From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-Hans David Freund-Letters From Madrid
THE SPANISH REVOLUTION, 1931-39, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973
THE CRISIS OF REVOLUTIONARY LEADERSHIP
AS WE APPROACH THE 75 th ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR MILITANTS NEED TO LEARN 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. 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 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 at that time was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Trotsky's writings on this period represent a provocative and thoughtful approach to an understanding of the causes of that failure. Moreover, with all proper historical proportions considered, his analysis has continuing value as the international working class struggles against the seemingly one-sided class war being waged by the international bourgeoisie today.
The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Trotsky's complication of articles, letters, pamphlets, etc. which make up the volume reviewed here is an exception. Trotsky was actively trying to intervene in the unfolding events in order to present a program of socialist revolution that most of the active forces on the Republican side were fighting, or believed they were fighting for. Thus, Trotsky's analysis brings a breath of fresh air to the historical debate. That in the end Trotsky could not organize the necessary cadres to carry out his program or meaningfully impact the unfolding events in Spain is one of the ultimate tragedies of that revolution. Nevertheless, Trotsky had a damn good idea of what forces were acting as a roadblock to revolution. He also had a strategic conception of the road to victory. And that most definitely was not through the Popular Front.
The central question Trotsky addresses throughout the whole period under review here was the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletarian forces. That premise entailed, in short, a view that the objective conditions for the success of a socialist program for society had ripened. Nevertheless, until that time, despite several revolutionary upheavals elsewhere, the international working class had not been successful anywhere except in backward Russia. Trotsky thus argued that it was necessary to focus on the question of forging the missing element of revolutionary leadership that would assure victory or at least put up a fight to the finish.
This underlying premise was the continuation of an analysis that Trotsky developed in earnest in his struggle to fight the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution in the mid-1920's. The need to learn the lessons of the Russian Revolution and to extend that revolution internationally was thus not a merely a theoretical question for Trotsky. Spain, moreover, represented a struggle where the best of the various leftist forces were in confusion about how to move forward. Those forces could have profitably heeded Trotsky's advice. I further note that the question of the crisis of revolutionary leadership still remains to be resolved by the international working class.
Trotsky's polemics in this volume are highlighted by the article ‘The Lessons of Spain-Last Warning’, his definitive assessment of the Spanish situation in the wake of the defeat of the Barcelona uprising in May 1937. Those polemics center on the failure of the Party of Marxist Unification (hereafter, POUM) to provide revolutionary leadership. That party, partially created by cadre formerly associated with Trotsky in the Spanish Left Opposition, failed on virtually every count. Those conscious mistakes included, but were not limited to, the creation of an unprincipled bloc between the former Left Oppositionists and the former Right Oppositionists (Bukharinites) of Maurin to form the POUM in 1935; political support to the Popular Front including entry into the government coalition by its leader; creation of its own small trade union federation instead of entry in the anarchist led-CNT; creation of its own militia units reflecting a hands-off attitude toward political struggle with other parties; and, fatally, an at best equivocal role in the Barcelona uprising of 1937.
Trotsky had no illusions about the roadblock to revolution of the policies carried out by the old-time Anarchist, Socialist and Communist Parties. Unfortunately the POUM did. Moreover, despite being the most honest revolutionary party in Spain it failed to keep up an intransigent struggle to push the revolution forward. The Trotsky - Andreas Nin (key leader of the POUM and former Left Oppositionist) correspondence in the Appendix makes that problem painfully clear.
The most compelling example of this failure - As a result of the failure of the Communist Party of Germany to oppose the rise of Hitler in 1933 and the subsequent decapitation and the defeat of the Austrian working class in 1934 the European workers, especially the younger workers, of the traditional Socialist Parties started to move left. Trotsky observed this situation and told his supporters to intersect that development by an entry, called the ‘French turn’, into those parties. Nin and the Spanish Left Opposition, and later the POUM failed to do that. As a result the Socialist Party youth were recruited to the Communist Party en masse. This accretion formed the basic for its expansion as a party and the key cadre of its notorious security apparatus that would, after the Barcelona uprising, suppress the more left ward organizations. For more such examples of the results of the crisis of leadership in the Spanish Revolution read this book.
Revised-June 19, 2006
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.
Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.
The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff.
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Hans David Freund-Letters From Madrid
These letters and the following article are the work of Hans David Freund (1912-1937). The letters, dated 24 August and 27 September 1936, are translated from the Information and Press Service of the Movement for the Fourth International, nos 7 and 12, 4 September and 21 October 1936, in which they appeared under the name of ‘Moulin’. The article first appeared as La Dualité de pouvoirs dans la Révolution espagnole: la Question des Comités, Quatrième Internationale, no.3, March-April 1937, pp.28-30.Freund, a “pure and devoted militant”, according to Katia Landau (Stalinism in Spain, Revolutionary History, Volume 1 no.2, Summer 1988, p54), was born of Jewish parents in Germany, but spent most of his adult life abroad due to Hitler’s terror. He became disillusioned with Stalinism after a visit to the Soviet Union, appears to have studied at Oxford for a while, and then in Switzerland, where he organised a Trotskyist group amongst the students in Geneva. He went to Spain in September 1936, and whilst in Madrid he assisted Paul and Clara Thalmann in the German language broadcasts of the POUM group there, which was very much influenced by Trotskyism. He then went to the Guadarrama front, where the Stalinist Galán threatened to have him shot for promoting Trotskyist propaganda amongst the militiamen.
Early 1937 found him in Barcelona, where he tried to bring about a unification of the two Trotskyist groups, the El Soviet (Bartolomeo) and Voz Leninista (Munis) organisations, and was the main contact between the Bolshevik-Leninists and the Friends of Durruti at the end of April and the beginning of May. He found himself in charge of the Bolshevik-Leninists when the May Days broke, as Munis was in Paris consulting with the International Secretariat, and it was he who wrote the leaflet distributed on the barricades that was noticed by George Orwell (Homage to Catalonia, Penguin edition, p.148).
But the NKVD was closing in on him, as on so many others, and he had been photographed whilst on the barricades. He took refuge with the Anarchists, who extended their protection to other revolutionaries hunted by the Stalinists. Reports differ as to how he met his end. One is that he went to an Anarchist collective in the countryside, and was killed in a Stalinist raid on it. Another is that he was simply picked up by the NKVD in the street in Barcelona at the beginning of August and was never seen again. (Cf. the full and useful notes and introductions in Pierre Broué“s edition of Trotsky’s La Révolution espagnole, Minuit, 1975, and Freund, dit Moulin, Cahiers Léon Trotsky, no.3, July-September 1979, p.135.)
Letter of 24 August 1936
The POUM has not ceased to be a centrist party. Even though it denounced its electoral pact with the Popular Front after the event, in fact it has never ceased to be the left wing of the Popular Front, carrying out a policy of sacred union with the anti-Fascist bourgeoisie. Even if it did refuse to enter into the Casanovas government [1], we ought to note that the PSUC itself had to withdraw after a few days under the pressure of the masses, and that the POUM did respond favourably to the invitation of the government to collaborate with the Economic Council of Catalonia, whose only function was the elaboration of draft laws intended to hold back and divert the movement for socialisation, restore the fortunes of the left bourgeoisie, create new parliamentary illusions among the masses, and to restore the class collaboration that had now become impossible for the government. The POUM is very proud of being the only party that did not submit its press to governmental censorship, but it refuses to denounce the Republican government openly as well as the parties of the Popular Front and the Anarchist leaders, allies in the government in the common cause of smashing the proletarian revolution and of preventing up to now the rapid and decisive victory of the anti-Fascist military forces, given that this victory, if it resulted in a revolutionary situation, risked being the prelude to the proletarian revolution. “Fascism is the only enemy”, such is always the message of the POUM ...Even in Madrid, where the POUM is for the greater part composed of old left oppositionists from the Communist Party, the attitude of the POUM is more correct than in Barcelona. Thus, in contrast to the POUM in Barcelona, the Madrid POUM does not seem to have illusions in Caballero, etc.
The main slogan of the POUM at present is that of the workers’ government. But the POUM does very little to put this correct slogan into practice. It does not educate its cadres. It doesn’t, or hardly does, send propagandists to the front. It should have dissolved some of its combat units, and distributed the members in the Anarchist and other units. It does not have a correct tactic of the United Front. As well as working at the base, which it did insufficiently, it should at the same time have made overtures to the reformist organisations, etc, for talks on determining a date and a programme for a soviet congress, for which it makes propaganda in a general fashion, to be able at the same time to denounce the reformist leaders, etc, in the probable event of their refusal. Instead of alerting the working class to the Caballero-Prieto-Azaña Bonapartist danger, it confined itself to saying that the bourgeois government had become “useless’ (sic), and that only Socialism could rebuild the Spanish economy disrupted by civil war.
The POUM remains firmly linked internationally with the London Bureau. Pivert, translated by Gorkin, greeted the workers “in the name of the SFIO and the CGT” at a meeting of the POUM. The POUM seems to be in favour of an “International Congress of Marxist Reunification”. On the other hand, it is ready to accept unity in action with the Bolshevik-Leninists, particularly the French. Our task is to enter systematically into relations with the POUM, convey our interest in and understanding of the problems that are posed for it and for the entire working class vanguard, and to serve as a liaison between the French and Spanish proletariat.
The POUM’s manpower, along with its mass influence, is growing considerably. The POUM militias, which during the crucial night in Barcelona played an important part, have more than 10,000 members. The youth (Juventud comunista ibérica) has multiplied tenfold since the insurrection. The party cadres are growing stronger, and fresh local sections are set up every day. La Batalla is read with great interest. The POUM publishes a daily in Lérida. It has just started a weekly for its militias (El Combatiente rojo). Every week the POUM gains more influence in the Anarchist trade unions, and the Anarchist workers no longer confuse the POUM with the reformist ‘politicos’, etc. The influence of the POUM is equally strong in the UGT. It controls union executive positions throughout the whole country. The POUM militants, moreover, have their own trade unions (office workers, textiles, potash mines) which they are preparing for entry into the united trade union, the CNT, in which the POUM will have the majority control. Among the foreigners (above all among the Italians in Barcelona) the POUM can count upon a relatively strong influence. Including as it does at present some tens of thousands of members, if it continued its progress at the same rate during the coming months, it could win the majority of the conscious proletariat in order to proceed to the conquest of power.
There does not exist a revolutionary force in Spain outside of the POUM. We must work towards the Bolshevisation of the POUM, although we cannot predict whether it will accomplish this by changing its present leadership for another one, or by the evolution of its leaders in the direction of Bolshevism-Leninism.
Letter of 27 September 1936
Some weeks ago a letter of the SIP (International Press Service for the Fourth International) stated that the POUM had not ceased to be a centrist party and the left wing of the Popular Front, prophesying a policy of sacred union with the ‘anti-Fascist’ bourgeoisie. This judgement seemed to be too severe at the time to some of the Bolshevik-Leninist comrades of the POUM. In fact, these lines were written in the course of a relatively leftist period of the POUM, when it could be thought that the leadership was evolving towards Leninist positions. Well, it was nothing of the sort. The facts today, unfortunately, confirm completely the appraisal that was stated a few weeks ago. In the person of Andrés Nin the POUM has entered the government of the Generalitat of Catalonia in the capacity of the Minister of Justice. Is this in order to administer bourgeois or proletarian justice? According to La Batalla of 17 September (an article on the “necessity for forming a government or council conforming to the revolutionary needs of the present time”) the present government has the aim of resolving the duality of power in Catalonia. For the benefit of which class?Has Companys decided to govern and carry on government in the name of the proletariat? The government’s executive power is concentrated in the hands of a minister of the Catalan Left. [2] Is this the executive power of the proletariat? Is the emancipation of the proletariat, then, no longer the task of the proletariat itself, but of the ‘anti-Fascist’ bourgeoisie? Nin has become a minister, but he did not become so by the decision of a congress of the militias, workers and peasants, any more than as a result of a victorious proletarian insurrection. He became this following upon negotiations in the antechamber of the bourgeois Generalitat of Catalonia.
A resolution unanimously decided by the Central Committee of the POUM is unfortunately the only document that has been published about this important meeting. Given the lack of any preparation and of any serious political motivation, it is on its own the most overwhelming expression of the centrism that has definitely taken hold among the leadership of the party. Instead of taking up a position with reference to the different problems that the revolution poses, the resolution concentrated upon one point alone: the justification of participating in the next government in Catalonia. So why, then, did it take so long to assume this liquidatory attitude? Why did it refuse point blank to participate in the Casanovas government? What has changed in it? Absolutely nothing, unless you want to base yourself upon the change of position by the Anarchists, which is also in a reformist direction.
The excuses that are invoked for this surrender are based upon several points. First of all is emphasised “the popular character of the organisations of the petit-bourgeoisie in Catalonia”. Who is making fun of whom? The ‘proof’ of this serves only to render the POUM worthy of its French ally, M. Pivert. (Its present differences with Pivert are simply a reflection of the real differences between the interests of the French Popular Front and the Spanish Popular Front.) Is not the party of Companys a reactionary party, then? The same La Batalla which described the Caballero government as a counter-revolutionary government (Madrid is far away, and Madrid governments have never been highly rated by the Catalan ‘people’) gave the title of ‘popular’ representative to Companys, who gave up without a serious struggle on 6 October 1934, instead of giving arms to the workers and peasants who were clamouring for them, and who also refused arms to the alerted proletariat a few hours before the Fascist insurrection of 18 July, so being responsible for the greater part of the deaths of the three glorious Barcelona days, the man who recently proclaimed that there was no land problem in Catalonia, the man who does not really represent the petit-bourgeoisie but the big bourgeoisie well and truly, on whose account he held back the progress of the revolution everywhere, sabotaging community control, protecting the banks, and undertaking the reconstruction of the army and the police.
This is what can be read in the Official Bulletin of the Catalan Generalitat:
Casanovas, the national hero of Catalonia ... There was a march past that lasted for four hours. Regimental bands, Republican troops and sisters and doctors of the Red Cross were marching in the street with red flags and the national colours of Catalonia. The militiamen were roundly applauded, as also were the shock troops and the Civil Guard, who had discarded the old three-cornered hat for the red-rimmed bonnet.It was a perfect example of victory that is being announced here, that of the Popular Front over the proletarian revolution. In fact here is a bourgeois demonstration (a national demonstration) but in which all the working class organisations are taking part, as a preliminary to collaboration in the government of the Generalitat.
Our petit-bourgeoisie are not to be compared with the others, say our autonomous revolutionaries in the leadership of the POUM. Centrists and reformists in every country have always emphasised the exceptional popular character of the left bourgeois organisations of their respective countries. Is not the Radical movement in France social, progressive and secularist? Isn’t its basis the small peasantry, led by the advanced forces of the intellectuals of the land of France? What difference is there in fact between collaborating with Herriot [3] and with Companys?
The leaders of the POUM use yet another argument – that of the radicalisation of the petit-bourgeoisie and of some of their leaders during these last few weeks. This argument proves precisely the opposite of what it intends to support. Yes, the petit-bourgeoisie is radicalised: one proof of it, among others, is the abandonment of the union of rabassaires [4], Companys’ own trade union base, by hundreds of the Catalan small farmers in order to enlist in the workers’ trade unions. Is it, then, the time to enter a government formed by a reactionary leader of this organisation? As for the leftist language of the leaders of the petit-bourgeoisie, that is also a fact. This language (partly out of fear, and partly from calculation) is of a generally more revolutionary type than that of the Stalinists and reformists and the other ‘workers’’ representatives. But does it follow that we should ally with the former against the latter? The absurdity of this criterion of the POUM is self-evident.
It is stated in La Batalla that the revolution is assuming a more proletarian character every day. If the revolution is indeed going forward, then why are you accepting a programme that is manifestly going backwards compared with your programme six weeks ago? We are talking about the programme of the Economic Council, elaborated, so it seems, by Nin himself. In the governmental declaration it pretends that the economic programme of the government is identical with that of the Economic Council. A comparison between the two very quickly reveals the falsity of this assertion. The “monopoly of foreign trade to avoid foreign manipulation against the newborn economic order” is replaced by pure and simple ‘control’ of foreign trade, which exists in every capitalist country. The “compulsory collectivisation of agricultural products farmed by middle and small ownership” is replaced by a pure and simple appeal for “respect for small property”. The “prompt suppression of all taxes in order to attain a single tax” is replaced by a promise of “a prompt suppression of the different indirect taxes, in time and to the extent of possibilities’. These examples could be multiplied.
Before the formation of the new government La Batalla said that if it was to be worthy of the participation of the POUM it should affirm its intention to “translate into revolutionary legality the initiative of the masses who are moving in the direction of the Socialist revolution”. Today, on the other hand, the POUM is entering a government that proposes to end the war “quickly and victoriously”, to this end creating “compulsory militias’, and which only demands “the economic reconstruction [?] of the country”, whereas for all that the Economic Council had demanded the “collectivisation of the economy”. We criticised the participation of the POUM in the Economic Council at the time by declaring that its constitution, in spite of the revolutionary appearance of its programme, would only serve to divert and in other words break up the revolutionary wave. The march of events has yet again proved that we were right. The first revolutionary wave had hardly started to abate before the workers’ ‘leaders’ renounced essential points of the programme, proof that they had never taken it seriously in the first place.
In the sphere of the army the POUM was exposed yet again as fundamentally centrist. Did not the POUM on several occasions envisage a red army and soviets, and make political reservations about its submission to the technical authority of Madrid? Today La Batalla envisages its unconditional subordination to the General Staff. Isn’t this already virtually disarming the proletariat? Especially since orders from Madrid mean an end to any political or trade union intervention at the front and the formation of a new Republican army, within which the militias must dissolve themselves? The formation of an army of volunteers proved to be impossible, as the workers and peasants refused to enrol in it, and preferred to join the ranks of the workers’ militias. The militiamen tore off and burned their bourgeois army uniforms, preferring their rags to the costume of capitalist coercion. Are we going to witness Nin, the Minister of ‘Popular’ and ‘Catalan’ Justice, laying down a decree against these acts of disobedience? We will speak again more fully about the question of the army, which is a central question of the Spanish Civil War.
Notes
1. Juan Casanovas was a member of the Esquerra, the Catalan nationalists, who was entrusted by President Companys with forming a government in Catalonia on 2 August 1936. Although the Stalinists (Comorera) joined, there was such hostility from the CNT and the POUM that they had to withdraw, and his administration was replaced on 26 September. He was later involved in a failed Catalan coup d’état, and had to withdraw to France.2. The Prime Minister, Minister of the Interior, and Councillor for Defence in the Taradellas government were all members of the Catalan Esquerra.
3. Edouard Herriot (1872-1952) was the most well-known leader of the Radical Party in France.
4. The rabassaires was a union of leasehold tenant farmers, holding their land for the lifespan of the vines they cultivated, and looking to the Catalan nationalists to make their tenancies permanent.
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Hans David Freund
Dual Power in the Spanish Revolution
The Question of the Committees
Ever since the beginning of the revolution, the proletariat, lacking a revolutionary leadership, has not ceased to fall back upon the bourgeoisie. The Central Committee of the Militias as a sub-committee of the Generalitat (the end of July), the Economic Council of ‘containment’, in other words channelling and breaking up the initiative of the masses (mid-August), a government of sacred union with the CNT and POUM (mid-September), and governments with full powers to liquidate the revolution (mid-December): such are the stages of the counter-revolution as they express themselves in representative organisations.This has been a successive evolution in a direction opposite to that of the leading organisations of the French Revolution, from the States General up to the Convention. [1] This comparison also shows the more democratic character of the French Revolution: the Spanish proletariat, which did not know how to provide itself with a party of class dictatorship, has up to now also been incapable of providing itself with a representative organisation on a democratic basis. The authority of the trade unions, and the revolutionary inclinations of the Anarchist centre, had let it be known that that democratic foundation, which was Soviets in Russia and elsewhere, was at the same time impossible and superfluous. The trade union unification that is being prepared is perhaps going to reinforce this opinion even more in the mind of many a militant. Is the Workers’ Alliance [2], in the mind of a great many, in reality anything more than the coordination of the two trade union centres? And are not the political parties, the Socialist Party and the Communist Party, at the same time marching towards unification, with the POUM itself begging for unification with them? Isn’t the Alliance of the Youth [3] in the process of being realised?
In reality – and there are more and more comrades who are seeing this reality – the intensification of these discussions about unification is proportional with the extent to which the proletariat is drawing back from power, and the bourgeoisie is preparing a fresh triumph, unthinkable only a few months ago.
Under the sign of ‘anti-Fascist unity’ the CNT-Taradellas-Nin government has dissolved the local committees of the militias, and re-etablished the military code of the monarchy.
Under the sign of trade union unity, the specific weight of the trade union bureaucracy moving towards corporatism has been reinforced, and is preparing to halt and reverse the movement of the proletariat and small peasantry for economic and political emancipation.
Under the sign of unity, the Committee for the Coordination of the United Youth (Stalinists) and the Libertarian Youth are tying down the revolutionary tendencies, particularly among the latter, not to mention the slogan of the National Alliance of the Spanish Youth of which we shall speak in another context.
In the same way, inasmuch as it does not remain on paper, in present political circumstances, a single command in the army means the subordination of the proletariat to the liberal bourgeoisie, the stagnation of military operations, and the preparation of a shameful armistice.
‘Anti-Fascist Unity’ reveals itself as anti-Communist and anti-revolutionary unity. The problem of the unity of the proletariat remains posed, more strongly and more urgently than ever.
The Workers’ Alliances
In October 1934 the Workers’ Alliances represented to a certain extent the democratic and effective union of the proletarian forces. They owed their existence first of all to the agitation of the Bolshevik-Leninists, to which was added in Catalonia Maurín’s Workers and Peasants Bloc. But the Catalan Anarchists refused to take part, and the Socialists refused to recognise the Workers’ Alliances as organisations of proletarian power. The sectarianism of the organisations more often made them into organisations of local liaison than into soviets.The double weakness of the Workers’ Alliances was that they simultaneously lacked a central national leadership and failed to be organisations of the United Front at the base. The theory according to which the United Front in Spain must be realised neither at the top nor at the base, but ‘locally’ is obviously absurd. Because of the ascendancy of the bureaucracy in many places, the existence of the Workers’ Alliances remained purely nominal and fictional. Elsewhere they were dominated by the Socialists, who refused to place their weaponry at their disposal. [4] As we know, the Stalinists termed the Workers’ Alliances (which in spite of their weaknesses constituted the highest organs of struggle that the Spanish proletariat had been able to create up until that time) “holy alliances of counter-revolution”, only finally to enter them a few days before the insurrection of October 1934. The history of this demonstrated the strengths and weaknesses of the Workers’ Alliances.
In May 1936, at the Congress of Saragossa, the CNT voted for a resolution recommending the Workers’ Alliances, but this was only the bureaucratic deformation of the project of the left minority, which had demanded unity in action at the base, or at least in the ‘middle’, but lacking a firm ideology, gave in to the Congress. The entry of the CNT into the counter-revolutionary Madrid government was accomplished thanks to this evolution of the Workers’ Alliances, and the bureaucratic unification of the two trade union centres will take place under the same auspices.
The July Revolution
The July Revolution, a tardily prepared response to the Fascist coup, caused committees of every type to spring up. Local committees came to replace the bourgeois municipalities; moreover, to secure the executive and judicial functions, etc., of the state, at the same time the revolution democratised and decentralised its functions to the limit, and dismantled the repressive arms of the state.The Central Committee of the Militias in Barcelona was the expression on the one hand of the victory of the anti-Fascist insurrection, and on the other of the continued existence of the structure of the bourgeois state. There were “absences of bourgeois legality”, but not its pure and simple abolition. The dual power regime (proletariat and bourgeoisie) established by the July Days expressed itself in the course of the first few weeks in the collaboration of the petit-bourgeoisie with the proletariat.
But the nature of this collaboration was reversed in proportion to the extent to which the profoundly shaken foundations of the bourgeois state recovered; the one which ‘collaborated’ was no longer the bourgeoisie, but the proletariat. Some days after the formation of the September government, the Central Committee of the Militias dissolved itself: from then on the system of dual power expressed itself in the coexistence of the bourgeois government and of the many committees, both of them entering into a more or less sharp phase of struggle, in which the leadership of the parties (including the POUM) and of the unions (including the CNT-FAI) in effect took the side of the reactionary bourgeoisie.
After the dissolution of the local militia committees, the following committees remained:
- Committees in the police barracks, etc. These committees formed a very relative, insufficient guarantee against the use of the armed force of the bourgeois state against the working class.
- Committees in the ‘collectivised’ industries. These committees suffered from scarcity and bureaucratic nepotism, as well as the workers’ incapacity to manage the economy without an intermediary period of education (workers’ control). In the absence of a renewed upsurge of the revolutionary wave, their inactivity and incompetence led to their being swept aside by reaction.
- Committees of workers’ control. These committees exist in the most important firms that have generally not been collectivised. Trade union control of the banks is practically nil; likewise for small trade.
- House committees in Madrid. These committees suffered from the same bureaucratic tendencies, but carried on the tasks of repression, vigilance, medical aid, etc. They were centralised by a system of delegation by districts, etc.
- Local committees, continuing mainly in Aragon, the Levante, [5] etc.
- Militia committees, existing on different fronts (Sierra, Aragon, etc.).
- Peasant committees, existing in many places for the collectivisation of production, commerce and supply. In conflict with the state and the trade union bureaucracy.
Today they would make the workers believe that the period of the class struggle – which they never previously admitted – has ended with the boss being liquidated, seeing that he has now accepted responsibility in the committees or the factory on a salary equal to that of the workers. Now today, more than ever, the main preoccupation of the working class is not economic, but political. Or rather, economic problems can only find their solution, more than ever, in the political struggle.
The POUM itself has never understood that the problem of the committees, of keeping them at all costs, and of transforming them into truly democratic organisations of advanced struggle, constitutes the central problem of the revolution. It has, moreover, added its signature to the decree calling for the dissolution of the local militia committees. It has offered the reactionary government of the Generalitat its collaboration, whilst in an abstract way and with many reservations calling for the formation of an assembly of the committees. To bring together such an assembly it is first necessary to reform the committees, creating better ones out of them wherever the masses are struggling for their conditions of life. But the POUM is incapable of proceeding in this direction in a systematic and consistent fashion. [6] The slightest threat of reaction causes it to draw back. The slightest possibility for collaboration makes it abandon its reserve arsenal of Leninist slogans.
“Long live the strong state! Down with the committees!” cries the reaction. “Down with the state, long live the committees, rejuvenated, politicised, democratised, strengthened and broadened for all the functions of public life as instruments for the seizure of power by the proletariat!” – that is the slogan of the revolutionaries.
January 1937
Notes
1. The French Revolution of 1789 began by the aristocracy forcing the king to convene the States General, which contained all of the three orders in France (nobility, clergy and Third Estate). As it gathered momentum and entered into its radical phase this body was replaced by the revolutionary Convention, dominated by the Jacobins.2. The Alianza Obrera (Workers’ Alliance) had been the main slogan of the Trotskyists and the Bloque since the Asturian uprising of October 1934.
3. The Socialist Party and the Communist Party, along with other groups, combined in Catalonia in 1936 to form the Stalinist PSUC. Unity in the rest of Spain was prevented by the opposition of the mass left wing of the Socialist Party, led by Largo Caballero. But the leaders of the Socialist Party Youth deserted to set up a “united” organisation with the Communist Party’s youth, which then became an appendage of Stalinism.
4. Julián Bestiero and other right wing Socialist Party leaders had denounced the workers’ resort to arms in the Asturian uprising of 1934. It was as a result isolated and crushed by Franco’s troops with great brutality.
5. The Levante is the area around Valencia on the eastern coast.
6. Moreover, the POUM has launched the slogan of an assembly of the committees allied to the Constituent Assembly. But the formation of a constitution is only a secondary requirement among all the tasks to be fulfilled by the future central representative organisation of the proletariat. [Author’s note]
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