The Militant - April 5, 2004 -- National oppression and Spanish Civil War

Vol. 68/No. 13 April 5, 2004

National oppression and Spanish Civil War

Reprinted below is an excerpt from Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain by Felix Morrow. It tells the story of the Spanish revolution of the 1930s: the fall of the monarchy and rise of a republic in 1931, the revolutionary upsurge by workers and farmers that challenged the rule of the wealthy landlord and capitalist classes in Spain, the role of the Popular Front coalition government—made up of the Socialist and Communist parties and bourgeois parties—and the civil war, which ended with the defeat of the republican forces and the establishment of a fascist regime under Francisco Franco in 1939.

Two key political issues facing the Spanish revolution were the colonial question and the national question. Spain was the colonial oppressor in what is now Morocco and the Western Sahara in North Africa. Inside Spain, the Basque and Catalán peoples aspired to the right to national self-determination—struggles that continue today.

These two struggles for national liberation remain central to the class struggle in Spain, as can be seen in the current step-up of the Spanish government’s offensive against the Basque and North African peoples. While Morocco won its independence and the Western Sahara is now occupied by the Moroccan regime, Spain remains an imperialist power, with colonial enclaves along Morocco’s coast. Growing numbers of workers from Morocco and other North African countries have immigrated to Spain, becoming part of the working class there.

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BY FELIX MORROW
The “feudal” monarchy had not only been modern enough to foster the rise, development and decline of bourgeois industry and finance. It was ultra-modern enough to embark on seizure and exploitation of colonies in the most contemporary manner of finance capitalism. The “national renascence” included the conquest and subjugation of Morocco (1912-1926). In the disaster of Anual (1921) alone,¹ ten thousand workers and peasants, serving under two-year compulsory military service, were destroyed. Seven hundred million pesetas a year was the cost of the Moroccan campaign after the World War. Riots when recruits and reserves were called up and mutinies at embarkation preceded [Gen. Miguel Primo de] Rivera’s coup [in 1923]. An alliance with French imperialism (1925) led to a decisive victory over the Moroccan people the next year. A murderously cruel colonial administration proceeded to exploit the Moroccan peasants and tribesmen for the benefit of government and a few capitalists.

The republican-socialist coalition took over the Spanish colonies in Morocco and ruled them, as had the monarchy, through the Foreign Legion and native mercenaries. The socialists argued that when conditions justified they would extend democracy to Morocco and would permit it to participate in the benefits of a progressive regime.

[Russian communist leader Leon] Trotsky and his adherents termed the socialist position an act of treachery against an oppressed people. But for the safety of the Spanish masses, too, Morocco must be set free. The peculiarly vicious legionnaires and mercenaries bred there would be the first force to be used by a reactionary coup, and Morocco itself as a military base for the reaction. Withdrawal of all troops and independence for Morocco were immediate demands for which the workers themselves must fight, and incite the Moroccan people to achieve. The liberty of the Spanish masses would be imperiled unless the colonies were freed.

Similar to the colonial question was the issue of national liberation of the Catalan and Basque peoples. The strong petty-bourgeois Catalan Esquerra (Left) Party derived its chief following from among the militant sharecroppers who should be the allies of the revolutionary workers, but who succumb to the nationalist program of the petty-bourgeoisie, the latter thereby finding a support in the peasantry against the de-nationalizing role of big capital and the Spanish state bureaucracy. In the Basque provinces the national question in 1931 led to even more serious consequences; the nationalist movement there was clerical-conservative in control and returned a bloc of the most reactionary deputies in the Constituent Cortes. Since the Basque and Catalonian provinces are also the chief industrial regions, this was a decisive question to the future of the labor movement: how free these workers and peasants from the control of alien classes?

The model for the solution was given by the Russian Bolsheviks, who inscribed in their program the slogan of national liberation and carried it out after the October revolution. The broadest autonomy for the national regions is perfectly compatible with economic unity; the masses have nothing to fear from such a measure, which in a workers’ republic will enable economy and culture to flourish freely.

Any other position than support of national liberation becomes, directly or indirectly, support for the maximum bureaucratic centralisation of Spain demanded by the ruling class, and will be recognized as such by the oppressed nationalities.

Catalonian nationalism had grown under the oppression of the Rivera dictatorship. Hence, a day before the republic was proclaimed in Madrid, the Catalans had already seized the government buildings and declared an independent Catalonian republic. A deputation of republican and socialist leaders rushed to Barcelona, and combined promises of an autonomy statute with dire threats of suppression; the final settlement provided a much-restricted autonomy which left the Catalan politicians with grievances they could display with profitable results in the way of maintaining their following among the workers and peasants. On the pretext that the Basque nationalist movement was reactionary, the republican-socialist coalition delayed a settlement of the question and thereby gave the Basque clericals, threatened by the proletarianization of the region, a new hold on the masses. In the name of getting away from regional prejudices, the socialists identified themselves with the outlook of Spanish bourgeois-imperialism.

Thus, in all fields, the bourgeois republic proved absolutely incapable of undertaking the “bourgeois-democratic” tasks of the Spanish revolution. That meant that the republic could have no stability; it could be only a transition stage, and a short one. Its place would be taken either by military, fascist, or monarchical reaction—or by a real social revolution which would give the workers power to build a socialist society. The struggle against reaction and for socialism was a single task, and on the order of the day.

¹In the 1921 battle at Anual, during the Rif rebellion (see photo caption), a Spanish army of 20,000 led by Gen. Fernández Silvestre was defeated by forces led by Abd-el-Krim fighting for independence from Spanish colonial rule in northern Morocco. Some 12,000 Spanish soldiers died in the battle.

Related article:
Fight for a ‘new Europe’ and a ‘new America’
Spanish imperialism steps up ‘antiterror’ offensive aimed at rights of workers and oppressed peoples in Spain
Madrid steps up assault on rights of Basques and North Africans

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