Essays on the Spanish Civil War By Albert Weisbord

The Spanish Revolution The Spanish Revolution at the Crossroads Long Live The Spanish Socialist Republic The Underground Railway To Spain Two Visits to Barcelona Outcast Spain The Huesca Front in Aragon The Provocations of Bourgeois Democracy in Spain Barricades in Barcelona Perspectives of the Spanish Revolution Collectivization in Catalonia The Fight Within the Spanish Left The P.O.U.M. in Spain An Analysis of the Barcelona May Days Unique Problems of the Spanish Revolution Covering the Evacuation of the Refugees

The Spanish Revolution by Albert Weisbord (From "Class Struggle" Volume 6 Number 5, September 1936) Ever since the fall of 1930 when the Spanish Revolution began there has been no surcease of thestruggle in Spain. For a long time there was a deadlock of forces, an equilibrium in the tug of warbetween the property holders and the destitute. Now the equilibrium is being definitely broken. Theissue before Spain is either Communism or Fascism. The matter is being fought out not with ballotsbut with bullets and ruthless civil war. Slowly the political revolution is being definitively turned intoa social revolution. From the very beginning, the mass of workers of Spain, both in the city and in the country were thedecisive elements. When the students rioted before the universities in 1930 it was only when theworkers joined them with a vast general strike that the regime of the military dictator, Primo deRivera, fell and the temporary regime of General Berenguer set up. When General Berenguer tried tohold fake elections without extending the franchise to all, it was another general strike that overthrewthe regime, compelled new elections, forced the king to flee and established the republic in April1931. At this point the Syndicalist and Anarchist workers began to miscalculate their forces. Syndicalismand Anarchism, in spite of their revolutionary phraseology were able only to overthrow the old regimeand to allow the new democratic republic to be set up; but these movements could not go forward tothe positive constructive tasks of setting up the rule of the workers. These antiquated movements weregood enough to accomplish the negative and critical tasks of overthrowing an antiquated monarchy;they did not know how to deal with a modern bourgeois republic. In the course of the revolutionary movement there was set up what in fact amounts to a dual power,the masses respecting the authority of the unions and the revolutionary organizations, the governmentbeing forced at times to yield to the opinions of these mass organizations on vital questions. At onetime the bourgeois government was even forced to declare that Spain was a workers republic and tofeign friendliness toward the Soviet Union.

The leaders of the toilers' organizations, however, did not know what to do with their power. Thelending groups were composed of four principal elements: the Anarchists, the Syndicalists, theSocialists and the Communists. The Anarchists were powerful enough within the trade unionmovement to exercise decisive influence for a time upon the whole situation. With their Bakuninistidealism they did not appreciate the necessity of preparing for revolt by building powerfulorganizations in all discontented strata of the population. They attempted one adventure after anotherand believed that the State could be abolished and all oppression ended by one blow struck by amilitant minority. After each failure of the Anarchist workers, the working class would lose some ofits strength, the reaction would pick up its head, the government would consolidate its position. Allthat the Anarchists could do was to wear out the working class in ill prepared battles, in fruitlessadventures and to strengthen the reactionary forces. The failure of the Anarchists who controlled goodly sections of the trade union movement broughtabout with it also a failure of the Syndicalist movement. A split occurred among the Syndicalists,some breaking from Anarchism and urging the formation of centralized authoritarian bodies leadingto the dictatorship of the proletariat. These Syndicalists, however, agreed with the Anarchists inboycotting the State and in ignoring the work of the political parties, in failing to reach the wideststrata of the population, etc. As the Syndicalists too began to be discredited and the working class forces to turn a bit weary, themasses began to flock to the Socialist party banner. In the beginning of the revolution the millionorganized Spanish workmen had been divided somewhat as follows: about 200,000 belonging to theGeneral Labor Union controlled by the Socialists and about 800,000 under the control of the C.N.T. ,the National Federation of Labor led by the Syndicalists and Anarchists. With the deepening of therevolution, however, the masses began to move from the Anarcho-Syndicalists and to join the GeneralLabor Union, so that by 1934 the relation was changed the other way around, 800,000 workers beingmembers and sympathizers of the General Labor Union of the Socialists. In the meantime the Socialists themselves had undergone somewhat of a change. In the early days ofthe republic it was the Right Wing Socialists typified by Prieto who controlled the Socialist Party.These were the gentlemen who took office in 1932 together with the Liberals and who at that timedeclared that they hoped they would not receive a majority of the votes since Spain was not yet readyfor Socialism, the masses evidently, being too dumb, to understand our Socialist heroes. Within thegovernment the Socialists aided the Liberals to put the people back to work under capitalist control, tostop the revolution and restore order. If hitherto the revolutions in Spain had mostly of a palace andcamarilla variety now it was to be a superficial political revolution only, leaving the basic problemsentirely untouched. Thanks to the Socialist Party, none of the chief demands of the masses were carried out. The land ofthe wealthy was neither confiscated nor partitioned and given to the poor peasantry, thus the landquestion still remained a burning one. Inflation robbed the workers of any gain that they might havewon through strikes, thus the labor question remained unsolved. The church property which wassupposed to be confiscated was left intact and the government proved very slow in separating churchfrom state and in disbanding the disloyal religious orders. Thus the religious question has been left formass direct action to solve. On their part, the leaders of the workers organizations made no attemptreally to arm the people and to establish a workers militia; they did not try to raise the question ofworkers' control over production to guaranty to each worker security and life; they did not make theslightest effort to set up revolutionary organs, soviets, to take state power. Thus, the workers, after turning from the Anarchists and Syndicalists to the Socialists, could not findany better solution to their problems. In time of revolutionary advance it was the Syndicalists that ledthe way, but since these advances were always defeated, it was the Socialists that gained ultimately. In

times of retreat, the workers took to parliamentary actions and to day-to-day economic struggles thatplaced them under the banner of the Socialists without involving them in a battle for political power.At least under the Socialists the workers were able to build authoritarian centralized massorganizations that recognized that the workers had to capture the state. Only the Socialists believedthat they could take control of the state in a peaceful and parliamentary manner. The Stalinist Communist Party showed itself completely bewildered and futile in all of this action.The entire Spanish revolution caught the Communist International unprepared. In the beginning theCommunist Party did its best to attack the Socialists and rejected the united front of all workers'organizations to fight the capitalist enemy. Instead of the united front they began their crazy tactics ofbuilding paper unions, splitting up labor's forces, etc. The result of this was miserable failure. In theend the Stalinists gave up their special trade union organizations and fused them with the Socialists'General Labor Union. In the meantime the Spanish reactionaries had taken heart at the defects and disunity of the workersand prepared one blow after another. They were able to see to it that all the revolutionary measureswhich the masses had favored were postponed by the Liberal-Coalition government which continuedto live only because of the collaboration of the Socialists with it and because the workers did not knowwhat to do with the power they had organized. Having stalled the revolution, the monarchistreactionaries then began their counter-offensive, the most important phase being the attempt ofGeneral Sanjurjo with part of the army and Civil Guards. It was in such periods when reaction threatened that the masses were able to isolate the reactionarycliques and give them crushing blows. The Sanjurjo revolt was quickly put down and the massesdemanded death to the traitors and the confiscation of their property. Again the Liberals of theZanorra-Azana stripe ran to the aid of the reactionaries to protect them from the wrath of the people.Thus the deadlock continued for a number of years. However, this unstable equilibrium could not lastforever. The intensifying contradictions throughout the world and within Spain compelled the politicalmovements to give permanent answers to the burning problems of the day. The great growth of Fascism in Europe, particularly its brutal victory in Germany and Austria,compelled the masses of France and Spain to draw the necessary lessons that the ruling class wouldnever give up its power without a fight. The murder of so many Socialists broke up the SocialistInternational and caused certain parties to revise their position on legalism and parliamentarism. TheSocialists got angry because, in spite of their servility to capitalism, capitalism in its Fascist phase,was kicking the Socialists out of office and making them lose their social reform and nice jobs. Thesereformists saw that they would have to fight to keep their reforms. The masses, under Socialistsinfluence, were demanding action against Fascism. As the Socialist International now split intofragments, in France and in Spain the Right Wing began to lose influence and to separate itself fromthe Socialist Party proper. Now it was the turn not of Prieto, but of Caballero, leader of the Socialist"Left" to take control. The rise of Fascism also occasioned the bankruptcy of Stalinism; these Stalinists now rushed to hidebehind the mass organizations of the Socialists and in joining forces with the Socialists, the Stalinistscould not but add to the Left Wing strength. The Trotskyites also capitulated and joined the SocialistParty. Thus encouraged by this unification, the Socialist workers demanded that the aims of theSpanish revolution begin to attain realization. The workers called for social insurance, for workers'control over production, for the division or confiscation of estates, for the real separation of churchand state, etc. Then the Liberal-Radical government, now thoroughly under the influence ofreactionary forces led by Lerroux, Robles and March, tried to deny the will of the masses, in 1934there took place, under the banner of the united alliance of Socialists, Communists and certainelements of the Syndicalists who broke away from the Anarchists, the great insurrectionary movement

among the miners and other workers in the Asturias region of Spain. The revolt was put down by thegovernment with much cruelty, many hundreds being shot and thousands perishing in the battles. The Asturias revolt was of enormous significance to the Spanish people. In the first place, it showedthe capitalists and large land holders that the people were not going to wait further but were going todivide the land and control their jobs. These reactionaries now began to mobilize their power inearnest. The monarchist agrarian elements now began to cement their close alliance with the capitalistcity forces led by Juan March and Gil Robles and others who were forming Fascist groups. As theproperty even of the Liberal Azana began to be invaded by the peasants, these worthies, the AzanaLiberals, leaned all the more closely to the reactionaries, permitting them to have the greatest leewaypolitically, especially in the organization of their forces in the army. The Liberals no longer wouldform a coalition with the Socialists under the new terms that the Socialists were compelled to ask butformed a coalition with the rightist element and thus the Socialists were placed outside the rulingbodies of the government. However, by this action the government only made itself still moreunpopular and made the Socialist Party lend itself even more to activities of the left groups. TheSocialist politicians saw that they could hold their jobs and their heads only by yielding to thedemands of the masses and organize them for action. In the second place the Asturias revolt taught the masses that to win they would have to knock out thestate apparatus and set up their own dictatorship. The workers broke forever with rotten Anarchismthat had stood aside in the most treacherous manner while the masses were fighting and being shotdown. The C.N.T. had refused to take part in the Asturias action; this damned the Anarcho-Syndicalists forever in the eyes of the conscious workers of Spain. In the third place the fighting gave the masses many lessons in the art of civil war. While it hadunified all forces temporarily under the banner of the opportunist Socialist Party, whose opportunismand cowardice was directly responsible, incidentally, for the defeat and isolation of the workers of theAsturias, it had taught the workers and toilers the value of unity in action and the meaning ofrevolution. The defeat of the workers forced the revolutionary masses to take to parliamentary activityfor the time being. This they could do only under the banner of the Socialist Party and at the nextelection the mass of people for the first time sent an overwhelming leftist delegation to the Cortes.This leftist delegation was made up of Communists, Socialists and Left Radicals, who being moreresponsive to the masses, at once made an attempt to execute the decrees already passed in 1931 butnot yet executed. It is to be noted that the Socialist Party of Spain, under the pressure of the LeftWing, did not take part in forming the government but kept in opposition. By this fact alone, theSocialist Party of Spain showed how more advanced it was than the Socialist Party of France, whoseleader, Leon Blum, is premier to do the dirty work for the capitalist class of France and who uses thegovernment to prevent the French from attaining Socialism. In this respect the Spanish revolutionarymovement is far more advanced than the French. In order to execute the decrees desired by the people, the government had to take real control of thearmy and thus was forced very timidly to begin the reorganization of the army by removing certainFascist and reactionary generals and officers. The reactionists, however, could not afford to lose thearmy. They would have to fight rather than give up their chief weapon. At the moment time waspressing heavily against the reactionists. The government in Spain was being pushed to the Left notonly by the Spanish masses but by the "People's" government in France. The great general strikemovement in France had shown that the workers were not following the "People's Front" governmentin France so much as the "People's Front" government was following the workers. It was the workersthat were taking the initiative and spontaneously forcing the hand of the government, compelling thegovernment to yield on one demand after another. Faced with such powerful support the Leftistgovernment of Spain could not help but go forward and allow the masses to have their will. And in

this they were aided by the great strike movement that began to shake Spain as it shook France. Theworkers were becoming increasingly bolder. Now was the time for the Fascists to strike their blow ornever. Such, at least, was the opinion of those sections of the former ruling class and land owners whocould no longer wait for favorable world conditions to break for them. It should be remembered, too, that in Spain the army had always been a paramount political force inthe country. He who controlled the army, controlled Spain and the army men had been accustomed tomake and unmake governments. This was owing to the fact that for centuries Spain had stagnated andup to recently there had been no class capable of challenging the will of the monarch who ruledthrough the army and ____ who was displaced by palace revolutions led by men controlling that army.The Spanish army was no good in foreign war. It was, however, an invaluable weapon internally to________ any resistance to the dictatorships set up within Spain. The Spanish army was also a placewhere grandees could regain their lost fortunes and get fat salaries doing nothing. The Spanish revolution, however, had unleashed new forces that were changing the entire characterand role of the army. No longer was the army necessarily a decisive force in Spanish history. It wasthe people who were speaking now in their own name, who demanded the entire dissolution of the oldarmy and the establishment of a workers militia. Up to 1934 the Socialists and others were able tosabotage that demand for a workers' militia, but with the Asturias uprising and afterward the workersarmy became a fact and showed its great potentialities. The day of the mercenary standing army withits great pack of generals and officers was doomed, once the revolution was allowed definitely toswing to the Left. No wonder these officers, as one man, looked with hatred and fury upon therevolution and aspired to crush it. But to put down the masses, the Rightists now had to put down the Leftist parliamentary regime thatshowed itself so weak before the people. The revolt, therefore, had to be a revolt against thegovernment itself. Thus the Spanish revolution now shows itself to be a replica of the RussianRevolution, as the Revolution had moved to the Left, the Right Wing capitalist elements hadconspired against it and were forced to fight the government of the Liberal-Radicals of Kerensky. Andin Russia, too, although the masses hated Kerensky and the whole parliamentary frame work andwanted to give all power to the Soviets, yet the workers were compelled to defend Kerensky andparliamentarism. but in the course of this defense the masses were taught to go still further to the Leftand wipe out both Kerensky and parliament and establish the Soviet regime and the dictatorship of theproletariat. Comparing the Russian with the Spanish revolutions, we can see that the Russians moved much fasterthan the Spaniards. It took only nine months for the Russians to complete their revolution and cap itwith the rule of the workers. It is now six years since the first "February" days of the SpanishRevolution in 1930 and the Spaniards are no further advanced than the Russians were at the end of sixmonths. The principal reason for this slowness is that the Russian Revolution occurred during theterrible time of the world war when solutions had to be made quickly. Another reason for the slownessis that there is no genuine revolutionary party in Spain. Not as in Russia where there was a Lenin and agenuine Bolshevik party already in existence, long tested and strong, in Spain the workers must nowonly begin to form their real revolutionary organization. The Spanish workers are groping their wayand must create their revolutionary party while they fight. This is a costly and slow process. II The present rebellion offers many important lessons which it will pay the workers of the world tolearn very carefully. In the first place we must note that the counter-revolution was evidently carefullyprepared and that it was practically able to take with it almost all of the officers. Furthermore, in avery large number of cases, the soldiers have gone with the officers or at least only in a small numberof cases have the soldiers revolted from the reactionary officers or has the government been able to

use their regular troops against the reactionary rebels. Only in the case of the navy has the governmentbeen able to find firm adherents. All this requires explanation. One of the first things that a revolution must accomplish is to wincontrol over the army. When the revolution first broke out and a republic was formed, it was only theInternationalist Communists who insisted on the necessity of forming Soviets and of reorganizing thearmy. In fact, the army was left untouched, thanks to the Liberals, Radicals and Socialists whosupported the government. The army was left practically untouched because the government wasafraid that the masses would go further than a mere republic and begin to form Soviets and to takeover industry and land as in Russia. The Liberals then made a firm alliance with the officers of thearmy to put down the people. We have seen how, in 1934, in the Asturias revolt, it was this very groupof Fascist and monarchist officers that did its best to save the bourgeois republic against theproletariat. A similar situation occurred in the German revolution right after the war. Although in this case it wasthe German Socialists that took the power, the Socialist leaders, Noske and Scheidemann, alliedthemselves with the Prussian officers of the Kaisers general staff to shoot down the workers by thehundreds and thousands. This alliance of Liberalism and Socialism with the reactionary militaryofficers in Germany was the only thing that prevented the victory of Communism in that country in1918, just as it was the only force that prevented the victory of the Asturias revolt in 1934, that is, ifwe leave out the mistakes made by the workers themselves. In refusing to clean out the army, the Liberals and the Socialists always like to appear as though theywere polite gentlemen and the revolution is to give everyone a new deal. There is to be no morebrutality __________ no more struggles; everything is going to work out fine and all will join hands topreserve the revolution. With such a theory there is then no real reason for changing the army or itsofficers. Socialism will come through the army, which is now democratic, as well as throughpersuasion. This is the tripe which the yellow Socialists and Liberals always hand out to the workers -with disastrous results. Already in the counter-revolution led by General Sanjurjo in 1933 it was clearthat Sanjurjo had recruited all his forces in the national army and Civil Guards and that it wasabsolutely necessary to clean out that stable of intrigue. But the Liberal government did its best toprotect Sanjurjo. It refused to let the masses kill him but promised to give him a trial and execute himitself; then it postponed the trial and did not execute him so that finally he was allowed to leave thecountry and go to Portugal there to plot against the safety of the Spanish Republic. As a reward for thegoodness of the Spanish people to him, General Sanjurjo became the leading light in the presentreactionary rebellion until he was killed in an airplane crash. From the widespread character of the revolt, which occurred simultaneously in the Canaries, in theBalearic Islands, in Africa and in three parts of Spain, in the Basque country, in Catalonia, and inSouthern Spain, as well as outbursts elsewhere as in Madrid itself, it is clear that the governmentforces must have known of the plot and conspiracy against the people. The treacherous Azana type,however, did absolutely nothing to prevent the consummation of the plot. It is only with the newgovernment that came in recently that the first effort is made to cope with the problem. Thus we cansee that it is the Liberals and so-called Republican bourgeois who prove their treachery from first tolast, who fill the army with monarchists and Fascists, who allow the leading Fascists like Juan Marchand Gil Robles and Sanjurjo to go scot free, who join hands with them in fact to shoot down themasses. These Liberals and Radicals prove to be the agents of counter-revolution in all of theiractivities. Why, then, are these traitors to the people allowed to remain in the government? Solely because theSocialist and Communist Parties give them permission to do so, protect and defend them. The People'sFront that contains these Liberal and Radical scoundrels could not last one minute were it not for the

Socialist and Communist bureaucracies which support them. And why are they supported? Becausethe Socialists and Stalinists refuse to take the power, they refuse to establish Soviets, they refuse totake over the factories, they have degenerated from instruments of the revolutionary masses toinstruments to save capitalism in spite of itself. Why have not the soldiers broken from their rebellious officers? Why cannot the government rely onits regular troops, why must it call in the workers and toilers of Spain to do the fighting? The answeris very simple. In all the course of the Revolution, the Socialists were allied with the Liberals who inturn supported the officers against the soldiers and who ordered the soldiers to shoot down the people.The Socialists and Communists did nothing to protect the soldier, did nothing to work within the armyso as to form revolutionary nuclei in advance. Both Socialists and Communists wanted to concentrateon legal, parliamentary work. Work within the army was too dangerous for these politicians. Thus thearmy was entirely neglected with fatal results. Only in the Navy did the government get adequate support. The sailors here killed their officers orjailed them and ran up the Republican and Red flags. It is the navy that has done yeomen work. Theships have prevented the passage of thousands of Moroccan troops controlled by the Rightists whichwould have been used against the Spanish people. The seamen of the Spanish navy by their actionillustrate again what has been noted in the German and Russian revolutions and also seen after war inFrance and in England, namely, that the sailors are the closest to the proletariat in the armed forces ofthe state and respond the quickest to the calls of the proletarian revolution. There are many reasons for this which we shall give briefly: First, the sailors are recruited fromelements of the proletariat in the cities: Second, the work of the seamen on modern warships is worksimilar to that of a regular mechanic and workman. Third, the work is extremely disagreeable, tediousand monotonous and the tyranny of the officers is especially irksome. Fourth, the seamen are nevercalled on to shoot down the people. This is left to the army. They are totally unused to handling mobsof their own nationality and have instead been always accustomed to look for foreign enemies only.Fifth, the travels and mode of life of the sailors permit them to look at events from an internationalangle and to discuss all matters thoroughly on the ship. Communication and organization of sailorsone with the other is extremely simplified and easy. There are many other reasons to explain thedifference between the two arms of the military machine, the land and sea forces, but these are enoughto account for the revolts in the Black Sea, in the Baltic and in the Kiel Canal in the variousrevolutions in the past, as well as for the more recent outbreaks in the British, Dutch and Chileannavies. The chief force behind the government is the workers and the peasant toilers. Here again lengthyexplanations are needed to account for this. It is possible that the government can really rely on anumber of regiments of soldiers and on thousands of police and Civil Guards. The reports are notclear. At any rate these soldiers and policemen are not being sent to the front. They are being kept toprotect the government from its own supporters, the workers and peasants who may get out of controlof the Socialist and Communist parties and may begin to get reckless and take over private property intheir own interests. Thus we read this ominous account in the Chicago Tribune: "Refugees fromBarcelona reported... that the full force of the Civil Guard had been mobilized to combat what theycalled 'anarchy'." In ordinary revolutionary situations the masses try to win over the army but are forced to exterminatethe professional police against the regular army. But if this is true, such a situation could only comeabout first because of the failure of the workers' organizations to do serious work in the army, andsecond, through the fact that the workers are being taught to be merely coolies to help out the Liberalbourgeois republic. Soon enough the masses will begin to shoot down the police as their most bitterenemies the moment the revolution goes beyond mere defense of the "People's Front" government.

Incidentally, it is here seen just what sort of a "people's government the present government is when itcan be supported by the scum of the Spanish police force which has been founded and constantly usedto kill the workers and the peasants. But if the government can not rely on its regular force but must arm the workers and toilers then whyshould the latter fight for the bourgeoisie? Why don't these workers form their own revolutionarybodies and take over the government? Since the only real force on the side of the government is themasses, then why should not the masses go the whole way? Here we see the counter-revolutionary roleof the Socialists and Communists clearly exposed. Whereas the tactics of Lenin in the RussianRevolution was as follows: The Soviets should call out the masses to fight the counter-revolutionaryKornilov but not to support the Kerensky regime which also was against the people, even thoughtimmediately it would be the Kerensky regime that would be saved from Kornilov. The line of theSpanish Stalinists is not that of Lenin, namely to organize the separate forces of the proletariat todefeat reaction but not to support the government bosses, but rather the Stalinist line is to defend thegovernment and merge the workers' troops with those of the government bosses. Thus here again the Socialists and Stalinists show the workers that they are to fight for thegovernment bosses and not for themselves. Instead of demanding a change in the government, insteadof forcing Soviets and increasing their dual power, instead of raising the cry of a workers' and people'smilitia, instead of marching separately toward power and toward Socialism, the Socialists andCommunists do all in their power to keep in office the bankrupt treacherous Liberals and bourgeoisforces whom all despise and who have no supporters of their own any more. Thus the workers and toilers who should be fighting to overthrow the capitalist government of Spainare now its chief defenders. The Communists and Socialists who should be exposing the aid to theenemy that the government has given is covering up the crimes of Azana and the rest. In short, thepolicy of the Communists is exactly the policy of the Mensheviks and Socialists in all countries tosave capitalism. However, there is one very bright side to the situation. The masses have actually been able to obtainarms and have been able to meet the forces of the regular army. Frederick Engels long ago had pointedout that a civilian population could not hope to defeat a regular army unless it could split this army.Here the army is practically a unit and is not split, so far as we can see from reports which state thatthe government does not use regular troops much against the rebels. On the other hand, it has the navyand some few of the aviation corps with it and has also neutralized and paralyzed a section of thearmy. Thus the people have some of the armed forces on their side. This has been sufficient toencourage the workers and to make them feel that they can meet the regular army and defeat it in openbattle. It is to be noted too that the rebels have been much scattered and unable to form one singlegreat force. In the cities like Barcelona the garrison was crushed soon enough by the mighty force of theproletariat. In Madrid the process was a bit longer since Madrid is not an industrial center likeBarcelona but eventually the same result was obtained. Similarly in other cities. Thus the ordinaryaspects of internecine civil war, street by street and house by house have as yet been avoided. Becauseof the smallness of the active rebel army, the people have been able to stop the army by means ofguerrilla warfare of which the mountainous terrain of Spain and the training and traditions of thepeople are peculiarly adapted. The fact of the matter is that Frederick Engels' statement must be modified in the light of present dayevents. In many countries the whole population today is trained to the use of arms or had served in thearmy. In the present period marked by perpetual violence, war and civil war, it is quite possible thatthere exist elements among the population able to defeat the regular army in open battle, relying ontheir overwhelming numbers to overcome the army's superior organization and techniques. Especially

is this true where the army is small, weak, mercenary and unused to real battles, while the populationhas gone through the experiences of world wars and revolutionary battles. The present battles are unifying the whole Spanish people and are putting an end to the interminableprovincialities and narrow petty sectionalisms that divided the Spanish workers and toilers. After theAsturias revolt it has become clear that reaction can be defeated only when the entire Spanishproletariat gets into action all together and simultaneously. On the other hand it is seen that reaction iswell aware of the need of national concerted effort to defeat the Spanish proletariat. Thus one of thegreat results of the Spanish battles will be to kill the old Liberal and Anarchist particularisms andfederalisms that have flourished for so long a time in Spain. The people will become more unifiedthan ever. Particularly significant in the struggle of the masses against reaction is the attitude of the Spanishwomen, many of who have entered into the people's army and are bearing the brunt of the fighting.Only a few months ago the Spanish Socialists were bewailing the "reactionary" character of theSpanish women. They were weeping that the Socialists were forced to introduce votes for women inSpain when the women were affected by the priests and would be against the Socialists. Now thewomen are in the very forefront of the struggle. This shows how little the Socialist Party understoodthe situation, how little they understood the Spanish women and the revolutionary potentialities of theSpanish masses. Because the Spanish women didn't fool around with the trivialities of ballot boxparliamentarism, because they could see through the Socialist pompous phrasemongerers andcareerists, this did not at all mean that once the revolution really started the women of the workingclass would not show themselves infinitely more revolutionary than the Socialist officials and theirphilistine philosophers. The prolongation of the fighting is only turning the civil war into deeper and deeper channels anddriving the masses more and more to the Left. This is the best guarantee that the rebellion will beliquidated entirely and the reactionists thoroughly defeated. But the prolongation of the struggle haspermitted the Spanish fighting to take on an international aspect. Italy and Germany are openly aidingthe Spanish rebels and it is reported that in return the rebels will turn over certain Spanish Africancolonies to the Fascists. The English, now thoroughly alarmed for their own empire, have been forced to put aside theirfavoritism for the Spanish reaction and take a more favorable view of the Leftist government. At firstthe British would not at all help the navy of the Spanish government, refusing it coal, oil and supplies.But this is changing, what with the shipping over of airplanes and materials by Italy to the Rightists. France, too, is beginning to be worried. The Blum regime has been compelled to take a friendly viewof the Spanish Leftist government since it is practically of the same character. But the Blumgovernment could look on complacently enough while the reactionary forces were beating thegovernment which lacked supplies and was looking to France for help. Only when it had become clearthat should the rebels win France would be surrounded by Fascist states, that Spain would then allyitself with Italy and thus greatly diminish the power of France in the Mediterranean, that the Spanishvictory of the Right would precipitate civil war in France too, that French Morocco is also moving torevolt as Spanish Morocco has done, only when all this had become acute did the French Socialistregime make a move to help the Spanish government. Of course should the rebellion fall and theSpanish government need help to put down the threatening masses, of course the French governmentwill help with all its might. In the meantime all the governments of Europe are arming, feverishly preparing to intervene ifnecessary for their own imperialist aims. There is, for example, the great prize of Spanish Morocco.What would not Italy or Germany give for this prize! Even before the world war, the attempt on thepart of Germany to win a foothold in this part of Africa led to the Algeciras affair and almost

precipitated armed conflict then. Now the same situation is arising. England can maintain her hold onGibraltar only if a weak and friendly country controls both sides of the Straights. England could neverpermit an Italy or a Germany to hold this ground. But this is precisely what the Spanish rebels areoffering to Italy in return for support. This can only mean war should Italy accept the offer. But there is something else of great importance to worry the "People's Front" governments of Franceand Spain. It is highly significant that the chief forces of the reactionists come from Morocco. We donot refer to the Foreign Legion stationed there. The Foreign Legion is made up of the scum andcriminal element of the world and is everywhere ready for Fascist adventure and for slaughter of thecivilian population at the behest of its leading butchers. We refer to the native Moroccan troops. Whydo the Moroccan troops take this side against the government? The reason is that the workers'organizations, the Socialists and Communists of Spain never bothered their heads with demanding thefreedom of Morocco from Spanish imperialism. The Spanish Republic has carried on the same policyof imperialism as King Alphonso. And to this day the Communists make no demand nor does the"Leftist" government utter one word on the question of freedom for Morocco. Thus the SpanishCommunists show themselves to be imperialists or capitalist tools interested in maintaining theirdomination in Africa over the Moors and the Negroes. Is it any wonder, then, that the Moroccansshould retaliate with a struggle to the death against the Socialists and Communists who support theimperialist government of Spain? The crimes of the Socialists and Communists have furnished to theGeneral Francos and Mollas, reactionists , their best troops against the people of Spain. Of course,Franco does his work with promises that he will help the Moroccans. In the meantime the rebellionwould have been crushed a long time ago had the "People's Front" government come out for the self-determination and liberation of Morocco and the other African colonies. A similar situation is brewing in France. The wonderful "People's Front" government of France underthe premiership of Leo Blum has also refused to free the French colonies. Already a revolt had to becrushed in French Morocco and the French Fascists are now busy stirring up discontent against the"People's Front" government and are preparing to use the African Colonial troops in France in thesame way that the Spanish general, Franco, has used them in Spain. Thus the treachery of the Socialistand Communist parties on the colonial question is costing thousands of workers' lives and making itextraordinarily difficult to put down the enemy bourgeoisie. This is only another illustration of therule that the workers are not fit to win unless they can burn out all the garbage and pus that capitalismhas filled them with. If they do not know how to free the colonial slaves, if they work hand in glovewith their bosses, then the workers will be defeated and perish by the hundreds of thousands and evenmillions until they learn the basic lesson that workers can not win freedom without fighting for thefreedom of all. III What are the perspectives for the Spanish Revolution and what are the lines of struggle of theworkers? The general principles have been well laid down by Marx some 85 years ago when hedeclared (See his "Two Speeches"): "The democratic petty bourgeoisie, far from desiring torevolutionize the whole society, are aiming only at such changes of the social conditions as wouldmake life in existing society more comfortable and profitable... As for the workingman--well, theyshould remain wage workers; for whom, however, the democratic party would procure higher wages,better labor conditions and a secure existence. The democrats hope to achieve that part through stateand municipal management and through welfare institutions. In short they hope to bribe the workingclass into acquiescence and thus to weaken their revolutionary spirit by monetary concessions andcomforts." "The democratic demands can never satisfy the party of the proletariat. While the democratic pettybourgeoisie would like to bring the revolution to a close as soon as their demands are more less

complied with, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent, to keep it going untilall the ruling and possessing classes are deprived of power, the governmental machinery occupied...with us it is not a matter of reforming private property but of abolishing it." "It is a matter of course that in the future sanguinary conflicts as in all previous ones, the working menby their courage, resolution and self-sacrifice will form the main force in the attainment of victory. Ashitherto, so in the coming struggle, the petty bourgeoisie as a whole will maintain an attitude of delay,irresolution and inactivity as long as possible in order that, as soon as victory is assured, they mayarrogate it to themselves and call upon the workers to avoid so-called excesses and thus shut off theworkers from the fruits of victory... The workers must not be swept off their feet by the general elationand enthusiasms of the new order of things which usually follow upon street battles; they must quenchall ardor by a cool and dispassionate conception of the new conditions and must manifest upon distrustof the new government." "Besides the official government they must set up a revolutionary workers government, either in theform of local executives and communal councils or workers clubs or workers committees so that thebourgeois democratic governments not only immediately lose all backing among the workers but fromthe commencement find themselves under the supervision and threats of authorities behind whomstands the entire mass of the working class. In short, from the first moment of victory we must nolonger direct our distrust against the beaten reactionary enemy but against our former allies, againstthe party who are now about to exploit the common victory for their own ends." It can be seen that the Stalinists and Socialists have violated all the precepts laid down by Marx just asthey have violated the fundamental advice of Lenin. Under the lethal influence of Stalin, the pettybourgeois government is supported in all of its criminal activities and the workers become the cooliesfor the property holders. However, what is very hopeful in the situation is that there is the strongest possibility of the massesbreaking away from the Socialist and Communist parties in the course of the present struggles andreally adopting a revolutionary line that will lead to the building up of genuine revolutionaryorganizations. There is no doubt but that the Spanish Revolution must take a great jump to the Left in the immediatefuture. The present rebellion, from all reports, will be put down within Spain itself. The whole armywill then have to be reorganized and for once there will be approximated a people's army or workers'militia. The government will oppose this tooth and nail but the government will be pushed aside. Themasses will be armed. The prestige of the workers' organizations is enormous. There will be no forcewithin Spain capable of defeating the workers movement now, except the blunders of the massesthemselves. The peasants will begin more fiercely than ever to seize the land, the workers will beginto institute a control over industry to guaranty a living wage and security for all. Once the rebels aredefeated the workers will have to solve the problem of unemployment and sabotage of the bosses. Thiscan only lead them to the question of taking power themselves. The government has becomethoroughly exposed as completely impotent and utterly dependent upon the masses. All this must lead the workers to join en masse their organizations and take over the situation. Alreadythe union membership has jumped to 1,500,000 according to all reports. The workers in their shopcommittees and unions will come together into joint councils and begin to take action in their ownbehalf. Thus will the dual power really be established. Out of these shop committees will come realCommunists who will build a new internationalist Communist force capable of leading the workers tovictory. From press reports we learn that all the so-called "revolutionary" parties have now come together inCatalonia where the Communist Party, the Socialist Party and the Party of Marxist Unity (Maurin-Ningroups) have come together to form one organization. This will prove to be a step forward in spite of

the combined bureaucracy which now confronts the workers. The consolidation was effected not inorder to protect the gains of the revolution but to prevent the masses from breaking the discipline setdown by the Socialists and Stalinists and to stop the masses from going too far in overthrowingcapitalism. The masses will want to dissolve the parliamentary regime and set up their own dictatorship throughrevolutionary juntas or soviets. This the Socialists and Stalinists will do their best to prevent. If theseparties lose control of the masses, then we shall see the very Liberals who gave the workers arms,presumptively, to fight the Fascists now go over wholesale to the side of the reaction. The CivilGuards and the rest of the soldiers will be used against the people. The British and French regimeswill send in their armed forces to crush the Spanish proletarian revolution. And yet the formation of Soviets and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat is the onlyreal way out for the Spanish people. Now is the time, when the people are armed, to form Soviets, tosocialize industry, to create the rule of the workers and peasants and stamp out the enemy, capitalism.Such resolute action in Spain will be bound to precipitate the proletarian revolution in France and tothrow the whole European situation into the vital struggle of Communism or Fascism. From that battlethere can come but one result. Faced with a victorious worker's revolution in France and Spain fromthe West, and with a mighty Red Army that will have brushed aside Stalinism, from the East, theFascists of Central Europe will be torn to pieces. If the workers follow the Socialists and Stalinists, however, then the bourgeois governments willremain, the workers will lose their gains, chaos will return, reaction will raise its head, ultimately thePeople's Front government will be defeated by Fascism even in France. Here is the terrible price theworkers will have to pay unless they can build up their own Communist parties and FourthInternational. Postscript: Since the above article was written events have crowded thick and fast upon the Spanish scene.Revolution, that locomotive of history, is moving at terrific spead making evident once more to allobservers how mind limps after matter and how far behind is even the keenest watcher during suchmoments. In this postscript we jot down some additional remarks we deem of importance. Because of the miserable mistakes of the workers' leaders and the ample preparations of the counter-revolution the present civil war is entering into an extremely bitter phase. This is fortunate rather thanotherwise since it means that it will take the utmost heroism of all the people to win the day;consequently in the heat of the struggle the opportunism and blundering so prevalent in the beginningof the action will be burned out and the masses will be able to form new revolutionary organizationssteeled in struggle and truly their own. Each day's prolongation of the civil war draws new layers intothe struggle and strengthens the workers' forces. Each day's struggle makes the tasks of the Fascist-Monarchist coalition harder to perform. The hope of all such minority rebellions lies in their superior organization and technique, in the use oftheir preparations to the fullest advantage, in striking hard and suddenly at the important points,demoralizing the centers and taking control before the masses can be aroused. This was the originalplan of the counter-revolution but it failed. Now the reaction must conquer every hill and road onlyafter heavy casualties. No sooner does it win a point when it must settle down with large forces to holdthat point. To survive the reactionists must terrorize the countryside and carry on ruthless executionsof masses of people. Thus every day's continuance of the war sinks the reaction deeper and deeper intoa swamp from which they cannot hack themselves out and where they cannot be sustained. In the meantime the volunteer corps of the workers are becoming formidable armies. Lessons arebeing learned, old mistakes are no longer repeated. The enemy is being physically wiped outeverywhere. The government is forced to rely entirely upon the strength of the toilers who sooner or

later must take things completely into their own hands and decide their destiny for themselves.Already they have exposed how the government republican officials are playing into the hands of thebourgeoisie by refusing to let the workers fight the battles in the way that will bring victory. Theminers want to blast out the enemy from their strongholds with dynamite which they know hot to usewith great effectiveness. It is the republican government that refuses to let them do so. Daily thetreachery, the weakness, the idiocy of the government republican officials became known to themasses. The government begins to lose its standing. The masses became ready to take over forthemselves. We have already noted that it was only when in the last elections the Lefts had polled about 4 1/2million votes and had obtained 266 delegates to the Cortes to the 217 of the Rights and Centrists, thatthe first steps had been taken to push the revolution forward. Amnesty was given to the 30,000prisoners of the 1934 revolt; the statute granting Catalonian autonomy was restored, payments bytenant farmers pending redistribution of the big estates were suspended, the church and state wereseparated an army shakeup occurred and the Fascist Falange Espanola was dissolved. It was thesemeasures that provoked the counter-revolution; but at the same time it was the bourgeois republicanswho hoped to use these measures to keep control of the situation and prevent the 'rods' from goingfarther. Although the elections had thrown out Zamorra as President of the Republic and had installed Azana(Zamorra had been responsible for the use of force against the 1934 revolt) Azana had no love for thereal left forces since already the peasants were seizing his (Azana's) estates and partitioning them andas a "Left" he could hardly protest. But as "Current History" reported at the time: "Responsiblebanking quarters feel Azana will do everything in his power to resist Socialist pressure for extrememeasures pointing out that in the Popular Front program he rejected the Laborites' demand fornationalization of land and banks and a dole for the unemployed. (May, 1936, p 92) All the signs point to the desertion of the ship of state by the bourgeois republican rats. In the courseof the struggle the Socialists headed by Largo Cabellero who is playing with the title of the "SpanishLenin", will have to take over the government. Of course the Socialists will not want to transform thegovernment into Soviets. Indeed, the Socialists will take over the government only in order to preventthe Soviets and the organizations of the workers from dominating the scene and deciding events.Rather than allow Soviets to be formed the bourgeois republicans will turn parliament over to theSocialists. Once in power the Socialists may temporarily talk about nationalization of certainindustries, but that will be only while the fighting is on. By no means will they countenance the takingover the factories by the workers. But the workers will begin to do this anyway. Thus the very takingover of power by the Socialists will mean the rupture with the republican bourgeoisie who will go overto the side of the reactionary enemy. This will result in an intensification of the civil war which in turnwill make the compromising position of the Socialists utterly untenable and the Socialists too will beforced to quit the scene as a progressive force. Within the Anarchist and Syndicalist ranks there exists great confusion and the best of these elementsare abandoning their old theoretical positions and moving closer to the Communist one. That is,instead of being Communist-Anarchist or Communist-Anarcho-Syndicalists they are becomingCommunists although retaining to some extent their Anarchist or Syndicalist traditions andtendencies. Thus, for example, we see that a special committee of fifteen is taking over thegovernment of Catalonia and that several Anarchists and Syndicalists are on this committee.Anarchists on a government committee! Who would have possibly believed that this evolution wouldtake place! And yet, all that this means is that the Anarchists are keeping their old name and some oftheir tendencies but that the revolution has caused them to wake up to the real situation, namely thatthe dictatorship of the proletariat is inevitable and is the only method by which to crush the enemy. It

is the same with the Syndicalists. In spite of their different traditions and concepts they have beenforced into the general direction of genuine Communism. As these Anarchist and Syndicalist groups move to the Left it is natural that they begin to regain theirinfluence, especially when the masses are forced to turn away from the fake Communists, theStalinists, in increasing number. While some of the Anarchists and Syndicalists actually want to formthe dictatorship of the proletariat and have the workers take over the factories, build a red army andcrush the enemy, the scurvy of the Stalinists are reported to have the following position: "The CentralCommittee of the Spanish Communist Party, an important element in the Popular Front regime inMadrid, announced through the French Communist Party tonight that it planned no 'installation of adictatorship of the proletariat. The Spanish Communists said they were fighting the Fascists withother Spanish republican organizations 'only for the defense of the republican order in respect toproperty."' (N.Y. Times report, Aug. 2nd, Paris dateline) An increasingly important role is being played by the Proletarian Party of Marxist Unity. The programof this party (led by Nin) is the closest approximation to the one that we have set forth and calls forthe taking over of the factories, the confiscation of the land and the moving forward towards Soviets.Nothing, however has been reported as to its policy on Morocco. Only recently Trotsky wasdenouncing Nin for not joining the Socialist party. Like the Communist League of Struggle, Nin hastaken the course away from the Socialist Party and had broken from Trotsky on this. Now Nin's groupis playing a far greater revolutionary role than the Trotsky followers ever could hope to play withinthe socialist Party. Here, again, Trotsky has missed up. In the meantime we have to note the poor role that Russia is playing in all of this affair. After it wasannounced that the Russian unions were going to collect money to help the Spanish revolution,suddenly, without explanation, the Russian bureaucrats called off the drive. This, apparently, indeference to the wishes of Leon Blum and the French capitalists, or at least that is how the matter wasreported. Even if this money had been collected it would have been sent to the Spanish government,that is to the traitor Azana and not to the Spanish workers' organizations although the money wascollected not by the government itself but by workers. In the meantime the Fascist countries, Italy andGermany, are playing an increasing role in aid of the rebels. Were Russia to help the Spanishgovernment this would call for no objection from the capitalist governments since it has been longestablished that a friendly government can aid another government but not a rebellion against thatgovernment. It is Italy and Germany who are openly violating this international rule. On the otherhand Russia would have been entirely within her rights even from a capitalist angle had she shippedaid to the Spanish Leftist Government. But she has done nothing of the sort. As usual Stalinism, withits theory of Socialism in one country, says to the workers of the world, "We have got ours, the hellwith you." It has now become increasingly clear that the backbone of the rebels' army is the Moroccan troops.The Moroccans, after the capture of Abd-El-Krim, were disarmed by the Spanish government; theFascists have now rearmed the Moroccans. This is a step forward for the Moroccans. How could theMoroccans have refused to take these arms when it means the possibility of making another fight forfreedom? Nor is it incorrect for the Moroccans to fight the Spanish Government! Whom else shall theMoroccans fight? It is the existing government of Spain that has oppressed them and this is the realenemy they must overthrow. Thus the colonial troops have a fine spirit and morale. They eagerly killthe Spanish workers who refuse to call for the independence of Morocco. And in a measure they arecorrect. They are correct to take arms wherever they can get them. They are correct to resist and fightthe Spanish government. They are correct too in their estimation that their real enemy is the existinggovernment no matter who composes it and that after they defeat the Spanish government they candefeat the few officers in their ranks who might try to prevent them from obtaining freedom.

There is only one way to deal with this problem and that is for the workers of Spain themselves tofight their capitalist republican government, to overthrow it and show to the Moroccans in deed thattheir cause is one and that the same fight that will free the Spanish workers will free the colonialtoilers and masses of the world. ************************************** Contents

The Spanish Revolution at the Crossroads by Albert Weisbord (from Class Struggle, Volume 2 Number 10-11 Nov./Dec. 1932) Recent events have exposed the fact that the Spanish Revolution still remains at the crossroads. It isstill in its Kerensky Period, with a sort of dual power manifesting itself. On the one hand, there are theworkers ever on the lookout, ever on guard to crush the enemies of the Republic; but not organized inSoviets and having no adequate leadership and thus incapable of seizing power for themselves. On theother hand, is the National Cortes controlled by the bourgeoisie who would themselves prefer a morestable regime even if it meant a return of the king. The Syndicates are too weak to crush thebourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie is too weak to crush the Syndicates (revolutionary unions). This unstable equilibrium, though it has lasted over a year and a half already, can not continueindefinitely. Either one or the other, wither the workers will succeed in seizing power or allreactionary forces will pool together to crush the proletariat and restore the monarchy if not establisha regular Fascist dictatorship. The present unstable equilibrium must come to an end either because ofa shift of class forces within Spain or by a shift in the international situation (say, Germany) or by acombination of both. There is no question, for example, that should the Nazis crush the communists inGermany, the Revolution (and the Republic) comes to an end in Spain. While everything hangs in thebalance, the proletariat in Spain has shown its greatest strength when it is fighting a defensive fight,against the Monarchists for example, and in doing the work which should be done by the bourgeoisiebut which the latter is too cowardly and weak to do for itself. For example, take the last Monarchistattempt of General Sanjurjo. Sanjurjo actually had the conspiratorial support of part of thegovernment and of the Civil Guard itself. It was not the bourgeoisie which crushed this uprising, itwas the savage action of the proletariat which at once smashed to bits this reactionary movement, andalthough the government saved the life of Sanjurjo from the wrath of the masses, even the governmentwas thrown for a loss and compelled to move to the left. The Bourgeoisie, frightened at the power of the masses, exposed as a weak, tiny minority, utterlyincapable of dealing with the Monarchists, or saving the Republic, indeed exposed as a group alliedwith the Monarchists, were forced to make concessions to the revolutionary forces. The governmentwas forced to confiscate the property of the counter-revolutionists, deport their leaders, promise agreater reform in the army and for the peasantry, and actually granted a very liberal autonomy toCatalonia. All this marks a clear step forward in the Spanish Revolution, the appreciation of whichstep can be better seen in connection with the past periods of the Spanish Revolution. II The first period, November 1929 to January 1930. This is a period prepared by student riots, by thediscontent of the bourgeoisie ground down by the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and by theeconomic crisis that affected them on all sides. This period is marked by the first general strike inNovember and December 1929. The workers here are supporting the students and the bourgeoisie, theyplay no distinct role; they merely push the leaders on to make the demand "Down with the King for aRepublic" etc. The result of this mass pressure is the fall of the Dictator Primo de Rivera January

1930. Succeeding Primo de Rivera is General Berenguer. He attempts to trick the people. He concedes that aNational Cortes should be elected, that the absolutism of the Spanish Royalty be ended. But he meansto fool the people, to have the National Cortes elected not by the masses but by the municipaldelegates who have already been elected and who represent not the will of the people but the oldMonarchist clique as before. The trick fails. All parties decide to boycott the fake elections. Armyrevolts backed up by Anarchist elements occur. The proletariat enters the fray. The Second GeneralStrike is called. It starts from a small economic strike called in Madrid by the Socialists. It is seizedupon by the Syndicalists and made into a general political strike that crushes Berenguer who fallsMarch 1931 giving way to a provisional government headed by the Right wing Bourgeois Aznar. TheKing flees the country (aided by the bourgeoisie). Real elections are then held. This marks the third period of the Revolution. A unanimous vote is castfor a Republic in the municipal elections. A republic is proclaimed April 14th, 1931. But the workersunder the influence of the revolutionary Syndicalists, wish to go further. They call a general strike forApril 15th It fails miserably, the Socialists fighting it tooth and nail. Up to this point the Spanish Revolution has followed classic lines. The Russian Revolution of 1917and the French Revolution of 1848 are the models. There is this difference, among others, with theRussian Revolution: There is no Bolshevik Party, the working class is thus weaker and the bourgeoisierelatively stronger. The King is not executed but allowed to escape. The Monarchists while driven tocover, still control the army and government posts. Spontaneous Soviets are not set up. But we see thesame phases in the Spanish as in the Russian Revolution; the King is overthrown, the Miliukov-Gotchkov regime is ended and the "Bulygin Duma" period of 1905 is quickly passed through(Berenguer period). A provisional government is set up that represents the Kerensky period of theSpanish Revolution. As in Russia so in Spain. At first the Socialists take part. But when the Monarchyis overthrown, the Socialists defend the capitalists and fight the general strikes. As in Russia so inSpain, the theory of the Socialists is that since the capitalists are too weak to establish their rule, theworkers must help them to establish capitalism, since capitalism must come before Socialism. As inRussia, the Socialists of Spain refuse to take power and bring in Socialism. As in the French Revolution of 1848, the Revolutionary masses first demand a republic, then arepublic with Social reforms. The ruling powers too weak to stop the masses must grant certainreforms for a time. The weak Louis Blancs (the Socialists) are taken into the government and flattered(The Spanish Republic was actually called a "Workers Republic"!) but the ruling class bides its time.It waits for its "June Days" to massacre the toilers. If the "June Days" have not yet come around inSpain it speaks volumes for the strength of the proletariat, the weakness of the bourgeoisie, and theinstability of the international situation: it bespeaks the fact that we are in 1932 and not 1848. As the"June Days" period is delayed, the workers grow bolder. They move from Social Reforms toSocialism, to a demand on the part of the Communists that the workers seize power. The elections of July 28, 1931, to the National Cortes showed the situation clearly. The Right Wingreactionaries got but 41 delegates out of a total of 470. The Radicals, Radical-Socialists and Socialiststogether got about 275 seats and forming a bloc took over the government, the Socialists taking threecabinet seats (labor, public instruction, public works) and were quite content to remain in a minority.But such a government can not crush the revolutionary forces which mount steadily in this period. The fourth period (to October 1931) of the Revolution sees the Revolution move to the left. Manyviolent strikes break out all over the country. A peasant movement is organized strong in Andalusialed by the agricultural workers. The government is forced to confiscate the property of the King. TheMonasteries and church's are attacked and the church and State separated. The Jesuits are dissolved(but not banished, note). The separate government of Catalonia is recognized and agrarian and

military reforms promised. A fourth general strike is attempted which is marked by a great deal ofviolence. It is crushed. This period is followed by another (October 1931 up to the time of the Sanjurjo attempt). Themovement seems set back. The trade union Syndicalist movement, falls from one million members toless than half. The Socialists grow. Insurrections in the Potassium mines and in the textile factories ofCatalonia are put down. In November a drastic Safety Law of the Republic is put over. The fifthgeneral strike (January 1932) is quickly put down ............. the Tarrasa insurrection in March. What can we say about these last two periods? 1. The Socialists openly take the role of shooting down the workers. 2. The workers "experiment" with the attempt to seize power. (Note the similarity with the "JulyDays" of the Russian 1917 Revolution). They fail. A more sober mood sets in. The difficulties havebecome more apparent. The Syndicalist movement becomes split. The foolish putschist tactics of theAnarcho-Syndicalists become thoroughly exposed. A "group of 30" headed by Pestana, denounces theattempt to use the trade unions as revolutionary organs. This group fights for a moderate policy andgoing further, really fights against the revolution itself. The Syndicalists are split. It is this split thatprovokes the Anarchists to really seize the factories (fourth general strike). From that time theAnarcho-Syndicalists decline. 3. Refomism and liquidation tendencies grow. The Socialist Party, in spite of its open treacheryincreases its influence due to the failure of the revolutionary forces. 4. The Communist influence grows. The workers see not the trade unions alone, not putschism but astrong political party deeply embedded in the masses can succeed. A period of reflection and of studyhas set in. The Reactionary forces mistook this period as one of defeat. They attempted through General Sanjurjoto turn the defeat into a rout. They in turn were routed. The Revolution enters into its sixth period witha decided swing to the Left. As in the Russian Revolution, the Spanish Revolution has witnessed a great flowering out of all partiesand groups. Large finance capital and secret adherents of the Royalty are represented by thenewspaper "A.B.C.", while the large agrarians have their reactionary paper "Debate" and their groupheaded by Zamora. These groups occupy the extreme Right Wing. Next to them are the out-and-outbourgeois parties. The Radicals have the old fox Lerroux as their spokesman who was the "Legal Left"under the king but who is now far to the Right. In Catalonia, La Liga Regionalista occupies the RightBourgeois position. This league has a non-separatist position and have Cambo, who was Minister ofLaw under Alphonso, as their leader. Since the Revolution, the group "Accio Catalana" bourgeois, butadvocate of Catalonian Separatism has been organized. Its organ is the paper "La Publicitat". To the left of the bourgeois groups are the petty-bourgeois groups now flourishing since Alphonso'sexile. There is the "Partido Radical-Socialista" whose chief is Domingo and in Catalonia the group ofMacia which takes a separatist position and whose organ is "L' Opinio". Today it is the Radicals andRadical-Socialists supported by the Socialists who dominate the government. We turn now to the Labor movement.There are two trade union centers in Spain: 1. The Union Generalde Trabajo (U.G.T.) and the Confederacion National de Trabajo (C.N.T.). The Union General deTrabajo (U.G.T.) has already a half century of history behind it, having been organized in 1888 andhaving been the only organization of labor tolerated and permitted by Alphonso and actuallyparticipating in the government under the King. It is controlled by the reformist Socialist Party andtoday has about 250,000 to 300,000 members. Large Caballero, up to recently its head, is also now theMinister of Labor of the Spanish Republic. It is particularly strong in Madrid, in Biscay (in the metaland mining industry) and in the Asturias (coal mining) although it is extremely weak in Catalonia,which after all, is the labor and revolutionary center of the country. Besides its labor members of the

U.G.T. has a considerable peasant affiliation. The second labor center is the C.N.T. This organization, controlled by Anarcho-Syndicalists andoverwhelmingly strong in Catalonia (Barcelona especially) whose metal, textile and generalproletariat comprise the vanguard of Spanish labor, is an extremely important revolutionaryinstrument. It was organized in 1911 and during the revolutionary wave of 1919 under thesecretaryship of Andres Nin (now Trotskyist) the C.N.T. reached the enormous membership of almost1,000,000 members. It was due to this threat of the proletariat that Alphonso XIII established themilitary dictatorship of Primo de Rivera under whose ruthless blows in 1923 the unions were smashed.The dictatorship of Primo de Rivera saw the virtual annihilation of the C.N.T. With the new revolutionary wave that arose in 1929-1930 and that resulted in Rivera's downfall theC.N.T. rapidly reorganized itself and soon regained its strength of a million members. As we haveseen it has launched time and again extremely powerful and violent general strikes throughout thecountry, many of them, due to the Anarcho-Syndicalists leadership, of an adventurous and wearyingcharacter. As a result of this false line, of late the C.N.T. has lost its membership steadily so that in1932 toward the end of the year it had not much more than 400,000 workers. The C.N.T. is controlled by a so-called Federation of Iberian Anarchists (F.I.A.). The false adventuristutopian direction which the F.I.A. has given to the unions has resulted in a split, another "Group of 30"headed by Pestanya arising. If the Anarchists think of political action and want to smash the state by aconspiracy supported by the unions, the Pestanya group stands against revolution and wants thesyndicates to be pure and simple economic organizations fighting for everyday reforms only. Thisgroup declares it stands for a "practicable view" of the role of the trade unions in Spain. Between thesetwo groups then there goes on a struggle which bids fair to convulse the whole C.N.T. However, the C.N.T. is still the most powerful revolutionary organization in Spain. It issues two dailypapers: "Solidaridad Obrera" put out in Barcelona and "C.N.T." published in Madrid. In its structurethe C.N.T. stands as a sort of cross between French Syndicalism and the I.W.W. Gradually it isoutgrowing its earlier Anarchist theory in the course of the Revolution. Its local unions are nowindustrial and not close to the local trade union centers. In 1919 these local centers had a great deal ofautonomy but the Trade Union Congress in 1931 in Madrid definitely declared for the formation ofNational Centralized Industrial unions and a centralized national general center. Thus more and morea Communist ideology is taking hold in the C.N.T., an ideology stimulated by the work of the SpanishLeft Opposition and supported by the fact that the mass of members are not skilled craftsmen but thebulk of miserably exploited unskilled proletarians. To this report we must add that in June 1932 a new trade union center was organized by theCommunist Party of Spain. This is a direct result of the sterile disloyal policy of Stalin. The history ofthis new trade union center which now has the name of the Trade Union Unity Committee, is briefly asfollows: It must be recalled that during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera the C.N.T. had practicallydisappeared. Under Berenguer it already began rapidly to revive. At that time the C.P. had organized a"Committee of Reconstruction" to reconstruct the C.N.T. and used the trade unions of Seville as abase. But already the C.N.T. had been thoroughly reorganized so that the Seville actions were reallyacts of schism, splitting the C.N.T. and drawing the fire of the workers on that account. Originally itwas a method of the Party to penetrate into the C.N.T. However, in 1931 the "new turn" of the Comintern hit Spain and the Communist Party transformed theCommittee of Reconstruction to a "Unity Committee". The Communist Party claimed it had 700,000workers behind it. Really it had but 80,000. To the conference in 1932 only small unions in theprovinces and the trade unions of Seville responded. The tobacco and commercial workers of Madridcame as observers only and withdrew. When we consider that after the Revolution at times 85% of theSpanish proletariat were organized in the C.N.T. and U.G.T. we can appreciate better the correctness

of the Stalinists line of breaking up the old unions. The weekly paper of the "Trade Union UnityCommittee" called "Unidad Syndicale" has become the symbol of the new splitting policy of the C.I. We turn now from the trade union organizations of the working class to their political organizations.First, the Socialist Party. The S.P. has between 15,000 to 20,000 members at an estimate. It is strongin places where its unions are strong and besides in Andalusia and Castille where it has peasantconnections. In Catalonia the separate Socialist Party which had existed there and which had its ownpaper "Justitia Sociale" has now fused with the Spanish Socialist Party. As we have seen the SocialistParty supports the bourgeois regime, refuses to take power, but is part of a ministerial coalition inwhich it has received the ministries of Labor, Public Instruction and Public Works. Between the Socialists and the Communists and nearer to the Socialists stands the Maurin Group, allof whose original membership came from the Communist Party but split in 1930 when about 500-600followed Maurin. This group is strong only in Catalonia and there more in the province than in the cityof Barcelona proper. After the split Maurin formed an Iberian Communist Federation with about 1,000 membership and aweekly paper "La Batalla". In 1930 it was able to get the "Communist Party of Catalonia" a separateand rationalist Communist Party to fuse with it and thus strengthened itself. In 1931 the IberianCommunist Federation organized a so-called "Workers-Peasants Bloc" a loose organization whichnow has close to 5,000 members (1,000 in Barcelona). The Maurin group is a typical nationalistcentrist body losing more and more of its character as a Communist organization. Before the Revolution, the Communist Party had about 2,000 members which were not well organized.Now it has about 5,000 until very recently headed by Bullejos and Trilla. As we have reported in thelast issue of Class Struggle (see Volume II no. 10-11) suddenly the whole Political Committee of theSpanish Communist Party has been expelled including Bullejos and Trilla, as "traitors". ---TRAITORS no less! The Communist Party puts out two weekly papers: "Frente Rojo" issued inMadrid with about 2,000 circulation and "Las Masas" published in Barcelona and having 5000-6000circulation. The Communist Party also publishes irregularly a theoretical organ "Bolshevismo". Thisis put out mainly as a counter to the theoretical organ of the Spanish Left Opposition "Comunismo". As for the Left Opposition in Spain we can do no better than quote from our article in Vol II no. 9 ofthe Class Struggle entitled: "A Report on the European Sections of the International Left Opposition". "The first conference of the Spanish Left Opposition was held in Luxemburg in 1929 with La Croixand five other members present. In 1930 another conference was held this time in Madrid with aboutthe same number of people (Nin, La Croix, Andrade, Ferson) but it was only in the earlier part of 1931that the Left Opposition really began to grow. The recent conference held in April 1932 with 25delegates represented over 1100 members. Within a year it has put out a paper "El Soviet" nowstruggling to become a weekly, with 5,000 circulation. It has issued a theoretical organ, "Comunismo"with 1500 circulation and over 15 popular pamphlets have been printed with a large sale. A youthpaper "Young Spartacus" has recently appeared which it it claimed sells 2,000 copies. In quality theLeft Opposition is stronger than the Party (though not numerically, the Party having about 5,000members) and in many places the Left Opposition has groups where the Party has not (as inSalamanca).The last conference found the Left Opposition best developed in Biscay, Asturias,Castille, Andalusia, (Seville, Cadiz) Barcelona and Madrid. (However, the group in Barcelona isnumerically relatively small, considering the importance of the place). "The last conference of the Left Opposition accomplished a good deal and worked out elaborate theseson the situation in Spain, the position of the Left Opposition on the national and agrarian questions,their relation to the Party and to the syndicalists and on the trade union question. Within the LeftOpposition differences are arising as to the correctness of the Spanish comrades but two things standout clearly: 1. The great growth of the Spanish Left Opposition due to its bold independent working

class activity. 2. The recogition it has received as the most dangerous revolutionary force in Spain. InCatalonia only the Left Opposition is illegal (the Communist Party is legal there) and the Chief ofPolice in a special brochure has declared that Spain must account it as a stroke of good fortune that theCommunist Party has ejected the Left Opposition and that the leaders of the Left Opposition are notthe head of the Party. (see Maurice Karl: Communism in Spain pg.91)". What are the perspectives of the Revolution? It is very clear that after the Sanjurjo defeat theRevolution has taken a new turn to the Left. It is also very clear that the Revolution is at a crossroads,that the unstable equilibrium which now exists cannot long endure. Either the triumph of reaction orthe dictatorship of the proletariat. But for the dictatorship of the proletariat there is needed a complete transformation of the subjectiveelement, the proletariat. In no country in the world has the opportunist adventurist criminal blundersof the anarcho-syndicalists become so decisive as in Spain. The Syndicalists know how to use thegeneral strike to defend the republic, that is the republican bourgeoisie, but they do not know how touse it to break the bourgeois republic and to seize power! By their ignorant blunders they know onlyhow to play into the hands of the reformist Socialists, to weary out the masses and to prepare the wayfor Fascism. The legalist and bourgeois character of the Spanish Socialist Party has become patent to all. IndeedPrieto its leader has declared the Socialist Party does not want power in Spain as Spain is in nocondition to have Socialism. To help the bourgeoisie, to pave the road even for the return of Alphonso,to defeat at all costs the victory of the working class, this is the despicable role of the Socialists. As usual the crimes of the Socialist Party are matched by the blunders of the Communist Party. Thebureaucratic splits, the theory of democratic dictatorship, the general bankruptcy and vulgarity of theCommunist Party has isolated it and rendered it impotent. Only the Left Opposition can lead the working class out of the impasse. The works of L.D. Trotskystand as a beacon light showing the way. The Spanish Left Opposition has a glorious opportunity. Letus boldly use it and it may be that the Left Opposition will yet lead the Second Soviet State on tovictory. Contents

Long Live the Spanish Socialist Republic

( From Class Struggle, Volume 6 Number 6, October 1936 ) Since our article on the Spanish Revolution in the last issue of the Class Struggle, immense changeshave taken place which must be thoroughly analyzed by the working class throughout the world. First and foremost is the fact that the old rotten Liberal government has gone out of existence and inits stead is a new regime in which the Socialists and Communists have a clear majority. This resulthas been due to the fact that the civil war is far more severe than had been originally conceived. It nowinvolves the very life and death of Spain. In the course of the severe fighting all half-way measureshave to go by the board. It has been found that the bourgeois Republicans in the government havesabotaged every inch of the way. They had aided the Fascists in their mobilizations before theoutburst; they have hindered the defense of the important positions in the battle; they have refused toconscript wealth and the general population for the struggle; they have protected the Fascist andMonarchist prisoners as long as possible; they have thwarted the workers and toilers in accomplishingthe social aims of the revolution. As a result the Spanish people were being defeated in one decisive battle after another with greatlosses. The fall of Irun served notice another course would have to be pursued. The masses have seen

that they would have to get rid of their treacherous bourgeois allies or they would be destroyed. It wasnot the action of the Socialists nor of the Stalinists that ousted the"People's Front" coalition, but thedemands of the people themselves to use all the force at its disposal to crush the rebellion. It was notmerely the fact that the workers refused to give up their lives for the abstractions of a bourgeoisrepublic, but the practical realities of the civil war that showed that only the greatest development ofthe power of the people stifled by the bourgeois republican element of the "People's Front" coulddefeat the enemy. Thus, now for the first time in the history of Spain the Socialists have a clear majority of thegovernment. It is a sign not that they have fought for Socialism but that the workers are moving sostrongly to the proletarian dictatorship as to take the Socialist politicians along with them. Togetherwith the Communist Party, the Socialists, however, even now do not abandon their bourgeois friendsbut insist that they remain in the government as a minority. As we wrote last month long before theevents: "In the course of the struggle the Socialists headed by Largo Caballero, who is playing with the title ofthe Spanish Lenin will have to take over the government. Of course the Socialists will not want totransform the government into Soviets. Indeed, the Socialists will take over the government only inorder to prevent the Soviets and the organization of the workers from dominating the scene anddeciding events. Rather than allow Soviets to be formed the bourgeois republicans will turnparliament over to the Socialists. Once in power the Socialists may temporarily talk aboutnationalization of certain industries, but that will be only while the fighting is on. By no means willthey countenance the taking over of the factories by the workers. But the workers will begin to do thisanyway. Thus the very taking over of power by the Socialists will mean the rupture with theRepublican bourgeois who will go over to the side of the reactionary enemy. This will result in anintensification of the civil war which in turn will make the compromising position of the Socialistsutterly untenable and the Socialists, too, will be forced to quit the scene as a progressive force. None of these words has to be modified today. Although the Socialists and the Stalinists are in officetogether, they make no demands for the change of government from parliaments to Soviets. We couldexpect this from the Socialists but should not of the Communist International under Lenin whichdeclared: "Parliamentarianism cannot be a form of proletarian government during the transition periodbetween the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and that of the proletariat. At the moment when theaccentuated class struggle turns into civil war, the proletariat must inevitably form its stateorganization as a fighting organization which cannot contain any representatives of the former rulingclasses. All fictions of the "national will" are harmful to the proletariat at that time... The only form ofproletarian dictatorship is a Republic of Soviets."? However, the Stalinists have forgotten all they ever knew about Leninism or Marxism. They still shoutabout the People's Front in Spain although the People's Front has in fact disappeared. Not only is thistrue in the government but in the actual field of battle where as at San Sebastian we see the bourgeoisRepublic Basques treacherously give up this important city to the enemy without a fight; yet theBasque Nationalist representative is kept in the Cabinet of the new government, regardless. Not aword do we hear from the Socialists and Stalinists about the treacherous conduct of the President,Azana, last vestige or rather hostage of the People's Front, until reports in the capitalist press informus that Azana has fled the government and has sought refuge in the Argentine legation, preparatory toleaving the country in an Argentine cruiser. This is no flight from Fascism, but rather a flight from theworkers and toward Fascism. Azana now realizes that in spite of the support to the bourgeoisie offeredby the Socialists and the Stalinists, neither party can control the masses and that the Socialist Republicis on the order of the day. It is not only that neither Socialists nor Stalinists demand the abolition of the fake Constituent

Assembly - - for now it is truly a shell, since all the reactionaries and most the bourgeois Liberalshave fled and no longer participate in any deliberations - - and the institution of real bodies, Soviets;but far more significant is the fact that nowhere do these so-called revolutionary parties make theslightest effort to proceed to the socialization of industry, to workers control and the end of privateproperty in the means of production. Wherever this is being accomplished, it is being done by the workers themselves. In Catalonia it wasfound more convenient by the people for them to break from the Spanish government and set up theirown autonomous region before socializing their industries. And it is precisely in Catalonia where theSocialists and Stalinists do not have the principal voice in proletarian affairs. The Stalinists, on thecontrary, still ardently maintain that it is not a question of a social revolution, that the workers mustnot end capitalism but merely fight for the continuation of the "democratic" republic. In Catalonia, from all reports, matters are proceeding rapidly towards the abolition of capitalism.Factories are being seized; food rationed; workers militia set up; the bourgeoisie shot down; thewealthy quarters turned over to the poor; the principal buildings appropriated by the revolutionaryorganizations, etc. From Catalonia military columns are being sent all over Spain, to Madrid, toSaragossa, to Huesco, and elsewhere to stiffen up the front. Everywhere these Red troops bring thehope of Communism to the people. The Communist Party is now in the government but it behaves exactly the way Stalin wanted theRussian Party to behave before Lenin arrived in Russia in 1917, that is in close alliance with theSocialists, serving as coolies to them. These "Communists" have put no demands separate from theSocialists. Scandalous as it may seem, the Stalinists now in the government still make no effort tocome for the independence of Morocco or appeal to the Moorish shock troops of the Fascists to fightfor their own independence which will be aided from now on by the new workers government whichhas repudiated imperialism. Instead the Moors see no change from the attitude of the old Spanishimperialist government even though Socialists of the Left (not of the "Right" note) and so-calledCommunists are at the head. The fact of the matter is that the "Left" Socialists and the Stalinists are desperately trying to maintaincapitalism in Spain. The value of the new Socialist and Stalinist regime consists merely in the factthat these people dare not openly sabotage the UNCLEAR against the Fascists as the Azanas and thebourgeois Republicans have done. UNCLEAR their own heads are at stake, they must permit theforces of the people to be UNCLEAR further than ever. This eventually must spell the doom not onlyof the Fascist rebellion but of the "Left" Socialists and the Stalinists as well. Now for the first time there has been introduced universal conscription of all who are not at work andof every able-bodied person, men and, in many cases, women. Facing such determination of the peopleit will be almost impossible for the Fascist troops to win, in spite of the great aid given them fromabroad and the international isolation of the Left government. But the Spanish people have stillenormous work out ahead of them. Up to now they still have not formed a real Red Army. They stilloperate haphazardly, without a plan and centralized direction. Thus, we have isolated campaigns inMalega, in Oviedo, in Bilbao, in Saragossa, in Mallorea, in Madrid, etc. Such a policy can be fatal in the long run against an experienced enemy. It leads only tothe defensivenever to the offensive. But by defensive fighting alone the people cannot win. And they cannot takethe offensive unless they have a centralized force, discipline and plan. Up to now the Anarchist tradition, with its loose guerilla warfare, has carried the day but it now mustand is giving way. A Red Army is being formed. But such a Red Army cannot be organized without agenuine Communist Party. Up to now it is precisely this kind of a Party that has been lacking. If it isnot formed the workers cause is lost. However, the germs of such a party are there in fact and the partymust and will be formed in the course of the fight.

The issue is becoming more and more clear: Under the guise of supporting the government, the peopleare really moving to Socialism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and as they march in thatdirection they are bound to organize their own shop and land committees and Soviets with full power.The old government apparatus will crash to earth just as surely as the old army has now been blown topieces. If they conscript men they will conscript property and they will proceed from equalitarianismas a policy to socialization of the means of production. This, in turn, will allow the masses for the firsttime to fight for the independence of the colonial peoples, to really address themselves to the poorMoorish colonial soldiers fighting against them and to win them for the cause of Socialism. As the Stalinists have turned into filthy Liberal-Socialists, it is after all the Anarchists who arebehaving like genuine Communists. They have retained the name Anarchists, but in fact many of themhave lost their Anarchist theories almost entirely. They are now strongly supporting authoritarianaction; they are on government bodies to carry on the struggle; they are forming centralizedorganizations; they are helping along the dictatorship of the proletariat. Ever since1934 and the lostAsturias revolt, Anarchism has been in a deep crisis in Spain. The old Anarchism has been killed.Only a small fraction of the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie and intelligentsia now adhere to the oldtype of Libertarian-Communism. The new Anarchists are taking the place to a considerable measureof the Stalinists who have betrayed the cause of Communism. By no means does this mean that these new recruits to the cause of the proletarian revolution aretrained Leninists. But in spite of the fact that they keep the name Anarchists they are far betterLeninists in fact, with all their traditions and mistakes, then the stinking Stalinist Party with its"People's Front" and class collaboration. These revolutionary elements are truly following basically acorrect line. They denounce the People's Front; they put no faith in the bourgeois Republicans; theyoppose the present type of State: they fight reaction but they do not fight for bourgeoisRepublicanism. They push the faker politicians constantly to the Left; they inaugurate the most drasticacts of reprisals against the bourgeoisie and carry on constant Red terror against the enemy classwithin their ranks; they declare plainly that their task is not only to defeat Fascism but to institute thenew social order. In line with this hopeful sign is the fact that the Workers Party of Marxist Unity is also growing andincreasing its might. It has been rumored that Maurin has been killed. This leaves really only AndreasNin to head the Party. But Nin has had some training in the Internationalist Left CommunistMovement. He is far better prepared ideologically than any other to take full advantage of thesituation. It is significant that he refuses to become part of the government and while fightingreaction, denounces all the Stalinist-Socialist-bourgeois conditions and their"People's Fronts". AlsoNin has been close to the Syndicalist movement and has its respect. Should there be a coalition offorces nationally under the direction of the former Internationalist Communist Left there is no doubtthat the Spanish Revolution will take a still further step towards Socialism and the World Revolution. The terrible influence of the Socialist-Stalinist-bourgeois "People's Front" is to be seen also in theinternational aspect of the Spanish Revolution. On the one side, the Italian and German Fascist Statesare helping with all their might. They have sent in large numbers of the most powerful bombers withfull crews and plenty of equipment and bombs to destroy the Spanish people. They have helpedmaterially in defeating the people's forces in the Islands of the Mediterranean, especially Mallorca.They have threatened to bombard Barcelona, the most important city of Spain. They have demandedrepeated apologies from the Spanish Left government for daring to protect itself from the outragescommitted by the foreign Fascists. They have used their embassies to pour in a stream of money andsupplies to the Fascist forces of Spain. On the Western side of Spain, Portugal now has begun a complete fascisation of its regime. Up to nowthere had been established a military dictatorship. But with the moving to the Left of the Spanish

Revolution, this military dictatorship is now being buttressed by the arming of the active civil forcescontrolled by the aristocratic and capitalist elements. The Portuguese government has put down themutiny in its naval forces with the most severe reprisals against the sailors. It has strengthened itsreactionary supports on every side. It has openly taken sides against the Spanish Republic and for therebels. It has become the greatest counter-revolutionary center against Spain on the entire continent,being the source for all the supplies for the rebels that are pouring in daily to aid their cause. Certainly, this could not have been done without some acquiescence on the part of the British, thetraditional friends of whom the Portuguese have been for a long time. The British-Portuguese allianceis of old standing and firmly cemented. Yet the British look on with on action on its part to prevent theformation of an Italian-German-Portuguese Bloc to crush the Spanish Republic. In return, it is reported that the reactionists are willing to grant Portugal a portion of Spain directly tothe North of her present borders. Spain will cede the Balearic Islands to the Italians and Portugalpromises to give the Canaries to the Germans, the Germans to abandon all claims to the Portuguesesections of Africa in return. We do not know whether all these rumors are accurate but where there issmoke there is generally some fire and in this case the reports fit in well with the imperialistadventurous schemes of the large Fascist continental powers, Italy and Germany. But even more scandalous than "democratic" British toleration of these moves is the position of theFrench "People's Front Government" and that of the Socialist Blum. While the forces of Fascism arebending all their might for the destruction of the Spanish People's movement, Blum does all he can toisolate the Spanish Republic and turn it over to the Monarchist hounds for destruction. In spite of thegreatest pressure on the part of the French workers, in spite of repeated demonstrations and now evengeneral strikes, the Socialist Blum remains adamant. And just as the British Trade Union Congresssupports the position of its bourgeois government to remain "neutral" although the formal position ofevery government is to adopt a friendly attitude toward a government it considers friendly, so does theSocialist Blum insist on serving the interests of his own bourgeoisie by barring arms and munitions toSpain. And yet it is ordinary capitalist courtesy to permit friendly governments to buy arms and munitions intheir country while preventing rebels from doing so. Apparently it makes a great difference to theBritish Labor Leaders and to the French Socialists whether the government that wants to busy sucharms and munitions is a Left government or not and whether the rebels are workers or bosses. If therebels are bourgeois, then they are to be favored; if the government is being controlled by the workers,then the government must be barred from purchase of arms in that country. Such is the "neutrality" ofthe Socialists of France and the Labor Partyites and the Trade Union scoundrels in England. Of course, what is bothering these people is that the Socialist Revolution cannot succeed in Spainwithout precipitating civil war in France and England. The workers there too will have to move forpower and struggle against international Fascism with more than platonic phrases. What is botheringthem acutely also is the fact that the Spanish people cannot win without establishing the independenceof Morocco and calling for the freedom of all African colonies. This must inevitably mean civil war inFrench Morocco and the spreading of the entire war throughout the whole colonial world. The greatBritish Empire and French colonial possessions are at stake. The British Trade Union leaders and theFrench Socialists mean to fight for the colonies of their masters to the end. If we look at capitalist Europe as a whole, we see that it is burning at both ends. In the East there is therecord of the Russian Revolution, in the West, the great Spanish Revolution which can spread toFrance and Belgium and throughout the world. Fascism must strike quickly if it is to extinguish thesemighty flames. There is this great difference between Russia and the West. Russia was under the domination of theThird International now destroyed by Stalinism. With its theory of Socialism in one country,

Stalinism has played a role crushing the proletarian revolution elsewhere. The Spanish Revolutioncannot turn to Stalinism. It must turn to the World Revolution and thus it must turn to the FourthInternational. The victory of the Spanish Social Revolution is the end of Stalinism and the rise againof genuine revolutionary internationalism. But in the meantime the Spanish Revolution moves gloriously forward. It is now well on the way toestablishing the rule of the workers. LONG LIVE THE SPANISH SOCIALIST REPUBLIC! LONGLIVE THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL. ******************************** Contents

THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY TO SPAIN By Albert Weisbord The Spanish Civil War is like a huge flaming candle attracting many moths who soon enough singetheir wings and fall into the blaze. German emigres torn from their native land by the purge of Hitler,Italian outcasts, now long enduring the misery of exile in France and unable to pass the bans ofMussolini, French partisans of the class war who believe events in France are going too slow and wantto speed them up by the acceleration of Spanish strife, British and even American youths ready to takesides, these are the people who rush enthusiastically to the borders of France, burning to give theirlives and to fall on the blood soaked fields of Spain. The French government tries its best to stop the flood. It places tens of thousands of guards at theborder, patrolling every mountain pass, even the ones used by expert smugglers. It searches everyvillage, every tavern, every train that goes to the border. It arrests scores and even hundreds of peopleweekly. It watches every opening along the Mediterranean to see that no one slips through and yet itcan not succeed completely. It may be able to hinder the flood of volunteers and reduce it to a tinytrickle, but still the enthusiasts can succeed, one by one, in getting by. Of course, hardly anybody can get through legally. The American consul at Paris is careful to see thatvisas are granted very sparingly and then only when a mass of credentials are presented to prove that afirst class news gathering agency or some similar body has sponsored the visit. For the ordinary writerand author there is a long wait, while the consul cables Washington, at your expense of course, andsees whether permission can possibly be granted to you. But the true American seeker of thrills scornsthat sort of entry into Spain. The difficulties of American visas, French guards and internationalcontrol only spur him all the more to crash the gate and to see at first hand how the undergroundrailway works that brings the adherent of either side of the civil war in Spain across the Pyrenees. To counteract these activities of the French government there has arisen a vast network of anti©fascistcircles with their volunteer friends who conspire to violate the bans against entering into LoyalistSpain. On the other side, too, there are committees to aid the forces of Franco, so that France hasbecome literally honeycombed with secret partisans of the combatants in Spain who carry on theirmachinations on all sides. However, as there are not nearly as many who volunteer for Franco as forthe side of the Loyalists in democratic France, the best way to study the activities of this undergroundrailway is to work with the side sending in help to the Spanish Republican Government. Your first difficulty is to get in touch with the proper committees. Their international center, ofcourse, is Paris. The committees there are of two kinds, one made up of Socialists and Communists,that is, of those elements who favor the People's Front Government, the very government that deniesthem permission to go into Spain, and the other committees of Anarchists, Syndicalists andrevolutionary Marxists who are opposed to the People's Front Government whether in France or inSpain, and who want to overthrow both governments and push the revolution to the extreme, similar to

what was done in Russia under Lenin. It is not very hard to get in touch with the comrades of thesegroups. And once they are certain that you really mean to help their cause and not betray them, theywill aid you all they can at your own risk, of course. Armed with suitable letters you go to one of the central points in Southern France. It can be Toulouse,it can be Perpingnan, all depending upon what part of France you want to pass through. The best placefor me was Perpignan. Anxious to see what would happen, I took the train from Paris the first eveningI could get my letters in shape. Significantly I heard the trainmen singing the "Internationale", therevolutionary song of the workers. Wondering what the future would hold in store for me, eventually Ifell asleep to the rhythmic clatter of the wheels of the fast express, to find myself the next day in thelittle city of Perpignan. Perpignan is a sleepy town on the extreme Southern edge of France near the Mediterranean and abouttwenty miles from the frontier of Spain. It is the last important stop before reaching Cerbere, theextreme point on the French boarder. Having checked my baggage at the station I walked slowly downthe principal street of the city. The day was bright and sunny as only Southern France can be. Faraway, behind the station, one could see the towering blue outlines of the Pyrenees. The nearer hillswere terraced to support the vineyards that one sees everywhere in this country. A dinky little trolleycar, with an open trailer, clanged its way down the street. The policeman in a cork helmet looked cooland at ease in the square of palms that faced the station. To one side could be seen the barracks part ofthe fortifications that made Parpignan one of the principal military strongholds of this part of France. Hardly a person was on the street. It was Saturday noon and they were either at home or behind thecurtains of bright colored beads that hid the cool recesses of the cafes. A few minutes walk broughtme to the Cafe Metropole on Place Arago. All around were immense palm trees that sheltered thesquare from the heat and stretched along the canal to the park in the distance. But I had a mission tofulfill and could not stop long to enjoy the sunny serenity of the town. I pushed past the tables spread out in the open air and went to the rear. "Do you know M. Cartier?" Iasked the bartender. The bartender whispered with the waiter and then told me out of the corner of hismouth to go into another room in the back and wait. All the customers in the meantime, who had beenchatting in Catalan, that quaint mixture of 18th century French and Spanish, put aside their games ofdominoes and Catalan cards to eye me thoroughly up and down. Later I was to find out that this cardplaying was mostly a mask, that right here was transacted a good part of the business of sending menacross the line. In a short while M. Cartier came around. He did not say much, just took my letter, told me to wait anddisappeared. Later I was introduced to some of the men playing cards who took me to a hotel where Icould spend the night and then returned with me to the cafe. Every hour men would arrive anddisappear. At one time there burst in an officer of the Customs Guard. I thought surely there was goingto be a raid on the place. But no. This customs guard was one of the comrades who right under thenose of his superior officials had already passed a number of men across the border. But now it hadbecome too risky. A new officer had been put over him and he could not take the chance. It seems thecommittee actually had sympathizers on the police force of many of the boarder towns, the policethemselves doing the job of spiriting across the volunteers. Around five o'clock a truck stopped outside with supplies for Spain and several people came into thebar. They had passed into France legally and were returning to Madrid the same way. Could I be takenacross? Well, if I would like to sprint it, they would consider it. The road that they were taking wasone that twisted and turned just before they were to reach the border where the guard was placed. Theywould arrive at the last turn late at night and could slow down. I could then jump off and run acrossthe rough country hillside several hundred yards till I reached a point where the road had woundaround and crossed the Spanish line. Of course the guards would see me running and would give

chase. But the border patrol had been forbidden to kill those running across the line and so the soldierswould be reluctant to fire. Was I ready to take the chance? Only recently they had tried that very scheme with a young couple. "But they were youngsters andthin," one of them remarked, looking dubiously at my waistline. These two young Americans had justgot over the border when it turned out that the Spanish government had changed the border guard andput in charge officers who were not sympathetic to the workers' committees. The officer now at thehead was ready to turn back the two volunteers to the French patrol who had vigorously demandedtheir return. And it had only been the intervention of the Spanish soldiers themselves that hadprevented the partisans from being ousted from Spain and sent to prison in France. My friends on thetruck looked pretty gloomy about taking the chance again as their truck would now be confiscated andthey themselves deported from the country. So another method was closed to me. But how about the mountain passes? Surely one could cross thePyrenees in spite of the fact that the hills are not wooded but covered only by sparse shrubs and thereare watch towers on every prominent height. There were smugglers, members of the undergroundrailway, w0ho could guide you through. But one had to bide one's time for this. In the meantime, sinceI was in a hurry they would give me a special pass to a high functionary of the border town of Cerbere.He might help. I quickly took this offer, grabbed my valise and dashed up to the station just in time tomake the last local to Cerbere. On the way an English youth from the truck had told me: "Don't actlike a greenhorn. There are guards at the station. Pretend you are a native or a tourist. Walk right by,turn to the right. There you will find a tunnel. Go under the tunnel and turn to the left. Then follow thedirections of the note till you meet the functionary." For this advice I was grateful. For, indeed, whenwe pulled into the little village of Cerbere every passenger was closely scrutinized and I was stoppedand asked whether I knew the way around. "Why, of course!" I exclaimed. "I am going under thattunnel to such and such a street. I am not here for the first time." They let me pass. I hurried under thetunnel, got out to the square on the other side and looked around. Already it was dark. The Pyreneesnow looked threateningly lower all around me. The village was at the foot of the hills that rose sheeron all sides and threw themselves into the sea that rippled against the shore. Pantingly I lugged myvalise up the hilly streets to the house of M. Jaques and rang the bell. M. Jaques was by no meanspleased to see me. The committee had considered him a friend, but now he had become a high officialand did not dare take any more risks. Besides I had a valise. Did I think he could smuggle me acrossthe hills with all sorts of baggage and the place swarming with soldiers? Every narrow dirt road andalley off the dried up stream that ran through the village was filled with swanking men in uniform whohad gazed suspiciously at me all during my jaunt. No, it was better to leave the house at once andspend the night at the Hotel Industriel. Drearily I trudged my way back, crossed the bridge of the canal and entered the vile hotel whosedining room was filled with swearing and drinking guards. I hired a room determined to take the firsttrain back. Cerbere seemed no more promising than Perpignan. At first I thought of going through thetunnel at night, the tunnel that marked the link between Cerbere, France and Port Bou, Spain. Its darkopening had looked so inviting. This, however, had been explained to me as a very dangerous method,indeed. I would have to pass sentries posted with machine guns at each entrance. The only chancewould be to wait for a moonless night and then creep through trusting to luck that no freight trainwould pass thundering by making hamburger of me. Just now a bright moon was shining and it wouldbe suicidal to try that route. So, sadly, I went to bed, sleeping fitfully amid the hooting of owls and therustling of the trees and at early dawn walked down to take the first train back. It was 4:30 in the morning. Scarcely a soul was up in the village. But as I passed the big of shore nearthe station I could see some fishermen standing by their little boats and spreading their nets. Could Inot hire a radical fisherman to go "fishing" with me and place me on one of the barren rocks a few

miles to the South which was already Spain? Later I found that this method had been used, but alsowas dangerous. Again it would have to be done under a darkened moon and with a trusted fishermanprepared in advance. So back to Perpignan. Back to watch the parade for May Day which had been made a governmentholiday this year in France, with bedraggled meetings addressed to death by city and State officials.For a while I thought of going to Marseilles and there taking a boat across the Mediterranean. Thiswas the advice given me by one close to the American consul at Paris. But I had later been told the seawas closely watched. Fascist ships were forewarned and made the trip exceedingly difficult. This wasto be demonstrated later when the vessel "The City of Barcelona" was torpedoed with over a hundredlives lost, fifty of them being American. There was one last chance that sounded feasible and this one I determined to try at whatever cost. Itinvolved, however, a considerable amount of histrionic ability and careful preparation. There is a littlevillage that stands astride the very frontier of France and Spain. The main highway has a big chainacross it where France meets Spain, but the Spanish border is so cut that a portion of the sidewalk onthe left side of the road is Spanish while the road itself and the other sidewalk is French. The problemis to cross that very heavily guarded road so as to be able to walk down the street in France until youpass opposite to the sidewalk that is Spanish and then cross over. This time I made no mistake of taking any valise. But in a light suit that was totally unfit for longtravelling, I came to this village to do business with one of the transit men who move goods across theborder. I inquired whether any of my trucks had arrived with food for Spain and on being told no, tookmy place in one of the cafes that lined the French part of the road, loudly complaining at the delay.Soon I was in intimate conversation with the cafe owners and hangers on and with the soldiers andofficers of the army and the members of the International Control Commission watching all. Theobject, of course, was to have them completely familiar with me. Come the late afternoon. The road is crowded with wagons and trucks unloading their goods for thecustoms inspectors to examine. The highway is filled with the people and the guards are hard put tonotice who is who. Complaining of the delay of my truck I tell the officers that I will telephone toMadrid to see what is the matter. But to telephone to Spain I must cross the fatal street to the Spanishside. No one would suspect a business man of wanting to go into Left Spain illegally. I cross to makethe call. I am now in Spain. There is a back way out of the cafe, a way that winds across the slope ofthe hill and that lets me out just in front of the Spanish guards on the other side of the chain. I amthrough. And the French guards would never even notice whether I returned or not. My valise is senton to Barcelona by one of the committees. I am now free to pass my examination at the Spanish partof the boarder. Lucky for me that no one at the French border knew that at the very moment that I had inquired for atelephone, all wires had been cut and that a new civil war was raging in Barcelona. Lucky for me, too,that the guards on the Spanish side had not been changed but, pending the outcome of the struggle ofwhich I was to be a part and which cost the lives of over 1400 persons, the guard was willing to let allgo through. I could not then be aware of the fact that my life in Spain would be one perilous adventureafter another. I would no sooner pass the tests at the border when I would be thrown into the barricadefighting in Barcelona and the firing at the Aragon Front as well as be witness to a terrible aerialbombardment that in a few minutes would cost the capital of Catalonia over two hundred casualtiesand immense destruction of property. But of this more anon. Contents

Two Visits to Barcelona

By Albert Weisbord A cocked revolver thrust into my face by a worker patrol as I alighted from the train, was myintroduction to the Spanish scene in Barcelona in May 1937. The crossing of the frontier had requiredfive days and considerable wit as well as material assistance from the French anti-fascist committees.Breaking through at the little town of X which sits astride the Franco-Spanish border, I was still thirty-two kilometers from a railroad and had to thumb my way to Figueras, the nearest point at which Icould catch a train. We had got only as far as San Martin, a working class suburb of Barcelona, when the train stoppedamid great excitement of the passengers. I was arriving in the thick of one of the most criticalsituations of the civil war, as far as Catalonia was concerned. Pavements were torn up, barricades fivefeet high had been erected in the streets, ambulances rushed about while machine gun and rifle firecracked out from all sides. The revolution was an active volcano in process of eruption and the foreignvisitor, however sympathetic, was there at his own risk. It was five years since I had been in Barcelona. In 1932, the revolution had already been in progresstwo years. Yet the changes to be observed in the externals of its life were few. The native bootblackwho had shined by shoes as I stepped off the train then had expressed it succinctly: "The revolution?The king is gone, yes, but otherwise what is changed? Nada, nada." It is true that the suppressednationality of the Catalonians had been able to assert itself under the republic for the first time inmany years. The Catalonian flag flew beside the tricolor of new Spain, a flag bespeaking the ancienttradition of the Catalonian State, its four red bars on a yellow ground representing the bloody fingersof St. George who slew the dragon there and supposedly wiped his hand on the yellow cloth at hand.The language of the people, a quaint mixture of eighteenth century French and Spanish could once bespoken on the streets and taught in the schools; the native songs and dances could appear in the openagain. But outside of these rather superficial changes, Barcelona in 1932 was still a city of the old regime.The clergy and the military, visible symbols of coercion, were everywhere as of old. The trainsentering and leaving the city carried monks and nuns of various orders going about their businessquite unmolested. At every street corner were the police and the civil guards, the latter with theirtraditional patent-leather pill-box hats. There was the same ubiquitous spying in the cafes and at allthe centers where people congregated as under Alfonso. The beggars that clutched one on every streettestified to the unsolved unemployment problem. At night the avenues were filled with prostitutes and in the old quarters of the town vice did a flamingbusiness. From lurid dives in narrow streets men painted like women leered openly at the passer by.Further out were the dance halls where women dancers with big firm breasts writhing to the torridmusic of Andulusia or the Levante, exposed their lithe bodies to the gaze of the male public sippingcoffee or liqueur and fondling themselves in ecstasy. Around the walls of these music halls werecubicles into which the men could retire with any one of the dancers they fancied, there to committhose sins which they could later confess and be absolved from in other cubicles not far distant. To the foreigner sojourning in Spain the revolution had brought one great boon: the fall of the pesetawhich enabled one to live like a prince for a dollar a day. Barcelona had indeed become a haven forforeigners with little money who would have starved at home but were weathering the crisis verynicely. For these and for the tourists the attractions of the city were many. There was Montjuic Park,scene of the International Exposition of 1927, with its fountains which were periodically turned onfrom the huge control towers. The synchronization of beautiful sights and sounds made this place alittle paradise. Flowers scented the atmosphere filled with the tinkling of the fountains. At nightcolored lights played on the waters in combinations which varied from moment to moment as thecontours of the jets constantly shifted creating ever new and more gorgeous effects.

At Montjuic Park, too, one could become acquainted with the native Catalonian music and dancing.Both have quite a different character from those of other sections of Spain, so different as to claimsome justice for the national aspirations of this little region. Whereas the Andalusian music isstrongly individualistic and tinged with a Moorish color, with many runs and trills, the Catalan issimple, harmonious and collective, quite like the eighteenth century music of Southern France orperhaps like that of old England. Again, the typical Spanish dance (Andalusian or Castillian) is anindividual one, a dance of rich cadences accented by the clack of castanets and the swish of skirts. Butthe Sardana and other Catalonian dances that were performed in the parks and in the streets before thecafes are folk dances, danced by numbers of people with stately complicated steps. Through thiscultural differentiation Catalonia was expressing its own individuality. For further amusement one could take the ride on the cable cars across the lagoon to Barcelonata.These cars had been constructed for the exposition and ran from two great towers hundreds of feet inthe air. High in the cool air, one could overlook the whole city, from the fortress and prison ofMontjuic at the harbor entrance, with its cannon frowning over the city, to the far off Mount Tibidabobacking Barcelona to the West. Mount Tibidabo was another lovely trip to make. At the end of thetramway line a cable car carried one to the top of the mountain. All about were the villas of thewealthy who could contemplate the dirt and noise of the city at this comfortable distance. Sippingliqueur on the terrace of the restaurant, one could seeÜjÜall of Barcelona at one's feet, with a distantpanorama of blue hills to one side and to the other the sparkle of the Mediterranean. Tourists were still visiting the old churches, the Greek columns, Roman walls and other relics ofantiquity. The grand column and statue dedicated to Christopher Columbus stood gazing out to sea asa reminder that the great maritime genius was considered a Catalan in this part of the world. Theflower stalls crowded the Rambla de las Flores with their gorgeous display. The boulevards around thePlaza Catalunya still proudly displayed their handsome dwellings in native marble or stucco, some inthat peculiar style of modernistic Catalonian architects which constructed buildings without symmetryand without angles, marked with irregular undulating lines. Here and there, however, one could see thepeck marks on the buildings that bespoke rifle and machinegun fire. Under the pleasant facade known to the tourist there surged in the working class quarters and on thedocks a life of feverish aspiration and struggle in which various organizations carried on their workunder a semi-legal status. Strikes, police raids, arrests and demonstrations were the occasionaloutbursts of this pent-up class conflict under the republic as under Alfonso. When I visited AndreasNin, head of one of the workers' factions, it was surreptitiously, for he had still to live in hiding,constantly dodging the police. During the five years of upheaval since 1932, the curve of the revolution has been upward for thesetoilers' groups which have now emerged from their underground retreats to claim millions ofadherents. The appearance of Barcelona in May 1937 proclaimed unmistakably that the proletariat wasnow asserting itself. All the important buildings in the center of the city were occupied by workersorganizations. The top floors of Hotel Oriente had been taken over by the Syndicalists and on ViaDurutti (renamed after a popular Anarchist leader who fell in battle a year ago) the NationalConfederation of Labor (C.N.T.) made its headquarters in the magnificent building which formerlyhoused the Chamber of Commerce. Hotel Falcon had been converted into a center for the WorkersParty of Marxist Unification (P.O.U.M.), especially for its soldiers on leave from the front. On theexclusive Pasco de Gracias a beautiful building had been taken over by the Unification Socialist Partyof Catalonia (P.S.U.C.) and was now the Case Karl Marx. An enormous propaganda sign covered itsbasement and first floor but when the fighting began in May, at once the sign had been ripped and themachine guns concealed behind it had opened fire on the revolutionary workers who were behind thebarricades in the streets.

One startling innovation was the huge picture of Stalin three stories high which stared at one from thefacade of the Hotel Colon, the swankiest hotel in Barcelona which had also been requisitioned by theP.S.U.C. It seems the picture had been accompanied by a picture of Lenin of similar size, but Lenin'spicture had fallen down (let those who will look for a hidden symbolism in this incident) and hadnever been replaced. Las Remblas and Plaza Catalunya were a riot of color not only with the red flags of the Communistsand Socialists and the red and black flags of the Anarcho-Syndicalists, but with other enormousbanners and signs placed over the avenue and center of the square. Here in bright pictures and largeletters the masses were called upon to fight fascism and to build a new society. The old street nameshad been replaced to honor Spanish revolutionists or even Russian celebrities who had caught popularfancy (such as Calle Pavlov or Calle Tolstoy). The sunny calm that in 1932 had pervaded the city's thoroughfares had given way to a contagiousatmosphere of strain. It was civil war now in all its grimness. Many streets were still torn up where therecent barricades had been erected. The barracks of the old guards near the Columbus column were ina state of complete destruction, a reminder of the July days of 1936, with huge shell holes marking thespot where the cannon of Montjuic in the hands of the workers had smashed the resistance of theguards and had forced them to come down from the top of the column where they had placed theirmachine guns and to surrender. The straw-sandaled picturesque dancers in the streets, the gay crowds hanging about the sidewalkcafes, all had vanished. Now groups stood tensely to hear the radio reports of casualties from the frontand the stern directives for the citizen on how to win the war. At night all lights were out; searchlightsplayed over the city and on every corner placards notified people where to go in case of an air raid orbombardment. Soldiers, home on leave from the front, were everywhere. But if the old civil guards in the patent leather hats had disappeared to go with Franco, new guards andpolice, the Asaltos and Carbineros, had been formed by the conservative elements in the government.These bodies were now apolitical and deadly enemies of the old Workers Patrol Control which hadbeen dominated by the trade unions and revolutionary parties. Once again there was appearing theubiquitous spy and the night raid. Daily, nightly, individuals known to be active members of this orthat revolutionary organization would simply disappear never to be seen again. Even for the moneyed stranger life was not what it used to be. Few hotels could boast of hot water orwarm baths. Food was becoming poor in quality even in the pensions and restaurants where mealswere restricted to two courses with one small piece of bread per customer. For the rest of the peoplethere were bread and milk lines while olive oil, tobacco, charcoal, soap and medical supplies hadbecome very scarce. In general only simple fare was obtainable consisting of rabbit, muscles, plaincuts of meat and rice, the standbys of the poorer classes. Nevertheless in certain restaurants patronizedby the officials and by well-to-do strangers in the know such delicacies as lobster, chicken, ice creamand strawberries might be enjoyed. Evidently Catalonia was still far from having realized the SocialistCommonwealth where all would be treated alike. Gone were the pleasant diversions which formerly used to ease the stay of the tourists in the city. Inthe fashionable neighborhood near Tibidabo the buildings had been sequestered as sanitoriums orhospitals for the wounded, homes for refugees or orphaned children and similar institutions of socialwelfare. The cable cars, deserted, no longer operated. The fountains of Montjuic likewise were silent...who would want to spend money on colored waters when there was dire need for arms and munitionsfor the front and hundreds of thousands of the best blood of Spain were dying on the field of battle?The fortress of Montjuic was still there (The Anarchists had captured it for a brief moment during thefighting of the May Days) but as for the old prison, the bastille in which so many champions of thepeople had suffered torments in the old days, the populace of Barcelona had stormed it and released

the prisoners. As for the music halls with their accompanying prostitution, after July, 1936, when the workers hadcrushed the fascist revolt throughout Catalonia and were on the road to becoming the chief power,there had been a determined effort to stomp out these hotbeds of vice. Many of the pimps were killedand the women liberated. Educational posters were spread throughout the city advising the soldiersthat prostitution was the disgrace of the army and the degradation of the women; it was an agency ofFranco and must be stamped out. But in the months that had elapsed since then, during which theinfluence of the workers' organizations was waning, there had been a general relaxation of disciplineand the dance halls were now open once more with their languishing sirens. By June the Syndicalistshad been ousted from Hotel Oriente where now a hot abaret flourished. How far the revolution had emancipated the women of Spain was an intriguing question for all thosewho had followed the heroic participation of these women in the actual fighting in defence of theircountry. To what extent had the old semi-harem status of the feminine sex, so strongly rooted in thetraditions of the country, actually broken down? It must be confessed that, in spite of the efforts of theprogressive forces in Spain, the enlightenment of the women has not proceeded very far. In everydaylife the customs of centuries still had their grip on personal relationships. Women in Spain were still divided into two simple groups, prostitutes and respectable women, thelatter consisting of cloistered virgins and fanatically loyal mates. Revolutionary soldiers could befound beating their wives and even so-called professional revolutionists were still ready to kill theirlife companions if they were caught conversing with other men. It is true that a certain breath offreedom has blown over the women. Its first expression have been rather freakish ones inspired byHollywood, heads bleached blond and pained faces glaringly incongruous among the natural darkbeauties of Spain. Women constituted still but a small percentage of the membership in therevolutionary organizations, and the women secretariats which had been recently appointed werehaving an exceedingly difficult time of it to make the men understand the need of drawing the womeninto the movement and the women to understand their place in the new social order. Similarly with the school system. The Generalidad was making efforts to introduce new methods andcurricula, yet in only two or three of the nine high schools of Barcelona had they succeeded to anygreat extent. Old fashioned methods of drill and an antiquated routine still prevailed in the rest.Attendance of children at school was not strictly enforced, although a great part of the people was stillilliterate. Yet one could see that much more reading was being done on the whole by the adultpopulation. In Las Rambles, adjacent to the flower stalls, large numbers of book stalls had now openedup selling revolutionary literature of all sorts. But it must be admitted that among the seriouspamphlets and books, "literature" of a quite different sort was common: pornographic novels andmagazines that purported to speak of physical culture, of nudism and the emancipation of women butin reality were cheap commercial ventures calculated only to stir up the sexual passions of the"liberated" readers. Gone was the censorship of the clergy, as were the priests, monks and nuns themselves. The churcheswere no longer anything but blackened shells, where fire had finished whatever bombs and dynamitehad left of their walls. Not a church was left standing intact in Barcelona except the old Cathedralwhich, singularly enough, had been preserved by all factions as a work of art. Nothing so sharply characterized the change in regime that had taken place as the nature of thenewspapers in circulation. All the old sheets that one used to read, El Debat, A.B.C., etc., werenowhere to be seen and their place was taken by the papers of the workers' groups, formerly poorlyprinted sheets issued weekly in small numbers, but now grown to powerful dailies. Now it was "Soli",Solidaridad Obrera, organ of the C.N.T. leading the way with a circulation of about 225,000, LaBatalla, paper of the P.O.U.M., El Treball and Las Noticias, P.S.U.C. papers in Catalan and Spanish,

that were most read. Many of the radio stations in operation in May - later they were all taken over bythe government © were controlled by the same workers' organizations. The programs that blared outmost frequently consisted of news from the front, international news and propaganda orproclamations. The workers factions were by no means in harmony among themselves, the chief quarrel beingbetween those who wished to retain the present republic while fighting Franco, and those who wantedto pursue the revolution further along the lines of the Russian Revolution of October 1917. Theselatter groups (The Anarchists, the Syndicalists and the P.O.U.M.) had been mainly responsible for thecollectivization of industry which is one of the most fundamental changes that have been effected inCatalonia. Restaurants, means of transportation, as well as all key industries have been thuscollectivized. During the fighting of the July Days of 1936, many owners of industry, shopkeepers and restaurateurs,tired of the perpetual tumult and fearful of their lives should a social revolution be successful, fled thecountry. To take over the abandoned enterprises and operate them was at once a natural step and anecessity for the continued economic existence of Catalonia. The expropriation was carried outprincipally by the C.N.T. which in the course of the past year has become the leading industrialcorporation as well as the most powerful proletarian group. The change of direction was noteffectuated without considerable confusion during the early period of workers' control. Some idea of the state of affairs may be given by a glance at the auto accident statistics in Barcelona.The transport industry had been collectivized, all available autos and autobuses as well as thetramways and railroads having been seized and operated by the C.N.T. working with the U.G.T.wherever necessary. Of course all the workers' groups also requisitioned cars which were driven aboutthe city on their own administrative business. During the first three months of 1937 auto accidents inBarcelona numbered 865, a figure almost three times as high as those of the similar period in thepreceding year (292). At a time when all energies had to be conserved to win the war, 3,808 vehicleshad been destroyed with a value of over 27 million pesetas in the course of the past ten months endingMay, 1937. Another indication of the chaos which prevailed was the currency which absolutely refused to meetthe requirements of the people. Silver had completely disappeared by May 1937 due to the fall of thepeseta and the resultant speculation in the medium of exchange. It had reached the point where shopkeepers issued their own "money" as did the unions in the collectivized restaurants. In spite of the incipient chaos which was being corrected the Catalonian workers were determined atall costs to keep what they had taken in July. I was amply convinced of this after several visits to someof the collectivized work-places. At some of the factories great barricades had been erected, workersentinels standing guard at the gates to meet whatever force might present itself to seize thesecollectivized plants. That their hold on the factories might really be challenged was indicated by theaction of the Generalidad government in seizing the telephone central in Barcelona from the workersof the C.N.T. who had held it since July, 1936. It was this action of the government which hadprecipitated the barricade fighting in early May in the midst of which I had arrived in the city. Enthusiasm was the pervading spirit in those worker-controlled industries, although here and there onewould hear some complaints that conditions were no better now, that the officials of the unions weretrying to rule in place of the old employers and so on. Output per hour had increased and the workersput in extra hours uncomplainingly, feeling that their products were needed to defeat the enemy on thebattle front. To some of these workers, a great deal was on the road to being realized, the ideal of Socialism orAnarchism (according to which faction they belonged) for which they had fought, suffered and bledfor many bitter years both under Alfonso and under the republic. They had won their industries now;

this was a first step. Yet how precarious was their hold upon them? Not merely was there a lack ofunanimity among the workers' forces themselves, but the enemy that had wrested part of Spain fromthe Loyalists, that was laying siege to Madrid and was swallowing the Basque country, would now andagain bare its teeth at Catalonia also. It was May 29th when I had returned from a visit to the comparatively peaceful Aragon front that at anearly hour of the morning seven rebel bombing planes "visited" Barcelona dropping large numbers ofheavy bombs, causing over two hundred casualties and leaving gaping holes of an earthquake in theportion of the city near the waterfront. My hotel was situated in the very center of the bombed area.only those who have been through the war can appreciate this experience. It was 3:45 in the morning when I was awakened by a peculiar hum of the sirens and above it thesteady droning of airplanes. I reached for a switch only to see the light go out before my eyes. Myroom, the hotel, the whole city, were plunged in thick darkness. There was the steady approach of theplanes, second by second drawing nearer and nearer, the rat©a©tat of machine guns, the futile puffs ofthe anti-©aircraft gun and then the enormous detonations of the bombs loosened by the craft above us.What to do? Run to the refuge? But it was pitch black and too late now! The planes were almostoverhead. Besides, I was in my pajamas. Curious how the ridiculous can crop up in moments of starkterror when death may be a moment away. The terrible explosions came all around in quicksuccession, glass shattered and walls of nearby buildings crumbled with thunderous roars; screamsrang out. There was nothing to do... the horror seemed interminable. The planes passed, and the first relief gave way to overpowering, unreasoning hate and longing forrevenge. To get them, those murderers that could get away so easily. The planes returned but the terroris not so great now. I throw the window open and crane my head out. Perhaps I shook my fists at them,I don't know. In the early dawn everyone went out into the streets to see the dead amid the frantic sorrow ofsurvivors, amid the great gaping holes and the ruined buildings. Bombs have been dropped that canmake a hole sixty feet deep in soft earth. When they hit a dwelling they crash through five stories onlyto explode in the cellar, thanks to a delayed fuse, and destroy the very refuge where the people aresupposed to be safe. Indeed that is what happened in the past and the strange case is given of a familyon the top floor finding two walls gone, the staircase destroyed and no way to get down while thebomb had passed through their apartment to crash through those below and completely destroy thecellar refuge with thirty lives snuffed out. I then learned that such bombardments have exactly the opposite effect to what is calculated. Not fearbut frenzied eagerness to rush at the enemy and to fight to the bitter end is the result on the generalpopulation. I learned, too, that there must have been some fascist spies in the city because the centerof the attack was the docks and harbors. The very spot where a munitions ship had been unloadingexplosives the evening before had been destroyed by the bombs, but the ship had been moved duringthe night and so the fascists had failed in their purpose. I shuddered to think what would havehappened had the ship been found and struck. And I wondered if this was the destruction that butseven planes could make in a few minutes, what could seventy planes do in an hour and what if theyhad gas as well as explosives and inflammatory bombs? Whatever may be the outcome of the present civil war, it is clear that old Spain and old Catalonia aregone for good. Something very fundamental has taken place of which all the social manifestations Iwitnessed are but the external dress and coloring. The spirit of the people had undergone a profoundupheaval and whether they move to Socialism or are defeated by Franco with his German and Italianaids, a new life is being carved out of the blood and hunger and travail of the people and the oldcannot return. Contents

Outcast Spain

By Albert Weisbord Anyone entering Spain today cannot but be impressed with the immense isolation of the Spanishpeople. The Pyrenees seem almost to constitute a natural cordon sanitaire shutting off their strugglefrom the everyday life which people elsewhere are leading. While in Spain, one is carried away on thecurrent of the social upheavals. Everywhere there is the feeling of living dramatic moments in history.There is struggle and sacrifice, unbelievable heroism and constructive effort as well as devastationand horror. But once over the Pyrenees, back in Paris or Brussels or London, indifference to theSpanish struggle surrounds one on all sides. The average Frenchman is all agog over the International Paris Exposition, but the battles going onjust to the South of him, which may vitally effect the history of his own country, do not move him.And inevitably the scenes just witnessed in Spain - the ragged men and women, the great shell holesleft by the bombardments and the bloody remnants of the victims, the banners of working classorganizations everywhere, the collectivized factories and the soldiers in the trenches - all this greatdrama of life recedes into an unreality from which it is difficult to recall it. One leaves Spaindetermined to shout loudly and everywhere the terrible need of the Spanish people. But elsewhere inEurope one must hunt for an echo to one's voice. The fact is the People's Front and liberal coalitiongovernments that exist in Western Europe have concentrated their efforts to channelize public opinionon strictly national problems.

It might be supposed that the People's Front administration of France would extend help to theSpanish Loyalists apparently so close to French conceptions of democracy. Such help would notviolate international custom. On the contrary, tradition has long sanctioned the aid of one governmentto another friendly to it, though not conferring the right to aid a rebellion against the friendly power.Such mutual assistance would appear all the more to be expected when both countries are part of theLeague of Nations. The French government, however, at a very early stage, was one of the initiators ofa neutrality pact to blockade Spain and to treat both sides on an equal footing. The effect of thisagreement has been considerably to further General Franco's fight to obtain recognition from worldpowers as the representative of a regular government.

French neutrality has not merely closed down vigourously and tightly on all volunteers into LeftistSpain, although the overwhelming and decisive number of volunteers would have come from theworking class and peasantry of France to help the cause of Spanish democracy. More than that, undercover of the international blockade, the French government is actually bending far over in the otherdirection to help the fascist side. We cite some examples given to us in Spain. In April, when thirty sixGerman planes flew from Hanover over French territory to reach Burgos there was no protest fromFrance. When, however, three Spanish government planes were blown by storms in the Pyrenees overthe French border, their planes were confiscated and the aviators imprisoned. This action must becontrasted with what happened several months ago when Italian military planes were forced to comedown in French North Africa territory and were released with full arms. And when a Junker planemade a forced landing in Madrid, the French government put pressure on the Spanish for the release ofthe plane so that it could proceed to its destination in Franco's territory.

There is no question as to the attitude of the officers of the French Navy, many of whom are members

of the Action Francaise, a French fascistic organization. Nor is there much ambiguity in the activity ofthe French diplomatic service when the French Ambassador, since the siege of Madrid, has seen fit toinstall himself not at Madrid or Valencia but on the Western border of France close to fascist Spain.At one time the papers of practically all the groups in Spain (for example, La Vanguardia, theBarcelona Generality paper, Solidaridad Obrera, Syndicalist organ, Dia Graphica, republicanmouthpiece, and Espagna Socialista, Socialist paper) published a series of exposures proving that theFrench consuls at Barcelona and Alicante were the open agents of Franco and that the Frenchconsulates were guilty of selling passports admitting Spanish reactionaries into France. The officialsof the French government could hold up a Spanish ship at Dakar, Africa. Its officers had wanted toturn the ship over to the fascists, but the sailors had mutinied and imprisoned the officers and weregoing to return the ship to the Spanish government. Similar consideration of Franco prompted theFrench government to ask that general's permission before evacuating the children from Bilbao.However, when women and children were being bombed to death in the terrible massacre at the opentown of Guernica, the French spokesmen actually were open to the insinuation that the town had beenbombed by the Loyalist forces themselves, in spite of the overwhelming testimony connecting thecohorts of Franco to the crime.

Presumably, the blockade does not affect material such as food supplies that can not be used formilitary purpose. Yet the French regime prevented the departure of the ship, Le Sarastore fromBordeaux with food for Bilbao. And although the Spanish government had shipped several hundredmillion dollars worth of gold to be stored in France, this money, evidently, could not buy food forCatalonia. For I was able to see, while in Barcelona, the bread lines, the milk lines, the tobacco lines,the poor quality and meager quantity of all food, the lack of soap, olive oil, charcoal, adequatemedical supplies, etc.

I quote here a comparative table of prices of some articles of necessity published in SolidaridadObrera on Friday, May 21st (1937).

June, 1936 May, 1937

Outside wheat, sack of 60 kilos 26 pesetas 106 pesetas

Outside No. 4 flour, sack of 60 kilos 44 p. 126 p.

Corn, sack of 100 kilos 50 p. 130 p.

Barley flour, sack of 100 kilos 38 p. 135 p.

Red beet pulp, 1,000 kilograms 300 p. 700 p.

These items are representative of the general rise in prices, those given being really anunderestimation of the actual market conditions.

So great was the need for food, that on April 14th serious food riots broke out in Barcelona. Fromearly morning until late at night in the market districts and in front of the Generality office impressivedemonstrations against the increase of food prices were staged. In some places the merchant's stockswere overturned and destroyed in the course of the fighting that ensued. There is no question, too, thatthe lack of food contributed mightily to the fall of Bilbao.

The attitude of France and England, however surprising at first sight, is, after all, easily explained inregard to the new Spanish Republic. To begin with, the chief capital investments of these countries inSpain were made in the days of the old regime. French and British capitalists are not so sure now thatthe Republic will treat them as handsomely as did Alphonso. The modernization of Spain under theRepublic will mean the rise of a native capitalist class of far greater power than hitherto, a class thatstrives to liberate itself from the semi-imperialist bondage that British capital, above all, has beenable to impose upon Spain. A modern capitalist Spain may mean the fortification of the sea coastopposite Gibralter and the consequent end of British domination of the Straights there, a vital link inBritain's imperialist policy. Britain can always look at Mexico for an example of how Spanish-speaking capitalism can modernize itself.

But what weighs even more heavily upon the minds of the politicians controlling affairs in WesternEurope is the fact that by no means is there any guarantee that the Spanish Revolution will "stay put"at the present level. There is the constant fear that the Valencia government will not be able to dealwith the revolutionary workers who, under the leadership of the Anarcho-Syndicalists and the WorkersParty of Marxist Unification (P.O.U.M.) may try to take the power and set up a workers' ruleconfiscating all capital investment in Spain. If the Valencia regime really forms a dependable army ofits own headed by "responsible" officers, if it disarms the workers and drives them out of the factoriesthey have taken over, the attitude of France and England will change considerably.

The role of the Soviet Union in Spanish affairs has been equally decisive with that of the democraticcountries of Western Europe. Although not actively on watch in the Mediterranean, Russia is also partof the blockade. Before the blockade, Russia sent arms and equipment to Spain. Russian tanks,Russian airplanes and Russian aviators did much to stave off the advance of Franco in the beginning.But none of this stuff was donated by the Russians. I was assured by officials high in the Spanishgovernment, who, of course, did not want to be quoted, that they had paid in gold the full price ofeverything sent and furthermore, that some of the equipment had been stuff of inferior quality whichthe Russians had evidently wanted to get rid of.

While I was in Barcelona, a huge campaign was being launched by the Generality of Catalonia to raisemoney to pay for the Russian ship, Komsomol, that had been sunk while delivering supplies to Spain.In the heart of the city, over the broad avenue of Las Ramblas and facing Plaza Catalunya was anenormous banner calling on the people of Spain to give money for this purpose. Committees werespread all over the city asking the poorest worker to contribute his share. And this at a time when thepeople could scarcely obtain bread and milk and were in dire need, embattled on all sides by fascistforces that had launched their bombs on that very city.

I asked myself how far the Russian Revolution would have got, during the bitter days of interventionfrom 1918 to 1921, had the European workers insisted on being paid for all the help they gave the

Russians then. In America everywhere I had been given the impression that the Russian regime wasthe true friend of popular Spain. Yet, here in Barcelona, I saw miserably poor Spaniards whose wageof ten to fifteen pesetas a day was barely sufficient to keep them alive, coerced to give their money torepay the cost of the ship that rich Russia, with its Five Year Plans - which had supposedly builtSocialism in one country all by itself - had lost in sending supplies to aid the people of Spain infighting Russia's fascist enemies.

In return for even this aid that Russia was giving, the Spaniards had been forced to make concessionsin policy to Stalinist ideas. Thanks to Russian aid, the Communist Party of Spain had grown from atiny sect to a great party of over three hundred thousand members with decisive influence in thegovernment. It was Russian influence that kept Spain in the League of Nations and allied to Franceand England. Only when the Loyalist government had pledged itself to drive the representatives of theWorkers Party of Marxist Unification, who stood for the proletarian revolution, out of all posts ofinfluence and to use its efforts to disarm the Anarcho-Syndicalists did Russia consent to allow thesupplies of arms that were at hand to be unloaded in Spanish ports. Premier Caballero, before beingousted, is reported to have said "I can do nothing. Russia demands complete curbing of the P.O.U.M.as the price of military aid which we must have." Russian influence in Spain has been as decisive as itwas in China in the days of Borodin's alliance with Chiang Kai Shek in 1926-1927.

Thus we have the paradox of the leading functionaries of the Russian Revolution using their influenceand prestige to prevent the development of a similar Spanish Revolution to the end where the workerswill triumph. The Soviets of Russia become instruments to forestall the formation of Soviets in Spain.The Russian Stalinists who preach the possibility of building Socialism in one country (as if therewould not be interference from the international community) are doing their utmost to reach beyondthe limits of their own land to stop the creation of a Socialist regime in a country a thousand milesaway.

It is entirely superfluous to discuss the well-known aid of the fascist countries to monarchist Spain.The Spanish government has published a White Book on the subject filled with irrefutable factsobtained from prisoners captured by the Loyalists. Even after Germany and Italy joined the non-intervention commission it is notorious that Franco has never been in need of artillery, airplanes,tanks and the equipment and men that go with them. But I have visited the front line trenches on theAragon Front near Huesca where Loyalist soldiers had been supposed to hold the lines with twentycartridges each, with no bayonets, with no bombs, with no cannon, with no tanks, with no airplanes,with about three per cent of the material that the situation urgently called for.

Truly the bleeding people of Spain can rely on no foreign government as their real friend in thisparlous period of international rivalry. Each country that meddles in Spain has its own selfish ulteriormotives to carry out. Not one of them will hesitate for a moment to use the Spanish people as pawns intheir own lust for world power. Contents

THE HUESCA FRONT IN ARAGON By Albert Weisbord The Aragon Front is the mystery front in Spain. Stretching for about two hundred and fifty miles fromthe Pyrenees to the Teruel region, covering the cities of Hesca and Zaragossa, and guarding Cataloniaand Valencia, the most important industrial areas, it has, nevertheless, hardly been heard from in the

military annals of the present civil war. All the other fronts, Bilbao, in the North-West, Madrid in thecenter, and Malaga in the South-East, have been exceedingly active at one time or another. Up to veryrecently only Argon was silent. It was the ghost front of the war. Almost the entire Aragon front is held by Catalonians, the majority of whom are under the influenceof the Anarchists, Syndicalists, and Workers Party of Marxist Unification (P.O.U.M.). Of the sevendivisions, three are Anarcho-Syndicalist ("Durutti," "Black and Red," and "Ascaso"), one is the"Lenin" division of the P.O.U.M., while the three others are controlled by the Unified Socialist Partyof Catalonia (P.S.U.C.), the Catalan Republicans (Esquerra), and the regular army. Naturally, the passivity of the Aragon Front has given rise to disquieting rumors from all sides. It isclaimed that Catalonia is sabotaging the war and, giving way to her old weakness for autonomy, isinterested only in her own independence. It is further claimed that the Anarcho-Syndicalists believethe Valencia regime is just as bad as the fascist and are retaining all arms in the rear among theproletarians in the factories, while their soldiers are quite content to maintain the status quo at thefront. Finally, it is charged that the P.O.U.M. forces are agents of the fascists and have made a dealwith them for mutual tolerance. On the other side it is maintained that the People's Front Government of Valencia is not interested infurnishing arms to the revolutionary sections of the troops but prefers to divert all military equipmentto the sectors controlled by those parties favoring capitalist democracy. They point out that a realdrive in the Aragon region would smash the fascists in two and settle the war at once. Since this drivehas not been made, they insinuate that the bourgeois republican section of the People's Front, with itsofficers caste, does not want to defeat Franco too badly, perhaps this would mean the elimination of anobstacle to the workers' taking power completely. I decided to investigate the spot, to go into the front line trenches, to speak with the soldiers in thedug-outs and the generals at headquarters. The place to go, obviously, was that sector of the frontcovered by the P.O.U.M. and the Syndicalists who were facing the city of Huesca and whose militarycenter was at the village of Sietamo. Before going to Aragon, however, I resolved to track down theclaim that Catalonia was sabotaging the war. There had just appeared in the Barcelona press a speechby Premier Caballero praising the Catalonians for having been the first to drive out fascism from theirterritory and hailing the large support that Catalonian factories were giving the war. With this reportin hand I put the question squarely to Commissioner Miravilles, head of the publicity bureau of theGenerality. Miravilles, himself a member of the Esquerra, proceeded to show me in great detail thefalsity of the rumors spread about his country. With a total population of less than three million, Catalonia had furnished over 85,000 soldiers for thefront. Of the approximately 400,000 soldiers on the four principal battle areas in Spain, close to60,000 were in Aragon. The others were spread, 150,000 in the Biscay region, 150,000 around Madrid,and 50,000 near Malaga. In Catalonia every able-bodied man available was being called to the colorsor held in readiness, and already 40,000 more recruits had enthusiastically answered the conscriptioncall and had been trained for service. Besides that, close to 125,000 men were working directly at warproduction. In addition, Catalonia was taking care of 350,000 refugees, and taking care of them betterthan France had done during the World War, especially in the case of the children who were beingwell fed and educated in the spirit of the republic. At the outbreak of hostilities, Catalonia had had no industries that could be used immediately for warpurposes. She had no metal works of importance, no furnaces nor forges, no large plants except theHispano-Suiza motor concern. But, with the greatest ingenuity, the whole economy was being rapidlyremodeled. Firms that used to produce rouge and lip sticks were now turning out cartridges. Everysmall plant available was being utilized for making powder, shells, bombs, parts of machine guns, etc.Now even some tanks were being produced and some aviation motors.

To these facts, Miravilles added some historical data to prove that Catalonia could not have beenguilty of sabotage of any war against monarchical reaction. He pointed out that ever since the days ofthe Inquisition, Catalonia had been the most rebellious province in Spain. In 1812, it was a Catalanwho was at the head of the Cortes of Cadiz. In 1873, of the four presidents who led the republic offourteen months, two, Figueras and Salmeron, were Catalan, and the other two, Pi y Margall andCastelar, found Catalonia a pillar of support. It was a Catalonian and Spanish paramilitary assemblythat had met secretly to demand a constitution in 1917. Catalonian capitalists traditionally had foughtthe obstructive policies of the monarchy. Similarly, it was the Catalonian proletariat that had alwaysbeen in the lead in the general strikes that had shattered the old regime. In the present rebellion, Catalonian workers had been the first to disarm the 12,000 fascists soldiery,entrenched in strong fortifications in Barcelona, and had driven back the fascist army into Aragon allthe way to Huesca. Miravilles was no adherent of Anarcho-Syndicalism nor of the P.O.U.M. but headmitted that it was these elements which had been the earliest to mobilize their militia, the formerunder Durutti and Ascaso, the latter under Maurin, and had sent their best forces with these leaders todie in the struggle. The victory of the workers in Barcelona had inspired the rest of Spain to resist thesurprise attack of fascism and had been one of the main factors in gaining for all Spain the necessarytime to give battle to the forces of the old regime. It was for this reason, because the Anarcho-Syndicalists and the P.O.U.M. had been the chief factors inthe field, that they had been included in the first government formed after the July upheaval. At thattime neither the Socialists nor the official Communists were very strong in Catalonia. They were toincrease their strength only later when the situation became more stable and when Russia had addedher might to the side of the Loyalists. I was soon to see at first hand what the P.O.U.M. and Anarcho-Syndicalist troops had been able toaccomplish in the early days when each division acted for itself and was furnished with supplies bythe activity of its own organization. The village of Sietamo itself, which was now the headquarters ofthe P.O.U.M. "Lenin Division", was mute witness to their valor. The village looked for all the worldlike a Hollywood stage drop of some war-torn hamlet. Huge holes gaped at the spectator from everyhouse that was still able to stand on its own four walls. These holes had been made not by the fascists,but by the artillery of the Leftists which had driven the enemy out of their stronghold. The soldiersrecounted to me how their opponents, in rage at being forced to retire from Sietamo, had bound eightworkmen together and run over them with their tanks, leaving their bodies to be buried by theLoyalists. Now Sietamo was well in the rear of the front lines which had been pushed up close to thevery walls of the city of Huesca. I went with a military guide up to Mount Aragon, the highest eminence in the region from which onecan get an uninterrupted view of close to thirty miles. It was a bright May day and in the limpid air thepoppies showed startlingly red among the sedge-like grasses and thistles of the rather barren region.To our right were the purple Pyrenees. The blue river wound below, and between us and the silhouetteof the Huesca cathedral in the distance occasional white puffs of smoke marked the dull boom ofcannon. The ride had been a hurried one, scurrying behind the rough fence of saplings that had beenset up to shield from enemy fire the cars going up the mountain. Mount Aragon rises steeply out of the countryside overlooking a terrain gullied by erosion resemblingsome of the lands in Nevada or Arizona. For centuries the ancient fort built in the time of the Romanshad been used by the lords of the region watching over their territory. At first I supposed the ruins ofthe fort to be due to the shelling of the Loyalists when the position had been held by the fascists. Butmy guide asked me to look on top of the ruins and to note the plants that were growing there. He thenexplained that the walls were five feet thick and so strongly cemented together by the action of timethat the shells had merely bounced off the hard rock damaging it but slightly. Mount aragon, in fact,

had been considered almost impregnable. And yet the fortress had been taken by the joint action of the Lenin-Durutti divisions. With daringenthusiasm the soldiers had scaled the impossible walls and driven out the three hundred fascistsdefenders behind whom were many thousands of other soldiers in support. In the operations aroundMount Aragon, the workers' militia had lost about two thousand men. And, later, when Franco hadreceived help from Italian and German aviators and the trenches had been severely bombed, over sixhundred casualties were recorded in one hour and a half. All in all, the Lenin Division of the P.O.U.M.alone had suffered over three thousand men lost. From there we went to the front line trenches around Huesca, the posts closest to the city held by theP.O.U.M. Seventeen thousand men were concentrated around Huesca forming a hairpin bend that wasalmost closed, [as the accompanying military map given me by the commanders in charge shows].The six thousand men of the P.O.U.M. with two thousand others in reserve, held about 46 kilometers.For the entire force around Huesca there were only five effective cannon of 70-75 mm., about sixtymachine guns, and one airplane (not in use). The soldiers complained to me that after the Madrid-Valencia government had centralized all the armed forces in its hands, the men had only twentycartridges apiece, up to several months ago. Many of these cartridges were "refills," so that they werewont to become swollen and jam in the breech, rendering any effective rifle action impossible. Sinceno bayonets had been issued until very late in the struggle, hand to hand charges to drive the enemyout of their positions were not to be thought of. Headquarters estimated they had no more than 3% ofthe material they actually needed. Opposed to the Loyalists the fascists had placed around Huesca some ten thousand trained soldierssupplied with at least six batteries of 100-105 mm. How effective their fire was I could see in whatremained of the little hamlet of Tierz which had just been bombed. The Loyalists, however, had beeninstructed not to fire their largest cannon because they might damage the "famous Cathedral inHuesca" which, as a matter of fact, was now used for military purposes by the fascists. For similardelicate scruples, when a few airplanes were loaned to the Aragon Front, they, too, were instructed notto bomb the Cathedral which was a "work of art." Concurrently with these orders from the general command not to fire their cannon, came periodicorders of re-organization which strongly tended to demoralize the forces of the Leftists. At first theinstruction had been to form regiments and brigades, then the order came to form divisions withoutthe brigades. Then new changes took place. In each case a complete overhauling of the army divisionof labor was necessary. In the beginning the various political groups had selected their owncommanders to head their columns which they themselves had recruited. Now the divisions were nolonger part of a loose revolutionary workers' militia; they had become incadrated into the regulararmy and had to wait for the general command to act. But the general command refused to act. Andmonth after month had gone by with a steadily growing demoralization taking place among thesoldiers. It was not that the will to fight was lacking on the part of the soldiers in the trenches, the men allearnestly informed me. It seems they had repeatedly demanded that the perpetual re-organizations bestopped, that adequate arms and equipment be sent them and that a general advance be ordered. Bynow the Spanish Leftist army was composed of men who had become seasoned under fire and werequite equal to the professional troops of the enemy. The numerical strength was about two to one infavor of the loyalists. The fascists had only enough power to strike at one point at a time. WhileBilbao was being attacked, that was the time for a general advance throughout Aragon that would havebroken the enemy. The soldiers asked me to look at the map to see how Huesca was almost entirelysurrounded and could be completely cut off with but a comparatively slight effort. And the samesituation prevailed around Zaragossa to the South.

All this argument had been in vain. Instead, the soldiers had to hear the insistent propaganda that they,who had been among the very first to enter into the combat, did not want to fight and were sabotagingthe struggle. There had been one time when the Loyalist troops had taken some of the enemy'strenches but had been so unsupported by the artillery that they had had to yield the ground again totheir opponents. This failure had been played up in the rear to show the incapacity of the Anarcho-Syndicalist and P.O.U.M. soldiers in the fight. As a final act, the general command had sent them General Pozas to re-organize them once again.General Pozas had been a member of the extreme Right political faction before the July days. Of allthe generals still available to the Valencia Government, there was none farther removed from theideals of the proletariat. Here was the man the Socialist War Minister had sent to displace thecommand of the Anarchist and P.O.U.M. leaders who had taken the strongest positions when they hadbeen only loose militiamen. General Pozas, moreover, had been also made responsible for themaintenance of order in the rear of Catalonia. It was quite clear to all that one man could not possiblyhandle both jobs, policing the rear in an explosive revolutionary situation, and making plans for anadvance on the Aragon Front. One or the other would have to be sacrificed. The soldiers were not slowto guess that Pozas, at least in May, had been sent to keep the proletariat in order and not to preparefor a general offensive. The result of all this was a situation that would have dismayed the stoutest enemy of fascism. Whenour party first entered the trenches the fascists must have been able to see us for at once, from theirlines some 150-300 yards away, the bullets came whining over, lashing like whips at the sand bags infront of us. But after the first flurry had passed, hours went by without a single shot being fired oneither side. Fascist soldiers could shout through loud speakers that soon, "in twenty days," anarmistice would be declared and all would be shaking hands as brothers. In the course of the war, theP.O.U.M.-Syndicalist troops had been able to win over about one thousand deserters from the enemyranks, but of late these conversions had stopped. The lack of struggle made the armistice talk almostplausible. Behind the trenches, only a few hundred yards away, life was going on as normally as though nothingin the world was taking place. Men and women were swimming in the river, farmers were busy withtheir ploughing and planting. And even in the trenches phonographs were playing and men weredancing one with the other. Some went about in shorts as though they were in some vacationist camp.Only the vicious crack of some sharpshooter's bullet from time to time reminded one that it was war. From the time of the May Days' barricade fighting in Barcelona, especially, the men in the trencheshad continued their vigil with one ear cocked to hear the sounds coming from the rear. It was plaintheir mind was on the struggle that was being waged in the streets of the city. When they first heard ofthe May 3rd events, the men were restrained with great difficulty from returning at once "to clean outthe capitalist counter-revolution." As it was, half of them prepared to leave and one thousandP.O.U.M. did start to march back. Halfway on the road to Barcelona they were stopped by agents ofthe Valencia Government who informed them, if they would return to the trenches, Valencia wouldsend no soldiers into Barcelona. The men called P.O.U.M. headquarters which told them to go back,and they did. The next day five thousand Valencia Guards entered the capital of Catalonia. When I saw them, the men in the trenches in front of Huesca had no heart to fight under a commandwhich they did not trust, made up of officers trained in the same school as Franco, officers interestedin building up a new army separate from the people so that new careers could be made for themselvesand their children on behalf of a capitalist system which the workers detested. In the old days of theworkers' militia, officers and men had come from one proletarian class, took the same pay, wore noseparate insignia, had common revolutionary ideals. Now all this was changed. The P.O.U.M. and Anarcho-Syndicalist organizations had done considerable political educational

work at the front. Thousands of newspapers come from Barcelona daily, the P.O.U.M. also putting outits own daily in Sietamo, El Combatiente Rojo, The Red Soldier, covering all events carefully. Everysoldier believed he knew the plans of the People's Front Government of Spain to dissolve the specialworkers' divisions and fuse them with others into one general army headed by officers no longer underworkers' control. The former revolutionary divisions would be displaced by others who were notconcerned with their ideals of making the war subordinate to and intertwined with the victory ofSocialism. Soon the 40,000 new recruits that the Generality of Catalonia had trained would be placedon the Aragon Front, the old P.O.U.M. and Anarcho-Syndicalist commanders dismissed and theirforces either dissolved or broken up and sent to other parts to be fused with P.S.U.C. or republicanbattalions. Nor had any of the organizations effectively prepared to resist this new development. The Socialistsand official Communists favored it. The Anarchists and Syndicalists had not believed in a regulararmy but relied solely on volunteer militia democratically controlled. Only the P.O.U.M. hadadvocated a regular army under workers' control and had actually formed its own officer school givingthree month courses to 120 worker-cadets. This party had also published and distributed the works ofTrotsky, Zinoviev, Maurin and other Communist leaders on how to build up a revolutionary army. However, outside of the P.O.U.M. none of the proletarian organizations had seriously undertaken toform a cadre of worker-officers approaching a professional standing. Now that a regular army wasbeing evolved, the class conscious workers felt they were being militarized under a system similar towhat they had overthrown and against which they were now fighting. The result is that at the front, as well as in the rear, new struggles are brewing, as the question oncemore becomes acute whether Spain is to stop halfway at a mere political revolution or to enter thepath of a thorough-going social revolution. Contents

THE PROVOCATIONS OF BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY IN SPAIN By Albert Weisbord The events of May were but the culmination of a whole series of provocations on the part of thebourgeois democratic forces against the workers. The following list of provocations compiled sinceOctober 24, 1936, might be of interest to the reader in understanding the events of May 1937. October 24th - The generality of Catalonia decrees compensation to former owners of collectivizedindustry held by workers. November 30th - From now on the policy is adopted in the official press of the Generality, not tomention meetings of the POUM while mentioning others. December - Catalonian government reorganized without the POUM representative, who is droppedfrom the government. January 7th - Councillor of Supplies in the Catalonian government dissolves workers suppliescommittees. January - Weekly organ of POUM in Madrid permanently suspended by the Madrid DefenceCommittee. February 7th - Colonel Vilaba reinstated by government over protests and arrests of Anarchistsbetrays and abandons defence of Malaga. February 10th - Madrid Defence Junta seizes POUM radio of Madrid. Also suspends El CombatienteRojo of Madrid POUM and seizes press. February 15th - Valencia government orders collection of all heavy arms from workers and all lightarms not held by permission.

February - Series of decrees of financial nature designed to restrict activities. February 17th - POUM Public Order Commissioner of Lerida displayed by Councillor of Catalonia infavor of bourgeois representative. February 19th - Red aid of POUM excluded from permanent committee of Aid for Madrid. February 29th - Valencia government orders all customs officers to refrain from joining politicalparties or trade unions or to attend their meetings or to have any relations whatever with them. February 26th - Generality forbids public meeting in city of Catalonia although all preparations madeby CNT-FAI-POUM. February 27th - Nuestros, FAI publication of Valencia suspended indefinitely for publishing articlesagainst minister of war. March 1st - Generality of Catalonia decrees reorganization of department of Public Order abolishingWorkers Patrol Controls and consolidating bourgeois influence, doing with the Guards what they didwith the Carbinners with careful selection of men and officers. March 1st - POUM sanitarium Peorola of the Red Aid seized at Alp Gerena province. March 4th - Colonel of Karl Marx Division steals 12 tanks from warehouse using false papers andhides them in Voreshilev barracks controlled by PSUC. March 8th - Council of Generality fines La Batalla 5,000 pesetas for not working in accord with theregulations of the censorship March 12th - Valencia government orders workers parties and organizations to collect large and smallarms from their members and to surrender them within 48 hours. March 15th - Councillor of Public Order of the Generality suppresses certain workers patrol controlsin outlying districts of Barcelona. At the same time Generality suspends La Batalla for four days foroverstepping the bounds of the censorship in the political articles written. March - Juventud Rojo, organ of the JCI, Political Youth of POUM of the Lavante submitted to severepolitical censorship. March - La Natercha, organ of the JCI of Madrid refused authorization to reappear by Madrid DefenceJunta on the grounds that "JCI needs no press." March - Generality refuses use of Generality Radio for POUM meetings for the first time. March 21st - Protracted attempts in the Generality to wear down militants in the course of formingnew government. March 25th - Basque government seizes press of CNT Del Norte at Bilbao which is then given toBasque Communist Party. Paper is suspended and editorial staff as well as regional committee of CNTare arrested. March - Assassination of CNT leaders in Albacata and other cities of Castilla. Imprisonment ofMauette, CNT leader, at Alemeria. Continued sabotage of Aragon front deprived of arms andmunitions by Valencia government. April 7th - National Republican Guards shoot tramway worker in Barcelona during administration ofGuard forces. April 8th - Catalan parliamentary depuation holds meeting during long governmental crisis althoughparliament considered dead long time. April 9th - POUM Radio closed permanently in Madrid. April - POUM Radio of Barcelona and Spain excluded from M... week. April 11th - 18th Suppression of certain issues of Anarchist papers CNT of Madrid and Castilla Libra. April 16th - Military censor at Valencia again suspends Nosotros. April 17th - National Republican Guard in Catalonia begins to disarm workers. April - During protracted governmental crisis First Councillor Taradelhs decrees annulment of controlof workers over official college of customs agents and commissioners which was monopoly of custom

officers given to commercial organizations during monarchy. April 17th - Carabinners of Customs to Pigcards to take control of customs from Anarchists. Few dayslater Anarchist leader shot when he went there to arrange settlement. April - Civil Guards sent to Figueras and other towns to wrest control from workers organizationsstrong there. April - Police agents try to bribe POUM employees to steal POUM documents April - Funeral of Rolando turned into demonstration with public forces compeated to attend. 300workers disarmed by police in Barcelona during last week of April. Workers prevented fromcelebrating May Day by government orders and joint meeting of JOI-Anarchist youth suspended. Contents

BARRICADES IN BARCELONA By Albert Weisbord The barricade fighting that flared up from May 3rd to May 7th in Barcelona and throughout Cataloniamarked one of the most important turning points of the Spanish Revolution. Before May the governments of Catalonia and of Valencia had been generally considered the mostradical the world had seen since the days of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath in Hungary andBavaria. In the July, 1936, days, in answer to the attacks of Franco, the workers, in effect, had speedilytaken over economic and political direction of the country while organizing their militia to fightFascism. Out of sheer magnanimity the workers' organizations of Spain did not attempt to exclude Republicanbourgeois organizations from participation in the government. Neither did they take any steps to buildSoviets on the Russian model as a step to the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the contrary, graduallythe government assumed the form it had before the July upheaval, the anti-Fascist committees beingvoluntarily dissolved in favor of the governments of Companys and Azana. This action was taken notbecause the bourgeois radicals were strong enough to win such consideration, indeed, most of themhad disappeared in the troubled July days. Rather, was it because the labor organizations haddeliberately limited their own aspirations and demands to this halfway point. What was first established in July, 1936, was an emergency government with an overwhelmingdomination of workers' representatives. The factories were collectivized by the unions. The oldemployers, those who were not in flight or reactionary, were given part of the direction of theenterprise or kept on as technical advisers. A fund was established for the payment of debts whichmight include compensation for the former owners, especially where the capital was of foreign origin. Despite these concessions voluntarily granted, the Spanish workers labored under the belief that theyhad created a genuine workers' revolutionary government which could be induced gradually, andwithout the harsh necessity of a new upheaval, to usher a full form of Socialism into Spain. With sucha belief the Anarchists abandoned the essence of their program and entered into the government; theSyndicalists talked of being able now to construct a new society; even the Workers Party of MarxistsUnification (the P.O.U.M.) nourished similar fantasies. The May Days toppled these "castles in Spain" to the ground. Within a few hours once more theworkers' neighborhood became a seething hive of activity. Masses of men grouped behind barricades,thousands of them armed with rifles, revolvers and hand grenades, challenge all passers by and waittensely for a threatened attack. Barricades sprang up everywhere, six or eight to a street, hundredsthroughout the city, barricades made of paving blocks and sandbags hastily thrown together to theheight of five feet, powerful barriers that guard all important corners and block the streets. All

Catalonia is paralyzed with a general strike. In the center of the city firing continues steadily forseveral days. Ambulances rush hither and thither, the only vehicles allowed to pass except for the carsof the AnarchoªSyndicalist (C.N.T. F.A.I.) and the P.O.U.M. organizations. At night, Barcelona goes dead, all the lights are out except for some distinct bulb here and therecasting a faint yellow gleam upon the empty streets now grimly patrolled. The Control Patrol, whichapparently had been dissolved by the government in March, is resurrected in the crisis. The Patrolmen,armed with sub©machine guns go from barricade to barricade, investigating every house and rooftopto ferret out any surprise the enemy might try to spring. In the workers' locales no one sleeps and Foodis rationed out by the women who elect to stand with their husbands in the fight. In the center of the city each organization has barricaded itself. In front of the "Casa CNT", the homeof the National Confederation of Labor, situated on Via Duruntti, there is heavy firing in alldirections. A car brings six men into this street. It is fired upon by the police and members of theUnified Socialist Party of Catalonia (the P.S.U.C.), who are together in this battle. The six rush outholding their hands high. All are shotdown and for fifteen minutes afterward they lie sprawling intheir blood in the street. Streams of lead continue to pour into them until their skulls are shot wideopen and their brains spill into the street. Their bodies are ripped from top to bottom. Only then is theambulance allowed into the street to remove the remains. The fire is hottest in the Las Ramblas section. The police occupy the building next to the P.O.U.Mheadquarters. The British contingent of the P.O.U.M., on leave from the front at the moment, havestrategically seized the high building opposite the P.O.U.M. to guard its entrance and from there theypour their fire into the ranks of the police holding the "Mocha Cafe" across the way. Some workersadvance to the very doors of the police retreat and throw hand grenades that wreck the place, leavingthe police crouching in the rear. News arrives that C.N.T.-P.O.U.M. soldiers are leaving the Aragon front to protect their comrades inBarcelona and that thousands are already on the way. Into the harbor there steam the heavy Spanishcruiser Jaime I and two destroyers. The huge guns of the British and French Navy are also levelledagainst the city. On the otherside, the fortress of Montjuic is taken by the Anarchists; the cannon aretrained on the Generality Building, one shot, I am informed, is actually fired that lands behind therailroad station. Here, then, are the May Days. The most radical government that capitalist democracy has everexperimented with is firing at the workers who created it, the workers are declaring war against a Statein which their own delegates are seated as ministers! No wonder the reports of these events can bedistorted and their meaning misunderstood. In the general press the May Days have been pictured as a wild uprising of uncontrolled Anarchists(F.A.I.) mingled with treacherous Trotskyists (P.O.U.M.) behind whom lurk the sinister figures of the"Fifth Column" of Franco. The Spainish Embassy to France, inspired by Alvarez del Vayo and LuisArquistain, actually stated that those behind the barricades flew monarchist flags in the streets. Such acomplete fabrication can do no service to the Spanish Republic but rather falsely advertises to theworld that Fascism is so strong in Barcelona, the heart of industrial Spain, that it can openly show itscolors supported by the workers. But before we denounce the barricade fighters as Fascists we should consider the fact that it was thesevery people, the Anarcho-Syndicalists under Durutti and Ascaso and the POUMites under Maurin whohad been the first to disarm the Fascists in Barcelona and to drive their troops out of Catalonia. In Julythe P.O.U.M. was the most important Marxist Party in Catalonia, the Stalinists being a secondaryfactor. None the less, Pravda, the Russian Communist paper, has seen fit to agree with the SpanishAmbassador and has affirmed: "The power which carried forward the counter revolutionary putsch in

Barcelona was above all, the Trotskyist organization, the POUM which was wholly linked up to thesecret agents of Fascism and with the 'Fifth Column.' On the side of the Trotskyists stood the so-called'Control Patrols,' that is to say, groups of all sorts of bandits who now for a long time have operated inthe streets of Barcelona and on the roads of Catalonia as robbers and murderers....The attempt of aTrotskyist Fascist putsch in Barcelona is absolutely no accident. Beyond a doubt it was organizedunder the directives of Franco and of the German and Italian marauders....The putsch of the Trotskyistagency of Spanish and German Fascism in Barcelona was dictated by the German General Staff inorder to frighten the bourgeois circles of England and of France with the spectre of 'Anarchy' inSpain." Any objective person present in Barcelona during the barricade fighting of May 3rd to May 7th wouldsurely have to give an entirely different statement of the situation. He would have to declare as thefirst inescapable fact that the events were precipitated not by uncontrolled Anarchists or POUMistsbut by the action of the Director of Public Security, Rodriguez Salas, in charge of the Catalan police,who, following a preconceived plan and carrying out the orders of the Minister of the Interior,Auguade, had broken into the Telephone Central in the center of the city, to take possession of it. It should be remembered that, like all public enterprises, not only in Catalonia but throughout allSpain, the telephone centrals had been taken over by the trade unions and controlled by themaccording to the Decree of Collectivization of October 24th, 1936. A delegate of the CatalanGenerality was at the head of the control committee of the workers. This arrangement was in accordwith the laws of the country. The seizure of the Telephonique was, then, of enormous significance to the entire working class ofBarcelona, effecting not only the C.N.T. members who were in the majority on the control board, butalso the Socialist trade union center ( U.G.T.). It was, in fact, an attack against the entire trade unionmovement and illegally challenged the whole idea of collectivization. If the police could violate the laws of Catalonia and seize the most important center ofcommunications by force, what could stop them from raiding all the factories? The reaction of theworking class, therefore, was immediate and violent. Spontaneously and at once, throughout the entirecity, all the workers, whether of the C.N.T. or of the U.G.T. came into the streets in a universal generalstrike, although not a single organization, neither C.N.T., F.A.I., P.O.U.M., nor P.S.U.C. had issued thecall for them to do so. In the train of this general strike barricades sprang up everywhere. Although only a minority, severaltens of thousands of armed men manned the barricades. Yet the large crowds that gathered aroundthem clamoring for action left no doubt that the overwhelming mass of workers were wholeheartedlybehind the vanguard and were only awaiting the orders of their respective organizations to marchforward. These orders never came. Not from the P.O.U.M. nor from the Anarcho-Syndicalists, norfrom any other source. Franco's "Fifth Column" never would have acted so hesitantly. What was behind the illegal seizure of the telephone central by the forces of the Catalan police? Theessence of the matter was very well put by the prominent leaders of the PSUC in a huge meetingreported in Las Noticias of Barcelona on June second. Said the leaders of the Socialist-Stalinist forcesat this meeting: Two lines of policy found themselves opposed on May Day, the line of the P.S.U.C.,which wanted to place the war before the social revolution, and the line of the Anarchists which placedthe social revolution before all. Two forces existed creating a sort of dual government. One wasofficial. The other was secret, carrying out violence in the streets and chaos in the economy,sabotaging the economic reserve forces of the country. This secret "government" was in possession of eighty thousand rifles, three thousand machine guns,several hundreds of thousands of hand-bombs, also mortars and some tanks. Two programs ofeconomic reconstruction were also in clash, one, the Socialist-Stalinist, that declared that the unions

must subordinate themselves to the State which alone should deal with the property of the community,and the other, the Anarcho-Syndicalist, that the unions should become a special privileged group.... The May Days were an expression of the fact that the dual power which has been established inCatalonia and in Spain after the July 1936 days is creating an intolerable situation, capable of solvingnone of the burning problems that face Leftist Spain. The dilemma must be resolved either in onedirection or another. Either the Spanish and Catalonian State is to be controlled by the regulargovernment in favor of capitalist development, or the workers will take over the full power andestablish their own forms of fighting and of governing. The present confused situation stems directlyfrom this dual power. Let us examine, for instance, the economic situation in the rear. The war had brought with it a greatdislocation of industry, due to war needs and the blockade around Spain by the Fascist, Democraticand Soviet countries. Present conditions called for a great intensification of labor. Spain could nottake a holiday even on May first. One the other hand, the wages of the workers are exceedingly lowand the cost of living has rocketed, many items of consumption being very hard to get. Thegovernment makes no real effort to curb speculation or to ration out the foodstuffs on an equalitarianbasis. There has been no clear declaration that the factories belong to the workers. On the contrary, thegovernment has refused so to declare. In October, 1936, the government decreed compensation for former proprietors ousted of theirproperty. In February, 1937, it declared illegal the collectivization of dairies. In May it rejected thedecision of the Council of Economy which recommended that the collectivized firms be registered soas to protect the products of those firms exported abroad and now impounded in the courts of England,France and Belgium under suits brought by the former owners of the plants. Regarding the rumors which are constantly circulated that Catalonia, under Anarchist influence,sabotages war production, Commissioner Marivilles assured me that Catalonia had strained theenergies of its workers to the limit for the war. About 125,000 men were engaged in war production,night and day, making use of the small diversified industries located in Catalonia with remarkableingenuity in order to turn out cartridges, guns, shells, torpedoes, aviation motors, powder, tanks,machine gun parts, trucks, etc. Besides, Catalonia takes care of about 350,000 refugees from otherparts of Spain, not to mention the immense supplies sent to the front. Catalonians are directly incharge of a front of almost 250 miles covered by 60,000 men and have supplied 25,000 more soldiersto Madrid. It is because of these achievements that the Anarcho-Syndicalists feel proud of their workand believe they can reconstruct Spain without any further need of capitalists. The existent dual power in which the syndicalist control the factories but not the state, a situationbrought on in part by the Syndicalist refusal to take over political power, has brought on furtherconflict. The Syndicalists run each industry separately without sufficient regard for coordination andthus considerable chaos is created, as for example, in the textile industry in Catalonia. Under suchcircumstances no real planning, no real centralized control, is possible. The opportunists in control ofthe State use this defect to try to take the factories out of the hands of the unions, and, with the slogansof municipalization and nationalization of industry, to put the plants in the hands of the government.Feeling the State not their own, the workers resist its encroachment, thus continuing the disorganizedsituation and virtually strengthening the forces opposed to them. The military situation presents a similar confused aspect. By the time of the May Days the civil warhad gone on for ten whole months with a cost of at least 500,000 lives. Malaga had fallen owing totreachery of the officers and despite the most heroic efforts of the masses, the People's FrontGovernment had not stopped the menace to Bilbao which was in deadly peril, nor had it been able toremove the threat to Mardid. What was worse, the Loyalists seemed absolutely incapable of taking theoffensive although by now the Spanish people knew that they had the stronger force and had organized

a real army capable of defeating Franco. On the Aragon front, nearest to Catalonia and dominated byAnarcho-Syndicalist-P.O.U.M. troops, a stalemate had developed because all the supplies collected bythe Minister of War had been shipped to other fronts where the Communists-Socialists controlled. At first the revolutionary elements had been very willing to ship all arms to the most active front. Butwhen the new Valencia government began to remove the workers from posts of leadership in the armyand turn over the control to the professional officers, many of them former friends of Franco, and todissolve the workers' committees in the army and navy, when the C.N.T.-F.A.I.-P.O.U.M. sawdissolved their own police force, the Patrol Controls, which had been created and legalized during theJuly days, and in their stead professional police, well armed and disciplined kept in the rear by thetens of thousands instead of being sent to the front, then the workers began to believe that this slogan"All Arms to the Front" was not very honestly meant and refused to disarm while other elements whothey considered their class enemies were arming in the rear. That this fear was not unreal was demonstrated by the May Days themselves. We give a freetranslation of the reported as to the rest of Catalonia outside of Barcelona as given in the democraticpaper La Depeche de Toulouse (France): "The dissolution of the 'wild' groups is proceeding especiallyat Tarragona. This region fell into the hands of armed bands controlling cannon, machine guns, riflesand bombs. It found serious resistance at Tortosa and Gandesa after Valencia and Castillon forcesarrived. At Tarragona public forces got one tank, 1,700 rifles, some thousands of bombs frominsurgents. The next day they went after Reus and got eight tons of materials of which 6,000 bombswere included. With these arms they armed the carbineros of the province of Tarragona, the NationalGuard, the aviation forces and a cavalry regiment at Reus." Thus the existence of the dual power, on the one hand, thwarts the need for the centralization of thearmed forces, since the Syndicalists do not fight to control the State which constitutes that instrumentwhich alone can form an army powerful enough to defeat Franco and to guarantee the victory of theRevolution. On the other hand, the Socialist-Stalinist-Republican forces attempting to centralize thearmy are not sympathetic to the revolutionary victory of the workers. The Syndicalists want workers'rule without dictatorship; the others want dictatorship without workers' rule. The P.O.U.M. is the onlyorganization in Spain which wants the dictatorship of the proletariat at the present time. Naturally the P.O.U.M. is the first to receive the hard blows designed to prevent the realization of theproletarian rule.Concurrently, because they would not go the limit but stopped halfway at a dualpower, the unions now find themselves being gradually ousted out of direct control of the governmentwhich they had thought was theirs. And the old regime was strengthened, the very regime which hasalready bred two reactionary revolts. As has happened many times in the past, the State forces, in order to maintain a "general" democracyand to prevent the dictatorship of the proletariat, have been compelled to act in a dictatorial mannerthemselves, actually violating their own laws. It has been mentioned in the reports concerning the barricades of May 3rd to May 7th in barcelonathat this was a violent attempt on the part of a minority to take power. According to my observationsof the events, the situation was quite the opposite, the policy of the P.O.U.M. and of the Anarcho-Syndicalists being exceedingly moderate. Let me take, for example, the actions of the P.O.U.M.during those days, Monday to Friday, the first week in May. At first all it did was to call for the resignation of Rodriguez Sala. It is true that on Tuesday it did callfor the creation of "Committees for the Defense of the Revolution", but on Thursday it was alreadycalling on the workers to return to work. At no time did it issue the call for the resignation of thecapitalist ministers in the government (a slogan which Lenin used in similar circumstances in 1917).At no time did it criticise the actions of the Anarcho-Syndicalists and their refusal to lead the massesof Workers into offensive action. The P.O.U.M. did not even call for the dissolution and disarmament

of the special State police and the reconstitution of the authority of the workers' Patrol Controls. One thousand P.O.U.M. soldiers that had marched from the front to Barcelona were instructed at thehalf way point to go back to the trenches. It is true that the workers could not have held the power, hadthey tried to seize it, in May, but it is also true that no real effort was made by P.O.U.M to capitalizethe situation so as to prepare for the seizure of power by the workers later on. Or let me take the role of the Anarcho-Syndicalists. It is clear that they could have taken the powerduring the May Days. So great was the support given them by the workers that the police and theP.S.U.C. forces were completely bottled up in small quarters and could not even hold the center of thecity. However, the C.N.T.-F.A.I. made no effort to raise positive demands even to improve theirposition. They voluntarily relinquished the Telephone Central. They refused to march on the center ofthe city, keeping the workers in the suburbs. When, as was reported to me by a high functionary, the government after hearing the cannon shot firedfrom Montjuic, telephoned Garcia Oliver that it was ready to yield the power to the opposition, Oliverdid not even report that matter to his committee. When the Libertarian Youth demanded that some ofthe arms be turned over to them, the older Anarchist group refused their request on the ground thatthey might push events too far. The C.N.T. F.A.I. rejected the demands of the P.O.U.M. for jointCommittees for the Defense of the Revolution and instead told the workers to go back to work and endthe fight. All during the time the government was firing on the C.N.T.-F.A.I. workers, their syndicalist ministersremained in the Catalonian and Valencian cabinets, thus, themselves sharing responsibility for theprovocative events! The C.N.T. expelled the Friends of Durutti from their ranks and reinforced theirappeals to give up the struggle when the workers refused to obey orders to take down the barricades.Sections of the Anarchists, under the inspiration of the Friends of Durutti, had also called for aworkers' rule and the end of the capitalist regime. Later on, when the Right Wing Socialist, Negrin,was to take office under the new government, the C.N.T. was to pass a motion declaring that it wouldsupport that government in its fight against Fascism and so legalized its own expulsion in the eyes ofthe masses. The fact of the matter is there is no Bolshevik organization as yet in Spain that can be compared withthe old Russian party under Lenin. In the May events the masses proved themselves far in advance ofall of their organizations. This is one of the greatest lessons to be learned and one of the most serioussigns of what the future holds in store for Spain. Contents

PERSPECTIVES OF THE SPANISH REVOLUTION By Albert Weisbord If the French Revolution of 1789 may be taken as a gauge, a nation of twenty-five million does notexhaust itself in civil war until about a million and a half combatants have perished in the struggle.Measured by this standard, the Spanish civil war may last another year. As the number of deathsmounts tragically and the cost to the nation rises to bankrupt heights, one must ask, "What is the fightreally about? Has all this blood been spilt to determine merely who shall manage the government ofSpain, or are there deeper issues?" Up to now the battle has been waged upon a political plane, within the channels of Fascism versusDemocracy. But the fact is that the rebellion of Sanjurjo and Franco was far more than a "palacerevolution" or a political upheaval, it was a genuine protest on the part of wealthy property elementsand high caste army officers to maintain their power and wealth. And the resistance which met therebellion of July 1936 did not come from the republican government - most of the members of the

Liberal Coalition were hardly to be seen at the time of the uprising - it came rather from the workersand impoverished peasants who seized whatever arms they could lay their hands on at the moment tohold back the enemy. In Catalonia, in Valencia, in the Biscay region and elsewhere in the industrial regions, the workerstook possession of factories and transport industries and talked about a social revolution, about acomplete defeat not only of the Fascists armies but of capitalism and all private ownership ofproperty. They formed Anti-Fascist Committees that began to look very much like Soviets to directthe struggle. All this activity was carried on independently of the republican government. Apparentlyclass lines were cutting through the "Loyalist" forces which were comprised of widely differentgroups, as indeed were the "Fascist" armies. The fact that people go on using the shibboleths of political revolution when it is a social revolutionthat is in the making, is a sign that a dual power exists within the ranks of the Loyalists and that therevolution has stopped but half-way, unable fully to articulate its real historic meaning. One side ofthis dual power, the revolutionary workers' side, aims at social revolution. The other, more moderateside, that of the Peoples' Front, wants to restore the status quo of before July 1936. It is doubtfulwhether the situation now prevailing can endure very long. How transitory is the present regime canbe seen from the fact that the Valencia government has steadily lost its mass base and today rests uponan administration of nine men, certainly a slim foundation upon which to build an enduring republic. Both the instability of the government and the class nature of the forces which divide it were glaringlyilluminated in the barricade fighting which broke out in Barcelona on May 3 and lasted to May 7. Itwas my good fortune to arrive at the very outset of the events and to witness unmistakabledemonstrations of the volcano that seethes under this People's Front. A street barricade, on both sidesof which rifles crack and machine guns rat-a-tat, cuts with amazing sharpness through the bewilderingbabble of parties and of political pass-words. There was no mistaking the fact that in the eyes of theworkers who manned the barricades, ready to give their lives if need be (and there were at leastfourteen hundred casualties), the issue was not at all between Democracy and Fascism, but betweencapitalism and workers' rule. They were on the streets to "defend the conquests of the revolution"which to them meant the right to own and control the economic functions of the nation. The Valenciagovernment, in their eyes, had already become a counter-revolutionary one, in essence no better thanFranco's rule. It is absolutely vital to grasp this underlying truth if we wish to thread the labyrinths of the Spanishscene with any certainty. That the upper classes understood the menace of the May Days can be seenin the fact that immediately thereafter there was widely discussed in all of the People's Front press thequestion of settling the war, of making an armistice with Franco. And although the papers at the sametime vigorously denied the possibility of this being done, yet so much smoke surely did not comewithout a flame and there is no doubt that powerful influences are at work in republican Spain toarrange some sort of agreement to terminate the war with Franco before the war with the peoplebecomes too sharp to be easily handled. The Loyalists government in the internal development of therevolution seems to stand between the workers and the forces included in the grouping termed"fascist." The fact is the May Days ended in a truce, not in a complete victory for the government. The workerswere well aware that they could have taken the power if the leaders of their organizations had sowished, and that the government existed therefore on their sufferance. Even the capture of theTelephone Building in Barcelona - the seizure of which by the Catalan police from the trade unionswho were administering it precipitated the fight - was not effected by the power of the assault guardsbut surrendered to them voluntarily. Furthermore, the government forces had not been able to hold thecenter of the city, no less advance on the suburbs, but were bottled up in the tiny quarters where they

had sought refuge, many of them not daring to step out of their houses. When the Anarchists seizedMontjuic, with its cannon frowning upon the Generality Building, it is reported that after the first shothad been fired, at once the government telephoned the Anarchist chiefs that it was ready to surrenderto the opposition. What respect can Anarchist workers have for such a government? In the course of the fighting tens of thousands of soldiers in the front line trenches were ready to comehome to fight what they considered their enemy in the rear, the Catalonian-Valencian government.And, on the other side, there is no doubt that all the troops available to the government would havebeen used to put down the new regime, had the workers actually taken power in Barcelona andCatalonia. The government, it is true, finally got the Telephone Building which it was after, but it was not able todisarm the masses in the rear. How many arms the Anarchists, the Syndicalists and the members ofthe Workers Party of Marxist Unification (P.O.U.M.) actually have, can only be guessed. One of theCommunist ministers of the government declared that the "seditious forces" had at least eightythousand rifles, three thousand machine guns, several hundreds of thousands of hand bombs and somemortars. And I myself, in visiting the big factory of Hispano-Suiza motors saw some huge tanks in thehands of the workers. That the unions meant business in taking over the factories is seen in the highbarricades constantly maintained by an armed guard outside each factory. Despite all efforts of thegovernment, the members of the workers' patrol controls have not been entirely disarmed but manystill retain their submachine guns taken in the July days. As for the interior of Catalonia outside of Barcelona, the state of affairs may be seen from the factthat, weeks after the end of the battle in the capital city, the fighting was still going on in the smallertowns and cities of the countryside where the Anarcho-Syndicalists and POUMites had, in manyplaces, taken entire control, only to be ordered by their central organizations finally to relinquish it. Inthe ensuing disarmament that was attempted by the government, it was reported that in one placealone, Tarragona, the public forces got one tank, seventeen hundred rifles and some thousands ofbombs, the characteristic weapon of the Spaniards. At Reus they obtained eight tons of materials inwhich were included six thousand bombs. The big problem before the Loyalist government is the disarmament of the working class and all otherarmed forces not under direct control, and the ousting of the workers from possession of the factories.But should either of these tasks be attempted it marks the beginning of a new civil war in the rear. Thegovernment will not be able to conduct a double war, at the front against Franco and in the rear againstthe revolutionary sections of the working class. It will have to choose one or the other, or one after theother. After all, both Franco's rebellion and the May Days barricade fighting in Barcelona were but theculmination of a process of many years standing beginning with the events that led to the formation ofthe Republic in 1931. If we plot a graph of the revolutionary movement since that time, we shall haveto conclude that despite great zigzags, on the whole the curve has been steadily upward, each newspurt of the revolutionary curve having followed some attempt on the part of the forces of the oldmonarchic regime to go too far. The democratic republic, born in 1931, gave birth to two militaryoutbursts, led by Sanjurjo and Franco, but in each case these counter-revolutionary attempts werefollowed by still further revolutionary advances so that, in the name of the defence of the republic, thelower classes of workers and peasants have each time moved closer to the seizure of power. At this point in the game the Valencia regime can not cease activities against Franco. Itself more orless a prisoner of the workers constituting the parties that dominate the government, the cabinet mustcontinue to fight defensively against the fascist enemy. It must not allow the defeats at Irun, atToledo, at Malaga, at San Sebastian and at Bilbao, in every case due rather to the treachery of theLoyalist officers than to the superiority of the enemy, to be followed by a defeat at Madrid.

Should Madrid fall the government would lose so much prestige that it would not be able to maintainitself. And just as in the French Revolution when the foreign invaders were at the gates of Paris thepeople moved to the most extreme Left position possible in those days; and just as in the time of theParis Commune of 1871 it was the defeat of the government of Napoleon III on the battlefield and inthe siege of Paris that led to the proletarian outburst, so it may well be that the loss of Madrid wouldentirely disillusion the masses about the efficacy of the People's Front government in Valencia andimpel them to take matters into their own hands. The government, therefore, must strive not to bedefeated in Madrid, not because Franco would thereby win the country, but because the issue betweenFascism and outright Communism would then have to be fought out in its utmost clarity and allmiddle-of-the-road elements would have to disappear. Internationally, the fall of the Valencia government and the rise of civil war in the rear with theestablishment of a workers' rule would at once lead to united intervention and foreign war. The answerto this could only be the attempt to extend the revolution beyond the borders of Spain into Portugal,France and Western Europe. The struggle between Communism and Fascism would then have to takeon a world wide scope and even draw in the Soviet Union. But the far more likely probability is that Madrid will be adequately defended. There is no doubt thatthe Spanish people's army is now more formidable than the army of Franco. The soldiers have becomeseasoned and trained. They have the highest moral. They are fighting for their homes and what theybelieve to be progress. Their enemy combines a hated foreign invader and the cohorts of minoritygroups whose foot has been traditionally on the necks of the people. The Loyalist Army is far superiorin numbers and has much better economic organization behind it. The case parallels, in a way, thesituation in the American Civil War where the South was able to strike the first hard blows and in thebeginning appeared to be winning the struggle, only to have to yield to the superior economic mightand man power of the North standing for a more modern and better mode of production. Theindications are that Franco has spent his main strength and has definitely reached his peak beyondwhich he cannot go without immense new aid from Germany and Italy. But the fact that will have to be recognized sooner or later, is that the conservative sections ofpoliticians and army officers on the side of the Valencia government do not want to beat Franco toobadly or completely destroy his forces. Should the defenders of the old regime be completely wipedout, they fear they will not be able to control the rear. Such a situation is not entirely new. It finds itsprototype as far back as the days of the English Civil Wars of 1642-1646 and 1648-1649 when theconservative element in England had been fearful that the civil war would go too far in upsetting theproperty structure. At first the army of the Parliament of England had been led by several big Lords,but after the defeat of the King at Marston Moor these officers were mortally afraid not of beingdefeated but of beating the king too much. They therefore sabotaged the further conduct of the war andCromwell was forced to bring charges against the Earl of Manchester and others and to push forwardhis own "Model Army." These considerations furnish the basic reason for the fact that the government forces, on the whole,have always limited themselves to the defensive, even when these tactics were suicidal, and for thefurther fact that although the Loyalist government has lost so many positions owing to the treachery ofthe officers, it still continues to place the highest trust in the renewed militarization of the oldworkers' militia under their supreme command. Here, too, is the reason why the revolutionary troopson the Aragon front have found themselves without cartridges, without bayonets, without cannon,without airplanes or tanks and are periodically re©organized by a general staff which has not theslightest intention to arm these men even though their advance might mean the fall of the importantcities of Huesca and Zaragossa and the cutting of the long lines of the Fascists into fragments. The idea, then, is to defeat Franco but not too badly, to force the enemy to submit but later to

incorporate its ranks into the republic again, so that the combined forces may put down the threat ofsocial revolution. And this, too, is the card that England and France, and with them Soviet Russia,seems to be playing. It is no accident that the French Ambassador is to be found near Hendaye and not near Valencia andthat Britain has kept so many key men on the Franco side of Spain. They are working overtime tocounteract the influence of Hitler and Mussolini and to effect a compromise between the two sides ofthe struggle. For this it is necessary to have elements in both camps in charge who are not extremists. In the government of Valencia a Liberal-Right Socialist-Stalinist coalition can be set up willing tolisten to reason and prepared, before it deals decisively with Franco, to deal decisively with theproletariat of Catalonia, the most important industrial region of Spain. It means, too, that on the sideof Franco, not the Falagists, inspired by the foreign models of Germany and Italy, must control butthose elements, the liberal Monarchists and the old Lerroux type of compromisers who were formerlyfriendly to England, be put in charge. The recent trial and expulsion from the country of ManuelHedilla, leader of the Falangist appears to indicate that Franco is taking this drift toward moderationseriously, is bargaining with England and is trying to come to some terms. As long ago as May 27th,the well informed paper, La Depeche de Toulouse, could predict that the civil war in Spain wasapproaching its end and that both sides would finally get together in some sort of compromise. What sort of compromise can possibly be effected? It can only be on the condition that the situationbefore 1936 be restored and that private capitalism be re-established. That is to say that the massesabandon the property they had seized. But this can be done only after the city workers are provokedinto some sort of struggle and are beaten. And this is the most probable perspective because theworking class has not been able to form organizations strong enough to resist the coming attacksagainst it. The recent mass executions in the Soviet Union have provided the sinister spectacle of a revolution,like some female spider, devouring the very elements which had impregnated it. As applied to Spain,this same principle holds good in another sense, namely, that in the course of the revolution all theparties have been forced to contradict their programs and advocate the very opposite. Catholics fightside by side with Moors whom their ancestors drove out of the country. Monarchists are the campmates of Falangists who insist that never shall the monarchy return to Spain. And, under othercircumstances, it will be the monarchical elements friendly to England that will break from theFalganists friendly to Germany and Italy, if need be to effect a compromise on terms under which theycan keep some of their influence and wealth. But if on the other side of the propertied classes there has been marvelous flexibility both underFranco and under the Loyalist regime, on the side of the workers' leaders has been an utterabandonment of principle. The Socialist Party which has always preached the necessity of democraticmanagement of the government has consistently refused to determine democratically the relation offorces between itself and the Anarcho-Syndicalists. The Communist Party, formerly stern advocate ofinsurrection and of the dictatorship of the proletariat through Soviets, now does its best to declare thatit does not fight for Socialism but for capitalist democracy and has consistently initiatedgovernmental measures to suppress the working men in the cities of Catalonia and elsewhere. Anarchists, the very essence of whose program has been intransigent hostility to every sort of Stateregardless of its character, have been members of the State itself and ministers in the government.Syndicalists who have reared barricaded in opposition to it; and while staying in the government, bothAnarchist and Syndicalist ministers urged their adherents not to try to conquer the State but to ignoreit and to construct a new social order regardless of it. And even the Workers Party of Marxist Unification, known as the P.O.U.M., which boasts of being thereal heir to the robe of Lenin in Spain, entered the government established in July with statements

implying that this was a workers government and that no further revolution was necessary for theworkers to take power. Even this party kept one of its members as head of the ministry governing thetextile industry of Catalonia during the bloody May Days when the government was hunting down andprosecuting all the P.O.U.M. members it could find. At this time, too, the P.O.U.M. made no earnesteffort to take the initiative and to lead an offensive of the workers that might have resulted in the fallof the capitalist section of the government and the inauguration of a trade union government thatwould have paved the way for Soviets. A party that believed in workers' initiative, the P.O.U.M. had not even formed soldiers' committees inthe brigades under its direct command. A party claiming to wish to overthrow imperialism, it made noreal effort to raise the slogan for the independence of Morocco so as to induce a revolt in theMoroccan troops supporting Franco. A party that declares war on the Socialists and Communists alikeand calls for a new Communist International, it yet remains inside the socialistic International LondonBureau and allows the Bureau to govern its international relations. In a sense this very confusion in the ranks of the revolutionary labor movement may be a sign of itssalvation. It means, at least, that under the blows of the struggle everything is in flux and that properchanges in practice are possible. A large section of the Socialists may yet definitely advocate directaction at the same time as the overwhelming majority of the Syndicalists champion the cause of theseizure of State power and the establishment of a workers' State. Already a very influential section ofthe Anarchists, the Friends of Durruti, have come out for the closest collaboration with the P.O.U.M.which, in turn, as it becomes further persecuted and driven underground, might succeed inBolshevizing itself and eliminating the discrepancies between its theories and its practices. In this respect the P.O.U.M. has played a very clever move in calling for the setting up of a tradeunion government composed solely of representatives of the General Labor Union (U.G.T.),socialistically controlled, and the National Confederation of Labor (C.N.T.) led by syndicalists. Thelead given by the P.O.U.M. has been seconded by considerable numbers of workers in both unioncenters and the C.N.T. has officially endorsed the move. The fusion of the C.N.T. and sections of theU.G.T., especially those under the influence of Caballero and his Left Socialists, is becoming evenmore realizable. Should such a fusion take place, it would signify that Spain is well on the road to theestablishment of dictatorship of the proletariat. But for all this, time is evidently needed. Whether they will be able to win this time is problematical.At any rate, at the present moment, the workers' organizations seem to be unprepared to solve thetremendous problems before them. The odds appear to be against them and just as Franco will not beable to take the power, so it may be the proletariat also will not be able to succeed completely for thetime being. And then what? The defeat of the workers in pitched battle, after they have been induced to engage infutile struggle, their disarmament and ousting from the industries of the country, the reconstitution ofa strong military machine to which all is subordinate, all this is probable, and if this happens the basiswill be laid for the driving out of the temporizers from the government, and, whether openly orcovertly, through the use of the plebiscite or other democratic trappings, for the establishment of adictatorial regime that will bring order of one sort or another into the Spanish scene. Such a prospect can be realized in Spain with one important proviso, namely, that the internationalsituation remains as it is. But if world war breaks out quite different complications will ensue. Contents

COLLECTIVIZATION IN CATALONIA By Albert Weisbord

A visit to the collectivized factories in Barcelona carries one back to the early days of the RussianRevolution. There is the same thrill of new things being born, of a society in travail remaking itselfbefore one's eyes. There is the same enthusiasm of the workers who have now taken the reins ofdirection of production into their own hands. And yet the Spanish experiment is in some ways unique.It is an attempt of the Spanish people to reconstruct their economy while under immediate fire fromFascism. On the other hand while in Russia it was the Marxian Communists who were at the helm ofthe revolution, in Catalonia it is the Syndicalists who are the preponderant force in attempting torealize the workers' dreams of a new social order to replace capitalism. The generic term collectivization employed in Spain is a misnomer, since it has been used also todescribe the operations of a Fascist regime taking over private industry on behalf of the State. A moreexact term would be Syndicalization, indicating the taking over and running of the industrialenterprises by the unions or syndicates of workers. So far as the Anarcho-Syndicalists are concerned,syndicalization is as far from Fascist collectivization, on the one side, as it is from Sovietcollectivization on the other. Collectivization in Catalonia started as the answer of the workers to the Fascist revolt of July, 1936.Having disarmed the twelve thousand soldiers of Franco in the barracks of Barcelona, the workersfound themselves involved in a war situation throughout Spain, so that the most pressing task was tomanufacture all the arms and supplies needed by the front as soon as possible. Many of the industrialenterprises had been closed by the flight of the employers and administrators. In the crisis thatfollowed the rebellion it seemed as though the regular State had been honeycombed with agents ofreaction and was completely paralyzed. At this juncture, the trade unions, which had been severely repressed in the days of reaction underLerroux, from 1934 to 1936, found themselves with tremendous new forces at their disposal. Theunionized workers began to possess themselves of the factories and to operate them. We can say herethat only such as step enabled the Spanish Republic to survive and to supply its army with thenecessary material for the struggle. in October, 1936, the Government of Catalonia, slowly reviving asa separate institution but now dominated by workers' organizations, with the non-working classelements in the State trying hard to get back into favor with the people again, legalized the de factoseizure of the shops and factories by its famous Decree of Collectivization. This decree classified industrial enterprises into two categories: those which were to remaincollectivized in which the responsibility for the administration and direction of the plants pertained tothe workers represented by an Enterprise Committee: and those which were to remain privateconcerns, the direction of which was to be left to the owner or administrator operating under workers'control. All enterprises employed over one hundred workers and those whose owners were Fascistswere collectivized, as well as certain other plants of an exceptional character even though having lessthan one hundred employed therein. The new enterprises were to take on all the assets and liabilities of the old. The former owners ordirectors were to kept in place in administrative or technical posts where their collaboration wasneeded. The direction would be under a Council of the Enterprise elected by a general assembly of theworkers and answerable for all their acts both to the workers of the plant and to a General Council ofthe Industry. In each collectivized enterprise there was to be an inspector named by the government inagreement with the workers there. In the council of the Enterprise the various central trade unionbodies, C.N.T. and U.G.T., were to be proportionally represented. This Council was to name a directorfor the plant. The General Council of the Industry, presided over by a member of the Economic Council ofCatalonia, was to be composed of four representatives of the Councils of the Enterprises, eightrepresentatives of the trade union centers (C.N.T. and U.G.T.) and four technicians. The functions of

this General Council were to regulate the total production of the industry in question, to unify saleprices, to study the consumption of the different wares, to increase or diminish the number of factoriesas necessary, to administer the purchase of raw materials, to create sales centers, to carry on creditoperations, and so forth. Above the General Council of the Industry was the Economic Council ofCatalonia. The decree of October 24th, 1936, also provided for those enterprises still in private hands. Therecommittees of control were to be formed by the workers, employees and technicians in each concern.These committees of control had to watch the conditions of work and rigorously to check all incomeand outgo. They were to work in close contact with the owners so that the processes of productionmight be perfected and a steady stream of goods insured. On the questions of whether property taken from former employers was to be compensated for orconfiscated outright, or whether the legal title of the property actually belonged to the workers, thedecree is not very clear. There is a provision that a careful accounting be made of the business of eachenterprise and that under some circumstances certain former owners might be paid back the value ofthe capital taken from them. To get the facts as to how Spanish collectivization is actually working out, I spent considerable timeinterviewing the local officials of the chief trade unions in Barcelona, these were all affiliated to thenational Confederation of Labor, the C.N.T. and visiting the important plants of the region. Since thetransport union, claiming one hundred thousand members, was one of the most important, Iconcentrated on an investigation of the enterprises under its jurisdiction, particularly the tramways,the autobusses and the taxicabs. Everywhere the officials were eager to give me all the data in themost helpful manner, to conduct me to the workshops and to allow me to speak to all the men Iwished. My first visit was to the tramway section of the transport industry in Barcelona. Before July, 1936, thewages for workers there averaged 260 pesetas per month, 270 pesetas for the skilled, the workersbeing divided into sixteen arbitrary categories. Technicians obtained 800 to 1,000 pesetas. (The pesetais now stabilized at 12 to the dollar in Spain, although in France one may get 40). The company itselfwas in the hands of first-class plunderers. The two chief heads drew 1,000 pesetas a day for each of thethree divisions of the company (subway, tramway and autobus) and besides drew 30% of all themoney taken in. Nine members of the Board of Directors got 6,000 pesetas a month for attending onemeeting. In 1929 the bank of Catalonia bought over the tramway division from its former Belgianowners for 35 million pesetas; in 1936 it was capitalized at 180 million. Now all this capital has beenseized, the exploiters have precipitously fled the country and the workers are in control. The newconcern still pays municipal taxes. Under private hands the company used to pay only 700,000 pesetasin taxes; the collective has voluntarily raised its quota to 1,500,000. A similar story can be told, by the way, concerning the subway of Barcelona. Before the workers tookit over the annual deficit was 260,000 pesetas. Now, not only has the entire deficit been rubbed out but600,000 pesetas profit in ten months has been recorded, in spite of the fact that many more workmenare employed, and over two million pesetas have been spent for new cars in the abnormal conditionsof war and revolution. Once the workers took over the tramway business, the union raised the pay of the employees to 400. p.a month for unskilled, 450 p. for skilled and office workers, 500p.-600p. for technicians and 1,200p.for the two engineers. The work-week became one of eight hours daily, six days a week. Six hundredmore workers are employed now than before July. Of the 3,600 members in the union, 432 are retiredworkers drawing pensions of 270 p. a month. Those permanently sick draw 250 p. monthly, thosetemporarily ill get full pay. About 250-300 members are at the front and their jobs are being saved forthem by others who do their work; many of the men refuse their one day off during the week so as to

release others for the fight. All the union members were of the opinion that the men were working as well if not better than whenthe enterprise was capitalistically controlled. In fact, the union is getting 30% more income out of thebusiness than the private owners did in the old days, although the fares, in some cases, have beenreduced and free transportation is given to 80,000 children. I asked the workers, since they were toiling harder than before, just what did they consider were thebenefits of Trade Union collectivization. The material benefits, they informed me, were not verygreat. They obtained work clothes, one summer and two winter uniforms each, worth 64 p. and 170 p.respectively, as did the office workers. They got two weeks vacation with pay and full salary whensick, but on the whole, since the cost of living had gone so high, their material conditions were notbetter. But what was decisive to them were the moral questions involved. They were now masters oftheir own destiny, they proudly declared, they controlled their own means of production, they had afuture ahead of them. This was the attainment for which they were ready to give their lives. The union men in Barcelona gleefully contrasted their syndicate with that of the tramway men inMadrid controlled by the General Labor Union (U.G.T.) of the Socialist-Stalinists. In Barcelona, theysaid, all the members of the regional and national committees are working men who must be takenfrom their jobs to become officers of the union. They draw the pay only of the average worker, as dothose Syndicalists who are ministers in government. The dues of the members are 1 1/2 pesetas amonth. The Madrid union, on the other hand, the men in Barcelona affirmed, has not called a single meetingfrom July, 1936, to May (1937). The bureaucracy has been increased and all the old officials of thecompany have been kept on with the old pay. The National Committee of the U.G.T. has full powerand works entirely from above, the executive nominating the men for the chief positions. However, Igot the distinct impression that matters were not so much different with the C.N.T. in some respects,since the officials admitted that at the last C.N.T. Congress "elastic powers for emergencies" had beengiven to the National Executive, powers which that small body had used to call off the last generalstrike of the workers on May 3rd to May 7th without the consent of the men themselves. The situation in the autobus division of the transport workers was quite in line with that in thetramways. Before the July upheaval the wages had been 12 1/2 p. a day for the driver, 10 1/2 p. for theconductor, 8 1/2 p. for the apprentice in the plant, and 13 1/2 p. for the technician. Now the pay was15, 14, 13 1/2 and 15 pesetas respectively, and the men were paid for seven days although they workedonly six. In the plant manufacturing and repairing autobusses which used to employ 800 men but were now1,400 were working in three shifts, I mingled among the workers to get their reactions directly. Therewas Juan M., a stocky man of about fourty who was working a a grinding machine near the door. Hewas glad to answer all questions. What changes had collectivization made? Well, today he workedwith more pleasure that hitherto, and produced a little more. He had obtained a 35% increase in wagesalthough it was true that the cost of living had gone up more than 50% recently. The men had askedfor a raise but the union had refused to grant it. His friend, Fernando B., estimated that they producedat least 15% more than before and could have done much better if they had had the supplies. The next person I approached - he was working at a lathe told me he was an Anarchist long in themovement. "The wages are not enough," was his opinion. "We used to have the boss, now it is theunion." He seemed to think that the syndicates were taking the position that the exploiter used tooccupy. Emphatically he underlined the point that many bureaucrats were in the union who didnothing for the workers. Yes, the men worked harder, but the organization of the work was not so goodbecause of the poor leadership. This man's experience with syndicalization was making him moreconfirmed than ever in his Anarchists opposition to union organization.

The autobus plant was remarkable in the improvements in production that the workers had made ontheir own initiative. Many of the auto parts in the past had had to be imported, now they were all madeon the premises, including an entirely new diesel engine of ninety horsepower. Considerable newmachinery also had been bought and separate electronic motors placed on each machine. Two newbusses were being built each week, busses which were the result of collective suggestions of the men. Similar technological improvements had been made by the workmen in the taxi plant. They had takenover a building of the old fair grounds and had installed modern machinery worth 3 1/2 millionpesetas for the making of spare parts alone. The results of their efforts to obtain self-sufficiency wereproudly shown me by the men. They insisted that much of the stuff was now being made better andcheaper than the parts which they had previously been forced to import. They handed me a crank casewhich, they said, used to cost 600 pesetas, when all spare parts had to be imported; now they weremaking better crank cases costing only 210 pesetas. New motors were being placed in cars in twohours, whereas hitherto the car was wont to be tied up for a week. Several important inventions had been developed by the workmen. For example, in cleaning cars theplant used to consume 200 litres of gasoline a day; now it used less than 5 litres, thanks to a newcleaning device put into operation. Prior to this apparatus, it used to take a whole day to clean a motor,now one half an hour was enough. Again, through another invention, the time it took to limber up newmotors was reduced from two days for each motor to two hours for twelve motors. None of theseinventors have been specially rewarded, nor did they expect any rewards. They modestly told me theywere glad to donate it for the "cause." The story of the taximen is an inspiring one. Before the July days, the men worked on a 25%commission basis. Over 2,650 cabs were put into the streets making very fierce the competitionamong the drivers, the average income being about 70 p. per week for a twelve hour shift each day ornight. The men were fired if they did not bring in a certain income. Now only 700 taxis are put into thefield under a system whereby no man is discharged but each works about 24 hours a week for 90 p.soon to be raised to 100 p. The union, to meet the rising cost of living, is also initiating a system ofpurchasing food for its members and selling it at cost (the economato system). The taxi union is one of the most militant in Barcelona. Before the July days it had to go undergroundand its membership fell drastically. Now it has 17,000 members in Catalonia, 4,300 of them inBarcelona. When, during the July revolt, for six or seven weeks no taxis ran in the city in order toparalyze the activities of the Fascist, the trade union decided to pay the men the wages lost, amountingto 6 million pesetas. This money was taken from the treasury of the Generality. In this union widowsof workers who have been killed from any cause receive 80 pesetas a week for the rest of their lives! Collectivization in Catalonia has created certain contradictions which must be solved if theRevolution is not to be wrecked by this experiment. In the first place the Syndicalists do not conceiveof this collectivization, in opposition to others in Leftist Spain who tolerate it for the time being, assome transition point necessitated both by the flight of the employers and the duty of spurring warproduction. Since the program of Syndicalists is hostile to all States, even a Workers' State, they areopposed to all State ownership and operation of industries, on the one hand, and to the workerspossessing the State, on the other. The workers must own and operate the industries directly throughtheir own unions. But since it is the State that conducts the war against Fascism and must look after a multitude ofeconomic duties connected with that struggle, the Syndicalists are forced to support the State whilemaking no effort to take it over. Thus, as we have seen for example, the tramway union has voluntarilydoubled its taxes and turned over 1,500,000 pesetas annually to elements in the government ofBarcelona who can use that money for the equipment of the very guards who may be called on to takethe factories away from the workers, as they did the Telephone Central on May 3rd.

Since it is the State that alone can carry on the most concentrated struggle against Fascism, the Statecan then put in its claims for the co-ordination of industry not only for the war but for the interests ofsociety generally. And thus there has arisen a pressing demand for the municipalization andnationalization of industry. This is a demand that the Syndicalists find increasingly difficult to rejectsince there is no question about the fact that the independent control of the industries by the unions,now divided into two rival centers, has not led to the most efficient co-ordination of forces, nor to anydegree of adequate national planning at a time when planning economy is vital to the conduct of thewar. This was dolefully illustrated in the textile industry of Catalonia where the factory committeesscandalously competed with each other in the open markets, to the great glee of the speculators, andused up the capital at hand without regard to the purchase of raw materials for the continuation ofproduction. The problem of nationalization versus syndicalization can also be put as a problem of workers versuspeasants. Spain is predominantly a peasant country. The factories must consider the needs, the incomeand the welfare of the peasantry as well as those of the proletariat. It was for this reason that in 1921Lenin fought the program of the "Workers Opposition" that declared that the unions and not theSoviets in Russia should run the factories. Had the unions operated the factories there would havebeen great danger of an immediate rupture of the alliance between the workers and peasants cementedin the Soviets which bodies would have then been shorn of much of their power. Giving power to the Soviets in a peasant country like Russia, the Spanish Syndicalists reply, hasactually destroyed the trade union movement and has led to the bureaucratic system responsible for somuch of Russia's ills today. It is, indeed, a moot question whether the program of the "WorkersOpposition" would not be more correct in a Western industrial country and it is a further questionwhether Spain does not fit in rather with such Western countries where the peasants follow the lead ofthe unions than with a country such as Russia. Under collectivization as practiced in Spain, each union owns the capital in its particular industry.This means that the barbers union has felt that it was entitled to dispose of the funds in its hands in itsown way. Hence some unions were able to pay higher wages and give better benefits than others. Hereis resurrected the basis for new rivalries and differences among workmen. Advanced workers find itdifficult to justify this disparity in wealth among the syndicates and thus, only last March, the C.N.T.Congress founded local, regional and national economic committees which collect all the excessprofits made by each collectivized industry. Henceforth, no union can do what it wants with itsproperty but must first submit all such questions to the general council of the confederation. In a growing spirit of solidarity, all the syndicates in Barcelona are contributing to a 5 million pesetafund for helping agricultural collectives. The transport union, to cite another example, has the duty oflooking after the unemployed dockers thrown out of work by the Fascist-Democratic-Soviet blockadearound Spain. These dockers are drawing full pay while unemployed and in return are used by othersections of the transport union whenever needed. Only now are the unions beginning to talk of a basic minimum family wage, a wage which all workersare to get on the basis of the needs of their family, regardless of what kind of work they do. This, inturn, implies a new theory that the unions must pool all resources and that each union works for all thepeople and not for itself. But if the union works for the whole nation, it is hard for it to persist indenying that nation a voice in the management of the factories for the welfare of all. Because it ignores the general community and the State, the union has also ignored the problems ofconsumption, especially the question of the rising cost of living and the speculation prevalent in thecities. With all the vaunted workers control and collectivization the standard of the proletariat isactually no better, if not considerably worse, than before. Prices of wheat have risen from 26 p., June,1936, for a sack of 60 kilos, to 108 p. in May; flour has gone from 44 p. per sack of 100 kilos to 126

pesetas. So long as syndicalization makes no effort to control the State, it can not effectively controlforeign and domestic prices nor eradicate speculation. Syndicalization, too, has ignored the problem of unemployment. The unions take care of their ownmembers, but are slow to understand the needs of the youth coming of working age who must find acreative place in society. Now this youth is at the front, but obviously this is no permanent solution. Viewpoints on the question of syndicalization differ among the leading proletarian bodies. TheAnarcho-Syndicalists believe that the unions must own as well as possess the enterprises and that noState is necessary for general control even temporarily. Then there is the position of the Socialists andStalinists who advocate the municipalization or nationalization of all industries even though the Stateis not yet a Workers State building Socialism. Connected with this viewpoint is that of the bourgeoisRepublican parties, the Izquerda and Esquerra and others who believe that collectivization isnecessary as a temporary measure to defeat Fascism, but that Spain must return to a modernized formof capitalism and that municipalization or nationalization as a form of State capitalism is proper as atransition point to turning back the factories, wherever possible, to their private owners. Finally, there is the position of the Workers Party of Marxist Unification (P.O.U.M.) that there shouldbe formed a workers' and peasants' government as in Russia which, through revolutionary "Juntas"(Soviets), should take over all the industries under the leadership of the proletariat. As a transition tothis step the P.O.U.M. has called for a Trade Union Government, C.N.T.-U.G.T., in Spain and inCatalonia. Certainly, if the unions took over the state then the difference between syndicalization andnationalization would be greatly reduced. Furthermore, as the unions executed the serious task ofconducting the war and running the entire nation they would have to be transformed into politicalbodies similar to soviets or factory councils. This would eliminate the differences betweensyndicalization and sovietization. Thus a trade union regime in Spain would be a form of governmentnever tried hitherto and one pregnant with great possibilities. Contents

THE FIGHT WITHIN THE SPANISH LEFT By Albert Weisbord The civil war in Spain has gone now for over a year. Its protracted character is due, on the one hand, tothe international interference which has isolated the Spanish Republic and surrounded it with aFascist-Democratic-Soviet blockade. Franco's forces have been aided by German, Italian andPortuguese arms, as well. On the other hand, the war is protracted due to the serious differences whichhave developed on each side preventing completely unified action. On the side of Franco there are at least three principal divisions among his cohorts. There are themonarchists, divided themselves into two sections, the Bourbonists and the Carlists. There is the oldLerroux group which has one wing that favors a constitutional monarchy and another that wouldtolerate a conservative republic. Then there are the Falangists or Fascists proper who are supporteddirectly by German and Italian troops. The monarchists represent the interests of the old agrarian grandis whose natural archtype was theking. The struggle between the two monarchical sections is primarily a dynastic one, as it was betweenthe house of Bourbon and the House of Orleans in France. As with the Orleanists, the Carlists in Spainhad always posed as being more socially minded, more interested in social reform than the die©hardBourbons and thus, one may say, they pose as the representatives of a more modern system of societycatering to classes more recently arrived in influence in Spain. The Lerroux group represents rather the city capitalist interests who were dominant in the later years

of the King and in the early days of the Republic. They want to see a restricted parliament in which theolder financial interests would have the definite sway and would push aside the hindering hand of theagrarian chiefs and the Catholic Church and allow free play to the capitalist exploitation of thecountry. It was the Lerroux group that was responsible for the period of reaction which led to theAsturias revolt in 1934 and the repressive measures thereafter. It, more than any other factor, perhaps,precipitated the great swing of the country to the Left in the elections of February 1936 which in turnled to the Franco rebellion. The Falangists are of an entirely different sort. In contradiction to the other groups which favorEngland and France, they are oriented toward Germany and Italy in their foreign policy and towardheavy industry within the country. They are not for the return of old Spain, not necessarily even forthe monarchy, although they tend to take Mussolini's stand on this rather than Hitler's, that is, totolerate and use the monarchy as the tool of centralizing and concentrating capital. The Falangistswant the modernization of Spain and believe that not the workers through Soviets can accomplish thisbut only heavy industrial capital regimenting and disciplining the nation. The struggle between the Falangists and the monarchists recently has become so bitter that Franco wasforced to take action, having discovered a plot against himself, and to place on trial the leader of theorganization, Manuel Hedilla, for sedition. The outcome of the trial was that Manuel Hedilla has beenexiled from the country and has gone to Germany to intrigue further in the interests of theNazification of Spain. But if the Spanish Right is so divided as to threaten the unity of command at critical moments, whatshall we say of the Spanish Left covered over by the term "Loyalist"? The Spanish Left is divided intoat least the following sections: The Republican Union with its allies the Izquierda and the Esquerra,the Socialists and their trade union body, the General Labor Union (U.G.T.), the official Communistsand their special branch in Catalonia, the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (P.S.U.C.), theSyndicalists with their powerful trade union center, the National Confederation of Labor (C.N.T.), theAnarchists in their Iberian Federation of Anarchists (F.A.I.) affiliated to the InternationalWorkingmen's Association (A.I.T.), and finally, the Workers Party of Marxist Unification (P.O.U.M.)besides the special interests that are subserved by the Basque Party, the Estat Catala and similarpolitical organisms locally powerful and sometimes even decisive. The barricade fighting of May 3rd to May 7th in Barcelona showed clearly that the unity of theseforces on the Left was coming to an end and that sooner or later open civil war would break outamongst them. In those days, on one side there were ranged up the Anarchists, the Syndicalists, andthe P.O.U.M. in Catalonia, and, on the other side, all the rest of the organizations aforementionedwhich were present and active there. To the outside observer the fight seemed to be utterlyunreasonable since the divisions within the country meant that the progressive forces would not beable to defeat the reactionary ones and indeed might give their common enemy the victory. But anentire country is not made up of fools and criminals. It is necessary to study the various componentparts of the Loyalist regime to see whether they can actually work together or not and why the strugglehas become so sharp within their ranks. The divergences among the Left are sharper than among the Right for the simple reason that whereasthe struggle within the Right is a struggle of various sections of the propertied classes, the strugglewithin the Left is truly a class struggle, the various groups representing different classes, big capital,small capital, petty ownership and the proletariat. To the extreme Right of the Loyalist forces is the Republican Union made up of capitalist elementswho could not go over to the side of Franco for various reasons. In some cases their interests werelocked in regions controlled by the workers and they were compelled to stand by their property and toguard it was long as possible. In others, they had found the republic the best medium for their

development or they had traditionally struggled against the monarchical landlord regime and couldnot now change sides. At any rate, these elements profess loyalty to the government and willingness tohelp put down any minority rebellion within it. Close to the Republican Union is the party of Izquiorda (Spanish word for "Left" and better translatedas Radical Republican). They stand for the completion of the political revolution in the sense ofwanting to clean out all the vestiges of the old monarchical clique if possible. They are willing tocoquette in difficult moments with sections of the lower classes. They can agree with the atheism andlaissez faire ideas of some of the older and more intellectual Anarchists. At present they are workingin agreement with the Socialists and Stalinists in a coalition regime similar to the People's Front inFrance. The capitalist group in this party, then, is of a Radical Liberal type; the composition of theparty is mostly of the lower middle class, the lawyer, the student, the teacher, the small entrepreneur.If the more important army officers are generally tied up with the Republican Union, the lowercommissioned officers are to be found close to the Izquierda. Similar to the Izquierda but limited to Catalonia is the Esquerra (Catalan term meaning "Left") whichbesides having the Liberal-Radical ideals of the Izquierda, has the special tradition of having been theadvocate of Catalonian autonomy and the creation of a Federation of Autonomous Republics in Spainbound together on a fraternal basis. The Esquerra, then, is more moderate in this respect than the EstatCatala, a purely Catalan petty bourgeois party that advocates the complete independence of Cataloniaas a separate republic. The immoderate activities of the Estat Catala for Catalonian independence has led to charges that thisparty is even ready to deal with foreign powers hostile to Spain to accomplish its ends. It is said thatDencas, the leader of the organization went to Rome to deal with the Italians just before the outbreakof the rebellion in July 1936. It has been further charged in the press that Casanovas, former Presidentof Catalonian Parliament and also a leader of this political tendency went to France in January of thisyear to negotiate with similar disloyal elements and that Comorera, the General Secretary of theUnified Socialist Party of Catalonia, in his special trip to Paris in April also dealt with the same agentswho were involved in the activities of the Estat Catala. Incidentally it was the responsible leaders ofthis party who gave the orders for the attack on the Telephone Building that precipitated the barricadefighting on May 3rd to May 7th and in which the members of the Estat Catala and of the UnifiedSocialist Party of Catalonia fought side by side. The pressure of the masses during the course of the upheaval that followed the July 1936 days hascaused all the aforementioned property groups to come closer together. The Estat Catala, together withthe Esquerra, for example, welcomed the entrance of the five thousand Valencia troops after the streetfighting in May in Barcelona, although formerly they would have protested this "foreign" invasion.They made no complaints when the central government decided to take over the customs, the foreigntrade and the internal order of Catalonia and manage it entirely from above. With this, the old semi-alliance that certain elements of these radical parties had maintained with groups of Anarchists whoalso used the slogans of no centralized State in Spain with each region to be separate and autonomous,came to an end. At this point there should also be mentioned the Basque Party. This party is made up of the large andsmall capitalists of Euzkadi (the Basque country) who, like the Catalonian capitalists in Estat Catalaand Esquerra had traditionally fought for autonomy against the centralized tyranny of the MadridBourbons. Some of them were for complete independence. Unlike the Catalonians, the Basque Party, however, really had little of Radical ideas, being stronglyfeudal in its make-up and a fanatical adherent of the Catholic Church. Both the Basque Party and theEsquerra were given representation in the national government as supposedly representing all thepeople of their regions. In reality this was very far from the truth. Almost all of the industry in Spain

is concentrated in Catalonia and the Euzkadi-Asturias regions. The workers of these areas had verylittle in sympathy with the capitalists, native and foreign, controlling the textile and metal factoriesand mines of the country. Yet it is significant that the various workers parties that dominated the government after July 1936permitted the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalist parties of the Basque and Catalonianterritories to speak in the name of the whole people there. This representation has permitted theBasque Party to control the armed forces in the field in Euzkadi that led to such disastrous results inIrun, San Sebastian and Bilbao and which is now creating the strongest friction between the Basqueand the Asturian miners and other proletarians who want to carry on the civil war to the bitter end andwith revolutionary means. At the beginning of the July events, the aforementioned parties, although containing in their ranks thepersons of the President of Spain, Azana, and of the President of the Catalonian Generalidad,Companys, really had very little influence. At that time an Anti-fascist Committee was createdcomposed predominantly of proletarian groups that took control of the factories and of the militiamobilized by the workers to defeat fascism. At one time there was a serious movement for the settingup of this anti-fascist united front as the government, based on the committees of workers, peasantsand soldiers, but this movement came to an end, the old apparatus was maintained, and eventually theAnti-Fascist Committee was dissolved and its component parts became members of the newgovernment established under Caballero. Step by step the influence of the bourgeois parties mentionedabove has increased so that now instead of having but four out of eighteen members in the Spanishcabinet, they have four out of nine and the most extreme sections of the workers have been entirelyeliminated from effective participation. The interest of these parties is to restore as soon as possible the old republic of 1931-1936, to makepeace with the proper elements on the side of Franco, to revive parliament, to rebuild an independentarmy, to restore capitalist development, to normalize the country by putting an end to thecollectivization of the enterprises and workers' control of the factories that has been established, toreconquer Morocco, in short, to make Spain on the model of France. Against these views, however, are posed the interests of the proletariat and the poor peasantry of Spainwho are united in two great trade union formations, the U.G.T. and the C.N.T. and who are dividedinto various political factions that war on each other. Practically every worker is in a union in Spain, and practically every poor peasant has also organizedand attached himself to one or the other labor federation. The U.G.T. has been traditionally controlledby the Socialist Party and lately more and more by the Communist Party. It is strong in Asturias, inValencia and Madrid and also in the Basque region. The C.N.T. is dominated by Anarcho-Syndicalistconceptions. They are strongest in Catalonia, practically monopolizing this most important industrialarea, and have strong bases also in Valencia, Asturias and elsewhere throughout Spain. Both union groups theoretically advocate the termination of the capitalist system and both, therefore,would have to resist any move to oust them from the control of the factories which they have takenover and legalized by the Decree of Collectivization of October 24, 1936. A strong tendency towardsthe unification of both trade union centers now exists throughout Spain. This tendency emanates notonly from the ranks of the workers who believe that their power would become indomitable once theytruly become united, but also from the officials who have heretofore been divided by differentpolitical programs. In the course of the revolution, both sides have violated their own principles andhave been driven to take common action. The syndicalists believed that the unions themselves should take over the factories and not tolerate forone moment the interference of any kind of State, even a Workers' State. The Socialists have alwaysadvocated the government ownership of the industries with the unions subservient to a general

democracy. What has actually happened is that the Syndicalists joined the very State which they hadprofessed to detest while the Socialists were forced to go along with the direct action and control overthe factories. But what is driving both sets of officials together is the threat that the working class hasbeen making, as witnessed in the barricade fighting in May, to take things into their own hands, tofuse their ranks from below and organize shop councils and no longer to recognize the authority oftheir leaders who permit a capitalistic government to continue and the revolution to stop half way. Tounderstand the deep gap that separates both trade union centers we have to discuss the differences thatthe Socialists have with the Anarcho-Syndicalists. The Socialist Party for a long time has been divided into two divisions, a Right Wing and a Left Wing.The Right Wing was headed by Prieto seconded by such men as an extreme Right Winger named Dr.Negrin. They were social reformers. They wanted a republic with social reforms that gradually andpeacefully would work itself into Socialism with the cooperation of the Liberal-Radical elements.This group swayed the Socialist Party before 1934 and was part of the coalition government thatframed the Republic in the beginning. After the Asturias revolt, however, with the definite swing ofthe Republic to the Right, the Socialists were no longer part of the government and the party becamedominated by such as Largo Caballero who was the head also of the U.G.T. Caballero was, therefore,closer to the workers and a leader of the Left Wing in the party that talked of creating in Spain a"Socialism in Our Times." The Left Wing, at least, was willing to become militant to fight fascism soas to maintain the social reforms of which it was the beneficiary, although it did not at all believe inthe dictatorship of the proletariat advocated by the Communists. The Communist Party has had its own evolution. Before the Revolution it amounted to such aninsignificant sect that the events caught it completely surprised. The Spanish Party then adhered to the"Third Period" policies of the Communist International which consisted of rather extreme tactics suchas calling every other organization fascist or social-fascist, refusing to cooperate with other workers'organizations, attempting to split the existing unions and form its own pure Communist unions,concentrating its time in issuing manifestos calling on the workers to revolt, rather than seriouslysetting about to consummate that revolt. The result of these policies was utter failure on the part of theCommunists to get ahead. So much so that in those days the Communist Party had less influence atleast in important parts of the country, than the Trotskyist Left Opposition headed by Nin andAndrade, and, in Catalonia, were far behind the Workers-Peasant Bloc organized by Maurin. By 1935 the crushing victory of Fascism and the destruction of the Communist parties in CentralEurope caused a complete volte-face on the part of the Third International which then ran to coverbehind the Liberals. It then averred it would defend capitalist democracy with its life as againstfascism and would enter into political coalitions with democratic capitalists. It liquidated all itsindependent mass organizations which it had tried to set up. It tried to fuse itself with the Socialistparties wherever they remained. Stalin made a pact with France pledging himself to defend Frenchcapitalism with the last drop of the Russian worker's life. In Spain, the effect of this has become very clear after the Fascist revolt of July, 1936. TheCommunist Party declared that it was not for the social revolution at this time in Spain but only forthe maintenance of the bourgeois republic and the defeat of Franco. The main thing was to win the warand not to introduce Socialism. Questions of property would be taken up later. In the internationalfield one had to trust the League of Nations, particularly England and France and by and by no meansstir up the masses against the governments of those nations even when they proclaimed a blockadearound Spain, even when their international control obviously immensely aided the side of themonarchists. Within the country, the chief job was to keep the workers from going too far andoverthrowing the capitalist democratic State of Azana. With the entrance of Russia into the field, sending in airplanes and tanks, and trained men and

equipment to keep them going, the conditions that the Russians laid down in return for their aid had tobe accepted and the Communist Party grew immensely, having, perhaps, at the present moment aboutthree hundred thousand members. As yet they have not been able to wrest control from the Socialistsin the trade union movement, but they have done everything they can to link themselves together withthe Socialists. And indeed the complete modification of the program of the Communist Party is suchthat there is no longer any fundamental distinction to be seen between the former Socialists andStalinists. In Catalonia they already have fused together under the name of the Unified Socialist Partyof Catalonia but while the name Socialist has been retained it is the Stalinists who dominate the partycompletely. How far the Stalinists have swung in their politics could be seen in the barricade fighting in Barcelonaduring the early days of May when they fought side by side with the police against the strikers. It wasthe Stalinists who risked the complete rupture of the anti-fascist front and the demoralization of thestruggle. They forced the fall of Premier Caballero in May and the substitution of the Right Wing, Dr.Negrin, on the ground that the former did not know how to keep firm order among the workers in therear and to disarm them. It is they who have insisted on the reduction of the government from eighteento nine men with the elimination of the trade union and militant worker element. They have revivedthe utterly defunct and discredited parliament, most of whose members have run away and all ofwhom were elected in February 1936 before the rebellion of Franco and under entirely differentcircumstances. They are the ones most insistent on the reformation of the old workers' militia into aregular army with its rigid militarized caste system of officers and men, general command and robots.Naturally, there is a sharp conflict between the Socialists and Stalinists on the one hand and theAnarcho-Syndicalists on the other, although among the latter there is a wide divergence between thetheories of the membership and the practice of the leaders. In theory, both Anarchists and Syndicalistsare for the smashing of all States of any kind. They have been taught to believe that there is littledifference between an Azana government and a Franco one. They view the fight against Fascism asintertwined with their fight for complete emancipation from all capitalist rule which they believe to beimmediately possible. Within the Anarcho-Syndicalist ranks there are also some important differences that should be noted.Earlier in Spain's history the Anarchists were divided into two main sections, one of an intellectualsort which favored an extreme individualism garnished with poetic phrases, the other, much moreproletarian which took to the Bakuninist view of relying on the proletariat and worked withconsiderable success to influence the secret revolutionary trade union movement then growing inSpain. This section now practically dominates completely the field of Anarchism and has given itstheories to the syndicates. It stands for the destruction of all capitalist authority but instead of thedictatorship of the proletariat in a centralized State, it advocates the voluntary cooperation of freecommunes with no right for one man to exploit another. Within the ranks of the Syndicalists also there are considerable disagreements, as would be mostnatural, since the syndicates are mass unions taking all laborers who work in a given industry (earlier,the syndicates were built along craft lines like the American Federation of Labor, but this has beenchanged) regardless of each one's views on social and political questions. As a matter of course, manyof the members are mere trade unionists who have joined their union to improve their conditionsimmediately without regard to the future. But there are others who have developed a trade unionphilosophy that with the destruction of all States there must arise the authority of the union that hasnot only the chief job of destroying capitalism but the sole work of constructing a new social order. Despite the fact that Anarchists and Syndicalists have pretty well come together today in Spain, therecan still be noted the following differences, mostly in emphasis, that each section tends to make. TheAnarchists stress the destruction of the old political order, the Syndicalists the construction of the new

economic system, the former speak of the need of further insurrection, the latter use the weapon of thegeneral strike, the one adopt a more intransigent attitude toward their opponents, the Syndicalistsappear more tolerant. The Anarchists are theoretically completely anti-authoritarian and favorLibertarian communes, the Syndicalists would set up the authority of the union that would centralizeeconomy throughout the nation. Against all of the above groups stands the Workers Party of Marxist Unification (P.O.U.M.), formedof a fusion, after the Asturias rebellion of 1934, of the Workers-Peasant Bloc of Maurin and the oldTrotshyist Left Opposition under Nin and Andrade which had broken from Trotsky's dictatorialcontrol and his capitulation to the Socialists. The P.O.U.M. is against the reformism of the Socialists,against the People's Front government, against temporizing with the capitalist system, against theremilitarization of the army, against collaboration with the League of Nations. It is for theindependence of Morocco, for the social revolution leading to the dictatorship of the proletariat, andfor a workers and peasants government of Soviets, for a new Communist International. The P.O.U.M., then, tries to stand for the same position in Spain as the Bolshevik Party under Leninstood in Russia, just as objectively the Socialist-Stalinists of Spain may be compared to theMensheviks and the Anarcho-Syndicalists appear as the Spanish variety of the Russian Left SocialRevolutionaries. The Workers Party of Marxist Unification, however, is by no means as hardened ortested, nor its leadership so intransigent or audacious as the Bolsheviks were under Lenin. Themistakes of the P.O.U.M. have been far more numerous. The P.O.U.M. has about thirty thousand members but its influence in much too restricted to Cataloniafor it to play a decisive role nationally as yet. None the less, there are certain drifts in the Spanishcurrent that appear to give the P.O.U.M. the possibilities for great growth. Among the Anarchists,after the May Days, there have appeared strong groups, like the friends of Durutti, who have becomeextremely discontented with the actions of the Anarcho-Syndicalists in having been part of thegovernment while the government was shooting down the workers in Barcelona. They are for thecapture of power by the workers without further delay, they wish the overthrow of the bureaucracythat has appeared even in the revolutionary Syndicalist unions, they want to resist by force thecontinued militarization of the army corps and the disarmament of the workers in the rear. TheFriends of Durutti during the barricade fighting actually came out in favor of close collaboration withthe P.O.U.M. Among the trade unionists, too, there is a great deal of discontent. The war has dragged on a long time.None of the social problems have been decisively settled. The cost of living is constantly goinghigher. The collectivization in the factories is being steadily restricted. The workers' guards are beingdisarmed and imprisoned, the government unable to make very much headway against the fascistenemy, altogether while the revolution is definitely going backward. The leaders of the Syndicalists have tried to stem the tide of discontent by ordering the expulsion ofall members of the Friends of Durutti. The Socialist union center, in Catalonia under the influence ofthe P.S.U.C., has come out for the expulsion of all members of the P.O.U.M. The government hastaken a hand to arrest the leaders of the discontented, particularly Nin, Gorkin, Andrade and the rest ofthe executive committee of the P.O.U.M. and, it is reported, about one thousand others, including theresponsible P.O.U.M. officers at the front, on the ground that they are fascist agents. La Battalla,central organ of this Party, has been suppressed, their radio discontinued, the Party practically drivenunderground and hunted as was the case with the Bolsheviks during the days of the Kerensky-Menshevik coalition before the October Revolution of 1917. Will there be an October Revolution in Spain? The P.O.U.M. has initiated a clever policy in calling forthe establishment of a trade union government run by united U.G.T.-C.N.T. for one knows full wellthat once the unions take over the helm of State there is bound to be created Soviets that will carry the

revolution to a Socialist conclusion. But this would mean the complete break-up of the anti-fascistfront with departure of all the parties of the Right into a fusion with the fascists. It would bringEngland and France and the other countries posing as friendly to Spain into complete hostility, itwould mark an international intervention in Spain and world war. None the less, Spain is driftingtowards that momentous head-on collision day by day. Contents

The P.O.U.M. in Spain By Albert Weisbord (From Class Struggle Vol. VII No.1+2 February 1937) In previous articles in the Class Struggle we have exposed the dreadfully false policies of those whohave undertaken to lead the working class forces in Spain, namely the Stalinists, the Socialists, theAnarchists, and the Syndicalists. It is because of the crimes and blunders of these elements, eachcommitting grievous mistakes in its own way, that the fascist-monarchist reactionaries have been ableto carry on their fight for so long a time. However, there exists another organization in Spain,particularly in Catalonia, the Workers Party of Marxist Unification (P.O.U.M.) With which we intendto deal in the present article. Many advanced workers, disillusioned with the Socialists and Stalinists, have been willing to believethat in the P.O.U.M. there is some hope that the workers will be able to surmount their difficulties andestablish the dictatorship of the proletariat and a socialist regime. They point out that the mostinfluential leader, Andreas Nin, was closely connected with Trotsky for many years and was a strongadherent of the theory of peasant revolution. They show that the P.O.U.M. in contradistinction to theother parties in Spain, has called for the rule of the workers, even for Soviets, and has steadilymaintained its independence from the other opportunistic organizations. On the other hand there are those workers who assert that the P.O.U.M. was willing to become a partof the capitalist Catalonian government and that no revolutionary party could possibly have taken sucha move. They also declare that the Catalonian government, being capitalist, was as bad as the Madridgovernment and both were reactionary and against the working class. In the light of this polemic, it seems to us that the best way to treat the question of revolutionarypolicy as involved as the actions of P.O.U.M. is to take up the following basic questions: 1. What is the character of the present governments of Madrid and of Catalonia; is it correct to callthese governments "reactionary"? 2. Can a revolutionary party at any time enter a government such as that which exists in Madrid orCatalonia? 3. Can the Spanish workers rest their hopes upon the P.O.U.M.? It seems to us entirely incorrect to estimate the present governments either of Madrid or of Cataloniaas "reactionary". Certainly they are not reactionary from the point of view of the bourgeoisie. Thepresent republican-democratic set-up can not be compared with the regime under Alphonso XIII. It isnot the habit of Marxists to use the term "reactionary" as a mere expletive. The word "reactionary"means something: it means going backward. A reactionary system is one that would move the socialorder backward bringing back outworn techniques and methods of production and outworn politicalforms and social customs.. Alphonso XIII and his forces are clearly reactionary in that sense of theword since they rested state power upon the old feudal grandees and a system of production that wasstifling Spain. The government in Madrid, from the angle of the capitalists, is far from reactionary, since thisgovernment intends to unleash all the productive forces of Spain for their benefit. Power will shift

from the country to the city, from agriculture to industry, from the landlord to the industrialists andmodern capitalist elements. From the capitalist point of view the victory of the present Madrid orCatalonian government means the beginning of the modernization of Spain. To draw an historical analogy: It might be said that the present Madrid government stands toAlphonso XIII as the French Revolitionary government stood to Louis XVI. There is, however, thisvast distinction. In the 18th century the French Revolutionary Government, operating on behalf ofmodern capitalism, could not help be progressive and clear the road for the new social order. In the20th century, there has appeared on the horizon a new class, a working class that should be able tomake an independent bid for power. No longer tied to the apron strings of capital, the proletariat ofSpain is ready to modernize Spain not in the capitalist sense but in the socialist sense. And thus themodernization of Spain in the capitalist sense has to be the work not of a progressive government butof forces that stifle and crush the revolutionary proletariat and the toiling masses. Many of those who wish to modernize Spain from a bourgeois point of view are now with the forces ofFranco precisely for this reason. The insurgents are not of one piece; there are the Carlists and theBourbonists, but there are also the fascists. The fascists do not wish to bring back the old Spain thathas been irrevocably destroyed. They too wish essentially to industrialize and modernize Spain, butthey understand clearly that no longer is this the job of revolution - as was the case in France in 1789 -but of counter-revolution. In this the counter-revolutionary fascists disagree violently with their capitalist brethren who are stillbehind the Madrid government. The capitalists of the Madrid government who are in the LeftRepublican Parties, believe that the workers can be controlled, that they will not make a bid for powerand that therefore the Madrid government can become, like the government of present day England orof France, a fine vehicle for the development of capital. The fascist capitalists, however, believe thatthe day is too late for this, that democratic control is too weak, that the working class can no longer berestrained and that the first job of the day is to crush the aspirations of the masses for Socialism. Onlythus can capitalism be revived in Spain. Here, then, are the exploiting classes divided. Generally speaking, it is the big capitalists of heavyindustry and the financiers that take the side of the fascists; the landowners go with the monarchists;both units against the present Madrid regime. It is the petty bourgeoisie and the factory owners ofsmall and light industry that tend to support the Madrid Republic or at least not openly fight against it.Nor can it be said that even from the workers' point of view that either the Catalonian government orthe Madrid government was "reactionary". Were these governments engaged in shooting down theworking class and putting down the lower orders, were the masses ready to push the revolutionforward to socialism and were being kept back by the broad might of these governments, then it mightbe said that these governments were reactionary in the sense that they were preventing the peoplefrom building Socialism, the only system of society that could improve upon the moribund capitalismof the present. But the fact of the matter is, the masses are more or less imprisoned by the opportunism of theSocialists and Stalinists on the one hand, and the Anarchists and Syndicalists on the other. TheSocialists and Stalinists have openly declared that they are not fighting for Socialism but merely forbourgeois democracy. They have become ardent bourgeois democrats and republicans and have noother thought than loyal support of the status quo that was being attacked by the rebel reactionaries.The Socialists and Stalinists do not want Socialism, they do not want even workers' control overproduction. They make no move to socialize the industries. They do not form Soviets. They do notresists the formation of a new capitalist army under the control of bourgeois officers. They do notbreak from the Azanas and the Companys, bourgeois leaders of the Madrid and Cateloniangovernments. They make no effort to carry the revolution forward for the benefit of the people.

Instead they carry on bitter war against the Left Wing, especially the P.O.U.M. that tends to go in therevolutionary direction. The Anarchists also have come out strongly against the dictatorship of the proletariat and it was forthis reason that the Anarcho-Syndicalists of the C.N.T. refused to participate in the Asturias revolt of1934 and quietly saw their own brethren shot down by the Madrid government of those days becausethe workers refused to pledge themselves to the Asturias revolt that they would not take the power andinaugurate Socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Today, together with the Socialists andStalinists, the Anarchists and Syndicalists have also become part of the governmental forces ofMadrid and of Catalonia. These Anarchists, who would not fight for the rule of the workers, are quitready to give their lives for the continuance of Madrid rule, and thus they prove to be basically onewith the petty-bourgeois reformists of the Socialist and Stalinist parties. In the light of the fact that all of the big proletarian organizations, Anarchist, Syndicalist, Socialistand Stalinist support the present governments of Madrid and of Catalonia, it is difficult to call thesegovernments reactionary. They would be reactionary only if the mass organizations were ready to goforward beyond the present capitalist system and were throwing themselves against this government.But for this there would have to be a genuinely revolutionary party guiding the masses. Up to thepresent, unfortunately, this is not the case; the masses through their organizations are heartilysupporting the governmental regimes. But if the Madrid and Catalonian governments are not reactionary, this does not mean that they are notcapitalistic. For anyone to idealize the Madrid governments or the Left Madrid government that existsin Catalonia would be to make a criminal error. There is no such thing as a government withoutclasses and class domination. The class that dominates Madrid and to a weaker degree Catalonia, isthe capitalist class. It is true there has been some talk of socialization of the factories in Catalonia and also in Madrid, butthe Socialists and Stalinists have seen to it that it is mostly talk. There have been some spontaneousseizures of the factories by the workers and a degree of worker control over them, but private propertyin the means of production is still retained intact, on the whole. Foreign property is carefullyprotected; the property of the agrarian landholder is assured, the petty-bourgeoisie is quieted. Duringthe present civil war, there may have to be some severe measures of confiscation, some degree ofnationalization of industry and public utilities, as there was in the days of the Jacobins of the 18thcentury in France, but the system of private property remains secure. That is the situation today wherethe Republicans control. Nor can much of a distinction be drawn between Catalonia and Madrid. It is true that Barcelona is theproletarian heart of Spain and events have gone considerably further there than elsewhere. But, atbottom, Barcelona has not gone too far beyond Madrid. As Azana, the bourgeois Radical heads thelatter regime, the bourgeois Radical, Companys, heads the former. We can sum up this part of our argument, therefore, as follows: 1. The governmental regime neither at Madrid nor at Catalonia can be called reactionary at present,either from the capitalist or from the workers' point of view. 2. Both the Madrid and the Catalonian governments are capitalist governments which do not carry outa policy on behalf of the working class. As soon as possible the workers must disassociate themselves from these governments and overthrowthem as blocking the path to Socialism and the victory of the toiling masses in Spain. II. The fact that the regime in Catalonia is a capitalist one, does not mean, however, that a revolutionaryorganization should not, under certain circumstances, have to join that government. To understand thiswe must study the concrete circumstances that exist in Spain and in Catalonia today.

Were the governments of Catalonia or of Madrid stable capitalist governments run by big bourgeoiselements with all the reactionaries to keep the masses down, then, of course, it would be out of thequestion for a revolutionary organization to enter into such a government and accept the responsibilityfor its actions. This was the situation within the French government in the late 19th century and led tothe split between the reformist and revolutionary groups. At that time the reformist Socialists, asrepresented by Millard and by Briand, believed they could enter the French cabinet. Their idea was toreform the State from within and peacefully and gradually through a series of reforms introduce abetter society for the workers. In reality, through their entrance into the capitalist government, thereformist Socialists merely tied the workers to the wheels of capitalism still more tightly. As eventsunfolded themselves in Europe it became clear to the revolutionary working class that the capitalistState could not be reformed to be transformed, but had to be smashed and an entirely new regime setup. But this is not the situation in Catalonia, nor in Madrid. The opening up of the revolution in 1930established in reality two centers, a dual authority. On the one hand there was the regular government,successor to Alphonso XIII, which was elected when the Republic was founded: on the other hand,there were the mighty trade unions and other working class organizations that began to speak forthemselves. The government could do little without the consent of these mass organizations. It mightseem then that these organizations would strive to take over power themselves, but led as they were bythe opportunist Socialists, Stalinists, Anarchists and Syndicalists, they made no effective effort to doso. On the other hand, the capitalists and agrarian lords strove with might and main to break down thissecond power of the people. In the course of their efforts they finally decided to attack the governmentitself and thus, in 1936, there broke out the present insurgent rebellion. But with the rise of the reactionaries the people also began to strengthen themselves. The oldreactionary forces were driven out of the government and the government made prisoner of thepopular movement for the time being. A People's Front Government was set up which expressed thecoalition of the masses with certain weak elements of the bourgeoisie. In the course of the presentcivil war this People's Government has moved even further to the Left. Now the administration of theState is in the hands of workers' representatives directly. A Socialist is the premier, several Stalinistsare in the cabinet together with other so-called revolutionary factors. It would seem that since the workers' organizations and representatives are actually leading thegovernment, that the workers would try to remold that government to introduce Socialism. ButSocialism cannot be introduced through bourgeois parliaments and through the State system set up bythe capitalists. To set up the rule of the workers there would be necessary a complete new apparatusand governmental machine, on the style of the Soviets established in Russia. The fact that theSocialists, Stalinists and others have entered into the present governments of Madrid and of Cataloniameans that they are fighting not for Socialism but for capitalism and mean to keep the capitalist formsand functions intact. Thus, although the government is made up of workers' representatives, it is still acapitalist government, carrying out capitalist policies. It is a sign that the capitalist class in Spain wasentirely too weak to carry out its own policies. As in Germany just after the War, so in Spain today,capitalism can be preserved only by the activity of the Socialists and Stalinists and other petty-bourgeois forces who do for the bosses what the bosses cannot do for themselves. It is the Socialistsand Stalinists and the others who save the day for private property in Spain today. However, this new government, precisely because of its composition, precisely because of the powerof the people that put them into office, precisely because the chief task of the hour is the destructionof the reactionaries threatening the government, have not been able to put down the real strength ofthe people which is increasing all the time. A new dual power, even more menacing that before, hasbeen set up. On the one hand are the Socialist and Stalinist functionaries and their ilk behind Azana or

Companys who defend capitalism; on the other hand, there are the masses of workers who have takenover many of the factories and who mean to run them for themselves. This has taken place in a moreextreme fashion in Catalonia than it has in Madrid or generally throughout Spain. Again, it would seem that since the masses have taken control over the factories in many localitiesthat they would form Soviets or new organizations that are not represented in the official government.But this has not occurred for several reasons. In the first place there has been developed no force thatfavors Soviets except the relatively weak P.O.U.M. Today the Stalinists and the others bend all theirefforts to liquidate whatever Soviets may appear in the villages or towns. It is not as in Russia in 1905and 1917 where the masses themselves spontaneously formed Soviets and all the revolutionary partiesentered into these new bodies. Today the degenerate Socialists, Stalinists and others know full well themenace of such organs as the Soviets and in advance break them down wherever they are formed. Secondly, the masses still have the illusion that because the workers' representatives are in thegovernment that the government is theirs, that they can really reform and change the government intheir direction, that the government will socialize the factories and introduce workers' rule, etc. In the third place, it is not inevitable that Soviets must be formed in every country without exception.In Spain, there has existed a very strong tradition of Syndicalism and Anarchism which has taught thepeople that they must expect nothing through the State but must take things in their own hands. Evenin Russia there arose at the time of the Workers Opposition in 1921 the question whether the Sovietsshould run the factories or the unions would run them. It was pointed out that if the unions gave up thefactories to the Soviets, made up so overwhelmingly of peasants and petty-bourgeois elements, thatthe unions would decay: thus the dictatorship of the proletariat would in fact be destroyed. A gooddeal of what the Worker Opposition predicted actually has come to pass in Russia. On the other hand,it was argued that if the unions operated the factories and not the Soviets it would break the alliance ofthe workers with the peasants, something fatal in such a country as Russia. The workers had toexercise control through the Soviets and not independent of the Soviets. Now in Spain the Syndicalists and the workers in the unions refuse to give up the factories to the Stateat the present moment. Fundamentally this is a sound policy, since, as we have pointed out, the Stateis still a capitalist one. But along with the idea that the unions should control the factories, the workershave thus militated against forming Soviets of workers that would rally the mass of toilers with them.They still work within the frame-work of their unions, and since their unions are tied up with thecapitalist State, they have not been able to go beyond spontaneous operation and control of thefactories. There has not been established the socialization of factories and a unified and systematizedprogram of Socialism. Everything is in chaos and confusion, with the officials of the unions and of theworkers' parties doing their best to sabotage the Socialist direction of the workers and to keepcapitalism intact in Spain and Catalonia. Now it is this concrete situation with which we have to deal when treating of the question whether atruly revolutionary organization should enter the government of Catalonia at the present time. We cansummarize the situation as follows: 1. The government is made up overwhelmingly of workers'representatives. 2. The government has the confidence of masses of workers who believe that throughthis government Socialism can be established. 3. The government is fighting a progressive battleagainst reaction. 4. The masses have not formed Soviets but have workers' organizations and unitedfronts which demand that every workers' organization takes responsibility in supporting the defense ofthe Republic. Under such circumstances, if the other workers' organizations through their united front decide that allworkers' groups should enter the government to carry on the struggle against reaction and forSocialism, it would be impossible for the P.O.U.M.. or any other organization to stand aside. To standaside would mean not to have confidence in the masses, to step aside from responsibility in the

strughgle against the fascist-monarchist reaction. It would be the height of folly and sectarianism. In Russia, when Lenin raised the slogan "All Power to the Soviets" at that time the Mensheviks andopportunists were in control of the Soviets. Had the Soviets taken power then, the leaders of theSoviets in Russia, as today in Spain, would have carried out a policy of capitalism. Yet Lenin wasperfectly correct in using this slogan, because the victory of the Soviets would have meant a decisivedefeat for reaction and such development of the power of the masses as would render insecure andprecarious the hold of the opportunists upon them. Now if in Russia, the Soviets had decided to takethe power and to give a seat or two to the Bolsheviks, the Bolsheviks would have had to take theseseats, even though the government policy were a capitalist one and under control of the Mensheviks. As a matter of fact, when the Soviets actually did take power, the Bolsheviks did not take all thecabinet seats but shared them with the Left Social-Revolutionary Party and offered other seats toopportunists of various organizations. The regime that was formed in November, 1917, did notimmediately socialize the factories but kept boss ownership for almost a year, or rather in the city forseven months longer, after the power was taken. A somewhat analogous situation prevails in Spain even though there are no Soviets. There is a unitedfront of the proletarian organizations to carry on the civil war. Should this united front demand allworkers' organizations take on responsible posts, it is impossible for any workers' group not to accept.Failure to accept would doom that party in the eyes of the struggling masses. III However, it is an entirely different question what a revolutionary party should do once it gets intosuch a transition government as that represented by the sick capitalist State of Madrid or Catalonia. Ofcourse, a truly revolutionary party would expose the capitalist operations of the government of whichit was temporarily a part. It would issue the slogan: Out with the Azanas and the Companys. Out withthe capitalist elements from the government. Such an organization would expose the workings of theState from within. It would show the masses that in reality this government and this State could notpossibly carry out the will of the people, could not possibly carry out the struggle against capitalism inthe most effective manner. A revolutionary party would call for a complete transformation of the present State to a workers'State. It would call for all power to the united front councils of the workers' and toilers' organizations.It would call for the formation of a real people's and proletarian army to defend the interests of themasses. Inside the State the proletarian organization would declare war against the capitalist elementsthere in and create an utterly impossible situation where either the government would have to bechanged in a revolutionary direction or the revolutionary party would have to be ousted from thegovernment. In the latter case those who did the ousting would have the onerous duty of telling the people why. Thewhole question of who is to rule whom and for what the people are fighting would come up in themost dramatic and drastic manner. It would not be the revolutionary party that would be placed in thelight of fighting against the revolution, but rather the persecutors of such a party. Whether the revolutionary organization takes part in the government or not it has the duty to tell thepeople that the government is a capitalist one and must be destroyed. It must carry out the policy offighting reaction but absolutely giving no support to the Kerenskys and similar capitalist agentscontrolling the government. A revolutionary workers' party in the government would strive to change the struggle from one againstfascism and monarchism to one against capitalism as a whole. It would expose in detail the sabotageof the capitalist elements in the government and how these saboteurs are protected by the Socialists,Stalinists and others playing their game. The fact that the party was within the government andundertaking responsible tasks would weight mightily with the masses and would provide such a party

with excellent first-hand material for its struggles. The question now arises whether the P.O.U.M. has actually behaved in such a revolutionary manner. Itis quite clear that it has not, although we are willing to admit that we may not have all the facts. Inentering the government the P.O.U.M. did not sufficiently expose the capitalist nature of the presentState. It is true that it has called for Soviets and for Socialism, but its calls have been rather vague andplatonic. It did not fight sufficiently hard against the capitalist elements in the government nordemand their expulsion; it did not expose enough the capitalistic sabotage of the Socialists andStalinists; it did not adopt the program of support to the policies of the present governments of Madridand Catalonia even though it would do its share in fighting against reaction side by side with theforces of the government. The weakness of the Workers Party of Marxist Unification could have been anticipated by the historyof its formation, The P.O.U.M. is an incomplete amalgamation of two distinct trends: the trendrepresented by Maurin and that of Andreas Nin. Maurin would have been called a Spanish variety of the American opportunist, Lovestone, althoughwithout the cowardice of the latter and his petty Jewish tricks. Maurin was a Right-Wing Communistof nationalist tendencies who favored a loose workers and peasants party and who hid his Communismin favor of opportunist policies. He was able to build in Catalonia an amorphous groupling which hecalled the Workers-Peasants Bloc within which his own communist tendency was supposed to work.The whole thing became affiliated to the Centrist international grouping, known as the LondonBureau. Maurin held himself opposed to the line of the International Left Opposition although he didnot agree with Stalinism. With the liquidation of the forces of the Left by Trotsky when he sent his henchment into the Socialistparties everywhere, the Spanish group refused to follow the line of Trotsky and broke up into twoparts, a minority going into the Spanish Socialist Party, but the rest following Nin who joined theMaurin group, which reformed itself into the Workers Party of Marxist Unification. The action of Ninwas really no better than that of Trotsky; as Trotsky enterd the Socialist Party, Nin entered the "Left"Socialist grouping of Maurin. Both liquidated their own organizations and policies to enter into ahopeless Centrist outfit. However, Nin had a far better chance to work than did the ordinary variety of Trotskyites wholiquidated their forces. He was one of the principal leaders of the P.O.U.M. which, under the blows ofthe revolution, actually moved to the left (as did the Socialist Parties of Spain and of Catalonia forthat matter). Furthermore, Maurin was killed in action in the present civil war, leaving Nin practicallythe chief leader. But far from producing a monolithic organization, this set of circumstances is onlybringing to a head a crisis within the P.O.U.M. A section of the old Maurinists refused to follow the line of the former Trotskyists, especially whenthat Trotskyist leadership means unmitigated hostility on the part of the Stalinists who are now fusedwith the Socialists into one party in Catalonia. This section of the P.O.U.M. is now flirting with theother Centrists and threatening to break away. And as the Socialist-Stalinist center rains heavy blowsupon the P.O.U.M. and throws them out of the government, in spite of the relatively timid andcautious approach of Nin, the Right Wing all the more is worked on by the Russian nationalistStalinists and becomes determined to dump Nin and join the coalition. Here is proof that should the revolutionary nucleus give up its banner for some sort of Centristprogram and "mass" organization, it does not do away with the crisis in its ranks that drives it toliquidation, but only postpones it and in the long run, aggravates it. The Trotskyites will find that theyhave no short cut to the path of building a really Bolshevik organization. Nin fused with Maurin asCannon fused with Muste. In the case of Cannon, the rottenness of this amalgamation became clearwithin less than a year. In Spain the forces have held together longer because of the development of

the revolution, but this has only heightened the crisis. Now Nin sees that his "mass" party with whichhe hoped to realize the proletarian revolution is crumbling under his hands. Furthermore, theopportunism latent in the Nins, that induced them to fuse with the Maurins also crops up again andmakes the Nins constantly compromise with the Right Wing rather than utter a truly revolutionaryline. After all, the Cannons are not much different from the Mustes when the fusion actually does takeplace. In the long run, water finds its level. So it has been with Nin in Spain. The opportunist line of the Nins was clearly brought out in relation to the stand of the P.O.U.M. on thequestion of Moroccan independence. Every Leninist who knows even his A.B.C.s understands that oneof the burning questions in Spain today is the question of fighting for the independence of SpanishMorocco. Because the Spanish workers took a nationalist and chauvinist position to Morocco and tothe African colonials generally, they are now paying dearly and see the Moroccans closely allied withthe fascist forces. The P.O.U.M. should have made this one of their main points from the verybeginning and used all the forces at their disposal to attack and expose the Madrid and Cataloniangovernments and the Socialists, Stalinists and others for their false line. Reports, however, do notshow that the P.O.U.M. took such an intransigent internationalist line, except perhaps a word or two insome sheet not read by those directly affected. The opportunism of the Nins and of the P.O.U.M. is also clearly revealed in their adherence to thebankrupt Centrist International grouping, the London Bureau. Here is seen in all its nakedness that notonly the Socialists and Stalinists have broken down but also the Trotskyists of almost every variety. Itis a farce to expect an organization believing the London Bureau is a revolutionary factor, to carry outthe revolution in Spain. The sad situation is that there is no genuine revolutionary party in Spaintoday. It is an indication that Europe as a whole is burning out as a revolutionary force and cannotsolve its problems. The fight is not absolutely hopeless, however. No doubt there do exist germs ofsuch a genuine party both within the P.O.U.M. and in the other organizations. It is a question,however, whether these germs will be able to find their developmental way into the leading force intime to save the day. All this does not mean, because we do not support the P.O.U.M. in the sense of joining it or agreeingbasically with its like, that we are not willing to send money to the P.O.U.M. The fact is, there is nobetter organization than the P.O.U.M. in Spain today. We cannot simply stand aside sneering at theheroic battles of the Spanish people. We must help in every possible way. It is our duty to raise moneyfor Spain for the shipping of arms and munitions and supplies to carry on the civil war to the end thatthe reactionaries be defeated and the proletariat stimulated to carry forward the revolution to the end.It may be that our help in this regard will compel us to send money to the P.O.U.M. or to the LondonBureau. But together with this help to the Spanish working class we also send our word that there isonly one way out for them: To break with the Socialists, Stalinists and Trotskyists of the Trotsky-Ninstamp and build up a real internationalist Communist organization that will establish the Dictatorshipof the Proletariat in Spain and extend the revolution throughout Europe. ************************************ Contents

ANALYSIS OF THE DAYS OF MAY 4-7 INCLUSIVE IN BARCELONA By Albert Weisbord The Basic Situation The economic situation is characterized by the following features: In the first place there is a very great dislocation of economy due to war needs. Many of the industries

have been closed down to make room for others with a consequent dislocation of the crafts and skillsof the workers. In the war industries themselves there is every urge to increase the speed up and towork as long as possible. May 1st, for example, was dedicated to work. At the same time the workersare not clear about the fact whether they are working so hard for themselves of for new bourgeoismasters since there is partly workers control but as yet stern resistance to the socialization of industry.In the second place the consumption of the workers in Catalonia, especially in Barcelona is quite lowand is steadily being reduced by the exigencies of the war. There is at times a scarcity of good bread,there is little soap, and the outlook is far from bright at the present time. Wages of the workers areexceedingly low. In the foreign exchange the pesata has fallen to new lows now being quoted as 37 tothe dollar (in 1932 it was 16 and normally 6 1/2 to the dollar) at the same time the workers do notreceive more than 10 to 15 pesetas a day, normally. With the resultant increasing scarcity of food, prices are advancing and there is a steady clamor forthe curbing of speculators and of profiteers in the sale of necessities of life. As yet the government hasdone little about it. Long lines can be seen before bread and milk stores, meat stores, etc. In thismanner the whole population is being brought to a state of tension with the governments of Spain andCatalonia. This tension is aggravated greatly by the military situation. In the first place there is the great dangerof the fall of Bilbao and the sabotage of the central government in helping that city. Then there is thestill dangerous situation around Madrid and the possibilities that if Bilbao falls there will be a greatoffensive against both Madrid and Catalonia on the Aragon front. Third, already the Spanish peoplehave demonstrated on the front that they can pass from the defensive to the offensive but thegovernment in spite of the clamors for a general offensive does nothing about it, evidently not wishingto beat Franco too hard since they will need his forces against the people later on when the revolutiongoes still farther to the left as it indubitably must. In the fourth place there is the evident sabotage ofthe central government on the Huesca-Aragon-Catalonian front. Soldiers have been sent to the frontwithout any adequate equipment. They are never allowed to receive the necessary materials andreserves to advance. All the work on this front is constantly in confusion. At the same time the government is making constant efforts to disarm the masses with the appeal 'allarms to the front' while at the same time it has increased the governmental forces in the rear, thecarabineers, the assault guards and the Guard Civile. In these troops are to be found the forces of thepetty bourgeoisie well armed and never sent to the front. Connected with all this is the fact that the government is making every effort to incorporate theworkers military forces which had been formed after the July Days of 1936 into the regular army andunder the bourgeois discipline of the capitalist officers. These armed forces were of two kinds,Workers militia at the front and Workers Patrols in the rear to police the cities. Thanks to the Socialist and Communist Parties all of the workers militia forces have beenincorporated into the regular army that can be used later against the workers, with the exception of themilitia in Catalonia under the POUM and other forces. Up to now they have held out and maintainedtheir own division with their own men. The government has been forced to pay their generals and torecognize them as part of the regular army, but at the same time now the tension is growing greaterand the demands of the Valencia government to completely incadrate the Catalonians into the regulararmy are becoming imperatively insistent. In Barcelona and in the other cities of Catalonia, the workers patrols still existed as a dual power tothe guard civile and the Assault Guards of the Generality. Recently steady pressure has been put todisarm these workers organizations, and to liquidate them. The UGT and PSUCists took their men outof the patrols, regularly clashes took place with the guards whereby the patrols were disarmed a few ata time. Before the May events the patrols actually did not function for fear of being completely

disarmed but kept their weapons for the emergency that was to come. Ever since the stiffening of the governmental front around Madrid the central government has putsteady pressure to the right. In this they have been incomparably aided by the Stalinists who havedenounced the POUM and such forces as the Fifth column of the Fascists and call for theirextermination. In Madrid the POUM headquarters were attacked and then the move was made againstthe Left Wing of the FAI as well. The smallness of the POUM and the fact that it is mostly centered inCatalonia has compelled it to cling closely to the FAI and the CNT to avoid complete physicalextermination. In Catalonia the Generality has recently been increasing its pin prick provocations against theworkers. Here the PSUC is not as strong as the CNT-FAI-POUM and thus the People's Front has notthe mass base that it has in Madrid. Companys in the face of the growing crisis has been forced toform his governments from the top rather than by any electoral measures. In April the old governmentfell and a deadlock ensued for several weeks before a new one could be selected by Companys. Thedeadlock consisted in the fact that the CNT-FAI forces insisted on greater representation and aprogram leading to greater revolutionary action (socialization of industry and of land, pressure againstspeculators, workers' police etc) The PSUC-UGT forces being steadily opposed. In the end a newgovernment was formed of the same number, thirteen, with the increase of one FAI-CNTrepresentative. It was under this new government that the provocative events increased leading to theMay Days. In Catalonia the Republican Left and the party of Etat Catalalan has become increasinglyweakened and exposed as a conservative force. The compromise effected could only be a temporaryone. The government could do only one thing and that is to increase its provocations, which culminated inthe events of May 4th with the seizure of the Telephonique. The growing tension between the two sets of conflicting class forces could also be traced in the tradeunion field. On the side of the trade union reformists there has been steady efforts on the part of thebureaucracies to get together and form one national center fusing both CNT and UGT together. ThePOUM has also been in favor of this unity. The workers also from below but for other reasons than thebureaucrats and the State. On the part of the weak bourgois forces in the State it was necessary tointegrate the CNT forces into the State apparatus and to bring UGT and CNT officials to work togetherharmoniously within the government. On the part of the workers trade union unity would mark a greatstep forward in the unification of the workers ranks. The mass of CNT workers would be bound toinfluence the mass of UGT workers from below in the places where they were in the majority (themost important industrial regions) and to appeal to UGT workers better in other places. Trade Unionunity could be a force both for better control and for better mass resistance to state and capitalistcontrol. Before May 1st the CNT and UGT were able to get together to adopt a common document whichcontained several significant points. On the one hand it called for great support of the war underunified control and with discipline to the officers. On the other hand it called for a purging from theranks of the unions of those elements that were not in accord with the aims of the document. On thethird side, on the point of socialization of industries the document hemmed and hawed with statementsof "in so far as," "as much as possible under the circumstances" etc. It was clear that the CNTbureaucrats were trying hard to meet the demands of the UGT at the expense of the POUM andmilitant workers. The events of May 4th to May 7th were to sharply accentuate all the contradictionsinvolved in the situation. The Events On May 4th under the direction of the police Chief Sala, in the early afternoon an attempt was made toseize the Telephonique which up to then had been under the control of the CNT-UGT unions jointly,

with the CNT predominating. This building had been taken over by the workers in July and was ofenormous importance both literally and figuratively. Literally it meant that the workers organizationscontrolled all telephone calls in the city of Barcelona and could set up an inspection over thegovernment while at the same time workers organizations could have all the calls they needed tocoordinate their forces in time of struggle. But more the literal significance was the symbolic significance of the occupation and control of theworkers of the Telephonique. It not only signified workers control, that was also signified in otherparts of the city in other industries which had been controlled by private capitalists, but theTelephonique was preeminently a public utility, like the tramways, the rail roads and such industries.Thus the taking over of the Telephone works was a direct threat against the idea of nationalization andState capitalism, so dear to the hearts of Socialists and Stalinists. The Syndicalists and Anarchistslooked on their opposition to the entire theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat which they hadespoused for so long a time and which in practice they were abdicating when they entered thegovernment. The POUM, of course, differed from the Anarchists and the Syndicalists in their theory of workerscontrol. Workers control to the Marxist is the first step towards the dictatorship of the proletariatwhere the State organs of the workers control all the industries and not the independent unions. ThePOUM believes in the centralization of industries, the Anarchists in federalism. None the less thePOUM also understood that the occupation of the capitalist State of the Telephonique had nothingreally to do with the question of Workers State or Industrial Union control over the industries, aquestion which will have to be fought out later, but rather with the question, bourgeois State orworkers control of the industries seized by the workers in the July fighting. Under such circumstancesthe POUM could do nothing else but support the resistance of the revolutionary forces to thisoccupation. Within a few hours after the attempt was made to seize the Telephonique a tremendous reaction tookplace among the workers. Without a call being issued either by UGT or CNT officially, the entiremass of workers whether UGT or CNT came out in an immense general strike that completelyparalyzed the city while at the same time men and women labored feverishly to build barricades in allparts of the city. The Patrol Controls were immediately put to use. Firing began in all parts of the city.To the immense surprise of the Generality the police were not even able to hold the central parts of thecity but were literally surrounded and blockaded in the quarters where they happened to be at the time.Immediately the government picked from above, fell and for a time the country was without anygovernment whatever. The government of Catalonia was the most Left government of any to be found in Spain. The fact thatthe workers were setting up barricades not against the Fascists but against this most left Peoplesgovernment supported by BSUC and Republican forces was a sign that the government was now beingconsidered counter-revolutionary and had lost all of its progressive character before the eyes of theBarcelona proletariat. The question now before the workers for the first time was WHOSEREVOLUTION WAS IT? WHAT CLASS WAS TO LEAD THIS REVOLUTION? This also meant that the masses were beginning to see that the front was yielding and dependent uponthe solution of the problems in the rear. The continuation of the revolution and the victory in the warwere being irrevocably connected despite the demagogy of the PSUCists. The workers were firing on the State, the State the most left Peoples State of PSUCists was now firingon the workers. Side by side with the police and guards of the government were to be found membersof the Socialist Communist and Left Republicans against the workers. Thus there was a struggle notonly against the State but against the leaders of the UGT and People's Front groups as well. And sincethe CNT leadership was also in the government, in a sense a struggle against the CNT-FAI leadership

as well. This was to come out even clearer as the events developed. The fact that the trade union leadership was part of the government which was shooting down theworkers, their own members, the fact that the UGT came out against the barricades while the CNTsaid nothing in favor of them, the fact that none of them had called the general strike, meant that theworkers in a sense were left without central direction for the most part. This resulted in the action ofthe masses being entirely defensive at a time when they could have swept all before them, for theyheld the center of the city as well as the suburbs. The defensive character of the action could be seen in many ways. In the first place while all theworkers went on strike, only the vanguard manned the barricades, generally the military committeesof FAI-CNT and the POUM. In the second place, there was no effort to mobilize the forces of theproletariat for an offensive mass drive against the police but only to hem them in and to block themall around. However, as the spirit of the fight became higher and the tension reached unbearable pitchthere came the final act. UGT and CNT on the 6th of May ordered their workers back to work. ThePOUM also in its power did the same. Only the unanimous action of all three groups were able toprevent the workers from taking the power in their hands. Contents

UNIQUE PROBLEMS OF THE SPANISH REVOLUTION By Albert Weisbord One of the things that makes it so difficult for a people to solve the burning problems that periodicallybeset them is the fact that there is no exact repetition in history, that truths most painfully learned byone nation become arrant falsehoods when applied by another. The individuality of truth in nature isan extremely costly lesson that must be assimilated repeatedly whenever one country believes that allit has to do is to follow in the footsteps of another. Certain political observers, trained in the Russian school, for example, have tried to make popular thebelief that revolutions all over the world must follow the Russian pattern of 1917. This belief is thenbrought over to Spain and mechanically applied. Memory is substituted for concrete living analysis.Glib phrases are trotted out, uttered by Russians in the past, which are made to pass for eternal veritiesto which all people must give obeisance or face annihilation. In a sense the Spanish Revolution is quite like the Russian. Both countries had an absolute monarchywhich was overthrown by workers and peasants headed by intellectuals stifled by the old regime. Bothcountries are agrarian with, none the less, a proletariat that has been engaged in struggles for freedomfor some time. But from there on the similarity begins to taper away. If the Russian proletariat wasinfluenced by Marxism, the Spaniards have been swayed by Anarchism. In the cities of Spain thefactories are generally not large and state controlled but small and wholly impregnated with the spiritof nineteenth century competitive capitalism. Such regions as Catalonia, indeed, had been some of thefirst regions in Europe to demonstrate a flourishing capitalist regime and, in the thirteenth century orso, had dominated the Western Mediterranean as the rival of Genoa and Venice. On the countryside, too, the situation is quite different. In Russia the vast majority of agrarians weresmall peasants whose chief cry was for more land for extensive cultivation. In Spain, the greatest partof the land, especially in the interior and Southern and Western parts of the country, was in the shapeof huge latifundias owned by grandees who had turned the population into agricultural laborersworking for them. Only in restricted areas of the country, in Catalonia, for instance, were most of thefarms in the hands of small independent farmers who, moreover, unlike the Russians, had not beenrecently released from serfdom and the communist institution of the Mir or were holding their landsas tenants, but were rather petty entrepreneurs well versed in a capitalist system and selling their

wines and other products in a large market. In Russia, therefore, the Bolsheviks could take over the Social-Revolutionary program of more or lessequal partition of the land. But in Spain the agricultural laborers have joined the trade unions and havedifferent ideals; wanting to run the latifundias as the urban workers run the factories, collectively, butnot wanting to divide the large estates. On the other hand, the small proprietor in such places asCatalonia does not favor overly much the collectivization of all resources in the same manner as dothose working on the large scale farms. The Russian revolution came as a result of war. The masses were armed. The foreign powers were tiedup in mutual hostilities that prevented them from decisive interference in Russian affairs. The Russianpeople could, therefore, settle matters with their own rulers. After the war was over, all of Europe wasin great ferment. Hungary and Bavaria and even Slovakia had their temporary Soviets. Italian factorieswere being seized, the French navy was mutinying, Germany and Austria were on the verge ofproletarian revolutions. The Russians were able to ride on top of this world revolutionary wave andbeat off their opponents. Just the reverse, however, is true in Spain. The Spaniards have beenattempting their revolution at a time when throughout the world not the proletariat but Fascism has theupper hand. The situation is so utterly different that some of the Communists, those adhering to the Stalinistschool, have swung to the other extreme and said that since conditions are not the same as in Russia, aproletarian revolution is impossible in Spain. Thus, using the same old Russian model as infallible,these politicians believe that unless the factors that existed in Russia are repeated, no revolutionshould be permitted and those attempting it are to be shot as fascist agents of reaction. If, under Lenin,the Russians were eagerly looking for similarities with the Russian pattern to prove that revolutionscould be successful elsewhere, under Stalin they are just as eagerly proving that conditions are sounlike those extant in their own country that revolution is impossible. Concrete international problemsare blurred over by a national myopia. The Spanish revolution, as it has unfolded, has revealed such contrasts with the Russian that it hasmade the Iberian militants all the more firm in their belief that the social revolution is possible onlywhen Spain breaks from Russian nationalism and understands its own concrete problems. Incidentally,this helps to account for the fact that the revolutionary elements in Spain, the Anarcho-Syndicalistsand the Marxists of the Workers Party (P.O.U.M) variety, hate and detest the various politicalcommissars that Stalin has sent to Spain to tell the people there what to do, just as, in the old days of1926-1927, he sent Borodin to China to become the Messiah of the East. All during the course of the revolution in Spain, since 1931, no Soviets have been organized by thepeople. Instead, all of the workers, and with them large sections of the agrarian toilers, have joined thesyndicates or unions. This presents a problem entirely unique in modern history and one of greatcomplexity and difficulty. In Russia the Soviets had been creations of the people themselves and both in 1905 and 1917 hadarisen entirely spontaneously. Once created, they soon became immense instruments for theunification and organization of the masses. Without distinction, soldiers, workers, peasants, middleclass elements, all flocked into the Soviets and laid their problems before these bodies. Faced withthis outstanding development, none of the existing organizations could dare to ignore or neglect it. Infact, all of the political and economic groups claiming to represent the interests of the people at onceentered into the Soviets and turned them from purely amorphous bodies into a united front in whichthe various factions fought each other for domination. Under the influence of the Bolsheviks theseunited front centers soon became organs of power of an entirely new kind of State never before seen inthe history of revolutions. Concurrently with the formation of soviets in Russia there went on an unprecedented growth in the

trade union movement. Overnight there sprang up trade unions embracing hundreds of thousands andeven millions of members. What is most important to note is that no one dreamed of forming two setsof unions, one fighting the other. But just as spontaneously as the Soviets had arisen, all the workersgot together in shop meetings, formed their locals, and affiliated themselves to the union of their tradeand industry with absolutely no effort being made on the part of any one to split the organization or todivide the ranks. Thus the Russians had two advantages in their struggle against the old order as compared to theSpaniards. First, they had Soviets which united all factions and which had the germs of State power inthem. Inside the Soviets were soldiers, workers and peasants in one grand lump moved in a commondirection at first by the Social-Revolutionaries and by the Mensheviks, and then by the Bolsheviks.Second, they had a unified trade union movement taking in all the workers and organizing themtightly within one framework. Within both organizations the various parties fought out their policiesto the end. In Spain, however, an entirely different situation exists. Not only are there no Soviets, but apparentlythere is no desire to form Soviets. Can this be accounted for by the fact that Spain is a Westerncountry? Certainly, in Asia all people are jumbled together into one toiling mass far more than inEurope where the distinctions between proletariat and peasantry have existed in one form or anotherfor centuries. In Russia the great cities had not been built naturally on the basis of commerce and tradeas in western Europe, but had been created quite artificially and were founded on the needs of theCzarist State. The village was the basic unit and in the village all distinctions between proletariat andplebeian tended to be blurred. Thus, while the working class occupied a conscious position in the large centers, still throughout thecountry, wherever the peasants expressed themselves in the village with its ancient democraticinstitution of the Mir it was natural that the Society would dominate and the unions play a secondaryrole. This was a sign that, at bottom, it would not be the workers in Russia but the peasants that wouldhave the final say, unless the conscious proletariat of Western Europe would go to the aid of Russia. On the other hand, in Spain the working class allied with the urban intellectuals had traditionallystaged the rebellions against absolutism and for a republic. Catalonia, most industrialized section ofall, had always been in the lead in this struggle ever since the first Cortes of Cadiz in 1812 and theuprising in Carthegena in 1873 and the second Republic of that period. In Spain, therefore, in spite ofthe fact that the country, like Russia, is predominantly agrarian, the workers have not been entirelyswamped by the mass of peasants but rather have brought the countryside in the wake of the cities. Itis not that the peasants are not organized; it is rather that most of them are taken into special divisionsof the trade union centers so that, in fact, the agrarian element must articulate its needs through theinstrument set up and dominated by industrial laborers. The peasant is here, in a sense, the prisoner ofthe worker and follows his lead. This process has been greatly accelerated by the fact that a vast part of the land was in great estatesworked by wage laborers. Naturally, then, in Spain, it was the union that would dominate the fieldrather than the Soviets or general councils of toilers mixed indiscriminately together. For the benefitof those Russians who like to make God in their own image and believe that Tashkent camel driversand Georgian cobblers can lead the world to a new social order, it might be well to add that mostlikely the Spanish situation will be far more typical of the Western world than the Russian andperhaps may afford a clue to elements in the agrarian countries of Europe that want to revolt againstthe old order. The question whether Soviets or unions should play the leading part was for a long time in doubt evenin Russia. For a while, when the Soviets seemed to be entirely controlled by his reformist enemies,Lenin was in favor of using purely proletarian instruments like the shop committees of the unions, to

move forward the revolution and permit the working class to take power. Fortunately for him,however, after the failure of the June offensive of the Kerensky Government at the front and thecollapse of the Kornilov counter-revolution, the Bolsheviks were able to win the majority within theSoviets and so this problem never became acute. Lenin believed Soviets were better than unions asweapons for the establishment of a new State because they cemented the concord between the workersand the peasants whereas, if the unions had taken power by themselves, the peasants would havetended to become antagonized and broken the alliance. The last word has not yet been said on thisstrategy, however, for with the breakdown of the European social revolution, the Soviets in Russiagradually became filled not with revolutionists but with nationalist elements that have now changedeven the constitution of the country to suit their new aims. The problem whether Soviets or unions should have the hegemony renewed its importance in 1921, atthe end of the interventionary period. At that time there arose the so-called Workers Opposition insidethe ranks of the Bolsheviks that raised the question who should control and operate the factories, theSoviets or the unions. The Workers Opposition argued that if the unions were not given theconstructive task of building up economy, they would lose all vital function and degenerate into merepropaganda clubs. The Bolshevik Party under Lenin believed, on the contrary, that the program of theWorkers Opposition would tend to separate the proletariat too much from the peasantry. Furthermore,that such a change was not timely for Russia was then in desperate need of increased production,outside aid was not forthcoming, and there was danger in further experimentation outside of the testedremedies of the iron hand of the dictatorship. In Spain, the fact that the mass of workers and toilers generally have joined the unions, coupled withthe complete absence of Soviets, makes it quite probable that the Syndicalist view that the unionsmust be the vehicle for the revolution and the instrument for the construction of a new social order,will prevail for a long time to come. The Syndicalist position, however, goes much farther than that. Itdenies that any State, even a Workers' State has the right to exist and it demands the liquidation of allpolitical parties as injurious to the needs of the people. None the less, in the course of the struggle, theSyndicalists have been forced to recognize that the State is useful at least in the conduct of a war, butthey talk as though war is some transitory phase that will soon pass away and that therefore there is noneed to make a determined effort to capture the Spanish State. In their whole conception the syndicalists are advocating an entirely unwarranted experiment that canprove fatal to the entire popular movement. One cannot support the State in war and not in peace,when "peace" is but a temporary truce among nations. One cannot turn over the army to thegovernment and keep from that government the necessary arms and equipment to allow thatgovernment to win the war. One cannot admit that the union is incompetent to lead an army and yetmaintain that the union can conduct an armed insurrection against a powerful oppressive State. So the Syndicalists have been called to task by the revolutionary Marxists of the P.O.U.M. This Partywants the establishment of a Workers' State but instead of calling for all power to the Soviets, asLenin did, it calls for the immediate establishment of a Trade Union Government. This is aremarkably keen slogan since it attempts to solve at one stroke many of the most important problemsfacing Spain today. For one thing, such a view tends to terminate the situation where two distinct sets of unions exist inSpain, one controlled by the Socialists, called the General Labor Union (U.G.T.), and the otherregulated by the Anarcho-Syndicalists, called the National Confederation of Labor (C.N.T.). Both areabout evenly matched, the Syndicalists dominating Catalonia, the Socialists leading in Asturias andother industrial regions. Should both unions fuse into one, it would mean that the union shop localwould really be equivalent, in the extent of its strength, to the Soviets that were established in thefactories of Russia. Should these combined unions then take over the machinery of the State, the trade

union regime would become analogous to the Soviet dictatorship. For if trade unions were to seize the government it would automatically involve the taking over of thedirection of the war and the control over foreign trade and relations. This would entrain, in turn, a hostof most important political questions both internal and international. The trade union would thenbecome transformed from a traditionally defensive economic body interested solely in wages andhours and better working conditions for its members, to a vast political organism engaged in a life anddeath struggle and civil war. Under a trade union government there would come to an end the disturbing question whether theunions or the State should control the factories and run them. Once the union is the State, there can beno difference between, on the one hand, nationalization or municipalization of industries, where theenterprises are owned and operated by the State, and, on the other, collectivization or syndicalization,where the concerns are managed entirely by the unions for the benefit of the people as a whole. The formation of a trade union government in Spain would be the utilization of concrete Spanishmethods and habits to accomplish the same results that the Russians were able to do with Soviets.Should the People's Front Government in Valencia fail to win the war against fascism, should thedifficulties of the people increase as the mountain of dead piles up, there is no doubt that this solutionwill more and more appeal to the Spanish people. Once decided on, just how much influence the agrarian element would have in the new governmentwould become a secondary difficulty. Most of the agricultural toilers are now in associationsconnected with the unions and would have a direct say. Where they function in separate organizations,as in Catalonia where they have formed the Union of Rabasaires, there the government can include therepresentatives of such organizations directly into the State apparatus and treat them as though theywere union delegates. It must be admitted, however, that before such a general solution could be arrived at, almostinsuperable difficulties would have to be overcome. First there are the officials of the variousparliamentary parties who think in terms of democracy and parliament and who would never toleratefor one moment these institutions being dissolved in favor of industrial union control. Then there arethose Socialists and Communists who want the political party to dominate the State and to reduce theunion to a secondary organism. Third, there are those Syndicalist and Anarchist officials in the unionswho do not want anything to do with the State and are opposed to nationalization and centralization ofany sort. Finally, there are those trade union functionaries who fear that the creation of a solidworking class regime would enormously stimulate the shop locals from below and give a death blowto the old trade union machine in which they are so firmly entrenched. Regardless of the outcome of the present struggle in Spain, it can be said without equivocation thatunless the Spanish people use the concrete methods at hand to solve their unique problems, they willnever be able to solve them at all. Contents

Covering the Evacuation of the Refugees By Albert Weisbord It was time for me to get out of Spain, Valencia, Alaeria, Barcelona, and others, made me feel thatgradually the noose was being drawn around the Spanish Republic. At the same time the sullenness ofthe masses, coupled with the continued preventative repressive measures of the government, presagednew battles to come of an even more terrible nature than before. Although I was invited by those in thegovernment to stay around and see the fun, I considered that now was the time to leave Spain if I

wanted to get out at all. But before leaving this part of the country for good, I determined to see what the evacuation ofrefugees was like. Each week the French government sends a vessel, the Imetherie II, from Marseillesto Barcelona to take out refugees, Spanish and otherwise, who wish to leave Spain. The ship is underthe watchful eyes of two representatives of the International Control Commission who hoist theirpeculiar white pointed flag with two balls painted on it, for all to see and take note. I was not aware ofthe fact, until later, that those who took the boat were, in the main, people who were afraid to leaveCatalonia by train, that is, who were hostile to the Republic and therefore feared, whether justifiablyor not, that they would be taken off the train and either arrested or shot. These people had lived in Barcelona under the protection of various foreign consulates whounderstood that their charges must have the protection of foreign flags, otherwise their lot as refugeeswould not be an easy one. Most of the refugees on the trip I was to make were former nuns, pale, timidwomen bewildered and plainly incapable of adjusting themselves to the stern realities of the life theyhad found outside their cloister. Mingled with these nuns were a few families of the business worldwho had lost their all in the revolution and wanted to get out.... Then there were others. Pressed in with these future passengers, then, and totally ignorant of the fact that we were looked uponwith deadly hostility by the Valencia Carbineros who had replaced the Catalonians after the bloodyMay Days, I was pushed along into the locked large warehouse used by the customs authorities for theinspection of those leaving the country. Most of the voyagers, were playing safe and travelling verylight. But I, not having been forewarned, had a big suitcase and plenty of literature. What is more, Ihad only my passport and press card to identify me. As soon as I opened up my suitcase the customs official became extremely excited. First of all I hadbeen foolish enough to keep with me an old map put out by the North German Lloyd Company whichon one side contained a map of Germany and on the other a map of Europe giving in red and in bluethe airlines and railroad routes from one city to another and also expressing in numbers the mileageand the hours it took to travel the distances. It was an ordinary map, but all maps were suspect inSpain and this was a German one. Then I had a large detailed map of Spain. It did no good to protestthat I had received this from the Spanish Bureau of Tourism in Paris. It might have secret notations ininvisible ink. I also had some pictures of the victims of the recent bombardment of Barcelona and, tocap it all, some literature of the various political organizations some of them not linked by theofficial. Then my name was German. In short, I could be nothing else but a German spy bringing outimportant information to Hitler. I trembled at the fact that in my pocket of my topcoat flung carelessly next to the valise were highlyinteresting military notes that I had obtained in my visit to the Aragon front, notes that had been givenme by the general staff at Sietamo. But fortunately, so eager was the official to bring me before hischief that he had scarcely time to give an order to his fellow officer to run through the valise carefully,when he had whisked me away for "special examination." Life moves swiftly in Spain these days.Gone is the old procrastination of "manana," perpetual delay till "tomorrow." Once suspect of being aspy, your life is not worth a Catalonian peseta in Franco's camp, which is not very much. Justice isswift and secret. No wonder, then, that I had a few jittery moments while I explained to the chief incharge the innocent character of my material. At last he gave the order to allow me to pass. When I returned I found all my stuff in the suitcase had been gone over as with a fine toothed comb,everything was scattered on the floor and some of it was lost. But, what was most important, nobodyhad thought of looking in my topcoat. And so packing up my bag and throwing the coat nonchalantlyover my arm, I went on to the next official in the line. This person was supposed to check up on themoney each passenger took with him so that he did no take out more than he had come in with. But, asmy listeners know, I had not been given any money authorized on my entrance into Spain, and so I had

to turn over all my foreign money to the officials. Fortunately, however, again I had changed most ofmy money into American Express money orders which were worthless to the Spanish authorities andwhich they allowed me to keep. But to make sure that I had really shown them all of the money in my possession, they sent me toanother room to be searched. You can imagine my dismay when the officials began fishing into mytopcoat and dragging out all the precious notes I had kept hidden from previous inspections. Withthese notes I had been given a special topographical map at military headquarters at the front. I hadhad the presence of mind to mail this map out of Spain. Had they found it on me, I certainly could nothave been here to tell this tale. As it was, I do not know what gods there are that favor me, the officersscrutinized minutely the whole first part of the notes which were innocent enough and then rapidlyscanned through the middle portions containing the military data. With a gruff grunt he handed thenotes back - others had been arrested and killed for trying to take out similar notes - and I was finallyallowed to pass on board the boat. I wiped my forehead, grabbed my valise and coat and rushed for thegang plank. At last I was under the French flag again. I was one of the first passengers to board the Imetherie II, but I found ahead of me a faultlesslydressed passenger who, I was certain, had not passed through the customs. This individual was alreadyensconced in the best cabin in the ship. I should point out that the only accommodations for the somethree hundred and fifty refugees who were to overcrowd the ship for the night trip to Marseilles weremiserable bunks of straw in a filthy unventilated freight hold. On one side, toward the prow of the shipwere two toilets used indiscriminately by men, women and children and adding their stench to theunbearable odor from the closely packed and sweating passengers. The hold, at best, should not haveheld fifty passengers, if any at all, but under this hatch there was supposed to be squeezed all thepassengers they had shoved on board. Knowing, then, what kind of bunk had been given me, I becameall the more interested in this favored passenger. Walking around the ship I knocked into the delegates of the International Control Commission, anEnglishman and a Dutchman. The British representative, I soon discovered, was a member of theBritish Naval Reserve. He evidently conceived his job on the commission as a fine opportunity to dosome spying for the British Admiralty. His chief concern was the identity of every vessel, especiallyevery ship of war, to be found in Mediterranean and Barcelona waters. The Dutch member, however,took his duties in reference to the Imetherie II, conscientiously. He was a newcomer on this route,having been stationed previously on the Portuguese side watching the Canary Islands, and he was a bitworried by the fact that the captain of the ship was not making him very welcome. Gloomily he toldme that he had heard of some cases where the crew had become so hostile to the control committee onboard that the members had not dared to get out of their rooms. As for the present vessel, thingslooked rather suspicious, he confided to me. With that sort of opening, I was able to ask about the interesting passenger whom I had found on theship and I was informed that this gentleman had come aboard in a very mysterious manner. Before thevessel had reached Barcelona harbor, a French destroyer had stopped the boat and placed this manaboard. Thus his presence was unknown to the Spanish authorities. While the stolid Dutchman waspuzzling over this question, I made up my mind to do a bit of sleuthing on my own. I was soon in conversation with the stranger. He told me that he was a "special aid" of the Britishconsul at Alicante. But when I question the British member of the control I learned that there was noBritish consul at Alicante and that such small consulates never had "special aids." What was moresuspicious was the fact that this Spaniard had no passport of any kind. Later he unburdened himself ofthe real facts. He was the son of a very wealthy aristocratic family now fleeing republican Spain. Withthe help of the French consul he had been able to get on board a French warship and then had beentransferred to the refugee ship, since it would create a scandal for the French Navy to disembark

private passengers. It was enough that the French Naval vessels had become ferry boats for theemigration of Franco's supporters who had been caught on the other side. Where was my friend going? Well, he did not mind saying that he was going to Bayonne, a French cityon the Bay of Biscay, and from there he would re-enter Spain to enlist on the side of the monarchists.But how would he get into France? He had no passports or papers of any kind. Oh, that was easy, heexclaimed. The French consul could take care of him. Here was an interesting case worthy of any American writer's attention. I made it my business tocheck all these facts. Sure enough, as the boat docked at Marseilles and the immigration authoritiescame on board, one of the French consuls who had travelled on the boat with us took this stranger infirst of all and made a special plea for him. The Spaniard was then given a special pass for debarkationand allowed to waive his vaccination, although all the rest of us had been forced to submit to thismedical treatment. Since I was the next one to get off the boat after he did, he stopped for me and asked me to help himget his papers in Marseilles, especially as the French consul could no longer be openly identified withhim. I thus accompanied him to the prefecture of police at Marseilles and saw that it took only a shorttime to get him fixed up with the necessary papers to stay and travel in France, to enter England if heso desired, or to go to the Franco side of Spain. Astounding, you may say, that the agents of the French People's Front Government professingfriendship to the Spanish Republic, should be violating French law, Spanish law and the rules of theInternational Control Commission in order to help Monarchists escape from this Spanish Republic.But this was no isolated case of an accidental nature. I was to see further evidence of this sametendency. The officers of the French Navy, most of them members of l'Action Francaise, a Frenchfascistic society, were evidently not in sympathy with the politics of their government. As our ship, the Imetherie II, steamed out of the harbor of Barcelona, it was stopped and again aFrench warship drew alongside. This time, six more passengers were deposited. All of them were wellwithin the draft age, all of them, like the first one, were Spanish and were thus violating Spanish lawsin fleeing the country. All of them professed views friendly to Franco as I was to ascertain. And all ofthem were given special privileges on the boat. Supposedly, every one was to be treated equally on this vessel, and nothing was for sale. But while therest of us were given but one coarse meal during the first day out, these others could have theirsbrought to their state rooms, and obtained the best on the boat in the way of food and drinks. Theyformed a special group apart from all the rest. There was such a glaring contrast between this situation and the one that had confronted me when Ihad tried to enter leftist Spain that I determined to take up the matter with the representatives of thecontrol commission on board the boat. But the British member declared his job was only to preventthe entrance of volunteers into Spain, not to report the escape of Monarchists from the Leftists. If theFrench Admiralty violated the laws of France or of Spain, that was not his business. If these favoredrefugees wanted to get into Spain on the other side, that was for the control in Western France toworry about. The Dutchman wanted to help but felt he could not if the British member would notcooperate. It was beginning to dawn on him, too, why he had not been made welcome on the ship. Hepromised to report the matter. And so it rested. Thus my final farewell to Spain was like my first initiation to its borders. Around the volcano of thecivil war in Spain there blew on all sides immense billows of smoke of intrigue, plots andconspiracies. Everyone apparently has a finger in the Spanish pie eager to pull out some sort of plumfor himself. Neutrality and impartiality are birds entirely unknown in these parts. Were they to beseen, they would be shot on sight. Contents