the ICE Executive Committee received numerous motions of support from local branches. Thus when the ILO organised a pre-conference in Paris in February 1933 and called on both tendencies to send delegates, the ICE leadership angrily refused to comply, and denounced the International Secretariat for "wanting to give a political character to Lacroix's dishonest and intolerable campaign against the Executive Committee". [46] In the event both tendencies were represented at the pre-conference, the official ICE delegate, and a delegate from Lacroix's group who was invited without the knowledge of the Spanish group's leadership.
The pre-conference referred to the situation inside the ICE, and demanded that disciplinary measures against Lacroix be stopped. [47] It also condemned the ICE for supporting "confusionists and deserters" such as Landau, Rosmer and Mill, and, seemingly oblivious of its recent campaign in favour of the PCE in the Catalan elections, of "tail-ending the petit-bourgeois nationalist and provincial phrasemonger Maurin" and of favouring participation in parliamentary elections in a manner contrary to the policy of the ILO.
In reply, Fersen, the official Spanish delegate, agreed to the establishment of an internal bulletin open to "all tendencies", and that nobody would be excluded from the organisation until a national conference could be held. Nevertheless, Fersen defended the measures already taken against Lacroix's group as "necessary to maintain discipline and avoid the degeneration of the organisation's progress". The ICE later bemoaned the "frank support" of the pre-conference for "comrade Lacroix's campaign of sabotage and disorganisation". JM
Relations between the Spanish section and the international organisation were further undermined by the ICE's criticisms of some of the decisions of the pre-conference. In particular, the Spanish section rejected as "totally exotic" the imposition of the title "Communist Left Opposition - Bolshevik-Leninist" on all national sections. For the ICE, the title Left Opposition already gave the impression both inside and outside the Communist movement that the differences of the Trotskyists with the Stalinists were only an "incomprehensible and harmful internal struggle". Instead, the ICE advocated that there should not be one name applicable to all national sections, but that each national section should include the name of the international organisation.
The ICE also criticised the International Secretariat's manner of dealing with internal problems, particularly in relation to the Rosmer group. Finally, the Spanish group claimed that the decision of the pre-conference that following events in Germany, the Opposition "should work systematically in all proletarian organisations ... without modifying its attitude towards the [Communist] party", was identical to the position adopted in Spain 11 months previously. [49]
Immediately following the pre-conference, the International Secretariat initiated a campaign against Nin and the ICE leadership. Trotsky based his attacks, although not explicitly, firstly upon the arguments of Lacroix and then on those of two other dissidents, "Arlen" and Mariano Vela - both of whom had already left the Spanish section. [50] The International Secretariat also published Nin's correspondence with Trotsky of 1930-32 in order to illustrate Nin's continued divergences from the international organisation. In April 1933 a long extract from a recent article by Lacroix attacking the ICE leadership was published without the slightest comment in the International Bulletin. [51]
Whilst it appeared that the International Secretariat was siding with Lacroix against Nin, Trotsky himself pointed out in a letter to Lacroix at the time that he had no intention of favouring one group against the other, and even accused Lacroix of having the "same ideas and methods" as Nin. [52] However, it remained the case that the statements of the International Secretariat on the internal crisis of the Spanish section were directed almost exclusively against Nin. This campaign culminated in August 1933 in a scathing attack by Trotsky on the "inadmissible conduct" of Nin "and his friends" whose policies had been "condemned by all sections of the International Left Opposition ... without exception" at the pre-conference in February. Nin's "radically incorrect policy" had prevented the Spanish section from "winning the place opened up to it by the conditions of the Spanish revolution" and had led to the weakening of the ICE. [53]
Meanwhile, the ICE Executive Committee accused Lacroix of misusing party funds and of systematic obstruction of its work. Evidence relating to these accusations was sent to the International Secretariat, which in turn had to admit that Lacroix had "falsified official documents". [54] The whole ignominious affair finished in June 1933 with the expulsion of Lacroix and the disintegration of his faction. [55]
Subsequent events would shed more light on Lacroix, and thus seemingly vindicate the position of the ICE leadership. In September 1933 he joined the PSOE and in a letter to its daily, El Socialista, renounced his Communist past and recognised his mistaken role as a"sniper against Socialism". [56] Prior to this, however, Lacroix had attempted to rejoin the PCE. His total lack of scruples are revealed in his letter of 15 July 1933 to the PCE Central Committee, which has recently been found in the party's archives in Madrid. [57] According to this letter, only lack of money prevented Lacroix from returning to Madrid (he was in Tolosa at the time), as the PCE leadership had asked him to, in order to explain his recent "evolution back towards the party". Lacroix concluded that "rapid action could put an end to the residues of Trotskyism in Spain, and win back the good, if mistaken, workers who still follow... the masked counter-revolution of Trotskyism".
This letter leaves little doubt as to Lacroix's dubious (to say the least) activities inside the revolutionary movement, and gives some credence to Vereeken's claim that Lacroix was a "Stalinist agent". £58J However, the fact that he was not allowed back into the PCE undermines Vereeken's thesis; nor was he known to have sided with the pro-Stalinist wing of Spanish Socialism during the Civil War. Indeed, according to Pierre Broue, Lacroix, having led a division in the Republican army, was recognised by Stalinist troops whilst crossing into France at the end of the Civil War, and was lynched on the spot. [59]
The Lacroix affair only served to strain relations even further between the ICE and the ILO. Once he had joined the PSOE, the International Secretariat denounced Lacroix for his "violent and poisonous struggle ... against the International Left Opposition and a number of leading comrades", and described him as always having been "an alien element among the Bolshevik-Leninists, alien to their ideas and their methods". [60] This belated recognition of Lacroix's role inside the Trotskyist movement was not very convincing, given the International Secretariat's recent attacks on Nin and its effective support for this "alien element".
The desertion of Lacroix must have been a blow to the Trotskyist movement; to the ICE, of which he had been a founder and one of its principal leaders, and to Trotsky, to whom he had always proclaimed his "total loyalty and agreement". Whilst undoubtedly there were real differences between the ICE and the International Secretariat, particularly over the degree of political independence to be maintained in relation to the official Communist movement prior to August 1933, and over the differences around the Rosmer and Landau cases, the Lacroix affair was marred not only by its personal overtones, but also by the confusion surrounding its exact nature. Any examination of the documents of the ICE, Lacroix and the International Secretariat on the Spanish crisis, along with Trotsky's writings of the time, confirms this confusion. The contradictory nature of the later statements of the International Secretariat on the question and on Lacroix's subsequent betrayal serve to cloud the issues at stake even further.
The decision that the ILO took in August 1933 to form new independent parties and to establish the International Communist League (ICL) as the first step towards the establishment of a new International, was welcomed by the ICE. The Spanish group pointed out, however, that it had been the first to move towards more independent activity, and it criticised the "mechanical way" in which the ILO's change of line had been adopted, as if "obeying a military order", and for its lateness. [61] There was also some opposition inside the ICE during the autumn of 1933 to the idea of creating a Fourth International. [62]
Relations between the ICE and the (by now) ICL appear to have been relatively calm during the first half of 1934, until a new dispute broke out over the tactic of entrism. This tactic appeared particularly relevant in Spain, where, due to the disenchantment with their party's participation in the Republican government between 1931 and 1933, many Socialist militants had turned sharply to the left. The threat of Fascism - both at home and abroad -reinforced this tendency. By mid-1934 the left wing of the Socialists controlled the trade union federation (the UGT), the Socialist Youth and many local and provincial sections of the party. Moreover, its language was increasingly revolutionary in tone.
The importance of the radicalisation of the Spanish Socialist movement was not missed by the ICE, but it baulked at following the example of the French Trotskyists of actually entering the Socialist Party. A national plenum of the ICE voted unanimously in September 1934 to reject the new tactical turn of the ICL. Whilst recognising the importance of the new mood in many countries in favour of united action, the ICE warned that this should not lead to "organic confusion". The plenum concluded:
The guarantee of the future lies in the United Front, but also in the organic independence of the vanguard of the proletariat. In no way can we immerse ourselves in an amorphous conglomerate merely because of circumstantial utilitarianism ... However sad and painful it may be for us, we are prepared to maintain the principled positions that we have learnt from our leader, even at the risk of having to separate from him on the road to victory. [63]
The ICE also proposed the formation of a faction inside the international organisation to fight against the new turn.
The growing distance between the Spanish Trotskyists and the ICL is clearly illustrated by the resolution at the plenum. Not surprisingly, their rejection of entrism has sometimes been cited as the principal reason for their break from the international movement. Nevertheless, the final break would not take place for another 16 months, and the ICE's refusal to enter the Socialist Party would be only one of several contributory factors.
Notes
3fL R. Molinier, op. cit.
36. Cf. Nin's letter to Trotsky, 7 November 1931, The Spanish Revolution 1931-39, op. cit., p.380.
31, P. Pages, op. cit., p. 127.
3JL There is no known documentary evidence of the immediate reaction of the International Secretariat, except the testimony of Ignacio Iglesias of the Asturias ICE many years later, Cf. P. Pages, op. cit., p. 128, but, given the subsequent development of relations between the International Secretariat and the ICE, Iglesias' version seems very plausible.
39, Comunismo, April 1932.
40. Informs sobre el caso Lacroix, Boletin interior de la Izquierda Comunista de Espana, 15
July 1933.
41. G. Vereeken, The GPU in the Trotskyist Movement, London 1976, pp.48-67.
42. Both documents were published in the Lacroix faction's bulletin, Boletin interior de discusion del Comite Regional de Castilla la Nueva y del Comite Nacional de Jovenes de la Izquierda Comunista Espanola, 3 January 1933.
43. La Izquierda Comunista Espanola y los grupos de Rosmer y Landau, Comunismo, September 1932.
44. Boletin interior de discusion ..., 2 December 1932.
45. Both the Regional Committee of New Castille and the National Committee of the ICE Youth consisted of the same six militants, and were effectively set up by Lacroix to fight the Executive Committee. Cf. P. Pages, op. cit., p. 134.
46. Ante una grave situacion de la ICE, Boletin interior de discusion ..., February 1933.
47. Informe sobre el caso Lacroix, op. cit..
48. P. Pages, op. cit., p. 145.
49. Ibid.
50. 'Arlen' was the pseudonym of an army officer who had joined the OCE from the PCE. Although he maintained correspondence with Trotsky during 1933, he had left the ICE at the end of 1932. In 1936 he refused to accept the command of the POUM militia in Madrid, leading a Socialist unit instead. Cf. L.D. Trotsky, La revolucion espanola, Volume 2, pp.530-1; P. Pages, op. cit, p.135.
5L P. Pages, op. cit., p. 148.
52. L.D. Trotsky, The Spanish Revolution 1931-39, op. cit., p. 194. A copy of this letter was also sent to Nin.
53. op. cit, pp. 198-201.
54. P. Pages, op. cit., p. 147.
55. According to Broue (L.D. Trotsky, La revolucion espanola, Volume 1, p.269n) most of Lacroix's group stayed inside the ICE. One member, Grandizo Munis, became a leader of the Spanish Bolshevik-Leninists during the Civil War; another, Gomila, joined the Falange. Cf. P. Pages, op. cit., p. 148.
56. El Socialista, 29 September 1933.
57. It has been possible to verify Lacroix's signature. The letter, dated 15 July 1933, can be found in the Archive of the Central Committee of the PCE in Madrid. The previous day (14 July) Lacroix had written to the party complaining that he had yet to receive an answer to his request of "some days before" to "rejoin" the PCE, the "only true Communist organisation" that existed in Spain. He
added that there were "many honourable workers' in the "so-called opposition", with whom he could put the PCE in contact, who were waiting for the decision of the party leadership on his case before joining the party.
58.. G. Vereeken, op. cit., p.66.
59. L.D. Trotsky, La revolucion espanola. Volume 2, op. cit., p.536. 6JX G. Vereeken, op. cit, pp.59-60.
61. Al plena international de la Oposicion de Izquierda, Boletin interior de la ICE, 5 September 1933.
62. Boletin interior de la ICE, 20 November 1933
63. Comunismo. September 1934.
