File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-03-18.151, message 68


Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 19:55:17 -0500 (EST)
From: Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin-AT-utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Spain? 1939?


Louis,

No, I am not seeking a PhD in political science. 

Funny, when people think they know everything, and then they run into
something they don't know, their first reaction is disbelief or outright
ridicule. When X-rays were first discovered, several of the old physicists
denied them completely. When Freud revealed, in a speech in 1896, that his
neurosis patients had been molested, the hall erupted in riot. But these
events are not really analogous, since the matters upon which Louis finds
room to be combative are well-known.

The year? 1939? It is symbolic, largely, but represents when the
Stalinists called off the Popular Front and joined with Hitler in actively
putting down the people in Spain. As you know, Louis (I hope you know),
1939 was the year that Stalin and Hitler entered into an alliance, the
year after Madrid fell to axis powers. But the Stalinists had been working
against the people in Spain for a lot longer than that. The Civil War in
Spain was a drawn-out affair, as you should know. The people were
struggling against fascism on the one side and the Stalinism on the other. 
It was a war on two fronts that they ultimately lost. The antifascist and
popular forces that were struggling in Spain were eventually abandoned,
and then destablized. I really thought that this piece of history was
uncontroversial. Evidently not. 

The counterrevolution by the Stalinists was led through the SCP and the
USPC. There immediate goal was, of course, the destruction of the CNT (a
cause I am sure many Bolsheviks on here celebrate to this day). In 1935
the Soviets signed a mutual assistance pact. The pact was designed to
forge linkages between the Soviet Union and Britain and France to close up
holes threatening Russia's interests. To convince the Western Europeans
that the established communist parties had no intentions of revolution in
Spain they joined forces with the Republican Party, the Republican Union,
the Socialist Party, the POUM (Marxist--who would ultimately be put down),
the Syndicalist Party, the Basque and Catalan nationalists. This was the
famous Popular Front, of which you spoke, and the Popular Front line was
adopted by the Third International at the 7th WCC August 1935. The Popular
Front stood against the fascists. The effort to undermine the fascist
move in Spain involved joining with elements of the bourgeoisie, the petty
bourgeoisie, liberal and republican parties, etc. On the fascist side
Germany and Italy were giving aid in Spain. When the people actually threw
revolution, the Stalinists were embarrassed. Already, from the beginning,
the Stalinists worked against fascism but undermined democracy. This
destruction of the worker project in Spain lead directly to weakening
resistance to fascist forces. (This is all an over-simplification. Events
on the ground were obviously very complicated.)

The counterrevolutionaries gained power in 1937 and began destroying the
working class organizations. They destroyed the workers supply committees,
etc., people began starving. The collectives were dissolved. Industries
were nationalized and taken from the workers. In December of 1937 Pravda
ran this story: "As for Catalonia, the purging of Trotskyists and the
Anarcho-Syndicalists has begun, it will be conducted with the same energy
with which it was conducted in the USSR." Would we expect anything less?
The forerunner of the KGP, the GUP, began operations in earnest. Leaders
of the working class began disappearing or turning up dead. During May
Day 1937, Barcelona, the Stalinists and government forces launched
full-scale assaults against the working people. The destablization lead to
the triumph of fascist forces in 1938 when Madrid fell. You fill in the
pieces.

In 1939, with the signing of the Nonaggression Pact between Germany and
USSR, the CP was directed to withdraw all antifascist forces from Spain
and the Stalinist party there joined with the fascists. Again, your fill
in the pieces. I don't have time, to be honest. If Louis wants to defend
Stalinism, then he is free to do so.

As for the ad hominem... well, that speaks for itself. I see nothing to
make me change my position.

I should say that the understanding of geopolitics of this time on this
channel is shit.

AA




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