Una larga discusión con Andrés Nin; las relaciones entre el PSUC y Esquerra; las exigencias del PSUC

Saturday, 28 November 1936: At 10am I had a discussion with Nin. First of all I enquired as to the long term political perspectives for the government in Catalonia. He answered that at the moment it was impossible to see in precisely what way they could establish a workers’ and peasants’ government. Most interesting was what Nin had to say about the ways in which the continual political shifts among the rank and file express themselves in the leadership.

This happens through the trade unions. According to Nin the workers are 100 per cent trade unionised. Following the shifts in influence of the political parties in the trade unions, the committees, which exercise power in the localities in Catalonia, change their composition in the same proportion. All political questions are discussed in the trade unions, and delegates are chosen according to the attitudes of the rank and file. It is also quite often the case that in areas where, for example, the POUM is strongest, even the CNT and UGT delegates represent POUM positions and feel like POUM representatives, even though they are not members of the organisation. According to this description the trade unions are the broad bodies through which proletarian democracy is put into effect. It can thus be seen that when, for example, the ratio of representatives of the various organisations is fixed in any locality, its real political composition alters in line with the attitudes of the rank and file.

It is for this reason that the POUM has expended so much energy attempting to win over the UGT. Their former party trade union entered it.8) They maintain that, despite the bureaucracy of the PSUC and the Social Democrats, who have put all kinds of obstacles in their path, they are in a good position to win the leadership of the UGT. One of the PSUC’s tricks is to allow into the unions all kinds of petit-bourgeois elements, people who have nothing to do with trade unions.

The POUM is also active in the CNT. They stand for a merger of the CNT and the UGT, and, according to them, this will soon be a reality. According to Nin’s account, which is backed up by Arquer and others, it is just not true that the representatives of the leading political committees are simply named by the party political leadership. They are elected by the membership, or the membership must agree with the selection. In any case the political development of the masses organised in trade unions — and that is equivalent to the entire working class — is reflected in the composition or the political position of the committee. This is a proletarian democracy (which is also the start of the proletarian dictatorship), whose organ is primarily the trade unions.

Nin was very critical of the PSUC. The PSUC and the Esquerra tend to hang around together. The CNT informed him that the PSUC sent them a confidential letter containing the following demands:

1. Full dictatorial powers for the government
2. Exclusion of the POUM from the government.
3. Abolition of the junta de defensa and all bodies through which the workers’ organisations carry out their control over the armed forces at the front and in the rear.

Even the CNT, as well as the UGT members, strongly opposed this statement and rejected it.

Nin also gave a report of a conference or meeting of government members after the October celebrations, whereby, quite characteristically, Companys is said to have called for a Socialist republic, whilst Antonov-Ovseyenko,9) the consular representative of the Soviet Union, came out in favour of a bourgeois republic.

Moreover, Nin told me of an article which Antonov-Ovseyenko sent to the Barcelona press denouncing an article in La Batalla. He described the POUM as Fascistic. On the following Sunday, Nin and some other POUM spokesmen publicly and sharply replied to this attack.

Nin says the Esquerra should not be taken for a liberal bourgeois party. There are no elements of the big bourgeoisie in their ranks but, rather, peasants, petit-bourgeois and a considerable number of workers — professional workers. It would be more appropriate to compare the Esquerra to the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party.

On the question of the international working class movement, Nin’s position can be summed up by the following:

1. He admits that the Brussels conference was a flop.
2. At the international conference in Barcelona the ideological basis for a new International should be worked out, but the time is not yet ripe for its immediate formation.
3. In reply to the question of what does he imagine the relationship of a new International to the Soviet Union may be, he said that he thought that a victory in Spain ‘through its effect on France and other countries, could alter the internal regime of the Soviet Union’. A reform of the Comintern would only be imaginable if ‘Stalin were to take a walk’.

Nin was evasive in response to my suggestion of financial payment from the POUM for our propaganda. He said that the party was currently stocktaking the goods which they had confiscated. It seems that they have come across a lot of things of little worth. Of course, I did not pursue the matter any further.

Characteristic of Nin’s attitude to the Soviet Union was his remark that the workers have less freedom of expression there than in Hitler’s Germany. We both agreed that we were divided by totally opposing attitudes to the Soviet Union.