Spanish Civil War

Scan page 6

POPULAR FRONT SHACKLES FIGHT AGAINST FRANCO In our first article we aced some of the developvents and the balance of class Arces which forced Franco's ascist rebellion against the purgeois democratic governdent in Spain on July 17th 936.

We showed how the mass movesents of the working class, going Tyond their reformist, Stalinist and archist leaders made impossible coexistence any longer between i capital and an independently rganised workers movement.

The initial reaction to Franco's bellion meant that some "demo satic sections of the bourgeoisie i first opposed his onslaught, and peared, to those who set aside e Marxist method of analysis, to dave a common ground of struggle With the workers movement which • course faced annihilation if Frano were to conquer.

"LIBERALS"

This was one of the reasons why de conception of a 'Popular Front', ringing together reformists, Stalinanarchists and centrists from working class parties and unions th "liberal" " sections of the bourpoisie became established as the sis of the resistance to Franco.

But of course the participation ithin such a 'Popular Front' of le Communist Party reflected also i marked change in the foreign olicy of the Kremlin under the irection of Stalin. After the disastrous defeat of the German working -ass by Hitler in 1933 had been brought about by the criminal ditra left sectarian policies of the IP, which had denounced social democrats as "social fascists" and plit the working class in the face fascism Stalin had moved towards seeking an accomodation with Hitler and with the reactionary heads of state throughout Europe, in the pursuit of "socialism in one bountry" which of course meant tin real terms capitalism in every other country. As a part of Stalin's move to the right therefore the Spanish working class had to be held back from ¡revolution, and the whole of the energies of the wholly Stalinised Spanish Communist Party, which was built rapidly almost from nothing for the very purpose, were diverted towards tying the working dass to the bourgeois parties and subordinating it to the bourgeois state.

WORKERS' CONTROL

As the civil war began, as we showed in the last article effective dual power was established throughout Spain, with local workers organisations seizing control of factories transport, army barracks and al the resources needed to defend gainst the fascist armies.

But on a national level the kadership was paralysed. The bourgoois democratic government of Azana had suppressed all news of the coming rebellion and continsously attacked the working class.

The question posed to these ministers was - what is more important, democracy or capitalism? Democracy could only be defended by the revolutionary mobilisation of the working class, which would sweep away the power of the bourgeoisie.

BREAK

Only the Trotskyists were able consistently to show that in such a situation the defence of the workdes Just be through a break mories parties from the prog peasants of Spain on socialist In Spain in 1936, as in every period of dual power, the bourgeois government was only able to continue through the entry into it of representatives of the reformist workers organisations who thereby became the main prop for the bourgeoisie. For seven weeks however the socialist leaders dared not enter the government.

Despite this, the workers' state remained embryonic, scattered in the various committees which were not brought together into national Workers Councils.

It was the failure of the workers parties to carry this through that led the socialists, the anarchists and entually join in governmental coll- the centrists of the POUM to evaboration with the bourgeois republicans. To refuse to build soviets in the middle of civil war means to recognise the right of the liberal bourgeoisie to govern the struggle, i.e. to dictate its social and political limits.

Only through the creation of independent class organs could the working class have determined the social and political content of the fight against fascism.

Once the bourgeoisie were conceded the right to govern the struggle they set about ending the situation of dual power. This was, however, no easy task. Central to carrying this out was the role of former left' Largo Caballero, who not only joined the Popular Front along with two lefts' three right wing reformists, two Stalinists and five bourgeois ministers, but took the leading role as Prime Minister. He summed up his betrayal this way: "The government was constituted, all those forming it previously renouncing the defence of our principles and particular tendencies, {except the bourgeois ministers.] in order to remain united on one sole aspiration: to defend Spain in her struggle against fascism" [October Ist, 1936] All the 'left' talk, based on no Carillo: present CP leader, played treacherous role.

alternative prod tenuted only on Caballero's capitulation to the fraudulent delence of bourgeois democracy. Caballero's government refused to nationalise the land, only giving to the peasants the land of known fascists. The peasants who feared that the land might be taken back at a future date wanted the land nationalised for all time.

When the government failed to do this the one chance of sowing __ha of tha the factories. Caballero put government directors into the factories who limited the workers committees to routine work. Among the strongest opponents of dual power and the independent organisations of the working class were the The struggle of the liberal bourgeoisie to end dual power in Catalonia could not proceed at the same speed as it had done in other parts of Spain. In the aftermath of the fascist uprising the Catalans had set up their own government headed by the bourgeois republican, Companys.

While the workers organisations were just as preapred to enter this government as. they had been to enter the bourgeois government in Madrid, the Catalan workers were not so ready to give up workers' control of the militias and the factories and the collectivisation of the land. Indeed Barcelona, the Catalonian capital had led the first armed struggle against the fascists.

Although the Catalan government refused to arm the workers against the rebellion, CNT (anarchist) and POUM. workers raided sporting goods stores for rifles, construction sites for dynamite, fascist homes for concealed weapons, and brought out their few guns remaining from the 1934 struggles.

POLITICAL As the fascists began to lead soldiers out of the barracks they met the workers barricades. As Felix Morrow describes in his Revolution and Counter Revolution in Spain:

... here political weapons more than made up for the superior armament of the fascists. Heroic workers stepped forward from the lines to call upon the soldiers to learn why they were shooting down their fellow toilers. They fell under rifle and machine gun fire, but others took their place. Here and there a soldier began shooting wide. Soon bolder ones turned on their officers. Some nameless military genius - perhaps he died then -seized the moment and the mass of workers abandoned their prone positions and surged forward. The first barracks were taken. General Goded was captured that afternoon.

With arms from the arsenals the workers cleaned up Barcelona. Within a few days, all Catalonia was in their hands."

These heroic struggles took place throughout the industrial cities of Spain. The Asturian miners outfitted a column of five thousand dynamiters who marched to Madrid and took up guard duty in the streets. The working class fought fascism while its leaders sought only to fuse with the "liberal"

bourgeoisie.

The POUM began to talk of organising the workers committees on a national scale but then proceeded to do nothing about it. By October, the first great advance of the counter revolution in Catalonia was marked by the decree dissolving all the workers committees, whatever their names.

A few days later a further decree ordered the disarming of the workers. The socialists, the anarchists, and the POUM voted for both these decrees and continued to sit in the government.

In an attempt to confuse workers as to their real intentions the coalition introduced "workers' control" of the banks, in effect, the guarding of the banks by the workers to prevent money being distributed to fascist sympathisers, until the promised nationalisation of the banks, an. event which of course never took place.

The early months of 1937 saw the further whittling away of working class control over the economy.

Eventuallv. through its control of Madrid government and then the Catalan government in Barcelona were able to end workers control of the factories by refusing to extend or threatening to withdraw credits to factories run by workers committees.

The Stalinists took Ministry of Supply and the workers committees which had kept the population fed while they produced arms for the fight against the fascists.

An important aspect of the destruction of the independent class organisations by the coalition government was the introduction of censorship. The CNT-POUM press and radio suffered the worst with their papers frequently not appearing for days on and or "getting lost" between the cities and the Ultimately though, a stable bourgeois regime could only be established if the organisation of the armed struggle against the fascists was taken out of the hands of the unions and workers parties. The Stalinists very quickly handed their militias over to government control but the masses organised in the CNT were not prepared to follow suit.

The CNT and POUM representatives in the government nevertheless voted for decrees setting up the first regular regiments ruled by the old military code rather than by elected committees.

The real issue was" not as the Stalinists argued the advantages of "centralised command' over loosely organised militias but, over who was to control the army, the working class or the bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie won on this question because the UGT-POUM-CNT made the error of seeking a proletarian controlled army within a bourgeois state.

Bourgeois control of the armed force could only have been prevented by bringing the soldiers into daily political life through a national council of soldiers delegates and workers control of the army. It was precisely this method that had enabled the 9,000 strong POUM militia to lead the social conquest of Aragon. But because the POUM and the anarchists had no concrete slogan of workers committees nor any programme for replacing the bourgeois state, their opposition to bourgeois domination of the army coll the strugele of the bourgeoisie against the POUM and the anarchists was enthusiastically supported by the Stalinists. Not content with sticking to "legal methods' they set up a number of 'preventoriums'.

These were nothing less than the Stalinists' own private prisons and torture chambers in which untold thousands of anarchists and social ists were tortured and murdered.

In this context we find a familtime in the history Morrow tells us: 'Rodriguez, CNT member and Special Commissioner of Prisons, in April formally charged Jose Cazorla, Stalinist Central Committee member and Chief of Police under the Madrid Junta, and Santiago Carillo, another Central Committee member, of illegally seizing workers arrested by Cazorla but acquitted by the popular tribunals and "taking said acquitted parties to secret jails or sending them into communist militia battalions in advanced positions to be used as 'fortifications"" • [Morrow, pp129 - 30] PROVEN STALINIST Carillo, who later replaced Cazorla as Chief of Police, is now the General Secretary of the illegal Spanish Communist Party. This is how he politically "proved himself" as a Stalinist leader, and made his "contribution" to the fight against The anarchists, because they had always rejected the idea of the state were by now completely disorientated. Failing to distinguish between a workers state and a bourgeois state they had, now that their oppostion to the state was dropped, joined a bourgeois government which was forcing them more and more to the right.

ANARCHIST This was leading to a split between the CNT leadership and their mass following. The POUM could have stepped into the breach and fought for the leadership of the CNT masses. Instead it continued to proclaim that the Stalinists were leading the counter-revolution whilst remaining in the government alongside them. Whereas POUM did call for a congress of union, peasant and combatants delegates, the congress in itself could not solve the basic political task of the POUM: to wrest from the Stalinists and anarchists the political leadership of a majority of the working class. By demanding that the government call the conference instead of starting to elect delegates itself, the whole idea was still born. From these centrist positions it was but a short step to the renunciation of Leninism. The POUM left wing were expelled and a section constituted themselves as the Spanish Trotskyist movement.

but they were too small to win the leadership of large sections of the working class.

CENTRISM

The betrayals which resulted from these centrist positions of the POUM leadership are illustrated by Morrow:

«The POUM had a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate the efficacy of this method [for working class control of the armyl. On the Aragon front it had for eight months direct organisational control over some 9,000 militiamen. It nad an unparalieled opportunity to educate them politically, to elect soldiers' committees among them as an example to the rest of the militias, then to demand amalgamation in which its trained forces would have been a powerful leaven.

Nothing was done...

The simple, concrete siogan of elected soldiers' committees was the only road for securing proletarian control of the army. This slogan, moreover, could only be a transitional step. For a workercontrolled army could not exist indefinitely side by side with the bourgeois state. If the bourgeois state continued to exist, it would inevitably destroy workers' control of the army"

Revolution and Counter Revolutio in (main nn 177 - 1281

Scan page 7

eadership Vita RESS, Wednesday August. h 1975 ¡EJO