Leon Trotsky: Letter to Andreu Nin

September 1, 1931

[The Spanish Revolution (1931-39). New York 1973, p. 161-164, title: “More on Soviets and the "Balkanization" Argument”, different title; “The Catalan separatists, soviets and communists”]

I have received your letter of August 25. You ask yourself the question: shall we summon the workers to join the party or the Federation? The local conditions speak in favour of the Federation. The general Spanish conditions speak in favour of the party.

From the practical point of view, that is, from the point of view of the relationship of forces at the given moment, it is difficult to solve this problem, but it seems to me that our principled position is really of decisive importance: we declare that we are a faction of the party, a faction of the Comintern. The main struggle against us is carried on along the line that we are "enemies" of the USSR and of the Comintern. Even Maurín lives on the crumbs that fall from this table.

If we call upon the workers to join the Federation, we compromise ourselves throughout the rest of Spain and internationally. Do we gain at all on the Catalan scale? If we consider the present results of our collaboration with the Federation, we find that it is bringing us more harm than benefit. The entire press of the Comintern, and Pravda in particular, has held us responsible for Maurín's opportunist confusionism. Comrade Mill's articles in La Vérité also contributed greatly to this. Despite this collaboration, we have been forced to break with the Federation and we have left almost empty-handed. In other words, the experience of collaboration with the Federation has weakened us in Spain as a whole as well as internationally, without helping us any in Catalonia.

It is time to strike a balance. In my opinion, we ought to execute an abrupt political turn to avoid being confused with Maurín any longer — a confusion that has been to his advantage and our own disadvantage.

The most correct procedure would be to call upon the workers to join the Left Communist faction, to build it, and to demand admission into the party. But such a policy requires an official center, no matter how small, of the Left Opposition in CataIonia. If you remember, I have insisted on this from the first day of your arrival in Barcelona, but alas without success. Even now I see no other road. …

Maurín has issued the slogan: "All power to the proletariat." I think you are quite right in pointing out that he has chosen slogans of this sort in order to provide himself with a bridge to the syndicalists and to lend himself the appearance of greater strength than he actually possesses. Unfortunately, the chase after appearances is very strong in politics, and very disastrous in revolutionary politics.

I ask myself — at times — why are there no soviets in Spain? What is the cause of this?

On the slogan of soviets

In a previous letter, I expressed several ideas in this connection. I have developed these much more amply in an article I sent you on workers' control in Germany. It appears that the slogan of "juntas" is associated in the minds of the Spanish workers with the slogan of soviets; and for this reason it seems too sharp, too decisive, too "Russian" to them. That is to say, they look at it in a different light than did the Russian workers at a corresponding stage. Are we not confronted here with a historical paradox in that the existence of soviets in the USSR acts to paralyze the creation of soviets in other revolutionary countries?

This question must be given the utmost attention in private conversations with workers in different parts of the country. At any event, if the slogan of soviets (juntas) fails as yet to meet with a response, then we must concentrate on the slogan of factory committees. I dealt with this topic in the above-mentioned article on workers' control. On the basis of factory committees, we can develop the soviet organization without referring to them by name.

Workers' control

On the question of workers' control, you are, in my opinion, absolutely correct; to renounce workers' control merely because the reformists are for it — in words — would be an enormous stupidity. On the contrary, it is precisely for this reason that we should seize upon this slogan all the more eagerly and compel the reformist workers to put it into practice by means of a united front with us, and on the basis of this experience to push them into opposition to Caballero and other fakers.

We succeeded in creating soviets in Russia only because the demand for them was raised, not by us alone, but by the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries as well, although, to be sure, they had different aims in mind. We cannot create any soviets in Spain precisely because neither the Socialists nor the syndicalists want soviets. This means that the united front and organizational unity with the majority of the working class cannot be created under this slogan.

But here is Caballero himself, under the pressure of the masses, forced to seize upon the slogan of workers' control and thereby opening wide the doors for the united-front policy and forging an organization that embraces the majority of the working class. We must grab this with both hands. Certainly, Caballero will try to transform workers' control into the control of the capitalists over the workers. But that question already pertains to another subject, that of the relationship of forces within the working class. If we succeed in creating factory committees all over the country, then in this revolutionary epoch that we are witnessing, Messrs. Caballero and his associates will have lost the decisive battle.

The separatist movement and the Iberian Soviet Federation

You describe how one might unintentionally aid Madrilenian liberalism by proclaiming that the Balkanization of the Iberian Peninsula is inconsistent with the aims of the proletariat, and by proclaiming it without further elaboration. You are quite right. If I have not underscored it sufficiently in my preceding letter ["Maurín and the National Question"] I am prepared to do so ten times over right now.

The analogy between the two peninsulas really needs to be completed. There was a time when the Balkan Peninsula was unified under the domination of the Turkish gentry, the militarists, and the proconsuls. The oppressed people longed to overthrow their oppressors. If our opposition to partitioning the peninsula had been counterposed to these aspirations of the people, we would have been acting as lackeys to the Turkish pashas and beys. On the other hand, however, we know that the Balkan peoples, liberated from the Turkish yoke, have been at one another's throats for decades. In this matter, too, the proletarian vanguard can apply the point of view of the permanent revolution: liberation from the imperialist yoke, which is the most important element of the democratic revolution, leads immediately to the Federation of Soviet Republics as the state form for the proletarian revolution. Not opposing the democratic revolution, but on the contrary supporting it completely even in the form of separation (that is, supporting the struggle but not the illusions), we at the same time bring our own independent position into the democratic revolution, recommending, counseling, encouraging the idea of the Soviet Federation of the Iberian Peninsula as a constituent part of the United States of Europe. Only under this form is my conception complete. Needless to say, the Madrid comrades and the Spanish comrades in general should use particularly great discretion with regard to the Balkanization argument.