Part 14: the Red Guards

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One of the clearest lessons r Marxists from the experaces of the uprising and the ris Commune of 1871 was e need for the working class smash the machinery and my of the capitalist state. To i this it is necessary to organi the power of the working Iss on a completely different sis from that of the bourpisie.

HEIGHT

Even the height of the at immune its Central Committee arly expressed this, declaring -y had established: "For the first time... a national litia that defends the citizens linst the state power instead of a manent army that defends the Are b against: the citizens."

Proclamation of Central Committee March 1871.

In the development of the revolutionary crsis in Kussia, particularly after February 1917 this same phenomenon began to emerge in different forms.

On the one hand the growth of Bolshevik and anti-war influence within the army began to rot its structure of discipline and render it progressively more and more incapable of being used to defend the Provisional Government "against the citizens" ', let alone to restore any form of blatantly reactionary regime.

The fiasco of General Kornilov's attempted right wing coup brought this fact forcibly home to both the bourgeoisie and the workers and peasants of Russia.

But at the same time there was emerging a ditterent kina or army, • force based not on the detence of the ruling class, its property and privilege, but drawing on the militancy, class consciousness and self sacrifice of the most advanced layers of workers. This army was the Red Guard.

The traditions of the Red Guard looked back to the 1905 Revolution. It had re-emerged in various forms of Workers Guard during the February 1917 Revolution, , and seems to have played a part in the disappearance at that time of 30,000 revolvers and 40,000 rifles from military stores.

For the next period armed companies of workers patrolled working class areas protecting against attacks by counter-revolutionaries.

REAL FORCE

They backed up the struggle for workers control in the factories lending real force to the side of the working class - often removing or arresting managers and engineers and sometimes even receiving payment from the factory exchequer for their time on patrol As the employers attempted to sabotage production to disrupt the economy, armed workers would protect the factories, taking over the functions of security guards and also of local police.

The period of réaction which followed the July Days demonstrations set back for a while the development of the militias.

In many areas detachments of the Red Guard were forced to go underground and even bury their weapons to avoid searches and confiscations.

But as the repression eased, the Bolsheviks who had devoted most of their attention to work inside the armed forces, took up the question. of arming and systematically organising the various factory militias.

BOOST

This received a boost in August when in the fight against Kornilov machine guns and rifles were given out to the 25,000 workers who enrolled in the newly respectable Red Guard.

Workers from a gunpowder factory presented them with a barge full of grenades and explosives; rifle drill was begun.

By mid October the prestige of the Red Guard had grown still further. It had won the support of the army. irom where resolution after resolution . demanded the And on October 13th the now Bolshevik dominated Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet undertook the task of arming the workers.

Trotsky, to the horror of the capitalist press, signed a requisition on behalf of the Executive Committee for five thousand rifles from the Sestrovesk Arms Factory, and the workers there delivered them up at once.

The Red Guard, with this equipment, was firmiy integrated into the Military Revolutionary Committee established the day before. This Committee, which was crucial to the successful direction of the insurrection included in its staff: the presidiums of the Soviet and the soldiers' section, Bolsheviks, the Vyborg Soviet and the military headquarters. The district militia is fusing with the Red Guard. The district is wholly in the control of the workers. If the government should raid Smolny, the Vyborg district alorie could re-establish a centre and guarantee the further offensive." Trotsky HRR Vol 3, p. 190 INSURRECTION And as the insurrection began, the city was divided into military divisions, while the Red Guard took on the task of guarding the most important points bridges, telephone exchanges and crossroads. Trotsky highlights the class composition of these forces:

"Companies of the Red Guard had emerged from their districts. The worker with a rifle, the bayonet above hat or cap, the title belt over civilian coat - that is the essential image of the 25th October. Cautiously and still

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Review of 'Spain in Crisis, edited by Paul Preston OCTALIST PR I Vesterday 11 ideatly, the armed worker mas hinging order into the capital conquered by him."

The occupation 1 of government buildings proceded and finally the storming of the Winter Palace was accomplished by the victorious : soldiers, sailors and Red Guards.

SOVIET POWER

In the provincial areas, where there were no army units, it was to be the Red Guard which decisively imposed Soviet power and reinforced the gains of the insurrection in the capital. It was perhaps in these struggles that the development of the Red Guard went most explicitly from their original function as defence to offensive organisations for the winning of state power by the working class.

In the year following October 1917 the numbers of-Red Guards rose from 100,000 to oyer 200,000 and the Guard itself was transformed by Trotsky into a solid section of the Red Army of the new Soviet state, playing a decisive role in the defence of the revolution against the attempts at imperialist intervention.

Their courage and discipline, together with the fact that they brought into one fighting unit the members of all the oppressed minority nationalities together with working women, provide a model for the struggle of revolutionaries for the unity and independence of the working class.

The lessons from the Paris Commune were taken to a higher level in the proletarian revolution of 1917 in Russia: they must be taken to a still higher level in the fight for workers' defence today and in the preparation of leadership for revolution in the advanced capitalist countries.

The proletarian army must first begin to emerge in the struggles within the capitalist system itself, and come to full strength in the overthrow of bourgeois rule and the seizing of state power.

This is how the capitalist state machine can be destroyed and its standing army disbanded, remembering the judgement of Marx that:

•. the working class cannot simply lay hold on the ready-made state machinery and wield it for their own purpose. The political instrument of their enslavement cannot serve as the political instrument of their emancipation." July 1976 Forty years ago this week the 2½ years for Franco's army and to crush the Republican forces.

and introduce a regime of un against the working class.

This regime has lasted for nearly forty years. It has survived many crises, including the fall of all the other fascist governments in Europe between 1943 and 1945.

It is now attempting to survive the death of its leader.

To understand the reasons for this longevity is a primary task for the Spanish and international workers movement. It is a necessary part of building a revolutionary strategy to overthrow Francoism tor ever.

ACADEMICS

Spain in Crisis is a book which cannot contribute directly to that task since it is written not from the standpoint of workers or revolutionaries searching for a political strategy, but from the standpoint of a group of left-wing or liberal anti-Francoist academics observing the struggle from the outside.

None of the ten writers, each of whom tackles one aspect of Franco's Spain (the church, the opposition, the peasantry, the working class, the army and so on), confronts . the major political questions.

And where some approach is made to them, as in Paul Preston's introduction, the conclusions are both superficial and dangerous.

Preston claims that a substantial section of what he calls the 'economic oligarchy' is now in favour of democracy in Spain.

It is widely felt, he says, that ....continued development dependent on entry into the Common Market...Entry into Europe requires democratisation.' As a result, *the crisis of the regime has created a coincidence of interest between part of the economic oligarchy and the opposition.' Several of the other contributors to the book share this opinion that the political structure of Francoism has become an obstacle in the path of capitalism in Spain.

TREACHEROUS

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LIC EI •1:25 =5 : ET= present i: is 00e 1s:: == "progressive sections of the ispri ist class both in Spain and internationally.

But the book also contains, (even though its authors fail to interpre: iti the historical evidence wh sons just how wrong these VE: 11' =:= =.iE:: т 25 -..

• 3:72 published by Harvester Press Spanish 1 Civil War began. It took the Spani sh fascists (the Falange) strangle the Spanish revolution paralleled repression and terror in 1936 Having • maintained brilliantly opportunistic virtual neutrality during the fighting, Franco was nonetheless widely believed at the end of the war to be close to total defeat. All his international allies had surrendered, some of the exiled Spanish opposition had fought in the British or US armies, confident that the Western democracies would at the end of the war use their power to overthrow Franco.

In Britain the Labour government came to power, in France and Italy the Communist Parties were in the government Spain was diplomatically isolated; it was unanimously refused membership of the United Nations.

ALLIANCE

The Communist Party, scenting the downfall of Franco scarcely needed the prompting of Moscow (which accepted Spain as part of the Western capitalist sphere of influence) to declare a broad cross-class alliance as its strategy for the opposition.

Lader the sponsorship of Ernest *=e British Labour Foreign tim i Saais Pary and 225-3 MR IT I E DALE • I= STE TIETE 219= =::: =::22415 PROCESS 3u: agat they teared abore all that ine process which mas necessary to bring that about could not be controlled and would raise once again the danger of the social revolution which Franco had originally strangled on behalf of capitalism.

Franco F2:222 the massment :85: I= LT He reduced the power of the Falange by bringing other ultra-right wing, especiaily Catholic, forces into his government.

The Falange, or National Movement, was reduced in status from a 'state party' to an 'instrument of national unity'.

The fascist salute ceased to be compulsory and Franco issued a new 'democratic' Charter of the Spaniards in which: 'the Spanish State prociaims, as the guiding principle of its acts, respect for the dignity, the integrity and the liberty of the individual."

BRUTAL

All this did not make the slightest difference in practice to the ruthless and brutal Francoist dictatorship. Yet it proved enough to get the capitalist countries to swallow their embarassment and one by one to recognise Franco's regime.

By 1951 it was receiving vast amounts of aid from the United States in exchange for American air bases.

The 'progressive' sections of the world capitalist class (with the close collaboration of the Soviet bureaucracy far from helping to overthrow Franco had helped to guarantee him power for life.

FAKE

Franco's successors are now using the same fake democratic language that Franco resorted to in 1945 and at other times.

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23x Dr Penk :0 9 elfiei Pare 7 11830 Militiamen patrol Madrid street There is no sign whatever that their democratic intentions are any more honourable than Franco's were.

The strategy of the Communist and Socialist parties in Spain depends on spreading the illusion that the capitalist class is prepared now to support in Spain a growth in democratisation when in the rest of the world, in an effort to solve the economic crisis, it is moving in exactly the opposite direction.

NOT PREPARED Not that the "progressive' sections of either the Spanish or the world capitalist class are any more prepared now than they were then to give real assistance to a struggle in which they know that their own power will be called into NO OBSTACLE Spanish fascism has lasted from the previous economic crisis to the present one. For that reason the features of Francoism which are claimed in this book to be an obstacle to capital are on the contrary, precisely what it requires.

There is no objective basis for a period of bourgeois democracy in Spain. And the post-war capitalist 'economic miracle' makes that more true rather than less true. The defeat of Francoism, therefore, depends on the development by the working class of an independent and revolutionary strategy