Grandizo Munis writes in “The Road to Victory Begins with the Revolutionary Front of the Proletariat” (April 1937):

“But it is necessary to prevent the Revolutionary Front of the proletariat constituting a governmental bloc, whatever may be its programme. The Spanish revolution has developed without having matured, in the proletariat, any ideological current capable of guiding it victoriously…”

Munis himself prevented this maturation and put into motion the wheels of sterility by overlooking Trotsky’s elevation of Nin, his personal secretary above LaCroix, a more consistent Marxist. Munis criticized Nin but remained in his organization through the deaths of Maurin and Nin, Trotsky’s chosen representatives who joined the Republic and died serving the Republic. Trotsky’s spectacle of opposition to these figures contradicts his bureaucratic control of the Left Opposition organization and his elevation of them as leaders. All this occured to justify Trotsky’s continued allegiance to the Comintern and delay of the foundation of the Fourth International until 1938, when fascism had already won Spain.

Had LaCroix’s leadership won over Nin, this maturation could have prepared a victorious ideological current. Munis had agreed with LaCroix against Nin, but when Trotsky interfered on Nin’s behalf, he silenced himself from 1931 past the death of Maurin in 1935, Nin in 1936, and LaCroix in 1939, past even Trotsky’s death all the way until 1989 with the fall of the Soviet Union and his own death around the corner. This long silence by Munis undercut the development of proletarian leadership in Spain, something he did not merely observe but helped plan as well as a service to the Soviet bureaucracy.

A Marxist Workers’ Opposition, basing itself on the Marxist opposition to Soviet bureaucracy would have provided Spain with a way forward. It could have proven that the anarchist workers’ collectives had a workers’ foundation but upon closer observation, the anarchists had internal divisions representing the class divide, with ruling class anarchists stepping in to defend Spanish production as imperialist production with anarchy in world trade. Anarchist Collectives that had collectivized industry could have stopped production or controlled the distribution of goods using political demands for government positions. In that way, they could have transferred power over the army of the Republic to their own workers’ government, and within the army they could have transferred power to regiments that democratized and chose revolutionary leaders that would continue the war against fascism. They could not, however, follow the Bolshevik model because the Bolsheviks withdrew from the fight against German imperialism and turned over half of Russia’s industrial production to the Germans. The Spanish fascists, aware of this isolationism in Bolshevism, would have used such concessions as a means of taking over the rest of Spain, with which they were already at war. Left Communists in Russia and throughout Europe saw Bolshevik concessions to Germany as a betrayal that led consciously to the death of Rosa Luxemburg. Bolsheviks disregarded this outcome as a necessary step towards bringing a Marxist into power, while in public they claimed to represent the international revolution of the proletariat. Left Communists would have repaid the Russian peasants with German agricultural machinery and engaged the German army until Germany agreed to hand power over to a workers’ government in Germany led by Rosa Luxemburg. The Spanish had an opportunity to do this as well from the West of Germany, but under Trotsky’s leadership, the proletariat failed to produce a democratic movement based on elected leaders. The party could not lead the committees because it could not overthrow Comintern appointments even within the “Left Opposition.”

At the same time, we are asked to forget that Trotsky spent a month in a British prison in 1917 until he negotiated his release to serve British imperial interests and betray proletarian democracy. He also agreed to imprisonment by Kerensky when he remained in jail after a meaningless trial until Kerensky could threaten Kornilov with his release. The idea that his release was obtained without a political plea of some kind is pure fiction. He agreed to the destruction of Russia in exchange for control over Russia, and he agreed to betray the revolution in Germany in exchange for control over International Marxism, including Spanish Marxism. He would not lead any victorious ideological current unless imprisoned and forced in exchange for his release. It would require his imprisonment in Norway to bring about his final submission and agreement to found the Fourth International.

Munis continues:

“Furthermore, the government of social revolution will have to be based in organisms directly elected by the masses, in no way on political or union organisations. The struggle for Committees of Workers, peasants, and soldiers, is the third indispensable condition for the Revolutionary Front.”

His idea that “organisms directly elected by the masses” cannot be polical or union organizations reveals further his opposition to democratic rights within the Left Opposition and his opposition to democratization of the trade unions, whose bureaucracy is also to be accepted as part of the formation of democratic committees. What he leaves out is Trotsky’s opposition to democratic rights within the democratic organizations of the working class. This is why political and union organizations are not to be democratic, so they can then replace elected leaders with appointments by a professional vanguard deploying secret weapons to restore “order,” meaning autocracy and bureaucracy in favor of compromise with imperialism. According to this theory, the workers would have to arrest party and trade union leaders to keep in place their own elected committees.

Who would organize such arrests except a party and union movement dedicated to the elaboration of a revolutionary program? The #Democratic_Power_Faction could only emerge through an internal power struggle against the #Nanobureaucracy of the Fourth International in favor of democratic committees overcoming party-imposed bureaucracy and actually freeing the party from Comintern-imperialist compromise organizations, sworn to secrecy over vital issues concerning the democratic rights of the workers. They rely on secrecy over financial matters to hide the management structure of the organization. The capitalist courts defend their fraud from investigation. Yet, a revolutionary working class can overcome these obstacles by affirming democratic principles in their organizations and rejecting the leadership appointments of any political party or union. They must first subject those organizations to a trial of their leadership to eliminate the threats outlined above.