Socialist View (Summer 2006) - History: The Spanish Revolution 1936

The Spanish elections of February 1936 resulted in a victory for the Popular Front consisting of the Socialist Party, liberal republicans, the Communist Party, POUM and with tacit support from the anarchists who voted for the ticket. Across Spain, this election victory resulted in political prisoners being freed and reinstated at work with full compensation, while scabs were kicked out.

The repression of the past years was thrown off by the revolutionary masses. Every single town or city saw strike action involving millions. And in response the Popular Front government imposed a modified form of martial law in an attempt to quell the working class and peasantry. The right-wing landlords, aristocrats and clergy all reacted as if revolution had actually arrived and called for a military coup, while the leaders of the Popular Front (PF) were just as astounded by the workers and peasants’ actions. However, the PF leaders like Azana (a “liberal” republican) didn’t heed the warnings of a military plot and refused to give arms to workers’ organisations in order for them to oppose a fascist uprising. The day before the fascist coup, workers’ newspapers came out with blank editorials. The reason? These papers had printed stories warning that a coup was imminent but the government refused to allow this to be published fearing it would provoke the coup plotters!

Spain’s capitalists and big landlords had no confidence in the Popular Front maintaining control of the working class and peasants and therefore backed the fascist forces in order to protect their political system. The fascist uprising began on 17 July and initially the Popular Front government refused to admit that a rebellion had taken place and had spread from Morrocco to mainland Spain. Thanks to the heroic resistance of Spain’s workers and peasants the fascist coup was prevented from taking over society. A situation of dual power then existed on the Republican side, the capitalist state as run by the Popular Front was suspended in mid-air, the fascists and the working class had armed organisations, Azana and his ilk were like a head without a body.

For Spanish workers, fascism represented death, their sworn enemy. Only the workers and peasants could be relied upon to resist fascism to the finish. The capitalists who remained on the Republican side were merely the “shadow” of the bourgeoisie i.e. the legal and political representatives of capitalism, not actual capitalists and landowners. In Aragon at the end of July, the anti-fascist militias conquered the territory and as an army of liberation, they distributed the land to the peasants and power rested in the local anti-fascist committees. An important lesson of the Spanish revolution is that a mass revolutionary party with a programme that included land for the peasants and socialist democratic control of industry for the working class could have won over the majority of the people and created an unbreakable bulwark against fascism. Franco’s fascist coup began in Spanish Morocco and then spread to mainland Spain. The military had hoped for a quick victory, to terrorise the population into submission. However there was a magnificent groundswell of opposition to the fascists among the working class and peasantry. Right across the country the masses rose up and stormed military barracks armed only with knives, sticks and dynamite. This intense response to the coup was described by Felix Morrow in his excellent book, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain:

“The Barcelona proletariat prevented the capitulation of the republic to the fascists. On 19 July, almost barehanded, they stormed the first barracks successfully. By 2pm the next day they were masters of Barcelona. It was not accidental that the honour of initiating the armed struggle against fascism belongs to the Barcelona proletariat. Chief seaport and industrial centre of Spain, concentrating in it and the surrounding industrial towns of Catalonia nearly half the industrial proletariat of Spain, Barcelona has always been the revolutionary vanguard. The parliamentary reformism of the socialist-led UGT had never found a foothold there. The united socialist and Stalinist parties (the PSUC) had fewer members on 19 July than the POUM... But CNT and POUM workers during the afternoon of 18 June were raiding sporting goods stores for rifles, construction jobs for sticks of dynamite, fascist homes for concealed weapons. With the aid of a few friendly Assault Guards, they had seized a few racks of government rifles. (The revolutionary workers had painstakingly gathered a few guns and pistols since 1934.) That - and as many motor vehicles as they could find - was all the workers had when, at five o’clock on the morning of the 19th, the fascist officers began to lead detachments from the barracks. Isolated engagements before paving-stone barricades led to a general engagement in the afternoon. Here, political weapons more than made up for the superior armament of the fascists. Heroic workers stepped forward from the lines to call upon the soldiers to learn why they were shooting down their fellow toilers. They fell under rifle and machine-gun fire, but others took their place. Here and there a soldier began shooting wide... With arms from the arsenals the workers cleaned up Barcelona. Within a few days, all Catalonia was in their hands”.

Dual power

As well as defeating the fascists in many areas, the workers also took over factories, seized land, and set up workers’ and peasants militias and committees to run society. The capitalists and landlords flocked to the call of fascism while the capitalist state literally disintegrated in the course of a few days. The fascists gained a foothold on the Spanish mainland but within the Republican areas (which included the main industrial areas) a situation of dual power existed. However, within three years, Franco was holding a victory parade through Madrid. Fascism, the face of counter-revolution, had defeated the working class. 45,000 international volunteers had aided Spain in her fight against fascism and for socialism. Yet a coalition of the Communist Party, the Socialist Party and liberals had betrayed the Spanish people, while the leaders of the anarchist CNT (trade union confederation) and POUM (anti-Stalinist communist party) committed serious and ultimately catastrophic blunders. This combined with the role internationally of the USSR and the imperialist powers sealed the tragic fate of millions of people.

The Popular Front was essentially a government of class collaboration between representatives of the working class and peasantry and the representatives of capitalism. After the disaster of the Nazis coming to power in Germany “without a pane of glass being broken”, the Communist Parties internationally under the direction of Stalin went into unprincipled alliances with other workers’ organisations and what they called “progressive” capitalists supposedly to oppose fascism. In Spain, by joining in an alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie, the CP, the Socialist Party and others became a left cover for capitalist politicians who opposed the victory of socialism in Spain. This policy of the Popular Front tactic has been repeatedly tried by Stalinists and social-democrats throughout the world, and on each occasion has resulted in defeat for the working class. Initially huge parts of the transport, supply and fighting apparatus was in the hands of workers’ committees and organisations. The problem for the workers and peasants was the lack of a centralised structure or of democratic control. The Catalan Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias based itself on consensus between the different parties, representation was not based on election from the militias. This would prove to be a fatal weakness. An embryonic workers’ state existed in Spain; however, it was necessary to create workers’ councils (or soviets) based on the workplaces and the militias where differrent political views could be represented and debated. These soviets would also have acted as a democratic structure through which the working class and peasantry could have organised a co-ordinated war against the forces of fascism and for the overthrow of capitalism. Unfortunately in Spain unlike Russia in 1917 there was no genuine revolutionary working class party and leadership capable of arguing for this strategy.

The CNT (anarchists) refused to fight for workers’ control. Anarchism with its “opposition” to all forms of state organisation couldn’t make the distinction between a workers’ state that would act as an instrument to consolidate workers’ control and smash fascist reaction and the capitalist state which they claimed to want to overthrow. Incredibly, the anarchists ended up taking part in government from September 1936 onwards! This criminal mistake was also made by the POUM leadership. Instead of attempting to win over the genuine revolutionaries who considered themselves anarchists, the POUM insisted on not working within the CNT and organised themselves in separate militias instead of entering the workers’ organisations. The POUM leadership also kept its members from intervening amongst the radicalised left-wing of the Socialist Party which had adopted a programme calling for the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and the creation of a “Soviet Spain”. If the POUM had intervened amongst these sections of the organised working class with the correct programme they could have created the beginnings of a mass base within the working class and peasantry for a political force that could have counteracted the counter-revolutionary role being played by the leadership of the CP. In August the CNT entered the Basque Regional Government while a Council of the Economy (which did have a radical economic programme) was set up in Catalonia that was entered by both the POUM and CNT. On 4 September, Largo Caballero (leader of the SP left-wing) formed a new government which included workers’ organisations. While all these moves were covered in radical phraseology, they couldn’t mask the reality that this was class collaboration by the anarchists and POUM leaderships with sections of the capitalist class.

While the Stalinists and right-wing social-democrats had been arguing openly for class collaboration, the so-called revolutionary groups and parties were now also implicated in the policies and actions of the Popular Front. Late September would also see the CNT and POUM enter the Catalan Regional government with the Catalan bourgeois republicans. The bourgeoisie was weathering the storm of revolution by using the workers’ organisations as cover. Immediately under the direction of the capitalists a decree was issued that dissolved the revolutionary workers’ committees that had been established in July. The CP in agreement with the liberal republicans were also fighting for the creation of a regular, professional army to replace the militias. For the re-emergence of the capitalist state in republican areas a standing army was a must, decrees issued in October and backed by the POUM and CNT called for the handing in of weapons by the working class to a government that in effect was controlled by the capitalist class! The first arms from Stalin’s regime didn’t arrive until October and the limited number that did were used by the “security forces” in the rear and never made it to the troops on the frontline.

The Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union could not allow a successful socialist revolution in Spain as its existence would be a threat to their undemocratic and parasitical rule. So deep was the betrayal of the Spanish Communist Party leaders (following the orders of their Moscow rulers) that they collaborated with the capitalist forces to physically murder and wipe out the anarchist and POUM forces. The POUM with the Stalinists’ insistence were kicked out of the government. Caballero to his credit did try to curtail some of the Stalinist repression but ultimately his perspectives were clouded by the false hope that the Soviet Union would provide the resources to ensure a Republican victory. From this point onwards, the Popular Front took a dramatic turn to the right, expelling all left parties, including the Communist Party

George Orwell in his book “Homage to Catalonia” gives an inspiring account of how the workers rose up and set up barricades throughout the city after the Stalinists tried to take over the CNT-controlled telephone exchange. The CNT and POUM leaderships both refused support to their own militants and called for them to lay down their arms! This rotten action truly exposed how much of a block these organisations had become to a victory for the working class. Leon Trotsky explained that the key problem was the lack of a disciplined Marxist revolutionary party that had built roots in the working class and would have been capable of winning a majority of the working class and behind them the peasantry to a struggle for socialism. On many occasions in 1936 the working class and peasants of Spain engaged in heroic struggles that were ultimately betrayed by their so-called “leaders”.

A party committed to the independent struggle of the working class and a rejection of the class collaboration of the popular front with the capitalist parties would have been capable of building a mass force around a programme of all power to the working class and peasant committees (soviets), workers’ control of industry and land to the peasants and freedom for the people of Morrocco. The lessons of the Russian Revolution of October 1917 and the Russian civil war were not taken onboard by the myriad of so-called Spanish “Marxists”. The most important of these were the need for a revolutionary party and the necessity of giving the land to the peasants to destroy Franco’s rear and gain support for revolution. The mistakes of the “Marxists” however, were nothing compared to the crimes of Stalinist and the right-wing social democratic leaders, who openly and consciously played a counter-revolutionary role.

In Spain the question was it was what side of the barricade are you on? In a situation of revolution and civil war, it’s either the side of revolution or counter-revolution, there are no other alternatives. Unfortunately, a majority failed to see that many who claimed to be on the revolutionary side of the barricades - capitalists, Stalinists and reformists were in fact doing all that they could to maintain capitalist rule in Spain. In the end these forces allowed Franco to defeat the revolution and Spain was plunged into the darkness of fascist rule for nearly 40 years.