Spanish Popular Fronto a Roadblock to Revolution

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cance and Spain through the Popular Front. Objectively the balance sources of international It is impossible to under- of. forces within Spain support.

France and Spain were the settings for the : the settings for the last great confrontations of the interwar period between the working class and the bourgeoisie.

In Spain during this conflict on more than one occasion the working class came close to the seizure of power.

In July and August 1936 in large parts of Spain, including the largest cities, the bourgeoisie was expropriated and the working class succeeded in setting up its own organs of revolutionary power.

By this time the working class and its allies in much of the rest of Western and Central Europe had been decisively crushed under the most savage reaction.

"Impossible"

Stalinist historians claim that this fact meant that social revolution in Spain in the years after 1935 was impossible and that any attempt at revolution was dangerous because of the isolation of the Spanish working class.

This interpretation, however, is a conscious liecultivated in order to justify the treacherous policies of class collaboration pursued by the Stalinist and other working class leaders, in particular through the Popular Front.

It is impossible to understand the crucial role in the history of the European working class played by the Spanish Popular Front without seeing the objective material possibilities which existed for the Spanish working class.

Actually occured

First of all, not only was social revolution possible in the Spain of 1936 ACTIAII7 nrrltten 1n IATOP -d-- 11_parts of the country.

In April 1936 Trotsky o observed:

"Both the profound ferment in the masses and the continual violent explosions demonstrate that the workers of town and country, as well as the poor peasants, deceived over and over again, are continually directing all their forces toward a revolutionary solution. And what role does the Popular Front play in the face of their powerful movement? The role of a gigantic brake, built and set in motion by traitors and servile scum"

And he later rightly concluded that:

"In its specific gravity in the ico potitical and cultural In lIs political level the Spanish proletariat stood on the first day of the revolution not below but a above the Russian proletariat at the beginning of 1917."

Objectively the balance of forces within Spain favoured, the working class. The distribution of arms to the working class would have made it invincible in the short term against even the full military might of the Spanish bourgeois state.

Of course, the bourgeoisie had access to strong international aid-especially from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

But the working class, too, had important possible paperar sado Not defeated The French working class was not defeated; it was attaining new heights of militancy and from June 1936 its leaders were in the And French support could have been crucial to the Spanish working class in many ways.

Also there was the Soviet Union-the world's first workers' state whose rapid material development was making it capable of providing important material assistance to any major working class struggle in another country.

In Spain, therefore, all the objective material circumstances made a working class seizure of power a historic possibility.

And if the working class had succeeded in establishing its power in Spain, across Europe would have been tremendous.

It was not too late in Spain in 1936 for the long tide of working class defeats in Europë to be decisively reversed.

All this could have happened. None of'it did.

But unless a successful Spanish revolution is seen as an objective historical possibility, the responsibility for its failure cannot be understood.

There can be no doubt where that responsibility lies: with the leadership of workers' organisations and parties who-some all the time, others only at crucial moments-pursued a policy not of identifying and fighting for the independent interests of the working class and the poor peasantry but of collaborating with a section of the enemy capitalist class.

'Left bloc'

Such alliances took forms during the tumultuous years between the fall of the Spanish monarchy in 1931 and the end of the civil war in 1939.

But they culminated in the Popular Front (also known at the time as the "left bloc').

This was formed late in 1935 between a group of 'liberal' bourgeois republican parties (the main ones being the Republican Left, led by Manuel Azana, the Republican Union, and the Esquerra of Catalonia, led by Luis Companys), the mass workers parties (the Socialist Party-PSOE-and and the much smaller Communist Party- and the self-styled "revolutionary" party, the Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) led by renegade former supporters of the Trotskyist Republican fighter dies in action

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FRENTE POPULAR DE IZQUIERDAS Mientras las derechas reaccionarias, monárquicas y' fascistas de Sevilla discuten anlagónicamente las clas que han de tocarte pura su medro personal y poră defender los intereses de los Partidos republicaLas derechas, con sus apetitos desordenados. con sus egoísmos y bajo la egida de la Compania de lesús, solo coinciden en esto: en insultar a los republicanos y a los obreros. Rivalizan en la práctica del sobomo, de la coacción, de los peores trucos de muñidores y electoreros. Y perdido todo átomo de verguensa política, apelan a la desliguración y al "chantaje", • utilizando una designación muy parecida a la de una gran Central Sindica, obrera, para firmar ciertos carteies y pasquines repugnantes, con el propósito de sembrar entre las filas de la clase trabajadora la duda, la vacilación y el confusionismo En caribio, el Fronto Eloctoral de Izquiendar se ha constituido para defender a la Republica y realizar un progtama concreto, elaborado a la luz del dia, conocido y aprobado por, las grandes masas populares del pais. Progtama que, si bien no representa los postulados máximos o minimos de los partidos coaligados El Fronte Popular de Izquierdas, lucha Por la Amaniatía: por la admisión de lon represaliados; por la exigencia de respossabilidados iadividuales for los excesos coretidos en la represióa de Asturias; Por la exigenda de responsabilidades por los rucios y escandalozos nexocios; contre la inmoralidad, la daa renquenza y la indecencia ile los políticos ca bienio regro; por le suprenión de los jorseleo "''católicos'' dè 1,50; por el establecimiento in un jornal mínimo en la Laduatria y ca la Agriculrura: por el entablecimiento de la infialación social de la República; por la suprente de la pena de muerte: por la rebaja ds infuestos a los industriales, cerpesinon y poquedas comerciantao: por una reforma aftaria riicaz; por tina reforma de nuestro sisteraa fiscali gor PAN, TRABAJO. CULTURA, DIGNIDAD, DECENCIA Y MORALIDAD.

irepticias intenciones de las derechas monárquicas no admiten nos y ubreros.

encama, cuando menos, todos aquellos puntos que nos son comunes, comparación.

Cumplid con vuestro deber de Frente Al pueblo sevillano:

ciudadanía votando al other parties of the Popular The prototype of the Popular Front government had already ruled Spain from the fall of the monarchy through the first constituent parliamentary elections in 1931 until the right-wing victory in the Cortes elections of 1933.

In these goverhments the Socialist leaders held ministries alongside the bourgeois republicans.

This was no longer the immediate plan-much as the republicans desired it. Under pressure from the left of the PSOE, the socialist leaders refused in advance to participate in any future government coalition with the republicans.

That, said PSOE leader, Largo Caballero would have been "unprincipled"!

He didn't find it unprincipled, it seems, to offer loyal parliamentary support for any government the bourgeois republicans Seventh Congress of the Comintern in 1935:

So it was only for a very short time, if at all, that the CP conceived of the workers' alliances as anything other than a step towards the Popular Front.

As Trotsky wrote when, as early as April 1933, the CP had participated in a "national anti-fascist conference"

"the Comintern from time to time organises a masquerade in imitation of a united front"

This is what the workers alliances were to become, as throughout 1935 the Stalinists and the right-wing Socialist leaders made plans for a strategic political alliance with the widest possible selection of bourgeois politicians.

Despite their small (though rapidly growing) quantitative political weight in 1935 the Stalinists' political importance in the construction of the Popular Front was very great.

Acting in accordance with the Comintern's new on the side of Menshevismof class collaboration, of betrayal of the independent revolutionary interests of the working class and peasantry.

The first of these were the anarchists of the CNT. The traditional position of the Spanish anarchists had been to advocate abstention in all elections, since voting was held to be a compromise with the bourgeois state.

In spite of the "official" position it is certain that many anarchist workers did vote though hundreds of thousands followed the abstentionist line.

But this uitra-leftist stance now transformed itself into a wholesale adaptation to the politics of the The anarchist leaders did not join the class collaborationist bloc. But they reversed their traditional for the Front "an authentic government of the Popular Front, with the direct (ministerial) participation of the Socialist and Communist parties."

This the POUM imagined would "complete the democratic experience of the masses" and so bring the revolution closer.

A small but significant section of the revolutionary masses looked to the POUM as their leaders. Millions looked towards the CNT.

Reactionary alliance And yet, at a time when the bourgeoisie was preparing the blackest reaction, both these organisations told their followers in effect to put their faith in a reactionary alliance with the shadow of the bourgeoisie.

"Unfortunately for the revolution," Trotsky observed bitterly, "between a handful of Bolsheviks and the revolutionary proletariat stood the counter-revolutionary wall of the Popular The handful of Bolshe-