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The murderous acts of the Stalinists against POUM in Spain are well-known.
Less well-known is that Trotsky was bitterly opposed to POUM, denounced its
comrades as traitors and renegades, and denounced Victor Serge and others as
"strikebreakers" for having any relations with POUM.
The lack of recognition of the right to self-determination of the Moroccan
people by the Spanish Republican government is well-known. Less well-known is
that Trotsky wasn't that interested in the right to self-determination of the
Moroccan people either. While against the colonial domination of Morocco in
theory, he rarely refers to it in writing about Spain. He does refer to it in
"The Lessons of Spain: The Last Warning, which appeared in the Socialist
Appeal on January 8 and 15, 1938"
(https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/xx/spain01.htm), but even here
it's a minor point, barely mentioned, without even mention of the word
"Morocco" or the right to self-determination or some other formulation. There
is no discussion of the attitude of different sections of the people in Spain
to this issue, and what serious agitation on the issue of Morocco would be.
He simply expects that the "colonial Rifians" would immediate react to
socialist revolution in Spain. And if one checks various of the accounts of
Trotsky's work and views, there is hardly anything about his attitude to the
Moroccans.
Even that is better than his complete lack of recognition of the relationship
of national oppression inside Ethiopia to the struggle against the Italian
invasion of Ethiopia. There are certain similarities between the Italian war
against Ethiopia in the mid-1930s and the Spanish Civil War. Both the
resistance against Mussolini and the resistance against Franco were damaged
by the failure to deal with the right to self-determination of oppressed
nationalities. The Eritirean and Oromo peoples and certain other
nationalities were oppressed inside the Ethiopian empire, as the Spanish
Moroccans were under Spanish domination. Franco used Moroccans as
cannonfodder, while the Italian fascists sought to make use in their invasion
and occupation of Ethiopioa of the anger of the Eritrean and Oromo peoples.
And, for example, when Haile Selassie fled Ethiopia -- which occurred right
after Trotsky imagined that Selassie would be the great anti-imperialist
liberator -- he was motivated in part by fear of the Oromo people. The
alternative to his fleeing Ethiopia would have been to risk accompanying
Ethiopian troops in a retreat through Oromo areas, and Selassie feared for
his safety there. But Trotsky, in discussing the Italian invasion, never
referred to the issue of national oppression in Ethiopia itself.
So it seems that there is more in common between the Trotskyist and Stalinist
positions than is usually imagined.
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