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Nykomling
Reg.datum: Nov 2008
Politisk riktning: Apolitisk
Inlägg: 13
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Här är vad Orwell skriver om POUMs trotskistanklagelser i Homage To Catalonia. Så välskrivet att det förtjänas att citeras i fullo.
Finally, as to the charge that the P.O.U.M. was 'Trotskyist'. This word is
now flung about with greater and greater freedom, and it is used in a way that
is extremely misleading and is often intended to mislead. It is worth stopping
to define it. The word Trotskyist is used to mean three distinct things:
(i) One who, like Trotsky, advocates 'world revolution' as against 'Socialism
in a single country'. More loosely, a revolutionary extremist.
(ii) A member of the actual organization of which Trotsky is head.
(iii) A disguised Fascist posing as a revolutionary who acts especially by
sabotage in the U.S.S.R., but, in general, by splitting and undermining the
Left-wing forces.
In sense (i) the P.O.U.M. could probably be described as Trotskyist. So can
the English I.L.P., the German S.A.P., the Left Socialists in France, and so on.
But the P.O.U.M. had no connexion with Trotsky or the Trotskyist
('Bolshevik-Lenninist') organization. When the war broke out the foreign
Trotskyists who came to Spain (fifteen or twenty in number) worked at first for
the P.O.U.M., as the party nearest to their own viewpoint, but without becoming
party-members; later Trotsky ordered his followers to attack the P.O.U.M.
policy, and the Trotskyists were purged from the party offices, though a few
remained in the militia. Nin, the P.O.U.M. leader after Maurin's capture by the
Fascists, was at one time Trotsky's secretary, but had left him some years
earlier and formed the P.O.U.M. by the amalgamation of various Opposition
Communists with an earlier party, the Workers' and Peasants' Bloc. Nin's
one-time association with Trotsky has been used in the Communist press to show
that the P.O.U.M. was really Trotskyist.
By the same line of argument it could be shown that the English Communist
Party is really a Fascist organization, because of Mr John Strachey's one-time
association with Sir Oswald Mosley.
In sense (ii), the only exactly defined sense of the word, the P.O.U.M. was
certainly not Trotskyist. It is important to make this distinction, because it
is taken for granted by the majority of Communists that a Trotskyist in sense
(ii) is invariably a Trotskyist in sense (iii)--i.e. that the whole Trotskyist
organization is simply a Fascist spying-machine. 'Trotskyism' only came into
public notice in the time of the Russian sabotage trials, and to call a man a
Trotskyist is practically equivalent to calling him a murderer, agent
provocateur, etc. But at the same time anyone who criticizes Communist policy
from a Left-wing standpoint is liable to be denounced as a Trotskyist. Is it
then asserted that everyone professing revolutionary extremism is in Fascist
pay?
In practice it is or is not, according to local convenience. When Maxton went
to Spain with the delegation I have mentioned above, Verdad, Frente Rojo, and
other Spanish Communist papers instantly denounced him as a 'Trotsky-Fascist',
spy of the Gestapo, and so forth. Yet the English Communists were careful not to
repeat this accusation. In the English Communist press Maxton becomes merely a
'reactionary enemy of the working class', which is conveniently vague. The
reason, of course, is simply that several sharp lessons have given the English
Communist press a wholesome dread of the law of libel. The fact that the
accusation was not repeated in a country where it might have to be proved is
sufficient confession that it is a lie.
It may seem that I have discussed the accusations against the P.O.U.M. at
greater length than was necessary. Compared with the huge miseries of a civil
war, this kind of internecine squabble between parties, with its inevitable
injustices and false accusations, may appear trivial. It is not really so. I
believe that libels and press--campaigns of this kind, and the habits of mind
they indicate, are capable of doing the most deadly damage to the anti-Fascist
cause.
Anyone who has given the subject a glance knows that the Communist tactic of
dealing with political opponents by means of trumped-up accusations is nothing
new. Today the key-word is 'Trotsky-Fascist'; yesterday it was 'Social-Fascist'.
It is only six or seven years since the Russian State trials 'proved' that the
leaders of the Second International, including, for instance, Leon Blum and
prominent members of the British Labour Party, were hatching a huge plot for the
military invasion of the U.S.S.R. Yet today the French Communists are glad
enough to accept Blum as a leader, and the English Communists are raising heaven
and earth to get inside the Labour Party. I doubt whether this kind of thing
pays, even from a sectarian point of view. And meanwhile there is no possible
doubt about the hatred and dissension that the 'Trotsky-Fascist' accusation is
causing. Rank-and--file Communists everywhere are led away on a senseless
witch-hunt after 'Trotskyists', and parties of the type of the P.O.U.M. are
driven back into the terribly sterile position of being mere anti-Communist
parties. There is already the beginning of a dangerous split in the world
working-class movement. A few more libels against life-long Socialists, a few
more frame-ups like the charges against the P.O.U.M., and the split may become
irreconcilable. The only hope is to keep political controversy on a plane where
exhaustive discussion is possible. Between the Communists and those who stand or
claim to stand to the Left of them there is a real difference. The Communists
hold that Fascism can be beaten by alliance with sections of the capitalist
class (the Popular Front); their opponents hold that this manoeuvre simply gives
Fascism new breeding-grounds. The question has got to be settled; to make the
wrong decision may be to land ourselves in for centuries of semi-slavery. But so
long as no argument is produced except a scream of 'Trotsky-Fascist!' the
discussion cannot even begin. It would be impossible for me, for instance, to
debate the rights and wrongs of the Barcelona fighting with a Communist Party
member, because no Communist--that is to say, no' good' Communist--could admit
that I have given a truthful account of the facts. If he followed his party
'line dutifully he would have to declare that I am lying or, at best, that I am
hopelessly misled and that anyone who glanced at the Daily Worker headlines a
thousand miles from the scene of events knows more of what was happening in
Barcelona than I do. In such circumstances there can be no argument; the
necessary minimum of agreement cannot be reached. What purpose is served by
saying that men like Maxton are in Fascist pay? Only the purpose of making
serious discussion impossible. It is as though in the middle of a chess
tournament one competitor should suddenly begin screaming that the other is
guilty of arson or bigamy. The point that is really at issue remains untouched.
Libel settles nothing.
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