Felix Morrow was for many years a leading figure figure in American Trotskyism, best known for

his classic Revolution and Counter-Revolution In Spain. He joined the Communist League of
America in 1933 and after Max Shachtman’s minority split in 1940, served as editor of the
Socialist Workers Party’s paper, the Militant, and its theoretical journal, Fourth International.
He was one of 18 SWP leaders imprisoned under the Smith Act during the Second World War.
In 1943 he formed a faction with Albert Goldman which challenged the SWP’s ‘orthodox’
catastrophic perspective. In one of the most instructive factional struggles in the history of the
Trotskyist movement, Morrow and Goldman projected the likelihood of a prolonged period of
bourgeois democracy in western Europe and emphasised the need for democratic and
transitional demands against the maximalism advocated by the majority. Although he was
expelled from the SWP in 1946 for ‘unauthorised collaboration’ with Shachtman’s Workers
Party, he did not join Shachtman, and drifted out of politics.

Felix Morrow
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James Cannon and Felix Morrow, with a bust of Trotsky.

Felix Morrow (3 June 1906 – May 28, 1988) was an American communist political
activist and newspaper editor. In later years, Morrow left the world of politics to become
a book publisher. He is best remembered as a factional leader of the American
Trotskyist movement.

Contents
 1 Early life
 2 Political career
 3 Later years
 4 Death
  5 Footnotes
 6 Works
 7 Further reading
 8 External links

Early life
Felix Morrow was born Felix Mayrowitz to an Orthodox Jewish family in 1906 in New
York City. His parents, emigrants from Eastern Europe, ran a small grocery store in the
city.[1] Morrow later recalled his upbringing in a letter to historian Alan Wald:

"I came from a Hassidic family, but my father at the age of 15 had fled in
disillusionment from the house of the Chortkow Rebbe where his father was a gabbai
(rabbai's assistant). But my mother remained religious and I had a traditional Jewish
education."[2]

In America, both of Felix Mayrowitz's parents had become socialists and Felix had been
a participant in the youth section of the Socialist Party of America from an early age,
beginning with the Junior division of the Young People's Socialist League.[1] At age 16,
Felix was employed as a reporter by the Brooklyn Daily Times.[1] He later went to work
for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, using his paychecks there to help finance his education at
New York University (NYU).[1]

Felix Mayrowitz graduated from NYU in 1928 and enrolled in graduate school at
Columbia University, also located in New York City, where he studied religion in
association with the Philosophy Department.[3] At the time of his enrolling at Columbia,
Felix availed himself of advice he had received that his professional progress would be
easier with a less ethnic surname; it was at this time that Felix Mayrowitz became Felix
Morrow.[3]

Political career
In 1931, the young graduate student applied for membership in the Communist Party
USA.[3] At the time of his application, Morrow was advised by New York District
Organizer Israel Amter that he would be of greater service to the party as a "secret"
member of the organization rather than as a known public figure. Morrow was told by
Amter to consider himself a party member, and his application was squirreled away in
Amter's desk.[3]

Morrow traveled the country extensively as a reporter for the Communist Party literary-
artistic monthly, The New Masses and for its daily newspaper, The Daily Worker,
making use of the pseudonym "George Cooper."[3] His journalism was latter collected
into book form and translated into Russian for publication in the Soviet Union in 1933
as Life in the United States in this Depression.[4] He also taught courses on American
history at the CPUSA's New York party training school, served as a member of the
party's speakers' bureau, and assisted Joseph Freeman with editorial tasks at The New
Masses.[4]
Morrow was for many years a leading figure in American Trotskyism, best known for
his book Revolution and Counter-Revolution In Spain. He joined the Communist
League of America in 1933 and after Max Shachtman's minority split in 1940, served as
editor of 'Fourth International' monthly theory/polemical journal of the Socialist
Workers Party (SWP) between 1940–45, until displaced by E R Frank (Bert Cochran)
on the maneuvers of James P Cannon and the SWP majority who opposed his views on
perspectives for European Trotskyists at the mid-war point. He was one of 18 SWP
leaders, including the party's National Secretary, James P. Cannon, imprisoned under the
Smith Act during the Second World War.

In 1943 he formed a faction, with Albert Goldman which challenged the SWP's
"orthodox" catastrophic perspective. Morrow and Goldman projected the likelihood of a
prolonged period of bourgeois democracy in western Europe and emphasised the need
for democratic and transitional demands against the maximalism advocated by the
majority. Although he was expelled from the SWP in 1946 for "unauthorised
collaboration" with Shachtman's Workers Party, he did not join Shachtman, and drifted
from left-wing politics to the right.[citation needed]

Later years
In the early 1950s, Morrow was hired by Schocken Books, working as a vice president
there. He later worked at Beacon Press, a publisher based in Boston, Massachusetts.

In the late 1950s Morrow founded University Books, publishing hundreds of titles under
that imprint, including a number of reprints.

In the 1970s University Books was sold to the publisher Lyle Stuart, who continued to
publish books under the imprint along with his own.

Death
Morrow died on May 28, 1988.

Footnotes

MIA > Archive > Mandel

Ernest Mandel

Morrow on Spain
(1974)
From International, Vol.2 No.3, Summer 1974, pp.40-42 (Theoretical Journal of the
International Marxist Group).
Thanks to Joseph Auciello.
Downloaded with thanks from the Ernest Mandel Internet Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.

Felix Morrow
Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain
New Park Publications, £1.25 / 75p.

Felix Morrow’s Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain remains the best

Marxist analysis of the Spanish revolution of 1936-37 and its tragic ending. Other
works, written since and drawing upon extensive new source material, give a more
detailed account of the events and struggles (social and political) which marked these
dramatic years, and of those which led up to them. [1] But none are equal, leave alone
superior, to Morrow in their analysis of the basic class forces at work, the inevitable
clash between them and the outcome of the contest, decided by the lack of revolutionary
leadership or clear political consciousness on the part of the toiling masses. Morrow
explains the key episodes of revolution and counter-revolution in Spain in terms of
social forces. He confirms to the hilt Trotsky’s diagnosis that the strategy of the
Stalinists and their various allies and hangers-on (‘First win the war, then complete the
revolution’), ignoring the realities of the class struggle and seeking to replace it by
political manipulation, could only lead to disaster: first strangle the revolution and then
lose the war.

The extensive memoir literature which has sprung up since Morrow’s book was first
published in 1938 has brought to light new evidence which, if anything, further
strengthens Morrow’s basic analysis. The key responsibility of Stalin and the Soviet
bureaucracy in imposing their counter-revolutionary course upon the Spanish
Communist Party has been confirmed by witnesses from the top leadership of that party.
[2] The grim details of the GPU’s attempts to export to Spain its techniques of mass
arrest, torture, murder and frame-up trials of revolutionists (slandered as being ‘Franco’s
fifth column’) are well-known today – as is its political failure. Nobody believed the
Stalinist slanders. The workers were dismayed by the political terror. Franco could play
on and utilize the tremendous demoralization created in the Republican ranks. When the
surviving POUM leaders were finally brought to trial, they were sentenced not for being
‘agents of Franco’, but for the ‘crime’ of advocating … the dictatorship of the
proletariat.

It is interesting that even inside the Soviet Union, and in spite of the tight thought
control which the bureaucracy maintains upon all fields of social science, the Komintern
and Spanish CP line of the period 1936-9 is today being questioned, albeit in cautious
terms. [3] This line – together with the theory and practice of ‘social-fascism’, which
made a decisive contribution to Hitler’s rise to power in Germany; the policies of forced
collectivization, which created more than thirty years of continuous crisis in Soviet
agriculture; and the mass purges of 1936-8, which murdered the whole surviving cadre
of the Bolshevik party and the cream of the Red Army command, thereby paving the
way for the military disasters of summer and autumn 1941 which brought the Soviet
Union within an inch of military collapse – is one of the major crimes of Stalin upon
which history has already unequivocally spoken its verdict.

The defeat of the Spanish revolution was not just a minor incident on a secondary
battlefield. It was the key event which led to the second world war and the spread of
fascism over the whole continent of Europe, up to the gates of Leningrad, Moscow and
Stalingrad. Hitler’s conquest of power in Germany started to tip the scales in favour of
counter-revolution on that continent. It dealt a deadly blow to the largest, best organized
and politically most conscious part of the European proletariat. But Hitler’s victory was
by no means stable, nor was his conquest of Europe inevitable. The tremendous upsurge
of revolutionary militancy of the Spanish working class in 1936, supported by a wave of
general strikes in France and Belgium and by a world-wide radicalization of working-
class struggles which even hit the USA (with the powerful sit-down strikes leading to
the emergence of the CIO), could have pulled the rug from under Hitler’s feet. In
summer 1936, his army was still very weak, and no match for the Red Army. A
victorious Spanish revolution spreading to France would have provoked a powerful
working-class echo in Italy and Germany. [4] History could have taken an entirely
different course. A defeated Spanish revolution condemned the working-class upsurge in
France, Belgium and elsewhere to decline and demoralization and opened the road to
Hitler’s conquest of Europe.

In that sense, Stalin’s policy of sacrificing the Spanish revolution to his diplomatic
game with the French and British imperialists cannot even be seen as a subordination of
world revolution to the ‘national interests’ of the Soviet Union. For his betrayal of the
Spanish revolution dealt a powerful blow to the immediate interests of military self-
defence of the USSR as well. This policy reflected the basic conservatism of the
privileged ruling stratum of Soviet society, its panic fear lest any important extension of
world revolution upset the status quo of social forces internationally and nationally – a
status quo which determines the political passivity of the Soviet working class and
makes the bureaucracy’s rule possible.

A similar hostility against any proletarian revolution, anywhere in the world, was shown
by Stalin and his successors towards the Yugoslav, Chinese and Cuban revolutions. The
Vietnamese communists are witnessing a repetition of this sordid spectacle at this very
moment. The basic difference between Spain 1936 and the postwar developments is the
change in the international balance of class forces. In the first instance, the change in the
strength of the revolutionary upsurge has precisely meant that whereas it was possible
for the Soviet bureaucracy to strangle the Spanish revolution, its subsequent efforts to
achieve analogous results have culminated in failure. This has been due not only to the
change in the balance of class forces, but also to the fact that local communist parties or
independent revolutionary forces have been ready to break decisively with the
Menshevik orientation Stalinism.

The Spanish revolution also gave the most convincing historical testimony against the
spontaneist view which implied that a mass upsurge in itself would be sufficient to bring
about a victorious socialist revolution, provided it be broad enough. Never before in
history had one witnessed a generalized upsurge such as that of July 1936, when the
Spanish workers broke the fascist army’s insurrection in practically every major city of
the country, and in a significant part of the countryside as well. Never before had the
spontaneous taking over of factories, public service centres, big landholdings, by the
toiling masses been so widespread as in these days in Spain.

Nevertheless, the revolution was not victorious. No unified and centralized power
structure was set up by the toiling masses. Confronted with this key question of any
revolution, the anarchist leaders, who had been educating the masses in the doctrine of
immediate ‘suppression’ of the state, were a decisive force in preventing the
revolutionary masses – many of whom were anarcho-syndicalists – from setting up their
own workers’ state – thereby accepting de facto the resurgence of a bourgeois state,
complete with repressive apparatus. The fact that the same anarchist leaders first
participated in this resurgence as members of a coalition government with the
bourgeoisie, and then became in their turn victims of the repression which they had
helped to make possible, only tends to underline the main lessons of July 1936. The
anti-capitalist militancy, revolutionary drive and heroism of the masses can, under
specific circumstances, go beyond anything foreseen by revolutionaries themselves. But
without the actual destruction of the bourgeois state machine and its replacement by a
new workers’ state, no socialist revolution can be victorious. And such a new
workers’state cannot be built without a centralized leadership, by spontaneous struggles
alone.

Stalin’s diplomatic game – largely built on illusions – was the immediate cause which
led to the defeat of the Spanish revolution. The Soviet bureaucracy’s interests as a
parasitic social layer in society provide, in the last analysis, the material explanation for
these counter-revolutionary policies. But an important mediating factor between the two
was wrong, Menshevik theory of ‘revolution by stages’, applied to Spain (with a special
‘anti-fascist’ variant) not only be the main Comintern politicians, but also by not a few
of their social-democratic and centrist allies (not to speak of the ‘liberal’ bourgeois
politicians who swallowed the theory with great enthusiasm). Spain being a backward
country, the revolution on the agenda was supposed to be a bourgeois-democratic one.
Thus the task was seen as being to defend bourgeois democracy, the democratic
Republic, against fascism, the monarchy and the ‘semi-feudal landowners’: not to carry
to its logical end the workers’ and peasants’ struggle against exploitation and
oppression, by a process of permanent revolution which would lead to workers’ power
and solve in passing those tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution which the
peculiar history of Spanish capitalism had left unsolved.

Today, with Franco still in power thirty-odd years after the end of the civil war, the
Spanish CP and the various centrist groupings are desperately clinging on to the same
fundamental strategy. They are more firmly attached than ever to their disastrous
conception of a ‘revolution by stages’. The first stage must be the restoration of
‘democracy’. In fact, the CP is even ready to abandon the concept of a democratic
Republic, and to accept the restoration of the monarchy, provided democratic liberties
could be restored in that way. Then will come a stage of parliamentary democracy,
during which the CP and ‘other democratic forces’ will fight for reforms. Only when in
this way the ‘majority’ of the Spanish people has been won over (presumably in
elections), the struggle for socialism – through a new intermediary stage of an
‘advanced democracy’ – will be put on the agenda.

The secret hope of the CP has been that somehow the capitalists themselves would
gradually ‘liberalize’ the senile bonapartist military dictatorship of Franco (the absence
of any petty-bourgeois mass base in support of the regime makes it impossible to call it
fascist anymore). That is why it has favoured Spain’s entering the Common Market (the
Spanish social-democrats ardently share these same hopes and illusions). As democracy
granted from above has shown itself to be an utter illusion, the line shifts towards
‘democracy’ conquered from below, through a ‘peaceful general strike’, supported by all
‘democratic’ political forces (including the liberal monarchists). As in 1936, political
manoeuvres completely replace any sober assessment of basic social forces.

It would be foolish to deny that many changes have occurred in Spanish society since
the civil war of 1936-9. After many years of isolation, Spanish capitalism was in the
fifties sucked into the big boom of the Western European imperialist economy.

Through the tourist boom and through the massive emigration of rural and urban
unemployed absorbed by the Western European economy, the home market was
significantly broadened to trigger off an important industrialization process. Today,
Spain has become essentially an industrialized country, in which the absolute majority
of the population is living in towns and in which the industrial working class has
become the numerically most important class in society.

Of course it remains significantly backward compared to imperialist countries like West

Germany, Britain, France, or Italy. Its industry is still unable to sustain real competition
on the world market. Its exports are still overwhelmingly agricultural. Many of its
southern and western regions remain sharply under-developed. The nationality question,
especially among the Basques, remains an uncured cancer. Nevertheless, if presenting
Spain as being on the threshold of a bourgeois-democratic revolution was already
utterly wrong in 1936, it is simply ludicrous today.

After a long slumber, determined by both terrible repression – that which followed
Franco’s victory was as murderous as the civil war itself – and by lack of perspective or
self-confidence, the Spanish working class, since the early sixties, has begun steadily to
rise again. Innumerable strikes and other skirmishes have started to form a new militant
vanguard in the factories, the working-class districts and the universities.

Initially, the capitalists tried consciously to limit this upsurge to immediate economic
demands (‘trade-unionism pure and simple’). But the very nature of the dictatorship
caused this strategy to fail. The new militancy could not but take up the struggle to free
political prisoners; the struggle for autonomous trade unions; the struggle for freedom
of the press; of organization and of demonstration; the struggle for self-determination of
the oppressed nationalities. Thereby, economic and political demands were closely
intertwined. After some ups and downs, and in spite of the state of emergency
proclaimed by the dictatorship, since 1969 large strike waves have spread in the Basque
country, in the Barcelona region, in Madrid, in Asturia and even in the backward areas
of Galicia, linking economic demands with solidarity movements against repression.

As the weight of the working class is absolutely decisive in all these struggles, and as
this class has started to fight for its own independent class interests, it is absolutely
unrealistic to expect it to limit itself voluntarily ‘in a first stage’ to the restoration of
bourgeois democracy. Workers who start to occupy factories, who are learning to take
on the police and the army, will not engage in a decisive test of strength with brutal
opponents just to hand over the fruits of their victories meekly to their own exploiters. It
is inevitable that the coming Spanish revolution will have a proletarian, socialist
character from the beginning, i.e. will be determined by working-class actions and will
open the possibility of the conquest of power by the proletariat.

This does not mean that democratic demands cannot play an important rôle in triggering
off this revolution, nor that no intermediary period of even a few months is possible
between the overthrow of the Franco regime and the establishment of the dictatorship of
the proletariat. It only means that the leadership of the working class will once again –
as in 1936 – be the decisive factor in the situation.

But the chances for such an interregnum to last would be even more limited than they
were between 1931 and 1936. If anything, the industrial development which Spain has
known since then has made the social contradictions in that society even more explosive
than they were at that time. The misery of the unemployed, the rural poor, the victims of
structural decline, would rapidly combine with the much increased objective strength of
the working class to shake bourgeois society to its very foundations. The capitalist class
would rapidly find out that it has not got the means to buy off the revolutionary social
forces with reforms. Mass repression would quickly become once again the basic
strategy of the ruling class. Having tasted the wine of organizational freedom, the
working class would not submit passively to that repression, any more than it was ready
to do so in 1934 or 1936.

The most likely variant in any case is that only a revolutionary general strike could
overthrow the Spanish military dictatorship (whether under Franco or under Juan
Carlos); that dual power would arise from that revolutionary general strike; that the
question of a Federation of Iberian Workers Republics would therefore be put on the
agenda through the very downfall of the dictatorship itself. Because it is conscious of
that likely perspective, the Spanish bourgeoisie continues to prefer the dictatorship,
lacking any realistic alternative.

A new generation of Spanish revolutionaries is being created today, in conjunction with

the rise of mass worker and student struggles. This generation is assimilating the lessons
of the 1936-9 civil war. It is still weak in comparison with the gigantic tasks which
history has placed before it – but it is much stronger than the handful of Trotskyists who
existed in Spain during the crucial weeks and months described by Felix Morrow in this
book. The coming Spanish revolution will play a key rôle in the unfolding of the
socialist revolution in Western Europe – a process which has started again with May ’68
in France. To help the Spanish revolutionary Marxists build a strong Leninist party, a
powerful Spanish section of the Fourth International, is today one of the most urgent
tasks of revolutionaries the world over. The republication of this book is a timely
contribution to that task.

Top of the page

Footnotes

1. For instance: Pierre Broué and E. Témime, La Révolucion et la Guerre d’Espagne,

Paris 1961. Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, London 1965.

2. A former member of the Political Bureau of the Spanish Communist Party during the
civil war, Jesus Hernandez, in 1953 published a stinging indictment of Stalin’s and the
GPU’s intrusion into CP politics during the civil war, Yo fui un ministro de Stalin (I
was Stalin’s Minister). In order to destroy a convenient legend, it is necessary to insist
upon the key rôle which Togliatti played, as the main Comintern representative in Spain,
both in imposing upon the Spanish CP the right-wing line of ‘revolution in stages’ (see
his article On the particularities of the Spanish revolution, reprinted in his collected
essays: Sul Movimento Operaio Internazionale, Rome 1964) and in the actual
organization of the GPU terror in Spain. Fernando Claudin also confirms this analysis in
his La Crisis del Movimiento Communista, Paris 1970 (French translation, Maspéro,
1972).

3. E.g. by K.L. Maidanik, The Spanish Proletariat in the National-Revolutionary

War, Moscow 1960. The author admits that in July 1936 the workers had actually
started to conquer power, and had far outgrown the limits of a bourgeois-democratic
revolution. His book was later the subject of violent criticism in the Soviet Union.

4. Desertions did indeed occur, not merely among the Italian troops engaged in Spain
against the Republicans, but even among the selected pilots of Hitler’s air force sent to
help Franco, the Condor Legion (see Walter Görlitz, Der Deutsche Generalstab,
Frankfurt, p.442).

Top of the page

Last updated on 4.8.2007

(1906-1988)

American publisher who contributed significantly to the occult boom in the United
States in the 1960s through his publishing house University Books and associated
Mystic Arts Book Society. Morrow was born on June 3, 1906, in New York City in a
Hasidic Jewish family. He grew up in a non-religious atmosphere and became drawn to
both Marxism and Freudian teaching. He became a graduate student in philosophy at
Columbia University (1929-31), where he researched the history of religions. As editor
of the theoretical monthly magazine Fourth International, he wrote a thoughtful article
on Marxism and religion. For over a decade (1931-46), he devoted himself to the
revolutionary socialist movement and was author of an important study: Revolution and
Counter-revolution in Spain (1938; rev. ed. 1974).

In 1946, he moved from socialism to capitalism in publishing as executive vice

president of Schocken Books, a Jewish publishing house in New York City, and became
attracted to the writings of Franz Kafka, Martin Buber, and Gershom Scholen, and
through them rediscovered his Hasidic roots. However, from 1948 to 1970, he became
immersed in Freudian psychoanalytic training and publishing, though at the same time,
his association with Mel Arnold at Beacon Press, and later with University of Notre
Dame Press, made him responsive to mysticism. Throughout this period he remained a
socialist at heart, this dichotomy creating many personal conflicts for him while
broadening his humanist outlook.

As executive vice president of British Book Center, he took on American rights of

Flying Saucers Have Landed by Desmond Leslie and George Adamski (originally
published in England in 1953), and this project launched his research into earlier
literature in psychic and occult subjects. In 1954, he incorporated University Books, Inc.
in New York, and began publishing important out-of-print books on occultism,
mysticism, psychical research, and comparative religion. These included key works
such as A. E. Waite's books on the tarot and ceremonial magic; Lewis Spence's
Encyclopedia of Occultism; Montague Summers' books on witchcraft and vampires;
William James's Varieties of Religious Experience; R. M. Bucke's Cosmic
Consciousness; F. W. H. Myers's Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death;
scholarly works by Charles Guignebert on the origins of Christianity; D. T. Suzuki's
books on Zen; Nandor Fodor 's Encyclopedia of Psychical Research;G. R. S. Mead 's
books on Gnosticism; Alexandra David-Neel's Magic and Mystery in Tibet; and scores
of similar books that opened large segments of the tradition to a new generation of
modern occultists.

Each book carried a new introduction, evaluating the work in a modern context and
often supplying original biographical research on the author. Some of these
introductions were written by Morrow under the pseudonym 'John C. Wilson;' others
were written by such authorities as E. J. Dingwall, Kenneth Rexroth, and Leslie
Shepard.

University Books also published original works as the occult revival threw up names
like Timothy Leary and new causes like the psychedelic revolution. In addition to
publishing, the company marketed chosen titles each month through the Mystic Arts
Book Society. A major event of that period was Morrow's association with William
Nyland in distributing the books of Georgei I. Gurdjieff through the society. Morrow
eventually became a disciple of Nyland and developed a great respect for the Gurdjieff
work.

After 15 years of creative and stimulating publishing in the fields of occultism and
mysticism, Morrow relinquished the business to Lyle Stuart, who continued the
University Books imprint side by side with its own Citadel Press imprint, and moved
the operation from New York to Secaucus, New Jersey. In 1973, Morrow launched a
second occult series for Causeway Books, an imprint of A. & W. Publishers, Inc., New
York. Morrow wrote some of the new introductions for this series under the pseudonym
"Charles Sen."

The significant influence of Morrow's publishing work was recognized by the National
Endowment for the Humanities and the Rockefeller Foundation, which initiated an oral
history recording project on the advanced literary-intellectual life of New York City
between 1925 and 1975. Tape recordings have been made of Morrow and other
individuals for deposit in the Oral History division of the Columbia libraries.

Morrow extended his psychological studies from Freudianism to Maslow's humanist

psychology and the holistic depth psychology of Ira Progoff. He was in charge of
publishing projects in these areas for Dialogue House Library (80 E. 11th St., New
York, NY 10003) prior to resuming independent publishing again with the books of
Mantok and Maneewan Chia under the imprint Healing Tao Books, in New York. In his
later years he was a regular visitor to the library of the Parapsychology Foundation in
New York, where he found excellent facilities for research. He died suddenly on May
28, 1988, in New York.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/felix-morrow#ixzz2ofnlGDq2

Felix Morrow
Scott McLemee sent me a impressive article by Peter Jenkins called "Where
Trotskyism Got Lost: World War Two and the Prospects for Revolution in Europe".
It is an analysis of the political fight between Felix Morrow on one side and the
leaders of the Fourth International on the other. I will present Jenkins' account,
which I am in complete agreement with, and add some thoughts of my own.

Felix Morrow was one of the top intellectuals of American Trotskyism. He is the
author of the superlative "The Civil War in Spain". During the 1940s, he and other
of the leaders of the SWP were imprisoned under the terms of the Smith Act for
their vocal opposition to World War 2 as an imperialist war. Morrow eventually
became a journalist for Fortune magazine after his release from prison.

In 1943 and 1944 the world Trotskyist movement expected the end of WWII to
usher in the same types of revolutionary cataclysms as WWI. The International
Resolution under consideration by the FI stated categorically that the allies would
impose military dictatorships. It considered American capitalism to have begun an
"absolute decline" in 1929. This decadent system said the resolution "has no
programme for Europe other than its further dismemberment and degradation, and
the propping up of the capitalist system with American bayonets".

The choice for the worker's movement was stark. Unless they made socialist
revolutions, they would face "savage dictatorship of the capitalists consequent upon
the victory of the counter-revolution." The workers would rise to the task since it
was "in a revolutionary mood" continent-wide.

This analysis of the world situation was strongly influenced by Trotsky's

conceptions from the start of the second world war which were of a "catastrophist
nature". He could not anticipate any new upturn in the world capitalist economy
based on Keynesianism and arms spending. Trotsky's catastrophism can be traced
back to the early days of the Comintern. I recommend Nicos Poulantzas's "Fascism
and the Third International" as a critique of this tendency in the early Communist
movement. No Bolshevik leader was immune from this tendency to see capitalism
as being in its death throes. Stalin and Zinoviev incorporated this thinking into their
"third period" strategy. Stalin eventually lurched back and adopted a right-
opportunist policy. What is not commonly appreciated is the degree to which
Trotskyism has a lineal descent to the ultraleftism of the early 1920s Comintern.

This ultraleftism stared Felix Morrow in the face, who like a small boy declaring
that the emperor has no clothes, ventured to state that American imperialism might
not have been on its last legs in 1945. He argued forcefully that the most likely
outcome of allied victory was an extended period of bourgeois democracy and not
capitalist dictatorship. Therefore it is necessary for revolutionists, Morrow advised,
to be sensitive to democratic demands:

"...if one recognizes the probability of a slower tempo for the development of the
European revolution, and in it a period of bourgeois-democratic regimes --
unstable, short-lived, but existing nevertheless for a period -- then the importance
of the role of democratic and transitional demands becomes obvious. For the
revolutionary answer to bourgeois democracy is the first instance more democracy
-- the demand for real democracy as against the pseudo-democracy of the
bourgeoisie. For bourgeois-democracy can exist only thanks to the democratic
illusions of the masses; and those can be dispelled first of all only by mobilizing the
masses for the democracy they want and need."

One of the main areas of contention between Morrow and the leaders of the FI was
how these differences in policy would play out against the background of German
politics. The SWP was convinced that the German working-class would lead the
rest of Europe in the fight for socialism. A document states that "the German
revolution constitutes the essential base of the European revolution, that it alone
can provide the indispensable, genuinely harmonious political and economic
organization for the Socialist United States of Europe."

Morrow disagreed completely with these projections. He stated that the document
contains not "a single reference to the fact that the German proletariat would begin
its life after Nazi defeat under military occupation and without a revolutionary
party."

What was the source of these false projections? "To put it bluntly: all the phrases in
its prediction about the German revolution -- that the proletariat would from the
first play a decisive role, soldiers' committees, workers' and peasants' soviets, etc. --
were copied down once again in January 1945 by the European Secretariat from the
1938 program of the Fourth International. Seven years, and such years, had passed
by but the European Secretariat did not change a comma. Exactly the same piece of
copying had been done by the SWP majority in its October 1943 Plenum resolution
in spite of the criticisms of the minority." Evidently dogmatism is not a recent trend
in the Trotskyist movement.

Morrow stood his ground against all attacks. He appeared as a heretic. One of the
charges against him made by Pierre Frank contained an interesting thought. If
Morrow was right, what implications would this have for the world Trotskyist
 movement? Frank seemed to be thinking out loud when he said:

"The false perspective of Morrow has a farther implication if it is really drawn to

its logical end. If American imperialism has such inexhaustible powers that it can,
as he thinks, improve the standard of living in Europe, then of course there exists a
certain basis, on however low a foundation, for the establishment of bourgeois-
democracy in the immediate period ahead. From that we must assume the softening
of class conflicts for a period that the class struggle will be very largely refracted
through the parliamentary struggle, that for a time the parliamentary arena will
dominate the stage. If that were true, we would have to revise our conception of
American imperialism. And of course the Trotskyist movement would have to
attune its work to these new conditions -- conditions for a while of slow painful
growth, propaganda, election campaigns, etc., etc."

Frank's fears were of course grounded in reality. This would be the fate of the
Trotskyist movement and the rest of the left. The 1950s were not even a period of
slow, painful growth, however. They were a period of decline. The FI only woke up
to new realities when it shifted toward the student movement in the early 1960s.
After a period of sustained growth, it returned to its "catastrophist" roots and
proclaimed in 1975 that the workers were ready to launch an attack on capitalist
power in the United States and the other industrialized countries. SWP leader Jack
Barnes not only led this return to Comintern ultraleftism, he did the early
communists one better and predicted war, fascism and proletarian revolution nearly
every year or so for the last 20.

The "catastrophism" of the Trotskyist movement is built into the manifesto that
created it, the Transitional Program. This is the political legacy of Trotsky's
uncritical acceptance of the perfect wisdom of the early Comintern. How could it
be otherwise, since at that time Trotsky itself was one of the key leaders. He made
it his business to straighten out any wayward Communists, like the French, who
stepped out of line. The organizational legacy of the Trotskyist movement is in
Zinoviev's schematic "Marxist-Leninist" model. The ultraleftism of the political
roots and the sectarianism of the organizational roots make for a powerful
inhibition to growth. As we struggle to create new political and organizational
paradigms, it will be important to shed ourselves of such counterproductive models.

Louis Proyect

Trotskyist lies on anarchism: Felix

Morrow on Spain
Article from Black Flag debunking myths of the libertarian Spanish Revolution from
American Trotskyist Felix Morrow.

Trotskyist Lies on Anarchism

It's fair to say that most marxists in Britain base their criticisms, of the Spanish
Anarchist Revolution of 1936, on the work of Trotskyist Felix Morrow. Morrow's book
'Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain', first published in 1938, actually isn't that
bad - for some kinds of information. However, it's basically written as Trotskyist
propaganda. All too often Morrow is inaccurate, and over-eager to bend reality to fit the
party line.

The Bolshevik-Leninists, for example, an obscure sect who perhaps numbered 20

members, are, according to Morrow, transformed into the only ones who could save the
Spanish Revolution - because they alone were members of the Fourth International,
Morrow's own organisation. 'Only the small forces of the Bolshevik-Leninists...clearly
pointed the road for the workers' (1); 'Could that party [the party needed to lead the
revolution] be any but a party standing on the platform of the Fourth International?' (2),
etc.. The POUM - a more significant marxist party in Spain, though still tiny compared
to the anarchists - is also written up as far more important than it was, and slagged off
for failing to lead the masses to victory (or listening to the Bolshevik-Leninists). The
Fourth Internationalists 'offered the POUM the rarest and most precious form of aid: a
consistent Marxist analysis' (3) (never mind Spanish workers needing guns and
solidarity!). But when such a programme - prepared in advance - was offered the
POUM by the Fourth International representative - only two hours after arriving in
Spain, and 1/4 of an hour after meeting the POUM (4) - the POUM weren't interested.
The POUM have been both attacked (and claimed as their own) by Trotskyists ever
since...

It's Morrow's attacks on anarchism, though, that have most readily entered leftist
folklore - even among Marxists who reject Leninism. Some of Morrow's criticisms are
fair enough - but these were voiced by anarchists long before Morrow put pen to paper.
Morrow, in fact, quotes and accepts the analyses of anarchists like Camillo Berneri
('Berneri had been right' etc. (5) (see below), and praises anarchists like Durruti ('the
greatest military figure produced by the war' (6)) - then sticks the boot into anarchism.
Morrow obviously wanted to have his cake and eat it.

Typically for today's left, perhaps, the most quoted sections of Morrow's book are the
most inaccurate. Here's a detailed look at three of them:

According to Morrow, "Spanish Anarchism had in the FAI a highly centralised party
apparatus through which it maintained control of the CNT (7).
In reality, the FAI - the Iberian Anarchist Federation - was founded, in 1927, as a
confederation of regional federations (including the Portuguese Anarchist Union). These
regional federations, in turn, coordinated local and district federations of highly
autonomous anarchist affinity groups. So, while the FAI may have had centralising
tendencies, a 'highly centralised' political party it was not.

Further, many anarcho-syndicalists and affinity groups were not in the FAI (though
most seem to have supported it), and many FAI members put loyalty to the CNT (the
anarcho-syndicalist union confederation) first. For instance, according to the minutes of
the FAI national plenum of Jan-Feb 1936: 'The Regional Committee [of Aragon, Rioja,
and Navarra] is completely neglected by the majority of the militants because they are
absorbed in the larger activities of the CNT'. And 'One of the reasons for the poor
condition of the FAI was the fact that almost all the comrades were active in the defence
groups of the CNT' (report from the Regional Federation of the North). These are
internal documents and so unlikely to be lies (8).
Anarchists were obviously the main influence in the CNT (which was anarcho-
syndicalist long before the FAI was founded). But 'FAI control' was an invention of a
reformist minority within the organisation - people like Angel Pestana, ex-CNT
National Secretary, who wanted to turn the CNT into a politically 'neutral' union
movement. Pestana later showed what he meant by forming the Syndicalist Party and
standing for Parliament/the Cortes. Obviously, in the struggle against the reformists,
anarcho-syndicalists - inside the FAI or not - voted for people they trusted to run CNT
committees. The reformists lost, split from the CNT, and 'FAI dictatorship' was born.

Again, following Morrow, marxists have often alleged that the Socialist and Workers
Alliance strike wave, of October 1934, was sabotaged by the CNT. To understand this
allegation, you have to understand the background to October '34, and the split in the
workers' movement between the CNT and the UGT (unions controlled by the reformist
Socialist Party, the PSOE).

From 1931 (the birth of the Second Spanish Republic) to 1933 the Socialists, in
coalition with Republicans, had attacked the CNT (a repeat, in many ways, of the UGT's
collaboration with the Primo de Rivera dictatorship of 1923-30). Laws were passed,
with Socialist help, making lightening strikes illegal and state arbitration compulsory.
Anarchist-organised strikes were violently repressed, and the UGT provided scabs - as
against the CNT Telephone Company strike of 1931. During and after CNT
insurrections in Catalonia (north eastern Spain) in 1932, and the much wider
insurrections of January 1933 (9,000 CNT members jailed) and December 1933 (16,000
jailed) Socialist solidarity was nil.

Socialist conversion to 'revolution' occurred only after the elections of November 1933 -
when they lost, and all the laws they'd passed against the CNT were used against
themselves. When cabinet seats were offered to the non-republican right, in October
1934, the PSOE/UGT called for a general strike..
If the CNT, nationally, failed to take part in this - a mistake recognised by many
anarchist writers - this was not (as reading Morrow suggests) because the CNT thought
'all governments were equally bad', but because of well-founded, as it turned out,
mistrust of Socialist aims.
A CNT call, in February 1934, for the UGT to clearly and publicly state its
revolutionary objectives, had met with no reply. Rhetoric aside, the PSOE's main aim in
October seems to have been to force new elections, so they could again form a (mildly
reformist) coalition with the Republicans (9). The CNT, in effect, were to be used as
cannon-fodder to help produce another government that would attack the CNT.
The 'workers alliances' were little better. These were first put forward by the marxist-
leninists of the BOC (Workers and Peasants Bloc - later to form the POUM) after their
attempts to turn the CNT into a bolshevik vanguard failed (10). PSOE interest began
only after their election defeat - when the alliances were seen as a means of dominating
the workers movement in areas the UGT was weak. The Socialist 'Liaison Committee',
for instance, set up to prepare for insurrection, only allowed regional branches to take
part in the alliances if they could guarantee Party control (11). And only one month after
the first alliance was set up, one of its founder members -the Socialist Union of
Catalonia - left in protest over PSOE domination.

During October, apart from Catalonia (where the Catalan government arrested CNT
militants the night before, then tried to declare Catalan autonomy), and Madrid (where a
general strike was supported by the CNT), the only real centre of resistance was in
Asturias (on the Spanish north coast). Here, the CNT had joined the Socialists and
Communists in a 'workers alliance'. But, against the alliance's terms, the Socialists alone
gave the order for the uprising - and the Socialist-controlled Provincial Committee
starved the CNT of arms. This despite the CNT having over 22,000 affiliates in the area
(to the UGT's 40,000).

Morrow states that 'The backbone of the struggle was broken...when the refusal of the
CNT railroad workers to strike enabled the government to transport goods and troops'
(12). Yet in Asturias (the only area where major troop transportation was needed) the
main government attack was from a seaborne landing of Foreign Legion and Moroccan
troops - against the port and CNT stronghold (15,000 affiliates) of Gijon. Despite CNT
pleas the Socialists refused arms, Gjon fell after a bloody struggle, and became the main
base for the crushing of the entire region. This Socialist and Communist sabotage of
Anarchist resistance was repeated in the Civil War, less than two years later.

Finally, Morrow claims that the Friends of Durruti 'represented a conscious break with
the anti-statism of traditional anarchism. They explicitly declared the need for
democratic organs of power, juntas or soviets, in the overthrow of capitalism..'(13).

Typically, in Morrow's topsy-turvy world, all anarchists like the Friends of Durruti
(Morrow also includes the Libertarian Youth, the 'politically awakened' CNT rank and
file, local FAI groups, etc.) who remained true to anarchism and stuck to their guns
(often literally) - represented a break with anarchism and a move towards marxism, the
revolutionary vanguard party (no doubt part of the 4th International), and a fight for the
'workers state'...

Those anarchists, on the other hand, who compromised for 'anti-fascist unity' (but
mainly to try and get weapons to fight Franco) are the real anarchists because 'class
collaboration...lies concealed in the heart of anarchist philosophy' (14).

The Friends of Durruti were formed, in March 1937, by anarchist militants who'd
refused to submit to Communist-controlled 'militarisation' of the workers' militias.
During the Maydays - the government attack against the revolution two months later -
the Friends of Durruti were notable for their calls to stand firm and crush the counter-
revolution. They did not 'break with' anarchism - they refused to compromise their
anarchism in the face of 'comrades' who thought winning the war meant entering the
government. Their leaflets, in April '37, called for the unions and municipalities to
'replace the state' and for no retreat (15). Their manifesto, in 1938, repeated this call
('the state cannot be retained in the face of the unions'), and made three demands: For a
National Defence Council, elected and accountable to the union rank and file (including
those at the front), with all posts up for regular recall; for 'all economic power to the
unions'; and for the 'free municipality' to cover those areas outside the unions' mandate
(16). More recently, Jaime Balius, one of the FoD's main activists, has stated: 'We did
not support the formation of Soviets; there were no grounds in Spain for calling for
such. We stood for Òall power to the trade unionsÓ. In no way were we politically
orientated' (17). ('Political' here meaning 'state-political' - a common anarchist use of the
word).

Morrow's book may bring comfort to those marxists who look for ready-made answers
and are prepared to accept the works of hacks at face-value. Those who want to learn
from the past - instead of re-writing it - will have to look elsewhere.

Notes & References

1) Felix Morrow, 'Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain', 2nd Edition 1974,
p191.
2) Morrow p248.
3) Morrow p105.
4) Morrow p139.
5) Morrow p153.
6) Morrow p224.
7) Morrow p100.
8) Juan Gomez Casas, 'Anarchist Organisation - the history of the FAI', p165 and p168.
Most of the information on the FAI comes from this. Also see Murray Bookchin, 'The
Spanish Anarchists, The Heroic Years, 1868-1936'.
9) See for instance Adrian Schubert 'The Asturian Revolution of October 1934' , in
'Revolution and War in Spain' ed. Paul Preston.
10) Paul Preston, 'The Coming of the Spanish Civil War' p117.
11) See Schubert (above). Most of the rest of this section comes from Preston 'The
Coming of the Spanish Civil War', Bookchin (above), and Abel Paz 'Durruti, the People
Armed'.
12) Morrow p30.
13) Morrow p247
14) Morrow p101
15) Quoted in Paul Sharkey, 'The Friends of Durruti - a Chronology'.
16) 'Towards a Fresh Revolution'.
The idea of a National Defence Council wasn't the radical break with the CNT that
some claim. Before the civil war the CNT had long has its defence groups, federated at
regional and national level, and the CNT insurrection - of December 1933 - had been
coordinated by a National Revolutionary Committee. During the war a national plenum
of regions, in September 1936, called for a National Defence Council, with majority
union representation and based on Regional Defence Councils. The Defence Council of
Aragon, set up soon after, was based on these ideas. The need for coordinated
revolutionary defence and attack is just common sense.
17) Letter to Ronald Frazer 1976 - in Frazer's book 'Blood of Spain' p381.

Camillo Berneri

Camillo Berneri was an Italian anarchist active in Spain during the revolution, who
wrote "An Open Letter to Comrade Federica Montseny", a call for a return to anarchist
principles and defence and extension of the revolution and was editor of Guerra di
Classe, an Italian language journal of the time. He was murdered by Stalinists in 1937.

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Oct 26 2006 23:16

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Felix Morrow

James Cannon, left, and Felix Morrow, with a Bust of Trotsky

Felix Morrow (3 June 1906 - 28 May1988)

Morrow, an American politician and author, noted for his Revolution and Counter-
Revolution in Spain (Pioneer Publishing, 1938), joined the Communist League of
America in 1933 and served as editor of the Socialist Workers Party's paper, The
Militant.

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain

With Albert Goldman in 1943, he challenged the party's orthodoxy and was expelled by
the party in 1946 for "unauthorized collaboration" with Max Schachtman's Workers
Party. However, Morrow turned toward the right and away from politics, becoming the
executive vice president of Schocken Books, a capitalist and Jewish-owned company in
New York City.

Becoming interested in his Hasidic roots, from 1948 to 1970, Morrow has been
described as follows:
He became immersed in Freudian psychoanalytic training and publishing,
though at the same time, his association with Mel Arnold at Beacon Press, and
later with University of Notre Dame Press, made him responsive to mysticism.
Throughout this period he remained a socialist at heart, this dichotomy creating
many personal conflicts for him while broadening his humanist outlook.
As executive vice president of British Book Center, he took on American rights
of Flying Saucers Have Landed by Desmond Leslie and George Adamski
(originally published in England in 1953), and this project launched his research
into earlier literature in psychic and occult subjects. In 1954, he incorporated
University Books, Inc. in New York, and began publishing important out-of-
print books on occultism, mysticism, psychical research, and comparative
religion. These included key works such as A. E. Waite's books on the tarot and
ceremonial magic; Lewis Spence's Encyclopedia of Occultism; Montague
Summers' books on witchcraft and vampires; William James's Varieties of
Religious Experience; R. M. Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness; F. W. H. Myers's
Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death; scholarly works by Charles
Guignebert on the origins of Christianity; D. T. Suzuki's books on Zen; Nandor
Fodor 's Encyclopedia of Psychical Research;G. R. S. Mead 's books on
Gnosticism; Alexandra David-Neel's Magic and Mystery in Tibet; and scores of
similar books that opened large segments of the tradition to a new generation of
modern occultists.
Each book carried a new introduction, evaluating the work in a modern context
and often supplying original biographical research on the author. Some of these
introductions were written by Morrow under the pseudonym 'John C. Wilson;'
others were written by such authorities as E. J. Dingwall, Kenneth Rexroth, and
Leslie Shepard.
University Books also published original works as the occult revival threw up
names like Timothy Leary and new causes like the psychedelic revolution. In
addition to publishing, the company marketed chosen titles each month through
the Mystic Arts Book Society. A major event of that period was Morrow's
association with William Nyland in distributing the books of Georgei I.
Gurdjieff through the society. Morrow eventually became a disciple of Nyland
and developed a great respect for the Gurdjieff work.
After 15 years of creative and stimulating publishing in the fields of occultism
and mysticism, Morrow relinquished the business to Lyle Stuart, who continued
the University Books imprint side by side with its own Citadel Press imprint,
and moved the operation from New York to Secaucus, New Jersey. In 1973,
Morrow launched a second occult series for Causeway Books, an imprint of A.
& W. Publishers, Inc., New York. Morrow wrote some of the new introductions
for this series under the pseudonym "Charles Sen."
The significant influence of Morrow's publishing work was recognized by the
National Endowment for the Humanities and the Rockefeller Foundation, which
initiated an oral history recording project on the advanced literary-intellectual
life of New York City between 1925 and 1975. Tape recordings have been made
of Morrow and other individuals for deposit in the Oral History division of the
Columbia libraries.
Morrow extended his psychological studies from Freudianism to Maslow's
humanist psychology and the holistic depth psychology of Ira Progoff. He was
in charge of publishing projects in these areas for Dialogue House Library (80 E.
11th St., New York, NY 10003) prior to resuming independent publishing again
 with the books of Mantok and Maneewan Chia under the imprint Healing Tao
Books, in New York. In his later years he was a regular visitor to the library of
the Parapsychology Foundation in New York, where he found excellent facilities
for research.

Morrow died suddenly in New York City.

Freethought
Warren Allen Smith, during a book party at Morrow's publishing house, mentioned his
having been a book review editor of The Humanist and told of his interest since his
studies at Columbia University in 1948-1949 in what humanism connotes. Morrow,
when asked point-blank, said he considered himself a humanist. "A Jewish humanist?"
he was asked. No, he thought of himself more as an Abraham Maslow kind of humanist,
not a supernaturalist, more a secularist. Smith asked if he was considering publishing
any books about this type of viewpoint, and Morrow suggested that he send him
something in writing. At that time knowing nothing whatsoever of Morrow's past leftist
history, Smith sent the following:

From The Archives Of The Spanish Civil

War- Felix Morrow-Revolution and
Counter Revolution in Spain (1938)

Click on the headline to link to the Felix Morrow (an important American Trotskyist
leader in the 1930s)Internet Archives.

Reposted from the American Left History blog- June 6, 2006

BOOK REVIEW

THE SPANISH REVOLUTION, 1931-39, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER

PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973
THE CRISIS OF REVOLUTIONARY LEADERSHIP

AS WE APPROACH THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF

THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR MILITANTS NEED TO LEARN THE LESSONS
FOR THE DEFEAT OF THAT REVOLUTION.

I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I
was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the
passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization
of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance
surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham
Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could
have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of
both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class
interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class
revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success.
Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class consciousness of the
Spanish proletariat at that time was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917.
Yet it failed in Spain. Trotsky's writings on this period represent a provocative and
thoughtful approach to an understanding of the causes of that failure. Moreover, with all
proper historical proportions considered, his analysis has continuing value as the
international working class struggles against the seemingly one-sided class war being
waged by the international bourgeoisie today.

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from
every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such
treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the
Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Trotsky's
complication of articles, letters, pamphlets, etc. which make up the volume reviewed
here is an exception. Trotsky was actively trying to intervene in the unfolding events in
order to present a program of socialist revolution that most of the active forces on the
Republican side were fighting, or believed they were fighting for. Thus, Trotsky's
analysis brings a breath of fresh air to the historical debate. That in the end Trotsky
could not organize the necessary cadres to carry out his program or meaningfully impact
the unfolding events in Spain is one of the ultimate tragedies of that revolution.
Nevertheless, Trotsky had a damn good idea of what forces were acting as a roadblock
to revolution. He also had a strategic conception of the road to victory. And that most
definitely was not through the Popular Front.

The central question Trotsky addresses throughout the whole period under review here
was the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletarian forces. That premise
entailed, in short, a view that the objective conditions for the success of a socialist
program for society had ripened. Nevertheless, until that time, despite several
revolutionary upheavals elsewhere, the international working class had not been
successful anywhere except in backward Russia. Trotsky thus argued that it was
necessary to focus on the question of forging the missing element of revolutionary
leadership that would assure victory or at least put up a fight to the finish.
This underlying premise was the continuation of an analysis that Trotsky developed in
earnest in his struggle to fight the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution in
the mid-1920's. The need to learn the lessons of the Russian Revolution and to extend
that revolution internationally was thus not a merely a theoretical question for Trotsky.
Spain, moreover, represented a struggle where the best of the various leftist forces were
in confusion about how to move forward. Those forces could have profitably heeded
Trotsky's advice. I further note that the question of the crisis of revolutionary leadership
still remains to be resolved by the international working class.

Trotsky's polemics in this volume are highlighted by the article ‘The Lessons of Spain-
Last Warning’, his definitive assessment of the Spanish situation in the wake of the
defeat of the Barcelona uprising in May 1937. Those polemics center on the failure of
the Party of Marxist Unification (hereafter, POUM) to provide revolutionary leadership.
That party, partially created by cadre formerly associated with Trotsky in the Spanish
Left Opposition, failed on virtually every count. Those conscious mistakes included, but
were not limited to, the creation of an unprincipled bloc between the former Left
Oppositionists and the former Right Oppositionists (Bukharinites) of Maurin to form the
POUM in 1935; political support to the Popular Front including entry into the
government coalition by its leader; creation of its own small trade union federation
instead of entry in the anarchist led-CNT; creation of its own militia units reflecting a
hands-off attitude toward political struggle with other parties; and, fatally, an at best
equivocal role in the Barcelona uprising of 1937.

Trotsky had no illusions about the roadblock to revolution of the policies carried out by
the old-time Anarchist, Socialist and Communist Parties. Unfortunately the POUM did.
Moreover, despite being the most honest revolutionary party in Spain it failed to keep
up an intransigent struggle to push the revolution forward. The Trotsky - Andreas Nin
(key leader of the POUM and former Left Oppositionist) correspondence in the
Appendix makes that problem painfully clear.

The most compelling example of this failure - As a result of the failure of the
Communist Party of Germany to oppose the rise of Hitler in 1933 and the subsequent
decapitation and the defeat of the Austrian working class in 1934 the European workers,
especially the younger workers, of the traditional Socialist Parties started to move left.
Trotsky observed this situation and told his supporters to intersect that development by
an entry, called the ‘French turn’, into those parties. Nin and the Spanish Left
Opposition, and later the POUM failed to do that. As a result the Socialist Party youth
were recruited to the Communist Party en masse. This accretion formed the basic for its
expansion as a party and the key cadre of its notorious security apparatus that would,
after the Barcelona uprising, suppress the more left ward organizations. For more such
examples of the results of the crisis of leadership in the Spanish Revolution read this
book.

Revised-June 19, 2006

*********
Felix Morrow-Revolution and Counter Revolution in Spain

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Source: Revolution and Counter Revolution in Spain, by Felix Morrow, published

by New Park Publications Limited, 186a Clapham High Street, London, SW11,
England, 1963. Printed in Great Britain by Plough Press Ltd., Clapham, London.
First Published: 1938.
Transcribed: by Ted Crawford.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bibliographical Note

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This book was first published in 1938 by Pioneer in the United States. An expanded
edition which contained Morrow’s much shorter Civil War in Spain pamphlet was
published in the United States by Pathfinder Press in 1974 with a new index and
copies may still be available from them. Note the reference to Civil War in Spain
by Morrow in Note 1 of Chapter 2 The Bourgeois ‘Allies’ in the People’s Front.

The text of the following book is that of the second Edition of 1963 published by
New Park Publications together with the introduction written at that date by the
late Tom Kemp. At the time, and for some years afterwards, the Socialist Labour
League in Britain, who controlled New Park, was politically allied with the
Socialist Workers Party in the United States, who controlled Pioneer/Pathfinder.
The type of this edition was reset with English spellings etc. and the book was given
its own index. Since it is now out of print, Index Books, the successor to New Park
Publications, is consequently delighted that this important text is available, if only
on the web, as they have no plans to reprint it.

It has been transcribed by Ted Crawford in 2003 and any errors and omissions are
his responsibility. Notes have been placed at the end of the chapters and numbered
rather than placed at the bottom of the page and the very occasional typographical
errors removed. Any notes added are clearly stated to have been done by him and
signed ERC.

Felix Morrow

Revolution and Counter Revolution in Spain

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Foreword

FOR the new generations moving into political life a study of the Spanish Civil
War of 1936-39 contains valuable lessons. This book, hammered out in time with
the dramatic events it describes, stands in direct line with the great writings of
Marx and Engels on the Revolutions of 1848 and the Paris Commune and
Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution. No doubt later historical research has
been able to uncover from the record a more detailed account of the facts, and the
reports of participants have helped to throw light on the motives of many of those
involved. The basic interpretation made by Morrow in the light of Marxism retains
all its validity and offers an invaluable key to one of the decisive events of our
epoch. In reprinting this book, which has become a rarity, a valuable service is
being rendered to the working-class movement and to students of politics. Needless
to say, while Morrow’s work has so well withstood the test of time there is not a
single part of the voluminous literature produced by the Stalinists which could be
reprinted today without courting ridicule.

The Spanish workers and peasants, in July 1936, made a revolution but they could
not complete it or maintain the positions won. Their revolution was defeated and
counter-revolution, in the shape of the bourgeois republic, by its triumph,
prepared the way for the bloodier triumph of Franco. This defeat was one of a long
series which issued from the betrayals of social democracy and Stalinism. It
reflected, above all, the failure to build in time the necessary revolutionary
leadership, a party of the Bolshevik type. This failure was not peculiarly Spanish
but was part of an international crisis of proletarian leadership which called for
the formation of the Fourth International and is still with us today.

During these years the Spanish proletariat was in the vanguard of the international
struggle of its class. It made a revolution in the teeth of the attempt by the fascist
military junta to establish a dictatorship on behalf of the landed oligarchy, big
business and the church, which saw in the crushing of the working-class movement
the only way to secure their privileges. Before this determined threat the bourgeois
state, wearing the trappings of the Popular Front, panicked and disintegrated. The
army and police, upon which its existence depended, joined the rebellion or
prepared to do so. The response of the workers, as well as of the peasants in many
parts of the country, was to set up their own organs of power and to carry out a
social revolution. In this way they sought, spontaneously, to give concrete form to
the promise of the Popular Front government which they had elected in February
1936.

Morrow describes graphically, as others have since done in still greater detail, how
this revolution was made. But he does more, he explains the significance of the dual
power which thus came into being and defines the character of this revolution.
According to the Communist Parties, applying the line of the Seventh World
Congress of the Comintern[1] it was a bourgeois democratic revolution from which
should issue a national democratic state. True the bourgeois democratic revolution
in Spain had been delayed and was half-completed, but it cannot be doubted that
capitalism was firmly established and that the state was a bourgeois state. When
the workers took over the factories and the peasants took over the land and
established collectives, their armed militias conquered power by overcoming the
rebel troops. ‘Shorn of the repressive organs of the state’ writes Bolloten, who is no
Marxist, ‘the government of Jose Giral possessed the nominal power, but not the
power itself, for this was split into countless fragments’.[1]

The failure of the workers and peasants to complete their victory can be explained
by two main factors. First there was the influence of the anarchist leadership (FAI-
CNT) which responded to the revolutionary impulse of the masses with the
pusillanimity of the petty-bourgeois and presented the world with the unique
spectacle of anarchist ministers in a bourgeois government. These leaders were a
powerful obstacle on the way to building the revolutionary party which the
situation demanded; though hard experience pressed this lesson home on many
anarchist workers and especially the youth, it was a lesson learned too late. The
way was thus clear for counter-revolution. The spearhead of this counter-
revolution was of the most insidious kind because it came decked out as Marxism
and Communism. The Spanish Communist Party, at the beginning of 1936, was
still a relatively small party. As a member of the Popular Front coalition it made
itself, after July, the protagonist of the restoration of republican, i.e., bourgeois
institutions, including; a well-armed police and disciplined army to supersede the
workers’ guards and militias. In this way it gained rapidly in strength; ‘from the
outset’, writes Bolloten.[2] ‘the Communist Party appeared before the distraught
middle classes not only as a defender of property, but as the champion of the
Republic and the orderly processes of government’—which in the circumstances
meant counter-revolution. It also became the most determined champion of the
policy of win the war first which rallied to its side many former supporters of the
other republican parties. As the Republic became increasingly dependent upon
Russian military supplies so was the power of the Communist Party enhanced, or
appeared to be.

In fact, it was not the Spanish Communists whose power grew but the direct power
of the Soviet bureaucracy in Spain. As Jesus Hernandez, Communist Minister of
Education in the Negrin Government has subsequently revealed,[3] the policy of
the party was determined, often over the protests of its more honest leaders, by
loyal agents of the policy of the Stalinised Comintern-Togliatti, Vidali (alias
Contreras), Orlov and others. This policy was not determined by the needs of the
Spanish revolution but by the diplomatic requirements of the Kremlin which had
no interest in revolution in the Iberian peninsula. Stalin settled for a limited
committment in Spain, hoping that the ‘democracies’—France and England—
would intervene to stop the spread of fascism and ready to pull out as it became
increasingly clear that this was not likely. To this end, then, not only was the
Communist Party set on a counter-revolutionary course, but methods and
organisation of the NKVD were transplanted to Spain. It was concerned primarily
with tracking down and exterminating genuine revolutionaries, operating quite
independently of the government, and even of the Spanish Communist Party. Its
most spectacular success, following the provocation which led to the ‘May days’ in
Barcelona in 1937, was the hounding of the POUM and the murder of Andreas
Nin. Hernandez has described how Nin was first tortured to the limits of human
endurance and then, according to a scenario devised by Vidali, ‘liberated’ by
supposed agents of the Gestapo disguised as members of the International Brigade,
leaving behind ‘evidence’ indicating that he was a German spy.[4]

The energy with which this repression was carried on against left-wing-militants
indicated the deep concern of the Stalinists to destroy the Spanish revolution. But
they could only play their counter-revolutionary role successfully by appearing
themselves in revolutionary guise when occasion demanded; otherwise they could
not have won mass support, including from many ‘workers, and made an
international impact. This was particularly so at the time of the battle for Madrid.
As recent historians put it, ‘The history of the defence of Madrid shows also that in
certain circumstances the Communist Party is capable, not only of making an
appeal to revolutionary traditions such as those of the Russian October Revolution
or of the Red Army, but also of using really revolutionary methods, in a word,
appearing, in the eyes of large masses of people, as an authentically revolutionary
party. Many Spanish or foreign militants experienced in the defence of the capital
a revolutionary epic in which the anti-fascist label was purely provisional. Against
the mercenaries from Germany or Italy, they wished to be fighters in the
international proletarian revolution. Many among them fought the revolution for
the time being, with the conviction that it was nothing more than a tactical
withdrawal of a provisional kind, and that at the end of the anti-fascist struggle the
World Communist Revolution would be found.'[5]

This cynical abuse of genuine revolutionary convictions was not least among the
crimes of Stalinism in this period and it is necessary to recall that many of those
who fought in Spain, or who backed the Republican Government, did so because
they were deluded into believing that by so doing they supported the revolutionary
cause.

The weight of this sentiment was so great that the task of those who, under the
inspiration of Trotsky, stood against the tide and spoke up clearly against the
Stalinist betrayal was virtually insuperable. All the more reason why, now that the
counter-revolutionary policies of Stalin can be seen more clearly for what they
were, works like Morrow’s should be studied.

It was from the ranks of the POUM—so often wrongly described as Trotskyists,
including by some who ought to know better[6]—that the chance of building a
genuine revolutionary leadership was greatest. It is thus necessary to understand
the nature of the POUM and the reasons for its failures and capitulation both as
displayed in this book and as explained in Trotsky’s pamphlet The Lessons of
Spain. The POUM had a sufficient basis in the industrial working class in
Catalonia to have given the necessary leadership. In order to do so, however, it was
not sufficient to give lip-service to the Permanent Revolution or to make a literary
exposure of the evils of Stalinism. It was also necessary to struggle against the
reformist and anarchist leaders, however respected or powerful or personally
honest, they may have been. ‘Instead of mobilizing the masses against the reformist
leaders, including the Anarchists’, ran Trotsky’s indictment, ‘the POUM tried to
convince these gentlemen of the superiority of socialism over capitalism. This
tuning fork gave the pitch to all the articles and speeches of the POUM leaders. In
order not to quarrel with the Anarchist leaders they did not form their own nuclei
and in general did not conduct any kind of work inside the CNT. Evading sharp
conflicts, they did not carry on revolutionary work in the republican army. They
built instead “their own” trade unions and “their own” militia which guarded
“their own” institutions or occupied “their own” section of the front. By isolating
the revolutionary vanguard from the class, the POUM rendered the vanguard
impotent and left the class without leadership. Politically the POUM remained
throughout far closer to the People’s Front, for whose left wing it provided the
cover, than to Bolshevism. That the POUM nevertheless fell victim to bloody and
base repressions was due to the fact that the People’s Front could not fulfil its
mission, namely, to stifle the socialist revolution—except by cutting off, piece by
piece, its own left flank.’ The ‘salami tactic’ was not invented by Rakosi: it was
used in Spain and the POUM was its chief victim.

The POUM provided an object lesson in showing how ‘left’ parties can, through
the vice of centrism, oppose a barrier to the solution of the crisis of leadership. As
Trotsky continued, ‘Contrary to its own intentions, the POUM proved to be, in the
final analysis, the chief obstacle on the road to the creation of a revolutionary
party.’ The supporters of the Fourth International in Spain were but a handful,
some were foreigners and they lacked roots in the working class. By the time that
they found a hearing in the POUM, or from workers under anarchist influence—
especially the Friends of Durruti who, according to Morrow, ‘explicitly declared
the need for democratic organs of power, juntas or soviets, in the overthrow of
capitalism, and the necessary state measures of repression against the
counterrevolution’—the most militant sections of the working class had been
defeated and divided. After May 1937, the victory of the counter-revolution was
assured. From that time the last act was played oat in the sombre tones of tragedy
and against a backcloth of defeat and betrayal.

It is one of the merits of Morrow’s book that he shows in detail how the bourgeois
nature of the Republican government made it incapable of waging a revolutionary
war, the only type of war which stood any chance of overcoming the forces of
international fascism. It could not promise liberation to the Moors, it could not
offer agrarian reform to the peasants in Franco territory, it could not appear as the
liberator of the working class nor could it appeal to the fascist troops with
revolutionary propaganda. The deliberate cutting off of arms and supplies to
sectors of the front held by CNT and POUM militias had its counterpart in the
superb armament and equipment of Assault Guards and army units kept in the
rear for ‘security’ purposes.[7] Morrow recounts how on several sectors of the
front the way was opened to the fascist forces by the betrayals of republican
officers and police. He shows how the navy, an important weapon in republican
hands, was reduced to impotence out of consideration for foreign powers.

Those who argue that a revolutionary seizure of power was out of the question and
that the restoration of republican institutions was necessary to defeat Franco are
answered by implication throughout Morrow’s work. They are dealt with more
specifically on pages 82-91 which rank among the most important in the book and
to which, therefore, the reader is especially referred. But the most convincing
refutation of the argument for ‘anti-fascism’ is its complete practical failure and
the demoralisation which accompanied and resulted from its failure. The military
defeat followed the counter-revolution with tragic inevitability once the
‘democracies’ showed that they were not interested in getting involved in a war to
stop Spain going fascist and Stalin necessarily pulled out his forces to cut his losses.
The undignified scramble of the agents of the Comintern and the NKVD to find
places on planes and boats leaving Spain in the final stages of the war was a fitting
conclusion to their work.[8] Unfortunately for some of them, Stalin decided that
they knew to much, or had been too shaken by the experiences; Rosenberg,
Antonov-Ovseenko and Kolsov were among those who perished on their return to
Russia. Nor can it have been accidental that the post-war purges in Eastern
Europe included among their victims a remarkably high proportion of communists
who had seen service in Spain.

The Franco regime, erected on the ruins of the revolution of 1936, has endured to
this day. In the second World War it leant on the Axis powers, but without formally
participating on their side. Its fate, in 1945, hung in the balance; but the betrayals
of the Social Democrats and Communists in Western Europe decided the future of
the Spanish people for a further lengthy period. The regime has, needless to say,
solved none of the problems of backward Spain. Despite talk of ‘agrarian reform’
the distribution of land ownership remains much as it was in 1936. Since the mid-
1950s especially, the Spanish working class has provided, through continued
resistance to the regime, including a number of great strikes, evidence of its
vitality. The regime depends, as it has always done, upon the support of the other
capitalist powers; by now that means mainly the United States. Even so, its future
remains in question. There has been frequent talk of monarchist restoration.
Reactionaries like Gil Robles offer themselves as an alternative. Sections of the
Church have taken their distance from the regime. No doubt, among many sections
of the population, democratic illusions are rife. For many workers and peasants
long years of poverty and repression have brought their toll of demoralisation from
which only the younger elements are entirely free.

The question of the forthcoming Spanish revolution remains posed. The crisis of
the leadership still has to be solved. In the meantime, the Communist Party, still
able to convince many that it is a revolutionary party, prepares new betrayals. In
the policy of ‘peaceful co-existence’ and the parliamentary road—as though there
can be a peaceful path in keeping with totalitarian Spain!—it preaches ‘national
reconciliation’. It is willing to collaborate with all and sundry, including former
supporters of Franco, in a broad coalition to restore ‘democracy’ in Spain. It
therefore repeats, for the present period, precisely the same role that it played in
1936-39. A study of this book can forearm against such a policy, a policy which can
only lead the workers and peasants of Spain to fresh defeats.

7th March, 1963

T. Kemp

Footnotes

1. B. Bolloten, The Grand Camouflage (London, 1961), p.42.

2. B. Bolloten, op. cit., p.87, and whole of chapter 6.

3. J. Hernandez, La Grande Trahison (Paris. 1953), French translation of Yo fui un

ministro de Stalin (Mexico City, 1953). Hernandez was Communist Minister of
Education in the government of Caballero, whose downfall he helped to bring
about, then in that of Negrin.

4. Hernandez, op. cit., chapter 5.

5. P. Broué and E. Témime, La révolution et la guerre d'Espagne (Paris 1961),
p.213. This is the best of the recent books on the Spanish Revolution.
Unfortunately it is not available in an English translation. [A translation was
published in 1972 by Faber and Faber. ERC]

6. Including H. Thomas, in his work The Spanish Civil War which, although
distorting the political significance of the struggle, is the fullest account so far
available in English. Thus on p.71 he produces the following curious piece of
reasoning: ‘Although not Trotskyist in the sense of being strict followers of Trotsky
(they were not affiliated to the Fourth International), these men could justifiably
be regarded as such since they were Marxist opponents of Stalin who shared
Trotsky’s general views: permanent resolution abroad, working class collectives at
home.’ The POUM leaders did not regard themselves as Trotskyists, nor did the
Trotskyists outside Spain regard them as such, therefore... therefore, Thomas
accepts the Stalinist characterization of them as Trotskyists!

7. On this point the mordant record in G, Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia—the best

personal account of the war—now available as a Penguin book.

8. J. Hernandez, op. cit., chapters 8 and 9.

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Struggle for the Fourth International

The following introductions to sections of the French edition of Trotsky’s works, edited
by Broué, provide a useful and short biography over the relevant period, November
1933-February 1937, his period in exile in France and Norway.
It has all been translated by the late John Archer. I have made a few very minor
corrections, a few spelling mistakes, repeats of words and some minor grammatical
changes. I have also put all the names of all publications in italics rather than inverted
commas. Note by transcriber. Ted Crawford March 2007.
(4,287 words)

STRUGGLE FOR THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL

(November 1933 to April 1934)

being the Introduction, written by Pierre Broue and Michel Dreyfus, to Volume III of
Leon Trotsky: Oeuvres".

Translated from French by John Archer

******

Trotsky left St. Palais (a small place near the mouth of the river Garonne, in South-West
France) for a three-weeks holiday, on October 3, 1933. On November 1, he, his
companion Natalia and his fellow-workers, moved into the Villa Ker-Monique at
Barbizon, on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau. The French Surete had given its
agreement and the secret was well guarded. There were practically no visits here,
because Trotsky could now move about without attracting attention. He went to Paris
from time to time and took part in meetings of comrades of his organisation. He also
met leaders and members of other part and currents. In fact, he enjoyed a certain
freedom of movement, with a minimum of precautions, for the first time for years. He
could have a place on the Executive Committee of the French Ligue, and even and even
participate as a representative of the Internationalist Communist League (1) - as the
former International Left Opposition now called itself - in the pre-conference of the four
signatories of the August declaration, which was held in secrecy in Paris on December
30, 1933.

In this period there is little to satisfy the curiosity of the researcher. Documents become
rarer. We have nothing like the precious correspondence with Jan Frankel or with the
International Secretariat. Nor have we any written trace of the discussions which
Trotsky had with a number of militants, such, for example, as Simone Weil, or with the
former Zinovievist leaders of the K.P.D. and of its left, Ruth Fischer and Maslov, or till
great Austrian journalist, Willy Schlamm, the chief editor of Die Neue Weltbuhne, or the
Belgian, Henri Spaak, the leader of the left in the Belgian Labour Party, to mention only
the best known.
The Barbizon period lasted less than six months. It was dominated by two related
events. On the one hand, we have the "turn", which was achieved in August 1933 by the
"Declaration of Four", for a new International, which he intended to concretise by
common work and fusions in certain cases Netherlands and Germany), preparing for
unification on the international plane. On the other hand, we have the split in the ranks
of the French Ligue in Paris, carried out by an opposition which was not very politically
homogeneous but which was united in a common resistance to the "methods" used to
effect the turn.

In August Trotsky was trying in vain to avert the split or, at any rate, to delay it. But
finally he chose his side and ended by frankly wishing for it. The Jewish Group
departed, taking with then the student Lasterade, who had been with him for a time at
St. Palais. Lasterade went on to found the "Communist Union", which published its
monthly journal, L'International from the beginning of November. We seek in vain for
any more than a passing reference in Trotaky's writings to this group. He definitively
put it out of his mind. Even when in December 1933 the French supporters of the "Left
Fraction", led by his old adversary, Kurt Landau, entered the Communist Union, they
did not draw a line of comment from him.

On the other hand, he did fight everywhere that he thought he could effect a
"regeneration". The New Italian Opposition (N.O.I.) was severely shaken by sharp
discussion on the "turn" in 1933. Giacomo Bavassano and Teresa Recchia, two of its
founders, went with the "Communist Union". The I.S. had to intervene to cancel the
exclusion of Blasco (2), another of its founders. We find echoes in the press of the
Italian Communist Party of the hesitations of Alfonso Leonetti. In March 1934, Paolo
Ravazzoli resigned and joined the Italian Socialist Party, in order to advocate there the
organic re-unification of the Socialist and Communist Parties against fascism. However,
Leonetti publicly repudiated his hesitations, - and in the same month the New Italian
Opposition won a first important recruit when a young militant, Veniero Spinelli,
recently out of Mussolini's jails, publicly joined it, followed by a group formed in Italy
itself around the underground Communist leader Metallo. The old Bolletino, very
modest, made way at once for a more ambitious monthly, Verita.

The man whom Trotsky held responsible for the split in the French Ligue was the Greek
Witte-Yotopoulos. He was a former member of the International Secretariat. He left
France in October 1933, to try to rally round himself the Greek Archaeo-Marxist
organisation, which with some 2000 members, was numerically the largest section up to
that time. However, his enterprise was only partly successful. Trotsky and the
International Secretariat had formed links with the Greek section in the recent past and
held their supporters firm right up to the Political Bureau. A split in its own ranks
replied to the break of the Archaeo-Marxist organisation from the I.C.L., and the birth of
a new organisation, which was at once recognised as the Greek section, under the
leadership of the actor, George Vitzoris.
The damage appeared to be definitely limited in Britain also, though it was not
completed repaired. The majority of the British section rejected the proposal of Trotsky
that they should enter the I.L.P. This majority pursued its efforts to construct an
independent organisation, round its journal, Red Flag. There was no formal breach, but
there was also a serious weakening of the links with the International Secretariat, which
wished to recognise the "majority" as a "sympathising" section. The minority, on the
other hand, "entered" the I.L.P., with a delay for which Trotsky criticised it. Finally,
however, it really did operate the policy which had been proposed to the section in
August 1933. It began to win successes which were important on the scale of an
organisation of twenty members, supported by the English-language publications from
the American section.

The opponents of the "turn" may have believed for a moment that they had taken with
them the Polish section. This was initially divided between doubt and open hostility.
The fact is that its history is unique. It was formed inside the underground Communist
Party only in 1932. But it was really homogeneous. The discussion was prolonged and
sharp, but at the beginning of 1934, without a split, it approved the turn and the
orientation towards the Fourth International. This conclusion led to the acceptance of
the Polish Opposition by the Internationalist Communist League, which until then had
been deferred. An article in Unser Wort announced that the Polish leader, Herschl
Mendel Stockfisch, an old Communist, had just arrived in Paris and met Trotsky there.

Unser Wort, the former bi-monthly in exile of the German Left Opposition - renamed
the I.K.D. - became a weekly (4). Trotsky saw this as a great success, because the
"German work" continued to be the pivot of international construction. The journal had
a real audience, both in the emigration and in Germany, where it was regularly
distributed. A former Reichstag deputy, Maria Reese, the former fighter in the German
civil war, Erich Wollenberg, and the former Comintern representative in Germany, Felix
Wolf, wrote in it publicly. It proclaimed in turn that the Communist International was
bankrupt and that the Fourth International must be fought for. The "Open Letter" to
Piatnitsky, a leader of the Communist International, which was drafted by Karl
Friedberg, one of the leaders of the underground apparatus of the K.P.D. in the
Sarreland, and a secret member of the Bolshevik-Leninist fraction, was published in
Unser Wort, making a real impression, and probably contributed to changing the policy
of the K.P.D. in the Sarre. In Germany itself in the mortally dangerous conditions of
illegality imposed by the ferocious repression, some young cadres of the K.P.D. sought
out and made contact with the clandestine organisation of the I.K.D. as the source of the
news from Germany, signed "Jan Bur", which appeared in Unser Wort. Finally, Trotsky
believed that he had won a political victory when he convinced the Zinovievists, Ruth
Fischer and Maslov, that they should join the I.C.L. This question, however, was the
occasion for an outbreak of disagreement which was never settled. The leaders of the
German section unanimously opposed the admission of these two former leaders of the
K.P.D., whose earlier capitulations and recantations filled them with utter mistrust.
Things did not go forward as quickly as Trotsky hoped - because he thought it necessary
- with the "Four", situated at the heart of the crucial question of the construction of the
International. There were promising initiatives in September and October. The R.S.P.
entered the Internationalist Communist League. Joint commissions were set up to effect
the fusion of the R.S.P. and the O.S.P. in the Netherlands. A document on work in
Germany was worked out jointly by the S.A.P. and the I.K.D. Fritz Sternberg, the
economist of the S.A.P., produced a draft thesis on the world economic situation. But
this tendency was quickly reversed. The fusion of the parties in the Netherlands was
delayed, because Sneevliet firmly opposed a precipitate fusion, proposed by the O.S.P.,
which would be without any discussion. At first also the fusion between the I.K.D. and
the S.A.P., on which great expectations had been placed, was delayed, and was then
soon compromised by the deterioration of relations between the I.C.L. and the S.A.P.
This can be sensed from October 1933 onwards in the correspondence passing between
Trotsky and Walcher. It is clear that, on this level, the S.A.P. was in full retreat, though
we cannot establish on a basis of facts the precise account of the factors which this
prevented what had seemed to be the the firm decisions which Walcher had made in its
name in August from being fulfilled. On this point, Kurt Landau, an exile in Paris,
stated in his journal (5) that the opposition in the S.A.P. to the fusion was inspired by
the refugee groups in Norway (in which the young Willy Brandt was starting to play an
important role) perhaps because of the relations of every kind which they had with
Tranmael's D.N.A., which Trotsky made the target of his criticism for its "opportunism",
but which had a prospect of early electoral victory.

This hypothesis seems likely; it is supported by the sharpness of the exchanges between
Trotsky and Walcher precisely on the subject of the D.N.A. Did the clandestine S.A.P.
groups in Germany itself also oppose the fusion, as Landau says? This time there is no
documentary evidence to support this last statement.

On the other hand, it is perfectly clear that in August 1933 Walcher had not started to go
down a new road, but had only reached the furthest point of an oscillation to the left.
The promises of the German patron, Julius Gomperz, made the publication of a joint
discussion journal possible, but the plan failed, because Walcher insisted that the
Brandlerites of the K.P.O. should be invited to contribute. In this way Walcher's demand
perhaps permits the supposition that the break between the Brandlerites of the K.P.O.
and the ex-Brandlerites who won over the S.A.P. was not a thorough-going one. No
doubt we may add that other S.A.P. leaders in exile, such as the young and brilliant
Boris Goldenberg, seem to have changed their original conception of the relation of
forces within the international workers' movement as a result of the contacts which they
had made in exile with the social-democratic parties. Goldenberg, like Thomas, was
believed in Germany to be close to Trotsky, but he opposed the fusion and soon began
to exercise his polemical verve against "Trotskyism".
Disagreements accumulated during the closing months of 1933. These were about
whether to produce a joint theoretical review with the participation of the Brandlerites,
whether to make a public evaluation of the orientation of Tranmael's D.N.A., whether to
participate in the "London Bureau" of the I.A.G., which the I.C.L. denounced, while the
S.A.P. and the O.S.P. were members of it. The pre-conference of the "four", on
December 30, took note of unresolved disagreements, but left the door half-open for all
that. But in February 1934 the door was slammed, when the S.A.P. and the O.S.P.
demanded that the I.C.L. join the I.A.G. In fact, the other groups had had no real
activity since August 1933. On the contrary, the S.A.P. and the O.S.P. had done nothing
towards having any. Both of them seemed disposed to quit the "Bloc of Four", the
declaration of which had never had more than very general value in their eyes. This was
the moment at which Trotsky decided to open up a polemic against the most hostile
elements among these "centrist" formations, the best elements of which he still hoped to
win, under the stinging lash of his criticism.

One more card remained to be played. For a time much seems to have been expected
from it; in October 1933 the youth organisation of the O.S.P. took the initiative of
calling an international conference of revolutionary Socialist and Communist youth
organisations. Trotsky had not forgotten that the Youth International, which
Muenzenberg and his comrades had kept going in Switzerland during World War I, had
been one of the elements in the foundation of the IIIrd International. Through the youth,
he might win the struggle, the short-term prospects of which were seriously
compromised among the adults. The International Secretariat responded to Trotsky's
call, mobilised its youth organisations in all its sections and called upon them to
participate in the conference, the preparation of which was entrusted to commissions.

The conference opened at Laren (in the Netherlands) in February 1934, in a youth
hostel. However, it was terminated almost immediately by a police raid and the arrest of
those foreigners whose papers were not in order. The Netherlands government handed
over four S.A.P. members to Hitler. None the less, the work of the conference was
concluded in a hall in the Free University of Brussels. The press communiques indicated
that it was held in Lille and its internal documents called it "the Luxemburg
Conference". Its final resolution is a confused appeal for a new International, and was
sharply criticised by Trotsky, who reproached his young comrades for having
surrendered to the pressure of the centrists without resistance. An "international youth
bureau" of three members was formed. One of them was the young German Walter
Held. The International Secretariat was pleased when the "bureau" quickly installed
itself near Stockholm, seeing a means to influence the party of Kilbom and its youth.
Trotsky warned against excessive illusions on that score; besides, it was at Oslo that
Held was to install himself.

The developments in North America produced news which confirmed Trotsky in the
belief that the road which the 1933 "turn" had opened was correct. The economic and
social crisis was provoking many changes and an important maturation in sections of
the working-class, limited, to be sure, but important. The former parson, A.J.Muste, who
had turned to the struggle of the workers in the strike wave which followed World War
I, and who, as director of the Brookwood workers' college, which had educated many of
the "politicised" cadres of the trade union movement, formed the American Workers'
Party. The A.W.P. conducted a serious campaign to organise the unemployed and to
penetrate certain trade unions. A left-wing was developing in the Socialist Party of
U.S.A. The Lovestone organisation split. The American section of the Left Opposition
had decided to advance from work as a "propaganda circle" to mass work, called for the
construction of a new party, and proposed to the A.W.P. a unification, which aroused
widespread sympathy in its ranks and opened up to the Communist League of America
the perspective of fusion with a group better implanted than itself.

The Internationalist Communist League had not completely emerged from the isolation
in which the Left Opposition had been in 1933. Many indices show that this danger was
again facing it, not only with the "bloc of four" having more or less fallen apart, but also
under the blows of the counter-attack from the Stalinists. Trotsky had succeeded in
getting access to the columns of the prestigious Neue Weltbuhne, thanks to his relations
with Willy Schlamm. There followed a fishy financial operation, in which, despite
virtuous denials, it is impossible not to discern the intervention at least of men of straw
of the Communist International, and money from the "Muenzenberg Trust" if not from
the G.P.U. There followed a sensational coup d'etat in the editorship of the review which
Carl von Ossietsky had founded. Willy Schlamm was dismissed and the new editors, led
by Hermann Budzislayski, very quickly re-oriented the journal, which became no more
than a docile fellow-traveller of the Communist International. There now remained no
large circulation journal in Europe to carry Trotsky's articles. Only in the New World
would large-circulation papers now do so. The small-sale journals of the national
sections were almost the only publications in Europe to do so.

However, where Trotsky himself was at work, in France, things were going ahead well.
To be sure, the French comrades were taking more time than he liked to turn towards
the Socialist Party (S.F.I.O.), the political crisis within which, he believed, was opening
up enormous possibilities. The exclusion of its entrenched right-wing in the parliament-
ary group (the "Neo-Socialistes) was at one and the same time the result of, and an
important encouragement to, a leftward movement in the party in which Trotsky
believed that a fraction should be built. Moreover, the agitation of the French
Bolshevik-Leninists for a united front of workers' organisations corresponded, beyond
all doubt, to the real aspirations of the workers of France, who were deeply concerned
by the catastrophe in Germany, and uneasy about the rising agitation and boldness of an
extreme right in France, organised in the fascist "leagues", while the workers' leadership
was divided.

On February 6, 1934, the "leagues" provoked a riot, which within a few days evoked
from the working class such a response as imposed unity on their trade union and
political organisations, which had been divided. Between February 6 and 12, and on the
morrow of February 12, the day which conferred immense prestige on the French
Trotskyists for the ideas which they had defended and which marked a great change,
they seemed to acquire a new stature. Trotsky was able to study at first hand the rise in
the influence of his comrades and the wholly new authority which they acquired,
especially among the Left Socialists who controlled the Seine Federation of the S.F.I.O.,
around Marceau Pivert and in the "Entente des Jeunesses". He also observed with
passionate interest the birth within the Communist Party-of France of the opposition, led
by the St. Denis section of the party under the leadership of Jacques Doriot, with the
banner declaring that a policy of workers' united front was necessary. He believed that
here was the first sign of an inevitable crisis within that party.

Progress was especially spectacular among the youth. A number of leading members of
the Socialist Youth of the Seine Federation demanded to join the Bolshevik-Leninists
and the Communist League, remaining as a "fraction" in their original organisation. An
initiative by the Bolshevik-Leninist youth, who were particularly active, resulted in the
formation of a specific form of youth anti-fascist alliance, which the Socialist, Anarchist
and Communist youth all joined. The Socialist Youth of the Seine declared for a new
Youth International. An analogous radicalisation developed in neighbouring Spain,
though at a different pace and in different forms. A powerful left quickly developed in
the P.S.O.E. and the U.G.T. (the Spanish Socialist Party and the reformist-led trade
unions), led by Francisco Largo Caballero. The review, Leviatan, under the control of
Luis Araquistain, welcomed the collaboration of the Spanish Trotskyists. The Socialist
youth in Spain turned towards what they called "Bolshevisation", confusedly but clearly
declaring that they were for the "Bolshevisation" of their party and, soon, for a new
International.

Trotsky hoped that he might play, on the spot in France and in Western Europe, the role
which his geographical remoteness and isolation had prevented him from playing in
Germany. That role would consist of advising and of contributing as a leader to the
education of the still-young and inexperienced cadres. He did his utmost to arm his
comrades for their political struggle. Decisive confrontations lay ahead on the question
of arming the workers and forming a workers' militia. He worked with them to prepare a
programme of action. Clandestinity was essential. We have only a few documents
(marked: "confidential"), because Trotsky tried day by day to convince, to explain and
to involve people by personal contact.

However, the general situation was increasingly dangerous making the most careful
precautions useless. The rising tension of the class-confrontations and re-alignments in
France, and the political and social battles on the horizon, could not fail to threaten the
already precarious refuge of the exile. During the February days, the Nazi press in
Germany constantly denounced "the hand of Trotsky behind the revolutionary troubles"
in France, where the press of the extreme right gallantly fell in step behind it. Capitalist
France had entered a period of crisis. It could hardly tolerate any more the presence in
its territory of the man of the October uprising, whose published writings called for the
construction of the Fourth International. In Moscow also it was well understood that
Trotsky must be muzzled. From February 1934 the end of the Barbizon period was
being arranged in Paris, no less than in Berlin or in Moscow.

There are in fact, changes in circumstances and set-backs which the most stable and best
organised mind cannot avoid, when they take place within an objective chain of events
which are completely outside its control.

The first of these was the expulsion from France of Jan Frankel. He was active in the
International Secretariat in Paris. Trotsky placed great confidence in him. But, on
February 12, he had wanted to see with his own eyes the crowds of workers who came
out, showing their pleasure at having won unity. He mingled with them, and policemen
who stopped him near the Place de la Republique, noted the presence in the
demonstration of a "foreigner". He was immediately expelled. This was a severe blow.

Several weeks later, worse befell. The last of the historic leaders of the Russian Left
Opposition, the unbreakable Christian Rakovsky, ceased in his turn to stand firm.
Trotsky felt painfully the desertion of this man, who was his personal friend and his
closest co-thinker. It left him as the only one of his generation to continue the struggle.
The conflict between his feelings and his judgement, his hesitation in speaking of
"capitulation" or placing a gros over this great militant, can be followed in Trotsky's
letters and articles.

At last, on April 17, 1934, the Council of Ministers decided to expel Trotsky himself
from France. We know the more distant origins of this decision, in the furious campaign
in the Nazi press, the terror of the bourgeoisie after February 12, and the echo of both in
the French press, with its enraged hatred of "Bolshevism". Its immediate origins were
more prosaic, though they clearly fit into the context. They lay in the rumours in the
little town about these "foreigners", who lived in an unusual way, in denunciations to
the police and the discrete surveillance of the local gendarmerie.

On April 12, the vigilance and patience of the latter were rewarded. Rudolf Klement
was bringing the letters from Paris, on his motor-cycle, when the lights failed. This gave
the police of Ponthierry the excuse to question the residents of the villa. The local
authorities in this way discovered that Trotsky lived there, while the Paris authorities
declared that they knew nothing about it!
The press exploded when the news reached them. Chauvinism, xenophobia and anti-
semitis erupted in cries of hatred in the Paris newspapers, combined with fear inspired
by the man who symbolised October and the Red Army. Hostile crowds massed outside
the railings of the villa and threatened to break in, yelling hatred and incitements to
murder. The police and the judicial authorities had visited Trotsky in the first days of the
affair, and kept the agitation going by carefully calculated "leaks". From that point it
was quite easy for the government to allege that Trotsky was "interfering in French
affairs". A new decree of expulsion was signed by the Minister of the Interior, the
radical Albert Sarraut.

Trotsky finally left the Barbizon house in secret on the evening of April. He left behind
Jan van Heijenhoort, whose job it was to gain time by creating the impression that
Trotsky was still there, and who replied calmly to the cries of hate (6). Then began a
long period of wandering for the man whom no country in the world wished to receive.
At that time the world had indeed become "the planet without a visa" for Trotsky.

FOOTNOTES
(1) The term, "Communist Internationalist" was proposed by Alfonso Leonetti. Trotsky
sharply criticised it, as a tautology. However, he did not prevail, and the title was
adopted by the plenum of August 19-21, 1933. However, Trotsky was to use the title
"Left Opposition" for some months afterwards.

(2) Vereecken Archives, Brussels.

(3) Silverio Corvisieri, Trotskij e il comunismo italiano, Rome, 1969.

(4) Wolfgang Alles, Zur Politik und Geschichte der deutschen Trotskisten ab 1930,
Universitet Mannheim.

(5) Der Funke, November 1933.

(6) Jan van Heijenhoort, De Prinkipo à Coyoacan. Sept annees aupres de Leon Trotsky,
Paris 1978.

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