[Militant No. 315, 30th July 1976, p. 6-7]
Forty years ago, on the 18th July 1936, General Franco launched the military revolt which began three years of civil war and drowned the Spanish Revolution in blood. For Europe, the defeat of the Spanish workers and the strengthening of fascism meant a fatal step nearer to world war. For the Spanish people, it meant the inauguration of a totalitarian regime which lasted nearly four decades. With the help of the Western democracies, Spanish fascism survived the downfall of Mussolini and Hitler and declined into senility with its leader. Today, another generation of Spanish workers in engaged in renewed struggle against its tattered remnants.
The fascist revolt was based mainly on the army. The Falange, which was modelled on Mussolini’s and Hitler’s organisations and drew it’s support from rightward moving middle class layers, was used as an auxiliary. But it was to the officer caste, part and parcel of the ruling class, that the big landlords and capitalists, the oligarchs and Monarchists, looked for salvation when the Popular Front won the elections in February 1936. They were not afraid of the respectable leaders of the Republican government that was formed, but of the “anarchy” let loose by its formation – by which they meant the spontaneous movement of the workers and rural labourers to seize the gains promised before the elections.
Some form of military revolt against the government was inevitable. It was simply a question of the general waiting for the right moment. The government and the Popular Front leaders were well aware that a military conspiracy was afoot. In May, the right wing Socialist Party leader, Prieto wrote: “General Franco, being young, gifted, having a network of friends in the army, is the man who, at a given moment, has it in him to lead such a movement (of military insurrection) with maximum probable success because of the prestige he enjoys.” Yet, incredibly, he went on to add: “I do not dare to attribute to General Franco any such designs”!
In a feeble attempt to head of a coup d’etat, the government simply offered to pension off, on full pay, any officers who wanted to retire. Ten thousand accepted – but it did not prevent many of them joining Franco later. The most reactionary officers stayed and prepared. Azaña’s government then tried to keep control over the army by shuffling around the generals it feared the most. As in Chile under Allende’s Popular Unity government, such timid measures made no difference. Officers with constitutional scruples were ignored by the conspirators, later to be pushed aside and in some cases executed.
General Mola was sent by the government to Morocco – where he organised for the rising of the Foreign Legion on 17th July, which was the springboard for the rising in Spain. Franco was sent to the Canaries – from where he co-ordinated the entire conspiracy.
Franco
Because of Franco’s success, the example of Spain is often used to “prove” the impossibility of workers taking power: “The army will always crush any attempt at social revolution.” A closer look at what happened, however, shows that it was the political factors, not the power of the army, which was decisive.
It cannot be said that Franco’s success was due to the strength of the right. The fascists had little popular support to begin with. They had to rely on Moorish mercenaries and Italian reinforcements. But the workers, who in most areas rose against the fascists as soon as they realised the danger, and could easily have smashed the revolt, were hamstrung by the leaders of the mass organisations. Concerned above all to preserve Republican “legality”, the workers’ leaders refused to arm the workers until the rebels had already gained a vital foothold in the country.
When he was informed of the uprising in Morocco, the Prime Minister is reported to have said: “They’re rising? Very well, I shall go to bed.” Neither the government nor the leaders of the mass parties made any attempt to alert the workers.
In fact, they even suppressed news of the rising until it leaked out. They thus squandered the precious few days by which the sailors, who overwhelmingly rose against their officers and took over the fleet, delayed the crossing of Mola’s forces from Morocco.
The rebels, or the Movimiento as they claimed to be called, quickly seized control of Seville and Cordoba in the South, and Galicia and Navarre in the North. Navarre was the traditional stronghold of the reactionary Carlists who welcomed the rebels with open arms. Elsewhere, however, the fascists’ success or failure was less predictable.
Where the rebels could rely on the police, the Civil Guard and the local garrison, and where the workers’ leaders allowed themselves to be duped by false promises of loyalty from the officials and officers, the fascists were able to seize their enemies’ organisations and take control. The key to the outcome of the early fighting lay not so much in the actions of the rebels as in the reactions of the unions and the workers’ parties and their ability to mobilise and arm the workers. This depended decisively on the political outlook of the workers’ organisations.
Each time the leaders held back the workers on the basis of hollow promises from the officers and each time they delayed the arming of the workers out of respect for Republican legality, the right-wing rebels prevailed. On the other hand, wherever the workers ignored their leaders, brushed aside the “legitimate” authorities, acted quickly, seized arms, and set about the destruction of the army, the Movimento was decisively repulsed.
No Arms
In the key industrial areas, like Barcelona, the workers – particularly those organised in the UGT (Socialist TU) and the CNT (Anarchist TU) – opened secret arms caches or stormed the barracks for weapons, and improvised workers’ militias. In other areas, like Malaga, the workers had practically no arms, but still quelled the revolt by determined action: they set fire to the houses surrounding the barracks and sprayed the rebels with dynamite, forcing them to surrender.
The generals attempted pronunciamento – their attempt to take over in a few days – had failed. They had taken nearly a third of Spain, but none of the major industrial or commercial centres.
They were no longer faced merely with a weak Popular front government, but with a workers‘ revolution sparked off by their own revolt. Now the generals could only come to power through civil war. If they subsequently succeeded it was because the revolution, luckily for them, was derailed, not because of their own strength.
In Republican Spain there was now dual power. Caught between its insurgent army and the armed masses, the old state shattered to pieces. The helpless Republican government was suspended in mid air. Real authority passed to the organs or workers‘ power – juntas, councils, committees, etc. – which were based on workers‘ control of the factories, services and big estates, and on the anti-fascist militias thrown up by the workers organisations.
The workers‘ councils extended the social gains of the workers – wages, conditions, welfare – and began the systematic organisation of food supply and defence. But to fight a war against the fascists a single, centralised authority was essential. ln the areas the councils ruled, but nationally they were still forced to go to the paralysed official government for credits, essential imports, and arms.
Azaña
Admitting the impotence of the government, which had even secretly continued to try to negotiate a compromise with the rebel generals, Azaña resigned. This baldly posed the question of power: Either a workers’ government based on the councils and committees and taking on the revolutionary task of carrying through a socialist transformation; or a new Popular Front government, based on a liberal programme and pledged to respect property and Republican legality.
The tragedy of the Spanish revolution was that in 1936 the leaders of the workers parties chose the latter course, when only the first could have succeeded The leaders of the workers‘ organisations allowed themselves to be used as the “last card”, as Azaña put it, to save the threatened capitalist system. In September, Largo Caballero, leader of the socialist UGT – though he had himself previously called for a “workers‘ government” to take power – eventually threw his considerable prestige with the left behind new Popular Front government.
The government, with Caballero as Prime Minister, included Socialists, Communists, and five Republicans – middle-class representatives of capitalism who were to act as a brake on the government, limiting it to “the defence of democracy”.
The Communist party, reflecting pressure from Moscow, was unreservedly in favour of „Republican legality“. „We wish to fight only for a democratic republic with a broad social content“, stated the party’s general secretary: „There can be no question at present of a dictatorship of the proletariat or of socialism, but only of a struggle of democracy against fascism.“
The „Communist“ leaders argued that the non-socialist programme of the Popular Front would be a guarantee of „respectability“ for the middle class in Spain and the big powers abroad. But the middle class were long passed caring about mere constitutional forms, and the big powers were not prepared to help even a struggling democracy. At home, as abroad the “moderate” programme of the Popular Front neither reassured the reactionaries, nor sufficiently inspired the left.
The Popular Front had a remorseless and fatal logic. To restore the authority of the old government apparatus, the Popular Front leaders had to undermine the power of the workers‘ councils. The gradual dissolution of the organs of workers‘ power was inevitably accompanied by the restriction of social advances, and then the erosion of gains that went beyond the bound of „legality“.
All this played into the hands of Franco and the fascists. The driving force of the workers’ and peasants‘ armies was switched off. The incredible heroism of the militants who threw themselves against the fascist armies could not compensate for the fundamental political mistakes of their leaders. The turn towards a purely military struggle against the fascists, awaiting military success before the struggle for socialism was resumed, tipped the balance against the Republican and socialist forces.
Internationally, things were certainly against the Spanish workers in 1936. Mussolini and Hitler naturally backed Franco with money, arms, men and aircraft. The Western democracies used the idea of “non-intervention”, intended to preserve the existing balance of power, to ban military aid to the Republican side. Germany and Italy had no objection to joining the “Non-intervention Committee” – but they continued their arms deliveries to the Spanish fascists. Once the social revolution took second place to military strategy, this unequal military balance took an increasingly heavy toll on the Republican forces.
Stalin, who by this time had completely buried the internationalism of the October Revolution, also subscribed to the idea of „non-intervention“. But soon the Soviet Union, too, was sending arms to Spain. For this support, however, the workers had to pay a heavy price.
Stalin
The conservative policy of „socialism in one country,“ which reflected the narrow interests of the privileged bureaucracy on which Stalin’s power rested, led to a policy of attempted compromise with the western “democratic” powers. So as not to upset them, Stalin supported in Spain not workers‘ power, but, according to the French Communist paper ‘L’Humanité’ (3/8/36), „the defence of Republican law and order, through respect for property.
In truth, Stalin was mortally afraid of the effects of a genuine revolution in Spain in his own regime. As it was, even with the defeat of the Spanish proletariat, the repercussions of the civil war were one of the main factors behind the Moscow „trials“ in 1937 in which the last of the Old Bolsheviks were purged. Success for the workers in Spain, as Stalin instinctively realised, would have broken the disastrous isolation of the Russian Revolution and sounded the bureaucracy’s death knell.
Yet because the Republican side desperately needed Russian arms and there wasno viable Marxist party able to provide an alternative to the Popular Front government, Moscow’s policy prevailed. The Spanish Communist party became an instrument of Russian foreign policy, a border guard for the bureaucracy rather than the vanguard of the workers.
The heroic volunteers of the International Brigades could not do the work of mass revolutionary armies. In any case, they too were soon merged with regular regiments. Brigades which opposed this because of their opposition to the policies of the Popular Front were starved of arms.
Stalin sent enough arms to keep the Republican armies going, but not enough for success. Russian officers and secret police agents took control of the government and the army. By the end of the civil war, the Republican state had taken on many of the totalitarian features of Stalin’s own regime.
Now it is different. The revolution beginning to unfold in Spain is part and parcel of an entirely new international situation.
Not only are the remains of Franco’s regime crumbling to pieces under the onslaught of mass strikes and demonstrations, but all Europe’s other fascist or Bonapartist regimes – Caetano in Portugal, the Junta in Greece – have also been swept away. The strengthening of the working class during the post-war boom prepared the conditions for a swing to the left throughout the capitalist world.
Because of the denial of democracy, the police repression, and the barbarous exploitation of the Franco regime, the demands of the Spanish workers for trade union and political rights and a living wage have taken on a revolutionary significance. But the struggle in Spain is paralleled by movements of the workers in all the main capitalist countries. The opening of the Spanish revolution marks the beginning of a new period of radicalisation and revolution, not a period of defeats as in 1936.
„Detente“
In 1936 the Spanish workers faced intervention by Mussolini and Hitler. The inability of the United States, the main bastion of capitalism today, to intervene directly against the Portuguese or Angolan revolutions shows the impotence of imperialism at the present time. Kissinger may storm about the possibility of Communists entering the government in France or Italy, but what can he really do to halt the swing to the left?
On the other hand, there is also no possibility of the Russian bureaucracy intervening to sabotage socialist revolution in Spain as it did in 1936-39. Moscow is still just as afraid of a successful revolutionary movement in an advanced European country with a powerful working class, as its „detente“ with US imperialism, aimed to preserve the status quo, indicates. But the Western Communist parties are no longer willing instruments of the Russian leaders. The recent meeting of European Communist parties in East Berlin underlined the complete degeneration of these parties, which have completely abandoned any pretence to internationalism in favour of their own different „national roads“.
The Spanish Communist party, like the French and Italian parties, has openly renounced a Marxist programme and perspective in favour of „historic compromise“ with the enemies of the working class and an „advanced democracy“ – a revival of the 1936 „democratic republic with a broad social content“!
In other words, forty years after Franco’s rising, the leaders of the CP still have not learned the lesson of the Popular Front’s disastrous defeat! Although it is no longer simply an agency or the Russian leadership, in so far as has an influence, because of its clandestine organisation and its undeserved historic association with Marxism and the October revolution, the Spanish Communist party, unless its rank and file redirect it to Marxist ideas, will be a serious obstacle on the road to socialism.
The objective conditions for socialist revolution are now much more favourable than in 1936. The ruling class is demoralised and split. Its main props, the army and the church, are bent and broken. The sections of the middle class are completely opposed to the regime and sympathetic to the workers. The working class, strengthened by the rapid industrial growth of the last decade, are much more powerful than in 1936. Yet the CP leaders have again given up socialist aims in favour of Popular Frontism.
Raising the idea of a “Freedom Pact” in 1970 (a broad democratic alliance against fascism), Carrillo, the leader of the Spanish CP openly declared: „The party will join with no matter what political group, even those who fought us in the past and with groups who will undoubtedly fight us in the future.“ („L’Humanité“ 3/12/70).
In 1974 the Carlists, the intellectual Popular Socialist party, and a motley collection of ex-fascists and latter-day converts to democracy joined the Communist party in the formation of the Democratic Junta, described by the CP as “a temporary convergence of working class and neo-capitalist forces” (L’Unità 6/9/74). The Junta adopted a programme of limited democratic demands. It was nothing if not a reincarnation of the Popular Front.
Even if fascism was on the ascendant, as in 1936, instead of crumbling away, as at present, what would be the use of „liberal“ Monarchists. „democratic“ ex-fascists, and newly converted “social democrats” in a struggle? The history of the civil war shows that they are completely unreliable allies as far as the workers are concerned. Any “unity” with these elements is completely hollow – and does immeasurable harm because of the confusion spread among the workers by the idea of an alliance with them. Instead of being warned against „groups who will undoubtedly fight against us in the future“, the workers are lulled to sleep. Only unity of the workers‘ organisations, based on Marxist policies, can take the working class forward.
But why should these bourgeois personalities and political cliques („neo-capitalist forces“) give their support to the Democratic Junta (or the equally mistaken Democratic Convergence, initiated by the leaders of the Socialist party?) Clearly, the more far-sighted representatives of Spanish capitalism see the need for liberalisation to prevent an even bigger explosion. They want a controlled transition to parliamentary institutions as a means of ensuring the survival of capitalism. They also understand the advantages of attempting to head off the workers‘ movement by supporting a broad alliance – like the Popular Front in 1936 – in which the workers‘ leaders are tied down to limited democratic aims.
At the same time, because of the weakness of big business and the enormous power of the workers, some of the representatives of capitalism who would have turned to Franco to smash the Popular Front and socialism in 1936 are today obliged to lean on the workers‘ leaders once again embroiled in Popular Frontism to restrain and divert the radicalisation of the growing labour movement.
What future can there be, after all, for democracy on the basis of capitalism? Even during the sunny boom period Spanish capitalism was unable to shed its fascist skin. With an acute crisis at home and an adverse climate internationally how will big business be able to afford to meet the economic demands that will automatically flow from the workers‘ struggle for the right to trade union organisation and political freedom? The fundamental antagonism between the “liberal” capitalists and the workers will be brought out into the open, and big business will in the future, without a doubt, once again move towards a totalitarian solution.
Vitoria
The Spanish workers’ „celebrated“ the anniversary or Franco’s revolt with mass demonstrations demanding a full political amnesty for political prisoners. Thousands of troops and armed police failed to prevent the demonstrations, which were banned. Every week there are fresh strikes, despite continued repression. Everywhere, the workers’ are instinctively linking up the immediate demands for democratic rights with the economic demands of the class. In areas such as Vitoria, where there has been a series of general strikes, the workers have understood the need to take power in order to guarantee liberty and solve the economic problems. The indomitable courage and commitment to a socialist society of the civil war generation is being reborn in struggle today. But another generation must not be wasted by bloody defeats. The lessons of the past must be learnt. The pernicious influence of the absolutely disastrous, fatal ideas of Popular Frontism must be completely destroyed. This time the movement must be guided by the ideas of Marxism. The day-to-day struggles must be linked to an independent struggle for workers power and a Socialist Spain.
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