There Is No Peace: 60 Years Since End of World War II

The Popular Front was the line promoted by the Soviet government and pro-Moscow parties around the world, starting in 1935, of seeking programmatic alliances with “progressive” capitalist parties. During World War II, Communist parties everywhere—from the United States to France to Argentina—backed Washington and other “Allied” powers in their imperialist dispute with their “Axis” rivals.

That course was also put to a test in Spain, where a revolutionary opportunity arose. A worker and peasant upsurge had begun in 1930 with the collapse of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship. King Alfonso XIII abdicated and a republic was declared. The government, made up of capitalist parties, also included Socialist Party ministers. Parliamentary elections gave an overwhelming majority to pro-republican parties, with the Socialist Party having the largest number of seats.  
 
Revolution
With heightened expectations, workers and peasants fought for their demands. For millions of rural toilers oppressed by big landlords, a thoroughgoing agrarian reform was the most burning need in this predominantly agricultural country. Workers fought for wage increases and more control over job conditions. In many cases these struggles began to challenge the capitalists’ property prerogatives.

Leon Trotsky wrote extensively on the Spanish events, pointing to the potential of the working class to carry out a socialist revolution in alliance with peasants. Above all, he said, what was needed was a communist party with a revolutionary strategy to lead working people to contend for power.

Trotsky drew on his experiences as one of the central leaders of the October 1917 Russian Revolution, in which workers and farmers, led by the Bolshevik Party, took political power, overthrew capitalist rule, and advanced the worldwide struggle for socialism.

The Spanish capitalists responded to the upturn in struggles with repression. In 1931 the army was sent to crush a strike wave in Seville. In October 1934, protesting the inclusion of rightist politicians in the government, coal miners took over the town of Oviedo in Asturias province. The government called in General Francisco Franco, who suppressed the revolt, killing and jailing thousands of workers.

These events deepened the working-class and peasant radicalization. The February 1936 elections brought to power a Popular Front government—a coalition of bourgeois republicans and the Socialist and Communist parties. The anarchists in the National Confederation of Labor (CNT) as well as the centrist Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) backed the government, and later joined it. The Spanish CP was following the line dictated by the Soviet government, where a privileged bureaucracy headed by Joseph Stalin had usurped political power in the mid- and late 1920s. The Stalin-led regime reversed the Bolsheviks’ proletarian internationalist course and imposed a course of subordinating the interests of working people to some “progressive” wing of the capitalist class in countries around the world, in order to serve the diplomatic maneuvers of the bureaucratic caste.

In July 1936 Franco launched a reactionary rebellion among army officers in Morocco, a Spanish colony. As the fascist revolt spread in Spain, it was met by a huge popular upsurge. Working people demanded arms to fight the fascists. Workers began to occupy factories and called for workers control of those industries. Peasants seized land. A network of popular militias was established under the control of the workers organizations.

The Communist and Socialist parties, however, backed by the anarchists and the POUM, sought to defeat Franco through the Popular Front. To keep the bourgeois forces in that coalition, they agreed to put a lid on the demands of working people, from land reform to workers control of industry. They refused to grant Morocco’s independence because that would jeopardize Madrid’s relations with London, Paris, and other imperialist “democracies” that feared losing their own colonies. The central government reestablished control of the military struggle and blocked workers’ revolutionary initiatives.  
 
Counterrevolution
This strategy led to defeat of the revolution and even of the republican government. The bourgeoisie declared almost unanimously for Franco, leaving only its figureheads in the government. The U.S., British, and French governments, under the guise of “nonintervention,” sabotaged the defense of the republic. The Moroccan people, a potential ally of the republic, became Franco’s strongest base of support. Workers and farmers became increasingly demoralized by the class-collaborationist course of their leadership, and the fascist-led forces continued to advance.

Following this line, the Popular Front government, led by the Communist Party, stepped up persecution of militant workers. In 1937 it ordered the Civil Guard to suppress peasant land takeovers in Estremadura. It launched an assault on the Barcelona telephone exchange, held by the anarchist-led workers. It outlawed the POUM and arrested its leaders.

The CP, aided by the Soviet secret police, organized the arrest, torture, and murder of vanguard workers and leaders of the anarchists and the POUM, despite the support of the Popular Front by these two currents. The Bolshevik-Leninists, the communist current in Spain that collaborated with Trotsky and fought for a revolutionary course, were also persecuted.

By mid-1938 the fate of the Spanish republic had been sealed. In March 1939 the government surrendered to Franco’s forces. The fascist-led regime was immediately recognized by the Roosevelt administration.

The defeats imposed on the working class in Germany, France, Spain, and elsewhere made World War II possible. Rather than eliminate fascism, the class-collaborationist course of the Stalinists and social democrats helped stabilize capitalism, the source of fascism.

The lesson of the revolutionary developments in Spain and other countries during that period is that such an outcome was not inevitable. The example set by the Russian Revolution under the leadership of the Bolshevik party points the road forward. That is the road of working people organizing a revolutionary movement that is independent of—not subordinate to—the bosses and their parties, and that leads to overturning capitalist rule.

Valuable books explaining these lessons include The Spanish Revolution (1931-39) and The History of the Russian Revolution, both by Trotsky, and Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain by Felix Morrow. They are published by Pathfinder Press.
 
 
Previous article in the series:
France 1936: mass working-class upsurge
Stalinist Popular Front tied workers to capitalists, paved road for fascism  
 
 
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