Article on International Brigaders

[A.J.]

10:50 - 13 January 2007

On February 12, 1937, three passionate young men left Aberdeen to lay down their lives for their political ideals.

Over the next few months they were to be followed by another 16 - all of them working-class tradesman.

Brought up in poverty, they were disgusted by the spread of fascism.

But five of them would never return to their families.

They died on the bloody killing fields of the Spanish Civil War, part of the dedicated but ill-equipped Republican army.

Against them were Franco's troops, aided and armed by Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy.

After a boat to France, the young volunteer soldiers faced a freezing, dangerous trek across the Pyrenees.

One of the first to join the Brigaders was fiery redhead Bob Cooney. As Black Shirt leader Oswald Mosley attempted to recruit fascists in Aberdeen, left-wing Bob joined the Communist Party and studied at the Lenin University in Moscow.

In Spain, Bob was appointed Commissar to the British Brigaders.

He survived the war and remained an active left-winger until his death in 1984.

Another of the first Aberdonians into Spain was powerful young blacksmith Archie Dewar.

Although he and wife Mary had two little boys - Sandy and Ian - she fully supported his decision to go Spain.

Like most of the others, he had no knowledge of war or fighting. His main weapon was his passion.

However, the Republicans were hugely outnumbered by the fascists, who were also well-trained and armed.

Archie fought hard but died in a hail of machine-gun bullets at the notorious Ebro front in 1938.

A few months later 23-year-old Ernest Sim, also from Aberdeen, was killed in the same place.

The other Aberdonians to die were 33-year-old Tom Davidson, 30-year-old Charles McLeod and Kenneth Morrice, also 30.

After Archie's death, his body was wrapped in the Republican flag belonging to the Aberdeen Brigaders.

Still stained with what is believed to be the blood of

Archie and some of the other war-dead, the flag is under lock and key at Aberdeen Trades Council HQ.

While in Spain, Archie became friendly with former Gordon Highlander Davie Anderson, also from Aberdeen. In 1939, when the Republicans were beaten and World War 2 against Hitler was about to flare, Davie returned to his home city. One of the first things he did was visit Archie's widow to assure him of her dead husband's dignity and valour.

Mary and Davie later married and he became the stepfather of Archie's two little boys. He died in 1987.

Sandy, 74, is a taxi driver in Glasgow and 72-year-old Ian, a retired upholsterer, lives in Kingswells. They both kept their birth father's surname. Ian's son, 41-year-old Gordon, can proudly claim he had two grandfathers in the famous Spanish war.

An oil and gas planning engineer, he said: "My father has never spoken much about Archie and it is only recently I've started trying to find out as much as I can about the civil war. I remember Davie as being quite a firebrand, always keen to debate politics with his friends, like Bob Cooney.

"The young men who went to fight were very special. They should never be forgotten."

None of Aberdeen's International Brigaders is still alive. The last to die was John Londragan in 1993.

Like his fellows-at-arms, he never lost the conviction that the cause in Spain was worth fighting and dying for.

A Greater Tomorrow exhibition is at Aberdeen Art Gallery from February 3 to April 28


http://www.thisisaberdeen.co.uk/displayNod...e=sidebarsearch (http://www.thisisaberdeen.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=148331&command=displayContent&sourceNode=148314&contentPK=16400104&moduleName=InternalSearch&formname=sidebarsearch)

[OneBrickOneVoice]

That's interesting. This is good too.


Dismembering history: How Trotskyism "remembers" the Spanish Civil War

2006 saw the 70th anniversary of the fascist rebellion which triggered a three-year people's war in defence of the Spanish Republic against General Franco's fascist rebels, who were lavishly assisted by German and Italian fascism, and were further strengthened by the embargo on supplies to the beleaguered Republic imposed by Britain, France and the USA on the false pretext of "non-intervention".

The Soviet Union, by embracing the liberation struggle of the Spanish people as her own, by supplying food, medicine, armaments and military advisors to the Republic, and by organising the despatch of some 35,000 fighting men through the International Brigades, stood proudly at the shoulder of the Spanish people. At this testing time the Soviet Union alone, out of all the states in the world, carried out its duty under international law and its class duty of proletarian solidarity, giving unstinting assistance to the Spanish Republic and the Spanish toilers.

The world knows that the people's war was lost in 1939. Yet in the course of three years of the most bitter armed struggle, the Spanish toilers and their class allies demonstrated to the world just what could be achieved against fascism when it was challenged by the heroism of a people risen in arms and welded into a united fighting force under the influence of Communist leadership.

Again and again in the course of those three long years the Republican forces went onto the attack against the numerically and technically hugely superior fascist forces. And even after the fall of Catalonia, it was the treachery of non-communist members of the Popular Front which sealed the fate of the Republic, not the disposition of the forces on the ground. The Spanish Communist Party certainly did not accept that the situation, though very difficult, warranted a policy of surrender to the fascist hordes. 700,000 Republican troops still remained in the liberated areas, and international contradictions within the crisis-stricken imperialist camp might yet have tipped the balance in the Republic's favour.

In fact, when the social democratic wing of the Popular Front adopted the craven policy of surrender, the Socialist Party leader Casado could only carry this policy through by sacking all the Communists from their military posts and throwing 12,000 Communists into jail. It was only by snatching from the hands of the people their own Communist leaders that social democratic defeatism was able to open the door to Franco.

This is how all of progressive humanity remembers the brave struggle of the Spanish Republic, and the staunch support that struggle received from the Communist-organised International Brigades and from the Soviet Union. Nor is it forgotten how the same Soviet Union then went on to make history by her destruction of the Hitlerite war machine and her crucial role in the liberation of Europe from fascist tyranny.

Trotskyite lies about the Spanish Civil War

However, this is not how the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) wishes to "remember" the Spanish Civil War. In a recent leaflet put out in Bristol inviting the public to a meeting entitled "Remembering the Spanish Civil War", the SWP offer a very different version of history, a version in which the Communists and the Soviet Union feature, not as the most steadfast allies of the Republic, but as obstacles to the revolutionary advance of the Spanish toilers. In order to make this lie stick, they have to call white black, and black white. The unique and unstinting material support rendered by the Soviet Union, at a time when the Western "democracies" were assisting the fascist aggressors by imposing an embargo on the Republic, is by this alchemy transformed into some fiendish plot by the "Stalinists" to crush the revolution. According to this gibberish, "… the newly arising ruling class in Russia around Stalin used the monopoly of control of the supplies to the government to prevent the development of the revolution". What does this rigmarole boil down to? Just this: since they cannot deny that no state other than the Soviet Union was prepared to offer supplies and assistance to Republican Spain, these frauds resort to the calumny that this unsought "monopoly of control of the supplies" was itself just a trick to hold back the revolution. Perhaps the SWP would like to tell us the location of that great long queue of capitalist states which Moscow must presumably have shouldered aside to secure this "monopoly"!

The question of who assisted and who retarded the survival of the Republic and the development of the revolution is best settled by reference to historical fact, not the tortured semantics of those caught out in a historical lie and hiding behind wordplay. So we should ask: what did Trotskyism do in the Spanish war?

Trot disruption of the Popular Front

The fascist revolt of July 1936 aimed to suppress not only the workers and peasants of Spain, but also those elements of domestic Spanish capitalism whose interests ran counter to those of the unholy alliance forged between world imperialism and the rotten "cacique" system of feudal landlordism. Together, these two forces had long stifled Spain's national democratic development. For this reason, it was not alone workers and peasants who rallied to the Republic, but also progressive sections of the bourgeoisie.

That being so, the efforts of the Communists to draw all anti-fascist forces behind a united Popular Front were crucial, both to the survival of the Republic and to the advance of the revolution. This task was complicated by the disorganising influence of both social democracy and anarchism upon the working class. Yet by the 1930s the Spanish communism had already become a force to be reckoned with, and in the course of the war did much to secure the hegemony of the proletariat over the Republican movement.

By contrast, the misleadingly styled "Workers' Party of Marxist Unity" (POUM for short), a Trotskyite outfit whose most illustrious adherent was the "democratic socialist" and police spy, George Orwell, did their damnedest to hamper the unification of progressive forces.

POUM's disruptive influence was on full display when the Communists took the lead in organising the celebrated Fifth Regiment. In July 1936, it had been the workers themselves, without effective organisation, with hardly any ammunition and relying on their own courage and initiative, that had decisively rebuffed the fascist forces closing in on Madrid. This outburst of revolutionary energy successfully drove back the fascist threat, and revealed the huge untapped revolutionary creativity of the toiling masses. However, the people of Madrid also learned by this experience how much more effective their efforts would be when properly organised and disciplined. Understanding that it was the Communists who were prepared and ready to organise militarily, in a professional manner, the cream of Madrid's workers rallied to join the Fifth Regiment. As in the Red Army, every unit had its own political commissar, tasked to promote a new kind of discipline, one that was conscious and voluntary rather than imposed, and therefore all the more effective. So successful did this model prove that it came to be adopted throughout the People's Army, so bringing to an end the criminal waste of life hitherto occasioned by the division of the troops into rival political factions, whose squabbles resulted in some needless military disasters.

This development, which strengthened the anti-fascist war effort (and thereby created the best possible conditions for the development of the revolution), was not to the taste of Trotskyism, however. In a fit of crass ultra-left pique, POUM denounced as reactionary the very idea of a People's Army, clinging instead to their own insistence on a purely "Workers' Army". In the same vein, they wanted to take control of the army away from the Popular Front and hand it to a military council elected from the workers' organisations. Yet no surer way of disrupting the common front against the most urgent threat to the Spanish toilers, destroying the alliance between worker and peasant, and thereby setting back the struggle to defend the Republic and to maintain proletarian hegemony over the Republican movement, could have been devised than this light-minded playing at revolution. Nor did these petty-bourgeois masters of the revolutionary phrase shrink even from denouncing the soldiers of the People's Army as no different from the "headless automatons who so efficiently click their heels and do or die for Hitler and Mussolini".

POUM likewise denounced the Communist proposal for a unified police force under Popular Front control, alleging in their paper (La Batalla, 16th December 1936) that such proposals amounted to an attempt to "crush the creative revolutionary instinct of the proletariat" (or as the airy SWP phrase would have it, hinder "these possibilities for socialism from below"). But the facts tell a different story. The workers' patrols, which had dealt with the fascists during the July rebellion, had since then gone off the rails. This is best illustrated by the events at La Faterellas. The peasants of this village, in the course of resistance to an ill-judged forced collectivisation, shot two Anarchists. The tragedy was compounded when a maverick workers' patrol arrived from Barcelona and wiped out half the men of the village in reprisal. Yet the Communists' sensible proposal to bring the patrols back under Popular Front discipline had POUM foaming that "This offensive of the Stalinists cannot succeed and will not succeed". Similar ultra-"left" demagogy greeted the Communists when they warned against such excesses as the burning down of churches and monasteries, sensibly pointing out that such activities were a propaganda gift to fascism. Nothing would please Franco more than to see religious-minded peasants needlessly alienated from the Republican movement through a failure to curb such excesses. Needless to say none of this impressed those whose petty-bourgeois revolutionism immunised them against any and every manifestation of proletarian discipline.

(Of course, when it is a case of a well-judged and successful revolutionary attack on the oppressive privileges of a landholding minority - as in the revolutionary land redistribution recently accomplished in Zimbabwe's Third Chimurenga, under the leadership of ZANU-PF - Trotskyism can see nothing but the occasional excesses which necessarily accompany such an enormous explosion of popular score-settling. In Spain these unfortunate excesses were egged on by Trotskyism, the better to disunite the Popular Front. In Zimbabwe, similar excesses are seized upon as an excuse to unite with British imperialism in rubbishing the achievements of the Zimbabwean people and personally demonising Robert Mugabe.)

Playing at Revolution

In their leaflet, the SWP raises the question of collectivisation of agriculture in the liberated areas, in order to lend colour to its allegations that "socialism from below" was stifled by Communists. According to this old slander, the Communists wilfully held back the class struggle in the Spanish countryside because they secretly wanted to hold back the revolution - presumably in the interests of the "newly arising ruling class in Russia around Stalin"! A glance at the actual circumstances in which these class struggles were unfolding, however, soon puts paid to these childish fables. In September 1936 the Republicans, having secured the whole of Catalonia as a liberated area, pressed on into Aragon, and seemed set fair to recapture this province too. But this advance stuttered to a halt, dogged by problems in the rearguard. The Spanish historian R. Tamames tells us that

"In Barcelona, while Madrid was short of food, people were living as though there were not a war on. Production was declining because of Anarchist collectivisation. The CNT-FAI [the Anarchists], instead of facilitating the advance on the Aragonese territory, to which they had made an extremely important contribution, dedicated itself to making a revolution, and to undermining republican power by creating entities such as the Consejo de Aragon. The lesson to be learnt from the collapse of the advance in Aragon was clear: to win the war and to carry out a libertarian revolution at the same time was simply impossible."

Yet it was not the Anarchists alone who made this mistake, but also the "Marxists" of POUM, who likewise advocated a policy of forced collectivisation, thereby risking the alienation of the peasantry and the starvation of the workers.

The Communist position on this question was clear. "Collective farms must not be established by force," Stalin insisted, adding, "That would be foolish and reactionary". He told delegates to the 16th Congress of the CPSU(B) that they needed to recognise that "the proclamation of a slogan is not enough to cause the peasantry to turn en masse towards socialism". Instead, "the masses of the peasantry themselves should be convinced that the slogan proclaimed is a correct one and that they should accept it as their own". Trotskyism, always happy to assist imperialism in slandering the collectivisation achievements of the Soviet Union, had no problem in urging collectivisation itself - just so long it was at the wrong time, in the wrong place and in the wrong way.

Defeat of the POUM Putsch

The long overdue exclusion of Trotskyism from the Popular Front government (which POUM had spent every waking hour undermining) marked the beginning of the adoption of a united policy in Republican Spain, in place of the sham unity which had only impeded resolute action by the government in defence of the Republic against fascism. In Trotskyism's final "contribution" to the fight against fascism, POUM called for an insurrection against the Popular Front government. The ignominious defeat of this provocation, in May 1937, revealed both POUM's treachery to the Republic and the utter bankruptcy of its claims to speak for the Spanish proletariat. With this failed putsch, Trotskyism in Spain had played its last card.

But Trot advice on how Spain ought to run her revolution did not dry up then (and has never dried up since). Writing in November 1937, at a critical time for the future of the Republic, Leon Trotsky wrote an article which was splashed all over the pro-Franco imperialist press, entitled, "It is time to pass to an international offensive against Stalinism". Here is a flavour of what Trotskyism really has in mind when it gets misty eyed about "remembering Spain".

"The events of recent months in Spain have demonstrated what crimes the Moscow bureaucracy, now completely degenerate, linked with its international mercenaries, are capable of. In Spain, where the so-called Republican Government serves as a screen for the criminal bands of Stalinism, the GPU has found the most favourable arena for carrying out the directives of the Plenum."

Harpal Brar, in his work "Trotskyism or Leninism?", sums up the real significance of Trotsky's "contribution" to the struggle.

"An international offensive of the dupes of Trotskyism against the Spanish Republic, to coincide with the offensive of Franco - such was the contribution of Trotskyism in the most critical period of the struggle of the Spanish people against local and international fascism."

Proletarian internationalism versus Trot sectarianism

The SWP leaflet suggests that the 70th anniversary of the start of the war provides "a great opportunity to discuss the continuing relevance of the key political questions posed by Spain in the 30s". Let this discussion take as its starting point the continued refusal of "the left" in general, and Trotskyism in particular, to offer consistent and unconditional support for the national resistance movement being raised by the Iraqi people against the aggression of "our own" Anglo-American imperialism. What is the relevance to Spain? Listen to the telegram which Joseph Stalin sent to the General Secretary of the Spanish CP, Jose Diaz, on October 15th 1936.

"The toilers of the Soviet Union only fulfil their duty when they give aid to the Spanish revolutionary masses. They are aware that the liberation of Spain from the persecution of Fascist reactionaries is not a private cause of Spaniards, but a universal cause of the whole of advanced and progressive mankind."

Nor is the liberation of Iraq from the present-day fascist occupation a private cause of Iraqis, but a "universal cause of the whole of advanced and progressive mankind". Those who have best learned the lessons of the Spanish Civil War are those who today support the united front of the Iraqi resistance movement without caveats or conditions, and urge upon the anti-war movement the unambiguous watchword, Victory to the Iraqi Resistance! Study of the treacherous role played by Trotskyism in the 30s makes it easier to see how those remaining under its baleful influence find this candid slogan so hard to stomach.

Long live the memory of the struggle of the Spanish toilers against fascism!

Long live the memory of the Soviet support for that struggle and of the spirit of proletarian internationalism which inspired the International Brigades!

Long live all those fighting imperialist aggression today in Colombia, Nepal, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan!

Victory to the Iraqi resistance!

FIRST PUBLISHED IN LALKAR by Harpal Brar

Link (http://seek-the-truth-serve-the-people.blogspot.com/)

[Louis Pio]

Ahh the "anti-trotskyist" alliance strikes once more... Btw why call SWP "trotskyist"? They don't even claim that themselves.
A small point to remember in regards to the spanish revolution, is how USSR only gave conditional support, put forward demands and always refrained from open support. Whereas bourgious Mexico didn't have these problems but just shipped the weapons when payed.

Now for anyone with any knowlegde of the period, the Austurian Commune in 1934 stands out as a part of the start of the whole affair.
I suggest this article: Lessons of the Asturian Commune, October 1934 (http://www.marxist.com/asturian-commune1934-2.htm)


Lessons of the Asturian Commune, October 1934
By Ramon Samblas
Tuesday, 05 October 2004
70 years ago the mining and industrial region of Asturias in Spain witnessed one of the most fascinating revolutions in the history of the 20th century. During the course of 15 days men and women fought to establish a new society free of exploitation and ruled by the principles of workers’ democracy. This was the beginning of the Asturian Commune.

---

On April 12, 1931 the Spanish masses voted massively for Socialist and Republican candidates in local elections that took place throughout the country. One of the main features of this election was a high turn out. Two days later, On April 14, the hated Monarchist regime collapsed, the king was forced to flee the country, and Spain became a Republic.

The masses were seeking to finish centuries of exploitation, cultural backwardness and the influence of the almighty Catholic Church in the economic and social affairs of the country. The Bourgeois-Democratic programme of land reform, development of industry, the separation of the Church from State affairs and the promises of decent education and healthcare for all filled the Spanish peasants and workers with hope. This situation opened a period of Socialist-Republican coalition governments and hope for the historically oppressed masses in Spain.

However, by 1934 the bourgeois-democratic republic had shattered the early democratic illusions and hopes of a big layer of the working class and the peasants. Three years after the proclamation of the Republic, the working class was beginning to see that this Republic had not solved any of the problems they faced. In the elections that took place on November 19th, 1933, the workers massively abstained, and together with manoeuvres of the bosses a shift to the right in parliament took place. Lerroux’s Radical Party emerged as the winner, but without an absolute majority. This meant they needed the support of the CEDA, a far right bourgeois party. The CEDA was a far right party, which represented landowners, “caciques” (direct political representatives of the landowners in the countryside), army officers and the bosses.

The situation in Spain became one of profound instability, which ran through every section of the country, beginning at the top. One of the main features of political life became the permanent crisis in the cabinet. In the space of two years the cabinet changed 6 times, but the Radical party (a bourgeois party which used a left rhetoric) was a permanent feature of all these cabinets.

Another permanent feature of this period was repression. The Republican-Radical government used laws that had been passed by the Socialists when they had been in office (in coalition with bourgeois Republican parties) against the very same Socialist Party! Between November 1933 and September 1934 more than 100 issues of “El Socialist” were sequestered. Prior to the 1934 uprising 12,000 workers were in prison. The Socialist militias were banned and disarmed. The funds of the trade unions were also sequestered. It was a cruel irony for the Socialists; they were prosecuted with the same laws they themselves had passed against, “wreckers and enemies of the Republic”.

It was becoming increasingly clear to the mass of workers that the Republic could not fulfil their hopes and demands for a better life. Experience had dashed their illusions in just three years. The impotence of parliamentarism in the face of such a severe crisis of capitalism was becoming increasingly evident.

The struggle against fascism and the impact on the workers’ organisations
This period was one of Revolution and Counterrevolution across the whole of Europe. The 1929 crash had pushed this process even further. Unfortunately, the Social democratic leadership, and the ultra-left and sectarian policies pursued by the Communist parties, had led these revolutions to bloody defeats and the triumph of Fascist and other reactionary regimes. In 1933 Hitler had taken power in Germany. The most organised working class in Europe had suffered a terrible defeat. A similar situation unfolded in Austria. Years before, the Italian working class had been crushed under the jackboot of Fascism.

The defeat suffered by the German and Austrian working class alerted the rest of the European proletariat – especially the Spanish – to the dangers of Fascism. Among the rank and file of all the workers’ parties and trade unions a feeling of unity sprang up. Here we saw in practice an example of how the working class, when it feels the need to struggle, rejects splits and divisions as a general rule. The Spanish proletariat was determined to defeat Fascism. They did not want to go through the same experience as their German comrades.

The situation across Europe had the effect of pushing the parties of the Second International to the left. This shift to the left was initiated by the growth of the left wing within the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Party). Largo Caballero and his supporters within the UGT (Socialist trade union federation) and in the Socialist Youth even stated they were in favour of the preparation of the proletarian revolution. Even Prieto (identified with the moderate wing of the party) stated in Las Cortes (the Spanish parliament) that he was committed to preventing, by whatever means necessary – including an armed uprising – a fascist regime coming to power. The pressure of the masses on their leaders was pushing them further and further to the left.

Largo Caballero illustrated the mood developing amongst the rank and file of the workers’ parties. He had been a Minister of Labour during the Primo de Rivera dictatorship (1924-1930). In spite of that, in the 1930s his shift to the left was such that he became known as the “Spanish Lenin”. However, the PSOE leaders were far from being Marxists or Leninists. They replaced their earlier parliamentary cretinism with an increasingly ultra-left policy. They suddenly declared they were no longer interested in “bourgeois politics” anymore. Having abandoned the idea of changing society slowly through parliamentary means, they now failed to grasp the role that the platforms provided by the system could play in the fight against capitalism.

The Revolutionary Workers’ Alliance
At the same time as a wide layer of the PSOE ranks was shifting to the left a new phenomenon, the Revolutionary Workers’ Alliance (RWA), was springing up all over the country. Its aim was to give expression to the deep-rooted feeling of unity among the proletariat. In October 1933 the BOC (Peasants’ and Workers’ Block) and the Catalan federation of the PSOE organised a rally appealing for the formation of a Workers’ United Front.

Later on, after the defeat suffered by the left-wing parties in the November general election and the failure of the last Anarchist uprising promoted by the FAI, a Revolutionary Workers’ Alliance was created in Barcelona. The original committee consisted of the BOC, UGT, PSOE (Catalan federation), FSL, Communist Left, USC (Catalan Socialist Union), Unio de Rabassaires (Catalan small and medium landowners’ union), trade unions expelled from the CNT (controlled by the BOC) and the dissident trade unions within the CNT gathered around Angel Pestana.

The Unio de Rabassaires and the USC withdrew from the Workers’ Alliance. The fact that both were giving support to the bourgeois Companys government quite quickly brought them into conflict with the original spirit of the Workers’ Alliance, which was that of a workers’ united front.

The first practical test for the Workers’ Alliance took place on March 13, 1934. The Workers’ Alliance called for a strike against the increasing influence of reaction in the central government. However, the strike was called without appealing to the CNT (Anarchist trade union federation). The CNT organised half of the unionised working class in Spain at the time. The adventurism of the Workers’ Alliance leaders and the sectarianism of the CNT leaders (especially in Catalonia) prepared the ground for the defeat of that strike, particularly in Barcelona. In general, the Workers’ Alliance failed to be a real united front against Fascism.

The sponsors of the Alliance, the Communist Left led by Andreu Nin and the BOC by Joaquin Maurin, never tried to unite the workers’ organisations at rank and file level. They always sought unity from the top. This bureaucratic method undermined the whole project despite the desires and mood in favour of unity against fascism within the rank and file of the trade unions and workers’ parties. They failed to stand for a Leninist policy on the united front – march separately and strike together.

The sectarianism of the CNT leadership and the then tiny Communist Party played a major role too. The Communist Party went so far as to call the Workers’ Alliances “Reactionary Workers’ Alliances”. This was in line with Stalin’s policy of the Third Period where the Socialists, Anarchists and Trotskyists were denounced as Fascists.

Despite the opposition of the CNT to the Workers’ Alliance in Catalonia the Asturian CNT leaders supported the idea of the Alliance and they eventually joined it against the will of the CNT leaders in the rest of Spain.

The explanation for the curious behaviour of the Asturian CNT is to be found in the fact that the UGT and the CNT had almost equal forces in Asturias. This situation had pushed the workers from the Socialist and Anarchist trade unions to work together and fight together. For instance, whilst the SOMA-UGT (Socialist mineworkers’ trade union) dominated in all the pits, the majority of the metal workers were organised in the CNT.

Historically, the Asturian labour movement had been the best organised in Spain. The number of “People’s Houses” (social centres run by the PSOE), Anarchist Social Centres, Cooperatives and even schools run by the trade unions, is one example of how well organised the Asturian proletariat was.

However, the process of drawing the CNT into the Revolutionary Workers’ Alliance was not free from controversy and opposition within the CNT itself. The stronghold of La Felguera controlled by the FAI always opposed the Workers’ Alliance.

It is also important to remember the role played by the Communist Party leadership. In the early 1930s the Communist Party had adopted the ultra-left Stalinist idea of the “Third Period”, whereby the Leninst tactic of the United Front was abandoned, which led them to split the labour movement down the middle and facilitate the rise of the fascists to power.

The mistaken policies of the Stalinist leaders led to defeats in China (because of the Popular Front tactic), and in Germany and then Austria (because of the sectarian “Third Period”. Through these various zig-zags, by 1934, the Comintern had ceased to be a genuine revolutionary International. Instead, as Trotsky explained, it had been reduced to the role of border guard for the Stalinists in Moscow.

Later on, the Stalinists shifted to the right again and adopted the tactic of the popular front. They changed their ultra-sectarian outlook on the Social Democracy to one of class collaboration. Marxism explains that ultraleftism and opportunism are two sides of the same coin. Both policies resulted in catastrophe during the course of the Spanish Revolution. In Asturias, on the eve of the uprising, the PCE (Communist party) leadership dropped their definition of the Workers’ Alliance as the “live nerve of counterrevolution” and instead applied to join it! The pressure of events, and from their own rank and file, was becoming too much for them to resist.

From the General Strike to the Revolution
By the end of September the crisis was so serious that the Radical-Republican cabinet headed by Samper collapsed and in the early October days, Alcala Zamora (the president of the Republic) called on Lerroux to appoint a new government.

The ruling class did not have a real way out. There was also mounting anxiety and tension amongst the working class. Everybody was waiting to see whether Lerroux would give any ministries to the CEDA. The working class regarded the entry of CEDA into the new government as the first step towards Fascism in Spain. The German experience was fresh in their minds. On October 3, Lerroux appointed three CEDA ministers. Six hours later the UGT and the Workers’ Alliances called a general strike.

Despite the shortcomings of the leadership – their failure to call on workers to occupy factories and peasants to seize land, and the lack of real soviets and clarity – the working class threw themselves into the fight.

In the end the general strike was doomed by the lack of participation of the workers of some key sectors of the economy organised by the CNT, such as the railways. This allowed the transportation of ammunition and troops to crush the protest. The workers did not receive arms until hours after the public appeal for the general strike. The Army used this time to arrest workers and disband militias. But, the workers resisted with the general strike going on for days and industry and trade were paralysed. In spite of the limitations of its leadership, when the working class starts to fight with such determination, it cannot be easily stopped. A ferocious struggle ensued. However, in the end, the failure of the leaders was decisive and the movement was defeated.

The failure of that movement was analysed by Leon Trotsky. In his article The consequence of parliamentary reformism, in which he stated:

“The Socialist Party, like the Russian Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, shared power with the republican bourgeoisie to prevent the workers and peasants from carrying the revolution to its conclusion. For two years the Socialists in power helped the bourgeoisie disembarrass itself of the masses by crumbs of national, social, and agrarian reforms. Against the most revolutionary strata of the people, the Socialists used repression (…). When the Socialist Party was sufficiently compromised, the bourgeoisie drove it from power and took over the offensive on the whole front. The Socialist Party had to defend itself under the most unfavourable conditions, which had been prepared for it by its own policy”.

Trotsky pointed out that as a result of the previous parliamentary cretinism of the Socialist Party, anarcho-syndicalism was strengthened as a tendency within the labour movement and it drew towards itself the best militant layers of the proletariat.

Nevertheless the role of the Anarchist leadership was as pernicious as the social democratic leadership. They refused to support the insurrection led by the Socialists. The insurrection is a decisive moment, not a game, and it must be skilfully used and prepared.

Again Leon Trotsky: “Marxism is quite far from the thought that armed struggle is the only revolutionary method, or a panacea good under all conditions. Marxism in general knows no fetishes, neither parliamentary nor insurrectional. There is a time and place for everything.”

The worst betrayal of the movement took place in Catalonia. Lluis Companys (Catalan Premier) feared the workers more than the troops sent by the Republican government. He used the divisions within the labour movement in Catalonia (especially in Barcelona) to proclaim the “Estat Catala” (Catalan state). The President of the Generalitat appealed to the Catalan people to calm them down. When the troops arrived from Madrid and surrounded Barcelona, he just surrendered without resistance. Of course, this “Estat Catala” did not challenge private property nor the current social establishment. The Catalan bourgeoisie was attempting to divert the attention of the masses through this manoeuvre. Leaving the leadership of the struggle in the hands of the petty bourgeoisie represented by the ERC (Catalan Republican Left) and the Unio de Rabassaires proved to be a grave mistake.

This manoeuvre of the Catalan petty bourgeoisie could have been overcome, but the CNT leadership dismissed the general strike as “political” and did not join the movement. In a decisive moment, the CNT that organised the majority of the Barcelona proletariat provided no leadership. As dialectics explains, nature abhors a vacuum. This vacuum was filled by the petty bourgeoisie led by Companys who did not hesitate to betray the movement. In spite of this the Madrid government “rewarded” Lluis Companys by jailing him and sentencing him to death, which was later commuted. With the failure of the insurrection in Catalonia the struggle in the rest of the country was seriously undermined.

UHP! (Proletarian brothers and sisters unite!)
In Asturias, however the situation was completely different. Here the General Strike took the form of an armed uprising. Only hours after the armed uprising began important mining areas like Mieres were under the control of the revolutionary workers. In two days the revolutionary workers took over the Oviedo council, the Asturian capital. The Workers’ Alliance had been established more than a year earlier and was a real united front.

As explained before, the pressure of the workers on the leadership in Asturias made them unite whether they wanted to or not. For instance, the PCE was forced to join the Workers’ Alliance despite the sectarian and ultra-left position of the leadership on this question. The mineworkers led by Gonzalez Pena and Grossi were clearing the way ahead with barrels of dynamite due to the lack of arms and ammunition. The revolutionary Asturian proletariat was making up for the lack of means and experience with their class instinct and creativity.

While the workers and peasants were establishing a new order called the Commune, the institutions of the capitalist system were collapsing. The Civil Guards and the Assault Guards were fleeing from the barracks. When they saw the armed workers, some of them even joined the proletarian army. The case of lieutenant Torrens is one of the most famous. He surrendered his squad of Civil Guards and joined the workers as a military advisor.

The Workers’ Alliances and the bodies which emerged from them (like the Revolutionary Councils) during the revolution, acted as real soviets. Despite the failure of those organisations in the rest of the country, in Asturias they led the revolution.

During the 15 days of the Asturian Commune, the Revolutionary Councils seized land, occupied factories, put the enemies of the working class on trial through the Revolutionary Tribunals (a right that reaction never conceded to the Asturian workers following the repression of the Commune), established Workers’ Democracy and held off the Moorish troops and the Legion, the two most reactionary bodies of the Spanish army.

In spite of the courage of the Asturian masses the movement faced serious problems. On the one hand the insurrection was isolated to Asturias. This made it easier for reaction to defeat it. But the lack of coordination of the different areas where the uprising was taking place also made it very difficult for the militias to overcome their lack of ammunition and weapons.

The failure of the insurrection in the rest of the country made it possible for the Republican government to focus their efforts on smashing the Asturian Commune. It became a common saying that if three Asturian Communes had taken place, the Revolution would have been successful throughout the country. Instead of the greatest of victories there was the most terrible of defeats.

Repression was horrific. The Republican Army, led by Franco, did not hesitate to use aerial bombing against the civil population. They also sent thousands of troops to kill, rape and torture women and children. These are the brutal methods that the ruling class used to crush the Asturian uprising. They could not allow the workers and peasants to decide their own fate. There are no exact figures, but different sources calculate the numbers killed as 2000-4000. The people in jail were counted in tens of thousands.

Once again, the lack of a clear programme and tactics proved to be a disaster and the working class paid for it. If a genuine Bolshevik leadership in the Socialist and Communist party and the trade unions (both anarcho-syndicalist and Socialist) had led the revolution throughout the country, the result would have been substantially different.

But the sacrifice of the Asturian workers was not completely in vain. They did prevent the rise of Fascism through parliamentary means. The ruling class could only impose its open dictatorship after a 3 year long civil war in which the Spanish workers fought like lions despite being led by lambs.

We wish to pay homage to the struggle of these men and women who bravely fought for a better world. They showed to the workers and peasants of the entire world that a society without classes is possible. Once again we reclaim the motto of the Asturian Commune against capitalism, Unios Hermanos Proletarios! (Proletarian Brothers and Sisters Unite!) UHP!

[OneBrickOneVoice]

I'm not anti-trotskyist, I used to be one.

[The Grey Blur]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20, 2007 03:33 am
I'm not anti-trotskyist, I used to be one.
Then why post a disgusting pile of anti-Trotskyist tripe. Can you not just leave the martyrs of the Spanish civil war alone in their graves instead of cheaply trying to use their deaths to make a political point.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Originally posted by Permanent Revolution+January 20, 2007 05:54 pm--> (Permanent Revolution @ January 20, 2007 05:54 pm)
[email protected] 20, 2007 03:33 am
I'm not anti-trotskyist, I used to be one.
Then why post a disgusting pile of anti-Trotskyist tripe. Can you not just leave the martyrs of the Spanish civil war alone in their graves instead of cheaply trying to use their deaths to make a political point. [/b]
seriously shut the fuck up. Anarchists and trots constantly jump on the spanish civil war as the great anarcho-trot revolution that was squashed by the evil stalinists, so I posted this. Did you even read it?

[Vargha Poralli]

Anarchists and trots constantly jump on the spanish civil war as the great anarcho-trot revolution

Could you prove this ? and POUM broke with Trotsky before the war.So please as don't drag them in to this.




evolution that was squashed by the evil stalinists

Unfortunately this is true so don't try to whitewash the crimes of Stalin and his worshippers.It has been failed so better do something useful.



seriously shut the fuck up

You do it first.

[Brownfist]

Has anyone on this board ever heard of Gopal Mukund Hudder?

[bcbm]

seriously shut the fuck up. Anarchists and trots constantly jump on the spanish civil war as the great anarcho-trot revolution that was squashed by the evil stalinists, so I posted this.

I'm too lazy to read a bunch of shit from Stalinist ****s. What does it say about all the working class revolutionaries they arrested and murdered, I wonder?