Criticizing the Line of the Comintern on the Civil War in Spain

The Spanish Civil War was the last time revolutionary armies fought in Western Europe. Defeated by the fascist coup of Francisco Franco, backed by the armies of Hitler and Mussolini, the revolutionary workers and peasants of Spain fought heroically, with assistance from International Brigades composed of communist (and democratic) volunteers from every corner of the earth. The superior armaments of the fascists weren't the only cause of the defeat.

In Spain, to be blunt, the possibilities for big revolutionary advances in that country and worldwide were sacrificed..." --- Revolution, 1981

Long out of print, this article from the old Revolution magazine has recently found it's way onto the internet. Be warned, the file is large. If anyone has the time to convert this important self-criticism from the communist movement into a more portable text file, feel free to post it as a comment here and Red Flags will format it into a more portable version.

Download the PDF

Comments

[Leon]

Aren't you inching close to errr...Trotskyism on this issue. Considering that the folks who were saying what this article is saying at the time were mostly Trots, semi-Trots like the POUM and some anarchists and those folks were wiped out and murdered by the Republican government with the leading role played by the PCE and GPU; dosen't that require a deeper evaluation of the Stalin and "Marxism-Leninism" than the RCP has done.

[general molotov]

Trotskyism always seemed more of a method than any particular program. Essentially, it aruges that platform is the answer to everything. It is monday morning quarterbacking of the sort where they try to uphold this semi-mystical spirit of communism while hating on every living communist movement in the world. After 60 years, you think the Trots would have led something somewhere...

The only real experiences I've had with Trots was their campus agitation via the ISO and some fairly economist labor organizing in New York City with the transit workers. They seemed to be basically good people, but their need to "intervene" by being didactic, and their total incomprehension of how race functions in America (through nationalities...) means they are often bewildered.

But the Comintern was wrong in Spain, and largely wrong for the USA. If Trotsky shared a similar critique then good for him. The Popular Front that always makes communists act under the political line of liberal capitalism has led to decades of disaster and sell-outs. Spain is the place we can see this so clearly.

But it's a hard road. In Nepal, the reds want to work with other political parties, but at what point does that "democratic" inclusion lead to a fundamental watering down of revolutionary objectives?

In Spain, there were revolutionary workers... and the Soviet Union under Stalin pushed the Spanish CP to an accomodationist position so as not to offend the Brits. Say what?!

Recognizing the big mistakes of socialism is a good start to not reproducing the same errors.

I am sympathetic to Maoist positions. That doesn't mean Mao's shit didn't stink sometimes, too. (Tea with Nixon, anyone?)

[rabble]

I think you're forgetting about Tito's Yugoslavia which fought and won against Hitler. The partisans in Italy and Greece never got as far as having a full armies nor winning, but they definately are more recent than the spanish civil war.

[the burningman]

Yugoslavia isn't "Western Europe," and those brave and heroic partisans of the Italian resistance to fascism, unfortunately, were not pursuing a revolutionary line. After the war, they took the deals cut at Yalta and effectively stepped out of the way to allow a bourgeois, semi-democratic government to come in.

What happened in Greece, Italy and France after WW2 is directly linked to the Popular Front orientation that effectively took socialism off the map indefinitely. That's what this polemic is addressing.

We need red flags on the ground, whenever and wherever possible.

[fifth column]

The Spanish Communists totally sold the revolution out for geopolitical bullshit. It started with the break-up of the largely anarchist militias and, years later, ended at Yalta with Churchill, FDR and Stalin sitting around a table carving it up.

That turned out great.

[Yo!]

GO POUND SAND UP YOUR ASS