Trotskyism in the Service of Franco is now available for purchase from New Outlook Publishers – https://newoutlookpublishers.store/shop/history/trotskyism-in-the-service-of-franco/
Trotskyism in the Service of Franco, written by Georges Soria, details the sabotage and deceit that the Trotskyite Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM) (translated in English as the Worker’s Party of Marxist Unification) committed against the Spanish Republic government. The POUM was formed in 1935 from a fusion of former Communist Party members who were revealed to be followers of Trotsky and a party of peasants that formed a Right Opposition to the Republican government.
The POUM opposed both the Republican government and the Popular Front that was formed when the fascists invaded. They opposed the Spanish government as they found it to be a “bourgeois parliamentarian government” and they called for a “an Assembly composed of delegates from Factory committees, representatives and delegates from the peasants and from the Fronts” while taking the ultraleft line of wanting to move straight to a “worker’s democracy” in the crisis of Fascism that threatened Spain. The POUM also opposed the Popular Front-organized Spanish People’s Republic’s Regular Army as it was composed of workers and people of all walks of life. One POUM leader even remarked, “We cannot tolerate the formation of an army which included a crowd of young Liberals, petty bourgeoisie and Catholics.”
The pamphlet details other treachery of the POUM-led units and their leaders. There is the detail of the arrest of POUM leaders in Catalonia who were found to be passing secrets and military intelligence to Franco’s operations in France in Perpignan, in spite of France’s closing of the borders during the Spanish Civil War. There is an account from a British volunteer in the International Brigades who recollects his time in a POUM unit and its lack of food supplies, poor equipment, and shady details of POUM soldiers fraternizing with fascists and playing football (soccer) with them at one point. This volunteer then contrasts this with his service in the People’s Republic’s Regular Army, which actually was supplied and actively fought the fascists.
Trotskyism consistently phrase-mongers leftist-sounding phrases and rhetoric in the public, while in reality they are rightist in their actions. Trotskyism consistently attempts to split the people’s movement and oppose the workers in their fight against Fascism and Monopoly Capitalism. Trotskyism in the Service of Franco is an excellent reminder that this behavior of the ultra-left is nothing new, and one must always be on guard against it.
