Anarchism and the mystification of the “Spanish Revolution”

The Anarchist Communist Group (ACG) held an on-line meeting on June 1st last on the topic of what they call the “Spanish revolution” of 1936. This event is of vital importance for revolutionaries because, among others, it highlights the defeat of the revolutionary wave from 1917 to the mid-1920’s and shows how, in this counter-revolutionary period, events in Spain were not a revolution, not a “civil war”, but a crushing defeat where the interests of the working class were derailed from its own terrain and then mobilised in a rehearsal for the second, imperialist world war by both the right and left wings of capitalism.

The presentation, by four members of the ACG, lasted one hour with each taking about 15 minutes. The two-hour meeting advertised was thus reduced to 90 minutes including 30 minutes “for questions”.

From the outset “The Spanish Revolution” was hammered home by the ACG; there were lots of meanders about the various factions (the FAI, for example[1]), but according to the ACG, events in Spain were part “of an unrivalled movement of anarchism in over 50 years of libertarian communism”. Collectivisation was necessary, it said, in order to win the war against Franco before making the revolution. They added “what happened on the land was more important than the factories”. In fact, there was a strong emphasis throughout on the role of the peasantry as the driving force of this so-called revolution. There was also criticism of the POUM (the Trotskyist group which was part of the “Popular Front”), for putting war aims before the revolution. They mentioned The Friends of Durruti (FoD – see below) for according priority to the ‘revolution’ rather than to winning the war against the right.

We insisted in our intervention that there was no revolution in Spain and the political and military situation was dominated by imperialism. In this context “collectivisation” was the organisation of the war economy, just as workers’ self-management and occupations have always turned out to be the working class managing its own exploitation.[2]

We made the point about members of the CNT in the government of the Spanish Republic (four members joined in 1936) telling the workers “we are all brothers in the Republic”, thus contributing to mobilising them in the service of the Republic and preparing the brutal repression of the proletariat by the Republican army and police. The CNT was part of the democratic process that crushed the working class and elements like the FoD were a workers’ reaction to the betrayal, but this didn’t demonstrate “the vitality of anarchism” as the ACG claimed, but its inability to draw the conclusion that it was the CNT itself that participated in the mobilisation of the working class behind the democratic faction of the bourgeoisie against the fascist faction, and was thus part of the build-up to imperialist war – a link in the chain of imperialism. We concluded that the defence of democracy always opens the working class to defeat, and it’s clear that in Spain democracy and Stalinism was on one side and Germany, Spain and Italy on the other. Spain was the final expression of the international defeat of the working class through the crushing of the 1917-23 revolutionary wave.

The ACG immediately denounced this ICC intervention as “gibberish and deranged” with general approval and silence from the majority. This made it possible for them to avoid any in-depth response and to steer the debate onto a number of secondary issues.

The avoidance of debate also enabled the Communist Workers Organisation, a member of whom was present at the meeting,  to express its unfortunately habitual opportunism This group, which is part of the Communist Left, had listened to an hour-long attack by the ACG on marxist positions, including support for anti-fascism in an imperialist war, and its only response was an empty question about possible differences in the FAI. It did speak again after the ICC intervention, not to support a proletarian position, but to sheepishly and half-jokingly talk about historical differences between marxism and anarchism, without the least mention of Spain in the 1930’s. A possible explanation for the CWO sucking up to the ACG in this meeting was revealed in a previous meeting in March this year by the latter on “Anti-militarism”, where the ACG revealed that it was “affiliating” to the CWO’s entirely opportunist “No War but the Class War” committees.

The Communist Left defends internationalism

The analytical framework of the Communist left is essential for understanding what happened in Spain in 1936. We will recall some of its most important positions.

On the one hand, the fundamental context for a proletarian revolution is its internationalist dynamic against all and any support for nationalism and the nation state, including its democratic and anti-fascist factions. The “Spanish Revolution”, a build-up to imperialist war in which both fascist and anti-fascist, democratic and Stalinist forces were involved, was a local expression – a very significant local expression which had international consequences – of the defeat of the working class which took place entirely within the international framework of imperialism’s preparation for the Second World War. It was also part of an internationally orchestrated ideological campaign against the working class, aimed at driving that defeat home. In this respect, the ruling class had learned its lesson from the revolutionary wave that followed – indeed ended – the First World War, that the working class had to be crushed as a precondition for marching it off to war, and it used its left wing to complete the job.

At the same time, in the 1920s and 30s, the fractions of the Communist Left had already begun the difficult task of deepening the marxist understanding of the dynamic of capitalism, war and the reasons for the defeat of the revolutionary wave of the early 20th century. In the epoch of capitalist decadence, colonial wars had been replaced by “imperialist war for a new division of the market” between “old” and “young” capitalist nations. “War no longer expressed the ascent of capitalism, but its general decadent nature” (Bilan, no. 11)[3]. Wars of this time couldn’t be compared to the progressive wars of capitalism against feudalism. No war could be “progressive”, “just” or “anti-reactionary” except the class war, and this was in line with the position of the Bolsheviks and Rosa Luxemburg that the choice facing humanity was revolution or barbarism – and the war in Spain was precisely an expression of capitalist barbarism. So no more support for bourgeois democracy:“the war in Spain had carried out this pitiless selection, demarcating the proletarian from the capitalist camp”.[4]

In 1934, Bilan had already denounced the Spanish Republic, founded in 1931, as “reactionary” after it killed at least 1500 striking and fighting workers in Asturias: “...October 1934 marks the frontal battle to obliterate all the forces and organisation of the Spanish proletariat”[5]. Further attacks on the working class from the Republic were made on the working class as they were mobilised into the Spanish war economy. If the Spanish working class fell into this trap, it was also to a large extent due to the illusions propagated by anarchism, illusions maintained and spread today by the ACG.

Workers tried to fight back against this “betrayal” by the left and the CNT in particular, fighting on their own ground and dying for it – notably on the barricades of May 1937 in Barcelona. Others were armed by the Republic and Fascist gangs and, dizzy with the ideological and physical onslaught taking place in an international context of defeat, were used as cannon-fodder in the war.

There were also political expressions questioning the role of the CNT and the left in the war; we’ve mentioned the FAI and the Friends of Durruti above and it was the latter that the ACG – along with many anarchists – refer to as showing the positive dynamic of anarchism. But although the Friends of Durruti criticised the CNT for its “collaboration”, it could not understand that it was the CNT itself that was part of the forces of the bourgeoisie in this imperialist war.[6] The group could not see beyond the frontiers of Spain and the “Spanish Revolution”, blinding it to the international defeat of the working class which dictated  a course towards world-wide imperialist conflict, and the events in Spain were part of this.

The events in Spain in 1936 once again illustrate the historical bankruptcy of anarchism

The depiction of war in Spain in the 1930’s as a workers’ revolution when it was in fact an imperialist war coming out of the defeat of the working class internationally, its support for “anti-fascism” and its democratic coalition, show that the ACG is fundamentally unable to defend the demarcation lines between proletariat and bourgeoisie. Without the defence of those lines, deemed essential by the Communist Left, this group is doomed to incoherence and further slides into leftism.

This slide is evidenced from statements from the ACG paper Jackdaw (February 2024)”. It quotes the ACG as saying: “For all the anger and opposition its (Israel’s) genocidal actions are creating amongst ordinary people, there are not, so far, any allies amongst the nation states of the world, notwithstanding South Africa’s filing a case of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice, that might intervene meaningfully on their behalf”[7]. Thus, these anarchists are appealing to capitalist states to come to the aid of Palestinian nationalism, citing the concerns of “ordinary people.

  As the ICC article says, the ACG go further in supporting an end to arms sales to Israel while calling on the British government to support a ceasefire. When one of our militants at the ACG meeting of April 23 called the ACG out on this outright support for the bourgeoisie and its manoeuvres on the level of imperialism, the ACG flatly denied that such a thing was suggested. Nevertheless, the ACG presenter said that “it was the human thing to do” to denounce Israeli atrocities while their paper states that: “Iran and their Hezbollah allies have refrained from any full-blooded commitment, despite provocation from Israel, because they know the consequences of an escalation”. Here they put forward the suggestion that restraint and moderation are being shown by the proxies of Iranian imperialism. This innuendo and suggestion is rife throughout the ACG’s position on the Middle East and it boils down to support for Palestinian nationalism – or the “resistance” as their speaker kept referring to it at the April meeting, with no clear position on the imperialist nature of Iran and its allies, i.e., all sides in this imperialist war.  Even the CWO has recognised the drift on the ACG position from that of proletarian internationalism to the support of Palestinian nationalism: "The ACG has been clear in its rejection of nationalism in Ukraine, but now seems to be entering the mire of bourgeois politics in Palestine".[8]

The “clarity” of the group on the fundamental issue of proletarian internationalism is paper-thin, virtually devoid of any theoretical foundations. The real substance and content of the ACG’s political positions were fully on display at its last two meetings above: support for anti-fascism, the “progressive” factions of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist state; tacit support for warring factions in the wars in the Middle East. The Anarchist Communist Group is sliding further into leftism.

Baboon, 22.6.26

 

 

 

 

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[1] The FAI (Iberian Anarchist Federation) was born out of militant anarchist workers who tried to stop the anarchist CNT (National Confederation of Workers) from taking up a role in the Spanish state. It ultimately failed. See: Anti-fascism: the road to the betrayal of the CNT, International Review 133

 

[2] See Spain 1936: The Myth of the Anarchist Collectives, International Review 15

 

[3] See the ICC’s pamphlet, The Italian Communist Left 1926-45, 6: Towards war or revolution? (1937-39)

 

[4] Chapter 5 of the above: 5: The War in Spain - No Betrayal!

 

[5] Bilan no. 12, October 1934

[6] See the ICC text Spain 1936 and the Friends of Durruti, International Review 102

 

[7] quoted in the ICC article on the ACG, The ACG takes another step towards supporting the nationalist war campaign

[8] ICT, October 2023

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