How Fascists Took State Power: N04 Ensures Defeat

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Azana with his ministers in the Popular front government. Front (l. to r.) Albornoz, Giral, Azana, Lerroux, PART TWO OF DAVID WHITFIELD's Nicolau,d'Olwer.

Capitalism in crisis continually sows the seeds of fascism, but specific conditions are required for these to flourish. Weeding out individual parts as they appear above the surface is vital, but not enough; only a revolutionary alternative to the anarchic methods of capitalism can destroy these seeds before they germinate.

By failing to solve the revolutionary tasks posed in Spain, the 1931-33 Republican government contributed directly to the rise of the CEDA, and its electoral triumph in 1933.

Gil Robles, leader of the CEDA, had been deeply impressed by his experience of Hitler's methods and attempted to reproduce these in Spain, by holding mass rallies and imitating the rhetoric of Nazism.

NOT EQUIPPED But for all its electoral successes the CEDA was not equipped to develop into a mass fascist party capable of taking power.

Drawing his support mainly from the large landowners and big bourgeoisie, Gil Robles could not put forward a "radical' programme of social transformation that could effectively mobilise the petty bourgeoisie and lum penproletariat With its extreme right wing politics heavily dependent on monarchism and the most reactionary aspects of catholicism, the CÉDA came to seek a parliamentary road to fascism, which was to prove its downfall.

At the same time other small groupings came together on a very different basis. Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera founded the Falange Espanola (Spanish Phalanx) in October 1933, but six months later was driven to unite his organisation ARTICLE ON THE SPANISH Primo de Rivera programme modelled closely that of Mussolini.

Jose Antonio was in fact a paid agent of Mussolini. The new organisation was still very small (3,000 members at the very most), but the youth sections of the Socialist Party recognised its significance and waged a campaign to drive the Falangists off the streets.

Armed skirmishes broke out, but these were only a part of the whole movement of the working class which responded with militant self-defence to the attacks launched by Tremanu's sonatinary governCIVIL After the crushing of the Asturian commune of 1934, the second of the 'two black years' of the Spanish Republic was one of intensifying struggle.

Increasingly the government was forced to send the Civil Guard into action against peasants who had expropriated land.

As the state attempted to close down unions and the labour press, workers asserted their strength and independence by forming illegal organisations and publishing illegal papers.

STRIKES

Capitalists, who sought to resolve their economic crisis by assaults on the proletariat, were confronted with strikes for higher wages and better conditions.

Constantly subjected to these local attacks, the bourgeois state was afflicted with near total paralysis on May Day 1935 as the working class united in a national general strike.

It became clear to sections of the ruling class that parliamentary democracy could no longer serve their interests by even controlling, let alone preventing this movement.

Gil Robles, now Minister of War, made preparations for the inevitable confrontation in the struggle for state power: fortifications were placed round Madrid, arms stockpiled, and the army reorganised (this task was trusted to that loyal servant of the Republic, General Franco).

At the same time he manoeuvred to oust the Radicals and other right wing forces to enable the CEDA to form a government which would establish a corporate state.

"DEMOCRATIC"

But here he was frustrated.

Sections of the bourgeoisie still reckoned that their rule could be maintained by 'democratic' methods, and when governmental GERMANY The bienio negro" had not just been a black period for Spanish workers alone. The defeat of the German proletariat with Hitler's rise to power had tipped the international balance of forces against the working class.

Far more important the Soviet leadership had reacted in 1935 by a further switch of international policy adopting the policy of the Popular Front which was to sacrifice millions of workers to fascism in order to preserve the bureaucratic caste in the Kremlin.

The course of the Spanish revolution was to be determined not by the strength of the bourgeoisie and tions of Hitler and Mussolinibut by the leadership of the Spanish working class.

In their battle against fascism, the Spanish workers had already shown constant heroism and determination but this spontaneous resistance could not of itself develop a conscious programme necessary for the completion of a revolutionary As the strength and power of the working class grew, it became more, not less necessary for a revolutionary leadership to direct that movement.

Five years earlier Trotsky had declared that to solve the tasks created by the Spanish situation 'three conditions are required: a party; once more, a party; again a party!' The events of 1936 showed with a terrible force that such a party had not been forged.

In calling the February elections, Zamora had been confident that a majority would be returned for the bourgeois parties of the 'centre'. He miscalculated badly.

On the one hand, the parties of the right had come together in a National Front; on the other, the Popular Front had been formed and scored a massive victory.

The Spanish Popular Front was a classic formation of its kind. United not simply to exchange votes, but on the basis of a common programme, Socialists and Stalinists here worked side by side with the Republican left led by Azana, the Catalan separatists of the Esquerra and even the Republican Union, an opportunist split from Lerroux's Radical Party.

BOURGEOIS The programme they adopted was inevitably that of the bourgeois parties: no proposals for limiting the power of the army and the church; rejection of land nationalisation and redistribution; rejection of workers control; rejection of nationalisation of the banks, unemployment benefit and other measures argued by the Socialist There was not even a hint of action to resolve the colonial question in Morocco, or the question of self-determination for the Catalans and Basques within Spain.

And for this, no different in its policies from those which had failed in 1931-33, the Socialists joined the Popular Front!

But the political situation was now very different from that of 1931. Despite the most strenuous efforts of their treacherous leaders, the masses of workers and peasants who elected the Popular Front into office did not content themselves with that gesture.

REPRESSION

Azana's government not only declined to act on the limited reforms of its programme; it also continued aspects of the repression.

But in every region of Spain peasants seized land to divide among themselves and workers struck on economic demands.

This movement swelled to reach its first peak in April, when the anarchist CNT, supported by UGT workers, called a general strike in Madrid to protest against fascist attacks.

Azana was now forced to turn to the reformist right wing of the Socialist Party to regain some control of the mass movement. But Haunt to haina Driotn into the Cabinet was frustrated by tr party's leftwing, which declared Madrid that the bourgeoisie cou not carry out the democratic tas! of the revolution, and so proleta ian revolution was the immedia necessity.

A major struggle developi within the Socialist Party, and tr daily took on a greater significan as the strike wave swept on wi increasing strength, now throwi up political demands alongside t gathering economic claims.

REACTION

As the crisis in the Popu Front continued, the forces of re tion prepared their interventic The activity of the fascists h increased at a considerable ra While the failure of its parliame tary strategy had resulted in t collapse of the CEDA, the Falar had grown rapidly, drawing forces from the lumpenproletari especially unemployed youth. membership was now 10,0 (excluding several thousand stude supporters) and there were further 15,000 close sympathise Rivera, along with the ot leaders, had been imprisoned wr the Falange was outlawed in Mar and now the group had develo rapidly into an anti-Republi terrorist force, beyond his perso control.

At the same time, Jose Anto had been in contact with the ar officers who were plotting the cr in which the Falange was to pla significant but complex part.

On July 17, the army broke out in Morocco and in garrisons throughout Spain;

Civil War had begun.

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PASARAN:

AYA TUMBA-DEL- FASCISMO-6 GREKONOUISTAR MICRID 'They Shall Not Pass!' The famous slogan displayed in Madrid.

MORAD SRREREITAS TEYTRKISHERM NTES MORIR RECONSEN ARTIRAL At every turn, Franco was able to advance only because the policies followed by the Popular Front had paved the way for him.

The initial organisation of the uprising was possible because the Popular Front had refused to reform the army.

Franco's military advance across Spain could be made because the peasants fed the ranks of his armythe peasants whom the Popular Front had refused to feed.

Azana's government had prepared the conditions for this attack on the Republic by its grotesquely inadequate policies; but the government was not at all prepared to change its policies in the fight to defend the Republic.

The Republicans first tried to suppress all news of the uprising: their main initiative was to attempt craven negotiations with its leaders, who rebuffed them.

ARMS SEIZED

In detiance of this further treachery, the workers broke into the arsenals to arm themselves, attacked the garrisons and entered into long, drawn-out struggle with the enemies outside the Republic, and the traitors within it.

In pace with the counter-revolution outside, a situation of dual power rapidly emerged internally.

It was in Catolonia that this revolutionary situation developed to its highest level, under the leadership of the CNT and the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista-Workers' Party of Marxist Unification)The POUM had been formed in September 1935 as a fusion of the Workers and Peasants Bloc with former forces of the International Left Opposition in Spain which had abandoned the call to build the Fourth International and followed Andreas Nin and Andrade in dissolving their political principles within this centrist group.

Ten months later the POUM broke from its support for the Popular Front and joined with the anarchists in recognising that the civil war had to be fought by political as well as military methods a thoroughly revolutionary counter-offensive had to be launched.

MILITIAS

Factories were brought under workers' control, land seized by the peasants, militias formed; all under the leadership of the 'Central Committee of Anti-fascist Militias of Catalonia'.

Here all the workers' organisations united to co-ordinate the activity of the factory committees against Franco's army.

LAND REDISTRIBUTED Nor did the workers confine the revolution to Catalonia. Militias marched into Aragon as an army of social liberation: here too the land was redistributed to the peasants, and collectives established to control all aspects of social life. The peasants of Aragon were won to the side of the revolutionary proletariat.

But although the anarchists and the POUM acted at this stage as if they understood the theory of permanent revolution, they were soon to show themselves inadequate to the tasks of revolutionary leadership.

In September 1936 the Popular Front government was re-formed, and the leader of the left Socialists, Largo Caballero, entered as Prime Minister.

Caballero declared: 'This government was constituted-all those forming it previously renouncing the defence of our principles and particular tendencies-in order to remain united on one sole aspiration: to defend Spain in her struggle against fascism.

What this declaration really signified was that the left Socialists had abandoned their principles-in order to support the principle of the bourgeois parties: the defence of private property against the demands of the working class. Bishops bless the Fascists' cause.

At the same time, the POUM and CNT entered the government of Catalonia. Precisely at the point where it was necessary to break from the bourgeois state, to develop the embryonic forms of workers' control into soviets and organise them nationally into a workers' government to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, at this point the anarchists and centrists turned their backs on the socialist revolution and followed Caballero into class collaboration.

By this act they virtually ensured the defeat of the Spanish Revolution. For the entry of the workers' parties into the government did nothing to transform the bourgeois character of the Popular COMPROMISED On the contrary: while the left Socialists, anarchists and POUM compromised their principles, their participation in the government enabled the bourgeoisie to regain control over the mass movement.

In this task it was consciously and ruthlessly assisted by the The Spanish Communist Party was guided by the Soviet bureaucracy's requirement that the international 'status quo' be preserved.

This meant no social revolution in Spain. The CP's contribution to the Republican cause was based entirely on a desire to re-establish stable bourgeois rule, as it frequently declared:

"It is absolutely false that the present workers' movement has for its object the establishment of a proletarian dictatorship, after the war has terminated. .. We are motivated exclusively by a desire to defend the democratic republic.

The CP had grown rapidly in size since the outbreak of civil war but it drew its recruits-particularly in Catalonia-from layers of the petty bourgeoisie terrified by the movement of the working class.

COLLAPSE With the flight of the big bourgeoisie and the collapse of support for the 'left' Republicans, the CP functioned increasingly as the main agent of the bourgeoisie within the Republic.

It was to prove a very efficient henchman. The Stalinists were the first to demand the ending of the People's Army on the way to the front. workers' militias; the outlawing the POUM; the restoration of expropriated property.

In Catalonia and Aragon, the CP moved to oust the anarchists and POUM from the leadership of the workers and peasants-not to assert their own leadership, but to reestablish bourgeois rule.

In May 1937 the forces of the central government supported the Stalinists in their attempt to wrest control of Barcelona from the CNT and POUM militias.

Barricades were thrown up and mass resistance developed, but the anarchist and centrist leaders argued that the workers should cooperate with the Populat Front With this betrayal it was certain that whichever camp-Loyalist or Republican-should win the military war, counter-revolution would triumph in Spain, either as fascism or as a restoration of the bourgeois rule of the Popular Front supported by reformism and international Stalinism.

Barcelona was subdued; the POUM outlawed, its militants massacred along with the CNI'S.

To detail the betrayals and crimes committed by the leaders of the Spanish working class parties in the name of 'democracy' would occupy many issues of Socialist Press.

The pattern had been established and was relentlessly imposed.

While Franco's armies advanced, the government of the Popular Front systematically destroyed the basis of any resistance to fascism.

TERRIFYING The forward movement of the masses presented it with a far n lore terrifying threat than Fran co's nrogress.

In the by the areas occupied by the 'Loyalist' repression was unleashed: mas murders and Farimprisonment, torture and persecution. The elements which flocked to join the CP in the Republican zone, here rushed to the Falange.

But it was not the Falange which seized power. Jose Antonio and many of its leaders had been executed by the Republic; the others were in Franco's entourage. where the Generalissimo played them off agaisnt the monarchists and other extreme reactionaries who tumbled in his wake.

Franco took over the rhetoric of the Falange, adopted some of its trappings, but the party itself he purged so that it formed no threat to his personal power.

It was not in a fascist party that he found his mass base, but in the peasantry which filled the Loyalist armies to overthrow the Republic that had given them nothing but empty promises.

BALANCE

To establish his dictatorship. Franco needed to balance various forces against each other so that he could rise above them; the Falange took its place here along with the army, the church, the major capitalists and large landowners.

When the Republic had been finally crushed in March 1939, the corporate state was imposed on the Spanish working class in the Falangist form-with "vertical" syndicates, as opposed to class-based "horizontal' syndicates-and Jose Antonio was hailed as a martyr.

But the triumph of little to his work.

The responsibility for that victory rests with the leaders of the Spanish workers' movement and above all with the Stalinists. As Trotsky remarked with bitter Irony:

"The work of the Moscow executioners confirms in its own way the correctness of the theory of permanent revolution."

CONCLUDED

Republican refugees head *

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reactionary forces within Spain not even by the military interven-

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and other organs of workers' control, directing them in the war