70th Anniversary of the Spanish Civil War
To commemerate the 70th Anniversary of the Spanish Civil War we publish this article written by Nigel Peacock, Socialist Party Melbourne.
The victory of the Popular Front in February 1936 raised the expectations of workers around the world. Many asked could Spain offer an answer to the rise of fascism with Mussolini in power in Italy and Hitler in Nazi Germany? The events leading up to and surrounding the revolution of 1936 and the subsequent Spanish Civil War resounded throughout the world.
The Spanish working class doubled in numbers from 1910 –30 based mainly in Catalonia as a result in a sharp rise in industrialisation. However, over half the population were either peasants or landless agricultural labourers. 100,000 landlords owned 12 million acres of land whilst 1 million peasants owned just 6 million acres. Earlier Republican governments failed to achieve land reform because of ties to the Spanish landowning bourgeoisie.
The Popular Front
In February 1936, a ‘Popular Front’ led by Manuel Azana and largely consisting of representatives of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) and Left Republicans formed a government. A Popular Front is a government based on an alliance between parties representing both workers and bourgeoisie parties. The policies of the bourgeoisie parties (even in other Popular Fronts where they are in a minority) dominate the alliance through their control of the media, state etc.
Unfortunately, the Spanish Communist Party (CP) participated in this Popular Front Government, giving it a legitimacy in the eyes of the masses. The Spanish CP was slavishly following the policies of the Communist International, or Comintern, to which all National Communist Parties affiliated. The Comintern was dominated by the undemocratic and reactionary ideas and practices of Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union. These ideas and practices became known as Stalinism. The Comintern changed its position of the early 1930s from one false idea of condemning all other leftwing parties as ‘social fascists’ to an equally false one of making alliances with middle class and even bourgeois parties, and completely watering down its policies to achieve this.
A significant though far smaller force in the Popular Front Government was the POUM – an anti-Stalinist party that identified itself as Marxist, but wavered between reformism and revolution.
The two largest mass worker organisations were the Socialist Party aligned to the UGT (trade union federation), and the CNT (Confederation Nacional de Trabajo) The CNT was an anarcho-syndicalist industrial union and was loosely federated via an organisation known as the FAI. The CNT-FAI did not at this point participate in the government. Anarcho-syndicalists believe that changes can only occur through industrial struggle and because of this it did not participate in political struggle or in the government.
The Popular Front had come to power due to a wave of support from the working class and peasant militancy. Its formation was the result of popular resistance during a two year period known as ‘Beinno Niegro’. This was an era of right wing reaction in Spain led by CEDA, a party that was staunchly conservative catholic, anti republican and pro-monarchist. The period was characterised by harsh wage reductions and rapidly rising unemployment.
After its election the pressure from workers and peasants upon the Popular Front was immense. This pressure forced the Popular Front to take measures that it would have preferred to avoid, such as implementing a 44-hour working week and imposing wage increases upon employers. Workers themselves were moving ahead of the Government and took direct action to secure the release of 30,000 political prisoners. They enforced the re-employing of thousands of sacked workers with two years back pay. Fascist sympathisers were expelled from factories. However because the Popular Front was primarily defending the interests of the Spanish ruling class it could never meet even the basic the needs of the Spanish workers and peasants. It was a regime, according to historian Hugh Thomas, that ‘frightened the middle classes without satisfying the workers’.
Workers Revolution
The mass of workers and peasants did not trust the Popular Front government, particularly after their earlier experience of the Republic. Regardless of the reformist position held by the workers representatives in the government, the revolution was dynamically unfolding. There were 113 general strikes and 228 partial strikes between February and July 1936. The Popular Front was in government but the instruments of state power were being systemically undermined. The working class and peasants collectives were effectively running two thirds of Spain’s economy.
Workers in factories seized control from their capitalist employers, many of whom fled Spain. Local factory committees of workers took full democratic control of the running of business, wages and profit distribution. Workers control flourished in workplaces across Spain but nowhere stronger than in Barcelona. Likewise peasants seized land and turned large farms into cooperative enterprises. Free schooling was made available in many areas.
The revolution was extending its gains to all aspects of society. Reactionary clergy of the Catholic Church, who largely supported the fascists, were thrown out of towns and cities across Spain. With the widespread participation of women in the revolutionary movements, traditional gender relations were being challenged. Widespread male chauvinism in the revolutionary movement itself was brought into question by women activists.
The fascist uprising
This situation could not last indefinitely, and on 17 July 1936 General Franco, supported by a majority of capitalists, led an armed uprising of fascists and counter-revolutionaries. The working class responded immediately, with demonstrations of hundreds of thousands in Madrid on 18July 1936 demanding arms from the government. However this determination was not matched by the Republican (Popular Front ) Government. The capitalist ministers within the government acted as a brake on the workers movement. The Republican Prime Minister Quiroga responded to workers’ demand to be armed by declaring that ‘anyone who gave arms to the workers without government approval would be shot’. Tragically, in the regions of Seville, Granada and Cordoba, fascist officers were successful in suppressing the workers because of the role played by PSOE and CP officials in persuading demonstrating workers to return to their homes.
However, In Valencia, when the government led by the Republican union refused to arm the working class organisations, namely the UGT and CNT, a general strike ensued and took action to take the Army barracks by force. Likewise, in Barcelona and Madrid the CNT and Socialist militias with little more than their bare hands took control of the barracks. Revolutionary youth in particular played a decisive role in these battles.
The question of power
July to September 1936 was a crucial period, where the CNT-FAI faced a decision. Would it seek to co-ordinate and unify the workers struggles, through a systemn of local and national workers councils that could become the basis for a new and democratic state. This was a situation described by Trotsky as “dual power†ie one were the ruling class and working class were both challenging for power..The anti-fascist militias were formed into a committee structure dominated by the CNT-FAI. The CNT-FAI, however, refused to make the committee the real instrument of power, and a revolutionary opportunity was missed. . Political power was, in fact, atomized between regions and between the anarchist anti-fascist committee and the Popular Front Generalitat (military command).
There then followed a a succession of resignations by Republican prime ministers, Caballero formed a government of Left and Right Socialists, Communists, Left Republicans and even a few members from the right. Remarkably in September 1936 representatives of the CNT-FAI were drawn into the Generalidad and by October there were CNT-FAI ministers in the government.
The POUM, though far smaller in size, had grown massively in its numbers during 1936, from a party of a few thousand to upwards of 50,000 members. Like the CNT-FAI, it was also drawn into supporting the Popular Front government by Caballero. Andres Nin, a former Trotskyist, became minister for justice in the Catalan government and the POUM also joined the Generalidad in September 1936.
Counter–revolution
The policies and actions of the Spanish Communist Party during this period was a complete betrayal of the Spanish workers and peasants. Stalin’s foreign policy at the time was based on reaching an alliance with the British and French governments. Also for Stalin a workers victory in Spain would have risked inspiring the working class in Russia to rise up and overthrow him. From August to September in 1936 the Soviet Union did not send any arms to Spain. To keep up the illusions of workers internationally however the Soviet Union was forced to send arms from October 1936. The CP sought to limit the extent of the workers movement – handing back occupied factories and land to the capitalists and landlords in the name of ‘defending the republic’. The CP, for example, in August 1936 stated ‘the Spanish people… are not striving for the dictatorship of the proletariat but know only one aim: the defense of the republican order while respecting property’. .The next step in the betrayal of the revolution was to disarm the workers militias. Stalin, significantly, had already held back from supplying arms until the most militant anarchist and revolutionary socialists were contained. After drawing in the CNT-FAI and POUM into supporting the Popular Front government, the workers militias, with their democratic election of officers, were disbanded, and ‘unified’ into the armed forces with no democratic accountability. The CP, and republicans in effect created an army along bourgeois lines, with appointed officers and a hierarchy of command.
The conflict with Popular Front forces came to a head by May 1937. The Communist Party openly launched an assault on the CNT-FAI and POUM by attacking the Barcelona telephone exchange. Workers reacted by successfully retaking it. Barricades appeared in Barcelona and other Catalonian towns. International Brigade troops, despite their allegiance to the Communist Party, refused to act against the workers. Both the majority of the CNT-FAI and POUM, however, called on workers to disarm and re-unify with the Popular Front and the moment was lost. For a second time in under a year, the question of a workers state was critical. As Trotsky pointed out, no one could have prevented the CNT-FAI from establishing whatever regime they desired. Instead the door was left open for a vicious suppression of revolutionaries.
Caballero, whilst an apologist and collaborator with the Republicans and Stalinists, resigned in May 1937. The right-wing of the Socialists took over under Juan Negrin took over. A campaign of assassinations and intimidation was carried out against CNT-FAI and the POUM militants, including the murder of its leader Andres Nin. These attacks on the most conscious layer of revolutionaries led eventually to mass disillusionment with the Popular Front. By mid 1938 Franco, with the military support of Hitler and Mussolini, had split the Republican Front in two. By early 1939 Franco’s forces had achieved total victory with the fall of Madrid.
A few lessons
The Popular Front was not made stonger by the inclusion of the ‘liberal’ bougoise parties. In fact it became a’ gigantic brake put up by traitors’, that could not solve any of the huge challenges it faced. Despite the role played by the CP it was possible that if the other left parties had had the correct policies then the Spanish revolution could have been successful.
Trotsky, in his critique of the POUM, argued that it avoided conflict by not carrying out revolutionary work in the republican army. Instead, the POUM built its own union and militias, or occupied its section of the front. It isolated the revolutionary vanguard from the working class and left it without leadership. The POUM’s closeness to the Popular front – its centrist policies – left it vulnerable to reprisal and its eventual annihilation.
For anarchism, the CNT-FAI leadership’s lack of decisive action when faced with power was deadly. The alternative of supporting the Popular Front, however reluctantly, compromised its revolutionary potential led also to its destruction by the Stalin backed Front. Various sections of the anarcho-syndicalist movement (such as the Friends of Durruti), the POUM, along with the two tiny Trotskyist parties did attempt to offer a revolutionary perspective. They came to similar positions of a revolution along Bolshevik lines in the form of establishing a federation of worker councils in control of the state. But their lack of unity and fragmentation placed them in a very vulnerable position when the Stalinist purge of 1937-38 carried out by the Communist Party took place.
Stalin’s support for the Popular front and repression of the working class revolution was borne out of defending the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy. A victory of revolution in Spain could have inspired the regaining of workers democracy in the Soviet Union. He also attempted to placate France and England from moving against the Soviet state and subjugated the Popular Front to this goal.
The Popular Front was not just a collaboration of class forces but a ‘gigantic brake put up by traitors’. In spite of its tragic dimensions, the Spanish revolution remains a prime example of the potential of class emancipation. It demonstrated that workers can move ahead of their representatives in bourgeois governments in accomplishing collective control of society. What was missing in his situation was a revolutionary organisation cable of carrying through the impetus from below in establishing a workers revolutionary state.
