Fascism/Antifascism (6)
| SPAIN: WAR OR REVOLUTION? |
| Everywhere democracy was capitulating before dictatorship. More correctly, it was welcoming dictatorship with open arms. And Spain? Far from constituting the happy exception, Spain represented the extreme case of armed confrontation between democracy and fascism without changing the nature of the struggle: it is always two forms of capitalist development which are in opposition, two political forms of the capitalist State, two statist systems quarrelling over the legitimacy of the legal and normal capitalist State in a country. Moreover the confrontation was violent only because the workers had arrayed themselves against fascism. The complexity of the war in Spain comes from this double aspect: a civil war (proletariat vs. capital) transforming itself into a capitalist war (the proletarians supporting in both camps rival capitalist State structures). |
| After having given every facility to the "rebels" to prepare themselves, the Republic was going to negotiate and/or submit, when the proletarians rose up against the fascist coup d'état, preventing its success in half of the country. The Spanish War would not have been unleashed without this authentic proletarian insurrection (it was more than a spontaneous outbreak). But this alone does not suffice to characterize the whole Spanish War and subsequent events. It defines only the first moment of the struggle, which was effectively a proletarian uprising. After having defeated the fascists in a large number of cities, the workers held power. Such was the situation immediately after their insurrection. But what did they proceed to do with this power? Did they hand it back to the republican State, or did they use it to go further in the direction of communism? They put their trust in the legal government, i.e. in the existing, capitalist State. All their subsequent actions were carried out under the direction of this State . This is the central point. It followed that in its armed struggle against Franco and in its socio-economic transformations, the whole movement of the Spanish proletarians was placing itself squarely within the framework of the capitalist State and could only be capitalist in nature. It's true attempts to go further took place in the social sphere (we shall speak further of this); but these attempts remained hypothetical so long as the capitalist State was maintained. The destruction of the State is the necessary (but not sufficient) condition for communist revolution. In Spain, real power was exercised by the State and not by organizations, unions, collectives, committees, etc. The proof of this is that the mighty C.N.T. had to submit to the P.C.E. (very weak prior to July, 1936). One can verify this by the simple fact that the State was able to use its power brutally when required (May, 1937). There is no revolution without the destruction of the State. This "obvious" Marxist truth, forgotten by 99% of the "Marxists," emerges once more from the Spanish tragedy. |
| "It is one of the peculiarities of revolutions that just as the people seem about to take a great start and to open a new era, they suffer themselves to be ruled by the delusions of the past and surrender all the power and influence they have so dearly won into the hands of men who represent, or are supposed to represent, the popular movement of a by-gone epoch." (Marx) [12] |
| We cannot compare the armed workers "columns" of the second half of 1936 with their subsequent militarization and reduction to the level of organs of the bourgeois army. A considerable difference separated these two phases, but not in the sense that a non-revolutionary phase followed a revolutionary phase: first there was a phase of stifling the revolutionary awakening, during which the workers' movement presented a certain autonomy, a certain enthusiasm, indeed, a communist demeanour well described by Orwell [13]. Then this phase, superficially revolutionary but in fact creating the conditions for a classic anti-proletarian war, gave way naturally to what it had prepared. |
| The columns left Barcelona to fight fascism in other cities, principally Saragossa. Supposing they were attempting to spread the revolution beyond the Republican zones, it would have been necessary to revolutionize those Republican zones, either previously or simultaneously. [14] Durruti knew the State had not been destroyed, but he ignored this fact. On the march his column, composed of 70% anarchists, pushed for collectivization. The militia helped the peasants and taught them revolutionary ideas. But "we have only one purpose: to destroy the fascists". Durruti put it well: "our militia will never defend the bourgeoisie, they just do not attack it". A fortnight before his death (November 21, 1936), Durruti stated: |
| "A single thought, a single objective...: destroy fascism.... At the present time no one is concerned about increasing wages or reducing hours of work... to sacrifice oneself, to work as much as required... we must form a solid block of granite. The moment has arrived for the unions and political organizations to finish with the enemy once and for all. Behind the front, administrative skills are necessary.... After this war is over, let's not provoke, through our incompetence, another civil war among ourselves.... To oppose fascist tyranny, we must present a single force: there must exist only a single organization, with a single discipline." |
| The will to struggle can never serve as a substitute for a revolutionary struggle. Furthermore, political violence is easily adapted to capitalist purposes (as recent terrorism proves). The fascination of "armed struggle" quickly backfires on the proletarians as soon as they direct their blows exclusively against a particular form of the State rather than the State itself. |
| Under different conditions the military evolution of the antifascist camp (insurrection, followed by militias, finally a regular army) recalls the anti-Napoleonic guerilla war described by Marx: |
| "By comparing the three periods of guerilla warfare with the political history of Spain, it is found that they represent the respective degrees into which the counter-revolutionary spirit of the Government had succeeded in cooling the spirit of the people. Beginning with the rise of whole populations, the partisan war was next carried on by guerilla bands, of which whole districts formed the reserve and terminated in corps francs continually on the point of dwindling into banditti, or sinking down to the level of standing regiments". [15] |
| The conditions cannot be juxtaposed, but in 1936 as in 1808, the military evolution cannot be explained solely by "technical" considerations related to military art: one must also consider the relation of the political and social forces and its modification in an anti-revolutionary sense. Let us note that the "columns" of 1936 did not even succeed in waging a war of franc-tireurs [irregulars] and stalled before Saragossa. The compromise evoked by Durruti above--the necessity of unity at any price--could only give victory to the Republican State first (over the proletariat) and to Franco next (over the Republican State ). |
| There was certainly the start of a revolution in Spain, but it failed as soon as the proletarians put their faith in the existing State. It scarcely matters what their intentions were. Even though the great majority of proletarians who were ready to struggle against Franco under the leadership of the State might have preferred to hang on to real power in spite of everything, and supported the State only as a matter of convenience, the determining factor is their act and not their intention. After organizing themselves to defeat the coup d'état, after giving themselves the rudiments of an autonomous military structure (the militias), the workers agreed to place themselves under the direction of a coalition of "workers' organizations" (for the most part openly counter-revolutionary) which accepted the authority of the legal State. It is certain that at least some of the proletarians hoped to retain real power (which they had effectively conquered, though only for a short time), while leaving to the official State only the semblance of power. This was truly an error, for which they paid dearly. |
| Some critics of the preceding analysis agree with our account of the Spanish war but insist that the situation remained "open" and could have evolved. It was therefore necessary to support the autonomous movement of the Spanish proletarians (at least until May, 1937) even if this movement had given itself forms quite inadequate to the true situation. A movement was evolving, and it was necessary to contribute to its ripening. To which the reply is that, on the contrary, the autonomous movement of the proletariat quickly vanished as it was absorbed into the structure of the State, which was not slow to stifle any radical tendency. This was apparent to all by mid-1937, but the "bloody days of Barcelona" served only to unmask the reality which had existed since the end of July, 1936: effective power had passed out of the hands of the workers to the capitalist State. Let us add for those who equate fascism and bourgeois dictatorship that the Republican government made use of "fascist methods" against the workers. Certainly the number of victims was much less in comparison to the repression of Franco, but this is connected with the different function of the two repressions, democratic and fascist. An elementary division of labour: the target group of the Republican government was much smaller (uncontrollable elements, P.O.U.M., left of the C.N.T.). |
| [12] Marx & Engels, Collected Works 13, Lawrence & Wishart, London (1980), p. 340. |
| [13] George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, London (1938). |
| [14] Abel Paz, Durruti: The People Armed, Black Rose Books, Montreal (1976). |
| [15] Marx & Engels, Collected Works 13, London (1980), p. 422. |