[Militant, No. 282, 5th December 1975, p. 4-5
Francisco Franco, Generalissimo and self-styled ‘Caudillo’, will go down in history as the butcher of the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39 and the dictator who imposed over 30 years of totalitarian rule on the Spanish people. As leader of the Nationalist revolt against the Popular Front Government, he was responsible for the deaths of a million Spaniards killed in the civil war and the repression which continued afterwards. The Spanish workers, with the sympathy of the world working class are impatiently awaiting their collective revenge through class action against Franco’s backers and collaborators.
Franco was a fascist, in terms of his survival in power, the most successful of the fascist dictators who resulted from the defeats of the workers in the 1920s and 1930s. Yet, unlike Mussolini and Hitler, he was not a middle class upstart who, after an obscure and irregular career, hoisted himself to power by demagogically mobilising plebeian support from among the crazed middle classes. Franco was the finished product of the Spanish officer class, which was tied closely to the traditional ruling class, intransigently opposed to change and bitterly hostile to the workers, farm labourers and land-hungry peasants.
In 1917, after experience in Morocco, the 25-year old Franco first confronted the Spanish workers when he put down the Asturian miners’ strike, with more than a hundred deaths. After further feats in Morocco, at the head of a colonial army largely composed of social outlaws, Franco, in 1926, became the youngest general in the Spanish army. In 1934, during the ‘Bienio Negro’ (two black years) when the Republic was in the hands of the right, Franco again put down a rising of the Asturian miners, this time with many thousands of deaths and casualties. He described this war as “a frontier war against socialism and communism and other forces that are attacking civilisation in order to replace it with barbarism.” His position was clear.
The election of the Popular Front Government in may 1936, on the tide of mass radicalisation, resulted in Franco and other reactionary generals being posted to isolated commands, in his case the Canaries. The feeble measures of the Government, however were unable to prevent Franco and the others from organising a right wing conspiracy within the army and preparing for a coup when the time was right. The rising of the Moroccan army under General Mola in July was the signal. Franco joined the revolt: within two months he was Generalissimo and chief of ‘Nationalist’ Spain.
Franco’s success was not due to the strength of the right, but to the disastrous policies of the leaders of the mass workers’ parties. Had the workers’ leaders not placed their trust in the bourgeois parties of the Popular Front and had the workers not placed too much trust in their ‘leaders’, the working class, which rose in enthusiastic support for the Government, could have easily taken the whole country.
Civil War
Franco was backed, naturally enough, by the big landowners, the banks, and the industrialists. But their lack of popular support was evident. A mercenary Moorish army and massive fascist foreign intervention were needed from the start for them to succeed. Later the ‘Falange’ modelled on Mussolini’s and Hitler’s organisations, was used to recruit ‘popular’ rightist support, mainly from the middle class. This grew from 75,000 at the beginning of the war to nearly a million in 1939. Yet Franco and his backers always remained suspicious of the ‘revolutionary’, demagogic ‘anti-capitalist’ elements in Falangist propaganda.
Although thousands of workers from many countries volunteered to fight for the Republic in the International Brigades, the Labour leaders refused to mobilise decisive mass support for the Spanish Revolution. The Labour leaders in France, Britain and other countries hid behind the policy of ‘non-intervention’, arguing that intervention by the democracies would provide an excuse for the fascist powers to intervene too – as if they needed an excuse!
As far as the Soviet Union was concerned, Stalin’s conservative policy of ‘Socialism in one country’ led to a policy of attempted rapprochement with the Western powers. Stalin therefore favoured stabilising the situation in the Republican zone on the basis of a “democratic” compromise with the bourgeois parties. Because the Republican side desperately needed Russian arms, the policies of the Russian bureaucracy prevailed. The struggle was increasingly conducted on a purely military basis and the social revolution postponed indefinitely, a fatal policy for the working class. The Russian leaders provided enough arms to continue the struggle, but not enough for a decisive victory. Through the control of the Russian military advisers and secret police, the Republican Government eventually took on many features of Stalin’s own totalitarian regime.
On the other hand, Mussolini and Hitler were well aware of the importance of Franco’s victory to their own position. Mussolini sent over 25,000 Italian troops to fight for Franco and vast quantities of arms. Hitler sent advisers, arms, supplies, and the ‘Condor Squadron’, a fighting force of 100 planes which became notorious for the bombing of Guernica. For the fascist regimes, the Spanish Civil War was a training ground for the Second World War, an event made inevitable by the defeat of the Spanish workers.
Franco gratefully received the support of the Axis powers, but gave few promises in return. During the Second World War Franco’s policy changed from pro-Axis “neutrality” to pro-Axis “non-belligerance” and to pro-Allied “neutrality”. Under pressure from Hitler, Franco sent the ‘Blue Division’ to fight for the Nazis on the Russian Front, exported great quantities of vital wolfram (for tungsten) to Germany, and generally backed the Nazi war effort, though without going so far as to declare war on the Allies.
Later, when he felt that the war was turning against Hitler, Franco began, through Salazar’s pro-British fascist regime in Portugal, to seek agreement with British capitalism. Franco wanted to emerge from the war on the winning side. Franco’s moves were welcomed by Churchill, a long-standing admirer of the Caudillo, who saw the strategic advantage of an alliance with the Spanish regime. Franco’s cynical manoeuvres were vital to the survival of his regime in the post-war period.
Western support
After the war, Franco’s regime was universally denounced by the leaders of the ‘Western democracies’. Spain was excluded from the United Nations and NATO. But the Spanish workers’ hopes that the British Labour Government would take action to bring down Spanish fascism were bitterly disappointed. Ritual condemnation of the dictatorship by Western governments was accompanied by the steady, if cautious development of diplomatic and economic links.
In 1953, the US Government came to Franco’s aid with economic assistance at a time when his position was seriously threatened by economic crisis. In return, the US was allowed to establish strategic air bases in Spain. In 1955, Spain was admitted to the UN. In 1959, President Eisenhower visited Spain, thus setting an important seal of success of Franco’s foreign policy. US economic and military aid was undoubtedly an important factor in stabilising Franco’s rule.
If Western government recently condemned Franco’s Government and its policy of renewed repression, it was not because of fundamental objections [as they lived with and did business with it for many years] but because they were afraid of the political explosions that will be produced by the continuation of totalitarianism under the new conditions that prevail today. For this reason they regarded Ford’s visit to Franco after the Helsinki conference as a serious blunder.
Franco’s regime
Having defeated the Popular Front forces, Franco set about consolidating his hold on the power. Franco’s Government and even his family were closely connected with the banks and big business, in whose interests he seized power and ruled. But Franco also created an enormously powerful state apparatus, which took on a certain independent life of its own. The establishment of such a monstrosity was made possible by the crushing of the working class, the complete destruction of its organisation, and a perpetual reign of terror against any opposition. Many enquiries, conducted by liberal and religious, as well as socialist organisations have testified to the brutal policies of imprisonment and police torture throughout the whole length of Franco’s rule.
Franco staffed his vast administration and repressive apparatus with recruits from the army and the Falange who had demonstrated their loyalty in the civil war, thus rewarding them for their services. The traditional patronage, nepotism and corruption of Spanish society was institutionalised in Franco’s system.
Franco played off the army chiefs, the Falange leaders, the Carlists and the Bourbons against one another to strengthen his own position. The Falange was pushed into the background, especially after the turn away from the Axis to a pro-Allied policy, and its leaders gradually eased out of power.
Like the other fascist leaders before him, Franco distrusted any elements of an independent mass basis, however necessary they had been to ensure his seizure of power. He rapidly carried through the complete bureaucratisation of his regime. At first, this appeared to strengthen the supreme power of the ‘Caudillo’. But in the long run it prepared the way for the erosion of the regime’s social base. Only inertia, resulting from the devastating defeat inflicted on the workers and the dead weight of the bureaucracy itself, allowed the regime to survive for so long.
In the last 5 to 10 years of Franco’s life all the main supports of his regime were steadily undermined. He could no longer rely on the loyalty of the Church: the hierarchy was split and largely opposed to him; many of the priests moved into open revolt against the regime. Even the army, the key to his original success, was no longer completely reliable. The senior officers were divided in their attitudes to Franco’s policies, and many of the junior officers had become completely hostile to Francoism. Large sections of the middle class turned against totalitarianism and began to show increasing sympathy to the working class.
These factors, together with the most important change that has taken place, the revival of illegal, clandestine organisations of the workers, which have taken on the repressive forces in enormous industrial and political struggles, mean that, strictly speaking, Franco’s regime could no longer be considered fascist, but had degenerated into a Bonapartist regime, lacking any real reserves of social support.
Economic policy
In the period following 1939, “the years of hunger”, continued repression was accompanied by extreme poverty, hunger and literally starvation conditions for millions of Spaniards. In economic policy, as elsewhere, Franco made a deliberate attempt to revert to the past. He halted agrarian reforms and shelved industrial changes, restoring the despotic power of the bosses. Yet because of the devastation of the civil war and the home and world economic crisis, the state assumed unprecedented responsibility for the direction of economic life.
Franco attempted to establish a fascist autarchy: Spain would follow its own course and aim at self-sufficiency. Through the National Industrial Institute (INI) and the big banks, which dominated the industry, Franco attempted to develop industries that could produce previously imported goods. He also wanted to develop industry away from Catalonia and the Basque country, because of the deep hostility to his regime of the industrial workers in these traditional industrial areas. More recently, this policy has rebounded on Franco with the appearance of workers’ opposition in formerly conservative areas like Navarre, Galicia and Grenada.
Franco’s economic policies failed to overcome the almost total stagnation of the economy, despite the rise in exports during the Second World War. In 1945, per capita income was lower than in 1936 and only rose above this level again in 1951. It was only the timely economic aid from the USA, provided under the 1953 Spanish-US agreements that the Spanish economy began to escape from long-term recession.
In the early 1950s Franco began to be challenged by big business elements who were not opposed to Francoism as such, but wanted policies more favourable to development. They were represented above all by the technocrats of the upper class Opus Dei order. At first, Franco resisted their demands, even temporarily reviving the Falange against them. But the necessity of securing a sound economic basis for his regime forced him to adapt, and the Opus Dei technocrats began to form an increasingly important element in his Governments.
The 1959 deal Franco made with the IMF and the US, which rescued the regime from financial disaster, marked a sharp and important change in Franco’s economic policy. The new policy was one of greater economic liberalism and the opening up of Spain to foreign investment, which benefitted the big monopolies and banks. The great expansion of world trade, investments from the multi-national corporations attracted to Spain by the cheap and ‘disciplined’ labour, the phenomenal growth of tourism, and remittances from Spanish workers who had been forced to find work in Europe, all contributed to the rapid but very uneven growth of the Spanish economy.
In the 1960s, Franco boasted that economic prosperity had produced social harmony and reconciled Spaniards to his regime. However while the remarkable growth of this period gave the regime the appearance of stability and strength, it was simultaneously creating the conditions of its downfall.
The developments which transformed Spain for the first time into a predominantly industrial country at the same time produced a new generation of young workers, unscarred by the civil war, greater in numbers and more self confident than their defeated parents, highly critical of Francoism, and increasingly prepared to take on the regime in struggle. The last 5 to 10 years have seen the magnificent flowering of this new generation of workers.
Under conditions of complete illegality and despite savage repression, the workers have created clandestine organisations which led widespread strikes and demonstrations against the bosses and the state. This development, more than anything else, has dug the grave for Francoism.
Spanish big business has been faced with an acute dilemma. Franco saved them from socialist revolution in 1936-39. But his autocratic regime increasingly became a straightjacket as far as modern industrial economy was concerned. Representatives of big business have long been pressing for some ‘liberalisation’ of the regime. Yet they realise that the post-war success of Spanish capitalism depended to a great extent on its fascist or Bonapartist protection. Although they now feel Francoism to be an economic fetter and a political liability, they can hardly be confident, especially in a period of world economic recession, that Spanish capitalism can continue to go forward if, at the same time, it is obliged to grant democratic freedoms to a working class anxious to make up for lost time.
It is this basic dilemma which underlines the present confusion of the Spanish ruling class and the oscillation of the Government between attempted liberalisation and renewed, intensified repression. In 1969, Franco announced that Prince Juan Carlos would be his successor as Head of State. This announcement coincided with the imposition, for the first time since the end of the civil war, of a state of emergency because of a mass upsurge of intense opposition. Fundamentally, it was already too late for Franco to assure a smooth transition which would preserve the essence of Francoism.
In the event, Franco stubbornly refused to relinquish power before his death. The cliques within the ruling circles who tried to ease him out were frightened to take decisive action in case it sparked off an independent movement of the workers. Ironically, by clinging to power until the last, Franco unwittingly helped to bring to full maturity all the conditions for the revolutionary developments the ruling class so deeply fears.
Revolution
“We are neither a parenthesis nor a dictatorship between two periods,” wrote Franco in 1958, using the royal “we”: “We constitute a veritable historical rectification.” Yet is this not precisely what Franco and Francoism will prove to have been, a bloody parenthesis between two periods of struggle for social change? His “rectification” has completely failed. His attempt to turn back the clock, to revive a mythical “Eternal Spain”, dreamed up to justify a barbaric crusade to preserve the power of the traditional ruling class, left out of account one thing: the working class, its vital power of recovery, and its unbreakable will to change society and take it forward.
Franco is dead and buried. His regime is already in ruins. His chosen successor, “Juan the Brief”, has inherited a whirlwind of workers’ struggles. The ideas of socialism, which Franco claimed to have destroyed in Spain forever, have already been re-discovered by the advanced layers of workers and the youth. Franco’s regime will prove to have been nothing but a long, regressive, barbarous, but nevertheless temporary interlude between two periods of world-shaking revolutionary struggles.
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