“I hoped he liked me as well as I liked him.”

On this day in history in 1938 George Orwell's memoir from the Spanish Civil War, The Homage to Catalonia, was published.

Posted below are a selection of articles and book reviews from the Socialist Standard covering both Orwell and the Spanish Civil War:

• Dec 1936: Editorial: Atrocities in Spain
• Feb 1937: Some Lessons from Spain
• Mar 1938: A review of Spanish Testament, by Arthur Koestler
• Apr 1939: The Last Hour in Madrid
• Dec 1949: Into the Crystal Ball
• Aug 1954: Barcelona 1937
• Mar 1971: Coming up for Orwell
• May 1980: Literary lefties in the 1930s
• Dec 1983: Orwell's Nightmare
• Aug 1986: Spanish Civil War
• Oct 1986: The Political Ideas of George Orwell
• May 1997: George Orwell, Spain and anti-fascism
• Feb 1998: A review of Friends of Durruti Group: 1937-1939 by Agustin Guillamon
• June 1998: A review of The Spanish Anarchists. The Heroic years 1868-1936 by Murray Bookchin
• Aug 2006: For Whom The Bell Tolled
• Sep 2016: The Heroic Tragedy: Civil War and Social Revolution in Spain
• Oct 2016: The Heroic Tragedy: A Civil War Within a Civil War
• Nov 2023: A review of Orwell: The New Life. by D. J. Taylor

The Last Hour in Madrid (1939)

From the April 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

What actually caused the revolt in Madrid that took place during March is not easy to discover with certainty. One thing, however, can be said without possibility of error. Men in that beleaguered city, awaiting the final assault of General Franco, and his foreign armies, would not have tried to seize power by force of arms without having what in their eyes was a very urgent and satisfactory reason. The revolt was apparently led by Communists, and received the approval of the Communist Daily Worker, but some accounts from Madrid itself indicated that by no means all the Communists there took part in it—whether because they opposed it or were taken by surprise is again in doubt. The view held by many observers was that, after the loss of Catalonia to Franco, many elements in the Madrid political parties were favourable to seeking surrender on whatever terms could be obtained. If, in these circumstances, some of the men who in any case would be Franco’s first victims, preferred to resist to the last, rather than submit, nobody could call their courageous attitude in question.

The nature of the case put by the two sides can be seen from a few typical statements: The Communist Daily Worker (March 5th, 1939) reported from Paris that the surrender policy was “the product of direct intervention by the British and French Governments,” working in conjunction with Franco. The Daily Telegraph was quoted by the Daily Worker to the effect that it was known in London at least a week earlier that Colonel Casado and Senor Besteiro (members of the Council of National Defence, against which the revolt took place), had been in touch with Franco and proposed to surrender once they had established their authority. The Daily Worker, (March 7th) had this to say of the Council: —

“The Council is composed of ex-professional officers, anarchists and Right-wing members of the Socialist Party. Political organiser of the movement is Julian Besteiro, a member of the Right-wing of the Socialist Party. Throughout the whole war Besteiro has been a leader of the capitulationists. As long ago as the end of 1936 he was notorious on account of his close contacts with the British diplomatic agents in Spain and elsewhere . . .”

The case put forward by the Council of National Defence (on which apparently the chief workers’ organisations, except the Communists, were represented—Manchester Guardian, March 7th), was that the Negrin Government had come under foreign Communist influence; had hidden the true facts of the military situation from the people, and were “hoping for a world war” to save themselves and their Government. This last charge Negrin denounced as absurd.

So much for the explanations given by the two sides.

The struggle itself, though comparatively short, was bitter, and must have weakened still further Madrid’s capacity to withstand the attack being prepared by Franco.

What was tragic was the bitterness of feeling among groups of workers, which could countenance this slaughter under the eyes of the enemy outside the gates. The Madrid correspondent of the Daily Telegraph could report (Daily Telegraph, March 8th), that: “Lieut-Colonel Mera, the Anarchist military leader, has brought veteran Anarchist shock troops . . . into Madrid to assist in suppressing the rising.”

The diplomatic correspondent of the Manchester Guardian (March 8th, 1939) reported executions of Communists in Madrid, and stated that once the supply of arms from Russia ceased there had grown up much anti-Communist feeling. The Daily Express (March 8th) alleged that the Anarchists shared this feeling towards the Communists because of their part in putting down the Anarchist-Syndicalist revolt which took place in Barcelona, with heavy loss of life, in 1937.

One ironic feature was a statement issued from General Miaja’s headquarters, that “Troops loyal to the new Defence Council, with abundant war material, are marching on Canillejas ” (i.e., marching to suppress the revolt) (The Times, March 10th, 1939). How often have Miaja and his Communist admirers lamented their lack of war material for the war against Franco.

One thing the revolt does show again: that is the difficulty or the impossibility of achieving real unity by merging together in a Popular Front parties and individuals who differ fundamentally in aim, outlook, and method. It was obvious in 1936 that it would be an enormous task to secure unity between long standing opponents like the Spanish Labourites, Anarchist-Syndicalists, Communists, Trotskyites, Liberal Republicans, Catholic Basque Separatists, etc. The revolt in Barcelona, and now this revolt in Madrid, together with the frequent inability to secure effective and loyal co-operation, show that, even the stress of war will not make men who think differently work to a common programme.

One writer (Jose Martin Blazquez—”I Helped to Build an Army.” Seeker and Warburg, 15s.), who was an army officer, and sided with the Republicans in the early part of the war, maintains that the Party rivalries made it impossible to build up an efficient army. There again, as Franz Borkenau maintains in his preface to the book, there was not one view of what kind of army to build, but three incompatible views—a revolutionary popular army like that of the French after the revolution, a “political” army like that of Russia, or a non-political army like the British. The Anarchists favoured the first, the Communists the second, and the army officers and Liberal-Republicans the third. According to Blazquez, the circumstances made the task impossible.

Edgar Hardcastle

Lessons of the Spanish Civil War (1979)

From the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Forty years ago. after three years of bloody civil war, the victorious Franco supporters came to power in Spain and imposed their long rule of savage repression. The war cost 600,000 lives, including about 100,000 “who may be supposed to have died by murder or summary execution” (The Spanish Civil War, by Hugh Thomas).

Propagandists for both sides presented the issues in simple terms—the Francoists’ “defence of religion against Communism and Russian influence”, opposed to the Republicans’ “Defence of Parliamentary democracy against reaction and German and Italian invasion”. However, the outstanding feature of the civil war was that hardly anything was what it seemed to be, and in the confusion, misjudgement was general.

There were Catholics on both sides. Many of the poorer priests in Spain sided with the Republicans, and in this country a number of Catholics like Dr. Morgan, Labour MP and medical adviser to the TUC, gave active support.

Although the Franco revolt included part of the Spanish armed forces, most continued to support the government and in spite of his monarchist backing Franco did not restore the monarchy. Neither did he join his German and Italian allies in the second world war which quickly followed the end of the civil war, at which time the Stalin government which had been providing arms to Spain to fight the German troops, entered into its pact of friendship with Hitler.

While the Conservative Party in Britain mostly supported Franco, an influential group actively campaigned to get the British Government to intervene on the side of the Republicans, on the ground that British capitalist interests would be imperiled if Germany got control of Spain and, through it, of the Mediterranean. Other sections of the Conservative Party, while aware of the force of the argument, took the view that British intervention might provoke the war with Germany for which they were not yet ready.

The Civil War from the start was overshadowed by the rivalry of capitalist interests between the Powers, Germany seeking to get a base in the Mediterranean and Britain, France and Russia wishing to prevent it. In addition German capitalism aimed to get control of mineral wealth in Spain. Hugh Thomas says that Germany’s condition for arming the Franco forces “was German participation in all the important iron ore projects in Spain. In return for this rich prize Germany committed enough war material to Spain to tip the balance finally towards the Nationalists.”

This was also the view of the Anarchists and Anarcho-Syndicalists:

The rebellion could not have taken place if the Spanish fascists had not already come to an arrangement with Hitler and Mussolini, who agreed to a mutual aid arrangement against Spain, in furtherance of their imperialist ambition. (Three Years of Straggle in Spain. Freedom Press).

Also, Germany and Italy as well as the French Popular Front government, seized the opportunity to try out new weapons of war in battle conditions.

Inside Spain the line-up on the Franco side rested largely on the big landowners and the Church, both of which saw their privileges threatened by the Popular Front government. It was estimated in 1931 that more than half the total land was owned by less than one per cent of the population and it was the declared intention of the Government to break the landowners’ stranglehold. It was not the capitalists who in the main supported the Franco rebellion—they also saw the big landowners as their enemy.

Capitalist parties belonged to the Popular Front, and the government which held office at the time of the rebellion was entirely composed of "radicals” and “progressives”. Although the Spanish “Socialist Party” (similar to the British Labour Party in outlook) was the largest party in Parliament, they were not in the government until some six months after the start of the war.

The declared aim of the Popular Front government was to establish in Spain a “Parliamentary democracy on the English model”, but to what extent did this represent the views of the voters and parties in the Popular Front? It was certainly the aim of the “Socialists” and the trade unions with whom they were allied, as well as of the capitalist parties in the government, but most of the other Popular Front supporters were completely opposed to it.

The Spanish Communists said that that was their aim too, and for saying so they were condemned by the Trotskyists and Anarchists. It would have been very odd if the Spanish Communists, who supported the Stalin dictatorship in Russia, had really favoured democracy. In fact it was for them merely a temporary political manoeuvre, as the Communist Jose Diaz put it:

To have attempted to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat would have meant skipping a necessary stage of development. . . . (Lessons of the Spanish War, 1936-1939).

He argued that premature disclosure of the real aim would have hampered the government in getting aid from abroad.

The largest body of supporters of the Popular Front, the Anarchist and trade union bodies which jointly published Three Years of Struggle in Spain made no secret of their total opposition to “parliamentary democracy” and determined to prevent its operation. They ridiculed the idea that “the revolution for which we were fighting” was “a new kind of democratic republic: that our politics should circulate in the orbit of the western democratic tradition of England and France.”

Their aim in the war had been, they said, “that the proletariat should repulse the State, no matter what political and economic parties stood in the way.” They complained that republican governments since 1931 had been hardly less repressive than had been the monarchy. Writing when the war was over, they had to admit that, in taking part in the government, helping to form a regular army and allowing Russian control, they had had to compromise—“no one knows it better or regrets it more keenly than we do.”

It is obvious that the Popular Front was a facade, and there never was working class unity for “parliamentary democracy”. The course of the war brought the bitter antagonism of the rival factions to the surface with mutual charges of murder and betrayal and the declaration: “neither in war nor revolution has anti-fascist Spain had a worse enemy than Stalinism.” They charged the Communists with holding the view "Better lose the war than allow the revolution”.

The fact is that democratic political methods require a degree of development, including working class maturity, which did not exist in Spain in 1936. Oliverra, himself a supporter of democracy, writing in the Labour Party journal Labour (September 1936) noted that the industrial capitalists were either neutral or pro-republican and described the Franco rebellion as “the last fling of feudalism". But he believed that at that time "Liberal institutions" could not take root in Spain.

Spain is very different today. Great advances have been made in industrial development and Anarcho-Syndicalist ideas have lost much of their appeal. Spanish capitalism, with its limited monarchy and parliamentary system, is now in course of coming into line with those of the European powers in the Common Market.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Imperial Communist Party of Spain (1977)

From the June 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

After forty years the Spanish dictatorship, dominated by bankers, landed aristocracy, mine-owners and wine-growers, has had to give way to its industrial capitalist section in its struggle to emerge as a competitor in the European and other markets by legalising trade unions and political parties. Restrictions imposed by the Franco regime — the police state, rigid censorship, and the political influence of the armed forces and the church, have produced a top-heavy bureaucracy and increased the expenses of government, whereas capitalism requires cheaper government. Surplus-value extracted from the working class, which is taken by the state in taxation, reduces the appropriation in private hands. The greater the overheads of the capitalist the less his competitiveness. In addition membership of the Common Market, which Spain seeks, entails the free movement of capital and labour, free competition, and free property lobbies in the shape of political representation.

According to the Daily Telegraph (28th April 1977) 130 parties are now legally recognized. Many of these are small fragments and sects from the main parties of Fascists, Communists, reformers, Syndicalists, Republicans. There is no Socialist party at the moment. Public assembly is strictly controlled by the police, the press is still censored, and strikes are still illegal. The Republican Convention (a Spanish anti-Fascist group) claims that 150 million work hours were lost in 1976 involving 5 million workers (May 1st circular, 1977). So much for the Fascist government’s attempt to suspend the class struggle.

It is this factor as much as any other which has pushed the ossified ruling class against its will into the 20th century of labour relations. There is still a long way to go before the corrupt Syndicatos (state- controlled trade unions of employers and workers) are swept aside, and a free and independent trade- union movement allowed to develop. The Workers’ Commissions (trade unions) are dominated by the Communist Party who are exploiting them for political ends which in the long run can only be detrimental to the independence of the re-born movement. A glaring example of this was seen during the recent TU May Day demonstrations organized by the Communist Party which were forbidden by the police, and ended in a series of riots. Marcelino Camacho, head of the Workers’ Commissions, openly admitted that the object of the TU demonstrations was to help the Communists in their forthcoming June elections (Daily Telegraph, 3rd May 1977).

Communist Hypocrisy
In denouncing police brutality he also stated: “Our main enemy is not the Suarez government but the threat posed by the Francoists and neo-Francoists forces to a true return to democracy”. So the Communist Party are not opposed to the Suarez government, and are prepared to support moves to a more democratic regime using the trade unions as pawns in order to achieve their political ambitions. At the Communists’ first legal meeting since the Civil War, held at Valaldolid with 10,000 present, the flag of the Spanish monarchy was displayed on the platform. Replying to protests from party militants, Santiago Carrillo the Party secretary explained: “To consolidate democracy it was necessary to be intelligent politically as well as brave . . . To win over new followers and neutralise enemies we have taken a step that many people do not understand”. (The Times, 28th April 1977.) We agree with Senor Carrillo; many people will not understand why the Communist Party support King Juan Carlos, hand-picked by Franco as the figurehead of the Spanish ruling class. Some Communists at least had sufficient principles to object to this shameful alliance.

The British, French and Italian Communist parties have all betrayed workers in the same way. During the last war, the British party dropped its opposition to British capitalism, and were calling for the prosecution of strikers and urging workers to fight for British capitalism on the Second Front. They too draped the Union Jack on their platform, and carried it in their processions. They also supported Winston Churchill and Tory parliamentary candidates. The Italian Party is sitting down together with the Christian Democrats, whilst the French Party is patriotic and supports French capitalism. Carrillo told a provincial committee that the Party “would support the monarchy without abandoning its Marxist principles”. (The Times, 25th April.) This is a contradiction, because they cannot stand for the abolition of capitalism and its retention at the same time; nor can all the warped and twisted reasoning of the Communist Party change Marxism into support for capitalism. The fact is that the Communist Party has no Marxist principles and could therefore scarcely abandon them.

Reform or Revolution?

Political democracy is the cry of a capitalist reform movement which no genuine Socialist would take part in. All the left-wing parties, including the United Socialist Party, Republicans, Communists and Syndicalists, want democracy in order to push their reform programmes. These range from agrarian reform to self-determination for oppressed minorities, and the release of political prisoners. Other reforms which are proposed include the right to strike and better working conditions for wage workers. These, however, can be achieved by the action of the workers themselves on the industrial field using the strike weapon. Workers can strike without the right to strike, they can achieve higher wages and better working conditions whether it is legally recognized or not. Workers have no rights before capital other than those they obtain and keep through their own action in the class struggle. If the workers using the strike weapon in a properly organized way are unable to wrest from their capitalist employers higher wages and better working conditions, then they are unable to obtain these by means of reformist political action. Reforms will always be enacted when the political parties representing the various sectional interests have made out their case, and the capitalist is convinced that his interests, whether long-term or short-term, will be served. By legalizing trade unions the government will be able to monitor their activities and to obtain their co-operation.

On the industrial field the working class can force the capitalist employer against his will to disgorge a larger share of the wealth extracted from the worker than he would otherwise part with. Therein lies the antagonism of interests which manifests itself as a class struggle between possessors and producers. Higher standards of living and better working conditions must be sought on the industrial field, and not through reformist political action.

However, this economic antagonism of interests, which expresses itself in the class struggle, can only be ended by political action for the establishment of Socialism. This is the real issue which must confront the workers of Spain, not the futile and useless policies of hordes of reformers bent on keeping capitalism going. Propaganda for Socialism does not require permission from the ruling class. Neither does it need any assistance from reformist democrats. The reformer and the so-called progressive elements in Spain have not only separated democracy from the class struggle, they have changed it into an administrative reform measure for the running of capitalism. They want the democracy of the commodity where equal value exchanges for equal value — the equality of property before the law.

Socialism and Democracy

Socialism and democracy are inseparable. Socialists in Spain must campaign for both at the same time. The left in Spain claim that their activities, which are non-Socialist, express the level of political thinking. At the moment this is unfortunately true because a genuine Socialist party has yet to emerge. However, to claim, as do the Communists (Sunday Times Supplement, 26th March 1972) that the workers are not in a position to win power therefore they must make a pact with the bourgeoisie to get the key of the door to get their freedom, is defeatist nonsense.

The Spanish working class is capable of Socialism, and they must stand together with the worldwide Socialist movement in working for its establishment. British workers have made the repeated mistake of making a pact with the bourgeoisie in the shape of the Labour government, and look where it has got them.

La Pensionaria (1978)

From the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The other morning, switching on the BBC overseas service, I heard the rhythmic spelling out and clapping of what I assumed to be the name of Manchester United or some similar outfit. However, after endless repetition, I became aware that the name was I-B-A-R-R-U-R-I and I then realised that the chanters were Spaniards who had the cheek to call themselves communists and that this was a broadcast from the proceedings of the first legal congress of the Spanish Communist Party since Franco’s Civil War victory.

The first reflection one had to make, upon this realisation, was on the mindlessness. Here were supposedly politically aware workers who had taken an apparently momentous decision (more of that later) and who had the effrontery to claim to be in the vanguard of working class thought, and yet here they were mouthing slogans in praise of leadership, like so many Pavlov dogs. As if all this was not sufficiently depressing, one then had to listen to the inane commentary of the BBC reporter at the five-star luxury hotel, in Madrid, where pseudo-communists were holding their jamboree. In a voice vibrant with emotion he said that this scene was a celebration of the name of the President of the Party and he went on to say that during an interval in the proceedings this woman had enchanted the delegates by singing Asturian folk songs in the same beautiful voice which, forty years before, had thrilled the Spanish people and given her the name of La Pasionaria. What this commentator forgot to mention was that when this melodious voice was heard during the Civil War, it struck a note of horror in the hearts of thousands of people fighting in the Civil War on the Republican side many of whom La Pasionaria would condemn to torture and death in the Communist Headquarters.

Anyone who is unaware of these facts and wants to get to know more about them has only to read George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. Still better, if it is possible to get a copy, they should read Listen, Comrades by El Campesino. This was the nickname given to a famous peasant general who led a Communist army in the Civil war and the book describes not only what went on in Spain but in Stalin’s Russia to which he and La Pasionaria and other Communist leaders fled from the victorious Franco. This Communist harridan continued her murderous career, under Stalin’s wing, by liquidating Communist opponents, including her husband, and it was only because El Campesino was actually able to escape from Stalin’s Russia — an even more difficult task than from Franco’s Spain — that we can learn about these things. Unfortunately, it seems that even the “reformed” Communists in Spain have not read about their former hero, El Campesino. Or perhaps they prefer to remain in ignorance. (It is worth a little digression here to mention that his memoires include some very revealing pages about the utter collapse of nerve on the part of the Stalin regime when the Germans were approaching Moscow in 1941. It is well known that millions of Russians showed that they looked to Hitler as their deliverer from the tyranny of Stalin. There is certainly a good case for arguing that, if the Nazis had behaved with some semblance of humanity towards the Russians in the area they had conquered, then even greater numbers of Russians would have changed sides).

The Spanish Communist Party has now achieved world-wide fame as the most advanced outpost of so-called Euro-Communism. It does not seem to have occurred to the scribblers of the western press that there is something remarkably inconsistent, even for Communists, in those circumstances, in appointing as their president a notorious Stalinist witch. The majority of Spanish people are a little less naive. They remembered her windy rhetoric during the Civil War about dying for liberty, rather than living under tyranny, but they noted that far from dying, she ran away to become a pensioner of Stalin, and with their mordant Spanish wit changed her sobriquet to the one at the head of this article. The Spanish Communist Party has now officially abandoned Leninism but, whatever that means, in practice none of the pundits seems to have noticed that this means they have thrown out the baby and the bathwater and the bath as well. What on earth can the party stand for minus its Leninism? They claim that the answer to that is that they are Marxist Democrats. But their new found adherence to democracy is exposed as a sham by the continuation of secrecy and leadership in their own organisation. As to Marxism, the word in their mouths is the same meaningless shibboleth as the so-called Marxist-Leninism that the Communist parties of the world have been prating about ever since 1917.

The real position now seems to be that the Euro-Communists of the western countries wish to divest themselves of the aura of conspiratorial leadership with the objective of a minority seizure of power. All they are left with is a programme of nationalisation. But, of course, there is already a plethora of so-called Social Democratic and Labour Parties who have been playing the rôle for generations. There is but one service which the Communist parties can perform and that is to leave the stage, where they now have no rôle whatever to play.

L. E. Weidberg

The Heroic Tragedy: A Civil War Within a Civil War (2016)

From the October 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The second part of our look back at the Spanish Civil War. Continued from last month.

The Spanish civil war is often simplistically described as a war of democracy versus fascism, or by Francoist historians as Catholicism versus Soviet Communism but this hides the real multiplicity of the underlying forces that fed into the conflict. Religion, regionalism, the agrarian question, rival claims to the monarchy, and class conflict all played a role in shaping the course of events.

There was tension and conflict of interests between the various groups that made up the Republican Popular Front. The Generalitat (Catalonian regional government) sought to regain power that had been taken from them during the putting down of the military rising of July 1936. Events came to a head and culminated in the ‘May Days’ of 1937, as famously described by George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia. On 2 May three trucks of assault guards, led by Rodriguez Salas the communist (PSUC – Catalonian Communist Party, pro-Stalinist) Commissioner for Public Order, arrived at the CNT/UGT controlled telephone exchange building with the intention of seizing it. Taking the occupants by surprise they were able to enter the building but were eventually forced back by machine-gun fire. The sound of the fighting alerted those nearby and news of the raid quickly spread throughout Barcelona. A stand-off ensued. On one side were the various forces of government and the PSUC, and on the other the CNT-FAI, backed up by the POUM (a small non-Stalinist communist party, similar in outlook to opposition Communists of Russia) and a smaller group The Friends of Durruti (a group within the CNT that objected to collaboration with the government).

CNT leaders made their way to the Generalitat to demand that Aiguader (Commander of the Assault Guards and Republican National Guard who was assumed to have given the order) and Rodriguez Salas resign, to pacify the situation. But no compromise could be met. The CNT declared a general strike. A network of barricades were constructed to resist the government forces, and movement of non-CNT vehicles was prevented. Sporadic shooting could be heard throughout the streets of Barcelona. A call for calm was put out over the radio, to no avail.

Anarchist and POUM divisions left the battlefront and attempted to head to Barcelona, only to be turned back by republican aircraft. Government reinforcements arrived in Barcelona via sea and road. The possibility of a full civil war within the civil war was becoming increasingly real. Seeing the futility of such a turn of events CNT and FAI leaders proposed that the barricades be taken down on the condition that no reprisals be carried out by the Assault Guards. The government agreed and on 7 May the barricades began to disappear. Five days of street fighting had resulted in more deaths and casualties than in the initial putting down of the military coup. The era of anarcho-syndicalist power in Barcelona was over. The PSUC and the PCE (Spanish Communist Party of which PSUC was the Catalonian branch) used the events to bolster their position within the government.

World war by proxy
In many ways the Spanish Civil War was a dress rehearsal for the Second World War, with foreign intervention playing a decisive role from the beginning of the conflict. The fascist states of Germany and Italy provided troops and hardware to aid the Nationalists, using the conflict as a testing ground for new equipment and techniques. In the first days and months of the conflict it was impossible for large Nationalist troop movements to be conducted via the sea, as the Republic had control of the navy. So German aircraft provided transport for the otherwise stranded forces of the Army of Africa commanded by General Franco, this being the first operation of its kind in history with a force of some 13,500 men being moved from Morocco to the mainland by the end of the operation. Another historical first befell the Basque town of Guernica which, later in the conflict, was to be the first civilian town destroyed by air raid. The other western European countries in effect supported the Nationalists by preventing arms being passed to the Republicans under the guise of non-intervention. Only Russia and Mexico supported the Republic and Mexico only diplomatically.

The aim of Russian foreign policy was to seek anti-Nazi allies in the region, a policy dependent on French capitalism. As the spread of workers’ control would be a threat to the interests of the ruling classes in the area, the goal of the Russians was to secure the victory of the Republic but at the same time stem the successes of the syndicalists. As the Republic’s only source of arms came from Russia, administered by the Spanish Communist parties, they were able to apply much leverage to the situation; though not to the extent that the Republic was a mere puppet of Moscow, as is sometimes claimed.

The Spanish Holocaust
‘It is necessary to spread terror. We have to create the impression of mastery, eliminating without scruples or hesitation all those who do not think as we do. There can be no cowardice. If we vacillate one moment and fail to proceed with the greatest determination, we will not win. Anyone who helps or hides a Communist or a supporter of the Popular Front will be shot’ – General Mola.

Away from the front-lines a wave of violent killings took place, claiming nearly 200,000 victims. Though atrocities occurred on both sides, the nature of the killings in the two different zones reflected two different attitudes towards violence and human life. In the Nationalist zone the repression was of a premeditated and coldly calculated nature designed to suppress the enemy through the imposition of terror. It has been estimated that, out of all the victims of rearguard repression, 150,000 were at the hands of the Nationalists. Once an area had been conquered they would round up known Republicans and trade unionists and mass executions would follow. Republican women would have their heads shaved and be forced to drink castor oil, so as to soil themselves in public. Thousands were subjected to rape and other forms of torture. The Nationalists were to continue with their policy of bloody repression well after the civil war had been won – in the years following the war a further 20,000 Republicans were to be executed.

The disappearance of conventional structures of law and order led to atrocities on the Republican side, but these were mostly brought to an end within the first few months of the war. Violence was spontaneous and came from the bottom up, rather than being the result of a deliberate policy. In the countryside armed gangs roamed from village to village, executing anyone that was suspected of being sympathetic to the Nationalists. Victims included captured rebel army officers and troops, the clergy, landowners and businessmen. Nearly seven thousand members of the church were murdered or executed. Some efforts were made to protect and assist the evacuation of Nationalist prisoners and others at risk, an equivalent move not seen on the Nationalist side. Workers organisations and political parties set up autonomous police forces and secret prisons, known as checas. As the conflict went on these would increasingly be brought into central control; though the Communists, assisted by imported NKVD Soviet secret police, would hold on to their checas, using them not only against suspected Nationalists but also against the CNT-FAI, POUM and other advocates of the social revolution.

Conclusion
It is all too easy to pass judgment from the distance of history. Any praise or criticism must be made in the light of the fact that without the military rising none of the subsequent events would have happened, and everything that did happen was unavoidably shaped and influenced by the conditions of war and the wider international situation. The social revolution in Catalonia only occurred because the normal functioning of state power had been disrupted by the military rising, with control of the economy temporarily passing into the hands of the syndicalists.

Could the social revolution (better understood as ‘trade-union controlled capitalism’) have spread further? The actual situation of the time meant that the odds were vastly stacked against this. The syndicalists were isolated both within the Republic and internationally. The central government deliberately held back credit and resources from the syndicalists, and international trade deals meant that foreign trade could only be conducted via the Madrid government, so economically the syndicalists found themselves behind a blockade.

But suppose, for the sake of argument, the CNT had somehow managed to become the dominant force throughout the whole of the Republic. How then would their programme have fared? Worker-controlled capitalism is subject to the same pressures as those of capitalism proper. Even with the whole industry of the nation forged into one great co-operative, the logic of market competition would remain. The national co-operative would have to be able to acquire goods and raw materials from the outside world and to do this it would have to profitably dispose of its own. In order for this to be possible enough surplus-value would have to be squeezed out of the working class so that at least an average rate of profit could be realised. As with any capitalist enterprise, the pressure would be to continually increase productivity of labour, ultimately to the detriment of the labour. The logic of capitalism is not imposed because of the greed of individual capitalists but because market competition compels enterprises to accumulate or die. Communism is not capitalism without capitalists but a system where productive activity is directly controlled by the whole of society, rather than being mediated through exchange on the market.

On the dawn of the military rising, the working class of Spain faced a bleak choice; face repression and extermination at the hands of the fascists, potentially die fighting, or suffer the isolation of exile. Though the outcome was not and could not have been socialism, the efforts of a strong and well-organised workers movement did for a short time and in many respects successfully improve their living conditions. However, at the same time we should not over-romanticise, since the positive achievements of the syndicalists were happening against a background of violence and slaughter. The cooperative worldwide society we call socialism cannot be brought about through coercive means, as what is gained by force has to be held onto by force. Repression and summary killing can only contribute to an atmosphere of authoritarianism. Nonetheless one cannot help but admire the bravery of the ordinary men and women who courageously set about building what they saw as the new society, whilst at the same time resisting the forces of a military rebellion. War and civil war is always a tragedy, but in this case it was a tragedy of heroic proportions.

Following the death of Franco and the return to parliamentary democracy in Spain, anarcho-syndicalism returned to play a small but significant, though greatly reduced, role in the Spanish labour movement. Spain’s third largest union currently is the CGT (General Confederation of Labour), formed from a split with the CNT in 1979, with a reported membership of 80,000.

Darren Poynton

Carrillo spells it out (1977)

From the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Standard of August 1918 dealt with the Bolshevik seizure of power by making quite clear that this was not—and could not be—a Socialist revolution. Both the essential prerequisites—social production for abundance of wealth and a majority of the people understanding and wanting Socialism — were lacking. We were almost alone in this view. Sixty years later, after incalculable damage has been done to the cause of Socialism a report in the Guardian (June 30) quotes the leader of the Spanish Communist Party as saying: “Russia is not socialist and the Communist Party is not Marxist”.

We are asking the working class to learn the lesson of history, which is to reject the advice of “superior intellectuals” and act on the principle enunciated by Marx before Lenin was born: “The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself.” How much more will the workers endure before they “do their own thing”? For whatever Carrillo and the other so-called Euro-communists like Marchais of France and Berlinguer of Italy may admit in their current schism with Russia, the last thing they will suggest is that the workers should reject all leaders—including them. And although Carillo tries to keep the Stalinist witch La Pasionaria out of sight she has been made the titular President of the party and is now MP for Oviedo.

Carrillo now actually calls the Kremlin a Church and the CP of the USSR the Inquisition—and in Spain that passes for a damning criticism. But what is it all worth? The real crux of the matter is that Carrillo's supporters have no raison d’etre if they cut themselves off from the Kremlin (could their British comrades run the Morning Star if the Kremlin stops paying for many thousand copies a day for export to the dustbins of Eastern Europe?). The largest leftist party in Spain, which ran a manifesto appealing to all classes of society including industrialists, stands for all the reforms and nationalization programmes that any non-Socialist could wish for. While Carrillo, publicly proclaims his loyalty to the Bourbon king and the capitalist flag.

L. E. Weidberg

Sixty inglorious years (1977)

From the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

In our issue of October last, we printed an article quoting remarks made by Carrillo, the leader of the so-called Spanish Communist Party, saying that Russia is not Socialist and their Communist Party is not Marxist, thus confirming what we have consistently stated in these columns right from the start. (Of course this has not prevented Carillo from accepting a gracious invitation to join in the banqueting in Moscow to celebrate the great anniversary of the State-Capitalist Revolution.)

Just in case further confirmation was needed, those other glorious “Communists”, the rulers of Red China, have not missed the opportunity of the anniversary to revile their Russian comrades. The Guardian of November 1 quoted an article from the People's Daily of Peking which Reuters says is a restatement of the views of Mao and which is certainly a statement of the views of the present ruling gang. Comparing the two super powers, they say that the Soviet Union “is therefore more aggressive and adventurous” than America and then goes on to make the following choice pronouncement: “It has a highly centralised State-monopoly capitalist economy without its equal in any other imperialist country and it is a state under fascist dictatorship.” You can’t get blunter than that, even in Chinese.

L. E. Weidberg

Spanish Civil War (1986)

From the August 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish civil war in June coincided with the re-election of the "socialist" government of Gonzalez. It presents some curious reversals. The Popular Front government of 1936, which was overthrown in the armed revolt led by Franco, was solidly republican while Franco was monarchist. Now the Spain of Gonzalez is firmly monarchist and was opposed in the general election of June by the party of Franco sympathisers.

In 1936 the Republican government declared that its aim was to establish in Spain a parliamentary system on the British model, though most of that Popular Front's supporters were entirely opposed to a parliamentary system. In 1976 a two chamber parliament, much like that in Britain, was endorsed by 94 per cent of the voters in a referendum, and the "socialist" government of Gonzalez in its four years of office has been running a policy rather like that of Thatcher, a “toughly Gladstonian economic policy", with "tight control of the money supply" (The Economist, 28 June 1986).

Just as the aim of the Popular Front in 1936 had nothing to do with socialism, the same is true of the Gonzalez government. (The Economist, in a nice choice of words describes its policy as "pale pinkery" and says it is socialist "in name only"). The Spanish "Socialist Party", like the British Labour Party, is concerned only with trying to show that it can run capitalism better than can its conservative opponents. Present day Spain has another resemblance to Britain. It has its equivalent of Northern Ireland in the violence accompanying the attempts of sections of the Basque population to set up an independent state.

The Civil War, which cost 600.000 lives, ended with a Franco victory in March 1939. and the fascist dictatorship lasted until his death in 1975. In Britain, the civil war was largely presented in ideological terms of "democracy versus dictatorship", and “atheism versus religion", with supporters of both sides levelling charges of atrocities, but the reality was very different inside Spain. Franco was backed by the Catholic hierarchy and the big landowners but many of the poorer priests supported the Republican government, as did most of the air force and part of the army and navy. It was estimated in 1931 that more than half the land was owned by less than one per cent of the population, the Catholic church being the biggest landowner. It was not the Spanish capitalists who backed Franco. Avowedly capitalist political parties belonged to the Popular Front and although in 1936 the Spanish "Socialist" Party was the largest party in parliament, they were not represented in the government until six months after the war started.

The whole question was overshadowed by the rivalries of other powers, of Germany seeking a base in Spain which would give them control of the Mediterranean and Britain, France and Russia wanting to prevent it. Germany and Italy gave massive support to Franco, as did Russia to the Republicans. The German condition for giving support was an agreement giving them control of the rich Spanish iron ore deposits. The Russian government insisted on being paid for the aid it provided. In Britain most Labour and Liberal sympathy was with the Republicans. The Tory government maintained a policy of "non-intervention" but an influential section of the Tory Party favoured helping the Spanish government against the Franco rebellion. Thousands of volunteers from outside Spain fought for the Republicans and others for Franco.

It was clear from the outset that the issue in the civil war would be largely determined by the amount and the type of aid coming from Germany, Italy, France and Russia. As the war took its course, first one side and then the other gained the advantage. It was the view of Hugh Thomas in The Spanish Civil War that "Germany committed enough war material to tip the balance finally towards the Nationalists". According to the Penguin Dictionary of Modern History (p.306) what led to the final collapse of the Republican armies was a change of Russian policy "which cut off aid from that source". As a Republican writer complained, within six months of the Russian government backing the Spanish Republicans against German arms and troops. Stalin and Hitler were “hobnobbing" under the Stalin-Hitler pact of September 1939. The aid-giving powers. Germany, Italy and the Popular Front government in France were all using the war to test out their new weaponry.

The League of Nations was quite impotent to prevent the civil war or the intervention by the other powers. Its successor, the United Nations, condemned the Franco dictatorship and resolved that member nations of the UN should withdraw their ambassadors. This was largely ignored and it did not prevent the British government allowing a Spanish ambassador in Britain and a British ambassador to be based in Franco Spain. The United States government in 1953 concluded an agreement with the Franco government to give military and economic aid in return for the lease of air and naval bases in Spain. It was the turn of American capitalism to see a vital interest in controlling the Mediterranean, against Russia.

When the Popular Front finally had to admit defeat some of those who had uneasily worked and fought together during the war began to lay at least part of the blame for defeat on each other. The Communist Party view was put by Jose Diaz in Lessons of the Spanish War 1936—1939.

The Communists were the only party to realise how important it was to secure the Unity of the Working Class. That is why the Communist Party strove so stubbornly for the creation of a united trade union centre. But the "Socialist" and Anarchist leaders persistently worked to defeat this end. For they knew that the effect of such a unity would be to strengthen the influence of the Communists in the trade unions and would lead to victory over the forces of reaction. The Communists redoubled their efforts to create a single party of the working class based on the principles of Marxism- Leninism. But the "Socialist" leaders steadily opposed the formation of such a party, which would have ensured the hegemony of the proletariat in the People's Front and the government.

The counter version of the Anarcho-Syndicalist and Anarchist organisations and the "Socialist-Communist" General Workers' Union was given in Three Years of Struggle in Spain 1936—1939. This accused the Communist Party and "Agents of the USSR" of wanting to impose their forcible control on the Spanish Libertarian Movement; of murdering thousands of non-Stalinist comrades; of Stalinist intrigues which brought about "despair and the loss of their best men". About unity it said that in the first two years the slogans of the Communist Party can be summed up in "Better lose the war than allow the Revolution".

"What unity did the Communist Party respect or attempt to establish?— none whatsoever" and finally. "Neither in war nor revolution has anti-fascist Spain had a worse enemy than Stalinism".

The simple truth was that at the time there never existed the basis for unity on the Republican side.

The government, backed by the "Socialist Party" and some trade union elements, could proclaim the establishment of a parliamentary system as the aim of their resistance to the Franco rebellion but the Communist Party, with its Russian links, and the Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalists, each from a different standpoint, were both violently opposed to that aim. Oliveira, a supporter of the aim of the government, writing in the British Labour Party magazine Labour at the beginning of the war (September 1936) said that the conditions necessary for a successful parliamentary system did not exist in Spain at the time.

But the Spain of 1986 differs considerably from before the civil war. Under the 1982—86 term of office of the Gonzalez government, inroads had been made against the privileged position of the church and the landowners and one critical experience appears to have strengthened the hand of the government in controlling the armed forces, and preventing them from playing politics. This was when an attempt was made by some army officers to stage a revolt, including the seizure of parliament. The rebels may have been expecting support, or at least neutrality, from the king but he immediately came out strongly against them and the attempt was defeated. Spanish capitalism has made great strides towards modernising its industries and making them competitive in world markets. The Gonzalez government has also joined the European Community and entered the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation along with most European countries.

What the Gonzalez government now has to worry about in its task of running capitalism is not military revolt but the kind of problems faced by governments in all the industrialised countries, notably the problem of unemployment. From 11 per cent in 1980 it has risen steadily year after year until it is now 24 per cent, the highest in Europe and almost double what it is in Britain. Like other governments who mistakenly believe that they have only to find the right policy to be able to reduce unemployment Gonzalez, four years ago. promised to "create" 800.000 new jobs. As The Economist (28 June) unkindly points out. unemployment has risen by 800,000 since Gonzalez made his promise to reduce it by that amount.

Edgar Hardcastle

Euroformism (1978)

From the February 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eurocommunism, as a word, first came into use in 1975 to describe the policies of certain European Communist Parties, in particular their refusal any longer to take orders from Moscow as they had done for the previous fifty years. The Communist Parties concerned—such as the Italian, Spanish and French— themselves prefer to emphasize another aspect: their claim that they are now committed to using peaceful and democratic methods to achieve their objectives. But this claim is not new. Ever since the 7th World Congress of the old Communist International at the end of 1935 Communist Parties had been proclaiming a commitment to democracy—while at the same time pointing to Russia under Stalin as the most democratic country in the world.

The new factor is the criticism of Russia. This was first made public in 1967 (though, apparently, the Italian Party through its leader, Togliatti, had been making similar criticisms in private for some years previously) when a number of European Communist Parties openly criticized the trial and jailing of the writers Daniel and Sinyavsky and, even more noticeably, when they denounced the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia the following year. In the days of the pre-war Comintern (dissolved in 1943 by Stalin to please his new allies, America and Britain) this stance of the Eurocommunist parties would have been denounced as “rightwing opportunism” and illustrates an ever-present problem for the Russian ruling class in relation to its puppet parties in other countries.

Vague Aim

In order to be an effective agent of Russian foreign policy a Communist Party needs to have a mass following, but such a following can not be built up on the basis of unconditional support for Russia but rather on vaguely stated issues like Democracy, Anti- fascism and Peace. A party built up on this basis will contain a large element, perhaps, even a majority of ordinary members and voters, who are more interested in the vague aim than in supporting Russia. Hence the danger that the leadership of these parties will, in order to retain their mass support, pander to the views of their followers at the expense of furthering Russian foreign policy.

This is more or less what has happened with the two European Communist Parties—the Italian and the French—which did succeed in becoming mass parties, thanks largely to their leading role in the struggle against the Nazis in the last years of the war. The Italian and French Communist Parties have since the war both consistently had the support of between 20 land 25 per cent, of the votes (the Italian party now has an even larger percentage). For ten or so years after the war Moscow managed to retain control of these mass parties. In 1947 with the outbreak of the cold War the Italian and French parties, through the trade unions they controlled, obediently launched a series of political strikes aimed at bringing pressure on their governments to reject the Marshall Plan; then they waged a bogus “peace campaign” designed to give Russia a respite in which to develop its own atomic bomb; and they loyally supported the Russian suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. But then, in the wake of Khrushchev's revelations in 1956 and in 1961 of Stalin’s atrocities, the leaders of what in the circumstances could only be described as Russia’s fifth columns in France and Italy, became less obedient, leading in 1967, as we have seen, to open criticisms of acts of the Russian government.

Dictatorial Class Rule

The extent of the Eurocommunist criticism of Russia should not be exaggerated. They still regard Russia as basically socialist and look upon the acts they criticize as isolated incidents, as “breaches of socialist legality”, rather than expressions of a dictatorial class rule. Even Santiago Carillo, the leader of the Spanish party, who has gone the furthest in his criticisms of the Russian regime, still sees Russia as “progressive” and even socialist though not as “socialist” as the Russian leaders claim. In his book, first published in April last year “Eurocommunism” and the State (an English translation has recently been brought out by Lawrence and Wishart), he rejects the official Soviet doctrine that Russia is socialist society developing towards “full communism”, saying that because of its undemocratic features — “serious bureaucratic deformations” and “degenerations” as he puts it — it has not yet reached “full socialism”.

In his discussion of why this should have happened he begins a line of argument that has dangerous implications for all supporters of Lenin and Russia: that “a bureaucratic layer” was able to come to power because, after 1917, Russia was a backward and isolated country faced with the same task as had the developed capitalist countries in the previous century, that of the creation of a modern industry and with it a modern industrial working class recruited from the peasantry, a task which could not be accomplished democratically but only by a minority acting dictatorially.

The implication of this line of argument is that Russia was not ripe for Socialism in 1917 and that the October Revolution could not have been a socialist revolution but was the seizure of power by a modernizing elite which was later to evolve into a new ruling class exploiting the workers. Carillo himself, however, does not see this. He does not regard Russia as a class-ruled, exploitative society. In fact in 1964 a group which did was expelled, for this and other reasons, from the Spanish CP, including Fernando Claudin, the author of an excellent book showing the close relationship between the policies of Communist Parties and the foreign policy of Russia entitled The Communist Movement: From Comintern to Cominform (published by Penguins). Similarly, in 1969, the Italian party expelled a group, some of whose prominent members had come to the (correct) conclusion that Russia was state capitalist. Clearly there are certain limits beyond which criticism of Russia must not go .

The Eurocommunist position on Russia is in fact very similar to that the Trotskyites have been peddling for years: that it is basically a “workers” or “socialist” country but that it suffers from “bureaucratic deformations”. This is nonsense; how can the oppressed and exploited workers of Russia, who are unable even to organize genuine trade unions, be in any way regarded as the rulers there? It is nevertheless a convenient argument that allows those who hold it to have their cake and eat it; they can support and criticize Russia at the same time!

This ambiguous attitude of the Eurocommunists to Russia inevitably calls into question their sincerity when they proclaim a commitment to democracy as an inseparable part of socialism. For how can they hold this opinion, yet at the same time regard the obviously undemocratic system in Russia as somehow socialist? Only by practising “newspeak”, defining democracy in a different way from normal, just as they did in their bad old Stalinist past.

Reformism and Gradualism

Not, we hasten to add, that a thorough break with Russia and a recognition of the class and state capitalist nature of society there would make them any more socialist. It would merely make them more like the Social Democratic parties of Europe or the Labour Party in Britain. The extent to which the Communist Parties of Europe are committed to the sort of reformism and gradualism normally associated With Social Democratic and Labour parties is not often realized, though the evidence is there.

Consider the following statement made by Enrico Berlinguer, leader of the Italian party, in 1973:

The democratic road to socialism is a progressive transformation—which can take place in Italy within the framework of the anti-fascist Constitution—of the entire economic and social structure, of the values and ideas which guide the nation, of the system of power and of the bloc of social forces in which it is expressed (Les PC espagnol, frahcais et italien face au pouvoir, p. 151, our emphasis).

Much the same view is expressed by another leader of the Italian party, Napolitano, in conversations with Eric Hobsbawn recently published in English by Journeyman Press under the title The Italian Road to Socialism.

The strategy of the Italian CP is based on this perspective of a gradual transformation of capitalism into “socialism” through a series of social reform measures passed by parliament. They even believe that this can begin before their party actually participates in the government, through pressure being put on openly capitalist governments to take measures described by Berlinguer as being “of a socialist type”. So what in practice the Italian CP seeks are reforms, reforms of capitalism which are supposed to lead to socialism but which in fact would only strengthen the state capitalist aspects of the Italian economy.

Co-operating with Capitalism

Carillo’s party in Spain (as indeed the Italian and French parties too) envisages co-operating with sections of the capitalist class to begin the supposed transformation of society from capitalism into Socialism! The programme of the Spanish CP adopted in 1975 states that “on the way leading to the socialist revolution there exists objectively an intermediate step” and that

This step is that of political and social democracy, or of anti-monopolist and anti-latifundist democracy. It is not a question of abolishing bourgeois private property or of implanting socialism but of establishing a democratic power of all the anti-monopolist forces, including the small and middle bourgeoisies . . . . (Les PC, etc, pp. 45-6, our emphasis).

Now, what is this perspective of a gradual transformation of society through parliamentary action in collaboration with sections of the capitalist class but the milk-and-water reformism expounded in 1899 by the German Social Democratic Revisionist Edward Bernstein in his book Evolutionary Socialism?

Eurocommunism is a variety of reformism and as such has nothing whatsoever to offer the working class in Europe or elsewhere. And, as long as their attitude toward Russia remains ambiguous, their commitment to democratic aims and methods must remain open to question

Adam Buick

George Orwell, Spain and anti-fascism (1997)

From the May 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sixty years ago this month the events began which inspired George Orwell to write Homage to Catalonia. Left-wing militias in the Catalan capital, Barcelona, opposed to the government's policy of restoring capitalist normality in the territories which had not fallen to Franco, were attacked by Republican paramilitary forces under Communist command.

Orwell witnessed these events while on leave from the front where he was fighting as a member of one of these leftwing militias, that of the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unification Marxista, or Workers Party of Marxist Unification). The POUM was basically a dissident Communist Party which didn't believe in taking orders from Moscow. It has been called a Trotskyist party (not least by supporters of Stalin) but, although it did contain some Trotskyists, this is inaccurate. Trotsky did try to tell it what to do, but the POUM no more followed orders from Trotsky than it did from Stalin.

Orwell had joined the POUM militia because he wanted to fight Franco not because he agreed with their political views. He knew some people in the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and they put him in touch with the POUM with which the ILP had some links. He was not a dissident Communist himself and never had any sympathy with Leninism or Trotskyism. As he pointed out in a book review in January 1939:

"It is probably a good thing for Lenin's reputation that he died so early. Trotsky, in exile, denounces the Russian dictatorship, but he is probably as much responsible for it as any man now living, and there is no certainty that as a dictator he would be preferable to Stalin, though undoubtedly he has a much more interesting mind. The essential act is the rejection of democracy - that is, of the underlying values of democracy; once you have decided upon that, Stalin - or at any rate someone like Stalin - is already on the way." (from George Orwell, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters , Vol 1, as are all the quotes in this article).

After May things in Barcelona got worse. In June the POUM was banned. Its leader, Andres Nin, was arrested and later murdered by agents of the GPU, the Russian secret police. Other POUM members were detained and tortured, including non-Spanish members of their militia. Orwell and his wife had to go into hiding and eventually got over the border into France.

Homage to Catalonia describes Orwell's own experiences in Spain but it also defends the POUM and the anarchists against the lies the Communist Party and their stooges put out about them to the effect that they were in contact with and acting on behalf of Franco's fascists.

Orwell knew this to be completely untrue and, out of honesty as well as loyalty to his former companions-in-arms, he denounced this. Needless to say, the Communists suggested that he too was a fascist sympathiser and "Trotsky-Fascist". It left him with an abiding disgust with the Communist Party, its ideology and its methods, which was to inspire his later novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eight-Four which, rightly, show them no mercy.

Russian Foreign Policy

Orwell had gone to Spain as someone who had vague pro-working class feelings. His experiences there politicised him and he left holding radical leftwing views. What he learned in Spain was, first, a respect for the capacity of ordinary workers to run things on their own and, secondly, that the Communists were bastards: that they were committed, not to furthering the interests of the working class, but to furthering the foreign policy objectives of the Russian state and that, to this end, they were prepared to lie, cheat and kill. Hence his damning, but wholly accurate, description of them: "the more vocal kind of Communist is in effect a Russian publicity agent posing as an international Socialist." (Inside the Whale)

In 1935 the Comintern under Stalin carried out one of its U-turns. When the 1930s began, Social Democratic and Labour parties were still being denounced as "social fascists" and seen as being as bad, if not worse, than the real fascists. With the coming to power of Hitler, however, Germany came to be seen by the Russian rulers as a threat to their interests. Russian foreign policy then changed, from a more or less equal hostility to all the openly capitalist powers to seeking an alliance with capitalist France and Britain against capitalist Germany.

The Communist Parties had their role to play in this strategy: to work for the broadest possible anti-fascist alliance to include openly pro-capitalist elements as long as they were anti-fascist, i.e. in effect anti-German. Everything was to be subordinated to the creation of such a broad anti-fascist front. All talk of "revolution", "soviets" and the like was dropped; the red flag was replaced by the Union Jack, and patriotism became de rigueur.

Orwell, having experienced first hand the application of this policy in Spain, saw through this, writing in a private letter n September 1937:

"Of course all the Popular Front stuff that is now being pushed by the Communist press and party, Gollancz and his paid hack set etc, etc only boils down to saying that they are in favour of British Fascism (prospective) as against German Fascism. What they are aiming to do is to get British capitalism-imperialism into alliance with the USSR and thence into a war with Germany. Of course they piously pretend that they donât want the war to come and that a French-British-    Russian alliance can prevent it on the old balance of power system. But we know what the balance of power business led to last time, and in any case it is manifest that the nations are arming with the intention of fighting. The Popular Front baloney boils down to this: that when the war comes the Communists, labourites, etc instead of working to stop the war and overthrow the Government, will be on the side of the Government provided that the Government is on the 'right' side, i.e. against Germany. But everyone with any imagination can foresee that Fascism, not of course called Fascism, will be imposed on us as soon as the war starts. So you will have Fascism with Communists participating in it and, if we are in alliance with the USSR, taking a leading part in it. This is what has happened in Spain. After what I have seen in Spain I have come to the conclusion that it is futile to be 'anti-Fascist' while attempting to preserve capitalism. Fascism after all is only a development of capitalism, and the mildest democracy, so-called, is liable to turn into Fascism when the pinch comes. We like to think of England as a democratic country, but our rule in India, for instance, is just as bad as German Fascism, though outwardly it may be less irritating. I do not see how one can oppose Fascism except by working for the overthrow of capitalism, starting, of course, in one's own country. If one collaborates with a capitalist-imperialist government in a struggle 'against' Fascism, i.e. against a rival imperialism, one is simply letting fascism in by the back door".

This position put Orwell far, far to the left of the Communist Party and in June 1938 he joined the ILP. The ILP, which had been one of the original founding elements of the Labour Party, had broken away from Labour in 1932 and was a home for all sorts of leftwing critics of Labour's short-sighted reformism. At different times, both the Communists and the Trotskyists tried to take it over, but without success. While some of its members had notions of socialism, generally speaking it was a confused organisation which was unclear both as to what socialism was and as to how to get it, and was itself reformist in the sense that it campaigned for reforms of capitalism.

Orwell was not out of place in the ILP since he, too, only had a vague notion of socialism. For him it was the general idea of a decent society without private ownership of the means of production or a privileged class and where ordinary people would run things democratically in their own interest. Orwell, however, was clear on one thing: Russia was not socialist or anything like it.

In a book review in June 1938 he asked of Russia: "is it Socialism, or is it a peculiarly vicious form of state capitalism?" His answer was that, whatever it was, it wasn't socialism. Later he embraced the theory that Russia was a new exploiting, class society best described as "oligarchical collectivism" where a self-appointed and self-perpetuating oligarchy ruled through a one-party dictatorship on the basis of the state (collective class) ownership of the means of production. For although Orwell was primarily interested in literary matters he also followed very closely the arguments that went on in Trotskyist, ex-Trotskyist and ex-Communist circles on the nature of Russian society, a knowledge he was able to put to later use when writing Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Capitalism and War

In one of his letters Orwell mentions that he had written an anti-war pamphlet. This has not been found, but it is not difficult to work out from his other letters and articles what it would have said. Its basic premise would have been what Orwell set out in book review he did in August 1937:

"1. That war against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.
2. That every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defence against a homicidal maniac ('militarist' Germany in 1914, 'Fascist' Germany next year or the year after).
The essential job is to get people to recognize war propaganda when they see it, especially when it is disguised as peace propaganda".

Orwell, as we have seen, regarded the campaign for an anti-fascist "people's front" as just such war propaganda disguised as a peace campaign. It merely opposed one type of capitalism by another type of capitalism, in the interest of one particular alliance of capitalist-imperialist powers. So his anti-war pamphlet can be expected to have denounced mere anti-fascism as a means of preparing workers ideologically to support Britain, France and Russia in the coming war against Germany and Italy

But if mere anti-fascism was not a genuine alternative to fascism, what, in Orwell's eyes, was? Orwell looked to the emergence of a mass democratic revolutionary movement that would be anti-capitalist as well as anti-fascist. Reviewing Franz Borkenau's The Communist International (which should be read by anyone wanting to learn about the various turns the Comintern effected in the 1920s and 1930s) in September 1938, he wrote:

"Where I part company from him is where he says that for the western democracies the choice lies between Fascism and an orderly reconstruction through the cooperation of all classes. I do not believe in the second possibility, because I do not believe that a man with 50,000 pounds a year and a man with fifteen shillings a week either can, or will, co-operate. The nature of their relationship is quite simply, that the one is robbing the other, and there is no reason to think that the robber will suddenly turn over a new leaf. It would seem, therefore, that if the problems of western capitalism are to be solved, it will have to be through a third alternative, a movement which is genuinely revolutionary, i.e. willing to make drastic changes and to use violence if necessary, but which does not lose touch, as Communism and Fascism have done, with the essential values of democracy. Such a thing is by no means unthinkable. The germs of such a movement exist in numerous countries, and they are capable of growing. At any rate, if they don't, there is no real exit from the pigsty we are in".

Unfortunately, no such movement did emerge and in September 1939 the widely predicted war broke out. Although previously he had envisaged going underground to oppose the war (in January 1939 Orwell had written to Herbert Read, the anarchist art-world figure, "I believe it is vitally necessary for those of us who intend to oppose the coming war to start organising for illegal anti-war activities"), when the war did break out he not only didn't go underground but he actively supported it - and not just on anti-fascist but on old-fashioned patriotic grounds.

He tried to enlist to go and kill German workers himself but was turned down because he had signs of TB. Instead, he spent the war churning out patriotic propaganda (some of it nasty stuff: he referred to pacifists as "fascifists" and denounced conscientious objectors as "pro-Nazis") aimed at getting British workers to go and kill German workers and Indian workers to kill Japanese workers.

It was a betrayal, an unpardonable one from a socialist point of view, of the working-class internationalism he had initially adopted as a result of his experiences in Spain.

Adam Buick