Foreword¶
Core Argument¶
Spain stands at the threshold of a revolutionary movement as the Franco dictatorship, having lost mass support, degenerates from totalitarian fascism into a Bonapartist military police regime. The British Marxists argue that Spanish Socialist Marxists must absorb the lessons of the defeated revolution of 1931-1937 to avoid a worse catastrophe. The Spanish bourgeoisie, developing late and entangled with landowners and the Church, could not complete the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution explains that the proletariat must carry out these tasks and advance towards socialism.
The Republican-Socialist coalition of 1931-1933 failed to redistribute land or meet workers' demands, repressing strikes and land seizures. After the February 1936 electoral victory, the masses acted independently, distrusting the Liberal Government. Dismissed workers were reinstated and strikebreakers sacked—over 1,000 in Madrid alone—yet Generals Franco and Goded were merely removed from their posts rather than executed. The Popular Front Government could not act against fascist army officers because the state machine is the basis of capitalist power. Between February and July, 113 general strikes and 228 partial strikes erupted. When the army rising began on July 17th, the Government refused arms to workers demanding them, leaving the working class to defeat the fascists in most towns and two-thirds of Spain largely unarmed.
Dual power emerged: the Republican Government existed only by the toleration of workers' party leaders, who refused to brush it aside. The Communist Party, under Stalin's instructions, became the vanguard of democratic counter-revolution, terrified that a successful socialist revolution would undermine the Russian bureaucracy's power. Workers had seized factories, railways, banks and public services, raising wages and limiting managers' salaries. The workers' revolution was unfolding, but no party prepared to centralise power through elected committees. The Stalinists rebuilt the bourgeois state, transforming militias into a regular army with disastrous consequences.
The "May days of 1937" erupted when Stalinists tried to seize the telephone exchange. Workers responded with barricades, and power was again in their hands. The CNT and POUM, arguing against civil war within a civil war, appealed for a return to work. The opportunity was lost. Within six weeks, Stalinists suppressed the POUM, murdering Nin and other leaders. Unlike the Bolsheviks, who won by giving land to peasants and factories to workers, the Spanish Republic restored bourgeois power, guaranteeing defeat.