*"Viva La Quince Brigada"- The Abraham Lincoln Battalion In The Spanish Civil War

Click On Title To Link To Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives Site.

BOOK REVIEW

THE ODYSSEY OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE: AMERICANS IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, Peter N. Carroll, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1994.

AS WE HEAD INTO THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY IN JULY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR MILITANTS NEED TO STUDY THIS IMPORTANT EVENT OF INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS HISTORY. THE WRITER WILL BE REVIEWING AND COMMENTING ON SEVERAL ASPECTS OF THAT FIGHT FOR MILITANTS TODAY.

I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 since I was a teenager. My first term paper was on this subject. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class uprisings after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted in one of his writings on Spain that the Spanish proletariat at the start of its revolutionary period had a higher political consciousness than the Russian proletariat in 1917. That calls into question the strategies put forth by the parties of the Popular Front, including the Spanish Communist Party- defeat Franco first, and then make the social transformation of society. Mr. Carroll’s book while not directly addressing that issue nevertheless demonstrates through the story of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion how the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and through it the policy of the Communist International in calling for international brigades to fight in Spain aided in the defeat of that promising revolution.

Mr. Carroll chronicles anecdotally how individual militants were recruited, transported, fought and died as ‘premature anti-fascists’ in that struggle. No militant today, or ever, can deny the heroic qualities of the volunteers and their commitment to defeat fascism- the number one issue for militants of that generation-despite the fatal policy of the the various party leaderships. Such individuals were desperately needed then, as now, if revolutionary struggle is to succeed. However, to truly honor their sacrifice we must learn the lessons of that defeat through mistaken strategy as we fight today. Interestingly, as chronicled here, and elsewhere in the memoirs of some veterans, many of the surviving militants of that struggle continued to believe that it was necessary to defeat Franco first, and then fight for socialism. This was most dramatically evoked by the Lincolns' negative response to the Barcelona uprising of 1937-the last time a flat out fight for leadership of the revolution could have galvanized the demoralized workers and peasants for a desperate struggle against Franco.

Probably the most important part of Mr. Carroll’s book is tracing the trials and tribulations of the volunteers after their withdrawal from Spain in late 1938. Their organization-the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade- was constantly harassed and monitored by the United States government for many years as a Communist 'front' group. Individuals also faced prosecution and discrimination for their past association with the Brigades. He also traces the aging and death of that cadre. In short, this book is a labor of love for the subjects of his treatment. Whatever else this writer certainly does not disagree with that purpose. If you want to read about what a heroic part of the vanguard of the international working class looked like in the 1930’s, look here. Viva la Quince Brigada!!

*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By- An Abraham Lincoln Battalion Salute-"Viva La Quince Brigada"

Click on the title to link to a "YouTube" film clip of Pete Seeger and The Almanac Singers performing the Abraham Lincoln Battalion tribute, "Viva La Quince Brigada".


In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.

LA QUINCE BRIGADA

Viva la Quince Brigada,
Rhumbala, rhumbala, rhumbala.
(Repeat)

Que se ha cubierta de gloria,
Ay Manuela, Ay Manuela
(Repeat)

Luchamos contra los Morros,
Rhumbala, rhumbala, rhumbala.
(Repeat)

Mercenarios y fascistas
Ay Manuela, Ay Manuela
(Repeat)

Solo es nuestro deseo
Rhumbala, rhumbala, rhumbala
(Repeat)

Acabar con el fascismo
Ay Manuela, ay Manuela!
(Repeat)

En el frentes de Jarama,
Rhumbala, rhumbala rhumbala
(Repeat)

No tenemos ni aviones,
Ni tankes, ni canones, ay Manuela!
(Repeat)

Ya salimos de Espana
Rhumbala, rhumbala, rhumbala
(Repeat)

Por luchar en otras frentes
Ay Manuela, ay Manuela!
(Repeat)

*The Latest From The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Website- A 74th Reunion Meeting Coming Up In May

Click on the title to link to the "Abraham Lincoln Brigade" Website.

Markin comment:

Every once in a while I go through the list of sites that I have links to on my profile page. I happened to click onto the Abraham Lincoln Brigade site while looking for something on the American poet Langston Hughes whom I have posted several entries on today. On their homepage I noted that there is to be a 74th Anniversary reunion meeting held in May (the International Brigades, including the Lincolns, entered the Spanish Civil War in early fall of 1936). As those who follow this blog may know I have railed against these odd-ball year celebrations on previous occasions. No so here. Those "premature anti-fascists" who fought and died in Spain are kindred spirits and should be honored every year and in every way. Not the least of which should be by our producing some victories in the struggle for our communist future. Hats off to the Lincolns!

Note: I do have a little question of who of the Lincolns would still be around to celebrate. The recruiting process done by the Communist Party for reliable politically Stalinist fighters would have required those who went to Spain to be in their twenties, I assume. Thus, any participant would have to be somewhere in their mid-90s. Is that right? And who is left? A big hats off to them, whoever they are.

*Eyewitness To The Spanish Civil War-George Orwell's "Homage To Catalonia"

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the Party Of Marxist Unification (POUM)whose militia George Orwell fought in and an organization thta has been the subject, including in this space, of on-going controversy for its role in the Spanish revolution.

BOOK REVIEW

HOMAGE TO CATALONIA, GEORGE ORWELL, HARCOURT BRACE JOVANOVICH, NEW YORK, 1952

AS WE APPROACH THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR MILITANTS NEED TO DRAW THE LESSONS FOR THE DEFEAT OF THAT REVOLUTION.

I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was a teenager. Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class consciousness of the Spanish proletariat was higher at the time than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. George Orwell’s book gives some eyewitness insights into the causes of that defeat from the perspective of a political rank and file militant who fought in the trenches in a Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) militia unit during the key year 1937.

Leon Trotsky in his polemical article ‘The Lessons of Spain-Last Warning’, collected in The Spanish Revolution, 1931-39 , his definitive assessment of the Spanish situation in the wake of the defeat of the Barcelona uprising in May 1937, while asserting that the POUM was the most honest revolutionary party in Spain, stated that in the final analysis the approaching defeat of the revolution could be laid to the policies of the POUM. Orwell’s book parallels that argument on the ground in Spain although he certainly was not a Trotsky partisan.

Let us be clear here- we are not talking about the Orwell who later, after World War II, lost his political moorings and decided that the road to human progress passed through the nefarious intelligence agencies of British imperialism. Unfortunately, many militants have traveled that road. Nor are we talking about the later author of Animal Farm and 1984 who warmed the hearts of Western Cold Warriors. We are talking about the militant George Orwell who fought as a volunteer against fascism in Spain in 1937 when it counted. That Orwell has something to say to militants. We need to listen to him if we are to make sense of the disaster in Spain.

While Homage to Catalonia is in part a journal of Orwell’s personal experiences as a militiaman under the stress of war that part is less useful to militants today. The parts that are important are the political chapters. One should, moreover, discount Orwell’s self-proclaimed blasé attitude toward politics. Here is an intensely political man.

Orwell draws two important conclusions from his experiences. First, the war against Franco could not be won without a simultaneous extension of the revolution to the creation of a workers state. The workers and peasants of Spain could not be persuaded to and would not and fight to the finish merely for ‘democracy’. This premise ran counter to the objective policies pursued by all the pro-Republican parties. Orwell describes very vividly the changes toward defeatism that occurred in working class morale in Barcelona, the Petrograd of Spain, after the May days of 1937during his stay.

The second conclusion Orwell draws is that the role of the Spanish Communist Party and its sponsor, the Soviet Union was not just momentarily anti-revolutionary in the interests of defeating Franco but counterrevolutionary. The Soviet Union had no interest in creating a second workers state. In the final analysis, despite providing weapons, the Soviet Union was more interested in finding allies among the European imperialists than in revolution. In long-range hindsight that seems clear but at the time it was far from obvious to militants on the ground, especially the militants of the Spanish Communist party who got caught up in the Stalinist security apparatus. Of course, this extreme shift to the right on the part of the Stalinists dovetailed with the interests of the liberal Republicans. However, in the end they all had to flee.

This writer notes that at the time many European militants, like Victor Serge, and organizations , like the Independent Labor Party in England, covered for the erroneous policies of the POUM based on their position as the most coherent, organized and militant ostensibly revolutionary organization in Spain. That support was at the time the subject of intense debate on the extreme left. Fair enough. What does not make sense is that since 1991 or so under the impact of the so-called ‘death of communism’ a virtual cottage industry has developed, centered on the British journal Revolutionary History, seeking today to justify the positions of the POUM. Jesus, can’t these people learn something after all this time.

And what was the POUM? That party, partially created by cadre formerly associated with Trotsky in the Spanish Left Opposition, failed on virtually every count. That party made every mistake in the revolutionary book. Those conscious mistakes from its inception included, but were not limited to, the creation of an unprincipled bloc between the former Left Oppositionists and the former Right Oppositionists (Bukharinites) of Juan Maurin to form the POUM in 1935; political support to the Popular Front including entry into the government coalition in Catalonia by its leader, Andreas Nin; creation of its own small trade union federation instead of entry in the massive anarchist led-CNT to fight for the perspective of a workers state; a willful failure to seriously expand the organization outside of Catalonia; creation of its own militia units and other institutions reflecting a hands-off attitude toward political struggle with other parties; and, fatally, an equivocal role in the Barcelona uprising of 1937. In short, at best, the POUM pursued left social democratic policies in a situation that required Bolshevik policies. Read 1937Orwell for other insights into the POUM.

***A Small Slice Of The Spanish Civil War- From The Pen Of Ernest Heminway

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for "For Whom The Bells Toll".

BOOK REVIEW

FOR WHOM THE BELLS TOLL, ERNEST HEMINGWAY

AS THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR APPROACHES THE WRITER IS REVIEWING BOOKS ON AND ABOUT THIS SUBJECT WHICH SHOULD BE OF INTEREST TO TODAY’S MILITANTS

I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish Fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class uprisings after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted in one of his writings on Spain that the Spanish proletariat at the start of its revolutionary period had a higher political consciousness than the Russian proletariat in 1917.

That understanding of the political consciousness of the Spanish proletariat calls into question the strategies put forth by the parties of the Popular Front, including the Spanish Communist Party- defeat Franco first, and then make the social transformation of society. Ernest Hemingway in his novel For Whom the Bells Toll weighs in on that question here. Whatever value the novel had or has as a narrative of a small slice of the Spanish events one must look elsewhere to discovery the causes of the Republican defeat.

Ernest Hemingway most definitively was in love with Spain and always, lurking just below, the surface was his love affair with death. That combination placed in the context of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 makes for an explosive, dramatic tale. The hero is an American, Robert Jordan, aka Ernest Hemingway, of fizzy politics but a desire to help the Spanish people. Additionally Jordan, if expediency demands it, is willing to face danger and death at the command of the Communist-dominated International Brigades (although it is not always clear whether he is an American Lincoln Brigade volunteer or a freelancer). Hemingway's critique of the Stalinist domination of the military command and therefore authors of the military strategy that led to defeat at times overwhelms the story. His skewering of Andre Marty, leader of the International Brigades, also has that same effect. In short, Hemingway believed that 'outside forces’ meddling in Spanish affairs led to death for Jordan and disaster for the Spanish people. Well, nobody expects nor is it mandatory for a novelist to be politically astute or correct. Here Hemingway joins that crowd.

The one subject that Ernest Hemingway seemed consistently to excel at was the telling of war stories. And whatever else might be true of For Whom the Bell Tolls it is preeminently a war story. A classic war romance if you have also seen the movie treatment of the book starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. It might be a male thing, it might be a Hemingway thing, or it might be that the nature of war lends itself to dramatic tension that holds a story together. Today, in some literary circles, it is not considered politically correct to laud works by such dead, white males as Hemingway but the flat out truth is that the man could write. If his work stands outside the current canon of American literary efforts then something is wrong with the new canon.

To make matters worst the current leftist-oriented literary establishment, grizzled, hard-bitten academic warriors that they are, has not been the only force that has taken aim at Hemingway's head. At the time of publication in 1940 the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, those who actually fought in Spain, and the various Communist Parties throughout the world were unhappy with the novel. Why? Hemingway was too harsh on the deficiencies of the Communists, the International Brigades and the Republican forces in general. Above I mentioned that writers were not expected to be politically astute. That is one thing. But to say that Hemingway was essentially sabotaging the exiled Republican efforts to aid the refugees by the thrust of his novel is also politically wrong. The man did materially and militarily aid the Republican side (financially aiding volunteers and supplying ambulances). That accrues to his honor. In short, Hemingway's writings-yes. Hemingway's politics-no.