8. Revival of the Bourgeois State: September 1936-April 1931¶
Core Argument¶
From September 1936 to April 1937, the bourgeois-Stalinist bloc systematically dismantled the workers’ economic and political conquests won in the opening months of the Spanish Revolution. The Valencia government, wielding control over the treasury and banking system, imposed its will on the revolutionary collectives. In Catalonia alone, fifty-eight financial decrees were issued in January, restricting collectivised factories. On February 3, the Generalidad declared collectivisation illegal, specifically targeting dairy products, and by April, workers’ control over customs was annulled. Comorera, the PSUC chieftain, dissolved workers’ supply committees on January 7, opening the door for speculators from the GEPCI to cause hoarding and price rises. Vicente Uribe, the Stalinist Minister of Agriculture, dismantled agricultural collectives and returned lands to former owners, now installed as state co-administrators. A campaign for ‘state control’ laid the ideological groundwork for wresting power from factory committees.
Censorship systematically curtailed the press and radio of the CNT, FAI, and POUM. The POUM was the chief victim: La Batalla was fined and suspended, its dailies harassed, and its radio station permanently closed in April. Police duties were wrested from workers’ patrols. The Carabineros, formerly customs officers, were expanded into a 40,000-strong praetorian guard, forbidden from union or party membership. By April, militias were pushed out of all police duties in Madrid and Valencia. In Catalonia, a March 1 decree unified police under state control, barring patrol members. Militias were liquidated through militarisation decrees and systematic withholding of arms. Disarming decrees culminated in orders for workers’ organisations to surrender their weapons. Extra-legal repression by the Spanish GPU, with private prisons and torture chambers, supplemented legal methods.
The CNT’s intelligence service uncovered a plot in Catalonia, published by Solidaridad Obrera on November 27–28. Initially scoffed at by Stalinists and the Esquerra, an investigation was forced. The plot’s chief forces were the separatist Estat Català and a khaki-shirt organisation split from the Esquerra. Over a hundred leading members were arrested; Chief of Police Reberter, an Estat Català member, was executed. Casanovas, President of the Catalan Parliament, ‘first toyed with the plot, then rejected it’ and was permitted to go to France, returning to political life after the May days. Cultura Proletaria reported that the CT sent 27 ex-officers of the old army, mercenaries formerly in Machado’s service, as fake militia to Spain. The former Valencia Secretary of the CEDA joined the CP. Louis Fischer admitted that bourgeois generals, politicians, and peasants joined the CP, reflecting ‘despair of the old social system as well as a hope to salvage one or two of its remnants’—a description, Anita Brenner notes, of the social group that swelled Hitler’s ranks.