Section Five: The Spanish Revolution¶
Core Argument¶
Section Five: The Spanish Revolution
The Spanish Civil War condensed into a single, explosive theatre the fundamental political divisions of the twentieth-century revolutionary movement. Three contending conceptions—Menshevism, Bolshevism, and anarchism—fought not only against Franco but within the republican camp itself. The bourgeois republican parties possessed no independent social weight; they existed only as shadows sustained by reformists and anarchists. The Menshevik position, adopted by Socialists and Stalinists, held that the revolution must confine itself to “democratic” tasks, pursuing a united front with the “democratic” bourgeoisie against Franco as “reaction.” Against this, the Bolshevik position, articulated by the Fourth International, derived from the theory of permanent revolution: democratic tasks such as land reform could not be achieved without the proletariat conquering power, which itself placed socialist revolution on the agenda. No intermediate regime was possible; the agrarian revolution could only be accomplished against the bourgeoisie, through the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Stalinism in Spain was no theoretical error but the empirical product of the Soviet bureaucracy’s interests. The People’s Front was mere arithmetic addition, ignoring the parallelogram of political forces: a bloc with the bourgeoisie paralyses the proletariat’s revolutionary force. The Spanish bourgeoisie had largely gone over to Franco, leaving only political phantoms—Azaña, Companys—who represented no one but themselves. Stalin needed these figures to prove to the French and British bourgeoisie that he could preserve order; they needed Stalin as an executioner. The Stalinists allied with the Socialist right wing and directed repression against the left—the POUM, anarchists, and left Socialists—degenerating from bureaucratic centrism into outright counterrevolution. Their advantage lay in their willingness to use bloody force and GPU methods to defend private property, thereby confirming the theory of permanent revolution.
The anarcho-syndicalists, having helped Stalin strip power from the workers, were themselves expelled from the government, then followed behind their victors professing devotion. Their claim that they refused power because they opposed all dictatorship is self-condemning: renouncing conquest of power leaves it with the exploiters. Every revolution places a new class in power; by opposing this, anarchism became anti-revolutionary and, at critical moments, counterrevolutionary. The POUM also failed, trying to convince reformist leaders of socialism’s merits rather than mobilising the masses against them, avoiding conflict with anarchist leaders, building separate unions and militias, and isolating the vanguard from the class. On arms, the lie that capitulation to Stalin was necessary to secure Moscow’s weapons concealed the truth: the People’s Front could have developed Spain’s own war industry and mobilised workers, but preferred dependence on Moscow. Revolutions succeed through a bold social programme, not foreign patrons.
The conditions for victory are simple: a revolutionary party, soviets, expropriation of exploiters, and revolutionary propaganda. None existed in Spain. The Spanish proletariat stood higher than the Russian in 1917, but its own organisations were the chief obstacles. The People’s Front, tasked with saving capitalism, doomed itself to military defeat. Even a full military victory would not mean the triumph of “democracy”; a third victory won by People’s Front generals would produce a military dictatorship or an embrace between Communist and fascist generals. Victory will go either to socialist revolution or to fascism. The Spanish experience is a warning: Marx called revolutions “the locomotives of history”; parties that linger are crushed. The line of least resistance brings disaster; fear of isolation from the bourgeoisie means isolation from the masses. A new generation, educated by defeats, now gathers under the Fourth International.