Workers' Party of Marxist Unification
From Freepedia
The Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM, Spanish: Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista; Catalan: Partit Obrer d'Unificació Marxista) was a Spanish political party around the time of the Spanish Civil War. The party was formed by the fusion of the Trotskyist Left Communists of Spain (ICE) and the Workers and Peasants Bloc (BOC) against the will of Leon Trotsky, with whom the former broke. They were formed as a Communist party in opposition to Stalinism in 1935 by Andres Nin and Joaquin Maurin. They were heavily influenced by the thinking of Leon Trotsky, in particular his Permanent Revolution thesis.
They were larger than the official Communist party in Catalonia and Valencia and highly critical of the Popular Front strategy, but they did take part in the Spanish Popular Front initiated by the leader of Acción Republicana, Manuel Azaña. The POUM tried to implement some of its radical policies as part of the Popular Front government but these were resisted by the more moderate factions. This political disagreement would cause Nin to leave the government.
During the Spanish Civil War the party began to grow in popularity and alongside the anarchist National Confederation of Workers (CNT) commanded the support of most of the proletariat in the zone not controlled by the fascists during the war. The British author George Orwell, a member of the Independent Labour Party fought alongside POUM forces in the civil war, an experience recounted vividly in his book Homage to Catalonia. Likewise, the movie Land and Freedom, directed by Ken Loach, tells of a group of POUM soldiers fighting in the Spanish Civil War from the perspective of a British member of the British Communist Party, and deals in particular with his disillusionment with Soviet policy in the war.
The POUM's support of Trotsky and opposition to Joseph Stalin caused huge ruptures between them and the Communist Party of Spain, still unswervingly loyal to the Third International. These divisions, particularly the false accusation of Trotskyism by the communists, manifested themselves in actual fighting between their supporters, most notably in the events of May 1937 in Barcelona where the POUM was attacked by a mostly-communist coalition of government forces. While the much larger CNT initially supported the POUM, its more militant members such as the Friends of Durrutti were pushed towards conciliation by the moderate leadership. This left the POUM isolated along with the purely Trotskyist Bolshevik-Leninist Section and both organisations were driven underground.
These severe ideological divisions between the forces supporting the Popular Front, together with the demoralisation caused by the clear end of the revolution, helped the mostly unified supporters of Francisco Franco win the civil war.
External links
- The Fundación Andreu Nin has a Spanish-language site containing an extensive collection of documents, biographical notes, and links related to the POUM.
- Hernández, Jesús. How the NKVD Framed the POUM. Memoir of PCE minister in Republican Governments of Largo Caballero and Juan Negrín. Translated. Excerpted from Yo fuí un ministro de Stalin. 339 pages. G. del Toro, Mexico, 1974. ISBN 8431201878. Reprinted online by What Next? Marxist journal. Retrieved May 11, 2005.
- Nin, Andrés. The May Days in Barcelona. Originally published as El significada y alcance de las jornados de mayo frente a la contrarrevolution. Central Committee of the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM). Retrieved May 11, 2005.
- Nin, Andrés. The Political Situation and the Tasks of the Proletariat. June 1937. Translation by David Beetham, ed., Marxists in Face of Fascism. Manchester University Press, 1983. ISBN 0389204854. Retrieved May 11, 2005.
