"Spain Betrayed: How the Popular Front Opened the Gates to Franco" (M. Casanova)

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/spain2/

Introduction
from Revolutionary History

This account was first published over the pseudonym of M. Casanova as a pamphlet in the Le Tract collection (no.3) and in Quatrième Internationale, no.17, May 1939. It has since been twice republished, in pamphlet form in the Cahiers de la 4è Internationale (no.1) in February 1971 by the Ligue Communiste Révolutionaire, the French section of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (Mandel/Maitan tendency), and in Les Cahiers du CERMTRI, no.41, June 1986. A rather free translation of the first few chapters appeared as The Popular Front’s Flight from Spain in New International, Volume 5 no.4 (whole number 31), April 1939, pp.101-4, which has been incorporated into this English version.

What follows has thus long been known to French readers, whilst being almost unknown in Britain. It belongs to a rich class of literature of the political memoirs of the Spanish Civil War written by insiders and participants. Some of these are of the nature of personal memoirs (for example El Campesino, Listen Comrades, London 1952, and Jésus Hernández, Yo Fuí un Ministro de Staline, Mexico 1953), whilst others concentrate almost exclusively upon political analysis (Grandizo Munis, Jalones de derrota: Promesa de victoria, Mexico 1948). Although it is intended to belong to the second of these categories, the author’s personal experiences are strongly drawn upon, and they are especially rich in detail about the workings of the economy of Republican Spain and the impact of the Popular Front upon the working class movement at grass roots level.

In spite of its artless style (the author admits that he is no writer), its loose structure (he admits its extempore character, p.101) and its heavy use of the Thucydidean speech form, it is in fact an analysis of considerable political sophistication. Its prophecies, that the Miaja-Casado plotters would receive no reward for their treachery (pp.199, 207), that Stalin would drop the policy of an alliance with the democratic imperialist powers and make another sharp turn (p.206), and that far from being a mere puppet of German imperialism, Franco would in the end bargain with Britain (p.214 n66), were not long in confirmation.

Because it was so overshadowed in length and scope by Felix Morrow’s Revolution and Counter-revolution in Spain (New York 1938), the book was little noticed among the groups of the non-Stalinist left. Most English readers will only have heard of it in Trotsky’s defence in The Class, the Party and the Leadership, a manuscript found unfinished on his desk when he was killed in 1940 (L. Trotsky, The Spanish Revolution 1931-39, New York 1973, pp.353-66). The magazine Que Faire? which attacked Casanova’s pamphlet was published in Paris from December 1934 by a group of former members of the French Communist Party, to which belonged the exiles Hippolyte Etchebehere and Kurt Landau, both of whom perished in Spain. Apart from Trotsky’s reply to this criticism, we do not know what his opinion was on the rest of Casanova’s pamphlet.

M. Casanova was the pseudonym of Mieczyslaw Bortenstein (1907-1942), who was born of a Polish Jewish family in Warsaw in September 1907 and joined the Young Communists in clandestinity at the age of 16. After his first arrest he emigrated, first of all to Belgium, and then to France, where he joined the Young Communists in 1927. Again arrested in August 1930, he was given another three year sentence for distributing illegal literature, and was expelled to Belgium. On his illegal return to France in 1932 he joined the adult Communist Party, only to be expelled in 1934, after which he joined the French Trotskyist organisation, the Ligue Communiste Internationaliste.

He departed for Spain in July 1936, serving first of all in the militia of the CNT and then in the offices of a factory manufacturing war material, whilst he assisted in the editorial work of La Voz Leninista, the journal of the Spanish Bolshevik-Leninists. After the arrest of Munis and Carlini described below he led the group until the end of the Civil War. Sherry Mangan’s account shows how he managed to get over into France in March 1939, where he tried to board a ship for Mexico at Marseilles. He was arrested and interned in a series of concentration camps, at Vernet (Ariège), “Les Milles”, and Drancy (Seine). On 19 August 1942 he was deported to Auschwitz, where he died.

------------------------------

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/spain2/

Introduction
Author’s Introduction
1. The Tragic Exodus
2. Why Barcelona Was Given Up Without A Fight
3. And the CNT?
4. The Republican Army and its Contradictions
5. The Ideological Factor in the Civil War
6. Can the Francoist Army be Disintegrated?
7. Once More on Technique
8. War Industry
9. What Happened on 19 July?
10. Was there a Proletarian Revolution in Spain?
11. The Events of May 1937
12. The Economy of the Popular Front
13. Food Supplies
14. Republican Order
15. The Withdrawal of the Volunteers
16. The Republican Ideology
17. The Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM)
18. The Anarchists of the Left and the ‘God-Seekers’ in the Light of the Spanish Experience

19. The Fourth International in the Spanish Revolution
20. The Miaja-Casado Pronunciamento
21. What else could have been done?

-----------------------------------


Author’s introduction

The proletariat has sustained a fresh defeat. Franco has seized Catalonia. After more than two and a half years of bloody conflict and of countless sacrifices on the part of the Spanish proletariat, all that has transpired is a new victory for reaction!

The extemporary and somewhat disorganised character of this work arises from the conditions it experienced at its birth. But if it lacks a systematic basis, it does express the most urgent needs of the time.

Comrades questioned me after my return to France. They asked me to explain the reasons for the catastrophe. Why was Barcelona given up without a fight? Why did the Catalan workers, who have demonstrated so much proof of their heroism, not hit back against Fascism? What was the attitude of the workers’ organisations at the critical moment, etc? What most amazed my questioners was the remarkable ease of the Fascist advance, and the fact that Franco had encountered no resistance from the proletariat that had accomplished 19 July. [1]

I have to explain what has just happened on the basis of my own experience. I have to report the facts. I will describe how strategic positions of crucial importance were abandoned without a fight, how defence plans were handed over to the enemy by a treacherous general staff, how the war industry was sabotaged and the economy disorganised, how the finest working class militants were murdered, and how Fascist spies were protected by the ‘Republican’ police, in order to explain how the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat against Fascism was betrayed and Spain was surrendered to Franco.

My analysis and the facts I shall describe all go back to one and the same theme: the criminal policy of the Popular Front. Only the workers’ revolution could have defeated Fascism. The whole policy of the Republican, Socialist, Communist and Anarchist leaders worked to destroy the revolutionary energy of the working class. “First win the war and make the revolution afterwards!” – this reactionary slogan was to kill the revolution only to lose the war afterwards.

Their hopes of winning therefore rested on the support of the so-called ‘democratic’ bourgeoisie of France and Britain. Everything was given up in the name of this policy. They went from capitulation to capitulation, all was betrayed, and the proletariat was demoralised. The POUM was crushed, and then the Anarchists. The bloody Barcelona days were provoked. All this finally resulted in the pro-Franco pronunciamento of Miaja and Casado [2] against the Communists, who had for the previous 30 months been preparing the way for their own destruction.

The uninterrupted succession of the crimes of the Popular Front led to Fascism.

The Republican, Socialist and Anarchist leaders have all had their share in the preparation of this catastrophe. But the real architects of this defeat and crime against the proletariat were undoubtedly the Stalinists. The authority they enjoyed as a result of the banner of the October Revolution, which they purloined and dragged in the mire, was placed at the service of a counter-revolutionary policy.

Yet it is difficult to imagine more favourable objective conditions for the proletarian revolution than those that existed in Spain.

The workers of the entire world must draw the lessons of this tragic experience. Neither Socialism nor Marxism failed in Spain, but those who so criminally betrayed it. Present day society is confronted by a tragic choice: to go backwards, that is to say to preserve capitalism, which can only evolve more and more barbarous forms, or to go forward towards Socialism. The desire to preserve bourgeois democracy is an idiotic illusion. Fascism or proletarian revolution! Such is the dilemma for the international working class.

The foremost duty of the revolutionary vanguard is to enlighten the workers about the real situation, to say what is.

The proletariat has gone from defeat to defeat, but nonetheless there is progress. In Germany in 1933 the working class, led by the Social Democrats and Communists, surrendered completely to Fascism without a fight. In Austria in 1934 the Viennese working class gave the first signal for resistance. The echo of this resistance was the glorious Asturian Commune in Spain. [3]

In spite of the criminal policy of the Popular Front, the proletariat managed to resist for nearly three years. The honour of being capable, not only of resisting, but of defeating Fascism and bringing about the triumph of the proletarian revolution, will fall to the workers of other lands. But to be victorious, the proletariat must forge the weapon of struggle – the revolutionary party and the revolutionary international, the Fourth International.

This work does not pretend to answer all the questions posed by this tragic experience, not even the most urgent. But if the writer of these lines has been able to throw some light and help in understanding the problems of the Spanish Civil War, he will feel that his labour has not been in vain.

M Casanova
Perpignan, 16 March 1939



Notes
1. 19 July 1936 was the day when the working class of Barcelona defeated General Goded’s attempt to take over the city by a military uprising.

2. General José Miaja Menant (1878-1958) and Colonel Segismundo Casado López (1893-1965) were Republican army generals who attempted a coup against the Republican government of Juan Negrín in order to end the Spanish Civil War through negotiations with Franco.

3. The Asturian Commune of October 1934 occurred when the miners of northern Spain, remembering the massacre of the Vienna workers by Dollfüss earlier in the year, rose against the growing influence of the reactionary CEDA on the government of Lerroux. They ran Asturias as a Soviet republic for a fortnight until smashed by Francisco Franco’s army.

----------------------------------------


1. The Tragic Exodus
How did you get out?

Well, it wasn’t so easy, not at all a de luxe trip.

In spite of his tiredness, his good humour has not deserted him. He tells us his exciting adventures, and adds:

The French frontier is guarded by gendarmes and by Senegalese troops who do not speak French. They do not let even French citizens get through if they don’t have a proper passport. As for the Spaniards, during certain hours of the day they let through the women, children and wounded, but the others are driven back without pity.

Our comrade, who accomplished the 100 kilometres between him and the frontier partly by hitch-hiking and partly on foot, added:

The sights I beheld on the roads leading to the frontier were horrible. This headlong exodus – of women, some of them pregnant – of children – of wounded, some of them with a leg amputated, trying in vain to stop a motor car – others hastily evacuated from hospitals in the areas threatened by the Fascist advance, this exodus on foot of exhausted men, women and children, was a sight to make us shiver! However, our feelings are not easily stirred after what we have seen in Spain.

Naturally, the departure was carried out differently for Messrs ministers, deputies, bureaucrats, leading functionaries, etc., who by Monday, 23 January (three days before Franco entered Barcelona) were already rolling along in luxurious cars toward Cerbère and Perthus. Observing along the road the two means of transportation, we had a concrete demonstration of the class divisions within the Popular Front: on the one hand the left bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisified bureaucrats travelled in fine limousines, or at the worst in small Citroëns; on the other the workers, peasants and rank and file militants walked on foot.

We saw tragic farewell scenes between those who left and those who, because of family obligations, were compelled to stay behind: moments of hesitation, of quick, precipitous decisions, all under the constant threat of the Fascist aviation, which constantly bombed and machine-gunned the road. Sometimes we had to stop suddenly, to hide in a ditch, to lie down on the road, to take cover in a nearby field, to spend many nights awake with no information about the conditions at the front or the speed of the Fascist advance, and all this took place in the midst of general panic, of unprecedented disorganisation and chaos. No newspaper came out after Tuesday [4], the radio stations were not working, and up to the last we had hoped for a stiff resistance to the Fascists. You will understand our disorientation.

Our comrade’s story, of which we give extracts, upset us and plunged us into gloom, moving us to tears at the fate of all these victims of ‘non-intervention’. The grief even affected our comrade, who experienced the tragedy of our Spanish brethren. He was embarrassed by his grief, and added forcefully:

No, I have not come back ‘disenchanted’ with Spain! Some may have come home ‘disenchanted’ – for example the Stalinist volunteers who left with false ideas, who did not understand the meaning of events, and who were kept in ignorance by the Communist leadership. But our international organisation and our Spanish section predicted well in advance the logical consequences of the criminal policy of the Popular Front which opened the gates to Franco.

The Spanish tragedy is one more crime to the account of the Stalinist bureaucracy, which crushed the revolutionary movement, assassinated the best militants, and by its whining policy toward so-called democratic capitalism, demoralised the heroic workers of this country. But this crime is also a lesson – dearly paid for, it is true – from which the workers of other countries will profit, the French workers to begin with.



Note
4. Tuesday, 24 January, or two days before the fall of Barcelona. [Author’s note]

-----------------------------


2. Why Barcelona Was Given Up Without A Fight
We must say that the French workers were surprised to learn of the taking of Barcelona after the military authorities had proclaimed resistance to the death.

I understand your surprise and I shared it. All of us, the ex-volunteers awaiting repatriation and all the militants too, were tragically shocked at the ease with which the Fascist advance moved toward Barcelona. True enough, we had no illusions and we took full account of the tragedy of the situation. But nevertheless we expected a desperate resistance in front of Barcelona and we cherished in our hearts the hope that heroic Barcelona would be a second Madrid. As long as a position has not been taken by the enemy, a revolutionary has no right to consider it as lost.

In an article, Can We Avoid The Debâcle?, written five days before the fall of Barcelona, which unfortunately did not get through to you, I put forward a plan of action to save Barcelona and the revolution. I put the opinions and slogans of the Spanish comrades more or less as follows:

Barcelona, can be saved. The province of Barcelona [5], the most industrialised region of Spain, with its industrial strongholds of Manresa, Sabadell and Tarasa, is not yet in the hands of the Fascists. It must not be. Barcelona must be fortified and transformed into an impregnable fortress. There is no lack of speculators and slackers to work on the fortifications in Barcelona. It is time they were made to swing some pickaxes! “Resist!” – this is the slogan of our Comrade Munis, spitefully charged with assassination and imprisoned for a year in the state prison of Carcel Modelo and now at Montjuich. Resist, as García Moreno resisted. [6] But our slogan, “Resist”, is different from Negrín’s. [7 In order to resist, the working class must raise its head, must regain confidence in itself, must create its committees for the defence of the revolution and its own organisations independent of the bourgeois state power, as it did on 19 July 1936 – but this time it must go further.

Such was the sort of spirit of our Spanish comrades some days before the fall of Barcelona.

True, the situation was critical. The Fascists were advancing by as much as 15 or 20 kilometres a day. Positions of the utmost strategic importance were systematically surrendered almost without a fight, such as the fortifications around Balaguer which took eight months to build, those at Segre, the important position of Las Borgas Blancas, whose conquest by the Fascists allowed them to march towards the sea and the encirclement of Tarragona and, at the eleventh hour, the chain of mountains around Igualada, whose conquest had already opened the road toward Barcelona.

We witnessed a repetition of the March catastrophe on the Aragon front, only on a still greater scale: betrayals by the high command, going over to the enemy with the defence plans, and even desertions to the Fascists of entire units of the carabineers. [8]

But Barcelona still remained. By the sea there were still the Garaf Hills, which could have been made a line of resistance. It is true that the main roads that lead to Barcelona, the one that comes from Villafranca de Penedès, and the other from Igualada, which join some 20 kilometres from Barcelona, cross a plain. But even in the event of a Fascist advance upon the town itself, there were still the mountains that surround the Catalan capital. Barcelona is encircled by Montjuich and Tibidabo. We could have fortified these hills and transformed them into a line of defence at the very gates of the city.

But they nevertheless say that Barcelona was indefensible from a strategic point of view?

That is a lie. Obviously it was easier to defend Barcelona in front of the chain of mountains near Igualada, or at the Garaf Hills than at the gates of the city itself. But it is more defensible than Madrid, for example. Neither the undoubted superiority of the Fascist armaments (a result of the passivity of the international proletariat, which had been lulled to sleep by the policy of the Popular Front) nor strategic reasons suffice to explain the fall of Barcelona, especially a fall so rapid and almost without a fight. The Fascists entered Barcelona after a brief engagement at Hospitalet, a suburb of Barcelona on the seaward side.

So what?

Well, it is simply that, especially in a civil war, strategy and military technique are subordinate to politics. Barcelona was abandoned because there was nobody to defend it, nobody, or scarcely anyone, who was ready to give his life to defend it against Franco. That is the tragic reality.

The less said about the sinister “Gobierno de la Victoria” [9], the better! It met on Monday night, three days before the entry of Franco. A message read by Uribe [10], the Communist Minister of Agriculture, informed us of the officially announced decisions and of the measures decided upon: firstly, to declare martial law in what remained of governmental Spain, that is to say, to try to muzzle the proletariat (though in reality it was powerless to do so); and secondly, to continue to hold out in Barcelona. That was the official declaration.

And the reality?

The reality? At the same time as they were making this announcement, Messrs Ministers already had their bags packed, their furniture and a surprising quantity of mattresses were already loaded onto trucks, and the aristocratic flight in Rolls Royces and Hispano-Suizas was beginning.

Filled with panic – above all for their own dangerous personal situation – the Messrs Ministers wanted to make an appeal to the CNT workers of Barcelona, in order that the workers should once again generously shed their blood and save the situation. These gentlemen believed that the same trick could be repeated an infinite number of times. According to their view, the proletariat should normally be held down, should respect bourgeois legality, should continually do the dirty jobs, should watch its militants mistreated, etc. Then at the moment of danger the chain could be loosened a bit and the proletariat could be generously permitted to die in defence of the legitimate government and for the democratic republic.

According to these gentlemen’s schema, the proletariat, taking advantage of the happy opportunity offered it, would mount the barricades, sacrifice some tens of thousands of its own people, and save the day. The Fascist danger having passed, the chain could be pulled tight again and the bullying could begin again as before. That was their plan. Ingenious, surely, but the same trick succeeds only a limited number of times.

Seized with panic, the ministers then called for García Oliver [11] to take control of six military divisions and direct operations.

But García Oliver is no soldier!

I wouldn’t like to recall the ‘services’, he has rendered the Spanish proletariat during the 1937 May Days in Barcelona! [12] In any case he was above all an agitational orator, but he represented the CNT and particularly the FAI, and the ministers thought that summoning him would also mean rallying tens of thousands of the militants of the CNT. But the Barcelona workers were demoralised. They remembered the days of May 1937. To understand the tragedy of 26 January 1939 we must remember that of 3-6 May 1937. There is a logical connection between these two dates. By destroying the revolution they lost the anti-Fascist war.

The Stalinists provoked and organised the events of May 1937, that is to say, they carried out the disarming of the proletariat, the destruction of its combat organisations, the assassination of its militant workers, etc. They instituted a regime of terror against the working class. All this was justified by the policy of the Popular Front: that is to say, “Win the war first of all!”, and to do this by winning the support of France and Britain. We now see the result. They did not win the goodwill of the French and English bourgeoisie, but whilst waiting for it they disgusted and demoralised the workers of Spain and those of Catalonia most of all. That was the quickest way to lose the war.

Of course the Barcelona workers understood that Franco was the worst evil, and, in spite of the fact that their confidence in Negrín was extremely low, they wished for the defeat of the Fascists and the victory of the Republican armies, but they no longer had any active participation in the struggle. After May 1937 they no longer felt themselves to be the masters. After all, they no longer were.

They were told many times a day that they were not fighting for their social emancipation (God preserve us from such Trotskyist ideas!) but merely for the return to a democratic republic – which had already nourished the Fascist insurrection. That hardly favoured a spirit of sacrifice or enthusiasm for the war; on the contrary, it was the source of the indifference towards it.

But in far more difficult circumstances Madrid had nonetheless defended itself, and in the month of November 1936 had successfully thrown back Franco’s advance. And yet the Fascists were at the very gate of the capital.

I know that old tune. Catalans are, so it seems, cowards, and Madrilenos are heroic and chivalrous. That is one answer, but it doesn’t stand up. It is obviously put out by the Communists, who use it to try to give themselves a boost: the majority of the Barcelona proletariat is Anarchist, but in Madrid it is the Communists who predominate.

Yet the Catalan workers showed what they could do on 19 July. Within 24 hours they had nipped the military rebellion in the bud. If the workers in the rest of Spain had followed their example, the Fascists would have been completely driven out of the Iberian peninsula. Barcelona also showed what it could do when in barely a few days it produced 200,000 volunteers, and when it sent off the famous ‘columns’ led by Durruti, Ortiz, Domingo Ascaso, Rovira, etc. [13], during the first week that followed 19 July.

Everything was done to break the militancy and the enthusiasm of the Catalan workers. The Popular Front, and most of all the Communists, did all they could to demoralise the Barcelona workers and push them into passivity. Unfortunately, they succeeded all too well. In addition, the glorious epic of Madrid dates from November 1936 and the first months of 1937, and not from January 1939. The spirit of revolution still dominated the whole of anti-Fascist Spain in the month of November 1936. The workers’ committees called for by José Díaz and Comorera [14] at that time had more say than the Republican and ‘legitimate’ government. Madrid radio was playing The Internationale and Hijos del Pueblo [15], and not patriotic songs as in 1939. Red and red-black flags were flying. They have since been replaced by tricolour rags (obviously it is not a question here of the flag itself, but of what it represents).

The Barcelona workers were in no hurry to give their lives for the tricolour flag and the hated Negrín government. What’s more, we do not know how Madrid will resist in 1939. Will it be able to repeat the epic of November 1936? I fear not.

But the rank and file workers of Barcelona could not fail to understand the imminence of the danger. They knew what a Franco victory had in store for them: the ruin of all their hopes. We have so often insisted on the spontaneous character of the struggles of the Spanish, and especially the Catalan proletariat, which is for the most part Anarchist in tendency. Why did the Barcelona workers not act against the will of their leaders?

The ‘spontaneity’ of the Catalan workers has, in spite of their impulsive temperament, its limits, you see. Everything was done to break their morale and their fighting spirit. They were preached calm and patience, and confidence in the leaders of the Popular Front and of the government, and above all they lulled them to sleep with illusions about the intentions of the British, and especially the French, bourgeoisie. Workers were constantly told: “At the eleventh hour Britain, and especially France, will intervene and will not permit the German and Italian Fascists to get a foothold on the Pyrenees, for we are fighting for the safety of the democratic empires.”

The summit of wisdom from the pen-pushers and orators of the Popular Front in their papers and meetings was to remind Chamberlain and Daladier [16] of their imperialist duties – which were to preserve the Spanish working class from Fascism! These illusions, or rather these criminal deceptions, were mostly propagated in particularly critical situations. At such times the diplomatic tensions between the two alliances were immeasurably exaggerated, and the international situation was portrayed as if war was on the point of breaking out between the democratic and the Fascist powers, and as if the British fleet and the French army were poised to intervene at any moment. The worst thing about it was that they stubbornly strove to shut the eyes of the working class, and they succeeded in this.

Here are a few examples to illustrate the short-sightedness of the ‘realistic’ leaders of the Popular Front. Several weeks ago Barcelona was told that hundreds of French aeroplanes and tanks had arrived. This was meant to boost morale! Another example: just a few days ago, before the fall of Barcelona, a foreign comrade, who was a left Anarchist in a relatively important post, told me whilst begging me to keep it secret (the usual way of spreading news) that several French divisions had crossed the Pyrenees and were coming to our aid. He had heard this from a member of the Regional or perhaps the National Committee, who had seen them (the French divisions) cross the frontier.

In the Middle ages ascetics and saints saw the blessed virgin in ecstasy, and sometimes even heard her voice. True, they had to mortify their flesh in order to do so. But the leaders of the Popular Front, without either mortifications or ecstasies, managed to see French divisions coming to their aid.

Unfortunately, these criminal fables were heard and put the proletariat off guard. Lenin once said that truths, even harsh truths, must be told to the proletariat in order to educate it; but wasn’t he, after all, also a ‘Trotskyist’?

Let us be more concrete. The Communist Party, in spite of its policy, must have known the danger that was threatening it. Surely it was a question of saving its own skin. What did it do for the defence of Barcelona?

Of course it kept repeating “No pasaran!” [17], but it did everything possible to make sure that they did. Its central slogan, advanced with a fury and a spirit worthy of a better cause, was: “Close ranks around Negrín’s Government of Victory!” Some government ... which was already packing its bags, or rather having them packed. Thus any independent initiative, and every attempt, however timid, to set up the independent workers’ organisations that alone could have brought back confidence, were described as Trotskyist and Fascist.

It is true that Frente Rojo, (Red Front), the organ of the Communist Party, published on Tuesday an appeal which was headed: “Everyone on the Barricades! As on 19 July!” But the barricades remained in the columns of the paper. These heroes of the PSUC [18] were only capable of mounting the barricades once. That was during the month of May 1937 against the Barcelona workers, to drive them out of the Telephone Exchange, the sacred property of American capitalism, and in order to help the bourgeois police machine-gun the workers.

It is true that if they succeeded it was only because the CNT, or to be more precise, the leadership of the CNT, allowed them to do so.



Notes
5. The importance and specific weight of the proletariat of the province of Barcelona is equal to that of the rest of Spain. [Author’s note]

6. García Moreno was a sergeant who stopped four Italian tanks single handed. [Author’s note]

7. Dr Juan Negrín López (1889-1956) was the right wing Socialist manoeuvred into office as Prime Minister of Republican Spain by the Stalinists after they had removed Largo Caballero in 1937.

8. The Communist leaders, and the ‘Anarchists’ along with them, kept this corps, which had been formed under the monarchy, intact. [Author’s note]

9. ‘The Government of Victory’ was the name given by the Communist Party’s publicist, La Pasionaria, to the Negrín government that replaced that of Caballero in May 1937. It wore its name uneasily. La Pasionaria was a name given to the Communist speaker Dolores Gómez Ibarruri (1895-1989) on account of her fervent oratory.

10. Vicente Uribe Caldeano (1908-1961) was Communist Minister of Agriculture in the Popular Front Government.

11. Juan García Oliver (1901-1980), a former supporter of Anarchist terror and a member of the group around Durruti, was Minister of Justice in the Caballero government, and played a most important part in disarming and demoralising the workers of Barcelona during the fighting in May 1937.

12. Because of his speech on 4 May 1937, which ended with the appeal “¡Alto el Fues!” (Cease firing), García Oliver, the honourable Anarchist Minister of Justice, handed over the militants of the CNT to massacre by the Stalinists. The workers of Barcelona remember this speech all too well. [Author’s note]

13. Buenaventura Durruti (1896-1936), Antonio Ortiz and Domingo Ascaso were Anarchist commanders. José Rovira Canals (1902-1968) was the commander of the Lenin battalion of the POUM.

14. José Díaz Ramos (1896-1942) was General Secretary of the Spanish Communist Party, and Juan Comorera (1884-1958) occupied the same position in the PSUC, its equivalent in Catalonia.

15. Sons of the People.

16. Arthur Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940) and Edouard Daladier (1884-1970) were the Prime Ministers of Britain and France at the time.

17. “They Shall Not Pass”, a slogan made popular by La Pasionaria.

18. The PSUC, the United Socialist Party of Catalonia, belonged to the Communist International. It is the pseudonym of the Catalan Communist Party. [Author’s note]

--------------------------------------------

3. And the CNT?
You mention the CNT. The Barcelona working class is in its overwhelming majority Anarchist. We do not understand why it did not act, or at least try to act, to save Barcelona. It has produced heroes, like Durruti and Ascaso, who are the pride of the international working class. What did the CNT do in this tragic crisis?

The CNT is a story of its own. Of course Durruti, Ascaso and thousands of nameless heroes will, like the Paris Commune, remain forever inscribed in the hearts of the proletariat; but as for the policy of the ‘anti-politicos’ and the ‘anti-statists’, the policy of the so-called leadership of the CNT, it was grossly reformist, petit-bourgeois and objectively criminal towards the proletariat and the revolution.

At this time of general ideological disarray, when Anarchist ideas can have a certain attraction for those who are disorientated, such a policy can instruct the workers of the entire world as to the value of the theory, and especially the practice, of Anarchism. This consistent work of criticism, which Marxists alone can do, will be done. Pamphlets are necessary, and perhaps even books.

In the past, I mean in 1936 and in 1937, these anti-statists used to abolish and sometimes even burn money in the little villages of Aragon where they set up libertarian Communism and the rule of love and brotherhood, but the idea of laying their hands on the big banks never occurred to them. The branch office of the Bank of Spain in Barcelona stands directly opposite the regional committee of the CNT, the seat of the Anarchist general staff, but the anti-statist leaders go on tiptoe in the presence of high finance. [19] They believe it to be an original sin to talk about a workers’ state, or of the formation and extension of workers’ committees. And, whilst working methodically at rebuilding the bourgeois state, they kept talking about Anarchism. [20] During May 1937 they betrayed the workers of Barcelona to the Stalino-bourgeois counter-revolution. A few weeks later the bourgeoisie, having no further need of them, and feeling itself sufficiently strong, dismissed them from the government.

A year later, in April 1938, at a moment of danger (the smashing of the Aragon front), they were offered the decorative and unimportant portfolio of Public Instruction in the second Negrín cabinet, which they accepted with a very un-Anarchist eagerness. The bourgeoisie knows that it is dealing with domesticated and well-trained creatures. From then on the CNT and even the FAI covered up the policy of social reaction by the Negrín government. Négrin’s 13 points [21], and the counter-revolutionary decrees dissolving the proletarian institutions, were all covered up by the CNT and the FAI.

Moreover, even the formal distinction between the frankly chauvinist and reformist language of the Stalinists and Socialists and the verbal revolutionary language of the CNT, a distinction that existed during the first year of the revolution, disappeared during 1938. The press was ‘gleichgeschaltet’, that is to say, put in step. Solidaridad Obrera, the central organ of the CNT, portrayed the conflict between the London Stock Exchange and that of Berlin as an ideological conflict between the democracies and the dictatorships. Every day it praised Roosevelt, the representative of Yankee imperialism, as an apostle of peace, and naturally explained that the security of the empires required intervention in Spain, thus giving lessons in patriotism to Chamberlain and Daladier.

For several months the regional committee of the CNT was disoriented and did not know what slogan to adopt. It finally found one in November.

What was it?

Just this: a councillor’s post in the Catalan Generalitat had to be given to the CNT! The honesty, the sense of justice and above all the idealism of the noble men carrying on a constant struggle “contra los sucios maniobras politicos” (against the dirty manoeuvres of politicians), demanded satisfaction for the crying injustice committed after May 1937, when the representatives of the CNT were kicked out of the Catalan Generalitat. [22] Besides, we read in the Soli [23] that the regional committee demanded a ministerial post, not for the base motives that characterise politicians – for example to attain a political objective or perhaps simply to get a ministerial job – but for altogether idealistic reasons.

As for me, vulgar materialist that I am, I do not altogether overlook the practical interest attached to the post of Councillor to the Generalitat. It opens up for the comrade pleasant prospects, of being ‘plugged in’, as they say over there, but it is a bit thin as a slogan for a situation that is rather more serious.

At the last moment the CNT and FAI could still have saved the situation. Yes! They could have done so, and in any case they should have tried to save it. But they didn’t even make the effort. Because for that they would obviously have had to break with the policy that was leading to the abyss, the policy that is called the Popular Front.

Let us be concrete. In spite of the demoralising effect of the policy of Negrín and Comorera, 15 days ago in Barcelona there were still several thousand workers, most of them young people, ready to mount the barricades once more and die, if need be, for the revolution. They were ready to join the regiments of the Libertarian Youth, but had no confidence at all in the Republican commanders, who went over to the enemy whenever they got the chance. The appeals of the official bodies went unheeded. For example, inside the factories numerous methods of coercion were necessary to pull fake ‘specialists’ into the army (that was the term used for the workers, or specialists, who were exempt from military service on account of their technical skills). [24] Just one example. The National Committee of the Libertarian Youth, which supported the line of the National Committee of the CNT, observing that only a few of the young people affiliated with the Libertarian Youth enlisted in the official regiments of the Ejercito Popular, published a very characteristic communiqué. In this communiqué the National Committee assured the young members of the Juventudes Libertarias that they need have no fear of enlisting in the government’s regiments of mixed volunteers because the National Committee had a representative on the organisation committee of the regiments! This ‘assurance’ did not convince the youth, who were waiting in vain for a voice that they could trust.

In brief, the CNT left its adherents without instructions and without a plan of action at the final moment. Thus on Thursday night, 26 January, the same day as the entry of the Fascists into Barcelona, I was in a little town near Gerona. I went to see the local committee, the ‘junta’ of the CNT. The comrades had no liaison at all with the centre, did not even know where it was, and asked for my advice.



Notes
19. Abolishing money in the little villages of Aragon whilst preserving El Banco de España curiously reminds me of the fable of Krylov, The Inquirer. The inquirer, who had visited the zoological gardens, is describing what he managed to see. He makes reference to insects as small as a pin, but nowhere mentions the elephant. [Author’s note] Ivan Andreevich Krylov (1769-1844) was the leading Russian writer of fables. [Translator’s note]

20. A reading of the four pamphlets by the CNT ex-ministers in the Caballero government published by the National Committee of the CNT is very instructive in this respect, and is to be highly recommended. [Author’s note]

21. Negrín’s 13 points were the programme for the re-establishment of a bourgeois republic. [Author’s note]

22. The Generalitat was the regional government established by the Statute of Catalan autonomy in 1932.

23. Soli was the common nickname of the Anarchist daily paper, Solidaridad Obrera.

24. In order to recruit volunteers in the most important arms factories in Barcelona, called Fabrica A, the factory committee had to shut the exit doors because the workers tried to escape. [Author’s note]

------------------------

(...)

(...)

18. The Anarchists of the Left and the ‘God-Seekers’ in the Light of the Spanish Experience

The policy of the leadership of the Anarcho-Syndicalist CNT (National Federation of Labour) and of the FAI (Iberian Anarchist Federation) has not been analysed in detail in this work. However, the reader can form a general idea of the policy of Anarchism in Spain by looking at the facts described in the chapter And the CNT, as well as other facts quoted in other chapters.

For the first time in history Anarchists had the possibility of applying their theories on a grand scale. They enjoyed an unparalleled authority in Catalonia, the decisive and most industrialised region in Spain, and had the unconditional support of the overwhelming majority of the proletariat. The truth of a theory, like the efficacy of a remedy, is verified according to experience. What remains of the theories of Bakunin, Kropotkin and Malatesta [131] after the Spanish experience? For decades we Marxists have demonstrated the limited and petit-bourgeois character of Anarchist concepts. Our masters, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Plekhanov [132] to cite but a few, refuted the Anarchist conceptions in their theoretical works from a doctrinal point of view, as well as making use of the living experience of the class struggle. Nonetheless, the Spanish Civil War, which for Anarchism was an ideological test, supplies us with a fresh opportunity to explain its ideological inconsistency.

The fundamental thesis of Anarchism, which separates it from Bolshevism, is the thesis on the possibility of passing to Anarchy without the transitional period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is to say, the immediate suppression of the state and its apparatus of oppression.

What remains of this conception after 31 months of civil war in Spain? For the first time we were shown the sharp and unexpected experience of ministerial Anarchism. This is as if someone had said an honest scoundrel, or a wicked fool. The anti-statists were transformed into ministers, the bomb-throwers into police prefects, the terrorists into prison governors, and in the course of this transformation the García Olivers and Frederica Montsenys had the opportunity to reveal the profoundly reformist nature of the leadership of the CNT, which held back the masses as much as any Austro-Marxists. [133]

How did the leadership of the CNT justify its evolution? Approximately in the same way as the other leaders of the Popular Front. These gentlemen are for Anarchy in principle, but in the meantime they were for saving the bourgeois state, just as Thorez is for the class struggle in principle, but in the meantime propagates the union of the French nation, in other words the union of the French bourgeoisie and the working class. In principle they are strong supporters of anti-alcoholism, but in the meanwhile they have been dead drunk these 30 tragic months.

Nonetheless, the Anarchist ideologues affirmed that their principles were always unscathed and in the best of health, since a ‘new’ and unforeseen factor had intervened: the war and foreign intervention. As if it is possible on this earth to liberate the proletariat, in no matter what country, without a war and foreign intervention!

But let us leave aside the Anarchist would-be ministers, who have not understood how ridiculous their position is. However summarily, their account has been settled in the course of this work.

There exist, however, in Spain and in the whole world, groups of oppositional Anarchists, who condemn the policy of the leadership of the CNT and the FAI and judge the betrayals of García Oliver and the other Anarchist would-be ministers in severe terms. They stigmatise, often in ardent and violent language, the reformism and softness, but they see the source of misfortune in the non-application of the true Anarchist doctrine, and in the fact that the CNT and FAI have begun to go in for ‘politics’, just as the Marxists have done for so long.

According to them the CNT and FAI remained revolutionary until 19 July. As long as they remained on the terrain of direct action and of economic struggle, all went well. But misfortune began when the leaders of the CNT began to make compromises with the other political parties. From compromise to compromise, the Anarchist leaders were pushed towards reformism. For example, according to some of the passionate leaders of the Libertarian Youth, already the first mistake was the creation of state organisations, like the Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias. That was already a commitment, it was already the state in control. Isn’t this a punishment for making a revolution whose precise aim is to suppress the state if on the first day of the revolution a new state apparatus begins to be built? And the Defence Committees in which the Anarchists had to collaborate and where consequently they had to make compromises with the other ‘politicos’, were they not the beginning of the slide by the CNT and FAI towards the same ‘political rottenness’?

The initiative of the people must be given a free run, and the splendid spontaneity of 19 July must not be broken. On that day in Barcelona did not an unarmed people smash the military uprising within 24 hours? Did it not throw itself bare-chested against machine gun fire? And it triumphed. It must be continued thus. Do not lose confidence in the people. As soon as you dip a finger into politics, you are lost! (Just as Jews or Moslems become impure if they eat pork, Anarchists become impure after having touched politics.) Is not the fatal evolution of Anarchist fighters into sensible ministers an illustration of what happens to anybody when he begins to practice ‘politics’? Politics is the art of deceiving others. We always said so. Do we need any fresh proof that Anarchy is right?

We find this reasoning in several Anarchist magazines and leaflets on the level of ‘ideas’, which preach a return to the pure doctrine of Anarchism. It reflects the state of mind of the young Anarchists as well as some older ones who criticise the attitude of the reformist leaders of the CNT. For one example among others we could cite the criticism made by Schapiro, the American Anarchist. [134]

In order to illustrate this reasoning of the Anarchists better, I will quote what I was told by a cultivated and devoted Anarchist lady in Barcelona. When the Anarchist committees in the Generalitat approved the decrees on the reorganisation of internal order in the bourgeois sense in April 1937 [135] my sympathetic Anarchist lady was disgusted; she was astonished at the softness of the Regional Committee, which had not made the most of its power in the course of the ministerial crises of the Generalitat and which did not want to impose a CNTist president on the Council of the Generalitat. As far as she was concerned, the CNT must have more portfolios. It is true that she was not very ‘left’ when she said this. But a quarter of an hour later her ‘leftism’ and her ‘purity’ got the better of her desire to see all the chancelleries occupied by the Anarchists. She said: “I am now more Anarchist than ever. When you begin to go in for politics and to occupy public offices, you are really finished. We must be intransigent!”

Eighteen months later I discussed with the same Anarchist lady in Barcelona. Her left Anarchist oppositional tendency had grown. Moreover, this sincere revolutionary had just got out of a private prison of the ‘Cheka’ [136] where she had been accused of espionage. In response to my arguments she replied:

You Trotskyists dare to talk about the failure of Anarchism on account of the ministerial experience of García Oliver and Frederica Montseny. You could with as much reason talk about the failure of Marxism on account of the experiences of Blum, Negrín, Stalin, or José Díaz! You say that in the course of the Spanish Revolution true Marxism has not been applied; well, no more was true Anarchism applied.

This is all very well and very touching when you hear it among young and devoted Anarchists, and at first sight the arguments appear to hold up, but in reality it is only a house of cards, as it is enough to touch it with a finger and it falls down. The reasoning of the Left Anarchists lacks one small detail: practicality.

When we consistent Marxists, in other words supporters of the Fourth International, make a critique of the reformist policy of the Stalinists and the Anarchists (and in essence it is the same policy, that of the Popular Front), we do not confine ourselves to refuting it, we show the way to proceed. We show the revolutionary methods that can lead the proletariat to victory.

We did not invent these methods ourselves and we can only transmit the experiences of the class struggle of the international proletariat. We point to the example of the victorious October Revolution of 1917 and we point to this gigantic step forward for humanity, the greatest so far known to history, even if it was followed by a temporary Stalinist reaction. We say to the workers: “Do not follow the policy of the Popular Front as that will lead you to the abyss, but follow the way of Lenin and Trotsky on a world scale, and it will give you victory worldwide.” Or, in other words, the liberation of humanity from capitalism.

And we are not satisfied with explaining this general idea, for in each concrete situation we show the working class the tactics of the way forward. We said that when García Oliver made his speech “Alto el Fuego” (cease firing!) on 4 May 1937, a speech modelled on that of Thorez, “We must know when to end strikes”, he betrayed the workers of Barcelona, but at the same time we added: the duty of the revolutionary leadership in the May Days was to reply to the Stalino-bourgeois provocation by the seizure of power by the proletariat, for it alone is capable of conducting the war against Fascism successfully after having established its dictatorship. In every sphere, whether it be military, economic, or any other problem, to the methods of the Popular Front we propose revolutionary methods whose effectiveness has been verified by experience.

In the critical writings of the Left Anarchists we search in vain for something positive, in other words, what those in opposition suggest should have been done. We will not find it for the simple reason that it cannot be found on the basis of Anarchist concepts.

The spontaneity of 19 July was truly beautiful – the initiative of the people and its unequalled heroism. It was a great and unforgettable day for the proletariat, but it was a day, it lasted for 24 hours. When these 24 hours had passed the proletariat had to continue to struggle because it is impossible to overthrow the capitalist system in a day, or even a week. The working class must not only continue to struggle, but it must organise its struggle. And when you pass over to organisation, and when you get down to it, you get dirty very quickly. You begin to act and take on responsibilities, particularly in a revolutionary period, because you can no longer be satisfied with making criticisms of the capitalist system: you begin to practice politics. That is inevitable. Only, you must practice revolutionary politics.

When the great victorious revolutionary day is over, the barricades are removed; but the next day the barricade fighters who have escaped the bullets are back on the streets, and then in the factory. To preserve their victories they must set up defensive organisations, juntas and committees. Of necessity not only the advanced workers must enter these committees, but also the backward ones, imbued with a petit-bourgeois outlook. In these committees the revolutionaries will have to be in contact with reformists and opportunists, particularly where the latter influence the proletariat. They have to make compromises. Only they must make revolutionary compromises, in other words compromises that favour the struggle of the proletariat, and not rotten compromises that favour its enemies, such as those agreed to by the anti-statists García Oliver and Frederica Montseny. The Left Anarchists would do well to read again Lenin’s Left-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder. [137] They would do well to assimilate the lessons of this Marxist work in particular. It would allow them to avoid meandering about and enable them to learn revolutionary realism.

Revolution is the struggle for power. This struggle takes a sharp and bloody form. Power passes from the hands of one faction into the hands of another, more revolutionary or more moderate, in a very different manner to the transfer of power from Conservative to Labour in the English constitutional and parliamentary system.

Everything rests on a knife edge. Yesterday’s masters become transformed into prisoners, and vice versa. Lenin said that in a period of revolution prisons are the ministerial antechamber, and from that he deduced the necessity for the red terror!

When the Mozos de Escuadra [138] set me free after the May events, they told me: “Hasta la vistas, au revoir”, and they added: “Soon, perhaps, we will change places.” In a revolutionary period the problem is always posed: us or you.

The problem of power was posed for the CNT and FAI during the July Days, and in an even sharper fashion during the May Days. Take the power or leave it to others: in other words, to the left bourgeoisie and the Stalinists. There was no escape from that. The leadership of the CNT obstinately closed its eyes during the first months following 19 July in order not to see reality. The truth was that in Catalonia it dominated the entire life of the country, possessed weapons, and could have brought about the seizure of power practically without a blow. But the leaders of the CNT said: “We are only concerned with the economy, the trade unions and the factories. Power can only interest ‘politicians’.” Thus it let the first most propitious occasion slip by.

In September in Catalonia, and in November in Madrid, those Anarchists who repeated the idea that power for the workers’ committees was too ‘étatist’, began to work to rebuild the bourgeois state. The question of power was posed yet again for the CNT in May 1937, but now in an even sharper fashion than in July. It was the Stalinists who went over to the offensive in order to disarm the CNT. The latter could have taken the power or resigned. It chose the second course.

What, according to the Left Anarchists, should the CNT have done? The majority of the Left Anarchists remained silent and made no response to this key question. Some of those who were in opposition arrived at the idea of a dictatorship of the CNT. But this idea was expressed by them in an imprecise fashion. But by so expressing it, they obviously came close to our point of view. But what remained of Anarchism then?

The only oppositional group inside the CNT which expressed clear ideas, particularly during the May Days, was the Friends of Durruti. They came out in favour of a revolutionary Junta taking power, based on the committees and the trade unions. Unfortunately, the Friends of Durruti halted halfway in their critique. We hope that in future they will know how to draw the lessons from this tragic experience.

If we have dwelt on the ideas of the Left Anarchists, it is because their ideas reflect the state of feeling of the rank and file of the CNT. For the future of the Spanish workers’ movement to a large extent depends upon the evolution of the revolutionary rank and file of the CNT and FAI towards revolutionary positions, in other words, towards the positions of the Fourth International.

After having surveyed the ideas of the Left Anarchists we wish to turn our attention to all those who have broken with Stalinism on an international level, but who nonetheless fight against Bolshevik methods. We have analysed the policy of the POUM, and we have demonstrated how it differs from ours. Obviously, we are not going to discuss with the different ‘Trotskyist’ and ‘anti-Trotskyist’ groupings of the Oehler type [139], etc. These groups generally have no ideas to oppose to ours, only personal grudges: nobody has appreciated their value as leaders of the working class movement as they ought to have done, they have been underestimated... and in addition it appears that Trotsky does not know how to handle people. They criticise our ‘methods of organisation’. Nevertheless, instead of criticising our methods, they would do better to come and work with us in order to improve them. We are ready to learn, but we have no time to lose ...

However, on the international level a tendency of ‘God Seekers’ has been taking shape for 10 years. Thus we label all those who have condemned Stalinism but think that the source of Stalinism already existed inside Bolshevism. They condemn not only Stalinist methods, but their opposite, Leninist methods. They say that our analysis of the errors of Stalinism is superficial. We have not, so it seems, gone to the origin of the evil and we have only dwelt on its logical conclusions.

According to these new anti-Bolsheviks it was Lenin himself who began the counter-revolution in Russia and prepared the way for Stalin. Bolshevik methods of organisation, which lacked democracy and failed to understand liberty, opened the way to Stalin. Not only Stalinism, but Bolshevism as well must be revised. We must look at everything again. Some go further, and say that the roots of the evil are already to be found within the Marxist conception itself. Among the ideologists of this ‘Stalinism equals Bolshevism’ concept we might cite Boris Souvarine, who, it might be said in passing, has ended up with Figaro. But not everybody has taken the road of the old newspaper of the great French perfume manufacturer. [140]

In the entire world there are several thousand honest revolutionaries who find themselves in unprecedented disarray. But having rejected Stalinism, they begin to doubt everything in Bolshevism and Marxism. For 10 years they have been searching for new revolutionary methods that are superior to Bolshevism and even to Marxism. Some among them want to draw arguments from Rosa Luxemburg against Bolshevism and Lenin. They rely upon the divergences between Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg over questions of organisation, and also upon the criticisms of Bolshevik methods made by Luxemburg in her pamphlet The Russian Revolution.

These ideas are put out in France by the Spartacus group which produces the magazine Masses [141] and by similar groups in other countries. These anti-Bolsheviks wish to draw arguments from Rosa Luxemburg against the idea of a centralised organisation in the Leninist manner. Consequently, they fight against the Fourth International, which relies on Leninist concepts. Rejecting Bolshevism, they look for new revolutionary methods, and even for new methods of thought, discovering, for example, that the Marxist dialectic lends itself to arbitrary interpretations. Not knowing to which saint to dedicate themselves, they are looking for a new god.

When we use the term for them that Lenin used against empirio-criticism and against Lunacharsky [142], we are not employing it in a pejorative sense, or for the requirements of polemic. ‘God seekers’ are always in existence during the periods of ideological disarray that follow catastrophes. And isn’t the ideological fall of the Comintern a catastrophe? In addition, it is very intelligent and noble to criticise, to want to go deeper into things, to push the analysis as far as possible, and above all to search. But it is much more difficult to find.

We have no intention of replying here to all the objections of the ‘god seekers’ and the revisionists, who moreover could be correct in some of their criticisms. We do not here presume to remove the problem of Bolshevism’s original sins, or even to examine them thoroughly. We only wish to demonstrate, in the light of tragic experience, that the ‘god seekers’ and the revisionists want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, they mix grain with chaff, they have not found any new and better methods of revolutionary strategy, nor any new methods of thought, and that in the course of the Spanish Revolution it is precisely those ideas of Bolshevism that they criticise as unfortunate that have received fresh confirmation. Let us outline these ideas:

1. The Bolshevik idea of the necessity for a centralised revolutionary party, a party of the proletarian vanguard, has been confirmed once more in the Spanish Revolution. As we have shown here, the objective conditions for proletarian revolution existed in Spain. However, we went from one disaster to another. The illusions of certain revisionists as well as of the old Syndicalists that broad organisations, like trade unions, containing the whole proletariat, would be enough and could replace the party, have to be rejected after the experience of 1936-39. The trade unions played an important rôle in the Spanish Revolution. Moreover, all Spanish workers were in trade unions after July. But they did not know how to organise everything nor to resolve the question of power.

If we wish to avoid fresh catastrophes in future, we must have a revolutionary party with its internal democracy as well as its centralisation and its discipline. The Spanish Communist Party was a disciplined party but its discipline was in the service of counter-revolutionary policies. However, it can in no way be deduced from this that a disciplined and centralised party is useless. Precisely the opposite: without a disciplined party there is no victorious revolution.

2. Mass spontaneity is not enough. It existed in Spain. Thanks to it we witnessed the heroic 19 July and the May Days. But it was not enough to be able to organise the revolution – for that we must have a party. By stating this we are not arguing with the one whom Lenin styled “The Eagle of the Revolution” [143] but with those who wish to draw arguments from her conceptions in order to put a spoke in our wheel and to prevent the construction of the Fourth International.

The spontaneity of the masses leads to centralisation. We must centralise their combativity by the creation of the Control Patrols and the militias within the structure of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Spontaneous collectivisation also posed the necessity for centralisation and an economic plan for the whole country. To survive, the collectivisations had to be incorporated within the structure of a socialised economy, in other words an economy of the transitional period.

3. The use of violence is inevitable in a revolution, not only against Fascists and avowed enemies of the proletariat, but also, at a certain stage of revolutionary development, against reformist and conciliatory currents within the working class. The whole question is in what direction will it be employed? Whose political aims will it serve? The Stalinists also used violence, but in the service of a counter-revolutionary policy that was slanted towards the democratic bourgeoisie, Chamberlain and the Pope. But if there had been, not charlatan Anarcho-Ministers, but proletarian Jacobins instead of the CNT leadership, they would have used revolutionary violence in May 1937 to smash the Stalinist provocation and the reactionary tendencies of Comorera, which represented the influence of the bourgeoisie, and which put a brake on the revolution.

Did the Bolsheviks go too far in the direction of revolutionary violence a

Did the Bolsheviks go too far in the direction of revolutionary violence against the Mensheviks? That is possible, but it was caused by their difficulties. Their mistakes in this area can be discussed. The Leninist period of the Russian Revolution, 1917-23, was no Age of Gold. We accept many of the criticisms and we will accept still more. But what is certain is that revolutionaries will be forced to learn more than they reject from Lenin and Trotsky in the sphere of revolutionary violence. Democracy has its limits, even among the proletariat. These limits must be determined by the revolutionary struggle.

4. The materialist and dialectical method, in other words the Marxist method of investigation, is the only way that allows us to find our bearings in the light of the Spanish experience. Without it we are blindfolded. The Stalinists pretend to use the dialectic to prove that black is white and that the Pope is a friend of the proletariat. But this does not prove that the dialectical method does not correspond to reality: it has nothing to do with Stalinist juggling, and allows us to understand the conflict of interests that lie behind all the ideological struggles. It allows us to analyse the reasons and the false use that the Stalinist jugglers make of it. Behind the ‘Stalinist dialectics’, juggling that wavers between idealistic mysticism and unscrupulous swindling, lie the interests of a bureaucratic caste.

To turn from science to alchemy, and from Marxism to the blind idealism of the Anarchists, for example, is impossible for the proletariat.

5. But does not your dictatorship and your method inevitably lead to Thermidor? [144] After Lenin, Stalin. Doesn’t the example of Russia discourage you? To reject the dictatorship of the proletariat and all its consequences, meaning the centralised party, the red terror, and violence against reformism, means to reject the revolution. That is Libertarian Communism ... in heaven, but in reality it is the Popular Front and the maintenance of bourgeois democracy, which leads to Fascism. The proletariat is a class that has to accomplish its historic mission and free humanity from the chains of capitalism.

Thermidor is the result of neither terror nor dictatorship. The particular way in which it develops is due to dictatorship; but Thermidor itself rises to the surface when the objective conditions do not allow the revolution to advance. The Russian Thermidor is the result of the terrible defeats of the international proletariat and of the isolation of the Russian Revolution. The victorious Spanish Revolution could perhaps have been a mortal blow delivered at the Russian Thermidor, in other words at the regime of Stalin. The next Socialist revolution in the capitalist countries will impel the Russian workers to end the Stalinist nightmare.

The danger of degeneration obviously exists in an isolated country in the event of defeats on an international scale. But that is no reason for us to fold our arms. To abandon the idea of dictatorship, that is to say to abandon the revolution, because it can degenerate, is like abandoning joy because it can only be followed by sadness, and life by death.

But humanity goes forward, even if it is with delays that can last decades. The proletariat is a class that is capable of rising above all the Thermidors and all the temporary defeats, and of bursting the Stalinist abscess. It will free humanity.

19. The Fourth International in the Spanish Revolution

The criticisms we have formulated in this book against the Menshevik policy of the Popular Front on the basis of the tragic experiences of 31 months of civil war in Spain were made by the Fourth International before the event and were expressed with a clarity that left no space for equivocation.

Our international organisation has a right to say that it has come out of this tragic test ideologically strengthened. Life itself confirmed our political concepts, that is to say, the failure to apply the revolutionary Bolshevik methods, supported at the time by the Fourth International, in a consistent manner, led to another catastrophe. The Popular Front and Stalinism not merely crushed a proletarian revolution, but prepared the ground for Fascism and opened a breach for Franco.

In spite of all the serious criticisms that can be made of it, the International Secretariat of the Fourth International criticised beforehand, not after, and with a clarity that was all the more justified by the gravity of events, not only the crimes of the Stalinists and reformists but also the grave mistakes of the POUM, which was in tow to the Popular Front. In August 1936 the representative of our international organisation in Barcelona foresaw and explained, not behind the scenes but at the top of his voice, the tragic consequences for the POUM and the Spanish Revolution of the liquidation of dual power and the dissolution of the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias. [145] The leaders of the POUM did not heed us. They preferred ‘realistic’ collaboration in the Generalitat to Fourth International ‘sectarianism’. Comrade Trotsky, inspired by his experience of the Russian Revolution, expressed himself in the same sense as the International Secretariat: the POUM, while whole-heartedly fighting against Franco alongside the other anti-Fascist forces, must not take even a shadow of responsibility for the criminal policy of the petit-bourgeois leaders of the Popular Front.

The Fourth International can thus rightly say: “We foresaw all this – the tragic and unavoidable consequences of the policy of the Popular Front.” We are not, however, philosophers. The satisfaction of being able to foresee and understand better than others is not enough for us. We want not merely to explain the world but to change it. “We foresaw everything!” but we did not know how to prevent it. Did we do our duty?

Apart from theoretical and ideological criticisms, where was the Fourth International during the Spanish Revolution? We were not satisfied with criticising other currents. Let us make a proper balance sheet of our own activity! Here were not the ‘shamefaced’ Trotskyists, but the real Trotskyists.

When the events of 19 July occurred, there was no Bolshevik-Leninist Section in Spain. The old leaders of the Izquierda Comunista (Communist Left), Nin and Andrade, who, thanks to their revolutionary past, had a certain prestige in the working class movement, had broken, not just organisationally, but politically, with the Fourth International. The question here is not only of their entry into the POUM but their break with the methods and policy of the Fourth International, of which they became convinced opponents. To our great regret Andrade and Nin preferred a centrist orientation to the Marxist one of the Fourth International and fell in behind the London Bureau. [146] Only those who cannot see further than their own noses (and they can be found in certain little anti-Trotskyist groups) can explain Nin and Andrade’s break with the Fourth International because of certain excesses of Trotsky’s language, a lack of flexibility on the part of the International Secretariat, and because of its diplomatic incompetence, etc. ... [147]

In spite of the importance that questions of wounded honour may have among Spaniards, we can only say that Nin and Andrade were not children and that it greatly belittles them to explain their evolution by a lack of flexibility on the part of the International Secretariat or by secondary conflicts over organisational questions. The conflict between the leaders of the Izquierda Comunista and the International Secretariat of the Fourth International over an organisational problem in reality concealed a series of political differences that showed up in the course of the Spanish Revolution.

We must remember that after this split by Nin and Andrade, and after 19 July, there only remained an isolated handful of Bolshevik-Leninists who supported the Fourth International. About 100 foreigners who were members of the Fourth International came to Spain after 19 July from several countries, including French, Belgians, Swiss, Dutch, Italians, Germans, Poles, Danes and Czechoslovaks, along with Americans and even members of our South African organisation. [148] Most of them were armed volunteers, either in the POUM militias or in those of the FAI-CNT. They had replaced “the weapon of criticism by the criticism of weapons”. Some of them left their bones on the Aragon front as well as on that of Madrid. If the lightning flash, the symbol of the Fourth International, was shown on the death parapet of the trenches near Manicomio de Huesca, the Bolshevik-Leninists also took part in the assault on Belchite, Codo and Quinto. [149] So, under Caballero as under Negrín, the Bolsheviks fought against Franco arms in hand and, for this, they can hold up their heads among the other tendencies in the working class movement.

After Nin and Andrade had left, the Spanish Bolshevik-Leninist group was only reconstituted in about November 1936, but from the start the majority of members were foreigners. It applied to join the POUM, agreeing to respect the discipline of the party and asking only for the right to defend its own political concepts. The leadership of the POUM shut the door on it: they asked for impossible conditions of entry including a declaration condemning “the so-called Fourth International”. [150] In spite of the obstacles raised by the leadership, the Spanish group gained some sympathy within the POUM.

Our group took up a correct position at each stage of the revolution and, within the limits of its feeble resources, showed the way forward. Both inside and outside the party we criticised the opportunist mistakes of the POUM, whether of its orientation to obtaining a Ministry again or of its tail-ending of the Popular Front.

We developed our conception of the permanent revolution inside the mass organisation of the revolutionary Catalan proletariat, the CNT. The same can be said of the Libertarian Youth as well. We did everything to push the rank and file Anarchist organisations against class collaboration and Anarcho-ministerialism, and in an anti-bourgeois and Marxist direction. While not wishing to attribute every virtue to ourselves it would still be true to say that the formation of certain groups on the left of the CNT, such as the Friends of Durruti, was influenced by our ideological work.

In the course of 1937 we won over some elements inside both the POUM and the CNT. But events moved quickly and we had hardly started to exist. The glorious May Days in Barcelona found us far too weak organisationally, even though we were strong and tested ideologically. Along with the Friends of Durruti, we were the only ones to draw up a plan of action, in other words a plan to resist the Stalinist conspiracy by a proletarian insurrection. During this period we drew up not only generalised slogans for our pamphlets and leaflets but practical ways to achieve them, such as the formation of area committees on the basis of a POUM-CNT-FAI Revolutionary Workers’ Front. And unlike the leadership of the POUM we continually denounced the betrayals of the reformist leadership of the CNT-FAI.

The May events found us at our posts with the revolutionary workers of Barcelona on the barricades opposed to the Stalinist running dogs of capital. Some were on the POUM barricades in the Ramblas, and others on the CNT barricades in the Casa CNT-FAI. While Fauconnet and others left their bones at the front, Cid, a militant of the POUM but a member of our Bolshevik-Leninist faction in the party, gave his life on the Ramblas defending the conquests of 19 July ... [151]

We criticised, we explained, we put forward our ideas wherever chance or accident found us: at the front, in the factory, in the trade unions, and while struggling with the entire working class against Fascism, which gave us the right to criticise, we criticised. But our enemies were too powerful and possessed formidable trump cards. Against us we had Franco, that is to say Fascism, supported by international capitalism, together with the Republican democrats of the Companys, Miaja and Casado variety, all of whom indirectly helped Fascism, and in addition the Social Democrats of the Second International, whether of the Caballero or of the Prieto tendency, who, understanding nothing and forgetting nothing, followed the Republican democrats.

We had against us the Stalinists, who whilst covering up the Menshevik policy of betrayal that is called the Popular Front, laid claim to and enjoyed the authority of the Russian Revolution, and used this authority to strangle the Spanish Revolution. It was the Ambassador of the Soviet Union, the first workers’ state in history, who prevented the creation of another workers’ state and strangled the revolution. Antonov-Ovseyenko [152], who in 1917 had led the seizure of the Winter Palace, 20 years later in 1937 helped the Catalan and Spanish Kerenskys in Barcelona to drive out the workers from the Telephone Exchange. Thanks to the power of the Soviet workers’ state, which as a parasitic and conservative caste it exploited for its own ends, the Stalinist bureaucracy enjoyed not only moral authority but also support due to the material help it could offer.

But on the left of the Stalinists, “the great architects of the defeat of the Spanish proletariat”, we had the Anarchists against us, who only perpetrated idiocies, if not worse, everywhere in spite of their fighting spirit. The leadership of the CNT-FAI, like the Second International in the period of its decadence, left the execution of its programme to an indeterminate future and, whilst observing Bakuninite rituals, worked for the bourgeoisie and the rebuilding of its state apparatus.

In addition we were opposed by the POUM and in particular by its leadership, which feared Trotskyism as the devil fears holy water, and which, by struggling against us, wished to justify itself and prove that it was not Trotskyist. To sum up, we had a formidable coalition of forces ranged against us and we were only a small band of propagandists.

But at this point I hear an interruption: “And the Bolsheviks in 1917? They were also a small minority, but they knew how to win over the masses very quickly. You Bolshevik-Leninists claim to be Bolsheviks. You are good at criticising everybody alright, but you cannot convince anybody. You are just scribblers!”

The Bolsheviks were not born in 1917. They had a past of 15 years of factional struggle behind them. They had an organisation with its own tradition and its cadres, an organisation that was itself a material force. When Lenin returned to Russia he was no foreigner but the leader of a recognised party, or at least a tendency. Unfortunately, there is no comparison between the position of the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917 and that of the Fourth International in Spain in 1936-39.

But we have the right to say to the leadership of the POUM: “But you, you were a party with cadres, a minority but a mass party, and with a Bolshevik policy you should have been able to become an important and even decisive factor in the country and to change the situation, by basing yourselves on aspects of the dual power.” But the leadership of the POUM was unable to share the reasoning of the Bolshevik-Leninists. We could only put forward our slogans within the mass organisations, push them in a revolutionary direction, reinforce the progressive forces there, and win over the best elements. In short, we could only try to create cadres who would play their part at a fresh stage of the revolution, and pending this, to push the organisations closest to us in a revolutionary direction.

This we did. During 1937 we won over some elements in the POUM, where, to the extent that our ideas and criticisms were confirmed by events, we were heeded more and more. It was the same in the CNT, where a collaboration of unfortunately short duration was established with the Friends of Durruti and other groupings, who were evolving, however slowly, towards revolutionary Marxism.

After the May Days came the Stalinist repression. Our comrades Erwin Wolf and Hans Freund (known as Moulin) were picked up and murdered by the Stalinists. The former was a Czechoslovak citizen who came to Barcelona at the end of May 1937. He was a correspondent for an English paper The Spanish News. The GPU could not forgive him for having been Leon Trotsky’s secretary. According to one story he was shot in the Soviet Union, together with Antonov-Ovseyenko, who had organised the counter-revolutionary conspiracy of May on Moscow’s orders, but whom Stalin was unable to forgive, as with so many others, because he had a revolutionary past. As for Hans Freund (Moulin) he was a German emigré, a devoted and enthusiastic propagandist for the Fourth International. He went straight after 19 July 1936 to place himself at the disposal of the Spanish Revolution. To start with he worked in Madrid, and then in Barcelona. The GPU did not lose sight of him. It was the Pole Mink [153], an agent of the GPU, who was given the job of shadowing him. On 2 August 1937 he was arrested by the Stalinist police.

In spite of the blows against us by the GPU, our organisation carried on working. It grew stronger. New elements from the POUM and the Anarchists joined it. Our comrades at the front called for the rebuilding of the militia committees. In the rear, despite enormous difficulties, the Voz Leninista continued to appear, pointing out the lessons of these tragic events. In our pamphlets we protested against the slandering of the POUM, and we defended it against Stalinist repression.

Around November 1937 the GPU succeeded in sending two provocateurs into our group. One of them, who was a political commissar in the International Brigades, was a German who bore the pseudonym of Max Joan [154], and he succeeded in winning a certain amount of trust. Max worked with another provocateur, Léon Narvitch, who, according to some other comrades, took part in the murder of Andrés Nin. [155]

The Stalinist police, who wanted a ‘Moscow Trial’ in Barcelona, arrested our comrades Munis, Adolpho Carlini, Jaime Fernández, Teodoro Sanz, Viktor Ondik, etc. ... [156] It was Max Joan who betrayed our comrades to the police. But the Stalinist police did not have the gall to accuse and try our comrades for revolutionary propaganda. They wanted to slander them and cover them with filth. The police accused our comrades in the Spanish Bolshevik-Leninists of murdering Léon Narvitch, a captain in the International Brigades. The indictment also talked about “de varios atentados contra las destecadas personalidades de la Republica” (different assassination attempts against prominent Republican personalities). Our comrades were accused of terrorism. The same hand that guided the Moscow Trials, which used gangster methods against the revolutionary vanguard internationally, which kidnapped Klement in Paris [157], also moved against the Spanish section of the Fourth International.

Our comrades accused of terrorism! This accusation was based on the corpse of Léon Narvitch, just as in Moscow the corpse of Kirov [158] started a wave of Stalinist terror. In both cases those concerned were dealt with by GPU assassins. The matter of Kirov has been cleared up. It is known that it was the Leningrad GPU which made the attempt. It is known that it was they who gave his revolver back to Nikolayev, which Stalin had to admit during the trial. As for the Stalinist provocation in Barcelona, it is not yet quite clear but it does seem probable that it was the GPU who killed Narvitch. Like so many others of its own agents, he was a witness who knew too much and could get in the way in the future. [159]

Commissar Mendez tried to extract ‘confessions’ from the young Luigi Zannon implicating the other comrades on the subject of the so-called preparation of criminal attempts against Negrín and Prieto, sabotage, etc. ... This episode confirms point by point the way in which confessions are extracted in Moscow.

Our comrades Munis, Carlini and Rodríguez held their heads up high to the degenerate torturers of the GPU. They took responsibility for the work of the Fourth International in Spain. They were not ‘shamefaced’ Trotskyists, but Bolshevik-Leninists openly and courageously defending the concepts of the permanent revolution in the hardest conditions.

Our comrade Munis took political responsibility for the work of the Bolshevik-Leninist group in Spain and for the production of La Voz Leninista before the courtroom of Comorera, to which he had been called by the POUM lawyer at the time of the trial of that party, in order to testify that the POUM was not Trotskyist and to clear Gorkin and Andrade of that terrible accusation. [160]

But the GPU burned its fingers in the Moscow Trial that it was preparing in Spain. Our international organisation was informed, and our foreign sections denounced this ignoble low-down Stalinist trick. The forgers and imposters of the GPU were caught with their hands in the till. The Negrín-Comorera police, which had already suffered a reverse with the trial of the POUM, was obliged to put back the date of the trial several times. It was finally fixed for 26 January 1939. But it was an irony of fate and a tragic coincidence that Franco’s troops entered Barcelona on the very day on which our comrades were to have been tried.

The meaning of this tragic coincidence is obvious: our comrades could not be tried because the criminal Stalinist policy of the Popular Front had opened the gates to Franco. The persecution of the Trotskyists was one of the elements, and not the least of them, that had disarmed the proletariat and made possible the victories of Fascism. The prison administration, who had burned the files and set free the Fascists and spies of the Fifth Column, prepared to receive their new masters and wanted to hand over our comrades to Franco, in other words to the Fascist execution stake. So even at the last moment of the general debâcle the Stalinists did not forget their hatred of the Trotskyists, that is to say, their hatred of the proletarian revolution.

If some of the comrades were able to escape, they did not owe it to the humanitarian sentiments of the GPU, nor to those of the Republican government, but to proletarian solidarity.

But in spite of the imprisonment of our comrades in the course of 1938, the Bolshevik-Leninists continued their work in illegality. They made their criticisms inside the mass organisations, mainly the CNT. They pointed out what had to be done. In March, during the collapse of the Aragon front and the fall of Negrín’s first government after the dropping of Prieto, they showed the rank and file of the CNT what to do, by reconstituting the independent organisations of the working class, and they denounced the new experience of Anarcho-ministerialism as a blind alley. While always critical, our comrades fought at the front as soldiers, gunners and political commissars against Franco.

The Stalinists can kill tested militants, and they can launch the most ignoble slanders against us. But to no avail! Our skin is tough! We will come out strengthened from all the tests, both morally and ideologically.

Marxism clears its own way. It is the hope of all the oppressed, and it will prepare a Socialist future for humanity. After the defeats of the proletariat, the Fourth International will lead them to great victories.


20. The Miaja-Casado Pronunciamento

Power reflects the relationship of forces between the different classes in society and between the different political organisations that express the interests of different social layers. When the equilibrium is broken, when the relationship of forces changes, power passes from the hands of one faction into those of another.

A reminder is necessary here. There were two powers after July: the bourgeois state power, formal and powerless, and the power of the workers’ committees. This second power clearly predominated during the first three months, up to the formation of the coalition governments, that of Largo Caballero and that of Taradellas in Catalonia. The government of Caballero rested upon all the working class organisations, the CNT included. The effective power of this government was limited.

Elements of the second, working class power, continued to exist, above all in Catalonia, until May. However, their gradual weakening encouraged the right wing of the Popular Front to liquidate them completely. Such was the meaning of the Stalinist coup and of the May events in Barcelona. The Anarchist ministers asked the workers to leave the barricades. The destruction of their base in the CNT not only disarmed the Catalan proletariat, but it made the existence of Anarchist Ministers in the government redundant.

The new relationship of forces was the basis for the formation of the Negrín government at the end of May 1937. Without the May Days we would not have had the ‘Government of Victory’. The CNT was thrown out of the government after May. The fact that it was offered a decorative post in the second Negrín government changed nothing in this respect. The Anarchist Minister of Instruction was only a piece of furniture in the Council of Ministers. Since May, state power was divided between two factions: the Stalinists together with the bourgeois Republicans and the Socialists. These two factions formed a bloc against the proletariat, against the CNT, the FAI, the POUM and the committees: they gave each other mutual favours. The bourgeois Republicans gave the Stalinists a free hand against ‘Trotskyism’. They said to the GPU:

You can settle your accounts with your enemies the POUMists. That is of no concern to us. But in return you must support our programme of social reversal in Spain and of the liquidation of the collectivisations because you well understand that all these socialisations, they are not serious. What will the Quai d”Orsay [161] and the British Foreign Office think? And send us weapons.

“Well true enough, we agree”, replied the GPU. “Socialisations and committees? Only agents of the Gestapo can support them. Our war is a national war. Our revolution is bourgeois, and we are fighting for a parliamentary democratic republic. We will sell you weapons, but allow us to exterminate the Trotskyists.”

That was the agreement that served as the basis for the foundation of the ‘Government of Victory’. Only when the revolutionary proletariat had been smashed did the contradiction between these allies start to appear and deepen. In March 1939 it culminated in a violent shock – the Miaja-Casado Pronunciamento. Events do have an internal logic, and crime gets its reward. The logic of the Popular Front turned against its architects, the Stalinists. The arm that they had forged broke them in their turn.

The Republicans used the Stalinists against the working class, but once the servant had done his job, he was expected to go. Moreover, the servant embarrassed the Republicans because he wanted to keep his own control of the administration and the army. Even though the Stalinists had proclaimed themselves a hundred times a day to be reformist, democratic, patriotic and chauvinist, the Republican bourgeoisie only accorded them a limited measure of confidence. The Stalinists had said that revolutionary measures prevented help from the democracies. This concept was the basis of their entire policy against the CNT and the POUM, the left wing of the Popular Front. A year later it was turned against them, too, when the Republicans said that Chamberlain and Daladier disliked the presence of Communists in the government. The Republicans were right. They only forgot to add that the City and the Comité des Forges [162] preferred Franco to both of them.

The fall of Catalonia gave the strongest bastion of the anti-Fascist resistance to Franco. With the recognition of Burgos [163] by France and Britain, the entire perspective of the Popular Front broke down. The leaders of the Popular Front had said that France would not allow Franco to consolidate his position along the entire Pyrenean frontier. They had placed their confidence in the anti-German and anti-Italian imperialist interests of France. This was a false hope. We have explained why many times.

In any case, after the recognition of Burgos by France and Britain, this perspective broke down even in the eyes of the ostriches of the Popular Front. What possibilities for resistance against Franco remained after the fall of Catalonia? Even if it did not encompass regions as industrialised as Catalonia, nonetheless central Spain contained some important wealth. War factories had been installed there in expectation of the fall of Catalonia. Well-fortified Madrid had withstood numerous assaults. The whole centre was surrounded by fortifications which in the event of serious resistance would be a hard nut for Franco to crack. Moreover, Franco’s rear in Catalonia was not secure and it might conceal some disagreeable surprises for him.

If the proletariat of Madrid and central Spain woke up, if it abandoned all its false hopes, if it finally leapt over the rotten policy of the Popular Front and devoted itself to the revolutionary task of reconstituting the committees, if it cleaned up all the barely concealed Fascists and agents of the enemy in the rear, then the resistance would be transformed, and a counter-attack would be possible.

But this route was closed to the Republicans. It was not only closed for Besteiro, Miaja and Casado [164], but for Negrín as well, who, when abroad, denied that he had ever believed in resistance at any price; and finally, for the Communists too. Once the revolutionary road was blocked, the road of capitalism remained. To this road were committed Besteiro, Miaja and Casado. This trio repeated against the Communists the operation of the other trio of Comorera, Ayguadé [165] and Rodríguez Salas [166] during the May Days in Barcelona against the Anarchists and the POUM.

The objective significance of the pronunciamento was pro-Francoist and capitulationist. It was not a matter of a struggle of the UGT, Caballerists or Republicans against the Communists. It was a conspiratorial affair whose aim was to open the gates to Franco by smashing the revolutionary rank and file of the Communist Party.

We Bolshevik-Leninists are adversaries of Stalinism. We hate Stalinism because we understand the criminal consequences of its policy of strangling the proletariat. But only those who do not understand and do not see further than their own noses can imagine that our political positions and our appreciations can be determined by our hatred of the Stalinists who have murdered so many of us, or by our thirst for revenge.

We are not enraged petit-bourgeois, but revolutionary proletarians. The Fourth International can proclaim, after the example of the Communist League, that it has no “interests separate from those of the proletariat as a whole”.

Even though we hold the Communist leaders responsible for the pronunciamento, we declare that the duty of all honest workers (and the Bolshevik-Leninists claim to be their vanguard) was to fight against the Miaja-Casado junta arms in hand by the side of the Communist workers and militants, who were so lightly abandoned by the Stalinist leadership.

There is an internal logic in our political conceptions and in our attitude. The militants of the Fourth International were on the barricades with the Anarchist workers during the May Days, even though our concepts had nothing in common with those of Bakunin and Kropotkin. A member of the Spanish Section of the Fourth International, Cid, gave his life on the Ramblas fighting alongside the rest of the workers, who were, in their overwhelming majority, Anarchists. Why? For the pleasure of fighting at every opportunity? No, gentlemen of Libertaire [167], Anarchist defenders of Miaja’s junta! Cid and others fought on the Barcelona barricades at the side of the CNT because it was a question of defending the conquests of the revolution of 19 July, because the interests of the proletarian movement were to defend what remained of the organs of the second, working class, power: the Defence Committees, the control patrols, etc.

Today in Madrid it is a matter of a stab in the back on the part of the disloyal generals who wanted to prepare the ground for their capitulation to Franco by the destruction of the Communists. Bolshevik-Leninists are not scribblers who condemn everybody and contemplate their own navels, as do certain far-leftists of the Bordigist type. [168] We cannot remain neutral in the conflict which at this moment is covering Madrid with blood. We take part. We are at the side of the Communist fighters against the traitors of the Junta of Defence.

Who are these traitors? Besteiro, a supporter of compromise since the start of the Civil War. Casado, who was sheltered by Negrín. But also to be found there is Carrillo [169], who belongs to the Caballerist faction of the Socialist Party. The Stalinists are using this fact to declare (see Pravda) that “the Trotskyist generals have revolted against the government of Negrín”. If Trotskyists did not exist, Stalin would need to invent them. For him it is a matter of justifying the catastrophic results of his policy, and of offloading all earthly evils onto a scapegoat. The Tsarist government organised pogroms and claimed that the Jews were responsible for the misery of the people. Hitler is imitating it at present. Even though Stalin represents other social layers – the Soviet bureaucracy, and not the landowners or the bourgeoisie – he must also have someone on whom to lay the blame for all his failures and the reversals of his own policy. The Caballerist faction has as much relationship with authentic Trotskyists, the Fourth International in other words, as the latter has with Lucifer in person.

Even if the Caballerist faction was excommunicated by the Stalinists because it was not prepared to execute all the orders of the GPU, and even if some of the representatives of the London Bureau who had come to Spain were flirting with that disgraced dignitary and considered the Caballero tendency as progressive, it should be recalled that the Bolshevik-Leninists had often denounced this faction of the powerless, who in the course of the last 18 months knew only how to moan.

Moreover, does this Caballerist faction exist? We would like to believe that there did exist a tendency capable of opposing other conceptions and other policies to those of the Stalinists and Negrínists. Caballero considers that the Stalinists and Negrínists have mistreated him, and that he was the victim of their filthy aims. He was indeed one of the victims, but not one of those for whom we have to feel much sympathy.

His conservative policy at the time when he was Prime Minister prepared the way for Negrín. This dignitary in disgrace, whose abilities as a statesman were unrecognised, was very upset. Although outraged, he abstained from publicly speaking out under the pretext that the Civil War demanded silence. According to him circumstances were too serious to denounce forcefully the Stalinist betrayals. There is nothing surprising in this. He did it in government as well. We do not know if he approved of the entry of one of his supporters into the Junta of Casado.

As for the attitude of some of the representatives of the CNT, Mera along with them [170], it can only surprise those who did not know the profoundly reformist character of the leadership of the CNT. Didn’t the García Olivers and the Frederica Montsenys betray the Barcelona proletariat, and in particular the rank and file of their own organisation to Stalinist repression? Val [171] and Mera continued on this criminal path. This time they betrayed the Madrid proletariat to a band of capitulationists, and indirectly to Franco. Mera, moreover, is the representative of the extreme right wing of the CNT; he fought its left wing, the Friends of Durruti, and was praised for it by the Stalinists.

But the important lesson of the Madrid events is yet another failure of all the conceptions of the policy of the Popular Front.

You criminals, look at yourselves in the mirror! What is the value of the Republican army from whose leadership you have driven all the revolutionaries? How faithful is it to the Republican regime? It carries out ‘pronunciamentos’, just as in the old days of the monarchy.

What is the value of the republican democratic state apparatus? It supports the ‘pronunciamento’. Let the politicians recall the fate of the authentically proletarian organs like the Control Patrols. It was the Stalinists who forged the weapon that has now been turned against them and unfortunately against the proletariat as well.

The Miaja-Casado pronunciamento marked the end of the Negrín government. We should notice also the cowardice of the Communist Party leadership which abandoned its own militants and fled abroad.

The French Anarchists (cf. Libertaire) supported the Miaja-Casado junta because they saw it as an attempt to halt a pointless massacre of Spanish workers. Was not the situation lost? The main thing was to save the lives of the endangered militants, because the Spanish Revolution can only be made by the living, and not by the dead. These ideas can be found in Libertaire and Juin 36.

However, those who wish to stop the ‘pointless massacre’ have misunderstood the nature of Fascism. They hope for clemency on the part of Franco. Now the fundamental trait of Fascism is precisely that it tolerates no independent organisation of the proletariat, and that it even suppresses all independent bourgeois organisations. An armistice with Franco that would allow anything whatever to be safeguarded for the working class is impossible.

García Oliver was never rewarded for his betrayal in May, any more than Comorera and Negrín. The fate of Miaja-Casado and their allies will be no better. But as for the proletariat, it has no choice. Even in the event of a total defeat, it is only to the extent to which it resists and makes Franco pay dearly for his successes that it can regroup its forces afterwards and prepare its revenge.


21. What else could have been done?

Could anything else have been done? To ask the question is to answer it. It is all the more urgently necessary to reply that the same policy, the Popular Front, is being carried out on an international scale where it can only have the same results, that is, new catastrophes. Could anything else have been done? That is to ask: “Could another policy other than that of the Popular Front have been applied in Spain?”

Opportunists, not only during 1939 but always, have the habit of justifying their policy, their crimes in other words, by the ‘objective conditions’. Objective conditions, you see, did not allow a revolutionary policy. No, gentlemen leaders of the Popular Front, you lie: you hide your betrayals behind the ‘objective conditions’.

If we listen to the explanations of the leaders of the Popular Front, including the Anarchists, and if we take these explanations seriously, all we can do is to despair of everything and lose hope in the revolutionary capacities of the proletariat, its future and even its historic mission. We do not wish to delude ourselves with illusions, and our duty is to see reality as it really is.

But what was tragic about the Spanish Revolution, was not the objective conditions, it was the stupid and criminal policy of those pretending to lead it and who, alas, were followed by the masses.

According to our petit-bourgeois Popular Front democrats, everything was inevitable. The Republicans and Socialists justified the defeat by the military superiority of the Fascists, and the Communists by the existence of a pro-Fascist bourgeoisie (a discovery, this!) which, by its policy of non-intervention, favoured Franco. They forgot to add that they supported the Blum government, which inaugurated this policy. The Anarchists justified their capitulations and repeated betrayals by the blackmail exercised by the Russians through the weapons that they were sending to the Republicans. As for the POUM, it too joined the fatalist chorus and said: “We were too weak, and we had to follow the others, and above all we could not break unity.” Thus everything was inevitable. What happened had to happen, and it was written in advance in the Koran ...

What happened had to happen, but it is your policy, gentlemen of the Popular Front, which made it possible. Marxist thought is not fatalist, it is determinist. In spite of the importance Marxists ascribe to economic factors, the policies and ideology of parties in struggle, which often lag behind the objective necessities of development, can prevent the forward march of society and the flourishing of a new economy.

In any case, in Spain in July 1936 all the objective conditions existed for the success of a proletarian revolution. Unlike Hitler or Mussolini, Franco had no powerful mass movement behind him. In spite of external appearances his movement had, and still has, an old style reactionary rather than a Fascist character. One of the currents that supported it, the Spanish Falange, resembled the German and Italian Fascist organisations. But the Spanish Falange was not a mass organisation. The main force upon which Franco relied was the old clerical and feudal reaction which was so hated by the people.

The country, the people, the workers, the peasants and the petit-bourgeoisie had risen up to end this medieval Spain. Only the curb of the Popular Front had prevented a proletarian revolution from preceding the Francoist coup d’état. Responding to the revolt of the generals, the workers and peasants rose to transform the country in accordance with their interests. The proletariat possessed a powerful ally in the countryside. It was precisely the backward character of the country that enabled an agrarian revolution in the countryside to be joined by a working class movement in the towns.

It possessed another ally in the Catalan, Basque and Galician national movements, and it could have won over the Moroccans by a policy of colonial liberation inspired by the example of the Russian Revolution.

Most of the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie went over to Franco, but within the Republican zone the workers had only to puff to destroy what remained of the capitalist state and take power. To start with the Republican zone extended over all the most important centres in the country. The anti-Fascists held the three great capitals, Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, and the two most industrialised and decisive regions, Catalonia and the north. Millions of men had risen, and energy, initiative and enthusiasm were not lacking. Only the party of the revolution was lacking.

“But unity was necessary to struggle against Franco. It was necessary to find a broad formula that would group together all the anti-Fascists, even the most moderate. This formula was rightly the Popular Front.” So say the defenders of the greatest betrayal that history has yet known.

We have already explained that the ‘broad formula’ of the Popular Front satisfied nobody. Real unity could only come about on the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

“But the masses were not ready, they were backward and saturated with democratic illusions”, say some of our left objectors. The masses really did have democratic illusions. It is on that account that they brought to power the leaders of the Popular Front. But even if they did not have a clear understanding of their own objectives, they showed instinctively that they had fewer illusions than many of the Communist and Anarchist leaders. They had no confidence in the rotten bourgeois republic and in men like Azaña, Companys, etc. ... They wanted the Communists and Anarchists in power. It took heavy and persistent efforts from their leaders, mainly the Communists, to regild the lily of the discredited democrats, in order to force the masses to swallow the maintenance in power of an Azaña or a Companys. When the masses wanted Caballero, Pasionaria and García Oliver in power, it was their way of saying that they wanted the proletarian revolution.

Moreover, the Popular Front did not exist in the first few months after 19 July. The men of the Esquerra did not even dare to show themselves in the street. By creating their own organisations of struggle, the committees, the masses were on the right track. It took several months of effort by the leaders of the Popular Front to turn the masses back from the revolutionary path and cause them to enter the orbit of democratic passivity again.

Here the left wing of the Popular Front, in other words the Anarchists and the POUM, will reply to us: “We were in a minority, we could not join battle with the whole world simultaneously”, that is, against the Fascists, the Republicans, the Socialists, and the Communists.

Obviously, you are not expected to do the impossible, only those things that are possible. Even though we are called terrible terrorists, in spite of the esteem and devotion we have for prison, we are not Blanquists. [172] To the extent to which the Anarchists and the POUM were in a minority among the masses, they could not take power. Long before 1936, Lenin had already shown the route that revolutionaries must follow in such cases – march separately, strike together. Fight side by side with other anti-Fascist forces against Franco, but keep your independence, tell the truth to the masses, at every stage denounce the hesitations and betrayals of your travelling companions, and in the process of common struggle and continual revolutionary criticism win over the majority of the working class and the general population, and take power.

But can you carry on two civil wars at the same time? To start with, you have no choice. However silent, however open, the war inside the ‘governmental camp’ was not an invention of the Trotskyists, nor was it the result of the machinations of Franco. This second civil war had its origins in the clash of interests within the Popular Front. This contradiction could only be suppressed if one party in the Popular Front took over from the other. The right wing of the Popular Front was not inhibited by this sentiment of unity. It carried on a civil war against the left wing, which it wanted to muzzle, and succeeded in doing so.

Secondly, to win the war against Franco it was necessary to end this second civil war, this war within the Popular Front, as soon as possible, and to end it to the advantage of the proletariat, which alone was capable of winning the anti-Fascist war.

The historians of the French Revolution agree that the struggle of the Jacobins against the Girondins increased the strength of France in its struggle against the allied kings. During the Russian Revolution the obstinate struggle of the Bolsheviks against the Russian Girondins, the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries, strengthened the proletariat and made possible the victories of the Red Army over the White armies. But on account of their petit-bourgeois nature our democrats and their followers preferred the cosy unity of the Popular Front, which was really only a screen behind which everyone was fighting for their own interests.

“But Spain was not ripe for the Socialist Revolution, it was only ready for a democratic revolution”, intone the Stalinists, seconded by the Socialists. Thus, in an analogous situation the argument of the Mensheviks is dished up to us 20 years later. Was Russia less backward than Spain? All the same features also existed in Russia, such as being a colony of imperialism, foreign intervention, the backward character of agriculture and the remains of feudalism. Now can anybody explain to us how this “democratic revolution” can be accomplished within the confines of the capitalist system and in the imperialist epoch? We await these explanations in vain, and equally in vain we wait to see these democratic revolutions triumph and be completed. The smashing of the proletarian revolution in China resulted in the destruction of all the democratic gains, and in foreign domination. What had not ripened in Spain was the revolutionary party.

But you are completely forgetting that the international situation was unfavourable to the Spanish Revolution! In Russia it was easier. In 1917 the capitalists were fighting amongst themselves, and they could not hurl themselves against Bolshevism... Now Fascism reigns in several countries, in Germany, Italy, Portugal and the whole of Central Europe. And even the democracies were against us. In 1936-39 there was then no world war.

So reply those who wish to justify betrayal. And the Anarchists add: “We had Stalin against us as well.” Oh yes, all these facts are true. But revolutionaries do not fight in conditions created by themselves, they have to fight in the conditions imposed by circumstances. Revolutions do not take place by decree. Hence there can be no question of choosing particularly favourable conditions for making them, still less ideal conditions – an economically developed country, a perfect international climate, etc. ... That would be all very nice of course, but things do not happen like that. “Our road is not as straight as the Nevsky Prospekt.” Lenin taught us that revolution becomes possible in that country where the chain of imperialism is the weakest. This was so in Spain in 1936. It was necessary to break it.

But was the international situation in 1936 as hopeless for the Spanish proletariat as our Popular Front democrats and their Stalinist and Anarchist allies said? There was no world war, obviously. But must the proletariat wait for a new world war to make its revolution? That is one point of view, but it is not ours. According to us, the proletariat must do all it can to render this new slaughter impossible by pre-empting it with the liberating Socialist Revolution. Thus it will save millions of human lives, and even though we may be unscrupulous ‘terrorists’, that is important for us.

Franco enjoyed considerable international support. He was supported by three states and by powerful financial oligarchies. But could the proletariat find any support on an international scale? As a result of the policy of the Popular Front it received from outside the International Brigades, condensed milk and beans in limited quantities, and very expensive arms of mediocre quality in exchange for a policy of sabotaging the revolution, that was later to open the gates to Franco.

But if a revolutionary orientation had been adopted by the Spanish proletariat, it would then have been able to obtain powerful support from outside as well. To begin with, even after the strikes in France in June 1936 that were betrayed by the Stalinists, the proletariat still had strong positions in that country. A proletarian revolution in a capitalist country cannot but have repercussions in other countries. It does not always have the power to trigger off revolution in other countries if the conditions in them are not really ripe. But it always provokes currents of active solidarity that can paralyse the bourgeoisie of these countries and render their reactionary intervention impossible. And was it impossible to disintegrate the Francoist army? [173]

‘The Red Plague’ has powers of radiation and penetration. It only has to be genuine. Naturally the policy of ‘non-intervention’, in other words the international proletariat remaining passive instead of following the example of Fascism and actively intervening in the Spanish conflict, was a hard blow for the revolution. But this ‘non-intervention’ of the proletariat derived from the entire policy which the Popular Front pursued internationally. This non-intervention does not excuse the Spanish Popular Front, it only increases its responsibility for the crime. For it was not only the Spanish Popular Front because of its orientation that worked for Franco, it was the Popular Front in all countries, the “Popular Front in the whole world”, according to Dimitrov’s formula. Those responsible are not only Negrín and José Díaz, but Blum and Thorez and the latter’s master, Stalin, as well.

The French Popular Front, and the Communist Party in particular, demanded the withdrawal of foreign troops from Spain, and was satisfied with this platonic demand, but at the same time it enforced the unity of the French nation, in other words subordinated the French proletariat to the bourgeoisie. In this way it created a pro-Fascist climate in Europe.

But a revolutionary policy in Spain could have struck a tremendous blow at European reaction, and would have thrown into confusion the conservative leaders of the Popular Front in other countries. If the French workers had learned that the dictatorship of the proletariat had been installed in Barcelona and Madrid, in other words another and greater Commune, who can say that they would have remained passive during these years? Perhaps even Thorez and Costes [174] would have had some difficulty in ending the strikes! And would Fascist Italy and Hitlerite Germany have necessarily remained homogeneous and solid blocs at every test?

Even though the Stalinists, by preaching nationalism, did all they could to make the Fascist dictatorships more solid and to create a favourable climate around them, we do not think, as Göbbels claims, that Hitler’s regime will have an assured existence for a thousand years. Perhaps if the proletarian revolution had triumphed in Spain it would not have had a thousand days.

A decree by the proletarian government for the liberation of the protectorate, followed by revolutionary propaganda in Morocco, could have opened up a breach in North Africa and roused the Arab world against European imperialism. And if Spanish Morocco had been penetrated, French Morocco would have awakened. Have not the memories of “Abd el Krim’s freedom struggle survived? [175] Have we forgotten that struggle which threw the chancelleries of Europe into confusion?

Obviously, in order to implement such a policy inspired by the example of the great Russian Revolution, to the spirit of which the Fourth International remains faithful, we must not be afraid of annoying international capitalism and its creatures – Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain, Daladier and the Pope. We must not only be intent on annoying them, but also on overthrowing them.

“Perhaps you are right”, the Anarchist ministers might say, “but we had Stalin against us too, and he has the weapons that we lack.” It might be surmised that it is not our intention to defend Stalin’s blackmail in the matter of the sale of arms to Republican Spain. However, García Oliver is trying to justify his successive capitulations to Stalinist blackmail and thus evade his own responsibility.

The international bourgeoisie is not omnipotent, and it cannot always do what it wants. Neither is Stalin all-powerful. His plans can also be overturned. Until now they were generally overturned by the international bourgeoisie, but the plans of the ‘father of the peoples’ can be and also will be overturned in the future by the revolutionary proletariat. Just like the Pope and Chamberlain, Stalin could also be thrown into confusion by a triumphant proletarian revolution in Spain.

The essentially conservative Soviet bureaucracy has interests contrary to the international proletariat, but it nonetheless rests on the foundations of a workers’ state and a socialised economy. Its attitude also depends to a certain extent upon the opinion of the Russian proletariat, as well as the opinion of the international proletariat. Even if it always deceives its supporters, it still does not want to answer for it. In total, despite its betrayals, the Stalinist bureaucracy is not suspended in thin air, and it, too, feels the pressure of the international working class.

Would Stalin have sent weapons if ideological and police control had escaped him in Spain? It is not certain. In spite of his betrayals, Stalin does claim to be ‘the leader of the international proletariat’, and occasionally even ‘the leader of the international revolution’. If the Socialist revolution had triumphed in Spain, Stalin would have been forced to choose between it and Fascism. Considering the clientele upon which he depends, it would have been difficult for him to have chosen Fascism. The workers of Russia and the whole world would have found this incomprehensible. And in any case, the anti-statist García Oliver would have had in his hands a powerful card with which to expose him, rather more powerful than a theoretical article on the superiority of the doctrine of Bakunin over that of Marx.

“But in the meanwhile it was not a question of exposure, but of being able to oppose anti-Fascist tanks to the tanks of Franco”, the defenders of Anarcho-ministerialism will reply. That is true. So long as Anarchists, and revolutionaries generally, were not in control, and as long as they did not have power, they could not be opposed to the Republican government buying and receiving arms from Stalin, or even from the Devil and his grandmother, but they still had to maintain their independence, carry on revolutionary criticism (which is a powerful weapon in itself) and, thanks to it, take power and get hold of Stalin’s weapons at the same time.

During the May Days in Barcelona I saw several Anarchist militants using Russian weapons against the reactionary attack. When he sent them Stalin had simply not foreseen that his machine guns could change hands and be pointed in his direction. But if a revolutionary party had existed in Spain, it would have got hold of, not only the Russian machine guns, but all the weapons sent by Stalin as well as those sent by other foreign speculators.

“But if the anti-Stalinists were in power, whether they were of Anarchist, POUMist or Trotskyist hue, then Stalin would not send another bullet”, continues our objector, the defender of Anarcho-ministerialism.

Let us admit the worst eventuality. There would have been no more bullets from Stalin, Chamberlain would have been even more upset and even furious against our cause, whilst the Pope would have denounced us in a fresh Encyclical. This may be dreadfully sad, but we have to accept it if we seriously want to fight against capitalism and its favourite weapon, Fascism. If we make our activity dependent upon Stalin, Chamberlain, Pius XI or XII [176], we have to abandon all revolutionary intentions and accept the Popular Front, or something similar. But even if the Popular Front temporarily satisfies Stalin (and we do not know what turn he will make next), it would not satisfy Chamberlain at all, or the Pope, and, moreover, it demoralises the proletariat and opens the door to Fascism.

By committing itself to the revolutionary road, by destroying the capitalist state, by building a power base on the workers’ committees – a dictatorship of the proletariat – by solving all the burning problems of Spanish society by means of revolutionary reforms, by carrying out a total agrarian revolution, by freeing the oppressed nationalities, by liberating the colonies, and by basing the struggle against Franco upon the European and world Socialist revolution, the Spanish proletariat would have gained more powerful trump cards than Stalin’s tanks could ever be. [177]

But at this point the united choir of Negrín, Alvarez del Vayo, José Díaz and García Oliver replies: “There were too many obstacles to overcome, and too many enemies to defeat.” Clearly the Spanish Revolution did not lack enemies – and the most perfidious and dangerous of them were on the General Staff of the Republican Army and in ‘El Gobierno de la Victoria’.

We Marxists of the Fourth International can give no guarantees to the proletariat that our methods will guarantee easy victories. Such guarantees do not exist in a revolution, which is a gamble. But basing ourselves upon tragic experience we say this. The method of the Popular Front is driving you towards Fascism with implacable logic. Our road, which is that inspired by the example of the first victorious proletarian revolution, that of October 1917, is a hard road, a road of implacable struggle against all the enemies of Socialism. But it is the only road.

Let Us Prepare For Our Revenge

Resulta impossible concebir lo que España ha realizado si no se cuenta como elemento fundamental de la Victoria la decidida proteccion del cielo. (Heraldo de Aragon, 2 April 1939)
(It is impossible to understand what Spain has achieved unless you reckon with the help of Heaven as a fundamental element of victory.)

This work had yet to come back from the printer and see the light of day when the last act of the Civil War was on the point of being unfolded before our eyes. As we foresaw a month ago, the government of the Miaja-Casado Junta had only a short-term character. All it did was to hand over power to Franco. A month ago we wrote (see the chapter The Miaja-Casado Pronunciamento):

García Oliver was never rewarded for his betrayal in May, no more than Comorera and Negrín. The fate of Miaja-Casado and their allies will be no better. But as for the proletariat, it has no choice. Even in the event of a total defeat, it is only to the extent to which it resists and makes Franco pay dearly for his successes that it can regroup its forces afterwards and prepare its revenge.

Our accuracy has been confirmed yet again. Miaja, Casado and Besteiro, followed by certain CNTers and some Caballerists, hoped – or at any rate, pretended to hope – for an ‘honourable peace’ and for clemency on the part of Franco. Some voices had been raised abroad on the far left that supported, however openly, however timidly, the Miaja-Casado Junta, and saw in its orientation an attempt to ‘save human lives’.

Now the whole of Central Spain and Madrid have been handed over to Franco. In its turn the brave proletariat of Madrid and Valencia has suffered the fate of the Catalan proletariat. White terror reigns. The execution squads function unceasingly. The concentration camps are filled with thousands of proletarians. Even Besteiro, the traitor Besteiro, was arrested. “He will get no reward”, we wrote, and he did not. [178]

Social Democracy gave a vote of confidence to the Führer after Hitler’s seizure of power in Germany in 1933, and certain trade union bosses imagined that they could integrate the free trade unions into the Fascist regime. But some weeks later Hitler dissolved the free trade unions. Six years afterwards the same phenomenon reproduced itself in Spain with those who hoped to obtain an amnesty from Franco. And this entire constellation of reformists treated the revolutionary Marxists, supporters of the Fourth International, as utopians!

It was not to grant an amnesty that Franco, the instrument of feudal and capitalist reaction, carried on an unlimited war against the proletariat, but to massacre its vanguard. Those who talked about ‘saving human lives’ by helping the Miaja-Casado Junta did not understand the nature of Fascism. POUMist, Anarchist and Communist militants as well as Socialists and Republicans are being massacred. In Central Spain few anti-Fascists were able to get away, as the democracies washed their hands of them and refused to use their ships. Obviously Miaja, Casado, Val, etc., were able to escape by aeroplane, as nowadays aeroplanes are always available for fleeing governments.

Yet once more: the Miaja-Casado Pronunciamento was a crime, a crime against the proletariat and the Republic, a crime that will be paid for one day. Miaja-Casado massacred Communist workers and thus began the work finished by the master hangman Franco. A thousand-fold shame to those involved in this crime!

“The war has ended”, announces the Francoist General Staff. ‘The Red Plague’ has been crushed. The bourgeoisie of Spain and of the whole world can breathe again. Now with greater ease they can launch millions of proletarians into the imperialist slaughter.

Order reigns in Spain. The best of the best among the fighters of the proletariat are being killed and tortured. The Anarchist journalist Mauro Bajatierra [179] was killed in his house after having used his last bullet. Now many Mauro Bajatierras were there in Spain? Several thousand, obviously.

Franco has won. The capitalist, the landed proprietor, the noble and the marquis have again entered into the fullness of their rights. The reign of the priest and the Civil Guard [180] begins again. The churches will be rebuilt, the priests will stroll around on the Puerta del Sol, and the devout will kiss their hands.

The Non-Intervention Committee has finished its work and discharged its personnel. The new ‘anti-Fascist’ Pope has congratulated Franco. Hitler and Mussolini have done the same. Chamberla

And all these years, I thought it was Franco that betrayed Spain. ;-)

One big problem faced by anarchists was the leaders' lack of dedication to revolution. They took up positions in the state, and undermined the revolutionary fervor of the rank and file.

Watch out for those Green Party politicians!