Less than a year earlier the fascist general Francisco Franco had launched a war against the republican government in Spain. The republic had been established in 1931 amidst an ascending wave of revolutionary struggles by workers and peasants.
The main forces in the workers movement, however, squandered the opportunity to lead the overthrow of capitalist rule. They increasingly allied themselves with representatives of the liberal bourgeoisie, formalizing this class collaboration in the Popular Front—a coalition of the Socialist and Communist parties with liberal capitalists, backed by the anarcho-syndicalists and centrists, which won the national parliamentary elections in February 1936. The Popular Front policy was promoted internationally by the Stalinized Soviet Communist Party.
The most prominent among the centrist groups was the POUM, or Workers Party of Marxist Unification. Trotsky explained that in verbally proposing revolutionary solutions to the crisis, while hesitating to take decisive steps to put them into practice, the POUM acted as a principal roadblock to the formation of a revolutionary socialist party with broad popular support in Spain. Copyright © 1973 by Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission. Footnotes are by the Militant.
In civil war, incomparably more than in ordinary war, politics dominates strategy. Robert Lee, as an army chieftain, was surely more talented than Grant, but the program of the liquidation of slavery assured victory to Grant.1 In our three years of civil war the superiority of military art and military technique was often enough on the side of the enemy, but at the very end it was the Bolshevik program that conquered. The worker knew very well what he was fighting for. The peasant hesitated for a long time, but comparing the two regimes by experience, he finally supported the Bolshevik side.
In Spain the Stalinists, who lead the chorus from on high, have advanced the formula to which Caballero, president of the cabinet, also adheres: First military victory, and then social reform.2 I consider this formula fatal for the Spanish revolution. Not seeing the radical differences between the two programs in reality, the toiling masses, above all the peasants, fall into indifference. In these conditions, fascism will inevitably win, because the purely military advantage is on its side. Audacious social reforms represent the strongest weapon in the civil war and the fundamental condition for the victory over fascism.
The policies of Stalin, who has always revealed himself as an opportunist in revolutionary situations, are dictated by a fear of frightening the French bourgeoisie, above all the “200 families” against whom the French Popular Front long ago declared war—on paper. Stalin’s policies in Spain repeat not so much Kerensky’s policies in 1917 as they do the policies of Ebert-Scheidemann in the German revolution of 1918. Hitler’s victory was the punishment for the policies of Ebert-Scheidemann. In Germany the punishment was delayed for 15 years. In Spain it can come in less than 15 months.3
However, would not the social and political victory of the Spanish workers and peasants mean European war? Such prophecies, dictated by reactionary cowardice, are radically false. If fascism wins in Spain, France will find itself caught in a vise from which is will not be able to withdraw. Franco’s dictatorship will mean the unavoidable acceleration of European war, in the most difficult conditions for France. It is useless to add that a new European war would bleed the French people to the last drop and lead it into its decline, and by the same token would deal a terrible blow to all humanity.
On the other hand, the victory of the Spanish workers and peasants would undoubtedly shake the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler. Thanks to their hermetic, totalitarian character, the fascist regimes produce an impression of unshakable firmness. Actually, at the first serious test they will be the victims of internal explosions. The victorious Russian revolution sapped the strength of the Hohenzollern regime….4 The task of the true Spanish revolutionists consists in strengthening and reinforcing the military front, in demolishing the political tutelage of the Soviet bureaucracy, in giving a bold social program to the masses, in assuring thereby the victory of the revolution and, precisely in that way, upholding the cause of peace. Therein alone lies the salvation of Europe!