Fascism/Antifascism (7)
| OCTOBER 1917 & JULY 1936 |
| It's obvious that a revolution doesn't develop in a day. There is always a confused and multiform movement. The whole problem is the ability of the revolutionary movement to act in an increasingly clear way and to go forward irreversibly. The comparison, often badly made, between Russia and Spain shows this well. Between February and October, 1917, the soviets constituted a power parallel to that of the State. For quite some time they supported the legal State and thus did not act at all in a revolutionary manner. One could even say the soviets were counter-revolutionary. But this does not imply that they were fixed in their ways--in fact they were the site of a long and bitter struggle between the revolutionary current (represented especially, but not solely, by the Bolsheviks), and the various conciliators. It was only at the conclusion of this struggle that the soviets took up a position in opposition to the State. [16] It would have been absurd for a communist to say in February, 1917: these soviets are not acting in a revolutionary manner, I shall denounce them and fight them. Because the soviets were not stabilized then. The conflict which animated the soviets over a period of months was not a struggle of ideas, but the reflection of an antagonism of genuine interests. |
| "It will be the interests--and not the principles--which will set the revolution in motion. In fact it is precisely from the interests, and from them alone, that the principles develop; which is to say that the revolution will not be merely political, but social as well." (Marx) [17] |
| The Russian workers and peasants wanted peace, land, and democratic reforms which the government would not grant. This antagonism explains the growing hostility, leading to confrontation, which divided the government from the masses. Moreover, earlier class struggles had led to the formation of a revolutionary minority knowing more or less (cf. the vacillations of the Bolshevik leadership after February) what it wanted, and which organized itself for these ends, taking up the demands of the mosses to use them against the government. In April 1917, Lenin said: |
| "To speak of civil war before people have come to realize the need for it is undoubtedly to lapse into Blanquism.... it is the soldiers and not the capitalists who now have the guns and rifles; the capitalists are getting what they want now not by force but by deception, and to shout about violence now is senseless.... For the time being we withdraw that slogan, but only for the time being." [18] As soon as the majority in the soviets shifted (in September), Lenin called for the armed seizure of power.... |
| No such events happened in Spain. In spite of their frequency and violence, the series of confrontations which took place after World War I did not serve to unify the proletarians as a class. Restricted to violent struggle because of the repression of the reformist movement, they fought incessantly, but did not succeed in concentrating their blows against the enemy. In this sense there was no revolutionary "party" in Spain. Not because a revolutionary minority did not succeed in organizing itself: this would be looking at the problem the wrong way around. Rather because the struggles, virulent though they were, did not result in a clear class opposition between proletariat and Capital. To speak of a "party" makes sense only if we understand it as the organization of the communist movement. But this movement was always too weak, too dispersed (not geographically, but in the degree to which it scattered its blows); it did not attack the heart of the enemy; it did not free itself from the guardianship of the C.N.T., an organization basically reformist as all syndical organizations are condemned to become, despite the pressure of radical militants; in brief, this movement did not organize itself in a communist fashion because it did not act in a communist fashion. The Spanish example demonstrates that the intensity of the class struggle--indisputable in Spain--does not automatically induce communist action, and thus the revolutionary party to keep the action going. The Spanish proletarians were never reluctant to sacrifice their lives (sometimes to no purpose), but never surmounted the barrier which separated them from an attack against Capital (the State, the commercial economic system). They took up arms, they took spontaneous initiatives (libertarian communes before 1936, collectivizations after), but did not go further. Very quickly they yielded control over the militias to the Central Committee of the Militias. Neither this organ, nor any other organ which emerged in this fashion in Spain, can be compared to the Russian soviets. The "ambiguous position of the C.C. of the Militias," simultaneously an "important appendage of the Generalidad " (Catalan government) and "a sort of coordinating committee for the various antifascist military organizations," implied its integration into the State, because it was vulnerable to those organizations which were disputing over (capitalist) State power. [19] |
| In Russia there was a struggle between a radical minority which was organized and capable of formulating the revolutionary perspective, and the majority in the soviets. In Spain, the radical elements, whatever they may have believed, accepted the position of the majority: Durruti sallied forth to struggle against Franco, leaving the State intact behind him. When the radicals did oppose the State, they did not seek to destroy the "workers'" organizations which were "betraying" them (including the C.N.T. and the P.O.U.M.). The essential difference, the reason why there was no "Spanish October," was the absence in Spain of a true contradiction of interests between the proletarians and the State. "Objectively," proletariat and Capital are in opposition, but this opposition exists at the level of principles, which doesn't coincide here with reality. In its effective social movement, the Spanish proletariat was not compelled to confront, as a block, Capital and the State. In Spain there were no burning demands, demands felt to be absolutely necessary, which could force the workers to attack the State in order to obtain them (as in Russia where one had peace, land, etc.). This non-antagonistic situation was connected with the absence of a "party," an absence which weighed heavily on events, preventing the antagonism from ripening and bursting later. Compared to the instability in Russia between February and October, Spain presented itself as a situation on the road to normalization from the beginning of August, 1936. If the army of the Russian State disintegrated after February, 1917, that of the Spanish State recomposed itself after July, 1936, although in a new, "popular" form. |
| [16] Oskar Anweiler, The Soviets: The Russian Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers Councils 1905-1921, New York (1974). |
| [17] Marx & Engels, Ecrits militaires, L'Herne (1970), p. 143. |
| [18] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works 24, Moscow (1964), p, 236. |
| [19] C. Semprun-Maura, Révolution et contre-révolution en Catalogne, Mame (1974), pp, 53-60. |