On The 75th Anniversary- The Lessons of Barcelona 1937 May Days:How The Popular Front Strangled The Spanish Revolution-(Young Spartacus -May 1977)
liance with the Spanish "democratic" bourgeoisie.
Revolution is the crucible in which political programs and the parties of the working class face their acid test. Forty years ago, at the height of the Spanish Civil War, the politics of class collaboration took their toll— 'with vengeance. Under the blows of the Popular Front and its Stalinist henchmen the flower of the Spanish working class—the Catalan proletariat—was trampled. As the Spanish workers head for parliamentary elections the bitter lessons of Barcelona must be brought to the fore for the new generation of proletarian militants-popular fronts mean workers blood'.
Struggle Against Francoism
The July 1936 military coup under the leadership of Francisco Franco came at the height of the largest strike wave in Spanish history. After the huge working-class vote in February 1936 for the popular-front coalition headed by the leader of the Republican Left, Manuel Azana, the government's arrest of strike leaders and the censorship of the working-class press discredited Azana in the eyes of the Spanish workers. Despite the participation of the Socialist and Communist parties (as well as the social-democratic UGT trade-union federation), the workers refused to entrust the government with the struggle against Franco and the fascists.
Franco's military revolt in Morocco triggered the massive mobilization of the Spanish proletariat. The bourgeois popular-front government, fearing the workers' response, first suppressed the news of the uprising a full day and then urged that everyone be "calm." But the memories of the bloody suppression of the 1934 Asturian miners' insurrection (which left 5,000 dead) at the hands of the "loyal Republican" army proved too vivid, and across Spain workers poured into the streets to demand arms for the fight against Franco—which Azana refused.
As garrison after garrison of the "democratic" army declared its loyalty to the Rebel forces of Franco, local workers committees took the initiative. Beginning on July 19, militant workers, often armed with no more than a few sticks of dynamite or a few aging handguns, stormed armories and barracks of the Republic's army. Those garrisons loyal to Franco (the vast majority) were disbanded and their arms used to equip the rapidly organized workers militias,.
By the afternoon of July 20 Barcelona, the Spanish citadel of revolution, was in the hands of the workers—unified under the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias. Within days the military revolt had been smashed in two-thirds of Spain by the armed working class. As tens of thousands of initial volunteers were hastily dispatched to the front to stem the advance of the Francoist troops, the organized workers militias settled into control of the streets.
Dual Power in Republican Spain
Following the July workers' uprising, Republican Spain entered into a revolutionary situation with two antagonistic poles of power: the bourgeois government and the armed workers militias. The working class patrolled the streets, organized the war effort and undertook the disarming of the army and the police— the latter were individually "volunteered" for service at the front. Workers collectives managed the factories and agricultural production was taken over by the farm collectives (who significantly raised output).
Nonetheless, even though the unstable Azana coalition lacked a significant social base—both Spanish capitalists and large landowners had for the most part deserted the! Republic in favor of Franco—the popular-front government remained the sole repository of bourgeois class rule in Republican Spain. Without even a significant armed force at its disposal, the few petty-lawyers of the Second Republic were indeed the "shadow of the bourgeoisie" (Trotsky). Their stay in power depended solely upon the determination of the bourgeois workers parties to uphold capitalist property relations. But the distrust and hatred of President Azana was of such magnitude that the Stalinists and social-democrats were forced to withdraw from the government under working-class pressure.
As with Russia between February and October 1917 and Germany in '1918-1919, so in Spain the independent organs of the working class were in a position to challenge the bourgeois state for state power. In all three cases the tottering bourgeois state was propped up only by the participation of reformist workers parties—all of whose bases of support existed elsewhere: in Russia the Soviets, in Germany the workers' and soldiers' councils and in Spain the trade union federations.
Unlike Russia, however, dual power in Spain existed only at the local or regional level. While workers militias controlled the streets, the unified national organs of proletarian power, the Soviets or juntas, never crystallized. Lacking the intervention of a revolutionary party struggling to unite the working class Tor the seizure of state power—and ‘necessarily rejecting any political collaboration with the bourgeoisie—the government of the "shadow bourgeoisie" remained the only national expression of the anti-Francoist forces. More than any other factor, this paved the way for Franco's march to power.
Revolutionary Catalonia
The locus of dual power par excellance was Catalonia—the center of 70 percent of pre-Civil War Spanish industry. The Catalan proletariat had long been the most militant in Spain, and land seizures and workers control of industry had begun long before Franco's uprising. Under wartime conditions, separated from the Basque metalwork’s industry, Catalonia was converted into the powerhouse of the Republic. The valiant workers collectives expanded the Catalan refineries, increased industrial production and built up a munitions industry and chemical works from scratch.
The workers militias also found their highest expression in Catalonia where they were centralized under the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias. The planned army takeover of Barcelona was decisively smashed and after July 20 the Catalan government was dependent upon the bureaucratic CNT (mass anarchist trade-union federation) leadership of the Central Committee for its continued existence. Fully the equal of the PCE and the Socialists in terms of class collaboration the Anarchists of the CNT readily acceded, going so. far as to incorporate bourgeois forces^ in the leadership of the Anti-Fascist Militias.
While the Madrid government was rearranged—with PSOE leader Largo Caballero as prime minister and the PCE in the cabinet—the government of Catalan Left leader Luis Companys temporized and granted "official recognition" to workers' activities over which it did not even have the vestige of control. Unable to dispute the military prowess of the workers militias, Companys invited the CNT-FAI (the Anarchist trade union and party) and the POUM (the centrist Catalan-centered Workers Party of Marxist Unification, formed in 193E by the fusion of former Trotskyism leaders with the Workers and Peasants Bloc led by Joaquin Maurin) to enter the Generalitat—the Catalan government. Caballero alone could not shore up Companys; in Catalonia the CNT was the hegemonic force on the left.
Only the entry of the CNT into the Generalitat on 26 September 1936 could have sufficiently strengthened Companys for a counterrevolutionary mobilization. Behind the rejection of the crucial importance of state power—i.e., either bourgeois or proletarian—which had been the hallmark of the vulgar anarchist "theoreticians" for decades lay the opportunism of the leaders. The abstract rejection of the state, the glorification of the producers' cooperatives emerging from the revolution as the culmination of the anarchist millennia, all gave way in September 1936 with the offer of ministerial portfolios. With the CNT and the POUM in the government Companys began to reinforce the repressive apparatus of the bourgeois state. In October, only a month after the new coalition was formed, he disbanded the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias and ordered the armed workers into the bourgeois "Popular Army." Later, in December the POUM's services were no longer required; and it found itself booted out of the coalition. In the meantime, the government was amassing a force of 20,000 well-armed men in the previously insignificant Carabineros—the customs police. Not only were these to be the shock troops of the Generalitat, but they laid the basis for the first direct challenge to the CNT (which had controlled the customs houses since July).
May Days in Barcelona
The strength of the Barcelona proletariat was exemplified by the red and black flags flying atop the Telephone Exchange. The Telef6nica, the most prominent building in central Barcelona, symbolized the seizure of industry and public services by the workers committees. Possession of the former AT&T building permitted the predominantly CNT workers occupying the premises to monitor the .activities of the Generalitat—a small though real lever of control on the activities of the Companys camarilla. The confrontation that was to center on the Telefonica had been brewing for several weeks. The Carabineros had repeatedly tried to seize the customs houses .from the CNT. Together with the Assault Guards, the Carabineros had attacked workers patrols in Barcelona. And for the first time since the fall of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, the government banned all demonstrations on May Day. Even more ominous was the murder of a dissident UGT leader (a member of the Catalan Communist Party, the PSUC, that controlled sections of the UGT in Catalonia) which the Stalinists used to marshal the forces of counterrevolution. The PSUC turned the funeral for a slain workers’ leader into a three-and-a-half hour mobilization of police and government soldiers in the heart of the workers' districts,
The stage was set when on May 3 the Stalinist Commissar of Public Order, Rodriguez Salas, arrived at the Telefoinica with three truckloads of Assault Guards (riot police). Salas demanded that the workers permit the "normalization" of the situation—i.e., that they hand over the premises to the cops. After forcibly entering the building, Salas and the cops (including a CNT police functionary) were forced to take shelter on the ground floor by CNT machine gun fire from the floor above.
Word of the attack spread like wildfire. Within hours the city was engulfed in street barricades. Despite the buildup of the Generalitat forces, they were no match for the armed workers' patrols. By the end of the first day, the entire city save parts of the center was indisputably in the hands of the workers. By nightfall, street fighting had begun.
The barricades posed the fundamental class question for every tendency on the left; particularly for those which had participated in the Popular Front. The Popular Front confronted the armed working masses across the Barcelona barricades. At each barricade, with each shot fired, the class line was drawn with brutal clarity.
PCE: Spearhead of Counterrevolution
Without doubt the most despicable role during the May Days was played by the PCE. At the time of its entry into the Popular Front the PCE did not possess a solid base in the working class—before fusing with the PSOE youth its membership was about 10,000. But Soviet military aid pro-vided the PCE an important lever to gain posts within-and to dictate terms to—the Republican forces However, the .real strength' of the -PCE. was its unswerving loyalty to bourgeois class rule. Throughout the popular-front period Stalinists the world over were beside themselves in demonstrating to the capitalist class their indispensability in suppressing the class struggle.
The PCE was the only working-class tendency willing to enter the Azana government in July of 1936 (during the Third Period the PCE had termed Azana a "fascist ")-but had been prevented from doing so by Caballero's adamant refusal to rejoin the coalition at that time. The PCE had resolutely opposed all nationalizations, land seizures, factory occu
pations—in short, any incursions upon capitalist property relations. At a plenary session of the PCE Central Committee on 5 March 1937 Spanish Stalinist chief Jose' Diaz laid down the line bluntly:
"If in the beginning the various premature attempts at 'socialization' and 'collectivization,' which were the result of an unclear understanding of the character of the present struggle, might have been justified by the fact that the big landlords and manufacturers had deserted their estates and factories and that it was necessary at all costs to continue production, now on the contrary they cannot be justified at all. At the present time, when there is a government of the Popular Front, in which all the forces engaged in the fight against fascism are represented, such things are not only not desirable, but absolutely impermissible." [our emphasis] —Communist International, May 1937
But in tirading against the seething struggles of the Spanish toilers Diaz and the other PCE leaders were only parroting the anti-revolutionary line of the Kremlin bureaucracy. A few months earlier, in December 1936, Stalin dispatched a personal letter to Prime Minister Largo Caballero advising him to conciliate "the middle and lower bourgeoisie... [by] protecting them against confiscations" (reprinted in New York Times, 4 June 1939).
But most of all, the Stalinists provided the rallying force for the attack on the Spanish labor movement. On 17 December 1936 Pravda laid out Stalinist policy with undisguised counterrevolutionary zeal:
"So far as Catalonia is concerned the cleaning up of the Trotskyist and Anarcho-Syndicalist elements has already begun, and it will be carried out with the same energy as in the U.S.S.R."
—quoted in Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth
Pravda's words rang all too true. PSUC commissar Salas directed the attack on the Telefonica and coordinated the attacks upon the workers militias. For the PSUC the barricades posed no problem whatsoever: their members were the only working-class tendency on the side of the Companys government. There could be no excesses in the rooting out of "Trotskyist" and "Anarcho-syndicalist" "Francoist agents"; and the hidden dungeons and torture chambers in the basements of PSUC-controlled police prefectures attest to this.
The Downfall of Spanish Anarchism
The May Days proved the undoing of the oldest current in the Spanish labor movement: Anarchism. The entry into the Catalan and Madrid governments had exposed the funda¬mental opportunism and class collaborationism of the CNT-FAI leadership. The May Days forced them to choose between their working-class base and the bourgeoisie; in the final analysis they chose the latter.
The CNT newspaper, Solidaridad Obrera, attempted to bury the news of the attack on the Telefonica; mean-while, the CNT-FAI leaders maneuvered to "negotiate" its surrender to the Generalitat. As the CNT ranks swelled the barricades and took control of the city, the CNT-FAI issued a leaflet exhorting the workers to: "Put down your arms; embrace like brothers!
Victory will be ours if we unite; we shall be defeated if we fight among ourselves." —quoted in Grandizo Muniz, Jalones
de derrota; promesa de victoria. But the "we" included the first 1,500 Assault Guards sent by the central government (which had moved to Valencia) to drown the workers in blood. The CNT-FAI sent its top leaders to Barcelona—to counsel "serenity" and abandoning the barricades. CNT National Secretary Marciano Vasquez, the Anarchist Minister of Justice Garcia Oliver ' and Federica Montseny (the "Pasionaria" of the CNT) has¬tened to Barcelona from Valencia-each one with the same message: surrender. As the cops streamed into the city Oliver, the most brazen among them, urged the workers, "Hold your , fire; embrace the Assault Guards!" (quoted in Muniz, op, cit.).
The Anarchist leaders faced no easy task. Clearly in command militarily, the workers were ill disposed to surrender to the hated police and Stalinists. But without organized leadership and following the demoralizing treachery of their leaders the workers drifted from the barricades. By May 6 the Generalitat controlled the city and reprisals were launched. Even the official CNT-FAI apologist was forced to admit:
"the overwhelming majority of the population were with the C.N.T. ... It would have been easy to attack the center of the city, had the responsible committee so decided.... But the Regional Committee of the C.N.T. was opposed to it." —Augustin Souchy, The Tragic Week
in May
The barricades were finally abandoned in exchange for the "promise" to "negotiate." 'With the barricades down, the police seized the Telefonica and rampaged through the working-class neighborhoods. However, the treachery of the CNT-FAI did not stop here. Again Souchy admits:
"Bad the workers in the outlying districts been informed immediately of this development, they would surely have insisted upon taking further measures and returned the attack."
Once again, Solidaridad Obrera suppressed the news.
The open capitulation of the Anarchists fueled the courage of bourgeois reaction on the Republican side. Before the May conflagration Companys haughtily dismissed the largest workers party, predicting that its leadership "would capitulate as they always had before." After the May Days Jaime Miraltlles, a Catalan Left minister in the Generalitat, railed "in fact the Anarchists had committed suicide. By this uprising they had shown themselves incompetent" (quoted in Robert Payne, The Civil War in Spain).
The actions of the CNT-FAI during the May Days, their refusal to take power and the desertion of their followers, was the logical outcome of their entry into the government. Writing in December 1937, Trotsky summed up their role:
"In opposing the goal, the conquest of power, the Anarchists could not in the end fail to oppose the means, the revolution. The leaders of the CNT and FAI not only helped the bourgeoisie hold on to the shadow of power in July 1936; they also helped it to reestablish bit by bit what it had lost at one stroke. In May 1937, they sabotaged the uprising of the workers and thereby saved the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Thus anarchism, which wished merely to be antipolitical, proved in reality to be antirevolutionary, and in the more critical moments—counterrevolutionary." —The Lessons of Spain: The Last Warning
POUM vs. Trotskyism
The most tragic capitulation was that of the POUM. Up until mid-September 1936, the POUM stood opposed to the Popular Front, at least in words. As the CNT entered into negotiations with the Generalitat, the POUM began to waver and on 18 September declared itself "willing to leave the question open." Eight 'days later POUM leader Andres Nin became Minister of Justice in a bourgeois government.
The entry of the POUM was a decisive confirmation of Trotsky's determined struggle against its formation. The fusion of Nin's followers, the majority of the Spanish Left Opposition, with Maurin came at the expense of programmatic capitulations on the questions of the popular front and Catalan nationalism. From its inception, the POUM gravitated into the left-wing orbit of the CNT and never presented itself as a determined competitor for leadership of the class. Thus, when the CNT opted for ministerial portfolios, the POUM meekly followed suit.
During the initial phase of the May Days the POUM played a decisive military role. As the largest organized force on the workers' barricades, the POUM militias numbered over 10,000, the POUM was in a unique position to channel the militant disillusionment with the treachery of the CNT tops into a concerted struggle for the seizure of power. Instead the POUM carried its politics of centrist capitulation to its highest expression: it ordered its followers off the barricades. As the proletariat faced the onslaught of the police, the May 6 issue of La Batalla (the POUM newspaper) advised the workers to "leave the streets" and "return to work."
The Spanish Trotskyists along with a small left-wing anarchist group, the Friends of Durruti, were the only organizations to have called for the defense of the barricades and raise a program for the seizure of power. Despite their size, the Bolshevik-Leninist section of Spain (for the Fourth International) widely distributed on the barricades the following leaflet dated May 4:
"LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTIONARY OFFENSIVE
No compromise. Disarmament of the National Republican Guard and the reactionary Assault Guards. This is the decisive moment. Next time it will be too late. General strike in all the industries excepting those connected with the prosecution of the war, until the resignation of the reactionary government. Only proletarian power can assure military victory.
Complete arming of the working class. Long live unity of action of CNT-FAI-POUM.
Long live the revolutionary front of the proletariat.
Committees of revolutionary defense in the shops, factories, districts." —quoted in Felix Morrow, Revolution and Counterrevolution in Spain
Aftermath of the May Days
The May Days broke the back of the struggle against Franco. The Valencia government sent 6,000 Assault Guards (equipped with Soviet arms and described by George Orwell as by far the best troops he'd seen in Spain) to smother the last embers of workers insurrection. When the fighting was over more than 500 had been killed, thousands wounded and the militias decisively defeated. Andres Nin and Left anarchist leader Camillo Berneri—along with numerous other proletarian militants—were murdered by the Stalinists. The POUM was outlawed and La Batalla banned; Solidaridad Obrera was censored; and Caballero •and the Anarchists were driven from the government. On 26 January 1939 Franco's troops marched into Barcelona; the resistance had long before been crushed.
An embittered George Orwell aptly summed up the nature of the "antifascist bourgeoisie's" war against Franco:
"A government which sends boys of fifteen to the front with rifles 40 years old and keeps its biggest men and newest weapons in the rear, is manifestly more afraid of the revolution than of the fascists." —Homage to Catalonia
Barcelona was the purest expression of the bourgeois character of the popular front. As the battle lines of the class struggle were drawn in blood, only the Trotskyist program offered the revolutionary proletariat the path leading to the seizure of power. The actions of the ostensible revolutionaries, from the POUM on the left to the Stalinists on the right, confirmed Trotsky's classic formulation:
"In reality, the People's Front is the main question of proletarian class strategy for this epoch. It also offers the best criterion for the difference between Bolshevism and Menshevism.... All the People's Fronts in Europe are only a pale copy and often a caricature of the Russian
People's Front of 1917 "
— Writings, 1935-36
Popular fronts are bourgeois political formations fundamentally counterposed to proletarian class interests. The working class must give no support to popular fronts, not even voting for the workers parties within them. This is the lesson of the Popular Front; two generations of the Spanish working class have borne the oppressive burden of Francoism as a result. But this lesson must be embodied in what Trotsky termed the three conditions for victory in Spain: the party, the party and once again the party. Forward to the building of a Trotskyist party in Spain, section of a reforged Fourth International.'
liance with the Spanish "democratic" bourgeoisie.
Revolution is the crucible in which political programs and the parties of the working class face their acid test. Forty years ago, at the height of the Spanish Civil War, the politics of class collaboration took their toll— 'with vengeance. Under the blows of the Popular Front and its Stalinist henchmen the flower of the Spanish working class—the Catalan proletariat—was trampled. As the Spanish workers head for parliamentary elections the bitter lessons of Barcelona must be brought to the fore for the new generation of proletarian militants-popular fronts mean workers blood'.
Struggle Against Francoism
The July 1936 military coup under the leadership of Francisco Franco came at the height of the largest strike wave in Spanish history. After the huge working-class vote in February 1936 for the popular-front coalition headed by the leader of the Republican Left, Manuel Azana, the government's arrest of strike leaders and the censorship of the working-class press discredited Azana in the eyes of the Spanish workers. Despite the participation of the Socialist and Communist parties (as well as the social-democratic UGT trade-union federation), the workers refused to entrust the government with the struggle against Franco and the fascists.
Franco's military revolt in Morocco triggered the massive mobilization of the Spanish proletariat. The bourgeois popular-front government, fearing the workers' response, first suppressed the news of the uprising a full day and then urged that everyone be "calm." But the memories of the bloody suppression of the 1934 Asturian miners' insurrection (which left 5,000 dead) at the hands of the "loyal Republican" army proved too vivid, and across Spain workers poured into the streets to demand arms for the fight against Franco—which Azana refused.
As garrison after garrison of the "democratic" army declared its loyalty to the Rebel forces of Franco, local workers committees took the initiative. Beginning on July 19, militant workers, often armed with no more than a few sticks of dynamite or a few aging handguns, stormed armories and barracks of the Republic's army. Those garrisons loyal to Franco (the vast majority) were disbanded and their arms used to equip the rapidly organized workers militias,.
By the afternoon of July 20 Barcelona, the Spanish citadel of revolution, was in the hands of the workers—unified under the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias. Within days the military revolt had been smashed in two-thirds of Spain by the armed working class. As tens of thousands of initial volunteers were hastily dispatched to the front to stem the advance of the Francoist troops, the organized workers militias settled into control of the streets.
Dual Power in Republican Spain
Following the July workers' uprising, Republican Spain entered into a revolutionary situation with two antagonistic poles of power: the bourgeois government and the armed workers militias. The working class patrolled the streets, organized the war effort and undertook the disarming of the army and the police— the latter were individually "volunteered" for service at the front. Workers collectives managed the factories and agricultural production was taken over by the farm collectives (who significantly raised output).
Nonetheless, even though the unstable Azana coalition lacked a significant social base—both Spanish capitalists and large landowners had for the most part deserted the! Republic in favor of Franco—the popular-front government remained the sole repository of bourgeois class rule in Republican Spain. Without even a significant armed force at its disposal, the few petty-lawyers of the Second Republic were indeed the "shadow of the bourgeoisie" (Trotsky). Their stay in power depended solely upon the determination of the bourgeois workers parties to uphold capitalist property relations. But the distrust and hatred of President Azana was of such magnitude that the Stalinists and social-democrats were forced to withdraw from the government under working-class pressure.
As with Russia between February and October 1917 and Germany in '1918-1919, so in Spain the independent organs of the working class were in a position to challenge the bourgeois state for state power. In all three cases the tottering bourgeois state was propped up only by the participation of reformist workers parties—all of whose bases of support existed elsewhere: in Russia the Soviets, in Germany the workers' and soldiers' councils and in Spain the trade union federations.
Unlike Russia, however, dual power in Spain existed only at the local or regional level. While workers militias controlled the streets, the unified national organs of proletarian power, the Soviets or juntas, never crystallized. Lacking the intervention of a revolutionary party struggling to unite the working class Tor the seizure of state power—and ‘necessarily rejecting any political collaboration with the bourgeoisie—the government of the "shadow bourgeoisie" remained the only national expression of the anti-Francoist forces. More than any other factor, this paved the way for Franco's march to power.
Revolutionary Catalonia
The locus of dual power par excellance was Catalonia—the center of 70 percent of pre-Civil War Spanish industry. The Catalan proletariat had long been the most militant in Spain, and land seizures and workers control of industry had begun long before Franco's uprising. Under wartime conditions, separated from the Basque metalwork’s industry, Catalonia was converted into the powerhouse of the Republic. The valiant workers collectives expanded the Catalan refineries, increased industrial production and built up a munitions industry and chemical works from scratch.
The workers militias also found their highest expression in Catalonia where they were centralized under the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias. The planned army takeover of Barcelona was decisively smashed and after July 20 the Catalan government was dependent upon the bureaucratic CNT (mass anarchist trade-union federation) leadership of the Central Committee for its continued existence. Fully the equal of the PCE and the Socialists in terms of class collaboration the Anarchists of the CNT readily acceded, going so. far as to incorporate bourgeois forces^ in the leadership of the Anti-Fascist Militias.
While the Madrid government was rearranged—with PSOE leader Largo Caballero as prime minister and the PCE in the cabinet—the government of Catalan Left leader Luis Companys temporized and granted "official recognition" to workers' activities over which it did not even have the vestige of control. Unable to dispute the military prowess of the workers militias, Companys invited the CNT-FAI (the Anarchist trade union and party) and the POUM (the centrist Catalan-centered Workers Party of Marxist Unification, formed in 193E by the fusion of former Trotskyism leaders with the Workers and Peasants Bloc led by Joaquin Maurin) to enter the Generalitat—the Catalan government. Caballero alone could not shore up Companys; in Catalonia the CNT was the hegemonic force on the left.
Only the entry of the CNT into the Generalitat on 26 September 1936 could have sufficiently strengthened Companys for a counterrevolutionary mobilization. Behind the rejection of the crucial importance of state power—i.e., either bourgeois or proletarian—which had been the hallmark of the vulgar anarchist "theoreticians" for decades lay the opportunism of the leaders. The abstract rejection of the state, the glorification of the producers' cooperatives emerging from the revolution as the culmination of the anarchist millennia, all gave way in September 1936 with the offer of ministerial portfolios. With the CNT and the POUM in the government Companys began to reinforce the repressive apparatus of the bourgeois state. In October, only a month after the new coalition was formed, he disbanded the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias and ordered the armed workers into the bourgeois "Popular Army." Later, in December the POUM's services were no longer required; and it found itself booted out of the coalition. In the meantime, the government was amassing a force of 20,000 well-armed men in the previously insignificant Carabineros—the customs police. Not only were these to be the shock troops of the Generalitat, but they laid the basis for the first direct challenge to the CNT (which had controlled the customs houses since July).
May Days in Barcelona
The strength of the Barcelona proletariat was exemplified by the red and black flags flying atop the Telephone Exchange. The Telef6nica, the most prominent building in central Barcelona, symbolized the seizure of industry and public services by the workers committees. Possession of the former AT&T building permitted the predominantly CNT workers occupying the premises to monitor the .activities of the Generalitat—a small though real lever of control on the activities of the Companys camarilla. The confrontation that was to center on the Telefonica had been brewing for several weeks. The Carabineros had repeatedly tried to seize the customs houses .from the CNT. Together with the Assault Guards, the Carabineros had attacked workers patrols in Barcelona. And for the first time since the fall of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, the government banned all demonstrations on May Day. Even more ominous was the murder of a dissident UGT leader (a member of the Catalan Communist Party, the PSUC, that controlled sections of the UGT in Catalonia) which the Stalinists used to marshal the forces of counterrevolution. The PSUC turned the funeral for a slain workers’ leader into a three-and-a-half hour mobilization of police and government soldiers in the heart of the workers' districts,
The stage was set when on May 3 the Stalinist Commissar of Public Order, Rodriguez Salas, arrived at the Telefoinica with three truckloads of Assault Guards (riot police). Salas demanded that the workers permit the "normalization" of the situation—i.e., that they hand over the premises to the cops. After forcibly entering the building, Salas and the cops (including a CNT police functionary) were forced to take shelter on the ground floor by CNT machine gun fire from the floor above.
Word of the attack spread like wildfire. Within hours the city was engulfed in street barricades. Despite the buildup of the Generalitat forces, they were no match for the armed workers' patrols. By the end of the first day, the entire city save parts of the center was indisputably in the hands of the workers. By nightfall, street fighting had begun.
The barricades posed the fundamental class question for every tendency on the left; particularly for those which had participated in the Popular Front. The Popular Front confronted the armed working masses across the Barcelona barricades. At each barricade, with each shot fired, the class line was drawn with brutal clarity.
PCE: Spearhead of Counterrevolution
Without doubt the most despicable role during the May Days was played by the PCE. At the time of its entry into the Popular Front the PCE did not possess a solid base in the working class—before fusing with the PSOE youth its membership was about 10,000. But Soviet military aid pro-vided the PCE an important lever to gain posts within-and to dictate terms to—the Republican forces However, the .real strength' of the -PCE. was its unswerving loyalty to bourgeois class rule. Throughout the popular-front period Stalinists the world over were beside themselves in demonstrating to the capitalist class their indispensability in suppressing the class struggle.
The PCE was the only working-class tendency willing to enter the Azana government in July of 1936 (during the Third Period the PCE had termed Azana a "fascist ")-but had been prevented from doing so by Caballero's adamant refusal to rejoin the coalition at that time. The PCE had resolutely opposed all nationalizations, land seizures, factory occu
pations—in short, any incursions upon capitalist property relations. At a plenary session of the PCE Central Committee on 5 March 1937 Spanish Stalinist chief Jose' Diaz laid down the line bluntly:
"If in the beginning the various premature attempts at 'socialization' and 'collectivization,' which were the result of an unclear understanding of the character of the present struggle, might have been justified by the fact that the big landlords and manufacturers had deserted their estates and factories and that it was necessary at all costs to continue production, now on the contrary they cannot be justified at all. At the present time, when there is a government of the Popular Front, in which all the forces engaged in the fight against fascism are represented, such things are not only not desirable, but absolutely impermissible." [our emphasis] —Communist International, May 1937
But in tirading against the seething struggles of the Spanish toilers Diaz and the other PCE leaders were only parroting the anti-revolutionary line of the Kremlin bureaucracy. A few months earlier, in December 1936, Stalin dispatched a personal letter to Prime Minister Largo Caballero advising him to conciliate "the middle and lower bourgeoisie... [by] protecting them against confiscations" (reprinted in New York Times, 4 June 1939).
But most of all, the Stalinists provided the rallying force for the attack on the Spanish labor movement. On 17 December 1936 Pravda laid out Stalinist policy with undisguised counterrevolutionary zeal:
"So far as Catalonia is concerned the cleaning up of the Trotskyist and Anarcho-Syndicalist elements has already begun, and it will be carried out with the same energy as in the U.S.S.R."
—quoted in Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth
Pravda's words rang all too true. PSUC commissar Salas directed the attack on the Telefonica and coordinated the attacks upon the workers militias. For the PSUC the barricades posed no problem whatsoever: their members were the only working-class tendency on the side of the Companys government. There could be no excesses in the rooting out of "Trotskyist" and "Anarcho-syndicalist" "Francoist agents"; and the hidden dungeons and torture chambers in the basements of PSUC-controlled police prefectures attest to this.
The Downfall of Spanish Anarchism
The May Days proved the undoing of the oldest current in the Spanish labor movement: Anarchism. The entry into the Catalan and Madrid governments had exposed the funda¬mental opportunism and class collaborationism of the CNT-FAI leadership. The May Days forced them to choose between their working-class base and the bourgeoisie; in the final analysis they chose the latter.
The CNT newspaper, Solidaridad Obrera, attempted to bury the news of the attack on the Telefonica; mean-while, the CNT-FAI leaders maneuvered to "negotiate" its surrender to the Generalitat. As the CNT ranks swelled the barricades and took control of the city, the CNT-FAI issued a leaflet exhorting the workers to: "Put down your arms; embrace like brothers!
Victory will be ours if we unite; we shall be defeated if we fight among ourselves." —quoted in Grandizo Muniz, Jalones
de derrota; promesa de victoria. But the "we" included the first 1,500 Assault Guards sent by the central government (which had moved to Valencia) to drown the workers in blood. The CNT-FAI sent its top leaders to Barcelona—to counsel "serenity" and abandoning the barricades. CNT National Secretary Marciano Vasquez, the Anarchist Minister of Justice Garcia Oliver ' and Federica Montseny (the "Pasionaria" of the CNT) has¬tened to Barcelona from Valencia-each one with the same message: surrender. As the cops streamed into the city Oliver, the most brazen among them, urged the workers, "Hold your , fire; embrace the Assault Guards!" (quoted in Muniz, op, cit.).
The Anarchist leaders faced no easy task. Clearly in command militarily, the workers were ill disposed to surrender to the hated police and Stalinists. But without organized leadership and following the demoralizing treachery of their leaders the workers drifted from the barricades. By May 6 the Generalitat controlled the city and reprisals were launched. Even the official CNT-FAI apologist was forced to admit:
"the overwhelming majority of the population were with the C.N.T. ... It would have been easy to attack the center of the city, had the responsible committee so decided.... But the Regional Committee of the C.N.T. was opposed to it." —Augustin Souchy, The Tragic Week
in May
The barricades were finally abandoned in exchange for the "promise" to "negotiate." 'With the barricades down, the police seized the Telefonica and rampaged through the working-class neighborhoods. However, the treachery of the CNT-FAI did not stop here. Again Souchy admits:
"Bad the workers in the outlying districts been informed immediately of this development, they would surely have insisted upon taking further measures and returned the attack."
Once again, Solidaridad Obrera suppressed the news.
The open capitulation of the Anarchists fueled the courage of bourgeois reaction on the Republican side. Before the May conflagration Companys haughtily dismissed the largest workers party, predicting that its leadership "would capitulate as they always had before." After the May Days Jaime Miraltlles, a Catalan Left minister in the Generalitat, railed "in fact the Anarchists had committed suicide. By this uprising they had shown themselves incompetent" (quoted in Robert Payne, The Civil War in Spain).
The actions of the CNT-FAI during the May Days, their refusal to take power and the desertion of their followers, was the logical outcome of their entry into the government. Writing in December 1937, Trotsky summed up their role:
"In opposing the goal, the conquest of power, the Anarchists could not in the end fail to oppose the means, the revolution. The leaders of the CNT and FAI not only helped the bourgeoisie hold on to the shadow of power in July 1936; they also helped it to reestablish bit by bit what it had lost at one stroke. In May 1937, they sabotaged the uprising of the workers and thereby saved the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Thus anarchism, which wished merely to be antipolitical, proved in reality to be antirevolutionary, and in the more critical moments—counterrevolutionary." —The Lessons of Spain: The Last Warning
POUM vs. Trotskyism
The most tragic capitulation was that of the POUM. Up until mid-September 1936, the POUM stood opposed to the Popular Front, at least in words. As the CNT entered into negotiations with the Generalitat, the POUM began to waver and on 18 September declared itself "willing to leave the question open." Eight 'days later POUM leader Andres Nin became Minister of Justice in a bourgeois government.
The entry of the POUM was a decisive confirmation of Trotsky's determined struggle against its formation. The fusion of Nin's followers, the majority of the Spanish Left Opposition, with Maurin came at the expense of programmatic capitulations on the questions of the popular front and Catalan nationalism. From its inception, the POUM gravitated into the left-wing orbit of the CNT and never presented itself as a determined competitor for leadership of the class. Thus, when the CNT opted for ministerial portfolios, the POUM meekly followed suit.
During the initial phase of the May Days the POUM played a decisive military role. As the largest organized force on the workers' barricades, the POUM militias numbered over 10,000, the POUM was in a unique position to channel the militant disillusionment with the treachery of the CNT tops into a concerted struggle for the seizure of power. Instead the POUM carried its politics of centrist capitulation to its highest expression: it ordered its followers off the barricades. As the proletariat faced the onslaught of the police, the May 6 issue of La Batalla (the POUM newspaper) advised the workers to "leave the streets" and "return to work."
The Spanish Trotskyists along with a small left-wing anarchist group, the Friends of Durruti, were the only organizations to have called for the defense of the barricades and raise a program for the seizure of power. Despite their size, the Bolshevik-Leninist section of Spain (for the Fourth International) widely distributed on the barricades the following leaflet dated May 4:
"LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTIONARY OFFENSIVE
No compromise. Disarmament of the National Republican Guard and the reactionary Assault Guards. This is the decisive moment. Next time it will be too late. General strike in all the industries excepting those connected with the prosecution of the war, until the resignation of the reactionary government. Only proletarian power can assure military victory.
Complete arming of the working class. Long live unity of action of CNT-FAI-POUM.
Long live the revolutionary front of the proletariat.
Committees of revolutionary defense in the shops, factories, districts." —quoted in Felix Morrow, Revolution and Counterrevolution in Spain
Aftermath of the May Days
The May Days broke the back of the struggle against Franco. The Valencia government sent 6,000 Assault Guards (equipped with Soviet arms and described by George Orwell as by far the best troops he'd seen in Spain) to smother the last embers of workers insurrection. When the fighting was over more than 500 had been killed, thousands wounded and the militias decisively defeated. Andres Nin and Left anarchist leader Camillo Berneri—along with numerous other proletarian militants—were murdered by the Stalinists. The POUM was outlawed and La Batalla banned; Solidaridad Obrera was censored; and Caballero •and the Anarchists were driven from the government. On 26 January 1939 Franco's troops marched into Barcelona; the resistance had long before been crushed.
An embittered George Orwell aptly summed up the nature of the "antifascist bourgeoisie's" war against Franco:
"A government which sends boys of fifteen to the front with rifles 40 years old and keeps its biggest men and newest weapons in the rear, is manifestly more afraid of the revolution than of the fascists." —Homage to Catalonia
Barcelona was the purest expression of the bourgeois character of the popular front. As the battle lines of the class struggle were drawn in blood, only the Trotskyist program offered the revolutionary proletariat the path leading to the seizure of power. The actions of the ostensible revolutionaries, from the POUM on the left to the Stalinists on the right, confirmed Trotsky's classic formulation:
"In reality, the People's Front is the main question of proletarian class strategy for this epoch. It also offers the best criterion for the difference between Bolshevism and Menshevism.... All the People's Fronts in Europe are only a pale copy and often a caricature of the Russian
People's Front of 1917 "
— Writings, 1935-36
Popular fronts are bourgeois political formations fundamentally counterposed to proletarian class interests. The working class must give no support to popular fronts, not even voting for the workers parties within them. This is the lesson of the Popular Front; two generations of the Spanish working class have borne the oppressive burden of Francoism as a result. But this lesson must be embodied in what Trotsky termed the three conditions for victory in Spain: the party, the party and once again the party. Forward to the building of a Trotskyist party in Spain, section of a reforged Fourth International.'
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