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It is important to be accurate about this, because the picture of events which the Stalinist and reformist leaders of the Popular Front have presented is a lie.
What were you told in France every day during these 30 months in L’Humanité and Le Populaire? [49] That in Spain there existed a democratic republic and a legitimate government that was leading this lovely land towards progress and happiness. But one day the perfidious generals broke out in rebellion (which is a bit like the revolt of the devils in heaven that gave rise to evil in the world, which helped the church to reconcile the teaching that God is both all-powerful and infinitely good). These agents of Germany and Italy plunged the country, which was on the flourishing road to democracy, into a murderous civil war. This civil war was primarily imposed on the Spaniards from abroad (in spite of their impulsive temperament we are given to understand, they have a gift for unity), and by agents of Mussolini and Hitler. These are the ones who broke the unity of the Spanish nation on its happy path, especially after the electoral victories of the Popular Front in February 1936. Thus the generals rebelled at the behest of the foreigner.
All true democrats, the workers, the peasants, the petit-bourgeoisie, and even the bourgeoisie itself who placed the higher interests of democracy and the nation above their selfish interests, came out into the streets and shed their blood for the democratic, constitutional and legitimate government of Spain, which they saved from an embarrassing situation on 19 July. Thus the second war for independence started in Spain. It was primarily a national war against foreign countries to preserve the integrity of the Spanish state and its colonies and protectorates.
Since the cause of Spain is “the common cause of the whole of advanced and progressive mankind” [50], there was, therefore, no civil war in Spain, nor any class war, but only a war against the foreign invader.
This concept, which found its concrete expression in Negrín’s 13 points, approved (let us not forget it) not only by the Stalinists but also by the representative of the CNT in the government, has been repeated urbi et orbi [51] thousands of times. Moreover, this conception also had the aim of winning Chamberlain’s heart.
But to return to the economy, it was obviously shaken by the revolt of the generals according to the picture painted by the leaders of the Popular Front. The workers and peasants were obliged to take over certain factories [52] and to work the land, but that was because the Fascist owners and other bourgeois of undemocratic hue had fled. As far as the latter were concerned, far from being Fascists, they were all simply bourgeois, and by fleeing they committed a gross folly which stemmed from their misunderstanding of the real character of the Spanish conflict that was so well explained in the theses of Dimitrov [53] and José Díaz. It was this misunderstanding and this misapprehension that persuaded them to emigrate, whether into the Fascist zone or abroad. Thus there has been no revolution in Spain (an invention of the Trotskyists, who by their theories are helping Fascism), but only a defence of the legitimate government and its rights as laid down in the constitution and the laws.
You know this picture, since you took the trouble to read the prose of the Popular Front every day. [54] Now let me tell you the truth. As a Marxist, I believe that the proletariat has no reason to close its eyes. It must look reality in the face ‘cara a cara’, as they say in Spain. The superiority of the materialist and scientific Marxist system over all idealist systems resides precisely in that in order to show the proletariat the path to follow, it starts off from the exact analysis of economic and political reality and the real contradictions between classes without a priori sentimental preoccupations. But it is true that there were no Marxists among the learned men of the Popular Front.
My analysis of the Spanish conflict starts off from acknowledging the main fundamental contradiction of our epoch that the two basic classes of contemporary society are opposed: the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie existed and ruled in Spain before 19 July under the regime of the Popular Front after its election victory in February, just as it ruled in France under all the Popular Front governments (and was none the worse for it!); just as it ruled in Russia with the government of another Popular Front, that of Kerensky [55], before the ‘German agents’ Lenin and Trotsky chased it out in 1917.
However, Spain is a backward country, perhaps not so much as Tsarist Russia, but it resembles it in many respects.
The bourgeoisie and finance capital rule in Spain just as they rule in agricultural and backward Lithuania, or in the Philippines. But the Spanish bourgeoisie rules there without having made a bourgeois revolution, as the Jacobins [56] in France had done so well in 1789. The Spanish bourgeoisie came to power by way of a compromise with feudalism. The reactionary castes, the landed proprietors, the church (an economic, and not only a moral and political force in Spain), the military caste, and a very powerful bureaucracy play a part of prime importance in the life of the country, and prevent it from advancing along the road of capitalist development. To this we might add as in Tsarist Russia, the decisive rôle of foreign capitalism which controls most of the wealth of the country, that foreign capitalism, mainly French and British, whose hireling is the Spanish bourgeoisie.
In sum, Spain was like the Russia of 1917, faced with a bourgeois revolution, that is to say, the urgent tasks posed by the objective necessities of the development of the country were the abolition of the remains of feudalism, the division of the land amongst the poor peasants, the suppression of the power of the church, of the military caste and of the bureaucracy, and the liberation of the country from the embrace of foreign capital. This last, whether it be British, French or German, is particularly interested in keeping Spain backward with all its medieval characteristics.
However, just as in Russia, this bourgeois revolution could not be accomplished by the feeble and tame Spanish bourgeoisie. The bourgeois revolution could only be led by the young but very combative Spanish proletariat. But in finishing with these relics of the Middle Ages, the Spanish proletariat could not stop at the liquidation of the remains of feudalism, but had to finish with capitalism, which is intimately and indissolubly linked with the landed proprietors and the military caste.
In total, to awaken Spain from her centuries-old sleep, the Spanish working class had to make its proletarian revolution, establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, and, taking its bearings with the help of the European revolution, begin the construction of a powerful part of the Socialist United States of Europe.
Such was the dilemma posed before Spain, not by some pig-headed doctrinaires, but by the objective development of the country: either to remain in backwardness, as a semi-feudal country with all its ignorance and slavery, or to go bravely forward towards Socialism. This was, and still is today, the tragic choice for this country, which the theory of the Permanent Revolution fits perfectly.
This theory, whose embryo we find in Marx, which was developed in a masterly fashion by Leon Trotsky from 1905 onwards, and then magisterially put into operation by Lenin and Trotsky in 1917 (in spite of the different theoretical paths that led them to it), teaches us that in the imperialist period of decadent capitalism, bourgeois democratic revolutions of the type of the French Revolution of 1789 are impossible. It is for the proletariat of the backward countries to take the lead in the movement for the liberation of those countries from feudalism, as well as from capitalism.
The political revolution of April 1931 solved nothing. [57] The history of this republic of ‘trabajadores de todas clases’ [58] is a history of permanent convulsions. The king left in order to have a good time in the cabarets of the most beautiful European capitals, and told the dominant classes: “Sort yourselves out.” But it wasn’t easy. The history of the five years of 1931-36 is a history of permanent military conspiracies, reactionary coups (Sanjurjo) [59], attempts to muzzle the proletariat with a reactionary dictatorship under a parliamentary cloak (Gil Robles-Lerroux) [60] on the one side, and on the other the heroic struggles of the Spanish proletariat. These either took the form of Anarchist movements, without perspectives it is true, but which dragged along significant layers of the proletariat, particularly in Catalonia, or were part of the mass movements that went forward to the glorious Asturian Commune. It was a history of lock-outs, but also of powerful strikes. It was a history of peasant insurrections, that took the form of Jacqueries. [61]
The country was in permanent turmoil. The peasantry wanted the land. The Republic of ‘trabajadores de todas clases’ presided over by Monsieur Azaña’s government gave them bullets. The beautiful Republic continued to give the Andalusian peasants bullets even when, thanks to the victory of the Popular Front, Monsieur Azaña was raised to the highest office, that of President of the Republic. It defended the nobles, and the marquises, and their lives as rich, idle layabouts. The workers were organised in strong trade unions, and the bosses demanded strong measures from the government.
The persecution of the proletarian organisations was as great under Gil Robles and Lerroux as in the worst years of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera [62], and went as far as the bloody suppression of the Asturian Commune. The Republic protected the monarchy’s generals and guaranteed their positions, but the generals did not feel reassured, because behind the Republic they saw the proletariat. And they held the Republic responsible for the revolutionary danger. Formal statutes were drawn for the separation of the church and state. While annoying the clergy, which felt threatened, they did not touch its real power, its economic power. The Republic was in reality protecting the church, but the church bitterly resented the loss of its secular ambitions. And so on, without end. Nobody was satisfied, and everybody was discontented.
The mess went on growing. Gil Robles, the farsighted representative of the Spanish bourgeoisie, understood that there was nothing more to be done with parliamentarism. Some months before the army coup of July 1936 he left parliament, slamming the door behind him. And this was more than a gesture. It was the haute bourgeoisie’s break with democracy.
The five months of the Popular Front from February to July 1936 were months of profound convulsions. The generals, the church and the banks, helped by foreign capital, were preparing their evil coup. The peasants broke out in rebellion. The workers lost patience and went on strike. But the leaders of the Popular Front advised them to wait, always wait, and to have confidence in the state machine of the legitimate government which was to be purged. It was up to the workers to take the initiative, but they were paralysed by the Popular Front.
Such restraint did not exist on the other side of the barricades. Reaction sensed the danger of the rising revolution. Mola, Cabanellas [63] and Franco were the instruments of all the reactionary classes. They sided with Hitler and Mussolini, but also with English capital. Hitler and Mussolini were on the alert, and obviously looking for strategic positions in Spain. They were used by and made use of Franco for imperialist reasons. We understand this as well as José Díaz and Alvarez del Vayo [64], but that is only one aspect of the Spanish Civil War, and not the most important!
The principle aim of international capitalism, both for the Fascist and the democratic countries, was, and remains, to crush the ‘Red Plague’, which means to crush the proletariat, and, in the only possible way, to ensure the continuation of capitalist exploitation in a country where bourgeois democracy had no possibility of continued existence. From this stems all the ‘non-intervention’ and the unity (real this time) of international capitalism, including the democratic variety. Obviously the latter could manoeuvre against its Fascist competitor in Spain by occasionally sending some weapons, in order to prolong the killing [65], but it could not become completely involved – and save the Spanish working class from Fascism.
We would not deny the rôle of agents of Hitler and Mussolini in unleashing the civil war, but it is a long way from that to explaining the war by their intrigues alone.
If Hitler and Mussolini were able to make use of Franco (and it is not at all certain that it is only they who will use him in the future) [66], that is because there was a major battle in Spain itself: between Fascism and the proletariat. They did not invent Franco in their cabinets, but based themselves on the existing reactionary forces in Spain itself. The theory that explains Fascism by the intervention of ‘foreign agents’ is as ridiculous as the theory of the reactionaries which explains every revolutionary movement, in no matter what part of the globe, by the ‘manoeuvres of agents from Moscow’. It is yet another proof of the baseness and stupidity preached by the ideologists of the Comintern.
The uprising of 18 July was an attempt to drag Spain backwards and to halt it brutally on its road of development. Fascism threw down the gauntlet. The proletariat picked it up. And it did not rise in defence of a rotten Republic that was exploiting it, and which had given birth to Fascism. It rose to free itself.
49. L’Humanité was the daily newspaper of the French Communist Party, and Le Populaire was the daily paper of the French SFIO (Socialist Party), both of which supported the politics of the Popular Front.
50. “... the liberation of Spain from the yoke of Fascist reactionaries is ... the common cause of the whole of advanced and progressive mankind” was the great phrase used in 1936 by Stalin in his telegram to José Díaz. This is the sole phrase and pronouncement that Stalin has made on Spain for three years. Surely, as the leader of the international proletariat and an intellectual giant, to have such a perspective he needed an intelligence such as the earth has not yet produced. [Author’s note] Cf. J. Stalin, Works, Volume 14, London 1978, p149. [Translator’s note]
51. “To the city and the world” – the Pope’s preamble to his official pronouncements.
52. They even wanted to conceal from democratic opinion the fact that the Spanish workers had taken into their hands all the important factories. Obviously they were incapable of deceiving the ‘democratic’ capitalists of France and Britain, who knew how to get information on the spot, but they did succeed on the other hand in deceiving the proletariat in other countries. [Author’s note]
53. Georgi Dimitrov (1882-1949), a Bulgarian and one of the defendants at the famous Reichstag Fire Trial, was President of the Communist International during the period of the Popular Front.
54. Significant in this respect is the article by one Fortin, an employee of the Regional Committee of the CNT, Reply to Styr-Nhair published in La Révolution Proletarienne, where the grotesque myopia of a French Anarchist emerges in all its sharpness. [Author’s note]
55. Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky (1881-1970) was Prime Minister and Minister for War in the Provisional Government overthrown by the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917.
56. The Jacobins were the petit-bourgeois leaders of France’s revolutionary democracy during the French Revolution of 1789.
57. The fall of King Alfonso XIII from power and the coming of a Republic to Spain in 1931 changed little in the political structure of Spain (a corrupt parliamentary republic followed a senile military dictatorship and a meddling king) and nothing at all in its social structure.
58. ‘De trabajadores de todas clases’ – of workers of all classes – according to the formula of the Spanish constitution. [Author’s note]
59. General José Sanjurjo Sacanell (1872-1936) attempted to overthrow the new republic in Spain in 1932 by a premature military coup. His punishment was surprisingly light.
60. José María Gil Robles y Quinones (1899-1980) was the leader of the CEDA and an extreme right wing clerical corporatist of the Dollfüss type. His attempt to become Prime Minister during the ‘bienio negro’ precipitated the Asturian uprising (; Alejandro Lerroux Garcia (1864-1949) was a corrupt Radical politician who had made his reputation on anti-clericalism, but whose government at this time was priest-ridden.
61. Jacqueries were violent peasant rebellions in France during the fourteenth century.
62. General Don Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja (1870-1930) was the Captain-General of Catalonia, who in 1923 seized power in order to prevent the overthrow of the king, and ran Spain as a military dictatorship until he retired and drank himself to death in Paris.
63. General Emilio Vidal Mola (1887-1937) and General Miguel Cabanellas Ferrer (1872-1938) were important commanders in the Nationalist camp, and for a brief while rivals of Franco for the position of dictator of Nationalist Spain.
64. Julio Alvarez del Vayo (1891-1975) was a crypto-Communist within the left wing of the Socialist Party and chief lieutenant of Largo Caballero, whom he betrayed. He was the Foreign Minister of the Popular Front Government who was responsible for the subordination of its foreign policy to that of the USSR and for refusing assistance to the Moroccans who offered to rebel behind Franco’s lines.
65. Some artillery salesmen sold weapons to both sides. As Vespasian said, “non olet” – “money has no smell”. [Author’s note]
66. If Franco wins, he will have every reason to change his masters. On the side of Italy and Germany he only has debts. Rapprochement with the democracies, on the other hand, would allow them to be paid off. This will be difficult, because Hitler and Mussolini will also have taken their precautions. But no precaution is of value faced with the ever changing balance of forces. We are not prophets. The most probable outcome is that Franco victorious will try to play at both tables, like Poland or Yugoslavia. [Author’s note]
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Last updated on 27.7.2003