Fascism/Antifascism (10)
| IMPERIALIST WAR |
| In order to have a revolution, it is necessary that there be at least the beginning of an attack against the roots of society: the State and the economic organization. This is what happened in Russia starting from February 1917 and accelerating little by little .... One cannot speak of such a beginning in Spain, where the proletarians submitted to the State. From the beginning, everything they did (military struggle against Franco, social transformations) was carried out under the aegis of Capital. The best proof of this is the rapid development of those activities which the antifascists of the Left are incapable of explaining. The military struggle quickly turned to statist bourgeois methods which were accepted by the extreme Left on the grounds of efficiency (and which were almost always proven to be inefficient). The democratic State can no more carry on armed struggle against fascism than it can prevent it from coming to power peacefully. It is perfectly normal for a bourgeois Republican State to reject the use of methods of social struggle required to demoralize the enemy and reconcile itself instead to a traditional war of fronts, where it stands no chance faced with a modern army, better equipped and trained for this type of combat. As for the socializations and collectivizations, they likewise lacked the driving force of communism, in particular because the non-destruction of the State prevented them from organizing an anti-mercantile economy at the level of the whole of society, and isolated them into a series of precariously juxtaposed communities lacking common action. The State soon re-established its authority. Consequently there was no revolution or even the beginnings of one in Spain after August, 1936. On the contrary the movement towards revolution was increasingly obstructed and its renewal increasingly improbable. It is striking to note that in May, 1937, the proletarians again pulled themselves together to oppose the State (this time the democratic State) by armed insurrection, but did not succeed in prolonging the battle to the point of rupture with the State, After having submitted to the legal State in 1936, the proletarians were able to shake the foundations of this State in May, 1937, only to yield before the "representative" organizations which urged them to lay down their arms. The proletarians confronted the State, but did not destroy it. They accepted the counsels of moderation from the P.O.U.M. and the C.N.T.: even the radical group "Friends of Durruti" did not call for the destruction of these counter-revolutionary organizations. |
| We may speak of war in Spain, but not of revolution. The primary function of this war was to solve a capitalist problem: the construction of a legitimate State in Spain which would develop its national Capital in the most efficient manner possible while integrating the proletariat. Viewed from this angle, the analyses of the sociological composition of the two opposing armies is largely irrelevant, like those analyses which measure the "proletarian" character of a party by the percentage of workers among its members. Such facts are real enough and must be taken into account, but are secondary in comparison to the social function of what we are trying to understand. A party with a working class membership which supports capitalism is counter-revolutionary. The Spanish Republican army, which included certainly a great number of workers but fought for capitalist objectives, was no more revolutionary than Franco's army. |
| The formula "imperialist war" as applied to this conflict will shock those who associate imperialism with the struggle for economic domination, pure and simple. But the underlying purpose of imperialist wars, from 1914-1918 to the present, is to resolve both the economic and social contradictions of Capital, eliminating the potential tendency towards the communist movement. It scarcely matters that in Spain the war was not directly concerned with fighting over markets. The war served to polarize the proletarians of the entire world, in both the fascist and democratic countries, around the opposition fascism/antifascism. Thus was the Holy Alliance of 1939-1945 prepared. The economic and strategic motives were not, however, lacking. It was necessary for the opposing camps, which were not yet well defined, to win themselves allies or create benevolent neutrals, and to probe the solidity of alliances. Also it was quite normal for Spain not to participate in World War II. Spain had no need to do so, having solved her own social problem by the double crushing (democratic and fascist) of the proletarians in her own war; her economic problem was decided by the victory of the conservative capitalist forces which proceeded to limit the development of the forces of production in order to avoid a social explosion. But again, contrary to all ideology, this anti-capitalist, "feudal" fascism began to develop the Spanish economy in the sixties, in spite of itself. |
| The 1936-1939 war fulfilled the same function for Spain as World War II for the rest of the world, but with the following important difference (which modified neither the character nor the function of the conflict): it started off from a revolutionary upsurge strong enough to repulse fascism and force democracy to take up arms against the fascist menace, but too weak to destroy them both. But by not defeating both, the revolution was doomed, because both fascism and democracy were potential forms of the legitimate capitalist State. Whichever one triumphed, the proletarians were sure to be crushed by the blows always reserved for them by the capitalist State.... |